Six Years in the Prisons of England Part 9

This was one of the men who bring odium on the whole cla.s.s of prisoners, and prejudice society against them. He was a thorough-bred professional thief, and, in addition, he was one of the very worst prison characters. His temper was very violent, and at times apparently uncontrollable. The lash had been tried on him, and, as in every case I met with, in vain. If he lives to complete the term of his imprisonment he will, as a matter of course, return to his old practices,--the only method he knows of making his living. The officials were afraid he would stab or otherwise injure some of them; and he was petted and indulged a good deal at first. His diet was changed every other day, until they got tired of humouring him; and then he got into trouble. At last, after he had been about eighteen months in the prison, and had insulted and threatened to strike the governor, he was suddenly removed to another prison, where he would no doubt repeat the same game. In all probability he will be in the grave before he is due for liberation.

Yet with all this, he could have been _led_ like a child; but to attempt to drive him was out of the question. I confess I was very glad when he was removed from the bed next to mine to one further away.

My neighbour on the other side was a very different character. He was a self-taught artist, and was gifted with considerable natural genius.

His failing had been intemperance, and his crime a "got up" case of rape. He was quite a philosopher in his way, always happy, always contented; nothing came amiss to him. Imprisonment was of no account with him; he was above it altogether. He had no inclination to break the law, and was most unlikely to enter a prison a second time. Yet this prisoner never could manage to get such good treatment as the other, simply because he was easily pleased. He looked upon the prison as a place of pa.s.sage to be made the best of, not as a home. He could be liberated to-morrow with perfect safety to the public, whilst the other prisoner, who had precisely the same sentence, will go into the society of thieves, and the pockets of other people, the moment he is permitted the opportunity. The artist, although a cripple, could have earned far more in prison than would have supported himself if he had been allowed to do so. The thief could not have supported himself honestly anywhere, and in prison he was never taught how to do so.

Now suppose these two men had been sent to a penal workshop, each with a fine of 50_l._ upon his head, instead of to a human cage with a seven years' sentence; suppose that they were each debited, in addition to the fine, with the cost of their food, lodging, &c., and credited with their labour on the profits on their work, and liberated when the account was balanced, what would be the result? In all probability it would be this: that the artist, anxious for liberty, would economise, do with as little food and drink as possible, exert his faculties to the uttermost, and in a year or two perhaps he would have paid off the amount of his fine, and the cost of his maintenance. He would then be liberated in a condition to benefit society; impressed with the folly of his conduct in having thrown away so much time and money, and determined to keep the law for the future.

The tax-payers, instead of being as now burdened to support him, would not only be relieved of that particular grievance, but would have the satisfaction of seeing the criminal contributing large sums to the right side of the public ledger. Instead of paying a quarter of a million of hard and honest-earned money to maintain convict prisons, and ever so much more to the county jails, we might in time make them self-sustaining, and the offenders of the law a source of revenue to the country.

If the casual offender regained his freedom in two years under such a system as I have indicated, when would one of the worst members of the most dangerous cla.s.s regain his? And what would be his condition and prospects? He would certainly get deeper into debt to begin with, and if thoroughly determined to remain a dangerous and useless member of society he would never regain his liberty. Perhaps he would commit an offence against the person, and bring restraint and punishment upon himself in every way unworthy of unrestrained freedom. But if he were resolved to become an honest and industrious man, the opportunity and the means for so doing would be before him; he would set to and learn a trade, practice economy, confine his hands to his own pockets, prove himself worthy of trust, and at the end of four or five years regain his freedom. He could never keep pace with the other in the race for liberty, nor would he be fitted for the proper use of his liberty until he had practised industry under a natural and healthy stimulus up to the paying point--the point when he becomes convinced in his own mind that honesty is the best policy. His prospects on liberation would then be very different from what they are under the present system. He would then be suited for being a colonist. It would have been proved to his own mind that he could make a living by honest industry, and in most cases this is the all-important consideration. Removed from his old a.s.sociates, placed in circ.u.mstances where money can be made by industry, and still keeping the cost of his transportation against him to be paid out of the first of his own free earnings, society would then have done its duty by him. I wish to impress this strongly on those who take an interest in the subject of criminal reformation; and therefore repeat, that if we can prove to the thief's own satisfaction that he can earn an honest livelihood, at work agreeable to himself and suited to his abilities, we shall do much towards making him an honest man. But, let us starve him and lash him, and tyrannize over him, and we shall send him to the grave or the gallows; and if we combine statuesque and compulsory Christianity with such treatment, we make him in addition a hardened unbeliever and atheist. And yet hitherto we have sent such men prematurely into the other world, in such condition of soul and body, with as great complacency as if the blame were all their own.

