Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/216

178

from exposing the horrors of the last ten years. The prison regulations say that the authorities are to instill into the minds of convicts "sound moral and religious principles "—very nice to read, but if the authorities have neither moral nor religious principles themselves, how then? In June or July, 1868, Chambers received "no grounds" as an answer to a petition that he had sent to the Secretary of State, begging to be allowed to attend to his religious obligations, a privilege of which he was deprived by a "moral and religious" director for six months. At present he is daily driven in and out of chapel by officers brandishing bludgeons, and shouting like cattle-drovers; even in chapel he is not quite free from their rudeness. Dozens of times those officers have stripped him naked in presence of thieves, and subjected him to insults too disgusting to describe. He is made to open his clothes five times a day while an officer feels over his body. He has been several times separated from other political prisoners—although our being together was within the rules—and forced to associate with picked ruffians. He has been for six months in constant contact with lunatics. He has been forced to mop out filthy dens of dirt with a small piece of a rag, to carry a portable water-closet on the public road and across the fields for the use of common malefactors. He has often been sick, but, except on a few occasions, was not taken to hospital. On one occasion he was sent to the dungeons for applying for relief after he had met with a severe hurt by falling from the gangway of a building. Last year, while laid up with rheumatism, they kept him sixteen days on ten ounces of food daily, two months on half diet, and then put him out of hospital far worse than when he was taken in. He is weekly forced to act as charwoman to a lot of very dirty creatures. He has had punishment diet (sixteen ounces of bread and water), penal class diet, and dungeons—dark, cold, wet, and dirty— in abundance. A smile, a movement of the lips—aye, even a glance of the eye— is often condemned as a crime in Dartmoor. We have been frequently insulted by thieves and even struck by them. Chambers has been held by a jailer while another jailer was ill-using him. Worthy sons of worthy sires, who shot down the poor prisoners of war here! Their scattered bones were collected lately, and "'Tis good to die for one's country" written over them. When Chambers's sentence of imprisonment for the term of his natural life is brought to a close by unnatural means, the jailers will write "No. 36, Felon Chambers," over him. No fine epitaph shall mark his murdered bones. Nevertheless, the only difference between the French and American prisoners and him is that while they were shot down, he will be slowly tortured to death.

In December of this year O'Reilly received a "letter" from Chambers, i.e., a printed document in which the