Recalling

the wrong people

Norfolk Island 1846 The Bot any Bay of Botany Bay. by Stuart and Naylor. Published by Sullivan’s Cove, Box 1932, Adelaide, Sth Australia. SA3S.

These are interesting, if some what expensive, days for people attracted by Norfolk

Island’s history.

Late last year The Exile’s Lamentations (PIM, February, p 59), a manuscript written by a Norfolk prisoner in about 1840, was published for the first time. It will almost cer

tainly remain the outstanding

description of the Island’s dis graceful prison colony as seen through a convict’s eyes.

Two other contemporary descriptions of that foul period - euphemistically called Nor folk’s ‘Second Settlement’ have now been brought out of archives and published in a volume titled Norfolk Island 1846.

The book has 84 foolscap size pages. The quality of its paper and production is high, for these days. Only 500 num bered copies have been printed for sale. The publishers have also had 10 copies bound in leather, with the page-edges being slit in the old style, at $lB5 a copy.

The two Norfolk prison descriptions in the book are by Rev T. B. Naylor, who was the Chaplain on Norfolk from 1841-1845, and by R. P. Stuart,

who wrote an official report for the Van Diemen’s Land government (Tasmania), after a two-weeks visit in 1846.

Naylor’s and Stuart’s accounts were published in a parliamentary paper in England in 1847, titled ‘Cor respondence on Convict Disci pline and Transportation’, and have been one of the main sources of information for Nor folk historians ever since. In republishing them the Sullivan’s Cove edition adds 45 explanatory footnotes that shed further light on the people and events described. There is a helpful introduction, and an appendix listing 42 years of punishments inflicted on a

single prisoner, Denis Doherty.

Restored to the Stuart report are some passages that were expurgated in the original parliamentary paper, com

menting on homosexuality in

the prison. They are neither substantial nor lurid by current standards.

Stuart’s report is 35 pages

long, and considerably the

more descriptive. It is critical of the state of affairs on Norfolk not so much because the place was a degrading hell hole, but because the Com

mandant, Major Joseph

Childs, had let discipline go to

pieces.

The report describes Major Childs as ‘a most amiable ben evolent gentleman’, which

might possibly qualify for the

Guinness Book of Records in a new category of ‘Nicest thing ever said of a member of the Establishment by another member.’

What Norfolk needed, Stuart recommended, were

new walls inside the mess com pound, to enforce obedience; the replacement of the broken down windmill with a tread wheel, ‘offering, as that description of incessant com pulsory labour does when com bined with separate treatment, a means of effectually coercing and subduing the hardened and turbulent’; the dismissal of officers who had been trading with convicts; and similar re forms such as building a more readily supervised blacksmith

shop.

Stuart proposed that Major Childs be recalled, in favour of someone more experienced, and this was promptly done.

When his report was con sidered by the executive coun cil in Van Diemen’s Land on July 1, 1846, the Lt-Govemor said it appeared to him that Norfolk was ‘on the very verge of open mutiny’. Mutiny was in fact then breaking out on the island.

In his report Stuart carefully catalogues the routines, the be haviour of prisoners and the

physical facilities at Kingston,

Longridge and Cascade. He describes the food, the crops, the wells, the ventilation, the hospital, sanitary arrange ments, the barracks, boot

making, lighting, prayers, the

bakehouse. It is an orderly, in formative report by a police magistrate concerned to make a system work, and apparently untroubled by whether the sys tem was right or wrong.

The Rev. Thomas Naylor’s description of Norfolk is only half as long as Stuart’s. The book’s introduction charac terises it as ‘less comprehensive and less objective’ but in his torical fact it was overwhelm ingly more powerful and effective. It led to the shutting down of the prison.

Where Stuart dealt with pro cedures, Naylor dealt with principles. He felt ‘there are evils which demand instant and effectual remedy’.

He intended his paper as an open letter to the secretary of state for the colonies. He sent it to England with his wife, ask ing her to get it published as a pamphlet.

His main points appear as sub-headings. Norfolk is unfit for a penal station, he says.

There is no discipline. There are too many men herded in one place. All grades of con

victs mingle indiscriminately.

Reformation and restoration to

society are altogether

overlooked. The diet is inad equate. The expense is enor mous.

He describes the island with restrained emotion. He con cludes, ‘At all events, my Lord, you must do something. Nor folk Island cannot remain the plague-spot it is much

longer...’

Mrs Naylor showed her hus band’s paper to Alexander Maconochie, who had returned to England after his term as Norfolk’s superintendent. He persuaded her to let him send it on to an associate of Earl Grey, who was colonial sec retary.

Eight days later Lord Grey

wrote to Sir William Denison, who was about to sail to take up his post as the new Lt- Govemor of Van Diemen’s Land. He enclosed Naylor’s paper. He instructed Denison ‘with the least possible delay, to take measures at once to break up the establishment at Nor folk Island, and withdraw the whole population of that settle ment to Tasman’s Penin sula ...’

It took Denison almost a decade to do it, but the fate of

England’s most despicable

prison colony was sealed from that moment. And all because a clergyman had the courage and the principles to write an

impassioned letter.

How foolishly we let our selves be led into remembering and honouring the wrong men

in history. The steely Major

Anderson is remembered on Norfolk because he had his name inscribed at the top of

large Kingston buildings - but

the humane, admirable Alex ander Maconochie is forgotten.

The Rev Thomas Beagley Naylor’s name should be honoured in the Pacific, and people who care about Nor folk’s history will want to have this new publishing of his elo quent letter, which broke the hellish grip cruelty had on the Island, and set the stage for the Pitcairn people to be offered a 4 new homeland there a decade

later.

Ed Howard.