The next case I shall notice was a very different one indeed. The prisoner had been a clergyman in the Church of England for upwards of twenty years, and during that long period had discharged his duties to the satisfaction of his flock and his superiors in the church. I believe he had made an imprudent second marriage. His wife was beneath him in social position and being inclined to habits of extravagance had incurred debts which his small income could not meet. He used funds entrusted to his care by some society for the purpose of liquidating these debts, intending to replace them when his stipend became due.

These funds happened, however, to be wanted much sooner than had been customary, he was not able to produce them, and the consequence was penal servitude for a very long period. I could not help pitying the prisoner. He had never rubbed shoulders with the world. An occasional evening with the Squire's family or in the homes of the less exalted among his paris.h.i.+oners, had been almost his only opportunity of gaining a knowledge of life. He was apparently very penitent, and often I noticed him shedding tears (a very unusual sight in a convict prison), and he seemed to feel his degrading and cruel punishment very keenly indeed. He was very kind to the prisoners and was a great favourite with them, and in consequence not in the very best odour with the authorities. He was, like myself, employed as a reader in the work-rooms, but was soon removed to another prison, where he is now employed tailoring! What will he--what can he do, when liberated? I heard of three other clergymen who had been convicts, one of them went abroad after he was liberated, and soon afterwards died. A second went to a part of the country where he thought he would not be known, opened a school which was not very successful, got into good society, and for a time was very comfortable and happy. One day, however, a cabman who came to drive him to a gentleman's house, recognized him as an old prison companion, and the fact having become known he was obliged soon after to leave the neighbourhood. The third met with a fate somewhat similar. He happened to be at an evening party, in the house of a friend; one of the guests would not remain in his company, and to save the party from s.h.i.+pwreck he threw himself overboard into the great ocean of life. Perhaps some friendly fish has swallowed him and cast him on a Christian sh.o.r.e! I never heard of him again. The fate of these men gives rise to many sorrowful reflections; surely there is cruel injustice in the law which condemns a minister of the church of Christ, who in a moment of sore temptation breaks the eighth commandment, to years of slavery and a life of degradation and disgrace, compared with which death itself would be mercy and kindness, and yet permits constant and flagrant violations of the seventh, by rich and t.i.tled transgressors, to be compromised with gold! Why do we in the one case brand the offender with the mark of Cain, and in the other cover with a golden veil both sin and sinner? If it is necessary, "as a warning to others," that casual violations of the eighth commandment should be so punished, why is it unnecessary to warn others against the frequent and habitual violation of the seventh? Would the payment of money, together with the loss of character, social position, &c., not be a sufficient warning to all men in a position to commit such acts of dishonesty as may be included under the general designation of breaches of trust? But what does so-called justice now demand in such cases? Let ten clergymen embezzle 100_l._ each, and hear how society indemnifies itself for the crime and the loss! By the mouth of one judge, one of these clergymen is sentenced to one year in prison; by the mouth of another judge, another of these clergymen is sentenced to two years in prison; by the mouth of a third, another is condemned to three years penal servitude, to labour and a.s.sociate with the dregs of society; by the mouth of a fourth, four years of such humiliation; and so on.

Are all these just judges;--or is only one of them just? and which is he?

These are questions I will leave my readers to answer for themselves.

Of one thing I am satisfied, that our present laws on the subject require alteration.

CHAPTER XVI.

QUACKERY--FOOD--A CHATHAM PRISONER EATS SNAILS AND FROGS--SIR JOSHUA JEBB'S SYSTEM AND ITS DEFECTS.

I have already said in a previous chapter that our prison authorities regard the convicts as mere human machines, all made after the same model, and that the machinery, by some abnormal defect in its original construction constantly impels them in the wrong direction. In official eyes they do not appear to be men having peculiarities of physical construction and const.i.tution, individuality of character, or to have been so designed as to be like other men, moulded by circ.u.mstances, or amenable to the influence of education or social position. They look at him through the official spectacles, the lenses of which are carefully adjusted so that the object shall present not only a perfectly uniform appearance but also appear uniformly bad. If the convict is in good health, the machinery working smoothly--but still by the defect in its construction always in the wrong direction--there are the regulation appliances, not for remedying the original defect in the machinery, it must be remembered, and if possible getting it to work in the _right_ direction, but appliances to check, thwart, and by force drive it backward, which in most cases it cannot and will not do, and breakages, ruin of machinery and other appliances also are the only result. They number and ticket the convict according to his sentence, range them all up, count them eleven times a day and say to them, "Convicts, now here you are, all ticketed and counted, all of you are afflicted with some moral disease, we are here to cure you, and we have _one_ pill which will do it, and you must swallow it."

