However, there is another delay, and this is accounted for by the fact that the suspected culprit is being “mixed” with some more prisoners, the more to test anyone in the task of identification.
At last the signal is given that all is ready, and after passing through a short corridor a yard is seen, rather capacious and surrounded with cell-doors.
But between the yard and the corridor were double gates of iron, and anyone exercising in the yard had not a shadow of a chance of communication with the outer world.
The iron gates were opened by the governor of the gaol; in front stood the constable and another who had come to see if Peace was in the hands of the police, and in front were twelve prisoners doing “the circular drill.”
This is a performance best known to prison officials, and to those who have been “wanted.” It consists in this:—
If there is a prisoner in the establishment whose identity needs to be established, and there is anyone attending for the purpose of viewing them, the prisoner is placed amongst others, and they follow each other in circle.
The suspected prisoner must then be identified. Those who performed the “circular drill” on this occasion in the Old Bailey, were a curious lot.
First came a young man, of some three or four-and-twenty years, with his neck half hidden in a muffler.
His gait was upright, but there was that cowed look about him which showed him to be “an old prison bird.”
Before the march commenced the prisoners took a look at us; they did not know who was “wanted,” and our visages were strange to all but one.