PRISONERS THEIR OWN
WARDERS

John Frederick Adolphus McNair

Preface

Some explanation appears to be due from us for writing this account of the Singapore Convict Jail so long after the date of its final abolition.

The truth is, that for several years it has been our opinion that it ought to be written by some one, and the same suggestion had often been made to one of us by the late Doctor Mouat, Inspector General of Jails, Bengal, and others who were well acquainted with its administration.

An opportunity lately occurred to bring us into communication on the subject, and when we came to compare the voluminous notes that each of us had collected during the time that the jail was in full vigour, we arrived at the conclusion that there was abundant material for a work upon it. It also appeared to us that there were some exceptional features in the training and discipline of these native convicts, that might even at this day prove of service to other Superintendents of native jails in different parts of India and the Colonies; while, at the same time, such a work would not be devoid of some interest to those who make a study of the punishment and reformation of the criminal class of all countries, a subject in regard to which, in spite of the great progress we have made, the last word has certainly not yet been said.

This, then, is our apology for the attempt we have made, and we trust that our joint labours may be received with indulgence.

When this old Singapore jail was put an end to in 1873, some six years after the transfer of the Straits Settlements to the Crown, the convicts then under confinement were removed to the Andaman Islands, at that time not long established as a penal settlement for India; while those on a ticket-of-leave were permitted to merge into the population, continuing to earn their livelihood as artizans, cow keepers, cart drivers, and the like. Those who were old and infirm were retained at Singapore at the expense of the Indian Government, and a certain number of convicts from Hongkong were returned to that colony to complete their sentences. There remained, therefore, only the local prisoners to be dealt with, and for these, under the subsequent orders of the Colonial Government, was planned and constructed by our Department, and under our supervision, a spacious prison on the cellular system, and situated on a more healthy site than the old convict jail, which had become surrounded by the buildings of the town.

We should much like to have given a consecutive history of this old jail from the date of its first construction until it was finally abolished, but unfortunately the jail registers have not been carefully kept from the beginning, or are not forthcoming; but we have had access to some old scattered letters and papers, and to statistics from the year 1844, since which time the records have been regularly kept from year to year.

A good deal of useful information has also come within our reach from works written upon Singapore and the Straits Settlements, and especially are we indebted to an Anecdotal History of Singapore, published by the Free Press, and extending from the year 1822 to 1856, which gives an interesting account of our early occupation of that island, and of the use to which the labour of these convicts was turned.

From the Memoirs of Sir Stamford Raffles, written by his widow in 1830, and from his Life by Demetrius Charles Boulger, in 1897, we have been able to trace that, so far back as the year 1823, there were between 800 and 900 of these Indian convicts at our settlement of Bencoolen, on the south-west coast of Sumatra; and that, when this place was conceded to the Dutch by the London treaty of 1825, these convicts were removed to Penang, and were subsequently distributed amongst the three settlements of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. This distribution would in all probability have taken place about the year 1825, when Singapore was incorporated with Penang and Malacca, under the Governor and Council of the Incorporated Settlements.

We think the account which we are about to give of the various employments of these Indian convicts at Singapore, will abundantly show how considerably this important settlement has benefited by their early introduction. They made most of the roads in the settlement, including timber bridges, viaducts and tunnels, and executed for the Government many important public buildings. Moreover, when released from imprisonment upon a ticket-of-leave, they were absorbed innoxiously into the native community, and again contributed to the advantage of the place in the various occupations they had recourse to, in order to obtain an honest livelihood. By a judicious system of rewards, and a graduated scale of promotion, a very remarkable spirit of industry was infused into the bulk of these convicts during their incarceration, and it may be honestly said that this was effected without the sacrifice of that wholesome discipline always essential in the control especially of the criminal class.

We could not, of course, interfere with their religion, but by a well-judged scale of punishments and rewards, and by instruction given to them in their own vernacular, we endeavoured to raise their character by helping them to good conduct, and to a better way of living. To encourage and foster that industry to which we have referred, we taught them the trades to which each of them appeared to be best adapted, and held out to them the hope that they might again become good citizens, and earn for themselves a creditable subsistence; and, as it was our practice to deal with each of them "individually," we were often made aware that there was many an honest heart immured within those prison walls.

In the narrative we have given of the Settlements, it may seem that we have dwelt at too great length upon their early history, but we thought it would add to the interest of the work, if we gave what is really only a limited sketch of the various places to which those Indian convicts were first banished beyond the seas.

In the initiation of the system of industrial training among these convicts, special credit is due to the late General (then Captain) Man, who in his early years had been trained at Chatham as a sapper. The late Colonel Macpherson, who succeeded him, carried on and improved the system, and both these officers were well seconded in their efforts by the late Mr. J. Bennett, C.E., who practically was their clerk of the works. Mr. Bennett subsequently rose to a high position in the Department.

