The events above narrated had driven him into a state of desperation at what he felt to be gross injustice, and he carried on in such a way that the doctor ordered his head to be shaved and blistered as a punishment, the straitjacket and all other coercive measures having been of no avail. The night watchman had orders to watch him closely, but he kept so sharp an eye on the watchman that he caught him asleep, and, creeping to the closet window, which he had previously tampered with, crept out, and after climbing the low wall found himself on a raw November night, with the rain falling in torrents, a stark-naked, head-shaved-and-blistered but once more a free man. In this condition he wandered on throughout the night, and just before daylight he entered a cemetery to find that refuge among the dead of which he thought himself so cruelly deprived by the living.
Beneath the entrance to the church there was a passage which led to some family vaults in the basement, and he crept down the passage to seek some shelter for his nude body from the driving rain, which had chilled him through. While groping about in the dark his hand rested on something soft, which, to his unbounded delight, proved to be an old coat which had probably been left there by the sexton and forgotten. He remained hidden all day, and traveled through the fields all night, during which he found a scarecrow, from which he transferred to his own person its old hat and trousers.
He said that although so hungry, he never had felt so happy as he did at finding himself once more dressed up. After proceeding a few miles farther, he ventured into a laborer's cottage in quest of food, which was given him, and with it a pair of old boots. As dilapidated, ragged, vagabond-looking, honest people are common in England, no questions were asked, and he proceeded on his way rejoicing in that freedom of which he had been deprived for ten years or more.
Amid all his pranks he had never been charged with idleness, and now worked at odd jobs about the farms until he had procured a decent suit of clothes, when he applied to a master house painter for work as a journeyman, though he had never done anything of that kind. The master, pleased with his appearance, gave him a trial, but the first job showed such ignorance of the art of house painting that he was forthwith discharged with half a day's wages. However, he had picked up some valuable hints, and being very apt by the time he had been more or less summarily discharged from half a dozen places he had become a good workman, and henceforth had no trouble about retaining any situation as long as he refrained from beer and restrained his temper; but at the slightest fault-finding on the part of the master he would fly into a passion and throw up the situation, and this, especially, if he suspected that anything had leaked out about his imprisonment.
While at work with a companion at painting the interior of a gentleman's residence near Bradford a word or two was dropped which made him believe his fellow workman had become aware of his being an ex-convict. Quitting work, he went to a public house, passing the rest of the day in carousing. About midnight, while on his way to his boarding house, it occurred to him that he had noticed a good many valuable things about the gentleman's house which he could obtain. No sooner thought than done; the entrance was in a moment gained; he had just consciousness enough left to gather a few things, then lie down by the side of them and fell into a drunkard's sleep, in which the servants found him when they came down in the morning. A constable was sent for, he was given in charge, tried, convicted of the crime of burglary and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.
His former term of five years had made him proficient in all the dodges of prison life, and he felt justified in his own mind in using all his craft in order to put in his seven years as easily as possible. As he had been in Raynell asylum, he knew that by "putting on the balmy" so as to be sent to the lunatic department he would not be subjected to the prison rules and be as well off as he had been in the free asylum. Persistent attempts at suicide by cutting himself in the arms and legs with a piece of glass so as to bleed freely accomplished his purpose. Being placed with the other convict lunatics, he made himself useful, but on account of his bad temper and overbearing, quarrelsome disposition, obnoxious to his fellow prisoners.
Eventually he was discharged with an eighteen months' ticket-of-leave and $2.50 as capital for a new departure.
He went to Liverpool, procured a passage on board a freight steamer to America, which he paid for by working at painting. Landing at New York, he made his way to Norfolk, Va., where he procured work as a painter. Owing to his infirmity of temper he did not keep his place long, and after knocking about for a few months he took a freak to return to England—the last place of all for any man who has once been a prisoner.
AFTER IMPRISONMENT.
(From Photo. by Stuart, Hartford.)