Stafford Jail covers a large space of ground surrounded by high
brick walls, and contains three prisons, with the usual outhouses,
such as the Governor’s office, the reception-cells, the cookhouse,
laundry, hospital, workshops, and chapels. In the centre stands the
original prison, known as the Old Prison, a building of an old type
of architecture, with high gabled roof and large windows. A path ran
beside it, between it and the Governor’s office, and this path led at
each end to the two newer buildings that face each other and complete
the square. One is known as the New Prison, of menacing exterior, with
small windows heavily barred. The other is known as the Crescent,
because of its shape. Both are plain solid buildings, but in the
Crescent the windows are large and less dungeon-like. Windows mean much
to the outward look of a prison, but they mean much more to its inward
life.
In the ordinary life of the jail—if it is at all possible to
speak of a jail containing an ordinary life—women occupy the Old
Prison, long-sentence and penal servitude men the New Prison, and
short-sentence men the Crescent. While we were there soldiers under
sentence occupied the Old Prison, and the Irish Prisoners of War the
other two prisons. Dublin men occupied the Crescent, having been
brought there on Monday, immediately after the surrender; and the men
from the country districts were put into the New Prison as they came to
hand, together with a few Dublin men who had been swept up during the
week after the Rising.
Flanking the jail on each side are the Union and the Lunatic Asylum,
and to judge from the size of all three, the population of that part of
England seems to be in a bad way. Afterwards I had an opportunity of
looking from one of the higher windows over the walls, and I could see
factory chimneys stretching to the horizon. Factory chimneys, lunatic
asylums, jails, poorhouses, and sleek suburbia: a pretty picture of
civilization. All the jail buildings were in red brick, which was at
least warm to the eye. The New Prison held about four hundred cells,
and the Crescent about the same.
Being one of the later Sweep-up I was placed in the New Prison. Within,
it was not unlike a church in some ways, chiefly in the matter of
gloom. It was comprised of three wings, branching from the central
hall. Right and left ran a long high hall, with church-like windows
at each end. Each side formed a wing, and opposite the gate there
extended a third smaller wing. The walls of each wing rose like a cliff
on either hand, with three tiers of cells like so many caves. Round
the cells run balconies with spiral stairways connecting them. Across
the midmost balcony wire netting is extended lest men’s nerves get
the better of them. Half-way down each wing the monotonous succession
of cell doors is broken on each side, and a little recess formed for
latrines.
Each wing bears a letter of the alphabet, and each cell a number. Each
man on entrance has his name inscribed on one side of a cardboard
form, and his cell number on the other. This is placed in a wooden
slot outside his cell. The name is turned to the wall, and the number
turned to view. By that is signified that his name is no longer needed,
and he becomes a number. Inasmuch as the system is subtly devised for
the extinction of personality, of identity, this is a deft piece of
symbolism of which any dramatist might be proud. In Stafford I was C
2:21:—Wing C., Balcony 2, Cell 21.
Cells are ever the same, even as their occupants are presumed to be.
My cell at Stafford was the same as at Castlebar, save that the upper
half of the walls was painted yellow instead of being whitewashed, the
lower half red instead of yellow, and the floor paved. The window was
much smaller and very dark. Unlike Castlebar, it had no gas jet inside.
Instead of this, a square thick pane of glass beside the door covered
an incandescent burner that was lit from outside. The cavity in which
the burner stood narrowed to a small slit in the outer wall, lest
any prisoner should magically narrow himself with a view to escaping
through an aperture a foot square. Beside the door appeared the usual
bell handle. By turning it sharply to one side a gong was rung above
the latrine recess, and the same action registered one’s number
outside.