Drunkenness with them is but the symptom of a deeper cause, and this cause is not alone the possession of the poor; women of middle age, wives of well-to-do and cultured husbands, mothers of many children, leave those homes, husbands, and children to roll in the sensual sties of London. ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. It is my eldest son’s twenty-first birthday, and I am two hundred miles away. I must come back, if only to look once more through the window.’ So wrote the mother of eight children to me. She had left them and her beautiful home for the wild and gross degradation of the streets; she had become one of the most notorious of our police-court habitués; she revelled in impurity, and down to the lowest depths she sank. So I sent her away, not hoping to reform her, but hoping that she might, at any rate, live a less scandalous life. To look once more through the windows of her once happy home she came back to London, came back to die in one of our workhouses. Their punishment is greater than they can bear, and the punishment that the law inflicts is but a small portion of it.
‘Take away the drink, and they will be all right.’ I yield to no man in my detestation of drink. I know its power and effects as but very few can; but with the great majority of these women it is not a question of drink at all. Mentally diseased, or sensually possessed, they present a hopeless problem, and unless science, in conjunction with human sympathy, can find some method of treating them as patients as well as sinners, the problem will go unsolved.
Such are the women who come within the provisions of the Habitual Inebriates Act of 1898. These are the women who come before our magistrates four times in one year. These are the women of whom the State says to philanthropic societies of private individuals: ‘Take them off our hands. Cure them of inebriety. Keep them for one, two, or three years, and you shall have ten and sixpence per week for each of them.’ And local bodies say: ‘Take them, treat them forthe drink craze, and we will supplement the State payments by six and sixpence per week for each.’ Seventeen shillings per week paid by the community, plus the labour of the individual, for sensually possessed or demented women to be cured of drunkenness! To such wisdom have we attained! Deliberately and emphatically I say, and I say it with some knowledge and great experience of these women, that drink is not the root cause of their condition. They drink because they must drink; their hunting-ground is the public-house, their prey the drink-excited male.
A friend of mine took a young woman of this class, who had been to prison a hundred times, into his service. There, with good wages and a comfortable home, shielded from the temptation to drink, with no possibility of indulging grosser passions, she tried to hang herself and was taken to an asylum. After three months’ detention I brought her away and cared for her. She stayed with us a few days and left us suddenly, not to drink, but to revel in impurity. Sadly but earnestly I say that philanthropic societies cannot restrain, discipline, and control these women. The State, and the State alone, can deal with them with any hope of success, and medical men who have made a study of sensuality and dementia should have charge of them in institutions where they can be properly classified, studied, and treated, for the hopeless scandal of their present lives ought not to continue. But to commit such women to ‘inebriate reformatories’ for one year or two, and then send them back to their old haunts and old vices, is not only supremely ridiculous but stupidly cruel—ridiculous, because the community has to pay about fifty pounds for a penniless and homeless woman to be conveyed to and kept at a reformatory for one year where her condition is not diagnosed; cruel, because these women come back to the same old conditions from which they were taken away. The Act is but eighteen months old, and they are coming back, back to their sensuality, back to the wild and fierce grossness ofthe street, back to the police courts and to prison—for this has been the case with several. Can it be right? Is it just to the community or to the individual directly concerned that a woman should be taken from her horrible life for a year, and at the end of that year be again launched into the abyss of uncleanness? The community, having borne the cost, has a right to demand, and I hope it will demand, that before any woman is discharged from any inebriate reformatory some provision is made for her, and that at least a chance of living a clean life is presented to her. If she accepts the opportunity, well; if not, the State ought to know how to deal with her.
The managers of philanthropic inebriate homes have a difficult task, for they must consider ways and means, and are bound to look at the financial aspect. They naturally want strong, healthy, and industrious women, for the labour of these must be an important factor. The conduct of each woman must have an important bearing on the morale of the institution; and there must be, I feel sure, the temptation to ‘license’ out the inferior and badly-behaved women, and keep for longer periods such as are decently behaved and fairly industrious. With the State these things can have no weight, for the State only can afford to disregard the conditions I have named. But the State, having the care of these women during their detention, might easily have an arrangement with philanthropic societies for the after care of their patients, and so prevent their discharge until suitable arrangements are made for their future.
It is commonly believed, and accepted as an article of faith among temperance workers, that there is much less hope of reforming a drunken woman than of reforming a drunken man. My experience of both men and women leads me to the opinion that the chances are about equal. In both men and women physiological and pathological causes very often lie at the roots of their condition, and make it difficult—almost impossible—to deal successfully with the drink habit. Some of the best fellows I know are constantly getting into trouble, and creating terror and misery at home, not because they have any love for drink, or any uncontrollable impulse to take it, but because there is something wrong in their mental or physical organization.
I have studied these men, watched them, made friends of them, and the more hopeless I have seen my task to be, the more has my sympathy and desire to help them been enlarged. Ill-health, lowness of spirits, vacancy of mind, and often delusions, coupled with loss of memory in many variations, come upon them, and at such times they are apt to take drink, with terrible results. These men are not what they are because they drink, but the reverse: they drink because they are what they are. In a word, drunkenness is not the cause, but the result, of their condition. Doctors will not, of course, certify them to be insane; until, therefore, the State makes someprovision for the half-mad, their case is hopeless, and frequent tragedies will continue; for matters are often ended by murder or suicide, and sometimes the latter course would undoubtedly give relief, and even comfort, to the suffering and distracted friends. But the dipsomaniac pure and simple, the man who at intervals of a few weeks or a few months has a passionate and overwhelming, uncontrollable desire for drink, is a strange being and a pitiful object. Cases of this kind almost fascinate me, for they are such tremendous contradictions.
Time after time in my own house I have sat in front of such men. I have seen their earnest—undoubtedly earnest—desire to be delivered from their enemy; I have listened to the poor pleas for help in their struggles; I have seen them and felt them clinging to me as if for life and hope. But I have perceived at the same time their fearful cunning and devilish resolve to frustrate any effort made for them, and to get drink at any cost. I have seen their trembling, eager joy when they have obtained drink; I have seen their shame, penitence, tears, and remorse even after they have swallowed the drink. ‘I am in hell! I am in hell! Give me a hand out! You tried to save Cakebread—save me!’ So from the depths of a ‘shelter’ wrote such a man to me. I wrote to him, telling him to come and be saved. He came, white and tremulous from his last debauch. I found him a clever man and a gentleman and most powerful in physique. He was a chartered accountant, and undoubtedly clever at his profession. He had swept streets in San Francisco; he had had delirium tremens in the Transvaal; he had driven bullocks in Mexico; but go where he would, and occupy himself as he might, the drink fiend stuck to him. Back to London, friendless, homeless, with the fiend still in possession, he came. ‘If I had the friendship of a man like you, I could conquer; I am sure I could conquer.’
I gave him that friendship, and he came to live with us. His intellect was in good order, his strength was magnificent, he seemed open and honest; so I felt hopeful. He told methat the drink craving would not come on him again for two months, or perhaps three. He lied to me, for it was on him then, and at that moment he was lusting and planning for drink. But I believed him. He took up his abode with us on a Thursday, employment was found for him, and his duties were to commence on the following Monday. On the Saturday at mid-day he went to his bedroom drunk. I went up to him, and found he had more drink with him. For this we had a struggle, but he was too strong for me. So I let him drink it, hoping he would go to sleep. But he did not; he became violent, and wanted to go out. This I was determined to prevent, so I locked the room door. Then he raved and swore, and declared he would stay no longer. ‘How dare you lock me in! What right have you to make me a prisoner?’ he indignantly asked. I told him that he had come to me for his own pleasure, but that he was going to stay for mine, and that I was not going to lose sight of him till he went to his work on Monday. So through Saturday night I stopped with him. All day on Sunday I was out in the open air with him, when he walked as if a fury were upon him. Every now and again I pulled him up, and gave him a soda-and-milk, and by degrees got him fit for a decent dinner, after which he had a dose of medicine and a cigar. When he had finished it, he came to me and took my hand, and with tears in his eyes said: ‘By God, Mr. Holmes, but you are a man!’ Yes, and next week-end (for he continued at work during the week) I had it all to do over again.
