AND J='RIS0NER5 ^^ ..„«^'i '■"■'. / wm* .ril?T!Tnr«'"fr,vwrn-i. ^■'■nuv c.\ WmTnv:trrr\?rnmrxr"' 1 i '■i I ! m J IT r Rev. J.W.HORSLEY. THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES IN MEMORY OF H. Lawrence vVhite PRESENTED BY Mrs. Ruth Vyhite A FEW words to explain the frontispiece may be useful. It is a reproduction of the card of invitation issued when the Prince of Wales opened the magnificent buildings reared on the site of Clerkenwell Prison, and within its old boundary walls. The keynote is struck by the copy of a picture from Punch in 1847, whichoccupies the central medallion at the top, and bears the legend, "The Pre- diction." A prison scowls and exclaims against the loss of business entailed by a neighbouring school which, with long arms and a smiling face, gathers children in and pur- poses to cut off the supplies of crime. It is balanced at the bottom of the card by a view of the Hugh Myddelton School opened on December 13, 1893. This date was ap- propriately chosen as being that of the blowing down of the prison wall by Fenians in 1867, when a large number of persons in the houses outside were killed or wounded. No prisoners escaped or were hurt owing to Captain Codd, the Governor — and subsequently my father-in-law — having put the exercise hour earlier owing to information he had received, but the intention was to allow the Fenian prisoners to escape from the exercise-yard. The gap in the wall is shown in the top left hand of the medallion, and it may still be traced in the wall of the children's playground. Other contrasts are afforded by the view of a typical prison cell and of a school class-room, and of the spacious Boys' Hall in which the Prince presided over the opening ceremony (his only previous visit to the place having been shortly after the outrage in 1867), and of the centre of the old prison with a view down one of its five-tiered galleries of cells, two of which, knocked into one, served as my office. The ground design of the card represents the leaves and roses which are metaphorically to blossom on the spot where previously "the wicked" were "folden together as thorns." I may add that the prison gate on the cover of this book is that of Newgate Prison, which became attached to Clerkenwell when abolished as a separate prison. The cat of nine tails on the cover is of an out-of-date pattern, knots having been now for a long time disused by order. I. \\. H. ■ — / Prisons and Prisoners BY REV. J. W. HORSLEY AUTHOR OF •■ JOTTINGS FROM JAIL" NEW YORK M. F. MANSFIELD AND COMPANY 22 EAST SIXTEENTH STREET CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAGE I. The Last Ages of Prisons. — 2. A Prison Calendar. — 3. The Last Prison Statistics. i CHAPTER H. I. Is Crime Reducible? — 2. Juvenile Crime. — 3. Family Crime. — 4. Alcoholic Infanticide 18 CHAPTER HI. I. Education and Crime. — 2. Not all Prisoners .\re Criminals. — 3. Mouthpieces ... 46 CHAPTER IV. I. Money Spent on Drink. — 2. Phraseology about Drink. — 3. Teetotalers in Prison. — 4. Proportion of Drink-caused Crime . 74 CHAPTER V. I. Prison Slang. — 2. A Thief's Autobiography. 95 919333 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VI. PAGE I. Children in Prison. — 2. Not "Whether" but "Why." — 3. Sunday School Influence . 126 CHAPTER VII. Inscriptions in Cells 143 CHAPTER VIII. Suicide — Its Causes . 164 CHAPTER IX. Prison Sermons 191 CHAPTER X. Ten Desirable Reforms . . . . .221 CHAPTER XI. AiMERiCAN Prisons . . . . . .228 PRISONS AND PRISONERS CHAPTER I I. The Last Ages of Prisons. — 2. A Prison Calendar. — 3. The Last Prison Statistics. I. The Last Ages of Prisons. IN the middle of the i8th century the people of England were perhaps, socially, at their lowest point. It is not only from an ecclesiastical point of view that we might describe the Georgian period as the Dark Ages: 1 8 19, when the Queen was born, was for many practical purposes still the middle of the 1 8th century so far as social progress was concerned. Nay, we may even say the same with regard to 1837, when she came to the throne. E no-land at that time was unknown save to a very few English people. Not a single railway had been completed. There was no Penny Post, and the majority of 2 PRISONS AND PRISONERS the country folk could neither read nor write. Why did no light or leading come from the State ? Because the State of that time was hopelessly corrupt. Elections were all carried by open bribes. The Civil Service was full of great men's nominees. Why was the Church, then, not as a leaven to the lump ? At that period pluralism was rampant ; there was deadness everywhere save i*n a few self-styled evangelical souls who confused worldliness with an interest in the well-being of society. Those two rivers of fresh thought and action which are represented by the names of Pusey, Keble, and Newman on the one hand, and of Maurice, Kingsley, and Robertson on the other, were then, as movements, tentative, and as streams only in their rill stage, separate without any apparent chance of swelling to their present dimensions, and with still less apparent chance of approaching, and of that partial coalescence of to-day whereby the momentum and the fertilising power of each are mightily increased. At this time with regard to crime and criminals there was law, but there was little thought of justice, a little less of equity, and none of mercy with regard to the principles of punishment and the right treatment of the A PRISON CALENDAR 3 offender. It is hard for us to believe that our grandfathers had heads or hearts in the face of many things that we find not merely in the writings of John Howard, but even fifty years after his death. It is hard to believe that little more than a century ago John Howard had to rouse the nation from its voluntary blindness and pagan apathy, and to show the awlul results of having excluded, or not admitted, aoencies for moral and relio-ious reform into our prisons, which were then pest-houses of physical and moral evil. His suggestions were many and minute. Few have not been adopted ; none were impracticable : and were he to re-visit our prisons to-day he would find little to condemn, and hardly anything from a religious, moral, philanthropic, or sanitary point of view of which he might not say, " I recommended that." 2. A Prison Calendar. The followincr condensed Pris(jn Calendar which I have compiled from many sources may be interesting, and tend to excite thought and prevent error and anachnjnisms in writing. It will show that public opinion and .State action has progressed, and also 4 PRISONS AND PRISONERS that Prison Reform began late, and proceeded at first with slow steps. Sir Moses Montefiore, for example, might have told us in 1885 that he remembered seeing a woman burned in the Old Bailey for passing bad money (this was in 1789), and in the next year he might have attended the funeral of John Howard. He was nearly ten when the Lord George Gordon Riots took place, whereof Dickens has written in " Barnaby Rudge," and their instigator died in Newgate of gaol fever (or typhus), which has long been extinct in gaols. When he had nearly attained his majority, the penalty of death, "without benefit of clergy," was attached to over 160 offences. He was nearly thirty before soldiers and sailors were not liable to be hung if travelling without passes. He was over forty when the police force was instituted, and he saw the beginning and the end of our system of transportation to what in his lifetime became the Australian Colonies. He could remember there being 18 prisons in London, and 518 in the United Kingdom. Dates. 1577. Black Assize at Oxford. All in Court died within 40 hours from gaol fever, including the^ Judge and the Sheriff. A PRISON CALENDAR 5 1596. Banishment from the Kingdom provided in Act as punishment for rogues and vagrants. 16 18. (leffray MynshuU's Prison Essays. 1 619. Transportation to America begun. 1699. S.P.C.K. Committee on Prisons. 1704. Pope Clement XI. erects a separate prison in Rome for the education and reformation of youthful criminals. 1 717. Transportation regularly introduced by Act of Parliament. 1728. Gen. Oglethorp's Committee of House of Com- mons to investigate the state of the prisons. 1 730. At Taunton Lent Assize some hundreds, including the Judge and Sheriff, died of gaol fever. 1735. Will. Hay's Parliamentary Committee on Prisons. 1 75 1. Prison Taps abolished. 1756. 154 out of 170 persons died in the Black Hole at Calcutta. 1772. Prisoners refusing to plead treated as guilty, and pressing abolished. 1773. Act enabling Chaplains to be appointed. 1774. Act for abolishing gaoler's fees. 1775. Transportation to America ceased. 1777- John Howard's "State of the Prisons" published. 1783. Last execution at Tyburn, first at Newgate. 1787. Transportation to Botany Bay begun. 1789. Last woman burned, after being hung at the Old Bailey, for passing bad coin. 1790. John Howard died. 1798. Thames Marine Police establi.shed. 1803. An R.C. priest, under sentence of transportation, set free at Sydney to act as R.(^ Chaplain. 1810. Komilly's Act for abolishing hanging for stealing calico from bleaching grounds. 1810. To this date 9,000 convicts had been sent to New South Wales ; po[)ulation of the colony, 10,500, of whom 1,000 were convicts. 1814. Api)ointment of Chaplains made compulsory. 1 81 5. Pillory abolished except for forgers. PRISONS AND PRISONERS 1816. Mrs. Fry began work in Newgate. 1817. Treadmill first set up — at Brixton. 18 1 8. 518 prisons in the United Kingdom, to which above 100,000 prisoners were committed in the year. 1820. Last Commitment (of the Cato Street Con- spirators) to the Tower. 1,236 sentenced to death in England and Wales; 107 hung, of whom only 10 for murder. 1825. First American Reformatory opened at New York. 1829. Last execution for forgery. Metropolitan Police established. 1 83 1. Criminals to population — Ireland, i to 490; England, i to 740; Scotland, i to 1,130; Wales, I to 2,320. 1833. A child, 9 years old, sentenced to be hung for poking a stick through a window and stealing 2^d., reprieved by " the gracious mercy of the Sovereign." 1834. Silent System introduced at Coldbath Fields. 1835. Borough Police established. Prisons Reform Act. 1837. Pillory abolished. P'irst Reformatory (Parkhurst) opened. Chaplain appointed to Norfolk Island Convict Settlement after ten years of its establishment. 1838. 158,000 lashes inflicted in one year in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land. 1839. County Police established. 1840. Up to this date, no diet but bread and water in St. Alban's Gaol. 1845. First International Prison Reform Congress — at Frankfort. 1847. Parliamentary Committee on Prisons and Punishments. 1853. Ticket-of-Ieave system established. 1854. First Reformatory Act. First Industrial Schools Act for Scotland. 1857. Industrial Schools Act for England. THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS 7 1862. Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society Act. 1863. Coroner's Inquest to be held on every prisoner who died in prison. 1865. Prisons Act. 1866. New Industrial Schools Act. 1867. Transportation to Australia ceased after 451 sent this year. 1868. Last public, and first private, execution. 1875. Transportation to Gibraltar ceased. 1877. 113 prisons in England and Wales (56 in 1897). 1878. Horsemonger Lane and 36 other small prisons closed. All Local Prisons under Government from April 2nd. 3. The Last Prison Statistics. Prisoners Received in 1896. Males . . . Females Males. On remand... ... ... 20,771 For trial 3.97 1 Summary conviction ... 93,454 Convictions on indictments 524 Convictions on court martial 1,098 119,818 Surety prisoners ... ... 1,323 Debtors io,934 Other prisoners (Non-pay- ment of maintenance and contempt) ... ... 2,127 134,202 134, 202 45,380 179. 582 Females. ... 4,695 ... 576 ... 39,008 61 44,340 = 164, 158 592 = I, 915 441 = II, 375 7 = 2 134 45.380 179 582 8 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Receptions of ■prisoners in I lie lcir>^est and snuillest prisons. Holloway and New- gate ... ... 21,190 Liverpool... ... 17,904 Manchester ... 16,138 Pentonville ... 9,457 Wakefield ... 8,197 Wandsworth ... 8,183 Durham ... ... 7,087 Birmingham ... 6,654 Newcastle... ... 6,003 Preston ... ... 5,641 Leeds Stafford ... Devizes ... Hereford Shepton Mallet Dorchester Bodmin ... Carmarthen Bedford Brecon Ruthin ... 5.454 5.195 656 631 625 616 542 409 333 291 256 Pentonville, all males; Wandsworth, i female (pre- sumably for execution). Disposal of uncoireieted prisoners. Discharged... ... ... ... ... 7,869 Convicted summarily ... ... ... 10,261 To Industrial School 118 Committed for trial ... ... ... 4.5 18 Died 6 To Naval and Military 1,704 To Asylums ... ... ... ... 6 24,481 Disposal of prisoners conunitled for trial. Acquitted ... Convicted ... Absconded | , •, •,■ . \ T^. , \ while waitm" Died ) *= ( To Asylums 1,449 7,551 4 4 26 9,034 THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS Disposal of convicted piisoiicrs. Released — sentence ended ... ...142,930 on payment of fine ... ... 6,386 on finding sureties ... ... 102 on pardon or remission ... 199 on licence ... ... -■• 1,224 ,, on medical grounds 31 Removed — to Reformatories ... ... 222 to Refuge ... ... ... 2 to Asylums ... ... ... 158 Executed ... ... ... ... ••• iQ Suicide ... ... ... ••• ••• 4 Died 121 i5i>399 Nature of sentences on those received into prison. Death 33 Penal servitude 777 Eorfeiture of ticket of leave ... ... 19 Guilty, but insane ... ... ... •■• 23 Hard labour 108,056 ^Vithout hard labour 40,088 First class misdemeanants ... ... 4 Court martial ... ... ..• ••• 1,098 150,098 Additions to imprisonment. Flogging 25 Whipping ... ... ... ..• ••• 49 Police supervision ... ... ... ... 254 Licence revoked ... ... .•• ••• 250 Convicted prisoners. — Leni^th of sentence. Death (commuted) ... ... 11 Penal servitude for life ... 6 „ 20 years... 5 16 years... 2 all males > ID PRISONS AND PRISONERS Penal servitude foi 15 years.. 4 (one female) 14 years... 12 years.. I 8 (one female) 10 years.. 13 8 years.. 7 years.. 6 years.. 5 years.. 4 years.. 3 years.. 9 (one female) 76 (four females) 15 (three females) . 203 (five females) 55 (two females) 380 (thirty-four females) Table XXXV of the Judicial Statistics for 1896 gives the previous convictions of con- victed prisoners, and is interesting therefore as to the prevalence of recidivism. Of the 85,405 convicted prisoners (55,097 males and 30,308 females), 21,932 have been convicted once previously, 10,962 twice, 7,531 thrice, 5,613 four times, and 4,387 five times. The ne.xt column gives us those whose pre- vious convictions have been from six to ten, and they number 13,556. Then come those more habitual offenders with from eleven to twenty convictions, and they number i[,5i9, and finally we get the "incurable" class of those who have been convicted over twenty times, and in some cases over two hundred or even over three hundred times. They are 9,906 in nuniber. One thing to be noted is that whereas in the class of those with only one previous con- THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS ii viction the males are 16,596 and the females 5,396, in the last class the women have caught up, outstripped, and practically doubled the men. the numbers being, males 3,579, females 6,327. In the column "six to ten times" men are in the ratio of 8 to 4 females ; in the column "eleven to twenty times" they are but 6 to 5 ; and then they sink to 3 to 5. This phenomenon is certainly due to the special characteristics of female intemperance. The Tables giving the degree of instruc- tion and the previous occupations of convicted prisoners are of little use, as the data arise from insufficient inquiry at admission and from false statements of the prisoners made to con- ceal their immorality or uselessness. With regard to the latter point, 7,411 of those con- victed describe themselves as prostitutes, but, naturally enough, we should find many others claiming to be domestic servants, charwomen, needlewomen, or even "of no occupation," and so enumerated under other heads. Con- sidering the great discrepancy between the nunibers of male and of female servants, it is not to the credit of the former, and it is to the credit of the latter, that 832 male servants and 1,417 female servants should be convicted. With regard to the former point, I may (juote 12 PRISONS AND PRISONERS from my Report for 1879 to the Prison Com- missioners : " The Chaplain would point out that the new system of books kept in the Clerk's office do not give any summaries or totals of the denominational or educational status of prisoners, which is to be regretted, as both these points are interesting with regard to crime. He would also point out a matter which would cause any statistics on the subject of education to be most misleading. According to the rules and custom, it would happen that if one of the Prison Commissioners {pei" im- possibile) were remanded on any charge, he would be asked on entrance if he could read and write, and if he simply answered yes, he would be described in the prison books and in the calendar, if sent for trial, as of imperfect education — to which he would probably object. As conclusions are often drawn by judges and by the public as to the effect of education on crime, it is unfortunate that this misleading state of affairs should exist." I would further add that old hands who could not read at all would certainly claim to be able to do so on entrance for fear they might not be supplied with the books or maoazines which contain a good many pictures which relieve the mono- tony of cell life. Nor, again, does a man THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS 13 " of superior instruction " always proclaim the fact on entrance, feeling that as a matter for shame rather than brag under the circum- stances. The column "neither read nor write," while fairly accurate, would be, for the reason already given, somewhat under the mark. It contains 19.377 males and i 1,844 females, which reveals holes in the educational net. Table XL ofives the number received into prison each month, and this is chiefly inte- restin;^ as showinij the truth of the old canon " Crime is Kstival." The number of admissions varies from 11,692 to 15,046, the former being that for December, and the latter that for July. Only in July is the number over fifteen thou- sand, and only in June and August is the number over fourteen thousand. It is not the depressing fogs of autumn, nor the physical excitement of spring, nor the winter's depression of trade amongst many forms of labour, that inclines people to crime. It is the sun^imer always that fills prisons. Why ? Largely be- cause the days being longer there is more time for drink, the davs bein^" hotter there is more natural thirst, and em[)loynicnt being better there is more money for drink. Table XLl "ives the number ul convicts under detention on December 31, 1896. The 14 PRISONS AND PRISONERS number of those sentenced to penal servitude Is decreasing, being only 3,556, whereas the daily average in 1890 was 4,870, and then the downward tendency had been observable for some years, the figures for 1887 being 7,186. 174 of these were under sentences of penal servitude for life, 95 of these being death sentences commuted. If then we add to these 95 the ;^T,S criminal lunatics confined in Broad- moor as murderers, we get the number of 443 murderers in durance. The distinction between the sentences of penal servitude for "life " and for "natural life," the former giving hope of release and the latter little or none, is now abolished. Those with sentences of between twenty and thirty years amount to 97, those between ten and twenty to 501, those with seven, eight, or nine years, to 4S7 ; those with five or six years to 991, and those with terms of three years and upwards, but under five, come to 1,306. The last twenty years have seen not only a great decrease in the number sent to penal servitude, but still more in the length of the sentences. In 1896, yjy persons were sent to penal servitude, and of these 435 received sentences of less than five vears ; but in 1886 there were 948 sentenced, and five years was the least term any received. THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS 15 As juvenile offenders are happily not now found in prison to any appreciable number, we have to pursue them into reformatories to eet an idea of the total amount of crime, and even to a certain extent into industrial schools. Into reformatories there were sent during the year 902 boys and 149 girls, and as to their state of instruction the figures are probably more trustworthy than those for the prison population, while also they are more important as relating to those exclusively who have been born since educational legislation has made it theoretically impossible to be illiterate. Ol the 105 1 admissions we find that 143 can neither read nor write, and 743 are under the heading "read, or read and write imperfectly." Turning then to the corresponding table with reference to the boys and girls com- mitted to industrial schools, who come from much the same classes and conditions, but are generally younger, of 7,256 committed in the year, 1,933 ^^^ quite illiterate, and 3,947 can only read, or read and write imperfectly. It should be noted, however, that into in- dustrial schools of the ordinary type only 2,699 boys, and 716 girls were committed, the number 7,256 being arrived at by the addition ot those sent to truant indiislrial or i6 PRISONS AND PRISONERS day school industrial schools. Out of re- formatories 1 8 escaped in the year, and the same number out of industrial schools. In reformatories 17 died, and in industrial schools 63- Into asylums as criminal lunatics, 145 males and 49 females were received in the year, and at the end of the year the numbers under confinement were 579 males and 190 females, 645 out of these 769 being in our only criminal lunatic asylum — Broadmoor. Of these poor wretches no less than 497 had already been confined for periods varying from ten years to above twenty years. Their offences were chiefly crimes of passion — murder accounting for 338, attempt to murder for 125, threatening murder 5, manslaughter 28, felonious wounding 42, and malicious wounding t^j, the only other headings which have any considerable number under them being arson 30, and simple larceny 27. The table as to the exercise of the pre- rogative of mercy is chiefly interesting for its fifth column, which shows that only 92 prisoners of all kinds were released " on medical grounds " during the year. This term includes persons whose lives would be endangered by further imprisonment, women THE LAST PRISON STATISTICS 17 near their confinement who, if longer detained, would not have been fit for discharge at the expiration of their sentence, persons removed to hospitals for infectious diseases, &c. Since altogether they do not number 100, if they all remained and all died the prison mortality would not have been advanced a point. This should be noted, as when the low rate of mortality is quoted, the objection is sometimes made that it would be higher, only those likely to die are hustled out of the prison ! CHAPTER II I. Is Crime Reducible? — 2. Juvenile Crime. — 3. Family Crime. — 4. Alcoholic Infanticide. I. Is Crime Reducible? THE social reformer must know that crime and criminals must always be not only interesting to him, but lie heavily upon his heart, while the amount of crime and the number of criminals can be reduced ; while the principles of the punishment have a tendency to be forgotten ; while the causes of crime are still inadequately sought out and combated ; and while there is still need for mercy to rejoice over judgment in the punition of crime, in the details of prison discipline, and in the relation of society to the prisoner and the ex-prisoner. Is crime reducible ? A school of Continental writers would have us believe that the statistics of births, deaths, marriages, suicide, and crime l8 IS CRIME REDUCIBLE? 19 generally show such a regularity as to serve as a formidable weapon to destroy the belief in the reality of independent human actions, and to demonstrate that the same laws exist in the moral as in the physical world, and that the aver- aoe amount of crime like the average amount of heat or of rainfall will be the same year after year. " Collective determinism in demographic phenomena " is a pet theory of Morselli, a painstaking- writer on suicide, and Herzen lays down that only as much as chance exists in the universal macrocosm does freewill exist in the microcosm of man. Few, however, believe that crime is not reducible, and only a few theorists that it has not been reduced at any rate in our land and in our days. The daily average in our local prisons in 1877 was over 20,000; in 1880 only 19,000; m 1881 only 18,000; in 1884 only 17,000; in 1885 only 16,000; in 1889 only 15,000; in 1890 only 14,000; in 1893 only 13,000. Or put it in this way. In 1878 our local and our convict prisons contained 31,701 prisoners; in 1885 only 24,000; in 1893 only 17,000. The number in custody on March 31, 1897, was: local prisons, 12,078; convict prisons, 2,958; total, 15,036. There are, of course, several arguments to prove that the 20 PRISONS AND PRISONERS decrease is more apparent than real, and that the number in prison is no real index to the amount of crime ; but I believe there are more arguments to show that the decrease is real. The operation of the First Offenders Act, and the transfer of juvenile offenders from the prisons to the reformatories and industrial schools, are the chief reasons to reduce the value of the figures that show a reduction in the prison population ; but this may be far more than counter-balanced by the general increase in the population of the country. One need not be an optimist to believe in a present reduction of crime ; one is likely to be a pessimist in denying it. Let it be granted, and what are its chief causes ? In the first class I should put — 1. Child-saving work, whether carried on by the Church, the State, or private individuals. This child-saving work has been the chief glory of Queen Victoria's reign, during which the Acts (to quote only State action) passed for the protection and benefit of children exceed in volume, and infinitely exceed in beneficence, all those of all preceding reions. 