A GERMAN TRAMP PRISON.[63]
The German method of dealing with vagrants and loafers may be studied
in its practical details with great advantage by visiting the Labour
House of Benninghausen, in the Prussian Province of Westphalia. The
establishment is situated in the open country, ten or twelve miles
distant from the old town of Soest, and its high boundary walls and
spiked fences enclose an area of about twelve English acres. The
nearest railway station is four or five miles away, and the visitor's
first impression is that of a sparsely populated country, in which
the prisoners who from time to time manage to elude the eye of
their warders can have but little chance of successful flight. The
Labour House was built in 1821 to accommodate 410 persons, and it
is administered by the Government of the Province. The books of the
establishment value the land at £1,022, while the buildings are insured
for £19,950, and the furniture, equipment, and material for £5,329.
[Footnote 63: A portion of this chapter was published in the
_Fortnightly Review_ of February, 1907.]
Benninghausen is an admirable example of the application of the
allopathic principle to penology. As sloth is the vice which brings
the majority of prisoners within its walls, so rigorous exertion is
the method of cure that is followed. The House is the veriest hive
of industry. The idea would never occur to you that these groups
of diligent workers, engaged in all sorts of useful crafts and
employments, were not long ago wandering aimlessly about the country
cherishing the delusive idea that work was beneath contempt, and that
the dignity of man consists in requiring someone else to tie your
bootlaces. Yet one important principle is strictly followed--whatever
the work done, it is not allowed to compete with the free labour
market. Hence, efforts are first directed to the provision of every
possible need of the Labour House itself and of its inhabitants. This
applies not only to the provision of food, but also to the weaving
of materials, the making of iron and woodwork, the carrying out of
repairs, and other matters of domestic economy. Beyond that the similar
needs of other provincial institutions--like the Asylums for the Sick,
for the Imbeciles, for the Blind, and for the Deaf and Dumb--are
supplied as the convenience of the Labour House allows. This is all
done, of course, on a business footing. An accurate account is taken
of the labour employed, and the wages of this labour, reckoned on a
moderate scale, plus the cost of material and a slight profit to cover
contingencies, constitute the price charged by the Director for the
goods he sells.
The Province of Westphalia is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, but as the
Benninghausen Labour House is the only one in the province it has to
be conducted on what is known as the "paritative" basis; it serves for
both confessions, though each has its special chaplain. At the time
of my visit the institution was housing temporarily, in addition to
the ordinary subjects of correction, a number of lads and girls, the
children of abandoned parents, the charge of whom had been undertaken
by the Poor Law Authority in virtue of the law of 1890, and for whom
more suitable provision did not exist at the moment.
The numbers of detainees dealt with during the financial year 1907-8
were as follows:--
-----------------------+--------+----------+--------
| Males. | Females. | Total.
-----------------------+--------+----------+--------
Number on April 1 | 307 | 27 | 334
Admitted during year | 377 | 25 | 402
Discharged during year | 329 | 30 | 359
Remained, March 31 | 355 | 22 | 377
Total number dealt | | |
with during year | 684 | 52 | 736
Daily average number | 367 | 23 | 330
Maximum number | 355 | 27 | --
Minimum number | 280 | 20 | --
-----------------------+--------+----------+--------
Those committed in 1907-8 had committed the following offences:--
------------------------+--------+----------+--------
| Males. | Females. | Total.
------------------------+--------+----------+--------
Vagabondage | 25 | -- | 25
Begging | 276 | 1 | 277
Begging and vagabondage | | |
together | 29 | -- | 29
Idleness | 16 | -- | 16
Work-shyness | 2 | -- | 2
Homelessness | 16 | -- | 16
Professional immorality | 9 | 27 | 36
------------------------+--------+----------+--------
Of the men newly admitted, 177 had been detained in a Labour House
before, 64 of them more than three times, and the great majority had
been imprisoned.
Structurally, the Labour House is not, perhaps, a model of what
such an institution might and should be in these days, nor is this
surprising when it is remembered that it has stood now for three
generations, yet its arrangements are, within the limits determined by
space and the architectural ideas of ninety years ago, excellent, and
they are certainly excellently supervised. There are three separate
blocks of buildings. The principal one contains the administrative
rooms, the day-rooms, the dormitories, baths, and kitchens. Separate
departments, without contact of any kind, are provided for the sexes,
the women being lodged on the ground floor and the men above. The
second block contains the workrooms, of which there are five, besides
the large bakery and washhouses, _viz._, a workshop for joiners and
carpenters, one for weaving, one for cigar making, one for shoe making
and a smithy and machine shop. The third building is the hospital,
and is sufficiently isolated. This is not intended, however, for the
chronically sick, who, with the physically disabled, are transferred,
on medical certificate, to the Provincial Poorhouse and Hospital. Cases
of child-birth are removed betimes to the Maternity Hospital, and the
mothers afterwards return to the Labour House to complete their terms
of imprisonment.
