Men leaving Dartmoor on Monday night arrived at the Bench, or Queen’s Bench, on Tuesday morning, where they remain, doing nothing, till the day of their discharge, which takes place one day during the same week.
Prisoners on licence, generally termed ticket-of-leave men, have to report themselves once every month at the police-station of the district where they reside, and to show how they are earning their living.
As a matter of course it is not at all likely any of them will pronounce themselves thieves by trade or profession; and everyone has what is termed a “stall,” that is, he professes to be some handicraft or trade by which to designate himself, and which, in most cases, is mere subterfuge—a blind or stall to his real proceedings.
The police are well aware that the pretext is a shallow one, and that in all probability the man has returned to the dishonest course of life which he followed before conviction, but the farce has to be gone through.
If a man moves from one district in London to another he must within four-and-twenty hours of his arrival report himself at the nearest police station, so that watch and ward may be kept over him.
The stoppage of transportation brought the administration of criminal justice to a dead lock. To meet the difficulty the Ministry prepared and passed with all speed a measure, since known as the first Penal Servitude Act.
As a final acknowledgment that it was England’s duty to consume her own criminality, and for the sanction which it gave to various important principles, this Act (which became law in the autumn of 1853) has, notwithstanding, many serious flaws, very valuable provisions.
In the course of execution, however, it was stultified into complete failure.
Altogether the first Penal Servitude Act was a complete failure, and in the session of 1856 it was found necessary to reconsider the whole question. The session was too far advanced to allow the report presented to be transformed into an Act that year, but when Parliament met again in February, 1857, the requisite bill was the first ministerial measure introduced, and in spite of the Chinese wrangle and the dissolution it became law before the end of June.
There is little fault to be found with the second Penal Servitude Act.