CONVICT LIFE
Various conditions described--Arrival and treatment of
newcomers--Hyde Park barracks for males--Parramatta factory for
females--Behaviour of assignees to their convict
servants--Treatment at out-stations--Labour--How
enforced--Demeanour of convicts--Disciplinary methods--The lash the
chief penalty.
British transportation divides itself naturally into three periods. The
first comprises the early history of the penal colonies; the second
treats of the days when "assignment" flourished, then fell into
disrepute; the third saw the substitution of the "probation" system, its
collapse; and finally, the abandonment of transportation beyond the
seas. Transportation was really continued for some years after the
collapse of the probation system in Van Diemen's Land, but only to the
extent of sending a few hundreds annually to Western Australia, and in
keeping up the convict establishments at Bermuda and Gibraltar. Having
sketched this early history in the two preceding chapters, I propose to
draw now a picture of convict life, and the state of the colonies
generally during the second of these periods. I shall, in this, confine
myself chiefly to New South Wales, the details of management and the
results having been much the same in Van Diemen's Land, or Tasmania as
it is now called. But I shall refer more especially to that island in a
later page.
To the voyage out and the internal management of convict ships I intend
to devote a special chapter. Let us imagine that the anchor is dropped
in Sydney harbour, and that the surgeon superintendent has gone on shore
to make his bow to His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales and
its dependencies. There is already plenty of excitement in the town. The
ship had been signalled in the offing, and there are numbers of good
people on the look out for useful hands from among its cargo. The days
when convict labour was a drug in the market are past and gone; the rush
for "assigned" servants is now so great that requisitions far in excess
of the number available crowd the office of the assignment board. All
sorts of tricks have been put in practice to get early information as to
the qualifications of those on board: although the indent bearing the
names of the new convicts goes first to the governor and then to the
assignment officers, the cunning old stagers--not a few of them
themselves emancipists--have found out privately from the surgeon or the
master of the vessel whether there are upon the list any men likely to
be useful to them. Thus a watchmaker seeks to obtain a watchmaker; an
engraver, an engraver; printers, compositors; merchants want clerks, as
doctors do assistants, or as the genteel folk--"ancients" they love to
style themselves--do cooks, butlers, and ladies'-maids. Many got
convicts assigned to them who were distinctly unfit and unworthy of the
charge. Cases were indeed known of settlers, outwardly honest men, whose
only object in asking for servants was to get assistants in thieving,
cattle stealing, and other nefarious transactions. All who lived inland
came off second best in the general rush: unless they had some friend on
the spot to watch their interests they had to take their chance later
on. But these too are in want of skilled labourers: one requires a
carpenter to complete a new shed or roof to his house; another a
blacksmith for the farm forge; and all would be glad of men with any
agricultural training or skill. If the newly-arrived ship carries female
convicts, there is similar anxiety. At one time governesses were
frequently got from among these outcasts; but the practice of confiding
the education of innocent children to such teachers appeared so
monstrous that it was soon altogether discontinued. But nursemaids and
other household servants were in eager request, and it must be confessed
that the moral condition of the colony was such that many of the better
looking female convicts were obtained without disguise for distinctly
immoral purposes.
One and all were compelled to lodge their applications for assigned
servants with the assignment board, where practically the decision
rested. This board was governed latterly by the clear and explicit
rules laid down by Sir Richard Bourke, to which I have referred in the
last chapter, but before these regulations were framed many malcontents
among the settlers were ready to declare that assignment all depended
upon favour and affection. "If you had no friend on the board," says
one, "you might get a chimney-sweep when you wanted a cabinetmaker." In
the same way complaints were made that the members of this board, and
other officials in high place, were given as many assigned servants as
they asked for. Thus the Chief Justice of the colony had forty, the
Colonial Secretary fifty or sixty, the Brigade Major eight or ten. The
principal landowners, too, were liberally supplied. One, a salt
manufacturer, had sixty or seventy; another, with a farm of forty
thousand acres, employed a couple of hundred servants. Laing declares
that the assignment of useful hands depended often on petty services
rendered to government, and that many of the settlers succeeded in
getting on the weak side of the governor and his advisers.
But to return to the ship, which meanwhile lay out in the stream. No one
was allowed to communicate with her, except the Colonial Secretary or
his assistant. One of these officials having gone on board to muster all
hands, inspect them, and investigate any complaints, as soon as these
preliminaries were concluded the disembarkation took place at the
dockyard. Male convicts were at once marched to the Hyde Park barracks,
where they paraded for the inspection of His Excellency the governor.
