Prisoners Their Own Warders

OF THE CON

us by the Rajah of Kedah in 1785, when we gave up, but only for a time, our British settlement on the North Andaman, which we had acquired in 1789 and abandoned in 1796. Province Wellesley, opposite to Penang, upon the Malay Peninsula, was thirteen years later taken by us for the purpose of suppressing piracy, and forms part of this British settlement. The is

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highest point of the island, then called "Bel retiro" but now Penang Hill.[2] A great part of the island was soon cleared and roads made, so that in 1792, seven years after it came into our hands, Captain Light was able to report

t 1850 some intramural work was also undertaken. The gangs in the province were at last taught to cut and burn the jungle as well as to construct the roads, and the records say at some risk from tigers which infested the

ipelago; but after the establishment later on of Singapore it had begun to decline, and the settlement then became second only in commercial importance. But within the last quarter of a century the trade has considerably reviv

he others, except that it was a two-storied building, and cots were provided instead of the continuous sleeping platforms. The hospital and women's ward were all within the enclosure in a separate yard. Warders' and apothecary's quarters were provided at the main entrance to the prison. Cooking places for the different castes and latrines were constructed in each yard; a military guard room, food and clothing stores were also supplied. Little can be said in favour of this prison, as the wards were ill-ventilated, and the sanitary arrangements were very imperfect. All the prisoners were in a somewhat lax system of association, except those undergoing punishment in cells. Prior to the receipt of the convicts from Bencoolen, Penang itself, as a penal settlement, had already been supplied from India with a number of transported criminals of all tribes and castes, who were working in gangs under free warders; but from vacancies and dismissals, and the consequent inability to supply the place of these warders, where free labour of the kind requir

s doubtless quite true at the time when it was penned, and when the system of employing prisoners as warders was in its infancy, and, moreover, when the whole prison discipline was acknowledged to be in more or less an indifferent state; but, as will hereafter be shown, it did not hold good when the system was

brick-making, felling timber, burning lime, and reclaiming mangrove swamps. The ground on which some portion of the present town is built was filled up by convict labour. Much later on, however, in the Fifties, rattan work was introduced into the prison, and easy chairs, lounging chairs, baskets, and other articles of a very substantial quality w

he late General Man as Resident Councillor of Penang, Captain Hilliard being Superintendent, that a manifest improvement in the management and control of the convicts took place, and especially in their industrial training. He brought with him the system in force in Singapore, and the new rules and regulations formed with the sanction of the Governor, then Colonel Butterworth, and which were an improvement on the ol

nt to the Andaman Islands to introduce there the system of convict management in force in the Straits Settlements;[3] and with the view to uniformity of pr

of those Indian convicts in the three settlements were placed under his charge. The "Butterworth Rules" remained

own as "wattle and daub." They were made with stout stakes driven firmly into the ground at about one foot apart, twigs of trees were then interwoven, and the whole then thickly plastered with a mixture of clay and cowdung, and when this had become thoroughly dry it was coated with whitewash. This formed both a substantial, and at the same time a sanitary walling, which was frequently treated with a further coating of limewash made thin. The dormitories were ten feet high, with a continuous open grating of wooden bars at the top, under the eaves of the roof, for the purpose of complete ventilation. The sleeping platforms were raised three feet off the ground floor, which was covered with the same composition as that of the walls, and the building was roofed with thatch. In the centre of the dormitory an earthenware brazier of burning charcoal was always maintained day and night, and occasionally crude fragrant gum Benjamin was thrown upon it. The nativ

victs and convict petty officers. A good proportion of these local prisoners were employed upon extramural works, under the guard of these convict petty officers, who, being natives of India, had nothing in common with the Chinese and Malays who formed the bulk

tifida," a small palm, ordinarily not higher than from five to six feet. From this palm, which grew mostly upon the Penang Hill, were constructed walking-sticks called "Penang lawyers," and the process of preparing them was very simple: the epidermis, or exterior

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he jungle, pointed a cannon in the direction in which he required it to be cleared, then he loaded it with powder, and inst

deavouring to get the money before another, led to a regu

le management of Col

Siberia, uses "command" as denoting

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