Chapter IX: The Artist Monk (2)

The parochial school in Scotland claims equal dignity with the parish Kirk. It is the chief educational establishment—the public school in fact—of the district, and is part of the national system for spreading education and enlightenment among the people of Scotland. The Kirk in Scotland, that is to say, the Established Kirk, is supported by a levy upon the occupiers of the land. The tax, however, is an indirect one, and therefore does not provoke the discontent caused by tithes and church-rates in England. The heritors, that is to say the landowners, pay the amount (on a scale in proportion to the price of grain), and repay themselves out of the rents of their tenants. This payment is not set down as a separate item in the rent-charge, and so the tenant pays his tithes and rates as he pays the tax upon his tea and tobacco. He is bled without knowing it. The parish school shares in this revenue with the parish kirk, but to a limited extent. Turning to the statistical account of my parish—written by the hand which directed the earliest calligraphical exercises of the one which now pens this—I find that the said parish is six miles long by five miles broad, and contains—or did contain then—a population of 1,661 souls. Those English persons who indulge in extravagant notions of the abundance of educational provision in the North may be a little surprised to learn that for this widely-scattered population there were only two schools, each capable of accommodating no more than sixty or seventy scholars. The endowments of these educational establishments were by no means magnificent. The allowance to the master of the parochial school (who was required to be a college man of considerable classical attainments) was 34_l._ 4_s._ 4_d._ per annum, with a dwelling-house and garden, and the fees of the scholars.[3] The fees ranged from 10_s._ to 1_l._ per annum—ten shillings for reading, writing, and arithmetic, and an extra ten for the classics. The master of the other school—an auxiliary seminary established by the General Assembly—received 25_l._ per annum and a cow’s keep, with the fees, averaging about ten shillings per annum for each scholar. It was not required that the master of this establishment should be a high classic, or indeed a classic at all. The appointment was vested in the minister, who was well content to select the candidate, whose letter, soliciting the appointment, exhibited the fewest errors in orthography. Perfection in that branch of grammar he never looked for and never got; for how could you expect irreproachable orthography for 25_l._ a year and a cow’s keep? The worthy man—the minister—made great exertions to establish and carry on this school; but it was always a great source of trouble to him. College men, of course, disdained to accept so trifling a salary; or to undertake so undignified a duty as the instruction of poor cottars’ children in the alphabet. The minister was, therefore, obliged to accept the services of any half-educated aspirant for the honours of a dominie, who could bring testimony to his respectability, and write a tolerable letter. Most of the teachers—for there were frequent changes—were Highlanders, who were more conversant with Gaelic than with English, and who had learned the latter language as a foreign tongue. They all spoke with a fearful Highland twang, all were married, all had slatternly wives, and unreasonably large families. The cow that was kept at the public expense for the sustenance (lacteally) of the General Assembly’s schoolmaster had a hard time of it. Provender was scarce, and the demand for milk excessive; and the schoolmaster’s cow generally died of exhaustion, after a year or two of self-sacrifice.

I remember once going with the minister to pay a visit to the Assembly’s Institute in these parts. When we arrived the academic grove was deserted, and we were informed that the “squeelmaister and the loons were oot on the peat moss.” There we found them, the dominie putting his pupils through a very novel kind of military exercise. He had collected his army on his own division of the moss, where his peats lay in stacks, ready to be carted home, when he could afford to pay for the cartage. We arrived on the scene just as the review began. “Now, poys,” said the dominie, taking up a peat in each hand, “this is a sword and this is a cun”—the Highland pronunciation of “gun”—“shoulder arms, poys.” Here the “poys” took a peat in each hand and shouldered them. “March, poys,” said the dominie, flourishing his peat sword; and away marched the boys with their peats, until they reached the school-house, when the dominie made them defile into a shed and ground arms; that is to say, lay down their peats in a heap convenient for the domestic use. This was what the dominie called his gymnastic exercises, which, he boasted, combined amusement and exercise with instruction; but a suspicion arising that these gymnastics were nothing more nor less than a Highland device for carrying home the dominie’s fuel on an economical principle, an order was issued from head-quarters that such military instruction should only take place in play-hours, and should not be included in the regular curriculum of study.

