When it had been decided between the mother country and the colony that transportation to Van Diemen’s Land should be at an end, the colonial Houses of Parliament petitioned the Queen that the name might be changed,—so that the convict flavour and the convict odour attached to the old sound might be banished; and the Queen of course assented. Hence has sprung in the catalogue of our colonies the name of Tasmania, as pretty as any that we have, but to my ears somewhat fantastic…
At the extreme south-west of the island,—in a peninsula called by the name of Tasman, which is all but an island,—is maintained a station called Port Arthur, and there are at present kept as many as remain of the old English exiles…
I visited Port Arthur, and was troubled by many reflections as to the future destiny of so remarkable a place. It is in a direct line not, I believe, above sixty miles from Hobart Town, but it can hardly be reached directly. The way to it is by water, and as there is no traffic to or from the place other than what is carried on by the government for the supply of the establishment, a sailing schooner is sufficient,—and indeed more than sufficiently expensive. In this schooner I was taken under the kind guidance of the premier and attorney-general of the island, who were called upon in the performance of their duties to inspect the place and hear complaints,—if complaints there were…
On the following day we inspected the prisons, and poor-house and lunatic asylum and farm attached to the prisons;—for there is a farm of well-cleared land,—seventy or eighty acres under tillage, if I remember rightly; and there is a railway for bringing down timber and firewood. The whole was in admirable order, and gave at first sight the idea of an industrial establishment conducted on excellent commercial principles. The men made their own shoes and clothes and cheeses, and fed their own pigs, and milked their own cows, and killed their own beef and mutton. There seemed to be no reason why they should not sell their surplus produce and turn in a revenue for the colony. But prisons never do turn in a revenue, and this certainly was no exception to the rule…
The interest of such an establishment as this of course lies very much in the personal demeanour, in the words, and appearance of the prisoners. A man who has been all his life fighting against law, who has been always controlled but never tamed by law, is interesting, though inconvenient,—as is a tiger. There were some dozen or fifteen men,—perhaps more,—whom we found inhabiting separate cells, and who were actually imprisoned. These were the heroes of the place. There was an Irishman with one eye, named Doherty, who told us that for forty-two years he had never been a free man for an hour. He had been transported for mutiny when hardly more than a boy,—for he had enlisted as a boy,—and had since that time received nearly 3,000 lashes! In appearance he was a large man and still powerful,—well to look at in spite of his eye, lost as he told us through the misery of prison life. But he said that he was broken at last. If they would only treat him kindly, he would be as a lamb. But within the last few weeks he had escaped with three others, and had been brought back almost starved to death. The record of his prison life was frightful. He had been always escaping, always rebelling, always fighting against authority,—and always being flogged. There had been a whole life of torment such as this; forty-two years of it; and there he stood, speaking softly, arguing his case well, and pleading while the tears ran down his face for some kindness, for some mercy in his old age. ‘I have tried to escape;—always to escape,’ he said,—‘as a bird does out of a cage. Is that unnatural;—is that a great crime?’ The man’s first offence, that of mutiny, is not one at which the mind revolts. I did feel for him, and when he spoke of himself as a caged bird, I should have liked to take him out into the world, and have given him a month of comfort. He would probably, however, have knocked my brains out on the first opportunity. I was assured that he was thoroughly bad, irredeemable, not to be reached by any kindness, a beast of prey, whose hand was against every honest man, and against whom it was necessary that every honest man should raise his hand. Yet he talked so gently and so well, and argued his own case with such winning words! He was writing in a book when we entered his cell, and was engaged on some speculation as to the tonnage of vessels. ‘Just scribbling, sir,’ he said, ‘to while away the hours’…
But of all the men the most singular in his fate was another Irishman, one Barron, who lived in a little island all alone; and of all the modes of life into which such a man might fall, surely his was the most wonderful. To the extent of the island he was no prisoner at all, but might wander whither he liked, might go to bed when he pleased, and get up when he pleased, might bathe and catch fish, or cultivate his little flower-garden,—and was in very truth monarch of all he surveyed. Twice a week his rations were brought to him, and in his disposal of them no one interfered with him. But he surveyed nothing but graves. All who died at Port Arthur, whether convicts or free, are buried there, and he has the task of burying them. He digs his graves, not fitfully and by hurried task-work, but with thoughtful precision,—having one always made for a Roman Catholic, and one for a Protestant inmate. In this regularity he was indeed acting against orders,—as there was some prejudice against these ready-made graves; but he went on with his work, and was too valuable in his vocation to incur serious interference. We talked with him for half an hour, and found him to be a sober, thoughtful, suspicious man, quite alive to the material inconveniences of his position, but not in the least afflicted by ghostly fear or sensational tremors. He smiled when we asked whether the graves awed him,—but he shook his head when it was suggested to him that he might grow a few cabbages for his own use. He could eat nothing that grew from such soil. The flowers were very well, but a garden among graves was no garden for vegetables. He had been there for ten years, digging all the graves in absolute solitude without being ill a day. I asked him whether he was happy. No, he was not happy. He wanted to get away and work his passage to America, and begin life afresh, though he was sixty years old. He preferred digging graves and solitude in the island, to the ordinary life of Port Arthur; he desired to remain in the island as long as he was a convict; but he was of opinion that ten years of such work ought to have earned him his freedom. Why he was retained I forget. If I remember rightly, there had been no charge against him during the ten years. ‘You have no troubles here,’ I said. ‘I have great troubles,’ he replied, ‘when I walk about, thinking of my sins.’ There was no hypocrisy about him, nor did he in any way cringe to us. On the contrary, he was quiet, unobtrusive, and moody. There he is still, living among the graves;—still dreaming of some future career in life, when, at last, they who have power over him shall let him go.
Of the able-bodied men the greatest number are at work about the farm, or on the land, or cutting timber, and seem to be subject to no closer surveillance than are ordinary labourers. There is nothing to prevent their escape,—except the fact that they must starve in the bush if they do escape. There is plenty of room for them to starve in the bush even on Tasman’s peninsula. Then when they have starved till they can starve no longer, they go back to the damnable torment of a solitary cell. None but spirits so indomitable as that of the man Doherty will dare to repeat the agonies of escape above once or twice…
In the evening and far on into the night the premier was engaged in listening to the complaints of convicts. Any man who had anything to say was allowed to say it into the ears of the first minister of the Crown,—but all of course said uselessly. The complaints of prisoners against their gaolers can hardly be efficacious. So our visit to Port Arthur came to an end, and we went back on the next day to Hobart Town.
The establishment itself has the appearance of a large, well-built, clean village, with various factories, breweries, and the like. There is the church, as I have said, and there are houses enough, both for gentle and simple, to take away the appearance of a prison. The lunatic asylum and that for paupers have no appearance of prisons. Indeed the penitentiary itself, where the working convicts sleep and live, and have their library and their plays and their baths, is not prison-like. There is a long street, with various little nooks and corners, as are to be found in all villages,—and in one of them the cottage in which Smith O’Brien lived as a convict. The place is alive, and the eye soon becomes used to the strange convict garments, consisting of jackets and trousers, of which one side is yellow and the other brown. If it were to be continued, I should be tempted to speak loudly in praise of the management of the establishment. But it is doomed to go, and, as such is the case, one is disposed to doubt the use of increased expenditure.
All those whom I questioned on the subject in Tasmania agreed that Port Arthur must be abandoned in a few years, and that then the remaining convicts must be removed to the neighbourhood of Hobart Town. If this be done there can hardly, I think, be any other fate for the buildings than that they shall stand till they fall. They will fall into the dust, and men will make unfrequent excursions to visit the strange ruins.