Читать книгу The English Colony in New South Wales (Vol. 1&2). Narrative of the British First Settlement in Australia 1788-1801 онлайн

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[* Sixty pounds of flour, which had been offered as a reward for bringing to justice a garden-thief, were paid to the watchman who fired at him.]

So great was either the villainy of the people, or the necessities of the times, that a prisoner lying at the hospital under sentence of corporal punishment having received a part of it, five hundred lashes, contrived to get his irons off from one leg, and in that situation was caught robbing a farm. On being brought in, he received another portion of his punishment.

Among other thefts committed in this season of general distress, was one by a convict employed in the fishing boats, who found means to secrete several pounds of fish in a bag, which he meant to secure in addition to the allowance which was to be made him for having been out on that duty. To deter others from committing the like offence, which might, by repetition, amount to a serious evil, he was ordered to receive one hundred lashes.

At Rose Hill the convicts conducted themselves with much greater propriety; not a theft nor any act of ill behaviour having been for some time past heard of among them*.