But I am wandering away from my own school, nestling five miles off among the trees under the shadow of the old kirk. It is a plain one-storey building divided into two parts; the one, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen, forming the home of the schoolmaster, and the other the schoolroom,—a tolerably large and airy apartment, with roughly plastered walls, and furnished with deal desks and forms of the universal school fashion. I do not remember that there were, at any time, more than sixty scholars. They were gathered together from all parts of the parish. Some of them came from a distance of four or five miles, and brought their dinners with them, the provision invariably consisting of a little tin can of milk and a bag of oat-cakes. It was a rule that each scholar should contribute a load or two of peats every quarter for the school fire; but some of them chose to bring a peat with them every morning. These scholars made their morning’s journey to school rather heavily loaded, having to carry, besides their satchel, the tin can of milk, the white calico bag of oat-cake, and the peat. We were of all ages, sexes, and conditions in this school. There was the son of the laird, the heir to an ancient baronetcy. He wore corderoys like the rest of us, and had five rows of broad-headed nails in his shoes. There were several sons of the minister, all destined for one or other of the learned professions; there were the sons of gentlemen farmers and the sons of poor cottars, their dependants; and with these, on terms of the broadest academic equality, mingled the grandson of the parish sexton and bell-ringer, the son of a widow occasionally receiving parochial relief, and the sons and daughters of carpenters, blacksmiths, and farm-servants, including the female descendant of old Lizzy—pauper and egg vendor—who lit the school fire and swept the school floor in discharge of young Lizzy’s fees. No distinction of rank was preserved in any way whatever. The laird’s son and the grave-digger’s son stood up in the same class side by side, and I remember that the expectant baronet was often “taken down” by the heir of the mortuary mattock. In the reading classes the boys and girls were all mingled together, and I have often seen a big, hulking fellow of eighteen—some ambitious cottar’s son who had taken to education late—standing next to a little girl in short petticoats and heel-strapped shoes. There was little jealousy on the score of religious belief in the parish. There were several Roman Catholic boys among us, and they joined in all our exercises, except the reading of the Bible and the saying of the Shorter Catechism. At these times the Roman Catholic boys sat in their seats and amused themselves; and not unfrequently, when memory failed with regard to Justification, Sanctification, and Adoption, we, Protestants, smarting under the consequences, were tempted to wish from the bottom of our hearts that we had been brought up Papists.

There was one feature of our school which appears very startling to me now, but which was never regarded as extraordinary by any of us at the time. It was this. Illegitimate mingled with the legitimate offspring of the same parents. Our parish was rather celebrated for irregularity in the matter of births, owing entirely to a local proneness to irregularity in the matter of marriage. This was not confined to the lower classes. Gentlemen farmers, who moved in the minister’s own circle, occasionally appeared before the Session to be admonished, and this sometimes led to the scandalous anomaly of a gentleman farmer dining at the manse one week and sitting on the stool of repentance the next. As there was only one school in the neighbourhood, and as it was considered imperative that every child, no matter what the circumstances of its birth, or position, should be educated, it constantly happened that there were several duplicates of families at the parochial school. In several instances, that I well remember, the illegitimate scion lived in perfect harmony with the legitimate in the bosom of the same family, and not unfrequently the illegitimate member was regarded as the flower of the flock. I can call up before me now two Marys and two Peters. The two Marys lived under the same roof as sisters, and I never heard a word of reproach cast at the elder Mary, albeit she was prettiest, cleverest, and illegitimate. It was different with the two Peters. Peter the First lived with his mother, Hagar, in the desert, an outcast from the paternal roof. But on the common ground of the parochial school, he sat on the same form, stood up in the same class, and shared equally in the Justification and Adoption of the Shorter Catechism with Peter the true-born. Peter the Base often enjoyed the satisfaction of giving Peter the True a “good licking;” but these quarrels never originated in resentment, arising out of their invidious relationship. So, you see, we were a strange, heterogeneous assemblage at this Scotch school.

A stranger aspect still was occasionally presented when two or three grown men and women took their places among us. I remember Betty, the laird’s nurse, coming for a quarter to improve her handwriting; and, nearly at the same time, the grown-up son of a neighbouring farmer, who had an ambition to become acquainted with mensuration and surveying. Betty had scarcely got to “round hand,” before the farmer’s son, who was accustomed to pursue his studies on the opposite side of the desk, fell in love with her, and the upshot of it was that the farmer’s son and Betty threw learning to the winds, and went and got married before the quarter was out. When Betty was squaring her elbows out at the large text, the laird’s son was wont to take great delight in walking past her and jogging her arm, in revenge for the ruthless way in which Betty used to clean out his ears with a piece of rough flannel on washing nights.

An almost universal circumstance tends to make every Scottish parochial schoolmaster discontented with his position and impatient of his duties. The parish-school is the stepping-stone to the kirk, and each schoolmaster when he is installed at the dominie’s desk, begins to long for the day when he will “wag his head in the poopit.” The school-house is the hard shell of the chrysalis; the manse, the flowery elysium of the full-fledged butterfly. When I went to school, our schoolmaster was in full cry after a kirk and a cure of souls. He spent a good deal of his time in reading the newspapers, and, as it appeared to me, in looking out for the demise of neighbouring ministers. Every morning after prayers, he read the newspapers for about an hour, during which time, we, the pupils, sat and learned our lessons, or more often amused ourselves, as quietly as we could. When any unusual disturbance took place, the master threw the “tag”—a piece of a gig trace burnt at the end to make it hard—at the offender. The pupil hit by it—no matter whether he was the real culprit or not—was expected to carry the instrument of punishment to the master and to accept flagellation, commonly on the hands, but not unfrequently (when the prospect of a kirk looked hazy and dim) upon a part of the body which required preliminary untrussing of points to be got at. It fell to the lot of Lizzy, the sweeper’s granddaughter, most frequently to have to take up the “tag.” Lizzy, it is true, was a very “limb” in point of trouble; but she had always more than her fair share of the gig trace. The way in which our schoolmaster lifted his hand against the female sex would have wholly disqualified him, in a nautical drama, from claiming the name of a British tar. The English reader may think that it equally disqualified him for the position of a British schoolmaster; but I do not remember that any one was shocked by these proceedings at the time. If a parent complained, it was not on the score of the indignity, but because the “tag” left its marks.

