^ 
 
 :\
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 ALBERT SHELBY LEVI1\^0
 
 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL
 
 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC MARTYN 
 
 > 1 t i 1 
 
 *• >'• •» 3> ] 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1911
 
 'K 
 
 H 
 
 v-^ 
 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAf. PAGE 
 
 I. THE ARREST I 
 
 II. THE "tapper" IS 
 
 III. THE CELLS 24 
 
 IV. THE POLICE COURT 37 
 
 V. ON REMAND 48 
 
 VI. MEDICAL INSPECTION 57 
 
 VII. FIRST FRIENDS 64 
 
 VIII. IDENTIFICATION 73 
 
 IX. BLACK MARIA AGAIN 76 
 
 X. BOW STREET 83 
 
 I/;) XL REMAND DIET 89 
 
 XH. EN ROUTE FOR THE OLD BAILEY - • • 95 
 
 Xin. THE OLD BAILEY CELLS IO3 
 
 XIV. AN UNEXPECTED CHARGE I07 
 
 XV. MV PREDECESSORS IH 
 
 XVI. FURTHER POSTPONEMENT 1 17 
 
 XVII. SENTENCED I20 
 
 XVIII. FELLOW PHILOSOPHER I27 
 
 XIX. A PRISONER IN EARNEST T33 
 
 XX. THE OPTIMIST AND THE P.URr.LAR . . -139 
 
 XXI. EXERCISE .14^^ 
 
 21595
 
 vi A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 CHAP. PACK 
 
 XXII. THE WARDER 1 53 
 
 XXIII. THE "star" class 1 56 
 
 XXIV. DINNER 161 
 
 XXV. SOLACE 166 
 
 XXVI. GOOD-NIGHT 168 
 
 XXVII. A TEMPTATION 171 
 
 XXVIII. COMPLAINTS 175 
 
 XXIX. SUNDAY 185 
 
 XXX. HARD LABOUR I90 
 
 XXXI. "THE ferret" 195 
 
 XXXII. HARD IDLENESS 200 
 
 XXXIII. AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE 205 
 
 XXXIV. THE SUSPECTS 208 
 
 XXXV. "THE TALKING FISH" 213 
 
 XXXVI. LIBRARIAN 219 
 
 XXXVIl. "SCHOLARS" 230 
 
 XXXVIII. SEARCHES 235 
 
 XXXIX. THE COMPLETE BURGLAR . . . .244 
 
 XL. THE SUICIDE 246 
 
 XLI. THE DOCTOR 250 
 
 XLII. THE CANTANKEROUS 259 
 
 XLIII. CHRISTMAS DAY 262 
 
 XLIV. WEARING THE END 270 
 
 XLV. RELEASE 276
 
 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL
 
 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE ARREST 
 
 I HAVE recently returned to work from the 
 holiday of a lifetime, feeling as if I am 
 wound up to go another fifty years on top of the 
 half-century I already have to own to, and with 
 a capacity for enjoyment that I don't remember 
 to have possessed in my salad days. I have 
 been taking the finest rest cure that the whole 
 world affords : I have been doing eighteen 
 months' hard labour in an English prison. 
 
 No, I am not trying to pull the leg of a 
 credulous public; I am simply endeavouring to 
 put into readable shape my experiences of police, 
 prisons, and prisoners arising out of my first 
 and only conflict with the criminal law of this or 
 any other country. 
 
 I am afraid that my experiences will be found 
 to differ greatly from any that have yet appeared
 
 2 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 either in the newspapers or in book form. If 
 they were not altogether different there would 
 be no excuse for publishing them, inasmuch as 
 the public must be quite " fed up " with the 
 whining accounts of prison life that have been 
 appearing more or less continuously in the 
 penny weeklies for the past few years. 
 
 These woeful wails without exception re- 
 present prison life as a very good imitation of 
 purgatory, but I say boldly that it is nothing of 
 the sort, and that, putting deprivation of liberty 
 out of consideration, nine men out of every ten 
 who go to prison are better off there than they 
 would be outside. 
 
 It may be put up against me that I was 
 hardly in a position to judge of the rigour of the 
 English penal system, seeing that I was a mere 
 Hard Labour prisoner in a local prison while 
 the accounts I have referred to were written by 
 men who have undergone sentences of penal 
 servitude. All I can say to this is that every 
 old convict that I met in prison — and I met a 
 good few, and asked every one of them the 
 same question — declared with emphasis that 
 hard labour isn't "in it" with penal servitude 
 for food, comfort, and flight of time ; and that 
 three years' penal servitude was in every way
 
 THE ARREST 3 
 
 a more desirable sentence than two years' hard 
 labour. 
 
 It may be thought, too, that my previous 
 circumstances were such as to make the prison 
 food and the prison bed a change for the better. 
 This would be an extremely erroneous im- 
 pression to get hold of, inasmuch as I went to 
 prison straight from the smoking of shilling 
 cigars and the eating of seven-and-sixpenny 
 dinners, and living the life generally of a man 
 who considers that the best of everything is good 
 enough for him. 
 
 It is well known that it is quite possible for 
 two eye-witnesses of an occurrence to give, in 
 perfect sincerity and good faith, diametrically 
 opposite accounts of what happened. What a 
 man sees depends a great deal upon the point of 
 view from which he looks at it, and this may be 
 the explanation of the discrepancies between my 
 experience and those of others. I am not 
 accusing writers of previous accounts of life in 
 prison of lying or misrepresentation ; it may well 
 be that their sufferings were as terrible as they 
 make them out to be, and that I didn't suffer 
 because I have the good fortune to be a sort of 
 rhinoceros-hided animal who can't even be 
 tickled with anything less formidable than a
 
 4 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 particularly sharp and well-built pitchfork. I 
 don't think myself that I am more thick-skinned 
 than the ordinary man, but I must confess that I 
 have a tendency to hunt for the silver lining to 
 a cloud without worrying myself to death about 
 the blackness of the cloud itself 
 
 Whatever it was that caused me to look on 
 my prison experiences in the way I did, it is a 
 fact that I regard my eighteen months' enforced 
 residence in gaol as one of the most comfortable 
 incidents in a somewhat varied life ; as a real 
 holiday, in fact. I won't go so far as to say that 
 I was sorry when the time came for me to return 
 to the outside world again — for even holidays 
 pall, and one longs for change from the 
 pleasantest times — but I can honestly assert 
 that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and am 
 glad that it came my way. 
 
 I didn't enjoy the beginning of it, not a little 
 bit. It was a real " come down " for me to go to 
 gaol, and in the early stages I really felt as if the 
 sun had gone bang out of my sky and would 
 never re-appear; but this pessimistic feeling 
 soon wore off, and I began to look around me 
 and appreciate the fact that many worse things 
 might have happened to me. 
 
 My arrest came upon me as a crushing
 
 THE ARREST 5 
 
 surprise, for I was not conscious of having done 
 anything that was anywhere near the borders of 
 crime ; and the surprise at the arrest itself was 
 only one degree less intense than the surprise 
 at the manner of it. The police may behave 
 roughly when arresting some criminals, but 
 they were very gentle with me, and arrested me 
 as politely and as quietly as if they were merely 
 inviting me to dinner. 
 
 As I came out of the post-office of the sea- 
 side town where I was staying, two well- 
 dressed men who were standing on the other 
 side of the street crossed over and met me in 
 the centre of the carriage-way. One of them 
 raised his hat and mentioned my name inter- 
 rogatively. 
 
 " Yes," I replied. 
 
 Then the second man took up position at my 
 side and the first one said deprecatingly — 
 
 " I'm sorry to say, sir, that I have a warrant 
 for your arrest. Would you like to go in any- 
 where to talk the matter over ? " 
 
 " Warrant for my arrest ! " I ejaculated. 
 "What on earth for?" 
 
 The detective shrugged his shoulders and 
 smilingly rejoined — 
 
 " You don't want me to show it here do you?
 
 6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 Let us go in there;" and he nodded in the 
 direction of a neighbouring hotel. 
 
 We made our way to the smoke-room, and 
 seeing that the drinks " were up against me," as 
 they say in America, I asked them what they 
 would have. 
 
 "Scotch and soda?" said the first man, 
 interrogatively, to his colleague. 
 
 The second man nodded and I ordered. 
 
 When the waiter had gone for the drinks, the 
 first man suggested that I might like to smoke, 
 adding apologetically — 
 
 "They won't let you smoke in there, you 
 know." 
 
 I produced my cigar-case and handed it round. 
 
 The detective who had the speaking part 
 lighted his at once without comment, but the 
 other one put the cigar up to his ear, pinched it 
 lovingly with his fingers, and then, with some- 
 thing like a sigh, wrapped it in an old letter and 
 carefully pinned it in the crown of his hat. 
 
 " May as well smoke it," said the first detec- 
 tive ; "we needn't go in for a good while yet." 
 
 The silent one shook his head. 
 
 "It's a sin to smoke a cigar like that on a 
 week-day," he said ; " I'll save it till Sunday 
 afternoon,"
 
 THE ARREST 7 
 
 I hastened to give him another cigar for 
 present smokirrg, and detective number one 
 remarked that good cigars didn't often get in the 
 way of provincial detectives, and that number 
 two ought to have joined the London force. 
 
 I gathered from this, rightly as it turned out, 
 that number one was the man who had my case 
 in hand, and that number two was merely a local 
 man who had been called in to help. 
 
 We smoked, and talked on indifferent subjects, 
 until we got the room to ourselves, and then I 
 suggested that I was ready to hear particulars. 
 1 didn't think for a moment that 1 was in any 
 danger of imprisonment, but I didn't feel com- 
 fortable nevertheless, for I knew that the scandal 
 and exposure incidental to even an unfounded 
 charge would inevitably ruin my already toppling 
 business. 
 
 " Oh ! Ah ! Yes ! " ejaculated detective 
 number one, as if it was some trivial matter that 
 had escaped his memory. "You are charged 
 with obtaining money by false pretences from a 
 man named Smith." 
 
 The name wasn't Smith ; all the names in this 
 narrative will be fictitious, though the facts may 
 be depended upon. 
 
 Now this man Smith had put a hundred
 
 8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 pounds into my business as a condition of obtain- 
 ing employment, and, beyond a little of what the 
 drapers call "window-dressing," I had made no 
 misrepresentations to him whatever; in fact, I 
 had even told him that I was an undischarged 
 bankrupt. He had worked with me for several 
 months without expressing any dissatisfaction, 
 although he was in a position to know all the ins 
 and outs of the concern. Then came the defection 
 of a firm that had been associated with me, and 
 Smith, naturally enough, alarmed about his 
 money, had given me notice. Under the terms 
 of his agreement with me I should have refunded 
 his money ; but when the time came I was unable 
 to do this, though I was on the point of making 
 arrangements that would put me in possession 
 not only of money to pay him but of sufficient 
 capital to enable me to carry on the business 
 without monetary anxiety. 
 
 These arrangements hung fire for a time, 
 owing to my prospective financiers wanting a 
 bigger slice of the pie than I was inclined to give 
 them ; and Smith, very unwisely I think, swore 
 an information against me for obtaining his 
 money by false pretences — no doubt thinking 
 that this was the most effective way of putting 
 the screw on me.
 
 THE ARREST 9 
 
 I knew nothing of this until after my arrest, 
 for he had never threatened me with criminal 
 proceedings ; and, by a curious coincidence, 
 when I was arrested coming from the post-office, 
 I had been there to send a wire to Smith asking 
 him to meet me in town so that I might pay 
 him — the money to do this having been lent to 
 me that very morning by a friend, and I actually 
 had it in my pocket when I was arrested. 
 
 I thought, in my innocence, that if the detec- 
 tive accompanied me to town and saw me pay 
 the money over it would put an end to the pro- 
 ceedings. I mentioned this to him, but he shook 
 his head discouragingly. 
 
 " It's out of Smith's hands now," he said, " and 
 he wouldn't be able to take the money if you 
 offered it to him. Any money in your possession 
 that we can fasten on will be kept by the police, 
 and if you are convicted of obtaining money by 
 false pretences from Smith, or anybody else, the 
 court will probably order your money to be 
 handed over to them. But we'd better be getting 
 towards the station, unless you'd like another 
 drink first." 
 
 "There isn't a train for an hour yet," I 
 replied. 
 
 " I meant the police-station," he said, smiling
 
 10 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 at my mistake. " I've got to take you there, you 
 see, as they must enter you up in their books 
 on account of your having been arrested on their 
 ground. I shall have to leave you there for a 
 bit, too, as we can't go up to town until the 
 afternoon." 
 
 "In that case we'll have another drink," I 
 said. " I am just as well here as in the police- 
 station, I expect." 
 
 Having had the glasses replenished, I asked if 
 they couldn't accompany me to my lodgings so 
 that I might put my things together and settle 
 with my landlady. 
 
 "Impossible," said number one decidedly. 
 " I'm chancing it enough as it is, without going 
 any further. I shall have to go to search 
 your lodgings as soon as I've put you inside, 
 and I'll see that your things are packed up all 
 right." 
 
 "And I'll settle with your landlady if you'll 
 give me the coin," said number two, chiming in. 
 "She happens to be my sister-in-law, and I 
 should like to see her paid." 
 
 " Thank you very much," said I, as I took a 
 five-pound note from my pocket. 
 
 I was passing the note over the table to 
 the outstretched hand of detective number two
 
 THE ARREST ii 
 
 when detective number one interposed his 
 arm. 
 
 " I'm afraid that I cannot allow that," he said. 
 "You see, when a man is charged with fraud 
 nowadays, it is assumed that the money in his 
 possession is part of what he has got on the cross, 
 and we have to stick to it until the case is 
 decided. It would be as much as my job is 
 worth to let 3-ou make away with any money you 
 may happen to have on you." 
 
 " That's all right," said number two resignedly. 
 " It's for you to say, and if you can't see your 
 way to letting my sister-in-law have her money, 
 she must go without it, that's all." 
 
 "Awfully sorry, old man," said number one; 
 " but duty's duty, j^ou know." 
 
 A minute or two afterwards number one said 
 that he must go outside, and asked me to 
 move over to the side of number two. " I'll 
 leave him with you for a minute or two," said he, 
 looking meaningly at number two. 
 
 "Give me that money, quick," said number 
 two as soon as the door had closed on his 
 colleague. " If he don't know anything about it 
 he can't get into any row, can he ? " 
 I handed over the five-pound note. 
 
 " Got any more money you want to send
 
 12 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 anywhere?" whispered the detective. "I'll see 
 it gets there all right if you like to hand it 
 over." 
 
 Then it occurred to me that I would like my 
 friend to have his hundred pounds back, and 
 I asked the detective if he would take it, as 
 my friend lived in the town and was well 
 known. 
 
 He consented without any hesitation what- 
 ever, and I gave him the envelope containing the 
 notes, just as I had received it from my friend 
 that morning. 
 
 No doubt I ought to have tipped the detective 
 handsomely for his complaisance, but I wasn't so 
 well acquainted then with the ways of detectives 
 as I am now, and I was afraid to offer him any- 
 thing. I expect he was greatly disappointed at 
 my want of appreciation of the service he was 
 rendering me. He was well rewarded, however, 
 by my friend, who was glad enough to get his 
 hundred pounds back under the circumstances. 
 
 When number one came back, he pulled a 
 pair of very bright handcuffs out of his pocket 
 and, jingling them jocosely in his hand, said — 
 
 " Now then, are you coming quietly, or shall I 
 have to put these on ? " 
 
 Any one seeing the three of us walking
 
 THE ARREST 13 
 
 abreast down the High Street would never have 
 guessed that I was a prisoner on a serious 
 charge. The London detective was in high 
 spirits, and laughed and chatted like a tripper, 
 while the local man was in a sportive mood also, 
 and introduced me to a uniformed sergeant as 
 "an officer from London "who had come down 
 to arrest the other detective. The sergeant was 
 of a sympathetic nature, and feelingly told the 
 London man to cheer up as imprisonment wasn't 
 half bad when one got used to it. 
 
 I didn't do much of the laughing and joking 
 myself; but I did not realize, all the same, that 
 I was in the serious position I afterwards found 
 myself in. Surely, I thought, there could not be 
 anything serious in a charge that the detectives 
 treated with such levity. I discovered after- 
 wards that levity in a detective is not a good 
 sign for the prisoner. 
 
 When we got to the police-station the 
 detectives put on their duty expressions, and I 
 was relegated to my proper place as prisoner. 
 
 Particulars of my name, age, physical descrip- 
 tion, and so forth were entered in a book, and 
 then I was asked if I had a knife or matches in 
 my pockets. Having delivered up my knife and 
 match-box, I was handed over to the gaoler to be
 
 14 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 "put back," which is the police synonym -for 
 being placed in a cell. 
 
