No defender of the silent system pretends that it wholly succeeds in preventing speech among prisoners. But be that as it may, a period of four months’ solitary confinement in the case of a female, and six months’ in the case of a male, and especially of a girl or youth, is surely a crime against civilization and humanity. Such a punishment is inexpressible torture to both mind and body. I speak from experience. The torture of continually enforced silence is known to produce insanity or nervous breakdown more than any other feature connected with prison discipline. Since the passing of the Act of 1898, mitigating this form of punishment, much good has been accomplished, as is proved by the diminution of insanity in prison life, the decreasing scale of prison punishment, and the lessening of the death-rate. By still further reducing this barbarous practise, or, better, by abolishing it entirely, corresponding happy results may confidently be expected. The more the prisoners are placed under conditions and amid surroundings calculated to develop a better life, the greater is the hope that the system will prove curative; but so long as prisoners are subjected to conditions which have a hardening effect at the very beginning of their prison life, there is little chance of ultimate reformation.
Need of Separate Confinement for the Weak-Minded
There are many women who hover about the borderland of insanity for months, possibly for years. They are recognized as weak-minded, and consequently they make capital out of their condition, and by the working of their distorted minds, and petty tempers, and unreasonable jealousy, add immeasurably not only to the ghastliness of the “house of sorrow,” but are a sad clog on the efforts to self-betterment of their level-minded sisters in misery. Of these many try hard to make the best of what has to be gone through. Therefore, is it necessary, is it wise, is it right that such a state of things should be allowed? The weak-minded should be kept in a separate place, with their own officers to attend them. Neither the weak-minded, the epileptic, nor the consumptives were isolated. There is great need of reform wherever this is the case. Prisoners whose behavior is different from the normal should be separated from the other prisoners, and made to serve out their sentences under specially adapted conditions.
I read in the newspapers that insanity is on the increase; this fact is clearly reflected within the prison walls. It is stated that the insane form about three per thousand of the general population. In local English prisons insanity, it is said, even after deducting those who come in insane, is seven times more prevalent than among the general population.
Reading an Insufficient Relaxation
The nervous crises do not now supervene so frequently as formerly in the case of prisoners of a brooding disposition, but the fact remains that, in spite of the slight amelioration, mental light is still excluded—that communion on which rests all human well-being. The vacuity of the solitary system, to some at least, is partially lighted by books. But what of those who can not read, or who have not sufficient concentration of mind to profit by reading as a relaxation? There are many such, in spite of the high standard of free education that prevails at the present day. The shock of the trial, and the uprooting of a woman’s domestic ties, coupled with the additional mental strain of having to start her prison career in solitary confinement, is surely neither humane, nor merciful, nor wise. These months of solitary confinement leave an ineffaceable mark. It is during the first lonely months that the seeds of bitterness and hardness of heart are sown, and it requires more than a passive resistance—nay, nothing short of an unfaltering faith and trust in an overruling Providence—to bring a prisoner safely through the ordeal. Let the sympathetic reader try to realize what it means never to feel the touch of anything soft or warm, never to see anything that is attractive—nothing but stone above, around, and beneath. The deadly chill creeps into one’s bones; the bitter days of winter and the still bitterer nights were torture, for Woking Prison was not heated. My hands and feet were covered with chilblains.
My Sufferings from Cold and Insomnia
Oh, the horrors of insomnia! If one could only forget one’s sufferings in sleep! During all the fifteen years of my imprisonment, insomnia was (and, alas! is still) my constant companion. Little wonder! I might fall asleep, when suddenly the whole prison is awakened by shriek upon shriek, rending the stillness of the night. I am now, perforce, fully awake. Into my ears go tearing all the shrill execrations and blasphemies, all the hideous uproars of an inferno, compounded of bangs, shrieks, and general demoniac ragings. The wild smashing of glass startles the halls. I lie in my darkened cell with palpitating heart. Like a savage beast, the woman of turmoil has torn her clothing and bedding into shreds, and now she is destroying all she can lay hands on. The ward officers are rushing about in slippered feet, the bell rings summoning the warders, who are always needed when such outbursts occur, and the woman, probably in a strait-jacket, is borne to the penal cells. Then stillness returns to the ghastly place, and with quivering nerves I may sleep—if I can.