448 Appendix IV 



was much such another, and the Governor, a worthy man I believe, at 

 heart, was officially reserved in his brief visits to our cells. The silence 

 of the place was a systematized oppression worse to my mind than the 

 noisy discomfort of the rude prisons I had seen in the East, where men, 

 perhaps in chains, are at least permitted to sit together in the sun and 

 talk, if it is only of their sufferings. How willingly would I not have 

 exchanged the cleanliness of my Kilmainham cell for the dirty prison yard 

 at Aleppo where I had seen murderers and honest men placed cheek by 

 jowl on a common footing of humanity. Here there was no humanity; it 

 was forbidden by the rules and regulations of the Prison Board. 



I left Kilmainham at the end of my two months in a spirit of revolt 

 against all Society — a feeling which I am certain is the predominant one 

 in every released prisoner at its gates — I left it without a smile with the 

 eightpence halfpenny in my hand which I had earned by my good conduct — 

 without a smile, though the worthy governor of the gaol had been good 

 enough to tell me mine had been exemplary, and had added (good man) 

 that instead of the customary advice given to prisoners on their discharge 

 he would inform me of a pleasant piece of news — his wife had been 

 brought to bed two days before, and it had been decided by him and her 

 to name their child after me. 



Such is an imperfect record of my experience of twenty-two years ago 

 in a gaol managed on the silent and separate system. Certain alleviations 

 in the treatment have, I understand, been since introduced, but the silence 

 and the separation still continue without practical change in all English 

 prisons. It is this part of prison discipline that I would see modified — I 

 do not say abolished, for seclusion has its uses — but humanized and made 

 less absolute. 



Apart from crimes of violence which need to be treated penally — and 

 for my part I should be quite prepared to see corporal punishment of the 

 severest kind inflicted in cases of rape, wife-beating, cruelty to children, 

 and the like, with capital punishment still for murder — I do not see any 

 advantage in severity of treatment for crime unattended by violence, more 

 than is necessary to keep loafers out of our gaols. The loss of liberty is 

 in itself sufficient penalty to deter all but the most hardened, and for these 

 hard labour is probably the only cure. Yet, even with the habitual thief, 

 though he should be made to dig till he sweats and be put to labour of the 

 least lenient kind, I see no reason that his taskmaster, the prison warder, 

 should deny him a cheerful word, or look upon him sourly. Nor do I 

 understand that the prison dress which he is forced to wear should be 

 made the obvious garb of infamy it is. The Spanish Inquisition in its 

 day clothed the heretics it burned in fantastic robes with the object of 

 robbing its victims of all human sympathy. Our twentieth century prisons 

 should make an end of this barbarity. It is an infamy to clothe a grown 

 man, used to decent dress, in a boy's jacket and knickerbockers and deny 

 him skirt enough to cover his loins. I felt the indignity of this so strongly 

 at the outset of my prison life that I rebelled (it was my only rebellion) 

 and made appeal to the visiting justices, and with the result that a skirted 

 coat was ordered me, as may be seen in the annexed photograph. Why 



