Legal History: Crime and Punishment Research Guide

Between 1614 and 1775 some 50,000 English men, women, and children were sentenced by judicial process to be sent to the American colonies for a variety of crimes. The data on these involuntary colonists came from a variety of official records which the author of this work spent over fifteen years studying. Among those covered were minutes of eleven Courts of Assize and Jail Delivery and of twenty-eight Courts of Quarter Session, as well as Treasury Papers, Money Books, Patent Rolls, State Papers, and Sessions Papers. The names of those deported are printed in alphabetical order and form what can be considered the largest passenger list of its kind ever published.

Includes an account of the convict ship Hashemy, and notices of prisoners by former ships.

A social history of forced emigration to the Americas of felons, destitute children, political and religious non-conformists, vagabonds, beggars and other undesirables.

An internationally bestselling and controversial study of the convict origins of the British settlement of Australia. Australian-born author is an internationally respected art critic whose other works include 'The Shock of the New' and 'Barcelona'.

Convict transportation to Britain's colonies in Australia greatly influenced political debate and policy in France. Surprisingly, it's a story that has not previously been told. Depiction of Botany Bay as a moral and economic utopia, and the answer to crime, was the basis of vigorous support for the establishment of a French penal colony. Implacably opposed to transportation were those who saw Botany Bay as a penal disaster. The opposing groups amassed a vast array of material. Debate raged. There were floods of impassioned literature. French ships roamed the world in search of an attractive and viable site for their own Botany Bay, and France came close to settling south-west Australia and New Zealand. In the end, the transportationists won. In 1852 France began transportation to French Guiana and in 1863 to New Caledonia. For both settlements, Botany Bay was the model. Colin Forster tells this fascinating story for the first time.

Covers the period 1850-1869. Library has an incomplete collection.

Were we a nation of rogues? Beyond recurrent images of convicts and bushrangers, what do we know about ordinary people's experience of crime and punishment in colonial Australia? Despite an abundance of sources, it is only recently that this question has been framed and answers sought. the impetus has come from concern with current issues such as relations between police and Aboriginal communities, and the significance of sex/gender in our social order. These essays deal with the police and the criminal law in action. Their subjects include women under the convict system in New South Wales; the paradoxical relationship between race, justice and criminal law in north Queensland; and the regulation of the vagrant in late-nineteenth-century Melbourne. In telling individual stories, they point to patterns of common experience. This new and accessible social history makes a forceful contribution to contemporary debate.

The geographical focus of this text is largely the penal colonies of early colonial Australia, and the social focus is the system of forced migration utlizing free labour that existed in the late-18th and 19th centuries. Between 1787 and 1868, more than 160,000 individuals were transported from Britain and its colonies for penal offences. This text finds similarities between penal transportation, and other systems of unfree migration such as slavery and indentured labour, not only in terms of culture and experience of the convict migrants.

"To which are appended two articles on transportation to New South Wales, and on secondary punishments; and some observations on colonization." Reproduction of original from Harvard Law School Library.

Full title: Transportation and Colonization, or the Causes of the Comparative Failure of the Transportation System in the Australian Colonies. With Suggestions for Ensuring its Future Efficiency in Subserviency to Extensive Colonization
Causes of the comparative failure of the transportation system in the Australian colonies. Reproduction of original from Harvard Law School Library.

Also available through Gale, Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, 1800-1926.
A review of the report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the operations of the acts (16 & 17 Vict. c. 99 and 20 & 21 Vict. c. 3) relating to transportation and penal servitute. "Reprinted from 'Meliora', October 1863." Reproduction of original from Harvard Law School Library.