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3ll
On July 4, 1873, Parliament, moved at last by the tragedy, introduced
the "Queen 1 s Asylum Bill" to ensure the better control and guardianship
of wards of the state.
Hall was no\'1 sixty-eight and beginning to feel the effects of
his .age. Unhappily, in June 1872 he suffered some accident which deprived
him of the use of his right arm, and prevented him from visiting the Orphan
Asylum as much as he would have liked. Coverdale's management still
caused him anxiety, and he saw little likelihood of improvement ?-S long as
he remained in charge . Nor were his fears unfounded: \'I hen he visited
the institution on April 6, 1873, he found two girls undergoing a week 1 s
sentence of solitary confinement on bread and water for having been ab sent
from the institution without leave for some hours. He was told that two
other girls and some boys had suffered the same punishment during his
ab sence. Hall was horrified at such treatment, so reminiscent of the
barbarity he had struggled .against in the old convict days in 1854. As
the Board of Guardians had no control over the Principal, and there was no
Visiting Magistrate to supevise his treatment of the children, like there
was for adult criminals, Coverdale being responsib le only to the Colonial
Secretary, Hall protested to the Government, only to find Coverdale 's
actions condoned and upheld. He immediately pub lished all his
correspondence with the Colonial Secretary in the Mercury o April 25 for
Parliament and the Public to judge for thems elves ; in his opinion ,
depriving growing children of the nourishment necessary to their proper
physical development was an irreparab le injury to the individual , and a
loss to society by impairing their capacity for labour; stockbreeders,
indeed, knew better than that ; moreover , it was monstrous that Coverdale
should have the power to punish children for offences with doub le the
severity that the gaolers of Hobart Town could punish adult criminals .
Fortunately , public opinion was already t-qrning against
Coverdale and his management, and Hall's remonstrances no longer fe ll on
deaf ears . Yet , Coverdale was to sow the seeds of his own destruction
himself. Owing to the increase in outdoor relief to pauper parents, and
to an experiment in "boarding-out" of forty-two children in selected
respectab le fami lies being conducted by Tarleton, the Administrator of
Pub lic Grants , who was responsible for the placement of destitute
children both in the Orphan Asylum and elsewhere , the numb er of children
in the Asylum, by the annual report of 1872 , had fallento about three
hundred and fifty , making it questionable whether the institution in its
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