Most of you will find a criminal or two lurking somewhere in your family's past. We'll forgive you if that brings a guilty pleasure. After all, rogues and scoundrels were generally better recorded than upstanding members of society, so there are plenty of opportunities to learn more about their misspent lives. Plus, if we're honest, we all love a grisly tale or two, even if they come from our own family!
Visit your wayward forebears aboard the famous floating prisons of the 19th century with this exclusive new collection. While you're there, uncover details of their offences, sentences and even their earlier life on the mainland.
The prison hulks filled a hole in the criminal justice system following the end of transportation to North America. These ships sat on the Thames and in Plymouth Harbour and provided a temporary home for thousands of miscreants sentenced to transportation – from murderers to petty thieves.
Our records delve into the lives of the people who received this novel punishment. Find an ancestor among the 160,000 names, and you'll learn their age, offence, where and when they were convicted, plus how and when they left the hulk. After 1837, you'll also discover the sentence they received, and details of their marital status, literacy and even their occupation.
Many of the prisoners listed aboard the hulks were later transported to Australia. Find out if your forebears were among the early settlers of the penal colony in our Transportation Registers.
Learn more about the transportation registers
When you imagine your family's villains, you probably picture burly men with scars and tattoos. However, you shouldn't make any assumptions when you're picking out troublemakers. Our second exclusive online collection details the crimes and prison lives of over 4,000 female convicts - and often provides mugshots to boot.
These thorough documents provide a revealing insight into the early years of Government-run prisons. Although the licenses were issued when women were released, the files contain personal details from their time inside, including handwritten letters, medical histories and reports of misconduct. After 1871, you'll also find a photograph of each prisoner. This provides an intimate backdrop to information on their crimes and sentences.
Our new records are available to Premium and Worldwide members.
Start your free trial or Upgrade your membership nowBoth these new collections fall within the time period of our Criminal Registers, 1791-1892 You can use the registers to find out if your forebears were charged with a crime, and learn where they were sent, then look for the same people in the new records to discover their eventual fate.
Learn more about the Criminal Registers
This mammoth collection is the number one resource for discovering your family's black sheep. Whether your ancestors brawled in a bar or burnt down a village, their crimes will be detailed here
The registers list over half a million reprobates who were charged with any sort of crime all over the United Kingdom. They provide each offender's name and age, plus the crime they were accused of and where and when they were tried.
That's not all! These incredibly detailed records also tell you how your forebears fared, with the verdict, sentence and date it was carried out all included. While many walked free, others were condemned to imprisonment, transportation or even death.
Because our Criminal Registers were transcribed by volunteers in the Ancestry World Archives Project, we let you search the collection and see the full results for free! Premium and Worldwide members can view the original records.
The Ancestry World Archives project gives you the chance to help us preserve family history records, and put them online for everyone to use, all from the comfort of your own home. Find out more
In the 18th and 19th centuries, over 160,000 lawbreakers were sent to Britain's latest penal colony - Australia. If your ancestors were among them, you're almost certain to find them in our huge transportation registers collection
The registers tell you where and when your forebears were convicted, the length of their sentence and where they were sent, plus the name of the ship and the date it left the UK. Most of the crimes aren't too serious - you might find your relatives setting fire to trees, buying stolen goods or stealing fish from a pond!
For decades, convicts formed most of Australia's population. Many of them settled in the country and started families. If you find a forebear in the convict registers, look for further information about them - and their descendants - in our new Australian birth, marriage and death records
Worldwide members can enjoy complete access to our criminal records - and all our other collections.
Start your free trial or Upgrade your membership nowJohn found the crime and punishment of his wife's ancestor illustrated in the records.
My wife's 2x great-uncle was sentenced to death and held on a prison hulk before eventually being transported to Australia – all because he stole a few spoons! The records at Ancestry.co.uk reveal each chapter in the story of his life, which had an unexpectedly happy ending.
My wife's maiden name was Dorothy Stratton. I've been looking into her family tree for her. By far the most interesting character I've found is Edward Chandler Stratton.
Edward apparently broke into a house in Great Gaddesden and stole six silver teaspoons. He was quickly caught, and ordered to appear before Hertford Assizes.
I don't know the value of the cutlery he took, but it seems a fairly minor crime. Nonetheless, the entry in the Criminal Registers shows my wife's ancestor was convicted of burglary in July 1826, and sentenced to death.
Edward was taken to London to await execution.
The Prison Hulk Registers show he was kept aboard the Justina, one of the floating prisons moored on the Thames. Perhaps understandably, given the fate he was waiting on, he attempted to escape, and was flogged for his trouble.
However, Edward got lucky in the end. His sentence was commuted to transportation, and he was sent to Van Diemen's Land - now known as Tasmania.
I've found him listed in the Transportation Registers onboard the convict ship Andromeda. He left London on the 10 October 1826, arriving in Hobart on 23 February 1827. The entry shows he was originally transported for life.
Nearly three years after Edward arrived in Australia, his wife and daughter were allowed to join him, Ann and Mary Ann Stratton sailed on the convict ship The Lady of the Lake as 'free persons' and arrived in Hobart in November 1829.
The family went on to live an ordinary life in their new home. Edward and Ann even had two more daughters. Edward died a free man in Longford, Tasmania 8th Oct 1863 - you can see his death listed in the official indexes
Many people who were originally sentenced to death later had their sentences reduced to transportation. If you can't find details of your ancestor's execution, it's always worth checking the Prison Hulk and Transportation Registers
For more gripping tales from our members' families, see our Member Stories
Worldwide members can enjoy complete access to our criminal records - and all our other collections.
Start your free trial or Upgrade your membership nowBefore 1816, there were no national prisons in Britain. Each county ran its own jail, but these were mainly used for holding suspected criminals before their trials. Rather than imprisonment, there were three main types of sentence – death, fines and transportation to the British colonies.
From the early 17th until the late 18th century, thousands of convicts were sent to America.
However, this stopped when the country gained independence in 1776, leaving the authorities with the problem of what to do with a growing horde of criminals. They solved this by keeping prisoners sentenced to transportation on the prison hulks.
Many of the hulk prisoners were eventually sent to Australia – transportation to the new colony started in 1787. Others served their full sentences on these floating prisons, just a few hundred metres off the coast.
Meanwhile, the Government gradually took control of the onshore prison system, and imprisonment overtook transportation as the most common punishment. The last prison hulk was closed in 1858, and transportation to Australia officially ended ten years later.
Transportation was introduced largely to avoid the widespread killing of relatively minor criminals. Until the 19th century, the list of crimes that carried the death penalty included:
Judges started pardoning prisoners convicted of these crimes, as long as they agreed to be shipped out to the colonies.