SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

Sorry that this piece is so long but I'm having trouble getting a signal here in the Philippine backwoods. I'm trying to blog twice a week but it's not always easy.

PRISON WORKS

What is the purpose of prison? This question continues to agitate the minds our politicians? Punishment? Retribution? Reformation? Or is it simply to move anti-social characters from our streets either temporarily or permanently for the public benefit? Prison works, some say. But even the harshest regimes have not managed to cut rising crime rates. Look how they've tried.

In 1824 the treadmill at Maidstone prison was completed under the superintendence of William Cubitt, the inventor of this form of prison discipline. Newspaper reports suggest that the machine at Maidstone was ‘the most perfect building of its kind in the country.’ Perhaps similar approval was given to gas chambers.

The machine cost £3,000, equivalent to £200,000 today. There were eight distinct shafts, all connected to the great central wheel. Standing side by side men had 18 inches of elbow room as they ceaselessly climbed, step by step. This mill was capable of holding about 100 persons at the same time. It was built to dress corn and ground 12 bushels an hour.

What a bestial invention. Men fell off the endless ladder or became entangled in the revolving machinery. And there is no evidence that even these nightmare contraptions acted as a deterrent even though those employed, the frail and unfit as well as the robust and sturdy, are estimated to have walked up the equivalent of 12,000 feet each day in winter. In summer, with longer hours for this work, they climbed as much as 18,000 feet. The treadmills were eventually abandoned but whether for humanitarian reasons or for the fact that they produced no positive benefits is uncertain.

In 1867, as part of a national survey, the Court of General Session heard reports from the governors and surgeons of Maidstone and Canterbury gaols on the effects of the Government dietary which had been in force for nine months.

Mr Joy, the Maidstone surgeon, said that the new diet was insufficient to keep prisoners healthy enough to be able to work the scheduled nine hours on the treadmill. There had been, he reported, an unusual amount of sickness and diarrhoea and in consequence he had had to increase the diet of many prisoners. The governor, Major Bannister, claimed that weakness and hunger were visible on the faces of the convicts within a week of their arrival. He had difficulty in preventing them from picking up raw potatoes and potato peelings.

While the Canterbury surgeon, Mr Reed, had observed no serious deterioration in the health of prisoners, he, like Mr Joy, felt that the diet was not compatible with continuous hard labour at the treadmill. He was also of the opinion that released prisoners could not go out into the world and straightaway earn a living after three months on the machine. The treadmill was producing physically broken men.

There were alternative sanctions. In 1867 punishment at Maidstone gaol was inflicted 2,406 times on males and 83 times on females.

Males Females

Whipping 11 -

Irons or handcuffs 1 -

Solitary or dark cells 820 83

Stoppage of diet 1,574 -

In several gaols male prisoners were given shot drill as a punishment. In this form of hard labour, groups of up to 32 men responded to warders’ orders. They had to stoop down and without bending the knees, pick up a cannon ball. The ball was raised up to the chest and when the order was given, the men took three steps sideways and then replaced the ball on the ground. They were then ordered to take three steps backwards and the procedure commenced all over again.

Stone breaking, beating rope, picking oakum and pumping water were other mind-numbing and body-breaking tasks to be performed. Work continued throughout daylight hours in winter and in summer from 6.30am until 6pm.

Oakum picking was carriedout by women as well as men. The purpose of this hateful job was to separate strands of old, tarred rope into thin thread. Constant working at this task, day after day, made the fingers painful, raw and bloody. The reconstituted threads were sold on to make string or mattress stuffing – ‘money for old rope.’

The Report on the Prisons of Great Britain indicates that on the day of the Inspectors’ visit to Canterbury in 1867 the male prisoners were employed as follows:

Treadmill 50

Beating rope and oakum 2

Oakum picking (3lb daily) 17

Shoemaking 1

Cleaning 2

In punishment 1

These days we learn that prisoners can elect not to work during their sentences – a complete turn-about. How do we sort this out? The purpose of prison in a democratic society remains unanswered.

Don't forget these Snippets of the Past are intended not simply for mild historical interest. I do hope that writers of historical fiction may gain some useful background.

SNIPPETS OF THE PAST

LOVE DIVINATION

Time for a new direction now.

I hope that my new series of blogs will be of some interest to writers of historical fiction – or indeed that today’s offering may attract writers of period romance.

In recent years I have become particularly interested in the darker, less publicised aspects of 18^th/19^th/20^th century social history. Sometimes these are no more than footnotes but they are significant in helping us to understand people in the past. I shall therefore be offering glimpses of bygone days, snippets of the past – crime, punishment, social conditions, beliefs – which may offer writers a hint for a plot or a scene.

Though my examples come principally from southern English counties, the stories they tell might well have come from distant parts of the world.

So to work... and here’s something odd. It’s a belief, a superstition, once widely held throughout Great Britain and it most probably transferred to other countries. I’d be interested to hear of instances beyond these shores.

It’s called love divination.

Who am I going to marry? What is he going to be like? And when shall I marry? These were – and perhaps they still are - natural speculations for many a young girl. The answers to such questions came from observing specific rituals.  

In the 1870s, Charlotte Latham, wife of the vicar of Fittleworth in Sussex, questioned many local people about their beliefs and recorded several strange procedures. On the night of the first new moon after New Year's Day, girls would sit alone on a gate or stile and, looking at the moon, recite:

‘All hail to thee, moon! All hail to thee

I pray thee, good moon, reveal to me

This night who my husband must be.’

Now this is an entry into the occult, the words intended to conjure up a living person’s wraith (the ghost of a living person). Little wonder if girls shivered with fear: little wonder if they did not always wait to find out.

And there were other sinister rituals. Two of these involved graveyard visits. Girls took the leaves of a yarrow plant from a young man's grave and then repeated the following wish:

‘Yarrow, sweet Yarrow, the first that I have found,

In the name of Jesus Christ, I plucked it from the ground;

As Joseph loved sweet Mary, and took her for his dear,

So in a dream this night, I hope, my true love will appear.’

Other girls might go to the graveyard with a handful of hemp seed which they would  sprinkle on the ground, all the while saying:

‘Hemp seed, I sow thee,

Hempseed, I sow thee;

And he that is my true love

Come after me and mow thee.’

Once the seed was sown, she looked over her left shoulder, expecting to see the wraith of her future husband mowing the already sprouting seed behind her. This spell was said to work only on days appropriate for divining the future – Midsummer’s Eve and St John's Eve, the 23^rd and 24^th June.

Another St John’s Eve strategy: girls would hang their newly washed blouses in front of the kitchen fire. Then leaving the kitchen door open they would sit in silence, waiting for the midnight arrival of the wraith to come in and turn the blouse.

Believe it?

The past is another country: they do things differently there.