Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Samuel Ellard grew up in Spitalfields and was apprenticed to a butcher. He completed his time as an apprentice and worked in the Spitalfields Market for various people until he was arrested on March 9, 1741 for robbing a cheese shop owned by William Shipman. The night of the robbery, Ellard went behind the counter of Shipman’s shop and pulled out 18 shillings and 9 pence from the till, but he was spotted by a neighbor who cried out, “Stop Thief! Shipman!” Upon hearing the cries, Shipman managed to seize Ellard, who put up a great struggle, but another neighbor came to his Shipman’s aid, and the two dragged Ellard to the magistrate.

Shipman and the two neighbors, Elizabeth Holmes and John King, testified against Ellard at his trial, and Ellard was found guilty and sentenced to transportation. He later claimed that he was “in Liquor, and did it at the Instigation of a young Fellow a Sailor who was going to Sea.”

Early Trouble

Ellard had run into trouble before. He was accused of theft in May 1736 along with Christopher Freeman. Freeman had grabbed a large quantity of linen items that Elizabeth Exton had been hired to wash. A neighbor heard Exton’s cries when she had realized that her laundry had been taken and assisted her in grabbing hold of Freeman. Ellard then appeared and encouraged Freeman in his struggle with the neighbor by shouting, “Strike him, punch him in the Guts.” Just as another neighbor arrived to help, Freeman managed to hand the bundle to Ellard, who proceeded to run away. Ellard was quickly caught, though, and brought to the constable. Freeman somehow managed to escape, but he was captured a couple days later.

At the trial, Ellard claimed that Freeman simply handed him the bundle during the ruckus and that he never tried to run away. He also arranged to have several people testify that he was at the Butchers-Arms while the robbery was taking place, and he produced a number of other witnesses to speak to his character. Consequently, Ellard was acquitted. Freeman, on the other hand, only managed to call one person to speak to his character, but this witness could not give a good account of him. Freeman was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Transportation to America

After Ellard was found guilty of robbing the cheese shop, he was transported to Maryland along with 21 other convicts in May 1741. He later claimed that he was then sold to a planter who treated him cruelly and was known to have whipped seven men to death. At the first opportunity, Ellard filled his pockets with food and ran away. He traveled 300 miles through the woods, covering twenty to thirty miles per day. At one point, he caught a squirrel and lived on it for 3 days. Several times he was caught and held as a runaway, even though he claimed that he had served out his time as a convict servant. When no one came forward to claim him while he was being held, he was let go, and he continued on in his journey.

Eventually, Ellard reached Philadelphia and then went to New York, where he found a job working on a ship. After six months he returned to Philadelphia and purchased passage back to London. After returning to England, he worked as a porter, carrying fruit for the vendors at Fleet Market. He worked for two years in this capacity, but he was suddenly taken early one morning and sent to Newgate Prison as a returned convict.

On Trial

At his trial for returning from transportation, the two people who gave evidence against Ellard for robbing the cheese shop, Elizabeth Holmes and John King, showed up in court to testify against him. Curiously, neither one could positively identify Ellard. King said that Ellard had a fairer complexion than when he last saw him, but when he was asked whether the prisoner had one eye back then, as was the case now, the witness said yes, he believed he did.

Going against what he later told the Ordinary of Newgate about being sold to a cruel planter, Ellard said at his trial that he worked as a butcher in America and that he lived very well, but that he “could not be easy till he returned to his native country.”

Ellard was found guilty of returning early from transportation and was executed on November 7, 1744 at the age of about 30. He left behind a pregnant wife, whom he had married eight months before his arrest. She frequently visited him in prison and wept bitterly up until his death.

Resources for this article:

• The Ordinary of Newgate, His Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words, of the Malefactors Who Were Executed at Tyburn, on Wednesday the 7th of November, 1744. London: John Applebee, 1744. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (www.oldbaileyonline.org, 5 August 2009) May 1736, trial of Christopher Freeman and Samuel Ellard (t17360505-60).
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (www.oldbaileyonline.org, 5 August 2009) October 1744, trial of Samuel Ellard (t17441017-29).

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Most of the convicts who were sent to America from Great Britain stayed in America, but some made it back to their home country, legally or illegally. Convicts who escaped, ran away, or purchased their freedom soon after landing in America had a greater likelihood of making the trip back across the Atlantic than convicts who ran away after several years had passed or who finished their terms of service.

“The WAY that Convicts return from Transportation”

Convicts who belonged to criminal gangs were more likely to return to England from America, basically because these gangs provided a support system for any member who was caught by the authorities. Gangs had a ready-made list of false witnesses who could provide alibis for any member who was caught and brought to trial. If that member was still found guilty and sentenced to transportation, the gang provided money for the convict to purchase privileges on board the ship, his or her freedom once the ship landed, and a trip back to England.

In his best-selling book that gives a full account of his criminal career and exposes the common practices of criminals, John Poulter describes the method by which convicts returned from transportation:

After they are in an Part of North America, the general Way is this, just before they go on board a Ship, their Friend or Accomplices purchase them their Freedom from the Merchant or Captain that belongs to the said Ship, for about ten Pound Sterling, some gives more and some less; then the Friend of the Convict or Convicts, get a Note from the Merchant, or Captain, that the Person is free to go unmolested when the Ships arrive between the Capes of Virginia, where they please.

Once the convicts secured their freedom, Poulter continues, they then looked for a ship that would take them back to England.

Convicts almost never returned on the same ship that brought them to America. The risk of taking a convict back across the Atlantic would have been too great for the convict merchants. The British government prohibited them from helping any convict to return to England, and if they were ever caught doing so, it would have jeopardized their highly profitable business. There were plenty of other ships, however, that were willing to take paying passengers back to England. Convicts who did not have enough money would look for opportunities to work on board the ship as compensation for their passage.

If convicts could not secure their freedom upon arrival, Poulter says, they would run away from their master, and “lay in the Woods by Day, and travel by Night for Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, in which Place no Questions are asked them.” Poulter goes on to claim that the ease by which convicts could return from transportation “encourages a great many to commit Robberies more than they would, because they say they do not mind Transportation, it being but four or five Months Pleasure, for they can get their Freedom and come home again.”

At his trial, the transported convict Bampfylde-Moore Carew expressed the kind of nonchalant attitude towards transportation that Poulter contends was typical. After the judge passed a sentence of transportation and told Carew that he would now “proceed to a hotter Country,” the convict

enquired into what Climate, and being told Merryland, he with great Composure made a critical Observation on the Pronunciation of that Word, implying, that he apprehended it ought to be pronounced Maryland, and added, it would save him Five Pounds for his Passage, as he was very desirous of seeing that Country.

Carew later escaped just as he was being sold to some planters, but he was eventually caught. As punishment, the captain had him flogged with a cat o’ nine tails and secured an iron collar around his neck to prevent him from escaping again.

Poulter concludes his section on convict transportation by offering an unwieldy bureaucratic solution to the problem of returning convicts. First, he recommends fining any merchant or captain who frees a convict upon arrival. Then he proposes that anyone bound homeward on a ship should be required to publish publicly his or her name and intent to travel abroad and that person should then secure a certificate from the governor stating that he or she is not an indented servant or a convict. These steps, he proclaims, “would prevent such a Number of Convicts coming back again before their Time is expired.”

Convicts Back in England

Any convict returning to England had to remain in hiding. If he or she were caught, the convict could automatically receive the death penalty. The government did not make it easy for returned convicts to go undetected. The reward for identifying and turning in a convict who returned early from a sentence of transportation was substantial. Given the risk of detection, the number of transported convicts returning to England was low.

