Sitting on benches, waiting for their turn, are a dozen prisoners. They are all old, white-haired, naked and shivering; old offenders, recidivists, tramps, bums, drunken louts; lean, pale, bruised, with anemic, unhealthy skins, red noses, fishy eyes, bloated faces, large hands, knotty, ungainly feet, purple with the cold.
A very old man attracts my attention by his immobility, his general paleness, and his extraordinary gauntness, which shows the perfect outline of his muscles, and reminds me of the statue representing San Bartolommeo in the cathedral of Milan, holding his whole skin over his arm like a bath robe.
Squint-eyed and almost blind, this old man, of more than the allotted span of seventy years, seems unable to recollect his name, occupation or social status.
"A bum, I guess," remarks the keeper.
It appears that he is deaf, and his neighbour nudges him with an elbow and shouts in his ear:
"Say yes!"
"Yes, sir!" hastily answers the old man.
These derelicts of society are going to the workhouse on Monday.
Later we are ordered to clean and wash the small glass panes in the windows of the main prison. Trusties in smart, new, striped clothes, with creased pants and caps, rushed by eyeing us with curiosity. "Whatcheh in fer?" "What did the judge hand yeh?" are the leading whispered queries.
A pungent, musty, sickening smell pervades the old prison, which is barely lighted by a dismal and gray reflection filtering through the small windows. An inscription on the wall shows the date of construction to be 1864. The cell where Boss Tweed died is pointed out to me.