The course of instruction pursued at our school included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and the classics. In the general branches all sorts, sizes, and sexes, stood up together in the same classes, according to their relative state of advancement. The Greek and Latin classes only were select, they being composed of some half-dozen boys of superior station destined to go to college when they had mastered Latin enough to enable them to spell through Cæsar and Virgil. With these the master took considerable pains for his own credit’s sake; for it would have been an eternal disgrace to him had his pupils been rejected on their first easy examination at Aberdeen. In the other branches the method pursued was one entirely of routine. Nothing was explained in a rational or intelligible way. The only reading books in the school were the Bible and McCulloch’s first, second, and third _Courses of Reading_, three progressive volumes of badly selected extracts from various authors; and at these we hammered away day after day, and over and over again, from the moment we entered the school until the moment we left it. There was not a single History in the school—not even a History of England in its most modest form of abridgment. As for myself, my early knowledge of English history was entirely derived from a sheet of coloured portraits of the English kings pasted up on the wall of my box-bed at home. My knowledge of the dates of their reigns, and the order of their succession, is even now vividly associated with that coloured sheet. Geography was taught from a book. We learned boundaries and the names of countries by heart, and chattered them like parrots; but of the characteristics of countries and their inhabitants we learned nothing beyond that such and such a people “were a hardy race, who devoted themselves to agriculture,” and the like. Arithmetic was taught in the same way. When we had, by an entirely mechanical and illogical process, committed to memory the multiplication table, we were given over to somebody’s “Arithmetic,” to puzzle over rules and make our answers to the questions tally, by any means whatever, with those in the book. I remember, with regard to the rule of three, that we used to try one position after the other, until we worked out the right answer. The dominie never condescended to explain the simple logic of the process. The result is, as regards myself, that I am to this day the greatest dunce at figures in the world. I believe I have been detected refusing to purchase oranges at two for three halfpence, but readily agreeing to take five for sixpence, with the idea that it was a better bargain.

At the time of which I speak it was a rule of faith with all Scotch schoolmasters that flagellation was the primary and most important agent in the work of education. “Spare the rod, and you spoil the child,” should have been written over the door of every parochial school. Every boy who entered the portals of my Scotch school with a consciousness of being imperfect in any lesson, left all hope of immunity from the tag behind him. The slightest mistake in spelling, or in saying the Shorter Catechism—that hated Shorter Catechism!—was punished by one or more strokes of the tag on the extended hand. I have seen the order go down a whole class, “Hold out your hand, sir.” And crack, crack, crack went the tag on our unflinching palms. We knew if we flinched we should get a double dose, and perhaps on another and more sensitive part of our bodies. I think I may safely say that a day never passed without a flogging. Two or three times a week the “tag” was the occasion of a regular scene. This was when some spirited or big boy refused to hold out his hand or untruss. I remember one notable occasion when the master attempted to inflict the “extreme punishment” on a big ploughman of eighteen or nineteen. There was a regular fight between them: and several times master and pupil went down together on the floor, rolling and struggling with all the desperation of men engaged in a mortal combat. Both parties called upon the pupils to come to their assistance; but we, small boys, were too much alarmed to side with either, albeit our sympathies were decidedly with the ploughman. The result of this conflict was highly agreeable to us all. The dominie was laid up for a week with bruised legs, and during that time there was “no school.” The terror inspired by the tag caused the boys to frequently play the truant; in the vernacular this was called “fugieing.” Scarcely a day passed that some boy did not “fugie,” or fly the school. There was one boy who was particularly distinguished for this art. He had been punished for it over and over again, and beaten at all points until he was black and blue, but still he would “fugie.” He would come away from home in the morning with his satchel and dinner; but, instead of going to school, would betake himself to the forest, and spend the day in birds’-nesting, or in devouring “blaeberries.” When his retreat was discovered, the master started one morning in pursuit of him, followed by all the scholars in a pack. We had a regular hunt, and greatly we enjoyed the sport, not caring so much for the fate of the fugitive, as for the holiday and the exemption for a few hours from lessons and the tag. Sandy, for that was the fugitive’s name, was unearthed like a fox, and hunted like one, all through the wood, and over the burn, and up the hill-side to a clump of tall fir-trees, where, finding the dominie close upon him, with the tag vengefully waved aloft, Sandy clambered up the smooth stem of a tall larch-tree, and perched himself triumphantly among its topmost branches. The dominie, who was not deficient in pluck when upholding the prerogative of the tag, immediately made the attempt to follow him; but finding the branches rather too slight to bear his weight, he was glad to slide down again, after having successfully climbed the stem. Having in vain commanded Sandy to come down, the dominie held a council of war with himself for a few minutes, and suddenly resolved upon his strategy. One of the boys was despatched to a neighbouring farm-house for an axe. When it was brought, the dominie set to work at the root of the tree, and, when he had given it two or three strokes, called out once more to Sandy—“Will you come down, sir?” Sandy looked cautiously over from his nest among the branches to see what probability there was of the dominie’s being able to fell the tree, and, apparently, coming to the conclusion that he couldn’t do it, contemptuously answered—“Na, I winna come doon.” Once more the dominie laid the axe at the root of Sandy’s citadel, and though he made little progress in cutting it, the tree shook at every stroke, until Sandy, becoming rather uncomfortable, consented to come down. He had no sooner reached the ground, than he was collared and marched off to the school in triumph, and was duly whipped by extreme process.

