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The History and Romance of Crime

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY

[Illustration: Decoration]


THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON


[Illustration: _Armour of Ned Kelly and Manacles Worn by Prisoners in
Tasmania_

The Kelly gang of bushrangers, of which Ned Kelly was chief, wore
veritable armour, bullet-proof, made of old plough shares, iron pots and
scrap iron. They terrorised the northeastern part of New South Wales
from 1870 to 1878, and it became known as the "Kelly country."
Troublesome bushrangers also devastated Tasmania, and when captured,
were hanged or sent to the penal settlement at Norfolk Island.]




Prisons Over Seas

DEPORTATION AND COLONIZATION
BRITISH AND AMERICAN PRISONS OF TO-DAY

_by_

MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
_Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_

_Author of
"The Mysteries of Police and Crime"
"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc._

[Illustration: Decoration]


THE GROLIER SOCIETY


EDITION NATIONALE

Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

NUMBER 307.




INTRODUCTION


It will hardly be denied after an impartial consideration of all the
facts I shall herein set forth, that the British prison system can
challenge comparison with any in the world. It may be no more perfect
than other human institutions, but its administrators have laboured long
and steadfastly to approximate perfection. Many countries have already
paid it the compliment of imitation. In most of the British colonies,
the prison system so nearly resembles the system of the mother country,
that I have not given their institutions any separate and distinct
description.

No doubt different methods are employed in the great Empire of India;
but they also are the outcome of experience, and follow lines most
suited to the climate and character of the people for whom they are
intended. Cellular imprisonment would be impossible in India.
Association is inevitable in the Indian prison system. Again, it is the
failure to find suitable European subordinate officers that has brought
about the employment of the best-behaved prisoners in the discipline of
their comrades: a system, as I have been at some pains to point out,
quite abhorrent to modern ideas of prison management. As for the
retention of transportation by the Indian government, when so clearly
condemned at home, it is defensible on the grounds that the penalty of
crossing the sea, the "Black Water," possesses peculiar terrors to the
Oriental mind; and the Andaman Islands are, moreover, within such easy
distance as to ensure their effective supervision and control.

Nearer home, we may see Austria adopting an English method,--the
"movable" or temporary prison, by the use of which such works as
changing the courses of rivers have been rendered possible and the
prison edifices of Lepoglava, Aszod and Kolosvar erected, in imitation
of Chattenden, Borstal and Wormwood Scrubs. France has also constructed
in the outskirts of Paris a new prison for the department of the Seine,
and she may yet find that the British progressive system is more
effective for controlling habitual crime than transportation to New
Caledonia. In a country where every individual is ticketed and labelled
from birth, where police methods are quite despotic, and the law claims
the right, in the interests of the larger number, to override the
liberty of the subject, the professional criminal might be held at a
tremendous disadvantage. It is true that the same result might be
expected from the Belgian plan of prolonged cellular confinement; but,
as I shall point out, this system is more costly, and can only be
enforced with greater or less, but always possible, risks to health and
reason.

But prisons are only one part, and perhaps not the most important part
of a penal system. It is obviously right that they should be humanely
and judiciously administered, but they exist only to give effect to the
fiats of the law, which, for the protection of society, is entrusted
with power to punish and prevent crime. How far these two great aims are
effected, what should be the quality and quantity of the punishment
inflicted, what the amount, if any, of the prevention secured, are moot
points which are engaging more and more attention. Although great
inequalities in sentences exist in Great Britain, as in every country,
dependent as each must be upon the ever varying dispositions of the
courts and those who preside over them, the general tendency is towards
leniency. Imprisonment is imposed less and less frequently and the terms
are growing shorter. The strongest advocates of this growing leniency
claim for it that it has helped to diminish crime, and it is certainly
contemporaneous with the marked reduction in offences in the last few
years. In other words, crime has been least when punishment was least
severe. Whether this diminution is not more directly traceable to other
causes, and notably to the better care of juveniles and better measures
to rescue and reform adult criminals, it is impossible as yet to
determine. But it is beyond question that imprisonment, almost the only
form of punishment now known to the law, is just as effective as the
older and severer measures, if not more so. An ever increasing number of
judges adhere to the axiom laid down by Mr. C. H. Hopwood, Q. C., one of
the most distinguished of their number, "never to send a man to gaol if
you can keep him out of it." The wisest of modern laws dealing with the
prevention and punishment of crime is based upon it as a principle. Such
acts as the British "First Offender's Act" and "Summary Jurisdiction
Act" have done more to keep down the English prison population than all
other measures combined.

The whole subject is one of the greatest importance and interest, and I
have endeavoured to treat it adequately in the following pages.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                       PAGE
      INTRODUCTION                               5

   I. THE FIRST FLEET                           13

  II. THE GROWTH OF NEW SOUTH WALES             41

 III. CONVICT LIFE                              67

  IV. A CONVICT COMMUNITY                       94

   V. THE PROBATION SYSTEM                     116

  VI. CONVICT SHIPS                            138

 VII. THE EXILES OF CRIME                      167

VIII. THE COLLAPSE OF DEPORTATION              207

  IX. GIBRALTAR                                230

   X. THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF PENAL SERVITUDE    248

  XI. FRENCH PENAL COLONIES                    277

 XII. PENAL METHODS IN THE UNITED STATES       308

XIII. BRITISH PRISONS OF TO-DAY                327




List of Illustrations


ARMOR WORN BY NED KELLY, AND MANACLES
  WORN BY PRISONERS IN TASMANIA     _Frontispiece_

CONVICT SHIP "SUCCESS"                  _Page_ 162

RUINED PRISON CHURCH, TASMANIA            "    222




PRISONS OVER SEAS




CHAPTER I

THE FIRST FLEET

     First idea of riddance of bad characters--James I removes certain
     dissolute persons--Sale of criminals as indentured servants to
     American Colonies and West Indies--Prices and profits--American
     Revolution closes this outlet--Discoveries by Captain Cook leads to
     the adoption of Botany Bay as the future receptacle--First fleet
     sails March, 1787--Settlement made at Port Jackson, christened
     Sydney--Landing of convicts--Early labours--Famine and
     drought--Efforts to make community self-supporting--Assisted
     emigration a failure--General demoralisation of society--Arrival of
     convict ships and growth of numbers--Unsatisfactory condition of
     Colony.


News of the discoveries, by Captain Cook, of vast lands in the South
Seas reached England just as the scheme of Penitentiary Houses had been
projected by John Howard, the great philanthropist, to remedy and reform
the abuses of gaol administration. Why embark on a vast expenditure to
build new prisons when the entire criminal population might be removed
to a distance to work out their regeneration under another and a
brighter sky? The idea was singularly attractive and won instantly in
the public mind. The whole country would be rid of its worst elements,
the dregs and failures of society, who would be given a new opportunity
in a new land to lead a new life and by honest labours become the
prosperous members of a new community established by virtue. The
banishment of wrong-doers had long appealed to rulers as a simple and
effective means of punishment, combined with riddance.

The first actual record of transportation is in the reign of James I,
when prisoners were conveyed to the youthful Colony of Virginia, where
Cromwell had sent his political captives beyond the Atlantic to work for
the settlers as indentured servants or assigned slaves. Early in the
eighteenth century the penalty was regularly introduced into the British
criminal code. An act in that year commented upon the inefficiency of
the punishments in use and pointed out that in many of his Majesty's
colonies and plantations in America there was a great want of servants,
who, by their labour and industry, would be the means of improving and
making the said colonies more useful to the nation. Persons sentenced
nominally to death were henceforth to be handed over to the contractors
who engaged to transport them across the seas. These contractors became
vested with a right in the labour of convicts for terms of seven and
fourteen years, and this property was sold at public auction when the
exiles arrived at the plantations. The competition was keen and the bids
ran high at a date prior to the prevalence of <DW64> slavery. To meet the
demand the pernicious practice of kidnapping came into vogue and
flourished for half a century, when it was put down by law. The price
paid according to the mercantile returns ranged at about £20 per head,
although it appears from a contemporary record that for two guineas a
felon might purchase his freedom from the captain of the ship. The
condition of these "transports" was wretched, and contractors often
complained that their cargoes of human beings were so damaged on the
voyages, and the subsequent mortality was so great, that serious
misgivings arose as to whether it was worth while to enter upon the
traffic.

Suddenly the successful revolt of the American Colonies closed them as a
receptacle for the criminal sewages of Great Britain. Another outlet
must be found, and for a time convicts sentenced or liable to
transportation were kept at hard labour in the hulks in harbours and
arsenals at home. Then Captain Cook found Botany Bay in the antipodes,
and for a long time after their inauguration public opinion ran high in
favour of penal establishments beyond the seas. "There was general
confidence," says Merivale, "in the favourite theory that the best mode
of punishing offenders was that which removed them from the scene of
offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of space from all
their former connections, and gave them the opportunity of redeeming
past crimes by becoming useful members of society." Through whatever
mire and discomfort it may have waded, beyond doubt Australia has risen
to a rank and importance which entitles it to remember unabashed the
origin from which the colony sprang. It has long since outgrown the
taint of its original impurity. Another writer asserts that "on the
whole, as a real system of punishment it (transportation) has failed; as
a real system of reform it has failed, as perhaps would every other
plan, but as a means of making men outwardly honest, of converting
vagabonds most useless in one country, into active citizens in another,
and thus giving birth to a new and splendid country, a grand centre of
civilisation, it has succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in
history." All this is of course indubitable. But in the process of
manufacture, Great Britain in fifty years expended eight millions of
hard cash, and remained as full of criminals as ever.

The early history of New South Wales as told in the pages of Collins
reads like a romance. Captain Arthur Phillip, R. N., the first governor,
started from Portsmouth in the month of March, 1787, with nine
transports and two men-of-war--the "first fleet" of Australian annals.
Unlike the _Mayflower_, bearing its Pilgrim Fathers, men of austere
piety and worth, to the shores of New England, this first fleet carried
convicts, criminals only, and their guards. Some vessels were laden
deeply with stores, others with agricultural implements. Before the
fleet was out of the English channel a plot was discovered among some
of these desperate characters to seize the ship they were on board, and
escape from the fleet. Nearing the Cape of Good Hope a second similar
conspiracy came to light, and all through the voyage offences, such as
thefts, assaults, abscondings, attempts to pass counterfeit coin, were
numerous, and needed exemplary punishment. After a dreary eight months
at sea, broken only by short stays at Teneriffe, Rio, and the Cape of
Good Hope, the fleet reached Botany Bay in January, 1788. Never had name
been more evidently misapplied. The teeming luxuriant vegetation was all
a myth, and on closer inspection the "Botanists' Bay" proved to be mere
barren swamps and sterile sands. The anchorage though extensive was
exposed, and in easterly gales torn by a tremendous surf. Before
debarking, therefore, Captain Phillip determined to seek along the coast
some site more suitable for the new settlement. Starting with a select
party in a small boat for Broken Bay, he passed _en route_ an opening
marked upon the chart as Port Jackson, named thus from the look-out man
in Cook's ship, who had made it out from the masthead. This is known now
as one of the finest and most secure harbours in the world. Here in a
cove, where there was deep water for ships of the heaviest burden close
in shore, the foundations of the new town were to be laid. It was
christened Sydney, after the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and
thither a party of convict artificers, guarded by marines, was at once
removed to clear land for the intended settlement. When this was
accomplished, the remainder of the colonists, 1,030 souls in all, were
put on shore.

There was plenty of work to be done, and but few hands to do it.
Enlarged clearings were needed; barracks, storehouses, hospitals,
dwellings for the superior and other officers, huts for the convicts.
Although at the time when the "first fleet" sailed, many thousands of
convicts awaiting deportation crowded the various gaols of England, no
attempt had been made to select for the new colony those who, from their
previous condition and training, would have been most useful to the
young community. Of the six hundred male convicts actually embarked,
hardly any were skilled as artisans and mechanics. Nay more, though it
was meant that the colony should be if possible self-supporting, and
that every effort should be made to raise crops and other produce
without delay, few, if any, of either the convicts or their keepers had
had the least experience in agricultural pursuits. Yet with ordinary
care the whole number might have been made up of persons specially
qualified, accustomed to work either at trades or in the fields. Nor
were there among the sailors of the men-of-war many that could be turned
to useful account on shore.

Again, it had been forgotten that if the convicts were to be compelled
to work, overseers were indispensable; for laziness is ingrained in the
criminal class, and more than change of sky is needed to bring about
any lasting change in character and habits. To these retarding causes
was soon added wide-spread sickness, the result of long confinement on
ship-board, and an unvarying diet of salt provisions. Scurvy, which
during the voyage all had escaped, broke out now in epidemic form.
Indigenous anti-scorbutics there were next to none, and the disease grew
soon to alarming proportions. Many convicts died, and others in great
numbers sank under an almost entire prostration of life and energy. On
the voyage out there had been forty deaths; now within five months of
disembarkation there had been twenty-eight more, while sixty-six were in
hospital, and two hundred others were declared by the medical officers
to be unfit for duty or work of any kind.

Another difficulty of paramount importance soon stared the whole
settlement in the face. So far "the king's store" found all in food, but
the supply was not inexhaustible, and might in the long run, by a
concurrence of adverse circumstances, be almost emptied, as indeed
happened at no remote date. Famine was therefore both possible and
probable, unless in the interval the colony were made capable of
catering for its own needs. To accomplish this most desirable end it was
necessary to bring ground at once into cultivation, breed stock, and
raise crops for home consumption. The first farm was established at
Paramatta, fourteen miles from Sydney, and at the same time a
detachment under Lieut. King, R. N., of the _Sirius_, was sent to
colonise Norfolk Island, a place highly commended by Captain Cook for
its genial climate and fertile soil. "Here," says Laing,
"notwithstanding the various discouragements arising from droughts and
blighting winds, the depredations of birds, rats, grubs, and thieves to
which the settlement was at first exposed, a large extent of ground was
gradually cleared and cultivated, and the prospect of raising
subsistence for a considerable proportion appeared in every respect more
favourable than at Port Jackson."

At the headquarters settlement in these earlier years prospects were
poor enough. The land being less fertile needed more skill, and this was
altogether absent. The convicts knew nothing of farming--how could
they?--and there was no one to teach them. One or two instructors
expressly sent out were found quite useless. The only person in the
colony competent to manage convicts, or give them a practical knowledge
of agriculture, was the governor's valet, and he died in 1791. To add to
these troubles a lengthened drought afflicted the country during the
first year of the settlement, under which the soil, ungenerous before,
grew absolutely barren and unproductive. A man less resolute and able
than Captain Phillip might well have recoiled at the task before him.
The dangers ahead threatened the very existence of his colony. Hostile
natives surrounded him. Within the limits of his settlement he had to
face imminent starvation, and to cope with the innate lawlessness of a
population for the most part idle, ignorant, and vicious. For it soon
became plain that to look for the growth of a virtuous community, except
at some remote period, from the strange elements gathered together in
New South Wales, was but a visionary's dream.

England's social sewage was not to be shot down in Botany Bay, to be
deodorised or made pure just because the authorities willed it. It was
vain to count upon the reformation of these people in the present, or to
build up hopes of it in the future. We have seen how their natural
propensities displayed themselves on the voyage out. These, directly the
convicts were landed, developed with rapid growth, so that crimes and
offences of a serious nature soon became extremely rife. On the day the
governor's commission was read, the governor addressed the convicts,
exhorting them to behave with propriety, promising to reward the good
while he punished heavily all evil-doers. Next morning nine of the
people absconded. Within a week it was found necessary to try three
others for thefts, all of whom were flogged. Before the month passed,
four more were arraigned charged with a plot to rob the public stores,
for which one suffered death, and the others were banished from the
settlement. Yet at that time there was no possible excuse for such a
crime. When goaded by hunger and privation in the coming years of
scarcity, it was at least intelligible that desperate men should be
found ready to dare all risks to win one plenteous meal, though even
then each convict shared to the same extent as the governor himself.
Each man's weekly allowance consisted of 7 lbs. biscuit, 3 lbs. peas,
and 6 ozs. butter; 7 lbs. salt beef, or 4 lbs. salt pork. But in the
first year the rations were ample, and inherent depravity could alone
have tempted these convicts to rob the common store.

About this time another convict offender was pardoned on condition that
he become the public executioner. Both "cat" and gallows were now kept
busy, yet without effect. "Exemplary punishments," says Collins, "seemed
about this period to be growing more necessary. Stock was often killed,
huts and tents broken open, and provisions constantly stolen about the
latter part of the week; for among the convicts there were many who knew
not how to husband their provisions through the seven days they were
intended to serve them, but were known to have consumed the whole at the
end of the third or fourth day. One of this description made his week's
allowance of flour (8 lbs.) into 18 cakes, which he devoured at one
meal. He was soon after taken speechless and senseless, and died the
following day at the hospital, a loathsome, putrid object." Here again
was felt the want of overseers and superintendents of a class superior
to that of the convicts, through whom discipline and interior economy
might be maintained and regulated. Naturally those selected felt a
tenderness for the shortcomings of their fellows, and it was more than
difficult to detect or bring home offences to the guilty. A common crime
was absence. Many, undeterred by fear of starvation, or savage natives,
went off to the woods. One remained there nineteen days, returning to
the settlement at night to lay his hands on food. In some cases the
absentees were murdered by natives, and their bodies found sometimes
with their heads pounded to jelly, but always mutilated, speared or cut
in pieces. There were other crimes quite new, as were the punishments
meted out to them. One impostor pretended to have discovered a gold
mine; but it was proved that he had fabricated the gold dust he produced
from a guinea and a brass buckle, and he was condemned to be flogged and
to wear a canvas dress decorated with the letter R, "to distinguish him
more particularly from others as a rogue." This same offender being
afterwards caught housebreaking, suffered death, but not before he had
betrayed his accomplices--two women who had received the stolen
property. One of these was also executed, while of the other a public
example was made. In the presence of the assembled convicts the
executioner shaved her head, and clothed her in a canvas frock, on which
were painted the capitals R. S. G.--receiver of stolen goods. "This was
done," says Collins, "with the hope that shame might operate, at least
with the female part of the prisoners, to the prevention of crime; but
a great number of both sexes had been too long acquainted with each
other in scenes of disgrace for this kind of punishment to work much
reformation among them."

Thieving continued on all sides, and the hangman was always busy.
Repeated depredations brought one man to the halter, while another, for
stabbing a woman, received seven hundred lashes. Scarcely any of the
convicts could be relied upon, yet many, in the scarcity of honest
freemen, were appointed to posts of responsibility and trust. Generally
they abused the confidence reposed in them. The case is mentioned of one
Bryant, a seafaring west-country man, who was employed to fish for the
settlement. Every encouragement was held out to this man to secure his
honesty: a hut was built for him and his family, and he was allowed to
retain for his own use a portion of every taking. Nevertheless he was
detected in a long continued practice of purloining quantities of fish
which he sold for his own gain. But he was too useful to be deprived of
his employment, and he was still retained as official fisherman, only
under a stricter supervision. Even this he eluded, managing a year or
two later to make good his escape from the colony, together with his
wife, two children, and seven other convicts. Having for some time laid
by a store of provisions, and obtaining from a Dutch ship, in the port
of Sydney, a compass, quadrant, and chart, together with information to
help him in reaching Timor and Batavia, he stole one of the government
boats and made off. Bryant and two of his convict companions being well
trained in the management of a boat, and having luck upon their side, in
due course reached the ports for which they steered. Others were less
fortunate in their attempts to escape; like those who tried to walk to
China northward through the Australian continent. Nor did much success
wait upon the scheme laid by the convicts at Norfolk Island to overpower
their guards, seize the person of the governor, and decamp. Although too
wild and preposterous a plot to raise serious alarm, the very existence
of this serves to prove the treacherous, untrustworthy character of
these felon exiles. Some years later, indeed, in the reign of Governor
King, an outbreak somewhat similar, but planned with secrecy and
judgment, came actually to a head, and for the moment assumed rather
serious proportions. In this, several hundred convicts combined "to
strike for their liberty." They had pikes, pistols, and several stands
of arms. The insurrection broke out suddenly. Two large bodies marched
upon Paramatta, but were closely followed by an officer, Major Johnson,
with forty men of the New South Wales Corps, who brought them to an
action at Vinegar Hill, and in fifteen minutes dispersed them with great
loss.

It is abundantly evident from these and other instances, that the
convict population could only be ruled by an iron hand. But I think
Governor Phillip would have forgiven them much if they had but been more
industrious. Everything hung upon their labour. The colony must continue
to be dependent on the mother country for the commonest necessaries of
life, until by the work of these felon hands sufficient food was raised
to supply subsistence, whenever the public store should grow empty or
come altogether to an end. Yet the convicts by no means exerted
themselves to the utmost; they foolishly conceived that they had no
interest in the success of their labours. Task work had been adopted as
the most convenient method of employing them; a certain quantity of
ground was allotted to be cleared by a certain number of persons in a
given time.

The surplus gained was conceded to them to bring in materials and build
huts for themselves. But few cared to take advantage of the privilege,
preferring to be idle, or to straggle through the woods, or to visit
surreptitiously the French warships lying in Botany Bay. Indeed, the sum
total of their efforts was to do just enough to avoid immediate
punishment for idleness. Moreover, as time passed, the numbers available
for work dwindled down, till at the end of the first year, in January,
1789, that is to say, only two hundred and fifty were employed in the
cultivation of land. Many were engaged at the wharves and storehouses,
but by far the greater portion were utterly incapacitated by age or
infirmity for field labour of any description.

The evil days that were in store did not long delay their coming.
Throughout the latter part of 1789, and the early months of 1790, the
colony saw itself reduced to terrible straits for food. Relief was daily
expected from England, but daily unaccountably delayed. Emptier and more
empty grew the King's store. In the month of February, 1790, there
remained therein not more than four months' provisions for all hands,
and this at half rations. To prepare for the worst, the allowance issued
was diminished from time to time, till in April, that year, it consisted
only of 2 lbs. of pork, 2 lbs. of rice, and 2½ lbs. of flour per head,
for seven days. More than ever in the general scarcity were robberies
prevalent. Capital punishment became more and more frequent, without
exercising any appreciable effect. Garden thefts were the most common.
As severe floggings of hundreds of lashes were ineffectual to check this
crime, a new penalty was tried, and these garden robbers were chained
together in threes, and compelled to work thus ironed. "Any man," said,
years and years afterwards, one of these first fleet convicts who had
reached affluence and comfort at last--"any man would have committed
murder for a month's provisions; I would have committed three for a
week's. I was chained seven weeks on my back for being out getting
greens and wild herbs." No doubt in those days of dire privation and
famine the sufferings of all were grievous; but the statements of these
people must be accepted with the utmost caution, even when divested of
half their horrors. The same old convict said that he had often dined
off pounded grass, or made soup from a native dog. Another old convict
declared he had seen six men executed for stealing twenty-one pounds of
flour. "For nine months," says a third, "I was on five ounces of flour a
day, which when weighed barely came to four. The men were weak," he goes
on, "dreadfully weak, for want of food. One man, named 'Gibraltar,' was
hanged for stealing a loaf out of the governor's kitchen. He got down
the chimney, stole the loaf, had a trial, and was hanged next day at
sunrise."

Food, food, all for food! In its imperious needs hunger drove the
unprincipled to brave every danger, and the foolish to excess not less
terrible. Collins tells another story of a woman who devoured her whole
week's allowance in one night, making up a strange compound of cabbage
and flour, of which she ate heartily during the day, "but not being
satisfied, she rose again in the night and finished the mess," and died.
Throughout these trying times, Governor Phillip maintained a firm front.
It is told of him, that seeing a dog run by he ordered it to be killed
at once,--as a mouth that was useless, it could not in these days be
entitled to food. Then, to ease the mother settlement, a large number of
persons were drafted to Norfolk Island, where, thanks to the presence
of numbers of wild birds, supplies were more plentiful. In transit, H.
M. S. _Sirius_--the only ship left in the colony--was wrecked in full
view of the settlement.

Relief came at length, but in driblets. At the time of greatest need,
more mouths arrived instead of more barrels of pork and flour. In
February, as I have said, there were but four months' provisions in the
stores; yet on the third day of June, two hundred and twenty-two women
arrived--"a cargo," says the chronicler, "unnecessary and unprofitable;"
while H. M. S. _Guardian_, which came as convoy and carried all the
stores, was lost at sea. Another store ship, the _Justinian_, happily
turned up about the 20th of June.

Later in this month, eleven sail, composing the "second fleet," came
into port. In this second fleet the arrangements made were about as good
as in slave ships from the Guinea Coast. The mortality on the voyage out
had been absolutely frightful. One thousand six hundred and ninety-five
male convicts and sixty-eight females were the numbers embarked, and of
these one hundred and ninety-four males and four females had died at
sea; while such was the state of debility in which the survivors landed
in the colony, that one hundred and sixteen of their number died in the
Colonial Hospital before the 5th of December, 1791. It seemed that the
masters of transports were paid head-money for each convict embarked,--a
lump sum of £17 9s. 6d. each. The more, therefore, that died, and the
sooner, the less food was consumed, and the greater the consequent
profit. Even to the living, the rations were so much reduced below the
allowance stipulated by the governor, that many convicts were actually
starved to death. In most of the ships very few were allowed on deck at
the same time. Crowded thus continually in a foetid atmosphere below,
many peculiar diseases were rapidly engendered among them. Numbers died
in irons; and what added to the horror of such a circumstance was that
their deaths were concealed, for the purpose of sharing their allowance
of provisions, until chance and the offensiveness of a corpse directed
the surgeon, or some one who had authority in the ship, to the spot
where it lay. In one of the ships a malignant fever had prevailed during
the latter part of the voyage, to which the captain, with his first and
second officers, had succumbed; while in another, the usual plot to take
the ship was discovered, and had to be checked with severe repressive
measures, which increased the tribulation of these hapless wretches.

Colonel Collins, in his "Account of New South Wales," gives but a sorry
picture of the condition in which these ill-fated exiles of the second
fleet arrived at New South Wales. "By noon," he says, "the following day
the two hundred sick had been landed from the different transports. The
west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable: upwards of
thirty tents were pitched in front of the hospital, the portable one not
yet being put up, all of which, as well as the hospital and the
adjoining huts, were filled with people, many of whom were labouring
under the complicated diseases of scurvy and dysentery, and others in
the last stages of either of those terrible disorders, or yielding to
the attacks of an infectious fever. The appearance of those who did not
require medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these
people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf
as they were lifted out of the boats; both the living and the dead
exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this
country. All this was to be attributed to confinement of the worst
species, confinement in a small space and in irons--not put on singly,
but many of them chained together."

The years immediately subsequent witnessed a repetition of what had
already occurred. The colony found itself again and again brought to the
lowest ebb; and then, when in the last stage, starvation stared it in
the face, there came more convicts and more salt meat. All through, the
health of the inhabitants continued indifferent, in spite of the natural
salubrity of the climate. This was partly due to the voyage out; also to
the diet, insufficient and always salt; and not a little to the gloomy
outlook for all concerned in this far-off miserable settlement. Yet,
through all vicissitudes, the governors who in turn assumed the reins
bore up bravely, and governed with admirable energy and pluck. They
were all--at least for the first twenty years--captains of the Royal
Navy, trained in a rough school, but eminently practical men. Their
policy was much the same. They had to bring land into cultivation,
develop the resources of the colony, coerce the ill-conditioned, and
lend a helping hand to any that gave earnest of a reform in character.

It will be seen that so far the colony of New South Wales consisted
entirely of two classes, the convicts and their masters. In other words,
it was a slave settlement--officials on the one hand as taskmasters; on
the other, criminals as bondsmen who had forfeited their independence,
and were bound to labour without wages for the State. The work to be
done in these early days was essentially of a public character. It was
for the common good that food should be raised, storehouses erected; the
whole body of the population benefited, too, by the hospitals, while the
building of barracks to house the guardians of order was also an
advantage to all. But such preliminary and pioneer works once fairly
started, the next step towards a healthy and vigorous life for the
colony was the establishment therein of a respectable middle class--a
body of virtuous and industrious settlers to stand between the supreme
power and the serfs it ruled. People of this kind were wanted to give
strength and stability to the settlement, to set an example of decorum,
and by their enterprising industry to assist in the development of the
country. But they must come from England; they were not to be looked for
"among discharged soldiers, shipwrecked seamen, and quandam convicts."
Governor Phillip at once admitted this, and from the first strongly
urged the home government to encourage free emigration by every means.
The distance from England was, however, too great to entice many across
the seas, and the passage out would have swallowed up half the capital
of most intending settlers. Several free families were therefore sent
out in 1796 at the public expense, receiving each of them a grant of
land on arrival and free rations for the first ensuing eighteen months.

But this assisted emigration was carried out in a very half-hearted,
incomplete fashion, so much so that for a long time--till years after
the peace of 1815--says Heath in his "Paper on Secondary Punishments,"
"a large proportion of the free settlers are described as of a low
character, not very superior to that of the convicts." Their numbers
were very small, being recruited indeed from the three sources above
mentioned--the soldiers, the sailors, and the convicts themselves.
Naturally, as time passed and sentences lapsed, the last mentioned
supplied a very numerous class. Every effort was made to give them a
fair start on the new road they were expected to follow. They received
grants of land, varying from ten to sixty acres, with additional slices
for children or wife. Pigs, seed-corn, implements, rations and clothing
were served out to each from the King's store; and, thus provided for,
straightforward industry would soon have earned for them an honest
competence. But in comparatively few instances did these convict
settlers thrive. They formed a body of small proprietors of the worst
class, ruining their land by bad farming, and making those who were
still convicts far worse by the example they set of dissoluteness and
dissipation.

Society now, and for years to come, presented a curious spectacle. Its
most conspicuous features were its drunkenness and its immorality. The
whole community might be divided into those who sold spirits and those
who drank them. Everything went in drink. The crops were no sooner
gathered than they went for spirits. Any hope of raising the general
tone of society was out of the question so long as this unbounded
intemperance prevailed. Besides this, there was neither marrying nor
giving in marriage. In Governor Bligh's time two-thirds of the births
were illegitimate. Bands of robbers, the first bushrangers, infested the
country, levying blackmail, and, entering the homes of the defenceless
settlers in open day, committed the most fearful atrocities.

This general recklessness and immorality was fostered by the monopoly of
sale possessed by the officers of the New South Wales Corps. These
gentlemen, who came out in 1792 as officers of this local regiment, were
for very many years a thorn in the side of the constituted authorities.
Bound together by _esprit de corps_ and unity of interest, they were
constantly at war with the governor, and generally successful.
Everything was made subservient to them. They had become by degrees
engaged in commercial operations, and in time they alone had permission
to purchase all cargoes of merchandise that came into port. These goods
they retailed at an enormous profit, so that the small farmers were
nearly ruined by the prices they had to pay for such necessaries as they
required. "Hence," as Laing says, "they (these small farmers) lost all
hope of bettering their circumstances by honest industry, and were led
into unbounded dissipation." The figure cut by officers who wore the
king's uniform in thus descending to traffic and peddle is not
over-dignified. Nor were they always over-scrupulous in their dealings.
As my narrative is concerned rather with the convict element and the
vicissitudes of transportation than with the general history of the
colony, it would be beyond my scope to enlarge upon the well-known
"rebellion," in which this New South Wales Corps played the prominent
part. In a few words, this amounted to the forcible ejectment from
office of the King's representative, Governor Bligh, by those who were
themselves the guardians of the King's peace. It would be tedious to
argue here the two sides of the question; but, even allowing that both
sides were to blame, it seems clear that the rebellious troops were most
in the wrong. Eventually this New South Wales Corps ceased to exist as
such, and becoming a numbered regiment, the 102nd of the line, was
removed from the colony.

Meanwhile the convicts continued to pour in. Between 1795 and 1801,
2,833 arrived; 2,398 from 1801 to 1811. In the years between the comings
of the first and second fleets, attempts had been made to improve the
arrangements for sending them out. As soon as the hulks at home were
full, and convicts began to accumulate, vessels were chartered for New
South Wales. Each carried 200 with a guard of 30 soldiers. The men
selected for transportation were always under fifty, and were taken from
those sentenced for life or fourteen years. When these were found
insufficient to provide the necessary draft, the numbers were made up
from the seven-year men, and of these the most unruly were chosen, or
those convicted of the more atrocious crimes. The females were sent
indiscriminately, the only provision being that they must be under fifty
years of age. Lists accompanied them out in all cases. These lists were
deficient in all useful information--without particulars of crimes,
trades, or previous characters; points on which information had to be
obtained from the convicts themselves. The transport ships were supposed
to be well found in all respects: clothes, medicines, and provisions for
the voyage and for nine months afterwards were put on board at the
public expense. The owner supplied a surgeon, and the admiralty laid
down precise instructions for his guidance. The master, too, was bound
over to be careful of his living cargo. On arrival his log-book was
submitted for inspection, and the governor of New South Wales was
empowered to reward him a special gratuity on the one hand, or on the
other to mulct and prosecute him, according to his behaviour on the
voyage out.

On arrival at Sydney the convicts were either disposed of as servants to
settlers, or retained in government hands. We have here the system of
assignment, though as yet quite in embryo. While settlers of any wealth
were few, there was little demand for convict labourers, except as
simple servants; although in the case of some of the leading officials,
who had already considerable grants of land under cultivation, as many
as forty were, even in these early days, assigned to the same master.

The great mass of the convicts were therefore retained by the
government. They were fed, clothed, and lodged by government, and
organised in gangs. Each gang was under an overseer--an old convict--who
was certain to err either on the side of culpable leniency towards his
charges, or of brutal cruelty. Stories are told of an overseer who
killed three men in a fortnight from overwork at the sawmill. "We used
to be taken in large parties," says the same old hand that I mentioned
before, "to raise a tree. When the body of the tree was raised, old
---- (the overseer) would call some of the men away, then more. The men
were bent double, they could not bear the weight--they fell, and on them
the tree, killing one or two on the spot. 'Take them away: put them in
the ground.' There was no more about it." Another overseer was described
as "the biggest villain that ever lived. He delighted in torment, and
used to walk up and down rubbing his hands when the blood ran. When he
walked abroad the flogger walked behind him. He died a miserable death:
maggots ate him up. Not a man could be found to bury him." A third
overseer was sent to bury a man who, though weak and almost insensible,
was not dead. "For God's sake," cried the poor wretch, "don't cover me
up. I'm not dead." "You will be before night," replied the overseer.
"Cover him up" (with an oath), "or we shall have to come back again to
do the work a second time." On the other hand, it was known that
overseers connived at irregularities of every description. The men were
allowed to work as little as they pleased; many left their parties
altogether to rob, and returned at nightfall to share their plunder with
the overseers. Naturally the work accomplished for the public service
did not amount to much. The hours of labour were from 6 A. M. to
3 P. M., after which the rest of the day belonged to the convict to be
spent in amusement or labour profitable to himself. Even in these days
the punishment of transportation fell most unequally on different men.
While the commoner classes of offenders were consigned to the gangs or
drafted off to be the slaves of the low-bred settler, persons who had
held a higher station in life, or who had been transported for what came
to be called "genteel crimes," forgery, that is to say, embezzlement,
and the like, were granted tickets-of-leave at once, which exempted them
from all compulsory labour and allowed them to provide for themselves.
To them the only hardship entailed by their crimes was the enforced
exile.

So far we have had to deal only with the difficulties encountered by the
young colony and the steps taken to combat them. It is too soon to speak
of the consequences that were entailed by forming a new settlement from
the dregs of society. I will only state in general terms what was the
actual state of affairs. A governor at the head of all with full powers
nominally, but not nearly autocratic; next to him, as the aristocracy, a
band of officials not always obedient, sometimes openly insubordinate,
consistent only in pushing forward their own fortunes. Between these and
the general body of the colonists a great gulf; the nearest to the
aristocracy being the settlers--passing through several gradations--from
the better class, few in number, to the pensioner or convict newly set
free; at the very bottom, the slave or serf population--the convicts
still in bondage.

This was the first stage in the colony's existence. With the breaking
up of the power of the New South Wales Corps and the appointment of
Governor Macquarie a new era opened; and to this I devote the next
chapter.




CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF NEW SOUTH WALES

     Large amount of convict labour available for employment--Free
     settlers too few to utilise it--Applied chiefly to public
     works--Premature erection of public edifices--Convicts given good
     wages and plentiful drink--Many grow rich--Governor Macquarie
     favours convicts unduly--Hostility shown him--Strong antagonism
     between classes--Great impetus to free emigration--Convict labour
     in demand--System of assignment revived--Discipline maintained by
     the "cat"--Efforts toward fair administration.


The peculiar condition of the colony now was the presence therein of a
supply of convict labour, growing larger also from day to day as vessels
with their cargoes arrived, for which there was no natural demand. When
General Macquarie assumed the government the influx of male convicts had
been so great in the five years preceding 1809, that the free settlers
were unable to find employment for more than an eighth of the total
number, though the labour was to be had for the asking, and cost nothing
but the price of raising the food the convicts consumed. In point of
fact, the free settlers were still too few and their operations too
limited. Seven-eighths of the whole supply remaining on hand, it became
necessary for the governor to devise artificial outlets. He was
anxious, as he tells Earl Bathurst, "to employ this large surplus of men
in some useful manner, so that their labour might in some degree cover
the expense of their feeding and clothing." The measures by which he
endeavoured to compass this shall now be described.

There is a stage in the youthful life of every colony when the
possession of an abundant and cheap supply of labour is of vital
importance to its progress. Settlers in these early days were neither
numerous enough nor wealthy enough to undertake for themselves the work
of reclaiming land, of establishing harbours and internal communications
on a scale sufficiently wide to insure the due development of the young
country. At such an epoch a plentiful supply of convict labour pouring
in at the cost of the home government is certain to be highly valuable.
Merivale points out how some such timely assistance to British Columbia
in more recent years would have given an enormous impetus to the
development of those provinces. It would be premature to discuss, at
this period of my narrative, the question whether the advantages gained
would outweigh the positive evils of a recurrence to transportation on
any grand scale. Some of these evils might disappear if the system were
carried out with all the safeguards and precautions that our lengthened
experience would supply. But the main objection--the excessive
costliness of the scheme--would remain.

This stage New South Wales had now reached, and the governor, finding
himself amply supplied with the labour so urgently needed, bent all his
energies to bringing forward the latent resources of the colony. His
reign began at a period of great scarcity. Repeated inundations on the
Hawkesbury had entailed disastrous losses on the whole community. He
decided, therefore, to form new towns at points beyond the reach of the
floods, and to open up to them, and throughout the province, those means
of communication which are so essential to the progress of a new
country. Upon the construction of these roads he concentrated all his
energies and all the means at his disposal. Not much skilled labour was
needed, yet the work was punitive and was also beneficial to the whole
community. No better employment could have been devised for the
convicts. Under his directions, towns before disconnected were joined by
means of excellent highways, while other good roads were driven through
wild regions hitherto unsettled if not altogether unexplored. The
greatest exploit of that period was the construction of the road across
the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, the whole length of which was 276 miles;
and there were, besides, good wooden bridges at all necessary points.
Beyond doubt, to these facilities of intercommunication is to be
attributed the early advance of the colony in wealth and prosperity.

But Governor Macquarie's other undertakings, though well intentioned,
were not equally well designed either for the improvement of the colony
or the amelioration of its people. No doubt his was a difficult task,
his course hard to steer. He had means almost unlimited, a glut of
labour, and behind him were the open purse-strings of the
mother-country. How was he to make the most of his advantages? This
labour, of which his hands were full, came from a mass of convicts, each
one of whom already represented a considerable charge on the imperial
funds. It had been expensive to transport him; now he was costly to
keep. Could he not be made in some measure to recoup the treasury for
the outlay he occasioned? It was obvious that he should, if possible,
contribute to his own support. Yet Governor Macquarie, in spite of his
promises, aimed at nothing of the kind. His chief object--next after
making roads--was to embellish the principal towns of the colony with
important public works--works for the most part unnecessary, and hardly
in keeping with the status of the young settlement. Roads were urgently
needed; but not guildhalls, vast hospitals, spacious quays, churches,
schools, houses and public offices. In these earlier years, buildings of
more modest dimensions might well have sufficed for all needs. But under
the Macquarie regime Sydney sprang from a mere shanty town into a
magnificent city. It was almost entirely reconstructed on a new plan,
the lines of which are retained to this day. The convict huts gave
place to prisoners' barracks, the mean dwellings of the settlers to
streets of imposing houses. The whole external aspect of Sydney and
Parramatta was changed. In all, the new public buildings numbered more
than 250, and the list of them fills ten closely printed pages of a
parliamentary report.

Yet all this expenditure was not only wasteful and at the time
unnecessary, but its direct tendency was to demoralise the population.
The labourers required for works of such importance were of course
collected together upon the scene of operations. In other words, crowds
of convict artisans were congregated in the towns, and countenanced each
other in vice. Many of the works were carried out by contract, the
contractors employing convict hands, bond or free, still serving or
emancipated; and in both cases they paid wages half in cash, and half in
property, which consisted of groceries and ardent spirits. This was the
"truck system," neither more nor less, which the contractors made still
more profitable to themselves by establishing public-houses close to
their works, at which the cash half of the wages soon returned to them
in exchange for the drink supplied. Naturally vice and immorality grew
apace. The condition of the towns was awful, and the low pleasures in
which they abounded attracted to them many people who might otherwise
have been contented to live quietly upon their grants of land. But the
choice between congenial society with plenty of drink, and the far-off
clearing with honest labour for its only joy, was soon made in favour of
the former, and every one who could, flocked into the towns. The
governor had indeed tried hard to form an agricultural population. With
this object he had conceded larger grants than his predecessors, in the
hopes that emancipated convicts would settle upon them and reform. It
was thought that "the hope of possessing property, and of improving
their condition and that of their families, afforded the strongest
stimulus to their industry, and the best security for their good
conduct." But these advantages were remote, and gave way at once before
the present certainty of being able to barter away the land they got for
nothing or in exchange for ten or fifteen gallons of rum. If this plan
of manufacturing industrious small proprietors out of the recently
emancipated convicts was meant to answer, the grant of land should have
been made conditional on actual residence thereon, and accompanied by
tangible results gained by actual labour done, which must be shown
before the acres were finally conveyed. Now it was proved that many of
Governor Macquarie's grantees never took possession of their land at
all: the order for thirty acres was changed at once for the much coveted
means of dissipation. Hence, though towns grew fast in beauty and
importance, the forest lands or wild tracts in the interior remained
unsettled; and the crowds of ex-criminals who might, by judicious
treatment, have turned into virtuous farmers, rapidly degenerated into
a mass of drunken dissipated idlers.

These were indeed fine times for the convicts. There was labour for all,
remunerative, and not too severe; liquor was cheap, and above all the
governor was their friend. It would be, however, more than unfair to
charge General Macquarie with any but the best motives in his tenderness
for the convict class. He conceived that the unfortunate people who
composed it were the especial objects of his solicitude. To promote
their reform, and to bring them to that prosperity which should make
this reform something more than mere idle profession--these, as he
thought, were among the first of his duties as the governor of a penal
colony. In his prosecution of such views he did not halt half way. The
manner in which he favoured and encouraged the emancipists came to be a
by-word. It was said in the colony that the surest claim on Governor
Macquarie's confidence and favour was that of having once worn the badge
of a convicted felon. Very early in his reign he made it clear that this
would be his policy. The year after his arrival he advanced one
ex-convict to the dignity of a justice of the peace; another was made
his private medical adviser; and both, with many others, were admitted
to his table at Government House. Nor were the recipients of these
favours always the most deserving among their fellows for the honours
showered upon them. It was taken for granted that the possession of
considerable wealth was proof positive of respectability regained; yet
in the case of Governor Macquarie's emancipist magistrate, it was
notorious that he had become rich by methods of which honest men would
hardly be proud. Transported as a lad for rick burning, after serving
his time in the colony he had been a shop-keeper, a constable, and last
a publican; in which line, by means of liberal credit, he had soon
amassed a fortune. His case was only one of many in which ex-convicts
had grown rich, chiefly by preying on their still more unfortunate
comrades, taking mortgages on grants as payment for long arrears of
accounts for groceries and drink, and by and by seizing all the land.
But no more emancipists were made magistrates after 1824.

Then, in many instances, members of the convict class were by far the
shrewdest and best educated in the whole community. Settlers of the
better class were few in number, so the sharp rogues had it all their
own way. They had capital moreover. Several brought money with them to
the colony, the fruit of their villainies, or their wives followed them
with considerable sums acquired in similar fashion. For these men,
especially if they had held fairly good positions at home,
transportation was almost a farce. It merely meant removal at the public
expense to a land, remote certainly, but in which they were little less
comfortable than at home, and where they moreover had exceptional
facilities for making money fast; and they had it all to themselves.
Governor Macquarie discouraged free emigration. He did not want to see
settlers. He looked upon them as out of place, nay more, as a positive
encumbrance to the colony. New South Wales was a settlement, he said,
made by convicts for convicts--"meant for their reformation; and free
people had no right to come to it." So he continued to pat his
favourites on the back: gave them land, and more land, as many assigned
servants--their former partners possibly in many a guilty scheme--as
they wished; and last but not least, provided a market for the very
crops he had assisted them (by convict labour) to raise. It was not
strange, then, that with a yearly influx of thousands of new hands, and
the rapid upward advance of all who were ordinarily steady and
industrious, the emancipists should come as a class to gain strength far
in excess of their deserts, and sufficient from their numbers to swamp
all other classes in the community.

There were frequent heartburnings in New South Wales during the reign of
Governor Macquarie on account of his overstrained partiality. The
discontent was heightened by his plainly spoken desire to force his own
views down the throats of those nearest him in the social scale: not
satisfied with openly countenancing them himself, he insisted that the
officers of regiments receive emancipists as guests at mess. Bigge says
on this point: "The influence of the governor's example should be
limited to those occasions alone when his notice of the emancipated
convicts cannot give offence to the feelings of others, or to persons
whose objections to associate with them are known. The introduction of
them on public occasions should, in my opinion, be discontinued. And
when it is known that they have been so far noticed by the governor of
New South Wales as to be admitted to his private table and society, the
benefit of the governor's example may be expected to operate; and it
will also be exempt from the fatal suspicion of any exercise of his
authority." Again, when Mr. Bent, judge of the Supreme Court, refused to
allow certain attorneys, ex-convicts but now free, to practise as
solicitors, the governor complained to the home government that this
judge was "interfering unwarrantably with a salutary principle which he
(the governor) had been endeavouring to establish for the reformation of
the convicts." Now at this very time an act was in force which deprived
all persons convicted of perjury or forgery from ever again practising
in the courts at home, and Judge Bent in refusing to administer the
oaths to these emancipist attorneys was but carrying out the law; yet on
the governor's representation he was removed from the bench.

