A vast, new, free online resource is enabling researchers to trace the lives of transported and imprisoned convicts in Britain and Australia between 1780 and 1925.
The Digital Panopticon website at www.digitalpanopticon.org draws on more than four million records to allow users to uncover how punishment affected the lives of 90,000 individuals convicted of crimes at the Old Bailey between 1780 and 1925, including those sentenced by the UK criminal justice system to transportation to the British Empire’s then newly established penal colonies in Australia.
By providing a wide range of search fields, including name, year and place of birth, criminal record, height, eye and hair colour, among others, it is possible to compare the impact of punishment on reoffending, desistence, family lives and health.