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Title: Millbank Penitentiary: An Experiment in Reformation

Author: Arthur Griffiths

Release date: June 18, 2015 [eBook #49230]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Giovanni Fini, Chris Curnow and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MILLBANK PENITENTIARY: AN EXPERIMENT IN REFORMATION ***




Produced by Giovanni Fini, Chris Curnow and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









  The History and
  Romance of
  Crime

  FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
  TO THE PRESENT DAY

  [Illustration]

  THE GROLIER SOCIETY

  LONDON


[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR

_Temple Bar_

A famous gateway which stood before the Temple in London built by
the noted architect, Christopher Wren, in 1670. According to ancient
custom when the sovereign wishes to visit the City of London, he asks
permission of the lord mayor to pass through this gateway into the
city.]




  Millbank Penitentiary

  AN EXPERIMENT IN REFORMATION

  _by_

  MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS

  _Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_

  _Author of
  “The Mysteries of Police and Crime”
  “Fifty Years of Public Service,” etc._

  [Illustration: LOGO]

  THE GROLIER SOCIETY




  EDITION NATIONALE

  Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.

  NUMBER 307




INTRODUCTION


MILLBANK PRISON stood for nearly a century upon the banks of the
Thames between Westminster and Vauxhall, a well-known gloomy pile by
the river side, with its dull exterior, black portals, and curious
towers. This once famous prison no longer attracts the wide attention
of former days but the very name contains in itself almost an epitome
of British penal legislation. With it one intimately associates such
men as John Howard and Jeremy Bentham; an architect of eminence
superintended its erection; while statesmen and high dignitaries,
dukes, bishops, and members of Parliament were to be found upon its
committee of management, exercising a control that was far from nominal
or perfunctory, not disdaining a close consideration of the minutest
details, and coming into intimate personal communion with the criminal
inmates, whom, by praise or admonition, they sought to reward or
reprove. Its origin and the causes that brought it into being; its
object, and the success or failure of those who ruled it; its annals,
and the curious incidents with which they are filled,—these are topics
of much interest to the general reader.

At this distant time it is indeed interesting to observe how thoroughly
John Howard understood the subject to which he had devoted his life.
In his prepared plan for the erection of the prison he anticipates
exactly the method we are pursuing to-day, after more than a century
of experience. “The Penitentiary Houses,” he says, “I would have built
in a great measure by the convicts. I will suppose that a power is
obtained from Parliament to employ such of them as are now at work
on the Thames, or some of those who are in the county gaols, under
sentence of transportation, as may be thought most expedient. In the
first place, let the surrounding wall, intended for full security
against escapes, be completed, and proper lodges for the gatekeepers.
Let temporary buildings of the nature of barracks be erected in some
part of this enclosure which will be wanted the least, till the whole
is finished. Let one or two hundred men, with their proper keepers,
and under the direction of the builder, be employed in levelling
the ground, digging out the foundation, serving the masons, sawing
the timber and stone; and as I have found several convicts who were
carpenters, masons, and smiths, these may be employed in their own
branches of trade, since such work is as necessary and proper as any
other in which they can be engaged. Let the people thus employed
chiefly consist of those whose term is nearly expired, or who are
committed for a short term; and as the ground is suitably prepared
for the builders, the garden made, the wells dug, and the building
finished, let those who are to be dismissed go off gradually, as it
would be very improper to send them back to the hulks or gaols again.”

Suggestions such as these may have seemed impossible to those to whom
they were propounded; but that the plan of action was simple and
feasible, is now most satisfactorily proved. Elam Lynds, the celebrated
governor of Sing-Sing prison, in the State of New York, acted
precisely in this manner, encamping out in the open with his hundreds
of prisoners, and compelling them in this way to build their own
prison-house, cell by cell, as bees would build a hive. De Tocqueville,
commenting on this seemingly strange episode of prison history,
observes that “the manner in which Mr. Elam Lynds built Sing-Sing
would no doubt raise incredulity, were not the fact quite recent, and
publicly known in the United States. To understand it we have only to
realize what resources the new prison discipline of America placed at
the disposal of an energetic man.”

Plans for the new penitentiary buildings were actually prepared, and
operations about to commence, when the Government suddenly decided
to suspend further proceedings. The principle of transportation
had never been entirely abandoned. Western Africa had indeed been
selected for a penal settlement, and a few convicts sent there in
spite of the deadly character of the climate. But the statesmen
of the day had fully recognized that they had no right to increase
the punishment of imprisonment by making it also capital; and the
Government, despairing of finding a suitable place of exile, was about
to commit itself entirely to the plan of home penitentiaries, when the
discoveries of Captain Cook in the South Seas drew attention to the
vast territories of Australasia. Embarking hotly on the new project,
the Government could not well afford to continue steadfast to the
principle of penitentiaries, and the latter might have fallen to the
ground altogether, but for the interposition of Jeremy Bentham. This
remarkable man published, in 1791, his “Panopticon, or the Inspection
House,” a valuable work on prison discipline, and followed it, in 1792,
by a formal proposal to erect a prison on the plan he advocated.

The outlines on which this model prison was to be constructed were
also indicated in a memorandum by Mr. Bentham: “A circular building,
an iron cage, glazed, a glass lantern as large as Ranelagh, with the
cells on the outer circumference,”—such was his main idea. Within,
in the very centre, an inspection station was so fixed that every
cell and every part of a cell could be at all times closely observed;
but, by means of blinds and other contrivances, the inspectors were
concealed, unless they saw fit to show themselves, from the view of the
prisoners; by which the feeling of a sort of invisible omnipresence
was to pervade the whole place. There was to be solitude or limited
seclusion _ad libitum_; but, unless for punishment, limited seclusion
in assorted companies was to be preferred. As we have seen, Bentham
proposed to throw the place open as a kind of public lounge, and to
protect the prisoners from ill-treatment they were to be enabled to
hold conversations with the visitors by means of tubes reaching from
each cell to the general centre.

Bentham’s project had much to recommend it and it was warmly embraced
by Mr. Pitt and Lord Dundas, the Home Secretary. But secret influences
were hostile to it. It is believed that King George III opposed it
from personal dislike of Bentham who was an advanced radical. Year
after year, although taken up by Parliament, the measure hung fire. At
last in 1810 active steps were taken to re-open the question, thanks
to the vigour with which Sir Samuel Romilly called public attention
to the want of penitentiaries. Nothing now would please the House of
Commons but immediate action; and this eagerness to begin is in strange
contrast with the previous long years of delay.

Negotiations were not re-opened with Bentham, except in so far as he
was entitled to remuneration for his trouble and original outlay.
Eventually his claims were referred, by Act of Parliament, to
arbitration, and so settled. The same Act empowered certain supervisors
to be appointed, hereafter to become possessed of the lands in
Tothill Fields, which Bentham had originally bought on behalf of the
Government. These lands were duly transferred to Lord Farnborough,
George Holford, Esq., M. P., and the Rev. Mr. Becher, and under their
supervision the Millbank Penitentiary as it now stands was commenced
and finished.




                      CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                                   PAGE

       INTRODUCTION                           5

    I. THE BUILDING OF THE PENITENTIARY      15

   II. EARLY MANAGEMENT                      33

  III. THE GREAT EPIDEMIC                    48

   IV. THE PENITENTIARY REOCCUPIED           73

    V. SERIOUS DISTURBANCES                 107

    VI. A NEW REGIME                        132

   VII. INGENIOUS ESCAPES                   166

  VIII. THE WOMEN’S WARDS                   198

    IX. THE MILLBANK CALENDAR               236

     X. THE PENITENTIARY IMPUGNED           275

    XI. LAST DAYS OF MILLBANK               293




List of Illustrations


  TEMPLE BAR, LONDON                          _Frontispiece_

  BOW STREET OFFICE, LONDON                       _Page_  40

  MILLBANK PENITENTIARY, WESTMINSTER                 ”   108

  PRISONERS AT DARTMOOR MARCHING TO THEIR WORK       ”   194




MILLBANK PENITENTIARY




CHAPTER I

THE BUILDING OF THE PENITENTIARY

 Choice of Site—Ancient Millbank—Plan of new Building—Penitentiary
 described—Committee appointed to Superintend—Opening of Prison in
 1816—First Governor and other officers—Supreme Authority—First
 Arrangements.


THE lands which Jeremy Bentham bought from Lord Salisbury were a
portion of the wide area known then as Tothill Fields; speaking more
exactly, they lay on either side of the present Vauxhall-bridge
Road. This road, constructed after the purchase, intersected the
property, dividing it into two lots of thirty-eight and fifteen
acres respectively. It was on a slice of the larger piece that the
prison was ultimately built, on ground lying close by the river. This
neighbourhood, now known as a part of Pimlico, was then a low marshy
locality, with a soil that was treacherous and insecure, especially
at the end towards Millbank Row. People were alive twenty years ago
who had shot snipe in the bogs and quagmires round about this spot. A
large distillery, owned by a Mr. Hodge, stood near the proposed site
of the prison; but otherwise these parts were but sparsely covered
with houses. Bentham, speaking of the site he purchased, declared that
it might be considered “in no neighbourhood at all.” No house of any
account, superior to a tradesman’s or a public-house, stood within
a quarter of a mile of the intended prison, and there were in this
locality one other prison and any number of almshouses, established
at various dates. Of these the most important were Hill’s, Butler’s,
Wicher’s, and Palmer’s—all left by charitable souls of these names;
and Stow says, that Lady Dacre also, wife of Gregory Lord Dacre of
the South, left £100 a year to support almshouses which were built
in these fields “more towards Cabbage Lane.” Here, also, stands the
Green Coats Hospital, erected by Charles I, but endowed by Charles
II for twenty-five boys and six girls, with a schoolmaster to teach
them. Adjoining this hospital is a bridewell described by Stow as “a
place for the correction of such loose and idle livers as are taken up
within the liberty of Westminster, and thither sent by the Justices
of the Peace, for correction—which is whipping, and beating of Hemp
(a punishment very well suited for idlers), and are thence discharged
by order of the Justices as they in their wisdom find occasion.”
Again, Stow remarks: “In Tothill Fields, which is a large spacious
place, there are certain pest-houses; now made use of by twelve poor
men and their wives, so long as it shall please God to keep us from
the Plague. These Pest-houses are built near the Meads, and remote
from people.” Hospitals, bridewells, alms and pest-houses—the chief
occupants of these lonely fields, formed no unfitting society for the
new neighbour that was soon to be established amongst them.

As the prison, when completed, took its name from the mill bank, that
margined the Thames close at hand, I must pause to refer to this
embankment. I can find no record giving the date of the construction
of this bank, which was no doubt intended to check the overflow of the
river, and possibly, also, to act as one side of the mill-race, which
served the Abbot of Westminster’s mill. This mill, which is in fact
the real sponsor of the locality, is marked on the plan of Westminster
from Norden’s survey, taken in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, in 1573. It
stands on the bank of the Thames, almost opposite the present corner of
Abingdon and Great College Streets; but it is not quite clear whether
it was turned by water from the river, brought along Millbank, or by
the stream that came from Tothill Street, which, taking the corner of
the present Rochester Row, flowed along the line of the present Great
College Street, and under Millbridge to the Queen’s slaughter-house.
“The Millbank,” says Stow, “is a very long place, which beginneth
by Lindsey House, or rather by the Palace Yard, and runneth up to
Peterborough House, which is the farthest house. The part from against
College Street unto the Horse Ferry hath a good row of buildings on
the east side, next to the Thames, which is mostly taken up with large
wood-mongers’ yards, and Brew-houses; and here is a water house which
serveth this side of the town; the North Side is but ordinary, except
one or two houses by the end of College Street; and that part beyond
the Horse Ferry hath a very good row of houses, much inhabited by the
gentry, by reason of the pleasant situation and prospect of the Thames.
The Earl of Peterborough’s house hath a large courtyard before it and
a fine garden behind it, but its situation is but bleak in the winter,
and not over healthful, as being so near the low meadows on the South
and West Parts.” But it was on one edge of these low, well-wooded
meadows that Millbank Penitentiary was to be built.

The first act was to decide upon the plan for the new prison
buildings. It was thrown open to competition by public advertisement
and a reward was offered for the three best tenders. Mr. Hardwicke
was eventually appointed architect and he estimated that £259,725
would be required for the work with a further sum of £42,690 for the
foundations. Accommodation was to be provided at this price for six
hundred prisoners, male and female, in equal proportions; and the whole
building was intended solely for the confinement of offenders in the
counties of London and Middlesex. By subsequent decisions, arrived at
after the work was first undertaken, the size of Millbank grew to
greater proportions, till it was ultimately made capable of containing,
as one great national penitentiary, all the transportable convicts
who were not sent abroad or confined in the hulks. Of course its cost
increased _pari passu_ with its size. By the time the prison was
finally completed, the total expenditure had risen as high as £458,000.
And over and above this enormous sum, the outlay of many additional
thousands was needed within a few years, for the repairs or restoration
of unsatisfactory work.

The Penitentiary, as it was commonly called, looked on London maps
like a six-pointed star-fort, as if built against catapults and
old-fashioned engines of war. The central point was the chapel, a
circular building which, with the space around it, covered rather
more than half an acre of ground. A narrow building, three stories
high, and forming a hexagon, surrounded the chapel, with which it was
connected at three points by covered passages. This chapel and its
annular belt, the hexagon, form the keystone of the whole system. It
was the centre of the circle, from which the several bastions of the
star-fort radiated. Each of these salients was in shape a pentagon, and
there were six of them, one opposite each side of the hexagon. They
were built three stories high, on four sides of the pentagon, having
a small tower at each external angle; while on the fifth side a wall
about nine feet high ran parallel to the adjacent hexagon. In these
pentagons were the prisoners’ cells, while the inner space in each, in
area about two-thirds of an acre, contained the airing yards, grouped
round a tall, central watch-tower. The ends of the pentagons joined the
hexagon at certain points called junctions. The whole space covered by
these buildings has been estimated at about seven acres; and something
more than that amount was included between them and the boundary wall,
which took the shape of an octagon, and beyond it was a moat.

Such is a general outline of the plan of the prison. Any more elaborate
description might prove as confusing as was the labyrinth within to
those who entered without such clues to guide them as were afforded
by familiarity and long practice. There was one old warder who served
for years at Millbank, and rose through all the grades to a position
of trust, who was yet unable, to the last, to find his way about the
premises. He carried with him always a piece of chalk, with which he
blazed his path, as does the backwoodsman the forest trees. Angles at
every twenty yards, winding staircases, dark passages, innumerable
doors and gates,—all these bewildered the stranger, and contrasted
strongly with the extreme simplicity of modern prison architecture.
Indeed Millbank, with its intricacy and massiveness of structure,
was suggestive of an order that has passed. It was one of the last
specimens of an age to which Newgate belonged; a period when the safe
custody of criminals could be compassed, people thought, only by
granite blocks and ponderous bolts and bars. Such notions were really
a legacy of mediævalism, bequeathed by the ruthless chieftains, who
imprisoned offenders within their own castle walls. Many such keeps and
castles long existed as prisons; having in the lapse of time ceased to
be great residences, and they served until recently cleared as gaols or
houses of correction for their immediate neighbourhood.

On the 9th February, 1816, the supervisors reported that the
Penitentiary was now partly ready for the reception of offenders,
and begged that a committee might be appointed to take charge of the
prison, under the provisions of an act by which the king in Council was
thus empowered to appoint “any fit and discreet persons, not being less
than ten or more than twenty, as and for a Committee to Superintend the
Penitentiary House for the term of one year, then next ensuing, and
until a fresh nomination or appointment shall take place.” Accordingly,
at the court at Brighton, on the 21st of February of the same year, his
Royal Highness the prince regent in Council nominated the Right Hon.
Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons, and nineteen others to
serve on this committee, and it met for the first time at the prison
on the 12th of March following. The Right Hon. Charles Long, George
Holford, Esq., and the Rev. J. J. Becher, were among the members of
the new committee, but they continued their functions as supervisors
distinct from the other body, until the final completion of the whole
building in 1821.

The first instalment of prisoners did not arrive till the 27th of July
following. In the interval, however, there was plenty of work to be
done. The preparation of rules and regulations, the appointment of a
governor, chaplain, matron, and other officials, were among the first
of them; and the committee took up each subject with characteristic
vigour. It was necessary also to decide upon some scale of salaries
and emoluments; to arrange with the Treasury as to the receipts,
custody, and payments of the public moneys; and to ascertain the sorts
of manufactures best suited to the establishment, and the best method
of obtaining work for the convicts, without having to purchase the
materials.

On the 10th of March Mr. John Shearman was appointed governor. This
gentleman was strongly recommended by Lord Sidmouth, who stated in a
letter to the Speaker that, having been induced to make particular
inquiries respecting his qualifications and his character, he had
found them well adapted to the office in question. Mr. Shearman’s own
account of himself was, that he was a native of Yorkshire, but chiefly
resident in London; that he was aged forty-four, was married, had
eight children, and that he had been brought up to the profession of a
solicitor, but for the last four years had been second clerk in the
Hatton Garden police office. Before actually entering upon his duties,
the committee sent Mr. Shearman on a tour of inspection through the
provinces, to visit various gaols, and report on their condition and
management.

He eventually resigned his appointment, however, because he thought
the pay insufficient, and because the committee found fault with his
frequent absences from the prison. He seems to have endeavoured to
carry on a portion of his old business as solicitor concurrently with
his governorship. His journals show him to have been an anxious and
a painstaking man, but neither by constitution nor training was he
exactly fitted for the position he was called upon to fill as head of
the Penitentiary.

At the same time, on the recommendation of the Bishop of London, the
Rev. Samuel Bennett was appointed chaplain. Touching this appointment
the bishop wrote, “I have found a clergyman of very high character
for great activity and beneficence, and said to be untainted with
fanaticism.... His answer is not yet arrived; but I think he will
not refuse, as he finds the income of his curacy inadequate to the
maintenance of a family, and is precluded from residence on a small
property by want of a house and the unhealthiness of the situation.”

Mr. Pratt was made house-surgeon, and a Mr. Webbe, son of a medical
man, and bred himself to that profession, was appointed master
manufacturer; being of a mechanical turn of mind, he had made several
articles of workmanship, and he produced to the committee specimens of
his shoe-making, and paper screens.

There was more difficulty in finding a matron. “The committee,” writes
Mr. Morton Pitt, “was fully impressed with the importance of the
charge, and with the difficulty of finding a fit person to fill this
most essential office.” Many persons were of opinion that it would be
impracticable to procure any person of credit or character to undertake
the duties of a situation so arduous and so unpleasant, and the fact
that no one had applied for it was strong proof of the prevalence of
such opinions. Mr. Pitt goes on: “The situation is a new one. I never
knew but two instances of a matron in a prison, and those were the
wives of turnkeys or porters. In the present case it is necessary that
a person should be selected of respectability as to situation in life.
How difficult must it be to find a female educated as and having the
feelings of a gentlewoman, who would undertake a duty so revolting to
every feeling she has hitherto possessed, and even so alarming to a
person of that sex.”

Mr. Pitt, however, had his eye on a person who appeared to him in every
way suitable. He writes: “Mrs. Chambers appears to me to possess the
requisites we want; and I can speak of her from a continued knowledge
of her for almost thirty years, since she was about fifteen. Her
father was in the law, and clerk of the peace for the county of
Dorset from 1750 to 1790. He died insolvent, and she was compelled to
support herself by her own industry, for her husband behaved very ill
to her, abandoned her, and then died. She has learned how to obey,
and since that, having kept a numerous school, how to command. She
is a woman forty-three years of age, of a strong sense of religion
and the most strict integrity. She has much firmness of character
with a compassionate heart, and I am firmly persuaded will most
conscientiously perform every duty she undertakes to the utmost of her
power and ability.” Accordingly Mrs. Chambers was duly appointed.

The same care was exhibited in all the selections for the minor posts
of steward, turnkeys male and female, messengers, nurses, porters,
and patrols; and most precise rules and regulations were drawn up
for the government of everybody and everything connected with the
establishment. All these had, in the first instance, to be submitted
for the approval of the Judges of the Court of King’s Bench, and
subsequently reported to the king in Council and both Houses of
Parliament.

The supreme authority in the Penitentiary was vested in the
superintending committee, who were required to make all contracts,
examine accounts, pay bills, and make regular inspection of prison
and prisoners. A special meeting of the committee was to be convened
in the second week of each session of Parliament, in order to prepare
the annual report. Under them the governor attended to the details
of administration. He was to have the same powers as are incident to
a sheriff or gaoler,—to see every prisoner on his or her admittance;
to handcuff or otherwise punish the turbulent; to attend chapel; and
finally, to have no employment other than such as belonged to the
duties of his office. The chaplain was to be in priest’s orders, and
approved by the bishop of the diocese, and to have no other profession,
avocation, or duty whatsoever. Besides his regular Sunday and week-day
services, he was to endeavour by all means in his power to obtain an
intimate knowledge of the particular disposition and character of every
prisoner, male and female; direct them to be assembled for the purposes
of religious instruction in such manner as might be most conducive to
their reformation. He was expected also to allot a considerable portion
of his time, after the hours of labour, to visiting, admonishing and
instructing the prisoners, and to keep a “Character-Book,” containing
a “full and distinct account from time to time of all particulars
relating to the character, disposition, and progressive improvement
of every prisoner.” Intolerance was not encouraged, for even then the
visitation of ministers other than those of the Established Church
was permitted on special application by the prisoners. Such ministers
were only required to give in their names and descriptions, and were
admitted at such hours and in such manner as the governor deemed
reasonable, confining their ministrations to the persons requiring
their attendance. No remuneration was, however, to be granted to these
additional clergymen. The duties prescribed for the house-surgeon were
of the ordinary character, but in cases of difficulty he was to confer
with the consulting physician and other non-resident medical men. The
master manufacturer was to act as the governor’s deputy if called
upon, and was charged more especially with the control and manufacture
of all materials and stores. It was his duty to make the necessary
appraisement of the value of work done, and to enter the weekly
percentage. The total profit was thus divided: three-fourths to the
establishment, or 15_s._ in the pound; one twenty-fourth to the master
manufacturer, the taskmaster of the pentagon, and the turnkey of the
ward; leaving the balance of one-eighth, or 2_s._ 6_d._ in the pound to
be credited to the prisoner.

For the rest of the officers the rules were what might be expected.
The steward took charge of the victualling, clothing, etc., and
superintended the cooking, baking, and all branches of the domestic
economy of the establishment; the taskmasters overlooked the turnkeys,
and were responsible for all matters connected with the labour and
earnings of the prisoners; and the turnkeys, male and female, each
having charge of a certain number of prisoners, were to observe their
conduct, extraordinary diligence, or good behaviour. The turnkey was
expected to enforce his orders with firmness, but was expected to act
with the utmost humanity to all prisoners under his care. On the other
hand, he was not to be familiar with any of the prisoners, or converse
with them unnecessarily, but was to treat them as persons under his
authority and control, and not as his companions or associates. The
prisoners themselves were to be treated in accordance with the aims and
principles of the establishment. On first arrival they were carefully
examined by the doctor, cleansed, deprived of all money, and their old
clothes burned or sold. Next, entering the first or probation class,
they remained therein during half of the period of their imprisonment.
Their time in prison was thus parcelled out: at the hour of daybreak,
according to the time of the year, they rose; cell doors opened, they
were taken to wash, for which purpose soap and round towels were
provided; after that to the working cells until 9 A.M., then their
breakfast—one pint of hot gruel; at half-past nine to work again till
half-past twelve; then dinner—for four days of the week six ounces
of coarse beef, the other three a quantity of thick soup, and always
daily a pound of bread made of the whole meal. For dinner and exercise
an hour was allowed, after which they again set to work, stopping in
summer at six, and in winter at sunset. They were then again locked up
in their cells, having first, when the evenings were light, an hour’s
exercise, and last of all supper—another pint of gruel, hot.

The turnkeys were to be assisted by wardsmen and wardswomen, selected
from the more decent and orderly prisoners. These attended chiefly to
the cleanliness of the prison, and were granted a special pecuniary
allowance. “Second class” prisoners were appointed also, to act as
trade instructors. Any prisoner might work extra hours on obtaining
special permission. The general demeanour of the whole body of inmates
was regulated by the following rule: “No prisoner shall disobey the
orders of the governor or any other officer, or shall treat any of the
officers or servants of the prison with disrespect; or shall be idle or
negligent in his work, or shall wilfully mismanage the same; or absent
himself without leave from divine service, or behave irreverently
thereat; or shall be guilty of cursing or swearing, or of any indecent
expression or conduct, or of any assault, quarrel, or abusive words;
or shall game with, defraud, or claim garnish, or any other gratuity
from a fellow-prisoner; or shall cause any disturbance or annoyance
by making a loud noise, or otherwise; or shall endeavour to converse
or hold intercourse with prisoners of another division; or shall
disfigure the walls by writing on them, or otherwise; or shall deface,
secrete, or destroy, or pull down the printed abstracts of rules; or
shall wilfully injure any bedding or other article provided for the
use of prisoners.” Offences such as the foregoing were to be met by
punishment, at the discretion of the governor, either by being confined
in a dark cell, or by being fed on bread and water only, or by both
such punishments; more serious crimes being referred to the committee,
who had power to inflict one month’s bread and water diet and in a dark
cell. Any extraordinary diligence or merit, on the other hand, was to
be brought to the notice of the Secretary of State, in order that the
prisoner might be recommended as an object for the royal mercy. When
finally discharged, the prisoners were to receive decent clothing, and
a sum of money at the discretion of the committee, in addition to their
accumulated percentage, or tools, provided such money or such tools
did not exceed a value of three pounds. Moreover, if any discharged
prisoner, at the end of twelve months, could prove on the testimony
of a substantial housekeeper, or other respectable person, that he
was earning an honest livelihood he was to be entitled to a further
gratuity not exceeding three pounds.

The early discipline of the prisoners in Millbank, as designed by
the committee, was based on the principle of constant inspection and
regular employment. Solitary imprisonment was not insisted upon,
close confinement in a punishment cell being reserved for misconduct.
All prisoners on arrival were located at the lodge, and kept apart,
without work, for the first five days; the object in view being, to
awaken them to reflection, and a true sense of their situation. During
this time the governor visited each prisoner in the cell for the
purpose of becoming acquainted with his character, and explaining to
him the spirit in which the establishment had been erected. No pains
were spared in this respect. The governor’s character-books, which
I have examined, are full of the most minute, I might add trivial,
details. After the usual preliminaries of bathing, hair-cutting, and so
forth, the prisoners passed on to one of the pentagons and entered the
first class.

The only difference between first and second class was, that the former
worked alone, each in his own cell; the latter in company, in the
work rooms. The question of finding suitable employment soon engaged
the attention of the committee. At first the males tried tailoring,
the females needlework. Great efforts were made to introduce various
trades. Many species of industry were attempted, skilled prisoners
teaching the unskilled. Thus, at first, one man who could make glass
beads worked at his own trade, and had a class under him; another, a
tinman, turned out tin-ware, in which he was assisted by his brother,
a “free man” and a more experienced workman; and several cells were
filled with prisoners who manufactured rugs under the guidance of a
skilful prison artisan. But Mr. Holford, one of the committee, in a
paper laid before his colleagues, in 1822, was forced to confess that
all these undertakings had failed. The glass-bead blower misconducted
himself; the free tinman abused the confidence of the committee,
probably by trafficking, and the rug-maker was soon pardoned and set
at large. By 1822 almost all manufactures, including flax breaking,
had been abandoned, and the prisoners’ operations were confined to
shoe-making, tailoring, and weaving. Mr. Holford, in the same pamphlet,
objects to the first of these trades, complaining that shoemakers’
knives were weapons too dangerous to be trusted in the hands of
prisoners. Tailoring was hard to accomplish, from the scarcity of good
cutters, and weaving alone remained as a suitable prison employment.
In fact, thus early in the century, the committee were brought face to
face with a difficulty that even now, after years of experience, is
pressing still for solution.




CHAPTER II

EARLY MANAGEMENT

 System proposed and Discipline to be enforced—Conduct of Prisoners;
 riotous in Chapel—Outbreak of Females—Revolt against Dietary—Millbank
 overgoverned—Constant interference of Committee—Life inside irregular
 and irksome.


THE system to be pursued at the Penitentiary has now been described
at some length. Beyond doubt—and of this there is abundant proof in
the prison records—the committee sought strenuously to give effect to
the principles on which the establishment was founded. Nevertheless
their proceedings were more or less tentative, for as yet little was
known of so-called “systems” of prison discipline, and those who had
taken Millbank under their charge were compelled to feel their way
slowly and with caution, as men still in the dark. The Penitentiary
was essentially an experiment—a sort of crucible into which the
criminal elements were thrown, in the hope that they might be changed
or resolved by treatment into other superior forms. The members of
the committee were always in earnest, and they spared themselves no
pains. If they had a fault, it was in over-tenderness towards the
felons committed to their charge. Millbank was a huge plaything; a
toy for a parcel of philanthropic gentlemen, to keep them busy during
their spare hours. It was easy to see that they loved to run in and out
of the place, and to show it off to their friends; thus we find the
visitor, Sir Archibald Macdonald, bringing a party of ladies to visit
the pentagon, when “the prisoners read and went through their religious
exercises,” which edifying spectacle gave great satisfaction to the
persons present. Again, at Christmas time the prisoners were regaled
with roast beef and plum pudding, after which they returned thanks to
the Rev. Archdeacon Potts, the visitor (who was present, with a select
circle of ladies and gentlemen), “appearing very grateful, and singing
‘God save the King.’” With such sentiments uppermost in the minds of
the superintending committee, it is not strange that the gaoler and
other officials should be equally kind and considerate. No punishment
of a serious nature was ever inflicted without a report to the visitor,
or his presence on the spot. All of the female prisoners, when they
were first received, were found to be liable to fits, and the tendency
gave Mr. Shearman great concern, till it was found that by threatening
to shave and blister the heads of all persons so afflicted immediate
cure followed. Two Jewesses, having religious scruples, refused to eat
the meat supplied, whereupon the husband of one of them was permitted
to bring in for their use “coarse meat and fish, according to the
custom of the Jews;” and later we find the same man came regularly to
read the Jewish prayers, as he stated, “out of the Hebrew book.” Many
of the women refused positively to have their hair cut short; and for
a time were humoured. In February, 1817, all the female prisoners were
assembled, and went through a public examination, before the Bishops of
London and Salisbury, to show their progress in religious instruction,
and acquitted themselves greatly to the satisfaction of all present.

Judith Lacy, having been accused of stealing tea from a matron’s
canister, which had been put down, imprudently, too near the prisoner,
was so hurt at the charge, that it threw her into fits. She soon
recovered, and it was quite evident she had stolen the tea. Any
complaint of the food was listened to with immediate attention. Thus
the gruel did not give satisfaction and was repeatedly examined.

“A large number of the female prisoners still refuse to eat their
barley soup,” says the governor in his journal on the 23rd April, 1817,
“several female prisoners demanding an increase of half a pound of
bread,” being refractory. Next day some of them refused to begin work,
saying they were half-starved.

Mary Turner was the first prisoner released. She was supposed to
be cured of the criminal taint. Having equipped her in her liberty
clothing, “she was taken into the several airing grounds in which were
her late fellow-prisoners. The visitor (Sir Archibald Macdonald)
represented to them in a most impressive manner the benefits that would
result to themselves by good behaviour. The whole were most sensibly
affected, and the event,” he says, “will have a very powerful effect on
the conduct of many and prove an incentive to observe good and orderly
demeanour.”

Next day all of the female prisoners appeared at their cell windows,
and shouted vociferously as Mary Turner went off. This is but one
specimen of the free and easy system of management. Of the same
character was a petition presented by a number of the female prisoners,
to restore to favour two other convicts who had been punished by the
committee. Indeed, the whole place appears to have been like a big
school, and a degree of license was allowed to the prisoners consorting
little with their character of convicted criminals.

This mistaken leniency could end but in one way. Early in the spring
the whole of the inmates broke out in open mutiny. Their alleged
grievance was the issue of an inferior kind of bread. Change of dietary
scales in prisons is always attended with some risk of disturbance,
even when discipline is most rigorously maintained. In those early
days of mild government riot was, of course, inevitable. The committee
having thought fit to alter the character of the flour supplied,
soon afterwards, at breakfast-time, all the prisoners, male and
female, refused to receive their bread. The women complained of its
coarseness; and all alike, in spite of the exhortations of the visitor,
Mr. Holford, left it outside their cell doors. Next day, Sunday, the
bread was at first taken, then thrown out into the passages. The
governor determined to have Divine Service as usual, but to provide
against what might happen, deposited within his pew “three brace of
pistols loaded with ball.” To make matters worse, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer arrived with a party of friends to attend the service.
The governor (Mr. Shearman’s successor) immediately pointed out that
he was apprehensive that in consequence of the newly adopted bread the
prisoners’ conduct would not be as orderly as it had ordinarily been.
At first the male prisoners were satisfied by raising and letting fall
the flaps of the kneeling benches with a loud report, and throwing
loaves about in the body of the chapel, while the women in an audible
tone cried out, “Give us our daily bread.” Soon after the commencement
of the communion service, the women seated in the gallery became more
loudly clamorous, calling out most vociferously, “Better bread, better
bread!” The men below, in the body of the church, now rose and stood
upon the benches; but again seated themselves on a gesture from the
governor, who then addressed them, begging them to keep quiet. Among
the women, the confusion and tumult was continued, and was increased by
the screams of alarm from the more peaceable. Many fainted, and others
in great terror entreated to be taken away. These were suffered to go
out in small bodies, in charge of the officers, and so continuously
removed, until all of the women had been withdrawn. About six of
them, as they came to the place where they could see the men, made a
halt and most boisterously assailed them, calling them cowards, and
such other opprobrious names. After the women had gone the service
proceeded without further interruption, after which the Chancellor
of the Exchequer (who was present throughout) addressed the men,
giving them a most appropriate admonition, but praising their orderly
demeanour, which he promised to report to the Secretary of State.
Afternoon service was performed without the female congregation, and
was uninterrupted except by a few hisses from the boys.

Next morning the governor informed the whole of the prisoners, one by
one, that the new brown bread would have to be continued until the
meeting of the committee; whereupon many resisted when their cell doors
were being shut, and others hammered loudly on the woodwork with their
three-legged stools; and this was accompanied by the most hideous
shouts and yells. In one of the divisions, four prisoners, who were in
the same cell, were especially refractory, “entirely demolishing the
inner door, every article of furniture, the two windows and their iron
frames; and, having knocked off large fragments from the stone of the
doorway, threw the pieces at, and smashed to atoms the passage windows
opposite.” One of them, by name Greenslade, assaulted the governor,
on entering the cell, with part of the door frame; but he parried
the blow, drove the prisoner’s head against the wall, and was also
compelled, in self-defence, to knock down one Michael Sheen. Such havoc
and destruction was accomplished by the prisoners, that the governor
repaired to the Home Secretary’s office for assistance. Directed by him
to Bow Street, he brought back a number of runners, and posted them in
various parts of the building, during which a huge stone was hurled at
his head by a prisoner named Jarman, but without evil consequences.
A fresh din broke out on the ringing of the bell on the following
morning, and neither governor nor chaplain could permanently allay the
tumult; the governor determined thereupon to handcuff all the turbulent
males immediately. The effect was instantaneous. Although there were
still mumblings and grumblings, it was evident that the storm would
soon be over. In the course of the day all the refractory were placed
in irons, and all was quiet in the male pentagon. Yet many still
muttered, and all was still far from quiet. There was little doubt at
the time that a general rising of the men was contemplated, and the
governor felt it necessary to use redoubled efforts to make all secure,
calling in further assistance from Bow Street. The night passed,
however, without any outbreak, and next morning all the prisoners
were pretty quiet and orderly. Later in the day the committee met and
sentenced the ringleaders to various punishments, chiefly reduction in
class, and by this time the whole were humble and submissive. Finally
five, who had been conspicuous for good conduct, were pardoned.

It is satisfactory to find that the committee firmly resisted all
efforts to make them withdraw the objectionable bread, and acted on
the whole with spirit and determination. How far the governor was to
blame cannot clearly be made out, but the confidence of the committee
was evidently shaken, and a month or two later he was called upon to
resign. He refused; whereupon the committee informed him that they
gave him “full credit for his capacity and talents in his former line
of life, but did not deem he had the talent, temper, or turn of mind,
necessary for the beneficial execution of the office of governor of the
institution.” There was not the slightest imputation against his moral
character, the committee assured him; but they could not retain him. He
would not resign, and they were consequently compelled to remove him
from office.

[Illustration: _Bow Street Office, London_

The principal police court of the City of London, established on Bow
Street in 1749.]


There can be no doubt but that Millbank in these early days was over
much governed. The committee took everything into their own hands, and
allowed but little latitude to their responsible officers. Governor
Shearman complained the visitors (members of the committee) who, he
says, “went to the Penitentiary, and gave orders and directions for
things to be done by inferior officers, which I thought ought to come
through me.... Prisoners were occasionally removed from one ward to
another, and I knew nothing of it—no communication was made to me; and
if the inferior officers had a request to make, they got too much into
the habit of reserving it to speak to the visitors; so that I conceived
I was almost a nonentity in the situation.” The prisoners, even, were
in the habit of saying they would wait till the visitor came, and would
ask him for what they wanted, ignoring the governor altogether. Indeed
it appears from the official journals that the visitors were constantly
at the prison. A Mr. Holford admits that “for a considerable time he
did everything but sleep there.” But their excuse was that they were
not fortunate in their choice of some of their first officers; and
knew therefore they must watch vigilantly over their conduct, to keep
those who fulfilled expectations, and to part with those who appeared
unfit for their situations. Besides which it was necessary to see from
time to time how the rules first framed worked in practice, and what
customs that grew up should be prohibited, and what sanctioned, by the
committee, and adopted into the rules.

It must be confessed that the committee do not appear to have been
well served by all their subordinates. The governors were changed
frequently; the first “expected to find his place better in point
of emolument, and did not calculate upon the degree of activity to
be expected in the person at the head of such an establishment; the
second was not thought by the committee to have those habits of
mind—particularly those habits of conciliation—which are required in
a person at the head of such an establishment;” the third was seized
with an affection of the brain, and was never afterwards capable of
exercising sufficient activity. The first master manufacturer, who as
will be remembered was appointed because he was of a mechanical turn
of mind, was removed because he was a very young man, and his conduct
was not thought steady enough for the post he occupied. The first
steward was charged with embezzlement, but was actually dismissed for
borrowing money from some of the tradesmen of the establishment. The
first matron was also sent away within the first twelve months, but
she appears to have been rather hardly used, although her removal also
proves the existence of grave irregularities in the establishment. The
case against Mrs. Chambers was that she employed certain of the female
prisoners for her own private advantage. Her daughter was about to be
married; and to assist in making up bed furniture a portion of thread
belonging to the establishment was used by the prisoners, who gave
also their time. The thread was worth a couple of shillings, and was
replaced by Mrs. Chambers. A second charge against the matron was for
stealing a Penitentiary Bible. Her excuse was that a number had been
distributed among the officers,—presents, as she thought, from the
committee,—and she had passed hers on to her daughter. But for these
offences, when substantiated, she was dismissed from her employment.

Entries made in the Visitors’ Journal, however, are fair evidence that
matters were allowed by the officials to manage themselves in rather
a happy-go-lucky fashion. One day new prisoners were expected from
Newgate; but nothing was ready for them. “Not a table or a stool in
any working cell; and one of those cells where the prisoners were to
be placed, in which the workmen had some time since kept coals, was
in the dirty state in which it had been left by them. Not a single
bed had been aired.” The steward did not know these prisoners were
expected, and had ordered no rations for them. But he stated he had
enough, all but about two pounds. Upon which the visitor remarks, “If
sixteen male prisoners can be supplied without notice, within two
pounds, the quantity of meat sent in cannot be very accurate.” Again,
the visitor finds the doors from the prison into the hexagon where the
superior officers lived “not double-locked as they ought to be, and
two prisoners together in the kitchen without a turnkey.” The daily
allowance of food issued to the prisoners was not the right weight. He
says: “There are in the bathing-room at the lodge several bundles of
clothes belonging to male prisoners who have come in between the 1st
and 21st of this month; they are exactly in the state in which they
were when the subject was mentioned to the committee last week; some of
them are thrown into a dirty part of the room—whether intended to be
burned I do not know; the porter thinks they are not. I do not believe
any of the female prisoners’ things have been yet sold. I understand
from the governor he has not yet made any entry in the character-book
concerning the behaviour of any male prisoner since he came into the
prison, or relative to any occurrence connected with such prisoner.”

All this will fairly account for any extra fussiness on the part of
the committee. Doubtful of the zeal and energy of those to whom they
confided the details of management, they were continually stepping in
to make up for any shortcomings by their own activity. But the direct
consequence of this interference was to shake the authority of the
ostensible heads. Moreover, to make the more sure that nothing should
be neglected, and no irregularity overlooked, the committee encouraged,
or at least their most prominent member did, all sorts of talebearing,
and a system of espionage that must have been destructive of all good
feeling among the inmates of the prison. Mr. Pitt, when examined by
the Select Committee, said, “Mr. Holford has mentioned to me: ‘I hear
so and so; such and such an abuse appears to be going forward; but I
shall get some further information.’ I always turned a deaf ear to
these observations, thinking it an erroneous system, and that it was
not likely to contribute to the good of the establishment.” He thought
that if the committee members were so ready to lend a willing ear to
such communications, it operated as an encouragement to talebearing;
the consequences of which certainly appeared to have been disputes,
cabals, or intrigues. Mr. Shearman remarks at some length on the same
subject: “I certainly did think there was a very painful system going
on in the prison against officers, ... by what I might term ‘spyism.’
I have no doubt it all arose from the purest motives, thinking it was
the best way to conduct the establishment, setting up one person to
look after another.” The master manufacturer and the steward in this
way took the opportunity of vilifying the governor; and there is no
doubt the matron, Mrs. Chambers, fell a victim to this practice. She
was the victim of insinuation, and the evil reports of busybodies who
personally disliked her.

It is easy to imagine the condition of Millbank then. A small colony
apart from the great world; living more than as neighbours, as one
family almost—but not happily—under the same roof. The officials,
nearly all of them of mature age, having grown-up children, young
ladies and young gentlemen, always about the place, and that place
from its peculiar conditions, like a ship at sea, shut off from the
public, and concentrated on what was going on within its walls. Gossip,
of course, prevalent—even malicious; constant observation of one
another, jealousies, quarrels, inevitable when authority was divided
between three people, the governor, chaplain, and matron, and it was
not clearly made out which was the most worthy; subordinates ever on
the look-out to make capital of the differences of their betters,
and alive to the fact that they were certain of a hearing when they
chose to carry any slanderous tale, or make any underhand complaint.
For there, outside the prison, was the active and all-powerful
committee, ever ready to listen, and anxious to get information.
One of the witnesses before the committee of 1823 stated, “From the
earliest period certainly the active members of the Superintending
Committee gave great encouragement to receive any information from the
subordinate officers, I believe with the view of putting the prison in
its best possible state; that encouragement was caught with avidity by
a great many, simply for the purpose of cultivating the good opinion
of those gentlemen conducting it; and I am induced to think that in
many instances their zeal overstepped perhaps the strict line of truth;
for I must say that during the whole period I was there, there was a
continual complaint, one officer against another, and a system that
was quite unpleasant in an establishment of that nature.”

Of a truth the life inside the Penitentiary must have been rather
irksome to more people than those confined there against their will.




CHAPTER III

THE GREAT EPIDEMIC

 Failure threatens the great experiment—General sickness of the
 Prisoners—Virulent disorder attacks them—The result of too high
 feeding and ill-chosen dietary—Disease succumbs to treatment—Majority
 transferred to hospital ships at Woolwich—Very imperfect discipline
 maintained—Conduct of prisoners often outrageous—Sent by Act of
 Parliament to the Hulks as ordinary Convicts.