This is the perfection of penal legislation at which, after many royal commissions, and much parliamentary eloquence, we have arrived! One would have imagined that a gigantic quackery and mult.i.tudes of quack doctors could have been procured and set in motion with less trouble and at less expense! Only on one point there is universal agreement, let the machine be working either in the right direction or the wrong--so long as it is working it must be oiled, that is a necessity of machine-life, so to speak--the man or convict must be _fed_. But how feed him? To you, my reader, and I, the natural answer would be that the machine must be oiled, or the man fed, in greater or less proportion to the power and capacity of the machine or man, and to the amount of work we require from it or him. But we are both wrong. Our prison authorities say, "Machine, big or little, you shall all have exactly the same quant.i.ty of oil, neither more nor less. You little machines there, with oil running all over you, how smoothly and uncomplainingly you work! You big machines, you may creak as you please, your journals may get hot, blaze up and produce universal smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up any of that which is running over your little neighbour there--that is for the pigs, and for _us_." Is not this amazing folly? Or again, suppose we were to take a race-horse, a dray-horse, a farmer's horse, a broken-down hack, and a Shetland horse--for these more nearly resemble the various cla.s.ses of convicts--and say to them, "Horses, you have all offended the laws of horsedom, and stand fully convicted of clover stealing. For this most heinous crime you are each condemned to draw a load, one ton weight, fifteen miles every day--Sundays excepted--for five years, and your allowance of food will be two feeds of oats, and one allowance of hay per diem;" and what would be the result, supposing that the allowance of hay and oats was just barely sufficient for the average--say the farmer's horse?

First of all the race-horse, able to eat his oats and a portion of the hay, could do with some additional dainty bits, perhaps, but on the whole he has his stomach filled and can live. He is yoked to his load, and being a spirited animal, he goes at it very hard, succeeds for a time; at last he sticks in a rut, puts on a "spurt," and breaks down.

He can't do the work. He is put down at six marks a day, or no remission. He is spoiled for ever, and as a racer his days are ended.

The dray-horse comes next, the load is a mere toy to him, he gets his eight marks a day, but by-and-bye he begins to feel the effects of an empty stomach, to fill which he would require double the allowance of food he receives; and in the long run he too breaks down and is pa.s.sed into the hands of the veterinary surgeon, and is ruined as a useful animal.

Next comes the farmer's horse, and the load and diet being suitable to him, he can do the punishment and easily satisfy the law.

The broken-down hack is never yoked at all, he pa.s.ses into the hands of the surgeon, and there remains. While the little Shetlander is in clover; he never had so many oats before--has actually as much again as he can consume--and the cart and harness being too large, and the load altogether ridiculous for his strength, he is never put to it, and so escapes the legal punishment. And so it is that one portion of the inhabitants of horsedom, pointing to the Shetlander, cry out that "the convicts have too much food, they are up to the eyes in luxuries;"

another portion, pointing to the dray horse, say "the convicts are starved, and are dying of hunger;" whilst a third answers both by pointing to the farm horse and saying that "he can do the work and satisfy the law. Why should they not all be treated alike? a horse is a horse all the world over."

Our system of dieting and working convicts is exactly similar to the above; only at the invalid prison where I was confined the law was not adhered to. I knew prisoners who ate double the quant.i.ty of food allowed them, and I knew others who did not eat above half. Sometimes it happened that a voracious prisoner could not get his food exchanged so as to increase its bulk, and in that case he would be compelled to seek refuge in hospital. If the diet there was not sufficient, G.o.d help him, for from man no further aid was to be expected.

I recollect having a conversation with a prisoner who had just arrived with eighteen others from the prison at Chatham. He had got his leg broken accidentally while at work there, and the medical men had not made a very good job of putting the bones together, so that he did not expect ever to be able to use it. I asked him what sort of a place Chatham was under the new system.

