Billy Blue - Conviction

Conviction

By 1796 he was living at Deptford, London, and working as a chocolate-maker and also labouring on ships on the Thames.

On 4 October 1796 he was convicted, at Maidstone, in Kent, of stealing raw sugar and sentenced to seven years transportation. After serving over four years in the convict hulks (ships used for housing criminals), he was transported to Botany Bay, Australia, in the convict ship Minorca. He was described in the ship’s records as 'a Jamaican Negro sailor', aged 29 in 1796.

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