Absolute Pardon
John Onion, 1830
It must have been a proud moment for John Onion, when he received this Absolute Pardon document in 1835. An iron smelter by trade, Onion was one of a group of convicts transported for the Pentrich rebellion in Derbyshire in 1817, in which a group of industrial workers in England’s midlands staged a mass protest against unemployment and pay cuts due in part to the introduction of machine technology. Some were hanged, but 49 year old Onion was sentenced to transportation for life, and arrived in Sydney in 1818, just as Hyde Park Barracks was being built.
An Absolute Pardon could be granted at any time to a convict on a life sentence. It declared a convict’s sentence finished and restored their legal rights to those of a free citizen. Unlike the Conditional Pardon, which restricted the convict to stay in the colony, the Absolute Pardon allowed the convict to return to their homeland.
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