PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O. 885
4
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
Passage of steamer.
Number of convicts
Sir,
84
Inclosure 1 in No. 14.
Georgetown, Sheriff's Office, March 1, 1878. I HAVE the honour to submit my report of a visit of inspection which I paid to the Penal Settlement on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of last month.
2. The contract steamer "Eliza," in which I left town at 7.15 A.M., did not reach the Settlement till 7.0 P.M., after dark, and then more by the help of the flood tide than of steam. I merely mention this, as her late arrival gave rise to some inconvenience in landing the nine convicts who were sent up, and in providing accommodation for the police escort in charge of them. As six to eight hours are quite sufficient to perform the passage, perhaps the contractors might be called upon to improve their service in this respect.
3. The number of convicts in the Settlement on the 24th February was 201, and of in the Settlement. prisoners from the Georgetown Gaol 24; this number was increased on the arrival of the steamer by nine convicts sent up, and reduced on the 26th by the release of one convict and eight prisoners, thus leaving at date in the prison 209 convicts and 16 prisoners.
Their races and employment.
Medical Report
Farm and provision felds.
Buildings, work- shops, &c.
New prison.
Quarries. Hospital. Chapel.
Prison books and journals.
Mark system.
Prisoners in cells. Case of Andries.
4. A return' (A) which the superintendent was good enough to give me at my request, and which I append, shows the number, the native countries, and the employment of the convicts and prisoners on the 24th February. I beg leave also to submit the medical officer's report for the 26th (B), from which it appears that of the nine patients in hospital on that day, no fewer than five were suffering from what I believe are known as diseases of the respiratory organs.
5. On the morning of the 25th, I accompanied the superintendent over the farm and provision fields. The former appears to be useful as affording the officers and their families an opportunity of purchasing fresh meat and milk which they could not other- wise obtain, while the provision fields furnish a large supply of roots and vegetables for feeding the convicts. And, as I understand, that none but men incapable of very hard labour are employed in their tillage, the system is no doubt profitable to the prison. I may be permitted to observe that the Settlement lands are by no means generally fertile, and it is only by good farming and high manuring that crops of even sweet potatoes and cassava are obtained from them. Mr. Sealy's experiments in growing plaintains on land reclaimed from the forest, and in sowing rice in the trenches and water courses, which he irrigates with liquid manure, are highly successful.
6. My inspection of the prisons, workshops, and other buildings was very satisfac tory; they appeared clean and well kept, and the men employed in the blacksmith's, tin- smith's, carpenter's, and tailor's shops were steadily at work. A party of convicts was also engaged in dressing stones for the foundation pillars of the new wooden prison, and another in building the pillars and dwarf walls; the new prison itself was being framed of wood by free carpenters, and the superintendent hoped to have the frame erected in the course of three or four weeks. The quarries were also in full work, and a large quantity of stone was waiting for shipment to Georgetown. I found the hospital clean and roomy, and the dispensary neatly kept. As his Excellency is aware the prison chapel is under the infirmary, and Mr. Sealy has recently added a chancel to it, and otherwise improved it, I cannot, however, include in these improvements the application of a room under the chancel to the purposes of a "dead house," so that the communion table stands immedi- ately over the dissecting table; the association was not pleasant, and I do not think the chaplain liked the arrangement. I visited the store rooms and kitchens and found them all neatly arranged.
7. Before inspecting the buildings, I went over the prison books, and signed the Superintendent's and Chaplain's Journals; I regretted to find entries in the latter to which I will refer more fully further on. My short stay at the prison did not give me time to examine the mark books, as I could have wished. The awarding and recording the marks gained by the convicts are amongst the most responsible duties of an officer, and the Superintendent, if I may form an opinion from the conversation I had with him on the subject, does all he can to carry out the system fairly and efficiently, and to check the warders in awarding marks indiscriminately to the idle and the industrious,
8. When visiting the prisoners confined in cells, I met with one case deserving of early attention; it is that of convict Andries, a native of Surinam. He was sent to the Settlement under a sentence of five years' penal servitude for larceny. He escaped on the 9th July, 1874, and was recaptured on the fil October the same year. While at large, he committed a robbery in Leguan, where he was arrested and referred by Mr. Bury, S.J.P., for trial before the Supreme Criminal Court now in session at Essequebo, and to which Court he was also referred by Mr:-Acting Stipendiary Magistrate Straker, for the
By some oversight somewhere, no indictment in either escape.