 "There," said the gaoler affably, as he ushered 
 me into a large cell, " there's room enough for 
 you to go for a walk in there."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE " TAPPER" 
 
 I WAS only in that cell for something like 
 a couple of hours, while the detectives went 
 to my lodgings to turn over my belongings and 
 have a few drinks together, but by the time they 
 came to let me out I felt as if I had been there 
 a week or two. It was the weariest two hours 
 I ever passed. People talk about time hanging 
 heavily on their hands, but I don't think that any 
 man can appreciate how leaden the wings of time 
 can be until he finds himself in a police-cell with 
 no definite idea as to how long he has got to stay 
 there. I had to pass many whole days in my 
 cell with nothing to occupy my hands or my 
 mind, many and many of them, before I was 
 through with my "dose," but no whole day of 
 them all seemed half so long as that first two 
 hours I ever spent in solitary confinement. 
 
 At last the key turned in the lock, and the 
 gaoler bade me " Come on." 
 
 15
 
 i6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I followed him into the charge-room, where 
 I found the detectives awaiting me. 
 
 Without uttering a word, detective number 
 one handed me back my knife and matchbox, and 
 motioned to me to follow him into the street. 
 As I moved on, detective number two closed on 
 me behind, as if he were afraid that I might stop 
 in the police-station and let the other detective 
 find himself in the street without me. 
 
 I had eaten but very little breakfast that 
 morning, and as it was long past lunch-time I 
 felt very hungry. I accordingly asked if I could 
 be allowed to have something to eat. 
 
 "No time to have more than a sandwich 
 now," said detective number one; "the train 
 leaves in a quarter of an hour. You should have 
 had your lunch sent into the station while you 
 were waiting for us. They would have sent 
 out and got you anything you liked to order— 
 if you had money to pay for it." 
 
 I felt as I had missed something. How nicely 
 I could have filled in that terribly wearisome 
 two hours in anticipating and then consuming 
 a grilled sole, a spatchcocked pigeon, and a half 
 bottle of good claret. 
 
 We had a few minutes to wait when we got 
 to the railway station, and detective number two
 
 THE "TAPPER" \^ 
 
 suggested that I might get a sandwich in the 
 refreshment room ; but number one advised me 
 not to trouble about anything more solid than 
 a drink, as he would give me an opportunity of 
 having a " good feed " in town before he " took 
 me in," as he put it. 
 
 "Got a season ticket?" asked number one. 
 
 I replied to the effect that I had a monthly 
 ticket. 
 
 "That's a fare saved anyway," said the 
 detective. "Come on, I'll stand 3'ou a drink 
 if you like." 
 
 We had the drinks, but the detective was so 
 absorbed in conversation with his colleague 
 when the time came for paying that I did the 
 settling myself. 
 
 Number one noticed what I had done as soon 
 as the act of paying was completed, and, pro- 
 testing that I ought not to have done it, 
 proceeded to order cigars. 
 
 I objected to this, as I had several cigars still 
 in my case, so he put his money back into his 
 pocket saying, with a trace of severity in his 
 tone, that when he asked any one to have a drink 
 he expected to be allowed to pay for it. 
 
 I mildly suggested that if he felt hurt at my 
 paying for the drinks we had better have another
 
 i8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 at his expense, but he said that there wasn't 
 time, and led the way to the platform. 
 
 He ushered me into an empty third-class 
 carriage, first satisfying himself that the door on 
 the other side was locked; and after he had got 
 in himself, detective number two stood at the 
 door until the train was on the point of starting, 
 when he got in also, saying that he didn't like 
 the idea of parting from us, and would come 
 along, as far as the first stop. 
 
 When the train was well out of the station, 
 detective number one produced an " Engaged " 
 slip and stuck it on one of the windows on the 
 platform side. 
 
 I asked him if it was usual to engage a whole 
 compartment when he had a prisoner in charge ; 
 but the only reply I got was a wink, which I 
 took as an intimation that he had engaged the 
 compartment quite unofficially. 
 
 At the first stop the local detective got out 
 after cordially shaking hands with me as well as 
 with his colleague. When he was getting up 
 to go out, something seemed to strike him, and, 
 putting his hand in his pocket, he pulled out 
 a piece of paper which he put before my eyes. 
 
 " Do you know that chap?" he asked. 
 
 1 looked at the piece of paper and saw that
 
 THE "TAPPER" 19 
 
 it was a note from my friend who had lent me 
 the ;^ioo saying that he had duly received it, 
 
 "What's that?" asked the London detective. 
 
 "Only a note written to me by some one 
 I thought he knew," replied the local man as he 
 put the paper in his pocket again. 
 
 At the moment I thought this was a bit of 
 make-believe and that the London man knew 
 that I had passed the money to his colleague, 
 but I afterwards discovered that the London 
 man's complaisance only extended to the money 
 for my landlady, and that the local detective had 
 returned the hundred pounds "on his own." 
 
 " How much money have you got on you ? " 
 asked the detective suddenly, after we had been 
 smoking in silence for some time. 
 
 "About fifteen or sixteen pounds," I replied. 
 
 "That's a good bit of money to lose," he 
 replied musingl}'. 
 
 " But I don't propose to lose it," I rejoined. 
 
 " Can't help yourself. As soon as you get to 
 Bow Street they'll take it off you, and that's the 
 last you'll see of it. As I told you before, they'll 
 hand it over to this chap Smith when you are 
 convicted." 
 
 " But I'm not convicted yet, and don't 
 think that there is any chance of my being
 
 20 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 convicted. As far as I know—and I ought to be 
 the one to know if anybody does — I've not done 
 anything against the law at all. I certainly am 
 not conscious of having told Mr. Smith anything 
 that could be twisted into a false pretence by 
 even an Old Bailey lawyer." 
 
 "You wait," said he with a chuckle. "You 
 don't know as much about Old Bailey barristers 
 as I do. When you hear the counsel for the 
 prosecution reckoning you up, you will be 
 paralyzed with astonishment that you have not 
 done time long ago." 
 
 " Well my conscience is pretty clear," I 
 retorted, " if I have ever robbed anybody, it must 
 have been in my sleep ; and, as far as this man 
 Smith's money is concerned, he stood no more 
 chance of losing it than if it had been safely 
 stowed away in the Bank of England. I don't 
 think for a minute that this case will ever 
 get as far as the Old Bailey : I expect that 
 to-morrow's hearing before the magistrate will 
 finish it." 
 
 " 1 hope so," said the detective sceptically. 
 " I'll tell the magistrate that you said what you 
 have just said when I arrested you if you like : 
 it would look well in the papers." 
 
 I replied to the effect that I should be much
 
 THE "TAPPER" 21 
 
 obliged to him if he would ; but he changed his 
 mind before the hearing, and what he did say 
 didn't look at all well in the papers and did me a 
 great deal of harm, though he afterwards denied 
 that he had said it. 
 
 " I try to make it as easy as I can for anybody 
 that passes through my hands," he continued, 
 "and I have had a good many presents from 
 gentlemen situated like yourself. If it wasn't for 
 little bits of sugar like that, our job wouldn't be 
 worth picking up." 
 
 This was little short of a direct request to 
 hand over some of the money I had about me ; 
 but I didn't see why I should give it to him. I 
 learned afterwards that he would not have 
 resented the gift of a sovereign — at.least, I met a 
 man who said that he had given him one, which 
 had been received gratefully— and if I had known 
 this at the time, I would cheerfully have parted 
 with so much ; but I was under the impression 
 that anything less than a ten-pound note would 
 have been regarded as an insult, and I didn't think 
 that it was in his power to do me ten pounds' 
 worth of good. I was mistaken: I am convinced 
 now that if I had satisfied his longing to possess 
 some of my money, it would have done me a 
 great deal of good; and if I had gone to the
 
 22 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 length of tipping him ten pounds, I should not 
 have been convicted at all. 
 
 I have set down my conversation with this 
 detective word for word as I remember it, and 
 leave it to the reader to judge whether or not he 
 was asking me for money. I did not give him 
 any money, it is true, and I am not therefore 
 in a position to state positively of my own 
 knowledge that London detectives accept money 
 presents from prisoners. I heard a great deal 
 on the subject, however, before I was through 
 my "little bit," and I am afraid that there is no 
 room for doubt that the general run of detectives 
 make a practice of trying to " tap " a prisoner 
 who they are satisfied has money about him. 
 
 I quite believe, too, that it is to a prisoner's 
 advantage to take any opportunity of this sort 
 to raise a kindly feeling towards him in the 
 detective's heart, inasmuch as in the course of 
 the investigations incidental to getting up a case 
 against a prisoner, as it proceeds from remand to 
 remand, the detective sergeant employed in the 
 case, who is generally the same who makes the 
 arrest, finds many opportunities for making things 
 easier for the prisoner, or the reverse, that he 
 may make use of without laying himself open to 
 any suspicion of dereliction of duty.
 
 THE "TAPPER" 23 
 
 My detective kept harping on the same string 
 all the way to London, but all he got out of 
 me was my cigar-case, which he admired so 
 persistently that I gave it to him as a souvenir. 
 
 When we got to London, I reminded him of 
 his promise to let me have a good meal before 
 he "took me in"; but his friendly manner had 
 dried up, and he replied, curtly, to the effect 
 that there wasn't time for me to have anything 
 then, but that I would be allowed to have some- 
 thing sent in from outside as soon as I got to 
 Bow Street. 
 
 I remonstrated ; but he had evidently come to 
 the conclusion that there was no profit to be got 
 out of me, and that he would only be wasting 
 time if he hung about with me, so his only 
 reply to my reminder of his promise was to call 
 a hansom and give the driver the direction : 
 " Bow Street Police Station."
 
 w 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CELLS 
 
 HAT did you bring him here for?" 
 asked the inspector on duty surlily, as 
 soon as I was introduced to him. " You know 
 as well as I do that he belongs to Grays Inn 
 Road. Don't you think that I've got enough to 
 do without shoving other people's work on to 
 me?" 
 
 The detective sergeant deprecatingly main- 
 tained that he had brought me to the right shop, 
 and leaned over the inspector's desk to give his 
 reasons for thinking so. As we three were the 
 only persons in the charge-room and the door 
 was wide open, there was a splendid opening for 
 me to make a bolt for liberty if I had been 
 desirous of taking advantage of it, and I specu- 
 lated, while they were arguing, as to the odds 
 against their losing a resourceful professional 
 criminal under such circumstances. 
 
 " Get in there," snapped the inspector, motion- 
 ing me to a little iron-railed enclosure. 
 
 24
 
 THE CELLS 25 
 
 When I had taken up position there, he read 
 the warrant to me, took a list of the contents of 
 my pockets, with the exception of a sixpenny 
 novel which he allowed me to keep, and made 
 them up into a parcel. Then he entered in a 
 book minute particulars of my age, personal 
 appearance, and clothing. Having done this, he 
 rang a bell and the gaoler entered. 
 
 The inspector jerked his thumb in my direc- 
 tion, and the gaoler looked at me and jerked his 
 thumb in the direction of the door leading to the 
 cells. Not a word was spoken. The detective- 
 sergeant was looking straight through me, as if 
 he had never seen me before, and was not at all 
 interested in the sight of me now. 
 
 I went through the door with the gaoler close 
 on my heels, and presently found myself in a long 
 passage with cells all along one side of it, the 
 other side being the wall that looked on to the 
 yard. 
 
 The gaoler unlocked one of these cells and 
 motioned me to enter. 
 
 " Make yourself at home," said he, when I got 
 inside ; " I'll bring you a rug presentl3^ I won't 
 put anyone else in with you if I can help it." 
 
 The "apartment " I had been invited to make 
 myself at home in was about the size of a billiard
 
 26 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 table, that is to say, about twelve feet by six. 
 Along one side of it ran a bench about eighteen 
 inches wide, with an uncovered convenience at 
 one end. There was no window, the cell being 
 lighted in the daytime by deadlights fixed in the 
 roof and by what light could come through the 
 open ironwork of the door. There was an 
 aperture in the upper part of the door about 
 nine inches long by four wide, which was used 
 for the purpose of passing anything in to the 
 prisoner or talking to him when occasion arose. 
 
 I was very hungry, and when the gaoler 
 brought me a coloured rug a few minutes after- 
 wards I told him what the detective had said as 
 to my being able to get some dinner, and asked 
 him if he could manage it for me. 
 
 " You can have anything you like so long as 
 you have the money to pay for it," he said ; " but 
 perhaps you had better let me get what I can, as 
 it may not be possible to get any fanc}^ grub at 
 this time of night." 
 
 I gratefully assented, but asked him to get me 
 some tea or coffee if I had to have a scratch feed 
 instead of a regular dinner with wine. 
 
 " All right ; I'll do what I can," he replied. 
 " Where's the money ? " 
 
 " The inspector has got my money," I said.
 
 THE CELLS 27 
 
 He looked at me pityingly and shook his 
 head. 
 
 " I'm afraid that you won't get any square 
 meal to-night," he said ; "but I'll go and see the 
 inspector all the same and see what he says." 
 
 He went away, and in a short time afterwards 
 the face of the inspector appeared at the booby- 
 hutch. 
 
 "What's this about your wanting a swell 
 dinner?" he asked. "Didn't you get anything 
 before you came in ? " 
 
 I told him of the detective's promise that I 
 would be allowed to have dinner sent in, and that 
 I had had nothing since a very light breakfast. 
 
 " Well, he might have taken you somewhere 
 and let you have a feed before bringing you in," 
 said the inspector. " He knew very well that I 
 shouldn't be able to part with any of the money 
 taken from you once it was entered up in the 
 book. You can't send out for anything, but you 
 can have an 'allowance ' if you like." 
 
 I had no idea what an " allowance " was, and I 
 didn't like to ask, but I gratefully expressed my 
 desire to receive it. 
 
 I waited for about two hours for that "allow- 
 ance," but it didn't arrive, and I got sick and 
 miserable for want of food.
 
 28 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 About a quarter of an hour after the in- 
 spector's visit I heard footsteps coming along 
 the corridor ; careful footsteps, as if the man who 
 was making them was carrying something that 
 would spill if he were hasty. I made sure that 
 this was the long-promised food, and, as the 
 footsteps came nearer and my nostrils re- 
 cognized the fragrant smell of hot coffee, I was 
 sure of it. Alas ! the footsteps didn't get as far 
 as my cell : they stopped next door. What a 
 sickening disappointment that was : I can feel 
 the blight of it now, as I write, though it is long 
 behind me. 
 
 Then came the long period of expectancy 
 that ended in my overcoming my natural re- 
 luctance to give trouble and ringing the bell. 
 
 A fresh gaoler came to the door : the other 
 one had gone off duty. 
 
 " What do you want ? " he asked, in a tone 
 that implied that it was like my cheek to want 
 anything. 
 
 I explained that the inspector had promised 
 me some food about a couple of hours ago and 
 that I was getting rather anxious about it. 
 
 "You've had it, hours ago," said the gaoler 
 emphatically. 
 
 There was an audible chuckle from the cell
 
 THE CELLS 29 
 
 next door that seemed to tell the gaoler some- 
 thing, and he left me. 
 
 " Did yoit get a 'lowance a couple of hours 
 ago?" he asked my neighbour. 
 
 " Yus I did, and jolly good it wuz too," said 
 the man in a tone of high good-humour. 
 
 " But you had one before, didn't you ? " 
 
 " I did, an' I can do another if you 'appen to 
 have one about you," replied my understudy, 
 laughing as if he enjoyed the joke. 
 
 The gaoler muttered a profane remark and 
 went away. 
 
 " Matey ! I say, matey ! " shouted the man 
 next door to me. 
 
 I took no notice. 
 
 ''Don't be proud, matey, if you are a toff," he 
 continued " I wuz oney wantin' ter tell you ter 
 cheer up 'cos you ain't dead yet." 
 
 I still kept a stony silence ; I couldn't forgive 
 that "allowance " yet. 
 
 " Orlright then," he said resignedly. " Keep 
 yerself to yerself if you want to. I wuz goin' ter 
 offer ter lend you my tame solicitor in the 
 mornin,' but it's no bet now." 
 
 Presently the gaoler came and handed me in 
 a mug of steaming hot coffee and three thick 
 hunks of bread and butter.
 
 30 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The coffee was not of the brand I had been 
 used to, and it was any odds that the "butter" 
 had no legal right to the name ; but I thought the 
 meal a delicious and satisfactory one, and having 
 enjoyed it, I settled down to the reading of my 
 sixpenny novel by the very dim light that 
 straggled into the cell from a gas-jet placed 
 outside the door. 
 
 I had hardly got interested in the book when 
 my attention was distracted by the sounds of 
 broken English being spoken volubly by some- 
 one coming along the passage. As the sounds 
 approached my door, I got up and looked out, to 
 see a young fellow in evening dress who was 
 being gently propelled along the passage by the 
 gaoler and was protesting every yard of the 
 way. 
 
