In 2022, the sentencing guidelines for judges recommend that those convicted of theft should receive anything from a fine or unpaid work order to seven years in prison, depending on the harm done.
Jail terms are reserved for those cases in which violence is used, vulnerable victims targeted or goods worth over £10,000 are made away with. For the petty theft of trivial items, offenders are likely to suffer a slap on the wrist – but this was not always the case.
During the 18th century, stealing so much as a ball of snuff could see someone being “transported” – meaning exiled to one of the British Empire’s colonies – for years at a time. Often this was Australia, a then-newly discovered continent on the far side of the planet, characterised by an insufferably hot climate and a menagerie of weird and potentially dangerous creatures.
Read more: Bristol civil rights leader Roy Hackett dies aged 93
The lives of the transported were hard and frequently short, in this alien environment. Around 162,000 people suffered this fate, many of whom departed from Bristol. The crimes and punishments of just a few are summarised below.
Barnaby Dennison, 28: Convicted of intent to rob one Richard Jones at Castle Precincts, Barnaby was sent to the floating prison (or hulk) Censor in 1783, sentenced to seven years’ transportation. Four years later he embarked the Alexander , one of the famous First Fleet of ships taking colonists to Australia.
At first he did not behave himself, being charged for rowdiness for making noise after hours and disputing the authority of the guards. His punishment was fifty lashes of the whip.
But by 1800 he had reformed, being sworn in as a constable of Dawes Point district and taking honest work as a stonemason. Given a thirty-acre parcel of land at Toongabbie, he died at Sydney General Hospital in 1811, aged 58.
William Connelly, 25: Convicted of stealing clothes from the Swan Alehouse in Temple Street, Connelly was sentenced to seven years’ transportation and imprisoned on the hulk Ceres . He then embarked the Alexander , which arrived in Sydney in 1788.
Shortly after arriving he married Elizabeth Thomas, a fellow transportation convict, and had with her a son named William. Sadly, the boy only lived three months.
The couple were sent to Norfolk Island in 1790 aboard the Sirius , which was wrecked on reefs as it approached. They survived to establish a one-acre smallholding on the island, and Connelly became a member of the night watch.
He then took the Sugar Cane to India in 1795, leaving his pregnant wife behind. She had moved on with another man, James Waterson, by the following year. What became of Connelly is unknown.
Aaron Davis, 24: Convicted of stealing rings from one John Gunning, Davis was sentenced to transportation in 1785. He served time at Newgate before being transferred to the hulk Ceres , from which he embarked the Alexander .
This took him to New South Wales, from where he was transferred to Norfolk Island aboard the ill-fated Sirius . There he supported a woman named Mary Walker, with whom he had several children, and a young girl named Sarah Lee by farming a one-acre plot.
Davis – who was described in records as “very industrious”, also started a bakery which flourished. Mary then married another man named James Mitchell and in 1805, having served his time, Davis returned to England alone.
But the reluctant emigrant found that he actually preferred Australia, requesting to be sent back there in 1813. He died before the petition could be considered.
Tom Kidner, 16: Born in Somerset during 1765, Barry was still a teenager when he was convicted of stealing Irish linen worth £6 from William Overend & Co. At first imprisoned in Newgate, he was transferred to the hulk Censor and then to the ship Alexander , which took him to Australia.
Once there, his punishment did not end. He was sentenced to 150 lashes in 1789, for some minor infraction. Once freed, Kidner moved to the remote Norfolk Island and lived there for 15 years.
There he married Jane Whiting, a fellow transported convict who had arrived on the Lady Julian when she was just 14. They later relocated to Tasmania, had two children, and then separated. Jane died in 1826, aged 50 – Kidner’s fate is unknown.
William Brice, 14: Born in 1770, orphaned Brice was just 14 when, in 1785, he was convicted of stealing a small mirror from a shop in St Peter Street. Sentenced to seven years of transportation, he was shipped overseas aboard the Dunkirk .
He survived there until at least 1789, when he was called as a witness in a court case involving two fellow convicts. The teenager appears in no further records – whether he died, lived out his sentence and then his life in Australia, returned home to England or was lost in the bush is unknown.
John Wisehammer, 12: Convicted in 1785 for stealing a ball of snuff, Wisehammer was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. After a two-year stay at Newgate, he embarked the Friendship for his journey to Botany Bay.
In 1790, aged 18, Wisehammer was punished for neglecting his work and sentenced to fifty lashes. He bore eight of them before fainting twice, the surgeon ruling that he had received enough torture.
The next day, the mischievous teenager did not turn up for work. His supervisor Ralph Clark reported him to his superiors, who ordered that when the young man did turn up he should receive only half rations.
Wisehammer, who shacked up with fellow convict Shuke Milledge, appeared as a character in The Playmaker , a novel by Thomas Kinneally which was later staged as the play Our Country’s Good , by Timberlake Wertenbaker.
Read next:
- Unearthed photos reveal rare scenes behind locked doors at Bristol Prison
- Forgotten moments come alive in long lost pictures from 1970s Bristol
- Winding back to Glastonbury Festival 2002 in 36 long lost photos
- Wander through Bristol in the 1950s in incredible forgotten photos
- Time warp photos capture Bristol’s high rise homes back in the 1980s
