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Solitary confinement   /sˈɑlətˌɛri kənfˈaɪnmənt/   Listen
Solitary confinement

noun
1.
Confinement of a prisoner in isolation from other prisoners.  Synonym: solitary.






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"Solitary confinement" Quotes from Famous Books



... admit that man is a social being. We see this in his dislike of solitude, and in his wish for society beyond that of his own family. Solitary confinement is one of the severest punishments which can be inflicted. Some authors suppose that man primevally lived in single families; but at the present day, though single families, or only two or three together, roam the solitudes of some savage lands, they always, as far as I can discover, hold ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... a negro,' or he will do as you and I would when at school—he will run. But with such a one, ... if you wish to make an example of him, take him down to the Savannah jail and give him prison discipline, and by all means solitary confinement, for three weeks, when he will be glad to get home again.... Mind then and tell him that you and he are quits, that you will never dwell on old quarrels with him, that he has now a clear track before him and all depends on himself, for ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... kind of St. Vitus's dance, arising from sensual irritation, with which women were far more frequently affected than men, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty; placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. Severe ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... man just entering politics—fifty-five 'died at the comparatively early age of fifty-five,' according to the newspapers. Bah! How these Christians funk death! Sixty-five—we're only getting on in years. Seventy-five is just possible, though. Great hell, cat O! fifty years more of solitary confinement in the dark! You"ll die, and Beeton will die, and Torp will die, and Mai—everybody else will die, but I shall be alive and kicking with nothing to do. I'm very sorry for myself. I should like some one else ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed the difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what these Theosophical gentlemen propose to substitute ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... certain time; but the debt recklessly incurred must generally be paid to the uttermost farthing. Life, if sufficiently prolonged, will always afford leisure for reflection and retrospect, and at such seasons we appreciate in full force the tortures of "solitary confinement." The criminal may go on pilgrimage to a hundred shrines, and never light on the purification that ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... strictly guarded and watched, before any one dared to speak with her; at length the vile Gardiner with three more of the council, came with great submission. Elizabeth saluted them, remarked that she had been for a long time kept in solitary confinement, and begged they would intercede with the king and queen to deliver her from prison. Gardiner's visit was to draw from the princess a confession of her guilt; but she was guarded against his subtlety, adding, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... built a reputation for succeeding where others failed, and, endowed with fearlessness, callousness, and cunning, he never let his reputation wane. There was nothing he dared not tackle, and, when he gave up an animal, the last word was said. For it, remained nothing but to be a cage-animal, in solitary confinement, pacing ever up and down, embittered with all the world of man and roaring its bitterness to the most delicious enthrillment ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... abolition of the death penalty the punishment of solitary confinement was substituted, we have a proof even more eloquent of the influence of the spirit upon the functions of the body. With our modern measures of hygiene in prisons, the prison cell cannot be called a place of torture for the body: it is merely a place where all spiritual sustenance ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... writers, however, have identified her with the niece of Vespasian, mentioned in the inscription referred to above, as owner of the villa of Torre Marancia and founder of the catacombs. The small island, where she spent many years in solitary confinement, is described by S. Jerome as one of the leading places of pilgrimage in the fourth century of ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... left:—vengeance! vengeance! on Jonathan Floyd, and John Vincent? No, no; for some of them at last would overcome him, think him mad, and, O terror!—his doom for life, without the means of death, would be solitary confinement. "Stay! with this knife in my hand—means of death—yes, it shall be so." And he hurriedly drew the knife across his throat; no use, nothing done; his cowardly skin shrank away from cutting—he dared not cut again; a little bloody scratch ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Steve, in solitary confinement, with only his throbbing leg for company, was under no illusions as to what his punishment would be. Pasquale had been killed by an American who had been seen talking with Yeager five minutes before he had shot the general. The charge against ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine

... course, Warburton was sentenced to eight years imprisonment, the first three years to be passed in solitary confinement. During the first term, no person was to be allowed to visit him. The knowledge of such a sentence was a dreadful blow to Mrs. Warburton. She parted from him in the court-room, on the day of his sentence, and for three long, weary years, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... she might be compelled to abjure her faith was most terrible to the girl; and she was firmly resolved that, so long as her strength lasted and her mind was unimpaired, she would resist whatever pressure might be placed upon her, and would yield neither to menaces, to solitary confinement, or even to active cruelty. The prospect, however; had weighed heavily upon her mind. Her father had appeared to consider any escape impossible; her mother had said nothing of her hopes; and the words which Malcolm had spoken, indicating something like a surety of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty

