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A CHRONICLE OF JAILS
A CHRONICLE OF JAILS
DARRELL FIGGIS “Jail Journals are always a fascinating study. The self-recorded thoughts and impressions of man forcibly isolated from his fellows in the solitude of the jail have a certain interest which is hard to explain. This is the case even when the recorder is a criminal. But when, as in the present instance, the individual is a highly cultured ‘political felon’ making his first acquaintance with the means and methods which twentieth century civilisation has provided for the reformation o
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PREFATORY NOTE
PREFATORY NOTE
The following pages were written mainly as a record for myself of days in which one’s private interest crossed a wider national interest, and which therefore seemed worthy of being set down with some care and faithfulness. In passing them for publication now it is necessary for me to apologise for their incompleteness in certain particulars. That incompleteness is due to no fault of mine. It has been arranged to rectify this by an edition at a subsequent date, when the contrast of edition with e
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A CHRONICLE OF JAILS
A CHRONICLE OF JAILS
By Darrell Figgis...
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I.
I.
Tuesday, April 25th, 1916, was filled with sunshine, in token of the summer that was on the way, while a keen wind from the north came in reminder of the winter that was passing. The winter had been bad, and the spring but poor, so that work on the land was delayed, and there had been no fishing for the year. Yet these things had not served me ill, for I had been tied all hours with a book overdue with the publisher. For some months I had been struggling with Calendars of State Papers, in which
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II.
II.
Such were the days of an anxious week. None knew what to believe, what to trust, or what to distrust. Work was impossible. Sleep even was almost impossible. We could but drift about and wait, when to do so seemed almost like a tragic cowardice. What proved finally to be well-grounded of the rumours that flew were disbelieved. What proved to be false were the only matters in which any reliance was placed. None doubted, for instance, that Cork and Limerick were “up,” or that Wexford County was in
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III.
III.
Two hours later I was wakened by the heavy tread of many feet down the road. A large number of men were passing round the house. We leapt out of bed, and, peering through the windows, could see two peelers at each window, with rifles at the “ready.” A man who was down on the foreshore, with my house between him and the village, afterwards described the scene. The whole force of eighteen peelers, three sergeants, and a district inspector, had charged down my boithrin at the double—charged down on
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IV.
IV.
Castlebar was my first jail. I was more fortunate than many who were swept-up during those days. I was at least accorded a prison-cell. Compared with these things, which I learned afterwards, my condition was kingly. I was treated as an ordinary criminal. The events of the day had presumably come with too great a shock to make much effect, for I was all the time strangely unperturbed and calm. It was only when all my things had been taken from me and I was placed in a reception-cell that the rea
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V.
V.
Later in the morning I heard the jingle of the warder’s keys, the grating of locks, and the tramp of feet down the wooden passage outside. Presently it came to my turn, and my door was flung open. When I made no move, my warder appeared in the doorway with angry countenance to ask me what I was doing. “Am I wanted?” I asked. “You’re to come out to exercise, and look sharp. If you’ve a coat there, bring it with you, it’s raining.” Through the small high window, ribbed with heavy bars and paned wi
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VI.
VI.
The next morning I asked the Chief Warder if he had any labour gang at which I could be employed, for I dreaded a continuance of the thoughts that had been with me through the night. “I can put you moulding my potatoes,” he said, with the air of a man who spoke of something so ridiculous that it disposed of itself. “Very well,” I said. “Can you mould potatoes?” he said. He seemed to be diffident now when his humour took actual shape. “I can try,” I said. “I was eight hours setting them the day b
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VII.
VII.
When I was wakened the following morning I was informed that I had to be ready for removal in an hour’s time. The Chief Warder did not know where I was to go, only that at six a guard of soldiers would come for me. It was his opinion that I was to be taken for the courtsmartial in Dublin. That meant anything; it meant, to be more precise, whatever the police desired or intended, for the reign of terror was abroad in the land, and every man’s fate was decreed by whatever the police had decided wo
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VIII.
VIII.
At Castlebar rigorous care was taken that P. J. D. and I should not speak with one another. Care had been taken that we should exercise apart, and only by the accident of the shortage of staff on the Sunday had either of us been able to do more than guess at the other’s presence. At Richmond Barracks we were thrown together perforce, and were condemned to sleep under the one slender blanket. In the room to which we were consigned there were already twenty-five others. The officers who took us up
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IX.
IX.
Richmond Barracks was for the military the clearing house for rebels; for the police it was their last chance of a stroke. Marching tunes are in military orders, and the men in khaki perceived no difference between one tune and another; but the little groups in dark green became twice as sullen, and twice as anxious to lay their victims by the heels, one way or another. Without a doubt Richmond Barracks was of great value from the dramatic point of view. We were housed in the second and third st
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X.
X.