It would be impossible to mention the names of all the subordinate staff, but Burnett, Stuart, and Lamb are prominent in our recollection as having done good service as warders and instructors.

In 1864, the Resident of Rhio, Java, Mr. E. Netscher, was appointed by the Dutch Government to study and report upon the convict system in force in Singapore, and both the Siam and Japan Governments sent special missions for the like purpose, the mission from Japan being accompanied by Mr. Hall, of the British Consulate. Many others, also, recorded their opinions in its favour, and some among them were authorities upon prison systems pursued in some parts of both Europe and America.

The local government, we should add, in their direction of this convict establishment, fully recognised that the distinctive feature in the native mind was to look to one rather than to many masters, to one European executive officer rather than to a collective body of magistrates, and, therefore, beyond that general supervision which the Government must ever assume over its Departments, it committed the whole of the management, discipline, and control of this large body of convicts entirely to their Superintendent, under the approved rules and regulations for his guidance, and for the administration of the whole establishment.

Scotia, Preston Park,
Brighton, Sussex.

List of Illustrations and Plates

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Plate I.

Chapter I

EARLY RECORDS OF BENCOOLEN AND
OBSERVATIONS ABOUT CONVICTS

In opening this account of the old convict jail at Singapore, it will be necessary to refer, as we have said, in some little detail to the history of the settlements of Bencoolen, Penang, and Malacca, to which convicts from India were first sent, prior to their reception into the Singapore prison.

The first penal settlement was Bencoolen, the Banka-Ulu[1] of the Malays, to which they were transported from India about the year 1787, much about the same time that transportation to Australia for English convicts was sanctioned by our laws.

Bencoolen was singularly adapted as a receptacle for convict labour; it was not a populous place when we took it in 1685, nor, as far as we can gather, had the population much increased up to the year 1787, and the few Sumatrans and Malays that were its inhabitants were an indolent race, and preferred a life of ease to any kind of labour. They were content to get their livelihood from fishing, and they had no artificial wants. They would occasionally work upon pepper plantations, and would bring the berries to Bencoolen for sale to British merchants. Labour was therefore wanted here, and the East India Company thought that by its introduction they would make of Bencoolen a thriving settlement; but as it turned out they were greatly disappointed, for both pepper and camphor, which were the only commodities there for trade, greatly declined; and commerce, which was all-important to the East India Company, almost entirely disappeared after its establishment for some few years. It was a miserable place from all accounts, and was described by Captain James Lowe, in 1836, "as an expensive port, and of no use to any nation that might possess it," and he only echoed what was previously said of it by William Dampier, who had once been there in the humble position of a gunner, that it was "a sorry place, sorrily governed, and very unhealthy." So unhealthy was it, that it became necessary as early as 1714 to remove the Residency and offices to a point of land about two miles further off the coast, which was called Fort Marlborough; but even this locality was found not to be beyond the reach of malaria, and the place continued, as Crawfurd says, to be more or less unhealthy down to the cession of the settlement in 1825. But it had, however, done its work in providing for us a firm footing in those seas, and was a help to the next step in our progress towards a wider empire.

It is important to relate here that its last Lieut.-Governor was the founder of our now important settlement of Singapore. He took up the appointment at Bencoolen on the 20th March, 1818, founded Singapore in 1819, returned to Bencoolen in 1820, and finally left for England in 1824.

It is not our present purpose to dwell upon the intellectual and moral greatness of this remarkable man, for full justice has been done to his memory in the recent account of his life by Demetrius Boulger, and by an impressive tribute to his worth by General Sir Andrew Clarke, R.E., G.C.M.G., in a paper read by him in May last at the Royal Institution.

It is of course impossible at this late date to trace what was done in connection with the convicts on their first arrival at this settlement, though we gather from old letters that they were employed principally upon road-making, and on clearing estates which, "owing to their owners having died intestate, had reverted to the State." They were also let out to planters on a guarantee as to their not quitting the settlement.

The first authentic information we have in regard to the management and treatment of these convicts is from a letter to the Government by Sir Stamford Raffles, written from Bencoolen in 1818; which we give bodily from his Life, written by his widow in 1830. It is a paper which gives evidence of the soundness of his views upon this subject, and indeed it may be truly said, that with every question with which he had to deal he always displayed the greatest judgment and keenness of insight.

It is as follows:—

These intentions were acted upon afterwards, and the good effects of the regulations were soon apparent; a large body of people who had been living in the lowest state of degradation soon became useful labourers and happy members of society. So grateful were they for the change, that when they were sent round to Penang on the transfer of Bencoolen to the Dutch in 1825, as we have stated, they entreated to be placed on the same footing as they had been placed at Fort Marlborough, and not reduced to the state of the convicts in Prince of Wales Island, who were kept as a Government gang to be employed wherever their services might be thought most desirable.

