Holloway Gaol From the Inside.

Waikato Argus, Volume XXIV, Issue 3750, 6 April 1908, Page 2

Holloway Gaol From the Inside.

(By a Suffragette, in the Daily Express.)

As the constable who rides behind “Black Maria” unbolts, one by one, the hutches in which its occupants during the drive are penned, each prisoner on arrival at Holloway is locked into a cubicle cell, the furniture of which is a seat. The partitions of these cells do not reach to the top of the corridor, so as one sits in the dark and cold one hears the receiving officer open one cubicle after another and go through the form of interrogation which is the nation’s welcome to those seeking temporarily its hospitality. The receiving officer, when I visited “Holloway Hotel,” was a good natured but ignorant Irish woman, and when I shut my eyes I can still hear the voice in which she repeated mechanically, as she opened each door “Well, gurrl! Fwhat’s your name? How old are you? Now do you get your livin’? Have you been here before? Fwhat’.s your religion?”

We were then let out in threes in a sort of passage, where we were told to take off all our clothes and to choose from a heap of coarse prison chemises, plentifully marked with the broad arrow, an elementary garment in which to clothe ourselves. We then stood for twenty minutes barefooted and in this one garment, while lists were made of all the clothes, jewellery, money, etc., found upon us.

We were weighed and measured, our taken down and examined for vermin, and we then passed on to the bath, which, fortunately, for us, was a perfunctory affair, as we stood in warm water for a few minutes. We then put on the rest of the prison clothing, consisting of a much worn, coarse flannel jersey, flannel petticoat to match, a linscy petticoat, a green shapeless bodice and skirt, a check apron, a white cap, a yellow badge, bearing our number, and a duster for a pocket handkerchief; no pocket being allowed, this beautiful object is tucked into the string of the apron, and as it has to last a week before it gets washed, it will be understood that no provisions for influenza colds are made for those who are the guests of the nation.

The stockings provided are of the quality of cycling stockings, and in my case reached barely to the knee; as no garters are allowed, the effect, when one has to walk briskly round and round the prison yards for half an hour, does not make for neatness. The shoes are of the hardest and coarsest leather, and have been cobbled again and again till their weight is enormous, and the number of nails sticking up in the soles soon reduce one’s stockings and one’s feet to a state of holes.” When, on the third day, I complained, the wardress produced a heap of old odd shoes, telling me to choose some that had fewer nails. On this evening of reception, after being marshalled in one of the upper corridors, we were each given a brown roll, and were locked for the night into our cells, where we took our plank beds down, laid them flat on the cement floor, unrolled the cocoanut fibre mattresses, covered ourselves with the two thin blankets, and lay down —but not to sleep! At six the bell clangs for us to get up, and in the dark of a winter morning I got into my outer prison garments (I suffered so from cold during the night that I had to keep on all my underclothes), washed in the tin basin, fastened up my hair as well as I could without a looking glass, and was just ready by the time the ceil doors were thrown open and we were told to go and fill our water cans. After breakfast of cocoa, which I never ventured on, so I cannot speak for its quality, and a roll of brown bread came the cleaning of the cells, which “cleaning” being among the most obtusely stupid traditions of prison discipline, deserves to be described in detail.

The cell violates all laws of hygiene, in that the barred window is not made to open to admit the outer air, and is of corrugated glass so that no sunshine can penetrate into the cell. A strip of the cement floor at the further end of the cell has to be whitewashed every morning, and on this whitewashed strip are arranged the tin utensils used by the prisoner. These tin utensils are a dustpan, a sanitary bucket, a washing basin, a water can with a cover, and a tin mug. These utensils can be rinsed out at the sink in the morning, but their cleaning and polishing must be accomplished in the cell, where one piece of rag, one cloth, and brickdust are provided. The prisoner is sometimes changed from one cell to another, and finds on her arrival in the new cell that she has to use the still wet and soiled rag of the woman who has just vacated the cell. When the cell and tins have been cleaned, the insanitary wooden spoon, and the “books of devotion” arranged at their proper angle on the shelf, the prisoner makes canvas Post Office bags till summoned to chapel. Half an hour is spent in chapel, where a wardress sits facing every group of thirty or forty women, to see that no one talks. Then comes the half hour of exercise in the yard, after which the prisoners are all locked up for the day, and have to do the task of hard labour allotted to them in their cells. With a clash and jangling of keys and bolts, dinner is thrust in at noon; it is sometimes a chunk of what is call ■ ed suet pudding, sometime soup, and sometimes “meat preserved by beat,” which, being interpreted, is Chicago tinned meat. There are generally potatoes, which is the only part of the mem I ever tried.

The evening meal is tea or cocoa and brown bread; after which the scissors used in cutting the coarse threads with which the mail bags are sewn are removed, presumably because the temptations to suicide become more acute as the evening chill and darkness set in. It was explained to me that the lack of garters was caused by the same solicitude on the part of the authorities that there should be no extra temptation for prioners to commit suicide.

No letters are allowed to be received or sent by prisoners serving short sentences; any letter sent to the prisoner is opened and returned at once to the sender with a printed form stating that the prisoner has no right to receive a letter. 1 have striven to give in the above article a faithful account of the day’s regime in Holloway. / A Horae Office Blue book gives a faithful account of the bulk of its inhabitants.-—D.B.M.