Robert C. Schenck to Hamilton Fish, August 12, 1873

No. 283. General Schenck to Mr. Fish.

Sir: The deportation of convicts and paupers from Great Britain to the United States is a matter which has demanded my attention from time to time, and it has been for me already the subject of some correspondence with the Department.

The practice of sending to our shores, under any direct or official sanction of the British government, such disreputable or helpless additions to our population, does not now, I believe, exist. Still it is necessary to be watchful against any movement in that direction. It is a great temptation to people on this side of the Atlantic, in view of the free asylum and welcome we give so generally to emigrants, to resort to that easy method of relieving themselves of a portion of their public burdens. They find it a simple and comparatively inexpensive expedient for ridding European countries of criminals, who are to be either supported, if in prison, or guarded against, if at large, as well as of the miserably destitute who can only subsist as objects of charity. But while Her Majesty’s government may not be disposed to forget in this particular what is due to our country by the comity of nations, some of the local authorities in England and Ireland are not disinclined, if an opportunity occurs, to make of the United States a cheap place of banishment and settlement for the inmates of their jails and poor-houses.

In my No. 94, December, 1871, I first wrote to you on this subject, giving you full report of a protest I had made against a scheme entered into by a parish vestry at Liverpool for sending off certain pauper children to the United States; and I communicated at the same time some correspondence I had with Lord Granville about it. The result of that interference on my part, and of informal communications which it led to, was an abandonment, by the local authorities implicated, of that offensive undertaking.

Next in order came your dispatches, Nos. 111 and 117, in relation to the cases of four persons who it was alleged had arrived at New York, released, before the expiration of their terms of sentence, from certain English prisons on condition of their going to the United States. In my No. 160, in reply, I gave you a copy of my note to Lord Granville in regard to those cases, and a copy of his answer on the 16th of February, 1872, informing me that he had referred my communication to the secretary of state for the home department.

Afterward, on the 15th of March, 1872, I received another note from his lordship, communicating the report from the home department as to those particular convicts. It was explained that while it appeared that discharged prisoners desirous of emigrating to America were assisted in that object by certain prisoners’ aid societies, yet no action was taken by Her Majesty’s government, who have no power to prevent such persons from going wherever they please; and Her Majesty’s government had no means of knowing whether the passage-money of those persons was supplied by their relatives in America, or by some charitable society. I inclose now herewith a copy of that last-mentioned note of Lord Granville. It was not satisfactory to me. I thought it did not sufficiently appear by the explanation given that those prisoners were not discharged before their terms of imprisonment expired, or that their emigration was not made a condition of their release. However, I concluded not to pursue the correspondence further at that time, but to reserve these objections for the future. I expected other occasions to occur.

In February last, with your No. 332, you sent me for investigation the case of one Bryan Fitzgerald. This man was reported, through the consul-general at London, to have been released from jail at Dublin when he had yet two years and three months of his term of imprisonment to serve, on condition of his going to the United States, and it was averred that having returned within that limit of time, he had been arrested and re-imprisoned for the remainder of his term of sentence. The statement was obtained from the man Fitzgerald himself. I took same pains to inquire after this man, to discover if his story could be verified, and had some correspondence with persons in Ireland in reference to him. As far as I could ascertain from unofficial sources his statement was substantially true.

But in the mean time my attention was attracted to another instance by a minute of the proceedings of the “North Dublin Union,” published in a newspaper of that city on the 22d of May last. The publication was official. It appeared that a meeting was held on the 21st of May, attended and conducted by the guardians of the union, and presided over by a public magistrate; and that it was voted to appropriate from a public fund the sum of £12, subject to the approval of the local government board, to provide an outfit and passage-ticket for a girl named Courtenay, “an inmate of the union work-house,” to enable her to accompany her mother who was at the time a convict at Mountjoy prison,” and was “about to leave for America.” I immediately addressed a communication to Lord Granville, in terms of strong remonstrance against any such procedure. I repeated the expression of my views in reference to the deportation of criminals and paupers from any part of Her Majesty’s dominions to the United States; and I requested especially that a prompt investigation might be made of the circumstances attending the case of Fitzgerald, and this new action of the local authorities at Dublin, with a view to some decided measures being taken to prevent the recurrence of such wrong, or the continuation of a practice so hurtful and disturbing to the friendly relations between our two countries. I was fortunate in being able to enforce my views by a citation of language used recently by Lord Granville himself, when making a similar complaint against the government of France.

But I must ask you to refer to and read this note to his lordship, a copy of which I transmit herewith.

To this communication I received from Lord Granville a reply, dated the 2d of June last, informing me that he had lost no time in referring the matter to Her Majesty’s secretary of state for the home department. And afterward, on the 31st of July, he wrote to me again, communicating a copy of a letter from the Irish government, with accompanying reports from the Irish convict-prisons and local government-board departments, which he had received from the home department in relation to these cases.

I send you copies of all these papers, and also of Lord Granville’s two notes.

These notes and these documents from Ireland I must request you to read and consider in connection with my respectful protest and my request for investigation.

I do not think they are a sufficient and satisfactory answer. We are entitled to some fuller assurance of the decided discountenance by Her Majesty’s government of the acts and practice of which I have complained.

It is my present purpose, after a time, to return to the subject again by a further communication to Lord Granville, making some comments on the want of fullness in his answer and the explanations attempted to be given.

I have, &c.,