The History and
Romance of
Crime
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
[Illustration]
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON
[Illustration]
_A Prison in Tangier_
Oriental Prisons
PRISONS AND CRIME IN INDIA
THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS
BURMAH--CHINA--JAPAN--EGYPT
TURKEY
_by_
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
_Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_
_Author of
“The Mysteries of Police and Crime
Fifty Years of Public Service,” etc._
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THE GROLIER SOCIETY
EDITION NATIONALE
Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.
NUMBER 234
INTRODUCTION
It is as true of crime in the Orient as of other habits, customs
and beliefs of the East, that what has descended from generation to
generation and become not only a tradition but an established fact, is
accepted as such by the people, who display only a passive indifference
to deeds of cruelty and violence. Each country has its own peculiar
classes of hereditary criminals, and the influence of tradition and
long established custom has made the eradication of such crimes a
difficult matter.
Religion in the East has had a most notable influence on crime. In
India the Thugs or professional stranglers were most devout and their
criminal acts were preceded by religious rites and ceremonies. In
China the peculiar forms of animism pervading the religion of the
people has greatly influenced criminal practices. Murder veiled in
obscurity is frequently attributed to some one of the legion of evil
spirits who are supposed to be omnipresent; and to satisfy and appease
these demons innocent persons are made to suffer. So great, too, is
the power of the spirit after death to cause good or ill, that many
stories are related of victims of injustice who have hanged themselves
on their persecutors’ door-posts, thus converting their spirits into
wrathful ghosts to avenge them. The firm belief in ghosts and their
power of vengeance and reward is a great restraint in the practice of
infanticide, as the souls of murdered infants may seek vengeance and
bring about serious calamity.
Oriental prison history is one long record of savage punishments
culminating in the death penalty, aggravated by abominable tortures.
The people are of two classes, the oppressed and the oppressors, and
the last named have invented many devices for legal persecution.
In early China and Japan, relentless and ferocious methods were in
force. One of the emperors of China invented a new kind of punishment,
described by Du Halde in 1738, at the instigation of a favourite wife.
It was a column of brass, twenty cubits high and eight in diameter,
hollow in the middle like Phalaris’s Bull, with openings in three
places for putting in fuel. To this they fastened the criminals, and
making them embrace it with their arms and legs, lighted a great fire
in the inside; and thus roasted them until they were reduced to ashes.
The first slaves in China were felons deprived of their liberty. Later
the very poor with their families sold themselves to the rich. Although
slavery has never been largely prevalent owing to the patriarchal
nature of society, all modern writers agree that it exists in a
loathsome form to-day. Parents sell their children and girls bring a
higher price than boys.
Who does not know of the peculiar sufferings and wrongs inflicted
for so many generations on the gentle peasant in the proud land of
the Pharaohs, of whom it is said “that the dust which fills the air
about the Pyramids and the ruined temples is that of their remote
forefathers, who swarmed over the land, working under the fiery sun and
the sharp scourge for successive races of task-masters--the Ethiopian,
the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the Arab, the Circassian and
the Turk.”
During the reign of Ismail Pasha we hear of 150,000 men, women and
children driven forth from their villages with whips to perform work
without wages on the Khedive’s lands or in his factories. It is a
heartrending picture.
In earlier times the administration of the country districts was in
the hands of governors appointed by the Pasha and charged by him with
the collection of taxes and the regulation of the corvêé, or system of
enforced labour, at one time the universal rule in Egypt. The present
system established by Great Britain is in striking contrast to past
cruelties.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. PRISON SYSTEM IN INDIA 9
II. THE CRIME OF THUGGEE 42
III. CEREMONIES OF THUGGEE 70
IV. DACOITY 82
V. CHARACTERISTIC CRIMES 124
VI. THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS 148
VII. PRISONS OF BURMAH 170
VIII. CRIME IN CHINA 205
IX. ENLIGHTENED METHODS OF JAPAN 229
X. THE LAW IN EGYPT 243
XI. TURKISH PRISONS 269
List of Illustrations
A PRISON IN TANGIER _Frontispiece_
EXECUTION IN INDIA _Page_ 124
CHINESE PUNISHMENT “ 217
PRISONS OF INDIA
CHAPTER I
PRISON SYSTEM IN INDIA
Lord Macaulay’s work--Commission appointed to look into
state of prisons--Appointment of an inspector-general of
gaols--Charge of district gaols given into the hands of civil
surgeons--Treatment of juvenile offenders in India--Prison
discipline--The employment of convict overseers--Caste--Ahmedabad
gaol--Prison industries--Alipore Gaol in Calcutta--Ameer Khan,
the Wahabee--Description of the Montgomery gaol--The prison
factory--Convict officials--The gaol of Sirsah--A native gaol of
Orissa.
The prison system in India developed gradually under the British
rule. At first but little attention was paid to the subject of penal
discipline, and the places of detention were put in the charge of
judicial officers who had complete control of the criminals in their
districts. The judges and magistrates had but little time to attend
to the gaols; the administration was chiefly in the hands of native
subordinates, and abuses of every kind prevailed, as might have been
expected.
