Book Review: World of the Living Dead
| Author | J. H McClemens |
| Published date | 01 December 1969 |
| Date | 01 December 1969 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/000486586900200413 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
250 AUST. &N.Z. JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY (Dec., 1969): 2, 4
gleaned from it
that
this is a very fruitful
research area. A single example will
suffice. The French educational system is
generally rigid and
rather
reactionary,
being based, as is
true
of France
generally, on good solid middle-class
values. In contrast,
the
educational set-up
in Wrexham is to a certain extent more
flexible and progressive, being geared
much more to the needs of its working-
class consumers. Nevertheless, ahigher
proportion of
the
working-class children
in Marseilles do well at school
than
they
do in Wrexham. Similarly in Marseilles a
higher proportion of those children
with
good academic records commit offences,
whereas in Wrexham delinquency is
usually confined, as would be expected,
to those children who do badly at school.
This opens up interesting questions both
for criminology and for a more general
study of the
two
educational systems and
their operation in this sphere. The French
system, in spite of its rigidity, seems to
show a
better
success'
rate
with
lower
class boys. Why? The English system
should presumably cause less
"status
frustration"
than
the
French system,
but
the groups have similar delinquency
rates
(which, of course, really cannot be com-
pared without more information). Whereas
in strict theory
the
French children should
be more delinquent. Again, why?
It is to be hoped
that
this study will
be
seen as
the
introductory work it really
is and
that
it will be followed up, as Miss
Elton Mayo
wants
it to be, by a more
thorough investigation. There are
many
insights to be gained from studies such
as this provided
that
they are carried out
in depth and on a strictly comparative
basis. This book has pointed
the
way
and, in spite of its imperfections, it is to
be hoped
that
its
pattern
of comparative
study in different countries by
the
same
research
worker
or workers will be
followed in the future.
NEIL
CAMERON t
Lecturer in Criminology,
Wellington.
World of
the
Living Dead, J. Marshall,
Wentworth Press (Memorial Edition),
Sydney, 1969, 139 pp, $2.75.
THE real interest in this book lies in its
reference to one facet of an important
part
of our history:
the
period of
the
anti-
conscription and anti-war campaign of the
first World War. It is largely forgotten
now
that
both
the
socialist and anarchist
movements of the early
part
of this cen-
tury
found
pretty
substantial support in
varying sections of
the
Trade Union move-
ment and
that
there was, in quite anumber
of circles, opposition to the
war
and par-
ticularly to conscription as effective and
powerful as any
that
exists now.
Vance Marshall,
the
author of these
two
pamphlets, originally published in May,
1918, and November, 1919, was a socialist
who was prosecuted and imprisoned for
various offences
under
the
War
Pre-
cautions Act. Marshall served his sen-
tence in Long Bay, Goulburn and Albury
gaols.
He was
the
first organiser of the New
South Wales branch of the Miscellaneous
Workers' Union.
As a result of his gaol experiences he
wrote
two
pamphlets, one being called
The World of
the
Living Dead and the
other, Jail From Within. This small book
is a republication of those pamphlets by
the Federal Council of the Miscellaneous
Workers' Union as a memorial edition.
The first pamphlet is autobiographical
and describes
"with
a smell of the gaol
fresh upon me"
the
arrest of Marshall
"for having made utterances likely to
cause disaffection to His Majesty
the
King". It takes
the
reader through
the
arrest, the police court, the sentence, the
reception into prison,
the
classification to
hard labour,
the
escort
to
Goulburn,
the
food, the warders and the effect upon
men of imprisonment. The descriptions
are bitter but one asks could
they
be
otherwise for a political prisoner in the
days when
the
doctrine of deterrent
punishment for its own sake was the
standard of criminal sanctions.
The second pamphlet is a series of
sketches of
what
gaol was like in the
years 1917 to 1919. Of some of them,
particularly the description of the hanging
and
the
flogging,
the
words used to the
writer himself by a publisher to whom he
took
the
manuscript -
"It
is good,
but
in places too raw, too creepy, too
real"-
might well be applied. Iread those two
descriptions myself with feelings of com-
plete horror.
To
the
reviewer the aspects of this
booklet
that
were
most interesting were
the references to Henry Lawson and to
Donald Grant. Henry Lawson died in
1922. At
that
time and for years after-
wards his friend, J. Le Gay Brereton, was
Professor of English Literature at Sydney
University and Brereton often used to tell
his students of
the
stupidity of a system
which meant
that
Henry Lawson spent
much of his life in Long Bay. Lawson
has contributed apreface to The World
of the Living Dead in which he speaks of
"the
hideous hopelessness of those who
fill the narrow wall-begirt world of gaol".
His poems have been drawn on for
the
chapter headings. The World of
the
Living
Dead is dedicated to Donald Grant and
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