Importation of Convicts

On 20 January 1671 the General Court order forbidding the importation of convicts into Virginia went into effect.

The Order [banishing rogues to the New Found Lands], 1603 [Full view] Virginia Historical Society

During the 1600s, the Virginia Company promoted indentured servitude as a way to increase the number of settlers in the struggling colony. Virginia was rich in land but poor in people, and landowners were eager to buy the services of anyone who could work in the tobacco fields or help clear the new lands along the frontier. Some of these servants came willingly, and their transportation costs were paid in exchange for signing an indenture to work for 4–7 years. Most of these immigrants were young, male, and poor, and few came in families.

Some indentured servants did not arrive here by choice. Faced with overcrowded prisons and a shortage of land and jobs, the British courts started exiling or "transporting" convicted felons to the colonies. Virginia and Maryland became the main destinations as the courts sentenced debtors, prisoners of war, vagrants, and other social outcasts to a term of servitude in the New World. Destitute children were kidnapped off the streets of London and spirited out of the country. Some women emigrated with their convict husbands, while others were banished for the crimes of prostitution or theft. Most prisoners were convicted of felonies that today would be considered petty offenses.

Parliament overturned Virginia's importation ban, and the flow of prisoners increased. According to recent estimates, some 50,000 felons had been transported to the colonies by the eve of the American Revolution. The British policy of making banishment the leading penalty for property offenses was understandably unpopular in the colonies, and many Americans protested. This led Benjamin Franklin to quip that the colonies should retaliate by exporting rattlesnakes to England. The importation of convicts finally ended in 1788 when the General Assembly passed an "Act to prevent the importation of convicts into this commonwealth."

Indentured servants, both those who came willingly and those who were forced, arrived with few possessions and worked under circumstances that resembled slavery. But they were not slaves, and at the end of their terms of servitude, they had more opportunity for improving their lives than was possible in England.