§ 8 Prison Inscriptions
Whenever the average human being is secluded for any considerable length of time from his fellows, he experiences the need of embodying some literary or artistic expression of himself. This instinct seems to be deeper and more wide-spread than that which induces some people to leave their names or other sign manual—the frothiest efflorescence of vain moments—on the places they visit. There is no vanity here, and it is an instinct from which no individual, whatever his degree of culture, is exempt; it is indeed scarcely distinguishable from the instinct which leads to the production of heroic works of art. The expression must vary with the individual. I knew a room, the residence of a long succession of medical students during certain weeks of seclusion involved by hospital duty, of which the walls were covered by inscriptions, humorous or broadly witty, cleverly artistic sketches, happy lines from the classics. Each person’s inscription is after his kind: Mgr. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, writes in the form of a cross, “O crux, mentis robur, ave;” Bill Sykes at Clerkenwell writes, “Lads, your only friend here is your brown lofe and pint of thick.”
In general, it seems, the lower the order of culture the more complete and trustworthy is the inscription as an expression of individual peculiarities. “The child loves to speak to himself,” as Dr. Corre remarks; “the negro, and especially the negress, think aloud; and if from restraint or distrust the criminal keeps silent his most intimate thoughts, he feels himself compelled to fix them wherever he may find himself, on the walls of his prison, or on the books that are lent to him. It is for himself, for himself alone, that he writes what he cannot or dare not say, and these revelations are very curious for the psychologist.” His desires and lusts, his aspirations, his coarse satires and imprecations, his bitter reflections, his judgments of life, are all recorded in these prison inscriptions on whitewashed walls, cell doors, margins of books, tin knives, and the bottoms of skilly cans and dinner tins. In Italy they have been studied in reference to their psychological significance with characteristic thoroughness by Lombroso; and in England Mr. Horsley and Mr. Davitt have recorded a considerable number.71 The Italian inscriptions, on the whole, are marked by a greater preponderance of the sentimental, reflective, and imprecatory elements; the English are generally very practical and material, dealing with food questions, or giving a concise statement of the event which led to the individual’s incarceration, with occasional tendency to moral aspiration and didactic exhortation. Mr. Horsley notes that comparatively few inscriptions are found on the women’s side, but that these are obscene much more frequently than on the men’s side. I conclude from Lombroso’s very comprehensive collection that this remark also holds good of the Italian inscriptions. It should be added that every inscription is an infringement of prison regulations; it is “a vulgar question of bread and water to the hungry author,” and the impulse which produces it must therefore be of considerable strength.
Here are a few terse English examples of exploits, probably the work of old hands, and recorded by Mr. Davitt and Mr. Horsley:—
“A burst in the City. Copped while boning the swag. 7 stretch, 1869. Roll on 1876. Cheer up, pals.”
“Little Dicky from the New Cut. 10 and a ticket. Put away by a Moll” (i.e., sold by a prostitute).
“Fullied for a clock and slang” (i.e., committed for trial for stealing watch and chain).
“Poor old Jim, the lob crawler, fell from Racker, and got pinched” (i.e., James and Racker having gone out to commit till robberies, the former was apprehended, and the latter escaped).
“For seven long years have I served them,
And seven long years I have to stay,
For meeting a bloke in our Alley,
And taking his ticker away.”
“The judge he seven years gave me,
Transported to Van Diemen’s Land,
Far away from my friends and relations,
And the girl with the dark velvet band.”
The last writer was at Dartmoor, and introduced Van Diemen’s Land because of the exigencies of rhyme.
The delights of food inspire much verse, and dissatisfaction with its quality or quantity a large number of remarks:—
“I had for my dinner, ochone! ochone!
One ounce of mutton and three ounce of bone!”
“Here’s luck to the pint of skilly!”
“Lord save me from starvashun!”
“One more month then out we go,
Then for feed of hot Coco;
Fried Bread and steak, Plenty of Beer,
Better luck than we get here.”
“Cheer up, boys, down with sorrow,
Beef to-day, Soup to-morrow.”
“O for a pot of beer!”
“Love is a great thing,” writes an Italian philosopher, “but hunger surpasses everything.”
“O who can tell the panes I feel,
A poor and harmless sailor,
I miss my grog and every meal;
Here comes the blooming jailer.”
A poet, Crutchy Quinn by name, known to Mr. Davitt, and who was himself acquainted with seven of the prisons he characterises, wrote as follows with a nail on the bottom of a dinner can:—
“Millbank for thick shins and graft at the pump;
Broadmoor for all laggs as go off their chump;
Brixton for good toke and cocoa with fat;
Dartmoor for bad grub but plenty of chat;
Portsmouth, a blooming bad place for hard work;
Chatham on Sunday gives four ounce of pork;
Portland is worst of the lot for to joke in—
For fetching a lagging there’s no place like Woking.”
