Thus, as the committee described, the criminal sentenced to transportation for crimes to which the law affixed the penalty of death, passed his time, well fed, well clothed, indulging in riotous enjoyment by night, vexed with but moderate labour by day. No wonder that confinement on the hulks failed to excite a proper feeling of terror in the minds of those likely to come under its operation. The hulks were indeed not dreaded; prisoners described their life in them as a “pretty jolly life.” If any convict could but overcome the sense of shame which the degradation of his position might evoke, he would feel himself to be better off than large numbers of the working-classes, who have nothing but their daily labour to depend on for subsistence. At the dockyards, among the free men the situation of a convict was looked upon with envy; and many labourers would have been glad to change places with him, in order that they might better their situation. It was not strange, then, that the discontented denizens of the Penitentiary found even the moderate rigour of that establishment too irksome, and that they were eager to be transferred to the hulks. Towards the end of September, 1826, came the first indications of disturbance. A prisoner having smashed his bedstead, demolished also the iron grating to his window, and thrust through it his handkerchief, tied to a stick, shouting and hallooing the while loud enough to be heard in Surrey. The same day, Hussey, another notorious offender, returning from confinement in the dark, was given a pail of water to wash his cell out, but instead, discharged the whole contents over his warder’s head. Before he could be secured he had destroyed everything in his cell, and had thrown the pieces out of the window. Next, a number of prisoners during the night took to rolling their cell-blocks and rattling their tables about. By this time the dark cells had many occupants, who spent the night in singing, dancing, and shouting to each other.