QUACKERY--FOOD--A CHATHAM PRISONER EATS SNAILS AND FROGS--SIR
JOSHUA JEBB'S SYSTEM AND ITS DEFECTS.
I have already said in a previous chapter that our prison authorities
regard the convicts as mere human machines, all made after the same
model, and that the machinery, by some abnormal defect in its original
construction constantly impels them in the wrong direction. In official
eyes they do not appear to be men having peculiarities of physical
construction and constitution, individuality of character, or to have
been so designed as to be like other men, moulded by circumstances, or
amenable to the influence of education or social position. They look at
him through the official spectacles, the lenses of which are carefully
adjusted so that the object shall present not only a perfectly uniform
appearance but also appear uniformly bad. If the convict is in good
health, the machinery working smoothly--but still by the defect in its
construction always in the wrong direction--there are the regulation
appliances, not for remedying the original defect in the machinery, it
must be remembered, and if possible getting it to work in the _right_
direction, but appliances to check, thwart, and by force drive it
backward, which in most cases it cannot and will not do, and breakages,
ruin of machinery and other appliances also are the only result. They
number and ticket the convict according to his sentence, range them all
up, count them eleven times a day and say to them, "Convicts, now here
you are, all ticketed and counted, all of you are afflicted with some
moral disease, we are here to cure you, and we have _one_ pill which
will do it, and you must swallow it."
This is the perfection of penal legislation at which, after many royal
commissions, and much parliamentary eloquence, we have arrived! One
would have imagined that a gigantic quackery and multitudes of quack
doctors could have been procured and set in motion with less trouble
and at less expense! Only on one point there is universal agreement,
let the machine be working either in the right direction or the
wrong--so long as it is working it must be oiled, that is a necessity
of machine-life, so to speak--the man or convict must be _fed_. But how
feed him? To you, my reader, and I, the natural answer would be that
the machine must be oiled, or the man fed, in greater or less
proportion to the power and capacity of the machine or man, and to the
amount of work we require from it or him. But we are both wrong. Our
prison authorities say, "Machine, big or little, you shall all have
exactly the same quantity of oil, neither more nor less. You little
machines there, with oil running all over you, how smoothly and
uncomplainingly you work! You big machines, you may creak as you
please, your journals may get hot, blaze up and produce universal
smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up
any of that which is running over your little neighbour there--that is
for the pigs, and for _us_." Is not this amazing folly? Or again,
suppose we were to take a race-horse, a dray-horse, a farmer's horse, a
broken-down hack, and a Shetland horse--for these more nearly resemble
the various classes of convicts--and say to them, "Horses, you have all
offended the laws of horsedom, and stand fully convicted of clover
stealing. For this most heinous crime you are each condemned to draw a
load, one ton weight, fifteen miles every day--Sundays excepted--for
five years, and your allowance of food will be two feeds of oats, and
one allowance of hay per diem;" and what would be the result, supposing
that the allowance of hay and oats was just barely sufficient for the
average--say the farmer's horse?
First of all the race-horse, able to eat his oats and a portion of the
hay, could do with some additional dainty bits, perhaps, but on the
whole he has his stomach filled and can live. He is yoked to his load,
and being a spirited animal, he goes at it very hard, succeeds for a
time; at last he sticks in a rut, puts on a "spurt," and breaks down.
He can't do the work. He is put down at six marks a day, or no
remission. He is spoiled for ever, and as a racer his days are ended.
The dray-horse comes next, the load is a mere toy to him, he gets his
eight marks a day, but by-and-bye he begins to feel the effects of an
empty stomach, to fill which he would require double the allowance of
food he receives; and in the long run he too breaks down and is passed
into the hands of the veterinary surgeon, and is ruined as a useful
animal.
Next comes the farmer's horse, and the load and diet being suitable to
him, he can do the punishment and easily satisfy the law.
The broken-down hack is never yoked at all, he passes into the hands of
the surgeon, and there remains. While the little Shetlander is in
clover; he never had so many oats before--has actually as much again as
he can consume--and the cart and harness being too large, and the load
altogether ridiculous for his strength, he is never put to it, and so
escapes the legal punishment. And so it is that one portion of the
inhabitants of horsedom, pointing to the Shetlander, cry out that "the
convicts have too much food, they are up to the eyes in luxuries;"
another portion, pointing to the dray horse, say "the convicts are
starved, and are dying of hunger;" whilst a third answers both by
pointing to the farm horse and saying that "he can do the work and
satisfy the law. Why should they not all be treated alike? a horse is a
horse all the world over."
