“MEN WHO HAVE PAID”

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 287, 31 August 1935, Page 22

“MEN WHO HAVE PAID”

Problem of the Underworld

Following the “News of the World” revealing that, Home Office experts were preparing a scheme to give exconvicts a better chance of “making good,” the paper was inundated with letters from “men who have paid,” and who complain that their continuance along the paths of wrong-doing has been due to their hopeless outlook on their release from jail. One of the most pitiful letters was from a Finsbury Park woman, mother of three young children, whose husband is at present in prison serving his latest sentence. She married him not knowing that he was an "old lag,” and at first was horror-stricken when she heard bls record read out in the cold atmosphere of a police court.

In her letter she relates how she realised that he had never had much chance and how she decided to stand by him. “I am the wife of a convict serving a sentence in prison at the present moment,” she writes. “I think the same as others, that the scheme that is being introduced now to, give ‘old lags’ a chance is very late. “When I first met my husband, who is 16 years older than me, I thought him a gentleman. I never knew he was a crook. He tried to keep it from me, but he had no chance. He could not get work; nobody wanted him, an ex-convict. The consequence was he had to do something. At first I thought he was working at the ‘dogs.’ Then he was caught and charged with housebreaking, and when all bis convictions were read out I nearly died. “I have realised since that he has never had a chance. I am left with three babies under the age of three, and am allowed 30/- from the Public Assistance to live on. All he asks now is, ‘What am I going to do when I come home? If only I could get work and go straight!’ But he knows It is useless trying. “I have two little boys. I tell the eldest, who is only a baby, that his father is a big, ‘brave soldier, and try hard to keep all wrong away from him. Will he grow up to be a crook, or will he be a straight-living, hard-working citizen? All my prayers are, night and day, that the children will never know wrong. If only this scheme had been thought of years ago, the world would have been a cleaner and much better living place.—From a heartbroken mother and wife.”

Another letter from an “old lag,” who at one time was notorious as one of the cleverest bandit motor-drivers in England, tells of his fight to keep straight after his last sentence, and how, to-day, broken in spirit, with seven children to keep, unable to find work, he is being sorely tempted to return to his old "lay” of bandit driver. “The only people I can suggest when I am asked for a reference,” he writes,

"is Scotland Yard’s flying squad, but they are hardly likely to give me the kind of reference which would induce a prospective employer to give me a job. My last sentence was one of four years’ penal servitude, but Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of England, decided when I appealed that there was some latent good in me and he reduced the sentence to one of IS months’ imprisonment. “When I came out last time I got a job. My employer did not know I was an ‘old lag.’ I served him faithfully and well. I was his bank messenger as well as his driver. “On scores of occasions I went to and from the bank with large sums of money. Once I was entrusted with £275 in cash. I never betrayed my trust. Why should I? I had a job. My wife and kiddies were being clothed and fed. “It was up to me to keep my job. I had no desire to run crooked. Then I had two accidents. I lost my job. I believe my boss discovered I was an ‘old lag.’ "I have walked the streets footsore and weary; I have stood in queue after queue hoping to find another job. I have been tempted to go wrong again. I was offered £lOO the other day to take part in a ‘job.’ I was wanted to drive the bandit car through the police cordons. I said ‘No’ this time. I wonder if I will have the strength to refuse the next time the offer is made?

"Sometimes I wonder what the comfortably off citizen would say if he returned home night after night to seven hungry children, penniless and weary. Would he remain honest or would he turn crook? It is a question they should ask themselves, those people who seem to delight in pushing the ‘old lag* still further into the mire “I am fighting hard for my family’s sake to keep straight,” the writer continues. "Not long ago I had visions of finding myself once more behind the wheel Of a bandit car with the screaming police whistles fading away behind me as I lost the ‘flying squad.’ The game has its thrills, but it is not worth the candle. When I look at my kiddies- -and believe me a bandit’s kiddies are as dear to him as are the kiddles of more respectable folks to their parents—l hate the thought that one day soon 'I might once again And myself behind prison bars, unable to help them, unable to play with them, not knowing whether they were hungry, or ill, or sad. “That is why a ‘bad man’ by all the ordinary canons of civilised outlook welcomes the announcement in the ‘News of the World’ that at long last something is to be done to help the ‘old lag’ to lead a straight life. My feelings will be shared by countless scores of that lost legion which constitutes Britain’s underworld.”