Punishment

Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land

Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land

By Dr Kristyn Harman Senior Lecturer in History, University of Tasmania   Like many New Zealanders, I grew up hearing stories about the Australian penal colonies, particularly anecdotes of London pickpockets and similarly desperate, impoverished characters, and the harsh and sometimes unfair regimes of punishment and deprivation under which such convicts lived and laboured. These […]

A Day in the Life: Convicts on board Prison Hulks

A Day in the Life: Convicts on board Prison Hulks

  By Anna McKay, AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Student, National Maritime Museum & University of Leicester.   In 1775 the outbreak of the American Revolution halted the transportation of felons to the colonies. One year later, with gaols overflowing, the Criminal Law Act -also known as the ‘Hulks Act’- was passed. Convicts awaiting transportation were […]

Ecuadorian thoughts on religion, power and the subaltern classes

Ecuadorian thoughts on religion, power and the subaltern classes

The Iglesia de la Merced, in Quito, was built in 1737 on the remains of the original church that dated from 1538 – four years after the foundation of the city. The church is situated in the city centre, at less than one kilometre distance from all other main sites of the colonial period: the […]

The Carceral Archipelago Conference, Leicester 13-16 September 2015

The Carceral Archipelago Conference, Leicester 13-16 September 2015

The Carceral Archipelago conference, held in Leicester from 13 to 16 September 2015, felt just like reading over thirty outstanding monographs in two-and-a-half days, getting to know their authors personally, and having the chance to reflect collectively about their mutual entanglements. It was an intense marathon through the burgeoning field of the global history of […]

Sounds in the silence of political exile

Sounds in the silence of political exile

My recent discovery of Alexander Sochaczewski’s painting, Farewell to Europe!, in the Museum Pawilon-X in Warsaw compelled me to think anew about the experience of political exile and about the innate “wordlessness” that the state intended it to symbolize.  Although Sochaczewski never sold a single painting during his life, today his work is viewed by thousands of visitors who […]

The Last Drop pub, located in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket. Photographed by author 2013.

Dating the Social Death of the Eighteenth Century Criminal. By Rachel Bennett

In April 2015 I presented a paper at a conference held at the University of Leicester entitled ‘When is Death?’ The conference was organised by members of the Wellcome Trust funded project, Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. My PhD has been conducted as part of this project. The conference sought to investigate the […]

Network-wide options by YD - Freelance Wordpress Developer