These walls can talk: Australian history preserved by folk magic

The 160,023 convicts transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868 left leg-irons and chains a’plenty, but surprisingly little in the way of clothing. Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum has a jacket and there are just three of the striped cotton shirts that we know the convicts wore.

Were it not for a strange folk magic ritual, unknown and unsuspected until recently, the number of surviving convict garments would be sparse indeed. The three examples survived because they were carefully concealed within the walls of houses or barracks.

The concealment of the convict shirts and many other objects throughout Australia is part of my PhD thesis, the result of six year’s work in which I located and photographed deliberately concealed objects in old houses and buildings throughout Australia.

But why conceal a shirt in a wall?