And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes —
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord —
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull —
Oh! the padded cells and the ‘O — b — s’ are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations — red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt —
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail —
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue — and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt — just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night — or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul — and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard —
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve —
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light — not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met — ’twas a mate of mine — in a gaol that is known to us;
He died — and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs — (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe —
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen —
The public call us the ‘criminal class’, but the warders call us ‘the men’.
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail —
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell —
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol —
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel —
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastille.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down —
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen’.
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow —
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind —
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison — or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they
bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw — (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’ — and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight — out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JACKIE FRENCH AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children’s literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for a variety of age groups. ‘Share a Story’ was the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.
jackiefrench.com
facebook.com/authorjackiefrench
Also by Jackie French
Australian Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner • Dancing with Ben Hall Daughter of the Regiment • Soldier on the Hill • Valley of Gold Tom Appleby, Convict Boy • A Rose for the Anzac Boys The Night They Stormed Eureka • Nanberry: Black Brother White Pennies for Hitler • Pirate Boy of Sydney Town • The Schoolmasters Daughter The Ghost of Howlers Beach • The Vanishing at the Very Small Castle
General Historical
Hitler’s Daughter • Lady Dance • How the Finnegans Saved the Ship The White Ship • They Came on Viking Ships • Macbeth and Son Pharaoh • Oracle • Goodbye, Mr Hitler • Just a Girl
Fiction
Rain Stones • Walking the Boundaries • The Secret Beach Summerland • A Wombat Named Bosco • Beyond the Boundaries The Warrior: The Story of a Wombat • The Book of Unicorns Tajore Arkle • Missing You, Love Sara • Dark Wind Blowing Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories Refuge • The Book of Horses and Unicorns
Non-Fiction
A Year in the Valley • How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri Invaded My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer How to Guzzle Your Garden • The Book of Challenges The Fascinating History of Your Lunch • To the Moon and Back The Secret World of Wombats • How High Can a Kangaroo Hop? Let the Land Speak: How the Land Created Our Nation I Spy a Great Reader
Miss Lily Series
1. Miss Lily’s Lovely Ladies • 1.5. With Love from Miss Lily: A Christmas Story 2. The Lily and the Rose • 2.5. Christmas Lilies • 3. The Lily in the Snow 3.5. Christmas in Paris • 4. Lilies, Lies and Love • 5. Legends of the Lost Lilies
The Matilda Saga
1. A Waltz for Matilda • 2. The Girl from Snowy River 3. The Road to Gundagai • 4. To Love a Sunburnt Country 5. The Ghost by the Billabong • 6. If Blood Should Stain the Wattle 7. Facing the Flame • 8. The Last Dingo Summer • 9. Clancy of the Overflow
Shakespeare Series
I am Juliet • Ophelia: Queen of Denmark The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman • Third Witch
The Animal Stars Series
The Goat Who Sailed the World • The Dog Who Loved a Queen The Camel Who Crossed Australia • The Donkey Who Carried the Wounded The Horse Who Bit a Bushranger Dingo: The Dog Who Conquered a Continent
The Secret Histories Series
1. Birrung the Secret Friend • 2. Barney and the Secret of the Whales 3. The Secret of the Black Bushranger 4. Barney and the Secret of the French Spies 5. The Secret of the Youngest Rebel
Outlands Trilogy
In the Blood • Blood Moon • Flesh and Blood
School for Heroes Series
Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior • Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
Wacky Families Series
1. My Dog the Dinosaur • 2. My Mum the Pirate 3. My Dad the Dragon • 4. My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome 5. My Uncle Wal the Werewolf • 6. My Gran the Gorilla 7. My Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken • 8. My Pa the Polar Bear
Phredde Series
1. A Phaery Named Phredde • 2. Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce 3. Phredde and the Zombie Librarian • 4. Phredde and the Temple of Gloom 5. Phredde and the Leopard-Skin Librarian 6. Phredde and the Purple Pyramid • 7. Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team 8. Phredde and the Ghostly Underpants
Picture Books
Diary of a Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Pete the Sheep (with Bruce Whatley)
Josephine Wants to Dance (with Bruce Whatley)
The Shaggy Gully Times (with Bruce Whatley)
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip (with Bruce Whatley)
Baby Wombat’s Week (with Bruce Whatley)
The Tomorrow Book (with Sue deGennaro)
Queen Victoria’s Underpants (with Bruce Whatley)
Christmas Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
A Day to Remember (with Mark Wilson)
Queen Victoria’s Christmas (with Bruce Whatley)
Dinosaurs Love Cheese (with Nina Rycroft)
Wombat Goes to School (with Bruce Whatley)
The Hairy-Nosed Wombats Find a New Home (with Sue deGennaro)
Good Dog Hank (with Nina Rycroft)
The Beach They Called Gallipoli (with Bruce Whatley)
Wombat Wins (with Bruce Whatley)
Grandma Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Millie Loves Ants (with Sue deGennaro)
Koala Bare (with Matt Shanks)
Dippy’s Big Day Out (with Bruce Whatley; concept by Ben Smith Whatley)
When the War is Over (with Anne Spudvilas)
Happy Birthday Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Fire Wombat • All of Us
COPYRIGHT
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsChildren’sBooks, Australia
HarperCollinsPublishers
Australia • Brazil • Canada • France • Germany • Holland • Hungary India • Italy • Japan • Mexico • New Zealand • Poland • Spain • Sweden Switzerland • United Kingdom • United States of America
First published in Australia in 2021
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jackie French 2021
The right of Jackie French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978 1 4607 5893 9 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 4607 1267 2 (ebook)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia
Cover design by Ayesha L. Rubio
Cover illustration copyright © Ayesha L. Rubio 2021
‘The Lights of Cobb and Co’, Henry Lawson, 1900
‘One Hundred and Three’, Henry Lawson, 1908
Night Ride into Danger Page 14
