Eighteen Months' Imprisonment

by late captain Donald Shaw

The ordeal at length had been gone through, and I was on my return journey to the prison as a “convicted prisoner.” A prisoner after sentence consists of only two classes, the “convict” and the “convicted prisoner,” and it is marvellous how soon the difference shows itself. The “convicted prisoner” finds absolutely no change beyond being deprived of the questionable privilege of procuring his own food at an exorbitant rate. With the “convict,” however, things are very different. Immediately after sentence he is stripped of all his clothes, his hair and beard are cropped as close as scissors can do it, and he is metamorphosized by the assumption of the coarse brown and black striped convict dress. The change is so marvellous that it is difficult at first to recognize a man. One poor fellow I saw, a gentlemanly-looking man from the Post-office, that I frequently spoke to, was so changed when I saw him next morning in Chapel that I could not for the moment recognize the poor wretch who kept grinning at me with an air of levity as assumed as it was painful. I am not ashamed to admit that I thanked Providence I had escaped that fearful doom. It is not generally known that two years’ imprisonment is the limit of a sentence of hard labour, after which the next higher punishment involves five years’ penal servitude. There is a vast deal of ignorance displayed on this subject, even by those who might be supposed to know better. It is generally believed that imprisonment with hard labour is a severer punishment than penal servitude. No greater fallacy ever existed. I base my assertion, not so much on personal experience (for I was exceptionally fortunate), as on what I saw of the treatment of others; and I confidently assert—and my opinion would be corroborated by every respectable prisoner (if such an anomaly can exist)—that two years’ “hard labour” is an infinitely lighter punishment than even two years of penal servitude would be; and I can only attribute the general acceptation of this error to the fact that convicts get a little more food than convicted prisoners, and prisoners as a rule will do anything for “grub.”

I have now brought my experiences of Newgate to a close, and shall briefly describe our departure to our final and respective destinations. An unusual bustle one morning indicated that something out of the ordinary was about to happen, and though we received no actual warning, it was generally buzzed about that we were to make a start after breakfast. At breakfast-time the warder told me to put my things together, and half an hour later found me and sixteen others marshalled in the corridor, where, being carefully compared with our respective descriptions, we were formally handed over to a detachment of warders from Coldbath Fields. Other parties were being simultaneously paraded for Holloway and Pentonville, the latter all in convict dress and as pitiable a looking set as can well be conceived. I discovered, both now and subsequently, that a human being is invariably referred to as if he were a parcel. Thus, on arrival, one is said to be “received,” and one’s departure is described as being “sent out.” This is not intended in an offensive sense, but may be taken rather as a figure of speech. In the adjoining yard were half a dozen vans—indeed, I had never before seen such a formidable array, except, perhaps, a meet of the four-in-hand club on a rainy day—and into one of these I was politely conducted, with a degree of precaution as unnecessary as it was absurd.

No reader can accuse me of rounding the points of this ungarnished story, or endeavouring to conceal any incident, however unpleasant. As, however, my subsequent experiences may discover a treatment so kind and exceptional as to appear almost incredible, I must only ask the reader to credit me with the veracity that my previous frankness entitles me to expect. My anxiety on this point is considerably enhanced by the contradiction it will bear to other narratives I have read, and which, purporting to describe prison life, invariably represent it as a hot-bed of cruelty, where prisoners are starved and otherwise ill-treated, all of which I emphatically deny, and cause me to doubt whether one single specimen of these so-called personal narratives is anything else but an “idle tale,” written with a view of enlisting sympathy, and possibly turning an honest penny. If these writers and these prisoners had seen as much as I have (from outside) of prisons on the Continent, in Morocco, and in China, they would think themselves very fortunate in their present quarters. I—who have seen prisoners starving in prisons in Morocco, and absolutely “unfed,” except by the charity of visitors, who usually scramble a few shillings’ worth of bread amongst them; and who, for a dollar to the jailor, have seen a Chinaman at Shanghai brought out, made to kneel down and have his head sliced off like a water-melon—have no patience with these well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed rascals. I would send all these discontented burglars and their “converted” biographers to China or Morocco, and omit to supply them with return tickets. I have lately read a book connected with penal servitude, by an anonymous writer, in which this innocent lamb is whining throughout of his hardship in being compelled to herd with criminals; and it says a great deal for his imitative capacity that he should so naturally and so thoroughly have adopted the almost universal “injured innocence” tactics of the habitual criminal. One great nuisance at all prisons is the almost universal habit that prisoners have of protesting their innocence; they protest it so often to everybody on every possible occasion, that they eventually begin to believe that they really are innocent. I found these guileless creatures great bores; indeed I am (I am convinced) well within the mark when I assert that there were only about three-and-twenty guilty persons besides myself amongst the fifteen hundred prisoners in Coldbath Fields. This compulsory herding with innocent burglars is a great trial, and one that never enters into the calculation of a judge.