Quinn, in spite of his name, was not an Irishman, but two-thirds of the prison-poets, Mr. Davitt found, are Irish.
From the more miscellaneous group of sentimental, religious, moral, didactic, and reflective sayings may be quoted the following:—
“The heart may breake, yet may brokenly live on.”
Mr. Davitt found a book at Newgate with “Good-bye, Lucy dear,” written throughout it, and at the end—
“Good-bye, Lucy dear,
I’m parted from you for seven long year.
Alf. Jones.”
A poet of a more caustic school had added beneath this—
“If Lucy dear is like most gals,
She’ll give few sighs or moans,
But soon will find among your pals
Another Alfred Jones.”
Remarks against women are by no means rare, as the following given by Lombroso—
“La donna è un essere inutile; io la stima soltanto quando la ch...
Napoleone I. empereur.”
And another Italian writes—
“He is a poor deluded fool who believes in the love and honour of women.”
But the women reciprocate this sentiment, and in an Italian illustrated magazine a woman writes—
“In this stormy sea which is called the world I have only found fleeting pleasures and cruel disillusions. And if I felt any happiness I had to pay for it with bitter tears. Never believe in the love of men: for them love is a pastime. When you have sacrificed for them honour, family, religion, interest, youth, they will turn their shoulders to you with contempt, in search of other loves. That is the kind of thing that man is.”
But the same woman writes passionately to her accomplice in murder, robbery, and adultery—
“Questo foglio dal cuor ti mando,
L’ho scritto ieri sera lacrimando,
L’ho scritto avante cena,
Senza inchiostro e senza penna.
La punta del mio cuore era la penna,
Il sangue delle mia vene era l’ inchiostro,
Se penna e calamaio poco ti costa,
Se merito pietà ti prego d’ una riposta.
Addio, Addio,
Addio, mio bene,
Addio, mio amore,
Tu sei il mio cuore,
Per ti morirò.
1886.”
Another woman’s inscription is a pathetic recollection of an old ballad—
“I wish to God my baby was born,
And smiling on its father’s knee,
And I, poor girl, lay in my grave,
The green grass growing over me.”
Beneath a design of a funeral monument a thief wrote this inscription (translated from Lombroso)—
“Here lies the body of poor Tulac Who, tired of stealing in this world, Goes to steal in another. His happy relatives have erected this memorial.”
Very significant of mental vacuity in solitude are some inscriptions given by Mr. Horsley:—
“21,000 times have I walked round this cell in a week.”
“3330 bricks in this cell.”
“131 black tiles, 150 red tiles in this cell.”
Good resolutions and moral exhortations are not uncommon:—
“It’s no good crying, you have got to do it, then after you have done it don’t do it any more; I wont.”
“Cheer up, girls; it’s no use to fret.”
“Brethren in adversity, turn your heart to God and be happy.”
“Good-bye all. Give up drink.”
“½ pint whisky brought me here—took the pledge for 2 years—renewable for ever.”
“The Lord saith, It is good to be here.”
“The Almighty for master, the devil for servant. Amen.”
“Fear God and scorn the Devil, then you will not be here again.”
The Italian inscriptions supply a more dubious exhortation:—
“O thieves! our profession is ruined by those rascally judges. But courage! Forward!”
This brief account would not be complete if I neglected to give some specimens of the imprecations, crude erotic aspirations, and perverse instincts which occupy some considerable space in Lombroso’s collection. I will leave them untranslated:—
“Abbasso il direttore delle carcere e il capo-guardia, che sono due avanzi di galera. A morte le gafe [warders] e tutti le spie, a morte il capo-guardiano delle carcere, a morte l’Arca che sono la rovina di tanti giovani.”
“Mia adorata stella, quando potrô ch...?”
“Pensare che in questo stesso luogo vi sono tante bighe [women] che hanno volontà di farsi infilzare e non possono e tanti p... che infilzerebbero un cane altro che una f... e non possono farlo.”
“Pare impossible. Che si possa stare tanto tempo senza piantare il membro in una f... od in un culo. Eppure sono già 22 mesi che me lo meno due volte ogni quattro giorno e non sono ancora tisico.”
The last I will give was written by a woman in a religious book, and is translated by Lombroso from the Piedmontese dialect—
“La Marietta del taglio salute le sue amiche che fanno la porca come lei, e saluta tutti i giovanotti che l’hanno ch... Menatevi una volta l’uccello al mio gusto, che io me la meno al vostro, e quando sarô libera venite a trovarmi che ce l’ho sempra calda e stretta tanto che volete. Allegri!”