Six Years in the Prisons of England Part 2

After a few weeks of great suffering to me, it became quite evident that my leg was not to get better under the treatment prescribed for it, but was rapidly getting worse. The knee was now so sensitive that the tread of any person's foot pa.s.sing near the bed caused me excessive pain. I was afraid to sneeze for the same reason, and at last so excruciating did the pain become that I begged and prayed to have my leg cut off. The idea of losing it, so horrible to me a few months previous, was altogether overpowered by the frightful torture, which night and day it now entailed upon me. I was again inspected about this time by a stranger doctor, and immediately after he left, my leg was lanced and poulticed. But the remedy came too late, for the time had come when I must either sacrifice my life, or give life a chance by the sacrifice of my leg. My readers can imagine for themselves what it must be to have the flesh cut, and the bone sawn through at the thickest part of the thigh. I fear I cannot give a more lucid description of the surgical operation. I was put under the influence of chloroform, which had to be administered a second time before the surgeons had completed their work, and with the exception of a momentary pang in the interval between the doses, I felt no pain whatever. The operation was skilfully performed, and occupied altogether about half-an-hour.

I was removed from the large ward, and placed in a small room by myself, with a prisoner to wait upon me, and for three or four days after the operation my life was despaired of by the medical officers.

Strangely enough I did not feel so hopeless about my case. I felt a whispering within that seemed to tell me I should not die then. With the exception of the pain caused by the first few dressings of the wound, and a sharp violent twinge that seized the stump on my going to sleep, causing it to start some inches from the pillow on which it rested, I did not now experience anything to compare with my previous, sufferings. The head surgeon also relaxed from his customary silent, stingy, and cold hearted manner, and became generous, and even kind to me. I had been in the habit of writing to my friends that I felt comfortable enough under the circ.u.mstances, in order to keep up their spirits about me, but now I could and did express genuine feelings of grat.i.tude, and until I wrote a letter to the late Mr. Cobden, more than a year afterwards, I believe I remained a favourite with the chiefs of the establishment. I had now become a cripple for life, and as I reflected upon all that these words involved in relation to my future history, and the circ.u.mstances which had entailed upon me a loss so irretrievable, I thought, amongst other things how easily, and still how fatally a little carelessness, negligence, or ill-temper on the part of our convict surgeons, may influence the future life and conduct of their convict patients. They are, without doubt, subjected to many vexations, and much annoyance, and their temper receives daily provocations. They have to deal professionally with a cla.s.s of men who, as a rule, cannot be believed or trusted; who are as likely as not to give a false description of their complaint, and in many instances to do all in their power to frustrate the efforts made to relieve it. They have to discover not only what the disease is in real patients, but also frequently to detect well planned and well sustained imposture in those who are not diseased at all. The latter is a much more difficult task in many cases than the former, as I will subsequently show, and it has a tendency to sour the temper and harden the heart, which the former does not. I do not imagine that the medical men in our convict establishments are naturally less warm-hearted, less n.o.bly devoted to their profession than their brethren outside, but it will not be disputed that the peculiar nature of their practice has a tendency to make them so. Were one hundred doctors each to have a patient for whom they had daily, for weeks, and even for months, been doing all that humanity and professional skill could suggest in order to relieve him, let us suppose of great suffering, and one fine morning to see the patient leap out of bed, laugh, and snap his fingers in their faces, and tell them that there had been nothing the matter with him all the while!--ninety-nine of them would probably look upon the next patient with some suspicion, and if deception was at all frequent, the really diseased would come in time to suffer even at the hands of the most tender and humane amongst them. I blame these "schemers" and "impostors" therefore for much of the apparent sourness, indifference to, and sometimes cruel neglect, if not positive aggravation of suffering, which I have noticed in the manner and treatment of most of the convict surgeons I have met with. I have seen the imperative necessity that exists for periodical inspection of our convict hospitals by competent medical men, not otherwise connected with them, in order to protect the "innocent patients," if I may use the term, from the indifference, mismanagement, and even punishment they are often compelled to undergo, because of the prejudices contracted by the prison officials, the result of a long experience perhaps of imposture and deception. Under the present system the resident medical superintendent has the lives of his patients at his sole disposal, and it is a very dangerous thing for a convict patient to offend the medical officers in any way, and of course the more so if they happen to be of a cruel or vindictive disposition. My own case was in some respects an instance of this. The experience I gained in the Yorks.h.i.+re prison, after I had ventured to insinuate to the doctor there that he had not quite understood the nature of my complaint, kept my mouth hermetically closed during the ill-concealed disagreement between the two doctors here as to the method of my cure. The chief medical officer at this prison was very much disliked by the majority of the patients, particularly by the young prisoners in the early stages of consumption.

