HC Deb 01 June 1869 vol 196 cc1160-71
MR. G. H. MOORE

rose to call the attention of the House to a statement made by Mr. O'Sullivan of Kilmallock, having reference to his detention and treatment as a prisoner in Ireland under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant; and to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the treatment of prisoners who may be detained under such circumstances, and against whom no charge may be preferred. Although the hour was late, he hoped that the House would listen to the case of his suffering fellow-countryman, who had been subjected to a long and cruel imprisonment, to great and unnecessary personal pain and indignity, without a trial, without any charge having been preferred against him, and without the opportunity of appeal to any regularly constituted tribunal. Mr. O'Sullivan, who was not of Cork, belonged to a class that, of all others, had deserved the support, and assistance of the Irish Government, for upon the good-will of that class the peace and prosperity of the island mainly depended, He was a most respectable, intelligent and industrious man. He was an hotel keeper, a commercial man, an agriculturist, in fact, engaged in all the spheres of industry that were open to an Irishman in his native country; he was a man of influence and worth, and as such, he had, of course, fallen under the suspicion of the spies and myrmidons of the Government. It thus happened that when the flame of discontent burst out in the South of Ireland, Mr. O'Sullivan was looked upon as one of the exciting elements of the disturbance. He would assume, for the purpose of argument, that Mr. O'Sullivan was arrested upon sufficient grounds, and he had no charge to bring against the Government, who were no doubt actuated by honourable and praiseworthy motives. Did he regard the cruelties and indignities inflicted upon Mr. O'Sullivan as exceptional he would not have troubled the House with his case; but it was because they were recognized as proper in the case of men against whom no actual offence had been charged, that he wished to call attention to the subject. No one ought to be treated as guilty until he had, at any rate, been charged with some offence; and even though it might be necessary, in exceptional circumstances, to arrest men against whom no specific charge was alleged, he thought that such men should, during their imprisonment at any rate, be treated with exceptional consideration. Mr. O'Sullivan stated in his petition that he was arrested on the 5th of March, 1867, taken twenty-one miles to Kilmarnock the same night, taken before a magistrate, and was sent to prison as a Fenian agent. Five days after he had been arrested the governor of the prison in- formed him that he had received the Lord Lieutenant's warrant for his detention. He was not allowed to write to his wife, or to write to any one of the nine firms for whom he did business, though he represented that the ruin of his business would follow from his not being able to write to his employers. On the night of his arrest he was put into a bed the sheets of which were black with dirt, but when he complained of the dirt he was told that the sheets could not be dirty, because the last man who slept in them had only committed an assault. He asked to be allowed to wear his trousers during the night, but was refused, and stripped naked to search him, and his clothes, with the exception of his shirt, wove thrown outside the cell. He could not sleep in consequence of the thinness of the covering, and had to get out of his bed during the night with cramps. [Laughter.] He (Mr. Moore) did not see what there was in this description to excite laughter. The warder called the petitioner "Sullivan," and when he said there was an "O" to his name, the warder asked him how dare he dictate to him, and ordered him into his cell, and the governor deprived the petitioner of that day's, exercise. A number of mice got out of his bed clothes, and he had to strike the bolster to drive them away, and they nibbled a hole in his pocket. One day, when going round the ring, he saw a young man from Kilmallock, and smiled at him, and the warder said he would cool him by putting him on bread and water if he laughed any more. He was fourteen days imprisoned before he could see an attorney, twenty-eight days before he could write a letter, and 120 days before he could see his wife and children. He had to walk round the ring without speaking a word, though the convicted prisoners, comprising pickpockets, were allowed to speak. He saw a convicted prisoner with sore eyes washing his eyes in a bucket, and the bucket was afterwards brought about with water to drink. When confined to bed his wife came from the country, twenty-one miles, to see him, yet the governor refused to let her because it was not the regular visiting day. The washing basins were filthy, and he had to empty the slops in his cell. While so ill that he sent for an attorney to make his will, he was ordered to Mount- joy Prison, was handcuffed, and subjected to other indignities. In addition he lost his license, owing to his absence from Kilmallock. The petitioner stated that he wrote several times to Lord Mayo on the subject of his imprisonment, and that when the order for his discharge was granted it was on the condition that he should not visit the county of Limerick until after a certain period. The petitioner was a most respectable Irishman, and he prayed for an inquiry, arid for some measures being adopted in protect the liberty of Her Majesty's subjects in Ireland. The hon. Member then read a letter of the light hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) from Naples, in which it was stated that in Naples imprisonments were made without any written authority but the word of a policeman—the men were seized and imprisoned, and their papers, and whatever else degraded hirelings might choose, carried off; and in the preliminary examination were; allowed no legal assistance; and though the political prisoners had a separate chamber from the others, there was but a small division between them, and that only for one half-hour in the week were they allowed to sec their friends outside the prison, He declared, there was no distinction between the statements made by the right hon. Gentleman and those of the Petition, and he did not think that any one on either side of the House would justify either to the public or to his own conscience the infliction of such cruel indignities upon a fellow-subject, against whom no civil offence had ever been charged. He also claimed that he was entitled to the favourable attention of the House in this matter, as some twenty years ago, when the Government of the day called for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Art in Ireland, he alone, of all the Irish popular party believing it to be necessary, voted and spoke in its favour, and he did so at the sacrifice of great popularity and credit among his constituents. But in taking that course he supposed that the Government of the day would be bound to exercise its powers in the spirit in which they were given. No one knew how soon another Government might ask for fresh powers of a repressive character in Ireland; and it was well that the House should ascertain how the terrible powers with which authority had previously been in- vested in that country had been exercised. He, therefore, moved for a Committee to inquire into the treatment of political prisoners, especially of those who might have been detained in custody under exceptional circumstances, without any special charge ever having been preferred against them; and in doing so he believed he was acting, not only in the interests of the liberties of the people, but of the credit of the Government.