For twelve months he stayed with us, and if ever mortal man tried to help another, I was that man. Every bit of intelligence I possessed, every bit of time I could spare—in fact, the whole of my being—was pressed into his service. He liked chess, so in the evening I played with him; he liked whist, so we formed whist parties for him; he loved books, so we discussed literature together; he liked church, so he went to church with us. If I went for a day in the country, he wentwith me; when I went for my holidays, I took him with me; if he bordered on d.-t.’s I doctored him. When he earned money he paid us honourably; if he did not, we never asked him for payment.
We all liked the man, but one night I had an experience that made me afraid of him, and we all agreed that it was time for him to leave us. He came home very late, and he had been drinking heavily. He soon discovered that the clock was making strange faces at him, so we covered it up. As he sat with us till the early hours of the morning, he produced a large bottle of eau-de-Cologne, which he drank as if it were water. When I got him to his room, he promptly locked the door, and put the key in his pocket. I was inside, and he kept me there. For an hour he paced the room, cursing the day he was born, and the mother that bore him. After a while he stopped in front of me, and said: ‘Do you think I can help it? I tell you I can’t! If I could, I should not be a man. I stood in the street to-day and called for you. I shrieked your name. I called to the skies for help, but they were dumb. I could have gone on my knees, and with my teeth have gnawed the very stones for drink!’ There was no mistake about his meaning what he said.
Presently he stopped again, and said: ‘Mr. Holmes, I like you, but I am going to kill you.’ I felt uncomfortable, but said nothing; it was no use, I knew, for me to ask for the key. I was, however, glad to remember that there were no knives or razors in the room, for I had previously removed them. ‘Yes,’ I heard him say to himself, ‘I’ll kill Mr. Holmes and myself.’ Things began to look serious for me; it was no joke to be locked in a small room with a homicidal madman for a companion. Force I knew could not avail me; argument, I felt certain, would only exasperate him. So I had to try guile. I asked him how he meant to kill me. He was kind enough to give me my choice. I told him that I thought if my throat were cut with a razor, I should die easier, so he looked for therazors, but could not find them. I told him that I knew where to find them, and borrowed the key from him, that I might fetch them. He did not seem to suspect anything; for he gave me the key, and I was quickly outside the room after telling him to wait quietly till I returned. I locked the door from the outside and went to bed. I felt persuaded after this that he was another of my brilliant failures, so I told him he must leave us, which he accordingly did. I suppose that some day his brain will become affected or his body, strong as it is, will be stricken with paralysis, for neither iron constitutions nor strong brains can escape the Nemesis of Nature.
At the time when this man was living with me I had on hand as fine a selection of dipsomaniacs as could be wished. One by one in the years of my work I had picked them up, and from different police-court cells they had gathered round me. They were mostly educated men who had considerable abilities, and held positions of trust, and they kept me alive. Some of the employers of these men looked upon me as a ‘keeper,’ for no sooner was one of them absent from his duty than I received a wire to that effect. Not unfrequently I had to effect a capture and bring one to my house for treatment. They were a strange lot, and their outbreaks occurred at varying intervals.
There was one who would go for six months and sometimes more, well conducted, scrupulously clean, and well dressed, an ideal picture of a well-to-do, benevolent, elderly man. I have also known him go for six weeks unwashed, and during that time never remove his clothes, change his linen, or take off his boots. He went down into the mud at longer intervals than the others, but when in it he stayed there and rolled much longer, and went lower down. At no stage of his drinking bout did this man become jolly, lively, or in any sense companionable. He wanted no one, he wanted nothing but drink. Quiet, sullen, and determined, he set about his debauch in a business-like way. He had been with his firm for many years,and was a valuable servant who did not mind work. His employers thought much of him, and were willing to overlook his outbreaks provided they were kept within reasonable limits, and that he never appeared at the office with the slightest sign of a debauch, or of recovering from a debauch, upon him. He had a marvellous constitution, and would drink for six weeks at a time, eating little or no food, and would take bottles of spirits to bed with him. If during his outbreak he took off his boots, he would wander from public-house to public-house, winter or summer, wet or dry, without any. If he started his debauch wearing a great ulster-overcoat, no matter how the weather changed or how warm it became, the overcoat he continued to wear. Often he would lose his silk hat, and many a warm day I have discovered him without hat or boots, but wearing this great-coat. He had beautiful silver hair and beard, of which he was proud, and with which he took no end of pains when sober; no matter how long his debauch lasted, his hair would go uncombed, his beard untrimmed, and his face unwashed.
The first time I met him he was in this condition; he had been picked up in the snow about three o’clock one February morning, and was charged at North London Police Court. Without hat or boots, with matted hair and beard, blood-shot eyes and inflamed face, he sat shaking in the prisoners’ room. He was described on the charge-sheet as ‘A man; address not tendered.’ Truth to tell, he was unable to give his own name or to say where he came from. When I spoke to him, he looked up and said, ‘Water!’ I got him a full quart and held it to his mouth, for he trembled too violently to do it for himself. At two draughts he swallowed the lot. I could not get a word from him, neither could the police, and when before the magistrate he was dumb and vacant. The magistrate kindly sent him in a cab to the workhouse infirmary. I promised to go and see him in a few days’ time.
I went, and found him in workhouse clothing; his mentalfaculties were coming back to him, but he was not fit for removal, being ill and weak. He could, however, tell me where he came from and where he was employed. So I called on his employers, who had seen nothing of him since Christmas Eve. They were pleased to hear of him, and put me in communication with his daughter, a very accomplished young lady who had left her position as governess in the country and had come up to London to seek for him, for nothing had been heard of him for some weeks; in fact, he had disappeared. The daughter went with me to the workhouse to visit her father, and found it a very unpleasant experience. As he was approaching us I said, ‘Here is your father coming, miss.’ In his corduroy trousers, his brown coat with brass buttons, and his brown Scotch cap, she did not recognise him at first; when she did, she nearly fainted, but ultimately had a good cry instead. I got fresh rooms for him, and his daughter consented to live with him, giving up her own prospects in order to do it. His employer paid his debts, advancing a sufficient sum of money to his daughter. In a few days he went back to the office, the same elderly, benevolent-looking gentleman as he had been before his debauch, with not a suspicion of drink upon him.
For three months he worked almost night and day, and then he was at it again. His daughter left him and went I know not whither, for I have never heard of her since. Again he was left lonely in London. I sought him, but could not find him, so I arranged with his landlady to let me know at once if he returned home in the daytime, for his lodgings were handy. At night I waited for him in his own room. He returned one morning about two, when I quickly took possession of him. About four o’clock he insisted on going out, but I had locked his door, so he had to remain. The next day I cut short his debauch by taking him home with me, and putting him under lock and key. This he was most indignant about, and questioned my right to make a prisoner of him. I toldhim that might was right, and that he had got to remain. In a week’s time he went to his lodgings and his work. For six months this time he worked well and regularly. He was a Roman Catholic, so I insisted on his going to his priest, making a full confession, and signing the pledge. This he did, not that it had much effect, for again, after six months, he was in the mud. I could not find him for a long time, and when I did he was penniless, and had, moreover, pawned everything he possibly could. He lost his employment; his firm would have no more of him. His landlady, too, would have no more of him, and so the door was closed against him. Penniless, homeless, and friendless, I took him in.
