Eighteen Months' Imprisonment

by late captain Donald Shaw

TABLE OF SUBSTITUTES

For cooked English beef or potatoes, which may be issued, if deemed necessary, by the authorities.

In lieu of four ounces cooked English beef:

Five ounces Colonial beef or mutton, preserved by heat (served cold); nine ounces beans, one ounce fat bacon, four ounces American or other foreign beef, preserved by cold (weighed after cooking), eight ounces cooked fresh fish; six ounces cooked salt meat; twelve ounces cooked salt fish.

In lieu of three ounces cooked English beef:

Three-and-three-quarter ounces Colonial beef or mutton, preserved by heat (served cold); seven ounces beans, three-quarters of an ounce fat bacon; three ounces American or other foreign beef, preserved by cold (weighed after cooking); six ounces cooked fresh fish; four-and-a-half ounces cooked salt meat; nine ounces cooked salt fish.

In lieu of twelve ounces potatoes:

Eight ounces cabbage or turnip-tops; twelve ounces parsnips, turnips, or carrots; twelve ounces preserved (dried) potatoes; eight ounces leeks; twelve ounces rice (steamed till tender).

In lieu of ten ounces potatoes:

Seven ounces cabbage or turnip-tops; ten ounces parsnips, turnips, or carrots; ten ounces preserved (dried) potatoes; seven ounces leeks; ten ounces rice (steamed till tender).

In lieu of eight ounces potatoes:

Six ounces cabbage or turnip-tops; eight ounces parsnips, turnips, or carrots; eight ounces preserved (dried) potatoes; six ounces leeks; eight ounces rice (steamed till tender).

In lieu of six ounces potatoes:

Four ounces cabbage or turnip-tops; six ounces parsnips, turnips, or carrots; six ounces preserved (dried) potatoes; four ounces leeks; six ounces rice (steamed till tender).

All the meats to be weighed without bone.

All vegetables to be weighed after cooking.

Printed at H.M. Convict Prison, Millbank.

A careful perusal of Dietary 4 will convince the reader that it is sufficiently generous to obviate any loss of weight, and yet, as a rule, prisoners fall away on it, (There are some extraordinary exceptions to this rule, and one man, a gentleman by birth, and an ex-officer in the army, increased two stone in a few months; the absolute half-starved vagrant also, of course, fattens on it.) I can only attribute it to the voracious way they bolt their food. It is stated of that eminent projector, the late Mr. Rumford, that he once submitted to the then Elector of Saxony a scheme whereby he might reduce the expense of maintaining his army, without impairing its efficiency, by a very simple method, namely, to reduce the amount, but compel his soldiers to masticate their food. I cannot say if the suggestion was acted on, but I am thoroughly convinced that if prisoners received less, and were compelled to eat slower, a considerable saving to the state and an improvement in the appearance of the men would be effected. Personally I found during the very few weeks I subsisted on this diet that it was more than I could possibly eat, and withal good. The gruel, I confess, is an acquired taste, and I was almost immediately permitted to substitute cocoa. The porridge was also a sad disappointment. I innocently hoped to have found the delicious composition associated with the land of cakes and immortal Burns, and could have burst into tears in recognising it as intensified gruel. Its nourishing powers, however, are not to be gainsaid; and to see malefactors shovelling it away, as I have, one would suppose they enjoyed it. The recitation of the substitutes for cooked beef I am compelled to characterise an official quibble. During the few months I spent at Coldbath I never heard—as I certainly should—of any beef being issued at all, the invariable substitute being Colonial meat served cold, except on one occasion, when salt fish was supplied. On the merits of this last item I cannot speak personally, for long before that I was on a daily diet of mutton and mutton broth, as I describe hereafter. For the preserved Colonial meat, however, I have nothing but praise. “Served,” as it was, under every disadvantage, I found it excellent; and as it can be purchased for seven-pence a pound, the marvel is that the poorer classes, who seldom or never taste butcher’s meat, do not patronise it more largely. I can only suppose its merits are unknown.

The bedstead, or “plank-bed,” as it is termed, is the hardest couch I ever felt; with a mattress on it I could feel every grain in the wood, and shuddered to think of my companions, all of whom had to submit for a month to the board “pure and simple.” It is only raised three inches from the floor, and is two feet in breadth—a tight fit for twenty stone. I had now fairly settled down in my final destination for a month, and will describe the routine of the day:—

6 A.M.	—Rise.
6.30 „	—Breakfast.
7 „	—Take down the day’s work, and receive a fresh supply.
8 to 9 „	—Exercise.
9 „	—Chapel (three times a week).
12 noon	—Dinner.
5 P.M.	—Supper.
8 „	—Bed.
8.30 „	—Lights out.

A slight difference existed between the regulation here and at Newgate on the subject of “lights out.” At Coldbath it was a serious offence to retire before 8 P.M. At Newgate it was, however, optional, though hampered with an absurd condition. One evening, at this latter awful place, I had determined on a comfortable read; with this object I undressed about 7 P.M., and, pulling my bed under the lamp, abandoned myself to the perusal of Chambers’ Magazine, for 1878. Barely, however, had I commenced, when “in a moment all was dark.” I ascertained next morning that it was a rule to put out the gas as soon as a man got into bed; whether from economical motives or as an extra mode of annoyance, I never troubled to ask.

The brown bread, which was often warm from the oven, was as good as any I have ever tasted, and the quantity enough to satisfy anyone; and yet the ordinary prisoner would devour his and gratefully accept as much as anyone else would give him. I found that prisoners would do anything for food, and through my entire career I bartered it in exchange for soap, etc. Amongst other recipients of my bounty was a German Jew who lived near me. He spoke very little English, and as I speak German fluently, I often had a word with him. He told me the usual story about being sentenced for nothing; and though I did not believe a word of it, it led to his being put on my free list. A more voracious appetite I never met with, and the way he bolted half a pound of bread and three or four potatoes was truly appalling; indeed, so unsatisfactory was it, that I transferred my patronage after a week; one might as well have tried to fill Nelson’s monument. Giving away food is strictly prohibited—a regulation that necessitates certain precautions, commendable for their suitability rather than their cleanliness. The usual mode is for the donor to stuff bread, potatoes, or a lump of suet down his stocking or inside his shirt, and when time and circumstance permit, to transfer it to the recipient of his bounty, who in his turn first shoves it up his back or into his cap, to be transferred at leisure into the mouth or elsewhere. This manipulation never commended itself to me; and my rule, though not much more refined, had at least the advantage of avoiding any personal contact with the greasy dainties. I placed all my food in my pocket-handkerchief, and transferred it bodily in exchange for the others’. This rule only applied to the clean linen day, when I was enabled without delay to get rid of my brother-reprobate’s mouchoir. On other occasions I received their pocket-handkerchiefs clean, and returned them later on full of good things. I let it be understood that I never took a handkerchief unless it was clean; and so perfect did the system become, that I had only to say en passant, “Your handkerchief to-morrow,” and it was duly handed to me washed and perfectly clean. I only once was offered a treat of this kind. It was a poor black man (I often see him about). I watched him fumbling in his chest and eventually produce a crust; this he secreted for some minutes in his fist, and then said, “Here, master,” and held it out to me. I can see his look of surprise that followed my refusal; but it was kindly meant, and though I declined the emetic, I wouldn’t have hurt his feelings for the world. Soup that I didn’t consume I usually placed outside the door, hoping that my regular “cleaner” would reach it in time. In this, however, I was often disappointed, for my custom having got known, a raid was frequently made on it by others—a practice I determined to try and circumvent.

I was suffering at this time from liver complaint, and had on my shelf a concoction of taraxacum and podophyllin. Of this I poured one day about two doses into my mutton broth; and as it was somewhat discoloured by the process, I added half a cup of soapsuds and a handful of salt. Not long after the two thieves arrived, and I could distinctly hear their long gulps as they swallowed the savoury concoction. My commendable endeavour to break them of pilfering was, however, a complete failure; and the only remark I overheard was, “I say, Bill, it’s damned salt, ain’t it?”

The soap one received had to last a fortnight, and was not sufficient for a thorough wash daily and the periodical bath, and I experienced great inconvenience at first by having to economize; but when it had got mooted about that there “was a swell as was mug enough to swap grub for soap,” my market became literally glutted, and I was enabled to revel in a bath every morning.

Washing one’s cell floor was not an agreeable duty. At first I puffed and blew like a grampus, but it soon became a very simple affair, and I became a perfect adept at the charwoman business. I heard whilst here, from a reliable source, of some man who after leaving the prison was staying at a West-end hotel, and who, seeing a servant shirking her duty whilst scrubbing the doorstep, and unable to resist the force of habit, very kindly gave her the benefit of his experience, and stripping off his coat, proceeded to lay-to assiduously. I should not hesitate to do the same under certain circumstances. This “doing” one’s own apartment was the only derogatory duty I had ever to perform; and as it was a private show, and clearly for one’s own benefit, I never had the slightest objection to it; the more so as the taking of my morning bath (the saucepan on the floor) had half completed the process.

Oakum-picking cannot be called an intellectual employment. I should say, too, it was decidedly monotonous, though I can hardly speak from personal experience. I tried the experiment of unravelling the rope, but it was so intensely provoking that I turned my thoughts to evading the necessity. My turnkey and I were friends within twenty-four hours, and I consulted him about getting a substitute. As turnkey and prisoner had both left before I had, I may say, without injuring anyone, that for a weekly consideration my task was picked daily. Of a morning a bundle was mysteriously thrown into my cell, and a few moments later I proudly descended with “my work,” and dropped the unused rope on the stair. The usual task that prisoners have to pick is three pounds a day, but being a light-labour man I was only assigned one pound. I invariably returned a portion of this modified amount unpicked, thereby lulling the suspicions of a dense but offensively-inclined taskmaster. Oakum is one of the most tell-tale commodities I ever came across. If merely unravelled, it remains black and juicy; but the more it is picked and pulled the paler it gets, till it is capable of assuming the appearance of Turkish tobacco. An experienced eye can at once detect the amount of labour bestowed on it, and some of the huge bundles I saw my confrères carrying down were works of art as regards finish. The man who actually picked my oakum was the “cleaner,” a privileged individual with a roving commission. His duties frequently brought him to my cell, and he told me he was a “racing man.” I discovered, however, as we became better acquainted, that the designation is capable of considerable expansion, and that his peculiar talent was the “three-card trick.” He knew every racecourse in England as well as every prison, and never failed of a morning to inquire how I had slept, adding, that he always slept badly the first few nights in a strange prison; and my reply that I was not affected in a “similar way” appeared to cause him considerable surprise. In my unravelling process I one day chanced to come across a bit of cane. It was certainly moist from proximity to the tar, but I carefully dried and subsequently smoked it. I can hardly say the pleasure was unalloyed, for it bore such a resemblance to the fragrant British Havanna that I got alarmed, and put it out. It was the only smoke I had for months.

Exercise at Coldbath was an important institution, and considering it was the only fresh air I at first experienced in the day, I always looked forward to it. An hour is the regulation time, but seldom is the boon of that duration; and if the warder is otherwise engaged, the exercise has to give way, and thus the prisoner is deprived of a healthy occupation to meet the convenience of a selfish turnkey. Overlooking the exercise-yard attached to C ward were a row of houses, and I often wondered what the lookers-on thought of the moving mass of misery that circled round below them. To me, with my limited facilities, there was ample room for reflection; and I often marvelled how such various types of humanity could have been collected, or indeed that they ever existed.

One feeble old man particularly attracted my notice. He was almost unable to walk round from sheer old age, and appeared altogether incapable of having qualified in any way for lodgings at Coldbath. I asked a warder what on earth he had done.

“Well,” he said, “they say he’s a bad ’un. He’s here for violently assaulting the police, and got six months.”

“But,” I added, “he don’t look as if he would last so long; he must be at least a hundred!”

“Very likely,” was the reply. “The fact is, a new rule has come in lately, and pauper prisoners are buried in the prison; so they sent him here in hopes of starting our new cemetery.”

Another peculiarity that struck me forcibly was the apparently universal obstruction that appeared to exist in the criminal throat. It was absolutely epidemic, and the sounds—such as are made by an over-wound moderator lamp—that accompanied their fruitless endeavours to obtain relief were excessively revolting. This and the like are the worst features of coming in contact with these dirty wretches. Many habits usually looked upon as filthy were freely indulged in, and anyone who instinctively abstained from participating was looked upon as an outsider. A foolish habit I had contracted in my youth of applying my pocket-handkerchief to its natural use was, I fancy, specially resented. I could never shake off these feelings, and though with them, was never “one of them.” I always kept them at arms’ length, and invariably received some implied recognition of my superiority. The better class of prisoners for the most part addressed me as “Capting,” or “Sir”; and even the lowest, if they spoke—which I never encouraged—did so with some small degree of reserve. The neighbourhood abounds with street-organs; indeed, it is the head-quarters where the instrumentalists for the most part live, the consequence being that, like the lady of Bambury Cross, we had music wherever we “goed.” About this time a certain popular air was much in vogue, and evidently much admired by the criminal classes. I enquired the name of this vile music-hall ditty, but without effect; and can only describe it by the fact that no sooner did it commence than the whole mob appeared to cheer up, and took up a sort of gin-and-water refrain which they buzzed out—“Ho moy littul tarling, ’ow are yew?” The wretch who composed it deserves a month. It is impossible to describe the monotony of these days without occupation—for my deputy did my task—and without books. The religious tract, as a leaflet was officially styled, had to last a fortnight; and I knew by heart all about “The Sweet Recollections of a Sweep,” and “The Converted Charwoman of Goswell Road.” “What Pickest Thou, you Wretch?” and “How are your Poor Fingers, you Blackguard?” were also works contained in this religious repertoire, and altogether of a more thrilling description. They were generally understood to have been the work of a local divine, as indeed their style suggested. The library books are a very sorry lot, though probably well adapted to the capacities of their readers. The rule, too, that permits their change only once a fortnight is in itself a species of torture unworthy of the system that sanctions them at all. The type for the most part is large, and such as an educated man can read in a day. Why, then, spoil a gracious act by limiting its very innocent scope. Such, too, is the reckless supervision of these literary treasures that I received no less than seven school histories of England during my career. I felt this as almost a reflection on the Dean of W— and my classical education generally.

There was, however, a reserve library for the special benefit of the “serious” minded, and men of education with strict Episcopalian proclivities. This issue, and its attendant patronage, is vested entirely in the hands of the chaplain—a custom it is high time to alter—and considering I had never been confirmed, it is a marvel how I was ever included in its favoured ranks. The blessing was not, however, an entirely unmitigated one; and “Locke’s Essay on the Mind,” “The Theory of Sturm,” and such light reading usually fell to my share. Happily I was independent of it all, although an amusing and undignified squabble some months later deprived me of even this modified clerical patronage.

I must mention one incident connected with my “three card” acquaintance before leaving the oakum district. It was after chapel, and he was in my cell, when, after sundry enquiries as to how I liked the service, etc., he said—

“I calls it bad, very bad taste, the way they goes on, even in chapel, at a chap about his work. Didn’t you hear this morning about the oakum?”

“Oakum,” I said; “I don’t remember any allusion to it.”

“O yes you do,” he replied. “D’you mind my nudging you?” and then I recollected receiving a dig in the ribs, which I failed to understand at the time, as they began to sing, “O Come, let us sing,” etc. The racing man had made a mistake in the spelling, and very properly resented the allusion.

My transfer from this hateful district was, however, nearer than I supposed, and an unexpected occurrence a few days after my arrival brought about this welcome change. My door was one day suddenly opened, and my friend the turnkey appeared in breathless agitation.

“Summat’s up,” he jerked out; “mind you tells em nothink. You’re going to be transferred at once.”

CHAPTER XVI.
THE VISITING JUSTICES.

Something was indeed up; a letter, in fact, that I had clandestinely written had been intercepted. Personally I was indifferent to the result; the worst had been done to me when I found myself in prison. Degrees of punishment had no terrors for me, and I was equally callous as to whether employed in a “situation of trust” or languishing in a punishment cell. To me all appeared tarred with the same brush, and I loathed the privileges and punishments, the indulgences and deprivations, the spiritual comforts, and every other contingency with the same intensity. As regards the turnkey, however, my sympathy was enlisted. Here was a poor man, with a wife and family, liable to dismissal, and even imprisonment, if convicted of carrying letters. At the time I was at a loss to understand how the traffic could possibly have been discovered. I was confident I had not been observed writing, and had seen the letters securely secreted in the warder’s pouch. Unless, then, he had been guilty of some indiscretion, the discovery seemed impossible. Such a contingency as foul play from without never entered my head, and yet, alas, such a thing had actually occurred. A servant in the family of one of my correspondents had lately been detected in a series of systematic thefts from her employers, extending over many months. The discovery naturally involved her immediate dismissal, and by way of gratitude for their refraining from prosecuting her, she purloined my letter, and assuming a position of authority, called at the prison and produced the document. Her motive was clearly revenge, but the truth (as it always does) eventually came out, and the mystery that shrouded the transaction for months has happily been dispelled, and the temporary doubt (almost excusable) that associated the act with very dear friends has given way to a regret that I could ever have doubted their honour. As to the thieving, sneaking wretch, she decamped with her spoils; and though her photograph has been freely distributed in the “three ball” quarter, she has hitherto evaded discovery. For my part I would gladly subscribe a trifle for the present address of Mrs. Smith. With the mystery that surrounded everything that occurred in the place, I tried in vain to ascertain whether anything had really been discovered, but day after day passed, and the affair had apparently blown over. This, however, was an erroneous impression; it was only the lull that precedes the storm, and not a stone was being left unturned to sift the matter. The turnkey, at the time only suspected of complicity in the matter, was carefully watched. When he left of an evening his every footstep was dogged, and a nightly report of his rambles duly made. A letter, too, that he foolishly posted in a neighbouring pillar-box pointed indirectly to his connivance, and subsequent inquiries at the district receiving office made matters possibly clearer. A close relationship exists between such Government institutions as post-offices, prisons, and police-stations, which affords greater facilities to constituted authorities for unearthing mysteries than to ordinary mortals. I was ignorant in those days of this affinity, and an easy prey to such trumpery contingencies; but I eventually reduced the trafficking to a science impossible of detection, and unfailing in its results. Can it be wondered at—surrounded as one is by underpaid officials, who begin at twenty-one shillings and twenty-three shillings a week, with a gradual increase, after years of toil, to a possible twenty-eight shillings, and with a prospect, after twenty years’ service, of receiving a pension of ten shillings a week—can it be wondered at, I ask, that these worthy men are unable to resist a bribe? I should regret to have to prove my words, but if I was in the position again, I think I could undertake to be in daily communication with the outer world, despite bolts and bars and the “special” observation I was always subject to. This is no idle boast, as subsequent events will prove; and the authorities have only themselves to thank for exercising no discretionary power in their treatment of prisoners, when the facts I mention prove conclusively that a great difference does exist and always will between the vagrant and the gentleman, even in prison, in more ways than one. The underpaid turnkey is still more unfairly handicapped, and it resolves itself into his choosing between my £5 and the Government £1. What more natural than that he should elect the former, when the most ordinary precaution will guard against detection. I don’t think the authorities ought to begrudge the so-called gentleman this solitary advantage. No one can deny that six months to a man of education is an infinitely severer trial than eighteen to a costermonger. The one has to battle with the mind, conscience, remorse, shattered prospects, loss of caste, a blighted future, food, clothing, surroundings, all inferior to what he has been accustomed to; to submit, moreover, to be addressed by inferiors in a tone of authority, besides a hundred-and-one other humiliations impossible to remember: the other finds himself amongst friends, loses nothing by his incarceration, is better clothed, fed, and housed than if he were at home, and, in the case of an artizan, reverts to his every-day employment; and yet this is seldom taken into consideration, and justice is ladled out to gentleman and vagrant alike. I cannot assert this as my own experience, for justice was indeed tempered with mercy to me, and I am fully sensible of the consideration I received, both at my trial and hereafter. Under ordinary circumstances one would be accused of ingratitude for breaking rules and deceiving those in authority who had treated one well, but I never took this personal view of it. I was fighting a system that I despised, not individuals that I respected. So I looked on it as a game of “brag,” a kind of “French and English,” a question of bolts and bars versus brains, where the latter had apparently the worst of it, where undue importance was attached to watching and spying, and nothing left to one’s parole. About a week after my transfer (I was now in the needlework ward, and being initiated into the mysteries of darning stockings) I received a summons to appear before the Governor. I knew now that the letter-writing had been discovered, or, as my friend the turnkey had expressed it, “Summat was up.” He told me, in a few words, that it had come to his knowledge that I had been sending out clandestine letters, and requested me to inform him if that was the case, and who had been my channel of communication, adding that he was prepared to take down any statements I might feel disposed to make. The idea of denying it never entered my head—I was perfectly indifferent as to what might happen; I thereupon informed him that I had written, as he alleged, three letters, and that I was quite prepared to bear the consequences. I, however, respectfully declined to give him any information as to my employé. I was then requested to wait outside, and the order was given to send for Mr. B—. “Well,” I thought, “if poor old B— tells them as much as I have he need not fear being identified as my brother conspirator.” A moment later, and I was recalled: a glance at the unhappy B— convinced me that fear had robbed him of his self-possession, and that he had not observed the salutary advice he had given me as to “telling ’em nothink.” His face was the colour of a boiled turkey, and the keys at his side (a sorry burlesque on authority) were rattling from tremour. The Governor then said, “Mr. B— has admitted that he took a letter for you, so I presume you have now no objection to admit it.” In courtesy to the nervous donkey I asked him if that was correct, and on his replying in the affirmative, I at once made a clean breast of it. The poor man was thereupon suspended from duty, and a week later summarily dismissed. I tried to make him every reparation in my power, and shortly after I procured him a billet at thirty shillings a week, but when I sent to his lodgings I found he had left. I heard afterwards he had gone into the country, where I hope by this time he has recovered his position. My case had yet to be dealt with, and as the Governor was not qualified to adjudicate on such a serious offence as this is considered, I was remanded to appear before the Visiting Justices. I heard terrible rumours of these avenging Solons, and of the floggings, solitary confinements, and other barbarities that followed in the wake of their fortnightly visits, and was prepared—but perfectly indifferent—for the worst. My information for the most part was derived from brother malefactors, and consequently likely to be considerably exaggerated. I found, indeed, that this was the case, and when the eventful day—Black Wednesday—arrived, I discovered that the dreaded justices were a full bench of Middlesex magistrates, my old friends who had smashed, pulverized, and otherwise annihilated Barnabas Amos on my representations, and who I hoped and believed were gentlemen capable of weighing the pros and cons of my peculiar case. My expectations were more than verified. The punishment cells, as I had had them described, and of which I hereafter got a bird’s-eye view—from outside—were not inviting abodes. There are twelve of them, fitted with double doors, warranted to preclude all sound from penetrating beyond. They contain no furniture, except a plank and a stool, both fixed to the floor, and the two blankets and rug that constitute the entire bed and bedding are issued every night and removed every morning. Water is supplied three times a day, and the food is stirabout and dry bread, administered on homoeopathic principles. Books there are none—indeed, the subdued light would make them superfluous; the occupants, moreover, have no employment, the distraction of oakum-picking even being fiendishly denied them. Men who had undergone this punishment told me that the effect was indescribable, this combination of gloom, idleness, and profound silence, and their wasted appearance after a fortnight’s incarceration fully confirmed their assertions. The penalty, as I was credibly informed, for sending a letter out was ten days at least in the punishment cells; and a preliminary I underwent of being carefully weighed on the morning of the eventful day raised the betting in my estimation to six to four on the cells. A kind friend expressed great sympathy for me, but feared I must make up my mind to this degrading punishment. But he was wrong; the weighing was superfluous, and I got off with a reprimand.