The bedrooms are plain yet light and cheerful apartments, not
over-large, but as fresh and airy as an abundance of open windows can
make them. Each prisoner has his own little iron bedstead, with straw
pallet and pillow, and a coloured counterpane, and his name is boldly
written at the head. The utmost care is taken to lodge the prisoners
according to age, character, and characteristics. "We have separate
bedrooms for the old, the middle-aged, and the young, separate rooms
also for the first offenders and for the recidivists," said the
Labour Inspector who showed me round the institution, "for we study
peculiarities as much as possible. We also study their comfort," he
added, "for we put all the snorers together."
The day begins for the inmates at 4.30 during the summer months (April
1 to September 30), and at 5.30 during winter and on Sundays and
festivals. The hours are divided as follows:--
4.30 a.m.--At the sound of the bell every prisoner has to rise,
dress, and wash, and in a quarter of an hour must have arranged his
bedclothes and be ready to leave the dormitory.
4.45 a.m.--Assembling in the corridors the prisoners are numbered,
after which (so runs the "Order of the Day"), "they shall offer up
at word of command (_auf Commando_) a silent prayer." Then the field
labourers, the implement room workers, and the bakers go to the dining
rooms, and the weavers, tailors, shoemakers, cigar makers, and the
female inmates to the workrooms, there to begin at once their work.
4.50 a.m.--The bell sounds for the morning meal (soup and bread), the
inmates going to the same in bands in charge of the overseers.
9.0 a.m.--Work is then continued without interruption until 9.0, when
there is a pause for a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.
11.40 a.m.--A pause for dinner, which is partaken like breakfast in
bands. (For the outside labourers a different order is followed.)
12.0 to 1.0 p.m.--A pause, during which the prisoners have at least
half an hour in the open air.
4.0 p.m.--A pause of a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.
7.15 p.m. (in winter and on Sundays and festivals, 6.15).--The bell
rings for supper, and work ends for the day.
7.50 p.m.--The prisoners are examined for the detection of forbidden
articles, and at 7.55 they are marched off to bed.
The work-day is thus about twelve hours in summer. But while, as a
rule, the hours are the same for all, work is not altogether measured
by time, but according to the capacity of the individual inmate, and
where the tasks imposed are unfulfilled at the close of the day, owing
to evident sloth or insubordination, some sort of punishment follows.
The dietary on ordinary work-days is as follows:--
Morning.--Coffee with milk and bread.
Noon.--Peas, beans, or lentils with potatoes; vegetable soup with
potatoes; cabbage or turnips, with potatoes (the portion of potatoes
allowed is 750 grammes for men and 660 grammes for women); or fresh
fish and potatoes.
Evening.--Soup, made with rye or wheaten flour, bread, oats,
buckwheat, rice or potatoes. (Of bread 550 grammes are allowed to each
man and 400 grammes to each woman daily). At Easter, Whitsuntide,
Christmas, and on the Emperor's birthday, beef or pork, with beer, is
given. Twice a week 100 grammes of meat may be served to men, and 80
grammes to women, instead of the fat which enters into the noon meal.
Once a week cheese (100 grammes) is served to men and women, and once
also a salted herring.
The whole of the prisoners are kept to work of a kind suited to their
strength, capacity and sex, their employment being determined by the
Director and the resident doctor together. The principal methods of
employment are the following:--
(1) Farm work on the provincial estate at Eichelborn, for which purpose
men are farmed out as required.
(2) Building and earth works in connection with provincial institutions
and undertakings.
(3) A series of industries carried on within the walls of the house.
(4) Works on the buildings, both within and without.
(5) Domestic and culinary work such as baking, washing, cleaning,
sewing, etc.
The baking alone is a very serious task, for a thousand mouths have
to be fed every day, since the two large ovens provide, not only for
the Labour House itself, but for two other large public institutions
situated not far away. In the weaving shop there are fourteen
hand-looms for linen, the yarn for which is bought. The work done by
the carpenters is various and thoroughly creditable. Furniture in
request for provincial institutions is chiefly made, such as tables,
benches, chests, chairs, toilette tables, and the like, and some of
the work I saw would compare with the best products of free labour.
