SCENES OF PRISON LIFE

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

SCENES OF PRISON LIFE

By An Ex-Warder

IT is an animated scene In a prison.yard when the men turn out of their cells for work. Each gang baa it* special place for lining up. When every man to in position they look like a regiment of soldier* on parade. When the order to march off to work is given, each gang, a warder inarching behind, files past the chief warder, who stands at one end of the parade ground. He checks the number of each gang, and when the last prisoner has paessd, the figures are totalled. If these do not tally with thVnumber of convict* on the gaol roll, the gangs are marched hack and another count made—and again, if necessary, until the roll Is found to be correct. This counting of prisoners Is a vital precaution because, incredible as it may idem, a man can easily be lost in a large prison. v t .- {■ For one thing, there are sons too many warders. In actual practice you usually And one warder to 40 or SO prisoners. Yet, if anything goes wrong, the warders are always blamed. At Parkhurst it was the custom for 20 or 30 warders to be iold off to unlock

the men after dinner and get them through on parade, so that when the main body of warders arrived half an hour later the prisoners were ready to march off to work.. ''

I have seen as few as 20 warders unlocking 500 to 000 men and letting them loose in the prison yard. There was no such thing as supervision. All you could do was to keep a general eye on the crowd and hope for the best.

One day I was standing in the yard watching the men pour out of the halls, when, above the babel of chattering voices, came the piercing scream: "I'm stabbed!"

The convict who screamed was on the ground about 00 yards from me surrounded by a crowd of excited prisonera.. I rushed to him and found he had been stabbed in the lower part of the back with a piece of pointfd iron:

The men in the crowd, asked if they had seen the convict who did it, shook their heads. The wounded man didn't know either. As lie wae walking across

the yard, he said, he had suddenly felt the iron driven into his back.

He was taken to the prison hospital, where it was found that his wound was only slight. .There was a rigorous inquiry and, although I was 50 yards away and there were at least 200 convicts between me tnd the stabbed man, I was told I ought to have seen it.

A long time afterwards, when the affray was almost forgotten, I learned that the affair was the result of a eanjr feud. 45 *

The victim must have known who did it, but he was probably afraid of meeting further trouble.

The men when exercising march round in a large circle. Each man is supposed to keep a full pace distant from the one in front and not to speak more than a Word or two. This rule, however, is rarely carried out. The men walk quite close, and warders seldom check them for talking. One morning three of us were in charge of a big gang at exercise. I saw two men having a heated argument. The next time they passed I told them to cool down. Twenty paces farther on they stripped off their coats and slammed into each other. Warders usually allow scraps to run j on for a few minutes, and we did this time. The remaining convicts formed a ring, and the, two men banged away like a pair of professionals. One had a slight advantage in height and weight. He soon had the other fellow groggy. Then a warder stepped in and the pair were taken to the punishment cells, which meant three days' confinement. I found out that both were members of gangs that went round to racecourses terrorising, bookmakers. One belonged to a Birmingham gang and the other to a mob from Cardiff. Time. passed and the South Wales man was released. In less than six

At periodical intervals each gaol is visited by one of the prison commissioners, who, among other things, inspects the staff. One day, just after dinner, we were drawn up on parade for one of these inspections. A handful of warders had been told off to get the men out of their cells to await our arrival.

nonths he and other members of his ang made a murderous attack on a man n a Cardiff street. Leaving their victim vitig on the pavement, they cleared ut. They were captured later and charged rith murder. And in due course the inn I had seen fighting in the prison ard at Parkhurat was hanged.

i The commissioner had just started to ; walk down the front rank of warders when we heard loud shouting on the convicts' parade ground, which was about a hundred yards away and hidden from view by a block of offices. The inspection broke off abruptly, and we raced to the scene of the shouting. There we found that a member of a Liverpool gang had been knocked out by a rival. He was not seriously hurt. In this " case the incident was seen by a warder, ind the attacker had a spell of punishment. Another time, when a pang of convicts was passing the warders' quarters outside the prison, a man broke away and, with the agility of a monkey, scaled a rair.watea pipe to the roof of a block of flats. Here lie started to rip off the slates and throw- them in all directions. He was quite 70 feet from the ground, and for a time was master of the situation. Then a harder, an ex-Navy man, carrying a length of rope, scaled the same pipe as the convict reached the roof. The convict was about 20 feet away, and the warder started to make a Jri? 80 w hich to capture the man. to. he fonvrct made no attempt to throw slates at the warder, but seeing that he was likely to be knocked off the roof when the lasso hurtled through the air, he quietly gave in. Not long after the warder was called to Buckingham Palace and invested by \r W1 ~ h . tlie Empire Gallantry Medal the Civil Servant®' V.C.

unvet^m 8 ceremonies Was recorded cJZJnI wl; Massachusetts, when Ella M. Knowton. president of the Zl °l t° W °^ n UnitQrian Chur <*> a on ) inr tl 6 CSt ° f A * Ma V° r ' William E. Kane (looking A n A £ , Co " VeVanC^ of , and public dis f> la » °f convicted inebriates And the}, are driven right through town. Incidentally,, thaCs Water in the bottle!