The Middlesex magistrates having heard the case, which was put before them in the kindest light by the Governor, and taking into consideration the dastardly act, whereby the offence was in a measure discovered, informed me through the chairman that they knew my position and were sorry for it, pointed out the gravity of my offence, and finished with an admonition—a treatment that only gentlemen could have accorded to such as I. This generosity induced me to register a mental vow that I would not abuse their kindness. I felt indeed as if I were on my parole; but the foolish act of an illiterate jailor—instigated, I suspect, by a vindictive snob—a few days after, armed with the authority, but incapable of discriminating between the treatment most likely to be deterrent to a man like myself and that desirable with a costermonger, turned me from my good resolutions. I saw it was a question of the “best man wins,” that confidence was a thing that never entered their heads, and that I had nothing to gain by passive submission. For the first and only time in my career I felt insulted, and determined henceforth to double my precautions, to evade every regulation, and to lose no opportunity of bribing everything and everybody with whom I came in contact. The act that decided me in this course was being formally searched. A few days after my admonition I was unexpectedly visited by two warders, and ordered to change everything I had on for a fresh supply, which they brought in. Meanwhile my cell was turned upside down. The salt was capsized into the plate; my bed minutely examined; the table and stool tapped and shaken; and matches struck and poked down the ventilators; and when they discovered I had neither pencil nor paper, I was left to readjust my apartment. As I said to them at the time, nobody in his senses would have supposed that a man who had so lately escaped a severe punishment would be such a fool as to incur the risk of possessing contraband articles. As a fact, I had got rid of all my combustibles a few days before; and if any of the officials can remember a stoppage in a certain drain about that time, they can make a pretty shrewd guess at what became of them. The above incident may, I hope, attract the notice of someone in authority, and be the means of giving a discretionary power to governors of prisons as regards the treatment of a certain class of prisoners. Sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander, and it’s for the authorities to decide whether certain results cannot be attained by tact that can never be assured by brutality.

CHAPTER XVII.
PRISON TRADES.

A great variety of trades are represented in Coldbath Fields—such as tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, worsted-workers, laundrymen, bakers, needlemen, basket-makers, mat-makers, printers, bookbinders, carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. Of these mat-making and laundry-work are considered the hardest. The men selected for following any of the above vocations are looked upon as privileged individuals, and infinitely better off than the ordinary oakum-picker—a task that everyone has to submit to for one month, although many never get beyond it and its accompanying isolation during the two years of their imprisonment. A good deal of the comfort or otherwise with which these trades are followed depends on the warders in charge. If the warder is a brute, the prisoners become demoralized, crime is rampant, and reports and punishment the natural consequence. If he happens to be reasonable and just in his dealings, contentment reigns, the work is well done, and insubordination is unknown. I saw and heard a great deal in support of this assertion, and during my few months’ retirement managed to poke my nose into a good many queer corners. The laundry bears an unenviable notoriety, both on account of the excessive hard labour and the brutality with which it is enforced. There are about sixty men employed in this department, who have severally to wash one or other of the following quantities daily:—30 shirts, 80 sheets, 200 towels, 500 pocket-handkerchiefs, 18 blankets, 250 pairs of socks. Such quantities would tax the capacity of an expert washerwoman; but when a novice—probably a clerk or respectable tradesman—is put to the task, its magnitude is at first insurmountable. Instead of 30 shirts, the poor wretch finds he cannot manage more than 5, which next day he succeeds in bringing up to 15. Meanwhile his hands become chafed and sore, and he sees the doctor in hopes of getting relief; but the doctor is powerless. A cut finger is not a serious complaint though probably a very painful one; and he has no alternative but to send him back. This in itself is considered as malingering; and the poor devil is brought before the Governor for idleness and feigning sickness, and is sentenced to one day’s bread and water as a first offence. Should this “crime” be repeated, he gets an increased punishment, and is either flogged or sent to the punishment cells. This is no overcoloured description. A prisoner in such a case has neither justice nor any means of proving the injustice. Any report, however garbled, is necessarily believed; and if corroboration is necessary, a dozen turnkeys, from every part of the prison, will come forward, and emphatically endorse their comrade’s charge. The prisoner meanwhile is not allowed to speak, and if he did would not be believed, and, as often happens with the lower classes, is actuated by fear, which only increases his apparent guilt.

It is not the prison authorities that can be held responsible for this burlesque on justice, for more humane, honourable, and just men than the Governor and Surgeon of Coldbath Fields do not exist. It is the vile system that gives no discretionary power to these officials, and considers that a man once overtaken in a fault ought forthwith to be treated like a dog; and, not satisfied with this inhuman conclusion, deputes the carrying out of their system to a set of ignorant, cringing, underpaid warders and turnkeys—in many cases ill-conditioned by nature, and brutal, eye-serving, and untrustworthy by habit.

One victim of this cruel system, that was undergoing fifteen months’ imprisonment, worn out by work, constant reports, punishment, and illness, and who was refused permission to revert to oakum-picking in preference to remaining in the laundry, went back to his solitary cell one Saturday night, and in sheer desperation hanged himself; and Sunday morning found him suspended by his bed-straps from the bell-handle, cold and stone dead. Another lad of 18, who had been reported for talking, and sentenced to bread and water, took it so much to heart that on his cell door being opened about 2 P.M. he rushed past the turnkey, and threw himself over the railings. He was picked up insensible and taken to the hospital, when, incredible as it may appear, he was found to be absolutely uninjured, although he had jumped from a fifth storey and landed on a stone floor. On his dinner tin the unhappy youth had scratched, “Dear father and mother, brothers and sisters I wish you all good-bye and have 3 days cells and 3 days bread and water and pushed about. From A. Burke.” The lad was thereupon brought before the visiting justices, and in consideration of his youth only got seven days in the punishment cells.

It cannot be denied that great malingering and deception are practised by prisoners, which necessitates the greatest vigilance on the part of the officials. Nothing is commoner than for them to pretend attempted suicide; and instances are of frequent occurrence where a man, having calculated the time to a nicety, proceeds to hang himself as his door is being opened. These gentlemen are almost invariably flogged.

On the other hand, it is equally certain that justice is not meted out in the disposal of everyday offences. Discipline demands that the warders must be supported; and even if they are known to be lying or grossly exaggerating, “the system” necessitates their being believed. If, therefore, this humble stratum of humanity is supposed to be entitled to a particle of fair play, it calls for the immediate attention of Sir Edmund Du Cane. I would suggest the advisability of an experienced ex parte official being daily present at these orderly-room farces, who could watch the cases and weigh the evidence. Until this is done a prisoner has about as much prospect of justice as had Arabi before the arrival of Mr. Broadley. In this résumé of justice as administered at Coldbath Fields I must be permitted to disown all reflections on the Governor, for whom I have the profoundest respect. It is the system that I blame, and sympathize with a conscientious man being compelled by regulation to conform to its usages.

About eighty men are employed as tailors; of these the best workmen are employed in the shop, the remainder doing piecework in their respective cells. They make the entire clothing for officers and prisoners for this and many other prisons. The work is exceptionally good—a fact not to be wondered at, considering they count amongst their ranks journeymen and cutters from many of the principal West-end houses. The basket-making is exceptionally good, and to a great extent made to the order of the leading shops; and the specimens of neat work I have seen quite surprised me. Mat-making is a severe type of hard labour. The daily task is one yard, and men who have been employed at it have assured me that it is very hard work. The mat-room is fitted with twelve looms for the make of the best doormats. The Government has a contract with Treloar, a shopkeeper in Ludgate; and as he is supposed to have a large connection, it may be assumed that reputedly honest feet are constantly being brought into contact with the work of dishonest hands.

The bakery is worth a visit, if only to see the mountains of bread in course of preparation. In this place about twenty-four men are constantly employed putting in or taking out loaves from two huge ovens. All the bread, whether white or brown, is made in separate loaves of the average size of a penny roll; and when it is added that some 4000 of these are consumed daily, representing a gross weight of over half a ton, in Coldbath Fields alone (to say nothing of Holloway Gaol and the House of Detention, which are also supplied from here), some idea of the proportions of “our bakery” may be arrived at. The kitchen is, if anything, still more interesting. I have never seen anything to approach the size of the vats and utensils, unless, perhaps, in a pantomime scene representing Gorgeybuster the giant’s cuisine. Everything is here cooked by steam, and excellent the cookery is. The soup, which is supplied three times a week, is exceptionally good. It finds its way from the kitchen in enormous tubs, and on arrival at the various wards is transferred into greasy, half-washed tins; still it does not lose its excellence, and I invariably enjoyed the soup. The usual amount made on soup days is about 200 gallons, and the daily quantity of potatoes consumed about 7 cwt. As may be supposed, certain farces and abuses have crept into this department. Specimens of the cookery are daily laid out for the inspection of the surgeon and Governor. If they should, however, omit this essential form, it is amply compensated for by the voracity of some of the head warders, who frequently sacrifice inclination at the shrine of duty and make a substantial meal during the tasting process. Beef-tea for the use of the patients is also made here—a brew that would be considerably strengthened by being doctored in the hospital kitchen instead of where it is. A pound of beef is the liberal allowance for each pint of beef-tea. The usual custom that prevails, however, is for the beef to be eaten, by those who ought to know better, and for Colonial meat to be substituted for it. I assert this advisedly, and offer it as the possible solution of the knotty problem of why complaints are of such frequent occurrence. Home Office papers, please copy! Despite all the assertions to the contrary, I freely confess I never found fault with the prison fare; and if one could keep one’s thoughts from wandering to “Bignon’s” or the “Café Helder,” one could thoroughly enjoy the liberal fare. I experienced this dietary, pure and simple, for two or three months, so may be fairly considered capable of forming an opinion.

The carpenters’ and smiths’ shops call for no special notice beyond the custom in vogue, whereby all men are carefully searched before returning to their cells. This is, no doubt, an essential ceremony, as turnkeys’ scalping-knives, in the shape of chisels, might occasionally go astray, not forgetting the modest pencil, the most treasured possession of Her Majesty’s prisoners.

The oakum shed finds employment for about a dozen men. In it piles of old rope are being continually chopped up, weighed, and tied into bundles varying from one to three pounds in weight. I have often seen van loads of this apparently worthless rope discharging cargo at this shed, and was surprised to see the same though quite unrecognisable rope leaving the prison a week or two after converted into the finest oakum, to be again utilized for the manufacture of rope.

The paper room is the most original and interesting of the various institutions in this original and interesting place. I do not know if it lies in the route through which visitors are conducted, but if it does it will repay a minute inspection. Into this room the sweepings of the Houses of Parliament and the various Government Offices in the United Kingdom find their way. All old telegrams, after being kept six months at the General Post Office, are sent here to be destroyed, to say nothing of old ledgers, directories, blue books, almanacks, etc.; in short, a heterogeneous mass of things useful and things useless, all higgle-de-piggledy, to be sorted and torn into small pieces, and eventually converted into paper by Alderman Waterlow and his sons (these last named individuals do their share of the work at home). Amongst this pile the most valuable discoveries are of daily occurrence; and articles priceless in the estimation of a prisoner, such as pen-knives, boxes of cigarettes, butt-ends of cigars, writing paper, envelopes, novels, coins, pencils, and postage stamps, are hourly exhumed. About 200 men are employed in this department, whose duty is to tear up into small atoms a certain amount of waste paper daily. Of the above number some 20 of the most trustworthy (i.e., those who are the greatest adepts in the art of secreting property about their persons) are employed in overhauling the supply, and delivering up contraband goods—that they may not require—before passing it to be manipulated by their less trustworthy confrères. Great precautions are supposed to be taken against the possibility of a prisoner appropriating any of this “treasure trove,” and they are each and all subjected to a minute examination before returning to their cells. That this search meets all the requirements of the case may be gleaned from the quantities of things that find their way into the prison. I was never without a capital pen-knife, and when I lost mine (or when it was stolen), as I did on more than one occasion, I never had any difficulty in procuring another. The stationery that I used for my “private” correspondence was invariably House of Commons paper, and, excepting perhaps being almost imperceptibly soiled, was as good as new. The traffic in tobacco through this agency is by no means inconsiderable, and before I had made my personal arrangements for a weekly supply I have frequently exchanged food for cigarettes; but they were far from satisfactory, and I found them infinitely better adapted for choking than chewing. Butt-ends of cigars, too, find a ready market; but at this point I invariably drew the line, and preferred—inveterate smoker though I am—to forego the luxury of chewing a cigar that had been half-masticated by some scorbutic quill-driver. The special trade that I was put to was worsted work. I was officially described as a “needleman,” a title I had more claim to than may appear at first sight. Needlemen are employed either in knitting stockings, making shirts, or darning blankets, shirts, or socks. I had the choice of any of these delectable pursuits, and selected the latter as the most easy of evasion. Darning burglars’ stockings, I admit, sounds a humble and unsavoury vocation; but considering they are boiled for about three days before passing into the needlemen’s hands, any antipathy on the subject must be attributed to sheer prejudice. Other motives also influenced me; it was far the lightest and most elastic job, and a reserve bundle I always kept in stock did me good service on the thimble rig principle. The allotted task was 15 pair a day at least, but thanks to my “reserve” (a far greater success than Mr. Cardwell’s), and “auxiliaries” of other kinds, I found that two pair and sometimes three a day met all the “requirements of the service.” The nature of my work amusingly exemplified Locke’s theory of the “Association of Ideas,” and I never took up a stocking without having vividly presented to my mind the scene in “Faust,” where Marguerite is bound to lame the wearer. I speak from personal knowledge, for one afternoon I experimentalized with one of my specimen repairs and blistered my foot for a month. I often had qualms of conscience as I saw the numerous men that were limping round at exercise—the number of whom appeared to increase in proportion to the quantity of stockings I darned—and I could not help feeling that I was the unintentional cause of all this misery. My deplorable incapacity in the Berlin wool and fancy line was once nearly getting me into a terrible scrape. Amongst the pedestrians that exercised at the same time as myself was an ex-convict and desperado, who prided himself on the recital of his past experiences, and who had undergone penal servitude in Australia and England almost without interruption during the past 20 years. He was a Hercules in appearance, addicted to the use of his fists on the slightest provocation, and about the last man whose susceptibilities one would care to offend. On his arrival some twelve months previously he had laid down some wholesome rules for the guidance of those whom it might concern. “I don’t wants any ’umbug as long as I’m ’ere”—this was the burthen of his instructions. “I’ll do my work as well as I’m able, and you’ll allus find me willing and respec’ful-like; but if any of you attempts to bully or ’umbug me I’ll cut your throats from ear to ear.” Conceive, then, my feelings on seeing this amiable creature one morning struggling with his stocking. A glance convinced me it was my handiwork. With a terrible oath, and livid with rage, he expressed a wish that he only knew the chap that had “fixed” his stocking. With an equally fervent but inaudible prayer I sincerely hoped he never would.

CHAPTER XVIII.
“THE OUTER WORLD.”

