CHAPTERLXXXV.PEACE BECOMES ACQUAINTED WITH THE INTERIOR OF MILLBANK PENITENTIARY—A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PRISON.Millbank Penitentiary, as it was termed, is now a thing of the past. The new prison at Wormwood Scrubs will supersede a place of some historic history. Probably not many Londoners of the present generation know the history of the huge ugly building which occupied the left bank of the Thames between the Horseferry-road and Vauxhall-bridge.It figures on the maps as a series of six pentagonal structures arranged round a central sexagon.The forbidding structure was, until very recently, an ordinary prison, whither convicts were sent for separate confinement for the first nine months of their sentences of penal servitude, before they were drafted off to the convict prisons at Portland, Chatham, Portsmouth, or Dartmoor.Its history as a “Penitentiary” closed more than thirty years ago, when Sir James Graham told the House of Commons it was a failure.The place itself was one of the early results of Howard’s efforts to improve the condition of prisoners, and all the methods of prison discipline which have since been practised have been associated with it.Howard withdrew from the scheme before even the site had been fixed on, and it was taken up by Jeremy Bentham, who wished to realise his idea of the Panopticon or Inspection House, “in which any number of persons may be kept within reach of being inspected during every moment of their lives.”Bentham agreed with the Government to build a prison, and bought the land at Millbank of Lord Salisbury for £12,000, but the scheme fell through, though eventually the Penitentiary was built, and received its first batch of convicts in June, 1816.In its management the new institution was meant as an experiment in the humanitarian treatment of crime.The place was not to be a prison, but a penitentiary, and the convicts were not so much to be prisoners as penitents. Men who knew trades were to work at them and teach others.Captain Griffiths, the present Deputy-Governor, in his “Memorials of Millbank,” just published, describes it as at this time “a huge plaything; a toy for a parcel of philanthropic gentlemen, to keep them busy during their spare hours.”Visitors were taken to it as a show-place, where the prisoners read and went through religious exercises to the great edification of the company.At Christmas they were regaled with roast beef and plum pudding, after which they passed a vote of thanks to Archdeacon Potts, the visitor, and sang “God save the King.”Punishments were rarely inflicted, and then only after report to the visitor. The first prisoner who was released from the penitentiary was a woman who, being dressed in her new clothes, was taken round to see her fellow-penitents, who were duly addressed by Sir Archibald Macdonald, the visitor, on the improving spectacle.Next day as she left the place of her temporary detention the other women were at their cell windows, and vociferously cheered the first subject of the new discipline as she went forth into the world. Convicts thus treated soon began to give themselves airs.One charged with stealing the matron’s tea was so hurt as to be thrown into fits. Some of the women refused to have their hair cut short, and were allowed to retain their locks.One Sunday the Chancellor of the Exchequer and some friends were at the prison service when a riot arose from the objection of some women to brown bread. The Chancellor addressed the men after the women had been removed, and promised to represent their complaint to the Home Secretary. The rebellious spirit, however, continued, and eventually had to be suppressed by punishments. The failure was charged on the officials, not on the system, and the Penitentiary continued to be conducted, as Captain Griffiths says, like a big school.The populace called it “Mr. Holford’s fattening-house,” and it was suggested that the guards and warders were not needful to keep the rogues from getting out, but to prevent honest people from rushing in.One of the services which Millbank has rendered in return for the half million of money squandered on it may be said to be the complete explosion of the idea on which penitentiaries were based.Millbank was the first penitentiary, and the last, in the full sense of the word.From the very first the place was a perpetual source of anxiety and dispute.Before it was finished Sir Robert Smirke had to be called in to rebuild it, and it had only been opened a few years when one of the most terrible epidemics in prison history broke out among its occupants, necessitating their removal to the hulks.When it was again occupied the same weak system seems to have prevailed.The power of persuasion to reform criminals was thoroughly believed in, and nobody seemed to doubt that a year or two in Millbank would change any rogue into an honest man, if he were at all capable of reformation.Only such as were considered hopeful were sent to the Penitentiary, and it required the failures of years to convince the public mind that the system of petting and patronising was the wrong one.Parliament had not even given the governor the power to inflict corporal punishment; and a Parliamentary committee reported that the situation of convicts in Millbank “cannot be considered penal; it is a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.” In 1826 the prisoners began to revolt even against restriction.For some years the place was the scene of continual rebellions and disturbances, and Parliament at length authorised whipping.No.45.Illust: THE LAWYER AND AVELINE GATLIFFE.THE LAWYER AND AVELINE GATLIFFE.This was inflicted in the first instance on a man named Sheppard, who had beaten an officer in presence of other prisoners, but it was done with great gentleness, and when it was over the scoundrel made an edifying address to his fellow-prisoners.One of the most celebrated cases of incorrigible perversity was that of JuliaSt.Clair Newman, which was often discussed in Parliament, and investigated by a select committee of the House of Lords.She was apparently a Creole who had been educated in France, and came to England as a swindler. She looked like a gentlewoman, but had been imprisoned several times before she was sent to the penitentiary to be reformed.Here her conduct alternated between fits of uncontrollable fury and passionate appeals for sympathy.She feigned illness, pretended to be insane; sometimes embraced the female warders vehemently, at others flung her gruel in the face of the chaplain; would one day make her clothes into a doll, and another compose a long and critical examination of the character of the Queen, who had just then come to the throne.Her influence all through the prison was most mischievous, and at length she had to be removed to Bethlehem.There it seemed impossible to restrain her, and the effort was given up. She was at length sent out to Van Dieman’s Land in the “Nautilus,” and was no more heard of. She was only one of the Millbank failures.After the confession in 1843 of the breakdown of the penitentiary system, the great prison became a kind of second Newgate.In Newgate, however, as Captain Griffiths points out, the worst criminals soon pass beyond human ken; at the great depot prison they at least continue alive.The calendar is full of names which have become historic in the annals of crime. Not to come down to the times of Orton, the names of Robson, Redpath, Poole, and Pullinger recall frauds which were conducted with a cleverness, and for a long time with a success, which only a genius for swindling could have attained.