The Scandal of Parkhurst Jail
SIR,—It made me as wrathful to read George Wheat- ley's nasty and cheap letter as. in the opinion of Blake. it made Heaven to see a bird caged. We must on no account, Mr. Wheatley says, 'make it a better world for criminals.' Isn't even the meanest criminal qua human being entitled to decent sanita- tion? I have seen WCs in the cells of French and other foreign jails on film and it has always been utterly beyond my comprehension how the average well-meaning British 'progressive' can put so much passion into propaganda for prolonging the lives of convicted murderers while accepting, with com- plete equanimity the fact that so many of his fellow human beings are in the mid-twentieth century con- fined for greater or less offences in conditions of mediaeval stench. I happen to be in favour of severer sentences, and even the return of the death penalty, for some offences today, but how over- whelmingly right you were to print the prisoner's letter! Surely it is more important to throw light on what the insides of our prisons are actually like than, by means of The War Game, to promulgate far and wide the after-effects of nuclear warfare.
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