The Sun.
London, England, 1849-09-20 00:00:00

i-lit Wit iltiTit aint

LONDON, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1849,

Recently, among the many distressing inquests
held on occasions of sudden death by Cholera, it may
have been observed that several Chartist prisoners
have been destroyed by this terrible epidemic during
the period of their incarceration. We would particu-
larly direct attention to these cases, because we regard
these unfortunate men as having been subjected to
very cruel and unjustifiable treatment—treatment
which, inasmuch as it terminated in painful and pre-
mature death, we cannot term otherwise than as
something very near akin to deliberate assassination.
Let us take as a case in point, perhaps
the latest instance of this melancholy ill-usage
recorded in the public journals, the instance
of ALEXANDER SHARPE, a person implicated
with Wieriams, FUSSELL, and other Chartist agi-
tators. On the 12th of July, 1848, the time of his
first entrance into the place of his confinement,
namely, Tothill-fields Prison, this unhappy man,
recently deceased, was known to be in excellent
health, and would in all human probability have still
continued in existence, but for the unjustifiable pu-
nishment to which he was subjected during his
lengthened incarceration. From the particulars
elicited before the Coroner, it would appear that up
to the 11th of August, 1849, the prisoner was ex-
empted from the customary prison employment of
picking oakum, in consequence of the payment of
five shillings weekly by his relations. Since
then, however, the usual pittance not being
continued, he was required by the deputy-
governor to pick the ordinary allowance of oakum.
On refusing to comply with this requisition, SHARPE
appears to have been conducted as a criminal before
the visiting magistrates on the 20th ultima, when
those authorities, by some extraordinary perversion
of the power entrusted to their keeping, ordered him
to receive for the next six days as nutriment a cer-
tain quantity of water and on the average about I#lb.
of bread per diem, and to receive this in a state of
uninterrupted solitary confinement. Be it observed
this was the decision of the visiting magistrates at the
very time when cholera had appeared within the
walls of the prison. The result was only
what might have been naturally anticipated.
The abrupt change from full diet and plenty
of exercise to a wretched diet of bread and
water, and solitary confinement, produced a violent
attack of diarrhoea, which ended at last in death by
Asiatic Cholera. -When these distressing, and we
must add, most disgraceful circumstances were
elicited from the different witnesses summoned
before the Coroner, it was very pertinently inquired
by one of the jury how it happened that the de-
ceased had either to work or pay for his exemption
when his sentence did not include hard labour ? The
reply given by one of the Inspectors of Prisons was to
the effect that, for the sake of prison discipline, the
local authorities were empowered to force such an
alternative upon a prisoner, referring, in corroboration
of his statement, to the Act 4th George IV., chap.
64, section 38. So ! for the sake of prison discipline,
a supplementary punishment, apart altogeth-r from
the decision of the court of justice, is at any time
inflicted upon an unfortunate prisoner by the Inca
authorities, and in the event of a refusal of com-
pliance is severely enforced by the visiting magis-
trates I If this be permitted to continue then are the
sentences pronounced by judges in open court mere
humbug. We insist upon the necessity for the
abrogation of this 38th section of the 4th George
IV., chap. 64. Until the law be modified in
some measure the public will be liable to hear
of repeated instances such as those of poor
SHARPE and his companions—men subjected to treat-
ment so cruelly superfluous that they are driven into
the jaws of death through the ghastly medium of the
Asiatic Cholera.

So imperatively neces=ary, indeed, is wholesome
nutriment, or rather, we should say generous diet for
the prevention of the spread of this destructive epide-
mic, that we do seriously believe it to be a duty
required from us by the common sentiments of huma-
nity to supply with better food than ordinarily the
wretched inmates of our places of incarceration.
This, at the very least, we conceive to be a tempo-
rary duty forced upon us by the occasion, if we
are not also imperatively called upon for such
a relaxation of the confinement of the in-
mates of our gaols as would enable them
to breathe more frequently and more freely than
usual the invigorating air of heaven. So far from
striving in this manner to ameliorate the condition of
prisoners at a period when a terrible disease is deci-
mating the population, our local authorities are only
diminishing the already paltry amount of exercise
and nourishment. If our prisons are not the filthy
and miserable receptacles of cri •me which they were
in a previous generation, before the sublime philan-
thropy of the benevolent flowAan shed its purifying
consolations into those lairs of sin, and dens of afflic-
tion, these occurrences, which have of late saddened
the heart of the community, show sufficiently
well that there is still great room for improve.
ment. They tell us that we must not
boast prematurely of changes that are still
incomplete. They demonstrate that our vaunted
benefactions are up to this moment rather nominal
than actual. They cry out in voices that are but too
audible for that interference of the Press which has
become the precursor of all the interferences of
Parliament. Listening to these inarticulate but still
easily cognizable appeals, rising from the silence and