English Ancestors Sentenced to Transportation

            Minor theft in the eighteenth century London was often treated harshly. It could result in job loss, criminal charges, and prison sentences. London at this time contained hordes of desperately poor people who had for years traveled from the countryside to avoid starvation (after industrialism’s disruptions and Protestant Reformers had destroyed the Church’s ability to care for them), so petty theft was common, and those convicted of petty crime were jailed even for such things as theft of a handkerchief or a loaf of bread.

            These arrests produced terrible overcrowding as people were stuffed into conditions of filth, disease, and deprivation. In Newgate, London’s infamous prison, people died “by the dozens of the jail distemper,” a disease of crowding, filth, and malnutrition. Prison workers carried the dead out by the cartload, threw them into pits, and buried them without ceremony.

            In 1718, to alleviate overcrowding His Majesty George I gave judges the authority to impose the sentence of transportation to America as a standard penalty for all but the most serious crimes. Excluded from transportation were hanging offenses such as murder, treason, rape, witchcraft, highway robbery, arson, and burglary.         

His Majesty’s government bonded sentenced people over to shipping merchants who could sell them for from two to seven years’ service. These agents arranged transportation for bonded passengers, who in most instances went to Virginia or Maryland where tobacco planters paid well for skilled and unskilled labor. In London shipping merchants struck deals with ships’ masters who paid them with tobacco shipped from America to pay for previous loads of laborers. Unskilled laborers sold for ten pounds while skilled craftsmen could bring as much as twenty-five pounds. Ships’ masters received an additional transportation fare of about four pounds per passenger.

            Shipping merchants also handled people under indenture. Indentured people voluntarily bonded themselves over to serve a stated period, usually seven years. Initially there appeared to be a difference between convicts and indentured servants, but to shipping merchants, ships’ masters, ships’ crews, and the people who received the convicts and indentures, there was little difference, and by the time they arrived in America any differences had been forgotten. Indentures and bonded passengers had been badly mistreated.

            Ill treatment began as soon as they left England. Ever mindful of profit, masters packed people in as tightly as possible, restricted their movement, and fed them poorly. Not surprisingly, people died in the process, and not only men but also women and children were transported. At times officials emptied brothels, rounded up orphans, and bonded the lot over. Ships’ crews abused women, sometimes unto death.

            When convicts and indentures landed in America, merchants reloaded ships with tobacco for the return trip to England. Because tobacco was highly prized in England, men made fortunes.

            As with African slaves, arriving indentures and convicts were marched to a central platform for display to potential buyers who poked, prodded, questioned, and then bought whom they wished. At this point the only differences among, bonded passengers, indentures and Negro slaves were the indentures’ length. As a matter of fact, in the early days of America some African slaves also came with limited indentures. It was not until later that African slavery became permanent.

            Transportation of convicts to America did not begin in 1718, but most were transported during the eighteenth century. Between 1615 and 1775 an estimated 50,000 people came to America as bonded passengers.

            Like many Americans of English ancestry some in my family have believed we descended from royalty – not very likely. Coats of Arms with the Chesser name are several and varied.     

Research prompted me to look at English shipping passenger lists for the period. I didn’t find Chesser but did find several Cheshire’s, of which Chesser is a variant spelling. In fact, in early U.S. censuses beginning in 1790 my ancestors spelled the name both ways, finally settling on Chesser in the 1810 census. I cannot say for certain if these bonded and indentured passengers are my direct descendants but in the absence of evidence of royal lineage, who knows?

            I know that some in my family were slow to abandon notions of descent from royalty.