Montesinos was a soldier, trained to arms, whose education and experience were entirely military. He had no previous acquaintance with or insight into prison systems, although he had travelled far and wide in many countries. He had never visited or inspected their penal establishments nor had he penetrated into any single prison in his native Spain. He served in the Spanish army, beginning as a cadet at fourteen, was actively engaged in the war of Independence, and was carried off as a prisoner into France. When set free at the conclusion of peace, he accepted a post in the secretariat of the War Office at Madrid, where he remained for five years. Then came the political troubles which ended in the fall of the constitutional government in 1823 and the surrender of Cadiz. With many other soldiers and citizens, he left Spain and wandered through Europe and America, with no very definite idea of examining into the laws and customs of other countries, but gaining knowledge and breadth of views. On his return to Spain when close on forty years of age he was appointed governor of the convict prison in Valencia.
Montesinos entered upon his duties with a firm conviction of the paramount importance of military discipline, of that passive and unquestioning obedience to authority, the absolute surrender of individual volition, the complete subjection of the many to the single will of one superior master, which he believed to be the essence of all personal government and more particularly in a prison. To enforce such discipline was the only effectual method of securing good order and the due subordination of the rough and possibly recalcitrant elements under his command. In this he entirely succeeded and established an extraordinary influence over his charges. He became an autocrat but in the best sense; his prisoners resigned themselves submissively and unhesitatingly to his control, anxious to gain his good will by their exemplary demeanour and their unvarying desire to behave well. What he actually made of his charges, how he succeeded in changing their very natures, in transforming lawbreakers and evil doers into honest, trustworthy persons, successfully restraining their evil instincts, will be best realised by a few strange facts which, if not positively vouched for, would be considered beyond belief. But before relating these marvellous results it will be well to describe in some detail the processes adopted by him and the principles on which he acted.
When Colonel Montesinos was appointed governor of the Valencian convent prison, it was located in an ancient mediæval edifice known as the "Torres de Cuarte," two towers flanking the great gate which gave upon the suburb known as "El Cuarte." This semi-ruinous building, dating from the fifteenth century, lodged about a thousand prisoners, herded together in a number of dark, dirty, ill-kept and insecure chambers, wholly unfit for human habitation. They were on several floors communicating by narrow passages and tortuous staircases, below which were deep underground cellars divided up into obscure foul dungeons, which were always humid from the infiltration from the city ditch and into which neither sunlight nor fresh air came to dry up the damp pavement and the streaming walls. Montesinos saw at once that it would be impossible to introduce reforms in such a building and he laboured hard to move into better quarters, securing at length, after a long correspondence, new quarters in the monastery of St. Augustine, which indeed was but little better. Here also the buildings had fallen into disrepair. A large part was without roof, there was little flooring, and many broken windows and decayed walls offered numerous facilities for escape. Extensive repairs were indispensable, yet funds were wanting, for the Spanish government was sorely taxed to meet the expenses of the civil war (Carlist) now in full swing. Nevertheless Montesinos, strenuous and indefatigable, a host in himself, transferred his people, a thousand convicts of dangerous character, into their new abode and set them to work to repair and reconstruct the old building. He meant to succeed, by drawing upon his own limitless energies, creating means from his own native resources, and was backed by the ready response of those he brought under the dominion of an indomitable will.
All difficulties yielded before his intense spirit. He was the very incarnation of activity and it was enough to look at him to be spurred on to assiduous effort. His personal traits and their effect upon his surroundings are thus described by his biographer, Vincente Boix,—"There can be no doubt that his martial air, his tall figure and the look in his face, a mixture of imperious command with great kindliness and shrewd appreciation of willing effort, had a marked effect upon his people, and convicts who had been once coerced and driven by the fear of punishment yielded much more readily to his moral force. His obvious determination and strength of character got more out of them than threats or penalties, although, if needs were, he was ready enough to appeal to the strong arm. They acknowledged his superiority, and rough undisciplined men, quite capable of rising against authority when unchecked or weakly held, succumbed to his lightest word like children to their father. They yielded even against the grain absolute compliance to his lightest wish without needing a sharp look or a cross word."
It will be interesting to follow Montesinos' procedure. Under his system the treatment was progressive and divided into three periods; first, that of chains; second, that of labour; and third, that of conditional liberation. This arrangement is in some respects akin to that generally known as the "Irish" system as practised many years ago with conspicuous success.
