unlettered and ignorant plebs that harboured such absurd delusions respecting the new gaol, because a scare, little less exaggerated, dazed the judgment of some of the best-informed and coolest thinkers in the community. For instance, when, in 1844, as the building was nearly finished, a large public meeting was held in the open-air, on a part of the now Public Library Reserve, to remonstrate against the delayed separation of Port Phillip, Sir James (then Dr.) Palmer, one of the speakers, arraigned the Sydney Government for the manner in which the district had been treated, and one of the counts in his indictment was the erection of so large a gaol. Turning round, and pointing to the louring pile, he exclaimed : " Look at that enormous gaol, and say, if it is not a libel on this colony." Mr. Edward Curr, the most cautious and calculating public man of his time, another of the orators, improved the occasion, by enlarging and emphasizing the Palmerian notion in the following vehement language:—"Look next at the gaol, that hideous mass of deformity which stands so conspicuous before you, and which Dr. Palmer has so correctly designated as a libel on our colony. It has cost you ,£25,000 1 And why and wherefore was the monster, huge as it is hideous, erected ? I will tell you. Your rulers dwell in a convict colony where it is calculated that a number of persons equal to the whole number of the inhabitants are passed through the gaols once every three years. This explains their ideas in erecting here the libellous monster." Dr. Palmer lived to witness the great changes wrought by time in the penal organisation of the colony, and if the shade of Edward Curr, who died nearly forty years ago, could revisit " the glimpses of the moon," it would behold how, what was once denounced as a standing menace to the town, has dwarfed into tarnished insignificance compared with the massive pile of prison buildings which has since grown up beside it. After the gaol wasfinishedit was found that a wall could not be dispensed with, and a contract was accepted for one twenty feet high, two feet thick, and with piers of three feet each, of the like stone as the building, and to be done in four months, for .£800. The concern was opened "for the transaction of business" on the 1st January, 1845, when there were transferred to itfifty-ninemale and nine female prisoners, detained for offences graduating from murder to lunacy, if the latter could be deemed an offence. N o attempt at classification could be tried, nor were there any separate divisions for keeping the sexes apart. All the gaoler could do to remedy such shameful blundering was to shut up the males in one quarter and the females in another, each section being permitted to exercise in the yard by rotation. And there was only one yard extending along the northern side, the length of the building, and thirty feet in width. At the end facing Russell Street the entrance was by means of a large heavy wooden gate. It would be difficult even to imagine anything more inconveniently or imperfectly arranged than this so-called twenty-five thousand pounder leviathan and its belongings. THE TREADMILL REDIVIVUS.
The treadmill, as a reformatory engine, was not lost sight of, and the new gaol was not considered complete without such a refresher, which was to be put up in a yard walled off from the main one, at its western end. Tenders were called for its erection, a Mr. Daniel Rooney was declared to be the successful contractor, and the 1st June, 1845, beheld the commencement of the great undertaking; but it was not opened for exercise until the 1st March, 1846, when wonderful results were expected under the engineering of one Robert M'Cord, a turnkey, who was promoted for his supposed aptitude, to the exciting, though rather monotonous dignity of Master of the Mill. The second circumrotary machine was not much of an improvement on thefirst,and, from something or other going wrong with it internally, there were frequent break-downs. It used to be also thrown out of work through its constructor, or the specification anticipating more employment for it than it obtained. It was made to circumgyrate only under the weight offifteenaverage adults, and, as it frequently happened, that there were not this number of prisoners under sentence of hard labour at a time, the "mill" would stand still. One day M'Cord tested all his ingenuity to work it with eleven men, but it was no go, and as there was no known method of dummying it, the experiment was abandoned. Then poor Rooney, the contractor, who fondly dreamt of making a fortune out of the job, went to smash. H e notoriously either scamped or botched his work, for which he was to receive between ,£600 and £700, and Rattenbury, the Clerk of Works, refused to certify any payments. Rooney was, in consequence, landed in the Insolvent Court, and it was. a toss up as to which was in the more dilapidated condition—the man or his machine.