Our parents rarely interfered to protect us from the tag, when it was administered in moderation; though occasionally some noise was made when a boy was sent home utterly incapacitated from occupying a sitting position. The miller’s wife—a strong-minded dame of the “rampaging” order—so far from being maternally indignant when her son, Johnny, was sent home in a state of pulp, would occasionally call in to enjoin the dominie not to spare him. This lady was a chief actor in one of our most memorable “scenes.” Her son Johnny had “fugied” for several days running, and had been found out and duly whipped by the maternal order. Some time after this the good lady found Johnny hiding in the mill, about the middle of the day, when he ought to have been at school. I remember well what came of that discovery. Late one afternoon we were startled from our studies by a noise of wheels, the clattering of some iron instrument, and the accents of a shrill, angry voice. The master immediately ran out to see what was the matter, and we, the pupils, took the opportunity to rush to the windows. It was the miller’s wife, who had arrived with her son Johnny in a cart, keeping guard over him with the kitchen tongs. The next minute Johnny was driven into the schoolroom by his infuriate parent, who banged him with the tongs as he ran. I shall never forget the scene that ensued. “Now have your wull o’ him,” said the Spartan parent to the dominie. The dominie thus licensed, got out the tag; but Johnny no sooner caught sight of that instrument than he was nerved to the most desperate resistance. The moment the dominie advanced to seize him Johnny scrambled over a desk and dodged him; and when the dominie ran round after him he scrambled back again. The miller’s wife now came to the dominie’s assistance, and for nearly a quarter of an hour both together hunted Johnny over the desks and forms, hitting out at him with the tag and the tongs, while the books, and slates, and milk-cans were scattered all over the floor like broken armour on a battle-field. It was not until Johnny was fairly out of breath that he gave in; and then he lay down on his back on the floor, and turning himself rapidly round as on a pivot, menaced first the dominie and then his mother with his iron-shod feet. Johnny managed to resist the extreme penalty designed for him, but what with the bumps he received in riding over the desks, and the random blows from the tongs and the tag, he had punishment enough and to spare. Of course, as we all saw and felt that this constant flagellation was both cruel and unjust, we were never any better for it, and bore it or resisted it manfully, as martyrs bear and resist persecution.

But notwithstanding the loose and desultory, not to say brutal, system pursued at our school, the pupils of all degrees managed, in some way or other, to acquire a very respectable quantum of knowledge, or, if not knowledge itself, the groundwork of knowledge. The boys who learned Greek and Latin went to college and took their degrees; the farmers’ sons went home to give a higher intellectual life to the society in which their families moved; and the humbler class of scholars carried away with them to the plough’s tail, the carpenter’s bench, and the smithy, just enough of the rudiments of learning to enable them to cultivate themselves by after study. This fact may seem a contradiction to the picture I have given of my Scotch school. In Scotland, however, bad teaching and a high state of mental cultivation among the masses are quite consistent. The fact is, the middle and lower classes in Scotland have a passion for learning. The dearest ambition of the poor cottar is to educate his children, and, if possible, to give one, at least, such an amount of schooling as will fit him for a higher station than that occupied by his parents. A poor hillside crofter will starve himself and his family for ten years of their life to send one of the boys to college and qualify him for the kirk. Such boys, however, learn more poring over their books by the humble fireside at home, or out in the fields in the intervals of their farm work, than at the school. They learn under every disadvantage, because they are spurred on by a love of knowledge and a desire to raise themselves. It is this universal thirst after knowledge and intellectual cultivation that gives Scotland so decided a pre-eminence as regards general education. Persons who can neither read nor write are common enough in England, not alone in the country districts, but also in the great towns. I doubt if you could find one such in all Scotland. The classes corresponding to the “hinds” and “navvies” of England, cannot only read and write, but are capable of enjoying literature in its higher developments. Our farming-men at home used to spend their evenings, after their frugal supper of kail brose, in reading the newspapers and discussing the debates in Parliament. Our herd-boy taught himself the elements of astronomy out in the fields, while tending the cattle. He was the first to tell me the names of the planets and point them out to me. I taught him, in return, a little Latin; and I remember, during my last year at college, meeting this herd-boy in the quadrangle, arrayed in the red toga. I have since heard that he carried off the first mathematical prize.

