EARLY PRISONS AND PRISONERS

The prisons in Spain have been generally divided into three categories: First, the depositos correcionales, the cÁrceles or common gaols, one in the capital of each province, to which were sent accused persons and all sentenced to two years or less; second, the presidios of the Peninsula for convicts between two years and eight years; and third, the African penal settlements for terms beyond eight years. The character and condition of the bulk of these places of durance long continued most unsatisfactory. In 1888 in an official report, the Minister of Grace and Justice said, "The present state of the Spanish prisons is not enchanting. They are neither safe nor wholesome, nor adapted to the ends in view." This criticism was fully borne out by the result of a general inquiry instituted. It was found that of a total of four hundred and fifty-six of the correctional prisons only one hundred and sixty-six were really fit for the purpose intended and the remainder were installed in any buildings available. Some were very ancient, dating back to the 16th century; and had once been palaces, religious houses, castles or fortresses.

Many of these buildings were ancient monuments which suffered much injury from the ignoble rÔle to which they were put. A protest was published by a learned society of Madrid against the misuse of the superb ex-convents of San Gregorio in Valladolid and San Isidro del Campo near Seville, and the mutilation by its convict lodgers of the very beautiful gateway of the Templo de la Piedad in Guadalajara. The installation of the prison at Palma de Mallorca all but hopelessly impaired the magnificent cloisters of the convent of San Francisco, a thirteenth century architectural masterpiece, and a perfect specimen of the ogival form, like nothing else in Spain. Within a short period of ten years several of these interesting old buildings were ruined. The entire convent prison at CoruÑa sank, causing many casualties, loss of life and serious wounds.

Sometimes the authorities hired private dwellings to serve as prisons, or laid hands on whatever they could find. At Granada a slice of the Court House was used, a dark triangle to which air came only from the interior yard. The prison of Allariz at Orense was on the ground floor of a house in the street, having two windows looking directly on to it, guarded by a grating with bars so far apart that a reasonably thin man could slip through. One of the worst features of many of these ancient prisons was their location in the very heart of the towns with communication to the street. Friends gathered at the rejas outside, and the well known picture of flirtation at the prison window was drawn from life. A common sight also was the outstretched hand of the starving prisoner imploring alms from the charitable, for there was no regular or sufficient supply of provisions within. Free access was also possible when the domestic needs of the interior took the prisoners to the public well in the street.

The Carmona gaol in Seville was for years half in ruins; no sunlight reached any part of it with the exception of two of the yards; the dungeons had no ventilation except by a hole in their doors; an open sewer ran through the gaol, the floors were always wet, fleas abounded, as also rats, beetles and cockroaches; cooking was done in one corner of the exercising yard and clothes were washed in the other. The removal of the gaol was ordered and plans for a new building prepared in 1864, but they were pigeon-holed until 1883, then sent back to be revised, and the project is still delayed. The Colmenar prison of Malaga was always under water in heavy rain, and although simple repairs would have rectified this, nothing was done. The prison of Leon was condemned in 1878 as unfit for human habitation, and its alcalde (governor) stated that it had been reported for a century or more that it wanted light, air and sanitary arrangements; typhoid was endemic and three alcaldes had died of zymotic disease in a few years. It was generally denounced as "a poisonous pesthouse, a judicial burial ground." The Totana prison of Murcia was not properly a prison, but only a range of warehouses and shops fit for the storage of grain and herbs, but wholly unsuitable to lodge human beings. The district governor speaking of the Infiesto prison at Oviedo in 1853 wrote: "Humanity shudders at the horrible aspect of this detestable place."

At Cartagena the common gaol was on the ground floor of the presidio or convict prison. Here the innocent, still untried prisoners occupied a dark, damp den, enduring torments of discomfort, speedily losing health and strength, and exposed by its ruinous condition to the extremes of heat and cold in the varying seasons. Females were lodged on a lower floor, darker and closer and even exposed to the worst temptations. The convicts of the presidio had free access to their prison and immorality could not be prevented; no amount of supervision (and there was really none) could have checked the moral contamination more easily conveyed than the physical. These painful facts may be read in an official report dated October, 1877, and are practically the same as those detailed in the famous indictment of John Howard just a century earlier.[9]

