Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Visits to the Irish convict prisons - I
VISITS TO THE IRISH CONVICT PRISONS.
No. I.
The meeting of the Social Science Association at Dublin, in August last, afforded to many an opportunity of seeing and examining for themselves what has lately engaged considerable public attention—the Irish Convict System—as developed and carried on by the Board of Directors, of which Captain Walter Crofton is the chairman.
Even those who have not been called on to pay any special attention to the management of convicts, and to the principle and plan of convict prisons, must be aware that some very radical and important difference must exist between the Irish and the English Convict Prisons. On our side of the channel it would require a very great stretch of philanthropy even to make the trial of taking men into employment who were known to be just discharged from Portland or other Convict Prisons;—those who have come under our own knowledge have been complete failures;—the newspaper police reports continually record offences committed by prisoners discharged under licence or ticket-of-leave; and we know that some of the most atrocious crimes have been perpetrated by those who ought to have been reformed characters, if long years of training and instiniction in Government prisons could make them so. The English public does not believe in the reformation of prisoners by the system adopted in this country.
The contrary is the case on the other side of the channel. There is a belief in Ireland that the system adopted in the convict prisons does reform those who are the subject of it; and the consequence of this belief is, that masters are ready to receive discharged prisoners into their employment; those who at first, doubtingly, tried some, now confidently apply for more. The knowledge that trustworthy, hard-working men are to be obtained by application at the prison for those whose time is completed, is becoming so general, that the grand problem is solved—“what are we to do with our convicts?” The bulk of them are absorbed into the population as honest labourers, and those whose home connections make it undesirable for them to remain in their own country, emigrate to others, well prepared to become useful and respectable members of society elsewhere.
What is the real secret of this marvellous difference?
And why is it that, while elsewhere we hear of increase of crime and of re-convictions of those who have already put the country to great expense by years of public maintenance in prison, in Ireland the number of convicts has actually diminished from 4,278, in January 1, 1854, with several hundreds in those of Bermuda and Gibraltar, who have since been discharged, and on January 1, 1860, there were only 1631 convicts; with 74 in Bermuda and Gibraltar.
We desired then to avail ourselves of this visit to Dublin, to satisfy ourselves fully on these points, and to verify, by personal observation, what we had heard of the Irish Convict System.
The reformatory section of the Association had received an admirable and lucid statement of the system, and its results, from a paper on the subject, read by Captain Crofton himself, which was listened to with the deepest interest, not only by an attentive audience, but by the venerable president. Lord Brougham, who strongly expressed his approbation of it. But we desired also an impartial statement of the whole system, and this was given by the Attorney-General for Ireland in his presidential address. After briefly reviewing the history of Reformatory Schools for juveniles, which are now established in Ireland as in England, he referred to the touching story of the “Vicar of Wakefield,” in which, a hundred years ago, Oliver Goldsmith developed the true principles which should combine punishment and reformation. “Throughout the whole prison life of the convict” (in Ireland), he continues, “these guiding principles regulate his treatment. He enters Mountjoy prison, and he has there to undergo the hard discipline of cellular incarceration. He works alone, not often visited by any one, and with ample opportunity for meditation and repentance during his nine months of that probationary state. But he is allowed to have hope of the future,—a hope to be realised by himself. The shortening of this period of his separation depends on his good conduct, and he knows that when it shall have ended, he will have still further opportunity of improving his condition by his own endeavours. This expectation produces its natural result in his quiet and orderly demeanour, and his obedience to authority, and in most instances the period of his cellular confinement is accordingly abridged. Then he passes to Spike Island or Philipstown, where he labours in association with others under the strictest surveillance, and where continuing good behaviour enables him to rise from class to class, gaining all the while something for himself from the fruits of his toil, until he becomes fit for an intermediate prison, where he has more of freedom and a larger share of his own earnings, and where the same stimulating and sustaining influence of hope still operates upon him. By his own efforts he can lay up a little store for the day of liberation, and by his own efforts he can hasten the coming of that happy day. If he will so act as to obtain good marks it is hastened; if he fails to obtain them it is postponed. Then, during the period of his detention in the intermediate prison, he