... says Mr. Addison, "to be seen in the ancient church of the Knights Templars is a penitential cell, a dreary place of solitary confinement formed within the thick wall of the building, only four feet six inches long and two feet six inches wide, so narrow and small that a grown person cannot lie down within it. In this narrow prison the disobedient brethren of the ancient Templars were ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... great measure unfitted me, I doubt whether I should enjoy it if I might have it. Sometimes I think I should, and I thirst for it; but at other times I doubt my capability of pleasing or deriving pleasure. The prisoner in solitary confinement, the toad in the block of marble, all in time shape themselves to ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... justice adjourned, Rachel opening the door of Conrade's little room, and recommending solitary imprisonment there till he should be brought to confession. She did not at all reckon on his mother going in with him, and shutting the door after her. It was not the popular notion of solitary confinement, and Rachel was obliged to retire, and wait in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour before Fanny came down, and ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... blessing to the convict that he can have the privilege of working. When prisons were first started in this country it was thought best to keep the prisoner in solitary confinement; have him visited daily by a spiritual teacher, place the Bible and other good books in his hands, and in this manner reform him, and send him out into the world a better man than he was on entering the prison. The great penal institution of Auburn, New York, was for a time conducted ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... old frauds as you and I, Captain! What a sight of hypocrisy there is in the world, to be sure! No offence—mind: I'm as bad as you, and you're as bad as me, and we're both as bad as each other. But no more solitary confinement of an evening for Benjamin Flint, ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... thought, that he was absolutely to live in solitary confinement at Scarrowby. He might have a friend or two, and then the station was ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... with a heavy log of wood tied to his feet, so that he could not turn his body. A strong negro then commenced lashing him with rods until his flesh was cut in pieces. Now let down, he was thrown again into his loathsome dungeon, where he was kept ten days, in solitary confinement, after which he was brought forth to undergo a repetition of the same barbarous torture. He was now kept like a ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... Campion made a smaller circle from Oxfordshire up to Northampton. When they got back to town in September, they found all the world discussing "the Challenge." What had happened was that proceedings had been taken by the Ecclesiastical Commission against Pounde, and he had been committed to solitary confinement in the ruinous castle of Bishop's Stortford. Before he left London he began to communicate the letter to others, lest it should be altogether lost, and as soon as it was thus published it attracted everyone's attention, ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... can come," Honoria answered. Her delightful smile beamed forth, and it had a new and very delicate charm in it. For it so happened that the woman in her whom—to use her own phrase—she had condemned to solitary confinement in the back attic, beat very violently against her prison door just ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... was put in solitary confinement, Castel-Bajac was sent to The Bicetre, and Vauversin's name was struck off the rolls. The suit instituted against me by Madame X. C. V. went on till her daughter reappeared, but I knew that I had nothing to fear. The girl returned to her mother about ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... twelve state prisoners were found, some of whom had been incarcerated for six years without having undergone a trial, and whose names were only known to the commander of the castle. In the dungeons of Marienanski, in Warsaw, was found a victim of the Russian police, who had been kept in solitary confinement for ten years, and whose fate was entirely unknown to his friends and relatives. Respectable inhabitants of Warsaw were often taken and flogged before the grand duke without the formality of a trial, or the specification of a charge. Some were even, in the same unlawful manner, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 489, Saturday, May 14, 1831 • Various

... surrounded by soldiers, and converted into a veritable bastile. Whilst they were removing him thither, Conde exclaimed loudly against this brazen violation of all the promises of safety by which he had been lured on when urged to go to Orleans. The only answer he received was his committal to absolutely solitary confinement and the withdrawal of his servants. The King of Navarre vainly asked to have his brother's custody confided to him; he obtained nothing but a coarse refusal; and he himself, separated from his escort, was kept under ocular supervision ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... been in solitary confinement in a cell at the depot for sixteen days now—or was it fifteen?—he was not sure. The hours dragged by with an ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France

