Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8033, 20 January 1906, Page 4

Mrs. Maybrick's Fifteen Years in Prison. In Hep Book Just Published She Tells of the Horrors of Solitary Confinement, and Scores Unnrupulous Enemies. 11 My Fifteen Lost Years " is the title under which Mrs. Florence Maybrick tells the story of her famous trial and imprisonment ill England for the alleged murder of her husband, of her life as a convict, the efforts made by her friends, by legal organisations in America and in England, and by the State Department to secure ner release, and of the final success of these efforts. Of her solitary confinement she writes : " I followed the warder to a door, perhaps not more than two feet in width. She unlocked it and said, 'Pass in.' I stepped forward, but started back in horror. Through the open door I saw, by the dim light of a small window that wag never cleaned, a cell seven feet by four. u< Don't put me in there," I cried. I cannot- bear it.' " For anßwer the warder took me roughly by the shoulder, gave me a push, and shut the door. There was nothing to sit upon but the cold slate floor. I sank to my knees. I felt suffocated. It seemed that the walls were drawing nearer and nearer to* gether, and presently the life would be crushid out of me. I sprang to my feet and beat wildly with my handsagainst thedoor. 'For God's sake let me outl Let me out!' But my voice could not penetrate that massive barrier and exhausted I sank once more to the floor. I cannot recall those nine months of solitary ionfinement without a feeling of horror. My cell contained only a hammock rolled up in a corner, and three shelves let into the wall—no table nor stool. For a seat I was compelled to place my bedclothes on the floor." "On through the ten long, weary hours of the night the night officers patrol the wards, keeping watch, and through 4 glass peep-hole lilently inspect us in our beds to see that lothing is amiss. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. "Solitary confinement is by far the most jruel feature of English penal servitude. It inflicts upon the prisoner at the commencement of bor sentence, when most sensitive to the horrors which prison punishment entails, the voiceless solitude, the hopeless monotony the long vista of to-morrow, to-morrow, tomorrow stretching before her, all filled with desolation and despair. Once a prisoner hi* crossed the threshold of a convict prison, not only is she dead to the world, but she is expected in word and deed to lose or forget every vestage of her personality. Verily, The mills of the gods grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small, And woe to the wight unholy On whom these millstones fall.

"Bo it is with the Penal Code, which directs this vast machinery, doing Us utmost with tireless, ceaseless revolutions to mold body and soul slowly, remorselessly, into shape demanded by act of Parliament. A period of four months' solitary confinement in the case of a female, and six months in the cas6 of a male, and especially of a girl or youth, is surely a crime against civilization andhumanity. Such a punishment is inexpressible torture to both mind and body. I spsak from experience. The torture of continually enforced silence is known to produce insanity or nervous breakdown more than any other feature connected with prison discipline. It is a serious accusation against any system to say that it produces the thing it is designed to prevent, but such, I am convinced, is the fact as regards the manufacture of criminals and imbeciles by the present system of penalism almost the world over." SEARCHED TEN THOUSAND TIMES. Concerning the ordeal of being searohed daily for concealed weapons of any kind whereby the prisoners might harih them•elves, Mrs. Maybrick says: "To me it was a bitter indignity. I was never allowed to forget that, being a prisoner even my body was not my own. It was horrible to be touched by unfriendly hinds, yet I was compelled to submit—to be undressed and be searched. During the term of my imprisonment I was searched about ten thousand times.

At last came the day of release. The prisoner had awaited it half dazed since notified of her respite. She says: On Monday, the 25th day of January, I was awakened early, and after laying aside, (or the last time, the garments of shame and disgrace, I was clothed once moreTn those that representcivilization and respectability. I descended to the court below, and accompanied by the chief matron and my escort, passed silently through the great gates and oat o( the prison. At half-past six a cab drove quietly up, and the matron and I silently stepped in and were driven away to the Aylesbury station. On our arrival in London we proceeded at once to Paddington station. The noise and the crowds of people everywhere bewildered me. VEBDIOT IS UNTENABLE. A time will come when the world will acknowledge that the verdict which was passed upon me is absolutely untenable. But what then 1 Who shall give back the years I have spent within prison walls; the friends by whom lam forgotten; the children to whom I am dead; the sunshine; the winds of heaven; my woman's life, and all I have lost by this terrible injustice?

■The innocents—my children—one a baby of three years, the other a boy of seven, I had left behind in the world. They had been taught to believe that their mother was guilty, and, like their father, was to them dead. They havegrown up to years of understanding under another name. I know nothing about them. When the pathos of all this touches the reader's heart he will realize tho tragedy ol my case. During the early years of my imprisonment I received my children's photographs once a year; also several friendly letters from Mr. Thomas Maybrick, with information about them. But as time passed on, they ceased altogether. When I could endure the silence no longer I instructed Mr. B. S. Cleaver of Liverpool—who had been the solicitor in my case, and to whose unwavering faith and kindness I ows a debt I can never hope to repay—to write to Mr. Micheal Maybrick to forward fresh photographs of my boy and girl. To this request Mr. Thomas Maybrick replied that Mr. Micheal Maybrick refused to permit it. When the matter was further urged Mr. Micheal Maybrickhimself wrote to the Governor to inform me that my son, who had been made acquainted with the history of the case, did not wish either his own or his sister's photograph to be sent to me.

IN HUSBAND'S SICK ROOM. Mn. Maybrick in her analysis of the evidence presented against her, says that her husband was a known arsenic eater and gives this account of what occurred in the fatal sick-room: At my husband's urgent piteoui request, I placed a powder (which by his direction I took from a pocket in his vest, hanging in the ad> joining room, which room until his sickness had been his private bedroom, he havingbeen removed to mine as being larger and more airy) a bottle of meat juice, no part of the contents of which were given him, and hence it the Yery most there oould have legally arisen from this act only t' (jharge of" intent to poison."

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