has, in a higher degree, the benefit of intellectual and moral culture which has been offered to him continually, with the higher blessing of the religious care of a zealous and instructed chaplain, from the commencement of his incarceration. A lecturer, a gentleman very competent and very devoted to his duty, addresses to him plain speech on subjects calculated to arouse his interest and awaken his faculties . . . In very many cases, as part of his penal probation, he is employed at large in this city and its neighbourhood on such service as the convict directors deem suitable for him, or at Lusk, where you will find him discharging the ordinary duties of an agricultural labourer, without enclosure or confinement of any kind; and it is found that he can be so trusted safely, and that neither the city messenger nor the Lusk workman ever dreams of escaping from a control which has no apparatus of bolts and bars to make it effectual. And so the man passes from the prison to his place in society—not his old place, but a higher and better place. He does not make the passage abruptly or without reasonable preparation. Generally he is liberated as the recompense of meritorious conduct before the expiration of his sentence; and the liberation is conditional, subject to be ended if he falls again. And for a time he is under the eye of authority, and finds confirmation of his good purposes in the checks which its supervision puts upon him, and the apprehension of the evil consequences of a return to crime. But, more than this, the continuing guardianship is not at all strongly repressive. To the liberated convict it is a protection against the influence of those who would turn him back to wickedness, and it gives him a shield against many mischiefs and many misconceptions which would be entailed by his tainted character, if he had not the opportunity of appeal to the officers of justice as to his changed life and renewed trustworthiness.”
Such is a brief sketch, by so high an authority as the Attorney-General, of the system, the working of which we were anxious, personally, to inspect.
Our first visit was to Lusk Common, one of the intermediate prisons, the last stage which the convict undergoes before receiving liberty. A large party assembled, among them many magistrates, and other influential persons from various parts of England, and an hour’s ride brought us to Lusk. Had we been merely strangers on a pleasure excursion we should probably have passed by without especial notice what is, morally considered, one of the most wonderful spots in the island. There was nothing to attract any attention. Before us was a large common, part of which had been reclaimed, and gave evidence of much skilled labour having been bestowed on it. Other parts were perfectly wild, and we saw a number of men working very steadily at the drainage of it. No one would have noticed that they were not ordinary labourers; they wore no prison uniform, but the ordinary peasant dress; they appeared under the control of no gaol official, and no turnkey was watching them; they were not handling the pickaxe and spade with the unwilling air of men who were under compulsion to perform a certain amount of Government work, but like free labourers who would gladly do as hard a day’s work as they could. It seemed incredible that those men were prisoners, and even more, men convicted of no ordinary offences, but who were under long sentences of penal servitude; such men as those who had burst forth into violent rebellion at Portland, and who had been more recently, at Chatham, controlled only by extraordinary severity, after the most ferocious outbreaks, and outrageous attacks on the officers. Looking at these men we could hardly, as an English magistrate remarked, believe what we saw with our own eyes. We might have waited to converse with some of the prisoners, for so they really were, and we were quite at liberty to do so, but delicacy restrained us. Indeed, once observing a group assembled round one young man, we approached to listen, but we saw that he was hanging down his head with evident shame, and found that some one was most injudiciously questioning him respecting his former life, and his feelings while engaged in a career of crime;—so we passed on, and gave a courteous greeting to another, who responded with a manly, respectful air, not as one who had for ever lost his position in life. The directors. Captain Crofton and Captain Whitby, pointed out and explained the few and simple buildings. The only dwellings provided for from fifty to one hundred convicts consisted of two large huts of corrugated iron, each of which would contain accommodation for fifty men and one officer, the beds being so arranged that they could be put out of the way and the room converted into a dining and sitting room. There were a few simple tenements for the residence of the superintendent, and for the cooking and bathing of the men; but everything was as informal, simple, and inexpensive as possible. Captain Crofton pointed out some small houses on the outskirts of the common. Those, he told us, after withdrawing us from the hearing of the men, had been intended for policemen, as it had been considered quite unsafe for a body of criminals to be left with no police near. The houses had never been used; there had never been occasion for any police agency. One superintendent only has charge of each Imt. The few labourers employed with the men at work live in separate houses near.
