She feigned illness, pretended to be insane; sometimes embraced the female warders vehemently, at others flung her gruel in the face of the chaplain; would one day make her clothes into a doll, and another compose a long and critical examination of the character of the Queen, who had just then come to the throne.
Her influence all through the prison was most mischievous, and at length she had to be removed to Bethlehem.
There it seemed impossible to restrain her, and the effort was given up. She was at length sent out to Van Dieman’s Land in the “Nautilus,” and was no more heard of. She was only one of the Millbank failures.
After the confession in 1843 of the breakdown of the penitentiary system, the great prison became a kind of second Newgate.
In Newgate, however, as Captain Griffiths points out, the worst criminals soon pass beyond human ken; at the great depot prison they at least continue alive.
The calendar is full of names which have become historic in the annals of crime. Not to come down to the times of Orton, the names of Robson, Redpath, Poole, and Pullinger recall frauds which were conducted with a cleverness, and for a long time with a success, which only a genius for swindling could have attained.
“Jem the Penman,” the master mind of a gang of forgers, who made great hauls before they were caught, looked like a drunken sot in prison, but conducted himself fairly well.
One remarkable criminal was a practising surgeon, who had married wives in various parts of the country, and having got possession of their money, trinkets, and clothing, had deserted them.
He spoke several languages, and one of his favourite feats in prison was to write the Lord’s Prayer in five different languages within a circle the size of a sixpence.
His conduct at Millbank was most exemplary, and he, like other prisoners, eventually went to the Antipodes and married.