 " All right," said the gaoler, as they passed 
 my cell, " I'll go and fetch the inspector and 3'ou 
 can talk to him. He'll very likely do what you 
 want, but I've got to lock 3^ou up." 
 
 "I cannot stob in dis blace," said the young 
 swell. " I veesh you to send a telegram to my 
 fader an 'e vill dell you to let me go." 
 
 The inspector came to him in a few minutes, 
 and explained to him that, having been arrested 
 on an extradition warrant, he would have to
 
 THE CELLS 31 
 
 " stob in dis blace " ; but that a telegram could 
 be sent to his father if he had the money to pay 
 for it, though it would be a sure waste of money, 
 as it was at his father's instance that he had been 
 arrested. 
 
 I learned afterwards that this young Dutch- 
 man had forged his father's name for a consider- 
 able amount, and was making away with the 
 plunder in rapid life in the West End when he 
 was arrested at a fashionable hotel. The tele- 
 gram to his father had no effect, and, after 
 spending several weeks at Brixton, he was 
 eventually extradited. I saw him often at 
 Brixton, and every time I saw him he was crying. 
 He was very sorry for himself indeed ; but I 
 fancy that he was sorrowing over having been 
 landed in prison and not regretting his misdeed. 
 I often find myself speculating as to whether he 
 eventually got veal or was left to browse on 
 husks. 
 
 Up to the advent of the Dutchman I 
 thought that life in a police cell was rather slow 
 and monotonous ; but after his arrival things 
 brightened up to such an extent that there was 
 a continuous variety entertainment that lasted 
 until about three o'clock next morning. 
 
 Following close upon the gentleman from
 
 12 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 Holland came a very stout woman with a new 
 surgical bandage on her head. 
 
 " Oh, please, policeman, don't lock me up ! " 
 she moaned, as she was being hustled along the 
 passage. " I've never been locked up in my 
 life. Oh, "do let me go home to my children ! 
 They're only little ones, and they'll be wondering 
 what has become of me and crying their eyes 
 out. Oh, do let me go ! please ! please ! " 
 
 The two stolid policemen who were conduct- 
 ing her made no reply to her ravings, which 
 presently merged into hysterical shrieks as she 
 saw the cell door close upon her. Poor children, 
 waiting hour after hour in the dark for mother 
 to return from that "five minutes" round the 
 corner. 
 
 The next lodger to arrive was a man who 
 was very drunk and very strong. He fought 
 every foot of the passage with the policemen who 
 were trying to get him along, and as he fought 
 and struggled he protested against his arrest with 
 all the force of a pair of very powerful lungs. 
 
 " What a rotten shame bringing me here," he 
 yelled. " I ain't done nothing— I ain't even 
 disorderly — and my wife'll be waiting up fer me. 
 I'll make some o' you rotten blighters sit up for 
 this, see if I don't."
 
 THE CELLS 33 
 
 When they had got him into a cell he kicked 
 at the door and shouted demands and appeals to 
 be let out, on the grounds that his wife was 
 sitting up for him and that he would get the sack 
 if he was not at work at six o'clock in the 
 morning, until he had kicked and raved himself 
 into silence. He was quiet for perhaps an hour. 
 Then a lady in one of the cells down the passage 
 started singing, in a cracked falsetto voice, 
 "Yield not to temptation, for temptation is sin." 
 This appeared to touch the gentleman whose 
 wife was waiting up for him on the raw, for he 
 wept aloud, and his weeping was like unto the 
 bellowing of a sick bull. When he had wept as 
 much as he felt he wanted to, he called the be- 
 draggled street-walker, who was still singing 
 persistently, an angel, and kept on calling her 
 an angel until it became monotonous to the 
 lady herself, and she desired him, with sundry 
 unangelic expressions, to " Shut up." 
 
 Then two " drunks " were shoved into my 
 cell, and made themselves comfortable on the 
 floor, as I was lying at full length on the bench, 
 and did not see why I should move. One of 
 them, who spoke with a strong German accent, 
 was argumentatively drunk, while the other's 
 intoxication ran to facetiousness. The German
 
 34 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 would insist on discussing Tariff Reform, and 
 for a long time the other one replied to him with 
 good-natured chaffing remarks. At last the 
 Englishman's fund of good temper gave out, and 
 he testily told the other to "shut up," adding 
 some uncomplimentary remarks about sausage 
 and sauerkraut. 
 
 " Ach ! " said the Deutscher, disgustedly. " I 
 shall not speak mit you any more ; you vas a 
 beastly man." 
 
 It was beyond his strength to keep silence 
 however, and in a few minutes he said in a 
 wheedling tone — 
 
 " Dis Jamberlain vos a great man ! Not 
 so, my friendt ? You tink he will be brime 
 minisder, eh ? " 
 
 " There you are again, sauerkraut," said the 
 other ill-temperedly. " I thought you was 
 choked off. I'll tell you what, I'd vote for 
 Chamberlain or anybody else that would do 
 something to keep your sort in their own 
 countries. Our coppers and our prison warders 
 are all bein' overworked on account of our own 
 'wrong 'uns' havin' to put up with so much 
 foreign competition." 
 
 The German got on his feet, took off his coat, 
 and rolled up his sleeves.
 
 THE CELLS 35 
 
 " You vill have a little fight mit me my friendt, 
 eh ? " he asked cheerfully. 
 
 "As much as you like," said the Englishman, 
 scrambling to his feet. " I've been feeling like 
 that for a long time." 
 
 Just at that moment the opening in the cell 
 door was filled up by the face of the inspector. 
 
 " Which is Johnson ? " he asked. 
 
 "That's me," said the Englishman. 
 
 " Well, Johnson, that house where you told 
 us to send for bail for you has been pulled down. 
 There's been no house there for the past six 
 months." 
 
 "That's right," said Johnson; "I'd quite for- 
 gotten for the moment that I didn't live there 
 any longer." 
 
 "Well, we're not going to send anywhere 
 else, so you'd better make yourself comfortable. 
 It'll be a good thing for you to try and remem- 
 ber where you do live by the morning, too, as 
 the magistrate likes to know little things like 
 that." 
 
 "We're very crowded here, inspector," I 
 ventured to say. 
 
 " So you are," he admitted. " These two 
 chaps were only put in here for an hour or two 
 until they got a bit sober and were bailed out.
 
 36 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 As they don't look like being bailed I'll move 
 
 'em." 
 
 Being left to myself again, I tried to compose 
 myself to sleep, and at last dropped off after 
 every one was too exhausted to continue the 
 pandemonium, and there was modified silence 
 punctuated by snores in several keys.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE POLICE COURT 
 
 IN the morning, before it was light, we were 
 let out one by one to wash at a lavatory 
 basin fixed in the passage wall. After that, 
 those who had money and wanted breakfast 
 ordered it, and it was supplied from an eating- 
 house outside. Those who had no money, or 
 whose money had been impounded, were regaled 
 with an "allowance" like I had given me the 
 previous night. There was not much demand 
 for solid food, and even I, who had had so little 
 the previous day, could not tackle the three 
 thick slices of bread and butter, though I was 
 very glad to get the coffee. 
 
 About ten o'clock the policemen in charge 
 of the cases came, and each one escorted his 
 particular prisoner to a waiting-room just out- 
 side the door leading into the police-court. 
 
 There were about a couple of dozen prisoners 
 in this room, and my eyes roved over them 
 trying to pick out the people who had taken 
 
 37 
 
 S15956
 
 38 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 leading parts in the previous night's entertain- 
 ment ; but I couldn't fit in the previous night's 
 performance with this morning's appearance 
 of any one of those present. As they appeared 
 this morning, they were a very subdued and 
 humble lot, and any one who hadn't heard them 
 would have had some difficulty in believing that 
 they had made things so lively the night before. 
 
 The detective-sergeant who had arrested me 
 had quite lost his friendly manner of the day 
 before, but he unbent so far as to say : " If I 
 was in danger of going to prison I would get 
 
 Mr. to defend me. He's up to all the 
 
 moves on the board, he is, and he's got the 
 ear of the magistrate more than any other 
 solicitor that practises here. Would you like 
 me to introduce you to him ? " 
 
 I assented, and he presently brought the 
 solicitor to me. 
 
 " I understand that you wish to see me," said 
 he. 
 
 "I want somebody to represent me," I 
 replied; "but I should like you to understand 
 that all my available money is in the hands of 
 the police, and that it will be necessary for you 
 to get it out of the hands of the police before 
 you can be paid."
 
 THE POLICE COURT 39 
 
 " All right," said he, " I'll go and get a look 
 at the information and see what I can do." 
 
 My heart was beating nineteen or more to the 
 dozen as I entered the dock and faced the 
 magistrate, and I had hardly got over my 
 agitation at occupying the centre of the stage 
 in a criminal court for the first time in my life 
 when the proceedings for that day came to an 
 end, and I found myself remanded for a week. 
 
 The solicitor applied for bail ; but, before the 
 magistrate could give his decision, the detective- 
 sergeant came forward and said that at the next 
 hearing he would be able to bring fresh charges 
 against me involving several thousands of 
 pounds. This remark was reported in all the 
 newspapers; but when, at the next hearing, I 
 applied to have it put upon the depositions, 
 the detective denied that he ever made it, and, 
 though the magistrate must have known that 
 he was lying, he made no comment. I merely 
 give this as an instance of the recklessness of 
 policemen in giving evidence ; there was not the 
 slightest foundation for any such remark, and it 
 has always been a puzzle to me how it came to 
 be made. There is no doubt that it did me a 
 great deal of harm, for it enabled that detective- 
 sergeant, in the interval between the first and
 
 40 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 second hearing, to persuade one or two people 
 to give evidence against me who would have 
 been on my side if they had not been led to 
 believe that I had been engaged in other shady 
 transactions. This may be a statement that the 
 general public will find a bit hard to swallow; 
 but every man who has been through the 
 criminal mill will bear me out when I say that 
 few men who have stood their trial for a criminal 
 offence leave the dock without a strong con- 
 viction as to the absolute unreliability and 
 unfairness of police evidence. I am not whining 
 about my conviction, and do not even say that 
 my imprisonment was undeserved, but I do say 
 that it was brought about by unfair means, and 
 that our boasted fairness in criminal matters is 
 a national delusion. Our criminals are not tried 
 by a jury, as most people imagine ; they are tried 
 by detectives, and if the detectives find them 
 guilty, they stop at nothing to get them convicted. 
 The magistrate fixed prohibitive bail, and 
 then the solicitor made an application for the 
 money that had been taken from me so that 
 I might use it for purposes of my defence; but 
 the magistrate shook his head, and the police 
 hung on to the money until I was convicted, 
 when it was placed at my disposal.
 
 THE POLICE COURT 41 
 
 The solicitor lost all interest in me when he 
 saw that my money could not be got at, and 
 he never appeared for me again, nor asked for 
 any fee for his first appearance. 
 
 I had sunk something like two thousand 
 pounds in my business, and could have sold it 
 for, perhaps, half this sum as a going concern ; 
 but it stopped short with my arrest. The book 
 debts could not be got in, and the police turned 
 the office upside down and took away all books 
 and papers. My assets were thus entirely 
 destroyed, and my entire available resources 
 were in the hands of the police who would not 
 part with them, so that I was compelled to 
 conduct my own defence. 
 
 Remanded prisoners, while awaiting the 
 prison van to take them to Brixton Prison, are 
 pigged together in large cells with other 
 prisoners who have been convicted and are 
 awaiting the Black Maria to take them to Pen- 
 tonville. 
 
 The thing that struck me most was the lack 
 of reserve that prisoners thus thrown together 
 showed towards each other. On that first of my 
 six remand days there were two prisoners in the 
 cell with me who had that day been sentenced. 
 One of them had got fourteen days for stealing
 
 42 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 a goose, and was as pleased with himself as if the 
 magistrate had given him a substantial present. 
 
 " Fourteen days ! " he ejaculated gleefully, 
 " an' I expected a stretch (a year). I told 'im 
 that I was hungry an' that a sudden temptation 
 took hold of me." 
 
 " ' Anythin' known about him,' sez 'e. 
 
 '"No/ sez the split (detective). 'The police 
 ain't got anythin' aginst 'im.' 
 
 " Lorlumny ! I wonder what they'd say if 
 they knowed as I'd got three sessions cons 
 behind me, and was entitled to a stretch under 
 the Act. I thought as I was a goner at Brixton 
 yesterday when I see that swivel-eyed screw 
 (warder) from the Scrubs lookin' at me very 
 hard as he went round with the rest of the 
 screws and splits tryin' to twig old hands ; but 
 he wasn't lookin' at me at all, as it turned out. 
 Fourteen days ! an' it was a rippin' fine goose 
 too." 
 
 " But I thought that they could recognize 
 everybody now by their finger-prints," I said 
 timidly. 
 
 " So they can, or they lets on as they can ; 
 but finger-prints don't affect me this time, 'cos 
 my other bits was done afore they come in. All 
 they've got to go on with old hands is their dials,
 
 THE POLICE COURT 43 
 
 and they sends screws an' splits to have a walk 
 round the exercise yards at Brixton to see if they 
 can reckernize any old pals. I knowed a good 
 few as walked round while I was there this last 
 week, but not one of them spotted me." 
 
 "And would you have got twelve months, 
 or a 'stretch' as you call it, if you had been 
 recognized ! " 
 
 "Ab — so — bloomin' — lutely. You see, under 
 this 'ere Prevention of Crimes Act — about the 
 wickedest act that Parlyment ever passed — a 
 man that's been convicted twice at sessions or 
 assizes is supposed to be alius on the look out 
 for chances ter commit felonies, an' any rozzer 
 (policeman) as sees him lookin' in a shop winder, 
 or standin' at a street corner, or lookin'on at a fight 
 or a street accident, can run him in an' charge him 
 for ' loitering, being a person subject to the 
 Prevention of Crimes Act,' an' the magistrate can 
 give 'im anythin' up to a stretch without any 
 more proof than the rozzer's bare word. This 
 means that every man as has been convicted 
 twice at sessions is at the mercy of every split 
 and every rozzer as feels that he wants a job. I 
 couldn't have grumbled if they'd worked the Act 
 on me, 'cos I did have the goose, but I've 
 knowed many a chap as has got a stretch when
 
 44 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 he wasn't doin' anything and hadn't any idea of 
 doin' anything'." 
 
 Then the cell door was opened, and the other 
 prisoner was ushered in. This man was very 
 glum, for he had actually got the maximum 
 twelve months " under the Act " ; and thoroughly 
 deserved it — for his asinine carelessness if for 
 nothing else. 
 
 He had stolen a watch and chain in a crowd 
 outside the Oxford Music Hall, and, though he 
 was an old hand at the game, had been so utterly 
 foolish as to go to the same neighbourhood 
 the next night actually wearing the stolen seal 
 on his own watch-chain. The man who had lost 
 the jewellery happened to be there too— on the 
 look-out, he said, for a suspect who was not the 
 prisoner — and, recognizing the seal, mentioned 
 the matter to a policeman, who promptly laid 
 hands on the napping thief. There was no 
 direct proof of his having stolen the article, but 
 there was hardly any doubt about it, and "the 
 Act" enabled justice to be done. 
 
 "I asked him to let me out on bail while I got 
 married to a young woman as I've got into 
 trouble," said this prisoner pathetically; "but 
 he said as I'd get her into worse trouble by 
 marrying her, and hoped as she'd ferget all
 
 THE POLICE COURT 45 
 
 about me afore I'd done the twelve months* 
 hard he was goin' ter give me. Blimy, some o' 
 these blokes ain't got no perishin' hearts at all." 
 
 Another man in the cell had been fined ten 
 shillings for being drunk and disorderly, and I 
 identified him in my own mind with the man 
 who had been so solicitous about his wife sitting 
 up. He was now waiting the result of a com- 
 munication that has been sent to the said wife 
 saying that unless she could produce ten 
 shillings by three o'clock he would be carted oft 
 to Pentonville for seven days. When the poor 
 woman arrived, she told him tearfully, but with- 
 out a trace of reproach in her tone, that there 
 was nothing in the home on which she could 
 raise the money, and that she had tried to 
 borrow it without success. She now suggested, 
 as a last resource, that the man should consent 
 to her approaching his employer. 
 
 '"Tain't no good goin' there," said the man 
 despondently. " He said the last time as he'd 
 gie me the sack if it happened agin," 
 
 " I can but try," the woman replied, putting 
 as much hope into her voice as she could. 
 
 "All right; but it won't be no good, so I'll 
 make up my mind to do the seven days," he 
 rejoined.
 
 46 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 It looked very much as if he would have to 
 do this, for he was actually standing in the pas- 
 sage waiting his turn to get into the Pentonville 
 van when his wife returned and triumphantly 
 displayed a half-sovereign, which she held 
 through the bars at the end of the passage. 
 
