More narrow passages, with grated rooms like aviaries on each side. These are the apartments where the prisoners receive their friends, separated from them by two gratings several feet apart. It will remind you of the picture in Old Curiosity Shop, where Mrs. Nubbles and Barbara's mother go to see Kit in prison. A prisoner can receive a visit once in three months, write one letter, and receive one; but they are seldom here so long. Newgate is only a house of detention before trial, except for those condemned to death—a mere jail. Here we are in one of the great oblong halls with tiers of cells opening on to galleries. Up this iron staircase in the middle of the hall and across this little bridge, and we stand outside a cell door. In the American prisons you have seen, you say that the cells open on a corridor, with a grated door, and sometimes a grated window. Not so, here. The door is solid, with merely a small hole for purposes of surveillance, and a trap below it through which food, etc., may be passed. If the prisoner wants anything, he rings a bell, the action of which is curious. Fix your eye on the bell-spring outside. I pull the bell inside and a tin flap flies back, showing the number of the cell. Thus the officer knows what bell has rung, and the prisoner, having no power over the flap when it has once sprung back, cannot avoid discovery if he has rung merely in order to give trouble. The cell is sufficiently large, you see, and is lighted from the court-yard through that arched window near the ceiling. A nice little room enough, with the bedding stowed away on one of those shelves in the corner. On the shelf below is the prisoner's bowl with the spoon lying on it. Everything must be in its place. If the spoon were on the shelf, it would be out of place; it must lie on the reversed bowl. Resting against the wall is his plate, and on the lowest shelf are his books. Oh! yes, you may examine them—the same in all the cells, Bible, Prayer-Book, hymns, and psalms. [Footnote 222] The other volume comes from our library, and is changed every day, if necessary> At this little turn-up shelf the prisoner takes his meals, or reads by the small shade-lamp above it. In the corner is a nice copper basin with plenty of water. There are two apertures, one to admit warm air, the other for ventilation; every comfort provided for him, you see. Yes, we keep the prisoners entirely apart from each other, never two together, unless some one comes here for drunkenness, and has delirium tremens, and then we put two others with him for safety's sake. Now we'll go up to the next corridor; in the one below are the doctors' cells, where fresh prisoners are kept until they have passed through a sanitary examination.
[Footnote 222: Prisoners who do not belong to the Established Church can be visited by a priest or by a dissenting minister.]
Step into this cell, occupied, as you see, by a mere boy. There's his pile of oakum on the floor. Go on with your dinner, my man; no need to stop for us. As we go up higher, more light comes in from the courtyard; the upper cells are reserved for prisoners who are likely to be here some time. The next cell occupied too, you see, though we've not many prisoners here now, the trials being just over. Yes, sir, this man is trying to educate himself a little; has a dictionary on the shelf beside the library-book—a volume of travels this time. Now that we are in the corridor again, let me tell you that this same shock-headed young man is condemned to ten years of penal servitude and twenty lashes, for highway robbery with violence. The lashes are to be received before he leaves Newgate, but more on that subject presently.
Here we are in the old part of Newgate. In your reading, no doubt you've come across the name of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry. It was in this same long, dark room that she used to assemble the prisoners, and read and pray with them. No, I have no means of judging of the durability of her conversions. It is easy to talk of converting criminals; but perhaps her chief merit lay in setting the example in England of a friendly and trusting intercourse with these poor wretches. Yes, it is strange to see the whipping-block in this room, but indeed, sir, corporal punishment has become an absolute necessity. It is never used to force prison discipline, but is administered in execution of a sentence, imposed by a magistrate for wanton violence. It is a curious fact that these brutes, who go about garroting inoffensive travellers, breaking jaws and skulls with their brass knuckles or dusters, as they call them, are the veriest cowards on earth when physical pain comes to themselves. In this very room they will cry like children, and beg to be forgiven, I don't feel half the pity for them that I do for the poor creatures going to be hanged. [Footnote 223] This iron door survived the fire in the Gordon riots, you see. Come through here, if you please, sir. This is another of the large rooms in old Newgate, where prisoners were kept before the solitary system came into vogue. The change is a most fortunate one for all concerned, I'm confident.
[Footnote 223: We are not fully convinced of the wisdom of introducing the whipping-block once more into the honorable company of penal inflictions in England. One of the most satisfactory cases of reformation we have known among persons guilty of grave crimes, was that of a "garroter." It is our strong impression that corporal punishment would have degraded him beyond all human hope of redemption. At least, great care should be taken to keep the use of this instrument of torture within the bounds of absolute necessity. Imprisonment may soften the heart; perhaps many persons have died well on the scaffold, who would have died impenitent under other circumstances; but however great may have been the number of spirits crushed by flogging in prisons, we venture to doubt whether there is a single instance on record of its having produced or aided reformation.]
I've no question that many a crime was hatched here among the men herded together in these cells. You can see for yourself what kind of talk there would be among them. Perhaps some footman was sent here for stealing his master's purse. What a chance for an old hand to get a little useful information in a friendly way: "Your master was an easy, comfortable kind of a man, was he? Well, them well-to-do city-men mostly is easy-tempered. Not partickerlerly well-to-do, an't he? Old family he belongs to, eh? What lots o' plate some o' them poor noblemen do have! Wonder myself that they don't sell it and get the good out on it, 'stead of hiding it away at the banker's? Don't keep it at the bankers! Pity the poor cuss as cleans it, then! Go to Brighton or Bath, of course, when the season's over; I thought as much; it takes poor folks to travel," etc., etc. And then, the first step after getting out of Newgate would be to make love to the maid-servant when the family was out of town. Very devoted he'd be, until some evening he'd think it "such a pity there were no oranges in the house, or something else to cool your mouth with; there was such a nice, respectable place round the corner; wouldn't she just step round there and choose something for herself?" And then, while the the poor girl was gone, the accomplices, well instructed as to the whereabouts of the plate, would ransack the safe at their leisure. You may depend upon it, sir, it was a good thing for society when the present discipline was adopted.
The little court-yard we are crossing now is one of those where the prisoners take their exercise. Oh! yes, sir; they all have regular times for exercise, and in these yards within the building there is no possibility of their making their escape. I am going to show one of our cells for solitary confinement. Let me turn up the gas in this small room. You see this door which I open, and again an inner door, which I open too. Step in, sir. Now, turn so that your eye may catch the gaslight outside. Here is a bedstead; you can feel it, if you don't see it. In this cell, pitch-dark and cut off from the rest of the prison so completely that no shouts or screams would be heard, unruly prisoners are confined for any period between one hour and three days, with only bread and water for food. There is ventilation and warmth here, as in the other cells. The doctor comes each morning to see that mind and body are sound. Only by sentence of a magistrate can the confinement be prolonged beyond three days. Yes, sir, it is an awful place; and then, too, the men look upon it as sheer lost time. We have soldiers in here sometimes, and they say that they can make up for three days on bread and water in the guard-house, by spending their whole pay in eating and drinking when they come out; but here it's just loss of rations, and nothing else. You'll hardly ever catch an old thief in here. "Oh! don't stop my grub, whatever you do," he'll say, and so he takes care to behave well enough to keep out of "solitary." The prisoners who mind it least are little ragamuffins, accustomed to creep into any dark hole, to curl themselves up and go to sleep. They are never afraid of anything. Decent boys, in prison on suspicion of forgery or whatever, are dreadfully scared. But you'll be glad to get out into the daylight again, I am thinking, sir.