He stayed two years with us, regaining his situation and doing so well that the firm substantially increased his salary. He was saving money fast, but he became too grand and important for us, and left us for other lodgings. For a while he kept straight, coming to visit us every Saturday evening. His silvery hair, his deportment, and his irreproachable clothing conferred quite a lustre upon our establishment, and his visits were a pleasure to us; but his holiday-time came round. For this he made great preparations, for he loved to do things in style. He had not had a seaside holiday for years; his frequent lapses prevented the thought of such a thing. He wanted a cab to take him to the station, for his luggage was considerable—a trunk, two portmanteaus, a Gladstone bag, a hand-bag, two hat-boxes, all full. With a gold-mounted Malacca cane, a gold-mounted umbrella, a gold watch and chain, away he went.
About five weeks afterwards, at two o’clock in the morning, he was on my doorstep, rapping and ringing and calling out, ‘For the love of God, let me in!’ I went down to him, and a pretty picture he presented. Unwashed and dirty to a degree, with an old cloth cap on his head, he stood there shaking and trembling again, almost in delirium tremens. Every bit of his luggage and belongings, excepting the clotheshe was wearing, had disappeared, and the work of two years was completely undone. He had no claim upon me for lodging, but I took him in, and saw him in bed; there he made such unearthly noises, the neighbours got up, thinking a murder was being committed. They told us about it next day, but never thought the noises proceeded from our house. By the aid of light nourishments, frequent cooling drinks, and medicine, we got him round again, and he went to face his employer. I don’t know what excuses he made, but, contrary to my expectations, he was allowed to commence his work, although he had been absent two months. Again he got straight, paid his debts, and appeared as a philanthropic elderly gentleman, goodly to look upon.
But once more the drink craving came and took him by the throat, and he was helpless in its grip. Warnings were nothing to this man, for when he was sober he never dreamt or thought it possible that he could ever fall again; others might, but himself never. Never could it or should it happen again to him; but it did, and again I brought him home, and locked him up. This time, however, he was too much for me, for he got through the window of the room with nothing on but trousers, shirt, and stockings, and in that condition this nice, elderly, silver-haired gentleman went ‘on the drink.’ I sent out scouts, and he was found in a public-house some distance away. I went for him, and found him with a stiff glass of brandy before him, which I quickly upset. He refused to come with me, and would not budge an inch, so I explained matters to the landlord, who refused to serve him again. Still he would not come with me. Calling for a cigar and a glass of lemonade, I made myself as comfortable as I could, and risked my reputation as a teetotaler by waiting a good hour for him. He must have suffered something in that hour. With drink all round him, the fumes of it increasing his passion, waiting, longing, mad for it, there he sat till he could bear it no longer, so he got up and said he was ready to go. AgainI locked him up, took possession of his money and thought I had him safe.
The next day, in my absence, he burst the door of his bedroom, went out and pawned something, came back and went to bed. When I got home, I searched his room, but could find no drink. I made him undress, but he had no drink upon him. I took away all his clothing, and then searched his bed. I found under the mattress a flask of brandy. When I took it away, I noticed a cunning look on his face, which I did not understand at the time, but I thought it strange that he quietly acquiesced in my taking the flask. For several days he stayed in his room, getting more and more drunk. I could not understand it, so determined to make another search, and soon found that he had completely fooled me by placing the small flask where he knew I should find it, but also hiding several large bottles up the chimney. These were now empty, and he was stupidly, insensibly drunk. I came to the conclusion that my wits were not sharp enough to cope with his, so I put his clothing back in his room, determined to let him have his fling. Again with matted beard and hair unwashed for weeks he went in and out; again the workhouse brought him up. This time it was his own seeking; he knew that I had decided to have done with him. He had pawned and parted with everything possible; he wandered about and could get no more drink, so, abject and ill, he went to the workhouse infirmary.
For seven long years I had hoped and struggled for this man. I had fought the drink demon with every resource at my command, and I had to confess defeat. The last thing I did for him was to get a change of clothing out of pawn, take him to Euston Station and pay his fare to a large Northern city. There Nature has had its revenge, for he lies paralyzed in a workhouse infirmary, waiting for the end. There his wife lives in easy circumstances, bringing up her younger children to hate the name of their father. She had property and friends,and years ago she obtained a judicial separation, for when the trial came on he was in the mud. His eldest daughter I have never heard of since the day she disappeared. But about once a year a stalwart sailor comes into London port, and for a few weeks revels in the mud after the fashion of the silver-haired gentleman. Cut and wounded, penniless and shaken, he goes back to his ship, or, should that be gone, seeks for another; for he inherits the same passion, and is slave to the same over-mastering craving, as his father—a passion I have some reason to fear the accomplished daughter is not a stranger to.
God help all such! for who else can understand them, who else can help them? Moral force is of no avail; human sympathy, kindly interest, and earnest solicitations are of no avail with them. Sufferings and remorse, burning shame and hopeless poverty, teach this kind nothing. Though they know that the prison or workhouse waits for them, though they know that the grave is yawning for them—yea, though hell itself stood open for them—into it they would go for the chance of satisfying their all-compelling craving. And it comes upon them like a thief in the night, when it is least expected. To-day they are clean, circumspect, gentlemanly, even religious; to-morrow they are bestial and wallow in the mud. Education is powerless, culture is powerless, refinement is powerless, good desires are powerless, self-respect is powerless, before this omnipotent craving. As I sit writing, all of these men whom I have ever met seem to crowd round me, and they are all educated men—University men and business men, clergymen and ministers of religion, artists and literary men, men of historic family and doctors of repute—I see them all again in their hopeless misery. I listen to their appeals for help, and I feel again the dint of pity as I look into their faces. I know only too well that I cannot and have not helped them. I have but pitied them, and given them such assistance as lay in my power.
And but too frequently their own friends show no pitytowards them—nothing but stern and implacable resentment. Doubtless they have suffered much because of them, but what can justify a father in speaking of his son as ‘the accursed wretch that bears my name’? for in these words a wealthy gentleman living in Kennington replied to me when I wrote to him concerning his son, who was a clergyman and a dipsomaniac. In the depth of winter, with his toes peeping out through his old boots, this man had sought me out. I had given him food and a new pair of boots, and out of pity had appealed to his father. I might as well have appealed to an iceberg. ‘You may be able to work miracles,’ he had sneeringly added, and not even a cast-off coat would he give to his son.
But the most extraordinary dipsomaniac I have had to deal with was the man whom poor Kate Henessey knocked down in the prisoners’ room for insulting me. I did not have a promising introduction to this gentleman, but as I saw much of him afterwards, we became friendly, and he asked me to call on him. One morning, on my way to the court, I called at the address he gave. ‘Not at home,’ the landlady said. I called again in the afternoon. ‘Not returned yet,’ I was told. I felt interested in the man, for I had gathered from our conversation that he was an educated man of good family, and had been well-to-do. So next morning I called again. Seeing me persistent, the landlady invited me in, and asked me my business. When I told her who I was, and what was my errand, she asked me if I had a few minutes to spare. I told her that I had. We were then in a narrow, miserable passage, and, opening a door on the left, she told me to look in.
