Prison food

“ Some prisoners would eat their day’s rations at one meal; others would make two meals of it. Salt beef, salt pork, salt fish and bread was doled out to us for months; no coffee, tea or sugar; no vegetables, except very rarely an onion or potato. Consequently, men suffered with scurvy so that their gums were bleeding [101] and sometimes their teeth fell out. Old bones were broken up and boiled, and scraps of food were culled out from the hospital slop-barrels. Rats and cats were eaten by the hungry men when they could catch them. ”

“ It seems extraordinary that so little judgment is shown by prison officials in varying and improving the dietary. The same unappetizing stuff is served day after day and year after year, with no variety in food or manner of preparation. A large number of the prisoners have stomach troubles from this cause alone. Canned food is served when fresh vegetables would be just as cheap. The meat is cooked to death and is covered by a so-called sauce. The kitchen keepers are not to blame; it is the fault of the system. ”

“ They are now serving a diet at Sing Sing which is, upon the whole, satisfactory and comes as near to being a balanced diet as the means at our disposal will permit. What is needed is not so much an increased allowance by the legislature for the purchase of food, as the addition to the prison of an extensive farm which will furnish eggs, vegetables, milk, pork and other supplies at reduced cost. Every prison should have such a farm connected with it. ”

“ While I was awaiting the second trial in Newgate, and providing my own food, I studied the diet scale which hangs up in each cell, and was fascinated by this extravagant quantity of pork, which seemed to evidence an unimagined display of prison hospitality. One of the officers to whom I mentioned the matter said, "Ah, Mr. Foote, I wish you would show that diet up when you get out. Untried prisoners have the same fare as condemned criminals, only they get less of it. ”

“ It is surely palpable that if a comparison with the diet of prisoners, the fare of our honest poor looks meagre enough; that if a premium seems to be placed on crime by the goodness of the penitentiary kitchen, there may be a wrong somewhere, but it is certainly not in the system of prison discipline. Surely the wrong is not that prisoners are so well fed, but that honest men are worse fed. Why should they be worse fed? They pay far more than fourpence a day for their food, and that food is not nearly so nice, nor so wholesome, as that which every pick-pocket obtains. ”

“ Twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, four ounces of cooked meat, without bone, were added, and on these days the prisoner got about twenty-seven ounces of bread. When there was no meat the bread ration was nearly thirty ounces. But the foregoing did not comprise all that the prisoner had to eat. Those who were in funds, whether from private sources or from the pécule disponible already referred to, were permitted to sweeten prison life and eke out prison fare by various articles of food on sale at the canteen. ”

“ During each basic fourteen day period of confinement, an inmate in a punitive cell is fed on a diet of "grue" unless such a diet is medically contraindicated. He gets no other solid food, except that every third day he receives or is supposed to receive a regular prison meal. ”

“ The prison brown bread is excellent in quality and in nutritive properties to those who can digest it, but to most moderns, of whatever class or sex, it is an unaccustomed food. To some people it is too coarse and acts as an irritant, while producing the opposite effect on others. The white bread of the hospital, also excellent of its kind, though not so irritating, is also not easily digested because of the stagnant life and small quantity of vegetables or butter allowed. ”

“ One prisoner with a good appetite requiring double the allowance of food, will give four ounces of cheese for twenty-three ounces of bread, or five ounces of mutton for the same quantity. In this way the man with the capacious stomach gets it filled, and the man with a dainty appetite gets better food. All this sort of traffic is quite contrary to the prison rules, and in the case of tobacco it is severely punished, but prisoners will have it, and many of them do have it regularly. ”

“ To economize fuel as much as possible, a steam pipe has been extended from the engine room to the prison to conduct the waste steam of the shop boilers for use in those apartments.
The female prisoners eat at a table in the warden's kitchen and from the same food as goes to his own table. The men have a prescribed diet, called rations, the allowance of each being dealt out in a tin basin,—meat, potatoes, gravy, &c., all together, the potatoes unpared. ”

“ The Managers of the American Prison Discipline Society, in their third Report, page 58, say, "In the Penitentiaries generally, in the United States, the animal food is equal to one pound of meat per day for each convict." ”

“ Finding, from the best authority at hand on prison fare, that it is not safe to run the supply to a man lower than twenty cents per day in cost for the raw material as the market usually is, and that flour bread is an economical food for prisoners, as well as being humane, he resolved to adopt this with a diet commensurate with nature's real de [Pg 19] mands, built a baker's oven, and hired a baker for instructing certain selected inmates in the art of baking, and established the daily supply seen in the Bill of Fare at the end of this article. ”

“ If any one yields to his insatiable hunger and eats the whole for supper he has to fast until the following evening and must then deny himself and put away the portion for the next morning’s breakfast. Experiment proved that strength was better sustained by taking the scanty ration of [Pg 40] food in two portions than by eating the whole at once.
When the number of prisoners exceeded fifteen thousand, the facilities of the cook-house were inadequate. Therefore raw rations were issued alternately every two weeks to each side of the prison. ”

“ As to the local prison dietary, its application is based on (1) the principle of variation of diet with length of sentence; (2) the system of progressive dietary; (3) the distinction between hard labour diets and non-hard labour diets; (4) the differentiation of diet according to age and sex. There are three classes of diet, classes A, B and C. Class A diet is given to prisoners undergoing not more than seven days’ imprisonment. The food is good and wholesome, but sufficiently plain and unattractive, so as not to offer temptation to the loafer or mendicant. ”

