PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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TITULC.O.885
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3 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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As to the question where the responsibility should be placed for the fatal conse- quences of abuses and neglects so long continued, I should have conceived that no mere official censure could add to the regret which any one must feel if he were conscious of having had it in his power to avert such consequences and had neglected the means at his disposal. But here I am met by the extraordinary fact that for two years and a half these conséquences were allowed to take their course without apparently awakening any sense of their importance in those who were in immediate contact with them. Dr. Coghill's report for 1870, containing the representations I have quoted, appears to have been addressed to the Inspecting Medical Officer, and he asserts that he repeatedly called the Medical Officer's attention to the overcrowding. I do not agree with Dr. Watt that the medical authorities are solely responsible for all defects, but still less can I accept the disavowal of responsibility by Dr. Charsley, implied in his assertion that "the placing three or more prisoners into one cell is the act solely of the superintendent," and that "the Medical Officer is not consulted in the matter, nor does he necessarily become acquainted with it."
By the 4th, 9th, and 15th of the Rules and Regulations touching the duties of Medical Offers attached to Ceylon gaols, made by the Governor and Executive Council on the 28th April, 1868, the Medical Officer “is daily to visit all prisoners under discipli- nary or rigorous punishment," and he is to keep a journal for the information of the principal Civil Medical Officers and of others, in which he is to enter any remarks in connection with the performance of his duty, which duty, by Rule 1, "embraces the con- sideration of every matter connected with the health of the prisoners."
and in general everything connected " with the hygiene of the gaol and its inmates.”
But without any rules at all, when it was known to the principal medical officer that a practice existed which ought not to be tolerated, and that it had been followed by suffering and death, it was not for him to learn from a turnkey, as he states himself to have done in regard to the confinement of three prisoners in one cell, that "it could not be helped," and thereupon "bow to its necessity." It was his plain duty to represent what was taking place to the Governor.
I share the respect with which you and your Executive Council advert to the character and past services of Dr. Charsley, and I do not doubt that his personal efforts in the treatment of the sick, and his anxiety, were such as you and your Council give him credit for, though I think he assumed a serious responsibility in desiring that the Medical Officer of the prison should not be sent for at once when premonitory symptoms of the prevailing malady occurred in the night. The censure passed upon him by the Governor and Council is for his want of energy and resource, and for his omission to apply to the Government for the measures which the exigency demanded, and there can be no question that that censure is deserved.
With regard to the case of Dr. Coghill, there are some considerations which distinguish it from that of Dr. Cbarsley. He can plead that he did undoubtedly make representations of a very urgent nature in his printed Report for 1870, addressed to the Inspecting Medical Officer, and he asserts that his representations to the Medical Department (whether the Inspecting Medical Officer or the Medical Officer of the prison is not distinctly set forth), as to the overcrowding, were repeatedly renewed. But however this may be, there were malpractices which he could either have corrected by his own authority or made the subject of direct representation to the Governor, and it was his duty to represent the overcrowding also to the Governor when he found his represen- tations to the Medical Officers to be unavailing.
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It be said, on behalf of these officers, that they supposed they were not to regard the abusive practices and their consequences as intolerable, because the practices, or some of them, prevailed generally in the gaols of the Colony, or, at all events, in one gaol or another, and that they had been repeatedly, as they certainly had been in 1865, 1866, and 1867, attended by the like consequences,
If so, I can only reply that the state of things so appealed to ought to be regarded by all concerned with the deepest regret. And when I look back to the course of the correspondence on the subject, it is with a disappointment and discouragement which cannot but abate the hopes now held out of improvement in the future.
It is now nearly ten years since the attention of the Governors of Colonies was called by the late Duke of Newcastle to the subject of prisons and prison discipline, in his despatches of August and October, 1863. In January 1865 Mr. Cardwell, stating that he was not informed whether the Duke's despatches and their inclosures had obtained the attention which it was hoped that their importance would command, sent out a series of interrogatories designed to elicit information as to the actual state of the prisons and the improvements required. On the 18th January, 1867, the Duke of Buckingham furnished
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the Governors with the Prison Digest, containing an exposition of the actual state of the prisons, and with it a compendium of the principal conclusions from the experience of this country, arrived at through long and laborious inquiries by Parliamentary Committees and other authorities, as to what was required to place the discipline and arrangements of a prison on a satisfactory footing.
