Nos.
No. of Offences.
Sentence.
13
11
14
15
Death.
26
Death commuted.
Do.
Do.
16
Do.
17
13
7 years.
18
6 times tried
in courts of
18 months.
7 years.
3 years.
justice;
18 offences
tried.
summarily
19
20
17
21
22
23
14
225
24
33
Death.
2 years.
To be hanged.
Do.
Do.
Remarks.
Gaol report, insubordinate and trea- cherous; a most refractory pri-
soner.
A most revolting case; struck off books of Probation Department.
Ditto.
Passed one period of transportation. and became free; again tried in 1844, and sentenced to death.
Notorious bushranger.
Commuted to transportation for life.
Ditto.
Ditto.
Transportation for life.
Prisoner since 1833.
Do.
Do.
Do.
25
26
37
14 years.
3 years.
portation for life.
.
27
28
13
29
10
30
31
44
.
To be hanged; commuted to trans-
Do. Twice sentenced to death.
Death (in England) commuted to transportation for life. Again transportation for life in Van Diemen's Land.
Transportation for life.
Death.
7 years in England, 1827.) Death, Van Diemen's Land, 1832. Do.
Do.
32
34
33
34
35
35
•
34
Death commuted,
Original sentence, life. Death in New South Wales. Do. in Van Diemen's Land.
Death in New South Wales.
Do. in Van Diemen's Land.
To be hanged.
1844.
A very bad case.
Bushranger.
Prisoner since 1831.
Many summary convictions.
Wretched character. Robbery with
violence, &c.
A most desperate character; several
times on Norfolk Island.
Tried and convicted on two separate
charges.
27
I may permitted to add the following extract from an official letter addressed by me to the Colonial Secretary on this subject :-
→
"It will be a hopeless work, if such a state of things be permitted to continue. Every fresh batch of English prisoners will in succession be landed in a vitiated moral atmosphere, and their degradation will increase as a matter of course."
By Clause 35 of the Printed Regulations, it would appear that the old and new convicts are distinguished by their dress, the old being dressed in yellow, the new in grey clothing;" and that there can be little or no communication between them ;-" the two classes, moreover, being entirely separated:" and from clause 46, a distinct classification would be inferred.
"No. 46. The second convicts will be divided into three classes, to be called,--
The Advanced Class.
The Ordinary Class.
The Retarded or Degraded Class."
All this looks well in print; but unless it has some practical enforce- ment, your Lordship will excuse me, if I apply to it an expressive word I have heard in both hemispheres, it is a sad humbug. There is absolutely no classification of the prisoners; they are all subjected to the same Pro- crustean process—the same bed for all. You may in Downing Street con- ceive that such distinct regulations are really carried out; and, with a happy consciousness that you at least have done your duty, you may silence objectors by referring them to the "Standing Regulations." Very unwillingly do I furnish your Lordship with a less pleasing, though truer, view of the case. I have sat down a hundred times to my present ungra- cious task, and have as often risen from itin disgust. Forgive me, my Lord, if I at length feel that I ought not to remain silent. I should justly be blamed by others, and worse than all, I should be tormented by self- reproach, if I were any longer to shrink from the task. From the time the convict leaves England, there is absolutely no classification whatever. After six months' confinement in Millbank Prison, in a solitary cell, he is conveyed to the transport ship, where he is at once restored to the society of others in like condemnation. The transition is far too sudden. Delighted to find their tongues no longer under restraint, many of the convicts vie with each other in the use of profane and obscene language, and the indulgence of depraved habits. I have been repeatedly assured by decent men, that any conception of the licentious and demoniacal prac tices in the prison of a convict-ship, especially during the earlier part of the voyage, would fall far short of the hideous reality. No classification is usually attempted; just as they happen to pass over the ship's side, the men are numbered on the back like sheep, and each takes his place in numerical order. The indiscriminate association thus formed, is not only a wanton and painful infliction upon the better disposed, but it is calcu lated to make the comparatively good irreclaimably wicked. There are occasional exceptions I believe, and honourable ones; but commonly no- thing in the shape of classification is attempted in this part of the prisoner's progress. The voyage terminated, the convict arrives at Norfolk Island, where the defect works still greater evils. Here there is, as I have shown, a heterogeneous mass of moral polution painful to contemp- late. That criminals of every grade would be found in a place set apart for the reception of the prisoners of a great empire might be expected; but the people of England will nevetheless be astonished to learn that offenders for the first time.— suffering often for offences of a comparatively venial character,-nay, sometimes undeservedly suffering, are imme- diately on their disembarkation, thrust among the veriest monsters of crime, from the cold-blooded murderer trebly convicted, to the wretch whose enormity Blackstone characterizes as “inter Christianos non nomi- nandum," without a possibility of escaping from the pestilential mass, for the work of contamination has infected, far and wide, the whole body. And these men are professedly placed under a system of probation! and
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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C.O.:
Reference --
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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