Transportation had been used as
a form of punishment since 1717. Under the "Bloody Code"
(See Gallery Crime 1750-1900),
courts were looking for a punishment which was not as extreme
as hanging, but tougher than a fine. In the absence of proper
prisons, transportation seemed the answer and was used for
over a hundred years. In the 18th century convicts were transported
to America. After US independence in 1776, however, this option
was closed and the British government looked for another destination.
Australia had been mapped and claimed as British territory
in 1770, so convicts began to be sent there. From 1787 to
1857, 162,000 British convicts were transported to Australia.
Seven out of eight of these were males; some were as young
as nine or ten; some were over eighty. Many political prisoners
were transported, including Luddites, Chartists, the Tolpuddle
Martyrs and Irish Nationalists.
They were sent first to the "hulks"
-disused warships. Conditions on these rotting vessels were
often terrible, with death rates of one in three. The long
voyage to Australia could take six months. Many lives were
lost among the convicts, locked in iron cages below decks
in insanitary conditions, although by the end of the transportation
era more care was taken and loss of life on the voyage was
Once in Australia, convicts lived in barracks
and worked in gangs, building roads and bridges or working
on farms or quarries. Some were sent out to work for farmers.
If they behaved themselves, their sentence could be reduced
by a "ticket of leave." The majority of convicts
decided to stay in Australia at the end of their sentences,
recognising that they could make a better life there than
returning to Britain and, probably, poverty and crime.
By the mid-19th century, however,
opinion was turning against transportation. The "Bloody
Code" had ended. It seemed wrong to offer convicts a
free passage to build a new life in Australia when some people
were paying to go. Removing criminals to another land did
not seem to have had any effect on the crime-rate. Prisons
were now considered a better method of punishing and/or reforming
criminals (see Case
Study 2 and Case
Study 3) and many new ones were
being built. Most of all, Australians began to object strongly
to their country being used as a dumping-ground for Britain's
Transportation ended in 1857.