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Author Archives: Anthony Vaver

Anthony Vaver has broad expertise in the social and cultural history of crime and punishment. He holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University.

Read My Article on Convict Transportation in New Politic

Friday, December 17, 2021

An article I recently wrote for the British online magazine, New Politic, is now available online. The article, “The Criminal Origins of the United States of America,” is about British convict transportation to America, which took place between the years 1718 and 1775, and is the subject of my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: […]

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Convicts to Maryland, 1773 by Peter Dickson

Thursday, February 7, 2019

[Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica Family […]

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Places and Events: Early American Crime in San Francisco (and I Don’t Mean Alcatraz)

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Anyone with an interest in crime history must visit Alcatraz while in San Francisco (My daughter said after our tour, “Of all the prisons I have visited, this one definitely ranks in the top three!”). But if you decide to take the boat from Pier 33 at Fisherman’s Wharf out to the island, you should […]

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Prisons and Punishments: Dining at Alcatraz

Friday, July 17, 2015

With so much information on the Web about Alcatraz, I feel little need to write about my recent visit to this historical prison. But given my latest articles on prison food, I can not pass up posting some of the pictures I took of the kitchen. Prisoner meals were governed by “Alcatraz Regulation #33: DINING […]

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Eat Like an Early Convict: Prison Food Recipes

Thursday, October 2, 2014

As a follow-up to my last post on “A Foodie Look at Early Prison Food,” I decided to find out more about food served in early American prisons. During my research, I came across a description of the meals served to convicts in New York’s Newgate Prison in a 1799 Report of the Inspectors of […]

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