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

by Arthur Griffiths

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.