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

by Arthur Griffiths

Thieving continued on all sides, and the hangman was always busy. Repeated depredations brought one man to the halter, while another, for stabbing a woman, received seven hundred lashes. Scarcely any of the convicts could be relied upon, yet many, in the scarcity of honest freemen, were appointed to posts of responsibility and trust. Generally they abused the confidence reposed in them. The case is mentioned of one Bryant, a seafaring west-country man, who was employed to fish for the settlement. Every encouragement was held out to this man to secure his honesty: a hut was built for him and his family, and he was allowed to retain for his own use a portion of every taking. Nevertheless he was detected in a long continued practice of purloining quantities of fish which he sold for his own gain. But he was too useful to be deprived of his employment, and he was still retained as official fisherman, only under a stricter supervision. Even this he eluded, managing a year or two later to make good his escape from the colony, together with his wife, two children, and seven other convicts. Having for some time laid by a store of provisions, and obtaining from a Dutch ship, in the port of Sydney, a compass, quadrant, and chart, together with information to help him in reaching Timor and Batavia, he stole one of the government boats and made off. Bryant and two of his convict companions being well trained in the management of a boat, and having luck upon their side, in due course reached the ports for which they steered. Others were less fortunate in their attempts to escape; like those who tried to walk to China northward through the Australian continent. Nor did much success wait upon the scheme laid by the convicts at Norfolk Island to overpower their guards, seize the person of the governor, and decamp. Although too wild and preposterous a plot to raise serious alarm, the very existence of this serves to prove the treacherous, untrustworthy character of these felon exiles. Some years later, indeed, in the reign of Governor King, an outbreak somewhat similar, but planned with secrecy and judgment, came actually to a head, and for the moment assumed rather serious proportions. In this, several hundred convicts combined "to strike for their liberty." They had pikes, pistols, and several stands of arms. The insurrection broke out suddenly. Two large bodies marched upon Paramatta, but were closely followed by an officer, Major Johnson, with forty men of the New South Wales Corps, who brought them to an action at Vinegar Hill, and in fifteen minutes dispersed them with great loss.

It is abundantly evident from these and other instances, that the convict population could only be ruled by an iron hand. But I think Governor Phillip would have forgiven them much if they had but been more industrious. Everything hung upon their labour. The colony must continue to be dependent on the mother country for the commonest necessaries of life, until by the work of these felon hands sufficient food was raised to supply subsistence, whenever the public store should grow empty or come altogether to an end. Yet the convicts by no means exerted themselves to the utmost; they foolishly conceived that they had no interest in the success of their labours. Task work had been adopted as the most convenient method of employing them; a certain quantity of ground was allotted to be cleared by a certain number of persons in a given time.

The surplus gained was conceded to them to bring in materials and build huts for themselves. But few cared to take advantage of the privilege, preferring to be idle, or to straggle through the woods, or to visit surreptitiously the French warships lying in Botany Bay. Indeed, the sum total of their efforts was to do just enough to avoid immediate punishment for idleness. Moreover, as time passed, the numbers available for work dwindled down, till at the end of the first year, in January, 1789, that is to say, only two hundred and fifty were employed in the cultivation of land. Many were engaged at the wharves and storehouses, but by far the greater portion were utterly incapacitated by age or infirmity for field labour of any description.

The evil days that were in store did not long delay their coming. Throughout the latter part of 1789, and the early months of 1790, the colony saw itself reduced to terrible straits for food. Relief was daily expected from England, but daily unaccountably delayed. Emptier and more empty grew the King's store. In the month of February, 1790, there remained therein not more than four months' provisions for all hands, and this at half rations. To prepare for the worst, the allowance issued was diminished from time to time, till in April, that year, it consisted only of 2 lbs. of pork, 2 lbs. of rice, and 2½ lbs. of flour per head, for seven days. More than ever in the general scarcity were robberies prevalent. Capital punishment became more and more frequent, without exercising any appreciable effect. Garden thefts were the most common. As severe floggings of hundreds of lashes were ineffectual to check this crime, a new penalty was tried, and these garden robbers were chained together in threes, and compelled to work thus ironed. "Any man," said, years and years afterwards, one of these first fleet convicts who had reached affluence and comfort at last—"any man would have committed murder for a month's provisions; I would have committed three for a week's. I was chained seven weeks on my back for being out getting greens and wild herbs." No doubt in those days of dire privation and famine the sufferings of all were grievous; but the statements of these people must be accepted with the utmost caution, even when divested of half their horrors. The same old convict said that he had often dined off pounded grass, or made soup from a native dog. Another old convict declared he had seen six men executed for stealing twenty-one pounds of flour. "For nine months," says a third, "I was on five ounces of flour a day, which when weighed barely came to four. The men were weak," he goes on, "dreadfully weak, for want of food. One man, named 'Gibraltar,' was hanged for stealing a loaf out of the governor's kitchen. He got down the chimney, stole the loaf, had a trial, and was hanged next day at sunrise."

