When I left Montreal for Ottawa and the Civil Service, I was forced to
leave a few unpaid bills behind me. I owed no serious amount of money,
but some of my creditors immediately attacked me like hungry wolves,
as soon as they discovered that I was a Government clerk. This did not
add to my comfort, nor assist me in a vain effort to make the two short
ends of three dollars per day meet. If it had not been that I taught
music, did various odd jobs of auditing, accounting and scribbling for
newspapers, I would have gone to jail several times; but as it was, I
went only once, but I made frequent trips to the Court House, where
I stood before a judge to give evidence against myself, and where I
was examined as to my private affairs, the number of my family and so
on, which was a novel experience for me. I thought I had suffered all
things of this nature, but learned that I had not. The Court House, or
that particular section of it to which the impecunious are summoned,
had its amusing side. I was never there alone, and if I was forced to
lay bare my private and financial affairs, I had the satisfaction of
hearing similar serio-comic particulars, pertaining to the lives of
other Civil servants.
Our civilisation is peculiar, in that it worships morality without
being moral, praises honesty and practices dishonesty, honours justice
and tolerates injustice, and makes a pretence of believing a great
many things that it finds impracticable, inexpedient and inconvenient
to follow. Appearance is the only thing that counts, and the most
successful hypocrite is the greatest man among us. It is the opinions
you express that mark you, not the actions of your life, provided
you care for appearances. We are worshippers of form. Good form is
everything; the substance is nothing. This is well exemplified in the
matter of imprisonment for debt. Civilisation boasts that imprisonment
for debt has been abolished long ago, and most of us really believe it,
whereas the number of people who suffer imprisonment for this cause is
enormous. It is quite true that it is not called imprisonment for debt.
The silly farce of sending you to jail for “contempt of court” is gone
through, but if you pay your debt, you are liberated at once, and if
not, down you go to the common jail, where you are treated very much as
if you had stolen chickens or killed a parson.
The tale of my jail experience is very amusing and instructive. It is
not generally known that you may go to jail for debt, for the very
plain reason that but few men who have had practical experience are
willing to admit it. John H. Wesblock is different; he will admit
it, and tell you here in cold print that he went to jail for debt
in the City of Ottawa, in the year of his time, Forty. It happened
that I was worried and excited, and got stubborn and wicked, under
the persistent importunities of one particular creditor. He, as ill
luck would have it, had an especially exasperating lawyer, who roused
such fight as remained in me. The amount involved in the matter was
small, and all I was called upon to do to keep out of trouble was to
pay into court three dollars a month. I had many calls upon my small
means, all paltry sums, but together they made me poor indeed. In a
fit of ugliness I balked and decided to let my over-anxious creditor
do his worst. The consequence was that as I walked officeward one
rainy morning in the Fall, accompanied by my son, I was accosted by a
seedy-looking individual, who demanded to be informed if I were John
H. Wesblock. I admitted my name. “Well then,” said the party of the
first part, “you must come along o’ me. I have a warrant here for your
arrest. You are committed to jail for ten days.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Contempt o’ court,” said the party, producing with dirty hands a dirty
paper from a dirty pocket. “In the case of Block _versus_ Wesblock.”
My feelings suddenly became a curious mixture of merriment, anger,
shame and other emotions. I took the paper from the dirty man and
examined it. It was a warrant or commitment or both. I laughed, but
I was sick. I wanted to kill the seedy party, in the very worst way,
but I just grinned a sickly yellow grin, and told him I was ready to
go with him. There was nothing else to do. My little son stood by with
wide-open eyes.
“What’s the matter, Dad?” he asked.
“Jail, my son,” I replied. “Jail for your Dad for ten days because he
owes money.”
“Oh, Dad, can they do that?” he asked.
“Yes, son, they can,” I said.
He was a gritty kid and said nothing more, but put his hand in mine.
I think he had tears in his eyes. The seedy bailiff would allow me no
consideration whatever. He would not allow me to call at my office or
my home, or do anything but accept his pressing invitation to the coop.
We had but a short walk to make to the jail, and my son, who was of a
merry and cheerful disposition, was able to laugh at my jokes on the
predicament before we arrived. At the jail I bade him good-bye, and
told him to run home and break the news to his mother.
In the jail I was carefully and most thoroughly searched, and relieved
of all sundries carried in my pockets, except a pocket handkerchief.
I learned that if you owe money you cannot smoke. My pipe and tobacco
were taken from me. After being as carefully registered and numbered
as any crook, I was escorted by two guards to my cell. _Cell_ is the
word. It was not a room, but a cell, with heavy iron bars and lock, not
different in any respect from the cell I would have been condemned to
for a high crime. At my request I was permitted to have paper and lead
pencil, and I wrote several necessary notes. To my chief, Mr. Kingdom,
I wrote the plain facts. I said to him:
“DEAR MR. KINGDOM,—If you have no objection, I will take some of my
holidays now. I am in jail, where communications will find me for the
next ten days. I would not thus suddenly deprive you of my services
willingly, but the Crown cannot possibly have me in two places at the
same time, and as it has acceded to the request of one of my creditors
that I be incarcerated, my duties as a Civil servant must wait.”
Ten days is a very long time under some circumstances. It is
particularly long when spent in jail, without a bath or any of the
necessities of decent life. To call what I was offered to eat “meals”
would be extravagant. I never got anything fit to eat, except what was
sent me from home. I was not allowed to smoke or walk out of doors, or
have company, bad, good, or indifferent. I might have walked in the
jail yard, in company with the regular boarders, pickpockets, drunks,
fighters, burglars and other rips, but I declined the kind permission
to take the air at the price. For ten days I had no one to speak to;
even the guard would not give me more than a few words. Conversation
between guards and prisoners is against the regulations, which applies
to all who come to jail, innocent and guilty, criminal and debtor.
The hardness of my stinking straw mattress and pillow, and the look of
the mess of morning “skilly,” are impressions of which I shall never
be able to rid my mind. I can easily understand that a man, who once
suffers a long imprisonment, becomes distorted beyond cure for the rest
of his life. For weeks after my liberation the odour of the damned
place was in my nostrils.
It was many weeks before I recovered my standing of decency and
respectability, even in the eyes of my wife. Mr. Kingdom never referred
to my holidays till months had passed.
An equally amusing but more pleasant episode of my days of debt,
and one which illustrates the law in another light, was a judgment
given by a good and upright judge, who is now no more. This happened
in the same Court that condemned me to ten days in jail. A certain
voracious creditor pursued me and piled up costs against me, till I
came on summons before Judge Good to admit the debt and the bill of
costs, which was now more than the debt. Mr. Judge was very kind. He
questioned me minutely relative to my affairs, but in a pleasant and
courteous manner. Finally he asked me: “How long have you been in the
Civil Service?”
“Four years,” I answered.
“Do you owe any money in Ottawa?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I replied.
Then a wonderful thing happened. The Judge delivered himself of
judgment in the case in the following words:
“The Court is of the opinion that a man who has succeeded in keeping a
wife and family in Ottawa, for four years, on three dollars a day, and
made no new debts in that time, should not be harassed by old debts.
Discharged!”
If the kind judge had been less hasty he would have had an offer from
me of two dollars per month, in settlement of the case, but the word
“Discharged!” cancelled the whole thing, debt and costs. On hearing the
judgment, the lawyer who was putting me through gaped in astonishment
and sat down suddenly, while the other lawyers present laughed at his
discomfiture. I gave him a smile myself, thanked the kind judge and
withdrew, richer, without robbery, by about forty-five dollars.