The unfortunate contretemps that had indirectly associated me with the dismissal of a warder caused me to be looked upon for some time by his confrères with considerable distrust; it was generally understood, however, that I was not a man that could be bullied with impunity, and would unhesitatingly have reported any attempt of the kind. I attribute this diagnosis of my character to my bearing from the first. I made it a rule to be scrupulously courteous to the humblest turnkey if he showed an inclination to treat me civilly, whilst I ignored the position of those who attempted to hector over me, and convinced them by my manner that I looked on them as my inferiors. When I reflect on the bearing of the various officials towards other prisoners, I am at a loss to understand how I was permitted the latitude I was. I can only attribute it to that moral and indefinable effect certain men of birth and education, and naturally arrogant in disposition, do and always will exercise, no matter how temporarily circumstanced, over their inferiors. This bearing asserted itself without my knowledge, and I had my likes and dislikes from the highest to the lowest. Thus I liked and respected the Governor, and ignored his deputy; I liked one chaplain, and cordially despised the other; I liked and venerated the kind old surgeon, which would be exaggerating my feelings regarding his assistant. None of my antipathies could probably instance any absolute case against me, yet they were respectively aware of my estimate of their merits. To remove this feeling of distrust amongst the turnkeys was by no means easy. I had to watch my opportunity to get into conversation, and then carefully to smuggle in “a word in season.” This necessary formula was not unattended with risk, and I had to discover the disposition of my man and not say the wrong word in the wrong place. My knowledge of human nature gave me a considerable advantage in these negotiations; it was like playing blind-man’s-buff with one eye exposed, and I soon had the measure of every official in the prison. Some nuts I admit to have found very difficult to crack, but they eventually yielded to treatment; others were hopeless cases, and some I labelled “dangerous” and carefully avoided. I had, however, attained my object; and wherever I went, or wherever I was located, I was always within “measurable distance” of one ministering angel, and often two. The principal cause of my unbroken success may be attributed to my having no confidants—my right hand literally knew not what my left was doing; and Jones, the turnkey, who lived in fear and trembling that Brown would suspect his trafficking with me, was a source of hourly anxiety to Brown, who dreaded Jones getting wind of his kindly interest in my affairs. I always assured these respective worthies that they had nothing to fear from me if they would only exercise ordinary discretion on their own parts, and as I was above the weakness of carrying about a fagot of pencils or cigars, it is hardly to be wondered at that diplomacy triumphed. Through one channel or another I heard everything that was going on, and was on more than one occasion amused by having repeated to me the special cautions that were issued regarding me. The Deputy Governor was no friend of mine; indeed I should be doing him an injustice if I omitted to state that he disliked me as cordially as I did him. He was of that pronounced military type associated in my mind with the Fifth West Indian Regiment, and suggested the idea of having been promoted from the adjutantcy of that distinguished corps to a company in a non-purchase regiment during the Cardwellite era. A switch, and an almost brimless pot hat, worn on one side, completed the picture of this typical sabreur. He apparently took a considerable interest in my affairs, and frequently asked questions, and gave wholesome advice to the turnkeys regarding their intercourse with me. “Have nothing to do with that man” was the burthen of his song, all of which was invariably repeated to me. His duties assimilated very much with those of a garrison Quarter-master, and he was supposed to poke about and discover dirt in impossible places; occasionally, however, they resembled those of a boatswain in H.M. navy; as, for example, at the flogging of garrotters, and the birching of little boys, when he counted the strokes. I had to be careful of this individual, for I am confident he had his suspicions about my little games; but it was the old story of the ironclad charging the outrigger, and with all the facilities at his disposal he was no match for me in a matter of finesse. To such a state of perfection had I now brought my arrangements, that everything of interest was at once known to me; and the hanging of Dr. Lamson, Prince Leopold’s wedding, and the bombardment of Alexandria, all assisted in their turn to relieve the monotony of my existence. Nor was my system confined to gloomy Clerkenwell; but penetrated into the sanctity of the more fashionable Belgravia; and conversations of peculiar interest to me, that took place at table or in the privacy of the closet, and that I had a motive for hearing, were repeated to me within a day with a minuteness of detail that would astonish the gossipers. This is no idle boast, as documents and dates in my possession can and may testify. In short I was in telephonic communication with the outer world (registered number 594). But a master hand was required to keep this huge machinery in order, which, no sooner was it removed, than it crumbled to pieces. Within a week after my final departure, papers began to be picked up, and a scientific elaboration, incapable of detection, was degraded to the level and shared the same fate as the commonest pickpocket’s ruse. The moral that is to be gleaned from all this is: If you wish a thing done well, do it yourself. I trust the sequel to my departure above narrated may afford a melancholy satisfaction to those interested, and convince them that no extra precautions are necessary to prevent the repetition of these innovations; the rules in force are amply sufficient for the ordinary prisoner. But my constitution, suffering from this severe strain, and assisted considerably by fever and ague, began to give way, and led to a change in my everyday life. In short I was ill, and admitted into hospital. As I ascended the stairs that led from the worsted wards I had the consolation of feeling I should not be forgotten. I had indeed left my mark; I had crippled half the prison.

There are many abuses that might be changed with advantage, and which I cannot do better than point out, in hopes that somebody in authority will read, mark, and inwardly digest them. On each cell door is a card setting forth your name, sentence, and full particulars. This placarding of one’s name is surely useless, as one is never called by it, and the only object it appears to serve is to enable prisoners to discover all about one another. My cell was once situated on the high road to the chapel, and every malefactor en route to worship made it his business to master my history. This surely is unfair, and hardly contemplated by the authorities. If it is absolutely essential that one’s name is to be placarded, why not inside instead of outside the door, as was the custom before the Government took over the prisons?

Too much at present is left to the turnkeys. They are, indeed, the channel of communication and the only official with whom the ordinary prisoner comes in contact. The chief warder deputes details to the principal warders of divisions, who in their turn confide them to the warders of wards, who again leave the carrying out to the turnkeys of flights. It is not fair that so much should be left to these assistants—which, despite any assertion to the contrary, is the case—and who, though counting in their ranks many highly respectable men, have also some desperate rascals—vindictive, deceitful, and utterly unfit for any discretionary powers, and who would stick at no degree of brutality if capable of being indulged in with impunity.

The use of the same baths by prisoners and men previous to medical examination cannot be too strongly deprecated. That a clean man should be compelled to risk contagion with one suffering from itch or covered with vermin is as filthy as it is disgraceful. With all the space at their disposal the wonder is a swimming bath has never commended itself.

Every warder in charge of a ward has a prisoner allotted to him, who performs such necessary duties as cleaning his office and assisting him in his multifarious returns. These men are generally selected from the clerk or tradesman class, and have great facilities for knowing everything that passes through the office. I have found, indeed, that they know and hear a great deal too much.

Thus a descriptive return containing every particular about one from one’s youth up, and supposed to be a confidential document, is carefully studied by these cleaners, and facts likely to be of general interest—especially about “celebrities”—go the round of the prison. These documents should either not be in the warders’ charge, or if so, should be carefully locked up. In my opinion they would be more appropriately assigned to the care of the principal warders of divisions. These cleaners, if dishonestly or greedily inclined, appropriate considerably more than their share of the daily rations. In one ward I seldom, or ever, got my supply of Monday bacon, which had either been filched or bitten in half; and as the original supply does not exceed the proportions of a postage stamp, it can ill afford this wholesale reduction.

I cannot leave the subject of “warders” without bearing my testimony to their excellency as a class—I specially refer to those in charge of wards, and not to their washerwomen and plumbers and glaziers confrères. The multiplicity of returns they have to render daily, the alterations, however trivial, that are constantly occurring and have to be noted, and the serious consequences attending the slightest error or omission, all combine to make their duties and responsibilities more arduous than any class of men I have seen. Their pay for this, moreover, is so small—29s. a week, with a gradual rise—that many otherwise excellent men shrink from accepting promotion. The colour-sergeants of the army might learn a lesson from these warders, and if the “descriptive return” in use, and which supplies every information, was substituted for the ponderous ledgers, small books, defaulter sheets, etc., as used in the army, it would come like the Waverley pen—

As a blessing and boon to sergeants and men.

CHAPTER XIX.
“THE CONVALESCENT WARD.”

On my admission into hospital I was at first sent to the convalescent ward, a huge room devoted to light and unpronounced cases. It accommodates 40 patients, and the entire furniture may be roughly estimated as consisting of 40 beds, 40 tables, 40 chairs, one shovel and tongs, and one thermometer. The beds are ranged round the entire room, the tables and chairs a yard apart forming two rows down the centre; the thermometer is suspended from a beam, the shovel is chained to one fire-place, and the tongs to the other. A high desk and a still higher stool complete the furniture of this singular room. The fixtures are of a more unique kind; at one end are the cabinets, at the other the lavatories. These are simply boarded partitions, extending only about three feet from the ground—so constructed as to make it absolutely impossible to conceal more than one-third of the body, however engaged; thus admirably adapted for observation, but utterly regardless of privacy or decency, and revolting in their proximity to a room devoted to convalescents. Along the walls here and there are chains hanging. These are the alarm bells for communicating with the outer yard in case of fire, mutiny, or other emergency. At each corner are the padded cells—grim, sombre constructions—admirably adapted for deadening sound, and fitted with every appliance for the restraint of violent and demented criminals. The proximity of these cells is very awful, and the shrieks that occasionally emanate from them, and the sights I have seen, would have filled me with horror six months previously. The treatment of convalescents is as original as can well be conceived. The day is mapped out into the following portions, which are observed with a punctuality seldom attained except by chronometers:—

6 A.M.	Rise, and roll up your bed.
6.30 ,,	Breakfast.
11 ,,	Visit by surgeon.
12 (noon)	Dinner.
3 to 4 P.M.	Exercise.
5 ,,	Supper.
6 ,,	Bed.

The dietary is the simple prison fare, although many (I amongst others) are on what is known as ordinary diet—i.e., cocoa, mutton broth, and a chop—and others on low diet, consisting of tea, bread-and-butter, beef-tea, rice pudding, etc. Discipline is little or nothing relaxed here; indeed the general system is evidently based on what is considered applicable to confirmed patients not suffering from any acute disease, and lunatics real and pretended. Shortly after rising a shout of “Physic!” causes a rush to get the first pull at one’s respective medicines; and as the same mug does duty for everything, and as time is an object, it has been found that a dose of hop mixture is not improved if augmented by the dregs of the black draught left by one’s predecessor. Being always up and washed whilst my brother-reprobates were still dozing, I was invariably the first to benefit by a clean mug, and devoted the next few minutes to watching the frowsy cluster of depravity, half dressed, half awake, and just out of bed, drink or throw away their doses as opportunity permitted. Although strictly prohibited, many of these wretches usually turned in with their stockings on, and in some instances with their trowsers; and on rising, having previously assumed boots and vest, proceeded to wash. I minutely watched this ceremony, and seldom detected the slightest desire to do more than make clean the extreme outer rim of their cups and platters, extending—humanly speaking—from the hand to the elbow, and from the chin to the ear. Although in many respects preferable to the prison proper, this convalescent ward was one of the severest ordeals I had to undergo. I would not have missed it for the world, nevertheless, to sleep, live, move, and have one’s being amongst thirty or forty pickpockets, idiots, burglars, and lunatics, implies an experience that baffles description. At 6.30 the advent of two wash-tubs, containing respectively cocoa and gruel, announces breakfast, which, being carefully measured into tins, is consumed in an incredibly short time, and devoured with the voracity never to be seen except in menageries or prisons. It must be remembered that the room contains specimens of some of the sharpest pickpockets in London, and experts at every dodge for the deceiving of their fellows, compelled by circumstances to be huddled together, and relieved from the isolation of separate cells that makes them comparatively powerless for mischief. It cannot be wondered at, then, that the rules require, if anything, to be more stringent; but all the vigilance of the sharpest warder is powerless, and no two eyes capable of seeing or preventing the wholesale exchange of food that now begins. If the warder is looking this way, a loaf will change hands for a mug of gruel in the twinkling of an eye; if he suddenly turns round, advantage is taken of it to swap something on the other side; and at dinner hour especially, I have seen bread, potatoes, and lumps of meat flying about with a rapidity, precision of aim, and a profound silence, only disturbed by the “flop, flop,” as they reached the various hands, that would have done credit to the most expert Oriental-Whitechapel juggler. After breakfast everyone is supposed to remain at his table without interruption the entire day, except during exercise, and time is only to be beguiled by reading such wholesome literature as “The Converted Burglar, and how he did it,” as the chaplain may be graciously pleased to supply. At the side of each table is considerately placed a handful of fibre, which is purely optional whether picked or no. I attribute its presence indeed to the association that invariably exists in official minds between hospitals, chapels, and mortuaries, and only capable of being dealt with on the principle that a certain old gentleman “finds some mischief still for convalescent hands to do.”

Happily no one really is ill in the convalescent ward (he would then be removed to the hospital), or it would be absolutely impossible to bear the incessant fuss from officials and filth from the prisoners that never cease day or night. Not twenty minutes elapse during the twenty-four hours that someone is not passing through; and as every approach is barricaded and double locked, the rattle of keys, the hobnailed boots of head warders pounding over the floor, and the shouting and yelling, and the necessity of “sitting up” to your table as they pass through, make it almost unbearable for even a convalescent. In addition to this is the absolute necessity of keeping one’s eye on one’s next-tabled neighbour. If you turn round during a meal, a piece of food disappears, and any trifle you may happen to possess cannot be considered your own from one moment to another. I had a worsted needle that I prized considerably; it fulfilled the duties of a toothpick, and had been my constant companion and comforter for weeks. It was, indeed, my most cherished possession. I usually kept it inside my cap, and my cap outside my head; here at least it was safe, but one day, in a fit of absence, I crossed over the room. On my return I discovered that my cap had been rifled and the needle gone.

An old man (though only one of many) added considerably to my burthen. He took a great fancy to me—or my food—and seldom lost a chance of persecuting me. He was never without a pocket-handkerchief stuffed full of crusts, chop bones, suet pudding, or any garbage he could find, firmly clutched by day, and placed under his pillow at night. He was by way of being a gentleman, and said, with some degree of truth, that he was a general officer (he was at present undergoing three months’ retirement for stealing a sovereign from a sixpenny lodging-house keeper). He approached one with the blandest smile, hoped you were not seriously ill, and asked how your appetite was. This, indeed, was the burthen of his song:—If you told him it was bad, he begged you to kindly reserve your fragments for him; if you said it was good, he stole what he could. The result was consequently the same; and so to get rid of him I promised to help him when I could. This nasty old man slept two beds from me, and often during the night, “when everything was still,” I have watched him unpack his treasure, and, selecting certain of the stalest pieces for immediate use, carefully tie up and restore the bundle to beneath his pillow or mattress.

This hoarding and stealing of food was by no means confined to the “General”; it was, indeed, so much in vogue that periodical raids were made on the beds, and even inside the shirts men were wearing, which invariably resulted in the exhumation of sundry delicacies. So strong was the ruling passion that one wretch with half a lung, who was allowed extras which he never consumed, rather than part with a crumb, would hide chops and even rice pudding in his pocket-handkerchief and towel, or secrete them in his bedding or about his person.

That food was a drug in the market may be reasonably assumed; and if further proof was wanting, the reckless waste that took place after meals would amply provide it. The supplies of soup, porridge, cocoa, and gruel were invariably in excess of the regulation personal allowance. Discipline, however, demanded that so much and no more should be given to each man; and I have seen gallons of capital soup and cocoa thrown down the sink daily that many a starving wretch outside would gratefully have devoured. I do not blame the hospital warders for this custom so much as the kitchen officials for either sending too much or adding too much water, for experience had taught them that it was equally dangerous to give more or less than the regulation allowance, and that they would probably be reported by one thief, if another thief got more than himself; and it was a common occurrence for vagrants who had never heard of arrowroot before coming to Coldbath to complain of the thinness of their nightly allowance as “unfit to be eaten.” I once suggested to the head hospital warder (but my proposal was never carried out) that the staple food of discontented vagrant invalids should be treacle and brimstone, and that if they complained of their diet, the treacle should be omitted by way of variety.

I don’t know what is the annual expense of food, fuel, and gas in the various prisons, but I confidently assert that an immense saving would result if the coal at present issued ad lib. for the use of the warders was as carefully weighed as the prisoners’ various allowances. These turnkeys, whose supply of coal at home is probably limited to half a hundred a week, cannot here do without fires banked up a foot high night and day in the various corridors; and I have often been awakened in various parts of the prison by the shovelling and piling on of coals on even temperate nights. I should like no better billet than to be appointed contractor for the coal and potatoes used and wasted in Her Majesty’s prisons.

Another means of keeping down the present excessive expenses connected with prisoners’ keep and warders’ coals would be the adoption of the sensible course pursued in France, whereby the clothes of murdered men and the instruments with which the murders have been committed, if not claimed within three months, are sold by public auction. This might be supplemented by the sale of the articles found in cabs and elsewhere, often comprising objects of considerable value, and at present taken to Scotland Yard and never claimed. It will possibly be urged that all this would be opposed to English tastes and ideas; and yet it is an incontrovertible fact that the principal purchasers at these “art” sales in Paris are English and Americans, that the price of articles which have belonged to notorious criminals generally rules very high, and that the ghastly relics for the most part find their way to England.

Exercise was a most ridiculous ceremony; the tables were pushed back, and everyone proceeded round and round in two rings. A scene I once saw at some theatre, representing the “casual ward” of a workhouse, more nearly resembles it than anything I can think of.

Amongst my numerous companions in this delectable sport was a celebrated pickpocket; who was good enough on my invitation to show me “how it’s done.” My request, indeed, appeared to flatter his vanity so much that on more than one occasion, when I was not thinking of his particular talent, he has removed my pocket-handkerchief, and politely returned it as if pretending to pick it up. I once saw him bring his science to bear on a thoughtless warder, who, through ignorance probably of his special talent, had asked him to brush him down. A wink from the thief drew my attention to his movements, and I watched him with profound interest. For some seconds he confined himself to the legitimate brushing, but as he worked round and the arm of his victim was slightly raised, with the unemployed hand he deliberately opened the warder’s pouch, took out a piece of tobacco, and then quietly re-buttoned it; with another smudge of the brush and “I think that’ll do, sir,” he resumed his place. I wouldn’t have betrayed him for the world; indeed, I gave him some bread for the exhibition.

It was pretty generally known that I was very green, and that I was anxious to see everything; indeed, I never lost an opportunity of conversing with everyone capable of telling me an adventure; so that one way and another I heard a lot, much of which I shall hereafter narrate.

Another oddity with whom I was associated was a kleptomaniac. Nothing was safe from him, and his eye was as quick as his hand. He might be seen at all hours sneaking about, thrusting his arm between mattresses and occasionally into people’s pockets. He was undergoing two years’ imprisonment for stealing two ounces of tobacco. So impossible was it for him to keep his hands from picking and stealing that it was frequently necessary to lock him into a separate cell for weeks at a time, only to be released after piteous appeals and promises not to offend again, which were invariably broken on the first opportunity. He was as nimble as a cat, and occasionally gave an acrobatic performance on the sly. The poor wretch was admittedly an imbecile, and it seems inexplicable how he ever incurred the punishment he received, though he was probably happier at Coldbath than he was ever likely to be elsewhere. One day he could not be found, and after the hue-and-cry had been raised and the prison and grounds scoured, he was found concealed in a tank on a portion of the roof. What he could have wanted there is beyond comprehension, for he dreaded the water and never washed unless compelled.

I’ve heard a great deal of prisoners escaping, and from the penal establishments it is unquestionably practicable. At a prison conducted, however, on the Coldbath Fields’ principle such an idea is simply absurd. I do not refer to the impediments of locks and doors so much as to the full blaze of light system along the corridors. The constant countings, too, and patrols night and day would at once discover the truant, to say nothing of the 20-feet wall that surrounds the building. I have occasionally read descriptions of escapes from the Bastille, where prisoners with a yard of rope, a spare shirt, and an oyster knife, have burrowed and scaled and got clean off. I am not in a position to dispute these assertions, but I will willingly undertake to provide the most expert acrobat with a sack full of ropes, crowbars, and linen, in his cell, and stake my existence that he does not proceed five feet beyond his premises without detection. The escape of a notorious burglar from Millbank Convict Prison last year gave rise at the time to considerable discussion amongst the officials at Coldbath Fields. That a man should be able to break through the roof of a cell during the early hours of morning without creating a disturbance seems incredible, and had the corridors had the same acoustic properties as those at Coldbath, would have been simply impossible without collusion.

So extraordinarily is sound conveyed in these vast and barren tunnels that every word spoken during the night at the other end of the passage is distinctly audible, whereas conversation close by is almost unintelligible, so great is the echo. I think Mr. Burglar Lovell may congratulate himself that he had not been relegated to Coldbath Fields, for he would most assuredly have derived less benefit there from his sixty feet of rope than he appears to have done at Millbank. A prisoner attempting to escape forfeits all the time he may have completed of his sentence—a sufficient deterrent for a sane man! A very disgusting adjunct to the convalescent ward is “Itch Bay,” and though comparatively distinct, is actually next door, and leads from it. It is devoted to those filthy creatures who, on admission, are found to abound in vermin, or who, after months in prison—as can be verified—have caught the disease (according to my theory) by using the universal bath. The treatment of this complaint can hardly be said to be a pleasant, although undoubtedly a very effectual one. A man is taken to “the bay,” made to strip off all his clothes, put into a separate cell, and smeared with a thick coating of mercurial ointment, and left to soak for three days at least, and often longer. His bedding may best be described as an ointment mattress, with “blankets to match,” so saturated is everything in this fearful quarter, the stench from which pervades the passage, and works into the convalescent ward. I used almost daily to see these loathsome objects, either before admission or after three days’ retirement, and it is difficult to say which is the most revolting. On admission, and previous to treatment, I have seen three or four of these unclean things waiting to be admitted. During this time—often an hour and more—they sit in the convalescent ward, use the furniture, and circulate with the others. This surely is wrong, and may justly be laid to the charge of negligent warders! On leaving they are again taken through the ward, devoid of all covering but the saturated blanket, and conducted to a bath. This bath is a fixture in the hospital kitchen. Yes, the itch bath in the principal prison of civilized London is in the hospital kitchen! I have seen these social pariahs splashing about within a few feet of the kitchen fire, whilst a rice pudding was being made—an appetizing accompaniment to the preparation of human food. This gross outrage on cleanliness must fairly be charged to the Home Office people; and as the kitchen is situated in the main thoroughfare, and passed through almost daily by visiting justices or prison commissioners, it is clearly no official’s business to point it out—and if a surgeon represented it he would probably be told to mind his own business. This is in conformity with prison usage, and anyone mentioning, or taking apparent interest in a trifle not actually connected with his special department, is at once suspected of some sinister motive. I have heard officials regret this disgusting institution, and their inability to remedy it.