There were other cases not less plainly marked. As a natural
consequence, the antagonism was deepened between the two classes which
were so widely distinct--the virtuous Pharisees, that is to say, and
the thriving publicans. The former despised all who had come out "at
their country's expense;" and the latter hated the settlers, as people
of a lower class not seldom hate social superiors to whose "platform"
they are forbidden to hope to rise. Eventually, as we shall see, after a
long protracted warfare and varying successes, the free population
gained the day; but not till the lapse of years had strengthened their
numbers out of all proportion to their antagonists, and given them the
preponderance they at first lacked.

The struggles between these two classes fill up the whole of the annals
of the next years of the colony. All said, however, it cannot be denied
that under the administration of General Macquarie the colony prospered.
The population was nearly trebled between 1809 and 1821, and there was a
corresponding increase in trade and in the public revenue. Just before
this governor left the colony it contained 38,788 souls; there were
102,929 horned cattle, 290,158 sheep, 33,000 hogs, and 4,500 horses; and
32,267 acres had been brought under cultivation. The moral tone of the
community, too, was slightly raised; marriage had been encouraged in
place of an indifferent and disreputable mode of life which till then
had been largely prevalent. "In externals, at least," says Laing, "the
colony itself assumed quite a different aspect under his energetic and
vigorous management from what it had previously worn."

Speaking of his own administration and his efforts to elevate the
convict population in the scale of society, Governor Macquarie said for
himself, as against his detractors, "Even my work of charity, as it
appeared to me sound policy, in endeavouring to restore emancipated and
reformed convicts to a level with their fellow-subjects--a work which,
considered in a religious or a political point of view, I shall ever
value as the most meritorious part of my administration--has not escaped
their animadversions."

And yet, however praiseworthy his efforts, they were misdirected; and
beyond doubt, in his desire to discourage the influx of free people, he
committed a fatal error. It was his wish, of course, to further the
development of the colony; but he could not do this half so
satisfactorily by the establishment of penal agricultural settlements,
as could substantial emigrants working with capital behind them for
their own profit. Moreover, these agricultural settlements started by
Governor Macquarie cost a great deal of money. Again, the free classes
of the community would not have found themselves for a long time
outnumbered had not immigration been systematically discouraged. The
formation of an independent respectable society, armed with weight and
influence, was, as I have said, much needed in the colony. In this
respect General Macquarie had departed from the policy of his
predecessors. Captain Philip was eager enough, as we have seen, to
attract settlers, and had his recommendations been persistently followed
the colony would have found itself the sooner able to raise grain enough
for its own consumption.

Sir Thomas Brisbane, on the other hand, who came after Governor
Macquarie, recognised the full importance of the principle, and his
reign is memorable as marking the period when settlers in any
considerable numbers first flocked to the colony. But it was no longer
the humbler classes who came. None of these did the governor want, but
persons who were well-to-do, who could take up larger grants and find
plenty of employment for the rapidly increasing convict population. Sir
Thomas Brisbane held out every inducement to attract such persons. At
this period, thanks to the unceasing arrival of new drafts, the number
of felon exiles on charge continued to form a serious item in the
colonial expenditure. To get quit of all or any the governor was only
too glad to offer almost any terms. The grants of land were raised from
500 to 2,000 acres, which any one of moderate respectability might
secure, provided only he would promise to employ twenty convicts;
rations also were to be given from the King's store for self and
servants for the first six months, and a loan of cattle from the
government herds. The newcomers therefore were mostly gentlemen farmers,
younger sons of land-owners, or commercial men who had saved something
from a general crash in business. Most of these people were
sufficiently alive to their own advantage to realise the opportunity now
held out to them. Land for nothing, food and stock till the first
difficulties of settlement were overcome--these were baits that many
were ready enough to swallow. Labour was also gratuitously provided by
the same kind hands that gave the land.

For some years this more than parental encouragement continued, till at
length the influx of settlers came to be thoroughly felt. The labour
that was so lately a drug, was now so eagerly sought that the demand
grew greater than the supply. The governor was unable to comply with all
the requisitions for servants made by the land grantees. This at once
brought about the abandonment of the agricultural penal settlements
established by General Macquarie. Their success had always been
doubtful: although land to a considerable extent had been cleared,
timber felled, buildings erected, and farming attempted, no great
results had ever been obtained. Indeed now when the land which had thus
been occupied was again resumed, it was found to have been little
benefited. One by one they were broken up. They were costly and
unproductive. On the other hand, the settlers, old and newly arrived,
were clamorous for the hands thus wastefully employed. "So steadily,"
says Laing, "did the demand for convict labour increase on the part of
the free settlers that, during the government of Lieutenant-General
Darling, there were at one time applications for no fewer than 2,000
labourers lying unsatisfied in the office of the principal
superintendent of convicts."

We have now really arrived at the second stage in the history of
transportation. Although from the first origin of the settlement convict
servants were readily provided for any master who might ask for them,
the applications, as I have said, were few and far between, amounting in
1809 to an eighth only of the total numbers available, and requiring, as
late as 1821, to be accompanied by the bait of distinct and tangible
bribes. But now had dawned the days of "assignment" proper, the days of
wholesale slavery, where private persons relieved the state of the
charge of its criminals, and pretended to act, for the time being, as
gaolers, taskmasters, and chaplains, in return for the labour supplied
at so cheap a rate. How far the persons thus called upon to exercise
such peculiar functions were entitled to the confidence reposed in them
was never in question till the last few years. Emancipists got their
convicts too, and of course among the settlers many were quite unsuited
for so serious a charge.

The failure of assignment as a method of penal discipline will be seen
later on, when its great inherent evils had had time to display
themselves. At first the chief fault was over-leniency--so much so that
General Darling came out as governor charged with orders to subject the
convicts to more rigorous treatment. Dr. Laing, in his "History of New
South Wales," is of opinion that, about this date, much unnecessary
severity was noticeable in the carrying out of the sentence of
transportation. He states that convicts were now treated by the
subordinate agents, who saw that severity was the order of the day,
"with a reckless indifference to their feelings as men which their
situation as criminals could never have warranted."

Nevertheless it must be confessed that the condition of convicts could
not be irksome when soldiers envied it, and committed crimes on purpose
to become felons too. This was proved in the case of certain soldiers
who had turned thieves in Sydney simply that they might be sentenced to
transportation. They were caught, convicted, and sentenced to seven
years at Moreton Bay or Norfolk Island. Had their story ended here the
bare record of it might suffice, but it so happened that very serious
consequences ensued, and these I cannot refrain from recounting. As it
came out quite clearly upon their trial what had been the object and
design of their theft, Governor Darling resolved that they should be
treated with extra rigour, "it being an intolerable and dangerous idea
that the situation of a soldier was worse than that of a convict or
transported felon." The seven years at a penal settlement was therefore
commuted to seven years hard labour in chains on the roads of the
colony. The intention of this change was doubtless that their old
comrades should sometimes see them as they were marched to and fro; but
besides this, it was ordered that at the end of their sentence they
should return to their regiments. Therefore, after the proceedings of
the trial had been promulgated, the prisoners were publicly stripped of
their uniforms, iron collars with spikes projecting were placed around
their necks, from which iron chains hung and were fastened to basils on
their legs. Thus arrayed they were drummed out of their regiment (the
57th) to the tune of the Rogues' March. Under the horrors of this
punishment one man, Sudds, immediately sank, and died the following day.
The survivor then made a statement to the effect that Sudds complained
bitterly of his chains. The projections on the collar prevented the
prisoners from stretching at full length when lying on their backs. They
could not lie at full length without contracting their legs, nor could
they stand upright. The collar was too tight for Sudds' neck, and the
basils too tight for the other's legs.

In reporting this whole case to the Secretary of State, Governor Darling
says, "However much the event is to be regretted, it cannot be imputed
to severity; none was practised or intended.... With respect to the
chains which are designated instruments of torture, it will be
sufficient to state that they weigh only 13 lbs. 12 ozs.; and though
made with a view of producing an effect on those who were to witness the
ceremony, the extreme lightness of their construction prevented them
from being injurious in any respect to the individual." On the other
hand, Laing says the irons usually made for the road gangs in the colony
did not weigh more than from 6 to 9 lbs.; while those brought out for
convicts on board prison ships from England weighed only from 3½ to 4
lbs.

Following all this came vituperative attacks in the press. Papers
inspired by the government defended General Darling, and the fight was
long and bitter. One result was the passing of several acts known as
"Gagging Acts," intended to check the virulent abuse perpetually aimed
at the government, but they failed to have the desired effect. Governor
Darling grew more and more unpopular, and on leaving the colony he was
threatened with impeachment. A Parliamentary commission did, eventually,
inquire into his administration, and completely exonerated him from all
charges.

Speaking of the trial and sentence of these soldiers, Laing
observes,--"It would be unjust to consider Sir Ralph Darling's sentence
by the light of public opinion in England. He was governor of a colony
in which more than half the community were slaves and criminals; he had
to arrest and punish the progress of a dangerous crime; but he fell into
the error of exercising by _ex post facto_ decree, as the representative
of the sovereign, powers which no sovereign has exercised since the time
of Henry VIII, and violated one of the cardinal principles of the
British Constitution by rejudging and aggravating the punishment of men
who had been already judged. At the present day it is only as an
historical landmark that attention can be called to this transaction,
which can never be repeated in British dominions." It is more than
probable that, as a military officer of rank, he was doubly disposed to
reprobate the offence recorded. All his soldierly instincts were
doubtless hurt to the quick by the notion that the private men of an
honourable profession preferred an ignominious sentence to service with
the colours of their corps. From this came his uncompromising attitude,
and the seemingly unjustifiable violence of his measures.

But except in this one instance, Sir Ralph Darling proved himself an
efficient administrator. His sympathies were certainly with the
"exclusionists" as against the "emancipists;" and therefore, by the
latter and their organs, he was persistently misrepresented and abused.
But he was distinctly useful in his generation. A most industrious
public officer, he spared himself neither time nor trouble. Every
matter, however unimportant, received his closest personal
consideration. He may have made mistakes, but never through omission or
neglect; besides which, he introduced order and regularity in the
working of the state machine. Method followed disorganisation; ease and
freedom, where before had been friction and clogging interference
between its several parts. One of his earliest acts had been to regulate
the system of granting land, which under the previous administration
had fallen into some confusion. It was he who established a Land Board,
and who ruled that grants were to be made to people only according to
their means of improving the acres they got, and not as heretofore,
simply in answer to mere application.

In these and other useful labours the lead he gave was consistently
followed by his immediate successor, Sir Richard Bourke, who came to the
colony in December, 1831. Although by the extension of the colony the
personal character of the governor was no longer of such paramount
importance as in earlier days, the arrival of an efficient administrator
was a distinct benefit to the whole settlement. Sir Richard Bourke was
unquestionably a man of character and vigour. The measures he introduced
were all salutary. Not only did he encourage free immigration, but he
made fresh laws for the distribution and coercion of the convict
population. His regulations for assignment--to which I shall refer
directly--were wisely planned; and the reforms he introduced in the
constitution of the courts of justice were as sensible as they were
necessary. He had found that the decisions of local magistrates in the
cases of the misconduct of convict servants were extremely unequal: some
were ludicrously lenient, others out of all proportion severe. He
thought it advisable to establish some uniform system by which
magistrates should be guided in the infliction of summary punishments;
and he passed, therefore, an act known henceforth as the "Fifty Lashes
Act." This substituted fifty lashes for the first offence cognisable in
a summary way, in lieu of one hundred and fifty; and made the powers of
a single magistrate somewhat less than those of a bench of two or more.
At the same time it was ruled that a "cat" of uniform pattern should be
used in every district. "Each bench had before superintended, or left to
its inferior officers, the construction of its own scourges, which
varied according to accident or caprice; nor could it ever be
ascertained by the mere number of lashes ordered what degree of pain the
culprit was likely to have suffered." This restriction of their power
was not palatable to all the magistrates, and petitions were presented
to His Excellency, protesting against his new act. They urged that now
their authority was utterly derided. "Such a feeling," says Sir Richard,
commenting on their petition, "is not to be considered extraordinary, as
it requires much judgment and moderation to overcome the instinctive
love of power.... The magistrates who felt the diminution of their power
as a grievance may perhaps have been excited to expressions of complaint
by the annoyance to which, in their character of settlers, they are
exposed from the misconduct of their assigned servants. They do not
perhaps consider that the natural dislike to compulsory labour, which is
part of human nature, and has existed and ever will exist under every
form or mode of government, must offer great difficulties to those who
seek to carry on their business by such means. Severity carried beyond a
certain point, especially towards men of violent and turbulent feelings,
will only tend to inflame this indisposition to labour with more
dangerous acts of desperation and revenge."

However, to give the petitioners no just cause for complaint, he
instituted a formal inquiry into "those circumstances connected with the
discipline of the prison population which formed the subject of the
petitions." Reports were called for from the police of the several
districts. From them it was clearly apparent that fifty lashes with the
new cat were quite enough for any one, provided they were properly
administered. "The sufficiency of the law and of the instrument of
corporal punishment, in all cases where proper superintendence is
exercised, being thus established on unexceptionable evidence," His
Excellency considered it would be inexpedient, nay, dangerous, to add to
the severity of either, "merely because, in some instances, the
wholesome vigour of the existing law has been impeded by a negligent or
corrupt execution. In reading the reports which have been presented, the
governor could not fail to observe that where punishments have been duly
inflicted, the power of the magistrates has been anything but derided.
While perusing these painful details, His Excellency has indeed had
abundant reason to lament that the use of the whip should of necessity
form so prominent a part of convict discipline in New South Wales; but
believing it to be unavoidable, the governor must rely on the activity
and discretion of the magistracy for insuring its wholesome and
sufficient application."

The clear-sighted policy adopted by Sir Richard Bourke in carrying out
the last mentioned reform was no less observable in his treatment of the
question of assignment. The system by which servants were assigned to
settlers was undoubtedly not altogether free from abuses. It was alleged
that successive governments worked it quite as a source of patronage to
themselves. Governor Darling had however established an assignment
board, which to some extent equalised the distribution of the convicts
among the settlers. But it remained for Sir Richard Bourke to put the
whole question on a thoroughly satisfactory footing. The rules he
promulgated did not make their appearance till he had been four years in
the colony; after he had gained experience, that is to say, and time to
consider the subject in all its practical bearings. Excellent though
they were, they were rather late in the field. From the date of their
appearance to that of the final suspension of transportation there were
but five years to run. The pains taken by Sir Richard Bourke are evident
from his despatch to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, dated
June, 1835. He observes, "My chief object in this measure has been to
substitute for the invidious distinction hitherto more or less vested in
the officers entrusted with the duty of assigning convicts to private
service, strict rules of qualification, intelligible alike to the
dispenser and receiver of penal labour, and from which no deviation
shall be permitted. It is not until after much delay, and after maturely
weighing the suggestions of the various parties, that I have ventured to
deal with this important and difficult subject."

The main principle of the new regulations was that servants were to be
assigned solely in proportion to the land the masters occupied. A
carefully prepared scale was drawn up fixing this proportion, which,
speaking roughly, was at the rate of one servant per 160 acres of
ordinary land, and one per 20 acres under plow or hoe culture. At the
same time it was ruled that, as all mechanics were more valuable than
mere labourers, each of the former should be equal to two and sometimes
three of the latter. Thus one blacksmith, bricklayer, carpenter, or
cooper, counted as three labourers; while a plasterer, a tailor,
shoemaker, or wool-sorter, counted only as two. An entirely new process
of application for these servants was also laid down. A special sessions
was to be held in every district in September, for the purpose of
receiving and reporting on all such applications. It was the duty of the
magistrates in sessions to "inquire into the correctness of the facts
stated in each, requiring such evidence thereof as to them shall seem
proper; and they shall in no case recommend the claim of any applicant
unless perfectly satisfied of the truth of the statement on which the
application is founded."

Over and above this they were also required to look into the moral
qualifications of the assignee. They were not to recommend any person
"who is not free, of good character, capable of maintaining the servants
applied for, and to whose care and management they may not be safely
entrusted." Had this regulation been enforced at an earlier date the
system of "assignment" might have been worked with greater success. The
applications having been duly passed at sessions were then forwarded to
the assignment board at Sydney. Throughout, the greatest care was taken
to prevent underhand dealing: when eventually the time for actual
assignment arrived, it was done by drawing lots, or rather numbers from
a box in the office of the assignment board, and it was impossible for
the officials to show favour or affection even had they been so
inclined. The whole spirit of these regulations was thoroughly equitable
and straightforward. The only object was to be fair to every one. Thus
the land qualification was not insisted upon in the case of tradesmen
who wanted assistance in their own calling; and respectable householders
were also allowed to obtain indoor servants, though without an acre of
land in the colony. With these rules were included others requiring
masters to remove their servants without delay, and establishing
certain pains and penalties against contravention of the new law.

These arrangements were indeed admirable, all of them, but they should
have been earlier enforced. Not that Sir Richard Bourke was to blame for
this. The change he instituted should have been made by his
predecessors. But he was probably superior as an administrator to most
who had gone before. At least he was clear-sighted enough to perceive
that New South Wales had already outgrown the conditions of a mere penal
settlement. He was of opinion that convict labour was no longer
required, and that the abolition of transportation would be really a
benefit to the colonial community. He was in this ahead of his time, but
within a year or two of the close of his reign the same views began to
be widely entertained both in Great Britain and her colonies. In fact,
the period was now approaching when the idea of the possible abandonment
of transportation was to take a tangible and substantial form.




CHAPTER III

CONVICT LIFE

     Various conditions described--Arrival and treatment of
     newcomers--Hyde Park barracks for males--Parramatta factory for
     females--Behaviour of assignees to their convict
     servants--Treatment at out-stations--Labour--How
     enforced--Demeanour of convicts--Disciplinary methods--The lash the
     chief penalty.


British transportation divides itself naturally into three periods. The
first comprises the early history of the penal colonies; the second
treats of the days when "assignment" flourished, then fell into
disrepute; the third saw the substitution of the "probation" system, its
collapse; and finally, the abandonment of transportation beyond the
seas. Transportation was really continued for some years after the
collapse of the probation system in Van Diemen's Land, but only to the
extent of sending a few hundreds annually to Western Australia, and in
keeping up the convict establishments at Bermuda and Gibraltar. Having
sketched this early history in the two preceding chapters, I propose to
draw now a picture of convict life, and the state of the colonies
generally during the second of these periods. I shall, in this, confine
myself chiefly to New South Wales, the details of management and the
results having been much the same in Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as
it is now called. But I shall refer more especially to that island in a
later page.

To the voyage out and the internal management of convict ships I intend
to devote a special chapter. Let us imagine that the anchor is dropped
in Sydney harbour, and that the surgeon superintendent has gone on shore
to make his bow to His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales and
its dependencies. There is already plenty of excitement in the town. The
ship had been signalled in the offing, and there are numbers of good
people on the look out for useful hands from among its cargo. The days
when convict labour was a drug in the market are past and gone; the rush
for "assigned" servants is now so great that requisitions far in excess
of the number available crowd the office of the assignment board. All
sorts of tricks have been put in practice to get early information as to
the qualifications of those on board: although the indent bearing the
names of the new convicts goes first to the governor and then to the
assignment officers, the cunning old stagers--not a few of them
themselves emancipists--have found out privately from the surgeon or the
master of the vessel whether there are upon the list any men likely to
be useful to them. Thus a watchmaker seeks to obtain a watchmaker; an
engraver, an engraver; printers, compositors; merchants want clerks, as
doctors do assistants, or as the genteel folk--"ancients" they love to
style themselves--do cooks, butlers, and ladies'-maids. Many got
convicts assigned to them who were distinctly unfit and unworthy of the
charge. Cases were indeed known of settlers, outwardly honest men, whose
only object in asking for servants was to get assistants in thieving,
cattle stealing, and other nefarious transactions. All who lived inland
came off second best in the general rush: unless they had some friend on
the spot to watch their interests they had to take their chance later
on. But these too are in want of skilled labourers: one requires a
carpenter to complete a new shed or roof to his house; another a
blacksmith for the farm forge; and all would be glad of men with any
agricultural training or skill. If the newly-arrived ship carries female
convicts, there is similar anxiety. At one time governesses were
frequently got from among these outcasts; but the practice of confiding
the education of innocent children to such teachers appeared so
monstrous that it was soon altogether discontinued. But nursemaids and
other household servants were in eager request, and it must be confessed
that the moral condition of the colony was such that many of the better
looking female convicts were obtained without disguise for distinctly
immoral purposes.

One and all were compelled to lodge their applications for assigned
servants with the assignment board, where practically the decision
rested. This board was governed latterly by the clear and explicit
rules laid down by Sir Richard Bourke, to which I have referred in the
last chapter, but before these regulations were framed many malcontents
among the settlers were ready to declare that assignment all depended
upon favour and affection. "If you had no friend on the board," says
one, "you might get a chimney-sweep when you wanted a cabinetmaker." In
the same way complaints were made that the members of this board, and
other officials in high place, were given as many assigned servants as
they asked for. Thus the Chief Justice of the colony had forty, the
Colonial Secretary fifty or sixty, the Brigade Major eight or ten. The
principal landowners, too, were liberally supplied. One, a salt
manufacturer, had sixty or seventy; another, with a farm of forty
thousand acres, employed a couple of hundred servants. Laing declares
that the assignment of useful hands depended often on petty services
rendered to government, and that many of the settlers succeeded in
getting on the weak side of the governor and his advisers.

But to return to the ship, which meanwhile lay out in the stream. No one
was allowed to communicate with her, except the Colonial Secretary or
his assistant. One of these officials having gone on board to muster all
hands, inspect them, and investigate any complaints, as soon as these
preliminaries were concluded the disembarkation took place at the
dockyard. Male convicts were at once marched to the Hyde Park barracks,
where they paraded for the inspection of His Excellency the governor.
Then the assignees, having been first informed of the numbers they were
to receive, waited in person or sent for them, paying on receipt one
pound per head for bedding and the convict clothes. Assignees failing to
appear, or to remove the lots assigned to them, forfeited the grant.
With the women the system was much the same. They were first mustered,
then they landed, decked out in their finest feathers. There was no
attempt to enforce a plain uniformity of attire; each woman wore silks
and satins if she had them, with gay bonnets, bright ribbons, and showy
parasols. Persons who had applied for female servants were present at
the dockyard to receive them. After that all who remained on government
charge--and their numbers were large, for female convicts were not in
great demand--passed on next to the great central depot or factory at
Parramatta.

As the Hyde Park barracks and the Parramatta factory were to a certain
extent depot prisons for males and females respectively, a word about
both will not be out of place here.

Until later years the men's barracks had been very negligently
supervised. There was no attempt to enforce discipline within the walls.
The convicts were not even kept under lock and key. Half at least were
absent as a general rule all night, which they spent in prowling about,
stealing anything they could lay hands upon. The officers at the
barracks were tampered with, and winked for substantial reasons at the
nightly evasions of the prisoners in their charge. Even in the day time,
and inside the walls, drunkenness was very rife, and with it perpetual
pilfering from one another, and much general misconduct. Naturally in
this universal slackness of control the lower officials fattened and
grew rich at the public expense. Gross peculation and embezzlement were
continually practised. The storekeeper was known to have abstracted
supplies from government stock; and others on small salaries were found
to have amassed considerable fortunes, building themselves fine villas
in the best part of the town, and living on the fat of the land. Having
thus full scope for license and depravity, it will be conceded that
there was no attempt at punishment and restraint in this the first
halting-place of the transport in the land of exile.

The condition of the Parramatta factory, the depot for females, was even
more disgraceful. The building, not unlike an English workhouse, was
large and stood amidst spacious courtyards and gardens. The
accommodation provided was of the best. There was plenty of food and
comfortable raiment. The women were not confined always within the
walls, they had money in plenty, and there was little or no work to be
done, even by those in the lower stages or classes. A few were made to
wheel sand or gravel for gardening purposes, but the barrows used were
of light construction, and the women laughed openly and made a joke of
the labour imposed. The administration of the establishment was
entrusted for years to a matron, whose character, to say the least of
it, hardly entitled her to so responsible a charge. It was alleged that
she misappropriated the labour of the convicts, keeping back the best
prisoners to employ them for the benefit of herself and her daughters.
It was openly said, also, that these daughters were not a bit better
than they should have been. There was some attempt at classification
among the female convicts according to conduct and character, but the
lowest of these classes was filled with women who had been returned from
service or who were sentenced to remain at Parramatta till further
orders. This was just what they wished. All the women much preferred to
be at the factory. It was far better, they said, than at service. If any
servant misbehaved, and was taken by her master before a magistrate, she
said at once, "Send me back to the factory. Send me back." These scenes
in court supply curious evidence of the condition of affairs. The women
constantly made use of the most desperate and disgusting language. One,
after threatening her master, suddenly spat in his face. Another, when
sentenced to ten days on bread and water, was so insolent that the
punishment was increased to thirty. "Oh! thank you," she said coolly;
"couldn't you make it thirty-one?"--knowing perfectly well that thirty
days was the limit of the magistrate's power. No wonder that, with such
material to choose from, decent people refused to receive convict
maid-servants into their families. As a rule their characters were so
bad, they gave so much annoyance, and disturbed to such an extent the
peace and quiet of households, that the settlers would rather be without
their assistance altogether. "They make execrable servants," says a Mr.
Mudie, speaking from long experience. In many years he had only met one
or two who were well behaved. Some were exceedingly savage, and thought
nothing of doing serious mischief to any one. The most flagrant case of
this was the assault on Captain Waldron, a retired officer and settler.
Having reason to find fault with a woman for not cleaning his veranda,
he threatened to send her back to the factory. "If you send her, you
must send me too," cried another woman coming forward directly. High
words followed; after which the two women threw themselves without
warning on their master, got him down, and mauled him so seriously that
he died of the injuries he received. Other servants, convicts also, were
within earshot, but not one stirred a finger to help their master.

Not a pleasant picture this of the actual consequences of female
transportation. Perhaps all the women were not originally bad, but the
voyage out was a terrible ordeal to those who had still some faint
glimmering left of the distinctions between right and wrong. Another
observer remarks that the character and condition of these women was
"as bad as it was possible for human beings to be; they were shockingly
dissolute and depraved, steeped to the very core in profligacy and
vice." But I will now leave them and return to the men, who formed the
bulk of the convict population.

Let us take first the case of those assigned to settlers in the
interior. The assignee, as I have said, attended and carried off his
quota to dispose of them on his station, or otherwise, according to his
discretion. To get the men home--often a long way off--was no easy
matter. Sometimes the convict was given money and told to find his own
way, and again the master assumed charge, and they marched in company.
Then it happened, either that those left to themselves made straight for
the nearest public-house, or that those under escort gave their masters
the slip and traveled in the same direction. The next the assignee heard
of his new servants was a demand made upon him to take them "out of
pawn." Joining with old pals, these new chums, fresh from the restraint
of the convict ship, had soon launched out into drunkenness or worse. As
often as not, the master found them in the lock-up, with half their
clothing gone, and charged with felony. Having cost money already, they
now cost more; and the process might be repeated over and over again.
Nevertheless, sooner or later, all or a part of the new labourers
reached their destination. Here their position was quite that of
slaves. The Transportation Act gave the governor of the colony a
property in the services of every convict, and this property he made
over to the assignee. The authority with which the settler became
thereupon vested was not exactly absolute, but it was more than an
ordinary master has over his apprentice. Nevertheless, the Australian
master was bound to maintain and to protect his convict servant. He
could not flog him, nor was he supposed to ill-treat him; besides, the
law gave the convict the right of appeal and complaint against
ill-usage. Maintenance was likewise provided by law. The regulation
rations consisted weekly of seven pounds of fresh meat--beef or
mutton--and eight pounds of flour, with salt, also soap and other
necessaries; but this minimum allowance was often largely increased. The
meat issue rose to eight or nine pounds; the flour to fourteen pounds;
tea and sugar were added, and occasionally rum and tobacco. In spite of
the danger of supplying such men with spirits, rum was openly given--as
at time of sheep shearing, and so forth, when it was supposed to be
needed medicinally. The occasion of a harvest-home was often the excuse
for a general jollification. Many masters found that it was to their
interest to feed their convict servants well. This was bribing them to
do good work, and not a few people had more confidence in the efficacy
of such treatment than in purely strict and coercive measures. Mr.
Mudie, again, when before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837,
confessed to having provided one servant with a flute, just to keep him
in good humour. A good master was anxious to make his servants forget,
if possible, that they were convicts. Really profitable labour, they
argued, could only be got out of them by making them comfortable. Here
at once was a departure from the very first principles of penal
discipline. It was hardly intended that the felons who were transported
as a punishment beyond the seas should be pampered and made much of,
simply to put money into the pockets of private individuals. As a matter
of fact the average actual condition of the convict servant, as far as
food and lodging were concerned, was far superior to that of the honest
field labourer at home, and under a good master, as we have seen, he was
much better off than a soldier. He might be under some personal
restraint, and there was a chance of being flogged if he misbehaved, but
he had a great many comforts. He was allowed to marry, could never
starve, and if industrious, might look forward in no remote period of
time to rise to a position of ease, if not of actual affluence.

At all the large stations the daily routine of life was somewhat as
follows: The big bell on the farm rang out an hour before sunrise, a
second bell half an hour later, and a third when the sun appeared. It
was the night watchman's business to ring the bells. At the last summons
all hands turned out. The mechanics went to their various works, the
bullock drivers to their carts, the herdsmen to their cattle and pigs.
As a general rule the heaviest labour to be performed was kept for the
newest comers, so as to break them in. It was their business to clear
the land, fell timber, and burn it. At eight came the breakfast bell,
and with it an hour's rest. Dinner was at one, after which work was
continued until sunset. At 8 or 9 P. M., according to the season, a
night bell recalled every one, and after that no convict was supposed to
leave his hut. On the surface, then, no great amount of rest appeared to
be allowed, except at actual meal times or after sundown; but the whole
character of the work performed was desultory and far from satisfactory.
A convict servant's value was estimated by people of experience at
something much less than that of a free labourer; so much so that there
were settlers who declared they would rather pay wages, as they lost
rather than saved by this gratuitous labour. The convicts worked
unwillingly almost always; sometimes they executed their tasks as badly
as they could, on purpose to do injury. What leisure they had was not
very profitably employed. One convict in twenty might read, and some few
spent their time in plaiting straw hats for sale; but the greater number
preferred to be altogether idle, unless they could get a pack of
cards--forbidden fruit at every station, and yet generally
attainable--in which case they were prepared to gamble and quarrel all
the night through. There was little or no supervision over them in
their huts. It was quite impossible to keep them inside. No kind of
muster was feasible or even safe. The overseers were really afraid to
visit the men's huts much after dark, fearing to be attacked or openly
maltreated. It would have been far better if a strong stockade, with
high palisading, had been in all cases substituted for the huts. The
latter were open always, so that after the last bell at night, any--and
they were not a few--who chose crept out and spent the whole of the dark
hours on the prowl. Of course the convicts were incorrigible thieves,
and the whole country side was laid under contributions by them while
thus nightly at large. Sunday was another day which gave these idle
hands abundant opportunities for mischief. Of course there was no
regular work done on the farm on that day; but there was no attempt,
either, to enforce religious observances in lieu thereof. The want of
provision for public worship was at this time largely felt throughout
the colony, and seldom were churches at hand for the convicts to attend,
even if such attendance had been insisted upon. Some few superintendents
of farms took their convicts to church, if there was one in the
neighbourhood, but cases of this were few and far between. Even if there
was a church, all who could do so, sneaked out of the way on pretence of
going to bathe, and so escaped the service.

Thus far I have described only the pleasant side of a convict's life up
the country. On the whole it was far from irksome. Nevertheless, as a
set-off against the home comforts and the comparative idleness, there
was the total want of freedom of action, coupled with strictly enforced
submissiveness of demeanour. A convict was expected to be even
cringingly subservient in manner. For insolent words, nay, looks, as
betraying an insubordinate and insurgent spirit, he might be
incontinently scourged. In this way he was subject to the capricious
temper, not only of his master, but of the whole of the master's family.
Then the local magistrates had great powers. Singly a magistrate could
sentence any man to be flogged for drunkenness, disobedience, neglect of
work, or absconding; with others assembled in petty sessions, they had
power, however, to inflict heavier punishments for graver offences. In
"Byrne's Travels" I find mention made of several convicts who had
received in the aggregate many thousand lashes. The same writer asserts
that he once had an assigned servant upon whom 2,275 had been inflicted.
This man was said to have grown so callous that he was heard to declare
he would rather suffer a thousand lashes than the shortest term of
imprisonment. Life could not be very enjoyable to men liable to such
treatment. And this code was for the convicts and for them alone.
Another law applied to the masters, in whom, indeed, was vested a
tremendous power for good or evil. Some, as I have before remarked, were
quite unfit persons to have the charge of felon servants, being
themselves little better than convicts, and prepared at any time to
consort with them and make them their intimate friends. Others of the
better classes often delegated their authority to overseers, being
either non-resident on their farms, or not caring to exercise personal
control. In many cases these overseers were ex-convicts, and although it
might be considered advisable that the master should not make himself
too cheap, and that a middleman should be employed to come into direct
communion with the convict himself, still every precaution should have
been taken to prevent any abuse of power. In point of fact every
well-ordered establishment should have been uniformly under the eye of
its resident owner.

But in reality the lot of the convict in assignment was left altogether
to chance. According to his luck in masters, he might be very miserable,
or as happy as the day was long: one master might be lenient, giving
good food and exacting but little labour in return; another, a perfect
fiend. It was quite a lottery into which sort of hands the convict fell,
for until 1835 there was little or no inquiry into the character of
applicants for servants, and except in the most flagrant cases
requisitions were never refused.

This, indeed, comprised one of the chief objections to the system of
assignment. It was altogether too much a matter of haphazard. No system
of penal discipline ought to be left thus to chance; yet as we have
seen, there was no supervision and little attempt to enforce hard labour
or any stringent code of discipline. This neglect fostered evil courses,
and tended to increase the temptations to crime. Nor was the style of
labour provided that which was always most suited to the persons for
whom it was intended. In some few cases it was proper enough. Men
employed as shepherds were perforce compelled to drop into regular
habits from being obliged to go out and return with their herds at fixed
hours, and they lived much alone. But these were only a small proportion
of the whole number, and the balance working in association had many
opportunities for developing vicious qualities by this corrupting
intercourse. Especially was this the case with the mounted herdsmen, who
were free to gallop about the country, collecting together in large
numbers at the squatters' huts to drink and gamble and plot schemes of
depredation.

These squatters, who about this period--1825-35--sprang up in rank
growth round about the principal stations, did much to give annoyance,
and to increase the difficulties of the settlers. They were mostly
emancipists or ticket-of-leave men, who occupied crown pastures without
paying for them, or spent their energies in stealing horses and cattle.
Sometimes they established themselves at the corners of the settlers'
own grants of land, getting as near to estates as they could without
detection. Their principal object in life seemed to make themselves
useful to the convicts employed near them, for whom they kept "sly
grog-shops," where they sold or bartered liquor for stolen goods. This
ready market for stolen property was a source of great loss to the
settlers. One calculated that it cost him £200 or £300 a year. Pigs,
sheep, harness in bags, flour on its way to market--all these were
purloined in large quantities, and passed at once to the receivers, who
gave rum in exchange, and sometimes tea, sugar, and tobacco. The
squatters were fined if caught at these illicit practices, but to
recover money from them was like getting blood out of a stone. Another
favourite _modus operandi_ was to knock up a sort of shanty close by
some halting-place on the main line of road, where there was water handy
and the drays could be made snug for the night. The draymen naturally
flocked to the grog-shop, and naturally also obtained the sinews of war
by making free with their masters' property.

In the foregoing pages I have dwelt chiefly on assignment to the country
districts. But every convict did not of course go to the interior. Many
were assigned in the towns. Now, whatever evils may have surrounded the
system as carried out inland, the practice of town assignment was
infinitely worse in every respect. In the first place, it led to the
congregation of large numbers in places where there were many more
temptations to profligacy and crime. And just as these were increased,
so were the supervision and control that would check them diminished
till they sank to almost nothing at all. Country convicts, as we have
seen, were not much hampered by rules; but those in towns were free to
do just as they pleased. It was impossible for the masters to enforce
any regulations. In the hours of work, such as they were, the convicts
might perhaps be kept out of harm's way more or less, according to the
character and style of their employment; but labour over, they had great
license and were practically free men. Household servants were as well
off as servants at home in England: they frequented theatres and places
of amusement, and the badge of their disgrace was kept altogether in the
background. Masters were not compelled by law to enforce any particular
discipline; nor would the most strict among them dare to exercise much
surveillance over their servants. Such conduct would have been rare and
singular, and it would have drawn down upon them the animosity, or
worse, of the whole convict class. Such was the state of affairs that
this body really possessed some power, and could not openly be
affronted.

Convicts were required in the towns, as in the country, to be within
doors by 8 P. M.; but unhappily this rule was quite a dead letter. The
Sydney police was miserably inefficient. Recruited from the convict
ranks, they were known on all occasions to favour openly their old
associates. If they gave information they were called "noses," which
they disliked; or worse, they were hooted, sometimes attacked and half
killed. They were known, too, to take bribes, and to be generally most
neglectful of their duties. It was not to be expected, therefore, that
from them would come any zealous supervision of the convicts still in
assignment, even to the extent of sending all such to their homes after
8 P. M., or of preventing the commission of petty offences. But as a
matter of fact, the police were never certain whether half the men they
met were convicts in assigned service or people actually free. Sydney
was by this time so large, and the convicts so numerous, that it was
next to impossible for a constable to know every one he met, by sight.
None of the assigned servants in towns wore any distinctive dress. Those
in government hands wore gray, and the chain-gangs a parti- suit
of yellow and brown cloth, but the assigned servants appeared in their
masters' liveries, or clothed just as it pleased them. Recognition was
not likely to be easy or frequent. Even in our own day, with admirable
police machinery, the thorough supervision of criminals at large is not
always obtained. In Sydney, seventy years ago, it was lamentably below
the mark. Often enough men who had arrived in recent ships, having been
assigned in due course, were soon lost sight of, to reappear presently
under another name, as men quite free. They had proved themselves so
useful that their masters wished to give them sole charge of a
business, which, if still convicts, they could not assume. In this way
it was discovered that an assigned convict servant had charge of a
tan-yard close under the eyes of the police, but here it was proved that
the police had connived at a grave neglect of duty.

It followed, too, from the nature of their previous vocations, that the
convicts assigned in towns were the sharpest and most intelligent of
their class. They were therefore the more prone to dissipation, and the
more difficult to restrain within bounds. Knowing their value, they
presumed on it, and felt that they were too useful to be sent off as
rough farm hands into the interior. Here was another blot in the system
of assignment, and generally on the whole principle of transportation.
The punishment fell quite unequally on offenders. The biggest villains
and the most hardened offenders fell naturally into the lightest
"billets;" while the half-educated country bumpkin, whose crime may have
been caused by ignorance or neglect, was made a hewer of wood and drawer
of water. Prominent among those of the first class were specials, or
gentlemen convicts, as they were styled; men sentenced for "genteel"
crimes, forgery only, or embezzlement, but whose delicate fingers had
never handled the cracksman's jimmy, or tampered with foil or blow.
These genteel criminals were forever, through all the days of
transportation, a thorn in the side of the administration, and they were
always treated with far more consideration than they deserved. Some of
these were well-known men, like one who had been a captain in the royal
navy, and whose proclivities were so ineradicable that he suffered a
second sentence at Norfolk Island for forgery, his favourite crime. From
among this class the lawyers selected their clerks, and the auctioneers
their assistants. If unusually well-educated they became teachers in
schools, and were admitted as such even into the public seminaries of
Sydney. A flagrant instance of the consequences of this injudicious
practice is quoted by Laing--a clergyman's son, who had a convict tutor,
coming himself, under the influence of such a man's teaching, to be also
a convict sentenced to transportation for life.

There was another very improper proceeding which for a long time held
among the convicts of this superior or more wealthy class. Their wives
followed them out to the antipodes, bringing with them often the bulk of
their ill-gotten gains. Having thus ample funds, they established
themselves well on arrival, and applied for a grant of convicts like the
rest of their neighbours. Naturally they took care to secure that their
own husbands should be among the number. There was one man who had
received a very heavy sentence for the robbery of a custom house, who
should have gone direct to Norfolk Island. Through some bribery he was
landed at Sydney, and was made overseer at once of a gang working in the
street. Within a day or two he absconded. His wife had joined him with
the proceeds of the robbery, and they went off together. Mr. Macarthur
gives another case of a farrier who was assigned to him. This convict's
wife followed him, and asked permission to live with him on Mr.
Macarthur's farm. When this was refused the man managed to get returned
to Sydney, and was there reassigned to his wife. To something of this
kind some of the largest shops in Sydney owed their origin.

Among the many lighter and more remunerative kinds of employment into
which the convict of the special class readily fell, was employment on
the public press. As time passed there had grown up a strong antagonism
between bond and free, and both sides had their newspapers. The organs
which were emancipist in tone were not of the highest class, but they
were often conducted with considerable ability. Their staff was of
course recruited from the convict ships as they arrived, where
compositors, leader writers, and even sub-editors were occasionally to
be found. The most notorious instance of this description, was the case
of W., who was originally assigned as a servant to the proprietor of the
_Sydney Gazette_. This paper, which was then published only three times
a week, was an able and influential journal, and its editor and owner
was a certain O'S., who had himself been assigned to a former
proprietor, and by him employed as a reporter. To him came W., and these
two, according to Dr. Laing, bent all their energies to compass "the
abolition of all the moral distinctions that the law of God has
established in society; to persuade the public that the free emigrant
was no better than the convict, that the whole community was equally
corrupt, and those of the convict class were no worse than the best in
the colony, their situation being the result of misfortune, as they
pretended, and not of misconduct."

W. was a Scotchman, who had been outlawed for some misdemeanour in the
office of a solicitor by whom he had been employed in Edinburgh; he then
went to London, and was taken into a large mercantile house, Morrison's;
from which, for embezzlement, he was transported for fourteen years. He
was sent out in Governor Darling's time, and was sent to Wellington
Valley, then a penal settlement for educated convicts. He stayed there
but a short time, thanks to his interest with the superintendent, and
returning to Sydney obtained a ticket-of-leave, being afterwards
employed as a clerk in the corporation office, under the archdeacon of
the colony. On the dissolution of the corporation he was no longer
required there, but he found great demand for his services from editors
of newspapers, having two sub-editorships offered to him at the same
time. He went to the _Sydney Gazette_, and thenceforward had it under
his entire control, the ostensible editor being a person of dissipated
habits, who let him do as he pleased. This W. was a man of considerable
talent. From that time forth he proved a source of prodigious
demoralisation from the sentiments he disseminated, and the use he made
of the powerful engine he had under his control, in endeavouring to
exasperate the prison part of the population against the free emigrants.
He was tried at length on a charge of having bribed a compositor to
steal a printed slip from another newspaper office in the colony. The
printed slip was a proof of a letter that had been sent for publication
to the editor of the paper, and which contained libellous matter,
reflecting on the character of a certain emancipist. The letter was not
very carefully examined by the editor until it had been set up in type,
but on discovering the nature of its contents he considered that he
ought not to publish it. Though actually printed, it never appeared in
the paper. W. came to know that such a paper was in type, and he bribed
a convict compositor in the office to which the letter had been sent to
purloin a copy, or one of the proofs of the letter. He then sent the
letter in an envelope through the post to the person libelled, in order
that there might be proof of its publication. The person to whom the
letter referred thereupon brought an action against the editor of the
paper to which it had been sent, and endeavoured to establish the fact
of publication from the circumstance of his having received the letter
through the public post; but the action failed. On inquiry, W.'s
complicity in the matter was discovered, and he was tried for being a
party to the theft. Of this he was acquitted, as the property found was
not of value sufficient to constitute grand larceny; but the judge
considered that he should not be allowed to remain at Sydney, and the
governor sent him to Port Macquarie, a station for gentlemen convicts.
Though now two hundred and fifty miles from Sydney, he still continued
to contribute articles to the _Sydney Gazette_; and soon afterwards the
widow of the late proprietor of the paper, into whose good graces he had
insinuated himself, went down to Port Macquarie and married him. He then
got into trouble by stirring up a feud between the harbour master and a
police magistrate. In the investigation which followed, both these
officials were dismissed and W.'s ticket-of-leave was cancelled. He was
sentenced to be classed again with the convicts in government hands, and
on hearing this he absconded. Nothing more was heard of him.

I think it will be evident from what I have said that the actual
condition of men who were in assigned service was not very disagreeable
if they were skilful hands and useful to their masters. This much
established, they found their lives were cast in pleasant places. They
did not want for money: they were allowed openly a portion of their
earnings, and these gains were often largely increased by illegal
methods. Besides this, many masters gave their servants funds to provide
for themselves. They even went so far as to allow their men to
marry--saddling themselves with the responsibility of having perhaps to
keep both convict and his family. These convict marriages, when
permitted, took place generally in the convict class, though cases were
known of free women who had married assigned servants, and _vice versa_.
Among the latter, Byrne, in his "Travels," speaks of a certain old lady,
the mother of very respectable people, who had married when a convict,
and who did not, to the day of her death, quite abandon the habits of
her former condition. Her husband had been an officer of high rank, and
her sons rose to wealth and prosperity in the colony; but no
considerations for the feelings of those belonging to her were
sufficient to wean her from her evil propensities. She was so
passionately addicted to drink, that it was in vain her children sought
to keep her with them: she always escaped, taking with her all on which
she could lay hands, and returned to her favorite associates--the
brick-makers in the suburbs of Sydney.

But such marriages as these were the exception. As a general rule the
assigned servant, whether in town or country, paid a visit to Parramatta
factory, and made his case known to the matron by whom it was governed.
"Turn out the women of such and such a class," forthwith cries Mrs. G.,
and the marriageable ladies come trooping down, to be ranked up in a row
like soldiers, or like cattle at a fair. Benedict walks down and
inspects, then throws his handkerchief, and if the bride be willing, the
two retire to a corner to talk a little together. If the conversation
is not quite satisfactory to "Smith, _Aboukir_," or "Jones, _Lady
Dacre_,"[1] he makes a second selection; and so on, perhaps, with three
or four. Cases were known of fastidious men who had run through several
hundreds, and had declared in the end that there was not a single woman
to suit. Others were less particular. Men up country have been known to
leave the choice to their masters, upon the latter's next visit to
Sydney. There was of course no security against bigamy: often both
parties to the colonial marriage had wife or husband alive at home, and
just as inevitably the conduct of these factory brides was most
questionable after the new knot was tied.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A convict in Australia was always known by his name and the name of
the ship in which he had come out.




