The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-23 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, JUNE 23, 1862.

LITERATURE.

Female Life in Prison. By a Prison Matron.
Hurst and Blackett.
We have rarely met with a more striking exem-
plification of the venerable adage, "Truth is stranger
than fiction," than in the work before us, which
gives a woman's experience and estimate of her
sex when hard( ned in crime, dead to reason, and un-
shackled by self-control. That the theme of the book
is in one sense a sad one the title above is sufficient
to imply. Nevertheless, it is rendered extremely
interesting by the handling. The whole of the
inner life of a prison is put before us ; the influence
of confinement on the different characters of the
inmates is shown, some of the defects of the exist-
ing system are pointed out, and certain valuable
suggestions are made for improvements. But al-.
though the "Prison Matron" has retired from ser-
vice, the work' is not written in a captious spirit, or
with a desire to magnify abuses ; on the contrary,
merits are stated as fairly as defects, praise is given
where due, and the tone of the work is thoroughly
honest and impartial. The prisons described are
Millbank and Brixton, with both of which the
writer appears to be thoroughly conversant, though
the details concerning Millbank are, perhaps, the
most ample, this being the prison to which offend-
ers are first sent—then, if their conduct be good,
they are transferred to Brixton. The first opera-
tion to which the prisoner has to submit on arrival
is that of having the hair cut, to which most of
them strongly object, but it is, in the writer's
opinion, a test of character.
One woman will be resigned to her fate on the instant,
and, with a Socratic stoicism, will compress her lips and
submit herself to the shears, and march away to her bath
afterwards in a business-like manner. A second will have a
shivering fit over it, a third will weep passionately, and a
fourth will pray to be spared the indignity, and implore the
matron on her knees to go to the lady-superintendent and
state her case for her.
Some women are impressed with the idea that coaxing
will go a long way towards softening the matron's heart, or
at least obtain a variation in the rules, and a less length of
hair from their heads ; and consequently bestow many
" my dears," and " God bless you's" on the operator.
The greatest trouble in my experience of prison life was
with an old woman of sixty years of age, and with about
the same number of grey hairs io her head. She was an
old prison• bird—had spent two-thirds of her life in prison,
and was as vain of her personal appearance as any girl of
seventeen.

" No, Miss 8.," she said to the operator, after catching
sight of the scissors, and drawing herself up with the
haughtiness of a duchess—" not this time, if you please,
Miss B. It can't be done."
But Miss B. replied that it could be done, and was abso-
lutely necessary to be done before the prisoner left the
room.
"Things have altered a little, Miss 8., since I saw you
last, I can assure you. You've no power to touch a hair of
my head, mum."
" How's that ?"
"'lf you please, mum, I'm married," and the old woman
regarded the matron with undisguised triumph.
" And what's that to do with it ?—sit down—you really
must sit down."
" What's that to do with it I" shrieked the old woman,
indignantly, "why it's my husband's hair now, and you
daren't touch it, according to law. It belongs to my hus-
band, not to me, and you've no right to touch it. Lord
bles you, the Queen of England daren't lay a finger on it
now."
And the old woman's staunch faith in the laws of her
country to protect her grey hairs, would in any other
place, under any other circumstances, have been supremely
ludicrous. Argument with her was useless—she did not
see that anything more was required after an expression of
her opinion—she would not object to the bath, because the
law had nothing to say in the matter of baths to married
women, but her hair couldn't be touched by any mortal
power. When there were signs of being uninfluenced by
her eloquent expositions, she demanded to see the governor
—he knew the law, of course—and when her hair was cut
to the statutable length, she vowed to make a full state-
ment to the directors, on the next board meeting, and
please put her name down to see those directors at once.