 "'E wouldn't do nothin' fer you," she said, 
 gleefully. "'E said as the seven days 'ud do 
 you no end o' good; but 'e give me this to help 
 me along whilst you was in, an' 'e med me 
 promise, 'e did, that I wouldn't pay the fine wi' 
 it ; but I'm goin' to, an' you'll be out in a minute, 
 ole man, so cheer up." 
 
 "She's a reg'lar pal ter me, my missis is," 
 said the man, joyfully. 
 
 " Well, see if you can't be a bit of a pal to 
 her," I said. " It isn't very pallish to go off on 
 your own and fill yourself up with beer, leaving 
 her to find the money to pay the fine." 
 
 " She won't 'ave ter find any more money for 
 fines," he said with sincerity. " I'm goin' ter 
 give the booze a long rest now." 
 
 Let us hope that he did give the booze a rest, 
 though most of us would be willing to lay odds 
 that he didn't. 
 
 There was another " drunk " in the cell whom 
 it would have been a real pleasure to kick. He
 
 THE POLICE COURT 47 
 
 had been out of work for weeks and weeks, 
 and things at home were on the rock bottom. 
 The previous day he had unexpectedly had a 
 sovereign given to him, and instead of taking it 
 home he had gone on the drink with it, with the 
 result that he was now up against a fine of ten 
 shillings, or the usual seven days' alternative. 
 In his case there was no earthly prospect of 
 finding the money, and he was quite resigned 
 to going up to "the 'Ville " for seven days. In 
 taking leave of him his wife said in a wheedling 
 tone — 
 
 " Have you got a few coppers left as you 
 could give me, Jim ? There is nothing at home, 
 an' the kids 'asn't had anythin' to eat to-day." 
 
 The brute assured her, with an appeal to the 
 Almighty to strike him dead if he was lying, 
 that he hadn't got a " brass farden " ; but after 
 she had gone away crying he said with a 
 snigger — 
 
 " I've got 'arf-a-dollar, but I couldn't give 'er 
 that, 'cos I shall want it fer a drink when I come 
 out."
 
 CHAPTER V 
 ON REMAND 
 
 MY case was over for the day before eleven 
 o'clock, and from that time until after five 
 in the afternoon, when the Brixton van arrived, 
 was a very long wait without food. I asked the 
 sergeant gaoler if I could not have something to 
 eat, and he replied to the effect that I could have 
 as much as I liked, and a certain quantity of 
 beer or wine also, if I had money to pay for it. 
 I told him the old story about my money having 
 been taken away from me, and as soon as he 
 found I was penniless his civil and accom- 
 modating tone turned to brusqueness, and he 
 told me shortly that I could get nothing until I 
 arrived at Brixton. 
 
 Everybody who is brought into contact with 
 a prisoner during the police-court stage of his 
 case is on the make. As I have already said, 
 the detective who arrests him expects some- 
 thing; the gaoler at the court will ask him if he 
 
 48
 
 ON REMAND 49 
 
 wants the change out of the half-crown he has 
 given to the officer to purchase food ; the 
 sergeant in charge of the police-van is not 
 averse to earning a shilling by doing little 
 services ; the warders at Brixton hover round 
 him with solicitous attentions if he looks as if he 
 has money or moneyed friends ; and even the 
 doorkeeper at the court will take a tip from a 
 prisoner's friends if he can get it. I do not 
 remember having seen anything about these 
 practices in print, but I do not see any reason 
 for being reticent about them : they undoubtedly 
 exist, as any man who has been through the mill 
 can testify. One of the warders at Brixton even 
 asked me to give him my dirty underclothing, 
 and got it, too. I do not think that many people 
 will blame them for taking what they can get ; 
 I certainly do not, and would supplement my 
 miserable pay in the same way if I were in the 
 same position and had the chance. 
 
 At last the Brixton van arrived, and the 
 "remands" were brought out of the cells and 
 stood in a line in the passage. Then the 
 sergeant-gaoler stood at the door with the blue 
 commitment papers in his hand, and as he 
 named a prisoner, that prisoner passed him and 
 got into the van. 
 
 £
 
 50 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The man in front of me was of a build that is 
 evidently not criminal, for when I got into the 
 van he was just finding that he could not get 
 into one of the little cells that lined both sides 
 of it. He was eventually directed to stand side- 
 ways in the passage that ran up the centre, and 
 in that position made that journey and subse- 
 quent ones to and from the court. He eventually 
 got eighteen months' hard labour, and I expect 
 that he would have found himself to be a better 
 fit for the van at the end of it, for prison life is 
 death to adipose tissue. 
 
 Prison-van customs are very free and easy — 
 even the sergeant in charge will gossip with the 
 prisoners on occasion. The top halves of the 
 cell doors, which let down like railway-carriage 
 windows, were always left down, and the inmates 
 of the vehicle had unrestricted intercourse with 
 one another, and passed cigarettes and matches 
 from hand to hand. When the noise got beyond 
 bounds, the sergeant would say : " A little less 
 noise, please," but this was the extent of his 
 interference. 
 
 It was a very long journey, that drive to 
 Brixton, for we had to go round to some of the 
 other courts and collect their passengers, and it 
 was close upon seven o'clock before the van
 
 ON REMAND 51 
 
 rolled up to the "reception ward" of the prison 
 and we were invited to get out. 
 
 We were ushered into a sort of entrance hall 
 and here we stood round the walls while the 
 reception warder checked us off against the 
 commitment papers and gave the prison-van 
 sergeant a receipt for our bodies. When this 
 ceremony had been completed, we were marched 
 along a passage with cells on one side of it to a 
 small desk at the end, where sat a warder who 
 demanded from each man in turn sundry 
 biographical particulars which he entered as 
 given on a four-paged octavo form. 
 
 Then we were passed on round a corner and 
 told to take our boots and socks off, stand on a 
 sheet that was spread on the stone floor by 
 the side of a door, and wait our turns to be 
 searched. 
 
 The sheet was a bit crowded by the time I 
 got to it, and I stood on the stones, which 
 brought forth an admonition from the warder to 
 "stand on the sheet; they won't give you any 
 less if you get rheumatics in your feet." 
 
 One by one as our names were called we 
 went into the search-room and stripped to the 
 shirt behind a screen. Then one warder took our 
 weights and heights, while another searched our
 
 52 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 clothing. A third warder, sitting at a desk with 
 a big book in front of him, took particulars of the 
 contents of our pockets. The contents of mine, 
 on arrest, with the exception of the money, had 
 been returned to me before leaving Bow Street ; 
 but I only retained them until I got into this 
 search-room, as everything is taken away and 
 made up into a parcel, which is given back to 
 the prisoner when he leaves. For some reason, 
 which is hard to get at, there is special attention 
 given to the prevention of prisoners at Brixton 
 retaining possession of pieces of lead-pencil. 
 Any lead-pencil turned out of his pockets by a 
 prisoner himself, or found about him by the 
 searching warder is at once confiscated and not 
 returned to the prisoner with his other property. 
 I made a special application to the governor of 
 the prison to have a pencil I had brought in 
 returned to me when I went out for the next 
 hearing at the police court, so that I might use 
 it for the purpose of taking notes for my defence, 
 and my application was refused. 
 
 I have no fault whatever to find with the way 
 in which the warders conducted these searching 
 operations, and, as far as I could see, they did 
 not degrade any one more than was absolutely 
 necessary; but I must say that I did see them
 
 ON REMAND 53 
 
 make very minute examinations in one or two 
 cases where the prisoner was under suspicion of 
 trying to best them. 
 
 Any man who is wearing decent clothes is 
 allowed to retain them while on remand if he 
 wishes to do so; but no option is given to 
 prisoners whose clothing is either ragged or 
 dirty. Men who do not wish, or are not allowed, 
 to wear their own clothes, are given a suit of 
 blue prison clothing — blue is the colour for 
 debtors and unconvicted prisoners, brown for 
 second division, and khaki for hard labour — and 
 their own outfits are bundled up, without any 
 folding or precautions to avoid creasing of coats 
 or bashing of hats, and stoved. Some of the 
 men whose clothes are treated like this look a 
 bit scarecrowish when they go in ; but they are 
 all without exception fully qualified for the job 
 when they go out. 
 
 " Pick up your clothes and go through there," 
 said the searching-warder to me when he had 
 finished "going over me." 
 
 He pointed to a door on the opposite side of the 
 room, and, going through it as directed, I found 
 myself in a large bath-house with a long row of 
 luxurious porcelain baths, in cubicles open at 
 both ends, running down the centre. The only
 
 54 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 criticism that can be made of the bathing 
 arrangements is that little or no room is avail- 
 able in the cubicles for dressing, and that a 
 prisoner is hunted out of the bath almost as soon 
 as he gets in. 
 
 After the bath, I was directed to a door which 
 opened into a big room having little sentry-box- 
 like cells round three sides of it, the other side 
 being taken up with clothes and linen racks and 
 the door of the medical inspection room. As 
 soon as I appeared in this room, a warder 
 escorted me to one of the little cells and locked 
 me in. There was a shelf at the back to serve 
 as a seat, and sitting down on this, I waited 
 patiently for the feeding to start. 
 
 I hadn't waited long when the door was 
 banged open, and a warder asked me if I had 
 left the prison that morning. On my replying 
 in the negative, he handed me an eight-ounce 
 brown loaf, cut in half and made into an 
 agricultural sort of sandwich by the insertion of 
 a five-ounce wedge of preserved meat between 
 the halves. He left the door open, and next 
 moment another warder came along and asked, 
 "Do you want any of this?" as he pointed to a 
 large can of porridge that a prisoner with him 
 was carrying.
 
 ON REMAND 55 
 
 I didn't want any of it, and at that moment 
 was absolutely certain that I should never be 
 wanting any of it ; but I was mistaken, for it 
 didn't take me a week, when I started in to work 
 out my sentence, to discover that porridge eaten 
 with a fairly liberal allowance of salt is miles in 
 front of porridge eaten with milk and sugar. 
 Prisoners who had only been away for the day 
 and were returned on further remand got no 
 meat, as it had been given to them on leaving in 
 the morning to make their dinner on at the court, 
 and such men had to make their evening meal on 
 dry bread alone, if they didn't happen to fancy 
 the porridge. I never saw anybody eat the 
 porridge at Brixton, unless they were old 
 hands at prison life ; the first timers passed 
 it to a man, but it would be pretty safe to 
 bet that they were not passing it a month 
 afterwards. 
 
 I made a very satisfactory meal on the bread 
 and meat, although the meat was nothing like up 
 to Chicago standard, and tasted more like pressed 
 beef-tea meat after the beef-tea had done with it 
 than anything else. This kind of preserved meat 
 forms the piece de resistance of every Sunday 
 dinner in prison, and I notice that quite a 
 large number of prisoners never ate it; but I
 
 56 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 wasn't one of the fastidious ones, and always 
 looked with longing eyes at the rejected slabs 
 when I saw them in the dinner-tins outside the 
 cell doors as I marched past them to afternoon 
 chapel.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 MEDICAL INSPECTION 
 
 I HADN'T time to finish my supper before 
 the doors were thrown open again, and we 
 were told to form a queue in front of the door of 
 the medical inspection-room. The food was too 
 precious to leave behind, so I carried it with me, 
 and went on eating it in fear and trembling lest 
 I was sinning against the prison regulations. 
 There were many others doing the same thing, 
 but the only notice the warder took was to 
 admonish us to " get that down you afore the 
 doctor comes." One old chap in prison dress 
 surreptitiously captured a tin of porridge that 
 was standing on the seat of an open cell, 
 and feverishly scooped up the cold mess with his 
 hand, licking the stuff off his fingers lovingly as 
 if it were the daintiest of dainty morsels. I 
 couldn't understand his taste at all then, and 
 thought there was something beast-like about his 
 proceedings ; but I hadn't been in prison under 
 sentence long before I began to feel very much 
 
 57
 
 58 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 like the same thing myself, and would have con- 
 sidered the finding of an extra pint of porridge 
 as a very great piece of good fortune indeed. 
 
 " Open your coats and waistcoats, unbutton 
 your trousers, and get ready to pull up your 
 shirts," shouted the warder, as the doctor passed 
 into the inspection-room. 
 
 Then we went in before him, one out next in, 
 and the doctor examined us at the rate of about 
 one a minute. 
 
 Dr. Scott, who has recently vacated the 
 appointment on promotion to be Governor of 
 Holloway, was the principal medical officer of 
 Brixton Prison then, and it was he who was 
 examining the prisoners that evening. 
 
 There are very few men, I imagine, among 
 the many thousands who passed through Brixton 
 during his term of office there, who don't think 
 kindly thoughts of Dr. Scott, though he is hardly 
 the type of man to diverge from the strict line of 
 duty in order to do a favour to anybody. He is 
 a dapper little man with a friendly twinkle in 
 his eyes that seems to radiate sympathy all 
 around him, and as soon as I saw him I seemed 
 to receive a sort of telepathic assurance that the 
 outlook for me was not nearly so black as my 
 fancy had painted it.
 
 MEDICAL INSPECTION 59 
 
 "Are you all right?" he asked, as he applied 
 the stethoscope to my chest. 
 
 " I am in good health, as far as I know," I 
 replied. 
 
 " You're feeling a bit depressed though, aren't 
 you ? That is hardly to be wondered at in the 
 circumstances. Have you ever been in trouble 
 before?" 
 
 I hardly understood what he meant and looked 
 at him questioningly. 
 
 " Have you ever been in prison, I mean," he 
 said smilingly. " Didn't you know that the only 
 sort of trouble known to a gaol-bird is the being 
 in prison ?" 
 
 I didn't know it, and said so. I also denied 
 having "been in trouble" myself before. 
 
 " I was satisfied that you hadn't, but it is usual 
 to ask," he said apologetically. " You must cheer 
 up and hope for the best ; it doesn't do anybody 
 good to brood over misfortunes." 
 
 This was all that passed between us, but his 
 manner conveyed a great deal more than his 
 actual words did ; it seemed to say to me that I 
 would have to be proved guilty before he could 
 harbour any ill opinion of me. 
 
 After all had been examined, a principal 
 warder came in and seated himself at a table in
 
 6o A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 the middle of the room on which there was a 
 pile of yellow cloth disks with a leather button- 
 hole stitched on to them, and bearing large black 
 numbers. 
 
 As the principal warder called out a name, 
 the prisoner who owned it went up to the table 
 and received one of the yellow disks bearing 
 the number and location of the cell he was to 
 occupy. He was told to hang this label on the 
 top button of his coat, and then he received 
 a hair-brush and comb, a pillow-case, a towel, 
 and a pair of sheets. When thus outfitted, 
 he passed over into one of several groups 
 that were being formed at the other side of 
 the room. 
 
 " Put me on the C 2's, sir, if you please, sir. 
 I am a good worker, sir," said, in wheedling, 
 tones, a big strapping prisoner who was clad in 
 prison blue. 
 
 " Hello ! You here again ? " said the principal 
 warder. " Same old thing, I see," he continued, 
 as he looked at the man's descriptive form. " I 
 suppose you'll be fuUied (committed for trial) 
 this time." 
 
 " Yes, the magistrate said to-day that he was 
 goin' ter send me up ; but it wasn't me as done it 
 this time, sir, it really wasn't."
 
 MEDICAL INSPECTION 6i 
 
 "No, I don't suppose it was : you don't know 
 how to do that sort of thing," said the principal 
 warder drily, and the prisoner laughed. 
 
 "Do you want a cleaner?" asked the 
 principal warder, turning to the warder in 
 charge of one of the groups. 
 
 " Yes, sir," replied the warder. " I'd be glad 
 to have him, too, if he's going to be fuUied ; he's 
 a good man." 
 
 "All right then," said the principal, as he 
 handed the coveted badge to the prisoner. 
 
 I learned afterwards that this gentleman was 
 in the habit of chastening any unfortunate police- 
 man he might happen to come across after he 
 had been having a night out ; and as he was 
 much given to having nights out, his convic- 
 tions for assaulting the police were numerous. 
 His anxiety to get posted to No. 2 ward of the 
 C block was due to the fact that that ward 
 was where the majority of the swell prisoners 
 who paid half-a-crown a week for their cells 
 and had their meals sent in from outside were 
 located, and cleaners there earned money by 
 waiting on them, and had the reversion of 
 any food they couldn't eat, so that it was a 
 "pinch" for an impecunious prisoner to get 
 there.
 
 62 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 At last all the prisoners but myself were 
 disposed of and marched away. 
 
 "Take him over to the hospital," said the 
 principal warder to the only officer who was 
 left. 
 
