Colonisation of Australia

The English background to transportation (ссылка преступников)

The 1700' s were years of change and unrest in Britain brought about by James Watt's invention of the steam engine (паровая машина).

Britain was changed first by the Agricultural Revolution, the invention of new mechanised farming equipment and methods. In country areas, people whose ancestors (предки) had lived on the land for centuries as tenants (арендатор) were forced to leave their homes as they were progressively replaced by the new machines.

In the rural areas of Britain many people turned to crime - either to survive or to protest at the way landowners treated them. They poached (заниматься браконьерством) animals from the estates and sometimes destroyed the crops and machinery of the owners.

Food and materials once supplied from farms across Britain were now replaced by imports that were processed in factories. British farm owners turned their land over to sheep grazing (пастбище). They evicted (выселяли) farm labourers (сельскохозяйственный рабочий) and their families, who, with no jobs and nowhere to live, flocked (стекаться) to the cities looking for work in the factories.

Initially the answer seemed to lay in the Industrial Revolution, as many new factories were rapidly being established, and these offered jobs. This combination of rural work declining and factory jobs appearing caused a vast movement of people to the cities.

These cities rapidly became overcrowded and so soon little or no work was to be found there either. In the cities the poor lived in squalor (нищета, убогость), without work or money, decent food, clothing or housing. Overcrowding, poverty and drunkenness were widespread, and so too was crime, particularly theft (воровство). Petty crime (мелкая преступность) became a way of life for many. Criminality was widespread because it was hard to catch criminals in the narrow streets of the industrial cities and there was not a professional police force.

Britain in those days included all of Ireland as well as Scotland and Wales. The Irish resented the English control over their land. They tried to drive them out by destroying the property of English landowners.

The government responded to the increase in crime by extending the criminal code to make even the most minor transgression (правонарушение) a capital offence. It was known as the 'Bloody Code' because of the huge numbers of crimes for which the death penalty (смертная казнь) could be imposed.

In 1778 there were about two hundred 'crimes' which carried the death sentence.

Some of the crimes carrying the death penalty in the 1700s:

- murder

- arson (поджог)

- forgery (подделка документа)

- stealing horses or sheep

- stealing from a rabbit warren (крольчатник)

- pickpocketing (карманная кража) goods worth more than 5 shillings

- destroying turnpike roads (платная дорога)

- cutting down trees

- being out at night with a blackened face

Number of crimes carrying the death penalty:

The ramshackle (ветхий) system of local prisons could not accommodate the swollen (непомерно большой) numbers of convicts. British jails were foul-smelling (зловонный), dank (сырой) and dark places. About half the jails of England were privately owned. Chesterfield jail belonged to the Duke of Portland, the Bishop of Ely owned a prison, the Bishop of Durham had the Durham County Jail and Halifax jail belonged to the Duke of Leeds. The jailers were not state employees but small business operators, who made profits from extorting (вымогать) money from prisoners.

Since the days of Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603; Queen 1558-1603), the British had been getting rid of troublemakers by banishing (изгонять, высылать) them abroad or putting them to work rowing the galley (галера) ships.