“I immediately sent for Edwards,” says Captain Chapman in his journal. “He appeared much distressed. The tears rolled down his cheeks, but he would not speak. I said everything I could think of to soothe and console him, and had him taken by the surgeon to the infirmary.” The case seemed to require full investigation, which it received; and the result is recorded a little further on by the governor. “It appeared that up to two or three days before he had been remarkably cheerful. But one day some extra soup had disagreed with him, after which he hardly spoke, not even to his partner with whom he walked in the yard.” Then, when he thought he was unobserved, he had secreted the hammock lashing which was to put an end to his wretched existence.
Bile or indigestion have doubtless driven many to desperation; but though the saying is common enough, that life under such afflictions is barely worth having, actual cases of suicide from stomachic derangements are comparatively rare. Perhaps the soup story opened the governor’s eyes a little to the prisoner’s real character, and then, later on, a second detection of fraud proved beyond doubt that Edwards was an impostor.
He was caught in a clandestine correspondence with his relatives outside, and for this he was transferred to “the dark.” Fifteen minutes afterwards they find him suspended from the top of his cell gate by his pocket handkerchief. They cut him down at once. He pretends to be unable to speak, yet it is clear that he has not done himself the slightest injury. Nevertheless, to keep him out of mischief, he is removed to the infirmary and put into a strait jacket. To escape from this restraint he embarks upon a new line of imposture. He sends an urgent message to the chaplain, having, as he asserts, a weighty sin upon his conscience, which he wishes at once to disclose.
“Some four years ago, sir, I murdered a young woman. She was the one I kept company with. I was jealous. I threw her into the New River. Sir, I have never had a happy moment since I committed the deed. My life is a burthen to me; and I would gladly terminate it upon the scaffold.”
“Are you quite sure you are telling me the truth?” the chaplain asks.
“The truth, sir—God’s truth. If I am not, may I,” etc.
He detailed the circumstances of the murder with so much circumstantiality that it was thought advisable to take all down in writing, so as to make full inquiry; but both governor and chaplain were “fully convinced that the prisoner had fabricated the whole story in the hopes of getting himself removed to Newgate.” No sort of corroboration was obtained outside, of course, and by and by the matter dropped. I have merely quoted this as a sequel and commentary upon the conduct of Edwards, proving that he was clearly an impostor from first to last.
But not long after this a fatal case occurred. The suicide was a man long suspected of being wrong in his head. Early one morning he was found hanging to the cross beam of his loom, from the framework of which he had jumped, and thereby dislocated his neck. It appeared on inquiry, that the mental derangement of which this man showed symptoms had been kept quite a secret from the governor and medical officer; so also had his frequent requests to see the chaplain; and the officer in charge of the ward was very properly suspended from duty “for culpable neglect, as probably, with timely interference, the prisoner’s life might have been saved.” But whether it might or might not, the news of his death spread rapidly through the prison, and from having occurred but rarely, real or feigned suicides became again quite the fashion. The gossip of an incautious matron took the intelligence first into the female pentagon. That very evening, after the women had been locked up, one yelled to another in the next cell that she meant to hang herself directly, and had a rope concealed, which she dared any one to discover. This woman was made safe at once; but next morning another was found tied up by her apron to the pegs of the clothes rack behind her cell door. She had failed to come out with the rest to wash, and as the officers approached to examine her cell they heard a noise of groaning within. A sort of feeble barricade had been made by the prisoner, with her mattress and pillows, to prevent entrance; but the door was easily opened, and behind it hung Hannah Groats by the neck, to one peg, while she carefully kept herself from harm by holding on by her hands to the two pegs adjoining. She was instantly taken down, when it was seen that she had not sustained the slightest damage. She had, of course, chosen her time just when she knew the cell doors were about to be opened, and she was sure to be quickly discovered.
Next the men took up the contagion. One announced that unless he be removed without delay from the cell he occupied he should forthwith make away with himself, as he was tired of life. “He appeared so much dejected, and spoke with such apparent earnestness, that I ordered him to the infirmary,” says the governor. Another man writes on his slate that the authorities treat him with such severity, he shall certainly commit suicide. He is seen at once by both chaplain and governor, but continues “dogged and intractable.” Then a certain impudent young vagabond, notorious for his continual misconduct, is found one morning seated at his table, reading the burial service aloud from his prayer-book, and sharpening his knife on a bit of hearth-stone; a woman is discovered with a piece of linen tied tightly round her neck, and nearly producing strangulation; men, one after another, are found suspended, but always cut down promptly, and proved unhurt in spite of pretended insensibility: cases of this kind really occurred so frequently, that I should fill many pages were I to recount a tithe of them.
I will describe the first instance in which it was found necessary to inflict corporal punishment in Millbank, which was as a punishment for a brutal assault. One of the prisoners, David Sheppard, checked mildly by his officer for walking in his wrong place, replied, “I’ll walk as I have always done, and not otherwise.”