Maconochie, Alexander (1787–1860)

History

In 1840, the notorious prison on Norfolk Island (a penal colony in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles northeast of Sydney) was sent a new governor, Captain Alexander Maconochie. He had requested this post. Norfolk Island was a place of secondary punishment for convicts who reoffended in the British colony of New South Wales. It was distinguished by a regime of brutality designed to strike terror in the hearts and minds of all transported felons. Here, men were starved at the slightest infringement of rules and were confined in small fetid cells. Here, too, they could be flogged until their bones were revealed. Norfolk Island was a place where hope was removed from prisoners' lives, and where death was eagerly awaited.

Maconochie, a former soldier, had been employed in Van Diemen's Land as a private secretary to Governor Sir John Franklin before he sought this new employment. He was a prison reformer, concerned to establish a process of improvement even in the most brutal prison of the antipodes. Inspired, in part, by his Christian beliefs, Maconochie thought it necessary to build new, healthier prisons with strict, regulated regimes that would persuade inmates not to reoffend. These institutions would also equip prisoners with skills to support themselves with honest labor once back in the world.

The Marks System

Maconochie's contribution to prison reform lay in his introduction of a scale of “marks” that prisoners could earn for good behavior. Once an individual achieved a certain number of marks, his living conditions would improve. An accumulation of marks would also result in an early form of parole known [Page 564]as a “ticket of leave” that allowed a person to be released from prison under license.

Maconochie experimented on Norfolk Island with these ideas and, to his mind at least, achieved some notable results. He altered inmates' lives by allowing them to hope. Unfortunately for the Norfolk Island convicts, the ticket of leave could only be permitted on the island itself. They had little chance of returning to the mainland and even less of returning to England. Maconochie could not achieve miracles, but he could and did permit a level of humanity to return to the men's lives.

Convicts in this system had been brutalized. One man's treatment had included a period of time chained to a rock in Sydney Harbor, where he became an object of mockery for those who could reach him and throw bread or less savory items at him. His life sentence was to be served out on the island, and by the time Maconochie reached it the convict could barely make himself understood. He was removed from the prison and sent to live by himself in a small hut where he was permitted to cultivate a garden and was supplied by convict stores. In this way, Maconochie believed he had retrieved an individual who was thought to be beyond help of any kind but God's.

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