THE PRICE OF SUCH OFFENCES
PROLOGUE Through the driving mists across Mount’s Bay, You discern the granite walls of St Michael’s standing shallows, And just fleetingly the winding-sheets of seamen’s ghosts Or sanded bodies walking the rocks of Megliggar. Run with the hares the ancient trackways across the moors, Where you stumble to paw the granite tombs of West Penrith That stud gorse and scrub, furze and bracken, And cromlechs in barrows beneath a tilted capstone. Magic, those moorstones and madness of Mid-summer Eve In Penzance under torch-light and blazing tar-barrels Where you arched arms with a lass in an eye For wild-fired dancers to jig through. You crame through the ring stone, the Men-An-Tol, Nine times against the sun to backen disease. Idle summer eves, you would lie on your back, Hand behind head on the smooth-bellied dolmen, Harking to the quick cry of sea-pies swooping The mud banks in flashes of black and white, And gaze upon the trimmed tors and lichened lozenges Looming, lurching in a circle, nineteen slabs, Maidens dressed in stone for dancing on the Sabbath, Forbidden passage to the netherworld. And you, where did you tread the shoe awry? Sir Rose Price’s ball at Trengwainton? An ivory curve of shoulder . . . a pink, satin gown décolleté … Your spoffish father interposing and stronged it. What prospects? The fourth son of a dissolute baronet, You were not brought up in the stirrup. S’truth, I’ll not stream for tin, Nor be clayman, quarrier or copper-seeker! Nay, I’ll not be rock-bound till doomsday! Perhaps gentleman farmer, settler . . . Causeway to a new world. HENRY BERESFORD GARRET, CONVICT Towered above us runty wraiths, the new Commandant. Dandy flash and fly; a striking looker As mebbe but a bull-necked brute even so. With this mass of carroty hair silvering at the parting. He sported a shooting-jacket bursting hefty shoulders And a black silk kerchief tied jack tar at his throat.
Strong as a stallion, he rode us jockeys down With a tiger’s pouncing sense of relish. Tucked in his leather belt, the butts winking, A brace of bull-dogs that’d stopper your jaw. And when those stony, grey ogles skewered you, In partiklar, the sharp-glassed left, They’d sound the deepest reaches. Cave! The fiend’d cut a shine in rumtackle all right, But would get the nettle in quick sticks. A queer customer was girt John Price. JOHN PRICE, COMMANDANT OF NORFOLK ISLAND You know me, don’t you? I am come here to rule, And by God I’ll do so. And break you in or knacker you. My smellers have got wind of your rum bites. I know you for lily-livered dogs. I’ll make you torment and devour each other! CONVICT Every which one of us, We wuz all awe-strick by gummagy John. Talk about steely pride. He’d cut you down With that rock of eye like it wuz a cutlass. Else have you crawl at his heels, a maggot a-begging mercy. Bugger for the lash wuz John, knew the Devil’s tricks: The spreadeagle, where yer arms are chained To two ring-bolts six feet asunder And yer ankles reeved to floor-bolts So yer feet are scarce scraping the sod beneath. Then the scavenger’s daughter, when yer noddle Is trussed to yer knees, so yer can hardly breathe And sink into a dizzy faint, well nigh toes up. Worse, the tube gag pushed in yer muff and down yer gullet. Yer sucks in through an iron hole and have bellows to mend. Even when I wuz a bullock wain or carter, Both gams shackled, I hobbled slower than the bloody bullock. JOHN PRICE Hear me, Constable. Why didn’t you trig him like a bullock? Break his spirit. My name’s not Maconochie, damn your eyes! DR JOHN HAMPTON, COMPTROLLER GENERAL OF CONVICTS Consequent upon my holding a private enquiry,
