There are many women who hover about the borderland of insanity for months, possibly for years. They are recognized as weak-minded, and consequently they make capital out of their condition, and by the working of their distorted minds, and petty tempers, and unreasonable jealousy, add immeasurably not only to the ghastliness of the “house of sorrow,” but are a sad clog on the efforts to self-betterment of their level-minded sisters in misery. Of these many try hard to make the best of what has to be gone through. Therefore, is it necessary, is it wise, is it right that such a state of things should be allowed? The weak-minded should be kept in a separate place, with their own officers to attend them. Neither the weak-minded, the epileptic, nor the consumptives were isolated. There is great need of reform wherever this is the case. Prisoners whose behavior is different from the normal should be separated from the other prisoners, and made to serve out their sentences under specially adapted conditions. I read in the newspapers that insanity is on the increase; this fact is clearly reflected within the prison walls. It is stated that the insane form about three per thousand of the general population. In local English prisons insanity, it is said, even after deducting those who come in insane, is seven times more prevalent than among the general population. READING AN INSUFFICIENT RELAXATION The nervous crises do not now supervene so frequently as formerly in the case of prisoners of a brooding disposition, but the fact remains that, in spite of the slight amelioration, mental light is still excluded--that communion on which rests all human well-being. The vacuity of the solitary system, to some at least, is partially lighted by books. But what of those who can not read, or who have not sufficient concentration of mind to profit by reading as a relaxation? There are many such, in spite of the high standard of free education that prevails at the present day. The shock of the trial, and the uprooting of a woman’s domestic ties, coupled with the additional mental strain of having to start her prison career in solitary confinement, is surely neither humane, nor merciful, nor wise. These months of solitary confinement leave an ineffaceable mark. It is during the first lonely months that the seeds of bitterness and hardness of heart are sown, and it requires more than a passive resistance--nay, nothing short of an unfaltering faith and trust in an overruling Providence--to bring a prisoner safely through the ordeal. Let the sympathetic reader try to realize what it means never to feel the touch of anything soft or warm, never to see anything that is attractive--nothing but stone above, around, and beneath. The deadly chill creeps into one’s bones; the bitter days of winter and the still bitterer nights were torture, for Woking Prison was not heated. My hands and feet were covered with chilblains. MY SUFFERINGS FROM COLD AND INSOMNIA