THE internal organization of Millbank, which has been detailed in the
last chapter, is described at some length in a Blue Book, bearing
date July, 1823. But though Millbank was then, so to speak, on its
trial, and its value, in return for the enormous cost of its erection,
closely questioned, it is probable that its management would not have
demanded a Parliamentary inquiry but for one serious mishap which
brought matters to a crisis. Of a sudden the whole of the inmates of
the prison began to pine and fall away. A virulent disorder broke out,
and threatened the lives of all in the place. Alarm and misgiving in
such a case soon spread; and all at once the public began to fear that
Millbank was altogether a huge mistake. Here was a building upon which
half a million had been spent, and now, when barely completed, it
proved uninhabitable! Money cast wholesale into a deadly swamp, and all
the fine talk of reformation and punishment to give way to coroners’
inquests and deaths by a strange disease. No wonder there was a cry
for investigation. Then, as on many subsequent occasions, it became
evident Millbank was fulfilling one of the conditions laid down as of
primary importance in the choice of site. Howard had said that the
Penitentiary House must be built near the metropolis, so as to insure
constant supervision and inspection. Millbank is ten minutes’ walk
from Westminster, and from the first has been the subject of continual
inquiry and legislation. The tons of Blue Books and dozens of Acts
of Parliament which it has called into existence will be sufficient
proof of this. It was, however, a public undertaking, carried out in
the full blaze of daylight, and hence it attracted more than ordinary
attention. What might have passed unnoticed in a far-off shire, was
in London magnified to proportions almost absurd. This must explain
state interference, which now-a-days may seem quite unnecessary, and
will account for giving a national importance to matters oftentimes in
themselves really trivial.

But this first sickness in the Penitentiary was sufficiently serious to
arrest attention, and call for description in detail.

In the autumn of 1822, the physicians appointed to report on the
subject state that the general health of the prisoners in Millbank
began visibly to decline. They became pale and languid, thin and
feeble; those employed in tasks calling for bodily exertion could not
execute the same amount of work as before, those at the mill ground
less corn, those at the pump brought up less water, the laundry-women
often fainted at their work, and the regular routine of the place
was only accomplished by constantly changing the hands engaged.
Throughout the winter this was the general condition of the prisoners.
The breaking down of health was shown by such symptoms as lassitude,
dejection of spirits, paleness of countenance, rejection of food,
and occasional faintings. Yet, with all this depression of general
health, there were no manifest signs of specific disease; the numbers
in hospital were not in excess of previous winters, and their maladies
were such as were commonly incident to cold weather. But in January,
1823, scurvy—unmistakable sea scurvy—made its appearance, and was
then recognized as such, and in its true form, for the first time by
the medical superintendent, though the prisoners themselves declared
it was visible among them as early as the previous November. Being
anxious to prevent alarm, either in the Penitentiary itself or in the
neighbourhood, the medical officer rather suppressed the fact of the
existence of the disease; and this, with a certain tendency to make
light of it, led to the omission of many precautions. But there it was,
plainly evident; first, by the usual sponginess of the gums, then by
“ecchymosed” blotches on the legs, which were observed in March to be
pretty general among the prisoners.

Upon this point, the physicians called in remarked that the scurvy
spots were at their first appearance peculiarly apt to escape
discovery, unless the attention be particularly directed towards them,
and that they often existed for a long time entirely unnoticed by the
patient himself. And now with the scurvy came dysentery, and diarrhœa,
of the peculiar kind that is usually associated with the scorbutic
disease. In all cases, the same constitutional derangement was
observable, the outward marks of which were a sallow countenance and
impaired digestion, diminished muscular strength, a feeble circulation,
various degrees of nervous affections, such as tremors, cramps, or
spasms, and various degrees of mental despondency.

With regard to the extent of the disease, it was found that quite half
of the total number were affected, the women more extensively than
the men; and both the males and females of the second class, or those
who had been longest in confinement, were more frequently attacked
than the newest arrivals. Some few were, however, entirely exempt;
more especially the prisoners employed in the kitchen, while among the
officers and their families, amounting in all to one hundred and six
individuals, there was not a single instance of attack recorded.

Such then was the condition of the prisoners in the Penitentiary in
the spring of 1823. To what was this sudden outbreak of a virulent
disorder to be traced? There were those who laid the whole blame
on the locality, and who would admit of no other explanation. But
this argument was in the first instance opposed by the doctors
investigating. Had the situation of the prison been at fault, they
said, it was only reasonable to suppose that the disease would have
shown itself in earlier years of the prison’s existence; whereas,
as far as they could ascertain, till 1822-3 it was altogether
unknown. Moreover, had this been the real cause, all inmates would
alike have suffered; how then explain the universal immunity of the
officers in charge? Again, if it were the miasmata arising upon a
marshy neighbourhood that militated against the healthiness of the
prison, there should be prevalent other diseases which marsh miasmata
confessedly engender. Besides which, the scurvy and diarrhœa thus
produced are associated with intermittent fevers, in this case not
noticeable; and they would have occurred during the hot instead of the
winter season. Lastly, if it were imagined that the dampness of the
situation had contributed to the disease, a ready answer was, that
on examination every part of the prison was found to be singularly
dry, not the smallest stain of moisture being apparent in any cell or
passage, floor, ceiling, or wall.

But indeed it was not necessary to search far afield for the causes
of the outbreak; they lay close at hand. Undoubtedly a sudden and
somewhat ill-judged reduction in diet was entirely to blame. For a
long time the luxury of the Penitentiary had been a standing joke. The
prison was commonly called Mr. Holford’s fattening house. He was told
that much money might be saved the public by parting with half his
officers, for there need be no fear of escapes; all that was needed was
a proper guard to prevent too great a rush of people in. An honourable
member published a pamphlet in which he styled the dietary at Millbank
“an insult to honest industry, and a violation of common sense.” And
evidence was not wanting from the prison itself of the partial truth
of these allegations. The medical superintendent frequently reported
that the prisoners, especially the females, suffered from plethora,
and from diseases consequent upon a fulness of habit. Great quantities
of food were carried out of the prison in the wash-tubs; potatoes,
for instance, were taken to the pigs, which Mr. Holford admitted he
would have been ashamed to have seen thus carried out of his own
house. It came to such a pass at last that the committee was plainly
told by members of the House of Commons, that if the dietary were not
changed, the next annual vote for the establishment would probably
be opposed. In the face of all this clamour the committee could not
hold out; but in their anxiety to provide a remedy, they went from one
extreme to the other. Abandoning the scale that was too plentiful,
they substituted one that was altogether too meagre. In the new dietary
solid animal food was quite excluded, and only soup was given. This
soup was made of ox heads, in the proportion of one to every hundred
prisoners; it was to be thickened with vegetables or peas, and the
daily allowance was to be a quart, half at midday, and half in the
evening. The bread ration was a pound and a half, and for breakfast
there was also a pint of gruel. It was open to the committee to
substitute potatoes for bread if they saw fit, but they do not seem to
have done this. The meat upon an ox head averages about eight pounds,
so that the allowance per prisoner was about an ounce and a quarter. No
wonder then that they soon fell away in health.

The mere reduction in the amount of food, however, would not have been
sufficient in itself to cause the epidemic of scurvy. Scurvy will occur
even with a copious dietary. Sailors who eat plenty of biscuit and
beef are attacked, and others who are certainly not starved. The real
predisposing cause is the absence of certain necessary elements in the
diet, not the lowness of the diet itself. It is the want of vegetable
acids in food that brings about the mischief. The authorities called
in were not exactly right, therefore, in attributing the scurvy solely
to the reduced diet. The siege of Gibraltar was quoted as an instance
where semi-starvation superinduced the disease. Again, the scurvy
prevalent in the low districts round Westminster was traced to a
similar deficiency and the severe winter, also to the want of vegetable
diet. This last was the real explanation; of this, according to our
medical knowledge, there is not now the faintest doubt. Long enforced
abstinence from fresh meat and fresh vegetables is certain sooner or
later to produce scurvy. At the same time it must be admitted that the
epidemic of which I am writing was aggravated by the cold weather. It
had its origin in the cold season, and its progress kept pace with it,
continued through the spring, actually increasing with summer.

During the months of May and June the disorder was progressive, but the
early part of July saw a diminution in the numbers afflicted. At this
time the prison population amounted to about eight hundred.

There was a total of thirty deaths. In spite of this slight improvement
for the better, it is easy to understand that the medical men in charge
were still much troubled with fears for the future. Granting even
that the disease had succumbed to treatment, there was the danger,
with all the prisoners in a low state of health, of relapse, or even
of an epidemic in a new shape. Hence it was felt that an immediate
change of air and place would be the best security against further
disease. But several hundred convicts could not be sent to the seaside
like ordinary convalescents; besides which they were committed to
Millbank by Act of Parliament, and only by Act of Parliament could
they be removed. This difficulty was easily met. An Act of Parliament
more or less made no matter to Millbank—many pages in the statute
book were covered already with legislation for the Penitentiary. A
new act was immediately passed, authorizing the committee to transfer
the prisoners from Millbank to situations more favourable for the
recovery of their health. In accordance with its provisions one part
of the female prisoners were at once sent into the Royal Ophthalmic
Hospital in Regent’s Park, at that time standing empty; their number
during July and August was increased to one hundred and twenty, by
which time a hulk, the _Ethalion_, had been prepared at Woolwich for
male convicts, and thither went two hundred, towards the end of August.
Those selected for removal were the prisoners who had suffered most
from the disease. This was an experiment; and according to its results
the fate of those who remained at Millbank was to be determined. “The
benefit of the change of air and situation,” says Dr. Latham, “was
immediately apparent.” Within a fortnight there was less complaint of
illness, and most of the patients already showed symptoms of returning
health. Meanwhile, among the prisoners left at Millbank there was
little change, though at times all were threatened with a return of the
old disorder, less virulent in its character, however, and missing
half its former frightful forms. By September, a comparison between
those at Regent’s Park or the hulk and those still in Millbank was so
much in favour of the former that the point at issue seemed finally
settled. Beyond doubt the change of air had been extremely beneficial;
nevertheless, of the two changes, it was evident that the move to the
hulks at Woolwich had the better of the change to Regent’s Park. On
board the _Ethalion_ the prisoners had suffered fewer relapses and had
gained a greater degree of health than those at Regent’s Park. On the
whole, therefore, it was considered advisable to complete the process
of emptying Millbank. The men and women alike were all drafted into
different hulks off Woolwich. These changes were carried out early in
December, 1823, and by that time the Millbank Penitentiary was entirely
emptied, and it remained vacant till the summer of the next year.

The inner life of the Penitentiary went on much as usual in the early
days of the epidemic. There are at first only the ordinary entries in
the governor’s Journal. Prisoners came and went; this one was pardoned,
that received from Newgate or some county gaol. Repeated reports of
misconduct are recorded. The prisoners seemed fretful and mischievous.
Now and then they actually complained of the want of food. One prisoner
was taken to task for telling his father, in the visiting cell, that
six prisoners out of every seven would die for want of rations. But
at length the blow fell. On the 14th February, 1823, Ann Smith died in
the infirmary at half-past nine. On the 17th, Mary Ann Davidson; on the
19th, Mary Esp; on the 23rd, William Cardwell; on the 24th, Humphrey
Adams; on the 28th, Margaret Patterson. And now, by order of the
visitor, the prisoners were allowed more walking exercise. Then follow
the first steps taken by Drs. Roget and Latham. The governor records,
on the 3rd March, that the doctors recommend each prisoner should have
daily four ounces of meat and three oranges; that their bread should
be divided into three parts, an orange taken at each meal. Accordingly
the steward was sent to Thames Street to lay in a week’s consumption of
oranges.

An entry soon afterwards gives the first distinct reference to the
epidemic. “The medical gentlemen having begged for the bodies of such
prisoners as might die of the disorder now prevalent in the prison,
in order to make post-mortem examinations, the same was sanctioned if
the friends of the prisoner did not wish to interfere.” Deaths were
now very frequent, and hardly a week passed without a visit from the
coroner or his deputy.

On the 25th of March the governor, Mr. Couch, who had been ailing for
some time past, resigned his charge into the hands of Captain Benjamin
Chapman. Soon afterwards there were further additions to the dietary—on
the 26th of April two more ounces of meat and twelve ounces of boiled
potatoes; and the day after, it was ordered that each prisoner should
drink toast-and-water,—three half-pints daily. Lime, in large tubs, was
to be provided in all the pentagons for the purpose of disinfection.

About this period there was a great increase of insubordination among
the prisoners. It is easy to understand that discipline must be relaxed
when all were more or less ailing and unable to bear punishment. The
sick wards were especially noisy and turbulent. One man, for instance,
was charged with shouting loudly and using atrocious language; all of
which, of course, he denied, declaring he had only said, “God bless
the king, my tongue is very much swelled.” Upon this the turnkey in
charge observed that it was a pity it was not swelled more, and Smith
(the prisoner) pursued the argument by hitting his officer on the
head with a pint pot. Later on they broke out almost into mutiny. The
governor writes as follows: “At a quarter to eight o’clock Taskmaster
Swift informed me that the whole of the prisoners in the infirmary
ward of his pentagon were in the most disorderly and riotous state, in
consequence of the wooden doors of the cells having been ordered by the
surgeon to be shut during the night; that the prisoners peremptorily
refused to permit the turnkeys to shut their doors, and made use of
the most opprobrious terms, threatening destruction to whoever might
attempt to shut their doors. Their shouts and yells were so loud
as to be heard at a considerable distance. I immediately summoned
the patrols, and several of the turnkeys, and making them take their
cutlasses, I repaired to the sick ward. I found the wooden doors all
open, and the prisoners, for the most part, at their iron gates, which
were shut. The first prisoner I came to was John Hall. I asked him
the reason he refused to shut his door when ordered. He answered in
a very insolent tone and manner, ‘Why should I do so?’ I then said,
‘Shut your door instantly,’ but he would not comply. I took him away
and confined him in a dark cell. In conveying him to the cell he made
use of most abusive and threatening language, but did not make any
personal resistance.” Five others who were pointed out as prominent in
the mutiny were also punished on bread and water in a dark cell, by the
surgeon’s permission.

Nor were matters much more satisfactory in the female infirmary wards.
“Mrs. Briant, having reported yesterday, during my absence at Woolwich,
that Mary Willson had ‘wilfully cut her shoes,’ and, having stated
the same verbally this morning, I went with her into the infirmary,
where the prisoner was, and having produced the shoes to her (the
upper-leather of one of them being palpably cut from the sole), and
asked her why she cut them, she said she had not cut them, that they
had come undone whilst walking in the garden. This being an evident
falsehood, I told her I feared she was doing something worse than
cutting her shoes by telling an untruth. She answered in a very saucy
manner, they were not her shoes, and that she had not cut them. She
became at length very insolent, when I told her she deserved to be
punished. She replied she did not care whether she was or not. I then
directed the surgeon to be sent for; when not only the prisoner, but
several others in the infirmary, became very clamorous, and evinced
a great degree of insubordination. I went out with the intention of
getting a couple of patrols, when I heard the crash of broken glass
and loud screams. I returned as soon as possible with the patrols into
the infirmary. The women generally attempted to oppose my entrance,
and a group had got Willson amongst them, and said she should not be
confined. I desired the patrols to lay hold of her, and take her to
the dark cell (I had met with Dr. Hugh when going for the patrols, who
under the circumstances sanctioned the removal of the prisoner). In
doing so, Betts and Stone were assaulted with the utmost violence; I
myself was violently laid hold of, and my wrist and finger painfully
twisted. I had Willson, however, taken to the dark cell, when, having
summoned several of the turnkeys and officers of the prison, I with
considerable difficulty succeeded in taking six more of them who
appeared to be most forward in this disgraceful riot. Several of
the large panes in the passage windows were broken; and the women
seized everything they could lay their hands on, and flung them at the
officers, who, in self-defence, were at length compelled to strike in
return. I immediately reported the circumstance to Sir George Farrant,
the visitor, who came to the prison soon after. I accompanied him, with
Dr. Bennett (the chaplain) and Mr. Pratt (the surgeon), through the
female pentagon and infirmary, when a strong spirit of insubordination
was obvious. Sir George addressed them, and so did Dr. Bennett, and
pointed out the serious injury they were doing themselves, and that
such conduct would not pass unpunished. We afterwards visited the
dark refractory cells, where the worst were confined; two of whom, on
account of previous good-conduct and favourable circumstances, were
liberated. For myself, I never beheld such a scene of outrage, nor did
I observe a single individual who was not culpably active.”

As a general rule, the prisoners in the Penitentiary were in these
days so little looked after, and had so much leisure time, that
they soon found the proverbial mischief for idle hands. Having some
suspicions, the governor searched several, and found up the sleeves
of five of them, knives, playing cards (made from an old copy-book),
two articles to hold ink, a baby’s straw hat, some papers (written
upon), and an original song of questionable tendency. The hearts and
diamonds in the cards had been covered with red chalk, the clubs and
spades with blacking. “Having received information that there were
more cards about, he caused strict search to be made, and found in
John Brown’s Bible, one card and the materials for making more, also a
small knife made of bone. In another prisoner’s cell was found another
knife and some paste, ingeniously contrived from old bread-crumbs.”
But even these amusements did not keep the prisoners from continually
quarrelling and fighting with one another. Any one who had made himself
obnoxious was severely handled. A body of prisoners fell upon one
Tompkins, and half killed him because he had reported the irreverent
conduct of several of them while at divine service. The place was like
a bear-garden; insubordination, riots, foul language, and continual
wranglings among themselves—it could hardly be said that the prisoners
were making that rapid progress towards improvement which was among the
principal objects of the Penitentiary.

And now the scene shifts to the Woolwich hulks, whither by this time
the whole of the inmates were being by degrees transferred. The first
batch of males were sent off on the 16th August, embarking at Millbank,
and proceeding by launch to Woolwich. Great precautions were taken.
All the disposable taskmasters, turnkeys, and patrols being armed
and stationed from the outer lodge to the quay (River Stairs), the
prisoners were assembled by six at a time, and placed without irons
in the launch. The same plan was pursued from time to time, till at
length the entire number were removed. The hulks were the _Ethalion_,
_Narcissus_, _Dromedary_. A master was on board in charge of each,
under the general supervision of Captain Chapman, the governor of the
Penitentiary. There was immediately a further great deterioration
in the conduct of the prisoners. Not only were they mischievous, as
appeared from their favourite pastime, which was to drag off one
another’s bedclothes in the middle of the night, by means of a crooked
nail attached to a long string, but the decks which they occupied
were for ever in a state of anarchy and confusion. “All the prisoners
below,” says the overseer of the _Ethalion_, “conducted themselves last
night in a most improper manner, by singing obscene songs and making
a noise. When summoned to appear on the upper deck, they treated the
master with defiance and contempt, so that the ringleaders had to be
put in irons.” But it was a mere waste of time to confine prisoners
below. There was no place of security to hold them. “A number of
prisoners broke their confinement by forcibly removing the boards of
the different cabins in which they were placed in the cockpit, and
got together in the fore hold, where they were found by Mr. Lodge
at half-past nine at night.” Another prisoner, a day or two later,
confined in the hold, broke out, and proceeded through the holds and
wings of the ship till he arrived at the fore hold, where another
prisoner, Connor, was confined for irreverent behaviour during chapel.
Connor tore up the boards fastened on to the mast-hatch, and admitted
Williams to him. “When Williams’ escape was discovered,” says the
overseer, “I searched for him in the bottom of the ship. On my arriving
at the bulkhead of the fore hold I inquired of Connor if Williams
was with him. He declared he was not, calling on God to witness his
assertion; but on opening the hatch, to my astonishment I found him
there. I ordered him back to the place in which he was first confined;
on which he used the most abusive language, saying, by God, when he
was released he would murder me and every officer in the ship. I
talked mildly to him, and desired him to return to the place in which
he had been confined. He at last complied, using the most abusive and
threatening language. When he had returned to the after hold, I put
the leg-irons on him to prevent his forcing out a second time, giving
him at the same time to understand, that if he would behave himself
they would soon be taken off. But he was still turbulent, breaking
everything before him. I then put handcuffs on him, notwithstanding
which he broke out at 9 P.M., disengaged himself from the handcuffs,
and got a second time to the fore hold, where I again found him, and
insisted on his returning. He kicked me very much in the legs, using,
as before, threatening language. I then found it necessary to use
force, and taking guards Wadeson and Clarke with the steward, we again
removed him to his first place of confinement. He appeared so resolute
and determined to commit further depredations, that I fastened his
leg-irons to a five-inch staple in the timber of the hold, which staple
he tore up during the night, and again passed to Connor in the fore
hold.”

On the 27th November it was found that some prisoners had made their
escape from the _Ethalion_ hulk. On mustering the prisoners in the
morning three were missing. Search was immediately made, but they were
not to be found. All the hatches on the lower deck were secure; but it
was ascertained, on examination of the after hold, that the prisoners
must have made their way into the steward’s store-room, where they
had taken out the window. One of them then swam off to the _Shear_
hulk, secured the boat, brought it to the after windows, and by that
means, assisting each other, the three effected their escape. The boat
belonging to the _Shear_ hulk was found at the Prince Regent’s Ferry
House, on the Essex coast. After a close investigation it was not
possible to bring the blame home to any one. All the guards proved,
of course, that they were on the alert all night. The steward said he
had had a blister on, and could not sleep a wink, but he never missed
hearing the bell struck (by the watch) every quarter of an hour.
Stevenson, one of those who had escaped, had always been employed in
the steward’s store-room, hence he knew his way about the ship. Being
a sailor and a good swimmer, it was probably he who had gone to the
_Shear_ hulk and got a boat, taking with him one end of a rope made of
hammock nettings, the other being fast to a beam in the store-room. By
this rope the _Shear_ hulk boat was hauled gently to the _Ethalion_;
then the other two prisoners got into it, and it was allowed to drift
down for some distance with the tide. No sound whatever of oars had
been heard during the night by the sentries on board or on shore. The
escape must have been made between one and two o’clock in the morning,
as at three the men were seen landing from a boat on the Essex coast.

Information of the escape soon spread among the other prisoners, and
it was pretty certain that many would attempt to follow. They were
reported to be ripe for any mischief. The fire-arms were carefully
inspected by the governor, who insisted on their being kept constantly
in good order and “well flinted.” At the same time a strict search
was made through the ship, particularly of the lower deck, for any
implements that might be secreted to facilitate escape. False keys
were reported to be in existence, but none could be found; only a
large sledge-hammer, a ripping chisel, and some iron bolts which
were concealed in the caboose. A few days afterwards the master of
the _Ethalion_ reported the discovery of a number of other dangerous
articles in various parts of the ship, several more sledge-hammers,
chisels, iron bars, spike nails, etc., all calculated to do much
mischief, and endanger the safety of the ship. At the same time, four
prisoners were overheard planning another escape. They were to steal
the key of a closet on the deck, and alter it so as to fit the locks
of the bulk heads into the infirmary wards, and pass by this means to
the cabin, and out through one of the ports. The key was immediately
impounded, and a strict watch kept all night. Between eleven and twelve
the guard reported that he heard a noise like filing through iron
bars; so the master got into a boat with two others and rowed round
the ship. They were armed with a cutlass and blunderbus, “which,” says
the master, “I particularly requested might be put out of sight.” But
everything was perfectly quiet on the lower deck, and on going through
the upper deck the only discovery made was a prisoner sitting by a
lamp, manufacturing a draught board, which he refused to part with.
They left the deck quite quiet; yet at half-past three the whole place
was in an uproar. A regular stand-up fight took place between two
prisoners, Elgar and Blore, in which the former got his eyes blackened
and face damaged in the most shameful manner. This Elgar was the man
who gave information of the projected escape, thereby incurring the
resentment of the rest. It is improbable, however, that any attempt was
actually intended this time, though escape was in every mouth, and had
been since the event of the previous Thursday.

Speaking of the hulks at this time, the governor says, “It is but too
true that little if any discipline exists among the prisoners, and
that the state of insubordination is extremely alarming. This may, in
a great degree, be attributed to the lamentable state of idleness, the
facility of communicating with each other, concerning and perpetrating
mischief, and the inadequate means of punishment when contrasted with
the hulks establishment.”

But by this time news had come of the missing three. At nine o’clock
one night a person called at the Penitentiary and asked to see the
governor in private. He was shown into the office. “You had three
prisoners escape from Woolwich lately? One of them is my brother,
Charles Knight. I am very anxious he should be brought back. What is
the penalty for escaping?” He was informed; also that there was a
charge of stealing from the steward’s store. Knight’s brother said he
would willingly pay the damage of that, and wished to make conditions
for the fugitive if he was given up. The governor would not promise
beyond an assurance of speaking in Knight’s favour to the committee;
and said all would depend upon his making a full and candid disclosure
of all the circumstances connected with the escape, and giving all the
information in his power which would lead to the arrest of the other
two. The visitor then observed that his brother was very young, and by
no means a hardened offender; that he was led into this act and was
sorry for it; that none of his relations would harbour him, and that
he was quite ready to return. Next morning he was brought back by his
mother and brother, and gave immediately a full account of the affair.
The escape had been concerted a full week before it was carried into
effect, and had been arranged entirely by Stevenson, who having been
employed in the store-room, had purloined a key, filed out the wards
and made a skeleton key, with which he opened the hatches. The rope was
made out of spun yarn, found in the hold by Stevenson, who also got
there the sledge-hammer, chisel, and iron spikes. There was not a soul
moving or awake on the lower deck, and no one knew of their intention
to escape. They then got away in a boat, just as had been surmised. On
landing at the new ferry on the Essex coast, they went across the chain
pier, Payne changing a shilling to pay the toll. This was all the money
they had amongst them, and had been conveyed to Payne by some person in
the ship. They then proceeded to London, and were supplied with hats
by a Jew named Wolff, living in Somerset Street, Whitechapel, to whose
house they were taken by Stevenson. Afterwards they went to the West
End. Payne separated from them in Waterloo Place, saying he meant to go
to a brother living at Stratford-on-Avon. Stevenson then took Knight
to his brother’s, who was a working jeweller, and who gave them money
to buy clothes. They hid together for the night in a house in George
Street, St. Giles; and then Knight went home to his aunt’s in Hanover
Street, Long Acre, but was refused admittance. The same happened with
all his other relatives, and at last he was compelled to give himself
up in the manner described. Through information which he gave the
others also were apprehended.

The numbers on board the several ships at this time were over
six hundred; they were not classified; the distinctions of the
Penitentiary, as well as the dress, were done away with. All alike
were clothed in a coarse brown suit. They were kept in divisions of
seventy-five, with a wardsman in charge of each division; besides
which, a number of well-conducted prisoners were appointed to keep
watch during the night, who were to report any irregularity that might
occur during the watch. There was no employment for the prisoners: the
making of great-coats was tried, but it did not succeed. There was no
work to be got on shore, and it was doubtful whether these prisoners
could be legally employed for that. In fact the whole establishment
was considered a sort of house of recovery, and all the prisoners were
more or less under hospital treatment throughout. The general conduct
of the prisoners was “unruly to a degree, and in some instances to
the extent of mutiny.” This continued month after month through the
winter till well into the spring of 1824, when for a time, indeed, the
conduct of all improved. They were in hopes that they were about to get
some remission of their sentences, and feared lest misconduct should
militate against their release. They were all in full expectation that
something would be done for them by Parliament, in consequence of their
very great sufferings. The tenor of all their letters to their friends
was to the same effect. They were, however, doomed to disappointment;
for on the 14th April, Mr. Kellock states, “This morning I received
information that the bill for the labour and removal of the male
convicts under the Penitentiary rules, and at present on board the
prison ships, had received the royal assent. When informed that they
were to be removed to labour at the hulks, they received the news with
some degree of surprise and astonishment.” But the same day the exodus
took place, and they are reported to have gone away “very quietly and
resigned.”




CHAPTER IV

THE PENITENTIARY REOCCUPIED

 Improved Ventilation and Drainage—Revised dietary—Provision
 of Hard Labour—Mild rule of Governor Chapman—Constant warfare
 between Prisoners and Authorities—Feigned suicides—Repeated
 Offences—Turbulence developed into open mutiny—Cells
 barricaded—Furniture demolished—Officers assaulted—Resistance to
 Authority culminates in murderous affray—Act permitting corporal
 punishment passed.


NO pains were spared to make the Penitentiary wholesome for
re-occupation. A Parliamentary Committee—that great panacea for all
public ills—had however already reported favourably upon the place.
They had declared that no case of local unhealthiness could be made
out against it; nor had they been able to find “anything in the spot
on which the Penitentiary is situated, nor in the construction of
the building itself, nor in the moral and physical treatment of the
prisoners confined therein, to injure health or render them peculiarly
liable to disease.”

Yet to guard against all danger of relapse, they advised that none
of the old hands should return to the prison, and recommended also
certain external and internal improvements. Better ventilation was
needed; to obtain this they called in Sir Humphrey Davy, and gave him
_carte blanche_ to carry out any alterations. Complete fumigation
was also necessary; and this was effected with chlorine, under the
supervision of a Mr. Faraday from the Royal Institution. To render
innocuous the dirty ditch of stagnant water—dignified with the name
of moat—which surrounded the buildings just within the boundary wall,
it was connected with the Thames and its tides. Additional stoves
were placed in the several pentagons, and the dietary reorganized on
a full and nutritive scale, in quality and quantity equal to that in
force before the epidemic. Provision was also made to secure plenty of
hard labour exercise for the prisoners daily, by increasing the number
of crank mills and water machines in the yards. More schooling was
also recommended, as a profitable method of employing hours otherwise
lost, and breaking in on the monotony and dreariness of the long dark
nights. The cells, the committee thought too, should be lighted with
candles, and books supplied “of a kind to combine rational amusement,
with moral and religious instruction.” Indeed there was no limit to
the benevolence of these commissioners. Adverting to the testimony of
the medical men they had examined, who were agreed that cheerfulness
and innocent recreation were conducive to health, they submitted for
consideration, whether some kind of games or sports might not be
permitted in the prison during a portion of the day. Fives-courts
and skittle-alleys were probably in their minds, with cricket in the
garden, or football during the winter weather. As one reads all this,
one is tempted to ask whether the objects of so much tender solicitude
were really convicted felons sentenced to imprisonment for serious
crimes.

The rule of Governor Chapman was essentially considerate and mild.
There was no limit to his long-suffering and patience. Though by all
the habits of his early life he must have learned to look at breaches
of discipline with no lenient eye, we shall find that he never punished
even the most insubordinate and contumacious of the ruffians committed
to his charge till he had first exhausted every method of exhortation
or reproof; and when he had punished he was ever ready to forgive, on
a promise of future amendment, or even a mere hypocritical expression
of contrition alone. It is now generally admitted that felons cooped
up within four walls can be kept in bounds only under an iron hand.
Captain Chapman acted otherwise, the committee which controlled him
fully endorsing his views. For a long time to come the prison was like
a bear garden; misconduct was rife in every shape and form, increasing
daily in virulence, till at length the place might have been likened to
Pandemonium let loose. Then more stringent measures were enforced, with
satisfactory results, as we shall see; but for many years there was
that continuous warfare between ruffianism and constituted authority
which is inevitable when the latter savours of weakness or irresolution.

Feigned suicides were among the earliest methods of annoyance. It is
not easy to explain exactly what end the prisoners had in view, but
doubtless they hoped to enlist the sympathies of their kindhearted
guardians, by exhibiting a recklessness of life. Those who preferred
death to continued imprisonment must indeed be miserably unhappy,
calling for increased tenderness and anxious attention. They must be
talked to, petted, patted on the back, and taken into the infirmary,
to be regaled with dainties, and suffered to lie there in idleness for
weeks. So whenever any prisoner was thwarted or out of temper, often
indeed without rhyme or reason, and whenever the fancy seized him, he
tied himself up at once to his loom, or laid hands upon his throat
with his dinner-knife, or a bit of broken glass. Of course their last
idea was to succeed. They took the greatest pains to insure their own
safety, and these were often ludicrously apparent; but now and then,
though rarely, they failed of their object, and the wretched victim
suffered by mistake. Happily the actually fatal cases were few and far
between.

This fashion of attempting suicide was led by a certain William
Major, who arrived from Newgate on the 8th October, 1824. A few days
afterwards he confided to the surgeon this determination to make away
with himself; “that, or murder some one here; for I’d sooner be hanged
like a dog than stay in the Penitentiary.” Such terrible desperation
called of course for immediate expostulation, and Captain Chapman
proceeded at once to Major’s cell. The prisoner’s knife and scissors
were first removed; then the governor spoke to him. Major replied
sullenly; adding, “I’ve made up my mind: I’d do anything to get out
of this place; kill myself or you. I’d sooner go to the gallows than
stay here.” “I reasoned with him,” says Captain Chapman in his Journal,
“for a length of time on the wickedness of such shocking expressions;
telling him there was only one way of shortening his time, and that
was by good conduct. I told him his threats were those of a silly lad,
which I should however punish him for.” So Major was carried off to a
dark cell, but not before the governor had said all he could think of,
to reason him out of his evil frame of mind. He remained in the dark
two days, and then, having expressed himself penitent and promising
faithfully better behaviour, he was released. For three weeks nothing
further occurred, and then, “Suddenly,” says the governor, “as I was
passing through a neighbouring ward, a turnkey called to me, ‘Here,
here, governor! bring a knife. Major has hanged himself.” He had made
himself fast to the cross beam of his loom. The action of his heart
had not, however, ceased, though the circulation was languid and his
extremities cold. He was removed at once to the infirmary, and as soon
as animation was restored, the governor returned to the prisoner’s
cell, and then found that “the hammock lashing was made fast in two
places to the cross beam from the loom to the wall; in one was a long
loop, in which Major had placed his feet; in the other a noose, as far
distant from the loop as the length of the beam would permit, in which
he had put his head; a portion of the rope between noose and loop he
had held in his hand.” It was quite clear, therefore, that he had no
determined intention of committing suicide; besides which he had chosen
his time just as the turnkey was about to visit him, and he had eaten
his supper, “which,” says the governor, “was no indication of despair.”
Major soon recovered, and pretended to be sincerely ashamed of his
wicked behaviour.

Not long afterwards a man, Combe, in the refractory cell, tried to
hang himself with a pocket handkerchief. Placing his bedstead against
the wall, he had used it as a ladder to climb up to the grating of the
ventilator in the ceiling of his cell. To this he had made fast the
handkerchief, then dropped; but he was found standing calmly by the
bed, with the noose not even tight. Next a woman, Catherine Roper,
tried the same trick, and was found lying full length on the floor,
and evidently she was quite uninjured. Then came a real affair; and
from the hour at which the act was perpetrated all doubt of intention
was unhappily impossible. Lewis Abrahams, a gloomy, ill-tempered man,
was punished for breaking a fly-shuttle; again for calling his warder
a liar. That night he hung himself. He was found quite dead and cold,
partly extended on the stone floor, and partly reclining as it were
against the cell wall. He had suspended himself by the slight “nettles”
(small cords) of his hammock, which had broken by his weight. The
prisoner in the next cell reported that between one and two in the
morning he had heard a noise of some one kicking against the wall; and
then no doubt the deed was done.

After this unhappy example attempts rapidly multiplied, though happily
none were otherwise than feigned. One tried the iron grating and a
piece of cord; another used his cell block as a drop, but was careful
to retain the halter in his hands; a third, Moses Josephs, tried to cut
his throat, but on examination nothing but a slight reddish scratch
was found, which the doctor was convinced was done by the back of the
knife. In all these cases immediate and anxious attention was afforded
by all the officials of the Penitentiary. The governor himself, who
never gave himself an hour’s relaxation, and was always close at hand,
was generally the first on the scene of suicide. If there was but a
hint of anything wrong he was ready to spend hours with the intending
_felo-de-se_. Thus in Metzer’s—a fresh case: a man who would not eat,
was idle too, morose and sullen, “though spoken to always in the
kindest manner.” No sooner was it known that he was brooding over
the length of his confinement—his was a life sentence—and had hinted
at suicide, than the governor spent hours with him in exhortation.
Metzer, being a weaver by trade, had been placed in a cell furnished
with a loom; from this he was to be changed immediately to another,
lest the beam should be a temptation to him; but the governor, being
uneasy, first visited him again, and found him, though late at night,
in his clothes perambulating his cell. On this his neighbour was set
to watch him for the rest of the night, and the doctor gave him a
composing draught. Next morning, when they told him he was to leave
his cell for good, he became outrageously violent, and assaulted every
one around. He was now taken forcibly to the infirmary, and put in a
strait-waistcoat; whereupon he grew calmer and promised to go to his
new cell, provided he was allowed to take his own hammock with him. It
struck the governor at once that something might be concealed in it,
and it was searched minutely. Inside the bedclothes they found a couple
of yards of hammock lashing, one end of which was made into a noose,
“leaving,” the governor remarks, “little doubt of his intention.”

But to meet and frustrate these repeated attempts at suicide were by
no means the governor’s only trials. The misconduct of many other
prisoners must have made his life a burthen to him. Thefts were
frequent: these fellows’ fingers itched to lay their hands on all
that came in their way. The tower wardsman—a prisoner in a place of
trust—steals his warder’s rations; others filch knives, metal buttons,
bath brick, and food from one another. Then there was much wasteful
destruction of materials, with idleness and carelessness at the looms,
aggravated often by the misappropriation of time in manufacture of
trumpery articles for their own wear: one makes himself a pair of green
gaiters, another a pair of cloth shoes, a third an imitation watch of
curled hair, rolled into a ball, which hangs in his fob by a strip of
calico for guard.

These were doubtless offences of a trivial character. The anxiety
evinced by many to escape from durance was a much more serious affair.
Surprising ingenuity and unwearied patience are exhibited by prisoners
in compassing this, the great aim and object of all who are not free.
As yet, however, the efforts made were tentative only and incomplete.
To break a hole in the wall or manufacture false keys was the highest
flight of their inventive genius, and the plot seldom went very far.
One of the first cases was discovered quite by chance. On searching
a prisoner’s cell, some screws, a few nails, and two pieces of thick
iron wire were found concealed in his loom; and in one of his shoes
as it hung upon the wall, a piece of lead shaped so as to correspond
with the wards of a cell key. This the prisoner confessed he had made
with his knife from memory, and altogether without a pattern. “I have
a very nice eye,” he said, “and I have always carefully observed the
keys as I saw them in the officers’ hands.” “And what did you mean
to do with the key?” he was further asked. “To get away, of course.”
“How?” “I can open the wooden door when I please, and then I should
have unlocked my gate.”[1] On examination a hole was found in his door,
just below the bolt and opposite the handle; through this, by means
of a narrow piece of stuff, a knitting needle in fact, he could move
back the bolt whenever he pleased. Once out in the ward, he meant, with
a file he had also secreted, to get through the bars of the passage
window. The wards of this key were fastened into a wooden handle, which
was also found in his cell. Another prisoner, having been allowed to
possess himself of a large spike nail, which had been negligently left
about in the yard, worked all night at the wall of his cell, and soon
succeeded in removing several bricks. The hole he made was large enough
to allow him passage. Besides this, from the military great-coats, on
which he was stitching during the day, he had made himself a coat and
trousers. He might have actually got away had not a warder visited his
cell to inspect his work, and taking up the great-coats as they lay
in a heap in the corner, discovered the disguise beneath, also the
spike nail, and the rubbish of bricks and mortar from the hole. More
adventurous still, a third prisoner proposed to escape by stealing his
warder’s keys. Failing an opportunity, he too turned his attention to
making false ones; and for the purpose cut up with scissors his pewter
drinking can into bits. By holding the pieces near the hot irons he
used for his tailoring, he melted the metal, and ran it into a mould
of bread. Information of this project was given by another prisoner in
time to nip it in the bud. Another, again, had been clever enough to
remove a number of bricks, and would have passed undetected, had not
the governor by chance, when in his cell, touched the wall and found
it damp. A closer inspection showed that the mortar around the bricks
had been picked out, and the joints filled in by a mixture of pounded
mortar and chewed bread. On the outside was laid a coating of whiting,
such as was issued to the prisoners to help them in cleaning their cans.

In some mischief of this kind, one or other of the prisoners was
perpetually engaged. Cutting up their sheets to fabricate disguises;
melting the metal buttons, as the man just mentioned had melted his
pewter can; laying hold of files, rasps, old nails, scissors, tin,
copper wire, or whatever else came handy; and working always with so
much secrecy and despatch, that their plans were discovered more
by fortune generally, than good management. In those days the best
methods of prison discipline were far from matured. We know now that
the surest preventives against escape, are repeated and unexpected
searchings, with continuous vigilant supervision. A prisoner to carry
out his schemes must have leisure, and must be left to himself to work
unperceived. By the practice of the Penitentiary, prisoners had every
facility to escape; and we shall find ere long, that they knew how to
make the most of their advantages. For the present, all the good luck
was on the side of the gaolers.

But at this juncture a new trouble threatened all the peace and comfort
of the place. The prisoners seem to have grown all at once alive to
the power they possessed of combination. It had been suspected for
some time that a conspiracy was in progress among the denizens of D
Ward, Pentagon two, and a minute search of the several cells brought to
light a number of clandestine communications. These, written mostly on
the blank pages of prayer-books, and spare copy-book leaves, were all
to the same effect: exhortations to riot and mutiny. A certain George
Vigers was the prime mover; all the letters, which were very widely
disseminated, having issued from his pen. It had long been openly
discussed among the prisoners that the hulks were pleasanter places
than the Penitentiary. Here, then, was an opportunity of removal.
All who joined heartily in the projected commotion would draw upon
themselves the ire of the committee, and would certainly be drafted to
the hulks. To explain what might otherwise appear unintelligible, it
must be mentioned here, that the punishment implied by a sentence to
the hulks was by no means of a terrifying character, as is evidenced by
the choice of the prisoners.

A year or two later (1832), the report of the Parliamentary Committee
on Secondary Punishments laid bare the system, and expressed their
unqualified disapprobation of the whole treatment of convicts on board
the hulks. It being accepted that the separation of criminals, and
their severe punishment, are necessary to make crime a terror to the
evil doer, the committee pointed out that in both these respects the
system of management of the hulks was not only necessarily deficient,
but actually inimical. All that has been said of the miserable
effects of the association of criminals in the prisons on shore, the
profaneness, the vice, the demoralization that are its inevitable
consequences, applied in the fullest sense to the hulks. The numbers
in each ship varied from eighty to eight hundred. The ships were
divided into wards of from twelve to thirty persons; in these they were
confined when not at labour in the dockyard, and the evil consequences
of such associations may easily be conceived, even were the strictest
discipline enforced. But the facts are stated as follows: “The
convicts after being shut up for the night are allowed to have lights
between decks, in some ships as late as ten o’clock; although against
the rules of the establishment, they are permitted the use of musical
instruments; flash songs, dancing, fighting, and gaming take place; the
old offenders are in the habit of robbing the newcomers; newspapers
and improper books are clandestinely introduced; a communication is
frequently kept up with their old associates on shore; and occasionally
spirits are introduced on board. It is true that the greater part of
these practices are against the rules of the establishment; but their
existence in defiance of such rules shows an inherent defect in the
system. But the indulgence of purchasing tea, bread, tobacco, etc.,
is allowed, the latter with a view to the health of the prisoners;
the convicts are also allowed to receive visits from their friends,
and during the time they remain, are excused working, sometimes for
several days. Such communications can only have the worst effect. It
is an improper indulgence to anyone in the position of a convict, and
keeps up a dangerous and improper intercourse with old companions.
The most assiduous attention on the part of the ministers of religion
would be insufficient to stem the torrent of corruption flowing from
these various and abundant sources; and but little attention is paid
to the promotion of religious feelings, or to the improvement of the
morals of the convicts.” It was plainly seen that the convicts were
also allowed to earn too much money—threepence a day to convicts in the
first class, three halfpence to those in the second; out of which the
former got sixpence a week, and the latter threepence, to lay out in
the purchase of tea, tobacco, etc., and the remainder was laid by to be
given to them on their release. They were supposed to work during the
day at the arsenals and dockyards, but “there was nothing in the nature
or severity of their employment which deserves the name of punishment
or hard labour.” The work lasted from eight to ten hours, according
to season; but so much time was lost in musters, and going to and
from labour, that the summer period was never eight hours, and winter
only six and a half. As common labourers work ten hours, and when at
task work or during harvest much longer, the convicts could hardly be
said to do more than was just sufficient to keep them in health and
exercise; indeed, their situation could not be considered penal; it was
a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.

Thus, as the committee described, the criminal sentenced to
transportation for crimes to which the law affixed the penalty of
death, passed his time, well fed, well clothed, indulging in riotous
enjoyment by night, vexed with but moderate labour by day. No wonder
that confinement on the hulks failed to excite a proper feeling of
terror in the minds of those likely to come under its operation.
The hulks were indeed not dreaded; prisoners described their life in
them as a “pretty jolly life.” If any convict could but overcome the
sense of shame which the degradation of his position might evoke,
he would feel himself to be better off than large numbers of the
working-classes, who have nothing but their daily labour to depend on
for subsistence. At the dockyards, among the free men the situation of
a convict was looked upon with envy; and many labourers would have been
glad to change places with him, in order that they might better their
situation. It was not strange, then, that the discontented denizens of
the Penitentiary found even the moderate rigour of that establishment
too irksome, and that they were eager to be transferred to the hulks.