Then the assignees, having been first informed of the numbers they were
to receive, waited in person or sent for them, paying on receipt one
pound per head for bedding and the convict clothes. Assignees failing to
appear, or to remove the lots assigned to them, forfeited the grant.
With the women the system was much the same. They were first mustered,
then they landed, decked out in their finest feathers. There was no
attempt to enforce a plain uniformity of attire; each woman wore silks
and satins if she had them, with gay bonnets, bright ribbons, and showy
parasols. Persons who had applied for female servants were present at
the dockyard to receive them. After that all who remained on government
charge--and their numbers were large, for female convicts were not in
great demand--passed on next to the great central depot or factory at
Parramatta.
As the Hyde Park barracks and the Parramatta factory were to a certain
extent depot prisons for males and females respectively, a word about
both will not be out of place here.
Until later years the men's barracks had been very negligently
supervised. There was no attempt to enforce discipline within the walls.
The convicts were not even kept under lock and key. Half at least were
absent as a general rule all night, which they spent in prowling about,
stealing anything they could lay hands upon. The officers at the
barracks were tampered with, and winked for substantial reasons at the
nightly evasions of the prisoners in their charge. Even in the day time,
and inside the walls, drunkenness was very rife, and with it perpetual
pilfering from one another, and much general misconduct. Naturally in
this universal slackness of control the lower officials fattened and
grew rich at the public expense. Gross peculation and embezzlement were
continually practised. The storekeeper was known to have abstracted
supplies from government stock; and others on small salaries were found
to have amassed considerable fortunes, building themselves fine villas
in the best part of the town, and living on the fat of the land. Having
thus full scope for license and depravity, it will be conceded that
there was no attempt at punishment and restraint in this the first
halting-place of the transport in the land of exile.
The condition of the Parramatta factory, the depot for females, was even
more disgraceful. The building, not unlike an English workhouse, was
large and stood amidst spacious courtyards and gardens. The
accommodation provided was of the best. There was plenty of food and
comfortable raiment. The women were not confined always within the
walls, they had money in plenty, and there was little or no work to be
done, even by those in the lower stages or classes. A few were made to
wheel sand or gravel for gardening purposes, but the barrows used were
of light construction, and the women laughed openly and made a joke of
the labour imposed. The administration of the establishment was
entrusted for years to a matron, whose character, to say the least of
it, hardly entitled her to so responsible a charge. It was alleged that
she misappropriated the labour of the convicts, keeping back the best
prisoners to employ them for the benefit of herself and her daughters.
It was openly said, also, that these daughters were not a bit better
than they should have been. There was some attempt at classification
among the female convicts according to conduct and character, but the
lowest of these classes was filled with women who had been returned from
service or who were sentenced to remain at Parramatta till further
orders. This was just what they wished. All the women much preferred to
be at the factory. It was far better, they said, than at service. If any
servant misbehaved, and was taken by her master before a magistrate, she
said at once, "Send me back to the factory. Send me back." These scenes
in court supply curious evidence of the condition of affairs. The women
constantly made use of the most desperate and disgusting language. One,
after threatening her master, suddenly spat in his face. Another, when
sentenced to ten days on bread and water, was so insolent that the
punishment was increased to thirty. "Oh! thank you," she said coolly;
"couldn't you make it thirty-one?"--knowing perfectly well that thirty
days was the limit of the magistrate's power. No wonder that, with such
material to choose from, decent people refused to receive convict
maid-servants into their families. As a rule their characters were so
bad, they gave so much annoyance, and disturbed to such an extent the
peace and quiet of households, that the settlers would rather be without
their assistance altogether. "They make execrable servants," says a Mr.
Mudie, speaking from long experience. In many years he had only met one
or two who were well behaved. Some were exceedingly savage, and thought
nothing of doing serious mischief to any one. The most flagrant case of
this was the assault on Captain Waldron, a retired officer and settler.
Having reason to find fault with a woman for not cleaning his veranda,
he threatened to send her back to the factory. "If you send her, you
must send me too," cried another woman coming forward directly. High
words followed; after which the two women threw themselves without
warning on their master, got him down, and mauled him so seriously that
he died of the injuries he received. Other servants, convicts also, were
within earshot, but not one stirred a finger to help their master.