(1) The wearing of irons at that time was general in Spain, although now the practice has fallen into disuse. With Montesinos the rule was to impose irons of varying weight graduated to the length of sentence. A two years' man carried them of four pounds' weight; a four years' man of six pounds, while between six and eight years they were of eight pounds. They consisted of a single chain fastened to a fetter on the right ankle, while the other end was attached to a waist belt, a method supposed to cause no great inconvenience. With Montesinos the period of wearing them was of short duration. It terminated on the day that the convict petitioned for regular employment, for on first reception, after having entered the first courtyard, which was kept bright with garden flowers and the songs of many birds in cages hanging around, the new arrival was given no work. He remained at the depot idle and silent, for no conversation was permitted, although he was associated with others, and if he put a question to a neighbour he got no reply. Weariness and boredom soon supervened in this period of first probation and the convict was keen to pass on. He appealed to his officer, who told him to seek employment at some trade. "I know none." "Then learn one, you cannot get quit of your irons in any other way." If the convict hesitated he was left studiously to himself, unhappy and ashamed, for his condition was deemed disgraceful. He could not hold his head up, for a wide gulf separated him from others who had escaped the chain. He was a marked man, shunned and sneered at, and was required to work from the second day at ignominious and humiliating labour, such as sweeping, cleaning, and so forth. They were the helots and scavengers of the prison. Their lot was the more unbearable because they were debarred from many privileges conferred on those who were at regular labour, and who were earning wages to spend in part upon themselves. These regular labourers might buy toothsome food and cigars, the delight of every Spaniard's heart. Meanwhile the governor had been watching him closely, noting his disposition and whether or not he was desirous of taking up work which was so much to his advantage and of which he would be speedily deprived unless he applied himself to it with zeal and unflagging industry.
(2) A wide choice of labour obtained in Valencia. Trades and handicrafts were varied and numerous. Carpenters, turners, saddlers, shoemakers, fanmakers, workers with esparto grass, weavers of palm straw hats, silk spinners, tailors, basket makers, were all represented, and the total was some forty trades, with seven hundred artisans. To-day there would be nothing remarkable in this industrial activity, which may be seen in well governed prisons, but in Valencia at that date (1835-40) it was a novelty due very largely to Montesinos' initiative, and he could boast that out of three thousand convicts, barely a fourth left prison without having acquired some smattering of a trade. Stress must not be laid upon the exact amount of skill possessed by these prison taught artisans, and it is to be feared that it was no more thorough than in these latter days of ours, when the same principles as those of Montesinos have actuated prison administration. This is the crux of the system of prison instruction. It cannot be expected to turn out workmen sufficiently well trained and expert to go out into the open labour market, so generally overcrowded, and compete for wages against the free labourer who has had the benefit of full apprenticeship. Adults cannot easily acquire knowledge and dexterity in the use of tools, and inevitable waste of materials accompanies the experiments made by unskilled hands. We have no record of how far these drawbacks affected Montesinos' well-meant practice.
(3) We have no facts to show how far the third period, that of conditional liberation, was successful at Valencia. There is no possibility of knowing definitely whether it was really tried or went beyond the enunciation of the theory so long in advance of our modern practice. It is little likely, however, that the effective and elaborate method of police supervision on which it is absolutely dependent was in existence or even understood in Spain in the days of Montesinos.
No permanent results seemed to have been achieved by the Montesinos system. There is no record that it survived the man who created it or that the government sought to extend the admirable principles on which it rested. It was essentially a one man system, depending entirely for success on the personal qualities of the individual called upon to carry it out. Montesinos was not, however, singular in his remarkable achievement. The German Obermaier did much the same in the prison of Kaiserslautern, and Captain Maconochie in Norfolk Island exercised a notable mastery over the Australian convicts. The effects produced by Montesinos were little less than phenomenal. He so developed the probity of his convicts that he could rely implicitly upon their honesty and good faith. During the civil war he sent them with confidential despatches to commanders in the field and never had cause to regret the trust placed in them. They were sent out as scouts seeking information of the enemy's movements and brought in news with punctuality and despatch. A message was brought one day to the governor directing him to send a clerk to fetch a thousand dollars from the provincial Treasury. Montesinos forthwith summoned one of his convicts and despatched him, carrying with him the receipt for the money. Within half an hour the man returned with the dollars. Whenever a convict escaped from the presidio, a rare occurrence indeed, other convicts were despatched in pursuit and seldom failed to bring in the fugitive.
At one time the Spanish government decided to build a new prison in the capital and to employ convict labour in the construction. The Governor of the presidio of Valencia was ordered to send up a number of prisoners, and next day at daylight they marched, taking with them a quantity of material, the whole escorted by a small body of cabos, "prisoner warders," and commanded by a veteran overseer. The journey was safely made to Madrid without the smallest mishap, not a sign or symptom of misbehaviour shown on the road, and the alcaldes of the towns on the route, after anticipating the worst evils, were agreeably surprised and were satisfied to lodge the travellers at night in private houses if there was no prison accommodation. A second experiment of the kind was made in the same year.