Posted Jul 28, 2018, 6:32 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2016
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 24,177
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Quote:
When derelicts from Down Under overran San Francisco
By Gary Kamiya July 21, 2018 Updated: July 21, 2018 10:44 a.m.
In the early years of San Francisco, one neighborhood was synonymous with vice, crime, degradation and all-around sleaze: Sydney-Town.
Sydney-Town was located in the waterfront area around Pacific and Montgomery streets, at the southern edge of Telegraph Hill. It took its name from its Australian denizens, known as the Sydney Ducks.
Word of the Gold Rush led thousands of Australians to head for California . . . . By mid-1851, a staggering 11,000 had arrived, including 7,500 from Sydney.
Most of these immigrants were not criminals. But some were ex-convicts who had been transported from Britain to the penal colonies in New South Wales, later known as Australia. These ex-cons were known as “ticket-of-leave” men, after a document of parole showing that the possessor had served his time.
. . . the largest number of ex-cons to ship to California were not from Sydney but from the island of Van Diemen’s Land, now called Tasmania. In late 1849 and early 1850, more than 21 percent of immigrants from Hobart and Launceston, the two main towns on the island, were ex-cons, compared with 12 percent from Sydney . . . .
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https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...n-13092716.php
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