Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison 38 – Bidwell · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison 38Henceforth a Light Was to Stream Through the Fluted Glass of My Window
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison 38
Henceforth a Light Was to Stream Through the Fluted Glass of My Window
BidwellEnglish
The first day was over, but it seemed to me that something more must come. That what I had gone through could mean the life of a day must surely be impossible. Was there nothing before me but isolation so complete that no whisper from the outside world could reach me, that world which compared with the death into which I was being absorbed seemed the only world of the living?
Had I actually nothing to look for but the most repulsive work under the most repulsive conditions? I said there must be surely some change, that wheeling mud forever was not the doom of any man and could certainly not be mine.
I looked about my little cell, the stillness of the grave without, the utter solitude within. The ration which formed my supper was on the table, eight ounces of black bread. Try as I might to cheat myself with hope, I knew that hope for many a long year there was none, that so far as the most vindictive sentence could compass it, for many a long year the earth with her bars was about me.
No "De Profundis" cry could ever ascend from the abyss to the bottom of which I had fallen. What was outside of me had nothing but the hideous.
But although the visible seemed corruption, and the things which my soul, and body, too, had refused to touch were become my sorrowful meat, yet I could not but feel that the invisible, that part of me which no bars could hold and no man deprive me of, was still my own, and that in it I might and would find sufficient to support what I began to feel was, after all, the only man.
To face the actualities of the position was the first thing; not to cheat myself, the second. I had seen the sort of men I was to be with. I set to work to study and to understand the kind of life we were to live together.
At early dawn we rose, receiving immediately after the nine ounces of bread and pint of oatmeal gruel which composed breakfast. At 6.30, to chapel to hear one of the schoolmasters drone through the morning prayers of the English Church service, and listen to some hymn shouted out from throats never accustomed to such accents. Then the morning hours would drag slowly on in the Summer's sun and Winter's blast until the noon hour; then there was the long march back from the scene of my toil to the prison for dinner. Arriving there, each man went to his cell, closing his door, which snapped to, having a spring lock. Soon after a dinner is given consisting of sixteen ounces of boiled potatoes and five ounces of bread, varied on three days of the week with five ounces of meat additional. At 1 o'clock the doors were unlocked and we marched out to our work again. At night, returning to the prison, eight ounces of black bread would be doled out for supper. Then came the hours between supper and bedtime, when shut in between those narrow walls one realized what it was to be a prisoner.
In the corner of the cell there was a board let into the stonework. There was a thin pallet and two blankets rolled up together during the day in a corner of the cell that served for bedding, but so thin and hard was the pallet that one might almost as well have slept on the board. For the first few weeks this bed made my bones ache. Most men have little patience and small fortitude, and this bed kills many of the prisoners. I mean breaks their hearts, simply because they have not the wit to accept the matter philosophically and realize that they can soon become used to any hardship. It took six months for my bones to become used to the hard bed, but for the next nineteen years I used to sleep as sweetly on that oak board as I ever did or now do in a bed of down, only, like Jean Valjean, in "Les Miserables," I had become so used to it that upon my liberation I found it impossible for a time to sleep in a bed.
On a little rusty iron shelf, fixed in the corner, was our tinware. Although called tinware, it really was zinc, and was susceptible, through much hard work, of a high polish, but this "polishing tinware" was a fearful curse to the poor prisoner. It consisted of a jug for water and a bowl for washing in and a pint dish for gruel. There were strict and imperative orders, rigidly enforced, that this tinware should be kept polished, the result being that the men never washed themselves, and never took water in their jugs, for if they did their tinware would take a stain--"go off," as it was termed--the result being that if the poor devil washed and kept himself clean he would be reported and severely punished for having dirty tinware.
A prisoner is not permitted to receive anything from his friends or communicate with them in any way, save only once in three months he is permitted to write and receive a letter, provided he is a good character and has not been reported for any infraction of the rules for three months; for if reported for any cause, however trifling, the privilege of writing is postponed for three months, and, as a matter of fact, more than half of the men never get a chance to write during their imprisonment.
A visit of half an hour once in three months is permitted, but this is a favor that is only granted upon the same condition as the privilege of letter writing.
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Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison 39
