Prisons Over Seas / Deportation and Colonization; British and American Prisons of To-day

by Arthur Griffiths

In the first few years everything appeared rosy. The reports continue: "As a body, the men show a spirit of willing and cheerful obedience. The strictest discipline is maintained with a very small proportion of punishment. The industry of the working parties is remarkable." Again, the same report asserts that "any candid and dispassionate inquiry into the condition and prospects of the convicts who have passed through periods of penal and reformatory discipline at Pentonville and Portland, will prove beyond doubt that, to say the least of it, the majority of those now serving are likely on their release to be respectable in their station of life, and useful to those who engage their services; thus realising the anticipations of the Pentonville commissioners, that a large proportion of our convicts would be qualified on their discharge to occupy an honest position in their own or any other country."

This was in 1852 and for the following ten years the new plans were persevered in with very general satisfaction. The public heard with pleasure of the notable results achieved. All indeed were a little weary of the subject of secondary punishment, and were content to leave the problem in the hands of officials whose duty it was to deal with it. How long this indifference might have continued it is impossible to conjecture, but all at once a panic fell upon people that was long remembered. It is only when touched by the sharp sense of personal insecurity that people are universally roused to take an interest in such affairs. The moment came when—in presence of a real or imaginary danger—England awoke to the fact that her penal system was all a mistake.

It was in the winter of 1862 that robberies with violence—garrote robberies, as they were called—suddenly increased to such an alarming extent, and were accompanied with such hideous details of brutality, that general consternation prevailed. The streets of London were less safe, said the leading journal, than a capital in the throes of revolution and under no government at all. No man could walk abroad, even in crowded thoroughfares, without feeling that he carried both his life and his money in his hand. Both might be wrested from him by an insidious malefactor before the victim was even conscious of his danger. On all sides instances of these treacherous assaults multiplied; and though varying somewhat in their method of execution, each and every one of them belonged unmistakably to the same class of crime. One day it was reported that a young lady of fifteen had been attacked in Westbourne Crescent in the afternoon. She was half throttled, and a pistol held to her head, while they rifled her pockets, and tried to tear off her necklace, and the pendants from her ears. Her head was to have been shorn, too, of its magnificent hair, which, as one of the ruffians cried, would certainly fetch a goodish sum; but just then the sound of approaching wheels frightened these human vultures from their helpless quarry. Next, a poor old woman, a feeble tottering creature advanced in years, was knocked down and wantonly maltreated for the half-dozen coppers she carried in her pocket.

These attacks were made at all hours and in all neighbourhoods. Daylight was no protection, nor were the crowds in a thoroughfare. One gentleman was felled to the ground in the afternoon near Paternoster Row, another in Holborn, a third in Cockspur Street. Later on, at night, the dangers, of course, multiplied a hundredfold. Poor musicians, tramping home after performing in some theatrical orchestra, were knocked down and robbed of their instruments as well as their cash. It was a service of danger to take the money at the door of any entertainment. A gang of garroters, for instance, had their eye on Michael Murray in the early part of the night as he stood at the door of the Teetotal Hall in Chelsea, and as soon as he left for home, they followed with stealthy step till they overtook him in Sloane Square, and knocked him down, having first throttled and rifled him. If you stood still in the street, and refused to give a drink to any man who accosted you, he would probably then and there give you a hug. Those who took a delight in attending public executions did so at their own peril. A Mr. Bush, who was standing in front of the Old Bailey when Cooper was hanged, was hustled by several men, who first forced his hands up over his head, then unbuttoned his coat and stole his watch.

In every case, whether the victim resisted or surrendered, he was nearly certain to be shamefully ill-used. Now and then the biter was bitten, as when three men fell upon a certain foreign gentleman who carried a sword, and was a master of the art of self-defence; or when another, who knew how to hit out, was attacked by two ruffians, both of whom he knocked down. But as a general rule the victim suffered tortures. When down on the ground, as often as not he was kicked about the face and head, usually with savage violence; his teeth were knocked down his throat, his eyes closed, and he was left insensible, streaming with blood.

In most cases, there was every appearance that the outrage was deliberately planned beforehand. There were accomplices—women sometimes; and all were banded together like Hindoos sworn to the practice of "Thuggee." For months these crimes continued to be prevalent. Every morning's news chronicled "more outrages in the streets;" until, as the fogs of November settled down on the devoted heads of the honest inhabitants of London, men's hearts failed them for fear, and life in sequestered streets or retired suburban villas seemed hardly worth an hour's purchase. Every journal teemed with complaints; Punch took up the question with grim humour; at the theatres audiences roared at some amusing actor, then shuddered to think they had still to get home after the play was over.

At length the horrors of garroting culminated in the arraignment of a crowd of such offenders in one batch at the central criminal court. There were twenty-seven of them. The cases of all bore a certain family likeness: though differing somewhat in detail, there was in each the same insidious method of attack, followed by the same brutality and wanton violence. Speaking to the most hardened, the judge, Baron Bramwell, said, as he passed sentence, that it was his belief that they were "utterly destitute of morality, shame, religion, or pity, and that if they were let loose they would do what any savage animal would do, namely, prey upon their fellows." Therefore he was resolved to keep them out of mischief as long as he possibly could. All got heavy sentences, ranging from "life" downward, and all were consigned to prison, where they are still well remembered—strong, able-bodied, determined looking scoundrels; top-sawyers in the trade of thieving, ready for any kind of daring work, treating their incarceration with the utmost contempt, as indeed they might, for it was nothing new to them. One or two had graduated in crime during the days of the Penitentiary; but neither Mr. Nihil, then the chaplain-governor, nor any one else had succeeded in reforming them. One of them, Leats, had actually at one time been a prison officer, a warder. Formerly a soldier in the marines, his career had been checkered. He had been present at the siege of St. Jean d'Acre, and was at that time servant to the admiral, through whom he obtained a situation at Millbank, from which he was soon dismissed for drunkenness. After this he went rapidly to the bad; was caught, and sentenced for obtaining goods under false pretences, next for robbing a lady at Richmond Park, and now for the third time he entered prison as a garroter. Although they maintained throughout, from the moment of their capture, in the dock and after sentence, an insolent and defiant demeanour, yet in the prison these murderous rogues conducted themselves fairly well; only two of them got into serious trouble. These were Dixon and another, Needham, who together made a vigorous attempt to escape. Dixon cut out, by means of a sharpened nail, the panel in his cell door, unbolted it, got out, and then set Needham also free. Their idea was to surprise the night patrol, and seize his keys. With this object they concealed themselves behind a passage door, and as he appeared struck him behind the ear. Fortunately the blow fell light, and the officer turned to grapple with the prisoners.