Jonathan Wild, the self-proclaimed “Thief-Taker General,” took advantage of this reward system. He developed a strong relationship with Jonathan Forward, the Contractor for Transports for the Government, who could give him valuable intelligence in the matter of returned convicts. Once he identified a returned convict, Wild could either blackmail the convict into continuing a life of crime as a working member in Wild’s criminal empire or he could turn the convict in for the ₤40 reward offered by the government.

Even with the reward, prosecuting returned convicts was apparently quite difficult if one did not have the kind of resources that Wild had at his disposal. The Virginia Gazette contended,

It is certain Numbers do return from Transportation; but it being so much Trouble to bring them down to the Old Bailey, prove them to be the Persons transported, and that did the Fact transported for, that People don’t care for the Trouble of it; especially since the Trying of them for the Fact transported for, is too often attended with great Trouble and Expence, that poor People are scarce able to support it, by which Means Rogues often escape.

Notably, convicts who were caught returning to England never showed up in advertisements for runaways in American newspapers. There could be several reasons for why this is the case. Most likely, those who ran away from their masters never made it back to England. Convicts needed some combination of money, connections with captains or sailors, and an appearance that did not draw suspicion that they were escaped servants in order to travel back to their homeland. The longer they stayed in America, the less likely these resources were available to them. Convicts who managed to escape or found freedom after their ship encountered problems at sea through shipwreck, piracy, or mutiny before they could be sold would not have had advertisements run in colonial newspapers for their capture, and these early escapees were more likely to return to England. Another reason convicts caught returning to England did not show up in runaway ads could be that returned convicts were either skillful in avoiding detection or the methods of detecting them were in reality inadequate.

Resources for this article:

• Carew, Bampfylde-Moore. An Apology for the Life of Mr Bampfylde-Moore Carew. 8 ed. London: Printed for R. Goadby and W. Owen, 1768. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• Coldham, Peter Wilson. Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• —. The King’s Passengers to Maryland and Virginia. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1997.
• Morgan, Gwenda and Peter Rushton. “Running Away and Returning Home: The Fate of English Convicts in the American Colonies.” Crime, Histoire & Sociétiés / Crime, History & Societies 7.2 (2003): 61-80.
• Poulter, John. The Discoveries of John Poulter, Alias Baxter. Eleventh ed. London: R. Goadby, 1754. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• The Virginia Gazette (Parks) January 28, 1737, p. 4. Database: CW Digital Library, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Lots of convict servants tried to run away from their owners in an attempt to escape harsh treatment from them or to regain their freedom and possibly return to Great Britain, or both. Almost as soon as the practice of convict transportation started, convicts began trying to run away. Shortly after one of the first ships to transport convicts to America under the Transportation Act landed, seven of the convicts on board managed to escape. On November 25, 1718, Samuel Shute, the Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation that described the convicts–who had been committing “many robberies, and other Enormities in the Places whether they are fled”–and offered fifty shillings each for their recapture.

Incentive

Convicts tended to run away from their masters at a higher rate than indentured servants. Unlike indentured servants, convict servants did not choose to come to America, so they were more than likely resentful of being forced into servitude in a strange country against their will. They also had little incentive to serve out their terms of service, so running away could appear to be an attractive option. Early on in the period, owners of convict servants were required to provide some tools and seed to them once they served out their terms, much like indentured servants. But as the century progressed these rights were stripped from the convicts, so there was no reward waiting for them if they stayed until the end of their service.

The punishment for running away was not much of a deterrent either. Runaway convicts faced corporal punishment and additional service time if caught: roughly one extra week for every day, one month for every week, and one year for every month. But such punishments seemed trivial compared to the experiences the convicts had already faced.

Most of the convicts who chose to run away did so within two years of arriving in America, and they usually did so 6 months to a year after arrival, if they didn’t run away soon after they landed. As the years went on, the incentive to run away grew less as they neared the end of their usual sentence of 7 years. Most convicts ran away alone, but occasionally they would run away in pairs, often with someone who came from the same part of England. Some convicts were even known to run away with an African slave.

The Difficulty of Running Away

Convicts who ran away from their owners had a difficult time escaping detection due to the many mechanisms in place to bring about their recapture. For one, servants traveling through the countryside were required to carry papers that showed that they either had been discharged or had their owner’s permission to be wandering off of his property. Any servant caught traveling without such papers could be questioned and apprehended at any time to see if anyone made any inquiries about his or her whereabouts.

Property owners were vigilant in keeping an eye out for runaways, mainly because a generous reward was usually offered for their capture and return. Advertisements in American newspapers helped in the identification of runaway convicts and specified the reward offered. Many plantation owners kept descriptions of their servants and slaves on file in case any one of them decided to run away.

Convict servants who ran away in Virginia or Maryland not only had to contend with the vigilance of property owners, but also with the intersecting rivers that made travel extremely difficult. Even if a runaway convict managed to make it to a port, he or she would have had a difficult time securing passage back to Great Britain without any money or without being detected.

Runaway Ads

Colonial newspapers often carried advertisements for runaway convict servants that were placed by their owners, and these notices provide important information about the convicts and their lives in America. Runaway ads usually give the names of the convicts, a description or their appearance, their age, where they originally came from, and their occupation or skill set. The faces of many of the convicts are described as being pitted from smallpox, and some of the convicts are noted as wearing an iron collar or handcuffs.

The following runaway ad that appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette illustrates the kind of information that was generally included in runaway advertisements, even though it provides a more detailed description of the runaway convict than most did.

Bohemia, Maryland, April 9. 1752
Runaway, last night, from the subscriber, a convict servant fellow, nam’d Jacob Parrott, born in the West of England, and bred in the family of a gentleman in Devonshire. He is about 22 years old, of a fair complection, active and strong, but short for his bulk; he is very handy at any thing, so that he may pretend to be a groom, coachman, gardiner, barber, lawyer, shoemaker, &c. His apparel was a new felt hat, a new brown and an old grey wig, a new ash colour’d duffel great coat, with a large cape, and white metal buttens, a new darkish grey fine kersey coat, with a small black cape, and black button holes, with carved white metal buttons, double breasted short brown holland jacket, with wash’d yellow buttons, new leather breeches, two or three fine Irish linen shirts, white cotton stockings, and new footed grey yarn ditto, new pumps, and larger pewter buckles. He took with him a brown middle siz’d natural pacing horse, a good bridle, saddle and housing, with plenty of money, which ‘tis supposed will soon be spent, he being a very drunken idle fellow, and a lover of dancing, singing, carding, racing, cock-fighting, &c. he will cringe to those he thinks his superiors, but is quarrelsome and abusive to others, in whose company he will brag, chatter, fight, curse, swear, &c. has a scar on his left-thumb, occasioned by a cut with a broad ax: All persons, especially women, are cautioned to beware of him, for he is a great cheat, and a notorious villain. Whoever secures him in any prison, &c so that he may be had again, shall be paid Forty Shillings, Pennsylvania currency, and besides that reward, any person that will bring him home, shall be paid his reasonable charges, &c. by me, his master. Hugh Jones.
N.B. All masters of vessels are forbid to carry him off.

Dangerous Runaways

Runaway convicts could be quite dangerous. On September 7, 1738, the American Weekly Mercury carried a story about a coachmaker named Evans who was found murdered in the woods. Evans was traveling from Rappahannock to Hanover when he stopped at an inn for the night. Before retiring, he handed the innkeeper a handkerchief holding money in it for safekeeping. Unfortunately, someone witnessed the exchange and followed Evans the next day after he left the inn. Two days later, a convict was picked up as a runaway, and in his possession were Evans’s handkerchief, his clothes, his horse, and a considerable sum of money. The convict was the one who witnessed the exchange of money, but he was not known to be a runaway at the time. After his capture, he was committed to the public jail in Williamsburg, VA and charged with “barbarously murdering Mr. Evans.”

