The Collaborative International Dictionary
Emancipist \E*man"ci*pist\, n. A freed convict. [Australia]
Wiktionary
alt. (context Australia historical English) In penal colonies of early Australia, a convict who had been pardoned for good conduct; ''sometimes inclusively a convict whose sentence had completed, though one such was more usually called an expiree''. n. (context Australia historical English) In penal colonies of early Australia, a convict who had been pardoned for good conduct; ''sometimes inclusively a convict whose sentence had completed, though one such was more usually called an expiree''.
Wikipedia
An emancipist was any of the convicts sentenced and transported under the convict system to Australia, who had been given conditional or absolute pardons. The term was also used to refer to those convicts whose sentences had expired, and could also be used of free settlers who supported full civil rights for emancipated convicts.
An emancipist was free to own land and was no longer subject to penal servitude. An emancipist could be released from his or her sentence for good behaviour, diligent work, or the expiration of his or her sentence. One limitation placed upon emancipists with a conditional pardon - a ticket-of-leave - was that they were not allowed to leave the Australian colonies. This limitation did not apply to former convicts whose term of servitude had expired, or who had been unconditionally pardoned, and more than half of all male convicts did leave the Australian colonies on the expiration of their sentence [it was more difficult for women emancipists to leave, as they had fewer opportunities of "working their passage" away from the colonies].
The Exclusives (who included many free settlers, civil servants and military officers) often shunned the society of the Emancipists and considered them to be little more than criminals. When Governor Lachlan Macquarie invited emancipists to social functions at Government House, for example, many military officers refused to attend.
Macquarie (Governor from 1810 to 1821) insisted emancipated convicts be treated as social equals and, very conscious of the critical shortage of skills in the young colony, appointed emancipists with talent to official positions. Among these appointments were Francis Greenway as colonial architect and Dr William Redfern as colonial surgeon. He scandalised settler opinion by appointing another emancipist, Andrew Thompson, as a magistrate.
John Hamilton Irving (or Irven, Irwin, or Ervin) was Australia's first emancipist. Irving was a surgeon convicted of larceny on 6 March 1784. He was sentenced to "seven years beyond the seas," and was sent on one of the First Fleet transport. After exhibiting a willing readiness to assist with his exceptional surgical skills, he was emancipated by Governor Arthur Phillip on 28 February 1790, and worked thereafter as an assistant surgeon. On 14 July 1792, Irving's Warrant of Emancipation was received in England and acknowledged by Henry Dundas, the Secretary of State.
Usage examples of "emancipist".
Newman, an emancipist and police officer, with a third child on the way, was easily enough convinced by John Solomon that he should apply for Hannah to be assigned as his servant.
Within six months of the completion of the still, having served three years in prison, she was assigned to an emancipist of good repute who offered at the same time to take her as his wife.
But even when the children of a successful emancipist achieved such Olympian heights, their flawed lineage remained and the whispers of the crinolined society matrons would continue for the next two generations.
Hannah soon enough adapted, taking up with a certain George Madden, an emancipist who had become a wealthy grain merchant, and also acted as a district constable.
As an emancipist Mary rightfully belonged two social ranks further down the ladder.
He had been very useful in the obtaining of various licences, and a positive stalwart in her fights with the beer barons and others who did not like to see an emancipist and, in particular, a woman succeed at what they felt was most decidedly the province of a man.
Then Sarah silently chided herself, wondering what her father would say if he knew of her embryonic emancipist feelings.
But, fortunately for us, she came of farming stock and eventually became the emancipist owner of a sizable sheep run on the Nepean River.
He quickly surmised that trinkets and rings and bright shining things would not be so much sought after on an island consisting largely of convicts, emancipists and troopers.
Most of the people who walked the streets were either emancipists, ticket of leavers or active prisoners, and all felt they had just cause to resent authority and to keep some things secret from the free settlers whom they disliked almost as much.
Governor Arthur abolished land grants to emancipists first, and then altogether, but had nonetheless awarded himself a great acreage, without the payment he demanded from everyone else.
Land would not readily invest in emancipists, particularly women, unless they had assets to secure the loan well in excess of the amount they wished to borrow.
The emancipists, for obvious reasons, tended to be convicts, former convicts, or the children of convicts, and consequently had difficulty getting the authorities to listen to their pleas for equal treatment.
These have but arrived in the country, and their influence must effect a radical change in the mental standard of the native Colonists, and, we firmly hope, overcome the pernicious influence which wealthy emancipists and uneducated dealers have hitherto exercised upon the minds of the rising generation, and who, being in many instances only concealed rogues, masked their want of principle, and mingled with the more reputable class, which tended to undermine the whole moral fabric, and to sink the mental tone of the whole race of Colonists.