It was quite within possibility that in these two cases madness was proved. But it is often difficult to draw the line between madness and outrageous misconduct; and the latter is sometimes persisted in order to make good a pretence of deranged intellect. Among the female prisoners there are numerous instances of this—and as a matter of fact among the males also. Cases of “trying it on,” or “doing the barmy,” which are cant terms for feigning lunacy, used at one time to be more frequent than they are now, when longer experience protects prison physicians from deception.
The case of Julia St. Clair Newman—or Miss Newman, as she was commonly called in the prison and out—attracted considerable attention in its time, becoming indeed the subject of frequent discussion in Parliament, and being referred at length to a Select Committee of the House of Lords. Inside the walls Julia Newman was for many months the centre of all interest; she was a thorn in the side of all officials, visitors, governor, doctor, matrons, and even of her fellow-prisoners. Apparently of Creole origin—at least it was certain that she had been born in one of the West India Islands—she came home while still a child, and was educated at a French boarding-school. When sixteen she returned to Trinidad with her mother, remained there a year or two, and again came to England to live on an allowance made them by Julia’s guardian. But whether this allowance was too small, or their natural proclivities would not be repressed, they soon got into bad ways. Repeatedly shifting houses, they moved from one lodging to another, always in debt, and not seldom under suspicion of swindling and fraud. Three months in the King’s Bench was followed by a lengthened sojourn in Whitecross Street Gaol; then came more shady transactions, such mistakes as pledging their landlady’s plate for their own, making away with wearing apparel and furniture, or absconding without payment of rent. At length, having left the apartments of a certain Mrs. Dobbs in a hurry, they packed up—quite by accident—in one of their trunks a silver spoon, some glasses, and a decanter, the property of the aforesaid Mrs. Dobbs. For this they were arrested, and as soon as they were in custody a second charge was laid against them for stealing a ring from a woman in the King’s Bench, which Julia indignantly denied, declaring that she had picked it up in the pump yard—where of course there were plenty of rings to be had simply for the trouble of stooping. Naturally the jury disbelieved the Newmans’ explanation of both counts, and mother and daughter were found guilty and sentenced to transportation.
They were evidently a pair of ordinary commonplace habitual swindlers, deserving no special notice. But their rumoured gentility gained for them a species of misplaced sympathy; and they were excused transportation, to be sent instead, for reformation, to the Penitentiary, where they arrived on the 11th March, 1837. Of the mother it will be sufficient to say at once that she was an inoffensive tractable old woman, who bore her punishment with patience, and eventually died in prison. But Julia was cast in a different mould. Under thirty,—according to her own statement she was only nineteen,—full in figure, and florid of complexion, possessed, as was afterwards proved, of extraordinary physical strength, she displayed, from the first moment almost, an incorrigible perversity which made her in the end a perfect nuisance to the whole establishment. There was something ladylike about her when she was in a peaceable mood. Inexperienced people would have called her a gentlewoman. Not handsome or even good looking, but decidedly “interesting,” the matrons said when questioned before the Select Committee. She was accomplished: could draw and paint, and was very musical; sang beautifully—and certainly during her stay at Millbank she gave plenty of proof of the strength and compass of her voice; and with all this she was clever, designing, and of course thoroughly unprincipled.
The day after her reception she endeavoured to tamper with the wardswoman; seeking to obtain paper and pencil “to write a letter to her mother.” When taxed with this breach of rules, she declared the wardswoman wanted to force the things upon her. Then she was found to have cut a page out of “The Prisoner’s Companion,” a book supplied to all. Questioned privately, Newman with many expressions of grief confessed her guilt. Mr. Nihil, who was still quite in the dark as to her real character, pardoned this offence. She was next charged with an attempt to induce a fellow-prisoner to pass on a message to her mother—the substance of which was that the elder Newman was to impose upon the chaplain by a hypocritical confession, in order to obtain thus the daughter’s release, Julia promising when free to contrive means by which the mother should also be discharged. The “dark” became her lot for this, and to it she again returned the following week, for refusing to clean out her cell. When the governor reasoned with her, she merely said she would be happy to pay some other prisoner to do it for her. This second visit to the dark brought her under the doctor’s notice, who ordered her to the infirmary, as she declared she was too weak to walk downstairs. Her face having grown quite pale and ghastly, help was sent for, when it was discovered that she had whitened it with chalk. She again visited the dark, and when released began again to communicate with her mother. Several “stiffs”[7] were intercepted, in which she tried to persuade her to smuggle a letter out to their solicitors. This discovery led to a strict search of Julia’s cell and person, when large quantities of writing paper were found upon her, though “how she procured the paper, or the pen, or how she manufactured the ink, continued a mystery implying great laxity of supervision.” Her anxiety to write thus checked in one direction found vent in another: with the point of her scissors she had scratched upon the whitewash of her cell wall four verses of poetry. The words were harmless, and as she asserted that she felt it a severe restriction being kept apart, the governor admonished her well for this offence.
