An Act for the further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons, and unlawful Exporters of Wool; and for declaring the Law upon some Points relating to Pirates.
The Piracy Act 1717 (4 Geo. 1. c. 11), sometimes called the Transportation Act 1717 (1718 in New Style[2]),[3] was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that established a regulated, bonded system to transport criminals to colonies in North America for indentured service, as a punishment for those convicted or attainted in Great Britain, excluding Scotland. The Act established a seven-year transportation sentence as a punishment for people convicted of lesser felonies (those under the benefit of clergy), and a fourteen-year sentence for more serious crimes, in lieu of capital punishment. Completion of the sentence had the effect of a pardon; the punishment for returning before completion was death. It is commonly accepted that 30,000 convicts (women, men and children) may have been transported to the British American colonies, with some estimates going as high as 50,000.[2]
The Act established that merchants and others could contract transport convicts, after giving a surety bond that the transport would be made and the term of service would be completed. To accomplish this, the Act declared that the contractor had a property and interest in the convict's transport and service. Significantly under section five, and after noting the many idle youth "lurking" about London and elsewhere, wanting employment, and otherwise tempted toward crime "if not provided for," the Transportation Act included that merchants and others could also contract with 15-20 year-olds, who were willing to be transported and serve up to eight years indentured service. Other sections of the Act imposed stricter measures against fencing stolen goods, making them fourteen-year sentences instead of mere accessories to theft;[4] imposed a seven-year transportation sentence for those imprisoned for, or breaking, the long-time prohibition on exporting wool in violation of the Acts of Trade.
Development and passage
Although the sentence of transportation with the royal prerogative of mercy had been granted as an alternative to a death sentence for a century,[5] its usage was irregular and subject to abuse. Several sections of the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, as originally passed, contained provisions related to its then-current usage.[6] , The Bill for the Act was introduced into the House of Commons in 1717 under the Whig government by William Thomson, the Solicitor General, who became "the architect of the transportation policy" as developed under the Act.[7] The Act mandated transportation as a direct sentence, thus simplifying and hastening the process of criminal sentencing.[8]
The reasons for passing the Act, as stated in the preamble, include the insufficiently effective sentencing, recidivism, the fact that many offenders previously extended this mercy had not transported themselves, "and whereas in many of his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America, there is great want of servants, who by their hard labour and industry might be the means of improving and making the said colonies and plantations more useful to this nation." The passage also derived from the convergence of a number of events at the time, including fears over rising crime and disorder, following the discharge of soldiers after the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, a contested Hanoverian accession to the British throne, inappropriate punishments for lesser felonies (misdemeanours), concern over crowd behaviour at public punishments, and a new determination by parliament to push through the legislation despite colonial opposition. Transportation thus became a regularly available and normal sentence for the courts to hand down to those convicted of non-capital offences as well as capital crimes.
Provisions
The Criminal Statutes Repeal Act 1827 repealed the whole of the Piracy Act 1717 as to England and as to offences committed within the jurisdiction of the admiralty of England, except so much thereof as related to the trial of piracy, felony or robbery committed within the admiralty jurisdiction. The effect of this was to repeal the whole Act, except section 7.[9][10]
Section 7
Unrelated to transportation, section 7 concerns the suppression of piracy. The death penalty for most kinds of piracy was abolished by the Piracy Act 1837, which preserved the death penalty for piracy with intent to kill.
The words from "and shall and ought" to the end were repealed by section 1 of, and the First Schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1948.[11] This section was repealed by section 10(2) of, and Part I of Schedule 3 to the Criminal Law Act 1967.[12]
Later Acts and general results
Following the initial passage of the 1717 Act, several other statutes regulating and related to the penal transportation system to America were passed.[13] The Robbery, etc. Act 1719 (6 Geo. 1. c. 23)[14] amended the previous Act, authorized payments by the state to the merchants who contracted to take the convicts to America,[15][16] and broadened the types of crimes subject to transportation. The Return of Offenders from Transportation Act 1742 (16 Geo. 2. c. 15)[17] reinforced the death penalty for transportees returning early. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Traitors Transported Act 1746 (20 Geo. 2. c. 46)[18] was passed, among other things, to deal mercifully with many of those detained. The Transportation Act 1768 (8 Geo. 3. c. 15) [19] was passed to make the existing transportation process faster and more effectual.
