Many arrived suffering from infectious diseases or other illnesses such as dysentery, smallpox, scurvy, and typhoid.
One convictout of tendied during the voyage itself.
The situation in the colony was no better.
Food was scarce and efforts at agriculture was met with failures.
Not only prisoners, but officers themselves often went to bed hungry.
One of these buildings was a hospital.
Macquarie supplied convict labour while the traders built the hospital which became popularly known as the Rum Hospital.
Unfortunately, Macquaries ambitious building program didnt go well.
A convict architect instructed to report on the quality of the work foundserious structural faults.
When Macquarie ordered the contractors to repair these defects they simply hid them away.
These were not discovered until the 1980s during restoration work.
The hospital was completed in 1816 and comprised of three groups of buildings, two of which survive today.
The central wing housed the infirmary.
It wasshoddily built, with poor foundations causing subsidence and rising damp.
Its walls were built from rubble that provided an ideal home for rats, bedbugs and other vermin.
No wonder, the convicts dreaded going to the hospital which they had nicknamed the Sidney Slaughter House.
The hospitals deteriorating central wing was eventually demolished in 1879 and a new hospital was built at the site.
This hospital still stands.
The southern wing became the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint in 1854 and remained so until 1926.
The northern wing now houses the Parliament of New South Wales.
The Sydney Hospital today.
Photo credit:Steve Miller/Flickr