FOOTNOTES

[3] In an abstract of a bill for bettering the condition of the schoolmasters of Scotland, passed at the beginning of the century, it is laid down that “the amount of salary to each parochial schoolmaster shall not be less than the average annual wages of a day labourer, nor above that of two day labourers.”

The Convict out in the World.

At stated periods, the governor of a convict prison gives audience to such inmates of his mansion as may have complaints to make, or petitions to prefer; and of the demands most commonly heard, from old and young, one of the commonest is: “Please, sir, may I grow?” It sounds odd to hear the naïve request put by some square-shouldered grey-haired fellow; but it is usually found so reasonable that, after a word or two of inquiry, the governor consents. The man wishes to let his hair grow within the next three or four months before his leaving the prison; and it is the first step towards his release, whether it be on the expiry of his sentence, or on his earning a “conditional pardon.” Subsequently, the chaplain of the prison sends forth certain formal questions as to the man’s prospect of obtaining honest employment out of doors; and about a month before the date of his departure, the chaplain addresses a letter to any person by whom the prisoner hopes to be employed, describing the man’s state of health, stating his conduct in prison, and asking whether his report upon the subject of employment is true, or whether he has any other means of support. In the majority of cases, I am told, the replies are “satisfactory;” but, in some instances, they are otherwise, and, in some, the man can give no reference. Within my own very limited range of individual observation, I have observed in England the same circumstance which I have noticed in Ireland—that the prisoner often has a dread of returning to his friends, not only because he fears that his character will be known, but because he is too well aware that those with whom he has been acquainted before he entered the prison will draw him back into evil courses. At once, then, we perceive a very unexpected symptom of improvement: the desire of the prisoner to cut all connection with his family, and to avow that he has no means, no chance of obtaining help or employment, is one of the most tangible results of his reformation. In cases where the reply is unsatisfactory, or the man can give no reference, the governor and chaplain fill up a form in which they express an opinion whether he is able to earn his livelihood. From these inquiries and records returns are made to the Secretary of State, specifying the men who are eligible to be recommended for release under a conditional pardon. On receiving the order of the Secretary of State, the licence is printed on a small parchment form, and on the back of that form is the following schedule of conditions:—

“1. The power of revoking or altering the licence of a convict
will most certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct.

“2. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by
his good behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he
must prove, by his subsequent conduct, that he is really worthy
of her Majesty’s clemency.

“3. To produce a forfeiture of the licence, it is by no means
necessary that the holder should be convicted of any new
offence. If he associate with notoriously bad characters,
leads an idle and dissolute life, or has no visible means of
obtaining an honest livelihood, &c., it will be assumed that
he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once
apprehended, and recommitted to prison under his original
sentence.”

Dressed in clothes provided for him by the prison, and suited to his probable occupation, whether as an artisan or a labourer, his parchment licence in his pocket, and the first instalment of his gratuity—probably 2_l._, more or less—with a soldier’s railway pass for the place of his destination, the prisoner sets out. In less lucky instances, he simply walks forth into space “to take his chance”—that is, to beg for employment from those who are too busy to attend to him, or to supply his necessities by some more familiar means. Upon the whole, however, we might classify the prisoners into three classes: those who return to their friends, those who proceed at once to some familiar place of resort, and those who seek the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society.”

I have already explained that those persons who were convicted under the Peel’s Servitude Act of 1853, which accidentally omitted to provide for the conditional pardon, form a class which has occasioned some perplexity, but is gradually dying out. The men of this class are divided into four “stages:” those in the second stage have sixpence a week towards their gratuity, in the third ninepence, in the fourth one shilling. Men sentenced under the amended Act of 1857 are divided into three “stages:” in the second stage they receive fourpence a week, and in the third eightpence. The larger sums given to the men of the first class, together with some other indulgences in prison, are allowed as a compensation for their losing the chance of getting a ticket-of-leave, either in the colonies or at home. The accumulated gratuity sometimes rises to a considerable amount. A friend who has studied the subject minutely has found it to range as high as 27_l._ or 28_l._; usually it ranges from 8_l._ to 20_l._; and he computes the average to be about 12_l._ As you already know, this is not handed to the man in one sum. Supposing his gratuity to be of the average amount, on leaving the prison he will receive 2_l._, with the deduction of a few pence for postage which will be incurred on his account after his departure. Ten days later he will receive 2_l._ more, at the end of two months 4_l._, and at the end of three months the balance of 4_l._; so that he will be five months and a half before he can draw the whole sum. Thus, if he is discharged on the 1st of January, he will not have cleared his prison account until the end of June. He cannot draw any of the instalments without obtaining the endorsement of a clergyman, magistrate, or some known persons, to a form which shows that he is living respectably and supporting himself by honest work. Some time since, I am told by the same friend, the discharged prisoners were often unable to obtain any of their gratuity, and in most instances could not arrive at the closing balance. It too frequently happened that the man would return to his friends, recover his original character—that is, become a vagabond and a thief—and so lose the power to procure the valuable endorsement of a magistrate or clergyman. Another danger attended all convicts, and still, I fear, attends the most hardened or the most desolate. At every post where the man was likely to emerge from his seclusion was stationed an agent appointed by the very worst of all “the dangerous classes”—some Fagin or Fagin’s man, the caterer for criminal customers. This functionary is of the same genus with those who tout at the landing-pier of watering-places, with vocal cards issuing from their mouths in praise of certain inns. The gentleman sallying forth from one of her Majesty’s mansions, found himself suddenly courted as a welcome customer, a “distinguished person,” with every convenience offered to him for spending the money in his pocket as fast as possible, and perhaps for discounting the great expectations of the next few months.

