The refractory or punishment cells, as they are termed, have double doors, which are kept locked to effectually prevent any communication from without. The prisoner, on entering one of these dark cells, which do not admit a single beam of light when the doors are closed upon him, finds everything as silent as the grave.
The furniture of these wretched places consists of an iron bedstead, securely fixed in the floor, and a water closet.
There is also a bell to communicate with the officers of the prison, and a trap in the door to convey food, as in the other cells.
When under confinement in these places the prisoners are kept upon bread and water.
The bedding at night consists of a straw mattrass and a rug, handed in at nine o’clock in the evening and taken away in the morning, when a tub of water is given to the prisoners for the purpose of performing their ablutions.
Peace was conducted back to the gaol by the warders, one of whom unlocked the door of one of the refractory cells, and the wretched prisoner was thrust into the dark and cheerless receptacle.
Without doubt even a temporary or short imprisonment in a dark cell is a terrible punishment to most men.
When Peace heard the door slammed to his heart sank within him. A cold shudder passed through his frame as he breathed the mephitic black air, which seemed to be more like a fluid than an atmosphere.
His allowance of bread and water had been given him as he made the acquaintance for the first time of his dark prison-house.
“Oh!” he exclaimed; “and to think it should come to this! Had it not been for those loose bricks I should be breathing the fresh air now—be at liberty—but this is, indeed, most horrible. Ugh! this wretched darkness—this appalling gloom!”