“I was sentenced to seven years’ transportation at the Old Bailey. I went to Wakefield and can confirm the statement of a previous speaker, that no gratuities are allowed there. I next went to Portsmouth, where I remained two years and two months, when I was discharged on ticket-of-leave. I returned to the neighbourhood from whence I was committed. A master who promised to give me constant employment had before this given me a certificate. I was discharged about eighteen months ago. Whilst I was at work for my master a female came up to me and asked me if I had seen two other women pass. I answered, ‘No,’ when she invited me to have something to drink; and knowing the female, I accepted her offer. While walking with her, only two doors from where I lived, a policeman came up and took us both into custody. This, I suppose, was because I was known to be a returned convict. The woman was charged with being concerned with others of her own sex with robbing a gentleman, and on being searched a portion of the money was found on her, but none on me. Moreover, the gentleman stating that there was no man engaged in the theft, I was discharged. I then resumed work, but was taken again upon a charge of burglary. Many of you may have heard of the case. I was in my shirt-sleeves when I was arrested. The case was tried before Mr. Brenham. I did not deny my name, and being a ticket-of-leave man I was remanded for a week. I was afterwards brought up and re-examined, and after a careful investigation I was discharged. If there had been the slightest suspicion attaching to me, from my character being known, I must have been either imprisoned for three months, or committed for trial. I again returned to my work, but in three weeks afterwards I was dragged out of my bed and locked up for three hours in the Bagnigge-wells station, whence I was taken to Bow-street. Three policemen had burst my bedroom-door open before six o’clock in the morning, and while it was yet dark. They said they wanted me, because I had been concerned with a female in the robbery which had occurred two nights previous, on Pentonville-hill. The inspector told me he had received an order from the Secretary of State to send me back to Portsmouth prison, my license being revoked. When I got to Bow-street I was placed before Mr. Hall, not in open court, but in a private room. That gentleman also told me that my license had been revoked, on the alleged grounds that I was living by dishonest means. I was sent back to prison accordingly; but through the intercession of my brother—a married man, who showed that I had been working for twelve months—I was again released. There was no just ground whatever for sending me back to prison. I have only been home a fortnight, and having no tools I don’t know what to do. The master who employed me before has got another man.”
Mr. Mayhew here remarked, that it would be a great encouragement to Society to help them, if those who were doing well assisted those who were doing badly; whereupon
Peter observed that “it was little help that the one could possibly give to the other. An Association (he said) was what was wanted, whereby the men’s present urgent necessities could be relieved before they fell into mischief. A few days after a man’s liberation he generally found that he had acted foolishly, and returned to his senses. If, therefore, a society took him by the hand, and gave him temporary shelter and counsel, it would be the best thing that could happen to him.”
Those of the lads and men present who had been left without father or mother from an early age, were then requested to hold up their hands; when twenty out of the forty-eight did so.
A lame blacksmith and fitter, of about forty, whose garb and complexion were in strict keeping with his craft, and who spoke with not a few grains of stern bitterness in his tone, next mounted the rostrum. He said: “I have been transported, and am a ‘spotted man,’ with whom the police can do as they like. I was a long time at Dartmoor, one of the hardest convict stations a man can go to, and I did the prison work there. I went there in 1851, when an eminent doctor, Mr. McIntosh, belonged to the place, but having good health I did not need his assistance. While in the infirmary on several occasions, but not for illness, I saw the medicine that was given to the patients. It was only a large bottle of salts. I have known a man to be cut out of his hammock, taken down-stairs, and buried, all in three hours; and I have heard the doctor say of a sick man, ‘Let him drink out of a pail till he bursts.’ (Some sensation.) I was a privileged man because I was handy, and fitted up almost the whole iron-work of the place. Once some books were pilfered; and at dinner-time there was a general turn over and search at parade. The ‘searcher’ was a very sedate man, at least in the eyes of the Governor, but he was the most malicious person that ever stripped. After feeling the pockets of the man next to me, this person called me out, and, contrary to the rule, took me into the yard and stripped me naked. I remonstrated, and wished him to choose a place not in the open air, but for this I was ordered to a cell, and while on my way there he borrowed a sword from an officer—the foreman of the smith’s shop—and made a cut at me with the back edge of the weapon, inflicting a wound of eighteen inches long. I went to my cell, and next morning I was, to my astonishment, charged with attempting to knock this very man down with a hammer! The Governor would not hear a word that I had to say. I was inspected by the doctor, and then put back, to appear afterwards before the directors. The charge against me was wholly false. The foreman of the smith’s shop was a straightforward man, and when applied to about my character, he told the governor that a quieter man, and one more capable of doing his work than me, he could not wish to see. The accuser could not look me in the face; but if the foreman spoke the truth to the directors,—and he was a man who would speak nothing else,—he would have been sure to have his band removed from his cap. So, instead of my being taken before the directors, I was sent to my dinner; and I never received the least redress for the wrongs I endured.
