Seven-year Slaves:  Felons from British Isles Often Sold into Unwilling servitude

By Tamie Dehler as printed in the Terre Haute Tribune-Star

     Are you descended from a slave?  If you are not a black American, you will likely reply “no” to this query.  However, many white Americans are descended from men and women who were shipped to the colonies from the British Isles, forced to work for others and bought and sold into unwilling servitude.  In practice, this forced labor was nearly indistinguishable from slave labor.

     The story begins with conditions in England in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The poor lived horribly, partially due to the severe laws enacted to protect property and landowners. Many poor people congregated in the cities, living in squalid conditions.  London was filthy, with garbage and sewage in the streets.  Poor or orphaned children were often sent to workhouses, where many died.  Petty crime, necessary to stay alive, was rampant.  This prompted harsh laws; there were over 160 offenses meriting death.  Many were sent to prison for crimes that are trivial by today’s standards.  Prisons were overcrowded, and jailers extorted fees from the people in their care.  Torture and disease ended many prisoners’ lives.

     The idea to ship convicted felons to the American colonies first came about in 1584.  In 1597, the first legislation to do so was passed.  By 1776, the prisons of England had released some 50,000 prisoners and forced them to emigrate to the colonies where they were sold into servitude for a period of years, depending on their sentence.

     This practice served a dual role.  First, it relieved England of overpopulation and got rid of many of the “undesirable” poor and criminal elements.  Second, it provided an endless source of unpaid laborers to the colonial plantations of Virginia and Maryland.  At first, the American colonies were in favor of the practice.

     By 1718, the British government had begun subsidizing the operation by paying certain contractors to do the transporting.  The shipping of felons had become big business.  The state paid the contractors a certain fee for each felon transported, and the ship owners profited by selling the felons into servitude at the end of the trip.  The government made deals with shippers already experienced in the African slave trade; they had ships equipped to transport people as cargo.

The convicts were transported in chains in the holds of ships. The mortality rate on these trips was high.  Between 1620 and 1680, it estimated that 35 percent of the women and 50 percent of the men died en route.  The sea voyage held many risks, including disease, pirates, fires, bad weather and sinking.  The penalty rate for mutiny or trying to escape was death.

A trading circuit was thus established—tobacco was taken to England for sale there and felons were taken back to work in the tobacco plantations.  They were called “His Majesty’s Seven Year Passengers,” referring to the fact that indentures were often for seven years.  However, the “seven-year passengers” often called themselves “slaves.”

 As time passed, the colonies had second thoughts about this practice.  Some of the criminals imported were truly “undesirable” and committed crimes in their new homes.  The colonies tried to pass acts to control the flow of convicts into their land, but the government back in England revoked their laws

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