In July 1773, Archibald Moffman, a soul-driver from Baltimore, purchased a group of convicts with the intention of reselling them for a profit further inland. He managed to sell all but four of the convicts by the time he reached the town of Frederick and was continuing on to Hagerstown to sell the rest. About two or three miles outside of Frederick, one of the convict servants complained of fatigue, so the party stopped under a tree alongside the main road. When Moffman decided that they needed to continue on their journey, the convicts refused to move. Instead, they threw him backwards, dragged him into the woods, and cut his throat from ear to ear. They then stole Moffman’s pocketbook and proceeded to stop at every tavern they met as they continued the journey over the mountain.

At one of the taverns, a man who had earlier happened to spot them with their master asked them where he was. The group claimed that he was refreshing himself just a little way behind them, but after the enquiring man rode a couple miles back without meeting Moffman, he suspected murder. He notified the neighborhood, and the convicts were easily pursued and captured. They were brought to the jail in Frederick, where they confessed their guilt. This story caused quite a sensation at the time, for a number of newspapers from the Chesapeake all the way up to New Hampshire carried the story and followed up on it in later editions.

For their act, the four convicts received the death sentence, and they were executed in Frederick on October 22, 1773.

Resources for this article:

• “Annapolis, July 29.” New-York Gazette, and Weekly Mercury August 9, 1773. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• Coldham, Peter Wilson. Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, Comprising Occurrences from 1769 to 1777, Inclusive. London: William Eddis, 1792. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• “Extract of a Letter from Shippensburg, in Pennsylvania, Agusut 6, 1773.” New-Hampshire Gazette September 17, 1773. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767-1775.” The American Economic Review 91.1 (2001): 295-304.
• —. “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor.” The Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 94-122.
• Morgan, Gwenda and Peter Rushton. “Running Away and Returning Home: The Fate of English Convicts in the American Colonies.” Crime, Histoire & Sociétiés / Crime, History & Societies 7.2 (2003): 61-80.
• The Ordinary of Newgate, His Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words, of the Malefactors Who Were Executed at Tyburn, on Wednesday the 7th of November, 1744. London: John Applebee, 1744. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• “Philadelphia, November 10.” Boston Post-Boy November 15, 1773. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Run Away from the Subscriber.” Pennsylvania Gazette October 28, 1742. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “[Runaway Advertisement].” Pennsylvania Gazette May 21, 1752. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• Shute, Samuel. “A Proclamation.” Massachusetts, 1718. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• “Williamsburg, August 18.” American Weekly Mercury September 7, 1738. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

On July 15, 1751 the New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy reported that Onesiphorus Lucas was executed in Annapolis in a follow-up to a newspaper story that appeared two weeks earlier about how Lucas was found guilty of burglary and sentenced to be hanged. The earlier article also reported that Thomas Poney was tried that same day and was sentenced to be burnt in the hand for committing a felony and that Jacob Windsor was executed for a crime he committed in Queen Anne’s County. Windsor had apparently caused quite a bit of trouble before being executed, because he “had been four Times since whipp’d and pillor’d, once for stealing a Bible.” All three of these criminals were transported convicts.

These reports and others like them helped confirm what American colonists initially feared, that the Transportation Act of 1718, which set the legal stage for sending convicts to America, would drastically increase the number of crimes in the colonies.

Complaints of Criminal Activity

Complaints by colonists about crimes committed by convict servants began to appear not long after Great Britain started to send its convicts to the American colonies. In 1724, Hugh Jones, the Rector of Jamestown, Virginia, stated that the “abundance of [convicts] do great Mischiefs, commit robbery and Murder, and spoil Servants that were before very good.” Likewise, the Baltimore County Court complained that “the great number of convicts of late imported into this Province have not only committed divers murders, burglaries and other felonies, but debauched several of its formerly innocent and honest inhabitants” and that the “very great numbers of said convicts in this County . . . encourages them to be more frequent in the perpetration of their villainies.”

The belief that the presence of convict servants increased crime was widespread enough that in 1732 John Clayton, the attorney general of Virginia, successfully asked for a higher salary on the grounds that “the increase of Criminals of late Years especially since the importation of Convicts from great Britain” had increased his workload. Whether the influx of convicts into Virginia and Maryland actually increased the number of murders, arsons, and robberies is open to debate, but beginning in the middle of the century, newspaper stories about crimes committed by convict servants notably increased, as did editorials complaining about their shipment to America.

Attacks on Their Owners

Not surprisingly, the owners of convict servants would sometimes become victims of crimes committed by transported convicts. In 1752, the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that two convict servants in Dorchester County attempted to murder their two owners. The master and mistress held their assailants at bay, and most likely would have overpowered them, when a female convict servant joined the attack. Her appearance prompted the mistress to run upstairs, escape out a window, and hide in a swamp near the house. With his wife gone, the master was quickly overtaken and cruelly beaten by the three until they left him for dead. The group then plundered the house, taking clothes and eleven pounds in money with them. The article noted, however, that the master survived the attack and was likely to recover.

One year earlier the Pennsylvania Gazette reported another attack on a convict servant’s owner. This time, the convict servant entered the main house armed with an ax and with the intent of murdering his mistress. But when he came face-to-face with her and saw, as he later said, “how d—-d innocent she look’d,” he placed his left hand on a block, cut it off, and threw it at her, shouting, “Now make me work, if you can.” In a note added to the end of the story, the Gazette warns the public that the convict servant had recently been seen begging in Philadelphia, claiming that he lost his hand in an accident.

Forgery

Sometimes the reputations of transported convicts preceded them. The Boston Post-Boy reported in 1770 that Captain Blichenden arrived in Annapolis from London with a number of coiners on board his ship, the Trotman. The report claims that since their arrival some poorly made counterfeit dollars and a milled shilling have already been discovered. The convicts are implicated in the article as the ones who produced them, even though it is doubtful that they would have had the means or the time between their arrival and the appearance of the report to carry out even poor reproductions of colonial money.

In 1751, the New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy carried a story about a man named Chamberlain who tried to pass by two merchants in Philadelphia a forged order for 200 pistoles (Spanish gold coins) supposedly written by a Mr. Wardrop, a merchant in Maryland. The two merchants spotted a mistake in the spelling of Wardrop’s name and suspected forgery, so they took the man before a magistrate, where he was committed to prison. The authorities also found other forged bills of exchange for considerable sums of money on Chamberlain.

After some investigation, it turns out that the young man’s name was not Chamberlain and that he came from a reputable family in Maryland. The article goes on to speculate that he no doubt learned how to pass counterfeit bills of exchange from the convict servants who populate that area of the country.

Robbery

In the same article in the New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy that reported the execution of Onesiphorus Lucas is an account of “one of the most audacious Robberies.” Two armed men went at night to the house of Charles Cole with a ladder, which one of them used to climb into the second-story bedroom where Cole was sleeping while the other served as a lookout. Once inside the bedroom, the robber held a pistol to Cole’s head and threatened to blow his brains out if he stirred or made a noise. He then tied Cole up and began to beat him, saying that he wanted his money.

Meanwhile, one of Cole’s servants, who was sleeping in a nearby house, heard some noise and peeked out his window to investigate. The lookout at the bottom of the ladder spotted the servant and threatened to shoot him dead if he made any noise. Undeterred, the servant grabbed a gun and fired it at the lookout, but missed. The lookout fired back, but he missed as well. The shooting alarmed the man in the house, and the two robbers got away, leaving Cole tied up in his bed. As of the writing of the article, the two armed men were still at large.