Many of the makeshift prisons mentioned above were located in the very heart of towns and were without boundary walls or means of separation from the public, and two hundred and sixty-four had windows giving upon the streets. It was impossible to ensure safe custody so limited was the supervision, so insecure and ruinous the state of these imperfect prisons. Escapes had been of very frequent occurrence, but the total number could not be stated owing to the absence of accurate records from year to year. One authority gave the annual average of escapes as thirty-four, ranging over five successive years. They were greatly facilitated by the slack, slipshod system of discipline and the careless guard kept at the gates through which crowds constantly passed in and out. Friends admitted wholesale to visit prisoners brought in disguises and easily helped them to evade the vigilance of warders and keepers. Escapes were most numerous in the small gaols,—about three to one when compared to those from the presidios,—and were often effected on the way to gaol through the neglect or connivance of the escort, especially when the journey was made on foot and officers in charge willingly consented to linger on the road in order to enjoy themselves in the taverns and drinking shops. They even allowed their prisoners to pay lengthened visits to their own homes if situated anywhere near.

A famous escape took place, en masse, in one of the prisons on the occasion of a theatrical performance given by the prisoners in honour of the governor's birthday. Permission had been duly accorded and the function was organised on an imposing scale. The stage was erected in an open space, scenery provided and a fine curtain or act drop behind which the usual preparations were made. These had not gone beyond rehearsal, however. All was ready to "ring up," the prison audience all seated, enduring with increased impatience and dissatisfaction the long wait which seemed and was actually endless. At last the authorities interposed and the governor sent a messenger behind the curtain with a peremptory order to begin. There was no company. Every single soul, manager and actors had disappeared under cover of the curtain. A great hole or gap had been made in the outer wall, through which all of the performers had passed out to freedom.

Numerous as are the escapes, recaptures are also frequent. That fine corps, the guardias civiles, which constitutes the rural police of Spain, always so active in the prevention and suppression of crime, has been highly successful in the pursuit of fugitives, few of whom remain at large for any length of time. Travellers in Spain, especially in the country districts, must have been struck with the fine appearance of these stalwart champions of the law. They are all old soldiers, well trained and disciplined, ever on the side of order, never mixing in politics, and conspicuous for their loyalty to the existing rÉgime.

The most disgraceful of the old prisons were in Madrid. The Saladero which survived until very recently had been once an abattoir and salting place of pigs. But it replaced one more ancient and even worse in every aspect. The earlier construction is described by a Spanish writer, Don Francisco Lastres, as the most meagre, the darkest, dirtiest place imaginable. It had yet a deeper depth, an underground dungeon, commonly called "el Infierno," hell itself, in which light was so scarce that when new comers arrived, the old occupants could only make out their faces by striking matches, manufactured from scraps of linen steeped in grease saved from their soup or salad oil. When the gaol was emptied it was so encrusted with abominable filth that to clean it was out of the question and the whole place was swept bodily out of existence.

This must have been the prison in which George Borrow was confined when that enterprising Englishman was arrested for endeavouring to circulate the Bible in Spain, as the agent and representative of the British Bible Society in 1835 and the following years. His experiences as told by himself constitute one of the most thrilling books of adventure in the English language, and his strangely interesting personality will long be remembered and admired. He had led a very varied life, had wandered the world over as the friend and associate of those curious people, the gipsies, whose "crabbed" language he spoke with fluency and to whose ways and customs he readily conformed. Readers whom his "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye" have delighted will bear witness to the daring and intrepid character which carried him safely through many difficult and dangerous situations. He was a man of great stature, well trained in the art of self defence, as he proved by his successful contest with the "Flaming Tinker" described in "Lavengro." The bigoted Spanish authorities caught a Tartar in Borrow. It was easy to arrest him as he was nothing loth to go to gaol; he had long been thinking, as he tells us, "of paying a visit to the prison, partly in the hope of being able to say a few words of Christian instruction to the criminals and partly with a view to making certain investigations in the robber language of Spain." But, once in, he refused to come out. He took high ground; his arrest had been unlawful; he had never been tried or condemned and nothing would satisfy him but a full and complete apology from the Spanish government. He was strongly backed up by the British Ambassador and he was gratified in the end by the almost abject surrender of the authorities. But he spent three weeks within the walls and we have to thank his indomitable spirit for a glimpse into the gloomy recesses of the Carcel de la Corte, the chief prison, at that time, of the capital of Spain.

