The New County Gaol, Jewry Street, Winchester completed in 1805, in a pen and wash drawing 1825

On 13th May 1787, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, a fleet of ships left Portsmouth to "found" a new penal colony on the eastern shore of a virtually unknown continent 12,000 miles away. Twenty five criminal from Hampshire were included in the total of around 750 convicts on board the fleet. A second fleet of three ships, left Portsmouth on 19th January 1789 containing around a thousand more convicts of which a total of 29 from Hampshire, comprising of twenty-seven males and two females. The first fleet took eight months to accomplish the journey and it was deemed a resounding success but the second fleet was an unmitigated disaster.

The attitude of society to criminals during the 18th century was harsh and punitive, fuelled by fears concerning the safety of property, any property, however modest.  Many of the criminals were accommodated in a Bridewell, which was a local prison solely for petty offenders receiving short periods of containment. Whereas others were sent to nearby County gaols, people sentenced for debt and for others awaiting the death penalty or transportation.

Surviving court records in Hampshire only show a minimum of the amount of criminal activity that was rife between the years 1780 and 1800 and many crimes would have gone undetected. Many more never reached prosecution, as there was no police force as there is today, therefore to prosecute a private  individual was a costly and time-consuming affair.

The cost of taking a person to court, made serious inroads to a complainant living thirty or more miles from a town where the assizes or quarter sessions were being held, thus the loss of earnings, cost of recompensing witnesses would be added to the other expenses of the period. These expenses would multiply rapidly for those that depended on these payments included the clerical staff of the assizes, quarter sessions, central courts and ecclesiastical tribunals as they all depended upon the fees for their living Thus a charge was introduced at each step in the procedures and the total cost would be extremely heavy for a man of moderate means.

In the Salisbury Journal an article reads......

"It appears from this confession that they had carried out their depredations with very little interruption for these last seven years during which time they had stolen seventy-two horses, nineteen sheep, fifty-eight flocks of bees and seventy-seven asses.....cloth to the amount of 200 pound at Shroton Fair and acknowledged to have robbed twenty-two different shops besides other smaller thefts"

This was in connection with a confession that two gypsies, Luke STANLEY and John PATRICK, made before leaving Winchester prison for execution in July 1790.

Prisoners were quite often discharged or acquitted due to lack of evidence, the unwillingness of witnesses to attend or "no true bill". An example of this is at the March 1784 assizes in Winchester as many as 17 were acquitted and in the July 1779 quarter sessions 13 out of the 17 prisoners up for trial were discharged.

Despite all the difficulties in obtaining a successful prosecution, there were some that Winchester Assizes sentenced during the last 20 years of the 18th century, either to transportation to be sent to the gallows for execution. Though a number of death sentences were later reduced to transportation, though on what grounds would be difficult to speculate due to the insufficient detail on records.

Death sentences "differed" in their severity  in that the more usual procedure was for the criminal to be taken to the gallows in a cart - the gallows being about a mile up the road to Andover opposite Gallows Field - after the execution had been carried out the family or friends were allowed to dispose of the body themselves. Though sometimes, especially if a particularly brutal murder had been carried out the bodies were sent for dissection. Records show that in March 1796 four black men Summo, Rabon, Ravoo and Sarax, murdered another black man in Portchester Castle, which was the home of several thousand prisoners of war. All were hanged and their bodies sent to the county hospital.

Another notorious case concerning a marine, John Quin, who had helped Mary Bayley murder her husband at their house in Portsmouth. They were sentenced to be dragged on a hurdle to the place of execution where 'she was to be burnt at the stake and he was to be hanged and his body delivered to the surgeon for dissection and anatomization'. The crime of husband killing was regarded as a most serious offence, and technically described as petty treason, and therefore subject to the more extreme punishment.

Quite often as in the case of John Hastings, who was sentenced for the willful murder or Robert Warnock in August 1786, bodies were hung in chains. The day following Hastings execution his body was conveyed to Hardway in Gosport and hanged near the spot 'where this shocking murder and robbery was committed' An example of an iron cage used to string up bodies on a gibbet can still be seen in the Westgate Museum at Winchester.

An even more ferocious sentence was meted out to David Tyrie at a Special Commission in Winchester in August 1782. Tyrie was found guilty of supplying the enemy with information about British warships throughout the kingdom. He was subsequently sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering, with the four quarters being 'disposed of as His Majesty shall think fit'. He was drawn to the place of execution in Portsmouth on a hurdle and the sentence carried out 'before a vast crowd'.

