STARVATION BY ORDER.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3124, 21 February 1879, Page 1

STARVATION BY ORDER.

We take the following frdittX the Examiner:—" Within the last few weeks people who Beck for ' horrors' in the paper* have been regaled with a story which «hows to the fullest advantage the beauty of the Buraau 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 he was too ill to work and that he hqd no roof to cover his head. He reached Clerkenwell just in time to reap the beneficient provisions of |£r Cross's New Prisons Act, which places ailesost arbitrary power in the hands of the gov-ecoor. Ordered to pick three-pounds of oafcwo, he failed to do it, and by the surgeon's order the amount was reduced to two pou»i«. This, too, was beyond his str.engih. He was, therefore, sentenced fa> <iwo days' bread and water—that is, one 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 diys. At the expiration of that . punishment, without any time to recover bis strength, he was set to Work again; he again broke down, and as a refresher was condemned 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 .continue,*! with greater or less severity till he wins found to be . suffering from congestion ,pfthe lungs. The congestion passed into inflamma. tfjon,' and he died. jFqr All the particulars of this glow (murder, for the de tails of the plant ibed; and the other prison tortures,we refer our readerrback to the newspaper reports. Our point at present is that the governor, under New Prisons Act, acted-strictly within tha letter of the law and with the approval of Mr CrossT'^When, in the spring of tthis 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, IVLr Cross Bided 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 respon-

aible 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 semidivine sanction. The story of Thomas Nolan, from the time when he entered the prison to be slowly tortured to death until the time when he lay dead, with no coyering but a newspaper, waiting to be spirited away to the hospital dissecting-room (for even hig poor body could not be found, loudly as the jury demanded it at the inquest), is a story that puts civilisation to shame, and makes us ask ourselves, in horror, whether we live in a Christian land P "