Life in the Clearings versus the BushMoodie, Susanna
History
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Moodie, Susanna
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Moodie, Susannah, 1803-1885; Ontario -- Description and travel
Mr. Moodie's bailiffs had taken down a young fellow, about twenty years
of age, who had been convicted at the assizes for stealing curious coins
from a person who had brought them out to this country as old family
relics. The evidence was more circumstantial than positive, and many
persons believed the lad innocent.
He had kept up his spirits bravely on the voyage, and was treated with
great kindness by the men who had him in custody; but when once within
the massy walls of the huge building, his courage seemed to forsake him
all at once. We passed him as he sat on the bench, while the barber was
cutting his hair and shaving off his whiskers. His handsome suit had
been removed--he was in the party-coloured dress before described. There
was in his face an expression of great anguish, and tears were rolling
in quick succession down his cheeks. Poor fellow! I should hardly have
known him again, so completely was he humbled by his present position.
Mr. M---y told me that they had some men in the Penitentiary who had
returned three different times to it, and had grown so attached to their
prison that they preferred being there, well clothed and well fed, to
gaining a precarious living elsewhere.
Executions in Canada are so rare, even for murder, that many atrocious
criminals are found within these walls--men and women--who could not
possibly have escaped the gallows in England.
At twelve o'clock I followed Mr. M--- to the great hall, to see the
prisoners dine. The meal consisted of excellent soups, with a portion
of the meat which had been boiled in it, potatoes, and brown bread, all
very clean and good of their kind. I took a plate of the soup and a
piece of the bread, and enjoyed both greatly.
I could not help thinking, while watching these men in their comfortable
dresses, taking their wholesome, well-cooked meal, how much better they
were fed and lodged than thousands of honest industrious men, who had
to maintain large families upon a crust of bread, in the great
manufacturing cities at home.
Most of these men had very bad countenances, and I never felt so much
convinced of the truth of phrenology as while looking at their heads.
The extraordinary formation, or rather mal-formation, of some of them,
led me to think that their possessors were hardly accountable for their
actions. One man in particular, who had committed a very atrocious
murder, and was confined for life, had a most singular head, such as
one, indeed, as I never before saw on a human body. It was immensely
large at the base, and appeared perfectly round, while at the crown
it rose to a point like a sugar-loaf. He was of a dull, drab-coloured
complexion, with large prominent eyes of a pale green colour;
his expression, the most repulsively cruel and sinister. The eye
involuntarily singled him out among all his comrades, as something too
terrible to escape observation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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