The case of the prisoner who becomes insane is no less harrowing. She is kept in the infirmary with the other patients for three months. If she does not recover her reason within that period, she is certified by three doctors as insane and then removed to the criminal lunatic asylum. In the mean time the peace and rest of the other sick persons in the infirmary are disturbed by her ravings, and their feelings wrought upon by the daily sight of a demented fellow creature.
And the suicide! To see the ghastly and distorted features of a fellow prisoner, with whom one has worked and suffered, killed by her own hands—such scenes as these haunted me for weeks; and it needed all my reliance on God to throw off the depression that inevitably followed.
Moral Effect of Harsh Prison Regime
Have you ever tried to realize what kind of life that must be in which the sight of a child’s face and the sound of a child’s voice are ever absent; in which there are none of the sweet influences of the home; the daily intercourse with those we love; the many trifling little happenings, so unimportant in themselves, but which go so far to make up the sum of human happiness? It commences with the clangor of bells and the jingling of keys, and closes with the banging of hundreds of doors, while the after silence is broken only by shrieks and blasphemies, the trampling of many feet, and the orders of warders.
In the winter the prisoners get up in the dark, and breakfast in the dark, to save the expense of gas. The sense of touch becomes very acute, as so much has to be done without light. Until I had served three years of my sentence I had not been allowed to see my own face. Then a looking-glass, three inches long, was placed in my cell. I have often wondered how this deprivation could be harmonized with a purpose to enforce tidiness or cleanliness in a prisoner. The obvious object in depriving prisoners of the only means through which they can reasonably be expected to conform to the official standard of facial cleanliness is to eradicate woman’s assumed innate sense of vanity; but whether or no it succeeds in this, certain it is that cleanliness becomes a result of compulsion rather than of a natural womanly impulse. Also she must maintain the cleanliness of her prison cell on an ounce of soap per week. After I left Aylesbury I heard that the steward had received orders from the Home Office to reduce this enormous quantity. If true it will leave the unfortunate prisoners with three-quarters of an ounce of soap weekly wherewith to maintain that cleanliness which is said to be next to godliness. The prisoners are allowed a hot bath once a week, but in the interval they may not have a drop of hot water, except by the doctor’s orders.
Attacks of Levity
All human instincts can not be crushed, even by an act of Parliament, and sometimes the prisoners indulge in a flight of levity, which is, however, promptly stopped by the officer in charge. But even wilfulness and levity are to some a relief from the perpetual silence. A young girl, fifteen years of age, came in on a conviction of penal servitude for life. In a fit of passion she had strangled a child of which she had charge. In consideration of her youth and the medical evidence adduced at her trial, sentence of death was commuted. She was in the “Star Class,” and it aroused my indignation to witness her sufferings. A mature woman may submit to the inevitable patiently, as an act of faith or as a proof of her philosophy; but a child of that age has neither faith nor philosophy sufficient to support her against this repressive system of torture. At times, however, the girl had attacks of levity which manifested themselves in most amusing ways. One day she was put out to work in the officers’ quarters and told to black-lead a grate. With a serious face she set to work. Presently the officer asked whether she had finished her task, to which she meekly replied “Yes,” at the same time lifting her face, which, to the utter amazement of the female warder, had been transformed from a white to a brightly polished black one.
On another occasion she was told that she would be wanted in the infirmary. She was suffering great pain at the time, and had begged the doctor to extract a tooth. When the infirmary nurse unlocked her door she was found in bed. This is strictly against the rules, unless the prisoner has special permission from the doctor to lie down during the day. Of course, the officer ordered her to get up at once, to which she replied, “I can’t.” “Why not?” asked the officer. “Because I can’t,” the girl repeated. Whereupon the officer lifted off the bed covering to see what was amiss. To her astonishment she saw that the child had got inside the mattress (which I described in the beginning as a long sack stuffed with the fiber of the coconut), and had drawn the end of it on a string around her neck, so that nothing but her head was visible.
It has been said that no apples are so sweet as those that are stolen, and the great pleasure the women in prison derive from their surreptitious levity is because it can so rarely be indulged in, and the opportunities for its expression must always be stolen.