They took us through a detached block of strongly built stone cells in their own yard lying close under the line wall, and by this time the noise became almost deafening. Each cell had two doors; an outer door of stout iron bars, protecting an inner one of wood. The bolt of this second door was thrown back and exposed the interior. At that moment a mad figure rushed forward with frightful imprecations, to be checked, fortunately, by the outer iron gate; a wild and terrible beast, human only in form, clad in a hideous particoloured garb, the badge of those who had made a murderous assault on their guardians. He stood raving and raging impotently, threatening us with fluent vituperative tongue to the accompaniment of clanking chains. He was in leg irons and was also manacled with "figure eight" handcuffs on his wrists, and so could do no injury even to himself.
This H was one of a class who presently became a danger to London and complicated the penal question by the alleged inadequacy of the punishment. He was a man of cruel and ungovernable temper, addicted to crimes of violence, who ill-used as well as robbed his victims. There were others like him at Gibraltar, but none that equalled him in his savagery and determined defiance of authority. Nothing seemed to tame him; prolonged doses of dieting, punishment and cellular isolation had no effect. He continued intractable to the last, and was one of those withdrawn and brought home to England three years later when the Gibraltar convict prison was abolished.
"Captain" P.—titular rank is generally preserved among prisoners when speaking of or to each other—was of a different kind, irreconcilable also, but his resistance was rather moral than physical. He was always surly, sulky and impudent; inclined to be disobedient, but keeping within the line of sharp reprimands. I remember him as a smooth-speaking, supple-backed, cringing creature, anxious to show that he had been well-bred and that he had occupied a superior station, but dropping all at once into the other extreme if crossed or offended, when his language was of the foulest and his manner disgusting. I met "Captain" P. again under rather amusing circumstances. One afternoon when standing among my gangs at work upon the foundation of the new Wormwood Scrubs prison, I saw a well-dressed, gentlemanly looking man approach under escort of the gate keeper. He wore a well-cut frock and a shining silk hat, which he lifted courteously as he bowed low, to the manifest delight of some of the convicts around. They knew him well. It was "Captain" P. who had been an old comrade in Portland or Dartmoor, and who, now a free man, had impudently decided to pay me a formal call. He addressed me as an old friend, saying: "You were always so good to me when I served under your orders at Gibraltar" (it might have been in some distinguished cavalry regiment) "that I have ventured to intrude upon you to ask if you can help me to some employment." I am afraid I answered rather curtly and ordered him to be shown out of the enclosure. Had he been a different man, penitent and well-disposed, with a blameless prison character, and determined to turn over a new leaf, I would gladly have given him a helping hand. But there had been a second sentence since the term at Gibraltar, and I soon learned that he was a hardened, habitual criminal. Oddly enough, at the very time of his visit, a friend was standing with me who knew him personally in previous days, when he was a captain in the British army and came to grief over a forged check.
Life in a colonial convict prison was not eventful, and yet not monotonous. Some of the more startling episodes have been recounted. The chase for tobacco constantly kept us busy. Its use is strictly tabooed in British prisons, but the forbidden weed will always find its way inside. Nothing will check its introduction, and its presence is proved by the fact that tobacco has a regular price in articles of food, the only possible circulating medium. The traffic depends upon the dishonesty of officials, who are bribed by prisoners' friends to pass it in, the safe keeping and distribution being the work of the prisoners themselves. At Gibraltar, where "free" people came and went in the quarries almost unquestioned, large transactions were constantly afoot. The new arrivals brought out cash and the "traffickers" were clever in finding hiding places in the rock for the money offered and the weed when bought. We made many searches for both the raw material and its price, and I can call to mind long watches in the night for the agents who brought in the stuff, and elaborate devices to catch the culprits in actual possession of the forbidden weed.
A few months spent in this varied fashion was no bad preparation for the new career on which I was about to embark. I was called to service in the home department, and during many years was closely associated with the entire penal system of Great Britain. From small beginnings, devised under the pressure of great emergency, these experiments have grown into the present system of secondary punishment. Opinions differ as to its value and merits, but these will best be judged by independent critics on learning what measures were adopted upon the cessation of penal exile, and what grew out of them.
CHAPTER X THE BRITISH SYSTEM OF PENAL SERVITUDE
A substitute for transportation—Task entrusted to Colonel Jebb—Initiates Public Works' Prisons in England—Plans to assist in the construction of great breakwater at Portland—Rapid progress—Much useful work executed by the convicts—Old War Prison of Dartmoor prepared for convicts employed in the reclamation of savage moorland—New prison at Chatham for extension of the naval dockyard—Similar undertaking at Portsmouth—New system carried out conscientiously—First results satisfactory—The garroter—Insecurity of London streets—Discipline of penal servitude lax—Royal commission advocates new principles and insists upon greater severity—Strenuous industry enforced under the "mark" system—Favourable results.
Transportation beyond the seas ended when the British colonies positively refused to receive the penal exiles. One of them, Queensland, lately founded in Australia, which was supposed to be favourable, repudiated the idea entirely, and its citizens asked impertinently whether they might be permitted in return to transport their own malefactors to the British Isles. Then the geographers began to search for new lands suitable for penal settlements. One suggested the Falkland Islands, and another New Guinea, while Labrador was felt by many to be exactly the place for convict colonisation. Western Australia, as a matter of fact, did not object; it was a crown colony and could not protest, but it was never very largely utilised.