Upon December 20th, 1823, Sir Stamford Raffles wrote a further letter to Government in regard to these convicts, of which we can only give an extract, which runs thus—

It is greatly to be regretted that we have been unable to obtain a copy of the regulations to which Sir Stamford Raffles refers, but we have no doubt they formed the basis of what were hereafter called the "Penang rules."

It was, as we have said, in the year 1825 that the whole of the Bencoolen convicts were transferred to Penang, and thence, as opportunities offered later on, to Malacca and Singapore. One point we trace in regard to those convicts is that, greatly to their disappointment, they missed the freedom they had possessed at Bencoolen, for they were sent to work in gangs upon the roads, and in levelling ground near the town of Penang. At first they were tried at jungle cutting and burning, but had no aptitude for it. This work was therefore entrusted to Malays, who we all know have a natural bent for cutting down trees and underwood, and are possessed of implements wonderfully suited for the purpose.

We may remark here that transportation in those early times had its terrors both to the European from our shores to Australia, and to the native of India to these settlements, and more especially to the latter.

Though, by a system of "assignment" or "compulsory" servitude to masters, or by a ticket of leave which made it open to the European criminal to work for whom and where he pleased, expatriation became in time to be less severely felt; still, for a long period it continued to act as a deterrent to others, though to the convict himself it was "greater in idea perhaps than in reality." To the native of India it meant even a severer punishment than to the European, for to be sent across the "kala pani," or "black water," in a convict ship or "jeta junaza," or "living tomb" as they called it, meant, especially to a man of high caste, whether of the right or left hand section, the total loss to him of all that was worth living for. He could never be received in intercourse again with his own people, and so strong are the caste ideas of ceremonial uncleanness that it would be defilement to his friends and relations even to offer to him sustenance of any kind, and he was in point of fact excommunicated and avoided. Happily this dread of caste defilement has now, by railway communication over the country and equalization of classes under our rule, greatly diminished, but it is still, as Balfour says, "a prominent feature in every-day Hindu life." Sir Stamford Raffles' views as to the treatment of those transported convicts have in the main been recognised by all authorities in the Straits Settlements since his time; and his suggestion as to the privileges to be granted to men of the first class, though not defined by him as a "ticket of leave," has been all along kept in view, and was in regular force in the jail of which we treat. He divided his convicts into three classes only, but as time went on they were separated into six classes, and later on in the narrative will be given the reasons for this enlargement of the number. Dr. Mouat, Inspector General of Jails, Bengal, in a paper read before the Statistical Society some few years ago, spoke of this jail and the ticket-of-leave system as follows:—

We are not of course greatly concerned in this treatise with the original crimes committed by those Indian convicts, and for which they had received a sentence of transportation. Suffice it to say that their warrants showed generally that, in the case of convicts for life, the crimes were for the most part those of Murder, Thuggee, and Dacoity; while those sentenced to a term of years had been tried and convicted of frauds and forgeries, robbery with violence, and such like misdemeanours. "Thuggee," we all know, though it will bear repetition here, was in full operation all over India from very early times, but at the beginning of this century it engaged the serious attention of the Indian Government; and it was found to be an hereditary pursuit of certain families who worked in gangs—the Hindus to satisfy their goddess Bhawani, and other sects the goddess Devi—and they committed a countless number of murders all over the country. Thugs were a bold, resolute set of men, and as a rule divided themselves into groups consisting of a leader, a persuader, a strangler, a scout, and a gravedigger, but all the gangs, happily for India, were finally broken up under Colonel Sleeman about 1860. Some of the men were hanged, and many transported to our penal settlements in the Straits of Malacca. Dacoity was in some parts of India akin to Thuggee, for the leaders carried with them in the same way a sacred implement, which was devoted to Bhawani. In the case of the Thugs this was a pickaxe, but with the Dacoits it was an axe with a highly-tempered edge.

In the early days we talk of, it was the common practice of the authorities to brand these life convicts with a hot iron to indicate the character of their crime, and this was in some cases done upon the forehead both in the English language and in the vernacular of the district where the crime was committed. This was very properly put a stop to shortly after the custom became known. We have seen some of those in our jail who, by good conduct, have risen to a ticket of leave, using their utmost endeavours to get rid of the marks, but without effect; and finally as a last resource they were obliged to be content to hide the "stigma" by wearing their turbans, or head-dresses, inconveniently low down over their brows.

It is worthy of remark here, in reference to those native criminals who are in the habit of working in gangs, more especially among the Thugs, how signally they often fail when they attempt to act alone. Amongst our Thugs we had one (a strangler) who, coveting a pair of gold bangles on the wrist of a fellow-convict employed at the General Hospital, one night tried the handkerchief upon him, but missed his mark, and got away without being detected. Later on, the convict authorities examined the warrants of all the men at the hospital, and this gave them a clue, which they followed up successfully and caught the "Thug." He was punished, and then confessed, saying, "Bhawani was unkind, and I could not do it by myself; I missed my companions," or "saubutwalé" as he called them, literally meaning those "I kept company with."