After inspecting all parts of the premises, and satisfying ourselves that everything was as open and free as a common farm, and that the men were controlled only by the strong moral influence which, combined with strict discipline and steady adherence to well-devised laws, constitutes the essence of the system, we felt desirous of learning how far these men were, or rather had been, the same daring criminals who fill our Government prisons in England. Various questions on this subject were put to Captain Crofton by the gentlemen present, who showed us a table of the offences which had been committed by the men among whom we had been walking without fear or suspicion. We were astounded to find that they had been guilty of almost every conceivable offence. There were highway robbers, burglars, &c.; murderers, only, are not admitted here, but must finish their term of imprisonment under the closer confinement of the prisons. We were particularly anxious to ascertain this fact, having heard it asserted that the inmates of the Irish convict prisons were of a lower grade of crime than those in the sister country. This is not the case, and the table which he presented to us is a satisfactory proof of this.
Smithfield and Lusk Intermediate Prisons.
| Smithfield. | Lusk. | ||||
| 1st | Conviction | 12 | 1st | Conviction | 12 |
| 2nd | Convictiondo. | 10 | 2nd | Convictiondo. | 19 |
| 3rd | Convictiondo. | 12 | 3rd | Convictiondo. | 12 |
| 4th | Convictiondo. | 5 | 4th | Convictiondo. | 4 |
| 5th | Convictiondo. | 2 | 5th | Convictiondo. | 7 |
| 6th | Convictiondo. | 1 | 6th | Convictiondo. | 1 |
| 8th | Convictiondo. | 2 | 7th | Convictiondo. | 1 |
| 9th | Convictiondo. | 1 | 8th | Convictiondo. | 2 |
| 10th | Convictiondo. | 2 | 9th | Convictiondo. | 2 |
| 11th | Convictiondo. | 1 | 10th | Convictiondo. | 1 |
| 14th | Convictiondo. | 2 | 12th | Convictiondo. | 2 |
| 15th | Convictiondo. | 1 | 14th | Convictiondo. | 1 |
| 41st | Convictiondo. | 1 | 17th | Convictiondo. | 1 |
| 45th | Convictiondo. | 1 | |||
| — | — | ||||
| Total | 53 | Total | 65 | ||
Therefore 94 out of the 118 are known “Old Offenders,” some of the remainder being known to the police as bad characters, although not known to have been before convicted in the same county.
It is said, also, that the English are more unmanageable than the Irish. Our own experience of the criminals of both nations would be directly the reverse of this. There are, besides, many English in the Irish convict prisons, and many Irish convicts in the English prisons, but their peculiar nationality does not render any different treatment necessary. The objection is futile. The principles and the system which have happily been the means of bringing these outcasts of society into the orderly, respectful, self-controlled men whom we saw, are founded on universal conditions of human nature, and if proved true in one place may be readily adapted to another by men who, like Captain Crofton, comprehend them, and possess the personal qualities which are requisite to carry them out. What those qualities are, and what are the peculiarities of the plans, we more fully ascertained on our visits to the other prisons which form part of the whole system. On this occasion we were anxious to learn the actual truth, and of that we were fully satisfied. The testimony of the labour master was no more than we were prepared to expect.
“I have been engaged on various public works,” he said, “for thirty years, yet never before have I had under me a set of men so well conducted, so free from bad language, so attentive to their duty.”