This scoundrel was base enough to charge an innocent man with the crime.
He had a heartless, hypocritical expression of face, and we could believe him capable of committing the most atrocious crimes.
On leaving the ante-room, we pass along a gloomy passage, and make our way towards the kitchen.
After reaching the side of a room enclosed with glass panelling, in the centre of a large apartment, with a groined roof, we proceeded along another narrow gloomy passage, lighted with gas, and went into the kitchen, which was very similar in size and general appearance to the lodge, entering it by a small door of massive structure, furnished with looks and bolts.
Opposite to it, fronting the Old Bailey, are two ponderous doors, through which the culprit used to pass on to the drop on the morning of the execution; but the Private Execution Act has done away with this, and the extreme penalty of the law is carried out within the precincts of the gaol.
We are not at all sure that a change has been made for the better.
It is quite true that pickpockets ply their vocation even at the foot of the gallows; but it is equally true that they do so in churches and chapels at the present time, but that is no reason that all places of public worship should be closed, neither is it any reason that murderers should be strangled in secret.
In the kitchen are two coppers sufficient to cook food for three hundred prisoners.
The steam is conveyed away from the coppers by means of pipes that lead though a grated window into the open air.
On shelves were ranged bright tins for the use of the prisoners, and wooden trays to carry the food from the kitchen to the various prison cells.