Our system of dieting and working convicts is exactly similar to the
above; only at the invalid prison where I was confined the law was not
adhered to. I knew prisoners who ate double the quantity of food
allowed them, and I knew others who did not eat above half. Sometimes
it happened that a voracious prisoner could not get his food exchanged
so as to increase its bulk, and in that case he would be compelled to
seek refuge in hospital. If the diet there was not sufficient, God help
him, for from man no further aid was to be expected.
I recollect having a conversation with a prisoner who had just arrived
with eighteen others from the prison at Chatham. He had got his leg
broken accidentally while at work there, and the medical men had not
made a very good job of putting the bones together, so that he did not
expect ever to be able to use it. I asked him what sort of a place
Chatham was under the new system.
"Oh, it's the worst station out," he replied, "they are starved and
worked to death. They are even eating the candles, and one man died
lately who had twenty or thirty wicks in his stomach when the _post
mortem_ took place. In the docks I have seen fellows pick up the
dirtiest muck you ever saw, and swallow it! There are lots of fellows
there who eat all the snails and frogs they can get hold of. I have
seen one man several times swallow a live frog as easily as you could
bolt an oyster. Frogs and snails are considered delicacies at Chatham."
"How did you get on with the food yourself?"
"Well, I was never much of an eater, and I could get on middling well
with it; but then the food was better there than it is here. This is
the worst station out for 'grub.' The cook and steward must be d----
villains to rob a lot of prisoners of their food."
"Do they all get eight marks a day at Chatham?"
"No, not nearly all; many only get seven, and some not more than six.
The 'screws' there are ---- tyrants, and if they don't mind what they
are about some of them will get murdered. There are a few fellows there
would rather be 'topt' than be messed about in such a way, and have to
die in prison at last. What sort of 'screws' have you here?"
"Well, the majority of them are very civil fellows; there are a few,
perhaps, inclined to exceed their duty, but on the whole they are not
bad, and you will have yourself to blame if you get into trouble. Bad
masters make bad servants, and I have no doubt the Chatham officers are
merely carrying out the directors' orders when they tyrannise over the
men."
"What sort of a doctor is this you have got here? he gets a very bad
name."
"Well, he is blamed for not giving prisoners treatment until they are
just dying, but I do not pretend to be a judge of such matters myself.
My advice to you is to be civil and grateful, and do not bother him
about food. Do not ask him for anything, just tell him exactly how you
feel, and you may do very well here."
The prediction as to the murdering of some of the officers made above
by the prisoner was shortly after verified, and the culprit was hanged
at Maidstone quite recently. At the Yorkshire prison they had what
appeared to me a more sensible method of apportioning the diet. The
prisoners were weighed once a month, and if any of them lost weight
they were allowed an additional quantity of dry bread to make it up. In
the Surrey prison the practice of exchanging and trafficking in food
amongst the prisoners counteracted the evils that would otherwise have
resulted from the regulations being strictly adhered to; and in the
Scottish prisons the use of tobacco appeared to have the same effect.
While on the subject of diet, I may allude to a rule which had a very
bad effect on the minds of the prisoners who expected justice at the
hands of the officials. In the dietary scale brought out in 1864, it
was specified that when a prisoner had been two years in prison, he
would be permitted to have the option of tea and two ounces of bread in
lieu of the oatmeal gruel for supper, and when he had been three years
in prison he might have roasted or baked meat in lieu of boiled. The
convicts sentenced under the old Act were placed in the first or lowest
grade in the scale of the Act of 1864, but were denied the option of
those changes of diet which were permitted under it, and which were
considered necessary for the preservation of their health by the
medical authorities. The consequence was, and is, that there were
prisoners with life sentences who had been ten, twelve, and sixteen
years in prison on a diet inferior to those who had only been in prison
two years. No tea and bread at night for them, and no roasted meat.