... many rejected as idolatrous. For the second kind of St. Vitus' dance, Paracelsus recommended harsh treatment and strict fasting. He directed that the patients should be deprived of their liberty, placed in solitary confinement, and made to sit in an uncomfortable place, until their misery brought them to their senses and to a feeling of penitence. He then permitted them gradually to return to their accustomed habits. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... philanthropists have at last taken refuge in the infallible effects of solitary confinement. Punishment, it was said, is the real demoralizer of society; it is our jails which are the hotbeds and nurseries of crime. Reform them—separate the hardened criminal from the apprentice to crime—let solitary confinement teach its impressive lessons, and confer its regular habits; and vice, with all its concomitant evils, will disappear from the land. At the same time a great impression was made on the legislature by a graphic, and, in some respects, just description of the suffering in the penal colonies of New ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... Silence is the loudest thing in the world. It thunders louder than the thunder. And it's the deadliest. What drives men mad who are put in solitary confinement? The darkness? The solitude? Well, they help. But it's silence that does the trick—silence that roars in their ears until it cracks their eardrums and addles ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... a negro with us, an old and faithful vassal, who at the present moment is enjoying solitary confinement in another part of the fortress. We reached the castle grounds, where a group of Spanish 'militares' were seated. We gave them the 'Buenas tardes:' they returned our salute, and their chief, who was no less a personage ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... can be assigned to the reign of Edward II., the only occurrences of importance being the downfall of the Knights Templars and the imprisonment of many of them at the Tower, where the Grand Prior, William de la More, expired in solitary confinement a few months after the close of the proceedings that marked the suppression of the order; and the escape of Roger Mortimer from the keep (which reads almost like a repetition of Flambard's), the consequences to the constable being ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... knees, crawl round the counter with the stillness of death, draw out the till with its contents, and bear off the spoil with impunity. One night, however, luckily for the public, the whole gang was made prisoners of, and dispersed to various gaols, each delinquent being ordered a severe flogging and solitary confinement. Availing himself of this indulgence, the Captain had watched the opportunity of approximating towards Tallyho, and was detected, as we said before, in the exercise of his former propensities; so difficult it is to eradicate vice from the human mind, even though in this ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... fields again, and secured my escape; but before I could slip down from the bed and resume my shoes, and take advantage of this exit, my aunt and poor Mrs. Taylor entered the room, and I was ignominiously captured and taken home; I expiated my offence by a week of bread and water, and daily solitary confinement in a sort of tool-house in the garden, where my only occupation was meditation, the "clear-obscure" that reigned in my prison admitting ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... no saltlick, wandering stream or struggling bush enlivened this prairie. There was not even an odd conformation, a higher clump here or there, a dead patch to relieve the unimaginative symmetry. I have read of men going mad in solitary confinement from looking at the same unchanging walls; well, here was a solitary cell hundreds of miles in area and its power to destroy the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... to imagining his little love as being a hapless prisoner in the hands of two cruel ogres (I am afraid he really does apply the term "ogres" to the two old ladies of Moyne), and finds a special melancholy pleasure in depicting her as a lonely captive condemned to solitary confinement and dieted upon bread ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... in importance to the cases of feral men are the investigations which have been made of the results of solitary confinement. Morselli, in his well-known work on Suicide, presented statistics showing that self-destruction was many times as frequent among convicts under the system of absolute isolation as compared with that ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... revealment of all that was true and worthy, in a degree I had never known before. I could not banish either from my mind. For months I had been in prison, expecting a death sentence, much of the time passed in solitary confinement, and now, with that cloud lifted, I had come forth into a fresh existence only to be confronted by this man and woman, representing exact opposites. Their peculiarities took immediate possession of a mind entirely unoccupied, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... from man? How came your fellow-creature, Cain, after the first murder, to go and build the first city? And why is it that the modern Cain dreads nothing so much as solitary confinement? ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... the plaudits of their fellows, have earned those plaudits just as poor men would earn them—by service to their fellow-creatures. Man is not constituted so that he can "take his ease" and be happy. The prisoner in solitary confinement is forced to take his ease, and we are told that he suffers terribly under the ordeal. Of course you have ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... Ruhleben—and Back (CONSTABLE), Mr. GEOFFREY PYKE has such a fine yarn to spin of his foolhardy proceeding in walking right into the eagle's beak as correspondent for an English newspaper, at the end of September, 1914, and (after some months' solitary confinement in Berlin and his transfer to the civilian prisoners' miserable internment camp at Ruhleben) walking right out of it again, that one can forgive him for spreading his elbows for a piece of expansive writing when he was safe home. To tell the truth he writes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various

