Stories of a Convict Prison.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 7, 15 February 1908, Page 48

Stories of a Convict Prison.

The history of gloomy Dartmoor Gaol has just been written by its present Governor, Mr. Basil Thomson, one of the most humane and enlightened criminologists of the day, and well-known in the ■ literary world as the author of those sparkling books, “South Sea Yarns” and “Diversions of a Prime Minister.” He tells many stories, some tragic, some pathetic, some humorous, of the dreadful house of correction in which society sees fit to immure those who have fallen by the way in life’s progress. One of the saddest spots in modern Dartmoor is the burial ground. The first burial of a convict in the churchyard was on May 31, 1851, and thereafter a portion of the ground on the south side of the churchyard was set aside for convicts. Until the year 1902 their graves were not marked unless their relations chose to put up a headstone, and in only one case was this done. Since 1902, however, small granite headstones have been erected by the Prison Commissioners, bearing the initials of the convict buried there and the date. The solitary tombstone erected by the friends of the dead is suggestive enough, bearing, as it does, the simple initials, “A.L.M.” and the words, “Jesus, mercy.” Convicts may hate their fellow-men from a burning sense of injustice or from other motives, but they are almost always kind to animals. Mr. Basil Thomson says he cannot recall in his experience as a "prison official a single instance of cruelty. The care of animals on a farm seems to bring with it a sense of responsibility and self-respect quite out of proportion with the effect that such duties have on free men. The convict will devote himself heart and soul to the nursing and grooming of an animal for the show ring, and will swell with pride when he learns that his charge has carried off the first prize. Much of the sue* cess of the present flock of sheep at Dartmoor 'is due to the care with which an old shepherd has nursed them through four years of penal servitude. As the day approached for one of his occasional absences from prison he would say to the warder regretfully, “I hope, sir, that they will look after this ewe till I come back I shall not be long away.” This did not mean that he preferred prison to freedom, but that, owing to his foibles., he was speaking of the probability of the case. “He was,” says Mr. Thomson, “the only English shepherd I know whose sheep followed him in Oriental fashion, and sometimes when a lamb had broken away and refused to be driven by the dogs, I have seen him come down from the farm and bring it in by calling it by name. This old man. as far as one could see, possessed a full measure of Christian virtues. His only fault was the habit of breaking into houses when he got past the hounds of strict sobriety. His numerous friends and admirers felt at last that a supreme effort should be made to change his mode of life. His only surviving relation, a married sister living at Texas, Was traced, and through the generosity, of. a benefactor all arrangements were made for sending him out to her; but an unexpected difficulty in the shape of the immigration laws of the United States caused delay, and while negotiations were in progress I regret to relate that he broke into a church and was re-arrested. No man could have been more pathetically anxious to lead a new life than he was on the day before his release, and the only consoling thought in the story is the joy that he ami his prison sheep must have felt on being reunited.” Another pathetic case is that of a prisoner who asked specially to be located at the top floor of No. 5 prison, which is the most unpopular landing of all. When pressed for a reason, he said evasively that he preferred to have no one over his head, but when Mr. Thomson induced him to be confidential, he confessed that he was an old sailor, that reading made his headache, and that he liked to walk up and down his cell listening to the howl of the wind overhead, which made him think he was at spa again. One of the most tragic stories is that of a man who, believing that his sentence was a judicial crime, spent his long term in passive resistance, voluntarily accepting solitary confinement and five extra years of penal servitude. He was a man of some education, who had been sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude for manslaughter. He had passionately asserted that the homicide was justifiable, and had swoin to the judge

that the sentence should not be carried out. “From the first dsy he refuse# WK work,” says Mr. Thomson, “explaining quite respectfully that if he worked he would be abetting the judge in commit* ting a judicial crime. He made a distinction between labour that was necessary and labour whicn was punitive. If* would clean out his cell and help to carry the dinner trays; he would even march out to labour with his party; but neither persuasion nor punishment availed to make him do a hand’s turn of work for the public, though he knew he was adding five years to his sentence by earning no marks for "remission. In the end he was left alone, and he spent the long days in his cell, a tall, grey, silent man, with pathetic determination stamped upon his features. Thus he spent fifteen years a voluntary martyr to principle.”