CONVICT LABOR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4574, 17 November 1875, Page 3

CONVICT LABOR.

In view of the location of a central penal establishment at Taranaki and the employment of the convicts npon the harbor works there, the following description, from the “Sunday Magazine,” of convicts at work at Chatham, will be read with interest The speciality of Chatham is that over twelve hundred men are daily at work in the open within an area of twenty acres or so, and are so carefully supervised that e3Ca P“J^ e seldom attempted, and are hardly ever ™ccessful. A very natural question, therefore on the reader’s partis, how is -ccomplished ? Well, alongside of each gang warder or warders —a warder these” again is a district warder, “ 5 -Lo-ts for his district as the others do t Many of these warders are trained men who have been in the army, and each is armed with a sword and a baton They are as fine and intelligent-looking a body of men as you could wish to see. But the responsibility was too., great for them alone; and therefore you find the civil guard, who are each armed with a rifle and a bayonet, posted at commanding points all round the semicircle, so that the whole field is, so to say, under the point of the sword, in quite another sense surely than was Mahomet’s paradise. There are some two hundred warders, and between fifty and sixty of a civil guard at Chatham. But we must retrace our steps a little to see “ the march in,” for it is now the dinner hour, We take our stand in the main exercismgeround, and soon the tramp of many feet is heard. The arrangement by parties or gangs necessitates a rough sort of classification determined by the kind of work a man is likely to do best, so that we find the gangs run into certain types. Here is a party that has a smart, well-set-up, skilled look, and doubtless is entrusted with superior work ; following it again, a large brotherhood of low criminal times, whom drill has failed to relieve of a wild and undisciplined expression. And see there, bringing: up the rear, is a man with one leg of trousers yellow and inirons. He is one of the few who have attempted escape, and has thus only added to his period of confinement, besideshaving undergone several days of bread and water, and got on these heavy irons, which are never removed night nor day for three or six months. It is not generally the old gaol-birds who attempt to escape. They know too well how slight is the chance, how great the risk ; ana they generally apply themselves assiduously to work so as to reduce their time to the utmost —a point on which the chaplain would not express himself with so much enthusiasm as the other officers. The parties come m led and followed by a warder, one of whom reports to the governor on duty the number of his partv and the number of his men. bo they pass on, Ming round to right or left according as they belong to this or that corridor/ In the rear of that gang, see, there is a man whose dress on one side is all black, and yonder is another in this gang following who is similarly clad. These men have assaulted their warders, and this dress is part of their punishment. Another gang still, showing two or three in_ strong canvas dresses. Remarking on it, you are told that these are men who have several times torn up their clothes in their cells, it may be with intent to commit suicide, and these dresses are provided to defeat that propensity. In the rear of another gang are two or three cripples—men who have thrown themselves under waggons, or some other form of self-mutilation; for all risks are run and all tricks tried to get rid of the regular labor,' hatred of which has been the mam atreut in bringing not a few of these men to this. It is difficult to see what these disfigured creatures can do in this kind of work, but they have to struggle on, for it is one of the most strictly observed maxims here that “if a man will not work, neither shall he eat. But now, all the men being in, they are about to be searched. This is done by the warder, after they have been made to “ open out,” bringing his bands down over their dress at every part. This process is going on in tbe various exercising grounds at one time, and when finished the men are marched to their cells, and all the doors are locked. To make assurance doubly sure, a muster is taken by each .prisoner pufcinner out his scrubbing-brush beneath his cell door. Meanwhile the civil guard march into the yard, and have their arms duly inspected. Then the dinner is served indoors.