A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convicts, especially those recently released from prison, is "ex-con" ("ex-convict"). Persons convicted and sentenced to non-custodial sentences tend not to be described as "convicts".
Penal transportation was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to a distant place, often a colony, for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home.
In Australia, a swag is a portable sleeping unit. It is normally a bundle of belongings rolled in a traditional fashion to be carried by a foot traveller in the bush. Before motor transport was common, foot travel over long distances was essential to agriculture in the Australian bush. It is sometimes referred to as a "backpack bed". Swags have been carried by shearers, miners, the unemployed, and many others, some of whom would have been happy to have been called swagmen and some not.
Margaret Dawson, also known as Margaret Henderson, was a convict sentenced to transportation. She travelled on the Lady Penrhyn as a member of the First Fleet to establish a British colony in Australia. She had a long-term relationship with the surgeon, William Balmain, whose descendants still live in Australia.
William Hutchinson was a British convict who was transported to the Australian colonies, ultimately to become a successful public servant and businessman.
Lieutenant Colonel James Thomas Morisset, penal administrator, was commandant of the second convict settlement at Norfolk Island, from 29 June 1829 to 1834.
The history of Australia from 1788 to 1850 covers the early British colonial period of Australia's history. This started with the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson on the lands of the Eora, and the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales as part of the British Empire. It further covers the European scientific exploration of the continent and the establishment of the other Australian colonies that make up the modern states of Australia.
Esther Abrahams was a Londoner sent to Australia as a convict on the First Fleet. She was de facto wife of George Johnston, who was for six months acting Governor of New South Wales after leading the Rum Rebellion. They later married legally, in 1814.
Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, India, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the West Indies and Mauritius to various penal colonies in Australia.
Margaret Catchpole was an English servant girl, chronicler, and deportee to Australia. Born in Suffolk, she worked as a servant in various houses before being convicted of stealing a horse and escaping from Ipswich Gaol. Following her capture, she was transported to the Australian penal colony of New South Wales, where she remained for the rest of her life. Her entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography describes her as "one of the few true convict chroniclers with an excellent memory and a gift for recording events".
Michael Massey Robinson was a poet and author of the first published verse in Australia.
Robert Francis Pate Jr. was a former British Army officer, remembered for his assault on Queen Victoria on 27 June 1850.
Robert Sidaway, a convict of the First Fleet, was transported to Australia for stealing in 1788. Robert is known for being baker for the British Marines of Sydney and opening the first theatre in Sydney in 1796.
Thomas Pamphlett (1788?–1838), sometimes Pamphlet, also known as James Groom, was a convict in colonial Australia. He is best known for his time as a castaway in the Moreton Bay area, halfway up the eastern coast of Australia, in 1823. He was marooned with two others, Richard Parsons and John Finnegan, until rescued by explorer John Oxley on HMS Mermaid on 29 November of that year. They were the first white people to live in the area.
Edward Lawrence Levy was a British solicitor convicted of forgery, fraud and perjury. Along with two of his sons, he was the subject of an entire editorial article in The Times in 1882, which summarized their "organized system of fraud and perjury". He went to prison three times and died in Wormwood Scrubs five months into his third sentence.
Joseph Backler was an English-born Australian painter. Transported to Australia as a convict in 1832, he obtained a ticket of leave in 1842 and was active as a painter from 1842 to 1880.
The Frederick escape was an 1834 incident in which the brig Frederick was hijacked by ten Australian convicts and used to abscond to Chile, where they lived freely for two years. Four of the convicts were later recaptured and returned to Australia, where they escaped the death sentence for piracy through a legal technicality.
Edmund Bults, better known by his alias Edmund Edgar, was an English-born painter, engraver and lithographer who was transported as a convict to the British penal colony of New South Wales.
Stories of Convicts on the First Fleet contains information about a number of convicts on the First Fleet to the penal colony of New South Wales who meet the following criteria:
