The second inspector, the Rev. Whitworth Russell, was the chaplain of Millbank penitentiary, the great architectural experiment which grew out of the strong representations of Jeremy Bentham and others, and was the first national recognition of the principle that punishment must be reformatory as well as deterrent.
Messrs. Crawford and Russell proceeded to carry out their new functions with commendable energy, and without a moment’s loss of time. The ink was barely dry upon their letters of appointment before they appeared at Newgate, and commenced a searching investigation. They attended early and late; they mustered the prisoners, examined into their condition, took voluminous evidence from all classes of individuals, from the governor down to the convict in the condemned cells. They visited the wards after locking-up time, and saw with their own eyes what went on. Having started with the proposition that the metropolitan prisons must monopolize their attention, as constituting, to use their own words, “a subject of magnitude and importance sufficient to exclude other gaols,” they soon narrowed their inquiry still further, and limited it to Newgate alone. Newgate indeed became the sole theme of their first report. The fact was that the years as they passed, nearly twenty in all, had worked but little permanent improvement in this detestable prison. Changes introduced under pressure had been only skin deep. Relapse was rapid and inevitable, so that the latter state of the prison was worse than the first. The disgraceful overcrowding had been partially ended, but the same evils of indiscriminate association were still present; there was the old neglect of decency, the same callous indifference to the moral well-being of the prisoners, the same want of employment and of all disciplinary control.
All these evils were set forth at length in the inspectors’ first report. There was no longer the faintest possible excuse for overcrowding. The numbers now committed to Newgate had sensibly diminished. The prison had become more or less a place of detention only, harbouring mainly those awaiting trial. To these were still added an average of about fifty expecting the last penalty of the law; a certain number of transports awaiting removal to the colonies; an occasional prisoner or two committed by the Houses of Parliament, the Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, the Commissioners of bankruptcy and of taxes; smugglers, and a larger number sentenced for very short terms, and for offences of the most varying description, by the Central Criminal Court. The sum total thus produced was inconsiderable compared with the hundreds that had formerly filled the gaol, and the whole by proper management might have been so accommodated as to prevent overcrowding. But incredible as it may appear, the authorities of Newgate declined to avail themselves of the advantages offered them, and when the population fell they shut up one half the gaol and crowded up the other. Some rooms remained quite empty and unoccupied, while others were full to overflowing. Not only were the wards thus needlessly crammed, and for no reason but the niggardliness of the corporation which refused a proper supply of bedding, but the occupants of each were huddled together indiscriminately. The inspectors found in the same wards in the chapel yard the convicted and the untried, the felon and the misdemeanant, the sane and the insane, the old and young offender. The classification prescribed by the Gaol Act, which laid down that certain prisoners should not intermix, was openly neglected, and “the greatest contempt shown for the law.” In another part there were men charged with and convicted of unnatural offences shut up with lads of tender years; minor offenders charged with small thefts or non-payment of small sums were cheek by jowl with convicts sentenced to long terms of transportation. In the master’s side yard, which had only one washing place, as many as seventy-eight prisoners, frequently more, were associated together, “of every variety of age, habit, and delinquency, without employment, oversight, or control.” In the middle yard it was still worse. “Here,” say the inspectors, “are herded together the very worst class of prisoners; certainly a more wretched combination of human beings can hardly be imagined. We have reason to fear that poverty, ragged clothes, and an inability to pay the ward dues, elsewhere exacted for better accommodation, consign many of the more petty and unpractised offenders to this place, where they inevitably meet with further contamination from the society of the most abandoned and incorrigible inmates of the gaol.”
No doubt the governor for the time being, Mr. Cope, was in a great measure to blame for all this, and for the want of proper classification. I shall have occasion to speak again, and more at length, of Mr. Cope’s careless and perfunctory discharge of his many manifest duties, but I shall here confine myself to animadverting on his neglect as regards the appropriation of his prison. He was unable to give any reason whatever for not utilizing the whole of the wards. He saw certain rooms fill up, and yet took no steps to open others that were locked up and empty. He blamed the construction of Newgate for the neglect of classification, and was yet compelled to confess that he had made no attempt whatever to carry it out. The fact was, he did not keep the classification of prisoners on first arrival in his own hands, nor even in that of his officers. A new prisoner’s fate, as to location, rested really with a powerful fellow-prisoner. The inspectors found that prisoners had their places assigned to them by the inner gatesman, himself a convicted prisoner, and a “wardsman” or responsible head of a room. The wardsman still exacted dues, of which more directly, and this particular official took excellent care to select as residents for his own ward those most suitable from his own point of view. “So great is the authority exercised by him, and so numerous were his opportunities of showing favouritism, that all the prisoners may be said to be in his power. If a man is poor and ragged, however inexperienced in crime, or however trifling may be the offence for which he has been committed, his place is assigned among the most depraved, the most experienced, and the most incorrigible offenders in the middle yard.” It must be admitted that so far but little effort had been made to counteract the evils of indiscriminate association.
