Six Years in the Prisons of England Part 6

Sometimes their machinery gets out of order, and the method by which these things are done gets to be exposed. Two cases where answers were received to pet.i.tions _which were never sent_, are very familiar to the majority of convicts. In the one case the prisoner had drawn his paper, but delayed writing the pet.i.tion. The reply came notwithstanding, "Not sufficient grounds." In the other case the pet.i.tion was discovered mislaid in the office, or some other part of the prison, after the prisoner had received his answer. The official replies to pet.i.tions appear to be stereotyped, and the names of the pet.i.tioners are merely written on the margin. One reply does for any number of pet.i.tions, and all the officials have to do is to write the name of the prisoner who draws pet.i.tion paper on the margin of the answer, about a month after the paper has been issued. On the day I wrote the last pet.i.tion I was discharged from the hospital, and transferred down-stairs to a room containing twenty-four prisoners.

CHAPTER X.

THE PRISON--DAILY ROUTINE--READINGS IN PRISON--QUARRELS AMONG THE PRISONERS--PROTESTANTS VERSUS CATHOLICS--SCHOOL--SUNDAYS IN PRISON--"SACRAMENT BLOKES"--TURNING POINT IN PRISONERS' CAREER.

My readers must now descend with me from the hospital, to what the convicts termed the twenty-four bedded room in the prison. In the cells and in the hospital, quietness reigned, but in the twenty-four bedded room it was different. Here the prisoners talked and conducted themselves very much as they felt inclined, and in the evenings the noise and tumult was sometimes beyond description. The inmates were constantly changing, some going upstairs to hospital, some coming from it, and every now and again there were fresh arrivals from other prisons. The daily routine observed here and in the similar wards was as follows:--

We started out of bed at half-past five a.m., summer and winter; washed, dressed, and made our beds, and two or three times every week a.s.sisted in scrubbing the floor. At six o'clock the officer opened the room door and counted us. At half-past six we had breakfast. About twenty minutes past seven we were ranked up in the corridor, and counted a second time. At half-past seven we were in chapel. At eight o'clock we were on parade and counted a third time. Those who worked outside and were receiving full diet went to their work. Those who worked inside walked on the parade until half-past eight. They were then ranked up and counted for the fourth time; and at nine o'clock all were at work. At 1145 we were counted for the fifth time, and at twelve o'clock we were at dinner. At 1250 we were again ranked in the corridor and counted for the sixth time. At one o'clock we were on parade and counted for the seventh time, before exercise commenced. At ten minutes after two we were counted for the eighth time, and at two we were all again at work. When we left off work in the evening we were counted for the ninth time, amongst the party with whom we worked, and for the tenth time when we returned to the ward. At half-past five we got supper, and at half-past seven we were ordered to bed. At eight o'clock we were commanded to cease talking, and at nine o'clock the night officer counted us for the eleventh time and left us to repose. I used to rejoice when bed-time came, for I then could be alone and at home. Then there were no prison walls for me, for I had ceased brooding over the past, and endeavoured to peer into and prepare for the uncertain future. In winter and spring, when the weather was cold, it used to be rather trying for me to stand so long on parade being counted. About an hour or an hour-and-a-half was spent in this way each day. Then the clothing of those of us who worked indoors was the same on the coldest day in winter as on the hottest day in summer. This was an excellent arrangement for keeping the hospital supplied with patients. I knew many who suffered from this cause, and some who attributed their death to the want of proper under-clothing. I felt the cold more perhaps than the others, as my hands were exposed holding my crutches, and my speed in walking could never get beyond that of a goods train, whilst my companions could run at express speed when it suited them.

My employment was knitting and reading aloud to the prisoners. At that time, and up to a very recent date, it was the custom where fifty or a hundred prisoners were at work, for one of the prisoners to read aloud an hour every forenoon and afternoon. When I commenced this reading, my audience were very careless about listening, unless when I read some amusing work of fiction. Indeed, other prisoners did not attempt to read any book of a more solid description. But during the years I was engaged in this way I had the most abundant and satisfactory testimony that I had obtained an influence over the minds of the prisoners, and had succeeded in attracting their attention to general literature in a more effectual manner than any of my predecessors.