"We have just sent out an account for £2,000 worth of goods," said
the labour master with pride. The business of cigar making is not,
like the other departments, carried on by the Labour House on its
own account. The plan adopted is for labour to be farmed to tobacco
manufacturers, who send the raw material with a skilled overseer
to direct the various processes of preparation. The administration
undertakes no responsibility for the quality of the work done, or for
the material spoiled, though, on the other hand, the wages charged to
the manufacturer are very low, _viz._, 75 pfennige or 9d. per day. The
various employments detailed in a recent official report included
locksmithry, joinery and carpentry, basket and chair making, tinning,
mason's work, roofing, painting and plastering, weaving and spooling,
tailoring, boot and shoe making, saddlery, hair sorting, book-binding,
cigar making, machine turning, repairs to tools and implements,
copying, manifolding, baking, butchery, knitting, sewing, laundry work,
farm and field work, and road making. The weaving department produced
45,547 metres of stuff, the tailoring department produced 158 complete
suits and 2,890 single garments, the sewing department 5,099 bed
coverlets, towels, shirts, aprons, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, etc.;
the shoe making department 748 pairs of shoes, the carpentry department
1,319 articles of furniture, and so forth. The total value of the goods
produced and of the labour farmed during the year was £6,164, which
more than covered the cost of food and clothing.
Formerly the Labour House had its own farm, but this was separated
some years ago, and it has since been conducted as an independent
undertaking, though still by the aid of forced labour. Men are lent
to the farm manager as required, at the rate of 60 pfennige or 7d. a
day of ten or twelve hours, according to the season, and some forty or
fifty are always employed in one way or other on the land. The Labour
House buys its rye for bread, its milk, its butter, and its potatoes
from the farm management at the full market prices, though, on the
other hand, it sells to the farm all the implements of iron and wood
which it is capable of supplying, and also makes its repairs.
In the year 1907-8 of an average _personnel_ of 330, there were
employed in domestic and other work for the institution 152 persons,
while 142 were employed on work for the Provincial Administration, 50
were employed by outside persons in farm, industrial, and other work,
and 10 worked for officers of the Labour House.
The entire cost in that financial year was £24 18s. 9d. per head, this
sum including food, clothing, materials, and administration, and of the
total expenditure the prisoners earned by their labour £7 13s. 10d. per
head, leaving a deficit of £17 4s. 11d. per head, equal to 6s. 7-1/2d.
per week, to be made up by the Province. As compared with several years
ago, there was an increase in both the gross and the net cost.
There is absolutely no contact between the workers of the several
trade departments, for all save the bakers work behind locked doors,
whose small windows only the officials may approach. The work, too,
is strenuous in the full meaning of that hackneyed word. Every man
literally works ever in his taskmasters eye; and not only so, but he
must complete each day the task which is allotted to him. According to
his capacity, and the character of his employment, a fixed _pensum_
is required of him, and unless this is done there is a penalty to
pay; while, on the other hand, to the industrious, who exceed the
inevitable minimum of effort and output, a small reward is offered.
The latter only ranges from a farthing to a penny a day, though by the
accretions of a year it may grow into a sum which proves a welcome help
to a man on his discharge. This accumulating bonus is, as a rule, kept
intact until the time of discharge comes, when it is handed to the
Police Authority of the place to which the man elects to go, to be paid
to him in instalments or otherwise used advantageously on his behalf.
The women's department does not need particular description. It is
conducted quite independently of the men's, though, of course, under
the same higher officials, and its inmates are put to occupations
suitable to their capacity and strength, not a small part of their time
naturally being taken up by the domestic, culinary, and other indoor
work inseparable from so large an establishment. In this department are
found many members of a class which is one of the saddest excrescences
of our modern urban life. These women of evil profession are, as a
rule, detained in the Labour House for six months after the expiration
of their gaol sentence. On discharge they are sent to their legal
domicile if without fixed home or regular means of subsistence, but
if they cannot establish a legal settlement they are handed over to
the Poor Law Authority. It may be noted, however, that Germany does
not as yet go as far as certain cantons of democratic Switzerland in
the restraint of those single women of known moral weakness, so well
known to English Poor Law workers, whose periodical visits to the
workhouse imply an ever increasing burden on the public funds. Such
persons the Berne Poor Law Authorities, for example, keep under duress
indefinitely without the slightest misgiving that the sacred principle
of individual liberty, in whose misused name so many wrongs to society
and the commonwealth are committed, is being infringed. In Germany,
as in England, these persons may, indeed, come under the restraining
influence of the Poor Law when physically or intellectually defective,
but for the rest the only power of detention resides in the penal
provisions applicable, as above shown, to females found guilty of
professional solicitation, a class to which most of the moral breakages
which find their way into the women's wards of our own workhouses do
not in the least belong.