Towards the end of September, 1826, came the first indications of
disturbance. A prisoner having smashed his bedstead, demolished also
the iron grating to his window, and thrust through it his handkerchief,
tied to a stick, shouting and hallooing the while loud enough to be
heard in Surrey. The same day, Hussey, another notorious offender,
returning from confinement in the dark, was given a pail of water to
wash his cell out, but instead, discharged the whole contents over his
warder’s head. Before he could be secured he had destroyed everything
in his cell, and had thrown the pieces out of the window. Next, a
number of prisoners during the night took to rolling their cell-blocks
and rattling their tables about. By this time the dark cells had many
occupants, who spent the night in singing, dancing, and shouting to
each other.

Early next morning, about 5 A.M., in this same ward from which all the
rioters came, Stephen Harman broke everything he could lay hands on—the
window frame and all its panes of glass, his cell table, stool, shelf,
trencher, salt-box, spoon, drinking-cup, and all his cell furniture.
He had first barricaded his door, and could not be secured till all
the mischief was done. Later in the day from another cell came a
long low whistle, followed by the crash of broken glass. The culprit
here, when seized, confessed he had been persuaded by others; all
were to join after dinner, the whistle being the signal to commence.
The governor was now really apprehensive, anticipating something of
a serious nature. He had a strong force of spare warders and patrols
posted in the tower of the pentagon; but though the whistle[2] was
frequently heard during the night, nothing occurred till next day, at
half-past eight, when George Vigers and another followed Harman’s lead
and destroyed everything in their cells. They joined their companions
in the dark cells, all of whom, being outrageously violent, were now
in handcuffs. In the dark they continued their misconduct; using the
most shocking and revolting language to all officials who approached
them; assaulting them, deluging them with dirty water, resolutely
refusing to give up their beds, and breaking locks, door panels,
and windows, and this although they were restrained in irons. These
handcuffs having failed to produce any salutary effect, they were now
removed; although several of the prisoners did not wait for that, and
had riddled themselves of their bracelets. For the next few days “the
Dark,” as these underground cells were styled in official language,
continued to be the scene of the most unseemly uproar. When Archdeacon
Potts, one of the committee, visited it he was received with hoots
and yells; and this noise was kept up incessantly day and night.
But at length, after nearly a fortnight of close confinement, the
strength of the rioters broke down, several of them being removed to
the hospital, while the others went back to their cells. But there was
no lack of reinforcements: fresh offenders took up the game, and the
dark cells were continually full. As soon as those first punished were
sufficiently recovered, they broke out again. The cases of misconduct,
generally of the same description, were varied now and then by a
plot to break the water-mill by whirling round the cranks too fast,
continuous noise, insolence, dancing defiantly the double shuffle,
attempts to incite a whole ward, when in the corridor at school, to
rise against their warders, overpower them, and take possession of
their keys.

Throughout the long nights of the dreary winter months these
disturbances continued; a time of the utmost anxiety and annoyance to
worthy Captain Chapman, who was invariably the foremost in the fray.
Nothing can exceed the pluck and energy with which he tackled the most
truculent. When a prisoner, mad with rage, dares any man to enter his
cell, it is Governor Chapman who always enters without a moment’s
hesitation; when another, armed with a sleeveboard, threatens to dash
out everybody’s brains, it is Captain Chapman who secures the weapon
of offence; when a body of prisoners on the mill break out into open
mutiny, and the warder in charge is in terror for his personal safety,
it is Governor Chapman who repairs at once to the spot and collars the
ringleaders. Perhaps it would have been better if so much resolute
courage had not been tempered with too much kindness of heart. No one
can read of Captain Chapman’s proceedings without admitting that he was
brave; but for his particular duties he was undoubtedly also amiable
to a fault. Had he been more unrelenting it is probable that the worst
offenders would never have gone such lengths in their insubordination.
A word or two of contrition, often the merest sham, was sufficient
generally to secure his pardon. Thus when a man has worked himself
into a fury and appears ready for any act of desperation, the mere
appearance of the governor calms him, and the prisoner, softened, says,
“You, sir, use me much better than I deserve. Put me in the dark.” “I
left him,” says Captain Chapman, on one occasion, “saying I trusted my
lenity would have a much better effect than a dark cell. I therefore
admonished and pardoned him.” Had such kindness been productive of good
results no one could have questioned his wisdom; almost invariably it
was worse than futile, and the malcontents soon worse than ever, and
devising fresh schemes.

It was in this winter that the superintending committee became
convinced that the methods of coercion they possessed were hardly so
stringent as the case required. They reported to the House of Commons
that “there were among the prisoners some profligate and turbulent
characters for whose outrageous conduct the punishments in use under
the rules and regulations of the Penitentiary were by no means
sufficient.” They found by experience that “confinement in a dark cell,
though in most cases a severe and efficacious punishment, operates
very differently on different persons. It appears to lose much of its
effect from repetition; it cannot always be carried far without the
danger of injuring health; and on some men as well as boys it has no
effect.” Many of the ringleaders in the disturbances just described
were subjected to twenty-five, twenty-eight, and even to thirty days
of uninterrupted imprisonment in the dark, and certainly with little
effect. In view of this want of some more salutary punishment the
committee expressed a wish for power to flog. They were convinced
that “the framers of the statute under which the Penitentiary is now
governed acted erroneously in omitting the power to inflict corporal
punishment when they re-enacted most of the other provisions of the
19th Geo. III. And they are satisfied that a revival of this power (a
power possessed in every other criminal prison in this country) would
be highly advantageous to the management of this prison, provided such
power were accompanied by regulations adequate to control the exercise
of it, and to guard against its being abused.”

Soon after these lines were in print, and presented to the House, it
became more than ever apparent that to tame these turbulent characters
some serious steps must be taken soon. During the early months of
1827 there had been no cessation of misconduct of the kind already
described, but the cases were mostly isolated, and generally succumbed
to treatment. But as March began a storm gathered which soon burst
like a whirlwind on the place. It was heralded by a riot in chapel
on Sunday, the 3rd of March. Previous to the sermon, during evening
service, a rumbling noise was heard, as if the prisoners assembled were
stamping in unison with their feet. The sound ceased with the singing
of the psalm, and recommenced during the sermon, and increased in
violence. It was discovered that the noise was made by the prisoners
knocking with their fists against the sheet iron that separated the
several divisions. As the uproar continued to increase to a shameful
and alarming extent, the governor left the chapel to fetch the
patrols, and other spare officers, all of whom, with drawn cutlasses,
were posted near the chapel door. The prisoners were then removed to
their cells, and, in the presence of this exhibition of force, they
went quietly enough. The ringleaders were afterwards singled out and
punished: the chief among them being a monitor, long remarkable for his
piety, who on this occasion had distinguished himself by mimicking the
chaplain, by commenting in scandalous terms upon the sermons, and using
slang expressions instead of responses.

After this, in all parts of the prison there are strong symptoms of
mutiny. Loud shouts, laughter, and the thieves’ whistle on every side.
For the next few days there is much uneasiness; and at length, about
midnight on the 8th, the governor is roused from his bed. Pentagon six
is in an uproar. As Captain Chapman hurries to the scene he is saluted
with the crash of glass, interspersed with loud cries of triumph and of
encouragement. The airing-yard below is strewed with fragments; broken
window-frames, fragments of glass, utensils, and tables smashed to
bits. Two notorious offenders in B Ward, Hawkins and John Caswell, are
busy at the work of destruction, and already everything is in ruins.
The tumult is so tremendous, so many others contribute their shouts,
and the thieves’ whistle runs so quickly from cell to cell, that sleep
is impossible to any one within the boundary wall; and presently all
officials, chaplain, doctor, manufacturers, and steward, have joined
the governor, and are helping to quell the disturbance. It is quelled,
but hardly has the governor got back to bed, at two in the morning,
when the uproar recommences: the same noise and loud shouts from one
side of the pentagons of prisoners, inciting each other to continue the
riot. Next day, from various other wards come reports that a spirit
of insubordination is on the increase; and the offenders in the dark,
ten in number, are violent in the extreme. Again, at midnight, the
governor is aroused by a tremendous yelling from Pentagon six, followed
by the smashing of glass. The offenders are seized at once, and, the
governor remarks, “from what I could learn, were pretty roughly handled
by their captors.” During this night, too, in noise and violence the
several prisoners in the dark exceeded, if possible, their accustomed
mutinous conduct. One, by some extraordinary effort, broke the part
of his door to which the lock was attached, and got it into his cell,
swearing he would brain the first person who approached him. There was
much answering to and from the dark cells and the upper stories of the
pentagons opposite. There was evidently discontent also in other parts
of the prison. Those prisoners who had no hope of gaining any remission
of their sentences, having no inducement to behave well, were on the
point of insurrection. In addition to these alarms, on the night of the
14th it was reported to the governor that the prisoners were making
their escape from the dark cells. The noise was so tremendous that it
could be heard all over the prison.

And now mysterious documents emanating from the prisoners were picked
up, containing complaints mostly of the treatment they received, and
full of terrible threats. As time passed, the worst of these threats
found vent in the hanging of the infirmary warder’s cat. The halter was
a strip of round towel from behind the door, and a piece of paper was
affixed to it, with these portentous words:—

  “you see yor Cat is hung And
  you Have Been the corse of it
  for yoor Bad Bavior to Those
  arond you. Dom yor eis, yoo’l
  get pade in yor torn yet.”

Next were several closely written sheets, full of inflammatory matter,
which gave the authorities so much uneasiness that several hundred
prisoners were closely examined as to their contents. As these letters
afford curious evidence of the importance prisoners arrogate to
themselves, it may be interesting to publish one _in extenso_. It was
found on the road back from chapel. There was no signature attached. It
was addressed to the visitor.

“SIR,—Four instances of brutality have occurred in this Establishment
within the last week; the which we, as men (if we do our duty towards
God and man), cannot let escape our notice, and hope and trust you will
not let them pass without taking them into your serious consideration.
We will take the liberty of putting a few questions to you, which we
hope you will not be offended at. Who gave Mr. Bulmer authority to
strike a lad named Quick almost sufficient to have broken his arm,
indeed so bad that the lad could not lift his hand to his head? and who
gave Mr. Pilling the same authority to smite a lad to the ground, named
Caswell, with a ruler, the same as a butcher would a Bullock, without
him (Caswell) making the least resistance? On Saturday night last there
was brutal and outrageous doings, Mr. Pilling as desperate as ever,
assisted by that villain Turner (we cannot give him a better term—we
wish we could). Who would have thought a man could have been so cruel
as to lift a poker against a fellow-creature? A ruler, we have heard,
was broken into two pieces, a thing that is made of the hardest of
wood. Was there ever, in the annals of treachery and oppression, facts
more scandalous than these! No. To hear their cries was sufficient to
make the blood run cold of any man, if he was possessed of the least
animal feeling (‘For God’s sake have compassion, and do not quite kill
me,’ etc., etc.). And we do not hesitate to say, had not the wise
Creator, that sees and hears all, put it into the heart of a man to
be there and stop them in their bloody actions, homicide would have
been committed: then God knows what would have been the result. We
will admit that these men committed themselves in the most provoking
manner; but still, who are, what are these men, that they should
take the law in their own hands? You are the person they should have
applied to, and we are satisfied you would not have given them such
authority. Many men have committed as bad, or worse crimes than either
of these, and in less than one minute afterwards have been sorry for
it. How did these men know but this was the case here? but without
speaking to them, as Christians would do, knocks them down, as we have
stated before, as a Butcher would do an Ox—we cannot make a better
comparison—Messrs. Pilling and Turner in particular. The governor, too,
who professes to fear God, we think if he would study the great and
principal commandment, that is, to do to others as he would be done
unto, it would be much more to his credit; especially, sir, as you and
other gentlemen of this establishment expect when there is a discharge
of prisoners (and it is to be hoped that soon will be the case) that
they will give the establishment a good name. They cannot do it, unless
there is a stop put to such brutal actions; they will most likely speak
the sentiments of their hearts; they will say they have seen some of
their fellow-creatures driven like wrecks before the rough tide of
power till there was no hold left to save them from destruction. That
will be a pretty thing for the public to hear. And, sir, we do not wish
to be too severe, but unless Pilling and Turner are dismissed from the
Establishment, and that shortly, we will fight as long as there is a
drop of blood in us; for it is evident, many men have expired from a
much lighter blow than either of those delivered; therefore necessity
obliges us—we must do it for our own safety; but depend upon it, sir,
it is far from our wish to do anything of the kind, for your sake, and
for the sake of what few good ones we have (and God knows it is but
few). There is 3 good men in the Pentagon—Messrs. Newstead, Rutter, and
Hall, and we wish we could speak well of the others—but we cannot.

       *       *       *       *       *

“N.B. We do not wish to give the last new warder a bad name, for we
have not seen sufficient of him to speak either way, but what little we
have seen leads us to believe he is a good man. We hope, sir, you will
excuse us, but we will ask you another question. If you were in Mr.
Pilling’s situation, and a man committed himself, would you not reason
with him on the base impropriety of what he had done? We know you
would. Instead of that, Mr. Pilling takes a delight in aggravating the
cause with a grin, or a jeer of contempt, not only before you see him
(the prisoner), afterwards the same; which, without the least doubt,
makes a man commit acts of violence which at other times he would
tremble at the idea. We hope, sir, you will take this into your worthy
and serious consideration, and by so doing you will greatly oblige,

  “Your Obedient Humble Servants,

  “FRIENDS TO THE OPPRESSED.”

This letter indicates the prisoners’ attitude. On another occasion a
few of them go to the governor’s office to remonstrate with him on one
of his punishments. We might as well imagine—to compare great things
with small—a deputation from the criminal classes waiting on a judge
to complain of his sentence on a thief. As soon as the protesters are
ushered in, one says that Davis, the culprit, is very sorry for what he
has done; another says that he was unwell at the time, and all unite
in hoping the governor will let him off. Fortunately the governor is
not so weak as they fancied. He says: “On my remarking to them—which I
did with much indignation—their highly improper conduct in presuming
to remonstrate with me in the execution of my duty, Boak (one of the
three) remarked, that by their rules they were to apply to the governor
or visitor if they had any complaint. To which I answered, ‘Most
certainly,’ but that my confining Timothy Davis could not possibly be
any grievance to them; and repeated that their presuming to dictate
to me was of such a reprehensible and insubordinate nature that I
should confine them in the dark cells.” But as they were penitent, and
promised for the future to mind their own business, they were released
the same day.

Meanwhile, the rioting and destruction proceeded without intermission.
A frequent device now was for prisoners to barricade their cell
doors, so as to work the more uninterruptedly. For this purpose the
cell-blocks or some of the fragments from the demolished furniture
served; and, as a brilliant idea, one or two prisoners invented the
practice of filling their keyholes with sand and brick rubbish, or
hampering the locks with their knives. But in March the riot exceeded
anything in previous experience. It was prefaced by the usual
exhibitions of defiance and insubordinate conduct, and the uproar as
before broke out in the middle of the night. A dozen or more of the
prisoners dressed themselves, barricaded their doors, and then set to
work. By and by the whole ward was in a tumult. The dark cells were
already full, and there was no other place of punishment. The shouting
and yelling could not therefore be checked, and continuing far into
the day excited other prisoners at exercise, so that they were on the
point of laying violent hands upon their warders. One scoundrel took
off his cap and tried to cheer on his fellows to acts of violence; and
some followed the warder into a corner, swearing they would have his
life. The condition of the whole prison was now so alarming that the
governor, with permission of the visitor, sought extraneous help.
Application was made to the Queen’s Square police office for a force of
constables to assist in maintaining order and insuring the safe custody
of the prisoners. As soon as these reinforcements arrived they were
marched to the airing-yard of Pentagon five—the scene of the recent
riots.

Here a large body of prisoners were at exercise. The governor and
the visitor in turn addressed them, pointing out “the shame and
disrepute they were bringing on themselves and the institution by their
mutinous conduct.” Several in reply were most insolent in speech and
manner, declaring they did not deserve to be treated with suspicion.
One addressed a warder close at hand with loud abuse, another the
taskmaster, swearing he was starved to death, and both had to be
removed. These constables remained on duty during the night, and for
several weeks to come continued to give their assistance. On the return
of the prisoners to their wards, the governor spent four hours, from
seven to eleven o’clock, going patiently from cell to cell, impressing
on each man the necessity for orderly and subordinate conduct. “My
time and efforts,” he says next day, “were, I regret to say, quite
thrown away, for the noise and shouting continued during the night,
though not quite to the same extent.” Nothing very serious, however,
happened till three o’clock the following day, when Hickman, a prisoner
in the infirmary, began to break his windows, and with loud huzzahs
endeavoured to incite the others in the yards to “acts of violence and
insubordination.” He was answered by many voices, and the tumult soon
became general. Meanwhile, the governor and the visitor had repaired
to Hickman’s cell as soon as the smashing of glass was heard, but the
man had cunningly made fast his door, and could not be interfered
with. It appeared that he had complained of want of exercise, and had
accompanied this complaint with so much contrition for previous violent
conduct, that the surgeon had allowed his cell door to be unlocked,
so that he might walk when he liked in the passage. Directly the
officers had gone to dinner he got out, and, using his knife, which had
imprudently been left in his possession, hampered the locks at both
ends of the passage. His next act was to slice into ribbons the whole
of his bedding and that of several cells adjoining his own, which were
unoccupied and proved not to be locked. This business satisfactorily
arranged, he began to shout and to smash all the windows within his
reach. Before he could be secured he had demolished eighty-two panes of
glass and several sashes complete. He was found brandishing his broom,
and offering to fight the lot of his captors, one of whom promptly
knocked him down, when he was quickly handcuffed and carried back to
his cell. But the noise he made that night, with others, was so great
that the governor declared he never closed his eyes during the night.
Night after night the misconduct of the prisoners continued, and grew
worse and worse. Wards hitherto well behaved became infected. In C
Ward, Pentagon six, “they commenced at 4 A.M. shouting and bellowing
like the rest.” The visitor on going to “the dark” was again most
grossly insulted and abused. Another evening the noise and shouting
that broke out was so loud that many officers going off duty heard the
disturbance at the other end of Vauxhall Bridge, and returned to the
prison.

All through the months of April and May the violence of the malcontents
continued unabated. They had found out their strength, no doubt, and
laughed at all attempts to coerce them. Neither dark cells nor irons
exercised the least effect, and the only remaining punishment—the
lash, the committee were not as yet empowered to enforce. It must be
confessed that one reads with regret that a parcel of unruly scoundrels
should thus be allowed to make a mockery of the punishment to which
they were sentenced by the law, and that they should be suffered
unchecked to set all order and discipline at defiance. And all this
deliberate insolence and open insubordination could have but one end,
and culminated at length in a murderous affray, in which a couple of
prisoners fell upon the machine-keeper and nearly killed him. The plot
had been well laid, and brewing for some time. About seven o’clock one
morning, while working quietly at the crank, prisoner Salmon rushed at
Mr. Mullard, the machine-keeper, and knocked him off the platform by a
tremendous blow, which caught him just behind the ear, and cut his head
open. Crouch, another prisoner, struck Mr. Mullard at the same moment.
When on the ground he was kicked by Salmon in the mouth. No one but
the wardsman, another prisoner, came to poor Mullard’s assistance; but
this man acted with great spirit, and it was mainly owing to his prompt
interference that the machine-keeper escaped with his life.

At the moment the attack was made all the other officers were at a
distance. One warder said he saw Mr. Mullard fall, but thought it was
accidental, and that the prisoner Salmon had stooped over to pick him
up. However, when the other prisoners crowded round, shouting, “Give
it him! Give it him! Lay on,” this warder, perceiving their evil
intentions, took to his heels—to get assistance, for he afterwards
indignantly disclaimed all idea of quitting the yard through personal
apprehension. At the tower he found the taskmaster coming out cutlass
in hand; Rogan, the warder, got one also, and both hurried back to the
yard. Smith, the wardsman, was fighting with Crouch, and Mr. Mullard,
who had got again to his feet, with Salmon; the other prisoners looking
on, being, as they afterwards asserted, afraid to stir, “particularly
after seeing the warder, Rogan, run away.” Crouch now came at the
taskmaster “with fury in his looks;” upon which the latter drew his
cutlass and warned him to stand off, and then both Crouch and Salmon
were secured. There was no doubt the greater part of the prisoners
were concerned in this mutiny, for although Mullard called aloud for
assistance, not a soul but Smith, the wardsman, stirred a finger to
help him. These miscreants were subsequently tried at the Old Bailey,
and sentenced to increased imprisonment.

Not long after this the new Act, authorizing the committee to flog for
aggravated misconduct, was passed, and then a clearance was made of
the worst subjects by sending them from the Penitentiary to the hulks.
This was really yielding to the prisoners. But it gained a certain lull
of peace within the walls—no slight boon after the disturbances, and
it was hoped that the new powers of punishment would check any further
outbreak amongst those who remained.




CHAPTER V

SERIOUS DISTURBANCES

 Irregularities continued—Intrigues between male and female
 prisoners—Women conspire to be removed—Their unceasing misconduct—Plot
 to murder the Matron—Renewed trials of Governor—A number of suicides—A
 serious assault—First flogging under new Act—One hundred and fifty
 lashes inflicted—An effectual warning—Assaults checked.


IRREGULARITIES of an entirely new character appeared at Millbank after
the exodus of the worst-behaved had taken place. An intrigue was
discovered to have been in progress for many months, between the women
in the laundry and certain of the male prisoners. This had not gone
further than the interchange of correspondence, but its existence is
in some respects a proof of the laxity of the discipline maintained
in the Penitentiary. It was customary to make up the clothes of the
male prisoners sent to the wash in kits, or small parcels, which were
opened in the laundry by a female prisoner, called the “kitter.” One
day the kitter, by name Margaret Woods, found among the clothes a slip
of paper—a prayer-book leaf—on which some man had written that he came
from Glasgow, and that he hoped the women were all well. Woods not
being able to read, showed it to another woman, who showed it to a
third, a Scotch girl, Ann Kinnear, who came also from Glasgow. “Yes,”
she said, “I know him well. It’s John Davidson—a very nice young man;
and if you won’t answer it, I’ll write myself.” The acquaintance, on
paper, soon deepened between Kinnear and Davidson. One of her tributes
of affection was a heart, which she worked with gray worsted on a
flannel bandage belonging to Davidson. At another time she sent him a
lock of her hair.

It is easy to understand the flutter throughout the laundry caused by
this flirtation, which was known and talked of by all the women. They
were all eager to have correspondents, having husbands “outside” being
no obstacle seemingly; nor was age, for an old woman, with grown-up
children, entered herself as eagerly as the girls barely in their
teens. John Davidson was in all cases the channel of communication. He
promised to do his best for each of his correspondents: to find out a
nice sweetheart for Mary Ann Thacker, and to tell Elizabeth Trenery how
fared her friend Combs, with whom she had travelled up from Cornwall.
He expressed his regret to his own friend Kinnear, that he was likely
soon to be set at large; but that before going he would “turn her over”
to another nice young man, in every way similar to himself. How long
this clandestine intercommunication might have continued, it would be
difficult to say; but at length the wardswoman came to know of it, and
she instantly reported it to the matron. One fine morning the whole of
the kits were detained, and a general search made in the tower. Several
letters were discovered. They were written mostly with blue ink made of
the blue-stone used for washing, and contained any quantity of rubbish:
questions, answers, gossips, vows of unalterable affection, promises to
meet “outside” and continue their acquaintance.

[Illustration: _Millbank Penitentiary_

The name of Jeremy Bentham is forever associated with Millbank
Penitentiary. In his plans for its erection nearly a century ago he
anticipated exactly the modern methods of to-day. During the time that
Millbank was used as a prison, nearly a century, among the inmates
were many notorious rogues and criminals. As a reformatory it was not
a success, but the expensive experiment served as a lesson to the
government and it paved the way for the model prison of to-day.]

All this of itself was harmless enough, the reader may say: and
such it would have been undoubtedly in a boys’ school next door to
some seminary for young ladies, in the suburbs; but it was hardly in
accordance with the condition of prisoners, or the seclusion that was
a part of their punishment. And no sooner was this intrigue detected,
and put an end to, than another of similar character was discovered
between the male convicts in the kitchen and certain maid-servants
kept by the superior officers. The steward on searching the kitchen
drawer of his housemaid—it does not appear what led him to ransack the
hiding-places of his servants’ hall—found a letter addressed to the
girl by the prisoner named Brown. Brown, when taxed with it, admitted
the letter, but declared that the first overtures had come from the
maid. He had been cleaning the steward’s door-bell, when this forward
young person nodded to him from the passage, and he nodded back. At
the same time another prisoner was caught at the same game with the
female servant of the resident surgeon. On searching the prisoner-cooks
a letter from the girl was found in this man’s pocket, and a lock of
long hair, neatly plaited. The first-mentioned girl had not confined
her smiles to Brown, for in her possession was another letter from John
Ratcliffe, a prisoner who had been working in the starching yard close
by the steward’s quarters. Betsy S., the surgeon’s second maid, had
become also the object of the affections of a prisoner named Roberts,
who had thrown a letter to her through the open window. But Betsy would
not encourage his advances, and took the letter at once to her master.
Moreover the chaplain’s maid was always at her kitchen window, making
signs.

The chief lesson to be learned from these nefarious practices is, that
it is a grave error to permit officers and their families to reside
within the walls of a prison. In the old constructions the “gaoler’s”
house was always placed in the very centre of the buildings, from
whence he was supposed to keep a watchful eye on all around. But the
gain was only imaginary; and even if there had been any advantage it
would have been more than nullified by the introduction of the family,
or unprofessional element, within the walls. A prison should be like a
fortress in a state of siege: officers on duty, guards posted, sentries
always on the alert, every one everywhere ready to meet any difficulty
or danger that may arise. No “free” person should pass the gates but
officials actually on duty inside. In this way the modern practice of
placing all residences and private quarters in close proximity to,
but outside, the prison is a distinct improvement on the old. By it
the moral presence of the supreme authority with his staff is still
maintained, and no such irregularities as those I have just described
could possibly occur.

So far I have made but little reference to the female convicts. Indeed,
during the first years after the reopening of the Penitentiary, except
in isolated cases, they appear to have conducted themselves quietly
enough. But the contagion from the male pentagons could not but spread,
sooner or later. The news of the removal of the worst men to the hulks
no doubt acted as a direct incitement to misconduct. Had not this
power of removal been accompanied, in the case of the males, with
authority to inflict corporal punishment, we should have seen a great
and continuous increase of the riotous disturbances described already.
A certain number, it is true, had gained their ends; but if those who
remained were ambitious to tread the same path, it was possible that
sound flogging would be tried before removal to the hulks. With the
women it was different—they could not be flogged, so they had it much
their own way. It was the same then as now: the means of coercion to
be employed against females are limited in the extreme, and a really
bad woman can never be tamed, though she may in time wear herself out
by her violence. We shall see more than one instance of the seemingly
indomitable obstinacy and perversity of the female character, when all
barriers are down and only vileness and depravity remains.

Long before the women broke out into open defiance of authority there
were more than rumours that all was not right in the women’s pentagon.
“Irregularities are on the increase there,” observes the governor in
his journal. The object of the agitation was no secret. The women
wanted to get away from the Penitentiary as the men had done. One
having abused a matron in the most insolent terms, swore, if not sent
at once to the hulks, or abroad, she would have some one’s life.
Another sent for the governor, saying she had something particular
to confide to him. “Well?” asked Captain Chapman. “You must send me
to the hulks or to New South Wales,” she answered. Other women made
the same request, pleading that they had not a friend on earth, and
when released they must return to their old vicious courses. “I told
them,” says the governor, “they could only be sent to the hulks when
they were incorrigible, and to qualify for that they must pass months
in the dark. Then I exhorted them to return to their work and better
thoughts.” But they both at once flatly refused either to work or to
think better of it, demanding to be sent immediately to the dark, a
wish which was gratified without further delay.

It now appeared evident that the discipline of the female side was
most unsatisfactory, and there had been great remissness on the part
of the officers. It was discovered, too, among other things, that the
religious exercises had been greatly neglected: the reading of the
lesson in the morning service in the wards had been “either shamefully
slurred over, or neglected altogether.” For this, and other omissions,
the visitor assembled the matrons in a body, and lectured them in plain
terms.

That very afternoon occurred the first real outbreak. All at once the
whole of one of the wards was found to be in an uproar. The shouts and
yells of the women could be heard all over the prison, and for a great
distance beyond. The disturbance arose in this wise: there had been
great misconduct that morning in chapel, but the offenders had eluded
detection, as they thought; therefore when the matron reprimanded
them, they concluded that one of their number had “rounded” or “put
them away,”—in other words, had turned informer. Elizabeth Wheatley
was suspected, and upon her the whole of her companions fell, tooth
and nail, when let out for exercise. It was with the utmost difficulty
she was rescued from their clutches. Then the ringleaders, having been
again confined to their cells, commenced a hideous din and continued it
for hours.

Soon after this a violent attack is made upon the chief matron: a woman
assaults her, and deals her a blow that makes her nose bleed. This is
the signal for a general disturbance. All the ward join in the uproar:
those not under lock and key crowd round the matron with frightful
yells and imprecations, and from those in their cells, come shouts
through the bars, such as “Give it her! give it her. I’d make a matron
of her, if I was out. I’d have her life.” The unfortunate officer is
only saved from serious injury by the prompt interposition of the
wardswoman, a well-conducted prisoner; the excitement now becomes
tremendous.

Let us look at a scene enacted in another part of the prison on that
very same evening. It is towards dusk in the “Long Room,” where there
are beds for nearly forty. Half a dozen women, unattended by a turnkey,
are discussing the topics of the day. One, Nihill, is lamenting in
bitter terms the want of pluck exhibited by the others. None of the
women were “game,” she said. She was ready to do anything, but none of
the others would give her a helping hand. There were men in the prison,
too, who were willing and able to join in a mutiny if they only got a
lead. It might be done in chapel, where the whole of the population of
the Penitentiary collected together twice a day for prayers. At this
moment comes a new arrival, bearing the news of the murderous assault
upon the matron, to which reference has been already made.

“How many were in it?” Nihill asks, she being the leading malcontent of
those mentioned above.

“Five.”

“That’s three too many. I wish I’d been there. Wait till I get my green
jacket,[3] I’ll carry a knife, and I’ll stick it into her.”

“She’s a brute,” adds another. “I’d serve her so too.”

Here a woman interposed on the other side and a fierce quarrel ensued
and there was a hand to hand fight. The other prisoners gave the alarm;
assistance arrived; and the combatants were secured and carried off to
the dark cells.

The next affair occurred at school time. A prisoner, Smith, was checked
by the matron for quarrelling with the monitress, whereupon Smith,
seizing her stool, swore she would make away with the matron. Two other
prisoners came to the rescue, and, pushing the matron into a cell close
by, got in with her, and pulled the door to. Smith in a fury raced
after them, but the cell gate was locked before she arrived, and she
had to be satisfied with the grossest abuse from the further side. But
Sara Smith was now mistress of the ward, and ranged up and down with
uplifted stool, and fury in her looks, till the governor, bold Captain
Chapman, came to the spot with his patrols, and she was, with some
difficulty, overpowered.

So determined were the women to misconduct themselves, that they
took in bad part the advice of the few who were well-disposed. When
one Mary Anne Titchborne begged her companions to behave better, they
turned at her _en masse_, pursuing her to her cell with horrid threats,
brandishing their pattens over their heads, and swearing they would
have her life. The following feminine feat at first sight appeared
most extraordinary. One of the female prisoners, it was declared, had
in the night jumped out of her window, on the second floor, into the
airing-yard below, a height of seventeen feet; and the governor, who
visited her about 7 A.M., four hours after the accident, found her
sitting in her cell again, quietly at work, and “with the exception
of a sprain, or a contusion of the fingers of the right hand, quite
unhurt.” According to this woman’s story, she determined to take her
life about ten o’clock and threw herself out of her window. “It seems
incredible,” remarks Captain Chapman, “that she could have effected
this, as the sash of the window opens from the bottom with the hinge,
forming thus an acute angle—in fact a V—having an aperture about ten
inches wide. Not a single pane of glass was broken, and Miller, for
all her fall, was unhurt, beyond a scratch or two upon her fingers.”
Miller when questioned further stated that on reaching _terra firma_
she was at first quite stunned. By and by she got up and walked about
the yard for several hours; then, finding it cold, she returned to her
ward, which she accomplished easily, as all the external doors and
passage gates had been left unlocked. This carelessness with reference
to “security” locks, as they are called, or the gates that interpose
between the prisoners and fresh air, might easily make the hair of a
modern gaoler stand on end; and even the considerate Governor Chapman
was forced to reprimand the matrons for this gross neglect of duty. A
little later Miller confessed her fraud. After school at night, she had
managed to secrete herself in an unoccupied cell. No one missed her;
and about eleven, coming out, she commenced to wander up and down the
ward, going from cell to cell knocking.

“Who’s there?”

“Miller.”

“Where have you come from?”

“I have jumped out of the window, and got back through the gates, which
were left open.”

“Go back to your cell, for goodness’ sake.”

“I can’t get in, the door is locked.”

“Call up the matron then.”

“I daren’t.”

Such was the conversation overheard by others. About three o’clock,
Miller could stand it no longer, and woke the matron of the ward.

One other case of misconduct among the females which occurred some
months afterward may be mentioned here. This was the discovery of a
conspiracy which at first sight seemed of rather serious dimensions.
Its apparent object was to murder the chaplain, the matron, and a
female officer named Bateman, all of whom had incurred the rancour of
certain of the worst prisoners. One day in chapel an officer noticed
much nudging and winking between two or three of the women, one of whom
afterwards came up to her, as she stood by the altar rails, and said,
“There’s a conspiracy going on.”

“Where?” asked the matron.

“In a bag.”

“A bag? Who’s got it?”

“Jones.”

And in effect, upon Jones was found a bag of white linen, six inches by
four, and inside it a strip of bright yellow serge, such as the “first
class” women wore. On this yellow ground was worked in black letters,
as a sampler might be, the following:—

“Stab balling (bawling) Bateman, dam matron too, and parson; no justis
now, may they brile in hell and their favrits too. God bless the
governor; but this makes us devils. Shan’t care what we do—20 of us
sworn to drink and theve in spite—get a place—rob and bolt. Make others
pay for this. Shan’t fear any prison or hel after this. Can’t suffer
more. Some of us meen to gulp the sakrimint, good blind: they swear
they’ll burk the matron when they get out, and throw her in the river.
No justis. Destroy this. No fear. All swer to die; but don’t split,
be firm, stic to yor othe, and all of ye, stab them all. Watch yor
time—stab am to the hart in chaple; get round them and they can’t tell
who we mean to stab.”

This bag was akin somewhat to the mysterious _chuppaties_, which were
the forerunner of the Indian Mutiny. It was passed from hand to hand,
each prisoner opening, reading, and then sending it on. Jones, on
whom it was found, declared she had picked it up in the passage. She
was lame, and returning from exercise had put her crutch on something
soft. “Why, here is some one’s swag,” she cried, and thereupon
became possessed of it. But she had intended to give it up to the
matron; “Oh yes, directly she had read it.” However, another prisoner
forestalled her, and Jones got into trouble. Then, with the instinct of
self-preservation, which is stronger, perhaps, among prisoners than in
other human beings, Jones “rounded” at once, in other words, gave full
information of the plot. Hatred of the matron was at the bottom of it.

This great conspiracy was of a piece with many such plots in modern
experience—mere empty threats and rank bombastic talk. Prisoners are
very fond of bragging what they mean to do, both inside and outside
when again free. In the present case there was supposed to be much
more in store for the matron than the actual assault with which they
threatened her. One of the conspirators swore that if she (the matron)
escaped now, later on vengeance should overtake her. “As soon as I’m
free I’ll do for that cat of destruction. I’ll send her first a dead
dog with a rope round its neck, made up into a parcel. That’ll frighten
her. Curse her, I’ll give her a bitter pill yet. If it’s ten years
hence, I’ll never forget her. I’ll watch her, and track her outside;
and I have friends of the right sort that’ll help me.” But threatened
men and women live long, and nothing much happened to the matron then
or afterwards.

Let us now return to the male side. Here the worries and annoyances of
the governor were still varied and continuous. Hardly had misconduct
in one shape succumbed to treatment, than it broke out in another.
Many attempts to escape—one of which, to be detailed hereafter, went
very near complete success; a couple of very serious assaults, and a
fresh suicidal epidemic, still kept his energies on the stretch. It was
his practice, as we know, to give his immediate attention to anything
and everything, as soon as it occurred; and although he must now have
been alive to the preponderance of imposture in the attempts prisoners
made upon their own lives, still so kindhearted a man could not but be
greatly exercised in spirit, whenever the suicides seemed of a _bonâ
fide_ nature.

The following case called at once for his most anxious interference.
One Thomas Edwards was reported to have it in contemplation to do
himself a mischief. Another prisoner detected him in the act of
concealing a piece of hammock lashing in his bosom, gave information,
and the halter was seized at once by the officer in charge. It was
found to be nearly two yards in length. In Edwards’ pocket was also a
letter, an old letter from his brother, across which in red chalk was
written:

 “To Captain Chapman. The last request of an innocent, and injured man
 is, that this note may be delivered to a much loved brother.

 “I can no longer bear my unfortunate situation. Death will be a relief
 to me, though I fain would have seen you once more; but I was fearful
 it might heighten your grief. The privations of cold and hunger, I can
 no more suffer. I now bid you an eternal farewell. God forgive me for
 the rash act I am about to commit—the hour is fast approaching when I
 must leave this troublesome world. Write to my dear sister, but never
 let her know the truth of my end, and comfort her as well as you can.
 God forgive me.

  Farewell for ever,

  Farewell.”

“I immediately sent for Edwards,” says Captain Chapman in his journal.
“He appeared much distressed. The tears rolled down his cheeks, but
he would not speak. I said everything I could think of to soothe and
console him, and had him taken by the surgeon to the infirmary.” The
case seemed to require full investigation, which it received; and the
result is recorded a little further on by the governor. “It appeared
that up to two or three days before he had been remarkably cheerful.
But one day some extra soup had disagreed with him, after which he
hardly spoke, not even to his partner with whom he walked in the yard.”
Then, when he thought he was unobserved, he had secreted the hammock
lashing which was to put an end to his wretched existence.

Bile or indigestion have doubtless driven many to desperation; but
though the saying is common enough, that life under such afflictions
is barely worth having, actual cases of suicide from stomachic
derangements are comparatively rare. Perhaps the soup story opened the
governor’s eyes a little to the prisoner’s real character, and then,
later on, a second detection of fraud proved beyond doubt that Edwards
was an impostor.

He was caught in a clandestine correspondence with his relatives
outside, and for this he was transferred to “the dark.” Fifteen minutes
afterwards they find him suspended from the top of his cell gate by
his pocket handkerchief. They cut him down at once. He pretends to
be unable to speak, yet it is clear that he has not done himself the
slightest injury. Nevertheless, to keep him out of mischief, he is
removed to the infirmary and put into a strait jacket. To escape from
this restraint he embarks upon a new line of imposture. He sends an
urgent message to the chaplain, having, as he asserts, a weighty sin
upon his conscience, which he wishes at once to disclose.

“Some four years ago, sir, I murdered a young woman. She was the one I
kept company with. I was jealous. I threw her into the New River. Sir,
I have never had a happy moment since I committed the deed. My life is
a burthen to me; and I would gladly terminate it upon the scaffold.”

“Are you quite sure you are telling me the truth?” the chaplain asks.

“The truth, sir—God’s truth. If I am not, may I,” etc.

He detailed the circumstances of the murder with so much
circumstantiality that it was thought advisable to take all down in
writing, so as to make full inquiry; but both governor and chaplain
were “fully convinced that the prisoner had fabricated the whole
story in the hopes of getting himself removed to Newgate.” No sort of
corroboration was obtained outside, of course, and by and by the matter
dropped. I have merely quoted this as a sequel and commentary upon the
conduct of Edwards, proving that he was clearly an impostor from first
to last.

But not long after this a fatal case occurred. The suicide was a man
long suspected of being wrong in his head. Early one morning he was
found hanging to the cross beam of his loom, from the framework of
which he had jumped, and thereby dislocated his neck. It appeared on
inquiry, that the mental derangement of which this man showed symptoms
had been kept quite a secret from the governor and medical officer; so
also had his frequent requests to see the chaplain; and the officer in
charge of the ward was very properly suspended from duty “for culpable
neglect, as probably, with timely interference, the prisoner’s life
might have been saved.” But whether it might or might not, the news of
his death spread rapidly through the prison, and from having occurred
but rarely, real or feigned suicides became again quite the fashion.
The gossip of an incautious matron took the intelligence first into the
female pentagon. That very evening, after the women had been locked
up, one yelled to another in the next cell that she meant to hang
herself directly, and had a rope concealed, which she dared any one to
discover. This woman was made safe at once; but next morning another
was found tied up by her apron to the pegs of the clothes rack behind
her cell door. She had failed to come out with the rest to wash, and
as the officers approached to examine her cell they heard a noise
of groaning within. A sort of feeble barricade had been made by the
prisoner, with her mattress and pillows, to prevent entrance; but the
door was easily opened, and behind it hung Hannah Groats by the neck,
to one peg, while she carefully kept herself from harm by holding on
by her hands to the two pegs adjoining. She was instantly taken down,
when it was seen that she had not sustained the slightest damage. She
had, of course, chosen her time just when she knew the cell doors were
about to be opened, and she was sure to be quickly discovered.

Next the men took up the contagion. One announced that unless he be
removed without delay from the cell he occupied he should forthwith
make away with himself, as he was tired of life. “He appeared so much
dejected, and spoke with such apparent earnestness, that I ordered him
to the infirmary,” says the governor. Another man writes on his slate
that the authorities treat him with such severity, he shall certainly
commit suicide. He is seen at once by both chaplain and governor,
but continues “dogged and intractable.” Then a certain impudent
young vagabond, notorious for his continual misconduct, is found one
morning seated at his table, reading the burial service aloud from
his prayer-book, and sharpening his knife on a bit of hearth-stone; a
woman is discovered with a piece of linen tied tightly round her neck,
and nearly producing strangulation; men, one after another, are found
suspended, but always cut down promptly, and proved unhurt in spite
of pretended insensibility: cases of this kind really occurred so
frequently, that I should fill many pages were I to recount a tithe of
them.

I will describe the first instance in which it was found necessary to
inflict corporal punishment in Millbank, which was as a punishment for
a brutal assault. One of the prisoners, David Sheppard, checked mildly
by his officer for walking in his wrong place, replied, “I’ll walk as I
have always done, and not otherwise.”

“You must walk with your partner.”

“What is that you say? I’ll partner you,” exclaimed Sheppard most
insolently; an answer that is conclusive evidence as to the sort of
discipline maintained in the prison.

The officer made no further remark, but walked away to unlock a
gate. Sheppard followed him quickly, and without the least notice,
struck him a tremendous blow behind the ear, striking him again and
again till other officers came to the victim’s assistance. Many of
the prisoners cried “Leave off!” but none offered to interfere. As
soon as the prisoner had been secured, he was carried before the
governor. The assault was brutal and unprovoked, and seemed to call
for immediate example. Under the recent Act, it had become lawful to
inflict corporal punishment in serious cases, and now for the first
time this power was made available. The prisoner Sheppard was sent to
the Queen’s Square police office, and arraigned before the sitting
magistrate, who sentenced him forthwith to “one hundred and fifty
lashes on the bare back.” The whole of the prisoners of the D ward,
to which Sheppard belonged, were therefore assembled in the yard, and
the culprit tied up to iron railings in the circle. “Having addressed
the prisoner,” says the governor, “on this disgraceful circumstance, I
had one hundred lashes applied by Warder Aulph, an old farrier of the
cavalry, and therefore well accustomed to inflict corporal punishment,
who volunteered his services. The surgeon attended, and he being of
opinion that Sheppard had received enough, I remitted the remainder
of his sentence, on an understanding to that effect with Mr. Gregory
(the sitting magistrate). The lashes were not very severely inflicted,
but were sufficient for example. Sheppard, when taken down, owned
the justice of his sentence, and, addressing his fellow-prisoners,
said he hoped it would be a warning to them. He was then taken to the
infirmary.” A strong force of extra warders was present to overawe
the spectators; but all the prisoners behaved well, except one who
yelled “Murder” several times, which was answered from the windows
above, whence came also cries of “Shame.” Another, who had been guilty
some months before of a similar offence, witnessed the operation. It
affected him to tears. “He was much frightened, and promised to behave
better for the future.”