“ The spirit dispensaries were known in the jargon of the jail as “whistling-shops,” and what with the strong waters they provided, and the malt liquors of the taproom, it was safe to assume that the bulk of such prisoners in the Fleet as were not dying for the want of sufficient food were perishing of a superfluity of drink.
The poor debtors who still had the price of “a chamber-pot of coals” and a scrag of mutton, could have it in from the market and cook it for themselves in their rooms or, for a penny or two, at the common kitchen in the prison-yard. ”

“ Separate cooks are also assigned to prepare the officials' food on the prison ranges; the meats and vegetables are of a grade much better than is supplied to prisoners; but some favored prisoners participate in their consumption. The higher officials have the best food the market affords and in such ample abundance that certain prison pets, usually negroes, get their main subsistence from the surplus. ”

“ A daily market was held in an open space arranged within the innermost yard of the prison, and to this people from the neighbourhood were admitted, bringing articles of food for sale and to bargain for the commodities offered by the prisoners, who also sold surreptitiously their rations and their clothing in their hunger for ready money. The rations at that time consisted of one pound of bread, half a pound of fresh meat, a quarter of a pint of peas and a modicum of salt. Many of the Frenchmen had special aptitude for trading and did a large business with the outsiders. ”

“ The citizens flocked in to see us, and brought us food, or we should have gone hungry during this interval. They came to trade for the things which we would leave behind us, and we sold off the pots and kettles belonging to the Confederacy, until the authorities learned the fact and placed a guard at the gate to prevent any further depletion of their stock of cooking utensils. As the prisoners now had nothing to cook, they commenced to break up and throw into the cesspools all that was left of the cooking outfit, and before long there was not a pot or skillet to be found. ”

“ If they intended suicide nothing would be easier than to break the glass and open a vein with it. The lavatories contain no such easy implements for suicide. The almost unanimous experience of our prisoners, and of many ordinary prisoners with whom I have compared notes since my release, is that prison life disorganises digestion. The unaccustomed food, the many hours of sitting still, the want of air, the inability to leave the cell except at stated times, and the great depression of spirit, are all of them certain to produce digestive disorders. Bread is the staple food of prisoners. ”

“ Their stomachs were not shrunken, dried, and hardened to starvation as were those of the old prisoners. Their stomachs and systems generally being in better condition, they felt the demand for food more keenly than did the half-sick-at-the-stomach and scurvy-infected veterans of the prison-pen. Being without shelter also made in them a greater demand for food. The ravages of exposure had to be repaired. Scurvy in the systems of the old prisoners had begun to make their stomachs qualmish and less desirous of food. ”

“ It may reasonably be contended that good housing conditions and suitable diet do not of themselves secure reformation of the misguided or the habitual criminal; but without some consideration of the necessity of proper food, the best ends of the imprisonment for crime cannot be attained. Malnutrition may or may not contribute to the production of criminals; in any event, the physiologic and psychic conditions attending the lack of palatable food and a well-balanced ration are not such as are conducive to those mental attitudes that lead to improved conduct and more wholesome life. ”

“ The second thing from which a child suffers in prison is hunger. The food that is given to it consists of a piece of usually bad-baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half-past seven. At twelve o’clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal stirabout (skilly) , and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong grown man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly of course diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. ”

“ The food supplied is utterly inadequate. A few weeks ago the bill of fare for one week consisted of bread and coffee served twice a day for the seven days and a ration of soup with meat and vegetables was served twice during the week. On one other day three potatoes were dealt out to each prisoner. A certain amount of molasses is given out each week. No prison in the United States or Canada has such scanty fare. The prisoners are allowed to supplement their fare by purchasing supplies from a dealer who calls almost every morning, but the majority of them are penniless. ”

“ Again, the prison dietary is based on the opinion of experts, is framed on scientific principles, so as to represent a sufficiency, and not more than a sufficiency, of food for an average man doing an average day's work. ”

“ Dietary Scales in Force.—So far as animal food is concerned, the amount of meat allowed to prisoners generally averages throughout the Australasian colonies about 70 ozs. per week, whereas in England convicts "on industrial employment" only receive 31 ozs.
It is claimed for England that a relatively very low scale of meat diet is rendered possible by the great variety, which is the distinguishing feature of English prison diet. Thus we find that in England on no two days in succession is the same kind of food given for the principal meal, dinner. ”

“ At this warning cry every light must be extinguished, and the prisoners are compelled [56] to go to their bunks or sit in the dark. And here is where our rusty fat pork, saved by us from the mess-room table, is made do good service.
One night we sat around the stove, with a quantity of this over-rich food, contributed by the inmates of our room, one of whom sat in front of the stove and threw in piece by piece as it burned away. This shed a light over the room, and it was seen by the sentry pacing his beat in front of the building. He called out “Corporal of the guard, Post No. 1.” ”

“ Many of these rascals would steal and secrete a part of the food, and, as opportunity offered, sell it at an exorbitant rate to their famished comrades. Shortly before I went to Andersonville six of these villains were detected, and, by permission of the prison authorities, the prisoners themselves organized a court of their own, tried them for the offence, found them guilty, and hung them inside the stockade. This event led to a change in the mode of issuing rations, which precluded the possibility of such a diabolical traffic in stolen food. ”