The Word of a Gentleman his wife Nora are the focus of many chapters (and the book opens with a quotation from Oscar Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"); these reflect Niesewand's detention by Desmond Lardner-Burke under P. K. van der Byl and Smith, and his subsequent deportation, leaving behind his wife of three years, Nonie Niesewand (née Fogarty). The Word of a Gentleman The Word of a Gentleman (1981) (later retitled "Undercut") was the third of five novels written by Peter Niesewand, the South African journalist who spent 73 days in solitary confinement for his coverage of Ian Smith's government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Hay Gaol a staff of four. It was costing £582 per year to remain open and the former Governor of Parramatta Gaol, Superintendent O'Connor, deemed that Hay Gaol was "no longer useful". It was officially closed on 30 June 1915 (though it remained operating until 4 July 1915). Between the two World Wars, the Gaol buildings met Hay's medical needs. In 1919, during a local outbreak of the worldwide Spanish Flu epidemic, the Gaol was briefly used as an emergency hospital to isolate patients who couldn't be treated at the Hay Hospital. In 1921 Hay's Red Cross Society turned the Gaol into