The arrest was made openly in one of the principal streets of Madrid by a couple of alguazils who carried their prisoner to the office of the corregidor, or chief magistrate, where he was abruptly informed that he was to be forthwith committed to gaol. He was led across the Plaza Mayor, the great square so often the scene in times past of the autos da fÉ. Borrow, as he went, cast his eyes at the balcony of the city hall where, on one occasion, "the last of the Austrian line in Spain (Philip II) sat, and, after some thirty heretics of both sexes had been burnt by fours and fives, wiped his face perspiring with heat and black with smoke and calmly inquired, 'No hay mas?'" (No more to come?) for which exemplary proof of patience he was much applauded by his priests and confessors, who subsequently poisoned him.

"We arrived at the prison," Borrow goes on, "which stands in a narrow street not far from the great square. We entered a dusty passage at the end of which was a wicket. There was an exchange of words and in a few moments I found myself within the prison of Madrid, in a kind of corridor which overlooked at a considerable altitude what appeared to be a court from which arose a hubbub of voices and occasional wild shouts and cries...." Several people sat here, one of whom received the warrant of committal, perused it with attention and, rising, advanced towards Borrow.

"What a figure! He was about forty years of age and ... in height might have been some six feet two inches had his body not been curved much after the fashion of the letter S. No weasel ever appeared lanker; his face might have been called handsome, had it not been for his extraordinary and portentous meagreness; his nose was like an eagle's bill, his teeth white as ivory, his eyes black (oh, how black!) and fraught with a strange expression; his skin was dark and the hair of his head like the plumage of a raven. A deep quiet smile dwelt continually on his features, but with all the quiet it was a cruel smile, such a one as would have graced the countenance of a Nero.

"'Caballero,' he said, 'allow me to introduce myself as the alcaide of this prison.... I am to have the honour of your company for a time, a short time doubtless, beneath this roof; I hope you will banish every apprehension from your mind. I am charged to treat you with all respect, a needless charge and Caballero, you will rather consider yourself here as a guest than as a prisoner. Pray issue whatever commands you may think fit to the turnkeys and officials as if they were your own servants. I will now conduct you to your apartment. We invariably reserve it for cavaliers of distinction. No charge will be made for it although the daily hire is not unfrequently an ounce of gold.'

"This speech was delivered in pure sonorous Castilian with calmness, gravity and almost dignity and would have done honour to a gentleman of high birth. Now, who in the name of wonder, was this alcaide? One of the greatest rascals in all Spain. A fellow who more than once by his grasping cupidity and his curtailment of the miserable rations of the prisoners caused an insurrection in the court below only to be repressed by bloodshed and the summoning of military aid; a fellow of low birth who five years previously had been a drummer to a band of Royalist volunteers."

The room allotted to Borrow was large and lofty, but totally destitute of any kind of furniture except a huge wooden pitcher containing the day's allowance of water. But no objection was made to Borrow's providing for himself and a messenger was forthwith despatched to his lodgings to fetch bed and bedding and all necessaries, with which came a supply of food, and the new prisoner soon made himself fairly comfortable. He ate heartily, slept soundly and rejoiced next day to hear that this illegal arrest and confinement of a British subject was already causing the high-handed minister who had ordered it, much uneasiness and embarrassment. Borrow steadfastly refused to go free without full and ample reparation for the violence and injustice done to him. "Take notice," he declared, "that I will not quit this prison till I have received full satisfaction for having been sent hither uncondemned. You may expel me if you please, but any attempt to do so shall be resisted with all the bodily strength of which I am possessed." In the end the amende was made in an official document admitting that he had been imprisoned on insufficient grounds, and Borrow went out after three weeks' incarceration, during which he learned much concerning the prison and the people it contained.

