Arthur Griffiths

“ Now they came rushing through the gaol, calling to each other in the vaulted passages; clashing the iron gates dividing yard from yard; beating at the doors of cells and wards; wrenching off bolts and locks and bars; tearing down the door-posts to let men out; endeavouring to drag them by main force through gaps and windows where a child could scarcely pass; whooping and yelling without a moment’s rest, and running through the heat and flames as if they were cased in metal. By their legs, their arms, the hair upon their heads, they dragged the prisoners out. ”

“ What must be the sufferings of that man who sits two months on the bare ground in a dungeon so damp, so dark, so horrible, without bed or straw, his limbs loaded as mine were, with no refreshment but dry ammunition bread; without so much as a drop of broth, without physic, without a consoling friend, and who under all these afflictions must trust for his recovery to the efforts of nature alone! ”

“ I defended to myself the assault upon Lord Blackadder as in a measure provoked and justifiable under the circumstances, although I was really sorry for him and at the poor figure he cut before the police magistrate and gendarmes. But I could not forget the part he had played throughout, nor was I at all disposed to turn aside from my set purpose to help the ladies in their distress. Every man of proper feeling would be moved thereto, and I knew in my secret heart that very tender motives impelled me to the unstinting championship of Lady Claire. ”

“ The combat with crime is as old as civilization. Unceasing warfare is and ever has been waged between the law-maker and the law-breaker. The punishments inflicted upon criminals have been as various as the nations devising them, and have reflected with singular fidelity their temperaments or development. This is true of the death penalty which in many ages was the only recognized punishment for crimes either great or small. Each nation has had its own special method of inflicting it. One was satisfied simply to destroy life ”

“ Purling was quite calm and self-possessed, while Miss Fanshawe, strange to say, seemed agitated enough for both. Her hands trembled, she looked away; only with positive repugnance she submitted to her new mother's affectionate embrace. A woman who is capable of the most cold-blooded calculating intrigue may yet have an access of remorse. Phillipa's heart was heavy now at the moment of her triumph. It cost her more than a passing pang to remember that she had robbed Harold Purling of his birthright, and had turned to her own base purpose the foolish cravings of the silly mother's heart. ”

“ But at Newgate the convicted prisoner, instead of privation and hard fare, “is permitted to purchase whatever his own means or the means of his friends in or out of prison can afford, and he can almost invariably procure the luxuries of his class of life, beer and tobacco, in abundance. Instead of seclusion and meditation, his time is passed in the midst of a body of criminals of every class and degree, in riot, debauchery, and gaming, vaunting his own adventures, or listening to those of others; communicating his own skill and aptitude in crime, or acquiring the lessons of greater adepts. ”

“ Laing, bent all their energies to compass "the abolition of all the moral distinctions that the law of God has established in society; to persuade the public that the free emigrant was no better than the convict, that the whole community was equally corrupt, and those of the convict class were no worse than the best in the colony, their situation being the result of misfortune, as they pretended, and not of misconduct." ”

“ Strangers in a strange land, surrounded by dreary wastes, shivering under leaden skies, seldom seeing the sun which to many was as the breath of life, all alike were consumed with inappeasable nostalgia, hopelessly cut off from their native soil and seemingly separated forever from their kith and kin and all they held most dear. Yet many strove bravely in various ways to combat their wretchedness, to rise superior to ever torturing despair. ”

“ I would fain know,” he asks, “by what surmise of common sense a keeper of a prison can demand a recompense or fee from a prisoner for keeping him in prison?... Can he believe that any person can deserve a recompense for opening the door of misery and destruction?... But now such is the confidence of a purchaser, that to regain his sum expended he sells his tap-house at prodigious rates, ... he farms his sheets to mere harpies, and his great key to such a piece of imperious cruelty (presumably his chief turnkey) as is the worst of mankind.” ”