My readers will have been accustomed, perhaps, to regard convicts as very ignorant men, but it must be borne in mind that they belong to all cla.s.ses of society, and if I were to speak of them in the ma.s.s, I should say that they were much more intelligent and as well educated as the ordinary peasantry of England. When I commenced reading in prison there were a good many works in the library, which were afterwards withdrawn as being too amusing for the place. These were such works as "The Last Days of Pompeii," "Now and Then," "Adam Bede," "Poor Jack,"

"Margaret Catchpole," "Irving's Sketch-book," "d.i.c.kens's Christmas Tales," &c. There still remained periodicals with tales in them, and these with a mixture of historical, biographical and other-works, const.i.tuted the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday Magazine," and "Sunday at Home." The reading of an article in the "Leisure Hour," ent.i.tled the "Thief in the Confessional," was the chief cause of the readings being discontinued both in the work-rooms and the hospital. As this happened recently and the particulars are still fresh in my memory I will narrate them here. There were readings aloud in four hospital and three work-rooms in the prison. In the hospital the Roman Catholics were kept by themselves, and had a Roman Catholic reader. In the prison they were scattered among the Protestants, and in the three work-rooms referred to, perhaps about one-fifth of the prisoners were Roman Catholics. In these rooms a Protestant reader was appointed, and there was no disturbance about this arrangement until the arrival of a few Fenians, and a zealous or rather an officious priest.

Shortly after their arrival the other Roman Catholic prisoners became for the most part Fenians, and religious animosities soon sprang up among the prisoners. Macaulay's History of England was being read by one of my fellow prisoners, in one of the work-rooms, or sheds, as they were called, when one of the ignorant and bigoted members of the Roman Catholic creed got up and objected to its being read, and complained to the governor on the subject. The governor, anxious perhaps to please the new visiting director, who was reported to be a Roman Catholic, took the complainant's part. The reading of the book was discontinued, to the great exultation of the Roman Catholics: however, I got the same book, and it was read from beginning to end in the work-room where I was employed! the chaplain and the more intelligent Roman Catholics considering it a very suitable book for the purpose. About this time I wished to be exempted from reading on account of my health, and when I could get a subst.i.tute I did give it up for some time; but the subst.i.tutes available were not popular with the prisoners, and it was very difficult to find suitable readers amongst them. Two of the Roman Catholics wanted to read, one was a Fenian and a literary man, the other was an ignorant conceited professional thief and an avowed infidel, but they were not allowed: meanwhile the article I have referred to as appearing in the "Leisure Hour," was read in one of the sheds, and it so offended some of the Roman Catholics and the professional thief and infidel who was not allowed to read, that he took the matter before the director, who ordered all reading aloud to be discontinued throughout the prison!

This decision ill.u.s.trates the usual method adopted by convict authorities in dealing with questions connected with the treatment of prisoners. If a privilege is granted to the convicts and one out of 600 abuses that privilege the 599 will be deprived of it. It was no matter whether the privilege had a good or bad effect upon the majority of the prisoners, if it gave the governor and the directors any trouble they soon put an end to it. If it was a good thing for the prisoners and tended in any way towards the diminution of crime, to have these readings, the directors could have separated the Roman Catholics from the Protestants without any difficulty. If it was a bad thing why was it continued so long? The Roman Catholics had one legitimate ground of complaint, however, in the chaplain having frequently ordered articles to be cut out of "Chambers's Journal," "Good Words," &c. The prisoners naturally asked "Why cut out anything? why not let us judge for ourselves? If the books are good let us have them whole; if bad, reject them altogether; or if there is to be cutting out, why not cut out 'The Thief out of the Confessional,' which is so offensive to the true Catholic?" I happened to read several of the articles which were so cut out, and in several cases one number of a periodical got bound up and in circulation with the condemned article in it. I here note a few articles which were placed in the chaplain's _Index Expurgatoriam_, 1st--"Evasions of the Law," an article which appeared in "Good Words,"

and I may remark that convicts could scarcely be made worse by reading it, for they knew all it contained and probably more than the writer of it did. 2nd--A review of a work by a female warder, in "Chambers's Journal." 3rd--The last half of "The Franklins," a story in the "Leisure Hour." 4th--An article on the "Prisoners' Aid Society" which appeared in the "Quiver," some years ago.