The cause of this, was supposed to be the desire to keep the hospital well filled with patients, and to have the greater proportion of them of the cla.s.s who were content to be idle without craving for "extras."

He could thus keep the cost per head lower than the medical officers at other prisons, and obtain the greater credit at head-quarters. Young consumptive patients he found to be too expensive, and they were accordingly made uncomfortable. His junior, on the other hand, although blunt in his manner and speech, was held in general esteem. He seemed to have his heart in the profession, and endeavoured to cure complaints deemed curable without reference to the expense of the diet, if it contributed to the end he had in view.

In another chapter I shall again allude to this subject, and give a number of cases which came within the range of my own observation, to prove the justice of some of the reflections I have made on the want of periodical inspection of our prison hospitals. In the meantime my stump continued to discharge matter. An abscess formed and r.e.t.a.r.ded the healing of the wounds and it was not till I discovered a cure myself that it showed any symptoms of healing. The cure was to hold the stump under a tap of cold water, using friction afterwards. This I continued to do long after the wound had finally closed.

CHAPTER VI.

I PEt.i.tION THE HOME SECRETARY--DOCTOR p.r.o.nOUNCES ME "QUITE WELL"--"SCHEMERS;" THEIR TREATMENT AND FATE--DEATH-BED SCENES.

About two months after the amputation of my leg, feeling and believing that my health would never be restored in confinement I wrote a pet.i.tion to the Home Secretary, in the expectation that I would be as mercifully considered as my predecessors in misfortune. While my pet.i.tion was under consideration I was encouraged in my expectations by the fact that one of my companions who had nothing the matter with him but a dislocated hip joint, was liberated on medical grounds three or four years before his time was up. My hopes were somewhat damped, however, by another circ.u.mstance which just then occurred. The prison director arrived on his monthly visit, and on pa.s.sing through the ward, the medical officer who accompanied him stopped at the foot of my bed and informed him that I was the man whose leg he had amputated, and that I was "quite well now!" The director, seeing me in bed and looking very poorly, and noticing the general stare with which the doctor's remark was received, asked in a somewhat doubtful way, "Is he quite well?" "Oh! yes quite well," the doctor replied; and off they went.

I was sixteen months in hospital after the above remark was made, and I was then unable to get up to have my bed made, nor did I leave my bed during the whole winter and spring that succeeded! I received an answer to my pet.i.tion, shortly after the visit to which I have referred, in the usual form of an official negative, "Not sufficient grounds." Being now free from acute pain, I conversed freely with my companions, and taught some of them to spell, read, and cypher. After I was able to get out of bed I read aloud for an hour every evening, for the benefit of all the patients. In time I became popular, and intimate with many of them. I wrote letters and pet.i.tions for them, encouraged them with good advice, and succeeded in obtaining considerable influence over them.

In return for these trifling services, which also to some extent relieved the monotony of the long period I spent in hospital, they told me their history and experiences. I learnt their slang and thiefology, and as a theorist became tolerably conversant with all the mysteries by which the professional thief and scoundrel preys upon society.

The first of my companions who attracted my attention was a young Scotchman. He appeared to be a very strong hearty fellow, but when he attempted to walk, he was the most pitiable looking cripple imaginable, and excited the sympathy of all who saw him. His sentence was twenty-one years, four of which he had undergone at this time. He had been invalided home from the convict establishment at Bermuda, was s.h.i.+pwrecked off the Isle of Wight on the return voyage, and had been some months in the hospital previous to my arrival. He was in the habit of being carried up and down stairs to exercise on the backs of the nurses, and was getting full diet and porter. About four months after my arrival, he one morning suddenly started out of bed, shouted "Attention," at the top of his voice, in defiance of the prison rules, and ran about the room like a lamplighter, to the utter amazement of all present. This man was what the prisoners term a "schemer," and he was certainly the very best actor of his cla.s.s I ever met with. It will be acknowledged that he played his part well, when even during the s.h.i.+pwreck he had never made the slightest attempt to move, and kept up the deception for many months in a prison hospital, where the majority of the patients are put down as "schemers" unless they have an outward sore, or some natural malady with palpable external symptoms. When the doctor came his rounds, he could do nothing but stare at the fellow, who started up and told him with a laughing countenance that he had had a dream in the night, about being miraculously cured, and in the morning he found he could walk as well as ever he did. The doctor never opened his lips; the patient was discharged, and although the other patients cried aloud that he ought to be punished, no further notice was taken of the matter.