This leniency was quite thrown away. A fresh attempt at clandestine correspondence came to light within a week or two. Newman passed a letter at chapel to Mary Ann Stickley, which was found in the other’s bosom, the substance of it being that Newman professed a great regard for Stickley, and begged of her to excite the hatred of all the other prisoners against Ware for her recent betrayal of Newman. A second letter was picked up by Alice Bradley in front of Newman’s cell, addressed to a prisoner named Weedon, whom she abused in round terms for making a false charge against the governor to the effect that he had called her (Newman) by some horrid epithet—“which she could never believe of that good man.” Newman’s cell was again searched, when an ink bottle was found in the hopper,[8] and some substitutes for pens. Her letters were found replete with artifices respecting modes of communication. Her next form of amusement was to manufacture a big rag doll for herself, out of a breadth of her petticoat. When this was discovered Newman was at exercise walking in the yard, and she heard that her cell was about to be thoroughly searched. Whereupon she ran as fast as she could, back to her ward, and endeavoured to prevent the matrons from entering her cell. When searched herself she resisted violently, but with the assistance of the wardswoman some written papers were taken from her, also some leaves from the blank part of her prayer-book, also written over.
“I understand,” says the governor, “a most extraordinary scene took place when the prisoner apprehended a search. She rushed to the stove and thrust certain papers into it, which but for the promptitude of the wardswoman, who behaved admirably, would soon have succeeded in putting them beyond investigation. They were however rescued, upon which she threw her arms round the warder’s neck, kissed her vehemently, went on her knees, supplicated concealment, tore her hair, and by such passionate demonstrations evinced the great importance she attached to the papers. The warder wept, the taskmistress contributed her tears, the wardswoman was overcome, but all stood faithful. In the midst of the screaming and confusion came the schoolmaster, who was also assailed with all the tender importunities of the fair prisoner, but all in vain.”
By this time the governor arrived upon the scene, the officers partially recovered from their consternation, and Newman, much less excited, was disposed to make light of the document recently esteemed so precious. She said it was only a copy; the original had been torn up. “What is it then?” “A paper from which my mother and I expect to gain our liberty. It relates to a person who was the cause of all our misfortunes.” On inspection it proved to be a statement, or dying confession, of one Mary Hewett, tending to exculpate the Newmans at her own expense—probably a draft of what Julia Newman wished Hewett to say.
Three days later Julia was reported to be in a state of fury. Loud screaming proceeded from her cell. “I found her in a most violent paroxysm of rage,” says the governor. “It was most painful to see it. Not genuine madness did she evince, but that species of temporary frenzy to which an actress by force of imagination and violent effort could attain. Towards me she expressed the utmost abhorrence, and slammed the door in my face. I sent for the surgeon and some male officers, for her screams and yells, her violence in tearing her hair, and knocking her head against the wall, made it probable that forcible restraint would be necessary.”
The surgeon did not wish to have her placed in a dark cell, nor even in a strait waistcoat, and at his recommendation she was taken to the infirmary and put in a room by herself; but she was not removed without a continuance of violent screaming, to the disturbance of the whole place. Papers were found in her cell, on one of which was written “a lampoon, composed in doggerel verses, in which she vented the bitterness of her revenge. I (Mr. Nihil) was the principal object of her ridicule. It is melancholy to see a young girl of talent and some attainments so bent upon deception, and when foiled in her artifice abandoning herself alternately to studied malice and furious rage.” She remained in the infirmary for three days at the special wish of the surgeon, though the governor wanted to have her back in her cell. All the time she continued to feign insanity—a clear imposture of which the doctors, the governor, and the assistant chaplain were all convinced. The governor visited her to endeavour to convince her of the folly and hopelessness of this course; but the moment she saw him she addressed him with the most insulting expressions, and seizing a can full of gruel threw it at his head. She was restrained from further violence, but continued to use the most outrageous exclamations, to the disturbance of the whole prison. The surgeon now consented to have her removed to a dark cell; and the governor remarks, “I can account for her personal hostility to myself thus. She has been defeated in several attempts to carry on clandestine communications. Until Monday last she cherished a hope of getting back among the other prisoners, where she might still prosecute her schemes; but on that day I again refused her, and my refusal was such as it was hopeless for her to try to alter it.” She continued in the dark, amusing herself by singing songs of her own composition, “too regular and too much studied for the productions of a genuine mad-woman.” She slept well, and ate all the bread they gave her. The visitor, Mr. Crawford, saw her, and recommended another medical opinion. Accordingly Mr. White, the former surgeon to the establishment, was called in, and stated that her madness was assumed, but he recommended she still should be treated as a patient.
Goaded at length by the continued annoyance, the governor writes to the committee as follows: “I submit that the case of Julia Newman calls for some decisive proceeding. There has been time enough—eleven days—to put to the test whether she is mad in reality or only in pretence. She has contrived to set all discipline at defiance, continually singing so as to be heard in every part of the establishment. Her conduct excites universal attention, and furnishes an example of the grossest insubordination. If the prisoner is mad, she ought forthwith to be sent to a mad-house; if not, she ought to be sent abroad as incorrigible. Yesterday she showed a disposition to return to her senses, as if tired of the effort of simulation, but did not know how to get out of her assumed character. To-day she is as bad as ever. No doubt in time she would come all right, but in the meantime what is to be done with her? I cannot venture to place her among other prisoners. If she is to be kept apart the whole time of her imprisonment (of which three and a half years are unexpired), there is every reason to expect a constant recurrence of violence and other modes of annoyance; for she has no respect for authority, and after assaulting the governor and counterfeiting madness with impunity, she will be emboldened to act as she likes. If put into a dark cell doubts as to her sanity will arise, and perhaps her own self-abandonment to violence may superinduce real madness, and then it will be said that our system at the Penitentiary had driven her out of her mind. She is far too dangerous a character to be sent into a ward with other prisoners. She has already tampered with eight or ten other prisoners, perhaps more.”