“Jem the Penman,” the master mind of a gang of forgers, who made great hauls before they were caught, looked like a drunken sot in prison, but conducted himself fairly well.One remarkable criminal was a practising surgeon, who had married wives in various parts of the country, and having got possession of their money, trinkets, and clothing, had deserted them.He spoke several languages, and one of his favourite feats in prison was to write the Lord’s Prayer in five different languages within a circle the size of a sixpence.His conduct at Millbank was most exemplary, and he, like other prisoners, eventually went to the Antipodes and married.An “honourable and reverend” gentleman, who was convicted of forgery, and sentenced to transportation for life, became almost imbecile and useless in confinement; he, too, went to the colonies, where he “was last heard of performing divine service at an out-station at the rate of a shilling a service.”A military man, of good family, who had become a gambler, and was convicted of enormous swindling transactions, proved in detention an idle, good-for-nothing rascal, who would do no work, and expected to be waited on.Another ex-military officer was sentenced to seven years for striking the Queen. No motive could be found for the act, but in prison he declared that his sole object was to bring disgrace on his family, as his father had offended him. He was leniently treated, was popular with the officers, and eventually went to Australia.These glimpses which the records of such a prison as Millbank give of men who have disappeared from the world are like scenes from Dante.All hope, however, is not abandoned even when the gates of Millbank close behind a criminal. He still belongs to the world he has left.A way back is kept open for him; and, though his old friends may know him no more, he has usually a chance of redeeming his position, perhaps under another name, in another land.Upon Peace and his companions in crime arriving at Millbank, the first thing that was done on entering was to take the handcuffs off each convict; they were then told to seat themselves on a long bench in the passage.Presently two chief warders arrived, accompanied by a medical officer and a clerk.On their appearance the prisoners were told to rise and stand to attention. One of the chief warders walked along one line, and claimed more than one of the party.By the time that certain preliminary preparations had been gone through, and the name, case, and crime of each prisoner had been entered into a book in the office, it was twelve o’clock, and dinner time.The newcomers were informed that presently they would be asked what religion they were. Each man might please himself what he chose to be, but what he elected he must stick to.The bill of fare for each day of the week was read out to them. The allowance given to each person was quite sufficient to support life, and keep him in good health.Luxuries were, of course, never thought of. Coarse plain food was all they had any right to expect, and certainly it was all they got, but the cost of prisons forms a very large item in the expenses of the country.Up to the time the prisons were taken over by the Government, it appears that the cost of maintaining the prisoners, exclusive of convicts, had been slowly but gradually diminishing, and it is not improbable this movement will now continue even more rapidly.It appears from the volume of judicial statistics lately issued, that the average for the year 1876-7, of £28 16s.7d., calculated on the total cost, is less than the corresponding average for 1875-6 by £1 9s.5d.The average, omitting the extraordinary charge for buildings,&c., is less than the corresponding amount for 1875-6 by £1 4s.The average yearly charge per prisoner, depending in a great degree on the number of prison officials maintained, and the daily average of prisoners, varies greatly in different prisons.It is, of course, affected also by extraordinary charges of buildings, loans,&c.The lowest average cost per prisoner for 1876-7, as for 1875-6, is at Salford County Prison, where, with a total staff of 65 officers, and a total daily average of 900 prisoners in the latter year, and of 66 officers, and a total daily average of 966 prisoners in 1876-7, the average cost per prisoner was £14 6s.1d.in 1876-7, and £15 12s.5d.in 1875-6.In Durham County Prison, with a total staff of 42, and a daily average of 641 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was in 1876-7, £17 0s.2d.In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 42, and with a daily average of 625 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £17 17s.6d.In Preston County Prison, with a staff of 36 officers, and a daily average of 435 prisoners, in 1876-7 the average cost per prisoner was £16 14s.10d.In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 36 officers, and with a daily average of 405 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £19 12s.10d.The highest average cost for 1876-7 was, as in the previous year, at the Lincoln County Prison, where, with a total staff of 9, and a daily average of 12 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £107 10s.11d.The average cost for the previous year, with a staff of 9 officers and a daily average of 9 prisoners, £133 19s.10d.per prisoner.The average cost per prisoner, in the following 13 prisons, in the year 1876-7, exceeded in each case the sum of £50—namely, Wisbeach; Hertford, County;St.Alban’s, County; Great Stukely, County; Newgate, City and County; Peterborough, Liberty; Oakham, County; BurySt.Edmund’s, County; Ripon, Liberty; Beaumaris, County; Cardigan, County; Dolgelly, County; and Presteign, County Prison.The average cost per prisoner in the following four prisons, in addition to the three previously mentioned, in the year 1876-7 was in each case under £20—namely, Devonport, Borough, £19 16s.3d.; Kirkdale, County, £18 1s.3d.; Liverpool, Borough, £18 2s.2d.; and Manchester City Prison, £17 16s.7d.The different sources from which the prison expenses for the year were defrayed, and the amount received from each were as follows:—From prison receipts, inclusive of profits of prisoners’ labour, £64,855, or 11·0 per cent. of the total amount from local rates and funds was 69·1 per cent. total, and from public funds £116,769 or 19·9 per cent. of total.The principal and proportions for the year 1875-6, under various heads, were, from prison receipts, £65,387, from local rates,&c., £400,712, and from revenues £110,300.It will be seen by the foregoing statistics that the criminal population of the United Kingdom absorbs a vast amount of money annually from the pockets of the ratepayers for the maintainence of convicts.This is a lamentable state of things, but under existing circumstances there is no help for it.After the rules had been read, Peace and his fellow-prisoners were ordered in batches of four or five into some cells, each man having given to him previously a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese of excellent quality.Here Peace was kept for a long time, but he could hear that the officials had returned and were engaged with the fresh arrivals he had for his companions—three ruffians of the very worst type—these being indeed, London thieves, and he had as little to say to them as possible.Not being pleased with his associates, he got up on a table under the window, and looked out on the Pentagon yard.“What are you up to?” cried one of his fellow-prisoners. “Want to see as much as you can of the blooming place. An’ much good it ell do yer.”Peace made no reply, but looked out. Walking round the yard, or rather the division nearest to the cell window, he observed a number of prisoners marching round the yard, about five or six yards apart.In the centre stood an imposing-looking warder in uniform, with a staff like a policeman’s in his hand.Each man was dressed in a short, loose, ill-fitting jacket and vest, and baggy knickerbockers of drab tweed, with black stripes one and a half inches in width. The lower part of the legs were encased in blue worsted stockings with bright red rings round them, low shoes, and a bright grey and red worsted cap. It struck Peace that they were very much like supernumeraries at a theatre, but all over the garments there were hideous black impressions of the broad arrow, the “crow’s foot” denoting that the articles belonged to her Majesty.After inspecting the prisoners at exercise, Peace descended from the table, and stood silent and dejected in the cell.Presently the door was opened, and he and his companions were ordered out.Peace was directed to go to the end of the passage, where the principal of the receiving ward was standing. He had to undergo the usual formula of the bath. A bundle was handed him, which contained a complete suit of clothes of the same picturesque pattern as those worn by the prisoners he had seen exercising.He was then called into a room where the doctor was, and here he saw the chief warder—an enormous man with the voice of a Stentor, who looked dreadfully stern and resolute, but who was, nevertheless, a kindly-disposed man enough—this he afterwards found out; there, to his surprise, he was shown a bundle which he at once recognised as the clothes, even to the hat and boots, he had worn before his conviction—his last habiliments of freedom.