STARVATION BY ORDER.

Colonist, Volume XXII, Issue 2514, 22 February 1879, Page 5 (Supplement)

STARVATION BY ORDER.

We take the following from the Examiner : —" Within the last few weeks people who seek for ' horrors ' in the papers have been regaled with a story which shows to the fullest advantage the beauty of the Bureau and the omniscience of its presiding,beadle, Mr Cross. Some little time ago, a; lad' of nineteen, named Thomas Nolan, was committed to prison for three months as' a rogue and a vagabond'—which, being translated, certainly meant in this case that be was too ill to work and that he had no roof to cover his head. He reached Clerkenwell just in time to reap the benificient provisions of Mr Cross's New Prisons Act, which places almost arbitrary power in the hands'of the governor. Ordered to pick three pounds of, oakum, he failed to do it, and by the. surgeon's order the amount was reduced to two pounds. This, too, was beyond his strength. He was, therefore, sentenced to two days' bread and water —that is, onel pound of bread, and water ad libitum, every' twenty-four hours. The day following this punishment he did his taskwork, but the next day he failed again. He was again put on bread and water, for two dayß. At the expiration of that punishment, without any time to recover his strength he was set to work again; he again broke down, and as a refresher was c ondemned to two days' more bread and water. Next day he had to go into the infirmary. Immediately on coming out he was punished again. The punishment was continued with greater or less severity till he was found to be suffering from congestion of the lungs. The congestion passed into inflammation, and he died. For all the particulars of this sldw murder, for the details of the plank bed, and the other prison tortures, we refer our readers back to the newspaper reports. Our point at present is that the governor, under the New Prison's Act, acted strictly within the letter of the law and iWith the approval of Mr Cross. When,; in the spring of this year, the Visiting; Justices complained to the Home Secretary that the governor was cruelly punishing prisoners by confining them in separate cells, on bread and water for two days at a stretch, Mr Cross sided with the governor. In July the justices complained that the bread was unfit for human food. Mr Cross made no sign. All power was virtually left in the hands of the governor and the doctor. It was proved at the inquest that the visiting justices were practically powerless, and that the prison officials were only responsible to Heaven —that is to Mr. Cross and the Bureau. We have no wish, to torture our readers with the detailed description of the brutalities done under this semi-divine sanction. The story of Thomas Nolan, from the lime when he entered the prison and to be slowly tortured to death until the time when he laid dead, with no covering but a newspaper, waiting to be spirited away to the hospital dissecting-room (for even his poor body could not be found, loudly as the jury demanded it at the inqueafc), is a story that puts civilization to shame, and makes us ask ourselves, in horror, whether we live in a Christian land?"