But this was not the only amusement. Most of the wards took in the daily papers, the most popular being the ‘Times,’ ‘Morning Herald,’ and ‘Morning Chronicle’; on Sunday the ‘Weekly Dispatch,’ ‘Bell’s Life,’ and the ‘Weekly Messenger.’ The newsman had free access to the prison; he passed in unsearched and unexamined, and, unaccompanied by an officer, went at once to his customers, who bought their paper and paid for it themselves. The news-vendor was also a tobacconist, and he had thus ample means of introducing to the prisoners the prohibited but always much-coveted and generally procurable weed. In the same way the wardsman laid in his stock to be retailed. Other light literature besides the daily journals were in circulation: novels, flash songs, play-books, such as ‘Jane Shore,’ ‘Grimm’s German Tales,’ with Cruikshank’s illustrations, and publications which in these days would have been made the subject of a criminal prosecution. One of these, published by Stockdale, the inspectors styled “a book of the most disgusting nature.”[83] There was also a good supply of Bibles and prayers, the donation of a philanthropic gentleman, Captain Brown, but these, particularly the Bibles, bore little appearance of having been used. Drink, in more or less unlimited quantities, was still to be had. Spirits certainly were now excluded; but a potman, with full permission of the sheriffs, brought in beer for sale from a neighbouring public-house, and visited all the wards with no other escort than the prisoner gatesman. The quantity to be issued per head was limited by the prison regulations to one pint, but no steps were taken to prevent any prisoner from obtaining more if he could pay for it. The beer-man brought in as much as he pleased; he sold it without the controlling presence of an officer. Not only did prisoners come again and again for a “pint,” but large quantities were carried off to the wards to be drunk later in the day.
There were more varied, and at times, especially when beer had circulated freely, more uproarious diversions. Wrestling, in which legs were occasionally broken, was freely indulged in; also such low games as “cobham,” leap-frog, puss in the corner, and “fly the garter,” for which purpose the rugs were spread out to prevent feet slipping on the floor. Feasting alternated with fighting. The weekly introduction of food, to which I shall presently refer, formed the basis of luxurious banquets, washed down by liquor and enlivened by flash songs and thrilling long-winded descriptions of robberies and other “plants.” There was much swearing and bad language, the very worst that could be used, from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night.[84] New arrivals, especially the innocent and still guileless debutant, were tormented with rude horse-play, and assailed by the most insulting “chaff.” If any man presumed to turn in too early he was “toed,” that is to say, a string was fastened to his big toe while he was asleep, and he was dragged from off his mat, or his bedclothes were drawn away across the room. The ragged part of the prisoners were very anxious to destroy the clothes of the better dressed, and often lighted small pieces of cloth, which they dropped smouldering into their fellow-prisoners’ pockets. Often the victim, goaded to madness, attacked his tormentors; a fight was then certain to follow. These fights sometimes took place in the daytime, when a ring was regularly formed, and two or three stood by the door to watch for the officer’s approach. More often they occurred at night, and were continued to the bitter end. The prisoners in this way administered serious punishment on one another. Black eyes and broken noses were always to be seen.
More cruel injuries were common enough, which did not result from honest hand-to-hand fights. The surgeon’s journal produced to the inspectors contained numerous entries of terrible wounds inflicted in a cowardly way. “A serious accident: one of the prisoners had a hot poker run into his eye.” “A lad named Matthew White has had a wound in his eye by a bone thrown at him, which very nearly destroyed vision.” “There was a disturbance in the transport yard yesterday evening, and the police were called in. During the tumult a prisoner, ... who was one of the worst of the rioters, was bruised about the head and body.” “Watkins’ knee-joint is very severely injured.” “A prisoner Baxter is in the infirmary in consequence of a severe injury to his wrist-joint.” Watkins’ case, referred to above, is made the subject of another and a special report from the surgeon. He was in the transport side, when one of his fellows, in endeavouring to strike another prisoner with a large poker, missed his aim, and struck Watkins’ knee.... Violent inflammation and extensive suppuration ensued, and for a considerable time amputation seemed inevitable. After severe suffering prolonged for many months, the inflammation was subdued, but the cartilage of the knee-joint was destroyed, and he was crippled for life. On another occasion a young man, who was being violently teased, seized a knife and stabbed his tormentor in the back. The prisoner who used the knife was secured, but it was the wardsman, and not the officers, to whom the report was made, and no official inquiry or punishment followed.
