Transcriber's Note: Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. Some changes of spelling have been made. They are listed at the end of the text. OE ligatures have been expanded. Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. CHILDREN IN PRISON AND OTHER CRUELTIES OF PRISON LIFE. MURDOCH & CO., 26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON. PUBLISHERS' NOTE. The circumstance which called forth this letter is a woeful one for Christian England. Martin, the Reading warder, is found guilty of feeding the hungry, nursing the sick, of being kindly and humane. These are his offences in plain unofficial language. This pamphlet is tendered to earnest persons as evidence that the prison system is opposed to all that is kind and helpful. Herein is shown a process that is dehumanizing, not only to the prisoners, but to every one connected with it. Martin was dismissed. It happened in May last year. He is still out of employment and in poor circumstances. Can anyone help him? _February, 1898._ SOME CRUELTIES OF PRISON LIFE. THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY CHRONICLE. SIR,--I learn with great regret, through an extract from the columns of your paper, that the warder Martin, of Reading Prison, has been dismissed by the Prison Commissioners for having given some sweet biscuits to a little hungry child. I saw the three children myself on the Monday preceding my release. They had just been convicted, and were standing in a row in the central hall in their prison dress, carrying their sheets under the arms previous to their being sent to the cells allotted to them. I happened to be passing along one of the galleries on my way to the reception room, where I was to have an interview with a friend. They were quite small children, the youngest--the one to whom the warder gave the biscuits--being a tiny little chap, for whom they had evidently been unable to find clothes small enough to fit. I had, of course, seen many children in prison during the two years during which I was myself confined. Wandsworth Prison, especially, contained always a large number of children. But the little child I saw on the afternoon of Monday, the 17th, at Reading, was tinier than any one of them. I need not say how utterly distressed I was to see these children at Reading, for I knew the treatment in store for them. The cruelty that is practised by day and night on children in English prisons is incredible, except to those who have witnessed it and are aware of the brutality of the system.