Crime

and
Punishment
>Between 1788 and 1868, around 160 000 British and Irish
convicts were transported to the Australian colonies as
punishment for a crime they committed.

>Given the nature of many of their crimes, such as pick-

pocketing, petty theft and forgery, the punishment appears
harsh.

>How had British society come to this? Why were

punishments for seemingly minor crimes so severe? The
answers lie partly in the nature of society at the time.
The Industrial Revolution transformed the British economic base from agriculture to
industry. In a process called enclosure, wealthy landowners bought up small farms
and fenced off common land to combine into single, large estates, in order to make
production consistent and more efficient with the use of new technologies. Production
was often more efficient, but the process of enclosure also resulted in poor farmers
being forced from their homes and livelihoods. Similarly, in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in Scotland, thousands of country people were forced from their
homes during the infamous Highland Clearances by landlords eager to improve the
agricultural output of their land.

With more efficient and mechanised farming practices, fewer agricultural workers
were needed. As employment opportunities in the rural areas of Britain declined, the
towns filled with those seeking work. Even with the industrial boom, however, there
were not enough jobs. Some turned to gambling or alcohol in search of escape. For
the desperate, crime became a way to survive.
The government’s response to these growing social problems was
simply to make criminal punishments harsher. About two hundred
different crimes drew the death penalty. Yet the threat of hanging did
not have the effect the government desired.
Despite harsh punishments, the numbers of people in Britain’s
prisons remained high and became a concern for the
government. While convicts were not being transported, the
hangman was kept busy and prisons were overflowing. In an
attempt to address this problem, old decommissioned naval
ships, of which there were plenty after the end of the war with
America, were turned into floating prisons called hulks. As a
short-term fix, the hulks were a success, but they soon
became cramped, stinking and rat-infested, and merely
delayed the inevitable. Soon enough they too were impossibly
overcrowded. The government urgently needed a long-term
solution.
A prison hulk moored in the Thames River, London.
This artwork dates to c. 1826.
DID YOU KNOW?
 In eighteenth-century England about two hundred crimes
were punishable by the death penalty. They included
murder, pick-pocketing, poaching, highway robbery,
stealing horses or sheep, and cutting down young trees.
 Children were often among those sentenced to death.