He refrains from a particular description of the place. "It would be impossible," he says, "to describe so irregular and rambling an edifice. Its principal features consisted of two courts, the one behind the other, in which the great body of the prisoners took air and recreation. Three large vaulted dungeons or calabozos occupied the three sides of the (first) court ... roomy enough to contain respectively from one hundred to one hundred and fifty prisoners who were at night secured with lock and bar, but during the day were permitted to roam about the courts as they thought fit. The second court was considerably larger than the first, though it contained but two dungeons, horribly filthy and disgusting, used for the reception of the lower grades of thieves. Of the two dungeons one was if possible yet more horrible than the other. It was called the gallinerÍa or 'chicken coop' because within it every night were pent up the young fry of the prison, wretched boys from seven to fifteen years of age, the greater part almost in a state of nudity. The common bed of all the inmates of these dungeons was the ground, between which and their bodies nothing intervened save occasionally a manta or horse cloth or perhaps a small mattress; this latter luxury was however of exceedingly rare occurrence.

"Besides the calabozos connected with the courts were other dungeons in various parts of the prison, some of them quite dark, intended for the reception of those whom it might be deemed expedient to treat with peculiar severity. There was likewise a ward set apart for females. Connected with the principal corridor were many small apartments where resided prisoners confined for debt or for political offences, and, lastly, there was a small capilla or chapel in which prisoners cast for death passed the last three days of their existence in the company of their ghostly advisers.

"I shall not forget my first Sunday in prison. Sunday is the gala day ... and whatever robber finery is to be found in it is sure to be exhibited on that day of holiness. There is not a set of people in the world more vain than robbers in general, more fond of cutting a figure whenever they have an opportunity. The famous Jack Sheppard delighted in sporting a suit of Genoese velvet and when he appeared in public generally wore a silver hilted sword by his side.... Many of the Italian bandits go splendidly decorated, the cap alone of the Haram Pacha, the head of the cannibal gipsy band which infested Hungary at the conclusion of the 18th century, was adorned with gold and jewels to the value of several thousand guilders.... The Spanish robbers are as fond of display as their brethren of other lands, and whether in prison or out are never so happy as when decked out in a profusion of white linen in which they can loll in the sun or walk jauntily up and down."

To this day, snow-white linen is an especial mark of foppery in the Spanish peasant. To put on a clean shirt is considered a sufficient and satisfactory substitute for a bath and in the humblest house a white table cloth is provided for meals and clean sheets for the beds. Borrow gives a graphic picture of the "tip-top thieves" he came across. "Neither coat nor jacket was worn over the shirt, the sleeves of which were wide and flowing, only a waistcoat of green or blue silk with an abundance of silver buttons which are intended more for show than use, as the waistcoat is seldom buttoned. Then there are wide trousers something after the Turkish fashion; around the waist is a crimson faja or girdle and about the head is tied a gaudily coloured handkerchief from the loom of Barcelona. Light pumps and silk stockings complete the robber's array.

"Amongst those who particularly attracted my attention were a father and son; the former a tall athletic figure, of about thirty, by profession a housebreaker and celebrated through Madrid for the peculiar dexterity he exhibited in his calling. He was in prison for an atrocious murder committed in the dead of night in a house in Carabanchel (a suburb of Madrid), in which his only accomplice was his son, a child under seven years of age. The imp was in every respect the counterpart of his father though in miniature. He too wore the robber shirt sleeves, the robber waistcoat with the silver buttons, the robber kerchief round his brow and, ridiculously enough, a long Manchegan knife in the crimson faja. He was evidently the pride of the ruffian father who took all imaginable care of him, would dandle him on his knee, and would occasionally take the cigar from his own mustachioed lips and insert it in the urchin's mouth. The boy was the pet of the court, for the father was one of the 'bullies' of the prison and those who feared his prowess and wished to pay their court to him were always fondling the child."

Borrow when in the "Carcel de la Corte" renewed his acquaintance with one, Balseiro, whom he had met in a low tavern frequented by thieves and bull fighters on a previous visit to Madrid. One of these, Sevilla by name, professed deep admiration for the Englishman and backed him to know more than most people of the "crabbed" Gitano language. A match was made with this Balseiro who claimed to have been in prison half his life and to be on most intimate terms with the gipsies. When Borrow came across him for the second time he was confined in an upper story of the prison in a strong room with other malefactors. There was no mistaking this champion criminal with his small, slight, active figure and his handsome features, "but they were those of a demon." He had recently been found guilty of aiding and abetting a celebrated thief, Pepe Candelas, in a desperate robbery perpetrated in open daylight on no less a person than the Queen's milliner, a Frenchwoman, whom they bound in her own shop, from which they took goods to the amount of five or six thousand dollars. Candelas had already suffered for his crime, but Balseiro, whose reputation was the worse of the two, had saved his life by the plentiful use of money, and the capital sentence had in his case been commuted to twenty years' hard labour in the presidio of Malaga.

