LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 WARDS OF THE STATE
 
 WARDS OF 
 
 THE STATE: 
 
 AN UNOFFICAL VIEW OF 
 PRISON AND THE PRISONER 
 
 BY TIGHE [HOPKINS 
 
 Author of "The Silent Gate: A Voyage into Prison," etc. 
 
 HERBERT AND DANIEL 
 95 NEW BOND STREET LONDON W. 
 
 '913
 
 TO 
 MY WIFE AND MAY
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY ..... 1 
 
 II. " THE MAN THAT WAS A THING " 
 
 SOCIETY'S CRIME AGAINST THE CRIMINAL 25 
 
 III. PENAL SERVITUDE : A TASTE OF LIFE 
 
 AT PORTLAND ..... 42 
 
 IV. PENAL SERVITUDE : A TASTE OF LIFE 
 
 AT PORTLAND (continued) ... 64 
 
 V. THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR . 76 
 
 VI. THE BEST THING IN PRISON : BORSTAL 
 
 AND THE YOUNG DELINQUENT . . 92 
 
 VII. AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE : THE " LITTLE 
 
 MOTHER " OF AMERICAN PRISONS . 106 
 VIII. THE BOOK IN THE CELL . . 119 
 
 PART II 
 PREVENTIVE 
 
 IX. BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT . 131 
 
 X. CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE . . 146 
 
 XI. CRIME AND THE CAMERA . . .159 
 
 XII. THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 165
 
 Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XIII. THE POLICE DOG 
 
 XIV. JlU-JlTSU FOR THE POLICE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 174 
 180 
 
 PART III 
 
 XV. THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING . .184 
 
 XVI. ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES . 204 
 
 XVII. THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 . 220 
 
 XVIII. THE CASE OF THE WOMAN : THE SUF- 
 FRAGETTES AS PRISONERS . . . 229 
 
 XIX. IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 
 
 I. HISTORICAL .... 259 
 
 II. SOME " PROFESSIONAL " OPINIONS 261 
 
 III. MARK TAPLEY IN " STIR " . 266 
 
 IV. THE APPEAL FROM THE DOCK 
 
 THE DESTRUCTIVE SENTENCE . 269 
 
 V. ECHOES FROM THE CELL . . 280 
 
 VI. HlBBERT 283 
 
 VII. THE MALINGERERS . . . 287 
 
 VIII. PRISON MAKES THE PRISONER . 292 
 
 XX. THE NEW HORIZONS .... 297 
 
 XXI. SUMMARY 333 
 
 INDEX 
 
 337
 
 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 IMPRISONMENT, its effects upon the prisoner (in 
 prison and after prison) and the prejudice it creates 
 against him in the public mind : these are my chief 
 topics. With imperfections of which I am extremely 
 conscious, the book represents a study of some years' 
 duration, a study rendered difficult for the onlooker 
 by this fact above others, that he does not view the 
 life of prison from within. His advantage (as an 
 onlooker), perhaps his sole advantage, is that he 
 should be able to approach the subject with no 
 excessive bias on the one side or the other. 
 
 With the criminal, as a criminal, these pages are 
 not peculiarly concerned. He is here in the main 
 regarded as a person suffering imprisonment. Crime, 
 criminals, and criminal psychology are at this day the 
 subjects of a fresh and special literature, ranging 
 in space from Madrid to New York, from Graz in 
 Austria to Los Angeles in California. From the 
 newest collection of works occupied with these ques- 
 tions, the " Modern Criminal Science Series," an
 
 2 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 enterprise of the American Institute of Criminal 
 Law and Criminology, I take this note from the 
 general introduction : 
 
 " Is the difference between the criminal and the 
 just an anthropological difference, to be recognised 
 by structural and functional peculiarities ? Is 
 the criminal marked off from other men by the 
 shape of his head, of his ears ; by his physiognomy, 
 by the length of his arms, and his physique gener- 
 ally ; by his functions, his mode of speech, the 
 reaction of his nervous system, and his mental 
 peculiarities ? Is he a criminal born, the product of 
 heredity alone ; or does he owe his criminality to 
 the influence of his circumstances ? If he is so 
 born, is his criminality due to his parentage and 
 immediate ancestry, as vicious, depraved, diseased, 
 criminal, drunken, or what not ; or is he a throw- 
 back, the reproduction, after many intervening 
 generations, of some more or less remote ancestral 
 form, long superseded by more developed types of 
 men ? If his criminality is the result of his circum- 
 stances, what is the criminalising factor in the 
 circumstances ? Is it geologic, climatic, geo- 
 graphical, or social ; and, if social, what is the 
 effect of different social factors on the produc- 
 tion of crime ? What is the effect of density 
 of population, of grade of civilisation, of sani- 
 tary and insanitary conditions, of employment 
 and unemployment, of education, imitation, 
 exhortation ; of the unequal distribution of 
 wealth, of peace and war ? How should crime 
 be detected ; what methods should be employed 
 for detecting, identifying, and registering criminals ? 
 How should they be tried when caught ? Should
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 the practice be litigious as in English Courts, or 
 inquisitorial as in those of countries in which the 
 Common law does not prevail ? How ought the 
 criminal to be punished and how induced to 
 reform ? Ought he to be punished at all, and if 
 so what is to determine the severity, what the 
 methods, of punishment ? Lastly, how is crime to 
 be prevented ? How are children to be trained 
 so that they may not become criminals ? How are 
 those who have joined the ranks of criminals to be 
 persuaded to desert them, and live upright lives? 
 And by what means is crime to be made so difficult 
 or so unremunerative that it is not worth while 
 to commit it ? " 
 
 Manifestly, this is an argument suited rather to 
 encyclopaedias than to the mere octavo. 1 
 
 Again, it is with regard to imprisonment and its 
 effects as witnessed in our own country and at the 
 present day that I have for the most part framed 
 my plan. A comparative study on a properly ex- 
 tended scale would have added many elements of 
 the picturesque, heightened and diversified the colours 
 of the melancholy raree-show of prison. It would 
 
 1 It is to an Encyclopaedia, indeed, that the American Institute 
 of Criminal Law and Criminology seems committed. The purpose 
 of the series is to make available in the English language the most 
 useful treatises on modern criminal science now extant in the 
 Continental languages. The first volumes, should their reception 
 '.varrant it, will be followed by others covering all the primary 
 aspects of Criminology, and endowing us with nothing less than 
 the results of a generation of European thought. These first 
 volumes, in the order of publication, are : " Criminal Psychology," 
 by Hans Gross (for many years the master-mind among investigat- 
 ing magistrates in Europe, and now professor of criminal law in 
 the University of Graz) ; " Crime : its Causes and Remedies," by 
 Cesare Lombroso ; " Modern Theories of Criminality," by C. 
 Bernaldo de Quiros ; and "The Individualisation of Punishment," 
 by Raymond Saleilles, professor of comparative law in the 
 University of Paris. London, Wm. Heinemann.
 
 4 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 have been profitable, too ; suggesting things to shun 
 and things to imitate. But, adequately done, it 
 would have tended to remove attention from penal 
 problems of our own ; and, as I have reconnoitred 
 prisons nowhere save at home, it would all in this 
 instance have been at second hand. 
 
 ii 
 
 Consider for a few moments a little of what the 
 travelled inquirer, bent on examining and contrasting 
 the prison systems of the world, would have to pack 
 his notebook with. A trip to Australia could not 
 well be pretermitted : New South Wales, for instance, 
 is showing us, by contrast, how appalling were the 
 blunders of Botany Bay. Sooner or later he must 
 look in on China, for this country has now joined the 
 International Penitentiary Congress. Some Chinese 
 gentlemen, on their way to the Congress at Washing- 
 ton the other day, were conducted over Wormwood 
 Scrubs Prison. They did not altogether like it. 
 They thought the prisoners looked " too happy." 
 Now, what with boiling l and burning at Smithfield, 
 pressing to death at Newgate, tearing asunder by 
 horses, 2 stoning to death in the pillory, whipping to 
 death at the cart's tail, disembowelling at Tyburn, 
 and the torments of the thumbscrew and the rack, 
 we have not always, in our recognised and legal 
 penalties, been a very poor second to China. We 
 have run her to a neck on the post. But if at this day 
 the student from the West should take China on his 
 
 1 In our penal history there are two authentic instances of boiling 
 alive. One of the victims was a maidservant. Pike's " History 
 of Crime in England." 
 
 2 Marks's "Tyburn Tree."
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 course through the East, he would not be long in 
 realising what the delegates to Washington meant 
 when they recorded their impression at Wormwood 
 Scrubs that the prisoners looked " too happy." In 
 Japan (as an instance to be offered in another chap- 
 ter may persuade us) he would find something to 
 commend. 
 
 But there would presently be Europe to traverse 
 in all her parallels. My friend Mr. G. H. Ferris has 
 discovered to us, in " Russia in Revolution," the 
 nightmare of the North. Prince Kropotkin, most 
 even-handed of publicists, who (though he has 
 endured imprisonment for his politics, both in his 
 own country and in France) seldom, if ever, permits 
 himself the luxury of invective, has issued to our own 
 nation an appeal on the state of prisons in the empire 
 of the Czar. 1 The terrible facts with which, from 
 cover to cover, this pamphlet is crammed could 
 easily have been presented in a style more dramatic 
 and alluring. All the emotional arts that a writer 
 might have at command, and those more especially 
 of persuasion and denunciation, could be effectively 
 and quite fairly employed in a statement of the case 
 against the existing bureaucracy in Russia. These 
 arts Prince Kropotkin has scrupulously avoided. He 
 has spoken simply from his brief but the brief 
 rests upon realities which of themselves are clamant : 
 " so deplorable that they leave far behind all that has 
 been published in this country about the Russian 
 prisons and exile for the last thirty years, even during 
 the reaction that set in after 1881." Yet Russia has 
 long been a party to the International Penitentiary 
 Congresses, and St. Petersburg is one of the capitals in 
 which the delegates have met. 
 
 1 "The Terror in Russia : An Appeal to the British Nation."
 
 6 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 In Prince Kropotkin's indictment reference is 
 made to the Black Hole of the Boutyrki Prison in 
 Moscow, where, says one who has been there, " the 
 black patches of coagulated blood will tell you what 
 happens." 
 
 To what extent the Black Hole in Russian bastilles 
 is used as a mode of discipline or punishment I am 
 unable to say ; but in the matter of the cachot noir 
 the true dungeon, unvisited of any light it has been 
 for France to make the worst of a very bad thing ; and 
 the thoroughgoing pilgrim of prisons would need to 
 follow Mr. George Griffith into the tropical limbo of 
 New Caledonia. Let me at once, however, qualify 
 this statement. The history of punishment in France 
 is not at all more discreditable than the history 
 of punishment in England (in neither country, I 
 think, is it quite so discreditable as the history of 
 punishment in Germany 1 ) ; but the French, having 
 taken to the notion of the black cell as a mode of 
 discipline, are still somewhat downright in their 
 working of it. Mr. George Griffith, in the volume 
 entitled " In an Unknown Prison Land," detailing 
 his progress through this limbo (which, like our own 
 
 1 See, at any rate, " La Torture : les supplices et les peines cor- 
 porelles infamantes et afflictives dans la justice allemande, etude 
 historique, 3 ' par Georges Verdene. Paris, 1906. Possibly also 
 some readers may remember that " Original Collection of Torture 
 Instruments from the Royal Castle of Nuremberg," lent for exhibi- 
 tion by Lord Shrewsbury, and on view at Mr. Louis Tussaud's in 
 Regent Street in the autumn of 1891. " We can see," said the 
 Saturday Review, in a vivid article on the subject, "that the earlier 
 painters of martyrdom the Meisters Wilhelm and Stephen, of the 
 Rhenish School, the Orcagnas and the Spagnolettos were much 
 more realistic than imaginative when they depicted saints simmer- 
 ing in cauldrons over slow fires, or being besprinkled with boiling 
 oil and drawn under red-hot harrows. The conscientious artists 
 only painted from the every-day experiences of their fellow-citizens, 
 and had merely to visit the local law courts for inspiration, as our 
 students go to Trafalgar Square or South Kensington."
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 New South Wales of the past, is a prison main- 
 tained by the central Government), opens for us one 
 of the cachots noirs of the establishment. " Out of the 
 corner came something in human shape, crouching 
 forward, rubbing its eyes, and blinking at the un- 
 accustomed light. It had been three and a half years 
 in that horrible hole, about three yards long by one 
 and a half broad." The natural and indispensable 
 annexe of the corridor of the black cells is the " mad " 
 wing of the prison hospital. What Mr. Griffith saw 
 there may be read in his own pages. 
 
 We, in our own prisons, slowly learned that it 
 was not wise to seek the taming of the mutineer by 
 shutting him up in darkness. The first time I went 
 into prison, many years ago, when the scene was no 
 more to me than a curious masquerade, I was 
 invited to step into the Black Hole. The door was 
 locked, and in the blackness of night I sat on the 
 floor of the cell and tried to think that I was in for 
 three days of it. It was ridiculous, of course ; but 
 even in three minutes the total blindness, silence, and 
 abstraction of the cell grew slightly uncomfortable. 
 A prisoner confined there for three days (his allowance 
 of bread and water reaching him through a trap -door) 
 would rise up out of a snatch of sleep, and, ignorant 
 of time as a man marooned, would rave and beat upon 
 the door and walls. At Wormwood Scrubs, years 
 later, I saw a Malay doing a brief term of penance in 
 the modified punishment cell of that day ; a scene 
 of twilight, not wholly painful : the Malay said he 
 preferred it to picking oakum. Cells black and half- 
 black have now vanished from English prisons, and are 
 scarcely missed in the way of discipline. 
 
 The examples from Russia and New Caledonia are 
 no doubt extreme. There is a good deal of sky
 
 8 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 between New Caledonia and Paris, and the sub- 
 Arctic regions of the Russia of the exiles are as remote 
 from St. Petersburg as the Zambesi is from London. 
 But, to come back to nearer Europe, Belgium will 
 give us a picture of imprisonment in its most rigorous 
 modern kind. Solitary confinement extending to the 
 term of the prisoner's natural life is possible in the 
 prison of Lou vain, some few miles from Brussels. 
 Here is the most formidable instance of restraint 
 under special conditions that is to be met with in our 
 day. It is discussed afresh in a new volume by Henri 
 Joly, 1 who found at Louvain, on a second visit, after 
 an interval of eighteen years, prisoners whom he had 
 seen and spoken with before. Seclusion in Louvain 
 gets to the very refinement of the word. The prisoner 
 is sealed from the world. After twenty years of this 
 immurement, an anarchist sews handkerchiefs like a 
 child, and cries or purrs with pleasure at the governor's 
 praise of his work. 
 
 in 
 
 Let us turn to America. The situation here is 
 peculiar, extraordinary, bewildering. The past few 
 years have given us sundry and strange revelations 
 of the under- world of America. It is a naughty world 
 in which good deeds are not conspicuous, and a wide 
 world a world too wide. There are probably 
 regions of it not yet explored, regions perhaps still 
 undiscovered ; but through many of its mazes Mr. 
 Charles Whibley, with the charm and precision that 
 we look for at his pen, has led the readers of Black- 
 wood. A great part of the financial world of America 
 is evidently contained within its under-world. There 
 may or may not be a necessary, inevitable bond 
 1 " Problemes de Science Criminelle."
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 between Trusts and corrupt practices, but the finance 
 that Mr. T. W. Lawson denounces as "frenzied," and 
 Miss Ida Tarbell exposes in her history of the Standard 
 Oil Company, has its foundations in the worst kind 
 of greed, and moves by tortuous ways. At one of the 
 meetings of the International Free Trade Congress, 
 a United States delegate, Mr. Franklin Pierce, brought 
 forward concrete cases to show " how the entire 
 Government machine was in the control of the 
 Trusts, and how the men of wealth ' squared ' not 
 only the State Legislatures but even Congress itself." 
 Critics, essayists, and novelists, natives of the soil, 
 begin not so much to suggest as to insist that, under 
 this influence and the other, the freedom that has been 
 his boast since the days of Washington is passing 
 from the American citizen. The spread-eagle talk 
 that Dickens made such delightful fun of in " Martin 
 Chuzzlewit " is no longer heard or read. Strenuous 
 fiction which is liable, of course, to merge in the 
 sensational must be taken account of, and Mr. 
 Upton Sinclair's novels are lurid tracts in which he 
 satirises, crudely enough, the pork-butcher of Chicago 
 and the plutocratic " dude " of New York. Mark 
 Twain had his fling at what were to him the sancti- 
 monious frauds of Eddyism. In a word, a note of 
 alarm pervades whatever is at the moment serious in 
 American speech or writing. It is a note that returns 
 perpetually upon this under-world, which is some- 
 times " Congress itself," oftener Wall Street, and 
 most often that undefined and incalculable sphere in 
 which lawyers of the type of " Abe " Hummel are 
 able to spend half their lives in circumventing justice. 
 The purely criminal regions of America's under- 
 world have before now been laid open to us. We have 
 a pretty good peep at them in Josiah Flynt's realistic
 
 10 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 work " Tramping with Tramps." A more intimate 
 account is given in the " Autobiography of a Thief," 
 edited by Mr. Hutchins Hapgood, which appeared 
 about four years after Mr. Flynt's volume. Here are 
 seen the " grafter " at large and the " grafter " who 
 has unluckily " fallen " and is spending a season in 
 prison. According to the candid thief, no one with 
 money in reserve " fall-money," as they call it 
 ought ever to find himself in gaol. It is mainly a 
 matter of bribing the police, whose venality in New 
 York, we are assured, exceeds belief. Even in prison, 
 the grafter who has funds at command can corrupt 
 his keepers almost to any extent. We read of an 
 affluent convict, an ex-mayor and ex-chief of police, 
 who had his private refrigerator in his cell, wherein 
 he kept butter, milk, and other privy luxuries. The 
 bribery of warders is not unheard of in our own 
 prisons, but Portland knows nothing of the " under- 
 ground tunnel " of certain State prisons in America, 
 through which are conveyed " opium, tobacco, 
 cigarettes, whisky, pies, fresh butter, and live pets, 
 such as white rats and canaries." 
 
 Mr. Arthur Train, district attorney of New York, 
 in a work entitled " The Prisoner at the Bar," speaks 
 of a " widespread contempt " for the criminal law in 
 America, " which if it has not already stimulated a 
 general increase of criminal activity, is likely to do 
 so in the future." 
 
 In a later volume, " True Stories of Crime from 
 the District Attorney's Office," composed chiefly 
 of narratives of cases in which the author acted as 
 prosecutor, Mr. Train reports at length the career of 
 that amazing lawyer, Hummel, who was probably 
 instrumental in providing a larger number of " techni- 
 cal avenues of escape to wrongdoers " than anyone
 
 INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 else in the whole continent of America, and who is 
 now, on his merits, in the penitentiary on Blackwell's 
 Island. Hummel was the " high-monkey-monk of 
 every thin' ' in the under- world of New York. 
 " Who," asks Mr. Train, " could accomplish that in 
 which the law was powerless ? Hummel. Who 
 could drive to the uttermost ends of the earth persons 
 against whom not a shadow of suspicion had pre- 
 viously rested ? Hummel. Who dictated to the 
 chiefs of police of foreign cities what they should or 
 should not do in certain cases ; and who could, at 
 the beckoning of his little finger, summon to his 
 dungeon-like offices in the New York Life Building 
 the most prominent of lawyers, the most eminent of 
 citizens ? Surely none but Hummel." 
 
 Yet this rascal knew nothing of law. A few law- 
 books " lay torn and half -opened " on the floors of his 
 office, but it was his boast that in five-and-twenty 
 years he had not three times looked at one. None- 
 theless, he and his partner, " it is alleged, made and 
 squandered millions." He had enough law to know 
 how to defeat it. 
 
 I have referred to Mr. Lawson's treatise on " Fren- 
 zied Finance." Events rendered opportune its as- 
 tonishing disclosures. Scarcely, indeed, could Mr. 
 Lawson have chosen a more dramatic moment at 
 which to launch his bolt against the jugglers of 
 American finance. The three principal Transatlantic 
 insurance companies were in a veritable state of 
 siege; and that devil-fish of the financial world, 
 opprobriously known as " Standard Oil," had at last 
 begun to be assailed. It is with " Standard Oil " 
 and its offshoot, " Amalgamated Copper " that 
 Mr. Lawson has his reckoning in these electrifying 
 pages. Together they represent what the author
 
 12 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 calls the " System," a process or device for the 
 incubation of wealth from the people's savings in 
 the banks, trust and insurance companies, and the 
 public funds. 
 
 During twenty years the System has been laying 
 America waste, plundering the nation, swallowing 
 the substance of the country ; and as a result of its 
 workings in this period there has grown up in the 
 vaunted " free " republic a set of colossal corporations, 
 in which unmeasured success and continued im- 
 munity from punishment have bred an insolent 
 disregard of law, of common morality, and of public 
 and private right, together with a grim determination 
 to hold on, at all hazards, to the great possessions 
 they have gulped or captured. It is the same 
 " System " which has taken from the millions of 
 American people billions of dollars, and given them 
 over to a score or two of individuals. " Standard 
 Oil " made fortunes almost fabulous for certain 
 arch-rogues and highwaymen of American finance ; 
 "Amalgamated Copper" (the story of which, as 
 told by Mr. Lawson, involves the credit of the 
 premier bank of America), swindled its investors out 
 of a hundred millions of dollars, and in its wake 
 there followed an interminable procession of bank- 
 rupts, convicts, and suicides. 
 
 In such a work as mine, however, the importance 
 of these gigantic scandals is indirect ; and as regards 
 what enters directly into my own scheme, the 
 administration of prisons, it is a problem too vast 
 and complex for minute examination in a chapter 
 merely prefatory. We can speak of an English 
 prison system, but we cannot speak of an American 
 prison system. Central in our own organisation is 
 that Commission which controls from Whitehall the
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 conduct of every penal institution, large and small, 
 " local " and " convict," throughout the country. 
 In America a kind of fog lies over the labyrinthine 
 realm of prison ; and, to an English student at least, 
 chaos seems to reign complete. In the great London 
 prison of Wormwood Scrubs, with a daily population 
 of about twelve hundred, precisely the same method 
 obtains as in the tiny prison of Brecon, in Wales, 
 where there may be twenty-five or thirty prisoners. 
 I turn now to a report of the Prison Association of 
 New York. With uniform laws and uniform procedure 
 in the State, there is no uniformity of prison adminis- 
 tration. In fact, there are in New York sixty-two 
 prison systems one for the State and one for each 
 of its sixty-one counties. Naturally, " the tramp or 
 vagrant chooses for a winter residence the county 
 where he can get the most comfort with the least 
 work ; turning the weakness of the system to his own 
 advantage." 
 
 Local control and divided responsibility can hardly 
 be expected to make for efficient discipline and 
 uniform and economical administration. There are 
 sixty-two prison systems in New York State because 
 there are sixty-two centres of power and responsibility. 
 Neither the State Commission of Prisons nor any 
 other State authority exercises any control over 
 discipline, treatment, feeding, education, or labour in 
 county gaols or county penitentiaries ; the only 
 uniformity is the uniformity of idleness which 
 " prevails in the gaols throughout the State." 
 Says the report : 
 
 " A sentence of two years to such a prison as 
 Sing Sing, especially \vith two men in a cell, is a 
 different and far heavier penalty than the same
 
 14 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 term in a healthy, modern prison. The county 
 gaols, too, vary so much in condition that a month 
 in one is worse than three months in another. Six 
 months hi the gaol at Batavia in this State or in 
 the penitentiary at Syracuse is a very different 
 punishment in degree and consequence from a 
 sentence of the same period to the gaols at Fonda 
 or to the ' merry-go-round ' at Oswego, as commit- 
 ment to the King's County penitentiary, where men 
 may be kept at work, is a different thing from com- 
 mitment to the Queen's County gaol, where they 
 are kept in idleness." 
 
 The uniformity of the penal code is therefore 
 theoretical only, and the penalties imposed under it 
 do not represent any uniformity in punishment or 
 reformatory discipline. The law requiring the 
 separation of prisoners in gaol is, says the report, 
 totally disregarded, and the law requiring that they 
 be put to work is a dead letter nearly everywhere. 
 
 In respect of work a change of some sort has been 
 effected, but it can scarcely be described as for the 
 better. I have before me two recent articles by Mr. 
 Julian Leavitt, 1 in which he says : " The melancholy 
 fact is that there are not ten prisons in the country " 
 he means, I presume, the whole of the United States 
 " to-day which teach the prisoner a usejul trade, and 
 scarcely one, so far as I know, which permits him to 
 make any reasonably decent provision for his dependent 
 family ; and in nearly half of the States of the Union 
 he is sold to a private trader, called a prison con- 
 tractor, for an average of not much more than fifty 
 cents a day. At best, the contractor is a business 
 man ; at worst, a merciless slaver. He has absolutely 
 
 1 American Magazine, February and March, 1912.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 no interest, human or other, in the prisoner ; and the 
 prisoner has no rights which he need respect." 
 
 There is, according to Mr. Leavitt, an aspect of 
 the case even uglier than this. The State offers to 
 teach the prisoner a trade, and breaks faith with him. 
 " He is immediately harnessed to a machine in the 
 prison factory. Let us suppose that he has been 
 assigned to the shirt or overall factory, for these are 
 very common in our contract prisons." He presently 
 learns that this is, for a man, no trade at all. It is 
 a woman's trade. " Be he ever so skilful and ever so 
 willing, the convict who has spent several years of his 
 life learning to make overalls or shirts can no more 
 earn his living thereby when released than if he had been 
 carefully ' trained ' to serve as nursemaid or governess." 
 
 There are other prison industries, broom and brush 
 making (a blind worker's calling), hollow-ware, 
 binder twine, hosiery knitting, etc., at which the 
 ex-convict can never earn a living unless he returns 
 to prison ! As Mr. Leavitt sums it up : " These 
 prisons profess to fit their inmates for freedom by 
 teaching them ' trades ' which they cannot follow 
 when released." 
 
 In contemporary records, nothing is sadder, 
 nothing more revolting, than the exposures of San 
 Quentin Prison and the Southern Convict Camps, in 
 a tractate, " Crime and Criminals," issued by the 
 Prison Reform League of Los Angeles ; but I abstain 
 from touching upon this. 
 
 Briefly, I find in the American prisons something 
 of the worst but something also of the best. Their 
 condition depends, as I gather, in part upon the 
 character and intelligence of the " warden " in charge, 
 and in part upon the character and intelligence of the 
 Governor of the State. A bad, stupid, and cruel
 
 16 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 method easily assumes form and fixity ; a good, 
 mindful, and liberal one has excellent chances of 
 succeeding. Under the uniform system that dis- 
 tinguishes our own prison service, experiment must 
 usually get the sanction of Whitehall ; under the 
 multiform systems of America, an experiment so 
 splendid and unique as the crusade of Mrs. Ballington 
 Booth can embrace the gaols of a continent, and, in 
 the course of half a generation, do more than a little 
 to refashion its criminal populace. Again, nothing 
 is more refreshing than the instances, very recently 
 to hand, of efforts in America to bring the prisoner 
 to himself by treating him as a man not to be de- 
 naturalised by punishment. America is, in these 
 endeavours, a fair decade ahead of us. Two or three 
 illustrations will suffice. 
 
 At Warrensville, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Dr. 
 Harris Cooley is treating " criminals and shirkers " 
 with sunlight and fresh air. He had possibly been 
 reading of Coleridge's anonymous philanthropist, who 
 
 " Gives the blue sky to many a prisoner's eyes." 
 
 Dr. Cooley has opened a building at the corners 
 of which four large towers with wide windows let 
 the light into the punishment cells. To these airy 
 dungeons, which he calls his "thinking-rooms," he 
 consigns in turn the most indocile and impenitent 
 of his charges. They come out, the doctor says, 
 softened and cheered and equable of temper ; and we 
 may believe it, for this is treatment on the simplest 
 lines of nature. These sunlit eyries of Dr. Harris 
 Cooley may one day attract attention over here but 
 in all that makes for the amelioration of prisons the 
 common sense of genius has a stiff opponent in 
 tradition,
 
 INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 A glimpse now of the tactics of Mr. Thomas J. 
 Tynan, Warden of the State prison of Colorado. Mr. 
 Leavitt is our informant. After a reference to savage 
 methods flogging, stringing up by the wrists, starving 
 " in a scientifically darkened room " he says : 
 
 " On the other hand, I might tell a thousand 
 and one stories to prove the prisoner's essential 
 humanity under stress and strain : how, for 
 example, his word given to a humane warden is 
 rarely dishonoured ; how, only last year, the 
 convicts of Colorado built, without watch or guard, 
 the most wonderful scenic road in the world, which 
 winds its way from Canon City to Colorado Springs, 
 and not one convict broke his word simply 
 because Governor Shafroth and Warden Tynan 
 are men among men. They say that in the convict 
 camp of over one hundred only one man carries a 
 gun ; and he is a convict armed by the warden to 
 keep off coyotes." 
 
 With Mr. Tynan's rule in Colorado we may compare 
 Governor Oswald West's in Oregon. It is in Oregon, 
 says a writer in the World's Work, 1 " that, in sober 
 fact, a Governor telephones to the penitentiary 
 superintendent to ask a convict to get on a tramcar 
 and come down to the State house so that he may 
 inquire if he wouldn't like leave of absence to go 
 home to his farm and save the crops." The convict 
 took the tram, asked and was granted the necessary 
 leave, and went home to his farm to " save the crops." 
 He was "expected back at Salem in the autumn," 
 and it would be millions of surprises had he not 
 returned, for Mr. West paroled him on his naked 
 word and how many convicts, in any quarter of the 
 1 November, 1911.
 
 18 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 world, have ever been taken on their word ? Governor 
 West offers us this memorable hint : that men in 
 prison " respond to confidence and kindness more 
 quickly, because they are unfortunate." With this 
 prepossession, he is " putting the Oregon penitentiary 
 on the honour system. He began by proposing to a 
 number of selected prisoners to go out daily and 
 work on the farm and roads without a guard, coming 
 back to sleep at night. They jumped at the chance. 
 In a speech to the convicts last June, Mr. West said : 
 ' Of course, there's bush out there, and it would be 
 easy to get away. Besides, it's summer, with plenty to 
 eat out-of-doors, and it's easy to sleep out-of-doors. 
 But this will be an experiment on which the future 
 of the men who will come to this place will depend. 
 They will be treated like slaves or like men according 
 to their behaviour. What do you say ? I only want 
 your word of honour, and don't give it if you can't 
 keep it.' " 
 
 During the summer of last year one hundred and 
 fifty of these convicts were " out-of-doors in the 
 country about Salem, where the prison is located, 
 mending roads, beautifying the grounds of the 
 tuberculosis hospital, raising crops and milking cows, 
 digging wells and building fences, and, without the 
 suggestion of a guard, finding their way back to 
 prison at nightfall. Only two have broken parole. 
 One of them was caught and is back in prison, without 
 a friend among the men to speak to him. . . . Maybe it 
 is a strange thing to do let convicts decide for them- 
 selves whether or not they shall be guarded and 
 locked up. Yet already there are evidences that when 
 men leave the Salem prison they go out, not like 
 ordinary penitentiary graduates, crushed in spirit, 
 weakened in body and hardened in crime, but men
 
 INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 who have learned to work, to keep their word and 
 their self-control, and who have regained the greatest 
 thing in the world their self-respect." 
 
 As Dr. Cooley's sun-chambers at Warrensville are a 
 good deal nearer to reason than black holes in Russia 
 or new Caledonia, so are the honour system and 
 paroles of Warden Tynan and Governor West a 
 moral league or two ahead of sequestration in 
 Louvain and of the policy of perpetual mistrust that 
 goes so far to spoil the convict in our own prisons. 
 America, indeed, lets now and then a rainbow's light 
 on Europe. 
 
 IV 
 
 These excursions have taken us but a very little 
 way, yet far enough perhaps to give the reader to 
 surmise how wide the voyage would have been 
 through Prisondom. Some adventurer, with oppor- 
 tunities of travel never vouchsafed to me, may one 
 day go upon this quest. What I fear is that he will 
 not often enjoy a spin " down the ringing grooves of 
 change." 
 
 For, Europe or Cathay, despite the counsels of 
 criminologists in America, France, Germany, Spain, 
 and Italy (in England their science is but just 
 beginning to be sniffed at), progress in the betterment 
 of prison is extravagantly slow. None the less, since, 
 in the latter part of the nineteenth century, this new 
 school of criminologists, inspired and partly captained 
 by the brilliant, imaginative, and impulsive Lom- 
 broso, got seriously to work, many minds have 
 gradually received from it one idea of cardinal im- 
 portance. It is, that imprisonment of the conven- 
 tional and old-fashioned sort is a grand, unmitigated 
 failure. Real and acceptable remedies or substitutes
 
 20 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 may be and are very difficult to arrive at ; but the 
 absolute defectiveness of the ancient method 
 imprisonment as imprisonment is an outstanding 
 fact. Its failure is the same in all countries. It is 
 played out. 
 
 Our own mechanicians keep on touching up the old 
 machine, and every now and then it starts off again 
 in quite an imposing manner. The Prison Com- 
 missioners attract their due share of abuse, but they 
 never leave off tinkering at the system they admin- 
 ister ; they publish annually a very painstaking 
 report in which apology blends with gratulation ; 
 and they are probably as energetic and conscientious 
 a body of gentlemen as the public service contains. 
 Their system may be destined to the dust, but while 
 it survives they will not cease to medicine it. 
 
 There is occasionally at the Home Office a Secretary 
 of State, whether Liberal or Conservative (a Mr. 
 Asquith at one time, a Sir Matthew Ridley at another), 
 who allows the needs of prison a call on his activities ; 
 and the Commissioners are then, perhaps, a little 
 busier than usual. Mr. Winston Churchill gave them 
 no undue repose. The penal reforms outlined and 
 proposed by him in the House of Commons two years 
 ago 1 were considerable. The speech itself might 
 well have been reproduced in its extent and sold or 
 distributed as a pamphlet. It was an utterance at 
 once practical and compassionate, statesmanlike and 
 philanthropic, distinctly a message of hope. No 
 Home Secretary has ever spoken better, few Ministers 
 have ever spoken so comprehensively and feelingly, 
 on the deep social questions concerning imprisonment, 
 the prisoner, and the ex-prisoner. 
 
 To all the most important of Mr. Churchill's pro- 
 1 July 20th, 1910.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 21 
 
 posals effect has since been given, and the gain is 
 appreciable. He was bent first of all upon reducing 
 and keeping down the prison population. This opens 
 up the question of fines and the proper way of 
 managing the fine system. Why go through the farce 
 of fining a prisoner and then at once sending him to 
 gaol ? " In 1910," said Mr. Churchill, " there were 
 90,000 persons committed to prison in default of the 
 payment of fines, the greater proportion of whom 
 might have paid had sufficient time been allowed. 
 . . . More than half the persons committed to prison 
 in default of paying the fine were committed for 
 offences of drunkenness." To send a drunkard to 
 prison for a week is simply to put him in training for a 
 new bout, to foster him in his habit. Then there are 
 all sorts of small offences frequently the merest 
 peccadilloes which can be and have been punished 
 with imprisonment, the alternative fine being not 
 immediately forthcoming. One of the fines that may 
 be mentioned is that too often inflicted on the day- 
 labourer for the truancy of the boy at school. In the 
 majority of instances these commitments are un- 
 necessary. For short periods every year we have 
 been sending to prison thousands of persons who 
 should never have seen the inside of such a place. 
 They learn to know it, and sometimes find it not so 
 shocking as they had fancied. There are other cases 
 in which the taint of gaol spoils or destroys the chance 
 of getting work. And the cost to the country of these 
 countless short and futile sentences is enormous. 
 Every case entails some amount of clerical work, and 
 the whole of this vast body of delinquents has to be 
 fed, clothed, lodged, and supervised at the State's 
 expense. The result is sheer, irremediable waste. 
 What solid return in work or anything else can be
 
 22 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 got from the prisoner whom we put away for ten or 
 fourteen days ? Mr. Thomas Holmes, secretary of the 
 Howard Association, expressed his belief that the right 
 management of fines would keep 60,000 persons out of 
 prison eveiy year. 
 
 Certain young gamblers, rowdies, and larrikins are 
 now, under the new rules, being dealt with by means 
 of what is called " defaulters' drill." This is described 
 as " something extremely salutary and at the same 
 time extremely disagreeable." It is perhaps a question 
 whether many of the weedy boys of the street are fit 
 for the kind of drill that might be useful enough for 
 well-grown and well-nourished subjects. Possibly 
 some form of detention with curative treatment would 
 give better results. But whatever be done it is wise 
 to avoid committing to prison the 5000 lads who 
 were annually sent there for such " crimes " as stone- 
 throwing, pitch-and-toss, football in the back streets, 
 or sleeping in the open air. This was criminal on the 
 part of the State. 
 
 There is a class of prisoners very different from 
 any of these. Of " political " prisoners, commonly 
 so called, the law itself knows nothing, but most of us 
 are moderately informed as to the meaning of the 
 term. No one, at any rate, confounds the offence of 
 the burglar with that of the enthusiast who pummels 
 the police about taxes or votes or the existence of the 
 Deity. One may break the law in ways which, in Mr. 
 Churchill's phrase, " do not involve any moral 
 censure," any " moral turpitude." Law-breakers of 
 this class may congratulate themselves that they will 
 no longer be submitted to the degrading punishments 
 that are not beneficial even to the most degraded 
 prisoners. It would not be difficult to show that the 
 mere wearing of ignominious clothes has its effect
 
 INTRODUCTORY 23 
 
 and probably in very many cases a powerful effect 
 in imbuing the prisoner with a deeper sense of self- 
 contempt ; and self-contempt must be transformed, 
 in however feeble a degree, into self-respect, before 
 any work of reformation can begin. The humiliating 
 garb of the felon, changing him from a man into a 
 grotesque, has done woefully little to improve him ! 
 In a few of the more sensibly conducted prisons of 
 America the uniform of the stripes is being abandoned 
 for a decent suit of blue-black, and I believe we 
 shall gradually come to understand that the broad- 
 arrow wear of our own convicts is an embellishment 
 not exactly worth what it costs in its indirect 
 contribution to recidivism. 
 
 " Separate " confinement (the official euphemism 
 for what is actually solitary confinement, since it 
 means some twenty-three hours out of the twenty- 
 four) is reduced to one month " in all cases except 
 those of old offenders." Something more is done in the 
 way of lectures and music, and one may be moderately 
 sure that concessions in these directions will have a 
 salutary effect. There are prisons in America in 
 which convicts have their own band, and discipline 
 is none the worse. We hear of " pampering " in these 
 matters : the convict on a seven or ten years' sentence 
 knows negligibly little of pampering ! I would intro- 
 duce a prison journal in the convict establishments. 
 This also is a privilege hugely appreciated by the 
 shorn-heads of the United States, and the odd copies 
 of these prints that have passed into my hands wanted 
 only a little more candour and a little less goodyness. 
 It would be no bad plan to let prisoner address prisoner 
 in this manner, and governors could safely be trusted 
 to see that the liberties of the prison press were not 
 abused ! Oscar Wilde was allowed to write his
 
 24 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " De Profundis " in his cell at Reading, and it seems 
 a trifle absurd to reduce an educated prisoner to the 
 slate and pencil, a provision that transports us to the 
 days before the Education Act was passed. A prison 
 journal written for prisoners by prisoners might be 
 useful as criticism from the inside point of view. Mr. 
 Justice Darling has had the courage to say from the 
 bench that when new laws were to be framed it would 
 be not unreasonable to take the opinion of the 
 criminal whom they would affect ; and from the 
 shades of the cell, in a newspaper made entirely with 
 his own hands, he might deliver to us with a relish 
 some sharp and useful notions on the congregated 
 pains of imprisonment.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING "SOCIETY'S 
 CRIME AGAINST THE CRIMINAL 
 
 [Of course, from one point of view, I know that on 
 the day of my release I shall be merely passing from 
 one prison into another, and there are times when the 
 whole world seems to me no larger than my cell, and as 
 full of terror for me . . . all sentences are sentences of 
 death.] 
 
 OSCAR WILDE, looking to his day of freedom, wrote 
 these words in a cell of Reading Prison. They are 
 terrible words from the pen of one who has at least 
 borne the punishment imposed on him by law, has 
 paid the penalty exacted of him. He counts merely 
 on changing the little prison he has been humiliated 
 in for the wide prison of the world, where he will be 
 even more bitterly humiliated. He counts his sen- 
 tence of two years as a sentence of death. The 
 brilliant, broken man spoke but the bare truth. 
 The world, " shrivelled to a handsbreadth," became 
 his second prison, and his sentence of two years 
 proved a sentence of death. Soul and body shattered, 
 he was very soon in the grave. 
 
 This, no doubt, was a peculiar case, yet we need 
 not insist too much on its peculiarities. For the 
 disabilities of an Oscar Wilde are known, in greater 
 or in less degree, to every man and woman on whom 
 
 25
 
 26 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 the taint of gaol has passed. There is a crowd of 
 pariahs living among us, and yet in a marked and 
 painful manner separated from us, who have ceased 
 to share the world with us on any terms of equality. 
 They are the persons who have been in prison. 
 
 These few facts open up two aspects of a very 
 important question, the question of the future of the 
 ex-prisoner. The first aspect is a moral and the second 
 an economic one. Are we just in our attitude to- 
 wards the ex-prisoner ? Are we wise ? 
 
 If theory went for anything, the prisoner should 
 quit his cell mentally, morally, and physically fit to 
 do battle for himself again. It is admitted that he 
 has handicapped himself ; it is felt by every one that 
 the way at first will be none too plain for him. But 
 we are told that the discipline he has undergone in 
 prison ought to have equipped him for the task. The 
 effect of his punishment, we are assured, is, or should 
 be, to cleanse and heal the offender, weaken in him 
 the impulses to do wrong, strengthen what impulses 
 he may have to do right ; tone and brace and build 
 him up anew. All the defenders, official and non- 
 official, of our elaborate system of imprisonment 
 insist that these are among the ends for which it was 
 expressly framed ; that they are on the whole, 
 perhaps, its most important ends. 
 
 Unfortunately we have at this day an immense 
 mass of evidence which goes to show that the real 
 effects of imprisonment are almost totally and 
 radically different from those that are so often 
 claimed for it. Indeed, if at this day we know any- 
 thing about what prison does for the prisoner, it is 
 that the very short sentence operates chiefly in the 
 direction of hindering a man from getting work on 
 his release, and that a long sentence of penal servitude
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 27 
 
 is in nearly all respects injurious. There are no 
 beneficial results from imprisonment. As a mode 
 of punishment it is directly and indirectly a failure. 
 It is a direct failure in the case of wellnigh all the 
 individuals who have endured it, an indirect failure 
 in the case of the community whose efficient strength 
 is reduced by a standing army of prison-made dead- 
 heads and derelicts. 
 
 Testimony against the existing system (which, 
 after all, is not so old that we need boggle at the 
 question of bettering it) can be collected from au- 
 thorities as different as possible. It would be more 
 correct to say that this testimony thrusts itself upon 
 us. We get it occasionally from the judge who passes 
 on the convicted man or woman in the dock a sentence 
 that he feels and knows is practically useless. We 
 get it now and again (in this instance very rarely, 
 for the rules are very strict) from the medical officer 
 who sees the prisoner in confinement. We get it 
 (rarely here also) from the clergyman who holds the 
 dreary benefice of prison. We get it from the unpaid 
 visitors who do the office of charity among the 
 prisoners of both sexes. We get it from the reports 
 of committees appointed by Parliament. We get it, 
 as opportunity arises, from independent critics in 
 Parliament. We get it from mere writing persons 
 like myself, who, having been permitted to go into 
 prison, have afterwards read and sifted some thou- 
 sands of pages of evidence on the subject. We get it 
 from every intelligent prisoner who has the ability 
 and the courage to tell us in print what his life as a 
 convict was like and what this life did for him. 
 
 Bearing upon this point of the failure of prison 
 as a punishment, and its more or less destructive 
 effect upon the victim, I shall select a few illustrative
 
 28 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 examples. A judge of wide experience, the late Lord 
 Coleridge, once said that little good could be done 
 to the criminal by the sentence imposed on him ; 
 pains might be taken to make prisons " as useful as 
 possible in the way of being reformatories," but 
 " as a matter of fact, they are not so" No more 
 suggestive report about prison has ever been published 
 than that of the committee appointed by the present 
 Prime Minister and presided over by the gentleman 
 who is now Lord Gladstone. The evidence taken by 
 this committee fills a volume of over six hundred large 
 double-column pages. Few aspects of imprisonment 
 and penal servitude were neglected, and the most 
 significant admission in the report is that the system 
 " not only failed to reform offenders, but produced 
 a deteriorating effect upon them." 
 
 The late Sir Edmund Du Cane, a very starched 
 and stiff-necked person, who was largely responsible 
 for this system, was driven to acknowledge, respecting 
 the close confinement of prisoners, that it was " an 
 artificial state of existence, absolutely opposed to 
 that which Nature points out as the condition of 
 mental, moral, and physical health." From a prison 
 doctor genuine criticism is very seldom to be had. 
 In England there is, I fancy, a strict rule against it. 
 The medical officers of local and convict gaols make 
 an annual statement to the Commissioners, which is 
 usually both brief and unreadable, though I am 
 certain that most of these gentlemen could tell us a 
 great many very interesting things about the prisoners 
 in their charge. Perhaps in Scotland the rules are a 
 little less severe, for we have from the pen of Dr. 
 James Devon an admirable communication to the 
 Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow. 
 
 Dr. Devon says of penal servitude that it is "a
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 29 
 
 system of repression mainly ; a sitting on the safety- 
 valve that is apt to provoke outbursts of temper and 
 violence resulting in assault." He states that the 
 problem of the criminal " is not solved by imprison- 
 ment," that " better results could be obtained by 
 keeping as many out of prison as possible," and that, 
 as regards the generality of offenders, " their prison 
 experience has failed to produce either a deterrent 
 or a reformatory effect on them." It would be of 
 great value could we get the unbiassed and unhin- 
 dered opinions of the whole body of the medical 
 officers of prisons on the effects of long sentences of 
 imprisonment and penal servitude. At present it 
 would be quite useless to suggest that prisoners 
 should be individually watched and studied, though 
 this is, of course, what ought to be done in every 
 penal institution throughout the country, and a 
 doctor with some cultivated taste for mental science 
 is the person to do it. But, if not all prisoners, 
 certain of them should be watched and studied. 
 What a revelation of temperament, for example, 
 we get from Oscar Wilde's " De Profundis " (the one 
 modern English work of genius that prison has be- 
 stowed on us), and, in an utterly different manner, 
 from Lord William Nevill's " Penal Servitude " ! 
 
 The prison chaplain is another man in the machine 
 who does not often tell us (he also, I take it, is pretty 
 close bound by the rules of the service) what he truly 
 thinks of its workings. Every one, therefore, who 
 is in any way concerned about change and reformation 
 in these dark and silent seats is and has long been in 
 debt to the Rev. Dr. Douglas Morrison, who has 
 knocked in pieces all the arguments of all the de- 
 fenders of the system, and who speaks of the inner 
 life of gaoldom as an astronomer speaks of the
 
 SO WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 firmament. Dr. Morrison, who was a chaplain in 
 this service from 1883-98, has told us how, when 
 he first took office, the authorities were issuing 
 Blue Books year after year in which the decrease 
 of the daily prison population was triumphantly 
 pointed to as a proof of the success of the new ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 " These optimistic statements impressed the 
 public mind. But I was coming into too close 
 contact with the prison population to accept them 
 without reserve. It was clear to anyone going 
 out and in among prisoners as men and women, 
 and not looking at them as figures in a Blue Book, 
 that the punishment of so many weeks or months, 
 or even years of imprisonment, was not deterring 
 them from crime. . . . Many of these unfortunate 
 and guilty creatures entered prison shattered and 
 dilapidated, and when the time came for them to 
 leave it they had become even more unfit for social 
 life than when they went in. The prison had made 
 them worse instead of better. When once more at 
 liberty, they relapsed again into crime, and re- 
 turned to gaol in ever-increasing numbers. The 
 prisons of England, so far from being what they 
 were represented in the Blue Books, were little 
 better than machines for the manufacture of 
 habitual criminals." 
 
 On the general subject of the treatment of the 
 criminal in prison, Dr. Morrison said in a lecture 
 delivered before the Humanitarian League : " Cer- 
 tainly if you want to reform him, you will not attain 
 your purpose by subjecting him to the operation of 
 a code of regulations which are calculated to ex- 
 tinguish every spark of humanity he may happen to
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 31 
 
 possess." A leading witness before the Asquith 
 Committee was Sir Godfrey Lushington, K.C.B., who 
 had been nine years Under-Secretary for the Home 
 Department, and twenty-five years altogether at the 
 Home Office. He made some very grave statements. 
 
 " I regard as unfavourable to reformation," 
 said Sir Godfrey, " the status of a prisoner through- 
 out his whole career ; the crushing of self-respect ; 
 the starving of all moral instinct he may possess ; 
 the absence of all opportunity to do or receive a 
 kindness ; the continual association with none but 
 criminals ; the forced labour and the denial of all 
 liberty. I believe the true mode of reforming a 
 man or restoring him to society is exactly in the 
 opposite direction of all these. . . . / consider 
 that a mediceval thief who had his right hand chopped 
 off was much more likely to turn over a new leaf than 
 a convict who has had ten years' penal servitude." 
 
 Nothing else quite so damaging as this has ever 
 come out of Whitehall. It was in effect endorsed 
 by the Committee, who said in their report: "As a 
 broad description of prison life, we think that this 
 description is accurate." 
 
 After a considered criticism, crushing in every 
 syllable, of Sir Godfrey Lushington, we could almost 
 dispense with the testimony of the ex-prisoners, 
 which some hearers are never very willing to receive, 
 and which is seldom, perhaps, very thoroughly 
 attended to. This testimony, surveyed in the bulk, 
 is, no doubt, of very unequal merit ; but the ex- 
 convict who speaks to us in his own name claims a 
 large measure of respect. He comes to us with his 
 reputation in his hands. He is willing to stand to it 
 in the public eye that he is one of the men who have
 
 32 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " been there." I listen with interest and submission 
 to anything that Mr. H. J. B. Montgomery (of whom 
 I know nothing personally) has to say. In the 
 Nineteenth Century and elsewhere he has written 
 simply and shrewdly of what he went through in 
 prison, of the men he met there (few of them differing 
 very widely from the common run of us), and of the 
 greeting that the ex-prisoner may look for on the 
 day of his discharge. From Mr. Montgomery's 
 writings on the subject I take but a few sentences 
 here and there. They bring the ex-prisoner in touch 
 with the Under-Secretary. 
 
 " As they are to-day, English prisons are not 
 only manufactories of crime, but forcing-houses 
 for professional criminals. The human, not to 
 say humane, note is absent from them. . . . The 
 system simply tends to make what I may term 
 the accidental criminal an habitual criminal, to 
 case-harden the old offender. It is a system 
 lacking throughout in sympathy, which attempts 
 nothing, and apparently cares nothing, in regard 
 to the improvement of character, or in reference to 
 preparing the incarcerated man or woman for 
 return to the world. ... If the English people 
 knew the English prison system as I know it, I 
 feel perfectly certain it would be doomed." 
 
 A note of Oscar Wilde's prison book is this : 
 
 " The prison style is absolutely and entirely 
 wrong . . . our very dress makes us grotesque. 
 We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns 
 whose hearts are broken." 
 
 Between Wilde's " De Profundis," a uniquely 
 written thing the half-uttered first canto of a new
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING 11 33 
 
 Inferno and the business-like, self-contained, and 
 very unassuming but very critical pages of Mr. 
 Jabez Balfour's volume, " My Prison Life," no 
 comparison is possible. Mr. Balfour's is the best 
 practical exposition and condemnation of penal 
 servitude that we have. He writes without bitterness, 
 and deals with prison as with a balance-sheet. 
 " Looked at from whatever point of view whether 
 we regard it as intended to reform, to deter, or to 
 punish the existing system has failed." As touching 
 on the absolutely and cruelly artificial life which the 
 convict is compelled to lead, one little point is of 
 curious interest. No convict is allowed a looking- 
 glass ; he passes years without knowing what his 
 features are growing into. After nine years of 
 captivity Mr. Balfour caught sight of himself in a 
 glass in the library of Parkhurst Prison. " I started 
 back, for I did not know my own face. It was one 
 of the most amazing and terrifying experiences in my 
 life. I had changed past recognition." It is quite 
 possible, of course, for a convict to spend years in 
 prison and never look upon a woman, never see a 
 child at play. No life is more utterly unnatural. 
 
 An article, " Concerning Imprisonment, By One 
 Who Has Suffered It," in the authoritative Hibbert 
 Journal, gave the public a momentary feeling of 
 uneasiness. Many newspapers quoted it at length, 
 and the Express printed a vigorous and instructive 
 correspondence on the subject. The Press is as diffi- 
 cult to rouse in this matter as Parliament or the 
 taxpayer ; it waits for the lead of a sensational 
 article. To readers unfamiliar with the theme of 
 prison, this communication to Hibbert must have 
 seemed sensational in a high degree ; but, apart 
 from the passion of protest that fills and overspreads
 
 34 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 it, the writer says little that had not been coldly 
 said by the Under-Secretary. 
 
 The author of this powerful and lurid contribution 
 worked out the greater part of his sentence in Aus- 
 tralia ; but the general conditions of penal servitude 
 in that distant country seem to reflect those of a 
 convict establishment in England. " What is it 
 that we are really going to ? " he asked a fellow- 
 prisoner, and the stimulating answer was : " Hell ! " 
 Well, Jabez Balfour (while admitting that " things 
 have doubtless changed since then ") found Portland 
 " a heart-breaking, soul-enslaving, brain-destroying 
 hell upon earth." 
 
 In terms as dreadful the writer of the Hibbert 
 article tells the story of his own imprisonment. He 
 says explicitly that penal servitude 
 
 (1) Is slavery ; 
 
 (2) Is a school of crime ; 
 
 (3) Destroys men morally, physically, and men- 
 tally ; 
 
 (4) Is wholly evil in its effects. 
 
 " A World of the Dead " is his general description 
 of prison. The prisoner " has no rights whatever, 
 either as a man or an animal. . . . He is ruled 
 entirely by compulsion. Not for a single moment 
 can he do anything he would elect to do." The 
 following note is recurrent : 
 
 " By whatever margin of creational equipment 
 a human being is superior to a beast, by so much 
 is that human being's condition inferior when the 
 key turns and he or she is left locked in the kennel, 
 henceforth replacing what has been his or her 
 home. Language affords no means of expressing 
 its agonising, appalling effect on mind and body."
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 35 
 Oscar Wilde had said long before : 
 
 " For us there is only one season, the season of 
 sorrow. ... A day in prison on which one does 
 not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not 
 a day on which one's heart is happy." 
 
 At the long last comes the day of discharge, and I 
 fancy that the shock of release must be something 
 which those of us who have not been set free from 
 prison cannot even faintly realise. 
 
 We have now arrived at one or two facts of interest 
 and importance. The punishment of imprisonment 
 does not do what it professes to do and is supposed 
 to do. It does not reform anyone ; it does not deter 
 anyone from going back to crime ; it does not help 
 anyone to win again the place that he has lost as a 
 citizen. In every way it hinders him. If he does 
 not come out of prison a worse man than he was when 
 he entered it, he comes out a weaker and more help- 
 less one. His general efficiency, I think, is about 
 seventy-five per cent less than it was. He has 
 existed during his imprisonment as a Thing ; a 
 Thing disgraced and despised. It is unwholesome 
 to live in this way, and it is indescribably emasculat- 
 ing. No man can be improved, and the most obdurate 
 of men is made more obdurate, by being compelled 
 to pass a term of years in contempt and degradation. 
 The man who has done this is at a frightful dis- 
 advantage when he is delivered again into freedom, 
 with his way to make once more in the world. He 
 has lost his sense of self-respect, and this is but 
 another term for moral paralysis. He has lost all 
 touch with free workers. He has lost, in every 
 reasonable meaning of the word, his individuality.
 
 36 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Ought we not to give this man some chance of re- 
 habilitating himself ? 
 
 What is the legal situation of the ex-prisoner ? 
 
 This question was discussed two and a half years 
 ago in a thoughtful and cogent article in the Fort- 
 nightly Review, entitled " Society and the Criminal." 
 The writer, Mr. Reginald Statham, shows by refer- 
 ences to Acts of Parliament, text-books, and law 
 reports, that the enduring of punishment for 
 criminal offence has the same legal effect as a pardon 
 under the Great Seal. Now we know, or should 
 know, what the granting of a pardon means. It 
 means that every stain attached by the law to the 
 offender has been wiped out. In the eyes of the law 
 the man who has " done time " has thereby purged 
 himself of his offence, and has received (in the words 
 of a high legal authority) " a new capacity and credit." 
 He stands according to law in precisely the situation 
 in which he stood before he committed the offence 
 that has been expiated in prison. 
 
 The law's attitude is sensible, humane, practical. 
 Nothing can be more impolitic or in the long run 
 more improvident than for a State to refuse to the 
 delinquent citizen whom it has already punished 
 (and often with extreme severity) the right to make 
 a fresh credit for himself in the world. 
 
 But the attitude of society is very different from 
 the attitude of the law. I cannot but think that the 
 State itself is in some degree responsible for the 
 individual whom it thrusts from prison upon a gaping 
 world, from the cell into the street. (Under the 
 newest scheme in Japan, work is found by the State 
 for all discharged prisoners, and it is an indictable 
 offence either to molest or to boycott them.) But 
 whatever the responsibility of the State, I am in no
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING' 1 37 
 
 doubt at all as to the responsibility of society. For 
 the luckless creature whom the law has broken there 
 are at least two tremendous crises. The first is when 
 he enters prison. The second is when he leaves it. 
 There are those to whom the second crisis is almost 
 more terrifying than the first ; and it is at this hour 
 that to the sinner who has paid his forfeit in full the 
 moral obligation of society begins. In what manner 
 is this obligation met ? Listen once again to Wilde, 
 yearning for yet dreading the day of his release : 
 
 " Many men on their release carry their prison 
 about with them into the air, and hide it as a 
 secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like 
 poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and 
 die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, 
 and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of society that it 
 should force them to do so. Society takes upon 
 itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on 
 the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of 
 shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. 
 When the man's punishment is over, it leaves him 
 to himself ; that is to say, it abandons him at the 
 very moment when its highest duty towards him 
 begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions and 
 shuns those whom it has punished." 
 
 This is just as true as it is discreditable to all of us. 
 Whatever may be the legal status after imprisonment 
 of the men who were once army officers, solicitors, 
 bank managers, clerics, financiers, clerks, tradesmen, 
 we know very well what their real position is. They 
 are the social lepers of their world. In very many 
 cases they have had to change their identity alto- 
 gether, and the man who has had to do this lives in 
 constant terror of discovery and betrayal. Such a
 
 38 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 man, moreover, is leading a false, and therefore a 
 more or less diseased existence ; he is always in a 
 state of repression, as he was in prison ; and in this 
 state he can never do justice to himself. If he is in 
 hiding, using a name not his own, it is very likely 
 that he will sooner or later be found out, and then at 
 once the shame of prison covers him again, and he is 
 probably driven forth to some obscurer hiding-place. 
 What must be the ultimate fate of this man ? Suicide 
 or a return to crime, says Mr. Statham. Our prisons 
 are filled with men who have been punished in this 
 way again and again, and the Home Secretary has 
 told us that we have something like sixty per cent 
 of reconvictions. Yet, if prison is what it has here 
 been shown to be, penal servitude is not exactly the 
 condition which any of us would willingly re-enter. 
 
 If we have not faced the question in a fair spirit, 
 it is partly, perhaps, because we have never quite 
 understood it. What, for instance, do we gain by 
 spending every year more than half a million of 
 money on prisons that reform nobody, and that 
 always contain an immense number of persons who 
 would probably not be there at all if, after their first 
 punishment, we ourselves had done our duty by 
 them ? Is not this as foolish to ourselves as it is 
 wrong to the legion of degraded persons whom we 
 have made helpless in our hands ? 
 
 Between society and the ex-prisoner there should 
 be an understanding. He has taken the dose that 
 we have forced upon him. It is a bad dose, and has 
 none of the restorative effects that we have boasted 
 of in Blue Books. We should help him to recover 
 from it. Not one of the many charitable institutions 
 that are at work in the interest of the ex-prisoner 
 will ever be able to benefit him until the mind of
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 39 
 
 society softens, and, in softening, grows sensible. 
 These institutions are driven to do in the dark what 
 should be done in the light and in the open. The 
 Church has made no public effort in the cause of the 
 ex-prisoner. There is text enough in his situation, 
 one would think ! 
 
 The feeling and opinion of society, then, are out of 
 harmony with the law. It may at once be granted 
 that there are particular cases in which it is difficult 
 for a community freely and cordially to extend the 
 hand to the offender who has once been cast out ; 
 but, in general, it is made quite as hard for the erring 
 and the victim as for those whose offence has implied 
 or suggested a grave moral taint. To all alike the 
 law says : " Your credit is restored to you." To all 
 alike society says : " Your position is naturally hard ; 
 we will make it harder ; we will make it so hard that 
 recovery shall be impossible ; we will decree that 
 whenever you have gained a few steps in your ascent 
 from the abyss you shall be hurled back into it again." 
 This utter want of sympathy, merging in downright 
 hostility, is a direct encouragement to the ex-prisoner 
 to relapse into the life of crime. The first offender, 
 in brief, is liable to be gradually transformed into 
 the habitual offender. This is as serious a matter 
 as could well be, and we should take some trouble to 
 find a remedy or remedies. 
 
 One of Mr. Statham's suggestions is that, without 
 disturbing or interfering with any existing Acts, " it 
 might be found worth while to pass an Act under 
 which persons previously convicted might, if so 
 deserving it, obtain a formal certificate (if one may 
 call it so) of rehabilitation. Such an Act would 
 obviously have to be permissive or optional only." 
 To the possible objection that legislation might not
 
 40 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 succeed in dispelling prejudice, Mr. Statham replies : 
 " The public mind seizes readily upon public formulas, 
 and would therefore attach importance to such a 
 certificate." 
 
 Legislation would, undoubtedly, encourage many 
 an ex-criminal to make a very strenuous effort to 
 right himself with the world. It would do something 
 to break through the demoralising habit of conceal- 
 ment which is one of the inevitable results of the 
 prejudice of society. It would establish " a concrete 
 and public proof of rehabilitation, to which the public 
 could always refer." It would supply a valuable 
 protection against the blackmailing of the respectable 
 ex-prisoner by the disrespectable ex-prisoner, which 
 is said to be frequent. 
 
 Legislation apart, I have more than once suggested 
 the establishment of some sort of public bureau to 
 which the discharged prisoner, anxious to retrieve 
 his fate, could openly resort, and where his case and 
 claims could be frankly considered and dealt with. 
 It is improper that he should have to sneak up the 
 stairs of an aid society that treats him (in Mr. 
 Montgomery's expression) " as a one-legged man." 
 This suggestion, which I made in the Law Times in 
 1907 (and earlier, I think, in Mr. Stead's Daily 
 Paper], seems not very different from the scheme 
 outlined by Mr. Churchill in his speech in the House 
 of Commons, of a " new central agency of a semi- 
 official character." The State, in brief, is at last 
 beginning to recognise that it owes something to the 
 man it has imprisoned. Mr. Statham, in a personal 
 communication which I have from him, favours what 
 he happily calls a Criminal Restoration Department, 
 
 " whose business it would be to take stock of first 
 offenders (in particular), to note their conduct and
 
 "THE MAN THAT WAS A THING" 41 
 
 bearing under punishment, and the nature of their 
 connections and surroundings in the world. In- 
 stead of the cast-iron system of ticket-of-leave, 
 every prisoner should be made aware that he can 
 shorten his term by his own conduct, but do not 
 let him know when. And when once he is released 
 let him be absolutely free. To let a man out of 
 prison with a string tied to his leg is simply a 
 refinement of cruelty." 
 
 The ticket-of-leave system was long ago denounced 
 in the strongest terms by the late Cesare Lombroso. 
 It may have been devised less in the interests of the 
 conditionally released convict than in those of the 
 police, whom it certainly invested with peculiar 
 powers. It has often been hinted that these powers 
 were not invariably exercised in the wisest, most 
 tactful, and most charitable manner ; but practically 
 the " ticket " system is abolished. 
 
 The Asquith Committee urged that " habitual 
 criminals can be effectually put down in one way 
 only, and that is by cutting off the supply." One of 
 the surest means of cutting off the supply would be 
 to give due facilities to first offenders to rehabilitate 
 themselves. 
 
 If the right kind of Departmental Committee could 
 be got, the question might be completely sifted. It 
 is a question with many aspects, and there is much 
 in it upon which all of us should be fully informed. 
 The public at large knows very little of what the 
 criminal goes through during a long sentence of penal 
 servitude. Still less, perhaps, is it able to realise 
 what he has actually to face on the day he is restored 
 to the world.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE: A TASTE OF LIFE AT 
 PORTLAND 
 
 A SENTENCE of penal servitude may be for three 
 years or for life. Intermediate between these ex- 
 tremes are sentences of five, seven, fifteen, and 
 twenty years. By " steady industry," allied to what 
 is called in prison " good conduct " (a matter of 
 mere passive obedience), a prisoner may earn re- 
 mission of about one-fourth of the judge's award. 
 This, under the " mark " system, means that he 
 must pile up all the marks he can, and forfeit of them 
 as few as may be. 
 