 I didn't feel at all like a fit subject for the 
 hospital, and didn't want to go there, as at that 
 time I didn't know and didn't suspect that it was 
 the most comfortable place I could go to. I 
 remarked that there must be some mistake, as 
 there was nothing the matter with me, and the 
 doctor had said nothing about sending me to 
 hospital. 
 
 "There's no mistake; the doctor has marked 
 you down for hospital right enough. He must 
 have forgot to ask you whether you'd like to go 
 or not," said the principal warder drily. 
 
 If was after eight o'clock then, and the 
 hospital lights were turned down for the night ; 
 but a white-jacketed hospital warder on night 
 duty ushered me into a comfortable hospital cell, 
 brought me a mug of hot beef tea, and gave me 
 a book — "White Wings," by the late William 
 Black. 
 
 " It's the doctor's orders that your light is to 
 be left on all night, so you can read a bit after 
 you are in bed if you like," he said. " Good
 
 MEDICAL INSPECTION 63 
 
 night ! Touch that bell if you happen to want 
 anything." 
 
 "Good Lord!" thought I, as I got between 
 the clean linen sheets, "this is a bit better treat- 
 ment than one gets at a first-class hotel."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 FIRST FRIENDS 
 
 I DIDN'T sleep very well that night, for my 
 thoughts were very troublesome, and the 
 light shining into the cell helped them to keep 
 me wakeful. I was on the point of dropping off 
 several times when I was aroused to wakefulness 
 again by the click of the cover to the observation 
 hole in the door, which showed that the night 
 warder was keeping his eye on me pretty closely. 
 I managed to get soundly asleep at last however, 
 in spite of all these hindrances ; but this could 
 not have happened until well on towards 
 morning, because when the bell rang at seven 
 o'clock — it was Sunday morning, when the rous- 
 ing bell rings at seven instead of at six — I felt 
 like a man who has been awakened directly after 
 he has dropped asleep. 
 
 "Just put your slops out here and make your 
 bed," said, very civilly, the warder who opened 
 the door. 
 
 This was all I had to do, for a cleaner came 
 
 64
 
 FIRST FRIENDS 65 
 
 in and tidied up my cell. On the second morning 
 my sense of shame at letting another prisoner 
 wait upon me caused me to ask for a broom so 
 that I might clean the cell myself, and thereafter 
 I did everything in the cell except the periodical 
 scrubbing, which was done on days that I was 
 at the police-court. 
 
 Breakfast followed quickly on the collection 
 of slops, as was the case on every Sunday 
 morning throughout the whole term of my 
 imprisonment; the daily routine is not put back 
 an hour on account of the late Sunday morning 
 rising, and everything is hurried until the hour 
 is made up. 
 
 For breakfast I got a pint mug of very good 
 tea and a half-pound loaf of excellent white 
 bread cut into slices and buttered. 
 
 After breakfast was served there was a long 
 wait until about ten o'clock, when those hospital 
 prisoners who were able to get about were let 
 out into the yard for exercise. I was not, on 
 this first day, put to walk round with the ruck ; 
 but was allowed to stroll up and down in a corner 
 in company with a solicitor who was being held 
 in durance sine die under an order of the high 
 court because he wouldn't part with some money 
 belonging to a client. He told me that he had 
 
 F
 
 66 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 already been in the prison for three months, and 
 looked like being kept there for the rest of his 
 natural life if the court made the production of 
 this money the condition of his release, as he 
 hadn't got the money and saw no earthly prospect 
 of getting it. I believe he was afterwards 
 charged under the Larceny Act with misappro- 
 priating the money, and sentenced to a term 
 of penal servitude ; but at the time he was in 
 Brixton with me he was simply confined there 
 for contempt of court in not paying the money 
 when an order had been made for him to do so, 
 and he had no idea that a criminal charge would 
 be brought against him in connection with the 
 money. This was not the only solicitor I met in 
 gaol, not by a long chalk. I seemed to be 
 always in daily contact with one or more 
 solicitors during the whole of my prison life, and 
 as I never met even one actor, I couldn't help 
 reflecting upon the fact that though an actor is a 
 " rogue and a vagabond " by statute, he doesn't 
 trouble the judicial authorities much, while the 
 attorneys, though statute-made " gentlemen," are 
 a very criminal body of men. Notwithstanding 
 the fact that there are so many solicitors to be 
 met with in prison, I do not think that solicitors 
 are fundamentally worse men than doctors,
 
 FIRST FRIENDS ^1 
 
 barristers, and parsons. What brings nearly 
 every solicitor to prison who gets there is the 
 fact that he has had the handling of other 
 people's money without there being any sort of 
 check or supervision over him ; and in similar 
 circumstances it is highlyprobable that barristers, 
 doctors, and parsons wouldn't show up any 
 better. " Lead us not into temptation," is the 
 most useful sort of prayer that a man can utter, 
 for few men can withstand temptation in an 
 insidious form, and no man can know whether he 
 is really honest or not until he has done so. 
 
 We were not supposed to speak to one 
 another, even while still unconvicted and pre- 
 sumably only at Brixton for safe custody ; but, 
 as a matter of fact, there is little restraint of 
 conversation between the prisoners, provided 
 that it is carried on discreetly, and not forced on 
 the warders' notice. I hadn't become alive to this 
 on that Sunday morning, and so said nothing to 
 the solicitor until he opened the conversation by 
 asking the first question that one prisoner 
 invariably asks another : " What are you in 
 for ? " 
 
 On my replying that I was " in" for obtaining 
 money by false pretences, but that I wasn't 
 guilty, the solicitor politely murmured, "Of
 
 68 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 course," and proceeded to explain to me the 
 difference between his status in the prison and 
 that of the ordinary inhabitant. 
 
 We hadn't got any further in our confidences 
 when Dr. Scott entered the yard, and we were all 
 formed up in line for his inspection. He had a 
 cheery word for every one and with most of 
 those present he went into medical matters ; but 
 in my case he fulfilled the medical part of the 
 interview by putting his stethoscope over the 
 region of my heart on the outside of my over- 
 coat and keeping it there for about two seconds. 
 
 "There isn't much the matter with you," said 
 the solicitor as soon as Dr. Scott had gone and 
 we were walking up and down again. 
 
 " No, I don't think there is," I replied, "and I 
 cannot imagine why he sent me here." 
 
 " Did they keep the light on in your cell all 
 night ? " 
 
 " Yes, they did. But what has that got to 
 do with it?" I asked in surprise. 
 
 " It accounts for the milk in the cocoanut," 
 he replied. " It shows that Dr. Scott sent you 
 here because he thinks that you are just the sort 
 of man to attempt to commit suicide, and he 
 wants to soften your fall for you as much as 
 possible so as to prevent your getting the idea
 
 FIRST FRIENDS 69 
 
 into your head. The light is left on in your cell 
 so that the night warder may keep a very strict 
 watch on you." ' 
 
 If that was really Dr. Scott's reason for 
 sending me to hospital — and I myself believe that 
 it was— it does little credit to his powers of 
 observation, inasmuch as I am a man of very 
 sanguine temperament, and about the very last 
 man in the world to dream of self-destruction. 
 It goes to show, though, how very careful he was 
 in looking after the prisoners committed to his 
 professional care. 
 
 After exercise we prisoners who belonged to 
 the Church of England were taken up into one 
 of the association wards where we sat round 
 the table for a quarter of an hour while the prison 
 chaplain talked to us. It was a very perfunc- 
 tory performance, and I felt sorry for the poor 
 old parson, who went through with it as if he 
 recognized the utter futility of it all. He was 
 a terrible driveller was that particular prison 
 chaplain, and it was a positive infliction to 
 sit under him at chapel ; but there was a 
 stalwart, manly young parson who used some- 
 times to come and do the prison chaplain's duty, 
 and made a practice of talking very straight to 
 the prisoners. He didn't worry us with points of
 
 70 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 doctrine, and his sermons might have done duty 
 
 in any denomination : but he preached the 
 
 gospel of " do as you'd have others do to you " 
 
 to such purpose that a man who owned to having 
 
 got his living by thieving all his life from 
 
 boyhood upwards told me that after the parson's 
 
 sermon he couldn't help fancying himself in the 
 
 position of a man who had been robbed, and that 
 
 he was convinced that thieving was about as 
 
 mean and unmanly a game as the parson had said 
 
 it was. That parson was not a prison chaplain 
 
 at all — I rather fancy that he was the incumbent 
 
 of some church in the vicinity of the prison— but 
 
 it is a real pity that he is not in the prison 
 
 service in place of one of the many inefficient 
 
 drones who are. I don't say that all prison 
 
 chaplains, or even a majority of them, are round 
 
 pegs in square holes — my experience of them 
 
 would not justify my making such an assertion — 
 
 but as three out of the four prison chaplains I 
 
 came in contact with were certainly and palpably 
 
 out of place in a prison, it is evident that these 
 
 officers are not so carefully selected as they 
 
 ought to be. 
 
 When the Sunday dinner came along, I was 
 agreeably surprised to find that it was a really 
 well-cooked and tasty meal, which I could eat to
 
 FIRST FRIENDS 71 
 
 the last scrap and thoroughly enjoy. It consisted 
 of five ounces of roasted meat, swimming in 
 delicious gravy, a couple of large potatoes 
 boiled in their jackets, some tender cabbage, and 
 a six-ounce loaf of white bread. 
 
 It was a long stretch between dinner and tea 
 — bread and butter with tea as at breakfast — but 
 I got through it comfortably enough by the aid 
 of my book, and it was a longer stretch still 
 between tea at about half-past three and bedtime 
 at eight ; but I was thoroughly interested in 
 William Black's fine yachting novel, and bedtime 
 came rather sooner than I was ready for it. 
 
 Next morning, before breakfast, the medicine 
 warder served me with a dose of cascara, 
 and I had the dose repeated every morning 
 while I remained in hospital. The only other 
 medicine I had while in hospital was one 
 dose of quinine, which I asked Dr. Scott for 
 when I had been there for about a week, and 
 rather got his back up by my clumsy way of 
 demanding it. 
 
 "Could I have a dose of quinine — fifteen 
 grains?" I asked him one morning when he 
 was paying me his usual duty visit. 
 
 " Do you take me for an apothecary's boy ? " 
 he asked with some asperity. " If you'll tell me
 
 72 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 what is the matter, 'I'll prescribe for you, but 
 I'm hanged if you're going to doctor yourself 
 here, if you are fool enough to do it outside." 
 
 Then I explained, as I ought to have done 
 before asking for the stuff, that I was subject to 
 attacks of malaria, and that when I felt one 
 coming on I more often than not choked it off 
 by taking fifteen grains of quinine. 
 
 "That's all right," he said in a mollified tone. 
 " You may have the quinine with pleasure ; 
 but remember in future that you should never 
 start a consultation with a medical man by telling 
 him how to treat you."
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 IDENTIFICATION 
 
 AFTER breakfast on the Monday morning 
 the open iron grating that served as a cell 
 door in the day time was unlocked by a warder 
 from the prison proper, who tersely bade me 
 "Come on." 
 
 " What's on ? " I asked, as we crossed the 
 prison yard. 
 
 "Nothing much," he replied good-humouredly. 
 " We're only going to see if you are an old pal 
 of ours in disguise." 
 
 He took me to a room in the reception ward 
 where, lying on a table, were a plate of polished 
 copper about a foot long and six inches wide 
 mounted on a block of wood, a roller made of 
 printers' inking composition, an inking slab, and 
 some forms printed on white foolscap. 
 " Are your hands clean ? " he asked. 
 "Quite," I replied, showing them. 
 "Very well, then, we'll proceed to take your 
 sign-manual," he said as he rubbed the inked 
 
 n
 
 74 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 roller vigorously over the copper-plate until it 
 showed a shiny black surface. 
 
 When he had inked the plate to his satisfac- 
 tion, he took hold of my right hand by the wrist 
 with one hand, and with the other gently rolled 
 my thumb from side to side, first on the inked 
 slab and then on a ruled space on one of the 
 white forms, making not an ordinary thumb 
 print, as is generally represented in newspaper 
 articles on finger-prints, but a sort of square 
 impression that showed the lines at the side 
 of the thumb as well as those on the front. He 
 repeated this operation with the fingers of my 
 right hand and the thumb and fingers of my 
 left, the markings of the left hand being shown 
 underneath the spaces allotted for the markings 
 on the right. Then I was made to place just the 
 tips of my right-hand fingers simultaneously on 
 the inked slab and transfer them to the paper in 
 spaces ruled out below those which contained 
 the other marks, and, below these again, the 
 simultaneous print of the tips of the fingers of 
 my left hand. Then the form was turned over, 
 and I was directed to sign my name and 
 immediately afterwards make the print of the 
 tip of my right forefinger by the side of the 
 signature. This is a correct account of the way
 
 IDENTIFICATION 75 
 
 in which my finger-prints were taken immediately 
 after my arrest and again just before my final 
 discharge from prison, though it does not agree 
 with any published accounts of finger-printing 
 that I have seen, and the prints made by my 
 fingers were not of the same shape as the prints 
 illustrated in the articles on the subject that I 
 have read.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 BLACK MARIA AGAIN 
 
 ON the day when I was due to appear again 
 at the police-court I was taken over to 
 the reception ward just after the bell rang at six 
 o'clock, and when I got there I found those 
 prisoners who had been wearing prison clothing, 
 changing into their own in the little cells ranged 
 along the reception corridor, while others who 
 were already dressed in their own clothes were 
 standing in line along the corridor. 
 
 When we were all.assembled, there was a long 
 line of a hundred or more men stretching from 
 one end of the corridor to the other, and a very 
 mixed lot we were. There were men in absolute 
 rags, men in respectable working-man's rig-out, 
 men in morning coats and billycock hats, men in 
 reach-me-down lounge suits, and men in lounge 
 suits bearing the stamp of Savile Row and 
 Conduit Street, men in irreproachable frock-coat 
 suits and tall hats, and one man in the wreck of a 
 swell evening-dress suit. 
 
 76
 
 BLACK MARIA AGAIN i'] 
 
 There were men whose faces bore the imprint 
 of great mental anguish, and other men who 
 seemed to be taking the proceedings as a huge 
 joke. 
 
 As soon as the line was properly formed, the 
 order " pull up your trousers and waistcoats " was 
 bellowed out by three or four officers at the same 
 time. Then a warder passed along the line with 
 a lighted taper in his hand, and closely inspected 
 the socks and underclothing each man was 
 wearing to make sure that none of the thieves 
 were exercising their profession on the prison 
 underclothing ; the men who had been wearing 
 their own clothing, and never having had posses- 
 sion of any garments belonging to the prison, 
 being examined the same as the others. 
 
 Then breakfast was served out and eaten by 
 the men as they stood in their places, and after 
 that the property each man had brought in 
 was handed to him and his signature taken 
 for it. 
 
 The chief warder now appeared on the 
 scene, bearing in his hand the blue commitment 
 papers relating to the prisoners due for court 
 that morning. 
 
 His particular job on this occasion was to make 
 sure that the men who were leaving the prison
 
 78 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 were actually those named in the commitment 
 papers, and his way of doing this was to pass 
 down the line and ask each man his name and the 
 offence with which he was charged, checking the 
 answers by the commitment paper. 
 
 On this morning there was a little foreign- 
 looking man standing next but one to me in the 
 line. When the chief warder came to him and 
 asked his name, he simply shook his head and 
 smiled, though I had heard him speaking to the 
 man next to me in broken English not five minutes 
 before. 
 
 " What's your name, and what are you in for ? " 
 shouted the chief warder, as if he were convinced 
 that English yelled is easier to understand than 
 English spoken. 
 
 The man gesticulated furiously, shook his 
 head, and volubly declared in Italian that he did 
 not understand. 
 
 " He can speak English right enough," said a 
 warder. " I expect that he's an old hand at this 
 game." 
 
 " I neva watyoucalla pinched before," said the 
 Italian indignantly, betrayed into finding his 
 English. 
 
 "You understood him well enough then," 
 said the chief warder chaffingly. " Shall I ask
 
 BLACK MARIA AGAIN 79 
 
 him to ask you your name and what you are 
 in for?" 
 
 " Neva watyoucalla pinched before," reiter- 
 ated the man sullenly. 
 
 "Well, you're jolly well pinched now, if this 
 is your start," said the chief grimly. " Forgery 
 of banknotes for use in the kingdom of Italy," is 
 what you're pinched for, and it looks like keeping 
 you pinched for a few years." 
 
 " Eet ees my brothaire ; 'e do the banknote, 
 an' me, I get whatyoucalla pinched," wailed the 
 foreigner. 
 
