THEY DON'T USE STRAIGHT-JACKETS IN PERSIA.
Warders are exempted from doing night duty, which is all done by the assistant warders, who are on that service one week out of three. Although when on night duty they had the day for sleep and recreation, I never saw one who did not detest it, because they must remain on duty continuously for twelve hours, and must not read, sit down nor lean against anything, nor have their hands behind them. These military regulations apply as well to the whole time they are on duty in the prison, day or night. A few years ago the time of daily duty was reduced to twelve hours, with one hour at noon for dinner. Besides this, at times they must do a good deal of extra duty. Each is allowed ten days annual holiday, but is frequently obliged to take it piecemeal, a day or two at a time, so that he cannot go far away from the scene of his servitude. Their duties require unflagging attention and never-ceasing vigilance, which must be a heavy tax on the brain, and the twelve hours must be passed in standing or walking about. In fact, they are subjected to military discipline, or rather despotism, and any known infraction of the rules subjects them to penalties according to the nature of the offense. Leaning against a wall, sitting down, etc., for a first offense, they are mulcted in a small sum—12 to 60 cents, usually—and are put back in the line of promotion. The fines go to the Officers' Library fund. I knew one officer, Joseph Matthews, who had been assistant warder twenty years, and, being frequently set back for doing some small favor to prisoners, was discharged from the service in 1886, without a pension, for some slight breach of regulations. He had a wife and six children, and had worked twenty years for less than $7 per week. For giving a convict a small bit of tobacco, a heavy fine, suspension, and in case it was not the first offense, expulsion from the service without a pension. For acting the go-between and facilitating correspondence with the friends of convicts, expulsion—possibly imprisonment. One of the assistant warders, who was convicted of having received a bribe of £100 from one of us at Newgate, was expelled from the service and imprisoned eighteen months. Another at Portsmouth Prison underwent the same fate, save that his term was but six months, for sending and receiving letters for a prisoner, and similar cases are of frequent occurrence.
The warders and assistant warders are the ones who come in direct and constant contact with prisoners, and when the eye of no superior authority is on them, or nothing else to deter, they are "hail fellow well met" with such of the convicts as are unprincipled enough to curry favor with and assist them in covering up their peccadilloes from their superiors. They naturally recoil at the hardness and parsimony of the Government toward them, evading the performance of duties when they can, and I have heard more than one say: "Why should we care what prisoners do, so long as we don't get into trouble? The Government grinds us down to twelve hours' daily duty on just pay enough to keep body and soul together; then, if we complain, tells us that we can leave if we like, as there are others ready to step into our places. Bah! what do we care for the Government? It is of no benefit to us; the big guns get big pay, and the higher up the office the more the pay and the less the work. To be sure, we can go out of the prison to sleep, but otherwise we are bound as closely as you are." Yet these very warders, the moment any superior authority appears on the scene, are as obsequious and fawning as whipped dogs, and recoup themselves for this forced humiliation by taking it out of such of the convicts as fail to curry their favor, or offend, or make them trouble. Surely their office is a very responsible one, and it is blind, false economy to retain low-priced men in such a position. The present English system of penal servitude is perfect on paper, but the moral qualities of most of the warders and assistant warders preclude all possibility of the reformation of those in their charge.
Notwithstanding the expositions of the English delegates at the international meetings, prison reform has never yet been tried in Great Britain and Ireland. In other words, all efforts in that direction have been defeated by placing convicts in the immediate charge of a class of men who, by education and training, possess none of the qualifications requisite for such a responsible position.
In so far as forms are concerned, the business of the prison is carried on most systematically. There are blank forms which cover everything, from provisioning the prison to bathing the men, and these must be filled in and signed by the warder in charge of the particular work being done. For example, every week he must fill in the proper form and certify that every man in his ward has had a bath. I have known men to go unbathed for many months, simply because they did not wish to bathe, and it saved the warder trouble—nearly all others in the ward only bathed about once a month, and yet at the stated times the officer filled up and signed the form, certifying to the superior authorities that those in his ward had been bathed at the regulation times.
A great majority of the officers are soldiers who have been invalided or pensioned off after doing the full term for which they enlisted—twelve years—and of sailors in the same condition. In order to encourage enlistment into the army and navy, the Government gives discharged soldiers and sailors the preference in the civil service, apparently heedless as to their moral qualifications. Indeed, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain about these, for the very nature and present requirements of these services tend to harden and make men conscienceless, subservient and fawning toward their superiors, and tyrannical to those in their power.
As to those in the prison service, there are many who would be good men in a situation suited to their acquirements, and there are but a few of those who are brought into immediate contact with the men—who, in fact, virtually hold the power of life and death over them—whose influence is of an elevating or reforming kind. Indeed, I have heard many of them telling or exchanging obscene stories with prisoners, and using the vilest language and bandying thieves' slang, in which they become proficient. I am bold to say that at least one-half of all I have known are in morals on a level with the average prisoner, or, as I have heard more than one assistant warder say, "Too much of a coward to steal, ashamed to beg and too lazy to work"—therefore became a soldier, then a warder. This may, at the moment, have been spoken in a jesting way, but it is none the less true.
What can be expected in the way of refinement and good morals from a class of men who entered the army or navy, coming, as they did in most cases, from the untaught and mind-debased multitude with which that land of drink and debauchery swarms?
It will be seen from the foregoing that very much is expected from them, and in order to fulfill the very hard terms of their contract with the Government, and keep their places, they are forced to resort to trickery, deception and perjury, until these, in their attitude toward their employer, the Government, become second nature, readily resorting to lies to clear themselves from blame, even in trivial matters, to save themselves from a sixpence fine. There are jealousies among themselves, but when it is a question of deceiving or keeping any neglect of duties or violences against prisoners from the superior authorities they all unite as one man and affirm or swear to anything they think the position requires.