The cemetery was divided into designated sections.
Convicts were buried on the lower, southern end of the island.
No headstones or markings were placed on convict graves, as they were not allowed.
Alfred Mawle, a tour guide for Port Arthur from about 1899 to 1939, described that convict graves were marked with small metal numbers, which went missing in the 1920s.


Free people were located on the northern western corner of the island and their graves were generally marked with footstones, headstones and tombstones cut by convict stonemasons.
Approximately eighty-one headstones and five footstones, dated from 1831 to 1877, were identified and inscriptions recorded in the late 1970s.
Of these, four belonged to former convicts who were free at the time of their deaths and nine were erected as memorials to convicts after the closure of the penal colony.
It is estimated that less than 10% of all the burials on the Isle of Dead were formally marked.
The cemetery was divided into designated sections. Convicts were buried on the lower, southern end of the island. No headstones or markings were placed on convict graves, as they were not allowed. Alfred Mawle, a tour guide for Port Arthur from about 1899 to 1939, described that convict graves were marked with small metal numbers, which went missing in the 1920s.

Free people were located on the northern western corner of the island and their graves were generally marked with footstones, headstones and tombstones cut by convict stonemasons. Approximately eighty-one headstones and five footstones, dated from 1831 to 1877, were identified and inscriptions recorded in the late 1970s. Of these, four belonged to former convicts who were free at the time of their deaths and nine were erected as memorials to convicts after the closure of the penal colony. It is estimated that less than 10% of all the burials on the Isle of Dead were formally marked.
Isle of the Dead (Tasmania)