 Jabez Balfour, whose prison life lasted ten years 
 and five months, says that during the whole of this 
 existence the most monotonous, depressing, ex- 
 acting, and irksome that can be imagined he lost 
 never a mark that could be won, had never a scratch 
 against his name. Praise to whom praise is due ! 
 That this constitutes a splendid record let the words 
 which follow testify. 
 
 " The life of a convict," says Mr. Balfour, " a 
 life regulated by two or three gentlemen in White- 
 hall is not to be judged by any of the standards 
 which are applicable to a life of freedom. Seclusion, 
 silence, shame, separation from one's fellows, a 
 
 42
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 43 
 
 minute and pedantic control exercised by others 
 over all one's actions, a steady, persistent course 
 of official snubbing from morn till eve these are 
 its normal conditions. The man who is brave 
 enough to accept them and adapt himself to them 
 may grow at length so accustomed, so acclimatised, 
 to their influence, as to pass at least a tolerable 
 existence. But this demands exceptional qualities 
 and a tremendous effort." 
 
 A life sentence signifies in general some twenty 
 years, but the prisoner is not necessarily released at 
 the end of this frightful term. I saw at Portland a 
 convict, a reprieved murderer, who had been confined 
 for five -and- twenty years. A young poacher, he 
 had shot a gamekeeper in some midnight tussle in 
 the woods ; and in prison had lain forgotten for a 
 quarter of a century. He carried in Portland the 
 
 nickname of " Unhanged R ," and the warder 
 
 from whom I had his history gave him the highest 
 character. He is dead, I hope ! 
 
 The punishment involved in a decree of penal 
 servitude is applied, as to all essentials, in precisely 
 the same manner to every person undergoing it. 
 No discrimination is made between the baronet and 
 the professional burglar, between the ex-member of 
 Parliament and the murderer who has escaped the 
 gallows, between the bank clerk and the common 
 thief. Whatever may have been the previous career 
 and character of the convicted, once the penal livery 
 is donned the same iron rule is meted out to each and 
 all. 
 
 Du Cane says : 
 
 " The previous career and character of the 
 prisoner makes no difference in the punishment to
 
 44 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 which he is subjected, because it is considered, 
 and rightly I think, that it is for the Courts of 
 Law, who have, or should have, a full knowledge 
 on these points, to consider them in awarding the 
 sentence; and if any prisoner were subjected to 
 harsher or milder treatment in consequence of any 
 knowledge the prison authorities might have of 
 his previous character, it might be that he would 
 practically be punished twice over on the same 
 account, and on information much less complete 
 and less impartial than the Court of Law would 
 have at its command. The Government would 
 also always be liable to charges of showing favour 
 to or prejudice against certain particular prisoners : 
 and any feeling of this kind would be fraught with 
 danger and inconvenience. It is also considered, 
 and justly, that the Judge or Court who passes 
 the sentence should know, or should be able to 
 know, precisely the exact effect of the sentence, 
 and this would be impossible if any discretion 
 rested with the executive officers as to the mode 
 of carrying out the punishments. At the same 
 time, it is open to consideration whether more than 
 one mode of carrying out the punishment might not 
 be laid down by authority, as applicable to certain 
 defined cases, and whether a discretion might not 
 be given to the Judges as to the system to which 
 each prisoner should be subjected." 
 
 It is perfectly clear that equal punishment, dis- 
 tributed among a diverse population of prisoners, is 
 of all things the most unequal. The judge " should 
 be able to know precisely the exact effect of the 
 sentence " ! How many judges know, in any detail, 
 what penal servitude itself is like ? If every judge knew
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 45 
 
 four times as much as any judge is ever likely to 
 know about this penalty, it would still be impossible 
 for him to estimate I will not say " precisely," 
 but in a degree the most remotely appreciable the 
 manner in which the particular sentence will act 
 upon the particular criminal. What we can definitely 
 assert is that each sentence tells in its own way, and 
 that upon no two prisoners does it tell in the same 
 way. To A a " lagging " of five years is a leaden 
 interval in a life of illicit excitements. To B it is 
 the certain loss of the stool (in office, bank, shop, 
 warehouse what situation soever it may have been) 
 that he had hoped to hold for life. To C it is sheer 
 ruin of name, fortune, family everything : the 
 pillars of his little universe have collapsed beneath 
 him. Each of these persons may have deserved 
 punishment so far forth as punishment is of any 
 profit to anybody but to say that they are all 
 punished alike by a sentence of five years' penal 
 servitude is to talk nonsensically. Not less non- 
 sensical is it to suggest that the judge concerns 
 himself about the " effect " of the penalty he inflicts. 
 Following the traditions of his court, the judge 
 passes sentence not on the man but on the crime. 
 When he departs from his rule, and passes sentence 
 not on the crime but on the man, the victim usually 
 gets a trifle beyond his deserts. 
 
 Formerly divided into three, the stages of a sen- 
 tence of penal servitude are now practically comprised 
 in two. Again, as to the first of these stages a 
 change has to be noted. Until within a very recent 
 period, every convict served the first nine months 
 of his sentence in the strict seclusion of his cell. We 
 may call this " separate confinement " as it is 
 described in the reports but between separate
 
 46 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 confinement and solitary confinement no real dis- 
 tinction is to be made. Twenty-two or twenty-three 
 hours out of the twenty-four the prisoner sits alone 
 with his task and his thoughts. 
 
 Du Cane says of the objects of this probationary 
 stage : 
 
 " The first is, that every convict shall be sub- 
 jected to a period of strictly separate confinement, 
 which not only is a severe penal discipline, but 
 during which his mind is thrown in upon itself, 
 and he cannot fail to feel that, however agreeable 
 may have been his previous life, probably one of 
 idleness and excitement, he pays dearly for it by 
 the dull monotony, hard work, a diet which is 
 sufficient but no more than sufficient, and de- 
 privation of every luxury he has been accustomed 
 to indulge in ; and, above all, by the absence of 
 freedom and the constant supervision which is 
 his present condition and which form his prospect 
 for some years to come. 
 
 " During this time he becomes open to lessons 
 of admonition and warning ; religious influences 
 have full opportunity of obtaining access to him ; 
 he is put in that condition when he is likely to feel 
 sorrow for the past and to welcome the words of 
 those who show him how to avoid evil for the 
 future." 
 
 Nothing could be more plausible ; but the ex- 
 perience of years was to reduce to folly almost all 
 the official platitudes of this great high-priest of the 
 system. " During this time " the convict, cooped 
 in his cell, contending as best he might with the 
 conditions of a life insanely and intolerably artificial, 
 very seldom became " open to lessons of admonition
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 47 
 
 and warning" ; seldom did "religious influences have 
 full opportunity of obtaining access to him " ; and 
 though he might certainly be " put in that condition 
 when he is likely to feel sorrow for the past," his mood 
 was seldom that of welcome for " the words of those 
 who show him how to avoid evil for the future " 
 words which, in any case, are rarely proffered in the 
 cell. It is the word of command that the prisoner 
 is familiar with. Briefly, the nine months' " separate" 
 or " solitary " proved a failure and, be it remem- 
 bered, the nine months were once eighteen. There 
 was found to be nothing salutary ; often, on the 
 contrary, something quite hurtful, in turning the 
 prisoner's mind " in upon itself " for this protracted 
 term ; and the nine months (save, I believe, in the 
 cases of certain old offenders, for whom they can be 
 intended only as an added punishment) have been 
 brought down to one month. 
 
 A convict sentenced at the Old Bailey will most 
 likely do his " separates " in one of the large London 
 prisons, such, for instance, as Pentonville or Worm- 
 wood Scrubs. For the second and principal stage 
 of his discipline he is transferred to what is called a 
 Public Works Prison. The best -known prisons of 
 this type are Portland in the county of Dorset, and 
 Dartmoor in the wilds of Devonshire. Here the 
 convict sleeps and takes his meals in a separate cell, 
 but works in restricted association, under the close 
 supervision of his guards. 
 
 The prisoner doing his first "lagging" knows little 
 of the new life that awaits him on Public Works. He 
 has more or less habituated himself to the seclusion 
 of the cell which he is about to quit. He is, perhaps, 
 unwilling to face the comparative publicity of a gaol 
 in which he will have to labour in the companionship
 
 48 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 of felons of all orders. But the old " lag," who has 
 " fetched " several previous " stretches," or terms 
 of penal servitude, is glad enough to make the change 
 to " public works." He knows all that he has got to 
 face ; he also knows that in some outdoor gang he 
 will be pretty certain to meet a pal or two and hear 
 the news. He is mainly curious as to his destination, 
 for no prisoner is told to what gaol he is to be trans- 
 ferred, and he may be on the move to one that bears 
 a bad name among the old timers. I shall send him 
 down to Portland. 
 
 Portland Prison, at the summit of the island or 
 promontory of Portland, surveys the sea from a 
 height of some five hundred feet. The island itself 
 is a huge mass of stone, and on all sides, except upon 
 the south, is girt by a ridge of tall, steep rocks. It 
 has been attacked by the French, and was stormed 
 by Cromwell's troops in the Civil War. " It seems," 
 says Jabez Balfour, " a place designed by Nature 
 for the imprisonment of human beings. What 
 the Chateau d'lf of ' Monte Cristo ' fame is to the 
 Mediterranean, such is Portland to the English 
 Channel." 
 
 As the convict, chained by the wrist to a brother 
 lag, climbs the steep three miles of winding road 
 from the shore to the island top, he has a variety 
 of object-lessons in the difficulties that w r ould attend 
 an attempt at prison-breaking. He perceives that 
 it would be no easy matter, if the shore were reached, 
 to cross to the opposite coast. He observes that to 
 reach the shore would be harder still, for the military 
 barracks command it from the heights, and the 
 sentries have peremptory orders to fire on a flying 
 convict. Near to the prison itself he sees the civil 
 guard, with loaded rifle and bayonet, posted on every
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 49 
 
 spot of vantage, and patrolling the narrow street 
 that leads to the great iron gates. Within these, 
 he is in the midst of tall grey walls ; he has the 
 impression of a far stronger force of warders than 
 surrounded him in his London prison; he notes that 
 the principal warders have a sword trailing from the 
 belt. Everywhere there is an air of militarism, of 
 readiness for and preparedness against assault from 
 within. The rare visitor from the outer world who is 
 at all familiar with the general aspect of the London 
 prisons, feels and perceives a difference the moment 
 he steps within the walls of Portland. That other 
 comer, with the steel chain at his wrist, has the notion 
 that he is a much more formidable enemy of society 
 than he had supposed himself to be when he lay 
 forlorn in his cell some two hundred miles away in 
 London. 
 
 In Wormwood Scrubs prison there is accommoda- 
 tion for about twelve hundred prisoners. Portland 
 holds a like number. But in Wormwood Scrubs a 
 force of some sixty chosen warders is sufficient for 
 the maintenance of discipline ; whereas at Portland, 
 the strength, including the civil guard, is one hundred 
 and fifty. At the head of the discipline staff is the 
 chief warder. He has under him a certain number of 
 principal warders, who have charge of the gangs on 
 the works, and of the wards or halls in which the 
 cells are. Next in rank are the warders and assistant 
 warders, who have immediate control of the prisoners. 
 The Governor is the head of the establishment, and 
 his right hand is the Deputy-Governor. These officers 
 have mostly served in the army or the navy. The 
 prison has a chaplain, who has a staff of schoolmasters 
 under him ; an assistant chaplain ; a Roman Catho- 
 lic priest ; a medical officer, who has control of the
 
 50 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 infirmary staff ; an assistant medical officer ; and a 
 clerk of the works. There are stewards and store- 
 keepers ; and a staff of permanent officers to instruct 
 the prisoners in their various trades, and to measure 
 the value of the work done by them. All of these 
 are subject to the Governor in every matter of disci- 
 pline. 
 
 Marched to his cell in Portland, the fresh arrival 
 compares it, quaking a little, with the one that he 
 quitted in London in the morning. It is fitted, to 
 be sure, in much the same way. There is a stool to 
 sit on and a shelf for his books, a zinc basin and jug, 
 a tin knife and plate, and a tin pint measure. The bed 
 in the old cell is here replaced by a hammock, which is 
 the easiest sleeping-place in the world, though it tends 
 to hump the shoulders. But the Portland cell is the 
 merest cupboard (and none too well lighted at that) 
 as compared with the one he has just abandoned. 
 It is a bare four feet hi width, and seven in length. 
 He can stand in it comfortably, but he need not 
 extend his arm to touch the ceiling. 
 
 It matters little from what " local " prison the 
 new-comer has arrived at any convict establish- 
 ment ; by the aspect and the very breath of it he 
 knows that he has touched a lower and a harsher 
 circle. 
 
 " As the great, gloomy gates closed on me," 
 says Balfour, " and I realised that here was the 
 spot in which I was probably to be immured for 
 ten long years, my feelings beggared description. 
 Moreover, before I had been five minutes inside 
 that dreadful fortress I had discovered that there 
 was as much difference between Portland and 
 Parkhurst " the prison in the Isle of Wight from
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 51 
 
 which he had just come on " or Wormwood 
 Scrubs as there is between Ratcliff Highway and 
 St. James's Street. ... I left my decent and 
 roomy cell, and was thrust, in the brusque fashion 
 that distinguished Portland, into a box seven feet 
 long, seven feet high, and four feet broad. I am 
 a short man, but I could touch the ceiling with my 
 hand. It was nothing but a small corrugated iron 
 kennel, with a stone or slate floor. There was not 
 so much as a bit of wooden grating on the floor ; so 
 that a prisoner, when his boots and stockings 
 were off, had to tread the icy-cold flags. The only 
 articles of furniture in it were a wooden stool, a very 
 diminutive flap table, and a hammock and bedding 
 rolled up on a shelf or ledge in one corner." l 
 
 On the morrow of his coming, the new hand hears 
 the bell at five o'clock, an hour or so earlier than he 
 was summoned at Pentonville or the Scrubs. At 
 five minutes past five he must be out of his hammock. 
 He has a good supply of water in his cell, and if he 
 likes to wash all over he can do so. After dressing 
 he has to put his cell in order. Everything in the 
 prison is done to pattern ; all bedding and hammocks 
 are rolled and folded in precisely the same way, and 
 every book on the shelf and every article of furniture 
 in the cell has its appointed place and must abide 
 there. 
 
 At ten minutes to six it is breakfast-time. Meals, 
 fetched from the kitchen by convict orderlies, are 
 carried in trays and baskets to the several halls ; 
 and as the warder on duty unlocks each cell in turn, 
 
 1 In recent years, I believe, the cells of Portland have been 
 largely rebuilt ; but the best of cells in the best of prisons has no 
 pretensions to the style of a respectable scullery.
 
 52 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 the prisoner stands at the door to take in his pint 
 of gruel and loaf of brown bread. Each prisoner 
 on full hard-labour diet get 168 ounces of bread 
 per week 23 ounces on weekdays and 30 on 
 Sundays. 
 
 Chapel muster is at a quarter to seven, and im- 
 mediately after service comes the general parade 
 for labour. Here the men are mustered in gangs 
 according to the work they are employed at. While 
 the principal warder hi charge of the gang counts 
 his men, an assistant warder searches them ; each 
 prisoner standing with his jacket unbuttoned and 
 arms outstretched, holding his cap in one hand and 
 handkerchief in the other. This is to prevent men 
 from carrying food out of their cells, or anything 
 into them that might favour a hopeless notion of 
 escape ; but, like everything else in the military 
 discipline of a convict prison, the business of search- 
 ing is overdone. Four times a day, Saturdays and 
 Sundays excepted, every prisoner is overhauled 
 " rubbed down," in the slang of the place in the same 
 meticulous fashion. When the warder in charge is 
 assured that all is right with his party, he salutes 
 the Deputy-Governor, who presides at the parade, 
 gives the number of his party and the number of 
 men in it, and the figures are checked by the chief 
 warder. 
 
 There are some thousand men to be searched and 
 numbered, but the work is quickly despatched, 
 and at about a quarter-past seven all is ready for the 
 march to the works. The outlying sentries, members 
 of the civil guard, shoulder their rifles and lead the 
 way. They are followed by the military guard, 
 \vhose scarlet coats are the only bit of colour in the 
 sullen pageant. The prisoners march out two abreast
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 53 
 
 by gangs, and remarkably well they step ; the parties 
 for the quarries going in front. Standing on the 
 rampart in front of the Governor's office, which 
 commands a prospect of the varied and extensive 
 works, quarries, and outbuildings enclosed within 
 the prison walls, one may take note of the different 
 classes of prisoners as they troop to labour. 
 
 A certain number of men will be seen wearing 
 the ordinary convict dress without facings of any 
 kind. These are probationers. Every prisoner 
 passes his first twelve months in the probation class, 
 during which time he must earn on public works 
 720 marks. If he has earned that number and been 
 well conducted, he is eligible at the end of his first 
 year for promotion to the third class. Those are 
 third-class men with the black facings on their jackets. 
 They must earn during their second year 2920 marks, 
 and they may then be promoted to the second class. 
 The second-class men are those with the yellow facings. 
 At the end of another year promotion may be 
 obtained to the first class, with blue facings. In the 
 first class an industrious prisoner of good behaviour 
 remains until within twelve months of his discharge, 
 when he may perchance be received into the " special " 
 class, the members of which are distinguished by a 
 full suit of blue. 
 
 While he remains in the probation class, the 
 prisoner is allowed to receive no visits from friends 
 nor to receive or write letters, except one letter on 
 reception from separate confinement. The third- 
 class man may receive a visit of twenty minutes' 
 duration once in six months, and may receive and 
 write a letter once in the same period. The second- 
 class man may be visited, and may receive and write 
 a letter once in four months. In the first class the
 
 54 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 prisoner is entitled to receive a visit of half an hour 
 and to receive and write a letter every three months. 
 In respect of diet, prisoners in the first class are 
 allowed the choice of tea and two ounces additional 
 bread in lieu of gruel for breakfast, and baked instead 
 of boiled beef for dinner. 
 
 Two hideously distinctive dresses remain to be 
 described. One is a parti-coloured dress of black 
 and drab, one side one colour and one the other. 
 The second is parti-coloured drab and brilliant yellow. 
 The black-dress men have been flogged with the 
 cat-o'-nine tails for an assault on a warder. The 
 yellow-dress men have attempted an escape from 
 prison. Both wear a chain six and a half pounds in 
 weight, held up to the waist by a strap and riveted 
 on each ankle. These fetters are worn night and 
 day, sometimes for six months together, and the 
 wearers are in the penal class and on restricted diet, 
 with other discomforts, all that time. They walk 
 alone at the rear of their respective gangs, their 
 chains clanking poor, grotesque creatures, proper 
 to the procession of a Spanish Inquisition. 
 
 Now the gangs have all filed out and are marching 
 to their several stations, to the workships, the 
 building-grounds, the stone-cutting sheds, the foundry, 
 the quarries. Men whom the doctor will not pass 
 for hard labour are employed in the tailors' shop, 
 the laundry, the sewing-room, etc. 
 
 Every man physically able to do so must work with 
 his hands at some calling, and coarse, rough labour 
 is a part of his punishment. The skilled thief is 
 put, perhaps, to toil in the quarries ; and it might 
 be supposed that a task of this sort, long continued, 
 would take the cunning out of his fingers. But, 
 if he returns to his old haunts, he goes in for a short
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 55 
 
 course of bread poultices and gloves of chamois, 
 till his fingers grow supple again. 
 
 At Dartmoor the prisoners are largely employed 
 in reclaiming and farming the land about the prison. 
 At Portland a principal part of the hard labour 
 consists in the quarrying of stone, great quantities 
 of which are sent away to all parts of the country. 
 It was at Portland that the system was first begun 
 of carrying out large public works by means of 
 convict labour. The great achievement at Portland 
 was the construction of the breakwater, a stone dam 
 in the sea two miles long, and running fifty or sixty 
 feet into the water. The military barracks, and the 
 stout works of defence on the island batteries, case- 
 ments, etc. were raised by convict hands. 
 
 I jshall attempt in another chapter to show what, 
 and how little in the main, is the worth of a convict's 
 labour. For the moment, I invite the attention of 
 Capital seeking good and quick returns from the 
 servants in its pay to the spectacle of Mr. Jabez 
 Balfour, ex-financier, ex-M.P., at work in the shoe- 
 makers' shop at Portland. 
 
 " We had one or two dynamiters, kindly and 
 well-behaved men, as I have already said ; one or 
 two doctors, an accountant, a bank manager, two 
 or three solicitors, a sailor, a soldier, one or two 
 tradesmen, one or two murderers, and one or 
 two clerks who had got into trouble through 
 backing horses." 
 
 At the time I visited Portland there were doubtless 
 other doctors, murderers, solicitors, and sailors 
 engaged as usefully as Mr. Balfour and his party in 
 the shoe department, at one trade or another in 
 this imposing list :
 
 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Bagmakers 
 
 Bakers 
 
 Basketmakers 
 
 Bell hangers 
 
 Blacksmiths 
 
 Boilermakers 
 
 Bookbinders 
 
 Bricklayers 
 
 Brickmakers 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 Chairmakers 
 
 Chimneysweeps 
 
 Cooks 
 
 Coopers 
 
 Coppersmiths 
 
 Engineers, 
 
 mechanical 
 Engine drivers 
 Fitters, engine 
 Fitters, gas, etc. 
 
 Fitters, iron 
 
 Fitters, ordinary 
 
 Flax dressers 
 
 Galvanisers 
 
 Gardeners 
 
 Grinders 
 
 Knitters 
 
 Locksmiths 
 
 Masons 
 
 Matmakers 
 
 Moulders 
 
 Moulders, brass 
 
 Moulders, iron 
 
 Painters 
 
 Paperhangers 
 
 Plasterers 
 
 Platelayers 
 
 Plumbers 
 
 Polishers, French 
 
 Printers 
 
 Riggers 
 
 Sail or Ham- 
 mock makers 
 
 Sawyers, stone 
 
 Sawyers, wood 
 
 Ships' fender 
 makers 
 
 Shoemakers 
 
 Slaters 
 
 Smiths 
 
 Stonecutters 
 
 Strikers 
 
 Tailors 
 
 Tailors' repairs 
 
 Tinsmiths 
 
 Turners 
 
 Washers 
 
 Weavers 
 
 Wheelwrights 
 
 The marks earned by a prisoner are nominally 
 proportioned to the amount and quality of his work, 
 and for practical purposes in calculating the gratuity 
 to be given him on his discharge the following scale has 
 been adopted : 
 
 In the third class 20 marks are equal to Id. 
 In the second l|d. 
 
 In the first 2|d. 
 
 The actual amount of labour exacted from a 
 convict is by no means excessive ; it is the deadly 
 monotony of his task with never an interval of 
 relaxation which preys upon him, much more than 
 its severity. For this reason many prisoners (chiefly 
 of the habitual class, to many of whom all regular 
 work is abhorrent) prefer an occasional period of 
 close confinement, on a diet of bread and water, to the
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 57 
 
 daily grind in workshop or quarry. But I shall 
 return to the problem of labour. 
 
 At eleven o'clock the whistle goes " Cease work " ; 
 and at this hour the lag who has been at it since a 
 quarter -past seven is ready to eat his boots. At 
 11.15, " Fall in ! " calls the principal warder on duty, 
 and every tool, spade, and barrow is relinquished ; 
 the men don their " slops," or outer jackets, and 
 all the gangs are quickly marshalled, and the march 
 back to the prison begins. This time the civil guards, 
 converging from their various stations, bring up the 
 rear. Arrived on the parade-ground, the men are 
 searched or " rubbed down " again, that no one 
 may carry a convenient tool into his cell ; and the 
 process of counting and checking the numbers is 
 repeated as in the morning. Then the men are 
 marched to their cells for dinner. 
 
 When I visited Portland, Monday's and Saturday's 
 dinner for prisoners on full diet was five ounces of 
 cooked beef, thickened and seasoned with flour, 
 onions, and pepper, a loaf of bread, and a pound of 
 potatoes. On Tuesday and Friday, a pint of soup, 
 containing shins of beef, pearl barley, fresh vegetables, 
 onions, flour and pepper, bread and a pound of pota- 
 toes. Wednesday, five ounces of mutton, flavoured and 
 thickened as above, bread and potatoes. Thursday, a 
 pound of suet pudding, with the usual allowance of 
 bread and potatoes. Sunday, bread and cheese. 
 
 H. J. B. Montgomery, the very intelligent ex- 
 convict whom I have already cited, and whose 
 articles in the Nineteenth Century and elsewhere are 
 always of value, says : 
 
 " Any person who has had the misfortune to 
 be in gaol, more especially in a convict prison, is
 
 58 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 painfully aware of the fact that food is a perennial 
 topic of conversation, a fruitful source of com- 
 plaint and discontent ; and it is scarcely to be 
 wondered at." 
 
 Lord William Nevill (the " W. B. N." of that 
 interesting and candid work " Penal Servitude "), 
 who served his time at Parkhurst, devotes a chapter 
 to the subject. Mr. Balfour discusses it at about 
 the same length in " My Prison Life." Scarcely 
 a writer on prison (Oscar Wilde himself makes a 
 delicate reference to it) has been able to escape from 
 this theme. The Asquith Committee took the 
 fleshpots in hand with the thoroughness they gave to 
 everything. Nay, a Home Secretary, Sir Matthew 
 White Ridley, appointed in 1898 a Departmental 
 Committee on Prison Dietaries. 
 
 Well, has the commissariat had too much notice? 
 
 Perhaps not, if we weigh these words from the 
 report of the Departmental Committee : 
 
 " The dietary has an intimate relationship with 
 all the other elements of prison life. On its proper 
 adjustment to the requirements of the average 
 prisoner, and the manner of its application and 
 administration, must depend in large measure the 
 successful working of the whole prison system." 
 
 With this backing we may take a turn around 
 the kitchen. Parenthetically I may say that I 
 have dipped into capital messes in prison (to this day 
 I remember a most grateful broth that I drank one 
 chilly morning in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin), but the 
 master-cook may have an eye to a visitor. The 
 point is, how fares it with the inmate ? 
 
 The Prison Commissioners, observes Montgomery,
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 59 
 
 " have drawn up a scale of dietary sufficient, and not 
 more than sufficient, for the average man, provided 
 he gets it ; too much for a few men, and far too little 
 for many men probably most. I have advisedly 
 said ' provided he gets it,' and this is a very large 
 proviso. There are many persons in gaol interested 
 in seeing that the prisoner does not get his allowance. 
 Not to put too fine a point upon it, there is a con- 
 siderable amount of roguery in reference to both 
 the quantity and the quality of the food provided 
 for prisoners. There is an utter, or almost utter, 
 lack of supervision over the persons responsible for 
 ordering these supplies, and checking the quantity 
 and quality supplied, while in the kitchen there is 
 still further leakage or wastage." 
 
 Portions of Nevill's criticism are to the same 
 effect, and it may be added that Lord William is 
 another ex-prisoner whose strictures must be taken 
 seriously : neither in his work nor in Mr. Balfour's is 
 there a malicious or querulous expression. " One 
 Sunday," says " W. B. N.," " which was known as 
 pork-soup day, because the dinner consisted then 
 only of one pint of pork-soup and eight ounces of 
 bread for full-labour men the pork that the soup 
 was made of was absolutely putrid. . . . The next 
 day there were so many complaints to the Governor 
 that he investigated the matter very closely. It 
 came out that when the meat was issued to the 
 master-cook on the Saturday, he pointed out that 
 it was tainted. . . . The steward, however, told him 
 that the meat must be used. On Sunday, of 
 course, it was quite unfit for human consumption. 
 If a butcher had exposed it for sale he would have 
 
 been heavily fined. . . . Colonel P , who was 
 
 then Governor, was very much put out by this
 
 60 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 occurrence, and well he might be, for if we had eaten 
 the soup, a good many of us would have been poisoned. 
 He therefore ordered four ounces of cheese to be given 
 to each man for supper on Monday, as compensation 
 for the loss of their dinner the day before." 
 
 The purely anonymous book about prison is 
 usually to be received with caution, but a connoisseur 
 of this literature should be able to taste with some 
 discretion, and when anonymity and the signature 
 are in harmony a quotation carries no excessive risk. 
 Here, bearing on the subject, is an excerpt from 
 " Convict Life " by " A Ticket-of-leave Man." 
 
 " In the party with which I worked at Portland 
 there were half a dozen men who fed themselves 
 daily upon snails, slugs, and frogs. ... I was 
 for a short time attached to a party whose duty 
 it was to drag a cart about to collect ashes and 
 rubbish from the different departments of the 
 prison. It was considered by a certain class of 
 prisoners quite a privilege to be attached to the 
 4 cart party,' on account of the refuse food and 
 poultices which could be fished out of the infirmary 
 ashes. To men of this class no diet w r ould be 
 sufficient, but it may be asserted with confidence 
 that the prison fare served out to them is better 
 in quality, more cleanly, and of larger quantity 
 than they have been accustomed to enjoy in the 
 places which they call their homes." 
 
 An ex-convict, Mr. E , examined before the 
 
 Asquith Committee on Prisons, spoke much more 
 strongly respecting the insufficiency of the rations 
 in the public works prisons. " A man who has to 
 work squaring stone, or using a pick, or wheeling 
 barrows, is really starving. I know that is my own
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 61 
 
 experience. When I was at Portland I have eaten 
 things I am almost ashamed to tell you of, and 
 others have done the same ; and when men do that 
 they must be terribly hungry." Asked whether the 
 men complained very much of the insufficiency of 
 food, the witness replied : " Almost every prisoner 
 on the works would do that. I can imagine what they 
 said when they thought they were going to get four 
 ounces extra bread, when all the refuse they can pick 
 up is eaten by them ; and you have only to look at 
 the men at Portland to see that they have no flesh 
 on them. It is a very cold place, and you can imagine 
 what it is to be working like this, and going nearly 
 six hours without food." 
 
 As may be supposed, the hungry man in prison 
 will adventure far to satisfy his cravings. Good- 
 natured prisoners are often in trouble for an attempt 
 to " sling toke," or pass food, to a comrade with a 
 yearning stomach. The warders are bribed into 
 service, and an illicit traffic in small food-stuffs of the 
 piquant sort seems a recognised industry of the place. 
 A certain Frederick Martyn, author of one of the latest 
 volumes on prison, cynically entitled " A Holiday in 
 Gaol," tells of a warder who tried to cozen some 
 secret from him with a promise of ham sandwiches 
 at night. This, however, is another side of the 
 picture ; it is oftener the warder who is bribed for 
 food by the prisoner than the prisoner who is 
 bribed with food by the warder. Sometimes the 
 game is given away by being carried a point too far. 
 Martyn reports a conversation that followed a general 
 search among suspected prisoners : 
 
 " ' Who was it gev the game away did you 
 hear ? '
 
 62 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " * Nobody give it away as far as I know ; it 
 give itself away by bein' carried too far. It was 
 all the fault of an adjectived fool that was rotten 
 with money and wanted all sorts of things brought 
 in. He wasn't satisfied with a bit of snout, an' a 
 chop or steak or bit of 'am an' a drop of port wine, 
 but he wanted noosepapers an' cigars and fancy 
 truck of all kinds, an' the screw took to bringin' of 
 'em in because there was any amount of money 
 knockin' about. They do say that he was at the 
 screw ter bring him in a mouth-organ, but the 
 screw struck at that, an' told him that he barred 
 mouth-organs an' even grand pianos.' 
 
 " ' It's allus the way,' sighed the other, ' when 
 you've got a screw properly straightened there's 
 allus somebody spoils the game by being too 
 greedy or too careless.' ' 
 
 Balfour says of the dietary : 
 
 " So far as I personally was concerned, it was 
 considerably more than I could eat, and I always 
 had something to give away to fellow-prisoners 
 every day. It was against the rules, of course, but 
 no less a personage than the Right Hon. John 
 Burns stated, I believe hi the House of Commons, 
 that when he was at Pentonville he was glad to 
 carry off in his breeches the illicit loaf which some 
 less hungry fellow-prisoner had given him. I 
 solemnly declare that to a great number of prisoners 
 penal servitude is certainly not starvation or semi- 
 starvation, but one long hunger." 
 
 After glancing at the case of " a man who had 
 occupied a prominent position in the commercial 
 world," and who tried to appease his hunger by
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 63 
 
 devouring the marrow he extracted from the decayed 
 bones which he was employed in crushing for manure," 
 Mr. Balfour continues : 
 
 " It was also part of my punishment to be 
 surrounded all those long years by half-fed men 
 whose talk was always of food. There is something 
 almost horrible in the fact that the man who gets 
 a 10-oz. loaf is regarded with envy as a lucky 
 fellow by those who only get an 8-oz. loaf. There is 
 something pathetic, too, in the fact that the convict, 
 with a little practice, is able to weigh exactly his 
 loaf in his hand. He can tell within a few grains 
 whether it is up to weight or not. For some months 
 I had charge of the scales which are kept for weigh- 
 ing the rations when a convict desires it, and when 
 I speak of men always hungry I speak of what I 
 know." 
 
 If anything were to be looked for from their 
 deliberations, we might ask for another Departmental 
 Committee on Prison Dietaries ! 
 
 On the return of the warders from dinner (the 
 single men mess in their own quarters within the 
 prison walls, the married ones go to their homes in 
 the village) they are paraded by the Governor or 
 Deputy-Governor. The cells are then unlocked, and 
 there is another parade, counting, and " rubbing 
 down " of the prisoners ; after which they are 
 marched out again to the works.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE: A TASTE OF LIFE AT 
 PORTLAND (continued) 
 
 THROUGH the whole of convict life runs the mark 
 system. To every man is assigned the duty of 
 earning a certain number of marks, proportioned 
 to the length of his sentence. In fact, as remission 
 of sentence is never granted for conduct, the time 
 which the prisoner in penal servitude must pass in 
 prison is represented by the number of marks which 
 he earns by labour performed. If he earns them at 
 the highest rate, and loses none by fines for mis- 
 conduct, he procures the remission of one-fourth 
 of the time that he passes on public works. If he 
 earns them at a lower rate, he gains a smaller 
 remission. The scale of marks is : 
 
 8 marks a day for steady hard labour and the full 
 
 performance of the allotted task. 
 7 marks a day for a less degree of industry. 
 6 fair but moderate day's work. 
 
 Convicts in the light-labour class can seldom earn 
 more than six or seven marks a day, and those in 
 hospital never more than seven, unless their con- 
 finement has resulted from accident on the works. 
 
 The population of a convict prison contains 
 representatives of every crime known to the calendar 
 murder, manslaughter, burglary, forgery, theft 
 
 64
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 65 
 
 in all its branches, and every conceivable form of 
 robbery and swindling. It is interesting to note the 
 extraordinary self-control, patience, and obedience 
 to discipline exhibited here under this relentless rule 
 by men whose lack of self-control in another state has 
 subjected them to it. The late Michael Davitt, a 
 political convict who saw the inside of many prisons, 
 and whose " Leaves from a Prison Diary " is even 
 now extremely well worth reading, divides into four 
 classes the inmates of one of these vast, unwieldy, 
 overfilled houses of punishment. In an average 
 roll of twelve hundred men (there were about a 
 thousand in Portland when I visited it), it will be 
 found, he says, that six hundred pass through their 
 terms of imprisonment " without a single report 
 having been made against them for breach of dis- 
 cipline a discipline probably without a parallel in 
 its treatment of human temper in any other services, 
 civil or military, in the world." 
 
 Three hundred more " will be reckoned well- 
 conducted prisoners by the Governor," with no 
 serious charge ever laid against them. Two hundred 
 and fifty more " will comprise very troublesome 
 prisoners, that is, men of a refractory disposition 
 and guilty of occasional outbursts, against whom 
 there are frequent reports." The remaining fifty 
 " will be almost entirely unmanageable, desperate 
 in their attacks upon fellow prisoners, and occasion- 
 ally upon prison warders, and apparently insensible 
 alike to the kind advice of chaplain or priest, or of 
 any leniency or punishment at the hands of sterner 
 officials. It is by prisoners of the latter class that 
 warders have been occasionally murdered in convict 
 prisons." 
 
 It is further deserving of note that the best-con-
 
 66 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 ducted men in prison are often the most dangerous 
 when let loose upon society. Thus the first class is 
 principally made up of " old jail-birds men who 
 are thoroughly inured to crime, but who are too 
 familiar with the penalties of insubordination, from 
 former prison experience, to invite extra punishment 
 by coming into conflict with the rules and regula- 
 tions." 
 
 The murderer who has escaped the gallows for a 
 lifelong sentence of penal servitude is almost always 
 an exemplary prisoner ; and Captain Harris told 
 me that men passing into the prison on a first con- 
 viction, under the frightful sentence of twenty years, 
 seldom give trouble to the authorities. Men more 
 difficult to control are those who, having previously 
 served a short sentence of penal servitude, have been 
 punished for a second grave offence with a term of 
 ten or fifteen years. 
 
 The second class comprises the thievocracy, which 
 takes in " both the higher and middle ranks of the 
 aristocracy of crime." To this extensive class belong 
 the professional burglar, the accomplished swindler, 
 the dealer in " snide," or base coin, the " swell " 
 thief (who is never a pickpocket, but pursues his 
 calling in hotels, West End shops, railway stations, 
 etc.), and the member of the " long firm." Most of 
 these have been " lagged " two, three, or four times ; 
 and very few of them are ever reclaimed. They are 
 among the many failures of our penal system. 
 Penal servitude is powerless either to reform or to 
 deter them ; their terms of imprisonment are mere 
 gaps in an otherwise unbroken course of crime ; and 
 their recreation in prison is to whisper to novices 
 their triumphs of the past, and to plan with older 
 hands new schemes for the future.
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 67 
 
 " Magsmen " and " hooks " comprise the third 
 class. The former live mainly by their wits, the 
 latter including the clever type of pickpocket 
 make more use of their fingers. The numerous 
 guild of sharpers, the sham noblemen and parsons, 
 the begging-letter writers, and the " confidence 
 trick " fellows are all magsmen. Both magsmen and 
 hooks are a troublesome lot in prison. They are so 
 well known to the police that they have little in- 
 ducement to shorten their sentences by hard work 
 and obedience ; and as both orders are constitution- 
 ally incapable of industrious labour which they 
 despise not less than they detest they pass a 
 considerable portion of their time in the punishment 
 cells ; and sometimes forfeiting by continuous 
 misconduct the whole of their remission, they are 
 kept in separate confinement during the last six 
 months of their sentences. 
 
 Three types are included in the fourth class, the 
 " bruiser," the " bounce," and the " common 
 bounce." The first is, according to Davitt, " the 
 nearest approach to Dickens's hero Bill Sikes, so 
 far as the criminal in the flesh can well correspond 
 to that of the novelist." He adds that "murderers 
 are never, however, found in this class in prison." 
 The bruiser is a compound of pugilist, bully, sneak, 
 and cadger ; an incorrigible ruffian out of prison, 
 and dangerous when in it both to his fellow-prisoners 
 and to the officers. He seldom passes out of prison 
 without having had one or more interviews in the 
 flogging-room with the warder who wields the " cat." 
 
 The " bounce " and the " common bounce " are 
 of a type still lower. Both are professional leviers 
 of blackmail ; and the " common bounce " in 
 particular is a creature whose favourite and peculiar
 
 68 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 crimes will not bear description. He is generally 
 loathed by his companions in penal servitude. 
 
 It is in the third and fourth of the classes named 
 that the " malingerers " are most commonly found, 
 who feign sickness, disease, or insanity, in order to 
 escape hard labour or procure admission to the 
 infirmary. There are scores of these men in every 
 convict prison, who tax to the utmost the skill and 
 ingenuity of the most experienced doctors in the 
 service. The most determined and persistent amongst 
 them do not stick at self -hi jury, and will inflict 
 tortures on themselves to gain their desired haven, 
 the " farm " or hospital. They chew and swallow 
 ground glass and bits of iron, eat poisonous insects, 
 poison their flesh by inserting into it copper wire or 
 rusty nails, and bury needles in their feet to lame 
 themselves. Some will feign paralysis, epileptic 
 fits, or sudden attacks of insanity ; and others will 
 keep an arm or a leg in one position for weeks together, 
 until the power of using it is lost. Men lie buried 
 within the walls of every convict prison who have 
 literally done themselves to death in their deter- 
 mination to " best the croker " (doctor). 
 
 The worst of it is that the quiet and steady-going 
 prisoners suffer for the misdeeds of the malingerers 
 and the malcontents. Men really needing the 
 doctor's attention for some obscure or subtle ail- 
 ment are liable to be suspected of and even punished 
 for shamming ; and the ceaseless revolt against 
 discipline on the part of a minority of the convicts 
 is in a measure responsible for the constant and 
 irritating surveillance and hard, unbending rule to 
 which all alike are subjected. Day or night, no 
 prisoner can ever escape the watchful eye of his 
 warder. He is under observance during every hour
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 69 
 
 that he is at work ; if he is detached from his party 
 and sent elsewhere, though only for five minutes, a 
 warder is told off to accompany him ; arid even in 
 his cell, where, if ever, he may be said to be alone, 
 the warder views him through the spy-hole in the door. 
 
 It is a tough or a very resolute nature that can 
 oppose itself throughout a course of years to all the 
 coercive forces of a convict prison. For the resources 
 of the governing body are considerable. The powers 
 of punishment vested in the Governor, though 
 limited in certain directions, are sufficient to enable 
 him to make life burdensome to prisoners who seek 
 persistently to defy the rules. A convict who will not 
 work, who " cheeks " the warders, bullies the mates 
 in his gang, uses foul language, smashes his cell 
 furniture, or tears his clothes to ribbons, and who 
 persists in one or more of these diversions, can be 
 practically starved into obedience by a diet of bread 
 and water. He can be locked in his cell for weeks at a 
 time, cut off from all communication save with the 
 warder who has him under constant, close surveillance, 
 and exercised only for a limited period in the morning, 
 alone in a narrow yard. If his hands persevere in 
 mischief, there is a " chain room " containing a very 
 varied assortment of handcuffs, manacles, and body 
 belts, and a heavy canvas dress which no fingers 
 could rend. With the punishment of flogging, now 
 very greatly restricted, I deal in a separate chapter. 
 
 Exceptional punishments are of exceptional oc- 
 currence in every convict prison. The intelligent 
 criminal and his name is legion knows well that 
 he has nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by 
 kicking against the pricks. A small minority excepted, 
 the lag in prison is governed by two ideas to 
 make life there as tolerable as possible and to get
 
 70 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 out as soon as he can. He can secure toleration 
 by keeping within the rules, and he can shorten his 
 sentence by diligence, or the show of it. So he does 
 his best, not only to earn his full total of marks by 
 industry (or a reputation for industry) on the works, 
 but also to avoid losing them through the fines which 
 are among the invariable penalties of the slightest 
 misbehaviour. 
 
 When he knows the routine in what minute 
 particulars he must be constantly obedient, and in 
 what others he may contrive to infringe the rules 
 with comparative impunity he manages to work 
 out his sentence with a modicum of annoyance 
 and discomfort to himself. There are men who 
 feel the shame and bitterness of their position 
 every day that they pass in a servitude of years ; 
 but this sense of day-long and year-long wretched- 
 ness is not general, even amongst the felons who 
 are to be pitied rather than contemned ; and the 
 placid face so often seen in communities of convicts 
 is the not unfaithful index of a mind that has schooled 
 itself to bear, with much fortitude and something 
 of contentment, a fate that involves present pain 
 and a possible future of indelible disgrace. Leaving 
 out the cases in which sympathy is difficult or quite 
 impossible, there are examples of patient heroism 
 in the convict world (including both the worst and 
 the most unfortunate of men) which have seldom 
 been equalled, and which have never been surpassed, 
 in recorded history. 
 
 One relief, the sole perhaps that makes a sentence 
 of penal servitude endurable, is the opportunity of 
 talk which comes with the change from separate 
 confinement to public works. Talk is all but utterly 
 forbidden, but there is no preventing it. Were it
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 71 
 
 possible to prevent it, the men under long sentences 
 would hardly keep their reason. Much of the talk 
 that is mumbled in half-tones between old lags work- 
 ing in the same gang is a jargon which few but them- 
 selves and their kind understand. Of this strange 
 tongue, the slang of thieves and all the criminal 
 folk, Canon Horsley, one-time chaplain of Clerken- 
 well prison, writes in his " Jottings from Jail " : 
 
 " It has its antiquity, as well as its vitality and 
 power of growth, and development by constant 
 accretion ; in it are preserved many words inter- 
 esting to the student of language, and from it have 
 passed not a few words into the ordinary stock of 
 the Queen's English. Of multifold origin, it is yet 
 mainly derived from Romany, or gipsy talk, and 
 thereby contains a large Eastern element in which 
 old Sanscrit roots may readily be traced. Many of 
 these words would be unintelligible to ordinary 
 folk, but some have passed into common speech." 
 
 Here is a sample from Captain Harris's work on 
 " Dartmoor Prisons " : 
 
 " I buzzed a bloke on the fly, and nicked his 
 poke with two five and a quid ; but got bested 
 before the beak, for the copper knew I did the 
 job, and gave me a drag over it." 
 
 Translated into ordinary English it reads thus : 
 
 " I picked a man's pocket as he was walking 
 along and secured his purse containing two five- 
 pound notes and a sovereign ; but when brought 
 before the magistrate I got the worst of it, for the 
 policeman knew that I had committed the offence ; 
 and I received three months' imprisonment in 
 consequence."
 
 72 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 As a sample of thieves' Latin, I cull the following 
 from Davitt : 
 
 " A uffma, ill olloswa a alewha. Itchpa the 
 idesna, or utpo the ukedo in the obfa." 
 
 In ordinary thieves' slang this would be : : ' He 
 is a muff, and will swallow a whale. Pitch the snide, 
 or put your duke in his fob." In plainer English it 
 would read thus : " He is such a confounded ass that 
 he will stand almost anything. Try the counterfeit 
 coin, or pick his pocket." The peculiarity of this 
 lingo is, it will be observed, the transposition of the 
 syllables of words containing more than one syllable, 
 " and making two syllables of all words having only 
 one in ordinary pronunciation by adding a vowel or 
 liquid consonant to the first or second part of such 
 word." 
 
 All convicts admit that, despite the close observa- 
 tion of the warders, there is comparatively little 
 difficulty in making communications in prison. In 
 the cells they have a method of telegraphing by a 
 tattoo on the walls ; and on the works there are 
 means of communication by signs and the working of 
 the lips, not unlike the " talk " of the deaf and dumb. 
 But all conversation in the prison is not of this sort, 
 nor is it all foul or criminal. A convict population 
 never lacks brains and intelligence of a high order, and 
 many men who had little or no book knowledge 
 when first convicted become sufficiently well versed 
 in the literature of poetry and criticism, through 
 the books received from the library, to be able to 
 talk well and with pleasure on these subjects as 
 often as they get the chance. They are great critics 
 of sermons, and there is immense interest throughout 
 the prison when a new clergyman comes in from
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 78 
 
 the outside to take the chaplain's duty on Sunday. 
 On the works next morning his discourse is often 
 most intelligently sifted. 
 
 The day begins to bend ; the afternoon's graft is 
 over. At 5.15 the welcome order is once more given 
 to fall in, and after the march back and the search 
 on parade the men are returned to their cells, not 
 to leave them for another twelve hours. 1 Supper is 
 served at about a quarter to six ; a pint of cocoa 
 and a " sixer," or six-ounce loaf of fresh brown bread. 
 An old lag can tell in an instant, by weighing his loaf 
 in his hand, whether it is half an ounce short of the 
 regulation quantity. After supper the reading men 
 turn to their books ; the rest doze till bedtime, or 
 polish their tins, or hold a quiet palaver with a chum 
 in the adjoining cell. At a quarter to eight the hall 
 warders issue the order to turn in, the hammocks 
 are slung in a twinkling, and every man is curled up 
 at five minutes to eight, when the lights are put out 
 
 1 The impression, by the way, is apparently a wrong one that 
 the convict lives most of his time in the open air. Balfour remarks 
 that " by far the longest portion of every day is spent ... in very 
 rigorous and often very demoralising close confinement." He 
 supplies a table : 
 
 HKS. MIN. 
 
 From midnight to 6.55 a.m. . .6 55 
 From 11.20a.m. to 12.55 p.m. . . 1 35 
 From 5.15 p.m. to midnight . . 6 45 
 
 15 15 
 
 To this he adds a further " 4 hours and 20 minutes on Saturday 
 afternoons, and 3 hours and 25 minutes on Sundays. This, there- 
 fore, makes close confinement for 
 
 HRS. MIN. 
 
 Five days a week . . . .15 15 
 
 Saturdays 19 35 
 
 Sundays 18 40 
 
 Of the 48 hours which make up Saturday and Sunday, no less than 
 38 hours and 15 minutes are spent in close confinement ! "
 
 74 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 for the night. The guards are set, and very shortly 
 after eight the prison is more or less at rest. 
 
 Not until the prison is closed for the night do the 
 warders themselves know much relief. They have 
 a longer day than the prisoners, and pretty nearly as 
 dull a one. The work is close and hard ; trying, 
 wearisome, and not without danger ; another form 
 of penal servitude. A fortnight's holiday in the year 
 is almost their only relaxation in a life disciplined 
 scarcely less severely than that of the men they 
 are appointed to guard. I asked an old officer at 
 Portland what comparison he would make between 
 the life of a warder and that of a policeman. His reply 
 was : "A policeman's life is like a warder's off 
 duty." Men entering the prison service from the 
 army find that " hard labour " has but just begun 
 for them. 
 
 Of warders, much, I suppose, might be said. Nay, 
 much has been said. Old hands often (though by no 
 means always) have a rough word for them. A kinder 
 word is used by many younger ones ; and I have 
 known of some that sent thanks through the post to 
 officers they had spent years with in convict 
 prisons. Outward acts of kindness on a warder's 
 part are, I fancy, difficult and even somewhat 
 dangerous ; for every officer concerned with discipline 
 is subjected to close surveillance, and just as liable 
 to report as the convict in his charge. But influence 
 of the silent or semi-silent sort goes far, even in this 
 narrow and unwholesome sphere, wherein suspicion 
 every one suspecting every one is the noxious breath 
 of life. Character, too, goes far in prison. An 
 upright officer is known, and seldom unesteemed. 
 More or less mutely he can aid the men he has in 
 keeping the men who look so mean with their
 
 PENAL SERVITUDE 75 
 
 shaven heads, the men in the cage of prison, the men 
 whose rights have passed from them and, not rarely, 
 I believe, he does so. The convict, as a convict, is 
 of course beheld in full blaze of discredit, damaged 
 goods the very ugliest on show ; but, allowance of 
 the utmost made, convict in contrast with warder is 
 the derelict in contrast with the able man. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Paterson, in one of his articles in The 
 Times, admirably stated the case for the staff : 
 
 "As a whole, and in spite of black sheep, the 
 staff of our prisons are men and women of whom 
 the nation should be proud. They are neither 
 callous nor hard in their attitude to prisoners. 
 They strive, with a courage and devotion unknown 
 to the public outside, toward the ideal set before 
 them to reform those in their charge. When they 
 fail, it is not so much from want of effort as from 
 the difficulties and obstacles which are in their path. 
 Sometimes they succeed not only in doing good to 
 those they serve, but in awakening a real or per- 
 manent feeling of gratitude and friendship." 
 
 For the present this glimpse of penal servitude 
 may suffice. To the flagrant inutility of it as a 
 punishment, already glanced at in the opening 
 chapter, I shall turn again.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 
 
 FEW persons know how difficult a task it is to task 
 the prisoner. I mean, of course, to keep him going 
 at useful, wholesome, and stimulating work. " Three 
 years' penal servitude," says the judge in one case. 
 " Six months' hard labour," says the magistrate in 
 another. Very easily said on either hand ; and 
 doubtless the reader of the sentences in the morning 
 paper thinks it quite as easy a matter to assign to 
 each delinquent (the first, perhaps, a merchant's 
 clerk, the second a violent young subject from the 
 slums) his proper labour as a duly convicted criminal. 
 There is nothing easy about it. It is one of the 
 most provoking problems in the vexatious world of 
 prison. Let us see. 
 
 First, though, we must take a glance at modern 
 prison history. 
 
 During many years after the date (1853) at which 
 penal servitude began to be substituted for trans- 
 portation, the local prisons as distinguished from 
 what were then the new convict establishments 
 went on anyhow. They were in the hands here of 
 one authority, and there of another, and seldom 
 were two authorities of a mind as to the way in which 
 a prison should be managed. A man might be " doing 
 his bit " quite comfortably in a gaol down South ; 
 and some other man same offence, same sentence 
 
 76
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 77 
 
 might be roughing it horribly in gaol up North. 
 The art in those days was to be " lagged " in a place 
 where you could be busy at your meals and not too 
 busy at your work. 
 
 It is, however, on record that in many of the local 
 prisons of those days much work was done. There 
 is the celebrated instance of mat-making at Wake- 
 field. The mats manufactured in Wakefield Prison 
 fetched 40,000 a year. Prisoners working well got 
 nice gratuities, including sometimes a mutton chop 
 at Christmas. Dr. R. F. Quinton tells us (in his 
 lively volume " Crime and Criminals ") of a prison 
 he once served in as medical officer: 
 
 " It was conducted by the local authorities on 
 a self-supporting, if not a profit-making basis, 
 under a Governor who had considerable business 
 capacity. He made gas for the establishment, 
 he had a successful iron foundry, and carried on 
 carpentering and cabinet-making on an extensive 
 scale, turning out handsome walnut wardrobes 
 and tables, and he had even made a billiard-table. 
 He had, besides, some minor industries, among 
 which was sugar-chopping, on which he made a 
 respectable profit, although he reckoned that a new 
 hand at the work ate the full profits of his own 
 industry for the first two days, after which surfeit 
 he became temptation-proof. The prison was a 
 hive of industry, and the bees seemed to enjoy a 
 corresponding sense of freedom." 
 
 Not all the local prisons, to be sure, were organised 
 on these lines ; but, in general, work of an industrial 
 sort that could be made to pay was favoured and 
 encouraged. Governors were allowed a very free 
 hand in developing the industries best suited to their
 
 78 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 prisoners, or best likely to secure a market in the 
 neighbourhood of the prison ; one prison competed 
 with another in producing and selling a variety of 
 goods ; and while the Governor who took an active 
 interest in trade might expect a bonus at the end 
 of a profitable year, the warders on the industrial 
 staff were heartened by higher pay and special grants. 
 Substantial profits, in a word, showed the way to 
 promotion in the service. 
 
 But while all this was going on some old-fashioned 
 and very foolish kinds of purely penal labour were still 
 kept upon the programme. Until within the past fif- 
 teen years or so authorities of prisons were stiff on the 
 principle that useless work was useful to the convict. 
 They held that it disciplined him. It did discipline 
 him. It disciplined him to a detestation of work of 
 every sort. Not in the least realising this, the authori- 
 ties mounted him on a treadmill or treadwheel, or 
 set him at the crank, the capstan, or shot-drill. The 
 treadmill is the most distinguished example of the 
 unproductive toil that hardens men against the mere 
 notion of work and makes them cunning to evade it. 
 The daily task on the " mill " was an ascent of 8640 
 feet. That is to say, on prison food and in the prison 
 air (the treadwheel was enclosed in a sort of shed or 
 barn) the man climbed every day considerably more 
 than twice the height of Mount Snowdon. Oftener 
 than not the " mill " was merely grinding air, and the 
 prisoners knew it. It is the simplest business in this 
 way to make a criminal. The man on the wheel vows 
 that once out of prison he will never work again ; 
 and he never does except at crime. The tread- 
 wheel and the other ideal expedients for persuading 
 felons that work is the accursed thing were at last 
 abolished.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 79 
 
 On a sudden the whole scheme of prison was trans- 
 formed. It underwent, at any rate, an absolute 
 modification. By an Act passed in 1877 the local 
 prisons were transferred to the Government. In one 
 day 120 gaols were taken over and consolidated 
 into about sixty. In the briefest terms, the capital 
 result of the transfer was uniformity of administra- 
 tion in every prison in England. 
 
 A transformation so complete would affect the 
 whole institution of prison as it had been. What was 
 most affected was the labour system. The allowances 
 received by warders for pushing on the trades were 
 stopped ; there were no more gratuities to prisoners 
 for extra work (and no mutton chops at Christmas) ; 
 and the Governor went without his bonus. The Prison 
 Commissioners, \vho, under the Home Secretary, had 
 now become the central authority, were not, of 
 course, intending to put a check upon labour, and 
 most of the industries hitherto in favour were still 
 carried on ; but it is clear that the persons directly 
 concerned in them had lost a great incentive. Briefly, 
 the industries which under the old system had been 
 slightly profitable to the prisoners themselves, more 
 profitable to a numerous class of warders, and still 
 more profitable to Governors, were gradually reduced 
 to a part of the common dull grind of prison life. 
 Everything else fell before " discipline." Discipline 
 was put in the very front of the programme. Prison 
 had been remade into a vast engine of punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Then there was the trouble with the trade unions. 
 I have shown to what a comfortable tune mat- 
 making was conducted at Wakefield. In many other 
 prisons also it was a lucrative employment, engaging 
 altogether nearly 3000 hands. All at once the mat-
 
 80 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 making in prisons was practically suppressed. Mat- 
 makers outside rose in their numbers ; Parliament 
 was implored to interfere and the prisons had to 
 drop that industry. Here it may perhaps be asked 
 whether on the whole we have not heard a little too 
 much concerning the competition of prison with the 
 free worker ? You cannot in any way compare the 
 prisoner with the skilled free workman. If the 
 prisoner were twice as efficient as he usually is, and 
 if the whole population of prison were available the 
 whole year round for the higher grades of industrial 
 employment (and this is very far indeed from being 
 the case), the interference with labour in the open 
 market would be increased in no more formidable 
 proportion than 1 to 2500. This seems a percentage 
 which the trade unions might somehow contrive to 
 ignore ! 
 
 These and many other things of interest were 
 discovered (at least, to the readers of Blue Books) 
 in the ever-admirable report of the Departmental 
 Committee of 1894, appointed by Mr. Asquith and 
 presided over by Mr. Herbert Gladstone. It is not 
 to be inferred that at this date the general labour of 
 prison was in a state of paralysis ; but the Committee 
 made plain the fact that while under the new order 
 discipline was growing more perfect every year 
 and the prisoner being transformed into a well- 
 drilled and astonishingly obedient automaton the 
 gainful industries of the 'seventies were falling away, 
 and far too much was being made of the punitive 
 and unproductive forms of labour. 
 
 Again, the short sentence had been coming into 
 vogue. Now, though it is very shocking that a man 
 should get five years who can be adequately punished 
 with six weeks, it is certain that in the shorter period
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 81 
 
 he can be taught nothing that will be of any real 
 profit to the prison, nothing that will be of the smallest 
 profit to himself on his release. Make the six weeks' 
 sentence (but pray not without good cause !) a 
 sentence of three months, and in this time a prisoner 
 of moderate intelligence would just get a fair notion 
 of that simplest of all trades, mat-making. The 
 greater the number of short-sentence men in your 
 prison the smaller the chances of success with your 
 industrial programme ; and the short-sentence men 
 are nowadays very many, and the long-sentence men 
 are comparatively few. 
 
 The Asquith Committee was the first that ever 
 heard a proper and exhaustive statement of the 
 labour question ; and from the mass of testimony 
 submitted often, of course, in some degree con- 
 flicting a bird's-eye view was obtained of the general 
 situation in 1894. It was a disordered and an absurd 
 situation in the main. The industries of prison had 
 gone a good deal to wreck. Partly to blame for this 
 was a juster and kinder application of the law, and 
 partly also the signal change that had come about 
 in the administrative policy. The officers responsible 
 for discipline in the prisons had walked over the 
 heads of the officers responsible for trade. Militarism 
 in management was the note and order of the day. 
 Nobody at this date was much concerned in giving 
 a fillip to the industrial energies of the prisoner ; 
 but in some other respects prison was marching 
 beautifully ; and never were there such fine-drilled, 
 dumb, lamb-like creatures in the cells. They were 
 learning nothing of any account, but their behaviour 
 on parade and in chapel was elegant. " Everything 
 subservient to discipline " the condensed evidence 
 of many witnesses sums up the main situation.
 
 82 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Governors and their subordinates had left off looking 
 for promotion through the balance-sheet ; and under 
 the drill-sergeant process, which had started almost 
 at the hour of the transfer, the industrial occupations 
 of prison were snubbed. 
 
 The Asquith Committee made an heroic attempt 
 to set the labour of prison up again. The Report 
 they sent forth with an immense book of evidence is 
 the one live official document about prisons and their 
 government that we owe to the closing years of the 
 nineteenth century. From the recommendations of 
 this Report have flowed some of the best efforts of 
 the Commissioners, and they set themselves seriously 
 to reconstruct their plan for prisoners' work. A 
 Comptroller of Prison Industries was appointed. 
 New instructors were given to him. The cellular 
 system for prisoners on short sentences was reduced 
 in extent and degree to allow the decent and in- 
 dustrious among them to do their tasks together 
 instead of in solitude. A new scheme was slowly 
 introduced for the training of prisoners below and 
 up to the age of twenty-one. 
 
 Since 1894 it has been a struggle and a compromise 
 between militarism, or discipline, and the new 
 industrial endeavour and ideal. 
 
 One thing may be said : the Commissioners, with 
 their Comptroller of Industries and his staff, do not 
 cease pegging away at the portentous problem. 
 But in what a situation do they find themselves ! 
 They have somehow to provide with daily work a 
 population of about 22,000 criminals (convicts and 
 locals included) in places of which scarcely a single 
 one was constructed for any industrial purpose. 
 True, I have seen excellent, roomy, and well-lighted 
 workshops in Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth, and
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 83 
 
 Borstal ; but good workshops in prison are excep- 
 tional, and not in the very best of them is there the 
 machinery or the expert professional assistance that 
 would be indispensable in a second-rate manufactory. 
 As the Commissioners themselves observe in one of 
 their Reports (1909-10), " the old prisons, taken over 
 in 1878, were built almost exclusively for the purposes 
 of cellular confinement during the whole of the 
 sentence, and can only, by the most ingenious 
 contrivances, and economy of space, be made avail- 
 able for associated labour." 
 
 Next may be mentioned the permanent difficulty 
 of a market for things that are or might be made in 
 prison. Local industries could doubtless be worked 
 up for the larger local prisons in the provinces, but 
 the moment these began to flourish the ridiculous 
 cry would be heard again that the felon was spoiling 
 the job of the British labourer. Not only are prisons 
 seldom situated where business could be decently 
 pushed, but, if they were so situated, and could 
 succeed in creating the business, they would never be 
 suffered to push it to any remunerative figure. Dr. 
 Quinton puts the matter truthfully and with humour 
 when he says that the Commissioners " at present 
 have what might be called an old-established family 
 business " with the various Government Departments. 
 In fact, the General Post Office, the Admiralty, the 
 War Office, and the Office of Works are probably 
 their chief customers. Time was when convicts at 
 Dartmoor (whose traditional employments are farm- 
 ing and the reclamation of bog-land) were making 
 baskets for the London Post Office ; when Portland 
 (supposed to be devoted to quarrying and stone- 
 work) was making tin paper-trays for Whitehall ; and 
 when Manchester Prison was washing the linen of
 
 84 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 most of the Public Offices ; but in recent years these 
 things have been better and more economically 
 ordered. 
 
 Here, therefore, are two enduring and ever- 
 troublous factors of the problem of work for prisoners : 
 (1) the very nature of the prison buildings, and (2) 
 the want of a general market. But there is a third 
 factor a thousand times more plaguy than these 
 two put together. It is the stuff that the prison 
 population is composed of. Broadly speaking, this 
 is a population ideally unadapted to the steady, 
 sustained effort that the notion of work implies. 
 
 Many, of course, are the avenues by which prison 
 is attained ; but to have achieved this unhappy 
 distinction is, for thousands, to have failed in some 
 behest of life, some relation of the social world, some 
 adjustment that the common, careful citizen makes 
 almost unconsciously. There are upper ranks, and 
 middle, and lower, and lowest ; and a medical officer 
 with thirty-five years' experience of prison tells us 
 that the differences in degree of criminality " between 
 the inmates of a convict prison and those of a local 
 prison are so marked that passing from one to the 
 other is like a transition from university to prepara- 
 tory school." Lord William Nevill (" Penal Servi- 
 tude ") rounds up his associates at Parkhurst. 
 " Certainly, we had enough variety to make a 
 harmonious whole. I think amongst us we repre- 
 sented almost every class and profession. There 
 were ex-clergymen, ex-dissenting ministers, ex- 
 doctors, ex-solicitors these in overwhelming pro- 
 portion to the others soldiers, sailors, schoolmasters, 
 bank managers, and for a time one ex-M.P." For 
 a more extended and detailed list (as has been 
 shown) the pages of Michael Davitt's " Prison Diary "
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 85 
 
 lie open. These are the dwellers in the convict 
 prisons ; in the criminal world they mean the clever 
 and high-up people sometimes also, unquestionably, 
 the very unfortunate. 
 
