Britain's Most Notorious Prisoners

by Stephen Wade

  She reflected that her ‘safety’ was in ‘compressing her thoughts to the smallest compass of mental existence’. Florence is accurate and powerful in her account of the visiting time – something that is as stressful today as ever it was. Her mother used to travel from France to see her, and the conditions they had at ‘visits’ are described in Florence’s book: ‘Whenever my mother’s visit was announced, accompanied by a matron I passed into a small oblong room. There a grilled screen confronted me; a yard or two beyond was a second barrier … and behind it I could see my mother …’

  She was the victim of something inherent in the prison system too – duped by another prisoner, using her for selfish means. The other prisoner gave her some fine wool for her stocking, after spilling hot water on her foot, and later there was a cell search (a ‘spin’) and the wool was found in her cell. She suffered greatly after that, as she wrote: ‘I was degraded for a month to a lower stage, with a loss of twenty-six marks, and had six days added to my original sentence.’

  But in January 1904 she was released. Florence had always said that she bought the arsenic for use on flypapers, ultimately to be used as a beauty treatment. After her death among her few possessions found was a piece of paper on which was written the method of adapting fly papers to cosmetic uses.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Ballad of Oscar Wilde

  Oscar Wilde is arguably the most notorious literary prisoner in English literature, closely followed by John Bunyan. In his writing he had a lot to say about the prison regime in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, and in his Ballad of Reading Gaol, he produced a classic of prison poetry.

  In his essay, De Profundis, he wrote: ‘While I was in Wandsworth prison I longed to die. It was my one desire. When after two months in the infirmary I was transferred here [to Reading] and found myself growing gradually better in physical health, I was filled with rage. I determined to commit suicide on the very day on which I left prison. After a time that evil mood passed away …’ We know now, thanks to the researches of Anthony Stokes, who is a senior prison officer at HMP Reading today, why conditions improved for Wilde in Reading. But he had had a terrible time.

  Wilde’s fall and disgrace are well known. His homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, the son of the Marquis of Queensberry, led to a bitter confrontation with the Marquis, and eventually Wilde was in court, first after he took out proceedings against the Marquis for criminal libel (libel today) and then, after losing that action, he himself was charged with sodomy. He was found guilty and was sentenced to two years in prison; that was on 25 May 1895. First, he spent the weekend in Newgate, and was then taken by cab to Pentonville. So began his degradation. By the time he was moved to Reading gaol, he had experienced the worst of the prison system as it was at that time. Entry meant a strip search, followed by a medical examination and a bath; then he would have put on the prison clothes, with the black arrows, signifying that he was now no more than a chattel belonging to Her Majesty’s government.

  From the beginning, Wilde had problems with the food, and he was ill, suffering from diarrhoea. He could never really sleep properly; he was a large man and the bed was no more than a board, with one blanket. It was difficult to be warm at any time. But he was, in some sense, a celebrity prisoner and he had friends who had power: one such was no less than RB Haldane, who was a Prison Commissioner. Haldane took an interest in Wilde’s case from the start. In June 1895, he visited Wilde and promised that he should have books, pen and ink. Such a thing was forbidden, but as events were to prove, there were many aspects of Wilde’s prison life that involved breaking the rules.

  There was a furore on the part of the Governor, but as is still the case today, there are exceptional circumstances in prison, and matters vary according to who the person is and what his condition may be. In Wilde’s case, part of the reason for him having special treatment was that he was seriously ill. Deaths in prison are always embarrassing for the staff as well as for the prison service and the Home Secretary. With Haldane’s help, Wilde read his books – fifteen altogether. Later he was to work in the prison library, and that was one of the most humane moves made on the part of the authorities.