In addition to my employments of knitting and reading, I had to go to school one half-day every week for about twelve months, or until a certain cla.s.s were exempted from attending. On entering the school the prisoner sat until the roll was called, and after half-an-hour was thus spent, he read a couple of verses from the Old Testament, and then listened to an explanation of the pa.s.sage read. This done, he wrote a short time in his copy book, if he felt inclined, and the proceedings were wound up by a short lecture on some scientific subject. I fear there is not much good done in our convict schools. Teaching, or trying to teach, men ranging from thirty to eighty years of age, who are determined not to learn, or at least so careless about the matter that they never can learn, seems to me a waste of public money. Young men sometimes learn a good deal of French, arithmetic, &c., in prison, but it is not at the school, but from their fellow prisoners that they receive such instruction.

My Sunday routine differed from that of the other days of the week, chiefly in having chapel-going subst.i.tuted for work, and being allowed to be in bed an hour longer in the morning.

Shortly after taking up my abode in the twenty-four-bedded room, the diet was changed, and this was the cause of much noise among the convicts. The day fixed for the alteration was a Sunday. The former Sunday's dinner consisted of soup, mutton, and potatoes. The new Sunday dinner was dry bread and four ounces of bad cheese. On being served with this, the prisoners began cursing and swearing, and calling the head officials all the bad names they could think of: "This is what they call Christianity, is it, the ---- hypocrites? Starving a man on Sundays above all days, and then taking us up to that chapel to tell us about mercy and forgiveness and loving our neighbours! This is the way to reform us and make us better, is it?--By jingo! I will make somebody pay for all this yet. I'll not get my next bit for nothing," &c., &c.

Such was the burden of the conversation on this and succeeding Sunday afternoons. To force men to go to hear the Word of G.o.d preached when their hearts are full of evil thoughts and their mouths full of curses is far from being a likely mode of leading men to Christ. The chaplain's position in the pulpit used to strike me as being something like that of a farmer sowing good seed broad-cast over a field so overgrown with tares, that the seed could never reach the soil. If he attempts to clear the soil of the weeds, to win the hearts of the prisoners, he finds the whole system of prison discipline arrayed against him. That discipline breeds and encourages the growth of every evil pa.s.sion in the heart of man, and he, the chaplain, is part of that system: he lives by it, and he is not allowed to interfere with it, at all events he never did so. When prisoners complained to him of some injustice or some cruelty, they got for reply: "I am here to preach the Gospel, and I can do nothing in the matter."

Chaplains paid by the State, and forming part of the penal establishment, can never do much good to the prisoners, except in so far as they operate as a check upon the cruelty or neglect of the governor and other officers. Missionaries having no connection with Government, might do some good amongst them. At the time I commenced to attend the prison chapel, I learned that a score or so of convicts took the sacrament. Some of them were truly pious, as far as one could judge in such matters, others were unfit or unworthy partakers, the whole of them were called by the other prisoners "Parson's men," or "Sacrament blokes," and it used to pain me to hear them scoffed and mocked at. It was a great victory if they could be got to swear on the evening of the communion day: I never could make up my mind to become a "Parson's man," for reasons perhaps not very satisfactory, even to myself. In the first place I belonged to another branch of the church; then I had only one leg and could not kneel at the altar, and would have felt while standing something like a beggar in dirty rags in a fine pew among silks and satins; then again I would have lost my influence over many of my fellow-prisoners. I may have been wrong in all this, but as I once said to my fellow-prisoners when appealed to on the subject of religion, "There are only three cardinal points in my religious belief, and these are simple and easily remembered--believe in Christ, love G.o.d, and love my neighbour; what I do inconsistent with the last I know to be wrong. It is inconsistent, I think, with the latter, for Protestants to revile and speak evil of Roman Catholics, and _vice versa_, therefore I disapprove of discussions and arguments on religious belief among prisoners, as they usually lead to feelings incompatible with true neighbourly love." Such was my reply to a question addressed to me by a convict during a hot debate between the Protestants and Roman Catholics, and it allayed the storm instantly. As a rule I avoided and discountenanced all discussion on theological subjects.

