Australiana. Thoughts on Convict Management and other subjects connected with the Australian Penal Colonies. ...

This is a rare or used book from the Berkelouw Rare Books Department.

London: John W. Parker 1839. Octavo bound in contemp. half calf. (vi viii ii 222 16 24pp.). Previous owners bookplate inside front cover. Some light foxing throughout. With errata slip. Bound-in at end: Supplement to Thoughts on Convict Management. By Captain Maconochie . Hobart Town: Printed by J. C. MacDougall 1839. Publisher's advertisements at end. Complete uncut copy. Colophon to both items: Printed by J. C. MacDougall Hobart Town Van Diemen's Land. Rare. This copy collates exactly with Ferguson. NOTE: Born in Edinburgh Alexander Maconochie (1787-1860) joined the Royal Navy in 1803 serving during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1811 he was on board the brig Grasshopper when she was captured by the Dutch. Handed over to the French Maconochie experienced prison-life first hand as a prisoner of war at Verdun until Napoleon's abdication in 1814. In 1836 Maconochie accompanied Sir John Franklin the new lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen's Land to Hobart Town as his private secretary. Once there he prepared a report published as a parliamentary paper on the treatment of convicts. Its contents however proved so inflammatory that Franklin was forced to dismiss him. Maconochie was nonetheless given an opportunity to put his reformative theories on convict management into practice on Norfolk Island to which place he was appointed superintendent in 1840. It was on Norfolk Island that Maconochie "formulated and applied most of the principles on which modern penology is based" (ADB 1967). Primary to Maconochie's penology was a shift in emphasis from punishment to reform. As he elucidates in the preface to the present work "[T]o restrain men rather by making virtue easy and good conduct pleasant than merely by making vice difficult and misconduct painful." (p. i) An early work by the pioneer penal reformer who laid the foundations for modern Western penal systems (ADB).