“You know what these are, and whom they belong to, I suppose?” said the prison official.“Yes, they belong to me,” Peace returned.“All right,” said the other, throwing them into a corner, where a pile of similar bundles were lying.After he had undergone the usual examination by the doctor, a card was given him with a number on it, which he was told was his number, to which he was to always answer, as prisoners left their names behind them.All this he knew perfectly well from sad experience, but he was too artful to let it appear that he was well acquainted with prison life.They would find that out in all probability quite soon enough.When fully equipped, and feeling very uncomfortable, he was marched down a passage and through a door at the foot of a winding spiral stone staircase into the Pentagon yard, across this and through a gate or two in the dividing railings into a similar door, up a spiral stone staircase like the first one he had passed—one flight, two flights, three flights, to the very top where he was transferred by the warder who had conducted him so far, to the care of another warder, and he at once pointed out the way along the passage to a cell, the door of which he opened, and introduced him to the quarters he was to take up during his sojourn at Millbank.The little ticket with his number was taken from him, and placed by the warder in a rack over the doorway. This done, he locked Peace in.Each convict establishment has a governor, deputy governor, and one or more chief warders. At the time of Peace’s incarceration in Millbank it had no less than three, who had under them three grades of officials—principals, warders, and assistant warders.The slang name for all the prison officials is “screws,” all are armed in some way, the leading officials wear swords, the warders and assistant warders are armed with truncheons, which are carried in cases at the side, much the same as those worn by the police.When with a gang of men at outdoor work these truncheons are replaced by a short rifle and bayonet. In addition, there is at Dartmoor and other prisons away from London, the civil guard, armed with rifles and bayonets, who do military duty in guarding the place.Millbank was so near to the barracks at Westminster that there was little need for a special guard. Every block of buildings and every ward in Millbank prison was in communication with each other, and all radiated from the centre of the whole establishment. Though to an outside observer it looked like a number of detached buildings, it was possible to visit every cell and every ward without once going into the open air.The numberless windows which were seen on the outside of this prison were not, as many erroneously supposed, the windows of prisoners’ cells. These windows served to light the passages running between them and the cell gates and doors. Every cell had a strong iron gate, opening outwards into the wide strong corridor or passage, and a wooden door opening inwards to the cell. Opposite the door was a large window, about three feet square, looking into the inner yard of the Pentagon.The round towers at the corner of each angle of every block of buildings, surmounted with pointed roofs, contained the spiral stone staircases leading from the ground floor to the top landing.There were four stories of these cells, all of which were alike and of good size, being about ten feet square.On each floor were sinks and water supply, and other conveniences for the wants of that corridor. Captain Arthur Griffiths has written an admirable work upon this prison, which he entitled “Chronicles of Millbank,” and the reader who desires to know more about a place which possesses an historical interest, cannot do better than consult that work.The history of punishments is parallel to the history of civilisation, for every advance made in the direction of a humane and intelligent treatment of criminals has marked a progressive step in contemporary manners and modes of thought.Among barbarous peoples the penal measures were barbarous; as the world has grown older and wiser punishments have become less cruel, and been based on wider principles.At first the object of punishment, whether by death or torture, was vengeance; only after long years was it directed to suppress crime; and it is in these more enlightened days that the system has developed into one which, while it is assigned to correct the wrong-doer, endevours also to reform him, and prevent others from following his ways.It seems at first sight surprising that confusing ideas with regard to the means and methods of punishment are the growth entirely of the present century; but so it is, and the work under notice most usefully reminds us of the various mutations those ideas have undergone, and of the immense change which has been made within a hundred years in the views of statesmen and philanthropists with regard to penal reclamation.“The Memorials of Millbank” are, in that, a description, full of instruction and charged with interest, of the process of evolution through which our prison system has reached its present excellence.Captain Arthur Griffiths begins his work with a picture of the condition of affairs in the time of Howard, long before Millbank was built or thought of, and a terrible picture it is he draws.Prisons were overcrowded, ill-ventilated, damp, pestiferous. The gaol fever, a disease now happily unknown, carried off, according to Howard, “more people than were put to death by all the public executions in the kingdom.”And those were times in which capital punishment was inflicted for the most trivial offences. Prisoners brought into court communicated the infection to judges, barristers, jurors, and spectators; and at Taunton in 1730 bench and bar and hundreds of people in court died from the disease.The prisons were not only pesthouses: they were places of torture, and gambling, and vice. The gaolers were inhuman wretches, as mercenary as they were cruel, and their chief aim was to make their positions profitable to themselves.Howard’s revelations stirred first of all the Duke of Richmond, who built a new and improvised prison at Horsham for Sussex; and soon after that, when transportation to the American colonies was abandoned, the Legislature resolved to build a gaol to which should be sent criminals heretofore ordered for transportation.Here it was hoped, to use the words of the Act, “that solitary confinement, accompanied by well-regulated hard labour and religious instruction, might be the means under Providence, not only of deterring others, but also of reforming the individuals and turning them to habits of industry.”This extract contains the seed from which, after long controversy and the failure of a scheme which honest but unpractical Jeremy Bentham attempted to carry out, the Millbank Penitentiary grew; and it contains, too, it appears to us, the secret of the repeated failures which governor after governor and successive Legislatures met with when the great experiment was under trial.The cost exceeded £350,000, which was a much larger sum at that date than it would be to-day to expend in a philanthropic enterprise, and is a proof of the earnestness with which the Government embarked in the task; but the money was almost thrown away.It was for a long time the old, old story of zeal without knowledge.Ministers and their advisers made the mistake of overrating the capabilities and moral qualities of the class they had to deal with.The committee of supervisors, who were virtually the rulers of the prison—which was another mistake—fell into a similar error.The governor and officers seem to have done the same; and nothing but trouble was in store for Millbank for many years to come.The story of the first volume is a sad one.It is one long series of struggles between well-meaning but weak authorities and turbulent incorrigible prisoners in a chronic state of insubordination. Even this was not all.The place was built on a faulty site; structural defects were constantly appearing, and the prisoners more than once were laid prostrate with a then mysterious disease, which turned out afterwards to be due to unsound sanitary and dietetic conditions.Leniency was the key-note of the prison system. Men and women the most depraved, the most irreclaimable, were to be reformed by moral suasion. There was practically no punishment, no discipline, no order.The governor