Convict transportation registers database
Find a convict
Related websites, books and more
Below is a sample of useful convict resources:
- Info Guides for family historians
- Websites for family historians
- Websites on convict history
- General books
- Specific voyages
- Personal accounts
- Biographies
- Prison hulks
- Convict women
- Convict escapes
- Major newspapers and serials
- Fiction
A Fleet of Transports under Convoy / mezzotint print published by Carrington Bowles.
(Source: Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales)
Info Guides for family historians
Please consult the following family history Info Guides for useful convict resources held at the State Library of Queensland:
- No.3.12: Convict research - getting started [new window
87 kb] - No.3.13: Convict research - finding out even more [new window 88 kb]
Websites
For family historians
Convict indexes (New South Wales) [new window] - State Records, NSW
Index to Tasmanian Convicts [new window] - Archives Office of Tasmania
Ireland-Australia transportation database [new window] – National Archives of Ireland
Western Australia - convict database [new window] - Fremantle PrisonThe Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1913 [new window]
First Fleet online database [new window]
Websites for genealogists - Convict records [new window]
Convicts to Australia [new window] - Dead Persons Society, Perth, Western Australia
PROV guide 57: Convict records [new window]– Public Record Office, Victoria
Transportation to Australia 1787-1868 [new window] - The National Archives (England)
Australian medical pioneers index [new window]
Founders and survivors : Australian life courses in historical context 1803-1920 [new window] 
Podcasts
ABC audio file - Convict secrets of The Rocks [new window] 
ABC podcast - Australian colonial history [new window]
ABC podcast - Australia's convict women [new window]
ABC podcast - Reflections on our convict heritage [new window]
Podcast - From crime to punishment: criminal records [new window] - The National Archives (England)
Podcast - Transportation to Australia [new window] - The National Archives (England)
Convict history
Convicts and the British colonies in Australia [new window]
Convict system [new window] - State Library of New South Wales
Australian convict sites [new window]
Books
Hobart Town Chain Gang / etched by G. Bruce.
(Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
General
The convict ships, 1787-1868 by Charles Bateson
The fatal shore : a history of the transportation of convicts to Australia, 1787-1868 by Robert Hughes
Botany Bay : the story of the convicts transported from Ireland to Australia, 1791-1853
by Con Costello
Australia’s birthstain : the startling legacy of the convict era by Babette Smith
The commonwealth of thieves by Thomas Keneally
Convicts : transportation and Australia by Michael Bogle
Freedom on the fatal shore : Australia’s first colony by John Hirst
Tasmania’s convicts : how felons built a free society by Alison Alexander
Is there a convict in the family? Research guide no.2 - produced by the Newcastle Family History Society
Specific voyages
Britannia - Death or liberty : the convicts of the Britannia : Ireland to Botany Bay 1797 by Barbara Hall
Broxbornebury - Journey to a new life : the story of the ships Emu in 1812 and Broxbornebury in 1814, including crew, female convicts and free passengers on board by Elizabeth Hook
Calcutta - Convicts unbound : the story of the Calcutta convicts and their settlement in Australia by Marjorie Tipping
Duchess of Northumberland - The last ladies : the female convicts transported from England on the Duchess of Northumberland November 1852-April 1853 by Christine Woods
Earl Grey - The convict ship : a narrative of the results of scriptural instruction and moral discipline on board the ’Earl Grey'
by Colin Arrott Browning
![[Portrait of Il Netunno, later Marquis Cornwallis, under sail / oil painting by] F.B. Solvyns, 1793](http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/71874/netunno_tn.jpg)
[Portrait of Il Netunno, later Marquis Cornwallis, under sail / oil painting by] F.B. Solvyns, 1793(Source: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales)
Eleanor - The convicts of the Eleanor : protests in rural England, new lives in Australia
by David Kent and Norma Townsend
Emu - Journey to a new life : the story of the ships Emu in 1812 and Broxbornebury in 1814, including crew, female convicts and free passengers on board by Elizabeth Hook
First Fleet - 1788 : the people of the First Fleet by Don Chapman
First Fleet - The founders of Australia : a biographical dictionary of the first fleet by Mollie Gillen
First Fleet - 1788 : the brutal truth of the First Fleet : the biggest single migration the world had ever seen by David Hill
Hilsborough - Voyage to Sydney in the ship Hillsborough, 1798-1799 and a description of the colony by William Noah