 Then, what a wretchedly variegated crew is 
 received, on longer or shorter sentences, the whole 
 year round, in the local prisons ! There may be, 
 and undoubtedly are, a great many regular criminals 
 passing in and out of the local prisons petty thieves, 
 swindlers, the numerous tribe of begging impostors, 
 the more numerous tribe of rogues and vagabonds 
 but Dr. Quinton declares that very many other local 
 prisoners " have, for the most part, so little of the 
 criminal in their composition that they hardly deserve 
 the name." From the point of view of the organisers 
 of prison labour we have to remember that in the 
 population of a local prison there is neither perma- 
 nence nor homogeneity. Some one hundred and 
 fifty or sixty or seventy thousand persons are in and 
 out of these places from January to December. The 
 casual creatures in every local prison, embracing all 
 the physical and mental degenerates that the Royal 
 Commission had to do with, are perpetually shifting, 
 and the length of his sentence radically affects the 
 capacity or incapacity of each individual prisoner. 
 In a word or two, throughout the local as distinguished 
 from the convict prisons, there is scarcely one favour- 
 able circumstance for the creation and development 
 of industrial work. 
 
 Yet, again, these prisons are eternally crowded 
 with persons whom it is expensively useless to send 
 to prison at all imbeciles of every age, habitual 
 drunkards, and a host of weak-minded offenders for 
 whom no discipline avails, and who can not only 
 never be brought to understand what punishment
 
 86 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 means, but who are in no sense proper subjects for 
 the prescriptive punishments of a gaol. 
 
 " The general practice in large prisons," says Dr. 
 Quinton, "is to place them in gated cells, with an 
 officer patrolling to keep them in order, or to have 
 them in an association ward under the care of an 
 officer who, by tact and patience, tries to bring them 
 into line, and extract from their combined energy a 
 little light work with clean and tidy surroundings." 
 These poor derelicts are pitched by the thousand 
 into prison every year, stay there awhile, are dis- 
 charged, and return again. Is it realised what the 
 State has to pay year after year for their encum- 
 brance of the prison service ? What sum, I wonder, 
 does the Comptroller of Prison Industries enter to 
 their credit on the labour sheet ? The average 
 annual earnings of prisoners in all our prisons range 
 from 12 a head to a trifle over 13 (the highest 
 recorded is 13 7s. Id.). What is the figure to the 
 debit of the imbecile whom the unwisdom of the 
 Bench continues to consign to gaol ? 
 
 Unfortunately, the case is not conspicuously better 
 in the convict prisons. Here it is possible to attempt 
 something in the way of serious industrial training, 
 but here also the human material is faulty, and here 
 also the circumstances and conditions of prison 
 being what they are it is permanently difficult to 
 find the right work for the right man. 
 
 Some men in prison will turn their hands naturally 
 and aptly to anything that comes along. In the 
 local prisons housemaids' work is done to perfection 
 by " habituals," who, in a state of freedom, despise 
 any kind of manual undertaking. They are as brisk 
 as bees at washing, scrubbing, polishing, serving 
 meals, waiting in hospital, and so forth. So, in
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 87 
 
 convict establishments, the adept burglar is often a 
 capital and willing workman. Of necessity a deft 
 and handy man, and a man of some method, he can 
 do most things he has a mind to. If tractable, he is 
 a man whom any warder likes to have in his party. 
 
 But a large proportion of convicts are first offenders 
 technically known as " stars." Take, in this class, 
 the educated men, professional men, men of the City, 
 men who have lived by brainwork of whatever sort. 
 If these men have ever practised at a craft it has been 
 in the nature of a hobby ; the probability is that 
 few of them know in the least what it is to labour 
 with their hands. Some are old, or mounting in 
 years ; others of sickly or enfeebled constitutions. 
 
 Mr. Jabez Balfour, who during a term of eleven 
 years saw the insides of many prisons, says ('* My 
 Prison Life ") : 
 
 " Take the great bulk of ' star ' prisoners. 
 They are by education, character, and age very 
 ill-adapted for hard manual work of any kind. 
 It is hopeless to expect that a middle-aged or 
 elderly banker, lawyer, doctor, or shopkeeper, still 
 less a clergyman or dissenting minister, will, under 
 any circumstances, make a good bricklayer, 
 plumber, shoemaker, or tailor. If he ever had 
 any manual aptitude he has lost it years ago. Such 
 a man can only be put to the more primitive 
 kinds of tailoring, the mending of torn and dilapi- 
 dated garments, and even this very elementary 
 work he will do very badly indeed." 
 
 Such an unfortunate in a convict prison (and he is 
 there in numbers) is, in truth, a mere load on the 
 nation's back, and what to do with him what to 
 put him to is a question to which no answer has
 
 88 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 been found. His work at its most sincere is little 
 above a botch. Again Mr. Jabez Balfour : 
 
 " To employ in mechanical work men who have 
 never used any mechanical tools in their lives is 
 a waste of time and energy. . . . They are bunglers 
 when they begin, they continue bunglers to the 
 end. They regard their work as a delusion and a 
 farce, and the officers who watch over them look 
 at it in the same light." 
 
 Mr. Balfour himself (an elderly man, I think, when 
 he entered prison) tried his hand now at mail-bags, 
 now at printing, now at sewing, now at soldering 
 tins, and now at shoemaking. Of his shoemaking 
 he says : " My master told me that my work was 
 strong, but very rough. ' However,' he added, ' you 
 needn't be frightened at your customers ; they 
 won't complain.' ' 
 
 Another prisoner, Mr. H. J. B. Montgomery, 
 gives us a satirical account of convict labour at 
 Parkhurst : 
 
 " For three years I was in Parkhurst in a light- 
 labour party, employed outside the prison, and 
 during nearly the whole of that time we were 
 employed, as the warder in charge of the party 
 put it, ' in looking for a job.' Even when we 
 found that job it was constantly impressed upon 
 us that we must not hurry over it, because if we 
 did there would be nothing for us to do. During 
 the last four or five months of my imprisonment 
 at Parkhurst I was, as a misdemeanant, employed 
 in an enclosure. In that enclosure there is a plot 
 of ground about half an acre in extent ; it has not 
 been cultivated for some time. So far as I can
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 89 
 
 learn it is kept fallow in order to produce weeds. 
 The duty of the party to which I belonged was to 
 weed this plot of ground, and by the time we had 
 got to the end of it there was always a fresh crop 
 of weeds at the beginning that we could commence 
 on anew. We were very careful never to pull any 
 of these weeds up by the roots, because the warder 
 in charge of the party told us that if we got out of 
 this job there was nothing whatever for us to do. 
 I made one day a small calculation as to the cost 
 of weeding this half-acre of land by some five-and- 
 twenty men ; I put their wages down at a very 
 small amount per diem, much below the market 
 rate ; and I arrived at the conclusion that the 
 imperfect weeding of this half-acre of ground cost 
 somewhere about 700 a year." 
 
 Let these two pictures be compared. They are 
 not altogether unlike. In the first we have a number 
 of educated persons more or less past the age of 
 acquiring unfamiliar trades maladroitly toiling as 
 tinsmiths, tailors, bag-makers, and shoemakers ; 
 never earning their keep, and never on any day doing 
 a manifest day's work. The working day of a convict 
 is in itself ridiculous by the side of a labourer's : 
 six to seven hours in summer, five to six in winter, 
 with endless silly interruptions. In the second we 
 have another party of convicts (both sets alike con- 
 demned by law to the pains of penal servitude, which 
 are taken to mean constant and exacting labour) 
 diligently engaged by the month in doing considerably 
 less than nothing, at an estimated cost if such em- 
 ployment had any estimable value of several 
 hundreds per annum. In either case the occupation 
 is worthy of Swift's Laputa.
 
 90 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 It is stated in a recent Report of the Commissioners 
 that the work of prison during the twelve months 
 under notice " has been valued at 248,981." What 
 do these imposing figures signify, and how are they 
 arrived at ? For, says the ex-prisoner whose testi- 
 mony has just been quoted, " there is, as a matter 
 of fact, practically no work for prisoners to do. It is 
 nearly all make-believe." 1 This is startling, but we 
 have also the evidence of Mr. Jabez Balfour in these 
 terms : "I can say that I had never spent an idle 
 day in my working life until I went to prison, and 
 that I never had a really busy day the whole time I 
 was there." 
 
 But there is one good thing to be presented. What 
 is known as the Borstal scheme (it was begun at 
 Borstal Prison, in Kent), for the treatment of young 
 criminals between the ages of sixteen and twenty- 
 one, has furnished us with an excellent example 
 of what the Commissioners are able to do with fit 
 material handled under fit conditions. Borstal takes 
 in hand at the malleable stage certain chosen youths 
 including some of the toughest customers from the 
 rookeries of London, Manchester, and Birmingham 
 puts them, under sensible and humane monitors, 
 through a terribly stiff course, fits them with a trade, 
 and finds the trade for them when they leave. They 
 
 1 He adds : " I understand that very elaborate books are kept 
 in connection with the [Parkhurst] farm, as is likewise the case in 
 reference to every other department of the prison, and that these 
 books show a considerable annual profit. But this profit is arrived 
 at by the simple process of manipulating figures. Prison book- 
 keeping is an art in itself, and, to the uninitiated, prison books and 
 figures demonstrate clearly that every department in a prison is 
 making enormous profits. Unfortunately these profits are lost 
 somewhere or other they do not reach the taxpayer, who is, 
 accordingly, called upon to pay up about 600,000 a year, the 
 deficit on the profit-worked prisons." H. J. B. Montgomery : 
 "The Waste of Labour in our Convict Prisons."
 
 THE PROBLEM OF PRISON LABOUR 91 
 
 seldom return to Borstal. So far it is the best thing 
 reported of the prison system. The Borstal institu- 
 tions have gone some way to strike at the root of 
 crime, or cut it off at the source of supply. 
 
 Almost every popular notion about prison labour 
 is inaccurate. 
 
 It is supposed that every convicted criminal 
 sentenced to " penal servitude " or " imprisonment 
 with hard labour " (the terms are not interchangeable, 
 but in reality they mean very much the same thing) 
 is immediately, on reception into gaol, furnished 
 with useful and salutary work, of which there is 
 never any lack. It is supposed that prisons are fitted 
 with all appliances necessary to the teaching and 
 management of the various trades that are nominally 
 conducted in them. It is supposed that prison 
 trains up an immense number of efficient craftsmen, 
 and turns out an immense quantity of genuinely 
 profitable work. 
 
 These suppositions are inadmissible. They are 
 warranted by no demonstrable facts. In its principal 
 net results the labour of prison is a grotesquely ex- 
 pensive failure.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON: BORSTAL AND 
 THE YOUNG DELINQUENT 
 
 PICTURE to yourself a boy in a brown suit ; above 
 him, in the heaven of Class I, is a boy in blue. The 
 boy in brown cannot change his colour or class till 
 he has put to his credit an awful total of 600 marks ; 
 and these 600 marks he cannot earn, by the best of 
 conduct and the best of industry, in fewer than six 
 eternal months. Think what it means. Here comes 
 in from the Jago a defiant roustabout of tender years, 
 who has plagued the " peeler " and drawn blushes from 
 the bench, and whose dear ambition has been to rise 
 as quickly as may be into the ranks of the " 'igh 
 mob," the full-blown swells of crime. He had 
 probably secreted as a prize in the lining of his cap 
 a newspaper report of his first knockdown in court. 
 But Borstal, which represents the most up-to-date 
 method of dealing with the juvenile delinquent in 
 this country, chooses to perceive or take for granted 
 that this boy is less wicked than wrong. Within an 
 hour of his reception the Governor pays a call on 
 him in his cell and has a great long talk with him. 
 Every week this visit is repeated, and a gratuitous 
 visit from the Governor is an honour quite unknown 
 in other prisons. Here, then, is the beginning of that 
 personal touch which counts for so much. And by 
 
 92
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 93 
 
 and by the boy realises that not the Governor only, 
 but the chaplain, the medico, the schoolmaster, the 
 warders, are all in a conspiracy to make a little man 
 of him. Then he sees on every hand these smiling 
 toffs in blue, some of them younger than himself, but 
 with a lot of privileges that haven't yet come his way. 
 This riles him. Well, what price some blue togs for 
 himself ? Blue toggery means, among other delights, 
 sweet pudding on Sundays. He learns the price ; 
 and so it comes to pass that he sets out one day upon 
 that awful six months' climb ; the pilgrim's progress 
 of the little fellow everybody helping him, however. 
 He curbs his tongue, he gives no cheek, he never 
 carries on at all, he uses his hands only as things to 
 work with. He grows an obedient heart ; he learns 
 (but oh ! with what agony of inward strife) to dis- 
 cipline his unruly little self through every aching hour 
 of the day. And how he studies the mark-sheet that 
 hangs at his door ! Twelve marks each week he can 
 earn by industry, twelve by good conduct, and six 
 by " special merit " : thirty marks a week, and he 
 must fetch up the number to 600. Really, I think 
 this is not an unheroic little life. But one heavenly 
 morning the sun shines upon a brand-new suit of 
 blue. The bold boy has pulled through ; has come 
 out on top. That mark-sheet is full up ; 600 marks 
 on it ; and class Number One has a fresh-faced swag- 
 gering recruit. 
 
 Perhaps few of us realise that half the crime in 
 civilised countries is committed by young people. 
 But we are not alone unfortunate. Other countries 
 are discovering that the callow, fledgeling criminal 
 is legion, and that the State which first succeeds in 
 tackling and bringing to book the young delinquent 
 will have the smallest criminal population in the next
 
 94 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 and succeeding generations. From all points of view 
 it is a question of the liveliest interest. 
 
 At the Prison Congress of 1895, held in Paris, the 
 topic was brought forward. At Brussels, five years 
 later, somewhat more prominence was given to it. 
 More recently, at Buda-Pesth, it was manifestly 
 regarded as the one thing that must not be neg- 
 lected. 
 
 These quinquennial international penitentiary con- 
 gresses assemble from all parts of the world the 
 United States, Japan, China, Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, 
 Great Britain, and wellnigh every state in Europe 
 expert critics of both sexes, philosophers, legists, 
 scientists, doctors of medicine and doctors of law, 
 clerics, and persons engaged in prison administration. 
 The question pSnitentiaire, once exclusively a question 
 of prisons, has had its scope extended greatly within 
 recent years (the first of these congresses was held in 
 1872), and it now embraces all problems of penal 
 policy. In particular it is concerned with the para- 
 mount idea of the day, the prevention of crime ; and 
 the corollary is the scientific study of the individual 
 criminal, which owes more than a little to Lombroso. 
 
 A complete survey would take in the Society Pro 
 Juventute in Holland, the Ecoles de Bienfaisance of 
 Belgium, and among other works of sauvetage, or 
 rescue, in France, the Ecole Thtophile Roussel ; but 
 it would be impossible for me to deal with every- 
 thing. 
 
 During the whole congressional week the delegates 
 at Buda-Pesth were much occupied with the establish- 
 ment of " schools of preservation or of observation," 
 for children coming before the courts. The principal 
 idea which the scheme contains is in the case, of 
 course, of the very young the substitution, " for
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 95 
 
 ordinary methods of repression and discipline," of a 
 course of treatment that may fairly be described as 
 scientific. It goes by the name of " psychiatry," 
 i.e. a study both of the mentality and of the morality 
 of the child, with a view to discovering whether the 
 lapse from normal conduct is due to physical or social 
 causes, i.e. to mental defect or to bad example. 
 This notion, a good one surely, has been for some 
 time in the air. Interest in it was greatly stimulated 
 by a new French law of 1904, which made provision 
 for the establishment of these schools of observation ; 
 and a movement in this direction may be observed 
 to-day in many countries of Europe, as well as in 
 America. It is, briefly, the method of individuality 
 as opposed to the old rough-and-ready method of 
 dealing with offenders in the lump. 
 
 The Congress, as a whole, was agreed that all young 
 prisoners should, during the whole of their sentence, 
 be rigorously segregated from adults, and classified 
 according to age, character, and antecedents ; that 
 the cellular system is not suitable to these cases, 
 except when the sentence is very short ; and that 
 the " progressive stage system " is to be recommended, 
 with promotion from class to class according to 
 industry and conduct, " and power to earn remission 
 when two-thirds of the sentence is completed." 
 
 It was agreed that : 
 
 " (a) Prisoners must be kept constantly occupied, 
 and in full exercise of their faculties (tenus en haleine), 
 except during meals and hours set apart for rest. 
 
 " (b) They should be taught a trade likely to be 
 useful on discharge. 
 
 " (c) Work in the open air farming, gardening, 
 and vine culture commended. 
 
 " (d) Education, secular and religious, will be
 
 96 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 compulsory ; lessons of patriotism and of moral 
 conduct will be impressed. 
 
 " (e) Gymnastic and military drill should be a 
 great part of the system." 
 
 In the form of an addendum, the hope of the 
 Congress was recorded that imprisonment, " the 
 ordinary punishment for juvenile delinquency," 
 would rapidly cease throughout Europe ; and Miss 
 Bartlett, of the Howard Association, was responsible 
 for the resolution recommending " to the favour- 
 able notice of all Governments, the special judicial 
 organisation, known as children's courts, as established 
 in the United States of America, together with the 
 extension of the system of probation, as practised 
 in the same country." 
 
 But better than Congress resolutions are the infant 
 asylums and houses of correction for young people 
 which were shown to the delegates at Buda-Pesth. 
 Of State infant asylums there are thirteen, including 
 466 colonies, in which, in 1903, there were, under 
 careful training, no fewer than 16,660 children. 
 There are five reformatories, or houses of correction ; 
 four for boys and one for girls. These are in no 
 sense prisons ; they are schools of a curious kind : 
 altogether very remarkable institutions to light upon 
 among the descendants of a nomadic race of non- 
 Aryan origin. 
 
 In the infant asylum, children of whom it can be 
 shown that they have no parental control, or none 
 worth the name, are received at any age under fifteen. 
 To the houses of correction young people between 
 twelve and twenty years of age are admitted by 
 order of the Minister of Justice, or on a declaration 
 by parents or tutor that the youngster is a " limb " 
 of the toughest sort. What distinguishes in an
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 97 
 
 especial manner these " corrective colonies " is the 
 grouping of the " boarders " into families. This is in 
 the main quite a new fashion. Each head of a 
 family, in the homes for boys, has twenty foster- 
 children, and banishment from the family is one of 
 the worst disgraces : there is no corporal punishment 
 in the code. Games, music, athletics, and recreations 
 are provided for. The programme of work ranges 
 from reading and writing to applied sciences, agri- 
 culture, and horticulture. Anybody who has a mind 
 to run away can do so and there are, as might be 
 supposed, very few " escapes." Save the habit of 
 decent and industrious living, there is nothing to 
 escape from. 
 
 For the girls there is at present only one place of 
 " corrective education." This is at Rakospalota, a 
 suburb of Buda-Pesth, where there are thirty-three 
 boarders formerly among the most ungracious 
 young persons in Hungary under the care of two 
 foster-mothers. There were incendiaries among 
 them, and several of the adroitest thieves in Buda- 
 Pesth ; one girl had made two attempts at infanticide ; 
 and another, at the age of fourteen, had helped her 
 brother to murder their father. 
 
 In the course of five years, 116 of these girls were 
 liberated ; and of eighty of them there was a very 
 good report. 
 
 These waifs blown of any wind until the State 
 entraps them, and often bred in vice for their parents' 
 gain are watched like plants ; and it is sometimes 
 possible to release them after a few months of mother- 
 ing. There are no fixed sentences ; girls and boys 
 alike can be set free under what is known as the 
 " indeterminate sentence." 
 
 In the midst of the many amazing anomalies
 
 98 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 created in America by the divorce of theory and 
 practice, two strong humanising influences stand 
 out : Mrs. Ballington Booth, and Judge Lindsey of 
 the Juvenile Court, Denver, Colorado. 
 
 The Volunteer Prison League of Mrs. Ballington 
 Booth, to which in a moment a chapter shall be 
 addressed, is a unique institution. Mrs. Booth is the 
 ministering angel of the cell, and has veritably saved 
 a legion that were lost. 
 
 Judge Ben B. Lindsey, " the just Jedge," is the 
 man who tells little boys that " swipin' " doesn't pay. 
 " Swipin' " means a heap of things, from borrowing 
 a spade that you don't intend to return, up to flat 
 burglary. As Maud Booth is the Little Mother of 
 Yankee gaoldom, Ben B. Lindsey is the " Kids' 
 Jedge " of Denver : golden titles both of them. 
 
 The "Kids' Jedge" is no "guy on the high 
 bench " drily doling out punishment. There is next 
 to no punishment in his system, and, apparently, no 
 prison at all. The key of the system is friendship, 
 and he teaches respect for grown-up law by showing 
 the profoundest respect for " Kid law." He got to 
 know the feeling with which boys regard the law 
 and the bench. A boy of twelve had been arrested 
 for stealing a razor " to whittle sticks." 
 
 " It was this way," he explained to Judge Lindsey. 
 " The guy on the high bench, with the w r hiskers, 
 says, ' What's the boy done, officer ? ' And the cop 
 says, says he, ' He's a bad kid, your Honour, and 
 broke into a store and stole a razor.' And the guy 
 on the high bench says, ' Ten dollars or ten days.' 
 Time, three minutes ; one round of a prize-fight." 
 
 This is not Judge Lindsey's way at all. " The 
 Jedge, he gives a feller a show," the boys say ; and 
 the consequence is that the boys whom he has once
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 99 
 
 got hold of never go back on him. " Gee ! but that 
 was something like a chance ! " says the " Jedge " 
 to the boy who was explaining what a grand oppor- 
 tunity he had had of swiping something. Boys 
 come singly and in troops to confess to and take 
 counsel of the just Judge. Leaders of a gang persuade 
 the whole crowd to follow them to the court, and the 
 gang is presently transformed into a Kids' Citizens 
 League, and plays square with the Judge. " Fine, 
 isn't it ! " says the Judge, when he has read out a 
 letter from Kid Dawson, who had been " on the 
 crook," and is now " making good." And at the 
 back of all is the pervasive influence of the Judge's 
 motto, that " there can be no justice without the 
 love of man for man." The Volunteer Prison League 
 and the Juvenile Court of Denver are examples to 
 the world. 
 
 To return to the subject of the sketch with which 
 I began ; the Borstal System stands for our best 
 preventive effort up to date. Borstal, briefly de- 
 scribed, is a half-way house between prison and the 
 reformatory school. In English law, sixteen is the 
 age of " criminal majority " ; that is to say, young 
 prisoners above that age can no longer be made 
 subject to reformatory treatment in the State schools 
 provided for the purpose. To meet the case of the 
 artful dodgers between the ages of sixteen and twenty- 
 one, Borstal was created. 
 
 The scheme was begun in a small way at Bedford 
 Prison in 1900, and in two years it was in the full 
 tide of successful experiment. When the affair was 
 well forward, a move was made to the more commo- 
 dious prison at Borstal, near Chatham ; and here 
 I saw from eighty to ninety of the young Borstalians 
 at work.
 
 100 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Labour at Borstal is not " tasked " as in the regular 
 convict and local prisons, but in the long day of 
 fourteen hours there are no idle moments : the lad 
 over his book of an evening keeps his knitting- 
 needles going. 
 
 There is half an hour's drill every morning and 
 afternoon. Everybody goes to school on weekdays ; 
 the upper boys for an hour, the lower for two hours. 
 I saw some lessons in progress and some very decent 
 specimens of handwriting. There is a good deal of 
 music, too ; the choir-boys are at it pretty often, 
 once or twice a week the whole crowd are mustered, 
 and the prisoner who does not love to sing is suffering 
 from softening of the brain. I found also and here, 
 indeed, was a wonder a recreation-room. It is the 
 first ever opened in any English prison. 
 
 I went through sundry shops and other work- 
 places. I saw youths employed in the open air at 
 bricklaying, building, and gardening. I saw young 
 carpenters, tinsmiths, and blacksmiths ; and the old 
 friend, Mr. Frederic Whyte, who accompanied me 
 (his first visit to prison) exclaimed that never had he 
 beheld more cheerful labour. 
 
 As compared with the ancient deadly and deadening 
 routine life of English prisons and I have looked 
 at it in not a few of them, and studied it in Blue 
 Books, reports, and narratives innumerable many 
 of the methods of Borstal are startling in their fresh- 
 ness. Elsewhere the prisoner short-term or long- 
 term man begins at the very lowest step of the 
 ladder ; he is in the hard class of the " probationer " ; 
 and there, be his conduct what it may, he must serve 
 his stated time. But this meanest and most painful 
 class of all the young Borstalian need never enter. 
 The start is made in the second or " ordinary "
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 101 
 
 stage. From this he can be degraded to the " penal " 
 class ; but for such degradation he himself would be 
 solely responsible, and the Governor assured me that 
 his penal class was often quite empty. 
 
 " Very few of my lads," Mr. Western, the ideal 
 first Governor of Borstal, said to me, " ever find 
 themselves in the penal class, and I take over some 
 of the most incorrigible young rogues in London. 
 One lad, when he came to me, had been fifteen times 
 in prison, and I have others who have had four, five, 
 and six convictions. We have hooligans, thieves, 
 and young burglars the despair of the courts yet 
 it is not uncommon for a week to pass without my 
 receiving a single report against any of them." 
 
 Most of the boys I saw at Borstal had risen to the 
 blue. As they rise their privileges increase. Thus, 
 they are housed as no convict ever is. The cell of a 
 convict resembles a very clean scullery, bare of 
 ornament. In the cell of the young prisoner in the 
 first class at Borstal there is a bedstead, a looking- 
 glass (no convict ever sees his features unless on the 
 polished bottom of his tin), and a strip of carpet ; 
 along with the volumes on his bookshelf are photo- 
 graphs of the folks he has left at home ; and if with 
 these is found a picture-card presented by the Gover- 
 nor at Christmas, you may be sure that this has been 
 a very good boy indeed. Authority is not above 
 coaxing and wheedling the young chap. 
 
 Thus, there is at Borstal an excellent boy's library, 
 but the best book in it is little valued in comparison 
 with the volume that comes now and then from the 
 shelves in the Governor's study. This book has not 
 the prison stamp in it ; was not bound in the prison 
 bindery ! 
 
 They use at Borstal the " indeterminate sentence,"
 
 102 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 in some measure an American device. It works in 
 this way : the Bench fixes the maximum, but it is 
 discretionary with the Governor, chaplain, and medical 
 officer, acting as a committee, to reconsider the term. 
 At the end of six months the probationer appears 
 before the committee and his case is overhauled. 
 The question is submitted : Would he be " likely 
 to benefit by release before expiration of his sen- 
 tence " ? The case is sifted thoroughly, for Borstal 
 is jealous of its reputation, and considers cautiously 
 the future of its chickens. As likely as not the 
 chicken is sent back, to be brought up again by and 
 by. But if this is a real game chick, the hope of being 
 set free after his next exam, keeps his pecker up and 
 acts like magic on his mark-sheet. 
 
 And when he is set free ? 
 
 " God speed you ! And may I never see you 
 more ! " is the best farewell that a Governor can take 
 of his prisoner. Yes ; but who is going to look to 
 this youngster, with a brave record behind him and 
 new hopes risen in his heart, when he stands on the 
 other side of the friendly door of prison ? There is no 
 blinking the fact that a very large number of re- 
 convicted criminals find themselves in prison a 
 second and a third time for the main and ugly 
 reason that we have not given them the chance to be 
 anywhere else. The released Borstalian has, at any 
 rate, one chance, and it is a fair one. 
 
 Space is wanting to praise the work of the voluntary 
 Borstal Association (formed some years ago), which 
 is rapidly becoming a central body that will make 
 itself responsible for the care, on discharge, of Bor- 
 stal's pattern boys. 
 
 One hopes devoutly that the new system will not 
 crystallise, will not become sterotyped and mechanical
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 103 
 
 the peril of all our prison schemes, and the fate 
 of most of them. Rules, standing orders, and the 
 literal and dull interpretation of them have reduced 
 the administration of every convict and local prison 
 in the kingdom to a frosty routine ; meticulous, 
 hair-splitting, cynical, and callous ; crushing in its 
 effects on almost all the better class of prisoners, and 
 contemned or made light of by the hard old lags, who 
 endure it philosophically, and pass from it unreformed, 
 untouched. From this historic destiny of every plan 
 that we have ever tried in prison hulks, Botany 
 Bay, old Newgate of Howard's day and Mrs. Fry's 
 day, down to the manifold anomalies of our existing 
 system of penal servitude may some peculiar 
 providence deliver Borstal ! 
 
 Meanwhile it goes somewhat trippingly. The 
 system has now been greatly extended. Until recently 
 it was applied only to selected individuals whose 
 sentence exceeded twelve months " which experi- 
 ence has shown," say the Commissioners, "to be 
 the minimum period where reformatory treatment 
 for persons of this age can be usefully applied." 
 At present, lads between sixteen and twenty-one, 
 in whatever prison they may be lodged, have the 
 new prescription tried on them. The Commissioners 
 have utilised a part of the prison at Lincoln for the 
 reception and treatment of cases from the north of 
 England. They have extended the principle of the 
 Borstal system " to all offenders committed to all 
 prisons in England and Wales, irrespective of length 
 of sentence, where the age is between sixteen and 
 twenty-one. . . . Steps have been taken to con- 
 centrate the criminal youths of the Metropolis, under 
 the longer sentences, at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, 
 where it is expected there will be a daily average of
 
 104 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 about 250 of these cases," and a class on the Borstal 
 lines has been started at Dartmoor. 
 
 Time will show how far this concentration of effort 
 will produce results proportionate to the outlay. 
 Length of days, infinite toil, and a good deal of 
 money will be needed. 
 
 In April, 1905, at Birmingham, was opened the 
 first Children's Court. It is not as wonderful, not as 
 fascinating an affair as " Jedge " Lindsey's in Denver, 
 but will do very well for a beginning. While the 
 business of the little pickles is being dealt with no 
 criminal grown-ups may be present. The children 
 have their own separate entrance, and they and 
 their parents or guardians are made to wait their 
 turns in a private room. No child is allowed in the 
 court except during the hearing of his own case. 
 Under the Youthful Offenders Act, 1901, the parents 
 or guardians of the " criminal " are bidden to 
 attend, and they may be punished when it is shown 
 that the offence is due to neglect on their part. 
 The example of Birmingham should be widely 
 followed. 
 
 A paternal administration of the streets would 
 save the Children's Courts and some others an im- 
 mense amount of trouble. All street callings are 
 bad for children, and that of the paper-seller is 
 possibly the worst. Prisons in the larger towns are 
 always receiving little chaps who got into trouble 
 first through hawking papers on the kerb. I have 
 seen them picking oakum and tailoring at Worm- 
 wood Scrubs, at Wandsworth, and elsewhere. The 
 kerb is a recruiting-ground for the army of the gaol. 
 The paper boy knows all about betting, " form," 
 and the state of the odds. He plunges a bit on his 
 own. He is equal to making a book, or setting up in
 
 THE BEST THING IN PRISON 105 
 
 business as a tipster ; and when he has got to this 
 point he has started threading his way down the 
 alley that is blind. He generally becomes a waster 
 of the racecourse, and settles down as a racecourse 
 thief. To anyone who believes that lads should be 
 allowed to trade in the streets under the age of six- 
 teen I would recommend a day in the police courts, 
 and after that a tour through prison. 

 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE: THE "LITTLE 
 MOTHER" OF AMERICAN PRISONS 
 
 QUITE a new thing is being done in the State Prisons 
 of America. It is a crusade, the practical results of 
 which seem rather to upset the conventional notion 
 that the man who has reached a certain stage in 
 crime is past reform. A woman of genius, with a 
 burning belief in her mission, enters prison after 
 prison, enrols the convicts her " boys," she calls 
 them in her Volunteer Prison League, literally 
 makes new men of them and creates new lives for 
 them. She has enrolled men serving life sentences, 
 who, on this side of the grave, have little hope of 
 release. The devoted woman who has done this is 
 Maud Ballington Booth, known to thirty or forty 
 thousand convicts and ex-convicts from end to end 
 of America as the Little Mother. 
 
 It should be understood at the outset that this is 
 a downright practical work. Mrs. Booth does not 
 go into prison to weep over men who have been guilty 
 of great crimes. She says to them in effect (I quote 
 the words of one of her own " boys ") : "I don't 
 come here to prevent you from paying the just 
 penalty of your crimes ; take your medicine like 
 men. You know what is right, do it now. When you 
 have paid the penalty, I will help you. I will nurse 
 you back to health, I will get you work ; above all, 
 
 108
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 107 
 
 I will trust you, and it depends upon you whether I 
 keep on doing so or not. Mind, I will help you over 
 rough places, but I won't carry you." 
 
 That's the talk that prison understands. In truth, 
 Maud Booth has shaken prison with a ringing message. 
 Testimony comes on every hand. Wardens (as 
 the governors of prisons are styled in America) who 
 at first were wholly sceptical have long been speaking 
 and penning her praises. Warden Thayer, of Danne- 
 mora Prison, addressing a public meeting in New 
 York, and touching on the first enrolment of men in 
 his prisons, said : 
 
 " When I saw those men, one hundred and seven 
 of them, stand up, I began to feel sorry for Mrs. 
 Booth. Here were the very hardest men I had to 
 deal with in the prison ; men constantly reported 
 for punishment. I took a list of their names for 
 future reference. I kept that list in my desk, 
 and when the year had passed I brought it out with 
 a view of paralysing that little woman. Would 
 you credit it ? I learned to my own surprise and 
 satisfaction, on comparing it with the punishment 
 book, that out of those who stood up in the chapel 
 that Sunday morning only three had required 
 punishment during the entire year. I saw now 
 what I had not realised before, namely, that as an 
 aid to discipline in the prison no plans had ever 
 equalled the influence of this work." 
 
 Says Warden Darby, of Ohio Penitentiary : " The 
 good derived has not been limited to the League 
 members alone. Others have been induced to strive 
 for better, higher, and nobler lives." Warden 
 Johnson, of Sing Sing, declares that his " faith in 
 man has been enhanced by certain discharged prisoners
 
 108 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 who are leading reputable and prosperous lives." 
 " I am sure," writes Warden McClaughry, of Fort 
 Leaven worth Penitentiary, " that you are receiving 
 to-day the gratitude of every prisoner and ex-prisoner 
 who has ever known you ; also of every prison officer 
 whose burdens have been lightened and whose way 
 has been made more clear by your kindly counsel and 
 helpful enthusiasm." The " boys " themselves tell 
 just the same tale. " The verdict of the prisoners 
 upon the work of the League," says a six-year man, 
 " is unanimous that it is the only real and practical 
 scheme of help that has ever been extended to them. 
 There is no varying opinion about its effectiveness. 
 They recognise its value. It has opened the way for 
 hundreds of wretched men who turned from the 
 contemplation of their future with despair, but who 
 now regard it with hope." 
 
 Now for a moment, before describing the work, 
 let us turn to some more or less general principles. 
 
 There are only two practical ways of helping the 
 prisoner. In the first place, while he is still in the 
 cell you must work upon his better feelings, you 
 must put heart and hope into him. In the second, 
 you must take him in hand when he comes out of 
 prison and decently restore him to the world. If 
 the getting into prison is a terrible business, so also, 
 in very many cases, is the getting out. Then, indeed, 
 it is that, in very many cases, the real punishment 
 begins. 
 
 But, as I have said, the work must start in the 
 cell ; and now I am thinking more particularly, not 
 of the convict who has friends of the good sort to 
 receive him or the money to take him abroad, but of 
 the one who expects, and possibly intends, to hie on 
 release to the haunts where the old gang and the
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 109 
 
 old life await him. Let him set his face in that 
 direction and it is up with him. The " peeler " will 
 have him again. Persuade this man, however, 
 before the day of his discharge, that the game is 
 not worth the candle ; convince his intellect that 
 you can and will show him a better ; and you may 
 succeed in turning him inside out. But when you 
 have made him believe that there are careers which 
 pay better than the crooked one, you ought not to 
 let go of him till you have set him on his feet again. 
 A few men return to crime quite prepared to take 
 all risks. They know very well that they sew a 
 double thread, but while the nerve lasts there is a 
 genial excitement in burglary and jobs on the big 
 scale, and the old hand who has had a good run for 
 his money pays his scot in prison cheerfully enough. 
 He is generally the best of prisoners and the 
 reformers' despair. Not by any means is every gaol- 
 bird of this kidney, though. Half the people on the 
 crook would be on the straight if only they knew 
 how. We do so little for them ! 
 
 These, then, are the two, and the only two ways. 
 Seek the prisoner in his cell. Cheer and exhort, 
 counsel, persuade, strive. Achieve something before 
 the man is out and can set his feet again in the mire 
 and the snare. Then, on his release, receive and 
 shelter him until you have found or made for him a 
 new opening. How may this be done ? 
 
 I know of but one answer: the work of Mrs. 
 Ballington Booth. 
 
 In the loneliness of the cell, what voice of appeal 
 can ever equal the woman's ? It echoes from the 
 bare walls when the ministering angel has gone ; if 
 there are chords to be reached they will vibrate 
 to this as to nothing else in the world. And if the
 
 110 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 woman not only quickens the dead heart with her 
 voice, but carries yet another appeal in the fairness of 
 her face ? I can make no picture comparable with 
 the living original, whom I met in the garden of a 
 Kentish vicarage. The comely head is admirably poised 
 on a chiselled neck and perfect shoulders ; and as fine 
 as the poise of the head is the carriage of the rather 
 small, flexile figure, which has every gentle pride of 
 curve and line. Add to these graces an infinite play 
 of feature, and a manner that is never in the least 
 aware of itself. This is the one woman in America 
 who can fill hall or church to overflowing, and hold 
 an audience bewitched for two hours. Is it wonderful 
 that when she went into prison she led captivity 
 captive, and made men of thirty or forty thousand 
 criminals and wastrels ? 
 
 During the time that she and her husband 
 were the leaders of the Salvation Army in America, 
 Mrs. Booth was asked by some of the prisoners in 
 San Quentin, California, to visit and address them. 
 She went at once, and beheld prison for the first time. 
 
 " Never shall I forget," she said, " the sea of 
 upturned faces, many of them so plainly bearing 
 the marring imprint of sorrow and sin despair and 
 misery yet behind the scars and shadows there 
 was such an eager longing such a hungry appeal 
 for a sight of hope's bright star, that one could but 
 feel an intense inspiration while delivering the 
 message. Never before had I seen the stripes, 
 never heard the clang behind me of the iron gates, 
 nor had I realised the hopelessness that enshrouds 
 the prisoner. ... I did not attempt to preach. 
 As far as possible in that brief hour I tried to carry 
 them away from prison. . . . The response I read
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 111 
 
 in those upturned faces the grateful words that 
 reached me afterwards through the mail, and the 
 constant memory of that scene as I witnessed it, 
 lasted with me, deepening into a determination to 
 make their cause mine when the opportunity 
 should offer." 
 
 Sooner than had been expected the opportunity 
 came. For reasons which I need not here discuss 
 the matter is a strictly private one Mr. and Mrs. 
 Booth severed their connection with the Salvation 
 Army. " Our movement," says Mrs. Booth, " has 
 nothing to do with the Salvation Army, is in no way 
 connected with it, and is absolutely dissimilar in 
 method and government." They founded between 
 them, husband and wife, the association of the 
 Volunteers of America, and out of this arose the 
 Volunteer Prison League. The Warden of Sing Sing 
 (whose testimony I have cited) asked Mrs. Booth to 
 speak there. It was the opening of the door that she 
 had prayed for since her visit to San Quentin. " On 
 the 24th of May, 1896, the initial meeting was held, 
 and from that place and hour it has grown and 
 widened, until now the movement has attained 
 national proportions." From Sing Sing the call 
 came to prison after prison. Sometimes it was " the 
 boys " who sent a plea through the chaplain ; some- 
 times it was a warden who had heard what strange 
 new things were being done in other prisons. Auburn, 
 Clinton, Charlestown, Trenton, Folsom, Joliet, Colum- 
 bus, Fort Leavenworth, Anamosa, Iowa, Baltimore : 
 in these prisons the League has been established, 
 and in the chapel hangs to-day the League's white 
 standard, with the star of hope shining in the centre. 
 
 Let us seek to know what is the spirit of this
 
 112 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 crusade which has stirred so profoundly and affected 
 so powerfully the whole under- world of America. 
 " From the very first," says Mrs. Booth, " I realised 
 that to make the work effectual there must be the 
 establishment of personal friendship " the beautiful 
 title of Little Mother was early bestowed on her by 
 some grateful and inspired " boy " " and that it was 
 only as we recognised and helped the individual that 
 we could by degrees affect the whole population." 
 Her idea was to meet the prisoners on the level, to 
 get to know them man by man, to win their confidence, 
 to put them gradually on their mettle, and then, in 
 the end, to engage them to stand up in prison with 
 her badge upon their breasts. There was to be no 
 coddling, no going behind the prison rules ; with the 
 definite promise of help on release the men were to 
 be compelled to work out their own salvation. 
 A beginning was made with the chapel services. The 
 first appearances of the beautiful little nervous 
 woman, half ashamed, she says, of her liberty in the 
 seats of bondage are still remembered ; the " sense 
 sublime " of her talk, the sudden stir along the hearts 
 of her listeners. She said she would correspond with 
 those who had no friends. Letters poured in upon 
 her. " The many letters which reached me soon 
 gave us an insight into the thoughts and feelings of 
 the men, and we were then able to become familiar 
 with the names and histories of many of them." 
 After the letters came interviews in the cells ; and as 
 men began to take the decisive step, it became 
 evident that organisation would be needed to bind 
 them together. The V.P.L., or Volunteer Prison 
 League, was formed ; and, to test him to the utmost, 
 every man who joined it must show his colours boldly 
 in the prison : a small white button with a blue star
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 113 
 
 in the middle, and the motto of the League : " Look 
 up and Hope." The prisoners banded in this League 
 stood together for right living and good discipline. 
 Each man was given a certificate of membership : 
 
 " This is to certify that is a member of 
 
 the Volunteer Prison League, he having faithfully 
 promised with God's help to conform to the 
 following conditions of membership : 
 
 First To pray every morning and night. 
 
 Second To read the Day Book faithfully. 
 
 Third To refrain from the use of bad language. 
 
 Fourth To be faithful in the observance of 
 prison rules and discipline, so as to become 
 an example of good conduct. 
 
 Fifth To seek earnestly to cheer and encourage 
 others in well-doing and right living, 
 trying, where it is possible, to make new 
 members of the League." 
 
 This document hangs in the prison cell, and its 
 owner dons forthwith the badge of the V.P.L. He 
 is now, of course, a marked man. Officers and fellow- 
 prisoners alike watch him closely, and, as may be 
 imagined, it is in this hour that his trial begins. This 
 trial, however, Mrs. Booth regards as of paramount 
 importance. The man must go through the fire . . . 
 alone. 
 
 " The thought that has made this League a 
 strong foundation for the work and that has proved 
 the most rousing inspiration to the men, is that the 
 effort is not ours but theirs. No philanthropist, 
 preacher or teacher in the world can reform these 
 men. . It rests with the men themselves."
 
 114 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 The League obliges them to realise this very 
 vividly ; the responsibility is rolled back upon their 
 own shoulders ; they are made beholden to their own 
 consciences. This would seem to be the root of the 
 matter ; this is that spirit we have been seeking. 
 The prisoner sets to work to rebuild his character ; 
 and what that effort costs within the walls of prison 
 may be but faintly guessed. 
 
 When the League has grown to some size in a 
 prison it becomes a " post," and the white standard is 
 presented. The loyalty of the " boys " to the flag, 
 Mrs. Booth says, is quite wonderful ; and there is a 
 kind of rivalry between prison and prison, each 
 " post " wishing to keep the best record. 
 
 I have said that even life-men have been drawn 
 into the League. Here is a letter from a man who 
 lies at this moment in the cell that will probably 
 hold him until death : a voice from a living tomb : 
 
 " Dear Little Mother, Nobody knows better 
 than I do myself w r hat the League has done for me 
 and the men here. I have been in prison over 
 twenty years, and know what I am talking about. 
 Without it prison would be much like what it was 
 before. I hope that with all the disappointments 
 you are bound to meet with, you will continue to 
 believe that there are hundreds of men in our 
 great prisons who are in earnest. Most respectfully 
 yours, No. 19,595." 
 
 What a breaking of the dawn on that dark 
 horizon ! 
 
 Some secret efficacy is in a League which makes 
 " earnest " men of lifers. 
 
 The supreme test is the power of the men to stand. 
 In a League like this mere profession counts for
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 115 
 
 nothing, since the members are left to achieve their 
 own salvation. What tells is the daily life in prison 
 of those who have put on the badge. On this point 
 we have the adequate testimony of a warder who at 
 first was as sceptical as the rest. 
 
 " I want to confess to you," he said to Mrs. 
 Booth, " that I was one who took no stock in this 
 movement at first. I used to laugh at the men 
 making a profession of living any better, but I 
 confess I have been forced to change my views. 
 You do not know the change it has made in this 
 prison, and the miracles that have been wrought 
 in many of these men. You can see them in the 
 meetings and can judge of them by their letters, 
 but we live with them day after day and know far 
 more than you can. I never believed anything 
 could take hold of the whole prison popula- 
 tion, the educated, the middle class, and the 
 tougher element, affecting them as this work has 
 done." 
 
 The Leaguer who was once an object of scorn now 
 wears his button with pride. The men who do not 
 wear it show some respect for those who do ; the 
 power of the League is felt everywhere in prison. 
 " It has become bad form to swear," says an ex- 
 prisoner, " and clean conversation is supplanting the 
 ribald talk that prevailed among the men before the 
 League's influence manifested itself." Officers and 
 prisoners are on a better footing with one another ; 
 the men more biddable, the warders less arrogant. 
 Discipline itself has come under the new spirit and 
 shows a milder temper. 
 
 One might think that these " boys " in their tens 
 of thousands were care enough for a Little Mother.
 
 116 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 It is not so. Wives, mothers, sisters, children have 
 their claims upon her. Do any among us ever think 
 what happens, or is likely to happen to the family 
 when the breadwinner is " put away " for a term of 
 years ? Ask Maud Ballington Booth. Often and 
 often the man in prison is tortured not so much by 
 what has befallen himself as by the knowledge that 
 wife and children are suffering in the ruined home. 
 Mrs. Booth had been presenting the cause of her 
 " boys " in a drawing-room in New York, and at the 
 close of the meeting a lady came forward and said to 
 her, " I never for one moment realised that these 
 men had wives and mothers and little children." 
 There are thousands who have never realised this, 
 the saddest side, perhaps, of the question. Mrs. 
 Booth gets countless appeals from mothers not in 
 America only, but in Germany, France, Italy : 
 " Watch over my boy, give me tidings of him." And 
 the " boy " in the prison stripes remembers mother 
 and wife, and pleads with the Little Mother for them. 
 A young wife with a baby wrote to the husband in 
 prison that she could hold out no longer, she was at 
 the end of everything, she could not let the child 
 starve. . " For God's sake," wrote the husband to 
 Mrs. Booth, " go and find her and save her from 
 what would be worse than death." And they are 
 found and saved, wives and children, and the mothers 
 are comforted. Mrs. Booth is of that English family 
 of Charlesworths, one of whose members has be- 
 queathed to us a book which childhood never wearies 
 of : I mean " Ministering Children." The note of the 
 story is altruistic ; do something for somebody 
 because you cannot help doing it. The idea is as old 
 as the world and always new in practice. 
 
 " After Prison What ? " Many men come out
 
 AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE 117 
 
 shattered and nervous, utterly unfit for a while to 
 take their place in the world. For them the doors of 
 Hope Hall stand open, with " Welcome " on the 
 doorstep. Mrs. Booth has several Hope Halls, and to 
 the ex-convict each of these is truly the country of 
 home. " Don't speak of the past," " Don't think of 
 the past," are among the mottoes on the walls. 
 Every room is bright, cosy, and dainty ; there are 
 beautiful grounds ; and the evening brings books, 
 music, games, and talk. Here the guests of the Little 
 Mother stay, bound only by the rules of courtesy 
 and chivalry, until they are able to go back into 
 life and work has been found for them. And in 
 obtaining work for them no deception is used. 
 When Mrs. Booth has found a willing employer 
 she tells him the " boy's " past ; he goes, there- 
 fore, without the dread of being discovered and 
 turned off. 
 
 Hope Hall and what it leads to are the top and 
 crown of the work. This work, moreover, as the 
 " boys " have long known, is voluntary. Mrs. Booth 
 and her husband, independently placed, give all and 
 take nothing. The Little Mother herself may be said 
 to spend one half of her life in prison and the other 
 on the railway, travelling up and down the whole 
 continent to give lectures and raise money for her 
 high crusade. In this and for this she lives. And she 
 says, with a smile that irradiates the prison-house : 
 " It is well worth while." It is. About 80 per cent 
 of the " boys " are a credit to her. But what a lesson 
 to us ! 
 
 P.S. Just as this chapter was going to press I 
 received from Mrs. Booth, on her return from a long 
 trip in the West, a letter which ends thus : " Our
 
 118 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 work is progressing well, and I am opening up in new 
 prisons, but perhaps the most cheering phase of it 
 is the meeting with those who have been out of prison 
 some years and are still doing well. I hardly ever 
 enter a city, however distant, without coming across 
 some of my ' boys.' '
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 
 
 FROM the hour that he passes into the cell a certain 
 solace of books is granted to the prisoner. The deal 
 shelf over his head contains a Bible, hymn-book, and 
 Prayer Book, and some simple primer, or "reader," 
 which may be conned for learning or amusement. 
 With no greater store a shipwrecked sailor would be 
 wealthy ; thousands of English homes have less ; 
 and many generations of English prisoners would have 
 found some sweetness in captivity had they possessed 
 the first only of the books on that deal shelf. 
 
 How long does it take to read the Bible through ? 
 There are, I fancy, scores hundreds, perchance of 
 persons at this moment undergoing penal servitude 
 who could answer the question out of hand. To a 
 certain number of the prison population no other 
 book in the world can have given so large a measure 
 of consolation, and all who can read must have had 
 it in their hands, and taken something from it, since 
 this is almost the sole book upon which, during the 
 earliest stage of his confinement, the convict can 
 bestow his leisure. It need be no impulse of devotion, 
 no mood of penitence or remorse, that sends him 
 to his Bible. The book may do no more than modify 
 the tedium of his resting hours ; but who knows ? 
 Many educated prisoners, making no special pro- 
 fession of religion, have described the Bible as the most 
 
 119
 
 120 WARDS OP THE STATE 
 
 inspiriting companion of solitary confinement, and 
 have testified to the delight with which they read 
 and reread it under those terrible conditions. 
 
 For the prison library the chaplain is chiefly 
 responsible. With the business of the library is 
 associated that of the educational department, over 
 which also the chaplain presides, assisted by a 
 qualified schoolmaster, who has under him warder- 
 schoolmasters. It is during the first stage of 
 penal servitude that the most particular attention 
 is paid to the mental, moral, and literary educa- 
 tion of the convict. His mental and literary 
 education especially have been subjects of con- 
 sideration by successive Governments of the past 
 half-century ; difficult subjects enough, the reader 
 may be assured. Mere literary education, experi- 
 ence has shown, is not the panacea for crime 
 which the reformers of the early nineteenth century 
 inspired in great part by the philosophic Beccaria 
 fondly believed it to be ; and it is obvious that 
 the fruits of the best system which could be devised 
 must be extremely slight in the cases of undeveloped 
 adult prisoners confined for short periods, and not 
 much more satisfactory in the cases of professional 
 and habitual criminals, whose morals are apt to 
 grow blunter as their wits grow sharper. 
 
 Still, in the hope of achieving something, this branch 
 of training is not neglected, and in all modern English 
 prisons a well-developed system of elementary educa- 
 tion is at work ; while letters, in a simple form, 
 do not altogether languish. 
 
 It is curious, if painful, to see prisoners of forty 
 years old and upwards laboriously engaged upon 
 copybooks and primers. Prisoners above the age of 
 forty do not, however, receive instruction except in
 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 121 
 
 special cases. The quite illiterate prisoner of middle 
 age is nowadays a rare bird. " Prisoners found to have 
 no capacity for learning, or who are idle, are excluded 
 from instruction, the latter, however, only tem- 
 porarily ; and prisoners previously convicted may, 
 if found advisable, be excluded." Prisoners in 
 Class III, if they need it, receive instruction in 
 writing and arithmetic, and are allowed a slate and 
 pencil in their cells in addition to books. Possession 
 of a slate is said to be greatly prized, and very 
 curious are some of the writings committed to it by 
 the prisoners in their leisure. 
 
 The limits of instruction in the prison are : reading, 
 as far as Standard III, inclusive ; writing, as far as 
 transcribing a portion of the book read and reading 
 what has been transcribed ; arithmetic, as far as 
 casting simple money accounts and mental calcula- 
 tion of small money sums. 
 
 Certain special encouragements and inducements 
 are held out to prisoners to take the utmost 
 advantage of these teachings. Thus, except in the 
 cases of those who are too old or too feeble in mind 
 to learn, no prisoner is allowed a library book in his 
 cell until he can read Standard II with fluency ; 
 and, as a further stimulus, those prisoners in the 
 second and third classes who are entitled by the rules 
 to write an occasional letter home are, after a period 
 of instruction, required to write for themselves, and 
 are forbidden, except by very special favour, to have 
 letters written for them. Prisoners admitted to the 
 first class on reception into prison can very rarely 
 have more than two letters written for them by the 
 schoolmaster or his assistants. No convict can ever 
 be promoted to the first class until he is able both to 
 read and to write, and, slight as are the privileges
 
 122 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 accruing on promotion from one class to another, 
 the dreadful monotony of prison life makes them 
 objects of the liveliest competition. 
 
 One of my visits to Wormwood Scrubs was devoted 
 entirely to the library ; and its quality, range, and 
 diversity surprised me. 
 
 There is a fair, but no more than a fair, leaven of 
 devotional works. For the foreign element of the 
 convict population it has not, of course, been possible 
 to cater largely, but the collection of Bibles embraces 
 all the chief languages of Europe. 
 
 In its general character, the library which con- 
 tains at least two thousand volumes much resembles 
 that which one would expect to find in a high-class 
 provincial literary institute. It is a far better 
 collection, as regards both numbers and quality, 
 than the average citizen of the middle classes possesses, 
 and as new books are constantly added to the store 
 it will in time be an exceedingly fine one. The 
 principle on which the works are chosen is necessarily 
 influenced by considerations as to the special circum- 
 stances of the readers, but the chaplain uses a very 
 liberal discretion, and it seemed to me that every 
 reasonable taste was provided for. 
 
 In the department of fiction I found Scott, 
 Thackeray, and George Eliot comely volumes in the 
 bindings in which you or I might buy them and 
 a host of lesser lights, from Ballantyne to Jane 
 Worboise. The adventure story, I noticed, was in 
 good quantities, as also the literature of travel. 
 Light and popular science was there in abundance, 
 and very favourite works, Mr. Baldwin informed 
 me, were the "Popular Educator" and the 
 " Technical Educator." Gibbon, Milman, Macaulay, 
 Kinglake, and Green were amongst the historians ;
 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 123 
 
 Emerson and John Stuart Mill amongst the philo- 
 sophers. Biography ranged from the " Life of 
 Napoleon " to the works of Smiles. Theology had 
 as prominent a representative as Newman in his 
 early sermons. Poetry began with Spenser and 
 ended I know not with whom. Natural history 
 was not neglected, and in the field of belles lettres 
 the literary essay had several distinguished ex- 
 ponents, from Addison onwards. There was a 
 volume on the philosophy of Shakespeare. Periodical 
 literature always in great demand among those 
 prisoners who like a big miscellaneous volume to 
 nibble at included " Chambers' s Journal " and 
 the " Leisure Hour." 
 
 The educational books pure and simple, primers, 
 readers, and so forth, were many, and I questioned 
 the chaplain about them. He told me that a certain 
 kind of educational book is continuously in demand 
 amongst his convicts, not a few of whom find their 
 best recreation in the pursuit of some form of intel- 
 lectual study. The learning of shorthand, for instance, 
 is a rather favourite pastime ; and those prisoners 
 who devote themselves to it seldom give up until 
 they have attained a degree of proficiency in the 
 reporter's art. Others take a fancy for languages, 
 and one prisoner of some social celebrity was named 
 to me who had acquired in prison a more or less 
 grammatical acquaintance with four European 
 tongues, not one of which had he any knowledge 
 of at the date of his sentence. In the nine months 
 of his sojourn at Wormwood Scrubs he had learned 
 enough to translate and construe sentences in French, 
 German, Spanish, and Italian. Having said this, 
 I need not add that the reference library is well 
 supplied with dictionaries. One of these, fetched
 
 124 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 down for me from its shelf, was a " Welsh-English 
 and English- Welsh Dictionary." I had never seen 
 a " Welsh-English and English- Welsh Dictionary " 
 before, and am curious to know in how many public 
 and private libraries in the kingdom a copy is to be 
 found. 
 
 One peculiar mark is borne by every volume in 
 this library, which stamps it as a " book for prisoners." 
 This mark, a black circle with the broad arrow in 
 the centre, is impressed on every available inch of 
 space on every page of every book. Margins and the 
 blank half-leaves between chapters carry this ugly 
 sign. The reason is, that no scrap of unprinted paper 
 may be available to prisoners for the transmission 
 of secret messages. The book, which a prisoner is 
 allowed to keep for a week in his cell, he may not, 
 during that week, exchange for the book of any 
 fellow-prisoner, but such exchanges are occasionally 
 effected hi chapel, on the exercise ground, or else- 
 where ; and a marginal allowance of infinitesimal 
 extent on any page suffices for the writing of a letter 
 or message in cypher. 
 
 To the question which this piece of information 
 prompted the chaplain replied, that considering 
 the character of so large a proportion of the prisoners, 
 the books were very well treated. No prisoner cares 
 to be convicted of spoiling his book, for he is then at 
 once deprived for a time of the privileges of the 
 library, and this is a sore penalty. For the library 
 is the first and last boon of the convict. The book 
 that it lends him is his one actual and only link 
 with the world that has divorced and cast him off. 
 With his Bible, or his story, or his page of easy 
 science, or his chapter of travel or adventure, he 
 carries himself back into the life which his sentence
 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 125 
 
 lost him ; or he creates for himself a new life which 
 banishes every day, for an hour of romantic and 
 incredible delight, the weary routine of the barrow, 
 the pickaxe, or the loom. 
 
 For an hour I say ; but the time limit of the 
 prisoner for reading is much more generous than 
 this. Taking his meals in his cell, he may read 
 while he eats, as many or most of the prisoners do. 
 Dinner itself would allow him the best part of an 
 hour ; Sunday might be given almost wholly to his 
 book. On a weekday labour in the prison ceases 
 at about half-past five in the evening, and lights 
 are not turned down until eight. How many of us 
 in the free world, including those to whom books 
 are a profession, can abstract from every evening 
 of the week a fair and secluded two hours and a half 
 for the pleasure or business of reading ? 
 
 ii 
 
 A good book in the cell, then, is a high concern to 
 its inmate. Intelligent prisoners in the old French 
 dungeons of State, for whom no occupation was ever 
 provided, have left poignant stories of the pains of 
 enforced idleness in those places ; and so weary of 
 his own society did Mirabeau grow in the solitudes 
 of Vincennes that he set himself deliberately to the 
 composition of indecent fables. The lot of our own 
 State captives, up to the end of the eighteenth 
 century, must have been as dour, and not a few 
 attempts at prison-breaking were the fruit of sheer 
 boredom. 
 
 In our modern gaols of both kinds the need of a 
 fair and regular service of books has long been 
 recognised. Under certain strict conditions a prisoner
 
 126 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 is allowed to receive books from friends outside, and 
 Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol availed himself of this 
 privilege. I think, however, that in all the larger 
 prisons the library is now handsomely provisioned. 
 It is praised by Jabez Balfour (who was " librarian 
 orderly " at Parkhurst) as " the very best agency for 
 good which is to be found in a convict prison." 
 Even during the period of his own detention of eleven 
 years, he tells us, the quality of the prison library 
 underwent a change : " The mawkish, goody-goody 
 stuff . . . has happily been used up and has not 
 been replaced." He adds : 
 
 " Every moral influence and power does, in fact, 
 manifest itself most effectually in the material 
 conditions and aspects of individual life. This is 
 notably the case in convict prisons. It is literally 
 impossible to overrate the good influence resulting 
 from the circulation of good books among prisoners. 
 It is often the only really successful influence." 
 
 In the spring of last year another departmental 
 committee reported on " the supply of books to 
 the prisoners in H.M. Prisons and to the inmates 
 of H.M. Borstal institutions." According to this 
 document, the books supplied to prisoners are at 
 present divided for administrative purposes into five 
 classes, named respectively, devotional books, school 
 books, books of moral instruction, books of secular 
 instruction, and " library books." The devotional 
 books are the Bible, the Prayer Book (in the case of 
 Roman Catholics "The Garden of the Soul"), and 
 the Hymn-book. These, in the official phrase, form 
 part of the " furniture " of every prisoner's cell. Then 
 come the school books. These are English History, 
 Reading Books (the National Society's), Language
 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 127 
 
 Lessons, Arithmetic, and Collins' Clear Type Pro- 
 nouncing Dictionary. As for books of moral instruc- 
 tion, it would seem that a prisoner can practically 
 be accommodated in accordance with his " religious 
 persuasion." Is he an Anglican ? He can have 
 " The Narrow Way " and " The Traveller's Guide." 
 Is he a Romanist ? He can make choice of " Think 
 Well On't," the Roman Catholic Penny Catechism, 
 and the Poor Man's Catechism. Is he a Noncon- 
 formist ? Here are the " Pilgrim's Progress " (itself 
 the creation of a prisoner) and the Methodist Hymn- 
 book. Jewish prisoners may pick works of moral 
 instruction upon other lines ; and to all prisoners 
 alike is offered a volume, the " Healthy Home and 
 How to Keep it." 
 
 The rules have been expanded since I looked 
 through the Wormwood Scrubs collection, for it 
 seems that at the present day almost any book that 
 can be brought within the technical description of 
 "educational" is allowed to any prisoner (not 
 under punishment) at any stage of his sentence. 
 There are many works that come under this definition, 
 ranging from English and foreign grammars to text- 
 books of shorthand, and manuals of shoemaking, 
 carpentry, weaving, blacksmithing, etc. Books in 
 this class, moreover, may be changed as often as a 
 new one is wanted. This, at least, is as the regulations 
 run ; but, as the service of the library is not numerous 
 in any prison, I can scarcely suppose (as the committee 
 seem anxious to persuade us) that the orderlies of 
 this department are as ready to the call of prisoners 
 as the assistants are to readers in the British Museum. 
 Naturally, they could not be ; and it is probable 
 that the prisoner gets his book his exceptional 
 book, I mean when it is convenient to the staff
 
 128 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 to wait on him. No prisoner commands anything, 
 and it is never to the interest of a prisoner to give 
 trouble to anybody. 
 
 As to the phrase " library books," this takes in 
 everything not comprehended in the four classes of 
 works connected with devotion, school, morals, and 
 secular instruction. The report says : 
 
 " Though the average level of education of the 
 prison population is below the general average of 
 the nation, yet actual illiterates are now few, and 
 nearly every grade and kind of education to be 
 found in the outside world has its representatives 
 to-day in prison. The ordinary demand which has 
 to be met by the library of a large prison is about 
 as varied as that which is catered for by the 
 circulating library of a provincial town, and at 
 one or two prisons would compare favourably with 
 it in point of quality. Prisoners' main desire is 
 naturally for relaxation and entertainment. After 
 a fairly hard day's work this is not surprising, either 
 in prison or out of it. What is somewhat surprising 
 is the extent to which the works of the best English 
 novelists are either spontaneously asked for by 
 prisoners, or accepted and read with pleasure when 
 recommended by the chaplain. There is always a 
 considerable number of prisoners who read Scott, 
 Dickens, and other standard writers, and even 
 prefer them to other books. A distinction has to 
 be drawn here between the inmates of convict and 
 local prisons. What we may call the ' educated 
 demand ' is chiefly to be found among convicts. 
 Among local prisoners it is the exception to find 
 persons of any substantial degree of education. In 
 the smaller local prisons they are almost unknown.
 
 THE BOOK IN THE CELL 129 
 
 In the convict prisons, on the other hand, such 
 persons are by no means uncommon. At Dart- 
 moor, for example, beside Dumas, Rider Haggard, 
 and Mrs. Henry Wood, we found Dickens, Thack- 
 eray, Scott, and Shakespeare in regular demand ; 
 while Pope, Southey, and Chaucer have also their 
 adherents." 
 
 The traditional vanity of the criminal finds its 
 expression even in the requests he makes to the 
 prison librarian. The convict or local prisoner who 
 would read by preference something with a taste of 
 blood can be induced to turn his attention to the 
 novelist in vogue ; and in Dartmoor there was a 
 sudden run on Shakespeare by prisoners who never 
 glanced at a page of him, but had privately received 
 the " office " that it was the correct thing to have 
 Shakespeare on the shelf. 
 
