Saltley Reformatory Inmates

Abner Wilkes

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Notes:

4 July 1853 A brief mention of Abner’s crime is in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette 4 July 1853 p.5, col.8. It reads:  … Imprisonment … Abner Wilkes [spelled thus] for stealing three candlesticks and a tea kettle, the property of James Hall, and two pairs of boots, the property of Betsy and Harriet Hall… two days

12 September 1853  In an extensive report of an inquiry into brutal treatment in Birmingham Gaol in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, Monday 12 September 1853 p.6 col.3, is the following:  …boys from the Reformatory School were then examined as to the state of discipline at the time they were in the gaol:- Abner Wilks, aged fifteen, was in the gaol three times, and on the last occasion about five weeks before the last sessions. He said:- I remember being put into the punishment jacket and strapped to the wall in February last for not doing my crank work, and for breaking the glass covering the index. The reason I did not do my work was because it was so hard, and I broke the glass to get the fingers of the index round, sp that I might get some victuals. I had been at the crank three days. I had to do three thousand turns before breakfast, and the crank had been made hard, so that I could not get them done, and I broke my glass to alter the index. They did not know of it until a day or two after. And gave me my food. I was put into the punishment jacket, and had a collar like that on my neck (pointing to a collar about three inches deep. I was strapped up for about an hour and a half. I was again strapped up not many day after for not doing my crank work. I had six ounces of brown bread at night when I did not do my work. I was put on bread-and-water when I had the strait jacket on. I had the jacket on about half-a-dozen times. I remember the Chaplain coming to me several times, when I was crying out from pain. I said that I would sooner be dead than alive. I shouted out ‘murder’, I was in such pain from the collar, and my arms were numbed as though they were cut off. I had it on last time I was in the prison on a Sunday, and the Chaplain saw me. There were several days when I did not have my breakfast till night, getting towards supper time. I was then supplied with gruel and six ounces of bread. I remember when the Chaplain saw me there was a loaf of bread on the table. I could not quite reach the bread with my mouth because of the collar holding my mouth to; so that when I attempted to bite the bread I pushed it further from me. I was not strapped to the wall, but I was in the straitjacket and had the collar on, and could walk about the cell. The Chaplain held the bread to my mouth, but the collar prevented me from biting it.. I left the gaol the next day. Brown came into my cell the day I had the jacket on, and I asked him to give me a bit of food, but he said he dare not. When I was strapped to the wall I kicked my shoes off; I was in such pain I did not know what I did. – [the entry in the Chaplain’s journal was then read and the cries of murder by the boy were described as terrific.] – I was punished by the Governor, and was never taken before the justices for misconduct in the prison. [in the next few sentences in the paper, the Governor is asked why Abner’s punishment was not entered in the punishment book, and the answer was that he sometimes admonished punishment while on his rounds and may have forgotten to enter them later.]

7 October 1854 in the Minute Book of the Reformatory it is recorded that Abner Wilks has been sent for to America by his father, who has paid his passage, via Mr Cobb, agent, Liverpool, who had asked for more boys, and is reported of by Mr Robertson Gladstone as a respectable man.

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