3-290 (Raw)

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The convict depot from which our little town derived its chief importance, was situated in the close vicinity of the pensioners' houses. At irregular intervals throughout the colony depots of this kind are scattered, to which convicts are drafted after serving a portion of their sentence in the Fremantle gaol. [137] On being thus transferred from the gaol to the depot, convicts, who are then 'probation prisoners', are distributed in gangs to work upon the roads of the district in which the depot is situated. Beside furnishing menders of the highway, the depots supply the place of 'mops' or 'statutes' for the hiring of farm labourers, and also serve as register offices for servants and tutors, according to the exigencies of the colonists, and the professed capacity of those prisoners who are entitled to their ticket-of-leave.
No one would have supposed, from the exterior of our convict depot at Barladong, that its inmates were under any sort of restraint, and, contrary to ordinary precedent in Government work, the architect appeared to have been strongly imbued with the idea of saving space and husbanding brick and mortar. Low white railings surrounded the enclosure instead of high spiked walls, and an out-house that looked like a large lock-up coach-house, and which stood open in the day, was the convicts' common hall and dormitory. The warders' quarters were as miserably cramped as if the bit of desert on which they stood had been rated at a London ground-rent, and the discovery that a district hospital was wanted had resulted in the appropriation for that purpose of an old kitchen, its which apartment both bond and free alike received benefit, but in less degree than would have been conferred on them by larger space and better ventilation. The depot bell, however, was a public boon without alloy, It swung from a tall slender gallows in the middle of the white-railed yard, and, being rung several times a day at stated hours, was as good as a church clock to those who heard it, few of whom had any other way of reckoning time.
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