"I RESOLVED TO LEAVE A MESSAGE OF HOPE AND HIGH RESOLVE.""I RESOLVED TO LEAVE A MESSAGE OF HOPE AND HIGH RESOLVE."
How easy it is for a man to become an unspeakable villain, and how nicely this one was hoisted with his own petard!
Eventually this catastrophe proved a blessing to the widow. It drove her back to her hotel again, and soon after she became the wife of one of the bravest and best men Tennessee ever produced. I was so interested in the fate of this lady that when in Nashville in 1893 I tried to hunt her up. I found several who knew the whole story, and from them I heard her after history and a full confirmation of Foster's narrative.
Foster remained four years in Chicago and flourished. He and Turtle became very influential in politics and partners in a combine of rascally Aldermen and police magistrates that robbed the city and the citizens with impunity. But unluckily for him, he one day took it into his head to pay a visit to his old haunts in England, there to display his diamonds and bank roll to such of his former cronies as happened to be at liberty. On arriving in London he began to play the role of a rich American, but was recognized by the police, an old charge raked up against him, arrested, promptly placed on trial, found guilty and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. Although the possessor of considerable property, he is to-day toiling at Chatham like a slave and probably if he lives he will come out a broken man. It is a certainty that the very day he is liberated he will"go to sea," being sent by a prisoners' aid society, and a few days later become an ornament to that good city of Chicago. Once there, his ambition will not be satisfied until he takes his seat as Alderman, becoming one of the City Fathers. Many more immoral and dangerous than he write Alderman after their names in that windy city.
BIDWELL PICKING OAKUM.BIDWELL PICKING OAKUM.
I am glad to say that during the almost lifetime I passed at Chatham there were only a scant half dozen Americans who came down to keep me company. One, Stoneman by name, interested me. He was a man of great nerve and quick apprehension, and very truthful, therefore I found his stories of his adventures most interesting, besides the fact that his history was another proof of the truth that wrongdoing never pays. Stoneman was of good parentage, and had entered the army in 1861, making a good record up to and including the battle of Gettysburg. There, owing to a quarrel with his captain, he deserted, and became a bounty jumper, making a large amount of money, but when the war ended, finding his occupation gone, he entered upon a life of crime, starting out first as a very successful express robber. The last robbery he engaged in in that line was on the New Haven road near Norwalk. His share amounted to some thousands, but he was literally bowled out, and by a singular circumstance. One of his confederates by the name of Riley had been arrested, and was confined at Norwalk. He engaged as counsel for his chum a well-known criminal lawyer of New York by the name of Stuart, and arranged with him to go up to Norwalk to see Riley the following day. Although Stoneman had plenty of money, he told Stuart he had none, but Riley had. Then he gaveRiley's wife $2,500, and told her to be present at the interview between the lawyer and her husband. At the interview Riley told him he would give him $2,500 if he cleared him or $1,000 if he got him off with a sentence of two years or less. Stuart was hungry as a shark to finger the money, and writing out a receipt for the full amount inserted the conditions agreed upon. Putting the money in his pocket he started back to New York with Mrs. Riley. Stoneman was on the train waiting for them, and as soon as they started he joined them. It happened the train was crowded, and they had to stand. It seems some pickpocket saw Stuart pull out the money, and determined to get it from him. On the arrival of the train in New York he succeeded in doing so. Stoneman had hurried out of the station, and, of course, knew nothing of the loss. So soon as Stuart discovered his loss he blamed him for it, and, being in a fury, he flew to Police Headquarters, secured the services of a friendly detective, and, going to the hotel that he knew Stoneman frequented, had him arrested on a charge of robbing him. The end of it all was that Stuart and the detectives got all his money, and then, knowing him to be a daring man, one that would neither forget nor fear to avenge his wrong, to get him out of the way they betrayed him to the Connecticut police as one of the express robbers. He was sent to Norwalk to stand his trial, was convicted and sentenced to five years, and sent to Weathersfield. Being a good mechanic, he was put in the blacksmith shop, and there, with an eye to the future, he did what is frequently done by professional gentlemen in our prisons, made a complete and most finely tempered set of burglar tools. They were too bulky to be smuggled out by friendly warders, so he secreted them in the shop where he worked and ruled. Many of the prisoners in Weathersfield are expert workmen, and from the machine shops there a high class of work is turned out. Among other workshops, there is one for the manufacture of silver-plated ware. Stoneman had made chums with one of the prisoners who held a confidential position in the silverware manufactory. As Stoneman's sentence was the first to expire, he gave him points, and it was plotted between them that the prison itself should be burglarized by Stoneman on a certain night after his release. The confidential man was to leave the way clear to the safe where the silver bars used in the business were stored. He in due time was liberated, with the customary injunctions from the warden and officers "not to come back any more." He did come back, but in a way entirely unanticipated by them.