I have more horrors connected with this kitchen to mention when I describe the hospital, and hope some one whose business it is will redress this crying shame. As a set-off to the many discomforts attending the convalescent ward, were the facilities it offered for the uninterrupted working of the telephone, and so multifarious were the opportunities, and so utterly impossible detection, that I omitted the commonest precautions as absolutely superfluous. My favourite time for correspondence was between two and four in the morning. I noticed that nature usually asserted itself on turnkey humanity, and that the most watchful became drowsy about this time. It must be remembered that a night warder is in the room all night, and that the gas, though turned down, is alight. I frequently wrote for two hours at a time, and as my bed was next the fire-place I had the advantage of poking it into a blaze as circumstances required. I often wondered whether these watch-dogs were really dozing. That they had not the faintest suspicion I am confident; the very possibility of such coolness may possibly have disarmed them, for I have written for hours under their very noses. One night I had a considerable scare. I had been carried away by the interest of my letter, and whether I had thought aloud and some word had escaped me I cannot say, but on peeping round the mantelpiece I saw one of the most ferocious of the tribe—who was on duty that night—leaning forward and peering in my direction. His eyes glistened like a cheetah’s as he cautiously approached the fire-place—the mantelpiece and one bed alone separated our respective positions, the rattle of a paper, or a hurried motion, would have been fatal; so, proceeding to mutter in my sleep, I slid my arm over a very damning pile. For some moments he stood intently watching me, and then happily began to poke the fire. Had he delayed much longer I should inevitably have betrayed myself; as it was, the noise “justified” my being disturbed, and I rolled round, “papers under,” as Bell’s Life would once have described a pugilistic round. The danger was now past, but I had quite determined, if he had asked me any unpleasant questions, to have made a dash at the fire-place and destroyed the evidence. There is a curious invention that exists in various parts of the prison. Detector-clocks are intended to show that a warder must have been alert every half-hour, by being required to press down a pin. This pin is so constructed that it cannot be let down except at the exact time, or unless the clock is unlocked. These various clocks undergo a minute inspection the following morning, and if all the pins are not down the delinquent is fined a shilling, or even more, for each omission. I could tell some curious stories about these detector clocks, but their narration might be interpreted as pointing in directions I have no intention of indicating. I may, however, without compromising anyone, state that if the authorities conceive they are aware of the exact number of keys that open these clocks, they are considerably out of their reckoning.

“My eye, old man,” I one morning said to an acquaintance, “you’ve missed two or three pins.”

“Never mind,” he replied; “I’ve got a pal outside that’ll make it all right before I’m relieved.”

At 6.30, when my friend was, I hope, comfortably in bed, I saw the Detector inspected and found “correct.”

On one occasion a friend kindly supplemented the rubbishy literature provided by the chaplain by lending me to read the book of “Rules for the Guidance of Warders and Assistant-Warders.” They can hardly be said to be as interesting as those lately published by Howard Vincent for the guidance of the police, although, situated as I was, they were to me vastly more important. I had intended to have produced them verbatim, but they are not of sufficient general interest. They, however, deal with the various duties of warders in that absurd style which attempts to impress on them the responsibility and general respectability of what, if carried out in its integrity, is a contemptible system of espionage.

CHAPTER XX.
CRIMINAL LUNATICS.

In one of the padded cells was a dangerous lunatic. For weeks and months he had kept up an incessant conversation with himself, occasionally diversified by shrieks and yells. At first it was believed the man was shamming, and he was taken before the visiting justices and sentenced to be flogged, but this usually infallible cure had not the desired effect. Clothes were converted into rags in an incredibly short space of time. He was handcuffed in front, and still they were destroyed. He was handcuffed behind with the same result. On his door being opened he would be found naked, the handcuffs on the floor, and his clothes in shreds. Canvas sacks, with slits for the head and hands, were suggested, and, first clothed, then handcuffed with his hands behind him, and finally covered with the huge sack, he was again consigned to the cell. The same result, however, invariably followed, and the kind-hearted doctor, despairing of cure, and though inwardly convinced it was an artfully contrived sham, yet loth to persist in the stringent remedies that alone were effectual, gave him the benefit of the doubt, and consigned him to the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell. I have frequently seen this maniac fed. His door was opened and he was brought out, and, half-naked and handcuffed, bleared, filthy, and bleeding from self-inflicted injuries, with dishevelled hair, and glaring like a panther, this wild beast in human form would open his mouth, and gruel and bread be shovelled in bounteously. Attempts would occasionally be made to induce him to wash, but at best they were qualified successes, and the assistance of four or five turnkeys had eventually to be resorted to. It was impossible to believe this being was sane and capable of keeping up the deception for such a time. Sleep was out of the question, for night was made hideous by the muffled shouts and blasphemies that forced themselves through the padded cell. But a reprieve at length came, and it was with a sense of relief that I one morning saw him taken off to Hanwell. The lull, however, was not of long duration; and he was eventually sent back as “cured.” The cure showed itself in a curious way. On finding himself again in his old quarters, and smarting under a pretended sense of breach of faith, he raved that the doctor at Hanwell had promised to release him if he withdrew his claim to the crown of Ireland. And now a reign of terror began in earnest, and shouting for Parnell, his secretary, the Empress Eugenie, and Old Ireland, he raved and roared day and night. How human nature could bear such a strain appeared marvellous. One night all was calm. “Thank goodness!” I thought, “he’s collapsed.” Had he? The wish, alas! was father to the thought, and the lull was only the precursor of the storm. Whilst we were sleeping the maniac was maturing his plans, and a shout of “Fire!” one night reminded us of his proximity. Smoke was now issuing from the padded cell. To draw back the ponderous bolts was the work of a second. To distinguish anything was absolutely impossible. Blinding smoke filled the cell, and as it poured out a terrible sight presented itself. On the floor was the charred mattress, the horse-hair alight, and the plank bed smouldering, and peacefully lying beside it was the madman. The first idea was that he was dead, but the smoke that would have killed a sane man had but temporarily stupefied him. In an instant he was on his feet, and, his arms being free, made a desperate attack with pieces of glass on the two men who had humanely approached him. Further help was now sent for, during which time he kicked, struck, and bit everything within reach, and it required sixteen men to secure and remove this wild beast in human form. The extent of his mischief now made itself apparent. How he had removed the handcuffs remains a mystery, but with the cunning and dexterity only to be found in maniacs, he had succeeded in reaching the gas, which, situated ten feet from the ground, and protected by a strong glass, must have taxed his ingenuity, not only to reach, but eventually to open, and yet this had been done so quietly that forty men and a watchful warder in the adjoining room heard nothing. With the fire now at his disposal, he had burnt the straps that were lashed round his body to secure the sack, but finding the effect not sufficiently expeditious, had proceeded to pull out the bed-stuffing, and lying down naked, bruised, and bleeding, beside the smouldering mass, calmly awaited the conflagration that was to free him. The cell presented an extraordinary appearance. On the floor were broken glass, burning wood, and his clothes torn to shreds; here the handcuffs, there the charred straps: the walls were smeared with filth and dabbed with porridge; the plank bed was torn up, and plaster and brickwork removed: a terrible wreck, an incredible performance, and all the work of two hands, handcuffed behind and strapped, and surrounded by every precaution that official ingenuity could suggest.

This final escapade materially assisted the magisterial finding as to the extent of the maniac’s “cure,” and he was again consigned to Hanwell.

Another lunatic of a different type was an inmate of the convalescent ward, a harmless, inoffensive creature, that had been flogged out of his senses. His physique proclaimed him incapable of doing bodily harm to a calf. He was not more than five feet high, with a fore-arm like a robin’s thigh, and the receding forehead, sunken eye, and conical skull associated with imbecility; but he had once “threatened” a warder, a hulking, round-shouldered old woman, that might have squeezed the life out of him without turning a hair, and discipline demanded he should be reported, and the visiting justices sentenced him to be flogged. From that day he never spoke, and would sit for hours without moving; suddenly he would break out into an immoderate fit of laughter, to be immediately followed by a paroxysm of grief, and, laying his head on the table, would sob like a child. Nothing appeared likely to restore his naturally limited intellect, and the country will be at the expense of keeping this “dangerous criminal” for another twelvemonth, who would be infinitely more at home at Earlswood Asylum for Idiots. A perfect child occupied another of these hospital cells, an incorrigible young scamp of about fourteen, that nothing seemed capable of taming. Everything within reach he proceeded to destroy, and clothes supplied him in the morning were in shreds at night. He, too, was constantly handcuffed; he refused to eat, and for a week nothing passed his lips. One day, on his door being opened, he was found suspended by a bed-strap from the bell-handle: another second, and life would have been extinct. For this he was taken before the visiting justices and birched. It had, however, no deterrent effect, and up to the time of his release he remained the same incorrigible young ruffian. There is no hope for such a lad; his future is bound to be a repetition of many instances I saw amongst the adults, who had commenced a career of crime with birchings, followed by three and five years in a reformatory, and ending with imprisonment and eventually penal servitude. Another companion that was the source of occasional anxiety, had been an inmate of a lunatic asylum, and though usually quiet, was subject to extraordinary fits. The first intimation of one coming on was a demoniacal groan, and in an incredibly short time a space was cleared round him. It had been found, indeed, that nothing could arrest the first paroxysm, and on the “band beginning to play,” a stampede invariably ensued: and not without cause, for everything within reach became an instant wreck, and tables, chairs, books, and (when procurable) arms and noses, were ruthlessly attacked by hands, feet, and teeth. When comparatively restored it took six or eight men to remove him into a cell, and the only thing that appeared to rouse him was the presence of the priest. So efficacious was this remedy that when everything else failed, the Roman Catholic chaplain was invariably sent for, and in a moment oil appeared to be thrown on the troubled waters, and the maniac arose subdued, and clothed in his right mind. Here was a religion that appeared to appeal to the feelings, and to produce results never attained by brow-beating and personality—a lesson to be laid to heart, and worthy of imitation, though in the quarter it was most needed it was, I fear, utterly thrown away. Personally this influence did not surprise me, for though debarred, by being a Protestant, from coming into actual contact with the priest, I was considerably struck, and almost fascinated, by the kind smile and friendly salutation he had for all his co-religionists. An Italian by nationality, with all the refinement of manner habitual to his countrymen, this polished gentleman was a pronounced contrast to the fire-and-brimstone snob occasionally met with in the “Established” ranks.

CHAPTER XXI.
PRISON CELEBRITIES.

I was surprised at the number of respectable men—such as solicitors, an ex-officer of Guards, a bank manager, a man of title, stockbrokers, cashiers, ex-officers of the army and navy, clerks, clergymen, etc.—in Coldbath Fields. Some of these had quite lost (supposing they ever had any) their pristine semblance of respectability; others, again, retained the appearance of persons of education, and spoke and deported themselves as such. A lamentable instance of the fatal effect of associating with the scum, and the ease with which a young man of good position can acquire the style and appearance of a vagrant, was exemplified in young B—. He was not more than 25 or 26, had been a subaltern in the — Guards, and came, moreover, of a good county stock; and yet in six short months he had so far degenerated as to be punished on the day his sentence expired for stealing a loaf from a fellow prisoner.

A worthy old man with grey hair and venerable appearance, and who might have passed for the chairman of a board of directors, appeared every morning at mine and other cells in the passage with a dust-pan, and with methodical precision removed the sweepings. He told me he had been a solicitor with a large connection, with chambers in — Street, and had a wife and grown-up family in a comfortable house in a well-known suburb. His imprisonment was perceptibly telling on him, and his hair and beard grew whiter every day.

A bustling, business-like man, one day attracted my attention. He was connected with the stores, and brought me a new pair of boots. He had been the manager of a London bank, and undergoing retirement for six months for some error regarding the ownership of £300.

A tall, smart-looking man that was pointed out to me, was, I was informed, an individual who attained notoriety some two years ago over a mining scheme. He was suffering two years’ incarceration for a miscalculation of over £7000.

A man who called himself Count H—, and an ex-convict to boot, was languishing for a year, because certain noblemen had had the bad taste to object to his having obtained money from them by false pretences. This nobleman! had a mania for petitioning the Home Office (I will give a specimen of his style hereafter).

In addition to these, numerous individuals who had been gentlemen in their day were known to me by sight. Conspicuous amongst them, was an old jail bird and ex-convict, who had 20 years ago been a captain in the army, and ever since had existed (and still is) in prison, for terms of seven, five, five, two, and one years. All the starch had been thoroughly wrung out of him, though he occasionally stood on a dilapidated kind of dignity. I once asked him where a friend of his had gone. He replied, “I don’t know; we don’t speak now; he’s no gentleman. Will you believe it, he had the impertinence to doubt my word.” As his word had been doubted a good many times during the past 20 years, I was considerably amused by this assumption of dignity.

Many prisoners are under the impression that they have only to petition the Home Office to procure a remission of their sentence. It seems perfectly immaterial to them, whether they have the slightest grounds for this assumption or not, and it frequently happens that, instead of mitigating their offence, they put matters in a more unfavourable light by airing their grievances, whilst others make a rambling statement referring to every subject but the one particularly concerning themselves.

Count H— was a specimen of this class. He was undergoing a well-merited 12 months’ imprisonment for defrauding the Dukes of S— and M— and other noblemen of sums of money, by representing himself as the son of some individual, which he certainly was not. It is, of course, possible that he may (to use a vulgar expression) have been “changed at nuss,” though the fact that he had previously undergone five years’ penal servitude for a similar offence minimizes the probability that he was acting under a misapprehension. The Count! had no sooner taken up his quarters than he expressed a desire to petition the Home Secretary. A “form” being supplied him, which he retained four days, eventually reappeared so blurred and smeared with blots and erasures that its transmission was impossible. A second attempt was more successful, and the following exhaustive specimen of penmanship and veracity struggled up to the Home Office, and eventually struggled back:—“That your petitioner, on being discharged from Pentonville Convict Prison, at the expiration of five years’ penal servitude, found that certain moneys and property, valued at several hundred pounds, had been stolen by his agent, who collected his rent on his estates in Italy; that being at that time without funds to go abroad, he had written to the Duke of S— and Duke of M— and others, asking for a loan until he received his rents. That his father really was Count H— and a friend of these noblemen, and that the charge of false pretences was consequently incorrect. That he had held diplomatic appointments, and been decorated for gallant service, and that he possesses a coronet with S.P.Q.R., all of which clearly proves his identity. In conclusion, your petitioner appeals to you with confidence as a lawyer of renown, and a scion of the noble house of Vernon.—Signed, H—.”

I have corrected “the Count’s” spelling as far as possible; the logic and composition were, however, past redemption. The rogue evidently knew the Home Secretary’s claim to “Royal descent,” as delicately hinted at in the concluding paragraph.

Another individual petitioned against his hair and beard being cut, on religious grounds, and quoted the Law of Moses as forbidding these formalities. This specimen did not, I believe, leave the establishment.

I was frequently struck by the vast difference in the sentences awarded in what appeared to me to be parallel cases, and tried in vain to discover any system that might be supposed to regulate them. It cannot be denied that a great difference of opinion exists apparently amongst judges on the subject of crimes and their punishment, and that whereas one judge will administer justice with harshness, another will attain the same desirable end with a regard to humanity. With these respective characteristics, the criminal classes are thoroughly conversant, and it would astonish the Bench if they heard how accurately their respective peculiarities are summed up. Thus one judge is credited with being very severe on conspiracy and long firm cases, whilst another is supposed to be “down” on burglars, whilst it is generally conceded that a plea of guilty will invariably fare better than one of not guilty. For my own part I fancied I had noticed that conspiracy is considered the most serious offence, and that two men conspiring to defraud another of £50 will run the risk of a severer punishment than the individual who unaided steals £500.

I will quote a few first offences which, apparently similar, differ considerably as regards their sentences:—

(a) A solicitor for passing a forged cheque for £18 that had been paid to him: 18 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(a) A bank manager for appropriating £300: six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(b) A wine merchant for complicity in a forged cheque, £52: sentence, 18 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(b) A commission agent for forging a £600 bill of exchange: 12 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(c) A clerk (with twenty years’ good character and recommended to mercy), for forging £50 and stealing employer’s cheque: sentence, twenty months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(c) A City man, for a fraudulent mining scheme and forgery, whereby he obtained £7000: sentence, two years’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(d) A shopman, for robbing his employer of £50: sentence, three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

(d) A beggar boy, for stealing 1s. 6d.: sentence, three months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

There are men in Coldbath whose cards show upwards of seventy previous convictions, varying from a year to seven days; nor is it to be wondered at, considering the starvation that confronts them outside and the comfort that is accorded them in prison. One of these habitual vagrants on his periodical appearance was usually accosted with an official joke, “Same address, I suppose?” “Yes, please,” was the invariable reply; “no change since last time.”

One old man in the convalescent ward, suffering from rheumatism and asthma, who was supplied with dainties he could never have heard of before, confessed to me that he should have preferred six to the three months’ imprisonment he was undergoing. Another old vagrant (a City man) told me that he always made it a rule to sleep on a doorstep a day or so before Christmas Day to insure the Christmas meal of a loaf of bread, beef, pudding, and a pint of ale, stood by the Lord Mayor to every prisoner in Newgate. He was bewailing the loss of that charming residence, and telling me how, having foolishly omitted to make himself acquainted with the change of system, had subsisted last Christmas Day in “Coldbath” on dry bread and stirabout.

Foreigners of every description find their way into Coldbath, though the majority consists of Germans, mostly Jews. There is an advantage in belonging to this faith, as I was led to understand by a gourmand. It consists in receiving meat on Mondays in lieu of the usual bacon and beans. Circumstances, however, render the temporary embracing of this faith more difficult than they do that of Romanism, which is much in vogue; and as certain punishment would follow the certain detection, Judaism has not as many followers as the Australian meat would otherwise command.

Flogging is usually administered for insubordination and malingering. For less serious offences the punishment cells and short commons usually have the desired effect. There are two descriptions of corporal punishment—the cat and the birch, usually reserved for youths. In the former case the culprit is lashed to a triangle; in the latter he is hoisted on what is euphoniously called a donkey. As a punishment, the cat, as applied in prisons, is not to be compared to its defunct namesake in the army or navy. It is sufficiently severe, however, to necessitate certain after-treatment—an item in the programme regulated rather by the “system” than humanity. A soldier was invariably admitted into hospital after undergoing corporal punishment; a prisoner is, however, flogged and then conducted to his cell.

These floggings are usually administered in the forenoon in presence of a surgeon, and before evening a zinc plaster—perhaps two—is applied to the recipient’s back. The performance takes place in a room off the main passage, and is not unattended with a certain amount of ceremony. The traffic is stopped, and no particulars transpire but the howls of the victim, which can be heard all over the building. Since the abolition of Newgate, Coldbath has risen in retributive importance, and garrotters sentenced to the lash here receive their punishment.

