# 112 Days' Hard Labour/Main

112 Days’ Hard Labour.
“To prison” and “to isolate” are practically identical terms. I understood this when on reaching my cell on my first night I found my sole remaining links with ordinary life were my spectacles, every shred of clothing and other possessions having been replaced by prison garb. Then the first rule read, “Prisoners must preserve silence,” and from the moment of entering till that of leaving the prison, to hold the slightest communication with another prisoner renders one liable to punishment.
A Prison Day
Perhaps the outsider will imagine that temptations to break the rule occur on more occasions than is actually the case. Of this they can judge from a rough time-table of the day’s happenings. This is as follows:—5.30 a.m.—Get up, wash, make bed, put plank bedstead and mattress (the latter is supplied after 14 days) against wall, sweep out cell. 6.0 a.m.—Warder opens door. Put slops out. Ward Officer walks round to note any applications to see the Governor, Doctor or Chaplain or any small complaints. Door closed while cleaners empty tins, leave clean water, etc., outside. Begin work in cell, for everyone has a canvas task to perform during the day. 7 a.m.—Breakfast served. 8 a.m.—Half an hour’s exercise. 12 noon.—Dinner served. 1.30 p.m.—Dinner tins, slops, etc., collected. 4 p.m.—Supper served. 8 p.m.—Lights out. On Wednesday and Saturday morning there is “Chapel” before exercise. On Sunday, prisoners do not rise till seven, and go to Chapel twice, at 10.30 and 3. Of course, no work is done on this day. During the first month, at all events, the only time one sees another human being is for the few moments when the door is opened for meals, etc., at exercise, and at Chapel.
After this period has elapsed, prisoners are supposed to work in association in the morning and afternoon in canvas, brush or tinsmith’s shops, laundry, bakery, etc. In my case, however, owing, I believe, to the congestion in these departments, I worked over ten weeks of my prison life alone in my cell, in practically solitary confinement; the only alleviation being that on three afternoons my cell door was left open and I could see passers-by along the gallery. There were even some cases, however, of men working all the time in their cells. In any case, it will be noted that prisoners are entirely isolated for fourteen hours between supper and 6 a.m. Think what the effect of such life must be on ordinary prisoners who can find no joy in reading after finishing work in the evening, or on the “juvenile adult,” the poor little boy thieves and hoc genus omne in their teens during these empty hours.
Prison Diet
The Food Controller has not yet interfered with the diet. The “A” menu is practically nothing but bread and porridge. It is served for the first seven days, but during the rest of the time I was on “B” diet, which is as follows:— Breakfast.—A pint of gruel and 8 oz. of bread. Supper.—The same quantity of bread and a pint of porridge. Dinner.—6 oz. of bread and nominally 8 oz. of potatoes, but, owing to war shortage, rice or haricots are sometimes substituted for part of the latter. In addition is served on Sunday 4 oz. of cold preserved meat, i.e., a small slice of pressed beef. On Monday, 10 oz. of haricots with 2 oz. of crude fat bacon (“beans in candle grease”). On Tuesday and Friday, 1 pint of soup—usually thick and good, and meat has been found in it. On Wednesday and Saturday, 10 oz. of suet pudding made with brown flour—good if received still hot; and on Thursday, 4 oz. of cooked meat without bone, but not without fat or gristle. As a rule the porridge could not be bettered, and the wholemeal bread though close is thoroughly good. One would welcome the opportunity of tasting it with butter. The only condiment is salt, sugar not being tasted in the ordinary way till “C” diet is reached, after a four months’ imprisonment, when cocoa is served. At Wandsworth prison a drink called “tea” was given to those who did a certain amount of work in excess of the minimum task. It, however, disappeared from my breakfast table after Ash Wednesday, according to rumour, either in consequence of the Chaplain’s sermon on fasting in Lent or as a war economy! Personally, I found I kept in the best health if I ate about two-thirds of my food, but most prisoners, I think, were always ready for a little more had it been obtainable.
