In another chapter I shall again allude to this subject, and give a number of cases which came within the range of my own observation, to prove the justice of some of the reflections I have made on the want of periodical inspection of our prison hospitals. In the meantime my stump continued to discharge matter. An abscess formed and retarded the healing of the wounds and it was not till I discovered a cure myself that it showed any symptoms of healing. The cure was to hold the stump under a tap of cold water, using friction afterwards. This I continued to do long after the wound had finally closed.
CHAPTER VI.
I PETITION THE HOME SECRETARY—DOCTOR PRONOUNCES ME "QUITE WELL"—"SCHEMERS;" THEIR TREATMENT AND FATE—DEATH-BED SCENES.
About two months after the amputation of my leg, feeling and believing that my health would never be restored in confinement I wrote a petition to the Home Secretary, in the expectation that I would be as mercifully considered as my predecessors in misfortune. While my petition was under consideration I was encouraged in my expectations by the fact that one of my companions who had nothing the matter with him but a dislocated hip joint, was liberated on medical grounds three or four years before his time was up. My hopes were somewhat damped, however, by another circumstance which just then occurred. The prison director arrived on his monthly visit, and on passing through the ward, the medical officer who accompanied him stopped at the foot of my bed and informed him that I was the man whose leg he had amputated, and that I was "quite well now!" The director, seeing me in bed and looking very poorly, and noticing the general stare with which the doctor's remark was received, asked in a somewhat doubtful way, "Is he quite well?" "Oh! yes quite well," the doctor replied; and off they went.
I was sixteen months in hospital after the above remark was made, and I was then unable to get up to have my bed made, nor did I leave my bed during the whole winter and spring that succeeded! I received an answer to my petition, shortly after the visit to which I have referred, in the usual form of an official negative, "Not sufficient grounds." Being now free from acute pain, I conversed freely with my companions, and taught some of them to spell, read, and cypher. After I was able to get out of bed I read aloud for an hour every evening, for the benefit of all the patients. In time I became popular, and intimate with many of them. I wrote letters and petitions for them, encouraged them with good advice, and succeeded in obtaining considerable influence over them.
In return for these trifling services, which also to some extent relieved the monotony of the long period I spent in hospital, they told me their history and experiences. I learnt their slang and thiefology, and as a theorist became tolerably conversant with all the mysteries by which the professional thief and scoundrel preys upon society.
The first of my companions who attracted my attention was a young Scotchman. He appeared to be a very strong hearty fellow, but when he attempted to walk, he was the most pitiable looking cripple imaginable, and excited the sympathy of all who saw him. His sentence was twenty-one years, four of which he had undergone at this time. He had been invalided home from the convict establishment at Bermuda, was shipwrecked off the Isle of Wight on the return voyage, and had been some months in the hospital previous to my arrival. He was in the habit of being carried up and down stairs to exercise on the backs of the nurses, and was getting full diet and porter. About four months after my arrival, he one morning suddenly started out of bed, shouted "Attention," at the top of his voice, in defiance of the prison rules, and ran about the room like a lamplighter, to the utter amazement of all present. This man was what the prisoners term a "schemer," and he was certainly the very best actor of his class I ever met with. It will be acknowledged that he played his part well, when even during the shipwreck he had never made the slightest attempt to move, and kept up the deception for many months in a prison hospital, where the majority of the patients are put down as "schemers" unless they have an outward sore, or some natural malady with palpable external symptoms. When the doctor came his rounds, he could do nothing but stare at the fellow, who started up and told him with a laughing countenance that he had had a dream in the night, about being miraculously cured, and in the morning he found he could walk as well as ever he did. The doctor never opened his lips; the patient was discharged, and although the other patients cried aloud that he ought to be punished, no further notice was taken of the matter.
This "schemer," I learned, had been a great sufferer from pleurisy at Bermuda, and was very weak when he was put on board ship, where he commenced his scheme; and had it not been for new regulations which were then put in force, there is no doubt he would have accomplished his object, which was "Liberation on medical grounds." He had petitioned the Home Secretary shortly before he threw his crutches aside, declaring that he had met with an accident at Bermuda from a stone falling on his back, and so injuring the spine that both his legs were paralysed. He had received a reply to the effect that his petition would be answered so soon as the authorities heard from Bermuda the particulars of the accident, and it was a few days after this that the miraculous visitation took place.
I asked him why he did not wait for the final answer to his petition before exposing his scheme? "Oh," he replied, "I knew very well if they wrote to Bermuda I should get no time off. I met with no accident, although I said so in my petition." "You will be very fortunate," I said, "if you get the customary remission after this affair, I fear they will punish you?" "Look here," said he, "I have another scheme in my head, and you will see I'll not fail this time. I'll get out to Australia, and by the time I arrive I will be due for my liberty." "Well, that will certainly be better for you than being kept eight or nine years longer in prison here; but how are you to manage to get abroad unless the authorities choose to send you?" "Oh! I will work that. I'll now be as bad in my conduct as possible; and I'll half murder some of the officers if they don't send me away; and that very soon too."