MY ARRIVAL AT THE YORKSHIRE PRISON--IN SIMPLICITER NATURALIBUS--GET
ANIMAL FOOD--MEDICAL TREATMENT--STATUESQUE CHRISTIANITY--REMOVED
TO THE HOSPITAL--DEATH OF A PRISONER--MY LEG GETS MUCH WORSE--REMOVAL
TO SURREY PRISON.
On my arrival at the Yorkshire prison I and my companions were
subjected to a new, and to me most painful operation. I am quite well
aware that it would be next to useless, if not quite hypocritical, in
one in my position to lay claim to any considerable delicacy of
feeling, or to appear to be over scrupulous in matters of common
decency. But there will occasionally, however, be found even amongst
convicts those who will bear a pretty long period of imprisonment,
during which they are subjected to a variety of contaminating
influences, and yet not have their moral sensibilities completely
destroyed. Of these I was one, and I felt that the treatment which I
had now to undergo was conceived in a barbarous spirit, and was
well-fitted to destroy utterly any feelings of self-respect which my
previous experiences had still left me. Every part of my body was
minutely inspected immediately on my arrival, in order that I might not
take any money or tobacco into the prison.
Doubtless it is very desirable, and even necessary, that every
precaution should be taken to prevent such articles finding their way
into prisons--at least on the persons of prisoners--but the fact
remains that, notwithstanding these inspections, both money and tobacco
do find their way into prison, and are every day in common use amongst
the prisoners. Prisoners will have tobacco, and tobacco cannot be got
without money, so that both must be obtained; and the result has been
that the more rigorous the inspection, the greater the ingenuity
required to evade it. The trials of skill and invention which goes on
between the convict and the inspector, like those between artillery and
iron plates, have as yet only proved that, given the power of
resistance, the power of overcoming it will be found. One of my
fellow-prisoners verified the truth of this conclusion by taking five
sovereigns into prison with him, notwithstanding all the care and
experience exercised by the inspector.
I now got the first taste of animal food I had had for about ten
months. So keen was my appetite that I could have relished any cooked
carrion even, if it had come in my way. I also got potatoes, the very
skins of which I devoured with great gusto. It was very curious that at
this time I preferred salt to sugar, or anything that was sweet, and I
used to suck little lumps of salt for the first few days I had the
opportunity of doing so with as much relish as children do their sugar
plums. The bread at this prison was excellent, and the food generally
of good quality.
The day after my arrival I was ordered to strip a second time for the
medical inspection, and as a considerable time elapsed before my turn
came, I had to remain standing in that state with my swollen leg rather
longer than was good for me. When the inspection was concluded my leg
was ordered to be bandaged, and some medicine was given to me daily. I
now had my hair cut in the approved prison fashion, and was put into a
cell to sew mats, in a standing posture. In this employment, relieved
by a short period of daily out-of-door exercise, I passed one of the
three and a-half months I was in this prison. The two chaplains before
whom I was taken shortly after my arrival, were extremely kind to me
during the whole time I remained. One of them had done much good among
the prisoners, and had been of great service to many of them by getting
them employment after they were liberated; thus removing the greatest
obstacle in the way of a permanent reformation of the prisoner.
I recollect the first Sunday I spent in this prison. I was very nearly
getting reported to the governor for a very unintentional violation of
the prison rules. In accordance with these rules, convicts were not
allowed to turn their heads in any direction in chapel, and if they did
so they were taken by the attendant officer before the governor, who
punished them for disobedience. I cannot but suppose that those who
framed these rules had some good end in view, in being so stringent in
the matter of posture in the religious services. The difficulty with me
was to discover whether the spiritual welfare of the prisoners, or the
preservation of a more than military discipline amongst them, even in
matters of religion, had appeared to them to be of the greater
importance.
It is probable, however, that neither of these considerations decided
the question, but that the principal object of these regulations was to
preserve in the convict mind, even in the act of worship, the idea of
punishment in a perfectly lively and healthy condition. Be that as it
may, on my first Sunday in chapel, with my English prayer-book before
me, which was then quite new to me, I found myself quite unable to
follow the chaplain in the services in which he was engaged, and to
which I was also a perfect stranger. Turning over the leaves of the
prayer-book, in the vain attempt to find out the proper place, and
happening to cast my eyes over the shoulder of the prisoner in front of
me in order to find it, the movement caught the eye of the officer, who
sat watching every face, and I saw from his stare, and the frown which
gathered under it, that I had committed a grave offence. Immediately I
resumed my proper attitude and sat out the service as rigid as my
neighbours, and so escaped the threatened punishment. Only on one other
occasion did I transgress the prison rules: while at work I felt the
pain in my leg become almost insupportable, and in order to relieve it
I took rest, although still continuing to sew. For doing so I received
a short reprimand. The state of my leg now became a cause of great
anxiety to me, and rendered my out-door exercise a source of pain,
instead of a means of relief from the monotony of my prison occupation.
