Photo: BWB/supplied
Some of New Zealand's most important roads, buildings, botanic gardens and great walks were constructed by forced labour, in an era where idleness and waste was deemed more criminal then crime.
Historian Jared Davidson's new book Blood and Dirt - Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand reveals the extent to which convicts were used to bolster a labour shortage gap in the latter half of the 19th Century.
Davidson's other books include Dead Letters: Censorship and Subversion in New Zealand 1914-1920, Sewing Freedom, and The History of a Riot.