Almost a month later, the same newspaper reported that a convict servant named John Connor confessed to the robbery of Charles Cole. He told a magistrate that he was the one who served as the lookout, while another convict servant, Thomas Bevan, went up into Cole’s bedroom. After the two escaped, they hid in the pine forests and continued to rob several people. At this point the search for them became so fierce that Connor decided to return to his master, who turned him over to the authorities.

Bevan, not knowing that he had been impeached by his partner, also returned to his master, but he tried to threaten his owner into helping him escape by water, presumably back to England. Bevan’s master managed to stow him away in a cellar, where he was later taken custody by several people loaded with pistols. The article assures the reader that Bevan is now in Jail, “strongly iron’d, and chain’d to the Floor.”

The assurance that Bevan is safely secured in prison is brought into some doubt by a report that immediately follows the account of his capture. Two men, the story reads, who were apprehended in New England and were brought back to St. Mary’s County in Maryland for the murder of a master and mate of a vessel both broke out of jail and are still at large.

Resources for this article:

• “Annapolis, April 16.” Pennsylvania Gazette May 7, 1752. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Annapolis, December 6.” Boston Post-Boy December 24, 1770. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Annapolis, in Maryland, August 14.” New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy August 26, 1751. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Annapolis, in Maryland, June 12.” New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy July 1, 1751. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Annapolis, in Maryland, June 26.” New-York Gazette, or Weely Post-Boy July 15, 1751. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• Jones, Hugh. The Present State of Virginia. New York: Reprinted for Joseph Sabin, 1865.
• Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
• Morgan, Kenneth. “Convict Transportation to Colonial America (Review of A. Roger Ekirch, Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775).” Reviews in American History 17.1 (1989): 29-34.
• “Philadelphia, April 11.” Pennsylvania Gazette May 11, 1751. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• “Philadelphia, May 9.” New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy May 13, 1751. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, Newsbank/Readex.
• Sollers, Basil. “Transported Convict Laborers in Maryland During the Colonial Period.” Maryland Historical Magazine March 1907: 17-47.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Plantation owners who purchased the labor of convict servants also acquired complete legal control over them. They could rent the service of the convicts out to another plantation owner. They could transfer ownership of the convict servants to someone else in order to pay off a debt. They could even wager the servants in a card game. On the plantation, they could freely use corporal punishment to control the convicts, as long as they were not deemed overly cruel in handing out the punishment. They also had the power to grant convict servants their freedom and simply let them go.

Convicts had more legal rights than slaves, mainly because their bonded condition was temporary and they could petition courts to prevent excessive abuse. However, as the eighteenth century wore on, convicts steadily lost legal rights to the point where they were treated not much differently than slaves. Both indentured servants and slaves were considered social outcasts with no real ties to the community, and as plantation owners became more and more dependent on slave labor, the working conditions of white servants deteriorated as well. In the period just before the American Revolution, the life of an indentured servant was positively miserable.

Relationships

Convict servants led fairly isolated lives. They had few opportunities for building community relationships, both on and between plantations. The presence of other convict servants on the plantation did not guarantee companionship, since they most likely came from other parts of England or Ireland where the customs could be quite different from their own. Building connections with slaves, who faced even greater cultural alienation in America, would have been even less likely to occur.

Servants could not marry without the consent of their owner. Without such permission, some convict servants developed illicit relations with one another, which sometimes resulted in bastard children. These children became the responsibility of the county, since the father was generally expected to support the cost of raising his own child, which a convict servant could rarely do given his circumstances.

In order to recover the costs of raising the child, the court usually tacked on extra years to the convict’s service in order to compensate his owner, who then paid the courts the amount needed to care for the child. Another payment option was for the court to seize the father after his original term of service was over and then sell him back into servitude, with the profit from his sale serving as compensation for raising his child. The mother of the bastard child was often required to provide an extra year of service to her owner to compensate him for the time lost during her pregnancy and the childbirth, even though the time she needed to carry the baby to term was much shorter than the tacked on service.

Abuse

Servants were treated much worse in America than they were in England. Many plantation owners ruled over their personal empire with an iron fist. An Englishman traveling through the Chesapeake once reported to the London Magazine, “Prodigious Numbers of Planters are immensely rich, and I think one of them, at this Time, numbers upon his Lands near 1,000 Wretches, that tremble with submissive Awe at his Nod, besides white Servants.”

There are many cases of masters abusing servants through beatings or through limiting food to bread and water. In one popular account, Chevalier James, an “Unfortunate Young Nobleman,” is tricked into indentured servitude and ends up on a ship bound for Pennsylvania. There, he is purchased by a cruel master named Drumon, who puts him to work cutting timber for pipe staves, which were used for making wooden barrels. James receives many lashes from Drumon, who also withholds meat from James as punishment for his initial incompetence in carrying out this unfamiliar work. James soon realizes that Drumon will never be satisfied with the quality of his work, because his master seems to relish handing out punishments to all of his laborers.

The Fortunate Transport tells another story of a transported convict who is treated cruelly by her master. After being transported for theft to Virginia, Polly Haycock is purchased by a planter and made a cookmaid, despite her inexperience in this line of work. The description of her master does not cast a good light on planters in general:

He was a meer Planter, consequently cruel, haughty, and mercenary, without any soft Sentiment of Humanity in his Breast; and his Years had laid the Fever in his Blood so much that he had no Thoughts but how to work the Value of his Money out of the Slaves, and make the most of them without regard to their Happiness or Misery. In a Word, like most of the Tribe of Planters, he had no Appetite but for Money; nor Pleasure in any Pastime but torturing the unhappy Wretches in his Power.

One day, as punishment for not roasting a turkey properly, the planter has Polly stripped naked, tied to a post, and then whipped. While this is happening, the planter sits down to eat, with the background “Musick” of Polly’s cries heightening the enjoyment of his meal. Luckily for Polly, a justice of the peace happens to be come by and witnesses the scene of an African slave unmercifully applying a cat-o’-nine-tails to her. The justice quickly puts an end to Polly’s beating and threatens to bring the planter to justice. Even though the planter knows that the Assembly would probably be on his side, he offers to give Polly to the justice in exchange for not pursuing the matter, which the justice readily accepts.

Few convict or indentured servants left behind first-hand accounts of their experiences on plantations. In one of the few extent letters written by an indentured servant, Elizabeth Spriggs poignantly illustrates the cruelty that could be wielded by plantation owners when she wrote to her father in 1756:

What we unfortunate English people suffer here is beyond the probability of you in England to conceive. Let it suffice that I, one of the unhappy number, am toiling almost day and night, and very often in the horses’ drudgery, with only this comfort that: “You bitch, you do not half enough:” and then tied up and whipped to that degree that you’d not serve an animal; scarce anything but Indian corn and salt to eat, and that even begrudged. Nay, many negroes are better used: almost naked, no shoes or stockings to wear, and the comfort after slaving during Master’s pleasure what rest we can get is to wrap ourselves in a blanket and lie upon the ground.

This is the deplorable condition your poor Betty endures, and no I beg, if you have any bowels of compassion left, show it by sending me some relief. Clothing is the principal thing wanting. (Quoted in Coldham, Emigrants in Chains.)

Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s letter never made it to her father.