Lady Juliana - The floating brothel : the extraordinary story of the Lady Juliana and its cargo of female convicts bound for Botany Bay
by Siân Rees
Lord Sidmouth - Lord Sidmouth 1819 : index to surgeon’s journal / compiled by Wendy Nunan
Marquis Cornwallis - A desperate set of villains : the convicts of the Marquis Cornwallis, Ireland to Botany Bay, 1796 by Barbara Hall
Neptune - The women of the 1790 Neptune : the seventy-eight convicts named on the cover and those who came free by Anne Needham
New Grove - Maids, masters and magistrates : twenty women of the convict ship New Grove : maidservants in Van Diemen's Land
by Jeanette E. Hyland
Princess Royal - A cargo of women : Susannah Watson and the convicts of the Princess Royal by Babette Smith
Queen - The Irish vanguard : the convicts of the Queen, Ireland to Botany Bay, 1791 by Barbara Hall
Salamander - The crimes and lives of the convicts arriving in Sydney on the Salamander 1791
compiled by Members of the Tomaree Family History Group
Second Fleet - The Second Fleet : Britain’s grim convict armada of 1790 by Michael Flynn
Sugar Cane - A nimble fingered tribe : the convicts of the Sugar Cane, Ireland to Botany Bay, 1793 by Barbara Hall
Suprize - Settlers and seditionists : the people of the convict ship Surprize 1794 by Michael Flynn
Specific locations
Convicts transported to and from Port Macquarie 1827-1837 compiled by Jan Shelley; Cheryl Perry; and Pam Yates
Runaways, robbers and incorrigible rogues : certificates of freedom records for Port Macquarie convicts : 13 December 1823 - 26 April 1827 [CD-ROM], published by Port Macquarie & Districts Family History Society
Caught in the act : unusual offences of Port Arthur convicts / compiled by Phillip Hilton and Susan Hood
Personal accounts
This beauteous, wicked place : the letters and journals of John Grant, gentleman convict by Yvonne Cramer
A warning voice from a penitent convict : the life, hardships and dreadful sufferings of Charles Adolphus King, who was tried at Liverpool Assizes for returning from transportation ... by Charles Adolphus King
The exile’s lamentations by Thomas Cook
Biographies
The girl from Botany Bay : the true story of the convict Mary Broad and her extraordinary escape by Carolly Erickson
Johnny Cassim : coolie - convict - catechumen - colonial entrepreneur (1814 - 1884) by Patrick J. Tynan
John Graham, convict, 1824 : an historical narrative by R. Gibbings
The history of Margaret Catchpole : a Suffolk girl by Richard Cobbold
Mary Proctor : convict, pioneer and settler by Jeff Atkinson
Duramboi : the story of Jem Davis of Glasgow (1808?-1889) by Patrick J. Tynan
An irresistible temptation : the true story of Jane New and a colonial scandal by Carol Baxter
A long way home by Mike Walker [story of convict Mary Byrant]
Hell’s gates : the terrible journey of Alexander Pearce, Van Dieman’s land cannibal by Paul Collins
Victims of tyranny : the story of the Fitzgerald convict brothers by Brendan Whiting
They were here: the convicts of Raymond Terrace compiled by June Reeks
The Liverpool embroiderer by Patrick Tynan
Prison hulks
The intolerable hulks : British shipboard confinement, 1776-1857 by Charles Campbell
The English prison hulks by William Branch Johnson
The history of the convict hulk ’Success’ and ’Success’ prisoners : a vivid fragment of colonial history by Joseph C. Harvie
Prisoners on board the hulk 'Phoenix'
Convict women
Convict maids : the forced migration of women to Australia by Deborah Oxley
Depraved and disorderly : female convicts, sexuality and gender in colonial Australia by Joy Damousi
Convict women by Kay Daniels
Female factory, female convicts : the story of the more then 13,000 women exiled from Britain to Van Diemen’s Land by Tony Rayner
These outcast women : the Parramatta Female Factory 1821-1848 by Annette Salt
Notorious strumpets and dangerous girls : convict women in Van Diemen’s Land, 1803-1829 by Phillip Tardif
Convict lives: women at Cascades Female Factory by Female Factory Research Group
Convict escapes
Tour to hell : convict Australia’s great escape myths by David Levell
Great convict escapes in colonial Australia by Warwick Hirst
Major newspapers and serials
Group of men standing outside the first Military Barracks in Brisbane, ca.1873
(Source: State Library of Queensland, neg. no. 141529)
Sydney Gazette and New South Wales advertister
Australian (1824-1848)
New South Wales Government Gazette
Australian newspapers online [new window]
Fiction
His natural life by Marcus Clarke
For the term of his natural life [videorecording]
The potato factory [videorecording]
The secret river by Kate Grenville
On Emerald Downs by Patricia Shaw
Women on the rocks : a tale of two convicts by Kristin Williamson
Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
Tom Appleby, convict boy by Jackie French
More information
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Last updated: 3rd January 2012
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