 "You can tell that to the magistrate — or the 
 marines," said the chief warder as he passed on, 
 apparently satisfied that he had got the man 
 named in the commitment right enough, and that 
 it was not worth while wasting any more time in 
 trying to get him to answer questions as to his 
 name and offence, 
 
 I had a ragged-looking tramp sort of a 
 man on one side of me, and on the other there 
 was standing a very well-dressed young man who 
 had on a new pair of patent-leather boots. The 
 man with the patents had a very small, well- 
 shaped foot, while the tramp, who was wearing a 
 pair of leaky crabshells, would have had to do a 
 bit of squeezing to get his tootsies into a pair
 
 8o A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 of number twelve-size bluchers. The tramp 
 couldn't take his eyes off the dainty footgear, 
 and after looking at them longingly for a con- 
 siderable time, he leaned over me and said to 
 the swell — 
 
 " Yer 'aven't got yer old boots ter give away, 
 'ev yer, mister ? " 
 
 The tramp was in deadly earnest, but the 
 swell evidently thought he was being chaffed, 
 and answered very superciliously. 
 
 "Yer don't need ter give yerself any airs 
 'ere, mister," retorted the tramp in an aggrieved 
 tone. " If the King 'isself, Gord bless 'im, was 
 a standing in this 'ere line, 'e wouldn't be 
 no better nor I am, an' I don't b'leeve as 'e'd 
 think as 'e was either. Tork about swells ! 
 why, I've stood in this 'ere line with bigger 
 swells nor you ever knowed 'ow ter be. Why, 
 I've stood in this line next ter Edwards the 
 Bermon'sey murd'rer, an' Chapman, the man 
 as was supposed ter've pizzened about six 
 wives." 
 
 This settled the swell and he retired hurt. 
 
 When we had been hanging about the 
 corridor for something like two hours, our dinner 
 — an eight-ounce brown loaf with five ounces 
 of preserved meat — was handed to us, and we
 
 BLACK MARIA AGAIN 8i 
 
 were formed up in squads according to the court 
 we were for. 
 
 I found that the swell with the patents was 
 for Bow Street like myself, and as we were 
 going out to get into the police-van, he nudged 
 me and told me to get into one of the cells 
 nearest the door. I thought that it would be a 
 good thing to get near the door myself, as one 
 can then see something of what is going on in 
 the streets ; but as I was appropriating one of 
 the cells, the sergeant in charge of the van 
 ordered me to move further up. " It's all right," 
 whispered the swell to the sergeant, and pushed 
 me into the cell, the sergeant making no 
 objection. 
 
 When we were outside the prison gates, the 
 sergeant produced a packet of cigarettes and 
 a box of matches and handed them to the swell, 
 who politely passed them on to me to help my- 
 self first. When I had taken one and lighted it, 
 he signed to me to pass it out to my next-door 
 neighbour, and in this way the cigarettes and 
 the matches travelled all round the van until 
 what was left of them came to the owner 
 again. Then he selected one himself and 
 offered one to the police sergeant, so that in 
 ten minutes time after the van had left the prison 
 
 G
 
 82 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 everybody in it was smoking. Whether this 
 smoking in police-vans is against regulations 
 or not I never inquired ; but I found it to be a 
 common practice, and it certainly did no harm 
 to anybody.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 BOW STREET 
 
 ON arrival at Bow Street the swell and my- 
 self were put into the same cell, and with 
 us were two men, a postman and his brother- 
 in-law, who were under remand for extensive 
 post-office robberies. The putting of these two 
 men together in one cell was a good illustration 
 of the wooden-headed system of dealing with 
 prisoners when under remand. At Brixton 
 prisoners who are in the same case are rigour- 
 ously kept apart in the prison itself, and no 
 prisoner is supposed to be allowed to address 
 even a single word to another prisoner ; yet 
 when they are brought down to the police court, 
 prisoners may talk with one another as much as 
 they please, and accomplices are even put 
 together, as these two were, in the same cell. 
 There does not seem to me to be any adequate 
 reason why unconvicted and presumably innocent 
 men should be subjected to practically the same 
 rules at Brixton as govern convicted prisoners; 
 
 83
 
 84 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 but if there is any reason for the silent system 
 at Brixton, that reason should surely hold good 
 at the police-court. If, on the other hand, there is 
 no harm in prisoners being allowed unrestrained 
 communication at the police court, what harm 
 could there be in their being allowed to talk to 
 one another at Brixton ? 
 
 The case of this postman was also an instance 
 of a systematic thief himself supplying the clue 
 that put justice on his track. He had been 
 looting letters for years, and his method of 
 working was so ingenious that it was almost any 
 odds that he would never have been suspected 
 even if he hadn't started flinging money about 
 as if he had the lease of a private mint. This 
 was bound to attract attention in the post- 
 office, as in this service a man who is thought to 
 be spending more than his official income is 
 always an object of suspicion, and he was closely 
 watched, with the result that he and his brother- 
 in-law, who was not connected with the post- 
 office, were found to be the parties who had been 
 baffling the post-office detective staff for many 
 years. 
 
 I couldn't help thinking that it was a bit hard 
 on the brother-in-law, for he had done nothing 
 to give the game away, and had, moreover, often
 
 BOW STREET 85 
 
 remonstrated with the other as to the danger of 
 being seen to be in possession of money. From 
 their conversation when in the cell with me 
 there was no room for doubt that it was the 
 postman was the leading spirit, and that the 
 brother-in-law had simply been drawn in by 
 him owing to the necessity of having some one 
 to travel all over the country to cash stolen 
 cheques over the counters of the banks they 
 were drawn upon. The magistrate, too, appeared 
 to be of the opinion that the brother-in-law was 
 the less guilty of the two, for he admitted him to 
 bail eventually, while refusing to take bail for the 
 postman. The judge who tried the case at the 
 Old Bailey, however, by some process of reason- 
 ing not easy to follow, came to the conclusion that 
 the brother-in-law was the more guilty and gave 
 him six months more than he gave the postman. 
 The gentleman with the patent-leather boots 
 turned out to be an ex-officer of yeomanry who 
 had served in South Africa. He had served 
 three months' imprisonment for obtaining money 
 by means of a worthless cheque, and had been 
 met on his discharge from prison by a detective 
 who had arrested him upon another charge of the 
 same nature. The circumstances in each case 
 were exactly similar: he had a banking account.
 
 S6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 but there was not sufficient credit in it to meet 
 either of the cheques, for which he had obtained 
 actual cash. The Bow Street magistrate held 
 that there was not sufficient evidence of criminal 
 intent, although he knew that another magistrate 
 had convicted him under circumstances exactly 
 parallel, and he was discharged after being kept 
 in Brixton without bail for a fortnight. Which 
 magistrate was right — the one who convicted him 
 or the one who discharged him? The whole 
 thing was a lottery in which he drew one prize 
 and one blank. 
 
 He was a good sort, was this ex-yeomanry 
 officer. Amid the surprise at his release, which 
 was totally unexpected — how could he expect it 
 when he had been convicted before in a case 
 exactly similar ? — and the congratulations of his 
 friends, he found time to think of me, and came 
 back to the cell as a visitor bringing a huge pork- 
 pie, a large bottle of Bass, a packet of cigarettes, 
 a box of matches, and half a sovereign which he 
 pressed upon me as a loan. He quite forgot to 
 give any address, and I never knew his name, so 
 that half-sovereign remains on loan to this very 
 day. I have a kindly feeling in my heart for that 
 ex-yeomanry officer, and would think it a great 
 bit of luck to find myself at his elbow some time
 
 BOW STREET S7 
 
 when he was feeling that he was greatly in need 
 of a friend. 
 
 I was alone in the cell when he brought me 
 these things, so there was nobody to share them 
 with. The beer presented no difficulty, and it 
 would be easy to get rid of the cigarettes in the 
 van going back to Brixton ; but having just 
 finished my brown bread and preserved meat, I 
 was not then in a humour to attack the pork-pie, 
 and decided to keep it for supper when I got to 
 Brixton. 
 
 As all sorts of eatables are allowed to be sent 
 into the prison for the consumption of prisoners, 
 it never entered my head that any objection 
 would be made to the pie ; but I was mistaken, 
 and when I got to the search-room that evening 
 I was given the option of standing there, naked 
 as I was, and eating it then or leaving it behind 
 me. I left it behind me, hoping that it would 
 make the warders ill. 
 
 These long court days— there was an interval 
 of about fourteen hours between our leaving our 
 cells in the morning and getting back to them at 
 night— are very trying, and the having to go 
 through all the formalities on readmission, just 
 the same as a new comer, seems to be just 
 wanton red-tape and nothing less. I had six of
 
 88 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 these days during my police court purgatory, and 
 I look back upon them as the six worst days in 
 my whole period of imprisonment. 
 
 I was sent back to hospital again on this 
 occasion, and also on the next ; but when I was 
 returned to Brixton on my fourth remand, I was 
 put in the general prison, in the " B," or old, 
 block, which used to form part of the old military 
 prison. 
 
 While I was in the hospital the principal 
 warder in charge there remonstrated with me 
 very earnestly, but very suavely, on what he 
 called my beastly habit of washing myself in the 
 dinner-time as well as in the morning. It spoiled 
 the look of the tin washbowl for the rest of the 
 day, he said, and seriously affected his reputation 
 for keeping a clean and tidy hospital. He was a 
 very nice chap was that principal warder, and I 
 hated to cause him pain, so I did without my 
 middle-day wash after this while I remained in 
 hospital ; but I reverted to the bad habit when 
 I got into the prison proper, and even per- 
 sisted in it during the whole term of my sentence 
 without any other warder taking exception to it.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 REMAND DIET 
 
 A PRISONER on remand or awaiting trial 
 may provide his own food if he likes, and 
 a warder goes round the cells every morning to 
 take the names of those who wish to purchase 
 food and newspapers. No money passes on 
 these occasions, for a prisoner's money is taken 
 from him on entrance, but the prisoner signs a 
 form authorizing the governor to take the amount 
 from the sum belonging to the prisoner in his 
 hands. The same procedure is adopted when a 
 prisoner desires a shave, the charge for which is 
 threepence — an outside barber attending in the 
 prison every morning for the purpose of shaving 
 and cutting the hair of any prisoners who desire 
 his services. The morning newspapers are not 
 served out to the prisoners until after dinner, 
 though why this delay should be a matter of 
 regulation I cannot imagine. 
 
 I didn't buy any food when in the prison — in 
 fact, it is only a small number of the prisoners 
 
 89
 
 90 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 who do — and after leaving the hospital I was on 
 ordinary prison diet, the same as is given to 
 debtors and men serving sentences in the second 
 division. This diet consists of— Breakfast : 
 an eight-ounce brown loaf and a pint of tea. 
 Supper: an eight-ounce brown loaf and a pint 
 of good ship's cocoa with a layer of oil floating on 
 top of it. Dinner on Mondays : two ounces of 
 bacon fat, ten ounces of haricot beans that have 
 been boiled with the bacon, six ounces brown 
 bread, and twelve ounces potatoes boiled in their 
 jackets. Dinner on Tuesdays and Fridays : a 
 pint of excellent pea-soup, bread and potatoes as 
 before. Dinner on Wednesdays and Saturdays : 
 twelve ounces plain suet pudding, made of brown 
 flour, potatoes and bread as before. Dinner on 
 Thursdays : five ounces of boiled fresh beef with 
 about a quarter of a pint of the liquor it was 
 boiled in, bread and potatoes as before. Dinner 
 on Sundays : five ounces preserved meat, bread 
 and potatoes as before. Jews are given preserved 
 meat on Mondays also. 
 
 This diet does not err on the side of luxury, 
 and few people get used to it during their stay 
 at Brixton if they happen to be making their 
 first acquaintance with it; but it is whole- 
 some enough, and I managed to eat what I
 
 REMAND DIET 91 
 
 wanted of it without feeling that I was doing 
 anything more unpleasant than roughing it a bit. 
 A prisoner on remand or awaiting trial may 
 write one letter every day that Government will 
 pay the postage of, and he may send as many 
 more as he likes provided that he either pays 
 the postage himself or is willing for them to be 
 posted unstamped. There is no restriction on 
 the number of letters he may receive. Every 
 letter, whether going out or coming in, is read by 
 the prison authorities, and in many cases copies 
 of them are taken and supplied to the pro- 
 secution. This was done in my case, and it 
 appeared to me to be a glaringly unfair pro- 
 ceeding, because the police were thereby made 
 acquainted with every step I was taking in my 
 defence, and the not over-scrupulous detectives 
 were able, in two cases at least, to influence 
 people whom I had asked to give evidence in my 
 behalf to give evidence against me. A prisoner 
 is not allowed to write any letter upon any 
 other paper than that bearing the usual official 
 heading. 
 
 Prisoners at Brixton may be visited any 
 afternoon except Saturday and Sunday, the 
 interviews taking place in compartments divided 
 in the centre by a strong wire netting through
 
 92 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 which it is impossible to pass any article, how- 
 ever small. For interviews with solicitors there 
 are special rooms where prisoner and solicitor 
 can discuss their business seated opposite one 
 another at a table. Even here they are over- 
 looked by a warder, for the upper parts of these 
 interview-rooms are of glass ; but he cannot 
 hear the conversation. A solicitor succeeded in 
 getting an interview with me in one of these 
 rooms for the purpose of dunning me for an' 
 account owing to a client of his, which goes to 
 show that the authorities are not so careful as 
 might be expected. 
 
 In the older part of Brixton prison the cells 
 and the cell furniture are exactly the same as in 
 an ordinary prison ; but in the new part the cell 
 windows are larger and are not placed too high 
 up for one to stand at and look out ; indeed, on 
 one side of the top floor of this new block a 
 prisoner can stand at the window and see what 
 is going on in the streets beyond the walls. It is 
 in this part of the prison that the majority of the 
 " private cells " are situated, for the use of which 
 prisoners pay half a crown a week. The differ- 
 ence only consists in the cell being furnished 
 with a chair, a table, a strip of matting, and a 
 washstand ; but the occupant of a private cell
 
 REMAND DIET 93 
 
 does not have to do his own cleaning, which is 
 done for him by one of the other prisoners. All 
 the cells in the new block have spring mattresses 
 which fold up against the wall in the day-time, 
 while in the old block the bed is the ordinary 
 prison plank and coir-fibre mattress. The cells 
 in the new part are altogether more desirable 
 and comfortable than the old ones, and prisoners 
 consider themselves favoured if they are posted 
 to them. I had to thank Dr. Scott for getting 
 there myself The principal w^arder had put me 
 in one of the least desirable cells on the ground 
 floor of the old block, where Dr. Scott found me 
 next morning when he looked me up to ask me 
 how I was, and promptly ordered my removal to 
 the new block. 
 
 I have given these minute particulars about 
 life in Brixton because I do not think they have 
 ever appeared in print before, and are of con- 
 siderable public interest. 
 
 During my stay at Brixton I formed the opinion 
 that remanded prisoners are treated with quite an 
 unnecessary amount of severity. The discipline 
 is so strict as to amount to a considerable punish- 
 ment — as a matter of fact, I felt more uncomfort- 
 able while I was in the prison proper at Brixton 
 than I did at any time when I was serving my
 
 94 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 sentence — and it appears to me that there is no 
 justification for punishing men who are innocent 
 in the eyes of the law. Further — and this is an 
 even more serious matter — the restrictions con- 
 siderably hamper a prisoner in the preparation 
 of his defence and add enormously to the unfair 
 advantages possessed and taken by the public 
 prosecutor.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 EN ROUTE FOR THE OLD BAILEY 
 
 THERE was an air of satisfaction, almost 
 of gaiety even, about almost every one 
 of the eighty or ninety prisoners who were 
 assembled in one of the corridors of the prison 
 at Brixton on the Monday morning fixed for the 
 opening of the Old Bailey Sessions at which I 
 was tried. Everybody seemed to be glad that 
 the long period of suspense was approaching its 
 end and that in a few more hours the process 
 of expiation would commence. One m.an in the 
 crowd, in default of something like a miracle 
 being worked in his favour, had only a matter of 
 three weeks to live, and was aware of it; yet 
 this murderer, whose guilt was patent and whose 
 condemnation was certain, had a smile on his 
 face as he furtively chatted with the man stand- 
 ing next to him, and to look at him one would 
 imagine that he had nothing on his mind more 
 serious than the little worries that fall to the lot 
 of the luckiest of us. 
 
 95
 
 96 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 He was not the only murderer there. There 
 was another one, a miserable undersized man, 
 who had murdered his own two little boys for 
 no better reason than that he was out of work. 
 This murderer was light-hearted even to hilarity, 
 and was several times checked by the warder 
 for laughing loudly. The jury in his case 
 found that he was of unsound mind, and in all 
 likelihood this was a right and proper verdict; 
 for it is difficult to believe that a sane man would 
 kill his own little children of whom he was very 
 fond. He was, however, arguing very sanely 
 about money matters with the warder who had 
 charge of this department on the last occasion 
 of my seeing him. 
 
