Powys Digital History Project

Transportation 5
Destination Botany Bay 

  A new place for convicts
The entry below from the Quarter Sessions is of interest in that it includes a reference to the new destination, for felons sentenced to transportation, of Botany Bay in Australia.
After the loss of the American colonies following the War of Independence, Botany Bay and Tasmania were to become the dumping grounds for felons.

Breconshire
Quarter Sessions
Easter 1791

Powys
County Archives
B/QS/O/6

Quarter sessions extract
 

The extract shown here, from the Order Books of the Breconshire Quarter Sessions of 1791, reads as follows:
"Ordered that the Sum of Seventeen Pounds Six Shillings and Eight pence halfpenny be paid by the Treasurer of the County to Walter Watkins the Gaolor and Keeper of the House of Correction for Conveying Catherine Williams a Female Convict from the Gaol to Gravesend to be Transported to Botany Bay for his Disbursements therein and for necessaries by him provided for the said Convict and for his assistant in the said Gaol and House of Correction for the last Sixteen weeks." 

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