The Perth gazette and Western Australian times/22 November 1867

CONVICT DISCIPLINE AT FREMANTLE — We take the following from the London Review of Sept. 7, 1867:

The convicts of Western Australia have presented a memorial to the Legislative Council, making certain disclosures of the treatment to which they have been subjected at Fremantle.... The convicts complain that the limits which the law has placed upon the punishments they have to undergo have been systematically disregarded. They assert that whilst corporeal punishment should not exceed 50 lashes, "the prisoner, in nearly every case, receives 100 lashes for frivolous disciplinary offences." That whilst imprisonment in dark cells on bread and water should not exceed beyond seven consecutive or twenty-eight alternate days, with at least an hour a day for exercise, the usual custom at Fremantle is to extend the punishment to twenty-eight consecutive days, and sometimes as far as thirty, forty, or fifty, without light, air or exercise... The truth of these complains should be inquired into, and if these lawless acts of tyranny we have detailed have been committed, the perpetration of them must not be permitted to go unpunished.