The first important step toward prison reform was initiated by Lord
Macaulay when a member of the Indian Law Commission in 1835. He
suggested that a committee should be appointed to look into the
state of the prisons in India and to prepare an improved plan of
prison discipline. This suggestion was readily acceded to by the
governor-general, Sir C. Metcalfe, and a committee composed of fourteen
able and distinguished men was selected for the purpose. An extract
from their report will best show the existing state of the prisons at
that time, and runs as follows:
“In reviewing the treatment of prisoners in Indian gaols, although on
some points which we have not failed to throw into a strong light the
humanity of it is doubtful, yet generally the care that is taken of the
physical condition of these unfortunate men in the great essentials
of cleanliness, attention to the sick and the provision of food and
clothing, appears to us to be highly honourable to the government of
British India. When fair allowance has been made for the climate of
the country and the habits of the people, we doubt whether India will
not bear a comparison even with England, where for some years past
more money and attention has been expended to secure the health and
bodily comfort of prisoners than has ever been the case in any other
country of Europe.... It appears to us that that which has elsewhere
been deemed the first step of prison reform has been already taken in
India. What after many years was the first good effect of the labours
of Howard and Neild in England has already been achieved here. There
is no systematic carelessness as to the circumstances of the prisoner,
no niggardly disregard of his natural wants; he is not left to starve
of cold or hunger or to live on the charity of individuals; he is not
left in filth and stench to sink under disease without an attempt to
cure him; he is not able to bribe his gaoler in order to obtain the
necessaries which the law allows him. With us in England, the second
stage of prison reform seems to be nearly the present state of prison
discipline in India. The physical condition of the prisoner has been
looked to, but nothing more, and the consequences here as in England
have been that a prison, without being the less demoralising, is not a
very pleasant place of residence.... The proportion of distinct civil
gaols to all other gaols is very honourable to the government. The
mixture of the two sexes in Indian prisons is unknown, and in general
the separation of tried and untried prisoners is at least as complete
in India as in other countries. We allude to these things, not to give
more credit to the Indian government in these matters than it deserves,
but to show that although we have found much fault and recommend many
reforms, we do not overlook the fact that much has been already done.”
The second stage in Indian prison reform was the appointment of an
inspector-general of gaols for every province. This was first tried as
an experiment in the North-western Provinces after some hesitation
on the part of the government, and it was proved conclusively by
comparison with the statistics of former years “that the prisoners were
generally more healthy, better lodged, fed and clothed, that the gaol
discipline had been much improved and that the expenditure had been
reduced” in those prisons which had been placed under the supervision
of an inspector. Upon this evidence the government decided to make the
office a permanent one, and it was finally established in 1850 in the
North-western Provinces and shortly afterward in the Punjab, Bengal,
Madras and Bombay.
The third important measure toward prison reform in India was
initiated in the North-western Provinces. Until 1860, the management
of the district gaols had been in the hands of the magistrates of the
surrounding country, but it was found that owing to the increased
pressure of work in the administration they were unable “to find
time to regulate the management, economy and discipline of the local
prison with the care and exactness which the pecuniary interests of
the government and the purposes of civil administration demand.”
Therefore the civil surgeon, who had formerly had charge of the medical
department only of the local gaol, was now given the entire management.
This change was finally sanctioned by the government in 1864, after
due trial which showed that there had been an improved discipline
and an improved economy in all the gaols in which the experiment had
been tried. In 1864 two other important reforms were introduced:
first,--that no central gaol (intended for all prisoners sentenced to a
term exceeding one year) should be built to accommodate more than one
thousand persons; and second,--that the minimum space allowed to each
prisoner should be 9 feet by 6, or 54 superficial feet, and 9 feet by 6
by 12, or 648 cubic feet.
Some of the many difficulties in the way of prison reform besides those
of finance are summed up in Lord Auckland’s resolution upon the prison
committee’s report.
“Every reform of prison discipline is almost of necessity attended at
the outset with extraordinary expense. To exchange the common herding
together of prisoners of all descriptions for careful classification;
to substitute a strict and useful industry for idleness or for a light,
ill-directed labour; to provide that the life which is irksome shall
not also be unhealthy, and that the collection of the vicious shall not
be a school of vice,--are all objects for the first approach of which
large buildings must be erected, machinery formed and establishments
contrived, and in the perfect attainment and maintenance of which great
disappointment has after every effort and expense in many countries
ensued. In no country is it likely that greater difficulty will be
experienced than in this for the mere locality of the prison; that
which is healthy in one season may become a pesthouse by a blast of
fever or cholera, in another. For its form--the close yard which is
adapted for classification and is not unwholesome in England, would be
a sink of malaria in India. For food, for labour and for consort there
are habits and an inveteracy of prejudice bearing upon health, opposing
the best management of prisons such as are not to be encountered
elsewhere, and superadded to all this is the absence of fitting
instruments for control and management, while it is principally upon a
perfect tact and judgment and an unwearying zeal that the success of
every scheme of discipline has been found to depend.”
The classification of the gaols in the North-western Provinces and Oude
is made according to the number of persons they can hold, as follows:
the central prisons of the first, second, third and fourth class;
the district prisons, and the lock-ups. In the central prisons, all
prisoners sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for any period exceeding
six months are confined; in the district prisons all prisoners
sentenced to terms not exceeding three months are sent for every kind
of crime, also civil prisoners and prisoners committed for trial at the
sessions court; in the lock-ups all prisoners under trial before any
court are lodged.
