I have parcelled the above out into meals to meet the ordinary taste, though it is quite immaterial how or when the quantity is taken. It is, moreover, a matter of perfect indifference whether tea (no sugar or milk), claret, or, in fact, any other fluid (except ale and aërated or effervescing drinks), is substituted for coffee.
The principal points on which I differ from the so-called “Banting” system are:—
(a) The limiting of the quantity till a proper reduction has taken place.
(b) The occasional substituting (if desired) of soup for meat, which I have found attended with no inconvenience.
(c) The substitution of brown bread or brown biscuit for toast or rusk—thereby obviating constipation.
(d) The taking of liquorice powder at bed-time in lieu of the alkaline on rising.
To the uninitiated the above may appear trifles; their advantage can only be estimated by those who have tried both systems.
CHAPTER XIV.
COLDBATH FIELDS.
As the key turned in the ponderous door, and I found myself, with sixteen others, standing on a huge mat in a dismal corridor, I realised that I had arrived “home,” or at what I might consider as such, for—as I imagined—the next eighteen months. I had already passed one week in Newgate, and really thought, in the sanguineness of my heart, that I had made a considerable hole in my sentence, and that the remaining seventy-seven weeks would soon slip by. My first intimation that the place was inhabited, except by mutes, was hearing a metallic voice saying, pro bono publico, “You’ll find that talking is not permitted here—you mustn’t talk.” By peering into the gloom I discovered that the voice belonged to a bald head, and the bald head to a venerable head warder. The poor old man was super-annuated shortly after, and evidently meant to show the recruits he was not to be trifled with, and that there was life in the old dog yet. We were next taken through endless corridors to the “Reception Room.” Can any name be more suggestive of satire, except perhaps “Mount Pleasant,” the hill so called on which the prison stands, bounded at each corner by a public-house, and a “pop-shop” here and there sandwiched in between! The reception we received in the Reception Room was far from a cordial one; it was, indeed, as cold as the weather outside. The Reception Room is octagon shape, with benches arranged over the entire floor; on these we were directed to sit down, about a yard apart. In front was a large desk and a high stool, on which a turnkey was perched, whose sole duty was to prevent the least intercourse between the prisoners; in fact, the entire room and its fittings conveyed the impression of being connected with a charity school for mutes. The Reception Room is the first and last place a prisoner passes through; it is here that, on his arrival, he is transformed into the Queen’s livery, and again on his departure reverts to citizen’s clothing—it is, in fact, the filter through which the dregs of London have to pass before becoming sufficiently purified to be again permitted to mingle with the pure stream outside. The silence of the grave is its normal condition, where the novice receives a foretaste of the “silent system.”