was fettered by the supervisors, the officers were lax because there was no organisation, and the consequence was there was constant mutiny, escapes, or attempts to escape, which, despite altered arrangements and new regulations, continued for years.It was not until long after—not until transportation to the new Australian colonies commenced—that this evil was cured, and it is instructive at the present juncture to read that it was cured by the use of the lash.No other form of punishment was so efficacious; no other mode of correction so feared. The prisoners who witnessed the sufferings of their fellows appear to have been cowed.The women, who were always worse than the men—and here Captain Griffiths receives ample confirmation in a work published by a prison matron in 1862—seem only to have been controlled when it became known that they too might be treated—though it does not transpire that they ever were—with the same severity.Corporal punishment, however, was only needed to correct offences which it is evident a stricter discipline from the first would have prevented.In the course of years the Government discovered how little was to be hoped from moral suasion. Time and experience brought wisdom in their train, and ultimately the old order changed, giving place to new.The original scheme of a penitentiary was abandoned, the whole system was re-modelled, changes were made which we have not room to describe, and the prison was devoted to a different purpose and a different class of criminals—i.e., those on their road to the transport ships; and later on, when transportation was finally given up, as the first gaol of the convict under sentence of penal servitude, on his road to Portland or other establishments of the kind.Captain Griffiths in his second volume interweaves with his narrative of Millbank some interesting chapters descriptive of the system adopted in transportation to the colonies and the mode of life of the convicts there.A singular similarity exists between the errors of the one system and the other. In the earlier days of both the Government was too hopeful. They expected too much from the unpromising material they had to work upon.A reaction from the horrible condition revealed by the labours of Howard carried them too far in the other direction, and it was the reaction from this which led ultimately to a complete reversal of the old scheme of secondary punishment, the abandonment of transportation, and the establishment of the systems we have at present.Peace got on pretty well at Millbank; the warders were kind to him, and he behaved himself in the best possible manner, and his attempt to escape from Wakefield appeared to have been forgotten: anyway, it was never alluded to. It was some relief to the monotony of his prison life, when he was set to work with other prisoners to clean the windows of the establishment.It fell to his share to work at the infirmary, and while engaged on the windows in that part of the prison, he felt very much depressed, for the sight presented to him was indeed a most piteous one.To see fellow-creatures stretched on a bed of sickness is a sorry sight at the best of times, but when the bed is in a prison cell, with an iron gate at its entrance, securely locked, and the thought comes over you that the chances are that you may be in a similar position, it is enough to depress a man.Peace was greatly affected as he, as noiselessly as possible, polished the infirmary windows.He remembered at that time the accident that occurred to him in the rolling mills where he worked; and he remembered also his own long illness and tardy recovery after his leg had been set; but then he had a mother and sister to attend upon him, and he was a free man—in humble circumstances, it is true—but, nevertheless, free.As he thought of being seized with illness in a convict prison, he shuddered.The miserable patient, under these circumstances, has not one kind or sympathising face to smile upon him.The chances are that he is rudely tended by some fellow-prisoner, and he has to take his chance—and a very poor one it is—as to the sort of man whom the authorities have thought fit to appoint as hospital nurse.In most cases men who volunteer their services in cases of this sort do so for the purpose of shirking hard work, and but too frequently they feast themselves on the few little dainties ordered by the doctor, of which they rob the sick man when a warder’s back is turned. It is in their nature to do these sort of things; they have no compunction, no pity, no mercy. There are of course exceptions; sometimes indeed a convict makes an excellent nurse, but as we before observed the sick man has to take his chance; he has no voice in the matter. To complain would be of little avail; prison officials are so used to complaints that they take but little heed of grumblers, as they call them.To be ill whilst a convict is sad—to die a convict is terrible, and yet there are hundreds, and indeed, thousands, who are doomed to such a miserable fate. When a convict is sentenced to be imprisoned for his natural life, it of course means that he is to die in prison.To die at sea, and to be cast into the waves, rolled up in a hammock with a shot to carry the poor soulless body deep down where no mortal eye may see it, seems a sad and piteous fate. Anyway it is not pleasant to reflect on.To be shot down, or mangled by the bursting of a shell while fighting one’s country’s battles, yields, at least, some satisfaction to those who risk their lives in honour’s cause; but to die a convict, to be buried in an unknown, uncared-for grave, thrust into a prison coffin, filled up with dirty sawdust, as Peace had seen them done at Dartmoor, so that the ragged old shirt given out to do duty as a shroud may be served for other purposes, is but a sorry end for a man who had once lived respected and beloved.Peace was very glad when his window-cleaning job was over, he did not feel at all well, and the idea crossed his mind that probably he might be very shortly down upon the sick list, and be sent to the infirmary.This reflection was by no means a pleasant one; however, in the course of a few days he was in better health and spirits.Nothing after this disturbed the dull dry monotony of his prison life, but as the year was drawing to a close, he daily got more and more anxious to know what penal establishment he was to be drafted to after he had gone through his probationary term at Millbank.He had gathered scraps of information from several prisoners who professed to know a great deal of the subject, but he did not place much faith in anything they said, for, as a rule, prisoners’ “yarns” are not particularly truthful; nevertheless, he listened to what they had to say.One man, “an old lag,” said the next batch were going to Chatham, and it very soon transpired that he was correct in this surmise.In about a fortnight after this Peace became acquainted with the station to which he was to be drafted.While dinners were being served the chief warder said to him—“8642, collect all your letters together. Tie up your work, and put all your flannels on.”“Going away, sir?” said Peace.“Yes,” returned the warder.“Where to, sir?”“Prisoners must not ask questions—it’s against the rules.”“I shall know soon enough, I dare say,” growled Peace.“Well, Chatham, if you must know,” exclaimed the warder.“Thank ye, sir, I’m much obliged; I’m sorry to leave, though.”“Daresay you are. There, no more words. Pass on.”Peace now knew that the end of his quiet, though solitary, time was about to be brought to a close.He dreaded very much being brought into daily and hourly contact with some of the ruffians and blackguards he had been able to keep at a respectful distance while at Millbank, but there was no help for it.The batch had to finish the remainder of their respected sentences at Chatham.Thirty of them soon found themselves in the same corridor in which they had been received upon first entering Millbank, and after the usual formalities had been gone through they started on their journey, and were soon whirled down by train to their destination.
Millbank Penitentiary, as it was termed, is now a thing of the past. The new prison at Wormwood Scrubs will supersede a place of some historic history. Probably not many Londoners of the present generation know the history of the huge ugly building which occupied the left bank of the Thames between the Horseferry-road and Vauxhall-bridge.