“Before returning home I was classed as a permanent invalid, and yet I was kept at work on iron-work of three tons weight. After acting four years as a mechanic and a ‘first-rater’ at Dartmoor, I got invalided pay, and went home with about 7l. in my pocket. That is all the reward given to a good workman and well-conducted man at Dartmoor. I have heard much of Wakefield, and believe the system there will reform any man. It has a first-rate character; but as to Dartmoor, a man leaving it can have no reformation in him. At Dartmoor, when visitors wish to try the prisoners’ soup, a basin of nice beef tea, standing smoking on the hob, and fit to show gentlemen, is offered them to taste. But this is not the soup which is really given to the convicts; that is merely a little rice and water. In fact, Dartmoor is one of the most villanous places a man can be put into. You have there to swab up two or three pails of water before you can rise in the morning. The brutality practised is terrible; and remember, when a man is prejudiced against the treatment he receives, no permanent improvement of his character is possible. Let any Dartmoor man here get up and deny what I say about the place, if he can. The aristocracy fancy that it is an excellent convict station, but it is not. I have seen clean and comfortable-looking men taken off parade, because they would not do an officer’s dirty work, and conducted to a covered passage, from which they have not come out again until they did so with faces cut about and bleeding, and with clothes all torn to pieces. I don’t say that all the other convict establishments are like Dartmoor. I have seen bodies of seventy and eighty men come there from Wakefield—good-intentioned persons, and evidently having undergone religious impressions, to judge by their regularly kneeling down to prayers; but Dartmoor must contaminate them, and make them worse than ever before they leave it. I never had any particular religious feelings myself while at Dartmoor; but I am sure that a pious life is the most comfortable one under the canopy of heaven. I was very wrongfully sent away to that penal establishment. I had never been convicted before; and my only offence was being concerned in a tap-room drunken fight, for which I was charged with a misdemeanour. It was stated that I intended to do a man some grievous bodily harm, but it was proved that I had no weapon at the time larger than a penny-piece. I only left Dartmoor six or seven months ago. If I were in work, I should be most happy to give my mite towards the society that this gentleman (Mr. Mayhew) speaks of, for the benefit of the poor ticket-of-leave men; but the slackness of trade has thrown me out for the last month, and I have maintained myself and four others who are on my hands for half-a-year.”
The concluding speaker was a young and cleanly-looking working man, of prepossessing address, who stated:—“I have experienced considerable oppression from the police, who, I think, want as much showing up as anybody. In January, 1852, I was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. I stopped at the House of Correction for some time, and then went to Northampton borough gaol, where I lay eleven months. Thence I was sent to Woolwich, where I stayed about two years and five months, and was employed in dragging timber from one end of the yard to the other. However, I did very well there, and I find no fault with the place. When I got my liberty I returned home, where I had a father and mother and a sister; but as they were in humble circumstances, I did not like to throw myself on them for my support, and so I looked about for something to do. I am now keeping company with a young woman. One night as I was going home, at half-past twelve, after sitting some hours with her and her father, a policeman suddenly comes up to me, and tapping me on the shoulder, says: ‘Holloa, George; so here you are! Mind I don’t send you somewhere else for twelve months.’ I answered: ‘So you may, when I have given you occasion for it.’ My landlord saw us, and said that I had done nothing. ‘No,’ said the policeman, ‘or I would not allow him to go free;’ and he then told me to move on. My young woman’s father keeps a barber’s shop; and this policeman goes up to him and acquaints him with my character, asking him whether he is aware that the young man his daughter keeps company with is a returned convict. The father tells her of it, at least she gives me broad hints that imply as much. This man then shows me up, and exposes me several times to the tradesmen in my neighbourhood. I then see what I can do. I cannot get a certificate of character, and I try to write one myself. Then I get several months’ imprisonment, and now I have been out seven weeks. But I have not done anything dishonest. Still, if it goes on like this, I am sure I must be compelled to do that. A fortnight ago, as I was going home, the same policeman again interfered with me, and I was obliged to put up with his insults. Last week I wrote a letter to the captain of the hulks at Woolwich, telling him of the oppression I suffer. I received a letter from the chaplain, of course containing religious advice, but the answer I obtained from the captain of the hulks was, that the next time I am insulted I should write to him again, when he will acquaint the Secretary of State with it, and put it down, if possible. How can we hope to get employment from any tradesmen, if the policemen persist in telling who we are? I know that if I were an independent gentleman myself, I would not trust a man who had no reference of some kind.”
Mr. Mayhew: “We will now break up this meeting. I will let you know when to meet again. When I can arrange the formation of a committee of gentlemen willing to connect themselves with the undertaking I have sketched out, we can hold another assemblage in public. (Cheers.) In the meantime, if I can assist any of you with the loan of a few shillings—but, mind you, come to me gently, and not thick and fast—I will do what I can to help you. (Hear, hear.) I am a person who work myself for all I get, and remember I call myself a ‘shilling man,’ and not one of your ‘sovereign people’ (Laughter); and when I say ‘a loan,’ I want you all to feel that by doing your best to repay me, you will enable me to extend the same assistance to a greater number of your class. (Hear, hear.) Colonel Jebb looks on you almost with the eye of a father, and it touches him to the quick to hear of any of you relapsing. I trust that we shall prove successful in our object; but let me in conclusion entreat you all to adhere faithfully to your good resolves; and I hope you will find far greater happiness in pursuing honest courses than dishonest ones.” (Cheers.)
The meeting, which lasted from eight o’clock to half-past ten, and was most orderly throughout, then quietly dispersed.