 " There is always a certain number of highly 
 educated prisoners for whom even the best of 
 works of fiction are not sufficient. Such men 
 are mostly to be found among convicts, the average 
 quality of whose reading is considerably superior 
 to that of the local prisoner ; and especially 
 among the convicts placed in what is known as 
 the " star " class, i.e. persons of respectable 
 antecedents. For these even Scott, Dickens, and 
 Thackeray require to be supplemented by historical 
 or philosophical authors of the first rank. Among 
 the convicts at Maidstone there are men who will 
 seldom read novels, but ask for such authors as 
 Froude and Freeman, Macaulay, Burke, and 
 Gibbon, Ruskin, Carlyle, Spencer, and Mill. They 
 are usually professional men convicted of serious 
 frauds."
 
 130 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 A psychological study of the reading of prisoners, 
 if we could get it, would be curious and valuable. 
 Concerning certain prisoners, for instance, we should 
 know much more, if, knowing what books they call 
 for, we also knew precisely why they called for them. 
 The Jewish penitents were to be envied who coaxed 
 their Rabbi into placing " Monte Cristo " on the list 
 of " works of devotion."
 
 PART II 
 PREVENTIVE 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 
 
 WE have in recent years modified and more or less 
 transformed our old devices for identifying criminals. 
 Mistakes, sometimes absurd and sometimes serious, 
 are still, of course, recorded : the calamity of Adolf 
 Beck, positively sworn to by I know not how many 
 witnesses, was terrible. Still, we own a science now 
 where, twenty years ago, we rested in empiricism. 
 
 To get behind the alias, to fix the true personality : 
 this is the aim of the police. A case or two, culled 
 from the archives, may show how hard it often was 
 to recognise a prisoner by the loose methods hereto- 
 fore employed. 
 
 A man giving the name of Hodgson was put before 
 the Liverpool magistrates on a charge of " fre- 
 quenting." His clothes showed that he had recently 
 been discharged from a convict prison. The list 
 of discharged convicts was searched, and the police 
 identified the prisoner with one Thomas Franklin, 
 a licence-holder, or ticket-of-leave man. He was 
 convicted and committed to Liverpool Prison, but 
 when the question of revoking his licence came up he 
 continued to protest that he was not Franklin. The 
 
 131
 
 132 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Governor of the prison suggested a further search, 
 and " Hodgson," or " Franklin," was next identified 
 with another ticket-holder, by name Peter Connor ; 
 but he had gained nothing by the correction of the 
 mistake, for Connor was an old and dangerous hand 
 whose record was well known to the police. 
 
 A woman calling herself Eliza Whitchurch was 
 convicted at Gloucester of burglary. The county 
 police did not know her, and a description was circu- 
 lated through the usual channels. The Ilminster 
 police thought her an ex - prisoner, convicted of 
 stealing at Southampton under the name of Elizabeth 
 Smith, and of burglary at Poole, nine months later, 
 under the name of Elizabeth Clode. But from other 
 evidence, variously derived, it was surmised she 
 might be a certain well-known Eliza Rolfe, against 
 whom was a tale of eight previous convictions. The 
 photographs and descriptions of the two women 
 agreed ; the prisoner at Gloucester was credited with 
 Rolfe's achievements ; and the judge passed a 
 sentence of seven years' penal servitude. In prison, 
 the woman admitted the convictions in the names of 
 " Smith " and " Clode," but declared positively that 
 she knew nothing of Rolfe. A more thorough investi- 
 gation established the fact that Eliza Rolfe and the 
 woman convicted at Gloucester were different person- 
 alities. Justice was done, at the judge's request, 
 and the sentence was reduced from seven years to six 
 months. 
 
 The whole subject of identification was first ex- 
 haustively inquired into by the committee appointed 
 by Mr. Asquith in 1893. Two new systems new, at 
 least, so far as our prison service was concerned 
 were then submitted to a thorough test. The first 
 was the one associated with the name of its sole
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 133 
 
 inventor, M. Alphonse Bertillon, of the Paris Pre- 
 fecture of Police. M. Bertillon's anthropometrical 
 system has often been described, and I do not propose 
 to deal with it at length. I may nevertheless praise it 
 once again as the first great scientific device whereby 
 it became possible definitely to fix the human person- 
 ality. 
 
 Complicated as at first it looks, the Bertillon plan 
 is simple in the working. It begins with a series of 
 fine measurements measurements depending on a 
 knowledge of the length and breadth of certain bony 
 parts of the frame, which, manhood attained, seldom 
 increase, seldom diminish. For practical purposes 
 they are invariable in adults. These measurements 
 are never found to coincide in the cases of any two 
 individuals. A's head at twenty measures what it 
 will measure at fifty. It is no more, no less, with B's 
 head. A's head and B's head may show no more 
 than a fraction's difference ; but B's measurements 
 of finger, foot, forearm, and the rest will never so 
 completely coincide with A's as to allow (measure- 
 ments precisely taken) of a false identification 
 between the two. 
 
 Bertillon takes eleven measurements in all : 
 
 Height, 
 
 Span of arms, 
 
 Height of trunk or bust (sitting height), 
 
 Length of head, 
 
 Width of head, 
 
 Length of right ear, 
 
 Width of right ear, 
 
 Length of left foot, 
 
 Length of left middle finger, 
 
 Length of left little finger, and 
 
 Length of left forearm.
 
 134 
 
 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 In addition to these measurements, M. Bertillon 
 takes particular note of the colour of the eye, and has 
 framed a special category giving seven descriptions 
 of eyes, based on the intensity of the pigmentation of 
 the iris. These are the principal measurements and 
 indications upon which the anthropometric system 
 is founded. 
 
 The eleven measurements are not, however, of 
 equal value. Five, of greater importance than the 
 rest, form the basis of the classification : the 
 length and width of the head, the length of the left 
 middle finger, the length of the left foot, and the 
 length of the left forearm. These are selected as the 
 most constant in each individual, the most varied in 
 different persons, the least correlated to one another, 
 and the easiest to take with accuracy. 
 
 The measurements are noted on a card of the 
 following description : 
 
 Head, length 
 width 
 Left middle finger 
 Left forearm 
 Left foot 
 
 Name 
 No. 
 Date of Birth 
 Place of ,, 
 Particulars of Convictions 
 
 Finger-Print Formula 
 
 (Photograph) 
 
 Height 
 Eyes 
 Hair 
 Complexion 
 Distinctive marks 
 I. 
 II. 
 III. 
 IV. 
 V. 
 VI. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 | 
 
 
 The obverse of this card would contain the prisoner's 
 portrait ; and in a short time the collection would, of 
 course, be a very large one. How to classify the
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 135 
 
 cards ? Let us see with what facility M. Bertillon 
 arranges and manipulates a packet of 100,000. 
 
 The hundred thousand cards are first divided in 
 accordance with sex ; twenty thousand portraits 
 of women are cast out, and twenty thousand repre- 
 senting children, who are in a division by them- 
 selves. The remaining group of sixty thousand 
 is next divided into three classes of twenty 
 thousand each, for prisoners of tall, short, or medium 
 stature. 
 
 Then, taking no further account of height, M. 
 Bertillon goes on to split up each of these primary 
 divisions into three classes ; and he has three packets 
 of some six thousand photographs apiece, for the long 
 heads, short heads, and medium heads. Measurement 
 of the heads for width enables the three classes of 
 six thousand to be subdivided into three other classes, 
 and he has three packets of two thousand each, 
 containing respectively the narrow-headed, medium, 
 and wide-headed prisoners. By the measurements 
 of the middle finger these three packets are reduced 
 to a series of six hundred ; these in their turn may be 
 reduced to a series of two hundred by the division 
 according to the length of foot ; the length of arms 
 reduces these again to about sixty-three ; and the 
 division according to the seven classes of eyes gives 
 a final result of nine. 
 
 Thus easily has M. Bertillon divided for us his 
 hundred thousand photographs into groups or packets 
 of nine or ten apiece ! 
 
 Let us now observe the system in the working. A 
 man, we will suppose, has just been arrested in the 
 Department of the Seine and brought for measure- 
 ment to the Bertillon bureau. He gives the name of 
 Joseph Preville, and says he has never before been
 
 136 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 measured. The police, for their part, have reason 
 to believe that Joseph is lying low. 
 
 Now there are two classifications in the Bertillon 
 system the alphabetical and the anthropometrical. 
 The alphabetical collection is searched, but no 
 Joseph Preville lurks there. This, then, is either his 
 first arrest, as he insists, or he is bluffing the bureau. 
 Well, the anthropometrical classification is as handy 
 as the other, and the next step is to take the measure- 
 ments of Joseph Preville. 
 
 The measurer finds that his subject has a head of 
 medium length, so the long-headed and the short- 
 headed photographs are cast out. The photographs 
 of criminals with heads of medium length are them- 
 selves divided into three classes, according to breadth. 
 Joseph's head is wide ; the classes of narrow and 
 medium size are rejected, and the number of photo- 
 graphs is getting smaller and smaller. Joseph's 
 middle finger is measured, next his left forearm, and 
 his left foot. 
 
 Few photographs remain in the cabinet; the fate 
 of Joseph Preville begins to tremble in the balance. 
 Here, now, is the very last packet, which contains 
 but seven or eight portraits. 
 
 Whose photograph is this ? If not Joseph's it is 
 the portrait of his double : the features are identical, 
 and the measurements tally throughout, but the 
 name is another's. Can Joseph have forgotten his 
 proper name ? The photograph in the clerk's hand 
 represents a notorious offender whom the police have 
 long sought for. A little conversation follows : 
 
 " You still say that you are Joseph Preville ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Born at Toulon ? " 
 
 "Yes."
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 137 
 
 " Quite certain you are not Jean Franois Clairon, 
 born at Calais, twice condemned for housebreaking 
 and once for arson ? " 
 
 " Quite certain." 
 
 " H'm ! Open your shirt. I think you have the 
 scar of a burn an inch and a quarter in length on your 
 left shoulder." 
 
 Nemesis ! The scar is there indeed, and " Joseph 
 Preville " resumes his proper identity as Jean 
 Fran9ois Clairon. Compliments to M. Bertillon 1 1 
 
 ii 
 
 Less widely known at the date of the inquiry was 
 the second of the two processes examined by the De- 
 partmental Committee. This was the " Finger-Print 
 System " of the late Francis Galton, suggested in the 
 first instance and partially applied by Sir William 
 Herschel. 
 
 If the reader open his hand, he will see that 
 the inner part is covered in every direction with 
 lines long and short, broken and more or less straight, 
 running hither and thither, and some of them grouped 
 into very complex patterns. The conspicuous creases 
 caused by the folding of the skin may be plainly 
 observed in the hand of a child just born. No one 
 has been able to say definitely how they were formed 
 or what office they serve ; science has discovered no 
 real use for them, and they are of interest chiefly to the 
 student of palmistry. 
 
 Now, however, note the delicate lines on the fingers. 
 So struck was Bewick by them that he " made 
 engravings on wood of a couple of his fingers, which 
 
 1 A case very like "Joseph Preville's" was traced some years 
 ago by M. Bertillon.
 
 138 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 he used as designs for his illustrated works." The 
 same lineations were destined later to be far other- 
 wise applied. Note that on the third joint of the 
 fingers the lines or ridges nearest to that joint run 
 right across the finger, but the lines somewhat closer to 
 the finger-tip follow the form of the nail. They take 
 on the shape of a moderately rounded arch, and in the 
 centre of the bulb of the finger is found the pattern 
 proper of the finger-print. 
 
 Let the reader compare these fine curvatures of 
 his own finger-prints with those of any friend. At a 
 glance the differences will seem not very great. Let 
 them be examined closely and the differences will be 
 greater than at first. View the two hands then under 
 a small magnifying glass, and the differences will be 
 more than ever conspicuous. Briefly, the conclusion 
 arrived at by Galton was that the chance of two 
 finger-prints being identical is less than one in sixty- 
 four thousand millions. If, then, in using the finger- 
 print as a means of identification, two such prints 
 are compared and are found to be identical, no doubt 
 can be entertained " that they are prints of the same 
 finger of the same person ; if they differ, the inference 
 is equally certain that they are made by different 
 fingers. The prints of one ringer, if clearly taken, are 
 therefore enough to decide the question of identity 
 or non-identity, and if the prints of the three or more 
 fingers be taken and compared, all possibility of error 
 is absolutely eliminated." 
 
 Further, the lines and patterns of the finger-print 
 are enduring ; in the living subject they neither 
 vanish nor are modified by the lapse of time. They 
 remain on the fingers of the dead until decomposition 
 has caused the skin to perish. If the skin has been 
 preserved by artificial means, the prints are preserved
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 
 
 also ; they are legible on the fingers of many Egyptian 
 mummies. Mr. Galton took innumerable sets of 
 prints covering the period from childhood to extreme 
 old age. " As there is no sign," he said, " except in 
 one case, of change during any of these four intervals " 
 from childhood to boyhood, from boyhood to early 
 manhood, from early manhood to middle age, and 
 from middle to extreme old age " which together 
 almost wholly cover the ordinary life of man, we are 
 justified in inferring that between birth and death 
 there is absolutely no change in, say, 699 out of 700 
 of the numerous characteristics of the markings of 
 the fingers of the same person such as can be impressed 
 by him whenever it is desirable to do so. There appear 
 to be no bodily characteristics other than deep scars 
 and tattoo-marks comparable in their persistence to 
 these markings ; at the same time they are, out of all 
 proportion, more numerous than any other measur- 
 able features." 
 
 Let me for a moment interrupt this description 
 of Galton's system, to bring in a criminal case which 
 might have furnished a most interesting test. A 
 lady living at Highgate was found strangled in a 
 room of her house. Examination of the premises 
 gave no clue to the police until a well-trained pair 
 of eyes observed that the room in which the murdered 
 lady lay had been entered by means of the window, 
 the sill of which retained the impressions of the four 
 fingers of each hand. These marks were photo- 
 graphed, and proved legible. Suppose the murderer 
 had been through the hands of the police, and 
 Scotland Yard had had his finger-prints in its register : 
 his identification would have been established at 
 once. 
 
 In considering the value of the finger-print for
 
 140 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 the purposes of proving or of tracing identity, the 
 committee had before them the suggestion " that the 
 finger-prints could easily be altered or removed, and 
 if this were so it would be a fatal objection to their 
 use." They satisfied themselves by experiment that 
 the marks " could not be altered so as to cause any 
 possibility of mis-identification." They are, indeed, 
 capable of being destroyed altogether, but the process 
 would be particularly painful, and it would, move- 
 over, result in producing " a new personal mark of a 
 most distinctive character." Another question is, 
 how far the patterns may become obscured by hard 
 manual labour ? But the old and habitual " lag," 
 in a state of freedom, is not at all in love with manual 
 labour ; nor when in prison is he generally employed 
 at tasks that would tend greatly to modify the ridges 
 of the hand. Impressions were taken of the finger- 
 prints of one hundred prisoners at Pentonville 
 oakum-pickers, stokers, bakers, tailors, and so forth 
 and with the exceptions of two men who were 
 maimed, the results in every case were " perfectly 
 clear and complete." 
 
 All impressions are divisible into four types. The 
 fourfold classification, the last arrived at, I believe, 
 and the outcome of numberless trials, is said to meet 
 every practical requirement. These four types of 
 finger-prints are : Arches, Loops, Whorls, and 
 Composites. An Arch is a pattern in which the 
 ridges in the centre run from one side to the other of 
 the bulb of the finger without making any backward 
 turn. In the Loop, there is a single backward turn 
 but no twist. The Whorl pattern shows a turn 
 " through at least one circle, or a double turn in the 
 form of a duplex spiral." The Composite includes 
 patterns in which the peculiarities and combinations
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 141 
 
 of the Arch, Loop, and Whorl are recorded in the 
 same print. There are subdivisions of the Composite 
 into Central Pocket Loops, Lateral Pocket Loops, 
 Twinned Loops, and Accidentals, which the expert 
 revels in, but which are a sore exercise for the be- 
 ginner. It is in no way necessary to expound them 
 here. 
 
 We are next to consider and contrast the manner 
 in which the measurements are taken under M. 
 Bertillon's system and the impressions of the finger- 
 bulbs under Mr. Galton's. Here the Englishman has 
 a distinct pull over the Frenchman. The anthropo- 
 metric method requires fine instruments very finely 
 adjusted ; allowance must be made for minute errors 
 on the part of the operator, and for slight careless- 
 nesses in entering the measurements on the card. 
 Again, the parts measured, although practically 
 invariable in adults, may undergo a variation, so small, 
 perhaps, as to be scarcely appreciable, yet sufficient 
 to give rise to doubt if the subject be remeasured 
 after an interval of years. 
 
 The finger-print, on the other hand, considered as 
 a means of proving or tracing identity, has this 
 supreme and unapproachable value : it is an absolute 
 impression taken direct from the body itself. A 
 proper finger - print is necessarily a true print ; a 
 document complete in itself, which nothing can ever 
 invalidate. And the process of taking the print 
 is the easiest conceivable. The appliances, a sheet 
 of white paper ordinary foolscap will do a bottle 
 of printer's ink and a roller for spreading it, a slab 
 of flat tin, and a bit of brass wire or a sharpened 
 end of a penholder to use as a pointer for counting 
 and tracing the lines or ridges. Ink the finger- 
 bulb, lay it on the paper, and your impression is
 
 142 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 recorded : a reversal of the pattern on the finger. A 
 warder at Pentonville who had never before heard of 
 finger-printing, and had never handled the materials, 
 took for the committee in the course of an hour thirty- 
 five sets of impressions of three fingers, each in 
 duplicate, every one of which was perfectly legible. 
 
 In deciding what system should be adopted into 
 the service of the English prisons, three principal con- 
 ditions were laid down. (1) The descriptions, measure- 
 ments, or marks to form the basis of the system must 
 be such as could be taken readily and with due accu- 
 racy by Constable A of the Force or Warder B of any 
 of H.M. prisons. (2) The method of classifying the 
 descriptions must be such that the old hand seeking 
 to conceal his identity under an alias could be con- 
 fronted as promptly as possible with his real name and 
 record. (3) The case being found among the classified 
 descriptions, it was desirable that the evidence of 
 identity be nothing less than convincing. 
 
 It is clear that the first and third of these con- 
 ditions are fully met by the Galton scheme of finger- 
 prints. The classifying of the prints requires highly 
 trained knowledge, but we have seen that no peculiar 
 skill is needed in taking them. As for the nature of 
 the evidence afforded, it is as perfect as evidence can 
 be. It is improbable that once in ten thousand years 
 would the imprints of the finger-tips of two pairs of 
 hands be found to coincide. But the second condition 
 was less easily fulfilled. It was found that for a col- 
 lection, say, of ten thousand cards Galton's method 
 of classification would be entirely suitable. But a 
 well -stocked Criminal Register contains tens of 
 thousands, and Galton himself was of the opinion 
 that to a collection of this size his mode of indexing 
 could not well be applied.
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 143 
 
 In Bertillon's system, on the other hand, classifica- 
 tion is one of the strongest points ; and to this 
 system accordingly the preference was given for 
 primary classification, the finger-print method being 
 adopted for secondary or sub-classification. 
 
 Meanwhile, some two years before its introduction 
 into this country, anthropometry had found its way 
 into the Province of Bengal. It spread, and at the 
 end of 1898 some 200,000 cards had been accumu- 
 lated in the several Provinces. India offers a first- 
 rate field for anthropometrical experiment, the 
 Hindoo being an adept at false personation, and 
 excellent results were obtained. In Bengal, however, 
 certain weaknesses had begun to show in the system ; 
 and it was in these circumstances that the Inspector- 
 General of Police for the Lower Provinces, Mr. E. R. 
 Henry (now Sir Edward Henry, our Commissioner of 
 Police in London), began to cast a very intelligent 
 eye on the finger-print formula of Francis Galton. 
 The problem of classification, which had baffled 
 Galton, was finally solved by Mr. Henry : a triumph, 
 I believe, that none but a scientific mind could 
 thoroughly appreciate. 
 
 With the Henry code in hand, the Government of 
 India appointed a small independent committee to 
 inquire into and report upon both systems, Bertillon's 
 and Galton's. The committee recommended the 
 adoption of the finger-print as classified by Mr. 
 Henry ; urging its superiority to the anthropo- 
 metric method (1) in simplicity of working ; (2) 
 in the cost of apparatus ; (3) in the fact that all 
 skilled work is transferred to a central or classifica- 
 tion office ; (4) in the rapidity with which the 
 process can be worked ; and (5) in the certainty 
 of the results. The finger-print system was forth-
 
 144 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 with introduced throughout the whole of British 
 India. 
 
 Under the new process of indexing, the first 
 classification divides all the different kinds of im- 
 pressions into two classes, recognisable at a glance. 
 Combinations of these classes, as exhibited in the 
 ten fingers taken in pairs, enable all the descriptive 
 cards to be arranged in 1024 classes, and to each class 
 is allotted a separate pigeon-hole. By means of an 
 ingenious key any pigeon-hole can at once be found, 
 and the original of the most intricate card is produced 
 in five or six minutes out of a file containing hundreds 
 of records. For practical purposes, therefore, the 
 English system, as developed by Mr. Henry, counted 
 better than the French. 
 
 For a time the two methods, the Bertillon and the 
 Galton-Henry, were worked together in our own 
 detective service. It was presently found that the 
 second would stand by itself ; Bertillonage was 
 discarded, and I understand that Scotland Yard 
 with amazing results in its pigeon-holes claims the 
 finger-print as the thief-taker of the world. 
 
 A recent story from India to round the subject 
 off. The manager of a tea-garden in the district of 
 Julpaiguri, on the Bhutan frontier, was found on his 
 bed with his throat cut. His despatch-box and safe 
 had been rifled, and a quantity of rupees carried off. 
 One of the suspected persons was a former servant 
 of the manager whom he had had imprisoned for 
 theft ; but this man, released from gaol some weeks 
 before the murder, had not since been seen in the 
 neighbourhood. Among the papers in the despatch- 
 box was a calendar in book form, on the blue paper of 
 which were noticed " two faint brown smudges." 
 A magnifying glass showed one smudge to be part
 
 BERTILLONAGE AND THE FINGER-PRINT 145 
 
 of the impression of the finger of a right hand. The 
 finger-prints registered in the Central Office of the 
 Bengal Police were searched, and the right-thumb 
 impression of one Kangali Charan, the ex-servant of 
 the murdered manager, corresponded exactly with 
 the smudge on the calendar. Kangali Charan was 
 arrested. The chemical examiner to the Government 
 certified that the brown smudges on the calendar 
 were mammalian blood, " the inference being that the 
 actual murderer or some associate had knocked his 
 blood-stained thumb against the calendar when 
 rummaging the papers in the despatch-box for the 
 key of the safe." Kangali was put on trial, charged 
 with murder and theft. Of the theft of the rupees he 
 was easily convicted ; but on the count of murder, 
 witness failing, the prisoner escaped. Judge and 
 assessor recorded their opinion that the charge of 
 theft had been established, and the judges of the 
 supreme court upheld the conviction.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 
 
 THE murderer who knew even a little of what the micro- 
 scope reveals to the expert would rarely be at the 
 pains of inventing fables about bloodmarks. A 
 man in prison is suspected of murder or manslaughter. 
 His clothes exhibit certain suggestive stains, or the 
 stains are found on his knife or some other instrument. 
 " Oh ! " says he, " I was killing something the other 
 day," and, if a person of some ingenuity, he will 
 probably go on to name you an animal not easily 
 procured in laboratories. In the next street resides 
 a learned gentleman with a microscope and an 
 extensive and peculiar knowledge of blood discs. It 
 shall go hard with science but this gentleman will 
 solve the problem. 
 
 Some years ago a certain man lay under charge of 
 murder. Among the mass of circumstantial evidence 
 against|him was a knife " smeared with blood, which 
 had dried both on the blade and on the handle." The 
 prisoner said he had cut a piece of raw beef with the 
 knife and had omitted to cleanse the blade and 
 handle. The weapon was sent for microscopical 
 examination. 
 
 The stain, said the expert, was certainly blood. 
 *' It was not the blood of a piece of dead flesh, but 
 that of a living body ; for it had coagulated where it 
 was found." It was human blood. But the potent 
 
 146
 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 147 
 
 tube brought more than this to light. Mixed with 
 the blood on the knife were a few minute vegetable 
 fibres. They were cotton fibres, and identical with 
 the fibres of the murdered man's shirt and scarf. 
 The prisoner, in brief, had cut his victim's throat, 
 severing both shirt and neckerchief in doing so. 
 
 In a case of arson, some strips of tinder sewn 
 together with a thread formed a chief part of the 
 corpus delicti. The thread was compared under the 
 microscope with a piece which the prisoner had used 
 to mend his cap and brought about his conviction. 
 
 The curious illustration that follows belongs, I 
 fancy, to a day when the microscope was little used 
 as an aid to criminal investigation. The late John 
 Quekett, eminent in microscopy, was asked if it were 
 possible to determine whether a small fragment of 
 dried skin had once appertained to a human being. 
 He would try, he said, to give the answer. A morsel 
 was therefore despatched to him, " somewhat resem- 
 bling what might be torn from the surface of an 
 old-fashioned travelling trunk, with all the hair 
 rubbed off." 
 
 Quekett arranged his specimen, and the microscope 
 soon showed him " some fine hairs scattered over the 
 surface. These, after careful examination, he pro- 
 nounced with confidence to be human hairs, and such 
 as grew on the exposed parts of the body, and declared 
 the person who had owned them to have been of a 
 fair complexion." 
 
 Now this piece of skin had^been removed from the 
 door of an ancient church in Yorkshire, and a tradi- 
 tion of the neighbourhood was that Danish robbers, 
 a thousand years ago, had violated the sanctuary, 
 and that, having been taken and flayed alive, their 
 skins were nailed to the doors of the church. A few
 
 148 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 scraps of skin had remained here and there under 
 the nails with which the doors were studded ; and 
 one of these scraps, tested by John Quekett's micro- 
 scope, sufficed to make good the legend of the 
 fair-haired Danish pirates of a thousand years 
 before. 
 
 The reader has perceived that the expert in this 
 instance not only pronounces the hairs to be human 
 hairs, but adds that they are such as grow " on the 
 exposed parts of the body." Wind, rain, hail, and 
 the dusts of storms unnumbered have driven for a 
 thousand years against the doors of this church in 
 Yorkshire ; yet the hairs upon the patches of skin, 
 of which the eye can discern no hint, have preserved 
 their characters indestructibly through the destruc- 
 tions of all these centuries ; and it is instantly known 
 of what colour they once were, and to what part of the 
 body of some Danish pirate they once adhered. 
 
 Science being able to expound to us mysteries like 
 these, it is the duty of the officer investigating crime 
 to invoke the help of the scientific expert whenever 
 and wherever his own knowledge and experience come 
 short. The expert will show us not merely wherein 
 the hair of animals differs from the fibres of plants, 
 but how the characters of the former may be dis- 
 tinguished from the characters of the hair of man. 
 Further, he will make plain for us the signs distinctive 
 of the many kinds of hair upon the human body 
 the hair of the head, the hair in the nostrils, the hair 
 of the eyebrows, the beard, the moustache, the hair on 
 the chest, the limbs, the hair on the back of the hands. 
 He will tell us whether the hair is that of a man or a 
 woman. He will in some degree determine the age 
 of a person by analysing beneath the microscope a 
 small quantity of that person's hair. He may often
 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 149 
 
 establish by examination of hair the identity of a 
 corpse far advanced in decomposition. 
 
 Dr. Hans Gross observes that hair is very com- 
 monly found in the hands of persons who have 
 been killed ; he recommmends that it be scrupu- 
 lously looked for, and, where found, described with 
 precision. He insists, for example, that it is not 
 sufficient to state : " Hair found in the right hand 
 of N.N." ; the situation of the hair must be expressly 
 indicated, e.g. " between the thumb and first finger," 
 or " lying obliquely across the root of the first finger 
 and the ball of the thumb." Such minuteness of 
 description might help an investigating magistrate 
 to understand the nature of the struggle that had 
 taken place. " It must be remembered," Dr. Gross 
 adds, " that every hair discovered during the course 
 of an inquiry may be of the greatest importance when 
 it is possible to prove beyond all doubt that it belongs 
 to the accused person." 
 
 It may also, of course, import as much to prove 
 that the hair in evidence belongs to some one else. 
 You thus set free an innocent creature who may have 
 been in a sense the most literal within a hair's 
 breadth of condemnation. Here is an instance : 
 
 An old woman engaged in the curious business of 
 pledging and redeeming articles of pawn was mur- 
 dered. In one hand of the corpse were discovered three 
 hairs, which, it was surmised, the poor old body in 
 her death agony had torn from the head of her 
 assailant. Forthwith the hairs were delivered to two 
 very noted microscopic experts. In prison under 
 suspicion of the crime lay the old woman's son, of 
 whose hair also some samples were sent to the 
 examiners. " The three hairs found in the hand of 
 the corpse were from six to seven cms. in length, were
 
 150 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 dark brown in colour, had been torn out (the roots were 
 preserved), and seemed to have belonged to a man 
 of from twenty to forty years old." What struck 
 the experts as somewhat strange was that, while two 
 of the hairs were brown under the lens, the third 
 was in some parts brown and in others black. " Just 
 above the root it was brown, half a centimetre farther 
 on it became black, then again brown, and half a 
 centimetre farther towards the tip it became black 
 again." The phenomenon is said to be of very 
 unusual occurrence. Next were analysed the samples 
 of hair cut from the head of the prisoner, and behold ! 
 the fantastic phenomenon repeated itself. About 
 " two-thirds of the hairs were brown and the other 
 third presented absolutely the same peculiarity as the 
 brown and black striped hair " found in the dead 
 woman's hand. Now, indeed, might it have been 
 thought that justice had her grip upon a parricide. 
 It was not so ! The youth who barely eluded the 
 gallows had had no lot in his mother's dreadful death. 
 The assassin was duly nailed, and the microscope 
 established the fact that his hair was very nearly 
 identical with that of the murdered woman's son. 
 
 It is probable that the microscope has not yet 
 accomplished the half of what will one day be achieved 
 by it in the interests of the law. The scientist and 
 that legal party whose proper business is to thrust 
 his nose, as Sancho says, into other people's porridge 
 must know more of one another, and be in more 
 familiar touch. The microscopist, all unaware of 
 what is or might be wanted of him, can scarcely be 
 expected to dance attendance in police-courts on the 
 off-chance that his " wonder-seeing tube " may be of 
 use to some barrister or policeman there. Not at 
 all. It is the duty of the expert men of law to beg the
 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 151 
 
 aid, as often as needed, of the expert men of science. 
 And this duty presupposes and includes sundry other 
 duties. Tims, the officer entrusted with a difficult 
 case of crime should know just when the skill of the 
 savant will be most useful to him ; he should know 
 the savant who ought to be consulted ; he should 
 know the questions that may and that may not be 
 submitted to him; and he should know, moreover, 
 in what manner the thing to be examined, the corpus 
 delicti, should be taken from or guarded on the scene 
 of the crime. The last-mentioned point is of cardinal 
 interest and significance. Are there footprints, 
 blood-spattered grass or bushes, a handful of dust, or 
 a splash of dirt to be kept for the scrutiny of the 
 scientific expert ? They should be immediately 
 insulated, if insulation is in any way possible, and the 
 utmost care should be taken to cover and protect 
 them till they are either in the hands of the expert, 
 or till the expert can be brought to the spot itself. 
 
 Let us go back for a moment to the first illustra- 
 tion, that of the murderer who severed the throat of 
 his prey and evidently thought that the blood of 
 raw beef was much the same as the blood of a living 
 man. How does the microscope differentiate these 
 various forms of blood ? How distinguish blood from 
 stains resembling it ? Place a drop of blood under a 
 microscope, and you will see an infinite crowd of 
 minute roundish bodies, of a light yellowish colour, 
 swimming in a pale fluid the liquor sanguinis. 
 These are the blood discs, globules, or corpuscles. 
 The faintness of their colour is owing to their extreme 
 thinness, but the colour becomes plain enough when 
 a great number of them lie immediately over one 
 another. It is then either a deep red or a very elegant 
 scarlet, the familiar hue of blood proceeding entirely
 
 152 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 from its corpuscles. Manifestly, then, when stains 
 of any sort are in question, the microscope is at once 
 able to tell us whether they are blood or not. To the 
 eye, a trace of blood does not always look like blood ; 
 and something, on the other hand, that is not blood 
 at all a mark of paint or rust, etc. is often sus- 
 piciously near to it in colour. But the expert at the 
 microscope cannot be deceived. As to the other 
 question, it is not always possible to say precisely 
 whence the blood has issued. There is, however, one 
 very good criterion that, namely, of the dimensions 
 of the discs or corpuscles ; and it will here suffice to 
 say that those of the ox are not more than three - 
 fourths as large as those of a human being. An 
 accused, as has been suggested, will frequently 
 declare that the blood found on him is that of an 
 animal he has killed, but if the bloodstains on his 
 clothes or weapon contain globules of a considerable 
 size, and he names some animal whose blood discs are 
 of an exceptional smallness, he has pretty obviously 
 lied! 
 
 We may take it that a person who commits a 
 crime with a weapon of any kind does in general try 
 his best to clean the w r eapon. But by the very 
 process of cleansing it he may convict himself. A 
 strayed reveller in the garden of a restaurant had a 
 quarrel with a dragoon, who split his skull open with 
 a sabre stroke. The sabres of all the dragoons who 
 had been out of barracks that day were collected and 
 sent for microscopic examination. None of the 
 weapons bore a trace of blood, but in the cutting edge 
 of one an almost invisible particle of a blade of grass 
 was sticking in an almost invisible notch. The notch 
 had kept the particle of grass quite fresh ; it could not, 
 therefore, have been sticking in that place very long.
 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 153 
 
 The soldier to whom the sabre belonged was arrested 
 and questioned, and finally admitted his guilt. He 
 had scoured the blade in the moist grass (as the 
 Phoenix Park murderers scoured their knives in the 
 grass against the milestone on the Tallaght Road), 
 and wiped it with a cloth but the cloth had 
 left in the notch that fragment of grass for the 
 microscope ! 
 
 Still, you may clean a blade so perfectly that the 
 microscope itself will discover nothing there. But 
 your search is perhaps not even yet complete. Is 
 the weapon a clasp-knife ? Is it a dagger ? Is it a 
 hatchet ? Let the blade or the iron be drawn from the 
 handle, and see whether murder will out then ! 
 Blood lurks in crevices that the eye will scarce per- 
 ceive. 
 
 In a hop -growing district abroad, one of the fields 
 of a wealthy cultivator was destroyed during the 
 night, shortly before the harvest season. A small 
 contiguous estate was hi the occupation of an un- 
 successful rival who was known to be jealous of his 
 neighbour. This man was laid hold of, and a micro- 
 scopist was asked for an opinion on his pocket- 
 knife, a formidable affair with a curved blade the 
 very thing for slicing into your neighbour's hops. 
 First, however, the careful expert procured a hop 
 plant or two, and made a study of the plant and its 
 rind. The peculiar spurs on the branches of hop were 
 perceived to be wholly different from the spurs on 
 the rind or peel of sundry other plants that were 
 compared with them under the microscope. Next, 
 the knife with the serviceable blade was taken to 
 pieces, and in the place where the blade had been 
 united to the handle the microscope shone upon a 
 quantity of the atom-like spurs of the hop. Beyond
 
 154 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 a doubt the knife had very recently been used to cut 
 hops ; and the least successful farmer does not make 
 away with his crops before the harvest. 
 
 Now let us see how the microscope can tackle the 
 forger and the falsifier of documents. Inks are of 
 many kinds, and the forger often has a difficulty in 
 making a perfect match. The eye is easily deceived, 
 and the magnifying glass is not in all cases to be 
 relied upon ; but if the question turns upon the 
 employment of different inks, the microscope will 
 give the answer pat. There are, I need not say, some 
 first-rate chemical tests ; but the advantage of the 
 microscopical over the chemical analysis is this, that 
 the first leaves intact the object which the second 
 must in some degree destroy. Few of us possess the 
 simplest outfit of a burglar, but a decently appointed 
 writing-table will give anyone his opening in forgery. 
 Add to this that the banker's cheque is a common 
 medium of exchange and the frequency of forgery 
 should in no way surprise us. In this association, 
 forgery is extended to include any effort to falsify 
 any kind of document. 
 
 The photographic test will often in these cases be 
 as valuable as the test by microscope. Wherever, 
 in the process of obliterating the written sheet, 
 mechanical means have been employed, the paper 
 must have undergone some amount of thinning. Such 
 a thinning of the paper should be, and usually is, 
 appreciable by the unassisted eye ; but if it be photo- 
 graphed by transmitted light, the local injury to 
 the paper appears very plainly as a blot of con- 
 siderable density a blot that speaks like a blood- 
 print. 
 
 But it is to the microscope that all writing sus- 
 pected of falsification should in the first instance be
 
 155 
 
 submitted. Paper can be, and is, manipulated in the 
 most surprising and fairy-like ways with water, 
 with corrosives, with paint, with grease, with heaps 
 of things. The subtlest imposition in this art breaks 
 down under the gaze of the microscope. A false 
 sheet of paper may be slipped into a will, seals and 
 watermarks may be imitated as exactly as an ancient 
 yellow stain, and it is easier to counterfeit a grease- 
 spot than to pencil an eyebrow ; but the distinction 
 of the genuine from the sham is play-work to the 
 microscope. You can be confidently told by the 
 microscopist what style of pen hard or soft, broad 
 or fine you selected to trace the will that has come 
 to spell for you a killing sentence of penal servi- 
 tude ! 
 
 Divers crimes can be committed on paper : threats, 
 libels, perjury, forgery ; and a post card, a half-sheet 
 of note-paper, or a leaf torn from a copy-book or 
 diary may be of paramount importance in a case. 
 What sort of paper has the accused been in the habit 
 of using, is a question the investigating officer will 
 sometimes have to ask himself, and he will thereupon 
 most likely proceed to a domiciliary search. Is there 
 any paper on his premises which looks in the least 
 like the corpus delicti, the subject-matter of the 
 crime ? It should be entrusted without delay to 
 the microscopic expert. Dr. Gross remarks that the 
 objection " will often be wrongly made that the 
 majority of the people of a locality buy their paper 
 at the same establishment, or at least at a very 
 small number of establishments, so that the most 
 certain proof of the identity of two papers cannot 
 serve for very much." A character of forgery cases is 
 that the criminal eschews the paper commonly 
 sold in his own neighbourhood. He will buy
 
 156 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 it at a shop some distance away, or perhaps tear a 
 sheet from an old exercise-book, or use the second 
 leaf of a sheet of note-paper. " If the other half is 
 found at the residence of the accused, the proof of 
 identity made by the observer at the microscope >\ill 
 be practically conclusive." On one occasion recourse 
 was had to the microscope to prove that a lump of 
 paper forming the wad of a firearm was the same as 
 the paper found in the house of the supposed murderer. 
 Of course, however, these examinations will now 
 and then prove just a trifle too much. We should 
 scarcely hang a man on the evidence just cited, 
 though it might conceivably be the one proof that 
 had been missing. Great in all these cases are the 
 uses of the microscope. 
 
 From the fine handiwork of such a prince of 
 counterfeiters as " old man Johnson " of America 
 (who put in circulation a million dollars' worth of 
 bogus money) the microscopist may be called upon 
 to deal with so vulgar a thing as a scratch, or the dis- 
 coloured nails of a prisoner or a corpse. 
 
 The life-and-death wrestle between a murderer and 
 his victim may leave bloody scratches upon both. If 
 the dead body and the suspected criminal are both 
 in the hands of justice, both should be closely ex- 
 amined. Are there scratches upon the face or hands 
 of the murdered person ? If so, let the finger-nails 
 of the accused be seen to. Some correspondence may 
 be observed between the nails and the scratches. 
 The officer may not at first have perceived or looked 
 for the marks of scratching on the corpse, but he may 
 have noticed dark red matter under the nails of the 
 prisoner. Such matter should be collected and sifted 
 by the microscope, when it may possibly be found 
 to contain blood and scales of skin ; and then if
 
 CRIME AND THE MICROSCOPE 157 
 
 the corpse be scrutinised, the marks of scratches may 
 be noted. No direct or positive evidence might be 
 gathered, but a helpful inference might be drawn. 
 The investigator with the genius of his work neglects 
 not a particle of dirt, not a few grains of sawdust ; 
 and the microscope will frequently reward his care. 
 The forlornest hope holds something and is worth 
 standing by. 
 
 In the hands of a crafty officer a thing that has no 
 real bearing on the case may be the means of ex- 
 torting a confession. Here is an instance of the 
 consideration that should be given to stains of 
 every sort. A large, thick stain on the trousers 
 of a man standing his trial for murder took the eye 
 of the investigating officer. The microscope pro- 
 nounced it putty, but not a single trace of putty 
 was found where the crime had been committed. 
 The prisoner was interrogated. He himself (as it 
 turned out) did not know what the mark was, nor 
 how he had come by it ; but, thinking that it must 
 have some connection with the deed, he spun a tale 
 to account for it. This, of course, betrayed him to 
 the investigator, who had learned that the stain was 
 putty. He quickly showed the accused that his 
 story was false ; and the man, unnerved by the 
 apparent omniscience of justice, yielded and acknow- 
 ledged his guilt. 
 
 Lastly, when you have a suspect in the cells, request 
 him to oblige you with his boots. Mud upon the 
 soles will communicate its secrets to the microscope. 
 A foreigner detained for theft was believed to have 
 deposited a large sum of money in a hollow tree on 
 the bank of a stream. The scene had been visited 
 by the magistrate, and as the man had been arrested 
 quite close to it, his footwear, it was thought, might
 
 158 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 yield a clue. Forthwith the mud on his boots was 
 tested by the microscope. There were two layers 
 of mud on the soles, with a layer of sand between 
 them. In concealing his booty the man had trodden 
 first in the mud, then on the sand of the bank, and 
 then again in the mud.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 CRIME AND THE CAMERA 
 
 CONSPICUOUS among the relics of the Camden Town 
 murder were charred fragments of a letter ; photo- 
 graphs of these burnt scraps played an important 
 part in the chain of circumstantial evidence whereby 
 the police sought to bind Robert Wood. 
 
 An authentic case or two will show us at a glance 
 what services photography may render to the criminal 
 law. A photograph, we know, is a strictly impartial 
 thing, and no amount of hard swearing will destroy 
 the evidence it establishes. 
 
 It is probably remembered that President McKinley 
 was assassinated at the opening of the Buffalo 
 Exhibition. A cinematograph machine from the 
 Edison laboratory was on the spot, playing, all un- 
 wittingly, the role of first detective. Some very fine 
 pictures were taken, and these, a day or two later, 
 were under examination by the Criminal Investigation 
 Department. 
 
 The officers of the department at once made an 
 interesting discovery. Among the crowd surging 
 and swaying around the President the figure of one 
 man stood out with damning distinctness. Picture 
 after picture thrown off by the translucent ribbon 
 showed the same man, and always under terrible 
 excitement of feeling; tense and battling amid the 
 throng. 
 
 159
 
 160 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 He struggles towards the spot where the President 
 is delivering his address. The people whom he 
 thrusts from his way turn and glare at him ; he 
 fights on, getting nearer and nearer to the front. 
 The expression on his countenance is extraordinary ; 
 all his energies are knitting up to some appalling 
 purpose. Now he has almost attained his goal, and 
 now also arrested by fate for one sufficing instant 
 he turns his features full upon the camera. This 
 man was Czolgosz, the President's assassin. 
 
 A second case, as dramatic as the first, gives us the 
 camera in the role of preserver of the innocent. An 
 Englishman in Rio de Janeiro was charged with the 
 murder of his colleague, a Brazilian. They had 
 quarrelled, but the quarrel was said to have been 
 amicably settled, and they had sailed together in a 
 yacht. 
 
 Late in the day the Englishman brought the yacht 
 back to harbour, with the dead body of his com- 
 panion. His statement was that the Brazilian had 
 fallen from the masthead to the deck. This was 
 generally disbelieved, and medical experts testified 
 that a wound on the dead man's head might have, 
 and probably had, been produced by a blow from a 
 stick or an oar. 
 
 Scarcely could the accused have stood in a situation 
 more desperate. Then came as witness in his behalf 
 an opportune tourist on a steamboat. This provi- 
 dential person had directed his kodak upon the 
 harbour, and the little picture he had snapped 
 revealed a dark spot on the white sail of a passing 
 yacht. The photograph was enlarged, and the dark 
 spot then took the form of a man falling from the 
 masthead. The Englishman had spoken the truth, 
 but it had needed the camera to confirm his story.
 
 CRIME AND THE CAMERA 161 
 
 What possibilities are here unfolded to us of the 
 camera as an aid to justice ! It is, in truth, with 
 photography as it is with microscopy : we have never 
 yet put the one art or the other completely to the 
 test. By and by, for instance, when we have begun 
 to question the facile verdict of " Suicide," the 
 microscope brought to bear on the contents of the 
 stomach will astonish us with returns of murder. 
 
 We are, as I have said, at a very early stage of 
 microscopy in the investigation of crime. It is 
 precisely the same with photography. We know 
 vaguely what it has already done for justice ; but 
 the revelations of to-morrow are but beginning to 
 be prefigured. 
 
 Now let us detail the question a little. Any and 
 every perishable thing on a scene of crime should be 
 photographed instanter. A wound is a perishable 
 thing ; it begins to heal in the imperceptible moment 
 of its infliction. A man is struck in the neck ; the 
 gash begins instantly to close. A footprint is another 
 very perishable thing. It may or may not be possible 
 to take the impression accurately ; it is always 
 possible to take a photograph. 
 
 Sooner or later we shall train our police in photo- 
 graphy ; and a cheap, portable camera will be a part of 
 the policeman's outfit. On the Continent, where the 
 application of the camera to legal purposes is better 
 understood than at home, they recognise a scientific 
 and also what may be called a popular employment of 
 it. The investigating officer in a matter of crime is 
 often an amateur photographer, and finds it useful 
 to append to his report a picture of the locality he 
 has inspected. An official document of the kind may 
 thus gain immensely in clearness. 
 
 Or the investigating officer, setting forth on his
 
 162 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 preliminary inquiry, may take a photographer with 
 him doubtless it would be better that he should 
 always do so and the artist is not necessarily a 
 professional. Any simple citizen with a camera may 
 render a turn to justice ; and the amateur photo- 
 grapher at a race meeting, a regatta, or any public 
 ceremony in the open air cannot be too careful over 
 his work. He can never tell what his negative con- 
 tains. The operators from Mr. Edison's laboratory 
 had not a notion that they were going to assist the 
 police in their identification of Czolgosz ! 
 
 It is well to insist on the help that the amateur 
 may give. A very difficult function, of course, is that 
 of the expert photographer whom the law now and 
 again summons to its aid, and whom it will summon 
 far oftener in the future. It is the expert who will 
 make photography important in unexpected places 
 in all kinds of criminal inquisitions. 
 
 " Perchance in a little while," says Dr. Gross, " we 
 shall hardly be able to understand how we were able 
 formerly to conduct any case without invoking at 
 each moment the aid of scientific photography." 
 The sensitised plate has been exquisitely described 
 as the new retina of the man of science ; and wherever 
 the camera can range beyond the eye it will in course 
 of time be employed for reference in courts of law. 
 
 Dr. Gross suggests that the magic-lantern slides 
 or even radiographs " may yet play a great role in the 
 law courts. Anyone who has had to show and 
 explain a very small object in court is aware of the 
 inadequacy of present methods. The explanation 
 has to be given over and over again ... all who 
 have business in courts know how tedious and defec- 
 tive is this method." 
 
 Now, with a whitewashed wall or a screen the
 
 CRIME AND THE CAMERA 163 
 
 objects enlarged could very easily be shown by means 
 of the lantern, " not only transparencies, but wood 
 engravings, photographs, prints, handwriting, etc." 
 
 Along with the microscope, photography is of the 
 utmost importance where there is question of a 
 forged or suspicious document. An objection might 
 be raised to bringing chemical reagents into contact 
 with the original paper when, for example, it is 
 suspected that figures or letters have been fraudu- 
 lently added to a will or a banker's draft ; but in 
 such a case recourse could always be had to the 
 camera. If the ink with which changes have been 
 made in any document is of a different kind from 
 that used in the body of the document, it is practi- 
 cally impossible for the camera to be deceived. 
 Erasures, obliterations, or scratchings out, which 
 may be so delicately done as to escape notice by the 
 eye, are made plain with the help of photography. 
 
 By reducing two writings, the forged and the 
 genuine one, to the same scale, comparison is greatly 
 assisted ; and more important still are photographic 
 enlargements of the two writings. It is obvious that 
 the larger the letters one has to work upon the 
 easier is it to discover fraud. 
 
 Since the introduction of the finger-print system 
 the police trust less than of old to the identification 
 of suspects by photographs ; but there is no doubt 
 whatever as to the value of a good collection of 
 criminal portraits at head-quarters. 
 
 The microscopist, an indispensable person in many 
 criminal inquiries, should always photograph the 
 results of his experiments ; there could then be no 
 awkward suggestions on the part of the defence that 
 what he had examined under the lens was not a 
 bloodstain, but some less incriminating mark.
 
 164 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 As was stated a while back, we scarcely know 
 to-day what the camera has in store for us. An 
 intelligent amateur was asked whether a thought 
 could be produced on a photographic plate. Here is 
 the astonishing result : " He fixed postage stamps 
 on a black card, and gazed at them for a moment. 
 The room was then darkened, and a sensitive photo- 
 graphic plate was fixed in the same place where 
 the stamps had been." When the gentleman ex- 
 amined the plate twenty minutes later, " he found 
 two clear pictures of the stamps upon it." At this 
 rate we may one day photograph the thoughts of the 
 prisoner in the dock.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 1 
 
 THIS is, I believe, the first treatise of its kind. Briefly, 
 it is an application of certain methods of experi- 
 mental psychology to certain problems of law. 
 Experimental psychology is itself one of the newest of 
 the sciences. It took its rise in Germany, where, 
 as recently as the eighties of the last century, Wundt, 
 of Leipzig, established " the little psychological 
 laboratory," which " was still the only one in the 
 world." Some of his intricate machines for measuring 
 intervals of time, measuring velocity, measuring work 
 or effort, and so forth, were strange enough to the 
 students of that day, who could not quite make out 
 what psychology had to do with them. From 
 Germany the new psychology travelled to America ; 
 and in that country to-day, says Mr. Miinsterberg, 
 " there exists hardly a university which has not 
 opened a workshop for this youngest of the natural 
 sciences." How many workshops of the sort would 
 be found in England ? 
 
 At work in its own quarters, experimental psy- 
 chology directed itself to fresh problems and groups 
 of problems. " Groups of mental functions which 
 yesterday seemed beyond the reach of experimental 
 laboratory methods to-day appear quite accessible. 
 
 1 " Psychology and Crime/' by Hugo Miinsterberg, Professor 
 of Psychology, Harvard University. 
 
 165
 
 166 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 It may be said that there is now hardly a corner of 
 mental life into which experimental psychology has 
 not thrown its searchlight." Detached at first from 
 the problems of practical life, applied psychology 
 seeks henceforth to become an independent experi- 
 mental science, which shall stand related to the 
 ordinary experimental psychology as engineering to 
 physics. 
 
 " Even the business world begins to under- 
 stand that the effectiveness of economic life de- 
 pends in a thousand forms on factors for which 
 the student of psychology is a real specialist. 
 His experiments can indicate best how the 
 energies of mill-hands can reach the best results, 
 and how advertisements ought to be shaped, and 
 what belongs to ideal salesmanship. And ex- 
 perience shows that the politician who wants to 
 know and to master minds, the naturalist who needs 
 to use his mind in the service of discovery, the 
 officer who wants to keep up discipline, and the 
 minister who wants to open minds to inspiration 
 all are ready to see that certain chapters of Ap- 
 plied Psychology are sources of health and strength 
 for them. The lawyer alone is obdurate." 
 
 It is, then, to the lawyer that the sketches which 
 make up this volume are especially addressed. They 
 deal essentially with the mind of the witness in the 
 witness-box. Mr. Miinsterberg treats here of illusions, 
 the memory of the witness, the detection of crime, 
 the traces of emotions, untrue confessions, suggestions 
 in court, hypnotism and crime, and the prevention of 
 crime. To some of the leading points raised in these 
 very interesting chapters attention may be asked. The 
 author, never dogmatic, is almost always suggestive.
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 167 
 
 Illusion in the mind of a witness is probably of 
 far more frequent occurrence than courts of law 
 in general are willing to acknowledge. With the 
 testimony of the dishonest person we are not here 
 concerned ; what is important to notice is that well- 
 intentioned witnesses of sound mind differ greatly, 
 and with a certain observed regularity, in their 
 reports of things that they have seen and heard. Our 
 common and perfunctory habit is to throw the respon- 
 sibility upon memory ; we omit to take account of the 
 fact that men vary not a little in their powers of 
 perception. Does the court " take sufficient trouble 
 to examine the capacities and habits with which the 
 witness moves through the world which he believes 
 he observes " ? 
 
 " There was a case where it was essential to 
 find out whether at a certain riot the number of 
 guests in the hall was larger than the forty who 
 had been invited to attend. There were witnesses 
 who insisted that there could not have been more 
 than twenty persons present, and others who were 
 sure that they saw more than one hundred." 
 
 It is, of course, in certain cases, of the utmost 
 importance to make sure of all the physical happen- 
 ings ; but how often is it deemed necessary to deter- 
 mine the value of that very influential factor, the 
 mind of the witness his power of seeing, his power 
 of reporting on what he has seen ? From the results 
 of experiments made by him in his own laboratory, 
 the author found that many of his students could not 
 tell whether the points on a dial moved with the 
 slowness of a snail or with the rapidity of an express 
 train, whether a time interval was half a second or a 
 whole minute, whether a marked card contained
 
 168 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 twenty-five spots or two hundred, whether the moon 
 is as small as a pea or as large as a man. In brief, there 
 seem to be many minds, sane enough, which are unfit 
 to report upon incidents they have witnessed. 
 
 " Experimental psychology has at last cleared 
 the ground, and to ignore this whole science and 
 to be satisfied with the primitive psychology of 
 common sense seems really out of order when crime 
 and punishment are in question, and the analysis 
 of the mind of the witness might change the whole 
 aspect of the case." 
 
 Judge and jury may do their best to weigh the 
 testimony submitted to them, but errors must 
 constantly creep into the work of courts " through 
 wrong evidence which had the outer marks of truth 
 and trustworthiness " ; and it may very likely be 
 that a false statement which seems a deliberate lie 
 is frequently the result of an illusion of memory on 
 the witness's part. 
 
 " No one on the witness-stand is to-day examined 
 to ascertain in what directions his memory is 
 probably trustworthy. He may be asked what he 
 has seen, what he has heard, what he has spoken, 
 how he has acted, and yet even a most superficial 
 test might show that the mechanism of his memory 
 would be excellent for one of these four groups of 
 questions and utterly useless for the others, how- 
 ever solemnly he might keep his oath. . . . While 
 the court makes the fullest use of all the modern 
 scientific methods when, for instance, a drop of 
 dried blood is to be examined in a murder case, the 
 same court is completely satisfied with the most 
 unscientific and haphazard methods of common
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 169 
 
 prejudice and ignorance when a mental product, 
 especially the memory of a witness, is to be 
 examined." 
 
 The means suggested by Mr. Miinsterberg for 
 getting at facts are still untried so far as courts are 
 concerned, but he himself has put them to successful 
 tests, in the laboratory, in the houses of persons by 
 whom he has been privately consulted, and even 
 with permission of the authorities in the cell of the 
 condemned prisoner. The principle underlying the 
 method is the familiar one of the association of ideas. 
 With the help of the chronoscope an instrument 
 for measuring extremely short intervals of time 
 and words skilfully arranged, a subtle kind of cross- 
 examination may be made, which brings mental 
 facts under experimental test, " to make sure whether 
 there are lies in the mind of the suspect." 
 
 All that is required of the person under examina- 
 tion is that when he hears the word given to him by 
 the examiner he speaks out as quickly as possible the 
 first association which the word summons to his mind. 
 It is desired to know whether he has or has not 
 participated in a certain crime. The innocent man 
 could offer no objection to the test ; the guilty man, 
 resolved to face it out, would hesitate to offer one. 
 
 " Moreover, he will feel sure that no questions 
 can bring out any facts which he wants to keep 
 hidden ; he will be on the look-out. As long as 
 nothing more is demanded than that he speak the 
 first word which comes to his mind, when another 
 word is spoken to him, there is indeed no legal and 
 no practical reason for declining, as long as inno- 
 cence is professed."
 
 170 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Among the hundred words selected by the examiner, 
 there might be mixed twenty-five or thirty which 
 had a more or less intimate connection with the crime. 
 To the innocent subject these words will be as in- 
 different as the others ; but, says the author, the 
 guilty subject will very soon find himself in error 
 if he believes that none but harmless replies will spring 
 to his lips. " As soon as a dangerous association 
 rushes to the consciousness, it tries to push its way 
 out." By an effort of self-control the word that 
 demands utterance may be kept back, but the idea 
 remains in the mind, and may influence the next reply 
 or the one after that. Here is one of Mr. Miinster- 
 berg's dramatic instances, showing how the method 
 may work : 
 
 " He has, perhaps, slain a woman in her room, 
 and yet protests that he has never been in her 
 house. By the side of her body was a cage with a 
 canary bird. I therefore mix ' bird ' into my list 
 of words. His mind is full of the gruesome memory 
 of his heinous deed. The word ' bird,' therefore, at 
 once awakens the association ' canary bird ' in his 
 consciousness ; yet he is immediately aware that 
 this would be suspicious, and he succeeds, before 
 the dangerous word comes to his lips, in substituting 
 the harmless word ' sparrow.' Yet my next word, 
 or perhaps my second or third, is * colour,' and his 
 prompt association is * yellow ' ; the canary is 
 still in his mind, and shows its betraying influence." 
 
 In an examination of this kind the time measure- 
 ments are obviously of great importance. " A word 
 which stirs emotional memories will show an as- 
 sociation-time twice or three times as long as a 
 commonplace idea." A cool subject might indeed
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 171 
 
 hesitate scarcely at all in replying to an awkward 
 word, but if he were slow in answering two or three 
 indifferent words that followed, it would be a per- 
 missible inference that his mind had been in some 
 degree dissociated. " The emotional shock has 
 perturbed the working of the mechanism, and the 
 path for all associations has become blocked " ; and 
 Mr. Miinsterberg remarks that the analysis of these 
 " secondary time-retardations " is the factor which 
 demands the greatest psychological skill. 
 
 He goes on to ask what would be the situation of 
 an old criminal with little or no conscience, who 
 knew beforehand that the experiment was to extract 
 the truth from him. 
 
 " In that case another group of factors is to be 
 considered. We might expect from such a subject 
 very little lengthening of the simple association by 
 emotion, but instead of it a considerable lengthening 
 by conscious effort to avoid suspicious and danger- 
 ous associations, provided that he were anxious to 
 hide the damaging truth. As soon as a critical 
 word were offered, he would be on the look-out not 
 to betray the first word which came over the 
 threshold of consciousness, but to make sure first 
 that it was harmless, and to replace it if it were 
 dangerous. Experiment shows that such watching 
 and conscious sanctioning takes time, and the 
 replacing of the unfit word by a fitting word brings 
 still larger loss of time. ... If the dangerous 
 words show association-times of unusual shortness, 
 it is necessary to suppose that the subject of the 
 experiment makes no effort to suppress the truth ; 
 the short time proves that he lets the ideas go as 
 they will. Even the best bluffer will thus be
 
 172 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 trapped in his efforts to conceal anything by time- 
 differences which he himself cannot notice." 
 
 This detective psychological work as explained by 
 the author is not the less interesting that it has no 
 legal standing to-day, whether in America or any- 
 where else. It is sane, clean, direct, and searching ; 
 a mode of examining mental facts which is eminently 
 scientific. We are, of course, only at the beginning 
 of the development of experimental psychology ; but 
 who knows when we may see the psychologist 
 included among the experts of the criminal 
 court ! 
 
 In dealing with the traces of emotions, Mr. Miinster- 
 berg goes farther, and shows how the new science 
 " can register objectively the symptoms of the 
 emotions, and make the observation independent 
 of chance judgment," how it can " trace emotions 
 through involuntary movements, breathing, pulse, 
 and so on, where ordinary observation fails entirely." 
 We have not quite reached the time, however, when 
 a " breathing and pulse curve " may be made the 
 basis for a legal condemnation or acquittal. 
 
 And what of hypnotism in its relation to law and 
 court, to crime and criminal procedure ? Imaginative 
 persons in America, it seems, are occasionally heard 
 to propose that the court should apply hypnotism, 
 "for the purpose of unveiling the hidden truth." 
 Hypnotism, successfully employed, has the power of 
 breaking down the resistance of the w r ill. Why not 
 command a hypnotised witness to speak the truth ? 
 It looks simple enough. But hypnotism cannot work 
 on an unyielding brain as an operator may work on 
 a patient with a chloroformed sponge ; and even if 
 such hypnotisation by force were always possible, no
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGIST IN THE WITNESS-BOX 173 
 
 civilised court would be likely to listen to evidence 
 extorted in this way. 
 
 Just possibly a defendant wrongly accused or a 
 suspected witness might desire to be hypnotised in his 
 own interest. But the subject under the power of 
 the hypnotiser is no longer in full possession of his 
 mental energies ; he has, in a measure, ceased to be 
 himself, and " would therefore not remain legally the 
 witness who took the oath before the hypnotisation." 
 In the famous melodrama of " The Bells " the court 
 hypnotises the accused (at least, Mathias dreams that 
 he is so hypnotised), but outside of fiction or the 
 theatre the event is incredible. 
 
 Fiction more amazing than responsible has shown 
 us the hypnotist as inspirer and compeller of crime. 
 Mr. Miinsterberg flouts as absurd inventions the 
 deadly eye that fascinates at a glance and the 
 malicious magnetism from a distance, but admits that 
 " slow and persistent gaining of power over an 
 unresisting mind " is within the limits of the possible. 
 Not every one, however, can be deeply hypnotised, 
 " while only one of four enters into strong hypnotic 
 hallucinations." The full hypnotic state itself may 
 conceivably fall within the realm of criminal action, 
 but we have no knowledge of a murder committed 
 by a person of innocent mind " under the influence 
 of post-hypnotic suggestion." It is the weaker state 
 of openness to suggestion that makes the real hotbed 
 of criminal impulses ; alcohol poisoning is probably 
 one of the conditions. 
 
 Has any court condemned a prisoner for a murder 
 in which lie was a merely passive instrument ? It is 
 not impossible, but we have no proofs that involve 
 the hypnotist. There is, or seems to be, a zone of the 
 brain that criminal hypnotic suggestion does not reach.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE POLICE DOG* 
 
 THE employment of the dog for civil and military 
 purposes is in some degree a return to ancient custom. 
 Cambyses, as Major Richardson reminds us, used 
 dogs on his campaign in Egypt six thousand years 
 ago ; and by the Romans they were trained for the 
 defence of the ramparts. In the wars of the Middle 
 Ages dogs often guarded convoys and baggage, and, 
 clad in mail with scythes and projecting spikes, were 
 used to distract the enemy's cavalry and bring 
 confusion to his ranks. 
 
 Henry VIII sent to the Emperor Charles V four 
 hundred war dogs which did valiant service at the 
 siege of Valencia. The Scottish Field-Marshal Keith 
 supplied Frederick the Great with collies for sentry 
 work. Napoleon was impressed with the value of the 
 dog for certain needs of war. The police dog, not 
 regularly or extensively pressed into service in the 
 past, was known at St. Malo in the eighteenth 
 century ; and long before the establishment of a paid 
 police force the bloodhound did police business as a 
 tracker. 
 
 Major Richardson has despatched trained and 
 accomplished dogs of one breed or another to South 
 Africa, the United States, Turkey, and elsewhere. 
 He has studied on the spot the methods adopted in 
 
 1 " War, Police, and Watch Dogs/' by Major E. H. Richardson. 
 
 174
 
 THE POLICE DOG 175 
 
 whatever country of Europe dogs have been intro- 
 duced for war and watch, protection and detection. 
 It is unlikely that the dog will ever again be brought 
 upon the field as a combatant ; but for scouting and 
 sentry and ambulance work his peculiar powers of 
 sight, smell, hearing, and his sagacity, endurance, 
 and general trustworthiness will certainly be availed of. 
 In Belgium, France, and Germany the police dog 
 has passed the probationary stage. He has been 
 tried, proved, and enrolled among the force. He 
 assists and supplements the man in ways peculiar to 
 himself. He can see, smell, and hear better than the 
 savage ; and the savage, of course, has all these 
 qualities far more highly developed than the civilised 
 subject. The dog's hearing, for instance, is about 
 400 yards better than a man's. He does not tire in a 
 chase that leaves the best-winded athlete standing. 
 He has the courage that is rarely put out, and that 
 mounts with occasion. He can intrude himself easily 
 and lie hidden easily ; can run, leap, and swim to 
 envy. Doing all this, it is found abroad that he begins 
 to be a check upon crime. In neighbourhoods known 
 for the possession of a first-rate police dog the criminal 
 is less active than he was. This, an important point, 
 is made good in a passage cited by Major Richardson 
 from the German Police Gazette : 
 
 " Not only do the police dogs decrease crime, 
 but their presence has a strong moral effect, and 
 bad characters avoid towns where police dogs are 
 kept. In towns where these dogs are used, petty 
 theft has almost disappeared, and a great sense of 
 security is given to the inhabitants." 
 
