The History and
Romance of
Crime

FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON

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.

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

List of Illustrations

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 negro 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 fœtid 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-coloured 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.

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.

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.