DEPILATORY (from Lat. depilare, to pull out the pilus or hair), any substance, preparation or process which will remove superfluous hair. For this purpose caustic alkalis, alkaline earths and also orpiment (trisulphide of arsenic) are used, the last being somewhat dangerous. No application is permanent in its effect, as the hair always grows again. The only permanent method, which is, however, painful, slow in operation and likely to leave small scars, is by the use of an electric current for the destruction of the follicles by electrolysis.
DEPORTATION, or Transportation, a system of punishment for crime, of which the essential factor is the removal of the criminal to a penal settlement outside his own country. It is to be distinguished from mere [expulsion] (q.v.) from a country, though the term “deportation” is now used in that sense in English law under the Aliens Act 1905 (see [Alien]). Strictly, the deportation or transportation system has ceased to exist in England, though the removal or exclusion of undesirable persons from British territory, under various Orders in Council, is possible in places subject to the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, and in the case of criminals under the Extradition Acts.
Earlier British Transportation System.—At a time when the British statute-book bristled with capital felonies, when the pick-pocket or sheep-stealer was hanged out of hand, when Sir Samuel Romilly, to whose strenuous exertions the amelioration of the penal code is in a great measure due, declared that the laws of England were written in blood, another and less sanguinary penalty came into great favour. The deportation of criminals beyond the seas grew naturally out of the laws which prescribed banishment for certain offences. The Vagrancy Act of Elizabeth’s reign contained in it the germ of transportation, by empowering justices in quarter sessions to banish offenders and order them to be conveyed into such parts beyond the seas as should be assigned by the privy council. Full effect was given to this statute in the next reign, as is proved by a letter of James I. American plantations. dated 1619, in which the king directs “a hundred dissolute persons” to be sent to Virginia. Another act of similar tenor was passed in the reign of Charles II., in which the term “transportation” appears to have been first used. A further and more systematic development of the system of transportation took place in 1617, when an act was passed by which offenders who had escaped the death penalty were handed over to contractors, who engaged to transport them to the American colonies. These contractors were vested with a property in the labour of the convicts for a certain term, generally from seven to fourteen years, and this right they frequently sold. Labour in those early days was scarce in the new settlements; and before the general adoption of negro slavery there was a keen competition for felon hands. An organized system of kidnapping prevailed along the British coasts; young lads were seized and sold into what was practically white slavery in the American plantations. These malpractices were checked, but the legitimate traffic in convict labour continued, until it was ended peremptorily by the revolt of the American colonies and the achievement of their independence in 1776.[1]
The British legislature, making a virtue of necessity, discovered that transportation to the colonies was bound to be attended by various inconveniences, particularly by depriving the kingdom of many subjects whose labour might be useful to the community; and an act was accordingly passed which provides that convicts sentenced to transportation might be employed at hard labour at home. At the same time the consideration of some scheme for their disposal was entrusted to three eminent public men—Sir William Blackstone, Mr Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) and John Howard. The result of their labours was an act for the establishment of penitentiary houses, dated 1778. This act is of peculiar importance. It contains the first public enunciation of a general principle of prison treatment, and shows that even at that early date the system since nearly universally adopted was fully understood. The object in view was thus stated. It was hoped “by sobriety, cleanliness and medical assistance, by a regular series of labour, by solitary confinement during the intervals of work and by due religious instruction to preserve and amend the health of the unhappy offenders, to inure them to habits of industry, to guard them from pernicious company, to accustom them to serious reflection and to teach them both the principles and practice of every Christian and moral duty.” The experience of succeeding years has added little to these the true principles of penal discipline; they form the basis of every species of prison system carried out since the passing of an act of 1779.
