<P> Parliament accelerated the prisoner trade in the eighteenth century . Under England's Bloody Code, a large portion of the realm's convicted criminal population faced the death penalty . But pardons were common . During the eighteenth century, the majority of those sentenced to die in English courts were pardoned--often in exchange for voluntary transport to the colonies . In 1717, Parliament empowered the English courts to directly sentence offenders to transportation, and by 1769 transportation was the leading punishment for serious crime in Great Britain . Over two - thirds of those sentenced during sessions of the Old Bailey in 1769 were transported . The list of "serious crimes" warranting transportation continued to expand throughout the eighteenth century, as it had during the seventeenth . Historian A. Roger Ekirch estimates that as many as one - quarter of all British emigrants to colonial America during the 1700s were convicts . In the 1720s, James Oglethorpe settled the colony of Georgia almost entirely with convict settlers . </P> <P> The typical transported convict during the 1700s was brought to the North American colonies on board a "prison ship ." Upon arrival, the convict's keepers would bathe and clothe him or her (and, in extreme cases, provide a fresh wig) in preparation for a convict auction . Newspapers advertised the arrival of a convict cargo in advance, and buyers would come at an appointed hour to purchase convicts off the auction block . </P> <P> Prisons played an essential role in the convict trade . Some ancient prisons, like the Fleet and Newgate, still remained in use during the high period of the American prisoner trade in the eighteenth century . But more typically an old house, medieval dungeon space, or private structure would act as a holding pen for those bound for American plantations or the Royal Navy (under impressment). Operating clandestine prisons in major port cities for detainees whose transportation to the New World was not strictly legal, became a lucrative trade on both sides of the Atlantic in this period . Unlike contemporary prisons, those associated with the convict trade served a custodial, not a punitive function . </P> <P> Many colonists in British North America resented convict transportation . As early as 1683, Pennsylvania's colonial legislature attempted to bar felons from being introduced within its borders . Benjamin Franklin called convict transportation "an insult and contempt, the cruellest, that ever one people offered to another ." Franklin suggested that the colonies send some of North America's rattlesnakes to England, to be set loose in its finest parks, in revenge . But transportation of convicts to England's North American colonies continued until the American Revolution, and many officials in England saw it as a humane necessity in light of the harshness of the penal code and contemporary conditions in English jails . Dr. Samuel Johnson, upon hearing that British authorities might bow to continuing agitation in the American colonies against transportation, reportedly told James Boswell: "Why they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging!" </P>

Why did prison reformers modify their initial emphasis on solitary confinement