Our convicts : their riots and their causes : containing startling revelations of the frightful abuses of our convict system, official correspondence, etc., etc. : presented to Parliament / by W. Thwaites.
- Thwaites, W.
- Date:
- 1861
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Our convicts : their riots and their causes : containing startling revelations of the frightful abuses of our convict system, official correspondence, etc., etc. : presented to Parliament / by W. Thwaites. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![he falls into crime lie cannot keep his crime concealed from the knowledge of the authorities of Mettray. But what do Colonel Jebb and the prison directors know of the hundreds and thousands who leave their prisons 1 Half of them may lead dissolute and vicious lives, and the authorities who sent them forth from prison be none the wiser. So that after the con- victs have left his prisons Colonel Jebb can know but little concerning their so-called reformation. But let us glance a little more narrowly at the reformatory discipline of the Colonel's prisons. We will take Portland, which seems the pet prison. There, the Colonel tells us that it is pleasant to walk through the stone quarries and observe a thousand convicts cheerfully and quietly engaged in that laborious employment. He also points to the Governor's report of the fewness of the prison offences committed by the convicts, and in a somewhat exulting strain point to these facts as a proof of reformation. Now, I am not inclined to underrate these facts. Colonel Jebb deserves the thanks of the community for his admirable prisons, for the discipline he has established, and for the countenance he gives to religious and secular instruction in his prisons. But quietness, apparent cheerfulness, and fewness of prison offences, are not proofs of the reformation of con- victs. A very bad man is often a man the most alive to his own interests j and it is a well-known fact to those engaged among convicts that a regular thief and prison-bird is the man who conforms the most to prison rules. And Avhere men come under a semi-military discipline, as the convicts at Portland do, it strikes them at once that it Avould be folly to attempt to act in opposition to the commands of those who are placed over them, and who have the power to enforce those commands. But does working in quarries for two, three, or seven years in a quiet and so-called cheerful manner fit a man to return to the bosom of society ? Let it be borne in mind that those who work in those stone quarries are compelled to do so ; they have no other choice, and the quietness Avith which they do their work and their apparent cheerfulness are their only chances of getting the least mitigation of their sentence. Eeformation, Sir, does not consist in bringing a man to a mere submis- sion to prison authority, and to the mechanical performance of a certain amount of manual labour, which labour he will never perform after his liberation ; and all this too that he may hasten his freedom. If it does, then Colonel Jebb has in a great measure succeeded. But alas ! I am too well, far too well, assured of the fact, that from Colonel Jebb's prisons have emanated hundreds and thousands who have not imbibed one single right principle of action; but who have gone forth with the determina- tion to prey upon society for the time to come, as they have done in times past. And why is this ] Simply because Colonel Jebb sends them forth from his prisons no better qualified to gain an honest living than when they entered. Sir, fancy a hundred London or Glasgow thieves working from two to four years in the quarries at Portland, or dragging burdens in the dock- yards at Portsmouth or Chatham; have they by such an industrial training learnt to love an honest employment 1 Grant they have ; but you must have a credulous mind to believe it. You send them back to London, or to Glasgow : where, in either place, will they find the stone-quarries](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21081062_0032.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
