p. 16 “The City of London, suffering from a “superfluous multitude of unwanted and troublesome children “appointed” one hundred of them to be taken to Virginia in 1620, “there to be bound apprentices, upon very beneficial conditions”. So anxious was the City to rid itself of this innocent excess that 500 shillings were granted “for their passage and outfit”. It seems tghat some of the children were relucant to go to an unknown land across dangerous seas. The City petitioned the Board of Trades and Plantations for a ruling to overcome what was, even then, a dramatic infringement of personal liberty. The argument made by the London authorities was based on the redemption “of the ill0disposed children” from the sin of existing. They argued that the children “under severe masters in Vriginia may be brough to goodness”. But without official sanction, the City was unable to dlivert the children to the Virginia Company for transportation against their will, desiring a “higher authority to get over the difficulty”. Of course a way was found … and so it was with all aspects of transportation. With or without the support of the law, valuable, preferably young bodies would be procured for the needs of the New World.
p. 17 Throughout the 1740s hundreds of children were said to have been disappeared from the Aberdeen area alone, as traders, authorities and New World planters took advantage of the poor, the orpohaned and the plain unlucky. The ill-favoured included those who did not fit in. As well as children, sturdy beggars, strolling players and their troublesome like, “Egyptians” as Roma people were then known, were transported. With their nomadic lifestyle and distinctive dress, they were always easy targets. They were banished from England as early as 1531, and a few years later, in 1544. These unfortunates were sent to continental Europe, but as the empire established its foundations and banishment evolved into transportation, the Americas provided new destinations. In 1665 an Edinburgh merchant, George Hutcheson, and his business partners were empowered by the Privy Council to transport loose and dissolute persons, including “Egyptians” to Barbados and Jamaica. A similar privilege was granted to an Edinburgh syndicate in 1669. Nearly 50 years later, in 1715, nine male and female Gypsies were sent to Virginia. Waht, if any, crimes, these people had committed, was usually unclear.”
p. 26 Marcellus Rivers and Oxenbridge Foyle, gentlemen, were two of more than 70 Royalist rebels from the Penddrock Rising transported to Barbados in 1656. They had fought with the wrong army and simply been sold into forced labour by Cromwell’s main financier. Plantation slavery was well established by this time and the planters were not particular about the exact legal status of their workers, slave, indentured labourer or convitc. They were all treated in much the same way, especially when it came to tending the fields. Ten to 12-hour days were standard with overseers using harsh punishments to enforce obedience and productivity. Sunday was the only day of rest. Observers at the time likened the working conditions to those of galley slaves, an unremitting regime of backbreaking work conducted a rate determined by the overseer. After being imprisoned at Exeter, eben though “many of them never saw Salisbury, nor bore arms in their lives” and underwent no legal process, let alone a trial, the men languished for a year. Then without warning, they were “snatched out of their prisons” and driven unger guard in carts through the city. After further movements, they sailed from Plymouth and arrived in Barbados nearly six weeks later”.. never till thy came to the island knew whither they were going”… These men became the “goods and chattels” of a couple of London aldermen and a captain of Plymouth… The petitioners asked the court “to question by what authority so great a breach is made upon the free people of England”… caused uproar among the public and in Parliament. . contributed to the view that colonial transportation was a system that enslaved English people, an affront to the popular notion of the “freeborn Englishman”. Widespread popular opposition to transportation stems largely from this period. Oxenbridge Foyle seems to be lost to history but we know that Marcellus Rivers reyurned to England. He took the opportunity of the restoartion of the monarchy in 1660 to bring a case against the previously well-connected planters and slavers who had trafficked hime and his companions, reducing them to “Barbados merchandize”.
p. 34 Mary Moders, better known as Mary Carleton, specialised in relationships with middle- and upper-class men of substance, young and old, all ending with her disappearance, along with their wealth, whatever was left of it… in prison became such a celebrity that she was visited by the diarist Samuel Pepys, who also seems to have fallen under her spell… cleverly exploited her notoriety as far as she could, pursuing her serial relationships and frauds for some years, until arrested for stealing. The ‘princess’ was found guilty and transported to Jamaice in 1671. .. the service she provided in betraying her companions won Mary no favours for breaking the law against returning from banishment before serving the full sentence. . The playwright Aphra Behn procided a more sympathetic epitaph in the epilogue to her play The Dutch Lover, published shortly after Mary’s execution… Mary remained a celebrity, with street ballads and accounts of her adventures still being published and republished half a century after her execution. Her raffish life, brief transportation and ill-judged reuyrn highlight the haphazard nature of the system and the often random fates of those caught within it.”