MR. SYNAN

, in seconding the Motion, agreed with the hon. Gentleman in thinking that Mr. O'Sullivan's Petition disclosed a state of facts unworthy of the administration of justice in Ireland, provided the administration of justice there had anything whatever to do with it. But he thought the facts referred to seemed to bear more on the conduct of the governors and officer of the prison than on that of the Government. How was it possible that the Lord Lieutenant or the persons at the head of the Government of Ireland could be aware of what was being done by the governor and officers of the gaol of Limerick? If the facts detailed in the Petition had been brought before the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Secretary, he was confident that the governor and lieutenant governor of the gaol would have been called upon to explain their conduct with respect to Mr. O'Sullivan, and to treat him in a manner very different to that represented in his petition. He (Mr. Synan) had brought forward, in 1866, a Motion respecting the treatment of political prisoners; and the effect of it was that the Government of the day was obliged to remove those prisoners from the gaol of Limerick to Mountjoy Prison. Whether the treatment there was different he had no opportunity of knowing; but as Mr. O'Sullivan had not complained of it, he presumed there was no reason for doing so. Nevertheless, when, for the public safety, it was necessary to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, it was the duty of the Government to take care that political prisoners who were deprived of their liberty, without being brought to trial, should not be placed at the mercy of the governors and subordinate officers of county gaols, but should be treated in a manner consistent with their social position and character. He saw no substantial difference between the treatment said to have been received by Mr. O'Sullivan and that dealt out to the Neapolitan prisoners, according to the narrative of the right hon. Gentleman the present Prime Minister. In regard to Mr. O'Sullivan's case, it might fairly be said— Pudet et hæc opprobria nobis Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli. He trusted that the explanation they would hear from the Government would answer the last part of the lines which he had quoted, and would fully satisfy the House and the country that in future no such conduct as that of Mr. O'Sullivan would again occur in that free land.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the treatment of political prisoners, particularly of those who may lie untried; and of those who, under exceptional circumstances, may be detained in custody, without any special charge having been preferred against them."—(Mr. George Moore.)

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE

said, the hon. Gentleman who had brought forward that Motion was undoubtedly well entitled to call the attention of the House to the Petition of a countryman of his who complained of unjust and improper treatment in an Irish county prison; and there was no reason to complain of the hon. Gentleman's Motion, cither as to its substance, or, for the most part, as to the language with which it had been supported. For himself, he approached the subject with very great impartiality, because, both personally and as connected with the present Government, he was not responsible for any of the circumstances which had just been brought under their notice. But, as far as he understood the case, he must say that the responsibility of the late Government in the matter was of a very limited kind, because it was essential that the House should understand that those events, so far as they were correct—and he did not admit the correctness of many of the allegations of Mr. O'Sullivan's Petition—occurred in a prison which was not in the hands of the Government, but in the hands of local authorities, over whose acts the Government by law had no control whatever. The hon. Member was rather vague in his mode of dealing with the important question of the conduct of Mr. O'Sullivan before his committal to the Limerick county prison, and the justification of the late Government in so committing him under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant. The hon. Gentleman did not go so far as to affirm that Mr. O'Sullivan had not been connected with the Fenian conspiracy, and the attempted rising which Mould have spread desolation and. bloodshed over Ireland.

MR. G. H. MOORE

explained that he had expressly staled that he had raised no question as to the propriety of the arrest, and had admitted for the sake argument that there were proper grounds for it.