It is impossible to read this account of the infliction of what
seemed a highly necessary chastisement without noticing the peculiar
sensitiveness of the prison authorities on the subject. In these days
there are crowds of thin-skinned philanthropists, ever ready to loudly
rail against the use of the lash, even upon garroters and the cowards
who beat their wives. But in the time of which I am writing—in 1830
that is to say, when soldiers, for purely military offences, were
flogged within an inch of their lives, and the “cat” alone kept the
slave population of penal colonies in subjection—it is almost amusing
to observe what a coil was raised about a single instance of corporal
punishment. Were proof required of the exceeding mildness of the rule
under which Millbank was governed, we should have it here.

Between this and the next assault there was a long interval. But after
a little more than twelve months had elapsed, the ferocity of these
candidates for reformation again made itself apparent. This time it
was a concerted affair between two prisoners who fancied themselves
aggrieved by the stern severity of their officer, Mr. Young. These men,
Morris and King, had been reported for talking to each other from cell
to cell. Next day both were let out to throw away the water in which
they had washed. They met at the trough, and recommenced conversation
which had been interrupted the day before.

“At your old tricks, eh?” cried Mr. Young. “I shall have to report you
again.”

“You lie, you rascal,” shouted Morris, suddenly drawing a sleeveboard
which he had concealed behind his back. Holding this by the small end
with both hands, he aimed several tremendous blows at Mr. Young’s
head, which the latter managed to ward off partly, with his arms. But
now King, armed with a pewter basin in one hand and a tailor’s iron
in the other, attacked him from behind. Soon Mr. Young’s keys were
knocked away from him, and he himself brought to the ground. However,
he managed to regain his legs, and then made off, closely pursued by
his assailants, who, flourishing their weapons and smashing everything
fragile in their progress, drove him at length into a corner, got him
down, beat him unmercifully, and left him for dead, King throwing the
basin behind him as a parting shot.

Mr. Young’s cries of “Murder!” had been continuous. They were re-echoed
by the shouts of the many prisoners who, standing at their open cell
doors, were spectators of the scene. One man, Nolan, climbing up to his
window, gave the alarm to the tower below. Assistance soon arrived—the
taskmaster followed by two others, who met first Morris and King as
they were returning to their cells. “What has happened?” they asked.
“I haven’t an idea,” Morris replied coolly. King, too, is equally in
the dark. The officers pass on and come to other cells, in which the
prisoners are seen grinning as if in high glee, and when questioned
they only laugh the more. But at length Nolan is reached. “Oh, sir,”
says Nolan at once, through the bars of his gate, “they’ve murdered
the officer, Mr. Young, sir. There lie his keys, and his body is a
little further on.” At this moment, however, Mr. Young is seen dragging
himself slowly towards them, evidently seriously injured and hardly
able to walk. He just manages to explain what has happened, and as the
governor has by this time also arrived, the offenders are secured and
carried off to the refractory cells.

Here was another case in which a prompt exhibition of the “cat” would
probably have been attended with the best results. But for some
reason or other this course was not adopted; the prisoners Morris and
King were remanded for trial at the next Clerkenwell Assizes, where,
many months afterwards, they were sentenced to an additional year’s
imprisonment. So far as I can discover, in these times the power to
inflict corporal punishment in the Penitentiary was very sparingly
employed. No other case beyond that which I have just described appears
recorded in the journals till some four years afterwards, in 1834, when
a prisoner having attacked his officer with a shoe frame, the sitting
magistrate ordered him to be flogged with as little delay as possible.
For this purpose the services of the public executioner were obtained
from Newgate, and one hundred out of the three hundred lashes ordered
were laid on “not very severely.” A large gathering of the worst
behaved prisoners witnessed the punishment; but all were very quiet.
“Not a word was spoken, though many were in tears.” “I fervently
hope,” says Captain Chapman, “that this painful discharge of my duty
may be productive of that to which all punishment tends—the prevention
of crime.”




CHAPTER VI

A NEW REGIME

 Present system faulty everywhere—Reforms contemplated—Too great
 intercourse among prisoners condemned—Labour for the spiritual
 welfare of the prisoners becomes a leading idea—Unwearied zeal and
 activity of the chaplain—Succeeded by Mr. Nihil who combines the
 offices of chaplain and governor—Admonition and persuasion are the
 leading principles of the new Penal Discipline—The chaplain-governor’s
 difficulties and vexations.


WE now come to another stage in the onward career of the Penitentiary.
The committee, compelled to admit that the discipline was not
sufficiently severe, resolved to tighten the reins. In order to
understand this decision we must take into consideration certain
influences at work outside the walls.

There was, about this time, a sort of panic in the country at
the alarming prevalence of crime in England. Its continuous and
extraordinary growth was certainly enough to cause uneasiness. In the
years between December, 1817, and December, 1831, it had increased one
hundred and forty per cent. For this there was more than one reason, of
course. One, and no insignificant cause, was the comparative immunity
enjoyed by offenders. It came now to be understood that the lot of the
transgressor was far from hard. The system of secondary punishments in
force for their correction was felt to be inadequate, either to reform
criminals or deter from crime. Here was an explanation: evidently
a screw was loose in the way in which the sentence of the law was
executed. The judges and the juries did their duty, but the criminal
snapped his fingers at the ordeal to which they subjected him. This
discontent with the system of imprisonment grew and gained strength,
till at last the whole question of secondary punishments was referred
to a Select Committee of the House of Commons.

All prisoners found guilty of non-capital crimes were at that time
disposed of by committal for short periods to the county gaols and
houses of correction, or they were sentenced to transportation for
various terms of years. Those whose fate brought them within the latter
category were further disposed of, according to the will of the Home
Secretary, in one of three ways: either, by committal to Millbank
Penitentiary; or, by removal to the hulks; or, finally, by actual
deportation to the penal colonies beyond the seas. There were therefore
four outlets for the criminal. How he fared in each case, according as
his fate overtook him, I shall describe hereafter.

The county gaols were in these days still faulty. They made no attempt
to reform the morals of their inmates, nor could they be said to
diminish crime by the severity of their discipline. Indeed, they held
out scarcely any terrors to offenders. Of one of the largest, Coldbath
Fields, Mr. Chesterton, who was appointed its governor in 1829, speaks
in the plainest terms. “It was a sink of abomination and pollution.
The female side was only half fenced off from the male—evidently
with an infamous intention; its corrupt functionaries played into
each other’s hands to prevent an inquiry or exposure. None of the
authorities who ruled the prison had acquired any definite notion of
the wide-spread defilement that polluted every hole and corner of that
Augean stable. Shameless gains were promoted by the encouragement
of all that was lawless and execrable.” The same writer describes
Newgate, which he visited, as presenting “a hideous combination of
all that was revolting.” The thieves confined therein smoked short
pipes, gamed, swore, and fought through half the night: the place was
like a pandemonium. Again, when he saw them, “The prisons of Bury
St. Edmund’s, Salford, and Kirkdale created in my mind irrepressible
disgust. I wondered why such detestable haunts should be tolerated.”
Gaolers and criminals were on the best of terms with each other. At
Ilchester the governor was in the habit of playing whist with his
prisoners, and at Coldbath Fields the turnkeys shook hands with new
arrivals and promised to take “all possible care” of them. With all
this there was such a deficiency of control that unlimited intercourse
could not be prevented, and there followed naturally that corruption of
innocent prisoners by the more depraved which was a bugbear even in the
time of John Howard.

Indeed, it was a wonder that Howard did not rise from his grave. Half
a century had elapsed since his voice first was heard, and yet corrupt
practices, idleness, and wide-spread demoralization characterized the
greater part of the small prisons in the country. Herein were confined
the lesser lights of the great army of crime, and if they escaped thus
easily, it could not be said that the more advanced criminals endured
a lot that was much more severe. The reader has, perhaps, some notion
by this time of the kind of punishment to be met with in the walls of
the Penitentiary; the hulks, too, have already been mentioned. The
third method of coercion, by transportation, that is to say, beyond the
seas, remains to be described; but this I reserve for a later page,
recording only here the opinion of the committee of 1831, that as a
punishment transportation held out to the dangerous classes absolutely
no terrors at all. “Indeed, from accounts sent home, the situation
of the convict is so comfortable, his advancement, if he conducts
himself with prudence, so sure, as to produce a strong impression that
transportation may be considered rather an advantage than a punishment.”

After a long and careful investigation, the committee wound up their
report with the following pregnant words: “Your committee having now
passed in review the different modes of secondary punishment known to
the practice of this country, wish once more to direct the attention
of the House to their obvious tendency. If it is a principle of our
criminal jurisprudence, that the guilty should escape rather than the
innocent suffer, it appears equally a principle, in the infliction of
punishment, that every regulation connected with it, from the first
committal of a prisoner to gaol to the termination of his sentence of
transportation, should be characterized rather by an anxious care for
the health and convenience of the criminal than for anything which
might even by implication appear to bear on him with undue severity.”

The authorities at Millbank now wished to set their house in order.
With the publication of this parliamentary report, the managers of
Millbank awoke all at once to the true condition of the prison. On
account of the repeated “irregularities” laid before them, they now
considered it necessary to ascertain whether any, and what abuses
existed; and whether there were any and what defects in the system
upon which the prison was conducted. The whole subject was therefore
entrusted to a sub-committee, which, after some months of patient
investigation, was of opinion that all the irregularities arose
from “the too great intercourse which the present system permits
prisoners to hold with one another. The comparatively ignorant are
thus instructed in schemes and modes of vice by the hardened and the
depraved; and those upon whom good impressions have been made are
ridiculed and shamed out of their resolutions by associating with the
profligate.” We have here an admission that one of the old evils of
prison life—indiscriminate association—which was to have been abolished
by the Penitentiary system, was still in full vigour, and that in fact
it had never been interfered with.

The committee arrived therefore at the conviction “that the prosperity
and well-being of the establishment must depend upon effecting a more
strict seclusion of the prisoners, one from another.” At the same time
a new chaplain, Mr. Whitworth Russell, who became largely identified
with prisons and penal discipline, urgently recommended a greater
development of religious instruction. He proposed that in future the
open part of the Millbank chapel should be provided with benches, so
that he might assemble daily, large classes for religious instruction.
To these classes he was to devote three hours every morning, the
schoolmaster performing the same duty in the afternoon. During the
morning instruction by the chaplain this schoolmaster had to visit
the prisoners, cell by cell, either collecting information, as to the
previous habits and connections of the prisoners, or carrying on the
instruction commenced at school or the lectures in chapel. In this we
find the key-note of the new system that was from now on to prevail
with increasing strength, till by and by, as we shall see, it grew to
be altogether supreme.

Never since the opening of Millbank, in 1817, had the spiritual welfare
of the prisoners been forgotten, nor the hope abandoned of reforming
them by religious influences. But now, and for years to come, the
chaplain was to have the fullest scope. Whether much tangible benefit
followed from his increasing ministrations, will be best shown in
the later development of the narrative; but it cannot be denied that
the efforts of Mr. Whitworth Russell, and of his successor, Mr.
Nihil, who in himself combined the offices of governor and chaplain,
were praiseworthy in the extreme. Speaking, however, with all due
reverence, I cannot but think that their zeal was often misdirected;
that conversion, such as it is, obtained by force almost, could
never be either sincere or lasting; and in short, that the continued
parade of sacred things tended rather to drag them into the mire,
while the incessant religious exercises—the prayers, expositions, and
genuflexions, were more in keeping with a monastery of monks than a
gaol full of criminals.

There are numberless instances scattered up and down among the records
of the sort of spirit in which the prisoners received their sacred
instruction. It was the custom for a monitor, specially selected from
among the prisoners, to read aloud the morning and evening service
in each ward. He was frequently disturbed. Once when Balaam’s name
appeared in the lesson, it was twisted into “Ba—a—Lamb!” and as such
went echoing along with peals of laughter from cell to cell. The
monitor was frequently called upon for a song just before he gave out
the hymn; others mocked him as he sang, and sang ribald verses so loud
as to drown the voices of the rest; many said they couldn’t sing, and
nothing should compel them; often they would not join in the Lord’s
Prayer—there was no law, they said, to make them say their prayers
against their will. Then a certain Joseph Wells, an old offender, was
reported for writing on his pint cup these lines:—

  “Yor order is        but mine is
  for me to go        that I’ll go to
      to chapel,         Hell first”;

and when remonstrated with, he merely laughed in the governor’s face.
There was constant antagonism between the prisoners and their comrade
the monitor, generally over the church catechism, in which, as a
species of chaplain’s assistant, the latter had to instruct the others.
“What’s your name?” he asked one. “George Ward; and you know it as
well as I do,” replied the prisoner. Another read his answers out of
the book. The monitor suggested that by this time he ought to know the
catechism by heart. “Ah, every one hasn’t got the gift of the gab like
you have. And look here, don’t talk to me again like that, or you’ll be
sorry for it.” Again, as a proof of the glibness with which they could
quote scriptural language, I must insert here a strange rhapsody found
on a prisoner’s slate. He pretended to be dumb, and when spoken to, he
merely shook his head and pointed to the writing, which was as follows:

 “MY KIND GOVERNOR,—I hope you will hearken unto me, as your best
 friend; in truth I am no prophet, though I am sent to bear witness
 as a prophet. For behold my God came walking on the water, and came
 toward me where I stood, and said unto me, Fear not to speak, for I am
 with you. Therefore I shall open my mouth in prophesies, and therefore
 do not question me too much; but if you will ear my words, call your
 nobles together, and _then_ I will speak unto you of all he has given
 me in power, and the things I shall say unto you shall come to pass
 within 12 months; therefore be on your guard, and mind what you say
 unto me, for there be a tremor on all them that ear me speak, for I
 shall make your ears to tingle. And the first parable I shall speak
 is this: Behold, out of the mire shall come forth brightness against
 thee.”

This man, when brought before the governor, continued obstinately
dumb. The surgeon consulted was satisfied he was shamming, but still
the prisoner persisted in keeping silence. “Is there any reason why he
should not go to ‘the dark?’” the surgeon was asked. “Certainly not;
on the contrary, I think it would be of service to him,” answered the
surgeon; and to the dark he was sent, remaining for six days, till he
voluntarily relinquished the imposture.

The energy and determination of the new chaplain, who was appointed
about the time the new system was established, were very remarkable.
He was a man of decided ability, and his influence could not fail to
be soon felt throughout the prison. Perhaps in manner he was somewhat
overbearing, and disposed to trench on the prerogative of the governor
as to the discipline of the establishment. He soon came into collision
with the prisoners. Many “tried it on,” as the saying was, with him,
but signally failed; and any who were guilty of even the slightest
disrespect were immediately punished. Mr. Russell constantly reported
cases of misconduct. Thus, having asked at school, whether any present
had been unable to write on coming into prison, a man named Fleming,
answered, “Yes! I could not.”

“You have every cause to be thankful, then, for the opportunities
afforded you here.”

“Not at all,” replied Fleming. “I have reason to curse the Penitentiary
and everybody belonging to it.”

“Be silent,” said the chaplain, “I shall not stand by and listen to
such reprehensible language.”

“I’ll not be gagged, I shall speak the truth,” persisted Fleming.

And for this without loss of time he was transferred to the dark.

All the chaplain’s professional feelings were also roused by another
incident that transpired not long after his arrival. It was discovered
that a prisoner, George Anderson, a man of colour, who had been
educated at a missionary college, had through the connivance of a
warder been endeavouring to sow the seeds of disbelief in the minds
of many of the prisoners. He had turned the chaplain and his sacred
office into ridicule, asserting that the services of the Church of
England were nonsense from beginning to end, that the prayers contained
false doctrine, that the Athanasian Creed was all rubbish, and that
the church “went with a lie in her right hand.” This man Anderson must
have been a thorn in the chaplain’s side, for they had more than once
a serious scuffle in the polemics of the church. Mr. Russell got warm
in the discussion of a certain passage in Scripture, and jumping up
suddenly to reach his Bible, struck his leg against the table. After
this Anderson had drawn a caricature of the scene, writing underneath,
“Oh, my leg!” and from henceforth the chaplain went by the name of “Oh,
my leg.” At another time there was a long dispute as to the date of the
translation of the Septuagint, and upon the service for “the Visitation
of the Sick.” Anderson, on returning to his cell from Mr. Russell’s
office, had been in the habit of taking off his coat, and shaking it,
saying always: “Peugh—— I smell of fire and brimstone.” One cannot
refrain from observing here how much better oakum picking would have
suited Anderson than theological controversy.

Fortunately among the prisoners were two—Johnson and Manister Worts—who
were more than a match for the unorthodox black man. Anderson asserted
that the Athanasian Creed was objected to by many able divines; he took
exception to the title, “religious” given to the king in the prayer
for the High Court of Parliament, whether he was religious or not;
he maintained that his animadversions upon the church were the very
words used by his former pastor, the Reverend Silas Fletcher, from the
pulpit. The knowledge and acquirements of Johnson and Worts however
enabled them “triumphantly to refute Anderson.”

Nor were the women behindhand in giving the chaplain annoyance. In the
middle of the service on one occasion a woman jumped up on to her seat,
crying out, “Mr. Russell, Mr. Russell, as this may be the last time I
shall be at church, I return you thanks for all favours.” The chaplain
replied gravely that the House of God was no place for her to address
him, but the attention of the male prisoners in the body of the chapel
below was attracted, and it was with some difficulty that a general
disturbance was prevented. At another time there was actually a row
in the church. Just as the sermon began, a loud scream or huzza was
heard among the females. At first it was supposed that some woman was
in a fit, but the next moment half a dozen prayer-books were flung at
the chaplain’s head in the pulpit. With some difficulty the culprits
were removed before the uproar became general; but as soon as the
chaplain had finished his sermon, and said “Let us pray,” a voice was
heard audibly through the building replying, “No, we have had praying
enough.” A year or two later a more serious affair was only prevented
with difficulty, when the women in the galleries above plotted to join
the men in the body of the church below in some desperate act.

Mr. Whitworth Russell, however, through it all continued to exhibit
the same unwearied activity and zeal. He never spared himself; and as
the years passed by, he became known as one experienced in all that
concerned prisons and their inmates. Therefore, when the cry for prison
reform echoed loudly through the land, he was at once named one of
Her Majesty’s inspectors of prisons. His colleague was Mr. Crawford,
who had made a lengthened visitation of the prisons in the United
States, and the two divided the whole of Great Britain between them and
vigorously applied themselves to their task.

Mr. Russell was succeeded as chaplain at Millbank by the Rev. Daniel
Nihil, a gentleman who soon gave satisfactory evidence that he was
worthy to wear his predecessor’s mantle. All that Mr. Russell did,
Mr. Nihil did also, and more. Ere long he found himself so firmly
established in the good graces of the committee, that he was soon
raised by them to wider, if not higher, functions, and in 1837 it
was decided that he should hold the appointment of both governor and
chaplain combined.

On the 15th of April in that year, the governor, Captain Chapman, wrote
to tender his resignation for various reasons. “The changes that have
taken place, those about to be introduced by the new Bill, his advanced
age and indifferent health, induced him to consider it due to the
public service to retire, for the purpose of enabling the committee to
supply his place by the appointment of an officer who might begin the
new system at its commencement.” In reply came a gracious message from
the committee, to the effect that they were aware of the “unwearied
assiduity, zeal, and ability” with which he had discharged his arduous
duties for fourteen years, and they recommended him “for the most
liberal and favourable consideration of the Secretary of State, on
account of his long and faithful services.” At the same meeting it was
at once mooted that Mr. Nihil should succeed to the vacancy.

Some account may here be given of the chaplain’s reign in the
Penitentiary. It will be seen at once that his appointment as head
of the establishment sufficiently shows the influences that were in
ascendancy with the committee of the Penitentiary. This body was not
alone and peculiar in its views; the general tone of public opinion at
that time turned towards entrusting the ministers of religion with
full powers to preach prisoners out of their evil courses into honesty
and the right path. Far be it from me to detract from the efforts made
in such a cause; but they are liable to be misconstrued. The objects
of so much tender solicitude are apt to take the kindness that is well
meant, for weakness, and wax in consequence insolent and unmanageable.
The Millbank committee were sanguine still, in 1838, when Mr. Nihil
came into power under them. We shall see now how far their agent,
having _carte blanche_ and every facility, prospered in this difficult
mission. His real earnestness of purpose, and the thoroughness of his
convictions, were incontestable.

Immediately on assuming the reins Mr. Nihil applied himself with all
the energy of his evidently vigorous mind to the task before him,
seeking at once to imbue his subordinates with something of his own
spirit, and proclaiming in plain terms, to both officers and prisoners,
his conception of the proper character of the institution he was called
upon to rule. He considered it “a penal establishment, constituted with
a view to the real reformation of convicts through the instrumentality
of moral and religious means;” and in the official records made the
following entry, wherein he intimated his views, and appealed to those
under him for co-operation and support.

“Having, in my capacity of chaplain, observed the injurious effects
arising from a habit which appears prevalent among the inferior
officers, of regarding our religious rules as empty forms, got up for
the sole purpose of prison discipline, and conceiving it right to let
them understand the principles on which I propose to administer the
prison, I drew up, and have since circulated, the following intimation:

“Having been appointed governor of this institution, I desire to
express to the inferior officers my earnest and sincere hope that
they will one and all bear in mind the objects of a penitentiary. The
reformation of persons who have been engaged in criminal acts and
habits is the most difficult work in the world. God alone, who rules
the heart, can accomplish it; but God requires means to be used by
man, and amongst the means used here, none are more important than
the treatment of prisoners by the officers in charge of them. That
treatment should always be regulated by religious principle. It should
be mild, yet firm, just, impartial, and steady. In delivering orders
to prisoners, care should be taken to avoid unnecessary offence and
irritation, at the same time that those orders are marked by authority.
Command of temper should be particularly cultivated. The rules require
certain religious observances. It is of the greatest importance that
the officers should always remember the reverence which belongs to
sacred things, otherwise the prisoners will be apt to regard them not
as religious services, but as matters of prison discipline. It should
appear that officers themselves have a concern in religion and love
and venerate it for its own sake. I do not by any means wish them to
put on an appearance of religion which they do not feel—that would be
hypocrisy,—but I wish them, as members of a religious institution, to
cultivate the feeling and demeanour of true Christians—not only for the
sake of the prisoners under their charge, but for their own.”

That the intention of this order was of the best no one who reads
it can deny; but its provisions were fraught with mischievous
consequences, as will soon appear. It struck at the root of all
discipline. The prisoners were insubordinate and insolent, and needed
peremptory measures to keep them in check; they were already only too
much disposed to give themselves airs, and quite absurdly puffed up
with an idea of their own importance. In all this they were now to be
directly encouraged; for although the order in question was not made
known to them in so many words, they were quick witted enough, as they
always are, to detect the altered attitude of their masters. These
masters were such, however, only in name; and one of them within a
month complains rather bitterly that he is worse off than a prisoner.
The latter, if charged with an offence, need only deny it and it fell
to the ground, while a prisoner might say what he liked against an
officer and it could not be refuted. The governor did not at first see
how injudicious it was to weaken the authority of his subordinates,
and continued to inculcate mildness of demeanour. In a serious case
of disturbance, where several prisoners were most turbulent and
needed summary repression, he took a very old warder to task for his
unnecessary severity. One of these mutineers, whom they had been
obliged to remove by force, cried, “You have almost killed me,” though
nothing of the kind had occurred. This officer was injudicious enough
to reply, “You deserve killing.” Upon this Mr. Nihil, as I find it
recorded, states, “I thought it necessary to reprove the warder for
such language. If the prisoners are to be properly managed, it is by
authority administered with firmness, and guided, not by passion, but
by reason and principle.”

Later he issued the following order: “In consequence of what the
governor has sometimes observed, he wishes to impress on the inferior
officers the importance of coolness and command of temper in the
management of prisoners.... Cases will, of course, arise when
prisoners by their violence give much provocation. At such times it is
particularly necessary that the officers should endeavour to maintain
calmness and self-possession. The best way is to use as few words as
possible, taking care at the same time to adopt the necessary means of
securing a refractory prisoner; but to fall into a passion, or to enter
into a war of words, only lowers the authority of the officer, and adds
to the irritation it is intended to allay.” Excellent advice, but not
always easily followed.

Indeed, the condition of his officers was hardly to be envied. They
were mostly men of the camp, soldiers who had served their time in the
army, little fitted either by previous training or the habits of their
mind for the task required of them now. Mr. Nihil, to be fully served
and seconded in his conscientious efforts to effect reformation, should
have been provided with a staff of missionaries; though these were
hardly to be got for the money, nor would they have been found of much
assistance in carrying out the discipline of the prison. As it was,
the warders had to choose between becoming hypocrites, or running the
risk of daily charges of irreligious impropriety, and of losing their
situations altogether. Placed thus from the first in a false position,
there was some excuse for them in their shortcomings. It is not
strange that many went with the stream, and sought to obtain credit by
professing piety whether they felt it or not, using scripture phrases,
and parading in the pentagons and ward passages with Bibles carried
ostentatiously under their arms, though it could be proved, and was,
that many of the same men when safe beyond the walls were notorious for
debauchery and looseness of life. It was in these days that a curious
epithet came to distinguish all who were known as the chaplain’s men.
They were called in the thieves’ _argot_ “Pantilers,” and the title
sticks to them still. The “pantile,” according to the slang dictionary,
from which I must perforce quote, was the broad-brimmed hat worn by
the puritans of old. From this strange origin is derived a word which,
with the lower orders, is synonymous still with cant and a hypocritical
profession of religion to serve base ends. Millbank was long known as
the headquarters of the “Pantilers.”

On the other hand, officers in whom the old mammon was too strong
to be stifled altogether, occasionally forgot themselves, and when
accused or suspected of unorthodoxy or unbelief they naturally went
to the wall. Thus it was not likely that one who was reported to be
a confirmed infidel would escape instant dismissal; though in one
instance the information was given by a prisoner, and should at least
have been received with caution. The substance of the complaint made
by the prisoner was that the officer had asserted that the nature of
man was sinful, but that the worst man that ever lived was no worse
than God had made him, with other remarks of a carping and irreverent
character. Mr. Nihil immediately sent for both officer and prisoner,
and confronted them together, questioning the former as follows:—

“Mr. Mann, are you a member of the Church of England?”

“No, sir.”

“To what church, then, do you belong?”

“I was brought up a Baptist, sir; but I am not a member of any society
at present.”

“Are you a believer in the Scriptures?”

“I would rather not enter into that subject.”

“Did you not represent yourself a member of the Church of England when
first employed?”

“I did not. I was never asked the question.”

He was then asked if he had ever tried to controvert the religion of
the Penitentiary, but he distinctly denied having done so.

Then came the prisoner’s turn.

“I assure you, sir,” he told Mr. Nihil, “that this officer on one
occasion remarked to me that St. Paul took up several chapters in
telling women what sort of ribbons they wore in their bonnets.” And on
this evidence Mr. Mann lost his situation; for, says the Governor, “I
considered his answers evasive throughout; while the prisoner being an
exceedingly well-conducted man, I have no doubt, from the tenour of the
whole proceedings, that he spoke the truth.” Hard measure this, and
scarcely calculated to maintain the discipline of the establishment.

Still harder, perhaps, was the dismissal of another officer, who
was found using what was characterized as a species of low slang in
speaking of prisoners. “It came out very artlessly,” says Mr. Nihil,
“as he was telling me of some boyish irregularity of a prisoner, whom
he styled a ‘rascal.’ This, coupled with other appearances, determined
me that the man may have meant no great harm, but that he was quite
unfit for the moral charge here entrusted to him; and I thought it
necessary, not only in regard to this offence, but that others might
take a lesson from it, to mark my sense of the unfitness of one in the
habit of familiarly using such language for the situation of warder.”
When a fate so severe overtook these two for the offences recorded,
a third was not likely to escape who was proved to have occasionally
sworn, and who admitted that he considered it was all humbug taking
the prisoners to chapel. Although this culprit held the grade of
taskmaster, and had completed a service of many years, he too was
forthwith sent about his business. But then it was brought home to
him that he had once been heard to say, “The governor thinks himself
a sharp fellow—I think him the—— fool I ever knew.” It also appeared
that this officer’s familiar language among other officers was very
profane. He sometimes ridiculed religion; and at one time scoffed at
the miracle of the sun standing still. On one occasion he spoke of the
chaplain’s lectures as humbug. “My own impressions of T.,” says the
governor-chaplain, “were that though he was an efficient officer, he
was a conceited self-sufficient man, and of his moral principles I had
no good opinion. Everything led to the conviction that he was a very
dangerous character in an institution of this kind; his general bearing
giving him influence over the inferior officers, and his principles
and habits being such as to turn that influence to pernicious account.”
He was accordingly dismissed by the committee “with the strongest
reprobation of his abominable hypocrisy.”

Although thus studiously bent upon raising the moral tone of his
officers, in many other respects, hardly of inferior importance, the
utmost laxity prevailed. The rules by which the Penitentiary was
governed, and by which all undue familiarity between officers and
prisoners was strictly prohibited; which forbade certain luxuries,
such as tobacco, ardent spirits, and the morning papers; and which
insisted upon certain principles to insure the safe custody of those
confined—all these were often contravened or neglected. Upon no one
point are gaolers bound to be more vigilant and circumspect than in
the security of their keys. In all well-ordered prisons now the most
stringent rules prevail on this head. To lose a key entails exemplary
punishment, heavy fines, or immediate dismissal. Yet in these old
Millbank days we find an officer coolly lending his keys to a prisoner
to let himself in and out of his ward; and another who wakes up in the
morning without them, asserts at once that they have been stolen from
him in the night. In this latter case instant search was made, and
after a long delay one key was found in the ventilator of a prisoner’s
cell, and below his window, outside, the remaining three. This man was
of course accused of the theft; and a circumstantial story at once
invented, of his escaping after school, repairing to the tower, and
possessing himself of the keys. He would infallibly have suffered for
the offence, had it not been accidentally discovered that the officer
who had lost them was drunk and incapable on the night in question,
and had himself dropped them from his pocket. There was more than
one escape, which though ingeniously conceived and carried out could
never have succeeded but for a want of watchfulness and supervision
on the part of the officer. Of the improper intimacy there could be
little doubt, when it was proved that officers and old prisoners
were seen in company at public houses—the latter standing treat, and
supplying bribes freely, to compass the conveyance to their friends,
still inside, of the luxuries prohibited by the rules. All this came
out one fine day, when it was discovered that, through the connivance
of certain dishonest warders, several prisoners had been regularly
supplied with magazines and morning newspapers. Wine, spirits, and
eatables more toothsome than the prison fare, and the much-loved weed,
found their way into the prison by the same reprehensible means. It is
but fair to add here, that in this and in every other case, as soon
as the irregularities referred to were brought to light, they were
invariably visited with the condemnation they deserved.

Even a man of shrewd intelligence like Mr. Nihil could not fail to
be occasionally taken in. On one or two points he was especially
vulnerable. Signs of repentance, real or feigned, won from him at once
an earnest sympathy which not seldom proved to be cruelly misplaced.
There was also a certain simplicity about him, and want of experience,
that sometimes made him the dupe of his subordinates when they tried to
curry favour by exaggerating the sufferings of the prisoners. One day
when he was _en route_ to the dark cells, intending to pardon a culprit
therein confined, the taskmaster who accompanied him voluntarily
observed, “You are quite right to release him, sir. His legs would get
affected, I am afraid, if he were left there any time, like all the
rest.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked the governor at once. “Explain.”

“I mean, sir, that whenever a prisoner is kept any length of time in
the dark, his loins are always affected. It may be seen in their walk.
Take the case of Welsh. Welsh is quite crippled from being so much in
the dark.”

“Do they never recover it?”

“Never.”

Mr. Nihil was naturally much struck with this observation, and gave it
credence, thinking the officer’s opinion worth attention, as he was
particularly shrewd and intelligent. But on consulting the medical man
of the establishment, he found the statement quite without foundation.
Nothing of the kind ever happened; there was nothing the matter with
Welsh, and never had been. It was all pure nonsense.

Then there was the case of Stokes, a boy continually in mischief, an
arrant young villain, who coolly tells the governor that it is no use
sending him to the dark—the dark only makes him worse. The governor
reminded him that he had often tried kind and gentle methods in vain,
and asked what would make him better. Stokes replied that the only
thing to cure him would be a good sound flogging—knowing full well that
this it was not possible to inflict except for certain offences, all
of which he studiously avoided. Three days later when liberated from
the dark, to which he had been sent in default of corporal punishment,
he tried a fresh tack with Mr. Nihil, who observes, “This boy sent
for me, and spoke as from the very abyss of conscious depravity. He
complains of the hardness and wickedness of his heart. He thinks there
is something wrong about him. He cried much. I urged him to pray, but
he said his heart was too full—too full of wickedness to pray. I have
promised to visit him in his cell, when I shall endeavour to soften
and raise the tone of his mind, and pray with him.” Of course his new
attitude is all hypocritical deceit. Almost the next day he breaks out
in conduct more disorderly than ever, and after smashing his window,
spends his time in shouting to the prisoners below. The governor, now
alive to his real character, declares “that the injury done to the
discipline of the prison by the perpetual insubordination of this boy
has become so serious, that I think he must be sent up to the committee
as incorrigible.” Again he wavers, and again he changes his mind. “John
Stokes applied to me yesterday evening, and spoke so sensibly, with
such an appearance of a sincere desire for reformation, that I must beg
to suspend my recommendation for his removal to the hulks. The result
of such removal would probably be to consign him to the destroying
influences of the worst companions.” Stokes did not remain long in this
way of thinking, and continued still to be a thorn in the governor’s
side for many a month to come.

But we have in this an instance of the extreme pains Mr. Nihil was at
to do his duty conscientiously by all. And if he had sometimes to deal
with designing hypocrites, he was not always wrong—at least, in cases
like the following, the imposture, if any, was well concealed.

A woman came forward of her own accord to confess that she had made a
false charge against another prisoner.

“What led you to make the charge?” (She had accused the other of
calling her names.)

“Spite.”

“And what leads you now to confess?”

“I was so much impressed by the sermon I heard yesterday from the
strange gentleman.”

The governor admitted that it was a most impressive discourse, well
calculated to awaken the guilty conscience. “Being anxious,” he says,
“to foster every symptom of repentance, I did not punish this woman.
She freely acknowledged she deserved to be punished, but I thought it
might tend to repress good feeling were I, under the circumstances, to
act with rigour.”

Another woman, named Alice Bradley, sent for the governor, and told him
that she had put down her name for the sacrament, but that she could
not feel happy till she had told him all the truth. “I encouraged her
to make the communication,” says the governor, “whereupon,” with a
subdued voice and many tears, she said, “I was guilty of what I was
sent here for.”

“This girl had invariably,” goes on Mr. Nihil, “with much appearance
of a tender conscience, and a spirit wounded by injustice, protested
her innocence. This perseverance in her protestations had now lasted
six months, and it appeared that the girl had imposed a persuasion of
her innocence on her nearest relations. I was much gratified with the
contrition that was now developed under the system of this place, so
consolatory amidst the numerous instances of a contrary description
which we daily witness; and I endeavoured to trace the prisoner’s
impression to some distinct instrumentality, which might be improved
to further usefulness. She could only attribute her recent feelings to
prayer.”

Again, he states the case of George Cubitt, who had been extremely
well-conducted since he came to the Penitentiary. “He looks ill,
and much altered within a short time, and seems much distressed. He
told me he had of late been affected with the most dreadfully wicked
thoughts, that he had a strong temptation to sell himself to the devil,
and feared he had done so. That, on Friday week, when in bed, he was
much oppressed with these thoughts, which he long resisted, but at
last gave way, and made an oath to himself to sell himself. He got up
immediately, and felt a chill all over him, as if his nature was quite
changed. Ever since he has been subject to the most shocking thoughts
and fears. He attributed the calamity to his having been alone, and
seemed to dread the idea of returning to a cell by himself. I see no
signs of pretence about this boy, and greatly pity him. His nerves have
evidently been shaken by confinement. I prayed with him, and said what
I could to dissipate his terrors, and bade him make the goodness of God
his protection. I could wish that in a case of this kind the discipline
of the prison admitted of a little labour in the garden; but I see
great practical difficulties in making practical arrangements for the
purpose.”

Of course Mr. Nihil was in his element in dealing with a case of this
kind; just as the following claimed at once the whole of his sympathy
and attention.

A prisoner was seized suddenly with an attack of hydrophobia. The only
cause known was that he had been badly bitten by a dog six or seven
years before. “The poor patient was in a most distressing state, being
a fine intelligent youth, and in an admirable spirit of Christian
resignation. He observed to me repeatedly that he was a poor friendless
boy, and that this was a wise and merciful providence, for if he lived
to get his liberty he might get into trouble and come to a bad end.
When I saw him next morning, most edifying was the whole tenour of
his observations and his prayers. That night he grew to be in a state
of high excitement, continually imploring me and every one for tea,
while unable to taste a drop out of a basin which he held in his hand.
About midnight he took a turn—no longer expressed any bodily want,
but, as from a mind stored with scriptural truths, poured out the most
appropriate ideas and expressions, though in a raving and delirious
manner. It was most gratifying to observe the just views he exhibited,
and the expressions of his deep repentance and humility. But dreadful
to our feelings was the succeeding phasis which his disorder assumed.
He seemed to struggle with a deadly foe, beating about his arms, and
striving with incessant violence, while he uttered the language of
abhorrence towards his enemy. Then, after a while, he began to give
utterance to the most senselessly obscene and filthy language and
ideas, nor were we able to repress them; but with these were mixed
pleasing expressions of a pious, confiding tendency. This mixed and
incongruous exhibition continued till about 3 A.M., when he sunk into
death.”

Even if it could have been proved against Mr. Nihil that he was lacking
in the resolute peremptoriness of persons bred to command, this
chaplain-governor was, however, not wanting in many of the qualities of
a good administrator. It must be recorded to his credit that he brought
in many reforms, of which time has since proved the wisdom. There was
for instance the change he instituted in the system of hearing and
adjudicating upon charges of misconduct. It had been the custom for
the governor to rush off post-haste to the scene of action, and then
and there administer justice. Now, Mr. Nihil resolved to take “the
reports” the same hour every morning, “thereby economizing time, and
having the advantage of previous calm consideration. Besides,” he says,
“officers and prisoners are both much irritated when the offence is
still fresh, and the frequent interruptions took the governor often
away from other subjects which at the time had full possession of his
mind.” Again, after a daring and successful escape, he recommends
that every prisoner at night should be obliged to put outside his
cell gate all the tools, etc., with which he has been at work during
the day. An obvious precaution, perhaps, which is the invariable rule
now with all men, especially “prison breakers,” but the necessity of
it was not recognized till Mr. Nihil found it out. Although in his
management of his officers he erred somewhat in being too anxious
to obtain a standard of impossible morality, still he knew that more
than mere admonition was needed to maintain order and obedience to
the regulations. With this in view he instituted a system of fines,
as the best method of insuring punctuality and exact discharge of
duties. It is really a marvel how the Penitentiary had been governed
for so long without it. Nor did his tenderness and solicitude for the
spiritual welfare of the prisoners prevent his entering a sound protest
against over-much pampering them in food. “I have frequent occasion
to observe,” he remarks in one part of his journal, “the extreme
sauciness of prisoners with regard to their victuals. It appears
from Mr. Chadwick’s report, and the evidence that he collected, that
the industrious labourers are the worst fed; the next best are the
poor-house paupers; the next, convicts for petty thefts; the best are
felons, with the exception of transports, who are still more abundantly
supplied abroad. The idle and the profligate act upon the knowledge
of these facts, and we have in the Penitentiary several of that
description. Their fastidiousness and impertinence strangely illustrate
the fact that our diet is much too high for the purposes of a prison.”

Certainly the calls upon his time were many and various. Now for
the first time, in consequence of the great complaints made against
the county gaols, arising chiefly from the want of separate cells,
the Penitentiary became the receptacle for soldiers sentenced to
imprisonment by court-martial. And with the introduction of this
new element he brought about his ears a crowd of new questions and
new difficulties—a different dietary scale, different labour, and a
great accession of misconduct of a new description; above all, new
officials to deal with, and plenty of punctilious red-tapism, to which,
as a civilian, he was altogether unaccustomed. Then, through strong
representations made to the Government of the scandalous manner in
which female transports were shipped to the penal colonies, it was
decided that most of those who came from a distance should be lodged
in Millbank to await embarkation. All these women were the scum of
the earth, and added greatly to the governor’s trials. They came
to the Penitentiary in a miserable state of rags and wretchedness,
shoeless, shiftless, and filthy. They were often accompanied by their
children of all ages, from infancy to fourteen or fifteen years; and
in nearly every case the conduct of all was violent and outrageous
beyond description. Knowing they had nothing to gain by a conformity to
the rules of the establishment, and that by no possibility could they
escape transportation, they gave vent to their evil passions and set
all authority at defiance.

Another vexation, which pressed perhaps more sorely on him than any I
have described, was the invasion of his territory by a Roman Catholic
clergyman, appointed under a recent Act of Parliament to visit Roman
Catholic prisoners. I do not suppose that Mr. Nihil was more intolerant
than were others of his cloth in those days, when antagonism between
churches ran unusually high, and there is much excuse for the remarks
he makes on the subject. By the Act provision was made for the payment
of the priest from the prison fund. This Mr. Nihil characterizes as
tantamount to “establishment.” He does not see the necessity for
anything of the kind, especially as the scruples of all the Roman
Catholic prisoners have hitherto been most punctiliously respected. He
foresees trouble and difficulty: Where was the line to be drawn with
respect to discipline? Would not friction and difficulty arise from
the Roman Catholic prisoners placing themselves under the patronage
of the Roman Catholic priest in opposition to the governing authority
of the prison? Happily, these anticipations proved almost groundless,
and, except in one or two trivial instances, which are hardly worth
recording, no evil results followed the occasional admission of the
priest to the Penitentiary.




CHAPTER VII

INGENIOUS ESCAPES

 The case of Pickard Smith—Sent repeatedly to the Penitentiary—Escapes
 again and again—Best methods of preventing escapes as seen in
 modern Prisons—Remarkable case of Punch Howard—Escape ingeniously
 effected—Cleverly recaptured—Jack Robinson at Dartmoor—George Hackett
 at Pentonville.


THE most annoying of the many anxieties that weighed upon Governor
Nihil at this time was the deportment of a certain Pickard Smith, who
seemed more than a match for all the authority of the place. His case
is interesting as an example of the length to which a prisoner can go,
even in times when better influences were, it was hoped, at work with
all.

On the day he arrived at the Penitentiary under the name of Smith, it
was discovered that he had been there before as Pickard, when he was
known for notorious misconduct, though towards the end of his sentence
he had assumed an appearance of reformation. On his recommittal he
was at first quiet and amenable to discipline, but he seemed to
have conceived suddenly a desire to be sent abroad to the colonies.
From henceforth his conduct was detestable. At length he destroyed
everything in his cell: furniture, clothing, glass, books, including
“Bishop Green’s Discourses,” and then he endeavoured to brain the
officer who came to expostulate. “If I am to go to the dark, I may as
well go for something,” he said; and after he was removed it was found
that he had written the following lines on the back of his cell door:

  “London is the place where I was bred and born,
  Newgate has been too often my situation,
  The Penitentiary has been too often my dwelling-place,
  And New South Wales is my expectation.”

Not a very high poetical flight, to which the governor-chaplain
remained insensible, and had the poet forthwith flogged.

The magistrate came as before from the nearest police office, for the
express purpose of passing sentence. Seventy-five lashes out of three
hundred ordered were inflicted, greatly to the benefit, it is recorded,
of other unruly prisoners, all of whom were brought out to witness the
punishment. “They appeared much subdued in spirit,” says Mr. Nihil,
and for some days afterwards the prison exhibited quite an altered
character. But upon the culprit himself the sentence had no effect
whatever. He spent his time from that day forth in whistling, idleness,
and impertinence, sometimes in his own cell, oftener in the dark.
His insolence grew more and more insupportable; he told the governor
to hold his jaw, and his warder to go about his business. One fine
morning it was found that he had gone. His cell was empty, and he had
disappeared.

“The mode of escape,” said the governor in his journal, “was most
ingenious, daring, and masterly, though the prisoner is only eighteen
years of age. There was a combination of sagacity, courage, and ready
resource, indicating extraordinary powers, both mental and bodily.”

