What did they look like?

Two hundred years ago, poor people were a lot shorter and scrawnier than the average person is today. This was because during the important growing years of childhood, their food had not been very nutritious or plentiful. Most of the male convicts were under 173 cm. Many of them were only about 160 cm, which nowadays is quite short even for a woman.

The children that the convicts gave birth to later in Australia looked very different to their fathers and mothers. With a better diet and climate, they tended to grow up tall and broad, and were not as pale and hollow-cheeked as their parents.