Created by The Digital Panopticon Search Builder John HOOPER, my 5 x great grandfather, was one of those 534 convicts. Of that number 94% were transported to Australia. The graph below shows that 534 people were convicted for theft in 1818 alone. An unforgiving judicial system believed that removing the offenders, or members of that class, from the country would cause crime to decline.īy 1820 the English judicial system had at least 20 classifications of theft – ranging from pocketpicking to highway robbery. It was accepted that crimes were committed by members of a ‘criminal class’. Others came from the slums of the late Georgian and early Victorian-era cities of Birmingham, Leicester, Paisley, Dublin and London.įor many this was a time of grinding poverty, injustice, high crime rates and harsh punishment. None of them saw their family, friends or homes again. Where do I start? Sixteen of my direct ancestors were sentenced to transportation ‘beyond the seas’ to the colonies of Australia, all for theft.
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