Not long afterwards a man, Combe, in the refractory cell, tried to hang himself with a pocket handkerchief. Placing his bedstead against the wall, he had used it as a ladder to climb up to the grating of the ventilator in the ceiling of his cell. To this he had made fast the handkerchief, then dropped; but he was found standing calmly by the bed, with the noose not even tight. Next a woman, Catherine Roper, tried the same trick, and was found lying full length on the floor, and evidently she was quite uninjured. Then came a real affair; and from the hour at which the act was perpetrated all doubt of intention was unhappily impossible. Lewis Abrahams, a gloomy, ill-tempered man, was punished for breaking a fly-shuttle; again for calling his warder a liar. That night he hung himself. He was found quite dead and cold, partly extended on the stone floor, and partly reclining as it were against the cell wall. He had suspended himself by the slight “nettles” (small cords) of his hammock, which had broken by his weight. The prisoner in the next cell reported that between one and two in the morning he had heard a noise of some one kicking against the wall; and then no doubt the deed was done.
After this unhappy example attempts rapidly multiplied, though happily none were otherwise than feigned. One tried the iron grating and a piece of cord; another used his cell block as a drop, but was careful to retain the halter in his hands; a third, Moses Josephs, tried to cut his throat, but on examination nothing but a slight reddish scratch was found, which the doctor was convinced was done by the back of the knife. In all these cases immediate and anxious attention was afforded by all the officials of the Penitentiary. The governor himself, who never gave himself an hour’s relaxation, and was always close at hand, was generally the first on the scene of suicide. If there was but a hint of anything wrong he was ready to spend hours with the intending felo-de-se. Thus in Metzer’s—a fresh case: a man who would not eat, was idle too, morose and sullen, “though spoken to always in the kindest manner.” No sooner was it known that he was brooding over the length of his confinement—his was a life sentence—and had hinted at suicide, than the governor spent hours with him in exhortation. Metzer, being a weaver by trade, had been placed in a cell furnished with a loom; from this he was to be changed immediately to another, lest the beam should be a temptation to him; but the governor, being uneasy, first visited him again, and found him, though late at night, in his clothes perambulating his cell. On this his neighbour was set to watch him for the rest of the night, and the doctor gave him a composing draught. Next morning, when they told him he was to leave his cell for good, he became outrageously violent, and assaulted every one around. He was now taken forcibly to the infirmary, and put in a strait-waistcoat; whereupon he grew calmer and promised to go to his new cell, provided he was allowed to take his own hammock with him. It struck the governor at once that something might be concealed in it, and it was searched minutely. Inside the bedclothes they found a couple of yards of hammock lashing, one end of which was made into a noose, “leaving,” the governor remarks, “little doubt of his intention.”
But to meet and frustrate these repeated attempts at suicide were by no means the governor’s only trials. The misconduct of many other prisoners must have made his life a burthen to him. Thefts were frequent: these fellows’ fingers itched to lay their hands on all that came in their way. The tower wardsman—a prisoner in a place of trust—steals his warder’s rations; others filch knives, metal buttons, bath brick, and food from one another. Then there was much wasteful destruction of materials, with idleness and carelessness at the looms, aggravated often by the misappropriation of time in manufacture of trumpery articles for their own wear: one makes himself a pair of green gaiters, another a pair of cloth shoes, a third an imitation watch of curled hair, rolled into a ball, which hangs in his fob by a strip of calico for guard.