p. 118 Japan – January 1830. “the men were escaped convicts. They had mutinied aboard the brig Cyprus in Recherche Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, five months earlier.. The 18 convicts aboard sailed bolding into the Pacific Ocean for a life of piuracy and plunder. Their only experienced sailor was a man who named himself after a free-flying bird, William Swallow. His real name was William Walker, though he had a long list of other crijminal aliases and a colourful record. Born in 1792, Walker was transported for stealing, arriving in Van Diemen’s Land in 1829… He escaped back to England, where he was eventially recaptured and tried under an alias, escaping a likely death sentence for returning from transportation… the Japanese decided to help them out with some advice about the weather and winds, allowing them to set sail and drift away to sea. … They managed to reach China, losing only one man overboard. Three more departed the crew and in February 1830 the remaining mutineers scuttled the Cyprus and took to the ship’s boat with the aim of pretending they were shipwrecked sailors. The authories in Canton believed their lies and the convicts scattered. Some headed for America never to be heard from again, but Swallow and three others sailed for England. While they were in transity, news of the mutiny on the Cyprus reached Canton and one of the convicts who had remained there confessed to the crime. A fast ship carried the news to England and when Swallow and his accompliced arrived there six days later the authorities were waiting. Swallow managed to escape but was recaptured… Two of Swallow’s accomplices were hanged but he escaped the noose by convincing the court that he had acted under intimidation and navigated the ship to save himself. He was found not guilty of piracy and sentenced to serve out the remainder of his sentence. For the third time he sailed to Van Diemen’s Land and arrived at the destination of his original voyage. He died in 1834 at another notorious prison a few years after returning to penal servitude. .. laid to rest in an unmarked grave on the Isle of the Dead, the Port Arthur cemetery.”
p. 148 Convictism was the inevitable obverse of a global imperial institution. At the top of the social order were the government, officials, penal authorities, the military, merchant traders and armies of administrators necessary to run such an extensive enterprise and its attendant bureaucracy. At the bottom were the poor, indigent, ciminal, rebellious and otherwise troublesome indviduals. The upper and lower spheres depended on each other for their continued existence in a twisted chain of mutual dependency.”
p. 158 Dudhnath Tewari was a sepot in the Bengal Native Infantry in Punjab when, along with many others, he deserted and joined the mutiny against British colonial rule. He was transported with others to Port Blair in the Andamans in 1858. A little more than six months later he was part of a mass escape… the fugitives met a harsh landscape and an enraged and dispossessed indigenous people, ,, Andamese … nursed him back to health and allowed him to effectively join their community. He hunted with them, took part in their religious ceremonies and married two Andamese women, one of whom, in due course, gave birth to a son. … a little over a year. One day he heard excited talk among his hosts about plans to rid their homeland of the British. He quickly discovered that this involved a massacre of everyone in the islands, not only the British but his own countrymen and other convicts… he returned to Port Blair with news of the attack. It came on 17 May at a place the British had named Aberdeen. Forewarned, British firepower easily repelled the determined attack by the poorly armed Andamanese, slaughering them in their thousands and perpetuating what was effectively a genocide. It was the end of indigenous resistsance and incited the British to consoludate their power throughout the Andaman and neighbouring Nicobar Islands. For his treachery – or was it bravery? – Tewari was later given a full pardon and reportedly returned to his home in northern India.”
p. 203 In July 1840 eight-year-old William Beale was sentenced at Lewes Assizes in Sussex to seven years transportation for larceny. He was described as a ‘laborer’. He landed in Fremantle from the Isle of Wight in October 1843. Presumably 11 years old by now, he was thought to be too small and weak to work as an apprentice and one of his employers said he had barely been able to carry half a bucket of water. William was quickly in trouble for neglecting his work, sleeping rough in the bush, absconding and “working on his own account”. He was also described by two of his “masters” as a good worker. Eventually, the boy was “paid off”, as the record described it, and was lasted reported to be earning good wages of two pounds a month as a shepher. Hopefully, his entrepreneurial character led him to prosper, although a “William Beale” received three months’ hard labour for perjury in 1876 and it is not impoosible that this was the Parkhurst boy, by then aged in his mid-40s.”
p. 224 “It is estimated that Britain transported over 376,000 convicts between 1615 and 1940. These included the vagrant poor; professional and other criminals; rebellious Irish, Scots and English; religious recalcitrants, sundry unrulies, including Gypsies, border reivers (raiders), pirates, military deserters and ‘superfuous multitudes’ of unwanted children. To this figure can be added the unknown numbers of adbucted as well as internally transported and re-transported peoples of the far-flung empire… one of history’s most prolonged and brutal forms of oppression and punishment… these human beings were seen as sources of colonial labour, markets and procreation. Over four centuries the various public and private interests involved in this trade evolved into an extensive and large-scale ‘system’ of global labour transfer built on human misery, of individuals being enmeshed in economic, ploitical, strategic and commercial forces beyond their control. Many died. A few escaped. Some prospered. Most did their time and then got on with life. BUt almost all suffered.
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