Meanwhile in Halle...

John Boyle O’Reilly Mug­shot: Not the fath­er of criminals

In the pro­cess of bat­tling my way back to health (read: whole­sale slaughter of bac­teria), there was little time left to read up on vari­ous online blogs & news. Pic­ture my sur­prise then, when upon my return to the great vir­tu­al indoors *muhar­har* I came across an art­icle ser­i­ously advoc­at­ing the return to phys­ic­al pun­ish­ments. In, brace your­self, the Chron­icle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, no less. Flog­ging, to be pre­cise. As bar­bar­ic as this appears to be, what had me trans­fixed was the argu­ment — the dis­cus­sion of impris­on­ment vs. rehab­il­it­a­tion, sham­ing vs. integ­ra­tion, pun­ish­ment vs. justice vs. atone­ment… I am sure you will recall the dis­cus­sion we had in class about the extent to which our con­tem­por­ary judi­ciary is still in debt to Vic­tori­an pris­on reforms and dis­cus­sions per­tain­ing to Aus­trali­an trans­port­a­tion. I remem­ber say­ing how we still had no answers to the conun­drums plaguing “the sys­tem” then, and I am sure some of you thought me pess­im­ist­ic or down­right cyn­ic­al. Well, then brace your­self when you read the argu­ments put forth there, because they seem to just reit­er­ate good old Vic­tori­an staples. For the record: No. I do not believe, strip­ping an offend­er in pub­lic, tying them down and lash­ing them bloody is likely to deter offend­ers, help their rein­teg­ra­tion into soci­ety, or, indeed improve their will­ing­ness to accept said soci­ety’s norms. From the scarred-back regi­ment of the “Steel­backs” to repeat offend­ers in Nor­folk Island, flog­ging welds men togeth­er, no doubt. You may just not like the outcome.

Ps — No idea what’s with this return of Vic­tori­ana, but here’s the crim­in­al classes, yet again: an art­icle in the Sydney Morn­ing Her­ald about how the like­li­hood of crim­in­al offence increases in chil­dren of crim­in­als. Not because crim­in­als might make bad par­ents, or bad rolemod­els, or oth­er­wise fail their chil­dren. No, it’s genes, they say.

The Guard­i­an reports today on the deport­a­tion of Eng­lish chil­dren to Aus­tralia, see­ing as there’s a new movie out, Oranges and Sun­shine, about the Eng­lish social work­er who tracked these events and man­aged to bring the people affected togeth­er. The dis­reg­ard of human life exhib­ited by gov­ern­ment offi­cials (both Brit­ish and Aus­trali­an) as well as the tend­ency to con­sider Aus­tralia still a dump­ing ground for Brit­ish undesir­ables, dec­ades after col­on­iz­a­tion, is the strongest impres­sion you’re left with. Non­ethe­less, lying to chil­dren about their par­ents being dead or to par­ents about their chil­dren hav­ing been adop­ted is indeed noth­ing short of crim­in­al. The Chris­ti­an Broth­ers hor­ror briefly men­tioned in the art­icle relates to expos­ures in 1998 (largely unnoticed in Europe) that the Chris­ti­an Broth­ers insti­tu­tions were sites of mass rape and abuse. In 2001 the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee in Can­berra pub­lished a report with their final eval­u­ation of the events sur­round the orphan­age at Bindoon and oth­er Chris­ti­an Broth­ers insti­tu­tions; it is titled “Quite excep­tion­al deprav­ity” and not for the faint-hearted or those who believe that piety and reli­gious voca­tion guar­an­tee good­ness. This, too, is an inter­est­ing con­tem­por­ary echo of the Vic­tori­an dis­cus­sion of abso­lute author­ity in pen­al insti­tu­tions dur­ing the Aus­trali­an colonization.

I came across a fas­cin­at­ing post this morn­ing, show­ing the film­ing of Mar­cus Clarke’s For the Term of His Nat­ur­al Life in 1926 includ­ing a kangaroo brought onto the set. To add some Aus­trali­an feel… I’m sure that’s exactly what we’re sup­posed to ima­gine Sarah Purfoy does in Van Diemen’s Land, when she’s off her usu­al money-mak­ing or black­mail­ing agenda. Scruff the roo! ;-D
Paul Byrnes does a very good job in his intro­duc­tion & com­ment­ary to the fol­low­ing clips from the movie itself. It is par­tic­u­larly strik­ing to observe how the back­ground music in the third clip just does not match the action at all. After all, this is the night that Rex spends in a cave after his escape attempt, in which Clarke man­ages to con­vey the near-hal­lu­cin­at­ory powers of horror:

All creatures that could be engendered by slime and salt crept forth into the fire­light to stare at him. Red dabs and splashes that were liv­ing beings, hav­ing a strange phos­phor­ic light of their own, glowed upon the floor. The liv­id encrust­a­tions of a hun­dred years of humid­ity slipped from off the walls and pain­fully heaved their mush­room sur­faces to the blaze. The red glow of the unwonted fire, crim­son­ing the wet sides of the cav­ern, seemed to attract count­less blis­ter­ous and trans­par­ent shape­less­nesses, which elong­ated them­selves towards him. Blood­less and blad­dery things ran hith­er and thith­er noise­lessly. Strange car­a­paces crawled from out of the rocks. All the hor­rible, unseen life of the ocean seemed to be rising up and sur­round­ing him.