It was not likely that a system which left innocent men—for the great bulk of new arrivals were still untried—to be pitchforked by chance anywhere, into any sort of company, within this the greatest nursery of crime in London, should exercise even the commonest care for the personal decency or comfort of the prisoners. Their treatment was also a matter of chance. They still slept on rope mats on the floor, herded together in companies of four or more to keep one another warm, and under the scanty covering of a couple of dirty stable-rugs apiece. So closely did they lie together, that the inspectors at their night visits found it difficult in stepping across the room to avoid treading on them. Sometimes two mats were allotted to three sleepers. Sometimes four slept under the same bedding, and left their mats unoccupied. The rugs used were never washed; an order existed that the bedding should be taken into the yards to be aired, but it was not very punctually obeyed. The only convenience for personal ablutions were the pumps in the yards, and the far-off baths in the condemned or press-yard. Water might not be taken into the ward for washing purposes. There was some provision of clothing, but it was quite insufficient, and nothing at all was given if prisoners had enough of their own to cover their nakedness. The inspectors paraded the prisoners, and found them generally ragged and ill-clad, squalid and filthy in the extreme; many without stockings, and with hardly shoes to their feet; some, who had the semblance of covering on the upper part of their feet, had no soles to the shoes, and their bare feet were on the ground. This, too, was in the depth of the winter, and during a most inclement season. The allowance of food was not illiberal, but its issue was precarious, and dependent on the good will of the wardsmen, who measured out the portions to each according to his eye, and not with weights and measures, no turnkey being present. Too much was left to the wardsman. It was he who could issue small luxuries; he sold tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, although prohibited, and extra beer. He charged a weekly sum as ward dues for the use of knives, forks, and plates—a perpetuation under another form of the old detestable custom of garnish. He had power where his exactions were resisted of making the ward most uncomfortable for the defaulter. He could trump up a false complaint against his fellow-prisoner, and so get him punished; he might keep him from the fire, or give him his soup or gruel in a pail instead of a basin.
The authority of these wardsmen so improperly exalted, and so entirely unchecked, degenerated into a baneful despotism. They bought their offices from one another, and were thus considered to have a vested interest in them. Their original capital had been a few shillings, and for this they purchased the right to tax their fellows to the extent of pounds per week. The wardsman had a monopoly in supplying provisions, gave dinner and breakfast at his own price, and was such complete master of the ward that none of its inmates were suffered to make tea or coffee for themselves lest it should interfere with his sales. He made collections when it suited him for ward purposes, to be spent as he chose, in candles and so forth. When the wardsman was a man of some education, with some knowledge of legal chicanery gained by personal experience, he might add considerably to his emoluments by drawing briefs and petitions for his fellows. There was a recognized charge of 5s. per brief, for a petition of from 1s. 6d. to 8s., according to its length, and by these payments a wardsman had been known to amass as much as £40. The man intrusted with this privilege was often the inner gatesman, the prisoner official already mentioned, who held the fate of new arrivals as regards location in his hands. It was not strange that he should sometimes misuse his power, and when prisoners were not to be cajoled into securing his legal services, had been known to employ threats, declaring that he was often consulted by the governor as to a prisoner’s character, in view of speaking to it at the trial, and he could easily do them a good turn—or a very bad one. The brief-drawing gatesman and wardsman at the time of the inspectors’ first visit must have been a particularly powerful personage. He was on the most intimate and improperly familiar terms with the turnkeys, had a key of both the master’s side and middle side yards, was the only person present at the distribution of beer, and was trusted to examine, and, if he chose, pass in, all provisions, money, clothes, and letters brought for prisoners by their friends.
All the wardsmen alike were more or less irresponsible. The turnkeys complained bitterly that these old prisoners had more power than they themselves. The governor himself admitted that a prisoner of weak intellect who had been severely beaten and much injured by a wardsman did not dare complain, the victim of this cruel ill-usage having “more fear of the power of the wardsman to injure him, than confidence in the governor’s power to protect him.” These wardsmen, besides thus ruling the roast, had numerous special privileges, if such they can be called. They were not obliged to attend chapel, and seldom if ever went; “prisoners,” said one of them under examination, “did not like the trouble of going to chapel.” They had a standing bedstead to sleep on, and a good flock mattress; double allowance of provisions, filched from the common stock. Nobody interfered with them or regulated their conduct. They might get drunk when so disposed, and did so frequently, alone or in company. Evidence was given before the inspectors of eight or ten prisoners seen “giddy drunk, not able to sit upon forms.” The female wards-women were also given to intemperance. The matron deposed to having seen the gates-woman “exceedingly drunk,” and having been insulted by her. There was no penalty attached to drunkenness. A wardsman did not necessarily lose his situation for it. Nor was drink the only creature comfort he might enjoy. He could indulge in snuff if a snuff-taker, and might always smoke his pipe undisturbed; for although the use of tobacco had been prohibited since the report of the Lords Committee, it was still freely introduced into the prison.