Not a pleasant picture this of the actual consequences of female
transportation. Perhaps all the women were not originally bad, but the
voyage out was a terrible ordeal to those who had still some faint
glimmering left of the distinctions between right and wrong. Another
observer remarks that the character and condition of these women was
"as bad as it was possible for human beings to be; they were shockingly
dissolute and depraved, steeped to the very core in profligacy and
vice." But I will now leave them and return to the men, who formed the
bulk of the convict population.
Let us take first the case of those assigned to settlers in the
interior. The assignee, as I have said, attended and carried off his
quota to dispose of them on his station, or otherwise, according to his
discretion. To get the men home--often a long way off--was no easy
matter. Sometimes the convict was given money and told to find his own
way, and again the master assumed charge, and they marched in company.
Then it happened, either that those left to themselves made straight for
the nearest public-house, or that those under escort gave their masters
the slip and traveled in the same direction. The next the assignee heard
of his new servants was a demand made upon him to take them "out of
pawn." Joining with old pals, these new chums, fresh from the restraint
of the convict ship, had soon launched out into drunkenness or worse. As
often as not, the master found them in the lock-up, with half their
clothing gone, and charged with felony. Having cost money already, they
now cost more; and the process might be repeated over and over again.
Nevertheless, sooner or later, all or a part of the new labourers
reached their destination. Here their position was quite that of
slaves. The Transportation Act gave the governor of the colony a
property in the services of every convict, and this property he made
over to the assignee. The authority with which the settler became
thereupon vested was not exactly absolute, but it was more than an
ordinary master has over his apprentice. Nevertheless, the Australian
master was bound to maintain and to protect his convict servant. He
could not flog him, nor was he supposed to ill-treat him; besides, the
law gave the convict the right of appeal and complaint against
ill-usage. Maintenance was likewise provided by law. The regulation
rations consisted weekly of seven pounds of fresh meat--beef or
mutton--and eight pounds of flour, with salt, also soap and other
necessaries; but this minimum allowance was often largely increased. The
meat issue rose to eight or nine pounds; the flour to fourteen pounds;
tea and sugar were added, and occasionally rum and tobacco. In spite of
the danger of supplying such men with spirits, rum was openly given--as
at time of sheep shearing, and so forth, when it was supposed to be
needed medicinally. The occasion of a harvest-home was often the excuse
for a general jollification. Many masters found that it was to their
interest to feed their convict servants well. This was bribing them to
do good work, and not a few people had more confidence in the efficacy
of such treatment than in purely strict and coercive measures. Mr.
Mudie, again, when before the Parliamentary Committee of 1837,
confessed to having provided one servant with a flute, just to keep him
in good humour. A good master was anxious to make his servants forget,
if possible, that they were convicts. Really profitable labour, they
argued, could only be got out of them by making them comfortable. Here
at once was a departure from the very first principles of penal
discipline. It was hardly intended that the felons who were transported
as a punishment beyond the seas should be pampered and made much of,
simply to put money into the pockets of private individuals. As a matter
of fact the average actual condition of the convict servant, as far as
food and lodging were concerned, was far superior to that of the honest
field labourer at home, and under a good master, as we have seen, he was
much better off than a soldier. He might be under some personal
restraint, and there was a chance of being flogged if he misbehaved, but
he had a great many comforts. He was allowed to marry, could never
starve, and if industrious, might look forward in no remote period of
time to rise to a position of ease, if not of actual affluence.
At all the large stations the daily routine of life was somewhat as
follows: The big bell on the farm rang out an hour before sunrise, a
second bell half an hour later, and a third when the sun appeared. It
was the night watchman's business to ring the bells. At the last summons
all hands turned out. The mechanics went to their various works, the
bullock drivers to their carts, the herdsmen to their cattle and pigs.
As a general rule the heaviest labour to be performed was kept for the
newest comers, so as to break them in. It was their business to clear
the land, fell timber, and burn it. At eight came the breakfast bell,
and with it an hour's rest. Dinner was at one, after which work was
continued until sunset. At 8 or 9 P. M., according to the season, a
night bell recalled every one, and after that no convict was supposed to
leave his hut. On the surface, then, no great amount of rest appeared to
be allowed, except at actual meal times or after sundown; but the whole
character of the work performed was desultory and far from satisfactory.