  Wilde was moved to Wandsworth in August 1895, and there his condition deteriorated even more: as already noted, there he wanted to die. Concern was expressed for his mental health, and a doctor was sent to look at him, along with some specialists from Broadmoor. It was decided that he was not mentally ill, but the Wandsworth period did nothing but harm to the public image of the man whose plays had once entertained the glitterati of London. A chaplain wrote to the newspapers to report on the fact that, while having an interview with Wilde, he had smelled semen. In the late 1890s, the time when the intellectuals were full of talk about the ‘degeneration’ of the human race, it was one of the worst things to happen to the man who was already, in the public opinion, the epitome of everything that was repulsive to the heterosexual, empire-building commuter class, with its mediocre and philistinistic views on high art as well as on moral stricture.

  But Wilde was soon transferred to Reading, and there, as Anthony Stokes has discovered in his book, Pit of Shame, Wilde had friends who made his time inside much easier. But in Reading there was an execution during Wilde’s time there: a soldier called Wooldridge, of the Royal Horse Guards, had murdered his wife. Wilde’s experience of seeing the man, and in fact, of even seeing the burial after the hanging, within the prison grounds, gave us the classic poem, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, in which we have the lines:

  I walked with other souls in pain,

  Within another ring,

  And was wondering if the man had done

  A great or little thing,

  When a voice behind me whispered low,

  ‘That fellow’s got to swing.’

  This reminds us that the spell in Reading was far from being paradise, but what he did have was a man on the panel of prison visitors who was instrumental in alleviating some of the pain of prison life for the great writer. We now know from Stokes’ research that George W Palmer, of Huntley and Palmer, the biscuit manufacturer, was one of the prison visitors. At that time they were known as the Board of Visitors, whereas today they are the Independent Monitoring Board, and their role is to tour their allotted prison and enquire on conditions by speaking to prisoners in the daily routine. The Palmers’ biscuit factory was next door to Reading gaol, and so Haldane’s aim of looking after Oscar Wilde took another course, as well as being a source of books and paper.

  There was another link between the Palmers and Wilde: just a few years before the trial, Wilde had been a visitor at the home of Palmer’s younger brother, Walter, whose wife was a lady who liked to run a literary salon of a kind: Wilde had been to the biscuit factory in 1892, and signed the visitors’ book. But there was also another measure taken to make Wilde’s time at Reading more palatable; the first Governor had been a strict disciplinarian, and had no time for rules being bent or broken, so he was promoted to another prison, and the new Governor, Major Nelson, was far more sympathetic to Wilde’s condition. That move was followed by the appointment of a warder called Martin, and he would become something of a special friend – again, something that would not normally be tolerated in a prison establishment.

  Yet, life was tough in Reading, of course. One of the saddest events there was when Wilde had lost the custody of his children and his wife, Constance, came to the prison. She saw him there for the very last time, as she died just a short time later. One biographer described the situation: ‘Mrs Wilde cast one long lingering glance inside and saw the convict-poet, who in deep mental distress … witnessed his degradation.’

  Thomas Martin, in Stokes’ view a ‘plant’ put there by Haldane to give Wilde special treatment, was indeed guilty of breaking all the rules concerning prison officers and prisoners. He took Wilde drinks and biscuits every day – something that is technically a criminal offence called trafficking. On the exterior of every p
rison wall in Britain, next to the front gate, is a notice defining trafficking and giving the public dire warning of the consequences of giving prisoners anything without clearance. Martin later wrote an account of his life with Wilde in Reading. Wilde’s fall from grace and respect is nowhere better illustrated than in Martin’s memory of him having to turn away with all the other criminals when a ‘star class’ prisoner passed. That is, in modern terms, a first offender. Martin wrote: I have seen the poet having to stand with his face to the wall whilst a villainous looking ruffian passed by.’ Martin was a quiet hero, in effect; on one occasion when Wilde was very ill, he went to fetch some beef tea for him, and he had to hide it, so the bottle of liquid was put under his coat. On the staircase on the way back, he was stopped and told to answer some questions by the chief warder. The hot beef tea spilled against his chest, burning him severely, yet he did not give in and admit what he was doing. He later recalled that ‘The hot bottle burned against my breast like molten lead.’

