The Old Bailey online is an excellent resource for learning more about historical crime and punishment in England.

The simple truth is that murderers were hanged and so were never transported to Australia. The majority of convicts were transported for property offenses.

If your friend had said that Australia was populated by thieves he would have been a bit closer to the truth, but only partly.

Talking about the type of offenses and the punishments, some prisoners were sentenced to hang for property offenses, but by the time period we are talking about people were rarely hanged for anything less than a capital crime.

"A large number of eighteenth-century statutes specified death as the penalty for minor property offences (the "bloody code"), meaning that the vast majority of the people tried at the Old Bailey could be sentenced to hang (one could be executed for stealing a handkerchief or a sheep). Nevertheless, judicial procedures prevented a blood bath by ensuring that sentences could be mitigated, or the charge redefined as a less serious offence."

Even if the death penalty was upheld, the sentence may well have been quietly commuted to transportation.

One such trial in 1795 at the Old Bailey was for a 16 year old William Dean who stole a £20 banknote from his employer. He was found guilty, but judgement was respited.

A year later the court delivered this punishment summary : "YOUR case was reserved for the opinion of the judges; an objection was taken by the Counsel, that your offence was not a capital offence, that it did not fail within the statute which makes it a capital offence to steal, to the value of 40s. in a dwelling-house. However, it is my misfortune to inform you, that the Judges are unanimously of opinion to over rule that objection, they think it ill-founded, and, therefore, that your conviction is a proper and legal conviction."

As is explained in more detail in this law book of the time "Cases in Crown Law: Determined by the Twelve Judges", William Dean's lawyer had argued that the stealing of a banknote did not fall under the law that made the theft of more than 40 shillings a capital crime punishable by death, but the full twelve judges had upheld the sentence and he was sentenced to death

However, after the sentence had been upheld, in the September session 1797 his sentence and that of several other men was quietly commuted to transportation "for the term of their natural lives", and he was transported to New South Wales on the convict ship "The Hillsborough" in 1798.

He married another convict, Elizabeth Hollingsworth. She was convicted of stealing £1 from her employer, and was transported to New South Wales in 1808.

William was pardoned and was given land and they settled in the Parramatta area near some other ex-convicts. For example there was Andrew Snowden, who in 1791 was accused in the Southwark sessions of stealing "Three silver tablespoons of the value of 2 pounds, Four silver teaspoons of the value of 6 shillings, Four pairs of Nankeen Breeches of the value of 30 shillings and Four pairs of Worsted stockings of the value of 6 shillings" the property of William Dawson. In the final verdict he was convicted of stealing to the value of 39 shillings and transported to New South Wales in 1792 for 7 years.

His wife Sarah Darke, was also a convict and at Gloucester in 1795 was sentenced to 7 years transportation along with another young woman named Sarah for stealing "Four pairs of stays of the value of 6 pounds" from the house in St Mary de Crypt Parish of John Hoskins, (her employer)."

Non-violent theft of money or clothing (often from an employer) is the common thread here. William Dean's crime was the most serious, but it was still a non-violent crime.

I am an Australian (and an avid genealogist) and I'm a direct descendant of these 4 convicts, as well as a couple more convicts also convicted of property offences.

However, those convicts only make up a small percentage of my heritage.

Other than that, my ancestors are free settlers - they include families emigrating from England and Scotland, young Irish women fleeing poverty and attracted by generous immigration schemes, and even an American- a descendant of the earliest American colonists - attracted by the Australian gold rush.