Catalogue description Folio 20: Margaret Burk, aged 20, Convict for life; disease or hurt, febris. Put on sick...

Folio 20: Margaret Burk, aged 20, Convict for life; disease or hurt, febris. Put on sick list, 28 November 1835. Discharged, 12 December 1835.

Folio 20: Mary McMullen, aged 25, Convict; disease or hurt, dyspepsia. Put on sick list, 22 November 1835. Discharged, [1] February 1836. Complained of being generally irregular in her bowels and being at the time constipated and painful, with headache, hot skin and frequent pulse.

Folio 21: Rose Doyle, aged 25, Convict; disease or hurt, diarrhoea. Put on sick list, 30 December 1835. Discharged, 11 January 1836.

Folios 21-22: Dennis Toohy, aged 5, Convict's Child; disease or hurt, indigestion and fever. Put on sick list, 2 December 1835. Discharged, 17 January 1836. This child was a cousin of Rose Doyle and of a strumous habit.

Folio 22: Kitty Bowles, aged 33, Convict; disease or hurt, diarrhoea. Put on sick list, 26 December 1835. Discharged, 5 January 1836. When first seen she was rolling on the deck in agony from gas which was distending her abdomen, she had previously been suffering diarrhoea form which she had apparently recovered.

Folio 23: Elija Donoghue, aged 28, Convict; disease or hurt, iritis. Put on sick list, 3 January 1836. Discharged, 17 January 1836.

Folio 23: Charles Murray, aged 12 months, [Convict's Child]; disease or hurt, chronic enteritis. Put on sick list, 23 October 1835. Died, 29 January 1836. Came on board in a state of [.....] from mesenteric disease, took very little food except from the breast and suffered alternate bouts of constipation and diarrhoea. His mother was fond of him but had a bad temper which caused trouble with her messmates. His face, legs and feet became oedematous and his abdomen swollen and tender.

Folio 24: Caroline Joyce, aged 2; disease or hurt, chronic enteritis and diarrhoea. Put on sick list, 1 November 1835. Died, 13 February 1836. The child was of a pale, strumous appearance, subject to diarrhoea since coming on board.

Folio 24: Mary Brennan, aged 24, Convict; disease or hurt, menorrhagia. Put on sick list, 15 December 1835. Discharged, 19 December 1835. Suffered excessive catamenia and a succession of attacks of leipothymia attended by a generation of flatus in the stomach, which was distended.

Folio 25: Catherin Kelly, aged 20, Convict; disease or hurt, fever. Put on sick list, 1 December 1835. Discharged, 31 December 1835. Seized with intense headache, vomiting and pain of back and limbs, 'shortly after using a shower bath'.

Folio 25: Margaret Connoly, aged 36, Convict; disease or hurt, pleuritis. Put on sick list, 7 December 1835. Discharged, 20 December 1835.

Folio 26: Ellen Maher, aged 22, Convict for life; disease or hurt, uterine and ovarian disease. Put on sick list, 16 December 1835. Discharged to factory at Parramatta, 2 March 1836. The surgeon found her laying about the deck and was told that she was continually fretting over the execution of her brother for murder two years previously. She had had some part in the crime but her sentence was commuted to transportation. She was ‘very desponding and wishes for a speedy death to release her from her feelings'. She was found to have a tumour in the hippogastric region, where she had been kicked two years previously trying to escape from the police.

Folio 27: Abstract of the preceding journal, being a summary of all the cases contained therein, nosologically arranged. With a similar abstract of all the cases in the daily sick book.

Folio 28: Surgeon's general remarks. 'The convicts embarked at Cork on board the Roslin Castle consisted of 182 women and 49 children, many of the latter at the breast of the former, a large majority was of the worst description, morally and physically. A more filthy, indolent and reprobate set of women were never expatriated'. Most had been in prison more than a year and many were sent from the hospital as incurable. Adverse weather increased the sea sickness at the start of the voyage and many of the women suffered the consequences even after the bad weather ceased. There were many long lasting cases of gastric irritability and some of the old women were nursed all through the voyage. Obstinate obstruction of the bowels was also a general consequence, made worse by the women not reporting it for 10 or 15 days. The bowel conditions were made worse by the change in diet from the low hospital diet to the ship's dry provisions and by existing diseases from leading dissipated lives. A week after leaving harbour a case of fever developed [Joanna Reilly?] which had been disguised in its early stages by sea sickness. It quickly assumed a typhoid form and, when the patient died, caused great alarm among the prisoners. This did have the effect of encouraging the prisoners to keep themselves and the prison clean, 'yet even after this, from time to time, the filthy habits of some among them in the night about the water closets was a source of great annoyance to the people in the contiguous berths and of anxiety and vexation to myself'. Other cases of fever were very mild. Two other women died in the voyage, one [Sarah Lineham] died of dropsy induced by her refusing medicine for long continued visceral obstruction, the other [Anne Foley] died in the night. Her infant was obliged to be weaned but partly from bad nursing and a cachetic habit of body, it died shortly afterwards of diarrhoea. Three other infants of strumous diathesis and suffering abdominal diseases died. Most of the other cases were unremarkable, mostly of a chronic character, nearly half the convicts had some chronic pain and 40 of them, mostly young, applied for emmenagogues to relieve long standing catamenial suppression. Few of the women became reconciled to their new diet, they especially objected to cocoa and after a few days it was thrown away and tea substituted, even this did not suit some who had never had tea before. 'They had an incessant, almost morbid, longing for potatoes, for which they would have sacrificed everything else'. Signed John Edwards.