A great stone hall is our place of resort during the day. There my brother officers assemble, and there we are served—not with prison fare, as you may imagine—but with as good provisions and as good wine as we could obtain at a tavern. For breakfast we have tea, coffee, or chocolate, according to choice—roast beef or mutton for dinner—claret or canary to wash it down—and some of my companions regale themselves after supper with a bowl of punch. Smoking, also, is allowed, and indeed several of the prisoners have pipes in their mouths all day long. From the stone hall a passage communicates with a tap-room, where different beverages are sold. Here the common malefactors repair, but happily they are prevented from coming further. From what I have just stated you will infer that we are not in that part of the gaol appropriated to felons—though we are stigmatised as the worst of criminals; but with a certain leniency, for which we ought to feel grateful, we have been placed among the debtors.
Colonel Townley, Captain Moss, and Captain Holker, have each a commodious room. Tom Deacon and his brother Charles have the next cell to mine—but poor Adjutant Syddall is lodged in an infamous hole, owing to lack of money. All the officials, high and low, within the prison, seem anxious to lessen the rigour of our confinement as much as they can—especially, since most of us are able to live like gentlemen, and fee them handsomely.
For a prison, Newgate is comfortable enough, and, as far as my own experience goes, its ill reputation seems undeserved. No doubt the wards devoted to common felons are horrible, and I should die if I were shut up with the dreadful miscreants of whom I have caught a glimpse—but fortunately they are kept completely apart from us. We can hear their voices, and that is enough.
That I am melancholy in my prison does not proceed from any hardship I have to undergo—or from solitude, for I have too much society—but I pine and languish because I am separated from her I love.
Think not, if you come, in response to my entreaties, that you will be prevented from visiting me. You will be admitted without difficulty, and no prying eye will disturb us.
And now, since I have spoken of the good treatment we have experienced in prison, I must describe the indignities to which we were subjected on our way hither.
I have already mentioned that every effort has been made by the Government to inflame the minds of the populace against us. On our arrival at Islington, we learnt to our dismay that tumultuous crowds were collected in the streets through which we should have to pass; and to afford them a gratifying spectacle, it was arranged that we should be led to prison in mock triumph.
Accordingly, the waggons in which we were placed were uncovered, so that we had no protection from the numerous missiles hurled at us as we were borne slowly along through the howling multitude, and I verily believe we should have been torn in pieces if the mob could have got at us. Rebels and traitors were the mildest terms applied to us.
On the foremost waggon the rent and discoloured standard of our regiment was displayed, and a wretched creature, dressed up for the occasion as a bagpiper, sat behind the horses, playing a coronach. But he was soon silenced, for a well-aimed brickbat knocked him from his seat.
But though the crowd hooted us, pelted us, and shook their sticks at us, we met with some compassion from the female spectators. Many ladies were stationed at the windows, and their looks betokened pity and sympathy.