CONVICIS SMOKE CIGARS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 20

CONVICIS SMOKE CIGARS

"'Convicts ..and warders in'a great Anierican prison are boys together. The prisoners come out in the exercise yard smiklng'cigars/and doing much as they like.- They lead a life which is entirely, .different from the life of the Bnglish'-prisoner." "■'■•"-• Mr. Edgar Wallace^ the crime novelist iind playwright, gave'a""Daily Express" reporter this ..impression of United States: jail life' when ho arrived in tho liner;Berengaria from; New "York. ' IA.II myHime in America;'^ said Mr. ■Wallace,;' 'Pspent with the-police and in. Btudpng.-?'t>o-'.»fl)ects of tho crime wave in New-York and' Chicago compared with-the everyday incidents of crirrie in London. "My most interesting experience was a yifeit tb'Sin^, Sing, the great convict prison. '(The whole system amazed me. I saw! convicts talking together like ordinary ■ individuals in the street. Theie was no. sort of discipline as we kno\V it in aii English prison. Every prisoner has a. sort of apartment which is fairly comfortable and entirely unlike^ the narrow cell behind a barred doori in which the English prisoner lives. ■...•■ "I sat in the execution chair in Sing Sing^and tried to visualise the feelings of a man going to execution. "They told me that the electric current they turned on prisoners condemned to death was quicker than pain. TheyVhad: taken.1 graphs of tho heart action.of.executed men, and found that the reaction of the "nerves was behind that of* the electric shock. ■ "I went to the Bo'thstein murder trial in Now York. • The whole procedure was surprising toi an Englishman; During my day at the Court the' time

EDGAR; WALLACE-AMAZED

was spent" in; challenging jurymen;

"When I went to Ghicago I- was taken round, the city by the chief of the police and shown all the places where^ murders and ' shoot-ups have been committed. "My-impression, both in Chicago and in New- York, was that the' police were exceptionally efficient, but that they were handicapped.jail the time -by the political influence of- headquarters. "Nobody in England realises;the prevalence of gang murders' in New-York and Chicago. If wo had anything like them in England there would'be a revolution. . "I saw a whole series of photographs in New York of people who had been murdered in gang outrages—a number o.* them were women. They were all shot just above the heart. ■ "One of the troubles of the New York police at theI'•moment is what is known; as torch murders. The people who. are killed in the gang feuds are taken out by motor-car, their clothing is saturated with petrol; and they are set on fire. y , : : "We have in England no equivalent crime to' that of. America. Our police are dealing all the time: with! the ordinary offences of a well-regulated public. We have no counterpart to the amazing disregard for life which is an everyday, event in the great cities of America.,; , ••■■■<.- .■..^-■-r.-.y^c-'-, , ... "There"' have been.' only-; two -'executionsduring 'the past year for all' the murders that have been, committed in New York. I was told in Sing Sing that they were 'treasuring-up/ for execution in the first week of December a man who was the pnly/; prisoner they remembered during^ the past ten years who had been convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence.'" ' ■ ■ j