THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT.
AFTER my sudden summons to attend the Court I found myself in the yard
below, where, in company with some twenty others, I was placed in
rotation according to a list the Governor and chief warder were
“checking.” This formula being completed, we proceeded in single file,
preceded by an “officer” and followed by a patriarch, along the
subterraneous passages that connect the prison with the Old Bailey
Court-house. These passages are the last remnants of the old prison, and
demonstrate the change that has taken place in the accepted notions of
insuring the safety of prisoners. Every few yards a massive iron door
some inches thick, with huge bolts and a ponderous key, bars the passage.
Having passed through all these, we came to a halt in a dark recess,
partially lighted by gas, on each side of which were arched cells,
suggestive of those of the Adelphi. Into each of these five or six of us
were conducted, for by the prison system prisoners before trial may be
herded together; after conviction, however, all that ceases, and one is
“supposed” henceforth to be isolated. After a delay of some twenty
minutes, and during which I was initiated into the style of society I
might expect for the future, my name was called and I was conducted up a
wooden stair. The hum of voices—for I could see nothing—indicated to me
that I was in the vicinity of the Court and on the stair leading into the
dock—one of those mysterious boxes I had often seen from the opposite
side, where criminals popped up and popped down so suddenly and so
mysteriously.
I had seen many murderers sentenced to death from that very dock, and was
often puzzled at the geography of the place; all this, however, was now
made perfectly clear. It was with mingled feelings of astonishment and
bewilderment that I found myself, suddenly and without warning, the
observed of all observers. The crowded Court, the forest of well-known
faces—vindictive prosecutors, reluctant witnesses, quasi-friends come to
gloat over my misfortune, and one or two real sympathisers—all appeared
glued together to my bewildered gaze. Beyond, and seated against the
wall, were innumerable figures robed in flowing scarlet gowns, and
presenting to my senses so ghastly and weird a picture that I can compare
it to nothing but that impressive trial scene in “The Bells,” to which
Mr. Irving imparts such terrible reality. It only required the mesmerist
to complete the resemblance; and he must have been there, although
invisible, for I was mesmerized, or at least completely dazed. By
degrees, however, I recovered my senses, and embracing the whole scene,
summed up the vanity of human sympathy and the value to be attached to
friendship, as it is called. Reader, whoever you are, take the word of a
man who has been rich and surrounded by every luxury. Friends will
cluster round you in your prosperity as they did round me, and when they
have eaten you out of house and home, and robbed you by fair means or
foul, by card playing and racing, you must not be surprised if you
discover that the most vindictive and uncompromising are those you least
expected. “For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then I could have
borne it—neither was it he that hated me, that did magnify himself
against me; but it was a man, mine equal, my guide, and my
acquaintance—yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did
eat of my bread—hath lifted up his heel against me.”
The ordeal at length had been gone through, and I was on my return
journey to the prison as a “convicted prisoner.” A prisoner after
sentence consists of only two classes, the “convict” and the “convicted
prisoner,” and it is marvellous how soon the difference shows itself.
The “convicted prisoner” finds absolutely no change beyond being deprived
of the questionable privilege of procuring his own food at an exorbitant
rate. With the “convict,” however, things are very different.
Immediately after sentence he is stripped of all his clothes, his hair
and beard are cropped as close as scissors can do it, and he is
metamorphosized by the assumption of the coarse brown and black striped
convict dress. The change is so marvellous that it is difficult at first
to recognize a man. One poor fellow I saw, a gentlemanly-looking man
from the Post-office, that I frequently spoke to, was so changed when I
saw him next morning in Chapel that I could not for the moment recognize
the poor wretch who kept grinning at me with an air of levity as assumed
as it was painful. I am not ashamed to admit that I thanked Providence I
had escaped that fearful doom. It is not generally known that two years’
imprisonment is the limit of a sentence of hard labour, after which the
next higher punishment involves five years’ penal servitude. There is a
vast deal of ignorance displayed on this subject, even by those who might
be supposed to know better. It is generally believed that imprisonment
with hard labour is a severer punishment than penal servitude. No
greater fallacy ever existed. I base my assertion, not so much on
personal experience (for I was exceptionally fortunate), as on what I saw
of the treatment of others; and I confidently assert—and my opinion would
be corroborated by every respectable prisoner (if such an anomaly can
exist)—that two years’ “hard labour” is an infinitely lighter punishment
than even two years of penal servitude would be; and I can only attribute
the general acceptation of this error to the fact that convicts get a
little more food than convicted prisoners, and prisoners as a rule will
do anything for “grub.”
