JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1272

I stumbled upon this while looking for an article on the Wright Brothers in The Illustrated London News.  I figure that this may be the first opportunity in recent decades that a photograph of the dinner table of  incarcerated British drunkards would be published–and some opportunities need to be serviced.  No doubt that this was an ideal table setting and selection of food because, well, that’s what people do– they normally don’t present an average-something for photographic display in national/international media.  Also the snapshot quality of the daily surroundings of the incarcerated was unusual, as was the Andrew Lang fairyland title to the two-page photo story. 

And the food:

A full day’s serving: breakfast included a six-ounce white loaf of bread, a pint of tea–and an ounce of butter on the last day of the term.  Dinner  included six-ounces of white bread, twelve ounces of potatoes, four ounces of French beans, four ounces of fresh meat, and eight ounces of fruit pudding. Supper  “was a pint of gruel”, pictured on right.

The life in the state reformatory as an alcoholic British woman was hardly “pleasant” as the title states, though we don’t know what the author was comparing this to.  I suspect it was a general prison that was the benchmark for pleasantness, though perhaps it could have been an insane asylum , assuming of course that they didn’t seem nearly as pleasant as the “pleasant” scenes in these pictures.  The reformatory for alcoholics in Great Britain was established more along the lines of an almshouse or mental institution and seemed not terribly coercive–though given the border decorations for the photos on these pages–keys–there is no doubt that these people were incarcerated “for their own and the community’s good.”.