From A Village Politician, chapter 13.
>I found myself in the company of about six hundred and fifty convicts, whose ages varied from nine to seventeen years. So barbarous was our criminal code that boys were transported for offences for which they are now birched or sent to an industrial school or dealt with under the First Offenders Act. The judges in passing sentence would frequently remark that it was the only thing they could do. These boys practically began life as convicts; they were often without parents or were the children of convicts, which I thought very terrible. I could not conceive a boy ten or twelve years of age doing anything which justified transportation for life.
...Every now and then an order would come from the Home Office for one or two hundred to go on board a convict-ship lying in the Solent, on its way to Port Philip or some other station. The boys who had perhaps only one or two years to serve, no matter what their conduct had been, would be selected. No convict was allowed to complete his term of transportation in this country.
...The boys were for the most part joyous at the prospect of a long journey and a new country, which they called the land of promise, where they had a chance of becoming magistrates, landowners, and bankers.
...The ship, a sailing-vessel, had arrived, and was now waiting to complete its living cargo. There were already a good number of convicts on board. The number was completed by an addition of nearly two hundred.
Of all the dreadful products of an old civilisation a convict-ship is the most horrible. A detachment of marines was on deck; below, caged down with heavy irons like wild beasts, you could see between the iron bars every grade of human wretchedness and despair. The captain and officers of the ship seemed to think no more of this human cargo than if it had been made up of bales of cotton.
After I landed I almost wished I had been spared the ghastly sight; it haunted me for days. These were my fellow-creatures, some of them perhaps having loving mothers and sisters, others neglected and uncared for from birth, cast on the world to perish like an autumn leaf. In a few days a new batch of juvenile convicts filtered through Millbank, and after they were safely lodged in their cells in the probationary ward, they commenced, according to regulations, the life of a convict.
... One afternoon Mr. Hepworth Dixon and Mr. Charles Dickens called to see the prison, and I had to show them over. The governor, chaplain, and deputy-governor were holiday-keeping. Everything was clean and orderly ; every piece of iron was brightened up like silver, and you could eat off the floors. To a casual visitor the machinery was perfect, but in those cells, which could be counted by the little iron gratings in the blank wall, there was pulsating a mass of human wretchedness, the sepulchre of all earthly hopes.
... ?? pleasant conversation, and they asked me to their hotel in the evening, and we had a long talk. Mr. Dickens asked me to write my opinions and experiences and send them to him in confidence. I had already published in a local paper several articles on the subject, which I collected and forwarded, with additional matter as to the average cost of ea ch prisoner, the uselessness of some of their occupations, the unsuitable character of sedentary work, the feebleness of religious instruction, and other information which could be obtained by access to the prison books, which were of course at my command. I had no idea of anything being paid for by public money being private, especially the cost of a convict.
Mr. Dickens wrote thanking me and asking for more information on one or two matters, which I supplied.
Everything went on as usual. Weeks passed and I heard nothing ; but one morning the chaplain told me a very unpleasant duty had fallen on him and the governor wished to see me at ten. I went into his office and saw a number of newspaper cuttings on the table. In a few minutes the deputy-governor and doctor came in, then another who was a stranger, and they formed a committee of inquiry. The governor was in full uniform.
Suspicion naturally fell on me, because I had made no secret of my opinions, which were similar to those expressed in the cuttings. After a little small talk from the chaplain, whoby this time I thoroughly disliked, about the painfulness of the duty they had been instructed by the Home Office to perform, he asked me if I knew anything or had supplied any one with the information contained in these cuttings, which he read out. I replied that I did not recognise in him or any one the right to ask of me such questions. The governor asked me to give up my key, which was equivalent to suspension for further inquiries. I wrote at once to the principal and the gentleman who had recommended me and told them I had supplied the information, and they both advised me to send in my resignation, which I did.
In a few days I received another letter from the principal, requesting me to return to the training Institution as soon as possible. I made arrangements to leave, and after two years I turned my back on a convict prison. Shortly after I left the convicts mutinied and set fire
to the prison, and a good part of it was burned down. There was another inquiry, when the discipline department broke down, and as time went on many of my views were adopted, and the treatment and discipline became more rational.