This "schemer," I learned, had been a great sufferer from pleurisy at Bermuda, and was very weak when he was put on board s.h.i.+p, where he commenced his scheme; and had it not been for new regulations which were then put in force, there is no doubt he would have accomplished his object, which was "Liberation on medical grounds." He had pet.i.tioned the Home Secretary shortly before he threw his crutches aside, declaring that he had met with an accident at Bermuda from a stone falling on his back, and so injuring the spine that both his legs were paralysed. He had received a reply to the effect that his pet.i.tion would be answered so soon as the authorities heard from Bermuda the particulars of the accident, and it was a few days after this that the miraculous visitation took place.

I asked him why he did not wait for the final answer to his pet.i.tion before exposing his scheme? "Oh," he replied, "I knew very well if they wrote to Bermuda I should get no time off. I met with no accident, although I said so in my pet.i.tion." "You will be very fortunate," I said, "if you get the customary remission after this affair, I fear they will punish you?" "Look here," said he, "I have another scheme in my head, and you will see I'll not fail this time. I'll get out to Australia, and by the time I arrive I will be due for my liberty."

"Well, that will certainly be better for you than being kept eight or nine years longer in prison here; but how are you to manage to get abroad unless the authorities choose to send you?" "Oh! I will work that. I'll now be as bad in my conduct as possible; and I'll half murder some of the officers if they don't send me away; and that very soon too."

True to his threat, the fellow commenced a course of bad conduct, knowing it would ensure his pa.s.sage to Western Australia; and in a comparatively short time he gained his object, and I have no doubt he is now at liberty abroad.

About the time the above conversation took place another "schemer"

arrived, and was located a few beds from me. He had been a clerk in a government office, was respectably connected, and a very intelligent young man. He pretended he could not use his legs. The doctor's eye being now somewhat opened, he told him there was nothing the matter with him, recommended him to get well again as fast as possible, and threatened him with the electric battery, and even hot irons, if that did not succeed. The prisoner did not take advice, however, and the battery was tried upon him. After being stripped several times, and made to cry out with pain, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of his fellow-prisoners, he ultimately took to crutches; first two, then one, with a stick; then the stick only; then nothing at all. He was afterwards removed to another prison.

I saw several other cases, similar to the one I have just mentioned, of pretended loss of the use of the legs, or partial inability to walk; but as there was no marked difference in the cases, I need not notice them. There was, however, an amusing incident connected with one of them which I may mention. This prisoner was allowed a little porter every day, which was served out about one o'clock. One day at that hour he happened to be in an adjoining room with his crutches (he could walk a little) when another prisoner cried out, "Porter, porter; quick, quick!" On hearing this cry, and afraid of losing his liquor, he bolted out, ran down the room, and had swallowed his porter before he had discovered that he had left his crutches behind him.

Such cases as these injure the really sick, particularly those whose symptoms are not very apparent. Many prisoners adopt these schemes in order to get into hospital, where they get better food, less work, and have the chance of being with a favourite "pal." Others will make themselves ill by swallowing tobacco, soap pills, or anything they know will make them sick. There are others again who are afraid to enter the hospital lest they should be poisoned with a sleeping draught, or some other medicine carelessly administered; and when they hear of any sudden death in hospital they are ready to swear "his light has been put out by the doctor." On the other hand I have known it to happen that a prisoner went and complained to the doctor, who roughly told him he was a "schemer," and the following week the prisoner was dead.

Another time a healthy looking old man, with chest disease, complained to the doctor of pain in that region. He was dosed repeatedly with salts and senna--the medicine for schemers--and in less than a fortnight he was buried.

I could mention many cases similar to the above, and also others where the prisoner was his own murderer--if I may use the expression--but I will merely mention one of them. The patient in this case was afflicted with dropsy, and some affection of the heart. He had been receiving two ounces of gin for a short time, which he fancied was doing him good, and being partial to that variety of medicine, he was annoyed when it was ordered to be discontinued. Accordingly he resolved to make himself ill again, in order to get the allowance of gin, and swallowed a large piece of tobacco, which brought an increase to his heart complaint; and notwithstanding that the greatest attention was paid to his case by the doctor, before morning he was dead.

This prisoner lay in the next bed to mine, and among the many death-bed scenes I witnessed while in prison, I never saw one where the fear of death was so apparent, or the state of mind so appalling to the beholder.

The man had been a bully, and an avowed infidel. The prospect of death had now come upon him with awful suddenness. Fear and trembling took hold upon him, and as he thought of his past life, and the possible judgment seat, before which he might the next moment be summoned to appear, remorse and doubt seemed to torture him more than physical pain. At the closing scene he was evidently trying to believe, but could not, for he kept repeating, "If there be a G.o.d, if there be a G.o.d I hope He will forgive me; but I can't believe it, indeed I can't!" and so saying he expired.