He, of course, knew the whole routine of the place, the stations of the guards, and that the wall after 8 p.m. was left entirely unguarded. The second night after his liberation found him beneath the wall with no other implements than a light ladder of the right height. In a minute he was on top, had pulled his ladder up and lowered it inside.
Once inside, every inch of the place was familiar to him, and he had a clear field. The shops, although inside of the boundary walls, were quite separate from the main building, where the men, closely guarded, were confined. He entered the familiar room where he so long had worked, and easily placed his hands on his (to him) precious kit of tools, and carried his jimmies, wedges, sledges, bits, braces, drills, etc., to the wall, and then landed them safe outside. Then he returned and entered the room where the plunder he sought lay. Thanks to his friend, the way was easy, and his art was not required to secure it. There were 600 ounces in silver bars, a pretty good load in avoirdupois, but he only made one journey of it, mounted the wall and speedily was over.
Stoneman was a long-headed fellow. He had taken, without the owner's leave, one of the many boats on the banks of the near-by river. He carried his plunder and tools down to the boat, and pulled across the river, two miles down, towhere quite a stream empties into the Connecticut. He pulled some distance up it; then putting everything into bags he sank them in the creek. Then drifting back into the Connecticut River again he threw his ladder over and turned the boat adrift. At 7 o'clock the next morning he was in New York.
In due time, in the idiom of the professionals, he "raised his plant," and the burglar's kit manufactured in the Connecticut State Prison did what Stoneman considered yeoman service. With all his art and cunning, justice would not be cajoled by him, but weighed him in her balance, to a good purpose too. His success in his particular line was great, but he paid dearly for it all. Many times he escaped detection, but not always. Not to escape, but to be brought to the bar, means a fearful gap in the life of a criminal. He was, as I say, famous in certain circles for his success in his lawless course, yet in the twenty years between 1865 and 1886 he passed sixteen years in captivity. In that year he went to England with a confederate, and a few hours later in London they snatched a parcel of money from a bank messenger in Lombard street. Both were caught in the act, and sentenced at the Old Bailey to twenty years each. To-day Stoneman is toiling under brutal task-masters, and it is all but certain he will perish at his task, friendless, alone, unpitied. Better so even, for should he ever be freed it will not be until the twentieth century is well on its way to the have beens of time, then only to find himself a battered hulk stranded on a shore from which the tide has ebbed forever.
I had, of course, for many years heard much of the Fenian prisoners in the English prisons, particularly Sergeant McCarty and William O'Brien. Soon after my arrival at Chatham I was placed in the same party with them. We were all three strongly drawn together, but were shy of being the first to speak. Of course, it was strictly against the rules to talk, but as a matter of fact the prisoners find many opportunities for talking, particularly if they do their work. The officers are reported and fined if their men fall behind in their task, so if a man is any way backward in working the officer keeps his weather eye open, and reports him for any infraction of the rules.
One day, soon after they were put in my party, I gave O'Brien a hand in fixing his run. We spoke a few words. The ice was broken; we soon became fast friends, and our friendship remained unbroken until their happy release some years after. They were fine, manly fellows, and I in time came to have a warm affection for them.
McCarty had for nearly twenty years been a sergeant in the English army. He had come out of the Indian mutiny with a splendid record, and had been recommended for a commission. But while wearing the British uniform, his heart was warm for Ireland and her cause, so when, in 1867, his battery being then stationed in Dublin, he was informed many devoted adherents to the Fenian cause had determinedto try and seize Dublin, with a view of starting a wide revolt against English domination, perilous as it was, he cast his lot in with them, and speedily found sufficient adherents in his own field battery to seize it and bring it into action against the English. The plan miscarried. Sergeant McCarty, along with many others, was arrested and tried for treason; as a matter of course was speedily convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. This sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life.
O'Brien was an enthusiastic youngster of 17, and an ardent patriot. He had enlisted in a regiment then stationed in Ireland for no other reason than to familiarize himself in military affairs, also to win over recruits to the Fenian cause, and when the revolt began to be in a position to seize arms. The result of it all, so far as my two friends were concerned—they found themselves by my side in the great Chatham ship basin loading trucks with mud and clay, and that upon a diet of black bread and potatoes. The cars, or trucks, held four tons, there were three men to a truck, and the task was nineteen trucks a day, and between the urging of officers, frightened themselves for fear the task might not be done, and the mud and starvation, it was despairing work.