There are no reformatories for juvenile offenders in India. The
government has so far considered that there is no need for their
establishment. This conclusion has been arrived at by a comparison
between the state of civilisation in the European countries which have
adopted this plan of dealing with juvenile criminals and that of India.
In the former there is a large class of vagrant, deserted and neglected
children, which is quite unknown in the latter country. The following
figures will serve to show the truth of this assertion. In Ireland, in
1866, out of a population of 6,000,000, there were 1,060 juveniles,
under sixteen years, committed to prison for various offences; whereas
in the whole of India, with a population of more than 150,000,000, the
commitment of juveniles was about 2,000 in the same year.
In the presidency of Bombay there is an institution of very much the
same nature as a reformatory, called the David Sasson Industrial and
Reformatory Institution, which owes its origin to private benevolence,
but which now receives some support from public resources. It is quite
separate from the gaols and under different management and control.
In the North-western Provinces “all boys and lads under eighteen years
of age, sentenced to periods of imprisonment for three months, are
transferred as soon after sentence as possible to the nearest central
prison, where they are placed under a regular system of education with
training in industrial labour; they are confined in separate cells
at night wherever there are a sufficient number of these for their
accommodation, which is the case at Meerut, Agra and Gorruckpore,
and at all prisons they attend school and labour for fixed periods
during the day under directors specially employed for that purpose.
Boys, whether confined in separate cells or association, are kept, day
and night, entirely separate from the adult prisoners.” In the Punjab
there is a reformatory in connection with the gaol of Goordaspore to
which boys sentenced to more than six months’ confinement are sent.
This reformatory was first established in the Sealkote gaol in 1862,
but was subsequently removed to Goordaspore. The warder in charge,
the gaol officials, the inspectors and the teacher approved by the
educational department, are the only adults allowed to enter this
yard. In the majority of district gaols there is a special yard set
aside for juvenile prisoners, and in those gaols, where no such yard
exists, when juvenile prisoners are received they are placed in cells,
or other arrangements are made for separating them from the rest of
the prisoners at night, and during the day they are made to work in a
part of the yard by themselves. In the Lahore central gaol there is a
separate yard for juveniles under a specially selected warder.
Nearly every presidency and province of India has its gaol code,
drawn up under the sanction of the Prison Acts. That of Bengal was
compiled by Frederic J. Mouat, M. D., and was introduced in the year
1864. “It borrowed freely,” he says, “from all the existing European
and Indian rules which seemed to me to be suited for introduction in
lower Bengal, and contained some special provisions based upon my
personal experience, and study of prison systems at home and abroad....
It defined in considerable detail the duties, responsibilities and
powers of all classes of prison officers; contained provisions for
the classification and punishment of all classes of offenders; their
management in sickness and in health; their food, clothing, work,
instruction; and, in fact, every detail of discipline during their
residence in gaol, their transfer from one prison to another, their
discharge, and in the execution of capital sentences.” Since these
rules were framed a system of remission of sentence as the reward for
good conduct in gaol has been introduced, based on the principle of
what is known as the Irish system.
One of the chief peculiarities of Indian prison management is the
employment of convicts in the maintenance of discipline. From the
earliest days, prisoners were employed in the discharge of all the
menial duties of the gaols, cooking, washing, cleansing, scavengering,
husking rice, grinding corn and the preparation of food. The difficulty
of obtaining trustworthy warders on the salaries allowed, and the
impossibility of preventing the introduction of forbidden articles
through their agency, led to the trial in the gaol at Alipore of
well-behaved, long-term convicts as prison guards. They were found to
be more reliable than outsiders, and to discharge their duties more
efficiently. The practice was adopted in other prisons, and when
conducted with care and discretion, worked so well that the system
has been extended throughout India. Special provision for it has been
made in all the gaol codes. As a reward for good conduct and strict
obedience to prison rules, all convicts whose behaviour has been
exemplary throughout, and who have completed the prescribed term of
hard labour, are eligible for the offices of convict warder, guard and
work-overseer. The number employed in these offices can never exceed
ten per cent. of the criminals in custody. All such appointments are
made with great care and deliberation, and are subject to the sanction
of the head of the prison department, by whom they are closely watched.
They are liable to forfeiture for serious misconduct or breach of duty.
As a measure of economy in diminishing the cost of guarding
prisons, and as a means of reformation in teaching self-respect and
self-control, the plan has been successful everywhere in India,
contrary to the usual experience of penal legislators. The privilege
is much prized, and few prisoners who have held such offices have
relapsed into crime, while many have obtained positions of trust on the
completion of their sentences.
In the gaols of Bengal the privileges of caste are respected in
general, but no false plea of caste is permitted to interfere with
punishment. With care, tact and such knowledge of the people committed
to his charge as every officer in command of a prison ought to
possess, no great feeling of dissatisfaction is likely to arise or to
be created. But from the jealousy with which all proceedings within
the prisons are watched by the outside population, and the rapidity
with which intelligence regarding them is spread, it is evident that
extreme care must continue to be observed in the matter. While it is
well known that imprisonment with its enforced associations is always
attended with loss of caste, that, however, is readily restored by the
performance of slight penances on release. It is instructive to find,
on tracing them throughout the country, how the same castes, whatever
differences of names they bear, are most prone to the commission of the
same classes of crime.
