PRIDE IN PRISON.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9860, 9 March 1896, Page 2

PRIDE IN PRISON.

The Personal Vanity op Convicts. You would hardly expect convicts to have any pride of their personal appearance, remarked the chief warder of a convict prison to the present writer ; but they have, indeed, and they will take as much pains about their dressing arrangements as the prison rules will allow, aucl sometimes a very great deal more. The females are, of course, the worst—"it is their nature to " —but I can assure you the men are not far behind in vanity. We had a prisoner here once who had been heavily sentenced for a most brutal crime ; he was an out-and-out scoundrel, but the most conceited creature I have ever come across. After a meal he used to take his tin plate or mug and polish it up like a glass, and sit and gaze at his reflection. It was most amusing to watch him. He would pinch his cheeks and his chin to make them rosy, and then straighten his eyebrows with all the care possible. He was a troublesome fellow, too, and as strong as an ox, so I used to pay surprise visits to his cell to see he as not up to any mischief. One day I OPENED THE DOOR SUDDENLY and saw him hurriedly hide something. I took it from him, and found it was a long nail, worn down to a sharp edge like a razor. Ho used it for shaving on the sly. The thing must have- taken months to get to its perfect state, but,|of course, T could not let him keep it, in spite of the pitiful way he implored mc to do so. When a prisoner comes here after ti-ial we sometimes have a regular scuffle with him to get his hair cut. There is a fellow in prison now, eaten up by conceit; he took his sentence badly enough, but it was nothng to the way he carried on when he was told his hair must be cut. I quite thought we should have to put the jacket on him to j get him to submit to the operation, he proj tested so violently. , It is a mystery to mc why convicts should j care so much about their appearance, considering they never see anyone but the inmates of the prison ; but the doctor is frequently being called to one or another of the females who fainted through tight I lacing. One of the females once actually tore off the hem of her skirt to pull herself in at the waist with, and she did it so successfully that directly she knelt down she went off into a dead faint. We do see some strange characters in prison, I can assure you. Nothing less than a free pardon could PLEASE A FEMALE PRISONER.; more than to get hold of a piece of red stuff —flannel—anything dyed red, for with this they can, after moistening it in the water they have at dinner, give to their cheeks and lips the ruddy glory of apples and cherries ; and then, with a little whitewash pulverised in the hand, they can fast upon their faces the bloom of peaches. If a woman is quiet, the matron does not pay any attention to these little vanities— doubtless she understands them ; but when it comes to tearing up the Bibles and tracts the chaplain brings, to use as curl papers, it is different.

Sometimes a woman will pick up a piece of stick in the yard and slip it into her bodice. When she gets to her cell and the gas is lit she will burn it to charcoal, and the next morning appear with heavily blacked eyebrows and lashes. If a female prisoner sees a piece of fat on her plate at dinner she is enraptured, and will do anything to hide it away so that she can grease her hair Avith it of a morning. A little while ago we had a woman here in the infirmary who had burnt her face badly in trying to singe the hair on HER UPPER LIP OVER THE GAS in her cell. She was fifty, and of by no means prepossessing appearance. But, indeed, it is not the better-looking convicts who are the most conceited ; on the contrary, the more ugly they are the more they desire to look beautiful. Of course, the prison regulations do not allow looking-glasses in the cells, but in some prisons, this one, for instance, the cells are fitted up with fairly good substitutes. The small inspection windows, as we call them, in the doors are pieces of glass about the size of a gentleman's watch, and on the outside there is a little shutter painted black. When this is shut a prisoner can get an idea of her personal appearance, though it is very vague; and she can only see an eye or her mouth or nose at a time on account of the smailness of the glass. Still, it is ten chances to one if you open one of the shutters suddenly yon find the prisoner admiring her reflection.

I really think that some of the female convicts would rather have a flogging than be deprived of their little means of indulging their vanity. If you threaten to do it the quite ones become demons, and the savage ones angels ;it completely changes them. I will give you a striking instance of this.

We had a woman in this prison a little while since, who was, without exception, the vilest and most abusive character we ever been cursed by, and may I tell yon that

oxe female could give points to four male convicts and beat them all hollow at cursing and swearing. This

woman feared nothing — nobody ; the governor himself could not tame her. One day she would take it into her head to smash up the furniture in her cell; another, to put the gas out in her ward by taking off the burner jin her cell and blowing hard down the pipe. Another day she would strip herself and tear her clothes to shreds, and defy the world. She cursed everybody who happered to show themselves at her door, governor, chaplain, warders, matron, and all, and to hear her curse was a lesson in rhetoric never to be forgotten. I ought to have mentioned that she was here for a most brutal assault. The governor appealed to the visiting justices, and they gave her a week in the punishment cell, but it did not chango her in the least. One day, after she had been up to more of her tricks, the governor went round with mc to her cell, where we met with the usual reception, and for some time we could not get a word in edgeways. She was a nicelooking woman, with a fine head of hair, and it struck the governor as a last resource TO TACKLE HER PRIDE, if she had any—so he threatened to have her hair cut off and her head shaved if she was refractory again. I have never seen a woman so completely or so quickly cowed as she was by that. Her mouth shut like a trap, and she sat down and stared at us utterly bewildered and completely ' conquered. From that day she has never been refractory in the mildest sense of the word. She had stood every other threat, suffered a week in the punishment cell, and yet gave in the moment her vanity was touched.