parkhurst apprentices were juvenile prisoners from parkhurst prison, sentenced to "transportation beyond the seas", but pardoned on arrival at their destination on the conditions that they be "apprenticed" to local employers, and that they not return to england during the original term of their sentence. between 1842 and 1849, western australia accepted 234 parkhurst apprentices, all males aged between 10 and 21. as western australia was not then a penal colony, contemporary documents studiously avoided referring to the prisoners as "convicts", and the ships that brought them were not officially recognised as convict ships there. english records were not so reticent, classing as convict ships the seven ships that transported parkhurst apprentices to western australia.