Arthur Griffiths

“ In one hand he held a brick and with the other he brandished his knife blade, crying fiercely, “Let no one enter; I will kill all who attempt it. You may shoot me down, but I will not live here in chains. Stand back. I am armed.”
The commandant had inadvertently stepped forward but retired at these threats, and ordered his grenadiers to storm the cell. The narrow opening allowed only one to enter at a time and a combined attack was impossible. All halted irresolute under the menace of the missiles, and in the pause the major and chaplain tried to reason with Von der Trenck. ”

“ The Hungarian brigand was something of a popular hero, esteemed for his generosity and chivalry. He was ready for any dangerous and daring deed, inspired rather by a thirst for adventure than by acquisitiveness or the savage instincts of murder and pillage. Strange stories are told to their credit. One of them, who had been condemned to death and was being escorted to the gallows by a pandour, or local policeman, never forgot that he had been regaled with a good dinner and afterward allowed to escape. ”

“ He inspired Pellico with loathing as he paced the narrow cell rattling his heavy keys and scowling fiercely. Yet the man was not to be judged by appearances, for he concealed beneath a rough exterior a tender, sympathetic heart. Pellico, misjudging him entirely, bitterly resented his overbearing manner and showed a refractory spirit, addressing his warder insolently and ordering him about rudely. The old man—a veteran soldier who had served with distinction in many campaigns, behaved with extraordinary patience and good temper and shamed Pellico into more considerate behaviour. ”

“ The principal evils of these small prisons undoubtedly are the promiscuous congregating together of all offenders and the absence of occupation. It is not surprising, therefore, that the time is passed in idle talk, and that the man who can relate the largest number of rascally tricks he has played should be the hero of the company. Many an inexperienced lad listens to these anecdotes and acquires a taste for the life of a sharper. When to all this is added a brutal superintendent, open to bribery, then the prison becomes a real training school for criminals. ”

“ The lengthy sentence of imprisonment which Silvio Pellico endured at Spielberg was the penalty imposed upon him as an Italian subject who dared to conspire against the Austrian domination. The rich provinces of northern Italy had been apportioned to the emperor of Austria in the scramble for territory at the fall of Napoleon. The Italians fiercely resented the intolerable yoke of the arbitrary foreigners, and strove hard to shake it off, but in vain, for nearly fifty years. Secret societies pledged to resistance multiplied and flourished, defying all efforts to extinguish them. ”

“ The tyrant Borck was inexorable; he wished to expedite my 70 death and rid himself of his troubles and his terrors. Here did I experience the condition of a sick prisoner, without bed, refreshment, or aid from a human being. Reason, fortitude, heroism, all the noble qualities of the mind, decay when the bodily faculties are diseased, and the remembrance of my sufferings at this dreadful moment still agitates, still inflames my blood so as almost to prevent an attempt to describe what they were. ”

“ His father, whose name he never learned, was no doubt a soldier and a man of coarse, brutal disposition, many of whose worst traits had been clearly transmitted to his son. Joseph Schenk, from his earliest days, exhibited a cruel nature; his temper was ungovernable, his delinquencies incessant; he was given to acts of brutal violence, and to the last he was of an inhuman character. He passed much of his old age in the prison hospital, where his greatest treat as a patient was permission to attend at a post mortem and be present at the dissection of a corpse. ”

“ I never gave way all my life in anything I undertook. I hug my chains.” He did so, literally, treating them as a badge of honour, a tribute to his constancy, and set himself in his leisure hours to polish them till they shone like silver. He delighted in the manifest admiration of his fellows, and at one time conversed with them freely, giving picturesque descriptions of his adventurous career and enlarging with evident pleasure on the details of his principal crime. He was often sullen and insubordinate and would do no work; no punishment would compel him or break his spirit ”

“ 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! ”

“ Seldom or never, perhaps, has a convict occupied such a position in a prison as Schenk did during his palmy days at Bayreuth. To curry favour with him he was often invited to drink coffee with the governor in the office and while they drank it the governor discussed with him prison problems and the proper treatment of prisoners. It must have been a strange sight to witness the convict in his chains on a sofa and the director doing the honours. ”

“ Despair then seized him, and picking up his knife blade he opened the veins of his left arm and foot, meaning to bleed to death. When almost insensible, a voice crying, “Baron Trenck!” roused him, and on asking who called, he learned that it was his staunch friend and ally, the grenadier Gefhardt, who had come to the rampart to comfort him. He told Gefhardt that he was lying in his blood and at the point of death, but the stout old soldier consoled him with the assurance that it would be much easier to escape here, as there were no sentries over him and only two in the whole fort. ”

“ The account of my criminal career would be incomplete without some mention of prisons. They play a larger part in the life of the budding convict than many people realise, and contribute materially to his development. While the state turns its chief attention to the larger gaols, the smaller prisons are often sadly neglected. If these were better administered, fewer large houses of correction would be required. Here the vagrants tarry, shaping their plans; here one thief learns from another various artifices and tricks; here young offenders are won over to the criminal life. ”

“ Then came the morning inspection of the cell and its occupant, when every corner was scrupulously examined, the walls tapped and tried, and every link of the chains tested, one by one, to see whether any had been tampered with or broken.
There were three of these inspections daily; one in the early morning, a second in the evening, and the third at midnight. Such scrupulous vigilance absolutely forbade all attempts at escape. The broad rule in prison management is obvious and unchanging; it is impossible for those immured to 268 break prison if regularly watched and visited. ”