When Borrow condoled with him, Balseiro laughed it off, saying that within a few weeks he would be transferred and could at any time escape by bribing his guards. But he was not content to wait and joined with several fellow convicts who succeeded in breaking through the roof of the prison and getting away. He returned forthwith to his evil courses and soon committed a number of fresh and very daring robberies in and around Madrid. At length dissatisfied with the meagre results and the smallness of the plunder he secured, Balseiro planned a great stroke to provide himself with sufficient funds to leave the country and live elsewhere in luxurious idleness.

A Basque named Gabira, a man of great wealth, held the post of comptroller of the Queen's household. He had two sons, handsome boys of twelve and fourteen years of age respectively, who were being educated at a school in Madrid. Balseiro, well aware of the father's strong affection for his children, resolved to make it subservient to his rapacity. He planned to carry off the boys and hold them for ransom at an enormous price. Two of his confederates, well-dressed and of respectable appearance, drove up to the school and presenting a forged letter, purporting to be written by the father, persuaded the schoolmaster to let them go out for a jaunt in the country. They were carried off to a hiding place of Balseiro's in a cave some five miles from Madrid in a wild unfrequented spot between the Escorial and the village of Torre Lodones. Here the two children were sequestered in the safekeeping of their captors, while Balseiro remained in Madrid to conduct negotiations with the bereaved father. But Gabira was a man of great energy and determination and altogether declined to agree to the terms proposed. He invoked the power of the authorities instead, and, at his request, parties of horse and foot soldiers were sent to scour the country and the cave was soon discovered, with the children, who had been deserted by their guards in terror at the news of the rigorous search instituted. Further search secured the capture of the accomplices and they were identified by their young victims. Balseiro, when his part in the plot became known, fled from the capital but was speedily caught, tried, and with his associates suffered death on the scaffold. Gabira with his two children was present at the execution.

A brief description of the old Saladero, which has at last disappeared off the face of the earth, may be of interest. It stood at the top of the Santa Barbara hill on the left hand side, in external aspect a half-ruined edifice tottering to its fall, propped and buttressed, at one corner quite past mending, at another showing rotten cement and plaster with its aged weather-worn walls stained with great black patches of moisture and decay. A poor and wretched place outside with no architectural pretensions, its interior was infinitely worse. It was entered by a wide entrance not unlike that of an ancient country inn or hostelry with a broken-down wooden staircase, leading to a battered doorway of rotten timbers. The portals passed, the prison itself was reached, a series of underground cellars with vaulted roofs purposely constructed, as it seemed, to exclude light and prevent ventilation, permeated constantly with fetid odours and abominable foul exhalations from the perpetual want of change of atmosphere or circulation of fresh air. Yet human beings were left to rot in these nauseous and pestiferous holes for two or three years continuously. At times the detention lasted five years on account of the disgracefully slow procedure in the law courts and this although trials often ended in acquittal or a verdict of non-responsibility for the criminal act charged. Many of the unfortunate wretches subjected to these interminable delays and waiting judgment, therefore still innocent in the eyes of the law, were yet herded with those already convicted of the most heinous offences.

This neglect of the rules, generally accepted as binding upon civilised governments in the treatment of those whom the law lays by the heels, produced deplorable results. The gaol fever, that ancient scourge which once ravaged ill-kept prisons and swept away thousands, but long ago eliminated from proper places of durance, survived in the Saladero of Madrid until quite a recent date. Forty cases occurred as late as 1876 and zymotic disease was endemic in the prison. It was also a hotbed of vice, where indiscriminate association of all categories, good, bad and indifferent—the worst always in the ascendent, fostered and developed criminal instincts and multiplied criminals of the most daring and accomplished kind. When, with a storm of indignant eloquence, an eminent Spanish deputy, Don Manuel Silvela, denounced the Saladero in the Cortes and took the lead in insisting upon its demolition, he pointed out its many shortcomings. It was in the last degree unhealthy; it was nearly useless as a place of detention, for the bold or ingenious prisoner laughed at its restraints and escapes took place daily to the number of fourteen and sixteen at a time. If, however, with increased precautions it was possible to keep prisoners secure within the walls, nothing could save them from one another. Contamination was widespread and unceasing in a mass of men left entirely to themselves without regular occupation, without industrial labour or improving education and with no outlet for their energies but demoralising talk and vicious practices. Not strangely the Saladero became a great criminal centre, a workshop and manufactory of false money, where strange frauds were devised, such as the entierro[10] or suggested revelation of hidden treasure, the well known Spanish swindle which has had ramifications almost all over the world.

