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Jan 19, 2022 · The justice system of 17th and early 18th century colonial America was unrecognizable when compared with today’s. Early “jails” were often squalid, dark, and rife with disease. Cellars, underground dungeons, and rusted cages served as some of the first enclosed cells.
Wealthy debtors who had money but refused to pay might be persuaded by the prospect of imprisonment to settle their obligations. Locking up the poor, though, guaranteed they could never earn the money they owed, and this struck many as absurd.
- Bringing Convict Labor from Great Britain
- Privatizing The Penitentiary
- Selling Children Into Slavery
- Replacing Enslaved People with Convicts
- Squeezing Every Dollar Out of Prisoners
Before the American Revolution, Britain used America as a dumping ground for its convicts. In 1718 Britain passed the Transportation Act, providing that people convicted of burglary, robbery, perjury, forgery, and theft could, at the court’s discretion, be sent to America for at least seven years rather than be hanged. The convicts were chained bel...
In the early 19th century, the United States was exporting more cotton than all other nations combined. The frontier was constantly expanding, opening up more land for cotton, and it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. New Orleans had the densest concentration of banking capital in the country, and money poured in from Northern and Euro...
Before the Civil War, most prisoners in the South were white. The punishment of enslaved African Americans was generally left up to their owners. Louisiana, however, did imprison enslaved people for “serious” crimes, generally involving acts of rebellion against the slave system. A number of these imprisoned slaves were women. Penitentiary records ...
After the Civil War, the former owners of enslaved people looked for ways to continue using forced labor. With Southern economies devastated by the war, businessmen convinced states to lease them their prisoners. Convicts dug levies, laid railroad tracks, picked cotton, and mined coal for private companies and planters. The system, known as convict...
Around the end of the 19th century, states became jealous of the profits that lessees were making from their convicts. In Texas, a former slaveholder and prison superintendent began an “experiment.” The state bought two plantations of its own to work inmates that were not fit enough to “hire out for first-class labor.” As a business venture, it was...
US Supreme Court banned debtors prisons in 1833. From the late 1600s to the early 1800s, debtor’s prisons were purpose-built to jail borrowers who had not paid their dues. Records exist showing some people being jailed for 60c ($130 approx in 2021).
Feb 27, 2015 · In early colonial America, English law had an influence on colonial law – and laws regarding debt. In 16th century England, creditors had the legal power via the Law of Merchant to regain their money from insolvent debtors.
Feb 27, 2017 · Lacking a viable commodity to use as money, local colonial governments of the eighteenth century instead turned to paper money. Paper money could take one of two forms.
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Apr 20, 2021 · Colonial American currency was a work in progress from the time of the earliest English settlements of the 1600s until the United States of America minted its own money in 1783.
