Prisoners bound by the neck
Thomas Ayloffe: A Bonded Passenger to America
Born before 1741, St. Margaret, Westminster, England
Died 1774, in Richmond County Virginia
1741: Came from Westminster, England
Exiled to Rappahannock, VA
Exiled from England for stealing 2 sheep; arrived on ship Harpooner.
My ggggg-grandfather, Thomas Ayloffe, was an English prisoner that was exiled from London to Virginia. Finding this information about my ancestor caused me to become very interested in this part of our American history, so I began to research the British practice of exiling its prisoners to the Colonies.
What I did and did not know about the American Colonies being used as a place to exile British convicts:
It is general knowledge that England exiled convicts to its colonies in the 15th and 16th Centuries. I knew that English prisoners were used to populate the Colony of Georgia. I was mostly aware that Australia was used to exile prisoners. I did not know the practice of exiling prisoners was widely used by the British Crown as an act of classicism and a way in which to make money .
I knew of the horrors of enslaving Africans to work the plantations of the colonies. I did not realize that English prisons also supplied labor to the tobacco plantations. British prisoners were exiled and forced to work the plantations for four years in order to pay for their passage from England. In other words the prisoner became an indentured servant. I am not attempting to compare this type of forced labor to that of slavery. Yet, it is undeniable that British prisoners were treated as inhumanly as African slaves when they were incarcerated in London prisons.
During this time period, living conditions for the poor in London were deplorable, finding employment was almost nonexistent, and the prevailing attitude of those in power was that the poor class did not deserve any better than to be enslaved to work in order to "limit their existence." (17)
Prisoners had to pay for any type of services in prison such as bedding. Of course most could not afford to purchase services. Prisoners were packed into filth ridden rooms like sardines. Women were used by their captors. Prisons where men, women, and children of the poor class were kept were viewed as places of death.(19)
Newgate, the prison in which my ggggg-grandfather was incarcerated, was a place of torture. The prison was designed so other prisoners could watch peers being tortured and killed. Such acts committed by the prison were burning prisoners alive, boiling body parts and salting them in large kettles, and applying heavy stones so as to slowly crush victims to death. These are but a few of the tortures that the poor encountered. Tickets were sold to the public to watch executions. (20)
The poorest class of children, women and men were forced in exile for what was many times minor crimes. (9) British subjects of the upper class who committed the worst crimes were never subjected to exile or the horrendous prison treatment that the poor endured . (23)
Newgate Prison
My ggggg-grandfather's offense:
AYLOFFE also known as AYLIFFE, Thomas of St
Margaret Westminster July-Oct 1740 stole 2 sheep exiled Jan 1741 on
the ship Harpooner to
Although being an indentured servant without one's consent was unjust, I would think that it was a blessing in disguise for prisoners that had to endure incarceration in prisons such as Newgate. Although it was forced on him, I am grateful that Thomas came to Virginia and was taken out of the deplorable conditions that the poor in London encountered.
Work Cited:
Coldham, Peter Wilson. (1983). Bonded Passenger to America (Vols. 1-2) Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing
Newgate Prison, located in London, was probably the most notorious prison in all England. A prison has stood on the Newgate site for almost a thousand years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London and much older than the Bastille. It is first mentioned in the reign of King John and in the following reign of Henry the III, (1218), the King expressly commands the sheriffs of London to repair it, and promised to repay them from his own exchequer. This shows that the prison was under the direct control of the King at that time. The prison itself was originally above the gate or in the gatehouse.
London was anciently a walled city with four gates. It has been argued that Newgate was one of the original four, and conversely, that it was indeed a "new" gate, being the fifth to provide entry to the city. This is somewhat substantiated, according to Stowe, by the fact that in 1086 the old cathedral church of St Paul was destroyed. In building a new cathedral, Mauritius, Bishop of London, wanted a building so large and so grand plus a cemetery and churchyard that he blocked the then great thoroughfare from Aldgate in the east to Ludgate in the west. This resulted in traffic having to make long and dangerous detours. The remedy for this was to make a new gate which allowed a route from Aldgate through West Cheape to St Paul's. It was rebuilt and modified several times, once after the great fire of London in 1666.
Date this page was last edited: 10/05/2003
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