A CONVICT COMMUNITY
Convicts in public hands--How employed--Road parties--Chain gangs
and the penal settlements--Life and labour in each--Classes of
convicts--The emancipists--Many acquire great wealth--Irritation
among the free settlers--Growing party pledged to abolish
transportation--Deplorable state of the Colony--Crime
prevalent--Drunkenness the besetting sin--Judge Burton's charge:
"Transportation must cease"--Arguments against it.
In the latter part of the preceding chapter I have dealt with convicts
in assignment. These of course did not comprise the whole number in the
colony. Putting on one side the ticket-of-leave men,--who were still
really convicts, though for the moment and during good behaviour masters
of themselves,--and not including emancipists, who though, to all
intents and purposes, men free as air, still carried a class-brand which
generations only could efface--there were, in addition to the servants
assigned to private individuals, a large body of convicts retained in
the hands of the government of the colony. A certain proportion of these
were men so chosen on arrival for satisfying certain demands, and
therefore kept back from ordinary assignment because the government
officials, so to speak, assigned them to themselves. There were public
works to be carried out, and the government was clearly as much entitled
to share in the supply of convict labour as the settler. It was said
that the condition of these convicts in government employ was always
worse than those in private hands. About one fourth of the whole
available number were thus appropriated for the colonial works. But over
and above these, the government held the entire number of refuse
convicts in the colonies. Every man who did not get on with his master;
every man who committed himself, and was sentenced to undergo any
correction greater than flogging or less than capital punishment, came
back to government, and was by it disposed of in one of three ways:
First, the road parties; second, the chain-gangs; and third, the penal
settlements.
The road parties were employed either in Sydney itself and other towns,
or along the many miles of roads wherever their services were required.
Those at Sydney were lodged in the Hyde Park barracks, whence they
issued forth daily to their work, under the charge of overseers, at the
rate of one to every thirty men. These overseers were themselves
convicts; chosen for the post as being active, intelligent, and perhaps
outwardly more respectable than their fellows. Naturally the control of
such overseers was not very vigilant. They were paid no wages, and had
no remuneration but certain increased indulgences, such as an allowance
of tobacco and other minor luxuries. Hence they connived at the absence
of any men who were disposed to forage in the town and run the risk of
capture. If caught thieving, or as missing, the culprits were to take
the consequences; but if all went well, they shared whatever they stole
during the day with their complaisant overseer. Parties in the country
were under similar management, but they were dispersed over such a very
wide area that efficient supervision was even more difficult. The
surveyor-general of the colony was the responsible head of the whole
department; but under him the parties were actually worked by these
overseers. The convicts were free to come and go almost as they pleased.
Their dwellings were simple huts of bark, which presented no obstacles
to egress after hours at night. In the day time they were equally
unrestrained. They did odd jobs, if they pleased, for the neighbouring
settlers, though under Sir Richard Bourke's assignment rules, which were
promulgated in 1835, any settler who gave employment to convicts from
the road parties thereupon forfeited all his assigned servants. Any
artisan might earn money as blacksmith, carpenter, or cooper. Many
others were engaged in the straw hat trade, a very favourite occupation
for all the convicts. Great numbers, less industriously disposed, spent
their time in stealing. A large proportion of the robberies which were
so prevalent in the colony were to be traced to the men of these parties
on the roads. They were highwaymen, neither more nor less; and every
settler far and near suffered from their depredations. Sometimes they
went off in gangs, and, encamping by the side of the road, laid every
passing team under contribution. Increased facilities were given for the
commission of these crimes through the carelessness of the settlers
themselves, when they were permitted to employ men from the road parties
on Sundays or during leisure hours. Wages in cash were paid in return,
and the door was thus open to drunkenness and the evils that follow in
its train. Worse than this, at harvest time, when the road parties were
eagerly drawn upon for the additional hands so urgently required, the
settlers were in the habit of giving the men they had thus employed
passes to rejoin the stations from which they had come. Of course the
convicts did not hurry home, and of course, also, they did no little
mischief while on their way.