"Oh, it's the worst station out," he replied, "they are starved and worked to death. They are even eating the candles, and one man died lately who had twenty or thirty wicks in his stomach when the _post mortem_ took place. In the docks I have seen fellows pick up the dirtiest muck you ever saw, and swallow it! There are lots of fellows there who eat all the snails and frogs they can get hold of. I have seen one man several times swallow a live frog as easily as you could bolt an oyster. Frogs and snails are considered delicacies at Chatham."

"How did you get on with the food yourself?"

"Well, I was never much of an eater, and I could get on middling well with it; but then the food was better there than it is here. This is the worst station out for 'grub.' The cook and steward must be d---- villains to rob a lot of prisoners of their food."

"Do they all get eight marks a day at Chatham?"

"No, not nearly all; many only get seven, and some not more than six.

The 'screws' there are ---- tyrants, and if they don't mind what they are about some of them will get murdered. There are a few fellows there would rather be 'topt' than be messed about in such a way, and have to die in prison at last. What sort of 'screws' have you here?"

"Well, the majority of them are very civil fellows; there are a few, perhaps, inclined to exceed their duty, but on the whole they are not bad, and you will have yourself to blame if you get into trouble. Bad masters make bad servants, and I have no doubt the Chatham officers are merely carrying out the directors' orders when they tyrannise over the men."

"What sort of a doctor is this you have got here? he gets a very bad name."

"Well, he is blamed for not giving prisoners treatment until they are just dying, but I do not pretend to be a judge of such matters myself.

My advice to you is to be civil and grateful, and do not bother him about food. Do not ask him for anything, just tell him exactly how you feel, and you may do very well here."

The prediction as to the murdering of some of the officers made above by the prisoner was shortly after verified, and the culprit was hanged at Maidstone quite recently. At the Yorks.h.i.+re prison they had what appeared to me a more sensible method of apportioning the diet. The prisoners were weighed once a month, and if any of them lost weight they were allowed an additional quant.i.ty of dry bread to make it up. In the Surrey prison the practice of exchanging and trafficking in food amongst the prisoners counteracted the evils that would otherwise have resulted from the regulations being strictly adhered to; and in the Scottish prisons the use of tobacco appeared to have the same effect.

While on the subject of diet, I may allude to a rule which had a very bad effect on the minds of the prisoners who expected justice at the hands of the officials. In the dietary scale brought out in 1864, it was specified that when a prisoner had been two years in prison, he would be permitted to have the option of tea and two ounces of bread in lieu of the oatmeal gruel for supper, and when he had been three years in prison he might have roasted or baked meat in lieu of boiled. The convicts sentenced under the old Act were placed in the first or lowest grade in the scale of the Act of 1864, but were denied the option of those changes of diet which were permitted under it, and which were considered necessary for the preservation of their health by the medical authorities. The consequence was, and is, that there were prisoners with life sentences who had been ten, twelve, and sixteen years in prison on a diet inferior to those who had only been in prison two years. No tea and bread at night for them, and no roasted meat.

This regulation was considered unjust by the prisoners, who said, very naturally, "They took us off the good diet allowed by the old Act under which we were sentenced, and placed us on the lowest scale of the new dietary, and now, after being two years on the diet we ought not to have been put on at all, we are not even allowed the changes open to other prisoners. It is scandalous, after being ten or twelve years in prison, to see other prisoners who have only just commenced their time much better off than we are," &c.

Another grievance the prisoners had, of which they loudly complained.

It was the custom at the Home Office to forward the prisoners' licenses to the prison once a month, but as a rule these doc.u.ments were ten days--sometimes three weeks--later than they ought to have been. If a prisoner had earned his marks, and was due for his license, say on the 1st of March, he expected the authorities would keep faith with him, and that his license would arrive on the day it was due. Whatever the convict may be himself, he expects a good example and honourable fulfilment of the engagements on the part of the authorities. In this, however, he was often disappointed, and many a million curses were heaped upon them in consequence. And after all can we wonder at a convict being exasperated if, as it often happened, he had written to a wife, or a father, or brother or sister to meet him on a certain day at the railway station, when he was due for his liberty, and then was disappointed and had to wait a fortnight or three weeks before he could see his friends? This neglect on the part of the authorities at the Home Office, had the effect of making all those who were due for liberation early in the month quite regardless of the prison regulations, as one short sentence would not have made any difference to them under the circ.u.mstances.