... Arnauld, "that I am beside myself." She exulted too soon. The King was not to be balked of his vengeance. He refused to abide by the verdict of the Commission he himself had packed, and arbitrarily changed the decree of banishment to imprisonment for life in the Castle of Pignerol,—to solitary confinement,—wife, family, friends, not to be permitted to see the prisoner, or to write to him; even his valet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... "Perhaps solitary confinement with fasting would subdue the angry heat of their blood most effectually," said the elder ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... had been forced to change their hiding-place four times, and had just dug them up in his cellar. They were destined for the night of liberation. Monsieur Georges was thin and worn; he had spent two years in prison in solitary confinement for having given a French prisoner some bread. His eighteen-year-old daughter was imprisoned for a year because she had not informed the authorities as to what her father had done. No one in the family would learn a ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... to take alarm at this doctrine as if it condemned us to solitary confinement, and to ignorance of the world in which we live. We see and know the world through our eyes and our intelligence, in visual and in intellectual terms: how else should a world be seen or known which is not the figment of a dream, but a collateral power, pressing and alien? In the ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... reach forth a hand and save me from myself! I can not remain here without abusing the kindness and trust of a great institution, nor can I go away, I fear, without bringing disgrace on my friends, and shame and death on myself. God of mercy, help me! I know how useless it would be to lock me up in solitary confinement, and I think my attendant physician also feels that I can not be saved by any means within the reach of the asylum. With others not insane, but cursed with that insanity for drink which, if not checked, will soon or late lead ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... at their meagre boards. In this way the young girls, kept imprisoned from the world, instead of learning cookery and other domestic arts, have the grievous burden of idleness added to that of their solitary confinement, not only among the rich and noble, but among that large class which is neither and wishes to appear both. [Footnote: The poet Gray, genteelly making the grand tour in 1740, wrote to his father from Florence: "The only thing the Italians shine in is their reception of strangers. At ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... malice on account of the unfavourable opinion which had always been entertained of him by his old master, consented to supply the testimony which had hitherto been wanting. Cornish was arrested while transacting business on the Exchange, was hurried to gaol, was kept there some days in solitary confinement, and was brought altogether unprepared to the bar of the Old Bailey. The case against him rested wholly on the evidence of Rumsey and Goodenough. Both were, by their own confession accomplices in the plot with which they charged the prisoner. Both were impelled by ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Lieutenant, who during the time of the Spanish government had justly laid his heavy hand upon them. In the latter part of September they conducted him on foot and without any consideration whatever to the capital of Isabela. In this town he was at once placed in solitary confinement in one of the rooms of the convento and allowed no intercourse with any one. The sin for which they recriminated Piera was his having charged Dimas [283] with being a filibuster, and their revengefulness reached an incredible limit. The heartrending ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... wheeled, and walked away in the company of his guards to the room that served as a cell, where again he was left in solitary confinement. