I am the author of "Early American Criminals" and the Amazon bestseller, "Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America." I am also the author and publisher of EarlyAmericanCrime.com, a website that explores crime, criminals, and punishments from America’s past. I have a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University.
In “Early American Criminals,” crime historian, Anthony Vaver, examines early America’s most notorious criminals: burglars, murderers, pirates, counterfeiters, and other offenders who would be recognized as criminals even by today’s standards. Yet in telling the stories of these criminals, Vaver shows how early Americans both thought about and punished criminals differently than we do today.
In 1723, James Bell stole a book from a London bookstall. As punishment, he was loaded on a ship and sent to colonial America, where he was sold as an indentured servant. In telling the epic story of how thousands of British convicts like Bell were separated from families and transported to America in the 18th century, Anthony Vaver challenges the way we think about immigration to early America.