The scrupulous cleanliness, perfect plan of conservancy, excellent order, well-regulated system of labour and punishments, and the high standard of[83] health attained are not surpassed in any other well-regulated institution of the same kind that I am acquainted with in Europe or in Asia. My personal knowledge of prisons and of all details of prison management is sufficiently extended to entitle me to speak with authority on this subject.
In many important points of internal economy and discipline, Singapore can fairly lay claim to being Primus in Indis in the adoption and practical working of principles that are now generally accepted as sound and correct. My own feeling on the subject is that Colonels Man and Macpherson and Captain McNair, to whom the chief credit appears to be due, are entitled to rank in the first class of prison officers and reformers in India."
Perhaps the last addition to the jail buildings was the erection by the convict bricklayers and plasterers of a stand to hold the prison bell, and from whence to call the roll at general musters. It was built in the form of a "monopteron," a sort of structure without walls, and composed of columns arranged in a circle, and supporting a covered cupola.
Footnotes:
[8] Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
[9] These filters were of the simplest construction. They consisted of three very porous earthenware pots or "chatties" placed on a tripod. In the first was the water to be filtered, a foot off was the pot full of charcoal and white sand, and the filtered water was drawn off from the third. The charcoal and sand were renewed twice a week.
Chapter VIII
DIVISION INTO CLASSES, TRADES, FOOD, AND CLOTHING
We now come to deal with perhaps not a very inviting part of our subject, viz. the division of the convicts into classes, their supervision, artificer trades, hours of work, food, and clothing, but it must be told in brief in order to make the narrative of this jail complete.