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE

said, he was glad to accept that admission of the hon. Member. The fact was that Mr. O'Sullivan was arrested under the exceptional powers which Parliament thought it necessary to confer on the Executive Government; and upon reasons which were absolutely convincing to the late Government, that Mr. O'Sullivan had unfortunately allowed himself to be deeply involved in the Fenian conspiracy. Of course he could not say whether, formally speaking, he was a member of that confraternity; but the late Government had every reason to believe that, he, his house, and his establishment in Kilmallock formed an active and dangerous centre of the Fenian conspiracy in a part of Ireland which, within a day or two of his arrest, might have been the scene of lamentable proceedings, but that, fortunately, they were soon suppressed. Under those circumstances Mr. O'Sullivan was committed under the Lord Lieutenant's warrant, to the gaol at Limerick, and certainly his treatment there was a fair subject to be brought before the notice of the House. When he saw the Petition, and the hon. Gentleman's Motion in reference to it, he took the course which he thought it his duty to take by sending down to Limerick county prison one of the Inspectors of Prisons in Ireland—a man of high character, kindly nature, and perfect impartiality—to inquire upon oath into the statements contained in the Petition. It was necessary for the House to bear in mind the time; and the circumstances under which Mr. O'Sullivan was committed to the Limerick prison. He entered it a day or two before the rising in the South of Ireland, and the rising occurred in Kilmallock itself, the native place of Mr. O'Sullivan, whose son unfortunately took part in it. At that time there was, undoubtedly, great ap- prehension on the part of the local authorities, and if was hardly surprising that the discipline of the gaol should have been extremely strict. It was thought necessary to take the utmost precautions to prevent the spread of excitement and insubordination which prevailed to a dangerous extent among the large number of prisoners incarcerated in that prison, and also to prevent their effecting their escape. This would in itself account to a great extent for many of the apparent or real severities alluded to in the Petition. Without going into all the particulars therein set forth, he would allude to a few of them. As to Mr. O'Sullivan being searched, for instance, that was a precaution taken with regard to all prisoners when there was any fear that they might escape. As to the allegation about Mr. O'Sullivan's suffering; from cold, it had since been stated upon oath that no complaint on the subject was made at the time, or, in fact, until now. It was true that communication with his family and friends was at first prohibited, and, in his opinion, the restriction was continued longer than the necessity of the case required. The Board of Superintendence laid down a rule at the time of the rising that there should be no communication whatever allowed between political prisoners and their friends. The Inspector had, however, expressed the opinion that Mr. O'Sullivan ought to have been supplied with writing materials at an earlier time than they were allowed to him. Then Mr. O'Sullivan complained that, while he was not allowed to converse with his fellow prisoners, the privilege was accorded to the ordinary convicts in the prison. All the gaol authorities, however, denied the correctness of this assertion. In point of fact, Mr. O'Sullivan was, in regard to this matter, labouring Tinder a delusion, which was easily accounted for, because the exercise yard in which he was allowed to walk was the yard devoted to the lunatics, of whom there were many then in the prison, and to whom the rule of silence was not extended. There was a rather important allegation in the Petition as to the inconvenience and annoyance to which Mr. O'Sullivan was subjected by the admission of visitors to the prison. It was true that on a few occasions that was permitted by the governor of the gaol, and some visitors were allowed to stare at the political prisoners through the spy-holes of their cells, that fact was ascertained by the then high sheriff of the county of Limerick, who was a member of the Board of Superintendence. He at once brought the subject before the Board, and that improper proceeding on the part of the governor was at once put a stop to. It would be unnecessary for him to go more fully into Mr. O'Sullivan's allegations, which, after careful inquiry he had ascertained to be evidently marked with a large amount of exaggeration and misrepresentation. At the same time he admitted his impression was that Mr. O'Sullivan was treated, while in Limerick Gaol, with an amount of severity which was beyond the necessity of the case, and it was worthy of remark that neither Mr. O'Sullivan nor any of the other political prisoners made any complaints of the treatment they received in Mountjoy Convict Prison, which was under the care of the Executive Government. If the Habeas Corpus were at present suspended he should think it his duty to take care that all untried prisoners who might be detained for the purposes of public safety should be placed in the hands of the Government alone, and not intrusted to any local authorities over whom the law gave the Government so imperfect a control. When, however, the hon. Member called on the House to appoint a Committee of Inquiry into facts which he assumed likely to be of future recurrence, he differed as to the necessity or propriety of that step. He was not prepared to assume that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act would be the normal or ordinary state of things in Ireland. On the contrary he entertained the most sanguine hopes that its suspension would not be again required; but if it unhappily should, it would be the duty of the Government to make the arrangements to which he had referred for the detention of untried political prisoners. Under all these circumstances he hoped the hon. Gentleman would withdraw his Motion.