  Martin was later sacked for giving a biscuit to a child who had been imprisoned with the adults – normal practice at the time. Anthony Stokes is convinced that Martin was placed at Reading by Haldane, specifically to care for Oscar Wilde.

  Wilde, as a sensitive and cultured man, was of course, living every day with the roughest elements in the criminal class. They suffered the usual prison regime of punishment and deprivation if they erred. Flogging was still used, and at one time Wilde heard a flogging in progress on a wing landing. He was so moved and appalled by this that he wrote to the papers. The Daily Chronicle printed his letter. Flogging was not abolished in England until 1939, and in Wilde’s day the common criticism of such a tough punishment was perhaps best expressed by Mr Justice Keating in 1874, who replied to a questionnaire on the subject, saying:

  Does it deter others? I think not: a private flogging in a prison can scarcely have that effect; to be logical, the flogging should be as formerly, at the cart’s tail: yet no one can doubt that the effect of such an exhibition would be to brutalise the masses … During more than 40 years of experience of criminal courts, I have observed crimes diminish under a steady and comparatively lenient administration of the law …

  Wilde’s protests had no effect. But his time in gaol was soon over after that; he was released from Reading on 18 May 1897. His last allowance of special privilege was that he could wear his own clothes as he walked out, and that he was not in handcuffs. He then went to France, and lived at Berneval-sur-Mer until his death in 1900. The Times carried a brief obituary, and this summed up his tragic life as well as his rare genius: ‘When he had served his sentence of two years’ imprisonment, he was broken in health as well as bankrupt in fame and fortune. Death has soon ended what must have been a life of wretchedness and unavailing regret.’ But they added the words that he was ‘a brilliant man of letters’.

  It is thanks to the fact that Wilde had such notoriety that we know so much about prison life in the 1890s, from an authentic source of a man in a cell. The other spin-off benefits for literature and history have been that Wilde was arguably one of the most talented and gifted of all Victorian writers, and that talent was forced to express the deepest and most soul searching words in his eventful life. In De Profundis we have a classic of prison literature and a work of rare spiritual exploration, all in the one slim volume. He may have been a ‘special prisoner’ but that rare case gave us insider knowledge of prison life at its worst.

  Oscar Wilde’s reputation since these awful events has, of course, massively expanded and today he is still more influential than he was in his life; and in cultural areas even more than in drama, in some ways. He was, without doubt, one of the most troublesome and worrying prison inmates our prison system has ever had to cope with, but that sad episode in his short life added yet another dimension to the still resonant charisma and intellect of a unique artist and writer.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sir Roger Casement: Hanged by a Comma

  After the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, the British government were savage in their reprisals. The war with Germany was of course demanding their full attention, and paradoxically, thousands of Irish men had signed up and were fighting in the trenches for Britain and her Empire, when their countrymen took up arms in order to create a free Republican Ireland. After some hard fighting on the streets of Dublin, thousands were imprisoned, and in May the executions began. On 3 May, Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke were shot in the yard at Kilmainham jail, Dublin. Other perceived leaders were shot in the next few days and then, on 6 May, no other executions were announced. Eighteen men who were scheduled to die found that their sentences were commuted, two of these being for life.

  There was pressure from America. England needed her American allies to help fight the war in Europe, and Irish America did not at all like the executions. But the shootings did go on, the most disgusting being the death of James Connolly, brought out from his sick bed into the Kilmainham yard to be shot; he had been driven across the city in an ambulance, then sat on a chair in the yard, shot even though he was unable to stand. Courts-martial and death sentences continued. But a level of leniency came in, and even Eamon de Valera was saved; he had been a primary leader in the Rising, in command at Boland’s Mill.