Probably authority would not have been so recklessly usurped by the wardsmen had not the proper officials too readily surrendered it. The turnkeys left the prisoners very much to themselves, never entering the wards after locking-up time, at dusk, till unlocking next morning, and then only went round to count the number. Many of them were otherwise and improperly occupied for hours every day in menial services for the governor, cleaning his windows or grooming his horse. One turnkey had been so employed several hours daily for nearly eleven years. It was not strange that subordinates should neglect their duty when superiors set the example. Nothing was more prominently brought out by the inspectors than the inefficiency of the governor at that time, Mr. Cope. He may have erred in some points through ignorance, but in others he was clearly guilty of culpable neglect. We have seen that he took no pains to classify and separate prisoners on reception. This was only one of many grave omissions on his part. He did not feel it incumbent on himself to visit his prison often or see his prisoners. The act prescribed that he should do both every twenty-four hours, but days passed without his entering the wards. The prisoners declared that they did not see him oftener than twice a week; one man who had been in the condemned ward for two months, said the governor only came there four times. Again, a turnkey deposed that his chief did not enter the wards more than once a fortnight.
But it is only fair to Mr. Cope to state that he himself said he went whenever he could find time, and that he was constantly engaged attending sessions and going with drafts to the hulks. But when he did visit, his inspections were of the most superficial character; sometimes he looked at his bolts and bars, but he never examined the cupboards, coal-boxes, or other possible hiding-places for cards, dice, dangerous implements, or other prohibited articles. He only attended chapel once on Sunday, never on the week-day, and generally devoted the time service was in progress to taking the descriptions of newly-arrived prisoners. He really did not know what passed in his gaol, and was surprised when the inspectors proved to him that practices of which he was ignorant, and which he admitted that he reprehended, went on without hindrance. He was satisfied to let matters run on as in the old times, he said in his own justification; with him what was, was right, and evils that should have been speedily rooted out remained because they had the prescription of long usage. He kept no daily journal of occurrences, and nothing, however important, was recorded at the time. The aldermen never called upon him to report, and left him nearly unsupervised and uncontrolled. In his administration of discipline he was quite uncertain; the punishments he inflicted were unequal, and it was not the least part of the blame imputed to him that he made special favourites of particular prisoners, retaining of his own accord in Newgate, and for years, felons who should have been sent beyond the seas. But, indeed, his whole rule was far too mild, and under this mistaken leniency the interior of the gaol was more like a bear-garden or the noisy purlieus of a public-house than a prison.
It was the same old story—evil constantly in the ascendant, the least criminal at the mercy of the most depraved. Under the reckless contempt for regulations, the apathy of the authorities, and the undue ascendancy of those who, as convicted felons, should have been most sternly repressed, the most hardened and the oldest in vice had the best of it, while the inexperienced beginner went to the wall. Edward Gibbon Wakefield,[82] who spent three years in Newgate a little before the time of the inspectors’ first report, said with justice that “incredible scenes of horror occur in Newgate.” It was, moreover, in his opinion undoubtedly the greatest nursery of crime in London. The days were passed in idleness, debauchery, riotous quarrelling, immoral conversation, gambling, indirect contravention of parliamentary rules, instruction in all nefarious processes, lively discourse upon past criminal exploits, elaborate discussion of others to be perpetrated after release. No provision whatever was made for the employment of prisoners, no materials were purchased, no trade instructors appointed. There was no school for adults; only the boys were taught anything, and their instructor, with his assistant, were convicted prisoners. Idle hands and unoccupied brains found in mischief the only means of whiling away the long hours of incarceration. Gaming of all kinds, although forbidden by the Gaol Acts, was habitually practised. This was admitted in evidence by the turnkeys, and was proved by the appearance of the prison tables, which bore the marks of gaming-boards deeply cut into them. Prisoners confessed that it was a favourite occupation, the chief games being “shoving halfpence” on the table, pitch in the hole, cribbage, dominoes, and common tossing, at which as much as four or five shillings would change hands in an hour.