Eighteen Months' Imprisonment

by late captain Donald Shaw

At 11, and again at night, the surgeons visited the hospital, when every case was carefully gone into. The care that prisoners receive in this hospital puts crime almost at a premium, and though I may indirectly be accusing those eminent and otherwise irreproachable physicians of unintentionally aiding and abetting law-breaking, veracity compels me to say what I think. A case I met goes far to prove it. In the hospital with me was a broken-down old gardener who had seen better days, and was in receipt of a pension of five shillings a week from a former employer. This pittance, however conclusive it might be of his comparative honesty, was wholly inadequate to procure medical comforts for rheumatic gout, to which he was a martyr. He next appears at a police court for having a pig in his yard, which he had driven in from the street, and then informed the police. There can be only one solution of this act, for he was a man of sixty, beyond absolute want, and had never seen the inside of a prison before. He had now attained his object, and was undergoing three months’ imprisonment, during all which time he was in hospital. I saw him on admission, a cripple, crumpled up and half-starved, and I saw him every day swaddled in cotton wool, his limbs frequently fomented, and fed on the daintiest luxuries. This man was one of the few I met who was grateful for the care bestowed on him, and honest enough to wish he had had six instead of three months’ imprisonment. I saw him on the day of his discharge, comparatively cured, and wondered how long it would be before he again caught the right sow by the ear. A disadvantage that patients have to suffer from is the architectural construction of the ward: it unites the two angles of the prison, and necessitates its being traversed in its entire length by every official going his rounds. On these occasions great inconsideration is shown, the orange-peel delinquent of chapel notoriety being peculiarly offensive in the unnecessary noise he made. I heard him on one occasion complain to the warder, that a patient, who was almost in extremis at the time, was “too lazy to look up.”

During my retirement I saw more than one painful death-scene; the one that made the most unpleasant impression on me was that of a living skeleton, who seemed incapable of dying, although too weak to do anything but blaspheme dreadfully, and keep up one incessant groan. He was a man of sixty, and had been in his time the best known and expertest of swell-mobsmen. He had not a relation in the world, and although offered his discharge months before, had nowhere or no one to whom he could go. I saw this man dying for weeks, and eventually stood at his bedside when he took his last gasp. This man had been either a convict or undergoing imprisonment for the last twenty years, and the crime that led to his death in Coldbath was the sacrilege of putting a counterfeit half-crown into a collection plate, and taking out as change a genuine florin. One of the cleaners—an unmitigated thief, but sufficiently good to have qualified for staff employ—had told the warder the day before his death that he knew him to be acquainted with certain persons he named; and with the consideration that characterizes the treatment of prisoners in hospital, no pains were spared to discover the creatures. I saw them next day (two females, known to every policeman in London, the one as the keeper of a thieves’ lodging-house, the other as a “decoy”), actuated by no motive but curiosity and the intimation they had received, standing at the dying man’s bed in their tawdry finery, in company with the priest as attired in chasuble and stole he pronounced the extreme unction for dying sinners. The dying man, the kindly priest, the tawdry females, and the surroundings, formed a picture truly awful, and baffling description. But the end had not yet come; and as the room was again left to its normal condition, banter reassumed its sway, and bets began to be made as to the probable hour of his death. Pots of tea and bread-and-butter were freely wagered, and yet through the livelong night the dying groans, getting feebler and feebler, told how the swell-mobsman was still tussling with death. At five in the morning the end was evidently at hand, and slipping on my clothes, I joined the knot of men attracted to the bedside. The man was happily unconscious; and as the excitement of the sweepstake increased, I can only compare it to the game of roulette, when the ball almost rolls into one compartment and then topples into the next; and “He’s dead now,” “No, he isn’t,” “That’s his last,” followed gasp after gasp, till at a few minutes to six a profound silence announced that the swell-mobsman was gone. (It is only fair to state that much of this occurred unknown to the solitary warder, for what was one amongst so many?) By this time the prison bell was ringing, and the place was astir as day and night warders relieved one another. To stretch, strip, and carry him out of bed were the work of a moment; and what had been a living man a few seconds before had been washed, laid out, rolled in a blanket, and carried to the dead-house in less time than I have taken to write it.

The washing and laying out of a corpse is too dreadful to pass unnoticed. This necessary but revolting ceremony is performed in the kitchen. I saw the corpse divested of all clothing, lying on the top of the bath, in the centre of the kitchen, with the kettle boiling within a yard of it, and surrounded by pots and pans and other paraphernalia in daily use. The stench that pervaded the kitchen after this ceremony was so apparent (nor could it be got rid of for days) that I was absolutely unable to eat anything that had passed through it, and for days subsisted on the insides of loaves and eggs, as the only places where the flavour of potted pickpocket did not appear to have penetrated. This washing of corpses and the “itch bath” in a hospital kitchen is as great a scandal as ever was perpetrated by any Government.

The dead-house is a primitive establishment, and cannot even be divested of superfluous officialism. Its entire contents consist of a slab and a wooden block for the head of the corpse, and yet it boasted of an inventory board. This latter absurdity is conspicuously displayed, and reads—

“ONE TABLE.”

“ONE BLOCK.”

