To this day many of the released convicts are living in Singapore, cart owners, milk sellers, road contractors, and so on. Many of them are comfortably off, but are growing fewer year by year, and their places will never be filled by that class again. The name of Major McNair is a password to their good feelings, and all their disputes used to go to him as a matter of course. When the Major wrote the Sarong and Kris, Perak and the Malays, it was remarked by one of the reviewers that he hoped the Major would some day give an account of the old jail to the world. It was one of the most remarkable sights of the place, and no one came from India on a visit in those days without going over it before he returned. For all sorts of things, from coir matting and rattan chairs down to waste paper baskets, every one went to the jail; and the rattan chairs the Chinese now sell here so largely, were invented in the jail, beginning with a cumbrous heavy chair, which was the first pattern, down to the shape we see now.

No doubt the system had its defects, and there was a wide difference between the jail as it is now, filled with offenders sentenced in Singapore, and a jail which contained criminals who came from distant places and did not know the local language, and had no friends outside [184]the walls to help them to escape from the island if they succeeded in getting clear of the jail; but, notwithstanding, it was often a wonder to many to find so large an establishment of the worst characters of India kept in check by what was, practically, almost personal influence alone.