Scott Craig
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
This essay argues that conceptions of gender greatly affected the way women experienced the early modern criminal justice system in Britain, particularly through convict transportation, an enigmatic process whereby convicts were forced into exile and servitude in both colonial America and Australia. It will explore working class women’s agency in three primary contexts.
First, it will demonstrate how gender impacted the types of crimes women committed in Britain. Once sentenced, it will then examine their experiences as transports. Finally, it will show how the different penal contexts affected the kind of resistance strategies utilized by women, depending on when and where they were transported to.