Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women: Crime, Transportation, and the Servitude of Female Convicts, 1718-1783

Abstract

This book is about eighteenth-century women - women from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales - who committed crimes or otherwise broke the law. After their indictment, trial, and conviction, these women were punished by being transported to the American colonies, often to Maryland. The fate of these women has been largely overlooked by historians. Although their story forms only a small part of the overall narrative of American immigration, it contributes to the larger picture of unfree labor in the colonial Chesapeake. Moreover, the story of these women provides an alternative narrative to other accounts that explore the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs of the majority population - the free and the bound - and throws these behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs into sharper relief In recent decades historical inquiries have paid heed to the lives of everyday, nonelite people, and this book is in keeping with that approach. It seeks to increase what is known about the backgrounds and the experiences of the transported convict women who, together with their male colleagues, were referred to in Maryland as "His Majesty's Seven-year Passengers" or by similar epithets indicative of derision and disdain.