Six Years in the Prisons of England

by Unknown

I recollect having a conversation with a prisoner who had just arrived with eighteen others from the prison at Chatham. He had got his leg broken accidentally while at work there, and the medical men had not made a very good job of putting the bones together, so that he did not expect ever to be able to use it. I asked him what sort of a place Chatham was under the new system.

"Oh, it's the worst station out," he replied, "they are starved and worked to death. They are even eating the candles, and one man died lately who had twenty or thirty wicks in his stomach when the post mortem took place. In the docks I have seen fellows pick up the dirtiest muck you ever saw, and swallow it! There are lots of fellows there who eat all the snails and frogs they can get hold of. I have seen one man several times swallow a live frog as easily as you could bolt an oyster. Frogs and snails are considered delicacies at Chatham."

"How did you get on with the food yourself?"

"Well, I was never much of an eater, and I could get on middling well with it; but then the food was better there than it is here. This is the worst station out for 'grub.' The cook and steward must be d—— villains to rob a lot of prisoners of their food."

"Do they all get eight marks a day at Chatham?"

"No, not nearly all; many only get seven, and some not more than six. The 'screws' there are —— tyrants, and if they don't mind what they are about some of them will get murdered. There are a few fellows there would rather be 'topt' than be messed about in such a way, and have to die in prison at last. What sort of 'screws' have you here?"

"Well, the majority of them are very civil fellows; there are a few, perhaps, inclined to exceed their duty, but on the whole they are not bad, and you will have yourself to blame if you get into trouble. Bad masters make bad servants, and I have no doubt the Chatham officers are merely carrying out the directors' orders when they tyrannise over the men."

"What sort of a doctor is this you have got here? he gets a very bad name."

"Well, he is blamed for not giving prisoners treatment until they are just dying, but I do not pretend to be a judge of such matters myself. My advice to you is to be civil and grateful, and do not bother him about food. Do not ask him for anything, just tell him exactly how you feel, and you may do very well here."

The prediction as to the murdering of some of the officers made above by the prisoner was shortly after verified, and the culprit was hanged at Maidstone quite recently. At the Yorkshire prison they had what appeared to me a more sensible method of apportioning the diet. The prisoners were weighed once a month, and if any of them lost weight they were allowed an additional quantity of dry bread to make it up. In the Surrey prison the practice of exchanging and trafficking in food amongst the prisoners counteracted the evils that would otherwise have resulted from the regulations being strictly adhered to; and in the Scottish prisons the use of tobacco appeared to have the same effect. While on the subject of diet, I may allude to a rule which had a very bad effect on the minds of the prisoners who expected justice at the hands of the officials. In the dietary scale brought out in 1864, it was specified that when a prisoner had been two years in prison, he would be permitted to have the option of tea and two ounces of bread in lieu of the oatmeal gruel for supper, and when he had been three years in prison he might have roasted or baked meat in lieu of boiled. The convicts sentenced under the old Act were placed in the first or lowest grade in the scale of the Act of 1864, but were denied the option of those changes of diet which were permitted under it, and which were considered necessary for the preservation of their health by the medical authorities. The consequence was, and is, that there were prisoners with life sentences who had been ten, twelve, and sixteen years in prison on a diet inferior to those who had only been in prison two years. No tea and bread at night for them, and no roasted meat. This regulation was considered unjust by the prisoners, who said, very naturally, "They took us off the good diet allowed by the old Act under which we were sentenced, and placed us on the lowest scale of the new dietary, and now, after being two years on the diet we ought not to have been put on at all, we are not even allowed the changes open to other prisoners. It is scandalous, after being ten or twelve years in prison, to see other prisoners who have only just commenced their time much better off than we are," &c.