The West Indies and the Spanish Main

by Anthony Trollope

At Bermuda there are in round numbers fifteen hundred convicts. As this establishment is one of penal servitude, of course it is to be presumed that those sent there are either hardened thieves, whose lives have been used to crime, or those who have committed heavy offences under the impulse of strong temptation. In dealing with such men I think we have three things to do. Firstly, to rid ourselves of them from amongst us, as we do of other nuisances. This we should do by hanging them; this we did do when we sent them to Botany Bay; this we certainly do when we send them to Bermuda. But this, I would say, is the lightest of the three duties. The second is with reference to the men themselves; to divest them, if by any means it may be possible, of their roguery; to divest them even of a little of their roguery, if so much as that can be done; to teach them that trite lesson, of honesty being the best policy,—so hard for men to learn when honesty has been, as it were, for many years past out of their sight, and even beyond their understanding. This is very important, but even this is not the most important. The third and most important object is the punishment of these men; their punishment, sharp, hard to bear, heavy to body and mind, disagreeable in all ways, to be avoided on account of its odiousness by all prudent men; their condign punishment, so that the world at large may know and see, and clearly acknowledge,—even the uneducated world,—that honesty is the best policy.

That the first object is achieved, I have said. It is achieved as regards those fifteen hundred, and, as far as I know, at a moderate cost. Useful work for such men is to be found at Bermuda. We have dockyards there, and fortifications which cannot be made too strong and weather-tight. At such a place works may be done by convict labour which could not be done otherwise. Whether the labour be economically used is another question; but at any rate the fifteen hundred rogues are disposed of, well out of the way of our pockets and shop windows.

As to the second object, that of divesting these rogues of their roguery, the best way of doing that is the question as to which there is at the present moment so much doubt. As to what may be the best way I do not presume to give an opinion; but I do presume to doubt whether the best way has as yet been found at Bermuda. The proofs at any rate were not there. Shortly before my arrival a prisoner had been killed in a row. After that an attempt had been made to murder a warder. And during my stay there one prisoner was deliberately murdered by two others after a faction fight between a lot of Irish and English, in which the warders were for some minutes quite unable to interfere. Twenty-four men were carried to the hospital dangerously wounded, as to the life of some of whom the doctor almost despaired. This occurred on a day intervening between two visits which I made to the establishment. Within a month of the same time three men had escaped, of whom two only were retaken; one had got clear away, probably to America. This tells little for the discipline, and very little for the moral training of the men.

There is no wall round the prison. I must explain that the convicts are kept on two islands, those called Boaz and Ireland. At Boaz is the parent establishment, at which live the controller, chaplains, doctors, and head officers. But here is the lesser number of prisoners, about six hundred. They live in ordinary prisons. The other nine hundred are kept in two hulks, old men-of-war moored by the breakwaters, at the dockyard establishment in Ireland. It was in one of these that the murder was committed. The labour of these nine hundred men is devoted to the dockyard works. There is a bridge between the two islands over which runs a public road, and from this road there are ways equally public, as far as the eye goes, to all parts of the prison. A man has only to say that he is going to the chaplain's house, and he may pass all through the prison,—with spirits in his pocket if it so please him. That the prisoners should not be about without warders is no doubt a prison rule; but where everything is done by the prisoners, from the building of stores to the picking of weeds and lighting of lamps, how can any moderate number of warders see everything, even if they were inclined? There is nothing to prevent spirits being smuggled in after dark through the prison windows. And the men do get rum, and drunkenness is a common offence. Prisoners may work outside prison walls; but I remember no other prison that is not within walls—that looks from open windows on to open roads, as is here the case.

"And who shaves them?" I happened to ask one of the officers. "Oh, every man has his own razor; and they have knives too, though it is not allowed." So these gentlemen who are always ready for faction fights, whose minds are as constantly engaged on the family question of Irish versus English, which means Protestant against Catholic, as were those of Father Tom Maguire and Mr. Pope, are as well armed for their encounters as were those reverend gentlemen.

The two murderers will I presume be tried, and if found guilty probably hanged; but the usual punishment for outbreaks of this kind seems to be, or to have been, flogging. A man would get some seventy lashes; the Governor of the island would go down and see it done; and then the lacerated wretch would be locked up in idleness till his back would again admit of his bearing a shirt. "But they'll venture their skin," said the officer; "they don't mind that till it comes." "But do they mind being locked up alone?" I asked. He admitted this, but said that they had only six—I think six—cells, of which two or three were occupied by madmen; they had no other place for lunatics. Solitary confinement is what these men do mind, what they do fear; but here there is not the power of inflicting that punishment.

What a piece of work for a man to step down upon;—the amendment of the discipline of such a prison as this! Think what the feeling among them will be when knives and razors are again taken from them, when their grog is first stopped, their liberty first controlled. They sleep together, a hundred or more within talking distance, in hammocks slung at arm's length from each other, so that one may excite ten, and ten fifty. Is it fair to put warders among such men, so well able to act, so ill able to control their actions?

"It is a sore task," said the controller who had fallen down new upon this bit of work; "it is dreadful to have to add misery to those who are already miserable." It is a very sore task; but at the moment I hardly sympathized with his humanity.

So much for the Bermuda practice of divesting these rogues of their roguery. And now a word as to the third question; the one question most important, as I regard it, of their punishment. Are these men so punished as to deter others by the fear of similar treatment? I presume it may be taken for granted that the treatment, such as it is, does become known and the nature of it understood among those at home who are, or might be, on the path towards it.

Among the lower classes, from which these convicts do doubtless mostly come, the goods of life are chiefly reckoned as being food, clothing, warm shelter, and hours of idleness. It may seem harsh to say so thus plainly; but will any philanthropical lover of these lower classes deny the fact? I regard myself as a philanthropical lover of those classes, and as such I assert the fact; nay, I might go further and say that it is almost the same of some other classes. That many have knowledge of other good things, wife-love and children-love—heart-goods, if I may so call them; knowledge of mind-goods, and soul-goods also, I do not deny. That such knowledge is greatly on the increase I verily believe; but with most among us back and belly, or rather belly and back, are still supreme. On belly and back must punishment fall, when sinners such as these are to be punished.