Reviews

Approximately 50,000 men, women, and children were banished to the Americas from Great Britain between 1607 and 1776. There the convicts were sold to the highest bidder to labor for terms of seven years or more as the court had decided. Coldham has exposed the human face of this traffic by focusing on the convicts, their judges, jailers, the captains who shipped them West, and the buyers who met them on American wharves. In short, succinct chapters, he describes the trade and illustrates his points with vivid anecdotes, providing background on English criminal justice, the prisons, the horrors of transportation, and the life of a convict in the colonies. This is an engaging introduction to the subject for general collections.-- David B. Mattern, Univ. of Vir ginia, Charlottesville