 Major Richardson distinguishes two kinds of dogs 
 for police work. First (though not necessarily first
 
 176 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 in importance) comes the " executive " dog, the 
 animal that accompanies the policeman on his beat 
 at night. Next comes the " criminal tracking " dog, 
 which must have exceptional powers of scent and be 
 capable of running a cold trail. The chief duties of the 
 executive dog are : 
 
 1. To give warning of anything unusual in the 
 immediate neighbourhood of the policeman. 
 
 2. To guard the policeman against attack. 
 
 3. To capture and hold escaping criminals. 
 
 As used abroad, the executive dog is " of an 
 exceedingly savage and suspicious nature," and such 
 a protector must be useful to the Paris police in 
 districts harassed by the apache, and in other Con- 
 tinental towns infested by criminals who do not 
 hesitate to show fight. Major Klein, of the police dog 
 section in Berlin, informed Major Richardson " that 
 these executive dogs had made a complete clearance 
 of dangerous characters frequenting their quarter at 
 night." The ordinary executive dog is the patrol dog 
 of the night policeman. He is taken out muzzled 
 and on leash, and can be unmuzzled and slipped in a 
 moment. He needs just enough nose to warn him of 
 any person in the immediate neighbourhood, but is 
 not expected to track the criminal whose flight has 
 carried him a stage or two beyond. It is then that 
 the tracking dog is called in. These hounds, says the 
 author, " are kept at different centres, and telephoned 
 for in cases of emergency. They are taken by rail or 
 motor to the scene of the crime, and put on the trail 
 of the suspect. There are wonderful instances in 
 Germany where dogs have been of great use to the 
 police in tracking criminals who have escaped, and I 
 was enabled to investigate many cases and to find 
 that, if the dog is brought to the scene soon enough
 
 THE POLICE DOG 177 
 
 after the crime is committed, he has certainly tracked 
 down the criminals when all other means have failed. 
 The wild tales, however, of criminals being tracked 
 days after the crime has been committed, or through 
 crowded streets, may be styled unvarnished lies." 
 
 In Germany at the present time these dogs are used 
 in over 600 towns, and it is said that since their 
 introduction crime in large cities has fallen on an 
 average 35 per cent. The Paris dogs, " which 
 entirely come under the heading of executive dogs," 
 are of a big and heavy type, principally cross-bred 
 sheep-dogs. Belgium has recourse chiefly to the 
 native sheep-dog. Germany favours sheep-dogs, 
 Doberman Pinsher dogs, and Airedales imported 
 from England. 
 
 On the Continent the policeman must often be 
 prepared for a murderous attack. Assaults of this 
 kind are less common in England, and for the execu- 
 tive dog in this country Major Richardson recom- 
 mends " a strong, hardy, intelligent animal of a 
 determined, but not of a ferocious disposition." He 
 puts out of count all the larger breeds, and, among 
 the medium-sized, finds the ideal qualities in the 
 Airedale. " I have found that the old-fashioned 
 heavy type, with a good wiry coat, is a particularly 
 useful dog, and a dash of collie, sheep-dog, bull- 
 mastiff, or retriever in him helps his character." He 
 gives practical directions for training, working, 
 feeding, and kennelling these dogs. 
 
 For the business of tracking we have in England the 
 best dog of all the bloodhound. Most of the canine 
 breeds will probably do tracking of some sort, and 
 Major Richardson's experiments have satisfied him 
 that collies are serviceable even on a trail that is cold. 
 But whereas neither collie nor retriever will stick long
 
 178 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 to a faint or broken trail, the bloodhound's purpose 
 never slackens. While there is scent of any kind about 
 it is practically impossible to tire out a bloodhound ; 
 and oftener than not, at present, his powers are put 
 to the test on a trail that is many hours old. One of 
 Major Richardson's hounds tracked a poacher to his 
 cottage nine miles across country, and after a course 
 of this distance the dog would probably be as fresh 
 as on starting from the kennel. 
 
 In any district haunted by criminals the knowledge 
 that a trained bloodhound could be slipped at a 
 moment's notice would doubtless exercise a whole- 
 some deterrent influence. Man is the natural quarry 
 of this dread hunter, and criminal man has ever held 
 him in fearful esteem. Major Richardson himself 
 has put this to the proof. 
 
 " I am constantly being asked [he says] to hire a 
 hound to neighbourhoods suffering from epidemics of 
 various crimes, such as arson, cattle-maiming, etc., 
 and the effect of the hound's arrival has been a 
 complete cessation of the crimes." 
 
 None but a properly trained hound should be used 
 in police work. Under long disuse the finest instincts 
 will lose their native force, and during the last half- 
 century the bloodhound has been bred more for the 
 show bench than for his proper functions. Moreover 
 the best-bred and best-trained hound must be kept 
 up to the mark by being regularly schooled over 
 different tracts of country. 
 
 It can scarcely be questioned that there is room 
 for experiments here on the lines suggested by Major 
 Richardson. The Berkshire Constabulary, it seems, 
 have made a start, and a dog furnished by him for 
 night duty at Clewer police station, Windsor, " has 
 given great satisfaction." Districts might be selected,
 
 THE POLICE DOG 179 
 
 and careful trials given over a course of months both 
 to patrol dogs and to trackers. There is only one 
 circumstance that Major Richardson does not deal 
 with in this very interesting and thoroughly practical 
 essay. It is that the criminal classes themselves would, 
 in course of time, adopt special measures of their own 
 against the special measures of the police. Is it, for 
 instance, impossible that the burglar and the apache 
 should train dogs to cope with the patrol dogs ?
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 JIU-JITSU FOR THE POLICE 
 
 I UNDERSTAND that the City Police have been through 
 the hands of a native professor of the Japanese art of 
 Jiu-Jitsu. Until recent years this extraordinary 
 Oriental system of combat and defence has been 
 kept a close secret from all Western nations. There 
 is no fist work in jiu-jitsu, but the blow with the 
 edge of the hand and the jab with the forefingers in 
 the solar plexus may be delivered with more deadly 
 effect than can be produced by any right or left from 
 the shoulder of the Western pugilist. You cannot, 
 in fact, defeat the Japanese in physical encounter. 
 This is, moreover, the politest method of combat in the 
 world, and Mr. Irving Hancock, in his treatise on 
 " Japanese Combat Tricks," assures us that the 
 trained and consummate exponent of jiu-jitsu is never 
 a bully. He might, if fighting for his life, deem it 
 necessary to despatch you summarily with an edge- 
 of-the-hand blow at the back of the neck ; but in any 
 ordinary encounter he would consider it rude in the 
 extreme to blacken his opponent's eye. That primi- 
 tive style he leaves to us ; his own is an effective 
 blending of Oriental cunning and urbanity. Thus, 
 he knows how to reduce the whole frame of an op- 
 ponent to that painful condition of which the " funny- 
 bone " of the elbow is typical. A certain deft gripping 
 of muscle and nerve at their most sensitive points 
 
 180
 
 JIU-JITSU FOR THE POLICE 181 
 
 enables the same effect to be produced at countless 
 spots of the arms, legs, neck, back, and trunk ; and 
 this is the secret of jiu-jitsu, the Japanese physical 
 training. A peculiar nip or blow, which, to the eye 
 of a spectator not familiar with this kind of attack, 
 would seem almost harmless, causes temporary local 
 paralysis ; and the expert boxer, face to face with the 
 expert jiu-jitsian, soon finds that the old-fashioned 
 Western methods of fighting are neither offensively 
 nor defensively good against the craft and finesse of 
 the East. Mr. Hancock shows us, indeed, how a skilled 
 boxer may be " stopped " in the first round, and 
 actually made to defeat himself. 
 
 " The feat begins with a defence against the 
 boxer's left-hand blow. The man on the defensive 
 must shoot both his hands forward and upward 
 at the coming left hand of the opponent. The hands 
 of the man on the defensive are well together, very 
 much in the form of a ' V,' although the heels of the 
 hands do not quite touch. It is this ' V ' that is 
 shot up to catch and encircle the boxer's fist 
 not his wrist. At the instant that the assailant's 
 fist is caught in this ' V,' the man on the defensive 
 wraps his fingers around the captured fist." 
 
 One among the many admirable photographs with 
 which the book is illustrated shows just how this 
 encircling of the fist is accomplished. Mr. Hancock 
 continues : 
 
 " Now, the man who has captured his adversary's 
 fist must be prepared to move that fist wherever he 
 wants it to go, in front or at the side of the owner's 
 body. It may seem that the owner of the captured 
 fist can block this movement by exerting the
 
 182 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 muscles of his left arm to their utmost, but again 
 it is to be pointed out that the man on the defensive 
 has all the strength of two arms with which to 
 oppose whatever strength his opponent can put 
 into one arm." 
 
 But the man whose left fist is thus held in a vice has 
 his right arm free. Can he do nothing with this ? 
 Mr. Hancock makes it plain that he can do nothing 
 of importance. It is here, in short, that the essence 
 of the trick comes in. Thus : 
 
 " Let the man strike out with his right fist. The 
 man on the defensive brings that captured fist and 
 its arm swiftly down, crossing the forearm of that 
 captured fist over the forearm of the opponent's 
 assailing right. It is a complete block, stopping the 
 boxer's blow. And the same manoeuvre will stop 
 any blow that the boxer can try to deliver with his 
 right. ... It is impossible to make any striking 
 blow with the right that cannot be stopped by 
 swift contact with the captured left. . . . There is 
 no escape for the boxer, and he is made to submit 
 to the humiliation of practically warding off his 
 own blows." 
 
 There is no device known to the ring for which the 
 adept at the jiu-jitsu mode of combat has not an 
 immediate and effective counter. Every feat per- 
 formed by the latter is based on some natural 
 law, and the extension and perfection of the 
 feat depend upon the student's ability to observe 
 natural laws and to apply them. Incessant practice 
 is indispensable, and Mr. Hancock recommends the 
 student never to let himself get rusty, and never to 
 take up a second trick until he has mastered the first,
 
 JIU-JITSU FOR THE POLICE 183 
 
 and can go through it with the swiftness and pre- 
 cision of thought. He describes many of these subtle 
 tricks, such as edge-of-the-hand blows, grips, pinches, 
 holds, twists, throws, prods, and so forth ; and there 
 is little doubt that the student who made him- 
 self absolutely proficient in a dozen of them would 
 be able to ward off most forms of attack. It is 
 evident, for example, that the skilled jiu-jitsian can 
 usually take good care of himself, even when attacked 
 by two or three hooligans of more than average 
 brawn, for the terrible Eastern method demands none 
 of the brute strength of the heavy-weight boxer. 
 Jiu-jitsu is the art of the weaker subject, and a woman 
 trained in a few of its subtleties might readily over- 
 power an assailant of the other sex who knew none of 
 them. In Japan every policeman, soldier, and sailor 
 has to undergo the course, and Mr. Hancock tells 
 an amusing story of the discomfiture of some rowdy 
 European tars by one little yellow " bobby," who 
 led four of them captive to their ship.
 
 PART III 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 
 
 FOUR years ago, at Cardiff, there was what is called 
 a Flogging Assize. It was one of those sudden and 
 sporadic resorts to the lash which nowadays surprise 
 by their infrequency. Mr. Justice A. T. Lawrence 
 passed twelve sentences of whipping ; Mr. Justice 
 Bray contented himself with two. The few judges 
 who flog (there are not, I believe, half a dozen left 
 on the bench) have grown a little fidgety over their 
 performances seem willing, even somewhat anxious, 
 to explain them. Mr. Justice Lawrence is reported 
 to have said that he " would show leniency to men 
 convicted of robbery with violence only if the persons 
 who had themselves been attacked were to come and 
 plead for them." This is a proposal that refers us to 
 Anglo-Saxon days, when justice was the crudest 
 compromise betwixt violator and victim. The 
 King's officer, scarcely as yet a judge, sitting in a 
 shed to promulgate decrees that he might or might 
 not be able to enforce, said to the offended party : 
 " Now, suppose you let me chop this man's hand 
 off. Will that satisfy you ? " But in a season of 
 regulated law the law having due power behind 
 it what have judge and prosecutor to do with 
 one another ? One man, A, suffering injury, is for 
 mercy ; another, B, is for vengeance. The judge, 
 
 184
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 185 
 
 standing for the State and the community, has no 
 concern with A or B. 
 
 The Press had a revel over the Cardiff floggings. 
 We were told, now is the time for a " wholesome 
 application of the lash" to other offenders. There 
 is the burglar, there is the house-breaker ; let us flog 
 the burglar and the house-breaker. In support of 
 this demand, the history of the cat-o' -nine-tails 
 which is the history of its universal failure as a 
 punishment was, as usual, either quashed, forged, 
 or falsified. The mischief was played with statistics 
 that are open to every one ; and the judges by whom 
 flogging was most particularly contemned (chiefly, 
 of course, the late Mr. Justice Hawkins) were cited 
 as its principal defenders. 
 
 I sometimes wonder why the advocates of this 
 penalty, which, they assure us, is salutary or nothing, 
 abstain so carefully from describing its infliction. If 
 it is proper that certain persons in the community 
 should be whipped up to the limits of endurance, it 
 cannot be altogether improper that the rest of us 
 should know what the chastisement is like. 
 
 I notice, however, that it is invariably left for the 
 opponents of the " wholesome application " to state 
 its real effects : the quailing of the heart under each 
 successive stroke (as the pulse of the victim will 
 plainly declare), the changing of the skin from white 
 to a crimson blotch and from crimson to blackish 
 purple, the shriek that, as the strength ebbs, dies 
 into " deep, rhythmic sobs." " Take the vision 
 away," cried Sir Robert Rawlinson at the close of a 
 memorable description of floggings he had witnessed, 
 " it is too hideous even to remember ! " 
 
 I shall not follow this too far, but it is no subject 
 to be shirked, as the friends of flogging invariably do
 
 186 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 shirk it. There are things which nations should 
 refuse to forget, and among these things are the 
 evils they have done of old. How are the earlier and 
 later records of our navy and army stained by the 
 bloody lashes of the cat-o' -nine-tails ! Has any 
 reader ever chanced on an account of a flogging round 
 the fleet ? The man, lashed to the triangles, was 
 rowed from ship to ship ; at each ship a boatswain's 
 mate descended with his " cat " and laid it on afresh ; 
 and when the punishment was over the scarred and 
 blood-smeared back was swollen out like a bolster. 
 
 Is it forgotten that soldiers in the British Army 
 could be sentenced to 1000 lashes ? Such a sentence 
 (to cite but one) was passed by court-martial on a 
 trooper at Canterbury in 1812. Seven hundred and 
 fifty lashes were actually inflicted. Leigh Hunt, who 
 took up the case in the Examiner, was prosecuted for 
 libel, and Henry Brougham defended him. 
 
 No sufferer under the lash has ever given a more 
 remarkable account of his feelings than A. Somerville 
 in his " Autobiography of a Working Man." In 
 May, 1832, Somerville, a trooper in the Scots Greys, 
 was tried by court-martial " for highly unsoldier-like 
 conduct on the morning of the 28th inst., in dis- 
 mounting without leave when taking his lessons in 
 the riding-school, and absolutely refusing to remount 
 his horse when ordered to do so." The simple fact 
 was, the man's horse had got out of hand and he 
 could do nothing with it. He was sentenced to receive 
 200 lashes, " in the usual manner of the regiment," 
 and took 100 without a sound before the officer in 
 command gave the word to cast him loose. 
 
 Minute by minute, almost, he details his pains under 
 the whip, of which the knots five or six to each 
 cord were " compressed and hardened into sharp
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 187 
 
 edges till each had acquired the consistency of horn." 
 After some thirty cuts 
 
 " The pain in my lungs was now more severe, 
 I thought, than on my back. I felt as if I would 
 burst in the internal parts of my body. I detected 
 myself once giving something like a groan, and to 
 prevent its occurrence again I put my tongue 
 between my teeth, held it there, and bit it almost 
 in two pieces. What with the blood from my 
 tongue and my lips, which I had also bitten, and 
 the blood from my lungs or some other internal 
 part ruptured by the writhing agony, I was almost 
 choked and became black in the face. It now 
 became Simpson's second turn to give me twenty- 
 five. Only fifty had been inflicted, and the time 
 since they began was like a long period of life ; 
 I felt as if I had lived all the time of my real life 
 in pain and torture, and that the time when 
 existence had pleasure in it was a dream, long, 
 long gone by." 
 
 Yet Cooper, in his " History of the Rod," tells us 
 that " one lash in the navy was considered the 
 equivalent in severity to several in the army ; and 
 although the lashes were numbered by dozens in- 
 stead of by hundreds, twelve stripes afloat were fully 
 equal to a hundred on shore." 
 
 To pass from the army and the navy, are examples 
 wanted from our old penal inferno, Botany Bay ? 
 They can be had in nauseating plenty, but a single 
 instance shall suffice. A convict seized in trying to 
 escape was generally ordered 100 lashes and the 
 " cats " in those days were of the heaviest pattern 
 and occasionally tipped with lead. A certain William 
 Day, still living, I believe, after telling us in his
 
 188 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " Old Convict Days " how he himself was flayed in 
 this manner, goes on to the case of a fellow-prisoner 
 who was brought up for punishment with a wound in 
 his throat, the result of an attempt at suicide. 
 
 " He was utterly unable to stand to be strapped 
 in position, so ... the triangles were lowered and 
 again hoisted when the victim had been securely 
 fastened. ... As the blows fell the blood actually 
 bubbled and frothed from the wounded throat." 
 
 These hideous scenes will never be renewed, but 
 we have not done with flogging. It can be ordered 
 by a judge, and is retained in prison to what extent 
 shall presently be shown. It is the one legalised 
 form of torture that remains to us. Is the word 
 " torture " objected to ? I submit that the " cat " 
 is not less an instrument of torture than the thumb- 
 screw. The birch may very well be added I mean 
 the real prison article. 
 
 To the cheap sneer at " the kind of discipline 
 schoolboys are subjected to " no attention need be 
 given. It is the most mendacious nonsense. I have 
 seen and handled both " cat " and birch, and speak 
 by the card. Flogging in prison, the reader may rest 
 assured, is always flogging. The warder, who receives 
 a gratuity for the job, is not paid to tickle his victims ! 
 
 The floggings of former days were monstrous, but 
 when not intended to kill or maim for life they 
 were also supremely silly. Acute suffering endures 
 only up to a certain point. What a loathsome waste 
 of effort to lay 150 strokes (1350 stripes) on a man's 
 back ! During more than two-thirds of the punish- 
 ment you were mangling a creature who had passed 
 through all that can be known of human agony 
 into all but complete insensibility. The capacity of
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 189 
 
 pain varies very widely ; but, in general, I believe 
 (and prison doctors have told me) that after twenty 
 strokes or so the sting of the lash begins to lose its 
 venom. It is probable that the man who has had 
 twenty-five or thirty has reached the acme of physical 
 torment. The back is invariably scored for life. 
 
 As for " the kind of discipline schoolboys are 
 subjected to," Oscar Wilde, imprisoned at Reading, 
 compared the howls of a prisoner who was merely 
 being birched with those of " some animal like a bull 
 or a cow that was being unskilfully slaughtered." 
 Warders, indeed, have assured me that between 
 " cat " and birch there is very little to choose. Like 
 the " cat," the birch (which is so treated that every 
 separate twig is like a fine wire rod, with excrescent 
 buds) leaves its trace for life. We may dismiss, then, 
 as trivial the occasional innuendo that flogging is no 
 longer what it was. Flogging is always flogging. 
 
 Some people will exclaim, " So much the better ! " 
 The worse the punishment the more willingly will 
 they mete it out to certain classes of offenders. It 
 may be questioned whether a more debasing penalty 
 than flogging has ever been invented. I care not 
 how degraded is the wretch whom you tie up ; he is a 
 degree lower in the human scale when you have cast 
 him loose from the triangles. " You make a perfect 
 devil of the man you flog," said Mr. Justice Hawkins. 
 
 Flagellation has, in the long run, an evil and 
 hardening effect upon all who assist at and witness 
 it. I myself have been told, concerning a prison 
 flagellator, that he " takes an artistic interest in his 
 floggings." l But this does not suffice for everybody. 
 
 1 " It is far from an agreeable task to watch the face and figure 
 of the flogger as he executes the sentence ; and few would deny 
 that the moral eft'ect upon him must be as great as upon the criminal
 
 190 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 There is a savage in us that rises to the notion of 
 flogging, welcomes it, and takes a definite pleasure 
 in it. " Strap the brute up and let him have it ! " 
 is a fairly common sentiment. Argue the point, 
 and you will get a rejoinder like this : " Oh ! but 
 it's such a grand deterrent. Think of what it did for 
 garotting ! " H'm ! Are we there again ? 
 
 I take up this argument with alacrity. A more 
 fallacious, a more mischievous one was never pub- 
 lished. 
 
 First, let us return to Cardiff. When a judge 
 (always, we are assured, the most humane and kind- 
 hearted gentleman on the bench) begins to lay about 
 him with the " cat," many writers on the Press, and 
 many letter-writers to the Press, are tremendously 
 excited, and splendid results are predicted. Never 
 in any circumstances are these results achieved, but 
 
 whom it is his duty to whip" (L. O. Pike : "History of Crime in 
 England "). 
 
 A young medical friend of my own, dead some years, H. F. , 
 
 held for a while the post of chief medical officer in a large prison 
 at the Cape. He told me of the nervous horror and sense of 
 physical sickness with which he witnessed his first case of corporal 
 punishment. To the chief warder, who presided, the whole cere- 
 mony seemed a kind of pick-me-up ; and he repeatedly shouted 
 to the executioner, ' ' Lay it on well ! Let him have it ! '* My 
 friend admitted that in the course of time he himself became used 
 to the spectacle. 
 
 Major Arthur Griffiths, in " Fifty Years of Public Service," 
 mentions a flogger, "B," whom he had often seen at work in the 
 old convict prison at Chatham. " He had been a boatswain's mate 
 in the Royal Navy, where he had learned to flog, and the prison 
 authorities willingly utilised his skill in handling the ' cat. ' ( B. ' 
 was a short, squat, thick-set man, with the rolling gait of a sailor, 
 and immense physical strength, which, added to his skill, made a 
 very loathsome exhibition of the wretched culprits who were tied 
 up." 
 
 Michael Davitt, giving evidence before the Asquith Committee, 
 said that at Portland lie once occupied a cell near the punishment 
 cells, and had frequently heard the flogger boast "how he had 
 made his victims howl ! "
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 191 
 
 this matters nothing. Numbers of people go on 
 talking and writing as if the splendid results were 
 there in facts and figures indisputable. Two years 
 after Mr. Justice Lawrence had been giving the 
 garotters of Cardiff several dozens of his best, an 
 intelligent London magistrate, Mr. Plowden, of 
 Marylebone, interviewed by a representative of one 
 of the most widely read papers in the kingdom, 
 fetched up Cardiff and Mr. Justice Lawrence as the 
 newest instance of the wholesome power of the lash. 
 " Only a year or two ago," said he, " there was an 
 outbreak of crimes of violence in one particular 
 district of Wales, and the judges (one of whom was 
 Mr. Justice Lawrence) passed several sentences of 
 flogging, with the result that an absolute stop was 
 put to the outbreak." 
 
 Charming if the facts would but harmonise ! 
 Mr. Plowden, however, had neglected to follow up 
 the case. It was at the spring Assizes that Mr. 
 Justice Lawrence was so busy with the " cat." The 
 summer Assizes came duly round, and eighteen 
 garotters took their station in the dock. Spring and 
 summer, and then the winter Assizes : sixteen 
 garotters to the fore. " The desired result," said a 
 Welsh paper, " does not seem to have been produced." 
 Let the curtain fall on Cardiff ; l though we may be 
 pretty sure that the history of Mr. Justice Lawrence's 
 " triumph with the ' cat ' will once and again 
 be fetched up and that Mr. Plowden will be cited 
 as a witness. 
 
 These fugitive false histories of what the " cat " 
 has done and can do and will do revolve in cycles 
 through the newspaper Press. When one of them 
 
 1 With this example Mr. Henry S. Salt deals fully in " The 
 Case against Corporal Punishment."
 
 192 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 has served its temporary turn, another and an older 
 is substituted ; and when both have perished 
 beyond hope of recovery they are both restored 
 to life ; till judges with a taste for flogging may 
 reasonably urge that it is better to have flogged and 
 failed than never to have flogged at all. Consider the 
 record of Mr. Justice Day at Liverpool, which had a 
 wider celebrity than Mr. Justice Lawrence's at 
 Cardiff, and is even now in some sort efficacious. 1 
 During the eleven years from 1883 to 1893 Mr. 
 Justice Day was the boldest exponent of the flogging 
 system in all England. " At Liverpool, 2 where 
 flogging was largely resorted to, the crimes of violence 
 did not decrease, but actually increased, in despite 
 of terrible long sentences of imprisonment and 
 double and treble doses of the lash. The men who 
 were flogged came up again for a precisely similar 
 offence, and were sentenced to flogging a second 
 time." This was when Day touched his meridian as 
 the flogging judge. He started at Liverpool in 1883, 
 when there were fifty-nine cases of robbery with 
 violence. He finished there in 1893, when there were 
 seventy-nine cases. At the close of 1893, " Judgment " 
 Day had laid on 1961 stripes and the garotters of 
 Liverpool were going stronger than ever. None the 
 less, many writers, rehearsing the memory of Mr. 
 Justice Day, are still upholding him as the most 
 successful flogger of his time ! 
 
 1 In the reminiscences of " Thormanby/' for instance, an enter- 
 taining volume (" The Spice of Life ") that I chanced to be 
 reviewing while this chapter was in hand, the writer quotes witli 
 a chuckle one of Day's inimitable flogging sentences at Liverpool 
 ("As an additional punishment, you will each be flogged three 
 times during your term of imprisonment/' etc.), and adds : " The 
 stern and wholesome severity of Mr. Justice Day stamped out that 
 gang of ruffians at once." 
 
 3 " Facts about Flogging," by Joseph Collinson.
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 193 
 
 Take next what was known as the " Scuttling 
 Epidemic " in Manchester. This was in 1866, and the 
 judge upon the scene was Mr. Justice Lush, whom 
 Mr. Justice Day may have taken for his fugleman. 
 Eight years later, in 1874, Mr. Justice Lush, having 
 occasion to make a formal report to the Home 
 Secretary, let off this feu de joie : 
 
 " When I first went to Manchester in the spring 
 of 1866 there was a general feeling of alarm at the 
 prevalence of garotting. It had increased notwith- 
 standing that heavy sentences of penal servitude 
 had been awarded at the previous Assizes. I 
 flogged every one ; as many, I think, as twenty or 
 twenty-one. I went again in the summer of the 
 same year, and had to administer the same punish- 
 ment to about half the number. I have been 
 there five times since, and have, I believe, only 
 had one such case, and that was three or four 
 years since." 
 
 Now this looks as though Mr. Justice Lush had 
 really done it ! But the eight years had wiped the 
 facts from his memory, and in every particular he 
 was wrong. The criticism on the judge's statement 
 to the Home Secretary is from the pen of Mr. E. H. 
 Pickersgill, M.P., in an article in the Law Times. 1 
 
 " Fortunately," says Mr. Pickersgill, " we have 
 statistics by which we can test the accuracy of his 
 Lordship's memory in recalling events which had 
 happened eight years before. First, the learned 
 judge did not flog twenty or twenty-one persons 
 at the Manchester spring Assizes, 1866, unless he 
 broke the law, for there were only thirteen persons 
 
 1 February 2nd, 1895.
 
 194 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 liable to such punishment, and of these he flogged 
 twelve. Secondly, the number of such charges 
 had not increased, for at the winter Assizes, 1865, 
 there were nineteen convictions, whereas at the 
 spring Assizes, 1866, there were, as I have said, 
 only thirteen. Thirdly, his Lordship's drastic 
 proceedings were not crowned with success, for at 
 the summer Assizes the number of convictions was 
 still thirteen, and at the following winter Assizes 
 the number rose to fifteen. What was the condition 
 of the Calendar on the occasion of later visits of 
 the learned judge to Manchester is entirely irrele- 
 vant, for, apart from the consideration that 
 there are fashions in crime, the claim is that 
 flogging produces an immediate effect. I may 
 clench this case," adds Mr. Pickersgill, " by quoting 
 the observations made by the late Mr. Justice 
 Keating in his report to the Home Secretary in 
 1874 : ' Some years since a brother judge at the 
 Leeds Assizes ordered flogging in every case. I 
 went to Leeds at the next Assizes and found the 
 number of cases considerably larger.' ' 
 
 But the classic illustration is still to offer. In 
 London the year 1862 was marked by a sudden and 
 quite alarming outbreak of garotte robberies. During 
 some twenty-five years there had been practically 
 no flogging in England for criminal offences. Did 
 crimes of violence increase in this period ? Not in 
 the least. " There was a marked improvement. 
 Violence diminished, disorder diminished, vice dimin- 
 ished, and crime diminished." 
 
 Then, in an hour unforeseen, from the sties and 
 kennels of the town the garotter came, and London 
 was seized with panic. We must in this affair be very
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 195 
 
 strict on the point of dates, and it is important to 
 note that this epidemic (the epidemic, I repeat, not 
 the scare) lasted just four months. Beginning in 
 July, 1862, it was over in November. At the Novem- 
 ber Sessions of the Central Criminal Court, twenty- 
 seven persons were indicted for this crime ; twenty- 
 one were convicted and received exemplary sentences, 
 not of flogging, but of imprisonment. Meanwhile, 
 police in plain clothes were put on duty in the 
 streets, and detectives, I believe, were instructed to 
 call upon all ticket-of-leave men known to be in 
 London, with the friendly tip that if garotting did 
 not cease they would sup sorrow. This I do not give 
 for gospel, but the epidemic subsided. At the 
 December Sessions twenty-two persons were charged 
 with street robberies, " some (as the Common 
 Serjeant informed the grand jury) being accompanied 
 with personal violence." At the January Sessions, 
 1863, according to the report in The Times, " the 
 Calendar showed very few offences of this class " ; 
 and at the Sessions in March the Recorder of London 
 (Mr. Russell Gurney) thus referred to the subject in 
 charging the grand jury : "I am very glad to say 
 that there is an absence of those peculiar charges of 
 robbery with violence of which there was a large 
 number towards the end of last year, and which 
 have been gradually decreasing during the last two 
 or three months." 1 
 
 The crime, in a word, had been put down by the 
 vigilance of the police and the due administration 
 of the law. It was the ordinary law, with its ordinary 
 punishments. But long after the practical disappear- 
 ance of the epidemic of garotting namely, on 
 
 1 The Times, March 3rd, 1863.
 
 196 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 February 26th, 1863 a member of Parliament, who 
 not only had no official responsibility but who did 
 not even represent a London constituency, intro- 
 duced a Flogging Bill (the " Security from Violence 
 Bill" was its title) into the House of Commons. 
 Why was this ? It was that a member of the House, 
 Mr. Pilkington, had been assaulted and robbed in St. 
 James's Park. The Bill (to empower judges to add 
 a sentence of flogging to one of imprisonment or 
 penal servitude) was based on no statistics ; it was 
 backed by no argument. An angry and intimidated 
 House wanted neither argument nor statistics. 
 Vainly did the Home Secretary, stating the proven 
 facts of the case, oppose this measure. Hurried from 
 stage to stage, the Bill was passed into law on July 
 13th, 1863. From that day to the present the public 
 has been diligently hocussed into the belief that this 
 was the Act which garotted the garotter. 
 
 For the cold, parliamentary truth of the matter 
 we had to wait twenty-seven years. In 1900, Mr. J. 
 Lloyd Wharton, at whose hands better things had 
 been deserved, introduced a Flogging Bill, which a 
 final vote of the House smashed to pieces (for, 75 ; 
 against, 197). Two Home Secretaries a Liberal 
 and a Conservative spoke on it ; attempting once 
 for all to settle the delusion that flogging had killed 
 garotting. 
 
 Mr. Asquith (Home Secretary, 1892-5) : 
 
 "As to garotting, that crime had been brought 
 to an end as a serious danger before the House, in 
 a fit of panic, due to one of its own members having 
 been garotted, resorted to legislation. Garotting 
 was put down, without resort to the lash, by a 
 fearless administration of the existing criminal law."
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 197 
 
 The late Lord Ridley (Home Secretary, 1895- 
 1900) : 
 
 " Reference has been made to the Garotting 
 Act. He agreed with the history of that Act, at 
 all events as far as London was concerned, given 
 by the right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Asquith), 
 and that the rapid and severe action which put 
 down garotting took place before the passing of the 
 Act of 1863." 
 
 Briefly, the one and only real epidemic of garotte 
 that London has experienced was a terror of the past 
 many months before the achievement of the measure 
 that has ever since been paraded as its cure. But 
 prejudice on this subject is now chronic and inveterate. 
 For fifty years the legend of the garotter cowed and 
 quelled by the " cat " has lied so volubly that the 
 truth has grown a fool to it. 
 
 It is not even by any means universally the fact 
 that the violent man dreads the violent retaliation. 
 Griffiths cites the case of a prisoner flogged in the 
 early days of Wormwood Scrubs : " When he was 
 taken down from the triangles, after he had endured 
 it all without a sign or a groan, he turned to us and 
 said coolly : ' Now I'll fight the best man among 
 you ! ' Of a piece with this is a story I had from 
 one of Major Griffiths' s successors in the office of 
 Governor at the same prison. " Done quite a good 
 mornin's work, sonny, ain't you ! " said the prisoner 
 to the warder who had just finished flogging him. 
 
 ** Now go an' get yer b y 'air cut ! " Yet another 
 
 that was passed to me by the doctor, waiting in his 
 study the summons to his first round of the evening. 
 " We had quite an uncommon turn here one morning 
 last month : three men to flog. A week or so after-
 
 198 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 wards I put the question to each of them ' What 
 would you take, money down, to repeat the dose ? ' 
 No. I said he wouldn't be tied up again for a fortune. 
 No. II was prepared to take it for a ' fiver.' No. Ill 
 said, ' Well, I dunno, doctor, but I fancy I'd see it 
 through agen for a sovereign down.' ' Mr. Basil 
 Thomson, in his admirable " Story of Dartmoor 
 Prison," mentions a prisoner of war who said, " Hard 
 or soft, I'll take a dozen for a shilling any time." 
 
 But we have cases more directly to the purpose 
 from the criminal courts. " I have myself tried 
 more than one prisoner for offences of that description 
 (garotting), who had been flogged and imprisoned 
 by other judges," wrote Mr. Justice Denman in 
 1874. " The poor wretches who undergo it (flogging) 
 are not improved, are not deterred," said Mr. C. H. 
 Hopwood, K.C., in a public address. Ned Wright, 
 the Hoxton burglar, came six times under the " cat." 
 The old burglar " Archie," whose story Mr. Charles 
 Morley has so graphically told, mounting in his later 
 years into the service of the Salvation Army (its 
 representative at the prison gate), carried a visiting- 
 card with the record of his eight sentences of flogging. 
 
 Mr. Collinson says : 
 
 " It will be remembered by many readers that a 
 man named Hackett, on being sentenced, a few 
 years ago, to seven years' imprisonment, shouted 
 at the top of his voice, ' Oh, my Lord, flog me ! ' 
 and he left the dock shouting, ' My God ! seven 
 years ! ' This man had been flogged before." 
 
 The Morning Leader gives the case of a convicted 
 prisoner who, at Birmingham, " handed a written re- 
 quest to the Recorder, that instead of a long sentence 
 he would give him a short sentence and the ' cat.' '
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 199 
 
 The Manchester Dispatch reports the trial of one 
 Arthur Mannell : 
 
 "The Prisoner: I ask your Lordship, in prefer- 
 ence to a long term of imprisonment, which only 
 hardens a man's heart, to give me a short sentence 
 and a flogging." 
 
 The Yorkshire Daily Observer comments on the 
 case of Richard Bracewell, a carpenter, convicted of 
 stealing : 
 
 " His Lordship said that unfortunately any 
 punishment he might mete out to the prisoner 
 would practically fall upon his wife and family. 
 He only wished he could order a flogging. 
 
 " The Prisoner : I would willingly take that, your 
 Lordship, if I might have my liberty." 
 
 And this from the Daily News : 
 
 " At Newington Sessions, before Mr. McConnell, 
 K.C., Reuben Vaughan, 24, pleaded guilty to 
 obtaining by false pretences a watch and other 
 articles, value 18, etc. Mr. McConnell : ' In 1894 
 you had the advantage of being birched, in 1895 you 
 were sent to reformatory, in 1899 you got to the 
 Old Bailey for forgery, in 1901 you had a sentence 
 of twelve months for stealing a bicycle, and then 
 you were sentenced at Maidstone to two years.' 
 The Prisoner : ' Will your Lordship order me the 
 cat-o'-nine tails ? That would be better than 
 sending me back to prison for a long time.' Mr. 
 McConnell : ' I dare say it would be better, but I 
 have no power.' The prisoner was sentenced to 
 eighteen months' hard labour."
 
 200 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 It is of the nature of an axiom that penalties 
 casually and indiscriminately applied are seldom 
 in any sense deterrent ! Now the garotter knows 
 well that he has a first-rate chance of escaping the 
 punishment of the lash. Prison he will doubtless get ; 
 but, to quote a caustic pen in the Nation : 
 
 " It is only if a particularly humane and careful 
 judge arrives on the scene that his back will be 
 reduced to pulp. What might be gained by a bad 
 form of punishment is lost by its random adminis- 
 tration." 
 
 In a debate in the House of Commons in July, 1885 
 (on which occasion, by the way, the House declined 
 to sanction flogging even in reference to cases against 
 women and children), the point was finely argued by 
 Sir Farrer afterwards Lord Chancellor Herschell : 
 
 *' He strongly objected to the punishment of 
 flogging for two reasons. The first was that it was, 
 perhaps above all other punishments, an unequal 
 punishment. They inflicted the same number of 
 strokes upon two men, and the chances were that 
 the man who deserved to feel the punishment most 
 felt it by far the least. It was an extremely unequal 
 punishment. And in the next place it was of all 
 punishments the most uncertain. They had to 
 leave the punishment, as they must leave it, to 
 the discretion of the judge. There were some 
 judges who would always flog, there were some 
 judges who would never flog. Whether the punish- 
 ment was inflicted or not depended, not on the 
 gravity of the offence, but upon the particular 
 judge who might chance to go that particular 
 circuit. . . If hon. members would read the return
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 201 
 
 to which he alluded (the return which showed that 
 garotting had been put down before the Flogging 
 Act was passed) they would find that if a judge 
 went Assize and flogged a number of men for a 
 particular offence the number of such offences at 
 the next Assize did not diminish. If they could 
 prove anything from it it would be this that a 
 flogging judge was followed by a number of garrot- 
 ting cases and a non-flogging judge by a great 
 diminution of that crime." 
 
 In the debate on the Wharton Bill in March, 1900, 
 Mr. Asquith said : 
 
 " I believe the majority of the English Bench, 
 at present comprising some of the ablest and most 
 experienced of our judges, have never in their lives 
 awarded the sentence of the lash. As to reforma- 
 tion, has anyone ever yet been reformed by the 
 punishment of the lash ? I have never yet been 
 able to discover any such evidence. Is it the 
 wisest course for weaning men from brutality to 
 commence the course of punishment by treatment 
 which involves moral humiliation and physical 
 torture ? ... As to the deterrent effect of flogging, 
 it is impossible to look upon a punishment as really 
 deterrent if the question whether it will be inflicted 
 in any particular case is no more a certainty than 
 a chance in a lottery. The majority of the judges 
 never award this punishment at all." 
 
 And now, finally, how stands the case with regard 
 to prison ? A few years ago there were many trifling 
 breaches of the rules that rendered an adult male 
 prisoner liable to the fiery ordeal of " cat " or birch. 
 In a fit of temper he might tear up his slop jacket,
 
 202 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 pitch his wooden stool at the window of his cell, 
 swear at a teasing officer, throw down his tools in 
 the workshop, break into ribaldry in chapel, or 
 question the legitimacy of the chief warder's birth. 
 For any silly or pettish or unbecoming action that 
 the powers chose to regard as " gross misconduct or 
 insubordination requiring to be suppressed by extra- 
 ordinary means," l the prisoner might be introduced 
 to the visiting justices, who would almost certainly 
 introduce him to the scourger. Were this the begin- 
 ning of the chapter, I should seek to show in detail 
 that the flogging of prisoners has been as ineffectual 
 as the flogging of garotters : that, during the great days 
 of the " cat " in the older convict prisons, discipline 
 was at its lowest, the general sense of disaffection 
 at its highest. A chronicle of the period running 
 at the roughest computation from the 'sixties to 
 the later 'seventies would show the prison flogger 
 always pretty busy, and the prison governor never 
 very certain of the temper of his flock. " Although 
 penalties for misconduct were very severe at 
 the time," says Dr. Quinton, gathering up his 
 memories of Portsmouth Convict Prison in 1876, 
 " they had apparently but little deterrent effect." 
 
 An Act of 1898 limited flogging in prisons to two 
 offences : mutiny or an attempt at mutiny, and an 
 assault on an officer. Four years after the passing of 
 this Act, certain visiting justices, chafing under its 
 limitations, asked the Prison Commissioners for a 
 little more whipping. The Commissioners took stock 
 of four years' infringements of the rules. They found, 
 possibly to their own surprise, that whereas the 
 offences not punishable with flogging had decreased, 
 
 1 Du Cane.
 
 THE FUTILITY OF FLOGGING 203 
 
 there was a noticeable rise in those for which the 
 " cat " could be prescribed ! 
 
 On flogging as a punishment, the first and the 
 last word is : Failure. History vouchsafes no other 
 answer. The attempt to correct crime with crime 
 has everywhere repaid us in the properly disastrous 
 way. Example offers (and fairly overwhelms us) 
 wherever flogging has been tried : in the army, in the 
 navy, in the old and the new prisons. The most 
 indecent penalty retained upon the books is also the 
 most sterile in returns. 1 
 
 1 A writer in the Law Times (April llth, 1908) observes : " It 
 is not, perhaps, generally known that the harbarous and degrading 
 punishment of the lash is wholly abolished in Scotland. Mr. H. D. 
 Greene, K.C., speaking in the House of Commons on the 28th 
 March, 1900, thus accounted for its abolition in Scotland. We 
 quote from Hansard : ' The unfortunate Paddy in Dublin and the 
 unfortunate wretch in Whitechapel may be whipped, but the man 
 in Scotland is to go free. What is the reason ? Because the Scotch 
 will not tolerate a law of this kind. lu an Act, passed in 1862, to 
 amend the law with regard to the whipping of juvenile offenders, 
 a clause was introduced that no one should be whipped in Scotland 
 for offences against person or property, and the Scotch have 
 enjoyed a complete immunity against whipping ever since. Can 
 any one contend that there has been an increase of crime in 
 Scotland because of that provision ? ' " 
 
 But is the surmise correct as to the " unfortunate Paddy in 
 Dublin " ? Whatever the law may be, there is not, I fancy, any 
 flogging in Irish prisons. Neither in Kilmainham nor in Mountjoy 
 could any officer recall a case for me.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 
 
 A FATEFUL spot is the foot of the stairs leading to 
 the Old Bailey dock. On certain days certain 
 prisoners stand there waiting to go up for sentence. 
 Some few men have pleaded guilty. What judge has 
 tried the cases ? 
 
 This, a first offender may persuade himself, is not 
 a question of much moment. The law is the law, and 
 by the law the judge must regulate his sentence. Of 
 course this is true, but the old offender knows rather 
 more than the first offender. He knows, for instance, 
 that, let the law be what it may, the paying of it out 
 depends a good deal upon the judge. 
 
 One by one the victims come down from the dock ; 
 and now they are men not only convicted but con- 
 demned : they have got their gruel. It is soon 
 learned that the doses are pretty stiff this morning. 
 " ' The judge ain't on very good terms with his missus 
 this morning,' said the man standing next to me on 
 my right. ' It's all a bit of luck is this weighing-off 
 business. If that judge 'ad 'a 'appened ter've been 
 married yesterday instead of fallin' out wi' his Old 
 Dutch this mornin', that chap as 'as just come down 
 would 'a oney got six months instead o' three year.' " 1 
 
 Herbert Spencer puts it in another way : 
 
 " The lengths of penal sentences are fixed in a 
 manner that is wholly empirical. Within the 
 
 1 Frederick Martin : "A Holiday in Gaol." 
 204
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 205 
 
 limits assigned by Acts of Parliament, the judge 
 exercises his discretion, and in deciding on the 
 time over which the restraint shall extend he is 
 swayed partly by the special quality of the offence, 
 partly by the circumstances under which it was 
 committed, partly by the prisoner's behaviour and 
 appearance, partly by the character given to him. 
 And the conclusion he arrives at after consideration 
 of these data depends very much on his individual 
 nature his moral bias and his theories of human 
 conduct. Thus the mode of fixing the lengths of 
 sentences is, from beginning to end, little else than 
 guessing." 1 
 
 Thus the philosopher and thus the old offender 
 the first seeing it shrewdly in his study, the second 
 discussing it at the bottom of the dock stairs on 
 the question of the inequality of sentences. 
 
 What Herbert Spencer says about the empirical 
 fixing of sentences is not to be gainsaid. Unfortu- 
 nately, the empirical method is the one we are at 
 present bound to, since we have not a single 
 positive principle for the awarding of punishments. 
 For such-and-such an offence the law prescribes a 
 maximum penalty, and so long as the judge confines 
 himself within the limits laid down for him, he is 
 practically allowed to exercise his own discretion and 
 some judges have no discretion to exercise. 
 
 In the books that should be lights on the path 
 there is scarcely any guidance. " Even in the most 
 accurate and useful books of practice," says Lord 
 Brampton (Mr. Justice Hawkins, who in his day was, 
 perhaps, the most open-eyed and certainly the least 
 
 1 British Quarterly Review, July, 1860.
 
 206 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 sentimental judge upon the bench), " to which all 
 look for guidance and assistance during every stage 
 of the criminal proceedings, down to the conviction 
 of the offender, no serious attempt has been made to 
 deal, even in the most general way, with the mode in 
 which the appropriate sentence should be arrived at." 
 What wonder that, under such a state of things, " the 
 most glaring irregularities, diversity and variety of 
 sentences, are daily brought to our notice, the same 
 offence committed under similar circumstances being 
 visited by one judge with a long term of penal 
 servitude, by another with simple imprisonment, 
 with nothing appreciable to account for the differ- 
 ence? " If one judge regards prevention as the 
 primary purpose of punishment, another retribution, 
 and a third reformation, each of the three will pass 
 a different sentence for an offence of the same 
 kind. 
 
 This is a real evil. The man who is punished with 
 undue severity neither forgets nor forgives. He 
 bears a grudge against justice and against society, 
 and on such a man a long sentence of penal servitude 
 is likely to have a very bad effect. Moreover, long 
 sentences of penal servitude are costly to the State ; 
 the sins of the criminal are visited upon the taxpayer 
 whenever the penalty exacted is greatly in excess 
 of the offence. On the other hand, when the judge 
 errs on the side of lenity, society is endangered by the 
 untimely release of the thief whose hand is still in. 
 Looked at from any point of view, it is a grave 
 question. 
 
 There are many judges who contend that the 
 previous record of a prisoner " should be the most 
 important factor in deciding on his sentence." 
 This was not the view of Lord Brampton, who has told
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 207 
 
 us in his " Reminiscences " the course he always 
 adopted in practice : 
 
 " My first care was never to pass any sentence 
 inconsistent with any other sentence passed under 
 similar circumstances for another though similar 
 offence. Then I proceeded to fix in my own mind 
 what ought to be the outside sentence that should 
 be awarded for that particular offence had it stood 
 alone ; and from that I deducted every circum- 
 stance of mitigation, provocation, etc., the balance 
 representing the sentence I finally awarded, con- 
 fining it purely to the actual guilt of the prisoner/' 
 
 Against this practice (which does not guarantee 
 an always equitable award) may be set that of 
 the cumulative sentence. A prisoner arraigned on 
 several counts, and found guilty on two or more, 
 is liable to be punished for each of these offences. 
 One judge views the matter this way, another 
 views it that way : to the prisoner standing in the 
 dock for sentence the judge's own opinion of the 
 affair makes all the difference. The counts may 
 be lumped together, so to say, and regarded as one 
 offence ; and the prisoner sentenced accordingly. 
 It comes, of course, to the same thing when the 
 judge, giving a sentence on each count, orders the 
 sentences to run concurrently ; and this is a humane 
 and generally a just and common-sense method of 
 procedure. Very different is the fate of the prisoner 
 whose sentences on the various counts are directed to 
 run consecutively. In this event a man may receive 
 far heavier punishment than is involved in what is 
 called a " life " sentence. Discussing a case tried by 
 Mr. Justice Stephen (presumably at about the time 
 of the judge's retirement), when the failure of his
 
 208 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 wits was a matter of common knowledge at the Bar, 
 a writer in a quarterly periodical says : 
 
 " There were several counts on the indictment. 
 The maximum punishment for the offence with 
 which the man was charged was fourteen years' penal 
 servitude. He was found guilty on each count of 
 the indictment, and the judge inflicted sentences to 
 run consecutively, the whole totalling up to twenty- 
 nine years. According to the rules in regard to 
 remission, the man so sentenced must complete 
 twenty-one and three-quarter years before being 
 eligible for discharge on a seven and three-quarter 
 years' ticket-of-leave. Now, had this man been 
 sentenced to penal servitude for life a term no 
 single count in the indictment justified he would be 
 released at the end of twenty years on a five years' 
 ticket-of-leave. Had he, on the other hand, been 
 tried before a common-sense judge, or a pedantic 
 judge whose pedantry was tempered by humane 
 feelings, he would have received at most a sentence 
 of fourteen years, and have been released at the end 
 of ten and a half years' actual imprisonment." 
 
 It is difficult to imagine an offence which would call 
 for twenty-nine years' privation of liberty in a 
 convict prison (to say nothing of the money to be 
 disbursed by the State for the prisoner). Whittaker 
 Wright, arraigned on twenty-six counts, was found 
 guilty on twenty-four. For most of the offences the 
 maximum penalty was seven years ; and Mr. Justice 
 Bigham, following the example of Mr. Justice Stephen, 
 might have passed a sentence of considerably over 
 one hundred years' penal servitude. The sentence he 
 gave was seven years. 
 
 Mr. Montague Crackanthorpe, K.C., reviewing the
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 209 
 
 whole subject in the Nineteenth Century,* brings for- 
 ward some signal and shocking examples of an older 
 day : 
 
 "A was sent to penal servitude for his first 
 offence (embezzlement). Sixteen years after he 
 was liberated he was convicted of stealing some 
 candles, and was sentenced to seven years' im- 
 prisonment and seven years' police supervision. 
 
 " B had been committed to a local gaol for two 
 minor offences. He was afterwards convicted of 
 stealing money, and sentenced to seven years' 
 penal servitude followed by seven years' police 
 supervision. He was again convicted for stealing 
 3s., and sentenced to another seven years' imprison- 
 ment followed by a further seven years' super- 
 vision. 
 
 " C had been four times committed to gaol for 
 minor offences. He was afterwards convicted of 
 stealing a garden fork, and was sentenced to ten 
 years' imprisonment and five years' supervision. 
 
 " D, having had sixteen minor convictions, was 
 convicted of stealing a hamper of potatoes, and 
 was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment and 
 seven years' supervision. He was afterwards 
 convicted of stealing some watercress and shell- 
 fish, and was sentenced to eight years' imprison- 
 ment and seven years' supervision. 
 
 " E, after five petty committals to gaol, was 
 sentenced, for stealing 6s., to seven years' imprison- 
 ment. The same year in which he was liberated he 
 stole a pair of boots, and had a sentence of ten 
 years' imprisonment and seven years' supervision," 
 
 1 January, 1900.
 
 210 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 By such means have we striven to make criminals. 
 Mr. Crackanthorpe thinks it is " not at all probable 
 that any judge of the High Court or any recorder or 
 chairman of quarter sessions now living would inflict 
 such grotesquely cruel punishments as these " ; 
 but we still have gentlemen on the bench, in this 
 capacity or that, against whose judgment every 
 criminal would pray to be defended. At Middlesex 
 Sessions the hand of Sir Ralph Littler was pretty 
 heavy. In eighteen years his sentences reached the 
 total of five hundred and seventy-two years of penal 
 servitude ! 
 
 In prison, the flagrant and freakish inequality of 
 judicial punishments are a fruitful theme of talk. " In 
 this connection," says Jabez Balfour, " I aver that 
 the people who are best acquainted with the working 
 of the criminal law the governors and officers of 
 prisons are the most sceptical as to the boasted 
 merits of English justice." He tables the five most 
 aberrant cases in his own experience : 
 
 NAME. CRIME. SENTENCE. 
 
 K . . Killing wife . . Life. 
 
 S ,, . Three years. 
 
 H . . Killing girl . . Three years. 
 
 P . . Embezzlement (72) . Ten years. 
 
 Q . . (4000) Three years. 
 
 " S," says Mr. Balfour, " shot his wife because she 
 objected to his spending the best part of his time 
 and his money at various local clubs, and took the 
 highly feminine step of following him to those 
 establishments and urging him to return to his home. 
 This was apparently so heinous a proceeding, that 
 when he shot her dead in a fit of temper, the learned 
 and eminent judge who sentenced him dwelt on
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 211 
 
 the abominable nature of the provocation, and 
 inflicted the minimum sentence of three years' penal 
 servitude. 
 
 " In the other case . . . K had shot his wife, as he 
 himself stated, through jealousy, and had then 
 attempted suicide. A very different judge presided 
 over this trial, a judge who was generally reputed a 
 weak man, and who was therefore addicted to strong 
 measures. He passed a sentence of death, which was 
 afterwards commuted to penal servitude for life." 
 
 Cases not less eccentric are produced by Lord 
 William Nevill, who observes that " the whole 
 system of remission must be to a great extent farcical, 
 so long as the judges take such extraordinarily 
 different views in passing sentences. Monstrous as 
 it may seem, it is the plain truth that in one part of 
 England a crime is punished by a short term of 
 imprisonment in a local gaol, whilst in another part 
 of England the same crime is punished by a long 
 term of penal servitude. 1 Even in the courts in 
 London, where some sort of uniformity might surely 
 be arranged, the most astounding inequalities prevail. 
 . . . There were two solicitors at Parkhurst during 
 my time, both of whom had been condemned for 
 almost exactly similar crimes. Each had made away 
 with the property of clients, and each, when detected, 
 had attempted to take his own life and that of his 
 wife. These two men were tried by two different 
 judges, and one received a sentence of five years' 
 penal servitude, the other a sentence of ten years." 
 
 1 Lord William Nevill's " Penal Servitude " was published in 
 1903. Mr. Montague Crackanthorpe, in the Nineteenth Century 
 essay which appeared three years earlier, says: "Our sole 
 concern is that punishment should he on a uniform scale that is to 
 say, that similar punishments should be awarded for similar crimes 
 in different parts of the country."
 
 212 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 It was subsequently proved concerning the more 
 heavily punished of the pair that he was scarcely 
 responsible for his actions. 
 
 Lord William Nevill continues : 
 
 " Here is a still more bewildering instance of 
 judicial caprice as regards sentences. Two men were 
 brought before Mr. Justice Phillimore to be tried for 
 bigamy. There was nothing remarkable in either 
 case, both being just about equal in point of 
 criminality. But one man had gone through the 
 form of re-marriage in church, and the other at a 
 registrar's office. On account of this difference alone 
 the former was sentenced to five years' penal 
 servitude, while the latter was let off without any 
 punishment at all, being merely ordered to be 
 detained during the sitting of the court. Mr. 
 Justice Phillimore made no disguise of his bias in 
 this case. He openly avowed that, being a strict 
 Churchman himself, he did not consider a form of 
 re-marriage before a registrar was any breach of 
 the laws of God, and he therefore imposed only a 
 nominal penalty. In the other case the crime had 
 been committed in a church, and that was a breach 
 both of the laws of God and of man, and must 
 therefore be punished with the utmost severity. 
 What sort of equality can there be before the law 
 when judges have the power to exercise their 
 discretion or rather their personal prejudice- 
 in such a fashion as that ? " 
 
 Of the gluttony for punishment displayed by some 
 at least of our judges, proofs could be extended till 
 the reader tired of them. One example more a 
 rouser shall satisfy us. I am indebted for it to 
 Mr. Thomas Holmes, secretary of the Howard
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 213 
 
 Association, who for many years made the work of 
 a police-court missionary something to be lauded of 
 all men. The facer he delivered through the post to 
 one of those lickerish subjects who are always itching 
 to marry some illustrious mopsy of the courts was 
 exemplary. In the volume entitled " Known to the 
 Police " Mr. Holmes exhibits the inexplicable case 
 of a youth named Taylor. 
 
 In January, 1906, there was a trumpery burglary 
 at a small house in Coventry. Twenty-four farthings, 
 one gold locket, one metal chain, and ten spoons 
 were stolen. Taylor, twenty-two years of age, a 
 carpenter and joiner, " with a good little business of 
 his own," was charged with the crime and tried at 
 Warwick Assizes before Mr. Justice Ridley. He had 
 been detained in prison nearly eleven months. 
 " Some of the articles were found in his possession, 
 and it was proved that he had been spending farthings. 
 That the people whose house had been entered did 
 not suspect the prisoner was clear, as they sent for 
 him next morning to repair the door that had been 
 broken." Taylor " was not even suspected of con- 
 nection with any professional criminals. It was, 
 moreover, the first time he had been in the hands 
 of the police." His decent family had lived in the 
 town " for nearly three hundred years." The 
 evidence seems not to have been of the clearest kind, 
 but the jury, without leaving the box, gave a verdict 
 of guilty. The judge said : " You have been con- 
 victed, and properly convicted ; but I know the sort 
 of man you are, from this case and from the fact that 
 there is another charge against you in this calendar. 
 Fourteen years' penal servitude ! " It is unnecessary 
 to go beyond Mr. Holmes's comment : " Fourteen 
 years for a young man of twenty-two ! Fourteen
 
 214 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 years for a first offender ! It requires an effort to 
 make oneself believe it, but it is a fact." Is this man 
 still in prison ? 
 
 The author of the articles in The Times, treating 
 very luminously of " The Sentence," says : 
 
 " Good intentions and zeal for duty all our 
 judges and justices possess. Their knowledge 
 of law, their acumen, their sense of proportion in 
 considering not only actual guilt but the degrees 
 of guilt, are admittedly very great indeed. But 
 how many of them, from the county J.P. to the 
 judge, really know the inside edge, so to speak, 
 of prison life and a prisoner's way of looking at it ? 
 The agony such life may be, hi the third division, 
 to the first offender ; the comfort and relaxation 
 and health restorative it often is for a short spell 
 to the old hand. Then, worse still, take penal 
 servitude. When a Judge of Assizes sentences a 
 lad of eighteen to fifteen years for some violent 
 outrage committed in a fit of drunken passion, an 
 isolated act in a life otherwise respectable and 
 decent I speak of a case within my knowledge 
 does he really know what he is doing ? Has he been 
 hi and through Dartmoor and watched the faces of 
 some of the juvenile adults there, and studied on 
 the spot the effect of such sentences upon young 
 lives which were meant, with all their capacity 
 for brute passion, for freedom after punishment 
 and the softening influences of mothers and home ? 
 Or, on the other hand, when he puts away a 
 recidivist, as he does often enough, for three or 
 five years only, for a crime which has been repeated 
 half a dozen times say, housebreaking without 
 violence does his Lordship know what happens
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 
 
 when that man. is loose again how he goes back 
 to the old haunts not only to do it all again, but 
 to teach and encourage and incite the young to 
 follow his example ? " 
 
 On the two points emphasised in this paragraph 
 I shall offer two suggestions. (1) Sufficing instances 
 relatively few though they be have been adduced 
 in support of the contention that ideal justice is not 
 the universal aim of the bench of judges. I glance 
 back at Herbert Spencer's showing of the matter, 
 and glance forward to the view offered by Dr. Maurice 
 de Fleury in " L'Ame Criminelle." Dr. de Fleury, 
 putting himself in the shoes of a philosophic judge 
 of the future, says : 
 
 " There is nothing to permit me to judge, and I 
 am not qualified to allot punishment. I am here 
 in order to put it out of the power of the wretched 
 being before me to do harm ; it is for me to substi- 
 tute my coolness and my serenity for the revengeful 
 wrath of those whom he has injured, and to prevent 
 them from taking justice into their own hands." 
 
 (2) The question of the punishment of recidivists, 
 the men who have passed again and again through 
 prison, continues to this day to perplex every one 
 who thinks about it, and is not disposed of in a 
 facile sentence or two. The right standard of punish- 
 ment, could we attain to it, would no doubt be a 
 very surprising thing in its effects upon the criminal ; 
 but, as matters stand, what in the long run do we 
 gain by sending back to prison the man whom we 
 have already spoiled there ? 
 
 For the caprices of justice in the higher courts 
 Herbert Spencer could suggest no effective cure.
 
 216 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Lord Brampton, who in his later years had the 
 subject ever anxiously before him, took counsel with 
 the public on it in the New Review. * The inequalities 
 of punishment, he urged, " would be materially 
 lessened by the adoption of fixed principles, to be 
 determined by a commission of competent persons 
 having knowledge and aptitude for dealing with the 
 subject." Twenty-three years earlier, in 1870, Lord 
 Penzance (sometime a Baron of the Exchequer) 
 had advised in the House of Lords that a standard 
 of sentences might be obtained, if not by Act of 
 Parliament or an Order in Council, "by agreement 
 among the judges themselves." Lord Brampton's 
 proposal, I believe, was talked of in high places, and 
 rumour was busy with the appointment of a Com- 
 mission. But no Commission was appointed. Were 
 the judges invited ? Did they shrink from the task ? 
 The hint upon the " agreement among the judges 
 themselves " is the one especially commended by 
 Mr. Crackanthorpe. Discarding as impracticable 
 the two first methods of Lord Penzance the Act 
 of Parliament and the Order in Council, he says : 
 
 " Suppose each of these to be asked what are 
 the average sentences he would pronounce, apart 
 from special circumstances, on an adult male who 
 had been convicted of those offences which most 
 commonly recur, and who is not entitled to the 
 benefit of the First Offenders' Act. Having thus 
 got six average sentences, let the average of those 
 averages be taken. Let the same process be gone 
 through where there are one or more previous con- 
 victions, and let the average of the increase of 
 sentence attributable to that fact be ascertained 
 
 1 June, 1893.
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 217 
 
 in like manner. We should thus get a table of 
 units forming an approximate scale of punishment 
 which would be prima facie appropriate to certain 
 named crimes wherever met with, and would prove 
 of great assistance as a guide to all judges and 
 magistrates throughout the length and breadth 
 of the land." 
 
 If, insists Mr. Crackanthorpe in conclusion, some 
 such suggestion be not enforced, if it be thought 
 improper to put pressure on the judges, then must 
 we resign ourselves to the situation, " for the defect 
 will be beyond repair." Beyond repair it would 
 seem that we are all agreed to consider it ; for, so 
 far as public opinion goes, the question sleeps as 
 hard as ever. 
 
 Years ago Mr. Stead, having done penance as a 
 " first-class misdemeanant " in Hollo way, put before 
 judges the propriety of condemning themselves to a 
 stretch in prison. The Times, commenting on the 
 possible necessity of amending the law, observes 
 that " if the necessary knowledge is to be acquired 
 by our courts, the august members thereof would 
 have to take a holiday and at their country's expense 
 visit and examine prisons, inside and out, and learn 
 something of the curious morality and etiquette and 
 customs of the ' professional ' classes on the spot." 
 Well, quite recently an American administrator, 
 Governor Benjamin Hooper, of Tennessee, com- 
 mitted himself to the State Penitentiary at Nashville 
 to see for himself what sort of weather an amateur 
 felon could make of it. His identity was known only 
 to the warden, or governor, of the prison. At the 
 end of twenty-four hours he sent for this gentleman, 
 respectfully begged the loan of a pen, and wrote out
 
 218 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 his own pardon. " Chaffed unmercifully for his 
 ignominious retreat," he declared that, " honestly 
 as he had tried, he could not stand prison life for 
 another twenty-four hours." l Opportunity being 
 given, it would be interesting to note whether, since 
 the lagging of Mr. Hooper, the value of criminal life 
 has risen in the Nashville Penitentiary. 
 
 An ultimate word in The Times' s article on " The 
 Sentence " carries a practical appeal : 
 
 " That the Prison Commissioners should take 
 into consideration the advisability of gathering 
 together in as informal a manner as possible small 
 conferences of judges and magistrates and justices 
 of the peace, and consulting with them concerning 
 the problems which have to be faced and solved." 
 
