Geneology website uploads historic Australian convict info

Does your family tree have a few skeletons in the closet? Not sure? Now you can use Ancestry.co.uk to find out if relatives, friends, or pretty much anybody else was sent to a penal colony in Australia during the 18th century.

You you can also find out what they were convicted of, how long their sentence was, and which penal colony they went to. The site has uploaded records of 160,000 inmates sent to Australia between 1788 and 1868, and it's possible that millions of U.K. and Australian citizens could be related to one of these convicts.

Although there were a few murderers in the bunch, many of the inmates were shipped off to Australia for minor offenses thanks to overcrowded British prisons.

[via BBC News]

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