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Tag Archives: Punishment

Special Announcement: My New Book on Convict Transportation Is Now Available

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

My new book, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America, has just been published by Pickpocket Publishing and is available for purchase. I hope you enjoy reading it. Amazon.com: Paperback ($16.99) and Kindle ($4.99). Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99). The book will soon be […]

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Early American Criminals: John Quelch’s Piratic Joy Ride

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

In the fall of 1703, the owners of the 80-ton brigantine, the Charles, desperately wrote to various West Indies ports in an attempt to discover any information on the whereabouts of their new ship, but without success. This leading group of Boston merchants—Charles Hobby, Col. Nicholas Paige, William Clarke, Benjamin Gallop, and John Colman—built the […]

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Early American Criminals: The Curse on Joseph Lightly

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Joseph Lightly relates in his Last Words and Dying Speech that when his mother learned he had enlisted in the British army, “she told me she hoped she should hear of my being hanged, for my Cruelty of going to leave her against her Will.” Lightly’s mother may simply have been reacting to the moment, […]

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The American Malefactor’s Dictionary: boat

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

boat – 1. transport; 2. transport a prisoner; 3. to go in with, as in “to boat with another”: “to be his partner in the same boat—in the same scrape”; 4. to go to sea. Sources Barrère, Albert and Charles G. Leland. A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant. [London]: The Ballantyne Press, 1889. Matsell, […]

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Crime and Prison Songs: “John Henry”

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

[display_podcast] “Take My Hammer” is a work song that possibly has roots going back to the time of slavery and was sung by convicts who were leased to dig tunnels through the Appalachian Mountains: Take my hammer, Carry it to the captain, Tell him I’m gone, Tell him I’m gone. If he ask you was […]

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