“Certainly not; I can answer that question. No lights are allowed in the refractory cells. You have your answer, and so——”
The warder suddenly slammed the door to, and Peace was left in darkness again.
“Wretches—barbarians—inhuman monsters!” he ejaculated, and in the bitterness of the moment he felt disposed to cry.
The prison authorities were, however, more considerate and merciful to him than perhaps he had any reason to expect.
After two days’ confinement in the refractory cell he was taken out and placed in an ordinary prison cell, and in a few days after this he left the gaol with a batch of convicts, who were bound for Millbank. The officials at Wakefield were but too glad to be rid of him.
CHAPTER LXXXV.
PEACE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH THE INTERIOR OF MILLBANK PENITENTIARY—A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRISON.
Millbank Penitentiary, as it was termed, is now a thing of the past. The new prison at Wormwood Scrubs will supersede a place of some historic history. Probably not many Londoners of the present generation know the history of the huge ugly building which occupied the left bank of the Thames between the Horseferry-road and Vauxhall-bridge.
It figures on the maps as a series of six pentagonal structures arranged round a central sexagon.
The forbidding structure was, until very recently, an ordinary prison, whither convicts were sent for separate confinement for the first nine months of their sentences of penal servitude, before they were drafted off to the convict prisons at Portland, Chatham, Portsmouth, or Dartmoor.