GRIM DOCUMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5466, 26 August 1929, Page 3

GRIM DOCUMENT.

THE BAD OLD DAYS IN N.S.W. ADVENTURES OF PENAL EXILE. In these days when penal reform is a much discussed question it is difficult to realise that a little more than sixty years ago such offences as larceny and theft were among the numerous crimes punishable by hanging, and that it was not uncommon for lads of 16 years to suffer the extreme penalty for what would to-day be met by reformative detention in a Borstal Institute. In the earlier part of last century when the transportation system was in operation, many hundreds of men escaped the gallows and with thousands of other offenders were condemned to be sent overseas to spend the rest of their lives in the penal settlements of New South Wales, Van Diemen’s Land and, later, Western Australia. What this meant has been described by many writers in books of which “For the Term of His Natural Life” and “Robbery Under Arms” are perhaps the best-known. It may be doubted, however, whether past literature on the subject has produced anything to equal the stark realism of a remarkable book which has just been published. Edited by the Earl of Birkenhead, it is entitled “The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh, a Penal Exile in Australia, 18251844.” The book records the life of a mildnatured man with, as Lord Birkenhead says, “no worse criminal instinct than those necessary to become a successful ‘thief and burglar.” In a prefatory note the publishers, Jonathan Cape, of London, explain that the story was sent to them by Mr Charles H. Bertie, the well-known librarian of Sydney, who received it from “n man who had inherited it from nis wife’s father, in whose possession it had remained for thirty years.” Mr Bertie had read the original manuscript and was so sure of its importance that he had it typed and sent to London. It has been impossible to identify the squatter or the hero of the tale, say the publishers, although most of the events recorded have been verified. The name, Ralph Rashleigh, is admittedly an alias. It would seem that every name, except those of public persons, which occurs in the narrative has been deliberately altered. The reason for this is, doubtelss, that the book was written and intended for publication. The Punishment of Crime. Rashleigh had the advantage of a decent upbringing, but, out of weakness of character, adopted what seemed the easier life of crime at an early age. Terrible indeed were the “wages of sin” for him. The crime for which he was finally tried was “not a very desperate venture, consisting merely of feloniously entering a private house and robbing the butler’s pantry of the silver. Such, it would be thought in these days, was not a crime for which a man deserved to die by hanging, but this was the sentence first pronounced against Rashleigh. At the sessions at which he was convicted, no fewer than 65 men were sentenced to death for similar crimes Rashleigh’s capital sentence was computed to transportation for life, and the rest of the book is a stark narrative of his ghastly experiences in the penal colony of New South Wales. Shocking Abuses Yet, it is impossible to read the story of Rashleigh without shuddering, not only at the sheer brutality of the whole official system, and the shocking abuses openly and almost universally practised with the sometimes passive, but generally active, sanction of the higher officials. In the prison hulks of England, in the convict ships which carried overseas hardened criminals, petty offenders, and not infrequently innocent men and women wrongfully convicted, in the prisons and penal establishments tof New South Wales, and, as often as not among the settlers (especially those who were themselves ex convicts) the most appalling cruelties and injustices were perpetrated, oftentimes from sheer lust of inflicting tortures upon helpless men. There were many who escaped from event the vigilant custody of those terrible prisons and penal establishments'such as the Emu Plains Agricultural Establishment, and the coal mines and lime kilns of Newcastle. These became the bush rangers who by robbing settlers, and, when the opportunity offered, of exacting revenge upon their former taskmasters. With the Bushrangers. On of the most thrilling, as it is one of the most shocking and terrible parts of this book, is Rashleigh’s account of the adventures of Foxley and his gang of bushrangers. Rashleigh having fled from a tyrannical farmer employer, himself an ex-con-vict, and given himself up to a district constable, was captured by the bushrangers, who, after rescuing Foxley, set fire to the house in which the policeman and his wife and young children were burned to death. For many months Rashleigh was compelled to travel about the country under close guard and witness, the fiendish and bestial atrocities perpetrated by Foxley and his gang, until retribution overtook them. Rashleigh was sentenced to death once more, but his sentence commuted to three years’ labour at the penal settlement of Newcastle. Horrors of the System. The stark horrors of the lives of the men condemned to work in irons in the coal mines and permitted to spend abo v e ground only one day a week, which was chiefly devoted to merciless floggings for alleged “laziness” and other ‘‘offences,” were, however, as nothing to the sadistic cruelties practised on those who for further punishment, were sent to the living death and fiendish tortures of the lime-burners’ gang on the Hunter River. It was small wonder that the brutalised men frequently murdered ’ their brutal taskmasters in order to

secure a trip to Sydney and the hangman’s gallows. Adventures in Wild Life. There came a time when Rashleigh and half-a-dozen others made a thrilling and sensational escape by seizing a boat and putting to sea. They evaded their pursuers and landed far up the east coast of New South W ales. What follows is a narrative of absorbing interest, and a relief from the horrors and bestialities of convict - life. In fights with blacks, and in other ways, all the members of the party perish save Rashleigh. He is captured by natives, the “medicine man” of whom adopts him and by whom he is initiated into certain aboriginal mysteries. For the next four years Rashleigh lives in a state of “contented barbarism.” At length he , Iqaves the tribe and h’s coastal wanderings take him as far as Cape York, near where he finds two white women and a child, sole survivors on board a wrecked ship. Rashleigh rescues them and ultimately they all reach Sydney in a stray trading schooner. The father of the women intercedes in Rashleigh’s behalf with the authorities. The convict is assigned to the old man’s service and works as overseer on the latter’s farm until he receives a conditional pardon. The book is a remarkable one, and it is difficult, when reading it, to accept Lord Birkenhead’s contention that “ there is no just cause to feel shame that such experiences as are here recorded could befall Britishei’S even if it be true, as he holds that in an historical sense “the wisdom and justification of the transportation ; system lay in the incontrovertible fact that it worked well.”