I confirm that Commandant Price was a taut hand, Who has in no wise abused his power. CONSTABLE So I says to this old chum Assigned as gardener at Orange Vale, ‘What are you doin’ with that twig?‘ ‘Why,’ ‘e says, ‘I might be arter a parrot’. Impudent bilker! Ran ‘im into custody, Charged ‘im with Intendin’ To Catch A Parrot. Gloak got thirty-six on the breech. JOHN PRICE This Lazar House of Crime, The cullings of the Convict Department, Desperadoes, incorrigibles and gallows-birds. I’ll tolerate no rum mizzlers here. What then remains but recourse to the scourge? BISHOP WILLSON Hard on the heels of the Ring’s rebellion, That was fused by regular gripes over meagre rations And the confiscation of their mess-gear, The prisoners made a mad rush for the constables’ cottages. Twelve men were hanged on King’s Town gallows. Our Blessed Redeemer called for strong governance To eradicate these frightful evils, Not to mention the unnatural abomination itself. Worthy John Price is such a man. REV. THOMAS RODGERS Felons thrice convicted could frisk their fellows In a manner obscene. Dare resist, And you risked being bludgeoned and broken. Every rock-nosing jack was urged to play spy and squealer. Betrayal was credited as virtue; perjury the constables’ flam. JOHN PRICE What was your game at Home? Farm servant? Thief of circumstance is not thief enough for me. And you, Johnny Raw? An honest traveller, eh? You have the hide and gall for policeman. HENRY BERESFORD GARRETT
The Demon, I call him, a saturnine Satan, Made flogging a cruel science. Or exquisite art. Johnny Newcomes were forced to go a-licking Sheets of bark stretched on the triangles. Woe betide the namby-pamby scourger That couldst not carve the raw insignia of mutilation. The agony of mangled, purpled backs Was eased a whit with ragged bluestone. Or if you touched lucky, your chums made muckenders Of lemon and lime pulp, or cooled your welts With banana leaves. Or doused the flames with their piss. Faugh, those stink-dens of festering wounds! Norfolk was the soul of John Price damned thrice over! BISHOP WILLSON These living skeletons, attenuated and blanched, Bound in a frame of ironwork, Thirty-six pounds of iron drag at their feet. They stand all of a tremble in gore and streams of blood Mingled with cold water sluiced over their torn backs . . . Taken down like thieves on the Cross. REV. THOMAS RODGERS An officer’s assigned servant was gaoled merely For giving banana leaves from his master’s garden. Pity and mercy are all spent in this insular gaol. CONVICT John was a piercer. Glass eye’d stare you down. Run the rule over. Look us dandiprats up and down As if we wuz danna And him Demon-King of the night-snaps. JOHN PRICE I’ll take the flashness out of you, my joker! Lay it into him! Hold your tongue! Give this lewd loafer the gag! GAOLER I pushes the gag into his muff But he tries to bite me fingers orf, So I knocks two of the bugger’s grinders out And nigh broke his bloody jaw.
Beats cock-fighting, this billet. CONVICT ON THE JOHN CALVIN When we wuz got off at Cascade, Every man jack wuz stripped naked on the beach. If your crab-shells or drawers, castor or garters Didn’t have the devil’s claw, Her Majesty’s fleecers took ‘em. That’s how we wuz marched to Longridge, Shivery-shaky, stark and rheumaticky. John’s medicine wuz bitter pills for petty offences, Four or four n ten days’ solitary for . . . THE PLOUGH GANG tittlin bein late at musterin laughin on the way to prayers possessin a needle not doin jobs that was damn nigh impossible not tippin your lid to show respect not walkin quick enough walkin too quick avin a pipe CONVICT Any tracing of baccy and you’d be stripped naked, Yer privates’d be searched, Yer arse prodded n poked, Yer muff forced open for a cud. Tobacco track, they calls it. Quid est hoc? Hoc est quid, A chaw of nosey-my-nocker. Hunger’s far mightier than terror, Ergo Price was hungry as Hunt’s dog to find it. An’ you’d be limbered in limbo. Doin’ solitary meant confinement, no solitude. We’d be mustered, mucked in stiflin’ cells. Such wuz the heat and stench, we pissed tallow, Trippin’ and spillin’ the night buckets. Desperadoes and yellow gloaks would grab their chance To do the unnatural crime. Buggery, if they had to. That hell-hole druv you to it. Heard say Price was a lip-spigot. DR JOHN HAMPTON
