IF THE PRISON DOES NOT UNDERBID THE SLUM IN HUMAN MISERY, THE SLUM WILL EMPTY AND THE PRISON WILL FILL

The other day I stumbled upon an article on the "Pains of Imprisonment" by a scholar based in Oslo, Norway. The article (allegedly) quotes one of "Shaw's memorable phrases"

“If the prison does not underbid the slum in human misery, the slum will empty and the prison will fill."

Since this article did not provide a source for the quotation, and given that I could not find it in my database either, I turned to the Internet as a last resource. It did not take me long to realize that this phrase is quoted a number of times in different documents, from newspaper articles to scholarly books. Luckily for me, one of those books actually cited a source. In this doctoral dissertation on The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration andCrime in the Neoliberal Period in the United States, the quotation is sourced as part of Shaw's The Crime of Imprisonment (1946).  

Dan H. Laurence's Soho Bibliography lists this item (first published separately in 1925) and has something else to say about it. 

Now that I had the title of the book, I realized that it could not be freely available online because it had been published in 1946. However, as a preface to the Webbs' English Prisons Under Local Government (1922), my chances were much higher. 

And... bingo! The Internet Archive holds copies of all the volumes in the series on English Local Government. Specifically, the volume English Prisons Under Local Government contains the famous preface by Shaw and the famous words: 

In general terms, I guess this quotation may be related to a number of other works by Shaw (whether essays, speeches, or plays) where poverty is the driving force behind many of the ills of society. I'm sure each reader has their favorite one (please leave a comment about this if you will). 

Because this is a very complex topic and I am not an expert on the matter, I would like to direct readers to a couple of recent publications by fellow Shavian Peter Gahan, who edited "Six Fabian Lectures on Redistribution of Income" in SHAW 36.1 ("Shaw and Money") and, more importantly, has published a book that connects Shaw, the Webbs, and the problem of poverty and social inequality (Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914). 

The day will come when both the slum and the prison will be empty. At least, I hope so. 

I EXHAUSTED RATIONALISM WHEN I GOT TO THE END OF MY SECOND NOVEL

A few days ago, Richard Dietrich could not find the source for the following lines and asked for a hand: 

"I exhausted rationalism when I got to the end of my second novel at the age of twenty-four, and should have come to a dead stop if I had not proceeded to purely mystical assumptions.  I thus perhaps destroyed my brain, but inspiration filled up the void, and I got on better than ever."

This is an excerpt from a letter to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, dated 23rd December 1924. The letter and the process of locating it as the source of the above words made me think about a tangential aspect of Shaw studies. 

I started thinking about how important redundancy is for research in the humanities, despite being a source of inconsistency in other data sets. In this particular case, the same fragment is reproduced in several different publications, which facilitated my job a great deal. Specifically, one can find references to this letter (or the whole document) in Bernard Shaw Collected Letters (Vol. 3, pages 896-8); in The Nun, the Infidel, and the Superman (pages 93-5); in Berst's "The Poetic Genesis of Shaw's God," in the first issue of the SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies (page 22); and in Leon Hugo's Bernard Shaw's The Black Girl in Search of God: The Story behind the Story (Page 96). After quadruple-checking my results, I did not continue reading the results page but, at any rate, the point is that, had I not digitized any of those books, I still would have been able to track the source indirectly. I guess this is one of the reasons why a broad and eclectic digitized library of Shaw's plays and secondary sources (biographies, criticism, programs of productions) is an invaluable asset for research on Shaw. 

Until time (meaning copyright restrictions) allows me to publish my database and let others access it freely, I like to think that I can do a humble public service for Shavians. So, if you can't find a source, drop me a line (garoma@unex.es).