No immediate action was taken by the committee appointed. Its members were not in accord as to the choice of site. One was for Islington, another for Limehouse; Howard only stipulated for some healthy place well supplied with water and conveniently situated for supervision. He was strongly of opinion that the penitentiary should be built by convict labour. Howard withdrew from the commission, and new members were appointed, who were on the eve of beginning the first penitentiary when the discoveries of Captain Cook in the South Seas turned the attention of the government towards these new lands. The vast territories Australian penal settlements. of Australasia promised an unlimited field for convict colonization, and for the moment the scheme for penitentiary houses fell to the ground. Public opinion generally preferred the idea of establishing penal settlements at a distance from home. “There was general confidence,” says Merivale in his work on colonization, “in the favourite theory that the best mode of punishing offenders was that which removed them from the scene of offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of space from all their former connexions, and gave them the opportunity of redeeming past crimes by becoming useful members of society.” These views so far prevailed that an expedition consisting of nine transports and two men-of-war, the “first fleet” of Australian annals, sailed in March 1787 for New South Wales. This first fleet reached Botany Bay in January 1788, but passed on and landed at Port Jackson, where it entered and occupied Sydney harbour. From that time forward convicts were sent in constantly increasing numbers from England to the Antipodes. Yet the early settlement at Sydney had not greatly prospered. The infant colony had had a bitter struggle for existence. It had been hoped that the community would raise its own produce and speedily become self-supporting. But the soil was unfruitful; the convicts knew nothing of farming. All lived upon rations sent out from home; and when convoys with relief lingered by the way famine stared all in the face. The colony was long a penal settlement and nothing more, peopled only by two classes, convicts and their masters; criminal bondsmen on the one hand who had forfeited their independence and were bound to labour without wages for the state, on the other officials to guard and exact the due performance of tasks. A few free families were encouraged to emigrate, but they were lost in the mass they were intended to leaven, swamped and outnumbered by the convicts, shiploads of whom continued to pour in year after year. When the influx increased, difficulties as to their employment arose. Free settlers were too few to give work to more than a small proportion. Moreover, a new policy was in the ascendant, initiated by Governor Macquarie, who considered the convicts and their rehabilitation his chief care, and steadily discouraged the immigration of any but those who “came out for their country’s good.” The great bulk of the convict labour thus remained in government hands.
This period marked the first phase in the history of transportation. The penal colony, having triumphed over early dangers and difficulties, was crowded with convicts in a state of semi-freedom, maintained at the public expense and utilized in the development of the latent resources of the country. The methods employed by Governor Macquarie were not, perhaps, invariably the best; the time was hardly ripe as yet for the erection of palatial buildings in Sydney, while the congregation of the workmen in large bodies tended greatly to their demoralization. But some of the works undertaken and carried out were of incalculable service to the young colony; and its early advance in wealth and prosperity was greatly due to the magnificent roads, bridges and other facilities of inter-communication for which it was indebted to Governor Macquarie. As time passed the criminal sewage flowing from the Old World to the New greatly increased in volume under milder and more humane laws. Many now escaped the gallows, and much of the overcrowding of the gaols at home was caused by the gangs of convicts awaiting transhipment to the Antipodes. They were packed off, however, with all convenient despatch, and the numbers on government hands in the colonies multiplied exceedingly, causing increasing embarrassment as to their disposal. Moreover, the expense of the Australian convict establishments was enormous.
Some change in system was inevitable, and the plan of “assignment” was introduced; in other words, that of freely lending the convicts to any who would relieve the authorities of the burdensome Assignment system. charge. By this time free settlers were arriving in greater number, invited by a different and more liberal policy than that of Governor Macquarie. Inducements were especially offered to persons possessed of capital to assist in the development of the country. Assignment developed rapidly; soon eager competition arose for the convict hands that had been at first so reluctantly taken. Great facilities existed for utilizing them on the wide areas of grazing land and on the new stations in the interior. A pastoral life, without temptations and contaminating influences, was well suited for convicts. As the colony grew richer and more populous, other than agricultural employers became assignees, and numerous enterprises were set on foot. The trades and callings which minister to the needs of all civilized communities were more and more largely pursued. There was plenty of work for skilled convicts in the towns, and the services of the more intelligent were highly prized. It was a great boon to secure gratis the assistance of men specially trained as clerks, book-keepers or handicraftsmen. Hence all manner of intrigues and manœuvres were afoot on the arrival of drafts and there was a scramble for the best hands. Here at once was a palpable flaw in the system of assignment. The lot of the convict was altogether unequal. Some, the dull, unlettered and unskilled, were drafted up country to heavy manual labour at which they remained, while clever expert rogues found pleasant, congenial and often profitable employment in the towns. The contrast was very marked from the first, but it became the more apparent when in due course it was seen that some were still engaged in irksome toil, while others who had come out by the same ship had already attained to affluence and ease. For the latter transportation was no punishment, but often the reverse. It meant too often transfer to a new world under conditions more favourable to success, removed from the keener competition of the old. By adroit management, too, convicts often obtained the command of funds, the product of nefarious transactions at home, which wives or near relatives or unconvicted accomplices presently brought out to them. It was easy for the free new-comers to secure the assignment of their convict friends; and the latter, although still nominally servants and in the background, at once assumed the real control. Another system productive of much evil was the employment of convict clerks in positions of trust in various government offices; convicts did much of the legal work of the colony; a convict was clerk to the attorney general; others were schoolmasters and were entrusted with the education of youth.
