Chapter VI

I PETITION THE HOME SECRETARY--DOCTOR PRONOUNCES ME "QUITE WELL"--"SCHEMERS;" THEIR TREATMENT AND FATE--DEATH-BED SCENES.

About two months after the amputation of my leg, feeling and believing that my health would never be restored in confinement I wrote a petition to the Home Secretary, in the expectation that I would be as mercifully considered as my predecessors in misfortune. While my petition was under consideration I was encouraged in my expectations by the fact that one of my companions who had nothing the matter with him but a dislocated hip joint, was liberated on medical grounds three or four years before his time was up. My hopes were somewhat damped, however, by another circumstance which just then occurred. The prison director arrived on his monthly visit, and on passing through the ward, the medical officer who accompanied him stopped at the foot of my bed and informed him that I was the man whose leg he had amputated, and that I was "quite well now!" The director, seeing me in bed and looking very poorly, and noticing the general stare with which the doctor's remark was received, asked in a somewhat doubtful way, "Is he quite well?" "Oh! yes quite well," the doctor replied; and off they went.

I was sixteen months in hospital after the above remark was made, and I was then unable to get up to have my bed made, nor did I leave my bed during the whole winter and spring that succeeded! I received an answer to my petition, shortly after the visit to which I have referred, in the usual form of an official negative, "Not sufficient grounds." Being now free from acute pain, I conversed freely with my companions, and taught some of them to spell, read, and cypher. After I was able to get out of bed I read aloud for an hour every evening, for the benefit of all the patients. In time I became popular, and intimate with many of them. I wrote letters and petitions for them, encouraged them with good advice, and succeeded in obtaining considerable influence over them.

In return for these trifling services, which also to some extent relieved the monotony of the long period I spent in hospital, they told me their history and experiences. I learnt their slang and thiefology, and as a theorist became tolerably conversant with all the mysteries by which the professional thief and scoundrel preys upon society.

The first of my companions who attracted my attention was a young Scotchman. He appeared to be a very strong hearty fellow, but when he attempted to walk, he was the most pitiable looking cripple imaginable, and excited the sympathy of all who saw him. His sentence was twenty-one years, four of which he had undergone at this time. He had been invalided home from the convict establishment at Bermuda, was shipwrecked off the Isle of Wight on the return voyage, and had been some months in the hospital previous to my arrival. He was in the habit of being carried up and down stairs to exercise on the backs of the nurses, and was getting full diet and porter. About four months after my arrival, he one morning suddenly started out of bed, shouted "Attention," at the top of his voice, in defiance of the prison rules, and ran about the room like a lamplighter, to the utter amazement of all present. This man was what the prisoners term a "schemer," and he was certainly the very best actor of his class I ever met with. It will be acknowledged that he played his part well, when even during the shipwreck he had never made the slightest attempt to move, and kept up the deception for many months in a prison hospital, where the majority of the patients are put down as "schemers" unless they have an outward sore, or some natural malady with palpable external symptoms. When the doctor came his rounds, he could do nothing but stare at the fellow, who started up and told him with a laughing countenance that he had had a dream in the night, about being miraculously cured, and in the morning he found he could walk as well as ever he did. The doctor never opened his lips; the patient was discharged, and although the other patients cried aloud that he ought to be punished, no further notice was taken of the matter.

This "schemer," I learned, had been a great sufferer from pleurisy at Bermuda, and was very weak when he was put on board ship, where he commenced his scheme; and had it not been for new regulations which were then put in force, there is no doubt he would have accomplished his object, which was "Liberation on medical grounds." He had petitioned the Home Secretary shortly before he threw his crutches aside, declaring that he had met with an accident at Bermuda from a stone falling on his back, and so injuring the spine that both his legs were paralysed. He had received a reply to the effect that his petition would be answered so soon as the authorities heard from Bermuda the particulars of the accident, and it was a few days after this that the miraculous visitation took place.

I asked him why he did not wait for the final answer to his petition before exposing his scheme? "Oh," he replied, "I knew very well if they wrote to Bermuda I should get no time off. I met with no accident, although I said so in my petition." "You will be very fortunate," I said, "if you get the customary remission after this affair, I fear they will punish you?" "Look here," said he, "I have another scheme in my head, and you will see I'll not fail this time. I'll get out to Australia, and by the time I arrive I will be due for my liberty." "Well, that will certainly be better for you than being kept eight or nine years longer in prison here; but how are you to manage to get abroad unless the authorities choose to send you?" "Oh! I will work that. I'll now be as bad in my conduct as possible; and I'll half murder some of the officers if they don't send me away; and that very soon too."

True to his threat, the fellow commenced a course of bad conduct, knowing it would ensure his passage to Western Australia; and in a comparatively short time he gained his object, and I have no doubt he is now at liberty abroad.