These were doubtless offences of a trivial character. The anxiety evinced by many to escape from durance was a much more serious affair. Surprising ingenuity and unwearied patience are exhibited by prisoners in compassing this, the great aim and object of all who are not free. As yet, however, the efforts made were tentative only and incomplete. To break a hole in the wall or manufacture false keys was the highest flight of their inventive genius, and the plot seldom went very far. One of the first cases was discovered quite by chance. On searching a prisoner’s cell, some screws, a few nails, and two pieces of thick iron wire were found concealed in his loom; and in one of his shoes as it hung upon the wall, a piece of lead shaped so as to correspond with the wards of a cell key. This the prisoner confessed he had made with his knife from memory, and altogether without a pattern. “I have a very nice eye,” he said, “and I have always carefully observed the keys as I saw them in the officers’ hands.” “And what did you mean to do with the key?” he was further asked. “To get away, of course.” “How?” “I can open the wooden door when I please, and then I should have unlocked my gate.”[1] On examination a hole was found in his door, just below the bolt and opposite the handle; through this, by means of a narrow piece of stuff, a knitting needle in fact, he could move back the bolt whenever he pleased. Once out in the ward, he meant, with a file he had also secreted, to get through the bars of the passage window. The wards of this key were fastened into a wooden handle, which was also found in his cell. Another prisoner, having been allowed to possess himself of a large spike nail, which had been negligently left about in the yard, worked all night at the wall of his cell, and soon succeeded in removing several bricks. The hole he made was large enough to allow him passage. Besides this, from the military great-coats, on which he was stitching during the day, he had made himself a coat and trousers. He might have actually got away had not a warder visited his cell to inspect his work, and taking up the great-coats as they lay in a heap in the corner, discovered the disguise beneath, also the spike nail, and the rubbish of bricks and mortar from the hole. More adventurous still, a third prisoner proposed to escape by stealing his warder’s keys. Failing an opportunity, he too turned his attention to making false ones; and for the purpose cut up with scissors his pewter drinking can into bits. By holding the pieces near the hot irons he used for his tailoring, he melted the metal, and ran it into a mould of bread. Information of this project was given by another prisoner in time to nip it in the bud. Another, again, had been clever enough to remove a number of bricks, and would have passed undetected, had not the governor by chance, when in his cell, touched the wall and found it damp. A closer inspection showed that the mortar around the bricks had been picked out, and the joints filled in by a mixture of pounded mortar and chewed bread. On the outside was laid a coating of whiting, such as was issued to the prisoners to help them in cleaning their cans.
In some mischief of this kind, one or other of the prisoners was perpetually engaged. Cutting up their sheets to fabricate disguises; melting the metal buttons, as the man just mentioned had melted his pewter can; laying hold of files, rasps, old nails, scissors, tin, copper wire, or whatever else came handy; and working always with so much secrecy and despatch, that their plans were discovered more by fortune generally, than good management. In those days the best methods of prison discipline were far from matured. We know now that the surest preventives against escape, are repeated and unexpected searchings, with continuous vigilant supervision. A prisoner to carry out his schemes must have leisure, and must be left to himself to work unperceived. By the practice of the Penitentiary, prisoners had every facility to escape; and we shall find ere long, that they knew how to make the most of their advantages. For the present, all the good luck was on the side of the gaolers.
But at this juncture a new trouble threatened all the peace and comfort of the place. The prisoners seem to have grown all at once alive to the power they possessed of combination. It had been suspected for some time that a conspiracy was in progress among the denizens of D Ward, Pentagon two, and a minute search of the several cells brought to light a number of clandestine communications. These, written mostly on the blank pages of prayer-books, and spare copy-book leaves, were all to the same effect: exhortations to riot and mutiny. A certain George Vigers was the prime mover; all the letters, which were very widely disseminated, having issued from his pen. It had long been openly discussed among the prisoners that the hulks were pleasanter places than the Penitentiary. Here, then, was an opportunity of removal. All who joined heartily in the projected commotion would draw upon themselves the ire of the committee, and would certainly be drafted to the hulks. To explain what might otherwise appear unintelligible, it must be mentioned here, that the punishment implied by a sentence to the hulks was by no means of a terrifying character, as is evidenced by the choice of the prisoners.
A year or two later (1832), the report of the Parliamentary Committee on Secondary Punishments laid bare the system, and expressed their unqualified disapprobation of the whole treatment of convicts on board the hulks. It being accepted that the separation of criminals, and their severe punishment, are necessary to make crime a terror to the evil doer, the committee pointed out that in both these respects the system of management of the hulks was not only necessarily deficient, but actually inimical. All that has been said of the miserable effects of the association of criminals in the prisons on shore, the profaneness, the vice, the demoralization that are its inevitable consequences, applied in the fullest sense to the hulks. The numbers in each ship varied from eighty to eight hundred. The ships were divided into wards of from twelve to thirty persons; in these they were confined when not at labour in the dockyard, and the evil consequences of such associations may easily be conceived, even were the strictest discipline enforced. But the facts are stated as follows: “The convicts after being shut up for the night are allowed to have lights between decks, in some ships as late as ten o’clock; although against the rules of the establishment, they are permitted the use of musical instruments; flash songs, dancing, fighting, and gaming take place; the old offenders are in the habit of robbing the newcomers; newspapers and improper books are clandestinely introduced; a communication is frequently kept up with their old associates on shore; and occasionally spirits are introduced on board. It is true that the greater part of these practices are against the rules of the establishment; but their existence in defiance of such rules shows an inherent defect in the system. But the indulgence of purchasing tea, bread, tobacco, etc., is allowed, the latter with a view to the health of the prisoners; the convicts are also allowed to receive visits from their friends, and during the time they remain, are excused working, sometimes for several days. Such communications can only have the worst effect. It is an improper indulgence to anyone in the position of a convict, and keeps up a dangerous and improper intercourse with old companions. The most assiduous attention on the part of the ministers of religion would be insufficient to stem the torrent of corruption flowing from these various and abundant sources; and but little attention is paid to the promotion of religious feelings, or to the improvement of the morals of the convicts.” It was plainly seen that the convicts were also allowed to earn too much money—threepence a day to convicts in the first class, three halfpence to those in the second; out of which the former got sixpence a week, and the latter threepence, to lay out in the purchase of tea, tobacco, etc., and the remainder was laid by to be given to them on their release. They were supposed to work during the day at the arsenals and dockyards, but “there was nothing in the nature or severity of their employment which deserves the name of punishment or hard labour.” The work lasted from eight to ten hours, according to season; but so much time was lost in musters, and going to and from labour, that the summer period was never eight hours, and winter only six and a half. As common labourers work ten hours, and when at task work or during harvest much longer, the convicts could hardly be said to do more than was just sufficient to keep them in health and exercise; indeed, their situation could not be considered penal; it was a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.
