The week after our excursion to Wormwood Scrubbs, seven men were sent
down to us from Frongoch, where trouble had already begun. There were
no cells to hold them in our prison, and so they were lodged in the
reception-cells under the offices, where neither light nor air was bold
enough to venture. They were brought over to us for breakfast, and
lived during the day with us until they were taken back to bed.
Shortly afterwards five of our number were summoned to the Governor’s
office, and returned saying they were to be released that day. We
already had had that joke played on us several times, and so we gave
no heed to them. But when in a short time we saw them industriously
packing their kit, the joke wore a more earnest expression. It was no
jest, however. Although no man changed his mien yet none but felt what
a jewel freedom was when it became within the grasp of his neighbour,
and when that neighbour rose up and went forth proudly wearing it. We
sang them home, however, gaily enough. In a week two more were sent
home. These seven comprised all the releases from Reading at the same
time that two thousand and more were released from Frongoch. It was
not very difficult to discover the reasons prompting most of these
releases, and it need hardly be said that they had little relation to
the events of Easter Week. The internments covered a much wider ground,
which was chosen for much subtler reasons. The soldier’s hand might
rule in Ireland, but the politician’s hand indexed the internments.
And as usual the politician over-reached himself. For the men who were
released found on their return that the country judged them unworthy
to remain; and the Home Office officials were finally convinced that
Ireland was inhabited by the mad when they received shoals of letters
from released men pitifully arguing that their releases must have been
in error, and giving proofs of their part in the Rising-Out.
We, however, settled down to the honour of imprisonment with fortitude.
Already, when we had learned that the celebrations of the 12th of July
had been forbidden in Ulster we had filled the gap with a procession
and a meeting in which excellent Orange speeches had been made. Now we
held a Hibernian meeting. Such things enlivened our days.
We suffered greatly from lack of exercise, and the closeness of our
confinement began to tell upon us as the autumn approached. We had
given up going out to the work-yard for our morning exercise, and kept
to the little yard. This yard was beset on three sides by the buildings
of the jail, and on the fourth side, beyond the high wall, Huntley &
Palmer’s chimneys belched black smoke that blotted the sky. In a corner
of this yard we made a hand-ball alley. No stranger alley was ever
devised. Two windows, a drain-pipe, a railing across steps leading to
the basement, and a ventilator grating, gave opportunity for chance and
skill. And the exercise saved us.
Nevertheless, with the coming of winter the effects of our confinement
could be seen on most of us. The food, also, had become bad. The
margarine was often rancid. On two occasions the meat made several of
us ill; and for three months I lived only on bread and porridge, both
of which were, at least, clean and wholesome. Prisons are not built as
health resorts, yet precautions are supposed to be taken that a mean
of temperature is maintained. During a week of frost, however, the
temperature in my room was 46° to 48° Fahrenheit. This was inside the
cells: outside, the passage was full of draughts. Yet the prison was
never ventilated, for the only place where air could come or go was the
door. The result was that when one of the warders came in once with
influenza, every man in the prison in time fell to it.
Yet we kept our backs straight. P. J. D. was informed by the Governor,
on the authority of the Home Office, that if he would sign an
undertaking to be of good behaviour for the future he would at once be
liberated. He replied that the offer was adding insult to injury, and
he declared that if his liberation depended on his signature of any
manner of undertaking, he was destined to remain long in prison. The
Chief Warder approached others of us, thinking to try the ground before
any other offers were made; but he left matters as he found them.
In Frongoch at this time the same attitude was being taken. Matters
there were also complicated by the attempt of the military to search
out Irishmen who had returned home from England on the passage of the
Military Service Act—to search them out, not for the Army, but for the
pleasure of thrusting them into jails. And the result of the ensuing
resistance was that seven of the leaders there were brought to Reading
and put into the reception-cells, making our number thirty-five once
again.