"Yes,--if you listen to their complaints, they will all play sick, and
we shall get no work done."
I had said, "They might do something, and by not being driven so hard,
made useful, and their health spared."
"We have no such rules," was the reply.
"But any Matron, after she is acquainted with her women, can judge so
that they will not impose upon her very much."
"They will all cheat, and lie, and shirk, if they can."
That might be so generally; but I knew that I had women who would rather
work reasonably than be idle, because time passed faster when they were
employed, if from no other motive.
If they would all lie, and cheat, and shirk, the discipline that was
applied to them did not work any reformation in their characters.
The treatment meted out to them was hard, unremitting toil, enforced by
harsh words and punishment.
Implicit obedience to arbitrary rules was exacted, with no reasons given
why they were enforced, and no explanations for their necessity. The
hard work, the solitary cell, the meagre food, the damp stone prison,
the narrow cells, and the crawling vermin, all went in revision before
me.
Can such discipline soften the heart, and turn its stern purposes to
commit crime into the ways of virtue? Must not the hearts of these poor
things inevitably grow harder under such influences, till they become
the human fiends which they sometimes manifest themselves?
I looked along the whitewashed floor. Rats and mice were running
fearlessly about, holding gay revel over the crumbs that had been
scattered to them by the prisoners in their rooms.
I looked up at the cells. Human faces stared down upon me, through the
bars, made ghastly by the flickering gas-light. There were human hearts,
alive with all human emotions, beating beneath those horrid faces.
Directly in front of me, with no light, save one narrow, stinted ray,
which glimmered through the key-hole, with no bed but the stone floor,
no seat but the wooden bucket, nothing to lean against but the bare
brick walls, lay a girl "in solitary."
No human being has life enough to stir up those cold stones to warmth,
no change can soften them to comfort. Whichever way she turns, the hard,
chilling granite is her resting-place. She lies there with no covering
but her usual clothing, and that has been dealt out to her with the
spare hand of public rigor. No discretionary mercy has interposed to
provide a plank or a blanket to break the chill.
Like a flash the thought crossed my brain, If that were my child! It
sent a pang through my heart that stopped and wrung there till I gasped
for breath.
I looked up at the cells. The faces that glared down upon me were the
sweet faces of my own daughters transformed to human demons by the vile
impress of crime, and its compeer, punishment.
Was I putting my hand to the work to help on the hardening of human
hearts, and the degradation of human beings! I would flee the place, and
leave the work with the morning light. I could not flee the thoughts.
Wretched, wretched employment!
I was half frenzied. I started up and rushed around the prison. I laid
my head against the iron bars of the grated doors. I leaned against the
cold stone walls. I could have lain down upon them in bitter penance for
the part which I had taken.
The eight o'clock bell rung for inspection. It was a relief.
Humbly I took my lantern, and crept softly round to examine the locks.
Many of the women were in bed, some of them were up reading.
One of the girls looked up to me with a smile, and said,--I wondered
that she could smile at all,--
"See how nicely I keep the rats out."
She had taken off the cover of her box, and braced it, by the box,
against the lower part of the door.
Every room is furnished with a box which has a drawer in it. This box
serves for table and pantry. It contains a spoon, knife and fork, salt
and pepper boxes.
"Can't they jump over that?"
"They don't try; but run along to another room. There hasn't been one in
here since I put it up."
I sat down and busied myself reading till the nine o'clock locking came.
When that was accomplished, I went up, up, up the stone stairs to my
cell in the roof of the prison.
I laid me down, and from sheer exhaustion fell into a kind of slumber;
but my short sleep, if it were sleep, was rank with nightmare, or
haunted with the ghosts of my abode. No sooner did I become unconscious,
than I was falling from my eyrie to the rocky floor below, or was
strapped upon the iron bars that held the prisoners' beds. Visions
appeared to my dream-sight that roused me with a start and scream to
wakefulness again.
Even such disturbed slumber had hardly got possession of my faculties
when a volley of oaths came rolling through my door, and roused me to
distinct consciousness.