Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-02-27
PRISON TORTURE In ENGLAND.
Statements Of Daniel
Reddtng, q Fenian Prisoner.
OUR STOCK.
dec31 cod flip If

Extraordinary Statements Of Daniel
| BEDDING, q Fenian Prisoner.
The London correspondent of the New
York World writes as follows:
! Are the British convict prisons bells Of
torture, crammed with helpless victims and
| incarnate fiends? Charles Reade, in 'Ney.
er Too Late to Mend" drew pictures of life
in English jails which curdled with horror
the blood of the reader, but Charles Reade,
it was said, exaggerated, and even if his
pictures were true twenty years ago, prison
discipline since then has been supposed to
have vastly improved, and at the Interna-
tional Congress of Prison Philanthropists,
held here last summer, the British prisons
were represented as models of perfection.
But if some affidavits read before the Court
of the Queens Bench, day before yester-
day, be true-nay, if one-tenth part ofthem
be true-the English prisons are worse
than hells. What would you say of
the conduct Of prison physician who
is so "loya" that he selects the
political prisoners under his charge and
subjects them to months of ex-
quisite torture, telling them that their
crimes against the Queen were not suffi-
GENTLY punished by Imprisonment, but
must be expiated by additional suffering;
who starves some of them; who orders
paralyzed man, who is unable to walk, to
be dragged around the exercise ground; who
strips him of all bis clothing, places him in
apunishment cell, and has him beaten with
a staff, leaving him there to lie naked on
the stones for four hours; who burns him
with red-hot irons and pierces his legs with
heated needles; who blisters his flesh until
it is raw and then ties gslvanic battery to
the exposed flesh and subjects him to the
intense pain of repeat ed shocks; who pulls
him from his wretched bed by the heels and
drags him over the stones, his bleeding
head knocking against the rough flags; who
rigs him up with harness of ropes and
jerks him about; who makes the wardens
toss him high in the air and let him fall
violently back; who himself beats him in
the stomach with such violence that the
wretch yomits blood; and who, failing to
quite kill him, turns him out of the prison
at the end Of his five years such a wreck
that the surgeon ofthe hospital to which
he was removed, testifes that, after
three months of the most careful nursing,
he can scarcely move or speak? You
say, probably, that this is all a ro-
11ahOC, DOb Ii ID bIO SODobd4SO vi q SOlOiuA
affidavit made by Daniel Redding, Fenian
prisoner, convicted in Nov. 1867, at Man.
chester, and sentenced to five years. i'm
prisonment, which ended on the 18th of
October last. The affidavit was read, as l
have said, before the Court of Queens
Bench in support Of an application for
rule nisi, calling upon DR.. Burns, medical
officer of Chatham Prison, and DR.. Wilson, |
medical officer of Milkbank Prison, to show |
cause why criminal information should |
not be fled against them. The Court, with |
strange reluctance, however, granted the |
rule, and the case will come on next April. |
Every one may not know how extremely |
difficult it is to prevent atrocities like those |
in prisons and to obtain proof Of them |
when committed. The system of inspec- |
ton is a sham-the officers of the prison |
all hang together and defend each other
Tie prisoners often do not dare to speak |
when questioned, for they know that if they |
make complaint the officers will revenge |
cruelty upon them-snd if one /
IN his despair does venture to complain,
The chances are ninety-nine to one that the
inspectors disbelieve him, preferrine to take
he word of the honest wardens rather than
hat of the convict rascal. But it certainly
ought to be within the power of the Eng
ish Government TO protect the prisoners
rom such tortures as those which this Fe-
han swears he has suffered.