NOVELETTE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2216, 12 January 1904, Page 6

NOVELETTE.

AN EX-WARDER'S STORY. | * Mr. Arnold, just now j we want one or two men for Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum and it strikes me you are just the man for the job. How long were you on the Andamas?’ * Three years, sir.’ ‘ Ah, well, now, you know a warder's duty in the convict madhouse wants some doing. The fact is, Arnold, the nature of the work makes it necessary for us to select men with the wild beast taming instinct pretty well developed. Now, you look as strong as a lion and I presume you would not shrink from facing a mad tiger in a cage, eh ?’ ‘ Not if it were necessary, sir. A few of the black ‘lags’ on the Andaman Islands were human tigers, so I’vo Lad some experience in the Broadmoor line.’ ‘That’s the hammer, my man. Now, Arnold, please report yourself to Dr. Nicolson, Governor of Broadmoor, on Christmas Eve, and be ready to go on duty on Christmas morning. A good morning to you.’ * Christmas Day at Broadmoor,’ I thought to myself as 1 left the office of the Prison Directors at Whitehall. * Humph! that’s more than 1 bargained for ; however, I shall have to go down to this Berkshire inferno, I suppose.’ I had been a prison warder in India, aud soon after my return to England I applied for a berth in Her Hajeaty’s Convict Service and immediately obtained an appointment at the world-famous madhouse at Crowthorne, Broadmoor I What visions of horror, ruined lives, and blasted aspirations, of madness and despair, does this % single word’ conjure up when one mounts the hill to the gates. It was Christmas Eve, snow was falling, and the loneliness aud desolation of the scene struck a chill into my heart. The dark and sombre walls of the rambling brick building •—the living tomb of men and women who, in the eyes of the law, are dead and buried—frowned down upon me as I approached the portals of the orimihal madhouse and rang the bell. * Your business, sir P’ an old soldier demanded at the postern. ‘ Official. My name is William Arnold.’ ‘Oh! good morning, Mr. Arnold, Nice seasonable weather, is it not P it strikes me we’re going to have a heavy fall this Christmas.’ The veteran paused me on to the Governor’s office, and after the usual formalities I was banned over to the chief. ‘ A warder from the Andamans, ehP’ the latter official said as he shook hand... ‘ Good. Now, sir, if you’ll accompany me ,on my rounds I’ll show you the way about. Broadmoor, Mr. Arnold, is something of a, iftflze till you get used to the place.’ ‘How many prisoners have you here, sir ?’ ‘ We call ’em patients, Mr. Arnold. Our roll is six hundred and fifty-two and of these one hundred and forty are females. Women I the devil take ’em, sir. Bless my soul, I’d sooner face half a dozen raving madmen than frantic demon of a woman suy day. As a rule the wardresses keep ’em pretty well under, but sometimes ten thousand devils take possession of a woman’s mind, then we have to take her in Land.’ This remark revealed a great deal .of the uglier side of Broadmoor ; but us we passed from block to block, and everything seemed extremely quiet and orderly, 1 recovered my habit of looking at the pleasant side of life. That Christmas Eve, at any rate, was not rendered hideous by a mad woman’s yells ; on the contrary, a spirit of seasonable gaiety animated the wards and concealed the volcano of frenzy and madness slumbering under the surface. Many of the patients were helping the warders and attendants in the work of decorating the rooms with holly and festoons of coloured papers. Others were playing at cards and dominoes or caressing the pets of the wards—pussies, white mice, birds, &c, and there was very little in their conduct and domeonour that betrayed symptoms of mental derangement. ‘Yes, things are very quiet just now/ the Chief said, gravely ; ‘ still vigilance i., the order of the day, for we never can foresee what will happen.’ ‘I suppose you class the patients, eir ?’ ‘Yes; and divide all fares into fatale and casuals. The ferraer are ‘ Queen’s pleasures/ and never go out of Broadmoor alive ; the latter are men and women who become inaane while doing penal servitude, and we detain ’em till they’re cured. Then they are either liberated or sent back to the convict prisons as the case may be/ As we proceeded, the Chief kept whispering, ‘ Do you see that patient, he is ’ One whost. murderous deeds had thrilled the world with horror. Others were less infamous and terrible, and amongst those poor creatures I noticed an old soldier incarcerated for life for striking his superior officer and Oxford, the man who shot nt the Q'men. Both these cases had been in Broadmoor for over thirty years, *•••«• It is Christmas morning, time 0.50, and the bell in the officers' quarters is ringing over the revcil. A prison warder is soon out of bed, lor the second bell rings at seven. It did •not take me long to put my uniform