Such an infamous violation of the laws of her country she
had never been a witness to in her time
And strange as it may appear, the plea of marriage has
latterly been very often urged by prisoners, under the same
circumstance. " It's their husband's hair" has now be-
come a constant reason why the rules of the prison should
be waived in their particular case. And when it is not
urged as a plea, women, whom a repetition of crime has
brought back to the old quarters, generally offered, as their
first piece of information, that they have been married
since their last incarceration. There is a peculiar
craving to be considered an " honest married woman,"
and the husband, more often than otherwise, is alleged to
be in the army—probably out of compliment to the military
character of the governor and his deputy.
Althoughlthis operation may be, as the writer says,
" essentially necessary for cleanliness," there can
be little doubt that it has on some prisoners an injuri-
ous mental effect. They regard it in the light of a
mutilation ; one prisoner was delirious for a day and
a night after the operation ; and the writer admits
that she is " inclined to think that there are really
a few who are more sullen, more doggedly obsti-
nate, or more ferocious, according to their respective
natures, from the moment their locks of hair are
strewing the floor of the reception room," and we
suspect that this has something to do with the fits
of extreme violence called " breaking out," to which
some of them are subject. So different is the mo-
notonous prison life from that to which they have
been used, that they welcome, as a relief, even a
change for the worse. Thus a prisoner will smash
the windows and furniture of her cell, tear up her
blankets, and then be carried kicking and scream-
ing to "the dark," as the place of punishment is
called, just by way of a change. These dark cells
have, the writer says, " been long secretly acknow-
ledged failures, and a fitting and proper punish-
ment for these troubled spirits might be thought
of with advantage by the directors. Confinement
in these cells is an objectionable punishment; it
affects the prisoners' health; it has never worked
any good, and it has done much moral, physical,
and even mental injury. It has always represented,
in my eyes, a relic of the old barbarous times, the
little-minded style of punishment, as childish in one
sense as it is cruel in another." It seems to us
tolerably clear that, if the aim of prison life be to
reform, as well as to punish, the present system re-
quires modification. Its extreme monotony pro-
duces a revulsion to extreme violence. There is no
safety valve. Nay, the monotony affects even the
matrons themselves. Thus, "one matron who has
since left the service—a matron of a somewhat impul-
sive disposition—once told me in confidence, and with
a somewhat comical expression of horror in her
countenance, that she was afraid she should break
out herself, the temptation appeared so irresistible.
" I have been . used to so different a life—father,
mother, brothers, and sisters, all round me, light-
hearted and happy—that it's like becoming a pri-
soner oneself to folio w this tedious and incessant
occupation. I assure you, Miss —, that when
I hear the glass shattering, and the women scream-
ing, my temples throb, my ears tingle, and I want
to break something—dreadfully." Still, admitting
that the monotony and confinement is after a
time unbearable to those who have been used to a
life of freedom and licence, the writer emphatically
states that some of the female prisoners are irre•
deemably bad, far worse than the male. Thus—
" In the penal classes of the male prisoners there
is not one man to match the worst inmates of
our female prisons." Again—" Amongst a certain
class of women it appears as much a necessity to
act in a manner utterly at variance with common
sense and decency as it is to breathe and live."
Of these characters we offer the following sample--
Towers was a woman sentenced to four years' penal ser-
vitude, for stealing from the person, I believe, and her in-
troduction to Millbank Prison was a sad day for the prison
officers. Not that she was the most violent woman who
ever entered, for physical reasons hereafter to be mentioned,
but that she was more untruthful, malicious, lewd, and
horrible than even a prison matron had met with hitherto.
It is with some reluctance that I approach her character,
but it may be interesting to students of human nature to
have an outline of this specimen—albeit it is impossible for
a woman's pen to fill the shadings in all that depth and in-
tensity necessary for a truthful portraiture.
There is much prison detail that is unapproachable; and
airanohma,t—_,
the story of Towers's prison life cannot be dwelt on in all
its horrible minuteness. Two men, whose minds loved to
grope in dark places, might have been glad of such an ec-
centric character for a story or romance—Edgar Allan Poe
from her
and Eugene Sue.
