A good deal of objectionable language and wretched scrawls disfigured the walls of the cells occupied by the male prisoners. Many of the sentences displayed thereon were blasphemous, indecent, and profane.
The practice of scratching their names and writing all manner of things, doggrel lines and coarse couplets, on the walls, wheresoever they may be, seems to be a confirmed habit with the people of this country, both high and low. Every public building furnishes us with instances of this stupid mania. As it is in the outer world so it is in gaols and other public institutions. Take, as a sample, the following—which, with many others of a like nature, were found in the men’s cells—
Whillem Meagram came here from the steel
May 10th 1854—5 years for slinging his hook—
Him as prigs vat isent hisen—
When hes cotched vill go to prison—W. M.
Some of these inscriptions proved to be unusually amusing to the whitewashers.
Peace, however, had never evinced any predilection for indulging in this foolish propensity, and he professed to be greatly disgusted at the language made use of by the women on the walls. Many sentences were appended which were grossly indecent, and in some instances these were illustrated artistically. Peace had heard that when a woman is bad she is more debased than many of the opposite sex, but he was under the impression that a certain amount of modesty lay dormant in the most abandoned.
When he saw what the female persons had scratched upon their cell walls the illusion was dispelled.
He was surprised—as well he might be—that such disgraceful inscriptions and drawings were allowed to remain on the walls.