Second opinion
KNOWLEDGE is better than ignorance, though, oddly enough, the dissemination of information about contraception has not resulted in a decline in the number of unwanted children or of babies born to very young mothers, but rather in an increase. Thus knowledge, it seems, is not always reflected in practice. On the contrary, mere knowledge is but a weak determinant of human conduct.
Nevertheless, knowledge is sometimes not only useful but actually put to use. Last week in the prison, for example, I was called to see a man who had been, as we in the penal system say, slashed up. It happened in the exercise yard and at first the prisoner felt nothing, until another prisoner pointed out to him that he had a bleeding gash on the side of his neck.
It was what they call a tramline job: two blades from disposable razors melted in parallel into the handle of a prison- issue toothbrush. The purpose of this arrangement is to ensure that the cut inflicted is not reparable by sutures, but leaves ragged skin and flesh that must heal on its own, resulting in as marked a scar as possible.
It is interesting to speculate on who might have first hit upon this device, and after what process of invention: an imprisoned nurse, perhaps? And how had knowledge of it diffused through the
prison system (an interesting question for cultural anthropologists)? Anyway, it was a type of injury familiar to all the staff, who knew at once what a tramline job was.
The prisoner thus attacked seemed an inoffensive sort whose crime was minor, as crimes go. I asked him why he had incurred the wrath of his fellows, and his answer does credit to the innate sense of justice of the British people.
His cellmate (or padmate, in prison parlance) had just been released from the prison on appeal, and had left owing the drug barons some money. On the evening before the attack on the inoffen- sive prisoner, emissaries of the barons had turned up at his cell and demanded his watch, in payment for his padmate's debts for which they now held him responsible, for he had, after all, passive- ly smoked some of his padmate's cannabis. But he refused to part with his watch and the next day was tramlined by way of punishment, He was shaking when I saw him, not with the pain but with apprehension. The
long arm of the prisoners' law would be able to reach him wherever he was in the prison.
Life outside prison isn't much differ- ent, however. The underclass way of life is a prison without walls. A young man recently told me that he couldn't live with his girlfriend and mother of his children because he was working and she was collecting social security as a single mother. If he went to live with her, he said, 'the neighbours'd grass us up to the Social'.
`Why would they do that?' I asked. `Because the Social'd give them 50 quid.'
Enough, in fact, to buy one Nike train- ing shoe that status symbol of the slums. The contemplation of this debased world is enough, as one of my patients put it, to make you disgrumpled. Indeed, it is so horrible that, to quote him once more, I sometimes get antidepressed.
Theodore Dalrymple
Mass Listeria by Theodore Dalrymple can be ordered for £8.99 post-free in the UK (call for overseas rates) from The Spectator Bookshop, 24 Seward Street, London EC1V 3GB. Or ring 0541 557288, fru 0541 557225. Please quote ref SP020 when ordering.
Previous page
