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The Death Row Baseball Team and Other Odd Episodes in History

Khalid Elhassan May 18, 2020 34 min

Death Row All Stars: A Story of Baseball, Corruption, and Murder - State Penitentiary — Alston's All Stars. Daily Mail

14. Convicts Need Feeding, Don’t They?

Convicts arriving at Botany Bay in Australia. Nomads World

For generations, the American Colonies had served as a convenient dumping ground for British convicts. However, that outlet was foreclosed after America gained its independence. Understandably, the new republic was not eager to go on accepting shiploads of British jailbirds. Conveniently for the authorities in London, they had recently explored and laid claim to another huge territory, even farther away from Britain: Australia.

So the British began transporting their convicts to Australia, which had been recently explored by Captain Cook. Ever eager to economize, the British authorities shipped rabbits along with the convicts, as a rapidly breeding food source. Eventually, some rich settlers released rabbits and hares into the wild for hunting sport. As seen below, the results were disastrous.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.