The punishments were not only severe, but were dealt out with a liberal hand. The men, as a rule, were willing to work, but between weakness, brought on by perpetual hunger, and the misery of the incessant bullying of the officers, some few suicided every year, but many more did worse to themselves; that is, the poor fellows, seeing nothing but misery before them, would when the trucks were being shifted on the rail deliberately thrust an arm or leg under the wheels and have it taken off. No less than twenty-two did this in 1874. Of course, the object was to get out of the mud. When once a man's leg or arm was off he would no longer be able to handle a shovel, and would necessarily beplaced in an inside or cripples party and set to work picking oakum or breaking stones, with the result that, being free from severe toil and sheltered from the storms, they would not be so hungry. Then, again, they could more easily escape being reported, and that meant much.
CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED.CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED.
WEIGHING OFFICE, BANK OF ENGLAND.WEIGHING OFFICE, BANK OF ENGLAND.
There was never anything but black bread for breakfast and supper, save only one pint of gruel with the bread for breakfast. For dinner every day we got a pound of boiled potatoes and five ounces of black bread; three days a week five ounces of meat—that is, fifteen ounces a week for a man toiling hard in the keen sea air. We were always on the verge of starvation; our sufferings were terrible. In our hunger there was no vile refuse we would not devour greedily if opportunity occurred.
O'Brien was a slight, delicate fellow, quite unfitted for the hardships and toil he was subjected to, but he was a high-spirited, brave youngster, and his spirit carried him through, while many a man better fitted physically to endure the toil gave in and died, or became utterly broken down, and would be sent away to an invalid station a physical wreck. McCarty and I used to do extra work so as to shield O'Brien, and so long as our trucks were filled on time the officer made no complaint. The prisoners were certainly very good to each other, and usually did all in their power to help and cheer up the weaker men.
In 1877 my two friends were liberated. I was glad to see them go, but I missed them sadly. But McCarty had suffered too much. He only survived his liberation a few days, dying in Dublin, to the grief of all Ireland. O'Brien started a tobacco store in Dublin, where he still is.
I knew all of the dynamiters—Curtin, Daily, Dr. Gallagher, Eagan, etc. However misguided, yet they meant to serve their country, and dearly have they paid for their zeal. I pitied poor Gallagher. The strain on his spirit was too great. He soon broke down, and his dejected, forlorn looks, his stooping shoulders and listless walk made me and all think his days were numbered; but he had immense vitality and still lived when I was liberated; but he was truly a pitiable object, and if he is ever to live to breathe the air a free man then his friends must secure a speedy release, for he is slowly sinking into his grave.
RETROSPECTIONS.RETROSPECTIONS.
I have related how, the Sunday after my sentence, in my despair I took the little Bible off the shelf. The other books I had at Chatham besides the Bible were a dictionary and "The Life of the Prophet Jeremiah." Once, soon after my arrival in Chatham, I took the Jeremiah down from the shelf, but speedily put it back and made a vow never to take it down again; and I never did. It remained in view on the little shelf for nineteen years, while I sat there watching it rot away. The dictionary is a good book, but grows tiresome at times. As for the Bible, there is no discount on that. For fourteen years I was a careful student of its sacred pages. Every Sunday of that fourteen years, from 12 o'clock until 2, I used to walk the stone floor of my cell preaching a sermon with no audience but my dictionary and "The Life of the Prophet Jeremiah." I at first began my Bible studies and my sermons as a means to occupy my thoughts and keep my mind bright. It saved my life and reason. I need hardly say that I became tolerably familiar with the book, and I had the great advantage of studying the Bible without a commentary.
I thought in my enthusiasm I should never tire of the Bible, but after ten or twelve years I began to grow weary of it, and grew very hungry for other mental food. I wanted a Shakespeare, for with him to keep me company I could no longer be in the desolation of solitude. At last I determined to get my friends to try for me. I had learned the Bible almost by heart; the smallest incidents in the life of the Prophet Jeremiah were much more familiar to me than the history of the civil war, and Anathoth took on proportions which made it as real as New York and far more important. The desperate efforts I had made to keep myself from falling into the condition of so many I had seen drooping to idiocy and death were, I felt, successful, and any occupation which kept alive the intellect could not but be beneficial. I was hungry, starving for mental food. Never had books appeared so attractive, never was kingdom so cheerfully offered for a horse as I would have offered mine for an octavo. My friends had written for me to the Government, but with no success. At last they had interested the American Minister in London, who promised to write to the Home Secretary for me, but a year had slipped by and I had heard nothing.
