All these eleven men were illiterate. Their trial records provide no account of how they came to be in England and the sparse, one-line entries in their transportation indents provide few clues to their history. They had all been arrested in the period between 1782 and 1787, a time when the black population in England increased dramatically, especially in Greater London, where most were sentenced. By 1785, the black population in that city was around 10,000 and parish records indicate that the great majority were young black men concentrated in parts of the East End of London, such as Stepney, Minories, Wapping, Shadwell, Limehouse and Deptford. Analysis of records of black baptisms for 1770-1800 for the parishes of Greater London, using data supplied by the London Metropolitan Archives, indicate that about one per cent of baptised Londoners were black; however, this underestimates the black population, many of whom were not Christian. Analysis of trial records from the Old Bailey, the Middlesex and Kent Assizes in the period immediately after the American War of Independence, reveal about 0.9 per cent of indictments  
were identified as black, but racial identity was not always specified in the court documents. In the more detailed records for the prison hulks the percentage of convicted black felons was two per cent. An average of all three indicators suggests a level of about 1.3 per cent of a population of 750,000 , or just under 10,000 (Pybus, 2006).