PHOTOGRAPHING IN MILL. BANK PRISON.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1485, 29 August 1888, Page 5

PHOTOGRAPHING IN MILL. BANK PRISON.

The photographer at Millbank is one of the Bteel- buttoned warders, and we congratulate bioi on hia well-arranged studio. H' J re are some pictures he has jusi taken — half profile, bold, clear, and vigorous |« i Lraits, well lighted, and altogether filike what prison photographs usually are. There is no 'prentice hand here, and we say so. A sitter is departing as we arrive — a man in ordinary attire, his short, cutaway beard giving him the appearance of a foreigner. Our guide sees our look of astonishment — ' He is a liberty man, and is photographed in liberty clothes ; he goes out next week, aud has, therefore, been permitted to grow a beard during the past three months ;' and on the desk we see a printed form referring to him, to which his photograph will presently be attached, ' Seven years' penal servitude, three years' police supervision,' is upon it. His crime was forgery. What, we ask, if a man refuse to be photographed just before the expiration of his sentence ? Our guide smiles — llt is a very simple matter ; a man is usually set at liberty before his time, but only if he conforms to our regulations.' The guide leaves us for a while, and the photographer asks if he shall go on with his work. We reply in the affirmative, and he quits the atudio to fetch a sitter. He is not long gone, for there are plenty outside in the yard we have just crossed, men in grey, ambling round the flagged area at a rapid pace at a fixed distance from one another, and reminding you vividly of a go-as-you-please race at the Agricultural Hall. He is a young man of stalwart build, the sitter, when he appears, and as docile as a dog. He is clean shaven, and has an ugly black L on his sleeve, which means, poor fellow, that he is a 'Lifer.' There is a wooden arm-chair for posing. { Look here, I want you to sit down like this,' says our friend the photographer, placing him sideways in the chair, so as to give a half profile. The convict does as he ia told, and cvid p ntly enjoys the business immensely. 'Don't throw your head back quite so much ; there, that will do. Now put your hands on your breast, so.' For the shrewd governor believes that a photograph of a man's hands is as important almost as that of his face. The warder photographer retires to coat his plate, and we are left for a moment with a * Lifer.' Why shouldn't he make a rush for it, fell us to the earth, and have a try for liberty? He might be a murderer; that he had committed a terrible crime was certain from his sentence. Keep the camera between ycurself and the man, and be ready to roar out lustily if he so much as move a muscle, was one precaution that oeeui'i-ed to us j or should we knock him down out of hand before he began any mischief at all ? No such precautionary measures are called for. Indeed, it made one smile to think of such a thing as resistance. One might, perhaps, conjure up such thoughts as these in the presence of a typical convict; but the facts here are very commonplace. On the arm-chair opposite you sits a young man, almost a boy, with a frank, good-humoured face — a poor fellow who is evidently luxuriating in a delightful moment of release from drudging work and monotonous labour. And as to the bravado and ruffianism, there is just the same difference between the daring robber and this gray-clad humble individual as there is between a fighting cock with his plumes and feathers and a plucked fowl on the poulterer's counter. The photographer comes back to the docile prisoner, focusses; gives an exposure of fifteen seconds with a wet plate and No. 2 JB lens, and secures an admirable negative. ' 1 have never had the least difficulty,' he says, after he has led back his charge, ' either with the men or the women. The men are apt to be too grave, and the women are sometimes , given to giggling, that is perhaps the only drawback I have to contend j against'