After I had been four weeks in the prison I began to get a little downhearted at finding myself so far removed from sympathy. In the hospital I had an occasional chat with a Scripture-reader, but here there was no one with whom I could have any intellectual conversation, and no visitors were allowed. I felt very sad and dispirited for a time, and wrote to my friends that I should like to have a visit from a clergyman of my own persuasion who resided in London. I got for a reply a visit from some of my own friends, who mentioned that the gentleman whose visit I desired was too much occupied with his own flock to look after a lost sheep like me. I notice this chiefly in order to remark that this was a kind of turning point in my prison career: the point at which the generality of prisoners turn from bad to worse, and when long imprisonment ceases to be an instrument for good; when human sympathy is sought, and by the great majority of prisoners sought in vain, and when in consequence they seek to obtain the sympathy of their evil companions, and begin in earnest that downward career which knows no shame, and finds its goal in the convict's grave.

CHAPTER XI.

INDISCRIMINATE a.s.sOCIATION OF PRISONERS--TRANSPORTATION, AND THE CAUSE OF ITS FAILURE--A GUNSMITH.

As I have already said in a previous chapter, one of the most glaring defects in our present system of penal servitude, viewed as a means of reformation as well as of punishment, is the indiscriminate a.s.sociation of all cla.s.ses of criminals, or rather all criminals with a certain sentence, irrespective of the nature of the crime they have committed, the previous character of the criminal or the probability of his re-admission into society as an honest and useful member of it. I have met in the same ward prisoners of widely different characters and antecedents, whose crimes afforded conclusive proofs that in habits, disposition, and general conduct, they would never, in the natural order of things, become a.s.sociates, compelled by law to mate with each other as equals, and to learn of each other how to injure, not how to benefit society and themselves. There are, for instance, certain crimes which a man may commit under the influence of strong pa.s.sions, aroused in moments of great temptation, such as rape; or of great provocation, such as manslaughter; or committed under the pressure of misfortune, or to avoid, impending ruin, such as forgery or embezzlement, which do not necessarily prove the criminal to be of habitually depraved habits, or generally of a violent and vicious disposition. I found as a rule prisoners guilty of these crimes undergoing their first sentences.

Prison life and prison a.s.sociations were new to them as to me. They had no inclination to repeat the offence, or to pursue a career of crime, but rather disposed to redeem their character, and live an honest and industrious life. Yet this cla.s.s of prisoners are condemned, in addition to the loss of liberty and character, to live in constant contact, for years it may be, with the professional thief and house-breaker, the burglar, and the garotter, who has been frequently convicted, and whose whole life is spent between the prison and the "cross." The natural and inevitable result of this is contamination.

Even in the case of men possessing high principle and of great moral fort.i.tude the effect would be deteriorating and pernicious. With men of weak resolution, strong pa.s.sions, and a comparatively low standard of morality, the consequences cannot be doubtful in the majority of cases.

They gradually lose self-respect, cease to think of reformation or amendment, in time they come to envy the hardened stoicism and "gameness" of the practised ruffian, learn his language, imbibe his notions of life, and finally resolve, since character, self-respect, and all else that bind them to morality and virtue are lost, that they will compel society to make amends for the ruin it has brought upon them. It is from this cla.s.s I am persuaded that the ranks of our born and bred convicts are so largely and so constantly supplemented. Yet how easily and how speedily might this source of supply be diminished, if not altogether closed.