Such were the men, and such the work they did. Was it strange that the public should complain of a system of penal repression which left them to the tender mercies of ruffians like these? Transportation had been abandoned and what had been given them in exchange? A system which, as administered, had completely failed. It may have been a necessity, but it clearly had not been a success. They might perhaps be compelled to retain, or even to extend it; but its administration must be altered. As it was it had no terrors whatever for the evil-doer, while it gave but little protection to society. So said the Times; and it spared no pains to support its views with tangible evidence. Its columns teemed with letters on the subject, and special correspondents visited the chief convict establishments to spy out their nakedness and report their inefficacy as places for the punishment of criminals. Convicts, it was agreed on all sides, quite scoffed at the terrors of penal servitude. Barring the loss of actual liberty, which is doubtless the dearer to a man the closer he approaches to a lower species of animal, the convict prison was made so comfortable to the convict that he was loth to leave it, and hardly dreaded to return. Well-housed, well-fed, with labour just sufficient to insure good digestion and a healthy circulation; debarred only by a fiction of the luxuries he chiefly loved; let free from prison as soon as he chose to evince signs of amendment, a convict was altogether master of the situation. So said the critics. Penal servitude was like going down into the country after "the season." A little slow, perhaps; but very healthy and re-invigorating after a racket in town—just the discipline, in fact, to which men careful of themselves are ready to submit for a time, so as to issue forth afterwards braced and strengthened for a fresh campaign of pleasure. In these retired residences there was rest for the tired thief, for the burglar whose nerves had suffered, and for the playful miscreant who had been able only to half kill his victim, and who wished to recruit his strength. Here they found congenial society, such as a man meets at his club: others of his own set, with whom he could chat about the past, or concoct new plans for the future. His creature comforts were well looked after; he never worked as free labourers did, in the rain; and if, by mischance, he wet his feet, there were dry stockings for him on his return to his cosy well-warmed cell. If he had any special "whims" which called for gratification, an attentive official almost forestalled his wish. The leading feature of the whole system was to keep the convict comfortable and contented.

All this, and more, the panic-stricken public, speaking through the press, found fault with. Reform was called for, and immediate reform. The usual panacea was prescribed, a royal commission, which was that of 1863, long famous in British records as paving the way for the system of secondary punishment which, with various modifications, has existed to the present day. It was admitted on undoubted evidence that the régime established by Sir Joshua Jebb erred on the side of overmuch tenderness to the criminal. Far-seeing and able as was Sir Joshua Jebb, however skilful and capable as an administrator, on one point he was weak. It was an amiable weakness, but it did both himself and his system incalculable harm. He had formed too high an opinion of the criminal class; he was too hopeful, too ready to accept the shadow for the substance, to be satisfied with promise rather than performance, and to view the outward whitewashed semblance of purity for the radical transformation of the inner man. This was the key-note of his system, and this, as time passed, grew and gained strength, till at least there was some semblance of truth in the allegations so freely made by his opponents. It became known, beyond contradiction, that the diet in those days was far too generous; that the care taken of the convicts was tender to the extent of ridiculous coddling; that the labour exacted was far below the amount that each might be expected reasonably to perform. These facts are fully borne out by the traditions of the department itself. Old officers have told me that in all the prisons discipline was almost a dead letter. The convicts themselves ruled the roost. They did not break away, because there were troops at hand who would shoot them down; but otherwise they did just what they pleased. Their warders, taking their cue from the supreme power, sought to humour them into obedience by civil speeches rather than by firmness and resolution. The officers were afraid to enforce their orders, and the convicts saw that they were afraid. Men who are over-fed, if they are also idle, are sure to prove untamable and run riot. Some of the scenes at the convict prisons were disgraceful, almost rivalling, at times, the anarchy and disorder of Norfolk Island. That the convicts were thus insolent and insubordinate was undoubtedly due to the petting and pampering they received. But another cause was the unsettled, dissatisfied spirit evoked by several successive alterations in the law—alterations which it was absolutely necessary to make, but which none the less produced unevenness of treatment between various classes of prisoners.

The net result was stated in the report, to the effect that the system was clearly not sufficiently dreaded by those who had undergone it, or by the criminal classes in general. The number of re-convictions, they thought, proved this; moreover, the report continues, "the accounts given of penal servitude by discharged convicts, and the fact that they generally come back so soon to their original haunts, tends to prevent its being regarded with fear by their associates. Indeed, in some (though doubtless exceptional) cases, crimes have been committed for the sole purpose of obtaining the advantages which the offenders have supposed a sentence of penal servitude to confer." The system therefore stood condemned, and the commissioners attributed its shortcomings in a minor degree to defects in the discipline maintained, but thought the blame lay really in the shortness of the terms of imprisonment awarded in the courts of law.