 There are difficulties, however. These gentlemen 
 are scarcely in touch with one another, and not 
 exactly eager for intimacy. As for " problems which 
 have to be faced and solved," every judge, magistrate, 
 and justice of the peace reckons himself a law unto 
 himself, and has immemorially done so. Had there 
 been among them the most elementary sense of a 
 common interest they would long ago have come 
 together. Each and all of them we have invested 
 with an authority which at this day is individually, 
 separately, and distinctively theirs or nobody's. 
 
 At the moment, the end of the matter seems to be 
 this. We have no assured principles or principle of 
 punishment. From judges of the highest courts to 
 justices of the peace, there are upon the roll some 
 five thousand legal persons -who have power to pass 
 sentences. These sentences, plainly looked at, are 
 
 1 Case reported in the Daily Chronicle, December 23rd, 1911.
 
 ON THE INEQUALITY OF SENTENCES 219 
 
 an affair of pitch-and-toss. " Your crime, prisoner," 
 says the judge in effect, " is a very serious one, and 
 I intend to deal with it in a very serious manner. 
 Heads, I give you twelve months' hard labour ; 
 tails, you go into penal servitude for life " and up 
 goes the coin of fate.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 1 
 
 WHILE this measure " to make better provision 
 for the prevention of crime, and to provide for the 
 prolonged detention of habitual offenders " was 
 being discussed in Parliament, I made, at the sug- 
 gestion of a friendly editor, some comment on it in 
 his columns. That I may not repeat myself too often 
 I condense the article a little. 
 
 Let us see what are the chief provisions of the new 
 Bill in respect of the person branded as the habitual 
 offender. He is convicted of a new crime, and 
 sentence of penal servitude, we will say, is passed 
 upon him. If, in the jury's opinion, the delinquent 
 is an habitual offender, a professional criminal, a 
 recidivist the name matters little the court may 
 inflict a farther punishment may, in fact, double 
 the dose. As the Bill puts it, the court " may pass a 
 further sentence ordering that on the determination 
 of the sentence of penal servitude he be detained 
 during His Majesty's pleasure," an ominous phrase 
 hitherto associated only with Broadmoor. The second 
 sentence is described by the Bill as " preventive 
 detention." The habitual offender is one who has 
 been four times convicted, or who, in the belief of 
 
 1 The Act is in two parts. The first part deals with the 
 1 ' Reformation of Young Offenders/' the second with the " Deten- 
 tion of Habitual Criminals. 5 ' It is of the second part that I treat. 
 
 220
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 221 
 
 the jury, has been " leading persistently a dishonest 
 or criminal life." Having done time at Portland, 
 Parkhurst, or elsewhere, he is to be transferred 
 forthwith to some other prison, " which the Secretary 
 of State may set apart for the purpose." In this 
 place he will still " be subject to the law for the time 
 being in force with respect to penal servitude as if he 
 were undergoing penal servitude " ; but the rules of 
 the convict establishment will be modified " in the 
 direction of a less rigorous treatment." It is a trifle 
 vague, but we are left in little doubt that the powers 
 of the penal- servitude prison are to be in full force in 
 the background. Here, then, the old offender is to 
 remain until " there is a reasonable probability that 
 he will abstain from crime, and lead a useful and 
 industrious life, or that he is no longer capable of 
 engaging in crime." 
 
 Once at least in every three years the Secretary of 
 State will take into consideration " the condition, 
 history, and circumstances " of the prisoner, " with 
 a view to determining whether he shall be placed out 
 on licence." Again : " The Directors of Convict 
 Prisons shall report periodically to the Secretary of 
 State on the conduct and industry of persons under- 
 going preventive detention, and their prospects and 
 probable behaviour on release, and for this purpose 
 shall be assisted by a committee at each prison . . . 
 consisting of the governor of the prison and such 
 other persons as the Secretary of State may appoint. 
 Every such committee shall hold meetings at such 
 intervals of not more than six months as may be 
 prescribed." These, on a careful reading of the Bill, 
 strike me as its most important parts. 
 
 Let me examine the definition which the Home 
 Office or its advisers have given us of the habitual
 
 222 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 offender, the professional criminal so called. He is a 
 person against whom four convictions stand on 
 record. I submit that this case is not necessarily as 
 bad (and is very seldom as bad) as it looks upon the 
 sheet. Before dismissing him off-hand as a pro- 
 fessional criminal, liable to be shut up for a quite 
 indefinite time, under conditions which are not 
 explained, I want to know a good deal about this 
 person who has done four separate stretches. It is 
 a serious thing to decide about a man that he lives, 
 has lived, and means to live, by crime. I want to 
 know what his offences were, and in what circum- 
 stances he committed them. I want to know in what 
 manner he was punished for each of these offences. 
 I want to know what chances he had to quit the 
 crooked road for the straight one each time that he 
 came out of prison. 
 
 My point, to make it plainer still, is this : Every 
 time that we are trying for a crime a man who has 
 been twice convicted, we are also trying (though we 
 can seldom be brought to admit it) both the prison 
 system to which he has been subjected and the whole 
 social system of which he is a member. It is conceded 
 the question, indeed, is scarcely at this date open 
 to argument that the prison system is a failure. 
 What is not so generally conceded (because this is a 
 thing disgraceful to us all) is that society helps the 
 hurtful work of prison by refusing a decent opening 
 to the prisoner on discharge. By all means let us 
 admit that there are such persons as professional 
 criminals. But let us at the same time admit that both 
 we and our prisons have had no inconsiderable share 
 in the making of them. The one thing we should re- 
 fuse to admit is that, the prison system and the social 
 system being what they are, the professional criminal
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 223 
 
 is an irreclaimable. There are plenty of persons with 
 four convictions behind them who would very 
 willingly amend their ways. 
 
 I next observe that this unfortunate " habitual " 
 is to be transferred, as his penance progresses, from 
 a prison of one sort to a prison of some other sort. 
 " Not at all ! " says the complacent critic of the 
 scheme ; "his place of ' preventive detention ' will 
 be a kind of hospital or reformatory." I find nothing 
 of hospital or reformatory in the Bill ! The first 
 sentence, which may be one of many years, will 
 be served throughout under the system which has 
 notoriously failed to justify itself. All prison is bad. 
 It is hard and unwholesome for anybody to be 
 permanently in a condition of disgrace, and disgrace 
 and degradation are the state of the convict during 
 every hour of his confinement. A fine notion truly 
 it was that you were to reform wrongdoers by 
 cropping their heads, rigging them out like mounte- 
 banks, sealing their mouths, tasking them at any sort 
 of uncongenial labour, and rubbing it into them at 
 every moment of their dreary, vulgar, and useless 
 lives that they had put themselves beyond the 
 pale of decency and were fit for nothing better ! 
 But this is penal servitude ; this, and nothing less. 
 Read the confessions of any member of the intellec- 
 tual class who has been through it. 
 
 Now, I can imagine a place a prison even, if it 
 must be in which an influence might be directed 
 upon the old criminal hand such as he has never 
 known, and never could know, at Portland. And 
 here, of course, comes in the supremely important 
 point : What is the system to be, what are the con- 
 ditions of life to be, in the prison of preventive 
 detention ? In proportion as it resembles the convict
 
 224 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 establishments the new place of detention must fail ; 
 in proportion as it differs from them it may succeed. 
 The one great lack in the established system is the 
 human or humanising element. No man was ever 
 yet made better by being taught utterly to despise 
 himself, but in the whole social organism there is not 
 another situation so absolutely despicable as the 
 convict's. 
 
 It is clear, I trust, that all this must be pretty 
 thoroughly reformed if the Home Secretary's experi- 
 ment is to avail anything. I do not quite see by 
 whom it is going to be done. One thing seems 
 eminently advisable : that there should be as little 
 interference as possible by the autocrats of the 
 old school . Unless the routine of life in the new place 
 is once again to resolve itself into discipline and task 
 work the essence of penal servitude we want no 
 governor of the drill-sergeant pattern drafted from 
 the army or the navy. Nor do we want a personnel 
 such as the convict service has trained admirable as 
 that personnel is for the duties of keeping order and 
 handling large bodies of men crushed for the most 
 part into abject docility. A man passing out of penal 
 servitude would need first, I should think, to have 
 renewed in him some dim sense of self-respect, some 
 sense of responsibility, some feeling of kinship with 
 men not pariahs and lepers, some consciousness of 
 normal life and its privileges as well as its pains ; he 
 would need to be mentally and morally toned up ; 
 and all this supposes and demands on the part of 
 his mentors gifts which are not acquired in the 
 convict service. 
 
 It would be extremely interesting to know what 
 tests are to be applied in the cases of prisoners 
 petitioning for release. Who are the psychological
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 225 
 
 experts of the Home Office who will decide whether 
 the burglar placed in circumstances in which burglary 
 is impossible to him is fit to be returned to society ? 
 What is to be the criterion of repentance ? 
 
 Lastly, what is to become of the man who, in the 
 fullness of time, succeeds in obtaining his discharge ? 
 The day is not distant when it will be recognised 
 and insisted on that the State owes something to the 
 ex-convict whom it has kept for many years in prison. 
 The new Bill betrays no recognition of this duty. 1 
 
 This measure is now on the statute-book ; and, 
 in support of my own criticism, I will take a page 
 from the satirical reflections of Dr. Devon. 2 
 
 Prisoners undergoing preventive detention " shall 
 be subjected to such disciplinary and reformative 
 influences, and shall be employed on such work, as 
 may be best fit to make them able and willing to earn 
 an honest livelihood on discharge." 
 
 This, as Dr. Devon observes, " implies that prisoners 
 are not subjected to such disciplinary and reforma- 
 tive influence, and are not employed on such work as 
 may be best fitted to make them able and willing to 
 earn an honest livelihood on discharge ; but if this 
 implication is justified, why should they not be 
 placed under helpful conditions from the first day of 
 their imprisonment ? To one who is not a legislator 
 it appears foolish to insist that offenders should be 
 placed under conditions which do not fit them to 
 live honestly outside prison, and that this process 
 should be repeated until they have become habitual 
 criminals before it is ordered that steps shall be 
 taken for their reform. What are the influences 
 
 1 From the Nation. 
 
 2 "The Criminal and the Community."
 
 226 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 ordered by Parliament, and what is the work they 
 have to be taught which will make them able and 
 willing to earn an honest livelihood ? Surely no 
 Member of Parliament is credulous enough to believe 
 that the influences and the work that will tend to 
 make one man better will be suitable to all men." 
 
 The Act sets up a Committee the members of 
 which must meet at intervals to inquire into the 
 industry and morals of the black sheep in their care. 
 
 " Apparently, they need not meet more frequently 
 than once hi six months. Such a provision is too 
 nakedly absurd to deserve discussion. Apparently, 
 they have to report to the Prison Commissioners, 
 who report to the Secretary of State. The position 
 is therefore something like this that prisoners after 
 they have served prolonged periods in prison may be 
 transferred to another part of the establishment in 
 order to be reformed. In their new quarters the 
 treatment they receive is to be less rigorous than it 
 has been. The influences under which they have to be 
 brought are described but not defined. The officers 
 may be the same as those who were called warders 
 in the other part of the prison, but they may have 
 a new name perhaps a new uniform. If the person 
 satisfies the Secretary of State, whom he will never 
 see and who knows nothing about him personally, 
 that he is a reformed character, he may be liberated 
 on licence ; and he may seek election to the ranks of 
 the licensed once in three years. His conduct and 
 record will then be considered. What will determine 
 the character of the record obviously is the impression 
 he makes on those who come into contact with him. 
 That is to say, he will mainly depend on the report of 
 the warder, for, after all, does he not know most 
 about the man ? . . . The warder will report to the
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIMES ACT, 1908 227 
 
 head warder, who will report to the Governor. The 
 Medical Officer will report as to the health of the 
 person, and all the reports will go on to the Prison 
 Commissioners, and from them to some clerk . . . 
 who has satisfactorily passed a Civil Service examina- 
 tion on the boundaries of the Russian Empire, the 
 death of Rizzio, or some such important educational 
 subject, and who has never had any opportunity to 
 know anything about prisoners save what can be 
 learned from books, reports, and an occasional visit 
 to prison. The reports will be carefully checked, 
 weighed, and summarised, and the Secretary of State 
 will sign the order made for him." 
 
 They might not have done much better than this in 
 Laputa ; they would have done a great deal better 
 in Lilliput. If we accept Dr. Devon's humorous 
 account of the matter, we may guess what prisoners 
 under the new regime will have the best chances of 
 returning to freedom. " The man who has the best 
 chance to get a licence under the Act is the man who 
 can dodge best. All our experience points to the 
 fact ; and it is not uncommon for the most objection- 
 able character, by subservience and sycophancy, to 
 impress favourably those who have the dispensing 
 of privileges." 
 
 Sir Roger L' Estrange, in the moral of a fable 
 assigned to jEsop, asserts that " the trussing up of 
 thieves is the security of honest men." It is an 
 argument that easily returns against the user. If 
 all the cracksmen were put away at Portland, 
 jewellers in Bond Street might dispense with patent 
 shutters. If all financial sinners were bestowed at 
 Parkhurst, the small fry of investors might enjoy 
 a simple millennium of their own. 
 
 But not even in the new retreat erected by the
 
 228 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Act (which captivates the fancy of a witty and 
 perversive leader-writer in the Standard) can we 
 confine the enemies of society for a year of Sundays. 
 Time and the hour run through the roughest day of 
 imprisonment, and sooner or later the toughest subject 
 is let out. In the hour that he regains his freedom 
 the " security of honest men " depends in consider- 
 able sort on the treatment this malefactor has known 
 in the seclusion we have forced on him. What 
 treatment awaits him in his new asylum is scarcely 
 at present understood ; but Dr. Devon rightly and 
 warningly insists that no penal institution " has yet 
 been devised that even remotely resembles anything 
 like the life that its inmates have to anticipate."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 
 
 WOMAN is far less criminal than man. In all countries 
 " the proportion of female offenders, as compared 
 with female population, is at a very much lower ratio 
 than that of males." " Cherchez la femme / " is an 
 instruction that revolves between novels, farces, and 
 police inquiries. It is loosely applied, as such taking 
 phrases usually are, but a correct application it 
 undoubtedly has. Dr. Hans Gross, the Austrian 
 expert whose unrivalled professional experience en- 
 titles him to our utmost respect, attaches it to cases 
 in which the motive is revenge. 1 " Revenge and 
 the pursuit of revenge," he says, " are specifically 
 feminine. The real, vigorous man is not easily 
 turned thereto. In woman, it is connected with 
 her greater sensibility, which causes anger, rage, and 
 revenge to go farther than in men." This is also 
 a fundamental doctrine of Lombroso, who is at one 
 with other criminologists of the modern school in 
 assigning to women a far smaller share of criminality 
 than to men. " Statistics of every country show 
 that women contribute a very small share of crimin- 
 ality compared with that furnished by the opposite 
 sex. This share becomes still smaller when we 
 eliminate infanticide, in view of the fact that the 
 
 1 " Criminal Psychology." 
 229
 
 230 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 guilty parties in nearly all such cases should be 
 classed as criminals from passion." l 
 
 In France there are four times as many male 
 criminals as female. In the United States there are 
 at least twelve times as many. In Austria the 
 crimes of women constitute about 15 per cent of 
 the whole criminality; in Spain 11 per cent; in 
 Italy 8*2 per cent. In our own country " the pro- 
 portion is as fifteen males to one female in the convict 
 population, and as five to one in the local prisons." 
 Unhappily, the percentage of reconvictions is greater 
 among women than among men ; and I believe it is 
 the fact that the woman who has once passed into 
 prison is less likely than a first offender of the other 
 sex to regain the path of honesty. Hard as it is for the 
 man, society has made it harder still for fehe woman ! 
 It was stated some years ago that in the principal 
 female convict prison in England (we have now, by 
 the way, only one convict prison for women, the 
 establishment at Aylesbury), " by far the largest 
 number in custody are grey-haired, old, almost 
 venerable-looking women." Statistics of recidivism 
 inform us that " of the males, a percentage of 58*8 
 only had been previously convicted, and as many 
 as 77'2 of the females." 2 
 
 Lombroso, in "The Female Offender," seeks to de- 
 monstrate that prostitution is the true equivalent of 
 
 1 "Criminal Man, according to the Classification of Cesare 
 Lombroso." This is the summary of Lombroso's work by his 
 gifted and devoted daughter, Gina Lombroso Ferrero, of whom the 
 father says, in an introduction written shortly before his death, 
 " that she has worked with me from childhood, has seen the edifice 
 of my science rise stone upon stone, and has shared in my anxieties, 
 insults, and triumphs ; without whose help I might, perhaps, never 
 have witnessed the completion of that edifice, nor the application 
 of its fundamental principles." 
 
 2 Report of Prison Commissioners, 1911.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 
 
 criminality, and the modern school in general classes 
 prostitutes as criminals. Of course, if this mode 
 of calculation be agreed to, " the difference between 
 the criminality of the two sexes shows a considerable 
 diminution, resulting perhaps in a slight prevalence 
 of crime in women." In this connection, I extract a 
 paragraph from one of the latest of the Fabian 
 Tracts 1 : 
 
 " A barrister tells us that in his many years' 
 experience at the criminal bar, practically all 
 women convicted of indictable offences are (1) 
 prostitutes, or (2) married women convicted of 
 neglecting their children through drink, or (3) 
 domestic servants who have succumbed to their 
 peculiar facilities for stealing clothing or jewellery ; 
 usually girls in poor households and themselves 
 physically and mentally below par. Of these three 
 categories, prostitutes are immensely the largest, 
 from 85 to 90 per cent of the whole. ' It would 
 be almost true to say that indictable crime 
 among women is confined to women who are 
 prostitutes. This is, I fancy, the main explana- 
 tion of the greater irreclaimability of women 
 criminals.' ' 
 
 Lombroso recognises among female delinquents a 
 small number who^" show an extraordinary degree of 
 depravity, as though all the perversity lacking in the 
 others were concentrated in these few. They are 
 true-born criminals, epileptics, and morally insane 
 subjects." He places in this circle " murderers, 
 
 1 " Women and Prisons," by Helen Blagg and Charlotte 
 Wilson. Fabian Tract No. 163. March, 1912. A little store of 
 facts and references, skilfully arranged and effectively presented ; 
 a brief, highly condensed, and very luminous statement, which, to 
 the reader's profit, travels far beyond the title of the pamphlet.
 
 232 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 poisoners, and swindlers." 1 Most offenders of the 
 sex, however, Lombroso regards as belonging " to 
 the category of criminaloids." 2 He advises, as a 
 substitute for imprisonment in these cases, " the 
 cutting off of the hair, the obligation to wear a 
 certain costume, etc." This would be as bad as 
 More's public notifying of convicts in that most 
 dismal " Utopia " of his. Would not Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne's angelic heroine have preferred a cell 
 to the daily infamy of the " Scarlet Letter " on her 
 bosom ? The convicted criminal, carrying abroad 
 her badge of whatever kind, would never be shielded 
 from insult, and not always from assault. Ingenuity 
 could devise no crueller penalty in our day. 
 
 n 
 
 The late Major Arthur Griffiths, who, as deputy- 
 governor, governor, and inspector of prisons, was 
 many years behind the scenes, has given us a classi- 
 fication of the women in three divisions. The first 
 embraces those impulsive criminals whose misdoing 
 frequently their first " is more or less unpre- 
 meditated, born of some sudden overmastering 
 excess or fury a momentary madness, not sufficient 
 to satisfy the courts of their irresponsibility, but 
 
 1 "Criminal Man, according to the Classification of Lombroso." 
 
 2 Lombroso seems to define a " criminaloid " as an attenuated 
 type of criminal. "While the born criminal/' says Signora Ferrero, 
 " begins to perpetrate crimes from the very cradle so to speak, 
 and always for very trivial motives, the criminaloid commits his 
 initial offence later in life, and always for some adequate reason." 
 Lombroso himself says in " Crime : its Causes and Remedies " : 
 " Criminaloids, while quite separable from born criminals, do not 
 lack some connection with epilepsy and atavism." He adds that 
 criminaloids " differ from born criminals in degree, not in kind," 
 and have no marked anatomical peculiarities.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 233 
 
 only to be explained as the temporary withdrawal 
 of all barriers in a nature too easily inflamed." 
 Criminals of this class, fewer in England than in 
 France, are always the smallest category in our 
 prisons. They seldom belong to the troublesome 
 order. Their crime is usually serious murder or 
 manslaughter and the terrible penalty it has in- 
 volved is crushing in its effect. Often these poor 
 women, sincerely and intensely penitent, suffer an 
 agony of remorse through all the years of their 
 imprisonment. The vindictive ones among them, on 
 the other hand, those in particular who have come 
 from refined or comfortable homes, are difficult to 
 hold in subjection ; and their furious and sudden 
 outbreaks are, while they last, as dangerous to fellow- 
 prisoners as to officers sometimes most dangerous 
 of all to themselves. 
 
 The second and largest class includes, according to 
 Griffiths, " all who have taken to crime deliberately 
 for their own base purposes ; all who have drifted 
 into it imperceptibly, the result of inheritance, of 
 early associations, of evil teaching and example ; all 
 who, once embarked in crime, are seldom weaned 
 from it, especially if it has been undertaken and 
 continued at the instance of, or through devotion to, 
 some criminal man the parent, child, husband, 
 more often the lover, to whom they are quite as 
 faithful as though bound by the marriage tie." 
 Very many of these are professional thieves and 
 swindlers, the more famous and successful of whom 
 are oftenest associated with some partner or partners 
 of the' other sex. In this class are found women of 
 education, good linguists, clever and entertaining 
 talkers, who lodged last in an elegant quarter of the 
 town, are at home in the capitals of Europe, and
 
 234 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 exchange in the reception-room a costume of the 
 latest fashion for the ill-fitting dress and cap of 
 prison. With one of these adventuresses, the hand- 
 some, facile, and persuasive Mrs. G. B., I once had a 
 long and interesting talk in the editorial room of 
 Vanity Fair a deputed editor for an hour or so. 
 Her carriage and pair, her patent shoes, her mauve 
 silk stockings, and her eloquent conversation about 
 the crofters of Scotland, for whom she was raising a 
 fund and in whose interest she wanted an article in 
 the paper, long remained in my memory. Mrs. B.'s 
 career in London ended at the Old Bailey with a 
 sentence of penal servitude for frauds of divers kinds. 
 
 Her ingenious goings-on, from Scotland to the 
 south, are summarised by Major Griffiths in his 
 " Mysteries of Police and Crime." 
 
 Major Griffiths describes his third division as " the 
 lees and residuum of the other two." These are 
 among the many failures of our penal system. In 
 prison they are the most difficult class to deal with. 
 Outside of prison these women are incorrigible law- 
 breakers ; inside they are almost incorrigible offenders. 
 Were they numerous, it would be practically im- 
 possible to control them ; for they spend half their 
 time in prison, and are perpetually passing in and 
 out. They are the prisoners chiefly responsible for 
 those periodical " breakings-out " which are all but 
 unheard of among male prisoners. Every wardress is 
 familiar with that ominous prelude of revolt which 
 opens with a drumming of feet on the door of a cell. 
 The inmate of that cell has worked herself into a 
 rage, and wants to get up a little mutiny in the ward. 
 She is lying prone on the floor and has started to 
 hammer the door with the soles of her feet. Every 
 prisoner in the ward knows that sound, and the
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 235 
 
 example of the mutineer is pretty certain to be 
 followed. If there are many " bad 'uns " in the ward 
 the volume of sound gradually increases until there 
 may be thirty or forty women on their backs in their 
 cells, pounding with all their force at the doors, and 
 the whole place is in an uproar. Trouble succeeds, 
 of course ; but the ladies have had their fun. 
 
 Work in a woman's prison, though infinitely dull 
 and savourless, can scarcely be called hard. Does 
 any reader remember, at Queen's Hall, Portland 
 Place, in the early summer of 1906, one of the most 
 remarkable exhibitions ever held in London ? It 
 was the Sweated Industries Exhibition promoted by 
 the Daily News. At twenty-two stalls were seen 
 forty-four workers of both sexes engaged at tasks 
 which brought them in from a penny to twopence an 
 hour so many living illustrations of that most 
 tragical of all reports on the labour market, Tom 
 Hood's " Song of the Shirt." Here was a woman 
 lauded in the catalogue as " a magnificent worker," 
 busy at artificial flower-making. For fifty years she 
 had made artificial flowers, " and for skill and 
 indomitable perseverance she has no superior." The 
 work is irregular. When fully employed, and working 
 not less than fourteen hours a day, the woman could 
 contrive to earn 10s. in a week. She lost two hours 
 a day in fetching and returning tasks, she spent 6d. 
 a week on paste, and her weekly rent for a single room 
 was 4s. 6d. Here was a shirt finisher who earned from 
 12s. to 14s. a week by working seventeen hours a day. 
 Here was a widow of seventy-two, who made con- 
 firmation wreaths. This " most accomplished and 
 skilful worker " toiled on an average twelve hours 
 a day, and earned 7s. a week ; rent 4s. 6d. Here was a 
 glove stitcher, who had left at home a sick husband
 
 236 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 and " six small children." She was paid three- 
 halfpence a dozen, her average earnings "2s. weekly," 
 her rent 4s. ! To complete the wretched tale, one had 
 but to make the round of the two-and-twenty stalls. 
 The exhibition was a strictly practical affair, and 
 sensational only in so far as it gave a series of in- 
 expressibly painful tableaux from life itself. Legis- 
 lation was the object aimed at. 
 
 Alas ! every woman in the Sweated Industries Ex- 
 hibition would have found prison a place of rest and 
 ease. The tasks are in general light enough, and even 
 the six hours' day in the laundry would be nothing to 
 the woman who " takes in washing " at home. The 
 women tasked in prison make cotton, linen, woollen, 
 and jute articles ; sacks, bags, ships' fenders, and 
 nosebags ; and among other employments are cotton, 
 hair, and wool picking, paper sorting, and sugar 
 chopping. For Government and other public depart- 
 ments they turn out hearthrugs, mats, mattings, 
 bags, baskets, slippers, rope, and twine ; and for 
 the prison service rugs, mops, brushes, belts, blankets, 
 woollen cloths, sheetings, shirtings, handkerchiefs, 
 calico, canvas, dowlas, towels, socks, and stockings. 
 Some bookbinding is done, and some gardening ; and 
 of course there is the general service of the prison, 
 which includes cooking and washing. A convict 
 before going to Aylesbury passes her brief term of 
 solitary confinement in a local prison, where women 
 on short sentences spend their whole time. I may 
 note that during 1910-11 only forty-two female 
 convicts were admitted at Aylesbury, of whom 
 thirty-two were " recidivists " and ten " star " 
 prisoners. 
 
 In all prisons whether for men or for women 
 the best and most willing workers can be classed in
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 237 
 
 two divisions. They comprise (1) those " first 
 offenders " who are genuine!}'' penitent, and who 
 want to forget their disgrace, as far as hard work 
 may make them forget it ; and (2) a certain number 
 of the "old hands " who have learned by previous 
 experience that industry, or the show of it, " comes 
 cheaper " than skulking. 
 
 But on the women's side of the prison, even more 
 than on the men's, there is always a considerable 
 class of prisoners to whom serious and steady work 
 of any industrial kind is not only detestable, but more 
 or less impossible. The expert female sharper, shop- 
 lifter, thief, or swindler, who has never condescended 
 to use her hands like the rest of her sex, and who 
 has a weakness for playing the fine lady in prison, 
 spares neither trick nor tale in her ceaseless efforts to 
 escape the drudgeries of her lot. The disgrace of 
 prison she does not feel, but she bitterly resents the 
 indignity of having to go down on her knees and 
 scrub the floor of her cell and the corridor in front of 
 it. Anything in the nature of an industrial task is 
 abhorrent to her. She petitions the matron, upbraids 
 the governor, wheedles the chaplain, and tells the 
 doctor he is killing her by inches. Sometimes, when 
 every other device has failed, she hurts herself with 
 a needle, scissors, or fragment of glass, in the hope 
 of being removed to the infirmary. She feigns sick- 
 ness, insanity, epilepsy anything that is likely 
 to " come off " ; and an old hand at the art of 
 malingering often puts to the severest test the skill 
 of the most experienced prison doctor. Occasionally, 
 without any pretence whatever, she flatly refuses to 
 work, in which case the Governor has to prescribe a 
 few days' low diet, with solitary confinement. 
 
 Again, a prisoner of this class will work with
 
 238 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 exemplary patience for weeks together, and then on 
 a sudden break loose. The deadly monotony of 
 life becomes too much for her. The adventuress 
 whose free life is a perpetual, varied excitement, and 
 who can face almost anything but a changeless round 
 of common duties, is mentally unable to endure for 
 long the hard, dull routine of prison. To almost every 
 prisoner, indeed, this is one of the sorest trials of a 
 long sentence. A situation is created which pre- 
 sently becomes almost, if not quite, intolerable. The 
 stolid or the vacant mind sustains the awful lack of 
 change with equanimity through a long course of 
 years ; but the imaginative, or the highly-strung 
 temperament (and it is to be remembered that prison 
 holds nearly all known types of both sexes) suffers 
 more terribly than may be imagined ; and an acute 
 mental crisis may be followed by a brief defiance of 
 all rule and authority. 
 
 Sometimes it is a fit of ungovernable passion, in 
 which the nearest person (wardress or fellow-prisoner) 
 is attacked with fury. Sometimes it is a fit of de- 
 structiveness, and the cell furniture is smashed, and 
 the bed-covering and the clothes which the prisoner 
 is wearing are torn to rags. It is a curious charac- 
 teristic of these outbreaks that they seem often to be 
 deliberately planned to bring punishment on the 
 offender. A woman, locked in her cell, will divest 
 herself of every garment, stand on her head, and 
 scream for the wardress. She knows that she will 
 be reported, and she is reported ; but a " scene " on 
 the following morning, in the office of the matron or 
 the Governor, means a temporary rest from labours, 
 and the punishment that is bound to follow means a 
 break in the monotony of life. 
 
 As a rule, the most hardened female prisoners,
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 239 
 
 equally with the novitiates in crimes, are more or 
 less amenable to gentle treatment, and this is the 
 more successful in proportion as it is unofficial in 
 character. The chaplain's ministrations are not 
 invariably taken in good part, and where they are 
 resented, or coldly acquiesced in, it is on the not very 
 reasonable ground that the good man is " paid to talk 
 religion." Many of them, however, find the chaplain 
 a very practical friend, whose usefulness is not 
 confined to quoting texts from memory. But the 
 unpaid and unofficial visitors from the outer world 
 kind-hearted and sympathetic women above all 
 are those who win their way most effectually into the 
 hearts of the female prisoners. Here is given freely 
 the trust which is so often sullenly or fearfully 
 withheld from anyone and everyone holding an 
 official position in the prison, and the bruised heart 
 finds balm. The prison baby plays quite an important 
 part as a peacemaker and moral agent. With the 
 consent of the mother, other prisoners on their good 
 behaviour are allowed to nurse it for a while during 
 the exercise hour; and a similar indulgence often 
 calms the passion or relieves the melancholy of a 
 truculent or despairing convict. 
 
 in 
 
 From an article by Dr. Elizabeth Sloan Chesser 
 in the Guardian I take a few paragraphs : 
 
 " When I visited Ichigaya, one of the chief 
 prisons for women in Japan, I was much struck 
 by the humane and curative system that has been 
 organised of recent years. The first impression of 
 the prison contrasts markedly with one's idea of 
 a prison in this country.
 
 240 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " There are no massive buildings and glass 
 windows with iron bars, no bare stone floors, no 
 long corridors and tiny cells where the prisoners 
 spend hours in solitary confinement. The buildings 
 surround a central courtyard, and are built of 
 wooden planks or standards, cage fashion, so that 
 the prisoners are living an open-air life day and 
 night. The floors are covered with corn-coloured 
 matting, and the woodwork is polished till every 
 grain is visible. The prisoners wear pink crepe 
 kimonos, which contrast with their ivory faces and 
 gleaming hair. 
 
 " We were taken to one large room where three 
 rows of pink-clad figures were squatting Japanese 
 fashion on pink cushions on the floor. They 
 greeted us with shy smiles and soft murmurs of 
 * Ohayo,' the Japanese ' Good day,' while they 
 simultaneously bowed the blue-black heads to the 
 ground. Politeness is one of the chief virtues in 
 Japan, and in the prison special lessons are given 
 in manners and deportment, and classes are even 
 held to teach the art of tea-serving, which is an 
 important ceremony with the Japanese. The idea 
 is that whatever raises the self-respect of the 
 prisoner, whatever improves her behaviour and 
 manners, aids her reformation. The teaching is 
 very comprehensive. Lessons are given in weaving, 
 dressmaking, and sewing, and we saw some ex- 
 quisite embroideries made in the prison, and 
 artistic garments cut kimono fashion. . . . Prison 
 in Japan is an educational agency, and the women 
 work and are paid wages for what they do. Prizes 
 and decorative awards are also given as an incen- 
 tive to good work and conduct. 
 
 " The Japanese of to-day could teach us a great
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 241 
 
 deal in the matter of penology. They allow their 
 prisoners more liberty, they show a more sym- 
 pathetic interest in their welfare than we do. 
 Everything is done to teach them industry and 
 morality. . . . 
 
 " When the prisoners have served their sentences 
 arrangements are made by the State for providing 
 them with remunerative work on discharge." 
 
 In an American work, " Crime and Criminals," to 
 which reference has been made, a forbidding account 
 is published of life on the women's side of San 
 Quentin Prison, from details supplied by ex-prisoners 
 to the Los Angeles branch of the Prison Reform 
 League. I select without prejudice a few passages 
 here and there. The matron alluded to has left the 
 prison. 
 
 " Nothing is taught that can be of the slightest 
 use to the prisoner after her discharge, the accom- 
 plishments to be learned being cigarette smoking 
 each woman receiving every Monday afternoon 
 her sack of tobacco and package of papers and 
 other vices. . . . Nearly every woman there has 
 voiced the sentiment, not once, but many times : 
 ' I shall be a thousand times worse a girl when 
 I leave this living hell than I ever dreamed I could 
 be.' 
 
 " As for rules they are non-existent. What is 
 right to-day is wrong to-morrow. One does not 
 know until, in the matron's own phrase, she 
 ' lands ' on one." 
 
 The chaplain " held a little service in the office 
 about once in every three months," but " no one was 
 invited to attend," and " those who did were obliged
 
 242 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 to hear all manner of ridicule directed against him 
 by the matron." Many a time after the California 
 Club women or the Salvation Army lassies had held 
 their service in the office, " the table would be rolled 
 back and the negro women and those of the white 
 women who were low enough in their tastes to enjoy 
 such a spectacle, would be called in and, while one 
 would strum on a banjo the rest would raise their 
 clothes and give a leg show. The higher the kicks 
 the better the matron enjoyed it. At the same 
 time gambling would be in progress. An attempt 
 to form a Bible-class study was stopped. No books 
 that could be used for educational purposes were 
 obtainable, and every effort toward self -improvement 
 w r as discouraged." 
 
 A dungeon in the prison is described : 
 
 " A vile place, six by ten, without a ray of light 
 or even a crack for ventilation. One is thrown in 
 here with a straw mattress on the cement floor and 
 a pair of blankets. It is damp, never cleaned or 
 aired, and after one is there for a few hours the 
 oxygen is exhausted and the head feels as if a tight 
 band were around it. A hunk of bread and a pail of 
 water furnish the food, and, as one is not allowed 
 anything else, the condition of the hair and body 
 can be imagined. 
 
 " A coloured woman named Belle N. was serving 
 a term of ten years. At the end of three years, 
 after having been accorded the privileges granted 
 by the matron to all coloured women, she turned 
 on the matron and made threats that she would do 
 her bodily harm. This woman was locked in her 
 cell, and for three years, or nearly four, was never 
 allowed to leave it save for one hour every Friday.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 243 
 
 Just one month before her release should have come 
 she was removed to an insane asylum, and in two 
 weeks was a corpse." 
 
 The doctor "is a dissipated young fellow who 
 would not be tolerated as a physician in any place 
 save where he is. He was invariably intoxicated 
 when called in, and if it were after 5 p.m. his anger 
 and vulgarity knew no bounds. He would abuse and 
 insult the women in the vilest and coarsest of lan- 
 guage, and of course the poor creatures had no 
 redress." 
 
 A letter from a prisoner's friend : 
 
 " I went to see M. yesterday, and if you could 
 hear a story of all she knew and saw you would 
 shudder. The account of the members of the 
 legislature in 1904 and 1905 visiting in the night 
 after matron had gone home all of them drunk, 
 of the happenings in the rooms of the fast women 
 there, of the taking of money from the men, espe- 
 cially ' Papa Bliss,' as the women called him, and 
 Captain H. of the guard who accompanied him." 
 
 The charge contained in the last paragraph, it is 
 said, " has been confirmed by other testimony." 
 
 America, as I have observed, gives us, in respect of 
 prisons, examples of the worst and of the best. The 
 narrative that follows is from the pen of Signora 
 Ferrero : 
 
 " The Reformatory Prison for Women at South 
 Framingham, near Boston, under the management 
 of Mrs. Morton, is an excellent example of an insti- 
 tution conducted on the lines laid down by crimin- 
 ologists. The Reformatory is situated at about 
 an hour's journey by rail from Boston, in the
 
 244 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 midst of fields which are cultivated by a part of 
 the convict population. No high walls surround the 
 building and separate it from the outer world, nor 
 is it watched by guards. A broad avenue leads to 
 the entrance, where, in answer to my ring, I was 
 welcomed by neat, white-clad attendants and 
 shown into a charming room looking out upon a 
 lovely garden. I passed through corridors, un- 
 molested by the sound of keys grating in locks, from 
 this room to the dining-rooms, dormitories, recrea- 
 tion- and workrooms. 
 
 " As soon as prisoners enter the Reformatory 
 they are carefully examined by an intelligent and 
 pleasant woman physician, who is in charge of 
 the infirmary where the anthropological examina- 
 tion takes place. When the prisoner has been 
 declared able-bodied, she is placed in one of the 
 workrooms to learn and follow the trade indicated 
 by the medical officer as the best adapted to her 
 constitution and aptitude. At night she is con- 
 ducted to a second-class cell situated in a large 
 well-lighted corridor. The cell is furnished with a 
 table, bed, chair, pegs to hang clothes on, a calendar, 
 a picture, and a book or two. 
 
 " Work is compulsory and done by the piece, and 
 when each prisoner has finished her allotted task, 
 she is at liberty to work for herself or to read 
 books supplied from the library. If unskilled, she 
 receives instruction in some manual work, and the 
 payment for her labour is put aside and handed 
 over to her on her release, with the small outfit she 
 has prepared and sewed during detention. 
 
 " Women with children under a year, or those 
 who give birth to a child in the Reformatory, are 
 allowed to have their little ones with them during
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 245 
 
 the night and part of the day. When they go to 
 work every morning, the babies are left in the 
 nursery, which adjoins the infirmary, and is under 
 the direct supervision of the doctor. The nursery, 
 a large, well-lighted room, spotlessly clean and 
 bright with flowers, is a veritable paradise for the 
 little ones. 
 
 " At noon the prisoner is permitted to fetch her 
 baby, feed, and keep it near her during dinner- 
 hour. At two o'clock she resumes work until 
 five, when she again takes charge of her baby 
 till next morning. A cradle is placed in her cell 
 for the infant, and she is provided with a small 
 bath. 
 
 " A series of trifling rewards encourages moral 
 improvement. Those who show good conduct 
 during the first two months are transferred to the 
 first class, with its accompanying privileges, and 
 better and more spacious cell, a smart collar, the 
 right to correspond with friends and to receive 
 visitors more frequently, to have an hour's recrea- 
 tion in company with other good-conduct prisoners, 
 and to receive relatives hi a pretty sitting-room 
 instead of in the common visitors' room. 
 
 " The final reward for uninterrupted improve- 
 ment and untiring industry on the part of the 
 prisoner is her ultimate release, which, since the 
 sentence is unlimited, may take place as soon as 
 the Directress considers her competent to earn an 
 honest living. 
 
 " But released prisoners are not left to their own 
 devices, with the risk of speedily succumbing to 
 temptation. A commission of ladies interested 
 in the Reformatory (one of whom, Mrs. Russell, 
 was my guide on the occasion of my visit there)
 
 246 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 are consulted before the release of each prisoner 
 and undertake to furnish her with suitable employ- 
 ment, and to guide and watch over her during the 
 first few months so that she may be sure of advice 
 and assistance in any difficulties." 
 
 FV. THE SUFFRAGETTES 
 
 If men after leaving prison have often been chary 
 of passing on its secrets, still charier have women 
 been. There is a volume of lively and poignant 
 interest, published exactly fifty years ago, the author 
 of which practised a slight and harmless deceit upon 
 his readers. 1 " Robinson, L. W." was no " prison 
 matron," but the male author of many popular and 
 graceful novels, and a companionable man with a 
 legion of friends. I remember a dinner to him in 
 London a good many years ago when he was editing 
 a weekly paper. For his book on prison, his artist's 
 feeling helped him to pierce into and through the 
 subject, and so complete is the illusion he creates that 
 his survivors might have sued the Government for 
 his pension as a superannuated wardress. 
 
 The authors of the Fabian Tract say : 
 
 " No female prisoner recorded her experiences 
 until suffragists in large numbers were sent to 
 Holloway (1907-11)." 
 
 This leaves out of account Mrs. May brick's volume 
 "My Fifteen Lost Years," but Mrs. Maybrick is much 
 (and naturally) occupied with her own case before 
 the courts ; what she has written is in the main an 
 
 1 Robinson, L. W. : " Female Life in Prison. By a Prison 
 Matron." 1862.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 247 
 
 affecting piece of special pleading, and misses the 
 catholic qualities of such works as the anonymous 
 " Five Years' Penal Servitude," Davitt's " Prison 
 Diary," and Balfour's "My Prison Life." The 
 authors of the Fabian Tract are substantially correct. 
 We have had little from women about prison since 
 Elizabeth Fry celebrated Newgate as " Hell above 
 ground." * 
 
 The literature at present flowing from the woman's 
 suffrage movement has therefore a well-defined, a 
 specific interest for us. It is a literature apart. It is 
 spick and span new. Like all good crusading stuff, 
 it is ginger in the mouth. If it has deviltry, however, 
 it has also its own sufficing dignity. If it has passion, 
 it has humour too, where humour is admissible. 
 Most of it is extremely clever. 
 
 Many of us, I suppose, are in some degree acquainted 
 with Votes for Women, the newspaper of the move- 
 ment. Among books, it will be enough for me to 
 name three emphatic and well-sustained examples 
 of the new kind of writing. " The Suffragette : the 
 History of the Women's Militant Suffrage Movement, 
 1905-10," in which Miss Sylvia Pankhurst unfolds 
 the whole campaign and its designs, is like a succession 
 of valiant drum-taps. The book ends on this note 
 of aspiration : 
 
 " May we prize and cherish the great selfless 
 spirit that has been engendered and, applying it 
 to the purposes of our Government the nation's 
 housekeeping the management of our collective 
 affairs, may we, men and women together, not in 
 
 1 Pilgrims to the shrine of this noble Quakeress may be reminded 
 that there is a new " Life " of her from the pen of Mrs. G. K. Lewis, 
 who omits nothing of Elizabeth's career from the hour of her con- 
 version at the meeting-house in purple boots laced with scarlet.
 
 248 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 antagonism, but in comradeship, strive on till we 
 have built up a better civilisation than any that 
 the world has known. For surely just as those 
 children are fortunate who have two parents, a 
 mother and a father, to care for them, so is the 
 nation fortunate that has its mothers and its 
 fathers, its brothers and its sisters working together 
 for the common good." 
 
 The second of these treatises is Miss Constance 
 Maud's " No Surrender " ; and the reader in a hurry to 
 forget the dolours of the cell should, on closing it, ask 
 at once for that delicious piece of humour from the 
 same pen, "An English Girl in Paris." The third is 
 but a pamphlet in bulk, " The Prisoner: a Sketch," 
 by Miss Helen Gordon, who records her impressions 
 with the simplicity and fidelity of an exile in Siberia. 
 Indeed, it is to Russia that, in exploring the writings 
 of the suffragettes, one must sometimes turn for 
 parallels. 
 
 This is true, I think ; but no one cognisant of the 
 situation in Russia whether European or Asiatic- 
 would venture to compare the case of a suffragette in 
 Holloway, or in the mouldiest of local gaols in the 
 provinces, with that of any girl or woman, con- 
 demned for her political sympathies, in any prison 
 of the Czar. There are differences incalculable, 
 inconceivable. Against the worst illustrations of 
 forcible feeding, handcuffing in punishment cells, 
 and so forth, in Holloway or elsewhere, proofs can 
 be produced from Russia of the beating of women 
 with nagaikas and india-rubber sticks, and of their 
 attempted violation. Women in the Russian prisons 
 have set themselves on fire with kerosene to escape 
 horrors unmentionable. l 
 
 1 Kropolkin : " The Terror iu Russia."
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 249 
 
 Turn from Prince Kropotkin's book to Mr. Perris's. 
 These things are not exceptional in Russia ; they are 
 a part of the order of the day in all the prisons. At 
 intervals something really great happens, such as the 
 slow bleeding to death of the beautiful Hope Sigida 
 under the butcher's rods of Bobrovsky. 
 
 It Js Jiappy for the suffragettes and for ourselves 
 that this contrast can be made. 
 
 Coming to prison to gather the first-fruits of their 
 rebellion the fighting vaward of the suffragettes took 
 the line that might have been anticipated, for from 
 the onset they had shown themselves to be creatures 
 of mettle. Women of all ages and almost all ranks, 
 a single aim united them as prisoners : either to 
 obtain recognition as political offenders or to reduce 
 to foolishness a man-made system of punishment. 
 It was a spiritful game, and these lilies of the 
 W.S.P.U. 1 were in no sense lily-hearted. Original 
 in everything, the militant suffragettes brought about 
 a situation unprecedented in a place in which any 
 breaking of rules usually means pepper in prompt 
 doses for the breaker. Cells were barricaded, the 
 prison garb was rejected, the prison tasks were 
 
 refused. " Mutiny, by G ! sirs," as the admiral 
 
 said. In Russia these courageous ladies would 
 undoubtedly have been bruised ; in Hollo way and 
 in local prisons up and down the country they 
 succeeded in bruising the heel of authority. Au- 
 thority, of course, had means of retaliation ; punish- 
 ment cells were thrown open ; diet was diminished ; 
 handcuffs were produced. Much has been said about 
 the example set by the suffragettes to other prisoners ; 
 I am here concerned only with the fortitude they 
 displayed in the painful fix of their own deliberate 
 
 1 Women's Social and Political Union.
 
 250 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 contriving. Some of these prisoners were too young 
 and weak, others too elderly and weak for the quarrel 
 they had espoused ; but, being entered, they carried 
 it with the spirit and endurance of their sex. 
 
 I take a few isolated passages from Miss Helen 
 Gordon, who, in the autumn of 1909, did her time 
 at Strangeways Prison, Manchester. 
 
 The prisoner is led out for exercise in the yard. 
 She is rather weak from hunger. 
 
 " The iron gate is unlocked, and out they go into 
 the bare prison yard, where there are three prison 
 rings. . . . The prisoner has paced those narrow 
 paved paths until she knows exactly how far in the 
 day they walk, sometimes between two and three 
 miles. 
 
 " Round and round they tramp, these two the 
 prisoner looks up at the clouded sky, and thanks 
 heaven that it is blue and white to-day, with hope 
 sown broadcast her feet are cold, she draws the 
 cape closer round her what a relief it is to be out 
 in the open. 
 
 " Round she moves looking up at the windows 
 of one wing of the prison, and counts the windows 
 one two three, etc. It is an old worry of hers 
 it has bothered her for days eleven twelve 
 thirteen no, fourteen no, she has missed one. . . . 
 
 " It is an endless round sometimes the prisoner's 
 thoughts will carry her round the circle twice, 
 without being conscious of weariness she will 
 imagine her release her journey away the 
 activities to come. Very often, towards the end of 
 the hour, on some days when her body feels too 
 ill to bear it longer, her thoughts and imaginations 
 play with the horrors that surround her those
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 251 
 
 terrible moments spent in hospital, night and 
 morning. 
 
 " As the hour goes slowly by, her head becomes 
 giddy with the repeated circling her body cries 
 out for food the sky loses its charm, and there is 
 nothing left save the monotony of the machine 
 the putting of one leg in front of the other on the 
 narrow path set in the straggling sodden grass." 
 
 The hour's outing, in a word, becomes after a 
 short period of confinement almost as painful as 
 anything in the day's routine. 
 
 In the cell in the afternoon : 
 
 " The cold is gradually penetrating every after- 
 noon the prisoner knows that an hour after exercise 
 her body will become gradually petrified she sits 
 with her cape on, with only the tips of her toes on 
 the tiles now surely, little by little, the cold 
 creeps up in those four solid hours of solitude, before 
 the last scene of the day. Sometimes she rouses 
 herself to do a few exercises but her body is 
 tired starved her will quiescent, and the sound 
 of those heavy shoes on the floor she cannot bear 
 sooner would she sit and bear what she knows must 
 come." 
 
 What she knows must come ! What is it that the 
 prisoner knows must come ? This asks a word of 
 explanation, though the story has lost by now its 
 unpleasing novelty. 
 
 The last act of rebellion possible to the suffragettes 
 in prison was a rebellion against food. They resolved 
 upon a hunger strike. By political prisoners in 
 Russia this manoeuvre has frequently been practised. 
 In Russia or in England it is a sharp conclusion to
 
 252 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 submit oneself to. During the summer of 1909 the 
 suffragettes began their hunger strike at Holloway. 
 Miss Wallace Dunlop entered on it at a crisis framed 
 to test a woman's nerve, for, says Miss Sylvia Pank- 
 hurst, she had "gone alone to prison." Miss Pank- 
 hurst adds : " Miss Wallace Dunlop has not the 
 vigour and reserve force that belong to youth, and 
 she is of a fragile constitution, but she never wavered, 
 and went cheerfully on with her terrible task." She 
 was tempted like another Eve. " The ordinary 
 prison diet was no longer placed before her, but such 
 dainty food as at other times is not seen in Holloway." 
 From day to day the doctor, with a sporting interest 
 in the contest, asked : " What are you going to have 
 for dinner ? " and Miss Dunlop, who " had always 
 a smile for him," replied : " My determination ! " 
 For five days she abstained from food, and on the 
 evening of the fifth day she was released. 
 
 The hunger strike was kept up by prisoner after 
 prisoner in one prison and another. Miss Helen 
 Gordon tells us in her unaffected way how it felt to 
 the strikers. The last meal of the day is brought to 
 the cell, " a great mug full of a steaming fragrance 
 of hot gruel. Well does she remember her scorn of 
 the delicacy in bygone times but now it arrests her 
 with a fresh force. In the cold cell, herself almost 
 petrified the jar itself would be welcome in its 
 warmth but she dare not risk a nearer acquaintance 
 never has her sense of smell been so assailed so 
 keen so appreciative." She lifts the mug, and " puts 
 it in the far corner of the cell by the door and on 
 the floor. There it stands an aggressive tempta- 
 tion, with the little brown roll." 
 
 It was with such scenes as these in mind that I spoke 
 of the newness of the literature of the suffragettes.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 253 
 
 The Government, put to a pass, decided to end the 
 hunger strike by force. The women who refused to 
 feed were to be fed. Thus, in the course of the 
 struggle, we have Miss Helen Gordon (among other 
 prisoners) waiting in her cell for " what she knows 
 must come " the visit of the doctor, with his 
 wardresses, his gag, and his feeding-tube. As this 
 odious episode of the strife is closed (at least, I believe 
 so), I willingly slur the particulars. They may be 
 studied in the three books I have cited, where the 
 display of them is eminently proper. The forcible 
 feeding was a modified form of torture : about this, 
 when the sky is clear, there will scarcely be dispute. 
 " Question by water " was honoured by time until 
 close upon the French Revolution. Question by " a 
 stiff mixture of mince and bread," the examination 
 lasting " for twenty minutes," was a late improve- 
 ment of our own. I will put in only two depositions. 
 
 Miss Gordon says : 
 
 " But the worst torture of any kind was the 
 abominable tube-feeding. I was held forcibly in a 
 chair [towards the end of the book she sets out the 
 scene in full, and describes the sickness of one of 
 the wardresses in attendance], the gag was jammed 
 in, and my jaws levered open, and with that pain 
 continuing, a rather larger india-rubber tube was 
 forced down my throat through my open mouth. 
 The feeling of choking was intolerable, with my 
 jaws immovable and my head held back, and at 
 the end of the operation the deadly sensation of 
 sickness and collapse, with cold shivering fits, was 
 such as to cause the doctors to order me to bed in 
 hospital at once." 
 
 This prisoner lost a stone's weight in a month.
 
 254 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Lady Constance Lytton, who believed " that she 
 had been released from Newcastle prison on account 
 of her rank," l went disguised in a procession to 
 Walton Gaol, was arrested, and " gave Jane Warton, 
 seamstress, as her name and occupation." Refusing 
 food in the prison, she was forcibly fed. " I forgot 
 what I was in there for, I forgot women, I forgot 
 everything, except my own sufferings, and I was 
 completely overcome by them." 
 
 As these histories have ceased, I may break the 
 narrative. 
 
 Have the suffragettes assisted the cause of prison 
 reform ? Surely they have. In recent years, from 
 many sources, abundant light has fallen on the 
 prisons of the other sex. The women's prisons, 
 until the suffragettes went into them and stunned 
 the ear of the public, had received but the scantiest 
 illumination. The clamour over the vote is one 
 thing, and will have its foreordained result : " agita- 
 tions of the public mind," as Macaulay said of the 
 question of parliamentary reform, " so deep and so 
 long continued as those which we have witnessed do 
 not end in nothing." But, when the battle of the 
 vote has fallen, when the last suffragette has munched 
 or hurled through the window her last prison crust, 
 and when the governor and doctor and chaplain and 
 matron have said grace over the case of wine de- 
 spatched by a grateful Home Office restored to tran- 
 quillity, then we may begin to look for some reaping 
 of a harvest sown with tears and lamentation. 
 
 Already, " since the revelations of the suffrage 
 prisoners in 1908-9, a medical woman Inspector of 
 Prisons has been appointed." 2 Next there will be a 
 
 1 "The Suffragette." E. Sylvia Pankhurst. 
 
 2 Fabian Tract.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 255 
 
 doctor of the sex, and for the sex, in all prisons in 
 which women are confined. At the last we may 
 expect to see a lady on the Prison Commission, and 
 how very nice this will be for the gentlemen ! 
 
 In almost every statement made of late years by 
 suffragettes who have passed through prison there 
 is something nay, much for discussion : sug- 
 gestions about food, hygiene, discipline, punishments. 
 Twelve correspondents of the authors of the Fabian 
 Tract, whose letters " are first hand and carefully 
 verified," have informed them on several leading 
 points. 
 
 " The food may be sufficient to ward off the 
 actual pangs of hunger, but the monotony of the 
 diet amounts, after a time, to positive torture." 
 
 " The food is scanty, the ventilation totally 
 inadequate ; the result is to make prisoners dull 
 and stupid, unfit to earn their living when they 
 come out ; yet the reason that many are there at 
 all is chiefly from their inability to earn an honest 
 living." 
 
 " After the prisoner has been locked hi the cell 
 all night the air is unbearable, and its unhealthiness 
 is increased by damp. The cells are washed at six 
 in the morning, and the corridors are washed at 
 the same time. In spite of the fact that any 
 adequate ventilation is impossible, owing to the 
 height of the windows and the small area that opens, 
 the prisoners are locked into the cells again at 
 seven for breakfast, so that they sit in a wet cell 
 and are forced to breathe the evaporating moisture 
 which cannot escape. A great number of the 
 prisoners suffer from chronic catarrh, and anyone 
 with a tendency to consumption could hardly fail 
 to contract the disease."
 
 256 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 " Every endeavour is made to render the life dull, 
 monotonous, and dreary ; all the surroundings are 
 hideous as human ingenuity can make them, the 
 food unappetising, and the whole tone brutalising 
 and hardening." 
 
 I never yet could make out whose business it is 
 to reform prisoners (no one on the staff having his part 
 in the daily round has any time for that), and the 
 charitable of both sexes who minister unpaid within 
 the gates must repeatedly have taxed themselves 
 with the question. Mrs. Fyvie Mayo, who recently 
 gave us her delightful " Recollections of Fifty Years," 
 gathers up in a few pregnant sentences her own 
 experiences as a visitor to women in prison : 
 
 " I saw no movement either towards the reforma- 
 tion of the prisoner or the protection of the com- 
 munity. . . . The best part of each degraded nature 
 was as suppressed as its w r orst part. Humanity 
 was simply stultified. The perpetually returning 
 prisoners had actually that mysterious thing, the 
 ' institution look.' ' 
 
 Yes ; the women, like the men, are " perpetually 
 returning," and they get the " institution look " ! 
 " The prisoner hears from the wardress," says Miss 
 Helen Gordon, " that it is a relief to see one fresh 
 face that they come in over and over again, and 
 each face brings a history. What is it in this atmo- 
 sphere that breeds sin ? " "A suffragist," says Miss 
 Evelyn Sharp, 1 " has only to go to prison in order 
 to discover afresh why she is a suffragist." 
 
 We have learned from the suffragettes this, among 
 
 1 In a critical communication to the Nation, January 6th, 1912, 
 in which she cordially recognises some changes for the better.
 
 THE CASE OF THE WOMAN 257 
 
 many other things, that the prisons of the women 
 are every whit as useless and as hurtful as the prisons 
 of the men. 
 
 As regards the influence of the suffragettes them- 
 selves on the general life of prison, we have the very 
 interesting statement of Miss Georgina Brackenbury 
 (just set free from Holloway) to a representative of 
 the Standard: 
 
 " I saw Miss Georgina Brackenbury yesterday, 
 and asked her : ' Do you find any alteration in the 
 prison system, comparing it with your experience 
 in Holloway four years ago ? ' 
 
 " 'The atmosphere is entirely different. I think 
 breaking the windows in Holloway has brought in 
 more light. The Suffragists have effected such a 
 change and such a reform in the whole of the prison 
 system that it has made prison almost unrecognis- 
 able. Compared with progress in the past, a couple 
 of years has done what a quarter of a century could 
 hardly have accomplished. The much more humane 
 treatment throughout of the ordinary criminal has 
 had the effect of making the management of these 
 criminals a very much easier matter for the officials 
 generally. The temper of the prisoner is very 
 much improved by less rigid rule, while at the 
 same time they themselves seem to find more 
 courage and more determination to grapple 
 with their life outside, and 'not come back 
 again.' 
 
 " ' How did you come to realise this ? ' 
 
 '* ' Well, the most remarkable thing to me was 
 the change of expression in the faces of the 
 prisoners, and the less strained and happier look 
 of the officials. That the prisoners themselves
 
 258 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 trace the improvement to the Suffragists is shown 
 by odd, broken sentences, such as " You 'ave done 
 a lot for us ! " " Gawd bless you ! " 
 
 The suffragettes, as prisoners, have played a 
 valiant and profitable part.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 
 
 I. HISTORICAL 
 
 IN " The Criminal and the Community," far and 
 away the best book ever written by anyone actually 
 identified with the system, Dr. James Devon, medical 
 officer of Glasgow Prison, says : 
 
 " All sorts of systems have had their trial in 
 dealing with the offender. It has always been 
 recognised that it was necessary to remove him 
 from the place where he had offended. He has 
 been transported to other lands, there to begin a 
 new life ; but the conditions under which the 
 operation was carried out were appalling. 1 He has 
 been placed in association with other offenders, and 
 left, with very little supervision, to become worse 
 or make others worse. He has been placed in soli- 
 tary confinement ; cut off from company of any 
 
 1 The story of Botany Bay, from the landing, in January, 1788, 
 of Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., to the shipping of the last batch 
 of convicts from England to Australia as recently as 1867, is an 
 extraordinary mixture of the horrible, the humorous, and the high 
 romantic. The place itself was both the paradise and the hell of 
 felons. The " land of the lash " for some (Canon Horsley tells us, 
 in "Jottings from Jail," of 158,000 lashes inflicted in one year in 
 New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land), it was for others the 
 lucky convict jacks-in-oftice a land of milk and honey. And all 
 the while the colony so inauspiciously established was growing into 
 splendid opulence. It is, in some respects, the strangest story in 
 the world. 
 
 259
 
 260 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 sort ; with the result of wrecking his mind as well 
 as his body. At present he is separated from his 
 fellows, but he has no opportunity to come in 
 contact with healthy social life. One system has 
 broken down after another. All systems have 
 failed to deal with him satisfactorily." 
 
 Prof. A. F. Murison, LL.D., in his " Introduction " 
 to Dr. Devon's book, remarks : 
 
 " We are supposed to have travelled far from 
 the mediaeval brutality of prison life, but have 
 the changes not been superficial rather than deep ? 
 Setting aside the catalogue of minor regulations 
 and regarding the broad spirit of prison life, one 
 cannot but recognise that the conditions still pre- 
 vailing have much in common with the past. If 
 we look for the really essential changes during a 
 hundred years, we find just these : (1) A surface 
 cleanliness of apparent perfection; (2) conversation, 
 prison visits, and arrangements tending towards a 
 decent sociability between ' prisoners and prisoners ' 
 and the public reduced and rendered difficult by 
 multitudinous by - laws. On the one hand, a 
 cleanliness obtainable only by irritating industry 
 disproportionate to its proper value ; on the 
 other hand, a reduction of such facilities as are 
 most likely to prevent a prisoner from degenerating 
 to a social alien, an automatic machine, or a 
 lunatic. 
 
 " The after-effects of a long sojourn in prison 
 are not readily realizable : it would require a very 
 lively imagination to picture the life and its 
 inherent possibilities. The fact that some prisoners 
 do manage to get through their existence without 
 falling into despair may be taken rather as a
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 261 
 
 tribute to the chances of exception confounding rule 
 than as a proof of conversion to virtue through 
 punishment. It is too much to expect that an 
 ordinary man that has been incarcerated for a 
 period of seven, or five, or even three years, can 
 become, on his liberation, once more a ' respectable ' 
 member of society. His spirit has been cowed ; 
 his self-respect has been annihilated ; he has been 
 disqualified for re-absorption in the community ; he 
 has been prepared to gravitate once more towards 
 crime and prison." 
 
 These are two of the most recent pronouncements 
 on the subject. 1 
 
 II. SOME PROFESSIONAL OPINIONS 
 
 In considering them we must hold to one fact of 
 cardinal importance. It is, that the true, dark, 
 intimate, and innermost life of prison undergoes no 
 real change. Such as the convict was when Michael 
 Davitt received his gruel from the judge nearly thirty 
 years ago, such is he essentially at this day : in his 
 ludicrous and humiliating clothes, in his deprivation 
 of almost every right, in his state of practical slavery, 2 
 in the dumb degradation of his daily existence, in his 
 complete uselessness to himself and to society, in his 
 starvation of soul, in the utter blankness of his 
 outlook. The more the Commissioners change him 
 by a trifling new by-law here and there the more 
 he remains the same thing. To every apothegm its 
 
 1 Dr. Devon's book appeared in January of this year. 
 
 2 "A Modern Form of Slavery," Lombroso, in a letter to Pro- 
 fessor John II. Wigmore, first president of the American Institule 
 of Criminal Law and Criminology, May 3rd, 1909.
 
 262 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 exception : " The universe is change," except within 
 the gates of prison. 
 
 Oscar Wilde says, in " De Profundis " : 
 
 " The paralysing immobility of a life every 
 circumstance of which is regulated after an un- 
 changeable pattern, so that we eat and drink and 
 lie down and pray, or kneel at least for prayer, 
 according to the inflexible laws of an iron formula : 
 this immobile quality that makes each dreadful 
 day in the very minutest detail like its brother, 
 seems to communicate itself to those external 
 forces the very essence of whose existence is 
 ceaseless change. . . . For us there is only one 
 season, the season of sorrow. . . . For prison life 
 with its endless privations and restrictions makes 
 one rebellious. The most terrible thing about it is 
 not that it breaks one's heart hearts are made to 
 be broken but that it turns one's heart to stone." 
 
 " Portland as I knew it," says Jabez Balfour (and 
 this was fifteen or twenty years after Davitt's time 
 Mr. Balfour does not give the year of his trans- 
 ference to Portland), " was a heart-breaking, soul- 
 enslaving, brain- destroying hell upon earth." 
 
 This single sentence, already quoted, is, I think, 
 the only one of its kind almost the only passionate 
 expression throughout the whole of a work signalised 
 at once by the force and the temperateness of its 
 criticism of the prison system. 
 
 Michael Davitt, in a famous letter to the Daily 
 Chronicle on the question of the recidivist, the 
 criminal who returns time and again to prison, says : 
 
 " All the sneers in the armoury of official criti- 
 cism at meddlesome reformers cannot dispose of
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 263 
 
 this damnifying evidence against the failure of the 
 existing system to reform the criminal. 
 