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... publishers, before he became a soldier; and was disposed to show every consideration and indulgence to one whom he was pleased to consider a brother of the Literate Guild. The under-superintendent—Donnelly by name—treated one with a benevolence quite paternal. The monotony of my solitary confinement was often broken by his rambling chat and reminiscences of a gambler's life in the Far West; for he liked nothing better than lingering in my cell for an hour or so, when his day's work was done. After the prison doors were opened, I lingered for ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... own children, and buries them in its own chapel—that old stack of pigeon-holes that you see up yonder to the right hand.' So then, after all, thought I, if my poor Agnes should, in her desolation and solitary confinement to these wretched walls, find her frail strength give way—should the moral horrors of her situation work their natural effect upon her health, and she should chance to die within this dungeon, here within ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... such an infringement of the law. They were both subsequently tried for the offence, and being found guilty, were placed on board a Danish ship of war, and brought to Copenhagen, where, within this fortress, they are doomed to pass, in solitary confinement, the small portion of life which may yet ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... began to protrude the straps got loose, and he fell down. The guard rushed in at the noise. The doctor was called in, Stepan was brought to the infirmary. The next day he recovered, and was removed from the infirmary, no more to solitary confinement, but to share the common ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Thoughts like these passed through Rodney's mind, as the jailer led him to a room in which were confined three other lads, all older than himself. At that time, the system of solitary confinement had not been adopted in Pennsylvania, and prisoners were allowed to associate together; but it was deemed best to keep the boys from associating with older and more hardened culprits, whose conversation might still more corrupt them, and they were therefore ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... jest equal sartin as a magistrate 'ud bring you hin guilty. He'd say—and think hisself mighty wise, too—'You had the locket, so in course yer tuk the locket, and so yer must be punished.' Then you'd be tuk from the lock-up to the House o' Correction, where you'd 'ave solitary confinement, most like, to teach you never to ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... to find out that there is but one remedy to this growing leprosy, which threatens the body social, Solitary confinement? ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... were men of more timid disposition than many of their companions, and therefore less disposed to give trouble that would entail heavy punishment. But it was only the comparatively well conducted men who were placed upon road work; the rest were retained for work inside the jail, or were caged in solitary confinement. Each morning a number, varying from half a dozen to a dozen, were fastened up and flogged, in some cases with merciless severity, but it was seldom that a cry was uttered by these, the most brutal ruffians of the convict herd. This spectacle was just over: it was conducted in public for the edification ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... is Osmond's brother and Angela's father, and the wicked Earl thought that he had murdered him. It turns out, however, that, though left for dead, he had recovered of his hurts and has been kept unbeknown in solitary confinement, in a dungeon vault under the castle, for the somewhat long period of sixteen years. He is discovered in Act V., "emaciated, in coarse garments, his hair hanging wildly about his face, and a ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... her generation. Industry, economy, and above all thoroughness were the chief articles of her religion, and she instilled these virtues into the mind of her granddaughter by the most vigorous discipline. A week of solitary confinement was among the penalties inflicted upon the hapless child who had failed to reach the standard of duty prescribed for her. The standard, with Madam Dix, did not differ from perfection discernibly. Mr. Tiffany quotes a lady who in her girlhood, as a special reward of merit, was allowed to make an ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... to us, "was arrested for her part in the assassination of Grand Duke Sergius and thrown into solitary confinement in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. They tortured her, the beasts - burned her body with their cigarettes. It was unspeakable. But she would not confess, and finally they had to let her go. Nevsky, who was a student ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... cops, even though armed with the deadly dart guns and with shot-loaded billies. So afraid, Luke chuckled inwardly, that they had kept him from the other prisoners throughout the trip, kept him in solitary confinement. ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent

... philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in solitary confinement for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our Protestant clergy never hesitate to make the dogmas and superstitions of the Catholic church seem as absurd ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... doing? Trying to sentence, me to solitary confinement?" wondered the young man, when minute after minute went by without any call for him. In the Board room he could hear the droning ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock

... little lady," said he, taking her up in his arms, "I am going to try the effect of a little solitary confinement. They say you are not very fond of the dark. Well, I am going to keep you here all night, if you don't promise ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain. It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words. How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad—simply because the ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration of ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... (for they were enemies,) directly seized him, and bound him to a tree. This was done in a cruel manner, for the cords cut deep into his flesh. After this, he was manacled and kept as a prisoner in solitary confinement. When it was thought that his spirit was sufficiently tamed, and that what he had suffered would operate as a warning to his people, he was set ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge

... in light-hearted misunderstanding of the perils Oswald had led Denny into—I mean through, with Mr. Red House and another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over everybody's hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny's solitary confinement was at an end, too—and he was now able to stand on both legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit

... of silence gained upon him day by day, and was infecting us. External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... of something far higher than the ant-hill that she had found in her travels; but the other ants considered that an insult to the whole community, and consequently she was condemned to wear a muzzle, and to continual solitary confinement. But a short time afterwards another ant got on the tree, and made the same journey and the same discovery; and this one spoke with emphasis, and indistinctly, they said; and as, moreover, she ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... war was over and the men, released from their long terms of solitary confinement, came back to life injured in mind and body, she was almost glad he had escaped. But at the time it ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... a jungle on the lawn with them, and the garden hose. And you cannot be punished twice for the same offence. This is the English law; at least I think so. And at any rate no one would punish you three times, and we had had the Malacca cane and the solitary confinement; and the uncle had kindly explained to us that all ill-feeling between him and us was wiped out entirely by the bread and water we had endured. And what with the bread and water and being prisoners, and not being able to tame ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... and the wisest of his counsellors. After this action Douglas marched north and joined the king. The latter sternly reproached Randolph for having forsworn his allegiance and joined the English. Randolph answered hotly and was committed by his uncle to solitary confinement, where he presently came to a determination to renew his allegiance to Bruce, and henceforward fought ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... the magistrate, "I have had the girl placed in solitary confinement—that makes them willing ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... to the advocate. "Is this not dreadful? A woman whom they are keeping in solitary confinement for seven months turns out to be quite innocent, and only a word was needed ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... looked for punishment—a closer imprisonment, solitary confinement maybe—but nothing of the kind happened. They treated us as truants only, and as if they ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... happened about the same time to encounter a French ship of much superior strength, and become a prisoner of war. On pretext that this gentleman had acted as an accomplice in a scheme of assassination, he also was immediately placed in solitary confinement in a dungeon ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... hanged for his murder. I received a life-sentence for my punishment. I was thirty-six years of age at the time. I am now forty-four years old. I have spent the eight intervening years in the California State Prison of San Quentin. Five of these years I spent in the dark. Solitary confinement, they call it. Men who endure it, call it living death. But through these five years of death-in-life I managed to attain freedom such as few men have ever known. Closest-confined of prisoners, not only did I range the world, but I ranged time. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... the most wholesome pirate they had ever seen, and they figured the contrast would annoy him. Mr. Reardon, however, objected to this plan. He argued that von Staden would be glad of Mr. Henckel's company, and was it not their original intention to keep that laddybuck von Staden in solitary confinement? It was. They closed the state-room door on Mr. Henckel, and left him to meditate on his sins while they repaired to the carpenter's little shop, to return to the boat deck presently with the scantlings and cleats Mr. Reardon ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... in her misdoings, was determined to force her into making a full confession. The girl's repeated denials she regarded as mere stubborn effrontery, and after several stormy scenes she had locked her up in the dressing-room, to try if a spell of solitary confinement would reduce her to submission. Poor Gipsy, agitated, overstrung, burning with a sense of fierce anger against the injustice of her summary condemnation, had faced the Principal almost like an animal at bay, and defying ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... angle, and has two narrow slits of windows, one opening south, the other west, and the sunshine gets in. The day after her trial ended, she sent for the sheriff, who happened to be here, and asked him if solitary confinement was not considered a more severe penalty than any other form here? When he told her it was, she said: Then it could not be construed into clemency or favoritism if you ordered me into solitary confinement? Certainly not, he told her. Whereupon she begged him to allow her to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... 387 feet in length, are four stories in height, and each provides accommodation for 360 prisoners. The three western ones are for men, that on the east for women. On the male side one "hall" is reserved for convicts doing their months of solitary confinement before passing on elsewhere. The men are employed as masons, carpenters, etc., the women in laundry and needle-work. The exercise-grounds are large and airy; the ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... 'Kin, I could give you as punishment a hundred strokes of the rattan. I could put you on rice and water for a month, or I could put you to a room for a week in solitary confinement. But I am not going to do either or any of them. I am going to ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... proud of him, now his mother cannot cross my path, and would gladly see him devoted, as myself, to the interests of your grace. Nor do I despair of this; he is very young, and his character cannot be entirely formed. He will tire in time of dark and solitary confinement, and gladly accept any conditions ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... existence. But, evidence or no evidence, with all Worthington against me, conviction was inevitable. The jury found me guilty. The judge promptly sentenced me to three years' imprisonment in the State Prison, at Charlestown, with hard labor, the first day to be passed in solitary confinement. ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott

... the condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, and all the morning, until eleven o'clock, when his parents came, Sergey Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and muttered inaudibly. Sometimes he would stop abruptly, would breathe deeply and then exhale like a man who has been too long under water. ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... Bagnolet, got off with twenty years; and the two Chevassats escaped with ten years' solitary confinement. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... was Teacher of the Novices, appointed to breed us up to the rules, and I loved him well. "Fili mi," answered Samson, "the burnt child shuns the fire. Dost thou not know, our Lord the Abbot sent me once to Acre in Norfolk, to solitary confinement and bread-and-water, already? The Hinghams, Hugo and Robert, have just got home from banishment for speaking. This is the hour of darkness: the hour when flatterers rule and are believed. Videat Dominus, let the Lord ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... any rate,' said I. 'And he writes to me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents—which, you know, is by solitary confinement. What ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... whether she wanted children, and how many; he could not even require of an octogenarian Senate the passage of a law obliging every woman, married or not, to bear one baby — at the expense of the Treasury — before she was thirty years old, under penalty of solitary confinement for life; yet these were vital statistics in more senses than all that bore the name, and tended more directly to the foundation of a serious society in the future. He could draw no conclusions ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... been subjected, and other particulars; as thus: 'PETER SMALL. Aged forty. Weight at period of admission twelve stone. Confined three months. Present weight nine stone. Fed principally on water-gruel. Has been separated from his wife and children in the work-house, and occasionally placed in solitary confinement for complaining of hunger. Employment, breaking stones.' 'JANE WELLS. Aged seventy. Weight five stone; lost two stone since her admission, one month ago. Gruel diet; tea without sugar; potatoes and salt. Has been set to picking opium.' 'JOHN TOMPKINS. ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... of Edgar's exaggerations to Gloster; they make one's hair stand on end in the perusal but the poor old man, like poor old England, could fall no lower than he was. Mr. Montgomery, the ingenious and amiable poet, after he had been shut up in solitary confinement for a year and a half for printing the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, when he first walked out into the narrow path of the adjoining field, was seized with an apprehension that he should fall over it, as if he had trod on the brink of an ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... no third, there wasn't a sign that Harry who had married for a home ever could say, "I have a right to a home." He had, and he was often saying so, the most perfect home. He came not home of a night to a wife peevish with domestic frets and solitary confinement and avid he should hear the tale of them, nor yet to one that butterflied the day long between idleness and pleasures and gave him what was left. He came nightly to a home that his wife sought as eagerly as he sought, a place ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... Our solitary confinement has answered its purpose even better than I expected. It is so many years since I have been out of town in the Spring, that I scarcely knew of the existence of such a season. I see every day some new flower peeping out of the ground, and watch its growth; so that I have a sort of an intimate ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... the case much at that. Course, Jake Zosco has developed more or less of a grouch durin' his 36 hours of solitary confinement, but when Ellery orders him to march out with his hands up he comes ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... records for five years in a prison and discovered that there were two forms of psychotic reaction, a paranoid and a stupor type. It is interesting psychologically that the former appeared largely among prisoners in solitary confinement, while the stupors developed preponderantly among those who were not isolated. The stupors recovered more quickly. He describes the psychosis thus: The prisoner becomes rather suddenly excited, destructive ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... solitary confinement might perhaps be beneficial," said Bonaparte. "It will enable you, Waldo, to reflect on the enormity of the sin you have committed against our Father in heaven. And you may also think of the submission you owe to ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... birds must often have wished to break the bars of their cage, and occasionally they escaped from their solitary confinement. In the churchyard of Whalley, Lancashire, there are two cottages which stand upon the site of a reclusorium, founded by Henry, Duke of Lancaster, in 1349. Here in the reign of Henry VI. lived one Isole de Heton, who wearied of her lot, and left the anchor-hold, an example which was followed by ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... me through reading, once that accomplishment was mine. For it seemed rather a dangerous thing to ask questions, since the most innocent interrogatory might be taken as an offense, only to be expiated by solitary confinement and a bread-and-water diet; or, if not punishable in that way, it would probably be regarded as a result of the supposed collision of my head with a stone. To be reticent, observant, and studious was a safe plan; this had served to make me ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... found that it had also some annoying consequences. Under the old marshal, either to make the imprisonment more disagreeable to me, or from fear lest I should corrupt the other prisoners, I had been kept in a sort of solitary confinement, no other prisoners being placed in the same passage. This system was now altered; and, although my privacy was always so far respected that I was allowed a cell by myself, I often found myself with fellow-prisoners in the ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton

