Page 139 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

served standing round the public-house doors, waiting for
the expiration of the hours of public worship, in order to con-
tinue their carousing. As for the condition of the prisoner
population, that, indeed, is indescribable. Notwithstanding
the severe punishment for sly grog-selling, it was carried
on to a large extent. Men and women were found intoxi-
cated together, and a bottle of brandy was considered to be
cheaply bought at the price of twenty lashes. In the facto-
ry—a prison for females—the vilest abuses were committed,
while the infamies current, as matters of course, in chain
gangs and penal settlements, were of too horrible a nature
to be more than hinted at here. All that the vilest and most
bestial of human creatures could invent and practise, was
in this unhappy country invented and practised without re-
straint and without shame.
Seven classes of criminals were established in 1826,
when the new barracks for prisoners at Hobart Town were
finished. The first class were allowed to sleep out of bar-
racks, and to work for themselves on Saturday; the second
had only the last-named indulgence; the third were only
allowed Saturday afternoon; the fourth and fifth were ‘re-
fractory and disorderly characters—to work in irons;’ the
sixth were ‘men of the most degraded and incorrigible
character—to be worked in irons, and kept entirely sepa-
rate from the other prisoners;’ while the seventh were the
refuse of this refuse—the murderers, bandits, and villains,
whom neither chain nor lash could tame. They were regard-
ed as socially dead, and shipped to Hell’s Gates, or Maria
Island. Hells Gates was the most dreaded of all these houses

1 For the Term of His Natural Life