THE HOUSE OF DETENTION.
AFTER a delay of about twenty minutes—when for the first time I found
myself an inmate of a police cell—a very civil gaoler (with the relative
rank of a Police Sergeant) announced to me, with a “Now, Captain,” the
arrival of one of Her Majesty’s carriages. One has frequently heard of
the Queen’s carriages meeting, and not meeting, distinguished personages,
such as Mr. Gladstone, Sir Garnet Wolseley, the King of the Zulus, and
German princelings; but the carriage I refer to must not be confused with
this type. They are far from comfortable, the accommodation is limited,
and the society questionable; and had it not been for the courteous
consideration of the conductor (a Police Sergeant) I should have been
considerably puzzled in attempting to squeeze my huge bulk of 19 stone 13
lbs. (as verified a few minutes later in Her Majesty’s scales) into a
compartment about 16 inches in breadth. As a fact, however, I remained
in the passage, and thus obtained a view of streets and well-known haunts
under very novel and degrading conditions. Everyone appeared to stare at
this van, and everyone seemed to me to particularly catch my eye; but
this, of course, was pure fancy, resulting, I presume, from a guilty
conscience—for within the dark tunnel of this centre passage it was
impossible that anyone in the streets could see, much less distinguish,
anyone inside. I discovered a few weeks later that these uncomfortable
police vans were infinitely superior and more roomy than those attached
to Her Majesty’s prisons; in fact, I should say they were the only
attempt (as far as I could discover) at making a distinction between an
untried, and consequently innocent (vaunted English law—twaddle) person,
and a convicted prisoner.
My experiences at the “House of Detention” and subsequently at “Newgate”
convince me that justice demands a great alteration in the rules
regarding untried prisoners, who are allowed and disallowed certain
newspapers at the caprice of the chaplain, and actually restricted as to
the class of eatables their friends may send them. An instance of this
occurred in my case. A kind friend one day brought me a hamper
containing, as I was informed, a roast fowl and a tongue; the warder at
the entrance-gate, however, told him that these were luxuries in the
estimation of the Home-office, and therefore less suited to the palate of
an untried (and consequently innocent) man than a chop or steak fried in
tallow and procured from the usual eating-house; and as my friend had
dragged this white elephant of a parcel about with him for some time, he
gave it bodily to the turnkey, who consequently reaped the advantage of
the intended kindness to me. Next morning I complained to the Governor,
who assured me he should have made no objection to the “luxury” of a
fowl; in short, I had been the victim of the zeal of an illiterate and
astute official, who, putting two and two together, and weighing the
probable effect of his veto on an inexperienced inhabitant of the outer
world, had arrived at a very happy arrangement whereby I was deprived and
he benefited to the extent of a well-selected hamper. I found the
Governor a very good sort. His suit of dittos was a little of the
“thunder and lightning” pattern; but if his clothes were loud, his
manners were not—in short, he was essentially a gentleman, both in
appearance and manners, a beau ideal of the heavy dragoon that existed
before the Cardwellite era. I purposely refer to his manners being those
of a gentleman because it does not always occur that those situated in a
similar position possess the higher recommendation.
The “House of Detention” appeared to me the most awfully depressing place
to which my erring footsteps had ever led me. The darkness, the
stillness, the novelty of the situation, all tended to this conclusion;
and I cannot do better than describe what occurred, and leave the verdict
in the hands of the reader. Conceive then a man, who an hour previously
was a free citizen, suddenly finding himself stepping out of a police van
into a gloomy, white-washed passage, and being inspected and counted with
a dozen others by a bumptious turnkey, puffed out with his own
importance, addicted, as I have previously mentioned, to cold fowl and
tongue, but otherwise oblivious to the veriest rudiments of civilization.
