The monks of Melrose made gude kail
On Fridays, when they fasted;
And wanted neither beef nor ale
So long us their neighbours lasted.
At all events, the poor man began to imagine that there was no such potluck for him as he could get every day of the year in any penitentiary throughout the land. He and his little ones were starving on a crust of bread, and cast envious looks at the tabby waiting about the area gate for the daily visit of the cats’-meat-man. Why should he not have as good a dinner as the felon who had broken into the house with his centre-bit, or had broken the bank with his frauds? Why should he pace homewards day after day, pale-cheeked, hollow-eyed, with sinking heart and hungry blood, all for the crime of being honest? A cry of indignation rose throughout the country. If people did not go the length of supposing that our prisoners are fed on turtle-soup, and sleep on feather-beds, they declared at least that the management of prisons is such as to place a heavy premium on crime. The criminal is not punished, but rewarded. Our philanthropy has gone too far. We are milksops. Gaolers are gentlemen; turnkeys are bland as the angels that opened the prison doors; they take care that hinges never grate harshly on the ear, and they shoot the bolts sweetly, softly, solemnly, as dying falls of music. Success to swindling! When swindlers are thus petted, who would not go to prison? Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage. Let us have jolly dinners with shut doors in preference to empty stomachs under the open sky. Instead of plenty to do, and nothing to eat, let us have the crank on Christian principles—that is, in a fine combination of texts of scripture and boiled beef. After all, there is not a little attraction in the fleshpots of Egypt, and for the sake of the garlic, the leeks and the feast of fat things, with which their souls are satisfied, the chosen Israel long to enter once more the house of bondage, rather than serve God in the wilderness on a diet of sparrows—for what else are quails, at least according to the London experience? Lost in those deserts of brick and mortar, which all great cities are—famished and faint as he treads “the stony-hearted Oxford Street”—the British workman is fain to enter the house of his bondage for the sake of the daily allowance of cooked meat—three ounces, without bone.
In these flattering descriptions of prison discipline there is a good deal of exaggeration, but there is truth enough to perplex many worthy people who are anxious for the wellbeing of the working classes. The authorities may point to the fact that the fare of our penitentiaries is barely sufficient to keep the prisoners from losing flesh; but this is not a fact which appeals to the popular imagination. We see men feeding sometimes voraciously, and yet never gaining in flesh; while others, who are very spare eaters, grow fat in spite of themselves. Therefore, granting that, scientifically, the weighing machine is a fair test of what a man ought to eat, yet, practically, it is not a standard to which the common sense of mankind can submit. There is a fallacy in these measurements which never imposes upon the poor man. He says—“Nobody takes the trouble to weigh me. I have as little fresh air, and as little liberty as those fellows. I am confined in a close workshop all day. I breathe a stifling atmosphere, which the prisoners do not. My whole manner of life requires even more than these convicts do, a nourishing diet. But neither for myself, nor for my family, can I get such excellent or such abundant food as the greatest scoundrel in England obtains every day from his warders. It is a frightful shame—it is a national crime. Your weighing machine is a grand imposture.”
And what is the nature of this food which excites so much envy? Between one prison and another there are differences, and it must be remembered that in all prisons there is established a considerable difference between criminals confined for short, and those committed for long periods. Prisoners are divided into classes—generally three. First-class prisoners are the aristocracy of crime, who are at the top of their profession, who are in for more than a couple of months, and who are entitled to first-class fare. The second-class are those who have been sentenced to less than two months, but more than a fortnight; while the third and lowest class includes those who have been committed for a fortnight and under. Not to make the prisons too attractive to petty offenders, those in the second and third classes, who may be described as the fluctuating population of our bridewells, get the very commonest fare. Those in the second get but a very small portion of animal food; these in the third get none at all. It is the class who are confined for lengthened terms, and who may almost be described as the permanent population of our prisons, that get the sort of fare which has caused so much envy.
We may take the dietary table of the House of Correction at Cold Bath Fields as a fair example of the mode in which first-class prisoners are fed. They get three meals a day—breakfast, dinner, and supper. At the first of these, every prisoner gets six ounces and two-thirds of bread, together with a pint of cocoa. The bread, it is true, is brown, and our lower classes have a prejudice against loaves made from coarse flour; but the prejudice is an absurd one. The man of wealth regards brown bread as a luxury; it is the most wholesome, nourishing, and palatable form of the staff of life; and those who begin by making faces at it very soon come to enjoy it. Every day a loaf is given to each prisoner, about the size for which we pay twopence in the shops. With two cuts of a knife, it is divided into three parts; it is then placed in a bag and handed to each prisoner, being his allowance for the day. He eats a third at breakfast, a third at dinner, and the remainder at supper. We are still at breakfast, however, and wish to know about that pint of cocoa which is handed to each man. The general way in which the ingredients are mixed is this:—In every hundred pints of the article, as it issues from the kitchen, there ought to be three pounds two ounces of cocoa, eight pounds of molasses, or four pounds of raw sugar, and twelve and a-half pints of milk. So that the allowance to each man, in his pint of cocoa, is half-an-ounce of cocoa, half-a-gill of milk, and either one ounce and a-third of molasses, or two-thirds of an ounce of sugar—the rest being water. If this is not a very luxurious breakfast, still it is not a bad one, and many an honest man would be glad if he could command it for himself and his family.
