Pensioner Guards
military unit
The Pensioner Guards were English military personnel who served on convict transportation ships en route to colonial Western Australia between 1850 and 1868, and were given employment and grants of land on arrival. Their initial employment lasted for six months, or the duration of the voyage, whichever was the longer time. After this they became "pensioners" and had to serve 12 days per year as well as whenever called upon. They paraded annually in Perth at the Pensioner Barracks. Part of their purpose was to fulfil a promise by the British government to send free settlers to the colony to dilute the convicts, and to maintain law and order in the colony.
Many enlisted in the British Army as boys, around 15–17 years of age, and served in many parts of the world including India, Afghanistan, China, Crimea for about 21 years before being pensioned off. This meant a number of guards were under 40 years of age and had young families when they came to Western Australia. As an incentive they were promised a two-roomed cottage and a plot of land sufficient to grow crops, vegetables and keep livestock. It was a chance for a new and better life and a large number of families remained as settlers.
In 1858, many of the Enrolled Pensioner Guards in the colony contributed to the Indian Relief Fund that had been set up in England following the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
“Pensioner Guards” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pensioner, Guards and military can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pensioner Guards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.