18/06/2006
History of New South Wales From the Records
VOLUME 1 - GOVERNOR PHILLIP 1783-1789G. B. Barton - 1889
PART III
Early Virginian Planters
"DE FOE, in many of his writings, and especially in his novel - The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, published Historical in 1721 - supplies a good deal of information with respect to the transportation system as it was carried out at the time he wrote. The following extracts show how largely the system prevailed at that time; the classes of people who were sent out to the plantations; the practice of dealing with convicts ordered for transportation; and the custom established in America of buying them from the captains of the vessels in which they were transported:-
"Among the rest, she often told me how the greatest part of the inhabitants of that colony [Virginia] came thither in very indifferent circumstances from England; that, generally speaking, they were of two sorts - either, 1st, such as were brought over by masters of ships to be sold as servants; or, 2nd, such as were transported after having been found guilty of crimes punishable with death.
"When they come here we make no difference; the planters buy them, and they work together in the field till their time is out; when 'tis expired they have encouragement given them to plant for themselves, for they have a certain number of acres of land allotted them by the country, and they go to work to clear and cure the land, and then to plant it with tobacco and corn for their own use; and as the merchants will trust them with tools and necessaries upon the credit of their crop before it is grown, so they again plant every year a little more than the year before, and so buy whatever they want with the crop that is before them. Hence, child, says she, many a Newgate bird becomes a great man, and we have several Justices of the Peace, officers of the trained bands, and magistrates of the towns they live in, that have been burnt in the hand. .... You need not think such a thing strange, daughter, for some of the best men in the country are burnt in the hand, and they are not ashamed to own it. There's Major —— ; he was an eminent pickpocket; there's Justice ———, was a shoplifter, and both of them were burnt in the hand, and I could name you several, such as they are."
In another passage the author describes the practice of buying and selling the convicts. The heroine of his story, having been convicted of stealing in a dwelling, was sentenced to death, but transported on "an humble petition for transportation." Her husband was a highwayman captured on suspicion, but not tried, and allowed to transport himself :-
"When we drew near to the shore [of Virginia], the captain called me to him and told me that he found by my discourse I had some relations in the place, and that I had been there before, and so he supposed I understood the custom in their disposing the convict prisoners when they arrived. I told him I did not. .... He told me I must get somebody in the place to come and buy me as a servant, and who must answer for me to the Governor of the country if he demanded me. I told him we should do as he should direct; so he brought a planter to treat with him, as it were, for the purchase of me for a servant (my husband not being ordered to be sold), and there I was formally sold to him, and went ashore with him. The captain went with us. . . , After some time the planter gave us a certificate of discharge and an acknowledgment of having served him faithfully, and I was free from him the next morning to go whither I would. For this piece of service the captain demanded of me six thousand-weight of tobacco, which he said he was accountable for to his freighter, and which we immediately bought for him, and made him a present of twenty guineas besides, with which he was abundantly satisfied."
The practice of kidnapping people in the streets, and shipping them out to Virginia to be sold as indented servants, forms the subject of several incidents in another of De Foe's novels - Colonel Jack. And a paper On the Return to England of Transported Felons, published by him in Applebee's Journal, January 26, 1723, contains some interesting matter on that subject.
18/06/2006
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