An independent witness, nevertheless, speaking from experience, the same George Borrow already quoted, has a good word to say for the inmates of Spanish gaols. He was greatly surprised at their orderly conduct and quiet demeanour. "They had their occasional bursts of wild gaiety; their occasional quarrels which they were in the habit of settling in a corner of the interior court with their long knives, the result not infrequently being death or a dreadful gash in the face or abdomen; but upon the whole their conduct was infinitely superior to what might have been expected from the inmates of such a place. Yet this was not the result of coercion or any particular care which was exercised over them; for perhaps in no part of the world are prisoners so left to themselves and so utterly neglected as in Spain, the authorities having no further anxiety about them than to prevent their escape, not the slightest attention being paid to their moral conduct,—not a thought bestowed on their health, comfort or mental improvement whilst within the walls. Yet in this prison of Madrid, and I may say in Spanish prisons in general (for I have been an inmate of more than one), the ears of the visitor are never shocked with horrid blasphemy and obscenity as in those of some other countries and more particularly in civilised France, nor are his eyes outraged or himself insulted as he would assuredly be were he to look down upon the courts from the galleries of the BicÊtre (in Paris)." And yet in this prison of Madrid were some of the most desperate characters in Spain; ruffians who had committed acts of cruelty and atrocity sufficient to make one shudder with horror. Gravity and sedateness are the leading characteristics of the Spaniards, and the worst robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his occupation, (and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless and wolfishly eager for booty), is a being who can be courteous and affable and who takes pleasure in conducting himself with sobriety and decorum. Borrow thought so well of these fellow-prisoners that he was willing to entertain them at dinner in his own private apartment in the gaol, and the governor made no objection to knocking off their irons temporarily so that they might enjoy the meal in comfort and convenience.

A more intimate acquaintance with the inner life of the Spanish gaols has been accorded by a modern writer, Don Rafael Salillas. He summarises all its evils in the single word "money." All disorders and shortcomings, the corruption, the absence of discipline, the cruelties perpetrated, the prevailing license, the shameful immorality constantly winked at or openly permitted, have had one and the same origin, the use and misuse of the private funds the prisoners have at their disposal. Until quite a recent date, everything, even temporary liberty, had its price in Spanish prisons. This vicious system dated from the times when the "alcaide" or head of an establishment, the primary purpose of which was the safe custody of offenders, bought his place and was permitted to recoup himself as best he could out of his charges. The same abominable practice was at one time almost a world-wide practice, but nowhere has it flourished so largely as in Spain. No attempt was made to check it; it was acknowledged and practically deemed lawful.

In an ancient work on the prison of Seville, dating from the sixteenth century, the writer, Christobal de Chaves, classifies the interior under three heads; the spaces entered respectively by three doors of gold, silver or copper, each metal corresponding to the profits drawn from each. Imprisonment might be made more tolerable by payment regulated according to a fixed tariff. For a certain sum any prisoner might go home to sleep, he might purchase food where little, if any, was provided, he might escape fetters or purchase "easement of irons," as in the old English prisons. To enhance the value of the relief afforded worse hardships were inflicted at the outset. Restraint was made most irksome in the beginning of imprisonment. The fetters were then the heaviest and most varied, the deepest and vilest dungeons were the first quarters allotted. A plain hint of relaxation and alleviation was given, to be obtained at a price and the converse made equally certain. Increased pain and discomfort were the penalty for those who would not, or, worse still, who could not produce the extortionate sums demanded. Tasks imposed were rendered more difficult; it was a common practice to oil or grease the rope by which water was raised from a well, so that it should slip through the fingers and intensify the labour.