It figures on the maps as a series of six pentagonal structures arranged round a central sexagon.
The forbidding structure was, until very recently, an ordinary prison, whither convicts were sent for separate confinement for the first nine months of their sentences of penal servitude, before they were drafted off to the convict prisons at Portland, Chatham, Portsmouth, or Dartmoor.
Its history as a “Penitentiary” closed more than thirty years ago, when Sir James Graham told the House of Commons it was a failure.
The place itself was one of the early results of Howard’s efforts to improve the condition of prisoners, and all the methods of prison discipline which have since been practised have been associated with it.
Howard withdrew from the scheme before even the site had been fixed on, and it was taken up by Jeremy Bentham, who wished to realise his idea of the Panopticon or Inspection House, “in which any number of persons may be kept within reach of being inspected during every moment of their lives.”
Bentham agreed with the Government to build a prison, and bought the land at Millbank of Lord Salisbury for £12,000, but the scheme fell through, though eventually the Penitentiary was built, and received its first batch of convicts in June, 1816.
In its management the new institution was meant as an experiment in the humanitarian treatment of crime.
The place was not to be a prison, but a penitentiary, and the convicts were not so much to be prisoners as penitents. Men who knew trades were to work at them and teach others.
Captain Griffiths, the present Deputy-Governor, in his “Memorials of Millbank,” just published, describes it as at this time “a huge plaything; a toy for a parcel of philanthropic gentlemen, to keep them busy during their spare hours.”
Visitors were taken to it as a show-place, where the prisoners read and went through religious exercises to the great edification of the company.
At Christmas they were regaled with roast beef and plum pudding, after which they passed a vote of thanks to Archdeacon Potts, the visitor, and sang “God save the King.”
Punishments were rarely inflicted, and then only after report to the visitor. The first prisoner who was released from the penitentiary was a woman who, being dressed in her new clothes, was taken round to see her fellow-penitents, who were duly addressed by Sir Archibald Macdonald, the visitor, on the improving spectacle.
Next day as she left the place of her temporary detention the other women were at their cell windows, and vociferously cheered the first subject of the new discipline as she went forth into the world. Convicts thus treated soon began to give themselves airs.
One charged with stealing the matron’s tea was so hurt as to be thrown into fits. Some of the women refused to have their hair cut short, and were allowed to retain their locks.
One Sunday the Chancellor of the Exchequer and some friends were at the prison service when a riot arose from the objection of some women to brown bread. The Chancellor addressed the men after the women had been removed, and promised to represent their complaint to the Home Secretary. The rebellious spirit, however, continued, and eventually had to be suppressed by punishments. The failure was charged on the officials, not on the system, and the Penitentiary continued to be conducted, as Captain Griffiths says, like a big school.
The populace called it “Mr. Holford’s fattening-house,” and it was suggested that the guards and warders were not needful to keep the rogues from getting out, but to prevent honest people from rushing in.
One of the services which Millbank has rendered in return for the half million of money squandered on it may be said to be the complete explosion of the idea on which penitentiaries were based.
Millbank was the first penitentiary, and the last, in the full sense of the word.
From the very first the place was a perpetual source of anxiety and dispute.
Before it was finished Sir Robert Smirke had to be called in to rebuild it, and it had only been opened a few years when one of the most terrible epidemics in prison history broke out among its occupants, necessitating their removal to the hulks.
When it was again occupied the same weak system seems to have prevailed.
The power of persuasion to reform criminals was thoroughly believed in, and nobody seemed to doubt that a year or two in Millbank would change any rogue into an honest man, if he were at all capable of reformation.
Only such as were considered hopeful were sent to the Penitentiary, and it required the failures of years to convince the public mind that the system of petting and patronising was the wrong one.
Parliament had not even given the governor the power to inflict corporal punishment; and a Parliamentary committee reported that the situation of convicts in Millbank “cannot be considered penal; it is a state of restriction, but hardly of punishment.” In 1826 the prisoners began to revolt even against restriction.
For some years the place was the scene of continual rebellions and disturbances, and Parliament at length authorised whipping.
No.45.
Illust: THE LAWYER AND AVELINE GATLIFFE.THE LAWYER AND AVELINE GATLIFFE.
THE LAWYER AND AVELINE GATLIFFE.
This was inflicted in the first instance on a man named Sheppard, who had beaten an officer in presence of other prisoners, but it was done with great gentleness, and when it was over the scoundrel made an edifying address to his fellow-prisoners.
One of the most celebrated cases of incorrigible perversity was that of JuliaSt.Clair Newman, which was often discussed in Parliament, and investigated by a select committee of the House of Lords.
She was apparently a Creole who had been educated in France, and came to England as a swindler. She looked like a gentlewoman, but had been imprisoned several times before she was sent to the penitentiary to be reformed.
Here her conduct alternated between fits of uncontrollable fury and passionate appeals for sympathy.
She feigned illness, pretended to be insane; sometimes embraced the female warders vehemently, at others flung her gruel in the face of the chaplain; would one day make her clothes into a doll, and another compose a long and critical examination of the character of the Queen, who had just then come to the throne.
Her influence all through the prison was most mischievous, and at length she had to be removed to Bethlehem.
There it seemed impossible to restrain her, and the effort was given up. She was at length sent out to Van Dieman’s Land in the “Nautilus,” and was no more heard of. She was only one of the Millbank failures.
After the confession in 1843 of the breakdown of the penitentiary system, the great prison became a kind of second Newgate.
In Newgate, however, as Captain Griffiths points out, the worst criminals soon pass beyond human ken; at the great depot prison they at least continue alive.
The calendar is full of names which have become historic in the annals of crime. Not to come down to the times of Orton, the names of Robson, Redpath, Poole, and Pullinger recall frauds which were conducted with a cleverness, and for a long time with a success, which only a genius for swindling could have attained.
“Jem the Penman,” the master mind of a gang of forgers, who made great hauls before they were caught, looked like a drunken sot in prison, but conducted himself fairly well.
One remarkable criminal was a practising surgeon, who had married wives in various parts of the country, and having got possession of their money, trinkets, and clothing, had deserted them.
He spoke several languages, and one of his favourite feats in prison was to write the Lord’s Prayer in five different languages within a circle the size of a sixpence.
His conduct at Millbank was most exemplary, and he, like other prisoners, eventually went to the Antipodes and married.
An “honourable and reverend” gentleman, who was convicted of forgery, and sentenced to transportation for life, became almost imbecile and useless in confinement; he, too, went to the colonies, where he “was last heard of performing divine service at an out-station at the rate of a shilling a service.”