2. The increase and success of temperance v.ork, and the consequent better relation of JUVENILE CRIME 21 public opinion towards intemperance, which is by far the chief cause of crime. In the second class I should put — 1. Education, and its being made for most compulsory and free. 2. The disinclination on the part of adminis- trators of the law to commit children and first offenders. 2. Juvenile Crime. This brings us to the consideration of the phenomena of juvenile crime, its causes, its treatment, and whether this may not be increasing, though there is at present a decrease in adult crime. On this point what I write is mainly a summary of the first part of the recent work by the Rev. W, D. Morrison, on juvenile offenders, which forms Vol. III. of the Criminology Series published by Fisher Unwin. The problems of habitual crime, or of recidivism, are formidable from every point of view. "Why are our Prisons Failures?" was the title of an article I wrote over twenty years ago, and the question needs now to be even more loudly put. The proportion of habitual criminals to the general prison population is apparently steadily on the increase, and was never so high as now, although that general 22 PRISONS AND PRISONERS population shows a steady decrease. It is as if we could prove that drinking was decreasing, and yet dipsomania increasing, which, indeed, may very well be true. This increase of adult incurables is to be chiefly noted with reference to our present subject from the fact that the man who takes to crime as a trade as a rule begins young. Therefore preventive efforts with the young should be promoted even more than reformatory efforts. Do both, but do the former most. Cut off the tributaries of criminality, and the river of crime will dwindle almost to dryness. But to deal with the juvenile offender we must first understand him, and study the causes which have produced his abnormal state. These conditions are indi- vidual or social. The individual conditions to be considered are the sex, the age, the bodily and mental characteristics of the urchin. The chief social conditions are parental and economic, or, in other words, heredity and environment. Mr. Morrison rightly pleads that purely punitive methods have been proved to be mainly inefficacious, if not productive of further evil, and that the idea of reformation must be allowed greater weight than the present administrative idol of discipline. Here he JUVENILE CRIME 23 rightly points out that to an amelioration of the adverse conditions of life amoncr laroe sections of the juvenile population we must look for a mitigation of the problem of juvenile crime. Allow styes to be dirty and your little pigs cannot be clean. The preaching of temperance, soberness, and chastity, while we do nothing to remedy or to remove the conditions in which many of these live to whom we preach, is a canting absurdity, Mr. Morrison's memorable conclusions or demonstrations may be extracted as under : — The amount of crime committed is always largely in excess of crime recorded (and still more of crime punished). J uvenile delinquency is increasing in nearly every country. This is undoubted with regard to the Continent ; it would not be doubted in England if to the decreasing number found in prison were added those whipped or sent to correctional insti- tutions not being prisons. In England juvenile crime is usually high where crime as a whole is high, and both proceed from such conditions as the concentration of population in cities, which produces more weaklings and more orphans, while migrants froni the country are friendless, and lose the social circle of the villaoe which restrains wrontr-doino-. In dense 24 PRISONS AND PRISONERS populations also the struggle for existence is intensified, and cupidity is excited by the exposure of goods and the ostentation of wealth. From the moral point of view the decentralisation of industries is one of the most needed reforms, and, comparing the morality of town and country, we may well ask if the increase of national wealth is not beine purchased too dearly. A curious fact is that there is least pauperism where there is most crime, and vice versa. Poverty is a rare cause of crime with young or old. Innate disposition, parental example, social surroundings, social habits, the presence of temptation and oppor- tunity, are the chief causes, and therefore the most effective ways of combating juvenile delinquency consist in improving the hygienic surroundings of town children, so that they can better fight the battle of life in an honest way, and secondly in so improving the condition of country folk that they will not be tempted to rush to towns. Bad landlords, whether of village hovels or city slums, are chiefly responsible for crime. It is the stye that fouls the human pig before the pig fouls the stye. As regards sex, about 85 per cent, of juvenile habitual offenders are boys. The accident of JUVENILE CRIME 25 sex, and the attributes of sex, make it five or six times more likely that a boy will become a criminal than that a girl shall thus develop. This prevails all over the world, though con- sequent female complacency may be diminished by remembering that females always get off more lightly than males, that the public and the police are less disposed to charge them, and that their home life shields them from many tempta- tions and opportunities to which the errand boys, van boys, and so forth are exposed. Where the social and economic conditions of men and women are more alike, as where many factories or mills exist, there the proportion of female offenders is much higher. In rural Surrey a tenth, but in Manchester a third of the offences determined summarily are com- mitted by females. However, corrupt io opiiiiiiE pessiina obtains as a dogma in penology. Character is shown by habit more than by act, and the habit of offending is more deeply seated amongst offending girls than among boys. Both from industrial schools and reforma- tories we find that the number of failures eives the greater percentage among girls ; and amongst the inmates of corrective institutions the percentages of incorrigibles is higher amongst females. 26 PRISONS AND PRISONERS What is the effect of age on the juvenile dis- position to crime ? The first period is that of truancy and vagrancy — a disposition to revert to the nomadic statje of civihsation. The next step in the evolution of an anti-social life is rebellion aoainst societv's arransfement as to property. The third stage, the critical period between boyhood and youth, produces the offender against the person. As a Walworth gamin would express it : " First you hops the wag, then you nicks, and then you bashes the copper." Juvenile crime steadily increases both in amount and seriousness the nearer maturity is reached. ^\\^ physical condition of juvenile offenders is of importance. The boy death-rate of England is 37 per looo for the ages five to fifteen. The average amongst industrial school boys is 4 '2, and an annual average of 47 is also dis- charged in a moribund condition. Industrial school crirls of the sanie acre have a death-rate of 8*4, and those discharged on account of mortal or very serious illness are 3*9 per 1000, whereas the external girl death-rate is only 38. Plainly, therefore, juvenile offenders spring from, and belong to, the unhealthy class. This conclusion is also arrived at by the large pro- portion of orphans amongst juvenile offenders. JUVENILE CRIME 27 Thirty-nine in every hundred in our industrial schools have lost one or both parents. Their stature also shows that they are of a decadent stock. In weight also they are 24lbs. lighter than their coevals outside. Twenty-hve per cent, have some physical or mental defect, as compared with 17 per cent, in ordinary day schools. " Slums stunt and the stunted steal," is an axiom we might construct. What about their oeneral mental condition ? Both gauging and comparison are dithcult. Yet we know that where bodily processes are enfeebled mental processes are generally en- feebled also, and from imperfect development and depressed vitality we believe that a third of these juveniles are mentally below par. Mental incompetence or moral obliquity de- scribes the state of most of their parents, and these are by nature incorporated into the mental life of the child, and show themselves in defects of mind, of feeling, of will. Is character due to environment, as J. vS. Mill held, or to heredity influenced by environment, as more modern thinkers maintain ? In either case parentage must be studied. The propor- tion of illegitimates in industrial schools is slightly higher than the proportion in the general population ; but as the death-rate 28 PRISONS AND PRISONERS amongst illegitimates is at least double that of the legitimates, the proportionate percentage amongst juvenile offenders is really higher than it seems. Illegitimacy, as well as crime, is augmented by density of population. Illegiti- mates are therefore placed in surroundings likely to induce criminality. Illegitimacy is a product of penury and pauperism also, and therefore can be diminished by improving wages and lowering rents. The proportion of orphans is lower than might be expected, largely owing to the Poor Law and private charity befriending orphans before evil has been caused or developed in them. Fatherless children are offenders out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. Father was feeble and died ; mother has to go out to work ; children are un- supervised. Motherless children are 14 per cent., fatherless 20 per cent, in industrial schools. Widowers earn more than widows, and have more authority. Absolutely deserted children are 6 per cent. ; children of habitual criminals 2 per cent, of the industrial school population. Where both parents are living, in a very small percentage of cases can their character stand examination. Manchester states that 68 per cent, of the parents were disreputable, and 14 per cent, doubtful. FAMILY CRIME 29 3. Family CRniE. From the point of view of the well-being- of the nation nothino- deserves more consiclera- tion than the question of family crime. An individual may be noxious to the community as a habitual criminal, and as such should be subjected to far more supervision and longer terms of seclusion for the protection of society than he or she usually receives ; but when a whole family are criminal by heredity and choice, then the need of constant supervision and stringent measures are the more required. To imprison a burglar is good, to break up a gang of burglars is better ; but to dissolve the family nexus of a generation of criminal instincts and habits would be best, though also most diffi- cult. The individual dies, the family does not. Much of our child-saving work has this as its motive, and the mere fact of a child being- found to frequent the company of prostitutes, or to live in a house used by them, is enough for the Industrial Schools Amendment Act (due to the mind and work of Miss Ellice Hopkins) to be put in force, and for the child to be made a child of the State in an industrial school. The extension of such a system, in spite of the common but short-sighted objection of " offer. 30 PRISONS AND PRISONERS ing a premium to vicious parents," is much to be desired, and some palliative of the danger to the State from the vicious family comes, as I shall presently show, from the excessive mor- tality amongst the children of the intemperate ; but still, when we are as wise as our grand- mothers, we may have some more of that foolishly nicknamed " grandmotherly " legisla- tion whereby the State will rescue more children and destroy the " rights " of more use- less and noxious parents. The oft-quoted case of the Jukes family in America is that which has been most carefully studied. A semi-savage backwoodsman was a hard drinker and left a numerous progeny, more or less illegitimate ; two of his sons married some of these illeeiti- mate daughters, and from these and three other daughters descended seven hundred and nine persons, of whom some were honest and decent, but of the men not twenty were skilled work- men (and of these ten learned their trade in prison), one hundred and eighty were in r-eceipt of out-relief, seventy-six were criminals, and the average of prostitution among the marriageable women down to the sixth generation was 52*40 per cent. There is no more instructive lesson in the effects of heredity — and of State neglect perhaps — than the book entitled "The Jukes: FAMILY CRIME 31 a study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease, and Heredity, " by R. L. Dugdale ; Putnams, New York, 1877. Had the earlier members of this family lived in England instead of America, no doubt some of them would have been hung in the last century for various offences, and so the State would have amputated for the sake of the body some of the gangrened members, and no doubt also our compara- tively modern system of industrial schools and reformatories would have rescued and transformed some of the younger members, so that we may hope that such dangers from such a family are not now to be found on either side of the Atlantic. Put yet in a measure we have the same evil in our midst, though no family has been as scientifically studied and its history recorded with us as in America. I give the following cases that have come under my notice to indicate what I mean by family crime, and how attention ought to be more directed towards it. A girl aged ten is sent to an industrial school for theft ; she was neglected, and gained her living by hawking papers and matches. Her father was a returned convict on ticket- of-leave — a drunken and worthless fellow; her mother had just come out of prison and 32 PRISONS AND PRISONERS had been seventeen times before the magis- trates, and her eldest brother was in prison with sixteen convictions against him for drunkenness, assault, and felony. Had she been a Jukes of the eighteenth century she would not have been rescued, and would soon have become more evil and productive of evil. Were we living in the twentieth century perhaps the father would not have been allowed to return home to propagate his kind, nor have had his sentence shortened simply because he found it pay not to be troublesome in prison ; and the brother's pun- ishments would have been longer by the progres- sive system, and he would have been required not to return to his family and associates on dis- charge, but to live, and report himself periodi- cally, in some city at least a hundred miles away. A quiet and nice-looking girl of thirteen robbed her grandfather and went on a tour alone with the money. I wrote as to her future and received the followinof letter : " Sir — I am not in a position to pay anything for the support of Emma. . . . Just a little of the history of her father and mother. . . . Though I have kept her for nine years out of her life, it was only to snatch her from the evil influence of her un- natural parents. Twenty years ago her father, FAMILY CRIME 33 after a vast expense to me, was convicted, and I had to keep him in a reformatory three years, during which he learned the trade of a shoe- maker, after which the Red Hill Society sent him out to Natal, and after he had been there three years he sent me word what a good man he was, and if I would send for him home he would prove how good he had become, and I sent him ^20, and he had no sooner got here than he beoan his evil course of robbino- me, and a young girl about seventeen married him. After a time they parted, and she for a time walked the streets, and is now living with a man and has three or four children by him. Emma's father lived with a woman and had two children born to him, but his wife's father was so angry about it that he shot at him and was sentenced to five years' penal servitude. I then advised him to get away, which he did, leaving the woman. After an absence of two years he again turned up, with perhaps ;^ioo, and takes his daughter away from me, and again lives with another woman, who has a child by him, and this poor child is half-starved and packed off to me. ..." I cannot remember what I did with Emma, but probably she was one of the hundred or so that each year I orot into a home as affordin^r that change of environment 34 PRISONS AND PRISONERS that I have frequently noticed to produce such good results as almost to lead me to wonder if heredity has much force after all. Here is a man aged twenty-eight, who already had undergone ten imprisonments, in- cluding penal servitude ; his father had trained him to housebreaking and always led him back to crime after release. This father died while doing ten years' penal servitude. Another man said : " Father had three lag- gings and died in prison ; mother had seven years." A young man, aged nineteen, has eight brothers and sisters who with their father have all been in prison, three of them incarcerated now. Man, 2 2, pickpocket, only a fortnight out from two months' hard labour ; his stepfather is now in prison, and his mother is also a pick- pocket who has been in. On one day in July, 1878, there were four generations of one family in the same prison (Tothill Fields) : an old woman for being drunk and disorderly, her daughter and her grand- daughter in on the same charge, and the granddaughter had a baby girl at the breast. What chance had that child (a) of living, (d) of being healthy, [c) of not becoming a FAMILY CRIME 35 drunkard ? This would have been a family worth studying after the Jukes' method. A pickpocket, aged twenty-one, with five previous convictions, has two brothers doing seven years and one doing five for the same kind of offence. A lad of eighteen has many charges of theft brouoht acrainst him ; his father is doino- five years for a long-firm swindle ; his mother has been twice in an asylum and was living in adultery with his uncle, who got eighteen months at the same time as his lather, A man under me in 1882 got then fourteen years (had seven previously) for burglary, one sister with him getting five years and another ten months for burglary and possession of stolen property ; the sister who got five years had often been in for drunkenness, &c. ; was a married woman but also leading' an im- moral life ; two other sisters were on the streets. Man, aged thirty-three, gets five years' penal, had nine months, seven years, three months before ; a great drinker ; his mother drowned herself from drunkenness and upset at her son's previous term of penal servitude; his father had four brothers, of whom one j)oisoned himself one hanged himself, and one got twenty years for murderino" his wife. 36 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Lad of seventeen, with seven previous con- victions ; theft from his mother, whose eyes he blacks ; father several times in. Boy, aged ten, has a brother in a reformatory and two others who have been in one. A family of three boys, all in prison in the same year on separate charges. Observers on the Continent have been much and long ahead of us in the study of the causes and phenomena of crime, and they have not neglected the point of criminal families. Despine, in his " Psychologie Naturelle," instances the case of Jean Chretien, who had three sons. We are not told about him and them, but of the sons one had a son, Jean- Francois, a thief and murderer ; another had two sons, Francois, a murderer, and Martin, a murderer (whose son was a thief) ; and the third had six children, Jean-Francois, thief; Claire, thief; Marie Renee, thief; Marie Rose, thief ; Victor, thief ; Victorine, whose son Victor was a murderer ; and Benoit, of whom nothing is recorded. And the Italian Rossi gives two typical examples : N. N., con- demned for fraud and violence ; father alcoholic, convicted of fraud ; mother healthy ; six brothers died young ; one brother a monster, another born with webbed fingers, FAMILY CRIME 37 another a highwayman, another convicted of woundincr • two sisters, one insane and the other a prostitute. R. S., a thief and camorrista, convicted of wounding-, &c. ; father convicted of wounding ; paternal uncle a thief; mother a drunkard, convicted for fraud and wounding" ; maternal grandfather insane ; maternal uncle camorrista ; one brother pick- pocket ; another camorrista, convicted of fraud ; another a thief ; another a receiver ; another camorrista and thief; a sister honest and healthy. Generally there is little doubt of the accuracy of the conclusion of the Rev. W. D. Morrison in his work on Juvenile Offenders (Criminology Series, Vol, III,), that "respecting the parental condition of delinquent children who have both parents alive and are living at home with them, we are forced to come to the conclusion that in a very small percentage of cases is the character of the parents fit to bear examination. At the very least 80 per cent, of them are addicted to vicious, if not criminal, habits," It goes without saying that "alcoholism in either of the parents is one of the most fruitful causes of crime in the child " (Havelock Ellis, "The Criminal"), and we have also to consider such conditions as the 38 PRISONS AND PRISONERS acres of fathers at the time of the birth of children, the children of fathers below twenty or over forty being of more feeble constitution, and therefore more likely to develop some morbid or defective condition or tendency of body or mind. 4. Alcoholic Infanticide. It is a hard thing for a child-lover to rejoice over the death of children, but yet under the circumstances of alcoholic or criminal parentage it is generally well for them to be removed from what seems a certain evil, and from the point of view of the well-being of the State the excessive mortality of the children of the vicious is a matter for con- gratulation. To this subject I paid consider- able attention, and as a generalisation I might say that whereas in the upper ranks of society 8 per cent, die before a year old, and in the lower ranks 32 per cent., when one investigates the family history of those in prison, about 64 per cent, of infantile mor- tality may be assumed. Some entries from my notebooks will both illustrate this point and give alcoholism, or the habit of constant drink- ing, as the chief cause of this massacre of the innocents : — ALCOHOLIC INFANTICIDE 39 Woman, 34 ; four children dead ; four years' drinking ; in for theft when drunk ; three weeks out from ten months. Man, 46 ; drinks much ; four of fourteen chikh'en ahve ; earns £t, a week as barrow maker ; now he is on remand ; wife appHes for parish relief Woman, 47 ; attempted suicide ; husband left her eighteen months ; he a great drunkard and immoral ; married at sixteen ; had twenty-five children (only once twins), six alive. Woman, t^t^; drunk, ? sane; heavy drinking for last two years; husband also a continuous drinker ; one of nine children alive ; overlaid one when drunk. Woman, 29 ; husband and she several times in for drunken assaults on one another; now in for cutting his head with a bottle of beer ; one of five children alive. Woman, t^j ; sixteen and a half years living with a married man ; he left at last "because he couldn't stand my drunkenness"; has had three months for assaulting him ; seven children, all dead. Lad in for drunken assault ; father and mother drink much and are usually separated ; he and brother (who also drinks) the only survivors of eight children. 40 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Man, 47, Irish tailor; "my misfortune to have been a drunkard since sixteen " ; has two children alive out of fourteen ; awaiting trial for snatchinor publican's watch as being chucked out with his wife. Woman, 35; had eleven children, all but two died soon after birth ; married at seventeen to husband atred eitrhteen. Woman had buried fourteen children, the eldest being under two years. Woman, 44 ; one of twelve children alive ; husband died of paralysis of brain from "a gay life " ; she drinks hard, and has had six and twelve months before. Woman, 31 ; twelve years on the streets, but doesn't go out when her husband is in work ; hard drinker ; twice in for felony and eight times for drink; nine children, " all dead, thank God ! " Woman, t,t, ; concubine ; nine of ten children died as infants. Man, 42 ; had eight children, all died of dropsy before two months old. Man, 54 ; ex-soldier and warder ; murders wife ; who was a habitual drunkard ; nine children, all stillborn. Woman. 23 ; married at fourteen and a half; five children, all dead, ALCOHOLIC INFANTICIDE 41 Woman, 43 ; drunk ; separated from her husband, who is Hving with her sister ; one child out of eight. Woman, 40 ; in for neglect of children ; drunk when apprehended ; been drinking since her first child ; three of thirteen alive ; the baby, three months old, weighed 2 lbs. Woman, 45 ; two of fourteen children ; most died of consumption at four months. Woman, 31 ; seven children, all dead ; none lived more than three months ; married at seventeen. Woman, 32 ; had fourteen children, three alive ; married at eighteen to husband aged seventeen. Man, 36 ; drunkard ; in for threatening his wife ; seven of eight children cUed young. Woman, 41 ; four of eighteen children alive, one of these in asylum ; husband drunken ; at marriage he was nineteen, she sixteen ; tempe- rate for last two years, but used to drink much. Man, 30 ; in for assaulting his wife, who also drinks; one of seven alive; married at nineteen and eighteen. Woman, 58 ; one alive out of eleven ; only one got out of infancy ; she and her husband drank much ; he died in a prize fight. Man, 50 ; eleven of thirteen children dead. 42 PRISONS AND PRISONERS " I am one of the worst drunkards in the world ; wife don't drink so regular, but very hard when she goes about it." Man, 53 ; had fourteen pubHc-houses, wishes he had never known the trade ; wife died of alcohoHc phthisis ; usually had twenty glasses of beer a day ; had nine children, eight dead and one paralysed. Woman, 23 ; theft for drink ; pledges own things for drink ; husband, a policeman, " tired of talking to nie " ; one of five alive. And so I might go on for pages with the miserable tale if proof were needed, and terrible is the outlook, easy the pessimistic habit of mind, if heredity and environment are alone to be considered as forces that mould the man. What I think, however, all who have worked in prison or for the miserable will feel is — 1. That the undoubted and potent forces of heredity and environment are never to be ignored in dealing with those who have felt their power as malign. This will make mercy rejoice over judgment, and induce more sympathy and more patience in the persevering efforts to influence those under our care. This also should keep prison officials from their too common mental attitude, their class sin, of drawing a line, or rather digging a gulf, ALCOHOLIC INFANTICIDE 43 between the respectability of themselves and the criminality of their charges. Given the same heredity and early environment, and the warder or chaplain, nay, even the Prison Com- missioner, mioht be worse than the prisoner. 