Greater the ventilation, more their lives imperilled. Not a one is convicted without a free constable’s evidence. Mr Price is a trimming commandant. CONVICT That rum gagger grows glimflashly just grinding wind. REV. THOMAS RODGERS Take the case of this boy transport, Lloyd by name. By this time seven and twenty. We committed him for robbing an officer’s house. He languished in gaol nigh on ten months before trial, Then was sentenced at assizes to three years, With three months in every twelve in solitary confinement. Next year he was charged with indecency in the gaol yard And given an extension of nine months. Aye, Price was a stickler for extensions, you know. The lad became so wretched, he attempted to take his own life. For which offence, Price ordered the spiflication of fifty lashes. Then had him strapped down on his back for six weeks. The visiting chaplain likened this tooth-drawer to a corpse. One day he caught the movement of lips and leaned close And made out a dry whisper: ‘Loose me. Oh, loose me.’ The chaplain fidgeted. ‘No. Lloyd. I durst not do that.’ Lloyd uttered a deep sigh and tears trickled down his sunken cheeks. JOHN PRICE, INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF PRISONS When I quit the hurricanes of sand and salt and brooding pines On unpenitent Norfolk for this glory-hole at Pentridge, I should have forsaken every shred of humanity Had I not yearned to retire to my farm on the Huon river. ‘Twas then I felt merry as a grig, pitting my wits Against bush-rangers and duffers, outfoxing scurf and scab. The rush of elation born on the wind of the chase, Nay, dash and danger. Playing a good stick. Now home, fie, a stockade inside this block-house, Mary and my children cheek by jowl With a family of infernal dredgermen badged and tattered, More lice-ridden than a mob of mangy mastiffs. Chained am I to my own wheel and bolted down, Incapable of bestirring. Must not break, cannot bolt. I am hilla-ridden! The curse of the family crest! That bleeding hand in the dragon’s maw disturbs my dreams. Each day these curs tear at my liver. Prometheus was set free, yet I cannot renew. What has become of me? Nothing but a block, a Cornish quoit! Worked upon by sharpers, scoundrels and Alsatians.
HENRY BERESFORD GARRET, CONVICT He had his fags for overseers, lackeys he’d favour, Hard-a-weather coves what knowed him on Norfolk Blachford, who’d hanged twelve of the Ring, Them creamy cliffs of Nepean Isle swimming afore their lamps. Holles, Hendry, Hyland . . . hard men. Turned their coats. JAMES HOLLES, SUPERINTENDANT OF HULKS Five hulks are swinging at their moorings in Hobson’s Bay – The Lysander, Success, President, Sacramento and Deborah. Painted yellow, leaky, stumpy as rotten teeth, These stinking dens are guarded by warders Armed with rifles double-barrelled. Agin’ all a four hundred abrams, The wickedest of ‘em skulkn’ aboard the President. They’d bite your nose and ear off soon as look at yer, Be it not for the warders’ neddies, Bludgeons made of whalebone, nock of lead both ends. Oh, and solitary in The Box. JOHN PRICE, INSPECTOR, INSPECTOR-GENERAL OF PRISONS I’d rather be hanged on the morrow Than endure entombment in the President’s jug. HENRY AUGUSTUS WHITE, PENAL OFFICER Mr Price himself designed this moveable stockade at Pentridge That some jolly dogs call the Crystal Palace. In here you might muster the Devil’s own regiment of the line, Ne’er-do-wells scarred and deformed by heavy irons, Pentonvillains or old files freed from Vandemonia. Aye, sometimes unnecessary severity was dealt And made Desperate Dicks ferocious and pitiless biters. MR WILLS, POLITICIAN Striking terror is the warp and woof of the System, Directly opposed to the reformation of criminals And repugnant to community values and common sense. JOHN PRICE I’ll not pander to the humanity-mongers. Prigsters skulk on the President, old lags That I have thrice sentenced to be trined to the cheats. George Arthur would argue for the most harassing vigilance.
