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258 AN IRISH NEWGATE " IN THE FIELDS."
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
O I Had Lieard A Great Deal Of An Irish....
keep I stood ing watching the ploug _tlie hsh receding are deep fi in gure the of earth the ' man , while , as Ms the shoulders horses—quiet bent ,
, sturdy , strong beasts—patiently dragged on with that proud , slow movement with which heavy horses do £ heir work .
" Now , what crime did that rnan commit ? " "He was convicted of burglary—a second conviction . He had
heeii well known to the police . " I thought of the former scenes of that man ' s life ; the burglar ' s
weapons , the bludgeon and the centre bit , the crape mask , the blackened face , all so contrasting with the instruments which he now
handled so well . How different his life then and now ! Then the day passed in " fixing " some crime ; the night in prowling about , or
snatching sleep in some den far from the police . Now " Each Each evening morning sees sees its some close task . " begun ;
Here , in the open country , he lives in a healthy house in immediate contact with nature—the smell of the fresh earth to inspirit
himturning up a daisy as often as Burns himself . I did not speak to the prison _jDloughman . I do not like to see
such men made shows of—trotted out for the edification of visitors , expected to give " good" answersand to be patterns of propriety ,
, Besides , what the man was actually doing , and had done , was the best thing we could see . We walked up to the huts , and I saw in a
plain , simple uniform the two warders , the only guards of fifty-four men , sleeping each night in the two huts . We visited a little
pigstye , and the steward answered some ordinary question about the time of the coming Baconian process , as applied to pigs .
. "The pigs , of course , belong to the convict farm ? " I asked . " Yes . "
" Ah ! that ' s curious ; these men , lately thieves and burglars , now by honest industry grow their own bread and breed up their own
bacon . What a pleasure it must be to them to sit down to their table and see their own farm-produce smoking on the board ! "
My companion laughed . "No , " he said ; " you go a little too fast ; the convicts never taste this bacon—it is too good for them . "
" Too good for them ! " I exclaimed . " Yes , they are fed on contract meat , which costs less than this
bacon . We sell these pigs at a good price , and apply the profits to carry out the expenses of the establishment . For Lusk , you must
know , is a very peculiar Government prison—it is self-supporting ; the convicts are a self-subsisting colony . "
" But it seems very hard not to give them their own bacon . " My companion paused , and said , " It may seem hard , but if we
gave them the bacon they would be better fed than the majority of the farm-laborers around . That would have a bad moral effect on
the community . In England , some of the opponents of the Irish system talk of it as over-indulgent ; in fact , it is the most rigid and
severe prison system in the world . We never relax our rules ; no
258 An Irish Newgate " In The Fields."
258 AN IRISH _NEWGATE " IN THE FIELDS . "
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1862, page 258, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061862/page/42/
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