A military man, of good family, who had become a gambler, and was convicted of enormous swindling transactions, proved in detention an idle, good-for-nothing rascal, who would do no work, and expected to be waited on.
Another ex-military officer was sentenced to seven years for striking the Queen. No motive could be found for the act, but in prison he declared that his sole object was to bring disgrace on his family, as his father had offended him. He was leniently treated, was popular with the officers, and eventually went to Australia.
These glimpses which the records of such a prison as Millbank give of men who have disappeared from the world are like scenes from Dante.
All hope, however, is not abandoned even when the gates of Millbank close behind a criminal. He still belongs to the world he has left.
A way back is kept open for him; and, though his old friends may know him no more, he has usually a chance of redeeming his position, perhaps under another name, in another land.
Upon Peace and his companions in crime arriving at Millbank, the first thing that was done on entering was to take the handcuffs off each convict; they were then told to seat themselves on a long bench in the passage.
Presently two chief warders arrived, accompanied by a medical officer and a clerk.
On their appearance the prisoners were told to rise and stand to attention. One of the chief warders walked along one line, and claimed more than one of the party.
By the time that certain preliminary preparations had been gone through, and the name, case, and crime of each prisoner had been entered into a book in the office, it was twelve o’clock, and dinner time.
The newcomers were informed that presently they would be asked what religion they were. Each man might please himself what he chose to be, but what he elected he must stick to.
The bill of fare for each day of the week was read out to them. The allowance given to each person was quite sufficient to support life, and keep him in good health.
Luxuries were, of course, never thought of. Coarse plain food was all they had any right to expect, and certainly it was all they got, but the cost of prisons forms a very large item in the expenses of the country.
Up to the time the prisons were taken over by the Government, it appears that the cost of maintaining the prisoners, exclusive of convicts, had been slowly but gradually diminishing, and it is not improbable this movement will now continue even more rapidly.
It appears from the volume of judicial statistics lately issued, that the average for the year 1876-7, of £28 16s.7d., calculated on the total cost, is less than the corresponding average for 1875-6 by £1 9s.5d.
The average, omitting the extraordinary charge for buildings,&c., is less than the corresponding amount for 1875-6 by £1 4s.The average yearly charge per prisoner, depending in a great degree on the number of prison officials maintained, and the daily average of prisoners, varies greatly in different prisons.
It is, of course, affected also by extraordinary charges of buildings, loans,&c.The lowest average cost per prisoner for 1876-7, as for 1875-6, is at Salford County Prison, where, with a total staff of 65 officers, and a total daily average of 900 prisoners in the latter year, and of 66 officers, and a total daily average of 966 prisoners in 1876-7, the average cost per prisoner was £14 6s.1d.in 1876-7, and £15 12s.5d.in 1875-6.
In Durham County Prison, with a total staff of 42, and a daily average of 641 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was in 1876-7, £17 0s.2d.
In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 42, and with a daily average of 625 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £17 17s.6d.
In Preston County Prison, with a staff of 36 officers, and a daily average of 435 prisoners, in 1876-7 the average cost per prisoner was £16 14s.10d.
In this prison for the previous year, with a like staff of 36 officers, and with a daily average of 405 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £19 12s.10d.
The highest average cost for 1876-7 was, as in the previous year, at the Lincoln County Prison, where, with a total staff of 9, and a daily average of 12 prisoners, the average cost per prisoner was £107 10s.11d.The average cost for the previous year, with a staff of 9 officers and a daily average of 9 prisoners, £133 19s.10d.per prisoner.
The average cost per prisoner, in the following 13 prisons, in the year 1876-7, exceeded in each case the sum of £50—namely, Wisbeach; Hertford, County;St.Alban’s, County; Great Stukely, County; Newgate, City and County; Peterborough, Liberty; Oakham, County; BurySt.Edmund’s, County; Ripon, Liberty; Beaumaris, County; Cardigan, County; Dolgelly, County; and Presteign, County Prison.
The average cost per prisoner in the following four prisons, in addition to the three previously mentioned, in the year 1876-7 was in each case under £20—namely, Devonport, Borough, £19 16s.3d.; Kirkdale, County, £18 1s.3d.; Liverpool, Borough, £18 2s.2d.; and Manchester City Prison, £17 16s.7d.The different sources from which the prison expenses for the year were defrayed, and the amount received from each were as follows:—
From prison receipts, inclusive of profits of prisoners’ labour, £64,855, or 11·0 per cent. of the total amount from local rates and funds was 69·1 per cent. total, and from public funds £116,769 or 19·9 per cent. of total.
The principal and proportions for the year 1875-6, under various heads, were, from prison receipts, £65,387, from local rates,&c., £400,712, and from revenues £110,300.
It will be seen by the foregoing statistics that the criminal population of the United Kingdom absorbs a vast amount of money annually from the pockets of the ratepayers for the maintainence of convicts.
This is a lamentable state of things, but under existing circumstances there is no help for it.
After the rules had been read, Peace and his fellow-prisoners were ordered in batches of four or five into some cells, each man having given to him previously a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese of excellent quality.
Here Peace was kept for a long time, but he could hear that the officials had returned and were engaged with the fresh arrivals he had for his companions—three ruffians of the very worst type—these being indeed, London thieves, and he had as little to say to them as possible.
Not being pleased with his associates, he got up on a table under the window, and looked out on the Pentagon yard.
“What are you up to?” cried one of his fellow-prisoners. “Want to see as much as you can of the blooming place. An’ much good it ell do yer.”
Peace made no reply, but looked out. Walking round the yard, or rather the division nearest to the cell window, he observed a number of prisoners marching round the yard, about five or six yards apart.
In the centre stood an imposing-looking warder in uniform, with a staff like a policeman’s in his hand.
Each man was dressed in a short, loose, ill-fitting jacket and vest, and baggy knickerbockers of drab tweed, with black stripes one and a half inches in width. The lower part of the legs were encased in blue worsted stockings with bright red rings round them, low shoes, and a bright grey and red worsted cap. It struck Peace that they were very much like supernumeraries at a theatre, but all over the garments there were hideous black impressions of the broad arrow, the “crow’s foot” denoting that the articles belonged to her Majesty.
After inspecting the prisoners at exercise, Peace descended from the table, and stood silent and dejected in the cell.
Presently the door was opened, and he and his companions were ordered out.
Peace was directed to go to the end of the passage, where the principal of the receiving ward was standing. He had to undergo the usual formula of the bath. A bundle was handed him, which contained a complete suit of clothes of the same picturesque pattern as those worn by the prisoners he had seen exercising.
