For the Term of His Natural Life
Page 65
May 14th.--I sit down to write with as much reluctance as though I wereabout to relate my experience of a journey through a sewer.
First to the prisoners' barracks, which stand on an area of about threeacres, surrounded by a lofty wall. A road runs between this wall andthe sea. The barracks are three storeys high, and hold seven hundred andninety men (let me remark here that there are more than two thousand menon the island). There are twenty-two wards in this place. Each ward runsthe depth of the building, viz., eighteen feet, and in consequence issimply a funnel for hot or cold air to blow through. When the ward isfilled, the men's heads lie under the windows. The largest ward containsa hundred men, the smallest fifteen. They sleep in hammocks, slung closeto each other as on board ship, in two lines, with a passage downthe centre. There is a wardsman to each ward. He is selected by theprisoners, and is generally a man of the worst character. He is supposedto keep order, but of course he never attempts to do so; indeed, as heis locked up in the ward every night from six o'clock in the eveninguntil sunrise, without light, it is possible that he might getmaltreated did he make himself obnoxious.
The barracks look upon the Barrack Square, which is filled with loungingprisoners. The windows of the hospital-ward also look upon BarrackSquare, and the prisoners are in constant communication with thepatients. The hospital is a low stone building, capable of containingabout twenty men, and faces the beach. I placed my hands on the wall,and found it damp. An ulcerous prisoner said the dampness was owing tothe heavy surf constantly rolling so close beneath the building. Thereare two gaols, the old and the new. The old gaol stands near the sea,close to the landing-place. Outside it, at the door, is the Gallows. Itouched it as I passed in. This engine is the first thing which greetsthe eyes of a newly-arrived prisoner. The new gaol is barely completed,is of pentagonal shape, and has eighteen radiating cells of a patternapproved by some wiseacre in England, who thinks that to prevent a manfrom seeing his fellowmen is not the way to drive him mad. In the oldgaol are twenty-four prisoners, all heavily ironed, awaiting trial bythe visiting Commission, from Hobart Town. Some of these poor ruffians,having committed their offences just after the last sitting of theCommission, have already been in gaol upwards of eleven months!
At six o'clock we saw the men mustered. I read prayers before themuster, and was surprised to find that some of the prisoners attended,while some strolled about the yard, whistling, singing, and joking.The muster is a farce. The prisoners are not mustered outside andthen marched to their wards, but they rush into the barracksindiscriminately, and place themselves dressed or undressed in theirhammocks. A convict sub-overseer then calls out the names, and somebodyreplies. If an answer is returned to each name, all is considered right.The lights are taken away, and save for a few minutes at eight o'clock,when the good-conduct men are let in, the ruffians are left to theirown devices until morning. Knowing what I know of the customs of theconvicts, my heart sickens when I in imagination put myself in the placeof a newly-transported man, plunged from six at night until daybreakinto that foetid den of worse than wild beasts.