IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1235, 30 October 1885, Page 3

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

“ How Debtors are treated in Addington Gaol” is the heading of a series of letters which have been appearing the last month or two in the “Ellesmere Guardian,” a paper printed at Sonthbridge, about thirty miles from Christchurch. They have created quite a sensation, and have had a marked effect upon the orders for imprisonment for debt issued by the Christchurch magistrates. People read of how for no other crime than

poverty, men—and women, too —have been sentenced*to weeks’ and months’

imprisonment, which'mearis~ienu-stav-vrtfcion the whole time; solitary confinement twenty hours out of every twenty-four, and treatment in all ways as severe and degrading as that to which criminals- are sul jected. It these letters are faithful records of what obtains in Addington Gaol, then the Prisons Act under which’-Captain Hume has introduced his abominably severe treatment of debtors is repeatedly and systematic illy disregarded and ignored, and this not from ignorance on the part of the gaoler oi warders, but iu obe lienee, to 0u t tiin Hume’s direct instructions. The writer of the letters pledges himself to substantiate every statement made in them, and I may say that, from inquiries I have personally made of unfortunate debtors, I find that in every matter which I have looked into he is correct. Can you believe that a debtor is searched on entering the gaol, just as a criminal—every paper, letter, memorandum, pencil, pipe, watnh, everything, in fact, bub his actual clothing that he stands up in. is taken from him 1 His height, weight, appearance, religion, etc , are entered in a book. If he thinks fit the gaoler can make the man strip naked in order that “ any marks on his person ” may he duly recorded. He cannot receive any letter from even his wite until the gaoler has first opened, read, and endorsed it If he wants to write to her his letter has to pass through the same ghorrid Scrutiny before it is posted, branded with a huge stamp covering at least onethird of the envelope, bearing the words ‘-'Addington Gaol” If she calls to see him she does so in a kind of cage divided into three compartments by two rows of rails—she standing in one compartment and he iu another, with a warder listening for anything to be reported between them in the centre division. And remember this: with the semi-star vation, and with the solitary confinement twenty hours per day, is the treatment the law deals out to poverty, not crime and all the while we take credit to ourselves that that remnant of barbarism -imprisonment for debt —has been abolished in enlightened New Zealand.—Exchange.