Resources for this article:

• Coldham, Peter Wilson. Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• Creole. The Fortunate Transport; or, the Secret History of the Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Polly Haycock. London: T. Taylor, [1750?]. Database: Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
• Ekirch, A. Roger. Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Fogleman, Aaron S. “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution.” The Journal of American History 85.1 (1998): 43-76.
• Ford, Worthington Chauncey. Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor. Brooklyn, NY: Privately printed, 1889.
• Memoirs of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, Return’d from a Thirteen Years Slavery in America. London: J. Freeman, 1743. Database: Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
• Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America: A Short History. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
• “Observations in Several Voyages and Travels in America [from the London Magazine, July 1746].” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 15.3 (1907): 1-17.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Convict transportation raised important issues of identity and freedom for the convict, the plantation owner, and the other servants. Once on the plantation, convicts had to renegotiate their social position. They suddenly found themselves bound to a fellow Englishman who claimed ownership over them and everything they did. William Green, in his “Sorrowful Account of his Seven Years Transportation,” states that both he and the English countryman who purchased him in America were born only 20 miles away from each other back in England.

The Status of Convicts on the Plantation

Transported convicts had dual status in the colonies: they were both British criminals and American indentured servants at the same time. On the plantation, convict servants worked alongside regular indentured servants, who had some agency in their decision to travel to America to start a new life, and African slaves, who, like the convicts, did not. Convicts fell somewhere in between these two servant groups in terms of status. They could either be treated like other indentured servants or be subjected to forms of degradation that were usually reserved for slaves.

Convict servants began arriving in America at around the time when slaves were rapidly becoming a critical part of the Chesapeake economy. Menial plantation work was often carried out by white servants back in the seventeenth century. As this form of labor was increasingly assigned to slaves in the eighteenth century, it began to assume a demeaning stigma that it did not have in the earlier century. Convicts, who generally arrived in America with low reputations and few specialized skills, were increasingly treated like slaves as the period of convict transportation wore on, and they were generally put to work alongside slaves out in the fields.

Convicts who possessed valuable skills, however, more than likely enjoyed a status equivalent to indentured servants, who were generally purchased to perform specialized labor. Neither servant group, however, generated much respect from colonists. William Eddis, an Englishman who lived in Maryland in the early 1770s and wrote about his experiences, claimed that “the difference is merely nominal between the indented servant and the convicted felon,” since colonists thought that anyone who abandoned family and friends to become a servant in a distant land must be lacking in character.

Servants on plantations generally lived in huts or cabins of their own fashioning. Even though white servants and African slaves sometimes worked together, the two groups did not live together.

Work on the Plantations

Spring was an especially busy time for plantations in Maryland and Virginia. Planters oversaw the setting out of the tobacco plants, which required special attention early on. Tobacco seeds were first planted in beds, where they grew for a month, all the while needing attention and weeding. Once the plants reached the size of a hand, they were transferred in wet weather one-by-one to the hills. Spring was also the time when ships arrived back from England loaded with china, silver, wine, dresses, and other English items that the planters had ordered over a year ago using the tobacco they grew as exchange.

The fall was also particularly busy. Tobacco and the other crops grown on the plantation needed to be harvested, stored, and shipped off to their destined markets. Tobacco especially required special attention, since it needed to be dried carefully before it was gently packed inside barrels for shipment to England.

Convict servants were forced to work long and hard days in the fields. The transported convict William Green claimed that convict servants had to work six days for their masters, and then on the seventh day had to work to provide food for themselves for the following week. He went on to say that if they ran away, a day was added on to their service for every hour they were gone, for every day absent, a week was added, and for every month, a year. Convicts who were caught stealing or committed murder were put to death.

Convict servants were not permitted to engage in trade outside of what they were supposed to perform for the plantation. The fear was that if they did engage in their own trade, the convicts would pilfer goods to sell from their masters. In addition, any money earned by a servant through exercising a craft could be confiscated by the owner, since the servant’s labor was considered the property of the owner.

In America, convicts had to eat food that was foreign to them, wear clothes made out of cotton or linen rather than wool, and drink water rather than beer. Some convicts reported that they were only fed corn and were given nothing to wear on their feet but skins. Convict servants often endured whippings, especially if they were unruly, and they were forced to wear iron collars and chains if the master thought they needed to be restrained.

The convicts who led idle lives through pickpocketing and stealing back in England and were not used to manual labor probably had the most difficulty adapting to the new circumstances of colonial America.

Resources for this article:

• Atkinson, Alan. “The Free-Born Englishman Transported Convict Rights as a Measure of Eighteenth-Century Empire.” Past and Present 144 (1994): 88-115.
• Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
• Carew, Bampfylde-Moore. An Apology for the Life of Mr. Bampfylde-Moore Carew. 8th ed. London: R. Goadby, 1768. Database: Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
• Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, Comprising Occurrences from 1769 to 1777, Inclusive. London: William Eddis, 1792. Database: Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
• Ekirch, A. Roger. Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Green, W[illiam]. The Sufferings of William Green, Being a Sorrowful Account, of His Seven Years Transportation. London: J. Long, [undated, but after 1774]. Database: Gale, Eighteenth Century Collections Online.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767-1775.” The American Economic Review 91.1 (2001): 295-304.
• —. “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor.” The Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 94-122.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Most of the transported convicts who ended up in Virginia lived north of the York River, mainly in the Northern Neck between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. About three quarters of Maryland’s convict population lived in four of the colony’s fourteen counties: Baltimore, Charles, Queen Anne’s, and Anne Arundel. Maryland by far had the highest concentration of transported convicts, since it received more felons from Great Britain and its total population was half that of Virginia.

A Different Climate

Transported convicts, especially those coming from London, would have been immediately struck by the open spaces and the lushness of the American countryside. Even Baltimore and Annapolis would have seemed sparsely populated to them, since they functioned more as towns than cities during this time. John Harrower, an indentured servant who arrived in Virginia in 1774, noted in his diary that while moving up the Rappahannock “all along both sides of the River there is nothing to be seen but woods in the blossom, Gentlemens seats and Planters houses.”

Baltimore in 1752

The change in environment could actually become a source of misery for the convicts. The climate of the Chesapeake offered them greater temperature extremes than what they were used to in England. In recounting his experience as a transported convict, William Green notes that the falls and winters in Maryland are exceedingly cold and the summers hot and sultry. During the summer, servants in Maryland were generally allowed three hours of rest during the high heat of the day.

If adjusting to the new climate wasn’t enough, convicts also had to contend with exposure to new diseases once they reached the American shore. Some convicts already arrived with an illness that they may have picked up either before or after stepping onto the ship in Great Britain, such as gaol fever (i.e., typhus).

Skill Sets

Unlike convicts transported to Botany Bay, Australia, who were made to work in a state-run penal colony, transported convicts in America were sold as servants to private individuals soon after they landed. In buying them, planters looked for particular skill sets held by individual convicts that could prove useful on their plantations.

In general, convicts possessed fewer identifiable skills than indentured servants. Convicts who did possess skills, however, engaged in a broad number of trades and occupations. The most frequent occupations for both convicts and servants were shoemaker, weaver, blacksmith, carpenter, sailor, and tailor, with other top occupations for convicts being barber, joiner, gardener, butcher, and bricklayer. Convicts could also be engaged as soldiers, silversmiths, coopers, chimney sweeps, perukers, and fishermen.

Transported convicts who possessed some form of education could try to pass themselves off as schoolteachers. Planters who had a number of children would purchase convicts or indentured servants to educate their young. When George Washington was a boy, he reportedly was educated in reading, writing, and accounts by a convict servant his father purchased for that purpose. (Later, as a plantation owner, Washington purchased four convicts in 1774, and he possibly employed others.) Convicts who served as schoolmasters generally received better treatment from their masters than other servants, as did those convicts who possessed skills valuable to a plantation owner.