2. That environment is not always an aggra- vation of heredity, but sometimes its antidote. We must distinguish between the morality 01 impulse and the morality of insight. The morality of impulse takes the form of inward imperatives, which impose themselves on the mind of the assent without his knowin^r whence they come or why they possess any authority. These inward imperatives are in part instincts transmitted by heredity. But it is possible also to create these by education, by rules of life, by the persistent impacts of a stronger will or a higher nature. Therefore we expect, and we find, that even prison or military discipline has a transforming or, at any rate, a reforming power. vStill more, love is an emancipator and an elevator. The boardino- out of workhouse children, the institution of a star class in prison for those who are not criminal by heredity or habit, are two instances of the faith in the changing power of a changed environment. 3. That heredity and environment are not the only moulding conditions. Both against 44 PRISONS AND PRISONERS some scientists and much popular opinion we maintain the potency of two other forces — freewill and grace. When Morselli asks, " How is it possible that theoretical exhortations of moralists can suffice to arrest at the last moment the man whom despair urges to turn against himself the homicidal weapon ? " we simply answer from our own observation (and for ten years I had to do with an annual average of three hundred who had attempted suicide), "You doubt if it is possible; we know it is an actual fact." If Morselli, a typical Continental scientist, an authority on the statistics of suicide, claims that "to science alone will belong in future the functions of regulator and moderator of public morals," we smile at the audacity of his partial know- ledge. In this connection, at any rate, a science that knows nothing of the scientia scientiaruni, the knowledge of God, and from God of what is in man, and of what God does for man by man, is no science at all. The materialist has his function, and world in which he may achieve some victories ; but it is not the prison -world, nor has he any gospel for those who for him, but not for our Master, remain the outcast and the lost. He knows but the crucible and the scalpel ; we know the ALCOHOLIC INFANTICIDE 45 Cradle of Bethlehem, the Cross of Calvary, the empty Tomb, and the abiding presence of Emmanuel. It is in the prison and the penitentiary that materialism would do most harm. It is from the prison and the peniten- tiary that the strongest refutations will come of the materialist belief in heredity and environ- ment as irresistible or as the only considerable forces. CHAPTER III T. Education and Crime. — 2. Not all Prisoners are Criminals. — 3. Mouthpieces. I. Education and Crime. UNDER the head of environment we come naturally to think of education and its influence, especially upon the young ; and nothing is more frequently debated than the effect of education upon crime, nothing concerning which the opinions of a prison official are more commonly sought. " Once a gaol chaplain always a gaol chaplain " seems to be an adage that may be con- structed with a reverence for fact. Firstly, because prison work must be so interesting, and even fascinating, to every one who is not the square man in the round hole, that even if a chaplain retires and descends to become an ordinary vicar, surrounded by people of the ordinary type of respectability, " faultily 46 EDUCATION AND CRIME 47 faultless" in their own estimation, and "icily regular " in the monotony of their painfully proper existences, his mind is constantly travelling back to the kaleidoscopic variety, the lurid shadows, and the barred lights of the prison stage on which the drama of humanity was acted without masks by actors who were always intense. Philistines pall upon him after he has once noted with mingled amusement, irritation, and despair, their petty peculiarities and complacent individualism, and he seeks a corrective solace in the remembrance of his Bohemian friends of yore. Secondly, the adage is true, because the stores of experience that he perforce has gained are constantly being drawn upon by friends or strangers who recoonise that one who has seen not only the dark, but also the unveiled side ot humanity, will the better be able to advise under circumstances that are to the inquirer strange, unique, and appalling. If, therefore, one wanted to forget the prison and its lessons, other people would prevent oblivion. Amongst the abstract questions which are put with direct or indirect relation to penology, one of the most common is as to the relations of education and crime. An interviewer for a newspaper or magazine (who lives on the 48 PRISONS AND PRISONERS fricasseed brains of others), a youth who wants to open a debate in a Mutual Improvement Society, one who wants to maintain that School Boards and crime cannot co-exist, and another who believes that to impart more than the three R's will but increase a fourth, i.e., Roguery — all these naturally desire an answer to this question. Now definition of terms is commonly either the preventive, or the limitation, or the end of controversy ; therefore first we must define " crime " and " education." When you use the word "crime," do you mean {a) the criminal class, or {b) all who are found in prison ? And (ood as mv master,' and left him. " Some time after that affair witli the fence, one of the mob said to me, ' I have got a |)lace cut and dried ; will you come and do it } ' So I said, 'Yes; what tools will you want .'^ ' And he said, 'We shall want some twirls and the stick (crowbar), and bring a neddie (life pre- server) with you.' And he said, ' Now don't stick me up (disappoint) ; meet me at six tcj- no PRISONS AND PRISONERS night.' At six I was at the meet (trysting- place), and while waiting for my pal I had my daisies cleaned, and I piped the fence that bested me go along with his old woman (wife) and his two kids (children), so I thought of his own words, ' Do anybody, but mind they don't do you.' He was going to the Surrey Theatre ; so when my pal came up I told him all about it. So we went and screwed (broke into) his place, and got thirty-two quid and a toy and tackle, which he had bought on the crook (dishonestly). We did not go and do the other place after that. About two moon after this the same fence fell for buying two finns (^5 notes), for which he got a stretch and a half. "A litde while after this I fell at Isleworth, for being found in a conservatory adjoining a parlour, and got remanded to the Trench (House of Detention) for nine days, but neither Snuffy (Reeves, the identifier) nor Mac. (Macintyre) knew me, so I o-ot a draar and was sent to the Steel. While I was in there I see the fence who we clone, and he held his duke at me as much as to say, ' I would give you something if I could ' ; but I only laughed at him. " I was out about seven moon, when one night a pal of mine was half drunk, and said A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY iii something to a copper (policeman) which he did not Hke, so he hit my pal, so I hit him in return. So we both set about him. He pulled out his staff and hit me on the nut, and cut it open. Then two or three more coppers came up and we got smugged and got a sixer (six months) each. So I see the fence again in Stir. " On the Boxing Day after I came out I got stabbed in the chest by a pal of mine, who had done a schoolino-. We was out with one another all the day, getting drunk, so he took a liberty with me, and I landed him one on the conk (nose), so we had a fight and he put the chive (knife) into me. This made me sober, so I asked him what made him such a coward. He said, ' I meant to kill you ; let me go and kiss my wife and child, and then smug me.' But I did not do that. This made me a little thoughtful ot the sort of life I was carrying on. I thouijht, ' What if I should have been killed then ! ' But this, like other things, soon passeci away. " After the [)lace got well where I was chived, me and another screwed a place at Stoke Newinorton, and we not some squeeze (silk) dresses and two sealskin jackets, and some other things. We tied them 112 PRISONS AND PRISONERS in a bundle and got on a tram. It appears they knew my pal ; and some reelers got up too. So when I piped them pipe the bundle, I put my dukes on the rails of the tram and dropped off, and guyed down a double before you could say Jack Robinson. It was a good job I did, or else I should have got lagged (sent to penal servitude) and my pal, too, because I had the James (crowbar) and screws (skeleton keys) on me. My pal got a stretch and a half. " A day or two after this I met the fence who I done ; so he said to me, ' We have met at last.' So I said, 'Well, what of that?' So he said, 'What did you want to do me for .^ ' So I said, ' You must remember you done me, and when I spoke to you about it, you said, "Do anybody, but mind they don't do you." ' That shut him up. "One day I went to Lewisham and touched for a lot of wedge. I tore up my madam (handkerchief) and tied the wedge in small packets, and put them into my pockets. At Bishopsgate I left my kipsy at a barber's shop, where I always left it when not in use. I was going through Shoreditch when a reeler from Hackney, who knew me well, came up and said, ' I am going to run the rule (search) A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 113 over you.' You could have knocked me down with a feather, me knowing- what I had about me. Then he said, 'It's only my joke. Are you going- to treat me .^ ' So I said, 'Yes,' and began to be very saucy, saying- to him, ' What catch would it be if you was to turn me over ? ' So I took him into a pub which had a back way out, and called for a pint of stout, and told the reeler to wait a minute. He did not know that there was an entrance at the back ; so I guyed up to Hoxton to the mob and told them all about it. Then I went and done the wedoe for five-and-twenty quid. "One or two days after this I met the reeler at Hackney, and he said, ' What made you guy ? ' So I said that I did not want my pals to see me with him. So he said it was all right. Some of the mob knew him and had greased his duke. " What I am about to relate now took place within the last four or five moon before I fell for this stretch and a half. One day I went to Surbiton. I see a reeler oiving- me a roasting (watching me), so I began to cuunt my pieces for a jolly (pretence), but he still followed me ; so at last I rang a bell and waited till the slavey came, and the reeler waited till I came out, and then said, ' WHiat are you hawking of .-^ ' y 114 PRISONS AND PRISONERS So I said, ' I am not hawking- anything ; I am buying bottles.' So he said, ' I thought you were hawkinij without a hcence.' As soon as he got round a double I guyed away to Maiden, and touched for two wedge teapots, and took the rattler to Waterloo. " One day I took the rattler from Broad Street to Acton. I did not touch there, but worked my way to Shepherd's Bush ; but when I got there I found it too hot (dangerous), because there had been so many tykes (dogs) poisoned, that there was a reeler at almost every double, and bills posted up about it. So I went to Uxbridge Road Station, and while I was w^aiting for the rattler I took a religious tract, and on it was written, ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ? ' So I thought to myself, ' What good has the money done me what I have had? ' So instead of getting out at Brondesbury, I rode on to Broad Street and paid the difference, and went home and did not go out for about a week. " The Sunday following, when I went to Uxbridofe Road, I went down a lane called Mount Pleasant, at Clapton ; it was about six o'clock. Down at the bottom of the lane you could get a fine view of Walthamstow; so while A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 115 I was leaning against the rails I felt very miserable. I was thinking about when I was at Feltham. I thought I had thrown away the only chance I had of doing better ; and as I stood thinking, the bells of St. Matthew's Church began to play a hymn-tune I had heard at Feltham. This brought tears to my eyes ; this was the first time in my life that I thought what a wretch I was — going home very down- cast when I met some pals, who said, ' Why ! what is the matter ? You look miserable ! ' So I said, T don't feel very well.' So they said, 'Are you coming to have something to drink? — that will liven you up.' So I went in with them, and began to drink very hard to drown my thoughts. " Monday morning I felt just the same as I always did ; I felt ready for the old game again. So I went to Hoxton, and some of the mob said to me, * Why, where have you been the last week or so — we thought you had fell ? ' So I told them I had been ill. " I went out the next day to Maidenhead, and touched for some wedge and a poge (purse), with over five c\u'\d in it. "A little while after this I went with two pals to the Palace at Muswcll 11 ill; the races were on. So when we got there, there w^as ii6 PRISONS AND PRISONERS some reelers there what knew me, and my pals said, ' You had better get away from us ; if we touch, you will take your whack (share) just the same.' So I went and laid down on the grass. While lying there, I piped a reeler whom I knew. He had a nark (a policeman's spy) with him. So I went and looked about for my two pals, and told them to look out for F and his nark. About an hour after this they came to me and woke me up, and they said, ' Come on, we have had a lucky touch for a half- century in pap' (^50 in paper, i.e., notes). I thought they was only kidding (deceiving) at first, so they said, ' Let us guy from here, and you will see if we are kidding to you.' When we got into the rattler they showed me the pap; yes, there it was, fifty quid in double finns (;^io notes). We did them for ^9 los. each to a fence. " I took the rattler one day to Reigate, and worked my way to Redhill. So I went into a place and see some clobber hanging up, so I thought to myself I will have it, and take the rattler home at once ; it will pay all expenses. So while I was looking about I piped a little peter (parcel). When I took it up it had an address on it, and the address was to the vicarage, so I came out and asked a boy if the A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 117 clergyman lived there, and he said, 'Yes,' but to make sure of it I went back aorain. This o time I looked at the clobber more closely, and I see it was the same as clergymen wear, so I left it where it was. I always made it a rule never to rob a clergyman's house if I knew one to live there. I could have robbed several in my time, but I would not. So I took the rattler to Croydon, and touched for some wedge, and came home. " I used to go to Henley-on-Thames most every year when the rowing matches was on, which used to represent Oxford and Cambridge, only it used to be boys instead of men. The day the Prince of Wales arrived at Portsmouth, when he came home from India, me and two pals took the rattler from Waterloo at about half-past six in the morning. When we got to Portsmouth we found it was very hot, there was on every corner of a street bills stuck up, * Beware (jf pickpockets, male and female,' and on the tramcars as well. So one of my pals said, ' There is a reeler over there which knows me ; we had better split out ' (separate). Me and the other one went by ourselves ; he was very tricky (clever) at getting a poge or a toy, but he would not t(juch toys because we was afraid of being turned over (searched). We ii8 PRISONS AND PRISONERS done very well at poges ; we found after we knocked off we had between sixty and seventy quid to cut up (share), but our other pal had fell, and was kept at the station until the last rattler went to London, and then they sent him home by it. One day after this I asked a screwsman if he would lend me some screws, because I had a place cut and dried. But he said, ' If I lend you them I shall want to stand in ' (have a share) ; but I said, ' I can't stand you at that ; I will grease your duke if you like ; ' but he said that would not do ; so I said, ' We will work together, then,' and he said, 'Yes.' So we went and done the place for fifty-five quid. So I worked with him until I fell for this stretch and a half He was very tricky at making twirls, and used to supply them all with tools. Me and the screwsman went to Gravesend, and I found a dead 'un (uninhabited house), and we both went and turned it over, and got things out of it which fetched us forty- three quid. We went one day to Erith ; I went in a place, and when I opened a door there was a great tyke lying in front of the door, so I pulled out a piece of pudding (liver prepared to silence dogs) and threw it to him, but he did not move. So I threw a piece more, and it did not take any notice ; so I got close up to it A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 119 and I found it was a dead dog been stuffed. So I done the place for some wedge and three overcoats — one I put on and the other two into my kipsy. We went to Harpenden Races to see if we could find some dead 'uns ; we went on the course. While we was there we saw a scuff — it was a flat that had been welshed, so my pal said, ' Pipe his spark prop ' (diamond pin). So my pal said, ' Front me (cover me), and I will do him for it.' So he pulled out his madam and done him for it. After we left the course we found a dead 'un and got a peter (cash-box) with very nearly a century of quids in it. Then I carried on a nice game ; what with the trips and the drink I very nearly went balmy (mad). It is no use of me telling you every place I done, or else you will think I am telling you the same things over again. 1 will now tell you what happened the day before I fell for this stretch and a half. Me and the screwsman went to Charlton. From there we worked our way to Blackheath. I went in a place and touched for some wedge, which we done for three pounds ten. I went home and wrung myself (changed clothes), and met some of the mob and got very near drunk. Next mornine 1 ^ot up abcnit seven, and went home O O I to change my clobber and put on the old I20 PRISONS AND PRISONERS clobber to work with the kipsy. When I got home my mother asked me if I was not a-going to stop to have some breakfast ? So I said, ' No ; I was in a hurry.' I had promised to meet the screwsman, and did not want to stick him up. We went to Willesden and found a dead 'un, so I came out and asked my pal to lend me the James and some twirls, and I went and turned it over. I could not find any wedge. I found a poge with nineteen shillings in it. I turned everything over, but could not find any- thing worth having, so I came out and gave the tools to my pal and told him. So he said, ' Wasn't there any clobber ? ' So I said, ' Yes, there's a cartload.' So he said, 'Go and o-et a kipsy full of it, and we will guy home.' So I went back, and as I was going down the garden the gardener, it appears, had been put there to watch the house, s.o he said, 'What do you want here ? ' So I said, ' Where do you speak to the servants ? ' So he said, ' There is not any one at home, they are all out.' So he said, ' What do you want with them ? ' So I said, ' Do you know if they have any bottles to sell, because the servant told me to call another day .'^ ' So he said, ' I do not know ; you had better call another time.' So I said, 'All right, and good day to him.' I had hardly got outside when he A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 121 came rushing out like a man balmy, and said to me, ' You must come back with me.' So I said, ' All rioht ! What is the matter ? ' So when we got to the door, he said, * How did you open this door ? ' So I said, ' My good fellow, you are mad ! How could I open it? ' So he said, ' It was not open half an hour ago, be- cause I tried it' So I said, 'Is that any reason why I should have opened it?' So he said, * At any rate you will have to come to the station with me.' " The station was not a stone's throw from the place, so he caught hold of me, so I gave a twist round, and brought the kipsy in his face, and gave him a push and guyed. He followed, giving me hot beef (calling ' Stop thief! '). My pal came along, and I said to him, ' Make this man leave me alone ; he is knock- ing me about,' and I put a half- James (half-sove- reign) in his hand and said, ' Guy.' As I was runninir round a corner there was a reeler talk- ing to a postman, and I rushed by him, and a little while after the gardener came up and told him all about it. So he set after me, and the postman too, all the three giving me hot beef This set other people after mc, and I got run out. So I got run in, and was tried at Mary- lebone and remanded for a week, and then ful- 122 PRISONS AND PRISONERS lied (fully committed for trial), and got this stretch and a half. Marylebone is the court I got my schooling from." I continue the autobiography. During this imprisonment he was transferred from Coldbath Fields to Clerkenwell, as the former prison was over full. The hundred that came to us in a batch had apparently been selected, most of them, as those whose room was preferrable to their company, and a choice crew of Cockney criminals most of them were. I was attracted to him partly by finding in him a sense of humour, which is rare in the typical criminal, and partly because I thought he was as hard a nut to crack as could be found, and that if any- thing could be made of him of none need any one despair. On his discharge, as my memory and my account books show, there were many ups and downs, alternations of sobriety and intemperance, of hard work and relapses into crime, and for several years I had to stick closely to him and give him many a fresh finan- cial start. Close by me, as I write, is the jemmy he gave me once, remarking with a twinkle in his eye that it was safer in my cus- tody than in his, and other donations from him, including some flash notes which are the only fivers I at present possess, enrich my criminal A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 123 collection. I remember once walking- down the Blackfriars Road with him and noticing an old house with an iron arcading round the front door. "Ah," said he, with a view to the bed- room window above, "neat, but very 'andy." Telling this story to some artistic friends at Bedford Park, it shortly appeared in a some- what altered form with an illustration in Punch. In his longest interval of respectability he mar- ried a young factory girl, illiterate but virtuous, and I officiated by special request at the wed- ding, with a ticket of leave brother of his to give away the bride, and often afterwards were he and she my guests. One day, however, when out with his barrow, he met some old pals who persuaded him to go to Sandown Races. There the old passion for betting broke out ; he spent all his stock money, drank in disgust at himself, and relapsed to burgling, and was speedily caught and sent to the penal servitude for which his history and his convictions had qualified him. Uurino; his absence I had occasion to write of his wife as one of my heroines in these words : " Though young, illiterate, and not strong, she is keeping herself and two young sons by un- wearied toil at box-making, by which she makes from nine to eleven shillings a week, paying three and threepence rent for an unfurnished room. 124 PRISONS AND PRISONERS It always cheers and strengthens me to visit her, and to note her fortitude and sweet temper, while her fingers are busily producing the gross of boxes for which she will get perhaps two shillings." Herhusbandmadeabad prisoner this time, and got but little remission. On discharge he thought a new land would give him the only chance of a fresh start, and so between his relations and a grant from the Sheriffs' Fund, and some- thing from my friends, he and his wife and boys were sent abroad. Soon came a letter wanting- me to fetch him back. " Not for Joe," I wrote, and he had to settle down to work, and buckling to he soon gained the name of " the EnoHsh hustler," from the energy with which he devoted himself to various jobs. From time to time I heard from him, and each time progress was obvious. Now came a photograph of his boys as surpliced choristers, and later a parish maga- zine with the names of himself and his wife in the list of communicants, and eventually the typical criminal, the burden to the taxes, became a trusted insurance agent and a respected citizen; and finally in 1897 I received a cutting from a trans-oceanic paper which described his sudden death from apoplexy. It said : " Mr. X. was forty-three years of age. He was born A THIEF'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 125 in England, and came to this country with his wife and two small children eight years ago. For the greater part of this time Mr. X. has resided in this city, and has acted for the Y. Life- Insurance Company. He had a large acquaintance in business and social circles, and was highly respected and generally esteemed. The funeral will be held from All Saints' Church on Sunday. The members of the Z. Union Lodge, LO.O.F., of which the deceased was a popular member, will attend in a body." How commonplace it sounds to all but me ! But the commonplace often veils the marvellous and the heroic. Perseverance in effort ; trusting in those who despair of themselves ; the repudia- tion in this instance, I fear, of the most definite C.O.S. principles ; and the result is such as to encourao^e others who are wrestling with tough customers, and certainly to fill me with thank- fulness for the issue of what may be described as my Ten Years' War. This is a case of cure, but of course our chief efforts should be directed to prevention, and much every way is the gain when the supplies of crime can be cut oft by child-saving work. CHAPTER VI I. Children in Prison.