sixty or seventy women by the middle years of the decade.^115 While a few of
those women who could provide reasonable bail to support their promise to
transport themselves were released by the lord mayor in 1695 , that hardly re-
lieved the pressure.^116 According to Luttrell, Newgate was so crowded in 1697
that a large number of prisoners died of gaol fever.^117 The evidence of over-
crowding was provided by the best witnesses—the prisoners who had been par-
doned months or even years earlier and who were now trapped and awaiting
transportation in what had become a seriously dangerous place. A group of
women convicts petitioned the lord mayor and the justices at the Old Bailey in
1696 that they had
pleaded to a Pardon ofTransportation last December and the Ships being gon there is
no hopes of being sent away a great while so that your petitioners must inevitably perish
in the Gaole many of them being sick and in a Languishing Condition. Neither indeed
have your petitioners any hopes of being sent away at all, the Merchants Refusing to
take them without the men.
They went on to ask to be allowed bail to transport themselves.^118
By 1697 the situation was so dire that the City aldermen and the two sheriffs
attended the lords justices on several occasions that year to ask them to make
provision for the speedy transportation of convicts from Newgate.^119 In re-
sponse, these men in charge of the government in William’s absence ordered the
council of trade and plantations to discover which colonies might be persuaded
to take convicts. They got some dusty answers. Merchants trading to Jamaica
reported that they would gladly take men young and fit enough to be helpful in
the defence of the island, but no women. The agents for Barbados also refused
to take women. The Massachusetts agent took the line that New England had
always been excused from taking convicts of all sorts. In the course of this en-
quiry, the cabinet discovered that Maryland and Virginia had actually passed
laws against receiving convicted offenders from England, and expressed its sur-
prise. By the summer of 1697 the only possible destination for women convicts
was the Leeward Islands, and it was clear that if women were going to be sent
there the government would have to pay the costs of their transportation. The
cabinet agreed to do so, and the London authorities were ordered to make the
arrangements for fifty women to be sent to the Leewards.^120
The Revolution, Crime, and Punishment in London 365(^115) Estimates derived from the (imperfect) calendars of City and Middlesex prisoners being held in
Newgate in 1696 and 1697 in the sessions files in CLRO and LMA.
(^116) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, 1695 undated papers: petition of Elizabeth Edwards, with Sir
Thomas Lane’s instruction to the town clerk to take bond for the self-transportation ofEdwards and
another woman.
(^117) Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation, iv. 241.
(^118) CLRO: London Sess. Papers, 1696 (undated petitions). Similar concerns were expressed two years
later because of the number of convicts crowded into Newgate and the heat of the summer (Rep 101 , p. 205 ).
(^119) Rep 101 , pp. 156 , 205 , 226.
(^120) CSPC: America and the West Indies, 1696 – 7 , 271 , 341 , 530 – 1 , 541 , 543 , 559 – 60 ; CSPD 1697 ,
pp. 160 , 167 , 221 , 322. Even though the government agreed to pay, the transportation of these fifty