Description
Edited by Irene Wyatt
The system of transporting convicts was employed from the end of the seventeenth century as a means of suppling labour for the plantations of the West Indies and the southern American colonies. But the most consistent and the important feature of transportation was its use after the American revolution to colonize Australia from 1788 to 1869.
This volume collects material about convicts sentenced in the quarter sessions for the city and county of Gloucester and at Tewkesbury borough sessions between 1783 and 1841, and subsequently transported to Australia. A variety of sources in Gloucestershire and London has been investigated to trace the key stages in the lives of individual convicts: age at conviction; place of residence and occupation; name of ship, date of sailing, and destination.
The volume therefore makes an important contribution to the social history of Gloucestershire as well as to the early settlement of Australia. Irene Wyatt has been responsible for the collection of the material she has used and has supplied and introduction evaluating the sources.. Dr. James Jupp of the Australian National University has written an essay in which the record for Gloucestershire is place in the context of British crime and transportation to the colonies. This volume, the first to appear in the Record Series, commemorates the Australian Bicentenary.