Through various records it has been possible to determine what types of  crime committed by 199 of the transportees sentenced between 1783 and 1791. Apart from a 'high' of assaults and highway robberies in 1783-4 the commonest crimes were robberies or burglaries, and the theft of animals, mainly horses, cows, asses, sheep, pigs and poultry. Though it should be noted that during this period there was only one instance of poaching of game birds receiving a sentence of transportation, this incident took place on the Isle of Wight and involved violence. If no violence was involved the perpetrator was sent to the bridewell for a short period or fined. As well as the above there were also incidences report of sailors wills being forged, one or two of perjury, and the re-sentencing of four men who had earlier escaped from the prison hulks.

The Hampshire Chronicle had reported a considerable amount of information about crimes, for example a spate of highway robberies had taken place on the outskirts of  Portsmouth and Gosport. John Leary, Joseph Morley, Francis Garland and Henry Roach, who all sailed on the First Fleet, were part of a band of six men who attacked and robbed Thomas  Evans in Gosport in 1783
During the same year James Branagan and Robert Bruce robbed John Cutler on the highway at Gosport and John Williams and John Brady robbed Thomas Francis and James White near Forton.

Other incidences took place on roads around market towns such as Andover, Romsey and Wickham , victims for example, being men returning home from market with money in their pockets. One notable incident took place in 1782 which involved William Eastman and Izaac Lamb who:

"....attempted to rob Mr Samuel Walden Jnr, a stone mason, near Henvill Wood as he was coming home from Romsey; one of them jumped out of a hedge and attempted to catch at his bridle upon which he spurred his horse to ride away from them, when the others struck him a violent blow on the side of the head, which cut through his hat and had nearly taken off his ear. When he reached Hursley, he related the circumstance and gave a description of them, when they were immediately pursed and taken...."

Though these were Highway Robberies, not one of them were in the romantic sense of the legendry Dick Turpin, but rather resembled modern day muggers, with the booty being just modest amounts - perhaps a guinea or two, some silver or a watch or purse with a few pennies inside.

Many of the burglaries reported involved women, who usually just took clothes from houses or materials from market stalls or shops. A Mary McDonaugh, who sailed with the Second Fleet, stole clothes from Charles Lane's house - a blue greatcoat and thread stockings; she was identified when she tried to  pawn them. Sophia Meades also stole a quantity of thread lace, cotton shawls and other things from a shop in Gosport. And men accompanied by a female servant living in the house were more likely to take items of value, such as silver, cutlery or money. Hannah Smith was charged with Daniel Gordon for the robbery at the house of Charles Hancock in Upham. Both went on the First Fleet. Around the Portsmouth  area many men were often caught stealing lead, rope or iron articles, often from HM Dockyard but also off of the ships themselves. Again it seems the value of the goods was not very high but it was certainly much easier and rewarding than accosting people on the highway. Robert Campbell stole nine guineas and George Powell took 12 silver teaspoons. And sometimes the hauls were considerably more valuable. Thomas Robinson stole 121 pound from a packet at Spithead, William Waterman broke into a silversmith's in The Square, Winchester, and made off with a large quantity of plate, and William Hawkins stole a canvas bag containing 230 guineas from HMS Prince which was moored at Spithead. When sentenced Hawkins was 'not yet thirteen years old'.

At nearly every quarter sessions and assizes, the theft of animals were reported and this occurred all over the county. Mostly it was the stealing of a fowl or two, perhaps even a sheep for food or a horse to sell, but there were also organised gangs who stole horses. The depredations of Luke Stanley and John Patick have already been mentioned but William Thorogood, a young man, was found guilty in 1777 of stealing a horse from The Leaf at Petersfield, also gave an account '..of a large gang of horse stealers and their different methods of traffick, by exchanging horses that had been stolen in one county, for those that had been stolen in another'

Though records do not show the ages of many of these criminals it was certainly a wide field. Most of the crimes were committed by late teens to middle thirties but James King was 65 when

 'he stole a hawser from Samuel Jones from his sloop The Good Intent and also stealing and carrying away one other haswer from Thomas Burt of Poole from his sloop Active at Gosport'

Bartholomew Reardon was 60 when he took a trunk off a coach outside the Red Lion at Portsmouth. At the other end of the scale William Hawkins who we mentioned earlier was not yet 13 when he was brought to trial.