Jeremiah continued with me, and it seemed he was to remain with me to the end. But a change was coming.
Can I ever forget the day it happened! Can I ever cease to remember the delight, the incredulity, the astonishment of that happy day! I had come in at night hungry, cold, wet and miserable. I made my way a little depressed to my cell. As I was about to step across the threshold I saw a book lying on my little wooden bed. Amazed and astonished, I hesitated to enter. Small as such a circumstance appears, the very sight of the book brought on a weakness. I feared to pick it up, a horrible dread seized me that it might be a new Bible, and I was unwilling to risk another disappointment. The footprint on the sand was not more suggestive nor more awe-inspiring to Robinson Crusoe than the appearance of that book was to me. In mood as lonely, in plight as desperate as his, there lay before me a sight as unlooked for and, as it seemed, as full of meaning as the footprint was to Robinson.
At last I pulled myself together, determined to end the suspense and know what was before me. I picked up the book, and who can understand the delight, the joy, the rapture even, with which I read on the title page, "The Works of William Shakespeare." In an instant I became a new man. If ever one human being felt gratitude to another I felt it at that moment for the American Minister. To him I owed it that henceforth a new light was to stream through the fluted glass of my window, that henceforth a new world was opened up for me to live in, and the world seemed lighter to me. Many a month and year afterward my cell was filled and my heart cheered by the multitude of friends the divine William provided for me.
About the time I received my Shakespeare another piece of happy fortune befell me. A smallpox scare was existing outside, and all hands in the prison were ordered to be vaccinated. When the doctor came around a few days afterward to examine the effects of the operation he found my arm so swollen that he directed me to be taken to the hospital.
For twenty-five days I had full opportunity to learn what the girl in Dickens' "Little Dorritt" meant when she called the hospital an "'eavenly" place. It was the first time I had ever been admitted, and the change from the horrible mud hole to the rest and comfort of a cell in the hospital was indeed almost "'eavenly." With nothing to do but to read my Shakespeare, the cravings of hunger for the first time since my imprisonment satisfied, I was tempted to believe—I did partly believe—that the world had few positions pleasanter than mine.
Godliness with contentment is undoubtedly great gain. Contentment alone without the godliness is no poor thing, and was I not content? Few, indeed, of all the thousands who have toiled in that torturing prison house have ever been or are likely ever to be so content as I was.
How true it is that happiness is altogether relative, and that it is divided much more evenly among men than we are willing to believe! A mere respite from an intolerable position, a single book to keep the mind from cracking, transformed gloom and misery into light and at least comparative happiness.
After a time I began to watch the effects of the unnatural life upon others. They arrived full of resolution, buoyed often by hopes which they were soon destined to find delusive. The short-time men, those with seven or ten year sentences, could face the prospect hopefully. To them the day would come when the prison gate must swing back and the path to the world be open once more. But no such hope cheers the long-timers, the men with twenty years and life, who quickly learn how great the proportion is of their number who find relief only in the box smeared with black which incloses what is left of them in the grave. Every day I used to see the effects on them of hunger and torment of mind. The first part visibly affected was the neck. The flesh shrinks, disappears and leaves what look like two artificial props to support the head. As time wears on the erect posture grows bent; instead of standing up straight the knees bulge outward as though unable to support the body's weight, and the man drags himself along in a kind of despondent shuffle. Another year or two and his shoulders are bent forward. He carries his arms habitually before him now, he has grown moody, seldom speaks to any one, nor answers if spoken to. In the general deterioration of the body the mind keeps equal step; and so unfailing is the effect that even warders wait to see it, and remark to each other that so and so is "going off." When the sufferer begins to carry his arms in front every one understands that the end is coming. The projecting head, the sunken eye, the fixed, expressionless features are merely the outward exponents of the hopeless, sullen brooding within. Sometimes the man merely keepson in that way, wasting more and more, body and mind, every day, until at last he drops and is carried into the infirmary to come out no more.
Truly I was looking on life from the seamy side.