A convict servant's value was estimated by people of experience at
something much less than that of a free labourer; so much so that there
were settlers who declared they would rather pay wages, as they lost
rather than saved by this gratuitous labour. The convicts worked
unwillingly almost always; sometimes they executed their tasks as badly
as they could, on purpose to do injury. What leisure they had was not
very profitably employed. One convict in twenty might read, and some few
spent their time in plaiting straw hats for sale; but the greater number
preferred to be altogether idle, unless they could get a pack of
cards--forbidden fruit at every station, and yet generally
attainable--in which case they were prepared to gamble and quarrel all
the night through. There was little or no supervision over them in
their huts. It was quite impossible to keep them inside. No kind of
muster was feasible or even safe. The overseers were really afraid to
visit the men's huts much after dark, fearing to be attacked or openly
maltreated. It would have been far better if a strong stockade, with
high palisading, had been in all cases substituted for the huts. The
latter were open always, so that after the last bell at night, any--and
they were not a few--who chose crept out and spent the whole of the dark
hours on the prowl. Of course the convicts were incorrigible thieves,
and the whole country side was laid under contributions by them while
thus nightly at large. Sunday was another day which gave these idle
hands abundant opportunities for mischief. Of course there was no
regular work done on the farm on that day; but there was no attempt,
either, to enforce religious observances in lieu thereof. The want of
provision for public worship was at this time largely felt throughout
the colony, and seldom were churches at hand for the convicts to attend,
even if such attendance had been insisted upon. Some few superintendents
of farms took their convicts to church, if there was one in the
neighbourhood, but cases of this were few and far between. Even if there
was a church, all who could do so, sneaked out of the way on pretence of
going to bathe, and so escaped the service.
Thus far I have described only the pleasant side of a convict's life up
the country. On the whole it was far from irksome. Nevertheless, as a
set-off against the home comforts and the comparative idleness, there
was the total want of freedom of action, coupled with strictly enforced
submissiveness of demeanour. A convict was expected to be even
cringingly subservient in manner. For insolent words, nay, looks, as
betraying an insubordinate and insurgent spirit, he might be
incontinently scourged. In this way he was subject to the capricious
temper, not only of his master, but of the whole of the master's family.
Then the local magistrates had great powers. Singly a magistrate could
sentence any man to be flogged for drunkenness, disobedience, neglect of
work, or absconding; with others assembled in petty sessions, they had
power, however, to inflict heavier punishments for graver offences. In
"Byrne's Travels" I find mention made of several convicts who had
received in the aggregate many thousand lashes. The same writer asserts
that he once had an assigned servant upon whom 2,275 had been inflicted.
This man was said to have grown so callous that he was heard to declare
he would rather suffer a thousand lashes than the shortest term of
imprisonment. Life could not be very enjoyable to men liable to such
treatment. And this code was for the convicts and for them alone.
Another law applied to the masters, in whom, indeed, was vested a
tremendous power for good or evil. Some, as I have before remarked, were
quite unfit persons to have the charge of felon servants, being
themselves little better than convicts, and prepared at any time to
consort with them and make them their intimate friends. Others of the
better classes often delegated their authority to overseers, being
either non-resident on their farms, or not caring to exercise personal
control. In many cases these overseers were ex-convicts, and although it
might be considered advisable that the master should not make himself
too cheap, and that a middleman should be employed to come into direct
communion with the convict himself, still every precaution should have
been taken to prevent any abuse of power. In point of fact every
well-ordered establishment should have been uniformly under the eye of
its resident owner.
But in reality the lot of the convict in assignment was left altogether
to chance. According to his luck in masters, he might be very miserable,
or as happy as the day was long: one master might be lenient, giving
good food and exacting but little labour in return; another, a perfect
fiend. It was quite a lottery into which sort of hands the convict fell,
for until 1835 there was little or no inquiry into the character of
applicants for servants, and except in the most flagrant cases
requisitions were never refused.
This, indeed, comprised one of the chief objections to the system of
assignment. It was altogether too much a matter of haphazard. No system
of penal discipline ought to be left thus to chance; yet as we have
seen, there was no supervision and little attempt to enforce hard labour
or any stringent code of discipline. This neglect fostered evil courses,
and tended to increase the temptations to crime. Nor was the style of
labour provided that which was always most suited to the persons for
whom it was intended. In some few cases it was proper enough. Men
employed as shepherds were perforce compelled to drop into regular
habits from being obliged to go out and return with their herds at fixed
hours, and they lived much alone. But these were only a small proportion
of the whole number, and the balance working in association had many
opportunities for developing vicious qualities by this corrupting
intercourse. Especially was this the case with the mounted herdsmen, who
were free to gallop about the country, collecting together in large
numbers at the squatters' huts to drink and gamble and plot schemes of
depredation.