About the time the above conversation took place another "schemer" arrived, and was located a few beds from me. He had been a clerk in a government office, was respectably connected, and a very intelligent young man. He pretended he could not use his legs. The doctor's eye being now somewhat opened, he told him there was nothing the matter with him, recommended him to get well again as fast as possible, and threatened him with the electric battery, and even hot irons, if that did not succeed. The prisoner did not take advice, however, and the battery was tried upon him. After being stripped several times, and made to cry out with pain, to the great amusement of his fellow-prisoners, he ultimately took to crutches; first two, then one, with a stick; then the stick only; then nothing at all. He was afterwards removed to another prison.

I saw several other cases, similar to the one I have just mentioned, of pretended loss of the use of the legs, or partial inability to walk; but as there was no marked difference in the cases, I need not notice them. There was, however, an amusing incident connected with one of them which I may mention. This prisoner was allowed a little porter every day, which was served out about one o'clock. One day at that hour he happened to be in an adjoining room with his crutches (he could walk a little) when another prisoner cried out, "Porter, porter; quick, quick!" On hearing this cry, and afraid of losing his liquor, he bolted out, ran down the room, and had swallowed his porter before he had discovered that he had left his crutches behind him.

Such cases as these injure the really sick, particularly those whose symptoms are not very apparent. Many prisoners adopt these schemes in order to get into hospital, where they get better food, less work, and have the chance of being with a favourite "pal." Others will make themselves ill by swallowing tobacco, soap pills, or anything they know will make them sick. There are others again who are afraid to enter the hospital lest they should be poisoned with a sleeping draught, or some other medicine carelessly administered; and when they hear of any sudden death in hospital they are ready to swear "his light has been put out by the doctor." On the other hand I have known it to happen that a prisoner went and complained to the doctor, who roughly told him he was a "schemer," and the following week the prisoner was dead. Another time a healthy looking old man, with chest disease, complained to the doctor of pain in that region. He was dosed repeatedly with salts and senna--the medicine for schemers--and in less than a fortnight he was buried.

I could mention many cases similar to the above, and also others where the prisoner was his own murderer--if I may use the expression--but I will merely mention one of them. The patient in this case was afflicted with dropsy, and some affection of the heart. He had been receiving two ounces of gin for a short time, which he fancied was doing him good, and being partial to that variety of medicine, he was annoyed when it was ordered to be discontinued. Accordingly he resolved to make himself ill again, in order to get the allowance of gin, and swallowed a large piece of tobacco, which brought an increase to his heart complaint; and notwithstanding that the greatest attention was paid to his case by the doctor, before morning he was dead.

This prisoner lay in the next bed to mine, and among the many death-bed scenes I witnessed while in prison, I never saw one where the fear of death was so apparent, or the state of mind so appalling to the beholder.

The man had been a bully, and an avowed infidel. The prospect of death had now come upon him with awful suddenness. Fear and trembling took hold upon him, and as he thought of his past life, and the possible judgment seat, before which he might the next moment be summoned to appear, remorse and doubt seemed to torture him more than physical pain. At the closing scene he was evidently trying to believe, but could not, for he kept repeating, "If there be a God, if there be a God I hope He will forgive me; but I can't believe it, indeed I can't!" and so saying he expired.

Another death-bed scene impressed me much. The patient was paralysed in his lower extremities and could scarcely walk, but his general health appeared pretty good, and he was not confined to bed. He had a talent for mechanics and arithmetic, but a very bad temper and a very bad heart. His crime was sacrilege. In the next bed to his there lay a patient who was dying, and being in great pain was making a noise, which disturbed the studies and peace of mind of the other. A quarrel arose between the two on the subject. High words ensued. Curses, deep, black, loud, and long, soon followed, too soon for the officer to prevent, and there would certainly have been a fight if the dying man could have got out of bed, but the interference of the officer put an end to the disturbance. It was their parting words taken in connection with what followed, that made a deep impression upon me:--"If it wasn't that you are dying I would blacken your eyes for you," cried the mechanic. "How do you know I am dying? You look as like dying as anybody, you miserable cripple," retorted the other. "Ah! I'm tough stuff, you'll not see me die in a hurry." The cripple who uttered these words went shortly afterwards to bed, was seized with a paralytic affection, which took the power of speech from him. He never uttered another syllable, but lay in bed for about a week, making frantic motions with his lips. I forget which of these two men died first, but they were buried together in the same grave.

Another death at this time excited a good deal of conversation among the prisoners. The patient had been tried under the Transportation Act, one of the bye-laws of which enacted that for every prison "report," or offence, the prisoner would lose one month of his remission. But convicts being usually punished under the most recent law, without reference to its being different from that under which they had received sentence, the prisoner I now refer to was sentenced to lose three months of his remission for one offence, that of having an inch or two of tobacco on his person. He had undergone nearly the whole of this additional punishment, when, only a few hours before his time came to leave the prison to meet his motherless children, for whom he seemed to have a very strong affection, he died suddenly of heart disease.

Some prisoners expired on the very day for their liberation. Some died screaming aloud that they were poisoned. Many died like the brutes, and a very few departed in peace, with a prayer on their lips. The great majority died as they had lived, and were forgotten by the spectators almost before their bodies had been laid in the grave.