WIRELESS FOR PRISONS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—HONV nice to have wireless sets added to the libraries, charabancs excursions and other amusements provided for
our gaolbirds ! • I only hope that their victims, who have been sloshed over
the head, robbed or ravished will think it is nice, too. It is, of course, a la mode for the aggressor—be it nation or indi-
vidual—to get away with it.
In the Protectorate in which I served for some twenty-five years, just the same loving care and attention was lavished upon the criminal classes. To see the Senior Sanitary Officer fondling our champion burglar as if he were an exhibit at a Baby Show, or a prize chrysanthemum, and enquiring as to the quantity of vitamin, protein and all that, which he absorbed daily into his great criminal carcass, made one feel like taking a bit of the tax-money oneself.
I was a white man trying to sustain myself in one of the world's worst climates on the world's worst food. I was, so far, unconvicted, and incidentally a comparatively important
person. Yet nobody interested himself in my diet ; and, if I
had died, the cold, brief, death certificate of the medical officer would have completely satisfied thb .Authorities, whereas, if death should have claimed Imorti; Who was serving a sentence of ten years for setting fire to his mother, a special report would have been called for, and the face of Officialdom have assumed frightful solemnity.
It is a sign of the times that the " steady stream of subscrip- tions " should be flowing in the direction not of the widows (for example) who have been swindled out of their life-savings, but to provide jazz for the gentlemen who have despoiled Carlton Club, Pall Mall.
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