The Man Behind the Bars

by Winifred Louise Taylor

My visits to the penitentiary were never oftener than twice a year, and I usually limited the list of my interviews to twenty-five. With whatever store of cheerfulness and vitality I began these interviews, by the time I had entered into the lives of that number of convicts I was so submerged in the prison atmosphere, and the demand upon my sympathy had been so exhausting, that I could give no more for the time. I found that the shortest and the surest way for me to release myself from the prison influence was to hear fine stirring music after a visit to the penitentiary. But for years I kept my list up to twenty-five, making new acquaintances as the men whom I knew were released. Prisoners whom I did not know would write me requesting interviews, and the men whom I knew often asked me to see their cell-mates, and I had a touch-and-go acquaintance with a number of prisoners not on my lists.

Thus my circle gradually widened to include hundreds of convicts and ex-convicts of all grades, from university men to men who could not read; however, it was the men who had no friends who always held the first claim on my sympathy; and as the years went on I came more and more in contact with the "habitual criminals," the hopeless cases, the left-over and forgotten men; some of them beyond the pale of interest even of the ordinary chaplain—for there are chaplains and chaplains, as well as convicts and convicts.

I suppose it was the very desolation of these men that caused their quick response to any evidence of human interest. In their eagerness to grasp the friendship of any one who remembered that they were still men—not convicts only—these prisoners would often frankly tell the stories of their lives; admitting guilt without attempt at extenuation. No doubt it was an immense relief to them to make a clean breast of their past to one who could understand and make allowance.

This was not always so; some men lied to me and simply passed out of my remembrance; but I early learned to suspend judgment, and when I saw that a man was lying through the instinct of self-defence, because he did not trust me, I gave him a chance to "size me up," and reassure himself as to my trustworthiness. "Why, I just couldn't go on lying to you after I saw that you were ready to believe in me," was the candid admission of one who never lied to me again.

Among these convicts I encountered some unmistakable degenerates. The most optimistic humanitarian cannot deny that in all classes of life we find instances of moral degeneracy. This fact has been clearly demonstrated by sons of some of our multimillionaires. And human nature does not seem to be able to stand the strain of extreme poverty any better than it stands the plethora caused by excessive riches. The true degenerate, however, is usually the result of causes too complicated or remote to be clearly traced. But throughout my long experience with convicts I have known not more than a dozen who seemed to me black-hearted, deliberate criminals; and among these, as it happened, but one was of criminal parentage. Crime is not a disease; but there's no doubt that disease often leads to crime. Of the defective, the feeble-minded, the half-insane, and the epileptic there are too many in every prison; one is too many; but they can be counted by the hundreds in our aggregate of prisons. Often warm-hearted, often with strong religious tendencies, they are deficient in judgment or in moral backbone. The screw loose somewhere in the mental or physical make-up of these men makes the tragedies, the practically hopeless tragedies of their lives; though there may never have been one hour when they were criminal through deliberate intention. Then there are those whose crimes are simply the result of circumstances, and of circumstances not of their own making. Others are prisoners unjustly convicted, innocent of any crime; but every convict is classed as a criminal, as is inevitable; and under the Bertillon method of identification his very person is indissolubly connected with the criminal records. Even in this twentieth century, in so many directions an age of marvellous progress, there is a menacing tendency among legislators to enlarge the borders of life sentences—not according to the number of crimes a man may have committed, but according to the number of times a man has been convicted in courts notoriously indifferent to justice; too often according to the number of times the man has been "the victim of our penal machinery."

I well remember a man three times sent from my own county to the penitentiary for thefts committed during the brain disturbance preceding epileptic convulsions. On one occasion, between arrest and conviction, I saw the man in an unconscious state and in such violent convulsions that it was necessary to bind him to the iron bedstead on which he lay. I knew but little of physiological psychology then; and no one connected the outbreaks of theft with the outbreaks of epilepsy. And the man, industrious and honest when well, was in consequence of epileptic mental disturbance convicted of crime and sent to the penitentiary, and owing to previous convictions from the same cause was classed as an "habitual criminal."

Like instances of injustice resulting from ignorance are constantly occurring. In our large cities where "railroading" men to prison is purely a matter of business, no consideration is given to the individual accused, he is no longer a human being, he is simply "a case." A very able and successful prosecuting attorney—success estimated by the number of "cases" convicted—once said to me: "I have nothing to do with the innocence of the man: I'm here to convict."

By far the most brutal man whom I have ever personally encountered was a modern prototype of the English judge, Lord George Jeffreys—a judge in one of our large cities, who had held in his unholy hands the fate of many an accused person. However, with this one exception, in my experience with judges I have found them courteous, fair-minded, and glad to assist me when convinced that a convict had not been accorded justice.

We find in the prisons the same human nature as in the churches; far differently developed and manifested; but not so different after all, as we should expect, remembering the contrast between the home influence, the education, environment, and opportunity of the inmates of our prisons with that of the representatives of our churches. In our prisons we find cowardice, brutality, dishonesty, and selfishness. Are our church memberships altogether free from these defects? Surely, unquestionably, in our churches we do find the highest virtues: love, courage, fortitude, tenderness, faithfulness, unselfishness. And in every prison in this land these same virtues—love, tenderness, courage, fortitude, faithfulness, unselfishness—are to be found; often hidden in the silence of the heart, but living sparks of the divine life which is our birthright. And yet between these prisons and the churches there has long existed an almost impassable barrier of distrust, equally strong on both sides.

I once called with a friend upon the wife of a convict who, relating an incident in which she had received great kindness from a certain lady very prominent in church circles, said: "I was so surprised: I could not understand her being so kind—for she was a Christian." "Why, there's nothing strange in the kindness of a Christian," said my friend. "Miss Taylor and I are both Christians." The prisoner's wife paused a moment, then said, with slow emphasis: "That is impossible."