[CHAPTER V]
SERIOUS DISTURBANCES
Irregularities continued—Intrigues between male and female prisoners—Women conspire to be removed—Their unceasing misconduct—Plot to murder the Matron—Renewed trials of Governor—A number of suicides—A serious assault—First flogging under new Act—One hundred and fifty lashes inflicted—An effectual warning—Assaults checked.
Irregularities of an entirely new character appeared at Millbank after the exodus of the worst-behaved had taken place. An intrigue was discovered to have been in progress for many months, between the women in the laundry and certain of the male prisoners. This had not gone further than the interchange of correspondence, but its existence is in some respects a proof of the laxity of the discipline maintained in the Penitentiary. It was customary to make up the clothes of the male prisoners sent to the wash in kits, or small parcels, which were opened in the laundry by a female prisoner, called the “kitter.” One day the kitter, by name Margaret Woods, found among the clothes a slip of paper—a prayer-book leaf—on which some man had written that he came from Glasgow, and that he hoped the women were all well. Woods not being able to read, showed it to another woman, who showed it to a third, a Scotch girl, Ann Kinnear, who came also from Glasgow. “Yes,” she said, “I know him well. It’s John Davidson—a very nice young man; and if you won’t answer it, I’ll write myself.” The acquaintance, on paper, soon deepened between Kinnear and Davidson. One of her tributes of affection was a heart, which she worked with gray worsted on a flannel bandage belonging to Davidson. At another time she sent him a lock of her hair.
It is easy to understand the flutter throughout the laundry caused by this flirtation, which was known and talked of by all the women. They were all eager to have correspondents, having husbands “outside” being no obstacle seemingly; nor was age, for an old woman, with grown-up children, entered herself as eagerly as the girls barely in their teens. John Davidson was in all cases the channel of communication. He promised to do his best for each of his correspondents: to find out a nice sweetheart for Mary Ann Thacker, and to tell Elizabeth Trenery how fared her friend Combs, with whom she had travelled up from Cornwall. He expressed his regret to his own friend Kinnear, that he was likely soon to be set at large; but that before going he would “turn her over” to another nice young man, in every way similar to himself. How long this clandestine intercommunication might have continued, it would be difficult to say; but at length the wardswoman came to know of it, and she instantly reported it to the matron. One fine morning the whole of the kits were detained, and a general search made in the tower. Several letters were discovered. They were written mostly with blue ink made of the blue-stone used for washing, and contained any quantity of rubbish: questions, answers, gossips, vows of unalterable affection, promises to meet “outside” and continue their acquaintance.
Millbank Penitentiary
The name of Jeremy Bentham is forever associated with Millbank Penitentiary. In his plans for its erection nearly a century ago he anticipated exactly the modern methods of to-day. During the time that Millbank was used as a prison, nearly a century, among the inmates were many notorious rogues and criminals. As a reformatory it was not a success, but the expensive experiment served as a lesson to the government and it paved the way for the model prison of to-day.
All this of itself was harmless enough, the reader may say: and such it would have been undoubtedly in a boys’ school next door to some seminary for young ladies, in the suburbs; but it was hardly in accordance with the condition of prisoners, or the seclusion that was a part of their punishment. And no sooner was this intrigue detected, and put an end to, than another of similar character was discovered between the male convicts in the kitchen and certain maid-servants kept by the superior officers. The steward on searching the kitchen drawer of his housemaid—it does not appear what led him to ransack the hiding-places of his servants’ hall—found a letter addressed to the girl by the prisoner named Brown. Brown, when taxed with it, admitted the letter, but declared that the first overtures had come from the maid. He had been cleaning the steward’s door-bell, when this forward young person nodded to him from the passage, and he nodded back. At the same time another prisoner was caught at the same game with the female servant of the resident surgeon. On searching the prisoner-cooks a letter from the girl was found in this man’s pocket, and a lock of long hair, neatly plaited. The first-mentioned girl had not confined her smiles to Brown, for in her possession was another letter from John Ratcliffe, a prisoner who had been working in the starching yard close by the steward’s quarters. Betsy S., the surgeon’s second maid, had become also the object of the affections of a prisoner named Roberts, who had thrown a letter to her through the open window. But Betsy would not encourage his advances, and took the letter at once to her master. Moreover the chaplain’s maid was always at her kitchen window, making signs.