MR. HENLEY

said, he thought this was a question well worthy the consideration of the Government. Those who had the management of gaols must feel how important this subject was, because the class of persons who came in under such commitments as that referred to came under no ordinary de- scription at all. Some twenty-five years ago Parliament was obliged to provide for the special treatment as "first-class misdemeanants" of prisoners sentenced for political offences. That distinction in prison discipline for convicted prisoners was made in consequence of a considerable number of persons in this country being sentenced for sedition. The Act then passed provided that if the court thought fit they might order convicted persons to undergo imprisonment as first-class misdemeanants. As such they had proper diet, and were not compelled to do menial offices. If legislation of this kind had been found necessary for convicted prisoners à fortiori, it was required as regards unconvicted prisoners who were detained for the purposes of the public safety. Some hon. Gentlemen might recollect prisoners being sent to Reading Gaol, and the Executive Government, of the day refused even the Visiting Justices access to them. The Government ought to determine upon proper rules, so that these complaints might not arise. As he understood the Motion, it was merely prospective and in illustration of what might occur. He doubted, however, very much whether the appointment of a Committee would be the most convenient course to pursue. It was, he thought, rather a matter for the attention of the Executive, and it should be for them to lay down proper rules and append them to the Gaol Acts. We should then be freed from the difficulties which would arise from the different views taken by different authorities concerning the treatment of prisoners.

MR. BAGWELL

approved the suggestions which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Henley). In answer, however, to what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, as a member of a Board of Superintendence of a county gaol for many years, he could bear testimony to the fact that the local authorities could not put any rules in force until they had received the confirmation and approval of the Government. He maintained, therefore, that the authority in these matters rested, not with the magistrates, but with the Executive Government.

COLONEL WILSON-PATTEN

regretted that he was not able to enter into the subject with such complete informa- tion as he otherwise should have done, owing to the Motion of the hon. Member not having been sufficiently explicit. He believed, however, that an examination would show that the statements made in Mr. O'Sullivan's Petition were not entirely trustworthy. Moreover, the natural course for Mr. O'Sullivan to have taken would have been to complain, if he thought any malpractices existed, to the Inspector, by whom it would have received due attention, and as that had not been done, Mr. O'Sullivan was scarcely entitled at this time to make these complaints. If there was to be any difference in the treatment of prisoners that difference must result from an alteration in the present state of the law by which all prisoners were to be treated in the same manner. As regarded Lord Mayo, he was sure there was no one who would not give him credit for having discharged his duty in the most considerate and lenient manner.

SIR JOHN GRAY

advocated the policy of treating prisoners confined for political offences on a different footing from common felons, and suggested the addition to the Motion of words which would empower the Committee to report as to what alteration in the law would be necessary to secure this object.

MR. MAGUIRE

said, he only became acquainted with Mr. O'Sullivan a short time since, and the latter distinctly declared to him he had taken no part in the Fenian movement. On a former occasion, and in answer to a Motion which he had brought forward, the late Secretary for Ireland (the Earl of Mayo) had distinctly promised that he would introduce a Bill by which the punishment of sedition in Ireland should be assimilated to that inflicted for the same offence in England, where the treatment of prisoners confined for political offences was more lenient than it was in the former country. The admissions made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland showed that the hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. G. H. Moore) was fully justified in bringing forward this Motion. Whenever a Government thought it right to have an investigation in a prison it should not be one-sided and partial, and though he made no charge of harshness or cruelty against the Governor of the Limerick gaol, he thought that no such investi- gation should be carried on unless the party accused were present. A political prisoner should not be treated as a felon; and it was a disgrace to a country to have a political offender treated in the same way as a criminal guilty of some foul offence against the laws.

MR. G. H. MOORE

expressed his surprise that the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland should have added to the cruel imprisonment suffered by Mr. O'Sullivan by charging him with having been connected with the Fenian movement. He believed that charge to be utterly unfounded. Since his liberation Mr. O'Sullivan had declared solemnly upon his oath, before a Bench of magistrates, that he had no connection whatever with that movement. With regard to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that the prison in question was not under the control of the Executive, he thought it most unjust that any Government should place those whom they had caused to be arrested under the extraordinary powers granted by Parliament under special circumstances in prisons over which they had not complete control. He entirely adopted the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), and he should, with the permission of the House, alter the terms of his Motion by moving for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the treatment of political prisoners, particularly those who were untried, but especially those who had been taken into custody without any specific charge being made against them. He felt bound, under the circumstances, to press his Motion to a division.

Question put,

The House divided:—Ayes 20; Noes 84: Majority 64.

House adjourned at a quarter before Two o'clock, till Thursday.