“ Nothing can exceed the pluck and energy with which he tackled the most truculent. When a prisoner, mad with rage, dares any man to enter his cell, it is Governor Chapman who always enters without a moment’s hesitation; when another, armed with a sleeveboard, threatens to dash out everybody’s brains, it is Captain Chapman who secures the weapon of offence; when a body of prisoners on the mill break out into open mutiny, and the warder in charge is in terror for his personal safety, it is Governor Chapman who repairs at once to the spot and collars the ringleaders. ”

“ Strangest of all, the murderer himself, the doer of the fell deed, comes here, to the very spot where his victim lies stark and reproachful, and stares at it spellbound, fascinated, filled more with remorse, perchance, than fear at the risk he runs. So common is this trait, that in mysterious murder cases the police of Paris keep a disguised officer among the crowd at the Morgue, and have thereby made many memorable arrests. ”

“ It is known now as Greater New York, and its present municipal constitution is curiously at variance with the democratic traditions of a nominally free people. Supreme power, the absolute autocratic authority, is vested in a single individual, elected, it is true, by the popular voice, but, while he holds office, as despotic as any Czar. The only check on the Mayor of Greater New York is that of public opinion, expressed through a vigilant, often outrageously plain-speaking, Press, but a Press at times influenced, even to the point of silence, by party spirit. ”

“ The discipline of the prison was not in itself very strict and had it not been for the starvation, the pain arising from the cramped position in which the chains and ropes retained the arms and legs, with the heavy drag of the iron collar on the bones of the spine, and the creeping vermin that infested every place, together with the occasional beatings and tortures which the prisoners were from time to time taken away for a few hours to endure, returning with bleeding legs and bodies and so weak as to be scarcely able to crawl, there was no very great hardship to be endured.... ”

“ Hunger strikes were more especially the weapon of the weaker sex, although there was no weakness among the women revolutionists, and the movement owed much of its vigour and vitality to their indomitable courage and unconquerable strength of character. In the days to come, when the great, patient people of a cruelly oppressed and misgoverned land have achieved its emancipation, ample justice must be done to the feminine champions, who entered boldly into the fray and fought strenuously for the vindication of the rights of their fellow countrymen to freedom and independence. ”

“ It was under these circumstances that justice in France, in its eagerness to check these depredations and to protect the deserving, industrious population, secretly sought the aid of spies and informers willing to work against the criminal fraternity. Vidocq was one of the first to go over. He was weary of the life he led, the unceasing anxiety, the constant fear of recognition by old associates, the incessant blackmail to which he was subjected; and to escape re-arrest he was driven in self-defence to retaliate and offer his services to the cause of order. ”

“ Shall no one give celebrity to the present keeper of Newgate? Mr. Akerman marks every day of his existence by more than one such deed as this. Know, ye rich and powerful, ye who might save hundreds of your fellow creatures from starving by the sweepings of your tables, know that among the various feelings of almost every wretch who quits Newgate for Tyburn, a concern neither last nor least is that which he feels upon leaving the gaol of which this man is the keeper. ”

“ Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud deep roar, a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some ancient boundary, against which its ever restless billows had for ages battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave seems trying to overleap the other as they are drawn onwards towards this outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken, along the whole lengthened line has the motion jarred, and each in{248} turn sees, coiled up on the floor of the scaffold like a serpent, the hangman’s rope! ”

“ It was here, so ran the common rumour, that the chief power of the mighty Czar was concentrated; here stood Sebastopol, the famous fortress, the great stronghold and arsenal of Southern Russia; here, at length, the opposing forces would join issue, and the allies, after months of tedious expectation, would find themselves face to face with their foe.
No wonder, then, that hearts beat high as our men gazed eagerly upon the Crimea. The prospect southward was still more calculated to stir emotion. The whole surface of that Eastern sea was covered with the navies of the Western Powers. ”

“ We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers-by; but we still leave unblotted in our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow-prisoners. ”

