Early American Crime

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Convict transportation was modeled after the indentured servant trade. Many of the merchants who traded in indentured servants also took up the convict trade, and convicts were often transported alongside indentured servants. Both kinds of servants were generally sold at auction once they reached American shores.

The Indentured Servant Trade

People who desired to start a new life in the American colonies but lacked money to do so, or those who could not find work in England and found themselves in debt or some other form of trouble, could sign a binding contract to become a servant in America.

An indentured servant contract signed by Henry Mayer with an “X” in 1738.

Sometimes the potential servant signed a contract directly with an agent of a planter in America. Most planters, however, did not want to risk acquiring a servant sight unseen, so usually a merchant, an emigrant agent, or a ship captain would strike a deal to take those who wanted to become servants in America on consignment. The agent who transported the servants would then auction them off in America and use the money he received from the sale to cover the cost of their passage. The cost of carrying a person across the Atlantic was about ₤4, so the agent could realize a profit if he could sell the servant for more than this amount.

When the British government developed the legal and practical structures for transporting convicts to America, it used the existing indentured servant market as a model, so there were many similarities between the two trades. Both set fixed terms for servitude before the future servants left port. Indentured servants generally served for a period of 4 years, while convicts who were sentenced to transportation could receive one of three terms: 7 years, 14 years, or banishment for life (74, 24, and 2 percent of the total convicts shipped, respectively). These terms became the length of their servant contracts in colonial America.

In both trades, the government utilized the private sector to carry out the transport of these future servants across the ocean. Once in America, both types of servant were sold to the highest bidder, with the proceeds offsetting the associated costs of bringing them overseas. The labor that each servant performed in America, as well as their legal rights, was fairly similar as well. The main difference between the two was that the term of contract for convicts and the subsidy paid out for transporting them were set by the government, whereas both the term of service and the cost of passage were negotiated by the indentured servants themselves.

The Auction of Convicts

Once convicts and indentured servants arrived in America, they were treated as commodities. American newspapers, such as the Maryland Gazette, often advertised upcoming auctions of newly imported convicts. Despite grumblings in the press about the dumping of convicts on the American colonies by Great Britain, the planters were eager to receive cheap labor and readily bought the convicts who were transported. Convict labor was in such demand that the Bristol-based firm of Stevenson, Randolph & Cheston had standing orders to supply plantation owners with convicts months before they arrived by ship.

Soon after arrival, the servants were put on display on the deck of the ship for the planters to inspect. Potential buyers were shown the convict’s conviction papers, which contained the convict’s crime, length of sentence, and where and when the convict had been jailed in England. After inspection, the servants were sold to the highest bidder.

Convicts who were sick, old, lame, or judged useless were lumped and sold together or were simply given away. In some cases, the convict contractors actually had to pay a premium to have such convicts taken off their hands. Later in the eighteenth century, groups of convicts were purchased by “soul drivers,” who would buy up large groups of convicts and parade them inland through the countryside, selling the convicts along the way.

In general, cheap labor in America was in such need that contractors had little problem unloading their cargoes of convicts. After passage of the Transportation Act, the sale of convict labor competed with the sales of indentured servants, European immigrant servants, and African slaves to American buyers of labor. Convicts, it turns out, were an excellent deal.

The Price of Convicts

Convicts, when compared with indentured servants and slaves, were a bargain. They served almost twice the time of indentured servants–7 years as opposed to 4–and they were not subject to freedom dues, usually a small parcel of land, some tools, and some seed that was contractually awarded to indentured servants who had served out their terms. Planters were also skeptical about hiring indentured servants, since they suspected that anyone willingly subjecting themselves to four years of servitude must be fleeing something at home. At least with a convict, they presumably knew what they were getting.

Smaller planters who could not afford to buy slaves often turned to convicts and indentured servants. Even though, unlike slaves, they were bound to serve for only a set number of years, they were much cheaper to acquire. A healthy, young convict could be purchased for ₤12-15, while a black slave might cost ₤50 sterling. Planters sometimes found that white servants made better laborers, since they spoke English and could more easily adjust to the colonial lifestyle. Large planters would use convicts to augment their slave labor or to perform specialized tasks, such as overseers, schoolmasters, carpenters, coopers, weavers, and blacksmiths.