 Standing next to me was a solicitor who had 
 sold some houses belonging to a widow woman 
 without her authority, and stuck to the proceeds. 
 I asked him how he expected to come out of the 
 affair, and he answered laconically : " Five years." 
 I thought he deserved all that, but I was not 
 rude enough to tell him so. " I might have got 
 off with three," he said, "but my case is in the 
 judge's list, and the judge is Phillimore, who is 
 certain to give me every day I am entitled to." 
 
 " How much do you think I'll get?" I asked. 
 " You've read my case, haven't you ? "
 
 EN ROUTE FOR THE OLD BAILEY 97 
 
 " They don't seem to have much of a case 
 against you as far as I can see," he rejoined, 
 "and I should say that you've got a good chance 
 of getting off." 
 
 "What about me?" asked a smart-looking 
 sailor-like man, who was standing on my other 
 hand. " I'm in for that railway robbery, you 
 know." 
 
 "Twenty years will be your dose for a cert," 
 said the solicitor. 
 
 "That's what I'm expecting," said the sailor 
 simpl3^ " It'll be about the softest twenty years 
 that has ever been earned," he continued after a 
 pause. " I'd no more idea of robbing anybody 
 when I got into that train than I had of cutting 
 my throat, and I'm not one of the sort to cut 
 my throat either. But I was broke to the world, 
 and I couldn't stand the sight of that ship's cable 
 watchchain of his. If he'd have let me have the 
 chain he wouldn't have been hurt ; but the silly 
 fool put up a fight, and then I bashed him with- 
 out exactly knowing what I was doing." 
 
 "That's the trouble with us all — doing things 
 without thinking," said the solicitor drily. 
 " There's precious few of this lot would be 
 standing here now, waiting for the Black Maria, 
 who would be here if we'd thought about what 
 
 H
 
 98 A HOLIDAY IN GOAL 
 
 we were about to do before we did it. All the 
 gaols are full of people who won't look ahead." 
 
 " I'll bet they learn to look ahead quick 
 enough when they get there," said the sailor. 
 " I know I shall." 
 
 " I've been looking ahead already," remarked 
 the man on the other side of the solicitor, " I've 
 paid back the eleven hundred pounds they say 
 I've no right to, though in taking it I was only 
 doing what people before me did." 
 
 This man was an official of the City of London 
 Corporation, and his off'ence was the obtaining 
 of money from contractors by false represen- 
 tations. 
 
 " I think that I'd have stuck to that money," 
 said the solicitor. " I hope that you won't be 
 sorry for parting with it, but I expect you will 
 be. I don't suppose that you'd have got more 
 than six months in the second division if you'd 
 have stuck to the lot, and you'll hardly get less 
 now." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said the official 
 confidently ; " a detective-sergeant came up here 
 to me the other day and told me that I'd be let 
 down very easy indeed if the money was paid 
 back, though he owned that he wasn't authorised 
 to tell me so."
 
 EN ROUTE FOR THE OLD BAILEY 99 
 
 " You'll know better presently than to believe 
 what a detective tells you in circumstances like 
 that," said the solicitor grimly. " I expect that 
 you'll be handicapping that detective to give 
 Ananias a stone before the week's out." 
 
 I didn't hear any more of the conversation, as 
 a warder came up and told me to join a group 
 standing some distance away. This lot stood 
 still while the other prisoners were strung 
 together in batches, by very bright chains pass- 
 ing through handcuffs, and stowed away in 
 covered wagonettes. There was no necessity 
 to handcuff and chain my batch as we had been 
 selected to go down in the two Black Marias. 
 
 Standing by the steps of the prison-van 
 to see us safely inside was the comfortable- 
 looking chief warder, who literally beamed on 
 us after the manner of the landlord of an 
 hotel when seeing off some particularly dis- 
 tinguished and satisfactory customer. 
 
 As I stepped past him I carried the hotel 
 parallel a bit further by thanking him, as 
 gracefully as I knew how, for his kindness and 
 courtesy to me whilst I had been under his 
 charge, and he acknowledged my thanks by a 
 bow and a smile that suggested that he con- 
 sidered my remarks a condescension on my part
 
 100 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 and was grateful. He was a most courtier-like 
 and urbane gentleman^was that chief warder, and 
 I could fancy him, in his previous position at 
 Newgate, metaphorically strewing the pathway 
 to the scaffold with roses. 
 
 I only once asked him a favour, and then 1 
 got a refusal, but the refusal was so charmingly 
 conveyed that I left his office with the distinct 
 feeling that I was under a great obligation to him. 
 It was only a small favour that 1 was asking 
 of him, and it was hard to believe that it was 
 a case of couldn't and not wouldn't ; but when 
 he told me that he couldn't grant it I implicitly 
 believed him, and felt sorry for him on account 
 of his so much wanting to grant the favour and 
 not being able to do it. He was acting-governor 
 at Brixton when the time approached for my 
 trial at the Central Criminal Court, and as my 
 boots had not been cleaned for six weeks, I 
 made an official application to him to either 
 allow me to have a set of boot-brushes sent in 
 or to have a set lent me from the prison stores 
 so that I could put a shine on my boots for my 
 trial. 
 
 " What on earth do you want clean boots at 
 your trial for?" he asked in a surprised tone. 
 "Nobody will be able to see your feet as you
 
 EN ROUTE FOR THE OLD BAILEY loi 
 
 stand in the dock— it's not a railed dock at the 
 Old Bailey." 
 
 I explained that it made no difference that 
 my feet could not be seen : it was not for the 
 look that I wanted clean boots but for the feel. 
 Any man can feel, I told him, that he has got 
 dirty boots on, even if he cannot see them at all, 
 and that sort of feeling is utterly destructive of 
 all self-confidence, as it carries conviction to the 
 mind of the feeler that he is only a poor sort 
 of creature. How did he expect, I asked, that I 
 could conduct my defence properly if he sent 
 me to court with dirty boots. 
 
 I don't suppose that he had ever known what 
 it was to wear a pair of dirty boots, and so he 
 can hardly have understood my feelings ; but he 
 was very sympathetic for all that and expressed 
 his regret that I had not thought to raise the 
 question a month previously when I might have 
 petitioned the Home Secretary to allow me to 
 have my boots blacked. Unfortunately the 
 regulations did not say anything about boot- 
 brushes, and so he was powerless to help me, 
 much as he would like to do so. Did I think 
 that dubbing would serve my purpose ? 
 
 I shook my head dejectedly, and he dismissed 
 me with a sigh of sympathy.
 
 102 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The chief warder would probably consider 
 this boot-brush episode somewhat overdrawn, 
 and very likely it is so, if the incident be looked 
 at from the chief warder's point of view ; but 
 from my point of view it is absolutely true to 
 actual fact. I did appear at the Central Criminal 
 Court in boots that had not been cleaned for 
 something like seven weeks, and I ascribe my 
 hang-dog appearance in the dock to this cause 
 and not to the workings of a guilty conscience. 
 But let me get on with the main story.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE OLD BAILEY CELLS 
 
 WHEN the vans had driven into the court- 
 yard of the Old Bailey— I was tried at 
 the old building — and the gates were securely 
 fastened behind them, we were let out and 
 shepherded into a number of boxes in the base- 
 ment. These waiting-cells were apparently 
 designed for the accommodation of one person 
 only, but two or three prisoners were put into 
 each. The cells were so extremely dirty and the 
 dust lay so thickly all over them that I formed 
 the opinion that they could not have been cleaned 
 for many months at least. 
 
 I had two companions in my cell, both of them 
 burglars and in for the same job. Anybody 
 more unlike the "cracksman" as he is pictured 
 in the public mind it would be impossible to 
 imagine. 
 
 If there is anything in the theories put 
 forward by criminologists of the Lombroso type 
 they ought to have looked forbidding at least ; 
 
 103
 
 104 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 but they were quite nice and innocent-looking 
 persons, whose faces would have added to the 
 respectable appearance of any assemblage of the 
 minor clergy. And they had both of them had 
 plenty of experience that ought to have left the 
 stamp of crime upon their features, if there be 
 any such stamp in real life, for both of them had 
 previously served terms of penal servitude for 
 the same class of oifence, and frankly admitted 
 that they had been thieves of sorts from their 
 earliest boyhood. 
 
 The elder of them — he could hardly been more 
 than thirty, I thought — had a pair of velvety 
 brown eyes, in the depths of which I could read 
 nothing but truth, honesty, and good-fellowship 
 as they looked straight and unashamed into 
 mine. I asked myself whether a man like this 
 could possibly be a thief by nature, and I quickly 
 came to the conclusion that it was not innate 
 depravity but his education and his surroundings 
 that had made him what he was. 
 
 "You don't look at all like my idea of a 
 burglar," I remarked. 
 
 " Don't I ?" he said, showing a perfect set of 
 white teeth in a genial grin. " What should you 
 take me for then : a parson out of uniform or a 
 bank manager?"
 
 THE OLD BAILEY CELLS 105 
 
 " You certainly wouldn't make a bad-looking 
 clergyman if you dressed the part," said I ; "but 
 tell me, how did you come to drift into this sort 
 of game?" 
 
 " Didn't drift into it at all, I was brought up 
 to it. My old man was in the line and he learned 
 me the trade. My mate here 'drifted' into it 
 the same wzy." 
 
 " It doesn't seem to be much of a trade," I 
 retorted, "if nobody does any better at it than 
 you two seem to have done." 
 
 " It's a dead cert that it ain't what it useter 
 be, mister," he replied. 
 
 " Police smarter than they used to be, eh ?" 
 " Oh, it ain't the police, bless ye! They ain't 
 learnt much since the days of Jonathan Wild 
 in the way of interferin' with screwsmen when 
 they're actually at work. What beats the game 
 now is the perishin' hardship of gettin' rid of the 
 stuff after you've bagged it. I've never been 
 copped on the job yet, and ain't much afraid as I 
 ever shall be. Every time as I've been pinched 
 I've been rounded on by somebody over the 
 making away with the loot. There ain't no real 
 dependable fences nowadays like there used 
 to be, and them as arc open don't want to 
 touch anythin' but 'sparks' (precious stones) and
 
 io6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 meltin' pot stuff. In my old man's time it was 
 easy enough to find a market for a most anythin' 
 as you could pick up, but you can hardly place 
 anythin' now if it can be swore to." 
 
 This interesting conversation was put an 
 end to by a warder banging open the door and 
 inviting me to come outside with the remark 
 that I would be learning enough to get me a 
 lagging at some future time if I stayed there 
 much longer. 
 
 " All right, stand there with your face to the 
 wall," he said, as I was following him on the 
 supposition that he was going to place me in 
 another cell. 
 
 I stood with my toes close to the wall and 
 my nose almost touching the grimy whitewash 
 while he crept from door to door and listened to 
 the conversation going on inside the cells. 
 Whether he was doing this out of mere curiosity 
 or on the hunt for evidence, I don't know ; but 
 it presently appeared that the talk in my cell 
 was not the reason for my being fetched out, as 
 another warder came along and took me to a 
 room where I found the detective sergeant in 
 charge of my case.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHARGE 
 
 " TT ERE is a statement of additional evidence 
 XX we are going to call," said the sergeant 
 cheerfully, as he handed me a sheet of blue fools- 
 cap. " I wish you well, as you know, and if 
 you will let me give you a tip that will do you 
 some good you will plead " Guilty." I'll say 
 what I can for you, and I reckon that you won't 
 get half the dose that'll be served out to you if 
 you are found " Guilty " by the jury. 
 
 " But I don't think that I shall be found 
 ' Guilty,'" I retorted. 
 
 "Well, I hope you won't ; but I'm sure you 
 will," he rejoined coolly. " We've got a second 
 string in the shape of charges under the Bank- 
 ruptcy Act in respect of Grey and Green's debts, 
 if you should happen to wriggle out of the charge 
 you were arrested on." 
 
 This was the first I had heard of any charge 
 other than that on which I had been arrested and 
 formally committed for trial, and for the moment 
 
 107
 
 io8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I could hardly believe that he was speaking the 
 truth. It seemed to me to be an utterly impos- 
 sible thing that English justice could permit of a 
 man being brought to face a charge of which he 
 had been given no intimation until the very 
 moment he was called upon to plead to it. 
 How in the name of common fairness could I 
 hope to rebut such a charge? It must seem 
 incredible to all fair-minded men who are not 
 lawyers that the public prosecutor would take 
 such an unfair advantage of a prisoner as to 
 indict him, without his knowledge, for a crime 
 that was not specifically brought against him 
 during the police court investigation. And the 
 judge assured me that it is perfectly legal to 
 do this, and, on learning that my bankruptcy had 
 been proved at the police court, overruled my 
 objection to the charges. The appearance of in- 
 justice was further heightened by the fact that 
 neither of the nominal prosecutors in these 
 cases preferred any complaint against me, and 
 their evidence at the police court was distinctly 
 favourable to me. The public prosecutor, 
 however, subpoena'd them to attend the Old 
 Baiie}'^, where they again stated that they did not 
 wish to bring any charge against me, though 
 they admitted, in reply to the prosecuting
 
 AN UNEXPECTED CHARGE 109 
 
 counsel, that I had not specifically informed 
 them that I was an undischarged bankrupt 
 before obtaining credit from them. In cross- 
 examination by me they expressed the opinion 
 that I would have paid them if I had been let 
 alone, and that they still thought that I would 
 pay them at some future time. I was proceeding 
 with the cross-examination on these lines when 
 the judge interrupted me to say that it would not 
 be any answer to the charge if I could prove 
 that I had already paid them : once the offence 
 was committed it remained an offence, whether 
 the debt was liquidated or not. 
 
 It was on these two charges that I was 
 eventually convicted, the charge on which I was 
 originally arrested failing utterly. Yes, I served 
 eighteen months' imprisonment for wTongs done 
 to two men who didn't think that I had wronged 
 them at all until my assets were destroyed by 
 the prosecution and I was thus prevented from 
 paying them the money due to them. It is very 
 probable that had I been given notice of the 
 charge I might have brought evidence which 
 would have prevented the jury convicting me 
 at all. 
 
 Had I been financially strong enough to have 
 obtained the assistance of solicitor and counsel,
 
 no A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 it is possible that a copy of tiie indictment would 
 have been furnished to them before the day ol 
 trial — indeed, there may be some way in which a 
 prisoner can get a copy himself if he knows the 
 ropes ; but I was compelled to defend myself 
 because the police had taken possession of all my 
 assets, and I knew nothing of the procedure of 
 the courts. Surely, in common fairness, every 
 prisoner should be supplied with a copy of the 
 indictment so that he may know, some days 
 in advance of his trial, what are the charges he 
 has to meet. 
 
 Let me say, right here, that I am not whin- 
 ing about my sentence, though I have doubts as 
 to the even-handedness of the justice that metes 
 out to a man in my position, convicted for the 
 first time of the most venial of misdemeanours, 
 the same punishment as is commonly awarded 
 on a second conviction for burglary. I must 
 admit that when all has been said in my favour 
 that can be said, even by myself, the fact remains 
 that I was certainly guilty of criminal carelessness 
 in dealing with other people's money, as well as 
 with my own, and that I cannot truthfully say that 
 I did not morally merit all the punishment that 
 came my way — even if the punishment had been 
 real and not farcical.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 MY PREDECESSORS 
 
 I HAVE anticipated somewhat by discussing 
 my trial and sentence before being called 
 upon to plead, but the remarks fit in better after 
 the interview with the detective than they would 
 if put in their natural order. 
 
 When I got back to the cells after my inter- 
 view with the detective, I found all the prisoners 
 standing in line and being told off into batches 
 according to the courts in which they were to be 
 tried. 
 
 After this sorting out had been completed, we 
 were taken upstairs to other cells large enough 
 to contain a dozen or more prisoners each. These 
 cells had chalked on the doors the name of the 
 court in which the inmates were to be tried, thus : 
 "New Court ""Old Court" "Third Court" and 
 
 " Fourth Court." 
 
