PAPERS FROM THE PRISON.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 22, 19 September 1912, Page 7

PAPERS FROM THE PRISON.

When the Home Office sets about collecting specimens of skilled work done by convicts for the purpose of the International Exhibition which it is said to be about to hold (says the Manchester Guardian), it is to be hoped that some attention will be paid to prison newspapers and prison poetry. There is no prison press in England ,we believe, but in America there is a flourishing one. The Star of Hope, the happily titled news-sheet of Sing-Sing prison, is well written, well edited and well printed. The Minnesota Penitentiary has its Prison Mirror ,to which John'Carter, a young Englishman convicted of burglary, contributed a number of sketches in prose and yep. induced some prominentliterarypi ear to ask for his hr hvlsdreleascd^aftti 1 he had'slflbd a 'ijitil# *ihoro than half of the ten yeas t§ which ho had been sentenced, Her© is, a specimen verse of his:

Labour and brooding—is there then no rest ? Day follows day, and in the silent nights Throng ghostly memories of past d'e,i)igl\ts, i Faces I have loved and lips that I '■'• IhaVe pressed/ i Until, the sullen,, deep-toned morning hell' , ’; J ' Wakes me to face a yesterday again, With all its bitter agony of pain, Thou didst not linger, Dante, in thy hell. One need not go to America for specimens of verse of this sort, Perhaps the original of the following could be obtained for the Home Office Exhibition; — Millbanjcs for thick shins and graft at the pump; Broadmoor for all lags as go off thenchump ; Brixtou for good tpke and cocoa with ftVt * Dartmoor for bad grub but plenty of chat; Portsmouth, a blooming bad place tor hard work; Chatham on Sunday gives four ounce of pork; . Portland is worst of the lot for to joke

in; For fetching a lagging there’s no place like Woking. It was scratched with a nail on the bottom of a dinner-can.