As I seem to remember to be a vagabond the person has to be over fourteen years of age. A definition . . . Legal: poor, able bodied, unemployed by choice. "A vagabond is, by choice, a person of no fixed abode or home, and who wanders about from place to place; spec. one who does this without regular occupation or obvious means of support so spreading the infection of idleness and vice." The National Archives in Canada seem to have the British Home Children well documented . . . http://www.collectionscanada.ca/02/020110_e.html Here is a bit on transportation over the period . . . "The first major innovation in eighteenth-century penal practice was the extensive use of transportation. Although there was some idea that transportation might lead to the reformation of the offender, the primary motivations behind this punishment were deterrence and the exile of hardened criminals from society. Although some convicts were transported in the seventeenth century, it had to be done at their own expense or at the expense of merchants or shipowners. In the early eighteenth century there was a desire to extend transportation as a way of creating a more effective alternative to the death penalty (in terms of deterring crime) than benefit of clergy and whipping. In 1718 the first Transportation Act allowed the courts to sentence felons guilty of offences subject to benefit of clergy to seven years transportation to America. In 1720 a further statute authorized payments by the state to the merchants who contracted to take the convicts to America. The first Transportation Act also allowed those guilty of capital offences and pardoned by the king to be sentenced to transportation, and it established 'returning from transportation' as a capital offence. In 1776 transportation was halted by the outbreak of war with America. Although convicts continued to be sentenced to transportation, male convicts were confined to hard labour in hulks on the Thames, while women were imprisoned. Transportation resumed in 1787 with a new destination: Australia. This was seen as a more serious punishment than imprisonment, since it involved exile to a distant land." Slan Henry --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.659 / Virus Database: 423 - Release Date: 15/04/2004