The work that was done by these parties was certainly irksome in
character. Breaking stones under a broiling sun is not an agreeable
pastime. But the amount of labour performed was ludicrously small, and
has been described by an eyewitness as a disgrace to those in charge. On
the whole, therefore, the convicts of this class had no great cause of
complaint. They had plenty of congenial society, even outside their own
gangs, for they were not prevented from associating with the assigned
servants around; their food was ample; and they had abundant
opportunities for self-aggrandisement in the manner most agreeable to
themselves. It was not strange, then, that idle, worthless servants in
assignment greatly preferred service in the parties on the road.
Nevertheless, there were not wanting among the free residents
intelligent persons who saw how the labour of these road parties might
have been made really productive of great benefit to the colony. There
was still plenty of work to be done in developing colonial resources:
over and above the construction and repair of roads, they could have
been usefully employed in the clearance of township lands, the widening
and deepening of river beds, in quarrying, fortifying, and building
piers. But to have accomplished these results, a system more complete
than any that was even dreamed of then must have been indispensable.
Success only could have come from regular effective supervision by a
thoroughly trustworthy staff, and by carefully constructed prison
accommodation, such as was provided later in carrying out public works
by convict labour in Western Australia.
In the chain-gangs there actually was greater restraint, and some
semblance of rigorous discipline. The convicts were relegated to this
system of punishment as a general rule for colonial crimes, though at
times new arrivals of a desperate character were also drafted into them
at once. In these gangs the convicts were kept in close custody, and
condemned to work which was really hard. There were some few
chain-gangs in Sydney, living on board a hulk, employed at the magazines
on the island, and in improving the streets; but as a general rule they
were to be found chiefly at out stations, or in the interior. They were
guarded always by a detachment of troops, and when most efficiently
organised were governed by a military officer, who was also a
magistrate. Under him there was also a superintendent in charge of each
stockade or barrack, with a staff of constables in the proportion of one
to seventy-five convicts. The duties of the constables were analogous to
those of warders in permanent prisons at home. The stockades were
substantial buildings, in appearance somewhat similar to American log
houses, but of greater strength, sufficient to preclude all possibility
of escape. These stockades accommodated one hundred or more men each.
They were of simple construction: the walls formed of timber, split into
strong slabs, which rested in grooves at top and bottom; the roof was of
timber also, covered with bark. In most cases the materials were found
close to the spot, timber being everywhere plentiful; but it was
possible to take down the stockade and remove the pieces to another
locality if required. The prisoners were not badly fed, on flour, maize
meal, and beef. Their clothing was two suits a year. They had medical
attendance, and regular divine worship. Their beds were of plank, but
there was no lack of bedding. The great hardships were the unremitting
labour--at not less than ten hours daily, and in chains--leg-irons
weighing six or seven pounds, which were never for a moment removed. So
important were these irons considered, that it was the stockade
superintendent's business to examine closely every prisoner's chains
daily before the stockade was emptied for labour. In this way chiefly
escapes were prevented, as the convict found himself rather too heavily
handicapped to run, carrying with him several extra pounds of metal.
One other unpleasant feature at the stockades was the official
"scourger," as he was called--a convict specially appointed to execute
corporal punishment. He was not himself an "iron-gang" man, but came
from assigned service together with the convicts' cooks and wardsmen
required for the interior economy of the stockade. What with work
unremitting, weighty chains that were never removed, isolation from the
dissipation of the towns, the convict in the iron-gang was on no bed of
roses. Nor could he, under the later régime, escape as easily as he had
done heretofore. Sentries with loaded muskets guarded every exit, and
they gave him only one chance to halt when summoned, before they fired.
