Chapter XVI

QUACKERY--FOOD--A CHATHAM PRISONER EATS SNAILS AND FROGS--SIR JOSHUA JEBB'S SYSTEM AND ITS DEFECTS.

I have already said in a previous chapter that our prison authorities regard the convicts as mere human machines, all made after the same model, and that the machinery, by some abnormal defect in its original construction constantly impels them in the wrong direction. In official eyes they do not appear to be men having peculiarities of physical construction and constitution, individuality of character, or to have been so designed as to be like other men, moulded by circumstances, or amenable to the influence of education or social position. They look at him through the official spectacles, the lenses of which are carefully adjusted so that the object shall present not only a perfectly uniform appearance but also appear uniformly bad. If the convict is in good health, the machinery working smoothly--but still by the defect in its construction always in the wrong direction--there are the regulation appliances, not for remedying the original defect in the machinery, it must be remembered, and if possible getting it to work in the _right_ direction, but appliances to check, thwart, and by force drive it backward, which in most cases it cannot and will not do, and breakages, ruin of machinery and other appliances also are the only result. They number and ticket the convict according to his sentence, range them all up, count them eleven times a day and say to them, "Convicts, now here you are, all ticketed and counted, all of you are afflicted with some moral disease, we are here to cure you, and we have _one_ pill which will do it, and you must swallow it."

This is the perfection of penal legislation at which, after many royal commissions, and much parliamentary eloquence, we have arrived! One would have imagined that a gigantic quackery and multitudes of quack doctors could have been procured and set in motion with less trouble and at less expense! Only on one point there is universal agreement, let the machine be working either in the right direction or the wrong--so long as it is working it must be oiled, that is a necessity of machine-life, so to speak--the man or convict must be _fed_. But how feed him? To you, my reader, and I, the natural answer would be that the machine must be oiled, or the man fed, in greater or less proportion to the power and capacity of the machine or man, and to the amount of work we require from it or him. But we are both wrong. Our prison authorities say, "Machine, big or little, you shall all have exactly the same quantity of oil, neither more nor less. You little machines there, with oil running all over you, how smoothly and uncomplainingly you work! You big machines, you may creak as you please, your journals may get hot, blaze up and produce universal smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up any of that which is running over your little neighbour there--that is for the pigs, and for _us_." Is not this amazing folly? Or again, suppose we were to take a race-horse, a dray-horse, a farmer's horse, a broken-down hack, and a Shetland horse--for these more nearly resemble the various classes of convicts--and say to them, "Horses, you have all offended the laws of horsedom, and stand fully convicted of clover stealing. For this most heinous crime you are each condemned to draw a load, one ton weight, fifteen miles every day--Sundays excepted--for five years, and your allowance of food will be two feeds of oats, and one allowance of hay per diem;" and what would be the result, supposing that the allowance of hay and oats was just barely sufficient for the average--say the farmer's horse?

First of all the race-horse, able to eat his oats and a portion of the hay, could do with some additional dainty bits, perhaps, but on the whole he has his stomach filled and can live. He is yoked to his load, and being a spirited animal, he goes at it very hard, succeeds for a time; at last he sticks in a rut, puts on a "spurt," and breaks down. He can't do the work. He is put down at six marks a day, or no remission. He is spoiled for ever, and as a racer his days are ended.

The dray-horse comes next, the load is a mere toy to him, he gets his eight marks a day, but by-and-bye he begins to feel the effects of an empty stomach, to fill which he would require double the allowance of food he receives; and in the long run he too breaks down and is passed into the hands of the veterinary surgeon, and is ruined as a useful animal.

Next comes the farmer's horse, and the load and diet being suitable to him, he can do the punishment and easily satisfy the law.

The broken-down hack is never yoked at all, he passes into the hands of the surgeon, and there remains. While the little Shetlander is in clover; he never had so many oats before--has actually as much again as he can consume--and the cart and harness being too large, and the load altogether ridiculous for his strength, he is never put to it, and so escapes the legal punishment. And so it is that one portion of the inhabitants of horsedom, pointing to the Shetlander, cry out that "the convicts have too much food, they are up to the eyes in luxuries;" another portion, pointing to the dray horse, say "the convicts are starved, and are dying of hunger;" whilst a third answers both by pointing to the farm horse and saying that "he can do the work and satisfy the law. Why should they not all be treated alike? a horse is a horse all the world over."

