The Barlinnie Story by Robert Jeffrey

Author:Robert Jeffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845023737
Publisher: Black & White Publishing Ltd.
Published: 2011-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

9

TROUBLE IN THE CELLS, TROUBLE IN WESTMINSTER

Back in the 1880s the satirical magazine Private Eye was around a hundred years away from the attention of the reading public. Indeed had the scurrilous fruit of Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard’s contempt for politicians and the pompous been around then it would no doubt have been sued, and pursued by those of a censorious instinct, even more than it was in the latter part of the twentieth century. Its editors and writers, London orientated, would not have been sent down to Barlinnie. But as sure as satire is satire they would have ended up in Newgate. There is another certainty – if Glasgow Victorian author James Nicol had been around now he would have starred in one of Private Eye’s most popular features. He would have been James Nicol OBN. The Order of the Brown Nose is not awarded lightly, but James Nicol would have been a shoe-in for this honour.

In the early days of Barlinnie, Nicol had been ‘by order of the town council’ commissioned to produce a book, Vital, Social and Economic Statistics of the City of Glasgow 1886–1891. This he did with some serious and meticulously detailed application and produced a volume that was at the time an accurate picture of the city. Reprinted a few years ago by the Grimsay Press it contains some fascinating statistics on the city in general, including a look at the newly built Barlinnie. It points out that the cost of keeping each prisoner was twenty-one pounds eight shillings and eightpence. You couldn’t provide much methadone for that! But the Victorian work ethic came into play with the calculation that the profit on work done by the prisoners in a year was one hundred and forty–eight pounds one shilling and ninepence.

Of the prison itself, Nicol wrote, ‘It was considered that they [the cell blocks] would suffice for the male criminal population “thirled” to Barlinnie for many years, but already they have been found inadequate, and to ease the pressure, transfers have been made to the general prison at Perth.’ That old Barlinnie bugbear again: the doors hardly open and over-crowding is an issue.

This fact was followed by a sentence or two of brown-nosing to the Lord Provost Sir John Muir and his success in a war against crime. Nicol wrote: ‘Happily the general record of crime, especially of serious crime, diminishes with the spread of education and the great voluntary labours of our philanthropists amongst the young. Glasgow per se is improving every year.’

Nicol would have ensured his OBN with an introduction to his book, addressed to Sir John Muir and the councillors. It pointed out that his book contained ‘statistical facts illustrative of the progress of the city, under various aspects, in the last six years, and particularly the results of some of the important work carried out by you.’

It is easy to have some harmless fun with what might be seen as the false optimism, and pomposity, of the Victorians, but

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.