It was a knowledge of these facts which, in 1857, induced Mr. Whitbread, the Member for Bedford, at present one of the Lords of the Admiralty, to suggest the establishment of an Association for the express purpose of holding out a helping hand to the discharged prisoner. He invited Mr. William Bayne Rankin and other friends to assist him. Some lent him their names, which were in themselves of great value; others gave him their money, and some few rendered active co-operation. Mr. Rankin became the honorary secretary of the Association, and Mr. F. Partridge its secretary. By degrees the “Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society,” which is still an independent charitable body, has become a sort of volunteer auxiliary to the Convict Department. The Association prepared forms, which were sent to every convict prison in England; the nature of the society is explained to each prisoner before his discharge; and he accepts the help or not entirely according to his own free choice. In early days, many prisoners hesitated to comply with the first peremptory condition imposed by the society—that the whole of the gratuity should be placed in its hands. Judged by graduates in a school not calculated to afford the happiest study of human motives, the charitable gentlemen in Westminster were regarded as a great joint-stock crimping establishment; and the newly released suspected that they were to be as much victimized as the German “redemptioners” were in America. By degrees, however, this suspicion wore off; a knowledge of the manner in which the society worked spread amongst the class on whose behalf it acted, and the business of the corporation has expanded accordingly. At first, there would be two or three cases a week; there are now three or four a day. At first, there was scarcely work enough for one secretary; now the society employs a secretary, two clerks, and one or two agents, and finds the machinery altogether insufficient for its exigencies. During the last year, the moneys passing through the hands of the society have amounted to an aggregate between 10,000_l._ and 12,000_l._, composed principally of the prisoners’ own money; for it must be confessed that no society has ever done so much with such a narrow modicum of means. The list of actual subscribers is slender, and we observed that the heaviest share of the burden falls upon a very few in that short list. At the same time, gentlemen at a distance do not scruple to claim the co-operation of the society in helping forward individuals who may have excited a local or individual interest.

The prisoner comes to the office of the society, at 39, Charing Cross, with the papers of his discharge, including one of the forms stating that he is recommended by the governor of the prison which he has left. This paper specifies his registered number in the prison, his name and sentence, his age on conviction, religion and education, date and place of conviction, nature of crime, previous convictions and nature of crimes, character in separate confinements, character on public works, trade and degree of proficiency, capacity for hard labour, the employment desired, the prisoner’s willingness to emigrate, amount of gratuity due, probable period of discharge, with any remarks which the governor may think fit to add. The society disposes of its clients in three ways—first, by obtaining employment for them; secondly, by enabling them to return to their friends; and thirdly, by assisting them to emigrate. The first case which came before the society was in May, 1857; in the interval it has helped more than 1,900 prisoners. The secretaries believe that, of the total number, not more than 100 have been re-convicted. There are no positive data to establish this fact, but there are hopes that hereafter it may be tested by direct record. With regard to the men who are helped, they may be subdivided into two classes—those for whom situations are found by the advice of the society; and those who obtain work themselves, and are helped to procure tools or materials for work. The women remain at a “Home” provided for them, and in most cases enter as domestic servants. Where the society itself recommends its client for employment, and gives him a character, his antecedents are distinctly mentioned; but where he obtains work by his own independent search, his circumstances are not disclosed. I have inspected the books of the society, and have traced a considerable number of cases, both of men and women. Out of the whole number, I have before me a list of twenty-five, and I am able to say that they are not exceptional, but may be paralleled by far more in the books for the current year. The kinds of employment are as various as that indicated in the _London Directory_. The men are engaged as bakers, milkmen, painters, builders, cabinet-makers, commercial travellers, fishmongers, engineers, watermen, hawkers, goldsmiths, &c. The cases to which I refer range over periods of more than a year; some very few are a little less, some extend to three or four years. A few men have been placed in independent business. In two instances a business was purchased for a man, and in both those instances the person assisted is going on well. In all these cases there is complete information down to the latest date in the present year. In one instance, a man who appears to have squandered a part of his gratuity, came to the society at the eleventh hour in want of five shillings to procure tools. There was something in the earnestness of the man which attracted attention; on inquiry, his story proved to be correct; the tools were furnished him, and he is now employed by a great building firm. He learned the particular handicraft in which he is engaged, at Portland. Another instance falls under my personal observation, and it is interesting for special reasons. It is that of a young man who, since his discharge, has obtained work under an old employer, to whom he told all that had happened to him. By his discipline in prison, by acquiring a consciousness of his powers as a workman, with an insight into the opening offered through industry and energy, the man had evidently surmounted the original sense of the degradation. When I met him, accidentally, I observed no desire to parade himself, nor do I suppose he would have preferred to see his departure from his late residence announced in the _Court Circular_; but he did rather seek my notice, no doubt as that of a witness to his working skill, his diligence, and his substantial advancement; and he seemed to feel that the character which he had acquired at Portland was a substantial testimony to his capacity, industry, and resolution. The man is a very good specimen of a sharp Englishman. I have met, of course quite casually, with one or two instances of the same kind.