I took one step forward, and a pitiful sight met my eyes. A young man, tall, thin, and emaciated, was lying on a low pallet-bed; a clammy sweat stood on his brow, and his eyes were burning with an unnatural light. Only one look was required to tell that his sands were fast running out, and thatconsumption had almost done its work. I took one step forward, and said: ‘I am sorry to see you lying here like this. Can I do anything for you?’ ‘Only go away and don’t bother me,’ was his reply. I told him that I did not wish to trouble him, that I had called by his father’s request, but that I should be glad to do him any little service I could. He said that he only wanted to be let alone that he might die in peace. Seeing that he was not inclined for conversation, I withdrew, and had some talk with the landlady. She told me that the young man was the grandson of a celebrated British officer who had distinguished himself in the Peninsular War. The youth’s father was the only son of that officer, and had himself held a commission in a crack regiment. Their property was vested in trustees for the young man, the father receiving a weekly allowance and a further sum once a quarter. I was told how the father and mother, the youth and two sisters, lived in one room upstairs, and that father and mother had been away drinking for five days, and had left the boy to the care of his two sisters, one aged fifteen and the other five years. Being moved with pity for the dying youth, the landlady had given him that little room, and placed him there so that she might occasionally look to him. It was a dirty house in an awful neighbourhood. The woman herself looked coarse, and by no means tidy, but she had a kind, motherly heart, and had done her best for the lad.
Thinking a few nice grapes would be acceptable, I went out and obtained some, and came back to him. As I sat giving him a few, I heard the father and mother come in, and go tumbling upstairs. After a short time I went up to them, and, being invited, entered their den, for no other word can fitly describe it. I have been in many wretched places, but have seen nothing worse than their ‘home.’ The furniture consisted of three chairs—each bottomless—and a miserable table, on which were some stale bread and a dirty piece of cheese that the child of five (she had no shoes or stockings on) waspecking at with a fork. In the corner stood a small iron bedstead, covered with a quilt made up of portions of old clothing stitched indiscriminately together. No fire was alight, but the accumulated ashes of many days choked the hearth. The atmosphere was insufferable; the father drunk, the mother drunk, a female who had come in with them drunk also; and the poor lad lay dying below—all this made up such a scene of grotesque horror as fairly made me gasp.
It was some time before I could speak to them, and when I did it was in no measured terms, telling them that they were a scandal to humanity. Afterwards, when I spoke to them of their duty and responsibility to their son, they began to cry and wring their hands, repeating again and again: ‘Drink is damnation! Drink is damnation!’ while the wretched woman they had brought in joined her maudlin tears with theirs, and repeatedly wished that her husband would give up drink. Day by day I visited the youth for five days before I found the parents sober, and then I brought them, sober and miserable, to the bedside of the dying boy, and there they swore before God to touch no more drink while he lived, promising also to make his last days peaceful.
A week passed, and the father received his quarterly allowance, and with the money I persuaded him to take rooms close by, and furnish one comfortably for his son. This he did, and one bright day we got the doctor’s permission to move him on his bed to their new home. For another week there was quietude and some degree of comfort. My visits became acceptable to the poor lad, and in his better room we became close friends. I began to feel hopeful, but my hopes were soon to be dashed to the ground. One morning when I called, the bedroom door of the boy’s room was splintered, the hearthrug and other articles of comfort were gone, and his bloodshot eyes told of a fearful night. The drink madness had come upon the father, and he had broken into the room for anything portable and of value. He now seemed to lose all sense ofrestraint, and from this day till the death of his son nothing seemed too horrible for him. The new boots went off his little daughter’s feet; the elder girl was pushed into the street and told to get her own living; the dying son was assaulted and robbed of a little watch that was intended for a ‘keepsake’ for the sister. I shall not forget the morning after that assault. I saw at once that the poor boy was overwhelmed and exhausted. I asked him what was the matter. With his claw-like hands he turned down the sheet and pointed to his thin neck, and there on his throat were two red patches. Then he told me how the drink madness had come again on his father; how in the night he had come stealthily into his room, crept to his bedside, and put his hand under the pillow to take thence the little watch; how he had called out: ‘Oh, father, don’t take my watch!’ and then made an effort to keep it, and how his father took him by the throat and compelled him to give up the watch, which he took away. During the hours I spent with him the boy told me such stories of their sufferings that I wept when I heard them; told me of the unimaginable depths to which his father descended when the drink madness was upon him, and told me, with half-closed eyes and burning cheeks, of the loathsome occupation his father would sometimes follow to satisfy that drink-madness.
One morning in July the message came to me that I had been expecting. The landlady of the house where they lived came bareheaded and breathless begging of me to go at once; for the young man was dead and the father mad drunk, and she was afraid there would be murder or something almost as bad. I hurried there, and found a number of people congregated in front of the house. The front-door was open, so I ran direct to Johnny’s room. A desperate struggle had evidently taken place; the furniture was upset, the mattress thrown off the bed, and the dead body of the son lay on the floor close to the window. The elder girl stood confronting her father with a knife in her hand; the mother, weeping,followed me into the room, out of which her husband quickly went when he saw me.
Briefly this is what had taken place: the boy died soon after I left him the day before, and in a very short time the father had pawned all his clothes and stayed out during the night. He came back the next morning at nine o’clock drunk, and went up to the room where his son’s body lay, intending to take away the bed-clothing, etc. A struggle had thereupon ensued between the girl and her father for possession of them; and as he wanted the mattress, he had actually thrown the body on to the floor. A cheque for fifteen pounds was forwarded by the trustees for funeral expenses. A coffin was brought, but the rest of the money the father spent, never coming to the house till it was gone. More money was received from the trustees, and the day of the funeral came on. I had promised the youth to see the last of him and to be present at the funeral. The father did not come near the house that day, and it seemed as though the funeral would pass off quietly, but just as we got into the main road, he joined us in a cab. Soon there was a great shout, and a number of women closed around the cab; sticks and stones were thrown at him, and an effort made to drag him out and lynch him. He did get roughly handled, but the cabman, having a good horse, vigorously plied his whip, and drove through the crowd, waiting for us further on. There was no other disturbance, for in a few days the wife went down to the trustees and left her husband.
Three months afterwards I again met him, but this time he stood in the dock, when a serious charge was made and proved against him. The last view I had of him was as he stepped into the prison-van, to be conveyed to the punishment he so richly merited. So passed from my knowledge the worst dipsomaniac it has been my lot to meet with. Like Lucifer from heaven, he fell to the lowest depth, and evil became his good; for it is always so: the greater the height fromwhich a man falls, the lower the depths to which he descends. As in the physical world, so in the moral world, there is a law of gravitation. I have tried to understand these men, and I have failed to do so. I have taken some measure of the force that impels them, but neither I nor anyone else other than a dipsomaniac can realize in anything approaching its fulness the might and dreadfulness of the power that inhabits them.
The study of human nature is always interesting, but to study a criminal is an engrossing task. Anyone who undertakes this had better have no preconceived ideas; if he has he will have much to unlearn, for no two criminals are alike. Prison is probably the worst place in which to study a criminal. He is then under control; his actions are not ordered by himself, but by others, and he must obey. He, naturally, wants to make the best of his imprisonment; he, therefore, behaves himself, and his true nature or his fatal passion is not exhibited. When a dipsomaniac is detained where it is not possible for the passion of drink to be gratified, that passion lies dormant; it seems extinct, and the man flatters himself that it is dead; but when he is again at liberty, the lust for drink springs into active and powerful life.
