The Transported Convict Women of Colonial Maryland, 1718-1776

Abstract

In March 1718, as a response to what it perceived to be rising rates in lawlessness and criminal activity, the British Parliament passed legislation which established transportation to the colonies as a punishment for a vast range of formerly capital offences. This measure, together with pre-existing arrangements for capital reprieves upon condition of transportation meant that, by the time of the Declaration of Independence, some fifty thousand convicts had been forcibly banished to North America. At least 3,420 of these were women who can be identified as having served (or been destined to serve) their sentences in Maryland (though the actual number was almost certainly much greater). The entire historiography of British convicts in colo nial America is quite small overall. In the last 120 years or so there have been three or four books on transportation, a limited number of journal articles, and a few paragraphs or pages in general histories or in those concerned with a relevant subject such as tobacco production. None of this writing has addressed the subject of women directly. Instead women have been included as a subset of principally male accounts and interpretations. This has tended to marginalize (and thus trivialize) the women's experiences. Being a particular type of indentured servant (their shippers were granted a saleable property in their labor), the convict women have also been enveloped in this larger categorization.