After two years' trial Sir Richard Bourke reported that his new system
was eminently successful. By its assistance he was at length enabled to
dispense altogether with the road parties without irons, which I have
already described as being so fruitful of evil to the community at
large. Another evil to which I have not referred, and which was
attributable to the slackness of control over these road parties and
chain-gangs, was the existence of a class of desperadoes sufficiently
well known to every reader--I mean the notorious "bushrangers" of the
Australian colonies. Certain numbers of these were recruited from among
the assigned servants, who absconded when they and their masters could
not agree, but by far the greater proportion was furnished by the
government gangs, escapes from which were for a long time frequent and
generally successful. Whenever a man of courage and ability got away, he
collected around him a band of brigands like himself; and then, for
periods varying in length according to the nature of the pursuit, these
villains subjected the whole neighbourhood to their depredations. They
attacked chiefly the outlying huts and houses, but seldom large
establishments. One case was known where some sixty men of a chain-gang
had plotted to break out simultaneously and make for the bush. Thence
they were to march on Macarthur's station, bent on pillage. Nothing came
of this plot, because precautions were taken to meet it. But at other
times bloody affrays were common enough between the bushrangers and the
mounted police. Indeed, it was well known that unless a gang of these
highwaymen was entirely exterminated there was no peace for the district
in which they were at large. If one survivor escaped he soon became the
nucleus of a new gang. What between attacks on dwelling-houses, and the
daily stoppage on the highways of carts and wagons, the country
generally was most insecure. People went about in fear of their lives.
The penal settlements contained, as a matter of course, the dregs of
convictism. These settlements were the superlative degree of infamy. The
convicts in the road parties and chain-gangs were bad enough, Heaven
knows, but they were angels of light compared to those in the penal
settlements. Offenders were not indeed transferred to these terrible
receptacles till all other treatment had failed. When there, "it
seemed," to quote Judge Burton's words, "that the heart of a man was
taken from him, and that he was given the heart of a beast." It will not
beseem me to go fully into all the details of these cesspools of
iniquity, but I shall have to refer at some length further on to Norfolk
Island, the worst of them all. The settlements used as penal by New
South Wales were Moreton Bay and Norfolk Island; whereas Van Diemen's
Land used Tasman's Peninsula. This place was cut off altogether from the
settled districts, having only one communication--at Forestiers
Peninsula--with the main island. On this neck of land, between Pirates'
Bay and Norfolk Bay, stood an officer's guard; and besides his sentries,
a chain of fierce dogs kept watch and ward from shore to shore. These
dogs had been trained to give tongue at the slightest noise day or
night. So successful was the guard they kept, that only two prisoners
ever escaped from Port Arthur. One was recaptured, the other died in the
woods. This station on Tasman's Peninsula had the great advantage that
it was not, like Norfolk Island, distant several days' sail. Being but
six hours from headquarters at Hobart, it was brought directly under the
supervision of the governor and other officials.
I have now described the condition and style of life of all convicts,
still such; of all, I mean, who were not yet nominally or actually free.
The whole of these were comprised in the numbers at assigned service, in
the road parties, chain-gangs, or penal settlements.
Next above them, on a sort of debatable land, free for the time being,
but liable to degradation anew, stood the convict on ticket-of-leave.
This expression and the practice to which it applies has been adopted
into home legislation and language, but the term itself was a colonial
invention. The first tickets were granted by Governor Phillip with the
intention of instituting some stage intermediate between complete
freedom and actual restraint. As time passed new orders varied the
details; but the meaning of the term remained practically the same. The
holder of a ticket-of-leave was a convicted felon, who had permission to
be at large before the whole term of his sentence had actually expired.
At the top of the convict ladder were the emancipists, whose term of
transportation was at an end, who were free to return to the land from
whence they came, and begin life afresh, but who were never actually
whitewashed in the colonies, or permitted to rise in the social scale to
an equality with the free settler who had never broken the laws. We have
seen how successive governors sought to bring the emancipists forward,
and the heartburnings it occasioned. Their efforts were doubtless
supported by the wealth and importance of many of the emancipist class;
but it was on this account that the antagonism exhibited by the free
population was the more unvarying and bitter. Many of the respectable
inhabitants had been outstripped in the race for fortune by men who had
arrived in the colony bearing the felon's brand; and the free settlers
felt that in fighting against the pretensions of these ex-convicts they
were fighting for very life. The position of the latter was so strong,
that with the slightest success they would have swamped the former
altogether. No doubt the injudicious tone of the emancipist press, and
the flagrant conduct of many of the principal emancipists, drove the
free settlers into opposition more strenuous than was absolutely
required. A man who had been a convict was not necessarily to be taken
by the hand and made much of from pure sentimental philanthropy. But
neither, on the other hand, should he have been kept perpetually at a
distance, and treated as an outcast forever. It was because the
emancipists formed a body so powerful that their opponents were more or
less afraid of them, and stood really at bay, fighting with their backs
to the wall. Not a little of this bitter hostility has survived to the
present day. Even now, in the towns where transportation had effect, the
convict element stands in a class apart; there are caste distinctions
stronger than any in the mother country, of which the barriers are
rarely, if ever, overpassed.