CHAPTER IV

A CONVICT COMMUNITY

     Convicts in public hands--How employed--Road parties--Chain gangs
     and the penal settlements--Life and labour in each--Classes of
     convicts--The emancipists--Many acquire great wealth--Irritation
     among the free settlers--Growing party pledged to abolish
     transportation--Deplorable state of the Colony--Crime
     prevalent--Drunkenness the besetting sin--Judge Burton's charge:
     "Transportation must cease"--Arguments against it.


In the latter part of the preceding chapter I have dealt with convicts
in assignment. These of course did not comprise the whole number in the
colony. Putting on one side the ticket-of-leave men,--who were still
really convicts, though for the moment and during good behaviour masters
of themselves,--and not including emancipists, who though, to all
intents and purposes, men free as air, still carried a class-brand which
generations only could efface--there were, in addition to the servants
assigned to private individuals, a large body of convicts retained in
the hands of the government of the colony. A certain proportion of these
were men so chosen on arrival for satisfying certain demands, and
therefore kept back from ordinary assignment because the government
officials, so to speak, assigned them to themselves. There were public
works to be carried out, and the government was clearly as much entitled
to share in the supply of convict labour as the settler. It was said
that the condition of these convicts in government employ was always
worse than those in private hands. About one fourth of the whole
available number were thus appropriated for the colonial works. But over
and above these, the government held the entire number of refuse
convicts in the colonies. Every man who did not get on with his master;
every man who committed himself, and was sentenced to undergo any
correction greater than flogging or less than capital punishment, came
back to government, and was by it disposed of in one of three ways:
First, the road parties; second, the chain-gangs; and third, the penal
settlements.

The road parties were employed either in Sydney itself and other towns,
or along the many miles of roads wherever their services were required.
Those at Sydney were lodged in the Hyde Park barracks, whence they
issued forth daily to their work, under the charge of overseers, at the
rate of one to every thirty men. These overseers were themselves
convicts; chosen for the post as being active, intelligent, and perhaps
outwardly more respectable than their fellows. Naturally the control of
such overseers was not very vigilant. They were paid no wages, and had
no remuneration but certain increased indulgences, such as an allowance
of tobacco and other minor luxuries. Hence they connived at the absence
of any men who were disposed to forage in the town and run the risk of
capture. If caught thieving, or as missing, the culprits were to take
the consequences; but if all went well, they shared whatever they stole
during the day with their complaisant overseer. Parties in the country
were under similar management, but they were dispersed over such a very
wide area that efficient supervision was even more difficult. The
surveyor-general of the colony was the responsible head of the whole
department; but under him the parties were actually worked by these
overseers. The convicts were free to come and go almost as they pleased.
Their dwellings were simple huts of bark, which presented no obstacles
to egress after hours at night. In the day time they were equally
unrestrained. They did odd jobs, if they pleased, for the neighbouring
settlers, though under Sir Richard Bourke's assignment rules, which were
promulgated in 1835, any settler who gave employment to convicts from
the road parties thereupon forfeited all his assigned servants. Any
artisan might earn money as blacksmith, carpenter, or cooper. Many
others were engaged in the straw hat trade, a very favourite occupation
for all the convicts. Great numbers, less industriously disposed, spent
their time in stealing. A large proportion of the robberies which were
so prevalent in the colony were to be traced to the men of these parties
on the roads. They were highwaymen, neither more nor less; and every
settler far and near suffered from their depredations. Sometimes they
went off in gangs, and, encamping by the side of the road, laid every
passing team under contribution. Increased facilities were given for the
commission of these crimes through the carelessness of the settlers
themselves, when they were permitted to employ men from the road parties
on Sundays or during leisure hours. Wages in cash were paid in return,
and the door was thus open to drunkenness and the evils that follow in
its train. Worse than this, at harvest time, when the road parties were
eagerly drawn upon for the additional hands so urgently required, the
settlers were in the habit of giving the men they had thus employed
passes to rejoin the stations from which they had come. Of course the
convicts did not hurry home, and of course, also, they did no little
mischief while on their way.

The work that was done by these parties was certainly irksome in
character. Breaking stones under a broiling sun is not an agreeable
pastime. But the amount of labour performed was ludicrously small, and
has been described by an eyewitness as a disgrace to those in charge. On
the whole, therefore, the convicts of this class had no great cause of
complaint. They had plenty of congenial society, even outside their own
gangs, for they were not prevented from associating with the assigned
servants around; their food was ample; and they had abundant
opportunities for self-aggrandisement in the manner most agreeable to
themselves. It was not strange, then, that idle, worthless servants in
assignment greatly preferred service in the parties on the road.

Nevertheless, there were not wanting among the free residents
intelligent persons who saw how the labour of these road parties might
have been made really productive of great benefit to the colony. There
was still plenty of work to be done in developing colonial resources:
over and above the construction and repair of roads, they could have
been usefully employed in the clearance of township lands, the widening
and deepening of river beds, in quarrying, fortifying, and building
piers. But to have accomplished these results, a system more complete
than any that was even dreamed of then must have been indispensable.
Success only could have come from regular effective supervision by a
thoroughly trustworthy staff, and by carefully constructed prison
accommodation, such as was provided later in carrying out public works
by convict labour in Western Australia.

In the chain-gangs there actually was greater restraint, and some
semblance of rigorous discipline. The convicts were relegated to this
system of punishment as a general rule for colonial crimes, though at
times new arrivals of a desperate character were also drafted into them
at once. In these gangs the convicts were kept in close custody, and
condemned to work which was really hard. There were some few
chain-gangs in Sydney, living on board a hulk, employed at the magazines
on the island, and in improving the streets; but as a general rule they
were to be found chiefly at out stations, or in the interior. They were
guarded always by a detachment of troops, and when most efficiently
organised were governed by a military officer, who was also a
magistrate. Under him there was also a superintendent in charge of each
stockade or barrack, with a staff of constables in the proportion of one
to seventy-five convicts. The duties of the constables were analogous to
those of warders in permanent prisons at home. The stockades were
substantial buildings, in appearance somewhat similar to American log
houses, but of greater strength, sufficient to preclude all possibility
of escape. These stockades accommodated one hundred or more men each.
They were of simple construction: the walls formed of timber, split into
strong slabs, which rested in grooves at top and bottom; the roof was of
timber also, covered with bark. In most cases the materials were found
close to the spot, timber being everywhere plentiful; but it was
possible to take down the stockade and remove the pieces to another
locality if required. The prisoners were not badly fed, on flour, maize
meal, and beef. Their clothing was two suits a year. They had medical
attendance, and regular divine worship. Their beds were of plank, but
there was no lack of bedding. The great hardships were the unremitting
labour--at not less than ten hours daily, and in chains--leg-irons
weighing six or seven pounds, which were never for a moment removed. So
important were these irons considered, that it was the stockade
superintendent's business to examine closely every prisoner's chains
daily before the stockade was emptied for labour. In this way chiefly
escapes were prevented, as the convict found himself rather too heavily
handicapped to run, carrying with him several extra pounds of metal.

One other unpleasant feature at the stockades was the official
"scourger," as he was called--a convict specially appointed to execute
corporal punishment. He was not himself an "iron-gang" man, but came
from assigned service together with the convicts' cooks and wardsmen
required for the interior economy of the stockade. What with work
unremitting, weighty chains that were never removed, isolation from the
dissipation of the towns, the convict in the iron-gang was on no bed of
roses. Nor could he, under the later régime, escape as easily as he had
done heretofore. Sentries with loaded muskets guarded every exit, and
they gave him only one chance to halt when summoned, before they fired.
After two years' trial Sir Richard Bourke reported that his new system
was eminently successful. By its assistance he was at length enabled to
dispense altogether with the road parties without irons, which I have
already described as being so fruitful of evil to the community at
large. Another evil to which I have not referred, and which was
attributable to the slackness of control over these road parties and
chain-gangs, was the existence of a class of desperadoes sufficiently
well known to every reader--I mean the notorious "bushrangers" of the
Australian colonies. Certain numbers of these were recruited from among
the assigned servants, who absconded when they and their masters could
not agree, but by far the greater proportion was furnished by the
government gangs, escapes from which were for a long time frequent and
generally successful. Whenever a man of courage and ability got away, he
collected around him a band of brigands like himself; and then, for
periods varying in length according to the nature of the pursuit, these
villains subjected the whole neighbourhood to their depredations. They
attacked chiefly the outlying huts and houses, but seldom large
establishments. One case was known where some sixty men of a chain-gang
had plotted to break out simultaneously and make for the bush. Thence
they were to march on Macarthur's station, bent on pillage. Nothing came
of this plot, because precautions were taken to meet it. But at other
times bloody affrays were common enough between the bushrangers and the
mounted police. Indeed, it was well known that unless a gang of these
highwaymen was entirely exterminated there was no peace for the district
in which they were at large. If one survivor escaped he soon became the
nucleus of a new gang. What between attacks on dwelling-houses, and the
daily stoppage on the highways of carts and wagons, the country
generally was most insecure. People went about in fear of their lives.

The penal settlements contained, as a matter of course, the dregs of
convictism. These settlements were the superlative degree of infamy. The
convicts in the road parties and chain-gangs were bad enough, Heaven
knows, but they were angels of light compared to those in the penal
settlements. Offenders were not indeed transferred to these terrible
receptacles till all other treatment had failed. When there, "it
seemed," to quote Judge Burton's words, "that the heart of a man was
taken from him, and that he was given the heart of a beast." It will not
beseem me to go fully into all the details of these cesspools of
iniquity, but I shall have to refer at some length further on to Norfolk
Island, the worst of them all. The settlements used as penal by New
South Wales were Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island; whereas Van Diemen's
Land used Tasman's Peninsula. This place was cut off altogether from the
settled districts, having only one communication--at Forestiers
Peninsula--with the main island. On this neck of land, between Pirates'
Bay and Norfolk Bay, stood an officer's guard; and besides his sentries,
a chain of fierce dogs kept watch and ward from shore to shore. These
dogs had been trained to give tongue at the slightest noise day or
night. So successful was the guard they kept, that only two prisoners
ever escaped from Port Arthur. One was recaptured, the other died in the
woods. This station on Tasman's Peninsula had the great advantage that
it was not, like Norfolk Island, distant several days' sail. Being but
six hours from headquarters at Hobart, it was brought directly under the
supervision of the governor and other officials.

I have now described the condition and style of life of all convicts,
still such; of all, I mean, who were not yet nominally or actually free.
The whole of these were comprised in the numbers at assigned service, in
the road parties, chain-gangs, or penal settlements.

Next above them, on a sort of debatable land, free for the time being,
but liable to degradation anew, stood the convict on ticket-of-leave.
This expression and the practice to which it applies has been adopted
into home legislation and language, but the term itself was a colonial
invention. The first tickets were granted by Governor Phillip with the
intention of instituting some stage intermediate between complete
freedom and actual restraint. As time passed new orders varied the
details; but the meaning of the term remained practically the same. The
holder of a ticket-of-leave was a convicted felon, who had permission to
be at large before the whole term of his sentence had actually expired.

At the top of the convict ladder were the emancipists, whose term of
transportation was at an end, who were free to return to the land from
whence they came, and begin life afresh, but who were never actually
whitewashed in the colonies, or permitted to rise in the social scale to
an equality with the free settler who had never broken the laws. We have
seen how successive governors sought to bring the emancipists forward,
and the heartburnings it occasioned. Their efforts were doubtless
supported by the wealth and importance of many of the emancipist class;
but it was on this account that the antagonism exhibited by the free
population was the more unvarying and bitter. Many of the respectable
inhabitants had been outstripped in the race for fortune by men who had
arrived in the colony bearing the felon's brand; and the free settlers
felt that in fighting against the pretensions of these ex-convicts they
were fighting for very life. The position of the latter was so strong,
that with the slightest success they would have swamped the former
altogether. No doubt the injudicious tone of the emancipist press, and
the flagrant conduct of many of the principal emancipists, drove the
free settlers into opposition more strenuous than was absolutely
required. A man who had been a convict was not necessarily to be taken
by the hand and made much of from pure sentimental philanthropy. But
neither, on the other hand, should he have been kept perpetually at a
distance, and treated as an outcast forever. It was because the
emancipists formed a body so powerful that their opponents were more or
less afraid of them, and stood really at bay, fighting with their backs
to the wall. Not a little of this bitter hostility has survived to the
present day. Even now, in the towns where transportation had effect, the
convict element stands in a class apart; there are caste distinctions
stronger than any in the mother country, of which the barriers are
rarely, if ever, overpassed.

But beyond question, many of the emancipists throve. The pictures drawn
of their wealth and prosperity may be a little exaggerated, but in their
main outlines they were undoubtedly true. There was one who made a
fortune of £45,000 in a year. Several others had incomes of £20,000. One
or two of the largest shops in Sydney were owned by them. They had
public-houses, and farms, and ships, and newspapers, and all the outward
signs of material wealth. They spared no pains or cost to get gorgeous
furniture and costly plate. They had grand carriages and good horses,
and were fond of lavish and ostentatious expenditure. But with all this,
low tastes prevailed. No one bought pictures or works of art: the only
literature they valued was the "Newgate Calendar," and they preferred a
prize-fight any day to an opera or a decent play. It was said, indeed,
that the principal wealth of the colony was for a long time held in the
hands of those emancipists. Honest people less successful in the race
for money declared that these others made fortunes because they were
quite unscrupulous. No doubt the accusation held. One case was proved
in which a certain shop undersold all others, simply because its owner,
an ex-convict, was a receiver of stolen goods, which he naturally was
able to retail at remarkably cheap rates. A number made their fortunes
by dealing only with their fellow-convicts, whom a sort of freemasonry
attracted always to convict shops. The practice, at one time prevalent,
and to which I have already referred, of giving small grants of land to
ticket-of-leave men, was another opening to convict shopkeepers and
general dealers. These farmers came into Sydney to sell their produce.
As there were no markets, certain individuals bought all that came,
paying for the same in "property,"--in drink, that is to say, and other
articles of consumption. The countrymen got drunk always, and stayed a
day or two on the same spot: at last the landlord would ask if they knew
how much they owed, and name the amount as £50. When they expressed
surprise, he would tell them they had been too drunk to know what they
were doing. Of course the victim was unable to pay, and had to sign a
power of attorney, or paper binding himself to give up all his produce
until the debt was cancelled. This fraud was repeated again and again,
till all the man's property was pledged. Then he was sold up. One man
had been known to drink away his farm of 100 acres in a single night. It
was by carrying on this line of action that the emancipist already
mentioned as worth £20,000 a year became a large landed proprietor. But
he was also a thrifty, careful man, from the time he had come out when
almost a boy with one of the first fleets. He was a sober man, moreover;
and when spirits were issued to the convicts employed in building at
Parramatta, he saved his and sold it to his fellows. Then, putting by
all the time he was a prisoner every shilling he could make, he was able
when free to set up a public-house, and buy a horse and gig which he let
for hire. One day when his trap was wanted he drove it himself, and had
as "fare" an ex-convict woman who owned a little property--some two or
three hundred pounds. This woman he married, and thus little by little
increased his possessions.

On the whole it was not strange that there should be fierce warfare
between the better classes and the emancipists as a body. Beyond doubt,
the emancipists formed a very corrupting element in general society.
They looked with leniency on men who had committed serious crimes, and
welcomed those whom honest people naturally shunned. One of the sorest
points of contention was the admission of these emancipists to serve on
juries in criminal and other trials. It was not alone that they leaned
to the side of the accused, and could not, even in cases clearly proved,
be persuaded to convict; but respectable people objected to be herded
with them in the same panel. The question was warmly argued. Petitions
were presented for and against; and this of itself showed the extent to
which the convict element arrogated power to itself. One petition
praying for the abolition of the practice was signed by the clergy,
landowners, merchants, and gentry generally; while the counter petition
was prepared and signed mostly by men on ticket-of-leave. Irritated,
undoubtedly, by the general state of affairs, a party among the free
settlers grew up, and daily gained strength, which was pledged to the
abolition of transportation.

Truly the state of New South Wales was at that time terrible. Crime was
extraordinarily prevalent. Morals were loose and drunkenness was the
besetting sin of the colony. It affected all classes. Drunken people
were to be seen in all directions, men and women fighting in the
streets, and riotous conduct everywhere. At the Rocks--the Seven Dials
of Sydney--scenes of debauchery were repeated and always disgraceful. In
the upper classes, at the hotel bars, the same tastes prevailed; and the
gentry fuddled themselves with wine, just as the lower orders did with
rum. This _penchant_ for drink was curiously contagious. Free emigrants
who came out with sober habits were soon as bad as the old hands. Of
course among the convict class the drunkenness knew no bounds. The
favourite drink was rum--not fine old Jamaica, but East Indian, fiery
and hot--which was handed round undiluted in a bucket at all regular
"sprees." Often assigned servants were found downstairs hopelessly drunk
while host and guests waited upstairs for dinner, the roasts being in
the fire and the meat boiled to rags. Even good servants, fairly honest
and capable, could not resist the bottle. The hardest drinkers were the
"old hands," or convicts who had finished their terms and had become
free. These fellows worked hard for a year or two till they had put by
some £40 or £50, then posted off to Sydney to squander the whole in one
big debauch. They stood treat to all,--rum flowed like water,--and if
the money did not go fast enough they called for champagne. "It is, in
truth, impossible to conceive," continues the same writer, "the lengths
to which drunkenness proceeds and the crime it leads to, not only to
obtain the means of gratification, but as a consequence on indulgence."
To purvey to the universal thirst there were dram-shops and publics by
hundreds everywhere. Licenses were seldom, if ever, refused, even to
persons of unknown character. For them it was quite sufficient to get
the good word of the chief constable--himself an old convict. He was not
above a bribe, and his recommendation always carried the day. "In no
city of the world," says Byrne, "are there the same proportion of
public-houses, paying high rent, and doing an excellent business....
From high to low--the merchant, mechanic, and labourer, all alike are a
thirsty community. The bar-rooms of the hotels and inns are as much
crowded as the taps of the dram-shops. Drink, drink, drink, seems to be
the universal motto, and the quantity that is consumed is incredible;
from early morning to night it is the same--Bacchus being constantly
sacrificed to."

Of the extraordinary prevalence of crime there could be little doubt.
One eminent judge spoke of the colony as composed of two classes; one
whose main business was the commission of crime and the other, the
punishment of it. The whole colony, he said, seemed to be in motion
towards the courts of justice. Beyond question the criminal statistics
were rather startling. The number of convictions for highway robbery in
New South Wales alone was equal to the whole number of convictions for
all offences in England. Murders and criminal assaults were as common
out there as petty larcenies at home. The ratio was one offender to
every twenty-two of population; while in England about the same period
it varied from one in seven hundred and forty to one in a thousand. It
is but fair, however, to state that nearly the whole mass of crime
proceeded from the convicts, or those who had been such. Among the
reputable portion of the population the proportion was no greater in New
South Wales than elsewhere. Sydney was a perfect den of thieves; and
these, being indeed selected from the whole felonry of England, were
quite masters of their business, and stood at the head of the
profession. The report of the police magistrate of Sydney, printed in
October, 1835, gives an awful picture of the state of the town. Of the
whole population of twenty thousand a large proportion were prisoners,
past or present, "whose passions are violent, and who have not been
accustomed to control them, yet for the most part have no lawful means
of gratifying them. It includes a great number of incorrigible
characters, who, on obtaining their freedom, will not apply themselves
to any honest mode of earning their living, but endeavour to support
themselves in idleness and debauchery by plunder."

"There is more immorality in Sydney," he continues, "than in any other
English town of the same population in His Majesty's dominions." It
contained two hundred and nineteen public-houses, and there were besides
sly grog-shops innumerable. "There is no town which affords so much
facility for eluding the vigilance of the police. The unoccupied bush
near and within the town itself will afford shelter to the offender and
hide him from pursuit; he may steal or hire a boat, and in a few minutes
place an arm of the sea between him and his pursuers.... The
drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great portion of the
inhabitants afford innumerable opportunities and temptations day and
night to live by plunder." Sir Francis Forbes, the Chief Justice of the
colony, endorses the foregoing statements. "That this is a true
description," he says, "of the actual state of Sydney cannot be denied."

Another powerful voice was raised by Judge Burton, whose charge to the
grand jury of Sydney in November, 1835, attracted universal attention.
Not alone were crimes constantly detected and punished, but others,
often the most flagrant, stalked undiscovered through the land. And
numerous executions exercised no effect in deterring from crime. The
example of repeated capital punishments caused no alarm. There was no
attempt by the masters to raise the moral tone of their convicts; no
religious worship on Sundays, as we have seen; and instead of it,
drunkenness and debauchery. Masters, indeed, exercised hardly any
control over their men. To this Judge Burton traced nearly all the
crime. Many of the most daring robberies were to be attributed to this,
and this alone. Convict servants, as many as five and six together, went
about openly to plunder, masked, and armed with muskets--a weapon not
capable of much concealment. Even in broad daylight, and in the open
highway, harmless folk had been stopped by these miscreants and robbed.

In a word, Judge Burton intimated clearly that transportation must
cease. The colonies could never rise to their proper position; they
could not obtain those free institutions for which even then they were
agitating; in a word, the whole moral aspect of the colony suffered so
terribly by the present system, that the time must come when it must be
abandoned altogether.

The reader who has followed me through this and the preceding chapter
will probably admit that the method of transportation, as it had been
administered, was indeed a failure. Looking at the actual tangible
results, as they appeared at that date, at an early period of the
colonial history, and before years of subsequent prosperity and cleanly
life had purged the colony of its one constant infectious bane, they
were most unsatisfactory. Hardly any one could be said to have profited
in all these years but the convicts for whom transportation had been
instituted. But it had been instituted as a punishment, not as a boon;
and although we cannot actually quarrel with a system which had the
undoubted effect of turning large numbers of criminals into wealthy and
therefore, to a certain extent, honest men, we may fairly condemn it on
principle. Transportation to the antipodes was about the kindest thing
we could do for the criminal class. It was, indeed, removing them to a
distance from their old haunts and ways of life, but they went to a land
flowing with milk and honey. After the earlier years the vague terrors
of that unknown country had disappeared. Hardly a family of thieves but
had one or more relatives at the other end of "the pond." Those without
relatives had numerous friends and pals who had gone before. Besides
which there was this distinct anomaly, that convicts were now sent for
their crimes to a land which was held out as a land of promise to the
free emigrant. "It not unfrequently happens, that whilst a judge is
expatiating on the miseries of exile, at the same time, and perhaps in
the same place, some active agent of emigration may be found magnifying
the advantages of the new country; lauding the fertility of its soil,
and the beauties of its climate; telling of the high wages to be there
obtained, the enormous fortunes that have been made; and offering to
eager and willing listeners, as a boon and special favour, the means of
conveyance to that very place to which the convict in the dock has been
sentenced for his crimes."

But all the arguments against transportation are now as clear as
noonday. It failed to reform, except in a curiously liberal,
unintentional fashion; it was no punishment; it was terribly costly; and
as it was carried out was, at least for a time, distinctly injurious to
the best interests of the colonies in which it took effect. Archbishop
Whateley summed up the situation in forcible language in his "Thoughts
on Secondary Punishment."

"In any of the leading requisites of any system of secondary punishment
transportation was defective. Thus, it was neither formidable--in other
words, the apprehension of it did not operate as much as possible to
deter men from crime, and thus prevent the necessity of its actual
infliction--nor was it corrective, or at least not corrupting--tending
to produce in the criminal himself, if his life be spared, and in
others, either a moral improvement, or at least as little as possible of
moral debasement. Nor, lastly, was it cheap, so as to make the
punishment of the criminal either absolutely profitable to the
community, or at least not excessively costly. In all these requisites
transportation had been found deficient, but chiefly in the most
important, viz. in the power of exercising a salutary terror in
offenders."




CHAPTER V

THE PROBATION SYSTEM

     Reform in system of secondary punishment--Convicts still to be sent
     to the antipodes but after passing through various stages of
     improvement--Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania, chosen as sole future
     receptacle of convicts who are to pass through probationary
     treatment--Real imprisonment--Removal to Government
     gangs--Conditionally at large--Ticket-of-leave--Absolute
     pardon--Development of Norfolk Island--Its degeneration--Domination
     of the "Ring"--Port Arthur--Convicts in excess of the resources of
     the colony--Ominous prospect.


We now arrive at a new stage in the history of penal legislation. The
time had come when transportation was to be distinctly discountenanced
and its approaching abolition openly discussed. Many concurrent causes
contributed to this. Sir William Molesworth's committee, in 1837, had
spoken against transportation in the plainest terms. It was condemned
because it was unequal yet without terrors to offenders. It was
extravagantly expensive, and most corrupting to convict, colonist, and
all concerned. Last, but not least, the protest of the colonists
themselves, now for the first time formulated and put forward with all
the insistance that accompanies the display of a virtuous
determination, could not be entirely ignored. Important changes
therefore were inevitable, nor could they be much longer delayed.

In point of fact, in the matter of secondary punishments it was a return
to the position of fifty years before. At one and the same moment the
three latest devised outlets through which the graver criminals had been
disposed of were practically closed: the antipodes, by agitation and the
strident voice of public opinion; the hulks, by the faultiness of their
internal management; and the great reforming penitentiary, by the
absolute barrenness of results. If deportation beyond the seas were to
come to an end, then the convicts must remain in the mother country. But
where? Not in the hulks; that was out of the question. Sir William
Molesworth had recommended more penitentiaries, as the Nabob ordered
more curricles. But the country grudged another half million: there had
been little or no return for that spent years before on Millbank. Then
it was suggested that large prisons should be constructed on the
principle of Pentonville, for ordinary offenders, while the more
desperate characters were to be drafted to Lundy Island and other rocks
that might hold them. A third scheme was to construct convict barracks
in the neighbourhood of the dockyards, to replace the hulks; but this,
which contained in itself the germ of the present British prison system,
was far too radical a change to be tolerated at that time or for many
years to come. All action being thus impeded and beset with difficulty,
the British Government steered a middle course. It was thought that by
grafting certain important so-called improvements upon the old system it
might be retained. Doubtless, judged by later experience, the plan
appears shifty and incomplete; but in theory and as seen at the time it
was excellent. It was deduced by sound logical arguments from given
premises, and had those premises remained unchanged the system might
perhaps have existed longer without collapse. But reasoning on paper is
not the same as in real life: one small accident will upset the
profoundest calculations. The plan of "probation" which I am about to
describe was admirably devised; but it failed because the conditions of
the colonies varied, and because small obstacles, that were at the time
of conception overlooked or ignored, grew in course of time sufficiently
powerful to upset the whole scheme as originally devised.

Beyond question the task was not a light one. The Government did not
shirk its duty, but it was fully alive to the difficulties that lay in
the way. Speaking some years later, a member of that administration thus
deprecates adverse criticism. "We could hardly hope," says Earl Grey,
"to succeed at once in devising a system of secondary punishments
effectual for its purpose and free from objections, thereby solving a
problem which has for many years engaged the attention of legislators
and statesmen of most civilised countries, and has hitherto proved most
difficult for them all." But they met the question manfully, and this is
what they devised.

Transportation was to continue in force, but it was to be governed by
certain checks and safeguards which had been altogether absent before,
through all the long years that convicts had been sent out to the
antipodes. And now the whole stream was to be directed on Van Diemen's
Land alone. This Van Diemen's Land, which was thenceforth to be only a
colonial prison, had been settled some years later than Botany Bay, by a
party under Colonel Collins from the parent settlement. It had struggled
for life amid the same vicissitudes of famine and privation as New South
Wales, and similarly some years had elapsed before its home products
were sufficient for its own support. Up to the year 1821 it was solely a
penal settlement for the transportation of convicts from Sydney; but
after that date a few free settlers planted themselves in it, and
by-and-by ships landed their living cargoes at Hobart Town direct from
England, just as they did at Sydney in New South Wales. The system of
assignment was practised precisely as in the senior settlement, with
this difference, that the discipline was more perfect, and the machine
worked with greater ease. Two thirds of the whole number there were thus
in assigned service, the balance being employed as in New South Wales in
chain-gangs, at penal settlements, or on the roads.

Colonel Arthur, who was for many years governor of the colony, and who
was well known as a strenuous supporter of transportation, claimed, and
with some show of right, that the management and treatment of convicts
had been attended with a greater measure of success in Van Diemen's Land
than elsewhere. This may have had some weight with the government; for
the existence of a good system of administration was essential to the
execution of the new project: but it is probable that Van Diemen's Land
was chosen as the sole future receptacle of convicts because as yet it
had had no thought of refusing to receive them. New South Wales had
rebelled, but Van Diemen's Land was still obedient; and no time was lost
in turning its willingness to good account.

Although for years it had been more or less a penal settlement, as now
constituted it became essentially a colonial prison. Vast masses of
convicts were to be congregated in its chief towns; its out-stations
were to be overrun with convicts in various stages of emancipation; free
convicts were to be the pioneers and settlers of its back lands: in a
word, the whole colony was to be permeated, inundated, swamped with the
criminal class. That I am using no figure of speech, and to give some
idea of the amount of evil with which the small colony had now to deal,
I will mention here that in four years no less than sixteen thousand
convicts were sent out to Van Diemen's Land, and that the average
annual number of transported convicts in the colony was nearly thirty
thousand.

The new method came into force on the 20th May, 1840. It was christened
the "Probation" system, because the progressive improvement of the
convicts was intended to depend on their progress through certain
periods of "probation." Every convict was to be subjected to certain
punishments and restrictions peculiar to the stage in which he found
himself; but these rigours were to diminish, step by step, till he had
passed by many gradations from actual imprisonment to the delights of
unshackled, unconditional freedom. The plan of procedure is fully
detailed in a despatch addressed by Lord Stanley, on the 15th of
November, 1842, to Sir John Franklin, then lieutenant-governor of Van
Diemen's Land. All convicts, with certain exceptions, were to be
subjected to the new process. By it, as I have said, the convict was
compelled to pass through certain stages, five in number; and his
progress was to be regulated altogether by his good conduct in each
stage. The rules were the same for boys and females, but their stations
were, of course, different.

Stated briefly these five stages were: 1. Detention at a purely penal
station in a state of real imprisonment; 2. Removal to gangs working in
various parts of the colony for government, but still under restraint;
3. The first step towards freedom, in which the convict was granted a
pass to be at large under certain conditions, and to seek work for
himself; 4. The second step to freedom, when the convict gained his
ticket-of-leave, and was free to come and go much as he pleased; 5.
Absolute pardon.

Only the worst criminals entered the first stage, and for them (_a_)
Norfolk Island and (_b_) Tasman's Peninsula were set apart. These were
the colonial convicts, and men who had been sentenced at home to "life,"
or fifteen years for heinous offences. The term at Norfolk Island was to
be not less than two years, and not more than four; but misconduct
consigned an offender to an indefinite term within his sentence.

(_a_) First as to Norfolk Island.

Situated in semi-tropical latitudes, richly gifted by nature,
picturesque, fertile, of fairly equable climate, this small spot seemed
to contain within itself all the elements of a terrestrial paradise. It
was finely timbered, chiefly with the graceful tree known as the Norfolk
Island pine; limes, lemons, and guavas were indigenous; all manner of
fruits--oranges, grapes, figs, loquats, bananas, peaches, pomegranates,
pineapples, and melons--grew there in rare profusion. Flowers, wild or
cultivated, throve everywhere. On all sides the eye rested on long
fields of oats, or barley, or Indian maize. And yet the social condition
of the island, as compared with its external aspect, was as the inner
diseased core of an apple to its smooth and rosy skin. From the earliest
days of the Australian colonies this bountifully gifted island had been
made the sink of all the lees and dregs of mankind. Occupied in the
first instance on account of its fertile aspect, it was soon afterwards
abandoned for no sound or substantial reasons. By and by it was again
re-occupied, but then only as a penal settlement. And as such it served
New South Wales during all the years that transportation was in full
swing. It was a prison, and nothing more; convicts and their keepers
were its only population. The former at times varied in numbers: one
year there were five hundred, another seven; but their lot and condition
was always much the same. The worst wore chains. All worked, but not
enough to hurt themselves; and the well-conducted were allowed, as their
time dragged along, certain immunities from labour and a modicum of
tobacco. Occasionally the gaol-gangs, the most depraved of this
gathering of wickedness, broke loose, and attacked their guards with
brutal desperation. Numbers were always shot down then and there, and of
the balance, when overpowered, a fair proportion were forthwith hanged.
Stated broadly, life in Norfolk Island was so bitter to the convict that
many for choice sought death.

Thus was Norfolk Island constituted, and such the condition of its
residents, when the home government, in working out its new penal
scheme, resolved to increase the numbers on the island, by drafting to
it the most flagrant offenders from home. We have come by this time to
accept it as an axiom in prison affairs, that it is unwise to
concentrate in one spot the pith and essence of rascality; preferring
rather to subdivide and distribute the most dangerous elements at
several points. But the statesmen who were then legislating on penal
matters ignored this principle; they forgot that they were about to
recruit the old gangs at Norfolk Island by the very men most predisposed
to become as bad as those they found there. If the administration had
been really anxious to perpetuate the leaven of wickedness already
existent in the penal settlement, they could not have devised a plan
more likely to attain that result.

Under the new rules Norfolk Island was intended to contain--and
thereafter usually did contain--some 2,000 convicts. Of these about
two-thirds came from England direct. The rest were sentenced in the
colonies. There were three stations: the headquarters settlement or
"King's Town," Longridge, and Cascades. The first, situated on the south
side of the island and facing the sea, was the most important. Here was
the principal landing-place; but a coral reef prevented the near
approach of shipping, and the anchorage outside it was insecure. Hence
all loading and unloading was done by boats; and this, in itself a
tedious operation, was rendered more difficult and dangerous by the
heavy surf that rolled perpetually across the bar. But except those that
came on the public service no vessels visited the island. There was
another landing-place at Cascade station, on the north side of the
island, which was used when the state of the bar at King's Town rendered
it absolutely impracticable for boats. At King's Town the bulk of the
convicts were retained. Here were their barracks, in which some 800
convicts slept; here the lumber-yard, where the same numbers messed;
here too the hospitals, and the gaols for the retention of those again
about to be tried for fresh offences in the island. The barracks, built
of substantial limestone and surrounded by a high wall, stood some
eighty yards from the beach; the lumber-yard close at hand was simply a
high enclosure, two sides of which were roofed in and provided with
rough chairs and tables, the whole area within no more than half an
acre. Next to the lumber-yard, through which was the only entrance,
stood the slaughter-houses and cooks' houses, all filthy in the extreme.
There was no supervision over the issue of rations: meat was sold openly
at a penny per pound, and the convicts went to and fro from this and the
bakehouse just as they pleased. The gaol was close to the landing-place,
and right in front of its chief entrance stood the gallows--so placed
that to pass the doorway one came almost in contact with the gruesome
engine of death. The hospital accommodation for the whole settlement was
here at "King's Town," and it amounted to twenty beds, with a detached
convalescent ward, cold and cheerless; and this for a population of
2,000, in an island where epidemic dysentery of a malignant type,
especially during the summer, was by no means uncommon. In matters of
supply the settlement was equal to its own requirements, except after
seasons unusually bad. There was an abundance of water in the
neighbouring creeks, and, although this was rendered impure by flowing
past gardens and stock-yards, it was easily filtered: and there were
springs too in abundance. Stock was raised and grain grown chiefly at
Longridge, a mile and a half from headquarters. The soil was fertile but
light, and required good management.

The day's work began at the several settlements at daylight, when all
the men were roused by a bell. Any, and they were not few, who felt idle
and indisposed to work, remained behind in bed. But presently--let us
stand and look on--six or seven hundred men have collected in the
barrack yard, and are to be seen walking leisurely about, waiting for
the chaplain to say morning prayers, or if he failed to appear--and this
was not unusual--waiting for the commencement of muster. Should the
chaplain show himself, some ten or twenty prisoners go with him to the
chapel which is close at hand; the rest remain outside, and no effort is
made by the overseers to compel their attendance. The overseers are
indeed powerless then, as at other times, and exercise no authority
whatever.

Prayers over, muster follows; but the performance is as unlike the
strict parade it should be as anything it is possible to conceive.
There is no attempt at formation by classes, messes, or wards; no
silence, no order. The convicts lounge to and fro, hands in pockets, and
talking to one another while their names are read out by convict clerks
from the superintendent's office--the assistant superintendent, whose
duty this would be, being generally unable to read or write. As each
convict hears his name he answers or not, as it suits him, and then
saunters over to join the working gang for which he has been detailed.
As soon as the muster is concluded the men disperse, leaving the yard in
groups or one by one, and proceed to breakfast. Here the whole force
breakfast on hominy--or paste made from maize meal--seated under cover
or in the open areas, preserving no appearance of order, talking and
laughing just as they please among themselves. Breakfast over, some go
to work, but a great many do not. They have their bread to bake; and
this each man does for himself, spending half the day in sifting meal,
kneading dough, and loitering leisurely to the bakehouse and back. The
only men told off to regular labour are the two gangs who work the
crank-mill, and the labour there was so regulated that half usually were
idle half the day; while those at work were riotous and disorderly,
shrieking, yelling, hooting and assailing every passer-by, whether
subordinate official, magistrate, or the commandant himself, with the
vilest personal abuse. The great mass of the convicts were engaged in
quarrying or in agricultural pursuits. They were superintended by
convict sub-overseers, and not by free persons; and the work done was
naturally not large, more particularly as these convict overseers went
in daily terror of their lives. Indeed, at the time of which I am
writing--after the introduction of "probation," that is to say, and
probably before it too--there was practically little or no discipline
whatever maintained among the convicts. But for the bayonets and bullets
of the military guard by which they were more or less awed--though even
against them they rose at times, to their own disadvantage--they would
have become the real masters of the island; and if they were thus
restrained by fear from overt rebellion, they did not hesitate to
display as much sullen disobedience and active insubordination as they
dared without bringing on themselves retaliatory and coercive measures.

Flagrant outrages, like the seizure of boats which carried stores, were
not uncommon, on which occasions the men of the military escort were
usually thrown overboard. But perhaps the following occurrence, which
took place before the eyes of Mr. R. P. Stewart, a special commissioner
sent from Hobart Town, will prove most forcibly the anarchy that
prevailed. I cannot do better than use his own words.

"On the first of my morning visits to the lumber-yard," says he,
"accompanied by the superintendent of English convicts, I observed, on
our entry, a man very deliberately smoking, standing among a crowd round
the fire, inside the cook-house." An officer advanced to make the man
give up his pipe; but he was received with a look of the most ineffable
disdain, and the smoker, getting up with his hands in his pockets, moved
to a part of the mess known as the "Ring," where all the worst
characters collected. On this an order was issued to have the man taken
to gaol; but no one stepped forward to execute it, until at length the
acting chief constable, "who had been standing in the rear, advanced
with admirable coolness and determination to the spot. The whole yard
was now like a disturbed hive, and the superintendent expressed his
conviction that there would be a riot, as the men would never suffer the
culprit to be taken into custody. However, after a short time had
elapsed, the culprit was seen emerging from the dense crowd by which he
had been surrounded, with hands in pocket, attended by, rather than in
custody of, the chief constable of the island. He (the convict)
deliberately advanced to the superintendent, who was standing by my
side, and in the most insolent manner said, 'What have you ordered me to
gaol for?' The superintendent very coolly expostulated with him and
advised him to go quietly, when he deliberately struck him two blows in
the face, and using some very opprobrious expressions, fiercely rushed
upon and nearly threw him upon the ground." He was seized by a
constable, who asked if he should shoot him. But both convict and
constable were borne away to another part of the shed by a dense crowd.
The men got out their knives, and matters looked desperate, when the
acting chief constable again went forward and persuaded the offender to
give himself up. Had it not been for the presence of Mr. Stewart, an
officer accredited from His Excellency the governor of Van Diemen's
Land, a very serious disturbance might have been expected. As it was,
the most foul and abusive language was used by the convicts to all the
officials present.

This "Ring" which has just been mentioned was in itself a power on the
island. All the worst men were leagued together in it, and exercised a
species of terrorism over the rest. This was especially noticeable on
the arrival and debarkation of a batch of new convicts from England,
when every effort for their protection made by the proper authorities
proved always ineffectual. If the new hands were lodged under lock and
key, the men of the Ring contrived generally to break into the ward and
rifle them of all they possessed. If they were marched under an escort
of constables to bathe, the old stagers attacked them en route, or while
they were in the water plundered them of their clothes. Thus banded
together and utterly reckless, the more depraved exercised a power
almost absolute over their fellows, so that of these even the well
disposed were compelled to submit, in mortal terror of the deadly
threats of this vicious, tyrannical confederacy. A convict whose conduct
was good could not be protected from violence if there was even a
suspicion, with or without reason, that he had borne witness against any
member of the Ring, or was otherwise distasteful to it. Speaking in
general terms of Norfolk Island, Mr. Stewart states that he was
satisfied, from his inquiry, that a confirmed insubordinate spirit
existed among the convicts, "constantly exhibiting itself in threats of
personal violence towards subordinate officers, towards the constabulary
if they resolutely do their duty, and towards their fellow-prisoners if
they should be suspected of giving information or assistance to their
officers; which threats are rendered more serious and alarming from the
general practice of carrying knives, and from their having been
fulfilled in instances of stabbing, of assaulting by beating to a cruel,
nearly mortal extent, and of personal injury in attempted disfiguration
by biting off the nose, and in other overt acts of such a character as
to produce a most serious effect in deterring all holding subordinate
authority from the vigorous and prompt performance of their duty."

I have lingered thus long over Norfolk Island because it was the
starting-point and centre of the new scheme of penal legislation. In
actual truth the picture I have drawn is painted with colours far less
sombre than the subject deserves. I have shown how, beyond the absolute
isolation and exile, the punishment was not severe, the work light,
food plentiful, and discipline a mere farce. I have shown how the most
criminal were banded together to defy authority and exercise a species
of awful tyranny over the timid and weak; I have shown how these
malefactors who were supposed to be expiating their crimes swaggered
about, armed, and with knives in their hands, insulting their keepers
with vile abuse, lording it over their weaker fellows, using violence
whenever the spirit moved them to murder a constable, beat a comrade to
death, or make a mouthful of his nose. I have said that when matters
went too far firearms and the halter were called into play, and for a
time worked a certain cure; but from this, the relapse was worse than
the original disease. On other points I have not touched, because I do
not care to sully my pages with reference to other atrocities
perpetrated in that loathsome den--atrocities the existence of which was
not and never could be denied, and for which those who inaugurated the
system can hardly be held blameless. Regarding these, it must suffice
that I refer to them thus vaguely and pass on.

(_b_) But Norfolk Island was not the only penal settlement: that at Port
Arthur, on Tasman's Peninsula, was also included by the new scheme as
one of the first-stage depots. Being within easy reach of Hobart Town,
and not like Norfolk Island, hundreds of miles away, Port Arthur was
under the more searching supervision of the supreme authority. The
peninsula was separated from the mainland by a narrow isthmus, across
which, as I have said, sentries and fierce dogs forever kept watch and
ward, and escape thence was next to impossible. At the southern extreme
of the peninsula lay Port Arthur, having an excellent harbour, of
difficult entrance but wide within, and with plenty of deep water. To
Port Arthur were sent all convicts in the classes little less criminal
than those of Norfolk Island, their number being some 1,200, their work
chiefly what is called in the Western Hemisphere "lumbering," or
procuring wood for the sawyers and shipbuilders, who were also convicts.
Every now and then a ship of decent tonnage was launched, and much coal
and timber were also exported. There was a trade-wheel and a corn-mill,
and the settlement was to a certain extent self-supporting. The convicts
were lodged in hut barracks, in association with each other, but not in
great numbers. On the whole, the establishment at Port Arthur was as
well managed and the discipline as good as could be expected with such
insufficient prison buildings. The conduct of the convicts was generally
good, and punishments few and far between.

And now for the second stage, and the system of "Probation."

Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, the purely penal settlements, I have
described. At one or other of them, subject to such restraints as they
found there, the nature of which I have already detailed, the convict
of the worst class remained till he earned by good conduct his removal
to the second stage, or that of the probation gang. To this second stage
those convicts whose crimes were less serious had been inducted on first
arrival from England. They might therefore be supposed to avoid a
certain amount of contamination. But if they escaped the island, they
could not escape from those who had been at it; and around these
seemingly purified spirits hung something of the reeking atmosphere of
the foul den through which they had passed. In this way the contagion
spread; for wherever there were convicts there were those who had been
at Norfolk Island, and their influence, if not the most dominant, was
always more or less felt. But even without the presence of this
pernicious virus wherewith the whole mass might be permeated, the
probation gangs as constituted were bad enough to originate wickedness
of their own. Having, therefore, errors inherent, without counting the
super-added vice that came from the first-stage men, they served
admirably to perpetuate the grand mistake of the whole new scheme. Soon
after the development of this new order of things there grew to be
sixteen of these stations. Four of them were on Tasman's Peninsula, and
of these, one was for invalids, and three solely for those who had
misconducted themselves in other gangs. The men worked in coal mines, or
raised agricultural produce. Then there were five stations on the
coast, in the neighbourhood of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, placed where the
land was heavily timbered, all of which, when cleared, was to be devoted
to crops; others, also, more inland, and three at which the convicts
laboured exclusively at making and repairing roads. In principle, then,
probation stations were intended to give convicts, from the first, a
certain habit of industry and subordination, and if they had come from
the penal settlements, to continue the process. The probation stations
were abundantly furnished with religious instructors, and a minute
system of notation was introduced to record exactly the conduct of the
prisoners from day to day. It was according to his attitude while thus
in probation that the next step in the relaxation of his condition was
to be regulated. No doubt in many places the work accomplished by these
probation parties was not inconsiderable. Naturally the first aim was
that they should raise crops enough to suffice for their own support;
but after that, their labour was directed into many channels that
brought direct advantage to the colony. So far, too, as there were means
available, the administration was conducted intelligently. But the
entire number poured into Van Diemen's Land was so far in excess of the
resources of the colony that adequate lodgment could not be provided.
From this, and the difficulty of obtaining respectable supervisors in
anything like due proportion, there resulted such a state of things that
in course of time the probation gangs were not less a reproach than the
penal settlements.

The third stage was reached as soon as the convict had given, as it
were, an earnest of his improvement. The comptroller-general of convicts
was constituted the judge, and it rested with that functionary whether
the convict, after a certain period, should receive the boon of a
"probation pass." The holder of this was privileged to hire himself out:
to enter private service, and make his own terms with his future master.
But there were certain distinctions among pass-holders. Those in the
lowest class had to ask the governor's sanction to the employment they
chose; they had to be contented with half their wages, while the other
half was paid into a savings bank. Other classes could engage themselves
without sanction, and got certain larger proportions--half, two-thirds,
or in the last class, all their wages. These passes were liable to
forfeiture for misconduct, and the holder was then sent back to the
gangs. The chief distinction between these pass-holders and the men on
ticket-of-leave, to whom I shall come directly, was, that the latter
were free to roam where they pleased within certain districts, while the
pass-holders were retained at hiring depots till they had found
employment for themselves; and even when in service they were under the
direct control of a local magistrate, by whom they were inspected every
month. These hiring depots were at the chief towns--Hobart Town,
Launceston, and elsewhere. The numbers thus on pass came to be
considerable; and, later on, when work was slack and labour scarce, they
grew to be the most serious difficulty which colonial legislators were
called upon to face.

