[475] For a full account of the incident, including the text of the petition and list of signatures, see Cobbett’s Two-penny Trash, July 1, 1832.
[476] See p. 277.
[477] February 8, 1831.
[478] Times, January 8, 1831. The Times of the same day contains an interesting petition from the Birmingham Political Union on behalf of all the prisoners tried before the Special Commissions.
[479] The scene is still vividly remembered by an old woman over ninety years of age with whom Mr. Hudson spoke.
[480] H. O. Papers, Disturbance Entry-Book, Letter of January 3, 1831.
[481] See p. 268.
[482] Three boats carried the convicts, the Eliza and the Proteus to Van Diemen’s Land, the Eleanor to New South Wales. The list of the prisoners on board shows that they came from the following counties:—
Berks, 44
Bucks, 29
Dorset, 13
Essex, 23
Gloucester, 24
Hampshire, 100
Hunts, 5
Kent, 22
Norfolk, 11
Oxford, 11
Suffolk, 7
Sussex, 17
Wilts, 151
Total, 457
If this represents the total, some sentences of transportation must have been commuted for imprisonment; possibly some rioters were sent later, for Mr. Potter MacQueen, in giving evidence before the Committee on Secondary Punishments, spoke of the six hundred able-bodied men who had been transported in consequence of being concerned in the Swing offences.—Report of Committee, p. 95. Four years later Lord John Russell, as Home Secretary, pardoned 264 of the convicts, in 1836 he pardoned 86 more, and in 1837 the survivors, mostly men sentenced for life or for fourteen years, were given pardons conditional on their ‘continuing to reside in Australia for the remainder of their sentences.’ No free passages back were granted, and Mr. Hudson states that very few, not more than one in five or six, ever returned.—A Shepherd’s Life, p. 247.