f on and go on duty for the first time," I found the routine of work to be i similar in many respects to hospital I duty on the Andamans, and I very soon showed who was master when [ one or two of the patients became tricky and restless. ‘ That's the hammer, Arnold/ the Chief ea'd, approvingly. ‘A madman is like a vicious horse, and ;you must hura-.ur one and the other judiciously, while curbing their tempers with a hand of iron. Ones the lunatic or the brute gains the semblance of an upper hand, the moral supremacy of the keeper or tamer is materially diminished,’ At eight o’clock the patients breakfasts were served; and in honour of the Christmas festival huge chunks of currant cake were added to the diet for the morning. In this, as in other details of life at Broadmoor, a spirit of humanity and kindness prevailed a.id afforded a striking contrast to the harshness and terrible severity that pertain to life at Portland dud Dartmoor. Recently we have seen that the tortures of penal servitude have an inevitable tendency to drive men—political prisoners or ordinary convicts—out of their minds. Portland in this respect is obtaining an evil reputation and rivalling Siberia; but I have been informed that for fiendish tortures of body and mind the French prisons on the lies de Salut in Guiana (where Captain Dreyfus was imprisoned) ai worse than Portland and far woree than Siberia. One thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine years of Christianity have given a Divine religion time to heal up the wounds that make Society more or less a scourge; and what do we everywhere see on Christmas—political prisoners rendered insane by treatment that would brutalize the strongest minded and most gifted of our race. The service in the pretty chapel at Broadmoor began at ten o'clock and the marshalling of the patients into the sacred edifice called into play a considerable amount of tact and judgment. The women occupied a high gallery at the back of the chapel and the men sat on benches below. Everything passed off satisfactorily till the chaplain began hie sermon. Then all of a sudden one of the ‘fatals’ sprang up and made a murderous attack on a fellow patient. The scene that ensued defies description. Blood-curdling yells, shrieks, and curses transformed the chapel into a veritable pandemonium and for a moment or two the spirits of disorder and terror had it all their own way. The ‘bad case' had managed to secrete and sharpen a piece of scrap iron, and, primitive as such a weapon may appear to be, it was certainly something very formidable in the hands of this Broadmoor raving madman. At any rate, the maniac con-, trived to seriously injure his victim before we could drag him off and hurry him out of the .chapel, da. ; Qoi •' the sight of his Im.ribly distorted and tigerish feature j was an awful revelation of a Luma. nature fiendized. In the meantime the poor wretch who had been attacked with a ferocity rivalling that of a wild beast was taken to the infirmary ward. The other patients huddled together in a state of frantic terror and devilish glee, and we art with considerable difficulty in getting them out of the chapel and back to the wards, where a Christmas dinner of baked jwo and plum duff awaited them. « • o • • ‘lt is Christmas night, I was taking niy first spell of night patrolling—between the hours of six and ten. Outside the grim building a snow-storm raged with irresistible fury. In the dimly-lighted infirmary ward everything was quiet, but ever and anon the fury of the blast rattled the casements and howled round the gable end. The snow was drifting in the valleys below the hill and even this room of horrors in the criminal mad-house assumed a snug and haven-like aspect, * Warder, please come hero.’ I stepped noiselessly across the ward to the patient’s bedside. ‘Well, matey.’ I said, ‘how do you feel now ?’ ‘ Tlu. hand of death is on me, warder. Now, now, don’t contradict me. I know what’s coming and I am not sorry. A real death is better than the semblance of death. Sit down, sir, and hear what I’ve got to say.’ I drew a chair close to the bedside and, after thinking deeply for a few moments, the patient resumed the conversation. * Warder,’ he said, in a low tone of voice, ‘ let me look in your eyes and see whether you are honest and worthy, What is your name, sir ?’ ‘ William Arnold, my lad. This is my first day at Broadmoos.’ * Yes, yes; I know. Mr Arnold, I am as sene as you are. Yea, I was cured very soon after I was sent here. Doctor Nicholson can’t recommend me for discharge, for I am classed as a * fatal.’ Oh, my God I tcs, my hands are stained with blood 1’ ‘ And tnis Christmas Day you were nearly murdered yourself. My boy, you eesm harmless enough now.’ ‘ Yes, perfectly harmless. Mr Arnold, something draws me to you and, as man to man, I tell you that human life is not sacred in Broad- ’ moor. Bear in mind the terrible | scene enacted this morning and get > away from this horrible place while I you have an unbroken Bono 'n your 1 body.’ \ ‘ My aew felloe, a mm njust Uye,

• As ft prison ward in India Tvd t)a«n oft in danger and, believe me, I’m not afraid of the Broadmoor tigers.’ - You don’t know what it is yet. ; As regards a competence, I can put you in the way of making it in one day.’ I glanced at the patient sharply and mentally consigned this Broadmoor dream of fortune to the shadowy regions in which are located so many castles in the air. The patient quickly divined my thoughts and he said, earnestly, ‘Mr Arnold, this is not a madman’s whim. Look here, you have read ‘ Monte Christo/ have you not? Well, you can call to mind the old Abbe Faria’s revelation made to Edmund Dantes in the Chateau dTf. It is a far-away ory from that romantic prison to Broad- ! moor, still there’s a possibility of the I fiction being converted into fact in this terrible place. ‘ Listen to ms, sir, while I tell you something about my own life. In 188— I married a young and beautiful Hampshire lass, and soon after the birth of our little Elsie I left Ellen and went out to the diamond fields at Kimberley, where I had a sunstroke. As a miner I had a wonderful run of luck, and became possessed of a little fortune in stones, and instead of selling my diamonds to the Jews at Kimberley I kept ’em, and they were in my possession when I returned to England. ‘At Southampton a rambling fit seized me, and I tramped to my wife’s home, situated on the borders of the New Forest. While passing through the woodland a fear of robbers urged me to hide my treasure in an old oak tree. When I reached home a mad fit of jealousy mvde, for the time being, a devil of me, and in my frenzy I attempted to murder ray wife, and—oh, my God 1 oh, God I I plunged my knife into the heart of our little Elsie. Yes, waruer, see before you a man wh so soul is stained with the blood of his own daughter. * When I was taken I really was insane, and one of the phases of my derangement was a clean loss ot memory. As my mental health inadroved in this Broadmoor*! gradually recovered the faculty, and I now recollect where 1 hid the treasure in the New Forest. Warder Arnold, if you’ll give me your word, as man to man, shat if I tell v-yo. how and where to lay your hands on these South African diamonds, you will see that part of the value goes to my wife, I will give you free leave to appropriate one-half to your own use. Warder Arnold what do you say ?’ #*» # « . A few days after that eventful Christmas at Broadmoor 1 passed through a lonesome glade in the New Forest. The trees and the sward beneath them were snow-clad, and the grand old forestry looked very white and beautiful in the dim lirfat of a January morning. One noble and stately old oak engaged my attention in particular, and in the hollow of the trunk I, sure enough, discovered the madman’s treasure. After securing the bag of diamonds I walked across the ioxest to ft picturesque little hamlet situated on the borders of the woodland and sought out Ellen Barton. Mrs Barton —a very comely and graceful little woman —was at first thunderstruck aud then overcome with thankfulness when I handed over to her this New Year’s gift from Broadmoor. The poor fellow, whose history was so romantic and tragic, is now lying in his grave under the walls of the criminal madhouse, and this year I am going to spend Christmas in the New Forest. Yes, you may infer, if you like, that the fair little widow , is the magnet that attracts your humble servant, Ex-warder William Arnold, to the village by the woods at the festive season of the year,— 11. J. Tucknob.