The last two stages, of ticket-of-leave and pardon, were not peculiar to
the new system, and differed in no respect to the same named condition
of existence under other rules, except that both were to be gained less
easily now, and in no case as a matter of right.

I have given now an outline of the system introduced by Lord Stanley's
despatch of 1842, and, advancing a year or two where it was necessary,
have shown how it was carried out. Extraordinary and deplorable results
followed and will be duly set forth in a future chapter.




CHAPTER VI

CONVICT SHIPS

     Conveyance of convicts beyond seas--Early abuses--Neglect and
     starvation on board--Large mortality--Question of command--Weak
     discipline maintained--Constant dread of outbreak--Military
     guard--Notable conspiracies--Barrington's conduct--Fears of mutiny
     groundless--Epidemic of scurvy on board the _Waterloo_--Loss of the
     _Waterloo_--_Amphitrite_ cast away at Boulogne--Arrangements for
     embarking convicts--Millbank stairs--Reforms introduced--Horrors of
     convict ships beyond description--Dr. Browning--His labours and
     influence over his charges.


No account of deportation beyond the seas would be complete without some
reference to the passage out to the antipodes, which naturally was an
integral part of the whole scheme. From first to last many hundreds of
ships were employed on this service. Those that composed the "first
fleet" under Captain Phillip, R. N., in 1788, head the list; last of all
comes the steamer _London_, which went to Gibraltar in November, 1871.
The _London_ was the last prison ship that has left our shores. In the
long interval between these dates the conditions under which deportation
was carried out have varied not a little. Abuses in the earliest days
were many and flagrant. As time passed there came all that was possible
in the way of reform, and those charged with the execution of the system
did their utmost to reduce the evils inseparable from it. But even to
the last they were hardly obviated altogether; and this difficulty of
carrying out under proper restrictions the removal of convicts by
sea-passage to a distant land, is one--and by no means the weakest--of
the many arguments against transportation.

At the close of the eighteenth century, and during the early years of
the nineteenth, when the whole system was still somewhat new and
untried, the arrangements were about as bad as it was possible for them
to be. Great horrors were perpetrated in one particular convoy: the
neglect and starvation produced epidemic sickness and terrible
mortality. These shameful proceedings were due entirely to the rapacity
and dishonesty of the ship-captains, who sought to increase their
profits by improper means. Happily when their misconduct was brought to
light, repetition was prevented by new and salutary regulations. The
ships were no longer victualled by the contractors, but by the
commissioners of the navy, and certain checks and safeguards were
introduced to insure the issue to every man of his proper allowance.
Nevertheless, the mortality continued at times to be disproportionately
large. Especially was this the case in the ships _General Hewitt_,
_Surrey_, and _Three Bees_; and, aroused thereby to the necessity of
further reform, Governor Macquarie instituted at Sydney, in 1814, a full
inquiry into the conduct of convict ships in general. Great alterations
were recommended by Dr. Redfern, at that time assistant surgeon of the
colony. His suggestions embraced principally the points on which he was
specially competent to speak--the necessity, that is to say, for the
proper issue of clothing, sufficient diet and air space, with proper
medical assistance if required. Most of his recommendations were
adopted, and they were all amply justified by the diminished mortality
in subsequent voyages. Previous to this period the owners usually
provided a surgeon, who was paid by them, receiving only a reward from
government, after the completion of his duty; but this reward was
dependent on the production by him of a certificate from the governor of
New South Wales, to the effect that the latter was perfectly satisfied.
The surgeon's letter of service stated that, on the production of this
certificate, he would be recompensed for his "assiduity and humanity by
a present at the discretion of His Majesty's Secretary of State. On the
other hand, any neglect of essential duties will not fail to be properly
noticed."

Full instructions were issued for the guidance of the surgeon. He was to
inspect the "people"--this term seems to have been adopted from the
earliest times to describe the convict passengers--daily; the sick twice
a day, those in health once. The former he was to treat according to
his judgment; the latter were to be examined closely for signs of fever,
flux, or scurvy, in order that "early and effectual means may be taken
to stop the progress of these diseases." He was moreover to keep a diary
for the entry of everything connected with the sick, noting also the
"daily number of convicts admitted upon deck, the times when the decks
were scraped, the ship fumigated, the berths cleaned and ventilated, and
all other circumstances which may, immediately or remotely, affect the
health of the crew or convicts." How closely he performed his duties may
be judged by the fact that Mr. Commissioner Bigge advances as one reason
for keeping the hospital in the fore part of the ship, that "any
arrangement by which the personal inspection of the surgeons is
frequently directed to the whole of the prison (which must be the case
if they have to traverse it on their visits to the hospital), ought not
to be exchanged for another and more commodious position of that
apartment, unless the advantages of such a change are clear and
decisive." This does not look as if these surgeons were over zealous, at
least in the duty of frequently visiting and inspecting the prison
decks.

Similarly, precise rules governed the conduct of the master of the ship.
He also was promised a reward if his conduct gave satisfaction. He was
especially desired to see to the preservation of health, by keeping his
ship constantly sweet and clean, and by taking on board before
departure everything necessary for the purpose. The master was
especially charged with the care of provisions, and in this respect his
conduct was to be closely watched. The fear was not so much lest the
convicts should receive short allowance, although this happened too, in
spite of all precautions, but that there should be a substitution of
inferior stores for those of government, which were always supposed to
be good of their kind. The former fraud was to some extent guarded
against, chiefly by publishing plainly, in several parts of the prison,
the scale of diet to which every convict was entitled; but even this was
sometimes upset by the captain giving money compensation at the end of
the voyage for food not issued. Another precaution lay in making every
man of each convict "mess" attend in rotation to receive the rations,
instead of having one standing delegate for the whole voyage as
heretofore. It was found that imposition and corruption were less
frequently tried with many than with few. As to the other kind of
dishonesty, it was provided for by requiring the surgeon's attendance at
the opening of each new cask of provision--a sufficient check, no doubt,
so long as the interests of captain and surgeon were not identical. It
was just possible, however, that they might play into each other's
hands.

But one of the wisest steps taken after 1814, was when the government
itself appointed the medical officers, giving the preference, as far as
possible, to surgeons of the Royal Navy. On this point Bigge says, "A
great improvement has undoubtedly arisen in the transportation of
convicts from the appointment of naval surgeons to the superintendence
of the ships taken up for this service. Much attention has been paid by
them to the instructions of the navy board, that enjoin an attention to
the performance of religious duties; and their efforts in preserving
health have been no less conspicuous and successful." There was every
reason to expect that the government would be better served by an
officer of its own, than by some one taken indiscriminately from
outside. But equally probable was it that there would be a conflict of
authority between the master, who had been hitherto practically supreme,
and the new style of official, who might be said to possess, to some
extent, the confidence of the crown. This came to pass; and the
difficulty was not smoothed away by the tenor of the early acts
regulating transportation in which had been incorporated the provisions
of the 4 Geo. I, cap. II, whereby a property in the services of the
convict was vested (or assigned) to the persons who contracted to
transport them.

The master of the ship, as representing the contractors, had this
property with all its responsibilities; but he was bound also to obey
all orders from the commissioners of the navy and attend all
requisitions from the surgeon-superintendent. This apparent
contradiction led to frequent altercations between these two modern
Kings of Brentford. Where one looked only to the preservation of health,
the other thought chiefly of safe custody. If the doctor wished to
fumigate the prison, or send the "people" all on deck, the captain
demurred, and talked of the danger he ran of losing his ship and his
cargo, too, by one and the same blow. Being thus personally concerned in
the security of all they had on board, the masters of convict ships for
a long time maintained that they must be the fittest persons to hold the
supreme power. On the other hand, many of the higher authorities leaned
toward entrusting the real command to the surgeon. This, which was
clearly the proper decision, did in time become the rule. The reasons
for it yearly became more apparent. In the first place, the naval
surgeon, as a commissioned officer, was more under the control of the
crown; besides which, by degrees these surgeon-superintendents could
fairly claim that they had gained experience, and had proved their
aptitude for the service in which they were employed. As ship after ship
was chartered the captains came and went. There was no certainty that
the same vessel with the same master would be taken up twice over for
the conveyance of convicts. But the surgeons remained, and sailed voyage
after voyage to the penal colonies. Ere long, the power which had been
at first contested rested altogether in their hands.

All contemporary authorities give but a sorry account of the condition
of the convicts during the passage. Even when everything possible had
been done to reduce the death-rate, by insuring a sufficient supply of
food and proper medical attendance, the plain fact remained that here
were a couple of hundred felons (or more) boxed up together for months,
with no other employment or object in life than that of contaminating
one another. As a rule all of the convict passengers remained idle
throughout the voyage. A few might assist in the navigation of the ship
so far as was possible without going aloft. Others who were mechanics
found it to their interest to make themselves useful in their particular
trades, gaining in return greater freedom as to coming up on deck, and
perhaps some additional articles of food. "But the greater proportion of
the convicts," says Bigge, "are sunk in indolence, to which the ordinary
duties of washing and cleansing the prisons, though highly salutary in
themselves and performed with great regularity, afford but slight
interruption."

They spent their time in gambling, quarrelling, and thieving from one
another. In these relaxations the crew generally joined, as it was
impossible to prevent intercommunication between convicts and sailors.
The latter were not always immaculate, and were not seldom charged with
purloining the private property of the prisoners, which had been
provided by friends when leaving England. The medium for gambling was
chiefly the wine and lime juice issued as part of the daily rations. If
the convicts had money--which was unusual, except in small
quantities--then they played for cash, but this was prevented by taking
all money from them, as far as possible, on embarkation, to be kept for
them till the voyage was at an end. The other method of speculation was
also checked to some extent by "strictly observing that the allowance of
wine and lime juice is taken by every convict in the presence of an
officer at the time of distribution." Another plan was to deprive the
offenders of their allowance, but to compel them to attend at the
"grog-tub," and administer that which they had thus forfeited to some
other prisoner who had behaved well.

The only discipline enforced on board was just so much as was necessary
to insure a moderate amount of repression. For this purpose the people
were all for a time in irons; for the same reason, only certain fixed
proportions of the whole number were allowed upon deck at one time. As a
final bulwark behind all, should an ultimate appeal to the strong arm be
at any time needed, stood the military guard. Every ship carried a
detachment of soldiers: recruits sometimes, going out as drafts to join
their regiments in Australia; at others, part of a battalion, which
embarked in instalments on ship after ship, ending, according to one
writer, with the commanding officer and the band. The guard, or the
portion of it actually on duty, always carried loaded firearms; from it
came sentries forever on the watch, some at the doors of the prisons,
others upon the poop. As a general rule, ships with poops were preferred
for convict ships, because the soldiers stationed thereon were
sufficiently elevated above the deck to be able to control the movements
of the convicts at exercise below, though altogether separated from
them.

The dread of some outbreak among the "people," or convicts, seems to
have been an ever present sensation with those in authority on board
these ships. Nor was the alarm confined to those connected with the ship
itself. Whenever a strange sail, in those days of profound peace,
appeared above the horizon, she was set down always as a convict ship
seized by its felon passengers, who were supposed to have turned pirates
and to have hoisted the black flag to range the high seas in search of
plunder. I suppose there was not one among the hundred ships that left
the Nore or the Mother Bank, through the long years that transportation
lasted, in which rumours of conspiracy did not prevail at some time or
other during the passage. Yet nine times out of ten these fears were
absolutely groundless. Outbreaks did occur, of course; but few of them
were serious in nature, and nearly all were forestalled by the timely
perfidy of one of the conspirators. Colonel Breton, in his evidence
before the parliamentary committee of 1837, said that he had heard of
one ship with female convicts which had been captured by the crew and
carried into Rio. But I can find no corroboration of this statement
elsewhere. The same authority talks vaguely of another plot in his own
ship, which came to nothing, because another and a more desperate
character turned informer. Convict ships with females on board were as a
rule more easily managed than those with males. But the following
extract from a letter from the matron on board the convict ship
_Elizabeth and Henry_, in 1848, relates a curious incident:--

"_Off Cape of Good Hope_ (_April 30th_).--We were likely to have a
mutiny on board a few weeks since. The [female] prisoners laid a plan
for strangling the doctor, but providentially it was made known by M. A.
Stewart, a convict, just before it was executed. McNalty and Brennan
were the ringleaders in the affair. When it was known, the officers of
the ship went down in the prison with firearms. Fancy the scene! The
doctor has now promised to forgive them if they conduct themselves well
the rest of the voyage."

More serious was the conspiracy which was discovered in a ship of which
Doctor Galloway, R. N., was the surgeon-superintendent. This was brought
to light just after the ship had left Plymouth Sound--as a general rule
all such attempts are made in the early part of a voyage--and it was
discovered by a sentinel who overheard a fragment of a conversation by
the hatchway during the morning watch. The plot was cleverly laid. The
convicts had observed that the old guard discharged their firelocks
always at sunrise, and that the new guard did not reload till eleven
o'clock. They planned therefore to mutiny in the early morning, just
after the guard had fired, resolving to seize these weapons, and then
overpower the captain, the rest of the soldiers, and the crew. The total
strength of the military detachment was forty, and the convicts were two
hundred and fifty. The plotters of this outbreak were promptly punished
on proof of their guilt, twelve of them being carried in double irons
for seven or eight weeks.

In one of the earliest ships the opposing parties actually came to
blows--so says one Barrington, at least, who went as a convict in 1790
to Botany Bay. The memoirs of this man (a very different person from Sir
Jonah Barrington) were widely successful, and soon ran through several
editions. His career of crime was more than curious. His London
hunting-grounds were royal levées, court balls, Ranelagh, and the
opera-house. At the palace he found it easy in the crush to cut the
diamonds out of orders and stars. At the opera he picked Prince Orloff's
pocket of a snuff-box worth £30,000, but being collared by the owner he
restored the booty. He was eventually transported for stealing a gold
watch at Enfield races from Mr. H. H. Townshend. According to
Barrington's account two Americans among the people persuaded the others
to conspire to seize the ship. They declared that the capture effected,
it would be easy to carry the prize into some American port, where all
would receive a hearty welcome. Not only would all obtain their liberty
as a matter of course, but Congress would give them also a tract of
land, and a share of the money accruing from the sale of the ship and
her cargo.

The plan of action was to seize the arm-chest while the officers were at
dinner. This was kept upon the quarter-deck, under the charge of
sentries. The latter were to be engaged in conversation till the supreme
moment arrived, and then, at a signal given, seized. This was to be
followed by a general rush on deck of all the convicts from below.
Barrington relates that he was standing with the man at the wheel when
the mutiny actually broke out. Hearing a scuffle upon the main deck, he
was on the point of going forward, when he was stopped by one of the
Americans, who made a stroke at his head with a sword taken from a
sentry. "Another snapped at me a pistol. I had a handspike, and felled
the first to the ground." Meanwhile the man at the wheel ran down and
gave the alarm. The captain was below, seeing to the stowage of some
wine; but Barrington held the mutineers at bay, at the head of the
companion ladder, till the captain came up with a blunderbuss in his
hand and fired. This dispersed the enemy, and they thereupon retired. An
immediate example was made of the ringleaders in this affair. Two were
forthwith hanged at the yard-arm, and a number flogged. To Barrington,
the captain and his officers were profuse in thanks, and at the end of
the voyage they made him a substantial present. Told in Mr. Barrington's
own words, the story of this mutiny tends rather to his own
glorification. It is just possible that he may have exaggerated some of
the details--his own valiant deeds with the rest. This trusty convict
was received into high favour on landing in New South Wales and after
holding several subordinate appointments became at length a police
officer and gained high rank.

But as a rule the efforts made by the convicts to rise against their
rulers on shipboard were futile in the extreme. Even Mr. Commissioner
Bigge, in 1822, laughs at all notion of the convicts combining to
capture the ships. He is commenting on the different practice of
different doctors and captains, as to allowing the people upon deck and
removing their irons. Some, he says, who are inexperienced and timid,
dread the assemblage of even half on the upper deck, and they would not
for worlds remove the irons till the voyage is half over. Others do not
care if all the people come up together, and they take off all irons
before the ship is out of the Channel. But he considers free access to
the deck so important in preserving discipline, as well as health,
during the voyage, that "no unwarrantable distrust of the convicts"
ought to interfere with it, and "no apprehension of any combined
attempt to obtain possession of the ship." He thus continues:--

"The fear of combinations among the convicts to take the ship is proved
by experience of later years to be groundless; and it may be safely
affirmed, that if the instructions of the navy board are carried into
due effect by the surgeon-superintendent and the master, and if the
convicts obtain the full allowance of provisions made to them by
government, as well as reasonable access to the deck, they possess
neither fidelity to each other, nor courage sufficient to make any
simultaneous effort that may not be disconcerted by timely information,
and punished before an act of aggression is committed. A short
acquaintance with the characters of the convicts, promises of
recommendation to the governor on their arrival in New South Wales, and
an ordinary degree of skill in the business of preventive police, will
at all times afford means of obtaining information."

The passage out of all these convict ships was upon the whole
exceedingly prosperous. The voyage could be performed with perfect
safety. Mr. Bigge says that up to his time no ships had arrived
disabled; more than this, no disasters had occurred to any in Bass
Straits, where serious mishaps so frequently happened. The chief and
only difficulty really was the tendency to delay upon the road. There
was a great temptation to both master and surgeon to call at Rio. All
sorts of excuses were made to compass this--that the ship was running
short of water, for instance, or that the passengers absolutely required
a change of diet. Sugar was to be bought at Rio, and tobacco, and with a
freight of these the officials could make a profitable speculation on
reaching Sydney. For the doctor the temptation was especially strong,
because he was for years allowed to land his goods at New South Wales
duty-free. But if the superiors thus benefited themselves, it was at the
cost of the discipline of the convicts, such as it was. The ship was for
the time neglected utterly; the captain was busy and so was the doctor
with their commercial enterprises. The convicts, for security's sake,
were relegated to irons; but they found means to obtain spirits from
shore, and wholesale intoxication and demoralisation naturally followed.
In view of all this the masters of convict ships were ordered to make
the run outwards direct. The requisite supplies might be calculated with
care in advance, so as to preclude the chance of any scarcity before the
end of the voyage. But if it so happened that to touch at some port or
other was imperative, then the Cape of Good Hope was to be invariably
chosen instead of Rio.

These orders to bear up for the Cape in case of necessity were clearly
right and proper, but in one case they were attended with very serious
consequences. I allude to the loss of the _Waterloo_ convict ship in
Table Bay, in September, 1842. In this case scurvy had appeared on
board, and therefore the surgeon-superintendent gave the master a
written order to change his course. It was necessary to touch at the
Cape to obtain supplies of vegetables and fresh meat. To Table Bay they
came in due course, and there remained--ignorant, seemingly, of the
danger they ran, of which they would have been duly warned had the naval
authorities been aware of their arrival. But the surgeon-superintendent
failed to report it; and "in this omission," says Vice-Admiral Sir E.
King when animadverting upon the whole occurrence, "he has only followed
the common and very reprehensible neglect of duty in this respect of
surgeon-superintendents of convict ships." Ill-luck followed the
_Waterloo_. The master went on shore and left his ship to the care of
his chief mate, a young and inexperienced seaman, who showed himself
when the moment of emergency came either utterly incompetent or culpably
negligent--probably both. One of those sudden gales which frequently
ravage Table Bay rose without warning, and the _Waterloo_ went straight
on the rocks. Nothing was done to save her. The masts were not cut away,
and everybody on board seemed helpless. Another ship, the transport
_Abercrombie Robinson_, which was lying in Table Bay at the time, was
also driven ashore; but her people were rescued, and she did not become
an entire wreck. But the moment the _Waterloo_ struck she broke up, and
went to pieces. Terrible loss of life followed: 188 out of a total of
302 on board were drowned, and but for the merest chance not a soul
among the convict passengers would have reached the land alive. The
prisoners had been at first set free, but they were then ordered below
again by the surgeon-superintendent, who feared they would rush
violently into the surf boats coming to the rescue, and so swamp them.
The poor creatures went below--obediently enough, and then followed one
of those fatal but inexplicable mistakes which might have led to the
most terrible consequences. The doctor as a matter of precaution had
ordered the prisons to be bolted down, but the bolts in the hatches
could have been easily at any moment withdrawn. However, the officious
corporal in command of the military guard _proprio motu_ affixed a
padlock to the bolt to make it secure, and forgot to take it off again.
The excuse made for him was that he was "under the influence of the
panic incident to the unexpected and almost instantaneous demolition of
the ship." Thus several hundred men were in momentary danger of being
drowned like rats in a hole. "Most providentially," says the report from
which I quote, "the awful consequences of the unaccountable conduct of
the corporal were averted by one of the prisoners striking off the
padlock with a hammer that had accidentally been left in the prison
early that morning, it having been used to remove the irons from the
only prisoners who wore them for some offence." So the convicts reached
the deck in time to avail themselves of such means of escape as
offered. But these were few. Had the masts been cut down, when the long
boat was lowered, they might have formed a temporary bridge over which
the people might have passed in comparative safety to the surf boats. As
it was, nearly two-thirds of them were drowned.

This catastrophe attracted great attention at the time. At Cape Town the
sudden and apparently unaccountable destruction of the ship led to great
excitement in the public mind. A very searching inquiry was therefore
set on foot. The _débris_ of the wreck having been carefully examined by
Captain Sir John Marshall, R. N., he reported unhesitatingly that the
_Waterloo_ must have been unseaworthy when she left England. "General
decay and rottenness of the timbers appeared in every step we took." She
had been repeatedly repaired at considerable outlay, but she had run so
long that she was quite beyond cure.

As a further explanation of the disaster the mate and crew were charged
with being drunk at the time the ship struck. But the only evidence in
support of this was an intercepted letter of one of the convicts who had
been saved. He asserted that the chief mate could not keep his legs;
that in trying to drive in a nail he staggered and fell. The rolling of
the vessel was deemed a more than sufficient explanation of this.
Another charge was made against one of the seamen who swam back to the
ship after he had once actually reached the shore. No man in his sober
senses, urged the convict witness, would have risked his life in this
way; whereas it was clearly proved that no man otherwise than sober
could possibly have battled successfully with the surf.

It is but fair to add that the unseaworthy condition of the _Waterloo_
was distinctly denied at Lloyd's. They certified that at the time of
sailing she was "in an efficient state of repair and equipment, and
fully competent for the safe performance of any voyage to any part of
the world." And as the credit of the transport office had been more or
less impugned, a return was about this time called for by the House, of
the number of convict-ships which had foundered at sea, or not been
heard of, between 1816 and 1842. It was satisfactorily shown that in
this way not one single ship had been lost through all those years.

But there had been other shipwrecks, and among these none with more
fatal results than that of the _Amphitrite_, which went ashore at
Boulogne, in September, 1833. The story of this mishap is an instructive
homily in more ways than one. The ship was proceeding gaily down
channel, with a freight of one hundred and eight female convicts, when
she was met by a violent and unexpected gale, accompanied by a very
heavy sea. She was on a lee shore. The conduct of the master in presence
of danger is described as seamanlike, judicious, and decisive. Seeing no
help for it, and that he could not save his vessel from the land, he
said openly to the mate that he must look for the best berth and run her
straight on shore. They ran her up as high as possible, hoping the tide
as it rose would drive her higher. Then with as much complacency as if
they were safely lodged in a secure harbour, the crew went below, had
supper, and turned in. Before daybreak the ship was smashed to atoms and
only three lives were saved. The ship's fate was indeed sealed from the
moment she went ashore. Nothing possibly could have saved her, and it
was a matter of surprise to all who witnessed the catastrophe that she
was not deserted while there was yet time. "All might have been saved,
but for the deplorable error in judgment on the part of the crew."

More than this, the lives of the female convicts, at least, might have
been preserved but for the strange obstinacy of the surgeon's wife.
According to the evidence of one of the survivors, the doctor ordered
the long boat to be lowered soon after the ship struck. He was not in
the least afraid of losing his prisoners, and meant to put them all
forthwith on shore. Here, however, his wife interposed. She would not go
ashore in the boat. Nothing would induce her to sit in the same boat
with the convicts. "Her pride," says the narrator, "revolted at the
idea." Whether her husband expostulated does not appear; in the end he
gave way. No boat should leave the ship that night. Next morning it was
too late. Complete destruction, as I have said, followed the rising of
the tide.

Upon the introduction of the new régime by the Act of 1843, embarkation
of drafts for Australia took place every week or two from the stone
steps on the river bank, opposite the main entrance of Millbank prison.
As the dawn broke the convicts filed silently across the deserted
roadway, and aboard the tug that was to convey them to the Nore. Only
the night previous were they made aware that the hour of their departure
had arrived. Then had followed such necessary preparations as a close
medical inspection, to guard against the propagation of infectious
disease; shaving, bathing, and the issue of the necessary clothing and
kit bags. Every convict was furnished with a new suit, which was to last
him all the voyage; but they carried a second suit in their bags, with
underclothing, and, in some cases, an outfit to serve on landing at
their journey's end. Substantial shoes and gray guernsey nightcaps
completed their attire.

The next morning the whole draft was wakened about three o'clock, and
breakfasted. They were then marched to the reception ward, where their
names were called over by the chief warder. Next came the "shackling,"
or chaining them together in gangs of ten men upon one chain, the chain
passing through a bracelet on each man's arm. The same plan is pursued
to this day in ordinary removals from prison to prison, except that a D
lock is now introduced between every two prisoners. This practically
handcuffs the men together two and two. Under the old system, if one
link in the chain was cut, the whole ten were free; now, when a link
goes five _couples_ only are set loose. As soon as these precautions
were completed, the side door of the reception ward was opened, and the
prisoners passed on to the outer gate, and so to the river side.

If the embarkation was to be at low tide, old Collins, a well-known
bargee, who had permission to make his boats fast opposite the Millbank
steps, had brought them some hours before and run them aground so as to
form a passage or gangway to the steam-tug. This Collins was a
well-known character in his time and later served as the model for Rogue
Riderhood in "Our Mutual Friend." His spare hours were devoted to
gathering up the bodies of people drowned in the Thames. It was said
that he had secured in this way no fewer than two hundred corpses. The
parish authorities paid him at the rate of ten shillings per head. It
was his invariable custom, so he assured the coroner, to wash the face
of every corpse he picked up and kiss it. But he did other jobs, such as
dredging for sand, which he sold to the builders, and anything else that
he might pick up. It was all fish that came to his net. On one occasion
he found a bag full of sovereigns, upon which, so the story runs, both
he and his family lived gloriously till the money was all gone. This
piece of luck proved fatal to his wife. Returning from one of her
drinking bouts to their home on board a barge--for Collins occupied the
oldest of his boats, roofed in--Mrs. Collins slipped off the plank into
the Thames, and was picked up by her husband next day. He had lived all
his life in this barge, rearing there a large family, most of whom, I
believe, turned out ill. His daughters were, however, known as the best
oarswomen on the river. Poor old Collins himself came to a bad end. He
was caught in his old age, in the act of stealing coals from a
neighbouring barge, and for this he was sentenced to six months'
imprisonment. When he came out his barges were sold, and the place knew
him no more. But for many years he actively assisted in all embarkations
from Millbank stairs.

Of course there was a large staff of officials who were really
responsible. In charge of all generally went the deputy-governor, and
under him were sometimes as many as thirty warders. Their duties were
principally to insure safe custody, and to enforce silence and soberness
of demeanour on the passage down stream. Occasionally the tug halted at
Woolwich, to take in more passengers from the hulks; more often it made
the run direct to Gravesend or the Nore. Here, with blue peter flying
and anchor atrip, was the prison ship waiting for its living cargo. The
surgeon-superintendent was on board, ready to sign receipts for the
bodies of all committed to his charge; the convicts climbed the sides,
were unshackled, told off to messes, and sent below. Before mid-day the
ship had got under weigh, and had taken her place among the rest of the
outward bound.

The interior fittings of all the old convict ships varied little. The
"prison" occupied the main deck. It was separated fore and aft by strong
bulkheads, sheeted with iron. In the forward part the crew lodged as
usual; aft, the military guard. The only access from the prison to the
deck was by the main hatchway. This was secured by barred gates at the
foot of the ladder, so that the prison within looked like a huge cage. A
substantial bulkhead ran across the upper deck, dividing the part used
by the prisoners from the poop. There were doors in this, at each of
which a sentry was always stationed. The hatches were also provided with
stout padlocks. The "prison" was divided into "bunks" or "bays," as in a
troop-ship, each of which had a table for eight men, and at night eight
hammocks. For a long time prison ships sailed always without any special
staff for supervision. Later a small proportion of warders embarked in
each. During the day these officers took turns to patrol the deck and
keep a general look-out. But on the whole, they preferred to interfere
as little as possible with the "people." At night five convict sentries
kept watch on deck, and were held responsible that no others came up;
but below, the prisoners were left entirely to themselves. This, of
itself, was one of the chief blots in the whole plan of deportation. To
permit men of this class to herd together just as they please, is the
surest way to encourage the spread of wickedness and vice. The tendency
of any collection of human beings, it is to be feared, is rather to sink
to the level of the worst than to rise to that of the best. In a ship
load of convicts, free to talk and associate at all hours of the day and
night, the deterioration is almost inevitable. For this reason, the
elaborate machinery for providing for the religious wants and teaching
of the ships sent out in later years was rendered nearly useless. A
slight veneer of propriety in diction and demeanour might lie on top,
but beneath, the real stuff was as bad as ever. It could not be denied
even in after years, when every possible precaution had been taken. It
was admitted, before the parliamentary commission on transportation in
1861, that "the horrors of convict ships were really past description."
The arrangements for the conveyance of convicts by sea were never really
put on a satisfactory footing until 1870, when the steamship _London_
was especially fitted up for the purpose of taking convicts to
Gibraltar; a portion of her forward hold was turned into a "prison," in
every respect the same as a separate prison on shore. Here officers
patrolled on duty day and night. This, with the rapidity of the voyage,
reduced the chances of contamination to the lowest.

[Illustration: _The Convict Ship "Success;" Tasmania_

On the convict ship transporting prisoners to the Antipodes it was
necessary in order to maintain discipline to put them all in irons for a
part of the voyage. The worst class of convicts were sent to Tasmania
from the prisons of England, where they remained until by good conduct
they were removed to the probation gang; the second stage in the
elaborate scheme for convict colonies which ended so disastrously.]

I cannot refrain, however, from paying a tribute here to one who appears
to have worked wonders in the various ships he had in charge. I allude
to Dr. C. A. Browning, R. N., who has himself, in "The Convict Ship and
England's Exiles," given us an interesting account of his labours, and
the success that attended them. He was clearly a man of great piety,
gifted also with singular earnestness of character. The influence of
such a person cannot fail to be soon felt, especially in a society of
which he is himself the recognised head. Wonderful as were the results
obtained by Dr. Browning, they are substantiated by the testimony of
high colonial officials. Writing on the subject, Sir George Arthur, the
lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land, says, "The convicts brought
out in the _Arab_, in 1834, were put on board, I have every reason to
believe, as ignorant, as profane, and in every respect as reckless as
transported criminals usually are. But when they were disembarked, it
was evident the character of many of them had undergone a most
remarkable change. Their tempers had been subdued; they had been induced
to think and reflect; and they had been instructed, so as to know them
familiarly, in the principles of religion." It was said that in after
years the convicts whom Dr. Browning reformed, seldom if ever fell away;
but on this point I can find no reliable evidence. That quoted above
refers only to these men at the moment they landed on shore, when Dr.
Browning's impressive lessons were still ringing in their ears. An
examination of the parliamentary returns, however, leads me to conclude
that instances of after misconduct, as proved by the number of
convictions, summary and otherwise, were just as plentiful among the men
of Dr. Browning's ships as of any others.

But I should be loath to detract from Dr. Browning, who, besides being a
preacher of some power, was also a practical man with considerable
talent for organisation. His ships must have been patterns of propriety
and cleanliness. Yet he worked single-handed. The only officials under
him were convicts chosen among the "people," according to character
received with them, and "the impression," to use his own words, "formed
on my own mind by the expression of their countenances, and general
demeanour." At the doctor's right hand was the first captain, who was at
the head of the whole establishment; next to him came a second captain;
and below them the captains of divisions. Each had his duties prescribed
according to a carefully prepared scale. There were also appointed
cooks, barber, delegates, head of messes, a clerk, librarian, hospital
steward, and, last, not least, schoolmasters and inspectors of schools.
The routine of work for every day of the week was also laid down, and
was punctually carried out. As a rule, after the necessary cleaning
operations, it resolved itself almost entirely into school instruction,
and constant exhortation from the surgeon himself. Dr. Browning was
apparently much beloved even by the convicts; and his orders are said
to have been readily and implicitly obeyed. In return his confidence in
them was so great that when he was attacked with serious illness he had
his hammock hung inside on the prison deck, and gave himself up to be
nursed altogether by the convicts.

In after years the example set by Dr. Browning was so far followed that
every ship carried a religious instructor to teach, and perform the
services--duties which every surgeon-superintendent could not be
expected to perform, as did Dr. Browning. These instructors were
selected from among the Scripture readers and schoolmasters at Millbank
or Pentonville, and no doubt they were conscientious men, fairly anxious
to do their best. But this best fell far short of that which an
enthusiast of superior education like Dr. Browning could accomplish; and
in most of the ships, in spite of all the efforts of the instructors,
wickedness reigned supreme to the last.




CHAPTER VII

THE EXILES OF CRIME

     Notorious individuals exiled--Murderous assaults on the Queen--Bank
     frauds--Burgess and the Bank of England--Robbery of Rogers'
     Bank--Fraud and embezzlement--Walter Watts--Robert F. Pries--Joseph
     Windle Cole--Strahan, Paul and Bates--Aristocratic
     bankers--Robson--Redpath--Enormous stealings--Great gold robbery on
     the South-Eastern Railway--Agar, Pierce and Tester--Extensive
     forgeries--Saward or "Jim the Penman"--Vicissitudes of a convict's
     life--Journeys round the world.


So long as the law ordained that removal to a far-off land should be the
invariable fate of every offender who escaped "vertical punishment," as
hanging was sometimes styled, we must certainly find the most notable
criminals in the stream setting unceasingly southward. It will be
interesting and instructive to present here some of the most notable or
notorious individuals who thus left their country "for their country's
good" and still more for their own, as shown in many remarkable
instances on preceding pages. For a long time the great mass of passing
criminality hardly rises above the commonplace, for the simple reason
that the worst individuals, under the sanguinary British code of those
days, were peremptorily "finished" on the scaffold. But as death
penalties diminished, expatriation overtook many vicious criminals and
it is with some of these that I now propose to deal.

The assassination of or the murderous assault on crowned heads and chief
magistrates has been too sadly characteristic of modern crime. One tried
in England upon the person of the young Queen Victoria in 1842 created a
great sensation in London. The perpetrator was a certain John Francis
who, moved, as was supposed, by a thirst for notoriety, fired a shot at
the Queen as she was driving back to Buckingham Palace. The deed was
premeditated and would have been put into execution a day earlier had
not his courage failed him. A youth had seen him point a pistol at the
Queen's carriage, but drop it exclaiming, "I wish I had done it." The
boy weakly allowed Francis to go off without securing his apprehension,
but later gave full information. The Queen was apprised of the danger,
and was implored to remain within doors; but she declared she would not
remain a prisoner in her own palace, and next day drove out as usual in
an open barouche. Nothing happened until Her Majesty returned to
Buckingham Palace about six o'clock, when, on descending Constitution
Hill, with an equerry riding close on each side of her carriage, a man
who had been leaning against the palace garden wall suddenly advanced,
levelled a pistol at the Queen and fired. He was so close to the
carriage that the smoke of his pistol enveloped the face of Colonel
Wylde, one of the equerries. The Queen was untouched and at first, it is
said, hardly realised the danger she had escaped. Francis had already
been seized by a policeman named Trounce, who saw his movement with the
pistol too late to prevent its discharge. The prisoner was conveyed
without delay to the Home Office and there examined by the Privy
Council, which had been hastily summoned for the purpose. On searching
him the pistol was found in his pocket, the barrel still warm; also some
loose powder and a bullet. There was some doubt as to whether the pistol
when fired was actually loaded with ball, but the jury brought in a
verdict of guilty of the criminal intent to kill. Francis was sentenced
to be hanged, decapitated and quartered, the old traitor's doom, but was
spared, and subsequently transported for life. The enthusiasm of the
people at the Queen's escape was intense, and her drive next day was one
long triumphal progress. At the Italian Opera in the evening, the
audience on the Queen's appearance, greeted her with loud cheers and
called for the national anthem. This was in May, 1842.

Not long afterwards, a gentleman, for some occult reason of his own,
committed the atrocity of striking the young Queen in the face just as
she was leaving the palace. The weapon he used was a thin cane, but the
blow fell lightly, as the lady-in-waiting interposed. No explanation was
offered, except that the culprit was out of his mind. This was the
defence set up by his friends, and several curious facts were adduced
in proof of insanity. One on which great stress was laid, was that he
was in habit of chartering a hansom to Wimbledon Common daily, where he
amused himself by getting out and walking as fast as he could through
the furze. But this line of defence broke down, and the jury found the
prisoner guilty. When he came to Millbank he declared that he had been
actuated only by a desire to bring disgrace on his family and
belongings. In some way or other he had seriously disagreed with his
father, and he took this curious means to obtain revenge. The wantonness
of the outrage called for severe punishment, and the man was sentenced
to seven years' transportation; but the special punishment of whipping
was omitted, on the grounds of the prisoner's position in life. Whether
the mere passing of this sentence was considered sufficient, or the
Queen herself interposed, the prisoner at Millbank was treated with
exceptional leniency and consideration. By order of the Secretary of
State he was exempted from most of the restrictions to which other
prisoners were subjected. He was not lodged in a cell, but in two rooms
adjoining the infirmary, which he used as sitting and bedroom
respectively. He did not wear the prison dress, and he had, practically,
what food he liked. He seems to have awakened a sort of sympathy on the
part of the warders who attended him; probably because he was a fine,
tall fellow of handsome presence and engaging manners and because also
they thought his offence was one of hot-headed rashness rather than
premeditated wickedness. Eventually he went to Australia.

Frauds upon banks and large financial institutions became prevalent
about 1844. In that year the Bank of England suffered at the hands of
one of its clerks named Burgess who robbed it of £8,000 in conjunction
with an accomplice named Elder. Burgess fraudulently transferred consols
in the above amount to another party. Elder impersonated the owner and
attended at the bank to complete the transfer and sell the stock.
Burgess, who was purposely on leave from the bank, effected the sale,
which was paid for with a cheque for nearly the whole amount on
Lubbock's Bank. Burgess and Elder proceeded in company to cash this, but
as they wanted all gold, the cashier gave them eight Bank of England
notes for £1,000 each, saying that they could get so much specie nowhere
else. Thither Elder went alone, provided with a number of canvas bags
and one large carpet bag. When the latter was filled with gold it was
too heavy to lift and Elder had to be assisted by two bank porters, who
carried it for him to a carriage waiting near the Mansion House. Elder
was soon joined by Burgess and they drove together to Ben Caunt's, the
pugilist's public house in St. Martin's Lane, where the cash was
transferred from the carpet bag to a portmanteau. The same evening both
started for Liverpool and, embarking on board the mail steamer
_Britannia_, escaped to the United States.

Burgess' continued absence was soon noticed at the bank. Suspicions were
aroused when it was found that he had been employed in selling stock for
Mr. Oxenford, owner of the stolen consols, which developed as soon as
that gentleman was referred to. Mr. Oxenford having denied that he had
made any transfer of stock, the matter was at once put in the hands of
the police. A smart detective, Forrester, after a little inquiry,
established the fact that the man who had impersonated Mr. Oxenford was
a horse-dealer named Joseph Elder, an intimate acquaintance of
Burgess's. Forrester next traced the fugitives to Liverpool and thence
to Halifax, whither he followed them, accompanied by a confidential
clerk from the bank. At Halifax, Forrester learned that the men he
wanted had gone on to Boston, thence to Buffalo and Canada, and back to
Boston. He found them at length residing at the latter place, one as a
landed proprietor, the other as a publican. Elder, the former, was soon
apprehended at his house, but he evaded the law by hanging himself with
his pocket-handkerchief. The inn belonging to Burgess was surrounded,
but he escaped through a back door on to the river, and rowed off in a
boat to a hiding place in the woods. Next day a person betrayed him for
the reward and he was soon captured. The proceeds of the robbery were
lodged in a Boston bank, but four hundred sovereigns were found on
Elder, while two hundred more were found in Burgess's effects. Burgess
was eventually brought back to England, tried at the Central Criminal
Court and sentenced to transportation for life.

Within a month or two the bank of Messrs. Rogers and Co. in Clement's
Lane was broken into. Robberies as daring in conception as they were
boldly executed were common enough. One night a quantity of plate was
stolen from Windsor Castle; another time Buckingham Palace was robbed.
Of this class of burglaries was the ingenious yet peculiarly simple one
effected at the house of Lord Fitzgerald, in Belgrave Square. The butler
on the occasion of a death in the family, when the house was in some
confusion, arranged with a burglar to come in, and with another carry
off the plate-chest in broad daylight and as a matter of business. No
one interfered or asked any questions. The thief walked into the house
in Belgrave Square and openly carried off the plate-chest, deposited it
in a light cart at the door and drove away. Howse, the butler, accused
the other servants, but they retorted, declaring that he had been
visited by the thief the day previous, whom he had shown over the plate
closet. Howse and his accomplice were arrested; the former was found
guilty and sentenced to fifteen years, but the latter was acquitted.

In 1850 occurred the first of a series of gigantic frauds, which,
following each other at short intervals, had a strong family likeness
in that all of them meant to make money easily, without capital and at
railroad speed. Walter Watts was an inventor, a creator, who struck an
entirely new and original line of crime. Employed as a clerk in the
Globe Assurance office, he discovered and with unusual quickness of
apprehension promptly turned to account an inexcusably lax system of
management, which offered peculiar chances of profit to an ingenious and
unscrupulous man. It was the custom in this office to make the banker's
pass-book the basis of the entries in the company's ledgers. Thus, when
a payment was made by the company, the amount disbursed was carried to
account in the general books from its entry in the pass-book, and
without reference to or comparison with the documents in which the
payment was claimed. This pass-book, when not at the bank, was in the
exclusive custody of Watts. The checks drawn by the directors also
passed through his hands; to him, too, they came back to be verified and
put by, after they had been cashed by the bank. In this way Watts had
complete control over the whole of the monetary transactions of the
company. He could do what he liked with the pass-book, and by its
adoption, as described, as the basis of all entries, there was no
independent check upon him if he chose to tamper with it. This he did to
an enormous extent, continually altering, erasing, and adding figures to
correspond with and cover the abstractions he made of various checks as
they were drawn. It seems incredible that this pass-book, which when
produced in court was a mass of blots and erasures, should not have
created suspicion of foul play either at the bank or at the company's
board. Implicit confidence appears to have been placed in Watts, who was
the son of an old and trusted employee, and, moreover, a young man of
plausible address.

Watts led two lives. In the West End he was a man of fashion, with a
town house, a house at Brighton, and a cellar full of good wine at both.
He rode a priceless hack in Rotten Row, or drove down to Richmond in a
mail phaeton and pair. He played high, and spent his nights at the club,
or in joyous and dissolute company. When other pleasures palled he took
a theatre, and posed as a munificent patron of the dramatic art. Under
his auspices several "stars" appeared on the boards of the Marylebone
theatre, and later he became manager of the newly rebuilt Olympic at
Wych Street. No one cared to inquire too closely into the sources of his
wealth. Some said he was a fortunate speculator in stocks, others that
he had had extraordinary luck as a gold-digger. Had his West End and
little-informed associates followed him into the city, whither he was
taken every morning in a smart brougham, they would have seen him alight
from it in Cornhill, and walk forward on foot to enter as a humble and
unpretending employee the doors of the Globe Assurance office. His
situation, exactly described, was that of check clerk in the cashier's
department, and his salary was £200 a year. Nevertheless, in this
position, through the culpable carelessness which left him unfettered,
he managed between 1844 and 1850 to embezzle and apply to his own
purposes some £71,000. The detection of these frauds came while he was
still prominently before the world as the lessee of the Olympic. Rumours
were abroad that serious defalcations had been discovered in one of the
insurance offices, but it was long before the public realised that the
fraudulent clerk and the great theatrical manager were one and the same
person. Watts' crime was discovered by the secretary of the Globe
company, who came suddenly upon the extensive falsification of the
pass-book. An inquiry was at once set on foot, and the frauds were
traced to Watts. The latter, when first taxed with his offence,
protested his innocence boldly, and positively denied all knowledge of
the affair; and he had so cleverly destroyed all traces that it was not
easy to bring home the charge. But it was proved that Watts had
appropriated one check for £1,400, which he had paid to his own bankers,
and on this he was committed to Newgate for trial. There were two counts
in the indictment: one for stealing a check for £1,400, the second for
stealing a bit of paper valued at one penny. The jury found him guilty
of the latter only, with a point of law reserved. This was fully argued
before three judges, who decided that the act of stealing the bit of
paper involved a much more serious offence, and told him they should
punish him for what he had really done, and not for the slight offence
as it appeared on the record. The sentence of the court, one of ten
years' transportation, struck the prisoner with dismay. He had been led
to suppose that twelve months' imprisonment was the utmost the law could
inflict, and he broke down utterly under the unexpected blow. That same
evening he committed suicide in Newgate.

The details of the suicide were given at the inquest. Watts had been in
ill-health from the time of his first arrest. In Giltspur Street
Compter, where he was first lodged, he showed symptoms of delirium
tremens, and admitted that he had been addicted to the excessive use of
stimulants. His health improved, but was still indifferent when he was
brought up for sentence from the Newgate infirmary. He returned from
court in a state of gloomy dejection, and in the middle of the night one
of the fellow-prisoners who slept in the same ward noticed that he was
not in his bed. This man got up to look for him, and found him hanging
from the bars of a neighbouring room. He had made use of a piece of rope
cut out from the sacking of his bedstead, and had tied his feet together
with a silk pocket-handkerchief. The prison officers were called, but
Watts was quite cold and stiff when he was cut down.

