Читать книгу Six Years in the Prisons of England - Various - Страница 7

Table of Contents

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.