In the ten years between 1842 and 1852 nearly 1500 boys aged from twelve to eighteen were transported to Australia and New Zealand from Parkhurst Prison.
As Western Australia was not then a penal colony, contemporary documents scrupulously avoided referring to the youths as "convicts", and most historians have maintained the distinction.
The Parkhurst Visitors insisted that names of the boys not be published in the Government Gazette, in order that they were not discriminated against.
[5] Parkhurst apprentices were employed by a broad cross-section of Western Australia's businessmen and officials, including many of the colony's ruling class.
The assimilation of Parkhurst apprentices played an important role in the later acceptance of convicts in Western Australia.