85
case has been served on Andries, though a Marshal visited the Settlement to serve subpoenas on the witnesses in the escape case, and he has, consequently, not been sent down to Suddie this Session, but still remains in separate confinement awaiting his trial. I have ventured to point out to the Superintendent that, though this convict is under reference for trial, yet his original sentence is still running, and under that he might be worked with such precautions as would prevent another escape on his part, and which appeared to me a better course than keeping him in separate confinement,
as if he were an unconvicted prisoner awaiting trial. Another convict I found in cells Case of Longford was 294, Longford, a young man who was either nearly blind or cleverly malingering. (294). I took an opportunity of drawing the Surgeon's special attention to him.
9. The important subjects of preventing communication between the convicts Loading boats. employed in loading the stone boats and the crews of the stone boats, and that of carrying out the probation system, both engaged the attention of the Superintendent and myself. Mr. Sealy appears to deal with the former as effectually as he can by mostly employing coolies and Chinese in the work, who are not likely to have friends outside.
10. With reference to the probation system, the Superintendent, as I understood Probation system. him, does not very strictly observe the Rules, which direct that all convicts shall undergo a certain term of probation in separate confinement (see Rule 1, section xv, page 20 of Regulations, and paragraph 1 of the Mark System), If he finds a good man in this stage of his sentence, whose services he requires, he takes him out of his cell and employs him outside on the works." It may be that the advantages supposed to be afforded to the convict by a period of seclusion in the earliest stage of his imprisonment, and which forms so important an element of penal discipline in England, are lost on the races which chiefly compose our criminal classes, yet the system has not been introduced here except after due consideration and, I venture to submit, had best be set aside only by a formal rescinding of the rules referred to.
11. The dietary scale of the prison appears to be unnecessarily liberal, and the Dietary scale. Superintendent concurs with me in thinking that it might be advantageously recon- sidered.
12. Before quitting the Settlement, I saw the convicts on parade, and received Applications and the applications and complaints of those who wished to make any; these, fifteen in complaints from number.
convicts.
13. I also had an opportunity of seeing the warders and guards; the latter, eleven Warders and in number, were not drilled in any way, nor trained to the use of their arms, and they guards. left the impression on my mind of being but an indifferent substitute for the detachment of armed police from Georgetown, which, until recently, did duty at the Settlement under a system of frequent reliefs.
14. I had no opportunity of seeing, the convicts in school, but learnt from Mr. Sealy The school. that their school instruction was reduced to an hour in the week. This, I think, is to be regretted, and the more so, as by paragraph 27 of the Mark System, the gratuity granted to a convict is forfeited if he cannot read and write on emerging from his third class. Perhaps, if the Chaplain's parochial duties prevent his more frequent attention to the school, the services of a school-master warder might be secured.
tendent and Acting
15. The Governor having desired me, during my visit to the Settlement, to inquire Inquiry into into a misunderstanding which had arisen between Mr. Sealy and the Acting-Assistant misunderstandings Superintendent, Mr. Racker-the escape of a prisoner and the loss of a cell key, I took between Superin an opportunity of seeing all the officers who could give any evidence or information in Assistant these several matters; none of them, however, had anything to add to the statements Superintendent. which they had made to the Superintendent, and which had been taken down in writing and submitted to his Excellency,
After a careful perusal of these, and judging from what I saw of the officers, I can come to no other conclusion than that, with every desire to do all that he is directed, the Acting-Assistant Superintendent possesses no aptitude whatever for the office be now temporarily fills. He was aware that the head of the prison was out with twenty-four convicts till nearly 7 o'clock in the evening, and very little consideration should have told him that his duty was to have met the Superintendent on his return, and to have relieved him of his working party, and seen to their safe disposal for the night, although there was no precise rule to that effect; nor on the occasion of the escape of a convict did Mr. Racker show that alacrity which a more experienced prison officer would have done. The convict No. 278, James Trellis, appears to have escaped entirely through the negligence Escape of conviet. of sub-warders Holligan and Hubbard, and these officers have been lightly dealt with by being fined 6 dollars each. No. 278 was recaptured at Know Island, within the boundaries of the Settlement, twelve days after his escape. His statement is, that he
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