These squatters, who about this period--1825-35--sprang up in rank
growth round about the principal stations, did much to give annoyance,
and to increase the difficulties of the settlers. They were mostly
emancipists or ticket-of-leave men, who occupied crown pastures without
paying for them, or spent their energies in stealing horses and cattle.
Sometimes they established themselves at the corners of the settlers'
own grants of land, getting as near to estates as they could without
detection. Their principal object in life seemed to make themselves
useful to the convicts employed near them, for whom they kept "sly
grog-shops," where they sold or bartered liquor for stolen goods. This
ready market for stolen property was a source of great loss to the
settlers. One calculated that it cost him £200 or £300 a year. Pigs,
sheep, harness in bags, flour on its way to market--all these were
purloined in large quantities, and passed at once to the receivers, who
gave rum in exchange, and sometimes tea, sugar, and tobacco. The
squatters were fined if caught at these illicit practices, but to
recover money from them was like getting blood out of a stone. Another
favourite _modus operandi_ was to knock up a sort of shanty close by
some halting-place on the main line of road, where there was water handy
and the drays could be made snug for the night. The draymen naturally
flocked to the grog-shop, and naturally also obtained the sinews of war
by making free with their masters' property.
In the foregoing pages I have dwelt chiefly on assignment to the country
districts. But every convict did not of course go to the interior. Many
were assigned in the towns. Now, whatever evils may have surrounded the
system as carried out inland, the practice of town assignment was
infinitely worse in every respect. In the first place, it led to the
congregation of large numbers in places where there were many more
temptations to profligacy and crime. And just as these were increased,
so were the supervision and control that would check them diminished
till they sank to almost nothing at all. Country convicts, as we have
seen, were not much hampered by rules; but those in towns were free to
do just as they pleased. It was impossible for the masters to enforce
any regulations. In the hours of work, such as they were, the convicts
might perhaps be kept out of harm's way more or less, according to the
character and style of their employment; but labour over, they had great
license and were practically free men. Household servants were as well
off as servants at home in England: they frequented theatres and places
of amusement, and the badge of their disgrace was kept altogether in the
background. Masters were not compelled by law to enforce any particular
discipline; nor would the most strict among them dare to exercise much
surveillance over their servants. Such conduct would have been rare and
singular, and it would have drawn down upon them the animosity, or
worse, of the whole convict class. Such was the state of affairs that
this body really possessed some power, and could not openly be
affronted.
Convicts were required in the towns, as in the country, to be within
doors by 8 P. M.; but unhappily this rule was quite a dead letter. The
Sydney police was miserably inefficient. Recruited from the convict
ranks, they were known on all occasions to favour openly their old
associates. If they gave information they were called "noses," which
they disliked; or worse, they were hooted, sometimes attacked and half
killed. They were known, too, to take bribes, and to be generally most
neglectful of their duties. It was not to be expected, therefore, that
from them would come any zealous supervision of the convicts still in
assignment, even to the extent of sending all such to their homes after
8 P. M., or of preventing the commission of petty offences. But as a
matter of fact, the police were never certain whether half the men they
met were convicts in assigned service or people actually free. Sydney
was by this time so large, and the convicts so numerous, that it was
next to impossible for a constable to know every one he met, by sight.
None of the assigned servants in towns wore any distinctive dress. Those
in government hands wore gray, and the chain-gangs a parti-coloured suit
of yellow and brown cloth, but the assigned servants appeared in their
masters' liveries, or clothed just as it pleased them. Recognition was
not likely to be easy or frequent. Even in our own day, with admirable
police machinery, the thorough supervision of criminals at large is not
always obtained. In Sydney, seventy years ago, it was lamentably below
the mark. Often enough men who had arrived in recent ships, having been
assigned in due course, were soon lost sight of, to reappear presently
under another name, as men quite free. They had proved themselves so
useful that their masters wished to give them sole charge of a
business, which, if still convicts, they could not assume. In this way
it was discovered that an assigned convict servant had charge of a
tan-yard close under the eyes of the police, but here it was proved that
the police had connived at a grave neglect of duty.