Habitat
A prison cell is about 7 feet wide, 11 feet 6 inches long, and 9 feet high. Its furniture consists of stool, table (sometimes fixed by the frosted window through which light is received at night, and sometimes movable), a plank bed, with mattress, two sheets, two blankets, rug and pillow; mug, spoon, tin knife (which bends if used on a crust); slate and slate pencil; and a set of pots, pans and brush. At Wormwood Scrubs the floor is of boards, but in the older prison my cold feet were a perpetual reminder that I was living on tiles. In such a winter as we have been having this fact was perhaps the greatest physical hardship of imprisonment, bearing in mind that often I was only absent from the cell for half-an-hour out of the twenty-four. Those who wish to reproduce the test are advised to try working, sleeping and eating in their scullery.
The clothing consists of grey cloth collarless suit, liberally sprinkled with broad arrows; underclothing—the latter is always clean, but there is only one size for everybody, and a button a garment is liberal fare—stockings and shoes. Usually, little capes are available for extra warmth during exercise in cold weather. ​All garments are dated, and one day I noted a cape that had been in use for 21 years! I have also seen a man with his trousers turned up at least eight inches to make them fit.
The great luxury of prison life is the weekly bath. The bath-house resembles a loose-box stable with a bath for each man. One can have as much warm water as one wants without the worry of thinking whether the kitchen boiler is empty or not! How chills and colds are avoided is extraordinary, for one comes straight out of a hot bath, for instance, into the snow and east wind without putting on an overcoat; while once, when unfortunate enough to be in the box next the door, I was nearly blown out of the water by the wind that blew in on the advent of new bathers every few minutes.
Oddities of the Exercise Ground
This a monotonous perambulation in single file round an asphalted circle, vigilant warders keeping their ears open for surreptitious conversation the while. Exercise provides, however, the chance of seeing at least the faces of one’s friends, and the solemnity and dullness of the proceedings was relieved by many a touch of humour, such as the sight of Councillor Walter Ayles, the I.L.P. Parliamentary candidate for East Bristol, being threatened with dire punishment by the warder known as “Kaiser Bill,” or “Brer Fox,” for light-heartedly attempting to slide on the slippery “strait and narrow” exercise circle, or the sight of Fenner Brockway, Editor of the “Labour Leader,” and J. H. Hudson, Labour candidate for Clitheroe, cheerily marching along with the navvy gang.
A sense of humour evoked by trivial incidents is of inestimable value in prison. It tonics the whole man. It creates to be sure a special temptation—to try to share the zest with one’s fellows.
What struck me most forcibly in my earliest experience of prison exercises was that Bertillon’s theories anent criminal physiognomy must be all wrong. Never had I seen such a disreputable-looking company—sallow, red-nosed, scrubby-bearded, and most amazingly garbed, the clothes bursting across the backs of some and hanging loosely around others. Some shuffled along with ill-fitting footwear; some obviously fagged by even this slight physical effort. A few enwrapped and shrouded in ascetic contemplation as if they were old-world mendicant monks walking round and round some monastery garden. If, however, the prisoner face and mien as noted in the exercise ground seemed to be stamped with some features common to all, in chapel the case was different. Juxtaposition in that more compacted crowd made differences in type more evident. But whether on the exercise ground or in the chapel one could not but be somewhat thankful for the utter absence of mirrors. Happily prisoners cannot “see oorsels as ithers see us.”
Shaving and haircutting take place occasionally at the hands ​of a prisoner with a clippers and with an uncertain amount of experience. Up till Christmas men fell out during exercise and were barbered in the open air, even when snow was on the ground. At no time during the first two months did the direct rays of the sun shine on me when in the open air, owing to the earliness of the hour of exercise and the position of the yard.