Again, it is strange to discover that belief in witchcraft and the
existence of witch-finders is a source of crime in the East at the
present time. Among the Kols, an aboriginal race in the south-west of
Bengal, each village is supposed to have a tutelar divinity, generally
an evil spirit to whom is assigned all the sickness, epidemics,
diseases and misfortunes which occur in the village. To this spirit
certain lands are assigned, and the produce of this land is used in
propitiatory sacrifices. The existence of this superstition is said to
be a frequent cause of murder and extortion. The Kols believe in the
powers of divination of “witch-finders,” who are usually consulted when
anything untoward occurs in a village. This witch-finder, who often
lives at a distance, performs certain absurd ceremonials, and pretends
through them to discover who in the village has caused the anger of
the tutelar deity. The person denounced is generally called upon to
pay handsomely for the evil caused, and usually does so, but if he
refuses he is frequently murdered, and whether he pays or not, if the
misfortune does not cease he is driven from the village, if no worse
fate overtakes him. All this is done in the utmost good faith, faith as
absolute as that with which witch-hunting was pursued by the puritans
of Scotland and America.
Sir Richard Temple, one of the most famous of India’s recent
proconsuls, passes an approving verdict upon Indian prisons as they
existed to the date of his volume, “India in 1880.” He was of the
opinion that they were managed conscientiously and as far as possible,
with the means available, according to accepted principles. They erred
perhaps in construction, and showed many shortcomings as regards
sanitation and disciplinary supervision, but an earnest desire to
improve them has animated the Indian government and its officials.
Native states, a little tardily, perhaps, have followed suit, and
many possess prisons imitating some of the best points of the British
system. They long clung, however, to the old barbarous methods of
punishment, such as short periods of detention with flogging, various
kinds of fining, compensation to the relatives of murdered men, and
mutilation in cases of grave robbery. A capital sentence was very
rarely inflicted.
Gradually public opinion in India awoke to the belief that something
more than mere penal detention was needed for the treatment of
prisoners. Outdoor labour, chiefly employed hitherto, was deemed
injurious to health and demoralising to discipline, entailing undue
expense in staff and guards; and so employment within the walls was
substituted, with organised industries and manufactures by hand and
with the help of machinery. The work done includes the weaving of
carpets, which have a certain value and reputation, and much cotton
and other fibres are manufactured; and the prisoners work at printing,
lithography and other useful trades. The rules for wearing irons and
fetters have been revised, and a consistent attempt has been made at
classification by separating the old habitual criminals from the less
hardened offenders. The system of earning remission by industry and
good conduct, as practised in the British prisons, has been introduced
with good results. Sanitation and ventilation have been much improved,
so that mortality has greatly diminished. Solitary confinement is
enforced as a means of discipline, but the cellular separation of
prisoners by night makes only slow progress, and the association of all
classes, good, bad and indifferent has a generally injurious effect
upon prisoners.
According to Sir Richard Temple’s figures, there were in his time more
than two hundred prisons in all India, exclusive of 386 lock-ups, and
the daily average of inmates was 118,500, of whom only 5,500 were
females. The annual number of crimes committed and charged was 880,000,
and as more than one person is often concerned, the number of persons
tried amounted to 970,000, of whom 550,000 were convicted, the balance
being under trial or discharged. The labours devolving upon the police
were obviously severe, and the prisons were always full.
Among the leading Indian prisons of to-day, one of the largest, the
Ahmedabad gaol, was originally a Mohammedan college and was converted
to its present purpose in 1820. Miss Mary Carpenter, who visited
it in 1868, describes the gaol as follows: “It is a fine-looking
building and near the citadel, but not of course well adapted to its
present purpose, though the large space enclosed by the buildings
gives it great capabilities of improvement. The first thing which
struck us painfully was that the men had irons on their legs. This
barbaric custom, which has long been exploded in our own country,
is here preserved and is indeed general in India in consequence of
the usual insecurity of the premises. The prisoners were working in
large open sheds with little appearance of confinement. A number
were occupied in weaving strong cotton carpets which appeared well
calculated for wear. Others were making towelling of various kinds,
very strong and good, from the cotton grown in the neighbourhood,
while others were manufacturing pretty little cocoa mats and baskets.
There was in general a criminal look in the culprits; they were
working with good-will and appeared interested in their occupation,
as in an ordinary factory. Except the chains, there was nothing of a
penal description in the scene around us; and although this cheerful
open place, with work at useful trades, might not give the intended
feeling of punishment, still it was to be hoped that training these
men to useful labour, under good moral influences, must have a
beneficial influence on their future lives. On remarking this to the
superintendent, he informed me that the salutary effect of the day’s
work under proper supervision was completely neutralised, or even
worse, by the corrupting influences of the night.
“There are four hundred prisoners in this gaol, for whom the number
of sleeping cells is totally inadequate and three or four are
consequently locked up together in the dark for twelve hours. There
is no possibility during this period of preventing communication of
the most corrupting nature, both moral and physical. No man convicted
of a first offence can enter this place--which ought to be one of
punishment and attempted reformation--without the greatest probability
of contamination and gaining experience in evil from the adepts in
crime who are confined with him; no young boy can enter without his
fate being sealed for life.