  In total there had been more than 3,000 arrests in 1916, then many were released, and over 1,500 were interned in England. But one person stood out as an extraordinary case: Sir Roger Casement. He had been engaging in liaison with Germany, and the Rising had, as part of its statements of identity and aspirations, made Germany appear like their ally. Casement was arrested for high treason and his trial took place on 29 June, the prosecution being led by FE Smith (later Lord Birkenhead). Casement’s situation was bizarre and contradictory: he had taken a knighthood from King George V but insisted that his only country, his own real allegiance, was Ireland.

  He had enjoyed an unbelievably interesting and adventurous life previous to his involvement with the 1916 Rising; in 1914 he had tried to create a Liberal party in Ulster, as well as his adventures far afield. But in his trial he claimed that his highest aim was to serve Ireland. He had tried to recruit an Irish Brigade in Germany, and he failed in that. In visiting the POW camps in Germany, he had been unwelcome, and as was noted at the time, he had to have a guard with him on those visits in his attempts to divert them from their duty.

  Casement had gone to Germany, his movements monitored by British spies, and when he returned to Ireland it had been in a U-boat, landing off the coast of Kerry, where he had soon been arrested. His earlier life and career had been extraordinary; he had made the world aware of atrocities in the Congo and in South America, and he was something of a hero, particularly in America. He had made friends and contacts in high places. It seemed outrageous and incredible that such a man should be a traitor.

  The basis of his indictment was the Treason Act of 1351 which states that the offence is defined by ‘Compassing or imagining the King’s death’ and ‘levying war against the King in the realm’ but also, and this was the crucially important clause for Casement, ‘adhering to the King’s enemies in his realm, giving them aid and comfort, here and elsewhere’. That comma and what followed, was his death sentence. ‘Elsewhere’ was easily defined in a way that included activities at sea, in Germany and in fact in Ireland, so loose was the definition of the word.

  His trial has been the subject of a vast literature, including an account by FE Smith himself, published soon after the events, along with other famous trials in history. Smith recalled the issue of whether or not Casement had actually committed treason, and he expressed the situation in this way: ‘… when I closed the case for the prosecution, the legal argument began. It was necessarily long, technical and intricate. It involved the true leaning of the Treason Act, which was originally drawn up in Norman French. It necessitated a minute examination of a number of musty statutes, long since repealed … It was essential to grasp the details of an antiquated procedure …
’

  Eventually, agreement was reached; the dates of earlier precedents in treason trials had to be noted and finally the wording which was used against Casement was ‘adhering to the King’s enemies’. When the sentence finally came, it was done after much deliberation, as Smith wrote: ‘… after Counsel’s speeches and a judicial summing up by Lord Reading in terms most scrupulously fair and impartial, the jury convicted and Casement was sentenced to death’.

  Casement went to Pentonville. An appeal was launched, presided over by the famous Lord Darling. The question was still there: had Casement’s actions been an infringement of the law? He had been known to the public as a ‘servant of the Crown’ as Dudley Barker wrote. But the fact was that on 20 April 1916, near Tralee Bay, a labourer looking out to sea had seen a flashing light, and a farmer walking home later saw a boat a few yards from the shore. He beached the boat and there he found three Mauser pistols, maps of Ireland, a flash lamp and a flag. There was a jacket and in a pocket there was a railway ticket from Berlin to Wilhelmshaven. At a time of spy mania on the Home Front of the Great War, that story was enough to condemn Casement, as the owner of those materials, and as the person who had landed. He tried to claim, when the police cornered him, that he was a writer, on holiday, from his home in Buckinghamshire.

  It had all been a daring and bold adventure, but now he was in court, fighting for his life. Darling soon dismissed the arguments of the appeal lawyers for Casement; he said, ‘I am unaware of anything in the history of the German nation during this war which would lead me to accept with enthusiasm the suggestion that they would be prepared to offer unlimited hospitality to a number of Irish soldiers in order that when the war was over they would be able to write a new page in the purely domestic history of their country.’