It is just so with the criminal. In prison there is no possibility for him to indulge in his particular crime, therefore the lust for that crime is for the time being non-existent; but with liberty his lust again awakes, and the criminal finds, like the dipsomaniac, that not in protected retirement, but in full liberty, with every temptation around, and every possibility of falling, comes the time of danger; then the battle has to be fought and the victory won, if it is to be fought at all or ever won. At liberty I have seen such men; when at liberty I have made friends of them, the shelter of my own house hasnot been denied them, and I have had unique opportunities of studying them, and of trying to find out what it is that leads an industrious and skilled man again and again to the perpetration of crime.
The idle, loafing criminal has no attraction for me. I like him not, and have neither time nor effort to waste on him; but for the intelligent and industrious criminal I feel some degree of pity. I speak with such men, and find that they not only know right from wrong, but they can also weigh the consequences of their crime; moreover, they know perfectly well that criminality does not pay, and never will pay them. Further, many of them, in spite of repeated conviction, have earnest desires to do right. Again, a frightful tragedy is compressed into the life of a human being who earnestly wishes to do right, and yet is compelled by some inward power to do wrong, absolutely wrong, even to the perpetration of serious crime. Take the case of a really industrious man, who has trained ability that enables him to lead a comfortable life, and who, moreover, respects himself, and enjoys the respect of others, a man who loves Nature and liberty, and likes to do kind actions and good turns to other people. When such a man foregoes business, home, comfort, liberty, and the opportunity of doing kind deeds for the sake of indulgence in one particular crime, especially when that crime—if undetected—can bring him but trumpery gain, what doubt can there be but that the criminal is possessed of some kind of mania?
Kleptomania, dipsomania, and homicidal mania by no means exhaust the category of criminal manias that affect humanity. I have noticed for years that many criminals are charged again and again with a repetition of one kind of offence. Some people are born thieves, and will steal on any and every occasion possible anything they can lay their hands on; but the men and women I have in mind are altogether of a different class, and limit their thefts to one particular article, neverstealing any other, and, what is more important, never feeling any inclination or temptation to steal any other article or class of goods.
Only a short time back an exceedingly well-dressed man stood in the dock at North London charged with stealing a watch from a jeweller’s shop. He was of middle age, and quite intellectual in appearance. His frock-coat with silk facings, his silk hat, gloves, etc., all combined to make him as unlike a criminal as possible; yet when arrested with the watch in his possession, he told the police at once that he was well known at Scotland Yard; and so it proved, for there were nine convictions against him. He had been at liberty for over two years, and had lived honestly. His father, who was exceedingly well-to-do, and was much respected in his profession before he retired from business, allowed him sufficient money monthly to live upon. In conversation with him, I learned his father’s address and the address where he himself had been living. I wrote to his father, and the reply I got was full of pity and love. He had no hard words of condemnation to say about his son; he was very sorry, but he could not understand his son’s inexplicable mania for stealing watches. There was no necessity for him to steal a watch. His father had provided him with one, and allowed him a sufficiency of money, for he was not in poverty. I saw the people with whom he lodged, and they spoke in the highest terms of him. For two years he had lived with them, and had won their esteem and love; they had not the least idea that he had ever been convicted. Yet eight times he had been convicted for watch-stealing. His first offence was stealing a watch when quite a young man. After his discharge, his friends got him an appointment on a ship making long voyages, and he was away two years. No sooner does he come back to England, than again he is in trouble for watch-stealing, an offence that he has repeated so often that now, when over forty years of age, he finds himself in prison for the ninth time for the sameoffence. He sat crying in the cell after his last conviction, when I called him to me and begged of him to tell me why he stole watches. He could not speak for a time, and then he said: ‘I don’t know, indeed I don’t. Yesterday I was a happy man, and now I am here.’ ‘But tell me how it happened.’ ‘All I can tell you,’ he said, ‘is that as I was going along the street and passing the jeweller’s shop, something said to me, “Go in and get a watch! Go in and get a watch!” and I had to go in and get one.’ But he got it in such an unspeakably clumsy and blundering way that it was impossible for him to escape arrest.
Now, this man is a type of many; for to my knowledge there are large numbers of criminals who commit but one sort of offence, and are in every other direction honest and decent citizens. Here is a good-looking middle-aged woman whom I have known for years, and who twenty times at least has been sent to varying terms of imprisonment. An incorrigible shoplifter she is called, and so I thought her till I came to understand her. Repeatedly as she was charged, the pathos of the whole thing grew upon me; for her silence in the dock and her tears in the cells were irresistible, so we became friends, and she told me her secret. When she came out of prison I found her decent lodgings, hired a sewing-machine, and secured her plenty of work. She was not idle, and was soon beyond the necessity of stealing. I flattered myself we were on the way to success, and I said to her, ‘Your devil shall be cast out!’ when all of a sudden the old offence was repeated, and again to prison she went. My heart went out to the wretched woman as she sat weeping in the cell. I could not condemn her, for I knew. With a piteous look into my face she said, ‘Don’t blame me, Mr. Holmes, don’t blame me; I can’t help it. I would if I could, but I must steal boots.’ Knowing this, I had provided her liberally with boots to minimize the temptation, but all in vain; so far as I could ascertain she had not stolen anything but boots. I determined to try a new planwith her, so when she had served her term I sent her into the country to work I had secured for her, hoping that change of scene and air might have a good influence. She wrote me several letters, and sent me flowers and fruit, but in every letter she wrote me boots were referred to, and in one, otherwise lucid, she mentioned them without much reason four times. She was not in need of boots, and though I knew it was not of much use, I sent her a pair, but they did not prevent her from stealing others, and far away from London she was sent to a month’s imprisonment. And so I suppose it will go on to the end of the chapter, for she came back to London, and though I have not seen her since, and have heard but once from her, I have not the slightest doubt that she is in prison for her old and oft-repeated offence.
But other manias, and much more dangerous and serious than watch or boot stealing, exist, as I have found out to my sorrow. Seven years ago a little man was waiting for me outside the police court. He wanted a helping hand, he said, and had been advised to come to me. I looked at him, and saw at once that he had character and backbone. He was about five feet four in height, slightly built, and straight as an arrow, evidently full of nervous energy, but his eyes told me plainly that he had spent many years in prison. ‘What was your last stretch?’ I said to him. ‘Fifteen years!’ ‘Burglary?’ ‘Yes.’ I knew by his sentence that it was not his first term by any means, and on inquiry I found that though only forty years of age he had been sentenced to more than twenty-five years’ imprisonment and penal servitude at different times for burglary. He had been released in May, and it was now the end of June. With his gratuity he had bought a decent suit of clothes. He had, he said, tramped London over to look for work, and now he found himself footsore, helpless, and penniless. He’d had enough of prison; he did not want to go back there. I looked closely at him and felt the dint of pity, for I saw he had industry and talent. So I gave him my hand,telling him that it should not be my fault if ever again he saw the inside of a prison’s walls.