— 2. Not "Whether" but " Why." — 3. Sunday School Influence. I. Children in Prison. PRISON chaplains nowadays see little of children, but in my report of 1878 I wrote: "The chaplain, in noticing that 1 10 prisoners have been under the age of twelve years, must express his great regret that no defi- nite rules exist with regard to the safe custody of children accused of or involved in crime. . . . Obviously nothing can be said in favour of a boy of six years being remanded here and kept in silent and solitary confinement on a charge of vagrancy, nor for a girl of seven being sent here for running an errand for her mother with a bad fourpenny bit ; both of which instances have occurred here lately." I kept pegging away at this, though prison chaplains' reports did not then even advance to the honour of 126 CHILDREN IN PRISON 127 burial in a Blue Book, and I remember a prison inspector seeing one of my first reports and saying, " It is very good of you to take all this trouble, but you don't suppose any one will read it." Then happily came at last the order of the Home Secretary (Sir \V. Harcourt) whereby such magisterial iniquity was pre- vented, and governors had immediately to inform the Home Office if any child under the age of twelve was received. Therefore, in my last report (for 1885) I had only to refer to the subject thus : " I should like to put on record a suo'LTestion that the abolition of this prison might well be made the occasion of the establishment of a special House of Detention, after the nature of a truant school, to which all boys and girls under sixteen might be remanded, instead of their being introduced to a prison, and that frequently without having committed any real crime. People hardly believe me when I say that I have been called upon to minister to infants of both sexes aged six and seven. This is happily now impossible, but the time is ncjt f^u* distant when people will find it equally hard to believe that children in 1885 were sent here simply for being homeless and friendless, and as such committing the ' crime ' of sleeping out. Besides the more 128 PRISONS AND PRISONERS obvious objections, there is no doubt that the comparative luxury of the prison removes from the street-arab nearly all the deterrent force the idea of a prison had before, and his return as a real criminal is more likely. When our School Board can set up its truant school with power of detention, the cry of noii possumiLS can hardly be raised. You (the Prison Com- missioners) speak in your eighth report of the ' manifest injustice of sending to prison people whose mental condition is doubtful.' But these have committed crimes, and are frequently dangerous to the community. A fortiori, therefore, it is manifestly unjust to remand children whose only ' crime ' is homelessness." The decrease in the number of children under twelve committed to prison will be shown by the followinof table : — In 1872 there were 1562 ; in 1882 there were 415 „ 1873 „ 1482 „ 1883 „ 387 „ 1874 „ 1470 „ 1884 „ 270 „ 1875 „ 1084 „ 1885 „ 250 ,, 1876 ,, 998 ,, 1886 „ 261 „ 1877 ,, 1065 „ 1887 „ 226 But still there is need to remember that home- lessness is not a crime, and that there may be no moral wrono- nor harm to the State in what is technically and legally a crime. Neither our CHILDREN IN PRISON 129 prisons, nor even our workhouses, are the places in which temporary shelter is to be afforded for those whom we want to befriend and rescue as children. One day I noted the cases of five of my lambs who were juvenile offenders certainly, else they could not have been remanded. But what was their offence ? The card on their cell doors informs us that they have been " sleeping out" — an offence not unknown even to the heads of well-regulated families, and frequently committed by deputations from the Waifs and Strays Society. Not that I would proclaim them without fault, for in most instances they have started on the prodigal's path by running away from home, albeit with- out receiving the portion that should come to them, and with a memory, which was probably not his, of a frequent acquaintance with the buckle end of the parental strap. Having thus launched themselves upon the streets they find that if they be of gold, that metal is not edible, nor to be detached from the asphalte in sufficient amount to ensure even a " fourpenny doss " each nitiht. Therefore thev must find a restinij-place where thev can. Five boys I one day interrogated as to their usual l^ecl- rooms or beddin"; during the weeks or months that they have been tentless arabs. The first 10 I30 PRISONS AND PRISONERS has slept always on the ground, but, with some instinctive idea of the existence of rheumatism, has begged from the aristocracy of his class, the capitalists who sing the evening hymn of " Speshul Edishun ! " a few contents bills, more or less wind-torn and gutter-stained, and, spreading these beneath him, has dreamed on EcJio s and been cushioned on a Globe. The next has crept nightly under the tarpaulins which, in the Borough Market, cover the mounds of cabbages or sacks of potatoes, ex- pecting, if in the luxurious couch he envelopes himself and cannot anticipate the coming of the early salesman, to be roused by a cuff and an oath, with possibly another as a second course at breakfast, by way of kindly dismissal from the policeman to whom he is introduced. Ponder on this, ye who grumble at the incipient felting of your horsehair or tlock mattress, and rather admire the refinement of the princess who detected the inequality of the roseleaf beneath her bed of eiderdown ! " Blessinors," said Sancho Panza, " on the man who invented sleep." A ciouble blessing surely attends the capacity to slumber on sacks of Irish lumpers or piles of the roseate but rotund pickling cabbage. The third has usually found free quarters on the staircases of houses let out in CHILDREN IN PRISON 131 tenements, where, from the late or early habits of the lodtrers, the street door is open all night, a course certainly productiv^e of moral harm, as an estimable lady worker has frequently pointed out. How often such sleepers are stumbled over by those who return home only because the gin palaces are cl(jsed, or kicked more or less accidentally downstairs by those who grope their way out to their early work in the markets only those who have tried can tell. The next lad, with a companion, has for long occupied a four-poster in the shape of a van left under a railway arch, and if only a few sacks can be discovered for a cjuilt, what more could be desired ? The fiftli had run away from home, as his father would probably say, or been turned out for not getting work, as he himself said, some three weeks ago ; had made only threepence or fourpence a day by selling lights, and after spendingall this in a Lockhart's cocoa-room had repaired each night to " where you stand up to look over "-^in other words, to the seats on ]^)lacktriars Bridge, whence, as he said, " the p'lice doesn't always move you on." No .Sybarite couch — that is before him in the hammock of a training-ship — a pillow destitute of padding even more than his slender and skinny limbs, though perhaps he found some 132 PRISONS AND PRISONERS consolation in the undoubtedly thorough ventilation of his bedroom, in the height of its roof, and the abundance of night porters always in attendance — to disregard the mute appeal of such a bundle of rags and bones. But when I meet with these boys in prison I cannot but wish that their introduction to a criminal institution did not mean comfort and even luxury, and thus lose all its deterrent force. Kept somewhere of course they must be while philanthropy, whether of the State or of a society, or of individuals, has time to examine their stories and provide for their future benefit ; but need that place be a prison, when something after the nature of a truant school would answer all purposes, and preserve them from the memory of prison as a comfort- able place ? 2. Not " WiiETFiioR " BUT "Why." "God loves adverbs," says the judicious Hooker, merely reminding us that a word or action should be judged rather by its motives than its results. A penny given with sympathy, twopence as the result of self-denial, is worth far more than the lar^e sum oiv^n from ostentation, or rivalrv, or to silence im- portunity. A nian may come to a violent end NOT "WHETHER" BUT "WHY" 133 by wanton murder, or by homicide that may be justifiable and even a virtuous act. A corpse is the result in either case, but justice regards chiefly the intention that prompted the blow. So in many and varied cases have we to ask not whether something- is done, but why, and how, and with what result ? This preface leads me to remark that it is a matter of frequent occurrence for me to receive letters asking- what can be done with or for a lad or lass, a youni;" man or young' woman, who has been dishonest. My experiences ol oxer one hundred thousand separate cases in ten years' work in Clerkenwell Prison has neces- sarily resulted in a certain amount ol kiiovv- ledore of what to do, and how to do it, when an act, ov even habit, of dishonesty has been discovered ; and ni) usual hrst answer to correspondents whogixe voluminous and some- times unnecessary details oi the act that seems to blioht a character and |)ros|)('Cts is, " Never mind whether ; can )'ou tell me why he or she stole .'^ " I'ind out the cause, lalxtur to remove, cure, or prevent that, and then a repetition ot the act is less likely. Let me give a few cases that are t\j)iiiil. A.B., a girl brought up in a district school or large orphanage, pilfers in her first place. 134 PRISONS AND PRISONERS What? Oh, little thincrs — bits of ribbon a pair of scissors, Christmas cards. I am afraid she is a confirmed pilferer — cannot keep her hands from any unconsidered trifle on which her eyes fall. What does she do with them ? Only makes a magpie's hoard in her box. Then this is nature rather than vice, and the ofuiltiness is to be souoht not in the o-irl so much as in the system under which she was reared. She always had the innate and proper love of having personal property ; the enforced communism of the child-barrack has noxiously repressed it. Her dress belonged to the school and not to " No. 3," as she was called ; the few toys were common property ; the odds and ends that seemed impedimenta or litter to us, but treasures, and even companions, to the child, were unknown in her institutionalised life ; therefore, when she goes out into service, suppressed nature breaks out — the girl wants gifts rather than punishment. Had this been considered in time, a few trifles, valueless to the mistress, would have been precious to the servant when given as " your very own," and no pilfering would have occurred. Or CD., with the same history, acts in the same way. What did she do with her loot ? Bedecked herself, or spent the stolen coppers NOT "WHETHER" BUT "WHY" 135 in a brooch. Exactly ; here again is nature, not sin. She has hitherto been uniformed and even her outfit for service was identical with that she saw every other " inmate " receive. But God paints no replicas, nor makes two blades of grass alike, and gives all creation the power to differentiate and beautify itself. The girl's repressed instincts were for some adornment, and not to be like every one else. Why did not the mistress anticipate this, and teach her young sister in the kitchen the right measure and manner of adornment and pro- ducing individuality by a touch or two? E. F., from the same school, acts similarly. What became of her purloinings ^ She gave them away to the servant next door, or to a schoolfellow she met on Sunday night. Here arain is more of virtue than of vice. The dis- tributive faculty exists in all, and usually makes more for goodness than the acquisitive, and requires more encouragement. Hitherto it has had httle or even no opportunii)- for its being exercised ; and while one cannot defend the method by which means for its gratification arc. in this instance, accjuircd, yet let us not see in the action unmixed evil. G. H. steals money and sj)liu1s ii in a gorge ol sweets — a very common case, as all know 136 PRISONS AND PRISONERS who have had prison-work to do, and even have noted the ways of growing lads and lasses. Gluttony added to theft ! exclaim some. True, but yet the physical desire for sugar is natural, inevitable, and right in the young. Has it been borne in mind in the dietary and indulgences (if any) of the institution from which the culprit has lately come ? Very frequently the rules, framed by adults, have lost sight of this point, and no due provision has been made for the want that the manaoers have outgrown and forgotten. Ex-prisoners frequently injure them- selves by a hasty and unchecked rush to beef- steaks on the day of discharge from a scant and semi-veo'etarian diet. I have even known a death to occur from this cause. We grieve, but hardly wonder, and cannot absolutely blame. So, too, the apparently excessive and over- mastering desire for lollipops which leads to theft is sometimes attributable to suppressed and injured nature ; and the swing of the pendulum to the opposite extreme when set free cannot be unreservedly blamed by those who have hitherto tied it up too high instead of seeing that it rests upon its equipose. When the happ)' mean has not been provided for, excess may be expected when opportunity occurs — a maxim that is of wide application, and relates NOT "WHETHER" BUT "WHY" 137 to many things of physical, social, political, moral, and religious importance. I. J. is an office lad who has taken his em- ployer's stamps. Why ? I ask. Don't know. Then find out, and write again. I now learn that he had been led into betting, and was pressed, almost forced, to have his half-crown in the office Derby sweep to which all, from the indignant and prosecuting employer down- wards, contributed. Is the lad's guilt, then, entirely his own ? Blame him, but blame him not alone ; blame him, but give him something else as well as blame : teach him, as probably no one has hitherto done, the essential im- morality of betting ; make him see the shame of receiving money for which he has not given money's worth ; make him despise the un- fraternal spirit and cunning on and by which betting thrives; show him 1)\' instances how rapidly the passion grows, and what a consum- ing fire it becomes ; and then, remox iiig the cause, you w ill not have cause again to lament the effect. Here are four other cases that seem to you pure thefts, alike and inexcusable. But inquiry reveals that in one case, hysteria ; in another, the desire to help a needy friend ; a third, intemperance ; in the last, the over- 138 PRISONS AND PRISONERS mastering of a weak nature by a stronger and criminal one, is the real cause, to be met in the right way and removed. These are but simple cases, and under each head I could give many concrete instances that I have known in prison and without. Is it not well for people to consider the " why " as well as " whether," and to advance their moral growth by being at once more ready to make excuses for others and less ready to make excuses for themselves '^ Actions that seem quite inexcusable are not always such, when patiently and even sympathetically we try to discover motives and causes of action. I once had a girl from an institution under my care in prison, for the crime of arson. She had set fire to the home that had sheltered her. Base ingratitude ! a serious crime ! the effects of evil parentage coming out ! many, doubtless ex- claimed. Softly, censorious regarders of the fact alone. "Why did you do it, child.?" I asked. " Please, sir, it was the love of praise." (In prison one is rarely surprised at anything, for cloaks and masks are less worn than in the respectable and undetected world outside.) "Yes, child," I said, "but I don't quite under- stand what you mean." There came out what was undoubtedly the truth. There had been SUNDAY SCHOOL INFLUENCE 139 an incipient fire in the institution which this girl had discovered and put out. She gained much praise, which was so sweet (apparently, I fear, sweets had not their proper place in the moral dietary of the place) that to gain some more she shortly after kindled a fire herself. I told this incident, a few days after it happened, to my friend Mr. Moncure Conway, and he was moved to the verge of tears by its pathos and its significance. He, at any rate, thought not that blame and punishment were the sole medicines for the crime. 3. Sunday School Influence. A orreat deal mioht be said as to the in- fluence of Sunday Schools upon children who, from their parentage or early surroundings, are likely to swell the ranks of our home heathen. Into this many-sided and thorny subject I would not enter here except to say that certainly things would be worse if there were no Sunday Schcjols, and not nearly so bad if Sunday Schools were better. But it may be provocative of thought to record what I found when I took fifty boys as they came, their ages varying from nine and a half to sixteen. I. All but two had been Sunday-school scholars. Not that this means much, for I40 PRISONS AND PRISONERS "Go to Sunday School" often means but "Get out of my way." 2. Of these twenty-nine had been in Church schools, fourteen in chapel schools, four in both, and one didn't know which it was. 3. They had been at Sunday School for terms varying- from one month to nine years, with an average of three and a half years. 4. Forty-two claimed to have attended regularly, six admitted irregularity, 5. Seventeen had been once, twenty-six twice, and five thrice on Sunday. Evening Sunday School is a great advantage in popu- lous towns ; the devil always has one open at the thievish corner of the street, and fas est ab hostc doccri. 6. Twenty-one had kept to the same school, twenty had been to two, and seven to three schools. I presume they would hardly include or acknowledge temporary visits to other schools before the treats were on. 7. Twenty were still attending Sunday School, twenty-eight had left. 8. Thirty-one " didn't know why " they had left (I did though) ; nine had to work on Sundays ; two considered themselves too old (a common cause of loss unless the upper classes are called Bible classes and held apart SUNDAY SCHOOL INFLUENCE 141 from the yountrer catechumens) ; two had no clothes ; two didn't Hke it (no wonder, if they were in certain schools I could name) ; one left because his teacher did (the " 1-am-ot-Cephas " difficulty must be met in schools as well as in conf^regations) ; and one had to work so late on Saturday, poor brat, that he was unfit for exertion on Sunday. 9. Twenty-nine had had prizes, chiefly for regularity of attendance. 10. Only twenty-nine of the fifty could say the Lord's Prayer perfectly. 11. Only thirty-one could tell me how many Commandments there were. 12. Seven could repeat the Sixth and Ninth Commandments ; forty knew neither. 13. Thirteen could, and thirty-seven could not, repeat the Creed. 14. vSeven were entirely ignorant of how- Christ died — they had heard His name, and that was all. I 5. Twenty-one could tell me nothing of what happened to llim after fiis death. 16. Six had no idea where He was now. 17. To the ([uestion, "What is He doing now?" eio-hteen could give a fairlv good answer, three had some idea, but twentv-nine 142 PRISONS AND PRISONERS knew nothing about it, as the popular theology which blights us rarely goes beyond Calvary. The saddest thing in this respect was to find that the prevalent idea of the present occupa- tion of Christ was that He was engaged in " taking down everything what we do wrong." Oh dear, oh dear ! How can children be expected to love an awful combination of a detective and a public prosecutor ? CHAPTER VII INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS. SUPPLEMENTING what I have already kl^ said on the subject of the pecuhar speech of the crhninal, street-haunting', or vagrant classes, I would draw some illustra- tions and observations from the prison walls, or rather the insides of the cells, in which I spent so much time during my ten years at Clerkenwell. In no respect is the cacoethcs scribendi more deserving of its name than when it prompts the illiterate or the snob to leave a record of his unimportant or undesirable presence. The idiotic attempts at feeble and sometimes fetid wit in our railway carriages, the defacing of the walls in some historic place with names of trippers or tourists of the meaner sort, the vul- ""arisino- of the most maonihceiit thinos in nature by the announcemeni that 'Arry M3 144 PRISONS AND PRISONERS 'Opkins has appreciated but himself in Switzer- land, or Caleb Y. Smith has been unable to forget his personality in the presence of Niagara, are all wonderments to the philosophical and saddening to the moralist or the believer in the capacities of man. Egoism is the more unbearable when the Ego is contemptible and unable to conceal the fact. This particular manifestation of egoism and snobbery becomes not the less oppressive because it is confined almost entirely to one class of the community, namely, the lower middle males. It is a vice to which the labourer and the artisan is remarkably little addicted. It is rare among women of any class. But the males of the lower middle class are unfortunately (in this respect, at any rate) a very numerous, ubiquitous, and irrepressible body. An aggravating circum- stance is that very litde light is thrown upon the natural history of the animal by its inscrip- tions, which are chiefly confined to the abso- lutely unimportant matter of its name. One does learn something from the scratches of the early Hottentots in their caves, or from the walls of Pompeii ; but from the efforts of 'Arry the shopman, or clerk, or junior bagman, nothing can be gathered. There is, however, one kind of inscriptions INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 145 which presents exceptions to many of the pre- cecHng remarks, as they are the work of the lower and lowest, classes, and do teach much of the languajT^e, the habits, and the habitats of the inscriber. There are none of the beauties or solemnities of nature in view to be outraged. It is not here that "every prospect pleases," and only man is displayed as vile by his inability to appreciate it or depreciate himself. In some cases, even, they have a moral purpose, and aim at the interests of others, not the glorification or obtrusion of self Thev occasionally reveal sentiments which one could not wish absent, even though one fails to see why they should be published in this particular way. There is a creditable absence from them of the sheer silliness or mere dirt which is the staple of those inscriptions elsewhere which are more than records of names and dates. Finally, they are produced under circum- stances of braving an afilictive dietary, results which cannot, unfortunately, afflict most of our public scribblers. I allude to the inscrij)lions by the inmates of j)rison cells. As Hepworlh Dixon says: "It is a curious subject lo seek into the motives which impel men lo write their names on the stones ot their |)rison houses. Men of all ranks and characters do II 146 PRISONS AND PRISONERS it : the noble in the Beauchamp Tower ; the felon in the house of correction ; the murderer in the cell at Nevvfrate. Perhaps it is the mere instinct of activity, denied every other mode of expending itself." Michael Davitt, however, ascribes it to " that weakness or vanity which induces travellers to carve their names upon the Pyramids," yet adds later that he adorned the waiting-room at the Old Bailey with the record that " M. D. expects ten years for the crime of being an Irish Nationalist, and the victim of an informer's perjury." I do not, however, propose to speak of those inscriptions which are of some historic interest in older prisons, into which in the bad old days came men for the crimes of being Churchmen or Nonconformists (according to whether the Independents or Churchmen were in power), or for being loyal to their monarch in adversity. Much might be gathered of interest from the Tower of London, parts of which have been covered with inscriptions, of which I only quote one from the Beauchamp Tower : — " The man whom this place cannot mend, Hath evil become, and worse will end." Much more interesting information may be gathered on this point from Hepworth Dixon's INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 147 "The London Prisons," or by a personal visit to the Tower. Nor should one omit the records in the wrongly-named Lollards' Tower in Lambeth Palace. My purpose is, however, to speak only of what has come under my own notice, and to give some account of what I have transcribed from time to time from the walls of my own prison. Pencils are contra- band, writing materials only lent for a time when a letter has to be written, and all defacing of the walls would be a prison offence. Yet such power has the cacoethes scribendi that the whitewash or paint is hardly dry in a renewed cell before the crop of inscriptions begins to appear. Let me attempt to classify and