A one-legged garrotter was lately flogged; his leg, which had been amputated at the thigh, prevented his being securely tied, and his abortive struggles procured him a flogging infinitely severer than ordinarily experienced. Every blow fell on a different place, and the twenty lashes left twenty wheals, breaking the skin in a dozen different places. Sympathy with a garrotter would be out of place, and no one can doubt that he richly deserved his punishment; yet one’s bowels of compassion are instinctively moved by the description given to me by an eye-witness, of a lump of bleeding humanity alone and sobbing in a cell, and receiving at five in the afternoon a zinc plaster to apply to the back that had been torn and lacerated in the morning.

This treatment in no way reflects on the prison officials, who simply carry out the regulations; it is the system that is to blame, and is capable, like the dispensation of justice before described, of considerable improvement on the score of humanity.

Floggings and birchings appear to have no effect on these hardened criminals, and though they shriek and bellow during the infliction, they invariably revert to the same offence, and qualify for a second edition. Shamming madness is a favourite form of malingering indulged in by prisoners. The uneducated mind, however, invariably resorts to the same tactics—a combination between the symptoms of idiocy and hydrophobia that generally fails in its objects, and invariably yields to treatment by the cat.

The boys that find their way into Coldbath are the most hardened young scamps I ever saw. They are supposed to be isolated, as required by recent agitation on the subject of juvenile offenders. That the isolation is a farce need hardly be said. At chapel they certainly occupy benches to themselves, but so do the various wards and trades; the tasks they are put to are similar to those done by adults; and the pains and penalties they undergo are identical in time and circumstance to those of the full-blown criminal. I have seen these urchins on arrival, with their knuckles in their eyes, blubbering in chapel, and a week later winking and making signs as if determined to assert their qualification to be clothed and treated like their adult fellow-prisoners.

Tearing up their clothes is the favourite pastime of these promising youths. I have frequently seen these children marched along a passage, handcuffed behind, and preceded by a warder carrying a bundle of rags three inches square, that formerly represented their linen and clothes. The treatment they receive puts this crime at a premium. Boys are admittedly vain, and desirous of appearing as men to their older associates, what more natural then, that a child (one of the instances I refer to could not have been fourteen) should aspire to the honour of appearing as a hero; marching through a crowded passage with his manly work conspicuously displayed, treated, moreover, like a real man, manacled, and eventually birched, and receiving the approbation invariably accorded by the criminal classes to the perpetrators of wanton mischief. One would suppose that in a huge building like Coldbath Fields these urchins might be absolutely isolated, and if their offences were punished without the publicity that at present attends them, they would soon be given up as not worth the consequence. That the treatment of this hardened class of boys is a difficult problem, cannot be denied, and the cunning and ingenuity they display is almost incredible. Fully aware that the visiting Justices only visit the prison once a fortnight, and that without their order a birching is impossible, it frequently happens that on the day of their discharge every article of their clothing is made into mincemeat. For this mischief they are absolutely free from any consequence, it being an offence against the prison, and not against the law. If a remedy was applied to this crime, similar to the Article of War that provides against the destruction of Government property, the delinquent might be handed over to a policeman, and this would effectually stop the practice.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE TREAD-WHEEL.

By Act of Parliament, all prisoners, till quite recently, were photographed after admission to the various prisons. This universal system is now abolished, and since January, 1882, it is only reserved for habitual criminals and prisoners sentenced to police supervision. I had the good fortune to add to my experiences and my desire to see everything, by coming under the universal system, I having become a Government ward exactly eleven days before the expiration of the Act. One morning, whilst at exercise, my name was called amongst some half-a-dozen others. I could not conceive what new atrocity I had perpetrated, and what could have occurred to disturb the even tenor of my ways. A few of my more experienced comrades, however, enlightened me by remarking I was “a-goin’ to be tuk,” and I found myself on the road to the studio.

Photography such as this can hardly be considered artistic, though I have seen worse, but not much. It probably, however, answers all the requirements it is intended for. These works of art are only produced in duplicate, and though I offered a fabulous price to the seedy artist for an extra copy, no business was done; for though negatives are kept, they are kept under lock and key. Of the copies usually printed one was presented to the Governor of Newgate (this individual being lately abolished, I do not know who is now the recipient), the other finds its way into the Coldbath album, and no doubt affords pleasure and instruction at such jubilant gatherings as prison lawn tennis parties, or warders’ beanfeasts, which I was informed (though never invited) are occasionally indulged in. Prisoners are taken in their own clothes, and it is a matter of regret that the ones I then wore have gone the way of all old clothes, for, like their owner, they did not improve by their incarceration, and their huge proportions made them worthless without alteration. Pose or position is a secondary consideration, a good out-and-out resemblance is the thing to be attained; a deformed ear, or a fly-blown nose, would at once be seized upon, and the lens directed point blank at such fortunate distinctions. In my case there was nothing to merit special reproduction, so with a smirk that would have hanged me fifty years ago (for even here the “artist” could not resist the conventional request) I qualified for the Government album. On one side one’s number is pinned to one’s coat, on the other is a slate with one’s name in full, thus supplying an index simple but complete, and in proportion to the intellects of such probable students as the motley crew one periodically saw at Newgate. To me the ordeal had neither terror nor charms, though to some of my companions it was evidently not agreeable. One rogue caused considerable trouble by persistently protruding his chin or distorting some feature; these antics were not indulged in in a spirit of levity, but resorted to gradually as the cap was being taken off. He evidently objected to an accurate likeness, and so he might. I never could find out particulars, but not long after he disappeared from Coldbath, and whether hanged or a “lifer,” I never heard. That photograph had fulfilled its mission.

Visits to Coldbath cannot under ordinary circumstances be undertaken by any but the most robust. The accommodation is clearly intended for the scum of London, and it is unfair to expect any respectable person to come unless smell-proof and provided with a box of Keating’s insect powder. I received one visit under these revolting conditions, though my subsequent ones left nothing to be desired. Conceive, then, a cell eighteen feet by twelve, fitted with four partitions on either side, divided by a narrow passage, with a warder walking up and down. Into one of these cages the visitor is conducted and locked in. Immediately opposite, and similarly enclosed, is the object of his visit. In appearance they resemble a Cochin China hen-coop; in size they about equal the den of the untameable hyæna in a travelling menagerie. Conversation of a private nature is out of the question, as, indeed, is intended; topical subjects are tabooed, and but for the sake of adding to my experiences I should never have subjected myself or my friend to such nasty conditions. Within a foot of one, and flanked on both sides, was either a costermonger talking to his missus and her frowsy, unvaccinated-looking offspring, or a pickpocket hearing the latest news from the Seven Dials; the Babel consequent being such as to leave no alternative but to say nothing, or shout at the top of one’s voice. There is a snobbishness about this custom that went far to determine me in my course of telephoning as the only way to retaliate effectually on official inconsideration. No one would be foolish enough to expect that a gentleman should be better treated than a costermonger under such painful circumstances, although it would be an act of consideration, involving neither inconvenience nor relaxation of discipline, if some little discretion were exercised, as at Newgate, regarding the visitors.

The tread-wheel occupies a prominent position in prison life. There was none at Coldbath on my arrival, the old one having been burnt down a short time previously. There is a delightful interpretation to the three magic letters, C. B. F. (Cold Bath Fields), that long puzzled me, and which takes its origin—as I heard—from the ancient structure. I had frequently heard this cheerful place referred to as “The Farm,” and on enquiry it was explained that it was facetiously known as “Charley Bates’s Farm.” “Charley,” it appears, was a peculiarly ferocious turnkey that some years ago superintended the tread-wheel, but whether burnt, like his toy, or still burning, or alive, I have not the remotest idea. Its successor was now being rapidly built, and all the artisan talent procurable was laid on, in order to complete without delay this necessary adjunct to hard labour.

A reference to the “system of progressive stages” will obviate my repeating many details as to the particular men put to this punishment, etc.

I had never seen a tread-wheel except from the stalls of the Adelphi Theatre, and was particularly anxious to gratify my curiosity. I cudgelled my brains as to how it was to be managed, with such success that I eventually found myself on the “works.” As I have the misfortune to be neither a mechanic nor an artisan, and incapable of driving in a nail without hammering my finger, and being a perfect infant in the use of a shovel, I was at a loss to conceive how I could possibly be employed; but this difficulty was at length surmounted, and armed with a brush I was put on a roving job. I had the run of the building, with a kind of general instruction to brush everything and everybody, up stairs and down stairs, and in the warder’s chamber. The warder in charge of this building in course of construction, was a worthy man, incapable of being tampered with, though I never tried him (why should I?), but withal courteous, respectful, and considerate—one of those men whose bringing up had thrown him amongst gentlemen, and who knew how to maintain his own position without offending the susceptibilities of others. The artisans under him worked with a will, and reports and rows were things unknown, except on scrubbing days, when some ill-conditioned hound happened to be temporarily employed. My duties consisted in sitting about in sheltered nooks with the broom between my knees, and on the approach of a spy, with which the place was infested, to rise and make furious lunges at imaginary spiders. These sweeps into space were very effective, and, fatal as they would have been to any insect had I seen one, were equally gratifying to their human prototypes, whose desire was to see one working hard. During my employment in this building it was, I verily believe, the object of more inspection than it had ever been before. I had been informed by telephone that my antipathy had given a hint that I was to be looked after, and if he was satisfied with the result I certainly was. Not twenty minutes elapsed between the various inspections, and occasionally they swarmed like horse-flies in summer round a lump of sugar. These frequent visits involved an immense loss of energy, and the casualties amongst the spiders must have been enormous. When all had been destroyed I constructed a pile of dirt—one pound of dust to four of shavings—which I placed in a conspicuous position. This was violently propelled from me during a visit, and gently restored when the intruder had passed.

I had the opportunity of inspecting this huge instrument of torture, and was considerably disappointed that I could not try its effect. I had the gratification, however, of putting some paint on one panel and a piece of putty into a hole, thereby having assisted at the making of the wheel. Putting putty into a hole is not so easy as it may sound. At the inspection of work next day I had the mortification of seeing my lump condemned, and cruelly removed. The tread-wheel is moved by elaborate machinery worked by powerful engines, which, in addition to setting the wheel in motion, grinds corn in an adjoining building for the use of the prison. It is entirely different from the Adelphi one, and may be described as four long cylindrical wheels extending the length of the building on either side and along the gallery. Partitions, of sufficient dimensions to enable a man to stand up, run the entire length of the various wheels, thereby precluding all communication between the several occupants. Two hundred and sixty men can be “on” at once, and the punishment is carried out on the principle of ten minutes “off” and twenty minutes “on.” The victims are marched down at 7.30 A.M., and beguile the time thus pleasantly till 11.30. They return at 1.30 p.m., and continue the enjoyment till 5.

I am told this is considered an easy wheel, and men who have experienced the working of others assured me that this one was mere child’s play. A great deal depends on the worker, and the experienced jail-bird rises—or, as it was termed to me, “waits for”—the step with little or no exertion. With the novice, however, it is severe labour, and the exertion involved bathes him in perspiration. A supply of warm water is given them on returning to their cells of an evening, to obliterate in a degree the unpleasant consequences of the wheel. But the discomfort—can one estimate it? A poor wretch bathed in perspiration, and having to sleep in the same shirt and work in it for a week! Only prisoners fit for hard labour are put to the wheel, and no man is ever so employed unless passed by the surgeon. The doctor’s work is considerably augmented by the reconstruction of the wheel, and besides having to visit the yard frequently during the day, he is persecuted by strings of schemers trying by every conceivable subterfuge to evade the punishment. Some go the length of tumbling off, and occasionally succeed in temporarily disqualifying themselves by a sprained ankle or wrist. I was much amused during my employment at its construction at the interest that the various officials took in every detail connected with its progress. They revelled at the prospect of the treat in store for them, and seemed to gloat over the exquisite misery awaiting some of their lambs. Bunches of these warders would occasionally meet, and discuss the intricacies of the machinery with a gusto only to be acquired by prison contagion. It would not have surprised me to have heard that the opening ceremony had been attended by some kind of fête, to which the warders and “their ladies” had been invited, and condiments—made on the premises—distributed wholesale.

My worst enemies, and those I had to fear most, were the prisoners. They were all jealous of me, and had got an absurd notion into their heads that I could do as I liked, and, though there was no truth in such an impression, never lost an opportunity of “rounding” on me. A one-eyed scoundrel, who was one day checked and eventually punished for idleness, complained to the Governor that he didn’t see why he should work all day and another man (me) sit down and do nothing. This had the effect of causing me to be transferred elsewhere, and I next added to my experiences by becoming a gardener. I was not sorry to leave the wheelhouse, for it had a depressing effect on me, which the hum of the traffic just outside did not assist in allaying. As a wag said to me one day, “This will be a nice place when it’s finished.”

CHAPTER XXIII.
GARDENING.

I had at last indeed tumbled on my legs. My new duties offered a combination of advantages—such as variety, fresh air, newspapers, tobacco, etc.—far in excess of my fondest dreams. There are six so-called gardeners, who are constantly employed in the grounds. At 7.30 they go out, and rarely return before dinner; and again at 2, remaining out till 5. In fine weather this is a great relief, and I enjoyed many an afternoon basking in the sun on a grassy bank.

The general duties of a so-called gardener are a combination of the qualifications necessary for a dustman, carpet-beater, and agricultural labourer. They are, in fact, the scavengers of the establishment, and poke about all day under a curiosity of the turnkey species, and overhaul everything and everybody. Their duties are absolutely legion, and carpet-beating, mowing, weeding, and raking the walks are only a moiety of their accomplishments. I was appointed to this favoured team through the kindly recommendation of the assistant surgeon after my recent temporary discharge from hospital; and the master gardener, not having been consulted, as I fancy he usually was, was not by any means predisposed in my favour. That, however, wore off; and though I found him the most crotchety, three-cornered eccentricity I had ever met, I soon discovered his weak point, and did pretty much as I pleased. I must here repudiate any insinuation that by this I mean to imply he was to be squared. I might as well have tried to square the Marble Arch. Besides which, I did not require to, my supply being greater than my demand.

Our first duty was to proceed to the tool-house, and, armed with shovels, wheelbarrows, baskets, etc., to commence grubbing about. As a newcomer I was selected for the “barrer,” and a heavier “barrer” I never felt; but having knocked some paint off a gate, and rolled it over a sacred grass plot, my incapacity was so manifest that I was disrated to a shovel. Here, too, I was lamentably ignorant, and out of every spoonful I collected a third went into the “barrer” and the remainder everywhere else. I was, in fact, trying to emulate the scavengers one sees ladling mud on wet days. The long shots they make have always inspired me with admiration; their revels in the oceans of mud exercised a fascination over me, causing me till now to overlook the science that is required to produce such apparently simple efforts.

I have often driven up the hill that runs outside the front of the prison and fancied it was steep; that fancy has since been confirmed, and I am now in a position to assert positively that it is very steep, especially between the shafts of a “barrer.”

A duty we were about to undertake one day was the weekly overhaul of the head warder’s quarters. I was spared a share in this revolting exercise—I never knew how—but was simply told I should not be required.

I had often sympathized with these gardeners long before I joined them, when seeing them shaking the frowsy rugs and rags, carpet slippers, and other gimcracks, and dusting Mrs. Head Warder’s best Sunday willow-pattern teapot. My general ignorance, too, in the various branches of scavengering had become so apparent that I felt convinced I should be informed that I “didn’t suit”; but, thanks to the consideration of the Governor and assistant surgeon, I was retained, though otherwise employed. I was henceforth entirely detached, and turned out into various portions of the grounds, and told to do the best I could. My special instructions were to annihilate a certain weed, for which purpose I was armed with a knife, though I seldom used it for that particular purpose. The effect of this weed on the funny head gardener was very strange, and he would grind his teeth and mutter at the very sight of one. I at once took the cue, and feeling it would please him, besides showing my zeal, used the strongest language I could lay tongue to whenever I detected one. My zeal, I fear, often led me into mistakes, and valuable clover and priceless dandelions were ruthlessly sacrificed to my want of discrimination. These errors in uprooting the wrong plants generally elicited a gentle rebuke, but the “cussing” at the hated fungus condoned my offence. “It was zeal, sir, zeal,” and he began to “like that chap—he was willing, anxious like.” But the way I won the old boy’s heart was my love for old coins (as a fact, I know nothing about them, and prefer the more modern specimens). It happened one day he picked up a rusty coin—whether a button or an obsolete farthing I cannot say. I boldly, however, pronounced it to be a Henry the Seventh, said I would gladly pay five shillings for one like it, rattled along about Museum Street, my collection, etc., till he recognized a brother-collector, and a bond of sympathy was established; and as he dropped the Henry the Seventh into his pocket, he led me to understand he had many like it at home. Whether he undertook a pilgrimage to Museum Street I cannot say, but about a month later a coolness showed itself in his manner towards me, which rather led me to suspect he had.

I now found myself my own master. No one was specially interested in my movements. I was on my own hook, and so long as I appeared to be occupied when certain individuals were going their rounds, I was never interfered with; and as these rounds took place at about the same hours daily, I mapped out my occupation accordingly.

At 7.30 I was turned into a large lawn, with sloping banks on three sides and railings on the fourth; between these and the outer wall was a gravel walk that circumvented the prison. A turnkey patrolled this walk day and night, armed with a cutlass. I asked one of them one day what he should do if he found anyone scaling the wall. “Do?” he said. “If it was you, I should say, ‘Don’t be a fool; you’ll sprain your ankle dropping down t’other side.’” “And suppose it was some other chap?” I inquired. “Ah! then,” he added, “I should carve him about a foot below the waist.”

Between 8 and 9 parties of men were constantly passing to and fro to their various work. I usually, therefore, devoted that hour to contemplation, the selection of some half-a-dozen weeds for future decapitation, and a general look round. When things had settled down a bit, my knife came into requisition, and proceeding to one of my hiding-places I selected one piece of tobacco for immediate use, and sliced enough for my day’s consumption. I had some of these holes in various parts of the grounds, constructed of a slate floor about three inches square, with bricks for the roof and sides. I found them admirably adapted to resist rain, and many I daresay are still in existence. This enjoyment lasted till 11, when it became dangerous. (I was nearly choked on one occasion by foolishly having a lump of tobacco in my mouth when suddenly confronted by an official.) After dinner I had a good hour’s reading (the papers don’t arrive before; indeed, the postal arrangements are capable of considerable improvement), and so the afternoon passed comparatively pleasantly, between the daily paper, ’baccy, and the sloping bank. I often felt amused at the thought of how different all this was to what some people believed; and a conversation I “overheard” in the previous January, when one cad was explaining to his inebriated companion that imprisonment with hard labour was worse than penal servitude, came vividly to my recollection. On one of these sunny days I was much amused by an outline of the day’s telegrams as given me by a friendly turnkey. It was the day on which the news of young Vyse’s death whilst reconnoitring Arabi’s position reached England. “Them Arabians are rum chaps; ah, and can shoot too, I tell yer: that officer as was recognisizing—look at that!”

Chewing was an accomplishment I did not acquire in a day; indeed, it took me weeks. At first it made me absolutely poorly, but I persevered, and eventually found it as agreeable as smoking. I could not, however, manage the twist, and invariably used the honey-dew or negro-head. This daintiness was not unattended with inconvenience, as no shop in the neighbourhood kept such a thing, and involved journeys to the Strand or Oxford Street. I was never so foolish as to keep the tobacco about me, and my cell was as free of it as any hermit’s. In the grounds, however, it was perfectly safe; tobacco under a stone might belong to anybody, and though the suspicion would probably have cost me my staff appointment, absolute conviction would have been impossible. To say that I was free from some sort of suspicion would be hardly correct, for although I was never searched myself—except on the one occasion before mentioned—my next-door neighbour was “turned over” about twice a week. The reason that led to this was as follows:—I had found this man specially useful—he was quite a second Mike to me; anything I required he did, and in return I gave him portions of my superfluous food, and occasionally a piece of tobacco. This traffic had not passed unnoticed, and had been communicated to a warder by another prisoner, who felt himself aggrieved at the preference shown by me for his fellow prisoner. These sneakings are universally practised, and through my entire experience I had to be careful of these wretches; they watched me and hated me, and if they got the chance, always rounded on “The Swell.” Swell indeed! The swelling had long ago subsided. I only weighed, thank heavens! about fourteen stone. These sneakings never affected me, and one of these individuals was once considerably astonished at getting three days bread and water for a privileged communication about me. A circumstance that occurred one day impressed me very much on the matter of destiny, and the accidents that sometimes combine to form a link between two individuals that a month or two previously would never have been dreamed of. It was the day on which (the late) Dr. Lamson had been sentenced to death. I was standing not far from the prison van, which had lately returned after depositing him at the House of Detention, and watching two prisoners cleaning it out. The partition that he had occupied contained three or four pillows, and I was informed it was a delicate attention on the part of the Government to prevent condemned men intentionally injuring themselves. “What are those pillows for?” I asked of a turnkey. “Oh, they’re only Dr. Lamson’s,” was the facetious reply; “he was sentenced to-day, so we just put them in for fear he should chafe himself, poor fellow.” When the cleaning was over my brother reprobate led me to understand he had made a discovery. Beneath the pillows he had found three cigars; he considerately gave me one, as indeed prison etiquette demanded, it being an axiom that an uncompromised holder of a secret is never to be trusted. I certainly should not have rounded on my confrère, but was nevertheless very glad to be the recipient of a specimen of this “Marwood” brand. It was a sin to chew them, but there was no alternative, as smoking was out of the question. Half-an-hour later, as I bit off a piece, the thought forced itself upon me, “Three months ago, he at Bournemouth, and I at Brighton, had never heard of one another, and here I am chewing the condemned man’s tobacco.” Funny thing, destiny!