Chapel and Chaplain
It will seem very curious one day again to attend a religious service at which the congregation is not regimented and watched closely by warders throughout the proceedings. Perhaps the officers are getting used by now to obvious and sometimes, I confess, almost discourteous differences of opinion with the preacher when he states, for instance, as a rebuke to the C.O. portion of his audience, that as a maker of tents
Paul was an Army Contractor
who was “proud to do his bit for his Empire,” or the comparison of Lord Cromer with Moses. After hearing discourses of this nature it was interesting to go back to one’s cell to read, for instance, that one of the indictments against the Abbot of Wigmore at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries was that he had taught that one should hate one’s enemies and not love them. On the other hand, I have heard one or two of the best of sermons, though especially in that of Christmas morning, when the text was “I came not to bring peace but a sword,” I imagine that while what was eloquently said was most encouraging and stimulating if interpreted spiritually, a more literal meaning was in the preacher’s mind.
The Chance to Use the Voice
I doubt whether prison chapels have often heard such hearty singing, however. It reminded me of the enthusiastic congregations met with when I accompanied General Booth on one of his tours some years ago. Indeed, on one occasion the congregation took the choice of the tune of a favourite hymn into its own hands and unconsciously but effectively drowned the playing of a less familiar air upon the organ. Singing often supplied both the opportunity for the utterance of real pacifist sentiments in many of the hymns and also the opportunity of using one’s voice again. The quickness with which one tired was the measure of its weakness from lack of use.
Quaker Meetings in Prison
Attendance at the Quaker meetings once a fortnight was a joy, though the presence of the officers with a reminder “You have come here to a religious meeting, not to enjoy yourselves,” and also the shortness of time available did not assist in the creation of the “atmosphere.” But to see people one knew and ​to listen either to their short address or the voice offering of one of the prisoners “speaking to our condition” made red-letter records in our life.
200 at the Prison Quaker Meeting
As a rule only twenty or thirty prisoners in a thousand fail to describe themselves as being “Church of England” or “Roman Catholic.” The advent of C.O.’s has, however, changed all this, and nearly every denomination seemed to be represented. Those who asked to see the Quaker chaplain formed the biggest category, though the application did not necessarily mean that they were actual members of the Society, but was the outcome of the sympathetic contact between Friends and themselves since the fight began, which caused them to wish to attend a service where sympathetic ministration was certain. In consequence, out of 800 C.O.’s at the Scrubs 200 attended the Quaker meeting, while when some 300 men were transferred to Wandsworth to make room for new arrivals at the Scrubs, I found 99 were classed as “Friends.” Though Quakers form so large a proportion of the prisoners, nearly every denomination is represented. I recognised this one day when, in company of six men and our religion was asked, I found myself the only Quaker, while there was one Wesleyan, two Baptists, a Congregationalist, a Unitarian, and a Churchman. The warder asked one of the men if he was not an “anti-theologian”! One man on another occasion rather startled the officer by describing himself as a Pagan.
The Library
Prison has stamped upon my mind the meaning of the word “Erastian.” A prison chaplain with the best will in the world cannot avoid being just one of the officials on the staff, each and all of whom form part of the State machinery of punishment. Nevertheless, he may be looked upon as “Officer of the Humanities,” for he is responsible for the library, the source of what is practically the sole alleviator of prison life—books. On entry one is given a Bible, Prayer Book, and Hymn Book. In the ordinary way these would be supplemented by a curious little manual of devotion entitled “The Narrow Way,” but at the Scrubs Quakers were mercifully allowed in its place the Fellowship Hymn Book and the Friends’ Book of Discipline. The beauty and helpfulness of the latter was a revelation, some of its finest passages from Yearly Meeting Epistles in the past reminding me of a vigorous “Thomas à Kempis.” I found intense help in memorising all the Whittier and similar hymns in the Fellowship Book, and also getting word perfect in well-known hymns which I imagined I knew until I tried to repeat them. During the solitary hours of work and rest the learning and repetition of such verse are both a mental and spiritual stimulant of the greatest value.
In addition to these books two educational volumes may be ​allowed during the first month. The difficulty, however, at Wormwood Scrubs was that the presence of the objectors meant demand for books in this category that the library was not used to and could not stand. I personally was particularly lucky in being given Boswell’s Johnson on entry, but when I applied to the chaplain for it to be changed all I could get was a school prize volume, “Brave Deeds by Brave Men,” which I would rather have titled “Treachery by Traitors.” Other men whispered, however, that all they had, for instance, was a historical reader or a mental arithmetic! Conditions were better at Wandsworth, as the proportion of C.O.’s to ordinary prisoners was far less, and there was some chance of getting eventually books one applied for after making a choice in the catalogue which one is allowed to see.
