IT is a well established fact in prison logistics that the women are far worse than the men. When given to misconduct they are far more persistent in their evil ways, more outrageously violent, less amenable to reason or reproof. For this there is more than one explanation. No doubt when a woman is really bad, when all the safeguards natural and artificial with which she has been protected are removed, further deterioration is sure to be rapid and reform hopeless. Again, the means of coercion in the case of female prisoners are necessarily limited. While a prompt exhibition of force cannot fail sooner or later to bring an offending male convict to his senses, a woman continues her misconduct unchecked, because such methods cannot be put in practice against her. Although in some cases the men have made a temporarily successful fight against discipline, in the long run they have been compelled to succumb. On the other hand, there are instances known of women who have maintained for months, nay years, an unbroken warfare with authority, and who have won the day in the end. Never beaten, they continued till the day of their release to set every one at defiance. That obstinacy which has passed into a proverb against the sex, supported them throughout, of course, coupled with a species of hysterical mania, the natural outcome of the highly strung nervous system.
A curious example of their strength of physical endurance, and their almost indefatigable persistence in wrong-doing deserves to be mentioned here, though it occurred some years later on. A strange fancy all at once seized a number of women occupying adjoining cells to drum on their doors with the soles of their feet. There is no evidence to show when or how this desire first showed itself; but in less than a week it had become general almost throughout the female prison. To accomplish her purpose a woman lay full length on her cell floor, just the right distance from the door, and began. She was immediately answered from the next cell, whence the infection spread rapidly to the next, and so on till the whole place was in an uproar. These cell doors being badly hung, were a little loose; they rattled, therefore, and shook, till the whole noise became quite deafening and incredible. Some women were able to keep up the game for hours together, day after day; in several cases it was proved that they had drummed in this way for several weeks. They soon worked themselves into a state of uncontrollable excitement, amounting almost to hysteria. After a time many became quite prostrate and ill, and had to be taken to the infirmary for treatment. The physical exertion required in the operation was so great that women so employed for barely an hour were found literally soaked in perspiration from head to foot, and lying, without exaggeration, in pools of moisture. In numbers the kicking superinduced diseases of the feet, the whole skin of the sole having been worn away; for it is almost needless to observe that very early in the affray shoes and stockings were altogether destroyed, and it came to be a question of bare feet. Several methods were tried to put an end to this unpleasant practice—strait waistcoats, dietary punishments, and so forth—but all without avail. In that particular instance the disturbances continued till the women had fairly worn themselves out.