sentenced by the court to receive twenty, thirty, forty, or even fifty lashes, one half to be administered at the beginning, the other half at the end of the sentence. When it is resorted to as a means of discipline it is only after the case has been laid before the prison directors and carefully investigated. Prisoners in England have the right to make complaints to the governor of the prison, which are entered, together with the governor's action thereon, in a large book kept for that purpose, and open to inspection by the prison directors and commissioners, who may, in some cases, revise the action of the governor. The cells in English prisons are con structed on quite different principles from ours. They are much larger, are roofed with a brick arch, and are well lighted and ventilated. The light comes from a window about seven or eight feet from the floor, which is some three feet wide by eighteen inches high. The doors, unlike most of those in America, are solid and are about two inches thick instead of being grated like ours; so that one who walks along the corridor outside of the cells can only view the interior by moving a slide and looking through a small peephole about an inch in diameter. If a prisoner wants to communi cate with a warder — some of whom are always on watch in the corridor — he can press a knob in the cell that rings a bell and throws out a signal which can easily be seen, like a bedroom annunciator in a hotel. All the cells are neatly whitewashed, and the ventilation is good, especially in Wormwood Scrubs, where the warm air is forced into the top of a cell upon a novel plan that is said to work very successfully. The prisoner sleeps upon a mattress, with blankets, placed on two planks fastened to gether. Every morning he has to roll up his bedding and strap it, and turn up the plank bed against the wall. This enlarges the area for exercise in the cell. On the outside of each cell is a placard giving the name, number, and a distinguishing letter or mark
of the prisoner (if he has served previous sentences), and also a report on which are credited his marks. These marks are based upon his conduct and industry. If he gets eight marks a day for a month of twentyeight days, or two hundred and twenty-four marks a month for two years after he is committed, he is placed in the third grade; and if he continues as well for the third and fourth years, he is advanced at the end of each year to the second and first grade, re spectively. For good conduct, as with us, he is entitled to a commutation of the term of his sentence, and is released upon the "ticket of leave," or, as they call it in Eng land, the " license " plan, the obligation of his parole continuing until the full term of his sentence has expired. If his record in prison has been perfect, the prisoner during the last year of his confinement prior to his release on license, becomes a " special class" man and wears a blue suit, instead of the white, or nearly white, suit of the ordinary convict. A " special class " man has certain rights, such as less hours of work and the privilege (for so it is regarded) of carrying messages from one officer to another; and the mere possession of these distinctions makes the " special class " man an object of envy, if not admiration, in the eyes of his less fortunate companions. We have no such system in most of our convict prisons. I wish we had. I have been frequently asked, " How does the English prison system compare with the American?" It is difficult to make a fair comparison, because in the first place there is no American system. Each State has a system of its own, or pretends to have. Then, again, as I have said, the English sys tem has undergone great changes within a recent period. The government of their prisons is now centred in the Home Office in London, at a saving of expense, and a reduction in the number of local prisons, in 1887, from sixty-one to fifty-five, and the convict prisons from thirteen to ten. Instead of having the country prisons governed by