“Juvenile delinquents, casual offenders, hardened thieves sentenced
to a long term of imprisonment, are all herded together without any
possibility of proper classification or separation. The condition of
the thirty-two whom I had seen at the court on the day before was
even worse than the others; they were all penned up together without
work. There they had been for many months; and still they all were
without any attempt being made to give them instruction, which might
improve their moral and intellectual condition. This state of things
was not owing to any neglect on the part of the superintendent, a man
of enlightened benevolence, who devoted himself heart and soul to
his work. The conditions of this gaol are such that though able and
willing to remedy all these evils if authority and means were given to
him, under the existing circumstances he is powerless. There is ample
room on the premises for him to construct separate cells for all the
prisoners with only the cost of material, but this is not granted to
him; he cannot therefore carry out the printed regulations that the
prisoners are not to be made worse while in custody. The regulations
direct that the juveniles shall be separated from the adults; this is
now simply impossible. Rules are made that the prisoners shall receive
instruction, but no salary is allowed for a schoolmaster; there is
no place appropriated for instruction and no time is granted for
schooling; there are ten hours for labour, two hours are requisite for
meals and rest and during the remainder of the twenty-four hours the
prisoners are locked up. It is indeed permitted by the regulations that
some prisoners may be employed as instructors but with the proviso
that their hours of labour shall not be abridged for the purpose. Such
instructors could not be expected to exercise any good moral influence
on the other prisoners; yet to commence with these, if any educated men
were among them, might lead to some better arrangement. The old college
hall might possibly be employed as a schoolroom for a couple of hours
after sunset; but light would then be required and oil did not form a
part of the authorised expenditure. There were, then, obstacles to any
kind of instruction being imparted to the prisoners which no amount of
earnestness on the part of the officials or the superintendent could
surmount.
“On inquiring whether there were any females in the gaol, we were
conducted to a small separate court where in a dismal ward there were
some miserable women employed in drudgery work. There were no female
attendants and indeed no attempt appeared to be made to improve their
wretched condition. I felt grieved and shocked that in any part of the
British dominions women who were rendered helpless by being deprived of
liberty, and thus fell under our special responsibility, should be so
utterly uncared for as to be left under the superintendence of male
warders and without any means of improvement. In all these observations
I found that I had the full accordance of the superintendent; who, so
far from being annoyed at the discovery of so many evils in this place,
only rejoiced that some one should add force to his own representations
by an independent testimony. He stated that he understood it to be in
contemplation to build a large central gaol for the long-sentenced
prisoners; the removal of these from his own gaol would of course
remedy the overcrowding, though it would not enable each prisoner to
have a separate cell. In the meantime the evils were very great from a
sanitary as well as from a moral point of view. On one occasion more
than a hundred had died owing to a want of good sanitary arrangements.
Immediate attention to the condition of this gaol appeared therefore
necessary. Considering this as a common gaol without long-sentenced
prisoners, the following points suggested themselves as necessary
to carry out the intentions of government. First, a number of
well-ventilated sleeping cells should be constructed without delay,
so as to enable every prisoner to have a separate cell for sleeping.
Second, a trained and efficient teacher should be engaged to carry
out instruction; arrangements should be made to provide a cheerful
and well-lighted schoolroom. Educated prisoners may be employed as
assistant teachers; these should be specially trained and instructed
by the headmaster in their labour hours so as to provide as efficient
a staff as possible. Third, the mark system and classification should
be carried out. Fourth, prisoners awaiting trial should be kept in
separation, but not under penal condition; the female department should
be completely remodelled under female warders; all the advantages
provided for the men should be given to the women.”
Mr. Routledge, speaking of the Alipore Gaol in Calcutta which he
visited in 1878, says:--
“It contained 2,500 persons when I saw it, and with a few exceptions,
as in the case of those undergoing punishment, all were employed
in remunerative labour. There were masons erecting buildings,
weavers making gunny-bag cloth of jute, a factory of jute-spinners,
lithographers, painters, carpenters, blacksmiths and many other classes
of workmen, all engaged in task work. If they exceeded the task a
small sum was carried to their credit to be paid to them on leaving
gaol. An amusing story was told of a shrewd Yorkshireman who when
sent out to “manage a jute mill” was faced by the reality of some
hundreds of criminals not one of whom knew anything of the work. First
he despaired; then he hoped a little; finally he succeeded and had a
capital jute mill. Dr. Faucus, the governor of the prison, told me that
the men they sent out with trades hardly ever had returned; and there
was an instance of a man whose time had expired begging permission to
remain a little longer in gaol to more completely learn his trade. It
was to my view a humane and judicious system.
“Eighteen months later I visited the Presidency Gaol in Calcutta, and
the governor, Dr. Mackenzie, kindly showed me the wonders of the place.
We saw in the yard, ‘a mild Bengalee,’ whom flogging, short diet and
even the dreaded solitary confinement had failed to compel to work.
‘He is one of the few prisoners who ever beat me,’ the governor said.
