The food is scanty;—and yet the labour thus forced upon the poor sickly, half-starved wretches, is horribly severe.
Three-quarters of the crimes which send prisoners to Coldbath Fields, are larcenies and robberies caused by dire penury and pinching want: the miserable beings are half-famished already when they enter that gaol; but they are nevertheless retained in something closely bordering on that state of constant hunger, while the hardest possible labour is required from them!
Remember, reader, that we do not wish idleness to prevail in a prison. It is just the place where habits of industry should be inculcated. We therefore approve of the system of workshops established in Coldbath Fields: we admire the oakum-room—the room, too, where shoe-making is taught—and that department of the prison in which rugs are manufactured for a wholesale warehouse that contracts for the purchase of the same.
But we abhor torture—we detest cruelty; and the tread-wheel is alike a torture and a cruelty!
It makes the heart bleed in the breast of the visitor to the female-division of Coldbath Fields, to behold women nursing their babes at one moment, and then compelled to deliver their sucklings to the care of their fellow-prisoners, while they themselves repair to take their turn upon the tread-mill!
Talk of the despotism of Turkey, Russia, Austria, or Prussia,—talk of the tyranny of those countries where the will of one man is a law, be it for good or evil,—we solemnly and emphatically cry, "Look at home!"
Flogging in the Army and Navy, private whipping in prisons, semi-starvation in workhouses and gaols, and the tread-wheel,—these are the tortures which exist in this land of boasted civilisation—these are the instances in which our rulers seek to emulate the barbarism of past ages and the wanton inhumanity of foreign autocrats!
We must in justice observe that Coldbath Fields' Prison is kept in a most cleanly state. Perhaps the ventilation is not as perfect as it might be; and certainly the stone cells must be awfully cold in winter, for there are no means of imparting to them any artificial warmth. But as far as wholesome cleanliness is concerned, there is not the slightest ground whereon to raise a cavil against the establishment.
The discipline maintained in that gaol is on the Silent System. There it no separation—no classification—during the day; but the plan of silence prevents the corruption of the only moderately bad by the inveterately wicked. At night each individual sleeps apart in a cell.