“ He was young, comparatively speaking, unknown, inexperienced in police matters, with no previous record but a brief military service, followed by a call to the Bar. But he was energetic, painstaking, a man of order, with some power of organisation; above all, a gentleman of high character and integrity. His reign at Scotland Yard may not have been marked by any phenomenal feats in detection; in the pursuit of criminals he was dependent upon his able subordinates, and it was his rule to summon the most experienced of them to advise him in all serious cases. ”

“ Mazas as the prison of the prévenus, the receptacle of all persons accused of serious crime and detained on reasonable presumption of guilt, was intimately associated with the passing criminality of Paris for fifty years. Every Ishmaelite, charged with raising his hand against his fellows, passed through its forbidding portals to emerge once more, if fate was kind to him, or if convicted, to disappear into its inner darkness. Confinement in a trial prison is the most painful phase in the criminal’s career. He is a constant prey to sickening anxiety, or the plaything of exaggerated hope. ”

“ It would be impossible to conceive a more ghastly sight than that row of naked, trembling convicts as the warders now ranged them in the vault-like den to be counted. The dim light of oil-lanterns fell upon upturned faces, before repulsive enough, but now positively startling in their hideous disfigurement of dust and clotting blood. Every man was streaming with blood from wounds about the head, more or less severe, for the convicts had fought with the desperation of men to whom success meant liberty. ”

“ Great dignitaries and high-born dames have witnessed without a shudder the tortures of an auto da fé; to this day it is the fashion for delicately nurtured ladies to flock to the Law Courts, and note the varying emotions, from keenest anguish to most brutal sang-froid, of notorious murderers on trial. It is not strange, then, that in uncultivated and comparatively demoralized ages the concourse about the gallows should be great, or the conduct of the spectators riotous, brutal, often heartless in the extreme. ”

“ It was freely admitted by the authorities that the very harshest régime would prevail there: close confinement, scanty diet and entire absence of all that makes life endurable,—books, correspondence, the visits of relatives and friends. Above all, when the gates closed on a new arrival in the Schlüsselburg, hope died within him. Lifelong imprisonment was before him; there was no release this side of the grave. Few who enter the prison are ever set free again. The inmates are buried alive, suffering perpetual martyrdom. ”

“ I thought I was dead to the past, but my blood boils with indignation when I recall the unheard-of sufferings that I endured in those tombs of the living. The lot of a solitary prisoner awakens compassion, but at least he is not tortured by witnessing the woes of a herd of poor wretches, brutalised and exasperated by privations and misery. ”

“ The perpetrators of the deed, nevertheless, had disappeared, leaving no trace, and the police in their frenzied eagerness turned the city upside down. Searches innumerable of all suspected houses were made, and the most arbitrary arrests took place on the slightest whisper of anything wrong. Reports at the time put the numbers taken into custody at quite a thousand.
Yet “illegal” or “irregular” people, as they were styled by the officers of the law, came and went, moving about with impunity under the very noses of the police, and, as a rule, escaping scot-free. ”

“ Müller knew that any confession would ruin his chances of escape. His arguments were specious and evasive when pressed to confess. “Why should man confess to man?” he replied; “man cannot forgive man, only God can do so. Man is therefore only accountable to God.” But on the gallows, when the cap was over his eyes and the rope had been adjusted round his neck, and within a second of the moment when he would be launched into eternity, he whispered in the ear of the German pastor who attended him on the scaffold, “I did it.” ”

“ Records of like cruelty and indifference to human suffering blackened the pages of English history until the merciful ministrations of John Howard and of Elizabeth Frye aroused the slumbering pity of Great Britain, and alleviated the conditions of prisoners all over the world.
[ix] In all lands, in all ages, in all stages of civilization, man has left grim records of vengeful passion. No race has escaped the stigma, perhaps no creed. It would almost seem that nations had vied with each other in the subtlety of their ingenuity for producing suffering. ”