The range shown in the latter was extensive and peculiar, and I was somewhat amused to notice that all Miss Braddon’s books were available except one entitled “Her Convict”! During the second month, besides the educational book—if the library has one left—you may have a work of fiction. In the third month and onwards there may be two novels, though on request a volume of poetry or essays may be substituted for one of the latter, while, on the other hand, instead of two books, a bound magazine volume may be had—and is, I believe, the choice. The last allowance may sound quite generous, but it must be remembered that reading at meal times alone would occupy three hours a day, or at least eighteen hours a week, not counting the work-free hours of Sunday. On the other hand, it must be remembered that reading or meditation is the sole manner of recreation, and one can absorb a great deal. My library list varied considerably in quantity and quality. For instance, for a week in the second month I had a volume of seventeen short stories of a “Tit-Bits” variety, by G. R. Sims, and no educational book; once in the third month I had A. E. W. Mason’s “Broken Road,” our grandmother’s favourite “The Wide, Wide World,” with a text and a tear in every line, and volume four of Gibbons’ “Rome”; whilst once in the fourth stage I had “Captains Courageous,” Taine’s Notes sur l’Angleterre, Prothero’s “Psalms in Human Life,” and George Fox’s Journal; the latter had been sent in to me, with Home Office permission, as a devotional book, on condition it afterwards became prison property. The Librarian expressed his surprise at such a volume being allowed, though he assured me he knew and had read it, “and,” he added, “I’ve also read his book of Martyrs”!
Prison’s Worst Torture
It was, however, in connection with my prison reading and the consequent chance of study which the rush of life outside deprives us of that I experienced especially the deprivation of any opportunity of writing, except for ephemeral purposes on the cell slate. There is in prison no method of recording permanently thoughts that occur to one during reading or meditation, of noting for future reference passages that may be found helpful or striking, or of making notes for plans on return to ordinary life. Perhaps such a lack is felt particularly by a journalist, whose memory becomes accustomed to the stimulus of notes, and personally the one single alteration which would go to make gaol life more tolerable than anything else would be the provision of pencil and paper, and the permission to retain the latter on release. So nervous are the prison officers, however, that unauthorised writing shall be indulged in that when a man is writing the three quarter page letter allowed at the end of two months (and thereafter in six weeks and then at monthly intervals) he has to put outside his cell all his books and all the official rules, diet, and “Prisoners’ Aid Society” cards that hang on the walls.
No Self-Expression
Yet this is only another aspect of the absence of opportunity for self-expression which weighs so heavily on the prisoner. He has a registered number which is permanent, but is usually referred to by his officer by his cell number. This alters, of course, with any change of location.
Any trivial incident which reminds you of this fact is most welcome. The visit of the chaplain and the chance of a little talk, the answer to such an inquiry on the part of a warder as “What was you before you was a soldier?” and the explanation amongst other things that you were not a soldier, or, more exceptionally, the striking suggestion made me by a lively young officer who, bringing me back to my cell after an official visit which had detained me until supper was being served, offered to race me down the path to a certain gate—all such things have an extraordinarily exhilarating effect because of their scarcity.
The Cell’s Public Privacy: The Peephole
It will be good one day in the future again to live in a room in which there is not a peephole in the door. The prisoner never knows when he is being watched, and however innocent his action it is unpleasant to feel that complete privacy can never be relied on. During the evening officers wear silent felt slippers, and their visits are only known by the slight click of the shield over the hole as he moves it to look through. It was disconcerting, for instance, when engaged one morning in saying my prayers, suddenly to be accused by a voice on the other side of the door of being the author of tapping signals which were going on through the wall somewhere in the neighbourhood, and on my denying the charge, to be told that at any rate you had just been using “foul langwidge”! A few nights later, the tapping still continuing, and evidently still suspicious of me, the same officer declared I had attempted to deceive him by getting into bed with my trousers on, having heard him about. I was, as a matter of fact, sitting up in bed with my jacket round me finishing a book before lights out, but it was only by getting out of bed I was able to prove that I had taken as many of my clothes off as it is possible to divest oneself of under conditions in which nightwear is not provided!
