They live, for the time being literally, in a glass-house, and every movement can be seen from almost any portion of the chamber or corridor in which they stand.
Both places were empty during our stay, the only visitors being the women pressing against the iron bars.
It is easy to fill up their vacancy, however; and all but impossible not to realise the scences which take place in the attorneys’ box, as well as the priests’.
There are seats here, and a resting-place for papers. It is, indeed, a small office under a glass case, and swept and garnished for the next tenants.
The futile attempts at deceit, the half confessions, the miserable equivocations as to the extent and circumstances of guilt on the one hand; the calm business tone, the remonstrances on the suicidal folly of concealment, the penetrating questions, the practised art with which the truth is wormed out, and the astute assurances of help from the professional advisers on the other, this place has heard.
If glass walls have ears like the neighbours of stone and brick, what strange stories could this little cramped cage reveal!
There are more women in the porter’s lodge, as we leave, tearful and miserable as the rest, and waiting their turn for interviews.
They, too, will be conducted to the iron barriers, and utter their broken conversation across the dismal yard of intervening space. The prison of Newgate is so obviously well managed, and the comforts—we had almost written the luxuries—of its inmates are so carefully secured, that its authorities have doubtless sufficient reasons for the rules under which the visits of prisoners’ friends may be paid and received.
Still, a vast majority of the inmates are “remand cases;” and as they are all sent elsewhere as soon as possible after conviction, it is difficult to repress a wish that some less restricted mode of communication could be allowed.
Although many of the evil faces we saw marching round were old prison hands, we presume that the law holds them innocent of the particular offences they are charged with, until it finds them guilty.