The Scandal of Parkhurst Jail
SIR.-Such hissing and shrieking from Mr Wheatley and others! Apart from Miss Lahr, whose imprison- ment was apparently .brief, nobody seems to have actually been in jail.
I have spent. a year in the sole company of 'the pariahs of society' and found them to be men like any others, no better and no worse. I am, to quote somebody-was it Wilde?-appalled not by the crime but by society's vengeance.
The main point of my letter, which it seems nobody read carefully, was that all the reforms of the Prison Department are the Girl Guides non- senses I attacked. Once a man has lost his liberty, his most precious possession, conditions are of small importance. You could lock a man in the Ritz and if he was forbidden for years to stroll in Green Park and pat dogs and watch children play, he would still be miserable. This is a basic fact which Mr Wheatley and his kind ignore. Meanwhile. the Prison Department plants gardens- and ptovides pingpong and television, leaving men's spirits to rot. This is not the sort of reform that is necessary. FELON (Name and address supplied) HM Prison
[This correspondence is now closed.-Editor, SPECTATOR.]
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