Product Category: Top -> History -> History: Australian
Shaping Australia: Convicts
Author: Matthew Williams
Illustrator:
Illustrator:
| Retail Price: | $33.00 |
| Betabooks Price | $10.95 |
ISBN: 9780864154880
Format: Hardback
Published: March 2004
Published By: Watts Publishing
Stock Availability
Titles that are READY TO SHIP will be sent from our warehouse within 2 business days while stocks last. Click here for more details.
Published: March 2004
Published By: Watts Publishing
Stock Availability
Titles that are READY TO SHIP will be sent from our warehouse within 2 business days while stocks last. Click here for more details.
Product Description
Transportation was first used as an alternative to capital punishment (execution) in 1680 during the reign of King Charles II. When it was formalised in 1717 by the Transportation Act, it carried a fourteen-year term. Judges sentenced people to death, recommended mercy, and the King commuted the sentence to transportation. Social turmoil during the Industrial Revolution caused an upsurge in crime in eighteenth-century Britain. Thousands of unemployed in the cities turned to crime to feed their families. Rather than address the underlying problems, harsher laws were introduced. A person sentenced to transportation was taken by ship far away from Britain. Often, when ships arrived in the American colonies, convicts were sold as slaves for 10 Pounds to 25 Pounds each. About 1000 convicts annually were being sent to America by 1770, mostly to Virginia or Maryland.