 '' The reason of this failure is not far to seek. 
 All individuality is mercilessly suppressed in the 
 prisoner. No prisoner is allowed to do anything 
 except with the permission and in sight of a warder. 
 He is the object of constant and ceaseless vigilance 
 from sentence to liberation. He is closely watched 
 when at prayers in chapel. He is under the warder's 
 eye while in his cell, and is never for a second lost 
 sight of while at work. He is made to feel in every 
 particular of his routine life of silence and labour that 
 he is treated, not as a man, but as a mere disciplined 
 human automaton. To possess a will or to attempt 
 to exercise it even in some praiseworthy or harmless 
 manner as, for instance, to share a piece of bread 
 with a more hungry fellow-unfortunate is to com- 
 mit a breach of prison rules. The human will must 
 be left outside of the prison gates, where it is 
 to be picked up again five, seven, or fifteen years 
 afterwards, and refitted to the mental conditions 
 which penal servitude has created in the animalised 
 machine which is discharged from custody. All 
 initiative has been enervated under a remorseless 
 discipline, and a man, weak in mental and moral 
 balance at best, is turned out into a cold, repelling 
 and pitiless world, crippled in all those qualities 
 of self-reliance which are the essential needs of a 
 creature destitute of friends, and liable to be a 
 prey to the ticket-of -leave hunters of the law. The 
 system which reduces a man to a condition of 
 moral helplessness of this kind may be scientific, 
 ' just,' punitive, and all the rest ; but it is not, and 
 cannot possibly be, reformative, any more than it 
 can be merciful, Christian, or considerate.
 
 264 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 "It is not in the nature of things human to 
 expect sentient, reflective beings, no matter how 
 degraded by crime, to be cured of their moral 
 maladies through the media of inhuman sub- 
 mission, or to be deeply impressed with respect for 
 a law which penalises almost every natural faculty 
 in a prisoner in retaliation for his offence against 
 society. Working on such lines, on the lines of 
 greatest resistance, it is no wonder that penal 
 servitude is a fruitful nursery of recidivism and a 
 patent instance of expensive failure." 
 
 " It is a system," says H. J. B. Montgomery, the 
 intelligent ex-prisoner whom I have already cited, 
 " solely and only concerned about the performance 
 of the daily routine and the safe custody of the 
 prisoners. Its tendency is to atrophy every human 
 feeling, and to induce and accelerate a moral and 
 mental degeneracy. Whether from a utilitarian, a 
 moral, a philosophical, or a common-sense standpoint, 
 it must stand utterly condemned. ... It is based 
 on no principle. It is terribly expensive. It is 
 responsible for a constant manufacture of professional 
 criminals and lunatics." 
 
 Lord William Nevill : 
 
 " The only really happy time I had when I was 
 in prison for those three years and nine months was 
 when I was asleep and dreaming of being free." 
 
 On the pregnant and poignant concern of getting 
 out of prison, after a sentence long or short, I have 
 in the first chapter cited Oscar Wilde. Lord William 
 Nevill, contemplating his release from Parkhurst, 
 says :
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE $65 
 
 " I knew that I had yet to bear what is by no 
 means the lightest part of the punishment to a man 
 having once been in the position that I had been 
 in the loss of friends, and the cold contempt of 
 those who had once been among my most intimate 
 acquaintances." 
 
 A certain " No. 7," author of " Twenty-five Years 
 in Seventeen Prisons," says that, " under the old 
 regimen, as well as, in a lesser degree, under the new, 
 an ex-convict who desires to mend his ways and do 
 the thing that is lawful and right is more heavily 
 handicapped than any other man struggling to live ; 
 and if he goes to the wall, it is often solely because 
 any other man in like circumstances would and must 
 also go to the wall ... so great is the pressure 
 placed upon him." 
 
 Montgomery asks : 
 
 " How^ then, comes it that so many criminals, to 
 whom a helping hand is held out on their release 
 from gaol, return to wallow in the mire ? The 
 explanation seems to me to be simplicity itself. 
 The charitable people, or pseudo-charitable people, 
 are largely the cause of it. They make the path 
 of the ex-criminal so hard, the building up of the 
 character process so difficult. . . . When a man 
 has once come under the ban of the law in this 
 country, the difficulty really is to avoid becoming 
 one of the criminal classes. The way to that end is 
 smooth ; society has rendered, and still renders it 
 so. ' The world,' to use that convenient abstrac- 
 tion, expects that a man who has been in gaol will 
 continue on an evil course."
 
 266 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 III. MARK TAPLEY IN STIR ' 
 
 Now let me turn for a moment to a curious piece of 
 writing (I have already alluded to it) in a rather light 
 and cynical vein : a piece of writing a little out of the 
 common in the literature of prison. 
 
 By a prisoner's temperament we may measure 
 with some accuracy the effect of a sentence of im- 
 prisonment or penal servitude. Once behind the bars, 
 all felons come under the same treatment ; but it 
 affects A in one way, B in another way. There are 
 those to whom the punishment or chiefly perhaps 
 the degradation of it is a long and changeless horror. 
 There are others to whom it is a disagreeable experi- 
 ence, to be borne with resignation. There is a third 
 class that makes the very worst of everything in 
 prison, and keeps the nerves of the warders on the 
 stretch. There is a fourth that makes the best of 
 everything, and this attitude helps prisoners and 
 officers alike. 
 
 To Oscar Wilde, writing in his cell at Reading, 
 " all sentences are sentences of death." To Lord 
 William Nevill, roped to a cart at Parkhurst, " the 
 open-air exercise and the variety were a positive 
 delight after the monotony of crawling along with the 
 hospital party." Mr. Jabez Balfour served a terrible 
 sentence of eleven years in a true philosophic spirit, 
 and at the end of it sat down to compose the best, 
 most temperate, and most judicious indictment of 
 prison that an ex-convict has ever penned. And here 
 now comes a Mark Tapley among prisoners, 1 who 
 seeks to persuade us that his year and a half at 
 Wormwood Scrubs was almost the time of his life. 
 
 1 Frederick Martyn : " A Holiday in Gaol."
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 267 
 
 We cannot quite believe him, for he was manifestly 
 glad to be free, but this is what he says : 
 
 " I have recently returned to work from the 
 holiday of a lifetime, feeling as if I am wound up 
 to go another fifty years on top of the half -century 
 I already have to own to, and with a capacity for 
 enjoyment that I don't remember to have possessed 
 in my salad days. I have been taking the finest 
 rest cure that the whole world affords ; I have 
 been doing eighteen months' hard labour in an 
 English prison." 
 
 He adds that he is afraid his " experiences will be 
 found to differ greatly from any that have yet 
 appeared either in the newspapers or in book form." 
 But Mr. Martyn's experiences did not differ in the 
 least from those of hundreds of other prisoners in 
 Wormwood Scrubs or any other large local prison. 
 What is different in his case is merely the Tapleyan 
 point of view. 
 
 But these cheerful pages are for all their cheer 
 scarcely less an indictment of the system so lightly 
 discussed in them than the grave and often sombre 
 chapters of Jabez Balfour's " My Prison Life." Take, 
 for instance, the infinitely vexatious problem of 
 prison labour, which has already engaged our atten- 
 tion. Frederick Martyn is at one on this point with 
 Jabez Balfour and H. J. Montgomery. Thus : 
 
 " If one worked the hours supposed to be devoted 
 to labour, they would only amount to about six hours 
 a day ; that is to say, an hour before breakfast, an 
 hour and a half between breakfast and dinner, 
 and three hours and a half between dinner and 
 supper. But as there is practically no supervision
 
 268 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 over the eighty or so per cent of the prisoners who 
 work in their cells, they can work or not as they 
 please during these hours, provided they manage 
 to turn out enough work to satisfy the work- 
 warders. As the work-warders are pretty easily 
 satisfied, there are few prisoners work the full 
 labour time if they can find something else to do. 
 I never worked (or played at working rather) for 
 more than four hours a day during all the time I 
 worked in my cell." 
 
 In other matters besides work the supervision 
 seems not always perfect. There was a great turning 
 out of a ward one night, discovery having been made 
 that certain prisoners with money at command were 
 enjoying illicit banquets. Mr. Martyn apparently did 
 not share these feasts, but he tells us he found time to 
 write a novel in his cell. A gentleman occupying a 
 cell in the same hall 
 
 " even managed to do a little flirting over the 
 wall. One evening he shouted to a girl who was 
 walking in the field, and struck up a conversation 
 with her. She came many times after that, until 
 the gay Lothario got tired of her, and told her it 
 was no use her waiting for him, as he was ' in for 
 life.' " 
 
 Now is this possible from a top-tier cell in Worm- 
 wood Scrubs ? Very doubtful indeed, I should say. 
 At the same serene altitude Martyn reflects on his own 
 situation : 
 
 " Free from all care, able to eat the prison food 
 with enjoyment, and with practically as many 
 books as I wanted, I had an enviable time of it 
 and I often thought with dismay of the time when
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 269 
 
 I would be compelled to mix again in the busy 
 world, and be worried by the landlord and the 
 rate-collector." 
 
 Perhaps the author should have told us how he 
 has fared since his release, for on page 130 he alludes 
 to " two of us who had forfeited decent positions in 
 society which we could never hope to regain." In 
 the case of such prisoners, it is usually not so much 
 the getting in as the getting out that matters. What 
 was Mr. Martyn's getting out ? How this question 
 was faced by the fellow-prisoners who were to be 
 discharged with him he tells us in his final chapter. 
 On the eve of freedom they were all relegated to a 
 store-room of the prison : 
 
 " There wasn't much sleep in that store-room 
 that night, and I learnt enough from the conversa- 
 tion of the men who shared the room with me to 
 make a very interesting book. It was very instruc- 
 tive as to the reforming power of prisons to listen 
 to these men who were going out into the world 
 again, for there was not one of them who spoke 
 of getting work. Work did not appear to have 
 any place in their thoughts at all, and the word 
 was never mentioned, save in the criminal sense 
 of stealing or swindling." 
 
 An interesting, amusing, cynical book which will 
 hardly reconcile its readers to the cost of prison. 
 
 IV. THE APPEAL FROM THE DOCK THE DESTRUCTIVE 
 
 SENTENCE 
 
 I take from my notebook a few significant examples. 
 To multiply them would be easy. The argument 
 implied is of the simplest kind : that to the person
 
 270 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 who has once been in prison the return there is almost 
 natural. The blame can be parcelled (in degrees, of 
 course, not very readily measured) between the 
 ex-prisoner himself, the judge who condemns him, 
 the prison that receives him, and the social organism 
 that makes him a monster and a Caliban. The 
 savage appeal, exultantly defiant, is (at least to the 
 extent that my notebooks instruct me) extremely 
 rare. The pathetic appeal is common. The tragical, 
 mute appeal a scrap of paper handed up from the 
 dock too often carries with it the worst reflection of 
 all our systems social, judicial, and the rest. Let 
 me quickly add that some of the sentences here 
 reprinted would be impossible to-day. 
 
 Richard Barr, twenty-eight, about to be sentenced 
 at Cardiff for breaking into a co-operative stores, 
 said to the Recorder : 
 
 " You have heard a record of a few of the deeds 
 I have been guilty of. I feel proud of them ; 
 proud of my career ; and proud also to think that 
 the country must go to the expense of finding such 
 a one as I legal aid. 
 
 " My career might have been so different. What 
 I am to-day, you, the Recorder, helped to make me. 
 Ten years ago last Monday you sent me to prison 
 for six months. During those six months I learnt 
 more roguery than I learnt before or since. During 
 that time I determined to get my own back. I 
 have done my best to get my own back, and to do 
 injury to others. I think I have succeeded very 
 well." 
 
 The Recorder gave him three years' penal servitude. 
 John Williams, fifty-three, bricklayer, indicted at
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 271 
 
 the London Sessions " for being found *in Berners 
 Street, W.," pleaded : 
 
 " I was only seventeen when sentenced to seven 
 years' penal servitude. That ruined me, and I've 
 gone on recklessly ever since." 
 
 A detective 
 
 " handed the prisoner's extraordinary criminal 
 record for a variety of offences, including theft, 
 burglary, and uttering forged orders : 
 
 1863, one month's imprisonment and sent to a 
 reformatory. 
 
 1868, twelve months' hard labour. 
 
 1869, seven years' penal servitude and seven 
 years' police supervision. 
 
 1877, three months' imprisonment. 
 1877, six months'. 
 
 1879, twelve months' hard labour and five years' 
 police supervision. 
 
 1880, five years' penal servitude and three years' 
 police supervision. 
 
 1885, six years' penal servitude and five years' 
 police supervision. 
 
 1889, four months' imprisonment. 
 
 1892, five years' penal servitude. 
 
 1896, seven years'. 
 
 1904, five years'. 
 
 1908, six months'. 
 
 There were also four other minor sentences as a 
 suspected person." 
 
 " The Judge : I recognise that you are another 
 illustration where a young lad's life of crime was 
 brought about by a heavy sentence of penal
 
 272 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 servitude, and I rejoice that such sentences are 
 absolutely impossible to-day." 
 
 " Prisoner : I am heartily glad, for the sake of 
 young lads, I throw myself on your mercy." 
 
 Sentence of twelve months' hard labour. 
 
 An ex-convict, 
 
 " with a wife and five young children, told Mr. 
 Paul Taylor, the magistrate, at the Marylebone 
 Police Court, that since his release from prison in 
 January he could not obtain work. 
 
 " ' I applied to the Salvation Army for a tattoo- 
 ing instrument,' he said, ' in the hope that I would 
 be able to earn an honest living, but they did 
 nothing for me. I went to the Roman Catholic 
 Prisoners' Aid Society, but they said they were too 
 poor to help me. They were willing to provide me 
 with work in Scotland if the Salvation Army would 
 pay my fare, but the Salvation Army did nothing. 
 I have pawned almost everything we possess,' he 
 added tragically, ' and I have nothing before me 
 but to plunge into crime again.' 
 
 " The magistrate referred him to the court 
 missionary, saying he preferred to assist old 
 convicts rather than young ones, as they often 
 had less chance in life." 
 
 On behalf of George Roberts, ex-convict, charged 
 at the London Sessions with stealing postal orders 
 from a letter-box, a singular plea was urged. 
 
 " Mr. Purcell, his counsel, said the man received 
 eight months' hard labour for his first offence, 
 when he was twenty-two years old, and it was the 
 difficulty he experienced in getting employment 
 afterwards that drove him to a career of crime.
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 273 
 
 " ' Your lordship knows,' he said, * that in 
 those days the judges and the public had not 
 arrived at the principles which are now preached 
 and practised with regard to what are called first 
 offenders.' 
 
 " Evidence was given that Roberts had been 
 convicted twelve times, and had served two terms 
 of three years' penal servitude. 
 
 " ' Nowadays,' Mr. Purcell said, * to get honest 
 work it is only necessary to commit a crime, 
 because people then rally round you, give you 
 assistance, and start you on an honest career.' ' 
 
 It is, unfortunately, about the very last thing 
 they do. 
 
 Patrick O'Leary, convicted at the London Sessions 
 of stealing lead from a roof, made the following 
 appeal for leniency : 
 
 " ' All you have heard of me is rotten and bad. 
 But, your lordship, I don't want to be a criminal 
 all my life. I want to get a job and work hard, so 
 that I can become an honest man. Send me to a 
 home, I beg you to, where I can learn a trade. 
 That's all I ask. Grant me this one favour if you 
 can, or I shall be a ruined fellow. I am only 
 eighteen now, and I want to get on. The more I 
 go to prison the more I shall keep on going there, 
 and the worse I shall get. Give me one more chance 
 and you will not regret it ; I will do my very best 
 to run straight.' 
 
 " Mr. Wallace, K.C., said he would send him to 
 a home to see how he got on, adding : ' You were 
 sent to prison when you were very young, and I 
 don't believe you ever had a fair chance.' "
 
 274 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Frank Seaton, twenty-three, labourer, confessed at 
 the London Sessions to having been concerned in 
 two burglaries at Walham Green. He said : 
 
 " My first conviction brought about my downfall, 
 and blasted the whole of my unhappy career. It 
 was my first crime, and the magistrate sent me to 
 prison for three months. Up to that time I had 
 always been an honest worker and a straightforward 
 young fellow. But that sentence was my undoing 
 altogether. When I came out of gaol, I tried to get 
 an honest living, but I could not, for the simple 
 reason that I could not produce references. I am 
 not a criminal by choice or by nature, and if I can 
 get one chance to lead a new life I will do so." 
 
 Fifteen months' hard labour. 
 
 Here is the record of John Sullivan, thirty-two, 
 committed for trial at Southwark for being con- 
 cerned in the theft of a gramophone : 
 
 " March, 1882 Assault, six months. 
 
 January, 1884 Theft, three months. 
 
 October, 1885 Assault, three months. 
 
 March, 1887 Assault, two months. 
 
 July, 1887 Theft, three months. 
 
 February, 1888 Robbery with violence, nine 
 months. 
 
 July, 1889 Assault, three months. 
 
 December, 1890 Assault, three months. 
 
 April, 1892 Robbery with violence, eighteen 
 months. 
 
 January, 1894 Under Crimes Act, twelve 
 months. 
 
 June, 1897 Theft, three years. 
 
 January, 1900 Failing to report, one month.
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 275 
 
 April, 1900 Theft, eighteen months. 
 June, 1902 Theft, twenty-two months." 
 
 Charles Stuart, twenty-one, cabinet-maker, plead- 
 ing guilty at Clerkenwell Sessions to having stolen a 
 purse and the sum of 3s. 6d., put in a piece of auto- 
 biography. The style is perhaps a little over- 
 charged, but the miserable story seems genuine : 
 
 " My Lord, I shall be very grateful to your 
 lordship if you would kindly spare me a few 
 moments of your valuable time to glance your 
 eyes over this poor bit of pleading of mine. 
 
 "At the tender age of six my mother and father, 
 who could never agree together, mutually came to 
 the conclusion that it would be better to part. My 
 father went, taking me with him, to a lodging- 
 house in Dorset Street, Spitalfields a street 
 described by Mr. McKenzie in an article which 
 appeared in a daily paper a few weeks back as the 
 ' worst street in London, being the resort of 
 thieves, murderers, and burglars, where the crimi- 
 nals of to-morrow are trained to-day, where 
 children six and eight years of age gamble in the 
 gutters ; and where babes in arms learn to sip gin 
 at their mothers' breasts.' 
 
 " Such was the street, my lord, in which I was 
 fated to pass my childhood days, amongst all the 
 evil and corruption of that unholy neighbourhood, 
 where neither the fear of God nor the law is felt. 
 My life from the age of six years to thirteen was sur- 
 rounded by all the evil that years of wickedness and 
 ' vice could bring to bear on a mind and character 
 like mine, naturally weak and ill-suited to bear the 
 temptations to which it was hourly subjected. 
 At the age of thirteen I was sent to the training-
 
 276 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 ship Shaftesbury, where I spent three of the happiest 
 years of my life. On the expiration of my time I 
 came home on my father's advice, also on the 
 doctor's, on account of being subject to walking 
 in my sleep, and nearly losing my life once by 
 walking overboard in the English Channel. 
 
 " I arrived home about April, 1897, on a Satur- 
 day. My parents and my two sisters were just 
 sitting down to tea, and everything seemed to 
 speak of peace and happiness. 
 
 " But how deceiving are appearances at times ! 
 Instead of everything being as it seemed, my father 
 was up to his eyes in debt, being in the clutch of 
 money-lenders. The crash did not come at once. 
 I obtained employment with the excellent character 
 from the ship. . . . Now commenced the breaking 
 up of the home. My father went back to Dorset 
 Street to live. I went along with him, and my 
 mother and sisters took a little room and furnished 
 it with what bits of things the creditors had left 
 them. . . . As a matter of course, I was recognised, 
 and snapped up at once by my old companions, 
 most of whom I soon found out had had a taste of 
 prison. I had no inclination whatever to join my 
 old associates in wrong-doing, being as happy at 
 my work as could be expected under the circum- 
 stances. But all good intentions were destined to 
 have a fall, and to bring me to what I am, and that 
 through no fault of my own. On Sunday afternoons 
 all the men were congregated outside one of the 
 lodging-houses gambling. Me and another little 
 chap, neither of us having on anything save our 
 trousers and shirts, were eagerly watching the game 
 when down came some policemen. . . . My friend 
 and I were locked up, and on Monday morning the
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 277 
 
 magistrate remanded us for a week. So I lost my 
 employment, and being flattered by my elders 
 about having been in * stir,' as they called prison, 
 I began to lose my head, and thought what a grand 
 thing it was to do as you like, to have no master, 
 and get money without working for it. ... 
 Although I had eight previous convictions I have 
 never made a practice of stealing for my living. It 
 is only when out of work that I strayed, and my 
 sins have found me out. If, my lord, you only 
 faintly knew the life of temptation, misery, and 
 wretchedness I have passed through since I was 
 six, having no home to go to, no kind mother at 
 hand to speak loving and gentle words to me, and 
 so by her winning looks and pleading voice counter- 
 act the evil which we all have, some in less degree 
 than others. 
 
 " When I had finished work for the night there 
 was no bright fire and kindly looks to draw my 
 mind from evil ways, but, on the contrary, a 
 dirty lodging-house kitchen, old men and women 
 smoking dirty black pipes, with its usual accom- 
 paniment the curse of humanity drink, and 
 their language more foul than their pipes. ... I 
 have made a resolution, my lord, never to return to 
 a dishonest life, and I shall take it as a great kind- 
 ness if your lordship would put me under police 
 supervision for a few years, which I am sure would 
 deter me from breaking my resolution. Yours 
 (signed), Charles Stuart, alias Richard Davison. 
 
 " Eighteen months' hard labour and two years' 
 police supervision." 
 
 Take, to conclude, the wretched cases of three old 
 women, each of whom we may suppose to have been 
 ruined by a first injudicious sentence.
 
 278 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Jane Foster, " a little old woman with hair turning 
 grey, and a timid expression," was sentenced at the 
 London Sessions to fifteen months' imprisonment 
 " for stealing one skirt from the Lambeth New Cut." 
 
 " In 1873 she was sent to prison for eighteen 
 months. Since then she has been in gaol fifteen 
 times, generally for stealing purses. 
 
 " In 1877 she was sentenced to seven years' 
 penal servitude for stealing a purse ; in 1883 to 
 five years' penal servitude, and other terms ranged 
 from two months to two years." 
 
 " Seven years for stealing a purse, and a young 
 woman ! " exclaimed the judge in horror. 
 
 Annie Connor, seventy, convicted at the London 
 Sessions of shoplifting, had spent over forty years in 
 prison. Imprisoned first as a young girl in 1854, " she 
 adopted crime as a profession." Her sentences 
 included : 
 
 1854 8 months 1890 1 year 
 
 1858 3 months 1896 1 year 
 
 1859 6 months 1897 3 months 
 
 1859 14 days 1898 3 months 
 
 1859 3 years 
 
 1864 7 years 
 
 1869 10 years 
 
 1900 4 months 
 
 1901 3 years 
 
 1906 3 years 
 
 1882 10 years 
 
 " Had a helping hand been extended to her," 
 said the judge, " her career might have been very 
 different." 
 
 Ellen Adams, seventy, laundress, pleaded guilty at 
 the London Sessions to having stolen a muff in 
 Oxford Street. A wardress from Hollo way Prison 
 said the prisoner had served the following sentences :
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 279 
 
 " 1861, eighteen months' hard labour. 
 1864, four years' penal servitude. 
 1869, four months' imprisonment 
 
 1871, twelve months'. 
 
 1872, seven years' penal servitude and seven 
 years' police supervision. 
 
 1881, seven years'. 
 
 1890, six months' imprisonment. 
 
 1891, sixteen months'. 
 
 1893, three years' penal servitude and three 
 years' police supervision. 
 1896, eighteen months'. 
 1900, five months'. 
 
 1900, six months'. 
 
 1901, three years'. 
 
 1904, five years' penal servitude and three years' 
 police supervision." 
 
 Some thirty-six years of prison, and every year of 
 it fruitless ! 1 
 
 " All sentences," said Oscar Wilde, " are sentences 
 of death." 
 
 1 At a meeting in the Dossers' Chapel of the Salvation Army, a 
 man in the audience handed this note up to the platform : 
 
 "Gentlemen, Since 1857 I have served the following terms of 
 imprisonment (the dates indicate when I received the sentences) : 
 In 1857, 4 years in short terms ; 
 1861, 2 in a reformatory ; 
 
 1864, 3 
 
 penal servitude ; 
 
 1867, 8 
 
 1877, 12 
 
 1887,7 
 
 making a total of thirty-six years and three months, not counting 
 remands and waiting for trial, which must have amounted to 
 another nine months. I am fifty-eight years of age, and no trade. 
 Truly, Solomon struck the right nail on the head when he said, 
 ' The way of transgressors is hard ' I If you can do anything for 
 me I shall be truly grateful. I would do any sort of work you like 
 to give me. Beggars can't be choosers." 
 
 The applicant was taken to the prison-gate home.
 
 280 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 V. ECHOES FROM THE CELL 
 
 There is a curious unanimity in the opinions 
 registered by ex-convicts. These men are agreed, 
 with scarcely an exception, to condemn the system 
 they have suffered under. An editor, seeking diver- 
 sion, opens his columns to a correspondence on 
 imprisonment, and, pell-mell, all the readers of the 
 paper who have ever been in prison rush to his letter- 
 box. These anonymous contributors reap no profit 
 of their letters, in reputation or in money. They 
 shoot their arrows, and pass : no one knows them, no 
 one ever hears of them again. They do not think it 
 worth while to reveal themselves or, having put the 
 prison world behind them, they do not dare to reveal 
 themselves. One way or the other, they are still 
 the pariahs. But, inspired this way or that, they 
 have some memory of prison to disclose to us and 
 it is always a bitter and a hostile one. 
 
 What we know of the average of human conduct 
 does not permit us to believe that all ex-prisoners 
 will invariably stand to a false story. Why, in any 
 event, should they do so ? It boots them nothing, 
 these masked and nameless witnesses. But the 
 immense majority of ex-prisoners are dead against 
 the whole system that has injured and degraded 
 them. To a man, almost, they feel themselves the 
 worse for it. Who rises up to speak of anything whole- 
 some or curative in the treatment ? Not an individual 
 among them who speaks to us from the heart. 
 Frederick Martyn (this, by the way, is not, I think, 
 the writer's domestic name) has his tongue in his 
 cheek when he talks to us of his " holiday " hi gaol. 
 Would he have begged leave to remain if the Secretary 
 of State had offered to release him ? Observe him in
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 281 
 
 his cell on Christmas Day crying like a child after the 
 warder has tricked him into thinking he will dine on 
 roast beef and plum-pudding. 
 
 The cumulative force of the evidence given volun- 
 tarily and clamorously by educated ex-prisoners of all 
 classes, whenever and wherever the opportunity 
 occurs, is to put it at the tamest remarkable 
 enough. Some of these deponents, like the essayist 
 in the Hibbert Journal, seem to carry silently for 
 years a burden of wracking thought relating to the 
 past, and then, in an intolerable hour, discharge it on 
 us with unrestrained intensity of wrath. One and 
 all they proclaim themselves men whom prison has 
 undone. 
 
 An ex-prisoner, vouched for by his editor as " a 
 man of distinction who has served a long sentence," 
 writes in the strain of Montgomery : 
 
 " With all our vaunted progress and humani- 
 tarianism there has been no real progress in prison 
 reform during the past fifty years ; and in some 
 respects the prisoner's lot is relatively worse now 
 than it was half a century ago. For although his 
 physical conditions have improved, his social, 
 moral, and psychical conditions have not advanced 
 correspondingly with the onward march of civilisa- 
 tion and humanism ; and it is little exaggeration 
 to say that modern English penal servitude is 
 a systematised barbarism, and it is only its 
 esoteric occult administration that saves the 
 prison system from being doomed. And were it 
 exposed to the public view in the same way as 
 the other departments of the public service 
 its effete and inept system would not last a 
 day."
 
 282 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 He speaks of the kindness of warders, and says that 
 " the medical department ... is deserving of the 
 highest praise." 
 
 An ex-prisoner, who writes from " one of the 
 largest cities in the United States," and informs us 
 that he is now thanks to a reversion " a successful 
 man, not a goody-goody one by any means," says : 
 
 " I do not think I should be over-stretching the 
 mark if I said that ninety-nine out of every hundred 
 convicted criminal prisoners leave the prison at 
 the end of their sentence far worse men than when 
 they first entered prison. 
 
 " I know that in my case prison has hardened 
 me, made me callous, left me without any feeling 
 or care for my fellow-man." 
 
 He served four sentences, during the second of 
 which " my wife went to the dogs." 
 
 " Z. 619," described as " the last survivor of the 
 famous gang of forgers who a generation ago suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining 250,000 from the Bank of 
 England " (many students of criminal history will 
 remember this case), says : 
 
 " The only lesson I learned in prison was sub- 
 mission. The punishment I got I deserved, and I 
 have no complaint to make of any personal injustice. 
 It is the system that is at fault, inasmuch as it 
 punishes without helping a fallen man to regain his 
 self-respect. Many young men who go into prison 
 for one slip are ruined morally within a short time 
 of entering prison. The evil companionship, the 
 degradation of the life, and the shipwreck of all 
 future hopes work the mischief."
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 283 
 
 " C. F. 391 " says :- 
 
 " I am an architect and surveyor by profession, 
 and could have given very material help in the 
 preparation of working drawings and the taking 
 out of quantities, etc., but my abilities were pushed 
 aside, and I was condemned to work for the 
 greater part of my time quarrying. This I had to 
 pick up as best I could. 
 
 " From time to time I was taken from this and 
 put to stone-breaking, and ultimately I was trans- 
 ferred to the building party and set to mason's 
 work without any tuition whatever. Now, during 
 the five years of my incarceration I could have 
 become a skilled worker in any trade if the system 
 had provided for it, but I am cast upon the world, 
 so far as the authorities are concerned, either to fall 
 back into old courses or to become that even worse 
 individual, a social derelict. There is no country 
 in a highly civilised condition which treats its 
 felons with such abject parsimony, or exhibits 
 such callousness as to their welfare." 
 
 These illustrations could be piled up to weariness. 
 All sentences are sentences of death." 
 
 VI. HIBBERT 
 
 Let me again glance at the article in the Hibbert 
 Journal on which, in the opening chapter, I levied a 
 paragraph or two. The anonymity of this ferocious 
 criticism is of no great importance, since the whole 
 indictment of penal servitude is manifestly from the 
 pen of one who, as he says, " Has Suffered It." In a 
 fair-minded society no ex-prisoner would be under the 
 necessity of suppressing his name in a history of his
 
 284 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 prison life. He would be able candidly to say : " I 
 have suffered this at your requirement, and now I will 
 tell you what your punishments are like, and what they 
 are worth." But the ex-prisoner recognises himself for 
 a pariah, and, unless it be made well worth his while, 
 he will tell his story, if he tells it at all, as one who has 
 passed from the category of the known almost, it may 
 be added, from the category of the living. The editor 
 of Hibbert informs us that he has " taken all the 
 means open to him, by personal interview and other- 
 wise, to ascertain the bona fides of the writer of this 
 article." He adds that he himself is personally 
 satisfied, and indeed every one who has studied the 
 conditions of penal servitude will at once recognise the 
 general accuracy of these statements by " One Who 
 Has Suffered it." 
 
 It would, however, have been well had he told us at 
 what date he was sentenced and hi what prison or 
 prisons in Australia he served his time. I have had 
 occasion recently to examine reports of the Comp- 
 troller-General of Prisons in New South Wales, and 
 cannot but think that the present administration 
 there is intelligent and efficient. 
 
 But the principal counts in this writer's charge are 
 echoed by a legion of other writers. It is no new 
 accusation that imprisonment is a school of crime. 
 Lombroso, among modern criminologists, insisted 
 from the outset upon this. The convict is hemmed 
 round by evil. He breathes an evil and poisonous 
 atmosphere ; his task-masters and other officers 
 excepted, he is in contact solely with felons like him- 
 self. This is not the milieu in which any lesson of good 
 can be learned. The man is degraded from the 
 moment that he enters prison degraded in the loss 
 of his name, in his clothes, in the silence that is
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 285 
 
 imposed on him, in his compulsory tasks, in his 
 absolute dependence on the will of others, in every 
 detail of his sordid daily round, in the bare and narrow 
 walls of his living-place. He hears of crimes that he 
 has not known of before ; he hears them vaunted. 
 As for the work that he is put to, because he has had 
 no choice in it he probably grows to hate it ; the 
 trade he has learned in prison if he has really 
 learned one will always smell to him of prison, and 
 he will not go back to it. It is very likely that in the 
 course of years many convicts with no grievous moral 
 twist fall into the habit of regarding a criminal 
 environment as their natural and proper one, and of 
 speculating on the future in terms of crime. They 
 know, alas ! that the cold shoulder will be turned to 
 them on their release. Undoubtedly society helps 
 prison to transform its prisoners into professional 
 criminals. 
 
 There is another point of high social importance. 
 Imprisonment, says the writer, creates " harlotry and 
 adultery." 
 
 " Women and children are left practically 
 destitute, to maintain their ground, or to drift as 
 may happen. Drifting is easy for women and girls 
 suddenly deprived of their breadwinner. Many do 
 that which is easiest. There may seem at the 
 moment no other way to avoid famishing." 
 
 In the Law Times and elsewhere I have frequently 
 pointed out that something is owing from the State 
 to the women and children whom the convict leaves 
 behind him. These are always punished through the 
 punishment of the breadwinner, but no one can tell 
 us by what right they are made to share his penalty. 
 Is it clearly understood that wives and daughters
 
 286 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 must sometimes sell their virtue because a man has 
 been condemned to penal servitude ? 
 
 As to what is briefly said in the Hibbert article 
 concerning imprisonment " as a cause of immorality 
 in prison," this could be discussed properly in none 
 but a medical journal. It glances at facts that are 
 perfectly well known to governors, doctors, and 
 warders of every convict establishment. Both by 
 governors and by doctors the subject has occasionally 
 been mentioned to me. Anyone will understand it 
 who realises in imagination the absolute non-natural- 
 ness of a convict's life. 
 
 The literary skill of " One Who Has Suffered It " 
 no doubt lends weight and dignity to his indictment ; 
 but if the qualities of artistic colour and emotion be 
 overlooked, the statement does not materially differ 
 from those of many other ex-prisoners. 
 
 And once again what is to be said for the 
 prospects of the ex-convict on his return to the world ? 
 
 " He leaves the prison with every faculty of his 
 intellectual and corporeal organisation seriously 
 weakened. He may have heart disease ; is pre- 
 maturely aged ; possibly imbecile ; a settled 
 dyspeptic ; his constitution is undermined ; his 
 understanding is dulled ; and, likely enough, he 
 has also been transformed into a moral wreck. He 
 is wofully behind the times. . . . How is he to 
 wrestle successfully with alert, informed, un- 
 hampered competitors in the winning of a liveli- 
 hood?" 
 
 If, with these enormous disadvantages, he could 
 still rely upon the countenance and help of society, 
 it would be hard enough for him to win his way up 
 again to a^decent and safe position. But, with the
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 287 
 
 hand of the world against him, how are his impedi- 
 ments multiplied ! 
 
 The point, however, for immediate consideration 
 is that here once more (from an anonymous pen, it 
 is true, but in a periodical justly respected) we have 
 a thorough and deliberate and well-sustained attack 
 upon the whole system of penal servitude. Again and 
 again the principles of this system have been de- 
 nounced ; but the mass of accusations on the subject 
 is probably nothing in comparison with what could be 
 produced, if every intelligent ex-convict had a ready 
 pen and a fair channel of communication. 
 
 VII. THE MALINGERERS 
 
 One of the ugliest things in the life of prison of 
 the great convict establishments more especially 
 is the prevalence of malingering. Men in whom the 
 sense of decency has been killed feign an illness of 
 some kind (fictitious malingering), or exaggerate a 
 real ailment (factitious malingering). The confirmed 
 malingerer is the terror, or at least the bugbear, of all 
 prison officers, and of the " medico " in particular. 
 Thanks to him and his devices, prisoners who need 
 the doctor's care are apt to fall under suspicion, for 
 nowadays no sickness in prison is ever taken on the 
 mere word of the prisoner. 
 
 A convict sits in his cell diligently and painfully 
 biting a piece of tissue out of his ankle. Another 
 makes a wound in his arm and thrusts into it an 
 inch or two of cobbler's thread. A third is at work 
 on an elegant ulcer in his leg. A fourth is practising 
 fits. A fifth is trying to be dumb. A sixth has a 
 notion of stiffening a limb by persistently flexing or 
 extending it. A seventh devotes himself to starvation.
 
 288 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 An eighth studies insomnia. A ninth goes for insanity. 
 A tenth commends himself to a safe mode of suicide. 
 
 These are the malingerers. 
 
 Almost everything in prison has its grimly or 
 pitifully humorous aspect, and my friend Dr. Tenny- 
 son Patmore relates how, when he was at Wormwood 
 Scrubs, he received a convict from another prison, 
 " with a minute account of the grave epileptic fits 
 which, day and night, seized the unfortunate man " ; 
 and the prisoner himself gave such exaggerated 
 accounts of his sufferings that he at once came under 
 suspicion of malingering. The doctor laid a trap 
 for him. It was arranged that a " clinical lecture " 
 should be given on the case, and a specially selected 
 audience (of convicts) was brought together in the 
 infirmary, on the express understanding that " no 
 signs of amusement should be betrayed by any of the 
 observers, however ridiculous the lecture might appear 
 to them." A grave burlesque lecture was then 
 delivered by the doctor, who feigned to believe that 
 the case was one of the most extraordinary and 
 alarming he had ever come across. Next, the patient 
 was put most carefully and tenderly to bed, and the 
 doctor, in his hearing, solemnly remarked that there 
 was " no medical treatment available for such a case 
 save a protracted course of very low diet." Now, in 
 the prison he had come from, the " epileptic " had 
 been sedulously pampered, and a " very low diet " 
 was precisely the last form of treatment he had 
 expected to receive. In less than a week he arose from 
 bed a thinner and a wiser man, pronounced himself 
 " entirely cured," and never to the end of his 
 sentence had another epileptic fit. 
 
 Grotesque enough, no doubt, some of these cases 
 are ; many others are merely loathsome ; and it is,
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 289 
 
 I fancy, a somewhat serious reflection upon the 
 general conditions of life in prison that hundreds of 
 convicts spend almost the whole of their time in 
 unmanly, debasing, and self -injurious efforts to 
 procure their release, or even to effect the change 
 from cell to hospital. To every one in prison these 
 things are well known. No officer, I believe, would 
 hesitate a moment to admit them. Malingering, a 
 persistent and permanent disease of our prisons, is 
 taken in them as a matter of course. 
 
 Some prisoners themselves hold the malingerer in 
 thoroughgoing contempt. They despise him as a 
 weakling or a coward or a simple nuisance. But the 
 common sentiment of prison is not, I think, against 
 him ; and the master at the art of faking, who ends 
 by besting the doctor, and getting a turn in hospital, 
 or a spell of light labour, or an infinitesimal change 
 of diet, is praised and envied as a " wide " or clever 
 customer. The resolutely cheerful, industrious, and 
 obedient convict is in his way a very admirable 
 fellow ; and a right mode of handling this convict in 
 confinement would perhaps transform him into a 
 pattern citizen. But we have not got near to the 
 right mode. " The prison system is all wrong," l and 
 since there is nothing in it to give life to that senti- 
 ment under which, in a free and healthy existence, 
 every shirker and malingerer is contemned by every 
 honest earner, comparatively few convicts reprobate 
 the fellow-lag whose days are a protracted and often 
 a disgusting sham. For the out-and-out malingerer 
 sticks at nothing. Certain of his practices, when he 
 has finally sloughed the man and taken on the beast, 
 might, in a medical journal, point an argument against 
 
 1 Wilde's "DeProfundis."
 
 290 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 long sentences of imprisonment ; in pages non- 
 scientific they would scarcely be recognised as human. 
 
 In other cases the feigning of disease will presently 
 induce a true pathological condition ; the incorrigible 
 malingerer becomes a subject for the asylum or the 
 hospital for incurables. Dr. Patmore remarks that 
 " a voluntary abandonment of inhibition, with a long 
 continued simulation of maniacal manifestations, 
 may render the resumption of normal inhibition 
 impossible, and so induce a really lowered intel- 
 lectual calibre ; and also a protracted intentional 
 simulation of dementia, with disregard of personal 
 cleanliness and of all the decencies, does certainly at 
 times conduce to a real permanent mental inertia. A 
 limb long disused will atrophy, and so will the 
 cerebro-spinal centres lose tone by prolonged disuse." 
 It is this positive danger to the malingerer himself 
 that keeps the doctors of prison on steady, anxious 
 watch. 
 
 For anything and everything at the hands of the 
 malingerer they are at all times prepared, and half 
 their time is taken up with examinations, inquiries, 
 and experiments that the ordinary practitioner 
 knows nothing of and would hardly understand. 
 " Almost every description of subjective and ob- 
 jective ailment has been feigned or produced " : 
 malingering is in the day's work on the convict's part, 
 the detection of it is in the day's work on the doctor's 
 part. This repellently abnormal situation is abso- 
 lutely normal in prison ! 
 
 I have shown that the resolved malingerer may 
 filch something from his health. He is likelier, in 
 the long run, to filch something from his comfort. 
 A few years back, the heroic artists in this line, 
 yielding to no other measures, could be flogged on
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 291 
 
 an order of the visiting justices. This penalty is no 
 longer at command, but the doctor has shots enough 
 in his locker. On suspicion of malingering he can 
 prescribe what remedies he pleases, and the battery 
 at his disposal is more than equal to most of the 
 fakes he has to deal with. By electricity, medicines, 
 douches, and surprises in food he can put very un- 
 pleasing questions to troublesome malingerers ; and, 
 as there is always in the background the possibility 
 of an epidemic of malingering, he sometimes rubs it 
 in warmly to a leader in the business. 
 
 But the game continues ; sustained by the convict 
 in the hope of circumventing the doctor, and by the 
 doctor in the double endeavour to keep down sick- 
 ness and keep up discipline. 
 
 The atmosphere of prison is propitious to mal- 
 ingering. In the army, in the navy, and in public 
 schools this vicious habit is not indeed unknown ; 
 but in none of these spheres is it rife, as it is in 
 prison. Here, where a man's whole estate is artificial, 
 where he exists upon terms remote from all civility, 
 where life, in brief, is a mere accumulation of ills, 
 the temptations to sink lower and yet lower in the 
 moral scale are not easily resisted. Slowly or swiftly 
 prison encourages a man to derogate from manhood. 
 Its entire scheme of discipline, from A to Z, is 
 grounded in distrust of the individual. Men thus 
 regarded will they not try in all ways to flout 
 discipline ? lie and cheat and fawn and sham, till 
 they are beneath the level of the system that has 
 vitiated their very natures ? A process of punishment 
 that kept before the prisoner the simplest ideals of 
 personal dignity, honour, faith, conduct, and sub- 
 mission to equitable rule would tend to make 
 malingering impossible.
 
 292 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 In the utter deadness of the convict's life, penalties 
 themselves are sometimes welcomed as a stimulating 
 change. The malingerer takes his chance. He stands 
 to lose something, to gain something ; the prospec- 
 tive profit is worth the risk. Rouse him in the grandly 
 simple way that Mrs. Booth has learned, show him 
 that the convict does not cease to be a man, and he 
 will quit these unclean tricks. It is nothing to the 
 credit of the prison system that under it we are 
 breeding successive generations of malingerers ; that 
 the malingerer himself, everywhere else by every one's 
 consent an unsocial rogue and wastrel, is in gaol 
 commended in exact proportion to his prowess as a 
 swindler. 
 
 VHI. PRISON MAKES THE PRISONER 
 
 Our system of imprisonment is an ideal means of 
 spoiling the offender. It unmakes the man and the 
 citizen, it aids in the making of the wastrel and the 
 criminal. By the stigma it imprints on every prisoner 
 he is rendered little less than infamous. Branded 
 almost as effectually as the slave who carried the 
 seal of the marking-iron, the chances are that he will 
 and must return to the place where the brand was 
 inflicted. Sixty-six per cent of recidivists ! 
 
 Prison is the tragi-comedy of our day. The con- 
 vict is the tragic comedian. " Our very dress makes 
 us grotesque," said Oscar Wilde. " We are the 
 zanies of sorrow'. We are clowns whose hearts are 
 broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the 
 sense of humour." The prisoner's Whole existence 
 is a kind of dull burlesque on life. Here, in a con- 
 vict establishment, are some hundreds of imperfect 
 citizens whom we are pretending to reclaim by 
 rigorously depriving them of everything that citizen-
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 
 
 ship implies. We shave their heads and dress them 
 up as guys, close their mouths, march them hither and 
 thither in dumb droves, feel in their empty pockets 
 three or four times a day, stand them with their 
 faces to the wall, harry them with reports, dock 
 them of hard-won marks for a word or a frown, stop 
 their little treat of a letter or a visit for some slackness 
 at work or a grumble over doubtful meat, and at 
 stated hours lock them into cells where the warder 
 with his eye at the peep-hole can keep them per- 
 petually under watch. 
 
 Is this rational treatment for a grown delinquent ? 
 Is it the way to reclaim him ? Is it not rather the 
 way to make a pattern prison man, the type well 
 known wherever convicts are found a very un- 
 desirable character, yet one to be pitied rather than 
 condemned, since it is the place and the system that 
 have reduced him to what he is ? 
 
 But there are, of course, worse things in prison 
 than its sordid pettiness, and the utter monotony that 
 turns existence there to one long winter's day. The 
 absolute separation of the prisoner from the world 
 outside his silent gates cannot but be deeply injurious. 
 Every year that he passes within those gates takes 
 something from his fitness as a citizen, a worker, a 
 responsible individual. For, once in prison, all 
 relations with the world beyond are abrogated, and 
 no other mode of living has been devised that departs 
 in so many particulars as penal servitude does from 
 any recognised and tolerable norm of life elsewhere. 
 It is a circle of all the dead. Why, if a prisoner, 
 seven years in Portland or Dartmoor, should find 
 one morning in his cell at the dinner hour a copy 
 of the day's newspaper, with its multifarious tidings 
 of both hemispheres, he would be affected, I think,
 
 294 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 very much as a congregation in St. Paul's Cathedral 
 would be by the opening of the seventh seal. 
 
 The occasional letters that a prisoner may receive 
 (naturally there are prisoners who never get a letter 
 of any sort) are first read and edited by the Governor 
 or his deputy, who have instructions, I believe, to 
 strike out any reference to public events. Every 
 kind of knowledge of the world is diligently withheld 
 from the convict, whose whole behaviour is regulated 
 for him as if he were never to return to it. What 
 wonder that when he does return he fails to readjust 
 himself, and is usually either a nuisance or a danger 
 to society? 
 
 Old writers conceived of deserts and the barren 
 waste of ocean as the chosen and appropriate abodes 
 of demons. To me it is easier to think of prison as 
 haunted by the ghosts of all malignant beings that 
 have troubled earth. What a hunting-ground for the 
 legions of the disembodied spirits of the lost if such 
 there be ! The very atmosphere of prison is heavy 
 with evil. What subtle yet potent efflux of harm 
 should come from every stone of a building that has 
 never at any time held any but criminal inhabitants ! 
 And, for the criminals themselves, such a dwelling is 
 of necessity the very worst imaginable. The natural 
 miasma, the aerial poison of it, clings and infects year 
 in and year out. Let the mind pause for an instant 
 at the thought of the generations of felons by whom 
 the cells of our oldest convict prisons have successively 
 been tenanted. In these cells, what tears have been 
 wept, what curses whispered, to the moral hurt of 
 every later entrant ! I may be told that the air in 
 the fever-ward of a hospital is infected, but that 
 patients still recover in it. Yes ; but in the fever- 
 ward the patient is in the best of places. It is every
 
 IMPRISONMENT A FAILURE 295 
 
 one's business to restore him, and to this end every one 
 is ceaselessly striving. But it is not the real business 
 of any one to restore the prisoner, who is also, in 
 his kind, a patient. Not cure but discipline is the 
 dominating word in prison. The prisoner has 
 to live by rules in daily association with other 
 prisoners, who are the very last companions he 
 should be given and the chaplain himself, if at any 
 time his method clashes with these rules, is apt to 
 find that he too can be brought to book by them. 
 A good Governor can influence his prisoners, and does 
 so ; a good chaplain can influence his prisoners, and 
 does so; a good doctor can influence his prisoners, 
 and does so ; a good warder can influence his prisoners, 
 and does so. But each and all of these healing, 
 refining, corrective, and stimulating influences are 
 and must be indirect and secondary in their operation. 
 For it is the aim of prison to make not a good man, 
 but a good prisoner. 
 
 But the system achieves one end, at any rate, 
 with a steady and continuous success that no one 
 outside of Whitehall ever dreams of challenging. 
 We may fail to make citizens in prison, but we do 
 at least make criminals. " For," says Mr. Edward 
 Carpenter (" Prisons, Police, and Punishment "), 
 " habit robs even prisons of their terror. However 
 severe a system may be, it at last breeds its own type 
 of prisoner who is adapted to his environment. If you 
 live seven years without speaking or using your 
 brain and heart to any appreciable degree, you at 
 last lose the need for speech and thought and affec- 
 tion." And as Dr. Morrison says : " Will a pro- 
 longed course of severities and degradations confer 
 the virtues of industrious and orderly citizens on 
 these unhappy men ? On the contrary, the more
 
 296 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 harshly you punish them, the more you reduce the 
 human element which still lives in their hearts. The 
 more you punish them, the more certainly you doom 
 them to the awful existence of a habitual criminal." 
 The effect exerted on the public mind by this 
 system of punishment is enduring. It is fatal to the 
 chances of the ex-prisoner. Every one knows nowa- 
 days what the prisoner is in prison, what a figure of 
 ridicule and contempt he is there. The wretched 
 and contemptuous notion of him trickles abroad. 
 Coming out, he passes at once under a new sentence 
 of ostracism. Prison has weakened, humiliated, and 
 made a scaramouch of him. He has ceased to belong 
 to us. We have no use for him, no need of him 
 no room for him. He must go back to his proper 
 habitat of prison. He goes back !
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 
 
 1. THE push towards reform began, in Saleilles's 
 words, 1 " as a purely humanitarian reaction, prompted 
 by a sense of popular and sentimental justice." It 
 is now the affair of a new science called Criminology, 
 which has two determinate branches : criminal 
 anthropology, treating of the criminal man ; and 
 criminal sociology, dealing with the social causes of 
 crime. 2 We may as reasonably at this date profess a 
 science of crime as we once timorously professed a 
 science of medicine. An analogy, indeed, is possible. 
 Disease, of whatever kind, was once, and for long, 
 regarded as a visitation of heaven ; the sick man 
 had done something for which the Deity was to 
 punish him. Crime, in its turn, was once, and for long, 
 regarded as wilful and intentional sin ; the criminal 
 had done something that, as a free agent, he might 
 have abstained from doing. Modern science came to 
 realise that disease has natural causes. The science 
 of criminology perceives that there are natural 
 causes of crime. The cure of disease (to the extent to 
 which it goes) has gradually found its basis in ex- 
 
 1 " The Individualisation of Punishment," by Raymond Saleilles, 
 Professor of Comparative Law in the University of Paris. London, 
 1911. 
 
 2 " The Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in their Rela- 
 tions to Criminal Procedure," by Maurice Parmelee. New York, 
 1908. 
 
 297
 
 298 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 perience. The same basis is sought for the attempted 
 cure of criminality. 
 
 2. The notion of the curability of crime is in itself 
 a new one. There is not in the admirable Beccaria 
 (father of us all in the history of the reform of prison) 
 an appreciable hint of it, nor is it talked of with any 
 general confidence until the nineteenth century is 
 well advanced. By the modern penal school the 
 notion is urgently put forward, and to this school in 
 the main the credit of it belongs. 
 
 3. The cure is not to be found in conventional 
 systems of imprisonment. On this point are united 
 many critics who decline to go the whole way with 
 the extremists of Italy and France ; and, avoiding 
 arguments already used, I must for a moment return 
 to the subject. All the world over, the State continues 
 to favour imprisonment. All the world over, pen- 
 ologists are exposing the failure of imprisonment. 
 
 "The fixed belief in the virtue and necessity of 
 prison has had disastrous consequences," says Mr. 
 Thomas Holmes, " for the State has hitherto con- 
 sidered it the one great cure-all for law-breaking. 
 It has till quite recently been the first resource of 
 the law, instead of its last resource." 1 
 
 *' The autobiographies of criminals show us that 
 far from reforming evil-doers, prison is, in reality, 
 a criminal university which houses all grades of 
 offenders during varying periods ; that far from 
 being a means of redemption, it is a hotbed of 
 depravity, where are prepared and developed the 
 germs which are later to infect society ; yet it is 
 to this incubator of crime that society looks for 
 
 1 " Psychology and Crime." London, 1912.
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 299 
 
 defence against those very elements of lawlessness 
 which it is actively fostering." 1 
 
 Mr. Edward Carpenter observes that the 
 
 " evil of recidivism must either be ascribed to the 
 system, or to the congenital nature of the criminal. 
 Either the criminal must be a hopeless case from 
 birth, or the system must be very much at fault, 
 which, instead of reforming, causes him to return 
 again and again to prison. But as it would be 
 absurd to suppose that the great majority of 
 offenders are hopeless cases from birth (though this 
 may be true of some), we are forced to ascribe the 
 main fault to the system. In either case we may 
 conclude that mere punishment is of no use ; since 
 obviously in the case of defective birth it cannot 
 apply ; and since also the system, which hitherto 
 has been founded on the idea of punishment, has 
 itself so greatly failed." 
 
 The authors of the Fabian Tract state that 
 
 " The scientific study of criminal psychology 
 and pathology and of social conditions in relation 
 to crime, combined with an enlarging sense of 
 collective responsibility, has made the twentieth 
 century thoroughly impatient of the results pro- 
 duced by the penal reforms of the nineteenth. . . . 
 Modern criminologists regard the attempt to com- 
 bine aims so incompatible as deterrent punishment 
 and a serious attempt to reform the criminal as 
 the makeshift of a period of transition. . . . The 
 old idea was that the collective force of society 
 should be used to suppress the will and stultify 
 
 1 Ferrero.
 
 300 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 the faculties of every person of whose activities 
 custom or authority disapproved. The modern 
 idea is that the collective force of society should 
 be used to stimulate and support the exercise of 
 individual will power under a sense of personal 
 and social responsibility, and to make every effort 
 to strengthen and restore it where it is enfeebled 
 or lost, combined, of course, with opportunity for 
 the free exercise in a useful and healthy direction 
 of such powers as the individual may possess. In 
 a word, our present inclination towards a positive 
 rather than a negative method for the solution of 
 such social problems as destitution, ignorance, or 
 sickness is extending likewise to the treatment of 
 crime." 
 
 " One of the greatest factors in crime is the prison," 
 says Lombroso ; a statement he does not weary 
 of reiterating. " The injustice of the present situa- 
 tion," says Saleilles, " is aggravated by the pro- 
 miscuous intercourse of the prison, which itself 
 serves to make perverts and to enlist them in a 
 career of crime." 
 
 4. Deprecation of imprisonment being a theme 
 common to all penologists (irrespective of divisions 
 among parties), what have these critics to say about 
 punishment itself ? There is no lack of instance or 
 precision on this head. Schemes differ ; the aim 
 does not. In terms the most general, it may be said 
 that the whole modern school seeks in punishment 
 something that shall correct, strengthen, stimulate, 
 and elevate the criminal ; it condemns all modes of 
 punishment that tend to weaken and degrade him. 
 If this line of argument has a certain ground in 
 sentiment, it has an equal ground in economics. If
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 301 
 
 it takes account in full of the criminal whom we may 
 possibly reclaim, it takes account in like degree of our 
 social selves who need protection against the criminal. 
 Saleilles, discussing what he calls the " infamous " in 
 punishment, condemns all penalties that entail the loss 
 of self-esteem, the thrusting down of the prisoner " to 
 the level of those whom society has dishonoured 
 and rejected." Punishment, " to accomplish its end, 
 must not involve the loss of honour. It must aid in 
 its restoration." The purpose of punishment should 
 be not to destroy honour, but to give it back. We 
 are to restore, as far as may be, the sense of social 
 equality in the criminal who has taken punishment ; 
 we are certainly to do nothing to impede his social 
 reinstatement. The retributive punishment, which 
 has never effected anything, being of benefit neither 
 to the victim of the crime nor to the criminal, will be 
 gradually abandoned ; law itself will become " less 
 penal, less vengeful, less hungry for conviction and 
 imprisonment, and more simply regulative." 1 
 
 Stage by stage punishment, as punishment, being 
 always hurtful, will lose its value for us, and modes 
 of public tutelage (care for the criminal joining with 
 care for the State) will take its place. " Safety with 
 respect for the personality of the delinquent," says the 
 Spanish penologist De Quiros, 2 " is what characterises 
 criminal law reform. The desire for vengeance 
 meets with no official recognition, and penal servitude 
 is on the point of disappearing." At a point of time 
 ahead of ours, abstention pure and simple (a hint of 
 Nietzsche's) may be the note of our penal system : 
 the future, in other words, may decide to do nothing 
 at all with its delinquents. Awaiting this millennium, 
 
 1 Carpenter. 
 
 2 " Modern Theories of Criminality."
 
 302 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 we may still find place for reasonable punishment ; at 
 present, indeed, we have obviously no choice but to 
 do so. But the older or classical conceptions and the 
 newer ones travel on very different planes. " Logi- 
 cally defined, crime is a violation of the legally 
 established order. Punishment is the penalty of such 
 transgression of the law and may be looked upon as 
 a reparation, a kind of compensation through the 
 suffering of the individual for the injury that has been 
 done ; as such it is what the Germans call a Ver- 
 geltungsstrafe. When thus considered, it is the 
 practical consequence of a crime that attracts 
 attention, by which is meant the social disturbance 
 that has been occasioned, the resulting individual or 
 collective harm of which society reflexly feels the 
 effect." 
 
 On this principle, which takes account only of the 
 consequences of an act, the crime itself is almost 
 everything, the criminal almost nothing : as Saleilles 
 says, " there would be only crimes and no criminals ; 
 somewhat as if a physician were to maintain that 
 there are only diseases and no patients." The law 
 " sets the punishment in accordance with the injury 
 done ; by which is understood only the objective 
 injury. It sentences to months or years of im- 
 prisonment, or to penal servitude, or even to death, 
 according to the material gravity of the crime. The 
 person of the criminal is not considered. In the eyes 
 of criminal justice the offender is but an abstract, 
 nameless individual, as later he becomes a mere 
 number in the work-yards of the gaol or penitentiary. 
 Thus conceived, criminal law becomes a wholly 
 abstract construction, taking cognisance only of the 
 crime while ignoring the criminal." 
 
 Plainly this is not the means of attaining ideal
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 303 
 
 justice. Behind the abstractions of the law there 
 are " living realities, human beings whose moral and 
 social future constitutes a problem. While admitting 
 that the sacrifice of individuals may be of slight 
 importance in comparison with the interests of 
 social order, it is not to be overlooked that society 
 itself suffers through the haphazard application of 
 a mathematical type of administration ; for such 
 punishment acts blindly, running the risk of setting 
 free the incorrigible and the pervert, and penalising 
 the semi-responsible and the chance offender." l 
 
 To this typically and fundamentally legal view is 
 opposed that of the modern penal school, some of 
 whose exponents maintain that there are " no crimes 
 but only criminals." It is, at any rate, held by the 
 majority of this school that punishment must be 
 determined far less by the gravity of the crime, or 
 the injury inflicted, than by the nature of the 
 criminal. " The legitimate purpose of punishment 
 is to make of the criminal an honest man, if that be 
 possible ; or, if not, to deprive him of the chance of 
 doing further harm. For the view that punishment 
 is an infliction of injury for injury there is substituted 
 the view that punishment is a moral instrument, a 
 means of regeneration for the individual as well as of 
 protection for society. Punishment has thus a social 
 end directed to the future, while hitherto it has 
 been regarded only as the necessary consequence of 
 a past act. It was appraised and described in terms 
 of the crime committed, without reference to future 
 issues ; and this attitude resulted in making habitual 
 criminals." 
 
 That the criminal is a fitter object of study than the 
 crime is a concept which it has taken us above a 
 
 1 Saleilles.
 
 304 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 hundred years to realise. The eighteenth - century 
 philosophers, Cesare Beccaria among them, were all 
 strict in the creed that the character of the crime 
 should be the determinant of the punishment. 
 Beccaria did, indeed, insist that " no punishment 
 should be greater than the crime warranted " ; but 
 for him also the criminal was " a logical object of 
 vengeance, because he had done that which a law 
 had forbidden him to do." 
 
 With the modern school (in its several camps) it is, 
 on the other hand, a main tenet that the accom- 
 plished crime is by no means alone to be considered ; 
 account must be taken also of the purpose of punish- 
 ment. And this purpose, as Saleilles puts it, " is not 
 to inflict a punishment for what has been done, as if 
 in satisfaction of a sentiment of individual or collec- 
 tive vengeance, but to bring about a certain result 
 ... it is the future and not the past, not the crime 
 committed, that sets the goal and the purpose 
 sought." 
 
 This is manifestly something very different from 
 punishment crystallised by an abstract law " as a 
 mechanical and exact retribution, ineffective in 
 respect of the past and without influence upon the 
 future." This, in brief, is punishment devised to 
 yield the utmost wise return ; and to acquiesce in 
 this is to be compelled as a consequence to admit 
 " that the punishment must be adapted to the 
 nature of the individual to whom it is applied." The 
 adjustment of the penalty, not to the crime, but to 
 the criminal, is the important modern doctrine of the 
 individualisation of punishment. 
 
 5. Now it is at once apparent that in prisons 
 conformed, as ours are, to a standard of rules for
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 305 
 
 everybody, the methods of individualisation are 
 not practicable. But is the status quo, the present 
 condition of prisons, inevitable ? It is certain that 
 many of them are crowded with persons to whom the 
 ordinary discipline of a prison is unsuited, and whose 
 presence there is a permanent hindrance to any real 
 effort at reform. Almost every prison in the king- 
 dom contains prisoners, in greater or fewer numbers, 
 for whom it is not the proper habitation. Lord 
 William Nevill describes Parkhurst as " half a 
 hospital and half a lunatic asylum " ; yet this is one 
 of our chief convict establishments. Parkhurst, it 
 seems, overflows with prisoners officially classed 
 at " W. M." (weak-minded), colloquially known as 
 " balmies." In Lord William's day there were about 
 ninety of these at Parkhurst, " and many of them 
 were very difficult to manage, and made themselves 
 very offensive to the other prisoners and to the 
 officers. Most of them, doubtless, were really men of 
 feeble intellect, or partially demented, either natur- 
 ally or as the result of drink or other vices. But 
 there were certainly not a few among them absolutely 
 sane, who merely played the ' balmy.' ... It is 
 very difficult for the doctors in some cases to make 
 sure whether a man is genuinely off his head, or 
 whether he is only shamming. . . . The doctors 
 have neither the time nor the opportunity to watch 
 them closely enough." The writer adds : " There 
 is need of a reform of the prison system with regard 
 to weak-minded, and nothing but a knowledge of the 
 facts is required to show what that reform should be." 
 
 Mr. Jabez Balfour says : 
 
 " I met at Parkhurst with a special class of cases 
 which if not peculiar to that great establishment
 
 306 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 are certainly seen more frequently there than in 
 other convict prisons. I refer to elderly and infirm 
 convicts who are quite past work of any kind, and 
 who from their age and infirmities will remain a 
 burden to the State when they are discharged 
 from prison. They present a curious and a serious 
 social problem." 
 
 Mr. Holmes says : 
 
 " Roughly, the men and women who inhabit our 
 prisons may be classified under these five heads : 
 first, the feeble-minded ; second, the physical 
 weaklings ; third, the vagrant ; fourth, the casual 
 offender ; fifth, the habitual offender. I believe 
 that all our prisoners can be placed in one or 
 more of these divisions, though, of course, there 
 are variations. Should this be approximately the 
 case, it is certain that a tremendous difficulty 
 arises when the discipline and routine of any one 
 prison, however well conducted, is made to serve 
 for the whole of the classes. This is where prisons 
 fail, and must continue to fail if the present 
 methods are continued, for in our endeavours to 
 administer equal justice to all classes we commit 
 the greatest injustice ; and in our attempts to be 
 merciful we are cruel to many of our prisoners. 
 . . . The failure to reform must not be attributed, 
 then, to the prison system altogether, still less must 
 it be attributed to any lack of sympathy in the 
 prison officials ; but rather to the two facts, that 
 prisons are unnatural places, and that a prison 
 population is made up of strange and motley indi- 
 viduals, each differing widely from his fellows in 
 temperament and taste, in physical and mental 
 capacity."
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 307 
 
 In " Crime and Criminals " l this question of the 
 filling of prisons with the unfit is very thoroughly 
 examined by Dr. Quinton, who has discharged the 
 duties both of medical officer and of governor. Take 
 the case of the vagrants convicted of begging and 
 sleeping out. Some kind of labour colony is un- 
 doubtedly the place for them, but they are in and out 
 of prison to the number of twenty or five-and-twenty 
 thousand every year. 
 
