Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Sometime around midnight on June 10, 1664, Arthur Nottool, a tailor by trade and a servant living in Abington Cliffs, broke into the house of John Hunt of Eltonhead Manor in Calvert County, Maryland. Poking around in the dark, Nottool spotted an open trunk and removed a shirt from it. He also spied a gun, [...]
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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.
In a letter to the Maryland Gazette on July 30, 1767, one writer defended importing convicts from Great Britain by citing how many of them reform their ways:
[A] few Gentlemen seem very angry that Convicts are imported here at all, and [...]
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.
Most transported convicts did not make it back to England. Escape was difficult, and the passage back to England was expensive. Even if some convicts were able to return to England after serving out their 7- or 14- year [...]
Thursday, August 13, 2009
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 [...]
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
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 [...]
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 [...]
Filed in 5. In the New World
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Also tagged Assault, Attempted Murder, Branding, Burglary, Convict Transportation, Counterfeiting, Execution, Forgery, Pillory, Prisons and Jails, Robbery, Virginia
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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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