Formal prison discipline is enforced in the Labour House at
Benninghausen as in others. Possibly the purple patches of relaxation
which variegate the lives of the inmates are too few and too far
between. Here, however, the German authorities doubtless act
according to the teaching of experience, and no one will doubt that
a theory--whether satisfactory or not--lies at the basis of their
practice. Sunday is, of course, a free day, and the high festivals of
the Church are observed by the prisoners of both confessions and of
none. Then a great quiet falls upon this house of toil. Black clothes
become the order of the day, even to the soft round cap which covers
the close-cropped head, and as often as the church-going bell sounds,
the inmates are led to and from religious service. For the rest the
time is divided between workshop, bed, and board--and unless the rules
are scrupulously observed there is a good deal of board about the bed.
It goes without saying that the men are treated humanely and justly,
but of indulgence there is no pretence, and I confess that as this
aspect of Labour House discipline created upon my mind its own clear
and vivid impression, I recalled that saying of Prince Bismarck, when
he laid down the law of courtesy, "Politeness even to the murderer,
but hang him all the same." I do not, however, presume to criticise
the _régime_ followed; may be it is the best for the people who pass
beneath it. It is the serious side of life, rather than its levities
and _insouciance_, which they need specially to know. Why should
the tramp have all the ease and the honest worker all the hardships
of life? It sounds like the refinement of cruelty, but in this land
of Gargantuan smokers not only is the consoling companionship of
tobacco forbidden to the mass of prisoners, but even the cigar makers
themselves fall under the general ban, and may not test the result of
their own deft handiwork.
Severe punishment is very seldom necessary, and Benninghausen does not
possess the provision for treating acts of extreme misdemeanour which
is to be found in some other German Labour Houses. "Arrest" in various
grades is the worst penalty awarded. That means imprisonment in a
dark cell, with bare boards for a bed and bread and water for diet.
Even here, however, every fourth day brings respite and is, for that
reason, known as a "good day" (_guter Tag_), for on it the prisoner
may again, for one brief space, taste the joy of his accustomed straw
pallet, while, to comfort or to tantalise him, he is also given warm
food. But it is a fugitive bliss, for next day the pallet goes and
warm food with it, and the erring one sleeps again on the floor and
quenches his thirst at the water tap. A short time before my visit
eight or ten of the incorrigible young "foster-children" of whom I have
spoken had escaped from the Labour House while returning from church.
A hue and cry was promptly raised, and in a couple of hours they were
recaptured. They were birched for their escapade, for under the law
referred to above the parental authority is transferred to the public
foster parents, even to the extent of the right to inflict due bodily
chastisement. With such exceptions, corporal punishment is unknown in
the Labour House. The punishment for the loafer, the idler, and the
tramp is hard work, and about its genuineness there can be no doubt
whatever. But what would you otherwise? It is work which these men
need, and want of it which has been their undoing. Look at it in that
way. The Labour House is in effect a Continuation School. In it the
hapless sons of the commonwealth who have failed to learn the lesson of
industry in their early years are enabled to make good this important
deficiency in their education. It is also coercive. Just as Germany
applies compulsion in the instruction of adults who have failed to
master their R's betimes, so it applies compulsion in imparting to the
thriftless and shiftless members of society the spirit and habit of
orderliness, industry, and self-control.
No one who has been inside a Tramp Prison can fail to detect the
beneficial influence of rigid discipline upon the physique and bearing
of these tramps and loafers of yesterday and the day before. It was
hard to believe that the gangs of smart-looking men, who briskly
deployed in the quadrangle in their clattering wooden shoes, were
members of the same slouching brotherhood whose favourite haunt is the
King's highway. One little scene, enacted all in a moment before my
eyes, would have done credit to a drill-ground. A band of prisoners
were returning along the quadrangle from exercise to their work, a
warder behind them. Arrived at the doorway of the workshop, they
halted dead at signal, fell into two lines, and stood motionless at
attention with the rigidity and solemnity of a military watch, while
the warder ponderously passed between them and led the way into the
building. For they can, after all, be galvanised into life and vigour,
into agility and alertness, these licensed drones of the commonwealth,
these worthless hangers-on of the street corner and the highway, whom
we are accustomed to regard as "finished and finite clods" whose
betterment only a miracle could compass; all that is needed is the will
to override their weakness and make them men in spite of themselves.