Food, food, all for food! In its imperious needs hunger drove the unprincipled to brave every danger, and the foolish to excess not less terrible. Collins tells another story of a woman who devoured her whole week's allowance in one night, making up a strange compound of cabbage and flour, of which she ate heartily during the day, "but not being satisfied, she rose again in the night and finished the mess," and died. Throughout these trying times, Governor Phillip maintained a firm front. It is told of him, that seeing a dog run by he ordered it to be killed at once,—as a mouth that was useless, it could not in these days be entitled to food. Then, to ease the mother settlement, a large number of persons were drafted to Norfolk Island, where, thanks to the presence of numbers of wild birds, supplies were more plentiful. In transit, H. M. S. Sirius—the only ship left in the colony—was wrecked in full view of the settlement.

Relief came at length, but in driblets. At the time of greatest need, more mouths arrived instead of more barrels of pork and flour. In February, as I have said, there were but four months' provisions in the stores; yet on the third day of June, two hundred and twenty-two women arrived—"a cargo," says the chronicler, "unnecessary and unprofitable;" while H. M. S. Guardian, which came as convoy and carried all the stores, was lost at sea. Another store ship, the Justinian, happily turned up about the 20th of June.

Later in this month, eleven sail, composing the "second fleet," came into port. In this second fleet the arrangements made were about as good as in slave ships from the Guinea Coast. The mortality on the voyage out had been absolutely frightful. One thousand six hundred and ninety-five male convicts and sixty-eight females were the numbers embarked, and of these one hundred and ninety-four males and four females had died at sea; while such was the state of debility in which the survivors landed in the colony, that one hundred and sixteen of their number died in the Colonial Hospital before the 5th of December, 1791. It seemed that the masters of transports were paid head-money for each convict embarked,—a lump sum of £17 9s. 6d. each. The more, therefore, that died, and the sooner, the less food was consumed, and the greater the consequent profit. Even to the living, the rations were so much reduced below the allowance stipulated by the governor, that many convicts were actually starved to death. In most of the ships very few were allowed on deck at the same time. Crowded thus continually in a fœtid atmosphere below, many peculiar diseases were rapidly engendered among them. Numbers died in irons; and what added to the horror of such a circumstance was that their deaths were concealed, for the purpose of sharing their allowance of provisions, until chance and the offensiveness of a corpse directed the surgeon, or some one who had authority in the ship, to the spot where it lay. In one of the ships a malignant fever had prevailed during the latter part of the voyage, to which the captain, with his first and second officers, had succumbed; while in another, the usual plot to take the ship was discovered, and had to be checked with severe repressive measures, which increased the tribulation of these hapless wretches.

Colonel Collins, in his "Account of New South Wales," gives but a sorry picture of the condition in which these ill-fated exiles of the second fleet arrived at New South Wales. "By noon," he says, "the following day the two hundred sick had been landed from the different transports. The west side afforded a scene truly distressing and miserable: upwards of thirty tents were pitched in front of the hospital, the portable one not yet being put up, all of which, as well as the hospital and the adjoining huts, were filled with people, many of whom were labouring under the complicated diseases of scurvy and dysentery, and others in the last stages of either of those terrible disorders, or yielding to the attacks of an infectious fever. The appearance of those who did not require medical assistance was lean and emaciated. Several of these people died in the boats as they were rowing on shore, or on the wharf as they were lifted out of the boats; both the living and the dead exhibiting more horrid spectacles than had ever been witnessed in this country. All this was to be attributed to confinement of the worst species, confinement in a small space and in irons—not put on singly, but many of them chained together."

The years immediately subsequent witnessed a repetition of what had already occurred. The colony found itself again and again brought to the lowest ebb; and then, when in the last stage, starvation stared it in the face, there came more convicts and more salt meat. All through, the health of the inhabitants continued indifferent, in spite of the natural salubrity of the climate. This was partly due to the voyage out; also to the diet, insufficient and always salt; and not a little to the gloomy outlook for all concerned in this far-off miserable settlement. Yet, through all vicissitudes, the governors who in turn assumed the reins bore up bravely, and governed with admirable energy and pluck. They were all—at least for the first twenty years—captains of the Royal Navy, trained in a rough school, but eminently practical men. Their policy was much the same. They had to bring land into cultivation, develop the resources of the colony, coerce the ill-conditioned, and lend a helping hand to any that gave earnest of a reform in character.

It will be seen that so far the colony of New South Wales consisted entirely of two classes, the convicts and their masters. In other words, it was a slave settlement—officials on the one hand as taskmasters; on the other, criminals as bondsmen who had forfeited their independence, and were bound to labour without wages for the State. The work to be done in these early days was essentially of a public character. It was for the common good that food should be raised, storehouses erected; the whole body of the population benefited, too, by the hospitals, while the building of barracks to house the guardians of order was also an advantage to all. But such preliminary and pioneer works once fairly started, the next step towards a healthy and vigorous life for the colony was the establishment therein of a respectable middle class—a body of virtuous and industrious settlers to stand between the supreme power and the serfs it ruled. People of this kind were wanted to give strength and stability to the settlement, to set an example of decorum, and by their enterprising industry to assist in the development of the country. But they must come from England; they were not to be looked for "among discharged soldiers, shipwrecked seamen, and quandam convicts." Governor Phillip at once admitted this, and from the first strongly urged the home government to encourage free emigration by every means. The distance from England was, however, too great to entice many across the seas, and the passage out would have swallowed up half the capital of most intending settlers. Several free families were therefore sent out in 1796 at the public expense, receiving each of them a grant of land on arrival and free rations for the first ensuing eighteen months.