Some men will rebel, and force the “felon tamer” to some means of further punishment, and the duel between felon and gaoler once begun will be grimly fought—the one, unaided and reckless, will struggle with wild-beast fury; the other, put on his mettle and sorely irritated, will harden into ferocity.
Such a conflict will always terminate either in the prisoner’s victory or else his murder or suicide.
When the inquiry at Birmingham gaol was over it was found advisable to submit its prototype at Leicester, the model of crank discipline, to a similar scrutiny. The second investigation was not much more favourable than the former to the deterrent system.
It appeared that there too the felons and the felon breakers had been driven into fierce collision.
And if the inquiry had been extended (as it well might have been) other prisons would have been found in which gaolers and turnkeys had been forced to strange extremities in their endeavours to coerce stubborn convicts into conformity with a radically pernicious system.
Of course the investigations at Birmingham and Leicester produced a reaction against the method of unkindness, and the nation has grown wiser by experience. Cranks, and such like contrivances, have been abolished in most, if not in all of our prisons.
But Peace was not subject to the miserable labour on the treadwheel, or the still more wretched employment of turning the handle of the crank, and all things considered, he had very little to complain of.
The chaplain paid him occasional visits, and gave him the best advice. It would, indeed, have been well for him if he had given greater heed to the counsel of this kind and considerate minister, who, during his long official services, strove earnestly and persistently to improve the moral tone of those who came under his humanising influence.
The chief warder, Mr. M‘Pherson, was always busy on Saturdays. Just before dinner was served each man had a bundle of clean clothes handed him—shirt, stockings, towel, and pocket handkerchief; and every alternate Saturday flannel drawers and vest.
These he had to put on during his dinner hour, and after the meal was over the dirty things were collected.