Note 482 — Chapter XII · THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT

Three boats carried the convicts, the Eliza and the Proteus to Van Diemen’s Land, the Eleanor to New South Wales. The list of the prisoners on board shows that they came from the following counties:—

Berks, 44 Bucks, 29 Dorset, 13 Essex, 23 Gloucester, 24 Hampshire, 100 Hunts, 5 Kent, 22 Norfolk, 11 Oxford, 11 Suffolk, 7 Sussex, 17 Wilts, 151 Total, 457

If this represents the total, some sentences of transportation must have been commuted for imprisonment; possibly some rioters were sent later, for Mr. Potter MacQueen, in giving evidence before the Committee on Secondary Punishments, spoke of the six hundred able-bodied men who had been transported in consequence of being concerned in the Swing offences.—Report of Committee, p. 95. Four years later Lord John Russell, as Home Secretary, pardoned 264 of the convicts, in 1836 he pardoned 86 more, and in 1837 the survivors, mostly men sentenced for life or for fourteen years, were given pardons conditional on their ‘continuing to reside in Australia for the remainder of their sentences.’ No free passages back were granted, and Mr. Hudson states that very few, not more than one in five or six, ever returned.—A Shepherd’s Life, p. 247.