Our system of dieting and working convicts is exactly similar to the above; only at the invalid prison where I was confined the law was not adhered to. I knew prisoners who ate double the quantity of food allowed them, and I knew others who did not eat above half. Sometimes it happened that a voracious prisoner could not get his food exchanged so as to increase its bulk, and in that case he would be compelled to seek refuge in hospital. If the diet there was not sufficient, God help him, for from man no further aid was to be expected.

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.

Another grievance the prisoners had, of which they loudly complained. It was the custom at the Home Office to forward the prisoners' licenses to the prison once a month, but as a rule these documents were ten days--sometimes three weeks--later than they ought to have been. If a prisoner had earned his marks, and was due for his license, say on the 1st of March, he expected the authorities would keep faith with him, and that his license would arrive on the day it was due. Whatever the convict may be himself, he expects a good example and honourable fulfilment of the engagements on the part of the authorities. In this, however, he was often disappointed, and many a million curses were heaped upon them in consequence. And after all can we wonder at a convict being exasperated if, as it often happened, he had written to a wife, or a father, or brother or sister to meet him on a certain day at the railway station, when he was due for his liberty, and then was disappointed and had to wait a fortnight or three weeks before he could see his friends? This neglect on the part of the authorities at the Home Office, had the effect of making all those who were due for liberation early in the month quite regardless of the prison regulations, as one short sentence would not have made any difference to them under the circumstances.

In Sir Joshua Jebb's day anything of this kind seldom happened. The prisoner's chief grievance then was the robbery of his food by the officers, and as the discipline was lax a mutiny would be the result. This had a good effect for a short time, and as long as the attention of the press was directed to the question, but matters soon became as bad as ever, and it was not until the subject came before the criminal courts that there was any improvement. The name of Sir Joshua Jebb is still held in great veneration by the convict, but as the duty of carrying out his system was entrusted to men of a totally opposite character, it was impossible for it to succeed. Independent, however, of its moral administration, it had defects inherent in itself. No penal bill will suit all moral complaints, and the sooner we depart from quackery the better it will be for the prisoner and the nation as well. Sir Joshua Jebb's system entered too largely into competition with our workhouses and county jails. The prisoners were never taught suitable trades, they were no doubt supplied with food in abundance, and with some opportunities of learning to be industrious and for improving their minds, but they were completely surrounded by far more powerful counter-influences. Even the higher officials carried on a system of wholesale robbery, and winked at the very large retail business done in the same line by the prisoners and under officials. At Bermuda and Dartmoor convict establishments I believe there were more crimes committed by officers and prisoners together than the prisoners could or would have committed if they had been at liberty. Prisoners could do very much as they liked in those days, and the consequence was that the "roughs," or the worst characters, gave the "ton" to the whole prison. A country bumpkin who had stolen a bag of potatoes, perhaps, soon learned the theory of picking pockets and the art of garotting in these places, and being unequal to the former he would adopt the latter as a means of earning a livelihood. Another cause of the increase in the number of garotting cases, was the conduct of the directors who visited the prisoners and punished the prisoners. Their injustice and incivility to prisoners bore a striking contrast to the mild and dignified civility of Sir Joshua their chief. I have known prisoners return from the presence of a director, foaming with inward rage at being bullied out of the room and punished without being permitted to utter a word in their own defence. In many of these cases I have known the prisoners to be innocent. Such men would go out of prison vowing vengeance on some one, and ready for any deed of darkness that might tempt them. I do not wonder that they took to garotting when I reflect upon their character and the treatment they received in prison. Prisoners seldom, if ever, vow vengeance against a judge or a magistrate; the objects of their wrath are some policeman who has sworn falsely, or some other witness who has committed perjury or betrayed them; and we may naturally seek to inquire why the prison judge is not as favourably regarded as his learned brother who holds open court? I believe the reason is this, that a prison director can starve and flog and retain prisoners in confinement for years, according to the length of their respective remissions, and none but those directly interested in full and quiet prisons know anything about it. If the governor and directors of prisons had to dispense justice in presence of a reporter for the press, how great would be the reformation immediately effected. To the prisoner it would also be welcome, for if it ensured him of nothing else but civility it would be a boon. A civil word goes a long way with a convict, and it is so seldom he gets one from the chiefs of prisons that he is apt to place a value upon it beyond its real worth.