Searching for a Convict

 Do you have a convict in the family?  If so, here is a great site to begin your search, it's called the Digital Panopticon.

Moondyne Joe, Convict turned Bushranger.

This website is a 'hub', some information is fully digitised, whilst other information is indexed and will point you to the original documents.

Here is an example of a record found for Mary Katesby:

This points me to search the NSW State Records, where the original is housed.  I found this site also has a lot of historical background about both London and Australia in relation to the justice system and life during the convict era.

From the website, here is a summary of what the project is about   " To build this invaluable database the project co-ordinators utilised records hosted by FreeBMD https://www.freebmd.org.uk, Ancestry.co.uk https://www.ancestry.co.uk, Findmypast.co.uk http://www.findmypast.co.uk, Old Bailey Online https://www.oldbaileyonline.org and Founders and Survivors http://www.foundersandsurvivors.org and by creating databases from sources previously unavailable online. Where the "Digital Panopticon" does not own the data the individual records link to a fuller record on one of these websites. A full description of each record set is also available."

It is a good place to start your convict search.