Most male convicts sold for ₤10-14 sterling, and most females sold for ₤5-9. Convicts who could provide skilled labor would sell at an even higher rate, and manual laborers who could work the plantations were in greater need than those who were literate and well-educated. Adult servants were more valuable than teenagers, because the latter were considered less productive, and taller convicts sold for 20 percent more than those of average height. The specific crime that convicts committed affected their price as well. Those who committed arson, received stolen goods, or stole horses were discounted 36, 22, and 8 percent respectively from those who committed simple theft.

Convicts with high skills could be sold for cash, while others would be sold for credit or exchanged for tobacco. While buyers could inspect the convicts before sale, they could not fully inspect them for some diseases, such as venereal disease. The firm of Stevenson, Randolph & Cheston offered partial refunds to buyers who returned with evidence that the convict they bought was defective in some way that was not detectable at the point of sale.

Farley Grubb, a scholar of convict transportation, calculates that criminality lowered the labor value of convicts in the American colonies by 35 percent in comparison with indentured servants. This sizable discount explains why the demand for convict labor was so high. If a planter was willing to take a chance that the convicts he bought would not cause more problems than they were worth, he could extract a great deal of cheap labor from them.

Resources for this article:

• Coldham, Peter Wilson. . Emigrants in Chains: 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. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Market Evaluation of Criminality: Evidence from the Auction of British Convict Labor in America, 1767-1775.” The American Economic Review 91.1 (2001): 295-304.
• —. “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor.” The Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 94-122.
• Kaminkow, Marion J., and Jack Kaminkow. Original Lists of Emigrants in Bondage from London to the American Colonies, 1719-1744. Baltimore, MD: Magna Carta Book Co., 1967.
• Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
• Morgan, Kenneth. “The Organization of the Convict Trade to Maryland: Stevenson, Randolph and Cheston, 1768-1775.” The William and Mary Quarterly 42.2 (1985): 201-27.
• Shaw, A. G. L. Convicts and the Colonies: A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and Other Parts of the British Empire. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

Jonathan Forward, after being appointed “Contractor for Transports to the Government,” ran his new business out of his house on Fenchurch Street in Cheapside. He now deployed his fleet of slave and merchant ships–many of which he named after himself–to carry the large number of convicted criminals who received a sentence of transportation to the American colonies.

A Higher Rate

Over the course of the first year, Forward transported over 400 felons to Virginia and Maryland on four ships. He sold them all, pocketing the profits from the sale for himself and collecting his contracted fees from the Treasury.

In March 1719, he returned to the Treasury and demanded a higher rate. He claimed that the low price of tobacco, which was essentially used in trade for the felons on the American shore, made it financially impossible for him to continue under the present terms. This time, Forward sought ₤5 a head for felons from county jails and beyond, while maintaining the ₤3 a head for transporting convicts from Newgate. The need to clear the jails of felons was so great that the Treasury agreed to his demands and granted him a new long-term contract. In 1727, he received another raise when ₤5 became the standard fee for transporting all convicts, including those from London.

Litigation

Forward was often involved in litigation to protect his business interests. In 1723, both Maryland and Virginia passed laws attempting to limit the number of convicts imported into their colonies. Forward immediately complained to the Board of Trade, and the laws were quickly overturned. He also showed up in court attempting to rescue payments from tobacco planters who had gone bankrupt.

Sometimes Forward found himself defending his own actions against the government. In November of 1735, 139 convicts from 5 previous sessions at the Old Bailey were still awaiting transport, so Forward was brought before the Lord Mayor of London to account for the delay. Forward argued that he lacked the number of ships to accommodate such large numbers of convicts. This argument failed to elicit sympathy from the Lord Mayor. He forced Forward into agreeing to clear all convicts waiting to be transported out from Newgate Prison three times a year, in March, August, and December. Despite this agreement, the problem persisted, and Forward was again brought in to face the same charges a year later.

