Between 1788 and 1868, 160,000 convicts came to Australia, mainly from London and Birmingham, but a significant number came from Liverpool, which proves my point that nothing really changes.
Interestingly, 30% of the transportees came from rural Ireland. As I have an Irish surname I was interested to check the database of known convicts on the top floor of the museum and even more interested to discover not a single record of anyone with my maiden name, yet five pages of convicts with my married name. Just goes to show what a band of ruffians I have married into.
After serving some of their sentence (eg eight years of a life sentence), they could apply for a ticket of leave and go off and work for themselves provided they kept checking in with the screws. If they reoffended, they might be put on the treadmill or sent somewhere even worse like Norfolk Island (in the Pacific) or Tasmania. Then they'd have to wear something like this, with space for their leg irons and no pockets for their mobile phones.
Streuth - semaphore it is then.
2 comments:
You didn't find my married name there did you? It really would answer a lot.
~Lou xx
Didn't think to check, but lots of them kind of looked like they could have that surname.....
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