He had got, unknown to his officer, an iron pin used for turning
the handle of the ventilator of the stove. The stove not being in
use the handle was not missed. The prisoner was let out of his cell
by himself, being kept apart from other prisoners in consequence of
frequent insubordination and the mischievous tendency of his example.
With this pin he had made a hole in the brick arch which formed the
roof of his cell large enough to admit his body. The iron pin, stuck
into one of the slits for ventilation in the wall, served as a hook, to
which he had probably suspended a small ladder, ingeniously constructed
of shreds of cotton and coarse thread (it was found in the roof);
and with such assistance to his own activity and strength he had got
through the ceiling and into the roof, along the interior of which he
had proceeded some distance, till he was able at length to break a
hole in the slates. But the battens to which the slates were fastened
were too narrow to let him through, so he travelled on till he found
others wider apart, and here, making a second hole, he contrived to get
out on to the roof. The descent was his next difficulty, but he had
provided for this by carrying with him a number of suitable articles
to assist him in his purpose. It must be mentioned that he had chosen
his time well: not only were the officers later coming in on Sunday
mornings, but on Saturday evenings the prisoners receive their clean
clothes (their dirty ones were not returned till next morning), so that
Smith had in his cell two sets of clothes—two shirts, two pairs of
long stockings, and two handkerchiefs. He had washed his feet also on
Saturday night, and had been given a round towel to dry them. Having
torn his blankets and rugs into strips, he had sewn them together
by lengths, making each, like the round towel, a link in a chain to
which his neckerchiefs and pocket-handkerchiefs, similarly prepared,
added further lengths. With all of these, and attired in his clean
shirt, he had ascended as already described to the roof, where he must
have found his chain too short, for he had added his shirt to the
apparatus. This rope he fastened to one of the rafters of the roof,
and then slung himself down to where he judged the attic window was
to be found, and he judged accurately. The sill of the window formed
the first stage, and to its bars he fastened part of his chain, thus
economizing its length, instead of having one long rope from the roof
downwards. Descending in like manner to the second window, he repeated
the process, and again to the third (or first floor), after which he
reached the ground in safety. His next difficulty was to scale the
boundary wall. Much work happened to be going on in the rebuilding of
parts destroyed by fire, and a quantity of masons’ and carpenters’
materials were lying about. First he contrived to remove a long and
prodigiously heavy ladder (which two men ordinarily could not carry),
from against the scaffolding, and this he dragged to the iron fence of
the burial ground, against which he rested it, but he could not rear
it the whole height of the boundary wall. Next he got two planks, and
lashing them firmly together with a rope he picked up, he thus made an
inclined plane long enough to allow of his walking up it to the top
of the wall. Weighting one end with a heavy stone, he easily got the
planking on to the wall and thus got over.

As soon as the escape was discovered immediate search was made in
all adjoining lurking-places. Officers acquainted with Pickard’s
haunts were despatched to a far-off part of the town, information was
lodged at Bow Street, and a reward of £50 offered by authority of the
Secretary of State. He was eventually recaptured through the connivance
of his relatives. Soon anonymous letters reached the governor, offering
to give the fugitive up for the reward. A confidential officer was
despatched to a concerted place of meeting, and by the assistance
of the police, and his own friends, Pickard Smith was secured and
brought back to the Penitentiary. Mr. Nihil was much exercised in
spirit at his return. It appeared that he belonged to a family which
had all been transported. He came to the Penitentiary himself as a
boy, grew up in it to manhood, and five months after his release was
again convicted and returned under a new name. Mr. Nihil says: “Had
it been known that the benevolent system of the Penitentiary had been
previously tried in vain upon him, he would not probably have been
sent here a second time. It is plain that he was not a fit subject
for it, and his previous experience within our walls, and probable
acquaintance with their exterior localities, acquired during the
interval of his freedom, rendered him a dangerous inmate. After his
flogging continued misconduct rendered it necessary to keep him apart
from other prisoners—a circumstance which facilitated those operations
by which he lately accomplished his escape. It is now highly dangerous
to keep him in the same ward with other prisoners, our means of
preventing intercourse being extremely inadequate. On the other hand,
conversant as he is with the localities of the prison, aware of the
aid to be derived from the materials strewed about in consequence of
the extensive repairs after the late fire, and flushed with his former
success, it becomes no less objectionable to place him apart where he
may be less liable to any interruption in any attempt he may make. A
man of his capabilities ought not to be kept in a prison with so low
a boundary wall as ours. I do not fear his escape, watched as he now
will be, but I fear his attempts.”

Nevertheless, though repeated efforts were made to get this prisoner
removed to the hulks or to some other prison, the Secretary of
State would not give his consent. He said it would be considered
discreditable to the Penitentiary if prisoners were transferred on
account of its inability to secure them. “Why not chain him heavily?”
asks the Secretary of State. “Why not?” replies Mr. Nihil. “Because if
he is prosecuted and receives an additional sentence of three years, we
cannot keep him all his time in chains. The peculiarity of our system,”
goes on the governor, “hardly appears to be considered as an objection
to his continuance here.” The principle of the Penitentiary was that
it was not merely a place of safe custody and punishment, but a place
of reformation; and, therefore, if it failed of this latter object in
any instance, a power was reserved of sending away the prisoner as
incorrigible, for fear of his interfering with the progress of the
system among other prisoners. Next day he was told he would have to
remain three years extra in the Penitentiary, whereupon he promised, of
his own accord, to abstain from making any further attempts at escape,
provided he were allowed to go among the other prisoners. He was so
much more tractable and so much improved in temper that his request was
granted, and he was brought once more under ordinary discipline.

Having remained quiet for a month or more, just to lull suspicion, he
was again discovered—and just in the nick of time—to be on the verge
of a second evasion. The window of his cell was found to have the
screws taken out, with other suspicious symptoms. Smith declared that
the state of his window was the result of accident. He was removed to
another cell, and Mr. Nihil himself proceeded to examine the one he
had left. His hammock when unlashed revealed the state of his rug and
blankets. They had been torn up into convenient strips for scaling
purposes. When the prisoner was himself searched, between his stockings
and the soles of his feet were pieces of flannel, and in one of them
was a small piece of metal, ingeniously formed into a kind of picklock.
A piece of iron, for this purpose no doubt, was missed from one side
of the cell window. He was placed in the infirmary “strong room” for
safety; then apart in F gallery by day, sleeping at night in a small
cell below. But soon he destroyed everything in F gallery, and then he
was handcuffed. His next method of disturbance was to make a violent
noise by beating with his handcuffs against the door; upon which he
was ordered to be removed to a dark cell, not for punishment, but to
prevent disturbance. Presently a noise of loud hammering was heard in
this same dark cell. The officers on duty rushed to the spot, and found
that by some extraordinary contrivance Smith had possessed himself of
one of the staples by which the iron work was made fast on the back of
the door to the dark cell. By means of this instrument he had worked
away an iron grating fixed for ventilation, and had been engaged making
a hole in the wall by which he would have soon escaped. Smith was
handcuffed and taken to another cell.

The governor is almost bewildered, and begs the committee to get rid
of this prisoner. It would be inexpedient to place him among other
prisoners, and yet that can hardly be avoided, owing to the influx of
both military and other prisoners. “As to corporal punishment, he has
already experienced it very severely without any beneficial effect. His
knowledge of the localities, and the present unsafe condition of the
prison, owing to the extensive repairs, will breed perpetual attempts,
however unsuccessful, to escape,” writes the governor.

Soon afterwards Smith asked to be relieved from his handcuffs. “What’s
the good of keeping them on me?” he said, “I can always get ’em off
with an hour’s work.” He was told they would be fastened behind his
back. “I can slip them in front; you know that,” he replied.

“I threatened, then,” says Mr. Nihil, “to fetter his arms as well
as his hands, and that seemed to baffle him. To-day I held a long
conversation with him, and cannot but lament that the powerful
qualities he possesses should have been so greatly perverted. He spoke
with great candour of his former courses. He exhibited an affectation
of religious impressions, though he acknowledged much of the evil of
his character. By and by I asked him if he wished to have the handcuffs
taken off. He did, much, because they made him feel so cold.

“‘Will you promise if I take them off not to attempt to escape?’

“‘I’ll never make another promise as long as I am here. I have made one
too many, and I am ashamed of myself for having broken it.’

“‘What am I to do with you? Where am I to send you?’

“‘It’s no use sending me anywhere, sir. If you let me go among the
other prisoners I am satisfied; from what I know of the place, there
isn’t a part from which I couldn’t escape.’”

But Pickard Smith cannot remain forever in the dark. Exercise in the
open air becomes necessary, and the first time he is taken out is
in a dense fog. Almost at once he eludes his officer’s observation,
and, slipping off his shoes, clambers up a low projecting wall that
communicates with the boundary wall of the yard, mounts it, jumps over
on the other side, and runs for the infirmary staircase where he hopes
to hide. Fortunately the taskmaster, coming out of the tower, catches
sight of his legs disappearing through the door, and running after him
captures him on the stairs. The fellow was quite incorrigible. Again he
goes to the dark, again and again is he released and recommitted, till
at length his health breaks down. If in the end he was tamed, it was
of his own failure of strength, and not of the discipline of the place.
I believe he died in the Penitentiary a year or two later, but I have
been unable to find any authentic record of the fact.

I have lingered thus long over his story, which is at best but sad and
disheartening, because it is a good illustration of the methods of
coercion tried in those days in the Penitentiary, and moreover it opens
up the whole question of escapes from prison. Of course the convicted
criminal shares with all other captives an ever-present unsatisfied
longing to be free. Like a caged blackbird, or a rat in a trap, the
felon who has lost his liberty will certainly escape whenever the
opportunity is offered to him. To leave gates ajar, or to withdraw a
customary guard, would supply a temptation as irresistible as a bone
to a hungry dog; and a prisoner’s faculties are so sharp set by his
confinement, that he sees chances which are invisible to his gaolers.
A resolute and skilful man will brave all dangers, will exhibit untold
patience and ingenuity, will endure pain and lengthened hardship, if he
sees but a loophole for escape in the end. The fiction of Edmond Dantes
and his famous escape from the Chateau d’If, is but the embroidery
of a poetical imagination working upon a sober groundwork of fact.
The records of all ancient prisons contribute their quota of similar
legends, showing how the fugitive triumphed over difficulties seemingly
insurmountable. Baron Trenck’s escape from Spandau, and Casanova’s
from the Piombi, are as familiar to us as household words.

In this present time escapes are of rarer occurrence, and for many
reasons. It is not that prisons are really more secure _per se_:—so
far as construction can be depended upon, a gaol like Newgate seems
as safe as stone and iron can make it:—but the principles of security
are so much better realized and understood. Our forefathers trusted to
physical means, and thought enough was done. To-day our reliance is
placed on the moral aid of continuous supervision. An escapade like
that of Pickard Smith would be next to impossible now. He would have
been defeated with his own weapons. To compass his ends a prisoner
must have privacy; hours of quiet undisturbed by the intrusive visit
of a lynx-eyed official, and a cell all to himself. He has now the
cell to himself—at least he has with him no companion felon—but he
is for ever tended by an “old man of the mountain,” in the shape of
his warder, who is always with him—“turning him over,” as the prison
slang calls it; searching him, that is to say, several times a day,
both his person and the cell he occupies. To conceal implements, to
carry on works like the removal of bricks, of flooring, or of bars,
is next to impossible, or feasible only through a lack of vigilance
for which the official in fault would be called seriously to account.
The whole system as pursued in British Government prisons even where
prisoners work in the open air miles beyond prison gates or boundary
walls depends on the close observance of certain principles which have
come to be regarded as axioms almost with the officials. No prisoner is
allowed to be for one moment out of an officer’s sight; that officer
starts in the morning with a certain number of convicts in charge:
he must bring in the same number on his return to the prison. Beyond
the vigilant eye of these officers in charge of small parties ranges
a wide cordon of warder-sentries, who are raised on high platforms
and have an uninterrupted view around. A carefully prepared code of
signals serves to give immediate notice of escape. A shrill note on the
whistle, a single shot from a sentry’s breechloader sounds the alarm—“A
man gone!” Next second, the whistles re-echo, shot answers shot; the
parties are assembled in the twinkling of an eye, and a force of spare
officers hasten at once to the point from whence came the first note
of distress. It is next to impossible for the fugitive to get away: if
he runs for it he is chased; if he goes to ground they dig him out;
if he takes to the water he is soon overhauled. The cases are few
and far between of successful evasion. In every case the luck or the
stratagem has been exceptional—as when at Chatham a man was buried by
his comrades brick by brick beneath a heap, and interment was completed
before the man was missed; or when at Dartmoor, another broke into the
chaplain’s house, stole clothes, food, and a good horse, on which he
rode triumphantly away.

At Millbank from first to last the escapes, successful and
unsuccessful, have been many and varied. Pickard Smith’s was not the
first nor the last. The earliest on record occurred in April, 1831. One
night about 10 o’clock it was reported to the governor that the rooms
of three of the officers had been entered and a quantity of wearing
apparel abstracted therefrom. Almost at the same moment the sergeant
patrol came in from the garden to say that the patrol on duty in going
his rounds had discovered two men in the act of getting over the garden
wall by means of a white rope, made of a “cut of cross-over.”[4] Both
men were on the rope, and when it was shaken by the patrol they fell
off and back into the garden; but they attacked the officer, knocked
him down, and then ran off in an opposite direction. The patrol, as
soon as he could recover himself, gave the alarm, and presently the
governor, chaplain, surgeon, steward, and a number of other officers
arrived on the spot. They separated in parties to make search, while
the governor took possession of the cross-over cut, which was fastened
to the top of the wall by means of a large iron rake twisted into a
hook. This rake was used in the ward for bringing out large cinders
from the long stove. It was thought at first that, in the patrol’s
absence when giving the alarm, the fugitives must have got over the
wall; but the search was continued in the dark, in and out of the
tongues between the pentagons, and through all the gardens. Just by
the external tower of Pentagon four, the governor and chaplain, who
were together, came upon two men crouching in close under the wall.
These were two prisoners, named Alexander Wallie, the wardsman, and
Robert Thompson, the instructor of C Ward, Pentagon five. Thompson
said at once, “You are gentlemen; we will surrender to you. We will
make no resistance.” But the governor being immediately joined by the
other officers, it was as much as he could do to protect the prisoners
from attack and assault, as the former were greatly excited. One of
the prisoners was dressed in a fustian frock and trousers belonging
to Warder Hay; the other had no coat, but a waistcoat and trousers
belonging to some other officer.

At the top of the tower in C Ward, Pentagon five, out of one of the
loopholes near the water cistern, another cut of cross-over had been
found hanging, by which the prisoners had evidently descended. On going
up to the place there were found close by, a large hammer, a chisel,
and a screwdriver, articles used in repairing the looms, and the large
poker belonging to the airing stoves. Several bricks had been removed
from one side of the loophole, leaving a space wide enough for one
person to get through. To the iron bar in the centre of the loophole
one end of the cross-over was made fast; the other reached the ground.
The prisoners’ prison clothing was close by this cistern, and in
Wallie’s pocket was a skeleton key made of pewter, which opened many
of the officers’ bedroom doors. The prisoners confessed they had let
themselves out of their cells by means of false keys made of pewter,
and four of these were found near the place where the prisoners had
been caught crouching down. The keys were partially buried into the
ground. There were two check-gate keys, one cell key, and a skeleton
key made of pewter.

Attempts at escape were not unknown in the interval between this
and the time when Pickard Smith bewildered Mr. Nihil. But they were
abortive and hardly worth recounting. It was not till years after the
Reverend Governor had resigned his command that serious efforts at
evasion became really frequent and successful. This was when Millbank
had become changed in constitution, and from a Penitentiary had been
made a depot for all convicts awaiting transportation beyond the seas.
I shall have occasion to refer to this change in another volume, but
will so far anticipate as to include in the present chapter some of
the escapes that happened later. The prison was filled to overflowing
with desperate characters; every hole and corner was crammed; there had
been no commensurate increase of official staff, and therefore those
indispensable precautions by which only escapes could be prevented
were greatly neglected. Weak points are soon detected by the watchful
prisoner, and in these days every loophole of escape was quickly
explored and turned to account. That some of these convicts were
resolute in their determination to get free may be believed when it is
stated that one, _en route_ from Liverpool to Millbank, offered his
escort a bribe of £600 to allow him to escape. There was no doubt that
accomplices were close at hand ready to assist him, but happily the
virtuous officers resisted temptation.

One of the first attempts of those days was made by a man named
Cummings, who broke through the ceiling of his cell. He traversed the
roof of his pentagon, but could get no further. Then he commenced to
sing and to shout, and by this he was discovered. A ladder having been
placed for him to descend, he was secured. The prisoner himself stated
that he got through the arch by means of a hole he made with a nail he
had picked up in the ward. The man was evidently cowed when he found
himself on the top of the Penitentiary, and declared while they were
trying to secure him that he would throw himself down. He had made no
provision for his own descent; his rug, blanket, towels, etc., were
found in his cell untouched. He had, however, traversed the roof along
one side of the pentagon.

Soon afterward seven prisoners made their escape in a body from the
prison. They were lodged in a large room—afterward the officers’
mess—the windows of which were without bars; and they were able
therefore to climb through them on to the roof. They took their
blankets with them, and making a ladder, descended by it. The policeman
on duty outside roused the lodge-keeper, to say he had seen a man scale
the boundary wall between one and two in the morning, by a heavy ladder
reared against the wall. All the officers were roused and stationed
round the prison; while close search was made in the numerous gardens,
stone-yards, etc. At half-past four, two officers came back with four
prisoners in a cab. They had been tracked almost from the walls of the
prison and captured at Chiswick. The other three were caught at Watford
by a recruiting-sergeant and an inspector of the Hertfordshire police.
They were on their way to Two Waters.

Next day a conspiracy was detected among the prisoners, who brought in
coke from the garden, to escape while so employed. Almost immediately
afterwards four other prisoners were caught in the very act of escaping
through the top of the cell they occupied. They had broken away the
lath and plaster ceiling of the cell, removed the slate slab above it,
and had taken off the roof slate to a sufficient extent to allow of
easy egress; their sheets had been torn up and were knotted together,
and everything was ready for their descent.

The next attempt, within a week or two, was made by a prisoner who
found that the mouth of the foul air shaft, to which his cell was
adjacent, was not protected by bars; accordingly he broke through the
wall of his cell, and having thus gained access to the shaft, would
have gained the roof easily had his artifice not been discovered just
in time. Two others picked the lock leading to the garden, meaning to
escape in the evening; and just then by chance it fell out that the
prisoner bookbinders had been long maturing a plan of escape. They had
made a large aperture in the floor of their cell, which hole had been
concealed by pasteboard. The whole of the party (three in number) were
privy to the plot, and each descended in turn to the vault below the
cell, which was on the ground floor, to work at the external wall of
the prison. This, when their plot was discovered, they had cut three
parts through. They had also prepared three suits of clothing from
their towels, and had hidden these disguises beneath some rubbish in
the vault, where were also discovered a mason’s hammer, the blade of a
shears, and a cold chisel. A rope ladder had also been made for scaling
the boundary wall, but it had been subsequently cut up as useless.
The intending fugitives thought of making a better ladder from broom
handles, to be supplied by a brush-maker in an adjoining cell, who was
also in the plot. They had worked at night by candlelight. In this
case it is not too much to say that the officials in charge of these
prisoners were really much to blame. Had they exercised only ordinary
vigilance the scheme could not have remained so long undiscovered.
By the prisoners’ own confession the hole had been in existence for
more than three months, and therefore the cell could never have been
searched.

But the most marvellous escape from Millbank was effected in the winter
of 1847, by a prisoner named Howard, better known as Punch Howard. He
had been equally successful before both at Newgate and Horsemonger Lane
Gaol; but the ingenuity and determination he displayed in this last
affair was quite beyond everything previously accomplished.

He was sentenced to transportation, and had only been received a few
days when he was removed to a cell at the top of the infirmary, part
of the room called later on E Ward. The window in this cell was long
and narrow, running parallel to the floor but at some height above it.
The extreme length is about three feet, the width but six inches and
a half.[5] It was closed by a window that revolved on a central bar
forming an axle. This bar was riveted into the stone at each end of the
window. In those days the prisoners used ordinary steel knives, which
were given them at meal times, and then immediately removed. Howard
at dinner-time converted his knife into a rough saw, by hammering the
edge of the blade on the corner of his iron bedstead, and with this
sawed through one rivet, leaving the window _in statu quo_. The whole
thing was effected within the dinner hour: saw made, bar cut, and knife
returned. No examination of the knife could have been made, and so far
luck favoured the prisoner. As soon as the warders went off duty, and
the pentagon was left to one single officer as patrol, Howard set to
work. Hoisting himself again to the window, by hanging his blanket on a
hammock hook in the wall just beneath, he removed the window bodily—one
rivet having been sawn through, the other soon gave way. The way of
egress, such as it was, was now open—a narrow slit three feet by six
inches and a half. Howard was a stoutly built man, with by no means a
small head, yet he managed to get this head through the opening. Having
accomplished this, no doubt after tremendous pressure and much pain to
himself, he turned so as to lie on his back, and worked his shoulders
and arms out. He had previously put the window with its central iron
bar half in, half out of the orifice, meaning to use it as a platform
to stand on, the weight of his body pressing down one end while the
other caught against the roof of the opening, and so gave him a firm
foothold. He had also torn up his blankets and sheets in strips, and
tied them together, so as to form a long rope, one end of which was
fastened to his legs. He was now half way out of the window, lying in
a horizontal position, with his arms free, his body nipped about the
centre by the narrow opening, his legs still inside his cell. It was
not difficult for him now to draw out the rest of his body, and as soon
as he had length enough he threw himself up and caught the coping-stone
of the roof above. All this took place on the top story, at a height
of some thirty-five feet from the ground. He was now outside the wall,
and standing on the outer end of the window bar. To draw out the whole
lengths of blanket and sheeting rope, throw them on to the roof, and
clamber after, were his next exploits. He thereupon descended into
the garden below, which encircles all of the buildings, and is itself
surrounded by a low boundary wall. This garden was patrolled by six
sentries, who divided the whole distance between them. He could see
them very plainly as he stood on the roof between Pentagons three and
four. He took the descent by degrees, lowering himself from the roof
to a third floor window, and from third floor to second, from second
to first, and from first to the ground itself. The back of the nearest
patrol just then was turned, and Howard’s descent to _terra firma_ was
unobserved. Next moment he was seen standing in his white shirt, but
otherwise naked, in among the tombstones of the Penitentiary graveyard,
which is just at this point. Concluding he was a ghost, the sentry, as
he afterwards admitted, turned tail and ran, leaving the coast quite
clear. Howard was not slow to profit by the chance. Some planks lay
close by, one of which he raised against the boundary wall, and walked
up the incline thus formed. Next moment he dropped down on the far side
and was free. His friends lived close by the prison in Pye Street,
Westminster, and within a minute or two he was in his mother’s house,
got food and clothing, and again made off for the country.

Naturally the excitement in the prison on the following morning was
intense. Howard was gone, and he could be tracked by his means of exit
from his cell to the roof, down the outer wall, across the garden,
and over the boundary wall. Here the trail stopped; and though his
home in Pye Street was immediately searched, no one would confess to
having seen him. It was felt that recapture was almost hopeless. It
occurred, however, to Denis Power, the warder of Howard’s ward, that
this man had come to prison with a “pal,” a certain Jerry Simcox, who
had been convicted at the same time and for the same offence. Mr. Power
thereupon visited Simcox in his cell.

“So Punch has gone, sir?”

“How did you know that?”

“Why, sir, you couldn’t keep him. We was in Newgate together, him and
me, and in Horsemonger too; but we got out of both. There ain’t no jail
’ll hold Punch Howard.”

“Oh, you got out together, did you?” said the officer, growing
interested.

“Yes, and could again out of any ‘stir’ in the three kingdoms, and
they could not take us either. We got to too safe a crib for that.”

“Ah—?” Power spoke unconcernedly. If he had appeared too anxious Simcox
would have remained silent.

“Punch has got an uncle down Uxbridge way who works at some brick
fields at West Drayton. Six or eight hundred of them—Mr. Hearn’s lot,
they is. That’s where we went, and the police daren’t follow us there.
They don’t allow no ‘coppers’ on the premises thereabouts, Mr. Power.
That’s the place to hide.”

“No doubt,” thought Mr. Power; “and Howard’s gone there now.”

Within an hour he had obtained the governor’s permission to go in
pursuit, with a brace of pistols in his pocket, and unlimited credit.

At the inn of West Drayton he bought from the ostler a suit of navvy’s
clothes, and went thus disguised with a spade over his shoulder towards
the brickworks. The field was full and busy. There was an alehouse
close by, and it was early morning, no one about but a sort of serving
wench, a middle-aged woman, one-eyed, and bearing on her face the marks
of a life of dissipation and rough usage.

“Morrow, mistress. Any work going?” said Power.

“Ah! work enough,” replied the woman, fixing him with her one eye,
which was as good as four or five in any other head. “But you don’t
want no work.”

“No?”

“No; I know you. You’re not what you seem. That spade and them duds
ain’t no sort of good. You’re after work, but not that sort of work.”

Doubtful whether she meant to help or thwart him, Power could only
trust himself to order a pot of ale.

“Have a drain, missus.”

“And I’ll help you too—no, not with the ale, but to cop young Punch.”

“Punch?”

“Aye—Punch Howard. That’s the work you’re after; and you shall get
it too, or my name’s not Martha Jonas. This three-and-twenty years
I’ve lived with his uncle, Dan Cockett, man and wife, though no
parson blessed us. Three-and-twenty I slaved and bore with the mean
white-faced hound, and now he leaves me for a younger woman, and I am
brought to this. Help you!—by the great powers, I’d put a knife in Dan
Cockett too.”

“And how am I to take him?”

“Not by daylight. Bless you, if you went into that field they’d never
let you out alive. Why, no bobby durst go there, nor yet a dozen
together.”

“Is Punch Howard in the field with them?”

“There; look yonder. D’ye see that lad in the striped shirt and blue
belcher tie, blue and big white spots? Can’t you tell him a mile off?”

Sure enough it was Punch Howard, standing by a brick “table,” at which
a number of others were at work, smoothing and finishing the bricks, or
coming and going with the bearing-off barrows.

“Come to-night, master. They sleep mostly out there, on top of the
brick stacks—and heavy sleep, for the beer in this house isn’t water.
Come with a bobby or two, and look them all over. Punch’ll be among
them, and you’ll be able to steal him away before the rest awake.”

So Power went back to the village, interviewed the superintendent of
police, kept quiet during the rest of the day, and that night came in
force to draw his covert. Stealthily they searched it from end to end.
Among all the villainous faces into which they peered there was not one
that bore the least resemblance to Punch Howard. Had the woman played
him false? Power could hardly make up his mind to distrust her, so
earnest and embittered had been her language against Dan Cockett. No
doubt another night he would have more success. Meanwhile time pressed,
and he resolved to try a plan of his own.

“Have you a good horse and four-wheeled shay?” he asked of his landlord
next morning.

“The best in all England.”

“Every man’s goose is a swan,” thought Power. “Let’s see the nag.”

He was a good one, and no mistake; but an out-and-out good one was
wanted for the job in hand.

At one end of the brick field—a spacious place covering two or three
hundred acres—was an office for the time-keeper and foreman of the
works. He was an old police sergeant, long pensioned off, but he had
his wits about him still. The office was approached by a narrow lane,
with room for one set of wheels only, a quarter of a mile in length,
and branching off from the high road to Uxbridge. Up this lane, half
hidden by the hedge, Mr. Power drove to the foreman’s shed. The
ex-sergeant was alone, and readily fell in with the plan proposed.
“Here!” he cried to a young fellow who went his errands and assisted
in the office; “run up to the field and ask Dan Cockett if he wants a
job for that idle young nephew. I see he’s back in these parts. I need
a lad to screen coal dust, and I’ll give him twelve shillings a week.
Look sharp!”

The messenger went off immediately.

“A job for my nephew?” said old Dan. “Ay—heartily thank you too,
master. You’re a gentleman. Hi! Punch, you’re in luck. They say they’ll
take you on. Twelve shillings a week. Run along with the master: they
want to ‘book you’ at the office.”

So unsuspecting Punch accompanied the other back to where Power was
waiting for his prey. This warder was an extremely powerful man—tall,
with tremendous shoulders, and just then in the prime of life and
activity.

He stepped forward at once.

“What, Punch! What are you doing in these parts?”

“I’ll swear I never saw you in all—“ He never finished those words.
His captor was on him and had him fast. In less time than it takes to
describe, the handcuffs were locked upon his wrists, and, taking him
up in his arms, Power fairly lifted him off the ground and carried
him into the chaise. Without loosing his hold he took his seat too,
gave reins to the horse, and started off at a hand gallop down the
lane. He had the reins in one hand, the other arm tightly bound round
Howard’s neck, and the hand used as far as it was possible as a gag.
But though it was possible to hold this captive tight, it was not so
easy to keep him silent. Before they had gone a dozen yards Howard had
managed to send off more than one yell of distress, as a signal to
his friends in the field. The sight of the galloping horse, the burly
figure of the driver, and the lad crouching close by his side—all three
betrayed the plot. Almost simultaneously several hundred men dropped
work and gave chase—some down the lane, others trying to head the trap
at the junction with the high road. Power had his hands full: in one,
a struggling criminal, desperate, ready to fling himself out of the
chaise at any risk; in the other a bunch of reins and a whip. However,
he had the start and advantage of his pursuers. Once only was his
escape in doubt: on reaching the road, the horse tried to turn sharp
to the left, back to his stable at West Drayton, instead of to the
right to Uxbridge. With a jerk that almost upset the trap, Power turned
the horse in the right direction, and half an hour afterwards had left
his pursuers miles behind, and was safe at the police station. Within
forty-eight hours of his escape Punch Howard was back in a Millbank
cell, and Mr. Power was handsomely rewarded for the remarkable pluck
and energy he had displayed.

A similar feat to Punch Howard’s was accomplished by a man named Jack
Robinson, at Dartmoor. This man had long pretended to be weak-minded,
and had thus put his keepers off their guard. He was in the habit of
exercising himself shoeless and bare-headed, and wearing an old hat
without a brim. In his bosom he carried generally a few tame rats,
which issued forth now and then to walk over his arms and shoulders,
and to lick his hands and face. A frequent joke with Robinson was
to tell the chaplain that he had put his feet too far through his
trousers—which caused infinite amusement always to his convict
audience. Jack, however, was fond of foretelling that he meant to make
April fools of every one—and so in effect he did. One morning he had
flown, and with him two companions. He had cut through the bars of his
cell by some artful contrivance; which still remains a mystery to this
day. Some think he used a watchspring, others some chemical process. He
was not recaptured, but later was re-convicted for stealing a railway
rug.

[Illustration: _Prisoners Going to Work at Dartmoor_

When transportation beyond the seas was discontinued, the old war
prison at Dartmoor, long disused, was repaired by convict labor and
became one of the best examples of the modern penitentiary idea. The
convicts have reclaimed the vast tract of barren moorland, and in its
place to-day are broad acres of fertile farm and pasture land.]

No account of escapes from prison would be complete without some
reference to George Hackett, who escaped from Pentonville in a manner
nearly marvellous. Through some neglect he had been allowed to take his
sheets and bedrope into chapel with him. At that time the chapel was
divided into a number of small compartments, one for each prisoner.
Hackett worked unobserved in his, till he had forced up the flooring,
and so gained the gallery; whence, by breaking a zinc ventilator, he
climbed through a window on to the parapet leading to the governor’s
house. This he entered, and stealing some good clothes, changed, and so
got clean away. Soon afterwards he wrote the following letter to the
governor of Pentonville:

 “George Hackett presents his compliments to the Governor of the Model
 Prison, and begs to apprise him of his happy escape from the gaol. He
 is in excellent spirits, and assures the governor it would be useless
 to pursue him. He is quite safe, and intends in a few days to proceed
 to the continent to recruit his health.”

Hackett was a very desperate man. He had already escaped from a police
cell at Marlborough Street, when confined on a charge of burglary.
The cell was secured by two bolts and a patent Chubb lock. After his
escape from Pentonville he remained at large till the following Derby
day. He was then recognized going “down the road,” by a police officer,
who proceeded to arrest him, but met with violent resistance. Hackett
knocked down the policeman with a life preserver and made off, but was
intercepted by a labouring man, who, though badly mauled, succeeded
in capturing him. Hackett on all the charges was sentenced to fifteen
years’ transportation.

A later escape from Millbank was that of three prisoners on one Sunday,
by working a hole in the floor. They were located on the ground floor,
and having removed the ventilating plate which communicated with a
shaft, thus got down into a cellar and so to a party wall with iron
gratings. These removed, they issued out into the garden, where, as
it was summer time, the thick vegetation concealed them. By and by a
gentleman passing gave the alarm at the gate that he had seen two men
climbing over the boundary wall. Some officers immediately gave chase,
but the fugitives took a hansom and drove off. Their pursuers followed
in another cab, and presently ran down their men somewhere near St.
Luke’s. The third prisoner was caught in among the bushes of the
garden, which he had never left.

In this case the officers of the ward were very seriously to blame.
They were indeed suspected of collusion, and without that it is
difficult to understand how the prisoners could have effected their
purpose. They must have been long engaged in preparing to make good
their exit, and in the cellar were found great quantities of weapons,
tools, cards, and other things.




CHAPTER VIII

THE WOMEN’S WARDS

 Various outbreaks among the women—Drumming on the doors—The dumb
 cell—What happened at Durham—The Ladies’ Association—Greatest trouble
 from Convicts in passage to the Antipodes—McCarthy—Anne Williams—Julia
 Sinclair Newman’s extraordinary persistence in wrong-doing—Supposed
 to be mad—Returned from Bethlehem as sane—Mr. Nihil’s vain attempts
 to transfer her—No strait-waistcoat or means of restraint will
 prevail—Finally transferred to Van Diemen’s Land.


IT is a well established fact in prison logistics that the women are
far worse than the men. When given to misconduct they are far more
persistent in their evil ways, more outrageously violent, less amenable
to reason or reproof. For this there is more than one explanation.
No doubt when a woman is really bad, when all the safeguards natural
and artificial with which she has been protected are removed, further
deterioration is sure to be rapid and reform hopeless. Again, the means
of coercion in the case of female prisoners are necessarily limited.
While a prompt exhibition of force cannot fail sooner or later to
bring an offending male convict to his senses, a woman continues her
misconduct unchecked, because such methods cannot be put in practice
against her. Although in some cases the men have made a temporarily
successful fight against discipline, in the long run they have been
compelled to succumb. On the other hand, there are instances known of
women who have maintained for months, nay years, an unbroken warfare
with authority, and who have won the day in the end. Never beaten,
they continued till the day of their release to set every one at
defiance. That obstinacy which has passed into a proverb against the
sex, supported them throughout, of course, coupled with a species of
hysterical mania, the natural outcome of the highly strung nervous
system.

A curious example of their strength of physical endurance, and their
almost indefatigable persistence in wrong-doing deserves to be
mentioned here, though it occurred some years later on. A strange fancy
all at once seized a number of women occupying adjoining cells to drum
on their doors with the soles of their feet. There is no evidence to
show when or how this desire first showed itself; but in less than a
week it had become general almost throughout the female prison. To
accomplish her purpose a woman lay full length on her cell floor,
just the right distance from the door, and began. She was immediately
answered from the next cell, whence the infection spread rapidly to
the next, and so on till the whole place was in an uproar. These cell
doors being badly hung, were a little loose; they rattled, therefore,
and shook, till the whole noise became quite deafening and incredible.
Some women were able to keep up the game for hours together, day
after day; in several cases it was proved that they had drummed in
this way for several weeks. They soon worked themselves into a state
of uncontrollable excitement, amounting almost to hysteria. After
a time many became quite prostrate and ill, and had to be taken to
the infirmary for treatment. The physical exertion required in the
operation was so great that women so employed for barely an hour were
found literally soaked in perspiration from head to foot, and lying,
without exaggeration, in pools of moisture. In numbers the kicking
superinduced diseases of the feet, the whole skin of the sole having
been worn away; for it is almost needless to observe that very early in
the affray shoes and stockings were altogether destroyed, and it came
to be a question of bare feet. Several methods were tried to put an end
to this unpleasant practice—strait waistcoats, dietary punishments,
and so forth—but all without avail. In that particular instance the
disturbances continued till the women had fairly worn themselves out.

Later outbreaks of a similar character were met and subdued in an
altogether different fashion. The introduction of “ankle straps,”
which confine the feet as handcuffs do the wrist, was found a highly
efficacious treatment—this, and the invention of the “dumb cell.” From
the latter no sound can possibly proceed; however loud and boisterous
the outcry within, outside not a whisper is heard. When women feel
that they are shouting and wasting their breath all to no purpose, they
straightway succumb. But even more has since then been accomplished by
purely moral methods than by these physical restraints. It has been
found that the simplest way to tame women thus bent upon misconduct
is to take no notice of them at all. When a woman discovers that she
ceases to attract attention by her violence, she alters her line of
conduct, and seeks to attain her ends by other and more agreeable
means. The most potent temptation with them is the desire to “show
off” before their companions. A curious sort of vanity urges them on.
It is all bravado. Hence we find that when these tremendous “breakings
out,” as they are termed in prison parlance, occur, they originate
almost entirely among the women who are associated, in other words,
who are free to come and go and communicate with one another. Separate
them, keep them as much as possible apart and alone, and you remove
at once the strong temptation to gain an unenviable notoriety at the
expense of the discipline of the establishment. This was proved by the
experience of later years. Thus at Millbank in 1874 there were only
three instances of this sort of misconduct, and in the previous year
only four.

Weakness in enforcing the rules, yielding too readily to the women’s
tantrums, and letting them have their own way are soon taken advantage
of by the turbulent spirits in a gaol. I had a notable experience
of this much later in a northern prison, when one of Her Majesty’s
inspectors. The female prison population in the north are a rough,
headstrong lot, very difficult to manage, and at that time the chief
matron was a timid person, who found it pleasanter to give way than to
drive, and, of course, the warder staff took their tone from her. It
transpired afterwards that it was the custom to let the prisoners who
should have been in cellular separation collect together in parties of
four or more in one of the large workrooms, where they could gossip and
idle their time away for hours together, never doing a hand’s-turn of
work, and thus persistently breaking the regulations. I had a suspicion
that the female “side” was in bad order, and on one of my visits—I
never gave notice of them, but dropped in always by surprise—I went
immediately to that part of the prison. The warder who answered my bell
and opened the door looked flurried at the sight of me, and I passed in
quickly, to find the interior in some confusion. There was a scurrying
of feet, a jangle of excited voices, and a loud banging of cell doors,
clear indications that things were not all right. If I had any doubt,
it was removed by the sight of the matron, who was stooping over a
trap-door that gave access to the heating-chamber below, and pitifully
entreating the women to “Come up all of you and be good girls.” I
guessed what was wrong. It was the winter season, and the place below
warm and cosy, just where such women would love to linger. There could
be no doubt what was happening, and stepping across hastily I added my
voice to the matron’s, bidding them peremptorily to “come up.”

“Lord save us, it’s the major!” was the affrighted reply. They knew my
voice and obeyed, creeping up the stairs one by one, till all, a dozen
nearly, stood ranged in a row before me, and I desired the matron to
take their names down, then to lock up each woman in her own cell. Next
moment they were off, running for their lives in an entirely opposite
direction. With a suddenness that was startling they broke away and
made for the staircase, and up it to the top story of the prison
building, above the highest ward, and into the close gallery just under
the roof, whence they could reach the skylights and clamber out on to
the slates. We knew they had reached the upper air, for their shouts
were heard all over the prison, and they could be seen from the yards
below, from the neighbouring streets indeed, dancing and performing
wild antics on the roof above. We were all greatly puzzled how to deal
with them. Persuasion was futile and it would be both difficult and
dangerous to climb along the sloping roof, seize each woman in turn,
and drag her down. After much debate I decided to leave them where
they were—a “night out” would cool their blood, and they could neither
do nor come to great harm in the alley under the roof, to which they
would no doubt return of their own accord.

Meanwhile I sent to a friendly magistrate hard by, begging him to meet
me at the prison next day early, for I wished to have recourse to his
powers of punishment, having none myself. I made other preparations
to deal with my mutineers, and, passing on to an adjacent town, saw
the Governor of the prison there, requisitioned from him all his
“figure-of-eight” handcuffs, and carried them back with me next morning
in a bag. The situation remained unchanged; the women were still under
the roof, but no longer had access to the slates, for by means of a
ladder the skylights had been reached and secured from the outside.
Then the male officers went upstairs and, after a sharp scuffle,
extracted the women from the alley under the roof, and brought them
one by one to their cells. No sooner were they incarcerated than
the magistrate and I visited them, and he ordered each woman to be
handcuffed, as the law permits when fears are entertained that she will
do herself or another mischief. There was never another outbreak among
the female prisoners there.[6]

But to return to Mr. Nihil. It appears that during his reign the
condition of the female pentagon was always unsatisfactory. We find
in his journal constant reference to the want of discipline among
the female prisoners. Thus: “The behaviour of the female pentagon is
frightfully disorderly, calling for vigorous and exemplary punishment.
Women contract the most intimate friendship with each other, or the
most deadly hatred.” The bickering, bad feeling, and disputes were
increasing. After inquiring into one case, the governor observes,
“Before the afternoon was over the combatants had the whole pentagon
in an uproar. One smashed her windows to bits, and so did the other.
They had to be taken to the dark; but Walters produced a knife, and
would have wounded the matron.” Again, “I had to reprove strongly
the taskmistress and warders for the laxity of discipline prevalent
therein.” Later on, when the rules of greater seclusion came into
force, he again remarks, “On the female side there is great laxity, no
discipline, no attempt to enforce non-intercourse. Instead of a rule
by which each individual would be thrown on her own reflections, and
secluded altogether, the female pentagon is in fact a criminal nunnery,
where the sisterhood are linked together by a chain of sympathies and
by familiar and frequent communications.... Although, to the ladies
who visit them, the females repeat Scripture and speak piously,
the communications which many of them carry on with each other are
congenial with their former vicious habits, their minds being thus kept
in a state at once the most depraved and hypocritical.”

These ladies to whom the governor refers were members of the
celebrated “Ladies’ Association,” headed by Mrs. Fry, whose long
ministrations among female convicts at Newgate have gained them a
world-wide reputation. Having undoubtedly done excellent work where
crying evils called for reform, they were eager for fresh fields of
labour. Accordingly they came and tried their best. It would be hardly
fair to deny them all credit, or to assert that, because the women
continued ill-conditioned throughout, the counsels and admonitions of
these ladies had altogether failed of effect. It is obvious, however,
from Mr. Nihil’s remarks, that their services tended to produce
hypocrisy rather than real repentance. The fact was there was a marked
distinction between the work they had done at Newgate and that to
which they put their hands in the Penitentiary. In this latter place
the women were really sedulously cared for; they had an abundance of
good food, clean cells, comfortable beds; they bathed regularly; they
had employment, books, and the unceasing ministrations of a zealous
chaplain.

Newgate, on the other hand, when first visited by Mrs. Fry, was a
perfect sink of abomination, rivalling quite the worst pictures painted
by Howard. There could hardly have been a more terrible place than the
women’s side. All that Mrs. Fry and her companions accomplished is now
a matter of history.

But the condition of Millbank under Mr. Nihil was not that of Newgate
and other prisons in 1816. It could not be said the Penitentiary
prisoners were neglected. No fault could be found with their treatment
generally, or the measures taken to provide for their spiritual needs.
Long before the arrival of the “Ladies’ Association” the religious
instruction of the female prisoners may be said to have reached a point
of saturation: the preaching and praying, if I may say so, had been
already a little overdone. Hence it was that their advent deepened only
the outward hypocrisy and lip service, and was productive of little
good.

The most serious annoyance entailed upon the governor of Millbank
was the charge of female transports awaiting transportation. None of
these were worse than a certain Julia Newman, who was a Penitentiary
prisoner, and whose case I shall describe at some length, taking it as
a type of the whole.

But there were many others among the female convicts who were also
very desperate characters indeed; such as the woman from Liverpool,
concerning whom the governor of the gaol wrote to say that she was so
desperate that he thought it would be necessary to send her tied up
in a sack. Mary McCarthy, was another, who was brought in handcuffs
from Newgate, with a note to the effect that she required the greatest
attention. She had several times attempted to strangle herself, and had
therefore been handcuffed day and night and constantly watched. “She
is a most artful, designing woman, and will succeed, if not well looked
after, in her attempts to destroy herself.”

