There are many abuses that might be changed with advantage, and which I cannot do better than point out, in hopes that somebody in authority will read, mark, and inwardly digest them. On each cell door is a card setting forth your name, sentence, and full particulars. This placarding of one’s name is surely useless, as one is never called by it, and the only object it appears to serve is to enable prisoners to discover all about one another. My cell was once situated on the high road to the chapel, and every malefactor en route to worship made it his business to master my history. This surely is unfair, and hardly contemplated by the authorities. If it is absolutely essential that one’s name is to be placarded, why not inside instead of outside the door, as was the custom before the Government took over the prisons?

Too much at present is left to the turnkeys. They are, indeed, the channel of communication and the only official with whom the ordinary prisoner comes in contact. The chief warder deputes details to the principal warders of divisions, who in their turn confide them to the warders of wards, who again leave the carrying out to the turnkeys of flights. It is not fair that so much should be left to these assistants—which, despite any assertion to the contrary, is the case—and who, though counting in their ranks many highly respectable men, have also some desperate rascals—vindictive, deceitful, and utterly unfit for any discretionary powers, and who would stick at no degree of brutality if capable of being indulged in with impunity.

The use of the same baths by prisoners and men previous to medical examination cannot be too strongly deprecated. That a clean man should be compelled to risk contagion with one suffering from itch or covered with vermin is as filthy as it is disgraceful. With all the space at their disposal the wonder is a swimming bath has never commended itself.

Every warder in charge of a ward has a prisoner allotted to him, who performs such necessary duties as cleaning his office and assisting him in his multifarious returns. These men are generally selected from the clerk or tradesman class, and have great facilities for knowing everything that passes through the office. I have found, indeed, that they know and hear a great deal too much.

Thus a descriptive return containing every particular about one from one’s youth up, and supposed to be a confidential document, is carefully studied by these cleaners, and facts likely to be of general interest—especially about “celebrities”—go the round of the prison. These documents should either not be in the warders’ charge, or if so, should be carefully locked up. In my opinion they would be more appropriately assigned to the care of the principal warders of divisions. These cleaners, if dishonestly or greedily inclined, appropriate considerably more than their share of the daily rations. In one ward I seldom, or ever, got my supply of Monday bacon, which had either been filched or bitten in half; and as the original supply does not exceed the proportions of a postage stamp, it can ill afford this wholesale reduction.

I cannot leave the subject of “warders” without bearing my testimony to their excellency as a class—I specially refer to those in charge of wards, and not to their washerwomen and plumbers and glaziers confrères. The multiplicity of returns they have to render daily, the alterations, however trivial, that are constantly occurring and have to be noted, and the serious consequences attending the slightest error or omission, all combine to make their duties and responsibilities more arduous than any class of men I have seen. Their pay for this, moreover, is so small—29s. a week, with a gradual rise—that many otherwise excellent men shrink from accepting promotion. The colour-sergeants of the army might learn a lesson from these warders, and if the “descriptive return” in use, and which supplies every information, was substituted for the ponderous ledgers, small books, defaulter sheets, etc., as used in the army, it would come like the Waverley pen—

As a blessing and boon to sergeants and men.

CHAPTER XIX.
“THE CONVALESCENT WARD.”

On my admission into hospital I was at first sent to the convalescent ward, a huge room devoted to light and unpronounced cases. It accommodates 40 patients, and the entire furniture may be roughly estimated as consisting of 40 beds, 40 tables, 40 chairs, one shovel and tongs, and one thermometer. The beds are ranged round the entire room, the tables and chairs a yard apart forming two rows down the centre; the thermometer is suspended from a beam, the shovel is chained to one fire-place, and the tongs to the other. A high desk and a still higher stool complete the furniture of this singular room. The fixtures are of a more unique kind; at one end are the cabinets, at the other the lavatories. These are simply boarded partitions, extending only about three feet from the ground—so constructed as to make it absolutely impossible to conceal more than one-third of the body, however engaged; thus admirably adapted for observation, but utterly regardless of privacy or decency, and revolting in their proximity to a room devoted to convalescents. Along the walls here and there are chains hanging. These are the alarm bells for communicating with the outer yard in case of fire, mutiny, or other emergency. At each corner are the padded cells—grim, sombre constructions—admirably adapted for deadening sound, and fitted with every appliance for the restraint of violent and demented criminals. The proximity of these cells is very awful, and the shrieks that occasionally emanate from them, and the sights I have seen, would have filled me with horror six months previously. The treatment of convalescents is as original as can well be conceived. The day is mapped out into the following portions, which are observed with a punctuality seldom attained except by chronometers:—

6 A.M. Rise, and roll up your bed.
6.30 ,, Breakfast.
11 ,, Visit by surgeon.
12 (noon) Dinner.
3 to 4 P.M. Exercise.
5 ,, Supper.
6 ,, Bed.