The next step in the case was her removal to Bethlehem Hospital as mad. But even this was misconstrued; for when, in the February following (1838), a discussion arose in the House of Lords as to alleged ill-treatment of prisoners in the Penitentiary, Newman’s case was mentioned as one in which, on the other hand, culpable leniency had been shown. Those who found fault declared that she had been sent to an asylum, not because she was mad, but because by birth a lady. The same people declared that it was well known that she was not mad, and that she never had been. The matrons at Bethlehem knew this well, and had told her to her face that she was only feigning; whereupon she ceased to feign. Then as it was clear she was not mad, it was equally clear that Bethlehem was not the place for her.
Accordingly, she was returned to the Penitentiary; and back she came, exhibiting throughout the most sullen contempt, and persistently refusing to open her lips. Directly she arrived she again began her tricks. Deliberately insolent refusals to execute the orders she received, and open contempt of punishment, were the leading points on which she differed with the authorities. Again the governor urges on the committee that she may be removed by transportation, she being, under existing circumstances, both intractable and incorrigible. “If I am to maintain discipline where she is, it must be by entering perpetually into fresh and perplexing contests, the outcome of which may be very awful as respects the prisoner and exceedingly embarrassing as respects the institution,” he writes. She next pretends to wish to lay hands upon herself, and her rug is found torn up and converted into a noose. It was hanging to a peg in her cell, like a halter ready for use. The authorities considered it advisable therefore to place her in restraint, in a new strait waistcoat which fitted close. In an hour or two she had torn it all to pieces. The next proceeding was to confine her hands in a very small pair of handcuffs, and to pinion her arms with strong tape. The waistcoat appearing to have been cut, she and her cell were searched, but no knife or scissors could be found, and only a piece of broken glass which she must have used for the purpose. She soon afterwards loosened the tape, and was then bound with strong webbing to the bedstead. Next morning she was found to have got rid of the handcuffs, had cut the webbing to pieces, broken her windows, and destroyed her bedding. One of the female warders was therefore sent to a surgical instrument maker’s to purchase some effectual instrument of restraint, and returned with a muff-belt and handcuffs, all united, and ingeniously contrived to defeat the struggles of lunatics—quite a new invention. Before long she completely destroyed the muff and got rid of the handcuffs attached to it. She was next secured to the wall by a stout chain.
An officer, Mrs. Drago, who visited her just now, asked her why she should make such a figure of herself, pretending to be mad too, when she wasn’t. “I’ve been advised to do it by my solicitor. If I can only get out, I’ll soon manage to get my mother out. I’m a person of large fortune, and can make it worth any one’s while to do me a good turn. Mrs. Bryant used to, but she’s gone. That used to be my larder, over there,”—pointing to the window blind. Her evident object was to tamper with Mrs. Drago, and this of itself gave evidence that she could not be very mad.
The chain by which she was now confined was put round her waist, passed through a ring in the wall, and padlocked. “This security was of short duration,” says the governor, “before morning she had slipped through the chain. It was again placed on her in a more effectual manner, under, instead of outside her clothes.... As she had destroyed so much of her bedding I ordered her to have no more bedclothes. In the evening she made the most violent demand for a blanket, and said she was dying of cramp and cold.... As a matter of discipline I thought it my duty to refuse the blanket unless ordered by the surgeon. When she heard this she quite frightened the female officer with the frightful and horrible imprecations she uttered.”
In consequence of her getting out of her chain the manufacturer of restraints for the insane came to devise some fresh expedient for confining her. He made a pair of leather sleeves of extra strength, and fitted them himself. They came up to her shoulders, were strapped across, then also strapped round her waist, and again below, fastening her hands close to her side.
Next morning the taskmistress took the sleeves to the governor. In the night Julia had extricated herself from them, and then cut them into ribbons, using a piece of glass she had secreted. A new strait waistcoat was now made for her, and she was specially measured by the manufacturer already mentioned; but it could not be ready before the morning, so she was left without restraint that night. Many of the officials were afraid she would commit suicide, but not Mr. Nihil. However, next morning she was found with her clothes torn to rags, and part tied tightly round her neck. As a measure of precaution the new strait waistcoat was then put on, after she had been first carefully searched. A strong collar was also put round her neck to prevent her biting at the waistcoat with her teeth. “I lament exceedingly,” says Mr. Nihil, “the necessity of resorting to such measures; but what is to be done with this violent and obstinate girl?” Next morning she was found to have got at the waistcoat with her teeth in spite of the collar, then one hand loose, after which she relieved herself of the apparatus altogether.
She was now left free, while fresh devices were sought to restrain her, but in the midst of it all came an order for her removal to Van Diemen’s Land, whither she was in a day or two conveyed in the convict ship Nautilus. And here the curtain falls upon her stormy life.