HORRORS OF PENAL SERVITUDE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5714, 6 November 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

HORRORS OF PENAL SERVITUDE.

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Mr John Daly, whose release from Portland was mentioned in this column a week or two ago, has given a representative of the London Daily ) Chronicle an account of his prison, experiences, which will, even if it does nothing else, attract indignant attention to soine of the horrors of the penal system of the Mother Country. Mr Daly is desci'ibed as tall and spa»e and dark, and as looking thirty years older than he appeared when thrown into gaol twelve years ago. His health has considerably improved since his release, but his hair has grown grey, and at moments there is a chill, eerie expression in his face. He completely dissociates himself from the policy of dynamite — as he will publicly tell the Irish people— and protests his entire innocence of the charge on which he was convipted. When asked about his prison life he said, " I don't know any language to describe the horrors of it. j You are virtually in a living tomb— cut off from every daily, tho only living sounds you hear :>uing- b::nl orders and words from tho warders. Xever a touch of kindness, never a glimpse of humanity, apart, from a rare visitor and an occasional letter. The prison system is simply inhuman. Every warder will admit that, but they answer that they have their wive 3 and children to keep, and that if they were not brutes their services would be dispensed with." Mr Daly went into confinement in good spirits — buoyed up, as he puts it, by the sense of his own innocence — but his mental as well as his physical health was soon broken down by the scanty diet, the surroundings, the treatment and the n + ter desolation. " I was," he told [his interviewer, '"hungry for years; until my appetite wore away for want of anything to eat. Tho cocoa U miserable stuff, the 'plum duff' — save tho name! — is like gutta-percha., and the rest of the food is of the worst kind — at supports life in the body, and tlsafc's all that can be said of it." The Irish political prisoners appear to have been treated with exceptional severity, and to have been inspected and searched until their lives were made a ghastly burden. It would be difficult to imagine any process better calculated to convert mistaken patriots into bitter and reckless enemies of established authority, and it will remain to the lasting credit of Mr Daly that instead of urging his countrymen to vengence and extreme .measures he is now denouncing as madness and cowardice the very methods for the alleged perpetration of which ho has suffered years of unspeakable torture.