LAUGHTER IN A PRISON

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 169, 5 April 1923, Page 7

LAUGHTER IN A PRISON

SONGS. AND. STORIES?' HORATIO BOTTOMLEY A LETHARGIC FIGURE Just inside the prison at Wormwood Scrubs, in a garden bed very closely clipped shrubs spell out the motto: “Nil Desperandum”—in striking contrast with the “Parcere Subjectis” which you may read over the stone arch that leads to tho great prison on Dartmoor (writes a contributor to the “Westminister Gazette”). It is the first cheerful—quite defiantly cheerful —sight which you see when you have passed the heavy iron gates. The chapel, too, is a broad and cheery place, into which the sun finds 57s way even on an afternoon in early February. Special Hymns. From the gallery at the back, where the Governor and the organist sit, with a prisoner to blow the organ and a warder to look after him, one felt that even tho atmosphere was not without joyousness yesterday afternoon. The congregation, it is true, was not cheerfully dressed. The colour of the worshippers’ clothes was drab; the cut anything bub styish. Second Division men made a solid slab of dark blue in the midst of the khaki. Warders sat or stood in little pews, like witnessboxes, perched above the scrubbed forms on which the prisoners sat. Tho men sat remarkably still —it was the evening service—with backs at least which betrayed no suspicion of vitality, but with voices which sang the specially chosen hymns with gusto. Two rows of prisoners at tho front of the chapel were the choir, and led the singing. It was possible to grow dismal during thg singing of the hymns,- if only because tho singing was so cheerful, but when the men laughed—in chapel! —and clapped their hands, it would have been merely stupid to deny a certain touch of jollity. Music Instead of Sermon. To explain the applause it is neces-sai-y to add that although the men were engaged in their ordinary Sunday afternoon devotions, there was an unusual substitute for the sermon. Blinded musicians from St. Dunstan’s had come to sing and play to tho prisoners. The singers and the violinist and the man who recited Kipling’s “If” said that they never confronted a more sympathetic audience. The congregation was touched. During the music they made not a sound, but as each performer was led back from the centre of the chancel to his place nt the side the men applauded like boys at their first theatre.

Sternly sounded the words of Kipling’s “Invictus” ; but'not the refrain of “Devonshire Cream and Cider!” “Something that you men do not have here!” eaid tho Church Army missioner, announcing the. song, and they laughed at that also, although the laugh was against themselves. They laughed loud and long, too, when the missioner told ft story. Bottomry. Then the congregation became devout again, and soon afterwards the service ended. The prisoners trooped out, among them a fthort stout man whom I had observed at the back of the congrfgation, almost detached from it, who never applauded, stood or sat with equal lethargy; quecrly self-contained, inanimate, alone, whosg eyes never strayed. Ho was fioniGo Bottomley.