Before my own experience had taught me I used to think at times when such a subject ever came into my mind at all: "What must be the thoughts and anticipations of a man condemned to separation from other men, to lead an unnatural life under the strained and artificial conditions of prison?" The change is so violent, it comes so suddenly, the unknown possibilities are so terrible, the sufferings naturally implied are so inevitable, that had any one gifted with a knowledge of futurity shown me that such experience was to be mine I would have thought it utterly impossible that such horrors could be withstood by ordinary strength.
The delights of pleasure are seldom equal to the anticipation of them, and it is probable that the pain of suffering is more unbearable in the shrinking expectation than when affliction actually opens her furnace door and commands us to enter. Perhaps there is a compensation of some kind in nature, a provision to deaden feeling when a death stroke falls—some merciful dispensation by which we fail to realize or to understand in its exactness the meaning of the stroke which is crushing us.
The man rescued from drowning or from asphyxiation has felt no pain. The animal that falls beneath the rush and the murderous claws of a beast of prey seems to fall into a torpor-like indifference, under the influence of which he meets with no great suffering the death his captor brings him. Probably all great suffering comes accompanied with a reserve of strength or with a power of resistance which may even spring from weakness, but which invests the sufferer with courage, and perhaps, too, with hope, to meet it. —Transcriber's note—but the pitiless application of a discipline designed with consummate skill to find out all the weak points of a man's inner armor and to inflict the utmost possible suffering upon him, I used to ask myself if it could be possible that I was really the man upon whom so hideous a fate had fallen.
The blackness of darkness was round about me. Infinite despair stood ready to seize me. It seemed an amazement that life should be forced to remain with him who longs for death, who would rejoice exceedingly and be glad could he find the grave. But when the first horrible numbness of the shock was disappearing, when the first glimmering perception came to me that "as a man's day so shall his strength be," I began to suspect, and soon to know, that in many ways the reality was not so terrible as imagination pictured it.
However ample the provision be which men may make to inflict suffering upon other men, however well and successfully they may apply the provision, they cannot alter men's nature. That will assert itself under all circumstances. The fact that a man is restrained of his liberty by no means alters his nature. The things he liked or disliked when he was at liberty he will like or dislike when a prisoner, and he is not long in finding that "whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" is just as certainly true of the seed he plants in inclosed ground as it is of what he scatters in the open field.
The world inside of the walls has a public opinion of its own, and it is at least quite as often just as the public opinion whose sphere is not circumscribed by stone walls and iron bars. The man who accepts the situation, resolved to get his hand as easily as possible out of the tiger's mouth, soon becomes known as a sensible fellow, willing to give others no trouble and anxious to have no trouble given him. Such a man will rarely be molested.
Patient, uncomplaining endurance always excites pity and sympathy. The most ignorant, the most brutal warder will scarcely oppress the man who goes quietly and unresistingly along the thorny road stretched out before him; who, not taking the thorns for roses, is not disappointed at finding few roses among the thorns.
Those, however, who are determined to see the rough side of prison life may easily do so; the appliances are there and they will certainly be accommodated. An English prison is a vast machine in which a man counts for just nothing at all. He is to the establishment what a bale of merchandise is to a merchant's warehouse. The prison does not look upon him as a man at all. He is merely an object which must move in a certain rut and occupy a certain niche provided for it. There is no room for the smallest sentiment. The vast machine of which he is an item keeps undisturbed upon its course.
Move with it, and all is well. Resist, and you will be crushed as inevitably as the man who plants himself on the railroad track when the express is coming. Without passion, without prejudice, but also without pity and without remorse, the machine crushes and passes on. The dead man is carried to his grave and in ten minutes is as much forgotten as though he had never existed.
The plank bed, the crank, the bread-and-water diet, unauthorized but none the less effectual clubbing at the hands of warders, the cold in the punishment cells penetrating to the very marrow of the bones, weakness, sickness and unpitied death are the certain portion of the rebel.
Some are found idiotic enough to invite such a fate, though fewer now than formerly. The progress of education in England during the last twenty years, and the philanthropic efforts of many societies and private persons, but above all the covert but successful efforts of the authorities to deport them to this country instantly after their release, have had an immense effect in thinning the ranks of prison inmates. The Judges, too, have been forced by public opinion to be much less severe than they used to be, and that counts for much even in the inside of prisons.
Nothing can be more capricious than the sentences they pass. In very few cases does the law set any limit. "Life or any term not less than five years" is the usual reading of the statute books, and the consequence naturally is that one Judge will give his man five years, while another will condemn his to twenty years for precisely the same crime committed under precisely the same circumstances as the first one.