Towers was not more than three or four and twenty—in
tha•
n nßon-bookg I believe her age is registered as less
made one shudder to Millbank
swhe.n"she first entered Prison. Phy-
ist might have guessed much of her character
ceunte ance—it was so disproportionate and ye-
volting. A
like her; and
white-faced ape would have
_been something
was a look in her black eyes which
limbs by some early accident had to be carried into prison.
Towers wastaecripple, and
criminal propensities. The loss of h Ilse of her
no check upon her
Tower
been
bad—even the prisoners ;ere's, a word, was all that was
horrified at her.
1t She's like the devil hisseelfisn't she, miss?". one pri-
soner, who was not noted for good behaviour, remarked
once. now Oho reached Brixton, save on medical grounds,

I have ever been at a loss to discover ; but certain it is that
to Brixton Towers was conveyed in due course, and carried
from a cab through the prison-yards to her particular cell.
In that cell she was accustomed to lie on her bed for
several days together, refusing to get up—alleging, with
the most awful oaths, ter inability to move; praying, with
a horrible earnestnese, for further calamities to fall upon
her ; and blindness, leprosy, and 50 other ills to seize those
who worried her to rise. In my experience I do not re-
member Towers going once into the airing yard by her free
will, or by compulsion; there was a morbid satisfaction in
remaining in bed, in using every endeavour to make her-
self ill, by refusing food, and even by injuring herself.
Blaspheming and singing were her two principal employ-
ments ; if needlework were given her, she would tear her
work to pieces, and swallow her needle to horrify the
matron. She was taken to the refractory cells at times,but
her crippled condition rendered her transfer thence an
almost instantaneous process ; and her schemes for removal
and self-damage were horribly ingenious. She was partial
to secreting a piece of glass about her clothing, opening her
veins with it, and allowing them to bleed silently, giving
no hint of what she had done. It was only her gradual
faintness that gave the alarm, and brought relief to her,
otherwise she would have bled stoically to death in her bed.
And this not once or twice, but in a general way, however
closely watched.
It soon became absolutely necessary to have a special
cell, and two women constantly to attend upon her. Even
with these precautions, Towers would manage to secrete her
store of glass, or pieces of jagged pebbles, inside her bed;
and it became often necessary to remove her, without any
warning, to another bed, and carefully open her own, and
take all her store of dangerous materials therefrom. But,
by some mystery never solvable by prison vigilance, the
glass or the pebble was always available and ready to be
produced from her bed, or pillow, or even her back hair,for
the horrible gash which blanched the faces of her watchers.
If she was anxious to proceed to the infirmary, some such
scheme she would always adopt, despite the vigilance of
her officer; and in the infirmary she would continue the
practice till her life has been despaired of.
Towers always rallied, however, and allowed herself
sufficient time to recover some of her old strength before,in
a business-like manner, she would proceed to hack at her
veins again. By way of change she would sometimes pow-
der the glass and swallow it, and bring on internal
hemorrhage—a practice adopted by more than one prisoner
at both Millbank and Brixton.
In her cell; as in her infirmary, Towers knew no cere-
mony, and scoffed at all respect for time or place : her
principal amusement in either was lying on her back, and
yelling, at the top of her voice, Dick Turpin's supposed
song of " My bonny black Bess."
" Then while I've a bottle, what can I do less,
Than drink to the health of my bonny black Bess ?"
became as familiar to the ears of the prison matrons of
Towers's ward, as to any lover of Bacchanalian songs at a
low beer-shop.
She had some talent for extempore ballads also—neither
appropriate, select, nor decent—in which the names of her
officers were brought in, and much violent language added
by way of spice to the composition; but the effort was not
well sustained, and she slid back into " My bonny black
Bess" after a while.
Sometimes she would lie in bed, and scream for help, till
assistance arrived, when she would struggle into a sitting
posture, and fling every available utensil in her cell at the
light, or the heads of the officers—she was not particular—
accompanying each effort at damage by an oath, or an ex-
pression that made the blood run cold.