In 1853 a second case of gigantic fraud alarmed and scandalised the
financial world. It outshone even the defalcations of Watts. Nothing to
equal the excitement caused by the forgeries of Robert Ferdinand Pries
had ever been known in the city of London. He was a corn merchant who
operated largely in grain. So enormous were his transactions, that they
often affected the markets, and caused great fluctuations in prices.
These had been attributed to political action; some thought that the
large purchases in foreign grains, effected at losing prices, were
intended by the protectionists to depress the wheat market, and secure
the support of the farmers at the forthcoming election; others, that
Napoleon III, but recently proclaimed Emperor of the French, wished to
gain the popularity necessary to secure the support of the people. Few
realised that these mysterious operations were the "convulsive attempt"
of a ruined and dishonest speculator to sustain his credit. Pries,
although enjoying a high reputation in the city, had long been in a bad
way. His extensive business had been carried on by fraud. His method was
to obtain advances twice over on the same bills of lading or corn
warrants. The duplicates were forged. In this way he obtained vast sums
from several firms, and one to which he was indebted upwards of £50,000
subsequently stopped payment. Pries at length was discovered through a
dishonoured check for £3,000, paid over as an instalment of £18,000
owing for an advance on warrants. Inquiries were instituted when the
check was protested, which led to the discovery of the forgeries. Pries
was lodged in Newgate, tried at the Old Bailey, and transported for
life.

Another set of frauds, which resembled those of Pries in principle,
although not in practice, was soon afterwards discovered. These were the
forgeries of Joseph Windle Cole. This clever but unscrupulous trader
proposed to gain the capital he needed for business purposes by raising
money on dock warrants for imported goods which had no real existence.
When such goods arrived they were frequently left at a wharf, paying
rent until it suited the importer to remove them. The dock warrant was
issued by the wharfinger as certificate that he held the goods. The
warrant thus represented money, and was often used as such, being
endorsed and passed from hand to hand as other negotiable bills. Cole's
plan was to have a wharf of his own, nominally occupied by a creature
trading as Maltby & Co. Goods would be landed at this wharf; Maltby &
Co. would issue warrants on them deliverable to the importer, and the
goods were then passed to be stored in neighbouring warehouses. The
owners of the latter would then issue a second set of warrants on these
goods, in total ignorance of the fact that they were already pledged.
Cole quickly raised money on both sets of warrants. He carried on this
game for some time with great success, and so developed his business
that in one year his transactions amounted to a couple of millions of
pounds. He had several narrow escapes. Once a warrant-holder sent down a
clerk to view certain goods, and the clerk found that these goods had
already a "stop" upon them, that is, they were pledged. Cole escaped by
throwing the blame on a careless partner, and at once removed the
"stop." Again, some of the duplicate and fictitious warrants were held
by a firm which suspended payment, and there was no knowing into whose
hands they might fall. Cole found out where they were, and redeemed them
at a heavy outlay, thus establishing business relations with the firm
that held them, much to the firm's subsequent anger and regret. Last of
all, the well-known bankers, Overend & Gurney, whose own affairs created
much excitement some years later, wishing to verify the value of
warrants they held, and sending to Maltby & Co.'s wharf, found out half
the truth. These bankers, wishing for more specific information, asked
Davidson & Gordon, a firm with which Cole was closely allied, whether
the warrants meant goods or nothing. They could not deny that the latter
was the truth, and were forthwith stigmatised by Overend & Gurney's
representative as rogues. But Overend & Gurney took no steps to make the
swindle public, and therefore, according to people of principle, became
a party to the fraud.

The course of the swindlers was by no means smooth, but it was not till
1854 that suspicion arose that anything was wrong. A firm which held a
lot of warrants suddenly demanded the delivery of the goods they
covered. The goods having no existence, Cole of course could not deliver
them. About this time Davidson & Gordon, the firm above-mentioned, who
had out fraudulent warrants of their own to the extent of £150,000,
suspended payment and absconded. This affected Cole's credit, and ugly
reports were in circulation charging him with the issue of simulated
warrants. These, indeed, were out to the value of £367,800. Cole's
difficulties increased more and more; warrant-holders came down upon him
demanding to realise their goods. Cole now suspended payment. Maltby,
who had bolted, was pursued and arrested, to end his life miserably by
committing suicide in a Newgate cell. Cole too was apprehended, and in
due course tried at the Central Criminal Court. He was found guilty, and
sentenced to the seemingly inadequate punishment of four years'
transportation. Davidson and Gordon were also sentenced to imprisonment.

A more distressing case stands next on the criminal records--the failure
and subsequent sentence of the bankers Messrs. Strahan, Paul & Bates,
for the fraudulent disposal of securities lodged in their hands. This
firm was one of the oldest banking establishments in the kingdom, and
dated back to the Commonwealth, when, under the title of Snow & Walton,
it carried on business as pawnbrokers. The Strahan of the firm which
came to grief was a Snow who changed his name for a fortune of £200,000;
he was a man esteemed and respected in society and the world of finance,
incapable, it was thought, of a dishonest deed. Sir John Dean Paul had
inherited a baronetcy from his father, together with an honoured name;
he was himself a prominent member of the Low Church, of austere piety,
active in all good works. Mr. Bates had been confidential managing
clerk, and was taken into the firm not alone as a reward for long and
faithful service, but that he might strengthen it by his long experience
and known business capacity. The bank enjoyed an excellent reputation,
it had a good connection, and was supposed to be perfectly sound.
Moreover, the partners were sober, steady men, who paid unremitting
attention to business. Yet, even as early as the death of the first Sir
John Paul, the bank was insolvent, and instead of starting on a fresh
life with a new name, it should then and there have closed its doors. In
December, 1851, the balance sheet showed a deficiency of upwards of
£70,000. The bank had been conducted on false principles; it had assumed
enormous responsibilities--on one side by the ownership of the Mostyn
collieries, a valueless property, and on the other by backing up an
impecunious and rotten firm of contractors with vast liabilities and
pledged to impossible works abroad. The engagements of the bank on these
two heads, amounting to nearly half a million of money, produced
immediate embarrassment and financial distress.

The bank was already insolvent, and the partners had to decide between
suspending payment or continuing to hold its head above water by
flagitious processes. They chose, unhappily for themselves, the latter
alternative. Money they must have, and money they raised to meet their
urgent necessities upon the balances and securities deposited with them
by their customers. This borrowing continued, and on such a scale that
their paper was soon at a discount, and the various discount houses
would not advance sufficient sums to relieve the necessities of the
bank. Then it was that instead of merely pledging securities, the bank
sold them outright, and thus passed the Rubicon of fraud. This went on
for some time, and might never have been discovered had some good stroke
of luck provided the partners with money enough to retrieve the position
of the bank. But that passed from bad to worse; the firm's paper went
down further and further; an application to the Committee of Bankers for
assistance was peremptorily refused; then came a run on the bank, and it
was compelled to stop payment. Its debts amounted to three-quarters of a
million, and the dividend it eventually paid was three and twopence in
the pound. But worse than the bankruptcy was the confession made by the
partners in the court. They admitted that they had made away with many
of the securities intrusted to their keeping. Following this, warrants
were issued for their arrest, the specific charge being the unlawful
negotiation of Danish bonds and other shares belonging to the Rev. Dr.
Griffiths, of Rochester, to the value of £20,000.

Bates was at once captured in Norfolk Street, Strand. Police officers
went down at night to Nutfield, near Reigate, and arrested Sir John
Paul, but allowed the prisoner to sleep there. Next morning they barely
managed to catch the train to town, and left Sir John behind on the
platform, but he subsequently surrendered himself. Mr. Strahan was
arrested at a friend's house in Bryanston Square. All three were tried
at the Central Criminal Court, and sentenced to fourteen years'
transportation, passing some time in Newgate _en route_. Bates, the
least guilty, was pardoned in 1858.

Two cases of extensive embezzlement which were discovered almost
simultaneously, those of Robson and Redpath, will long be remembered
both within and without the commercial world. They both reproduced many
of the features of the case of Watts, already described, but in neither
did the sums misappropriated reach quite the same high figure. But
neither Robson nor Redpath would have been able to pursue their
fraudulent designs with success had they not, like Watts, been afforded
peculiar facilities by the slackness of system and the want of
methodical administration in the concerns by which they were employed.
Robson was of humble origin, but he was well educated, and he had some
literary ability. His tastes were mainly theatrical, and he was the
author of several plays, one of which, at least, "Love and Loyalty,"
with Wallack in a leading part, achieved a certain success. He began
life as a law-writer, earning thereby some fifteen or eighteen shillings
a week; but the firm he served got him a situation as clerk in the
office of the Great Northern Railway, whence he passed to a better
position under the Crystal Palace Company. He now married, although his
salary was only a pound a week; but he soon got on. He had a pleasant
address, showed good business aptitude, and quickly acquired the
approval of his superiors. Within a year he was advanced to the post of
chief clerk in the transfer department, at a salary of £150 a year. His
immediate chief was a Mr. Fasson, upon whose confidence he gained so
rapidly, through his activity, industry, and engaging manners, that ere
long the whole management of the transfer department was intrusted to
him.

Some time elapsed before Robson succumbed to temptation. He was not the
first man of loose morality and expensive tastes who preferred the risk
of future reputation and liberty to the present discomfort of living
upon narrow means. The temptation was all the greater because the
chances of successful fraud lay ready to hand. Shares in the company
were represented by certificates, which often enough never left the
company's, or more exactly Robson's, hands. He conceived the idea of
transferring shares, bogus shares from a person who held none, to any
one who would buy them in the open market. He took it for granted that
the certificates representing these bogus shares, and which practically
did not exist, would never be called for. This ingenious method of
raising funds he adopted and carried on without detection, till the
defalcations from fraudulent transfers and fraudulent issues combined
amounted to £27,000. With the proceeds of these flagitious frauds Robson
feasted and made merry. He kept open house at Kilburn Priory;
entertained literary, artistic, and dramatic celebrities; had a smart
"turn out," attended all the race-meetings, and dressed in the latest
fashion. To his wife, poor soul, he made no pretence of fidelity, and
she enjoyed only so much of his company as was necessarily spent in
receiving guests at home, or could be spared from two rival
establishments in other parts of the town. To account for his revenues
he pretended to have been very lucky on the Stock Exchange, which was at
one time true to a limited extent, and to have succeeded in other
speculations. When his friends asked why he, a wealthy man of
independent means, continued to slave on as a clerk on a pittance, he
replied gaily that his regular work at the Crystal Palace office was
useful as a sort of discipline, and kept him steady.

All this time his position was one of extreme insecurity. He was
standing over a mine which at any moment might explode. The blow fell
suddenly, and when least expected. One morning Mr. Fasson asked casually
for certain certificates, whether representing real or fictitious shares
does not appear; but they were certificates connected in some way with
Robson's long-practised frauds, and he could not produce them. His chief
asked sternly where they were. Robson said they were at Kilburn Priory.
"Let us go to Kilburn for them together," said Mr. Fasson, growing
suspicious. They drove there, and Robson on arrival did the honours of
his house, rang for lunch to gain time, but at Mr. Fasson's pressing
demands went up-stairs to fetch the certificates. He came back to
explain that he had mislaid them. Mr. Fasson, more and more ill at ease,
would not accept this subterfuge, and declared they must be found.
Robson again left him, but only to gather together hastily all the money
and valuables on which he could lay his hands, with which he left the
house. Mr. Fasson waited and waited for his subordinate to reappear, and
at last discovered his flight. A reward was forthwith offered for
Robson's apprehension. Meanwhile the absconding clerk had coolly driven
to a favourite dining-place in the West End, where a fish curry and a
brace of partridges were set before him, and he discussed the latter
with appetite, but begged that they would never give him curry again, as
he did not like it. After dinner he went into hiding for a day or two.
Then, accompanied by a lady not Mrs. Robson, he took steamer and
started for Copenhagen. But the continental police had been warned to
look out for him, and two Danish inspectors got upon his track, followed
him over to Sweden, and arrested him at Helsingfors. Thence he was
transferred to Copenhagen and surrendered in due course to a London
police officer.

Little more remains to be said about Robson. He appears to have accepted
his position, and at once to have resigned himself to his fate. When
brought to trial he took matters very coolly, and at first pleaded "Not
Guilty," but subsequently withdrew the plea. Sergeant Ballantine, who
prosecuted, paid him the compliment of describing him as "a young man of
great intelligence, considerable powers of mind, and possessed of an
education very much beyond the rank of life to which he originally
belonged." Robson was found guilty, and sentenced to two terms of
transportation, one for twenty and one for fourteen years. Newgate
officers who remember Robson describe him as a fine young man, who
behaved well as a prisoner, but who had all the appearance of a
careless, thoughtless, happy-go-lucky fellow.

In many respects the embezzlement of which Leopold Redpath was guilty
closely resembled that of Robson, but it was based upon more extended
and audacious forgeries. Redpath's crime arose from his peculiar and
independent position as registrar of stock of the Great Northern Railway
Company. This offered him ample facilities for the creation of
artificial stock, its sale from a fictitious holder, and transfer to
himself. All the signatures in the transfer were forged. Not only did he
thus transfer and realise "bogus" stock, but he bought _bonâ fide_
amounts, increased their value by altering the figures, and in this way
a larger amount was duly carried to his credit on the register, and
entered upon the certificates of transfer. By these means Redpath
misappropriated vast sums during a period extending over ten years. The
total amount was never exactly made out, but the false stock created and
issued by him was estimated at £220,000. Even when the bubble burst
Redpath, who had lived at the rate of twenty thousand a year, had assets
in the shape of land, house, furniture, pictures, and _objets d'art_ to
the value of £50,000.

He began in a very small way. First a lawyer's clerk, he then got an
appointment in the Peninsula and Oriental Company's office; afterwards
set up as an insurance broker on his own account, but presently failed.
His fault was generosity, an open-handed, unthinking charity which gave
freely to the poor and needy the money which belonged to his creditors.
After his bankruptcy he obtained a place as clerk in the Great Northern
Railway office, from which he rose to be assistant registrar, with the
special duties of transferring shares. He soon proved his ability, and
by unremitting attention mastered the whole work of the office. Later on
he became registrar, and in this more independent position developed to
a colossal extent the frauds he had already practised as a subordinate.
Now he launched out into great expenditure, took a house in Chester
Terrace, and became known as a Mæcenas and patron of the arts. He had a
nice taste in _bric-à-brac_, and was considered a good judge of
pictures. Leading social and artistic personages were to be met with at
his house, and his hospitality was far famed. The choicest wines, the
finest fruits, peas at ten shillings a quart, five-guinea pineapples,
and early asparagus were to be found on his table. But his chief
extravagance, his favourite folly, was the exercise of an ostentatious
benevolence. The philanthropy he had displayed in a small way when less
prosperous became now a passion. His name headed every subscription
list; his purse was always open. Not content with giving where
assistance was solicited, he himself sought out deserving cases and
personally afforded relief. When the crash came there were pensioners
and other recipients of his bounty who could not believe that so good a
man had really been for years a swindler and a rogue. Down at Weybridge,
where he had a country place, his name was long remembered with
gratitude by the poor. During the days of his prosperity he was a
governor of Christ's Hospital, of the St. Ann's Society, and one of the
supporters and managers of the Patriotic Fund. In his person he was neat
and fastidious; he patronised the best tailors, and had a fashionable
_coiffeur_ from Hanover Square daily to curl his hair.

There was something dramatic in Redpath's detection. Just after
Robson's frauds had agitated the minds of all directors of companies,
Mr. Denison, chairman of the Great Northern, was standing at a railway
station talking to a certain well-known peer of the realm. Redpath
passed and lifted his hat to his chairman; the latter acknowledged the
salute. But the peer rushed forward and shook Redpath warmly by the
hand. "What do you know of our clerk?" asked Mr. Denison of his
lordship. "Only that he is a capital fellow, who gives the best dinners
and balls in town." Redpath had industriously circulated reports that he
had prospered greatly in speculation; but the chairman of the Great
Northern could not realise that a clerk of the company could honestly be
in the possession of unlimited wealth. It was at once decided at the
board to make a thorough examination of all his books. Redpath was
called in and informed of the intended investigation. He tried to stave
off the evil hour by declaring that everything was perfectly right; but
finding he could not escape, he said he would resign his post, and
leaving the board-room, disappeared.

The inquiry soon revealed the colossal character of the frauds. Warrants
were issued for Redpath's arrest, but he had flown to Paris. Thither
police officers followed, only to find that he had returned to London. A
further search discovered him at breakfast at a small house in the New
Road. He was arrested, examined before a police magistrate, and
committed to Newgate. Great excitement prevailed in the city and the
West End when Redpath's defalcations were made public. The stock market
was greatly affected, and society, more especially the evangelical
element of it which frequented Exeter Hall, was convulsed. The Central
Criminal Court, when the trial came on, was densely crowded, and many
curious eyes were turned upon the somewhat remarkable man who occupied
the dock. He is described by a contemporary account as a fresh-looking
man of forty years of age, slightly bald, inclined to embonpoint, and
thoroughly embodying the idea of English respectability. His manner was
generally self-possessed, but his face was marked with "uneasy
earnestness," and he looked about him with wayward, furtive glances.
When the jury found a verdict of guilty he remained unmoved. He listened
without emotion to the judge's well-merited censures, and received his
sentence of transportation for life without much surprise. Redpath
passed away into the outer darkness of a penal colony, where he lived
many years. But his name lingers still in England as that of the first
swindler of his time, and the prototype of a class not uncommon in our
later days--that of dishonest rogues who assume piety and philanthropy
as a cloak for their misdeeds.

In Newgate, Redpath was a difficult man to deal with. From the moment of
his reception he gave himself great airs, as a martyr and a man heavily
wronged. By and by, when escape seemed hopeless, and after sentence, he
suddenly degenerated into the lowest stamp of criminal, and behaved so
as to justify a belief that he had been a gaol-bird all his life.

It has been already remarked in these pages that with changed social
conditions came a great change in the character of crimes. Highway
robberies, for instance, had disappeared, if we except the spasmodic and
severely repressed outbreak of "garrotting," which at one time spread
terror throughout London. Thieves preferred now to use ingenuity rather
than brute force. It was no longer possible to stop a coach or carriage,
or rob the postman who carried the mail. The improved methods of
locomotion had put a stop to these depredations. People travelled in
company, as a rule; only when single and unprotected were they in any
danger of attack, and that but rarely. There were still big prizes,
however, to tempt the daring, and none appealed more to the thievish
instinct than the custom of transmitting gold by rail. The precious
metal was sent from place to place carefully locked up and guarded, no
doubt; but were the precautions too minute, the vigilance too close to
be eluded or overcome? This was the question which presented itself to
the fertile brain of one Pierce, who had been concerned in various
"jobs" of a dishonest character, and who for the moment was a clerk in a
betting office. He laid the suggestion before Agar, a professional
thief, who thought it contained elements of success. But the collusion
and active assistance of employees of the railway carriers were
indispensable, and together they sounded one Burgess, a guard on the
South-Eastern Railway, a line by which large quantities of bullion were
sent to the Continent. Burgess detailed the whole system of
transmission. The gold, packed in an iron-bound box, was securely lodged
in safes locked with patent Chubbs. Each safe had three sets of double
keys, all held by confidential servants of the company. One pair was
with the traffic superintendent in London, another with an official in
Folkestone, a third with the captain of the Folkestone and Boulogne
boat. At the other side of the Channel the French railway authorities
took charge.

The safes while on the line between London and Folkestone were in the
guard's van. This was an important step, and they might easily be robbed
some day when Burgess was the guard, provided only that they could be
opened. The next step was to get impressions and fabricate false keys. A
new accomplice was now needed within the company's establishment, and
Pierce searched long before he found the right person. At last he
decided to enlist one Tester, a clerk in the traffic department, whom he
thought would prove a likely tool. The four waited patiently for their
opportunity, which came when the safes were sent to Chubbs' to be
repaired; and Chubbs sent them back, but only with one key, in such a
way that Tester had possession of this key for a time. He lent it to
Agar for a brief space, who promptly took an impression on wax. But the
safes had a double lock; the difficulty was to get a copy of the second
key. This was at length effected by Agar and Pierce. After hanging about
the Folkestone office for some time, they saw at last that the key was
kept in a certain cupboard. Still watching and waiting for the first
chance, they seized it when the clerks left the office empty for a
moment. Pierce boldly stepped in, found the cupboard unlocked; he
removed the key, handed it to Agar outside, who quickly took the wax
impression, handed it back to Pierce; Pierce replaced it, left the
office, and the thing was done.

After this nothing remained but to wait for some occasion when the
amount transmitted would be sufficient to justify the risks of robbery.
It was Tester's business, who had access to the railway company's books,
to watch for this. Meanwhile the others completed their preparations
with the utmost care. A weight of shot was bought and stowed in carpet
bags ready to replace exactly the abstracted gold. Courier bags were
bought to carry the "stuff" slung over the shoulders; and last, but not
least, Agar frequently travelled up and down the line to test the false
keys he had manufactured with Pierce's assistance. Burgess admitted him
into the guard's van, where he fitted and filed the keys till they
worked easily and satisfactorily in the locks of the safe. One night
Tester whispered to Agar and Pierce, "All right," as they cautiously
lounged about London Bridge. The thieves took first-class tickets,
handed their bags full of shot to the porters, who placed them in the
guard's van. Just as the train was starting Agar slipped into the van
with Burgess, and Pierce got into a first-class carriage. Agar at once
got to work on the first safe, opened it, took out and broke into the
bullion box, removed the gold, substituted the shot from a carpet bag,
re-fastened and re-sealed the bullion box, and replaced it in the safe.
At Redhill, Tester met the train and relieved the thieves of a portion
of the stolen gold. At the same station Pierce joined Agar in the
guard's van, and there were now three to carry on the robbery. The two
remaining safes were attacked and nearly entirely despoiled in the same
way as the first, and the contents transferred to the courier bags. The
train was now approaching Folkestone, and Agar and Pierce hid themselves
in a dark part of the van. At that station the safes were given out,
heavy with shot, not gold; the thieves went on to Dover, and by and by,
with Ostend tickets previously procured, returned to London without
mishap, and by degrees disposed of much of the stolen gold.

The theft was discovered at Boulogne, when the boxes were found not to
weigh exactly what they ought. But no clue was obtained to the thieves,
and the theft might have remained a mystery but for the subsequent bad
faith of Pierce to his accomplice Agar. The latter was ere long arrested
on a charge of uttering forged checks, convicted, and sentenced to
transportation for life. When he knew that he could not escape his fate,
he handed over to Pierce a sum of £3,000, his own, whether rightly or
wrongly acquired never came out, together with the unrealised part of
the bullion, amounting in all to some £15,000, and begged his accomplice
to invest it as a settlement on a woman named Kay, by whom he had had a
child. Pierce made Kay only a few small payments, then appropriated the
rest of the money. Kay, who had been living with Agar at the time of the
bullion robbery, went to the police in great fury and distress, and
disclosed all she knew of the affair. Agar too, in Newgate, heard how
Pierce had treated him, and at once readily turned informer. As the
evidence he gave incriminated Pierce, Burgess, and Tester, all three
were arrested and committed to Newgate for trial. The whole strange
story, the long incubation and the elaborate accomplishment of the plot,
came out at the Old Bailey, and was acknowledged to be one of the most
extraordinary on record.

Scarcely had the conviction of these daring and astute thieves been
assured, than another gigantic fraud was brought to light. The series of
boldly conceived and cleverly executed forgeries in which James
Townshend Saward, commonly called "Jim the Penman," was the prime mover,
has probably no parallel in the annals of crime. Saward himself is a
striking and in some respects a unique figure in criminal history. A
man of birth and education, a member of the bar, and of acknowledged
legal attainments, his proclivities were all downward. Instead of
following an honourable profession, he preferred to turn his great
natural talents and ready wits to the most nefarious practices. He was
known to the whole criminal fraternity as a high-class receiver of
stolen goods, a negotiator more especially of stolen paper, checks and
bills, of which he made a particular use. He dealt too in the precious
metals, when they had been improperly acquired, and it was to him that
Agar, Pierce, and the rest applied when seeking to dispose of their
stolen bullion. But Saward's operations were mainly directed to the
fabrication and uttering of forged checks. His method was comprehensive
and deeply laid. Burglars brought him the checks they stole from houses,
thieves what they got in pocket-books. Checks blank and cancelled were
his stock in trade. The former he filled up by exact imitation of the
latter, signature and all. When he could get nothing but the blank
check, he set in motion all sorts of schemes for obtaining signatures,
such as commencing sham actions, and addressing formal applications,
merely for the reply. One stroke of luck which he turned to great
account was the return from transportation of an old "pal" and
confederate, who brought with him some bills of exchange.

Saward's method of negotiating the checks was equally well planned. Like
his great predecessor "Old Patch," he himself never went to a bank, nor
did any of his accomplices. The bearer of the check was always innocent
and ignorant of the fraudulent nature of the document he presented. In
order to obtain messengers of this sort, Saward answered advertisements
of persons seeking employment, and when these presented themselves,
intrusted them as a beginning with the duty of cashing checks. A
confederate followed the emissary closely, not only to insure fair play
and the surrender of the proceeds if the check was cashed, but to give
timely notice if it were not, so that Saward and the rest might make
themselves scarce. As each transaction was carried out from a different
address, and a different messenger always employed, the forgers always
escaped detection. But fate overtook two of the gang, partly through
their own carelessness, when transferring their operations to Yarmouth.
One named Hardwicke assumed the name of Ralph, and, to obtain commercial
credit in Yarmouth, paid £250 to a Yarmouth bank as coming from a Mr.
Whitney. He forgot to add that it was to be placed to Ralph's credit,
and when he called as Ralph, he was told it was only at Mr. Whitney's
disposal, and that it could be paid to no one else. Hardwicke, or
"Ralph," appealed to Saward in his difficulty, and that clever schemer
sent an elaborate letter of instructions how to ask for the money. But
while Hardwicke was in communication with Saward, the bank was in
communication with London, and the circumstances were deemed
sufficiently suspicious to warrant the arrest of the gentlemen at
Yarmouth on a charge of forgery and conspiracy.

Saward's letter to Hardwicke fell into the hands of the police and
compromised him. While Hardwicke and Atwell were in Newgate awaiting
trial, active search was made for Saward, who was at length taken in a
coffee-shop near Oxford Street, under the name of Hopkins. He resisted
at first, and denied his identity, but on being searched, two blank
checks of the London and Westminster Bank were found in his pocket. He
then confessed that he was the redoubtable Jim Saward, or Jim the
Penman, and was conveyed to a police court, and thence to Newgate. At
his trial Atwell and Hardwicke, two of his chief allies and accomplices,
turned informers, and the whole scheme of systematic forgery was laid
bare. The evidence was corroborated by that of many of the victims who
had acted as messengers, and others who swore to the meetings of the
conspirators and their movements. Saward was found guilty, and the
judge, in passing sentence of transportation for life, expressed deep
regret that "the ingenuity, skill, and talent, which had received so
perverted and mistaken direction, had not been guided by a sense of
virtue, and directed to more honourable and useful pursuits." The
proceeds of these forgeries amounted, it was said, to some thousands per
annum. Saward spent all his share at low gaming houses, and in all
manner of debaucheries. He was in person a short, square-built man of
gentlemanly address, sharp and shrewd in conversation and manner. He was
fifty-eight at the time of his conviction, and had therefore had a long
criminal career.

The vicissitudes of the felon transport who ventured to return before
his sentence of exile had expired, has been told by one of their number.
His statement bears date of 1852 and runs as follows:

"At the time of the offence for which I was convicted I was suffering
from the most acute pecuniary distress, with a wife and large family of
children. A series of misfortunes--the most heavy was the death of my
second wife, by which I lost an annuity of £150, with a great falling
off, notwithstanding all my exertions, in my occupation as reporter to
the public press--brought about mainly the distress in question.
Previous to the commission of the offence I had through life borne an
irreproachable character. In early life, from 1818 to 1822, I held some
most responsible appointments in Jamaica and other West India Islands;
from 1829 to 1834, I held the appointment of Magistrate's Clerk and
Postmaster at Bong Bong in New South Wales; afterwards was
superintendent of large farms in Bathurst, over the Blue Mountains, in
the same colony. At the later period I had a wife and family of young
children; the former, a most amiable partner, I had the misfortune to
lose in 1838, leaving me with seven young children. My connections are
most respectable. My late father was an officer of rank, and of very
meritorious services. My eldest brother is at present a major in the
Royal Marine Corps. I was convicted in October, 1846; was three months
in Millbank Penitentiary, at which period fears were entertained that my
intellect would become impaired in solitary confinement; subsequently I
was three years and two months in the _Warrior_ convict ship at
Woolwich, during which period I was employed on the government works in
the dockyard; and was sent abroad in March, 1850. At Millbank and the
hulks I had the best possible character, as also on my arrival at Hobart
Town, Van Diemen's Land, after a passage of four months. On my arrival I
received a ticket-of-leave, which I retained until I left the colony,
never having forfeited the same for a day by any kind of insubordinate
conduct. My motive in leaving Van Diemen's Land was to proceed to the
gold-diggings, in the hope that I might be successful and better the
condition of my family at home, who were in very impoverished
circumstances; but although my exertions were very great in California,
Victoria, and New South Wales, I was unsuccessful. It is true I made,
occasionally, some money; but I was robbed of it on the road by armed
bushrangers, and frequently ill-used and robbed at Melbourne and Geelong
by the worst of characters. I was shipwrecked twice, and once burnt out
at sea: the first time in Torres Straits, between New Holland and New
Guinea on a reef of coral rocks. Upon this occasion I lost between £70
and £80 in cash, and all my luggage. Eleven only of us got ashore, out
of a ship's company of twenty-seven, chiefly Lascars, Malays, and
Chinamen. After thirty days' great suffering and privation we were
picked up by an American whaler, and ultimately reached Sydney, New
South Wales.

"I was subsequently wrecked in a brigantine called the _Triton_, going
from Melbourne to Adelaide, and lost all I possessed in the world,
having another very narrow escape of my life. In returning from San
Francisco to Melbourne in a vessel called the _White Squall_, she caught
fire about three hundred and fifty miles from Tahiti (formerly called
Otaheite). We were obliged to abandon her and take to the boats; but a
great number of the crew and passengers perished by fire and water. The
survivors in the boats reached Tahiti in about eight days, in a state of
great exhaustion; many of them died from the effects of the same. I had
the misfortune to lose nearly all I possessed upon this occasion. On
reaching Melbourne I was very ill and went into the hospital. I left in
about five weeks, intending to go again to Mount Alexander diggings;
but, owing to ill-health, bad state of the roads from the floods, and
limited means, I abandoned such intention. I had a twelvemonth before
been to Ballarat, Mount Alexander, Forest Creek, Bendigo, and many other
diggings: but at this time there were no police or gold escort
troopers, consequently nearly all the unfortunate diggers were robbed of
what they got by hordes of bushrangers, well mounted, and armed with
revolvers and other weapons to the teeth. In returning to Melbourne from
Forest Creek the last time, I was beat, stripped, and robbed of all I
had, in the Black Forest, about halfway between Melbourne and Mount
Alexander.

"I left Melbourne in the brig _Kestrel_ for Sydney, New South Wales, at
which place I was acquainted with many respectable parties, some of whom
I had known as far back as 1829, when I first went to Sydney with my
wife and children. The _Kestrel_ put in at some of the settlements of
New Zealand, at one of which (Auckland) was lying a barque, bound for
England, in want of hands. The temptation was great to reach my dear
family, for which I had mourned ever since I met with my misfortune. I
shipped myself as ordinary seaman and assistant steward. We left the
settlement in July, with a miserably crippled ship's company, and made a
very severe passage round Cape Horn, in the winter season, which carried
away masts, sails, rigging, boats, bulwarks, stanchions, etc., etc. Some
of the crew were lost with the yards, and most of us were frost-bitten.
We put into Rio de Janeiro to refit and provision. We proceeded on our
passage, crossed the equator, touched at Funchal--one of the Azores--for
two days, and reached England in September, after a severe passage of
four months and twenty-six days from New Zealand.

"Under all the circumstances of my present unhappy condition, I humbly
hope the legislature will humanely consider the long, severe, and
various descriptions of punishment I have undergone since my conviction.
I would also most respectfully call the attention of the authorities to
the fact that the offence for which I have so severely suffered was the
first deviation from strict rectitude during my life; and that I have
never since, upon any occasion whatever, received a second sentence even
of the most minor description. It was only required of me by the then
regulation of the service, that I should serve five years upon the
public works at Woolwich. On my embarkation for Van Diemen's Land I had
done three years and four months: if I had completed the remaining
twenty months I should have been discharged from the dockyard a free
man. I also humbly beg to state, at the time I left Van Diemen's Land,
six years after my conviction, I was entitled by the regulations of the
service to a conditional pardon, which would have left me at liberty to
leave the colony without further restraint. I beg to state that during
the period of three years and four months I was at the hulks I worked in
all the gangs in the dockyard. Upon several occasions I received severe
injuries, some of which required me to be sent to the hospital ship. I
was ruptured by carrying heavy weights, the effect of which I have
frequently felt since, and do to the present day. During the two periods
when the cholera raged in the hulks, I attended upon the sick at the
hospital ships. I humbly implore the government will have compassion
upon me for the sake of my numerous and respectable family, for my great
mental and bodily sufferings since my conviction, and for my present
weakly, worn-out debilitated state of health, and award me a mild
sentence. During my captivity and absence my unfortunate wife has
suffered from great destitution, and has buried two of her children. She
is again bereaved of me in a distressed condition with her only
surviving child, a little girl of ten years of age."

This man was set at large without punishment.




CHAPTER VIII

THE COLLAPSE OF DEPORTATION

     Lamentable state of Van Diemen's Land--Colony on the brink of
     ruin--Latest convict schemes a complete failure--Glut of labour and
     deadlock in employment--Terrible state of Norfolk Island--Convicts
     rule--Report of special commissioner--Ill-advised leniency--Severer
     discipline introduced--Interference with so-called rights
     aggravates misconduct--Many murders committed--New commandant
     appointed--Offenders brought to trial--Fourteen hanged--Norfolk
     Island condemned--Creation of new Colony in Northern Australia
     Gladstone's scheme--Change of Ministry and new measures--Exile to
     Van Diemen's Land checked--The new Colonies refuse to receive
     convicts--Western Australia alone admits them--An insufficient
     outlet--New ideas.


Within three years of the establishment of the new system, already
described at length, by which transportation was to be robbed of all its
evils, the most deplorable results showed themselves. The condition of
Van Diemen's Land had become most lamentable. It was filled to
overflowing with convicts. There were in all 25,000, half of whom were
still in the hands of government; and besides these numbers there were
three thousand pass-holders waiting for hire, but unable to obtain
employment. The latter would be reinforced by as many more in the year
immediately following. The colony itself was on the verge of
bankruptcy: its finances embarrassed, its trades and industries
depressed. With all this was a wholesale exodus of all classes of free
people--the better class, to avoid the ruin that stared them in the
face, and working men, because higher wages were offered elsewhere in
the neighbouring colonies. Already, in fact, the new system of probation
had broken down. It had given rise to evils greater than any which it
had been expected to replace. Not only was Van Diemen's Land itself on
the brink of ruin, but the consequences to the convicts were almost too
terrible to be described. Mr. Pitcairn, a resident of Hobart Town,
raised an indignant protest, in which he urges that "all that the free
colonists suffer, even the total destruction of Van Diemen's Land as a
free colony, is as nothing to what the wretched convicts are forced to
submit to. It is not bodily suffering that I refer to: it is the
pollution of their minds and hearts which is forced upon them and which
they cannot escape from. Loathsome as are the details of their miserable
state, it is impossible to see thousands of men debased and depraved
without at least making an attempt to save others from the same fate."
The congregation of criminals in large numbers without due supervision,
meant simply wholesale, wide-spread pollution. Assignment, with all its
faults, had at least the merit of dispersing the evil over a wide area.

Not only in its debasing effects upon the convicts themselves was the
system quite a failure. Half the scheme became a dead letter from the
impoverished condition of the colony. Of what avail was it to prepare
prisoners gradually for honest labour when there was no labour upon
which they could be employed? The whole gist and essence of the scheme
was that after years of restraint the criminal, purged of his evil
propensities, would gladly lend himself out for hire. But what if there
were no hirers? Yet this was practically the state of the case.
Following inevitably from the unnatural over-crowding of Van Diemen's
Land, there came a great glut in the labour market. Had the colony been
thoroughly prosperous, and as big as the neighbouring island-continent,
it could hardly have found employment for the thousands of convicts
poured in year by year. Being quite the reverse--small and almost
stagnant--a species of deadlock was the certain result of this
tremendous influx. To make matters worse, goaded, doubtless, by the
excessive costliness of the whole scheme, the imperial government
insisted that all hirers should pay a tax over and above the regular
wages for every convict engaged, and this whether the hirer was a
private person or the public works department of the colony. Neither
private nor public funds could stand this charge. In the general
distress, employers of labour could hardly afford the moderate wages
asked; while the local revenues were equally impecunious. Yet there were
many works urgently needed in the colony, which the colonial government
was quite disposed to execute--provided they got their labour for
nothing. But to pay for it was impossible. In fact, this imperial
penuriousness defeated its own object. The home government would not let
out its labour except at a price which no one would pay; so the
thousands who might at least have lived at their own expense, remained
at that of the government. They were put to raise produce for their own
support; but they earned nothing, and ate their heads off into the
bargain. They had, moreover, a grievance. They were denied all fruition
in the status to which, by their own conduct and according to prescribed
rules, they arrived. They had been promised that after a certain
probationary period they would pass into a stage of semi-freedom. Yet
here, after all, they were in a condition little superior to the
convicts in the gangs--in the very stage, that is to say, which the
pass-holders had left behind them. The authorities had, in fact, broken
faith with them. This was a fatal flaw in the scheme; a link broken in
the chain; a gap in the sequence of progressive probation enough to
bring the whole to ruin.

But at any rate the pass-holders were better off than the
"conditional-pardon" or "ticket-of-leave" men. The first named had still
a lien on the government. They were certain of food, and a roof over
their heads at the various hiring depôts. But those who were in a stage
further ahead towards freedom were upon their own resources. These men
were "thrown upon the world with nothing but their labour to support
them." But no labour was in demand. What, then, was to become of them?
They must steal, or starve; and as the outcome of either alternative,
the community might expect to be weighted with a large and increasing
population of thieves and paupers.

Nor would any description of the main island alone suffice to place in a
proper light the actual state of affairs. Norfolk Island, the chief
penal settlement, had deteriorated so rapidly, that what was bad before,
had grown to be infinitely and irremediably worse. Naylor, a clergyman,
writing about this time, paints a terrible picture of the island. Rules
disregarded; convicts of every degree mingled indiscriminately in the
settlement. Some of the prisoners had been convicted, and reconvicted,
and had passed through every grade of punishment in hulks, chain-gangs,
or penal settlements. Among them were "flash men," who kept the island
in awe, and bearded the commandant himself; bodies of from seventy to
one hundred often in open mutiny, refusing to work, and submitting only
when terms had been arranged to their satisfaction. The island was kept
in perpetual alarm; houses were robbed in open day; yet no successful
efforts were made to bring the culprits to justice. An official long
resident on the island tells the following incident: that a favourite
parrot, with its cage, was stolen from his house, and the thief was
known, and seen with the bird. He kept it in his barrack-room, and took
it daily with him to his work. Yet no one dared to interfere with him!
The bird was left in his possession, and he altogether escaped
punishment. The commandant was deliberately knocked down by one of these
ruffians and received severe contusions. The state of the island might
well awaken alarm.

In 1846 a special commissioner was despatched from headquarters at
Hobart Town, to report from personal observation on the state of the
settlement. It is abundantly evident from his report, which will be
found _in extenso_ in a Blue-Book on convict discipline, issued in
February, 1847, that some terrific explosion of the seething elements
collected together at Norfolk Island might be looked for at any early
day. Mr. Stewart, the commissioner, attributed the condition of the
settlement chiefly to the lax discipline maintained by its commandant.
This gentleman certainly appears to have been chosen unwisely. He was
quite the wrong man for the place, utterly unfitted for the arduous
duties he was called upon to perform. Of a weak and vacillating
disposition, he seldom had the courage to act upon his own judgment. It
was openly alleged that his decisions rested with his chief clerk. Most
of his subordinates were at loggerheads with one another, but he never
dared to settle their quarrels himself. Points the most trivial were
referred always to headquarters. He was equally wanting in resolute
determination in dealing with the great mass of convicts who
constituted the bulk of his command. With them he was forever
temporising and making allowances; so that rules, never too severe, came
by degrees to be sensibly relaxed, till leniency grew into culpable
pampering and childish considerateness. As might have been expected, the
objects of his tender solicitude were utterly ungrateful. He interfered
sometimes to soften the sentences of the sitting magistrate, even when
they were light enough; but his kindness was only mistaken for weakness,
and the men in his charge became day by day more insolent and
insubordinate. Where firmness was required in almost every particular,
in order to maintain anything like a controlling supervision, it was
altogether wanting. This commandant was considered by his supreme chief,
to be "totally unfitted for the peculiar situation in which he is
placed, either from want of experience, or from an absence in his own
character of the qualifications necessary to control criminals."

Of a truth, Norfolk Island was a government that could not be entrusted
to any but iron hands. That this commandant was clearly the wrong man
for the post cannot be questioned; nevertheless, he was not altogether
to blame for the terrible state of affairs existing. No doubt by his
wavering incompetence the original condition of the island was greatly
aggravated, but all these evils which presently broke out and bore such
noxious fruit, had been germinating long before his time. It had been
the custom for many years to treat the convicts with ill-advised
leniency. They had been allowed practically too much indulgence, and
were permitted to forget that they owed their location on that island
solely to their own grievous crimes and offences. They had been kept in
order by concession, and not by stern force; persuaded to be good,
rather than coerced when bad. Such a method of procedure can but have
one result with criminals. It is viewed by them as weakness of which
they are quick to take every advantage. Here, at Norfolk Island, under a
loose régime, the convicts had always been allowed their own way; half
the officers placed over them trafficked with them, and were their
free-and-easy familiar friends. On the introduction of the new system,
no attempt was made to sweep the place clean before the arrival of
greatly increased numbers. Old officers remained, and old convicts;
enough of both to perpetuate the old evils and to render them twice as
harmful under the new aspect of the settlement. Gardens were still
allowed; great freedom to come and go hither and thither, with no strict
observance of bounds; any number of private shops existed whereat the
convicts bought and sold, or bartered with each other for pork and
vegetables and other articles of general use. Worse than this, the
"Ring" was left untouched, and grew daily more and more powerful, till a
band of some forty or fifty cut-throat scoundrels ruled the whole
convictdom of the settlement. The members of this "Ring" were in league
with the cooks, from whom they obtained the best portions of the food,
abstracted from their fellow-prisoners' rations; but no one dared to
complain. Such was the malignant terrorism inspired by these fifty
ruffians, that they kept the whole body of the convicts in awe, and
their wholesale plunderings and pilferings flourished unchecked long
before any attempt was made to put them down. Under such conditions as
these, the management of the convicts in Norfolk Island was certainly a
disgrace to the authorities.

Following Mr. Stewart's visit, a more stringent system was attempted,
although not entirely carried out. The commandant was informed that he
must tighten the reins. One by one the highly prized privileges
disappeared: trafficking was now for the first time openly
discountenanced, and the prisoners at length saw themselves debarred
from many little luxuries and indulgences. A strictly coercive
labour-gang was established; the gardens were shut; the limits of bounds
rigorously enforced; and, last but not least, a firm attack was made
upon the method of messing, to check, if possible, the unlawful
misappropriation of food. In this last measure lay the seed of serious
trouble. It interfered directly with the vested interest of a small but
powerful oligarchy, the members of which were not disposed to surrender
lightly the rights they had so long arrogated to themselves. From the
moment that the robberies in the cook-house had been discovered, a
growing spirit of dissatisfaction and discontent was observable among
the more influential prisoners.

A second authorised attack in the same direction brought matters to a
crisis. Not the least of the evils attending the old plan of messing
was, that the prisoners themselves, one by one, were allowed access to
the kitchen, where they might cook anything they happened to have in
possession, whether obtained by fair means or foul. To meet these
culinary requirements, most of the "flash men" had collected pots and
pans of various sorts, constructed chiefly from the regulation mess-tins
and platters. It was decided as a bold stroke against illicit cookery,
to seize every _batterie de cuisine_ in the place. Accordingly, one
evening, after the convicts had been locked up for the night, a careful
search was made through the lumber-yard (the mess-room, so to speak),
and everything of illegal shape was seized. All these collected articles
were then and there removed to the convicts' barrack store. It must be
remarked here that several of the officials shrunk from executing this
duty. One free overseer, named Smith, who was also superintendent of the
cook-house, urged that he was all day among the prisoners, and felt his
life hardly safe if it were known that he had taken part in the search.
Others demurred also; but eventually the work was done.

Next morning, when the convicts went to breakfast, they missed their
highly prized kitchen utensils. A storm quickly gathered, and broke
forth with ungovernable fury. A great mass of men, numbering several
hundreds, streamed at once out of the lumber-yard, and hurried towards
the barrack stores. Everything fell before them: fastenings, woodwork,
doorposts. There within were the cans, the cause of all this coil. These
they gathered up at once, and then turned back, still _en masse_, to the
lumber-yard. They were in search now of victims. Their thirst was for
blood, and nothing less would quench it. They sought first the officers
they hated most; and chief among these was Smith, the overseer of the
kitchen. A convict named Westwood, by birth a gentleman, and having
received a superior education, commonly called "Jacky-Jacky," was
ringleader, and marched at the head of the mutineers. All were
armed--some with long poles, others with axes, most with knives. It was
a case of _sauve qui peut_ with the officers. There were not more than
half a dozen constables on duty, and warning came to four of them too
late. Smith, who had remained in the cook-house, was caught and murdered
on the spot. Another officer, Morris, was also killed. Two others were
struck down with mortal hurts. All the wounds inflicted were about the
head and face. One man had his forehead cut open deep down into the
cavity of the head. He had also a frightful gash from the eye down the
cheek, through which the roof of the mouth was visible. Another had the
whole of one side of his face completely smashed in, from the temple to
the mouth. A third unfortunate man had his skull fractured. All this
had happened in less time than it takes to tell it. Then the mutineers
cried out for more blood. Leaving the lumber-yard, they made for the
police huts, driving the few remaining constables before them, and
striking down all they overtook. At the police huts they smashed the
windows and did what damage they could. They were then for proceeding
onward. "Let's get that villain Barrow," was now the cry--Mr. Barrow
being the stipendiary magistrate, whom they hated with especially keen
hatred. They were determined, so it was afterwards said, to murder every
official on the island, and then to take to the bush.

By this time active opposition was close at hand. First came a military
guard, which formed across the road, and checked all further advance of
the mutineers. Presently Mr. Barrow himself appeared upon the scene with
a larger detachment of troops, and in the presence of this exhibition of
force the convicts retired quietly enough to their barracks.

