Transportation to Australia 1787-1868

Legal Records Information 17

HO 10/7, List of Convicts, New South Wales, 1787

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Searching for a Named Convict
3. Petitions for Clemency and Judges Reports
4. Trial Records: Which Court?
5. Assize Records
6. Special Jurisdictions
7. Transportation
8. Settlement in Australia
9. The National Archives' Library Bibliography

1. Introduction

Although we are accustomed now to think of imprisonment as one of the more obvious forms of punishment for convicted criminals, this was not so in the past. Most criminal offences were punished by death or by a fine and/or whipping. Transportation emerged during the seventeenth century as a humane alternative to the death penalty. Transportation was initially mainly to America, but the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776 meant that this was no longer a possible destination. Sentences of transportation were still passed, but convicts were held in prison instead. Naturally these soon became overcrowded, and extra accommodation had to be provided in old ships (the 'hulks') moored in coastal waters.

The solution to the crisis was to develop a new penal colony and on 13 May 1787 the First Fleet set sail for Australia, 6 transport ships, together with 2 warships and 3 store-ships, taking 717 convicts of which 48 died en route, arriving in January 1788 at Port Jackson. The names of the convicts transported are listed in P G Fidlon and R J Ryan, ed. The First Fleeters (Sydney, 1981). A list of convicts transported on the second fleet of ships, which left in 1789, and during which 278 died, has also been compiled in R J Ryan, ed. The Second Fleet Convicts (Sydney, 1982).

Transportation was not formally abolished until 1868, but in practice it was effectively stopped in 1857, and had become increasingly unusual well before that date. During those 80 years 158,702 convicts arrived in Australia from England and Ireland, and 1321 from other parts of the Empire, making a total of 160,023 men and women transported. A good account of the transportation system is given in R Hughes, The Fatal Shore (London, 1987).

2. Searching for a Named Convict

Before starting your search it would be a good idea to look at some of the books on the reading list below. You will find Bound for Australia and Criminal Ancestors particularly useful as they give transcripts and facsimiles of the many different types of document that you may want to consult.

As already mentioned, between 1787 and 1868 over 160,000 people were transported to Australia. There is no single index to their names. In order to find out more about a convict you will need to have a good idea of when they were tried and/or the date and ship in which they sailed to Australia. There are several ways of finding this out:

Use one of the published censuses or musters of the penal colonies, such as those listed below. These often indicate the place of conviction and the date and ship of arrival in Australia. The names of those who arrived on the First and Second Fleets have also been published: details are given below. Copies of all these books are available in The National Archives.

Consult the microfiche index to the New South Wales Convict Indents and Ships. Compiled by the Genealogical Society of Victoria, the index records the names and aliases of the convicts who arrived in New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land between 1788 and 1842. It also indexes ships recorded on the same documents. A CD-Rom copy of this is also available in The National Archives Library.

Consult the transportation registers in HO 11 (1787 - 1871). The original documents are not listed by the convict's name but by ship and date of departure, so you will need to have some information to narrow your search. However, you can search these records by name on the Australian Ancestry website: www.ancestry.com.au . These registers will tell you where and when your convict was tried, and may lead you to records of the trial. HO 11 is also searchable as a transcript on the Queensland Government website: http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/info/fh/convicts.

Try the criminal registers in HO 26 (Middlesex prisoners, 1791-1849) or HO 27 (Middlesex prisoners not tried at the Old Bailey, 1809-11, all Middlesex prisoners 1850-1892, and provincial prisoners 1805-1892). The original documents are arranged by county of trial, so you will need to have some information to narrow the search, and these will tell you where and when your convict was tried. However, these are also available on the Ancestry website ( http://www.ancestry.co.uk) and are searchable by name.

3. Petitions for Clemency and Judges Reports

At this stage most people think they want to look at the trial record. Be warned: trial records are very formal; they do not normally contain either transcripts of evidence or any information about age and family relationships. In addition, the information given about occupation and residence is rarely accurate. If you really want good quality personal information about a convict, then you would be better advised to look for an application for clemency - a petition. Remember that people asking for clemency or a pardon wanted to prove that they were worthy of mercy - so they often included a lot of information designed to establish how respectable they were and that this would include just the kind of details about personal circumstances and family background that family historians want to know.

Petitions for clemency are in HO 17 (1819-1839) and HO 18 (1839-1854). They are arranged in coded bundles so you will need to use the registers in HO 19 to identify the right one. The registers are arranged by the date of receipt of the petition. They date back to 1797 and include information about the response to the petition, so you can sometimes find out something useful about a convict even if the petition itself does not survive.

There are also petitions in HO 48 , HO 49 , HO 54 and HO 56 but they are not indexed.