When authority had sold its good will or wrung the life blood from its victims they were handed over to the tender mercies of their fellow prisoners, the self-constituted masters and irresponsible tyrants in the place. The most brutal and overbearing ruled supreme within the walls and levied taxes by the right of the strongest. The "garnish" of the old British prisons, the enforced payments to gain a first footing, was exacted to the last in Spain from all new arrivals and was called "cobrar el patente," i. e. collecting the dues. To hesitate or refuse payment was promptly punished by cruel blows; the defaulters were flogged; they got the culebrazo (whipping) with a rope kept for the purpose. The quite penniless were despoiled of their clothing and consoled with the remark that it was better for them to take to their beds because they were naked, than on account of injuries and wounds, or they wrapped themselves up in some ragged cloak infested with fleas. The bullies or valientes were not interfered with by the authorities but rather supported by them. In fact they played into each other's hands. Both worked their wicked will upon their victims and in their own way,—the authorities by right of the legal powers they wielded, the master-prisoners by force of character and the strength of their muscles. Both squeezed out money like juice from a lemon, robbed, swindled or stole all that came in their way.

Guzman de Alfarache, the typical thief of the time of Philip II, whose life and adventures are told by the author of the most famous of the picaresque novels, describes his journey from Seville to Cadiz to embark upon one of the galleys which made up the naval power of Spain. "As we started on the road, we came upon a swine-herd with a number of young pigs, which we surrounded and captured, each of us taking one. The man howled to our commissary that he should make us restore them, but he turned a deaf ear and we stuck to our plunder. At the first halt we laid hands on other goods and concealed them inside one of the pigs when the commissary interposed, discovered the things and took possession of them himself."

The alcaide of the prison turned everything to profit. He sold the Government stores, bedding and clothing to the prison bullies who retailed the pieces to individual prisoners. He trafficked in the disciplinary processes, accepting bribes to overlook misconduct, and pandered to the worst vices of the inmates by allowing visitors of both sexes to have free access to them and to bring in all manner of prohibited articles, unlimited drink, and dangerous weapons, knives and daggers and other arms for use in attack and defence in the quarrels and murderous conflicts continually occurring.

A fruitful source of profit was the sale of privileged offices, permits to hawk goods and to trade within the precincts of the prison. Salillas when he visited the Seville prison not many years ago, saw numbers of prisoners selling cigars and cigarettes in the yards, various articles of food, such as gazpacho, the popular salad of Andalusia, compounded of oil and bread soaked in water, and drinks including aguardiente, that powerful Spanish spirit akin to Hollands. Some kept gaming tables and paid a tax on each game and its profits and especially when the "King" was turned up at "Monte."

Salillas publishes a list of prices that ruled for places, privileges and boons conceded to the prisoners. To become a "cabo de vara," a "corporal carrying the stick" or wand of office, cost from eight to sixteen dollars. "Who and what was the Cabo de Vara?" he asks and answers the question. "A hybrid creature the offspring of such diverse parents as the law and crime; half murderer, half robber, who after living in defiance of the law is at least prevented from doing further harm in freedom, is locked up and entrusted with executive authority over companions who have passed through the same evil conditions and are now at his mercy. He is half galley-slave chained to the oar, half public functionary wearing the badge of officialdom and armed with a stick to enforce his authority. He represents two very opposite sets of ideas; on the one hand that of good order and the maintenance of penal discipline, on the other that of a natural inclination towards the wrong doing in which he has been a practitioner and for which he is, in a way, enduring the penalty. To succeed he must possess some strongly marked personal qualities; he should be able to bully and impose his will upon those subjected to his influence, overbearing, masterful, swaggering, ready to take the law into his own hands and insist upon its observance as he chooses to interpret its dictates."

The post of hospital orderly or cook or laundry-man could be secured for about the same price, while a small fee to the prison surgeon gained a perfectly sound man admission to hospital for treatment he did not need, but in which he was much more comfortable than in the ordinary prison. The place of prison barber was to be bought for four dollars; employment as a shoemaker two dollars; relief from a punishment ordered three dollars; permission to pay a visit home, four dollars. These prices were not definitely settled and unchangeable. Where a certain profit could be extracted from a particular post such as the charge of the canteen it was put up to auction and knocked down to the highest bidder.