The strength of the storm therefore was now spent. The mutineers were
either for the moment satisfied with their efforts, or--which is more
probable--they were cowed by the troops, and felt that it was now the
turn for authority to play its hand. Accompanied by a strong escort of
soldiers, the stipendiary magistrate went in amongst the convicts,
examined all carefully, and then and there arrested every one who bore a
single spot or stain of blood. Seven were thus singled out at once,
among them Jacky-Jacky and several members of the "Ring." Forty-five
others, who were strongly suspected of complicity in the murders, were
also arrested; and all these, heavily ironed, were for immediate
security chained together in a row to the iron runners of the boat-shed.
But such was the alarm on the island, that the commandant was
strenuously urged to remove these ringleaders at once to Van Diemen's
Land.

Indeed it was felt on all sides that there was no longer any safety for
either life or property. The convict population had reached the pitch of
anarchy and insubordination. It was indeed thought that the storm would
soon break out with renewed fury. The success which the mutineers had
won would doubtless tempt them to fresh efforts. They gave signs, too,
that they were ready to recommence. When the corpses of the murdered men
were carried past the barracks, the convicts within yelled in derision,
and cried that these victims should not be the last. The apprehension
was so great, that some officials maintained that the convicts ought to
remain immured in their barracks until a reinforcement of troops
arrived. There were some, too, who doubted the loyalty of the soldiers,
saying that the troops would yet make common cause with the convicts.
But this was never proved. What was really evident, was that the
soldiers were harassed and overworn by the incessant duties they had
been called upon recently to perform. They had been continually under
arms, and were often on guard six nights out of the seven. Fortunately
Sir Eardly Wilmot, Governor of Van Diemen's Land, had acted on Mr.
Stewart's representations, and had despatched reinforcements long before
this, which landed on the island a day or two after the actual outbreak.
The most serious dangers were therefore at an end.

But the state of Norfolk Island called for some radical reformatory
measures. If anything further had been needed to prove the incompetence
of the commandant, it was to be found in his latest proceedings. Sudden
changes, passing from laxity to strictness, had been made in the
regulations; yet no precautionary measures were taken to meet that
violent resistance which the convicts had long openly threatened. The
last act of authority, the removal of the cooking utensils, should at
least have been backed by an imposing exhibition of armed force. It was,
indeed, time to substitute new men and new measures. The Hobart Town
executive council resolved unanimously to suspend the commandant and to
replace him by Mr. Price, the police magistrate of Hobart Town, a
gentleman of knowledge, firmness, and long experience with the convict
population in the island. His instructions were precise. He was to
disarm the convicts and take from them the knives they habitually
carried; to make all wear, without distinction, the convict dress; to
compel close attendance on divine service; to institute messes,
regulate the muster, insist upon exact obedience to all rules, and above
all, to enforce the due separation of the convicts at night. By close
attention to these regulations it was hoped that peace and good order
would soon be restored to the settlement.

At the same time condign punishment was meted out to the mutineers. A
judge went down posthaste to the island, a court was formed immediately
on his arrival, trials proceeded with, and fourteen were hanged the same
day. This salutary example, with the measures promptly introduced by Mr.
Price, soon restored order to the island. The new commandant was
undoubtedly a man of great courage and decision of character. He acted
always for himself, and looked into everything with his own eyes. Being
perpetually on the move about the settlement, nothing escaped him.
Frequently when he met convicts, though he might have with him only one
constable as orderly, he would halt them, and search them from head to
foot. If they had knives or other forbidden articles, he impounded them
forthwith; saying as often as not, "I'll have you to understand, my men,
that in twelve months you shall see a gold watch upon the road and yet
not pick it up." Under his able government the evils of Norfolk Island
were sensibly lessened; but nothing could wash the place clean. So
convinced was the imperial government of this, that they had resolved,
even before the news of the mutiny, to break up the settlement. But
after that, positive instructions were sent out to carry this into
effect, and by degrees the place was altogether abandoned.

Indeed, the results of "probation," as they had shown themselves, were
far from ignored at home, and the members of successive administrations
had sought anxiously to provide some remedy for evils so plainly
apparent. Mr. Gladstone among others, when Under Secretary of State for
the Colonies, propounded an elaborate scheme for the establishment of a
new settlement in North Australia. This new colony was to provide an
outlet for the overplus in labour, which at that time in Van Diemen's
Land choked up every avenue to employment. "It is founded"--to use Mr.
Gladstone's own words--"as a receptacle for convicts who, by pardon or
lapse of time, have regained their freedom, but who may be unable to
find elsewhere an effective demand for their services." It was to be a
colony of emancipists. The earliest settlers would be exiles sent out
from England, with whose assistance the governor of the new colony was
to prepare for the arrival of the rest from Van Diemen's Land. The first
points which would require attention, were the selection of the best
sites for a town and harbour, the reservation of certain crown lands,
and the distribution of the rest to the various sorts of settlers. All
these points were fully discussed and provided for minutely by Mr.
Gladstone. Every other detail was equally well arranged. As economy was
to be the soul of the new settlement, its officials were to rank lower
than those of other colonies. The governor was to be styled only
superintendent, and the judge, chairman of quarter sessions. The whole
settlement was to be subordinate to New South Wales. And, as the word
"convict" was somewhat unsavoury to the Australian colonists, Mr.
Gladstone provided also for this.

[Illustration: _Ruins of Prison Church, Tasmania_

The settlements in Tasmania formed an important feature of the English
system of progressive penal servitude. Religious instruction was
abundantly furnished, and a record of each prisoner's daily conduct was
carefully kept, so that attendance at the regular church services
naturally assisted the convict in his progress toward the last two
stages of ticket-of-leave and pardon.]

In anticipation of the possible objections of the people of New South
Wales to the establishment of a new convict settlement on the continent
of Australia, Mr. Gladstone put his foot down firmly, and declared he
would admit no such protest. "It would be with sincere regret," he says,
"that I should learn that so important a body of Her Majesty's subjects
were inclined to oppose themselves to the measures I have thus attempted
to explain. Any such opposition must be encountered by reminding those
from whom it might proceed, in terms alike respectful and decided, that
it is impossible that Her Majesty should be advised to surrender what
appears to be one of the vital interests of the British Empire at large,
and one of the chief benefits which the British Empire can at present
derive from the dominion which we have acquired over the vast
territories of the crown in Australia. I think that by maintaining such
a colony as a depot of labour, available to meet the local wants of the
older colony, or to find employment for the capital accumulated there,
we may rather promote than impede the development of the resources of
New South Wales. But even if that hope should be disappointed, I should
not, therefore, be able to admit that the United Kingdom was making an
unjust or unreasonable exercise of the right of sovereignty over those
vast regions of the earth, in thus devoting a part of them to the relief
of Van Diemen's Land, and consequently to render that island the
receptacle for as many convicts as it may be hereafter necessary to
transport there. Having practically relieved New South Wales, at no
small inconvenience to ourselves, from the burden (as soon as it became
a burden) of receiving convicts from this country, we are acquitted of
any obligations in that respect which any colonist, the most jealous for
the interests of his native or adopted country, could ascribe to us."

But it never came to this. No antagonism in this instance ever arose
between the colonial and imperial governments, for Mr. Gladstone and his
colleagues just then went out of power, and the project of the new
colony in North Australia was given up by the new ministry which had to
deal with the question in two phases: first, the evils actually in
existence from the over-crowding of Van Diemen's Land must be mitigated,
if they could not be removed; and secondly, some plan must be adopted to
obviate their recurrence in the future. The first point was touched by
suspending transportation altogether for two years. The stream thus
checked, would have to be directed elsewhere; but in the meantime, Van
Diemen's Land would be relieved: in the course of two years the
probation-gangs would be emptied, and the great labour pressure caused
by the crowds of pass-holders would have disappeared. To deal still
further with the actual difficulty, new and able men were appointed as
administrators: Sir William Denison was to go out as governor, and Mr.
Hampton comptroller-general of convicts. So much for the first point.

The second embraced a wider field. The government was bound, not only to
provide for the thousands with which it had saddled itself by the
cessation of transportation to Van Diemen's Land for a couple of years,
but it had to look further ahead and legislate for future years. It was
now decided that transportation, as it had hitherto been understood and
carried out, should come to an end. Although two years had been the
limit of its temporary suspension, any expectation of recurring to the
old system at the end of that period was "altogether illusory." The new
system, stated briefly, was to consist of a limited period of separate
imprisonment at home, succeeded by employment on public works, either
abroad at Bermuda or Gibraltar, or in this country; and ultimately
followed in ordinary cases by exile or banishment for the remaining term
of the original sentence. The following was now to be the ordering of
the lives of convicts:

A term of separate confinement, continuing from six to eighteen months,
according to sentence and the manner in which prisoners bore the
punishment; forced labour at home penal establishments, or at Gibraltar
or Bermuda, this term to depend also on sentence, but the time by
arrangement of tasks to be shortened by industry; and finally
tickets-of-leave in the colonies.

This system remained in force with sanguine hopes of success, until a
year or two after the establishment of the system, when Van Diemen's
Land, the principal colonial outlet, waxed virtuous, and would have no
more convicts, whether whitewashed or not, at any price. The colony
would not have them at any price nor in any shape or form. Although
pains were taken to explain that these were well-disposed
"ticket-of-leave men," not convicts, their reception was violently
opposed. A struggle ensued, but in the end the imperial government gave
way, and the last convict ship sailed for Van Diemen's Land in 1852.
While we cannot withhold approval of the course the colony adopted,
there is no doubt that it was almost suicidal. Mr. Trollope, who visited
Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1871, describes in graphic
language the consequences to the colony of its conduct. Absolute
stagnation and want of enterprise were everywhere apparent, the
skeletons of great works in ruins, others half finished and doomed to
decay for want of hands, land relapsing into uncultivation, towns
deserted, grass growing in the streets--the whole place lifeless and
inert. Possibly, if the question had been put at another time the answer
might have been different. But in 1850, the discomforts entailed by
transportation were so recent and disagreeable, that free colonists
could not be brought to believe that by a better system of
administration such evils might be altogether avoided.

Nor were the people of Van Diemen's Land singular in their resolve. Even
before they had in plain language so declined, other colonies had
displayed a similar unmistakable reluctance to become receptacles for
convicts. As early as 1848, the British government, in search of new
fields for transportation, had addressed a circular to all colonial
governors, pointing out in persuasive periods, the advantages to be
gained by accepting this valuable labour which, nevertheless, no one
cared to have. Strange to say, only one colony--that of Western
Australia--replied affirmatively to this appeal. At the Cape of Good
Hope, the appearance of the convict ship _Neptune_, from Bermuda, in
September, 1849, produced a tumultuous and indignant protest. The moment
her arrival was signalled, the church bells began to toll half-minute
time, and a public notice was put forth by the anti-convict association,
calling on the people to be calm. At the same time the municipal
commissioners addressed the governor, Sir Harry Smith, begging that the
_Neptune_ might be forthwith ordered to leave the shores of the Cape.
"The convicts," they said, "must not, cannot, and shall not be landed or
kept in any of the ports of the colony." Sir Harry's answer was that he
must carry out his orders; upon which the people drew a cordon round the
ship and cut off supplies from Government House, so that His Excellency
could get no meat, and had to bake his own bread. Finally, he agreed to
compromise, and the _Neptune_ was allowed to remain in the bay till a
vessel could be sent home for instructions. The authorities at home
considered the opposition at the Cape too serious to be resisted, and
directed the _Neptune_ to proceed elsewhere.

At other places the bent of the colonial mind made itself equally
unmistakable, so that it was at length openly announced in the House of
Commons, that unless the colonies grew more amenable, transportation
must cease.

As all these various questions covered a period of several years, it can
hardly be said that the crisis which necessitated change came suddenly
or all at once. The government was loath to surrender till the very last
the idea of maintaining the existing system or something like it, but
they were not without fair warning that they were building on hopes
delusive and insecure. And it is evident that throughout the period of
doubt they gave the question the most anxious care, although the evident
disposition was more towards tinkering up what was rickety and useless,
than substituting a radically new plan. To this, no doubt, they were in
a measure forced. The mere idea of retaining a large mass of convicts at
home was hailed by the public with alarm; and it became almost an axiom
that offenders sooner or later, but as a rule inevitably, must be
banished from the country. This was long the underlying principle of
every scheme. The convicts must be removed to a distance, not
necessarily as a punishment--it might be as a boon to themselves--but in
any case as a benefit to their country. In point of symmetry the method
is undoubtedly admirable; theoretically perfect now as it was then. The
assisted emigration of discharged prisoners supplies the easiest means
of providing them with that honest labour which is theoretically
supposed to preserve them from a relapse into crime. But whether as
freemen, exiles, or convicts in chains, they were all indelibly branded
with the stigma of their guilt, and we cannot even now find a country
ready to receive them. At the time indicated, the resolute attitude of
all the colonies compelled England to reconsider her position. She was
forced, in fact, though sorely against her will, to make the best of a
bad bargain and keep nearly all her convicts at home.




CHAPTER IX

GIBRALTAR

     Over-sea prisons continued till late date at Bermuda and
     Gibraltar--Major Griffiths' personal connection with
     Gibraltar--Called to supreme control by threatened outbreak--His
     association with convicts--Their demeanour and characteristics--His
     difficulties in administration--Curious cases--False
     confessions--Sea-captain who had cast away his ship--Ingenious and
     daring attempts to escape--A vanishing specimen of prisoner--The
     gentleman convict--The forbidden weed.


When the British colonies with sturdy, independent spirit refused almost
unanimously to be the receptacle for the criminal sewage of the mother
country, it became of paramount importance to find other outlets of
disposal. The perfected system of penal servitude now in force was of
slow growth, and at the beginning many places were utilised that could
voice no protest. Two isolated strongholds, Bermuda and Gibraltar, were
pressed into service without question; they were both crown possessions
at the mercy of the authorities and plausible reasons could be offered
for turning them into convict prisons. They were at no great distance,
easily accessible by sea, and could very nearly guarantee safe custody.
Then the labour of the prisoners would be available there for defensive
purposes and colonial development. In both places many monuments to
their skill and industry are still preserved; both are decisive points
in the national strategy; one at least has a glorious history and the
other may any day prove of signal value to the ocean communications of
Great Britain.

It was my fortune to be closely associated with the convict prison of
the so-called impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, which was for some time
under my personal supervision, and I had abundant opportunities for
observing the traits and peculiarities of identically the same classes
as those who have provided the materials for the historical chapters
already compiled.

My call to functions of control came with dramatic suddenness and
surprise. I was plunged into the middle of new and strange surroundings
without a word of warning. There had been two outbreaks at the prison,
where a weak executive had broken down and a collection of turbulent
characters was encouraged to oppose and defy authority. An outbreak was
imminent at any moment, I was told, as I galloped up to the scene of
disturbance and proceeded to take charge. I might indeed have been at
Port Arthur or Norfolk Island, but for the comforting reflection that
above me the guns of the fortress showed their formidable teeth, tier
above tier, and that several thousands of the best troops in the world
were within easy reach to check peremptorily any breach of the peace.

The likeness might have been carried further, for there were many among
the convicts who had made the dread voyage across to the Southern
Hemisphere, who had been in the chain gangs and in assigned
service,--veteran survivors of the dark days of transportation and the
makeshifts that replaced it. Five hundred paraded for my inspection, and
as I slowly walked down the ranks I made my first acquaintance with the
physiognomy and demeanour of felons. Many exhibited the peculiar
features now commonly assigned to them by the criminologists; the
lowering brow, the prognathous jaw, the handle-shaped ear. These were
largely the born criminals of the great Italian savant Professor
Lombroso, "having projecting ears, thick hair, thin beards, prominent
frontal eminences, enormous jaws, square protruding chins, large cheek
bones, and frequent gesticulations." I may note the description of
another observer. "Their cringing and timid ways," he says, "the
mobility and cunning of their looks; a something feline about them,
something cowardly humble, suppliant and crushed, makes them a class
apart,--one would say dogs who had been whipped; with here and there a
few energetic and brutal heads of rebels."

I cannot say that the submissive air was greatly noticeable, when I
first saw them. They might have been a pirate's or a slaver's crew;
their costume was nautical, a tarpaulin hat, round jacket, wide duck
trousers and low shoes. Their faces were mostly unpleasing; their tone
and demeanour were arrogant and aggressive. They held their heads high
and looked me insolently in the face. I could see plainly that the bonds
of discipline had been relaxed, and that there had been no firm hand on
them of late; indeed it was the mental failure of my predecessor which
had brought me there in his place to try my prentice hand upon a (to me)
new and unruly team. No doubt there were many grievances abroad among
them. The old comptroller, as the supreme chief was styled, had
introduced many irksome regulations and at the same time withdrawn many
small privileges and indulgences that had come to be looked upon as a
right and were much missed. What would be my attitude toward my charges?
It was quite evident that from the moment I appeared I became the
cynosure of every eye. Every one was watching me closely, curiously,
seeking to make out what kind of man I was.

We soon grew better acquainted. A prominent part of my new duties was to
give a personal interview to any convict who applied. I found that
afternoon that almost every one had put his name down to see me, and
presently I took my seat in the chair of authority, without the smallest
previous knowledge, to listen to complaints, grant requests and answer
questions of the most intricate kind. I soon found that I was quite
unable to deal with matters so entirely new to me. I had hardly a word
to say. The only possible course was to acquire knowledge without delay.
Laying hands on all the authorities available, books of rules, standing
orders, printed circulars, official correspondence--I retired to the
comptroller's house, where my servants had made me up a rough and ready
home. I studied the voluminous mass of details far into the night, every
spare minute the next day and again late into the next night. I worked
on, conning my lesson diligently, painfully, but with ultimate success.
By the third day, Monday, when the applicants again paraded, their
numbers already largely increased, I was in a position to dispose pretty
summarily of all but the most complicated affairs.

It was in these interviews, which were accorded in private if so
desired, that I first gained an insight into convict character, its
guilefulness, its duplicity, its infinite art in seeking to gain the
ends in view; to evade or modify the regulations, often harsh enough, to
secure a modicum of comfort, an atom more food, lighter and less irksome
labour, a little sympathy in listening to a "case" and obtain support
for a petition to have a trial revised and secure pardon or mitigation
of sentence. As a newcomer and absolute tyro, I was held fair game by
every specious impostor, who could "pitch" a harrowing, heart-rending
tale. I was victimised very early by the curious craze of the criminal
mind for false confession, guilt assumed, without a shadow of proof,
for short-lived glorification or a period of idleness while
investigation was in progress.

One of the first cases of this kind made an extraordinary impression on
me. I was entirely befooled. The play was so well acted by such finished
performers that in my inexperienced innocence I was easily carried away.
A convict whom I will style X came to me with tears in his eyes,
evidently under the influence of the strangest emotion, and asked to
speak to me alone. He desired to give himself up as the real perpetrator
of a certain atrocious crime, a murder in the city of London which had
hitherto baffled detection. He was a tall man with a long yellow face
set in coal black, stubby hair, and with baleful black eyes, deep set
under bushy black eyebrows. He was in the most agitated state of mind.
Remorse most profound and agonising possessed him as he poured forth his
piteous tale and enlarged upon the horrible details of the murder. It
was impossible not to yield him full credit. If I had any doubt, it
would have been removed when his accomplice whom he betrayed was brought
in. I will call him Y.

A second scene was now enacted,--a duologue with the parts in strange
contrast. X denounced his companion with virtuous indignation. Y
altogether repudiated the charge. The first told his story with all the
realism of manifest truth. The second denied it as stoutly as he could,
but I seemed to see the half-heartedness of conscious guilt. Y was a
weaker vessel; a round faced, chubby looking man, smug, self-sufficient,
inclined to be off-hand and jaunty as he faced me giving the lie to his
accuser. For a long time he fought, but with failing force before the
insistence of his opponent. Then, all at once, he threw up the sponge.
Yes; it was all quite true. They had killed the poor old woman, the bank
caretaker, had brained her with a knuckle-duster, and then stabbed her
to the heart.

My course was plain. I was bound to report the strange story to my
superiors and ask for instructions. The two convicts were held strictly
apart, lodged in separate cells, given writing materials and required to
set forth their confessions at length, which were forwarded to England.
An answer came in due course. There was not one syllable of truth in the
story. Neither X nor Y had been within a hundred miles of the scene of
the crime. One of them, indeed, was actually at the time in prison for
another offence. They had heard of the crime, had put their heads
together while on the works where they laboured in association, and had
concocted the whole fraud by which I had been so completely misled. This
was the first spurious confession that had come within my purview, but
by no means the last. The practice is common enough among criminals,
both inside and outside the prison. The reasons are generally the same.
The convict, as in this case, hopes to be remanded for a new trial, and
to lead an idle life while awaiting it.

The inexperienced prison officer is very apt, and not strangely, to be
imposed upon also by eloquent and persistent protestations of innocence.
No one is guilty in gaol. A French _aumônier_, "chaplain," once called
upon his congregation in the prison chapel to answer him honestly and
truthfully, by holding up their hands, whether they acknowledged the
justice of their conviction. Only one hand was held up in response. I
was as gullible as any other beginner until repeated disappointment
hardened my heart. One of the first cases that worked a change was that
of the coxswain of my gig. It was a smart little craft, the favourite
plaything of my predecessor, who had manned it with a crew of convicts
dressed like men-of-war's men, and the coxswain was an ex-master
mariner, who had earned a long sentence for casting away his ship. W,
the man in question, and I became very good friends. He was a neat,
civil spoken, well conducted sailor, and I weakly let him see that I
took an interest in him. He came to me on an early occasion praying that
his case might be reconsidered. He assured me that he had been
wrongfully convicted, the victim of a base plot fabricated and sworn to
by some of his crew who hated him for ruling them with too tight a hand.
There was not a word of truth in the charges brought against him, and if
there were only a criminal court of appeal he would very speedily be
released.

I confess I was won over by his specious pleading. I liked the man and
was sorry for him, and I promised to make a full inquiry. There was a
file of the London _Times_ on the shelves of the Gibraltar garrison
library and it was easy to turn to the number containing the full
proceeding of the trial. All doubt was immediately dispelled, and I saw
at the first glance that I had once more been imposed upon. The charge
rested upon the clearest evidence, and the facts were proved beyond the
shadow of a doubt. Captain W. had deliberately prepared his ship for
destruction. It was shown that he had gone himself into the hold and had
bored holes in the ship's side with an auger and scuttled her. She was
cast away, and sank, but within reach of shore and of diving operations,
which proclaimed the criminal ill-treatment of her skipper, to whom the
possession and use of the augers were distinctly brought home. The evil
intention was further shown by the valueless cargo shipped and the large
amount for which it had been insured. After my experience with X, I
rather slackened in my excessive sympathy with my unfortunate charges
and was prepared to believe that they had had as much fair play as comes
to most of us in this crooked world.

The fate which eventually overtook this gig and its convict crew well
illustrates the difficulties of management in an oversea prison in near
proximity to a foreign country. Spain is within a stone's throw of
Gibraltar, and at the time of which I am writing there was no
extradition of criminals. The question was complicated by the British
reluctance to give up political refugees, and Spain would make no
difference between classes. No treaty of extradition was possible which
did not extend to all, and the convict at Gibraltar was well aware that
he was safe if he set foot on Spanish soil. These facts were known in
the prison, for local convicts were also confined there, and they could
one and all see the Spanish shore a few miles away. There was always the
chance of seizing a boat and escaping to the other side of the bay.

On one occasion a ship's cutter was seized and the fugitives made off.
The warning gun was fired, the flag was run up at the yard-arm on the
signal station on the top of the rock, and the alarm given at the
dockyard. Some one immediately ordered out the convict gig to go in
pursuit with an armed escort. The crew bent manfully to their oars and
quickly overhauled the chase, but by this time they were half way across
the bay. The temptation was too strong for loyalty. The crew of the gig
rose upon the warder, disarmed him and consigning him to the bottom of
the boat, carried it and him to Algeciras, where all parties landed
without let or hindrance. The Spanish authorities were by no means
overjoyed at the arrival of these desperadoes, but would not arrest
them. They took to the wild hill country around and were a terror to
quiet folk until they were gradually taken up for new offences or were
shot down by the _quadras civiles_.

Escape was the dazzling lure before the eyes of the Gibraltar convicts
and more than one ardent spirit strove to compass it. The patience and
ingenuity exhibited by one man was really marvellous. He was employed
alone in a remote workshop and had discovered that it communicated with
one of the hollows or caves with which the great oolitic rock is
honeycombed. In this he had constructed and kept concealed a boat built
of the nondescript materials that came to his hand--scraps of canvas,
disused cement bags and small pieces of timber. It was not unlike a
collapsible boat, in three separate compartments for convenience of
carriage, which could be made into one tiny dingy or coracle sufficient
to keep one man afloat. He expected to be able to launch this fragile
craft unobserved, choosing a favourable opportunity, and to commit
himself to the waters of the Straits of Gibraltar, a narrow passage ever
crowded with shipping, where he hoped to be picked up by some craft. He
had laid by a store of provisions saved from his meagre rations, which
he carried out daily from the prison. It was his abstraction of food
that betrayed him to a jealous comrade, who treacherously gave him away
and led to the detection of his undoubtedly clever scheme. The intensity
of his disappointment when discovered was quite pathetic.

A seemingly much more serious affair was a plot set on foot for a
combined attempt to break prison after rising upon the guards. When the
matter was reported to me, it had all the aspect of a dangerous
conspiracy and it imposed upon me, but I have reason now to think it was
all a hoax. Convicts have no loyalty to each other and their best laid
plans "gang aft agley," for the secret is rarely kept. Some one usually
turns traitor. The scheme is at times a pure invention devised by some
astute prisoner seeking to curry favour by his revelations to the
authorities. If it has any foundation in fact, there is a race between
the traitors, each anxious to be the first in betrayal and thus render
himself safe.

On this occasion the dread news was broken by picking up an anonymous
letter giving the particulars of the coming disturbance. Then came a
very confidential message from a patient in the hospital whom I visited
and who gave me some startling news. A deep laid conspiracy was afoot to
rise while at work in a distant quarry, to overmaster warders and
military guards and march straight on board the admiralty brig employed
to remove the heavily laden lighters from the quarry. To cast her loose
would be the work of a moment, and with steam up she might be taken
across the bay before the alarm could be given and pursuit organised.
The whole story seemed far-fetched but I could not ignore the warning.
Upon my requisition to the military authorities, the guards were
reinforced. They loaded ostentatiously before marching to the quarry,
and on arrival there it was found that the steam tug was absent on some
other duty. There was no outbreak, nor the semblance of one. The
turbulent spirits were cowed at this exhibition of formidable strength,
if indeed there were any who had contemplated mischief.

I must add a few words to the general description of the personnel of
the Gibraltar convict prisoners. They were interesting to me, many of
them as the survivors of the great tide of criminal exiles that turned
for years toward the antipodes. They were to be easily recognised by
those who had the key; their swarthy, weather-beaten complexions spoke
of long exposure to trying climates. They were hardy in aspect, with
muscular, well-knit frames, developed by much manual labour in the open
air. They had the bold, self-reliant, reckless demeanour of men who had
endured severe discipline and passed through it unbroken. They were
hard, bitter men, who had faced the worst and were willing to do it
again. Quarrelsome and of hasty temper, they might be cowed into good
order, but were ever ready to break out and resist authority, to assault
a warder or strike down a fellow convict with pick or shovel, or the
first weapon that lay to hand. The type was entirely new to me then, and
indeed I have seen little of it since, for they were a fast vanishing
species and are to be met with no more in the prison population.

I will pick out one or two for more particular mention. One who was
hopelessly "incorrigible," for instance, I will call H. This man
happened to be in one of his periodical, almost chronic fits of rage on
my first visit to the prison. My way had taken me across a drawbridge
leading from the line wall road to the top of a winding staircase that
descended to an inner gate which led straight into the main body of the
prison. This main prison, by the way, was little better than a shed,--a
long, low, two-storied wooden edifice, divided into bunks or cages shut
off from each other and a central passage by iron bars. This building
was filled with human beings, and, as we approached, the ceaseless hum
of voices, angry and even menacing, rose from it into one piercing note,
a yell or shriek of wild, or, it might be, maniacal, despair. We were
told that it was H, who had broken out again and was now in a separate
cell, and were asked if we would like to see him.

They took us through a detached block of strongly built stone cells in
their own yard lying close under the line wall, and by this time the
noise became almost deafening. Each cell had two doors; an outer door of
stout iron bars, protecting an inner one of wood. The bolt of this
second door was thrown back and exposed the interior. At that moment a
mad figure rushed forward with frightful imprecations, to be checked,
fortunately, by the outer iron gate; a wild and terrible beast, human
only in form, clad in a hideous particoloured garb, the badge of those
who had made a murderous assault on their guardians. He stood raving and
raging impotently, threatening us with fluent vituperative tongue to the
accompaniment of clanking chains. He was in leg irons and was also
manacled with "figure eight" handcuffs on his wrists, and so could do no
injury even to himself.

This H was one of a class who presently became a danger to London and
complicated the penal question by the alleged inadequacy of the
punishment. He was a man of cruel and ungovernable temper, addicted to
crimes of violence, who ill-used as well as robbed his victims. There
were others like him at Gibraltar, but none that equalled him in his
savagery and determined defiance of authority. Nothing seemed to tame
him; prolonged doses of dieting, punishment and cellular isolation had
no effect. He continued intractable to the last, and was one of those
withdrawn and brought home to England three years later when the
Gibraltar convict prison was abolished.

"Captain" P.--titular rank is generally preserved among prisoners when
speaking of or to each other--was of a different kind, irreconcilable
also, but his resistance was rather moral than physical. He was always
surly, sulky and impudent; inclined to be disobedient, but keeping
within the line of sharp reprimands. I remember him as a
smooth-speaking, supple-backed, cringing creature, anxious to show that
he had been well-bred and that he had occupied a superior station, but
dropping all at once into the other extreme if crossed or offended, when
his language was of the foulest and his manner disgusting. I met
"Captain" P. again under rather amusing circumstances. One afternoon
when standing among my gangs at work upon the foundation of the new
Wormwood Scrubs prison, I saw a well-dressed, gentlemanly looking man
approach under escort of the gate keeper. He wore a well-cut frock and a
shining silk hat, which he lifted courteously as he bowed low, to the
manifest delight of some of the convicts around. They knew him well. It
was "Captain" P. who had been an old comrade in Portland or Dartmoor,
and who, now a free man, had impudently decided to pay me a formal call.
He addressed me as an old friend, saying: "You were always so good to me
when I served under your orders at Gibraltar" (it might have been in
some distinguished cavalry regiment) "that I have ventured to intrude
upon you to ask if you can help me to some employment." I am afraid I
answered rather curtly and ordered him to be shown out of the enclosure.
Had he been a different man, penitent and well-disposed, with a
blameless prison character, and determined to turn over a new leaf, I
would gladly have given him a helping hand. But there had been a second
sentence since the term at Gibraltar, and I soon learned that he was a
hardened, habitual criminal. Oddly enough, at the very time of his
visit, a friend was standing with me who knew him personally in
previous days, when he was a captain in the British army and came to
grief over a forged check.

Life in a colonial convict prison was not eventful, and yet not
monotonous. Some of the more startling episodes have been recounted. The
chase for tobacco constantly kept us busy. Its use is strictly tabooed
in British prisons, but the forbidden weed will always find its way
inside. Nothing will check its introduction, and its presence is proved
by the fact that tobacco has a regular price in articles of food, the
only possible circulating medium. The traffic depends upon the
dishonesty of officials, who are bribed by prisoners' friends to pass it
in, the safe keeping and distribution being the work of the prisoners
themselves. At Gibraltar, where "free" people came and went in the
quarries almost unquestioned, large transactions were constantly afoot.
The new arrivals brought out cash and the "traffickers" were clever in
finding hiding places in the rock for the money offered and the weed
when bought. We made many searches for both the raw material and its
price, and I can call to mind long watches in the night for the agents
who brought in the stuff, and elaborate devices to catch the culprits in
actual possession of the forbidden weed.

A few months spent in this varied fashion was no bad preparation for the
new career on which I was about to embark. I was called to service in
the home department, and during many years was closely associated with
the entire penal system of Great Britain. From small beginnings, devised
under the pressure of great emergency, these experiments have grown into
the present system of secondary punishment. Opinions differ as to its
value and merits, but these will best be judged by independent critics
on learning what measures were adopted upon the cessation of penal
exile, and what grew out of them.




CHAPTER X

THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF PENAL SERVITUDE

     A substitute for transportation--Task entrusted to Colonel
     Jebb--Initiates Public Works' Prisons in England--Plans to assist
     in the construction of great breakwater at Portland--Rapid
     progress--Much useful work executed by the convicts--Old War Prison
     of Dartmoor prepared for convicts employed in the reclamation of
     savage moorland--New prison at Chatham for extension of the naval
     dockyard--Similar undertaking at Portsmouth--New system carried out
     conscientiously--First results satisfactory--The
     garroter--Insecurity of London streets--Discipline of penal
     servitude lax--Royal commission advocates new principles and
     insists upon greater severity--Strenuous industry enforced under
     the "mark" system--Favourable results.


Transportation beyond the seas ended when the British colonies
positively refused to receive the penal exiles. One of them, Queensland,
lately founded in Australia, which was supposed to be favourable,
repudiated the idea entirely, and its citizens asked impertinently
whether they might be permitted in return to transport their own
malefactors to the British Isles. Then the geographers began to search
for new lands suitable for penal settlements. One suggested the Falkland
Islands, and another New Guinea, while Labrador was felt by many to be
exactly the place for convict colonisation. Western Australia, as a
matter of fact, did not object; it was a crown colony and could not
protest, but it was never very largely utilised.

The excessive costliness of transportation was the principal demerit of
this practice. A few figures will show this. As late as 1851, the gross
cost for one year was £586,294 for passages out to the antipodes,
establishments and staff, including the home depots, Bermuda and
Gibraltar. There was a certain set-off in the value of the labour of the
convicts, and when this had been credited, the net cost remained at
£419,476. To arrive at any general estimate, this annual expenditure
must be multiplied by the seventy years the system lasted. It cannot, of
course, be denied that the product was Australia, a substantial section,
no doubt, for the cash expended, but the evils entailed by the system
must be taken into account, and modern feeling revolted from repeating
the process even to gain such a large and prosperous dependency,
provided additional territory was available. As we have seen, the
territory did not exist. Thus the only alternative was to retain the
convicts at home, to house and dispose of them as economically as
possible, and at the same time utilise them effectively in such works
and public undertakings as might reasonably be expected to bring in some
adequate return.

The solution of the pressing problem was entrusted to Colonel,
afterward Sir Joshua, Jebb, a distinguished officer of the Royal
Engineers, who was already well known in connection with prison building
and with penal legislation generally. He had for some years past been
associated with the two official inspectors of prisons; after that he
had assisted in the superintendence of Millbank, when constituting a
convict depot, and he had been in reality the moving spirit of the
commissioners who built the model prison at Pentonville. In those early
years he gave undoubted earnest of his energetic character and great
powers, a promise more than fulfilled. His proposal was to construct a
great breakwater at Portland, largely assisted by the labour of convicts
which was abundant and running to waste. He meant in the first instance
to provide accommodation of some sort on the island of Portland wherein
the convicts might be securely lodged immediately adjoining their works.
He described, in a memorandum dated 1847, the style of place he proposed
to build. Naturally, he said, when the works on which the prisoners were
to be employed were likely to be completed within a limited time,
something less costly than a substantial prison would suffice. Safe
custody and the due enforcement of discipline must of course be secured;
but these might be obtained without any very extravagant outlay. He
suggested, therefore, buildings on wooden frames, with corrugated iron
partitions; the whole so constructed as to be easily taken to pieces
and removed to another site if required. In these buildings the convicts
might be kept safe and separate, at the probable cost of little more
than £34 per cell. Similar prisons might be run up anywhere, so that the
entire number of convicts for whom accommodation was required might be
housed for about two hundred thousand pounds. Colonel Jebb accompanied
this proposal with certain figures as an off-set against this outlay. He
assumed that the maintenance, including every item, would amount to
£158,000, but their earnings would be £180,000. The balance was
therefore a gain of £22,000--a sufficient interest on the original cost
of the prison buildings. These figures were speculative, of course, nor
were they found exactly accurate in practice; the cost of maintenance
proved undoubtedly higher than thus estimated, but in return the
earnings were also considerably more.

Three years later, in March, 1850, Colonel Jebb reported to the
Secretary of State that he had provided room for eight hundred and forty
prisoners at Portland. The main buildings consisted of four large open
halls, eighty-eight feet long by twenty-one broad, having four tiers of
cells on each side. The interiors of the halls were well ventilated and
could be warmed; the cells were seven feet by four, and furnished with
hammocks, tables and shelves for books. The cells were divided by
partitions of corrugated iron, and were sufficient to secure the
effectual separation of the men at night, and to admit of their taking
their meals in them, and reading or otherwise occupying themselves after
working hours, until they went to bed. In addition to the cell
accommodation there was, of course, full provision for officers'
quarters, chapel, kitchen, laundries and stores. Moreover, ample space
was reserved "within the boundary wall for the erection of additional
buildings, so as to increase the number of convicts to twelve or fifteen
hundred, if it should be found necessary or desirable." Everything was
now in fair working order. The foundation stone of the breakwater had
been laid in July, 1849, by Prince Albert, who visited the prison and
presented a Bible and prayer-book for use in its chapel; but till then,
and during the first year of the occupation of a "bleak and barren rock"
the convicts were chiefly employed in setting things straight within the
prison walls. They had to level parade grounds, make roads and
reservoirs, fit gates and doors, paint and clean up the whole
establishment. As soon as practicable they were set to work on the
breakwater. "The stone," says Colonel Jebb, "is to be removed from the
quarries by means of several lines of railways, which are arranged in a
series of inclined planes from the summit to the point where the
breakwater joins the shore. The wagons will be raised and lowered by
wire ropes, working on 'drums,' placed at the head of each 'incline,'
the loaded train in its descent drawing up the empty one from the
breakwater."

In the general detail of work, the share that fell upon the convicts
was the plate-laying, levelling, forming embankments and excavations,
getting out and stacking the stone, filling the wagons, sending them
down and bringing them back from the incline. Some five hundred men were
so employed during the first year, 1849, and their earnings were
estimated at about fifteen thousand pounds.

Portland, when thus fairly launched, became the starting point for the
new arrangements. Other prisons were needed, and they must be built like
Portland. But time pressed, and anything actually available at the
moment was eagerly pressed into the service. Down at Dartmoor, on the
high lands above Tavistock, was a huge building which had been empty for
five-and-thirty years. Its last occupants had been the French and
American prisoners of war, who were confined there until the peace of
1814. Ten thousand, some said twelve thousand, had been accommodated
within the walls--surely there must be room there for several hundred
convicts? Colonel Jebb, hearing that Captain Groves, from Millbank, was
staying at Plymouth, begged him to run over to inspect Dartmoor. The
place was like a howling wilderness; the buildings in places were
without roofs; the walls were full of holes, if not in ruins. But a few
repairs would soon make the place habitable, said Captain Groves, and
accordingly a gang of convicts, under Mr. Morrish, was sent down to
begin operations. In a short time Dartmoor prison was opened. Then
other receptacles were prepared. The hulks had been pressed into the
service, and were employed at the various dockyards to house the
convicts, but only as a temporary measure, until proper buildings on the
new plan could be erected. There were ships at Woolwich, and others at
Portsmouth. At the first station the old _Warrior_, and the _Defence_,
took the able-bodied, while the _Unité_ served as a hospital; at
Portsmouth there were the _York_, _Briton_ and _Stirling Castle_, until
1852, when the new convict prison was occupied. Soon after this,
contracts were entered into for the erection of a large prison at
Chatham, which was completed in 1858, and to which all those at the
Woolwich hulks were in course of time transferred. The intention at both
these stations was to devote a goodly portion of the convict labour to
further the dockyard extensions. At Chatham the object in view was to
construct, high up the tortuous Medway, a chain of artificial basins
capable of containing a fleet. Hither beaten ships might retire to
refit; while new ironclads, built in the dock close by, might issue
thence to retrieve disaster. From the first the work was of an arduous
character. The battle was against the tide and the treacherous mud. But
all of St. Mary's Island has been reclaimed, and marsh has given place
to solid ground. At Portsmouth a feat has been accomplished, not exactly
similar, but wonderful also in its way.

So much for the framework--the bones, so to speak, of the new system;
let us see, next, something of the living tissues with which it was
filled up. Speaking broadly, it may be laid down that the plan of
treatment inaugurated by Colonel Jebb and his colleagues, was based on
persuasion rather than coercion. This, indeed, they openly admitted.
They were not advocates for a "purely coercive and penal discipline."
They conceived that there was sufficient punishment without that; the
convicts suffered enough in the "long periods during which they remained
under penal restraint," and there was further discomfort in "their
eventual deportation to a distant colony, and the somewhat severe
restrictions to which they are subjected when they gain the boon of a
ticket-of-leave," these regulations being drawn up at a time when
transportation was still practised, though only to a limited extent. The
directors of convict prisons hoped, therefore, to accomplish their
object by reward and encouragement rather than by strictness and terror.
They desired to put it plainly before every convict that if he would but
continue quiet and obedient, he would be sure to benefit in the long
run. It was really worth his while to be good, they said, and they
encouraged him by the statement: "It will convince us that you are on
the high road to reform, and the sooner we are convinced you are
reformed, the sooner you will be set at large." Everything was made to
depend on conduct--good conduct--in other words, the mere formal
observance of rules, a submissive demeanour, and a readiness to echo,
even with hypocritical hearts, the lessons the chaplains taught. The
word "industry" was tacked on to "conduct," but only in a subordinate
sense, and so long as the convict was civil he might be as lazy as he
liked.

Precise rules provided the machinery by which a due estimate of each
man's conduct was to be obtained. Every governor of a prison kept a
character-book, in which he was to enter concisely his observations upon
the character and conduct of every prisoner, so as thus to be enabled to
reward him by classification and good conduct badges, and more
especially "to report with confidence whenever he may be called upon in
conjunction with the chaplain to assist the authorities in determining
the period of detention of the different prisoners." The same rule went
on to say, "He (the governor) shall take every opportunity of impressing
on the prisoners that the particulars of their conduct are thus noticed
and recorded; and that while no effort at good conduct and industry on
the part of a prisoner will be disregarded by the authorities of the
prison, every act of wilful misconduct and punishment will be equally
noted, and will tend to prolong the period of his detention under penal
discipline." The governor's opinion was to be endorsed by that of the
chaplain, and even the subordinate officers were called upon to record
their views of the demeanour of the prisoners they especially
controlled. The whole object of this classification and this supervision
was to "produce on the minds of the prisoners a practical and habitual
conviction of the effect which their own good conduct and industry will
have on their welfare and future prospects."

These extracts from Colonel Jebb's earliest reports will be sufficient
to indicate the bias of his mind. He too, like others who had gone
before, was hopeful of reformation by purely moral means. As he has
himself declared in one of his reports, he thought he might more surely
gain the great end he had in view by leading than by driving. Upon this
principle the whole system of management was based. There can be no
question that those who were its authors took their stand upon the
highest ground. They were called upon to inaugurate a new order of
things, and they did so to the best of their ability, in the most
straightforward, conscientious fashion. The glaring evils of
transportation, as it had been administered, were then still staring
them in the face. "Speaking humanly," says Colonel Jebb, "the
demoralisation of every individual sentenced to transportation was
certain. No matter what might have been his previous character, what the
amount of his constitution, or what the sincerity of his efforts and
resolutions to retrace his steps, he was placed within the influence of
a moral pestilence, from which, like death itself, there was no escape."
The necessity for great and radical changes was imperative; and these
changes were carried out in the manner I have described. Great results
were expected to follow from them.

In the first few years everything appeared rosy. The reports continue:
"As a body, the men show a spirit of willing and cheerful obedience. The
strictest discipline is maintained with a very small proportion of
punishment. The industry of the working parties is remarkable." Again,
the same report asserts that "any candid and dispassionate inquiry into
the condition and prospects of the convicts who have passed through
periods of penal and reformatory discipline at Pentonville and Portland,
will prove beyond doubt that, to say the least of it, the majority of
those now serving are likely on their release to be respectable in their
station of life, and useful to those who engage their services; thus
realising the anticipations of the Pentonville commissioners, that a
large proportion of our convicts would be qualified on their discharge
to occupy an honest position in their own or any other country."

This was in 1852 and for the following ten years the new plans were
persevered in with very general satisfaction. The public heard with
pleasure of the notable results achieved. All indeed were a little weary
of the subject of secondary punishment, and were content to leave the
problem in the hands of officials whose duty it was to deal with it. How
long this indifference might have continued it is impossible to
conjecture, but all at once a panic fell upon people that was long
remembered. It is only when touched by the sharp sense of personal
insecurity that people are universally roused to take an interest in
such affairs. The moment came when--in presence of a real or imaginary
danger--England awoke to the fact that her penal system was all a
mistake.

It was in the winter of 1862 that robberies with violence--garrote
robberies, as they were called--suddenly increased to such an alarming
extent, and were accompanied with such hideous details of brutality,
that general consternation prevailed. The streets of London were less
safe, said the leading journal, than a capital in the throes of
revolution and under no government at all. No man could walk abroad,
even in crowded thoroughfares, without feeling that he carried both his
life and his money in his hand. Both might be wrested from him by an
insidious malefactor before the victim was even conscious of his danger.
On all sides instances of these treacherous assaults multiplied; and
though varying somewhat in their method of execution, each and every one
of them belonged unmistakably to the same class of crime. One day it was
reported that a young lady of fifteen had been attacked in Westbourne
Crescent in the afternoon. She was half throttled, and a pistol held to
her head, while they rifled her pockets, and tried to tear off her
necklace, and the pendants from her ears. Her head was to have been
shorn, too, of its magnificent hair, which, as one of the ruffians
cried, would certainly fetch a goodish sum; but just then the sound of
approaching wheels frightened these human vultures from their helpless
quarry. Next, a poor old woman, a feeble tottering creature advanced in
years, was knocked down and wantonly maltreated for the half-dozen
coppers she carried in her pocket.

These attacks were made at all hours and in all neighbourhoods. Daylight
was no protection, nor were the crowds in a thoroughfare. One gentleman
was felled to the ground in the afternoon near Paternoster Row, another
in Holborn, a third in Cockspur Street. Later on, at night, the dangers,
of course, multiplied a hundredfold. Poor musicians, tramping home after
performing in some theatrical orchestra, were knocked down and robbed of
their instruments as well as their cash. It was a service of danger to
take the money at the door of any entertainment. A gang of garroters,
for instance, had their eye on Michael Murray in the early part of the
night as he stood at the door of the Teetotal Hall in Chelsea, and as
soon as he left for home, they followed with stealthy step till they
overtook him in Sloane Square, and knocked him down, having first
throttled and rifled him. If you stood still in the street, and refused
to give a drink to any man who accosted you, he would probably then and
there give you a hug. Those who took a delight in attending public
executions did so at their own peril. A Mr. Bush, who was standing in
front of the Old Bailey when Cooper was hanged, was hustled by several
men, who first forced his hands up over his head, then unbuttoned his
coat and stole his watch.

