PUBLI RECORD OFFICE
Reference -
C.O.885
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
3PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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'The reference of Mr. Griffith to what occurred during the prevalence of cholera in 1854 served its purpose; but looking to the mortality of that year, which, in Bridgetown and Saint Michael, amounted to 9,100 above that of 1853, it has no bearing upon the question of the present state of the gaol. A sufficient answer to this is the deathrates furnished by Dr. Clarke in 1839-44, referred to by Mr. Watts, and that of 1868-72, detailed in his Report.
prisoners, have not been produced during a long course of years.
4. Mr. Griffith is correct in calling the gaol a cellar, or dungeon, because it is partly underground; not two-thirds, but four feet below the ground, the height of the wards being only nine feet. But it consists of nine separate rooms on each side of a passage five feet wide. He is also correct in stating that the number which the gaol is calculated to be adapted to contain is 135, and that it has had (more than once) as many as 185 But in the estimate of 135 are not included the punishment cells persons confined in it. and the hospital, which have provided for as many as 25.
5. The existence and the annoyance to the keepers of the effluvia on opening the wards in the morning, are pointed out by the Provost-Marshal, and admitted by the Inspector of Prisons. The cause of it is explained by the latter.
6. Admitting all that can be said in extenuation of the defects and unfitness of the prison, its want of sanitary arrangements and its insufficient accomodation, it must be acknowledged and, in justice to the local legislature, I must say it is, I believe, generally recognized, that it ought not to be occupied longer as a prison than can be helped.
7. Captain Hyde's Report, soon after his arrival and assumption of the government of the gaol, conveys the impression which it made upon myself, and it has been constantly When the under my anxious observation. I have had weekly returns laid before me. numbers have increased unusually, I have had the excess drafted off into the country prisons. When the number of men in hospital has increased, I have called for the Report of the medical officer, and have generally found that the increase was owing to malinger- ing, or to bodily sores, or general debility in fresh arrivals, and never to any endemic or epidemic sickness traceable to the character of the building.
8. When Captain Hyde made his Report in August, 1870, I was not in a position to make any proposal to the Legislature for the erection of a new prison, The Molehead conflict had only just ceased, and the urgent want of a new lunatic asylum appeared to me more pressing than that of a new prison.
9. With reference to the former institution, I am happy to be able to inform your Lordship that a Bill appropriating 25,0001. for the erection of the proposed new building passed the Assembly at its last sitting.
10. But although 1 did not then entertain any hope that an immediate application to the Legislature for a new prison, or for an extension of the Glendairy Convict Prison, would be successful, I took such steps as were open to me. I directed the Superintendent of Public Works to examine the gaol, and to furnish a plan and estimate for the improve- ment of the ventilation. This was submitted to the Legislature immediately on its reassembling in session. The money was voted, and what could be done was done, or appeared to have been done; for I now learn from Captain Hyde that the vote, though recorded as having been taken for the Town Hall Gaol, was really taken for another prison, or rather lock-up, and was expended upon it without my knowledge. I shall pay immediate attention to remedying this. The overcrowding has been kept down as far as possible; and on both of the last two occasions of opening the Legislature, I have referred to the insufficiency of this gaol, with a suggestion, on the last, as to the manner of the change. I inclose copies of the extracts.
11. I may also mention that only a few days before the arrival of your Lordship's despatch, the unfitness of the Town Hall Gaol was under discussion in my Executive Council, and a disposition was expressed to take the first opportunity of making better provision for the prisoners.
12. I perceive that the Inspector of Prisons in his last Report, printed in the Bluc Book for 1871, considers my suggestion feasible. I believe it to present the most speedy means of obtaining improved prison accommodation, and of vacating the present Town Hall Gaol.
13. As soon as the Bill providing funds for the erection of a lunatic asylum, and a measure making permanent provision for the appointment of a Superintendent of Public Works, which is almost as essential as the other, are passed, I shall be in a position to broach the question of prison accommodation in the Assembly, with a chance of success.
14. I shall be strengthened by the expression of your Lordship's views with regard to the insufficiency and unfitness of the present Town Hall Gaol; but I hope that your Lordship will not adopt the inference, which Mr. Griffith's letter was calculated to create,
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that the present Legislature would turn a deaf ear to any reasonable proposition for a change. Its recent vote of 25,0001, for a new lunatic asylum contradicts that assumption. The Legislature may be, perhaps is, economical, even to parsimony. It is slow in recognizing the necessity or the advantage of a liberal expenditure on objects apparently unproductive; but it is becoming less so daily; and nobody has contributed so largely to the change, partly by his remonstrances and reproaches, as Mr. Griffith.
Sir,
I have, &c.
(Signed) RAWSON L. RAWSON.
Inclosure 1 in No. 9.
Provost Marshal's Office, January 3, 1873. I HAVE the honour to acknowledge your communication of 29th ultimo, informing me that the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies had instructed his Excellency the Governor to make a full report upon the state of the Town Hall Gaol, and requesting me to make a report upon the subject for the purpose of enabling the Governor to prepare his.
In reply, I beg to forward you a copy of a Report upon the Town Hall Gaol and the District Prisons of Barbados. As far as regards the former, which I considered it my duty to draw up, and had the honour to lay before his Excellency the Governor, for his information, in the month of August 1870, on the occasion of my accession to the office of Provost-Marshal of Barbados, and consequent superintendence of the prisoners confined in the Town Hall Gaol in Bridgetown.
In that Report I endeavoured to show how deficient the Town Hall Gaol was in proper accommodation, and its unfitness as a place of security, for the confinement of prisoners, and generally to describe its means and modes of punishment, and the employment of those confined within it.
That Report as fully represents at this moment the state of the Town Hall Prison as it did at the time I wrote it, as, with the exception of a bath for the use of the prisoners (for constructing which I obtained the concurrence of the Town Ball Commissioners), 'no alteration has been made for the better accommodation of the prisoners, and the same evils of overcrowding and want of ventilation still exist, lately even in a worse degreee, in consequence of the increase during the last two months on the average number of prisoners confined in the gaol, and more particularly on the occasion of the recent disturbances in Bridgetown, when the number of prisoners in the Town Hall Prison increased to the uumber of 220.
Nor since the period of my Report has any alteration been made in the interior economy of the Town Hall Gaol further than in an increase in the salary of the keeper.
In conclusion, his Excellency the Governor having been instructed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies to make a full Report upon the state of the Town Hall Gaol, I trust that his Excellency (the opportunity oecurring) will bring to his Lordship's notice the fact of my not having failed, on my accession to office, to report on the defects of the Town Hall Gaol.
A. F. Gore, Esq.,
Colonial Secretary.
Sir,
I am, &c.
(Signed) C. T. HYDE, Provost Marshal.
Inclosure 2 in No. 9.
Provost Marshal's Office, August 8, 1870. UPON the occasion of my taking charge of the Town Hall and District Prisons, as Provost-Marshal of Barbados, I have the honour to submit the following observations for your Excellency's consideration :-
1. Of the Town Hall; as to its suitability for a prison.
Your Excellency must be aware that the building in which the prisoners are confined, and that in which the Legislative Chambers and the Courts of Justice meet for the dispatch of business, are one, the wards being in the basement of the building, immediately under the apartments used for the purposes above mentioned.
These wards, partially underground, are nine in number, and are situated on either side of, and open by doors, constructed of iron bars, into a narrow passage running the length of the building, their size and ventilation being very inadequate for the proper accommodation of the numbers confined in them.
As regards the insufficiency of space, I find the area of the wards, inclusive of the
(128)
0