"Maggie Murray, do you mean to say that you saw the Master pull Ida
Jones along the walk, by the hair of her head, and kick her as he pulled
her? You ought to be very careful how you tell such stories, unless they
are true."
"It is the truth, ma'am!" said several of them in a breath.
"He took her by her pug, like this," and she took hold of the coil of
hair on the back of O'Brien's head, "and dragged her along. We all saw
it, and the Housekeeper saw it, and she said he ought to be reported to
the Board. And that Matron, that skinny person, I forget her name, that
was here, she saw it. There were a plenty that saw it. When you go down
to the hospital, you can ask Ida what is the matter, and she will tell
you so too."
"What did he do it for?"
"She said she was dead with work--she could not sit at it another
minute--she was ready to fall; and Hardhack reported her; and the Master
was so mad,--some of 'em said so drunk,--he dragged her himself out of
the shop, all of the way to the Hospital."
My face must have expressed the horror that I felt.
"Indeed it is the truth, ma'am!" said O'Brien. "The Master was crazy to
get a lot of work done that night, and it made him awful mad to lose a
hand."
I asked myself if it were possible that that man would dare to abuse the
trust reposed in him in that manner. Certainly! The whole system of
secrecy upon which our prisons are managed is just calculated to screen
such conduct, and to induce the practice of it, if there be a tendency,
in the disposition of the man who has charge, to do it. If the testimony
of prisoners is not to be relied upon, a Master could make it for the
interest of his officers to remain silent. Some might look at it in the
same light that he did, and feel perfectly satisfied.
Why should not a prisoner's testimony be taken in a matter where he is
concerned? He has been tried and convicted of an offense. Is that fact a
conviction in every other case where he may have difficulty with another
person?
If prisoners are entirely unworthy of trust, how does it happen that
such a man, once a convict himself, according to the traditions of that
prison, has charge there, and the unlimited confidence of the Board?
I noticed, in making out the report of inmates, that there were not so
many women as men in prison. There was satisfaction in obtaining that
fact, because I had entertained the idea that women were more frequently
punished for their offenses than men.
It was a mistake, except in the one crime of licentiousness. In that man
goes comparatively free, and woman is the only sufferer in what is, to
say the least, their mutual sin. I say, almost every woman will say, and
with truth, for the sin that man leads her into.
Woman does not seek man, in that way, in the first instance. He draws
her into the sin, and when she becomes abandoned, and the Penitentiary
brings her up, she is no worse than he. She becomes a night-walker, and
suffers for her violation of law. He is a night-walker also, as
miserable and degraded a man as she is woman; but who prosecutes him,
and gives him a sentence in the House of Correction! He continues a
night-walker unmolested while she suffers for her sin.
He walks into the parlors of the intellectually cultivated, and socially
refined,--I was about to say virtuous woman. There can be little virtue
in such shaky morality. I can only say of the chaste woman, and she
takes the hand of the night-walker, and greets him cordially, and makes
him welcome, especially if he be rich,--the hand that leads her fellow
woman to her social ruin if not to her eternal death.
If woman were to help make the laws, could she remedy this state of
things,--would she? Would she take her husband, father, brother from his
home to the Penitentiary? She must do that, in order to rid society of
the pest of night-walking. She may do that now if she will. The law
gives her the opportunity. Instead of lavishing her courtesies, as she
now does, upon the male offender, she might extend her charity in kindly
assistance to his victim, if she were disposed to do it.
To judge by the way she treats him now, if she were to assist in making
laws would she not be still more unjust than she now is, to her own sex,
and lenient to the other.
If man go unpunished, of human law, for this sin, justice will find him
out sooner or later. God pity him when his retribution comes! The
avenging of a guilty conscience will work him greater woe than the
miseries of a prison can inflict.
As I sat in the prison this evening reviewing my day's work, I counted
up my occupations.
I am Housekeeper, Engineer, Overseer, Jailer, Porter, Usher, Sentinel,
and many others which I did not enumerate.
Irksome as was the handling of keys to me, it was quite an entertainment
to see myself answering the knock of the gentlemen in striped uniform,
letting them into my kitchen, and following them around, like a page
after a prince; and then, letting them out. I hardly think they get such
attendances in the outside world.
Rotation in duties, and reversion in offices was the order of the place.
I was Usher to the prisoners; my sweeps were stationed on the stone
stairs, when the prisoners were in their cells, and the kitchen door
locked, to open it if there were a knock on the outside, and to lock it
again after the officer who entered.
Sittings on the stone stairs could hardly have been comfortable
accommodations. I was reminded of that fact this evening, by hearing
Ellen whisper when she heard a knock,--
"I hate to get up,--I've just got my seat warm."
"Every back is fitted to its burden," is an old proverb. I wondered if
those prisoners had been provided by a beneficent Providence, of some
kind, with an extra amount of animal heat, in order to warm up the
stones they lived on during their incarceration.