The Brunswick times. [volume] (Brunswick, Ga.) 188?-1900, 1897-06-13
WILDE TELLS TALES.
THE LATELY RELEASED NOVELIST
SCORES BRITISH JAIL SYSTEM.

ciOus CrueIty-LOng Hours In Dark
CelI-Warden Dismissed Fer Feeding a
Starving BOy-A Stern Arrangement.
Whatever may he the truth in regard
to the personal morals of Oscar Wilde,
who was released from prison on May
/ 9 after serving two years for a heinous
crime, he has done service to human
ity by writing remarkable letter about
the almost fiendish cruelty of the Eng
lish prison system in the treatment Of
child prisoners.
A warden named Martin, who was
employed at the Reading Jail, where
Wilde was confined, was dismissed re-
Gently for giving two or three biscuits
to starving child in one of the cells
The whole convict system of England
is too barbarous for belief in a civilized
country and age, but when it is applied
to child of / l years, as in this case, it
is inhuman. In the course of his long
letter Mr. Wilde says:
81 saw three children (referring to
the Monday previous to his release) who
had just been convicted. They were
standing in row in the prison dress.
They were all small. The youngest, to
whom the warden gave the biscuits, was
tiny little chap, and it was evident
that the prison officials were unable to
find clothes small enough to fit him.
The present treatment of children is
terrible. Children can understand pun
ishment inflicted by an individually;
what they cannot understand is punish
ment by society. A child is taken from
its parents by people whom it has never
seen, and, finding itself in a lonely cell
and ordered to be punished by the rep
resentative of a system that it cannot
understand, becomes prey to the first
and most prominent emotion produced
by modern prison life-the emotion of
terror.
1.-THE terror of a child III prison is
limitless. remember as was going to
exercise seeing in a Gimly lit cell oppo-
site my own a small boy Two warders
were talking to him with some stern
ness. The child's face was like white
wedge. There was sheer terror in it,
and in the eyes was the terror of a
hunted animal. The next morning
heard him at breakfast time crying and
calling to be let out The cry was for
his parents. From time to time could
be heard the deep voice of a warder
telling him to be quiet, and yet he had
not even been convicted of whatever
little otfense with which he was charged.
He was simply on remand.
''This terror that seizes and dom
mates the child, as the grown man, is
also intensified beyond power of express
sion by the solitary cell system. Every
child is confined i'll a cell for 20 hours
out of the "a. This is the appalling
thing. To shut child in dimly lit
cell for % hours day is an example of
cruelty and of stupidity.
"Inhuman treatment of child is al
ways inhuman by whomsoever infict-
ed. but inbuman treatment by society
is to a child more terrible, because no
appeal to the parent can be made to let
out the child from the dark room A
warder cannot. Most warders are fond
of children, but the system prohibits
the rendering of the child any assist
ance. Should they do so, as Martin did,
they are dismissed.
The second thing from which a
child suffers in prison is hunger. The
food consists Of piece of usually badly
r. Z - Il TN u " 55T5T
for breakfast. At neon he gets dinner
composed of tin of coarse Indian meal
stirabout and at half past piece of
dry bread and tin Of water for sup
per. This diet in the case of strong
man always produces illness, chiefly
diarrhea. In fact, in big prison as
tringent medicines are served regular
ly as matter of course. A child, as
rule, is incapable of eating the food. A
child who has been crying all day and
perhaps half the night i'll lonely cell
and who is preyed upon by terror sim
ply cannot eat food of this coarse, hor-
rible kind.
I'm the case of the little boy to
whom Martin gave the biscuits, the
child was crying from hunger. He was
utterly unable to eat the bread and wa
ter served for his breakfast Martin
went out after breakfast and bought a
few biscuits for the child rather than
see him starving. 1t was beautiful
action and was SO recognized by the
child, who, utterly unconscious of the
regulation Of the prison board, told one
of the senior wardens how kind the
junior warden had been to him. The
result was report and Martins dis
missal. New York Sun.