Our Prussian Penal System
"No One the Better for Being in Prison"
In the short talks I have been able to get with warders, or before arrest with policemen, I have never discovered one who could admit that any man was ever the better for being in prison. Personally I can imagine nothing more calculated to put a man permanently on the road to ruin. God forbid that I should ever be responsible for sending a man, woman, or child to prison, for any injury to me or mine.
The attempted imposition of silence is unmoral, even if not immoral; the isolation drives the man into himself and tempts him at every turn to fulfil the human instinct of communication with his fellows, a course only possible by the exercise of some petty deceit or the breaking of a rule.
Evil Brooding
The opportunity for brooding over grievances is a corrosive evil. What it must be to the ordinary prisoner—victim of social conditions—I can well imagine from the effect on myself of the mountain of annoyance aroused within me by the molehill incident of delay in getting the promised privilege of a pint of breakfast tea, owing to a temporary error in allocating me the proper marks which entitled me to this addition to the menu.
Punishment
Punishment may take either of several forms. These include the forfeiting of privileges in the way of books, visits, etc., for a period; the performance of the daily task in the cell instead of in association with other prisoners; the loss of remission marks, that is the loss of good behaviour marks by which a prisoner would earn a remission not exceeding one-sixth of his sentence; and the putting of the prisoner on punishment diet. Punishment diet consists of one pound of bread and water per day. This dietary must not be continued for more than three consecutive days. If “P.D.” is imposed for a longer period “B” diet must be given during each alternate period of three days.
Ugliness Everywhere
One of my most conscious lacks in prison was the entire outward absence of beauty. All that ministered outwardly to this vital human need was an occasional glimpse of a sunset, the lines, curves, and distant frescoes of the fine Renaissance Chapel at Wormwood Scrubs, and even the warm brown and green of the worsted bedding. A thrill came over me when at exercise—under leaden sky and between lowering walls at Wandsworth—I one day saw flying overhead some seagulls, stragglers from the winter visitors to the Thames a mile or two away. Their graceful form, their easy motion, their association in one’s mind with the free and open life of sea and shore, of sunshine and “whale-backed ​down,” were as a refreshing breeze which blew away some of the gaol cobwebs in the mind.
Outstanding in my prison life will always be the remembrance of the joy with which I happened upon Wordsworth’s lines:—
“Whose dwelling is the light of setting sun. And the round ocean and the living air And the blue sky and in the mind of man. A motion and a spirit which impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.”
Prison a Cosmopolis
What a curious cosmopolis a British prison may be. To start with, practically every district in Great Britain is represented by its “objector” prisoner or prisoners, some already undergoing their second or third sentence. In one prison a prominent figure at exercise was a full-blooded negro objector, a former resident of the West Indies. Mingled with the ordinary prisoners, mostly old men or young boys, though there was a good sprinkling of men of military age, were yellow men, brown men, and black men, and late one night the whole prison was roused by the arrival of the crew of a captured German submarine under a strong armed guard.
And what a set of paradoxes was involved in it all. In one cell was a man beginning his life sentence for manslaughter—because he had taken life. In other cells were scores of young men, confined there because they would not take life. In one wing of the prison were soldiers in detention, mostly for being absentees, and, therefore, apparently, tired of killing; and beneath the C.O.’s were imprisoned some Germans because they had been too eager to kill.
