Blackfriar's Bridge

For almost a hundred years, convicts held in London's Newgate Prison were marched down the hill to Blackfriars Bridge, where they were loaded onto lighters and taken down river to Woolwich, where they were put on board hulks or merchant ships, to be transported to America and later New South Wales. This was the last place where many of them touched English soil.

There is a strip of sand where the quay once stood, which I photographed several years ago. I also collected a number of 18th and 19th century pipestems - for me, a tangible reminder that these men and women were more than names on a convict indent.