It may be asked, however, what is the practical effect of Labour
House discipline on the after life of those who have experienced
it? That a large proportion are won to a regular life of industry
cannot, unfortunately, be said, nor would it be expected. In proof
of this self-evident admission stands the patent fact that many of
the inmates are recidivists who have been in and out of the Labour
House time after time. Questioned on the point the Director placed
the percentage of genuine reformations at 25, and the proportion of
those who are directly benefited, without being actually reclaimed,
at from a third to a half of the whole. "One half at the outside,"
was his most sanguine estimate, volunteered, I must add, without
reference at the moment to books or memoranda. But cure in even one
case out of every four, and improvement in one of every two, is no
inconsiderable achievement when we remember the hard and almost
hopeless material with which the Labour House has to deal, and the
virtual inability of our own method of treating the vagrant and the
loafer to effect any reformative result whatever. Obviously, it is
impossible to expect accurate statistics on the question, for reasons
not by any means confined to the impossibility of following the history
of every discharged case, but one fact alone tells an eloquent tale.
The Labour House for Westphalia was erected in 1821. Since that time
the population of the province has vastly increased, and the economic
revolution consummated in the interval has created a new kind of
itinerancy, that of machine-bred labour, yet it has not been found
necessary to enlarge the Labour House, whose capacity is to-day as
adequate to the demands made upon it as it was ninety years ago. Not
only so, but (disregarding the abnormal numbers of the last two years)
the number of offenders of the kind for whom the institution exists is
actually decreasing proportionately to population.
The following were the commitments to Benninghausen during the twenty
years 1890 to 1909:--
-----+------+--------+--------
| Men. | Women. | Total.
-----+------+--------+--------
1890 | 329 | 71 | 400
1891 | 398 | 64 | 462
1892 | 325 | 44 | 369
1893 | 361 | 51 | 412
1894 | 378 | 41 | 419
1895 | 330 | 45 | 375
1896 | 287 | 51 | 338
1897 | 272 | 64 | 336
1898 | 258 | 49 | 307
1899 | 273 | 53 | 326
1900 | 239 | 65 | 304
1901 | 312 | 46 | 358
1902 | 336 | 42 | 378
1903 | 321 | 57 | 378
1904 | 355 | 39 | 394
1905 | 360 | 45 | 405
1906 | 305 | 35 | 340
1907 | 343 | 24 | 367
1908 | 442 | 40 | 482
1909 | 445 | 48 | 493
-----+------+--------+--------
Other causes have, no doubt, helped to bring about this relative
diminution in the number of commitments--amongst them the development
of the Voluntary Labour Colonies with their ever-open doors--but at
Benninghausen it is believed that the operation of the anti-vagrancy
law takes the first place.
Probably the question has before now passed through the reader's
mind--what becomes of the 300 or 400 men and women who are returned
from the Labour House to liberty in the course of every year? When
a prisoner has served his time a problem arises which requires the
most circumspect handling. What shall be done with him? Shall he be
simply turned adrift at the gates in the hope that he will continue
to follow in freedom the path of industry which he has entered while
under restraint? The Benninghausen Labour House makes no such wreck
of its own reformative work. On the contrary, every effort is made to
encourage the prisoner to persist in a regular and honest life. He is
allowed to choose his destination, and the Police Authorities of the
locality are communicated with beforehand, so that they may be ready
to provide for his temporary lodging, and either to help him to work
themselves or to enlist the offices of private persons able so to do.
In towns there always exists some philanthropic society which is ready
to take the case in hand; in the country the helping hand is often that
of the clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protestant, as the case may be.
Here also is seen the utility of the Labour Colony--and to Westphalia,
be it noted, belongs the honour of having founded the original
Colony, of which the thirty-three others scattered over Germany are
copies--which frequently serves as a temporary refuge for men who,
having passed through the mill of adversity and humiliation, and been
given a glimpse of better things, have no desire to drift into the old
demoralising ways.