 " Among these local prison habitual offenders," 
 says Dr. Quinton, " there are many of such a low 
 intellectual and moral type that they are in sun- 
 dry respects irresponsible, and practically on the 
 borderland of insanity. This class of habituals 
 supplies the main part of that three to four per cent 
 of weak-minded persons who are found in the 
 prison population. The care and management of 
 them under the conditions of a sentence of im- 
 prisonment are a source of much trouble to the 
 prison authorities. They are for many reasons 
 unfit for isolation in cells. They object to a regular 
 task of work, refuse to keep their cells or persons 
 clean ; they cannot be induced to arrange cell 
 furniture in the uniform fashion prescribed by 
 the rules, and they are much given to whistling, 
 shouting, and singing in their solitude, so as to 
 disturb the quiet of the prison, and provoke other 
 prisoners to imitate their example. They are very 
 impatient under, if not wholly insusceptible of, 
 penal discipline, and constantly incur reports for 
 breaches of the rules, and become proteges of the 
 medical officer, who has to screen them from 
 punishment. There are several epileptics, and 
 
 1 London, 1910.
 
 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 there are, besides, many aged and infirm, who are 
 in the early stage of senile dementia, as well as 
 youths who are congenitally deficient in intellect, 
 and whose chief education has been in criminal 
 habits. 
 
 " The general practice in large prisons is to place 
 them in gated cells with an officer patrolling to 
 keep them in order, or to have them in an associa- 
 tion ward under the care of an officer, who, by tact 
 and patience, tries to bring them into line, and 
 extract from their combined energy a little light 
 work with clean and tidy surroundings. Many 
 are quick in temper, and they quarrel with tongue 
 and fist in an instant, often before the officer can 
 intervene. They have, as a matter of course, a choice 
 selection of bad language which it is impossible to 
 keep in check. 
 
 " Many, too, have physical defects and bodily 
 deformities which unfit them for work. Out of 
 prison they live by thieving and begging, and they 
 are constantly returning with short sentences for 
 petty offences. Some are the dupes of more 
 knowing thieves, and find their way into convict 
 prisons ; others eventually get into lunatic asylums, 
 but many remain on the borderland, and never 
 satisfy the legal requirements or tests of insanity. 
 The excuses they give for misconduct are some- 
 times amusing. One man assaults another because 
 he does not ' like the looks of him.' Another, 
 reported for singing while at work in the ward, 
 says he was ' only 'umming " 'Twas in Trafalgar's 
 Bay," because the man next him had only one eye 
 and one arm, and reminded him of the death of 
 Nelson.' 
 
 " The practice which is followed up to the
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 309 
 
 present day of dealing with weak-minded offenders 
 is as irrational as it is discreditable to our penal 
 system. For more than twenty years the prison 
 authorities have been calling attention to the 
 anomaly and the evil of sending them to prison at 
 all. It should be patent to everyone that mental 
 defectives, who drift into criminal habits in their 
 struggle for existence from sheer lack of a sense 
 of moral responsibility and of self-control, are 
 unfit subjects for any form of penal discipline. 
 . . . Add to the plundering of the public the cost 
 involved in the constant repetition of arresting, 
 charging, and conveying to prison a host of these 
 habituals, and it will be found that every year 
 thousands of pounds are lost without the slightest 
 resulting benefit either to the public or to the 
 prisoner." 
 
 Take next the large contingent of habituals 
 furnished by the drunkards. Prisons " still swarm 
 with these unhappy victims, many of whom in the 
 early stage of their career, and not yet at the parting 
 of the ways, are quite capable of being cured under 
 proper conditions and by suitable reformatory 
 treatment." In 1908-9 " the committals for ' simple 
 drunkenness ' and ' drunkenness with aggravations ' 
 were close on 63,000, or about one-third of the total 
 committals from ordinary courts ; and, although there 
 were many occasional drunkards included in these 
 figures, the greater proportion had had previous 
 convictions for the same offence." 
 
 Then there are the criminal lunatics. 
 
 " If criminals are insane," observes Dr. Quinton, 
 " they should not be in penal institutions the
 
 310 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 very name of prison in this connection being op- 
 posed to all modern ideas on the subject of insanity. 
 Hitherto, prisons have been made a dumping- 
 ground for every sort and variety of the general 
 flotsam and jetsam of society which has been shot 
 into these institutions promiscuously without any 
 regard to fitness or ordinary justice. Prison 
 authorities have been criticised in their attempts 
 to classify and assimilate the motley collection, 
 but the community has sins of its own to answer 
 for in neglecting to sift out from the mass those 
 who, from their limited responsibility, should not 
 find a place in any penal institution. . . . Under 
 different conditions, and with longer periods of 
 detention, these wastrels can be trained to steady 
 work of some kind, and taught profitable industries, 
 so as to contribute to their own keep and super- 
 vision. Their disappearance from the prisons 
 will enable the permanent staff (which is at all 
 times, under existing conditions, so inadequate as 
 to need reinforcement by hundreds of temporary 
 officers) to concentrate its energies on the instruc- 
 tion and improvement of the reformable criminals 
 in custody." 
 
 Vagrants, feeble-minded, inebriates, criminal luna- 
 tics, wastrels of sundry kinds ; and to this enormous 
 list may be added the thousands of persons com- 
 mitted to prison because they have not the ready 
 money wherewith to pay a fine, and the host that 
 might be dealt with under the Probation Act. For 
 all of these prison is the wrong place. The space 
 they fill there is wasted ; the time and money spent 
 on them are wasted. We might exclude from prison 
 one-half of its whole population.
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 311 
 
 6. Were this done reformers would enjoy some 
 freedom for experiment. Experiment needs must 
 come ; in all countries alike it is demanded. To 
 reduce the population of prisons by one-half and to 
 go on dealing out the old doses of discipline to the 
 remaining half would be absurd. Moreover, experi- 
 ment is now bravely in progress, under different 
 governments, in different climes ; there is nothing in 
 the prospect that need daunt us. 
 
 I have shown a little of what strikes me as best in 
 the United States. Let me select in other countries 
 a few illuminative instances, tending all to show that 
 prison itself, rightly managed, may be a powerful 
 agent of reform. And first in South America, which 
 might be thought not the likeliest province for effort 
 of this kind. 
 
 There is in Buenos Ayres one of the finest prisons 
 in the world. It is the Penitenciario Na9ional, an 
 institute whose inmates comprise adult offenders of 
 almost every type. The Naional was opened a few 
 years after the Reformatory at Elmira, in New York, 
 and its founders were not above taking a hint or two 
 from the thrice-intelligent Mr. Brockway. 
 
 Signora Ferrero, who took the Na9ional in her 
 extended pilgrimage abroad, writes : 
 
 " Externally it has nothing in common with the 
 gloomy European prisons. It is a large white 
 edifice with a broad flight of steps leading to the 
 street, and is devoid of all signs of force soldiers, 
 sentry-boxes, etc. 
 
 " After passing through a wide vestibule, I 
 reached a large, shady courtyard with low walls 
 almost hidden beneath a wealth of flowers and 
 foliage. A corridor opening on to the courtyard
 
 312 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 was flanked on each side by a row of open white 
 cells, each well lighted by a fair-sized window during 
 the day and by electricity at night. Each cell is 
 furnished with bookshelves, a table with paper, 
 pen, and ink-stand, and a chair. All the corridors, 
 which are gay with plants, converge towards a cen- 
 tral glass-room, whence the sub-inspector surveys 
 all the radiating corridors under his jurisdiction. 
 Each corridor ends in a workshop, where printing, 
 lithography, shoemaking, metal and steel work are 
 carried on, and between the corridors are garden 
 plots, in which fruit, vegetables, and flowers are 
 cultivated. The workshops are reckoned among 
 the best the Republic contains. The printing office 
 turns out many weekly papers, illustrated maga- 
 zines, and scientific and literary reviews. Foot- 
 gear of the finest and most elegant quality is 
 manufactured in the shoe factory, and the foundry 
 and workshop produce lathes, boilers, industrial 
 and agricultural machines and implements. All the 
 cooking in the Penitentiary is done by steam, and 
 the plant is installed in a large building erected by 
 the prisoners themselves." 
 
 Every convict receives wages, which are about 
 equal to the standard in the trade he is employed 
 at. After work (and " a substantial supper ") the 
 prisoners are divided into nine classes for school 
 tasks, which include geography, history, languages, 
 and drawing, and they may then go to the library for 
 recreative books. " Instead of a weekly newspaper 
 like that published at Elmira, intellectual develop- 
 ment is stimulated by means of lectures delivered each 
 week by the prisoners or their teachers, and attended 
 by the director, vice-director, and all the convicts."
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 313 
 
 Here, at the National, the work is both useful and 
 interesting. Its directors, one may suppose, have 
 no trouble with trade unions, and are consequently 
 able to make their own programme. In the way of 
 wholesome and delightful recreative work there is, 
 of course, nothing to equal gardening, and these 
 " garden plots in which fruit, vegetables, and flowers 
 are cultivated " may be compared with Dr. Cooley's 
 sun-chambers for the refractory. Our own prison 
 yards are principally hideous. In the grey and 
 naked courts and quarries of Portland, on a blazing 
 day of summer, I had to slink into a corner behind 
 a warder's back and light a cigarette to warm 
 myself. 
 
 Steps to the front, so far as prison itself is concerned, 
 have been taken also in Saxony and Denmark. 
 Saxony has gone some way on the lines of individual- 
 isation. Individualisation implies, in Lombroso's 
 words, certain " special methods of repression and 
 occupation adapted to each individual," as a physician 
 acts " in prescribing dietary rules and special remedies 
 according to the temperament of each patient." 
 Thus, in Saxony (Zwickau) they have " special 
 prisons for the old and for the young, for heavy 
 penalties and for light ones," prisons in which, 
 " according to the merits of each prisoner, his food, 
 his clothes, and the severity of his penalty are 
 changed." A system of this sort would be adapted 
 only to a prison of moderate size in which every officer 
 from the governor downwards had his particular 
 niche ; but I look, of course, to a diminished popula- 
 tion of prison to furnish opportunity for experimental 
 reform work in the spheres both of humanity and of 
 economics. 
 
 In Denmark a strictly graded system begins
 
 314 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 severely enough. The convicts (I quote from 
 Lombroso's " Crime : its Causes and Remedies ") 
 
 "remain in their cells night and day, and work 
 there for their own advantage. The incorrigible 
 prisoners and the recidivists, after six years, live 
 in common in a special prison, and have no other 
 reward for their good conduct than the freedom 
 of working in the fields near the prison. Those 
 who are young and can still be reformed, or those 
 who are convicted for the first time for a minor 
 offence with a sentence of from three to six months 
 at the most, remain in a special cellular prison. 
 They are divided according to their conduct into 
 different grades. In the first (from three to six 
 months) there is absolute seclusion, instruction in 
 the cell, work without pay, and only writing on 
 the slate allowed. In the second grade (six months) 
 they receive two shillings a day for their work, are 
 taught in school but separated from others, can 
 have paper on holidays and books every fortnight, 
 may purchase with half their pay a mirror and 
 an almanac, may write letters and receive visits 
 every two months. In the third grade, which is 
 twelve months at least, they receive three shillings 
 a day, have books or paper every week, are allowed 
 to buy many useful things and send money to their 
 families, receive visits every six weeks, and may 
 have the portraits of their families. In the fourth 
 grade they get four shillings a day, and besides 
 other advantages which are more and more con- 
 ceded to them, they can go out of their cells, work 
 in the open air, and have flowers and birds. Their 
 sentence may be reduced for good conduct, a 
 sentence of eight months to six, of three years to
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 315 
 
 one, and of six years to three and a half. Thus 
 they pass from absolute solitude to solitude at 
 night only, from absolute silence to work in the 
 field and an almost complete liberty." 
 
 Lombroso, who never weakens into sentiment, 
 throws out a few pertinent remarks on the systems 
 of Saxony and Denmark. We need be under no 
 illusion concerning the best of systems, for under the 
 best we shall still receive our due percentage of 
 failures. But, says Lombroso, we may egg the 
 convict on, always with the notion of building him 
 up and restoring his self-esteem. " Good results may 
 be obtained by instituting a kind of decoration and 
 merit and demerit marks. The prisoners must be 
 permitted to pass according to merit into the privi- 
 leged classes, where they can, for example, wear 
 ordinary clothing and a beard, ornament their cells 
 with flowers and pictures, receive visits, work for 
 themselves and their family, and, finally, catch a 
 glimpse of the much-desired perspective of temporary 
 liberty." This, a plain policy, would twenty years 
 ago have seemed fantastic, and is still, in some 
 particulars, twenty years ahead of the designs of our 
 own Commissioners. 
 
 But it is Ireland, in the middle of the nineteenth 
 century, that presents us with the most alluring 
 picture. I speak of the Intermediate Prisons, 
 established about 1856 (" in the face of enormous 
 difficulties ") by Captain Sir Walter Crofton, vigor- 
 ously aided by the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Carlisle. 
 The best compendious account of this enterprise that 
 I have read is contained in an article published 
 seventeen years ago in the Westminster Gazette. 1 
 
 1 November 14th, 1895.
 
 316 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 The report of the Asquith Committee had just 
 appeared, and the author of the Westminster article 
 notes the " cautious " approval bestowed by the 
 Committee on the Crofton scheme. Sixteen years 
 earlier, in 1879, it had been commended by the Royal 
 Commission presided over by Lord Kimberley. 
 
 " Circumstances could hardly have been more 
 difficult or material more unpromising for such an 
 experiment. Prisons were overcrowded, education 
 of convicts almost totally neglected, transportation 
 had ceased, for even West Australia had just 
 refused to take any more Irish convicts, although 
 still willing to receive those from England. For the 
 future, hundreds of convicts must be discharged 
 annually on Irish soil, and the problem was how to 
 render such a proceeding innocuous to the general 
 community. It was to solve this problem that 
 intermediate prisons were started. These estab- 
 lishments were the half-way house between the 
 convict prison and the world ; leading strings 
 before perfect liberty. It was felt that characters 
 earned here would be worth something, and time 
 proved that the directors were right." 
 
 Two establishments were started. At Smithfield, 
 Dublin, use was made of an old, derelict prison ; and 
 on a common at Lusk a farm was laid out. 
 
 " To the former were sent those who, having gone 
 through the usual penal treatment and earned a 
 good prison character, wished to work as trades- 
 men, such as coopers, shoemakers, tailors, car- 
 penters. While the cellular arrangements were 
 retained for sleeping purposes, nothing else could 
 remind anyone of a prison. Workshops, dining and
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 317 
 
 lecture halls, well-kept gardens, all gave the 
 appearance one would expect to find in a modern 
 model reformatory school. The ' Governor of the 
 Prison ' was replaced by a ' Superintendent of the 
 Establishment.' Instead of an individual food 
 allowance, meals were laid as for ordinary workmen, 
 and each helped himself, with due regard for his 
 neighbour, conversation all the time being free and 
 open." 
 
 Every convict had sixpence a week for pocket- 
 money. This he was at liberty to spend on any 
 innocent indulgence, which was 
 
 " obtained in the following extraordinary manner. 
 Once a week these convicts were allowed to select, 
 with the approval of the superintendent, one of 
 their number, and this man collected up the money, 
 took a list of the commissions, and started off quite 
 unattended into the streets and shops of Dublin to 
 execute the orders entrusted to him ; often he had 
 a pound thus in his possession, but never once was 
 the confidence abused, although it is upon record 
 that on one occasion the temptation of a public- 
 house proved too great, and the ' intermediate 
 man ' entered it, but spent his own sixpence only. 
 Still it was a breach of trust he had been tried, 
 found wanting, and he was at once returned to the 
 ordinary Convict Prison. This was an invariable 
 rule in any case of misconduct, for punishments 
 were not inflicted in the Intermediate Prisons. It 
 was the duty of another man to take the official 
 letter-bag to the Castle, and it was quite a common 
 thing to see several of these intermediate men 
 walking through the city with one officer in charge 
 on their way to execute repairs in other prisons,
 
 318 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 each with his workman's bag slung over his 
 shoulder." 
 
 There were few tradesmen, however, among the 
 Irish convicts ; most of them were tillers of the soil, 
 and to the soil they clung. [Parenthetically, I may 
 say again what I said in " Kilmainham Memories " 
 sixteen years ago, and what, as an Irishman, it is 
 always pleasing to me to repeat : There is hardly any 
 crime in Ireland. The great guilds of crime in this 
 country, represented at such establishments as Port- 
 land and Dartmoor, in Ireland are utterly unknown. 
 So far as habitual crime is concerned, no other country 
 in the world is half so decent as Ireland. Ireland's 
 crimes have always, or nearly always, been peculiar 
 to herself, arising out of agrarian evils or deep-seated 
 political discontent.] It was for the tillers of the soil 
 that the farm was laid out at Lusk. In two large 
 iron huts, erected at a cost of 350 each, the prisoners 
 
 " became, and were treated as ordinary workmen ; 
 drained, ploughed, and sowed during the day ; 
 read, smoked, attended classes, and took part in 
 the organised discussions of an evening. The farm 
 had no walls, there was no military or con- 
 stabulary guard ; the few officers required were, 
 like the convicts, in ordinary working clothes ; 
 on Sundays the entire party attended the village 
 churches with the ordinary congregation. Moral 
 control had entirely taken the place of walls, locks, 
 bolts, and bars. Each man received 2s. 6d. per 
 week, he was encouraged to put it away, but was 
 allowed to spend it if he so desired. They were 
 trained, and well trained, in that particular form 
 of work they desired to ' take up ' when their 
 sentences expired. They had learned to practise
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 319 
 
 self-denial, to resist temptations similar to those 
 they would daily meet with in the world." 
 
 Thus uniquely has Ireland written herself into the 
 history of penal reform. Within the limits of the 
 United Kingdom, in respect of the treatment of adult 
 criminals, I recall no other instance of true and 
 thorough-going individualisation. The word itself is 
 found (it may be for the first time) in one of the 
 reports of Mr. Organ, " at once the lecturer, teacher, 
 and friend of every convict " in the Irish Inter- 
 mediate Prisons, to whose " marvellous energy and 
 personal zeal " the writer of this intensely interesting 
 article pays a high tribute. " Individualisation," 
 said Mr. Organ, "has always appeared to me the 
 greatest aid to success in the reformation of a 
 criminal. Its importance cannot be overrated; to deal 
 with them in the mass would be a grievous error." 
 
 This Irish scheme has been acknowledged and 
 eulogised abroad. Lombroso (writing as if it were 
 still in progress) mentions it as having " won so much 
 applause " presumably among foreign penologists 
 and adds that while we are reduced to the " mourn- 
 ful expedient of a prison " this is the way improve- 
 ment lies. 
 
 " When the officials felt that still greater liberty 
 was not likely to be abused, the man was sent out 
 into the world with a ticket-of-leave, which could 
 at any time be revoked if his conduct was not 
 completely satisfactory. 
 
 " In two years 547 male convicts were released 
 on these terms, and only twenty-two had to be 
 recalled ; a really remarkable result when it is 
 remembered that, only four years before, the 
 Government of West Australia had refused to
 
 320 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 receive any more Irish convicts, on account of their 
 misconduct and unfitness for the social life of the 
 colony. 
 
 "In order to test the real value of these returns, 
 a searching individual examination into each case 
 discharged during a subsequent year was ordered. 
 It was found that during the year 159 had received 
 a licence ; 34 had, by the help of their savings, 
 paid their way to some colony ; 15 had gone to 
 England or Scotland ; 1 had died ; and 106 were 
 found, on the admission of the police, to be really 
 doing well in Irish employment of some kind ; only 
 3 had their licences revoked." 
 
 This grand experiment had no bankrupt termina- 
 tion. So decisive a break with tradition would not 
 easily conciliate officialdom, but we read of the 
 " enthusiastic co-operation of all ranks engaged," 
 including the convicts who were or had been wards 
 of Sir Walter Crofton and Mr. Organ. And the 
 scheme went on. 
 
 " No one pretended that it could long flourish 
 under ordinary unsympathetic routine administra- 
 tion ; nevertheless, for a quarter of a century 
 after all concerned in its foundation had departed 
 from official life, Lusk remained, a monument of 
 what had been, eventually closing its career be- 
 cause Ireland could find only twenty-five convicts 
 eligible for its special treatment, as against over 
 300 when first Intermediate Prisons were opened." 1 
 
 1 In Ireland at the present day there might be even fewer 
 prisoners for another venture in individualisation. Of the two 
 large Dublin gaols, Mountjoy and Kilmainham, the second, which 
 witnessed the closing scenes of the Phoenix Park tragedy, has 
 recently been closed. There were not in Dublin and the adjacent 
 counties criminals enough to fill it. Could we borrow Kilmainham 
 for a new Crofton-Organ experiment ?
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 321 
 
 In the United States, in South America, in the 
 little kingdom of Denmark, in a northern region of 
 Germany, and in a semi-historical experiment in 
 Ireland the best is displayed that prison, as prison, 
 has to offer us. Not only, in their several ways, are 
 these examples the best ; they submit themselves as 
 models for our own imitation. Combine them and 
 select from them, and we shall understand something 
 of the meaning and the possibilities of the individual 
 treatment of criminals in captivity. 
 
 7. Mr. Carpenter has recommended the immediate 
 conversion of all our prisons into Industrial Asylums. 
 This seems infeasible ; perhaps it is scarcely neces- 
 sary ; but industrialism should unquestionably take 
 the place of militarism in our prisons, and wherever 
 trades are taught in them teaching and plant alike 
 should be of the best. The fault of most prison work 
 (and instruction) is amateurism. 
 
 But work, intelligently and thoroughly organised, 
 is among the great remedies. Work, not punishment, 
 is the thing. 
 
 " Work ought to be the first care and the highest 
 aim of every penal institution, in order to awaken 
 the energy of the prisoner and give him the habit 
 of productive labour, necessary after his liberation. 
 ... In every way the work ought to be propor- 
 tioned to the forces and instincts of the convict, 
 who, if he has accomplished as much as he is 
 capable of, although that may be little, ought to 
 receive a proportionate reward, if not in money, at 
 least in the shortening of his sentence." 1 
 
 Crofton was of the opinion that the prisoner's work 
 should be regarded by him less as a task than as a 
 
 1 Lombroso.
 
 322 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 privilege ; even that it should be asked for by the 
 prisoner (after a period of cellular detention in a state 
 of boredom) rather than imposed by the director. 
 This ingenious notion has Lombroso's countenance. 
 
 The Labour Colony, as it has been exemplified in 
 Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, is capable of 
 large developments. Where these colonies are rightly 
 managed the vagrant disappears. Holland, the 
 pioneer country, " has demonstrated that by this 
 system the streets and highways can be rid of tramps, 
 and that the cost of doing this through the agency 
 of labour colonies is relatively small." 1 Indeed, these 
 organisations can be made to pay their way. 
 
 A significant object-lesson is the immense colony 
 of Merxplas, in Belgium. In this institution, which 
 is industrial rather than agricultural, from five to six 
 thousand vagabonds are engaged in almost every 
 variety of trade. " It was among the vagabonds," 
 says Mr. Kelly, " that were found the architects who 
 drew up plans for the buildings, the draughtsmen who 
 furnished the designs for their carpets, and the 
 sculptors who modelled the statues that decorate 
 their chapel." There seems to be more of discipline 
 than of reformation at Merxplas, more of compulsion 
 than of co-operation ; but in a colony of such vast 
 proportions these defects are inherent. None the less, 
 Merxplas is important as an instance of the results 
 that may be obtained from the labour of the hetero- 
 geneous vagrant class. Moreover, the tramp has 
 vanished, it is said, from Belgium. 
 
 The Swiss have created two kinds of labour colonies 
 forced-labour colonies for criminal vagrants, and 
 free-labour colonies, " the doors of which are open to 
 
 1 Edmond Kelly : " The Elimination of the Tramp." London, 
 1908.
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 323 
 
 all indigent persons who are not culpable." To one 
 or other of these a magistrate can forthwith assign 
 all vagrom persons who come before him, " leaving 
 the ultimate disposition of the vagrant to depend 
 upon his conduct in the labour colony itself." The 
 colony of Witzwyl, directed by a skilled farmer, Mr. 
 Otto Kellerhals, not only pays its expenses, " but, 
 by a very simple method, reforms all those capable 
 of reformation." It is essentially agricultural. The 
 workshops " are purely secondary, the object of them 
 being to utilise the services of those who are specially 
 fitted for industrial work, those who are unfitted for 
 agricultural work, and even the agricultural labourers 
 during that part of the day and the season in which it 
 is impossible to work in the fields." Joined to Witzwyl, 
 a forced-labour colony, is the free-labour colony of 
 Tannenhof (both colonies controlled by Mr. Keller- 
 hals) ; and inmates of the first, their term expired, 
 are offered the choice of passing on to the second, or 
 of establishing themselves in one of the many small 
 colonies that have sprung up in the neighbourhood. 
 In these sub-colonies the inmates earn enough to put 
 by a portion of their wages, and are gradually pre- 
 pared to re-enter the open labour market. 
 
 " There is," says Mr. Kelly, " one feature of 
 Tannenhof which ought not to be lost sight of : 
 practically all the inmates do some work ; the old 
 men drive carts, care for cattle, do light gardening, 
 pick vegetables ; and it is the experience of the 
 director that they are much happier when so en- 
 gaged than when allowed to remain idle." 1 
 
 1 See also an excellent article on the same subject (" A Self- 
 Supporting Penal Colony ") in the Nineteenth Century, by Miss Edith 
 Sellers ; and, of course, the Report of the Departmental Committee 
 on Vagrancy.
 
 324 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Were it asked where we should find sites for labour 
 colonies at home, Professor James Long would 
 doubtless furnish the reply. In a communication 
 to the Chronicle, " Unemployed Land for Unem- 
 ployed," 1 he points to the " untouched and untilled 
 millions of acres of land " in Great Britain, " so large 
 a proportion of which is able to respond to the spade 
 and the plough." If it be objected that much of 
 this is stuff of the barrenest, the answer is, So much 
 the better ! This is the very soil for cultivation in 
 labour colonies. To set the free workman on the 
 reclamation of bad land is perhaps indifferent wise. 
 But in labour colonies, where labour commands but 
 a poor return, and where it is cardinal in our scheme 
 to seek the reformation of the worker by giving him 
 the habit of industry, this would be a policy of the 
 soundest. 
 
 8. There is talk once again of transportation. 
 France has long laid her penal station in the tropics. 
 We ourselves sent our last batch of convicts to 
 Australia in 1867. Mr. Jabez Balfour in the closing 
 chapter of " My Prison Life " advocates the deporta- 
 tion of incorrigibles, and selects St. Helena or " the 
 more salubrious tablelands and highlands of Africa." 
 Lombroso condemns severely (and not causelessly) 
 a great part of the French system in New Caledonia, 
 but concludes that " occasional criminals and criminal 
 by passion " may be transported. It is generally 
 agreed by penologists who favour any plan of 
 transportation that it should be for the term of life, 
 that the sentence of banishment should be irrevocable. 
 
 The whole question is one of great practical diffi- 
 culty therefore also, of course, one of high prob- 
 
 1 October 6th, 1908.
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 325 
 
 lematic interest. Given a small number of criminals 
 with whom every other device had failed, it would 
 be possible (and perhaps not unpermissible) to 
 despatch them to some wild and unhealthy region 
 where all the chances of life would be against them. 
 It would be equally possible (and perhaps equally 
 permissible) to relegate them to some wild and 
 healthy region where the primitive, elemental quali- 
 ties surviving in them would have a sporting chance 
 of battling it out with nature. Lombroso's atavistic 
 criminal might thus once again be pitted naked 
 against a naked world. 
 
 Turning the case upon ourselves, deductions from 
 the history of Botany Bay are no longer, I think, of 
 much importance. The stars in their courses are nearer 
 to us now than was the Australia to which, in 1788, 
 Captain Phillip carried his first cargo of male and 
 female convicts. Nothing that happened in Botany 
 Bay (or Port Jackson) could happen again ; but, 
 when we have written the worst about our earliest 
 failure in transportation, we are still to remember 
 that the extraordinary mixture of talent, intellectual 
 and physical, which, during many decades, travelled 
 under hatches to Australia, was of incalculable service 
 to the colony. 
 
 Saleilles, remarking that transportation " is doubt- 
 less not a punishment in the classic sense of the word," 
 regards it as " still a deterrent measure that should 
 be administered in progressive stages. It is a punish- 
 ment for incorrigibility, or, if it be preferred, of a 
 series of infractions that prove incorrigibility. . . . 
 It is clearly and primarily a preventive measure." 
 
 So far as our own country is concerned, the case for 
 transportation is nowadays a slight one. If we 
 restrict it to the incorrigibles, their numbers are few.
 
 326 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Much as we have to consider, we are not too seriously 
 concerned about arguments for or against transporta- 
 tion. 
 
 9. By sifting and reducing the present population 
 of prison, by establishing prisons of special kinds, 
 by setting up labour colonies, and possibly in time 
 by introducing some new mode of transportation, we 
 should gradually make easier the vexed problem of the 
 classification of prisoners. In 1879 a new system was 
 begun in convict prisons under which all first offenders 
 were placed in a class apart, and in 1897 this " Star " 
 class was introduced in the local prisons. An excellent 
 attempt to stop what has been called " the manufac- 
 ture of criminals by the State," it seems not altogether 
 to have succeeded. It receives praise from Lord 
 William Nevill, and some strictures from Mr. Jabez 
 Balfour. Mr. Balfour, who has " nothing but praise 
 and approval for this idea," complains that "it is not 
 properly carried out, because it is attempted under 
 impossible conditions. I saw the present system in 
 practice at Wormwood Scrubs, at Portland, and 
 at Parkhurst, and in all those places, although I do 
 not suggest that governors and officers did not do 
 their best, yet in all cases it was a sorry failure, little 
 better, in fact, than a make-believe. I go further, 
 and confidently affirm that it will continue to be a 
 failure so long as ' stars ' and habitual criminals 
 are herded together in one and the same prison." 
 
 Dr. Devon's remarks are as pointed on this as on 
 every subject that he touches : 
 
 " Men can only be placed in classes because of 
 certain qualities they have in common. Every 
 classification must neglect individual differences ;
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 327 
 
 and as it is these that mark men off from one 
 another, any system or method of dealing with 
 men will fail in so far as they are left out of ac- 
 count." 
 
 No plan of classification as yet has justified itself, 
 but none has had as yet a respectable working chance, 
 In the prisons of the future, as Mr. Holmes says, 
 " classification will still have to play an important 
 part ; but classification will be no longer governed 
 by the number of convictions a youth or adult has 
 received, but by the real .character, temperament, 
 and ability of the prisoner." 
 
 In other words, the " individual differences " must 
 as far as possible be taken into account. Individual- 
 isation is the only method. 
 
 10. The case of the hardy and promising " tough," 
 not as yet a man, is receiving, I think, efficient care 
 at Borstal. But Borstal is still a prison, and by and 
 by we shall devise, I trust, better things than prison 
 for the young. The George Junior Republic at 
 Freeville, near Ithaca (U.S.A.), is a brilliant and 
 original example. This is a complete Republic in 
 miniature. The boys and girls, divided into so many 
 families, are the citizens. About eighty boys and 
 about seventy girls possess a territory of 300 acres, 
 twenty-four buildings, a chapel, a prison, a school, 
 and a court of justice. The " families," ten or a dozen 
 members to each, are presided over by two grown-up 
 folk acting as parents. 
 
 " The greater part of the population is engaged 
 in agriculture, in cultivating the land belonging to 
 the Republic, but a certain proportion adopt the 
 arts and crafts necessary to every community :
 
 328 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 joinery, bookbinding, printing, shoemaking, or 
 shopkeeping. The colony coins its own money, 
 and possesses a bank run by the boys themselves, 
 where the colonists can deposit their savings. All 
 labour and produce are paid for separately." 1 
 
 Boys and girls sit together in the Parliament, which 
 makes laws, decrees holidays, organises games and 
 entertainments, and arranges the public expenditure. 
 Children are received in the colony over twelve years 
 of age, and leave at about fifteen. 
 
 11. Tutelage and Probation : these, no doubt, are 
 to be among the watchwords of the future. Both 
 are closely associated with methods of individual 
 treatment. " A public tutelage," says De Quiros, 
 " composed of competent men for the correction 
 of the guilty is the only idea of punishment or of 
 positive reprisals that the ethical principle can admit. 
 It is only when the penitentiary system shall be based 
 on this principle that it will become more equitable, 
 humane, and efficacious than it is at present." In 
 the closing paragraph of " Modern Theories of 
 Criminality " he predicts that " all forms [of punish- 
 ment] that cause human dignity to suffer or submit it 
 to shame and insult will be abolished. These having 
 been eliminated, penal tutelage, through indefinite, 
 indeterminate, or, at any rate, conditional sentence, 
 will take charge of delinquents, and give to each 
 what he needs by means of the consequent indi- 
 vidualisation." 
 
 Dr. Devon, stressing the point that prison ought 
 merely to be a place of detention " in which offenders 
 are placed till some proper provision is made for their 
 
 1 Ferrero.
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 329 
 
 supervision and means of livelihood in the com- 
 munity," does not fail to draw the logical conclusion 
 that, if this were recognised, " existing institutions 
 would be transformed." 
 
 " Those who refuse by their actions to obey the 
 law of the community, and to live therein without 
 danger to their neighbours, would as at present 
 be put in prison ; but they would not be let out 
 except on promise to remain on probation under 
 the supervision of some person or persons until 
 they had satisfied, not an institution official, but 
 the public opinion of the district in which they 
 were placed, that the restrictions put on their 
 liberty could safely be withdrawn." 
 
 He would have all offenders on release, young and 
 old, boarded out under proper care and guardianship 
 in the community. Where are the guardians to be 
 found ? asks Dr. Devon. " They are to be found in 
 all parts of the country when search is made for 
 them " ; and he commends the decent family as 
 model. As models of the larger sort nothing, one 
 may conjecture, will easily surpass the Hope Homes 
 of Mrs. Ballington Booth ; though hi these, I fancy 
 (save when the " Little Mother " herself is present), 
 the influence of woman is wanting ; and this, for the 
 true and final healing of the criminal kind, I take to 
 be absolutely indispensable. 
 
 Elsewhere in the United States systems of probation 
 have been somewhat highly developed. Although this 
 principle as an alternative of imprisonment is recog- 
 nised in English law, its application here is less ex- 
 tensive, less formal, less in the nature of a system 
 than in America. An English judge or magistrate 
 has power to release certain offenders " under recog-
 
 330 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 nisances upon probation of good conduct " ; and a 
 person so released may be and often is taken in 
 hand to excellent purpose by a missionary attending 
 the court. But in America this practice is much 
 more completely systematised, and its results are 
 lauded. It is, or used to be, known as the Massa- 
 chusetts System, but is not confined to that State. 
 " Probation officers " are appointed whose duty it 
 is to " inquire into the character and antecedents 
 of prisoners before trial, and to report to the judge, 
 and after trial to take charge of persons whom the 
 judge shall place on probation and commit to their 
 care." A few years ago the Hon. William E. 
 Russell, then Governor of Massachusetts, in his 
 inaugural address, recommended the adoption of the 
 probation system in all courts of law throughout the 
 Commonwealth. The recommendation was approved 
 by the Legislature, and in May, 1891, an Act was 
 passed appointing probation officers throughout the 
 State. 
 
 The system may be briefly examined as it obtains 
 in Boston. The Central Court of that city has six 
 assistants (one a woman) working under a chief 
 probation officer. The town is divided into districts, 
 and a district is assigned to each assistant, who visits 
 weekly every person in his or her charge, and reports 
 once a month to the chief officer. This officer is in 
 attendance at the city prison daily at 7 a.m., when he 
 sees every prisoner arrested within the twenty-four 
 hours, and submits all in turn to a kind of informal 
 examination. Records of drunkenness are carefully 
 sifted, and facts gathered at the prisoners' homes 
 are laid before the judge when the case is called. 
 A prisoner who, though addicted to drink, keeps in 
 work and maintains his family, is generally placed on
 
 THE NEW HORIZONS 331 
 
 probation ; but if, after this, he persists in drinking, 
 he is rearrested, surrendered to the court, and 
 sentenced. " If the person arrested is found to abuse 
 or neglect his family, although his first arrest, he is 
 sentenced. When the person arrested lives in another 
 town, and his statements to the court are not alto- 
 gether accepted, the case is continued long enough to 
 write to the probation officer of the town for informa- 
 tion. The probation officer, through daily inter- 
 course with the prisoners, becomes familiar with the 
 faces, and few old offenders pass through the court 
 without being recognised, although giving different 
 names and addresses." During probation for 
 drunkenness the probationer must abstain from all 
 intoxicating drink ; in a case of embezzlement or 
 larceny, restitution, if possible, must be made ; in 
 cases of non-support, the wife must accompany the 
 husband to report to the probation officer. The 
 probationary term is generally fixed at two months, 
 and the probationer must report twice. Probation 
 from one of the Superior Courts extends to twelve 
 months, and involves a report every month. De- 
 faulters and cases requiring to be surrendered are 
 said to be a very small percentage. The probation 
 officer must make a monthly report to the Prison 
 Commissioners, setting forth the numbers and par- 
 ticulars of the probation cases, and the cost saved 
 to the country for the maintenance in prison of so 
 many persons of both sexes. Two years after the 
 establishment of the system it was the subject 
 of an inquiry by a Public Commission, whose report 
 was that " it has worked with admirable results, and, 
 as a means of dealing with certain classes of offenders, 
 has succeeded beyond a question." The opinion of 
 Chief Justice Parmenter, presiding judge of the
 
 332 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 Boston Courts, is not less favourable. In many 
 instances, he says, the families of probationers ask 
 for an extension of the term of probation, " as the 
 restraint of probation has the desired effect." 
 
 But, with Dr. Devon, I look to the general probation 
 of offenders in our own country on some basis in- 
 finitely broader than this. 
 
 12. Visions of prison as a mere "place of deten- 
 tion " are not satisfying. They carry us but a little 
 way. Imprisonment, of this kind or that, will be the 
 penalty for many years to come. Our business is the 
 improvement of it. Improvement lies in two direc- 
 tions : special prisons, and in these a special treat- 
 ment.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 SUMMARY 
 
 IT has been for years a leading position of crimino- 
 logists that crime is in great measure curable. Modern 
 science perceives that crime has natural causes ; 
 perceives also " that penal or remedial treatment 
 cannot possibly be indiscriminate and machine-like, 
 but must be adapted to the causes, and to the man 
 as affected by those causes." The Individualisation 
 of treatment " for that man, and for the cause of 
 that man's crime " is the doctrine for to-day, and 
 may be the dogma of to-morrow. 
 
 In our system at the present day (a system sus- 
 ceptible of more or less complete change under new 
 economic conditions), the central thing is Prison. 
 Imprisonment as a penalty has failed. Proof abounds 
 that it has neither reformed nor deterred the criminal. 
 It could not possibly do so : deterrent punishment 
 and a serious effort to reform the criminal are quite 
 incompatible aims. 
 
 But we shall have to put up with prison and 
 imprisonment for a long time to come. It is not 
 possible in one generation, as De Fleury has observed, 
 to modify in any very considerable degree our antique 
 methods of repressing crime. To do the best we 
 can with prison is our immediate duty. The state 
 of prisons in this country is not favourable to experi- 
 ments in individualisation, but the existing situation 
 
 333
 
 334 WARDS OF THE STATE 
 
 can be sensibly and easily ameliorated. Prisons 
 are crowded with the unfit. Thousands of persons 
 are at this moment undergoing imprisonment who 
 might be released, or paroled, or treated under 
 supervision and probation, or cared for in hospital- 
 prisons or lunatic asylums ; a certain number might 
 even be expatriated. It is a perfectly practicable 
 measure to reduce the prison population by one-half. 
 This done, a fresh campaign could forthwith be 
 entered on. 
 
 If all forms of imprisonment are relatively bad, 
 not all are equally bad. Some indeed are relatively 
 very good. Wherever, in prison, punishment is 
 intelligently graded, the result achieved is worth 
 the trouble, which always is and must be considerable. 
 Wherever the effort is seriously and rationally made 
 to fortify the prisoner's will and character, develop 
 his sense of responsibility, encourage his manhood, 
 and accustom him by slow and prudent stages to 
 liberty and the open air of social life, the conditions 
 of his existence begin at once to return to normality, 
 the shades of the prison-house begin to be dispelled. 
 In countries widely separated there are at this day 
 a few conspicuous and stimulating instances of 
 prisons scientifically and humanely ordered. In 
 Ireland fifty years ago was witnessed a noble effort to 
 solve the world-problem of imprisonment. These 
 things are for guidance to-day. 
 
 " Nature does not proceed by leaps, and the 
 Modern School aims at effecting a revolution, not 
 a revolt, in Penal Jurisprudence. It proposes 
 therefore the gradual transformation of the present 
 system, which is to be rendered as little injurious 
 and as beneficial as possible. . . . The Modern
 
 SUMMARY 335 
 
 School proposes the cure of criminals by preventive 
 and legislative measures." l 
 
 The collective help of society is indispensable. 
 
 " It is a state of mind, not laws, that the world 
 demands," says Barres, " a mental, not a material 
 reformation." This may come, if we wait for it. 
 
 " Time and the fruitful hour are more than we." 
 1 Ferrero. 
 
 THE END
 
 INDEX 
 
 Act of 1877, 79 
 
 America, 8-19, 23, 94-96, 98, 99, 
 
 106-117, 165, 217, 218, 230, 
 
 241-246, 282, 311, 321, 327-332 
 American Institute of Criminal 
 
 Law and Criminology, 2, 3, 261 
 American Prisons, 13-19, 106, 107, 
 
 111, 217, 218, 241-246 
 American systems, 16-19, 23 
 Asquith, Mr., 20, 28, 80, 196, 197, 
 
 201 
 Asquith Committee, The, 28, 31, 
 
 41, 58, 60, 80, 81, 132, 190, 316 
 Australia, 259, 324, 325 
 "Autobiography of a Working 
 
 Man," 186, 187 
 Aylesbury Convict Prison, 230, 
 
 236 
 
 B 
 
 Balfour, Jabez, 33, 34, 42, 48, 55, 
 
 58, 59, 62, 63, 87, 88, 90, 126, 
 
 210, 211, 247, 262, 266, 267, 305, 
 
 306, 324, 326 
 
 Belgium, 8, 94, 175, 177, 322 
 Bertillon, Alphonse, 133-137, 141 
 Bertillon system, The, 133-137, 
 
 141-144 
 
 Birmingham, 90, 104, 198 
 Birmingham Children's Court, 104 
 Booth, Mrs. Maud Ballington, 16, 
 
 98, 106-118, 292, 329 
 Borstal Prison, 83, 90-92, 99-101, 
 
 327 
 Borstal system, The, 90, 99-101, 
 
 103, 104 
 
 Boston, 243, 330-332 
 Botany Bay, 4, 103, 187, 259, 325 
 Brackenbury, Miss Georgina, 257, 
 
 258 
 Brampton, Lord, 185, 189, 205- 
 
 207, 216 
 
 British Quarterly Review, 205 
 Brussels, 8, 94 
 Buda-Pesth, 94, 96 
 Buenos Ayres, 311 
 
 C 
 
 Cardiff, 184, 190-192, 270 
 Cardiff Flogging Assize, 184, 185, 
 
 191 
 Carpenter, Mr. Edward, 295, 299, 
 
 301, 321 
 Chesser, Dr. Elizabeth Sloan, 239- 
 
 241 
 Children's Courts, 104 (see also 
 
 Juvenile Court of Denver) 
 China, 4, 94 
 
 Churchill, Winston, 20-22, 40 
 Coleridge, Lord, 28 
 Collinson, Joseph, 192, 198 
 Colorado State Prison, 17 
 "Convict Life," 60 
 Cooley, Dr. Harris, 16, 19, 313 
 Crackanthorpe, Montague, 208- 
 
 211, 216, 217 
 " Crime and Criminals," 15, 77, 
 
 241, 307-310 
 
 " Crime : its Causes and Reme- 
 dies," 3, 232, 314 
 "Criminal and the Community," 
 
 The, 225, 259-261 
 " Criminal Psychology," 3, 229 
 Criminal Registers, 142, 145 
 Crofton, Captain Sir Walter, 315, 
 
 316, 320, 321 
 Czolgosz, 159, 160, 162 
 
 D 
 
 Daily Chronicle, The, 218, 262- 
 
 264, 324 
 
 Daily News, The, 199, 235 
 Dartmoor Prison, 47, 55, 83, 104, 
 
 129, 214, 293, 318 
 
 z 
 
 337
 
 338 
 
 INDEX 
 
 " Dartmoor Prisons," 71 
 
 Davitt, Michael, 65, 67, 72, 84, 
 
 190, 247, 261-264 
 Day, Mr. Justice, 192, 193 
 Denmark, 313-315, 321 
 Departmental Committee, 137, 140, 
 
 142 
 Departmental Committee of 1894 
 
 (see Asquith Committee) 
 Departmental Committee on Prison 
 
 Dietaries, 58, 59, 63 
 "De Profundis," 24, 29, 32, 262, 
 
 289 
 
 Detention of Habitual Crimi- 
 nals Act, 220, 221, 223, 225- 
 
 228 
 Devon, Dr. James, 28, 29, 225, 
 
 227, 228, 259-261, 326-329, 332 
 Dublin, 203, 316, 317, 320 
 Du Cane, Sir Edmund, 28, 43, 46, 
 
 202 
 Dunlop, Miss Wallace, 252 
 
 E 
 Elmira Reformatory, 311, 312 
 
 F 
 
 Fabian Tracts, The, 231, 246, 247, 
 
 254, 255, 299, 300 
 Ferrero, Signora Gina Lombroso, 
 
 230, 232, 243, 298, 299, 311, 312, 
 
 328 335 
 "Finger Print- System," The, 137- 
 
 139, 140-144 
 
 Fleury, Dr. Maurice de, 215, 333 
 Flogging Bills, 196, 201-203 
 France, 5, 6, 94, 116, 175, 230, 233, 
 
 298, 324 
 
 G 
 
 Galton, Francis, 137-139, 141-143 
 Gal ton's system (see the "Finger 
 
 Print System " ) 
 
 Garrotting, 184, 191-198, 200, 201 
 Garotting Act, The, 197 
 George Junior Republic, The, 327, 
 
 328 
 
 Germany, 6, 116, 165, 175-177, 321 
 Gladstone, Herbert, 28, 80 
 Gordon, Miss Helen, 248, 250-253, 
 
 256 
 Griffiths, Major Arthur, 190, 197, 
 
 232-234 
 
 Gross, Dr. Hans, 3, 149, 155, 162, 
 
 229 
 Guardian, The, 239-241 
 
 Hancock, Irving, 180-183 
 
 Harris, Captain, 66, 71 
 
 Hawkins, Mr. Justice (see Lord 
 
 Brampton) 
 
 Henry, E. R., 143, 144 
 Henry, Sir Edward (see Henry, 
 
 E. R.) 
 Herschell, Sir William Farrer, 137, 
 
 200 
 Hibbert Journal, 33, 281, 283, 284, 
 
 286 
 "Holiday in Gaol, A," 61, 62, 204, 
 
 266-269 
 
 Holland, 94, 322 
 Holloway Prison, 217, 246, 248, 
 
 249, 252, 257, 278 
 Holmes, Thomas, 22, 212, 213, 
 
 298, 306, 327 
 Home Secretary, The (see also Mr. 
 
 Winston Churchill, Mr. Asquith, 
 
 and Sir Matthew Ridley), 20, 38, 
 
 58, 79, 193, 194, 196, 197, 261, 
 
 264, 266, 267, 280 
 Hooper, Governor Benjamin, 217, 
 
 218 
 
 Hope Halls, The, 117, 329 
 House of Commons, 20, 40, 198, 
 
 200, 203 
 Howard Association, The, 22, 
 
 212 
 
 Hummel, "Abe," 9-11 
 Hungary, 96, 97 
 
 Ichigaya Prison, 239-241 
 
 "In an Unknown Prison Land," 
 
 6,7 
 
 India, 143-145 
 Ireland, 315-321 
 Irish Intermediate Prisons, 315-320 
 
 Japan, 5, 36, 94, 183, 239-241 
 Jiu-Jitsu, 180-183 
 "Jottings from Jail," 71, 259 
 Juvenile Court of Denver, 98, !
 
 INDEX 
 
 339 
 
 K 
 
 Kellerhals, Mr. Otto, 323 
 
 " Kids' Jedge," The (see Judge Ben 
 
 B. Lindsey) 
 Kropotkin, Prince, 5, 6, 248, 249 
 
 Labour Colonies, 322-324, 326 
 " L'Ame Criminelle," 215 
 Lawrence, Mr. Justice, 184, 191, 
 
 192 
 
 Law Times, 40, 193, 194, 203, 285 
 Leavitt, Mr., 14, 15, 17 
 Lindsey, Judge Ben B., 98, 99, 104 
 Littler, Sir Ralph, 210 
 Liverpool, 131, 192 
 Lombroso, Cesare, 3, 41, 94, 229- 
 
 232, 261, 284, 300, 313-315, 319, 
 
 321, 322, 324, 325 
 London Sessions, The, 271-279 
 Lou vain, Prison of, 8, 19 
 Lush, Mr. Justice, 193, 194 
 Lushington, Sir Godfrey, 22, 31 
 Lusk, 316, 318-320 
 Lytton, Lady Constance, 254 
 
 if 
 
 Manchester, 83, 90, 193, 194, 250 
 Manchester Dispatch, The, 199 
 Martyn, Frederick, 61, 62, 204, 266- 
 
 269, 280 
 Massachusetts system, The, 330- 
 
 332 
 
 Mayo, Mrs. Fyvie, 256 
 Merxplas, 322 
 " Modern Criminal Science Series," 
 
 1-3 
 " Modern Theories of Criminality," 
 
 3, 301, 328 
 Montgomery, H. J. B., 32, 40, 57, 
 
 58, 88, 90, 264, 265, 267, 281 
 Morning Leader, The, 1 98 
 Morrison, The Rev. Dr. Douglas, 
 
 26, 30, 295 
 Miiusterberg, Professor Hugo, 167- 
 
 173 
 Murison, Professor A. F., 260, 
 
 261 
 " My Prison Life," 33, 58, 87, 247, 
 
 267, 324 
 
 N 
 
 Nation, The, 200, 225, 256 
 Nevill, Lord William, 29, 58, 59, 
 
 84, 211, 212, 264-266, 305, 326 
 New Caledonia, 6-8, 324 
 New Review, The, 216 
 New South Wales, 4, 7, 259, 284 
 New York, 10, 11, 13, 107, 116, 
 
 311 
 Nineteenth Century, The, 32, 57, 
 
 209, 211, 323 
 
 Oregon Prison, 17, 18 
 Organ, Mr., 319, 320 
 
 Pankhurst, Miss E. Sylvia, 247, 
 
 252, 254 
 
 Paris, 3, 8, 94, 176, 177 
 Parkhurst Prison, 33, 58, 84, 88, 
 
 90, 126, 211, 221, 227, 264, 266, 
 
 305, 306, 326 
 Paterson, Arthur, 75 
 Patmore, Dr. Tennyson, 288, 290 
 "Penal Servitude," 29, 58-60, 84, 
 
 211 
 Penitenciario Na?ional, The, 311- 
 
 313 
 
 Phillimore, Mr. Justice, 212 
 Pickersgill, M.P., Mr. E. H., 193, 
 
 194 
 Portland Prison, 10, 34, 43, 47-49, 
 
 55, 57, 60, 61, 65, 83, 190, 221, 
 
 223, 227, 262, 293, 313, 318, 326 
 Portsmouth Convict Prison, 202 
 Prevention of Crimes Act, 220- 
 
 228 
 
 Prime Minister (see Mr. Asqnith) 
 Prison Commissioners, 20, 28, 79, 
 
 82, 83, 90, 103, 202, 218, 226, 
 
 227, 261, 315, 331 
 Prison Committees, 226 
 Prison Congresses, 94-97 
 "Prisoner: a Sketch, The," 248, 
 
 250-253 
 Prison Reform League of Los 
 
 Angeles, 15, 241 
 Probation Act, 310, 330-332 
 Public Works Prison, A, 47, 43
 
 340 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Quekett, John, 147, 148 
 
 Quinton, Dr. R. F., 77, 83, 85, 86, 
 
 202, 307-310 
 Quiros, C. Bernaldo de, 3, 301, 
 
 328 
 
 R 
 
 Rakospalota, 97 
 
 "Recollections of Fifty Years," 
 
 256 
 Reports of Prison Commissioners, 
 
 83, 90, 230 
 
 Richardson, Major E. H., 174-179 
 Ridley, Sir Matthew White, 20, 
 
 58, 197 
 
 Royal Commission, The, 85, 316 
 Russell, the Hon. William E., 330 
 Russia, 5-7, 248, 249, 251 
 
 8 
 
 Saleilles, Raymond, 3, 297, 300, 
 
 303, 304, 325 
 Salem Prison, 17, 18 
 Salvation Army, The, 198, 272, 279 
 Salvation Army in America, 110, 
 
 111 
 San Quentin Prison, 15, 110, 111, 
 
 241-243 
 
 Saturday Review, 6 
 Saxony, 313, 315 
 Scotland, 28, 203, 234, 320 
 Scotland Yard, 139, 144 
 "Scuttling Epidemic," The, 193 
 Secretary of State (see Home Secre- 
 tary) 
 
 Sharp, Miss Evelyn, 256 
 Sing Sing Prison, 13, 107, 111 
 Smithfield, Dublin, 316-318 
 Somerville, A., 186, 187 
 South Framingham Reformatory 
 
 Prison for Women, 243-246 
 Spencer, Herbert, 204, 205, 215 
 Standard, The, 228, 257, 258 
 Statham, Reginald, 36, 38-40 
 Stead, Mr., 217 
 Stephen, Mr. Justice, 207, 208 
 Strangeways Prison, Manchester, 
 250, 251 
 
 "Suffragette," The, 247, 248, 254 
 Suffragette Hunger Strike, 251- 
 
 254 
 Suffragettes, 246-258 
 
 Taunenhof, 323 
 
 " Terror in Russia, The," 5, 248 
 
 Times, The, 75, 195, 214, 215, 217, 
 
 218 
 
 Train, Arthur, 10, 11 
 Transportation, 259, 324-326 
 ' ' True Stories of Crime from the 
 
 District Attorney's Office," 10, 11 
 Tynan, Warden Thomas J., 17, 19 
 
 U 
 United States, The (see America) 
 
 Volunteer Prison League, The, 98, 
 99, 106-108, 111-115 
 
 W 
 
 Wakefield Prison, 77, 79 
 
 Warrensville, 16, 19 
 
 " Waste of Labour in our Convict 
 
 Prisons, The," 90 
 West, Governor Oswald, 17-19 
 Western, Mr., 101 
 Westminster Gazette, The, 315-319 
 Wharton, J. Lloyd, 196 
 Wilde, Oscar, 23, 25, 29, 32, 35, 
 
 37, 58, 126, 189, 262, 264, 266, 
 
 279, 289, 292 
 Witzwyl, 323 
 
 World's Work, The, 17, 18 
 Wormwood Scrubs Prison, 4, 5, 
 
 7, 13, 47, 49, 82, 103, 104, 122, 
 
 123, 127, 197, 266-268, 288, 326 
 Wright, Whittaker, 208 
 Wundt of Leipzig, 165 
 
 Yorkshire Daily Observer, 199 
 Youthful Offenders Act, 1901, 
 The, 104 
 
 WILUAM BRZNDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
 
 By the same Author 
 
 THE SILENT GATE 
 
 A Voyage into Prison 
 
 "Mr. Tighe Hopkins writes so feelingly and so knowingly of 
 prison life that we might fancy he had served a term of penal 
 servitude. Certainly we have never had it brought home to us so 
 forcibly as in some of these stories that the ways of transgressors 
 are hard when they are caught and sentenced. . . . Mr. Hopkins 
 takes a variety of types for the subjects that illustrate the system, 
 and his stories alternate between tragedy and comedy. . . . The 
 general effect is to give an excellent idea of the inner working of 
 prison routine, and the effects of punishment on different tempera- 
 ments." Times. 
 
 " His great strength lies in this that, though he has taken 
 a subject which lends itself to sensational, and even to melo- 
 dramatic treatment, he knows how to be effective without being 
 melodramatic or sensational. His book is a set of eleven short 
 stories, all dealing with episodes of prison life, and they are done 
 with a pathos that is never mawkish or conventional, and a humour 
 that is never, or hardly ever, forced. The story called ' Turkey ' 
 is delightful comedy. . . . All the stories are written with ad- 
 mirable restraint. " Literature. 
 
 " It is to Mr. Hopkins 's credit that in his hands prison life is 
 interesting in its strangeness and touching in its humanities. He 
 knows the routine, the slang, the habits, the tricks, the punish- 
 ments, the darker shades, the brighter gleams of life in Her 
 Majesty's prisons. He can gratify the curiosity of the man who 
 rides past Newgate every morning on his 'bus, or the railway 
 passenger who sees the turrets and low walls of Wormwood Scrubs 
 turning and fading in the dusk. And he can do this without 
 hardness. . . . It is unnecessary to say that this book is well 
 written. ' An Idler in Old France ' and ' Lady Bonnie's Experi- 
 ment ' had qualities of style which Mr. Hopkins was not likely to 
 lose or carelessly abandon." Academy. 
 
 " A series of sketches of prison life by one who not only knows 
 his subject, but can put his knowledge into effective literary shape. 
 Prison life is of necessity a gruesome thing but the gruesomeness is 
 here diversified with gleams of real humour and pathos." 
 
 Saturday Review.
 
 " Mr. Tighe Hopkins has seldom done anything better than 
 this volume of prison stories, 'The Silent Gate.' It abounds in 
 curious detail, it is neither too sentimental nor too cynical, is 
 redeemed by many flashes of humour and many studies of queer 
 characters. ... If ' Benjamin Cudd/ and ' Miss Pocket in B 
 Wing,' and ' Miss Cullender's Lamb ' are inventions, they are, at 
 all events, very good inventions. Miss Pocket's flirtations with an 
 invisible male prisoner, under the incredible difficulties which the 
 rules of Her Majesty's Prisons place in the way of such proceedings, 
 is a delightful idea. . . . Mr. Hopkins does not ostensibly write 
 for a purpose, yet incidentally he brings out the points which a 
 prison reformer would insist upon/' Westminster Gazette. 
 
 " Mr. Tighe Hopkins has long cultivated an elegant taste in dun- 
 geons, ancient and modern. His tales of old French dungeons are 
 piquant to the connoisseur of dark walls and rusty fetters. In 
 'The Silent Gate' he has collected stories of modern English 
 prison-life, and they reproduce the prison atmosphere with such 
 extraordinary fidelity that if we did not know Mr. Hopkins's career 
 very well, we should be inclined to ask : ' What was he in for ? 
 And how often?' These stories are all interesting, and some of 
 them are well-nigh perfect both in matter and treatment." 
 
 Illustrated London 
 
 " If the impression left on the mind by these stories is of the 
 sorrow and degradation of prison life, yet they show that through 
 this atmosphere of gloom break gleams of humour and of sublime 
 heroism. It would be difficult to go beyond the pathos of ' The 
 Release of Benjamin Cudd.' The slowly advancing madness of this 
 poor imbecile is described with the author's accustomed swiftness 
 and precision of touch, which brings out the pity of the tragedy. 
 The suddenness and inevitableness of the crisis are finely rendered. 
 The humour of ' Miss Pocket in B Wing ' is a delightful break in 
 the pervading sorrow. ... A very striking tale. ' Miss Cullender's 
 Lamb ' reveals how in the heart of a hardened woman runs a 
 redeeming streak of sublime devotion. This collection of moving 
 and graphic tales brings home to the imagination more forcibly 
 than any treatise the perplexities that attend the problem of the 
 treatment of criminals." Daily Xews. 
 
 " In the present volume ' The Release of Benjamin Cudd ' is 
 Mr. Hopkins's best study of criminal character. Benjamin is a real 
 prison type, and may be found by the dozen inside the walls of 
 Her Majesty's gaols. . . . Mr. Hopkins is at his best when 
 describing Benjamin's feelings in expectation of being called 
 before the visiting justices to be sentenced to the 'cat.' Nothing 
 could be better than the account of Benjamin's breakdown under 
 punishment, his hallucination, his delirium, his final intellectual 
 collapse. Benjamin is a fine study in criminal psychology, emi- 
 nently true to life. We should like Mr. Hopkins to give us some 
 more work of this kind, and leave ingenious escapes to lesser 
 literary lights." Daily Chronicle.
 
 " Although Mr. Hopkins writes pleasantly enough to keep the 
 reek of the midnight oil from the reader's nostrils, his knowledge 
 of his subject is always so large and full that he can only have 
 attained to it by long and patient study. In these respects his last 
 volume is like those which preceded it, so that ' The Silent Gate ' 
 may safely be commended to those who wish to get not only some 
 general impression of prison life, but also to become acquainted 
 with certain of its sordid details. . . . Mr. Hopkins writes with 
 such convincing certainty as to his facts that the reader will not 
 hesitate to accept him as an authority." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " Of prison stories there is one all too familiar type, which tells 
 of the blameless convict, the corruptible warder, and the heroic 
 escape. ' The Silent Gate ' is a refreshing change ; a collection of 
 excellently readable tales of the world inside the 'silent gate/ 
 some racy, some pathetic. Mr. Hopkins introduces us to types that 
 are new. Some of these the system ruins ; others, like the delight- 
 ful 'Turkey,' are simply sunny, innocent souls, whom no amount 
 of house-breaking could contaminate. . . . But Bone and Miss 
 Pocket are the gems of the book." St. James's Gazette. 
 
 te No writer to-day has an easier narrative style than Mr. Tighe 
 Hopkins, or a more agreeably urbane gift of humour. In a book 
 about prison life and prisoners there hardly seems to be much 
 scope for these accomplishments ; yet in ' The Silent Gate ' Mr. 
 Hopkins uses both very pleasantly. The story ' Turkey ' is a 
 perfect gem of light handling and whimsical observation." 
 
 Daily Mail. 
 
 " In eleven brief and powerful tales in his best style, Mr. Tighe 
 Hopkins takes his reader on 'a voyage into prison.' The book 
 will be read with real, if melancholy, interest. Mr. Hopkins has 
 made a careful study of many of the types of characters to be 
 found within the walls of the convict prisons of England, and his 
 darkest pictures in these pages are at once vivid and impressive. 
 . . . The tales are not all pathetic. There is a fine thread of 
 humour running through them all, imparting to their touching 
 realism a strong artistic quality. The book will interest a large 
 class of readers." Scotsman. 
 
 " Unusual interest attaches to a collection of stories by Mr. 
 Tighe Hopkins, entitled ' The Silent Gate : A Voyage into 
 Prison.' Quitting the familiar streets and dungeons of mediaeval 
 France, Mr. Hopkins takes us boldly into a modern gaol. . . . 
 A series of brilliant sketches of the strange types of humanity that 
 gather within the prison walls. Only an expert could pronounce 
 upon the fidelity of such portraiture : all that the reader knows is 
 that a vivid picture is presented to his imagination. . . . These 
 remarkable stories will certainly startle and arrest." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 " Many stories of prison life have been written, but few that 
 show so intimate a knowledge as the eleven which together make
 
 up 'The Silent Gate.' ... In each story the crime is but an 
 incident, a nothing ; the individual is the centre of interest the 
 study in psychology. So well are they presented that we have a 
 difficulty in not believing that the characters are true to life, 
 though f Miss Pocket in B Wing ' is too thorough a romance not 
 to have been helped by fiction. . . . Mr. Hopkins writes with 
 so much quiet humour, has so delicate a touch upon the sordid side 
 of life, that he makes even a prison amusing." Literary World. 
 
 "A varied assortment of prison stories, some pathetic, some 
 humorous ; all throbbing with a deep humanity." 
 
 Publishers' Circular. 
 
 " It is no small tribute to Mr. Hopkins 's power of vivid delinea- 
 tion to say that the reading of ' The Silent Gate ' makes one feel 
 quite ' bad.' It is the next best thing to being f in' in person. 
 The whole scene conies before you. . . . The strange case of 
 Dr. Ashmole, the ' last prisoner ' in Newgate before its disuse, is 
 of a curiously tragic character, although quite within the bounds 
 of possibility ; while the e Singular Conduct of C 53 ' owes its 
 interest, we expect, to the clever imagination of the author. . . . 
 Its humour is not the least attractive quality of ' The Silent 
 Gate.' " Bookseller. 
 
 " e The Release of Benjamin Cudd,' ' Turkey,' and ' Miss 
 Cullender's Lamb' call for special mention." World. 
 
 "Mr. Tighe Hopkins has hit upon a new idea in his 'Silent 
 Gate/ Nobody, so far as I remember, has written an entire book 
 of prison stories. Certainly no one has given us such an entirely 
 fresh incarnation of criminal life as has Mr. Hopkins in his 
 ' Turkey ' the boy who will make the fortune of ' The Silent 
 Gate/ ... Its success is a foregone conclusion." 
 
 New York Times. 
 
 " ( The Silent Gate ' contains one tale at least that places the 
 author in the same rank as Poe and de Maupassant. This tale 
 treats of a prisoner who murders his jailer, hoping to escape, but 
 in vain ; and it has all the horror and dramatic irony of ' L'Auberge' 
 without de Maupassant's cruelty with pity in the place of cruelty. 
 His blend of realism and delicacy, truth without coarseness, makes 
 him remarkable." Bookman.

 
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