Unskilled Laborers

Most convicts, however, were originally from the lower orders and were laborers with no identifiable skills. These convicts were generally forced to work as common field hands alongside slaves. Unskilled convicts also engaged in the laborious tasks of clearing trees and brush and in turning soil to create farmable land. Servants dreaded these grueling tasks the most. Falling timber was a skill that was rarely brought over from Europe and had to be learned on the fly in America, but once acquired it was considered highly valuable.

Unskilled convicts who did not end up working as common laborers on plantations could end up working in the iron mines. Sometimes companies bought up whole groups of convicts to labor in their iron works. William Eddis, an Englishman living in the colonies, called working in the iron mines in one of his letters describing America “the most laborious employment allotted to worthless servants.”

Resources for this article:

• Atkinson, Alan. “The Free-Born Englishman Transported Convict Rights as a Measure of Eighteenth-Century Empire.” Past and Present 144 (1994): 88-115.
• Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, Comprising Occurrences from 1769 to 1777, Inclusive. London: William Eddis, 1792. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• Ekirch, A. Roger. Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Ford, Worthington Chauncey. Washington as an Employer and Importer of Labor. Brooklyn, NY: Privately printed., 1889.
• Green, W[illiam]. The Sufferings of William Green, Being a Sorrowful Account, of His Seven Years Transportation. London: J. Long, [undated, but after 1774]. Database: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Gale.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor.” The Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 94-122.
• Harrower, John. “Diary of John Harrower, 1773-1776.” The American Historical Review 6.1 (1900): 65-107.
• Kaminkow, Marion J., and Jack Kaminkow. Original Lists of Emigrants in Bondage from London to the American Colonies, 1719-1744. Baltimore, MD: Magna Carta Book Co., 1967.
• Morgan, Kenneth. Slavery and Servitude in Colonial North America: A Short History. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
• “Observations in Several Voyages and Travels in America [from the London Magazine, July 1746].” William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 15.3 (1907): 1-17.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

While the American press criticized the practice of British convict transportation, Daniel Defoe enthusiastically supported it in his novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders. Moll Flanders is the most well-known character in literature to have been transported to America. In many ways, her story offers the most complete account of the life of a transported convict, even if she is only a fictional character and her experience was far from the norm of most transported felons.

Moll Flanders fits a line of tales involving convict transportation in both fiction and nonfiction. At the height of British convict transportation to America, both the British and America presses often carried accounts of convicts who were sentenced to transportation, but returned to England early to resume their nefarious ways. Several literary accounts of convict transportation also appeared both during and after convict transportation to America ended. Sweeney Todd, the “Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” is perhaps the most famous fictional example from the nineteenth century, when he begins his bloody rampage upon his return to England after being unjustly transported to Australia.

Convicts In Virginia

Moll Flanders first learns about convict transportation during a conversation with her mother-in-law after traveling to Virginia with her husband. To Moll’s surprise, her mother-in-law informs her that the colony is filled with productive citizens who first came to America as convicts: “many a Newgate Bird becomes a great Man, and we have, continued she, several Justices of the Peace, Officers of the Train Bands, and Magistrates of the Towns they live in, that have been burnt in the Hand” (88). Her mother-in-law then goes on to reveal that she herself is a former convict by showing Moll the burn on her hand.

This positive view of convict transportation contrasts with her mother-in-law’s opinion of Newgate Prison:

HERE my Mother-in-Law ran out in a long account of the wicked practices in that dreadful Place, and how it ruin’d more young People than all the Town besides; and Child, says my Mother, perhaps you may know little of it, or it may be have heard nothing about it, but depend upon it, says she, we all know here, that there are more Thieves and Rogues made by that one Prison of Newgate, than by all the Clubs and Societies of Villains in the Nation; ’tis that cursed Place, says my Mother, that half Peoples this Colony (87).

Through these conversations Moll, who was born in Newgate Prison, eventually realizes that her mother-in-law is actually her true mother and that her husband is in reality her brother. The shock of this information sends Moll back to England, where she eventually falls into a life of crime.

Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722, four years after the passage of the Transportation Act, but the story takes place well before this time. The characterization of Virginia being well-populated with convicts by Moll’s mother, then, is anachronistic to the time period of the novel. A significant convict population did not develop in the Chesapeake until after Britain institutionalized convict transportation in 1718. In other details, however, Defoe was more accurate.

A Source of Inspiration

One of the possible sources of inspiration for Defoe’s Moll Flanders is Moll King, a notorious pickpocket and thief who worked for Jonathan Wild. Just as Moll Flanders protects her identity by telling the reader at the beginning of the book that the name she is using is a pseudonym, Moll King used many aliases throughout her criminal career, among them Mary Godman, Golston, Golstone, Gilstone, Goulston, Gouldstone, Gouldston, Godfrey, Godson, and Bird.

All of these aliases make it difficult to trace the history of Moll King accurately, and most likely they confounded the authorities back then as well. The first time we know for sure that Moll King appeared before the Old Bailey was in 1693. Under the name Mary King, alias Godman, she was found guilty of housebreaking and sentenced to branding. The name “Mary King” appears in the Old Bailey records several times before and after this time, but it is impossible to determine which, if any of them, is actually Moll King.

Moll King was also transported to the American colonies several times under various names. In December 1718, she was indicted under the name of Mary Goulston for stealing a gold watch and chain and was sentenced to death. She turned out to be pregnant, however, and instead was transported on the Susannah & Sarah under the name of Gilstone in 1719, after she had her baby. King quickly turned around and returned to London, but soon after arriving back from transportation Jonathan Wild threatened to expose her as a returned convict if she didn’t join his criminal empire and begin stealing for him.

After about a year of operating under Wild’s thumb, King was caught robbing dress materials from a house on June 14, 1721. During this time, Defoe both wrote and edited newspaper stories about Moll King’s return from transportation and about her criminal exploits, and her story very likely gave Defoe the idea of writing a novel about a female criminal.

For the robbery of the dress materials, King was transported on the Gilbert under the name of Mary Goulstone in 1722. Once again she returned to England, was caught, and was transported by the Alexander under the name of Mary Godson in 1723. Also accompanying her on the voyage was Sarah Wells, aka “Callico Sarah” (See “Convict Voyages (12): Convict Passengers on the Jonathan”). After this, the third time that Moll King was transported, the certainty of her history becomes muddled once again.

A Defense of Convict Transportation

After returning to England and falling into a life of crime, Moll Flanders is caught trying to rob a plate from a goldsmith and finds herself in Newgate Prison, the place of her birth, with a death sentence hanging over her head. Moll, however, successfully appeals her sentence and receives a conditional pardon of transportation for 14 years instead. While in Newgate, Moll meets one of her former husbands, who maintains that he prefers execution to being sold as a slave in America as a transported convict. Moll eventually convinces him to plead guilty in exchange for transportation, and she arranges to have him join her on board the transport ship.

Unlike the other convicts on board her ship, Moll has considerable resources at her disposal to help set herself up for success in America. A governess of Moll’s arranges to load the ship with Moll’s personal belongings, and she supplies Moll with plenty of money. The governess also communicates with the captain to help Moll secure both a private cabin for the voyage and freedom for her and her husband after they arrive in America.

Moll’s early experience in Virginia also gives her great advantages. Before casting off for America, Moll has her governess purchase tools and other items necessary for setting up a plantation, knowing that they will cost twice as much to procure once she arrives at her destination. Upon landing in America, she also learns that her deceased mother has left her a considerable sum of money, as well as a yearly stipend from the family plantation in Virginia. With the help of a Quaker, Moll and her husband set up a prosperous plantation on their own, and they even purchase a female English servant and a black African slave to work on it. Few, if any, transported convicts enjoyed such advantages and treatment.