describe some of them. There are those which would certainly puzzle a future antiquarian who was learned in the tongue of the Victorian Age, from the number of words they contain unknown to the pulpit. the bench, and even to Parliament. Thus, " Fullied for a clock and slang," reveals the fact that the writer stole a watch and chain, was apprehended, and has been fully committed for trial at the next sessions or assize. " Lone bil expects bolt," informs the sympathetic or rejoicing reader that one William, whose stature exceeds that wlilcli is commnn amono- 148 PRISONS AND PRISONERS the stunted members of the criminal class (a man of six feet, is a rare phenomenon in prison), expects to be sentenced to penal ser- vitude. " Neddie from City Road, smugged for attempt up the Grove, expects a sixer," means that a misguided Edward has been appre- hended while promenading outside Whiteley's, and investicrating the contents of ladies' pockets, and is reconciling himself to an absence from his oriental home for half a year. "Take my tip and turn square, from a hook who is going to be legged," would be, in common parlance, Take my advice and get your living honestly, says a pickpocket who is expecting penal servitude. " Fatty Bill, from City Road, rem for a bust ex 2 years," means that William, affectionately known to his com- panions by the possession of adiposity (fat people rarely find their way to prison, or perhaps people who are qualifying themselves for prison rarely get fat), has (like the herein afore-mentioned Edward) been compelled to leave his congenial haunts in the City Road, as he is remanded for burglary, and anticipates two years' hard labour. Again, from the City Road (and he is careful to add E.C. lest he should be confused with some West End INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 149 bloated aristocrat), next comes Mike, whose record is, " 7 or the chucl-: for a clock," i.e., he hopes to be acquitted, but rather expects seven years for stealing a watch. " Kit from seven dials, remanded innocent on 2 charges of pokes, only out two weeks for a drag, expects to get fulled or else chucked. Got 2 previous convictions. Cheer up, old Dials." The speciality of this artist is proclaimed to be purses, and his assertion of innocence is rather discounted by the two charges and two con- victions which preceded the three months hard labour from which he has so lately emerged. Another is, "Only just out of Steel," i.e., the Bastile, i.e., Coldbath Fields Prison. " Arthur, from Marylebone, expects seven years for some Snow," or linen. Another from the Borough. " Ten for a toy," or watch. Another complains that he is " Put away by Charly Start, the Coppers Nark," or poHceman's spy, the nark being to his ex-companions what Judas Iscariot is to the Christian. " Tommy roundhead, seven dials, fulid, expects two stretch for a prop," or two years for stealing a breast pin. " Poor old Jim, the lob crawler, fell from Racker and got pinched." is a lament in an unknown tongue to many, but to the initiated conveys succincdy the information that James 150 PRISONS AND PRISONERS and his companion Racker went out to commit till robberies ; being detected, one escaped, but the other was apprehended. Another of the trade has " dipped a bob for 6 quid," or stolen six pounds from a till. As most consider it the thing to append their address after a fashion, it becomes very easy to compile a list of the streets or lodging- houses most affected by the criminal classes ; and these were in those days (building opera- tions in some cases, religious activity in others, having produced changes) : — In the Western district : Bangor Street and Crescent Street, Netting Hill. In the South-West district : Pye Street and Peter Street, Westminster. In the East, Flower and Dean Street, Kate Street, and the Bee-hive lodijin'^-house in Brick Lane. In the East Central : Whitecross Street and Golden Lane, St. Luke's Street, Lever Street, New North Road, and the streets between it and Hoxton Street on the east, and City Road on the West, and notably Blind Con's lodging- house in Golden Lane. In the West Central division : Eagle Street, Holborn, Short's Gardens, Drury Lane, the Empress Chambers, and Fullwood's (or Fuller's) Rents. Across the Thames, Mint Street and Tabard Street, in the Boroucrh, and East Street, Walworth. INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 151 These names come over and over ao-ain, and often afford a useful clue as to the habits of the writer. True, as a prisoner from a particularly low lodo'ino -house once remarked, " A man aint a 'orse because he live in a stable," but it is true, as I rejoined, that he has no great objection to the company of horses if he chooses such an abode. It would be naturally imagined that the great food question would be referred to in these mural records, and therefore we find such remarks as the followino- : '* Here's luck to the pint of skilly ! " and for the benefit of the next occupant of the lodgings, " How do you like skilly, old boy?" Or again, "Come to this place, and then you will see what food you will get ; " to which the answer might be, " Such as is sufficient to keep prisoners what they are — the most healthy class in England." There- fore, " Lord save us from starvashim," was an unnecessary prayer while the writer remained in prison. Yet visions ot luxuries and excess will enter the mind, and therefore we find : " One more month then out we go, then for feed of Hot Coco, hried Bread and Steak, Plenty of Beer, Better kick than we gets here." A somewhat carnal and despairing view of prison life is indicated by — " Lads, )(iur only 152 PRISONS AND PRISONERS friend here is your brown lofe and pint of thick." The following^ remark dates from before a uniform system was introduced by the prisoners comino" under Government : " This prison is worse than Maidstone ; Prisoners' dinners at to {i.e., not until two) clock and very bad then." Yet the variety of diet is beneficial from other points of view than the physical one — anything to minimise the horrors of monotony ; and so one wrote, " Cheer u|), boys, down with sorrow : Beef to-day, Soup to-morrow," which again does not sound as if "stir [i.e., prison), means starvation," were the expression of a fact, whether etymological or physical. A com- mon yearning during the first part of an im- prisonment would be expressed in, "O for a pot of beer," or the artless poem : — " O who can tell the panes I feel, A poor and harmless sailor. I miss my grog and every meal ; Here comes the blooming jailor." But those inscriptions are of more real interest which show that the quiet and solitary life has begun to arouse reflective powers, and that reason or conscience, long dormant or drugged, again make their voices heard. There INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 153 are very few people who would not be benefited by a month in prison, if they had the sense and the grace to use the opportunity thus afforded for meditation and resolution. They might doubtless make for themselves the same op- portunities in some external retreat, but then they generally will not, or at any rate do not. Plainly a step forwards and upwards has been taken, albeit a minor one, when the prisoner has beirun to search out the cause of his position, as had those who wrote, " I advise you to keep away from beer ; be a teatotaler," or "Goodbye all. Give up drink," or "Take my advice and keep from drink, for it has been the ruin of me ; it will be a warning to me U)r life;" words which might impress another prisoner more as coming from one in his own condition than if they came from the chaplain. Or again, from the female side (in which inscriptions are much rarer), " I, Eliz. F., take an oath 1 never touch drink again with the help of God." Prison resolutions are no doubt mainly equal in value to sick-bed reso- lutions, but yet from both there comes a percentage of permanent good, and it is by no means rare to find that the compulsory abstinence of a prison has been the prelude to voluntary abstinence outside, which has seemed 154 PRISONS AND PRISONERS or been thought impossible before. Again, "A prisoner's advice : sign the pledge," which had been anticipated or acted upon by another, who deposes, " h pint whiskey brought me here : took the pledge for two years — renew- able for ever." Should it be objected that prisoners seem to ascribe all their crimes to intemperance, the answer is that in seventy- five cases out of a hundred this is so, by a computation that is below that of many cognos- centi. Again, a step of solid value has been taken when reflection leads one to consider how little evil pays after all, even on commercial prin- ciples. A further and higher application of the question, " What shall it profit a man ? " becomes more easy after this first step. Of course we meet with the stock adage which bears on this point in the words, " Take advice from a convict — honesty is the best policy, my boys ; " but there is candour or humour in the variant form, " Honesty is the best policy for a little while." Many have reached the point of considering how much money they lose by what they take, as evidenced in " Babzey from the Kate (i.e. Kate Street, Spitalfields), 7 yrs. for /^;^T, ;" or, " Ten days and ten years for a box of money with 9s. yd. in the box ; " or, INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 155 " Harry the painter from Strand, expects 6 months for 5 bob ; " or the melancholy reHec- tion on the depression of trade, " Burglary is a poor game nowadays." Another moralist is moved to poetry : — " When I get out I do intend My future life to try and mend, For sneaking's a game that does not pay ; You are bound to get lagged, do what you may. Written by one who knows it to his sorrow. Who expects 12 months' for only a borrow." (Cf. "Convey the wise it call"). A similar thought occurred to him who wrote : — " For seven long years have I served them, And seven long years I have to stay. For meeting a bloke in our alley And taking his ticker away." Then there are moral remarks of a more varied kind, such as this, by one who probably bewailed the lack of visitors : " Lads, wen your outside and got nioney your got friends, but wen your here and got no money you got no friends ; " or the sneer of another pessi- mist, " What a happy world this is! " (Pretty much what we choose to make it, my Iriend ; man makes his circumstances more than circum- stances make the man.) "Cheer up, girls; 156 PRISONS AND PRISONERS it's no use to fret," may be the utterance of a better spirit or the vain attempt to drown remorse or shame. " I hope the best but dread the worst," is a natural remark, only acquitted, by which probably "the best" is meant, is not always a boon in the long run. " Chambre de la meditation " is an appropriate description of what a cell may be to the benefit of the inmate. " Return good for evil ; " let us hope this was not mentally addressed to the prosecutor, but was a personal admonition. " Vincit qui patitur " reminds us that it is not the uneducated only that fall into crime. But reasoning power seems to have been absent from him who wrote, "All in lonely cell I lie. No better I deserve. It will make your blood run cold, To think how I got served," wherein it is difficult to see w^hether the acceptance of penance or the spirit of rebellion against it was the innermost thought. " Law for the rich, but none for the poor," is a maxim which derives its sting from its truth not having passed away with feudalism, though sometimes quoted to justify absurd complaints. Was it a visit or the absence of a visit that inspired, " Oh, what is love, if not the same in wealth, prosperity, adversity, and shame .-* " Certainly from prison walls come very touching examples INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 157 in everyday life, as in history, that love will '^o to the fj;"allows. The application, " Wen your neighbour's house is on fire, save your own," requires explanation, which only the writer could give. Was " In speaking of another's faults, Pray don't forget your own," an attempt at self-consolation on the part of a prisoner who had been reprimanded for some breach of rules? "Cheer up, lads; time Hies," was written by one who would better have remem- bered the entire adage of the dial, " Pereunt — et imputantur." " You are a lot of fools to get in here, myself included," is frank, but oblivious to the fact that rogues are invariably fools, sometimes happily for society. If this is not mere sentimentality, there is pathos in this sentiment, " The heart may break, yet may brokenly live on ! " Good John Bullish words in " It's no use crying ; you have got to do it ; then, after you have done it, don't do it any more; I won't." "Think of your mother," was no doubt the well-meant advice of one who had personally profited by such thought ; but until many mothers cease to be the active as well as the passive cause of their children going wrong it is not safe to scatter this counsel brc^adcast. When, for example, a j)risoner tells me : " I was born in prison while n\y mother 158 PRISONS AND PRISONERS was doing- a month for being drunk, and I expect to die in prison," I had rather he should not reflect on her influence and example. But, " Man, know thyself," would not fail to fit any future occupant of the cell. If not morality, there is at least philosophy and bitter truth in the reply or comment on the words of Alf. Jones, who had written, "Good-bye, Lucy dear, I'm parted from you for seven long year." The reply was : — " If Lucy dear is like most gals, She'll give few sighs or moans, But soon will find among your pals Another Alfred Jones." Evidence of memory and the power of appli- cation is found in such inscribed quotations as this, from an old English ballad, which is pathetic when found in a female prisoner's cell :— " I wish to God my baby was born, And smiling on its father's knee, And I, poor girl, lay in my grave, I'he green grass growing over me." The inevitable, " Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," is of course found, and the INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 159 equally inevitable, " Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Politics are, happily, left outside, and do not disturb our tranquillity or embitter our fate, the only in- scription of this sort beincr " Vote for Dilke and Firth," which was not, I presume, inspired by any knowledge that I was a voter in the Chelsea Division. The oppressiveness of time, which is the real punishment of prison life to most, finds a strikinof record in such words as these : "21,000 times have I walked round this cell in a week " — a self-imposed treadmill, which speaks expressively of the pains of anticipation and unrest ; or in these other rosaries of despair : " 3,300 bricks in this cell," and in another place, "131 black tiles, 150 red tiles in this cell." Birds could not sing if they were reduced to counting the wires in their cage, in the hope of drowning thought. Certain generalisations of observant and experienced men appear in the description of the productive qualities of various places, to wit, " London for sharpers, Brummagem for thieves, Paris for flymen, Sheffield for pitchers of snyde (coiners and utterers), signed by Darkey, the gun (or gonoph, i.e., thief), from W^ands- worth Road, for a bust." Or as regards the i6o PRISONS AND PRISONERS ultimate destination of these gentlemen, we find that the convict's establishment have Murrays of their own, who say — " Dartmoor is a tidy place, Chatham is the terror of our race, Portland is not quite so bad, Broadmoor is for those stark mad, Pentonville is the hill of London, Borstal if you're there you're undone, Portsmouth is a noted shop, Brixton is a regular cop." Or, as a more fleshly poet writes — " Millbank for thick shins and graft at the pump, Broadmoor for all laggs who go off their chump (become insane), Brixton for good toke and cocoa with fat, Dartmoor for bad grub, but plenty of chat ; Portsmouth a blooming bad place for hard work, Chatham on Sunday gives four ounces of pork, Portland is the worst of the lot for to joke in, For fetching a lagging there's no place like Woking." I have left to the last the by no means least instructive class of inscriptions, the religious ones. Many of them may be the expression of hypocrisy, for the prison world is not much better than the external world of undetected persons ; many may record an emotion which INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS i6i dies almost at its birth, like the resolutions that arc born in church and buried in the churchyard ; but yet it must be remembered that they are not meant to catch the eye, and thus curry favour, for what they would gain would probably be a day's bread and water for defacino- the cell contrary to regulations, or being- in possession of a contraband pencil. In not a few cases, however, they spring from a revived (^r new-born emotion that convinces or calms, softens or makes brave to endure. Instances of these inscriptions are : "Keep your sins ever before thee," or " P^ear God and scorn the devil, then you will not be here again" ; or (with another suspicion of the dualist heresy), " The Almighty for Master, the (le\i] for servant. Amen." In which case the love of antithesis has proved fatal to the theological accuracy, or even the common sense of the author. " Whatsoever you would that man should do unto you, even so do it unto them," may have reminded the prisoner of the innate selfishness of criminality, or have been meant as a remiiuU;r of how mercy must rejoice over judgment, and kindness accompany the dis- charge of duty. Was some David strixing to be his own Nathan when he wrote;: "Thou hast forgotten the law of thy God ; I will also 12 i62 PRISONS AND PRISONERS forget thee " ? And certainly the hymn based on Hohnan Hunt's " Light of the World " has rarely found more striking application than when it was written on a cell door : " O Jesus, Thou art standing outside the fast- closed door," and the rest of the poem fol- lowed. And the city motto, " Domine dirige nos," was certainly more in place here than when I observed it under the City Arms on the doors of a gin-palace in the City Road. Nor are the cases unknown in which real a-ood comes out of apparent evil, and the prisoner can honestly and thankfully say, "The Lord saith, It is good to be here." Says another, with doubtless a good intention, " Brethren in adversity, turn your heart to God and be happy." Pregnant and not selfish is the prayer and intercession, " God help me, God help you." Useful the reminder, " The Lord's eye is everywhere " ; or this, " It's never too late to mend ; God help us to do so. Amen." Was that man hardened who wrote, " God bless my wife and children," as a relief to a heart that ached for the aches it had caused to other hearts ? And, finally, the inscription, " I was in prison and ye visited me," may help to remind my readers of how it is easier and more common to give prisoners contempt or INSCRIPTIONS IN CELLS 163 blame, or to let them drop out of public or private prayer, than to obey the Master's command in spirit, if it be impossible according to the letter. CHAPTER VIII SUICIDE — ITS CAUSES. THE revelation of the sanctity of life is a manifestation of the will of God, largely, thoug-h not entirely, peculiar to the two forms in which His one Church has existed — inchoate in Judaism, complete in Catholicity. Philo- sophic agnosticism very naturally commends or tolerates infanticide or suicide, and in its new paganism reproduces the habit of mind which saw no sanctity when there was no undoubted utility or pecuniary advantage in the life of the slave, the aged, or the unwanted child. The influence of religion is so far the chief force that makes against suicide that by itself it far outweighs the combined influences which arise from mere civilisation, culture, morality, or economic, political, and psychological con- ditions. Where the influence of religion is less felt, or where it is of a kind that affects senti- 164 SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 165 ment rather than faith and practice, there, as the carefully collected and collated statistics of all countries show, the ratio of suicides to the population is high, and has a tendency to increase steadily, and even rapidly. Pew have studied, few. indeed, have the opportunity to study on a sufficiently large basis the pheno- mena of suicide, and yet, without the knowledge of its causes, the efforts cannot be rightly directed which would make for its diminution. As I have had to do with over three hundred cases of attempted suicide in a single year, and during ten years of prison service had to study and report to the magistrates on each case, so as to aid them in the right dealing with the would-be suicide after the usual "remand for a week to receive the advice of the chaplain," I may claim to have had such opportunities for observation and deduction as have been accorded to few, and some thoughts as to the nature of the sin and crime and its causes may be useful to those who, as thinkers or workers, are interested in moral and social questions. First, let it be noticed that the legal defini- tion of the offence is " the crime of scK- murder," or yt'/c* rt't' sc ; the human law in this respect not having parted company with the Divine, as expressetl in the sixth coinmaiulment. i66 PRISONS AND PRISONERS It is not in the eye of the law a " rash act," — to use the minimising- phrase of the penny-a- liner — but a criminal act, one injurious to the well-being of the community, and not merely a personal and private sin which the law might consider outside its purview. There are cases, of course, that will occur to all in which a good and useful life has been ended, as regards its earthly stage, in this way, under the influence of undoubted delirium, and when there is justification for the usually unjustifiable verdict of temporary insanity. Putting such cases aside, however, the act of self-murder is frequently worse than that crime which is expiated on the scaffold, inasmuch as it is (i) More deliberate. The angry blow that causes the death of another may have been preceded by the passion of only a few minutes, and to inflict sonie pain may have been its only intention ; but, in many instances, the suicide has been preceded by careful preparations and by many a resistance to better thoughts. (2) More cowardly. In innumerable instances the suicide is simply shrinking from the shame of the exposure of some dishonest or immoral act, which shame, if he had any penitence, he would bear, or even welcome, as a fitting punishment for his sin ; David, being penitent. SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 167 did not commit suicide when exposed and denounced ; judas, being impenitent, or but partially penitent, did. And again, its coward- ice is abundantly evident in the utter carelessness of the offender as to the legacy of shame and loss which he leaves to his family and friends. " So long as I can get out of this trouble, never mind what happens to others " is practically his cry. And (3) the example is more contagious. Other suicides, and even a local epidemic of suicide, more surely arise from one act well published and little condemned, than from the slaughter of another. Moreover, (4) while the murderer is allowed, and even carefully pro- vided with, the time for and the aids to repent- ance before death, the suicide terminates his period of probation in the very act of rebellion. But, as I have already shown in these columns with regard to offences against honesty, the useful line of inquiry is " not whether, but why," and we should not content ourselves with observing or enumerating criminal acts, but seek to discover their causes, and which of them are most common and most j^reventable, so that the cnenjv of the Church or State mav be directed to their removal. Now the chief cause of suicide, in England at any rate, is undoubtedly intemperance, which directly or i68 PRISONS AND PRISONERS indirectly is the chief cause of 75 per cent, of all crime, anci most certainly of half the attempts at suicide. Morselli's ten categories of the cause of suicide are — i, psychopathic conditions (insanity and the like) ; 2, physical diseases ; 3, weariness of life ; 4, violent passions ; 5, vices ; 6, domestic troubles ; 7, financial derangements ; 8, misery ; 9, remorse and shame ; 10, despair. But it is obvious that in many of these categories alcoholism is the remote, though not the immediate cause of the death, having produced, or helped to produce the insanity, the poverty, or the shame. A remarkable bit of evidence comes from Sweden, which, as Dr. Morselli wrote in 1881, "has for lono" been the classic orround of alcoholism, and, before the last restrictive laws, also for suicides owinof to that cause." The proportion steadily grew up to 65*5 per cent, in 1855, but then, after the law passed in the interests of temperance, fell to 18*2, and in the next quinquennial period to only 11 "2. I once carefully investigated 300 consecutive cases of attempted suicide that came under my notice and care, and found that of these 145 were directly and 27 were indirectly attributable to intemperance. In one July I had 28 cases, of which 21 were due to the drunkenness of SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 169 the would-be suicide, 3 to the acts of intem- perate husbands, i was partially due to drink, and only 3 were apparently not in any way drink-caused. There are always more suicides in the summer than in the winter half of the year, not because the water is less cold, but because the drink is more inviting and attainable. Suicide, in fact, presents no exception to the canon, " Crime is CKStival," because it, like crime generally, is chieHy drink-caused ; and it would seem almost natural and logical that slow suicide by alcohol should lead to more rapid and violent forms of destroying our vital power ; that the loss of self respect inseparable from drunkenness, the want of self-control fostered and increased by daily indulgence, the continual preference of that which gives pleasure or seems to relieve depression for the moment at the expense of future loss of shame, should culminate in a suicide, wherein, to use words quoted to me by one who had attempted self-murder : — " 'I'hcy . . . cowards lo themselves And llicir Ocator, cut their existence short And iunl their spirits hack a^ain lo Cod, Disdainhil of tlie Hfc which Wisdom gave." I70 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Moral. Those who are not in some way promoting- temperance and combating intem- perance, have more bloodguiltiness than others in regard to the suicides of their locaHty and their land. Next to intemperance I should be inclined to put as a cause, Depression, arising from destitution, debt, disease, distress, despair, dissensions, delusions, dreariness, and desolation. (Is it not noticeable, by the bye, how most bad things begin with "d," and so take after their father the devil .