Matters were at times still worse, and the rioting went on to such dangerous lengths as to endanger the safety of the building. On one occasion a disturbance was raised which was not quelled until windows had been broken and forms and tables burnt. The officers were obliged to go in among the prisoners to restore order with drawn cutlasses, but the presence and authority of the governor himself became indispensable. The worst fights occurred on Sunday afternoons; but nearly every night the act of locking up became, from the consequent removal of all supervision, the signal for the commencement of obscene talk, revelry, and violence.
Other regulations laid down by the Gaol Acts were still defied. One of these was that prisoners should be restricted to the gaol allowance of food; but all could still obtain as much extra, and of a luxurious kind, as their friends chose to bring them in. Visitors were still permitted to come with supplies on given days of the week, about the only limitation being that the food should be cooked, and cold; hot meat, poultry, and fish were also forbidden. But the inspectors found in the ward cupboards mince-pies and other pasties, cold joints, hams, and so forth. Many other articles were introduced by visitors, including money, tobacco, pipes, and snuff. From the same source came the two or three strong files which the inspectors found in one ward, together with four bradawls, several large iron spikes, screws, nails, and knives; “all of them instruments calculated to facilitate attempts at breaking out of prison, and capable of becoming most dangerous weapons in the hands of desperate and determined men.” The nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, although restricted to certain days, continued to be an unmixed evil. The untried might see their friends three times a week, the convicted only once. On these occasions precautions were supposed to be taken to exclude bad characters, yet many persons of notoriously loose life continually obtained egress. Women saw men if they merely pretended to be wives; even boys were visited by their sweethearts. Decency was, however, insured by a line of demarcation, and visitors were kept upon each side of a separated double iron railing. But no search was made to intercept prohibited articles at the gate, and there was no permanent gate-keeper, which would have greatly helped to keep out bad characters. Some idea of the difficulty and inconvenience of these lax regulations as regards visiting, may be gathered from the statement that as many as three hundred were often admitted on the same day—enough to altogether upset what small show of decorum and discipline was still preserved in the prison. Perhaps the worst feature of the visiting system was the permission accorded to male prisoners “under the name of husbands, brothers, and sons” to have access to the female side on Sundays and Wednesdays, in order to visit their supposed relations there.
On this female side, where the Ladies’ Association still reigned supreme, more system and a greater semblance of decorum was maintained. But there were evils akin to those on the male side, prominent amongst which was the undue influence accorded to prisoners. A female prisoner kept the registers. Wards-women were allowed much the same authority, with the same temptations to excess, and intoxication was not unknown among them and others. The clothing was still meagre and ragged: the washing places insufficient, and wanting in decency; in some yards the pump was the only provision, and this in a place within sight of visitors, of the windows of the male turnkeys, and unprotected from the weather. There was the same crowding in the sleeping arrangements as on the male side; the same scarcity of bedding. It was a special evil of this part of the prison, that the devotional exercises, originally so profitable, had grown into a kind of edifying spectacle, which numbers of well-meaning but inquisitive people were anxious to witness. Thus, when the inspectors visited there were twenty-three strangers, and only twenty-eight prisoners. The presence of so many strangers, many of them gentlemen, distracted the prisoners’ attention, and could not be productive of much good.