The old Transportation Act, although it may not have provided for any such separation as that I have just indicated, and although it was based on what I consider pernicious principles, was undoubtedly the most effectual plan for getting rid of our criminal population, and in its operation the most merciful to the prisoner of any of our recent parliamentary enactments. Had its provisions been efficiently and judiciously administered, we might still have been sending convicts to our colonies. But the business of exporting our "dirty linen" was grossly mismanaged. The merchant who hopes to succeed as an exporter must study carefully the cla.s.s of goods suitable for the market he proposes to supply, and send only those he is confident will be approved of and meet a ready sale. But our prison authorities, by some fatality, so organized the system of selection of convicts for transportation that those who were, of all men, the very last a young and virtuous community would seek, were forced upon them, whilst those for whom there was a constant demand, and who would have regarded transportation and liberation abroad as the opportunity for escaping from social prejudice, of retrieving their lost character, and of commencing anew a life of honesty and industry, were condemned to pine in the prisons at home, and in too many cases, to adopt a career of crime when their sentences expired. The first and great commandment the prison authorities regarded in their selection was, that the prisoner should be physically healthy, sound in wind and limb; and the second was, that he should have been a certain time in prison at home after receiving his last sentence and conducted himself well whilst there. No enquiry was made into the prisoner's previous history, employment, education, or general disposition and habits, which, one would naturally have thought necessary before any intelligent opinion could be formed as to the probabilities of his future career abroad. Now, although the qualifications of health and good conduct might seem to be good and sufficient grounds on which to make such a selection as was required for transportation, those acquainted with prisoners and prison life will at once perceive that they were very far from being so. In the first place, a great many of the prisoners who would have adopted an honest life and been a benefit to the colonies if they had been sent there, but who were rejected on account of ill-health, had become diseased in prison and in consequence of their imprisonment, and would in all probability have recovered their usual good health before they had reached their destination abroad. These were generally men of education, and accustomed to generous diet, but the prison discipline and scale of dietary soon told upon their health, and disqualified them in the eyes of the prison officials for the boon of transportation.

Even if their health was not restored by the sea voyage and liberation abroad, it was only exchanging the hospital abroad for the hospital at home. If the experiment succeeded, who may estimate its value to him who was the subject of it? Again, "good conduct," as indicated by the standard of our prison authorities, is anything but a trustworthy criterion of the convict's true character and disposition. It does not mean that the prisoner has shown himself honest, industrious, or well disposed, or in any active sense what the phrase is ordinarily supposed to mean; indeed the system of penal servitude does not permit the prisoner any opportunity of showing that he is so. All that "good conduct," in prison official language means is, that the prisoner has not broken any of the prison rules, and is therefore a purely negative quality; scrupulous obedience to prison discipline and regulations, with severe penalties attached to transgression, is a very sorry basis on which to found a character of good conduct in a convict. The consequence was, if one of the greatest ruffians that ever entered the prison gates were to make up his mind, as I have known many of them do, to go abroad, he knew that he had only to study the rules of the prison and obey them for a certain length of time, and he would obtain his object, and be let loose among the innocent colonists, to rob and murder as he found opportunity. Thousands of such men, who had purposely behaved themselves well in the prison at home, with the grim determination of making amends for their restraint by a career of increased violence and ruffianism abroad, were thus let loose upon colonial society, and there is no wonder that the colonies rose up in indignation and shut their ports against them. As a rule, it was the hardened criminal whose reformation under existing laws was, I may safely say, entirely out of the question, who, on the score of health and good conduct, most perfectly fulfilled the conditions required by the prison authorities, and most frequently had the boon of transportation extended to him. Accustomed by long and frequent experience to prison diet and discipline, and to all the "dodges" for augmenting the one and evading or modifying the other, he could keep himself in perfect health under circ.u.mstances which would send a less experienced and more sensitive man to the hospital in a month; whilst his familiarity with all the petty rules and regulations of the prison, which the novice is in constant danger of breaking (quite unintentionally), enabled him to steer clear of any offence that could be reported if he thought it for his interest to strive for the convict's prize. In fact, "good conduct," as exemplified by a convict according to the prison standard, affords no more reliable evidence of his moral qualities and industrious habits, than proficiency in drill affords of the moral character of the private soldier.

