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may be unable to walk. This arrangement has been found to answer remarkably well, both as regards discipline and sanitation.

19. In deference to your Lordship's opinion that this Slave Island Prison was to a certain extent overcrowded, immediate steps were taken to relieve it of some of its inmates by converting the remaining portion of the old Commissariat Stere adjoining the Breakwater Prison into a ward to hold 60 prisoners. The ward has similar lateral and overhead ventilation to the portion already occupied, and separate night-privies are being constructed for it, opening directly into the outer air. I trust that this measure will meet with your Lordship's approbation. It was forced upon me by the fact of all the other Houses of Detention in the Island being at present full, with the exception of that at Negombo, which is reserved to meet emergencies.

20. I will not conceal from your Lordship the fact that the Slave Island Gaol has been a subject of much anxiety to me for the past two months, owing to its immediate propinquity to a crowded bazaar where cholera has been rife during that period, no less than 192 cases and 133 deaths having occurred from the disease in this locality; while the total number of cases in Colombo have been 531, of which 307 have proved fatal.

21. Nine cases of cholera occurred in the gaols and gaol hospital of Colombo, of which three proved fatal; but so effectual have the measures proved which were promptly taken to arrest the disease, that no fresh case has occurred among the prisoners since the 19th February until the 24th ultimo, when one case occurred in hospital, though it is only within the last few days that an abatement in the number of cases has shown itself among the general population. According to the last Report which has reached me, 37 only were on the sick list among the prisoners, 1,099 in all, detained in the several Colombo gaols. In view of the unhealthiness of the season, such a result is eminently satisfactory.

22. I trust that I have said enough to convince your Lordship that, as respects sanitation, every effort has been made by this Government to place the four Colombo gaols in a state of perfect health and efficiency. Of the measures suggested for the for the improvement of the Breakwater Gaol, one has been found impracticable, owing to structural difficulties, one is being carried out; all the others had been anticipated. The two suggestions for altering the privies and reducing the numbers in Slave Island Gaol are also being given effect to. The healthy state of this prison throughout the epidemic which has prevailed outside its walls, affords a stronger proof of its thorough sanitary condition than any verbal testimony on my part, and reflects the greatest credit on Captain Thompson, the recently-appointed Superintendent of Welikada under whose general supervision all the Colombo prisons are now included, and of whose successful endeavours to improve their condition I cannot speak too highly.

23. There remains the question of Prison Discipline, in special reference to the separate system. On this point I have, I would assure your Lordship, no desire to thwart or oppose the policy of the Imperial Government-that the separate system is to become of universal adoption in the gaols of this Island. The question really at issue is one of urgency, ie, to what extent the operation of conversion of our gaols is to have preference over other large works of public utility, the necessity for which is daily forcing itself upon the consideration of this Government.

24. I would, indeed, strongly deprecate the assumption that the punishment of Europeans and natives should be governed by precisely similar considerations in either a disciplinary or a deterrent point of view.

25. In the case of the European, the separate system is necessary on account of the vices prevalent among bad characters when confined in association wards. Those vices are, I believe, absolutely unknown among the native occupants of the Ceylon gaols. The only case brought under my notice since I have been Governor was that of a warder who was said to have committed the offence to which I allude. This was in a cell with a prisoner. But the case entirely broke down, and was considered by the judge who tried it to be a conspiracy to get rid of a harsh officer. The well-lighted wards continually patrolled during the night render impossible the perpetration of this vice.

26. In the case of an European, the monotony and fruitlessness of his labour enter largely into the deterrent effect looked for from, for example, shot drill; the Oriental cares little that his labour is useless, and prefers it if it is monotonous. The labour which is most irksome to him is anything which is varied, and, above all things, which has to be performed with instruments to which he is not accustomed,

27. As evidencing the dogged conservatism of this class, I would instance the case of the railway contractors on the Colombo Kandy Railway, who made continued but fruitless endeavours to induce their labourers to use wheelbarrows instead of carrying the materials in baskets on their heads; these efforts had to be abandoned in the end, as when

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the baskets were taken away no persuasion could induce them to refrain from carrying the wheelbarrows on their heads also.

28. The importance, therefore, of employing native prisoners on such works as the Colombo breakwater is two fold: first, in the civilizing and educational aspect of accus- toming them to work with European appliances; and, secondly, in the work being thoroughly irksome and unpalatable to them. I am assured that it is no uncommon thing for prisoners to entreat to be sent back from the Breakwater works and association to shot drill and the separate system at Welikada.

29. It is for the above reasons that I venture to solicit your Lordship's re-considera- tion of the question of introducing the cellular system into the Slave Island Gaol. It is impossible, on sanitary grounds, to do so in the manner suggested in the Memorandum transmitted to me. The only feasible mode of converting the gaol into cells would so reduce the accommodation as almost necessarily to involve the abandonment of this gaol, which cannot be extended without spoiling a very fine esplanade which is one of the "lungs" of the town of Colombo.

30. And although Mr. Kyle, the Breakwater engineer, is unable at present to inform me of the precise number of prisoners for whom he will have steady employment on the Breakwater during its construction, I very much fear that any such diminution in the accommodation at Slave Island, which would reduce the strength of the two prisons materially below 400, would necessitate the abandonment of the system of constructing the Breakwater with prison labour, as I need hardly point out that the labour so employed must be wholly convict or wholly free. To mix the two is out of the question.

31. And while I have, as I trust, satisfied your Lordship that such employment of these prisoners is advisable on grounds of sanitation and discipline, I may be permitted to add that it is also highly beneficial from an economical point of view, the price paid for the hire of a convict being sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining and guarding him, while it is also found that at this rate the work is performed far more cheaply with prison than it could be with free labour.

32. I may mention that having been over the Breakwater works a few mornings ago, and having remarked the muscular looks of the prisoners, I was informed by Mr. Kyle that, as a rule, the appearance, size, and weight of the men after a month's work offer a marked contrast to what they were on their arrival. They enter the prison in the weakest possible condition. They are now doing as good work per diem as an ordinary English navvy at 28. 6d. a-day." These are the words used by Mr. Kyle.

33. I have to apologise for perhaps wearying your Lordship with a despatch of this length, on only a portion of the subject; but I have been anxious to show that the health and reformation of its prisoners are matters which do not escape the serious attention of this Government, and that if in some respects the theories of European discipline have not been as yet fully carried into execution in their entirety, it has not been merely upon the lower considerations of a short-sighted expediency and economy.

34 Trusting that, in this respect at any rate, the foregoing explanations will be deemed satisfactory.

Sir,

I have, &c.

(Signed)

W. H. GREGORY.

Inclosure 1 in No. 49.

Principal Civil Medical Officer's Office, Colombo,

April 27, 1875.

HAVING called for a report from the Medical Officer in charge of the Convict Hospital, I have now the honour to forward it together with a Return showing the number of admissions into hospital from the cellular division of Welikada and from the association wards of the same prison--Slave Island and the Fort.

The Return speaks for itself. I quite agree with the opinion expressed by the medical officer of the gaol. I consider the cellular arrangement quite inapplicable to the prisons of this Island; and there is little doubt if the plan is carried out, we may expect a large increase in our number of sick. I would most strongly urge on the authorities the necessity of abandoning the idea of converting the well-ventilated healthy association prison of Slave Island into a cellular one.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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