Mr. Nihil found McCarthy submissive and tractable, but after the above
caution he thought it advisable to continue the handcuffing, intending
to withdraw the restraint as soon as she abandoned her intention to
commit suicide. At the end of two days she managed to rid herself of
her handcuffs, having very small wrists; but as she evinced no signs
of violence or intractability they were not replaced, the governor
thinking, from his experience with Newman, that effectual and complete
restraint was impossible if the prisoner was determined. McCarthy
was, however, constantly watched, and for ten days she remained quite
quiet. On the 21st of October, a fortnight after her admission, she
begged her warder, Mrs. West, to come into her cell and teach her to
stitch. Mrs. West did so readily, and all was calm and peaceable for a
while. Suddenly, without giving Mrs. West a moment’s warning, McCarthy
stabbed her from behind, inflicting one severe wound on the forehead
and the other under the ear. She appears to have used the utmost
violence. Mrs. West got up, streaming with blood, and made for the cell
door, which she bolted behind her, thus securing the prisoner inside.
Assistance was called at once, but on going back to the cell McCarthy
was found on the floor insensible, with a big bruise on her forehead.
She continued in this kind of trance for twenty-four hours. It was a
marvel to every one how she had got the weapon, for in consequence of
her known suicidal tendencies she had been furnished with neither knife
or scissors. However, on returning from exercise, as it was afterwards
ascertained, she had seen a knife lying on the floor in the passage,
and stooping, as if to pull up her shoe, had managed to secrete the
knife in her sleeve. So unprovoked and murderous an attack, coupled
with the previous attempts at suicide, indicated a maniacal ferocity.
The succeeding trance corroborated the suspicions; and although the
prisoner had exhibited great art in concealing her weapon, such cunning
was not inconsistent with mania. She had also attempted to effect her
escape by making a large hole in the ceiling of her cell. Therefore,
a well known physician, Dr. Monro, was now sent for, and at once, on
hearing the whole story, certified the prisoner to be insane. She was
now in the infirmary, her feet and arms bound to the bed by several
ligatures. The surgeon removed those on her arms, on which the governor
thought it prudent to put her into handcuffs. In the night she was
caught in the act of getting her feet loose, and was evidently bent on
some further mischief. Thus baffled, she remained sullen for some time,
then sent for the governor and made a clean breast of it, having been
moved thereto by a passage in one of the Psalms, which another prisoner
who watched her had been reading aloud. The expression she noticed was
about “going away like lost sheep.” She told the governor that while
she was in the trance she knew some gentlemen had come to see her, and
that one of them was a mad doctor. “I don’t think doctors know much
about madness,” she added, “or they’d a’ understood me better.” Mr.
Nihil was now pretty sure that McCarthy was no lunatic, but Dr. Monro
and Dr. Wade adhered to their former opinion, so she was removed to
Bethlehem.

Another woman, Ann Williams, who was received from Bath, proved a very
desperate character. The governor of Bath gaol, who brought her up to
London, declared he had never had so much trouble with any prisoner
before. She also was determined to make away with herself, and the
first time left alone she had jumped out of a window an immense height
from the ground. This country gaoler, on seeing the cell to which she
was destined in the Penitentiary, protested that it would be highly
dangerous to allow her to have pewter pint, or spoon, or cell stool.
The moment her hands were loosened she would be sure to thrust the
spoon down her throat, or attack some one with the stool. Even the
sheets should be removed, for she was capable of tearing them into
slips to make herself a halter. Directly she arrived at Millbank she
tried to dash her brains out by striking her head violently against the
wall—emulating in this respect another prisoner for whom, some years
later, a special head-dress was provided, a sort of Turkish cap padded
at the top, merely to save her skull. Williams’ language was dreadful,
and she refused all food. The governor now suspected her strongly of
artifice, and the doctor recommended that she should be punished with
bread and water diet. That night she grew extremely turbulent. She
was then tied down to her bedstead, and a sort of gag, brought from
Bath for McCarthy, used, which was effective in curbing her rage.
This gag was a wide piece of strong leather, having perforated holes
to admit of breathing, but which completely silenced her horrible and
violent expressions. After starving herself for four days she had still
strength enough left to get out of her handcuffs, and would have done
much mischief had not the other prisoners who were watching her held
her down by the hair. After greasing her wrists it was found possible
to replace the handcuffs. This was another case in which it was thought
advisable to give the prisoner the benefit of the doubt, and she was
also removed to Bedlam.

It was quite within possibility that in these two cases madness was
proved. But it is often difficult to draw the line between madness
and outrageous misconduct; and the latter is sometimes persisted in
order to make good a pretence of deranged intellect. Among the female
prisoners there are numerous instances of this—and as a matter of fact
among the males also. Cases of “trying it on,” or “doing the barmy,”
which are cant terms for feigning lunacy, used at one time to be more
frequent than they are now, when longer experience protects prison
physicians from deception.

The case of Julia St. Clair Newman—or Miss Newman, as she was commonly
called in the prison and out—attracted considerable attention in
its time, becoming indeed the subject of frequent discussion in
Parliament, and being referred at length to a Select Committee of the
House of Lords. Inside the walls Julia Newman was for many months the
centre of all interest; she was a thorn in the side of all officials,
visitors, governor, doctor, matrons, and even of her fellow-prisoners.
Apparently of Creole origin—at least it was certain that she had been
born in one of the West India Islands—she came home while still a
child, and was educated at a French boarding-school. When sixteen she
returned to Trinidad with her mother, remained there a year or two,
and again came to England to live on an allowance made them by Julia’s
guardian. But whether this allowance was too small, or their natural
proclivities would not be repressed, they soon got into bad ways.
Repeatedly shifting houses, they moved from one lodging to another,
always in debt, and not seldom under suspicion of swindling and fraud.
Three months in the King’s Bench was followed by a lengthened sojourn
in Whitecross Street Gaol; then came more shady transactions, such
mistakes as pledging their landlady’s plate for their own, making away
with wearing apparel and furniture, or absconding without payment of
rent. At length, having left the apartments of a certain Mrs. Dobbs
in a hurry, they packed up—quite by accident—in one of their trunks
a silver spoon, some glasses, and a decanter, the property of the
aforesaid Mrs. Dobbs. For this they were arrested, and as soon as they
were in custody a second charge was laid against them for stealing
a ring from a woman in the King’s Bench, which Julia indignantly
denied, declaring that she had picked it up in the pump yard—where of
course there were plenty of rings to be had simply for the trouble of
stooping. Naturally the jury disbelieved the Newmans’ explanation of
both counts, and mother and daughter were found guilty and sentenced to
transportation.

They were evidently a pair of ordinary commonplace habitual
swindlers, deserving no special notice. But their rumoured gentility
gained for them a species of misplaced sympathy; and they were
excused transportation, to be sent instead, for reformation, to
the Penitentiary, where they arrived on the 11th March, 1837. Of
the mother it will be sufficient to say at once that she was an
inoffensive tractable old woman, who bore her punishment with patience,
and eventually died in prison. But Julia was cast in a different
mould. Under thirty,—according to her own statement she was only
nineteen,—full in figure, and florid of complexion, possessed, as was
afterwards proved, of extraordinary physical strength, she displayed,
from the first moment almost, an incorrigible perversity which made
her in the end a perfect nuisance to the whole establishment. There
was something ladylike about her when she was in a peaceable mood.
Inexperienced people would have called her a gentlewoman. Not handsome
or even good looking, but decidedly “interesting,” the matrons said
when questioned before the Select Committee. She was accomplished:
could draw and paint, and was very musical; sang beautifully—and
certainly during her stay at Millbank she gave plenty of proof of the
strength and compass of her voice; and with all this she was clever,
designing, and of course thoroughly unprincipled.

The day after her reception she endeavoured to tamper with the
wardswoman; seeking to obtain paper and pencil “to write a letter to
her mother.” When taxed with this breach of rules, she declared the
wardswoman wanted to force the things upon her. Then she was found to
have cut a page out of “The Prisoner’s Companion,” a book supplied
to all. Questioned privately, Newman with many expressions of grief
confessed her guilt. Mr. Nihil, who was still quite in the dark as to
her real character, pardoned this offence. She was next charged with
an attempt to induce a fellow-prisoner to pass on a message to her
mother—the substance of which was that the elder Newman was to impose
upon the chaplain by a hypocritical confession, in order to obtain thus
the daughter’s release, Julia promising when free to contrive means
by which the mother should also be discharged. The “dark” became her
lot for this, and to it she again returned the following week, for
refusing to clean out her cell. When the governor reasoned with her,
she merely said she would be happy to pay some other prisoner to do it
for her. This second visit to the dark brought her under the doctor’s
notice, who ordered her to the infirmary, as she declared she was too
weak to walk downstairs. Her face having grown quite pale and ghastly,
help was sent for, when it was discovered that she had whitened it
with chalk. She again visited the dark, and when released began again
to communicate with her mother. Several “stiffs”[7] were intercepted,
in which she tried to persuade her to smuggle a letter out to their
solicitors. This discovery led to a strict search of Julia’s cell and
person, when large quantities of writing paper were found upon her,
though “how she procured the paper, or the pen, or how she manufactured
the ink, continued a mystery implying great laxity of supervision.” Her
anxiety to write thus checked in one direction found vent in another:
with the point of her scissors she had scratched upon the whitewash of
her cell wall four verses of poetry. The words were harmless, and as
she asserted that she felt it a severe restriction being kept apart,
the governor admonished her well for this offence.

This leniency was quite thrown away. A fresh attempt at clandestine
correspondence came to light within a week or two. Newman passed a
letter at chapel to Mary Ann Stickley, which was found in the other’s
bosom, the substance of it being that Newman professed a great regard
for Stickley, and begged of her to excite the hatred of all the other
prisoners against Ware for her recent betrayal of Newman. A second
letter was picked up by Alice Bradley in front of Newman’s cell,
addressed to a prisoner named Weedon, whom she abused in round terms
for making a false charge against the governor to the effect that he
had called her (Newman) by some horrid epithet—“which she could _never_
believe of that good man.” Newman’s cell was again searched, when an
ink bottle was found in the hopper,[8] and some substitutes for pens.
Her letters were found replete with artifices respecting modes of
communication. Her next form of amusement was to manufacture a big rag
doll for herself, out of a breadth of her petticoat. When this was
discovered Newman was at exercise walking in the yard, and she heard
that her cell was about to be thoroughly searched. Whereupon she ran
as fast as she could, back to her ward, and endeavoured to prevent the
matrons from entering her cell. When searched herself she resisted
violently, but with the assistance of the wardswoman some written
papers were taken from her, also some leaves from the blank part of
her prayer-book, also written over.

“I understand,” says the governor, “a most extraordinary scene took
place when the prisoner apprehended a search. She rushed to the stove
and thrust certain papers into it, which but for the promptitude of the
wardswoman, who behaved admirably, would soon have succeeded in putting
them beyond investigation. They were however rescued, upon which she
threw her arms round the warder’s neck, kissed her vehemently, went
on her knees, supplicated concealment, tore her hair, and by such
passionate demonstrations evinced the great importance she attached to
the papers. The warder wept, the taskmistress contributed her tears,
the wardswoman was overcome, but all stood faithful. In the midst
of the screaming and confusion came the schoolmaster, who was also
assailed with all the tender importunities of the fair prisoner, but
all in vain.”

By this time the governor arrived upon the scene, the officers
partially recovered from their consternation, and Newman, much less
excited, was disposed to make light of the document recently esteemed
so precious. She said it was only a copy; the original had been torn
up. “What is it then?” “A paper from which my mother and I expect to
gain our liberty. It relates to a person who was the cause of all our
misfortunes.” On inspection it proved to be a statement, or dying
confession, of one Mary Hewett, tending to exculpate the Newmans at
her own expense—probably a draft of what Julia Newman wished Hewett to
say.

Three days later Julia was reported to be in a state of fury. Loud
screaming proceeded from her cell. “I found her in a most violent
paroxysm of rage,” says the governor. “It was most painful to see it.
Not genuine madness did she evince, but that species of temporary
frenzy to which an actress by force of imagination and violent effort
could attain. Towards me she expressed the utmost abhorrence, and
slammed the door in my face. I sent for the surgeon and some male
officers, for her screams and yells, her violence in tearing her hair,
and knocking her head against the wall, made it probable that forcible
restraint would be necessary.”

The surgeon did not wish to have her placed in a dark cell, nor even
in a strait waistcoat, and at his recommendation she was taken to the
infirmary and put in a room by herself; but she was not removed without
a continuance of violent screaming, to the disturbance of the whole
place. Papers were found in her cell, on one of which was written
“a lampoon, composed in doggerel verses, in which she vented the
bitterness of her revenge. I (Mr. Nihil) was the principal object of
her ridicule. It is melancholy to see a young girl of talent and some
attainments so bent upon deception, and when foiled in her artifice
abandoning herself alternately to studied malice and furious rage.”
She remained in the infirmary for three days at the special wish of
the surgeon, though the governor wanted to have her back in her cell.
All the time she continued to feign insanity—a clear imposture of
which the doctors, the governor, and the assistant chaplain were all
convinced. The governor visited her to endeavour to convince her of the
folly and hopelessness of this course; but the moment she saw him she
addressed him with the most insulting expressions, and seizing a can
full of gruel threw it at his head. She was restrained from further
violence, but continued to use the most outrageous exclamations, to the
disturbance of the whole prison. The surgeon now consented to have her
removed to a dark cell; and the governor remarks, “I can account for
her personal hostility to myself thus. She has been defeated in several
attempts to carry on clandestine communications. Until Monday last she
cherished a hope of getting back among the other prisoners, where she
might still prosecute her schemes; but on that day I again refused her,
and my refusal was such as it was hopeless for her to try to alter it.”
She continued in the dark, amusing herself by singing songs of her own
composition, “too regular and too much studied for the productions
of a genuine mad-woman.” She slept well, and ate all the bread they
gave her. The visitor, Mr. Crawford, saw her, and recommended another
medical opinion. Accordingly Mr. White, the former surgeon to the
establishment, was called in, and stated that her madness was assumed,
but he recommended she still should be treated as a patient.

Goaded at length by the continued annoyance, the governor writes to the
committee as follows: “I submit that the case of Julia Newman calls for
some decisive proceeding. There has been time enough—eleven days—to
put to the test whether she is mad in reality or only in pretence. She
has contrived to set all discipline at defiance, continually singing
so as to be heard in every part of the establishment. Her conduct
excites universal attention, and furnishes an example of the grossest
insubordination. If the prisoner is mad, she ought forthwith to be sent
to a mad-house; if not, she ought to be sent abroad as incorrigible.
Yesterday she showed a disposition to return to her senses, as if
tired of the effort of simulation, but did not know how to get out of
her assumed character. To-day she is as bad as ever. No doubt in time
she would come all right, but in the meantime what is to be done with
her? I cannot venture to place her among other prisoners. If she is
to be kept apart the whole time of her imprisonment (of which three
and a half years are unexpired), there is every reason to expect a
constant recurrence of violence and other modes of annoyance; for she
has no respect for authority, and after assaulting the governor and
counterfeiting madness with impunity, she will be emboldened to act as
she likes. If put into a dark cell doubts as to her sanity will arise,
and perhaps her own self-abandonment to violence may superinduce real
madness, and then it will be said that our system at the Penitentiary
had driven her out of her mind. She is far too dangerous a character to
be sent into a ward with other prisoners. She has already tampered with
eight or ten other prisoners, perhaps more.”

There was no end to her deception. In one of the papers taken from her
she asserted that certain property was secreted in a flower-pot, and
buried in a garden in Goswell Street, at the house of one Elderton. The
governor applied to Sir F. Roe, at Bow Street, who said, “Newman has
been before me already. She was charged in an anonymous letter with
infanticide; but on investigation, I found the letter was a malicious
composition of this Mr. Elderton. The letter contained many revolting
particulars, and charged Newman with the utmost barbarity.” The letter
was sent for and examined by Mr. Nihil, who at once recognized the
writing as Newman’s own; and she had evidently written it with the
object of ruining Elderton’s character, and to appear herself as the
victim of a conspiracy. “So wily, ingenious, clever, and unprincipled a
deceiver as this prisoner cannot, I submit, after all that has passed,
be placed amongst others without endangering the subordination and
discipline of the whole ward; and unless the committee are prepared to
direct that she be kept altogether apart, I hope they will bring the
matter to a crisis and send her abroad,” wrote the governor.

For a month this violence of demeanour continued. She was found
uniformly ungovernable. In her cell, when searched at regular
intervals, clandestine writings were always discovered; in one of which
was a long and critical examination of the character of the young
Queen, who had just come to the throne. Mr. Nihil began to despair.
“Julia Newman having continued her pretended madness up to the present
time, to the frequent disturbance of the prison, and having committed
innumerable breaches of order, it became my duty to put a stop to her
proceedings,” he says.

There was no chance of getting rid of her by transportation, as the
last shipload of female convicts for that season had sailed, and there
would be no other till the spring. “This being the case, I thought it
necessary to converse with the prisoner, with a view of convincing
her of the folly of carrying on her attempts, and warning her of the
consequence of any further disturbance. I found her with her head
fantastically dressed, and other ridiculous accompaniments. She would
not hear me—darted out of her cell—stopped her ears, and uttered
several violent exclamations. I made several attempts at expostulation,
but in vain, and therefore I sent her to the dark.” The surgeon thought
her madness all deception. Again: “As my visits to Julia Newman are
only signals for violence, I have abstained from visiting her in
the dark, but inquired into her demeanour from the surgeon. He said
that in his presence she affected to beat herself violently, and
passionately to wish for death. Afterwards, in a manner very unlike
a mad-woman, she said she had been put into a dark cell, but it was
a matter of perfect indifference to her whether she was in a dark or
light cell. As the surgeon turned away she swore at him violently.”
Next day she hammered out her drinking-cup quite flat; and when being
locked up for the night, asserted loudly that she was quite well,
singing and shouting violently. There was an obvious effort of bravado
in her madness. Still the same report comes from the surgeon: “J. N.
continues her affected madness.” The governor sends word he will let
her out of the dark as soon as she promises to behave herself; and then
Miss Neave, one of the lady visitors, goes to her by the governor’s
request, “in the hope that the conversation of a lady, against whom
she could have no prejudice, might have a salutary effect.” It proved
ineffectual. The prisoner said she did not want to be preached to;
would not listen to a word from Miss Neave, threw water at her, singing
also, and shouting in a most powerful voice, so as to baffle all her
attempts. Miss Neave was quite convinced the prisoner’s insanity was
feigned, and that she was only acting a part. At length she was removed
to a sleeping cell in the infirmary for treatment, and here after a
first paroxysm of rage, in which she smashed a basin into atoms, she
assumed a timid aspect, and when spoken to by the taskmistress, wept
like a child. “In the hope she might be a little softened,” says Mr.
Nihil, “I spoke to Miss Frazer, another of the visiting ladies, who
agreed to go to Newman, saying that Julia had always received her with
gentleness and apparent pleasure. On this occasion, however, Newman
behaved with frightful violence, refusing to have any visit, dashing
her can upon the table, and seeming as if she would strike Miss Frazer
if she could. She had already blackened her own eyes, and she appeared
so possessed by despair, that Miss Frazer thought she might do herself
some serious injury, and that her hands should be secured.”

Two days later we read: “Julia Newman is worse than ever. The doctors
say she is not mad, at least Dr. Monro did. Mr. Wade is doubtful.” The
governor himself was of opinion that she was only carrying on a deep
scheme: He says, “I suggested to Mr. Wade, a day or two ago, that if
any circumstance had arisen to make it probable that she was really
deranged, we had better have another opinion, and send her to Bedlam;
but there does not seem any ground for this step. But is the prisoner
to defy all authority, now that the doctor has removed her from the
dark to the infirmary? Certainly not. I therefore called upon the
doctor to report whether there was any danger in subjecting her to
fresh punishment for fresh offences. The surgeon thinks there would be
considerable risk in sending her to the dark cell on bread and water at
present. Had I received a different answer, I should have proceeded
forthwith to act upon the reports against her; but the committee will
see how I am situated. She is too ill for punishment, and gets more
violent and refractory than ever. Her acts of misconduct are: refusing
to take her dinner, tearing up her prayer-book, singing loudly all
the fore-part of the evening, and refusing her breakfast; grazing her
nose, so that her face presents the most frightful appearance; asking
for a can of water and then throwing it all over the taskmistress.”
No further steps are taken at the moment, beyond providing a special
strait waistcoat to be used in case of emergency. But she still
continues in the infirmary. About 7 o’clock that evening she is heard
screaming loudly. After some time the governor sends to ask the
surgeon if he was aware of it. Answer comes to say that he is ill in
bed. Second message (oh, cunning governor-chaplain!): “Would it be
objectionable to her health to remove her to the dark?” Surgeon, asking
only to be left in peace, replies, “Nothing to prevent her being placed
anywhere.” This is all the governor wants. Off she goes to the dark,
where she remains till she is reported to be singing as loudly as ever
in her cell, and won’t give up her rug. Next she is found lying on her
back, with a handkerchief knotted tightly around her neck. As soon as
she was better, she uttered the following impromptu:—

  “What a pity hell’s gates are not kept by dame King,
  So surly a cur would let nobody in”—

Mrs. King being the infirmary warder. Then the assistant chaplain
visited her, and was treated with the utmost insolence. She attacked
Mrs. Dyett, another matron, and knocked the candlestick out of her
hand, “triumphing at the same time at her exploit. Upon this I ordered
her to be confined in the strait waistcoat made expressly for her under
the directions of the surgeon.” Some time after this the doctor visits
her, and finds she has not only rid herself of the restraint, but she
has also torn the waistcoat and most of her own clothes to atoms.
Nevertheless, he thinks her so unwell that he removes her again to
the infirmary. From this, in the course of a few days, she returns to
her ward. The cell, however, could not hold her, and she soon forced
her way out into the passage. Another new, and much stronger strait
waistcoat, specially constructed, was now put on her by a couple of
male officers. Within an hour or two it was found slashed to ribbons,
and on a close search a pair of scissors were discovered under her arm,
accounting no doubt for the destruction.

Her next offence is to slap a matron in the face. Again the strait
waistcoat is tried, this time a newer and a still stronger one; but it
is found too large to be of any use, so the old method is resorted to
and she is sent to the dark instead. For a time she appears tamed, and
for quite a month she remains quiet, though still “unconformable.” She
is, however, next reported for making three baskets from the straw of
her mattress and part of the leaves of her Bible. She has written a
long incoherent statement, probably with a stocking needle for pen, and
some blood and water for ink. The warders when questioned showed great
lack of desire to perform their duties. The truth is, the prisoner was
very difficult to deal with, and they were all more or less afraid
of her. “It is no wonder,” says the governor, “that a person of her
strength, violence, and mental superiority, combined with reckless
determination and obstinacy, should inspire these terrors; and I really
cannot blame these officers. Without perpetually searching her person,
as well as her bedding, it would be impossible to guard against the
practices just reported, but this would occasion perpetual disturbance,
leading to no good end, but doing much mischief in the Penitentiary.”
Convinced that Millbank’s means of punishment are totally inadequate to
attain the end of reforming her, or compelling obedience, the governor,
to avoid constant worry, was content to leave her quite to herself,
keeping her apart—in itself a heavy punishment—and restricting her to
bread and water when she broke the rules.

Newman, however, would not consent to be forgotten. Her next offence
was to refuse to give out her cell stool, and when the door was
opened she flung it with great violence at her warder’s head, but
the latter fortunately evaded the blow. The governor and the male
officers together repaired to the spot in order to remove this most
rebellious and dangerous prisoner to the dark. Her subsequent conduct
was all of the same stamp. None but the most prominent features admit
of being reported, her life here being in fact one continued system
of insult and contempt. “In the dark cell she levelled her tin can
at the surgeon, and the contents fell upon the taskmistress; had
either of them been struck by the vessel it might have been of serious
consequence. Her cell has since been examined, and several figures
and other articles have been discovered. They exhibit extraordinary
resource and ingenuity, unhappily directed to the flagitious purpose of
destroying property and manifesting contempt of authority.”

As soon as she went to the dark, the surgeon recommended that she
should be removed to the infirmary, as she appeared much exhausted.
“I thought it necessary to remonstrate against this,” says the
governor, “as it appeared ill-timed lenity. I am very reluctant to
liberate the prisoner from punishment for several reasons. Every fresh
victory which under the plea of ill-health she has achieved, has been
productive of increased insolence; and I have often lamented to see
her indulged with arrowroot and similar niceties at the very time she
has been defying all authority. The female officers entertain just
apprehensions in waiting on her in the usual manner when restored to a
sleeping cell, and with regard to the mode of punishing her on fresh
offences I am quite perplexed. I might again send her to the dark,
again to be restored in an unsubdued state to a sleeping cell, and so
on continually, but I am obliged to resort to male assistance, and this
I find by experience has a very injurious effect upon the other female
prisoners, many of whom take it into their heads to brave all female
authority, and require the men to be sent for before they will submit.”
The governor thinks, “All prisoners whose insubordinate spirit does
not yield to the ordinary method of treatment, should be reported as
incorrigible and removed.... The moral injury they do to the residue by
long continued examples of rebellion is incalculable.”

The assistant chaplain reported on 12th December, that he found
Julia Newman exceedingly exhausted, and that the news of a letter
from Trinidad to her mother failed to rouse her. She had only eaten
a little of the crust of her bread, and he was alarmed as to the
consequences which might follow if she were allowed to remain longer
in the dark cell. Mr. Nihil was still firm. He says: “I remarked that
her exhaustion was owing not to confinement in a dark cell, but to an
obstinate refusal to eat her bread; and that I could not compel her to
eat; if she would not eat unless humoured in this instance, she might
as well refuse to eat unless I let her out of the prison, and that I
should not be justified in complying from apprehension of danger to her
health thus wilfully incurred. In like manner it seemed now as if she
chose to starve herself because she was not allowed to throw stools at
the heads of officers. But of course I have no desire to keep her under
punishment a moment after she shows a disposition to conform to the
regulations and maintain that quietness I am here to enforce.”

The surgeon was now sent for, and asked what he thought. He was afraid
it would be necessary to remove her on the ground of safety, being
persuaded she would sacrifice her life sooner than yield.

“If you think she cannot be kept under punishment with safety, I must
submit to your opinion,” said the governor. “It is for you to determine
that, otherwise I must distinctly object; for the duties of my office
will not permit me to give in to her while she continues insubordinate.”

“It’s not the dark cell,” replied the doctor, “that constitutes her
danger, but her persistent refusal to eat so long as she is kept there.”

“Very well then,” said the governor; “you may remove her. I cannot
stand in the way and prevent you from acting on your own judgment.”

The surgeon went, and in five minutes returned.

“Well?”

“There’s not much the matter with her yet. Directly she saw me she
began to sing and scream, with a voice as loud as if she had lived
always on solid meat. She pelted me with bread—refused to come and have
her pulse felt—abused, insulted me in every way, and finally said she
was just as well in the dark as anywhere else.”

Under these circumstances it was decided to leave her where she was
for the present, especially as a forcible removal might have created a
general disturbance in the prison.

The next step in the case was her removal to Bethlehem Hospital as mad.
But even this was misconstrued; for when, in the February following
(1838), a discussion arose in the House of Lords as to alleged
ill-treatment of prisoners in the Penitentiary, Newman’s case was
mentioned as one in which, on the other hand, culpable leniency had
been shown. Those who found fault declared that she had been sent to an
asylum, not because she was mad, but because by birth a lady. The same
people declared that it was well known that she was not mad, and that
she never had been. The matrons at Bethlehem knew this well, and had
told her to her face that she was only feigning; whereupon she ceased
to feign. Then as it was clear she was not mad, it was equally clear
that Bethlehem was not the place for her.

Accordingly, she was returned to the Penitentiary; and back she came,
exhibiting throughout the most sullen contempt, and persistently
refusing to open her lips. Directly she arrived she again began her
tricks. Deliberately insolent refusals to execute the orders she
received, and open contempt of punishment, were the leading points on
which she differed with the authorities. Again the governor urges on
the committee that she may be removed by transportation, she being,
under existing circumstances, both intractable and incorrigible. “If
I am to maintain discipline where she is, it must be by entering
perpetually into fresh and perplexing contests, the outcome of which
may be very awful as respects the prisoner and exceedingly embarrassing
as respects the institution,” he writes. She next pretends to wish to
lay hands upon herself, and her rug is found torn up and converted into
a noose. It was hanging to a peg in her cell, like a halter ready for
use. The authorities considered it advisable therefore to place her in
restraint, in a new strait waistcoat which fitted close. In an hour or
two she had torn it all to pieces. The next proceeding was to confine
her hands in a very small pair of handcuffs, and to pinion her arms
with strong tape. The waistcoat appearing to have been cut, she and
her cell were searched, but no knife or scissors could be found, and
only a piece of broken glass which she must have used for the purpose.
She soon afterwards loosened the tape, and was then bound with strong
webbing to the bedstead. Next morning she was found to have got rid of
the handcuffs, had cut the webbing to pieces, broken her windows, and
destroyed her bedding. One of the female warders was therefore sent to
a surgical instrument maker’s to purchase some effectual instrument of
restraint, and returned with a muff-belt and handcuffs, all united,
and ingeniously contrived to defeat the struggles of lunatics—quite a
new invention. Before long she completely destroyed the muff and got
rid of the handcuffs attached to it. She was next secured to the wall
by a stout chain.

An officer, Mrs. Drago, who visited her just now, asked her why she
should make such a figure of herself, pretending to be mad too, when
she wasn’t. “I’ve been advised to do it by my solicitor. If I can only
get out, I’ll soon manage to get my mother out. I’m a person of large
fortune, and can make it worth any one’s while to do me a good turn.
Mrs. Bryant used to, but she’s gone. That used to be my larder, over
there,”—pointing to the window blind. Her evident object was to tamper
with Mrs. Drago, and this of itself gave evidence that she could not be
very mad.

The chain by which she was now confined was put round her waist, passed
through a ring in the wall, and padlocked. “This security was of short
duration,” says the governor, “before morning she had slipped through
the chain. It was again placed on her in a more effectual manner,
under, instead of outside her clothes.... As she had destroyed so much
of her bedding I ordered her to have no more bedclothes. In the evening
she made the most violent demand for a blanket, and said she was dying
of cramp and cold.... As a matter of discipline I thought it my duty
to refuse the blanket unless ordered by the surgeon. When she heard
this she quite frightened the female officer with the frightful and
horrible imprecations she uttered.”

In consequence of her getting out of her chain the manufacturer of
restraints for the insane came to devise some fresh expedient for
confining her. He made a pair of leather sleeves of extra strength,
and fitted them himself. They came up to her shoulders, were strapped
across, then also strapped round her waist, and again below, fastening
her hands close to her side.

Next morning the taskmistress took the sleeves to the governor. In
the night Julia had extricated herself from them, and then cut them
into ribbons, using a piece of glass she had secreted. A new strait
waistcoat was now made for her, and she was specially measured by the
manufacturer already mentioned; but it could not be ready before the
morning, so she was left without restraint that night. Many of the
officials were afraid she would commit suicide, but not Mr. Nihil.
However, next morning she was found with her clothes torn to rags, and
part tied tightly round her neck. As a measure of precaution the new
strait waistcoat was then put on, after she had been first carefully
searched. A strong collar was also put round her neck to prevent her
biting at the waistcoat with her teeth. “I lament exceedingly,” says
Mr. Nihil, “the necessity of resorting to such measures; but what is
to be done with this violent and obstinate girl?” Next morning she was
found to have got at the waistcoat with her teeth in spite of the
collar, then one hand loose, after which she relieved herself of the
apparatus altogether.

She was now left free, while fresh devices were sought to restrain
her, but in the midst of it all came an order for her removal to Van
Diemen’s Land, whither she was in a day or two conveyed in the convict
ship _Nautilus_. And here the curtain falls upon her stormy life.




CHAPTER IX

THE MILLBANK CALENDAR

 Millbank as a depot for convicts sentenced to
 transportation—Identified with a large proportion of the criminals
 of the day—Notorious robbers who spent some period of their sentence
 there—Burglars—Jewel robberies—The receivers of stolen goods—Thieves
 at the Custom House—Great Gold Dust robbery—“Money Moses”—Fraudulent
 shipwreckers—Forgeries to obtain stock—Gentlemen convicts—Gigantic
 commercial fraud—A modern Bluebeard—A racing parson—“Men of the
 world”—Striking the Queen—Bank of England robbed—Cauty, “father of
 the robbers”—A famous receiver—The Police Officers’ gang—Some female
 thieves—Alice Grey or “Brazil”—Emily Laurence—Daring thefts.


For some time past Millbank had doubled its uses; a penitentiary for
reformation and a depot for those awaiting transportation quickly
beyond the seas. It had ceased to receive only selected prisoners
and worked under the general system of secondary punishment; and
many of the most notorious criminals of the day made it a temporary
resting-place. We have seen in previous chapters how persistently
turbulent were the inmates of the prison and we shall better understand
this by a survey of the most prominent offenders of the time, and the
misdeeds for which they were in durance _en route_ to penal exile.
Criminal methods for the most part remained unchanged or the same
crimes flourished under different names.

Although highway robbery was now nearly extinct, and felonious outrages
in the streets were rare, thieves or depredators were by no means idle
or unsuccessful. Bigger “jobs” than ever were planned and attempted, as
in the burglary at Lambeth Palace, when the thieves were fortunately
disappointed, the archbishop having, before he left town, sent his
plate-chests, eight in number, to the silversmith’s for greater
security. The jewellers were always a favourite prey of the London
thieves. Shops were broken into, as when that of Grimaldi and Johnson,
in the Strand, was robbed of watches to the value of £6,000. Where
robbery with violence was intended, the perpetrators had now to adopt
various shifts and contrivances to secure their victim. No more curious
instance of this ever occurred than the assault made by one Howard
upon a Mr. Mullay, with intent to rob him. The latter had advertised,
offering a sum of £1,000 to any one who would introduce him to some
mercantile employment. Howard replied, desiring Mr. Mullay to call
upon him in a house in Red Lion Square. Mr. Mullay went, and a second
interview was agreed upon, when a third person, Mr. Owen, through
whose interest an appointment under Government was to be obtained for
Mullay, would be present. Mr. Mullay called again, taking with him £500
in cash. Howard discovered this, and his manner was very suspicious;
there were weapons in the room—a long knife, a heavy trap-ball bat,
and a poker. Mr. Mullay became alarmed, and as Mr. Owen did not
appear, withdrew; Howard, strange to say, making no attempt to detain
him; probably because Mullay promised to return a few days later,
and to bring more money. On this renewed visit Mr. Owen was still
absent, and Mr. Mullay agreed to write him a note from a copy Howard
gave him. While thus engaged, Howard thrust the poker into the fire.
Mullay protested, and then Howard, under the influence of ungovernable
rage, as it seemed, jumped up, locked the door, and attacked Mullay
violently with the trap-ball bat and knife. Mullay defended himself,
and managed to break the knife, but not before he had cut himself
severely. A life and death struggle ensued. Mullay cried “Murder!”
Howard swore he would finish him, but proved the weaker of the two,
and Mullay got him down on the floor. By this time the neighbours were
aroused, and several people came to the scene of the affray. Howard was
secured, given into custody, and committed for trial. The defence he
set up was, that Mullay had used epithets towards him while they were
negotiating a business matter, and that, being of an irritable temper,
he had struck Mullay, after which a violent scuffle took place. It was,
however, proved that Howard was in needy circumstances, and that his
proposals to Mr. Mullay could only have originated in a desire to rob
him. He was found guilty of an assault with intent, and sentenced to
transportation for fourteen years.

At no period could thieves in London or elsewhere have prospered had
they been unable to dispose of their ill-gotten goods. The trade of
fence, or receiver, therefore, is very nearly as old as the crimes
which it so obviously fostered. One of the most notorious, and for
a time most successful practitioners in this illicit trade, passed
through Newgate into Millbank and beyond. The name of Ikey Solomons
was long remembered by thief and thief-taker. He began as an itinerant
street vendor at eight years of age, at ten he passed bad money, at
fourteen he was a pickpocket and a “duffer,” or a seller of sham
goods. He early saw the profits in purchasing stolen goods, but could
not embark in it at first for want of capital. He was taken up when
still in his teens for stealing a pocket-book, and was sentenced to
transportation, but did not get beyond the hulks at Chatham. On his
release an uncle, a slopseller in Chatham, gave him a situation as
“barker,” or salesman, at which he realized £150 within a couple of
years. With this capital he returned to London and set up as a fence.
He had such great aptitude for business, and such a thorough knowledge
of the real value of goods, that he was soon admitted to be one of the
best judges known of all kinds of property, from a glass bottle to a
five hundred guinea chronometer. But he never paid more than a fixed
price for all articles of the same class, whatever their intrinsic
value. Thus, a watch was paid for as a watch, whether it was of gold or
silver; a piece of linen as such, whether the stuff was coarse or fine.
This rule in dealing with stolen goods continues to this day, and has
made the fortune of many since Ikey.

Solomons also established a system of provincial agency, by which
stolen goods were passed on from London to the seaports, and so
abroad. Jewels were re-set, diamonds re-faced; all marks by which
other articles might be identified, the selvages of linen, the stamps
on shoes, the number and names on watches, were carefully removed or
obliterated after the goods passed out of his hands. On one occasion
the whole of the proceeds of a robbery from a boot shop was traced to
Solomons’; the owner came with the police, and was morally convinced
that it was his property, but could not positively identify it, and
Ikey defied them to remove a single shoe. In the end the injured
bootmaker agreed to buy back his stolen stock at the price Solomons had
paid for it, and it cost him about a hundred pounds to re-stock his
shop with his own goods.

As a general rule Ikey Solomons confined his purchases to small
articles, mostly of jewelry and plate, which he kept concealed in
a hiding-place with a trap-door just under his bed. He lived in
Rosemary Lane, and sometimes he had as much as £20,000 worth of goods
secreted on the premises. When his trade was busiest he set up a
second establishment, at the head of which, although he was married,
he put another lady, with whom he was on intimate terms. The second
house was in Lower Queen Street, Islington, and he used it for some
time as a depot for valuables. But it was eventually discovered by
Mrs. Solomons, a very jealous wife, and this, with the danger arising
from an extensive robbery of watches in Cheapside, in which Ikey
was implicated as a receiver, led him to think seriously of trying
his fortunes in another land. He was about to emigrate to New South
Wales, when he was arrested at Islington and committed to Newgate on a
charge of receiving stolen goods. While thus incarcerated he managed
to escape from custody, but not actually from gaol, by an ingenious
contrivance which is worth mentioning. He claimed to be admitted to
bail, and was taken from Newgate on a writ of _habeas_ before one of
the judges sitting at Westminster. He was conveyed in a coach driven by
a confederate, and under the escort of a couple of turnkeys. Solomons,
while waiting to appear in court, persuaded the turnkeys to take him to
a public-house, where all might “refresh.” While there he was joined
by his wife and other friends. After a short carouse the prisoner went
into Westminster, his case was heard, bail refused, and he was ordered
back to Newgate. But he once more persuaded the turnkeys to pause
at the public, where more liquor was consumed. When the journey was
resumed, Mrs. Solomons accompanied her husband in the coach. Half-way
to Newgate she was taken with a fit. One turnkey was stupidly drunk,
and Ikey persuaded the other, who was not much better, to let the
coach change and pass Petticoat Lane _en route_ to the gaol, where the
suffering woman might be handed over to her friends. On stopping at a
door in this low street, Ikey jumped out, ran into the house, slamming
the door behind him. He passed through and out at the back, and was
soon beyond pursuit. By and by the turnkeys, sobered by their loss,
returned to Newgate alone, and pleaded in excuse that they had been
drugged.

Ikey left no traces, and the police could hear nothing of him. He had
in fact gone out of the country, to Copenhagen, whence he passed on
to New York. There he devoted himself to the circulation of forged
notes. He was also anxious to do business in watches, and begged his
wife to send him over a consignment of cheap “righteous” watches, or
such as had been honestly obtained, and not “on the cross.” But Mrs.
Solomons could not resist the temptation to dabble in stolen goods,
and she was found shipping watches of the wrong category to New York.
For this she received a sentence of fourteen years’ transportation,
and was sent to Van Diemen’s Land. Ikey joined her at Hobart Town,
where they set up a general shop, and soon began to prosper. He was,
however, recognized, and ere long an order came out from home for his
arrest and transfer to England, which presently followed, and he again
found himself an inmate of Newgate, waiting trial as a receiver and a
prison-breaker. He was indicted on eight charges, two only of which
were substantiated, but on each of them he received a sentence of seven
years’ transportation. At his own request he was reconveyed to Hobart
Town, where his son had been carrying on the business. Whether Ikey was
“assigned” to his own family is not recorded, but no doubt he succeeded
to his own property when the term of servitude had expired.

No doubt, on the removal of Ikey Solomons from the scene, his mantle
fell upon worthy successors. There was an increase rather than an
abatement in jewel and bullion robberies in the years immediately
following, and the thieves seem to have had no difficulty in disposing
of their spoil. One of the largest robberies of its class was that
effected upon the Custom House in the winter of 1834. A large amount
of specie was nearly always retained here in the department of the
receiver of fines. This was known to some clerks in the office, who
began to consider how they might lay hands on a lot of cash. Being
inexperienced, they decided to call in the services of a couple of
professional housebreakers, Jordan and Sullivan, who at once set to
work in a business-like way to obtain impressions of the keys of the
strong room and chest. But before committing themselves to an attempt
on the latter, it was of importance to ascertain how much it usually
contained. For this purpose Jordan waited on the receiver to make a
small payment, for which he tendered a fifty-pound note. The chest was
opened to give change, and a heavy tray lifted out which plainly held
some £4,000 in cash. Some difficulty then arose as to gaining admission
to the strong room, and it was arranged that a man, May, another Custom
House clerk, should be introduced into the building, and secreted there
during the night to accomplish the robbery. May was smuggled in through
a window on the esplanade behind an opened umbrella. When the place
was quite deserted he broke open the chest and stole £4,700 in notes,
with a quantity of gold and some silver. He went out next morning with
the booty when the doors were re-opened, and attracted no attention.
The spoil was fairly divided; part of the notes were disposed of to
a travelling “receiver,” who passed over to the Continent and there
cashed them easily.

This occurred in November 1834. The Custom House officials were in a
state of consternation, and the police were unable at first to get
on the track of the thieves. While the excitement was still fresh, a
new robbery of diamonds was committed at a bonded warehouse in the
immediate neighbourhood, on Custom House Quay. The jewels had belonged
to a Spanish countess recently deceased, who had sent them to England
for greater security on the outbreak of the first Carlist war. At her
death the diamonds were divided between her four daughters, but only
half had been claimed, and at the time of the robbery there were still
£6,000 worth in the warehouse. These were deposited in an iron chest of
great strength on the second floor. The thieves, it was supposed, had
secreted themselves in the warehouse during business hours, and waited
till night to carry out their plans. Some ham sandwiches, several
cigar-ends, and two empty champagne bottles were found on the premises
next day, showing how they had passed their time. They had had serious
work to get at the diamonds. It was necessary to force one heavy door
from its hinges, and to cut through the thick panels of another. The
lock and fastenings of the chest were forced by means of a “jack,” an
instrument known to housebreakers, which, if introduced into a keyhole,
and worked like a bit and brace, will soon destroy the strongest lock.
The thieves were satisfied with the diamonds; they broke open other
cases containing gold watches and plate, but abstracted nothing.

The police were of opinion that these robberies were both the work of
the same hand. But it was not until the autumn that they traced some
of the notes stolen from the Custom House to Jordan and Sullivan.
About this time also suspicion fell upon Huey, one of the clerks, who
was arrested soon afterwards, and made a clean breast of the whole
affair. There was a hunt for the two well-known housebreakers, who were
eventually heard of at a lodging in Kennington. But they at once made
tracks, and took up their residence under assumed names in a tavern in
Bloomsbury. The police lost all trace of them for some days, but at
length Sullivan’s brother was followed from the house in Kennington
to the above-mentioned tavern. Both the thieves were now apprehended,
but only a small portion of the lost property was recovered,
notwithstanding a minute search through the room they had occupied.
After their arrest, Jordan’s wife and Sullivan’s brother came to the
inn, and begged to be allowed to visit this room; but their request, in
spite of their earnest entreaties, was refused, at the instigation of
the police. A few days later a frequent guest at the tavern arrived,
and had this same room allotted to him. A fire was lit in it, and
the maid in doing so threw a lot of rubbish, as it seemed, which had
accumulated under the grate, on top of the burning coals. By and by the
occupant of the room noticed something glittering in the centre of the
fire, which, to inspect more closely, he took out with the tongs. It
was a large gold brooch set in pearls, but a portion of the mounting
had melted with the heat. The fire was raked out, and in the ashes were
found seven large and four dozen small brilliants, also seven emeralds,
one of them of considerable size. A part of the “swag” stolen from the
bonded warehouse was thus recovered, but it was supposed that a number
of the stolen notes had perished in the fire.

