All pause at the steps leading up to the half door, behind which the head and shoulders of a stalwart man in uniform are seen, and after a moment’s parley they are admitted within.
The object of their journey is nearly accomplished now, for they are about to be allowed to see and converse with husbands, or lovers, with their brothers, or their sons.
These last are taking their prescribed amount of exercise in the prison yards, and it is from behind one of the gratings looking on these that they are permitted to gaze from a given distance upon and exchange words with their visitors.
Between the prisoners and their friends runs a passage of about a yard wide, with another set of iron bars fencing it off from the place where the women stand; so that between the visitors and the visited are two stout barriers and sufficient space to preclude the possibility of articles being handed from one to the other. There are no seats.
The prisoners are told to break out of the line of march, and permitted to advance to the grating of the yard in batches of three or four.
The women who have come to see them stand exactly opposite, within the prison, and all have to press their faces close to the bars to make hearing possible.
If a double set of wild-beast cages were planted in parallel lines, with the ironwork of each facing the others, but a yard or so apart—if the lions and tigers were pushing their noses eagerly at the barriers, as if trying to escape, and if a keeper or two were planted in the intervening space to watch, a fair imitation of Newgate gaol during visiting hours would be obtained.
The gloomy place has been vastly altered and improved during the last few years. Those who only remember its old dark wards, with their long line of oakum-pickers at work in the day time, who saw the condemned cell, say about the time Palmer had occupied it, or Bousfield endeavoured to commit suicide by throwing himself in its fire, would be amazed at the transformation effected in its interior.
Light iron staircases lead to airy galleries, out of which the various cells open, and from the lower floor of which the exercise grounds are gained. The condemned cell differs little now from that appropriated to ordinary prisoners, save that there is accommodation for the warders, whose duty it is to watch the wretch sentenced to die, and who never leave him until he falls from the gallows’ drop.
But our present business is with the exercise yards, and the interviews held between their bars. There is a ghastly resemblance between them and the playground of some strict school.