Prison Life—“Meals and Mail Bags”
The prison regime provides every temptation to atrophy, and to let oneself vegetate. Several times I felt acutely the danger that my pacifism might merely become passivism, and that if not watchful I might let my life develop into meals and mail bags. It was almost with resentment that any little interference with the mechanical daily regime was received, even when it afforded a chance of such a change as the transference to Wandsworth. Many a time the truly horrible question arose in my mind, “Is our whole system of civilisation based on prison and a fear of it?” Sometimes I thought with shame that it was; but, No. Bad as our ​present social order is I do not believe it would be plagued one whit more with crime and criminals were our present penal system abolished to-morrow. The total crime I am certain would not be increased; indeed, I believe it would be definitely diminished, for fear of punishment does little or nothing to deter the hardened criminal, while the stigma of having been to prison (which now almost inevitably turns the weak man who has fallen once into a permanent gaolbird) would be absent. It is pitiful to see the old, bent, grey-haired men who have evidently become habituated to prison as their home, and still more tragic to watch the “juvenile adults” branded as criminals almost before they have left school, whose defiant eyes contrast strikingly with the dull look of older prisoners.
What a generation of prison reformers we should make—and must make.
Think of what Elizabeth Fry and John Howard effected, and how much greater will be our advantages when we can back our proposals not merely as the result of investigation but of personal experience, back them by the unescapable authentic warrant of those who can say,
“We have been in prison and we know.”
The allowing of books, letters, visits, these of course are all steps in the right direction. In the visits, to be sure, one’s friends are seen, or not seen, through two thicknesses of wire gauze. It is really an interview in semi-darkness. Four photos are allowed after a month—another right step. Yet another was the practice of the prison chaplain to announce from the front of the altar after service a few items of war news. They were presented in what seemed to be “Daily Mail” headlines, and looking back on them one reflects that, however well and candidly intended, they usually gave a very misleading impression of what was happening. But, however that may be, let me acknowledge that all these are welcome moves in the right line; it remains to add when that acknowledgment is made that they do but touch the merest surface of the problem.
Wanted—A Prison Newspaper
I thought often with amusement, but with more than amusement, of a “Sub Rosa” suggestion made in the “Daily News.” A year or two ago, when I was editing Sell’s publication, “The World’s Press,” Mr. S. Leigh Hughes, M.P., contributed to that work an article on Australian and American prison papers. He declared that we should soon want a “Cells’ World’s Press.” The recollection of “Sub Rosa’s” wheeze had its very serious side for me. The regular provision of a prison journal of some sort, even of one that was heavily censored, would be of the utmost value as a relief to the deadening, debilitating, soul-destroying influence of prison monotony. It would greatly increase the ​opportunity for some reforming influences being brought to bear upon the prisoners.
No C.O. Privileges Wanted
Any alleviation, however, must apply to the treatment of all prisoners, whether C.O.’s sentenced for refusal to commit what they believe to be a crime, or poor little sneak thieves convicted of some trespass against the community. I know I am expressing the feeling of most, if not all, of my C.O. prisoner comrades in emphasising the relief with which we heard that a scheme for internment, rumours regarding which had reached us, had been abandoned. This was not because we would not welcome less stringency of treatment, but because we felt and feel that there is great danger that special treatment will be a salve to the conscience of the public which, while tolerating the horrors of war, is uncomfortable regarding the hardships we are undergoing, and that having obtained certain new privileges for us they will be then tempted to think that “persecution in kid gloves” ceases to be persecution, and thus misconceive the real issue. The legal but ignored right of absolute exemption is the only one that should be striven for, either by us or by our non-pacifist sympathisers. We do not invite suffering, but we are only too willing to pay this price rather than that the fundamentals of our stand should be in danger of being obscured.
I write on the closing day of the first year of the operation of conscription in this country. True, my table is the corner of a prisoner’s bed in an Army guardroom. I am separated from all I hold dear from the world outside, and I am awaiting with my companions certain conviction and sentence to a further period of confinement. Yet it is with nothing short of an amazed thankfulness that I can look back upon the progress and effect of our movement in the past year. This is an almost negligible period in a fight for the “New Way of Life” for which we are standing when we look back and consider how long our spiritual forefathers had to struggle and strive in the great conflict between Customs and Ideals which throughout all history has marked the onward movement of mankind.
“Comrades, we whom Love is leading, out of shades of darkest night, Hearts aglow and faces sunward, children of the morning light. Dark the way that lies behind us, rough the path our feet have trod, But around us clouds are breaking on the breezy hills of God.”