Electrification of Convicts

In addition to amputation and trepanning sets, lithotomy and midwifery implements, dissection knives and ‘teeth instruments’, the First Fleet of ships sent to Australia in May 1787 also carried an ‘electrical medical apparatus’ for use in the colony. [1]

At first glance, this seems weirdly anachronistic - convicts shipped to the far side of the world were offered ‘a gentle and refreshing stream’ of electrical stimulation to help cure their ailments? But medical electricity was highly fashionable throughout Britain in 1786, when the First Fleet was commissioned, and on closer analysis, it is unsurprising that an ‘electrical machine’ was added to the list.

Medical Electricity

The nature of electricity and its potential uses were the subject of intense discussion and debate in Europe throughout the second half of the 18th century. The Leyden Jar, a primitive form of condenser, had been invented in 1745, and the following year, a London physician and scientist, William Wilson, conducted a current through a wire two miles long, demonstrating that it could be transported over long distances. Benjamin Franklin (allegedly) conducted his experiment with a kite in 1752, demonstrating that lightning was an electrical phenonemon.

In Italy, Luigi Galvani was exploring ‘animal electricity’, experimenting with amputated frogs’ legs from 1781. And as the First Fleet was preparing to sail, naturalists raised the possibility that earthquakes might be caused by electricity, and a gardener claimed to have grown over-sized asparagus and cauliflowers in winter without the benefit of a hot-house, through the use of electricity.

While ‘electrical machines’ quickly became a parlour game for the wealthy, their practical uses at this stage were in medicine, where they came to be regarded as a cure-all. In 1786, the list of ailments where electrification was thought to be beneficial included palsy, epilepsy, contractions, locked jaw, nervous disorders, rheumatism, gout, headache, deafness and blindness (among many others).

These were hand-turned electrostatic generators with the charge stored in Leyden Jars, but there was a great deal of experimentation with different designs. In the 1760s, a London instrument-maker, John Read, began producing small, cheap machines which could be taken apart and packed in boxes for transportation.

The first English textbook on medical electricity was published in 1756, and over the next three decades, the great hospitals of London all acquired machines and began teaching students. In 1780, an electrical department was established at St Thomas’s, presided over by Sir John Birch, a great advocate of electrification and the author of several books on the subject.

Democratising Medicine

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, played an important role in popularising medical electricity, purchasing some of the machines for his health clinics in London and Bristol, where electrotherapy was offered to the poor for free. Wesley held the medical profession in poor regard, criticising them for prescribing expensive chemical and botanical cures which the working class could not afford.

In 1760, he published The Desideratum: Or Electricity made Plain and Useful by a Lover of Mankind and of Common Sense, proselytising the success they had had in treating a variety of conditions, and creating a strong link in the public mind between medical electricity and low-cost healthcare. John Read had been a patient of Wesley, and his pursuit of easy-to-use and low-cost machines was deeply influenced by Wesley's philosophy of practical piety.

Frontispiece to George Adams, An Essay on Electricity Explaining the Theory and Practice of that Useful Science, and the Mode of Applying it to Medical Purposes, London: 1785

One of Wesley’s portable electrical machines, from Wesley’s Chapel and Museum in City Road, London

In 1793, a philanthropist named William Hawes (who was a Presbyterian and critical of Wesley in a number of ways) established the London Electrical Dispensary ‘with a view to afford a new benefit to the lower orders of mankind’.

New South Wales

There is no evidence as to how this ‘medical electrical apparatus’ was used in First Fleet society. The only known mention is in a list of medicines and surgical instruments for the colony prepared in 1786 by Robert Adair, surgeon general of the Army, and John White, the naval surgeon recently chosen as the chief surgeon of the proposed new colony.

But given the strong association between electrostatic generators and healthcare for the poor, it seems reasonable to conclude that Adair and White included one of these machines in their list because they expected it to be used for treating convicts. And given that he had recommended the machine, it seems likely that John White used it in the convict hospital on the west side of the cove once they had come ashore in January 1788.

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[1] Robert Adair and John White, 'List of Surgeon's Instruments &c for the Use of Convicts Going to Botany Bay', attached to Navy Board to George Rose, 13 November 1786, UK National Archives, T1/639, No.2643.

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