When I was a young child and I first heard about the old sentence of transportation I naively wondered what all the fuss was about. I’d seen Australia on the TV and in books and it looked nice enough to me. Back then I was, of course, completely unaware of the horrendous journey time and conditions, and the fact that the convicts were put to work in very harsh conditions once they arrived.

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As I grew older, I learned these facts just as I discovered – like many of you will know - that before Australia many of our convicts were sent to America but these – as it turned out – weren’t the only two locations.

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The outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775 rendered it impossible to send convicts there any longer and it wasn’t until 1787 that ships full of convicts set off for Australia. This left a gap of a dozen years where an alternative location was required. For many convicts, that location was the coast of Africa and that was very much the case for a convicted criminal in Derby named John Shaw.

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It was on March 14, 1782 that John’s name had appeared in the local press with details of his case and punishment at the Assizes the previous week. John, it seems, was one of four men initially sentenced to death that day – his crime was a burglary in Wirksworth. As was sometimes the case though, before the Judge left the town, he reprieved three of the men, and only one of them – James Williams – would go on to face the hangman.

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John had his sentence commuted where instead he would – as the Derby Mercury reported on April 11, 1872 - be sentenced to be transported to the coast of Africa for life.

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This did not sit at all well with John. You might argue – and correctly so – that at least this way he survived with his life, but transportation was known to be horrendously brutal with many of the men treated as slaves and with some describing it as a fate worse than death.

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With John resolved to finding a way out of his sentence, an opportunity presented itself on April 22, 1872 when he, along with eight other felons, managed to abscond from the gaol. His freedom was short lived though – it was actually so short that the Derby Mercury was able to publish the news of both the escape and his recapture in the same weekly edition.

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John hadn’t been idle in that time though. He’d broken into various houses and stolen two horses!

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Taken back to Derby Gaol, John soon found himself back at the Assizes with the Derby Mercury reporting on July 18, 1872 that he’d been charged with breaking out of the gaol and being found at large having been ordered for transportation. He received the death sentence once more, alongside three men who had been charged with the exact same thing – William Lee, William Cupitt and Edward Johnson. As before, reprieves were handed out on the day but this time not to John. William Cupitt and Edward Johnson were reprieved whereas John and William Lee still had their date with the hangman.

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Of course, reprieves weren’t just handed out on the day of the trial - they could arrive at any point up to the execution itself. In 1796 for example, James Preston and Susannah Moreton were both sentenced to death for the murder of their illegitimate child with Susannah being reprieved on the morning of the scheduled execution. Both John and William Lee would have, therefore, hoped for some form of intervention.

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In the case of William Lee, it arrived with a petition signed by the High Sheriff and Grand Jury which pleaded for clemency. William was indeed a lucky man as this was his second reprieve from the death sentence within the same year.

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There was to be no similar luck for John who was executed on August 2, 1782. His behaviour at the execution was described by the Derby Mercury, perhaps harshly, as ‘stupid and thoughtless’ as he seemed to be in a rush for it all to be over. If that’s the case, then who can blame him.

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John’s age was put on his coffin that had been provided by his mother. It said 21. John refuted this till the end, and if he’s to be believed, he was just 17 when he was launched into eternity.

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When his body had ‘hung the usual time’ it was cut down and given to his mother who took it in a cart to Wirksworth whilst John entered into history as one of the many people executed in Derby over the centuries.