CONVICT LIFE AND LIVING AT PORTLAND.

Southland Times, Volume I, Issue 51, 5 May 1863, Page 2 (Supplement)

CONVICT LIFE AND LIVING AT PORTLAND.

There are always from 1400 to 1600 convicts at Portland, mostly working in gangs by themselves, but now and then in close proximity -io groups of free laborers. You know at once when you are coming upon the ground mostly worked by the former ; on all the steep bpadlands and high commanding bluffs which are being scraped into perpendicular walls for the fort of this Channel Gibraltar, walk the tall figures of warders all around. There is nothing of the listless routine of sentry duty about these men. They carry th-^ir rifles ready, and seem all eyes and ears as they scan the ground beneath them, like eager sportsmen looking for a shot. Passing through two or three lines of such vigilant " look-outs'' is rather impressing, and prepares the visitor to expect such scenes of labor and enforced toil among the convicts as would induce them to run some risk to escape. Nothing of the sort is, however, to be seen as you turn into the old St. Paul's quarries, where some of the blocks rejected by Sir Christopher Wren are still upon the ground. Here, amid a number of old and rusty cranes on the hills overlooking the sea, a large number of convicts are at work in gangs of 25 or 30, each having its own warder, who,

by the way, has fifteen hours' work to j the convict's nine or ten. The prisoners require no pointing out — their dress, their closely shaven aspect, their hard, firm, ruddy, healthy look, like pugilists in condition for a fight, and, above all, their slow, Tazy style of working, or rather moving, which contrasts so strangely with the busy energy and speed of the free workmen near at hand, all show them at a glance to be " penal servitudes," at " hard labor." Here are men of every grade of infamy and crime — men who were once clerks, merchants, and commissioned officers, down to poachers, burglars, murderers, and that worst and most inveterate of all ruffians, who has been inured to every form of punishment known to the law, short of hanging — the true London criminal. Some few are employed in plate-laying, some in blacksmiths' shops, some at masons' or bricklayers' work upon the great fortifications of the Verne ; but the main bulk are kept in the quarries. To nearly all, however, employed, the same remark applies as to light and slothful labors, and nearly all are alike in their vicious and forbidding aspect — their low, narrow, retreating foreheads, keen, restless eyes, and vindictive animal features. This is not the mere effect of prejudice on seeing them as convicts. The type of the criminal head and face is well known in Portlaud and its neighborhood. They may be recognised as a negro would in Boston. Of all the convicts in Portland now, there are not five per cent, whom any man, judging from their mere looks alone, would ever think of trusting in a position requiring the exertion of sense or the forbearance of honesty. Some few among the number in these quarries work in heavy chains, in most quaint dresses of grey and yellow, and grey and black. The former are those who have tried to break away, the latter are ruffians who have used, or from their threats are known to intend, violence to the warders. Both, however, clank about with a defiant swagger, as if their chains were honorable distinctions of their strength and courage, in which light there is but too much reason to believe they are also regarded by many of their fellow prisoners. In these quarries the men work at quarrying and dressing blocks of stone in winter, about eight aud a half hours a day, in summer nine hours, and sometimes a little over. The work, indeed, would be hard labor if fairly done, and there are some few, but very few, who really do work well and as if labor was a relief to them. But the great majority take matters very easily indeed, as may be judged when five convicts kept at their work only quarry about as much stone in a day as two free laborers working for their hire. It is not suggestive of hard work to see a fellow put down a heavy hammer that he ought to be wielding lustily, and stop to swing his arms and clap his hands to "keep himself warm. When this is the " hard labor," we can see at once why convicts do not dread it. When we came to know how they are nurtured and lodged in the prison in order that their strength may be kept up to the required standard for this imaginary hard labor which they ars supposed to perform, we get a real light thrown upon the indifference with which penal servitude in tbis country is regarded, and gain a clue to the reason why it is that so large a proportion of ticket-of-leave men are, to say the least, not unwilling to return to the so-called " penal servitude." Perhaps, while the visitor is regarding this mockery of work, it may begin to rain ; at once the mimic toil ceases, and the convicts are marched off in gangs to sheds erected for the purpose, where they are carefully sheltered from the weather, and can look out with complacency upon the free laborer, who, having himself and his family to keep, must stay and bear whatever weather j Heaven sends, wet or dry, hot or cold. — Daily Telegraph.