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In prison and out is one of some fifty novels written by Hesba Stretton, and published by the Religious Tracts Society. Her aim in writing it is made clear in the postscript: "No gaol for children", and her criticism of the penal system for young people through the story of David Fell, and his life's inexorable downward spiral, is disconcertingly modern.
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Bess and David felt that their mother was different from most other women in the street. She did not drink, or swear, or brawl; and all their little world knew she was honest. They were vaguely fond of her good character, and David was beginning to feel for her a protecting tenderness he could not have put into words.
Despite the good character of his mother, David Fell inadvertently slips into petty villainy, and repeated prison sentences harden and criminalise him, until his lonely but redemptive death-bed in prison.
It was five years since David Fell had first crossed the fatal threshold of the gaol. He had graduated in crime, and, being neither a blockhead nor a lout, he had developed skill enough to transgress the laws and yet evade the penalty. The untrained ability of an English artisan, and the shrewd tact of a London lad, had grown into the cunning and business-like adroitness of a confirmed criminal…There was no disgrace for him now, except the disgrace of being found out.
Besides David, we follow the lives of his sister Bess, old Euclid Jones, and Roger Blackett, who could well have followed the same path as David, but has better fortune. Despite the 'happy ending' for most of the book's characters, the pervading mood is one of tragedy and waste, conveyed in a sombre, unsensational style.
Page created 25 November 2002 and last
updated 17 December 2002
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