With the ill treatment by his mistress “burning and broyling in [his] Breast,” Thomas Hellier, an indentured servant on a Virginia plantation, knew he had to escape. In 1677, Hellier was tricked into signing an indentured servant contract back in England with the promise that he would not be forced to perform physical labor and [...]
As soon as Joseph Andrews read the newspaper article in the St. Christopher’s Gazette, which reproduced the deposition William Harris gave to the authorities, he knew he had to leave the Caribbean island of St. Eustatia immediately. The decision was a wise one, because as soon as Governor John De Windt read the same story [...]
My new book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America, has just been published by Pickpocket Publishing and is available for purchase. I hope you enjoy reading it. Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99). Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99). The book will soon be [...]
I was recently in London and had the good fortune to interview and enjoy afternoon tea with Lucy Inglis, who is the author/publisher of Georgian London. Lucy and I met on Monday, April 18 at Blacks in Soho, London, and we talked about eighteenth-century London, crime, and the perception of Americans by Londoners during [...]
J. L. Bell, who writes the Boston 1775 blog, recently wrote a series of posts that breaks down the recent ruling by the Supreme Court on whether a life sentence for a seventeen-year-old convicted of two armed robberies–or for any juvenile offender who hasn’t committed murder–constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment to [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. Almost as soon as British convict transportation to America ended, Americans began to downplay the numbers and significance of convicts sent to the colonies. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson led the way by claiming, The Malefactors sent to America were not [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. The American Revolution brought an abrupt end to the British practice of transporting convicts to America. Back in England, the supposedly temporary solution of housing convicts on prison hulks in the River Thames to relieve prison overcrowding only had a [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies. The American Revolution ended the British practice of transporting convicts to the American colonies and threw Great Britain’s criminal justice system into chaos. With no place to send its convicted felons, and without a back-up plan in place, England suddenly [...]
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 [...]
In order to settle a debate with her boss, Rebecca, a self-described “curious technical writer,” asked Early American Crime, “Were American pickpockets executed in the 1700′s and 1800′s? I know Britain was big on this, but how about America?” As far as I can tell, pickpockets were not executed in America as they were in [...]
Anthony Vaver has broad expertise in the social and cultural history of crime and punishment, and he holds a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University. He is the author of the Amazon.com bestselling book, Bound with an Iron Chain and is currently working on a new book about early American criminals. He has never spent a night in jail, but he was once falsely accused of shoplifting. Contact Me.
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Read my new book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America, an Amazon.com bestseller! Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.
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