The Transportation Act, with the system that developed in North America, are generally considered a success; it became a popular method for criminal punishment, as well as for dealing with the poorer and younger elements of British urban society at the time. One reason for the success of this Act was that it obviated the financially costly voyage itself; the existing system of sponsorship by merchants had not worked effectively and needed improvement. The government eventually accepted Thomson's proposal to pay merchants to transport convicts, with the Treasury contracting London merchant Jonathan Forward.[20] The business was entrusted to Forward in 1718. Initially he was paid £3 for each prisoner transported, but the price was raised to £5 in 1727.[8] Despite some complaints from colonial governments, the system was favoured by the British government. In exchange for relatively small monetary subsidies, contractors relieved the government of convict maintenance costs. Contractors then sold transported prisoners in labour-starved colonial markets, such as the Chesapeake, for an average price of £10.
Suspension and significance
As thus developed, the established system for transporting convicts to the British American colonies continued until 1776 when its use was temporarily suspended by the Criminal Law Act 1776 (16 Geo. 3. c. 43).[21][22] The outbreak of the American Revolution had made continuing transportation there unfeasible, and recently illegal.[23] The last convict ship to depart Britain docked in Virginia in April that year.[24] Under the Criminal Law Act, felons continued to be sentenced to transportation, but with no place to go, were liable instead to a sentence at hard labour until alternative provisions could be made. The rebellion and the end of transport to America in part prompted the British use of prisons for punishment and the start of prison building programs (as opposed to the use of gaols related to trial or sentencing) because the important transportation alternative to the death penalty had been removed. The Criminal Law Act is also referred to as the "Hard Labour Act" and the "Hulks Act" due to the change in punishment and the overcrowded conditions that resulted[25][15] While initially suspended for two years by the 1776 Act, it would be continued until 1779 by the Criminal Law Act 1778 (18 Geo. 3. c. 62) and the Criminal Law Act 1779 (19 Geo. 3. c. 54), with little resolution of the developing accommodation problems.[25]
This situation would continue without any resolution until orders in council on 6 December 1785 which mandated the establishment of a penal colony in New South Wales.[26][27] In 1787 British transportation of criminals resumed with the departure of the First Fleet to colonies being established in Australia; its usage would be greatly reduced in the 1850s, but continue until the last arrived in 1868.
↑ As to the year of an Act, see Johnson, Privatised Law Reform, 2018, p 31; Johnson, Parliament, Inventions and Patents, 2018, note 1 to Introduction; Chitty's Statutes of Practical Utility, 6th Ed, 1911, vol 1, title "Act of Parliament", p 28.
↑ Beattie, J. M. Crime and the Courts in England 1660 - 1800. Oxford: Clarendon, 1986, pp.189-90.
"The Piracy Act, 1717". Halsbury's Statutes of England. (The Complete Statutes of England). First Edition. Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd. 1929. Volume 4. Page 343.
The Statutes: Second Revised Edition. 1889. Volume 2. Page 27.
Edith M. Ziegler, Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women: Crime, Transportation, and the Servitude of Female Convicts. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2014.
Coldham, Peter Wilson (2007). Emigrants in Chains. a Social History of the Forced Emigration to the Americas of Felons, Destitute Children, Political and Religious Non-Conformists. Lanham, Md: Genealogical Publishing. ISBN978-0806317786.
In English law, the benefit of clergy was originally a provision by which clergymen accused of a crime could claim that they were outside the jurisdiction of the secular courts and be tried instead in an ecclesiastical court under canon law. The ecclesiastical courts were generally seen as being more lenient in their prosecutions and punishments, and defendants made many efforts to claim clergy status, often on questionable or fraudulent grounds.
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.
The Act 9 Geo. 1. c. 22, commonly known as the Black Act, or the Waltham Black Act, and sometimes called the Black Act 1722, the Black Act 1723, the Waltham Black Act 1722, the Criminal Law Act 1722, or the Criminal Law Act 1723, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain. It was passed in 1723 in response to a series of raids against landowners by two groups of poachers, known as the Blacks from their habit of blacking their faces when they undertook the raids. The Act was expanded over the years and greatly strengthened the criminal code by specifying over 200 capital crimes, many with intensified punishment. Arson, for example, had its definition expanded to include the new crime of burning haystacks.
