Chapter XXI: Appendix: VIII

Extract from the _Singapore Free Press_, October, 1884:--

To this day many of the released convicts are living in
Singapore, cart owners, milk sellers, road contractors, and so
on. Many of them are comfortably off, but are growing fewer
year by year, and their places will never be filled by that
class again. The name of Major McNair is a password to their
good feelings, and all their disputes used to go to him as a
matter of course. When the Major wrote the _Sarong and Kris,
Perak and the Malays_, it was remarked by one of the reviewers
that he hoped the Major would some day give an account of the
old jail to the world. It was one of the most remarkable sights
of the place, and no one came from India on a visit in those
days without going over it before he returned. For all sorts of
things, from coir matting and rattan chairs down to waste paper
baskets, every one went to the jail; and the rattan chairs the
Chinese now sell here so largely, were invented in the jail,
beginning with a cumbrous heavy chair, which was the first
pattern, down to the shape we see now.

No doubt the system had its defects, and there was a wide
difference between the jail as it is now, filled with offenders
sentenced in Singapore, and a jail which contained criminals
who came from distant places and did not know the local
language, and had no friends outside the walls to help them to
escape from the island if they succeeded in getting clear of
the jail; but, notwithstanding, it was often a wonder to many
to find so large an establishment of the worst characters of
India kept in check by what was, practically, almost personal
influence alone.