Prisons Over Seas / Deportation and Colonization; British and American Prisons of To-day

by Arthur Griffiths

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.