Thus, as the committee described, the criminal sentenced to transportation for crimes to which the law affixed the penalty of death, passed his time, well fed, well clothed, indulging in riotous enjoyment by night, vexed with but moderate labour by day. No wonder that confinement on the hulks failed to excite a proper feeling of terror in the minds of those likely to come under its operation. The hulks were indeed not dreaded; prisoners described their life in them as a “pretty jolly life.” If any convict could but overcome the sense of shame which the degradation of his position might evoke, he would feel himself to be better off than large numbers of the working-classes, who have nothing but their daily labour to depend on for subsistence. At the dockyards, among the free men the situation of a convict was looked upon with envy; and many labourers would have been glad to change places with him, in order that they might better their situation. It was not strange, then, that the discontented denizens of the Penitentiary found even the moderate rigour of that establishment too irksome, and that they were eager to be transferred to the hulks.
Towards the end of September, 1826, came the first indications of disturbance. A prisoner having smashed his bedstead, demolished also the iron grating to his window, and thrust through it his handkerchief, tied to a stick, shouting and hallooing the while loud enough to be heard in Surrey. The same day, Hussey, another notorious offender, returning from confinement in the dark, was given a pail of water to wash his cell out, but instead, discharged the whole contents over his warder’s head. Before he could be secured he had destroyed everything in his cell, and had thrown the pieces out of the window. Next, a number of prisoners during the night took to rolling their cell-blocks and rattling their tables about. By this time the dark cells had many occupants, who spent the night in singing, dancing, and shouting to each other.
Early next morning, about 5 a.m., in this same ward from which all the rioters came, Stephen Harman broke everything he could lay hands on—the window frame and all its panes of glass, his cell table, stool, shelf, trencher, salt-box, spoon, drinking-cup, and all his cell furniture. He had first barricaded his door, and could not be secured till all the mischief was done. Later in the day from another cell came a long low whistle, followed by the crash of broken glass. The culprit here, when seized, confessed he had been persuaded by others; all were to join after dinner, the whistle being the signal to commence. The governor was now really apprehensive, anticipating something of a serious nature. He had a strong force of spare warders and patrols posted in the tower of the pentagon; but though the whistle[2] was frequently heard during the night, nothing occurred till next day, at half-past eight, when George Vigers and another followed Harman’s lead and destroyed everything in their cells. They joined their companions in the dark cells, all of whom, being outrageously violent, were now in handcuffs. In the dark they continued their misconduct; using the most shocking and revolting language to all officials who approached them; assaulting them, deluging them with dirty water, resolutely refusing to give up their beds, and breaking locks, door panels, and windows, and this although they were restrained in irons. These handcuffs having failed to produce any salutary effect, they were now removed; although several of the prisoners did not wait for that, and had riddled themselves of their bracelets. For the next few days “the Dark,” as these underground cells were styled in official language, continued to be the scene of the most unseemly uproar. When Archdeacon Potts, one of the committee, visited it he was received with hoots and yells; and this noise was kept up incessantly day and night. But at length, after nearly a fortnight of close confinement, the strength of the rioters broke down, several of them being removed to the hospital, while the others went back to their cells. But there was no lack of reinforcements: fresh offenders took up the game, and the dark cells were continually full. As soon as those first punished were sufficiently recovered, they broke out again. The cases of misconduct, generally of the same description, were varied now and then by a plot to break the water-mill by whirling round the cranks too fast, continuous noise, insolence, dancing defiantly the double shuffle, attempts to incite a whole ward, when in the corridor at school, to rise against their warders, overpower them, and take possession of their keys.