I have now brought my experiences of Newgate to a close, and shall
briefly describe our departure to our final and respective destinations.
An unusual bustle one morning indicated that something out of the
ordinary was about to happen, and though we received no actual warning,
it was generally buzzed about that we were to make a start after
breakfast. At breakfast-time the warder told me to put my things
together, and half an hour later found me and sixteen others marshalled
in the corridor, where, being carefully compared with our respective
descriptions, we were formally handed over to a detachment of warders
from Coldbath Fields. Other parties were being simultaneously paraded
for Holloway and Pentonville, the latter all in convict dress and as
pitiable a looking set as can well be conceived. I discovered, both now
and subsequently, that a human being is invariably referred to as if he
were a parcel. Thus, on arrival, one is said to be “received,” and one’s
departure is described as being “sent out.” This is not intended in an
offensive sense, but may be taken rather as a figure of speech. In the
adjoining yard were half a dozen vans—indeed, I had never before seen
such a formidable array, except, perhaps, a meet of the four-in-hand club
on a rainy day—and into one of these I was politely conducted, with a
degree of precaution as unnecessary as it was absurd.
No reader can accuse me of rounding the points of this ungarnished story,
or endeavouring to conceal any incident, however unpleasant. As,
however, my subsequent experiences may discover a treatment so kind and
exceptional as to appear almost incredible, I must only ask the reader to
credit me with the veracity that my previous frankness entitles me to
expect. My anxiety on this point is considerably enhanced by the
contradiction it will bear to other narratives I have read, and which,
purporting to describe prison life, invariably represent it as a hot-bed
of cruelty, where prisoners are starved and otherwise ill-treated, all of
which I emphatically deny, and cause me to doubt whether one single
specimen of these so-called personal narratives is anything else but an
“idle tale,” written with a view of enlisting sympathy, and possibly
turning an honest penny. If these writers and these prisoners had seen
as much as I have (from outside) of prisons on the Continent, in Morocco,
and in China, they would think themselves very fortunate in their present
quarters. I—who have seen prisoners starving in prisons in Morocco, and
absolutely “unfed,” except by the charity of visitors, who usually
scramble a few shillings’ worth of bread amongst them; and who, for a
dollar to the jailor, have seen a Chinaman at Shanghai brought out, made
to kneel down and have his head sliced off like a water-melon—have no
patience with these well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed rascals. I
would send all these discontented burglars and their “converted”
biographers to China or Morocco, and omit to supply them with return
tickets. I have lately read a book connected with penal servitude, by an
anonymous writer, in which this innocent lamb is whining throughout of
his hardship in being compelled to herd with criminals; and it says a
great deal for his imitative capacity that he should so naturally and so
thoroughly have adopted the almost universal “injured innocence” tactics
of the habitual criminal. One great nuisance at all prisons is the
almost universal habit that prisoners have of protesting their innocence;
they protest it so often to everybody on every possible occasion, that
they eventually begin to believe that they really are innocent. I found
these guileless creatures great bores; indeed I am (I am convinced) well
within the mark when I assert that there were only about three-and-twenty
guilty persons besides myself amongst the fifteen hundred prisoners in
Coldbath Fields. This compulsory herding with innocent burglars is a
great trial, and one that never enters into the calculation of a judge.
A short drive at a good pace on this early December morning brought us to
the gates of Coldbath Fields Prison; and as I stepped out, I could not
help recalling Dante’s famous line—
“All hope abandon ye who enter here.”
It only proves how apt one is to form erroneous ideas from first
impressions. I was never more mistaken in my life.