Dinner comes at two o’clock. The men sit down on narrow benches, before long strips of table. A table-cloth is laid for each; it is a piece of brown paper somewhat less than the size of the present page. Upon this the salt, to which the prisoner is allowed to help himself in any quantity, or his bread, or anything else, is deposited, and after dinner he pockets the paper, for he will receive a new table-cloth on the morrow. His quantity of bread I have already mentioned. It is a third part of the little loaf which is handed to him in a numbered bag, and for each meal weighs six ounces and two-thirds. The foundation of the dinner, however, is animal food. On four days of the week, the prisoners get meat and potatoes; on three they get soup. The meat (though not the soup) has the disadvantage of being served up cold; but this is unavoidable when a great quantity of beef or mutton has to be divided simultaneously into small pieces for a thousand prisoners, who commence their meal at one and the same moment. Each man gets six ounces of meat and half a pound of potatoes. During the winter half of the year the meat is beef and mutton alternate fortnights; during the summer half it is beef entirely. In some prisons the allowance is as low as three ounces of cooked meat without bone; but as provisions are probably dearer in London than anywhere else, it is worth while for the purposes of comparison, to confine our attention to the rations permitted in the Houses of Correction at Clerkenwell and Westminster. We shall then be able to put the case against the prisons in the strongest light. The sufficiency of the prison diet will be equally seen if we now turn to examine the nature of the dinner on the three days of the week, which are allotted to soup, with the usual modicum of bread. Each man gets a pint and a half of soup. This mess is so prepared that in every hundred pints of it there are stewed down two ox-heads, three pounds of barley, six pounds of peas, three pounds of rice, one pound of salt, and two ounces of pepper, with a due proportion of such vegetables as are in season—carrots, leeks, turnips. This is the Westminster receipt. In other prisons the receipt varies a little. At Lewes, for example, every quart of soup contains six ounces of meat without bone, five ounces of potatoes, two ounces of oatmeal and flour mixed, a sufficient quantity of leeks or onions, and a little parsley or thyme. At Horsemonger Lane, it is made from pot liquor of the boiling beef, and contains per pint, an ounce of chopped beef, two ounces of peas or barley, and vegetables seasoned with pepper and salt. At other prisons the mess is made into a sort of Irish stew, that besides containing plenty of nourishment, is rendered palatable by mint or other pot herbs. On the whole it will be admitted that the dinner, if it is of a very plain character, is also substantial, and that no one who can command such fare need starve or complain. There are thousands of poor men who would say that the meal requires but one thing to make it perfect, and that is the glass of beer which is allowed in the Munich prison.
Supper is the meal for which fastidious appetites will have least inclination, for it consists of the usual quantity of bread, together with a pint of gruel. What is this gruel which has such an evil reputation? It contains about one and a half ounces of oatmeal to the pint, and is seasoned with salt or sugar, as the case may be. Now, from the time when Dr. Johnson in his dictionary defined oats to be the substance on which horses are fed in England, and men in Scotland, to the present day, this very fattening article of diet has been the object of innumerable sneers. Lord Kames, with that audacious patriotism for which his countrymen are distinguished, retorted with not a little wit—“Yes, and where can you find such horses and such men?” These matters are very much under the shadow of prejudice. The Hebrew declines ham, and the Englishman can never become partial to frogs and snails. A Scotchman is astonished to find that turnip-tops are eaten in England, and we were all very much surprised when the illustrious Soyer told us not long ago, that the nettle is one of the most delicious green vegetables—fit for the table of a prince, though the poor man can pluck it by the road-side. About this oatmeal, it was but recently that we had some of our public men pronouncing upon its merits in the most dogmatic terms. Mr. Bright described oatmeal porridge as a horrible mess, and seemed to think it one of the grievances of the lower classes in Scotland that they are condemned to feed upon it. The Scotch were at once in arms against him, and they had some right on their side. First of all rose the Duke of Argyll, and declared emphatically that oatmeal porridge is capital food. Then came Dr. Guthrie, who did battle for another preparation of oatmeal, called sowens. “I stand up for Scotland and oatmeal porridge!” he said. “Clearly Mr. Bright knew nothing of what he was speaking about when he disparaged them.” (The Scotch, it will be observed, have a respectful habit of designating their food in the plural number. As kings and editors are always “we,” broth and porridge are always “they.”) “I have heard the case of a countryman of his somewhat in point, who was fain to say a good word for something with less substance. Travelling in the Highlands, he got tired; he got bemisted; he got, what an Englishman, is very apt to do, hungry, and so cast himself upon the hospitality of a cottage he stumbled on. The good woman had no English, and he had no Gaelic; but by the language of signs she came to understand what he wanted. She had no oatmeal in the house—nothing better than what we call sowens. Now sowens, you know, are very good and palatable when they are manufactured; but before that process they bear a remarkable resemblance to dirty water. That the man thankfully swallowed them I make no doubt—for he went home and told his friends that he had been the object of the most remarkable providence that ever befell a human being. Quoth he, after telling the first part of the story, the woman took some dirty water and put it into a pot, and, by the blessing of God, it came out a pudding!” There is certainly one mode of preparing oatmeal which all Englishmen relish—namely, when the finer qualities of the meal are baked into those thin cakes, which are obtained in perfection only in the north of Scotland; and with regard to the gruel at which Mr. Bright and other members of “the bloated aristocracy,” turn up their noses, it is, even in its simplest form, not to be despised by hungering men; while, by the addition of some cheap condiment, it can always be made agreeable to the taste. The prisoners, at all events, partake of it heartily; and a little butter, milk, or treacle, helps it wonderfully.