Before his last sentence (as he told me) he had been scarcely able to read, and could not even write his name. During his residence in the "Upper Arch," he had, single-handed, mastered reading and writing, and had made fair headway in grammar, geography, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and various other branches of education. For general reading he had a decided relish, and a correct appreciation of literary excellence. Fiction he held in supreme contempt, and could have had but a slight acquaintance with it, as he assured me that, in his whole life (he was now fifty years old), he had read but a single story, "The Vicar of Wakefield." As the prison library could not always supply Neilson's favourite mental food, I undertook to furnish him with such reading as he lacked; and his careful use, and prompt return of a book, with his fine appreciation of its contents, made this work a pleasure.
Neilson's story, part of which I had from his own lips and the remainder from the warden himself, runs thus:
An Englishman, born in a London slum, and growing up, as any ill weed must, at haphazard, he had, even in his first trousers, gravitated naturally to crime. A childhood of vagrancy and petty thieving ill-passed, in his early manhood he became a professional house-breaker. He had been made acquainted with many of the prisons of his native country, and had twice made his escape from "durance vile," when he was transported to Botany Bay, from whence he also escaped, along with another notorious burglar and robber, who had been his partner in the crime, for which they had both been expatriated.
On regaining their liberty, the pair had come to this country, and, in Boston, had together undertaken the robbery of a bank. For this crime, they were duly convicted, and sentenced to seven years in the State Prison. Before the removal from jail to prison, one of them managed to escape. The other, Neilson, had divided his booty with his accomplice. Neilson was the soul of honour, that very questionable honour, which, according to the adage, may exist among thieves, and, though he obligingly informed the officers of the "bank," where his share of the plunder was buried (which they recovered), and, in a subsequent interview with them in prison, slipped off his shoe, and took from his stocking, and further restored to them, a sum of about seven hundred dollars, which he had retained as pocket-money, and thus ingeniously smuggled into prison, neither entreaty nor bribe could induce him to reveal anything in regard to the plunder of his accomplice.
It was affirmed of Neilson that, in the bad days above referred to, he never countenanced violence, but carried on his profession, for the most part, without personal injury to his victims, accomplishing his ends rather by strategy, than by brutality. And yet, strange as it was, this very man, on one fatal morning,—and, oddly enough, it was that of the very day when his sentence for the bank robbery had expired, and within a few hours he would have been discharged from the prison,—as the convicts were marching in file from the prison to the workshop, made a brutal and fatal attack upon an unoffending fellow convict. Reaching over the shoulder of the man next him in the ranks, he stabbed the unfortunate prisoner in the neck, with a shoe-knife, severing the jugular vein, and causing immediate death. There was no quarrel between the two, and no cause could be assigned for the murder, for which Neilson was, in due time, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.
All the arrangements for carrying out the sentence had been made, the gallows erected, the rope in its place, and the chaplain rendering the last service of his office, when a reprieve for thirty days was received from the governor.
On consideration, it was believed that Neilson must have been labouring under temporary insanity, and, as he was known to be a man of pacific character, and could assign no cause for the attack, though he had never shown other symptoms of mental disturbance, he was given the benefit of a doubt, and his sentence commuted to solitary imprisonment for life. Thus he escaped the grave, only to be consigned to a living tomb. At the time of our first acquaintance, Neilson, all told, had been about twenty years in the —— State Prison. For the first years of his sentence, he was not once permitted to leave his cell, and but for the praiseworthy humanity of the new warden, he would never again have seen the sun.
The cells of the "Upper Arch" are not, like those in general use, on exhibition; but, one day, in consideration of my having never abused the privileges granted me by the authorities of the —— State Prison, I was kindly permitted to visit Neilson in his own apartment.
Following my guide, I passed through a damp, narrow corridor, gloomy to oppressiveness, and lined with grim iron doors, each stoutly secured with bar and padlock. Many of these cells are temporarily inhabited by refractory prisoners, and, as I went, a discordant chorus of groans, yells, and oaths, mingled with the dissonance of maniacal mirth from some ill-balanced wretch, gone mad in this horrible solitude, saluted my unwilling ear. On the extreme end of the doleful corridor, a narrow, cobwebbed window shed its feeble light. Pausing at the left-hand corner cell, my conductor fitted his key to the padlock, turned it, removed the heavy bar, and, throwing back the door, ushered me into Neilson's presence.