Another prisoner, assisted by the society, was discharged more than three years and a half ago. He found employment for himself; but after the society had assisted him, he came back to it for a character. He was warned that, if it were given, his employer must be told of his antecedents, but he still seemed to think the character necessary. The person who was about to engage him, a tradesman in a considerable way of business, called upon the secretary of the society. The instant he heard that his servant had been a convict, he turned away, declaring that it was useless to think of engaging him. The secretary stopped him, and inquired the amount of risk which the employer would incur; it turned out that the man would probably have 2_l._ or 3_l._ in his hands at a time, and that a guarantee of 5_l._ would cover the risk. The secretary undertook to guarantee that amount; and the man has remained in the same place for considerably more than three years, with such thorough satisfaction to his employer that that gentleman has spontaneously released the society from its liability. This case also is peculiarly interesting, as showing how the employing classes may be made to learn, by their own inquiry and practical experience, that a fellow-creature who is once a criminal needs not always be so.

Special arrangements are made for disposing of the women who leave the Refuge at Fulham. This place, as well as other portions of our English system, is pointed out as analogous to the “Intermediate” stage in Ireland, but the analogy is very faint. I mentioned the half-pint of beer allowed to the fourth class at Portland, as one amongst other indulgences to compensate for the loss of transportation for prisoners convicted between 1853 and 1857. Objections might be made to the dietary at Fulham, as being on too high a scale; and it is wholly unlike the homely fare which contents the hard-worked labourer at Lusk, or the penitent at the Golden Bridge in Dublin. The Fulham Refuge is also distinguished from the Intermediate prisons of Ireland by less liberty of action, and by containing within itself places of punishment. Still, it is an improvement on older prisons, and is not without _proportionate_ results. From the 1st of January to the end of May, 1861, seventy-two women were discharged from the Fulham Refuge, and were thus distributed:—Sent to parents, eighteen; sent to husbands, seven; to other relatives, fifteen; to friends, three; to service, direct from the Refuge, one; to the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society, with a view to service or emigration, twenty-six; sent out on their own account, having no home, eight. The reports of the first four classes are pronounced to be “satisfactory,” with the exception of two in the first class and one in the second. Of the first class three had no home, but had children in workhouses, whom they went to rejoin. Three others have joined friends under anything but hopeful circumstances. One is at service in the house of a clergyman; and another, whose husband is a convict in Australia, is understood to be “going on well.” When any woman is sent out from the Refuge, steps are taken to ascertain where she will be received, and to secure her safe arrival, with authenticated reports of the fact. Communication is always made with the clergyman of the district to which the discharged prisoner proceeds; and, says Mrs. Harpour, the lady superintendent of the Refuge at Fulham, in a letter to Sir Joshua Jebb, “much is learned in this mode of the sad and miserable way in which these poor creatures have been brought up, and the temptations with which they were surrounded immediately on their return to their deplorable haunts. It excites our sympathy, and makes us feel that something must be done by the public, or all our efforts cannot but be fruitless in many cases. I can only hope and pray that the publicity which is now being given to the convict system, will induce the Christian public to lend us a helping hand. We do not ask for their money, but for their sympathy and a little of their time.” I have statements of cases in which prisoners who have left the Refuge have done well; but, in this as in other instances, I am cautioned against their publication, lest exaggerated inferences should be drawn from contracted data. And at the Refuge, as throughout the English establishments, I have failed to obtain anything like the same full, detailed, and long-continued information about convicts at large, which I was enabled to obtain by my own personal examination in Ireland.

One grand resource for the disposal of English convicts, especially of men whose term of incarceration may be shortened by “ticket-of-leave,” is transportation. Theoretically, transportation is still continued to Bermuda, Gibraltar, and Western Australia; but the transport of convicts to Bermuda has been indefinitely suspended. Of the Australian arrangements the most recent account is afforded me in an extract from the unpublished Report to the Directors of Convict Prisons, by the religious instructor, who sailed in the convict ship _Palmerston_, and landed his charges at Fremantle in February.

