Criminals Transported To Australia 1836 to 1853
The following information is courtesy of the National Archives of Ireland. I have utilized their record search system to prepare a listing of criminals deported from County Roscommon to Australia during the 1836 - 1853 period. An explanation of the records appears below. Follow these links to view County Roscommon convicts who were transported to Australia:
Click on the first letter of your surname of interest.
System of Transportation
Following the American War of Independence a new destination was sought for the
transportation of convicts from Britain and
Ireland 'beyond the seas'. On 13 May 1787 the first fleet, bound for Sydney Cove with a
complement of convicts, sailed from
Portsmouth in England. Its arrival on 26 January 1788 marks the foundation of the colony
of New South Wales. The first ship
to sail directly from Ireland carrying convicts under sentence of transportation was the
Queen, which arrived in Port Jackson on
26 September 1791.
Transportation from Ireland to Australia effectively came to an end in 1853. The last ship
to carry convicts direct from Ireland
to Australia was the Phoebe Dunbar, which sailed from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) near
Dublin and arrived in Western
Australia on 30 August 1853. During the 62 years of transportation from Ireland to
Australia some 30,000 men and 9,000
women were sent as convicts to Australia for a minimum period of seven years; many more
followed their loved ones as free
settlers to a new life in the colony.
The sentence of transportation was abolished in July 1857 under an Act of that year, but the Act allowed for convicts sentenced to penal servitude to be sent 'beyond the seas'. By this means transportation continued from England until 1868. As far as is known nobody convicted of a crime committed in Ireland was transported to Australia between 1853 and 1868,although no doubt some persons of Irish birth or origin who were convicted of crimes committed in England were among those transported to Australia. However in 1868 sixty- three Irish Fenians who had been convicted in Ireland but imprisoned in England were transported from England. They arrived in Western Australia on 9 January 1868 on board the Hougoumont, the last convict transport ship to sail from England to Australia.
Transportation Records
The National Archives of Ireland holds a wide range of records relating to
transportation of convicts from Ireland to Australia
covering the period 1788 to 1868. In some cases these include records of members of
convicts' families transported as free
settlers.
To mark the Australian Bicentenary in 1988, the Taoiseach presented microfilms of the most
important of these records to the
Government and People of Australia as a gift from the Government and People of Ireland.
A computerized index to the records
was prepared with the help of IBM and is available for use at various locations in
Australia.
The records from which the transportation database was compiled, transportation registers
and petitions to government for
pardon or commutation of sentence, are incomplete. While the collection of convict
petitions dates from the beginning of
transportation from Ireland to Australia in 1791, all transportation registers compiled
before 1836 were destroyed. Therefore, if
the person you are researching was convicted before 1836 and was not the subject of a
petition, he or she will not appear on
this database.
Online Search
The complete index to the transportation records is now available here for online searches.