Transportation is the policy of punishing crime by removing offenders to some penal settlement abroad for a period of years or life. In England the Vagrancy Act of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I first empowered justices to order that certain classes of offenders might be sent beyond the seas, and by the reign of Charles II convicts were regularly transported to America where they were forced to work on plantations. Transportation to the American colony ended with the American War of Independence, and in 1788 the first batch of convicts landed at Botany Bay in New South Wales. The convicts sent to Australia were sent with a view to colonising the country. However, in 1835 a party was formed with the view of abolishing the transportation of convicts into Australia and from 1840 convicts were instead sent to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) where penal settlements already existed.
The system of transportation was abolished in Britain in 1853 in favour of penal servitude, by the Penal Servitude Act. Research Transportation
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General Information
Research Transportation