DRAMATIC SCENE

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1932, Page 3

DRAMATIC SCENE

EX-CONVICT'S EXPERIENCES

INCIDENT AT LECTURE.

There was a dramatic incident at King’s We'gh House Club, London, last month, where Mr E. A. Joyce, DeputyGovernor of Wormwood Serubbs Prison, gave a lecture.

After Mr Joyce had spoken, a man of about 45, wearing a black coat, got up and said quietly: “Perhaps, after the speaker and chairman, I am the most important man in the room—l am an ex-convict. I am what is known as an old ‘lag,’ and T have seven convictions against me. I wa« at Dartmoor, and you can take it from me that an ev-prisoner’s real trial start on the day of his discharge. “It was my birthday, as I call it. on January 16 last; you see I was last discharged from prison, it was Pentonville, on January 16, 1923, after having done 18 months. It was then my battle started. 1 have a delightful wife, f'Hthfi’l leva!, :and True, iand fiv© beautiful children. When I left Penton vi lie mv wife was there waiting foil’ me; it was about 7.30 in the morning.

“The first tring she said to me was: ‘Charles, you can’t come home, Mrs won’t have you in the house.’ We got as Jar as Balham, and there I had to part from her. 1 met some obi associates. ‘What are you going to have?’ they said. Fancy offering a man a drink when he has not had one f°>’ eighteen months.

“I HAVE HAD A BATTLE

“The Discharged Prison ers’ Aid Society had provided me with a week s l.w-rd and 'edging, and +hey pent my wife '3os. After that first week the battle began. H was all up in about, three weeks, and we had to go i’’to an institution, and if it were a choice between an institution and prison T vo’rid sav prison to-o’orrow.

T have had a battle. T am a clerk, and !l daresay I am about as cl“ver a writer a" °ny man in London. I have

done many and many n ‘kite,’ which ’s a vulgar term, or prisoner’-? name, for a cheque. T had an offer at Christmas : th,?v said • ‘Ginger, do this kite : you will get £2o.’ But no. For one thing fear has kept me off it, and also mv word to the chaplain when I last left prison that I would not go down aga’n. “I do not °av it now. hut a few years ago Scot 1 a lid Yard revised that I was oi'o -of the five or six men in London who could forge a signature. Three weeks ago I was elected because 1 could not pnv mv rent, hut T shall not 20 down. I have found a roof for my wife and children.t The man added that’ Wormwood Scrnbbs was his first prison. o »

CONDITIONS IN PRIONS. Mr Joyce, in his lecture, said that prison never reformed any man. The only thing tbev could hope to do war to make the conditions in a' prison such -that a man was able tq, reform himself.

“I met a man last month who will be in prison for another twelve mon'hs yet. He leaves outside a wife and a baby not yet six months old. and between him and his wife at the time T met him there was fifteen shillings. “You rend in the paper that a man Lar been sentenced to six months impr’sonment, but you never read—no lodge would dare sav it—that Ui p bulge said; “John Smith, T sentenc" you to six months’ hard labour. I sentence your wife to six months misery, and I sentence your child to a stigma the child itself does not understand.'’

Discussing the cause for the increase in crime, Mr Joyce said that theie was a lack of moral standards due. in the main, +n "W- "‘"■mital control.