The Potteries Examiner : — 1872-11-30 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

CONVICT LIFE IN ENGLAND. Mr. William Tallock, secretary of the Howard Association has written a letter on the shove sub ject, of which the following are extracte  The annual official Report of English Convict Prisons (issued by the Government, October, 1872) . . . . .  is alone 'sufficient' (irrespective of -.similar Info-rm.;  tion from various private sources), to prove the necessity for reforms in some departments of these establishments, and especially at Chat!.  Thus the surgeon at Chatham Convict Prison reports (in that volume) to the directors, that out of e. daily average of 1,692 convicts during the year, .1,725 have been admitted to hospital (that is more than one admission for every prisoner on the average), and 20 died. He states that _  ".absces,es h-a;e. incre.orl., from 153 to 270, _and  ulcers have risen from 98 to 247; both 'these complaints have been resorted to by the prisoners, and in many instances most effectually, as a means of procuring an exemption from labour." "Seventeen purposety few:tared their arms Or le;s, sod tcrenty-four purposely inflicted wounds on their bodies."  Surely there is no justification for rendering the ; penal treatment such crushing bondage as to drive so many of the prisoners to these terrible eslremitiea. Nor need the labour be attended by so many serious accidents, as have occurred for past years, especially at Chatham. The surgeon of that prison continues in his report, " Contusions from accidents as well as wilful injuries, ; are increased from 316 to 457" (in the year with , the 1,692 convicts) " the latter consisting chiefly of placing he extremities (most frequently the left arm) under the wheels of ui/tvay locujjovs or engines, when, if not succesful in destroying the bones, producing such injuries to the muscles of the limb as to render it permanently useless. The fractures themselves were of so severe a character that ampulafion was immediately necessary in most cases, as the limbs were so mangled as to preclude any hope of recovery." ("Convict Prison Blue Book, DM," page 289 )  Amongst the deaths the surgeon men:dons such as storm a very strange incident oeout.ed on the farm the following —" One prisoner was found in a state of a man named John Kenny, about three miles of collapse from cold, in his cell, having torn his from Longford. There stood in ono of the fields a clothes into pieces, and destroyed his provisions lone tree, hollow in the centre, anti ten years ago clandestinely, from the effects of which he died." Kenny noticed a swarm of bees g down in it. "One prisoner committed suicide by jumping into He never disturbed them, but on the night of the the new basin, and was drowned." "Another died storm the tree was blown down. When he went to from obstruction of the bowels canoed by im, examine it, Kenny found it oontaiocd an enormous pacation of potato peelings in the small intestines." amount of honey, which, when tak.ci out, weighed (Page 270.) upwards of Mal. The uses were very numerous These are not the statements ef on ignorant, pre- , and in a healthy condition, judiced, or sensational person, but the sober returns