It followed, too, from the nature of their previous vocations, that the
convicts assigned in towns were the sharpest and most intelligent of
their class. They were therefore the more prone to dissipation, and the
more difficult to restrain within bounds. Knowing their value, they
presumed on it, and felt that they were too useful to be sent off as
rough farm hands into the interior. Here was another blot in the system
of assignment, and generally on the whole principle of transportation.
The punishment fell quite unequally on offenders. The biggest villains
and the most hardened offenders fell naturally into the lightest
"billets;" while the half-educated country bumpkin, whose crime may have
been caused by ignorance or neglect, was made a hewer of wood and drawer
of water. Prominent among those of the first class were specials, or
gentlemen convicts, as they were styled; men sentenced for "genteel"
crimes, forgery only, or embezzlement, but whose delicate fingers had
never handled the cracksman's jimmy, or tampered with foil or blow.
These genteel criminals were forever, through all the days of
transportation, a thorn in the side of the administration, and they were
always treated with far more consideration than they deserved. Some of
these were well-known men, like one who had been a captain in the royal
navy, and whose proclivities were so ineradicable that he suffered a
second sentence at Norfolk Island for forgery, his favourite crime. From
among this class the lawyers selected their clerks, and the auctioneers
their assistants. If unusually well-educated they became teachers in
schools, and were admitted as such even into the public seminaries of
Sydney. A flagrant instance of the consequences of this injudicious
practice is quoted by Laing--a clergyman's son, who had a convict tutor,
coming himself, under the influence of such a man's teaching, to be also
a convict sentenced to transportation for life.
There was another very improper proceeding which for a long time held
among the convicts of this superior or more wealthy class. Their wives
followed them out to the antipodes, bringing with them often the bulk of
their ill-gotten gains. Having thus ample funds, they established
themselves well on arrival, and applied for a grant of convicts like the
rest of their neighbours. Naturally they took care to secure that their
own husbands should be among the number. There was one man who had
received a very heavy sentence for the robbery of a custom house, who
should have gone direct to Norfolk Island. Through some bribery he was
landed at Sydney, and was made overseer at once of a gang working in the
street. Within a day or two he absconded. His wife had joined him with
the proceeds of the robbery, and they went off together. Mr. Macarthur
gives another case of a farrier who was assigned to him. This convict's
wife followed him, and asked permission to live with him on Mr.
Macarthur's farm. When this was refused the man managed to get returned
to Sydney, and was there reassigned to his wife. To something of this
kind some of the largest shops in Sydney owed their origin.
Among the many lighter and more remunerative kinds of employment into
which the convict of the special class readily fell, was employment on
the public press. As time passed there had grown up a strong antagonism
between bond and free, and both sides had their newspapers. The organs
which were emancipist in tone were not of the highest class, but they
were often conducted with considerable ability. Their staff was of
course recruited from the convict ships as they arrived, where
compositors, leader writers, and even sub-editors were occasionally to
be found. The most notorious instance of this description, was the case
of W., who was originally assigned as a servant to the proprietor of the
_Sydney Gazette_. This paper, which was then published only three times
a week, was an able and influential journal, and its editor and owner
was a certain O'S., who had himself been assigned to a former
proprietor, and by him employed as a reporter. To him came W., and these
two, according to Dr. Laing, bent all their energies to compass "the
abolition of all the moral distinctions that the law of God has
established in society; to persuade the public that the free emigrant
was no better than the convict, that the whole community was equally
corrupt, and those of the convict class were no worse than the best in
the colony, their situation being the result of misfortune, as they
pretended, and not of misconduct."
W. was a Scotchman, who had been outlawed for some misdemeanour in the
office of a solicitor by whom he had been employed in Edinburgh; he then
went to London, and was taken into a large mercantile house, Morrison's;
from which, for embezzlement, he was transported for fourteen years. He
was sent out in Governor Darling's time, and was sent to Wellington
Valley, then a penal settlement for educated convicts. He stayed there
but a short time, thanks to his interest with the superintendent, and
returning to Sydney obtained a ticket-of-leave, being afterwards
employed as a clerk in the corporation office, under the archdeacon of
the colony. On the dissolution of the corporation he was no longer
required there, but he found great demand for his services from editors
of newspapers, having two sub-editorships offered to him at the same
time. He went to the _Sydney Gazette_, and thenceforward had it under
his entire control, the ostensible editor being a person of dissipated
habits, who let him do as he pleased. This W. was a man of considerable
talent. From that time forth he proved a source of prodigious
demoralisation from the sentiments he disseminated, and the use he made
of the powerful engine he had under his control, in endeavouring to
exasperate the prison part of the population against the free emigrants.
