A STRAY CONVICT DOCUMENT.

Inangahua Times, Volume IV, Issue 3, 16 April 1877, Page 2

A STRAY CONVICT DOCUMENT.

(timabu hebald apbil 2.) The explanation of tbe apparent mjs* tery connected with the finding on the Timaru beach of a Tasmania^ official document over thirty years old, turns cut after all to be simple enough. It seems that on tbe abolition of the system of transportation, and the subsequent breaking up of the convict establishments, tbe Government of Tasmania sold an immense mass of records at a nominal price for waste paper. They took care, however, to dispose of them outside the colony, so that their contents should not be made use of for malicious or other improper purposes, and we believe the whole of them became the property of a merchant in Victoria. From him a great portion of them subsequently passed into the hands of a manufacturer of jams on a large scale, who has used them ever since for packing the tins of his wares in their cases. This jam-maker, as it happens has several customers at Timaru; and there can be little doubt that the Fingal charge-sheet which we described a day or two since, found its way hither in a consignment of preserves. We are informed that many similar documents have from time to time turned up under the same circumstances, and in some instances have been kept as curiosities. The. only really mysterious part of the whole busines.9, therefore, is the aqtion of the Tasmania n Government at tbe outset, in selling the official records If their desire was that the narratives of crime and suffering, which; they con* tamed should be obliterated, they certainly went a very roundabout way to. effect that object. The shortest and safest plan, surely, would have been to reduce the papers to ashes. It is hardly to be supposed that the money to.be obtained by the sale of the waste paper was any object with the authorities, for even if they had twenty tons to dispose of-r which is improbable — the price could not well have amounted to £100. As, moreover, a great many of the Tasmpnian convicts, or their posterity, settled in Victoria and the neighboring colonies these documents might, qfter all, be employed effectively by malevolent people. It would, nojt be very pleasant to a wealthy and respected member of the Australian aristocracy to be reminded on official evidence, that his grandfather was formerly flogged at Fingal, or his grandmother was put. in irons at Ma^quarie Island.