... other. But when I got well enough to sit up it began to grow interesting. I used to sit at the window in a very infantile frame of mind and watch everything that went by. It wasn't a very rowdy life, as the prisoner in solitary confinement said to Dickens. We live in a back street, where there's not much passing. The advent of the baker's cart used to be the chief excitement. It was painted red and yellow, and he baked very nice ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... "And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the courage—yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all. Listen! Do you know whom she has got into ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that time, but the "horrible custom. The dark hole is a reality; men were kept there weeks at a time, to my certain knowledge, within stifling walls, chained standing for intolerable periods, with great suffering. The public understands 'solitary confinement' to mean a cell by one's self; but this cell is a dark dungeon below earth level. One convict had to be brought out on a litter, his legs swollen to a frightful size; he could not stand erect. I was ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... fifty convicts of the Kansas State | |penitentiary were placed in solitary confinement, | |accused of being leaders in a mutiny yesterday in | |the coal mines operated ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... the Honorable Percival, he had ample opportunity during his long hours of solitary confinement to make a complete inventory of his varied emotions. Two things which should never be interrupted are a sneeze and a proposal. That second declaration, so ardently begun and so ruthlessly arrested, still hung in mid-air, and lying on his back in his ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... of sullen and smouldering rebellion in the minds of its less hardened inmates. From the domineering boss down to the smallest understrapper, the spirit of the jailer and turnkey is dominant. Much worse than solitary confinement is it to be sentenced to ten hours of silence and drudgery. The temptation to speak to the man at your side is well nigh irresistible. But to speak means to be marked, to have hurled at you a humiliating reprimand, or, as a ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... but she ignored it. Both Professor Opdyke and her father had told her that Reed's sentence was a long one, long and heavy. Both Mrs. Opdyke and her husband had begged the girl to do what she could to keep it from seeming too much like solitary confinement. Olive was fond of Reed, though without the consciousness of a single vein of sentiment to blur their friendship. She enjoyed his society as much as she admired his virile, easy-going manliness. All the more, on this account, she ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... inasmuch as the German Government, on principle, would not permit accused persons to have any interviews whatever, he could not obtain permission for Maitre de Leval to visit Miss Cavell as long as she was in solitary confinement. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... let us have the whole story," he added, turning to her again, but still keeping his hold upon Arthur. "You young dog!" he added, when she had finished. "Yes, I'll forgive you when you've had a good, sound flogging, and a week's solitary confinement on bread and water, but ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley

... and love-letters when that pious lady supposed that she read her prayers, because her eyes were fixed upon her breviary. Without relating to any one this discovery of his Josephine's frailties, Napoleon, after a violent connubial fracas and reprimand, and after a solitary confinement of her for six days, gave immediate orders to have the chapels of the Tuileries and of St. Cloud repaired; and until these were ready, Cardinal Cambaceres and Bernier, by turns, said the Mass, in her private ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... general to prisoners of war. Great indignation was excited by this in Germany; the German government immediately seized thirty-seven officers, picking those whom they supposed related to the most prominent families in Great Britain, and placed them in solitary confinement. A few were confined in this way in Cologne, but the majority were put in the ordinary ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... days, Great Master of Romance! A milder doom had fallen to thy chance In our days: Thy sole assignment Some solitary confinement, (Not worth thy care a carrot,) Where in world-hidden cell Thou thy own Crusoe might have acted well, Only without the parrot; By sure experience taught to know, Whether the qualms thou mak'st him feel were truly ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... severely punished. The other students told how Otto had ended the fight and begged that he be let off, but the rector would not listen to their requests, and Bismarck was ordered to undergo eleven days of solitary confinement. When he was released he was welcomed back by all the student corps, and became more of ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland



Words linked to "Solitary confinement" :   confinement



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