Government blanket fragments

1819–1848

These fragments of a natural-coloured woollen cloth are thought to be from a government issue blanket, used by convicts in the Barracks sleeping wards. Found by archaeologists beneath the floors of Hyde Park Barracks, these fragments have a coarse weave, and a couple of pieces show that the blanket had a thin brown woven stripe. Barracks blankets were stamped with the government ‘broad arrow’ and the date they were issued, and were most likely made in the colony by female convicts at the Parramatta Female Factory, using locally grown wool. And while the convicts in the Barracks were keeping warm under these blankets, from 1826, these same blankets were also issued annually to Aboriginal people. A painting of Cora Gooseberry at Camp Cove in 1845 shows her wrapped in the same sort of natural coloured blanket with a thin border stripe along one edge. In 1844 the government stopped its blanket hand-outs to Aboriginal people, and Port Hacking man William Annan who came into Sydney in winter that year, probably to receive his blanket, died of exposure near the Barracks, in Hyde Park.