He was tried at length on a charge of having bribed a compositor to
steal a printed slip from another newspaper office in the colony. The
printed slip was a proof of a letter that had been sent for publication
to the editor of the paper, and which contained libellous matter,
reflecting on the character of a certain emancipist. The letter was not
very carefully examined by the editor until it had been set up in type,
but on discovering the nature of its contents he considered that he
ought not to publish it. Though actually printed, it never appeared in
the paper. W. came to know that such a paper was in type, and he bribed
a convict compositor in the office to which the letter had been sent to
purloin a copy, or one of the proofs of the letter. He then sent the
letter in an envelope through the post to the person libelled, in order
that there might be proof of its publication. The person to whom the
letter referred thereupon brought an action against the editor of the
paper to which it had been sent, and endeavoured to establish the fact
of publication from the circumstance of his having received the letter
through the public post; but the action failed. On inquiry, W.'s
complicity in the matter was discovered, and he was tried for being a
party to the theft. Of this he was acquitted, as the property found was
not of value sufficient to constitute grand larceny; but the judge
considered that he should not be allowed to remain at Sydney, and the
governor sent him to Port Macquarie, a station for gentlemen convicts.
Though now two hundred and fifty miles from Sydney, he still continued
to contribute articles to the _Sydney Gazette_; and soon afterwards the
widow of the late proprietor of the paper, into whose good graces he had
insinuated himself, went down to Port Macquarie and married him. He then
got into trouble by stirring up a feud between the harbour master and a
police magistrate. In the investigation which followed, both these
officials were dismissed and W.'s ticket-of-leave was cancelled. He was
sentenced to be classed again with the convicts in government hands, and
on hearing this he absconded. Nothing more was heard of him.
I think it will be evident from what I have said that the actual
condition of men who were in assigned service was not very disagreeable
if they were skilful hands and useful to their masters. This much
established, they found their lives were cast in pleasant places. They
did not want for money: they were allowed openly a portion of their
earnings, and these gains were often largely increased by illegal
methods. Besides this, many masters gave their servants funds to provide
for themselves. They even went so far as to allow their men to
marry--saddling themselves with the responsibility of having perhaps to
keep both convict and his family. These convict marriages, when
permitted, took place generally in the convict class, though cases were
known of free women who had married assigned servants, and _vice versa_.
Among the latter, Byrne, in his "Travels," speaks of a certain old lady,
the mother of very respectable people, who had married when a convict,
and who did not, to the day of her death, quite abandon the habits of
her former condition. Her husband had been an officer of high rank, and
her sons rose to wealth and prosperity in the colony; but no
considerations for the feelings of those belonging to her were
sufficient to wean her from her evil propensities. She was so
passionately addicted to drink, that it was in vain her children sought
to keep her with them: she always escaped, taking with her all on which
she could lay hands, and returned to her favorite associates--the
brick-makers in the suburbs of Sydney.
But such marriages as these were the exception. As a general rule the
assigned servant, whether in town or country, paid a visit to Parramatta
factory, and made his case known to the matron by whom it was governed.
"Turn out the women of such and such a class," forthwith cries Mrs. G.,
and the marriageable ladies come trooping down, to be ranked up in a row
like soldiers, or like cattle at a fair. Benedict walks down and
inspects, then throws his handkerchief, and if the bride be willing, the
two retire to a corner to talk a little together. If the conversation
is not quite satisfactory to "Smith, _Aboukir_," or "Jones, _Lady
Dacre_,"[1] he makes a second selection; and so on, perhaps, with three
or four. Cases were known of fastidious men who had run through several
hundreds, and had declared in the end that there was not a single woman
to suit. Others were less particular. Men up country have been known to
leave the choice to their masters, upon the latter's next visit to
Sydney. There was of course no security against bigamy: often both
parties to the colonial marriage had wife or husband alive at home, and
just as inevitably the conduct of these factory brides was most
questionable after the new knot was tied.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A convict in Australia was always known by his name and the name of
the ship in which he had come out.