Nat­ur­ally this calls for a cheer­ful tune, to which Rex stumbles amid blue-tin­ted caves, head­ing hap­pily towards his final sal­va­tion by boat, which is then marked by a tri­umphant cli­max in pipes and drums. Ouch.

James Boyce, in Van Diemen’s Land (2010, p. 3) makes much of the can­ni­bal scene (also in clip three) being in the sur­round­ings of Port Arthur, an envir­on­ment­ally most benign area. He con­cludes that Clarke “did not know the coun­try and it showed,” as Clarke only vis­ited Tas­mania for a few months. This would be rather weird, see­ing as Clarke spent time research­ing the Port Arthur archives and thus would have been in situ for quite a while. I’m not an envir­on­ment­al his­tor­i­an (BTW, can any­one find Boyce’s insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­ation? I can­not; com­ments please! This is not to detract from the gen­er­al mer­it of his study, which is very well done, merely a small irrit­ant.). As a lit­er­ary stud­ies schol­ar, how­ever, I feel bound to point out that Gab­bett becomes an estab­lished can­ni­bal in Macquar­ie Har­bour first — the fig­ure of Gab­bett is indeed based on the Alex­an­der Pearce escapes. His second can­ni­bal­ist­ic escape from Port Arthur is there­fore only a mat­ter of repeat­ing what has by then become his nature. The envir­on­ment of Port Arthur does not mat­ter to Gab­bett, though Clarke makes a point of keep­ing the run­aways in the bush along the east­ern coast to evade more settled dis­tricts. Gab­bett had planned his escape as a can­ni­bal­ist­ic feast from the start and there are ample hints in the text to show it. He even­tu­ally reaches St. Helen’s Point in the north-east, hav­ing devoured his mates and almost reached the north of the island. His tragedy is that there is no more sav­age wil­der­ness for a can­ni­bal to hide in, Van Diemen’s Land being firmly settled by this time — no mat­ter where he tries to run and how, Gab­bett will be caught, and he will be brought to justice. Civil­iz­a­tion asserts its val­ues eventually.

Post­mortem sketch of Alex­an­der Pearce

The mis­take Boyce makes goes, I think, a little fur­ther into meth­od. A fic­tion­al text, no mat­ter how his­tor­ic­ally based, is a rep­res­ent­a­tion of his­tory, yes, and Clarke’s is a real­ist­ic text, too — but such a fic­tion can as likely be alleg­or­ic­al. Gab­bett’s second fail­ure is the allegory of the extent to which sav­agery no longer lives in the Tas­mani­an bush and no mat­ter how moment­ar­ily suc­cess­ful, cun­ning, & cet­era & cet­era, has no future. The epis­ode is quite simply not a mimet­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion of the loc­al envir­on­ment of Port Arthur. The bush is an object­ive cor­rel­at­ive. After all, we are not read­ing Pear­ce’s story, no mat­ter how close to his con­fes­sions Mar­cus Clarke remains (and he is pretty close). We are read­ing Gab­bett’s, who was intro­duced as a sal­iv­at­ing “hor­ribly unhu­man” can­ni­bal, and remains so.

I’m cur­rently beaver­ing through the syl­labus for the con­vict nov­el sem­in­ar, and could­n’t help noti­cing just how much the wiki­pe­dia por­trait of Mar­cus Clarke rep­res­ents that Vic­tori­an bug­bear: the gen­tle­man. Sed­ate, bearded, respect­able, & some­what sombre. I am sure part of the later Mar­cus Clarke wanted to be seen as all these things.
How much more, how­ever, does that oth­er por­trait of the author found com­monly on the web (see right) dif­fer in all respects: cloth­ing style, body lan­guage… There’s no deny­ing a cer­tain colo­ni­al flash­ness to Clarke in this one. The boots are dusty. Note the cigar in the right, and the cor­res­pond­ing case he holds in his left. No gloves there. And what’s with the hat indoors? The photo must have been taken at a pub.
So, as the “tit­bit of the day”, here’s Aman­da Laugesen’s Con­vict Words: Lan­guage in Early Colo­ni­al Aus­tralia (OUP, 2002) on “flash”:
It is likely that the term derives from ‘flash’ in the sense (OED) ‘Gaudy, showy, smart. Of per­sons: Dash­ing, osten­ta­tious, swag­ger­ing, ‘swell’. The term first appears in Aus­trali­an records in 1793.
Osten­ta­tious & swag­ger­ing he is, no doubt, and cut­ting a dash­ing fig­ure as well (if some­what brash). The jack­et and waist­coat are impec­cable. It reminds me of that mem­or­able line of the banker­’s wife in the Ned Kelly movie with Heath Ledger: “There’s no need to apo­lo­gize on my behalf, Charles; the man is wear­ing a magenta cravat, for God’s sake!” Those were the days…

PS — Con­vict por­traits on the oth­er hand show the extent to which Eng­lish lower class men at the time were, to quote Mark Jef­frey, “dwarfs”: years of mal­nu­tri­tion, envir­on­ment­al pois­ons (wall­pa­per arsen­ic and infant-paci­fy­ing opi­ates) and dis­eases left their mark.