In every case, whether the victim resisted or surrendered, he was nearly
certain to be shamefully ill-used. Now and then the biter was bitten, as
when three men fell upon a certain foreign gentleman who carried a
sword, and was a master of the art of self-defence; or when another, who
knew how to hit out, was attacked by two ruffians, both of whom he
knocked down. But as a general rule the victim suffered tortures. When
down on the ground, as often as not he was kicked about the face and
head, usually with savage violence; his teeth were knocked down his
throat, his eyes closed, and he was left insensible, streaming with
blood.

In most cases, there was every appearance that the outrage was
deliberately planned beforehand. There were accomplices--women
sometimes; and all were banded together like Hindoos sworn to the
practice of "Thuggee." For months these crimes continued to be
prevalent. Every morning's news chronicled "more outrages in the
streets;" until, as the fogs of November settled down on the devoted
heads of the honest inhabitants of London, men's hearts failed them for
fear, and life in sequestered streets or retired suburban villas seemed
hardly worth an hour's purchase. Every journal teemed with complaints;
_Punch_ took up the question with grim humour; at the theatres
audiences roared at some amusing actor, then shuddered to think they had
still to get home after the play was over.

At length the horrors of garroting culminated in the arraignment of a
crowd of such offenders in one batch at the central criminal court.
There were twenty-seven of them. The cases of all bore a certain family
likeness: though differing somewhat in detail, there was in each the
same insidious method of attack, followed by the same brutality and
wanton violence. Speaking to the most hardened, the judge, Baron
Bramwell, said, as he passed sentence, that it was his belief that they
were "utterly destitute of morality, shame, religion, or pity, and that
if they were let loose they would do what any savage animal would do,
namely, prey upon their fellows." Therefore he was resolved to keep them
out of mischief as long as he possibly could. All got heavy sentences,
ranging from "life" downward, and all were consigned to prison, where
they are still well remembered--strong, able-bodied, determined looking
scoundrels; top-sawyers in the trade of thieving, ready for any kind of
daring work, treating their incarceration with the utmost contempt, as
indeed they might, for it was nothing new to them. One or two had
graduated in crime during the days of the Penitentiary; but neither Mr.
Nihil, then the chaplain-governor, nor any one else had succeeded in
reforming them. One of them, Leats, had actually at one time been a
prison officer, a warder. Formerly a soldier in the marines, his career
had been checkered. He had been present at the siege of St. Jean d'Acre,
and was at that time servant to the admiral, through whom he obtained a
situation at Millbank, from which he was soon dismissed for drunkenness.
After this he went rapidly to the bad; was caught, and sentenced for
obtaining goods under false pretences, next for robbing a lady at
Richmond Park, and now for the third time he entered prison as a
garroter. Although they maintained throughout, from the moment of their
capture, in the dock and after sentence, an insolent and defiant
demeanour, yet in the prison these murderous rogues conducted themselves
fairly well; only two of them got into serious trouble. These were Dixon
and another, Needham, who together made a vigorous attempt to escape.
Dixon cut out, by means of a sharpened nail, the panel in his cell door,
unbolted it, got out, and then set Needham also free. Their idea was to
surprise the night patrol, and seize his keys. With this object they
concealed themselves behind a passage door, and as he appeared struck
him behind the ear. Fortunately the blow fell light, and the officer
turned to grapple with the prisoners.

Such were the men, and such the work they did. Was it strange that the
public should complain of a system of penal repression which left them
to the tender mercies of ruffians like these? Transportation had been
abandoned and what had been given them in exchange? A system which, as
administered, had completely failed. It may have been a necessity, but
it clearly had not been a success. They might perhaps be compelled to
retain, or even to extend it; but its administration must be altered. As
it was it had no terrors whatever for the evil-doer, while it gave but
little protection to society. So said the _Times_; and it spared no
pains to support its views with tangible evidence. Its columns teemed
with letters on the subject, and special correspondents visited the
chief convict establishments to spy out their nakedness and report their
inefficacy as places for the punishment of criminals. Convicts, it was
agreed on all sides, quite scoffed at the terrors of penal servitude.
Barring the loss of actual liberty, which is doubtless the dearer to a
man the closer he approaches to a lower species of animal, the convict
prison was made so comfortable to the convict that he was loth to leave
it, and hardly dreaded to return. Well-housed, well-fed, with labour
just sufficient to insure good digestion and a healthy circulation;
debarred only by a fiction of the luxuries he chiefly loved; let free
from prison as soon as he chose to evince signs of amendment, a convict
was altogether master of the situation. So said the critics. Penal
servitude was like going down into the country after "the season." A
little slow, perhaps; but very healthy and re-invigorating after a
racket in town--just the discipline, in fact, to which men careful of
themselves are ready to submit for a time, so as to issue forth
afterwards braced and strengthened for a fresh campaign of pleasure. In
these retired residences there was rest for the tired thief, for the
burglar whose nerves had suffered, and for the playful miscreant who had
been able only to half kill his victim, and who wished to recruit his
strength. Here they found congenial society, such as a man meets at his
club: others of his own set, with whom he could chat about the past, or
concoct new plans for the future. His creature comforts were well looked
after; he never worked as free labourers did, in the rain; and if, by
mischance, he wet his feet, there were dry stockings for him on his
return to his cosy well-warmed cell. If he had any special "whims" which
called for gratification, an attentive official almost forestalled his
wish. The leading feature of the whole system was to keep the convict
comfortable and contented.

All this, and more, the panic-stricken public, speaking through the
press, found fault with. Reform was called for, and immediate reform.
The usual panacea was prescribed, a royal commission, which was that of
1863, long famous in British records as paving the way for the system of
secondary punishment which, with various modifications, has existed to
the present day. It was admitted on undoubted evidence that the régime
established by Sir Joshua Jebb erred on the side of overmuch tenderness
to the criminal. Far-seeing and able as was Sir Joshua Jebb, however
skilful and capable as an administrator, on one point he was weak. It
was an amiable weakness, but it did both himself and his system
incalculable harm. He had formed too high an opinion of the criminal
class; he was too hopeful, too ready to accept the shadow for the
substance, to be satisfied with promise rather than performance, and to
view the outward whitewashed semblance of purity for the radical
transformation of the inner man. This was the key-note of his system,
and this, as time passed, grew and gained strength, till at least there
was some semblance of truth in the allegations so freely made by his
opponents. It became known, beyond contradiction, that the diet in those
days was far too generous; that the care taken of the convicts was
tender to the extent of ridiculous coddling; that the labour exacted was
far below the amount that each might be expected reasonably to perform.
These facts are fully borne out by the traditions of the department
itself. Old officers have told me that in all the prisons discipline was
almost a dead letter. The convicts themselves ruled the roost. They did
not break away, because there were troops at hand who would shoot them
down; but otherwise they did just what they pleased. Their warders,
taking their cue from the supreme power, sought to humour them into
obedience by civil speeches rather than by firmness and resolution. The
officers were afraid to enforce their orders, and the convicts saw that
they were afraid. Men who are over-fed, if they are also idle, are sure
to prove untamable and run riot. Some of the scenes at the convict
prisons were disgraceful, almost rivalling, at times, the anarchy and
disorder of Norfolk Island. That the convicts were thus insolent and
insubordinate was undoubtedly due to the petting and pampering they
received. But another cause was the unsettled, dissatisfied spirit
evoked by several successive alterations in the law--alterations which
it was absolutely necessary to make, but which none the less produced
unevenness of treatment between various classes of prisoners.

The net result was stated in the report, to the effect that the system
was clearly not sufficiently dreaded by those who had undergone it, or
by the criminal classes in general. The number of re-convictions, they
thought, proved this; moreover, the report continues, "the accounts
given of penal servitude by discharged convicts, and the fact that they
generally come back so soon to their original haunts, tends to prevent
its being regarded with fear by their associates. Indeed, in some
(though doubtless exceptional) cases, crimes have been committed for the
sole purpose of obtaining the advantages which the offenders have
supposed a sentence of penal servitude to confer." The system therefore
stood condemned, and the commissioners attributed its shortcomings in a
minor degree to defects in the discipline maintained, but thought the
blame lay really in the shortness of the terms of imprisonment awarded
in the courts of law.

To speak first of the latter point: the commissioners reported that
there had been a notable reduction for some years previous in the length
of sentences, and to make them still lighter a remission of time was
granted under the new rules. It was a curious fact that the recent
increase of crime had corresponded in point of date with the discharge
of prisoners who were first sentenced for short terms under the Act of
1857, and was probably mainly attributable to their release from
custody. They had come out unchastened. "The discipline to which
convicts are subjected," declared the commission, "does not produce its
proper effect in short periods of punishment."

Next as to the discipline. It was clearly a mistake to lay so much
stress on conduct only. It was wrong, too, that the convicts should be
allowed to earn enormous "gratuities," the cash presents handed over to
them upon discharge. Many left prison with £30, £40, sometimes £80, in
their pockets. The effect of this was to make a sentence of penal
servitude an object of desire, rather than of apprehension. Besides, the
longer a man's sentence--presumably, therefore, the greater his
crime--the larger the sum he was entitled to take away with him. Again,
the measures to keep the prisoners in submission were far too mild.
Punishment did not follow fast enough on acts of violence and
aggravated misconduct. The infliction of corporal punishment was too
restricted, and the "cat" used was too light. There should be more power
to use it and greater promptitude in its infliction. Then came the
question of work and diet; but on these points the committee spoke with
less confidence. Last of all, there was an entire absence of supervision
of those who were at large on ticket-of-leave.

Having enunciated these propositions, the commissioners recommended
certain important changes in the manner of carrying out penal servitude,
chief among which were:

That in future no sentence should be passed of less than seven years.

That re-convicted criminals should be treated more severely than others.

That convicts, after enduring separate imprisonment for nine months,
should pass on to public works, where they might be permitted to earn by
industry and good conduct an abridgment of a part of their imprisonment.

That all males, if possible, should be sent to Western Australia during
the latter part of their sentences, "it being highly desirable to send
convicts, under proper regulations and without disguise, to a thinly
peopled colony, where they may be removed from their former temptations,
where they will be sure of having the means of maintaining themselves by
their industry if inclined to do so, and where facilities exist for
keeping them under more effective control than is practicable in this
country with its great cities and large population."

That all who were unfit to go, and, gaining a remission of sentence,
were discharged at home, should while on license be subjected to close
supervision by the police.

Such was the substance of the report. But it is right to mention here
that the commissioners were not quite unanimous in the conclusions
arrived at. Two of them, Mr. Henley and the Lord Chief Justice, would
not sign the report. Mr. Childers put his name to it, but under protest.
He could not agree to the proposals as to transportation. His view was
that of Australia, and he was of opinion that "the measures
recommended--while costly to the country and odious to her
colonies--would at best afford only a brief delay in the solution of a
question daily becoming more difficult."

By far the most important of the dissentient voices was that of Sir
Alexander Cockburn, the Lord Chief Justice, who appended to the report a
long memorandum giving his reasons for not concurring in it. After a
careful perusal of this memorandum any one would, I think, be ready to
concede that the Lord Chief Justice was nearer the mark than his
colleagues. They hesitated to admit that the penal system was entirely
defective. Sir Alexander Cockburn had no doubt of it, and maintained
that the same impression was pretty generally abroad. But if there were
faults in it, said the commissioners, then the administration of the law
was to blame; it was too lenient. To this the Lord Chief Justice would
by no means agree. The leniency of the judges, as it had shown itself of
late, was nothing. "The spirit in which the law is administered," he
observed, "is not the growth of yesterday. It has arisen gradually out
of the more humane and merciful disposition of men's minds in modern
times, whereby punishments inflicted without scruple in former days
would now be regarded as cruel and inhuman." No; the inefficacy of penal
servitude did not lie in the shortness or inequality of sentences, but
in the manner in which the punishment was inflicted. "Moderate labour,
ample diet, substantial gratuities," he maintained, "are hardly
calculated to produce on the mind of the criminal that salutary dread of
the recurrence of the punishment which may be the means of deterring
him, and, through his example, others from the commission of crime."

And then the Lord Chief Justice proceeded to put forth the following
pregnant sentences, which I quote in full. In taking up the question of
punishment, he says, "It is necessary to bear in mind what are the
purposes for which the punishment of offenders takes place. These
purposes are twofold: the first, that of deterring others exposed to
similar temptations from the commission of crime; the second, the
reformation of the criminal himself. The first is the primary and more
important object: for though society has, doubtless, a strong interest
in the reformation of the criminal, and his consequent indisposition to
crime, yet the result is here confined to the individual offender; while
the effect of punishment as deterring from crime, extends, not only to
the party suffering the punishment, but to all who may be in the habit
of committing crime, or who may be tempted to fall into it. Moreover,
the reformation of the offender is in the highest degree speculative and
uncertain, and its permanency in the face of renewed temptation
exceedingly precarious. On the other hand, the impression produced by
suffering inflicted as the punishment of crime, and the fear of its
repetition, are far more likely to be lasting, and much more likely to
counteract the tendency to the renewal of criminal habits. It is on the
assumption that punishment will have the effect of deterring from crime,
that its infliction can alone be justified; its proper and legitimate
purpose being not to avenge crime but to prevent it.

"The experience of mankind has shown that though crime will always exist
to a certain extent, it may be kept within given bounds by the example
of punishment. This result it is the business of the lawgiver to
accomplish by annexing to each offence the degree of punishment
calculated to repress it. More than this would be a waste of so much
human suffering; but to apply less, out of consideration for the
criminal, is to sacrifice the interests of society to a misplaced
tenderness towards those who offend against its laws. Wisdom and
humanity no doubt alike suggest that, if, consistently with this primary
purpose, the reformation of the criminal can be brought about, no means
should be omitted by which so desirable an end can be achieved. But
this, the subsidiary purpose of penal discipline, should be kept in due
subordination to its primary and principal one. And it may well be
doubted whether, in recent times, the humane and praiseworthy desire to
reform and restore the fallen criminal may not have produced too great a
tendency to forget that the protection of society should be the first
consideration of the lawgiver."

By far the most important improvement that followed this report was the
adoption of the "mark system;" in other words, of a method by which
remission was to be regulated, not by conduct as heretofore, but solely
by labour actually performed. For it must be understood that the
commissioners unhesitatingly accepted the principle of remissions. In
this they were at issue with the Lord Chief Justice, who thought that no
prisoner should escape one particle of the whole sentence laid upon him
by the judge. "It was most material," he said, "to the full efficiency
of punishment that its infliction should be certain." The door was
opened to doubt and uncertainty the moment the precise term of the
sentence was interfered with.

The objection was cogent if the remissions were to be granted in a
haphazard, capricious fashion and not by regular rule. But surely, if
the scale were drawn up on a regular plan and worked without deviation,
a sentence with remission might be just as certain as one without. The
former might, perhaps, be shorter than the latter--the judges, being
perfectly aware of the possible remission, would regulate their
sentences in proportion to this abridgment. And, on the other hand,
there was a clear and distinct gain to be expected from the practice of
remitting sentences. This was fully recognised by the commissioners, who
considered the hope of earning some remission the most powerful
incentive to industry and good conduct which could be brought to act
upon the minds of prisoners.

The commissioners perhaps laid more stress on good conduct than was
absolutely imperative, although they pointed out, very pertinently, that
"good conduct in a prison (apart from industry) can consist only in
abstaining from misconduct, which gives no just claim for reward." But
this harping upon good conduct was a weak point in their armour which
the Lord Chief Justice quickly discovered. He would not admit the
necessity for thus coaxing convicts into obedience by promising them an
earlier release if they behaved well. That was no argument, he said, for
remissions. Discipline ought to be strong enough to be independent of
such questionable support. "I can see no reason to think," he
continues,--"considering the powers of coercion, discipline, and
reduction of diet, possessed by the prison authorities--that, by the
application of firmness and determination with a sufficient force of
officers, convicts, especially if not massed in too great numbers, but
judiciously distributed, may not be kept under perfect control and
discipline."

No doubt the commissioners over-estimated the necessity of remission as
a means of insuring good conduct; but they were clearly in the right in
recommending the principle as a certain incentive to industry. The
experience, both of this and of other countries, has demonstrated that
it is impossible to compel convicts to work hard by mere coercion, the
attempt to do so having invariably failed, while it has produced a
brutalising effect on their minds and increased their previous aversion
to labour. On this ground the late Captain Maconochie many years ago
recommended that the punishment to be inflicted on criminals should be
measured, not by time, but by the amount of labour they should be
compelled to perform before regaining their freedom; and he devised an
ingenious mode of recording their daily industry by marks, for the
purpose of determining when they should have a right to their discharge.

Captain Maconochie himself experimented on his own suggestions in
Norfolk Island, but not with any great success. The state of Norfolk
Island, indeed, was never such as to encourage experiments of any kind.
It was really reserved for the officials who superintended the working
of transportation in Western Australia to give the system its first
practically successful trial. There a convict was allowed to earn by
each day's labour a number of marks, and as soon as they amounted to a
total previously calculated according to his sentence, he was granted a
ticket-of-leave. Industry became the test, and not good conduct; the
latter was only recognised by making misconduct carry with it a
forfeiture of some of the marks already earned by industry.

The convict's early release was no longer a matter of certainty provided
only that he avoided certain acts of rebellion, but it was made
contingent on something he had to earn. His fate rested in his own
hands; it was not to depend upon an opinion of his character formed by
others. The success which was shown to have attended the adoption of
this principle in Western Australia has been equally apparent in Great
Britain. The mark system is the keystone, the mainspring of the latest
British method of dealing with convicts, and the valuable results which
have grown out of it, as now clearly apparent, will be set forth
presently in the final chapter of this volume.




CHAPTER XI

FRENCH PENAL COLONIES

     Penal exile in favour with other nations--Systems of France, Italy,
     Spain and Portugal--Earliest French ventures--Guiana a fiasco--High
     sounding names--Renewed attempt--Settlement made in New Caledonia
     in 1864--Capital at Noumea--Convict population increases--Noumea in
     1888--Results of convict labour meagre--Loose discipline and low
     moral tone--Agricultural settlements--Life at the smaller
     stations--Arab convicts--Enforced labour unremunerative--Delay in
     development--The emancipists--Same warfare with free settlers as in
     Australia--A later view--Visited by Mr. George Griffith in
     1900--Free immigrants refuse to remain--Present condition proof of
     failure of penal exile.


The vast and costly efforts of Great Britain to make use of exile as the
penalty for crime, and the strange, unlooked for results achieved, have
been set forth. These efforts were undoubtedly successful, although not
in the manner expected. To add a great colony to the British Empire was
no small feat, even though the sources were impure and the foundations
laid by the dregs of society. But the gain was some compensation for the
means adopted. In any case, the convict stigma has long since been
washed out by honest industry and reputable development. A vast
territory, richly endowed, offered special advantages to an
enterprising people with the genius of colonisation. Other nations, who
overlooked the difficulties faced and overcome by England, have
endeavoured to follow in her footsteps, and have made but little
progress. France, as we shall see, has gone to great lengths in the
practice of deportation, but to no purpose. Portugal still transports
her criminals to the African colony of Angola, where the system is
established on a small scale and has exhibited no glaring defects. Italy
has long favoured the formation of criminal colonies on the many islands
that surround her coast, and has removed numbers of prisoners to
agricultural stations at Sardinia, to Pianosa and Gorgona in the Tuscan
Archipelago, as well as to Monte Cristo and Capraja. Spain had a penal
settlement at Ceuta on the north African shore as far back as the
fifteenth century, and has more recently added large stations at Melilla
and Alhucemas. Spanish experience in convict colonies is said to be
satisfactory, but the conditions are much the same as in Australia,--no
better, if no worse.

The efforts of France to found penal colonies range far back into
history. They date from a period long antecedent to the latest craze for
colonial aggrandisement. The very first attempt to sow the seeds of a
prosperous community with the failures of society was in 1763, when the
colonisation of French Guiana, already often attempted without success,
was again tried on an ambitious scale. The project failed miserably. An
expedition fourteen thousand strong, recruited mainly from the scum and
sweepings of the streets of Paris, melted away within a year, and
starvation carried off all whom the deadly climate spared. A second
similar experiment was tried in 1766, with a like disastrous result. No
serious importance could be attached to the colonising efforts of the
victims exiled to Guiana by the revolutionary tribunals. Barely half the
number survived the voyage, and the balance were in no condition to act
as pioneers. The records of French Guiana are full of such fiascos, the
most unsuccessful of which was the philanthropic attempt of the Baron
Milius, in 1823, to establish a penal colony on the banks of the Mana,
by the marriage and expatriation of habitual criminals, _recidivistes_,
and degraded women,--a most ill-judged undertaking, speedily productive
of ghastly horrors.

After this, penal colonisation seems to have fallen into disfavour with
France. Not only was it not renewed, but the principle of criminal
deportation, of exile as a penalty, was formally condemned in 1847, both
by such eminent publicists as MM. Lucas, De Beaumont and De Tocqueville,
and by the government of the hour. Yet within a few years the practice
was suddenly restored. To the new men in power there was probably
something attractive in the theory of transportation, as may be seen
from the high-sounding phrases that accompanied their decrees. The idea
was not merely to banish the dangerous social elements to a distant
soil: the young republic wished to prove that "humanity presided over
all its actions." Deportation, with the disciplinary processes that
surrounded it, was expected to bring about the moral regeneration of
those subjected to it; the criminal would be transformed into a useful
citizen; no longer a terror in his old home, he would aid the
development of and become a positive benefactor to the new. The
government was, indeed, so fascinated by the prospective advantages of
transportation to the convicts themselves, that it expected them to
accept it as a boon. Registers were opened at all the _bagnes_, or
seaport convict-stations, on which prisoners might inscribe their names
as volunteers for the high favour of removal to the promised land beyond
the seas. The philanthropic wish to benefit the exile was not, however,
the sole object of the government, as may be seen in various articles in
the decrees. The hope of founding substantial colonial possessions was
not disguised. The convict might benefit by expatriation, but so would
his new country, and to a greater degree. He went out, in a measure, for
his own good; he remained, perforce, for that of the community. It was
ruled that even when emancipated he was to be kept in the colony; those
sentenced for eight years and less must spend there a second period as
long as the original sentence; those sentenced for more than eight
years must remain in the colony for life. Their labour and their best
energies were thus impounded for the general good, in the sanguine
expectation that they were being utilised in the progress and
development of French colonisation.

The revival of transportation was formally promulgated by the law of
May, 1854, which declared that thereafter the punishment of _travaux
forcés_ should be undergone in establishments created in a French
colonial possession other than Algeria. As the only available outlet at
this time was French Guiana, this tropical colony alone was adopted as a
convict receptacle. In doing so, the very first principles of penal
legislation were ignored. To consign even convicts to a pestilential
climate, and expand the lesser penalty into capital punishment, was a
monstrous and illegal misuse of power. Exile to French Guiana meant
nearly certain death. For three years every attempt to colonise the
country had ended in disaster. Yet the government of Napoleon III
accepted deportation with a light heart and on the most extended scale.

The French government, slow to accept the evidence of facts, has never
abandoned deportation to Guiana. But it is no longer sanguine of
success, and the attempt to colonise is continued with other than
native-born Frenchmen. The total convict population of Guiana, as shown
in recent French official returns, had dwindled down to 3,441, and of
these barely a thousand were Europeans; the rest were Arabs from
Algeria, and Annamites, Asiatic blacks from the new French possessions
in Cochin-China and Tonquin. The Europeans were made up, in nearly equal
proportions, of convicts still undergoing sentence, and emancipists
compelled to reside in the colony. Large numbers of both classes are now
retained in the penitentiaries on the seacoast, where they can be
constantly employed at industrial labour under cover; as at Cayenne, the
capital, where vast administrative establishments exist, built at great
outlay in more prosperous times.

The French government has sought by every means to encourage the young
settlement of Saint Laurent, but its progress has always been
disappointing. It has been dependent for some years past upon the Arab
recruits, and the French officials already sorrowfully confess that
members of the Arab race transplanted to French Guiana are not of the
stuff to make good colonists. They are idle, discontented, and a prey to
unceasing homesickness. A great effort has been made by the
administration to attach the Arab emigrant to the land of exile by
transporting thither--I use the words of a late report--"the image of
the Arab family, its customs, habits and religion." Marriages are
encouraged with Arab women according to the Mussulman law. But little
success has attended these well-meant efforts. The Arab soon develops
nomadic instincts; he will not stick to one spot, but wanders abroad in
search of work which will give him the means of a speedy return to
Algeria. Not seldom he shows a clean pair of heels. Escapes in French
Guiana have been a source of trouble and annoyance to the authorities.
The total number of convicts who had escaped or disappeared from French
Guiana between 1852 and 1883 was 3,146; and since Arabs have been sent
there, they have supplied the largest proportion of fugitives. They went
off in bands; nothing could check them; no surveillance was effective.
The Government cutters cruising along the mouth of the river were easily
evaded, and the country boats once gained, they were soon out of the
colony. A report from the governor-general of Algeria in 1890 states
that a great cause of the insecurity of Algeria is the presence in the
colony of large numbers of Arab convicts who have escaped from Guiana
and returned home. Hence transportation has little terrors for the Arab
population, knowing how easily exile may be avoided.

A more remarkable case of escape was that of a French convict sent to
Guiana, who was anxious to see the Paris Exposition of 1889. He became
possessed of some eight hundred francs through successful gambling, and
spent six hundred in taking passage to Amsterdam; he embarked without
let or hindrance and went direct to Paris on arrival. He was present at
the opening of the exposition, where he stood not far from the
president of the republic. Later on he was captured for a fresh offence,
and taken to one of the large Paris prisons, where he was at once
recognised as a convict exiled not long before to Cayenne. He admitted
the charge; he had gratified his wish, had enjoyed _quelques bons
moments_, and was satisfied to go back to Guiana, as he would not have
to pay his own passage out. It was, in fact, established beyond question
that it was easier to escape from Cayenne, and even New Caledonia, than
from a _maison centrale_ in the department of the Seine.

It must be sufficiently plain from the foregoing facts that the attempts
to colonise French Guiana with convicts have ended in more or less
disheartening failure. Even in sections where the climate was not fatal
to Europeans, the conditions of life were opposed to the growth of a
prosperous community. There was little increase of population possible.
The ill-assorted marriages of convicts with degraded women of their own
class proved generally unproductive. Infant mortality was excessive;
children born in the colony could never be reared. The substitution of
Arabs for Europeans has been accompanied, as I have shown, with little
more success. Now, according to a late report of the French Colonial
Office, Annamite convicts, hitherto retained in their own country for
the completion of various important colonial works, are sent to French
Guiana. "The Annamite," says the report hopefully, "is a good
agriculturist; he can face the climate of Guiana without danger, and the
convicts of this race will doubtless largely contribute to the
development and cultivation of the colony."

The melancholy miscarriage of deportation to French Guiana did not
suffice to condemn it. The locality was only at fault, it was thought;
the system deserved a fuller and fairer trial. France now possessed a
better site for experiment, a territory in those same southern seas
where English transportation had so greatly prospered. New Caledonia was
annexed to France in 1853, but its colonisation had proceeded slowly,
and there was only a handful of white population when the first shipload
of convicts disembarked in 1864. A town, at this time little better than
a standing camp, was planted at Noumea, a spot chosen for its
capabilities for defence rather than its physical advantages. It had no
natural water supply, and the land around was barren. Exactly opposite
lay the little island of Nou, a natural breakwater to the Bay of Noumea,
well-watered, fertile, and commanded by the guns of the mainland, and
here the first convict depot was established. The earliest work of these
convict pioneers was to build a prison-house and to prepare for the
reception of new drafts. The labour was not severe, the discipline by no
means irksome, and some progress was made. Prison buildings rose upon
the island of Nou; a portion of the surrounding land was brought under
cultivation, and outwardly all went well. As years passed, the prison
population gradually increased. In 1867 the average total was six
hundred; in the following year it had increased to 1,554, after which
the yearly gain was continuous. Various causes contributed to this,
among them the gradual abolition of the _bagnes_ or convict stations at
the French arsenals, and the wholesale condemnation of Communists, many
of whom were deported to New Caledonia. In 1874 the convict population
exceeded five thousand. In 1880 it had risen to eight thousand; and
according to recent published official returns, the effective
population, taking convicts and emancipists together, numbered nearly
ten thousand. From May, 1864, to December 31, 1883, a total of 15,209
convicts had been transported to New Caledonia.

The development of the young colony was slow. Efforts were chiefly
concentrated upon the penitentiary island, and the convict labour was
but little utilised on the mainland. Those public works so indispensable
to the growth and prosperity of the settlement were neglected. The
construction of highroads was never attempted on any comprehensive
scale, and, notwithstanding the force of workmen available, Noumea, the
capital, was not enriched with useful buildings or rendered independent
of its physical defects. Henri Rochefort, who saw it in 1872, ridicules
its pretensions to be called a town. It might have been built of old
biscuit-boxes, he said; imposing streets named from some book of
battles--the Rue Magenta and the Rue Sebastopol, the Rue Inkerman and
the Avenue de l'Alma--were mere tracks sparsely dotted with huts,
single-storied and unpretending. The town lay at the bottom of a basin
surrounded by small hills. "It was like a cistern in wet weather, and in
the hot season it might be the crater of a volcano." A great mound, the
Butte Conneau, blocked up the mouth of the port and inconveniently
impeded traffic. Water was still scarce, and, according to Rochefort, a
barrel of it would be the most acceptable present to any inhabitant of
"Elephantiasopolis," as he christened Noumea from the endemic skin
affections. It took ten or a dozen years to improve Noumea. But by 1877
the Butte Conneau had been removed and levelled. About the same time an
aqueduct 8000 metres long was completed, which brought water to the
capital from Port de France and Yahoué. A number of more or less
ambitious residences had also been erected: a governor's house, bishop's
palace, administrative offices, hospitals, and barracks for the troops.

A later account of Noumea is given by M. Verschuur, who visited the
Antipodes in 1888-9, and spent some time in New Caledonia. On arrival he
was at first much struck by the appearance of Noumea. He was agreeably
impressed by the brightness and gaiety of its aspect as compared with
"the monotonous appearance of the little English towns" of Australia.
Cafés and taverns were numerous; crowds of lively folk filled the
streets through which he drove; and the well-built Government House,
surrounded by pretty grounds, looked homelike. A closer inspection much
modified his opinion. He remembered the large cities of the neighbouring
island continent with their imposing architecture, their fine public
gardens, and the prosperous home-like atmosphere pervading every part.
"But now I found myself in a small town somewhat resembling those of the
Antilles; the houses, which were all alike, were low and roughly built,
often of wood. Some of them were no better than the huts of the
backwoodsmen I had seen in the Australian bush. The shops were small,
and the wares displayed were inferior in quality and of a mixed
description. Toys hung side by side with saucepans and boots; calicoes
and hats were framed by jams and spirit-bottles. The streets were badly
kept and filthy; the roads outside the town had not been properly
levelled and the numerous bogs made travelling after dark very
dangerous. The only promenade was a public square planted with cocoanut
palms, which gave little shade. The harbour was meagre, the quays small
and inconvenient; but few ships can load or unload at the same time. If
there is one colony more than another where public building might be
carried on at the least expense, it is certainly New Caledonia, with its
hosts of convicts sentenced to 'hard labour.' In many of the places I
had visited, the numerous fine public works had been executed at great
cost; but here was a colony where labour would cost nothing and yet it
is never utilised. It is a strange anomaly, and a singular waste of
means, which might well be used for the advantage and progress of the
colony."

According to M. Verschuur, the amount of work gotten out of the convicts
was not very great. In his opinion France is maintaining in New
Caledonia an "army of drones who find means of evading the labour to
which they have been condemned. Many an honest, hard-working French
peasant might envy the fate which the government reserves for that part
of the population which is steeped in vice and crime. The law passed in
1854 prescribes that the convicts shall be kept to the most laborious
works of the colony." As soon as he landed, M. Verschuur heard an
excellent band playing in the public square. The bandsmen were all
convicts, who played three times a week and practised the rest of the
time. Men whose crimes had been the talk of all Paris were employed as
gardeners, or in the easiest kind of work, smoking and chatting with
their companions. The convicts work, nominally, eight hours a day; they
sleep another eight; and then there still remains another eight in which
they are absolutely idle. They do less than a quarter of the daily work
of an ordinary labourer. In the stone yard they simply work when they
see the warder is observing them. "I noticed a gang one day just outside
Noumea; out of the sixteen men, twelve were calmly seated on the heap of
stones they were supposed to be breaking, rolling cigarettes, and
talking; the remaining four made a stroke now and then, when the warder
chanced to glance that way. Several times, when travelling in the
interior of the country, I have come upon well-known murderers, living
in service with the unsuspecting inhabitants." A certain number were
regularly employed within the prison of Nou, where M. Verschuur saw them
engaged as shoemakers, carpenters, and at the blacksmith's forge. All
were busily at work, yet he was certain that before he entered with the
prison director, not a soul was doing anything. Great laxity, however,
prevailed in these shops. A convict carpenter was permitted to have
access to the stores of turpentine and spirits in the workshop, with
which abominable mixture he managed to get horribly drunk. Extraordinary
license was allowed in another direction. A convict quarrelled with and
murdered a comrade; they had been partners in a store kept inside the
prison for the sale of coffee, tobacco and spirits. The deeds of
partnership had been legally drawn up, and were actually engrossed upon
the official paper of the prison. It may be mentioned that this murderer
had been twice guilty of murder before and was yet allowed to keep a
knife in his possession, which he was seen to sharpen quite unrestrained
on the very morning of the last crime.

The influx of convicts produced many projects for their employment over
and above the development of Noumea. Following the practice that had
prevailed in Guiana, agricultural settlements, half farm, half prison,
were established at various points on the mainland. One of the first of
these was at Bourail, about a hundred miles from the capital. Another
was founded nearer home at Ourail, on the mouth of the Foa. A third was
at Canala, on the opposite and northern shore of the island. A fourth
was at its eastern end, in the Bay of Prony. Besides these a number of
smaller stations were distributed at various points through the colony.
The works undertaken were everywhere much of the same kind. At Bourail
the sugar cane was cultivated, and various vegetables; at Canala, rice,
maize and coffee; at Ourail the land was poor, and the settlement was
moved further up the river to Fonway, where the raising of tobacco, and
the cultivation of fruit trees and the quinine bush were attempted; at
the Bay of Prony the convicts became woodcutters to supply fuel for the
rest of the colony.

The inner life of one of the smaller stations, the labour camp of Saint
Louis, has been graphically described by M. Mayer, a political
transport, who published the "Souvenirs d'un Deporté," relating his
personal experiences, on his return to France. This camp consisted of
124 convicts, a heterogeneous collection, herded together
indiscriminately in the wretched _cases_, or straw-thatched huts, the
prevailing prison architecture of New Caledonia. Among these, of whom
forty were political and non-criminal convicts, there were twenty-six
Arabs, four Chinamen and two <DW64>s. Several notorious desperadoes,
Frenchmen born, were associated with the rest. One had been at the head
of a band of poisoners of Marseilles; another, who had murdered a girl
in Paris, had been arrested and sentenced during the Commune by a
Communist commissary, who, by a strange fate, was now his comrade
convict in this same camp of Saint Louis. Except for the scantiness of
diet and the enforced association with the worst criminals, M. Mayer did
not find the work hard. The hours of labour varied; the daily minimum
was eight, the maximum from ten to twelve. But the work performed was
desultory and generally unproductive. The principal aim was to clear the
land by removing the rocks, which were afterward broken up for
road-making material. The supervision was lax and ineffective; the few
warders were most active in misappropriating rations. The chief warder
himself, who had a fine garden and poultry yard, stole the wine and soft
bread issued for the sick. Many convicts eked out their meagre fare by
cooking roots and wild fruits, _pommes de lianes_ and Caledonian
saffron.

The lot of the Arabs was most enviable; they monopolised all situations
of trust. One was the quartermaster, another the chief cook, and others
worked as carpenters, bootmakers, and blacksmiths. The baleful practice
of putting one convict in authority over another, long condemned by
enlightened prison legislators, was always in full force in New
Caledonia. Strange to say, too, the French authorities preferred to
choose their felon overseers from an alien race. The Arabs seem to have
found most favour with their masters, although, if Mayer is to be
believed, these Arab officials were all fierce, untamed ruffians. Yet
they were entrusted with great authority over their less fortunate
comrades, and were especially esteemed for the vigour with which they
administered corporal punishment. Mayer has preserved the picture of one
Algerian savage, six feet high, who went about seeking quarrels and
striking his fellow convicts on the smallest excuse. This man was
considered an artist with the _martinet_, or French cat-o'-nine-tails,
and was said to be able to draw blood at the first stroke.

It is an admitted axiom in penal science that enforced labour is not
easily made productive. Unless peculiar incentives to work, such as
provided by the English mark system, are employed under a strict yet
enlightened discipline, the results have always been meagre and
disappointing. As these conditions were absent from New Caledonia, the
consequences are what might have been foreseen. Notwithstanding the very
considerable efforts made and the vast quantity of convict labour always
available, the colony still owns no great public works; while large and
sustained efforts to develop its agricultural resources by the same
means have also failed. No doubt the nature of the soil has been
unfavourable.

New Caledonia, while not without its natural advantages, such as a
nearly perfect climate, freedom from reptiles and animal life inimical
to man, is not very richly endowed except in unprospected and
undeveloped mineral wealth. The island consists of a rugged backbone of
mountains clothed with dense forests and grooved with rushing torrents,
along whose banks lie the only cultivable ground. A thin and sandy soil
covers a substratum of hard rock, which makes but scanty return for the
labour bestowed and serves best for pasturage. Hence the convict farms
already referred to have never been profitably worked. Those especially
of Bourail and Koe, the largest and most ambitious, show a positive
loss. At the former only three and a half tons of sugar were turned out
in one year by four hundred men, and ten years of toil had brought only
fifty hectares of land into cultivation. At Koe, five years' receipts
were valued at 50,000 francs, and the expenses for the same period just
trebled that sum. In 1883 the minister of marine approved the
suppression of the penitentiary farms on the island of Nou and at
Canala, and the limitation of the sugar cane cultivation at Bourail, on
the ground that the returns were altogether inadequate to the outlay.

It was only too evident, as the outcome of early years, that efforts had
been misdirected, and that the labour had been wasted and frittered away
instead of being more usefully employed for the benefit of the whole
colony. One signal instance of the shortcomings of the colonial
administrators is shown by their neglect to develop the means of
internal communication. It was not until 1883, that is to say, after
nearly twenty years of colonial life, that road-making, that
indispensable preliminary to development, was undertaken on any
extensive scale. New Caledonia, an island 230 miles long and 50 miles
broad, owned only 57 kilometres of road before the year 1882. It was
Captain Pallu de la Barriere, a governor whose administration was
severely criticised on account of his excessive humanitarianism, but
whose views as regards the utilisation of convict labour were
far-seeing, who removed this reproach. His idea was to substitute what
he called movable camps for the _bagnes sedentaires_ or permanent
penitentiaries. He thought that the severest toil should be the lot of
all convicts, at least at first; and this, he conceived, could be best
compassed by employing them in road-making, thus benefiting the colony
while effectively punishing the convict. His whole scheme of
organisation reads like a page from the despatches of British colonial
governors some thirty years previous. The measures he proposed, his
plans for housing the convicts and providing for their safe custody,
were almost identical with those in force with the road-gangs of New
South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. He was very hopeful; he had no fear
of escapes or of aggravated misconduct scattered over the wide area
which he now proposed to people with convict gangs. His intentions were
no doubt excellent, but in the twenty years following the initiation of
his scheme they have borne no very substantial fruit.

The colonial administration has found even less satisfaction in the
emancipists than in the convicts still under restraint. The former are a
great and increasing body, for whom work cannot easily be found. The
hope that the labour markets of the colony would absorb a great
proportion soon proved illusory. For some time past the free colonists,
by no means a numerous class, have declined to employ emancipists,
declaring that while they claimed the free man's wages they would not
give the free man's work. The settlers preferred to import native labour
from the neighbouring islands, especially the New Hebrides, thus coming
into direct conflict with the authorities, who soon put their veto on
such importation. The settlers were told that if they wanted hands they
must seek them among the emancipists, and all protests were silenced by
reminding the colonists that New Caledonia was a penal settlement and
that if they lived there they must abide by its constitution. At this
time there were some four or five thousand emancipists living as free
charges, lodged, fed and clothed at the cost of the state, yet making
absolutely no return. The greater number of these were kept in a
military camp under some semblance of discipline, but undergoing little
restraint beyond the prohibition to wander abroad, and within the limits
of the camp the occupants could do as they pleased.

Later and more specific information is now at hand in the accounts
brought back by an enterprising traveller, Mr. George Griffith, who
visited New Caledonia in 1900. The penal colonisation undertaken by
France with such philanthropic motives, and so sedulously carried out,
has resulted in failure. The experience is the same as that of New South
Wales and Tasmania; the penalty of banishment and penal exile inflicted
upon the majority of convicts has been accomplished, but not the
regeneration, to any appreciable extent, of the criminal classes. Their
conversion into a prosperous community, self-reliant, self-supporting
and able to stand alone, is still a vague, unrealised dream. All the
conditions that favoured the growth of its great neighbour have been
absent in New Caledonia, and it was hampered also by special
disadvantages. There has been none of the steady influx of free
settlers such as immigrated to Australia when first difficulties were
removed, nor yet the amazing stimulus of the discovery of gold as on the
near-by continent. Peculiar racial disadvantages have further impeded
development.

The present state of New Caledonia affords abundant proof of the truth
of this position. It will doubtless never advance to the rank of a
first-class colony. It is still and must always be a prison house beyond
sea peopled mainly by convicts past or present, by those in various
stages of ameliorating change, but who cannot shake off the original
taint, and the general low level is maintained by constant reinforcement
of those who have it full upon them. To-day the larger part of the
population of the colony is based upon the criminal element, which is
divided into three principal classes: First, the _forçats_, or convicted
prisoners still in a state of servitude; second, the _libérés_ or
emancipists in semi-freedom, who emerge in due course from the first
class, and, third, the _relégues_ or those sent from France to serve a
sentence of perpetual exile. There is hope in the future for the first,
partially attained freedom and approaching comfortable assurance for the
second, but for the last named there is nothing but black despair. Life
alone remains theirs, but with not the faintest prospect of remission or
release.

It is obvious that under such conditions healthy colonisation is about
as impossible as healthy physical being in a colony of lepers. Free
emigrants may declare it their intention, but they will not persevere in
the attempt to build up new homes under such false conditions; they will
not leave the mother country, or if they do, will take the earliest
opportunity to return to the hard, clean, industrious life of
agricultural France. We have seen that, with the larger influx of the
vigorous Anglo-Saxon, the same difficulties were faced and overcome; but
at what risks, what degradation and how great a waste of men and means!

New Caledonia is nevertheless an interesting study, and its present
condition an object lesson in penal legislation. It is a prison planted
in the tropics, to a large extent worked and governed on the same lines
as the prisons in the heart of a mother country. Wrong-doers are
transported to the other end of the globe to endure a penalty that might
be better inflicted, more cheaply and under better supervision and
control, by the strong arm of an omnipresent public opinion at home.
Some remote advantages are no doubt obtained in the later stages of the
terms of imprisonment, and at least society is rinsed effectively of its
lees and leavings.

The principal home for the _forçats_ in the penal stage of exile is
still on the island of Nou, already mentioned and immediately opposite
Noumea, the capital of the colony, which is now, after fifty years of
life, a pretty white town of villas and squares, and streets of shops
brightened by a luxuriant tropical vegetation. On the island of Nou a
pleasant looking settlement of white houses and shady streets has been
formed at the foot of a hill crowned with the imposing and extensive
prison buildings. On this commanding site and at this remote point,
so-called penitentiary science has planted the same sort of machine for
the coercion of erring humanity as may be seen nearly everywhere else on
the civilised globe. The latest experiment is being made with the oldest
methods. Here are separate cells, dark cells and condemned cells, bolts
and bars, iron doors and loaded revolvers. France desires to emancipate
her criminals and set them on the high road to regenerated life, but
they must tread the old thorny paths and suffer the same trials by the
way as their predecessors elsewhere. Discipline must be maintained, and
it is enforced at times by terrible means. The lash and the
"cat-o'-nine-tails" are not permitted, but a most ingenious deceptive
method of torture has been invented, mild enough at first sight, yet
more cruel than the rack, thumb-saw or boot.

Mr. George Griffith's description of the punishment as it existed when
he saw it--happily much modified soon afterward--is horrifying in the
extreme. The "black cell" was absolutely isolated. Not a sound reached
it, not a ray of light penetrated it, and in his day the doors were only
opened once in thirty days, when the hapless inmate was extracted for
an hour's exercise and the doctor's inspection. The effect of this
treatment may be best realised by Mr. Griffith's own words when he was
permitted to extend relief to one of the inmates.

"Out of the corner (of the cell) came something in human shape,
crouching forward, rubbing its eyes and blinking at the unaccustomed
light. It had been three years and a half in that horrible hole about
three yards long and half as wide. I gave him a feast of sunshine and
outer air by taking his place for a few minutes. After the first two or
three, the minutes lengthened into hours. I had absolutely no sense of
light. I was as blind as though I had been born without eyes. The
blackness seemed to come down on me like some solid thing and drive my
straining eyes back into my head. It was darkness that could be felt,
for I felt it, and the silence was like the silence of upper space. When
the double doors opened again, the rays of light seemed to strike my
eyes like daggers. The criminal whose place I had taken had a record of
infamy which no printable words could express, and yet I confess I
pitied him as he went back into that living death of darkness and
silence."

The extreme penalty of death is by no means rare in New Caledonia, and
the condemned cells in the prison of the island of Nou, six in number,
are sometimes simultaneously full. An execution in that far-off place of
penitence reproduces the scene in Paris; the preliminaries are the same
and the ceremony is identical. The same cruel uncertainty hangs over the
fate of the condemned, who hears his doom only an hour or two before he
is guillotined. The commandant of the island, the chaplain and the chief
warden, visit him at three o'clock in the morning and convey the dread
summons, _c'est pour aujourdhui_, the final, fatal decision he has been
awaiting day after day for weeks. Then follows _la toilette de la mort_,
the dressing for death, when the headsman "_Monsieur de l'Ile Nou_,"
pinions him and cuts away the collar of his shirt lest it should break
the fall of the swiftly descending knife.