The condign punishment meted out to these Custom House robbers had no
deterrent effect seemingly. Within three months, three new and most
mysterious burglaries were committed at the West End, all in houses
adjoining each other. One was occupied by the Portuguese ambassador,
who lost a quantity of jewelry from an escritoire, and his neighbours
lost plate and cash. Not the slightest clue to these large affairs was
ever obtained, but it is probable that they were “put up” jobs, or
managed with the complicity of servants. The next year twelve thousand
sovereigns were cleverly stolen in the Mile End Road.

The gold-dust robbery of 1839, the first of its kind, was cleverly
and carefully planned with the assistance of a dishonest employee. A
young man named Caspar, clerk to a steamship company, learned through
the firm’s correspondence that a quantity of gold-dust brought in a
man-of-war from Brazil had been transhipped at Falmouth for conveyance
to London. The letter informed him of the marks and sizes of the cases
containing the precious metal, and he with his father arranged that
a messenger should call for the stuff with forged credentials, thus
anticipating the rightful owner. The fraudulent messenger, by the
help of young Caspar, established his claim to the boxes, paid the
wharfage dues, and carried off the gold-dust. Presently the proper
person arrived from the consignees, but found the gold-dust gone. The
police were at once employed, and after infinite pains they discovered
the person, one Moss, who had acted as the messenger. Moss was known
to be intimate with the elder Caspar, father of the clerk to the
steamship company, and these facts were deemed sufficient to justify
the arrest of all three. They also ascertained that a gold-refiner,
Solomons, had sold bar gold to the value of £1,200 to certain bullion
dealers. Solomons was not straightforward in his replies as to where
he got the gold, and he was soon placed in the dock with the Caspars
and Moss. Moss presently turned approver, and implicated “Money Moses,”
another Jew, for the whole affair had been planned and executed by
members of the Hebrew persuasion. “Money Moses” had received the
stolen gold-dust from Moss’ father-in-law, Davis, or Isaacs, who was
never arrested, and passed it on to Solomons by his daughter, a widow
named Abrahams. Solomons was now also admitted as a witness, and
his evidence, with that of Moss, secured the transportation of the
principal actors in the theft. In the course of the trial it came out
that almost every one concerned except the Caspars had endeavoured
to defraud his accomplices. Moss peached because he declared he had
been done out of the proper price of the gold-dust; but it was clear
that he had tried to appropriate the whole of the stuff, instead of
handing it or the price of it back to the Caspars. “Money Moses” and
Mrs. Abrahams imposed upon Moss as to the price paid by Solomons; Mrs.
Abrahams imposed upon her father by abstracting a portion of the dust
and selling it on her own account; Solomons cheated the whole lot by
retaining half the gold in his possession, and only giving an I. O.
U. for it, which he refused to redeem on account of the row about the
robbery.

Moses, it may be added, was a direct descendant of the Ikey Solomons
already mentioned. He was ostensibly a publican, and kept the Black
Lion in Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, where secretly he did business as one
of the most daring and successful fencers ever known in the metropolis.
His arrest and conviction cast dismay over the whole gang of receivers,
and for a time seriously checked the nefarious traffic. It may be added
that prison life did not agree with “Money Moses;” a striking change
came over his appearance while in prison. Before his confinement he
had been a sleek round person, addicted obviously to the pleasures
of the table. He did not thrive on prison fare, now more strictly
meagre, thanks to the inspectors and the more stringent discipline, and
before he embarked for Australia to undergo his fourteen years, he was
reported to have fallen away to a shadow.

As the century advanced crimes of fraud increased. They were not only
more numerous, but on a wider scale. The most extensive and systematic
robberies were planned so ingeniously and carried out so cleverly that
they long escaped detection. Among the earliest of the big operators
in fraudulent finance was Edward Beaumont Smith who uttered false
exchequer bills to an almost fabulous amount. Another fraud greatly
developed was the wilful shipwreck and casting away of a ship which
with her cargo, real or imaginary, had been heavily insured. The
_Dryad_ was a brig owned principally by two persons named Wallace,
one a seaman, the other a merchant. She was freighted by the firm of
Zulueta and Co. for a voyage to Santa Cruz. Her owners insured her for
a full sum of £2,000, after which the Wallaces insured her privily
with other underwriters for a second sum of £2,000. After this, on the
faith of forged bills of lading, the captain, Loose by name, being a
party to the intended fraud, they obtained further insurances on goods
never shipped. It was fully proved in evidence that when the _Dryad_
sailed she carried nothing but the cargo belonging to Zulueta and Co.
Yet the Wallaces pretended to have put on board quantities of flannels,
cloths, cotton prints, beef, pork, butter, and earthenwares, on all of
which they effected insurances. Loose had his instructions to cast away
the ship on the first possible opportunity, and from the time of his
leaving Liverpool he acted in a manner which excited the suspicions of
the crew. The larboard pump was suffered to remain choked up, and the
long-boat was fitted with tackles and held ready for use at a moment’s
notice. The ship, however, met with exasperatingly fine weather, and
it was not until the captain reached the West India Islands that he
got a chance of accomplishing his crime. At a place called the Silver
Keys he ran the ship on the reef. But another ship, concluding that he
was acting in ignorance, rendered him assistance. The _Dryad_ was got
off, repaired, and her voyage renewed to Santa Cruz. He crept along the
coast close in shore, looking for a quiet spot to cast away the ship,
and at last, when within fifteen miles of port, with wind and weather
perfectly fair, he ran her on to the rocks. Even then she might have
been saved, but the captain would not suffer the crew to act. Nearly
the whole of the cargo was lost as well as the ship. The captain and
crew, however, got safely to Jamaica, and so to England, the captain
dying on the voyage home.

The crime soon became public. Mate, carpenter, and crew were eager to
disavow complicity, and voluntarily gave information. The Wallaces
were arrested, committed to Newgate, and tried at the Old Bailey.
The case was clearly proved against them, and both were sentenced to
transportation for life. While lying in Newgate, awaiting removal to
the convict ship, both prisoners made full confessions. According
to their own statements the loss of the _Dryad_ was only one of
six intentional shipwrecks with which they had been concerned. The
crime of fraudulent insurance they declared was very common, and the
underwriters must have lost great sums in this way. The merchant
Wallace said he had been led into the crime by the advice and example
of a city friend who had gone largely into this nefarious business;
this Wallace added that his friend had made several voyages with the
distinct intention of superintending the predetermined shipwrecks. The
other Wallace, the sailor, also traced his lapse into crime to evil
counsel. He was an honest sea-captain, he said, trading from Liverpool,
where once he had the misfortune to be introduced to a man of wealth,
the foundations of which had been laid by buying old ships on purpose
to cast them away. This person made much of Wallace, encouraged his
attentions to his daughter, and tempted him to take to fraudulent
insurance as a certain method of achieving fortune. Wallace’s relations
warned him against his Liverpool friend, but he would not take their
advice, and developing his transactions, ended as we have seen.

A clergyman nearly a century later followed in the steps of Dr. Dodd,
but under more humane laws did not lose his life. The Rev. W. Bailey,
LL. D., was convicted at the Central Criminal Court, in February,
1843, of forgery. A notorious miser, Robert Smith, had recently died
in Seven Dials, where he had amassed a considerable fortune. But among
the charges on the estate he left was a promissory note for £2,875,
produced by Dr. Bailey, and purporting to be signed by Smith. The
executors to the estate disputed the validity of this document. Miss
Bailey, the doctor’s sister, in whose favour the note was said to have
been given, then brought an action against the administrators, and at
the trial Dr. Bailey swore that the note had been given him by Smith.
The jury did not believe him, and the verdict was for the defendants.
Subsequently Bailey was arrested on a charge of forgery, and after a
long trial found guilty. His sentence was transportation for life.

A gigantic conspiracy to defraud was discovered in the following
year, when a solicitor named William Henry Barber, Joshua Fletcher,
a surgeon, and three others were charged with forging wills for the
purpose of obtaining unclaimed stock in the funds. There were two
separate affairs. In the first a maiden lady, Miss Slack, who was the
possessor of two separate sums in consols, neglected through strange
carelessness on her own part and that of her friends to draw the
dividends on more than one sum. The other, remaining unclaimed for ten
years, was transferred at the end of that time to the commissioners for
the reduction of the National Debt. Barber, it was said, became aware
of this, and he gained access to Miss Slack on pretence of conveying
to her some funded property left her by an aunt. By this means her
signature was obtained; a forged will was prepared bequeathing the
unclaimed stock to Miss Slack; a note purporting to be from Miss Slack
was addressed to the governor of the Bank of England, begging that the
said stock might be handed over to her, and a person calling herself
Miss Slack duly attended at the bank, where the money was handed over
to her in proper form. A second will, also forged, was propounded
at Doctors’ Commons as that of a Mrs. Hunt of Bristol. Mrs. Hunt
had left money in the funds which remained unclaimed, and had been
transferred, as in Miss Slack’s case. Here again the money, with ten
years’ interest, was handed over to Barber and another calling himself
Thomas Hunt, an executor of the will. It was shown that the will must
be a forgery, as its signature was dated 1829, whereas Mrs. Hunt
actually died in 1806. A third similar fraud to the amount of £2,000
was also brought to light. Fletcher was the moving spirit of the whole
business. It was he who had introduced Barber to Miss Slack, and held
all the threads of these intricate and nefarious transactions. Barber
and Fletcher were both transported for life, although Fletcher declared
that Barber was innocent, and had no guilty knowledge of what was being
done. Barber was subsequently pardoned, but was not replaced on the
rolls as an attorney till 1855, when Lord Campbell delivered judgment
on Barber’s petition, to the effect that “the evidence to establish his
(Barber’s) connivance in the frauds was too doubtful for us to continue
his exclusion any longer.”

Foremost on the Millbank calendar stand those of the upper classes,
who were afterwards styled in Australia, “specials,” or “gentlemen
convicts.” It was said that of these there were at one and the
same time in Millbank two captains, a baronet, four clergymen, a
solicitor, and one or two doctors of medicine. The tradition is _ben
trovato_, if not exactly true. Of course in such a prison there would
be representatives of every class, and although the percentage of
gentlemen who commit crimes is in the long run far below that of the
middle or lower classes, there is no special natural law by which the
blue blood is exempted from the ordinary weakness and imperfections of
humanity. Most of these genteel people who found themselves in Millbank
owed their fate to forgery or fraud. There was the old gentleman
of seventy years of age, who had been a mayor in a north-country
manufacturing town, and who had forged and defrauded his nieces out
of some £360,000. The officers spoke of him as “a fine old fellow,”
who took to his new task of tailoring like a man, and who could soon
turn out a soldier’s great-coat as well as any one in the prison.
Another convict of this stamp was Mr. T., a Liverpool merchant in a
prosperous business, who was a forger on quite a colossal scale. It
was proved at his trial that he had forged thirty bills of exchange,
amounting to a total of £32,811, and that he had a guilty knowledge
of one hundred and fifteen other bills, which were valued in all at
£133,000. In his defence it was urged that he had taken up many bills
before they were due, and would undoubtedly have taken up all had not
the discovery of one forgery exposed his frauds and put an end suddenly
to his business. Still, said his counsel, his estate could have paid
from twelve to fifteen shillings in the pound, and it could hardly be
maintained against him that he had any moral intention of defrauding.
Judge Talfourd appears to have commented strongly, in summing up, upon
such an idea of morality as this; and then and there sentenced Mr. T.
to transportation for life. Unfortunately for the criminal himself,
his sentence came a little too late: had he gone out to New South
Wales twenty years earlier, with his commercial aptitude and generally
unscrupulous plan of action, he would have run well to the front in the
race for wealth amidst his felon competitors.

More contemptible, but not less atrocious, was the conduct of Mr. B.,
who had taken his diploma as surgeon, and practised as such in many
parts of the country. His offence was bigamy on a large scale: he was
guilty of a series of heartless deceptions, so that it was said the
scene in court when this Blue Beard was finally arraigned, and all
his victims appeared against him, was painful in the extreme. He was
brought to book by the friend of a young lady to whom he was trying to
pay his attentions. This gentleman, being somewhat suspicious, made
inquiries, and discovered enough to have him arrested. Four different
certificates of marriage were put in evidence. It seemed that, although
already married in Cornwall, he moved thence and took a practice in
another county, where he became acquainted with a lady residing in
the neighbourhood, who had a little money of her own. He made her
an offer, married her, and then found that by marriage she forfeited
the annuity she previously enjoyed. After a short time he deserted
her, having first obtained possession of all her clothes, furniture,
trinkets, and so forth, which he sold. His next affair was on board an
East Indiaman bound to Calcutta, in which he sailed as surgeon—wishing
doubtless to keep out of the way for a while. Among the passengers was
a Miss B., only fifteen years of age, who was going out to the East
with her mother and sisters. He succeeded in gaining her affections,
and obtained the mother’s consent to the marriage on arrival at
Calcutta. He made out, by means of fraudulent documents prepared on
purpose, that he had inherited £5,000 from his father, and offered to
settle £3,000 on his bride. The marriage came off in due course at
Calcutta, and then the happy pair returned to England. Soon after their
arrival, Mr. B. deserted his new wife in a hotel in Liverpool, and
after that he began the affair which led to his detection.

Mr. B. is remembered in Millbank as a man of considerable attainments.
He was well educated, and spoke several languages. One of his favourite
feats was to write the Lord’s Prayer on a scrap of paper not larger
than a sixpence, in five different languages. In his appearance there
was nothing to justify his success with the female sex. If anything he
was plain, thereby supporting Wilkes, who asserted that he was only
five minutes behind the best looking man in a room. In complexion Mr.
B. was dark, almost swarthy; in figure, stout. He could not be called
even gentlemanlike in his bearing. But he had a good address; spoke
well and readily; and he was extremely shrewd and clever. As a prisoner
his conduct was all that could be desired. He passed on like the rest
eventually to Australia, where he again married.

The clergymen whose crimes brought them to Millbank were rather
commonplace characters; weak men, mostly, who could not resist their
evil propensities. Of course they were not always what they pretended
to be. One of the most noteworthy was the Honourable and Reverend
Mr.——, who was really an ordained minister of the Church of England,
and had held a good living in Ireland, worth £1,400 a year. But he was
passionately addicted to the turf, and attended every meeting. His
luck varied considerably—sometimes up and sometimes down. He came at
length to lose every shilling he had in the world at Manchester races.
The inveterate spirit of gambling was so strong within him that he was
determined to try his luck again. He had been staying at a friend’s
house—a careless man, of good means, who left his cheque-book too
accessible to others. The Honourable and Reverend Mr.—— went straight
from the course to his friend’s study, filled in a cheque, forged the
signature, cashed the same _en route_ to the races, and recommenced
operations forthwith. Meanwhile his friend went also, quite by
accident, to the bank for cash. They told him a large cheque had only
just been paid to his order.

“I drew no cheque!” he exclaimed.

“Why, here it is?”

“But that is not my signature.”

Whereupon the honourable and reverend gentleman was incontinently
arrested in the middle of the grand stand. His sentence was
transportation for life, and from Millbank he passed on in due course
to the antipodes. He was a poor creature at the best times, and under
prison discipline became almost imbecile and useless. After a long
interval he gained a ticket-of-leave, and was last heard of performing
divine worship at an out-station at the rate of a shilling a service.

Of a very different kidney was the Rev. A. B., a man of parts, clever
and dexterous, who succeeded in everything he tried. He spoke seven
languages, all well; and when in prison learned with ease to tailor
with the best.

Somewhat similar to him in character was the Rev. Dr. B., a doctor of
divinity, according to his own statement, whose career of villainy was
of long duration. This man had served several long sentences, which in
no wise prevented his return to crime. He also was a man of superior
education, who could read Hebrew, so the warders said, as easily as
the chaplain gave the morning prayers. Dr. B. was discovered one day
writing in Hebrew characters in his copy-book at school time, just
when a party of distinguished visitors were inspecting the prison. One
of them, surprised, said, “What! do you know Hebrew?”

“Yes,” was the impudent reply, “I expect a great deal better than you
do.”

A better story still is told of this man later, when set at large
on ticket-of-leave. Through barefaced misrepresentation he had been
permitted to take the duty of a beneficed clergyman during his absence
from the parish. In due course came an invitation to dine with the
local magnate, whose place was some distance from the rectory. Our
ex-convict clergyman ordered a carriage and pair from the neighbouring
town, and drove to the hall in state. As he alighted from the carriage,
his footman, hired also for the occasion, recognized his face in the
blaze of light from the open door. “Blow me, if that ain’t Slimy B.,
the chaplain’s man, who did his ‘bit’ along with us at the ‘Steel,’” he
exclaimed. Both coachman and lacquey were ex-convicts too, and after
that the secret soon leaked out. The reverend doctor found his country
parish rather too hot to hold him. Some of his later misdeeds consisted
in decoying and plundering governesses in search of situations; he also
established himself in various neighbourhoods as a schoolmaster, and
more than once succeeded in obtaining church duty.

Of the military men, the most prominent was a certain Captain C., who
belonged to an excellent family, but who had fallen very low, going
by degrees from bad to worse. He was long known as a notorious gambler
and loose liver. At length, unable to earn enough money to gratify his
vices by fair means, he sought to obtain it by foul, and became allied
to a mob of ruffians who styled themselves “Men of the World.” In other
words, he took to obtaining goods under false pretences. Captain C. was
principally useful as a respectable reference to whom his accomplices
could apply when they entered a strange shop and ordered goods. “Apply
to my friend Captain So-and-so, of such-and-such a square; he has known
me for years.” Reference is made to a house gorgeously furnished, an
establishment in every way _bien monté_, the master thereof a perfect
gentleman. “Do I know Mr. ——? Oh, dear, yes; I have known him for a
long time. He is one of my most intimate friends. You may trust him
to any amount.” Unhappily the pitcher goes often to the well, but it
is broken at last. And at this game of fraud the circle of operations
grows naturally ever narrower. At length the whole conspiracy became
known to the police, and Captain C. found himself ere long in Millbank.
He seems to have been treated there rather too well for an idle,
good-for-nothing rascal, who would do no work, and who expected—so said
the officers—to be always waited upon. Undoubtedly he was pampered,
had his books from the deputy-governor’s own library, and extra food.
More than this, his wife—a lady once, also of good family, but fallen
with her husband to an abyss of infamy and depravity which made her
notorious for wickedness even in this wicked city—was frequently
admitted to visit him, coming always in silks and satins and flaunting
attire, which was sadly out of keeping with her husband’s temporary
abode.

Another ex-military officer was Mr. P., whose offence at the time
created wide-spread and righteous indignation. This was the gentleman
who for some occult reason of his own, committed the atrocity of
striking our young Queen in the face just as she was leaving the
palace. The weapon he used was a thin cane, but the blow fell lightly,
as the lady-in-waiting interposed. No explanation was offered, except
that the culprit was out of his mind. This was the defence set up
by his friends, and several curious facts were adduced in proof of
insanity. One on which great stress was laid, was that he was in the
habit of chartering a hansom to Wimbledon Common daily, where he amused
himself by getting out and walking as fast as he could through the
furze. But this line of defence broke down, and the jury found the
prisoner guilty. He himself, when he came to Millbank, declared that
he had been actuated only by a desire to bring disgrace on his family
and belongings. In some way or other he had seriously disagreed with
his father, and he took this curious means to obtain revenge. The
wantonness of the outrage called for severe punishment, and Mr. P. was
sentenced to seven years’ transportation; but the special punishment
of whipping was omitted, on the ground of the prisoner’s position
in life. Whether it was that the mere passing of this sentence was
considered sufficient, or that the Queen herself interposed with
gracious clemency, this Mr. P. at Millbank was treated with exceptional
leniency and consideration. By order of the Secretary of State he was
exempted from most of the restrictions by which other prisoners were
ruled. He was not lodged in a cell, but in two rooms adjoining the
infirmary, which he used as sitting and bedroom respectively; he did
not wear the prison dress, and he had, practically, what food he liked.
He seems to have awakened a sort of sympathy on the part of the warders
who attended him; probably because he was a fine, tall fellow, of
handsome presence and engaging manners, and because also they thought
his offence was one of hot-headed rashness rather than premeditated
wickedness. Eventually Mr. P. went to Australia.

These are a few of the most prominent of the criminals who belonged
to the upper or professional classes. Others there were, and will
be, always; but as a rule such cases are not numerous. Speaking in
general terms of the “gentleman convict,” as viewed from the gaoler’s
side, he is an ill-conditioned, ill-conducted prisoner. When a man
of energy and determination, he wields a baleful influence around
and among other prisoners if proper precautions are not taken against
inter-communications. His comrades look up to him, especially if he is
disposed to take the place of a ringleader and to put himself forward
as the champion of insolence and insubordination. They render him
too, a sort of homage in their way, scrupulously retaining the titles
which have been really forfeited, if indeed they were ever earned. Mr.
So-and-so, Major This and Captain That, are the forms of address used
by Bill Sykes when speaking of or to a gentleman convict. For the rest,
if not openly mutinous, these “superior” felons are chiefly remarkable
for their indifference to prison rules, especially those which insist
on cleanliness and neatness in their cells. Naturally, by habits and
early education they are unskilled in sweeping and washing, and keeping
bright their brass-work and their pewter utensils. In these respects
the London thief or hardened habitual criminal, who knows the interior
of half the prisons in the country, has quite the best of it.

Somewhat lower in the social scale, but superior also to the common
burglar or thief, are those who occupy positions of trust in banks or
city offices, and for whom the temptation of an open till or slack
administration are too strong to be resisted. A good instance of
this class was Mr. B., who was employed as a clerk in the Bank of
England. With the assistance of a confederate who personated a Mr.
Oxenford—there was no special reason for selecting this gentleman,
in preference to any other Smith, Brown or Jones—he made over to
himself stock to the amount of £8,000 standing in Mr. Oxenford’s name.
His accomplice was a horse jobber. The stock in question was paid
by a cheque on Lubbock’s for the whole sum, whither they proceeded,
asking to have it cashed—all in gold. There were not eight thousand
sovereigns available at the moment, but they received instead eight
Bank of England notes for £1,000 each, which they promptly changed at
the bank for specie, taking with them a carpet-bag to hold the money.
The bag when filled was found to be too heavy to lift, but with the
assistance of the bank porters it was got into a cab. They now drove
to Ben Caunt’s public in St. Martin’s Lane, and there secured a room
for the night; the money was transferred to their portmanteaus, several
in number, and next morning they took an early train to Liverpool
_en route_ for New York. The steamer _Britannia_, in which they took
passage, started almost immediately, and they soon got clear out of
the country. But the detectives were on their track: within a day or
two, officers followed them across the Atlantic, and landing at Halifax
found the fugitives had gone on to Boston and New York. They were
followed thither, and on, also, to Buffalo and to Canada. Thence back
again to Boston. Here the culprits had taken up their residence—one on
a farm, the other in a public-house, both of which had been purchased
with the proceeds of the fraud; £7,000 had been lodged also in the
bank to their credit. One of them was immediately arrested, and hanged
himself. The other escaped in a boat, and lay hid in the neighbouring
marshes; but the reward that was offered led to his capture, and he
was brought home to England, where he was tried, found guilty, and
sentenced to transportation for life.

There were many other criminals who came in these days to Millbank
who belonged to the aristocracy of crime, if not to the great world
of fashion. Some of them, to use their own language, were quite top
sawyers in the trade. None in this way was more remarkable than old
Cauty, who was called the “father of all the robbers.” Few men were
better known in his time and in his own line than Cauty. He was to be
seen on every race course, and he was on friendly terms with all the
swells on the turf. He had a large acquaintance also among such of the
“best” people in town as were addicted to gambling on a large scale. He
was in early life a croupier or marker at several west-end hells; but
as he advanced in years he extended his operations beyond the Atlantic,
and often made voyages by the West Indian packets. He liked to meet
Mexicans and rich Americans; they were always ready to gamble, and as
Cauty travelled with confederates, whose expenses he paid, he seldom
lost money on the cards.

These, however, were his open avocations. “Under the rose” for many
years he devoted all his abilities and his experience to planning
extensive bank robberies, which were devised generally with so much
ingenuity, and carried out with so much daring, that a long time
elapsed before the culprits could be brought to justice. He had many
dexterous associates. Their commonest plan of action was to hang about
a bank till they saw some one enter whom they thought likely to answer
their purpose. They followed and waited till the victim, having opened
his pocket-book, or produced his cheque, was paid his money over the
counter. At that moment a button dropped, or a slight push, which was
followed by immediate apology, took off attention, and in that one
instant the money or a part of it was gone—passed from hand to hand,
and removed at once from the building.

Cauty came to grief at last. Of course he was known to the police, but
the difficulty was to take him red-handed. The opportunity arrived
when, with an accomplice, he made an attempt to rob the cashier of
the London and Westminster Bank of his box. They were both watched in
and out of the bank in St. James’s Square day after day. The police
kept them constantly in sight, and the cashier himself was put on
his guard. The latter admitted that the cash-box was at times left
unavoidably within the reach of dishonest people, and that it contained
property sometimes worth £100,000 or more. But if the police were
patient in the watch they set, the thieves were equally patient in
waiting for a chance. Once at the moment of fruition they were just
“sold” by the appearance of a police-sergeant, who came in to change
a cheque. But at length, almost as a conjuror does a trick, they
accomplished their purpose. Cauty went into the bank first, carrying a
rather suspicious-looking black bag. Three minutes afterwards he came
out without it, and raised his hat three times, which was the signal
“all right” to his accomplice. The latter, Tyler, a returned convict,
thereupon entered the bank in his turn, and almost immediately brought
away the bag. The two worthies were allowed to go without let or
hindrance as far as the Haymarket, and then secured. The black bag was
opened—inside was the cash-box.

This brought Cauty’s career to an end. He got twenty years, and then it
came out how extensive was the business he had done. Through his hands
had passed not a little of the “swag” in all the principal robberies of
the day—all the gold from the gold-dust robberies, all the notes and
bills stolen from big banking houses. It was said that in this way he
had touched about half-a-million of money.

Some years afterwards another leader and prince in the world of crime
was unearthed in the person of a Jew—Moses Moses—whose headquarters
were in Gravel Lane, Houndsditch, and who was discovered to be a
gigantic receiver of stolen goods. He was only detected by accident. A
quantity of wool was traced to his premises, and these were thereupon
rigorously examined. In lofts and in many other hiding-places, were
found vast heaps of missing property. Much was identified as the
product of recent burglaries. There was leather in large quantities,
plush also, cloth and jewelry. A wagon-load of goods was, it was said,
taken away, and in it pieces of scarlet damask, black and crimson
cloth, doeskin, silver articles, shawls, and upwards of fifty rings.
An attempt was made to prove that Moses was new to the business, and
had been led astray by the wicked advice and example of another man.
But the Recorder would not believe that operations of this kind could
be carried on by a novice or a dupe, and he sentenced Mr. Moses to
transportation for fourteen years.

For unblushing effrontery and insolence, so to speak, in criminal
daring, the case of King the police-officer and detective, is almost
without parallel. Although supposed to be a thief-taker by profession,
he was really an instigator and supporter of crime. He formed by
degrees a small gang of pickpockets, and employed them to steal for
him, giving them full instruction and ample advice. He took them to
the best hunting-grounds, and not only covered them while at work, but
gave them timely warning in case of danger, or if the neighbourhood
became too hot to hold them. His pupils were few in number, but they
were industrious and seemingly highly successful. One boy stated his
earnings at from £90 to £100 a week. King was a kind and liberal
master to his boys. They lived on the fat of the land. Reeves, who gave
information of the system pursued by King, said he had a pony to ride
in the park, and that they all went to theatres and places of amusement
whenever they pleased. The rascally ingenuity of King in turning to
his own advantage his opportunities as an officer of the law savours
somewhat of Vidocq and the _escrocs_ of Paris. King got fourteen years.

But the most notorious prisoners in Millbank were not always to be
found on the “male side.” Equally famous in their own way were some of
the female convicts—women like Alice Grey, whose career of imposture
at the time attracted great attention, and was deservedly closed by
committal to Millbank on a long sentence of transportation. Alice
Grey was a young lady of artless appearance and engaging manners.
Her favourite form of misconduct was to bring false charges against
unfortunate people who had never seen her in their lives. Thus, she
accused two boys of snatching a purse from her hand in the street,
and when a number were paraded for her inspection she readily picked
out the offenders. “Her evidence was so ingenuous,” says the report,
“that her story was implicitly believed, and the boys were remanded
for trial.” As a sort of compensation to Miss Grey (her real name was
“Brazil,” but she had several—among others, Anastasia Haggard, Felicia
Macarthy, Jane Tureau, Agnes Hemans, etc.) she was given a good round
sum from the poor-box. But she was not always so successful. She was
sentenced to three months in Dublin for making a false charge, and
eighteen months soon afterwards at Greenock. At Stafford she accused a
poor working man of stealing her trunk, value £8; when put into the box
she was taxed with former mistakes of this kind, whereupon she showed
herself at once in her true colours and reviled every one present in a
long tirade of abuse. Her cleverness was, however, sufficient to have
made her fortune if she had turned her talents to honest account.

There was more dash about women like Louisa M. or Emily L. The former
drove up to Hunt and Roskell’s in her own carriage to look at some
bracelets. They were for Lady Campbell, and she was Miss Constance
Browne. Her bankers were Messrs. Cocks and Biddulph. Finally she
selected bracelets and head ornaments to the value of £2,500, which
were to be brought to her house that evening by two assistants from the
shop, who accordingly called at the hour named. The door was opened by
a page. “Pray walk upstairs.” Miss Browne walks in. “The bracelets?
Ah, I will take them up to Lady Campbell, who is confined to her
room.” The head assistant demurred a little, but Miss Browne said,
“Surely you know my bankers? I mentioned them to-day. Messrs. Hunt and
Roskell have surely satisfied themselves?” With that the jewels were
taken upstairs. Half an hour passes. One assistant looks at the other.
Another half hour. What does it mean? One rings the bell. No answer.
The other tries the door. It is locked. Then, all at once discovering
the trap, they both throw up the window and call in the police. They
are released, but the house is empty. Pursuit, however, is set on
foot, and Miss Constance Browne is captured the same night in a second
class carriage upon the Great Western Railway, and when searched she
was found to have on her a quantity of diamonds, a £100 note, rings
and jewelry of all sorts, including the missing bracelets. She had
laid her plans well. The house—which was Lady Campbell’s—she had hired
furnished, that day, paying down the first instalment of rent. The
page she had engaged and fitted with livery also that very day, and
the moment he had shown up the jeweller’s men she had sent him to the
Strand with a note. Here was cleverness superior to that of Alice Grey.

Probably Emily L. carried off the palm from both. As an adroit and
daring thief she has had few equals. She is described as a most
affable, ladylike, fascinating woman, well educated, handsome, and
of pleasing address. She could win almost any one over. The shopmen
fell at her feet, so to speak, when she alighted from her brougham and
condescended to enter and give her orders. She generally assumed the
title of Countess L., but her chief associate and ally was a certain
James P., who was a lapidary by trade, an excellent judge of jewels,
and a good looking respectable young fellow—to all appearance—besides.
They were long engaged in a series of jewel robberies on a large scale,
but escaped detection. Fate overtook them at last, and they were both
arrested at the same time. One charge was for stealing a diamond
locket, value £2,000, from Mr. Emanuel, and a diamond bracelet worth
£600 from Hunt and Roskell. At the same moment there cropped up another
charge of stealing loose diamonds in Paris to the tune of £10,000.
Emily was sentenced to four years, and from the moment she entered
prison she resolved to give all the trouble she could. Her conduct at
Millbank and at the prison to which she passed, was atrocious; had the
discipline been less severe she would probably have rivalled some of
the ill-conducted women to whom I referred in the last volume. But at
the expiration of her sentence she returned to her evil ways outside.
Brighton was the scene of her next misfortune. She there entered
a jeweller’s shop, and having put him quite off his guard by her
insinuating manners, stole £1,000 worth from under his nose, and while
he was actually in conversation with her. The theft was not discovered
till she was just leaving Brighton. Apprehended at the station, she
indignantly denied the charge, asserting that she was a lady of high
rank, and offering bail to any amount. But she was detained, and a
London detective having been called in, she was at once identified.
For this she got seven years, and was sent to Millbank once more.
This extraordinary woman, notwithstanding the vigorous examination to
which all incoming prisoners were subjected, succeeded in bringing in
with her a number of valuable diamonds. But they were subsequently
discovered in spite of the strange steps she took to secrete them.




CHAPTER X

THE PENITENTIARY IMPUGNED

 Charges of harshness and cruelty—Parliamentary enquiry—Charges
 entirely disproved—Increased efforts at reform by segregating
 prisoners—Their improved demeanour—Prison very quiet—Cases of weakened
 intellect and insanity—Rules relaxed and contemplated change in the
 penitentiary system—Millbank a failure—New uses devised for the
 prison—Becomes part of the new scheme for transportation.


WHILE the criminals of the period were passing in and out of Millbank,
and Mr. Nihil, backed up by his committee, was working indefatigably
and with the best intentions, the credit of the establishment was
suddenly impugned in no measured terms. It was doubtful indeed
whether the ship could weather the storm of invective that broke upon
it. Had the managers of Millbank been ogres instead of painstaking
philanthropists working for the public good, they could not have
been more rancorously assailed. But here was a case where the people
suffered because their rulers squabbled. It was a period when party
warfare ran high and the Opposition hailed eagerly any opportunity
of bringing discredit upon the Ministry. The attack made upon the
Penitentiary was really directed against the Government.

On the 26th February, 1838, a noble lord rose in his place to call
the attention of the House of Lords to a grave failure in the
administration of criminal justice. “All London, the whole country,
was ringing with it,” said another noble lord. “It has been a topic
of universal reprobation co-extensive with the hourly increasing
sphere in which it has been known. All Westminster has talked of it,
all Middlesex has turned its eyes to the quarter in which the abuse
occurred. I will venture to say,” continued his lordship, “that it has
been more talked of, more discussed, more indignantly commented upon
in every corner of this great town and of this populous country, than
any one subject either in or out of Parliament, or in any one of the
courts of justice, civil or criminal.” It appeared that in Millbank, a
prison exempt from the general jurisdiction of the county magistrates,
and governed only by the Home Secretary, there had occurred five cases
of unwarranted harshness and cruelty. Three little girls and two fine
young men had been completely broken down by the system of solitary
confinement therein practised. The children were mere infants: one, as
it was alleged, was little more than seven years old; the other two
were eight and ten respectively. Yet at this tender age they had been
cut off entirely from the consoling influences of home and the kindly
intercourse of relatives and companions, to be immured in solitary
wretchedness for nearly thirteen consecutive months. So bitterly did
these little ones lament the loneliness of their lengthened seclusion,
that one asked piteously for a doll to keep her company, and all three
were found at different times sleeping with their bedclothes twisted to
simulate a baby, so earnestly did they yearn for something like ideal
society in their dreary confinement. More than this: the punishment of
continued solitude had produced in them a marked infirmity of mind,
manifested by great impediment of speech, and general difficulty in the
expression of ideas. A gentleman, one of the Middlesex magistrates,
who had visited the Penitentiary, described the effect upon their
speech such as to render their voices “feeble, low, and inarticulate—to
produce a kind of inward speaking, visible to and palpable to every
one who heard them.” So much for the children. As for the young men,
one of them, who had previously been remarkable for great activity
and intelligence, came out in a state of idiocy, and was afterwards
retained as an idiot in St. Marylebone workhouse, reduced to such a
state of utter and helpless imbecility as to be incapable of being
employed even in breaking stones. The other was similarly affected.
And yet all this was contrary to law. Here were prisoners subjected
to uninterrupted solitary confinement for twelve and thirteen months,
when by a recent Act it was expressly ordered that no such punishment
should last for more than one month at a time, and never for more
than three months in the year. Circumstances very disgraceful beyond
doubt, if the charge were only proved, and entailing a weight of awful
responsibility on those who were accountable to the public.

As the attack was made without a word of warning, Lord Melbourne, at
that time the head of the Government, was unable to defend himself. All
he could urge was that the House should reserve its opinion until upon
a close investigation the grievances and evils alleged should be proved
to exist. He felt certain that the whole statement was exaggerated and
over-coloured; of this he had, indeed, no doubt, but he must claim a
little time before he made a specific reply.

The next night he stated that full inquiry had been made. In the first
place the ages of the children had been understated. Each of them was
at least ten years old. But this was not a point of any very material
importance. They were all three very profligate children. One of the
worst signs of the day was the great increase of crimes committed by
children of tender age. The principal cause of this was, no doubt, the
wickedness of parents, who made their children the instruments for
carrying out their own evil designs. In the present instance the three
girls had been guilty of theft and sentenced to transportation, but
they were recommended for the Penitentiary solely to remove them for a
lengthened period from the influence of their parents, and to give the
Government an opportunity of effecting a reform in their character and
conduct. The only place suitable for such an attempt was the Millbank
Penitentiary, and to this they were removed. This establishment was
governed by rules laid down by the Lords’ Committee of 1835, and,
therefore, if undue severity had been practised, it must have been in
defiance of those very rules. But it was quite untrue that any of these
prisoners had been subjected to protracted solitary confinement. There
was no such thing in the Penitentiary except for prison offences, and
then only for short periods. Separate confinement there certainly was,
but solitary confinement—complete seclusion, that is to say, without
being seen, without going out to public worship—as a general practice
was practically unknown in the establishment.

“These children took exercise regularly twice a day, for half an
hour at a time, in company with other prisoners of their ward; they
had school also together twice a week; went to chapel on Sunday; and
were regularly visited by benevolent Christian ladies (Mrs. Fry and
her associates), who spent long hours in their cells. Surely their
condition was not one of great hardship!

“The young men, Welsh and Ray, were notorious rogues, who had also been
sent to the Penitentiary to effect, if possible, some reformation in
their ill-conducted and irregular lives. Their behaviour had been very
rebellious and disorderly, but though they had been frequently punished
they had left the Penitentiary at the expiration of their terms
of imprisonment in perfect health and full possession of all their
faculties.”

The Opposition laughed at the explanation. Not solitary
confinement—what was it then? The children went out to exercise. Yes;
but they were not allowed to communicate or talk to one another. They
went to church, and to school, but only for a few hours together in
the week, and for the rest of the time they were shut up in their
cells alone, utterly alone. Was not this solitary confinement? Were
these accusations all unfounded then? Had they been disproved? Let the
Government wait till a committee of the House had been appointed to
inquire and had reported upon the whole case.

A committee met, took evidence, and at the end of a month sent in their
report. It was quite conclusive. The whole of the charges necessarily
fell at once to the ground. “On the whole,” they stated, in summing
up, “the committee think it due to the officers of the Penitentiary to
state, that all the convicts have been treated with all the leniency,
and—in the case of the female children particularly—with all the
attention to their moral improvement that was consistent with the rules
laid down for the government of the Penitentiary.” The children had
come in dirty, ignorant, and in ill health; they were now cleanly, had
learned to read, could make shirts, and were all quite well and strong.
Nothing was wrong with their voices: one could shout as loud as any
girl of her age, but she was shy before strangers; the second led the
singing of the hymns in her ward, though her voice was only of ordinary
power, and had been even husky from the time of her reception; the
third usually spoke from choice in a low tone, but she had been heard
to shout often enough to other prisoners. It was quite evident, then,
that in these three cases, not only had the cruelty been distinctly
disproved, but it was equally clear that their imprisonment in the
Penitentiary had been a positive benefit to the children in question.

Nor was the charge a bit better substantiated in the case of the two
“fine young men.” Both of them had been cast for death at the Old
Bailey, which was commuted afterwards to one year in the Penitentiary.
One, Welsh, was a good-for-nothing vagrant, who had spent most of
the seventeen years he had lived inside the Marylebone workhouse,
and to this he had returned on his release from Millbank. He was a
clever but unruly prisoner; he could read and write well, and his
faculties had been sharpened rather than impaired by his residence
in prison. The master of the Marylebone workhouse was decidedly of
opinion that he had improved much; he was more civil now than before,
and he was greatly grown. Welsh said himself he had no fault to find
with the Penitentiary; in fact, he was quite ready to go back to it,
if they would only take him in. But this Welsh was in the habit of
counterfeiting idiocy, either to procure some extra indulgences, or to
amuse himself and others, and he played the part so well that many who
saw him were deceived.

William Ray, the other “victim,” was older, having reached his
twenty-fifth year. He also had passed the greater part of his life in
the Marylebone workhouse; but he had enlisted twice into the army, and
had gone with Sir de Lacy Evans to Spain. He had been discharged for
incompetence, and it was perfectly clear from the evidence taken, that
he was a person of very weak intellect long before he became an inmate
of the prison: he had a vacant countenance, a silly laugh, and a habit
of blinking his eyes and tossing his head about. Still he perfectly
understood what he was ordered to do. He had become a good tailor, and
had improved in reading.

Thus all the charges were disposed of, and the system in force having
been held blameless, it might fairly be continued without change. The
system then was as follows: The prisoners slept in separate cells
which opened into a common passage, and at the centre of the passage
was the warder’s bedroom. The cells were ten feet by seven, and had a
partition wall between them fourteen inches thick. The entrance to each
cell had two doors—one of open iron work, the other of wood. At the
first bell, every morning about daylight, the prisoners were let out
to wash, about six or eight at a time; and they then returned to their
cells for the rest of the day, except during their two hours’ exercise,
and twice a week when they attended chapel and school. Their meals
were brought to them in their cells by other prisoners let out for
the purpose. The chaplain, assistant chaplain, and schoolmaster were
continually visiting them. All day long the wooden door of the cell
remained wide open, and there were plenty of opportunities of talking
to their neighbours through the gate of iron grating, where even a
whisper could be heard. They were always talking—at washing time, at
exercise, even when in their cells with both doors locked and bolted.
Now this was manifestly not solitary confinement. Nay, more, it was not
even separate confinement. But yet, without the latter, without perfect
isolation and the prevention of all intercourse and intercommunication,
it was felt by Mr. Nihil that his efforts to reform his prisoners were
vain. Whatever good his counsels might accomplish was immediately
counteracted by the vicious converse that still went on in spite of
all attempts to check it. It was found that extensive communications
were carried on; that prisoners learned each other’s histories, formed
friendships and enmities, and contrived in many ways to do each other
harm. Unless this were ended all hope of permanent cure was out of
the question. Mr. Nihil says, in 1838, that he is in great hope that
by the thorough separation of the prisoners, important advantages in
respect to the efficiency of imprisonment and the reformation of the
convicts would ensue. “The more perfect isolation of the prisoner by
non-intercourse with fellow-criminals, not only renders the punishment
more effective, but places him in a condition more susceptible to
the good influences with which we seek to visit him—now constantly
frustrated by communication through the wards.”

So eager were the authorities to restrict the means of intercourse,
that they were not above taking the advice of a prisoner on the
subject. His suggestions were such as a prisoner is qualified to give,
being the fruits of experience, and an intimate acquaintance with the
various devices that are practised. If talking was to be prevented, he
said, several new arrangements must be made; thus the officer, when
prisoners were at exercise, instead of standing motionless should walk
on an inner circle, in an opposite direction to the prisoners, so as
to see their faces. The prisoners always talked whenever the officer’s
back was turned. Nor should they be allowed to eat while in the yard:
under the pretence of chewing they really were engaged in conversation.
Again, to put an end to clandestine letters, all the blank pages of
library books should be numbered and frequently examined, so that none
might be abstracted and used as writing paper. Nor should any whiting
be issued to clean the pewters: the prisoners only used it to lay a
thick white coat upon any damped paper, thus making a surface to write
upon. By scraping off the whiting the same paper could be used over
and over again. To make a pencil they scraped their pewter pints, then
with the heat from the tailors’ iron, with which many were supplied,
they ran these scrapings into a mould. Lastly, all searching of cells
and prisoners should be more frequent and complete; care should be
taken in the latter case to examine the cuff and collar of the jacket,
the waistband and the lower part of the legs of the trousers, and the
cap. The bedding in the cells, all cracks in floor or shopboard, and
the battens or little pieces below the tables should be thoroughly
overhauled. With such precautions as these much might be effected;
nevertheless, said the informer, misconduct must always continue, for
prisoners often incurred reports solely to gain the character of heroes.

