THE PRISON--DAILY ROUTINE--READINGS IN PRISON--QUARRELS AMONG THE
PRISONERS--PROTESTANTS VERSUS CATHOLICS--SCHOOL--SUNDAYS IN
PRISON--"SACRAMENT BLOKES"--TURNING POINT IN PRISONERS' CAREER.
My readers must now descend with me from the hospital, to what the
convicts termed the twenty-four bedded room in the prison. In the cells
and in the hospital, quietness reigned, but in the twenty-four bedded
room it was different. Here the prisoners talked and conducted
themselves very much as they felt inclined, and in the evenings the
noise and tumult was sometimes beyond description. The inmates were
constantly changing, some going upstairs to hospital, some coming from
it, and every now and again there were fresh arrivals from other
prisons. The daily routine observed here and in the similar wards was
as follows:--
We started out of bed at half-past five a.m., summer and winter;
washed, dressed, and made our beds, and two or three times every week
assisted in scrubbing the floor. At six o'clock the officer opened the
room door and counted us. At half-past six we had breakfast. About
twenty minutes past seven we were ranked up in the corridor, and
counted a second time. At half-past seven we were in chapel. At eight
o'clock we were on parade and counted a third time. Those who worked
outside and were receiving full diet went to their work. Those who
worked inside walked on the parade until half-past eight. They were
then ranked up and counted for the fourth time; and at nine o'clock all
were at work. At 11·45 we were counted for the fifth time, and at
twelve o'clock we were at dinner. At 12·50 we were again ranked in the
corridor and counted for the sixth time. At one o'clock we were on
parade and counted for the seventh time, before exercise commenced. At
ten minutes after two we were counted for the eighth time, and at two
we were all again at work. When we left off work in the evening we were
counted for the ninth time, amongst the party with whom we worked, and
for the tenth time when we returned to the ward. At half-past five we
got supper, and at half-past seven we were ordered to bed. At eight
o'clock we were commanded to cease talking, and at nine o'clock the
night officer counted us for the eleventh time and left us to repose. I
used to rejoice when bed-time came, for I then could be alone and at
home. Then there were no prison walls for me, for I had ceased brooding
over the past, and endeavoured to peer into and prepare for the
uncertain future. In winter and spring, when the weather was cold, it
used to be rather trying for me to stand so long on parade being
counted. About an hour or an hour-and-a-half was spent in this way each
day. Then the clothing of those of us who worked indoors was the same
on the coldest day in winter as on the hottest day in summer. This was
an excellent arrangement for keeping the hospital supplied with
patients. I knew many who suffered from this cause, and some who
attributed their death to the want of proper under-clothing. I felt the
cold more perhaps than the others, as my hands were exposed holding my
crutches, and my speed in walking could never get beyond that of a
goods train, whilst my companions could run at express speed when it
suited them.
My employment was knitting and reading aloud to the prisoners. At that
time, and up to a very recent date, it was the custom where fifty or a
hundred prisoners were at work, for one of the prisoners to read aloud
an hour every forenoon and afternoon. When I commenced this reading, my
audience were very careless about listening, unless when I read some
amusing work of fiction. Indeed, other prisoners did not attempt to
read any book of a more solid description. But during the years I was
engaged in this way I had the most abundant and satisfactory testimony
that I had obtained an influence over the minds of the prisoners, and
had succeeded in attracting their attention to general literature in a
more effectual manner than any of my predecessors.
My readers will have been accustomed, perhaps, to regard convicts as
very ignorant men, but it must be borne in mind that they belong to all
classes of society, and if I were to speak of them in the mass, I
should say that they were much more intelligent and as well educated as
the ordinary peasantry of England. When I commenced reading in prison
there were a good many works in the library, which were afterwards
withdrawn as being too amusing for the place. These were such works as
"The Last Days of Pompeii," "Now and Then," "Adam Bede," "Poor Jack,"
"Margaret Catchpole," "Irving's Sketch-book," "Dickens's Christmas
Tales," &c. There still remained periodicals with tales in them, and
these with a mixture of historical, biographical and other-works,
constituted the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I
note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure
Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday Magazine," and "Sunday at
Home." The reading of an article in the "Leisure Hour," entitled the
"Thief in the Confessional," was the chief cause of the readings being
discontinued both in the work-rooms and the hospital. As this happened
recently and the particulars are still fresh in my memory I will
narrate them here. There were readings aloud in four hospital and three
work-rooms in the prison. In the hospital the Roman Catholics were kept
by themselves, and had a Roman Catholic reader. In the prison they were
scattered among the Protestants, and in the three work-rooms referred
to, perhaps about one-fifth of the prisoners were Roman Catholics. In
these rooms a Protestant reader was appointed, and there was no
disturbance about this arrangement until the arrival of a few Fenians,
and a zealous or rather an officious priest.
