Death from Separation!—
A London paper tells us, that Mr. Bedford, the coroner for Westminster, held an inquest lately in Millbank Penitentiary, touching the death of Thomas Wilkinson, a convict, aged nineteen years, a clothdresser, who was found one Sunday morning lying dead and bleeding on the floor of his cell, having cut his throat with a razor which was given him to shave, during the momentary absence of the warder in charge. From the question of convict prison discipline having recently been slightly agitated in the public journals, the separate system was inquired into by the coroner, who asked Dr. Baily if he could throw any light on the case, to guide the jury as to the cause of the act. Dr. Baily thought that it was brooding over the length of his sentence, and stated further that, during eighteen years, in that prison, from 1824 to 1842, with an average of 454 prisoners, only three had committed suicide, but then their sentences were only two, three or four years. Again, in the ten years as a convict prison, from 1843 to 1853, there had been thirteen suicides. So that he thought it was more the length of the sentences than the separate confinement, although he must own that the latter would accelerate or aggravate any disease which might be on a prisoner, and also tend to suicide, by giving them an opportunity when they would be brooding over a long prospect of imprisonment. The jury returned a verdict to the effect that the deceased destroyed himself during a state of temporary insanity, brought on by the separate system!
We have put a few words in italics to mark the absurdity of such a verdict. (1.) No evidence of insanity is stated, except that which the fatal act furnishes. (2.) As favorable an opportunity is offered, during half of every twenty-four hours in a congregate, as in a separate prison. (3.) If it is brooding over an unusually long sentence that produces suicidal insanity, the verdict should be, that the deceased destroyed himself during a state of temporary insanity, brought on by a mistake of the law or of its administrators!