Tattooed Convicts- Eliza Roberts

Alker, Zoë (2022) Tattooed Convicts- Eliza Roberts. Digital Panopticon.

Abstract

Born in Bristol in 1816, Eliza Roberts was transported to Australia in 1832 for pocket-picking aged just 16. Far from the stereotype of the ‘Artful Dodger’ Eliza’s life narrative reminds us of the difficulties in being a young, working-class woman in early Victorian London. The self-identities of young female juveniles, often obscured from history, are made visible here through Eliza’s many tattoos, which provide us with a unique opportunity to understand the complex identities and sentiments of young women coming-of-age in the nineteenth-century metropolis. Together with her early marriage, they also, perhaps, help us to understand how she managed to desist from crime.