Children & Paupers to America

Initially, it was the ordinary people in England who settled in the American colonies. An untold number of emigrants indentured themselves for specific time periods to serve in exchange for passage. The contribution of the London prisons and penal institutions with its population of uneducated and destitute children, as well as paupers and vagrants, contributed to the early growth in Virginia and should not be under estimated.

Orphans and paupers from the Bridewell institution were apprenticed at jobs onboard ships, and were sent to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. As…