A hundred or so of the prisoners were breaking stones; some were on
the tread-mill, a frightful punishment under such a sun; some were
mat-making, on very heavy looms. We came to a separate cell, the inmate
of which was a loose-jointed, misshapen, weak-looking, thin-faced
native man, apparently about twenty-five years of age, though he
might, for anything one could judge, have been any age from eighteen
to forty. ‘That,’ said the governor, ‘was one of the most daring and
relentless Dacoits we have ever had.’ In a cell a few yards distant,
there was a grave and venerable looking old man who had attained the
very highest grade in a different profession--that of a forger. He had
been convicted in attempting to obtain money from an officer--I think
the head of the police--by means of a letter purporting to be written
by Mr. Reilly, the well-known detective. The forgery was perfect, and
no one would have disputed the letter but for one small mistake; the
two initial letters of Mr. Reilly’s Christian name were transposed.
This interesting old gentleman when questioned as to the amount of work
he had done, put his hands together and gravely confessed that it was
far short of the task. The governor spoke sternly and threatened short
diet. Evidently the old artist was out of his vocation when attempting
slow, patient work. When the same question was put to the Dacoit he
pleaded pitifully, ‘Only four bags, but I’ll do forty to-morrow.’ Forty
was the number required to be sewed per day.
“There were many wealthy natives among the prisoners; and I was
sorry to find a number of English sailors and soldiers committed for
deserting regiments or ships. It was impossible to look upon them as
criminals. They were kept apart from the other prisoners. Some of
them were very fine fellows, who probably never were in prison before
nor would be again. Another class was that of the vagrants, termed
‘loafers.’ There were some very respectable looking men among them,
‘turned away from the railways,’ they said, or ‘brought from Australia
in charge of horses and then dismissed’--the most prolific source of
‘loaferism’ in India.
“Six young native boys were separated from the rest. They had their
own yard and each a little garden and a division of work. One was
cook, another housemaid, and so on. They were drawn up in line and
questioned, the cook first.
“‘What are you here for?’
“‘Murder; I struck another boy on the head and killed him.’
“‘And you?’
“‘Murder; I threw a child into a well.’
“The answers were given as if they had related to common matters.
We went no further in the list. An Indian prison is marvellous for
its mixture of races. The Hindu cannot eat with the Mussulman. To
step inside a cookhouse is to defile it even for prisoners. Yet even
Brahmins, old offenders, had been known to beg for the office of
_mehtars_ (sweepers, lowest menials), so great was their dread of the
hard labour.
“What were called the ‘non-habituals’ were employed as at Alipore and
taught trades where necessary. I noticed particularly an intelligent
Chinaman busy at the lathe. I said, ‘He never gave you any trouble?’
‘No; he was entrapped into a robbery, caught and convicted, and he
immediately made the best of his position. He is a quiet, respectful,
intelligent man.’ He spoke English like an Englishman. There were
several Chinamen in the prison and all of the same class. We came to a
long line of men, seated on the ground, engaged in hand spinning; the
fourth from one end was old Ameer Khan, the Wahabee. He was a tall man,
I should say nearly seventy years of age, stout, with flabby cheeks, a
rather fine forehead and an extraordinarily furtive eye.”
The trial of Ameer Khan, the Wahabee, caused a great sensation in the
Indian law courts in the year 1870. The Wahabees were a sect founded by
a young Arab pilgrim of Damascus, named Abd-el Wahab, who endeavoured
to reform the Mohammedan faith by denouncing the corruptions that
had crept in and by calling upon Mussulmans to “return to their
primitive church with its simplicity of manners and purity of morals.”
The movement spread into India, where it gained great success with
the Sunnis, themselves puritans, but it was fiercely hated by the
Mohammedans, who had deteriorated greatly under the English rule, and
there was great danger of an insurrection. In 1858 Sir Sydney Cotton
had stormed the stronghold of the Wahabees at Sittana and razed the
villages of their allies to the ground. In 1869 the government received
information that the Wahabees had issued a propaganda from Sittana
and Patna which was to be spread throughout India, and again found it
necessary to take steps to suppress the Wahabees. Among others, Ameer
Khan, a Mussulman banker and money lender of Calcutta, was suddenly
arrested in July, 1869, on no stated charge. He applied for a writ
of habeas corpus, but was refused. He appealed to the Supreme Court,
and then began the famous trial which lasted six months. In December
Ameer Khan was released from Alipore gaol, but he was immediately
rearrested, as it had been discovered that he had been apprehended
by a warrant about which there was some question. He was then tried
before a civilian judge at Patna, where the offences were alleged to
have been committed, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. He was
found guilty of acting as agent and supplying money for the Wahabee
propaganda.
The religious tenets of the Wahabees are still professed by many of
the Arabs and are admitted to be orthodox by the most learned of the
_‘ulamas_ of Egypt. The Wahabees are merely reformers, who believe all
the fundamental points of El-Islam and all the accessory doctrines
of the Koran and the “Traditions of the Prophets;” in short, their
tenets are those of the primitive Moslems. They disapprove of gorgeous
sepulchres and domes erected over tombs; such they invariably destroy
when in power. They also condemn as idolaters those who pay peculiar
veneration to deceased saints; and even declare all other Moslems to
be heretics for the extravagant respect which they pay to the prophet.
They forbid the wearing of silk, gold ornaments and all costly apparel,
and also the practice of smoking tobacco. For the want of this last
luxury they console themselves in some degree by an immoderate use of
coffee. There are many learned men among them, and they have collected
many valuable books, chiefly historical, from various parts of Arabia
and from Egypt.
