HIS LIFE, POEMS AND SPEECHES.
51
Oft in the lonely watches of the night has it reminded me of the number of strokes I was doomed to listen to, and of how slowly those minutes were creeping along! The weird chant of Westminster clock will ever haunt my memory, and recall that period of my imprisonment when I first had to implore Divine Providence to preserve my reason and save me from the madness which seemed inevitable, through mental and corporal tortures combined.
That human reason should give way under such adverse influences is not, I think, to be wondered at and many a still living wreck of manhood can refer to the silent system of Millbank and its pernicious surroundings as the cause of his debilitated mind.
It was here that Edward Duffy died, and where Eickard Burke and Martin Hanly Carey were for a time oblivious of their sufferings from temporary insanity, and where Daniel Reddin was paralyzed. It was here where Thomas Ahem first showed symptoms of madness, and was put in dark cells and strait-Jacket for a "test" as to the reality of these symptoms.Davitt further avers that during all his confinement at Millbank, —
Corporal Thomas Chambers says:
The cells, in which poor Chambers complained he was not allowed to walk about, were not spacious, being nine or ten feet long by about eight feet wide, with stone floors, bare walls, and, for sole furniture, a bedstead of three planks a few inches from the floor, and a water bucket which had to serve as a chair when the prisoner was at work picking oakum or coir. There was no fire; walking in the cells was prohibited; and the scanty bed-clothing barely suf-