This regulation was considered unjust by the prisoners, who said, very
naturally, "They took us off the good diet allowed by the old Act under
which we were sentenced, and placed us on the lowest scale of the new
dietary, and now, after being two years on the diet we ought not to
have been put on at all, we are not even allowed the changes open to
other prisoners. It is scandalous, after being ten or twelve years in
prison, to see other prisoners who have only just commenced their time
much better off than we are," &c.
Another grievance the prisoners had, of which they loudly complained.
It was the custom at the Home Office to forward the prisoners' licenses
to the prison once a month, but as a rule these documents were ten
days--sometimes three weeks--later than they ought to have been. If a
prisoner had earned his marks, and was due for his license, say on the
1st of March, he expected the authorities would keep faith with him,
and that his license would arrive on the day it was due. Whatever the
convict may be himself, he expects a good example and honourable
fulfilment of the engagements on the part of the authorities. In this,
however, he was often disappointed, and many a million curses were
heaped upon them in consequence. And after all can we wonder at a
convict being exasperated if, as it often happened, he had written to a
wife, or a father, or brother or sister to meet him on a certain day at
the railway station, when he was due for his liberty, and then was
disappointed and had to wait a fortnight or three weeks before he could
see his friends? This neglect on the part of the authorities at the
Home Office, had the effect of making all those who were due for
liberation early in the month quite regardless of the prison
regulations, as one short sentence would not have made any difference
to them under the circumstances.
In Sir Joshua Jebb's day anything of this kind seldom happened. The
prisoner's chief grievance then was the robbery of his food by the
officers, and as the discipline was lax a mutiny would be the result.
This had a good effect for a short time, and as long as the attention
of the press was directed to the question, but matters soon became as
bad as ever, and it was not until the subject came before the criminal
courts that there was any improvement. The name of Sir Joshua Jebb is
still held in great veneration by the convict, but as the duty of
carrying out his system was entrusted to men of a totally opposite
character, it was impossible for it to succeed. Independent, however,
of its moral administration, it had defects inherent in itself. No
penal bill will suit all moral complaints, and the sooner we depart
from quackery the better it will be for the prisoner and the nation as
well. Sir Joshua Jebb's system entered too largely into competition
with our workhouses and county jails. The prisoners were never taught
suitable trades, they were no doubt supplied with food in abundance,
and with some opportunities of learning to be industrious and for
improving their minds, but they were completely surrounded by far more
powerful counter-influences. Even the higher officials carried on a
system of wholesale robbery, and winked at the very large retail
business done in the same line by the prisoners and under officials. At
Bermuda and Dartmoor convict establishments I believe there were more
crimes committed by officers and prisoners together than the prisoners
could or would have committed if they had been at liberty. Prisoners
could do very much as they liked in those days, and the consequence was
that the "roughs," or the worst characters, gave the "ton" to the whole
prison. A country bumpkin who had stolen a bag of potatoes, perhaps,
soon learned the theory of picking pockets and the art of garotting in
these places, and being unequal to the former he would adopt the latter
as a means of earning a livelihood. Another cause of the increase in
the number of garotting cases, was the conduct of the directors who
visited the prisoners and punished the prisoners. Their injustice and
incivility to prisoners bore a striking contrast to the mild and
dignified civility of Sir Joshua their chief. I have known prisoners
return from the presence of a director, foaming with inward rage at
being bullied out of the room and punished without being permitted to
utter a word in their own defence. In many of these cases I have known
the prisoners to be innocent. Such men would go out of prison vowing
vengeance on some one, and ready for any deed of darkness that might
tempt them. I do not wonder that they took to garotting when I reflect
upon their character and the treatment they received in prison.
Prisoners seldom, if ever, vow vengeance against a judge or a
magistrate; the objects of their wrath are some policeman who has sworn
falsely, or some other witness who has committed perjury or betrayed
them; and we may naturally seek to inquire why the prison judge is not
as favourably regarded as his learned brother who holds open court? I
believe the reason is this, that a prison director can starve and flog
and retain prisoners in confinement for years, according to the length
of their respective remissions, and none but those directly interested
in full and quiet prisons know anything about it. If the governor and
directors of prisons had to dispense justice in presence of a reporter
for the press, how great would be the reformation immediately effected.
To the prisoner it would also be welcome, for if it ensured him of
nothing else but civility it would be a boon. A civil word goes a long
way with a convict, and it is so seldom he gets one from the chiefs of
prisons that he is apt to place a value upon it beyond its real worth.