Another great blot on the English judicial system is that no court of appeal exists to which a sentence might be referred for review, so that the most unjust and unequal sentences are constantly passed from which there is no appeal but in the forlorn hope—rather, entire hopelessness—of a petition to the Home Secretary. I have often seen a man who had been sentenced to five years for murder working by the side of another whose sentence was twenty years for some crime against property. Such contrasts, of course, excite great discontent, and in some cases are the reason why men set up a hopeless resistance to what they feel to be persecution and injustice.
It always seemed to me that the standpoint of the Board of Directors, established in 1864, and which continued without change until very recently, was altogether wrong. They appeared to think that in their dealings with other men the only course was to be the application of "force, iron force," as one of the governors expressed it. The very great majority require no such application, and the few difficult ones could easily be managed in another way. Certainly it is necessary that all prison discipline be penal, but it is not necessary that it be ferocious and inhuman, as certainly is the English. Starvation, the crank, the plank bed, the fearful cold of the cells are not measures necessary in dealing with any man.
Whatever they could think of to harden, to degrade, to insult, to inflict every form of suffering, both physical and mental, which a man could undergo and live, was embodied in the rules they made. Their prisons were to be places of suffering and of nothing but suffering.
So far as the directors were concerned the regulations were carried out to the letter, but each prison is under the control of a resident governor, with a deputy governor to assist him. These gentlemen are always men of good social position, retired officers of the army, who have seen the world and have experience in controlling men. They are rarely inclined to unnecessary severity, but are generally willing to apply the rules with as much consideration as such rules admit.The governor's discretion, however, is limited, but daily contact more or less with men whom he sees to differ very little from free men, and whom he sometimes finds to be even better than many he knows who are not, but who perhaps ought to be, on the wrong side of the bars, makes him unwilling to throw too many sharp points on the path which has to be trodden by men for whom he often cannot help feeling considerable sympathy.
I have more than once heard governors express their disapproval of the starvation system and of the ferocity of treatment toward men who some day or other must go back to society.
Under such governors the new arrival speedily finds out that to a certain extent his comfort depends upon himself. No man can make a bad thing good or trick himself into believing that suffering is pleasure. If pain be not an evil, it is an exceedingly good imitation, and the wisest philosopher is just as restless under the toothache as the most perfect idiot.
PENTONVILLE PRISON.PENTONVILLE PRISON.
The inhabitant of a cell has a very rough row to hoe under any circumstance, and it has to be hoed, but there is no necessity for him to fill his row with stones and to plant roots in it himself. He soon finds his level, and the impression he makes on his arrival is the one which, as a rule, clings to him to the end.
When prison air and prison influence have succeeded in incasing a man with the sort of moral hardbake that renders him callous to those feelings which at first so gall the raw spots, he finds himself watching with curiosity the shapings of newcomers. Some announce immediately on arrival that they cannot possibly be there more than a month or two; their arrest was a mistake, and their uncle, the member of Parliament, is now busily engaged making representations to the Home Secretary. One of the very few amusements prisoners have is in watching the important fellows, the men whose friends could do so much for them if they would only let them know where they are. Sometimes a chap who has perhaps been a body servant or something of the kind, who has picked up the kind of veneer he could catch by aping his master, will furnish food for smiles to every one he comes in contact with during his stay. He never receives a letter without explaining confidentially to every one that another aunt whose favorite he was has just died, leaving him £10,000in cash, not to speak of a trifle or two in the shape of half a dozen houses. These gentlemen are immediately furnished with a name which becomes much better known than their own, and whenever they have delivered themselves of their periodical brooding of lies the news goes smiling round that Billy Treacle's aunt has died again and left him another fortune.
So long as their inventions do no more harm than make them ridiculous, they are only laughed at and let alone, but when one of them develops a talent for invention which molests or injures others, especially when it takes the form of confidential communication to the governor of what he sees, and still more of what he does not see, such retribution as both prisoners and officers can inflict is not long in falling. His row becomes filled with very sharp-edged stones indeed, and roots which tear his hands painfully. Nearly always these boastings are fathered by an absurd vanity—a desire ever to appear what they are not, and while they think they are deceiving others they deceive no one but themselves.
One case I remember, though, was an exception. One young fellow made such use of his invention, and the story is so interesting and instructive as showing with what lofty respect English gentlemen are educated for the rights of property, that I shall relate it.
Four or five years after I went to Chatham a young fellow named Frederick Barton arrived with a ten years' sentence for forgery. His appearance and manners were very much in his favor, and his conduct so confirmed the good first impression that he speedily became a favorite with everybody from the governor down.