“ For honour is more valuable than life; and if it is lawful to protect one’s life by destroying an assailant, it must obviously be lawful to use similar means to protect one’s honour.’”
On the 1st of August, 1818, he was declared guilty of murder and sentenced to indefinite imprisonment in a fortress. The regular punishment for murder was death, but in this case the learned jurist Feuerbach admitted that had the court not accepted Riembauer’s confession, he could not have been convicted, because the evidence, though strong, was purely circumstantial. ”

“ The highroads are infested with tramps, and the prisons are perpetually full. Every good citizen is keenly desirous of reducing these scourges of society, but the progress of reform is slow. It is a difficult problem, but the first step toward solving it is to acquire a more accurate knowledge of the true spirit and character of these wrong-doers. One of the most unregenerate and irreclaimable has revealed the whole story of his life and transgressions, and some quotations from the account may throw light on the difficulties of the problem confronting the prison reformer. ”

“ Looking back to these days, I recognise how very much better it would be if every apprentice, at the outset of his wage-earning life, were forced to belong to a guild, so that he would be protected by a strict corporation of this sort and obliged to obey its laws. In those days I thought otherwise, but now that I am under prison rule I regret the license I was allowed then. I remained a year at 208 Mannheim but, as my master refused to raise my wages, I departed one fine day and walked to Karlsruhe, passing through Bruchsal and Heidelberg on my way. ”

“ Prison life in Spielberg was dull and monotonous. It was little less than solitary confinement broken only by short talks with Schiller or Oroboni. Silvio Pellico has recorded minutely the slow passage of each twenty-four hours. He awoke at daylight, climbed up at once to his cell windows and clung to the bars until Oroboni appeared at his window with a morning salutation. ”

“ Capital punishment is still the rule in Austria-Hungary, as the penalty for murder in the first degree. At one time noble birth gave a prescriptive right to death by the sword for both sexes. Hanging is to-day the plan adhered to for all. The condemned, as in most countries, is humanely treated in the days immediately preceding execution. He is carefully watched and guarded against any despairing attempt at self-destruction, and he is given ample and generally appetising food. ”

“ Toward evening I reached the end of my journey and betook myself at once to a well-known ‘inn father’—for so we called our landlords—in the Judengasse. It is needless to state that a real vagrant has a perfect knowledge of all the disreputable haunts and low public houses of the whole German Empire. Next day I went direct to Baron Rothschild’s house, as he was the Bavarian consul, where I rang the bell, and, on being admitted to his presence, was told to produce my papers. I received two thalers and a free pass to the next place for which I said I was bound. ”

“ Toward the end of his term he went to the chaplain and bought a Bible. This reckless extravagance seemed odd, but it became known that the chaplain bought his Bibles at a reduced rate, and the usurer had calculated that he could sell at a profit.
“A clergyman’s task,” says Herr Fleischmann, “is far more difficult in a prison for women than in one for men. In the latter he has to deal with coarseness, brutality and moral degradation, but in the former he meets with many despicable traits: unlimited cunning, spitefulness, love of revenge, deceit and artifice. ”

“ Capital punishment was legal in Bavaria and was inflicted by decapitation with a sword, or breaking on the wheel from the feet upwards. But where conviction rested on circumstantial evidence only, or assumed guilt was not borne out by actual confession, imprisonment for life in chains was substituted, and it was a terrible penalty. The sentence annihilated civil existence; it was moral if not physical death. The culprit lost all rights as a husband, father or citizen; he was deprived of property, 25 freedom and honour; nothing remained but bare life passed in slavery and chains. ”

“ All this time he is kept in the dark as to the exact nature of the accusation laid to his charge, and it is illegal for him to seek enlightenment. He is not furnished with a copy of his own evidence or of that of the witnesses for or against him. Pitfalls are laid for him by his unexpected confrontation with an accomplice. If he obstinately refuses to speak, he is sentenced to bread and water. If it is a murder charge, he is brought face to face with the bleeding corpse, or it may be that the decaying remains are exhibited to him. The most curious feature in the proceedings is their prolixity. ”

“ In the history of prison management, Oldenburg earned an excellent reputation through the remarkable individuality of Hoyer, for years the director of the house of correction at Vechta. He advocated cell isolation until the latter years of his life, when he declared himself in favour of the Irish system. His plan of forming settlements for convict labour on waste lands was discontinued, as the results were unfavourable, and a modified form of solitary confinement was reinstated. A portion of the Thuringian states was under Prussian and Saxon jurisdiction with regard to their prison system. ”

“ Crime is very prevalent, owing to a generally low standard of morality, the neglect of education and the rough manners and customs of the population. The peasants in many parts of the country are in the habit of carrying long stiletto-like knives at public houses and dancing places, and murderous conflicts, after nasty quarrels, when grave injuries are inflicted, are very common. 19
The penal code of Bavaria, compiled chiefly by Anselm von Feuerbach, a distinguished criminal jurist, was adopted by the government in 1813, and became the basis of criminal legislation for all the German states. ”

“ My fetters seemed to me insupportable, until I became accustomed to them; and I thanked God that my knife had not been discovered, with which I was about to end my sufferings forthwith. This is a true consolation for the unfortunate man, who is elevated above the prejudices of the vulgar, and with this a man may bid defiance to fate and monarchs.... 52 In these thoughts I passed the night; the day appeared, but not its brightness to me; however, I could, by its glimmerings, observe my prison. ”