It is quite clear that selection on these terms could only by a rare accident find the suitable men for sending abroad. And yet it is my firm conviction that I, or any other man possessing ordinary intelligence and insight into human character and experience of convict life, could, with the utmost ease, have selected from the inmates of our prisons a very large number for exportation, whom our colonists would have been glad to receive, and who would have been rescued from a life of ignominy or crime at home. The question may very naturally be asked--Why could not our prison officials have done the same? The only answer I can give is that our prison officials (excepting the very highest) are directly interested in _maintaining_ and _increasing_, and not in _reducing_, the number of our convicts, and they are therefore inclined to favour the liberation of those whom they are pretty sure will soon return.

As a fair and forcible example of the advantage which might have been taken of the "Transportation Act," in dealing with a certain cla.s.s of prisoners, and also as an ill.u.s.tration--not nearly so forcible as others I have alluded to, and will yet notice--of the fault of the authorities in the matter of selection, I will mention one case. Three young men received sentence of twenty years' penal servitude for rape.

One of them, quite a youth, was more a spectator of than a princ.i.p.al in the crime, the other two being the really guilty parties. The three were in due course sent to Portsmouth. The guilty pair were sent abroad, and liberated before the end of five years from the date of their conviction. One of them is now married and settled comfortably abroad, and the other lodges with him. The other prisoner, being young and not very muscular, received some injury while at work and was sent to the Invalid Criminal Hospital in Surrey, and has to remain in prison, in a state useless to himself and to society, for eight or nine years longer than his more guilty companions.

But the day has gone by for successful re-establishment of a penal colony. I do not think there are many who would commit crimes for the express purpose of getting abroad, unless the colony was very attractive; but no country where officers can be got to reside will ever be looked upon with dread by the majority of criminals. A penal colony, I am convinced, would have no deterring influence on the minds of those convicts who are most difficult to deal with. It would have such an effect upon certain cla.s.ses of prisoners, but their numbers are small, and less expensive remedies might be found even more effectual in their cases.

When convicts leave prison they could be divided into three cla.s.ses.

First, those men who are not only determined to live honestly, but who in all human probability will never again enter a prison; their number may amount to about ten per cent. of the whole. Another cla.s.s leave prison with the deliberate intention of committing crime, and their number may be about forty per cent. The third cla.s.s, comprising about fifty per cent. of the whole, belong to the hesitating, unsteady, wavering cla.s.s. Many of this cla.s.s do manage to keep out of prison, but at least one half of them return, and, along with the forty per cent.

of professionals, bring up the number of the re-convicted to seventy per cent. Now, it must be quite clear that if we would reduce this number, it is to the fifty per cent of waverers that our efforts must be princ.i.p.ally directed. The other cla.s.ses either do not require or will not benefit by our endeavours. Our present law is altogether unable to cure the professional thief. I never heard, and I never met with a convict who ever heard, of any of this cla.s.s being converted into honest men by the operation of our present system, nor do I believe it possible to point to a single case. The professional thief lacks three virtues--economy, industry, honesty. Now, under the present system it is positively forbidden to give him any practical lesson either in economy or honesty; industry, indeed, might be taught him, but he rarely if ever receives an intelligent lesson, for it must be remembered that enforced labour does not teach the labourer industry, but is more likely to inspire him with an aversion to it. All that can be done with the professional thief, under existing laws, beyond the punishment of confinement and vigorous prison discipline, possibly, is to give him such work to do as he can do, or be readily taught to do, and that work not to be of the kind usually done in prison, but such as will compensate to some extent for his maintenance in prison, and enable him to live honestly out of it should he so elect.