Some three years had slipped by when one day he asked me if I would prepare a petition which he might send to the Home Secretary in the hope of obtaining a commutation of sentence. I liked the youngster very well and readilyconsented, but told him that I doubted very much if he would get anything. The petition was sent, and in a few days the usual answer was returned, "No grounds." He told me of his ill luck, and I said to him: "Look here, so long as you send up whining petitions asking for mercy both you and they will be treated with contempt. If you wish to get that English gentleman in the Home Office to do anything for you, make him believe you are a millionaire; you will see whether he will do anything then for you or not." He laughed merrily at that. "A millionaire! Why, I haven't a sixpence. My father is only a private coachman at Tunbridge Wells." "That is nothing at all," I said; "if you will be guided by me, and let me manage things for you, I will have a petition sent in for you from the outside, and I feel sure we can get you out." An idea had just flashed into my mind, and I was eager to try it.
At first he was a little timid about the venture, fearing that I might get him into trouble, but when he became convinced that I would do nothing of the kind he consented. I had a warder in the prison who in consideration of an occasional tip used to act as my postman, sending my letters to my friends and bringing in theirs to me. This was a deadly offense against the rules, but as the permitted correspondence was outrageously limited I saw no reason why I should deprive myself of letters when I had the chance to have them, and as I took good care that the great men in London should get no inkling of my misdeeds I dare say their hearts did not grieve after what their eyes did not see.
My warder friend supplied me with writing materials. I prepared one letter, which I had him copy, and another in my own handwriting. Both were directed to Barton, and informed him that his rich uncle had lately died and had left him one hundred and sixty thousand pounds in money and sixteen thousand acres of cotton land in India. He was also informed that his father had gone to India to look after the property, and that upon his return a petition would be presented to the Home Secretary, who it was hoped would grant his release. These two letters my warder sent to a friend of mine in London with a note from me requesting him to postthem immediately. I told Barton what I had done, at the same time cautioning him to guard the closest secrecy. Two days afterward the letters arrived, and I directed my protege to spread the news as much as possible, to tell all the warders he saw and to show them his letters. We had at that time in the prison a wideawake but tricky fellow named George Smith. He had been clerk to an important firm of auctioneers in London, and had been sentenced by probably the most savage judge on the bench, Commissioner Ker, to fourteen years' imprisonment for receiving a quantity of stolen silverware, which he had his employers sell for him. He was about to be released, and I determined to make use of him, but without letting him know the truth, for I knew that if he suspected he was merely doing a good turn for the chum he left behind him, he, like the Home Secretary himself, without the right kind of inducement would have left his friend to stop where he was until the bottomless pit was frozen over hard enough to hold a barbecue on it. Barton, by my directions, told Smith of his good fortune, and that he hoped on his father's return to be liberated. Smith then did exactly what I expected and wanted him to do. He said there was no need to wait until then; he was going to be released in a few days, and "if you like I will send in a petition for you; it can't do you any harm, and it may get you released immediately." Barton at once accepted the offer, and told him that if successful the post of manager on the Indian estate would be at his disposal. He also suggested to ask me to write the petition. Smith managed to see me in the course of the day, and, supposing me to have no knowledge of the matter, explained the situation and asked me to write the petition. Needless to say, I promised everything asked for, and added that I would make it my business to have the petition in London at some place where he could find it the day of his discharge.
BANK-NOTE STORE-ROOM, BANK OF ENGLAND.BANK-NOTE STORE-ROOM, BANK OF ENGLAND.
VISITORS AT NEWGATE STANDING OVER THE BURYING-VAULT DOOR LEADING TO THE BLACK-MARIA.VISITORS AT NEWGATE STANDING OVER THE BURYING-VAULT DOOR LEADING TO THE BLACK-MARIA.
The petition was prepared, setting forth all the interesting facts for the edification of the right honorable gentleman in the Home Office, and after being submitted to Barton and Smith, sent to the latter's address in London.
Millbank is a gigantic prison in the heart of London every one of the thousand cells of which cost the Government £300 to build. This is the establishment where David Copperfield visited Mr. Uriah Heep when that gentleman was under a cloud, and heard him express the wish that "everybody might get 'took up' so that they could learn the error of their ways." For many years all London men whose sentences had expired were brought here for release, and here Smith came a few days after the petition was posted.On the morning of his discharge and within an hour after passing through the gates of Millbank he left the petition personally at the Home Office. Two days afterward one of the clerks acknowledged its receipt, accompanied with the gratifying assurance that it was under consideration. A week later Mr. Smith was notified that the release would be granted. He immediately telegraphed the news to my warder, who told me, and I told Barton. Two days more and the release came down, Barton went on his way rejoicing and every one was glad at his happy fortune. The only one who felt much disappointment was very likely poor Smith, who never heard of his friend again.