Shortly after their arrival the other Roman Catholic prisoners became
for the most part Fenians, and religious animosities soon sprang up
among the prisoners. Macaulay's History of England was being read by
one of my fellow prisoners, in one of the work-rooms, or sheds, as they
were called, when one of the ignorant and bigoted members of the Roman
Catholic creed got up and objected to its being read, and complained to
the governor on the subject. The governor, anxious perhaps to please
the new visiting director, who was reported to be a Roman Catholic,
took the complainant's part. The reading of the book was discontinued,
to the great exultation of the Roman Catholics: however, I got the same
book, and it was read from beginning to end in the work-room where I
was employed! the chaplain and the more intelligent Roman Catholics
considering it a very suitable book for the purpose. About this time I
wished to be exempted from reading on account of my health, and when I
could get a substitute I did give it up for some time; but the
substitutes available were not popular with the prisoners, and it was
very difficult to find suitable readers amongst them. Two of the Roman
Catholics wanted to read, one was a Fenian and a literary man, the
other was an ignorant conceited professional thief and an avowed
infidel, but they were not allowed: meanwhile the article I have
referred to as appearing in the "Leisure Hour," was read in one of the
sheds, and it so offended some of the Roman Catholics and the
professional thief and infidel who was not allowed to read, that he
took the matter before the director, who ordered all reading aloud to
be discontinued throughout the prison!
This decision illustrates the usual method adopted by convict
authorities in dealing with questions connected with the treatment of
prisoners. If a privilege is granted to the convicts and one out of 600
abuses that privilege the 599 will be deprived of it. It was no matter
whether the privilege had a good or bad effect upon the majority of the
prisoners, if it gave the governor and the directors any trouble they
soon put an end to it. If it was a good thing for the prisoners and
tended in any way towards the diminution of crime, to have these
readings, the directors could have separated the Roman Catholics from
the Protestants without any difficulty. If it was a bad thing why was
it continued so long? The Roman Catholics had one legitimate ground of
complaint, however, in the chaplain having frequently ordered articles
to be cut out of "Chambers's Journal," "Good Words," &c. The prisoners
naturally asked "Why cut out anything? why not let us judge for
ourselves? If the books are good let us have them whole; if bad, reject
them altogether; or if there is to be cutting out, why not cut out 'The
Thief out of the Confessional,' which is so offensive to the true
Catholic?" I happened to read several of the articles which were so cut
out, and in several cases one number of a periodical got bound up and
in circulation with the condemned article in it. I here note a few
articles which were placed in the chaplain's _Index Expurgatoriam_,
1st--"Evasions of the Law," an article which appeared in "Good Words,"
and I may remark that convicts could scarcely be made worse by reading
it, for they knew all it contained and probably more than the writer of
it did. 2nd--A review of a work by a female warder, in "Chambers's
Journal." 3rd--The last half of "The Franklins," a story in the
"Leisure Hour." 4th--An article on the "Prisoners' Aid Society" which
appeared in the "Quiver," some years ago.
In addition to my employments of knitting and reading, I had to go to
school one half-day every week for about twelve months, or until a
certain class were exempted from attending. On entering the school the
prisoner sat until the roll was called, and after half-an-hour was thus
spent, he read a couple of verses from the Old Testament, and then
listened to an explanation of the passage read. This done, he wrote a
short time in his copy book, if he felt inclined, and the proceedings
were wound up by a short lecture on some scientific subject. I fear
there is not much good done in our convict schools. Teaching, or trying
to teach, men ranging from thirty to eighty years of age, who are
determined not to learn, or at least so careless about the matter that
they never can learn, seems to me a waste of public money. Young men
sometimes learn a good deal of French, arithmetic, &c., in prison, but
it is not at the school, but from their fellow prisoners that they
receive such instruction.