A short drive at a good pace on this early December morning brought us to the gates of Coldbath Fields Prison; and as I stepped out, I could not help recalling Dante’s famous line—

“All hope abandon ye who enter here.”

It only proves how apt one is to form erroneous ideas from first impressions. I was never more mistaken in my life.

CHAPTER XIII.
“CORPULENCY.”

From my birth up to within the past twelve months I have had the misfortune to be afflicted with one of the most dreadful diseases that flesh is heir to. It is one that entails suffering both to body and mind, and from which a vast proportion of humanity suffers in a more or less aggravated form. It is a slow and insidious disease that never decreases of its own accord, but on the contrary develops itself with one’s increasing years as surely as the most virulent cancer. It has this advantage, however, over this latter dreadful complaint—that it invariably yields to treatment conscientiously applied; but it has also this disadvantage, that, whereas other afflictions invariably enlist the sympathy of our fellow-creatures, this one never fails to be jeered and hooted at and turned into ridicule by the coarse and vulgar of our species. This complaint, surprising as it may appear, is held in contempt by most of the faculty, and I doubt whether it has ever received baptism in the English or any other pharmacopoeia. I will therefore without further preamble state, for the benefit of afflicted humanity, that it is called “obesity.” In the course of my remarks I may be led into the use of what may appear strong expressions; and if I should unwittingly offend the susceptibilities of any fat reader, he or she will, I trust, forgive it, as coming from one who has, as it were, gone through the mill, and been subjected to the like ridicule and the like temptations as themselves.

For thirty-eight years I’ve been a martyr to obesity. At my birth, as I am credibly informed, I was enormous—a freak of nature that was clearly intended for twins. As I developed into boyhood I still maintained the same pronounced pattern; and when I entered the Army as an ensign, it was said, with a certain amount of truth, that I was eighteen years of age and 18 stone in weight. I am particular in giving these otherwise uninteresting details, for I am aware from experience how fat people catch at every straw to evade a “regimen,” and invariably say as I did, “Nothing will make me thin,” “I’ve tried everything,” “It’s natural in our family,” “My father weighed nineteen stone,” &c., &c. I say to these people, “This is rubbish. I don’t care if your father weighed forty and your grandmother fifty stone; I’ll GUARANTEE to REDUCE you perceptibly and with PERFECT SAFETY if you’ll guarantee to follow my instructions.”

For the past fifteen years I’ve tried every remedy, with, however, the invariable result—that they did me no good, or at least so little that I came to the conclusion that the result did not repay the inconvenience. It must here be understood that when I refer to “remedies,” I do not speak of some that aspire to that title, which, if they don’t kill, don’t certainly cure; nor of others which will assuredly first cure and then as certainly kill—though I confess to have given even these a trial, and swallowed ingredients that don’t come well out of analysis. I would warn all zealous fat people to be careful of these concoctions, and at least consult a physician before saturating their systems with poisons. I do not even refer to other “remedies,” admittedly and which I have found safe, though before concluding my hints I shall have a word to say about them, and give my opinion of their respective titles to merit, on the principle that “a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse.” In support of my claim to credence I may state that my appearance was known to almost everybody, many of whom have since seen me as I now am; and though I cannot produce testimonials from a corpulent clergyman in Australia who weighed 40 stone and now only 14, and never felt better in his life, nor from the fat Countess del Quackador, of Buenos Ayres, who attributes her recovery to the sole use of —, still I can produce myself, and seeing is usually admitted to be half way to believing. My theory is based on that of that excellent man and apostle of corpulency, the late Mr. Banting—a theory which, as propounded by him, was in a crude state, but, like all great discoveries, is capable of improvement based on experience. In short, I agree with him as a whole, but differ on many essential points. I felt, whilst practising his treatment, that something was wanting, and my experience has since discovered what that something is. Others like myself may have found the Banting theory deficient beyond a certain point. I would ask these to give mine a fair trial for three months.