Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Prison LifeWilde, Oscar
General
Children in Prison and Other Cruelties of Prison Life
Wilde, Oscar
Juvenile delinquency; Prisons
of which this unfortunate man was placed, I had full opportunity of
observing him. I also saw him, of course, at exercise continually, and I
saw that he was becoming insane, and was being treated as if he was
shamming.
On Saturday week last, I was in my cell at about one o'clock occupied in
cleaning and polishing the tins I had been using for dinner. Suddenly I
was startled by the prison silence being broken by the most horrible and
revolting shrieks or rather howls, for at first I thought some animal
like a bull or a cow was being unskilfully slaughtered outside the
prison walls. I soon realised, however, that the howls proceeded from
the basement of the prison, and I knew that some wretched man was being
flogged. I need not say how hideous and terrible it was for me, and I
began to wonder who it was who was being punished in this revolting
manner. Suddenly it dawned upon me that they might be flogging this
unfortunate lunatic. My feelings on the subject need not be chronicled;
they have nothing to do with the question.
The next day, Sunday 16th, I saw the poor fellow at exercise, his weak,
ugly, wretched face bloated by tears and hysteria almost beyond
recognition. He walked in the centre ring along with the old men, the
beggars and the lame people, so that I was able to observe him the whole
time. It was my last Sunday in prison, a perfectly lovely day, the
finest day we had had the whole year, and there, in the beautiful
sunlight, walked this poor creature--made once in the image of
God--grinning like an ape, and making with his hands the most fantastic
gestures, as though he was playing in the air on some invisible stringed
instrument, or arranging and dealing counters in some curious game. All
the while these hysterical tears, without which none of us ever saw
him, were making soiled runnels on his white swollen face. The hideous
and deliberate grace of his gestures made him like an antic. He was a
living grotesque. The other prisoners all watched him, and not one of
them smiled. Everybody knew what had happened to him, and that he was
being driven insane--was insane already. After half-an-hour, he was
ordered in by the warder, and, I suppose, punished. At least he was not
at exercise on Monday, though I think I caught sight of him at the
corner of the stone-yard, walking in charge of a warder.
On the Tuesday--my last day in prison--I saw him at exercise. He was
worse than before, and again was sent in. Since then I know nothing of
him, but I found out from one of the prisoners who walked with me at
exercise that he had had twenty-four lashes in the cook-house on
Saturday afternoon, by order of the visiting justices on the report of
the doctor. The howls that had horrified us all were his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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