The separation of the sexes was not indeed rigidly carried out in Newgate as yet. We have seen that male prisoners visited their female relations and friends on the female side. Besides this, the gatesman who prepared the briefs had interviews with female prisoners alone while taking their instructions; a female came alone and unaccompanied by a matron to clean the governor’s office in the male prison; male prisoners carried coal into the female prison, when they saw and could speak or pass letters to the female prisoners; and the men could also at any time go for tea, coffee, and sugar to Mrs. Brown’s shop, which was inside the female gate. In the bail-dock, where most improper general association was permitted, the female prisoners were often altogether in the charge of male turnkeys. The governor was also personally responsible for gross contravention of this rule of separation, and was in the habit of drawing frequently upon the female prison for prisoners to act as domestic servants in his own private dwelling. Some member of the Ladies’ Association observed and commented upon the fact that a “young rosy-cheeked girl” had been kept by the governor from transportation, while older women in infirm health were sent across the seas. His excuse was that he had given the girl his promise that she should not go, an assumption of prerogative which by no means rested with him; but he afterwards admitted that the girl had been recommended to him by the principal turnkey, who knew something of her friends. This woman was really his servant, employed to help in cleaning, and taken on whenever there was extra work to be done. The governor had a great dislike, he said, to seeing strangers in his house. This girl had been first engaged on account of the extra work entailed by certain prisoners committed by the House of Commons, who had been lodged in the governor’s own house. The house at this time was full of men and visitors; waiters came in from the taverns with meals. Some of the prisoners had their valets, and all these were constantly in and out of the kitchen where this female prisoner was employed. There was revelling and roystering, as usual, with “high life below-stairs.” The governor sent down wine on festive occasions, of which no doubt the prisoner housemaid had her share. It can hardly be denied that the governor, in his treatment of this woman, was acting in flagrant contravention of all rules.
Eighteen years had elapsed since the formation of the “Ladies’ Association,” and Mrs. Fry with her colleagues still laboured assiduously in Newgate, devoting themselves mainly to the female prison, although their ministrations were occasionally extended to the male side. The inspectors paid tribute to the excellence of the motives of these philanthropic ladies, and recognized the good they did. They had introduced “much order and cleanliness,” had provided work for those who had hitherto passed their time in total idleness, and had made the treatment of female transports on the way to New South Wales their especial care. They had tried, moreover, by their presence and their pious, disinterested efforts, to restrain the dissolute manners and vicious language of the unhappy and depraved inmates. But it was already plain that they constituted an independent authority within the gaols; they were frequently in conflict with the chaplain, who not strangely resented the orders issued by the aldermen, that women should be frequently kept from chapel in order that they might attend the ladies’ lectures and exhortations. The admission of a crowd of visitors to assist in these lay services has already been remarked upon; as the inspectors pointed out, it had the bad effect of distracting attention, it tended to “dissipate reflection, diminish the gloom of the prison, and mitigate the punishment which the law has sentenced the prisoner to undergo.”
It is to be feared too that although the surface was thus whitewashed and decorous, much that was vicious still festered and rankled beneath, and that when the restraining influences of the ladies were absent, the female prisoners relapsed into immoral and uncleanly discourse. Even in the daytime, when supervision was withdrawn, “the language used to be dreadful,” says one of the women when under examination; “swearing and talking of what crimes they had committed, and how they had done it.” Another witness declared she had heard the most shocking language in the yard; she said “she had never witnessed such scenes before, and hopes she never shall again—it was dreadful!” After locking-up time, which varied, as on the male side, according to the daylight, the scenes were often riotous and disgraceful. The poor, who could afford no luxuries, went to bed early, but were kept awake by the revelries of the rich, who supped royally on the supplies provided from outside, and kept it up till ten or eleven o’clock. There were frequent quarrels and fights; shoes and other missiles were freely bandied about; and with all this “the most dreadful oaths, the worst language, too bad to be repeated,” were made use of every night.
Bad as were the various parts of the gaol already dealt with, there still remained one where the general callous indifference and mismanagement culminated in cruel culpable neglect. The condition of the capitally-convicted prisoners after sentence was still very disgraceful. The side they occupied, still known as the press-yard, consisted of two dozen rooms and fifteen cells. In these various chambers, until just before the inspectors made their report, all classes of the condemned, those certain to suffer, and the larger number who were nearly certain of a reprieve, were jumbled up together, higgledy-piggledy, the old and the young, the murderer and the child who had broken into a dwelling.[85] All privacy was impossible under the circumstances. At times the numbers congregated together were very great; as many as fifty and sixty, even more, were crowded indiscriminately into the press-yard. The better-disposed complained bitterly of what they had to endure; one man declared that the language of the condemned rooms was disgusting, that he was dying a death every day in being compelled to associate with such characters. In the midst of the noisy and blasphemous talk no one could pursue his meditations; any who tried to pray became the sport and ridicule of his brutal fellows.