There is no way of knowing if these felons were convicted and transported to Australia for the most petty crimes though this seems to be true. There is also no way of knowing if any of these were genuine first offenders or how many of them were habitual criminals albeit on a petty scale. But at least six have been identified as having been sentence more than once. William Denman stole sheep in 1782 and poultry in 1790; Robert Perry was sentenced to hard labour in 1780 and to transportation for burglary in 1785. Thomas Philips and John Bagley had stolen a quantity of handkerchiefs in Winchester, a shirt from Martin Filer, near Winchester and 'other stealings unknown'. John Tier (Tire) stole a horse in 1784 and five shirts in 1787 and William Waterman, as already mentioned, stole a quantity of silver plate in 1782 and broke into the Reverend Fleet's house and stole plate in 1790.

Records confirm that there was a considerable fluctuation in the amount of serious crime from year to year and at least some historians found that this was comparable to crime rates for London, Middlesex, Staffordshire, Surrey and Sussex. The predicted that there would be two reasons why these rates would rise. Firstly  in response to the fact that during periods of dearth when food prices were high and increased number of people would fall below the poverty line, and secondly that on the ending of wars, when thousands of young men would be discharged from duties en masse at a time of almost certain recession. Both of these sets of circumstances arose in the two years  between 1782 and 1784. And at the end of the American War, there were 160,000 soldiers, sailors and marines who were demobilized in a very short space of time, all of whom were set free to fend for themselves, most having to walk considerable distances to their homes while others roamed the countryside looking for work.

These reasons seemed to be of special relevance to Hampshire for Portsmouth was one of the main naval ports for demobilization; where many ships were laid off and where there was also a drastic reduction in the number of men required for the RN Dockyard. Although it seems safe to think that there was a crime wave at that time, that in itself, does not show why the penal system had reached a state of crisis in the early 1780s. This explanation lies in two different sets of circumstances, first from 1776 when the American war began, America refused to accept any more transportees and secondly, 18th century gaols were not able to hold large numbers of prisoners at any one time. When it was realized that 30-36,000 British convicts had been despatched to America between 1718 - the year the Transportation Act was passed - and 1775. It can be seen that America's refusal to take any more convicts would very quickly build up into a blockage of the prison system, especially so when  the numbers waiting for transportation were also rising, prisons began to fill up and soon began to overflow.

Prisons were not necessary very large and only expected to hold prisoners until their cases came up at the next quarter sessions or assizes, then the judges did their job and the prisons became empty. Most of the sentences consisted of whipping, the stocks, fines or being sent to the bridewell for terms ranging from a few days to a year or two with hard labour. These could all be accomplished in a few days and even hangings were rarely delayed for more than a week.

The simple chain that were fitted to the prisoners legs and hands

It was also necessary not to make the gaols more secure for prisoners were routinely ironed or even chained to the walls or floors to prevent them escaping. This certainly happened to a small group of convicts in Winchester prison in 1785 after they had escaped and had been recaptured. The Hampshire Chronicle reported the incident thus...

'six convicts escaped together from our city jail during the night of 20 January but as great rewards are offered for apprehending them...it is hoped they will soon be safe lodged again'

A week later John Muddle and Robert Russell had been captured 

' the former taken on Wednesday last in the New Forest, the latter secured in Salisbury jail and brought back the next day.'

February 21st the paper reported.......

'yesterday the remaining two prisoners...were brought back in heavy irons to join their old companions....the above were supposed to have been gone to France, but were taken by the assistance of a party of Dragoons, in a smuggling house near Steyning in Sussex'

and finally on 29 Feburary....

'all are in safe custody....lock'd down to the floor.

George Barsby, who later embarked on the First Fleet was one of this group. He is reported to have died before the fleet even left Portsmouth Harbour.

Many prisons were located in ancient castles, in rooms at the backs of inns or even in stables and barns. The situation for the prisoners became worse if they could not afford to send out for food or to pay for straw to sleep on - he might even die of starvation. A very small ration of bread were given but as prices began to rise steeply at various times over the century, prisoners received less to eat from the fixed sums of money which did not rise with the times. The job of the Surrey county gaol inmates was not enviable in the winter of 1740-1, for example...

• Their allowance from the county of one penny a day for bread had bought less and less as prices rose steeply. It had been raised belatedly to three half-pence in January 1741 and to two pence in April. But by then several dozen prisoners had died, many of whom the magistrates themselves thought had starved to death (Beattie 1986)

But the prisoners ordeals were still not over, even allowing for the poor rations and the overcrowding in dirty conditions, there was the ever-present risk of gaol fever. The lower part of the West Gate in Winchester, part underground, dark and dank, was for many years a prison and Mr Lipscomb, the gaoler, informed John Howard during his visit of inspection between 1775 and 1777 that more than twenty prisoners had died in it of the gaol fever in one year and that his predecessor had also died of the same distemper.