“ It must be confessed that one reads with regret that a parcel of unruly scoundrels should thus be allowed to make a mockery of the punishment to which they were sentenced by the law, and that they should be suffered unchecked to set all order and discipline at defiance. And all this deliberate insolence and open insubordination could have but one end, and culminated at length in a murderous affray, in which a couple of prisoners fell upon the machine-keeper and nearly killed him. ”

“ A striking feature at Tourah was the admirable prison hospital, which would compare favourably with the best in the world. It is a two-storied building with lofty, well-ventilated wards, beds and bedding, all in the most approved style; a well-stocked dispensary and a fully qualified medical man in daily attendance. The patients, unless too ill to rise, sit up on their beds rather like poultry roosting, and suffer from most of the ills to which humanity is heir. ”

“ An elderly lady with a baby-boy is like a girl with a doll—just as the little mother dresses and undresses its counterfeit presentment of a child in wax and rags, crooning over its tiny cradle, talking to it in baby-language, pretending to watch with anxious solicitude its every mood, so Mrs. Purling found in Harold a plaything of which she never tired. ”

“ The condition of the prisoners in Newgate was long most deplorable. They were but scantily supplied with the commonest necessaries of life. Light scarcely penetrated their dark and loathsome dungeons; no breath of fresh air sweetened the fetid atmosphere they breathed; that they enjoyed the luxury of water was due to the munificence of a Lord Mayor. Their daily subsistence was most precarious. Food, clothing, fuel were doled out in limited quantities as charitable gifts; occasionally prosperous citizens bequeathed small legacies to be expended in the same articles of supply. ”

“ Criminals who seek effacement do not take into sufficient account the curiosity and inquisitiveness of mankind. At times, just after the perpetration of a great crime, when the criminal is missing and the pursuit at fault, every gossip, landlady, “slavey,” local tradesman, ’bus conductor, lounger on the cab rank, newsboy, railway guard, becomes an active amateur agent of the police, prying, watching, wondering, looking askance at every stranger and newcomer; ready to call in the constable on the slightest suspicion, or immediately report any unusual circumstance. ”

“ With the latter went the headquarters of the regiment; its colonel, colours, and sergeant-major.
They were travelling into the very jaws of death, as it seemed. Progress was slow, and hindered by many vexatious obstacles—low walls and brushwood, ruined cottages, and many dangerous pitfalls on the vine-clad slopes—obstacles that forbade all speed, yet gave no cover from the pitiless fire that searched every corner, and mowed men down like grass. ”

“ The permanent garrison to overawe this despairing multitude so easily intimidated, constantly discontented and quick to rise into insubordination, was seldom more than a single regiment of militia or line serving practically on a war footing, with an army of guards, patrol and pickets, forever on duty and ready to turn out at a moment’s notice to quell disturbances, give chase to fugitives and hunt them down to the utmost limits of the moor. ”

“ It is only fair to the police of New York to credit them with considerable success in dealing with crime. Whatever suspicion may have rested on their good faith where offenders have been able to purchase their connivance, there is no doubt that a large number of crimes have always been detected and avenged in New York. They have to deal with cosmopolitan rogues drawn to the happy hunting ground of the New World, and with a large mass of indigenous crime of the most serious kind. ”

“ The gaol was the halfway-house to the scaffold or the gallows for turbulent or short-sighted persons who espoused the losing side; it was the starting-place for that painful pilgrimage to the pillory or whipping-post which was too frequently the punishment for rashly uttered libels and philippics against constituted power. Newgate, again, was on the high road to Smithfield; in times of intolerance and fierce religious dissensions numbers of devoted martyrs went thence to suffer for conscience’ sake at the stake. ”

“ The Arcadia, Lord Lydstone's yacht, was a fine three-masted schooner of a couple of hundred tons. She was lying far out in the bay, amidst a crowd of shipping of every kind—coal-hulks, black and grimy; H.M.S. Samarang, receiving-ship, and home of the captain of the port; British vessels, steamers and sailing-ships, of every rig; foreign craft of every aspect native to its waters: zebecques, faluchas, and polaccas, with their curved spars and heavy lateen sails. ”