Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
merchandise is to a merchant's warehouse. The prison does not look upon
him as a man at all. He is merely an object which must move in a certain
rut and occupy a certain niche provided for it. There is no room for the
smallest sentiment. The vast machine of which he is an item keeps
undisturbed upon its course.
Move with it, and all is well. Resist, and you will be crushed as
inevitably as the man who plants himself on the railroad track when the
express is coming. Without passion, without prejudice, but also without
pity and without remorse, the machine crushes and passes on. The dead
man is carried to his grave and in ten minutes is as much forgotten as
though he had never existed.
The plank bed, the crank, the bread-and-water diet, unauthorized but
none the less effectual clubbing at the hands of warders, the cold in
the punishment cells penetrating to the very marrow of the bones,
weakness, sickness and unpitied death are the certain portion of the
rebel.
Some are found idiotic enough to invite such a fate, though fewer now
than formerly. The progress of education in England during the last
twenty years, and the philanthropic efforts of many societies and
private persons, but above all the covert but successful efforts of the
authorities to deport them to this country instantly after their
release, have had an immense effect in thinning the ranks of prison
inmates. The Judges, too, have been forced by public opinion to be much
less severe than they used to be, and that counts for much even in the
inside of prisons.
Nothing can be more capricious than the sentences they pass. In very few
cases does the law set any limit. "Life or any term not less than five
years" is the usual reading of the statute books, and the consequence
naturally is that one Judge will give his man five years, while another
will condemn his to twenty years for precisely the same crime committed
under precisely the same circumstances as the first one.
Another great blot on the English judicial system is that no court of
appeal exists to which a sentence might be referred for review, so that
the most unjust and unequal sentences are constantly passed from which
there is no appeal but in the forlorn hope--rather, entire
hopelessness--of a petition to the Home Secretary. I have often seen a
man who had been sentenced to five years for murder working by the side
of another whose sentence was twenty years for some crime against
property. Such contrasts, of course, excite great discontent, and in
some cases are the reason why men set up a hopeless resistance to what
they feel to be persecution and injustice.
It always seemed to me that the standpoint of the Board of Directors,
established in 1864, and which continued without change until very
recently, was altogether wrong. They appeared to think that in their
dealings with other men the only course was to be the application of
"force, iron force," as one of the governors expressed it. The very
great majority require no such application, and the few difficult ones
could easily be managed in another way. Certainly it is necessary that
all prison discipline be penal, but it is not necessary that it be
ferocious and inhuman, as certainly is the English. Starvation, the
crank, the plank bed, the fearful cold of the cells are not measures
necessary in dealing with any man.
Whatever they could think of to harden, to degrade, to insult, to
inflict every form of suffering, both physical and mental, which a man
could undergo and live, was embodied in the rules they made. Their
prisons were to be places of suffering and of nothing but suffering.
So far as the directors were concerned the regulations were carried out
to the letter, but each prison is under the control of a resident
governor, with a deputy governor to assist him. These gentlemen are
always men of good social position, retired officers of the army, who
have seen the world and have experience in controlling men. They are
rarely inclined to unnecessary severity, but are generally willing to
apply the rules with as much consideration as such rules admit. The
governor's discretion, however, is limited, but daily contact more or
less with men whom he sees to differ very little from free men, and whom
he sometimes finds to be even better than many he knows who are not, but
who perhaps ought to be, on the wrong side of the bars, makes him
unwilling to throw too many sharp points on the path which has to be
trodden by men for whom he often cannot help feeling considerable
sympathy.
I have more than once heard governors express their disapproval of the
starvation system and of the ferocity of treatment toward men who some
day or other must go back to society.
Under such governors the new arrival speedily finds out that to a
certain extent his comfort depends upon himself. No man can make a bad
thing good or trick himself into believing that suffering is pleasure.
If pain be not an evil, it is an exceedingly good imitation, and the
wisest philosopher is just as restless under the toothache as the most
perfect idiot.
CHAPTER XLVII.
HIS ROW BECOMES FILLED WITH VERY SHARP-EDGED STONES INDEED.
The inhabitant of a cell has a very rough row to hoe under any
circumstance, and it has to be hoed, but there is no necessity for him
to fill his row with stones and to plant roots in it himself. He soon
finds his level, and the impression he makes on his arrival is the one
which, as a rule, clings to him to the end.