But beyond question, many of the emancipists throve. The pictures drawn
of their wealth and prosperity may be a little exaggerated, but in their
main outlines they were undoubtedly true. There was one who made a
fortune of £45,000 in a year. Several others had incomes of £20,000. One
or two of the largest shops in Sydney were owned by them. They had
public-houses, and farms, and ships, and newspapers, and all the outward
signs of material wealth. They spared no pains or cost to get gorgeous
furniture and costly plate. They had grand carriages and good horses,
and were fond of lavish and ostentatious expenditure. But with all this,
low tastes prevailed. No one bought pictures or works of art: the only
literature they valued was the "Newgate Calendar," and they preferred a
prize-fight any day to an opera or a decent play. It was said, indeed,
that the principal wealth of the colony was for a long time held in the
hands of those emancipists. Honest people less successful in the race
for money declared that these others made fortunes because they were
quite unscrupulous. No doubt the accusation held. One case was proved
in which a certain shop undersold all others, simply because its owner,
an ex-convict, was a receiver of stolen goods, which he naturally was
able to retail at remarkably cheap rates. A number made their fortunes
by dealing only with their fellow-convicts, whom a sort of freemasonry
attracted always to convict shops. The practice, at one time prevalent,
and to which I have already referred, of giving small grants of land to
ticket-of-leave men, was another opening to convict shopkeepers and
general dealers. These farmers came into Sydney to sell their produce.
As there were no markets, certain individuals bought all that came,
paying for the same in "property,"--in drink, that is to say, and other
articles of consumption. The countrymen got drunk always, and stayed a
day or two on the same spot: at last the landlord would ask if they knew
how much they owed, and name the amount as £50. When they expressed
surprise, he would tell them they had been too drunk to know what they
were doing. Of course the victim was unable to pay, and had to sign a
power of attorney, or paper binding himself to give up all his produce
until the debt was cancelled. This fraud was repeated again and again,
till all the man's property was pledged. Then he was sold up. One man
had been known to drink away his farm of 100 acres in a single night. It
was by carrying on this line of action that the emancipist already
mentioned as worth £20,000 a year became a large landed proprietor. But
he was also a thrifty, careful man, from the time he had come out when
almost a boy with one of the first fleets. He was a sober man, moreover;
and when spirits were issued to the convicts employed in building at
Parramatta, he saved his and sold it to his fellows. Then, putting by
all the time he was a prisoner every shilling he could make, he was able
when free to set up a public-house, and buy a horse and gig which he let
for hire. One day when his trap was wanted he drove it himself, and had
as "fare" an ex-convict woman who owned a little property--some two or
three hundred pounds. This woman he married, and thus little by little
increased his possessions.
On the whole it was not strange that there should be fierce warfare
between the better classes and the emancipists as a body. Beyond doubt,
the emancipists formed a very corrupting element in general society.
They looked with leniency on men who had committed serious crimes, and
welcomed those whom honest people naturally shunned. One of the sorest
points of contention was the admission of these emancipists to serve on
juries in criminal and other trials. It was not alone that they leaned
to the side of the accused, and could not, even in cases clearly proved,
be persuaded to convict; but respectable people objected to be herded
with them in the same panel. The question was warmly argued. Petitions
were presented for and against; and this of itself showed the extent to
which the convict element arrogated power to itself. One petition
praying for the abolition of the practice was signed by the clergy,
landowners, merchants, and gentry generally; while the counter petition
was prepared and signed mostly by men on ticket-of-leave. Irritated,
undoubtedly, by the general state of affairs, a party among the free
settlers grew up, and daily gained strength, which was pledged to the
abolition of transportation.