My Sunday routine differed from that of the other days of the week,
chiefly in having chapel-going substituted for work, and being allowed
to be in bed an hour longer in the morning.
Shortly after taking up my abode in the twenty-four-bedded room, the
diet was changed, and this was the cause of much noise among the
convicts. The day fixed for the alteration was a Sunday. The former
Sunday's dinner consisted of soup, mutton, and potatoes. The new Sunday
dinner was dry bread and four ounces of bad cheese. On being served
with this, the prisoners began cursing and swearing, and calling the
head officials all the bad names they could think of: "This is what
they call Christianity, is it, the ---- hypocrites? Starving a man on
Sundays above all days, and then taking us up to that chapel to tell us
about mercy and forgiveness and loving our neighbours! This is the way
to reform us and make us better, is it?--By jingo! I will make somebody
pay for all this yet. I'll not get my next bit for nothing," &c., &c.
Such was the burden of the conversation on this and succeeding Sunday
afternoons. To force men to go to hear the Word of God preached when
their hearts are full of evil thoughts and their mouths full of curses
is far from being a likely mode of leading men to Christ. The
chaplain's position in the pulpit used to strike me as being something
like that of a farmer sowing good seed broad-cast over a field so
overgrown with tares, that the seed could never reach the soil. If he
attempts to clear the soil of the weeds, to win the hearts of the
prisoners, he finds the whole system of prison discipline arrayed
against him. That discipline breeds and encourages the growth of every
evil passion in the heart of man, and he, the chaplain, is part of that
system: he lives by it, and he is not allowed to interfere with it, at
all events he never did so. When prisoners complained to him of some
injustice or some cruelty, they got for reply: "I am here to preach the
Gospel, and I can do nothing in the matter."
Chaplains paid by the State, and forming part of the penal
establishment, can never do much good to the prisoners, except in so
far as they operate as a check upon the cruelty or neglect of the
governor and other officers. Missionaries having no connection with
Government, might do some good amongst them. At the time I commenced to
attend the prison chapel, I learned that a score or so of convicts took
the sacrament. Some of them were truly pious, as far as one could judge
in such matters, others were unfit or unworthy partakers, the whole of
them were called by the other prisoners "Parson's men," or "Sacrament
blokes," and it used to pain me to hear them scoffed and mocked at. It
was a great victory if they could be got to swear on the evening of the
communion day: I never could make up my mind to become a "Parson's
man," for reasons perhaps not very satisfactory, even to myself. In the
first place I belonged to another branch of the church; then I had only
one leg and could not kneel at the altar, and would have felt while
standing something like a beggar in dirty rags in a fine pew among
silks and satins; then again I would have lost my influence over many
of my fellow-prisoners. I may have been wrong in all this, but as I
once said to my fellow-prisoners when appealed to on the subject of
religion, "There are only three cardinal points in my religious belief,
and these are simple and easily remembered--believe in Christ, love
God, and love my neighbour; what I do inconsistent with the last I know
to be wrong. It is inconsistent, I think, with the latter, for
Protestants to revile and speak evil of Roman Catholics, and _vice
versâ_, therefore I disapprove of discussions and arguments on
religious belief among prisoners, as they usually lead to feelings
incompatible with true neighbourly love." Such was my reply to a
question addressed to me by a convict during a hot debate between the
Protestants and Roman Catholics, and it allayed the storm instantly. As
a rule I avoided and discountenanced all discussion on theological
subjects.
After I had been four weeks in the prison I began to get a little
downhearted at finding myself so far removed from sympathy. In the
hospital I had an occasional chat with a Scripture-reader, but here
there was no one with whom I could have any intellectual conversation,
and no visitors were allowed. I felt very sad and dispirited for a
time, and wrote to my friends that I should like to have a visit from a
clergyman of my own persuasion who resided in London. I got for a reply
a visit from some of my own friends, who mentioned that the gentleman
whose visit I desired was too much occupied with his own flock to look
after a lost sheep like me. I notice this chiefly in order to remark
that this was a kind of turning point in my prison career: the point at
which the generality of prisoners turn from bad to worse, and when long
imprisonment ceases to be an instrument for good; when human sympathy
is sought, and by the great majority of prisoners sought in vain, and
when in consequence they seek to obtain the sympathy of their evil
companions, and begin in earnest that downward career which knows no
shame, and finds its goal in the convict's grave.