WHITE-MASKED MEN IN TOMB OP SILENCE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6911, 17 May 1929, Page 12

WHITE-MASKED MEN IN TOMB OP SILENCE

MODEL FRENCH PRISON In a house of silence, 1250 whitemasked men live without ever hearing one another’s voices or seeing one another’s faces. They never hear their names spoken from the day they enter until the day they leave. It is France’s model pri son, known simply as “Fresnes,’’ the last word in physical and mental isolation. Solitary confinement, usually considered severely strict discipline, is the rule. The prisoners eat alone, sleep alone, work alone, and even take their hour's daily exercise alone and in absolute silence. Strangest of all, several hundred at a time gathor in the chapel, each in a little cell, seeing no one except the priest, preacher or lecturer and part of his face visible only to the person on the platform. The mon enter the chapel hooded, go to numbered cells, which are in banked tiers, each cell open only in front at the height of one’s eyes, but with an aperture too small for the head to pass. From the moment a metal number is hung around his neck, the prisoner is required to wear a white hood whenever he leaves his cell, and he may not speak to his fellows. He sees the face of his guard from time to time, but no other, unless he is sent to the hospital or to the warden for dismpiino. , . , , Alone in his cell, ho works eight hours a day, but good will and skill enable him to reduce the time to six hours and the money ho earns enables him to buy small eomforts. The government receives 32 cent* a day fr°Jh contractors for each prisoner’s work, and gives from three-tenths to half the money to the prisoner. The prisoner never sees the money nntil he leaves, but half of it goes to his immediate credit for his little expenses. Yet in spite of this many criminals ask to be sent there, because the solitude entitles them Jo a reduction of one-fourth of their sentences.