A Sentence to Sail: The Transportation of Irish Convicts and Vagrants to Colonial America in the Eighteenth Century

Patrick Fitzgerald

This paper seeks to expand upon and contextualize the sketch of eighteenth-century Irish convict transportation that appears within A. Roger Ekirch's 1987 study of the phenomenon in Britain. First, it is proposed that the total number of Irish transported was some 5,000 greater than previously estimated. In contrast to England, roughly half of those transported from Ireland were vagrants. This reflected Ireland's previous experience, more limited provision for the poor, and inadequate carcerial regime. A profile of some 2,000 transports sentenced between 1737 and 1743 illustrates, among other things, that many of those shipped off had little other than their poverty to condemn them. Nonetheless, considerable numbers of the more serious offenders managed to return across the Atlantic early, undermining to some degree the rationale behind the system.

[WP #96022]