In this Digest were pointed out in detail the evils and abuses existing in the twenty- eight prisorts of Ceylon.
On the 16th August, 1867, Governor Sir II. Robinson reported, as in acccordance with his own, the opinion of an able and zealous Commission to which the subject had been referred, and this opinion was that, with the exception of one gaol, it was impossible to introduce the full system of reforms recommended by the Secretary of State until extensive changes should have been made in the buildings. "But the single exception," the Commissioners observed," is a very important one, for it is the Gaol of Welikada. It will serve as a model prison, and its position as the chief gaol of the Province in which the capital city of the island is situated will make it very important as an example." And accordingly the Governor and Council issued a Code of Regulations for Welikada Gaol, in which it is three times enjoined that every prisoner is to be kept separate from the others at night.
The Duke of Buckingham expressed, on the 20th November, 1867, his approval of the rules for Welikada, his gratification at the appropriation of 72,0001. to the improve- ment of the gaol accommodation in the Colony, and his hope that no further time would be lost in removing the defects pointed out in the Prison Digest, and effecting the thorough reformation which had been shown to be so urgently needed. His Grace said that he should await with much interest an account of the steps that might be taken for these purposes.
Another year passed, and on the 2nd November, 1868, the Governor reported that the rules for Welikada had been extended in January of that year to six other gaols, and in the following August to all the other gaols and lock-ups, so far as practicable,” and that, to remedy the overcrowding in some of the gaols which bad produced unusal sickness and mortality in 1867, "steps were being taken for the construction of the new gaols." The works in progress were specified. But they were merely some repairs and boundary walls for five provincial gaols, to cost in the whole 3,7117. 18s. 5d, out of the two sums amounting in the whole to 72.000), voted by the Legislature, and a sum of 1,3717. 14s,3}d. for alterations and additions to Welikada.
How grievous the overcrowding continued to be at this time is apparent, as well from the comments of the Prisons Commission as from Reports of Captain Fitzmaurice, the Inspector-General of Prisons, appended to the Governor's despatch. One of these Reports, relating to the prison of Hambantota, is in these words: "The number of prisoners was 123, of whom 43 were sick. There is not, in my opinion, accom- modation in the prison for more than about 70. Now they have nearly double that number crowded into it, which. I think, verges upon eruelty. I feel how impossible it is for me to report upon a subject on which I am unable to find words sufficiently to coudemn."
The Prisons Commission on their part had reported on the 20th June. 1868, that nothing had been effected or could be effected in the present buildings as to separation except at Welikada, and recommended that the reformatory measures should be proceeded with, and that in proceeding with them there should be no diminution, relaxation, or delay." And with regard to the Gaol of Hambantota, reported on by Mr. Fitzmaurice, they stated that "in October the number of prisoners was 180, whereas the gaol could properly hold only 68, or an allowance to each man of 500 cubic feet, which itself is an allowance very far below what is considered proper and necessary," and it was to this over- crowding that they attributed the prevalence of dysentery and diarrahœa,
With this sense of the overcrowding and of its consequences, the Commissioners naturally expressed satisfaction at hearing that the Government had directed the building of a new gaol at Hambantota; but this Report is dated 20th June, 1868, aud all that the Governor's despatch of 2nd November of that year states to be in progress is a boundary wall for which materials had been collected at a cost of 8401, 13s. 6d.
The committee make remarks of a similar purport upon other overcrowded prisons, and advert in like manner to the intentions they conceived to be entertained, or the orders given by the Government for the getting rid of the defective prisons and erecting new ones; and Lord Granville, in his two answers to the despatch (dated 29th January, 1869), highly approves the advice given by the Commission, and commends it to the Governor's "most serious consideration;" and whilst he suggests a question whether the effects of overcrowding might not be mitigated upon occasion by the substitution of
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