There were times when Towers could be persuaded or '
humoured into quietness, but the extent of her good be-
haviour was uncertain, and always wound up with one of
her extraordinary feats. Despite the inability to make
good use of her limbs, she was ingenious enough to " break
out ;" when she was considered safe and quiet for the
night, and too weak to do much mischief, she would
wriggle out of bed, shuffle herself to the cell walls, to which
she would cling with one hand and smash the glass with
the other, shrieking like no human being all the while. She
had her own peculiar way of standing on defence when the
men were sent to remove her—a vicious style of butting
with her head, for which, before her habits were known,
the guards wereunprepared, and lost their teeth and re-
ceived black eyes in consequence. In the infirmary she
would suddenly drop from her bed, and, with an eel-like
writhe, make for the bedside of other prisoners, and the
basins that might be there, which she would smash with
demoniac satisfaction. Attached to the infirmary are three
cells for patients refractory even in
periodthe i
ofrm haerryilwlnaseas or convalescence;
their and
Taongderteh,es
onehab imtaotisetnredmuriotnegthe from
and at all hours of the day and night would that abomin-
able refrain of " drinking to the health of my bonny Black
Bess" ring out and keep the sick women restless.
"Oh I how I do wish that cussed Towers was dead I"
fhave heard an invalid exclaim, as she turned restlessly in
her bed ; but Towers continued to live and open veins with
impunity, and sing "My bonny Black Bess" at the top of
her voice, to the imminent risk of breaking a vessel.
It became at last necessary to construct a special "con-
valescent cell" from an unoccupied room amongst the dark
cells ; and here Towers, with two women prisoners ever on
watch, struggled against death and mocked it, and yet lived.
One of the modes in which these women are
employed is that of slop-making for the large city
firms with whom the Government enters into con-
tracts, and against this system the writer very pro-
perly protests, as it is impossible to imagine one
more unjust to the honest and industrious poor,
and it is only wonderful that it could ever have
been tolerated. The writer says—
I have been often tempted to wonder if the workhouses
would be always full, if women would have to hesitate at
all between the parish and the prison, if Government
made no contracts with the slop-houses and the whole-
sale firms, and competed not so closely—so cruelly—
with the honest and hard-working poor. There will
be living illustrations to Hood's " Song of the Shirt"
to the end of time, if some better and more
just system be not presently adopted. I cannot think it
fair or humane to take contracts from such firms as Moses
and Sons, and others, at a price with which no woman who
has a rent to pay and a home to keep can possibly compete.
Prisoners, especially female prisoners, should do prison
work, army work, the binding of the prison books—even
the printing of the innumerable forms might possibly be
taught them—but no work beyond Government work, for
the sake of those who desire to live honestly and resist
temptation.
I am conscious that I am not the first to raise my voice
against this system ; but the matter has long since
dropped, and the system is at work still. It is a system
morally and radically wrong, and will fall some d
Go ay,
vern-
even
if the nation has a small extra tax to pa If
Y
ment would put the question to that nation, I think
its heart is large and sound enough not to shrink even
from that ordeal, for the sake of the poor atoms struggling
to be honest, and for the sake of Him who blessed them. In
one year, by one female prison, and for one firm alone,
forty-three tthousand, seven hundred and twenty-eight
shirts were made ; and the work is still done on as large a
scale, and thus diverted from its proper channel.
But while the bulk of the work is devoted to the
characteristics of the prisoners, the writer does not
fail to draw attention, and with reason, to the hard-
ships of the class to which she belonged. Some of
them enter too early (under 21) for the kind of duty
for which they are required; the number of matrons
compared with that of prisoners is too small, whilst
the hours of duty are decidedly too long. But the
writer shall state the case herself:—
A few more matrons on the staff at Millbank and Brixton
Prisons would obviate this unnecessary slavery, and not
add a costly item'to the balance-sheet of prison govern-
ment. lam assured it would be a saving in the end, for
some of the best officers in the prison fall ill after four or
five years' service; some break up and die; and their
places are hard to fill, and time is lost in teaching the
new assistants who arrive and are put upon probation.