This exercise was taken in a circle, keeping a certain number of yards
distant from another prisoner, and we were forbidden to speak or even
to look round. Once or twice during the period of exercise we had to
run instead of walk. The running I found very painful and injurious to
my leg, and I petitioned the doctor to be excused from it, but was
refused. There was nothing for it but to hop along, every step giving
me great pain. Until one day I made a false step, the consequences of
which compelled me to give up walking altogether. My knee became
inflamed, and I was ordered to lie in my hammock in my cell. Some pills
were prescribed for me, which I soon found, from the state of my gums,
contained mercury. As I knew that the cause of my complaint was the
want of proper nourishment, I fancied the doctor had mistaken my case
when he prescribed for me, and I ventured to speak to him about it. He
did not appear pleased at my making any allusion to medicine. The pills
were discontinued, but I was put on a change of diet for a month, which
consisted in taking away my meat, soup, and potatoes, and giving me
instead a dish of what was by courtesy termed "arrow-root," but which
the prisoners more accurately designated "cobbler's paste." Under this
regimen it will readily be believed my condition every day became
worse, and at last, after being nearly two months confined to my cell,
I got the order of removal to the hospital.
I remember--oh! how well! with what pain I crawled to it on all fours,
and slid down stairs on my back without any assistance. In this way I
managed to reach the sick-room, and the first object that attracted my
attention on entering, was a convict at the point of death. A stream of
blood was rushing from his mouth, which choked him just as I was placed
in the next bed. Another convict, a Scotch shepherd, had died only a
few days previously, from the effects of the treatment he received in
the Scotch prisons previous to his trial. I may here mention that I met
with several instances of deaths occurring in English prisons in
consequence of the treatment the prisoners had received before trial in
Scotland. In the majority of these cases the period of detention before
trial was six or seven months. I also heard of one case, which did not
come within my own observation, however, where the prisoner who died
was innocent of the crime with which he was charged, and that his widow
intended to prosecute the authorities for damages. Whether she did so
or not I never learned.
For about a month I lay in this hospital, but no improvement could be
reported in the state of my health. In addition to the physical pain I
endured, I was a prey to the most acute mental agony. I could feel that
my originally strong constitution was being gradually undermined, and
that the poison of disease which would never be eradicated from my
system was, through ignorance or negligence, slowly and surely
increasing within me. And then the possibility of losing my limb
altogether was a thought which now and again forced itself upon me and
made the warm blood curdle in my veins. All this time I knew, and the
knowledge gave additional poignancy to my sufferings, that with care
and proper surgical treatment I could easily have been cured; but I
dared not open my mouth in the way of suggestion or complaint, I had
already been taught, by bitter experience, the folly of that. Through
all the hours of my imprisonment I had learnt to look forward through
the darkness of my nearer future to the day of my liberation as to a
bright unsetting star. Its clear white ray pierced the clouds which
hung dark and heavy over me, and shed light and hope within me, for it
told me that behind these clouds there was a light, and a day which
would yet dawn upon me, wherein I could work and redeem the past! But
now the strong bright spirit of hope appeared to have forsaken me. As I
lay upon my bed and gazed out of the window, watching the birds dart
hither and thither in a clear blue sky, thoughts of the time when I
should be free as they arose in my mind, but failed to cheer my
desponding heart. Through the silent hours of night I have watched,
from my bed of pain, the myriad stars shining in the midnight sky,
glancing glory from far-off worlds, but I sought in vain among that
radiant silent throng for mine. And I would think of the day when
diseased and a cripple I should be cast out into the world alone, with
the brand of the convict, like the mark of Cain, upon my brow, without
friends, without sympathy, without hope, useless, purposeless, to eat
the bread of charity, and die a beggar in the streets, with only these
cold bright eyes above to witness at the last. Can it be wondered at,
if under the influence of these feelings I began to repine against that
Providence which had so roughly shaped my life, and to think with
bitterness of the imperfection of all merely human justice? I had met
with men whose whole life had been spent in constant warfare against
society, and who had no other intention on regaining their liberty than
to continue the struggle to the bitter end--the murderer; cheerful and
complacent over the verdict of manslaughter; the professional garotter,
in whose estimation human life is of no value, troubled only at being
so foolish as to be caught; the polished thief and the skilled
housebreaker, every one of them sound in wind and limb, intent only on
their schemes and "dodges" to extract the sting from their punishment,
or in planning new and more heinous crimes, and all longing for the
time when they and society could cry "quits," and they be at liberty to
pursue their career of villainy. With these, the vilest of the vile,
and also with the hoary criminal who knew no home save the prison, who
preferred it to the poorhouse, and to whom its comforts were luxuries
and its privations but trifles of no account, I was condemned to
mingle. Repentant for what I had done in the past, capable and resolved
to make amends in the future, having already suffered for my crime loss
of friends, character, everything almost that is dear to man, I was
also condemned to lose my health, my limb, to be deprived of my only
means of future subsistence, and to endure more years of degradation
and suffering in prison than many of my wretched companions, who had
committed heinous crimes and to whom penal servitude was no punishment!
Such were some of the bitter reflections upon our criminal laws and
prison regulations in which, under the pressure of severe mental and
bodily suffering, I then indulged. Writing now, in a calmer and less
indignant mood, I still commend them, and my subsequent experiences to
the consideration of thoughtful men, and I leave it with them to decide
whether the system maintained in our "model prisons," of putting all
prisoners, whatever their character and antecedents, who have similar
sentences, on a footing of perfect equality, and in constant
association with each other, is fitted to serve the purposes of even
human justice; and whether it is not more likely to promote than to
prevent the growth of crime.
I had now been about a month in the hospital when the order came for my
removal to a regular Government Convict Establishment, in Surrey. I was
in a very unfit state for such a journey; I could not walk a single
yard, even with assistance. My knee was so swollen that no trouser
would go over it, but yet the journey had to be made, and on my arrival
in Surrey I had to be carried by two prisoners to the hospital.