Conceive, then, the sensations of a man such as I, finding himself
suddenly confronted by such a biped, who, scanning first a paper and then
you, begins to drawl out, “What’s your name? Your age? Married or
single? Protestant or Romanist?” and a volley of such like rubbish,
which only tends to exasperate one, and which might well be dispensed
with, seeing that all the desired information is on the paper, and,
having been supplied by one’s self not an hour before, is sure to be
corroborated, whether correct or not, and considering, too, that this
farce is repeated every time you enter and leave the place, and which in
a case of frequent remands might occur twice a day. One can hardly
narrate a single item regarding the treatment of an untried prisoner that
does not call for redress, _i.e._, if the absurd theory is still
persisted in that an untried man is an innocent one. What right has an
innocent man to be debarred the privilege of seeing friends (under
reasonable restrictions) as often as he pleases, instead of being limited
to one visit of fifteen minutes a day? Why should one be allowed to
purchase _Town Talk_ and not _Truth_? Why should the _Graphic_ be
permitted and not the _Dramatic News_? These are anomalies no logic can
explain away, and have no right to be left to the caprice of a prison
official. The food supply as at present arranged is a cruel system; a
prisoner under remand is gratified at hearing that he may procure his own
food, and naturally shrinks at the idea of subsisting on prison fare till
absolutely compelled. No greater mistake ever was made—the latter is
good, clean, and supplied gratis; the former is nasty in the extreme, and
scandalously dear. If the doubtful “privilege” is to be continued, it is
time the government, in common fairness, controlled the tariff; at
present a prisoner is at the mercy of the eating-house keeper, and liable
to any charge he may choose to make. I must admit that the caterers for
the “House of Detention” were civil and comparatively reasonable, whereas
those at Newgate were exactly the opposite. I shall give a detailed
account later on of how I was fleeced at the Old Bailey, and I would
earnestly warn all prisoners awaiting trial to stick to the prison fare,
and carefully to avoid the refreshments supplied from the cat’s meat
houses in the neighbourhood. With these slight digressions I shall
proceed to a description of the routine at the “House of Detention,” with
its rules and regulations and privileges, and the impressions they
conveyed to me; and I cannot do better than impress on the reader that
this book makes no pretensions to literary merit, but must be regarded
rather as a journal of facts, whose principle claim is based on their
having been written by a man who is probably as well known as any in
England. I ask no praise, I’m equally oblivious to abuse; criticism I’m
absolutely indifferent to, being convinced that either my notoriety, my
popularity, my identity, or unpopularity, will procure me readers far in
excess of any book of greater merit; and it is a consolation to feel that
my friends will be glad that I got through some months with a degree of
comfort never before paralleled, and my enemies (male and especially
female) will be chagrined at discovering that “Imprisonment with Hard
Labour” in my case meant kindness from first to last hardly credible,
absolutely devoid of any labour at all, and accompanied with luxuries as
regards eating and drinking that could not have been surpassed had I been
stopping at a first-class hotel and paying thirty shillings a day for
board and lodging. Many apparent contradictions may moreover suggest
themselves, but taken in the light of a diary, these contradictory views
must be regarded as reflecting circumstances as they appeared to me from
time to time under various phases. Suffice it to say that I have
carefully avoided exaggeration, that everything I narrate can be fully
substantiated, and may be unhesitatingly accepted as the experiences of a
man endowed with an average amount of brains, who kept his eyes wide
open, and who had opportunities given him that no man ever had before,
whether higher or lower in the social or criminal scale, of seeing a vast
amount of the “dark side of nature.” In my innocence I once fancied I
had seen a good deal, and knew a lot; but the following narrative will
prove that I was a very babe and suckling, before I became a “Government
ward.” Heaven forbid that anyone should purchase his experience at such
a price; nevertheless, on the principle that has guided me through life
of trying to see everything and do everything, I can only attempt to
justify my escapades by endorsing the theory (slightly altered) of the
immortal Voltaire, that a man who would go through what I have is “_un
fois un philosophe_, _mais deux fois un criminel déterminé_.”