Truly the state of New South Wales was at that time terrible. Crime was
extraordinarily prevalent. Morals were loose and drunkenness was the
besetting sin of the colony. It affected all classes. Drunken people
were to be seen in all directions, men and women fighting in the
streets, and riotous conduct everywhere. At the Rocks--the Seven Dials
of Sydney--scenes of debauchery were repeated and always disgraceful. In
the upper classes, at the hotel bars, the same tastes prevailed; and the
gentry fuddled themselves with wine, just as the lower orders did with
rum. This _penchant_ for drink was curiously contagious. Free emigrants
who came out with sober habits were soon as bad as the old hands. Of
course among the convict class the drunkenness knew no bounds. The
favourite drink was rum--not fine old Jamaica, but East Indian, fiery
and hot--which was handed round undiluted in a bucket at all regular
"sprees." Often assigned servants were found downstairs hopelessly drunk
while host and guests waited upstairs for dinner, the roasts being in
the fire and the meat boiled to rags. Even good servants, fairly honest
and capable, could not resist the bottle. The hardest drinkers were the
"old hands," or convicts who had finished their terms and had become
free. These fellows worked hard for a year or two till they had put by
some £40 or £50, then posted off to Sydney to squander the whole in one
big debauch. They stood treat to all,--rum flowed like water,--and if
the money did not go fast enough they called for champagne. "It is, in
truth, impossible to conceive," continues the same writer, "the lengths
to which drunkenness proceeds and the crime it leads to, not only to
obtain the means of gratification, but as a consequence on indulgence."
To purvey to the universal thirst there were dram-shops and publics by
hundreds everywhere. Licenses were seldom, if ever, refused, even to
persons of unknown character. For them it was quite sufficient to get
the good word of the chief constable--himself an old convict. He was not
above a bribe, and his recommendation always carried the day. "In no
city of the world," says Byrne, "are there the same proportion of
public-houses, paying high rent, and doing an excellent business....
From high to low--the merchant, mechanic, and labourer, all alike are a
thirsty community. The bar-rooms of the hotels and inns are as much
crowded as the taps of the dram-shops. Drink, drink, drink, seems to be
the universal motto, and the quantity that is consumed is incredible;
from early morning to night it is the same--Bacchus being constantly
sacrificed to."
Of the extraordinary prevalence of crime there could be little doubt.
One eminent judge spoke of the colony as composed of two classes; one
whose main business was the commission of crime and the other, the
punishment of it. The whole colony, he said, seemed to be in motion
towards the courts of justice. Beyond question the criminal statistics
were rather startling. The number of convictions for highway robbery in
New South Wales alone was equal to the whole number of convictions for
all offences in England. Murders and criminal assaults were as common
out there as petty larcenies at home. The ratio was one offender to
every twenty-two of population; while in England about the same period
it varied from one in seven hundred and forty to one in a thousand. It
is but fair, however, to state that nearly the whole mass of crime
proceeded from the convicts, or those who had been such. Among the
reputable portion of the population the proportion was no greater in New
South Wales than elsewhere. Sydney was a perfect den of thieves; and
these, being indeed selected from the whole felonry of England, were
quite masters of their business, and stood at the head of the
profession. The report of the police magistrate of Sydney, printed in
October, 1835, gives an awful picture of the state of the town. Of the
whole population of twenty thousand a large proportion were prisoners,
past or present, "whose passions are violent, and who have not been
accustomed to control them, yet for the most part have no lawful means
of gratifying them. It includes a great number of incorrigible
characters, who, on obtaining their freedom, will not apply themselves
to any honest mode of earning their living, but endeavour to support
themselves in idleness and debauchery by plunder."
"There is more immorality in Sydney," he continues, "than in any other
English town of the same population in His Majesty's dominions." It
contained two hundred and nineteen public-houses, and there were besides
sly grog-shops innumerable. "There is no town which affords so much
facility for eluding the vigilance of the police. The unoccupied bush
near and within the town itself will afford shelter to the offender and
hide him from pursuit; he may steal or hire a boat, and in a few minutes
place an arm of the sea between him and his pursuers.... The
drunkenness, idleness, and carelessness of a great portion of the
inhabitants afford innumerable opportunities and temptations day and
night to live by plunder." Sir Francis Forbes, the Chief Justice of the
colony, endorses the foregoing statements. "That this is a true
description," he says, "of the actual state of Sydney cannot be denied."
