Scenes from the Chronicles of Grime page 2

The death sentence was repealed for ordinary felony and the convicts went first to the hulks of old warships outside Woolwich, and then were transported to New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania. Later the great, bleak fortress prison of Dartmoor, built for French war captives, was used for convicts.

The romance of roguery vanished. In place of the crowded life of Newgate and the curious crowds at executions, the prisoner, when caught, found himself sentenced to solitude and labour, and if death was his sentence, then death without glory. Prison reform has still far to go, but the horrors of yesterday have at least disappeared, and with their disappearance the most brutal crimes have enormously declined.