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.
[Sidenote: No. 45.]
[Illustration: 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 Julia St. 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 new comers 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; Bury St.
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.