This is a piece from over a hundred years ago when the death penalty was still in use – please note that some of the attitudes and language used were considered acceptable at the time.
A Prison Chaplain’s Notes:
Spiritual Work and Visitation amongst the Lowest Class of Criminals
We may be tempted sometimes to imagine that there is no good to be discerned among our fellow-creatures; but constant intercourse with even those who are branded by society as infamous, and who are suffering the penalty due to their wrong-doing, frequently causes surprise that so many good traits of character appear.
It is a wonder that prisoners are not more criminal than they are. What can be expected when their surroundings are so deplorably bad, when the name of God is seldom used in prayer, and is only heard when issuing from the lips of the blasphemer? Is it not to be expected that the inmates of the drunkard's home will be vitiated by the immorality of which they are daily witnesses? In spite of their depravity, they claim our pity and intercession. The writer has been chaplain in the prison service for nearly a quarter of a century, and therefore must not be accused of egotism if this expression of a few thoughts upon prison work and personal experience compel him to write about himself.
A chaplain who wishes to do his duty faithfully must devote much time to the anxious but pleasant work of visiting prisoners in their cells, and encouraging them to prepare for a better world. For the greater part of my prison-life I have been connected with a gaol which had an unenviable notoriety as being, of all the gaols in the United Kingdom, the one where the greatest number of executions has taken place. Yet I can truthfully state that some of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in the condemned cell.
It has been my duty to prepare many convicts for this terrible ordeal. Of these some were respited, but, with regard to the rest, I have accompanied twelve men to the scaffold.
I feel compelled to say that I detest the sentimental morbid effusions which those under sentence of death express in letters to their friends. These communications create ridicule on the part of the sensible reading public. Such letters, in my humble opinion, ought not to be given up for publication by the friends of the unhappy prisoners, for they are private communications. I would not deny repentance to the worst of criminals; but as it is very ‘bad form’ to publish private domestic affairs, so it is bad taste to publish the letters of those under sentence of death, for the ridicule of some, and for the encouragement of the vicious, who may thus be induced to suppose that repentance in a dying hour is an easy gift to obtain.
In all prison ministrations and visitations a conscientious chaplain will strive to be attached to those committed to his spiritual care; otherwise his work degenerates into mere officialism, and his influence upon the prisoners will be almost nil.
I deprecate the use of the Burial Service at executions; a ‘litany for the dying’ is the form of prayer which I always use, not only at the time of execution, but also during the period of preparation for this terrible death: for it is good that the condemned should be used to this beautiful form of supplication. We do not want in our prisons great orators as chaplains. We need men who can preach from the heart, and speak in private to prisoners with sincerity and warmth of feeling, without scolding, and without official pomposity. The most encouraging sentence from Holy Writ with regard to interviews with prisoners is the prophetical word of our King and future Judge, “I was in prison, and ye came unto Me”; and His terrible warning to us prison chaplains against proud exclusiveness is this. “I was sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not”. During all my years of prison experience instances of incivility on the part of prisoners have been very rare, because when a minister shows that he feels for them, and sympathises with them in the trouble which they have brought upon themselves, they will welcome him at all times. Prisoners are very quick to discover an artificial manner, and also to appreciate plain common sense.
I believe two great factors work the misery and downfall of men, and conduct them into an involuntary seclusion from the outside world. One is drunkenness, and the other is neglect of the worship of Almighty God in public and in private. With regard to drunkenness – I have given the pledge of total abstinence to hundreds of prisoners who have signed without the slightest compulsion, and I have received from time to time satisfactory accounts of the continued fortitude of some of them.
With regard to the neglect of public and private worship, I have endeavoured to impress upon their minds that the Lord’s people go to the Lord’s House by way of preparation for death, paradise, and heaven; and as to private devotions, I have taught that prayer is the atmosphere of heaven, and that stated times for prayer are indicated not only by the example of Daniel, who ‘kneeled upon his knees three times a day,’ but also by the passage from the holy psalm, which declares, “In the evening, and morning, and at noon-day will I pray, and that is instantly: and He shall hear my voice.” (Ps.1v17 – Prayer Book version)
- These notes, by a chaplain in England, are slightly shortened. One might have liked to hear more of preparation for a better life in this world: but the author’s experience has been special, among those condemned to die. – Editor (in 1893)
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