Well, I was just considering the irony -- Australia not allowing someone in because of a criminal background, but the whole country was founded as a dumping ground for England's criminals. Not like the US -- we are only England's street urchins.
As an Australian, I love being able to tell North Americans - mainly those from USA - that they too were settled by convicts... [And not all of the colonies in Australia were convict-settled - some were settled by free settlers. ]
:toocool:
Up to the War of Independence the Brits sent large numbers of their felons to the colonies in America. Then they had to store them on hulks in the Thames. Eventually they decided to ship them to colonies in the newer world...
According to NPR -
'In 1718, the British Parliament passed the Transportation Act, under which England began sending its imprisoned convicts to be sold as indentured servants in the American colonies. While the law provoked outrage among many colonists -- Benjamin Franklin equated it to packing up North American rattlesnakes and sending them all to England -- the influx of ex-convicts provided cheap and immediate labor for many planters and merchants. After 1718, approximately 60,000 convicts, dubbed "the King's passengers," were sent from England to America. Ninety percent of them stayed in Maryland and Virginia. Although some returned to England once their servitude was over, many remained and began their new lives in the colonies.'
Another reference - 'In 1769 Dr. Johnson, speaking of Americans, said to a friend, “Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be content with anything we may allow them short of hanging.” In the latest edition of Boswell, who chronicled this saying, it is explained by the following footnote: “Convicts were sent to nine of the American settlements. According to one estimate, about 2000 had been sent for many years annually. Dr. Lang, after comparing various estimates, concludes that the number sent might be about 50,000 altogether.”1 Again, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, under the article “Botany Bay,” we read: “On the revolt of the New England colonies, the convict establishments in America were no longer available, and so the attention of the British government was turned to Botany Bay, and in 1787 a penal settlement was formed there.” In keeping with these statements is a conversation related in the autobiography of Dr. Francis Lieber (p. 180). The scene was a breakfast in 1844 at Dr. Ferguson’s in London. “I remarked how curious a fact it was that all American women look so genteel and refined, even the lowest; small heads, fine silky hair, delicate and marked eyebrows. The Doctor answered, ‘Oh, that is easily accounted for. The super-abundance of public women, who are always rather good-looking, were sent over to America in early times.’”'
This is a learning site...
John