"You have expressed a desire to hear the story of my life," said my
mining partner. "I make you welcome to it. There is not much of my
history that I should be ashamed to tell you of; but with that little I
shall not trouble you. I have never done anything very bad,--that is, I
have never robbed anybody, nor stolen anything that I did not really
want.
"I am a native of Birmingham, in which town I resided until I was about
twenty years of age.
"My father was a confirmed drunkard; and the little money he used to
earn by working as a journeyman cutler, was pretty certain to be spent
in gin.
"The support of himself, and four young children fell upon my mother,
myself, and a brother--who was one year younger than I. In all
Birmingham, there were not two boys more dutiful to their parents, more
kind to their younger brothers and sisters, more industrious, and less
selfish, than my brother and myself--at the time I am speaking of.
"Our hours were wholly occupied in doing all we could, to supply the
wants of my father's family.
"We sometimes attended an evening school. There we learnt to read and
write; but even the time devoted to this, we would have considered as
squandered, if we could have been doing anything else--to benefit the
unfortunate family to which we belonged.
"One evening, after we had got to be grown up to manhood, my younger
brother and I were returning from our work, when we saw our father at
some distance off, in the middle of the street. We saw that he was
intoxicated. Three policemen were around him--two of them with hands
upon him.
"As usual with my father on such occasions, he was refractory; and the
policemen were handling him in a very rough manner. One of them had
struck him on the head with his baton, and my father's face was covered
with blood.
"My brother and I ran up, and offered to take him quietly home--if the
policemen would allow us to do so; but as he had assaulted them, and
torn their clothes, they refused to let us have him, and insisted in
locking him up. My brother and I, then offered to take him to the
lock-up ourselves; and, taking him by the hand, I entreated him to go
quietly along with us.
"The policeman rudely pushed me aside, again collared my father, and
commenced dragging him onward. Once more we interfered--though this
time, only to entice our father to go with the policemen, without making
any resistance.
"At that moment, one of the constables shouted `a rescue;' and the
three, without further provocation, commenced an assault upon my brother
and myself.
"One of them seized me by the throat; and struck me several times on the
head with his baton. We struggled awhile, and then both fell to the
ground. I turned my head, while trying to get up again, and saw my
brother lying on the pavement, with his face covered all over with
blood. The policeman, who had fallen with me, still retained his clutch
upon my throat; and again commenced beating me as soon as we had both
recovered our feet. A loose stone, weighing about ten pounds, was lying
upon the pavement. I seized hold of it, and struck my antagonist on the
forehead. He fell like a bullock. When I looked around, I saw that my
father--who was a very powerful man--had conquered the other two
policemen. He seemed suddenly to have recovered from his intoxication;
and now helped me to carry the constable I had felled, to the nearest
public-house--where the man died a few hours after the affray.
"I was tried for manslaughter; and sentenced to ten years
transportation.
"Not until then, did evil thoughts ever make their home in my mind.
"Up till the time I was torn from my relatives--for whom I had a great
affection--and from the girl whom I fondly loved, I am willing to be
responsible to God and man, for every thought I had, or every act I did.
Ever since, having been deprived of liberty--dragged from all near and
dear--with every social tie broken--and robbed of everything for which I
cared to live--I do not think myself to blame for anything I may have
done. I have been only a link in a chain of circumstances--a victim of
the transportation system of England, that transforms incipient crime
into hardened villainy.
"On arriving in New South Wales, I was placed in a gang with other
convicts; and put to the business of pushing a wheel-barrow. We were
employed in removing a hill, from the place where nature had set it: for
no other reason, I believe, than for the purpose of keeping us from
being idle! The labour was not severe; but the life was a very weary
one. It was not the work that made it so to me. I was used to work,
and did not dislike it, if there had been any sense in the task we had
to perform. But I had no more idea of what my labour was for, than the
wheel-barrow with which I performed it; and therefore I could feel no
more interest in the work, than did the barrow itself.
"My toil was not sweetened with the reflection that it was in behalf of
those I loved. On the contrary, I knew that the best years of my life
were being uselessly squandered, while my mother and her children were
perhaps suffering for food!
"I often asked myself the question: why I had been sent from home? It
could not have been to reform me, and make me lead a better life, after
the expiration of the term for which I had been sentenced. It could not
have been for that: for no youth could have been more innocent of all
evil intentions than I was, up to the time of my unfortunate affair with
the policeman. All the philosophers of earth could not devise a scheme
better adapted to corrupt the morals of a young man--make him forget all
the good he had ever learnt--harden his soul against all the better
feelings of human nature--and transform him from a weak frail mortal,
with good intentions, into a very demon--than the transportation system
of England.
"From the age of twenty years, until that of thirty, I consider the most
valuable part of a man's existence; and as this whole period was taken
from me, I naturally regarded the future of my life, as scarce worth
possessing. I became recklessly indifferent as to what my actions might
be; and from that time they were wholly guided by the circumstances of
the hour.
"Each month, I either heard, or saw, something calculated to conduct me
still further along the path of crime. I do not say that all my
companions were bad men; but most of them were: since my daily
associates were thieves, and men guilty of crimes even worse than theft
I am willing to acknowledge--which is more than some of them would do--
that the fact of their being convicts was strong evidence of their being
wicked men.
"After having spent nearly a year, between the trams of the wheel-barrow
in the neighbourhood of Sydney, I was despatched with a gang to do some
labourer's work up the country.
"Most of the men in this gang, were wickeder than those, with whom I had
previously been associated. This was perhaps owing to the fact that my
new companions had been longer abroad, and were of course better trained
to the transportation system.
"Some of them were suffering great agony through the want of tobacco and
strong drink, in both of which--being many of them `ticket-of-leave'
holders--they had lately had a chance of freely indulging. That you may
know something of the character of these men, and of the craving they
had for tobacco, I shall tell you what I saw some of them do.
"Many of the wardens--as is usually the case--were greatly disliked by
the convicts; and the latter, of course, took every opportunity of
showing their hatred towards them.
"One morning, the gang refused to go to work--owing to a part of the
usual allowance of food having been stopped from one of them, as they
said, for no good reason. The overseer, in place of sending for the
superintendent, attempted to force them to their tasks; and the result
was a `row.'
"In the skrimmage that followed, one of the wardens--a man especially
disliked by the convicts--was killed, while the overseer himself was
carried senseless from the ground.
"The dead warden had been a sailor, and liked his `quid.' He was
generally to be seen with his mouth full of tobacco, and this was the
case at the time he was killed. I saw the quid taken from his mouth,
scarce ten minutes after he had become a corpse, by one of the convicts,
who the instant after transferred it to his own!
"The overseer, at the time he got knocked down, was smoking a pipe.
Scarce three minutes after, I saw the same pipe in the mouth of one of
the men; and from its head was rolling a thick cloud of smoke!
"The fire in the pipe had not been allowed to expire; and the man who
was smoking it was one of those afterwards hung for the murder of the
warden!"
Volume Three, Chapter VI.