In Sir Joshua Jebb's day anything of this kind seldom happened. The prisoner's chief grievance then was the robbery of his food by the officers, and as the discipline was lax a mutiny would be the result.

This had a good effect for a short time, and as long as the attention of the press was directed to the question, but matters soon became as bad as ever, and it was not until the subject came before the criminal courts that there was any improvement. The name of Sir Joshua Jebb is still held in great veneration by the convict, but as the duty of carrying out his system was entrusted to men of a totally opposite character, it was impossible for it to succeed. Independent, however, of its moral administration, it had defects inherent in itself. No penal bill will suit all moral complaints, and the sooner we depart from quackery the better it will be for the prisoner and the nation as well. Sir Joshua Jebb's system entered too largely into compet.i.tion with our workhouses and county jails. The prisoners were never taught suitable trades, they were no doubt supplied with food in abundance, and with some opportunities of learning to be industrious and for improving their minds, but they were completely surrounded by far more powerful counter-influences. Even the higher officials carried on a system of wholesale robbery, and winked at the very large retail business done in the same line by the prisoners and under officials. At Bermuda and Dartmoor convict establishments I believe there were more crimes committed by officers and prisoners together than the prisoners could or would have committed if they had been at liberty. Prisoners could do very much as they liked in those days, and the consequence was that the "roughs," or the worst characters, gave the "ton" to the whole prison. A country b.u.mpkin who had stolen a bag of potatoes, perhaps, soon learned the theory of picking pockets and the art of garotting in these places, and being unequal to the former he would adopt the latter as a means of earning a livelihood. Another cause of the increase in the number of garotting cases, was the conduct of the directors who visited the prisoners and punished the prisoners. Their injustice and incivility to prisoners bore a striking contrast to the mild and dignified civility of Sir Joshua their chief. I have known prisoners return from the presence of a director, foaming with inward rage at being bullied out of the room and punished without being permitted to utter a word in their own defence. In many of these cases I have known the prisoners to be innocent. Such men would go out of prison vowing vengeance on some one, and ready for any deed of darkness that might tempt them. I do not wonder that they took to garotting when I reflect upon their character and the treatment they received in prison.

Prisoners seldom, if ever, vow vengeance against a judge or a magistrate; the objects of their wrath are some policeman who has sworn falsely, or some other witness who has committed perjury or betrayed them; and we may naturally seek to inquire why the prison judge is not as favourably regarded as his learned brother who holds open court? I believe the reason is this, that a prison director can starve and flog and retain prisoners in confinement for years, according to the length of their respective remissions, and none but those directly interested in full and quiet prisons know anything about it. If the governor and directors of prisons had to dispense justice in presence of a reporter for the press, how great would be the reformation immediately effected.

To the prisoner it would also be welcome, for if it ensured him of nothing else but civility it would be a boon. A civil word goes a long way with a convict, and it is so seldom he gets one from the chiefs of prisons that he is apt to place a value upon it beyond its real worth.

CHAPTER XVII.

A NEW GOVERNOR--BREAD-AND-WATER JACK--SEVERE PUNISHMENTS--DIRECTORS AGAIN--A HERB DOCTOR--EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

During my second stay in hospital the governor from another prison came to rule over our establishment. He was known to most of the prisoners as "Bread and Water Jack," some called him "Captain Spooney," some "the Lurcher," and others "Mr. Martinet." The patients had just completed their out-of-door exercise, and were standing in file two deep when he first made his appearance. Some of the prisoners whispered, "That's the new governor," and the sound having reached his official ear, the order was issued "Now you men, you must understand there is to be no talking in the ranks when I pa.s.s you." Almost every week some fresh order issued from the new governor, and the following may be taken as a fair example of the weighty matters which troubled the official head, and afford a very good idea of its qualifications for disposing of them.

"Prisoners must roll their neckerchiefs twice round their necks and tie them in a particular way," and the way is then described.

"Prisoners must walk three abreast round the parade, and not pa.s.s each other in walking."

"Prisoners must be sure to keep their hands out of their pockets in the coldest days."

"Prisoners must not neglect to salute the governor when he pa.s.ses them."

"Prisoners must walk only two abreast instead of three abreast, as formerly ordered."

"The spoons and platters must be placed in this particular way." And next week the order came to have the spoons and platters placed in exactly the opposite way!

"Prisoners' hair must be cropped shorter; they must not go to bed so soon as they have done: they must cease talking at work," and so on.