Evicted, Convicted, Transported, and Sold: The Ethics of Disposable Labor

By Benjamin Balak (BalakB@wlu.edu) Jonathan M. Lave (jml2@bulldog.georgetown.edu) February 23, 2002 (work in progress)

Sale of Convicts:  The merchant's second source of revenue came from the sale of convicts in the New World. The money received by merchants for convict labor depended on the age, health and sex of the prisoners, as well as the market conditions at the time of sale. Thus, the fee received per convict was highly variable. Duncan Campbell, for example, reported that males with useful trade skills sold for £15-25, common thieves sold for £10, and female convicts sold for £8-9, while the old and infirm were simply given away. Although different convicts sold for significantly different prices, these variation were minimized because the valuable cargo space was generally filled with high quality labor, 82% of which consisted of males aged 20-24. Thus, the merchants could expect to receive £5 from the government and £10 when the convicts were sold, for total expected revenue of £15.

Return Cargo:  The profitability of selling convicts did not rest solely on revenue derived from government subsidy and convict sale. Merchants did not return from the new world with empty cargo holds but rather they would purchase, or barter for, tobacco and other colonial goods.

      The role return-cargo played is highlighted by the fact that most merchants were drawn to Virginia and Maryland which both exported valuable commodities to Britain. Despite the fact that colonies such as Georgia and North Carolina had more severe labor shortages and would have paid more for convicts, merchants were not interested in them because their fledgling economies offered little by way of return cargo.

Costs: Jailer fees, Shipping, Irons, and Duties: Offsetting these revenues were substantial costs. They consisted of jailer fees, the cost of shipping convicts to the new world, irons, and duties. These costs were not recorded but it is possible to piece together evidence in order to get a sense of what they were.

      When the government paid Forward £3 for transporting convicts in 1718, it was understood that he would meet the jailers’ fee of £1 per head himself (Coldham, 1992, 62). Although the government subsidy increased through 1727, this was meant to account for fluctuations in the tobacco market. Thus, jail fees probably remained at about £1 per head over this period.

      The second major cost component was shipping fees that were made up of food and other shipping costs. Ekirch reports that the customary weekly food ration consisted of 1.2 lbs of beef and pork, 13.3 oz of cheese, 4.7 lbs of bread, half a quart of peas, 1.7 quarts of oatmeal, 1.3 oz of molasses, half a gill of gin, and 5.3 gallons of water for a total of 1200 calories per day. This weekly allowance was valued at about 2s 6d, and thus a two month voyage would cost a total of 16s 48d per convict. Other voyage-related costs included crew, ship, port, and administrative costs, which Ekirch estimates at another £2 per head. We can thus calculate that merchants probably incurred a cost of about £3.75 to ship each convict. [...]

      The other major components of costs were irons and import duties. Because irons could be reused, merchant did not pay the full cost of irons each time they shipped a convict; rather, they paid a rental cost estimated by Grubb (2000, 104) to be about 1s per voyage. Grubb also reports that import duties were about £1 per convict.

      Putting these numbers together, we estimate the merchants total cost of shipping convicts to the American colonies as follows:

      Jail Fees (£1) + Shipping Fees (£4) + Iron Rental (£0.05)+ Duty (£1) =  £6.05 per convict

Profits: From the information above it is clear that transportation was a very profitable business indeed. A typical male convict cost the merchant about £6 yet he received up to £15 in revenue from the government subsidy and sale, yielding a profit of close to £9 per convict. For a shipload of 70 male convicts, merchants could expect to make £630 profit.

Additional links: a) http://www.aa.gov.au/The_Collection/transport/sea.html b) http://www.theshipslist.com/

                             c)) 5 July, 16-17:00 Travel Channel  Short History of Convict Australia