On my right hand, in the twenty-four-bedded room, lay a city-bred professional thief, acquainted with all the brothels and sinks of iniquity in London, and his disgusting conversation chiefly related to such places. Like many of his cla.s.s, his const.i.tution was delicate, and his appet.i.te somewhat dainty. The prison fare and hard work were undoubtedly severe punishment to him; but no punishment could frighten him into honesty. He knew no honest trade by which he could support himself, but if he had been taught one in prison such as suited his strength and talents, and had been taught only the _policy_ of honesty, and been then sent to a country far removed from his old haunts, where his newly-organized trade would be more profitable than thieving, the possibility is he would have become a useful man in the world. On the expiration of his sentence, which was three years, he went home and wrote back to one of his "pals" in prison, under an a.s.sumed name, that he had been to the Prisoners' Aid Society, and had obtained as much of his gratuity as he could, to buy a barrow and some fruit, as he meant to turn costermonger. He added, however, that he did not like fruit-selling, and returned to his old trade of "gunsmith,"

gunning being the slang term for thieving, or going on the cross. The real fact was, that he never intended anything else than being a "gunsmith," but only used the deception in order to obtain a little more money from the Aid Society than he otherwise could. As soon as he got his barrow and stock he sold all off, and in a very few months I had him for a companion again, with a seven years' sentence. I remember asking whether he preferred a sentence of seven years' penal servitude, or three years in Coldbath Fields?

"Three years in Coldbath Fields! why that would kill me. I would as soon have fifteen years here."

The only good trait discoverable in his character was his ardent affection for his mother. When he has completed about five years and three months he will be liberated again, if he is alive, and again he will return to crime; and it is almost impossible that such a man can do otherwise; and as long as our prison authorities regard convicts as mere living automatons, all modelled after the same fas.h.i.+on in iniquity, our convict and county prisons, viewed as reformatories, will remain quite inoperative for good, but very potent for evil.

CHAPTER XII.

HOW REBELS AGAINST SOCIETY ARE MADE--I AM REMOVED TO A SMALL ROOM AMONGST MURDERERS--THE "HIGHFLYER" AGAIN--HOW A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WAS MADE A WARNING TO OTHERS.

A certain cla.s.s of criminals--it would be very wrong to say all--may be looked upon as rebels against society, and a.s.suming that they are so, it would be difficult to conceive a more effective method of promoting and disseminating the spirit of rebellion than that which is adopted in our convict establishments. We collect all these rebels from the various counties into a few localities, 600 here, 1000 there, and 1500 somewhere else, and along with them we place a certain proportion of comparatively untainted men. We subject them to a course of rigorous discipline in matters of diet and exercise, the sole effect of which is to stimulate them still more against society. We allow them a certain amount of intercourse with each other; liberty to the old to contaminate the young; to the veteran ruffian to enlist and drill the new recruit; to all to plan their new campaigns, and hatch new conspiracies, and then disperse them throughout the country to sow the seeds of sedition, and raise the standard of rebellion wherever they may go. This is really what is being done in our convict prisons. Take an extreme case, and keep out of sight altogether the characters and dispositions of our criminals, and imagine a hundred of England's most steady, honest, and industrious working men placed in our convict establishments for a few years, and what would be the result? It would most probably be this: if they were young, and had only received an imperfect education, fifty of them would join some branch of the thief profession if kept by force in convict society for three years; seventy of them would do so if kept for six years; and if kept ten years, they would almost all be corrupted, and become when liberated a source of corruption themselves.

But if the hardened and incorrigible criminals were really punished in any proportion to the others the system would have a kind of consistent iniquity about it which it does not possess. My left-hand companion was an old agricultural labourer, one of a large cla.s.s to whom a convict prison is no punishment. He had been brought up to work, and although an old man, he could work far more than a city thief, and yet not work hard. He had brought up a family who were all scattered abroad. He had now no real home when out of prison, and his third penal sentence of fourteen years was very much lighter punishment to him than fourteen days, with loss of character, would be to anyone in the upper or middle cla.s.ses of society. I met many such men in prison, and I used to ask them how much money they would take to do my sentence in addition to their own? One would say 100_l._, another, 50_l._, another 40_l._, and some would even take considerably less.