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CHURCH MILITANT IN PRISON.

Religious ceremonial plays an important part at Coldbath Fields. The quantity, indeed, is lamentably in excess of the quality, and leavened with a degree of barbaric hypocrisy incapable of engendering any feeling but that of nausea. Language fails me in trying to describe it in its proper light; and though reluctant to appear as scoffing at religion—which I emphatically repudiate—what I saw and heard makes it a hopeless task to allude to the subject and yet divest it of its component parts. This cure of some 1400 (criminal) souls was vested in two chaplains, of whom one had the misfortune to be a gentleman. I say “misfortune” advisedly, for unless incapable of contamination the most charitably inclined and refined is bound to deteriorate. Their duties, in addition to those usually associated with clergymen, embraced a soupçon of the schoolmaster with a dash of the district visitor, and if they were disposed (which all were not) to throw in a slice of detective work, it was not considered a disqualification for further preferment. The spiritual welfare of the Protestant portion of the prisoners was divided between them, all fresh arrivals during this month being specially assigned to the one, and all coming in the next devolving on the other. The etiquette and punctilio that regulated this division when once made, was as marked as that usually found amongst country medical practitioners. Thus, if Sykes the burglar, who happened to be one of the Rev. Smith’s lambs, unfortunately cracked his skull, and was in immediate want of spiritual consolation, he would in all probability be requested to defer his departure till the arrival of the Rev. Robinson. I mention this in regard to the system, and not as referring to anyone in particular, although the way I was ignored (very much to my delight) some weeks later, when my particular pastor was on leave, fortifies me in the conviction that my theory is correct.

A portion of the prisoners are visited daily by their respective chaplains, and day after day, between ten and twelve, is devoted to this solemn pilgrimage. That religion may be administered in various forms was apparent from the method pursued respectively by the two chaplains. The one seemed to think that a kind word and a pleasant smile might safely be addressed to the vilest criminal without detracting from his spiritual dignity; the other relied implicitly on scowls and frowns, and a recitation of the terrors of judgment and hell as the proper ministration for miserable sinners.

I have special cause to be grateful for the accident that assigned me to whom it did, as, being a Presbyterian, and never having benefited to the extent of “confirmation,” I should most assuredly have found my spiritual lines cast in harder places under an uncompromising bigot of Episcopacy, than under one who was willing to admit, that the kingdom of Heaven was not specially reserved for members of the Church of England. The multifarious calls on his time prevented my chaplain from seeing me more frequently than once or sometimes twice in a fortnight; but even these occasional visits did not pass unnoticed, and I gleaned, from a casual remark he once made, that his spiritual superior considered a visit every two months ample for the requirements of the most depraved outcasts. I can only attribute this conclusion to the potency of his peculiar ministration, which, unless taken in homoeopathic doses, might possibly have been injurious to both body and soul.

I never came much in contact with the chief pillar of the chapel, though I was made acquainted with his usual routine by many of his flock:—“What are you here for? Do you say your prayers?” were the soothing conundrums he rapped out on his periodical visits; and if the answer was in the negative, it was followed by “D’you know where you’re going to?” and then the door was slammed with a reverence suitable to the occasion. The relief that followed his exodus was, however, only momentary; and again the key rattled in the door, and a head, with eyes flashing, was once more thrust in, and yelled out, “To hell!” For of such is the kingdom of Heaven!

Chapel was an infliction one was subjected to four times a week. The service in its entirety was conducted with a strict regard to official etiquette, and the degrees of relative rank were as clearly defined by the Bibles and prayer-books as by the seats, hassocks, reading desks, etc., allotted to the officials. Thus, the Governor’s Bibles and prayer-books were gilt-bound, with gilt clasps; the deputy Governor’s, Scripture-reader’s, and schoolmaster’s, gilt bindings without the clasps; the principal warders’, clasps without the gilt binding; and those of the rank-and-file of warders destitute of either gilt binding or clasps. Prisoners had to content themselves with thumbed, dog-eared, leafless specimens, and so the united hallelujahs ascended to Heaven—let us hope equally acceptable, whether dog-eared or gilded. The interior of this sacred edifice resembled a barn, the nave being fitted up with rows of backless benches capable of accommodating some 600 knaves, a yard apart.

A bird’s-eye view of this congregation was one that challenged reflection, comprising as it did young men and old, dark and fair, short and stout, tall and thin, lads with fluff, and hoary-headed sinners, all stamped with the same mark of Cain—hang-dog faces and protruding jowls, conical heads with hair extending down the nape, bullet pates and cadaverous faces, cripples and blind men, one-legged and one-armed, yet all, with few exceptions, marked with the same indescribable jail-bird brand never to be mistaken, and once seen never to be forgotten.

The floor was tesselated (of the alms-house period), and one of the hardest floors with which I had ever come in contact. I realized this from a regulation that necessitated one’s grovelling on the slightest provocation. The walls of this portion of the building were of a bilious-official mud colour, the monotony of which was occasionally relieved by scrolls and texts of a personal nature. Beyond were a few steps leading to the pulpits and pews for the higher officials; here the mural decorations assumed a brighter form—indeed, paint seemed to have been laid on regardless of expense, and with a degree of vulgarity I had never seen equalled, except perhaps in Albert Grant’s lately pulled-down house at South Kensington. The mania for smearing the walls with texts was by no means confined to the chapel, but was to be found everywhere that propriety and extreme religious fervour seemed to suggest. Thus over the surgery, as a reminder to possible schemers, “lying lips” were very properly condemned; near the stores advice as to “picking and stealing” was conspicuously displayed, with about as much effect as if it had been placed in the oakum-picking wards; and everywhere, conspicuous by its absence, was the wholesome admonition, “If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, this man’s religion is vain.”

The chapel, moreover, boasted of an organ—a serious infliction, involving a temptation for the encouragement of singing; and nobody that has not heard 600 malefactors without an “h” in their composition bellowing “’Oly, ’oly, ’oly,” can sympathize to the extent the occasion merits. I was peculiarly unfortunate in my usual seat, which happened to be amongst the trades, and was flanked by the blacksmiths. I never heard them yelling without thinking that Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” must have been a different sort, which in its turn gave way to the “four-and-twenty blackbirds that were baked in a pie,” and then I was recalled to the proximity of the four-and-twenty blacksmiths by “’Oly, ’oly, ’oly.” I could have wept from sheer sympathy when I heard that glorious “Te Deum” so brutally massacred, and pitied the organist—an excellent musician—for having to play on such an instrument to such an accompaniment.

The entrance of the prisoners was not conducted on the principle customary in places of worship (though I suppose no one really associated this specimen with any attributes of the kind), but was accompanied by the blowing of whistles, and shouts of “Move higher up!” “Come on, there!” “D’you know where you are?” “This ain’t a music-hall!” and such-like appropriate exclamations. Music-hall indeed! The Middlesex magistrates would never licence such an exhibition; indeed, it only required a few handfuls of orange-peel to have made it a formidable rival of “The Vic.” in its palmiest days.

The chief cause of most of this indecent behaviour was one of the head warders, and when this man superintended the chapel parade the scene was disgraceful; and “Take that man’s name down!” “I’ll send you to your cell, sir!” and bully, bully, bully, was the preparation for the service. This is no exaggeration, and hundreds of officials and prisoners will recognize the description. At the same time it is only right to add that the Governor and chaplains have no means of knowing of these daily outrages, for custom regulates their entrance after the chapel is full, and when a toadying, eye-serving, make-believe reverence has succeeded the state of things I have described. The service was happily not a long one, and twenty minutes was the average duration from find to finish. It was conducted, I should say, with a tendency to High Church formula on the part of the clergy and a portion of the congregation. Thus, the ministers, the laundrymen, and the blacksmiths invariably turned to the east during certain portions of the service, whilst the Governor (an old man-of-war’s man, who could box the compass as well as ever), myself (I could see the weathercock from my window), the needle-men, who followed me to a man, and here and there a tailor, as persistently faced due north.

The habit of trying to sing “second” was a very severe trial to listen to, and I remonstrated with one old man that I looked on as a kind of ringleader, at the pain his efforts caused me. His voice was by way of being a tenor, and his disregard of all harmony induced me to christen him “Wagner.” One day poor old Wagner appeared with his neck painted with iodine, and the feeble croaks that he emitted, however painful to himself, were a considerable relief to me. Remembering, too, that when the Devil is sick he is supposed to be most susceptible of good impressions, and not wishing to lose the opportunity of working on his feelings, I determined to let him have it. I impressed on him the brittleness of tenor voices in general; how susceptible their metempsychosis was to disorganisation; how the epidermis of the carotid artery was peculiarly sensitive; and, with a casual glance at his neck, implored him for his own sake, if not for mine, to give his voice a rest. With beads of perspiration and iodine trickling down his back, he gasped compliance; and thus I reduced my “crosses” by one. Another horrid old man never failed to irritate me. He was undergoing twelve months’ imprisonment for inciting little boys to steal, but was now on the religious tack. So religious, indeed, had he become, that in a portion of “The Creed” he could not say “hell,” but invariably substituted “the grave.” I had never heard this impertinent innovation before, and could have kicked him and his hypocrisy into Wagner’s lap. Instantaneous conversions, such as took place years ago during the so-called Revivals, were of occasional occurrence, brought about, as I take it, by the thrilling discourses we were sometimes treated to, and the “awakened one” would stand up and hold forth. But very short work was made of these converts, and a couple of matter-of-fact warders soon trundled them out, to be brought up later on and punished for disturbing the service. I made a careful study of the two chaplains and their respective peculiarities in conducting the service. With the one I never had cause for annoyance, and though his sermons could not be said to bristle with eloquence, he was evidently in earnest, and mindful of the fact that the word Protestant embraced more denominations than one, and seemed particularly careful not to outrage the feelings of the many Presbyterians, Wesleyans, and other Nonconformists that formed a portion of the congregation. The other reverend individual had a partiality for the declamatory style, and whenever circumstances, or the calendar, gave him the option of selecting a psalm, never failed to declaim how “Moab is my washpot, over Edom will I cast out my shoe” (Ps. cviii.). I verily believe he used to think he was talking of his own household effects, and the expressions of admiration on the faces of the blacksmiths generally leave little or no doubt in my mind that they were thoroughly convinced he was appraising the contents of his charming little suburban retreat. But what he revelled in were the commandments: “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not” were balm to the holy man, and I was always pleased to see him enjoying himself. A favourite dodge amongst prisoners, now pretty well played out, is to petition for a remission of sentence on the plea of conversion and regeneration. That such a circumstance should be flattering to the vanity of a man who is morally convinced of his incapacity for converting anything, is not to be wondered at, but the marvel is, how men with the varied experience of prison chaplains (I speak generally) should be gulled by such shallow artifices. That they are, however, is beyond dispute. I have met and conversed with many of these brands plucked from the burning, and my experience accords with that of many capable of forming an opinion, that they are matchless both in cunning and rascality. They are invariably tale-bearers, or what are known in the comprehensive criminal vocabulary as “creepers,” for they do creep up the back of any one foolish enough to confide in them, and as surely creep down the next official’s who is mean enough to encourage their tattle. These gentlemen are pretty well labelled, and I made it a practice to always preface my conversation with any of them by letting them understand they might tell “Gehazi,” or any one they pleased, all and everything I might happen to say. One glaring instance of the converted type that I often led into conversation told me that he was very sanguine on the subject of a remission of the remainder of his sentence; that one of the chaplains was “working it” for him; and, indeed, that he and many other likely to be well informed individuals, such as assistant-turnkeys and fellow-prisoners may be presumed to be, had assured him that his success was a foregone conclusion. I asked him how he succeeded in getting such “powerful” advocacy, and although at first he assumed the fervent style, he very soon relapsed into his normal condition on seeing that I looked on him as a humbug. He then proceeded to explain that he began by expressing a desire to see his chaplain in private, in hopes of satiating the thirst for peace of mind that gave him no rest; that this led to salutary advice and a fagot of tracts, and had ended in his partaking of the Holy Communion—I almost hesitate to repeat this rank blasphemy, and my only justification is its unexaggerated truth; indeed, I would not dare to write such horrors unless fortified by my veracity. He went on to add that it was awfully jolly, and that he generally received any surplus that might remain of the consecrated bread or wine.

I am indebted to him for the following details of the custom that prevailed on these solemn occasions, which, retailed in a bantering style, may be briefly summed up as follows:—That the ceremony was usually attended by one official of each grade—such as the deputy governor, one chief warder, one warder, and a turnkey—to whom it was administered according to seniority; that the prisoners’ turn came next, and that by a judicious foresight he usually managed to secure the first place. He went on to add that he confidently expected some cozy billet in the prison suitable to his serious tendencies, and that his chaplain had promised to interest himself in procuring him some situation on discharge. As we became more intimate, he confided to me that he could never undergo poverty and privation again, and was determined to attain affluence, honestly if possible, but otherwise by one bold dash that should attain his end, or qualify him for penal servitude. This hopeful convert had been convicted of a till robbery, and had moreover committed forgery, which had not been preferred against him on condition that he restored the stolen money. It was this last spontaneous (!) honourable act that formed the basis of his petition, proving his instantaneous remorse for the error of a moment—a remorse that had since ripened into sincere and heartfelt repentance. He concluded by informing me that his chaplain had led him to understand he should probably give him a few pounds on his discharge, but that he had been deceived so often by “converts” he had assisted eventually becoming “convicts,” that he hesitated to help any of whose sincerity he was not perfectly satisfied. Let us hope he has not again been a victim of misplaced confidence! I have on more than one occasion found it difficult to maintain my gravity when hearing this rogue and his victim discussing Bible questions, and whining at the ridicule he had to submit to on account of his convictions, and receiving consolation by the quotation of the case of Mary Magdalene. I have no scruple in giving this account, as the principal actor has long since been discharged (but not on his petition, which was naturally refused), and because it is an ungarnished, indisputable proof of the deceptions practised by criminals, and goes a long way to justify the apparently harsh treatment frequently accorded them. That the chaplains are a conscientiously disposed class may be gleaned from the circumstance that on one occasion, when a converted sinner after his discharge sent a souvenir in the shape of an eighteen-penny papier mâché inkstand, the reverend recipient declined to accept it till he had first obtained the sanction of the visiting Justices.

“Tantum religio potuit suadere.”

CHAPTER XXV
THE HOSPITAL DEAD-HOUSE.

During my career as a gardener I became very unwell. I attribute this in a measure to a recurrence of a malady contracted in the tropics, and a chill I caught from lying on damp grass in a draughty yard. Another cause of my serious and probably life-long illness may possibly be traced to an insane and spontaneous act—an over-taxation of nature—many months previously. I had fined down in the ordinary course of events to the weight and bulk (according to my theory) that nature clearly intended; but not content with this satisfactory result, I determined to attain still slimmer proportions. Many indications convinced me I had found “my bearings,” and common sense ought to have suggested, enough; but vanity prevailed, and perseverance attained the further desired reduction, though at a more serious price than I had contemplated. My theory on the reduction of fat is based on my own case, and had I stopped as I recommend others, when I had found “my bearings,” I should have retained my usual health; as it was I went on and on, and like those enthusiasts who sacrifice health and life to the perfecting of a principle, so I, regardless of my own convictions, acted in direct opposition to my advice to others, and may be congratulated on having probed a theory to the very bottom at considerable personal sacrifice. If any sceptic is disposed to disparage my system, I ask him to blame me and not it. The latter consists of a dietary in itself harmless, and certain to produce diminution. When a certain point is attained it says STOP; and if it is asked why, I reply because beyond that point it is rash, and if persisted in, the theory is clearly not to blame. I am aware that many will seize the opportunity to disparage the system, and endeavour to deter others from following it. Such a course would be as logical as to condemn a glass of sherry, because someone had died from delirium tremens; or to abstain from eels because Henry I. had died from a surfeit of lampreys; or, to carry the absurdity a degree further, to avoid (like the old woman) apple-tart, because her husband had died of apple-plexy. It was in the spring that I commenced my campaign against nature, and though I had ample proof that I had arrived at my “natural bearings,” I determined (never dreaming of the danger) to persevere a little more. I was then about 15 stone in weight, and knowing it was a stone in excess of the average for men of my build, I thought if I could reduce just one stone more I would rest satisfied. I found, however, that my ordinary daily diet of mutton broth, a chop, potatoes, bread, and cocoa failed to reduce me as it had hitherto done, and that, try as I would, I recorded the same weight a fortnight hence. The remedy that most naturally suggested itself was to reduce the quantity, and I proceeded to divest my consumption, of the broth, the fat from the chops, and a portion of the potatoes and cocoa; but nature still continued to warn me, and I as persistently ignored her, and, losing all patience, I entered on a course little short of starvation. I took a solemn oath that I would for one week confine myself to six ounces of bread and six mouthfuls of water a day (six ounces of bread will be found to be synonymous to six mouthfuls, and no more). During the first 48 hours my appetite became ravenous, and on the third and fourth days the pains of hell did indeed get hold of me; and it was as much as I could do to resist the temptation of taking one mouthful of the savoury broth and mutton that was lying untouched on my table. The trial now became almost more than I could bear, and more than once I approached the table, where the food would have to remain for an hour, but at the last moment drew back. So acute, indeed, did I find this agony that, to avoid temptation and to put it out of my power, I used to throw the food into the slop-pail. After a few days, the cravings of appetite began to cease, and I congratulated myself that I was getting accustomed to it. An accidental circumstance also prevented my testing the result at the end of the seven days, and I continued in my madness for another week. On being weighed I then found I had lost nine or ten pounds. My appetite meanwhile had entirely forsaken me; the smell and even the sight of meat produced nausea, my eyes seemed to be affected, my head began to swim, I became giddy without cause. I was now really ill, and I endeavoured to remedy the evil, but my stomach refused nourishment, and if I ate I was immediately sick. The possibility of having fatally injured myself so alarmed me that I saw the surgeon, who prescribed tonics and a change of diet; and, as all failed in restoring outraged nature, I was admitted into hospital. During this time Dr. Tanner and his starvation exhibition were constantly in my mind, and the man I had once associated with the performance of a wonderful feat of self-denial descended in my mind to the level of a poor sick man like myself, absolutely incapable of taking food. Starvation has an ugly sound, and in its first stages is unquestionably painful; but in a very few days (three or four at the most) the sensation passes away, and is succeeded by an absolute aversion to food. When I have seen a half-starved man in the streets who has told me he has not tasted food for a week and was “so ’ungry,” my bowels of compassion have always been moved. If any mendicant was to tell me so now, I should know he was lying and refuse to assist him; but if he said he had not eaten for two days and was in agony, I should pity him and give him sixpence if I had it. I shall give a detailed account of my life in hospital, and the incredible kindness and consideration I received, later on. Meanwhile I will confine myself to the assertion, that to such an extent had I injured myself that in six weeks I had lost two stone. On one’s admission into hospital one is at once put to bed, and one’s clothes removed. This latter custom is intended to insure a proper compliance with the regulation, until the doctor’s sanction is obtained to the contrary. “Sitting up” has, however, been found to be half way to “going down”; and, as hospital is the goal to which all prisoners aspire, it does not require much inducement to commend their observance of this particular rule. The hospital consists of a large airy ward, fitted up with twenty beds. Through this, and communicating with a glass door, is a smaller room with three large windows, which gave a clear view of the outer world from Holborn Town Hall to St. Pancras Station. It was my good fortune to be located here, detached and alone, and yet sufficiently near to see and hear all that was going on. The menial duties of the hospital are performed by three prisoners selected for good behaviour. These billets are specially prized, and though associated with the most unpleasant duties, offer facilities for eating and drinking which, in the estimation of prisoners, cover a multitude of drawbacks. These cleaners eat up everything; indeed, so fat do they often become that it is a kind of unwritten rule that when they have increased a stone in weight they revert to prison life. The voracity they display is incredible, and until they become too dainty to care for anything but the best, they may daily be seen finishing eggs, tea, mutton, milk, beef tea, pudding, and arrowroot promiscuously, as they pass from patient to patient. The opportunity for this gluttony is unlimited, and a glance at the fare I subsisted on for over five months will convince the most sceptical that kindness and liberality can exist even in a prison; indeed, I attribute my being alive now to the tender care and medical skill I received, and can never adequately express my gratitude to the surgeons and the entire hospital staff.