And so with the new year many further changes were introduced. All
the governor’s recommendations were adopted, and not a few of the
suggestions last quoted, in spite of the source from which they came.
Within a week or two—rather soon, perhaps—the governor considers that
the new discipline works extremely well. Reports diminish, and the
control of officers is more complete. Ill-tempered prisoners evinced
great annoyance at the change; but by meeting this spirit by firmness
and good temper it has, he thinks, been repressed. Three months later
he notices a distinct improvement in behaviour, traceable beyond
question to the new rules. Prisoners formerly constantly reported
are now quite quiet, and in a very good state of mind—tractable,
submissive, and grateful. “Several had learned to read; and many
evinced a softened and subdued tone of feelings, and thanked God they
had been brought to the Penitentiary. Some expressed a grateful sense
of the value of the late regulations. One youth told me that previously
they might almost as well have been in the same room with a crowd....
In Thomas Langdale, a desperate housebreaker and a very depraved man,
the most hopeful change has taken place. He has written a most artless
and interesting letter to his wife.... Some prisoners have acquired a
great mastery over their violent tempers, and look quite cheerful and
happy.... A few only still manifest great discontent.”

All that year the principle has ample trial. In April, 1840, the
governor asserts that in his opinion the state of the prison is highly
satisfactory. The prisoners, as testified by their letters (which were
meant for him to see), were as happy as the day was long. They had
good food, good clothing, and spoke with gratitude of the provision
made for their religious instruction. Moreover, now the reins are as
tight as they can be drawn. “Separation has within the last two years
been much more carried out than formerly, and the effect has been
very materially to reduce offences and punishments, and to promote
reformation,” says Mr. Nihil. His great difficulty now is that he
cannot ventilate the cell without opening the door to communication.
In fact he might seem to wish to seal up his prisoners hermetically;
but he says, “I do not mean to advocate long separation from all social
communication. I should prefer a system of regulated intercourse upon
a plan of classification and superintendence and mutual education,
guarded by occasional separation. What I object to is nominal
separation accompanied with secret fraudulent vicious communication.
Health is certainly a great consideration, but are morals less? Ought
health to be sought by the rash demolition of an important moral fence?
If health is alone to be looked to it would be very easy to suggest
very simple means for keeping the prisoners in general good health;
but then the objects of imprisonment would be altogether frustrated.
Considering these objects indispensable, and that one of them is the
moral reformation of the prisoners, I conceive it would be much better
to leave them to the remedy of opening their cell windows for fresh
air.”

Mr. Nihil’s notions were certainly clearly developed. He was for no
half measures. But in his extreme eagerness to push his theory as far
as it could go, he actually courted disaster. He was apparently blinded
by a misconception of phrases. So long as he steered clear of what
was called solitary confinement he thought he was safe. But he forgot
that the more separation was insisted upon, the more nearly solitude
was approached. In point of fact there was absolutely no distinction
between the separate confinement practised at Millbank, and that
solitary confinement which had already been universally condemned, and
which by law was not to be inflicted except for very limited periods
of time. Naturally the same fatal consequences, the inevitable results
that follow such imprisonment protracted beyond the extreme limit,
began to be plainly visible. Cases of insanity, or weakened intellect
came to light, first in solitary instances, then more and more
frequently. The committee were compelled to run counter to Mr. Nihil,
and relax the rigorous separation from which he hoped to effect so
much. I find in their report for 1841 that they consider it necessary
to make great alterations in the discipline of the institution.

“In consequence of a distressing increase in the number of insane
prisoners, the committee, under sanction of the medical superintendent,
came to the resolution that it would be unsafe to continue a system
of strict separation for the long periods to which the ordinary
sentences of the prisoners in the Penitentiary extend. They therefore
propose that the system should be relaxed with regard to all classes
of prisoners except two; viz., military prisoners whose sentences
were extremely short, and persons convicted of unnatural offences;
and that to all other prisoners the prohibition of intercourse should
be limited to the first three months after their admission, and that
upon the expiration of that period they should be placed upon a system
of modified intercourse.” But they surrendered their views evidently
with the utmost reluctance, and remarked further in this report that
“they are inclined to believe that no scheme of discipline in which
intercourse between prisoners, however modified, forms an essential
part, is ever likely to be made instrumental either to the prevention
of crime or to the personal reformation of convicts to the same degree
as a system of separation. Whether the latter system can be rendered
compatible with the maintenance of the mental sanity of the prisoners
is a subject of much controversy, and can only be determined by actual
experiment, accompanied by such advantages as are proposed in the Model
Prison.”[9]

But it now becomes plainly evident that the waters are beginning to
close over the Penitentiary. There are people outside its walls who are
clearly not its friends, if not openly inimical. Thus dissatisfaction
finds voice in the House of Commons, where, on the 15th March, 1841,
Mr. Alderman Copeland asks for certain information which the prison
authorities must have found it awkward to supply. This return called
for was to show the numbers sent to the Penitentiary during the past
five years; the number removed during that period for insanity, the
number for bad health, and who had died; and it was to be stated how
often the several members of the committee attended during the year.

From different causes, one difficulty added to another, the
Penitentiary was drawing nearer and nearer to its doom. At length its
death-blow fell, accelerated doubtless by the sweeping alterations
contemplated in the whole system of secondary punishments. These
changes, by which also the whole constitution of the Penitentiary was
altered, will be detailed at length in another volume, and the closing
chapter shall be devoted to the last days of old Millbank.

It was on the 5th May, 1843, that Sir James Graham, then Home
Secretary, introduced a Bill for the better regulation of the
Penitentiary. The House must be fully aware, he said, of the Report[10]
in which it was stated that as a _penitentiary_ “Millbank Prison had
been an entire failure.” Its functions, therefore, in that respect were
now to cease. The next thing to be considered was what use might be
made of it, for it was a large building and had many conveniences for
a prison. Just at this moment, however, the Government had determined
to carry out a certain new classification of all convicts sentenced to
transportation. In other words, felons were to suffer this punishment
in different degrees, according to their condition and character.
But to ascertain in which category offenders should be placed a time
of probation and proof was needed, and this period should be passed
at some general depot, where for nine or ten months the character of
each convict might be tested. Millbank was admirably suited for the
purpose. From here, after the necessary interval, the juveniles were to
be sent on to the new prison at Parkhurst, the best and most promising
convicts to Pentonville, the rest to the hulks, but one and all only
_in transitu_ to the antipodes.

Nothing now remained but for the Penitentiary Committee to go through
the ceremony of the happy despatch; for by the new arrangements
the control of the prison was to be vested in a body of government
inspectors, and of a governor acting under them. Under the new system,
the committee states, “there will be a rapid succession of transports
continually passing through the prison; and the shortness of their
confinement, though very desirable on the score of health, will
necessarily militate against any great mental or moral improvement.”
Nothing is intimated as to the nature of the discipline to which
the transports are to be subjected during their detention here. The
committee, however, “are satisfied that a vigorous system will be
found necessary for the maintenance of order among criminals of
so depraved and desperate a character as the male transports are
evidently expected to be. In short, it is obvious that an entirely
new state of things is at hand, one never contemplated by any members
of the committee when they originally consented to act; one moreover
which will require, in their opinion, an active and unremitting
superintendence such as their other avocations render them incapable of
undertaking.” Therefore one and all of them were glad to resign their
functions into other hands. But they “cannot conclude without remarking
that the new system contemplated would never be properly administered
by a clerical governor, even if he considered it consistent with his
sacred functions to undertake such a charge.”

I find in the minutes of the committee on the 9th June, 1843, all
members were requested to attend at their next meeting, which was
probably to be their last.

At the same time they passed votes of thanks also to the
assistant-chaplain, the medical superintendent, the matron,
manufacturers, steward, and officers generally. And from that time
forth Millbank, as a penitentiary, ceased to exist.




CHAPTER XI

LAST DAYS OF MILLBANK

 Captain Groves at Millbank—New Staff—Governor a strict
 disciplinarian—His methods unpopular—Discontent among old
 officers—Petition to House of Commons charging Captain Groves with
 tyranny and misconduct—Another Parliamentary enquiry—Prolonged
 investigation—Report fully absolves Groves—His task difficult—The
 boys’ reformatory gives the most trouble—Mistaken methods employed,
 but Captain Groves’ firmness in due course establishes peace—Later
 history of Millbank—“Wormwood Scrubs” to replace it—Erected on the
 same lines as Sing Sing built by Elam Lynds—Some of the later Millbank
 celebrities—Latest uses of Millbank—Closed in 1891.


WITH the changes which were instituted in Millbank in 1843, its
character and constitution were alike materially altered. It was a
penitentiary no longer, for it did not now deserve the high-sounding
title. The lofty purposes with which it started were unfulfilled,
and its future usefulness depended upon the wide area it embraced
within its gloomy walls, rather than on the results its reformatory
system might be expected to achieve. But as a plain prison, it might
yet render more tangible service to the state. And just as Millbank
became more practically useful than heretofore, so those who ruled it
were no longer amateurs. The superintending committee, composed of
well-disposed gentlemen of rank, were replaced by a board of three
permanent inspectors, two of whom were already well known to prison
history. Mr. Crawford, the senior member, had given much time to the
examination of the American prisons; and Mr. Whitworth Russell, the
second member, had been for years chaplain of Millbank. Both also had
been long employed as inspectors of all prisons in England. Under them
was a new governor—a person of a different stamp from mild Captain
Chapman, or pious, painstaking Mr. Nihil. Captain John B. Groves, a
gentleman of some position and not unknown in society, was also a
military officer of distinction. He did not seek the appointment, but
as those in high places who knew his character thought him eminently
well suited for the post, he was told that if he applied he could have
it. A soldier, firm and resolute of will, but clear-headed, practical,
able, Captain Groves had but one fault,—he was of an irascible temper.
However, like many other passionate men, though quickly aroused, he was
as speedily cooled. After an outburst of wrath he was as bright and
pleasant as a summer landscape when the thunderstorm has passed. Added
to this was a certain roughness of demeanour, which, though native
often to men of his cloth, might easily be mistaken for overbearing,
peremptory harshness. But that Captain Groves was well-suited for the
task that had devolved upon him there could be little doubt. The
Millbank he was called upon to rule differed more or less from the
old Penitentiary which had just been wiped out by Act of Parliament.
The population was no longer permanent, but fluctuating: instead of
two or three hundred men and youths specially chosen to remain within
the walls for years, Captain Groves had to take in all that came,
_en route_ for the colonies; so that in the twelve months several
thousands passed through his hands. Moreover, among these thousands
were the choicest specimens of criminality, male and female, ripe
always for desperate deeds, and at times almost unmanageable; yet
these scoundrels he had to discipline and keep under with only such
means as Mr. Nihil had left behind; for the most part the same staff
of warders and with no increase in their numbers. And with all the
difficulties of maintaining his repressive measures, were the gigantic
worries inseparable from a depot prison, such as Millbank had become.
The constant change of numbers; the daily influx of new prisoners, in
batches varying from twos and threes to forties and fifties, in all
degrees of discipline—sometimes drunk, always dirty, men and women
occasionally chained together; the continuous outflow of prisoners
to the convict transport ships—a draft of one hundred one day, three
hundred the next, all of whom must carefully be inspected, tended, and
escorted as far as the Nore,—these were among the many duties of his
charge.

But Captain Groves soon seated himself firmly in the saddle, and made
himself felt as master. The promptitude with which he grasped the
position is proved by his early orders. On the first day he found out
that there were no standing regulations in case of fire. No fixed
system or plan of action was established, but it was left to the
governor, at the moment of emergency, to issue such instructions as
might suggest themselves. There were no stations at which the several
officials should take post on the first alarm, no regular practice
with the fire engine; the machine itself was quite insufficient, and
the hose out of repair. There had been one or two fires already inside
the prison, and the consequences had been sufficiently disastrous;
yet no attempt had been made to reduce the chances by previous
forethought and arrangement. Captain Groves begged therefore to be
permitted to frame regulations in advance and in cold blood, instead
of leaving the calamity to be coped with amid the excitement of an
actual conflagration. The fire question disposed of, the governor
turned his eyes upon the appearance of the men under his charge; and,
true soldier again, I find him complaining seriously of the slouching
gait and slovenly garb of the warders trained under the late regime.
“I think,” he says, “that the officers when together on parade, or at
other times, should present something of the appearance of a military
body.” He wished, therefore, to give them drill, and a waist-belt,
and a smarter uniform. Again, he found fault with the armoury, and
remarked that all the fire-arms in the prison consisted of one or
two old blunderbusses, with brass barrels exceedingly short, and he
suggested a stand of fifty carbines from the Tower. Next he made a raid
upon the dishevelled locks of the convicts, remarking: “The practice
of cutting the prisoners’ hair appears to be much neglected. I observe
the majority of the prisoners’ heads are dirty; the hair long, and
the whiskers growing under the chin.” To remedy this, he introduced
forthwith the principles of the military barbers of that time,—the hair
to be short on the top and sides of the head and whiskers trimmed on a
level with the lower part of the ear—an innovation which the prisoners
resented, resisting the execution of the order, one to the extent of
saying that the next time he was given a razor he would cut his throat
with it. But the rules were enforced, as all other rules that issued
from Captain Groves. Not that the adjustment of such trifles satisfied
his searching spirit of reorganization. He was much annoyed at the
idleness and determined laziness of all the prisoners. They did not
do half the work they might; the tailoring was a mere farce, and the
little boys in Tothill Fields Prison picked twice as much coir-junk as
full grown men in Millbank, and in a shorter time. As for great-coats,
the average turned out was one per week, while they should have been
able to complete three or four at least. The governor attributed this
chiefly to the undercurrent of opposition to his orders from officers
of the manufacturing department.

Indeed, not only from this branch, but from all his subordinates,
Captain Groves appears to have got but half-hearted service. The
double-faced backbitings, which had brought many to preferment in the
last regime, were thrown away on the new governor. He preferred to
see things with his own eyes, and he did not encourage officers to
tell tales of one another. When a senior officer reported a junior
for using bad language, Captain Groves remarked, “I must state my
apprehensions that the practice which has prevailed of _watching_ for
bad or gross language uttered by warders off duty, and reported without
their knowledge, accompanied by additions to the actual offence, will
be most certain to introduce discussion and discord into the prison,
and produce universal distrust and fear. No warder can feel himself
safe when he knows that an unguarded word may be brought against him
at some future day.” The practical common sense of these remarks no
one can deny; but those who knew Captain Groves will smile as they
remember that his own language at times savoured “of the camps,” and he
possibly felt that under such a system of espionage he might himself
be caught tripping. But in setting his face against the old practices
he was clearly right, although it might bring him into disfavour with
those hypocritical subordinates who felt that their day of favour was
over. Of most of the Penitentiary officers, indeed, Captain Groves had
formed but a low estimate. In more ways than one he had found them
lax, just as he found that the routine of duties was but carelessly
arranged. There was no system: the night patrols, two in number to
every two pentagons, slept as they pleased half the night or more, and
were seldom subject to the visits of “rounds” or other impertinences
from over-zealous officials; no one was responsible for the prison
during the night; by day, strangers came and went through the inner
gates and passed on to the innermost part of the prison, ostensibly to
buy shoes and other articles made by the prisoners, but really to see
their friends among the latter; coal porters, irresponsible persons,
often from the lowest classes (one was afterwards a convict), were
admitted with their sacks into the heart of the wards, male and female,
and could converse and traffic with the prisoners all day long. There
was no notice board at the gates or elsewhere to warn visitors of the
penalties of wrong-doing.

In all these matters the reform that was so urgently needed Captain
Groves introduced, and that with no faltering hand. Naturally in the
process he trod on many toes, rubbed up many old prejudices, and made
himself generally unpopular. Nor was the bad feeling lessened when
it became known that he looked on the bulk of the old officers as
inefficient, and recommended their dismissal _en masse_. Discontent
grew and rankled among the majority; but although nearly all chafed
under the tightened bit, few for a long time went beyond a certain
insolent restiveness, though some were brave enough to complain against
the governor’s tyranny and to talk of active resistance. It was not,
however, till Captain Groves had been in office nearly three years
that all these muttered grumblings took shape in an actual combination
against him. Of this he had notice, for a paper was put into his
hand giving full disclosures and a list of the conspirators, many of
whom he had thought trustworthy men; but he disdained to act on the
information. The malcontents were not, however, to be disarmed by his
magnanimity. Feeling certain that their case was strong, and that they
could substantiate their charges against him, one of their number, in
the name of all, presented a petition to the House of Commons, praying
for an inquiry into the condition of Millbank Prison. This petition was
signed by Edward Baker, ex-warder, and it was laid upon the table of
the House by Mr. Duncombe, M. P.

Baker’s petition set forth that he had filled the office of warder for
more than three years, but that he had at length been compelled to
resign “in consequence of the oppressive and tyrannical conduct” on
the part of Captain Groves, the governor of the prison, towards the
prisoners and officers themselves. He also impugned the character of
the governor, charging him with drunkenness and the habitual use of
foul language, and indirectly reflecting on the three inspectors, who
in permitting such malpractices had culpably neglected their duties.

The first allegation was that on one occasion a prisoner, Chinnery, had
a fit in the airing-yard, just before the governor entered it.

“What’s the matter here?” asked Captain Grove.

“A prisoner in a fit.”

“A fit—he’s not in a fit!” (He was standing on his feet.)

“No, he’s reviving.”

“Nonsense,” said the governor, “he never had a fit. If this man has any
more of his tricks report him to me.”

Further, the governor had sent the supervisor to bring up the prisoner
for this same feigning of a fit, and had sentenced him, without medical
testimony, to three days’ bread and water. Yet this very Chinnery had
been in the prison under a previous sentence, and had been lodged
always next door to a warder, so that assistance might always be at
hand when he had a fit.

The next charge was that the governor had sentenced three boys for
opening their Bibles in church, to seven days’ bread and water,
censuring them for such conduct, “which he considered irreverent.” (The
words are Baker’s.)

The third charge was that a prisoner who had assaulted and wounded
a warder with a pair of scissors, had not only been flogged, but the
governor had specially sentenced him to be deprived henceforward of all
instruction, religious or moral.

The fourth charge referred to a prisoner, Bourne, whom it was alleged
the doctor had neglected, refusing to see him, although he was actually
in a dying state. At length the officer of his ward sent specially to
the doctor, who came and had Bourne removed to the infirmary, where
he died two days afterward. “It was the governors plain duty to have
prevented such a catastrophe,” said Baker.

Fifth: a prisoner, Harris Nash, died of dysentery after three months
of the ordinary discipline. “The body was what may be termed a perfect
skeleton.”

Sixth: another prisoner, a boy, Richmond, from Edinburgh, died after
four months, having been confined in a dungeon on one pound of bread
and two pints of water per diem, for an unlimited number of days. At
night he lay upon the boards and had only a rug and blanket to cover
him.

Seventh: several prisoners who had been present at the infliction of
corporal punishment had immediately after hanged themselves, shocked by
the sight they had seen.

Eighth: many instances were quoted of the governor’s harshness and
partiality: fines inflicted unequally, old officers punished through
his misrepresentation, others deprived of their situations as
inefficient, though for years they had been considered efficient; while
several had resigned sooner than submit to such tyranny.

Ninth: Edward Baker further asserted that the reply furnished to
the House to his first petition was garbled and untrue. It had been
prepared secretly in the prison; it was altogether false; facts had
been suppressed or distorted; and that besides, the “cats” used were
not those sanctioned by law.

Tenth: that the governor had exceeded his powers of punishment, and
that in some cases prisoners had undergone as many as eighteen days’
bread and water in one month.

Finally, to quote the words of the petition, Baker urged that—“During
the last three years the cruel conduct of the governor is known to
have induced twenty prisoners to attempt suicide, and that four have
actually succeeded in destroying themselves, and that others are
constantly threatening self-destruction; forming a melancholy contrast
with the system pursued during the twenty-three preceding years at
the Millbank Penitentiary, that system being free from any such stain
during that period:

“That the severity of punishments for alleged offences has led to the
removal of many prisoners in a dying state to the invalid hulk at
Woolwich, where every seventh man has since died, although when they
came into the prison they were in good health. This cruel removal
takes place to prevent the necessity for coroner’s inquests within the
walls, and exposure of the discipline of the prison.”

The petitioner therefore prays for an immediate inquiry into the
manner in which Millbank is conducted, the deaths that have occurred,
the cruelties that are practised, the dying prisoners that have been
removed; also into the numerous reports and irregular hours and conduct
of the governor, and how far the inspectors have done their duty by
allowing such irregularities to pass unnoticed; “such facts being
notorious to all the prison.”

In consequence of this petition an inquiry was instituted by the House
of Commons; and the Earl of Chichester, Lord Seymour, and Mr. Bickham
Escott were appointed commissioners.

A very searching and patient investigation followed, the full report
of which fills an enormous Blue-Book of hundreds of pages. It would
be tedious to the reader if I were to go through the evidence, in
anything like detail, of the many witnesses examined; the commissioners
may be trusted to have done this conscientiously, and their summing
up in deciding on the allegations against Captain Grove may be quoted
here. The evident animus of the subordinates against their governor
is very clearly shown in every page: nothing he did was right, and
the complaints when not actually false, as in the case of prisoner
Chinnery, were childish and almost beneath consideration. One officer
declared that Captain Groves did not like the old prison officers; that
he had said openly “he would get them all out.” They could never please
him; they got no credit however much they might exert themselves.
Another told the governor he was breaking his (the officer’s) spirit
and his heart. “He (Captain Groves), after making his rounds, would
send for supervisors and warders in a body and reprimand them in his
office. Once when an officer expostulated with him, Captain Groves
struck him to the ground with his stick, and swore he’d have none of
his d——d Penitentiary tricks.” Another officer, who had been sent to
Pentonville and came back without an important document, complained
that he had been sent again all the way to the Caledonian Road to
fetch it. Mr. Gray (the victim) considered this was a great hardship,
although he admitted that he was none the worse for his walk. All the
officers were positive they had much more to do now than ever before.
Mr. Gray, above-mentioned, complained also that he had been deprived of
his lawful leave; yet he admitted that when all the paint work of the
prison was filthily dirty and had to be scrubbed, it was badly done;
and that the governor had only insisted on officers remaining on duty
till the whole was properly cleaned.

It was indeed quite evident from cross-examination and from the
evidence of Captain Groves, that the bulk of his officers were
slovenly, slack in the execution of their duties, and contentious.
Captain Groves, on the other hand, was doing his best to improve
the tone of discipline. No doubt he was stern and peremptory in his
dealings. We can quite understand that his reprimands were not couched
in milk-and-water language; that he more than once said, “By this, or
that,” and swore he would not suffer such doings to pass unpunished,
and that those who opposed him should forthwith be dismissed. But it
is also clear that he was not well served. Those who held under him
important posts were not always reliable and fitted for the charge.
On one occasion, for instance, an officer was so negligent of the
prisoners in his charge, that the governor, as he came by, was able to
remove one unobserved. This prisoner he took back to his cell, and then
returned to the spot to ask the officer how many he had in charge.

“So many.”

“Are you sure? Count them.”

“No; I am one short!”

“Ah!” said the governor, and added something more in rather stronger
language. Again, in the case of two barefaced escapes the governor
expressed himself as follows:

“Prisoner Howard escaped under the very nose of No. 2 sentry. The night
was clear and fine, and the governor cannot acquit the sentry of No. 2
beat of great negligence. It is quite impossible, on such a night as
the night of last Friday, for any individual to have performed such
work in the garden as raising planks, etc., against the boundary wall
without detection had common care been taken.”

“In regard to the escape of Timothy Tobin, the operations he had
recourse to, to break through the cell, made great noise, and attracted
the attention of several of the night guard; and the governor is
concerned to find that the principal warder in charge of the prison
as orderly officer made no effort to detect the cause of the constant
knocking in Pentagon five, but contented himself with the reports of
inferior officers without rising from his bed or anticipating his
intended time of going his rounds. The qualifications which entitle
an officer to promotion in this and every other establishment, are
intelligence, activity, and a sense of individual responsibility; and
no person is fit for the situation of supervisor or principal warder
who is not prepared to exercise them on all occasions.”

This was a reference to Mr. Gray; and it was he who, with others
equally negligent, were so sensitive, that they felt aggrieved
at Captain Groves’ seemingly merited reprimands. But in actual
investigation all charges of this kind melted into thin air as soon
as the commissioners looked into them. The charges of tyranny were
not substantiated, because they were far-fetched and exaggerated.
Such stories must have been difficult to find when one of the charges
trumped up against the governor was that he had kept the chaplain’s
clerk one day without his dinner. We should even assert that the whole
inquiry was another monument of misdirected zeal, were it not that the
original petition opened up serious topics which demanded attention.
The mere details of administrative bickering might have been better
settled by officials within the department than by parliamentary
interference; but when it is alleged in an indictment that unfortunate
prisoners, without a friend in the world, are done to death by
ill-treatment, it is clearly necessary that the said charges should be
sifted without delay. In this way the inquiry was distinctly useful,
and I shall now give the decision at which the commissioners arrived.

“These petitions seriously impugned the character and conduct of
the governor of Millbank Prison; and consequently imputed to the
inspectors, under whose superintendence the government of this prison
is placed, a culpable neglect of their duty in having permitted such
maladministration to continue.

“First: the allegation respecting the treatment of Chinnery is the
only charge on which the petitioner could prove anything from his own
knowledge; and, since it occurred after he had sent in his resignation,
could not be one of the instances of cruelty in consequence of which
he resigned. The fault or innocence of the governor on this occasion
depends entirely upon the validity of reasons alleged by him for
concluding that the prisoner was only feigning a fit. There being no
other witness but himself and Baker, we cannot pronounce a decided
opinion upon so very doubtful a question. Reviewing, however, all
the circumstances which were brought under our notice in connection
with this case, we think the governor should, before awarding the
punishment, have made a closer investigation into all the facts, and
have consulted the medical officer for the purpose of testing the
probable accuracy of his impressions. In this case, therefore, we are
of opinion that the punishment, whether merited or not merited by the
prisoner, was injudiciously inflicted by the governor.

“Second: The commissioners think the governor rather overstrained his
powers in punishing the boys for reading their Bibles in chapel.

“Third: The prisoner Bunyan was sentenced and punished by flogging,
as described, for an aggravated and malicious assault. The second
allegation, that he was ordered to receive ‘no instruction, either
religious or moral’ is untrue. He was visited by the chaplain, and had
the usual access to religious books.

“Fourth: No evidence to support charge against the governor in case
of H. Bourne; but the latter was certainly not well treated by the
resident medical officer.

“Fifth: Harris Nash died of a severe attack of dysentery. He was
an ill-conditioned, mutinous prisoner, who frequently attacked
his officers; but, though he was often punished, his death was
attributable to the dysentery and nothing else.

“Sixth: No responsibility rests with the governor as to Richmond’s
death. No symptom of disease on him when first he arrived at Millbank,
and he was never punished when the disease showed itself.

“Seventh: There does not appear to be the slightest foundation for the
suggestion insinuated in this charge; neither of the three prisoners
named having witnessed any punishments calculated to produce a bad
effect on their minds.

“Eighth: The charges of partiality were distinctly disproved; as were
also the allegations contained under Ninth and Tenth, which were found
to be quite ‘unfounded, in fact.’

“Upon the general charge of irregularity, and especially upon a charge
of intoxication preferred by some of the witnesses, after a minute
consideration of all the circumstances detailed in the evidence,
we feel bound to acquit the governor, and to express our strong
disapprobation of the manner in which the charge was attempted to be
proved.

“Having thoroughly sifted the complaint against the governor, and
made some allowance for exaggeration on the part of witnesses, whose
accusations were seldom warranted by the facts which they attempted
to prove, we have no hesitation in pronouncing our opinion that he
(Captain Groves) has endeavoured to perform his duties with zeal
and intelligence, and has done nothing to discredit the very high
testimonials which he possesses from the officers in the army under
whom he formerly served. His treatment of the prisoners, except in
the two cases above mentioned, appears to have been judicious and
considerate. Cases were indeed brought under our notice in which the
prisoners complained of excessive severity; but the responsibility
for these cases rests upon the subordinate officers, as it does not
appear that the governor was made acquainted with these complaints. The
substitution of the punishment of reduced diet in lieu of a dark cell
appears to have been made by the governor from motives of leniency and
with a view to preserving the health of prisoners.

“The only faults with which he appears justly chargeable are:—

“First: A too hasty method of dealing with his officers when reported
to him by others, or detected by himself in some neglect of duty; not
always giving them a sufficient opportunity for explanation or defence.

“Second: The occasional use of improper or offensive expressions, of
which we should express our condemnation more strongly were it not that
the instances adduced by all the witnesses amounted only to three.

“Third: An insufficient attention to the rules of the prison; it
appearing from his own evidence that he was entirely ignorant of the
legal force of the old penitentiary rules, and that in two important
instances the rules actually stuck up in the prison were not strictly
attended to by him.

“The want of a complete code of rules suited to the present government
of the prison has apparently given rise to many of the charges and to
much of the ill-feeling which have come under our observation during
this inquiry.

“No doubt there existed a very extended feeling of discontent among
the officers. It is probable that this may partly have originated
in the changes which took place in the organization of the present
establishment, by which the duties of the prison were necessarily
rendered more irksome and severe.

“The old prison possessed more of a reformatory character: the
prisoners were confined there for much longer periods, were under the
influence of stronger motives to good conduct, and by habits longer
exercised became more accustomed to the regular routine of prison life.
In the prison, as now constituted, few of the adult convicts remain for
more than two, or at most, three months; and of those who remain for a
longer period, the greater part are criminals of the worst description,
who are awaiting embarkation for their final destination, Norfolk
Island.

“The effective government of these convicts can only be carried on by
a very strict and vigilant attention on the part of the officers. We
must add that these important changes had to be commenced and carried
out by a new governor with an old set of officers, and, in our opinion,
with an inadequate addition of strength. It was but natural that the
old officers, receiving little or no increase of pay, while their
duties were generally augmented, should have felt some dissatisfaction,
and that a portion of it should have vented itself in personal feelings
towards the governor, who appears to be both a zealous and energetic
officer, giving his orders in a peremptory manner as a man accustomed
to military life, and expecting them to be obeyed with soldierlike
precision. We regret, however, to observe that, whilst these officers
omitted to make a single complaint or suggestion of grievance to
their legitimate superiors, they formed a kind of combination amongst
themselves for the discussion of their supposed wrongs and for
collecting matter for complaint against the governor.”

On the whole, then, Captain Groves came triumphantly out of the inquiry
into his conduct. Beyond doubt his task was a difficult one. He had
within the walls of his prison a large body of criminals who were
not to be managed easily. Their offences were more deliberate, and
their violence more systematic than anything which I have described
in the Penitentiary days. When they assaulted officers, which they
did frequently, from Captain Groves himself downwards, it was with
the intention of murdering them; and when they wished to escape, as
often as not they managed to get away. They stabbed their officers
with shoemakers’ knives, or dug scissors into their arms; while one,
when searched, was found with a heavy cell stone slung to a cord,
supplying thus a murderous weapon, of which he coolly promised to make
use against the first who approached. Another ruffian, named Long, a
powerful, athletic man, dashed at his officer’s throat and demanded
the instant surrender of his keys. Edward King, another, meeting the
governor on his rounds, assailed him with abuse, then struck him on the
mouth; whereupon Captain Groves promptly knocked him down.

Of all the annoyances, none equalled those that came from the “juvenile
ward,” as it was termed. In this Captain Groves had raised a sort of
Frankenstein to irritate and annoy him, which he found difficult to
control. Early in his reign he had felt the necessity for some special
treatment of boy prisoners. There were nearly two hundred of these;
and though styled boys, they were many of them youths of ages varying
from seventeen to twenty years. After much anxious consideration he
constructed from his own plans a large general ward to accommodate the
whole number. This building long existed, although it was afterwards
converted into a Roman Catholic chapel. It was built of brick, only one
story high, with a light roof supported by slender iron rods. Around
the wall were bays, holding each three hammocks by night, but in which
these juveniles worked during the day. And they could work well if they
pleased. For general intelligence and astuteness these boys were not
to be matched in all the world. They were the _élite_ of the London
_gamins_, the most noted rogues, the cleverest thieves, and the most
unmitigated young vagabonds of the whole metropolis. It was a similar
gathering, but on a larger scale, to that with which we are familiar in
the pages of “Oliver Twist.” Properly directed, they had talent enough
for anything. They were soon taught to be expert tradesmen; could
stitch with the best tailors, and turn out an “upper” or a “half sole”
without a flaw. It was part of Captain Groves’ scheme to drill them;
and these active lads soon constituted an uncommonly smart battalion.

So far we see only the bright side of the picture; the reverse is not
so exhilarating. The mere fact of bringing together in this way a mass
of juvenile rascality, without adequate means of restraint, was to
open the door to mutinous combinations and defiant conduct. Over and
above the buoyancy of spirits natural to youth, which tempts every
schoolboy to mischief, there was present among the inmates of this
juvenile ward an amount of innate depravity, due to early training and
general recklessness of life, which soon led them to the most violent
excesses. Within a week or two of the opening of the ward under the
brightest auspices, the governor recorded that already they exhibited
strong tendencies to run riot. They used threatening language to their
officers, were continually at loggerheads with each other, and their
quarrels soon ended in blows. Presently one made a violent attack on
his warder, and kicked his shins; but for this he was incontinently
flogged, and for a time the lightheartedness of the ward was checked.
But only for a time; within a week the bickering recommenced, and there
were half a dozen fights in less than half a dozen days. Appeal was now
made to the birch-rod, also for a time effectual. But the temptation to
misconduct in marching to and fro from drill, exercise, or chapel was
too strong for these young ragamuffins, and their next feat was to put
out the gas as they went, then lark along the passages. The governor
prayed for more power to punish them. “By their refractory and insolent
conduct,” he says, “they wear out the patience of every officer set
over them, and turn him into an object of ridicule and contempt.”

It occurred to them now that they could cause some considerable
inconvenience by breaking out at night; so night after night, when the
watch was set and the prison was quiet, they burst out into yells and
general uproar, till the night guards were compelled to ring the alarm
bells to call assistance. This continued to such an extent that Captain
Groves feared it would be impossible to persuade officers to remain
in the general ward after dark. Of course they were all experienced
thieves. On one occasion an officer on duty had his pocket picked
of a snuff-box. “I know where it is,” volunteered a boy; but after a
long search it could not be found in the place he indicated: then they
searched the boy himself, and found the box secreted on his person.
Another lad, with infinite cunning, nearly succeeded in effecting his
escape. One night after midnight he left his bed, and crawling under
the other hammocks, got to a wide stone which covered the entrance
to the ventilating flues. This stone he removed, and then descended
into the flue, meaning to follow it till he reached the airing-yard;
thence he meant to climb to the roof and descend again. In view of
this he carried with him a long cord, made of sundry skeins of thread,
which from time to time he had stolen and secreted. As it happened,
a warder going his rounds set his foot on the mat which the boy had
placed over the hole into the flue, tripped, and nearly tumbled in;
then the prisoner, who was in the flue, fearing he was discovered, came
out. But for this accident he might have got clean away. After this
the uproarious behaviour of the boys waxed worse. The governor began
to have serious apprehensions that discipline would greatly suffer.
Stronger measures of repression were tried, but without effect. They
continued to fight, to yell in concert after dark, and refused to work,
assaulting and maltreating their officers by throwing brooms at their
heads and kicking their shins. Throughout, too, their conduct in chapel
was most disgraceful, and it became a serious question “whether they
ought not to be kept away altogether from divine service, as their
example would certainly attract followers among the general body of the
prisoners.”

At length it came to pass that the ward must be broken up, and the boys
distributed among the various pentagons. It was felt to be dangerous
to keep so many elements of discord concentrated together in one room.
This was accordingly done; but by and by, for reasons that are not
given—probably on account of want of space in the crowded condition of
the prison—the general ward was again occupied with these precocious
juveniles. Yet, as I find it recorded, within a few days a scene
took place in the room at a late hour of the night, which called for
immediate decisive action.

About eleven o’clock the governor was sent for. The ward was described
to be in a state of mutiny. On his arrival the prisoners appeared
much excited, but comparatively quiet. At his order they assembled
quietly enough and fell in by word of command. He then asked what it
all meant, and heard that for a half hour there had been periodic
shoutings, and this chiefly from one particular boy. As it rose at last
to something serious, the alarm bell was rung, and on the arrival of
the reserve guard the ringleader was pointed out, by name Sullivan,
who had shouted the loudest. Ordered first to get out of his hammock,
he obstinately refused to move, and when at last dislodged by force,
he broke away from the officers, jumped on to the hammock rails, and
thence to the iron girders of the roof. An officer promptly followed
him, and “a scene ensued which it is impossible to describe.” He was at
length captured, and upon the whole incident the governor remarks as
follows: “These circumstances afford matter for grave consideration.
Hitherto, owing to strict discipline and energy on the part of the
officers, the system of the juvenile ward has been successful, with
occasional exceptions in regard to misbehaviour on the part of a few
turbulent characters. Of late, generally speaking, their conduct has
been insubordinate and disorderly, and the fact is that the officers in
charge of them are under serious apprehensions for their own personal
safety. Besides, as I have before noticed, owing to the paucity of
their number, their rest is broken night after night by being obliged
to rise from their beds to quell disturbances; whilst the night guards,
who ought to be taking their rest in the day time, are obliged to
attend at the prison for the purpose of substantiating their reports of
the previous night.

“It is quite evident that there are so many prisoners (180) assembled
an outbreak would be difficult to quell; and in my opinion the
situation is a serious one, calling for immediate consideration. Many
of them are athletic, and fierce in point of temper likewise.”

The governor decided to place patrols in the juvenile ward taken from
the garden, although he was loath to denude the garden of guards,
seeing that the prison was full to overflowing of convicts.

I have dealt in the last few pages with the misconduct of the boys as
it showed itself in a comparatively short period of time.

The contumacy of these lads continued for more than a year: again and
again they broke out, insulted, bearded, browbeat their officers till
the latter stood almost in awe of their charges; night after night the
pentagon was made hideous with their outcries and uproar. The governor
was pressed to abolish the ward altogether; but the project was a pet
one, and he hesitated to abandon it. He never quite got the better
of the boys; but in the end firmness and a resolute exhibition of
authority had its effect, and the ward, if not entirely quelled, was at
least brought to something like subordination and order.

It is of course clear to the reader that the convicts who were now and
hereafter contained within the Millbank walls comprised the worst of
the criminal class. There is this difference between the calendars at
Newgate and at Millbank, that at the former place the worst criminals
passed without delay to the gallows, while at the large depot prison
they remained to continually vex their keepers.

The life of Millbank was prolonged until the end of the nineteenth
century, by which time the new and palatial buildings at Wormwood
Scrubs, on the western outskirts of London, had been completed. A
word is appropriate here as to this imposing edifice which was begun
in a very small way by the writer, in the winter of 1874. The plan
pursued was identical with that of Elam Lynds when he built Sing Sing
on the banks of the Hudson. Lynds must have been a fine self-reliant
character, of such unwavering courage that it gave him personal
ascendency over the dangerous elements in his charge. When they told
him that a certain convict openly threatened to murder him, he sent for
the man, who was a barber, and made him shave him. “I knew you had said
you would kill me,” he remarked quietly after the shaving was over. “I
despised you too much to believe you would do it. Here alone, unarmed,
I am stronger than you, and the whole of your companions.”

The work at Wormwood Scrubs as at Sing Sing was almost entirely done
by the convicts themselves under the supervision of the warders and
directing staff.

An indispensable preliminary was the provision of a boundary fence
enclosing an area of three acres of common land. This fence was of
simple planking ten feet in height. Inside this space the shell of a
slight temporary prison had also been erected, a two-storied building,
of wood on an iron framework filled in with brick “nogging” (a single
brick thick), the cells lined and separated with sheet iron. Nine
of these cells were completed with locked doors and barred windows
when they were at once occupied by nine “special class” prisoners,
men who were in the last year of a lengthy sentence and little likely
to run away and forfeit privileges already earned. From this germ or
nucleus the whole establishment grew. The first comers laboured on the
still unfinished cells and as they were gotten ready fresh arrivals
were imported to fill them. In a short time the whole block of a
hundred cells was completed, and with the numbers which could now be
lodged there was strength sufficient for very extended operations:
the erection of a second block for another hundred convicts; and
the preparation of clay for brickmaking, and the digging for the
foundations of the main prison. Such rapid progress was made that
within six months I had established the brick mills and had turned out
a large number of “London stock,”—the sound, hard, light yellow bricks,
the chief building material of our modern metropolis. The place was
largely self-contained and self-supporting; we did everything as far
as possible for ourselves; we had our own carpenters and smiths; we
dressed stone for the window sills and cast the iron bars and framework
for staircases. Ere long the prison population reached a daily average
of from five to six hundred, and in less than five years we had built
four large blocks containing 350 cells apiece, a spacious chapel, a
boundary wall and beyond it numerous residences for the governor
and staff. Throughout this period, Millbank was the parent prison,
Wormwood Scrubs only an offshoot drawing support, supplies, cash, all
necessaries from the older establishment.

Millbank continued to be a centre of great criminal interest to the
very end. As has been shown, it became the depot and starting-point
for all convicts sentenced to penal exile, and when a peremptory stop
was put to transportation, it worked in with the substituted system of
Public Works prisons. For fifty years it was a receptacle for male and
female convicts undergoing the first period of separate confinement,
the preliminary to associated work with greater freedom. Notorieties
of all kinds passed through it; and the names of almost all the
celebrated prisoners of the time were to be found upon its registers.
There were murderers who had scraped through and just escaped the
death penalty, such as Dixblanc, the French cook who murdered her
mistress in Park Lane. Constance Kent, who confessed to the mysterious
crime of killing her infant brother, spent many years at Millbank;
the cruel and infamous Stantons, who starved poor Alice—— at Penge,
began their retribution there; Madame Rachel, the would-be benefactor
to her sex which she desired to make beautiful for ever, tried her
blandishments on more than one Millbank matron. It was my fate to
welcome the Tichborne claimant to durance vile, to watch him wasting
from excessive obesity to a decent and respectable size, lachrymose and
repentant, but secretive and defiant to the last. The moving spirits
in the De Goncourt affair, Kurr and Benson, made Millbank their medium
of communication with the dishonest detective officers who for a time
shook public confidence in the London police force.

Millbank served for other prison purposes. In its latest phases, part
of its accommodation was leased to military authorities and it was long
the home of court-martial prisoners. When the State finally acquired
all prisons of every category in the country, it was used for the
retention of venial offenders sent by petty sessions and police courts.

The end came in 1891, when Millbank was finally closed and the site
surrendered by the prison authorities to the government Office of Works.

Here the London County Council have built dwellings for the poor; a
handsome military hospital for the Guards and London District has been
erected by the War Office; and the trustees of the Tait bequest have
put up a fine gallery to house the valuable pictures with which that
munificent patron has endowed London. Thus buildings of a new and very
different character have now replaced the old Penitentiary.




                              FOOTNOTES:

[1] Every cell at Millbank has two doors: one of wood, next the
prisoner, the other a heavy iron trellis gate. The former was closed by
a running bolt; the gate had a double lock.

[2] Known as the “thieves’ whistle.”

[3] The dress of women in the second or superior class consisted of
dark green jacket and stuff petticoat; the first or lower class wore a
yellow jacket.

[4] A piece of long yarn issued to be worked up in the looms.

[5] I can vouch for the accuracy of this measurement which I verified
myself when Millbank was still standing.

[6] The account of this experience I have ventured to extract from my
work “Fifty Years of Public Service.” (Cassell & Co.)

[7] “Stiffs” are letters written clandestinely by prisoners to one
another on any scrap of paper they can find.

[8] The “hopper” is a contrivance for preventing the inmate of a cell
from looking out of the window. It is a board resting on the window
ledge at a slant, rising to a height above the window, the sides filled
in with other boards.

[9] This model prison was that built at Pentonville, under the active
supervision of Colonel Jebb, R. E., and a board of commissioners
specially appointed by the Secretary of State. The first stone was laid
in April, 1840, and it was occupied by prisoners in December, 1842.

[10] The Eighth Report of the Inspector of Prisons.




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:

—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.







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