I concurred then and still hold fast. DR GEORGE WEBSTER Convict by the name of Maguire was feigning madness, So I ordered him to be blistered. Warders held the cull face down While his shaved head, spine, cheeks, calves Were painted with a feather in vitriol. Certainly cured the moocher of malingering. JOHN PRICE Your name is Bacon, But I’ll take the fat off you before you leave me! WARDER JOHN BERKELEY A prisoner that’d caught the Frenchman, the crinkums, Was pushed into a bath, scrubbed with flannel and sand And had a piece of flannel shoved up his poxy rectum. That flannel was soaked in caustic soda. CONVICT ON THE HULKS To hazard a reply on the ringbolt meant bludgeon and gag. Or they’d warm yer with the cat’s tickle, Then cool yer down with buckets of salty brine Sloshed over yer ragged, red shirt. JOHN PRICE Can’t meet it? You’re not half a pebble. Keep the craven on it! And ignore those baying hounds. CONVICT ON THE HULKS Had we not doctor-stuff? The Epsoms, the glaubers, The arrowroots and the whips? The bugs wuz worst. JOHN PRICE These carping criticisms from the Citizens’ Committee Spun from the winch have spurred the rubble rabble At Gellibrand Point. I snilch serious consequences. DR JOHN SINGLETON
D’you know, clinked his own son in solitary For some scrape. A horse that kicked me, He ironed up. Griggombob paces the shadows of Caligula. JOHN PRICE My hopes of reforming scoundrels lapsed long ago. I own many rogues won’t thieve again. But morally reformed? Not one whit! Too much iron corrodes the soul. PRISONER ON THE SUCCESS Part of my bread ration was snapped by Warder Hyland. What’s more, our scran is as mouldy as our slops And our soap is pinched to scrub the hulks. JOHN PRICE Do you see anything green in my eye? JAMES KELLY, PRISONER ON THE SUCCESS My time will soon be up. Well, then, Would a punishment of three days’ solitary, Just bread and water, mean an extension of six months Afore I’m a-liable for me ticket-of-leave? JOHN PRICE Work for a dead horse must be done. JAMES KELLY You bloody tyrant! Your race will soon be run! PRISONER ON THE HULKS Price barges Kelly aside, orders him aboard. But Kelly was a sly’un, slunk back in the cart-gang What ‘d drawed up close in a half-moon About the big-wigs. The quarry gang too. They ‘gan to rag Price. Some chum yelled out, ‘Our officers have crossed us! Hyland! That’s the bloody tyrant!’ Some cove up back threw a clod or two. Quicker than hell would scorch a feather, The gangs grows bold as brass, grabs lumps of quarried rock And hurls them at the Demon and his cronies.
That overseer, Wilson, ‘e was cut bad. Captain Blachford and Warder Gleeson struck. Price raises a mauley to protect his block, But the very second he turns his back, Averts that infernal peeper, it done ‘im no good. The crew rushes to set about ‘im good n proper. JOHN PRICE Don’t, don’t, men! Fall back, men! Fall back! PRISONER FROM THE HULKS Knuckled hard, the big bug. Stood head and shoulders above us scrawny birds. Flailed his limbs like a mad bear at the stake. Broke loose. Must’ve bin in a bloody funk, though. A rock struck him in the back, Bundling him out agin the tramway bank. Staggers to his feet, he did, but stumbles in a gutter. Fit place, mind you. Looks blue, knocked up, dazed. Still getting to his feet when the first cove downs him, An almighty socker with a shovel. Bloody end to him. Stuck like a pig. Good riddance, I says. THOMAS HYLAND, CHIEF WARDER There was nothing for it, but look slippy. We couldn’t have done nothing for him. They’d planned it all along. Mayhem and murder. You could read mischief in their lamps. There was a greased rope, a noose, strung up Across the ridge-pole of a quarry tent. They suddenly rushed him, howling like wild beasts, Dragging him along, limp and lifeless, Raining down blow upon blow with devilish oaths, Striking, striking, stones and fists and shovels . . . And iron-shod boots. PRISONER FROM THE HULKS Come on, e’s cooked. ‘E wants no more. We’re shot of ‘im. SIMON RUSSELL, PRISONER ON THE HULKS Mr Price lay in the mud, battered unconscious, Abandoned by all – guards, officers . . . prisoners. I hobbled to him – most of us were ironed.
Lying face down in a hollow of sand, he was, Bleeding freely and groaning dreadful. I lifted his head from the wet sand so as he could breathe, Very careful on account of the awkward slant of his neck And the bruising and blood at the base of his skull. His crown was cracked, his left cheek staved in. Alfred Berry, a decent sort, Brought over a pannikin of water and washed his mouth, But the poor man was all but done-for.
Michael Small
July 19-September 13, 2004