The redemption of that promise cost me much, but it taught me much; it has shown me how good and evil exist side by side, and it has taught me that tenderness, pity, and love may dwell in the heart of the fearless criminal. It has taught me how hopeless is the lot of the released criminal unless personal friendship be accorded him. He was a bookbinder, and I could not get him work. He had a wife, and it was expensive work keeping the pair. He was anxious to work, and my failure to procure it disheartened him. I wrote scores of letters for him, and made calls upon some firms, but no one would have him. ‘Not in the union!’ said some. ‘Discharging hands!’ said others. ‘Could not have a man like that at any price!’ said a third. ‘It’s no use,’ he said bitterly; ‘you see you can’t get me work. I shall have to go back to it.’ I found a way out of the difficulty by buying him tools and materials, and setting him up in business for himself. He was a splendid workman, who could not do a slovenly job. I and my sons kept him going for a month, and then, having various specimens of his work, we canvassed for orders, and work became plentiful. But I learned much in that canvassing. I called upon a number of very good religious people—indeed, their goodness almost overpowered me, so effusive were they in their good wishes and promises of work—work that never came save in two instances, when it was expressly stipulated that I should myself fetch away and return the work to them when it was finished, and I was positively to keep their address secret; they were afraid of being burgled. Yet they had shaken hands with me and said, ‘God bless you, God bless you in your efforts for the poor fellow!’ When I returned the work, they complained about the price. So I charged them less, and made it up myself. They were not prepared to risk much more than prayers on his salvation.
I was glad when work became plentiful, and such customerscould be dispensed with. For it did become plentiful. Several of our London magistrates gave him good work, and took a great interest in him. He was a constant visitor (for work) at the house of one of our judges. Many clergymen in North London treated him with confidence and respect, leaving him alone in their libraries for hours. Several of them called on him more than once, presumably about work, but in reality to strengthen and confirm him. Exact, methodical, industrious beyond measure, honest in his dealings, he was to me a friend, a study, and a delight. I never talked his past over with him, preferring to centre his hopes and his thoughts on the future. He spent many hours in my house, and one night over a pipe his secret came out. I told him that I could not understand how such an intelligent, industrious, skilful workman as he was could be a burglar. He not only knew it was wrong and a crime, but he also knew it was folly, and could not pay. He looked at me for a moment, and then said: ‘You have seen the power of drink; you know the fascination of gambling. Bring drink, gambling, horse-racing, and roll them into one, and they do not equal the fascination of burglary. The silence of the night, every sense on the alert, the element of danger, the chances of failure and success, all combine to make burglary a fascination. Why do some men get drunk? Because they must. So I was a burglar because I was compelled to be a burglar.’
There was no doubt about the truth of this; it admitted of no argument, for his manner of saying it was convincing. But it troubled me, for I felt that the demon might not be dead, but only sleeping, while he himself laughed at the idea that he could again commit burglary. I had misgivings, and began to cast about for some new weapon wherewith to fight his enemy. He was then living and working in one furnished room, for beyond his tools, etc., he had no goods. After he left me I said to myself: ‘This man wants a stake in society—something to lose.’ I provided that something next morning, forI took an unfurnished house for him. I stood security for sufficient goods to furnish it nicely, the payments to extend over two years. He and his wife moved in, taking with them the tools, and when I called on them in their new home both of them cried like children. I explained to him the conditions on which the goods would belong to him, and what pride he would feel and what satisfaction he would enjoy when he felt his home was his own, the result of his own honest labours. Satisfaction! Why, he felt ecstatic joy at the thought of it; his eyes fairly glistened, and he told me that he would never waste a penny or an hour till he had paid for everything. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and when you have worked for the goods, and paid for them, and they are your own, how would you like some rascally burglar to rap you on the head some night, and then clear your home out.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s a shrewd hit, but he had better not try it.’ I said no more to him, but stayed for a cup of tea, when we drank success to his new home.
Next morning he was waiting for me at the court; he wanted to speak to me. He looked rather queer, so I asked him what he wanted to say to me. ‘I want to know whether you expect me to make a profession of religion because you have got me a home?’ ‘Why do you ask?’ ‘Because I think it right to tell you straightly that I do not believe in God or devil, and I don’t think you would if you had been in prison, as I have. I can’t make any profession.’ I looked at him and said: ‘We will leave God out of the question, but you won’t have to search far for the devil, and remember this, that when you have found him he is an ass.’ I told him further that all I asked at present was that he should be as loyal to me as he would be to one of his old pals, when he said: ‘Mr. Holmes, if I ever do a dishonest action, I will bring you the key of the house, and tell you about it.’
I kept him well supplied with work, and there was no holding him back, for he worked too hard, and kept at it on Sundaystill I found it out and stopped him. In twelve months he had paid every debt, and the goods were his own; more than this, he had won the confidence and respect of all who knew him. He was a most tender-hearted fellow; he would not kill a beetle or cockroach. I met him at his door one day with one in his hand, which he threw away into a place of safety. When I asked him why he did not kill it, he said: ‘Why shouldn’t the poor beggar live? The world is big enough.’ About that time our only daughter lay dying. Towards midnight he came two miles to inquire about her, and the next morning before eight o’clock he came again, but when he saw the drawn blinds he went away silently. When we buried the lassie, I saw him in the cemetery, and after we had left the grave, he approached it and placed his offering of flowers, without card or name, among the rest.
Two years passed, during which time I found him just and honourable in his dealings; but trouble began, for his wife turned out a terrible drunkard. She was a clever woman, who could do anything with her needle, and was of great help to him in his work. I knew that she had a past, for it was written in her face, and many a time when I have seen them happy together in their nice home my heart has been glad, for I felt that I was saving two. But the novelty of the husband’s return wore off, the joy of a woman in the possession of a decent home paled, and after two years’ sobriety the old drink craving asserted the mastery, and she became sometimes pig and sometimes tigress. Scenes ensued, and many times he came to my house till her drunken fury had passed; but he would not leave her, declaring that it was most likely his fault that she was as she was. At length it culminated in her striking him one day in her frenzy because he had refused her money for drink.
That night he broke into a boot warehouse, and was caught in the act. He had been with the judge previously mentioned in the morning, and had brought away plenty of work; atnight he was in the hands of the police. Five pounds of his own earnings were found on him when he was searched. A sentence of three years was imposed, his ticket-of-leave was revoked, and he had in all seven years to serve. ‘Don’t think too badly of me. You know I have fallen; you know why I have fallen; but you do not know—you cannot know—the hundreds of times that I have put the horrible temptation from me.’ Thus he wrote me, and I believed him. Not one word of condemnation had he for his wretched wife. Her remorse was dreadful to see, but it only drove her to drink the more, and in a few weeks the nice little home went. Not a vestige remained, and the forlorn wretch was again out upon the streets, a homeless wanderer and a drink-smitten vagrant; but not for long, for she soon disappeared as completely as the home—into the grave or some workhouse infirmary in all probability.
At intervals during his three years the man wrote to me from a convict settlement, and slowly for him those three years must have passed. But they ended at length, and some circumstances in his favour having come to my knowledge, they were placed, through the help of one of our magistrates, before the Home Secretary, who most kindly released him again on ticket-of-leave. And so he came back to me.
Back; but how changed! Men must, I know, be punished; detained in prison they unfortunately must be; but is it good to turn them into wild animals? I was speechless at the sight of him. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked. ‘Matter, man! Turn round and look in that glass!’ He did so, and then sat down and, covering his face with his hands, cried like a child. He had not seen the reflection of himself for three years, and he was horrified at himself. I ask again, Is it right to send long-term men out of prison in such condition and appearance? Their prison-made clothing is of itself enough to damn them; the material is bad enough, but the cut and make are worse, while their underwear has no semblance of make about it, andthis man’s would have probably fitted a man quite twice his size. The hair upon his head was little more than equal in length to the hair on his face, and in both cases it stood at right angles. It is cruel, it is wrong—nay, it is more, for it is silly to turn men out of prison in such guise, and expect them to go straight and to reform. There is, I know, a redeeming influence to a man that is down, especially to a man of taste, in a clean, well-fitting shirt. I know more, for I have seen some men find positive salvation in a well-made, nicely-fitting suit of clothes. Anything which helps a man to feel some degree of self-respect is helpful to him; anything which detracts from self-respect does but the more debase him, and render his position the more hopeless. The utter absurdity of it is the more proclaimed when it is certain that the cost of this man’s outfit, if reasonably expended, would have provided him with decent clothing, which he would have respected, and which would not have proclaimed to the world that its wearer had been a long time in prison.
