[edit] Shipments to the Americas, Caribbean and Australia

From the outset of their arrival in Britain, the Romanies were regarded with fear and suspicion, no doubt because of their dark complexion and foreign appearance that was far different to the local English population in the 16th century. England began to deport Romanichal Gypsies as early as (1544), principally to Norway, [13][14] a process that was continued and encouraged by Elisabeth I and James I. [15] In (1603) an Order in Counsel was requested to transport Romanichal to Newfoundland, the West Indies, France, Germany, Spain and the Low Countries. European countries forced the further transportation of the British Romani to the Americas.

In the years following the American Wars of Independence, Australia was the preferred destination for Romanichal transportation, as it's use as a penal colony.

In the 17th century Oliver Cromwell shipped Romanichal Gypsies as slaves to the American southern plantations [26] and there is documentation of English Gypsies being owned by freed black slaves in Jamaica, Barbados and in both Cuba and Louisiana. [27][28][29] Gypsies, according to the legal definition which was anyone identifying themselves to be (Egyptians) or Gypsies.

The last form of enforced servitude (villeinage) had disappeared in Britain by the beginning of the 17th century.

Slavery resurfaced in that century as a form of punishment against Catholics. As many as 100,000 Irish men, women and children were forcibly taken to the colonies in the British West Indies and British North America as indentured servants after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.[7] In the 17th century, slavery was used as punishment by conquering English Parliament armies against native Catholics in Ireland. Between the years 1659 and 1663, during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland by the New Model Army, under the command of Oliver Cromwell, thousands of Irish Catholics were forced into servitude. Cromwell had a deep dislike of the Catholic religion, and many Irish Catholics who had participated in Confederate Ireland had all their land confiscated and were transported to the British West Indies as indentured servants.

Occasionally, Scottish Highlanders and other Scotsmen were forcibly taken and transported abroad at this time. The need for labour in the Virginia plantations and West Indies encouraged planters and their agents to "press gang" unwary or naïve locals onto ships, bound for the Americas. Once at their destination, these people were indentured to plantation owners against their will. They were released eventually, unlike Africans similarly employed. Many made enough money to buy passage back to Scotland, whence they had come. These actions were justified on the basis that the persons in question were labelled as indigent, and under a 1652 law such people could be deported to overseas colonies.

It is also on record that a considerable number of Highland Jacobite supporters, who had been captured in the aftermath of Culloden and subsequently the rigorous Government sweeps of the Highlands to root out Jacobite fugitives and transgressors of the new laws against Highland culture itself, languished in fetid prison hulks on the River Thames for months, until sentenced to transportation to the Carolinas as indentured servants/slaves. [15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain_and_Ireland

Barbados served as an entrepôt for the distribution of slaves to other British territories

Barbados served as an entrepôt for the distribution of slaves to other British territories in the western hemisphere for many years. Whether ultimately bound for Virginia, Jamaica or elsewhere, large numbers of slaves passed first of all through that island (Hancock, 1980b). However, while the designations Gypsy, Gypcian, Egyptian, &c., turn up in the records of transportation located in Britain, nothing similar appears anywhere in the documents examined in Barbados.

Nevertheless, an examination of the lists of transportees found in these works and in the Barbados Records indicated that a great number of individuals bearing Romanichal (British Gypsy) surnames did in fact arrive in Barbados: the names occurring include Boswell, Cook/Cooke, Hern/Herne/Heron, Lee/Leek, Locke, Palmer, Penfold/Pinfold, Price, Scot/Scott, Smith and Ward, ranging from one Pinfold to nine Boswells to over a hundred Smiths. Only a small percentage of these were likely to have been Gypsies, of course. Sometimes, a further clue was provided by the county of origin of the individual, where given (Cookes from Middlesex and Kent), or by occupation (Boswell, a blacksmith), but these must also be considered non-conclusive.

So far, only one reference to Gypsies as a discrete group in the West Indies, and referred to as such, has been located, and that from Jamaica:
I have known many gipsies [to be] subject from the age of eleven to thirty to the prostitution and lust of overseers, book-keepers, negroes, &c., to be taken into keeping by gentlemen, who paid exorbitant hire for their use (Moreton, 1793:130).

http://www.geocities.com/~patrin/pariah-ch12.htm

Gypsy Slaves

many Gipsies were banished to America in colonial times, from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, sometimes for merely being 'by habit and repute' Gipsies, is beyond dispute ... Gipsies may be said to have been in America almost from the time of its settlement (1865:418).

the earliest actual document known to us, dates from the time of the administration of Oliver Cromwell's successor, his son Richard, when the first trans-Atlantic expulsion of Gypsies was instituted:
In 1661 'Commissions and Instructions' were issued anew to justices and constables, by Act of Parliament, with the view of arresting Gypsies ... a great many Gypsies must have been deported to the British 'plantations' in Virginia, Jamaica and Barbadoes during the second half of the seventeenth century. That they had there to undergo a temporary, if not 'perpetual' servitude, seems very likely (MacRitchie, 1894:102).

A reference dated November, 1665, comments upon the motives for indenturing Gypsies and others in this way:
The light regard paid to the personal right of individuals was shown by a wholesale deportation of poor people at this time to the West Indies ... out of a desire as weel to promote the Scottish and English plantations in Gemaica and Barbadoes for the honour of their country, as to free the kingdom of the burden of many strong and idle beggars, Egyptians, common and notorious thieves, and other dissolute and looss persons banished and stigmatised for gross crimes (Chambers, 1858:304).

In 1714, British merchants and planters applied to the Privy Council for permission to ship Gypsies to the Caribbean, avowedly to be used as slaves (MacRitchie, op. cit.), and in the following year, according to a document dated January 1st, 1715,
Prisoners ... were sentenced ... to be transported to the plantations for being [by] habit and repute gipsies ... On the said gipsies coming here the town was brought under a burden [and] they had used endeavours with several merchants who have ships now going abroad [i.e., to transport them as slaves], for which they are to receive thirteen pounds sterling (Memorabilia, 1835:424-426). Among the family names of those individuals were Faa, Fenwick, Lindsey, Stirling, Robertson, Ross and Yorstoun.

Gypsies, according to the legal definition which was in effect throughout this period in England, included "all such persons not being Fellons wandering and pretending [i.e. identifying themselves to be Egypcians, or wandering in the Habite, Forme or Attyre] counterfayte Egypcians" (Statutes, Eliz., 39.c.4, quoted in Smith, 1971:109. See also Axon, 1897, passim, and Beier, 1985:58-62).

Caption, "un Anglais de la Barbade vend sa maitresse" (an Englishman from Barbados sells his mistress/lover). Image is probably based on one version or another of the story of Yarico, an Amerindian woman, and her lover, Inkle, an English sailor who allegedly duped her and sold her into slavery in Barbados. For details, see Jerome S.` Handler, A Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627-1834 (Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1971), passim.