My dietary consisted of—

6 A.M.	—Half-a-tumbler of rum and new milk.
7 ,,	—A pint of tea, bread-and-butter, and an egg or two.
11 ,,	—A pint of new milk.
12 noon	—Beef-tea, rice-pudding, and two glasses of sherry.

(I was offered, when I wished it, to substitute a chop, fish, chicken, rabbit, or anything I might fancy.)

5 P.M.	—A pint of tea, bread-and-butter, and an egg.
7 ,,	—A pint of new milk. (This milk was so excellent, that often when I left it for the night, I skimmed off a thick coating of cream that would have shamed many dairies.)
8 ,,	—A pint of arrowroot.

Every item was the best that money could procure, and unlimited in the supply, nor could I have lived better at a West-End hotel at thirty shillings a day; but my health precluded my enjoying it, and I could not summon the appetite for one-tenth of the dainties. Everything I left was devoured by the cleaners, and I have seen these cormorants gorging as if determined to burst rather than waste a scrap. Mine was by no means an isolated case, for every one was equally cared for, and it seemed as if a man had only to be really ill to be made to forget that he had fallen amongst thieves, and was now under the care of the good Samaritan. Sick men are proverbially impressionable; but now, months after, in a genial climate, surrounded by every comfort that a kind mother can think of, and gradually regaining my strength, I cannot look back on the past without feelings amounting almost to veneration, as I remember the kind friend and skilful hand that saved me from the jaws of death. The hospital is unquestionably the best managed of the various departments in Coldbath. I attribute this to the excellent staff of experienced warders, and the supervision of the medical officers. Where all seem actuated by the same desire, it would be invidious to draw comparisons; but the authorities little know what hard-working, efficient, and trustworthy men they have in their two night-warders, who week by week relieve each other, and perform their multifarious duties through the livelong night in a quiet, unostentatious way, and all for a pittance of an extra shilling a night beyond that paid to an ordinary turnkey. The many sleepless nights I passed gave me ample time to study their habits, which never varied, nor seemed regulated by eye-service; and from 6 in the evening, when they appeared neatly attired in white jacket and apron, till 6 in the morning, these living automatons neither slumbered nor slept, but were engaged, without intermission, in dispensing medicines, preparing plasters and poultices, and keeping up the fires, without fuss or noise, and with the regularity of a chronometer. At first my utter prostration prevented me leaving my bed, but as time wore on, I began to get about and observe what was going on. The day was a long and dreary one, though it was optional when one got up, nor could it be divested of the many annoyances that officialism—spiritual and temporal—seemed unable to forego even in a hospital. The chief culprit was the Scripture reader (as I understood was his official designation, though I never saw or heard him so engaged), who appeared regularly at 2 o’clock, and read a monotonous harangue, with a religious tendency evidently intended to be entertaining. I should be sorry to misjudge the worthy man, whom I am disposed rather to sympathize with, as the passive instrument of an irreverent exhibition; indeed, he conveyed to me the notion of a man actuated by a strong desire to fulfil a duty conscientiously which he felt was contemptible, and that deceived neither himself nor his audience. This farce and its surroundings were all sprinkled with the same reverential ceremony, and as he strutted up the passage with his billycock under his arm, a subdued tone pervaded the room and heads were uncovered as became the solemn farce. “The subject for our study and meditation,” began the unhappy man, “is entitled, ‘Jonas, or the bilious whale,’ or, ‘Cain, the naughty man,’” as the case might be; and then followed twenty minutes of twaddle, senseless and monotonous, and as incapable of removing moral stains as would be “Thorley’s Food for Cattle,” if substituted in things temporal (and seedy) for “Benzine Collas.” A fervent “Amen” always followed these effusions, loudly joined in by the cleaners, who felt it might be considered a recommendation for continued hospital employment, and those patients approaching convalescence, who hoped it might turn the scale in favour of a few more days in hospital. By opening the door I could see and hear everything, and I often caught poor “Bubbling Bill” casting sheep’s eyes in my direction. Meals were always preceded by a grace (?) said by a turnkey: “Bless O lor’ th’ things touruse for crysake, Amen!” a refreshing and commendable adjunct.

It seems peculiarly unfair on religion that it should so often be presented in a hideous or ridiculous light, and if the same stipulations were enforced as to quality as at present exist as to quantity, more things than time might possibly be saved.

At 11, and again at night, the surgeons visited the hospital, when every case was carefully gone into. The care that prisoners receive in this hospital puts crime almost at a premium, and though I may indirectly be accusing those eminent and otherwise irreproachable physicians of unintentionally aiding and abetting law-breaking, veracity compels me to say what I think. A case I met goes far to prove it. In the hospital with me was a broken-down old gardener who had seen better days, and was in receipt of a pension of five shillings a week from a former employer. This pittance, however conclusive it might be of his comparative honesty, was wholly inadequate to procure medical comforts for rheumatic gout, to which he was a martyr. He next appears at a police court for having a pig in his yard, which he had driven in from the street, and then informed the police. There can be only one solution of this act, for he was a man of sixty, beyond absolute want, and had never seen the inside of a prison before. He had now attained his object, and was undergoing three months’ imprisonment, during all which time he was in hospital. I saw him on admission, a cripple, crumpled up and half-starved, and I saw him every day swaddled in cotton wool, his limbs frequently fomented, and fed on the daintiest luxuries. This man was one of the few I met who was grateful for the care bestowed on him, and honest enough to wish he had had six instead of three months’ imprisonment. I saw him on the day of his discharge, comparatively cured, and wondered how long it would be before he again caught the right sow by the ear. A disadvantage that patients have to suffer from is the architectural construction of the ward: it unites the two angles of the prison, and necessitates its being traversed in its entire length by every official going his rounds. On these occasions great inconsideration is shown, the orange-peel delinquent of chapel notoriety being peculiarly offensive in the unnecessary noise he made. I heard him on one occasion complain to the warder, that a patient, who was almost in extremis at the time, was “too lazy to look up.”

During my retirement I saw more than one painful death-scene; the one that made the most unpleasant impression on me was that of a living skeleton, who seemed incapable of dying, although too weak to do anything but blaspheme dreadfully, and keep up one incessant groan. He was a man of sixty, and had been in his time the best known and expertest of swell-mobsmen. He had not a relation in the world, and although offered his discharge months before, had nowhere or no one to whom he could go. I saw this man dying for weeks, and eventually stood at his bedside when he took his last gasp. This man had been either a convict or undergoing imprisonment for the last twenty years, and the crime that led to his death in Coldbath was the sacrilege of putting a counterfeit half-crown into a collection plate, and taking out as change a genuine florin. One of the cleaners—an unmitigated thief, but sufficiently good to have qualified for staff employ—had told the warder the day before his death that he knew him to be acquainted with certain persons he named; and with the consideration that characterizes the treatment of prisoners in hospital, no pains were spared to discover the creatures. I saw them next day (two females, known to every policeman in London, the one as the keeper of a thieves’ lodging-house, the other as a “decoy”), actuated by no motive but curiosity and the intimation they had received, standing at the dying man’s bed in their tawdry finery, in company with the priest as attired in chasuble and stole he pronounced the extreme unction for dying sinners. The dying man, the kindly priest, the tawdry females, and the surroundings, formed a picture truly awful, and baffling description. But the end had not yet come; and as the room was again left to its normal condition, banter reassumed its sway, and bets began to be made as to the probable hour of his death. Pots of tea and bread-and-butter were freely wagered, and yet through the livelong night the dying groans, getting feebler and feebler, told how the swell-mobsman was still tussling with death. At five in the morning the end was evidently at hand, and slipping on my clothes, I joined the knot of men attracted to the bedside. The man was happily unconscious; and as the excitement of the sweepstake increased, I can only compare it to the game of roulette, when the ball almost rolls into one compartment and then topples into the next; and “He’s dead now,” “No, he isn’t,” “That’s his last,” followed gasp after gasp, till at a few minutes to six a profound silence announced that the swell-mobsman was gone. (It is only fair to state that much of this occurred unknown to the solitary warder, for what was one amongst so many?) By this time the prison bell was ringing, and the place was astir as day and night warders relieved one another. To stretch, strip, and carry him out of bed were the work of a moment; and what had been a living man a few seconds before had been washed, laid out, rolled in a blanket, and carried to the dead-house in less time than I have taken to write it.

The washing and laying out of a corpse is too dreadful to pass unnoticed. This necessary but revolting ceremony is performed in the kitchen. I saw the corpse divested of all clothing, lying on the top of the bath, in the centre of the kitchen, with the kettle boiling within a yard of it, and surrounded by pots and pans and other paraphernalia in daily use. The stench that pervaded the kitchen after this ceremony was so apparent (nor could it be got rid of for days) that I was absolutely unable to eat anything that had passed through it, and for days subsisted on the insides of loaves and eggs, as the only places where the flavour of potted pickpocket did not appear to have penetrated. This washing of corpses and the “itch bath” in a hospital kitchen is as great a scandal as ever was perpetrated by any Government.

The dead-house is a primitive establishment, and cannot even be divested of superfluous officialism. Its entire contents consist of a slab and a wooden block for the head of the corpse, and yet it boasted of an inventory board. This latter absurdity is conspicuously displayed, and reads—

“ONE TABLE.”

“ONE BLOCK.”

Another death I saw was even more awful in its suddenness. It was during dinner when some five or six patients were devouring their chops. One man, that was conspicuous for his habitual voracity, had left the table whilst waiting for the pudding. As he passed his bed he toppled over and was dead. The cook, with the characteristic officiousness of the criminal class, rushed out of the kitchen with a saucepan full of rice pudding in his hand, and began to assist at the ghastly manipulation. I was within a foot of him, and saw the wretch brush off a tear from the dead man’s eye, which he then proceeded to close; he then resumed his culinary duties, and gave the saucepan a stir. Rice pudding, I understand, is liable to “stick” to the pot; for my part, I made a vow to “stick” to dry bread; indeed, I never see one now without being reminded of this disgusting scene.

I was now beginning to yearn for tobacco. For some days past my illness had indisposed me for it; besides, my arrangements had been upset by my sudden admission into hospital. To communicate with one of my agents, although by no means difficult, was a question of opportunity. I was particularly anxious, too, not to be suspected of breaking a rule, for though it could only have been interpreted as a breach of discipline to be dealt with by the Executive, I found it difficult to divest myself of the notion it would appear ungracious towards my kind physicians if I transgressed any rule whilst in hospital. But my craving increased, and as I could not eat, and to smoke I was afraid, and consoling myself with the assurance that what the eye does not see, the heart does not feel, I decided, in the burning words of Bishop Heber, to “mind my eye and blaze away.”

My position necessitated my breaking a fundamental rule of my principle, and I confided in a rascally cleaner. I had, indeed, no alternative, for, though by the confidence I increased the chances of detection, I minimized and almost precluded the possibility of the ownership being brought home to me. My first anxiety was to find a place, for between my mattresses was out of the question, and I at length decided on the flooring; but selecting a plank and removing the nails are two different things, and I should have been defeated at the very outset. Chance, however, favoured me; and one day, to my great delight, a ram was caught in the thicket, in the shape of a carpenter, come to repair a window. As opportunity offered, I pointed out to him a short plank, and leaving the room, said, “I shall be back in ten minutes; meanwhile, if you remove those nails, and replace the plank so as not to be observable, I’ll give you as much grub as you can carry away.” These instructions would have been ample, but fearing his zeal to earn the food might outrun his discretion, I popped my head in and added, “If you’re caught messing about, kindly remember I know nothing about it.” This will hardly be deemed chivalrous, though strictly in accordance with etiquette in giddy Clerkenwell. Being satisfied with his work, but dreading to explore my secret cave, I told a cleaner to collect all the spare bread-and-butter he could find. So well did he carry out my request that he shortly appeared with thirty-eight slices, but so bulky was the quantity that it was necessary to smuggle it in, and the coal-scuttle was pressed into the service; but my carpenter did not object, and, removing the lump that concealed it from the vulgar (turnkey) gaze, proceeded to devour it. With his mouth full of one slice and shoving in another, he occasionally gargled out, “This is a treat!” “This is jam!” until sixteen slices had disappeared. He now began to show signs of distress, and secreted the rest inside his shirt; but what between the sixteen slices inside and the twenty-two outside, his dimensions had so increased that detection was a certainty. I therefore refused to let him leave unless he swallowed eight more—just to make an even two dozen—and the unhappy man again began. I can see him now, sitting on the window-sill, pretending to hammer, his eyes starting out of his head, imploring me to “let it be;” but I was firm, and had not the remotest intention of jeopardising my position by any such weakness. As the last piece disappeared, he was speechless, and I almost feared he was choked; but my mind was considerably relieved by his asking me, for mercy’s sake, to give him a drop of water. But there was none in the room, and, telling him it was all nonsense, and that the walk downstairs would make it all right, saw him leave the room with considerable satisfaction.

That evening I explored my cavern, which surpassed my fondest expectations; the architect must have put it there on purpose, so admirably was it adapted. Lifting up the eighteen-inch plank, I discovered a hollow place about six inches deep and two feet square. I now lost no time in getting my supplies, and, making a bag, at once filled it with paper, envelopes, a knife, pencil, and a cake of tobacco. From 6 to 7 A.M. was my favourite hour for writing and other business. I then carefully replaced my treasures, and sent off my letters, leaving nothing criminating about me except five or six atoms of tobacco, which I would have swallowed rather than that they should have been discovered. There were several advantages connected with a choice of this hour. In it one was perfectly safe from interference; so busy, indeed, was everybody, that the orange-peel man, who was busy counting and inspecting, and the other officials sending off night reports, would never have dreamt of anyone devoting this particular hour to the breach of a dozen rules.

As time wore on, I began to dread the detection of my hiding-place; so conspicuous, too, did it appear to my guilty conscience that I determined to abandon it. The light seemed to pour on its well-worn crevices, the Governor stood on it twice or thrice a week, the surgeons crossed it a dozen times a day, warders absolutely hovered over it all day long; so I communicated with the cleaner, and entered into an arrangement whereby, for a consideration of food and a piece of tobacco daily, he was to secrete my bag elsewhere. I felt it was madness to trust a confirmed thief, but there was no alternative; and within a week I discovered the fallacy of there being any honour amongst thieves, and the brute I had treated with the greatest liberality stole my bag, and came to me with a whining tale of how it had been discovered and taken away. It never alarmed me, as it would had I really believed him; and shortly after the whole conspiracy was revealed to me by about the only reliable prisoner amongst them, and I had undoubted proof of the complicity of every cleaner in the place.

My weary afternoons I usually beguiled by pantomimic love-passages with a frowsy damsel in a neighbouring house. Our acquaintance began as I watched a portion of her graceful form bulging over a window-sill she was cleaning at the time, which ripened into such an intimacy, that day by day we looked out for each other, and exchanged such protestations of devotion as might be conveyed by her holding up to me portions of her employer’s eatables, such as eggs and once a steak, which I gracefully reciprocated by exposing Government property, such as a medicine bottle and occasionally bread-and-butter. Graceful Selina! may my successor have been more worthy of your innocent virgin heart!

CHAPTER XXVI.
BURGLARS “I HAVE MET.”

The number of admissions into hospital about this time necessitated my having a companion billeted on me, an unfortunate Frenchman, utterly oblivious of any language but his own; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as that of the warders in French, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. He was complaining to me one day of the disadvantage he laboured under, and described the usual conversation that took place daily between himself and the hospital warder.

“Well, are you better?”

“No, sare.”

“O, all right.”

“Voilà mon ami. What do you tink?”

My companion, I was gratified to observe, was gradually mastering some of the idioms of our language.

Not long after, an extraordinary creature was admitted as a patient, and I cannot to this day say what his nationality was, although I am inclined to believe his language was some kind of Russian patois. Nobody could make head or tail of him, and a distracted warder, in this dilemma recollecting my success with the “other foreigner” and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of every language of the earth besides a few of the lunar ones, came and asked me to try and understand him. My knowledge of outlandish languages is not remarkably extensive (it is confined, I may state, to the Hottentot word for “rice” and the Chinese for “smoke”), and as no one appeared to have a Russian dictionary, I addressed him in Hindustani, considering that in point of longitude it came geographically nearest the Russian. He at once replied in a rambling speech, throwing his arms about and beating his chest; and though I am convinced he understood no more of my speech than I had of his, my reputation was established, the more so as he had no means of betraying my secret. Having then explained to the warder that he complained of pains in the chest, and would prefer an egg beaten in his tea instead of boiled (a change I considered unlikely to materially affect his complaint), I retired to my apartment.

I now for the first time came into personal collision with the chaplain. For weeks and months circumstances, and possibly choice, had kept us apart, nor had we exchanged a word since the eventful day when he discovered that an “unconfirmed” sinner stood before him. It was during prayers (a movable feast indulged in three mornings a week at the chaplain’s convenience) that I was referring to a book on the table in hopes of finding the particular extract he was reading. Failing in that I replaced the book, and resumed my hypocritical solemnity, in blissful ignorance of any impropriety. The holy man, however, thought otherwise, and hissed out at me—

“I consider your behaviour impertinent to me, and disrespectful to God.”

At first I retained my equanimity, for he was incapable of raising my ire; and I assured him what my object had been, and reminded him I was a Presbyterian. At this his rage knew no bounds, and sneering in a manner unworthy of a clergyman (I won’t say a gentleman), he said—

“A Presbyterian, are you? Ah, I thought you didn’t belong to the Church of England!”