When prison air and prison influence have succeeded in incasing a man
with the sort of moral hardbake that renders him callous to those
feelings which at first so gall the raw spots, he finds himself watching
with curiosity the shapings of newcomers. Some announce immediately on
arrival that they cannot possibly be there more than a month or two;
their arrest was a mistake, and their uncle, the member of Parliament,
is now busily engaged making representations to the Home Secretary. One
of the very few amusements prisoners have is in watching the important
fellows, the men whose friends could do so much for them if they would
only let them know where they are. Sometimes a chap who has perhaps been
a body servant or something of the kind, who has picked up the kind of
veneer he could catch by aping his master, will furnish food for smiles
to every one he comes in contact with during his stay. He never receives
a letter without explaining confidentially to every one that another
aunt whose favorite he was has just died, leaving him L10,000 in cash,
not to speak of a trifle or two in the shape of half a dozen houses.
These gentlemen are immediately furnished with a name which becomes much
better known than their own, and whenever they have delivered themselves
of their periodical brooding of lies the news goes smiling round that
Billy Treacle's aunt has died again and left him another fortune.
So long as their inventions do no more harm than make them ridiculous,
they are only laughed at and let alone, but when one of them develops a
talent for invention which molests or injures others, especially when it
takes the form of confidential communication to the governor of what he
sees, and still more of what he does not see, such retribution as both
prisoners and officers can inflict is not long in falling. His row
becomes filled with very sharp-edged stones indeed, and roots which tear
his hands painfully. Nearly always these boastings are fathered by an
absurd vanity--a desire ever to appear what they are not, and while they
think they are deceiving others they deceive no one but themselves.
One case I remember, though, was an exception. One young fellow made
such use of his invention, and the story is so interesting and
instructive as showing with what lofty respect English gentlemen are
educated for the rights of property, that I shall relate it.
Four or five years after I went to Chatham a young fellow named
Frederick Barton arrived with a ten years' sentence for forgery. His
appearance and manners were very much in his favor, and his conduct so
confirmed the good first impression that he speedily became a favorite
with everybody from the governor down.
Some three years had slipped by when one day he asked me if I would
prepare a petition which he might send to the Home Secretary in the hope
of obtaining a commutation of sentence. I liked the youngster very well
and readily consented, but told him that I doubted very much if he
would get anything. The petition was sent, and in a few days the usual
answer was returned, "No grounds." He told me of his ill luck, and I
said to him: "Look here, so long as you send up whining petitions asking
for mercy both you and they will be treated with contempt. If you wish
to get that English gentleman in the Home Office to do anything for you,
make him believe you are a millionaire; you will see whether he will do
anything then for you or not." He laughed merrily at that. "A
millionaire! Why, I haven't a sixpence. My father is only a private
coachman at Tunbridge Wells." "That is nothing at all," I said; "if you
will be guided by me, and let me manage things for you, I will have a
petition sent in for you from the outside, and I feel sure we can get
you out." An idea had just flashed into my mind, and I was eager to try
it.
At first he was a little timid about the venture, fearing that I might
get him into trouble, but when he became convinced that I would do
nothing of the kind he consented. I had a warder in the prison who in
consideration of an occasional tip used to act as my postman, sending my
letters to my friends and bringing in theirs to me. This was a deadly
offense against the rules, but as the permitted correspondence was
outrageously limited I saw no reason why I should deprive myself of
letters when I had the chance to have them, and as I took good care that
the great men in London should get no inkling of my misdeeds I dare say
their hearts did not grieve after what their eyes did not see.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
HE TELEGRAPHED THE NEWS TO MY WARDER, AND BARTON WENT ON HIS WAY
REJOICING.
My warder friend supplied me with writing materials. I prepared one
letter, which I had him copy, and another in my own handwriting. Both
were directed to Barton, and informed him that his rich uncle had lately
died and had left him one hundred and sixty thousand pounds in money and
sixteen thousand acres of cotton land in India. He was also informed
that his father had gone to India to look after the property, and that
upon his return a petition would be presented to the Home Secretary, who
it was hoped would grant his release. These two letters my warder sent
to a friend of mine in London with a note from me requesting him to post
them immediately. I told Barton what I had done, at the same time
cautioning him to guard the closest secrecy. Two days afterward the
letters arrived, and I directed my protege to spread the news as much as
possible, to tell all the warders he saw and to show them his letters.
We had at that time in the prison a wideawake but tricky fellow named
George Smith. He had been clerk to an important firm of auctioneers in
London, and had been sentenced by probably the most savage judge on the
bench, Commissioner Ker, to fourteen years' imprisonment for receiving a
quantity of stolen silverware, which he had his employers sell for him.
He was about to be released, and I determined to make use of him, but
without letting him know the truth, for I knew that if he suspected he
was merely doing a good turn for the chum he left behind him, he, like
the Home Secretary himself, without the right kind of inducement would
have left his friend to stop where he was until the bottomless pit was