“_Millbank Prison, May 27, 1861._

“... I visited the prison on the third or fourth day after
the men were landed. The chaplain and deputy superintendent
kindly accompanied me. It resembles Portland more than any
other I know. The cells are small in size, and the interior
arrangements on the same principle as at that prison.

“There were two large association rooms occupied, I believe,
at night by artisans whom I found employed in the smiths’
forge and carpenters’ shop, which are very extensive, and
where work on a large scale was being carried on under the
superintendence of the Royal Engineer department. Some large
rooms on the basement floor were fitted up as printing-offices,
and prisoners were employed here in doing all the Government
printing required for the colony.

“There were, I believe, about 400 men in the prison at this
time, including about eighty landed from the _Palmerston_.
These last were employed, some few in the workshops, and the
remainder on the roads, working in gangs.

“The rations were abundant, and of excellent quality; served,
precisely as they are at Millbank, to the men in their cells.

“On the general parade, I noticed that the reconvicted, or men
remitted to the establishment, and the men sent up for short
sentences from the police-office, were paraded apart, and
distinguished from the general prisoners by a different dress.

“Being desirous of seeing how the remainder of the men who had
come out under our charge in the _Palmerston_ were disposed
of, and how the probationary period of six months (through
which all convicts are required to pass before they can
receive the greater degree of freedom of a ticket-of-licence)
is passed through, I visited, in company with Dr. Watson, the
surgeon superintendent, four of the out-stations. We found all
these stations occupied by men who also had come out in the
_Palmerston_; and I was informed that, for some time previous
to the arrival of that ship, the road-making had been much
interrupted for want of men.

“The parties consisted of from 40 to 80 men, lodged in huts.
They were in charge of a warder; and in most places there was
one of the Royal Engineers to direct the works on the roads,
and two or three convict constables to preserve order and
superintend the men at work and in their quarters. The men work
on the roads from four to five miles each way, and, whenever I
saw them, appeared to be diligently employed.

“Their sleeping-places were divided by partitions of slanting
boards, and they took their meals in messes of six or eight
at separate tables; the rations being supplied from the
chief stations, Perth and Guildford, and the whole from the
Commissariat in the first instance. They are also allowed
tobacco.

“The men at these stations were cheerful and industrious; they
made no complaints, except in reference to the heat of the
climate and mosquitoes. Those within reach of the river were
permitted to bathe in it in the morning. The hours of labour
were from six to six—one hour, I believe, for breakfast, and
one and a half for dinner were allowed.

“However desirable it may be to execute works of this nature at
a distance from where a proper degree of control may be kept
up, I cannot but say that I felt anxious for the welfare of
the prisoners who, during their detention in these huts, would
be exposed to great temptation and demoralization. In fact,
these stations were, in every respect, inferior to the larger
and more regularly-arranged stations which I recollect to have
visited in Tasmania peninsula. It is also obvious that the
sooner the men who go out in a convict-ship can be separated,
after they are disembarked, the better for them in every way.

“The men at these stations appeared perfectly aware of the
uselessness of attempting escape in a colony which has no
known outlet to any other. In point of fact, were the attempt
made, their footsteps in the sand would be unerringly traced
by the extraordinary sagacity of the natives attached to each
police-station for the purpose; they would be captured, or
perish for want of water.

“I shall now endeavour to describe their prospects of
employment when liberated on a ticket-of-leave, from what came
under my own observation.

“A few men who were sent out in the _Palmerston_, having
completed a large portion of their sentence at home (two
of them with commuted sentence), were discharged from the
establishment in about eight days after their arrival. They
were supplied with a ticket-of-leave dress, a portion of their
gratuity, and a pass for twenty-four hours, to enable them to
seek employment. I travelled in the steamboat from Fremantle to
Perth on the day some of them left the prison....

“The social status of the sober and industrious convict settler
is perfectly assured. In the country districts no difference is
made between him and the free settler.

“I am, gentlemen,” &c. &c.

After reading only this brief, sober, and most authentic report, the reader will begin to doubt whether transportation can be what it was once supposed to be—a very terrible penalty, severance of natural ties, death to family associations, and so forth. It has had its terrors, and at more than one season, but the season has always been limited. In July, 1827, came into operation an Act extending transportation to various felonious offences. In the following year there was a great decline in such offences—the new Act had stricken terror; but in the very next year the influence of the punishment had declined; by degrees transportation ceased to be regarded with alarm, and now it is admitted to be a positive reward. Writing years back, Archbishop Whately shows the dawn of this feeling. He quotes the words of convicts, crying out with delight at the accommodation on board ship; thanking God for having been carried to a country where they were well off; writing home with presents to masters whom they had robbed, and even offering patronage and assistance in a country where a man is sure to make his fortune. The keen-sighted teacher of logic foresaw that such dangerous knowledge must spread in the mother-country.