Читать книгу Eighteen Months' Imprisonment - Donald late captain Shaw - Страница 4

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After a delay of about twenty minutes—when for the first time I found myself an inmate of a police cell—a very civil gaoler (with the relative rank of a Police Sergeant) announced to me, with a “Now, Captain,” the arrival of one of Her Majesty’s carriages. One has frequently heard of the Queen’s carriages meeting, and not meeting, distinguished personages, such as Mr. Gladstone, Sir Garnet Wolseley, the King of the Zulus, and German princelings; but the carriage I refer to must not be confused with this type. They are far from comfortable, the accommodation is limited, and the society questionable; and had it not been for the courteous consideration of the conductor (a Police Sergeant) I should have been considerably puzzled in attempting to squeeze my huge bulk of 19 stone 13 lbs. (as verified a few minutes later in Her Majesty’s scales) into a compartment about 16 inches in breadth. As a fact, however, I remained in the passage, and thus obtained a view of streets and well-known haunts under very novel and degrading conditions. Everyone appeared to stare at this van, and everyone seemed to me to particularly catch my eye; but this, of course, was pure fancy, resulting, I presume, from a guilty conscience—for within the dark tunnel of this centre passage it was impossible that anyone in the streets could see, much less distinguish, anyone inside. I discovered a few weeks later that these uncomfortable police vans were infinitely superior and more roomy than those attached to Her Majesty’s prisons; in fact, I should say they were the only attempt (as far as I could discover) at making a distinction between an untried, and consequently innocent (vaunted English law—twaddle) person, and a convicted prisoner.

My experiences at the “House of Detention” and subsequently at “Newgate” convince me that justice demands a great alteration in the rules regarding untried prisoners, who are allowed and disallowed certain newspapers at the caprice of the chaplain, and actually restricted as to the class of eatables their friends may send them. An instance of this occurred in my case. A kind friend one day brought me a hamper containing, as I was informed, a roast fowl and a tongue; the warder at the entrance-gate, however, told him that these were luxuries in the estimation of the Home-office, and therefore less suited to the palate of an untried (and consequently innocent) man than a chop or steak fried in tallow and procured from the usual eating-house; and as my friend had dragged this white elephant of a parcel about with him for some time, he gave it bodily to the turnkey, who consequently reaped the advantage of the intended kindness to me. Next morning I complained to the Governor, who assured me he should have made no objection to the “luxury” of a fowl; in short, I had been the victim of the zeal of an illiterate and astute official, who, putting two and two together, and weighing the probable effect of his veto on an inexperienced inhabitant of the outer world, had arrived at a very happy arrangement whereby I was deprived and he benefited to the extent of a well-selected hamper. I found the Governor a very good sort. His suit of dittos was a little of the “thunder and lightning” pattern; but if his clothes were loud, his manners were not—in short, he was essentially a gentleman, both in appearance and manners, a beau ideal of the heavy dragoon that existed before the Cardwellite era. I purposely refer to his manners being those of a gentleman because it does not always occur that those situated in a similar position possess the higher recommendation.

The “House of Detention” appeared to me the most awfully depressing place to which my erring footsteps had ever led me. The darkness, the stillness, the novelty of the situation, all tended to this conclusion; and I cannot do better than describe what occurred, and leave the verdict in the hands of the reader. Conceive then a man, who an hour previously was a free citizen, suddenly finding himself stepping out of a police van into a gloomy, white-washed passage, and being inspected and counted with a dozen others by a bumptious turnkey, puffed out with his own importance, addicted, as I have previously mentioned, to cold fowl and tongue, but otherwise oblivious to the veriest rudiments of civilization. Conceive, then, the sensations of a man such as I, finding himself suddenly confronted by such a biped, who, scanning first a paper and then you, begins to drawl out, “What’s your name? Your age? Married or single? Protestant or Romanist?” and a volley of such like rubbish, which only tends to exasperate one, and which might well be dispensed with, seeing that all the desired information is on the paper, and, having been supplied by one’s self not an hour before, is sure to be corroborated, whether correct or not, and considering, too, that this farce is repeated every time you enter and leave the place, and which in a case of frequent remands might occur twice a day. One can hardly narrate a single item regarding the treatment of an untried prisoner that does not call for redress, i.e., if the absurd theory is still persisted in that an untried man is an innocent one. What right has an innocent man to be debarred the privilege of seeing friends (under reasonable restrictions) as often as he pleases, instead of being limited to one visit of fifteen minutes a day? Why should one be allowed to purchase Town Talk and not Truth? Why should the Graphic be permitted and not the Dramatic News? These are anomalies no logic can explain away, and have no right to be left to the caprice of a prison official. The food supply as at present arranged is a cruel system; a prisoner under remand is gratified at hearing that he may procure his own food, and naturally shrinks at the idea of subsisting on prison fare till absolutely compelled. No greater mistake ever was made—the latter is good, clean, and supplied gratis; the former is nasty in the extreme, and scandalously dear. If the doubtful “privilege” is to be continued, it is time the government, in common fairness, controlled the tariff; at present a prisoner is at the mercy of the eating-house keeper, and liable to any charge he may choose to make. I must admit that the caterers for the “House of Detention” were civil and comparatively reasonable, whereas those at Newgate were exactly the opposite. I shall give a detailed account later on of how I was fleeced at the Old Bailey, and I would earnestly warn all prisoners awaiting trial to stick to the prison fare, and carefully to avoid the refreshments supplied from the cat’s meat houses in the neighbourhood. With these slight digressions I shall proceed to a description of the routine at the “House of Detention,” with its rules and regulations and privileges, and the impressions they conveyed to me; and I cannot do better than impress on the reader that this book makes no pretensions to literary merit, but must be regarded rather as a journal of facts, whose principle claim is based on their having been written by a man who is probably as well known as any in England. I ask no praise, I’m equally oblivious to abuse; criticism I’m absolutely indifferent to, being convinced that either my notoriety, my popularity, my identity, or unpopularity, will procure me readers far in excess of any book of greater merit; and it is a consolation to feel that my friends will be glad that I got through some months with a degree of comfort never before paralleled, and my enemies (male and especially female) will be chagrined at discovering that “Imprisonment with Hard Labour” in my case meant kindness from first to last hardly credible, absolutely devoid of any labour at all, and accompanied with luxuries as regards eating and drinking that could not have been surpassed had I been stopping at a first-class hotel and paying thirty shillings a day for board and lodging. Many apparent contradictions may moreover suggest themselves, but taken in the light of a diary, these contradictory views must be regarded as reflecting circumstances as they appeared to me from time to time under various phases. Suffice it to say that I have carefully avoided exaggeration, that everything I narrate can be fully substantiated, and may be unhesitatingly accepted as the experiences of a man endowed with an average amount of brains, who kept his eyes wide open, and who had opportunities given him that no man ever had before, whether higher or lower in the social or criminal scale, of seeing a vast amount of the “dark side of nature.” In my innocence I once fancied I had seen a good deal, and knew a lot; but the following narrative will prove that I was a very babe and suckling, before I became a “Government ward.” Heaven forbid that anyone should purchase his experience at such a price; nevertheless, on the principle that has guided me through life of trying to see everything and do everything, I can only attempt to justify my escapades by endorsing the theory (slightly altered) of the immortal Voltaire, that a man who would go through what I have is “un fois un philosophe, mais deux fois un criminel déterminé.”