The actual performance takes place in the great courtyard, where the
scaffold has been erected and the audience is ready. All the great
officials of the colony are there, and a sufficient number of troops to
overawe the body of convicts arranged row behind row within full view of
the stage to which the principal performer ascends. He is allowed to
make a short address to his comrades, kneeling and bareheaded before
him. Then he is put into position upon a sloping plank, which slides
into place so that his neck is pushed out through an opening and is
ready for the swift-falling blade.

The _forçats_ are distributed all over the colony where there is work in
progress, on farms and agricultural stations, clearing forest primeval
and in mining operations of a very arduous character. The idle and
ill-conducted, the incorrigible who will not labour and are in a chronic
state of insubordination, are committed to disciplinary camps partly for
punishment, partly for seclusion. Nowhere is the régime more severe, the
daily rations less, the daily task harder. There are none of the small
luxuries of wine and tobacco, and they sleep on guard beds with a leg in
iron chained to a bar at the end. The penalty of solitary confinement on
bread and water is promptly inflicted for any breach of discipline, and
those who prove perfectly intractable are sent as hopeless to the cells
of the central prison at the island of Nou. Henceforth there is no
further change--they are deemed hopeless and incurable.

One form of punishment is peculiar to these camps. It might be called
perpetual motion. A number of convicts, twenty or thirty, are ranged in
single rank in a large shed, some sixty feet in length and forty in
breadth, and set to march round and round incessantly, pausing only for
a couple of minutes every half hour. Stone seats, each a kind of flat
topped pyramid, are fixed at intervals around the shed and afford a
brief rest from time to time, but the march is speedily resumed and
continues from dawn to sunset of the nearly interminable day.

The tardy development of the colony has been shown as it was at an
earlier date. Twenty years more and it still lags behind. After forty
years of occupation, with an average total of from eight to ten
thousand able-bodied criminals available, but little progress has been
made. The colony is still but sparsely provided with roads. The internal
communications are barely fifty miles in length; one road, fit only for
two-wheeled traffic and thirty miles in length, connects Noumea with
Bailoupari, and there are some short roads in the agricultural
settlement of Bourail. There are as yet no railways and no network of
telegraphic wires. All of the transit from point to point is performed
by small coastwise steamers.

Bourail is the show place where the _forçats_ blossom into the
emancipists, and where penal labour is replaced by individual effort of
the state-aided freedmen, the criminal who has expiated his offence and
is now to make himself a new life. Liberal assistance is given to those
who intend to do well. After fair assurance of amendment, the forger or
assassin, the unfortunate felon who got into the clutches of the law,
gets a new start, a concession of land with capital advanced to stock
it, materials to build his home, tools and agricultural implements, six
months' food, and seed to sow the first harvest. Some of them thrive and
prosper exceedingly; it is much the same as in early Australian days,
but no doubt to a lesser degree, for not a few fail and must return to
servitude with more successful comrades or free settlers. There are
those who champion the system as the best solution of the disposal of
the worst offenders who cannot be rehabilitated under the conditions
existing in a country long settled. The logic is a little weak perhaps,
and it is difficult to concede that crime should be the official avenue
to state assistance.

A good story is told of one reformed criminal who prospered exceedingly
and was congratulated by the governor of the colony when he came up to
receive the prize awarded for raising first-class stock. He was reminded
how by the fostering care of a paternal government he had been
transformed from the degraded _forçat_ into an honest owner of property.
The ex-convict was moved to tears, but his emotion was caused by his
regretting the time he had lost before he came to benefit by the change.
"Had I had any idea of the good fortune awaiting me," he whined, "I
would have arrived here ten years sooner." In other words, he would have
qualified ten years earlier by committing the deed which resulted in his
transportation--cutting his wife's throat.

The boons extended to the reformed one are not limited to a life of ease
and comfort in the colony. Rehabilitation may be earned, and with it
permission to return to the mother country with the restoration of civil
rights. Several have sold their farms and effects to the colony, and
have gone home to France as _rentiers_. Their reappearance hardly tends
to emphasise the deterrent effect of penal exile.

That the conditions in New Caledonia were until within the last few
years in many respects more encouraging, and that the labour of the
colonists was increasingly productive, may be gathered from the
following extract from the London _Times_ in 1890:

"The governor states that agriculture, which has hitherto been of only
secondary importance, seems to be entering upon a period of rapid
development under the influence of the fresh means of action afforded it
by the immigration from the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia will produce
this year 400 tons of coffee, while it is expected that in four years'
time the production will exceed 1,000 tons. The cultivation of the sugar
cane and of wheat is also making good progress.... The governor reports
that what New Caledonia is most deficient in is labour, but he adds that
the work done by the convicts, and especially at the Thio penitentiary,
is much more satisfactory than that of the convicts in Guiana, while the
men who have served their time and who choose can always find employment
at wages from 4s. to 5s. a day, and at piece work they in many cases
earn 10s. a day."

Some ten years later reports continued to be favourable as to the
prosperity of New Caledonia. According to the governor, the population
was steadily increasing and the demand for the minerals mined on the
island was so great that it could not be satisfied. In 1903, however,
the _Times_ published a news item stating that "emigration from France
has practically ceased and numbers of colonists have left," the cause of
the exodus being the high taxation and great cost of living. In the same
year, the agent-general for South Australia wrote to the French
government pointing out how anxious Australia was to see the use of New
Caledonia as a penal settlement abandoned, and a date fixed after which
prisoners should not be sent to the Pacific.




CHAPTER XII

PENAL METHODS IN THE UNITED STATES

     No common system--Each state takes care of prisoners in its own
     way--Prisons under the control of the general government--Lack of
     system not altogether without advantage--The "Pennsylvania System"
     _versus_ the "Auburn System"--Other prisons--Convict _versus_ free
     labour--Prison newspapers--The Elmira Reformatory--Similar
     experiments in other states--Obstacles to prison
     improvement--Institutions for juvenile offenders--Children's
     courts--Advantages and disadvantages of juvenile
     institutions--Interesting experiments.


There is no prison system common to the whole United States. Each of the
forty-six states and the territories as well deals with its prisoners in
its own way. The United States has two great prisons, one at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, and the other at Atlanta, Georgia, besides a small
one in the state of Washington, in which some of the offenders against
the general government are confined, but the greater number of Federal
prisoners are confined in state prisons by special arrangement with the
state authorities. The general government, however, prescribes rules and
regulations for the treatment of Federal prisoners, but has no authority
whatever over the state prisoners confined, perhaps, in the same
building.

Naturally conditions vary in different states and often in different
prisons in the same state. Few states have a Department of Correction,
and usually each prison is in the charge of a separate board, appointed
either by the governor or the state legislature. The county jails in
which short term prisoners or offenders awaiting trial are confined are
almost invariably under the management of the local authorities and the
condition of many is deplorable. Some state prisons are models in
construction, sanitation, and government, and challenge comparison with
the best in Europe. Others are poorly constructed, overcrowded, badly
kept and worse governed. Conditions depend entirely upon the state of
the public conscience and the sense of responsibility prevailing in the
jurisdiction. Manifestly it is difficult to make general statements of
American policy in penology.

Yet this very diversity has its advantages. While because of the lack of
a uniform system, the prisons in some states are worse than they would
be under general laws, still the various states are constantly
experimenting. A new idea in prison construction, or a new method of
government, will be tried in some state, by an officer who has been able
to convince his board of governors of its practicability. A general
board or commissioner would be less likely to interfere with the
existing order. This very fact of independent jurisdictions is
responsible for much of the American progress exhibited particularly in
reformatory institutions.

A rough classification as to methods shows four different systems of
dealing with felons. These are first, the cellular or separate; second,
the congregate; third, the reformatory; fourth, the convict lease
system. In addition there is a multitude of institutions organised to
deal with the youthful offender, variously known as juvenile asylums,
protectories, training schools, etc. Among them all there is much
variation.

The only prison of the cellular type now existing in the United States
is the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia which was
opened in 1829, though Walnut Street jail had in 1790 cells designed for
solitary confinement. This prison is built in the form of a star with
galleries radiating from a central hall. Most of the galleries are only
one story, though a few are two. The architecture was probably borrowed
from the prison of Ghent designed by Vilian, and begun in 1771.

Each prisoner is assigned to a large cell averaging in size perhaps
sixteen by eight feet and twelve to fifteen feet in height. A yard about
the same size open to the sky adjoins the cell and prisoners are allowed
to take exercise for a specified time daily. Each cell contains the
necessary furniture for a bedroom, including an electric light, a water
tap and sanitary conveniences.

In theory the prisoner is confined in this cell without intercourse
with any other prisoners, from his entrance until the sentence has
expired. He sees and speaks only with prison officers or instructors,
including the chaplain. He lives, works, eats, and sleeps in his cell.
No machinery or at least none that can not be introduced into the cells
is allowed in the prison. The prisoners make shoes, clothes, shirts,
cigars, stockings, etc. A specified amount is expected from each
prisoner and any greater production is credited to him. One half of the
surplus goes to the county from which he was sentenced, and the other
half may be spent for tobacco or other permitted luxuries, or may be
sent to his family.

The results, according to Michael J. Cassidy, warden for many years, are
exceedingly satisfactory. The first offenders are not corrupted by older
prisoners and there is almost no question of discipline. There are few
punishments. If a prisoner is not dressed when his breakfast is brought
he may lose his meal, or if the utensils presented to be filled are not
clean, the officer may in his discretion refuse to place the food in
them. In rare cases the prisoner is deprived of work which has been
found to be the most serious punishment of all. There are no dark cells,
and corporal punishment is not employed.

Mr. Cassidy emphatically denies that the system causes insanity or that
serious physical injury follows, and on the other hand declares that the
reformatory results obtained are greater than in other prisons. About
seventy-five per cent. of the first offenders do not appear again and
four per cent. of the habitual criminals reform. The results in his
judgment justify the greater cost of the system compared with the Auburn
or congregate system of which more will be said.

Though the idea put into execution at Philadelphia was not new the
prison has been often visited and the "Pennsylvania system" as it is
called, (though the Western Penitentiary at Allegheny is organised on
the congregate system) has been widely copied, chiefly in Europe. In the
United States it has been tried and abandoned in New Jersey, Rhode
Island, Virginia, Maryland, and to a limited extent in New York, partly
on account of the expense and partly because of doubts as to its
humanity. On the other hand the system was adopted in Belgium in 1838,
in Sweden in 1840, in Denmark in 1846, and to a limited extent by other
countries. Pentonville in England is modelled after this prison, as are
also Mountjoy in Dublin, and the Antrim jail in Belfast in Ireland.

The great majority of the prisons of the United States are organised
according to the "Auburn" or congregate system. Here the prisoners are
confined in separate cells at night, but work during the day in large
workshops, supposedly in silence. The New York state prison at Auburn
was organised in 1816. For a considerable time it was under the charge
of Elam Lynds, formerly a captain in the army, and a strict
disciplinarian. He was able to preserve almost absolute silence in the
workshops, using corporal punishment if necessary. His success while
preserving at the same time the general good will of his charges is
another striking illustration of the fact that a good man can make any
system work.

Though the system was not original with Auburn, the plan of organisation
has passed into prison history by that name, and violent controversies
have raged between the partisans of the opposing ideas. To it has been
added since the organisation, the system of classification of prisoners,
of good conduct marks, and of shortening sentences by good behaviour,
which is in force in many states. In some states the indeterminate
sentence which first was applied only in the reformatories has been
extended to certain classes of offenders confined in state prisons.

The general regulations applying to the prisons in New York state,
including Auburn, Sing Sing, at Ossining, Clinton, etc., are practically
the same. The prisoner is assigned on entering to certain work depending
upon his physique, intelligence and previous training. The efficient
prison book-keeper at Sing Sing a few years ago was a convict, and the
chief clerk for the superintendent of industries was also a convict.

The regulations provide for lights in the cells until ten o'clock, and
for the use of the prison library. A letter may be written once a month
and all proper letters received at the prison will be delivered after
examination. The prisoner may also receive a visit of a half hour's
duration in presence of a keeper once in two months and at the same
intervals a box of proper eatables may be received from friends, or
purchased from private funds. For breach of the prison regulations, a
prisoner may lose a part of the time which would otherwise be gained by
good behaviour, and may lose his privilege of receiving visitors.
Serious infractions are punished by confinement in a dark cell, and in
spite of the regulations, by physical punishment in many cases.

Formerly the labour of the convicts was contracted to outside parties at
a fixed price for each individual. While the contractors were not
supposed to inflict punishment, by bribing prison officials the
reluctant were forced to do the amount of work required. Undoubtedly
there were grave abuses. Some convicts were worked beyond their strength
to satisfy the greed of the contractor. During this period there was a
stone shed, a foundry, a hat shop, a file shop and a laundry, all of
which paid good profits to the contractors, and from a financial
standpoint were advantageous to the state.

The prejudice against this form of convict labour was sufficient in 1887
to cause the passage of a law absolutely forbidding contract labour. At
the same time an appropriation was made to purchase the plants then
existing and continue them on the state account. The results were not
satisfactory, especially as another law later required all goods
manufactured to be stamped "prison made." The labour unions continued to
object to the competition of convicts with free labour and by a
constitutional amendment adopted in 1896, it was finally forbidden. For
a time the prisoners were idle, but shortly they were ordered to
manufacture so far as possible goods required by other public
institutions, and these institutions on the other hand were ordered to
submit all lists of supplies desired to the prisons, in order that they
might have the opportunity of furnishing them.

Since that time, the prisoners have been partially employed in
manufacturing stone, knit goods, clothing, furniture, window sash,
shoes, etc., but the demand is not sufficient to require full work, and
the system is wasteful and uneconomic. The management is not stimulated
to do its best and little or no attempt is made to keep the men from
loafing. The system furnishes sufficient physical exercise but no
training in systematic work which will be of value when the prisoner is
released.

At Sing Sing prison the prisoners publish a paper, the _Star of Hope_
written and printed entirely by themselves, and a few other prisons also
issue papers. The founder of the paper has since his release published
an interesting book giving his experiences and his views upon matters of
prison discipline and government.[2] Speaking of the contributors to
the paper he says: "Nor was the literary tone of the paper at all
despicable. It would have been quite possible to make it more elaborate
and dignified, for there was no end of talent available, but the aim
held in view was to make it representative.... Poetry was the favourite
medium employed by the contributors, and I suppose the _Star of Hope_
printed and still prints more and worse verse than any other publication
in the world."

The question of prison labour has been a serious one in many states. All
agree that the convict must work for his own sake, and yet the
objections to placing his products in competition with free labour have
been loud and strong. In some states the labour unions have also
objected to the policy of teaching trades at the expense of the state,
claiming that in this way the offender is given a decided advantage over
the youth who has kept within the law.

Prison managers have been at their wits' end to find work to which
objections would not be made. In San Quentin prison, California, the
convicts work in a jute mill and at crushing stone for roads. The
alleged monopoly price for sacks demanded by the few jute mills in the
country has been lowered by prison competition, and the farmers approve.
On the other hand, the labour performed while in prison has little
relation to outside employment. In the Minnesota state prison, the
manufacture of binding twine for cereal crops was begun to break down
an alleged monopoly. North Carolina, and perhaps other states, use the
labour of a large number of their convicts in agriculture. Here the
product of convict labour is so small a proportion of the total product
that the price received by free labour is hardly affected at all, and no
objection has been made.

The larger number of the prisons which still engage in manufacturing are
organised on the "piece-price" system, _i. e._ materials are furnished
and a price as nearly as possible what must be paid to free labour is
charged for each unit of product. By this method the abuses of contract
labour, and the wastefulness of the state account system are avoided.

There are in the United States few great prisons which are known to all.
The best known are of course those of states which contain large cities;
first, because a larger number of the more notorious criminals come from
the cities, and second, because the city newspapers give a larger
proportion of their space to criminal news than do the journals of the
smaller municipalities. Besides those already mentioned, other well
known prisons are at Joliet, Illinois; Trenton, New Jersey; Columbus,
Ohio; Baltimore, Maryland, and on Blackwell's Island in New York City.

The reformatory system of the United States strictly speaking began with
the organisation of the Elmira Reformatory at Elmira, New York, in
1876, which was largely due to the efforts of Rev. E. C. Wines, who
gave his life to the improvement of prison conditions, and to Dr.
Theodore W. Dwight. They were much interested in the success of Colonel
Montesinos, Captain Maconochie and Sir Walter Crofton abroad, and drew
up a plan which was adopted by the legislature in 1869. The institution
was to be distinctly reformatory, and sentences were to be
indeterminate.

It was opened for reception of offenders between sixteen and thirty
years of age in 1876 under the superintendency of Z. R. Brockway who has
given to the institution its peculiar character. The statistics kept for
a number of years show that sixty-seven per cent. of those entering are
illiterate, that eighty-nine per cent. have no trade, and that more than
sixty-eight per cent. do not have what could be classed as good
physiques, and a considerable number may be classed as degenerates.
Further ninety-eight per cent. are committed from the cities.

Effort is made to develop the inmates on all sides. Athletic training,
gymnastic work and military drill are required. Attention is given to
baths, massage, and diet. Instruction in the common branches is given,
and there are frequent lectures, and entertainments. Debating societies
are organised and every effort is made to turn the misdirected energy
into saner channels. At the same time a part of every day is spent in
the shops and the rudiments of trades are taught.

The inmates are divided into four grades with different privileges.
Conduct marks based upon performance of duty, cleanliness, progress,
etc., are given, and promotion to a higher or removal to a lower grade
depend upon the prisoner's record. When a boy or young man has been in
the upper first grade for six months he becomes a candidate for release
on parole. If his record is good for six months after leaving the
Reformatory he is usually discharged.

The officers claim that the institution has been an unqualified success,
that out of five thousand discharged only three hundred and sixty-five
were returned, and that about eighty-two per cent. of those committed
are permanently reformed. On the other hand the officers of the regular
prisons declare that their prisons are full of "Elmira graduates," and
the state has built another institution at Napanoch which is to receive
the more incorrigible material from Elmira, and with sterner measures
again attempt reformation.

A number of states have adopted the system wholly or in part, including
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas
and South Dakota. The degree of success has varied with the
superintendent. The most interesting experiment is perhaps the
Massachusetts Reformatory for women at Sherborn.

This institution for several years seemed on the point of failure, owing
partly to the management and partly to the fact that sentences were too
short. Finally a woman of strong character, and broad sympathies, Mrs.
Ellen C. Johnson, was induced to take charge and success appears to have
followed her efforts. The general plan is the same as at Elmira, except
that restraint is not so prominent. The large majority of the
commitments are the result of intemperance and unchastity, and
undoubtedly mother love plays a part in drawing back the inmates from
improper or immoral lives. Inmates released on parole are in demand as
domestics, and in many cases give entire satisfaction.

The fourth plan mentioned in the classification, the convict lease
system, now exists in only a few states, chiefly in the South. Under
this system convicts are leased to work in gangs outside the prison
walls at mining, railroad and turnpike building, canal cutting and
similar employments. The contractor pays the state a fixed sum per head
for the convicts, feeds, clothes and guards them. Their management is in
his hands, restrained in some degree by the continuous or intermittent
presence of a state inspector. The work is generally laborious, the
intelligence of the labourers is low and they are disposed to shirk. The
contractor desires to make a profit and generally works the unfortunates
to the limit of their endurance, clothing and feeding them as poorly as
he dares. Almost unbelievable brutality has occurred in these convict
camps, ending in many cases in the death of stubborn or rebellious
individuals. A partially awakened public conscience no longer permits
former abuses but disgraceful conditions are still periodically brought
to light.

The authorities responsible for the leases excuse or defend them on the
following grounds. They say that a large majority of the leased convicts
are <DW64>s of an order of intelligence so low that they can be utilised
only to a limited extent in any work performed in the prison; that
confinement without labour is regarded as rather pleasant than
otherwise, as imprisonment in itself means to them little or no
disgrace; that the labour is of the same kind at which they would be
employed, if free. Therefore the state must support in idleness without
punitive effect a large number of offenders, or else lease their labour
outside the prison walls. While all these statements are in a measure
true, it may well be doubted whether any state is ever justifiable in
surrendering the guardianship of its own delinquents.

The two great obstacles in the way of prison improvement in the United
States are parsimony and politics. Though the cost of some prisons is
excessive the money is not always wisely spent. The salaries paid are
seldom high enough to secure men of a high type of intelligence and
character, for the subordinate positions at least. There are few men who
are fitted for the work who are willing to take the places with the low
salaries and uncertain tenure of office. In many cases attendants and
keepers are ignorant and brutal and by their defects neutralise any
reformatory effect.

This brings us to the second great evil; politics. Usually the higher
positions at least in the prisons are regarded as a part of the
patronage of the party in power. Appointments of superintendents,
wardens and other officers are too often made with more regard to
political expediency than to fitness. The rule is not universal. As
mentioned above Mr. Cassidy of Philadelphia and Mr. Brockway of Elmira
held their places regardless of political changes, but many men have
been removed, just when they were beginning to become really efficient.
Where civil service rules are applied to the lower positions it has been
charged that the result has been rather to protect the inefficient, than
to secure satisfactory service.

Institutions for the control and discipline of delinquents under sixteen
years of age exist by the score. Some are under the control of the
different religious denominations, as for example the Catholic
Protectory in New York, while others are supported by private
contributions or by the city or state. Street waifs without parents or
with drunken or immoral parents may be committed by the courts, rather
than to regular orphan asylums if they have shown vicious traits or are
considered incorrigible. A parent who is unable to control a son or
daughter, by making an affidavit to that effect before the proper
officer, may secure admission for the child to some institutions.

The larger number of children committed however have broken the law. If
sent to prison to associate with hardened criminals they are almost
certain to become habitual criminals themselves, while discharge with a
reprimand may be regarded by the boys themselves as weak leniency, and
may cause contempt for the law. In some American cities, special
children's courts are organised to take charge of complaints against
children. Where the judges have that indescribable combination of
qualities which gives influence over boys, they have been successful
without resorting to confinement. A striking example is Judge Ben. B.
Lindsay of Denver, Colorado, whose court has been widely described.
Attempts by others to copy his methods have failed. When ordinary judges
without particular sympathy or qualifications are assigned in turn to
the courts, there seems to be little advantage in the organisation.
Conditions however are so chaotic, that it is impossible to pass a
judgment worth while.

The purposes of such institutions may be stated as the following: to
inculcate respect for authority and create the habit of obedience; to
impart the rudiments of education, to form habits of industry, to impart
moral instruction. Some in addition teach or begin to teach trades. In
the execution of these aims, we have very diverse organisations. Some of
the institutions are in effect prisons, with walls, bars and guards.
Others apparently exercise no more restraint than is seen in an ordinary
boarding school. It is true that it is not entirely easy to leave the
dormitory without detection, and that generally while at work or at play
the inmates are under some sort of supervision, but the idea of
restraint is not made prominent.

Another interesting experience is the George Junior Republic at
Freeville, New York. Here a miniature state is organised with
legislative, executive and judicial departments. So far as practicable,
all offices are filled by inmates, with the idea that responsibility
will bring out the better qualities. The plan has not been widely
adopted, however, and the institutions are generally organised as
schools.

Some of the more successful of this sort are the school at Glen Mills,
Pennsylvania, at Golden, Colorado, at Lancaster, Ohio, and at Dobbs
Ferry, New York. The Jackson Training School at Concord, North Carolina,
organised on the plan of the Glen Mills school, has seemed to show that
the same methods successful in an urban commonwealth are equally
successful in a semi-rural state.

A large proportion of the children are orphans or half-orphans, and a
larger proportion have been habitual truants. The average of energy and
intellect is higher than will be found in an ordinary school. Sometimes
it is their excess of energy that has caused their transgression. When
subjected to discipline and compelled to attend school, many make rapid
progress and also acquire a sense of order and self-respect. On the
other hand in very large institutions an unexpected danger has arisen.
The manifold disciplinary influences have taught them obedience and
industry but have at the same time deprived them of initiative. They
have become "institutionalised" and find difficulty in adjusting
themselves to life outside. They require constant direction.

For the purpose of avoiding this danger, the newer institutions are
organised upon the "cottage plan." Instead of large dormitories, small
houses, each under the charge of an officer and his wife, are built to
accommodate twenty to forty boys. These are grouped around the
administration building and the workshops. The results seem to show a
great gain over the old methods but no one is yet ready to say that the
ideal has been attained. Nevertheless, it can be said without fear of
contradiction that the institutions for the training of juvenile
offenders are more successful than any other part of the disciplinary
and penal systems of the United States.

The combat of crime may be adjudged to have entered upon its latest
stage by the acceptance of the more enlightened principles daily gaining
attention in the most civilised countries. The treatment most in favour
is preventative rather than punitive, which is considered at once the
humane and efficacious method of dealing with crime. It is now being
attacked in the youth when still impressionable and susceptible of
cure. All criminality may be roughly separated into two principal
divisions; first, those who should never be committed to prison; and
secondly, those who should never be released from it. The widespread
adoption of this axiom must go far to diminish the volume of crime.
There is less and less recourse to imprisonment; sentences are inflicted
for shorter terms, and it is avoided whenever possible by sparing first
offenders from incarceration and postponing sentence on all who give
promise of future amendment. The effect of this very commendable
leniency is to be seen in the diminishing numbers of the actually
imprisoned and the increased economy of gaol administration.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Life in Sing Sing by Number 1500.




CHAPTER XIII

BRITISH PRISONS OF TO-DAY

     Steady progress toward improved methods--Legislation to secure
     uniformity and proper principles of management--First effort to
     bring all local jurisdiction into line--Decision that all prisons
     must be under state control--Unification of system--Burden borne by
     the public exchequer--Remarkable results--Marked diminution in
     number of jail inmates--How convict labour has enriched the
     nations--Results at Portland, Chatham, Dartmoor--Extension of
     output--Chattenden and Borstal.


Forty years have elapsed since England was forced to revise her methods
of penal treatment, and to replace the system of transportation beyond
the seas with home establishments, rather hastily improvised to meet a
sudden demand. Reference has already been made to the institution of
"penal servitude," so-called, the process of expiation to which
condemned felons were subjected in the newly devised state prisons. The
flaws and failures that became prominent in the earlier phases of the
system have also been touched upon, as well as the salutary changes
introduced from time to time by the legislature. Year after year
steadfast and consistent efforts have been made to improve and develop,
to remove blots in administration, to remedy shortcomings; to reform
offenders, while obliging them to labour to recoup expenditure and to
secure thereby some restitution from them. A brief survey will show the
existing conditions of the British penal system of to-day.

The chief reason of the merit of the British system is, that it is the
growth of time, the product of experience. In the many changes
introduced in this century, the great aim and object has been
progressive improvement. The movement has all been forward. There has
been no slackness in correcting errors and remedying abuses since John
Howard struck the key-note of indignant protest. Reform may not always
have gone hand in hand with suggestion, but that has been because of the
quasi-independence of the prison jurisdictions. British prisons in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were largely controlled by local
authorities upon no very uniform or effective principles, although act
after act of Parliament was passed for the purpose of betterment. In
1823 and 1824 two acts first laid down the rule that health, moral
improvement and regular labour were as important objects in prison
maintenance as safe custody. At the same time, some attempt at
classification was made, and it was ordered, for the first time, that
female prisoners should be controlled only by female officers. In 1835 a
fresh act insisted that all prison rules should be subjected to the
approval of the Secretary of State; a proper dietary was made
essential, without the "stimulating luxury" of tobacco. Classification,
too, was again tried, but without good results, and the rule of
separation at all times except during divine service, labour or
instruction, was gradually adopted in theory and practice. Inspectors of
prisons were appointed to exact obedience to the new laws. In 1839, an
act permitted, but did not actually order, the confinement of each
prisoner in a separate cell. The dimensions of these cells were
stipulated, and it was insisted that they should be certified as fit for
occupation. A surveyor-general of prisons was also appointed to assist
and advise the Secretary of State as to prison construction.

The first substantial progress was made in the building of Pentonville,
a prison which has served as a model for all prisons. Although copied in
a measure from the old Roman monastery prison of San Michele, and
following in design the famous Cherry Hill Penitentiary of Philadelphia,
Pentonville was really a type in itself, and embraced so many
excellences that it has never yet been greatly improved upon. In the six
years following the establishment of Pentonville, fifty-four new prisons
were built in England, providing cells for eleven thousand prisoners;
but in 1850 a select committee of the House of Commons reported that
several prisons were still in a very unsatisfactory condition, and that
proper punishment, separation, or reformation in them was impossible.
Parliament even then was strongly urged to entrust the supreme control
of all prisons to one central authority, wholesome advice which was not
accepted for nearly thirty years. But, although convicts sentenced to
longer terms, which were usually carried out beyond the seas in the
manner described in the earlier chapters, obtained much attention, the
successive recommendations to improve the small outlying gaols, for
short terms, were very imperfectly adopted.

The next great step was the Prison Act of 1865, which grew out of the
report from a committee of the House of Lords, and which strongly
condemned the lack of uniformity in the prison buildings, and in the
punishments inflicted. Many of the practices which still prevailed even
at that late date (1865) were really a disgrace to our civilisation. In
some of the prisons the inmates lay two in a bed in dormitories without
light, ventilation or control. Warders were afraid to enter them after
dark. There was no uniformity in labour, or in the hours in which it was
performed. In one prison the inmates lay in bed for fifteen hours daily.
One of these gaols, which existed until the passing of the Act of 1865,
and which was situated in the heart of a densely populated seaport town,
has been described by its last governor. It was an ancient edifice,
consisting of four parallel two-storied blocks. The lower story opened
on a corridor, the windows of which were unglazed and communicated with
the outer air. Above each cell door was a barred opening without glass,
which served as a ventilator. In wet weather the rain poured into the
passage; in a snow storm the snow flakes drifted through the
cell-ventilators upon the bed which was just beneath, and which was
often covered in the morning with snow an inch or two deep. There was no
heating apparatus, and the place was desperately cold in winter. On the
first floor there were a number of larger cells in which as many as
seven prisoners were associated together, day and night, so crowded that
the beds were stowed upon the floor, while hammocks were also stretched
across them above. Sunday was the worst day of the week in this horrible
old prison. After morning service, the prisoners took their dinners with
them to their cells and were then and there locked up till the following
morning. No one could get out, even if he were dying; there was no
communication with officers or others outside. Here, in an atmosphere
laden with fetid exhalations, amid filth of all kinds, the wretched
prisoners were imprisoned for eighteen consecutive hours. These modern
"black holes" were far worse than that of Calcutta in that their
unfortunate inmates had daylight in which to observe with loathing and
disgust the indecencies which surrounded them. Nor was it only in the
accommodation provided that these poor creatures suffered. They were
continually ill-used by their warders, who harassed and harried them at
every turn. Each officer had a prisoner to wait upon him as a personal
attendant, called his "lackey," who was always at his heels serving him
hand and foot, and performing every menial office except that of
carrying his keys. The outgoing governor who escorted his successor (my
informant) around the gaol was imbued with the same brutal, reckless
spirit, which he displayed by rushing into a cell, seizing a youthful
prisoner by the shoulders, and shaking him violently, after which he
threw him roughly upon the ground with the brief explanation, "You've
got to show them you're master sometimes." The boy had not been guilty
of any misconduct whatever.

In this gaol, all kinds of work was performed for the private benefit of
the officers, a practice very generally prevalent in the gaols until a
much later date. It was of the governor's perquisites to employ
prisoners for his own behoof. There was jubilation in his family when a
clever tailor or seamstress "came in;" new suits were at once cut out
and made for the governor, his wife or his children. His house was
fitted and half furnished by prisoners; they made arm-chairs,
picture-frames, boot-racks. In one prison I heard of an excellent
carriage constructed by a clever coach-builder who had gotten into
trouble, and whose forfeited hours were thus utilised for the governor
and not for the taxpayers. In another gaol an unexpected inspection
revealed the mouth of a mysterious pipe leading from the kitchen, which
when followed to its outlet was found to convey the grease and
scourings straight to a flower bed in the governor's garden.

This deplorable state of affairs continued without change long after
1865. Twelve years later the uniformity sought by the act of that year
had not been secured. Justices had not in every case realised their
duties and responsibilities. Many prisons remained defective. All
differed in their treatment of prisoners, and the criminal classes were
themselves aware of the differences. It was a common practice for
intending offenders to avoid a locality where the gaol discipline was
severe. To secure the same measure of punishment in each institution was
all the more important since criminals had learned to avail themselves
of the many modern facilities for travelling from place to place, and
crime was no longer localised. The same reason added another argument in
favour of making the support of prisons an imperial rather than a local
charge. It was a little unfair, too, that a district which had already
suffered by the depredations of an evil-doer should bear the heaviest
part of the expense of his correction. With these, there was a still
stronger reason for concentration. Some relief of local taxation was
earnestly desired, and the assumption by the public exchequer of prison
expenditure seemed to promise this in an easy and substantial way, more
particularly as the transfer of control would be accompanied by a
revision of the means, and followed by a diminution in the number of
prisons required. Such arguments fully justified Mr. (afterward
Viscount) Cross in introducing the measure known as the Prison Act of
1877, which was passed that year, and contemplated great changes in the
system as it then was; the first and chief being the transfer and
control of all local prisons to a board of commissioners acting for the
state.

All these have now taken effect, and after a test of twenty years may
fairly be judged by the results achieved. Certainly the uniformity
desired has at last been attained. Every prisoner now finds exactly the
same treatment, according to his class and sentence, from Land's End to
the Orkney Isles. Whether only an accused person, a debtor,
misdemeanant, or condemned felon, he is kept strictly apart, occupying a
cell to himself, the dimensions of which assure him a minimum
air-content of 800 cubic feet, and which has been duly certified by one
of the government prison inspectors as fit for his occupation, being
lighted, heated, ventilated, and provided with bell communications,
which are electric in some of the new prisons. From the moment he passes
into the prison until he again finds himself on the right side of the
gate, he is under exactly the same discipline, whether he is in the gaol
of Bodmin, Newcastle, Norwich, Liverpool or Carlisle. Everywhere his
bath awaits him; his prison clothing, if he is convicted, is furnished
him; his first and every succeeding meal is based upon a dietary framed
by medical experts after the most mature deliberation. His day's task is
fixed. If he is able-bodied, he must do six hours at more or less severe
labour, breaking stones, making cocoa mats with a heavy beater, making
sacks, digging, pumping, and so forth. This, the most irksome phase of
his prison life, continues for one month, or more exactly, until he has
earned 224 marks in the first series of the progressive stages which
have been ingeniously adopted to secure industry and good conduct. Every
prisoner holds in his own hands the ability to modify the penal
character of his imprisonment, and by the exercise of these two
qualities may gradually earn privileges and improve his position.

Whatever the cause--and it is easier to state the effect than apportion
it among the causes that have produced it, there has been a steady
diminution in the numbers sentenced to imprisonment, as compared with
increased population in the years succeeding 1878, when the new system
came into force. In that year the population of England and Wales stood
at twenty-five millions and 10,218 was the number imprisoned of both
sexes. In 1904 the general population was 33,763,468, while no more than
seventy-nine hundred were imprisoned. And during the intervening years
there has been a continuous falling off in the number of imprisonments.

"It certainly seems justifiable to infer from these figures that our
penal reformatory system has been made effective," says Du Cane, in his
"Punishment and Prevention of Crime;" "and the remarkably steady and
sustained decrease ... must be considered to show that recent
legislation, with which it so remarkably coincides in point of time, has
in principle and execution not only completely succeeded in promoting
uniformity, economy, and improved administration, but also in that which
is the main purpose of all--the repression of crime." The decrease is
even more remarkable in the convict prisons, those which receive the
more serious offenders, sentenced to penal servitude.

The convict population of Great Britain is now just about half what it
was some five and twenty years ago. Going back to 1828, when the
population of the country was barely fifteen millions, there were in
all,--in the penal colonies at the Antipodes, at Gibraltar and Bermuda,
the Hulks at home and the Millbank Penitentiary, just fifty thousand
convicts, or ten times what the total is to-day with a population of
nearly thirty millions. Carrying the comparison a little further, there
were 3,611 sentenced to transportation in 1836; in 1846, 3,157; in 1856,
2,715; in 1866, 2,016 (combined with penal servitude); in 1876, 1,753 to
penal servitude alone; in 1886, 910. In 1891 only 751 imprisonments are
recorded. This progressive decrease is doubtless largely due to the
growth of that more humane spirit which has in recent years mitigated
the severity of punishment, and which prompts the judges to avoid the
heavier penalties, as is shown, for instance, by the fact that in 1836
there were 740 life sentences, while in 1891 there were only four. It
may be attributed also to the admitted punitive efficacy of penal
servitude. That it is sufficient to visit even serious offences with
shorter terms, a practice much facilitated by the recent reduction of
the minimum period from five to three years, is amply shown by the
record.

A few words must be devoted to the work of the convicts in the great
British prisons. At Portland, during the years from 1848 to 1871 the
convicts quarried no fewer than 5,803,623 tons of stone, all of which
was utilised in the now famous breakwater, a stone dam in the sea nearly
two miles in length and running into water fifty or sixty feet deep. The
now presumably impregnable defences of the island, Portland Bill, the
great works on the Verne, the barracks, batteries and casemates, were
executed by convicts, who, as these works progressed, performed all the
subsidiary services of carpentering, plate-laying, forging, and casting
the ironwork. The enlargement of Chatham dockyard, a great feat of
engineering skill, begun in 1856, was accomplished by convict labour.
The site of St. Mary's Island, a waste of treacherous shore so nearly
submerged by the tide that the few sheep that inhabited it were to be
seen daily huddled together at the topmost point at high water, is now
occupied by three magnificent basins capable of floating almost the
entire British fleet. In fourteen years the convicts made one hundred
and two million bricks for the retaining walls of these basins and
excavated all of their muddy contents. The first, or repairing basin,
has a surface of twenty-one acres; the second, or factory basin, twenty
acres; the third, or fitting-out basin, twenty-eight acres. These basins
were skilfully contrived to utilise the old watercourses which
intersected the island. The bottom of the basins is twelve feet below
the old river bed, and thirty-two feet below St. Mary's Island, which
has been raised about eight feet by dumping on it the earth excavated
from the basins. The whole island has been surrounded by a sea-wall and
embankment nearly two miles in length, principally executed by convict
labour. Work of a very similar nature and extent has been carried out at
Portsmouth, and the enlarged dockyard there was given over to the
admiralty a few years ago.

Dartmoor was an ideal penal settlement: a wild, almost barbarous place
when the labour of the convicts was first applied to its development--to
fencing, draining, making roads and parade-grounds, and to converting
the old buildings into suitable receptacles for themselves and their
kind. But the eventual employment of the prisoners was to be the farming
of the surrounding moorland as soon as it was reclaimed; and this work
has in effect occupied the Dartmoor convicts for more than forty years.
What they have accomplished is best told by experts. The following is
extracted from a report in a recent number of the Royal Agricultural
Society's journal.

"The management of the prison farm, Princetown," reads the report, "has
converted a large tract of poor waste land into some of the most
productive enclosures in the kingdom. The farm, which lies in the wilds
of Dartmoor, at an elevation of some fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred
feet above the sea, ... comprises in all two thousand acres, the whole
of which was mere common or unenclosed waste land prior to 1850.... The
land is divided into square fields of from fifteen to twenty acres by
high stone walls, built of granite boulders raised in the prison
quarries or from the land as the work of reclamation proceeds. An
excellent system of reclamation, with scientific rotation of crops, has
been devised. If the herbage fails, or becomes unsatisfactory, the land
is again dug up ... but so good has been the management ... that the
greater portions of the pasture laid within the last fifteen or twenty
years are now in far too good a condition to require rebreaking. One
field which twenty years ago was mostly rushes is now able to carry a
bullock per acre through the summer. No purer or cleaner pastures are to
be found anywhere.... Sixty-seven acres of meadow land have been laid
out for irrigation and utilisation of the sewage from the prison
establishment, which at times numbers upwards of one thousand persons. A
dairy herd of forty-five cows is kept, and all the cows are reared....
A flock of four hundred sheep, 'Improved Dartmoors,' is kept and has
frequently been successful in the local show-yards. The wool, for so
high a district, is remarkably good and of long staple. Pony mares and
their produce are run on the fields. One of the ponies bred on Dartmoor
won first prize in its class at the Royal Show at Plymouth. Thirty acres
of garden are devoted to the growth of garden vegetables, of which all
kinds are grown, and much success has been obtained with celery and
cucumbers. The whole of the work is done by convicts, without the aid of
horses except for carting."

A great extension of convict labour has been seen in recent years. It
has been employed in novel ways which would have been impossible but for
the excellence of the present prison organisation and of the discipline
now enforced. In 1876 a small prison for one hundred inmates was erected
at Chattenden, near Upnor, on the north bank of the Medway. It was
intended to house convicts to be engaged in constructing new magazines
at Chattenden for the war department. The prison was built by a
detachment of prisoners sent across the river from Chatham convict
prison, and then by tramway to the site of the proposed work. The
tramway passed through dense woods, and the site of the prison was
surrounded by thick undergrowth. These seemingly hazardous operations
were carried out without a casualty of any kind; no gang chains were
used; no escapes, successful or frustrated, were recorded. The work was
continued for nearly ten years, when the magazines were finished, and
the prison, which throughout had been treated as a branch of the great
headquarters prison at Chatham, was closed. During these ten years,
besides the prison buildings, this small party had put up five large
bomb-proof magazines, in addition to the formation and drainage of the
roads, traverses and <DW72>s adjoining. The experiment at Chattenden
afforded an example of the use to which convict labour can be put, and
of the circumstances under which comparatively small works can be
undertaken by a small body of convicts in a separate prison erected for
the purpose. A number of the buildings, being easily removable, have
since been taken down to be otherwise made use of.

It is only fair to observe here that the same experiment had been made
under the Austro-Hungarian government by M. Tauffer. This eminent prison
official had recommended the adoption of the "progressive system" as far
back as 1866, and had carried it out under his own direction at
Leopoldstadt and Lepoglava, where his prisoners were employed on outside
labour at the rate of thirty or even forty to each overseer, and yet no
escapes occurred. These prisoners built another prison at a distance
from Lepoglava, and were lodged for the purpose in sheds and outhouses
beyond the prison walls. The doors were not even locked at night; there
were no bolts or bars, the only barrier to escape being the rule that no
one should leave the building after the hour for retiring at night.

The work at Chattenden had, however, been preceded by other similar and
more extensive undertakings in England. The first was the preparation of
a new and very simple prison edifice at Borstal, near Rochester; the
second, the erection of the great separate prison at Wormwood Scrubs,
with which I was myself closely identified from the beginning. The
prison at Borstal was to house convicts who were to be employed under
the war department in building fortifications for the defence of Chatham
arsenal, and indirectly of London. As a preliminary measure, a boundary
fence was erected at Borstal around the site of the new prison, and this
work--but this alone--was performed by free labour, the very timber for
the fence having been prepared in the prison at Chatham, four miles
distant, which served as general centre and headquarters for the Borstal
as well as the Chattenden prison. Parties of selected convicts were
despatched daily to Borstal, under escort, of course, but without
chains, and travelled back and forth in open vans. Temporary huts were
put up for cooking, storage and the accommodation of the guard, and
within sixteen weeks the prison buildings were so far advanced that
forty cells were ready for occupation by prisoners, and the
establishment was then regularly opened as a prison. During this
sixteen weeks there had been no accidents, no escapes, no misconduct.
The convicts employed in this really "intermediate stage," having a
larger amount of license and liberty than Sir Walter Crofton had ever
dreamed of giving a prisoner, had behaved in the most exemplary manner.
Within a year afterward, when the number of convicts had gradually
increased to more than two hundred, all necessary buildings had been put
up to accommodate a total population of five hundred prisoners.

The completion of the prison left the convicts free to carry out the
works for which they had been brought to Borstal. But the very nature of
these works was such as to startle prison administration of the old
school, and to forbid, at first thought, the employment of convicts upon
them. The site of the proposed forts was quite in the open country, and
the first of them, Luton, at least two miles from Borstal prison. How
were the convicts to be conveyed to and fro, without loss of time,
without unnecessary fatigue, and above all, without risk of losing half
the number by the way? A novel plan was boldly but happily conceived,
and its absolutely successful adoption constitutes an epoch in prison
history. It was decided to lay down a narrow gauge railway, along the
line the forts were intended to cover, and send the prisoners to their
work by train. Part of this plan was the invention of a special kind of
railway-carriage, constructed with a view to safe custody, and this
very unique and ingenious contrivance has since been constantly
employed. These carriages are small, open, third-class carriages, with a
sliding gate of iron bars. When the train is made up, a chain passes
along the exterior of these gates, and it is padlocked at each end. The
warders on duty occupy raised seats at each end of the train, and have
the convicts under supervision continually. The compartments hold from
eight to ten men each, and a train-load is made up of from eighty to a
hundred convicts. The engines used are the once famous little
locomotives that were sent out to the Sudan for service on the
Suakim-Berber railway. Extreme simplicity characterises all these
arrangements, yet they are perfectly suitable and quite sufficient. The
same device was tried with success at Portsmouth convict prison, for the
conveyance of convicts to Whale Island, distant a mile or more from the
prison.

The effectual guarding of the convicts when at work was, however, a
matter of equal importance. This, with the experience of many years
gained in all varieties of outdoor employment, has been reduced almost
to a science at Borstal. The works are enclosed by a wall ten feet high.
There is a ditch on the inner side, and there are wire entanglements on
the inner side of the ditch. The convict-laden train runs within the
palisading and its passengers are marched to the various points on which
they are employed. Some of these are in the open beyond the palisading;
but outside all, on a wide outer circumference, are sentries of the
civil guard, on high platforms at regular intervals, commanding the
ground between them. No fugitive could pass them unobserved, as they are
on such a radius that they would have the fleeing convict a long time
under their eyes while he was approaching. In addition to this, an
elaborate system of signaling has been devised by means of semaphores at
the highest points. These are worked by good-service convicts, men in
the last year of their sentence, who can be trusted to use field-glasses
and to communicate promptly any news that has to be sent on. In this way
escapes are signaled, or a call for help made, if help be required, in
event of disturbance among the parties at work. Escapes have no doubt
occurred at Borstal, but they have been few and far between, always
resulting in recapture, except in one or two instances.

Thus we have traced, in this and the preceding volume, the course of the
beginning and the development of the prison system of Great Britain.
Much that we now rightly consider inhuman marked its early history, in
common with the conduct of all prisons of that early day. The period of
deportation is certainly gloomy enough, until we stop to consider the
splendid secondary results that have grown out of it in the building up
of an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth in the southern hemisphere. The prison
system of Great Britain, as it is to-day established, is perhaps as
advanced as any in the world, while the future promises advance and
improvement wherever the one is called for and the other is possible.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The History and Romance of Crime.
Prisons Over Seas, by Arthur Griffiths

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