GIRL CRIMINALS

Evening Star, Issue 19839, 12 April 1928, Page 13

GIRL CRIMINALS

HOW THEY ARE CURED, LESS AMENABLE THAN BOYS THE ENGLISH SYSTEM. Tlie Girls’ Borstal Institute of Aylesbury is one of the most tragic buildings in England (writes H. V. Morton, in the ‘ Daily Express’). It has never, I believe, been fully described before. In one section of the disused gaol are eleven women serving life sentences for murder; in another section are the seventy-six bad girls of England. I went to Avlesbnry with the words of a Home Office official fresh in my mind.' ’• A bad girl,” he said, “is infinitely worse than a bad boy A bad boy is like the curate’s famous egg, good in parts; but a bad girl—my aunt!” It may seem strange that there should be over 1,000 bad boys in the Borstal system and only seventy-six girls. These figures are, not so flattering to the female sex as they appear. The reason why there are so few Borstal girls is because courts ot law try every possible expedient before they lock up a young girl for a period of years. When a boy is charged a eburt says, “Send him to gaol or Borstal!” but a "correspondingly bad girl is, time after time, put on probation in the hope that she will run straight. When she continues to enter the dock the court, with a weary but still reluctant gesture, then sends her for Borstal treatment. The result of this sentimental forbearance is that, while 60 per cent, of the Borstal boys are caught young in crime, 90 per cent, of the Borstal girls are hardened offenders. I believe that experts will agree with me when I say that it would be a kindness to sen dthese girls to Borstal much earlier. The Women’s Prison at Aylesbury and the likewise disused State Inebriate Reformatory are, for prison buildings, quite good looking. They stand on the main road a few minutes’ walk from Aylesbury. Many a convent has much more depressing walls. WOMAN GOVERNOR. Miss Lilian Barker, who made her name as a social worker during the war, when she had charge of 30,000 munition girls at Woolwich, is the governor. She has unconventional views on prison reform, “I came here a sentimentalist,” she admitted to me. “I came because I cared for these girls, and I thought that love would do everything. I soon found I had pretty tough material to handle. The girls thought that they had got hold of a softhearted fool, and they began to play mo up. I had to alter my theories and impose strict discipline." Miss Barker had not been talking long before I realised that the problem of the girl is much more complex than that of the boy. You can capture a boy and hold him. but you never know when you have gained the confidence and loyalty of a bad girl. Girls are subject to sudden epidemic outbreaks of violence. On a normal night, when all ia quiet, there sounds the crash of breaking glass; then the smashing spreads! An unsuspected girl has grown suddenly violent. ’ She has torn up her Prayer Book! Then her bedclothes! Then the "small furniture, and finallyyout goes a chair through the window! This hysteria spreads until several girls arc discovered lying on the floor crying and kicking. “ I soon stopped these distressing outbreaks,” said Miss Barker. “I assembled the girls and asked them to help me to atop it. I devised a badge to be worn by those girls who were willing to back me, and all but two were eager to do so. Those two eventually came in.” It is difficult with girls to separate sexual immorality from the long list of offences which qualify for Borstal. The profeesoinal prostitute is a model girl in an institution. A much more difficult girl is the unmoral girl.

“The crimes for which my girls are now paying the penalty,’’ said Miss Barker, “ are due mainly to foul housing conditions in our great cities, to lack of skilled occupation in the home, and to lack of decent recreation in the evening. They have only the street to play in. We want chibs and more chibs, where young people can meet one another on a decent basis. Como round'and look at the girls.” We went first to their living quarters. The girls sleep in cells which are locked at night; but they do not livo under prison conditions. Their cells are neat little bedrooms, nicely decorated and furnished. The girls are encouraged to make pillow' and nightdress cases, with blue and pink bows sewn crosswise in the corner. These are set out on each "bed. The girls »ko treasure postcards and pictures, which they put out on the little tables of their rooms. The only photographs of men which are permitted to gaze out at a Borstal girl are those of father, brother, or bona fide sweetheart.

“ I encourage those "iris who boast young men to keep their ph'llrgraphs before them. Oh, yes, many a Borstal girl has a devoted sweetheart. One man writes every week admonishing his girl in pious terms to be quick and ‘get good,’ so that they can be married.”

1 While we were walking along the dormitory peeping into these neat little rooms, a girl who had been tidying her bedroom came out and brought to the governor for appreciation the latest addition to her picture gallery. It was not the sort of thing I should have sent to cheer an exile; but it had made a great hit. “Isn't it lovely, miss?” asked the girl. “It’s me aunty!” It was a post card of a tomb with “ Rest in Peace” written under it, and “Cheer up ” on the other side. DOMESTIC SERVICE. Borstal girls tire trained solely for domestic service. They have to pass examinations in every branch before they can leave. We entered a large laundry_ in which twenty girls were washing the linen of the establishment. They were all between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, and nearly all of the same stumpy city typo. They looked healthy and quite tamo. They smiled at the governor, and it was easy to see that rebellion and hysterics are a thing of the past. London sends few girls to Borstal. I heard in this room the accents of Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham. There was a baronial kitchen in which girls were making bread and cakes and preparing tho evening meal. There was a large sewing room, in which they were cutting out and making neat bine serge gowns with red collars, cuffs, and belts. They are allowed ■to wear those neat gowns when off duty, and one does not need to bo a sociologist to realise what a difference a neat new gown makes to their sense of self-respect. Wo opened a door and entered, quite surprisingly (at least, to me) a nursery! There was one small baby in it and—no need for explanations. “One of the rarest experiences wo have,” said Miss Barker, “is the man who stands by a girl in trouble.” There is a farm of twenty acres worked by the girls. This farm provides tho institute with butter, eggs, milk, bacon, and market garden produce.

Wo passed through a gate in a high wall, and saw the tragedy of Aylesbury. This was the old convict prison. It is separate from the Borstal institute, and the girls have no contact with it or with those it contains. Ten women wearing black oilskin coats over rough clothes were raking leaves from a grass plot. A wardress in a blue coat stood near watching them. The ten women had all been condemned to death for murder, and their sentences had been commuted to penal servitude for life. Most of them were young women, and even their rough clothes could not quite hide the grace of their movements as I hoy bent over the dead leaves; and they were shut in for life behind that high red wall. It is true that good conduct may see them out in the world again as old, broken* women. I went to the cells. In one a lovelyyoung girl lay, in bed, a consumptive flush on her face. The light from a barred window lit up her auburn hair, .so that" I could see nothing at first in the dark cell but a pile of bright gold on the pillow. She also was a murderess. Sho had drowned her illegitimate child because the woman with whom it was boarded asked 10s a week instead of 7s 6d. And 10s a week was all the young mother could earn. The pitiful tragedy of it! She also is “in for life”; but she will bo moved soon to a sanatorium. I looked into the cell of the nurse who had tried to commit suicide with her three charges. She has made herself a rag infant, which she holds in the night.