Imprisonment with hard labour will never have the slightest effect in deterring such men from committing crime. Labour that would soon kill many other men would not punish them, but they would prefer it even to sitting in school. Rough fare they can do with, as long as it fills the belly. They have no other ambition to gratify. With the stomach distended and a quid of tobacco in their mouths, they are as happy as kings, and very careless about liberty. Many of them when they leave the prison, leave home. To such men, and to all the cla.s.s of vagrant and pauper criminals, a convict prison means a comfortable home, where they are fed and clothed, and bathed and physicked, and have all their wants supplied, without trouble or care, in exchange for their liberty and such labour as they can easily and cheaply perform. To the professional thieves a convict prison is a Court of Bankruptcy, to be avoided if possible, and to be made the most of when unavoidable. A place of punishment no doubt, but punishment nearly useless and entirely misdirected. To the man who has wrought for his living at some honest trade, up to the commission of his first known offence, who has been accounted respectable by his neighbours, and who belongs to a cla.s.s of society with whom loss of character is utter ruin--a convict prison is a h.e.l.l. If he happen also to be a man of thought and education, it will in addition appear to be an inst.i.tution for robbing honest tax-payers, and a nursery of vice and crime, which all good men should endeavour to reform or destroy.

In the small room to which I was now removed, the lodgers were quiet, inoffensive men, and in a few cases apparently religious.

During my residence in the prison I was frequently removed from one room to another, to suit the convenience of the prison authorities.

Fortunately I had no rent to pay, no economy to study, no opportunity to practice honesty, and my effects were easily carried about.

Obedience--the soldiers' virtue--and civility, were all I had to study, and these were not difficult to practice in my own case. One cla.s.s of prisoners in these rooms were elderly men, who had committed murder, or manslaughter, and who, from their age and infirmities had missed being sent to Western Australia. I knew upwards of twenty of them, and generally speaking, they were quiet, inoffensive men, with no inclination to steal or to do wrong. Several of them had very hot tempers, all of them, indeed, who committed their crimes under the influence of anger; others I sympathized with a good deal, inasmuch as they had been sorely tempted, and seemed penitent and honest.

One of them had brought up a family of honest working men. After the death of their mother, he married and lived with another woman, who was addicted to intemperance, and he was so annoyed at her conduct and by her tongue, that his pa.s.sion obtained the mastery over him, and in a moment of frenzy he killed her. This prisoner had had his arm broken at Portland, which prevented his being sent abroad, whence he would have been liberated by this time.

Another case was that of a comparatively young man, who shot his sweetheart because she had chosen another man just as the prisoner was looking forward to his marriage with her. He tried to shoot himself at the same time, but the shot pa.s.sed through the jaw and cheek bones, leaving him in a sadly disfigured condition to meet his doom of penal servitude for life.

I met several cases where murder was committed through jealousy. One man murdered his wife for flirting or cohabiting with another man. A second murdered the paramour and spared his wife, and so on. In the majority of these cases, the prisoners were very unlikely to commit a second offence.

There was one very peculiar case which I will here mention. The prisoner was the worst cripple perhaps in the prison, and the quietest man in it. He rarely spoke to anyone unless he was first spoken to, and his answers were very brief. This man committed a deliberate murder; although he had only one arm and but one good leg. He lay in wait for his victim, and his motive for perpetrating the deed was not money but revenge. The person he killed had injured or defrauded his father before he died, and being unable to obtain justice he took revenge, and is now paying the full penalty. He sits in the workroom along with the others, but being paralyzed he is not compelled to work at anything.

Another peculiar case was that of a man who had starved his mother to death, in order to obtain possession of her money. He was a miser, and was often taunted for his crime by the thief fraternity. He was the filthiest neighbour I ever had. Most of the prisoners are cleanly in their habits, but this one was the reverse. He would have his food stored away beside him, rather than give it to a fellow prisoner. He was not a great eater, and at one time there was more food about than the prisoners could consume; but whatever he got he kept until it was taken from him. After being confined for about thirteen years, he was allowed to go to North America, on a conditional pardon, to a son who lived there. Among the many pet.i.tions I drew out for prisoners to copy, his was the only one that ever succeeded. I have written pet.i.tions for dying men to the Home Secretary, for permission to go out and die at home, and many without any just grounds at all, but none succeeded, save the one I have mentioned above.