"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"What did you do outside?"
"I was born in a workhouse, and lived in it for thirteen years, and I have now been nine years in prison; so that I have not had much liberty to do anything at all."
"What do you intend doing when you get out this time?"
"I think I shall go hawking bits of things through the country."
"I am afraid you will find it difficult to make a living at hawking?"
"Well I have the prison to come to, where I'll always get my grub."
This prisoner had a delicate constitution, and in his case "hard labour" was a meaningless sentence, and imprisonment was no punishment to him whatever. To have made it more severe would have been all the same to him, as the hospital would then have been his perpetual abode. Some prisoners were in hospital nearly the whole of their sentence. One prisoner lay in bed with paralysis upwards of four years, and had to be lifted out to have his bed arranged several times a day: if he had been paid to commit a crime he could not have done it.
Another prisoner was in hospital all the years I was in prison, and had been so for several years previous to my arrival. I only remember his being in bed a few days on one occasion. I was much interested in another patient, who ultimately died in prison, and whose history was rather a singular one. I shall narrate it as he gave it to me:—