TBE FLOGGING AT THE GAOL.

Evening Post, Volume XIX, Issue 110, 13 May 1880, Page 2

TBE FLOGGING AT THE GAOL.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST. Sib — I did not address you on Tuesday evening, although I felt very much inclined to do bo after reading your article on the above subject, but as I Bee that yon state tonight that your information was derived from a minister of religion, and as it is wellknown that I conduct Divine Service at the Gaol every Sunday, I ask you to allow me the opportunity of saying that no such information wa3 given you by me. I do this for the very simple reason that I do not believe the correctness of the statements which have been made, and therefore could not have communicated them to you. The first time that I saw Longhurst was on Sunday, the 11th ultimo, and after service I remarked to the warden that I feared the corporal punishment, to which he was about to be subjected, would be more than he would be physically able to bear. As I have been doing duty in other places during the session of the Synod, I have not been able to attend at the gaol, but last Sunday I was enabled to resume my regular dutios there, and what most forcibly struck me, as I looked round upon the men, was the very marked improvement in Longhurst' s appearance. The pale, ashy look, which he formerly had, is exchanged for the rosy hue of health, and he stood up and eat down during service with apparently as much ease aB other men. • No one looking at him would have supposed that he had so recently been subjected to corporal punishmeat, muo^ less that such punishment had been administered with so much undue severity as your informant would lead you to believe. Besides, I do not believe .hat Mr. Bead — who is a strict disciplinarian,

but at the Bame time a Christian man and possessed of a generous warm heartedness, even towards criminals, which does him honor — would allow any snob, undue severity to be exercised in his presence. I am, &c, Chables D. de Casteo. [The statement referred to was not made to us by Mr. De Castro, but by another clergyman as information supplied to him, which he thought called for investigation ; j it was published by us on the same ground simply as a statement thus received. We readily accept the contradiction of the allegations which we quoted, and fully recognise , the improbability that Mr. Read, whose kindheartedness is well known, would sanction any undue severity. But the fact remains that these statements were in free circulation, and the improper secresy with which the affair was conducted precluded any possibility of an outside contradiction until we had thus given publicity to the reports now shown to be unfounded.— Ed. E. P.]