Page 596 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

dormitories like whipped hounds to kennel. The gaols and
solitary (!) cells are crowded with prisoners, and each day
sees fresh sentences for fresh crimes. It is crime here to do
anything but live.
The method by which Captain Frere has brought about
this repose of desolation is characteristic of him. He sets
every man as a spy upon his neighbour, awes the more
daring into obedience by the display of a ruffianism more
outrageous than their own, and, raising the worst scoun-
drels in the place to office, compels them to find ‘cases’ for
punishment. Perfidy is rewarded. It has been made part of
a convict-policeman’s duty to search a fellow-prisoner any-
where and at any time. This searching is often conducted
in a wantonly rough and disgusting manner; and if resis-
tance be offered, the man resisting can be knocked down
by a blow from the searcher’s bludgeon. Inquisitorial vigi-
lance and indiscriminating harshness prevail everywhere,
and the lives of hundreds of prisoners are reduced to a con-
tinual agony of terror and self-loathing.
‘It is impossible, Captain Frere,’ said I one day, during the
initiation of this system, ‘to think that these villains whom
you have made constables will do their duty.’
He replied, ‘They must do their duty. If they are indul-
gent to the prisoners, they know I shall flog ‘em. If they do
what I tell ‘em, they’ll make themselves so hated that they’d
have their own father up to the triangles to save themselves
being sent back to the ranks.’
‘You treat them then like slave-keepers of a wild beast
den. They must flog the animals to avoid being flogged