- New Ireland
- October 15, 1922
Everything is done by rule, and there are endless rules, and endless red tape, and endless inspections. All these seem originally to have been instituted for the protection of the prisoner, but all in the long run are either useless, or used against her for the protection of the officials, and are each like the jab of a severe bit to a nervous horse.
The dinner is always inspected, after it is cooked, by the governor or deputy-governor. A table of “samples” is neatly laid out. The bits are carefully selected by warders in charge, and it’s always the best bits the governor looks at and tastes and invariably says “excellent”, while we grin ironically. No inspector ever had the sense to take a ration at random and weigh and taste it, nor was the uncooked food ever examined as far as I know. If that had been done it would have been found that the suet was mostly rolled skin; it was constantly tainted and always full of what I have since been told are tubercular glands. They were of globular formation, ranging from the size of a pea to a large grape; some a pinky-yellow colour, some purple and covered with little veins. We used to collect them in a pie-dish and burn them.
We had fish on Thursday; bully beef on Sunday; other days we had mutton or beef; a couple of small slices of meat floating in greasy water.
With this we had 12 ounces of vegetables, mostly potatoes, with slices of carrots, or dried beans, or onions, very occasionally leeks or cabbage, etc. The dinners were served in two storey cans, used indiscriminately among 200 women, and, more, some of the cans very old and musty.
A great many of the women were known to be suffering from venereal disease, and at the time an attempt was made to keep their tins separate. This was dropped after a while.
There was no proper accommodation for washing these 400 tins. I used to do 200 with another convict. We did our best to get them clean in a big terracotta bowl on the kitchen table and to dry them on two towels. Sometimes the water would not be hot and then you could neither dry nor clean the tins.
In Aylesbury Jail I worked in the kitchen, and part of my work was the washing of over 200 top-tins daily. They never could be washed properly, as there was no proper accommodation. We did the best we could to rinse them in an earthenware bowl on the kitchen table. Often the water was not hot enough, and sometimes there was no soap or soda. Many of the tins were red with rust inside. There were only two towels to dry them. If I had time I could give you endless examples of English cleanliness. It may be summed up as follows: brasses, floors, door-knobs, all that jumps to the eye immaculate, but dirt and carelessness behind the scenes. I have seen vermin found in the baths.
All the convicts lived with their nerves on edge, the horror of catching syphilis, the struggle to keep your health so that when eventually you were released you could work, occupied everybody. It was their horror of breaking down, much more than gluttony, that made women risk severe punishment in their efforts to steal margarine or dripping, or a raw onion, or a bit of bread.
There are many horrors that I have no time to touch on. Those inquiring into prison conditions might find the following suggestions as to where to direct inquiries useful. You could write reams on each:
- Dividing the prisoners into classes
- Silence rule
- The unhealthy conditions under which prisoners work and live (cells, food, conditions of work, “speeding up”)
- The whole relationship of officers with prisoners, and system of discipline among themselves
- Methods of supervision, at Divine Service, and all other times
- Searches
- Complete severance of all ties
- Manner in which letters are censored
- Manner in which the few short visits are conducted
- The hundred little maddening rules and regulations which have driven so many unfortunates into the madhouse.