The pipes are conveyed into the different cells for the purpose of heating them. Along the walls are arranged a copious supply of iron tools for the purpose of repairing the different locks, &c.
Leaving the corridor of the male prison we returned to the passage across the court, covered with thick glass, where relatives and friends are permitted occasionally to visit the prisoners. On each side of it is a double grating, fenced with close wirework, of about four feet wide, occupied by the prisoners.
The relatives take their station on each side of the passage during the interviews, and a warder is stationed by their side to overlook them. On one occasion we were present when several of the prisoners were visited by their friends.
One of them was a man of about fifty years of age—a Jew—charged with having been concerned in the forgery of Russian banknotes. He was an intellectual-looking fair-complexioned man, with a long flowing beard and a very wrinkled brow, and his head bald in front.
He was very decently dressed, and appeared deeply interested while he conversed in broken English through the wire-screen with an elderly woman, who appeared to be warmly attached to him, and who was profoundly affected with his situation.
He appeared to be a shrewd man of the world. Alongside was a genteel-looking man, with sallow complexion and fine dark eye, who was visited by a tall young woman, decently dressed, who stood with a bundle in her hand. It appeared this prisoner was under remand for stealing clothes from his employers.
He looked sullen, and though apparently attached to the young woman, was very taciturn, and looked around with a very suspicious air.
A modest-looking elderly man, with silver hair, genteelly attired in dark coat and vest and grey trousers, stood with a bundle in his hand, and was busily engaged conversing with a little smart woman of advanced years, dressed in a grey dress and dark shawl.
We learned he was charged with embezzlement.
But there is one feature of Newgate’s interior a recollection of which will probably abide in the memory of the man who sets eyes on it, long after all else connected with the grim prison is forgotten—the murderers’ burying-ground.