BEASTLY DRUNKENNESS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1904, 9 February 1875, Page 3

BEASTLY DRUNKENNESS.

BEASTLY The special correspondent of the 'Daily News' furnishes the following graphic-description of what' he terms the "drunk cells," "mad drunk cells, nnd " dead drunk cells," of the Glasgow Central Police Station:— Ascending to the second floor, we enter through agrating 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 tne prisoners don't fight or choke themselves. This corridor contains numerous cells of various sizes. This central station,, it should bare been said, has accommodation for over 400 prisoners. The turnkey opens cell No 1, throwing his light into it.

The floor iajlittered' with five recumbent motionless forms, which might be. those of swine or of men for aught the spectator can distinguish, bufc that the, material tying 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 gruntings 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 resolve 3 irself into the forms of some half-dozen men, but from the confusion of odd limbs it would be rash to affirm that there were not a few more than this number. In the three next cells 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 was there ; the shrivelled greyhaired crone, drunlcen and pidst foulmouthed of all, as she lay so near her grave that one shuddered lest she might; i die of old age before she could be released ; young women, not uncomely spite of their whisky-bleared eyes, bloated faces, and careless rags ; babies slumbering the sweet sleep,.of childhood on the bosoms of mothers whose motherhood and whose 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 1 heap of the not-to-be-ana-lysed disjecta membra of womanhood n i«erable, whose Nana Sahib was whisky. A. few. steps from these cells/ and we were in the ".dead,cell".' itself, a veritable d^ad: house, tenanted by three martyis who had died in the service of their master—the drink. There lay the corpses, stiff 1, 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 which he had already taken two much. Beyond the dead cell lay the " mad-drunk cells/ each tenanted by a single inmate, whose condition of drunkenness had.been frantic and dangerous on admission. '