Under a system so anomalous and uncertain the main object of transportation as a method of penal discipline and repression was in danger of being quite overlooked. Yet the state Evils of convict system. could not entirely abdicate its functions, although it surrendered to a great extent the care of criminals to private persons. It had established a code of penalties for the coercion of the ill-conducted, while it kept the worst perforce in its own hands. The master was always at liberty to appeal to the strong arm of the law. A message carried to a neighbouring magistrate, often by the culprit himself, brought down the prompt retribution of the lash. Convicts might be flogged for petty offences, for idleness, drunkenness, turbulence, absconding and so forth. At the out-stations some show of decorum and regularity was observed, although the work done was generally scanty and the convicts were secretly given to all manner of evil courses. The town convicts were worse, because they were far less controlled. They were nominally under the surveillance and supervision of the police, which amounted to nothing at all. They came and went, and amused themselves after working hours, so that Sydney and all the large towns were hotbeds of vice and immorality. The masters as a rule made no attempt to watch over their charges; many of them were absolutely unfitted to do so, being themselves of low character, “emancipists” frequently, old convicts conditionally pardoned or who had finished their terms. No effort was made to prevent the assignment of convicts to improper persons; every applicant got what he wanted, even though his own character would not bear inspection. All whom the masters could not manage—the incorrigible upon whom the lash and bread and water had been tried in vain—were returned to government charge. These, in short, comprised the whole of the refuse of colonial convictdom. Every man who could not agree with his master, or who was to undergo a penalty greater than flogging or less than capital punishment, came back to government and was disposed of in one of three ways, (1) the road parties, (2) the chain gang, or (3) the penal settlements. (1) In the first case, the convicts might be kept in the vicinity of the towns or marched about the country according to the work in hand; the labour was severe, but, owing to inefficient supervision, never intolerable; the diet was ample and there was no great restraint upon independence within certain wide limits. To the slackness of control over the road parties was directly traceable the frequent escape of desperadoes, who, defying recapture, recruited the gangs of bushrangers which were a constant terror to the whole country. In (2) the chain or iron gangs, as they were sometimes styled, discipline was far more rigorous. It was maintained by the constant presence of a military guard, and when most efficiently organized the gang was governed by a military officer who was also a magistrate. The work was really hard, the custody close—in hulk, stockaded barrack or caravan; the first was at Sydney, the second in the interior, the last when the undertaking required constant change of place. All were locked up from sunset to sunrise; all wore heavy leg irons; and all were liable to immediate flagellation. The convict “scourger” was one of the regular officials attached to every chain gang. (3) The third and ultimate receptacle was the penal settlement, to which no offenders were transferred till all other methods of treatment had failed. These were terrible cesspools of iniquity, so bad that it seemed, to use the words of one who knew them well, that “the heart of a man who went to them was taken from him and he was given that of a beast.” The horrors accumulated at Norfolk Island, Moreton Bay, Port Arthur and Tasman’s Peninsula are almost beyond description. The convicts herded together in them were soon utterly degraded and brutalized; no wonder that reckless despair took possession of them, that death on the gallows for murder purposely committed, or the slow terror from starvation following escape into surrounding wilds was often welcomed as a relief.