page_title: Isle of the Dead (Tasmania)
section_title: Gravediggers
hierarchical_section_title: Isle of the Dead (Tasmania) / Cemetery for penal colony / Gravediggers
context_page_description: Isle of the Dead is a small island adjacent to Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. The island is historically significant as it retains an Aboriginal coastal shell midden, one of the first recorded sea-level benchmarks, and one of the few preserved Australian convict-period burial grounds. Isle of the Dead forms part of the Port Arthur Historic Site. This site is part of Australian Convict Sites and is listed as a World Heritage Property, as it represents convictism in the era of British colonisation.
  Prior to European settlement, the indigenous population used the Isle of the Dead for food gathering. From 1833 the island was used as a cemetery for convicts and free people of the Port Arthur penal colony. A number of journalists and authors visited the island at this time and their accounts were published.
  The Isle of the Dead was the destination for all who died inside the prison camps. Of the 1,000 estimated graves recorded to exist there, only 180, those of prison staff and military personnel, were marked. The cemetery was closed following the demise of the Port Arthur settlement in 1877 and the island was sold as private land.
context_section_description: There are two known gravediggers who lived and worked on the Isle of the Dead during its time as a penal colony. The first was John Barron, an Irish convict who lived and worked on the island for more than 10 years until pardoned in 1874. The second was Mark Jeffrey, an English convict who volunteered for the job as gravedigger and lived on the isle from Mondays to Saturdays and returned to the Port Arthur settlement to attend Sunday church services. He was the gravedigger until the penal colony's closure in April 1877, then transferred to Hobart Town prison.
caption: Mark Jeffrey (1825–1894). Convict gravedigger for Isle of the Dead, who wrote a published autobiography about his life, including his time as a prisoner in Port Arthur.
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