Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in SolitudeBidwell, Austin
General
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Bidwell, Austin
Bank fraud -- England; Bank of England; Bidwell, Austin; Criminals -- Biography
This flow of moral sewage to our shores is constant and unceasing. Our
Government has frequently protested against it, but with no success, for
the officials in England indignantly deny that the State either
encourages or assists the exodus of her criminal classes; but from my
personal knowledge I know this to be false. The officials over there
have found out an effectual way to rid themselves of their discharged
prisoners as fast as their sentences expire, and cast them on our
shores, and this is so ingenious a way that the wrong can never be
brought home to them.
During my twenty years' residence in Chatham I suppose nearly half as
many thousands asked me for information about America, and at least 95
per cent. assured me that when released they would "join the society"
and depart at once for that happy hunting ground--that Promised Land
which charms the imagination no less of the criminal than of the honest
poor of the Old World. In every English prison the walls are decorated
with placards, gorgeous in hue, of rival firms appealing to the readers
for patronage. "Join us," they all say; and every prisoner knows the
appeal "join us" means if you do we will ferry you over the Jordan that
rolls between this desert land and the plains flowing with milk and
honey on the other side. The "firms" I mention are those arch humbugs,
the Prisoners' Aid Societies of England.
Elizabeth Fry, who made "aid to prisoners" fashionable and a society fad
in England, has much to answer for. Prisoners' Aid Societies have sprung
up in every quarter of England, and having a rich soil, and under the
fostering care of the Government, have flourished with a rank and
luxuriant growth. These societies draw their nourishment from English
soil, but, unhappily for us, their tall branches hang over our wall and
their ripened fruit falls on our ground.
From the time a prisoner becomes accustomed to his surroundings until
the hour of his release the one thing ever uppermost in his thoughts,
the one distracting subject and cause of anxious solicitude, is the
question, "Which society shall I join?" It is a tolerably safe venture
to predict that he will "join" "The Royal Prisoners' Aid Society of
London," which society is happy in having Her Gracious Majesty and a
long list of illustrious lords and ladies for "governors." What that may
mean no one knows. Certainly no benefit from these people ever accrues
to the discharged prisoners, but who can describe the glory that falls
on the four or five reverend gentlemen, sons, nephews or brothers of
deans or bishops, high-salaried secretaries of this particular society,
who pose at the annual meeting in Exeter Hall, before a brilliant
audience, and after have the felicity of seeing their report in the
church and society journals and their names connected with such exalted
people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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