Thursday, July 26, 2007

New online records expose criminal past of millions of Britons

The records of tens of thousands of British convicts sent to Australia from the end of the 18th Century have been put online for the first time.

Subscribers can browse names, date of conviction, the length of sentence and which penal colony they went to.

Ancestry.co.uk features records of 160,000 convicts transported to Australia between 1788 and 1868.

It is estimated two million Britons and 22% of Australians will have a convict ancestor listed in the records.

Many Australians are said to consider a convict in their family tree is a badge of honour and 22% are direct descendents of these convicts.

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