Mainly due to John Howard's disclosures concerning the inadequacy of existing prisons - the way in which different types of prisoners mixed freely together and the deplorable ways in which they were being held - Parliament passed an act recommending that a range of improvements be made to existing prisons or that new prisons be built.

Thus in response to these recommendations, Hampshire justices of the peace held several meetings during 1784-5 to give serious thought to the bad conditions of the old Jewry Street prison and to the 'ruinous state' of the county bridewell in the Broadway, special emphasis being place on separation of the different types of offenders - convicts, felons, debtors and females. A decision was quickly made to build a new bridewell on land that was already held at the north end of the ruins of Hyde Abbey and this was in use by 1787, but there was considerable argument about the gaol: while some thought that a brand new building was urgently needed others objected strongly on the grounds of cost, the estimated cost being 11,000 pound. Over the next few years considerable alterations were made but it was not until 1805 that the much enlarged gaol with the fine frontage onto Jewry Street was built to Mr. Moneypenny's plan at a cost of 10,000 pound. Most of this frontage can still be seen today rising above the shops in Jewry Street.

The passing of the Criminal Law Act in 1776 showed many prisoners sent to hard labour on the banks of the Thames, being housed in two old naval ships (hulks) moored at Woolwich. As years passed and the number of prisoners grew it was necessary to moor further hulks at Portsmouth and Plymouth. Convicts at Portsmouth were sent ashore to work on the building of the Cumberland Fort and other defences, even though this brought fear of spreading gaol fever among the local people. Others were given the chance to join the army or going to sea.

An example of this is that four convicts sentenced at the March 1782 Assize at Winchester 'were conveyed from hence to Portsmouth, in order to be put on board a ship, to serve His Majesty as soldiers on the coast of Africa'.

Nine of the men sentenced sentenced in 1783 had a particularly eventful time, William Ayres, Daniel Barnett, James Branagan, Robert Bruce, William Field, Francis Garland, Joseph Morley, Henry Roach and William Robinson had their initial capital convictions reduced to transportation. They were all sent to the Ceres hulk moored on the Thames and were set to work, in chains, on the banks of the river. The American War having finished about this time, the government decided to try again to get them to accept some of our convicts, and the above men, were included in a batch embarked on the Mercury Transport on 26 March 1784. Whilst the ship was still in the English Channel there was a successful mutiny and the convicts managed to sail the ship into Torbay in Devon. Here many escaped, including the Hampshire men. All nine were later recaptured and their original sentences re-confirmed by a Special Commission held in Exeter in May of the same year. They were then marched in chains to Plymouth and put on the Dunkirk hulk, where they stayed for three years before sailing on the First Fleet.

The old naval ship York, anchored at Portsmouth
and used as a prison ship or hulk

The hulks were used for several years and appeared to be an adequate outlet for the overflow from the prisons and until 1785 the total number of convicts interned in them never rose above approximately 600. But between 1786 and 1789 this ha d risen to around 2,000 and the service was costing almost 50,000 pounds a year.

Pressure on the accommodation in the hulks rose, gaolers had to wait varying lengths of time before they could gather batches of transportees to escort to Portsmouth. There is no record of a description of a batch of prisoners being taken from Winchester but is is probable that hey would have to walk as those in Dorchester had to which was considerably further away.

• Prisoners sentenced at Dorchester were held in Dorchester Gaol until a convenient number were ready to to be removed to Portsmouth for embarkation.  They had to walk in chains following the route of the present A35 and A31. Their first day's march of about 14 miles brought them to a point about five miles west of Wimborne Minster; here at the red signpost they were turned right down a lane towards Bloxworth. The signpost, it is said, was painted red to distinguish it for the guards, most of who would have been illiterate. The prisoners spent an uncomfortable night in an old brick built barn, all chained to a central post which reached to the roof. The barn, built like a prison with narrow slits for windows and heavy studded oak doors, was partly destroyed by fire in 1935, but the farm retains the name 'Botany Bay Farm' to this day

Arriving at Portsmouth they would have been loaded onto boats and rowed out to either the Lion hulk in Portsmouth Harbour or the Ceres or Fortunee hulks at Langstone. The drawing above shows how an old dilapidated naval ship was demasted, had her gun ports blocked and accommodation put on the top deck for guards. Embarking on board the hulks was a very demoralising affair; the convicts had to climb labourously up with their irons still on, stripped of their clothes, had buckets of cold water thrown over them; were issued with slops, saw their own clothes thrown overboard; were re-chained and then sent down into the lowest deck of the hulk - the darkest and most foul-smelling part of the ship.