“You can’t have that,” says the Captain gruffly; and he snatches the handkerchief out of my hand.
Well, of all the unbelievable stupidity!
Suicide again, I suppose. But has it never occurred to anyone responsible for this System that a man can strangle himself more easily with his undershirt or drawers than with his handkerchief?
Ah! I recall it now—the case of that poor fellow who committed suicide down in this place several years ago. It was with his handkerchief that he strangled himself; so I have been told.
The official remedy, therefore, for suicide in the punishment cells is to take away your handkerchief.
And then—leave you your underclothes.
In none too pleasant a frame of mind toward prison officialdom, I enter my iron cage. It is the first one of the eight and is absolutely empty of everything except a papier-mâché bucket. There is no seat, no bed, no mattress or bedding, no place to wash, no water to wash with, nothing—except the bucket. I presume I ought to be grateful even for that. But I wish it had a cover.
A convict trusty, who now appears within the radius of the electric light, hands me a round tin can, and the grated door is banged to and locked. I take my seat upon the floor and await developments.
Soon the trusty hands me, through an extra large slot in the door, a roll of pieces of newspaper, evidently intended for possible toilet purposes. There soon follows a slice of bread, and then there is poked through the slot the end of a long tin funnel which holds a precise measure of water. I hold my tin can to the end of the funnel and receive a gill—neither more nor less than exactly one gill—which is to last me through the night. I never appreciated before what a small quantity is measured by a gill. The water covers the bottom of my tin can to the depth of about an inch and a half.
And three gills of water is all the inmates of this place are allowed in twenty-four hours.