He was then called into a room where the doctor was, and here he saw the chief warder—an enormous man with the voice of a Stentor, who looked dreadfully stern and resolute, but who was, nevertheless, a kindly-disposed man enough—this he afterwards found out; there, to his surprise, he was shown a bundle which he at once recognised as the clothes, even to the hat and boots, he had worn before his conviction—his last habiliments of freedom.
“You know what these are, and whom they belong to, I suppose?” said the prison official.
“Yes, they belong to me,” Peace returned.
“All right,” said the other, throwing them into a corner, where a pile of similar bundles were lying.
After he had undergone the usual examination by the doctor, a card was given him with a number on it, which he was told was his number, to which he was to always answer, as prisoners left their names behind them.
All this he knew perfectly well from sad experience, but he was too artful to let it appear that he was well acquainted with prison life.
They would find that out in all probability quite soon enough.
When fully equipped, and feeling very uncomfortable, he was marched down a passage and through a door at the foot of a winding spiral stone staircase into the Pentagon yard, across this and through a gate or two in the dividing railings into a similar door, up a spiral stone staircase like the first one he had passed—one flight, two flights, three flights, to the very top where he was transferred by the warder who had conducted him so far, to the care of another warder, and he at once pointed out the way along the passage to a cell, the door of which he opened, and introduced him to the quarters he was to take up during his sojourn at Millbank.
The little ticket with his number was taken from him, and placed by the warder in a rack over the doorway. This done, he locked Peace in.
Each convict establishment has a governor, deputy governor, and one or more chief warders. At the time of Peace’s incarceration in Millbank it had no less than three, who had under them three grades of officials—principals, warders, and assistant warders.
The slang name for all the prison officials is “screws,” all are armed in some way, the leading officials wear swords, the warders and assistant warders are armed with truncheons, which are carried in cases at the side, much the same as those worn by the police.
When with a gang of men at outdoor work these truncheons are replaced by a short rifle and bayonet. In addition, there is at Dartmoor and other prisons away from London, the civil guard, armed with rifles and bayonets, who do military duty in guarding the place.
Millbank was so near to the barracks at Westminster that there was little need for a special guard. Every block of buildings and every ward in Millbank prison was in communication with each other, and all radiated from the centre of the whole establishment. Though to an outside observer it looked like a number of detached buildings, it was possible to visit every cell and every ward without once going into the open air.
The numberless windows which were seen on the outside of this prison were not, as many erroneously supposed, the windows of prisoners’ cells. These windows served to light the passages running between them and the cell gates and doors. Every cell had a strong iron gate, opening outwards into the wide strong corridor or passage, and a wooden door opening inwards to the cell. Opposite the door was a large window, about three feet square, looking into the inner yard of the Pentagon.
The round towers at the corner of each angle of every block of buildings, surmounted with pointed roofs, contained the spiral stone staircases leading from the ground floor to the top landing.
There were four stories of these cells, all of which were alike and of good size, being about ten feet square.
On each floor were sinks and water supply, and other conveniences for the wants of that corridor. Captain Arthur Griffiths has written an admirable work upon this prison, which he entitled “Chronicles of Millbank,” and the reader who desires to know more about a place which possesses an historical interest, cannot do better than consult that work.
The history of punishments is parallel to the history of civilisation, for every advance made in the direction of a humane and intelligent treatment of criminals has marked a progressive step in contemporary manners and modes of thought.
Among barbarous peoples the penal measures were barbarous; as the world has grown older and wiser punishments have become less cruel, and been based on wider principles.
At first the object of punishment, whether by death or torture, was vengeance; only after long years was it directed to suppress crime; and it is in these more enlightened days that the system has developed into one which, while it is assigned to correct the wrong-doer, endevours also to reform him, and prevent others from following his ways.
It seems at first sight surprising that confusing ideas with regard to the means and methods of punishment are the growth entirely of the present century; but so it is, and the work under notice most usefully reminds us of the various mutations those ideas have undergone, and of the immense change which has been made within a hundred years in the views of statesmen and philanthropists with regard to penal reclamation.
“The Memorials of Millbank” are, in that, a description, full of instruction and charged with interest, of the process of evolution through which our prison system has reached its present excellence.
Captain Arthur Griffiths begins his work with a picture of the condition of affairs in the time of Howard, long before Millbank was built or thought of, and a terrible picture it is he draws.
Prisons were overcrowded, ill-ventilated, damp, pestiferous. The gaol fever, a disease now happily unknown, carried off, according to Howard, “more people than were put to death by all the public executions in the kingdom.”
And those were times in which capital punishment was inflicted for the most trivial offences. Prisoners brought into court communicated the infection to judges, barristers, jurors, and spectators; and at Taunton in 1730 bench and bar and hundreds of people in court died from the disease.
The prisons were not only pesthouses: they were places of torture, and gambling, and vice. The gaolers were inhuman wretches, as mercenary as they were cruel, and their chief aim was to make their positions profitable to themselves.
Howard’s revelations stirred first of all the Duke of Richmond, who built a new and improvised prison at Horsham for Sussex; and soon after that, when transportation to the American colonies was abandoned, the Legislature resolved to build a gaol to which should be sent criminals heretofore ordered for transportation.
Here it was hoped, to use the words of the Act, “that solitary confinement, accompanied by well-regulated hard labour and religious instruction, might be the means under Providence, not only of deterring others, but also of reforming the individuals and turning them to habits of industry.”
This extract contains the seed from which, after long controversy and the failure of a scheme which honest but unpractical Jeremy Bentham attempted to carry out, the Millbank Penitentiary grew; and it contains, too, it appears to us, the secret of the repeated failures which governor after governor and successive Legislatures met with when the great experiment was under trial.
The cost exceeded £350,000, which was a much larger sum at that date than it would be to-day to expend in a philanthropic enterprise, and is a proof of the earnestness with which the Government embarked in the task; but the money was almost thrown away.
It was for a long time the old, old story of zeal without knowledge.
Ministers and their advisers made the mistake of overrating the capabilities and moral qualities of the class they had to deal with.
The committee of supervisors, who were virtually the rulers of the prison—which was another mistake—fell into a similar error.
The governor and officers seem to have done the same; and nothing but trouble was in store for Millbank for many years to come.
The story of the first volume is a sad one.
It is one long series of struggles between well-meaning but weak authorities and turbulent incorrigible prisoners in a chronic state of insubordination. Even this was not all.
The place was built on a faulty site; structural defects were constantly appearing, and the prisoners more than once were laid prostrate with a then mysterious disease, which turned out afterwards to be due to unsound sanitary and dietetic conditions.
