The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1892-02-23
VANITY HARD 10 DOWN.

e.
The Greatest Trial of Female Prisoners
Is Their Prison Garb.
An eX-keeper of n penitentiary. beng
asked the other day to describe some
of the characteristics of the female
prisoners in the wards, said that one of
the things that struck her most forci-
bly, was the way in which the personal.
vanity of women prisoners remained
strong within most of them to the last
no matter what other traits prison life
crushed out When bustles were fash
lonable many prisoners would sacrifice
the warmth of their petticoat even in
mid-winter in order to roll them up I'M
der their skirts to give them u fashion
able hump behind. No man but the
chaplain and the warden saw them, and
then only occasionally, and what salts.
faction it gave them that would offset
their shivering it is hard to see.
The wearing of prison uniform is d
great blow to them. Few of them.
when they enter, seem to expect that.
1t never occurred to them that they
ments and wear the ugly convict garb,
and they plead for u ribbop ozatring
moro pitifully than they would for
food But when ii comes to cropping
their hair closs,/ that is the finishing
touch; yoUa think their hearts would
break. They may have remained
st9hd and stoical all through the trial
received their sentence, even. in
silence. but when it comes to cropping
off their treasured locks their plead
ings and prayers and tears and cries
would move q heart of stone
II remember the case of one woman
in particular" said the speaker, who
managed to excite and sustain the envy
of nearly all her companions in mis-
fortune by keeping her short black
hair shining with oil. How she did it,
where she got the oil, was mystery
that set myself to find out 1t took
me long time to do it, but finally 1
was rewarded. She used to let her
soup get perfectly cold. Then she
would carefully skim off the grease
that had risen to the top and use it on
her hair. Then she drank her SOUP
Try to drink cold soup yourself, and
you will be able to appreciate the sac
rifice she made for vanity's sake.
Another woman managed to rouge
her cheeks, on which the prison life
was settling its inevitable pallor. This
caused even more stir than the oiled
hair did, and when coaxing failed to
draw her secret from her, the other
prisoners made charges of favoritism
against me, intimating that / let the
rosy-cheelSed woman have privileges
denied to Others watched this pris-
oner also for some time before I found
that she could make her gums bleed
easily by scratching them with her
nails, and this blood she applied to her
cheeks with gratifying success.
ITO do this, she had to have n look
ing-glass something prohibited by the
rules And yet she had one-a piece OF
ordinary glass with u black rag behind
it for quicksilver. When found it on
her bed, 1 remembered that weeks be-
fore she had subjected herself to extra
punishment by breaking u pane of
glass. With piece of the broken pane
she had constructed this primitive mir
ror, in which she got distorted view
of her features that no doubt gave her
great comfort though why it should
not rather depress her spirits to look M
herself, in such clothes and with
cropped hair. I never could under
stand IN. Y. Tribune.