ABSTRACT
Historians’ understandings about the men and women transported to Australia as punishment for crimes committed in Great Britain, Ireland and elsewhere in the British Empire have shifted markedly over time. Convicts have been viewed as innocent victims, unemployable parasites on society, a mobile imperial workforce, and since the advent of digitisation of records of their servitude, data points to be examined en masse. This chapter tests the lingering theory that most convicts came from an urban criminal class in English, which they recreated in Australia. Informed by recent scholarship, and insights derived from online databases including the Old Bailey Online and Founders and Survivors, it argues that the idea of a transported criminal class, which might have spawned an Australian underworld, is not supported by the evidence. However, the belief in a convict stain did have a lasting impact on who was criminalised.