Another powerful voice was raised by Judge Burton, whose charge to the
grand jury of Sydney in November, 1835, attracted universal attention.
Not alone were crimes constantly detected and punished, but others,
often the most flagrant, stalked undiscovered through the land. And
numerous executions exercised no effect in deterring from crime. The
example of repeated capital punishments caused no alarm. There was no
attempt by the masters to raise the moral tone of their convicts; no
religious worship on Sundays, as we have seen; and instead of it,
drunkenness and debauchery. Masters, indeed, exercised hardly any
control over their men. To this Judge Burton traced nearly all the
crime. Many of the most daring robberies were to be attributed to this,
and this alone. Convict servants, as many as five and six together, went
about openly to plunder, masked, and armed with muskets--a weapon not
capable of much concealment. Even in broad daylight, and in the open
highway, harmless folk had been stopped by these miscreants and robbed.
In a word, Judge Burton intimated clearly that transportation must
cease. The colonies could never rise to their proper position; they
could not obtain those free institutions for which even then they were
agitating; in a word, the whole moral aspect of the colony suffered so
terribly by the present system, that the time must come when it must be
abandoned altogether.
The reader who has followed me through this and the preceding chapter
will probably admit that the method of transportation, as it had been
administered, was indeed a failure. Looking at the actual tangible
results, as they appeared at that date, at an early period of the
colonial history, and before years of subsequent prosperity and cleanly
life had purged the colony of its one constant infectious bane, they
were most unsatisfactory. Hardly any one could be said to have profited
in all these years but the convicts for whom transportation had been
instituted. But it had been instituted as a punishment, not as a boon;
and although we cannot actually quarrel with a system which had the
undoubted effect of turning large numbers of criminals into wealthy and
therefore, to a certain extent, honest men, we may fairly condemn it on
principle. Transportation to the antipodes was about the kindest thing
we could do for the criminal class. It was, indeed, removing them to a
distance from their old haunts and ways of life, but they went to a land
flowing with milk and honey. After the earlier years the vague terrors
of that unknown country had disappeared. Hardly a family of thieves but
had one or more relatives at the other end of "the pond." Those without
relatives had numerous friends and pals who had gone before. Besides
which there was this distinct anomaly, that convicts were now sent for
their crimes to a land which was held out as a land of promise to the
free emigrant. "It not unfrequently happens, that whilst a judge is
expatiating on the miseries of exile, at the same time, and perhaps in
the same place, some active agent of emigration may be found magnifying
the advantages of the new country; lauding the fertility of its soil,
and the beauties of its climate; telling of the high wages to be there
obtained, the enormous fortunes that have been made; and offering to
eager and willing listeners, as a boon and special favour, the means of
conveyance to that very place to which the convict in the dock has been
sentenced for his crimes."
But all the arguments against transportation are now as clear as
noonday. It failed to reform, except in a curiously liberal,
unintentional fashion; it was no punishment; it was terribly costly; and
as it was carried out was, at least for a time, distinctly injurious to
the best interests of the colonies in which it took effect. Archbishop
Whateley summed up the situation in forcible language in his "Thoughts
on Secondary Punishment."
"In any of the leading requisites of any system of secondary punishment
transportation was defective. Thus, it was neither formidable--in other
words, the apprehension of it did not operate as much as possible to
deter men from crime, and thus prevent the necessity of its actual
infliction--nor was it corrective, or at least not corrupting--tending
to produce in the criminal himself, if his life be spared, and in
others, either a moral improvement, or at least as little as possible of
moral debasement. Nor, lastly, was it cheap, so as to make the
punishment of the criminal either absolutely profitable to the
community, or at least not excessively costly. In all these requisites
transportation had been found deficient, but chiefly in the most
important, viz. in the power of exercising a salutary terror in
offenders."