Convicts

Convicts transported to Austraila

Some soldiers committed crimes so they would be transported to Australia, according to Emma Roberts who was in India 1828-1832. She wrote: "A few [soldiers], driven to despair by the melancholy prospect of interminable exile, unable to await the slow approach of their recall, and allured by the flowery descriptions of Australia, plunge into crime for the purpose of exchanging honourable servitude in India for a felon's lot in a climate resembling that of England. It is no very unusual circumstance for a soldier to attempt the life of his officer or his comrade, in the hope of being transported to a country possessing so many features akin to the land of his birth; and even the punishment of death is to some less terrible than the prospect of eternal banishment from "the home they left with little pain.""

External Links

• Convicts Transported to Australia from India - Perth DPS project. For Military Convicts from Bengal, you can probably obtain a summary of the Court Martial proceedings in the General Orders by C-in-C Bengal in the L/MIL/17/2 series at the British Library, and similarly for the other Presidencies. (Unfortunately, these have not been microfilmed)

• British Convict Transportation Registers Database includes European Soldiers sentenced in India.

• NSW State Archives Major sources held by NSW State Records that relate to trade and migration between India and New South Wales and includes a section on convicts.

• Tasmanian Archives Convicts Guide.This document may be searched for ”India”

• Sydney Journal Part of the Dictionary of Sydney. Some British military prisoners were sent first to Mauritius, and then to Sydney.

Historical books online

• Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan by Emma Roberts on Google Books. This edition is Volume 2, 1837. Page 122

Convicts transported to Penang

Some convicts were sent to Penang from India.

Historical books online

• Edinburgh medical and surgical journal, Volume 36 Google Books, (bottom of page), published in 1831.
• Prisoners their own warders : a record of the convict prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements established 1825, discontinued 1873, together with a cusory history of the convict establishments at Bencoolen, Penang and Melacca from the year 1797 by John Frederick Adolphus McNair.