C.—A French housebreaker who had been in English prisons before. Sentence, seven years. Lost his leg in consequence of disease in the knee-joint, and recovered speedily. He was sent home a few months after the operation, and before he had been so long in prison as I had been at the time of my request.
I now felt rather unhappy under the severity with which I was treated, and wrote a letter to my brother, in which I mentioned having seen the visiting director; but this letter was also suppressed, and I was warned not to mention the director's name in any letter, or inform my friends of the suppressed letter to Mr. Cobden. I felt hurt at its suppression, for its spirit was most unobjectionable; and the governor seemed to think so too, for he allowed me a sheet of paper to write to the director. My object in this letter was to obtain permission to petition the Home Secretary for liberty to go abroad. At this time all healthy and sound prisoners of my age, who had received the same sentence, were about due for their "ticket," in Western Australia; and as I did not see why the loss of a leg should cause me to be kept in prison for years after they were liberated, I resolved to petition to go abroad. I accordingly wrote my letter to the director, carefully excluding any reference to my treatment in the government prison, so as not to give any offence. An answer came back, in suspicious haste, that I was to petition the Home Secretary in the very same language as I had used in the letter. I was not exactly pleased with this, as I wished to say something about the merits of my case; but there was no help for it, and I must petition as I was told, or not petition at all. I petitioned accordingly, in precisely the same language, merely using the third instead of the first person singular. But it was of no use. Indeed I do not believe the petition was ever sent to the Secretary of State at all. All these documents go in the first instance to the directors, and they are understood to deal with them as they think proper.
Sometimes their machinery gets out of order, and the method by which these things are done gets to be exposed. Two cases where answers were received to petitions which were never sent, are very familiar to the majority of convicts. In the one case the prisoner had drawn his paper, but delayed writing the petition. The reply came notwithstanding, "Not sufficient grounds." In the other case the petition was discovered mislaid in the office, or some other part of the prison, after the prisoner had received his answer. The official replies to petitions appear to be stereotyped, and the names of the petitioners are merely written on the margin. One reply does for any number of petitions, and all the officials have to do is to write the name of the prisoner who draws petition paper on the margin of the answer, about a month after the paper has been issued. On the day I wrote the last petition I was discharged from the hospital, and transferred down-stairs to a room containing twenty-four prisoners.
CHAPTER X.
THE PRISON—DAILY ROUTINE—READINGS IN PRISON—QUARRELS AMONG THE PRISONERS—PROTESTANTS VERSUS CATHOLICS—SCHOOL—SUNDAYS IN PRISON—"SACRAMENT BLOKES"—TURNING POINT IN PRISONERS' CAREER.
My readers must now descend with me from the hospital, to what the convicts termed the twenty-four bedded room in the prison. In the cells and in the hospital, quietness reigned, but in the twenty-four bedded room it was different. Here the prisoners talked and conducted themselves very much as they felt inclined, and in the evenings the noise and tumult was sometimes beyond description. The inmates were constantly changing, some going upstairs to hospital, some coming from it, and every now and again there were fresh arrivals from other prisons. The daily routine observed here and in the similar wards was as follows:—
We started out of bed at half-past five a.m., summer and winter; washed, dressed, and made our beds, and two or three times every week assisted in scrubbing the floor. At six o'clock the officer opened the room door and counted us. At half-past six we had breakfast. About twenty minutes past seven we were ranked up in the corridor, and counted a second time. At half-past seven we were in chapel. At eight o'clock we were on parade and counted a third time. Those who worked outside and were receiving full diet went to their work. Those who worked inside walked on the parade until half-past eight. They were then ranked up and counted for the fourth time; and at nine o'clock all were at work. At 11·45 we were counted for the fifth time, and at twelve o'clock we were at dinner. At 12·50 we were again ranked in the corridor and counted for the sixth time. At one o'clock we were on parade and counted for the seventh time, before exercise commenced. At ten minutes after two we were counted for the eighth time, and at two we were all again at work. When we left off work in the evening we were counted for the ninth time, amongst the party with whom we worked, and for the tenth time when we returned to the ward. At half-past five we got supper, and at half-past seven we were ordered to bed. At eight o'clock we were commanded to cease talking, and at nine o'clock the night officer counted us for the eleventh time and left us to repose. I used to rejoice when bed-time came, for I then could be alone and at home. Then there were no prison walls for me, for I had ceased brooding over the past, and endeavoured to peer into and prepare for the uncertain future. In winter and spring, when the weather was cold, it used to be rather trying for me to stand so long on parade being counted. About an hour or an hour-and-a-half was spent in this way each day. Then the clothing of those of us who worked indoors was the same on the coldest day in winter as on the hottest day in summer. This was an excellent arrangement for keeping the hospital supplied with patients. I knew many who suffered from this cause, and some who attributed their death to the want of proper under-clothing. I felt the cold more perhaps than the others, as my hands were exposed holding my crutches, and my speed in walking could never get beyond that of a goods train, whilst my companions could run at express speed when it suited them.
My employment was knitting and reading aloud to the prisoners. At that time, and up to a very recent date, it was the custom where fifty or a hundred prisoners were at work, for one of the prisoners to read aloud an hour every forenoon and afternoon. When I commenced this reading, my audience were very careless about listening, unless when I read some amusing work of fiction. Indeed, other prisoners did not attempt to read any book of a more solid description. But during the years I was engaged in this way I had the most abundant and satisfactory testimony that I had obtained an influence over the minds of the prisoners, and had succeeded in attracting their attention to general literature in a more effectual manner than any of my predecessors.
My readers will have been accustomed, perhaps, to regard convicts as very ignorant men, but it must be borne in mind that they belong to all classes of society, and if I were to speak of them in the mass, I should say that they were much more intelligent and as well educated as the ordinary peasantry of England. When I commenced reading in prison there were a good many works in the library, which were afterwards withdrawn as being too amusing for the place. These were such works as "The Last Days of Pompeii," "Now and Then," "Adam Bede," "Poor Jack," "Margaret Catchpole," "Irving's Sketch-book," "Dickens's Christmas Tales," &c. There still remained periodicals with tales in them, and these with a mixture of historical, biographical and other-works, constituted the general reading in the work-rooms. The periodicals I note in the order of their popularity, "Chambers's Journal," "Leisure Hour," "Good Words," "The Quiver," "Sunday Magazine," and "Sunday at Home." The reading of an article in the "Leisure Hour," entitled the "Thief in the Confessional," was the chief cause of the readings being discontinued both in the work-rooms and the hospital. As this happened recently and the particulars are still fresh in my memory I will narrate them here. There were readings aloud in four hospital and three work-rooms in the prison. In the hospital the Roman Catholics were kept by themselves, and had a Roman Catholic reader. In the prison they were scattered among the Protestants, and in the three work-rooms referred to, perhaps about one-fifth of the prisoners were Roman Catholics. In these rooms a Protestant reader was appointed, and there was no disturbance about this arrangement until the arrival of a few Fenians, and a zealous or rather an officious priest.