Leniency was the key-note of the prison system. Men and women the most depraved, the most irreclaimable, were to be reformed by moral suasion. There was practically no punishment, no discipline, no order.
The governor was fettered by the supervisors, the officers were lax because there was no organisation, and the consequence was there was constant mutiny, escapes, or attempts to escape, which, despite altered arrangements and new regulations, continued for years.
It was not until long after—not until transportation to the new Australian colonies commenced—that this evil was cured, and it is instructive at the present juncture to read that it was cured by the use of the lash.
No other form of punishment was so efficacious; no other mode of correction so feared. The prisoners who witnessed the sufferings of their fellows appear to have been cowed.
The women, who were always worse than the men—and here Captain Griffiths receives ample confirmation in a work published by a prison matron in 1862—seem only to have been controlled when it became known that they too might be treated—though it does not transpire that they ever were—with the same severity.
Corporal punishment, however, was only needed to correct offences which it is evident a stricter discipline from the first would have prevented.
In the course of years the Government discovered how little was to be hoped from moral suasion. Time and experience brought wisdom in their train, and ultimately the old order changed, giving place to new.
The original scheme of a penitentiary was abandoned, the whole system was re-modelled, changes were made which we have not room to describe, and the prison was devoted to a different purpose and a different class of criminals—i.e., those on their road to the transport ships; and later on, when transportation was finally given up, as the first gaol of the convict under sentence of penal servitude, on his road to Portland or other establishments of the kind.
Captain Griffiths in his second volume interweaves with his narrative of Millbank some interesting chapters descriptive of the system adopted in transportation to the colonies and the mode of life of the convicts there.
A singular similarity exists between the errors of the one system and the other. In the earlier days of both the Government was too hopeful. They expected too much from the unpromising material they had to work upon.
A reaction from the horrible condition revealed by the labours of Howard carried them too far in the other direction, and it was the reaction from this which led ultimately to a complete reversal of the old scheme of secondary punishment, the abandonment of transportation, and the establishment of the systems we have at present.
Peace got on pretty well at Millbank; the warders were kind to him, and he behaved himself in the best possible manner, and his attempt to escape from Wakefield appeared to have been forgotten: anyway, it was never alluded to. It was some relief to the monotony of his prison life, when he was set to work with other prisoners to clean the windows of the establishment.
It fell to his share to work at the infirmary, and while engaged on the windows in that part of the prison, he felt very much depressed, for the sight presented to him was indeed a most piteous one.
To see fellow-creatures stretched on a bed of sickness is a sorry sight at the best of times, but when the bed is in a prison cell, with an iron gate at its entrance, securely locked, and the thought comes over you that the chances are that you may be in a similar position, it is enough to depress a man.
Peace was greatly affected as he, as noiselessly as possible, polished the infirmary windows.
He remembered at that time the accident that occurred to him in the rolling mills where he worked; and he remembered also his own long illness and tardy recovery after his leg had been set; but then he had a mother and sister to attend upon him, and he was a free man—in humble circumstances, it is true—but, nevertheless, free.
As he thought of being seized with illness in a convict prison, he shuddered.
The miserable patient, under these circumstances, has not one kind or sympathising face to smile upon him.
The chances are that he is rudely tended by some fellow-prisoner, and he has to take his chance—and a very poor one it is—as to the sort of man whom the authorities have thought fit to appoint as hospital nurse.
In most cases men who volunteer their services in cases of this sort do so for the purpose of shirking hard work, and but too frequently they feast themselves on the few little dainties ordered by the doctor, of which they rob the sick man when a warder’s back is turned. It is in their nature to do these sort of things; they have no compunction, no pity, no mercy. There are of course exceptions; sometimes indeed a convict makes an excellent nurse, but as we before observed the sick man has to take his chance; he has no voice in the matter. To complain would be of little avail; prison officials are so used to complaints that they take but little heed of grumblers, as they call them.
To be ill whilst a convict is sad—to die a convict is terrible, and yet there are hundreds, and indeed, thousands, who are doomed to such a miserable fate. When a convict is sentenced to be imprisoned for his natural life, it of course means that he is to die in prison.
To die at sea, and to be cast into the waves, rolled up in a hammock with a shot to carry the poor soulless body deep down where no mortal eye may see it, seems a sad and piteous fate. Anyway it is not pleasant to reflect on.
To be shot down, or mangled by the bursting of a shell while fighting one’s country’s battles, yields, at least, some satisfaction to those who risk their lives in honour’s cause; but to die a convict, to be buried in an unknown, uncared-for grave, thrust into a prison coffin, filled up with dirty sawdust, as Peace had seen them done at Dartmoor, so that the ragged old shirt given out to do duty as a shroud may be served for other purposes, is but a sorry end for a man who had once lived respected and beloved.
Peace was very glad when his window-cleaning job was over, he did not feel at all well, and the idea crossed his mind that probably he might be very shortly down upon the sick list, and be sent to the infirmary.
This reflection was by no means a pleasant one; however, in the course of a few days he was in better health and spirits.
Nothing after this disturbed the dull dry monotony of his prison life, but as the year was drawing to a close, he daily got more and more anxious to know what penal establishment he was to be drafted to after he had gone through his probationary term at Millbank.
He had gathered scraps of information from several prisoners who professed to know a great deal of the subject, but he did not place much faith in anything they said, for, as a rule, prisoners’ “yarns” are not particularly truthful; nevertheless, he listened to what they had to say.
One man, “an old lag,” said the next batch were going to Chatham, and it very soon transpired that he was correct in this surmise.
In about a fortnight after this Peace became acquainted with the station to which he was to be drafted.
While dinners were being served the chief warder said to him—
“8642, collect all your letters together. Tie up your work, and put all your flannels on.”
“Going away, sir?” said Peace.
“Yes,” returned the warder.
“Where to, sir?”
“Prisoners must not ask questions—it’s against the rules.”
“I shall know soon enough, I dare say,” growled Peace.
“Well, Chatham, if you must know,” exclaimed the warder.
“Thank ye, sir, I’m much obliged; I’m sorry to leave, though.”
“Daresay you are. There, no more words. Pass on.”
Peace now knew that the end of his quiet, though solitary, time was about to be brought to a close.
He dreaded very much being brought into daily and hourly contact with some of the ruffians and blackguards he had been able to keep at a respectful distance while at Millbank, but there was no help for it.
The batch had to finish the remainder of their respected sentences at Chatham.
Thirty of them soon found themselves in the same corridor in which they had been received upon first entering Millbank, and after the usual formalities had been gone through they started on their journey, and were soon whirled down by train to their destination.