The criminal, having been punished, ought not to be branded, and it is about time that the combined wisdom of our authorities found some plan of reasonably and decently clothing such prisoners when discharged. The matter is very simple and certainly not expensive, but it is of vast importance; for good intentions, hopes and resolutions wither and die in the mind and heart when the body is habited in prison-made clothes. Such men carry the prison about with them, and cannot get free of its influence. And in all conscience a few years in prison brand a man quite enough without adding to it stubbly beards, upright hair, and peculiar clothing! How is it that a man’s facial expression changes during a long detention? How is it that his voice becomes hard and unnatural? How is it that his eyes become shifty, cunning, and wild? It is no fault of the prison officials; they cannot help these things; from the governor downwards they are not to blame. It is not because of hard work. From conversation with, and knowledgeof, such men, I gather that some of them at any rate would be thankful for more work. It is the system that does it, the long-continued, soul-and-mind-destroying monotony, the long, silent nights in which for hours men lie awake thinking, thinking, thinking, driven in upon themselves and to be their own selves’ only companion. No interchange of ideas is possible, no sound of human voices comes to call forth their own, and their own vocal organs rust. Nor does returning day bring change, nothing but the same duties, performed in the same way, at the same hour, and the same food, in the same quantities, served in the same demoralizing way. They become strangers to the usages of civilized society, and devour their food even as the beasts, but not with the wild beast’s relish. To the use of knife and fork they become strangers; to a knowledge of their own lineaments they become strangers; to high thoughts, amiable words, courtesy, love of truth, and all that makes a man they become strangers, for these virtues cannot dwell with senseless monotony. But if these things die of atrophy, other but less desirable qualities are developed. A low cunning takes their place; the wits are sharpened to deceive or to gain small ends; hypocrisy is developed, and men come out of prison hating it, loathing it, but less fitted to perform the duties of life than when they entered it.
Punishment, I say, there must be. Prisoners we shall continue to have; but surely it would be merciful and just, and therefore it would be wise, to give these men some legitimate hope of a little relief from their manhood-slaying monotony. And here I would suggest a radical reform,i.e., abolish the ticket-of-leave system; let the judge’s sentence of so long a time be a final one, unless for good reasons the Home Secretary intervenes. Judges are not now vindictive, and probably shorter terms will be the rule. Let the prisoner know that there will be no shortening of his sentence, but let him also know that good behaviour, industry, and courtesy will bring him a reward, and that after a fixed time he will be placed ina higher class. Let him know that better food, better and more abundant literature (not too ‘goody’), some social recreation and some relaxation from dead monotony, will be his reward. Let him know that more interesting work awaits him. Let him know that he shall have a chance of seeing the likeness of his own face, of hearing his own voice, of being fed as a human being, and, my life for it, you shall inspire many a man to hope. Hope takes to herself many virtues, for with hope all things are possible for good, but without that saving grace all things are possible for evil.
Let there be a gradual amelioration and a gradual relaxation of the monotonous conditions in the lives of long-time prisoners, and when they are released they will not present a spectacle like the man of whom I have been telling. For his eyes betrayed him, his high cheek-bones and hollow cheeks betrayed him, his hair on head and face betrayed him, his prison-made clothes betrayed him, but most of all his voice betrayed him. How he talked! There was no stopping; he ran on and on, and though I wanted to tell him much, I had to sit and listen to his queer voice as the words came tumbling over each other. I had never seen him or heard him before in this condition, and did not know what to make of him; but I sat and looked and listened wondering. At length I stopped him and told him he had better have a little breathing-time. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, let me talk! I have had no one to talk to all these years; let me hear my own voice!’ On and on he went till a meal was served, and then my wife sat down with us. Gracious! it was worse than the talking. A knife and fork lay beside his plate, but he took the meat with his fingers. I called his attention to the knife and fork. He looked ashamed, and said: ‘Excuse me; I had forgotten. I haven’t seen any for three years.’ But he cut a poor figure with them.
I kept him with me a few days, and let him practise his voice, got him shaved and decently clad. I obtained good lodgings for him with excellent people close by, and they verysoon learned to love and respect him. Again tools and materials for his work were provided, and I fitted up a room of my own for a workshop. His former patrons did not forget him, and work became plentiful, for many had been saving it up for him. He worked as if a fury were upon him. Every morning at eight, punctual as the clock, he rang my bell; every morning he left his lodgings with the kiss of little children on his lips; every evening he was welcomed home by them. Day by day I watched him. I saw his eyes become restful, his face became the face of a man, and ‘his flesh the flesh of a child.’ I heard his voice become human, I saw his face develop the power of smiling, and even heard organs that had long been silent and unused give forth a hearty laugh. He had to report himself regularly to the police, who treated him in a gentlemanly way, and never divulged his secret.
I am indeed exceedingly glad to have this opportunity of bearing witness to the considerate manner in which released prisoners are treated by the police. I have never met with any instance of persecution. A good deal has been said about them hunting up and betraying ticket-of-leave holders and discharged prisoners generally; my experience has been exactly to the contrary. I have known numberless instances of kind actions, and even of thoughtful care, displayed by detectives and others. Again and again have such officers brought old offenders to me, asking my help on their behalf. The police have a difficult task to perform; it is their duty to be suspicious, but I know that many of them are really glad to see an old offender go straight and proper.
He was a most ingenious man, and invented a new and pretty system of ornamenting the edges of books. He was justly proud of this, and took great delight in it. I saw him pursuing his experiments time after time, with all the ardour of an inventor. We were just taking steps to patent it, when he was again carried captive by his old enemy. With some pounds of his own honest earnings in his pocket, with a watchand chain and plenty of good tailor-made clothes, with a thriving business that promised him independence, with a smile on his face and a ‘Good-afternoon, Mr. Holmes,’ he left my house and went to the suburbs, and broke into a mean little house, where it was impossible for him to secure portable goods to anything like the value of the money then in his own pocket. He was caught in the act, received a sentence of five years, and had his ticket-of-leave revoked. So again he writes to me from a convict prison, and pitiful his letters are. ‘I don’t know why I did it, but I was compelled to do it.’ He begs me to write to him, and implores me not to cast him off, but to let him live on with one hope and with the knowledge that he has one friend in the world. I do write to him, but what can I say to cheer him? Were he at liberty, what could I do to help him? My poor wits are powerless and my resources useless before his inscrutable madness or his demoniacal possession. But I shall never see him again at liberty—nay, nay, for in less than nine years he will have eaten his own heart. I sit writing with the books he bound all around me. I take one in my hand, and I see proofs not only of skill but of honest workmanship, and of a conscientious man. And then, far away from the work he has left behind, I can fancy him, a man of many talents and infinite resource, at the daily round, the maddening round, of his monotonous task. I see him in the silence and long-continued solitude of his cell; I watch the disappearance of the man and the revival of the animal. But never again shall I see his deft fingers at work; never again shall I hear his brisk step at my door; for heart-disease has already hold of him, and small wonder. A year or two of maddening thought, incessant reflection and choking confinement, and he will have passed into the presence-chamber of the great Judge.
