Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1895 — PENTONVILLE PRISON. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PENTONVILLE PRISON.

Where Oscar Wilde la Confined—Service and Punishment of Convicts. The most famous English prison, from the fact that It has sheltered more than L the dtdaT niffhbef'of famous crooks within its walls, Is PentonTille prison, or, as It Is better known, the ’‘Model” prison of all England. Within It Is now confined Oscar Wilde, poet, playwright and felon, and it Is now, for that reason sloop, a curlosjfrjn the criminal world. In the prison there are four stages of services. In the first-class the prisoner has to perform first-class hard labor for a certain number of hours In each day. That means he has to work In the treadmill or upon what is known as the “cranks.’’ The treadmill, or treadwheel, Is not a particularly useful maThe prisoners call service upon U “treading the wind,” and that is about what it is, for it seems to serve no useful purpose, except to keep prisoners employed when there isn’t anything else for them to do. The mtll is connected with a fan, which Is so arranged ns to give enough resistance to the mill to mnke the words ‘hard lamenu what they say. The prisoner ascends something like 7,200 feet, or 2,400 yards, for a day’s labor. Crank labor consists of making 10,000 revolutions of a crauk. A dial plate registers the number of revolutions made. A convict at ordinary rate of speed makes 1,200 revolutions of the crank an hour, so to turn 10,000 of them means about eight hours and twenty minutes' labor. Punishments In Pentonvllle prison have been made Into five classes. Tlien comes tlio transfer from tlie highest to the lowest class of servitude. Next comes fasting and a bread and water diet, and the next stage Is confinement In a cell of correction. Lastly Is ranked bodily chastisement, but this Is lim-

ited to eighteen lushes to prisoners under 18 years' of age and thirty-six lashes to older men. The most salutary form of punlslinjcnt Is In the docking of rations. A prisoner will give In quicker when placed on a starvation diet than for any other cause.

TREADMILL AT PENTONVILLE. Convicts In Stalls Are Picking Oakum.