Moll discovers at the book’s conclusion that by turning her energies to forging a productive life in the colonies she can atone for a previously wicked one. The Preface to the novel maintains:

[Moll's] application to a sober Life, and industrious management at last in Virginia, with her Transported spouse, is a Story fruitful of Instruction, to all the unfortunate Creatures who are oblig’d to seek their Re-establishment abroad; whether by the Misery of Transportation, or other Disaster; letting them know, that Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Cast for his Life (4).

The entire novel is framed by convict transportation, and the narrative works to argue its benefits. Moll’s experiences in America and her improvement at the end makes Defoe’s novel one of the most spirited and extended defenses of convict transportation ever written.

Resources for this article:

• Coldham, Peter Wilson. The King’s Passengers to Maryland and Virginia. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1997.
• Defoe, Daniel. The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, & C.. Ed. G. A. Starr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
• Howson, Gerald. Thief-Taker General: Jonathan Wild and the Emergence of Crime and Corruption as a Way of Life in Eighteenth Century England. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1970.
• Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (www.oldbaileyonline.org, 19 May 2009) October 1693, trial of Mary King (t16931012-48).
• —. (www.oldbaileyonline.org, 19 May 2009) December 1718, trial of Mary Goulston. (t17181205-19).

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

That the British policy of transporting convicts to America was not well received by colonists should come as no surprise to anyone. American colonists complained that Britain was using their land as a dumping ground for their undesirables in the name of helping the colonies with its labor shortage. The colonial legislatures of Maryland and Virginia both tried to pass laws with the intention of blocking the import of convicts into their colonies, and American newspapers carried numerous editorials denouncing the practice.

Attempts to Regulate the Convict Trade

American colonists worried about the sudden appearance of so many unwanted immigrants in their midst. In an attempt to curtail if not put an end to the import of British convicts into their colonies, both Virginia and Maryland passed laws to regulate the convict trade. In 1722, Virginia passed an act that levied fees and put in place layers of bureaucracy so as to make it entirely unprofitable for convict merchants to do business in its colony. Jonathan Forward immediately petitioned the Board of Trade to have the act overturned, and he testified before the Board in person on June 27, 1723.

The Board agreed with Forward’s arguments, concluding that if other colonies adopted similar measures, the practice of convict transportation would become unsustainable and would essentially allow colonial law to take precedence over the Transportation Act. Acting on the recommendation of the Board, the Privy Council struck down the Virginia law on August 27. Maryland tried to pass a similar bill that year as well, but Lord Baltimore vetoed it based on the previous decision of the Privy Council.

In 1725, provincial authorities in Annapolis tried to block Jonathan Forward’s agents from unloading their convict cargo without securing a bond assuring the good behavior of its passengers. The agents, not willing to take on such an expense, were forced to take the prisoners back on board the ship. Once again, Forward complained to the authorities back in London, and once again they ruled that the Annapolis rules violated the terms of the Transportation Act.

Almost every time Virginia and Maryland tried to pass laws that placed limits on convict transportation, the British government overturned them. The only act regulating convict transportation that passed British scrutiny was a Maryland law that quarantined convict ships that arrived with sick felons on board. Virginia tried to pass similar acts in 1767 and 1772, but both failed on grounds that they contained defects in their administration.

Grumblings in American Newspapers

In 1721, the American Weekly Mercury of Philadelphia carried one of the first newspaper stories about American resistance to convict transportation. The article reported that merchants were beginning to refuse to carry convicts to America despite the large sums of money being offered them to do so. The merchants contended that even though the convicts have helped planters who desperately needed their labor, the colonies have been complaining bitterly about how the convicts have generally been corrupting their society.

On April 16, 1722, The Boston News-Letter protested British shipment of convicts to the American colonies in a more direct manner: “Eighty five Felons have been lately ship’d off for our Colonies in America. Tho’ we abound with those Vermin such Numbers of them are order’d for Transportation every Sessions, it is hoped in a little Time the Plantations there will be pretty well stock’d, tho’ it were to be wish’d with honester People.” In general, though, complaints like this one appeared only sporadically in American newspapers during the early years of convict transportation.

As time went on, discussions of convict transportation began to appear in American newspapers more frequently. At one point, the Virginia Gazette and the Maryland Gazette engaged in a sarcastic exchange about the arrival of convicts to their region. In 1752, the Virginia Gazette reported that a ship carrying 150 convicts bound for Maryland had arrived in the James River, adding, “We congratulate the Marylanders on the safe arrival of these recruits!” The Maryland Gazette responded, “Thanks for this Virginia compliment! But the author, it is probable, did not think of the old trite proverb—‘The pot should not call the kettle black.’ It is said that Captain Gracey, who brought these recruits into the Patowmack, sold the chief part of them on the south side of that river.”

A Humble Proposal

By the middle of the eighteenth century the number of newspaper stories about transported convicts committing crimes in America began to spike, and along with them was an increase in the number of editorials complaining about Britain’s policy of shipping convicts to America without recourse.

On May 9, 1751, Benjamin Franklin wrote one of the more biting critiques of convict transportation in his Pennsylvania Gazette. He begins on the front page with a series of reports about serious crimes committed in Maryland and Virginia. The accounts include a story about a gang of thieves that broke into a Maryland home and then later that same night robbed a store of goods worth 200 pounds. Other stories involve two separate cases of robbery, another roving gang of bandits in Virginia that boldly robbed their victims in daylight, and a forger who came from a reputable Maryland family but supposedly turned to crime under the influence of transported convicts. Franklin also adds a letter from Maryland about how two transported convicts presumably murdered a sea captain and two others.

Franklin follows these criminal accounts with an open letter that begins, “By a Passage in one of your late Papers, I understand that the Government at home will not suffer our mistaken Assemblies to make any Law for preventing or discouraging the Importation of Convicts from Great Britain, for this kind Reason, ‘That such Laws are against the Publick Utility, as they tend to prevent the IMPROVEMENT and WELL PEOPLING of the Colonies.”

Franklin continues, “Such a tender parental Concern in our Mother Country for the Welfare of her Children, calls aloud for the highest Returns of Gratitude and Duty,” and he goes on to suggest a fair exchange for Britain’s convicted felons:

In some of the uninhabited Parts of these Provinces, there are Numbers of these venomous Reptiles we call RATTLE-SNAKES; Felons-convict from the Beginning of the World: These, whenever we meet with them, we put to Death, by Virtue of an old Law, Thou shalt bruise his Head. But as this is a sanguinary Law, and may seem too cruel; and as however mischievous those Creatures are with us, they may possibly change their Natures, if they were to change the Climate; I would humbly propose, that this general Sentence of Death be changed for Transportation.

Franklin ends the letter:

Now all Commerce implies Returns; Justice requires them: There can be no Trade without them. And Rattle Snakes seem the most suitable Returns for the Human Serpents sent to us by our Mother Country. In this, however, as in every other Branch of Trade, she will have the Advantage of us. She will reap equal Benefits without equal Risque of the Inconveniences and Dangers. For the Rattle-Snake gives Warning before he attempts his Mischief; which the Convict does not.

Opinions vs. Reality

Convict merchants and the British government resisted any effort by the American colonies to interfere with the convict trade. There was too much money to be made by the transporters of convicts and there was too much social benefit for Britain to allow the colonies to get in the way of such an expedient means of handling their convicted felons.