Fourteen hours a day for seven days in the week—for Sun-
day is not a day of rest for prison matrons, save when it is
a Sunday's leave of absence—fourteen hours a day, Chris-
tian ladies and gentlemen, of unceasing vigilance, with a
mind ever strung to its ighest degree of tension, and a
body that is expected to be übiquitous. Of the extra duties
of removing a prisoner to refractory cells—of the extra
attention likely to be bestowed upon a matron by a vindic-
tive prisoner, in the shape of a pewter pint on the back of
the head—of the nights when the past day's excitement,
like the Thane of Cawdor, " murders sleep"—of the sud-
den rousings by the night officer, to see to a woman in
some particular ward to which the matron belongs, I say
nothing—events foreign to a day's routine happen almost
every day, and they add to the fatigue and anxiety of these
constant workers. Call it only fourteen hours a day, say
that only fourteen hours a day are expected of a prison
matron—and an increase thereto is a glaring exception to
the rule—is the rule just, humane, or politic ?
I have seen women off duty on the twelve hour nights
fling themselves exhausted on their beds, too tired to take
advantage of the fresh air outside which they are at liberty
to seek ; I have known young women enter full of health
and strength, and depart from the service in a few years,
aged and anxious-looking, with no strength left for any
new employment ; I have known others die. It is a service
that makes its officers old before their time, and undermines
their constitution ; it calls for reformation • it must obtain
it in good time, if those who have affered will only
honestly speak out. It is like no other service under
heaven; and a little thought amongst thedirectors—thought-
ful and kind-hearted men too I—one little dash of
the pen from the Secretary of State, and the Exchequer
would be but a few hundred pounds poorer in the year,
these Government employees spared much ill-health, and
the Government itself benefited by their longer service and
greater energy.
That this work will be extensively read, and that
its influence will be decidedly beneficial, we have
not the slightest doubt. It is temperately written,
is full of interesting matter, and the aim is a most
audable one.

Walter Langley ; or, the Race of Life. By the
Hon. Charles Stuart Saville. 3 vols. Hurst

attorney, named Macpherson, is forced to
enter the family of the Dowager Lady Forestdale
her, takes her with him to India, and they are
and Blackett.
This novel has the merit of being readable, and
the plot delineates the struggle for precedence at
college and in after life between Walter Langley,
nephew of the Earl of Forestdale, and Lord Wood-
mount, that
is on every o
nobleman's son,
aonf in which struggle
victor. It appears that
Pauline Worthington, Walter's mother, having lost
all her property through the dishonesty of a ras-
callyaa governess, where the young lord attempts her
virtue, but his brother, Colonel Langley, rescues
married at sea. But the colonel is shortly after
killed. The baggage containing the marriage cer-

tificate is carried off, and th© vessel in which the
ceremony was performed is lost with, as is supposed,
ad on board. Thus Walter is open to the stigma
of illegitimacy, but the Earl of Forestdale, repent-
ing of his former evil attempt on his mother, gene-
rously acknowledges him, and pensions the widow.
But young Lord Woodmount gets possession of the
secret, and, stung by envy, taunts his cousin, pro-
vokes a duel, is wounded, and Walter is forced to
fly. On board the vessel in which he takes refuge
he fortunately meets with one of the witnesses to
his mother's marriage, and discovers that the chap-
lain who performed the ceremony also survives.
The blot on his birth is thus removed. Lord Wood-
mount is accidentally killed, his father dies of grief,
and Walter marries the lady of his heart, and
comes into the title and estates. Several minor
stories are introduced, and form by no means the
least interesting portion of the work.