Criminal Connections

Not surprisingly, the transportation business with its association with crime was riddled with scandals and shady dealings. Forward had strong ties with Jonathan Wild, and the two of them worked together on capturing convicts who returned early from transportation. Forward needed to maintain the integrity of his business, and he could face penalties for any convict that he transported who returned early. Wild liked to recruit for his criminal empire convicts who returned prematurely from transportation, because he could keep them under tight control by threatening to turn them over to the authorities, where they would receive an automatic death sentence. If Forward ever learned through inside information about the return of a convict, he would tip off Wild about his or her presence back in England.

Forward sometimes fell victim to the illicit dealings of those in his employment. One of his senior captains, William Loney, served Forward between 1728 and 1737. Loney had long retired to Hatton Garden, London, when it was discovered that he had swindled Forward by switching the marks on hogsheads of tobacco, so that he received quality leaf while Forward was left with inferior leaf. Loney also manipulated figures so that the payment of debts owed to Forward fell to himself instead. Forward estimated that the losses incurred by Loney’s actions totaled ₤1,400.

The Loss of His Contract

Forward lost his exclusive contract to transport convicts with the government in 1739 to Andrew Reid, but he continued in the convict trade, this time without the government subsidy. He died a wealthy man at the age of 80 in 1760, leaving much of his property to his grandson, Edward Stephenson, and his West Country estates to his daughter, Elizabeth. She was married to Robert Byng, who became Paymaster of the Navy and then Governor of Barbados. At the time of her marriage back in 1734, she was worth an estimated ₤10,000, giving some indication about the vast wealth accumulated by Forward in the convict trade.

Resources for this article:

• Beattie, J. M. Policing and Punishment in London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime and the Limits of Terror. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Coldham, Peter Wilson. . Emigrants in Chains: 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. Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1992.
• Ekirch, A. Roger. Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
• Grubb, Farley. “The Transatlantic Market for British Convict Labor.” The Journal of Economic History 60.1 (2000): 94-122.
• Howson, Gerald. Thief-Taker General: Jonathan Wild and the Emergence of Crime and Corruption as a Way of Life in Eighteenth Century England. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1970.
• Smith, Abbot Emerson. Colonists in Bondage : White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. The Norton Library; N592. New York: Norton, 1971.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.

Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.

If transported British convicts weren’t sent to Georgia, then where did they go?

The vast majority of transported convicts were sent to Maryland and Virginia, with the remaining few going to Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and the West Indies. Between 1718 and 1744, 7,010 convicts were transported from London to America, and of those, 6,815 (97.2%) were sent to Maryland or Virginia. In all, eighty percent, about 40,000, of the total number of convicts transported to America from Great Britain ended up in Maryland or Virginia.

More than one quarter of all immigrants to Maryland between 1746 and 1776 were convicts, and most of them ended up on Maryland’s Western shore. In 1755, convicts accounted for 12 percent of productive adult laborers in Baltimore, Charles, Queen Anne’s, and Anne Arundel counties. The number of convicts and indentured servants–who freely bound themselves for a set number of years in exchange for the possibility of setting up a new life in the American colonies–was so great in these counties that white strangers traveling through these areas had to be careful so as not to be mistakenly identified as bound servants who had run away from their masters.

Why did so many convicts end up in the Chesapeake region?

Tobacco

Most of the convicts transported overseas ended up working on tobacco plantations in Maryland and Virginia, and the success of the tobacco industry in these two colonies rested mainly on geography. The numerous natural rivers and tributaries that flowed into the Chesapeake Bay allowed for rapid settlement of the region and large-scale production of tobacco. Tobacco can be grown in other climates, but it was the ease of transportation provided by the area’s waterways, more than soil and climate, that was responsible for tobacco’s growth in Maryland and Virginia. Tobacco is susceptible to damage when transported, especially over land, but the vast water network of the Chesapeake made the area the perfect place to grow tobacco and transport it over water with less potential damage.

