HARD LABOR IN ENGLISH PRISONS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXI, Issue 179, 23 July 1895, Page 3

HARD LABOR IN ENGLISH PRISONS.

In a brief comment on the close of the trial of Oscar Wilde, the Daily Chronicle said : — " His sentence, enforced as it will be by the severest rigors known to our abhorrent penal system, is virtually a sentence of death or of madness, a fate to which we confess we hesitate to condemn any human creature whatever." A correspondent next day asked -what this meant, and he was enlightened as follows : — Two years' hard labor is the severest sentence, while it lasts, known to the English criminal law. It is a form of punishment never inflicted on criminals sentenced to penal servitude, inasmuch as it is calculated to produce madness amongst them. Nine months' separate confinement is as much as a con- 1 vict gets, and is considered as much I as his mind can stand. The Prisons Committee report that even nine months' separation often injuriously affect the nervous system, and recommend a reduction of the time. A prisoner under two years' hard labor may be kept during the whole time m the solitude of his cell, with the exception of one hour a day. During a portion of his detention he is allowed no ordinary reading books, has a wooden plank as a bed, and has to engage m occupation which the late Chairman of the Prison Board declares to be " irritating, depressing, and debasing to the mental faoulties, and decidedly brutalising m its effects." So severe is this form of sentence considered to be, that many judges will not inflict it at all, and last year m a total of 160,000 short sentences, only 84 persons were committed for two years by the ordinary criminal courts.