Beastly Drunkenness.

Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 28, 21 January 1875, Page 7

Beastly Drunkenness.

The special correspondent of the ' Daily News ' furnishes the following graphic description of what he ternis the " drunk cells," " mad drunk cells/' and "dead - dnrak ■ cells/'" of the Glasgow Central Police Station ;—rAscending to the second floor, we enter through a grating, a 'corridor which we find strongly patrolled, and are informed in explanation that two extra men; are placed on duty here on Saturday night to watch that the prisoners don't .fight or choke themselves. This corridor contains numerous . cells of various sizes. This central station, it should have been said, has accommodation for over 40u prisoners. The turnkey opens cell IVo 1, throwing his light into it. The floor is littered with five recumbent motionless forms, which might be those of swine or of men for aught the spectator can distinguish, but that the material lying about is that of humanity, has become dimly apparent because of a groan or two and a muttered curse which vary the monotony of the grun tings and stupor. The next cell presents an aspect like that of the miscellaneous grave of a battlefield The heap that cumbers its floor is a chaos which vaguely resolves itself into the form of some halfdozen men, but from the confusion tf odd limbs it would be rash to affirm that thei*e were not a few more than this number. In the three next cells the the scene was merely a repetition of what has been described ; but some of the inmates were too full of oaths and coarse language to sink into the drunken slumber which had overwhelmed their fellows. Then we came to the cells containing drunken women, who were nearly as numerous as the drunken men. Some lay like dead logs : others had laid aside the larger . portion of their clouts and " rampaged " about their cells hideous travesties of womanhood. Wretches of all ages were there ; the shrivelled grey-haired crone, drunken and most foul-mouthed of all, as she lay so near her grave that one shuddered lest she might die of old a°-e before she could be released; youngwomen, not uncomely spite of their whiskey-bleared eyes, bloated faces, and careless rags ; babies slumbering the sweet sleep of childhood on the bosoms of mothers whose motherhood and whcse decency had been alike drowned in drink. One cell was pandemonium itself, a pit of raging bedlamites. A woman yelled blasphemy and obscenity as she swung a babe carelessly in her arms, a girl stripped to the waist shrieked back at her, and an old woman sat crooning a maudlin song on the floor. Another cell resembled the description of the well of Cawnpore, a heap of the not-to-be-analysed disjecta membra of womanhood miserable, whose Nana Sahib was whiskey. A few steps from these "■ drunken cells," and we were in the "dead cell" itself; a veritable dead house, tenanted by three martyrs who had died in the service of their master — the drink. There lay the corpses, stiff, pale, and cold, while' the odour of the destroyer still faintly hung over the mortuary. One man had been run over when drunk; a second had been. found dead in a court after a debauch ; and a third had died in the act of taking more of that of whinh he had already taken too much. Beyond the dead cell lay the " mad-drunk cells," each tenanted by a single inmate, whose con-: dition of drunkenness had beenfrantic and dangerous on admission. :