Port Arthur, a Notorious 19th Century Australian Settlement

Rushcourt71

"Port Arthur (Australia) was chosen as the site for a prison settlement in September 1830, as a place of secondary punishment for convicts who had committed serious crimes in New South Wales or Van Diemen's Land itself, men who were seen to have no redeeming features and were treated accordingly.

The first 150 convicts worked like slaves to establish a timber industry in the wooded surroundings of the 'natural penitentiary' of the Tasman Peninsula, with narrow Eaglehawk Neck guarded by dogs. The regime was never a subtle one:

Governor George Arthur, responsible for all the convicts in Van Diemen's Land, believed that a convict's 'whole fate should be....the very last degree of misery consistent with humanity....

There was also a separate prison for boys- 'the thiefs prison'- at Point Puer, where the inmates were taught trades.

From the 1840s until transport of convicts ceased in 1853, the penal settlement grew steadily...

The lives of the labouring convicts contrasted sharply with those of the prison officers and their families, who had ornamental gardens, drama club, library and cricket fields.

The years after transport [of convicts being sent there] ended were in many ways more horrific than those that proceeded them, as physical beatings were replaced by psychological punishment.

In 1852 the Model Prison, based on the spoked-wheel design of Pentonville Prison in London, opened.

Here, prisoners could be kept in tiny cells in complete isolation and absolute silence; they were referred to by numbers rather than names, and wore hoods whenever they left their cells.

The prison continued to operate until 1877 by now incorporating its own mental asylum full of ex convicts as well as a geriatric home for ex convict paupers."

(Source: 'Australia: The Rough Guide, P 931, 1999)      

sktorry

Sometimes, the so called civilized world did many barbaric things.

Rushcourt71

The unfortunate reality is that the 'civilised world' today is more evil and barbaric than those it condemns for the same acts it subjects others too.

Four of the Five Permanent Members of the UN are from the so called 'civilised world' and are above international law and its legality. They can break the codes of the Geneva Convention, ignore treaties that define and govern the laws pertaining to genocide, human rights, torture and even the linguistic meanings of 'extremism' and 'terrorism', yet speak of everyone else being bound by and be tried by them.

The US for example refuses to accept definitions and clauses of accepted international UN statutes for itself because they obstruct its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

This includes waterboarding, confession obtained through torture, use of hearsay evidence to indict suspects, [complete] isolation, being hooded and bound, extradition to countries where 'suspects' will be tortured etc. and that is only what we know about from inside sources.     

Former President Barack Obama spoke calmly to reporters when he said 'we tortured some folks' as if to express the activity as a normal regular, common and perfectly civil thing to do. Others in official ranks less than him said similar things.