Reports and returns from the judges are also very informative. They sometimes include an unofficial transcript of evidence (together with comments on the characters of both witnesses and juries) as well as memorials and petitions from friends and relatives of the accused. The judges' reports are in HO 47 (1784-1829) and their circuit letters are in HO 6 (1816-1840).

4. Trial Records: Which Court?

Convicts were sentenced to transportation after trials at Assizes, Quarter Sessions, or the Old Bailey. If the trial took place at Quarter Sessions, the record will be held at the appropriate local record office; if it was at the Assizes, the documentation will be at The National Archives. Records of Old Bailey trials are deposited as follows: those for London (to 1834) are in the Corporation of London Records Office, Guildhall, London EC2P 2EJ; those for Middlesex (to 1834), in the London Metropolitan Archives, 40 Northampton Road, London EC1R 0AB; and those of the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey (from 1834) in The National Archives.

To find records of the trial you will need to know where the trial was held. In addition to HO 11 , HO 26 and HO 27 mentioned above, the date and place of trial may in many cases be ascertained from prison registers, which indicate where the prisoner was held before trial, and any movements from prison to prison. Many include an index of prisoners. HO 23 contains registers of county prisons, 1847 - 66; HO 24 , prison registers and returns, 1838-75. There are miscellaneous registers relating to convict prison hulks in HO 9 (1802-1849), and quarterly returns of convicts in prisons and hulk, 1824-76 in HO 8 . T 38 contains material on convict hulks, 1802-31, with lists of crews and convicts; and there is a list of hulks in 1830 in T 38/338 . There are also lists of prisoners tried at Newgate, 1782-1853 in HO 77 , and calendars of prisoners held for trial at quarter sessions and assizes in PCOM 2 (1774-1882).

5. Assize Records

Surviving records of assize trials are held in The National Archives. Use Assizes: Criminal Trials and Assizes: English: Key for Criminal Trials, 1559-1971, to find out what kind of information you will find in the trial record and to identify the records you need to order.

Indictments give a full statement of the charge. The parish of origin given in them is not necessarily accurate: it was often assumed (incorrectly) to be the place where the crime was committed. Other details noted are very basic, containing nothing about origins, parentage or the course of the trial. Before searching the indictments it is worth looking in any surviving agenda books (which set out the basic charge and sentence) or in the crown or minute books to determine the law term (winter, lent, summer or autumn) when the trial took place.

Depositions, usually filed with indictments, give written evidence of witnesses, and can be very informative. Those preserved in separate classes generally relate to murder cases.

The information found in Assize records may be supplemented with that from sheriffs' assize vouchers (E 389/241 - E 389/257 ), which cover the years 1758-1832. They contain calendars which parallel the assizes agenda books and give details of prisoners, their sentences, and the petitions of their gaolers for their maintenance payments. In some cases, the length of time spent in prison and exact amounts spent on food and drink are noted for each prisoner. A few supplementary returns give personal details, such as appearance, in response to enquiries from the Home Office. Payments made by the Treasury to the sheriffs, 1733-1822, arranged by county and including expenses for keeping prisoners in gaol, are in T 90/146 - T 90/170 , with entry books of warrants for payments, 1676-1839,
in T 53 .

6. Special Jurisdictions

Old Bailey proceedings from 1674 to 1913 are now available online at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/. From 1834 the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey served as the assize court for London and Middlesex and parts of Essex, Kent and Surrey. The Old Bailey sessions papers ( PCOM 1 ) contain incomplete sets of the printed proceedings for the London and Middlesex sessions, 1801-38, and CRIM 10 similar material for the Central Criminal Court from 1834. Old Bailey sessions papers, 1815-49 (HO 16 ), list prisoners to be tried at the Old Bailey; and see also the Newgate calendars in HO 77 .

Until 1830 the justice of the Palatinate of Chester presided over the palatinate assize courts and over one of the several Great Sessions courts which had been created in the sixteenth century to deal with assize business in the principality of Wales. The assize records of Wales and Flintshire to 1830 are deposited in the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, Dyfed, SY23 3BU; but some of those pertaining to the Palatinate of Chester are in The National Archives (CHES 20 - CHES 21 ,25 ). In 1830 the courts of Great Sessions and the Palatinate of Chester were abolished and Wales, Flintshire and Cheshire were incorporated into the assize system: the relevant assize records are in The National Archives (ASSI 57 - ASSI 67 , 71 - 73 ).

The Palatinates of Durham and Lancaster had independent assize jurisdiction until 1876. The surviving records are mainly in DURH 15 - DURH 19 and PL 25 - PL 28 , although a few isolated ones have been preserved among the records of the former Northern assize circuit (ASSI 55 ).