Men so selected went off to a criminal’s fate. Yet the authorities in effect recognised that the selection turned on a hazard by treating us all as criminals. Forms were delivered on some men with charges that astonished none so much as the recipients; and as there was no evidence other than police reports offered in support of such allegations, the only thing in doubt was the length of the sentence. On the other hand, men were passed over who were not less astonished at the passing. But all our
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XI.
XI.
The day on which deportations were due was always tense and strained throughout. We were generally warned a day or so in advance by the soldiers, and sometimes had some of the names conveyed to us of those who were destined to go. However they obtained this information, it was always correct. This meant that from the time we awoke we were all restless. About two o’clock an officer would enter and read a list of names. Each of those so summoned would be given a knapsack, and informed that he was
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XII.
XII.
Stafford Jail covers a large space of ground surrounded by high brick walls, and contains three prisons, with the usual outhouses, such as the Governor’s office, the reception-cells, the cookhouse, laundry, hospital, workshops, and chapels. In the centre stands the original prison, known as the Old Prison, a building of an old type of architecture, with high gabled roof and large windows. A path ran beside it, between it and the Governor’s office, and this path led at each end to the two newer b
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XIII.
XIII.
All that I had feared in Castlebar now returned upon me; yet, curiously, not so keenly, not so sharply. Already there had been a dulling of consciousness, a blunting of the susceptibilities. During the early morning we were examined medically and then bathed in antiseptic. We needed it; herded on the dusty floors of Richmond Barracks we had collected what was to be collected, and had, as a Tyrone lad put it, “grazed our cattle through-other”; and the doctor nodded gravely over his inspection, li
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XIV.
XIV.
Sunday brought relief. That day there was no exercise; but when we were aroused we all went to Mass. The Protestant Chapel was used, for there was no room elsewhere for both prisons-full. Everybody went, whatever our creed, both for the comfort of one another, and for the joint comfort of worship. There I saw for the first time the Dublin men from the Crescent, many of them known to me, many of them wearing the uniform of the Republican Army, in some cases scarred by battle. It was a large conco
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XV.
XV.
Deadened and inert though the barbarity of solitary confinement caused one to become (and even as solitary confinement ours was particularly severe and therefore particularly barbarous) there were times when the whole being rose in revolt. Anything would have been preferable to it. On one such occasion I demanded to see the Commandant of the jail. When he came, I requested to know exactly why I was being punished, and for what offence. I told him that I wished to have his answer in writing and t
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XVI.
XVI.
These more fortunate times soon came to an end—for me at least. So long as they lasted they were not intolerable; and the various funds in aid of prisoners, and the companies of our fellow-countrymen and women (chiefly women!) who came to visit us, made captivity as amenable as it could be made. But one morning I was summoned to the Commandant’s office, and informed that I and some fifty others were to be sent that day to an internment camp at Frongoch in Wales. We were to be the first to arrive
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XVIII.
XVIII.
Reading Jail that day was a mustering of the clans. All the isolation men from the various prisons, Wakefield, Knutsford, and Wandsworth, including many who had been to Frongoch, were gathered together at Reading. It was meant as an elect company; but it was not at all as elect as the selectors imagined. We ourselves entertained no delusions on that head. One of the most distinguished of our company had been wildly hailed on his arrival months before at Wandsworth, as the man who “’ad been a-hin
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XVIII.
XVIII.
Reading, being set deep in a valley at the confluence of two rivers, is an unhealthy town, close and sultry by summer, and damp and misty by winter. The gaol is a handsome building, erected in red brick after the manner of an old castle, with battlements and towers. One almost expected a portcullis to be lowered at the great gate; and when we were within the double gates we certainly felt as though a portcullis had been drawn after us. We stood in a small cobbled yard. Behind us was the broad wa
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XIX.
XIX.
We had all come with experience of prison life, and were not easily perturbed. We had become accustomed to taking things as we found them, and making them the basis of improvement, not in the mood of those who sought privileges, but as those who demanded rights. Our first act was to elect a Ceann-Phort, through whom to formulate our demands, and by whom to lay out the lines of our life together. Our next act was to put together the tables that stood in the passage in order that we might have our
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XXI.
XXI.
The week after our excursion to Wormwood Scrubbs, seven men were sent down to us from Frongoch, where trouble had already begun. There were no cells to hold them in our prison, and so they were lodged in the reception-cells under the offices, where neither light nor air was bold enough to venture. They were brought over to us for breakfast, and lived during the day with us until they were taken back to bed. Shortly afterwards five of our number were summoned to the Governor’s office, and returne
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XXII.
XXII.
So the winter days passed. The prison was wrapt continually in an unpleasant amalgam of winter fog and Huntley & Palmer’s smoke. We never saw the sun, though occasionally, when the fog cleared, we could make a guess at it where it strode the sky. Little wonder if we occasionally got upon one another’s nerves. None of our nerves were of the best, and we all felt the deathly system of prison life like an oppression on us, blotting out all intellectual life and making a blank of mind and so
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