Another death I saw was even more awful in its suddenness. It was during dinner when some five or six patients were devouring their chops. One man, that was conspicuous for his habitual voracity, had left the table whilst waiting for the pudding. As he passed his bed he toppled over and was dead. The cook, with the characteristic officiousness of the criminal class, rushed out of the kitchen with a saucepan full of rice pudding in his hand, and began to assist at the ghastly manipulation. I was within a foot of him, and saw the wretch brush off a tear from the dead man’s eye, which he then proceeded to close; he then resumed his culinary duties, and gave the saucepan a stir. Rice pudding, I understand, is liable to “stick” to the pot; for my part, I made a vow to “stick” to dry bread; indeed, I never see one now without being reminded of this disgusting scene.

I was now beginning to yearn for tobacco. For some days past my illness had indisposed me for it; besides, my arrangements had been upset by my sudden admission into hospital. To communicate with one of my agents, although by no means difficult, was a question of opportunity. I was particularly anxious, too, not to be suspected of breaking a rule, for though it could only have been interpreted as a breach of discipline to be dealt with by the Executive, I found it difficult to divest myself of the notion it would appear ungracious towards my kind physicians if I transgressed any rule whilst in hospital. But my craving increased, and as I could not eat, and to smoke I was afraid, and consoling myself with the assurance that what the eye does not see, the heart does not feel, I decided, in the burning words of Bishop Heber, to “mind my eye and blaze away.”

My position necessitated my breaking a fundamental rule of my principle, and I confided in a rascally cleaner. I had, indeed, no alternative, for, though by the confidence I increased the chances of detection, I minimized and almost precluded the possibility of the ownership being brought home to me. My first anxiety was to find a place, for between my mattresses was out of the question, and I at length decided on the flooring; but selecting a plank and removing the nails are two different things, and I should have been defeated at the very outset. Chance, however, favoured me; and one day, to my great delight, a ram was caught in the thicket, in the shape of a carpenter, come to repair a window. As opportunity offered, I pointed out to him a short plank, and leaving the room, said, “I shall be back in ten minutes; meanwhile, if you remove those nails, and replace the plank so as not to be observable, I’ll give you as much grub as you can carry away.” These instructions would have been ample, but fearing his zeal to earn the food might outrun his discretion, I popped my head in and added, “If you’re caught messing about, kindly remember I know nothing about it.” This will hardly be deemed chivalrous, though strictly in accordance with etiquette in giddy Clerkenwell. Being satisfied with his work, but dreading to explore my secret cave, I told a cleaner to collect all the spare bread-and-butter he could find. So well did he carry out my request that he shortly appeared with thirty-eight slices, but so bulky was the quantity that it was necessary to smuggle it in, and the coal-scuttle was pressed into the service; but my carpenter did not object, and, removing the lump that concealed it from the vulgar (turnkey) gaze, proceeded to devour it. With his mouth full of one slice and shoving in another, he occasionally gargled out, “This is a treat!” “This is jam!” until sixteen slices had disappeared. He now began to show signs of distress, and secreted the rest inside his shirt; but what between the sixteen slices inside and the twenty-two outside, his dimensions had so increased that detection was a certainty. I therefore refused to let him leave unless he swallowed eight more—just to make an even two dozen—and the unhappy man again began. I can see him now, sitting on the window-sill, pretending to hammer, his eyes starting out of his head, imploring me to “let it be;” but I was firm, and had not the remotest intention of jeopardising my position by any such weakness. As the last piece disappeared, he was speechless, and I almost feared he was choked; but my mind was considerably relieved by his asking me, for mercy’s sake, to give him a drop of water. But there was none in the room, and, telling him it was all nonsense, and that the walk downstairs would make it all right, saw him leave the room with considerable satisfaction.

That evening I explored my cavern, which surpassed my fondest expectations; the architect must have put it there on purpose, so admirably was it adapted. Lifting up the eighteen-inch plank, I discovered a hollow place about six inches deep and two feet square. I now lost no time in getting my supplies, and, making a bag, at once filled it with paper, envelopes, a knife, pencil, and a cake of tobacco. From 6 to 7 A.M. was my favourite hour for writing and other business. I then carefully replaced my treasures, and sent off my letters, leaving nothing criminating about me except five or six atoms of tobacco, which I would have swallowed rather than that they should have been discovered. There were several advantages connected with a choice of this hour. In it one was perfectly safe from interference; so busy, indeed, was everybody, that the orange-peel man, who was busy counting and inspecting, and the other officials sending off night reports, would never have dreamt of anyone devoting this particular hour to the breach of a dozen rules.

As time wore on, I began to dread the detection of my hiding-place; so conspicuous, too, did it appear to my guilty conscience that I determined to abandon it. The light seemed to pour on its well-worn crevices, the Governor stood on it twice or thrice a week, the surgeons crossed it a dozen times a day, warders absolutely hovered over it all day long; so I communicated with the cleaner, and entered into an arrangement whereby, for a consideration of food and a piece of tobacco daily, he was to secrete my bag elsewhere. I felt it was madness to trust a confirmed thief, but there was no alternative; and within a week I discovered the fallacy of there being any honour amongst thieves, and the brute I had treated with the greatest liberality stole my bag, and came to me with a whining tale of how it had been discovered and taken away. It never alarmed me, as it would had I really believed him; and shortly after the whole conspiracy was revealed to me by about the only reliable prisoner amongst them, and I had undoubted proof of the complicity of every cleaner in the place.