Another death-bed scene impressed me much. The patient was paralysed in his lower extremities and could scarcely walk, but his general health appeared pretty good, and he was not confined to bed. He had a talent for mechanics and arithmetic, but a very bad temper and a very bad heart. His crime was sacrilege. In the next bed to his there lay a patient who was dying, and being in great pain was making a noise, which disturbed the studies and peace of mind of the other. A quarrel arose between the two on the subject. High words ensued. Curses, deep, black, loud, and long, soon followed, too soon for the officer to prevent, and there would certainly have been a fight if the dying man could have got out of bed, but the interference of the officer put an end to the disturbance. It was their parting words taken in connection with what followed, that made a deep impression upon me:--"If it wasn't that you are dying I would blacken your eyes for you," cried the mechanic. "How do you know I am dying? You look as like dying as anybody, you miserable cripple," retorted the other. "Ah! I'm tough stuff, you'll not see me die in a hurry." The cripple who uttered these words went shortly afterwards to bed, was seized with a paralytic affection, which took the power of speech from him. He never uttered another syllable, but lay in bed for about a week, making frantic motions with his lips. I forget which of these two men died first, but they were buried together in the same grave.

Another death at this time excited a good deal of conversation among the prisoners. The patient had been tried under the Transportation Act, one of the bye-laws of which enacted that for every prison "report," or offence, the prisoner would lose one month of his remission. But convicts being usually punished under the most recent law, without reference to its being different from that under which they had received sentence, the prisoner I now refer to was sentenced to lose three months of his remission for one offence, that of having an inch or two of tobacco on his person. He had undergone nearly the whole of this additional punishment, when, only a few hours before his time came to leave the prison to meet his motherless children, for whom he seemed to have a very strong affection, he died suddenly of heart disease.

Some prisoners expired on the very day for their liberation. Some died screaming aloud that they were poisoned. Many died like the brutes, and a very few departed in peace, with a prayer on their lips. The great majority died as they had lived, and were forgotten by the spectators almost before their bodies had been laid in the grave.

CHAPTER VII.

THIEFOLOGY--WHAT THE UNINITIATED CONVICT MAY LEARN IN PRISON.

As a means of beguiling the time while in the hospital, I used to enter into long conversations with those of my fellow prisoners who were willing to gratify my curiosity, with a view of ascertaining their mode of life when out of prison. At first it was somewhat difficult for me to follow them in their talk, in consequence of their excessive use of "slang" terms; but in time I not only came to understand the nomenclature of thiefology, but also to use it fluently, as I found it more acceptable to my companions to do so, and rendered them more favourably disposed towards me.

One of my fellow prisoners was particularly communicative and obliging, and gave me a great deal of well-meant advice, no doubt, as to how I might live at the public expense _outside_ the prison walls, as well as explanations in every department of crime. I remember the following dialogue taking place between us, which also serves to show how an ignoramus in the science, or a young country lad, perhaps for the first time convicted of crime, might be instructed in vice, and incited to continue a career he had perhaps very thoughtlessly, or under strong temptation, began.

"Harry," I asked, "what's that 'bloke'[6] here for, who occupies the end bed?"

[6] Man.

"Twineing."

"Twineing! What's that?"

"Don't you know that yet? why you must be a greenhorn not to know that.

Well! I'll tell you. Suppose you start in the morning with a good sovereign and a '_snyde_'[7] half-sovereign in your pocket; you go into some place or other, and ask for change of the sovereign, or you order some beer and give the sovereign in payment; it's likely you will get half-a-sovereign and silver back in change. Then is the time to 'twine.' You change your mind, after you have 'rung'[8] your snyde half 'quid'[9] with the good one, and throwing down the 'snyde' half, say you prefer silver; the landlord or landlady, or whoever it is, will pick up the snyde half-quid, thinking of course it is the same one they had given you!"

[7] Counterfeit.

[8] Subst.i.tuted.

[9] Sovereign.

"Is that a good game, do you think?"

"Well, that depends on the party. If he has got good 'togs' on, looks pretty decent, and can work it well, he may make a good living at it."

"How much do you suppose?"

"If he can manage to begin every morning with yellow stuff, he may make a couple of 'quid' a day; but if he can only muster white stuff, why of course he can't make so much."

"Two pounds a day would do if it could be got regularly, but I suspect there are not many who make that?"

"Oh! I have known them make much more than that, but of course it varies, some days nothing may be done, but the great thing is to have something to start with."

"Do you never think of trying to make money at work?"

"Work! no, by jingo! I'll never work; that's all they can make one do in prison, and it will be time enough to work when we get there."

"I have heard you speak of 'hoisting,' how do you go about that?"