The effectual guarding of the convicts when at work was, however, a matter of equal importance. This, with the experience of many years gained in all varieties of outdoor employment, has been reduced almost to a science at Borstal. The works are enclosed by a wall ten feet high. There is a ditch on the inner side, and there are wire entanglements on the inner side of the ditch. The convict-laden train runs within the palisading and its passengers are marched to the various points on which they are employed. Some of these are in the open beyond the palisading; but outside all, on a wide outer circumference, are sentries of the civil guard, on high platforms at regular intervals, commanding the ground between them. No fugitive could pass them unobserved, as they are on such a radius that they would have the fleeing convict a long time under their eyes while he was approaching. In addition to this, an elaborate system of signaling has been devised by means of semaphores at the highest points. These are worked by good-service convicts, men in the last year of their sentence, who can be trusted to use field-glasses and to communicate promptly any news that has to be sent on. In this way escapes are signaled, or a call for help made, if help be required, in event of disturbance among the parties at work. Escapes have no doubt occurred at Borstal, but they have been few and far between, always resulting in recapture, except in one or two instances.
Thus we have traced, in this and the preceding volume, the course of the beginning and the development of the prison system of Great Britain. Much that we now rightly consider inhuman marked its early history, in common with the conduct of all prisons of that early day. The period of deportation is certainly gloomy enough, until we stop to consider the splendid secondary results that have grown out of it in the building up of an Anglo-Saxon commonwealth in the southern hemisphere. The prison system of Great Britain, as it is to-day established, is perhaps as advanced as any in the world, while the future promises advance and improvement wherever the one is called for and the other is possible.