Even though objections to convict transportation in the American colonies could be quite vocal, they generally came from those who did not employ convict labor. Many of the complaints about the practice appeared in northern newspapers or were from colonies that generally did not receive any convicts from Britain. Despite these objections, planters who needed cheap labor for their plantations to function continued to buy up convicts almost as fast as they landed.

Resources for this article:

• Coldham, Peter Wilson. Emigrants in Chains: A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and Other Undesirables, 1607-1776. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767-1775.” The American Economic Review 91.1 (2001): 295-304.
• “London, Feb. 10.” The Boston News-Letter From Monday, April 16 to Monday, April 23, 1722: 4. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank/Readex.
• “London, May 20.” The American Weekly Mercury From Thursday, August 31st to Thursday, September 7th, 1721: 3. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank/Readex.
• Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
• “Philadelphia, May 9.” The Pennsylvania Gazette May 9, 1751: 1-2. Database: America’s Historical Newspapers, NewsBank/Readex.
• Scharf, J. Thomas. History of Maryland: From the Earliest Period to the Present Day. 3 vols. Baltimore: John B. Piet, 1879, Vol. I: 371-372.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.
• Sollers, Basil. “Transported Convict Laborers in Maryland During the Colonial Period.” Maryland Historical Magazine March 1907: 17-47.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Convicts from Great Britain made up the largest number of forced immigrants from Europe to America in the eighteenth century, with kidnapping victims and forced political exiles trailing far behind. One of the ideas behind the creation of convict transportation was that while serving out their terms of punishment convicted felons could gain valuable experience and skills that they could then use to make something of themselves in America.

The truth is that convicts who served out their terms had a much more difficult time settling in America than those who came before them. The buyers of transported convicts were in a much better position to take advantage of the opportunities that the land afforded them, and even then they faced considerable challenges.

The Rise of Plantations

Most of the planters in Maryland and Virginia who purchased convict labor had roots in America going back to the mid-seventeenth century, well before convict transportation was institutionalized. They generally were the descendants of sons of middling English merchants who came to America in search of economic opportunity. These early settlers were rough and eager to get rich, but it wasn’t easy for them to establish themselves in America. Disease claimed the lives of many of them. Tobacco, their chief crop, offered them only moderate returns, and cultivating it required a lot of work. They lived in modest houses, because they didn’t have the time or money to spend developing their estates beyond the support of basic agriculture.

By the eighteenth century, however, the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. Because tobacco is such a labor-intensive crop, the income of planters was proportional to the number and efficiency of their laborers, not to the amount of land that they owned. Land was cheap in colonial America; labor was not. Wealthy planters were able to purchase slaves–a labor commodity that smaller planters were generally unable to afford–which allowed them to produce more tobacco. With the greater profits that came with growing more tobacco came the ability to purchase more slaves.

By the 1720’s, about the time when convicts began to be shipped to the colonies, some planters were rich enough to begin building the stately mansions that are associated with southern plantations today. Through the use of slaves, indentured servants, and convicts, the great planters were able to grow their business more quickly and came to dominate the area both economically and politically, although smaller tobacco planters continued to operate as well.

Plantation Owners

The great plantations functioned as self-contained communities run by a patriarch who had a strong sense of independence and was distrustful of outside help. His large house, the vast acreage of his plantation, and the number of workers who supported his enterprise all worked toward creating a self-sufficient enterprise.

John Mason, the son of George Mason, describes the self-contained world of the 18th-century plantation:

It was very much the practice with gentlemen of landed and slave estates in the interior of Virginia, so to organize them as to have considerable resources within themselves . . . Thus my father had among his slaves carpenters, coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers and knitters, and even a distiller. His woods furnished timber and planks for the carpenters and coopers, and charcoal for the blacksmith; his cattle killed for his own consumption and for sale supplied skins for the tanners, curriers, and shoemakers, and his sheep gave wool and his fields produced cotton and flax for the weavers and spinners, and his orchards fruit for the distiller (qtd. in Breen, Tobacco Culture).

Plantation owners were perceived to be arrogant, domineering, and greatly concerned with their social standing. One English traveler described planters as “immensely rich, and I think one of them, at this Time, numbers upon his Lands near 1,000 Wretches, that tremble with submissive Awe at his Nod, besides white Servants.” Another traveler noted their “litigious spirit” and was astounded by how many cases were brought before the courts at each session. Other contemporaries, however, described planters as being rather benign.

John Adams, in his diary entry for February 23, 1777, brought a Boston bias to his harsh assessment of the people of Maryland:

The Manners of Maryland are somewhat peculiar. They have but few Merchants. They are chiefly Planters and Farmers. The Planters are those who raise Tobacco and the Farmers such as raise Wheat &c. The Lands are cultivated, and all Sorts of Trades are exercised by Negroes, or by transported Convicts, which has occasioned the Planters and Farmers to assume the Title of Gentlemen, and they hold their Negroes and Convicts, that is all labouring People and Tradesmen, in such Contempt, that they think themselves a distinct order of Beings. Hence they never will suffer their Sons to labour or learn any Trade, but they bring them up in Idleness or what is worse in Horse Racing, Cock fighting, and Card Playing.

Smaller tobacco planters who could not afford to buy slaves would often turn to convicts or indentured servants to help work their fields, since they cost much less than slaves. Larger planters would purchase convicts to supplement their slave holdings, basically relying on the English-born servants to perform specialized functions that they brought with them from England.

The Carroll Family and Chesapeake Ironworks

The Carroll family from Maryland was one of the many employers of convict labor. Charles Carroll the Settler came from Ireland to Maryland in 1688 seeking an environment where his Roman Catholicism would not impede his political and economic advancement. The Glorious Revolution in England, however, jeopardized his plan, yet he still managed to accrue a fortune through land, slaves, moneylending, and mercantilism.

Carroll’s eldest son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, continued to build the family empire and became one of the richest men in Maryland. His grandson, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. The latter two Carrolls purchased convicts both to work on their plantations and in their ironworks company.

Along with tobacco, iron was another popular commodity produced in the Chesapeake area in the eighteenth century. English capitalists, iron-masters, and merchants formed the Principio Company in Maryland by establishing an iron forge in 1715 and the Principio Furnace in 1724. At its peak, the Principio Company produced half the iron exported by Maryland.

The Accokeek Furnace was founded in 1725 in the Northern Neck of Virginia and was soon followed by many others, including the Baltimore Iron Works, which became the second largest iron enterprise in Maryland after the Principio Company. The Carroll family owned a fifth interest in the Baltimore Iron Works and made 400 pounds sterling from it a year.

Convicts were regularly purchased to work in the iron factories and mines. This form of employment was considered to be the worst and most laborious that a convict could land after arriving in America. Not surprisingly, advertisements for runaway convict servants placed by iron companies regularly appeared in local newspapers.

Resources for this article:

• Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
• Eddis, William. Letters from America, Historical and Descriptive, Comprising Occurrences from 1769 to 1777, Inclusive. London: William Eddis, 1792.
• Fogleman, Aaron S. “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution.” The Journal of American History 85.1 (1998): 43-76.
• Hoffman, Ronald, in collaboration with Sally D. Mason. Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
• Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
• “Observations in Several Voyages and Travels in America.” The London Magazine July 1746: 321-30 [Hahti Digital Library: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021278463;q1=july%201746;start=1;size=100;page=root;view=image;seq=345;num=323].
• Smith, Paul H., et al., eds. “John Adams’ Diary: January 1, 1777 – April 30, 1777.” Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789. Vol. 6. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1976-2000 [American Memory: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(dg006336))].
• Sollers, Basil. “Transported Convict Laborers in Maryland during the Colonial Period.” Maryland Historical Magazine March 1907: 17-47.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.