That was the only instruction Colonel Milman ever received from the Home Office concerning us. Two months later, when public opinion was more fully aroused in our favor, Sir William Harcourt allowed paragraphs to circulate in the papers, stating that orders were given for our being granted every indulgence consistent with our safe custody. It was a brazen lie, which we were prevented from contradicting by the prison rules. So carefully is every regulation contrived for shielding officials that a prisoner is not allowed, in his quarterly letter, to give any particulars of his treatment. Sir William Harcourt also permitted the newspapers to announce that our health would not be allowed to suffer. Another lie! When, after six weeks' incessant diarrhoea, I complained that my stomach would not accommodate itself to the prison food, and asked to be shifted to the civil side, where I could provide my own, Sir William Harcourt did not even condescend to reply, although he was duly informed that if Mr. Ramsey and I had been found Guilty at the Court of Queen's Bench, on our third trial, Lord Coleridge would not only have made his sentence concurrent with that of Judge North, but also have removed us from the criminal-wards to the debtors' wing. Nay, more. When Mr. Kemp had to be taken to the hospital, where he was confined to his bed, and so weakened that he had to be assisted to the carriage on the morning of his release, Sir William Harcourt would not remit a day of his sentence, or take any notice of his representations. It is well that the public should know this, and contrast Sir William Harcourt's treatment of us with his treatment of Mr. Edmund Yates. From the first I had no expectation of release. I told Colonel Milman that Sir William Harcourt was merely a politician, who cared for nothing but keeping in office; and that unless our friends could threaten some Liberal seats, or seriously affect a division in the House of Commons, he would keep us in to please the bigots and the Tories.
Our "petition" to the Home Secretary being finished, we returned to our cells, where tea was served at six o'clock. It consisted of gruel, or, in prison parlance, "skilly," and another little brown loaf. The liquid portion of this repast was too suggestive of bill-stickers' paste to be tempting, so I made a second meal of bread and water.
The red-haired warder gave me a lesson in bed-making before he locked me up for the night. Hammocks had been dispensed with in Holloway ever since Sir Richard Cross groaned in the travail of invention, and produced his masterpiece and monument—the plank bed. Yet so slow is the official mind, that the rings still lingered in some of the cells. The plank bed is constructed of three eight-inch deals, held together laterally by transverse wooden bars, which serve to lift it two or three inches from the floor. At the head there is a raised portion of flat wood, slightly sloping, to serve as a bolster. For the first month (such is Sir Richard Cross's brilliant idea) every prisoner, no matter what his age or his offence, must sleep on this plank bed without a mattress, unless the doctor sees a special reason for ordering him one. During the second month he sleeps on the plank bed three nights a week, and during the third month one night. Sleeps! The very word is a mockery. Scores of prisoners do not sleep, but pass night after night in broken and restless slumber. Fancy a man delicately brought up, as some prisoners are, suddenly pitched on one of these vile inventions. He tosses about hour after hour, and rises in the morning sore and weary. He has no appetite for breakfast, and is low all day. The next night comes with renewed torture, and on the following day he is still worse. He then applies to see the doctor, who gives him a bottle of physic, which forces an appetite for a while. But it is soon powerless against the effects of nervous exhaustion, and before the poor devil can obtain relief, he is sometimes reduced to the most pitiable condition. I have seen robust men in Holloway, by means of this plank bed and other superfluous tortures of our prison system, brought to the very verge of the grave; and I can scarcely control my indignation when I remember that Mr. Truelove, at the age of seventy, was subjected to this atrocious discipline.
The mattresses are stuffed with fibre. They are tolerable at first, but in a few weeks the stuffing runs into lumps, and your mattress gets nearly as hard as the plank. Shaking is no good; I tried it, and found it only shifted the lumps out of the places my body had forced them in, and left me to repose on a series of hillocks. I got my mattress changed once or twice, but ordinary prisoners are seldom so fortunate.
I retired to rest early that first evening in Holloway. The day had been eventful, and I slept heavily. Breakfast the next morning was a second edition of the tea—bread and skilly; and again I refreshed myself with the little loaf and cold water.
Soon after breakfast I was invited to attend chapel. It was a welcome summons, for the cell is so drearily monotonous that any change is agreeable. The corner of the chapel we entered was partitioned off from the rest of the building, and capable of seating twenty or thirty prisoners. Besides ourselves, there were present ten or twelve boys, three or four old men, and two or three persons who looked slightly imbecile. The service was read by the chaplain, whose voice was loud, authoritative, and repellant. Some people would call it gruff. It was certainly the most unpersuasive voice I ever heard. As I listened to its domineering tones I could hardly refrain from laughing, for they elicited an old story from the depths of memory. An aged pauper lay dying, and in the parson's absence the master officiated at the sinner's exit from this world. "Well, Tom," he began, "you've been a dreadful fellow, and I fear you are going to hell." "Oh, sir," said the poor old fellow, "you don't say so." "Yes, Tom," the master rejoined, "I do say so; and you ought to be thankful there's a hell to go to."
After chapel we spent an hour or so in our cells, and were then conducted to the basement of the reception wing, where we met the Governor, who conducted us through several dark passages that led to the foot of a spiral iron staircase. We ascended this, and found ourselves on the ground floor of the criminal side of the prison. Four wings radiated from a common centre, distinguished by the first four letters of the alphabet. I was taken to the first cell in the first wing, Mr. Ramsey to the second cell in the second wing, and Mr. Kemp to the second cell in the third wing; our numbers being A 2, 1—B 2, 2—and C 2, 2. Colonel Milman personally placed me in charge of a warder who has since left the prison, and I believe the service. He was a good, kind-hearted fellow, who never spoke harshly to anybody. Following me into my cell, he took pains to "put me through the ropes." Before leaving he said, "I'm very sorry to see you here, Mr. Foote. I've been reading your case in the papers. It's a great shame. But I'll do my best to make you comfortable while you're with me." And I must say he did.
There were several prisoners standing mute in the corridor outside, and I remarked that they were a pale looking crew. "Yes," said the warder sadly, "confinement tells on a man." Then he gently closed and locked the door, leaving me alone to begin my long ordeal, with the words humming in my ears like the whisper of a fiend—Confinement tells on a man!