I soon got the unhappy man’s back up. I assured him I was indifferent to his opinion, and added I was proud to belong to a Church where such intolerant views were not expressed by its ministers. This undignified scene was heartily enjoyed by twenty prisoners and warders, all of whom assured me I had had considerably the best of it. I intended to have paraded him before the visiting Justices, but common sense prevailed, and I should have ignored his further existence had it not been for a petty spite he indulged in shortly after. As I have before stated, the library books are under his special care. During my long illness I had waded through this “special” catalogue till I had reached number 21, and in the course of events might naturally hope to receive number 22 next. In this, however, I had made a miscalculation, and his Reverence decided that a school edition (the eighth I had read) of the History of England was a more wholesome dietary for a bumptious Presbyterian. I was convinced the mistake was not unintentional, but, anxious to give him an opportunity of gracefully retracting a contemptible action, I sent the following day to point out his oversight. The reply was, as I expected, “If he does not choose to have it let him go without.” I reported the matter to the Governor, who at once offered to place the matter before the visiting Justices, as he had no jurisdiction in the matter; but I decided that the man and his book were neither worth it. I should now, under ordinary circumstances, have been left entirely bookless—a contingency in my case that did not occur. It also gave me the opportunity of reading “The General History of the Church,” a well-written and exhaustive work by the Abbé Daras, supplied for the use of Roman Catholics. The superiority of the literature—religious and profane—selected and supplied by the Roman Catholic chaplain, together with his personal merit and gentlemanly bearing, makes Romanism a formidable rival to the “Established” Religion as dispensed at Coldbath. To judge by the jealousy that exists in a certain quarter, it is evident this superiority is realized elsewhere. But the circumstance was not unnoticed by my lynx-eyed, ghostly comforter. On many occasions I have seen him watching, as if he would have liked—had he dared—to ask me what I was reading; but he confined himself to discussing me with the warders, with such remarks as, “I see he’s got hold of something,” or “What’s that he’s reading?” all of which was duly reported to me. I feel I have given undue importance to this contemptible squabble; but I look on it as a tilt between sects, a tussle between an Episcopalian divine, armed with authority, and a Nonconformist, placed at a considerable disadvantage, and where—had I been in a position to do so—I should have left the room—as the Governor once did the Chapel when unmeasured and ill-advised criticism was being lavished on Dissenters. The guilt of schism lay heavily on this orthodox Churchman’s heart. I say schism, for I call it such of the most culpable type that ignores the insignia of Divine sanction accorded to the Ministry and people of Nonconformity. I would ask this bigoted Episcopalian what he thinks of Richard Baxter, Livingston, John Horne, Wesley, Whitfield, Chalmers, Candlish, Caird, Guthrie, McLeod, names only to be mentioned to inspire veneration, and yet these were all Nonconformists of one denomination or another. Surely, if Divine grace finds and fashions such men, they may be considered as entitled to at least respect from clergymen and gentlemen, who, if they do not agree in their respective tenets, may at least abstain from unmeasured abuse of them and their followers! Arrogance anywhere is bad, but is doubly so when men who claim to be disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus set such an example by their narrow-minded remarks about Nonconformity. The Church of England is a venerable and illustrious section of the true Church, and unlikely to have its fair fame sullied by the ravings of a nameless ranter. But it becomes a question, is a chaplain with such extreme views, so uncompromising in his denunciations, so unguarded in his language, so ungovernable in his temper, the sort of person for a prison chaplain, or one likely to convert sinners from the error of their ways? God forbid that my remarks should be mistaken. I do not aspire to be considered either a ranter or a hypocrite, but I respect and never fail to detect religion, and despise its base counterfeit wherever and in whomsoever I find it; and if I can hear the “old story” ungarnished by rhetoric, I care not whether it emanates from Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Nonconformist of whatever denomination.

That this is a very small world was demonstrated to me during a conversation I once had with a fellow prisoner. He was a decent, educated man, and had been in a pawnbroker’s establishment. Our conversation one night turned on things theatrical, and he was giving me some interesting experiences of the “ladies” he had met at various times on business. He asked me if I knew Mrs. —, and I said I had spoken to the old hag. He then proceeded to tell me what a constant customer she had been in former days, and how her contributions had varied from woollen rags one week to valuable jewellery another. It was then that a circumstance was brought to my mind—told me some three years ago by a lovely and accomplished actress, since retired from the stage—of how a popular burlesque artiste in the same theatre had once lost a valuable jewel, and how suspicion pointed at this identical old woman, who had a girl at the theatre. I asked him if he recollected anything about it, and he at once proceeded to give me details that convinced me that the pendant he referred to was one and the same as that which had mysteriously disappeared, and that the suspicions formed a few years ago might have been very fully confirmed had a visit been paid to an establishment not a hundred miles from Tottenham Court Road.

During my illness I had at different times the services of the various cleaners in making my bed, brushing the floor, and bringing in my meals, and I invariably extracted anything of interest about their previous careers. My first was an unmitigated young “till thief.” This is a special branch of the profession, requiring assurance rather than dexterity, and consists in watching your opportunity when the shop is empty, and then making a dash for the till or cash-box. My valet had apparently been eminently fortunate, and although he had undergone a previous twelve months, had escaped detection a score of times. He was then undergoing a lengthened seclusion for an unforeseen occurrence, which he in no way considered as a reflection on his prowess. He had, it appears, entered a confiding lamp-dealer’s, and finding the shop conveniently empty, and the cashbox conspicuously displayed, had done his business, and proceeded to leave the premises. A swinging glass door, however, unfortunately intervened between the shop and the street, which in the excitement he pushed the wrong way, and in some way jammed. This little delay made a difference in his and the shopman’s respective accounts of about £45. On another occasion he found himself in a corn-chandler’s—a class that is proverbially considerate in avoiding superfluous obstacles to a hurried exit,—and whilst helping himself to the till, a customer came in, who, seeing him engaged, asked for a pennyworth of barley; to this he obligingly served her, added the cumbrous coin to his other findings, and then complacently left the shop. This individual was a special pet with the turnkeys, and as such—combined with his trustworthy reputation—was invariably selected for expeditions to the various stores. His special talent here stood him in good stead, and he never returned without having stolen three or four eggs, a handful of flour, or a lump of soap. Indeed, so inherent was the spirit for thieving, that if all else failed, he would annex physic, and I have often seen him with bottles of quinine and iron mixture. This latter forms a considerable article of commerce, and is much sought after and bartered (never mind how or where) for advantages of a more palatable type. A short time before his discharge I advised him to drop the cash-box game, and he assured me he had quite determined to “turn it up.” Within a week he had been re-convicted, and is at present undergoing seven years’ penal servitude. In my next valet I was considerably disappointed. Although an unmitigated thief, I fancied I detected some redeeming features. I talked to him frequently, and treated him with as much kindness as a man with my circumscribed means had probably ever been able to. In return he assisted to rob me of contraband things, of which he always had a liberal share. He had been a lieutenant (in burglary) of the late Mr. Peace, and often discussed that eminent man with evident regret. He had been with him in various minor affairs, and through his entire career had never been “nabbed.” His present incarceration was the result of treachery, where a less fortunate associate had rounded on him, and he was arrested a week after. He often hoped to meet him outside, though an incident that occurred will necessitate a postponement of the pleasure. A batch of convicts, en route to penal servitude, were one day being medically examined by the surgeon (a new regulation lately come into force), amongst whom my valet recognised his quasi friend, the informer. The interview took place near the kitchen, where my man was cooking a chop, the surgery being next door, at which the convicts were ranged. “And what did you say?” I enquired. “Say!” he replied, “I slapped my stomach to show ’im I was all right, and then I says, ‘You looks ’orrid ill, you —; you’ll never do it; thank God, ’twill kill yer.’”

A pleasant prelude to ten years’ penal servitude.

I am indebted to this noble-minded creature for many hints as to how burglaries are concocted and how best guarded against, and I am of opinion that attention to them will do more to obviate their frequency than all the absurd warnings as to window shutters and area gates, that periodically emanate from Scotland Yard. No burglary is ever attempted on chance; in fact, no house is ever entered except on exact and reliable information. This is usually obtained through a frivolous maidservant (in which case a delay of weeks may be necessary for love-making), a rascally butler, or the local chimney-sweep. The information chiefly sought after is the strength of the garrison (whether males or females), the class of valuables (whether plate or jewellery), their usual locality, and the habits of the occupants. With this as a basis, the house is watched for days and weeks, in order that a confirmation of the information may be obtained. The time preferred is when the night police are in the act of relieving the day men, and if that should be inconvenient (to the burglar), between the night patrols. All this may appear ridiculous, but I give it as the testimony of a notorious burglar, imparted to me in good faith, under exceptionally favourable circumstances for hearing the truth, and if acted on will materially increase the security of householders.

I asked my mentor his opinion about window shutters and door bolts, at which he absolutely laughed. No burglary is ever attempted through a window unless considerately left open. The front door is the invariable point of attack, as most favourable for ingress and a precipitate retreat, and under occasional circumstances the area. The operation never takes more than twenty minutes, as is erroneously supposed, the object being to be in and out again between the periodical promenade of the policeman. These nocturnal strolls are accurately calculated, and the precision with which they are performed, however admirable from a disciplinary point of view, are totally inappropriate as deterrents to burglaries.

“But suppose,” I asked, “a person said to you, ‘I’ve only got so-and-so in the house—you can have that’: would you be satisfied?”

“Satisfied?” he replied. “No, we knows jolly well what there is afore we comes; and, for the matter of that, there’s no time for talk. We goes straight for the swag, and if anyone tries to ’inder us, we’re bound to let ’im ’ave the jemmy right across the face. That’s ’ow poor Peace got ’imself into trouble fust.” He then went on to tell me that he had a lovely (!) little jemmy about eighteen inches long and tipped with the finest tempered steel, capable of being carried up the sleeve, and so fine that it could be inserted into the smallest crack or hinge; “And,” he added, “once let me get ’is nose in, and make no mistake, I walks in very soon arter.”

This gentleman’s testimony is worthy of consideration. He was associated, as he informed me, with the butler in a well-known burglary of plate somewhere in Kensington, and where the butler, being knave enough to rob his master, was fool enough to entrust a large portion of the proceeds to his confederate to melt down and divide. As I understood him, half only of this bargain was carried out in its integrity.

The secrecy with which foolish women fancy they put away their jewels in secure safes let into the wall is a labour lost in vain. Their hiding-place is thoroughly well known, and probably its value, and other useful particulars. That they have hitherto escaped is merely an accident of time and opportunity; that they will ultimately be victimized is a foregone conclusion. The moral to be gleaned from this is, to be sure of your servants, a fool being almost as dangerous as a knave, and to abstain from flashing your jewellery before eager eyes, only too ready for a clue to its whereabouts.

If after this disinterested advice unprotected women are fools enough to barricade themselves and their treasures in defenceless houses, they have only themselves to thank. They should be careful, however, not to waste their visitor’s time when confronted by his “bull’s-eye,” as burglars are proverbially children of impulse. Houses containing little or nothing of value are never burglariously entered. Men won’t risk penal servitude on a chance; the prize and its price have been carefully calculated.

CHAPTER XXVII.
“JUSTICE TEMPERED WITH MERCY.”

I had now been many months in hospital, though all the care and kindness I received seemed incapable of improving my condition. Strengthening medicines, stimulants, tonics, all failed to rouse me, and the tempting food, that I had only to suggest to have provided, could not induce me to eat. I was subjected to a minute medical examination, and my lung was found to be affected. Later on a further examination proved that the malady was slowly progressing. To remain in prison was certain death, so my case was submitted to the Home Secretary, who, with the humanity that has characterised his tenure of office, ordered my immediate discharge. I shall never forget the morning when an impulsive turnkey rushed into my room, and saying, “It’s come!” hurriedly disappeared, and I understood that her Majesty’s gracious pardon had arrived, and I was free.

The preliminaries for departure were somewhat long in my case, and it was nearly eleven o’clock before I bade adieu to gloomy Clerkenwell. I had, however, been by no means idle. The resumption of my clothing was a matter of time and difficulty; and though they had, by the kindness of the Governor, been considerably taken in to suit my diminished proportions (eighteen inches in the girth and seven stone in weight), retained a hang-down appearance in the vicinity of the neck and shoulders, that involved an immense expenditure of pins and ingenuity. The clothes of prisoners after admission into prison are, as a rule, subjected to a very necessary process. I do not know whether any discretionary power exists as to dispensing with the rule in certain cases, but it seemed incredible that mine should have undergone the usual formula without retaining a vestige of the fact. Clothes are, however, subjected to a process of modified cremation, and placed in airtight lockers, and smoked in a phosphoric preparation supposed to be antagonistic to the respiratory organs of creeping things. But the smell of fire had not passed over mine, and I can only suppose that the ceremony had been dispensed with as a graceful compliment to the executors of my deceased tailor, whose representative I last met at the “House of Detention.” My hat, too, had either considerably expanded, or my head had considerably contracted, for it necessitated at least a yard of brown paper between the brim and my cranium, before being padded to wearable dimensions.

As I passed through the office, I caught the first glimpse of myself in a respectably-sized looking-glass, and could hardly believe that the scarecrow I saw was really myself. But what mattered it if I had half a lung more or less than of yore?—I was free! I was not going to die in prison, and contribute in my person an additional item to the dead-house inventory board.

With what different sensations did I again find myself in the office which I had not entered since my arrival some months before. It seemed as if all the formula would never be completed, and I would almost have foregone the handsome donation of ten shillings I had earned for laming malefactors to have got out a moment earlier. But business is business, and the labourer is worthy of his hire, and in a few moments I had received a rare gold coin (at least so it appeared to me at the time), known as half-a-sovereign. The warder that had accompanied me from the hospital now sent for a cab, and as I drove through the ponderous gate a load appeared to fall off my mind, and though shattered in health, as I breathed the free air of a London fog, my lungs began to expand as they had not done for months.

The usual hour for the jail delivery is 9 A.M., when gangs, varying from ten to a hundred, are daily discharged. As they pass the wicket one by one, each man is presented with a breakfast order, entitling him to an unlimited supply of coffee and bread-and-butter at an adjoining tavern. This kindly act takes its origin from a private source that cannot be too highly commended, and though I failed in discovering its identity, understand it is in no way connected with the “Prisoners’ Aid Society.” Every detail connected with a prisoner on discharge reflects credit on the Government. A vagrant enters prison hungry, filthy, and penniless. He again emerges with his linen washed, his clothes fumigated, money in his pocket, and provided with an ample breakfast. Such treatment has not its parallel in any other country in Europe, and I cannot refrain from offering my testimony in opposition to the usually accepted and erroneous impression, and confidently assert that the British criminal is, if anything, far too generously treated in every respect.

On my way I stopped at a tobacconist’s and bought the biggest cigar I could find. It was, I believe, a good one, though for aught I knew it might have been brown paper. My sense of taste had apparently forsaken me, and it was days before I lost the sensation of having sucked a halfpenny. A friend I met soon after did not at first recognise me. “Good gracious!” he said, as he looked at my diminished circumference, “you’re not half the size you were.” “My dear fellow,” I replied, “you forget I’ve been lately confined.”

The sense of taste that had apparently forsaken me was for a time accompanied by a loss of voice; at least it seemed so, for acting on the force of habit, I could not bring myself to speaking above a whisper; and a waiter at the — Hotel seemed to think he was serving a lunatic as I asked him in a mysterious whisper for a pint of champagne. But the events of the day were too much for my strength, and before 7 that evening I had fainted, and was again in bed, under the care of an eminent physician. A careful examination next day confirmed the opinion of the prison surgeons, and I was ordered forthwith to the South of France, or anywhere from cruel London. Door handles caused me considerable surprise for days: they appeared, indeed, as superfluous additions that I was totally unaccustomed to. A morbid craving for old newspapers now seized me, and I again discovered the importance that seemed to attach itself to my late escapades. I am happily not a vain or unreasonable being: had I been so I might have found ample grounds for either when called upon to pay sixpence for a Daily Telegraph, and one shilling for a Truth at their respective offices, for copies containing references to my case. As it was, I merely concluded that the bump of avarice was equally developed in the Jew and the Gentile newsvendor.

And now the time has come to close my reminiscences. To continue them would be apt to lead me into drivel, an adjunct I have tried to avoid. I make no attempt at justifying my work—though as a literary production it is beneath criticism—being quite aware that many will consider my resuscitating the past an act of bravado. In this I cannot agree with them, for though guilty of a portion of the offence with which I was charged, and which I unhesitatingly admitted, I am happy to know that cruel circumstances prevented my refuting at the time a fraction of the thousand and one lies that were laid to my charge. Not the most trivial incident appears to have passed unnoticed, and the omission to pay for a pennyworth of bloaters has been since transformed into a crime, and carried, as only cowards can, to quarters most likely to injure me. And one scurrilous society journal, notorious for its “enterprise” rather than its “truth,” had the impudence to hint that I had made money at cards by foul play (I who have lost a fortune by gambling); but this I attribute to personal malice, and in return for my once publishing a scheme of a shady nature projected by its owner. This precious prospectus is in my possession, and at the service of any one with a taste for the perusal of rascally documents. I had indeed intended publishing it, but ultimately decided not to add to this volume of horrors, on the principle that “two blacks don’t make a white.” Whether it sees the daylight at the next general election is another affair. The marvel is I have not been associated with the “Clapham Junction Mystery,” or discovered to be the chief of the Russian Nihilists. These remarks are not incapable of corroboration. The link then missing has since been found; and more than one lawyer, and a certain high official, know the truth; and the only deterrent to a very thorough résumé of the case is the pain it would cause to others. For my own part, I should not object, and if any shadow of the “possibility” of the truth lurking in my assertion is to be extracted, it may commend itself by the publicity I have given to my experiences—a frankness not usually associated with unmitigated guilt. But after all, is it worth it? For my part, I value the world’s patronage as much as I do its odium. I’ve tested and accurately appraised both!

My motive, too, has been to present prison life in a truer light than I have hitherto seen described, and, with a few trifling exceptions, and a necessary transposition of names and places, to give the outer world an insight into that mysterious community that lives and moves and has its being in their very midst. The erroneous impression that exists as to the harsh treatment of prisoners has, I trust, in a measure been removed. To represent a prison as an elysium would be absurd. It is intended as a deterrent, though considering the wild beasts it has to deal with, it may be questioned whether it is not far too considerate in the matter of food. Nor can it be denied that the rules are framed, and their execution carried out by officials actuated as a body by humane and honourable principles. That there are black sheep in every grade must also be conceded, and if their responsibilities were curtailed, and in some cases transferred, considerable advantage would, I think, ensue. A man of education and worldly experience, circumstanced as I was, is probably capable of forming a juster estimate of things as they really exist than a Governor or any otherwise well-informed individual: and as my remarks have been suggested in no spirit of acrimony, but, on the contrary, under a sense of obligation, it is to be hoped that the seed sown in Clerkenwell may bring forth fruit in Whitehall. That my remarks are disinterested nobody will be foolish enough to deny, and whether acted on or not is a matter of perfect indifference to me. At the same time, a probe here and an inquiry there will manifest the weak points of the “system,” and convince the highest in authority that there are more things in a prison than are dreamt of in their philosophy. My conclusions have been drawn in a great measure from the treatment of others. For my own part, I often fancy my past experiences are a dream, so difficult is it to believe that the treatment I received, and immunity from degrading employment except in name, are compatible with “imprisonment with hard labour.” And if even one of the many objects I have aspired to is attained, the blank that divides the past from the future will not have been endured in vain.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
A RETROSPECT.

I cannot conclude my story without asking, What constitutes honesty? and if anybody can give a really logical and satisfactory reply, I would ask him, Has he ever met a really honest man?

In the conviction of being credited with a reprobate mind, I freely admit my inability to answer either question satisfactorily. It is my experience, indeed, that no such thing as honesty—as at present understood—exists, and that it is simply a question of time, circumstance, or opportunity, although I have met many rich men who are credited with this undefinable attribute. That men of means are proverbially the best of fellows (I was once a “best fellow” myself) need not be repeated, nor will I insult your common sense, virtuous reader, who never did a shady thing in your life, by telling you what everybody knows—that their goodness increases in proportion to their wealth. Whether they are really honest is another question, and though no one would credit them with theft, would they be equally exemplary in regard to filthier and more nameless crimes? Why should a rich man steal? As a class they are proverbially mean and selfish. Why, then, should they worry themselves with such unnecessary consequences? That the highest of the so-called aristocracy are not above suspicion may be remembered, when some well-known names were once associated with a nasty scandal not entirely composed of strawberry leaves; and if their better halves were like Cæsar’s wife, the immunity did not extend to themselves. And a comparison of the men undergoing penal servitude for huge commercial swindles, bogus “cab companies,” and rascally prospectuses, with others at large, less fortunate in finding dupes, only proves that detection and want of opportunity have been left out of the calculation; that “not proven” and “guilty” are synonymous terms; and that at heart prince and peasant, duke and dustman, are alike desperately wicked. It was said, with a great deal of truth, that when a certain projector contemplated another gigantic fraud on the public it was his invariable custom to preface the robbery by building a church—a hint that was not lost on the observant speculator. In the same way, when a person thrusts himself into prominence as the self-constituted scourge of erring humanity, and is offensively blatant in his denunciations of fraud, it may be reasonably assumed in nine cases out of ten that the man is an undiscovered rogue, and fairly qualified for “Eighteen months’ imprisonment.”

THE END.

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