In the United States, habitual offender laws have been implemented since at least 1952, and are part of the United States Justice Department's Anti-Violence Strategy. These laws require a person who is convicted of an offense and who has one or two other previous serious convictions to serve a mandatory life sentence in prison, with or without parole depending on the jurisdiction. The purpose of the laws is to drastically increase the punishment of those who continue to commit offenses after being convicted of one or two serious crimes.
The "Bloody Code" was a series of laws in England, Wales and Ireland in the 18th and early 19th centuries which mandated the death penalty for a wide range of crimes. It was not referred to by this name in its own time; the name was given later owing to the sharply increased number of people given the death penalty, even for crimes considered minor by 21st century standards.
Arson in royal dockyards and armories was a criminal offence in the United Kingdom and the British Empire. It was among the last offences that were punishable by capital punishment in the United Kingdom. The crime was created by the Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, which was designed to prevent arson and sabotage against vessels, dockyards, and arsenals of the Royal Navy.
The Offences against the Person Act 1861 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act. For the most part these provisions were, according to the draftsman of the Act, incorporated with little or no variation in their phraseology. It is one of a group of Acts sometimes referred to as the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861. It was passed with the object of simplifying the law. It is essentially a revised version of an earlier consolidation act, the Offences Against the Person Act 1828, incorporating subsequent statutes.
The Treason Felony Act 1848 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Parts of the Act are still in force. It is a law which protects the King and the Crown.
The Piracy Act 1698 was an Act of the Parliament of England passed in the eleventh year of King William III. The main purpose behind the statute was to make some corrections to the Offences at Sea Act 1536.
Criminal Law Act is a stock short title used for legislation in the Kingdom of Great Britain and later in the United Kingdom, as well as in the Republic of Ireland and the Republic of Singapore. The term encompasses acts relating to the criminal law, including both substantive and procedural aspects of that law. The term sometimes tends to be used for Acts that do not have a single cohesive subject matter.
The Piracy Act 1837 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It abolished the death penalty for most offences of piracy, but created a new offence often known as piracy with violence, which was punishable with death. This offence still exists in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, but is no longer punishable by death in either country.
The Piracy Act 1721 (c.24) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.
The Murder Act 1751, sometimes referred to as the Murder Act 1752, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.
The Offences Against the Person Act 1828 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It consolidated provisions in the law related to offences against the person from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act. It was part of the criminal law reforms known collectively as "Peel's Acts", passed with the objective of simplifying the law. Among the laws it replaced was clause XXVI of Magna Carta, the first time any part of Magna Carta was repealed, and the Buggery Act 1533. It also abolished the crime of petty treason.
The Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797 was an Act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain. The Act was passed in the aftermath of the Spithead and Nore mutinies and aimed to prevent the seduction of sailors and soldiers to commit mutiny.
The Criminal Justice Act 1948 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It implemented several widespread reforms of the English criminal justice system, mainly abolishing penal servitude, corporal punishment, and the right of peers to be tried for treason and felony in the House of Lords. The act also dealt with more minor aspects of criminal law, such as the procedure regarding bail. Early versions of the bill attempted to abolish the death penalty, but this would not occur until 1965.
The Piracy Act 1850, sometimes called the Pirates Repeal Act 1850, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It relates to proceedings for the condemnation of ships and other things taken from pirates and creates an offence of perjury in such proceedings.
The Forgery of Foreign Bills Act 1803 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Prior to its repeal in 2013, it created offences of forgery of foreign instruments in Scotland.
The Offences against Customs or Excise Act 1745 was a statute in English law, specifying severe punishment for smugglers and their helpers under certain conditions, with financial inducements to bring them to justice.
The Criminal Law Act 1827 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, applicable only to England and Wales. It abolished many obsolete procedural devices in English criminal law, particularly the benefit of clergy. It was repealed by the Criminal Law Act 1967.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