The Montgomery gaol in the Punjab, one of the largest in India,
was recently visited by Captain Buck of the Indian army, and his
description of the details of prison life there is exceedingly
interesting.
Attached to the gateway are not only the prison offices, barracks for
the warders and an armory, but a queer looking room where well-behaved
prisoners may receive friends once in three months. The room is divided
by bars into three parts. In the portion at one end the prisoner
squats, his visitor stays in the part at the other end and a gaoler
or assistant sits in the middle space, where he can make sure that no
smuggling goes on or that no attempts at escape are made.
The prisoners become very clever and use all sorts of devices to
smuggle in coins, tobacco, opium and other drugs and dice. They are
allowed to wear their own shoes, but these are examined very carefully,
for the soles are frequently found to be made of tobacco, four-anna
pieces and other things than leather. “A common dodge,” says Captain
Buck, “among the prisoners for concealing coins and other small things
is to make a receptacle in the throat by means of a leaden weight about
the diameter of a florin and half an inch thick; this is attached to a
string some six inches long, a knot in the end being slipped between
two teeth to prevent it sliding down the throat. By holding the head in
a particular position for some time every day, ‘waggling’ the weight
about, and from time to time altering the length of the string, a pouch
can be formed in the throat suitable for holding as many as fifteen
rupees. The possessor of this strange ‘safe’ is able to put in and take
out his treasure with facility, but it is exceedingly difficult to
make a man disgorge the contents against his will, or even to find out
whether he possesses the pouch at all without the use of the Röntgen
rays.”
The Montgomery gaol is as large as a small town, and contains two great
enclosures surrounded by a high outside wall, three spaces at the back
for work shops, a separate yard for the female ward and such other
buildings as storehouses, pumping stations and granaries. All of the
buildings are constructed of burnt brick, but the walls are made of
sun-dried brick and are kept in repair and plastered by gaol labour.
The menial work is performed by the prisoners, and caste prejudices
have been consulted in apportioning this work to the different classes
of prisoners. The lower castes do scavengering and general cleaning,
while the dyer, washerman, barber, tailor, blacksmith and weaver are
all, as far as possible, employed at their respective professions.
Other prisoners who have worked at trades which the gaol does not
afford are given work in the factories.
The factories are the most interesting part of the gaol at Montgomery.
Carpets are made in many beautiful patterns. A carpet over fifty feet
wide can be woven on the largest loom, and it is an interesting sight
to see a row of twenty-five men engaged in pulling the threads from
the many coloured balls of wool above their heads, slipping them into
place and with a small curved knife cutting off the ends, pressing
down the stitches with a wooden fork, and never making a mistake. The
pattern is read out by convicts stationed behind a loom, sometimes
from patterns, sometimes from books and often from memory. To the
uninitiated these instructions are incomprehensible, for there is such
a confusion of sounds that it is difficult to distinguish any one
voice. The marvel of it is how each man knows what colours to use and
where. Somehow or other, in spite of all the noise and confusion, dust
and glare, these lovely carpets are produced. The ordinary woollen
carpet costs from sixteen to twenty-four shillings a square yard,
according to the number of stitches to the inch, but the prices range
higher for specially selected wool, while the price of a silk carpet is
almost a small fortune.
Another part of the factory contains the cloth looms. The weavers
rig up their looms in the same manner as they would in their native
villages, and consequently the yard appears to be in considerable
disorder; “each weaver sits at his own little loom with his legs in
a hole in the ground and flashes the spindle backwards and forwards,
seldom wasting his time for fear he may not finish his day’s job, and
thus lose marks or fail to gain any. One man, in training, has to
complete nine yards of the duster-cloth, three-quarters of a yard wide,
in a day; fifteen yards of blanketing four feet, eight inches wide, is
another task; while a man working on a carpet, ‘_munj_-mat,’ or cotton
mat, has to work on a width of two feet and complete four inches,
twelve feet and two feet respectively in one day.” If a prisoner is
able to do extra work he obtains marks and gains some remission from
his sentence.
The dormitories contain curious looking long rooms with passages down
the middle and on each side rows of couches made of hard baked mud. The
prisoners are provided with blankets and mattresses made of rice straw,
and they can be fairly comfortable. Even beds made out of such material
have been diverted to other uses by the ingenious inmates. A convict is
said to have made a pipe out of his bed. By hollowing out a place near
the head of the bed and plastering it over, he made two holes, one to
hold the tobacco and ashes, and the other to serve as a mouthpiece.
As an additional precautionary measure to prevent plague from entering
the gaol, every prisoner who catches a rat and produces it alive is
given a reward of ten marks. This is a distinct gain toward a shorter
sentence, for twenty-four marks means one day’s remission. It has
been surmised, as the rats are very numerous in the gaol in spite
of wire netting everywhere placed to keep them out, that either the
warders arrange to bring them in or the prisoners maintain reserves for
breeding purposes.
The cook-house is in the yard where the men are paraded. Two meals are
served daily, one at 7.30 A. M. and the other after 5 P. M., but in
addition a little parched boiled _gram_ is given to each convict in
the middle of the day, when there is a short recess from work. Besides
the large _chupattis_, made of wheat and Indian corn, a few ounces of
_dal_ are served in the morning, and vegetables with condiments in the
evening. All the vegetables and condiments are produced by the convicts
in the large garden attached to the gaol.