^). Depression generally, from whatever cause it may arise, may account for about a sixth of the number of cases. But now I come to certain moral causes, to draw attention to which is the chief object of this article : — I. Remembering that suicide is in the cate- gory of "crimes of violence," we find its predisposing cause in the atmosphere of violent language in which thousands of the children of our slums are reared. " I'll break every bone in your body," is looked upon by the British matron of a certain and common type as certainly no reprehensible phrase, hardly a threat, almost an expression of endearment. Father and mother abuse one another in the angriest and filthiest language, the masculine SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 171 fist and the feminine poker are freely used, the fading lines of the last black eye are revived, the whole neighbourhood is aroused, crowds of children study this object-lesson in domestic economy, and eventually it is described as " only a few family words." " I wish I was dead " is to many a lass only the equivalent of " I am disappointed or annoyed," and when suggestive speech becomes action, whether towards others or against one's own life, who can wonder ? When in a few months I had to deal with a suicidal girl of fourteen, two of fifteen, one of sixteen, ten of seventeen, two of eighteen, and thirteen of nineteen, this cause, far more than those of drunkenness, or of tcBciiuui vitcE, was to be expected and to be found. 2. The moral standard for thousands is provided chiefly, if not solely, by what is, or is not, punishable in the police-courts, and not unnaturally little harm is seen in what the law ignores or treats lightly. So Sir Peter Laurie was not so far wroni>", thou-j^h well derided at the time, when he announced his intention, as a magistrate, of pulling down suicide. He probably mccuit, what is undoubtedly true, that some real punishment, inlhcted as a rule, would act as a deterrent lo those whose inclinalioii to 172 PRISONS AND PRISONERS suicide arose from folly or passion. Two years' imprisonment can be awarded for the attempt, but I only remember one instance of this sentence being given, and then it was by no means undeserved, and gave the offender a chance of a quiet and healthy life that she cer- tainly would never have known outside. But, as the usual course is a week's remand and a lecture, little is thought of the offence. Sureties of good conduct might in every case be required with advantage. One of my predecessors at Clerkenwell Prison wrote: "Amongst the list of attempted suicides will be found the names of certain offenders who have been committed for trial. These were old offenders and deter- mined drinkers. They were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, and it is worthy of note that no female was, for the unusual space of five weeks after the last sentence passed, committed to this prison for a similar offence." This is just what the alder- man meant, and showed the mercifulness of inflicting punishment, and how impressive to the community are the sermons of the Sessions. 3. A grave responsibility for any prevalence or increase of suicide rests on all teachers and preachers who have never taught that suicide SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 173 is wrong", and why it is wrong. Few, indeed, are the confirmation candidates that seem ever to have had any explanation of the Sixth Commandment, or to have any imagination that it refers to anything save cutting some one else's throat. This is only one symptom of the common disease, a subordination of definite, direct, and detailed moral teaching to the memorisinor of strinofs of texts, or the accurate knowledge of the missionary journeys of St. Paul. Let them rather have moral training and a thorough o-roundinor in the full meanintj of the Decalogue, and then they will understand that self-murder is murder, and that the prayer in the Litany to be delivered from sudden, i.e., unprepared death, is a foiiiori a prayer aoainst suicide. 4. One cause that I have often traced is the false sentiment, or rather sentimentality, that is talkc'd aljout the question, and the spurious glamour thrown over it by some poets and novelists. I distinctly believe that more harm than good, and that in more directions than one, has been done by tlie poem of T. Hood, " The Bridge of Sighs," written, no doubt, with the laudable object of evoking charity for the despised, and yet in the result tinging both immorality and suicide with a halo of romance, 174 PRISONS AND PRISONERS describing that merely as misfortune which is in most cases a deHberate choice, and affording a justification of cowardice and crime to the unreasoning and hysterical. So the senti- mentality and the humanitarian ism, which are enervated and enervatino- substitutes for the precious and necessary sentiment and humanity, continue in many workers, and some organised works, to do harm under the name of God. 5. The general neglect of the discipline of the Church, whereby the use of the ordinary Burial Service is forbidden over the bodies of those who have laid violent hands upon them- selves (albeit neither in this case nor in that of the unbaptized is there any prohibition of the use of some prayer or ceremony) has no doubt something to do with tjie cessation of more just views of suicide. So when we read in Hanikt, " Who is this they follow and with such maimed rites } This doth betoken the corse they follow did with desperate hand foredo its own life," we may be sure that such an impressive object- lesson would tend to deter the beholder from the offence. Unhappily, the barbarism of in- terment at cross roads, and the stake thrust through the body, and the injustice of pre- venting the innocent and injured family of the suicide from inheriting his possessions, pro- SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 175 duced by revulsion of sentiment a laxity of thought and practice not without its own evil. Yet it is more than doubtful if the clergy, in view of the rubric, have any right to shelter themselves behind the verdict of temporary insanity, which is so commonly not only not supported by, but in the teeth of, all evidence, and can only be justified on arguments that tend to the denial of any criminality in any wrong-doing. 6. One of the chief causes, albeit unsuspected by the world, and still more by the suicides, is that for which teachers and preachers are chiefly responsible, and that is the vagueness, if not entire absence, of definite teaching on the intermediate state and the permanence of character and the continuity of life therein. Hence Jews have a very low ratio of suicide, due to their having an eschatological system as well as to their general sobriety. Hence, too, while Romanists contribute always and every- where far more than their fair proportion of criminals according to their numbers in the general population, yet they are comparatively rare as suicides. Why ? Because they have not been tauoht or allowed to believe that the • mere act of dying miraculously transforms, that death has an absolving and sanctifying power, 176 PRISONS AND PRISONERS or that In any way " there will be an end of me and my troubles," which is the stock phrase of those who, taught only in creedless systems at the best, are contemplating- or excusing- suicide. Roman Catholic Ireland has i8, Protestant Saxony 299 suicides per million, a difference partly attributable to race, but still more to religion. The unscriptural theology of most Protestant sects anent the state of the dis- embodied soul makes many souls prematurely and sinfully disembodied. The undue exalta- tion of the mercy of God, coupled with the practical abolition of the idea of a Paradise, leads inevitably, and has led notoriously, to a depreciation both of the sinfulness of sin and of the holiness of God, when men imagine that death is the short and immediate road to Heaven. 7. The increase of infidelity, whether avowed or practical, of course tends to an increase of suicide when one no longer enjoys the life or the world that one has come to consider the only one. So one understands why the ratio in France increased from 85 per 1,000 in the year 1845 ^o 150 in 1875, and Morselli notes, as regards the department of the Isle de France, that it, though nominally Catholic, has a high suicide rate, for "the influence of SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 177 Paris is such as altogether to neutrahse that of religion." These seven causes that I have enumerated should supply subjects for self-examination for all who are conscious of the power for evil that comes from the omission of the rioht teaching, the right example, and the right work, that more self-denial and brotherliness would enable each to give. That suicide is a crime in the eve of the law, and that attempts at self-murder are crimes, is admitted ; but the way in which the law deals with it is by no means uniform, and the general impression left on society is that the journalist's expression " a rash act " rather represents its true character than the theologian's word, "a sin," or the lawgiver's, "a crime. " Suicides to some extent, and attempts at suicide to a very larofe extent, would certainly diminish were it not for the popular impression that " to be remanded to receive the chaplain's advice " is the maximum punishment prescribed by the law. The standard ol right and wrong with multitudes is siinj)ly found in ihe thought, " \\'h;il could I get lor it il caught.'' ' and 1 have oiten found that to show would-be suicides what the law does think of it gives them the first aid to looking" at the act in a more true li^ht. 1 178 PRISONS AND PRISONERS always found a diminution in attempts follow a case in which some person had been sent from the police-court for trial at the vSessions, while, on the other hand, undoubtedly suicides are suggested and made more common by the perfectly unnecessary reporting of such acts in the papers. The gruesome or sentimental details in which the penny-a-liner delights in- variably suggest a similar course to some other silly or cowardly persons. If only those cases were reported, whether in the case of attempted suicide or divorce, in which some real punish- ment followed, the offences would be fewer, as publicity in this case would tend to deter instead of to attract. Taking the three years 1880 to 1883, I find that of those under my care for attempting suicide twenty-one only went on to trial, and that with very various results. Two are marked " not guilty," one "acquitted," one "bill ignored," one "no bill found," one "sent to workhouse," two were bound over in their own recognisance to be of good behaviour, one so bound with the addition of his father's bond for ^50, one was sentenced to one day's imprisonment, one to two days', one to four days' hard labour, one to seven days' hard, one to fourteen days', one to six weeks', one to three months without hard labour, one to one year'g SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 179 hard labour, and one to two years' hard labour ; the two last sentences being from the Surrey Sessions, which at that time had the reputation of giving too severe, as the Middlesex Sessions had of giving too light, sentences, a fact very well known by burglars and other criminals, who confined their operations in consequence very much to the Middlesex side. One was sent to Broadmoor on another indictment, one to Colney Hatch by the Home Secretary's order, and one was hanged on another indict- ment. Two cases of girls who came repeatedly under my care from intemperance and conse- quent, or concomitant, suicidal mania, will illustrate a type that requires very special treatment and is least of all helped by short imprisonments, or indeed by prison treatment at all. Sar^lh Ann R., with at least five aliases, first came under my notice December 28, 1876, she beinor seventeen at the time. She had two months in default of bail for attempting suicide, and before I knew her had had one month for wilful damaijfe, one month for beino' drunk and disorderly, and seven days for quarrelling, be- sides a remand and four months in default of bail for attempting suicide. She left me Feb- i8o PRISONS AND PRISONERS ruary 28, 1S77, but was shortly charged twice at Lambeth with attempting suicide and re- manded to Horsemonger Lane Prison. In May of the same year she came here in default of bail for two attempts at suicide, and while here for six months she tried to destroy herself on May 9th, June 21st, seven or eight times in July, and on Noveml)er 4th, the day before her discharge. Leaving us on November 4th, she was charQ^ed on November 6th with beino; drunk and attempting suicide, and had a month's hard labour in Westminster, followed by six months here in default of bail. She tried to strangle herself twice while in prison, although on the latter of the two occasions she was in hand- cuffs, in consequence of its being necessary to restrain her when in a violent mood. On discharge I sent her to the Elizabeth Fry Refuge, but she was dismissed as unfit for service. In the same month she was taken up for trying to get poison, and twice tried to strangle herself in the police-court cell. Re- manded here, I got Miss Maulden, the police- court missionary, to receive her, but there she threatened suicide and left. In the followino- month she was charged with attempting to drown herself and making three attempts in the police-cell. This time she was sent to the SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES i8i Surrey Sessions for trial and received six months' hard labour, durino- which she aeain tried to destroy herself. Thence she was sent to Fisherton Asylum as insane. She remained there for nearly three years, leavino- July 14, i88r, but in November she reappeared in Clerkenwell for trying to poison herself. Here my records fail me, and I cannot tell what was her end. Melancholic and hysterical, and with probably a bad ancestral history, the kind of treatment she received at the hand of the law was only calculated to aggravate her mental twist. Unfit for liberty, she might yet have outgrown her condition of mind if placed in more therapeutic surroundings. The other woman is an even more striking case of recidivism, due to intemperance and suicidal tendencies. With obviously good blood in her, and with always some will power and self-respect, she was better equipped both for good and for evil than the case described above, and, as will b.e seen, I patiently wrestled with her for some ten years, trying all manner of ways to help her. In fact, she was alwa)'s in my mind the companion picture to the man whose autobiogra[)hy I have already given. Her portrait, taken with a sub-matron of a home in which she was, is now on my mantlepiecc, and i82 PRISONS AND PRISONERS I sometimes amuse myself by g-etting people to guess which of the two is the woman of good character. Her name was Mary C, though she generally went by an alias. Her mother, said to have been a lady by birth, married a butcher, who died young through drink. Her mother then became a drunkard, and her eight children followed her example. One drowned herself when drunk, and another, whom I knew^ was intemperate and immoral beyond the manner of Mary, who got me to try to reclaim her. She was seduced at the age of seventeen, and must have been then very g"ood looking, retaining long after an excellent carriage and figure. I found her in Clerkenwell in default of bail for attempting suicide when I was appointed chaplain, and learned that already she was a recidivist and a notorious character, having had twenty or thirty sentences for drunkenness or attempted suicide. She gave her age as twenty-three. She seemed much influenced by what I said, and on discharge I sent her to Mrs. Herbert's excellent home in Vauxhall. She did well there for a month, but left, and in two days was in Tothill Fields Prison for a month. I wrote to her, met her on discharge, and per- suaded her to go to St. James' House of SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 183 Mercy at Fulham. There for three weeks, she left and was soon at Tothill F'ields for a month with deHrium tremens, and in a padded cell. She now declined my offer of a home, as she "could not keep from the drink." In two days she was in Clerkenwell for a week. Discharged, but soon there again for a week (what an absurdity and an iniquity short sentences are in such a case !). Discharged, drunk the same day, and sent to Westminster for five days. Wrote to me on discharge, but was locked up after writing. Discharged next Monday, in again on Tuesday, attempted suicide in her cell, and told the magistrate, " I can't keep away from the drink : I have such a dreadful craving for it. I would like your worship to make me find sureties I cannot find, so that I may be kept in prison away from the drink." So she came to us for three months in default of bail. Then I sent her to Miss Mauldcn's to see if work could be found, as she would not go to a home. She left in six days, and the next day was apprehended for being drunk .and riotous, it taking six policemen to put her in a cell. Got a month. Wrote to me on discharge, started to see me, but got drunk on the way. In a few days she had another fortnight. Discharged on 184 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Wednesday, she was out all night at private night houses, and was taken up at ten a.m. on Thursday drunk, disorderly, and assaulting the police. Sent to us for six months. Attempted suicide in her cell a few days after reception. Sent her on discharge to Horbury House of Mercy, thinking a removal from London might be helpful. Did well there for a month, but then twice attempted suicide, and left on July 27th. Apprehended the same day at Doncaster for beino- drunk and smashing- windows, and was sent to Wakefield Prison for a fortnight. On August 1 7 she was in Tothill Fields Prison for a month. I obtained promises of pecuniary help, and looked out for a private home for her. Saw her several times up to October 8th, when she sent a telegram for me asking a lady to come and receive her the next morning. But when morning came she was at Marl- borough Street for being drunk and disorderly and assaulting the police. She also attempted suicide in her cell, and was remanded. She then told me this last three weeks was the longest time she had been free for six or seven years. She now got three months in default of bail, this being her thirty-fifth appearance at Marlborough Street alone. Then I got a private lady in South Devon to receive her, SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 185 but in March she had to be sent away for temper and dipsomaniacal craving. I then got her taken in at Bovey Tracy House of Mercy, but she left on April 24th. It happened just then that the owner of the Argyle Rooms was prosecuting me (ov libel and demanding ten thousand pounds for libelling his notorious establishment. She, amongst other prisoners male and female, had given me the information on which 1 had based what I had written con- cerning the place to a licensing magistrate, and as the other side found she had disappeared, they formally in court challenged me to pro- duce her. I had no idea where she was, but that very morning I saw an account of some one of a different name being locked up at Exeter. My lawyers sent down, and it proved to be Mary. They brought her up, and she gave effective evidence before Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, impressing people by her quiet and modest appearance and speech. I then put her into the Manchester Street Refuge, and she did well. She then was found a place in a temperance hotel, and made great progress in penitence. I forget wh)' she had to leave there, but for safety I took her in my own house for a fortnight, and then induced my friend, the Rev. W. Panckridge, i86 PRISONS AND PRISONERS of St. Matthew's, City Road, to try her as housemaid. She got, however, unsettled, and had to leave after six weeks. Then St. Agnes' Orphanage, Chiswick, tried her, but she left after a week, on December 27th, and was ap- prehended the same night. This time she was released on her own recognisances, but re- appearing on January 3rd, and charged with being drunk and twice attempting suicide in her cell, she had three months in default of bail. Half way through this term she had an outburst and smashed up everything in her cell. On April 2nd I sent her to the Stone House of Mercy, but she only remained five days, and was locked up in London the day of leaving. On April 15th she had two months' hard labour, after which she did better, and by perseverance I got her into a state that seemed to justify another and more costly experiment, and so on June 24th I sent her to Ottawa, with an intro- duction to one who would shepherd her. She got a place as chambermaid in an hotel at ^40 a-year. Moving afterwards to New York, she did well on the whole in America, but at last had a slight paralytic seizure, and returned unadvisedly to England in October, 1882. I placed her in a refuge pending a situation I found for her, and things seemed hopeful, but SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 187 when she visited her sister to try to reclaim her, she was persuaded to have a glass, and the old flame, reviving in a few hours, she was taken up for smashing" the window of a public- house. Sent for trial, she got twelve months. During this imprisonment she had frequent " breaks out " ; I saw and helloed her on dis- charge, but soon she got four days, though she professed to have lost the taste for drink, and to be afraid of it. Then 1 got her into the Wharfedale Refuge, but she behaved so strangely they were afraid to keep her. Then I got her into Lady Wilson's Home, to which I was honorary chaplain, and there I saw her at least once a week. She fluctuated between the ways of penitence and bodily and mental disturbance, and at last (March 17, 1884) she insisted on leavinof. Goino- to the house of some acquaintance she got drinking with her, pawned most of her clothes, and was taken in an unconscious state to a workhouse, and then was charo-ed with beinir drunk and assaulting the police. I saw her and sent her a brother prison chaplain (Rev. G. P. Merrick), who sent her to the Sutherland .Street Refuge. Upset there. Left April 26th, and on April 30th was remanded for assaulting a woman when drunk in Piccadilly. Her sister died about this time i88 PRISONS AND PRISONERS of erysipelas, after a life of immorality and intemperance. She came to us in default of bail, and Lady Wilson kindly tried her again, but after giving much trouble she left on July 7th. She got five days on July 30 as Ellen Bland- f(jrd, and two months on August 6th for an assault as Ellen Temple. The day after dis- charge she got seven days. I saw her October 24th, and sent her to Mrs. Wilkes' Home. Thence a place was obtained for her as bath- room attendant on a hospital ship. Left March 3rd for being drunk on duty. On March 29th she was lined for drunkenness, and on March 26th she had ten days for being drunk and destroying property in the police cell. On April 8th she was remanded as Ellen Roths- child for beino- drunk, smashino- windows, and destroying a rug in the police cell. Got four- teen days. Out April 27th. Wrote to me May 14th from the Home of Hope, but left there May 29th and next day got fourteen days. Wrote to me June i8th from Holborn Union. I found her in a padded room, having been sent there after an apprehension for attempting suicide and assaulting and biting two police- men. This gave her six weeks' hard labour. She came to me on August 6th, and I sent her to Mrs. Wilkes' again, but she left from a SUICIDE— ITS CAUSES 189 quarrel after three weeks. Then I sent her to Woolwich Refuge, but she altered her mind en route. She was taken up five or six times that week. Out on Wednesday, with us again on Saturday for attempting to strangle herself in the police cell when the horrors came on her. On re-examination she was also charged with an assault, but discharged, croino- then to Miss *T> t> o Steer's Home, she made herself obnoxious to the other women, and left on December 30th. On December 31st she got five days. Miss Steer tried her again, but she had to be dis- missed as very troublesome. Next 1 heard of her at Mrs. Meredith's Prison Mission, but aofain cominir into Westminster Prison, she was at length sent abroad by Mr. Merrick and the aid of the Sheriff's Fund. From America she wrote to me, and soon she ob- tained a place as nurse in a hospital at Savannah at ^50 a-year. There she de- veloped a talent for nursing and moved on to another hospital, and she seemed to be quite able to get and retain places. Occa- sionally, from th(; increased size of her hand writing, I judged she was not Iree h-(»in occasional excitement, but the last I heard ol her was to the effect that she was doing well, and was enofaoed to be married to a station iQo PRISONS AND PRISONERS master. It is many years now since I have heard from or of her, and whether she has settled down and wants to cut all connection with the troublous life and memories of Ene- land, or whether (as I fear is more probable) she relapsed and died, I do not know. Pardon the length of this case, but it is typical of many, and may serve better than mere figures and tables to show what recidivism means, what part drink plays in filling our prisons, and perhaps incidentally may dispel the idea that all a prison chaplain does is to preach dull sermons and to perform perfunctorily the mini- mum of routine duties. CHAPTER IX PRISON S E R M O N S PRISON sermons need not be dull, and I have no reason to suppose they are so in greater proportion than those preached outside. They certainly should be more, and not less, interesting since the preacher knows more of the inner life of his conorreoation than do most ministers of religion outside. We have talked to all our people one by one about the causes of their sins ; they are surrounded with people who are indignant at the supposition that they have any sin at all. Inasmuch as a knowledge of human nature as it is, and not as it pretends to be, is essential for any prophet or priest, I wish it were possible for every young clergy- man to be obliged to serve for a year at least as a prison cha[)lain. Whether my talks or my sermons were dull of course I cannot say. lyi 193 PRISONS AND PRISONERS They were frequent for I preached daily for my ten years, though of course only obliged to preach on Sundays ; and they were short, for the whole time allotted to service and sermon was only about half an hour. As to the cell- talks. I may, perhaps, retail an incident which I take as a great compliment. A man of some education was transferred from Coldbath Fields with a batch of a hundred convicted prisoners. I gave him the job of mending books in the prison library, and one clay going in to get some books he said, " May I speak to you, sir.'