SCHOOL AND A TRADE, OR JAIL.SCHOOL AND A TRADE, OR JAIL.
The successful issue of this little enterprise gave me great satisfaction. There was, of course, nothing in it for me, nor did I want anything, but it furnished me with an excellent standpoint from which to address the Home Secretary should the occasion ever arise.
The occasion did arise some time after, and I utilized it in this way: A friend of mine had come over from America to see me and to try if it were not possible to obtain some reduction in the sentence. My postman warder was away at the moment, so letter-carrier facilities were cut off. I wanted very much indeed to communicate with my friend, and applied to the Home Secretary explaining the position and asking him to let me write two letters immediately. At the end of eight weeks an answer came back that the Home Secretary had carefully considered the application and could find no sufficient grounds for advising Her Majesty to grant the prayer thereof. The next day I obtained a petition sheet from the governor and wrote the following petition:
"To the Right Hon. Sir William V. Harcourt, Secretary of State for the Home Department:
"The petition of, etc., humbly showeth: That two months ago I petitioned the Home Secretary for permission to write two letters, explaining the urgency of the occasion and pointing out that the request was by no means unusual. Yesterday the answer arrived telling me, with as much truth,I have no doubt, as kindness, the anxiety with which the right honorable gentleman has been for eight weeks considering the petition.
"I hasten to express to the Home Secretary the regret I cannot but feel at the thought of causing him so much concern, which I sincerely trust has had no prejudicial effect upon his health. I regret this the more as there was really no necessity for requiring eight whole weeks of his time to the inevitable great neglect of the public business, for no man who owns or who is known to be able to get a half sovereign ever has the slightest difficulty in sending out as many clandestine letters as he chooses. This, of course, is an infraction of the rules, and any reasonable man would rather get along in a friendly spirit with the prison authorities than be at war with them, but when trifling favors which it requires but to stretch out the hand to take are refused, rules, prison authorities and the Home Secretary himself are contemptuously set aside and the forbidden favor taken.
"I trust that this knowledge will save the Home Secretary any repetition of the anxiety he has suffered on this occasion, but while regretting my want of success in petitions for myself I desire to thank the right honorable gentleman for the kind attention he pays to my petitions for others.
"The Home Secretary will perhaps remember his merciful consideration of the case of Mr. Frederick Barton, whom he released some short time ago, but it will perhaps be news to him to hear that it was I who invented Mr. Barton's fortune and wrote the petition which furnished the grounds for advising Her Most Gracious Majesty to extend her royal clemency to the deserving young man. The result of my petition by no means surprised me, for I was always confident that an English gentleman could never be guilty of the solecism against English customs implied by keeping in prison a young gentleman who could perform so meritorious an act as to fall heir to many bags of gold and sixteen thousand acres of cotton land in India.
"Mr. Barton had previously petitioned for mercy pointing out that he was but 17 years old at the time of his arrest, and asking that his extreme youth might plead for him. This petition the Home Secretary treated with very proper contempt, but it was really delightful to contrast that contemptwith the respectful and instant attention shown to the petition of the young heir.
"I have a difficulty in expressing the comfort with which I saw an English Home Secretary, with all the power of the Empire in his hands to protect him against imposition, releasing a criminal after reading a sheet of foolscap covered with lies, which had been left at the Home Office by a released convict within half an hour after passing through the gates of Millbank. It is but the merest justice, however, to add that poor Mr. Smith, the presenter of the petition, was as badly humbugged as the Home Secretary himself. The glitter of gold was flashed before his eyes as it was before the eyes of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and with equal effect.
"To me this effect was certain, as not the slightest doubt existed in my mind that the moment it became a question of great sums of money all distinctions would vanish and pickpocket and Home Secretary would scramble on to the same foothold.
"The result, it is unnecessary to add, perfectly justified me. As I watched the lucky Frederick set out to return to the stable he came from it occurred to me that had he understood German, which he did not, nor English either, for that matter, he might have whispered joyfully to himself, in the words of another dealer in ways that are dark and tricks which are vain:
"'Es ist gar hubsch von einem grossen Herrn,So menschlich mit dem Teufel selbst zu sprechen.'