The mess hall has been laid out so that the prisoners will sit at the
table in the ordinary way, facing one another, with alternate wide
aisles for service. Feeding the prisoners in a large mess hall has now
been generally adopted in this country, and is infinitely better than
the continental system of feeding them in the cell. Man is a gregarious
animal, especially when his waywardness has landed him in prison,
and the old systems, which aimed at the solitary confinement of the
prisoner and tried to reform him by opposing all the things which were
natural to him, were as stupid as they were cruel.
Over the mess hall is the auditorium, large enough for all, with two
stairways so that the inmates from cell blocks 3 and 4 may be separated
from those in cell blocks 1 and 2, and the connecting corridor has been
divided by mesh grilles, so that these two general classifications
which are very desirable may be maintained.