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Description: | Lament on the transportation of criminals to the colonies.At the time this song was printed, the British penal code was extremely harsh. In the late eighteenth century Parliament had dramatically increased the number of capital offences and it was said that there were more executions annually in England than in all the rest of Europe. In Newcastle until well on into the second quarter of the nineteenth century, prisoners were hanged at Morpeth, Durham and Newcastle, before a great crowd of spectators, it being usual practice at Newcastle to hand over the body afterwards to the doctors at the Surgeon's Hall for dissection.Transportation to colonies, in particular Australia, became extremely popular during the nineteenth century, reaching its peak in the 1830s. Four out of five death sentences were transmuted to transportation, the practice continuing until the early 1850s, when Sydney and Melbourne refused to take anymore convicts. Prisoners in Newcastle, who were condemned to this fate at the local assizes, were retained at Newgate gaol, or in the basement of the keep whilst they awaited transfer to a transportation ship.This song is part of thecollection. John Bell was an avid collector of popular poems, songs, and pamphlets and long-term librarian to the Society of Antiquities in Newcastle. ; A collection of broadsheets on various subjects, with manuscript notes in the hand of John Bell. | Publisher: | T. Dodds The Side, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear | Rights holder: | rights holder : Newcastle University | Subjects: | Law and Order criminals & protest & transportation | Temporal: | start=1841;end=1860; | Source: | Folk Archive Resource North East | Identifier: | farne:N0203601 | Go to resource |
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