The Chesapeake did not initially start out as a center for tobacco cultivation. The main purpose for settling the area was to grow crops that England normally had to import from foreign countries. The theory was that if England could grow these crops in the colonies for use at home, it could improve its balance of trade and increase the country’s overall wealth. Early settlements in Virginia struggled, however, since the crops and goods that were produced could not be supplied on a sufficient scale to make the colony profitable. Once it was discovered that tobacco could be grown in great quantities and that there was a large market for it back in England, planters started planting and growing tobacco anywhere and everywhere they could. Tobacco quickly became king.

Tobacco cultivation is not physically taxing, but it requires constant attention throughout the year, with at least 36 separate operations to produce one crop. Each step in the process was considered so crucial that it was only carried out by skilled workers. Given the ease with which tobacco could be damaged during transport, cooperage was also an important part of the operation, although, unlike the cultivation of tobacco itself, it was generally carried out by unskilled workers.

The Need for Cheap Labor

The complexity involved in cultivating tobacco meant that larger scale operations did not offer special advantages over smaller ones. The difference between the large plantations and the smaller ones was mainly due to the amount of land owned by the planter and the number of people employed. If a tobacco planter wanted to grow his business, he could only do so by increasing his land holdings and employing more people at a dear price.

The intensive care needed to cultivate tobacco was one reason why the need for labor was so great, but there were others. The great planters of tobacco insisted on an independent existence, which came at a high cost. In order to maintain their autonomy as much as possible, the great plantations became self-contained communities, where every need–cooperage, blacksmithing, carpentry, shoemaking, etc.–was carried out by those who lived on the plantation. Plantations such as these required a vast labor supply.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Maryland and Virginia also experienced a growth in manufacturing and a diversification in its agriculture, adding wheat and corn to its staple of tobacco. The need for skilled labor for non-plantation work, which generally could not be performed by slaves given cultural and language barriers, was particularly acute during the first part of the century. Rising wages and improved conditions in England created a great demand for skilled labor in the American colonies as fewer indentured servants, who would have traditionally filled the need for skilled and semi-skilled workers, crossed the ocean to work in the colonies. Convict labor became the only viable solution to this shortage of labor, and many transported felons ended up working in manufacturing industries, such as iron works.

Of the three major staple-producing regions based on black slave labor, the Chesapeake was the only one where white servants were also an important part of the immigrant labor force (South Carolina and the West Indies being the other two regions that did not regularly employ white servants). The high demand for cheap labor, the already accepted use of white indentured servants, and the ability of convict merchants to fill up their ships with tobacco and grains to take back to England after selling off their human cargo, made Maryland and Virginia the preferred destination for transported felons.

Resources for this article:

• Breen, T. H. Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985.
• Ekirch, A. Roger. “Bound for America: A Profile of British Convicts Transported to the Colonies.” The William and Mary Quarterly 42.2 (1985): 184-200.
• Fogleman, Aaron S. “From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution.” The Journal of American History 85.1 (1998): 43-76.
• Middleton, Arthur Pierce. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era
  . Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953.
• Morgan, Kenneth. “The Organization of the Convict Trade to Maryland: Stevenson, Randolph and Cheston, 1768-1775.” The William and Mary Quarterly 42.2 (1985): 201-27.

Learn More About Convict Transportation

Learn more about convict transportation to colonial America by reading my book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America.

Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99).

Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99).

Most people know that England shipped thousands of convicts to Australia, but few are aware that colonial America was the original destination for Britain’s unwanted criminals. In the 18th century, thousands of British convicts were separated from their families, chained together in the hold of a ship, and carried off to America, sometimes for the theft of a mere handkerchief.

What happened to these convicts once they arrived in America? Did they prosper in an environment of unlimited opportunity, or were they ostracized by the other colonists? Anthony Vaver tells the stories of the petty thieves and professional criminals who were punished by being sent across the ocean to work on plantations. In bringing to life this forgotten chapter in American history, he challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.

The book also includes an appendix with helpful tips for researching individual convicts who were transported to America.

Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details.