Did your ancestors emigrate to the American colonies? If so, why? Was it their choice? The popular view of colonization suggests the majority of pre-revolutionary settlers came for religious freedom, to own and work one’s own land, to satisfy an adventurous heart, or other seemingly noble and culturally acceptable reasons.
Emigrants in Chains, by Peter Wilson Coldham, examines in detail an often overlooked piece of history. The forced colonization of the American colonies by English prisoners. The book outlines the social, economical, and political reasons England forced as many as 50,000 prisoners to emigrate.
The book’s subtitle, “A Social History of Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-Conformists, Vagabonds, Beggars and other Undesirables 1607–1776,” well describes the contents of this unique history book.
Referring to those individuals sentenced to colonial life, the author states, “Their untold story may lack the romance of the cavalries of Virginia and Maryland—the heroic ring of a dispossessed aristocracy— but is has the distinct advantage of being true. Without diminishing or debunking the past, it is a story that nevertheless challenges our perceptions and our attitudes.”
The more we know about history, the better we can understand, know, and appreciate our ancestors. Emigrants in Chains tells of the less glamorous side of human nature in history but is all-together important for us to explore and understand.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter I: The Convicts and Their Background
- Poverty and crime encouraged by legislation
- The growth of villainy and criminal gangs
- Environmental and economic inducements to law-breaking
Chapter II: The Prisons
- Contemporary descriptions of London and provincial prisons
- Punishments inflicted
- Exactions of prison keepers
- The power of money to relieve punishment
Chapter III: The Dispensers of Justice
- The development of criminal justice system
- The power of judges
- The prevalence of political corruption and venality
- Humanitarian reliefs
Chapter IV: The State Monopoly—Early Days
- State-administrated schemes for transporting pardoned felons to the colonies
- The extension of such schemes to vagrant children, beggars, drunks and political and religious misfits
- Private enterprise and the practice of spiriting
- The American colonies begin to protest
- The collapse of the early system of transportation
Chapter V: The Age of the Contractors
- New law on criminal transportation of 1718
- Appointment of Contractors for the Transports
- Reactions of the colonies
- Free trade and introduction of the Hulk Act in 1776
- Some dismal experiments after the Peace of 1783
Chapter VI: Transportation as a Business
- The official contractors, their commercial and maritime affairs
- Difficulties at home, at sea and in the plantations
- Profits and losses
- A contractor’s summary of his activities
Chapter VII: The Scottish Experiment
- Widespread practice of kidnapping in the Scottish Highlands
- The complicity of civic authorities
- Exposure of the illicit trade in plantation servants
- Poverty the cause of a tidal wave of Scottish emigration
- Government alarm
Chapter VIII: His Majesty’s Seven-Year Passengers
- Conditions of shipboard life for transported felons
- Personal reminiscences
- Brutality of captains and crews
- Shipboard security measures
- Dangers to women at sea
Chapter IX: The New Immigrants
- Accounts of living conditions for transported “servants”
- The preparation and sale of human cargoes
- Escapes and punishments
- Monied exiles, impostors and cheats
Chapter X: Some Thumbnail Sketches
- Biographies and autobiographies of transported felons
- Their experiences in the American colonies
- Their life and times in England
Chapter XI: The Twilight Years
- Objections to the Hulk Act
- Frustrated attempts to revive the transportation trade
- American and British reflections on the effects of criminal transportation
Appendices
- Pardons on Condition of Transportation
- Summary List of Principal Gaol Delivery and Assize Records
- An Act…for the More Effectual Transportation of Felons
- Specimens of Legal Documents
- Convict Ships Contracted from London to the American Colonies 1716–1775
- Convict Ships Contracted by Assize and Quarter Session Courts
- Convicts Pardoned for Transportation 1660–1699
- Convicts Pardoned for Transportation 1700–1775 (graph)
- Benjamin Franklin on the Subject of Transportation
Select Bibliography
Order today, Emigrants in Chains by Peter Wilson Coldham, available at Family Roots Publishing Item #GPC1109.