WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13171, 18 July 1908, Page 9

WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS.

LONDON, July 16. Messrs Robert Pearco and % C. H. Corbett, M.P.'s, aro initiating a Bill in 3 the Houso of Commons to treat girls r and women, sentenced for political of- ' fences, as first-class misdemeanants, ex--5 cept in cases where damage to pro- • perty or grievous bodily harm is in- [ volved. 1 The difference between the treatment ■ accorded to prisoners wlio are placed in the first class and those placed in , the second was furnished to the House I of Lords in a question asked by Earl . Russell of the Government concerning the treatment of soruo ladie3 who were . undergoing imprisonment in Holloway '. Gaol early in the year for persistently J ringing the door-bells of Cabinet ters. Hitherto, Lord Russell said, ladies who had acted in a similar manner had been treated as first-class mis- | demeanants, but now they were treated as second-class. In the instance \ under notice the ladies, many of whom were persons of culture- and refinement, were placed in the second division, in , which they had to wear the ordinary prison clothes brought out of the , jumble store of tho gaol; they were , served with the ordinary food in the ; ordinary woodon vessels; they were obliged to" cat with the ordinary wooden spoons, and they were subject, co far as confinement and exercise went, to all the other hardships and degradations to which, any ordinary prisoner was exposed. In tho first division prisoners were enabled to wear their own clothes and have their own food, and could be supplied with newspapers and books from the outside world; they wore merely confined in prison, without having inflicted upon them any particular hardship or degradation. "