Finding Your Ancestors in the Australian Convict Lists Transportation.
It sounds more like a method of time travel than a punishment. However, that is precisely the sentence that more than 160,000 so-called criminals from England, Ireland, and Scotland received in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
And what happened to you if you got transported? You packed your bags for a six-month sea voyage to Australia, where you were usually banished for seven years, but sometimes for five years, fourteen years, or even for life.
TRANSPORTATION AND WHAT COULD GET YOU TRANSPORTED
Transportation began as a method of punishment in England in the late 1700s. Originally, convicts were sent to America; however, after the American Revolution in 1776, prisoners were no longer sent there. Recently discovered Australia then became the new penal colony. The first prisoners—and first settlers—were sent there in 1788.
You could get transported for many Read More - Click Here.