Many a castle in the air I built for him. I thought I had surrounded him with every safeguard, and my heart is still sad for him; but I regret not my efforts on his behalf, neitherdo I count my labours lost, nor my time wasted, for I learned to know him, I learned to appreciate the awful power of his strange mania. Otherwise his life was gentle, and but for this curse he was a man. ‘I ask you to believe me when I say that I was sincere in my promises to you. I told you that I considered myself in honour bound to do right, and to justify the confidence you have shown in me. I am no hypocrite, but why cannot I be as your sons? Why there should be a power within me impelling me to do these things I don’t know; but I do know at times that I am utterly unable to resist it. Do you think there is any truth in fatalism? Is it my destiny? Is it any use my struggling against it?’ These words form a portion of the last letter received from him, and he puts me questions that I cannot answer. I did not save him, but I tried my best.
Perhaps my methods were wrong, but to me they seem right; for I hold that if a man cannot be saved by faith and hope, by friendship and respect, there is no social salvation for him. There is a large class of criminals of this kind, not all possessed of the same mania, but impelled by the same power. Day by day men of brain and energy are released from our prisons. They have skill, but not muscle; intelligence, but not brute force. What will save them? Not wood-chopping ten hours a day in a ‘labour home’; not envelope addressing at half a crown per thousand! not paper-sorting under unpleasant conditions; not pick and shovel in competition with the navvy; not even clerical work, where, because of their past, they do two men’s work for a boy’s pay. These will not, cannot, redeem long-time men. If the consecration of loving hearts fails, if the dedication to their service of home, intelligence, family life, and a man’s own self fails, if that divine inspiration that comes from human goodness fails, it is absurd to suppose that monotonous, ill-requited drudgery will succeed. Some kind people can, I believe, find a sort of gratification in making a profit or in getting cheap labour from men andwomen who are down. Thank God this cannot be laid to my charge, no, nor to my wife’s; for if the old ‘unfortunate,’ the hero of a hundred convictions, has lived with us and worked for us, we have paid her adequately. If the criminal who has spent a quarter of a century in prison has worked for us, we have paid him, and his labour has been as well requited as if his character was perfect and his past unsullied. Why should Christian people seek to get some advantage from unfortunate men and women who have fallen deeply into vice or sin? The return path to rectitude and citizenship is always a hard road to travel, and rightly so; but to make that road harder by imposing such heavy tolls upon the travellers is like unto casting out the devil by Beelzebub. I know a man at the present moment—a married man and a first-rate scholar, about thirty-five years of age—not long from prison who, because of his past and his helplessness, is earning ten shillings a week in a position to which he has been ‘recommended.’
A large number of good people are tarred with this brush, for I have received scores of letters at different times from persons who required either servants or assistants of some sort, and who were willing to take, with a view to their reformation, some girl or woman who had gone wrong, or some man who was down, the condition being that I should recommend them. ‘What are the duties? What is the payment? What references can you give?’ I have always inquired of them. I invariably found that the duties were numerous and heavy, and the pay about half the current rate. The question of references was often taken as a gratuitous insult on my part; but I had good reasons for the question, and I could not think of sending any broken sinner who had some desire of amendment to any place or situation where that hope would soon be extinguished, or where their labour would altogether be inadequately rewarded. I have sent back to their homes, in various parts of England, women, healthy, strong, and useful, who have been sent up to London to be ‘rescued,’ and afterbeing ‘rescued’ have been sent out to drudgery at half a crown or three shillings per week, with certain deductions. Needless to say, they found their way into our police courts.
I do not want men and women bribed to be good, for goodness so obtained would be shoddy stuff. I do not want criminals and offenders to have an easier time or, indeed, as easy a path in life as the honest, sober, and industrious; nay, with all my soul, I protest against the lives of decent people being made harder and their difficulties increased by ill-considered efforts in rescue work. It avails little to set up Peter and knock Paul down, yet this must inevitably be the result if fallen men and women are to do vast quantities of useful work for little or no remuneration; but I do want fallen men and women to have some chance of reform, and I do pray that the return path to rectitude and decency may not be made too thorny.
How to right one wrong without creating another is then the problem, and it is almost insoluble—almost, but, I venture to think, not quite. We must, however, begin at the beginning. Our prisons should be the starting-place, and these must no longer be ‘vengeance houses.’ The law must be satisfied, I know; but surely the law ought to be satisfied with the protection of society and the punishment of the criminal, without also claiming as its due the demoralization of the prisoner. I say advisedly, after taking counsel with and making friends of many who have been only too familiar with prison, that the present methods conduce to that state of mind and body which renders discharged prisoners almost certain to commit crime. Crime, generally, is the result of some peculiar condition of the mind or, it may be, of the body of the perpetrator. I cannot differentiate, but men whose business it is to know should be able to do so. Certain actions follow, and we say that crime has been committed, and that the criminal is morally diseased; so we proceed to take vengeance upon him. Itwould be considered insanity if physical or mental disease were so treated.
Prisons, then, should not only be the means of protecting society against the depredations of the criminals, but should also be hospitals or asylums for the study and cure of moral disease. Neither can I imagine a study and science more absorbing, for the wonders of the moral nature are greater even than the wonders of physiology. Have our prison officials studied in this direction? If not, what qualifies them for the positions they hold? Very respectfully, but very seriously, I would ask whether the army is the best training for the governor of a prison? Are our prison doctors selected because of their researches in the domains of moral, mental, and physical disease? Have our prison chaplains taken a degree in the university of human nature? Are the warders possessed of some useful technical knowledge, as well as of a knowledge of men? In mechanical trades a training has to be undergone before good workmanship is arrived at. In the professions long and severe courses of study are gone through, and examinations are held to test the fitness of the aspirants for certificates of knowledge or skill; but to deal with human nature of the darkest and worst descriptions, it appears as though anyone will do. No special fitness is required, no training is looked for, and no knowledge of humanity is for; in any other department of life the thing would asked be absurd.
If specialists are required anywhere, they are required in our prison officialdom. Not cranks or doctrinaires, not men who have made up their minds that they know all there is to be known about criminals and human nature, not fussy and ‘goody-goody’ people, and certainly not official martinets, should be in control of our prisons. Order and discipline there must, of course, be, but there is a discipline that kills as well as one that makes alive. There is small use in trying to discipline men by killing their better parts and destroying theiruseful faculties. Great-hearted, wise-headed men, men of tact but men of sympathy, men who have above all things a knowledge of human nature, should have control of our prisoners. The medical profession must play a more important part, and the chaplains must be embodiments of a living Christ, and full of a Divine pity even for the very worst. ‘The greater sinner a man is, the greater the need of his reform; the lower a man has fallen, the greater his need to rise; the more hopeless a man seems, the greater his claim for pity.’ So writes a criminal to me, and on these grounds he implores me to help him when his sentence has expired. I think Christ would have said the same. ‘I, whose vast pity almost makes me die,’ Tennyson makes King Arthur say; and such a vast pity should permeate the heart—nay, the very bones and marrow of every prison chaplain. ‘Power itself hath not half the might of gentleness’ has been well said; and of all qualities of the human heart and mind, the power of sympathy is the mightiest, for it disarms resistance and overcomes evil with good. Once let our prisoners know that the officials are animated with a desire for their welfare, and all things will be possible; but they must feel it.