MR. J. COWENasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he has had his attention directed to the observations of Baron Dowse at the Armagh Assizes on Saturday last, when, before sentencing a prisoner, he asked the governor of the gaol whether the new rules which require a prisoner to lie on a plank for the first month were in force in Armagh Gaol, and whether that meant that the prisoner should sleep in his clothes for a month? Upon both questions being answered in the affirmative, Baron Dowse, who declared that Judges were not mere automatons, but had their feelings like other men, said he should give a much shorter sentence, for he considered the new rule nothing more nor less than torture; and, if he has not had other complaints of the new prison rules, and if he will take them into consideration with a view to their modification?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS, in reply, said, the use of the plank was by no means new. It had been in use a great number of years. The only effect of the rule had been to make the system uniform in all prisons. He was sure there must be some mistake in the statement of the Judge, with whom he agreed that it would be torture to compel a man to sleep in his clothes for a month. Nothing of the kind occurred in England. Bedding was served out to prisoners, though they might have to sleep on planks. So far as Ireland was concerned, he asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland to make inquiries with regard to the gaol of Armagh, and he found there must be some mistake there.
§ MR. MITCHELL HENRYasked whether the Home Secretary would consider the suggestion that a hollow might be made in the planks?