*" "Certainly; what is it.'*" "I want to tell you something I heard in chapel " (wherein detected speech of course involves punishment), "one of the men behind me said to another, 'That chaplain!' 'Wot o' 'im .? ' ' E's a rum'un 'e is ; 'e cum into my cell and 'e sez, sez 'e, "you talk straight tome, and I'll talk straight to you." ' ' Ah, and 'e do talk straight, don't 'e ? I think 'e's one of us — turned, you know ! ' " Complimentary, as showing that I had not left the impression that I forgot our common humanity, or placed myself on a pinnacle and them in a pit as a means of promoting useful communion. Of what kind were the daily sermons may be judged from the following, which happen to PRISON SERMONS 193 be the only four that ever I wrote out after deHvery. CHRISTMAS IN PRISON. " And they began to be merry." — Luke xv. 24. You do not want many words from me, dear friends, this morning. The hymns we have just sung, "While shepherds watched their Hocks by night," and " Hark ! the herald angels sing," and that we shall sing presently, "O come, all ye faithful," are better sermons than any I can preach, good in themselves, and brincrinor memories with them that will do you good if only you will let them. But yet I should like you to think about the words in the te.xt. The first is "merry." How often that word is uttered to-day ! How many are saying now all over the world, "A Merry Christmas to you ! " And how many people will be in many ways "merry" — some of them God's ways, and some of them the devil's ways — to-day. The same word is used for very different states of mind, for it is little understood. Now, it is a ^ood thinLi to be merry ; there is nothing the good God, the loving Father, more desires than that His children should be merry — in the right way and in the riirht sense of the word : and there O 14 194 PRISONS AND PRISONERS is no greater cheat of the devil than to get people, especially at this time, to think that merriment can be caused by or found in what is unworthy of men. Guzzling, gorging, beastly drunkenness, and worse thino^s still are beino- done to-day in the name of being merry. Why, one of the officers told me just now that he never saw so much drunkenness in the streets as he did last night. In one public-house near here there were ten people serving the bar as fast as they could, and piles of bottles as well to be taken away. If he had desired to enter that house — I hope he did not — it would have been almost impossible owing to the crowd of people pressing in. How sad this is, surely, to any one who calls himself a Christian, that this day and this season should be so marked by sins of the body ! This is a holy and a happy day because, as on this day eighteen hundred and seventy-nine years ago the glorious God, the Prince of Peace, was born of the blessed Virgin Mary, having taken a body in order that, amongst other reasons, our bodies should be saved as well as our souls, and made temples of the Holy Ghost, in which drunkenness, gluttony, and impurity should be as much out of place and horrid as they would be if done in temples or churches made of stone PRISON SERMONS 195 and sacred to God. I can imagine a converted heathen coming from Africa or India to-day, and rejoicing because he saw on every wall and in nearly every window, and falling from every lip, the word "Christ." See how much they love Him, he might say. And then some one would laugh at his ignorance and say, " No, we are not thinking or speaking of Christ — ^only of Christmas, which is a very different thing ! " And so it is, God forgive us all ; but it ought not so to be. Merry, you say, this is no merry Christmas to me, alone, depressed, anxious, with this fog filling all the prison, and making it impossible to read a word to pass away the time. Well, my friends, I don't say it is easy, but I don't say it is impossible. Why were the people mentioned in the text merry? The words are taken, you know, from that grand old story of the son who was first prodigal and then repentant, and it was because the poor fellow had made up his mind at last to shake off the devil's chains, to cleanse himself from the filth of the pig-stye, to seek a more satisfy- ing food than empty husks, and to return to his father, and because, above all, he had not only thouoht of doino- this but had done it, that there was joy in the presence of the angels of God over the sinner that repented, and that the 196 PRISONS AND PRISONERS father, the friends, and he " began to be merry." He came back in fear and trembHng, with a confession and no excuse upon his lips, not swaggering in with his hands in his pockets, saying, "Well, father, here I am back again," as if nothing had happened, and no pardon need be sought. He came half expecting the does would bark at him, and the door be slammed in the face of such a tramp ; half prepared to go away empty, saying, "What else do I deserve ? I have made my bed thus, and I must lie upon it." But no, the father saw him afar off — and these were eyes of mercy ; he ran to meet him — and these were feet of mercy ; he Hung his arms around the poor wretch's neck — and these were arms of mercy ; he kissed him — and these were lips of mercy ; he spoke — and these were words of mercy ; and so may it be to-day for you. Oh, what joy, all the greater for being unexpected. Do you wonder they began to be merry ? They began to be merry, and when did they cease to be so ? Never, my friends ! that kind of joy will last. The merriment of the drunkard, the glutton, the whoremonger, the foolish, ends when the headache, the fine, the punishment, the disease or failing health, the loss of respect or of self-respect, begins. Only PRISON SERMONS 197 two joys can last, and those are they that spring- from a good conscience or from a true repentance. Might we not gain these ? Might they not begin to-day, and last for ever? Might not some of us look back hereafter to this dark and lonely Christmas Day and say, " Well, after all, it was the best Christmas I have ever known," for as we have just read, " the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light : they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined " ; and when most we felt alone then came there to us One whose name was and is Emmanuel — ^God with us. Do you not think the shepherds might have grumbled a litde, and felt sad all alone in the dark fields, when every house in Bethlehem was full of friends and joy ; and yet, when a few years hence they looked back to the events of the first Christmas night, they would have said : " Dark ? why, ' the glory of the Lord shone round about us.' Lonely.'^ why, the heavens opened and we saw 'a multitude of the heavenly host.' Sad? why, the angel brought to us 'good tidings of great joy.' " Ah, my friends, out- side is much merriment that will end only in shame and punishment, but here there may be (God grant there may be !) the truer merri- 198 PRISONS AND PRISONERS ment found by the returning son and the shepherds of Bethlehem. Let us not think of what we have lost or what we miss, but rather of what we may find and gain. I could make you all cry, and cry with you too, as easily as possible, with pictures of what you miss, but would there be a teaspoonful of good in a bucket of such tears ? Rather I would point you to the source of all true and lasting- joy — Emmanuel, God with us — and bid you as honestly and earnestly as I bid the same to my wife and friends, "A Merry Christmas." THE UNMANLINESS OF EXCUSES. "The woman gave me of the tree." — Gen. iii. 12. "The serpent beguiled me." — Gen. iii. 13. Most of us have noticed, my friends, that there are no stories children like better to hear than those about what their parents were and did when they were children themselves. And I suppose it is from the same kind of feeling that we so often turn to the first chapter of Genesis to find out what our common father and mother did, and what kind of people they were. Adam was made a perfect man in every way ; none of his children have been, or shall be down to the PRISON SERMONS 199 end of time, as perfect as he. In body I suppose a finer made, more handsome, more vigorous man than any since ; for he was n(^t only the creation, but as it were the master- piece of God ; in mind so full of wisdom and knowledge that others since, the wisest and cleverest that have lived, have been but children to him ; in soul such a saint of saints that he could even see God and know nothing, as do the best of us, of the earthborn mist of imperfection, the fog of sinfulness, and the wilful cataract of sin that blinds our eyes. In fact he was a man. " I likes a mahn as is a mahn," said an Oxfordshire irardener to me one day ; but men are rare ; in fact, we can say there have been two men, and only two on this earth, and one of them ceased to be a man. Jesus Christ, we know, is the one Man in whom no unmanliness was or could be, and He is now and for ever not only a man but the Man. Adam was a man, but ceased to be a man when he fell. Let us not take it for granted that because we have beards on our chins and wives at home, tliat therefore we are men. To be a man is a thing as rare as it is" grand. " Ouit you like men," says St. Paul, as if he would say. Understand what a man is meant to be and may be ; be that. 200 PRISONS AND PRISONERS and then neither I nor God want anvthine more. And we all have in our minds some idea, and not a bad one, of what a man should be, how ever little we try to be men ourselves. You know, for example, it is by no means hard to say of what another did — " That was an unmanly action." To inquire, " You call your- self a man, I suppose?" or to say, " If he is half a man he will do or will not do this or that." Yes, it is easy enough to go about the world with a spyglass, but a looking-glass is what we want to discover not whether our mate's wavs are manlv, but whether we are anything like nien ourselves. Certain sins and wrong acts are commonly admitted to be unmanly. To strike a man when he is down, to hit a woman, to attack a man two to one, to say or do behind a man's back what you dare not say to his face, to " round " on others to try and escape punishment which you deserve ; — all these things, or more, we know to be unmanly, unlike Christ, unlike even Adam before he fell ; but what I want you to see is that all sin, and not merely certain evil acts or ways, is un- manly ; that no mean or evil thing can be done without loss of manhood. Sometimes people outside ask me how many men come into this PRISON SERMONS 201 place in a year. "Very few," I say. "Oh, I thought it was chielly a male prison." " So it is, but do you think all males are men? It is generally because they have failed to be men that they come in, and here perhaps (God grant it) they may learn to become, or, at any rate, to desire to become men." Adam fell then ; he sinned and therefore and thereby lost his manhood, became unmanly, or, at any rate, did an unmanly thing. What does he do .'^ He begins to make excuses, to try to shuflie off the burden and ouilt on to his wife's shoulders, as if part of his sin was not, doubtless, that he had failed to keep his wife in order. " The woman gave it me." That's all very well, Adam ; but why did you take it ? Be a man, make a clean breast of it like a man, and take your punishment like a man, and don't sneak out of what you have done, and what you deserve, by laying the blame on another. Ah, you can see it was unmanly in him, but stop and ask yourselves whether you are quite in a position to throw stones at him. Such a common trick, that of making excuses. The oldest habit in the world. All of us take after Adam and Eve in this, and man might l)e dis- tinguished from other animals by describing him as an animal that makes excuses. 202 PRISONS AND PRISONERS Well, at any rate, you say he did not tell a lie about it. No, he had hardly a fair chance of that. Perhaps if some other man had been living he might have lied to him ; but he knew, as do you and I, that it is useless to lie to God ; but he made excuses ; that is unmanly enough, and a terrible downfall for one who just before was a man. And then Eve is unmanly, too, by trying to throw the blame on to another : " The serpent beguiled me." " Unmanly," you say ; "how can a woman be unmanly ? " Manliness, the perfection of manhood, is not a male thing. Do you remember when Grace Darling rowed out to the wreck, while men, as they thouoht themselves, were afraid to venture ? Do you remember how the Virgin Mary stood beneath the Cross of Christ when one Apostle had denied him, and all but one were afraid to be seen near Him? Weak woman, as we may call her, often puts us men to shame, and St. Paul speaks to wives as well as to husbands, when he says " Quit you like men." Bear away then from the story of our first parents just this one thing now — the unmanliness of excuses, which are rarely more than partly true, and often quite untrue. Not that I want you to abuse or accuse Adam ; you will find instances of this want of manliness nearer at PRISON SERMONS 203 home than that. How often, for example, have we not heard, or even made, the excuse for drunkenness or ahiiost any sin, "It was bad company that did it." Is it honest.^ Is. it manly? Is it any better in us than it was in Adam and Eve to try to shift the blame from our own shoulders ? Where is this bad com- pany we hear so much of.'*. Look in the look- ing-glass if you want to find it. Like goes to like, and a man picks out for his companions and friends those who are like himself. Thev tempted you, doubtless ; they pressed you to drink, as Adam and Eve were tempted and pressed to eat ; but you had your will, and your power of saying No, after all, and need not have consented any more than your first parents. You manage to say No if a man invites you into a church ; you can resist the temptation to attend a night-school, or to save your stray pence ; how does this power of resistance come suddenly to leave you when invited into a public-house, or tempted to waste your money in the extra glass ? Be men, then, for the future, and if you have been foolish or sinful bear the blame or punishment yourselves instead of seekino- some one else on whom to cast it. Or to take another instance, how many times a day do I not hear some one blaming " the 204 PRISONS AND PRISONERS cursed drink." Why curse the drink? It cannot, will not, hurt you if you leave it alone. It enters you only by your own choice and will ; why in this unmanly way blame the drink instead of the drinking or the drinker, that is yourself? I see a bottle of another kind of poison in the chemist's shop ; I see a tiger safely behind bars in the Zoological Gardens, very dangerous, very deadly, no doubt, if I let them out, but why should I do so ? No, my friends, give even the devil his clue ; neither he nor the drink can harm us aorainst our will, and if our own will has let either of them into ourselves, let us not be so unmanly, so Adam-like, as to shuffle the burden and guilt from our own shoulders where it must truly lie. Determine as we may on repentance and amendment, we all shall doubtless slip or fall again in some way or other ; let us resolve by God's grace that if, and when, that happens we will, warned by the example of Adam and avoiding the unmanliness of excuses, which we see availed him nothine, accuse ourselves, confess our personal sin, and blame the yielding and not the tempting ; and so, as the Apostle bids us, quit ourselves like men by following the example, not of the first PRISON SERMONS 205 Adam, but of the second, even the Perfect Man and Perfect Pattern of manliness, our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ — Amen. So may it be. LIKES AND DISLIKES. "Christ pleased not Himself." — Rom. xv. 3. Some of you, my friends, teach me more than perhaps I teach you, and certainly more than you think. One of you the other day taught me in his own way, that which Christ alone knows fully, that is, what is in man, what are the chief reasons that make him act. He had got into terrible trouble through the old and common enemy — drink — and when you hear this I suppose about two hundred of you find the cap fits and each thinks that it is he of whom I speak. I spoke to this man, as you know I should, of the folly, the misery, the sin, and the crime of drunkenness ; and he. of course, agreed to all I said, but added, when I had done, " But then, you see, I likes it." What could I say to such a strong argument as that ^ Did it not shut my mouth ? Well, you shall see. No doubt of all the excuses that are made for drinking, and even for drunkenness, this is about the truest that could be found, except, perhaps, that other which I took for my text 2o6 PRISONS AND PRISONERS not long ago — namely, "It's the fashion." Thousands there are, doubtless, who would sing from the bottoms of their hearts that old song, "I likes a drop of good beer," without ever asking themselves whether what they like is to be their only rule of life and cause of action. Let us see what makes us like to have what we like. St. Paul tells us plainly, what we all know more or less clearly, that there are in us two natures, as it were, one pulling us up to what is true, and pure, and kind ; and the other dragging us down to the rightly called dead level of respectability, and farther (if we let it) into the strong grasps of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Two natures in man, one like to God, one like to the beast. That man has made a beast of himself, you say, as you see outside a public-house one lying helpless in the mud. True, he has done so, but what I want you to see is, that without going so far as he, we yet may make beasts of ourselves by listen- ing even a little to the voice of our lower animal or beast-like nature, instead of to the voice of God within us, which ever says, " Young- man, I say unto thee arise," or, " Friend, go up higher." Duty tells me to do something, but I am lazy and say I don't like it, and then and PRISON SERMONS 207 there I mal-ce myself a beast, when suiiply by doing my duty, however hard, I might prove that I was a son of God. Are we, then, never to do as we Hke ? Never to indulge ourselves ? I don't say that, no man could say it. Christ did often what He liked, but then He never liked what was evil, un- worthy of man, or unlike to God. It is not wrong to do what we like, but it is very wrong to take " I like it," or, " I don't like it" as our only rule of life, and very wrong again to do what we like when by doing it we injure our- selves or others. You see, of course, as all men do, that it must be wrong to do as they like when that injures themselves, to indulge in drink, for example, till body, mind, soul, wife, family, good name, all are injured or destroyed. But vv'hat men don't see half enough is that we are bound to keep trom what we like because it hurts other people. " Why should I give up the drink when it never hurts me, just because others don't know when to stop .'^ " If you are too wise or too Christian to speak thus, plenty of people outside these walls are not. Now, look here ! W hen I was a boy ladies and gentlemen used shiny visiting cards. Some pointed out lli.iL diis polish was caused by the 2o8 PRISONS AND PRISONERS poison called arsenic, which did terrible harm to those who made the cards. What was the result? Did men say, "Well, but the little atom of arsenic on my cards can't hurt me, and therefore I will still use them ? " No, they were wiser and better, and said, " Then, if it injures others I will give it up." Or, again, supposing my wife wanted to trim her bonnet with those britrht ofreen ribbons whose colour is due to arsenic. I should say, " Don't have ribbons of that colour, there is arsenic in them." " But," she might say, " surely the little drop of arsenic in this dye can't hurt me as I wear the ribbons." " No ; but it does hurt those who dye the ribbons, and therefore, as you love your brothers and sisters, you ought not to encourage what does them harm. You may like the colour, and it will do you no harm, but as it does do harm to them you will give up your likes." Just so, a drop of beer may do me no harm and I may like it (I used to, though I have almost forgotten what it tastes like), but if I find hundreds and thousands making beasts of themselves in one way by drops of beer, I won't make a beast ot mysell in another way by taking even a single glass just because I happen to like it. One more illustration. En^-land was once PRISON SERMONS 209 very determined to put down slavery in her islands in the West Indies, and many good men and women took a pledge never to taste sugar while it was grown by slaves. There was no harm in sugar to them, but if they refused to take it, though they liked it, while it was grown by miserable slaves, they did rightly, and were washing their hands clean of slavery or anything to do with it. Just so, I say men are right in saying, " I won't taste a drop, though I like it, while this miserable slavery of drunkenness exists in our land." If I give up things glazed or coloured by arsenic because a few clozens might be poisoned by working in it, I am all the more right in giving up drink, by which about 100,000 are poisoned to death every year in England. If our grandfathers were right in giving up sugar while it was slave-grown, you and I are all the more right in giving up that which brings into slavery 600,000 drunkards in England alone. Shall I crive up my likes in a small matter, and not in a oreat ? Abstain from what does harm to but a few, and continue to use what brings misery to millions just because I like it? •' But then you see I like it! " That is just, in a few words, the reason for nearly all the ignorance, sin, crime, misery, sicknes.s, death, 15 2IO PRISONS AND PRISONERS damnation, in the world. A boy knows that he ought not to play truant from school, or steal the sugar ; but then, you see, he likes it. A girl brought up by a modest mother knows well that larkino- with the lads and dressing so as to make every idle man look at her is not rioht. But then, you see, she likes it. A young man knows that it is shameful to give up to filth the body God made ; but then, you see, he likes it. And so on for ever and for each of us. Whence come quarrels, scamped work, dishonesty, pros- titution, and all the horrid list of evils into which no man need put himself? Simply because thousands seek only their own desires like brute beasts, and never think the elorious thoughts that only men and angels know ; "I should like to, but I won't because it is wrone ; never mind what I like, but let me see and do what is my duty." Now suppose you gave up your beer, though you like it, and get no harm from it (though not many could honestly say that), because you don't want to be ruled by your likes, and do want to dis- courage what so terribly injures your brothers, would you make a grand step towards manliness and towards God. Mark, I don't say this is all you need ; it is one step, not the whole journey ; but I do say this, that when you have made PRISON SERMONS 211 one step the next will be easier and more likely to be made, and I do say this, that if you once in one thing do what is right, though you would like to do something else, you are most likely, by the grace of God, to be led on from strength to strength till your one great thought is ever this, " What is my duty ?" and never, or rarely this, "Do I like it?" The motto of Christ's life was " I please not Myself" The motto of yours and mine, I fear, is rather, " I mean to please myself" Well, as you say, please yourself, God Himself cannot change your nature unless you try yourself, but if you do call yourself a Christian, if you do want to make your life like that beautiful and perfect one which you find in the Gospels ; if you want to please yourself really, and not merely in a bad, unsatisfactory way, and that for a few moments only ; why, then I say, don't make a beast of yourself; don't think all you have to consider is whether you like a thing or not, but do be willing to rein in your desires, to conquer your lusts and passions, to love duty, to give up things for the sake of others, to live, in a word, like a man. " Live like a man," you say; "don't I do that now ? " Certainly not, my brother, unless you try hard, and always live like the Perfect Man, even the Man who is our God, Jesus Christ, 212 PRISONS AND PRISONERS of Whom it was said, "He pleased not Himself." WHO CAN STAND THE FIRE? "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly ; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil. . . . Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty ; they shall behold the land that is very far off." — Isa. xxxii. 14, 15, 17. Many read and quote the Bible as if the only virtue it inculcated was that of Faith. Few notice how much of its history, how many of its precepts, are directed to the impressing on us moral rather than spiritual duties ; how the duties of citizenship are held up to us as a means of serving God in our generation as real as that of worship. Prophets are recognised as foretellers in the name of God ; men fail to observe how more frequently they are forth- tellers, and their " Thus saith the Lord" refers to some present duty, political, civil, or sanitary ; or in the more definitely spiritual sphere of action to the conviction of sin, the necessity of repentance, confession, and amendment, rather than to some future hope or promise. Another point that commonly escapes notice is that PRISON SERMONS 213 when a portrait of the man after God's own heart, the man justified before Him, is given, the test of character is derived largely, or even chiefly, from his discharge of his duty to his neighbour. In several places this portrait is sketched in the form of a question, with the answer given, that includes rules for human conduct, such rules referring mainly to points of moral rectitude. Let us take for example this striking passage which is our text. The foreteller of the Incarnation or the Passion is here the forthteller of how the new man is to be put on and the old man crucified, and to those who would hope for the Beatific Vision, not a life of ecstatic worship or unworldly meditation is propounded, but six very practical rules of life given to guide him in the shop, in the street, in the law-court. " Who amon«" us shall dwell with the devour- inir fire ? Who amono- us shall dwell with ever- lasting burnings.'*" is the question, unlike in form, but perhaps identical in import, with those in other places : " Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord, and who shall rise up in His holy place ? " or the particular precepts that follow "He that would love life and see i^ood days." No doubt to many the idea of that state of loss and pain that we call hell is at 214 PRISONS AND PRISONERS once and exclusively suggested by the phrases "devouring fire" and "everlasting burnings," but a more comprehensive thought will remind us that the idea of fire is quite as often con- nected with the description of heaven as with that of hell, and that chiefly it comes as express- inof in human lano"uaoe somethino- of the nature and the manifestation of God Himself, " Our God is a God of fire." The presence of God expressed under this image is here and here- after a joy to some, a torment to others, accord- ing to what they choose their conduct and character to be. Public worship to one is a tedious conventionality at best ; to another in the same building a refreshment, an inspiration, an ennoblement. The same inspiration or holy thought is welcomed by one and resented by another. So the Vision even to the best is unsupportable (think of Moses on Sinai, of the apostolic witnesses of the Transfiguration, of Saul's journeying" to Damascus) without the training of a practice of the Presence of God which renders its veiled splendour, its afterglow, more bearable. A careful reading of the whole of this passage from Isaiah will serve to reveal the laws that duty to one's neighbour is the test of duty towards God, and that moral conduct enables us the better to contemplate the possi- PRISON SERMONS 215 bility of being able to stand the Presence of the otherwise unsupportable glory. Who among us can face this fire ? The answer gives the por- trait of a man — not that of a mere human being. And the portrait is sketched in six strokes. Six rules of life give the scaffolding whereby shall be reared, according to the design of the Great Architect, the tower of a manly, because godly, and godly because manly, life that shall stand four-square to all the winds that blow, 1. "He that walketh righteously." He con- descends to no tricks, whether of trade or of politics. He will not, because he cannot with the ideal and the hope before him take a mean and murky advantage of the absence ot an observing eye, whether of employer, or cus- tomer, or wife, or moral teacher. Nor can he take advantage of the ignorance of any, for the upright walk constrains him to help and not to hinder his brother. No ' guarantee for fidelity in business ' is necessary for him. 2. "He speaketh uprightly." His word is his bond, and is speedily known as such. The oath required of him as a witness in a law-court finds him no more bound after it than before it to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He takes it, as he may also take the pledge of abstaining from intoxicating 2i6 PRISONS AND PRISONERS liquors, not as needful for his own sake, but to enable him to aid the infirmity of others. Uprightly, also he rebukes evil, and thus avoids the complicity of silence. He cannot cant. He confesses Christ before men, since else he finds no possibility of the uprightness that animates his acts whether for or before man or God. 3. "He despiseth the gain of oppressions." He dares not make excessive profit, or take the interest which becomes usury, for he sees therein his brother's loss rather than his own temporary and injurious gain. None of the meaner maxims of trade will be used to salve the conscience that stings and reproaches when the possibility of something underhand or over- reaching is momentarily presented. Not only short weights, lying advertisements, goods not up to sample, or work perfunctorily done, but also the Sunday shopping which enfeebles the body, clouds the mind, and burdens the con- science of those he would force to serve him, are despicable. He groans at the thought of how traders of his nation for gain stupefy with opium, or madden with spirits, the tribes and nations with whom they come in contact. 4. "He shaketh his hand from holding 01 bribes." As St. Paul at Melita shook off the viper into the fire, so with a shudder that PRISON SERMONS 217 integrity has made instinctive he abhors the purchase money of iniquitous silence, or speech, or action, or inaction. Grant that now states- men and judges are not bribable — at least in coin ; grant that "every man has his price" is not now as true as ever it appeared to be in many circles and stations ; yet Bribery Acts have been needful in recent years. " Don't tell mother, and you shall play with my doll." " Don't let the master know, and I'll give you my knife." " Keep it dark, old fellow, and I'll make it worth your while." " I made it all riofht with the foreman." How we know these voices proceeding from the shop, the school, and even the nursery ! How can a child of light " keep it dark " ? Why should you make it all wrong with your conscience by "making- it all right " with some one else ? 5. "He stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood." There is a beast within us that rejoices, as there is an angel within us that shudders, at the very sound or suggestion of cruelty. "How sad," said Queen Victoria, " that there should be any need of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children ! " True, but the revelations of that society are in volumes, and show how neither education nor the profession of religion is the bar it should 2i8 PRISONS AND PRISONERS be to the lust for cruelty, which is sometimes the substitute for lust of another kind, and sometimes only its symptom and its incitement. Bull-baiting is extinct, cock-fighting nearly so ; but who pretends that our lesser brethren need not still the protection of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ? We may think the clamour for the abolition of vivisection, of corporal punishment, of the death penalty, are not wholly justified, but even if exagger- ated in aim as well as often in diction, they may be a necessarv safeguard aoainst a recrudes- cence of the savage element in our nature. It is not because the editors of professedly "respectable" papers believe in the desir- ability of stopping men's ears from the hearing of blood that they devote their columns and the largest type upon their contents bills to the highly unnecessary details, or the penny-catch- ing advertisement, of the last awful murder. 6. " He shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." Here come the wretched newspapers again, and many of our playwrights and theatre owners, making dirt more sticky in pursuit of gain and offal more stinking by their canting and hypocritical defence of it by the prostitution of the names of Literature and Art. They printed, most of them, the protest of some PRISON SERMONS 219 hundred members of Parliament against the publication, for no moral but much mercantile purpose, of highly unnecessary and plainly injurious details of divorce and other unsavoury cases ; but when next some spicy or sensational copy could be made, the evil to which they opened their eyes was that of not selling as many copies as their rivals in journalism. Not, of course, that the consumers of this garbage or of this tainted food are without their guilt, as well as the producers. Watch who and what are they who cluster round certain stationers', booksellers', and photographers' shops, and wonder if they ever knew or felt the import- ance of keeping a watch over their eyes and ol avoiding that in the paper or in the window which a momentary glance will show to be in the class of things which before have injured their minds or taken the bloom off their purity. But those that keep these rules before their eyes, that know them as the indispensable con- ditions of the upright life, what of them ? Isaiah, who has been the forth teller, now becomes the foreteller, with the gracious pro- mise from God, " They shall see the King in His beauty;" they shall have, even now and here, some foregleam of the transforming in- ward vision of Christ and the Father by the 220 PRISONS AND PRISONERS power of the Holy Spirit within them. "And the land which is very far off." The land of glory and of peace, of peace in men and towards men, because first the glory of God has been sought. Our land, our world, hardly now corresponds to this name, even in shadow. Hood, the poet, recollecting how as a child he looked from his cot through the window, and thought that heaven, with its starry lights, rested on the tops of the pine-trees of the garden, writes : " To me is little joy to think that heaven seems farther off than when I was a boy." Yet this world is salvable and trans- formable after all. Each can do his own part, beginning at his own heart, whence light will radiate to an ever-increasinof circumference. Deforniata 7'eformare ; reforuiata transfoinnare ; transfornmta conforinare : to reform by repent- ance that which, by yielding to temptation from within or without, has been deformed ; by manly perseverance in well-doing to transform into a shape of greater beauty and light that which by grace has been reformed ; and finally, partly here, more in Paradise, and most in the fire and everlasting splendour of "that perfect vision of God's face which we, for lack of words, call heaven," to conform his life to the ima^e of " the Lord our Ritrhteousness." CHAPTER X - TEN DESIRABLE REFORMS. TEN desirabilities I gave some years ago as pointing out the direction in which both mercy and justice called for progress in prison reform. Since then the Prison Com- mission has been held, and in some respects its report advocates what I previously had recommended. These are not, of course, all the points in which reform is possible and desirable, but they seem to me those that might be adopted without delay or difficulty. Briefly, they are these : — I. " More classification of prisoners and more variety in their treatment. The worst criminals are not punished with sufficient severity, while some, especially first offenders, are subjected to unnecessary degradation." So I wrote in 1893. Amongst the "principal recommendations" of the Departmental Com- 222 PRISONS AND PRISONERS mittee on Prisons are these : " Discretion to be reserved to prison authorities to distinguish between first offenders and habitual criminals who are caught for the first time." The worship of literalism and red tape could no further go than in treating equally under the First Offenders' Act some old Faein or noto- rious procuress who has long evaded capture and a G.P.O. lad who has stolen under the pressure of a racing-sharp to meet the debt of "honour," or a servant-girl who has been once dishonest to adorn or sustain her sweet- heart. Again, the recommendation "prisoners sentenced primarily for drunkenness should be specially treated in prisons or parts of prisons set apart for them " is what I have constantly urged by voice and pen for the last twenty years. 2. Prohibition of imprisonment of children under sixteen, save in reformatories or special houses of detention. The Committee agree, re- commending that "juveniles should be specially treated in prisons, and not be subjected to ordinary prison discipline and regulations." But the special treatment would better be given in an establishment not a prison, nor calleci by that name. The obsolete names of House of Correction and House of Detention TEN DESIRABLE REFORMS 223 avoided the error of non-classification that the use of the one word " prison " suggests. 3. Reduction of the maximum hard labour sentence to eighteen months, which is practi- cally and for most all that they can stand without mental, if not physical, injury under the conditions of separate confinement, and, on the other hand, a progressive system of sentences for repeated offences. That a month should be the maximum for drunken and dis- orderly conduct is futile and harmful. I knew one case of nine separate sentences of a month being given to the same person in a year. 4. The encouragement, though quite against the traditions and tendencies of the Home Office, of voluntary work, and of visits from outside, not only after the fashion of Elizabeth P^ry, but by the delivery of lectures and the holding of classes on moral and social subjects. So I am olad to see the Committee advise " Selected preachers should be brought in from the outside." "Greater facilities to be given to the representatives of discharged prisoners' aid societies for seeing prisoners before dis- charge." This is not all 1 meant, but it is a step towards it. 5. The censorship of the Press in the matter of the publication of the unnecessary and cor- 224 PRISONS AND PRISONERS rupting details of divorce proceedings and suicides and of betting lists. Editors cannot be the moral prophets of the age while they keep a sporting prophet, and while in bondage to advertisers and the lowest classes of their readers. Some crime is State-caused, much is Paper-caused. 6. The curtailment or abolition of the rights of evil parents to wrong their children by claimino- their return home on dischargfe from industrial schools and reformatories. I have known fathers and mothers who have caused their children to be wrongfully accused in order that they might be sent to industrial schools, and have claimed them again as soon as they have become marketable. Much has been effected in this direction by the Poor Law Act, 1889, Section I,, which enables guardians of the poor to adopt, i.e., to assume entire control of a child deserted by its parents until it reaches the age of sixteen if a boy, and eighteen if a girl ; and, further, that " where a parent is imprisoned under a sentence of penal servitude, or imprisonment in respect of an offence committed against a child, this section shall apply as if such child had been deserted by that parent." 7. A capitation grant should be allowed to TEN DESIRABLE REFORMS 225 all well-regulated and inspected societies and institutions that provide for children who are destitute or in peril. This is practically now the case with regard to industrial schools certified by the Home Office, and homes cer- tified by the Local Government Board, as regards children sent there by the guardians ; but I would extend the principle and have all child-saving homes inspected and aided if found satisfactory. Government inspection would be feared by none save those who ought to fear it. It would cause, no doubt, the extinction of some, but the fit that survived should be recogrnised as deserving well of the State, whether technically certified as now or not. 8. A State grant to all discharged prisoners' aid societies which are properly organised and supervised. This, which I advocated long ago, is now being offered to all. 9. In every county a refuge and testing- place for males and females on their discharge from prison. They are no more fit for liberty sometimes than a hot-house plant is fit to be planted out in the open air ; a hardening-off place is necessary for both. I am glad to find that the Committee recommend " that a small local prison might be selected for an experiment 16 226 PRISONS AND PRISONERS as an intermediate prison between discharge and release." It would be a revival, not a novelty, for the plan was tried earlier in this century under Sir Walter Crofton in Ireland, where two intermediate prisons were estab- lished, one of which was the Convict Farm at Lusk, where the inmates were employed in agriculture under conditions very different from those of an ordinary gaol ; while in England until comparatively recent years we had the Refuge for female convicts at Winchester. lo. Lastly, but of great importance, there is the shepherding of ex-prisoners on discharge. Many more must be led or persuaded to say to chaplains or the secretaries of prisoners' aid societies, " You may send me one, or so many cases, in the year, and I will find the money, the time, and the labour to do my best for them." I took not a few into my own house while a prison chaplain, and found some friends to be shepherds, though I found that amiable ladies or benevolent employers of labour would frequently gush over the desirability of giving a fresh chance to some penitent girl or young man on leaving a prison or a home, yet usually discovered exceptional circumstances in their own homes or businesses, that forced them to exercise self-denial by refusing a request to TEN DESIRABLE REFORMS 227 take this or that particular case under their care. Yet personal service is the lesson of the Incarnation, and the matter is one that affects the whole social life of England. We are judged by our worst as well as by our best, and our worst would not be what they are if the best did their duty to them. L CHAPTER XI AMERICAN PRISONS PEOPLE imagine in an optimistic way that Prison Reform has progressed uniformly and rapidly all over the world. This is happily true to a certain extent, and is due largely to international concrresses and conferences that have been held periodically ; but it is also untrue in some particulars and in certain places. People also in England, notably in the recent discussions over the Prisons Bill, are inclined to maintain, from a plenitude of ignorance, that our prisons are worse than those of other countries, of America for ex- ample. The value of both these imaginations is discounted by what I proceed to detail. There is before me the Fifty-Second Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York. It is for the year 1896. For more than half a century, therefore, earnest men and women AMERICAN PRISONS 229 have been labouring- in the cause, and they have achieved much. Yet, owing largely to the absence of any central power, and also to the Spoils system, whereby office-bearers of all kinds are removable and removed on any change of government, there is a most remarkable variation between prisons in the same State, some affording examples that we might well follow, and others taking us back almost to the days of John Howard for a parallel. Thus of Albany County Jail we read, "This jail has been for many years notoriously in a bad con- dition. Some time ago twenty-six U.S. prisoners were removed on account of the insufficient food and insanitary condition which prevailed." Of the next it is said, " It is in a very bad condition, which is acknowledged by every one residing in the county." Here, and in nearly every other report, we read that there is no labour for the prisoners. Even in the case of large county prisons like that of King's County, with a daily average of 634 prisoners, we find "no labour" recorded. The report as to Duchess County states, " Jail at Pough- keepsie. This is one of the oldest and worst jails in the State. It is not fit to put a human being in — in fact, not fit for a dog or a horse ; it is so dark in broad daylight that a light must 230 PRISONS AND PRISONERS be had to see anything in a cell, although the door is opposite a window. It is not clean, but fairly well ventilated." Here, it is remarked, " a man was sentenced to thirty days, but, strange to say, was on the street twenty days before his time expired, and made application for admission to the almshouse. . . . Sheriff Pearce has been interviewed as to how a man can get out of jail before his time is out, and says he doesn't know. He thinks the man must have given a fictitious name, or got out on somebody else's name." Fancy such words being written about Holloway and Colonel Milman ! Escapes are frequently recorded. In some prisons there are no relisfious services held. In not a few "no separation of young and old offenders" is recorded, which is all the more serious as the enforced idleness from the non-provision of labour must lead to most corruptive association and conversation. The variation in dietaries must be striking, inasmuch as the amount paid weekly by a county for the board of prisoners varies from four dollars twenty cents to one dollar fifty cents, which would indicate that some must be fattening coops, and in others attenuatino- circumstances exist. It is not sur- prising that the Sheriff of Washington County " is suing the county for the board of prisoners. AMERICAN PRISONS 231 The board of supervisors only allowed him I "50 per week, and he wants more." Naturally And when we read of Wayne County Jail, "the sheriff here receives a salary, and is not depen- dent upon the board of prisoners for his living," we are taken back to the indefensible abuse which was one of the first to be denounced and removed by John Howard, who found in some places that " the allowance being so far short of the cravings of nature, and in some prisons lessened by farming to the gaoler" (the preva- lent New York County system), "many criminals are half starved : such of them as at their com- mitment were in health come out almost famished, scarce able to move, and for weeks incapable of any labour." But this- was written in 1777, and even then evil conditions had been alleviated by an Act passed in 1774 for abolish- ing gaolers' fees, which was repeated in 18 13. The American system of farming out the labour of prisoners may be defensible, but never that of farming out their food. Monroe County has "a good jail, but very badly kept. It is very difficult to keep it clean on account of the overcrowding." This, by the bye, is solely for unconvicted prisoners on remand or awaiting trial. Orange County is progressive to the amazing extent of having introduced labour, 232 PRISONS AND PRISONERS and thereby has reduced the monthly avera^^e of prisoners from between fifty and sixty to from sixteen to twenty. Of this prison also it is remarked, "All the men were clothed in the striped denim — the only instance, I believe, of jail prisoners in this State having- a special and distinctive clothing." In Putnam County "this jail was filled with tramps, and was so over- crowded that you could not move without touch- ing somebody else. . . . There is no ade- quate separation for young and old offenders, or even of the sexes." Shades of Howard and Elizabeth Fry ! Queen's County Jail held 200 prisoners, but "there are no bathing facilities, and the men show it in their dirty and filthy appearance." In Rockland County "there were 108 prisoners — three to a cell, and men sleeping in the corridors also." Well may the visitor remark, "criminally overcrowded." In Suffolk County the representations of the visitors of the New York Prison Association have at last had some effect, and closets have actually been provided. " There are, however, but three of them. Forty men are obliged to use one in the morning, as soon as it can be opened, and it is impossible to keep it properly flushed and clean. There are no hospital accommodations : last winter diphtheria was AMERICAN PRISONS 233 brought into the prison, and spread among- the prisoners." No wonder ! Of White Plains Prison, in Westchester County, Judge Hellogg delivered his soul in the desire of reform. " All the prisoners, except those held for the most serious crimes, are turned out in the corridors together. They have no work to do. They play cards or loaf around, and tell of their exploits, and how they have committed bur- trlaries and other crimes in their various careers." Year after year, for more than half a century, the excellent Prison Association has reported as to abuses, as well as shepherded the discharged prisoner, and yet this state of affairs, inconceivable to English minds, exists, and presumably is defended or thought inevi- table. It is local o"overnment allowed to become local iniquity that sustains such an absence of system, and ignores or tolerates conditions that seemincompatible with enlightenment, humanity, or even the self-protection of the State. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Alleles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RtCa LD-URO IG 3 1 1988 *"" 315 3 1158 00688 2574 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 425 117 9