7. Transportation

HO 18/1, Criminal petitions, Series II, 1839-1854

Death sentences, other than those for murder, were commonly commuted to transportation. Petitions on behalf of prisoners for this to be done are in HO 17 (1819-39) and HO 18 (1839-54) , with registers of petitions, dating back to 1797, in HO 19 . There are further petitions in HO 48 , HO 49 , HO 54 and HO 56 . The circuit letters in HO 6 (1816-40) contain regular returns from the justices, including material about commutation; and the Judges' reports (HO 47 (1784-1829)) give details and supporting evidence for commutation or for the grant of a free pardon in some cases. Home Office warrants for pardons and reprieves are in HO 13 (1782-1849), and HO 15 (1850-71). See also HO 42 , HO 45 , and HO 144 .

The convict transportation registers (HO 11 (1787-1867)) provide the name of the ship on which the convict sailed as well as the date and place of conviction and the term of the sentence. Contracts with agents to transport the prisoners, with full lists of ships and convicts, are in TS 18/460 - TS 18/515 and TS 18/1308 - TS 18/1361 with a few stray lists, 1840-43, in PC 1/2715 - PC 1/2719 . Accounts of legal expenses for transportation to New South Wales, including convicts' names, 1789-1830, are in AO 3/291 .

Some wives applied to accompany their convicted husbands. Their petitions, 1819-44, are in PC 1/67 - PC 1/92 and from 1849 in HO 12 , identified via the registers in HO 14 (under 'miscellaneous'). Privy Council correspondence PC 1/67 - PC 1/92 (1819-44) contains additional material about transportation, as do the Privy Council registers (PC 2 ), which also give lists of convicts transported for 14 years or less.

Reports on the medical condition of the convicts while at sea may be found in Admiralty medical journals (ADM 101: 1817-53 , listed by ship). These are currently being indexed by name in the Catalogue, although the work is not yet complete. The Admiralty Transport Department surgeon superintendents' journals of convict ships, 1858-67 ( MT 32 ) also provide medical information on convicts. There is further information as to victuals, etc, in ADM 108 (1773-1868) . For the voyage itself see the captains' logs in ADM 51 (convict vessels are listed under 'transports'); captains' despatches in ADM 1 ; masters' logs in ADM 52 ; and ships' logs in ADM 53 . Particulars of merchant navy ships used as convict transports are in BT 107 (1786-1854) and BT 108 (1855-59) .

8. Settlement in Australia

Although individual convicts as well as policy decisions may be noted in Colonial Office records relating to Australia (see Colonial Office index on open shelves under individual states), these are not easy to search for particular named criminals. Censuses, primarily concerned with the convict population, were, however, taken periodically between 1788 and 1859, and are in HO 10 . The census for New South Wales of 1828 (HO 10/21 - HO 10/27 ) is the most complete and therefore the most valuable. It contains the names of more than 35,000 people with details of age, religion, family, place of residence, occupation, and stock or land held. In addition there is an indication as to whether each settler came free or as a convict (or was born in the colony); and the name of the ship and the year of arrival are also given. Transcripts of the returns have been published by the Library of Australian History, 17 Mitchell Street, North Sydney, 2060, Sydney, Australia, and can be searched by name online on the Australian Ancestry website ( http://www.ancestry.com.au ). HO 10 also contains material about convicts' pardons and tickets of leave from New South Wales and Tasmania, 1834-59, and correspondence, including material on the deaths of convicts in New South Wales, 1829-34, is in HO 7/2 .

There are further lists of convicts, together with emigrant settlers, 1801-1821, in New South Wales Original Correspondence (CO 201 ), and in Entry Books relating to Convicts (CO 207 (1788-1825)). Other names can be traced in New South Wales Registers (CO 360 and CO 369 ), from 1849, and Entry Books (CO 202 ), from 1786. CO 207 is available in microfilm only: the originals are now held in the State Archives of New South Wales. Some of the lists from these records have been printed in L L Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia (Melbourne, 1981).

The Archives Office of Tasmania has a database listing all 76,000 convicts transported there from 1804-1853, created by indexing all original records they hold, searchable by name: http://portal.archives.tas.gov.au/menu.aspx?search=11 . Further advice on researching a convict transported to Australia can be found on the following website which includes specific information on many such convicts and transport ships: http://www.convictcentral.com/.

9. The National Archives' Library Bibliography

The following recommended publications are available in the The National Archives' Library.
Where indicated a publication is also available to buy at The National Archives' Bookshop.

(ri2235) Last updated: 09 September 2009 | © Crown Copyright 2002