It is said that no convict has ever gotten away altogether, but that
those who manage to escape occasionally are always recaptured. As
the gaol is situated in a large desert, tracking the runaways is
comparatively easy. On one occasion, a man was apparently missing
at evening roll-call. For considerable time his identity could not
be ascertained, but after a thorough search and re-checking, it was
remembered that a murderer had been hanged that day, and the officials
had failed to strike his name from the roll.
The hospital is exceedingly clean and well kept. The routine of the
gaol generally runs smoothly, and the character of the treatment and
discipline in this typical prison of India will bear comparison with
that in many institutions of a like kind at home and abroad.
Some of the local gaols in India are worth a passing mention. A good
specimen was that of Sirsah on the confines of the Bikaneer desert.
Colonel Hervey visited it and speaks of it as a model gaol. He says,
“Its lofty walls are shielded by a covered way running round its top.
It has an outer and an inner ditch at the foot of the walls, and
upward-sloping towers at its four corners, resembling the castles of
a chess-board. The prisoners in it were warmly clothed and looked
sleek, and being told off to healthful although hard labour, they ate
with eagerness their diet of curried meat, curried _shorwah_, or soup,
and wheaten cakes. This was served out to them plentifully while I
was there. They sat down on the ground in lines without reference to
castes, and all promiscuously partook of the food set before them. I
was astonished at this, for there is generally so much difficulty in
the matter of food, owing to caste prejudices.”
Another interesting native gaol is that of Orissa, visited by Sir
William Hunter in 1872. He says: “It consisted of a courtyard with
low thatched sheds running round three sides and the guard-house on
the fourth. The shed roofs came so low that a child might have jumped
on to them and thus got over the wall. When the guard turned out,
moreover, we found it to consist of two very old men; and the Maharaja
was rather displeased to find that one of them had his matchlock under
repair at the blacksmith’s, while the other had left his weapon in his
own village, ten miles off, to protect his family during his period of
service at court. Inside were sixty-nine prisoners, and I asked how it
came that they did not, under the circumstances, all jump over the
wall? The question seemed to strike the Maharaja as a particularly
foolish one. ‘Where could they go?’ he said. ‘On the rare occasion that
a prisoner breaks gaol, it is only to pay a visit to his family; and
the villagers, as in duty bound, return him within a few days.’ The
truth is that the family instinct is still so strong in the tributary
states that imprisonment, or even death itself, seems infinitely
preferable to running away from kindred and home. There were no female
prisoners, and the Maharaja stated that crime among women had not yet
penetrated his country.
“I found the gang divided into two sections, each of which had a shed
to itself on the opposite sides of the court, the shed of the third
side being set apart for cooking. The one shed was monopolised by ten
men whose light complexion declared them to belong to the trading class
and who lolled at great ease and in good clothes in their prison house.
In the other shed the remaining fifty-nine were crowded, packed as
closely as sardines and with no other clothing except a narrow strip
round their waist. On expressing my surprise at this unequal treatment
and asking whether the ten gentlemen who took their ease were confined
for lighter crimes, the Maharaja explained: ‘On the contrary, these
ten men are the plagues of the state. They consist of fraudulent
shop-keepers who receive stolen goods, and notorious bad characters
who organise robberies. The other fifty-nine are poor Pans and other
jungle people imprisoned for petty theft, or as the tools of the ten
prisoners on the opposite side. But then the ten are respectable men
and of good caste, while the fifty-nine are mere woodmen; and it is
only proper to maintain God’s distinction of caste.’ All the prisoners
were in irons except one, a lame man, whose fetters had been struck
off on the report of the native doctor. They looked very fat and
comfortable, as indeed they well might considering that the sixty-nine
prisoners have an allowance of a hundred pounds of rice per diem, with
goat’s flesh once a fortnight, fish twice a month, besides the little
daily allowance of split peas and spices to season their food. It did
not seem to have occurred to any of them to feel in the least ashamed
on account of being in gaol. One of them had been imprisoned twice
before, and on my asking him what his trade was he explained that the
younger brothers of his family were husbandmen, but that for his part
he nourished his stomach by thieving.”
No European country can show anything like the immunity from crime
which the worst district in Orissa enjoys. In Balasor, the proportion
of persons in gaol is one to every 3,375 of the population, or one
female to every 121,278 of the population. Puri district, however, the
seat of the so-called “abominations of Jagannath,” would blush to own
such an overwhelming criminal population. Including both the central
and the subdivisional gaols, the proportion is one criminal always in
prison to every six thousand of the population and one woman to every
hundred thousand.
The gaol is a great institution in Indian and Burmese stations. Your
_syce_ breaks the shaft of your dogcart; send it round to the gaol to
be repaired. New matting is wanted for the veranda; you can get it in
the gaol. You want a piece of furniture; whether it be a wardrobe or
a whist table, you will find what you require in the gaol workshop,
and if there does not happen to be one ready, you can order it to be
made. They take a longer time to do it than free artisans, but you can
depend upon sound material, good workmanship and reasonable prices; so
the gaol industries flourish and the cost of supporting the criminal
classes falls with comparative lightness upon taxpayers.