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were a trap set to catch thorn and it became quickly known that confinement in gaol was now a real punishment. But the most marked effect attached to those measures of Sir Richard's administration by which he applied whipping and solitary confinement to cases of armed or violent assault, kidnapping and child-stealing (Ordinances 12 of 1865 and 3 of 1868) and to criminals returning from deportation (Ordinance 7 of 1870). Compelled by financial considerations to abandon the newly built gaol on Stonecutters' Island, he brought all prisoners under a uniformly rigorous system of discipline in Victoria Gaol, reduced the dietary scale, made gaol labour more severe, and ordered gaol offences to be punished with the cat instead of the rattan. By these measures he made imprisonment a real deterrent. He was so determined to keep the number of prisoners within the limits of the accommodation afforded by the old gaol, that he resorted to and, when checked by the Colonial Office, persevered in the application of other measures which were evidently illegal. In autumn 1866, he introduced a system under which prisoners were induced to petition, that they might be liberated on condition of their voluntarily submitting to be branded and deported with the understanding that, if they were thereafter again found in the Colony, they would be liable to be flogged by order of a Magistrate and remitted to their original sentence. He sought to give to this system a colour of legality by that Ordinance 8 of 1866 (for the maintenance of order and cleanliness) which has been referred to above, in connection with the equally illegal system of licensing gaming houses. When this Ordinance (in its original form) was disapproved by H.M. Government, Sir Richard abandoned the system of bringing branded and deported criminals, who returned to the Colony, before a Magistrate, but continued the original system of branding and deporting prisoners, before the expiration of their sentences, in accordance with those illegal engagements voluntarily entered into by prisoners and ratified in each case by the Executive Council. Criminals thus liberated and deported were, on being found again in the Colony, remitted to their original sentences

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