 I found myself in the cell marked "Third 
 Court," in company with thirteen others. I had 
 not spoken to anyone of the thirteen previously, 
 
 III
 
 112 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 nor noticed any of them at Brixton, but in five 
 minutes after being locked up together we were 
 all chatting away as if we were old acquaintances. 
 The first question that one prisoner asks another 
 at Brixton, or anywhere else where they may 
 chance to meet before trial, is: "What are you 
 in for?" After sentence, this question comes 
 second, if asked at all, giving place to : " What 
 are you doing?" When these questions are 
 answered, friendly relations are at once estab- 
 lished and confidences are exchanged that the 
 police would sometimes be very glad to hear. It 
 may be that the police take full advantage of this 
 want of reticence among the criminal classes by 
 judiciously planting a disguised detective among 
 prisoners here and there ; but if they do, I am sure 
 that they do not get credit from the criminal 
 classes for doing it. Criminals of all kinds with 
 whom I was brought into association appeared 
 to have a very poor opinion of the police, and 
 ascribed all their successes in the detection of 
 crime to " information received " ; but there was 
 one man among my thirteen companions who 
 certainly could not accuse the detectives of want 
 of sharpness. He was described as a doctor of 
 medicine and was certainly a very well-educated 
 man, but, according to the police, he had for some
 
 MY PREDECESSORS 113 
 
 years devoted himself to the practice of scientific 
 forgery. He was now charged with the forgery 
 of a cheque for six hundred pounds, the cash for 
 which he had obtained and made away with, and 
 he was suspected, but not charged, owing to want 
 of proof, of a long string of successful operations 
 of the same nature. How the police came to get 
 on to his track at last did not transpire ; but it 
 was evident that the information in their hands 
 was not sufficient to warrant his arrest, for 
 when they did arrest him so that they might 
 search him and his abode for the evidence they 
 were in need of, it was on a minor charge which, 
 he insisted, was deliberately got up by the police. 
 Like most clever criminals he wasn't quite so 
 careful in small things as he ought to have been 
 for his own safety, and when he was searched at 
 the police station on being taken in on the minor 
 charge, there was found upon him sufficient 
 evidence to warrant his detention for the far 
 graver offence for which he was now to stand his 
 trial. Next morning at the police court the 
 minor charge, which the police admitted could 
 not be substantiated, was withdrawn, and he was 
 charged with forgery, being remanded without 
 any evidence being given. At the next hearing, 
 the police having in the meanwhile found his 
 I
 
 114 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 lodgings and searched them, there was plenty of 
 evidence, and here he was at the Old Bailey with 
 such a strong case against him that he looked 
 upon his conviction as a certainty. He was very 
 bitter against the police on account of what he 
 called their " unsportsmanlike " proceedings, and 
 I do not think that there can be any doubt that 
 in his case they did commit a premeditated 
 wrong on him in order that the ends of justice 
 might be served. How far the police are justified 
 in themselves breaking the law in order that law- 
 breakers may be brought to reckoning I do not 
 pretend to be able to say ; but that they fre- 
 quently do break the law and violate tiie liberty of 
 the subject when they have reason to believe that 
 by doing so they can obtain evidence against a 
 suspect I do not entertain any doubt whatever — 
 I have heard too much about police methods 
 from all kinds of prisoners to leave any room for 
 doubt on this particular point. 
 
 This doctor — he probably wasn't entitled to 
 the designation — got seven years, I think, and as 
 he was supposed to have netted many thousands 
 of pounds, he got off very lightly indeed in 
 comparison with two other forgers who were 
 also in my batch. One of these got five years 
 for forging a cheque for six pounds, and the
 
 MY PREDECESSORS 115 
 
 other was sentenced to three years for forging 
 an order for the delivery of goods valued at 
 sixteen shillings. Both these men pleaded 
 " guilty " and correctly forecasted their sentences, 
 a thing that professional criminals often succeed 
 in doing. 
 
 "Why are you going to plead 'guilty'?" 
 I asked the man who got five years. " Surely 
 there is some chance of your getting off." 
 
 "That's just it," he replied. "I'm going to 
 plead 'guilty' because I want to make sure of 
 not getting off." 
 
 "What!" I ejaculated in amazement. "Do 
 you seriously mean to tell me that you want to 
 go to penal servitude ? " 
 
 "Yes I do," he replied calmly, "and so would 
 you if you was in my place. I've got an 
 incurable disease that kept me in hospital pretty 
 near all of my last lagging, and it's worse now. 
 I shall likely enough be in hospital all the time 
 I'm doing my six months' 'separates,' and if I'm 
 alive after they're over I shall be sent to Park- 
 hurst in the Isle of Wight. You don't know, of 
 course, but you can take it from me that I shall 
 be more comfortable and better off in every way 
 at Parkhurst than I should be in any workhouse 
 infirmary, and I'm so situated that it must be
 
 ii6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 one or the other. No, I haven't many years to 
 live, and I'm going to die as a convict if I can 
 manage it." 
 
 It struck me with horror to hear this man 
 calmly telling me that he hoped to lie in a 
 convict's grave, and I shuddered as I realized 
 the significance of his words. What a horrible 
 commentary on the time-honoured saying that 
 honesty is the best policy! He was not by any 
 means the only man I heard talk in the same 
 strain during my prison life.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 FURTHER POSTPONEMENT 
 
 IN the afternoon, after a dinner consisting of 
 an eight-ounce brown loaf and five ounces 
 of preserved meat, we were all taken up a 
 passage and formed up in a row at the foot of a 
 flight of stairs. After a wait of about an hour, 
 we were called up this flight of steps one by 
 one by a warder stationed at the top. When I 
 was called up in my turn, I found myself in the 
 dock and facing the judge, who, in black gown 
 and barrister's wig, sat perched with bent back 
 at a desk below and to the right of the dais, 
 which is, I believe, the seat of the Lord Mayor, 
 who is the nominal president of the Central 
 Criminal Court. 
 
 Notwithstanding the gravity of my situation, 
 I could not help thinking that the learned judge 
 looked very much like a grey-headed crow as he 
 sat there quite still and without speaking a word 
 during the whole of the proceedings. I found 
 
 117
 
 ii8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 out afterwards that he could use his tongue 
 more than a bit when it suited him. 
 
 As I advanced to the front of the dock, I saw 
 below me a crowd of barristers with every one 
 of their faces turned my way and, I thought, 
 looking at me expectantly. Again, in the midst 
 of the serious proceedings, I was powerless to 
 prevent my thoughts straying, and this time the 
 subject of them was the problem as to how it 
 could have come about that the bar took rank as 
 a profession suitable for gentlemen. According 
 to my ideas a man who can be hired to destroy 
 another man's reputation is very much like a 
 modern survival of the bravo of the middle ages, 
 and a gentleman must often find his feelings at 
 variance with the performance of the work he 
 is paid to do. What a pitiful story that is 
 of the barrister who, when charged with pro- 
 fessional misconduct in taking less than the 
 regulated fee, excused himself by saying that he 
 had taken all that the man had, which could 
 hardly be called unprofessional conduct. How 
 that story has been laughed over, and what a 
 thing it is to laugh about ; a man gives up all he 
 has to a " gentleman " as payment for per- 
 suading a jury to acquit him of a crime — the said 
 "gentleman" being just as ready, before being
 
 FURTHER POSTPONEMENT 119 
 
 engaged, to take payment for persuading the 
 jury that the said man committed the crime. 
 What work for a gentleman ! 
 
 A gentleman in ordinary attire, who sat at a 
 desk under that occupied by the judge, now 
 read out the indictment, which occupied many 
 large sheets of paper and a great deal of which 
 I didn't understand at all. 
 
 Having finished he said: "Are you 'guilty' 
 or 'not guilty'?" 
 
 " Not guilty " I replied. 
 
 Then the warder led me to a bench at the back 
 of the dock where those who had already pleaded 
 were sitting, and the next unfortunate was called 
 up. So it went on until all had pleaded, when 
 we were taken downstairs again and the 
 proceedings ended for that day. 
 
 At about five o'clock we were given an eight- 
 ounce loaf and about two ounces of cheese, and 
 at about eight the prison-van arrived and took 
 us back to Brixton. 
 
 On this occasion there was none of the 
 formality usual on re-entering the prison after 
 being remanded from a police court. We were 
 simply searched in a perfunctory fashion behind 
 screens, and then, after being given a pint of cocoa 
 and a loaf of bread, were locked up in our cells.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 SENTENCED 
 
 THE next morning, as soon as we arrived at 
 the court, we were taken direct to the foot 
 of the stairs at the back of the dock. When the 
 court opened, those who had pleaded "guilty" 
 the previous day were called up one by one to 
 receive sentence, and very severe the sentences 
 were. 
 
 " The judge ain't on very good terms with his 
 missus, this morning," said the man standing 
 next to me on my right. " It's all a bit of luck is 
 this ' weighing-off ' business. If that judge 'ad 'a 
 'appened ter've been married yesterday instead 
 of fallin' out wi' his Old Dutch this mornin', that 
 chap as 'as just come down would 'a oney got six 
 months instead o' three year." 
 
 The prisoner standing next to me on my left 
 was a retired major of the army who was accused 
 of stealing a diamond ring from a jeweller's shop. 
 He, like myself, had had a second charge under 
 the Bankruptcy Act put against him, and, also like 
 
 1 20
 
 SENTENCED 121 
 
 me, was convicted on this charge when the 
 graver one broke down. He has since been 
 convicted a second time — which is ever so much 
 easier than being convicted the first time — and at 
 the time of writing is serving a sentence of 
 eighteen months. 
 
 As the sentenced men came down the steps, 
 some crying and some quite unconcerned, and 
 communicated their sentences to us, the major 
 whispered to me — 
 
 "If people who plead 'guilty' are given 
 sentences like these, what are we to expect if we 
 are found ' guilty ' after making a fight for it ?" 
 
 Well, we didn't get off easily. The maximum 
 sentence for the offence of which I was con- 
 victed is twelve months, and the judge had to 
 give me separate and consecutive sentences on 
 each of the charges to make up the time he 
 thought I deserved. 
 
 At last the time came when I stood facing the 
 judge, with the jury in its box on my left front. 
 I was then infected with the common belief that 
 trial by jury is the greatest safeguard of an 
 accused man ; but my heart sank as I scanned 
 the faces of the twelve men who were to decide 
 my fate. 
 
 There was one whose bloodshot eyes were
 
 122 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 bulging out of his head as if he had not only had 
 one wet night but a series of them. I thought as 
 I looked at him that his head must ache far too 
 much for him to give that close attention to my 
 case that it must have if my side of it was to be 
 appreciated. And there was another one with 
 the facial angle of an anthropoid ape. There was 
 hardly an intelligent face in the whole jury, and 
 it did not need a phrenologist to predict that the 
 jury as a whole would take its view of the case 
 from the cleverest advocate. Alas ! I was com- 
 pelled to be my own advocate, in the very 
 circumstances where a man who is his own 
 lawyer has a fool for a client, while on the side 
 of the prosecution were three of the ablest 
 lawyers at the criminal bar. 
 
 What fairness can there be in a fight of this 
 sort ? Just about as much fair play as there 
 would be if a man armed only with his bare fists 
 tried to fight a fully equipped cavalryman on 
 horseback. 
 
 Why should it not be the duty of the police 
 and the public prosecutor to search for the truth 
 instead of merely striving for convictions in a 
 partisan spirit. Why, as is unfortunately the 
 case, should they produce all facts that tell 
 against a prisoner and say nothing about facts
 
 SENTENCED 123 
 
 within tlieir knowledge that tell in his favour? 
 The police and the public prosecutor are not 
 paid by the public in order that innocent men 
 may be sent to prison, or that guilty ones should 
 be punished more severely than they deserve ; 
 but that, I am afraid, is what happens in very 
 many cases, owing to the manner in which 
 Treasury prosecutions are conducted. 
 
 A great surprise was in store for me. The 
 leading counsel for the prosecution got up and 
 announced that it had been decided not to 
 proceed with the charge on which I had been 
 arrested and specifically committed for trial, and 
 that he would rely on the charges under the 
 Bankruptcy Act. If this meant anything, the 
 only meaning that could be put upon it was that 
 it was an admission that my arrest and the taking 
 up of the prosecution by the Treasury was 
 recognized to have been a mistake. It would 
 never do to admit that in so many words, though, 
 and so some way had to be found to save the 
 face of the public prosecutor. This way was 
 found, and I was charged and convicted of an 
 offence that the police would never have heard 
 of if I had not been arrested on the other charge. 
 
 A man who has to conduct his own defence is 
 placed in a very awkward position. If he is keen,
 
 124 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 he is in great danger of being regarded as an 
 impenitent thief, and if he isn't keen, it isn't much 
 use his defending himself at all. A prisoner in 
 such a position has to cover himself with humility 
 as with a garment ; he must not let any feelings 
 of indignation show in his manner or his speech, 
 nor must he, above all things, make sarcastic 
 remarks to witnesses. English justice gives 
 nothing to the man who stands up and proudly 
 demands justice as his birthright ; the man who 
 wants justice must ask for it meekly and humbly, 
 as if he is craving a boon instead of demanding 
 
 a right. 
 
 In the course of my cross-examination of the 
 witnesses I was several times testily interrupted 
 by the judge, who no doubt thought that I was 
 wasting time, as was probably the case. At last 
 I said to him just as testily — 
 
 " I must be allowed to get at my points in my 
 own way, my lord, or it is of no use my going 
 
 on." 
 
 He didn't interrupt any more, but I rather 
 think that I did an extra month or two for that 
 remark. 
 
 After I had been found "guilty," the detective 
 who had arrested me and had been in charge of 
 the case all through got into the witness-box
 
 SENTENCED 125 
 
 to give me the usual " character," and he painted 
 me as being a very black sheep indeed. In 
 speaking of the business I carried on, he 
 remarked that I " foisted " certain articles on 
 the public. 
 
 "What do you mean by that?" I asked him. 
 " Were the goods not worth the money asked 
 for them?" 
 
 " I don't say that they weren't ; I know nothing 
 about them," was his reply. 
 
 " Then why do you use the word 'foisted'? 
 Do you know the meaning of it ? " 
 
 I got no answer to that question. Another 
 item of his evidence was to the effect that I owed 
 a certain man seventy odd pounds, the truth in 
 this case being that I had an unsatisfied judg- 
 ment against that man for twelve pounds. If 
 one-half of what that detective said about me 
 were true, I should have deserved a great deal 
 more than I got ; but, speaking with the fullest 
 sense of the responsibility attached to making a 
 serious charge against the police, I say emphatically 
 that he didn't make a single statement about me 
 that would have borne sifting. How much my 
 neglect to tip him when I was arrested had to 
 do with this " character " I will not pretend to 
 say— perhaps he believed all he was told by
 
 126 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 persons with whom I had had business dis- 
 putes ; he never took the trouble to make 
 inquiries about me from a single person with 
 whom I was on friendly terms. 
 
 After I had been sentenced, the judge made 
 an order for the money that had been taken from 
 me to be given up to me. Nothing was said 
 then about the other property of mine that the 
 police had seized ; but a few days after I got to 
 prison I was told that the police would hand it 
 over to any one whom I would authorize to 
 receive it.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 FELLOW PHILOSOPHER 
 
 I KNEW the worst now, and very crushing 
 it was ; but my fit of depression did not last 
 long, and I was'ingood spirits again and looking 
 hopefully to the future before I stepped into the 
 prison-van that evening. 
 
 Down in the cells I found some of the men who 
 had that day been sentenced in the other courts. 
 There was the corporation official, who was con- 
 siderably more astonished at his "dose" then I 
 was at mine, for he had got three years' penal 
 servitude instead of six months' second division 
 predicted for him by the defaulting solicitor. 
 There also was the brown-eyed lovable burglar 
 with ten years plus the unexpired portion of his 
 ticket-of-leave to do. He was in very high 
 spirits, and did his level best to cheer up those 
 who were down in the dumps by recommending 
 them to " Cheer up, matey ; it ain't 'arf as bad as 
 you think it is. You'll be as 'appy as a bug in a 
 rug before two months is out." 
 
 127
 
 128 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 " You've got a pretty severe dose," said I to 
 him. 
 
 " Yes," said he laughing. " The old josser said 
 as it was no good givin' me short sentences. 
 Seein' as my last lot was seven years and the 
 lagging afore that was five, I don't think as he's 
 got much to grumble about. If he's satisfied, I 
 am ; I shan't have to worry about my ' kip ' 
 money for a good many 3'ears, an' if I won't get 
 bloaters or 'addicks fer tea I can do without 'em. 
 I don't alius have 'em when I'm out either." 
 
 Another of the party had got three years for 
 receiving some sacks of potatoes, knowing them 
 to have been stolen. This man had passed five 
 years in an industrial school and could not read 
 nor write He was very much upset, but not on 
 his own account : he was troubled about how 
 his " missus " was going to get along. 
 
 " There's a chap as was sweet on 'er afore she 
 married me," he said, "an' I'm sure as he'd be 
 good to her if she'd go an' live with him while 
 I'm in ; but I can 'ardly tell her to go an' live 
 with him, can I ? " 
 
 " Do you mean to say that you would be 
 willing for your wife to go and live with another 
 man whilst you are in prison?" I asked. 
 
 " Yus— why not?" he replied. "It 'ud be
 
 FELLOW PHILOSOPHER 129 
 
 better for her to do that than fer 'er an' the two 
 kids to star^^e, wouldn't it? Mind yer, I know 
 as she'd come back ter me like a shot when I 
 come out, so my mind's easy enough." 
 
 Supposing, reader, that you had seen that 
 paragraph in a novel. Wouldn't you have said 
 that it was an impossible thing? Well, it is not 
 fiction at all, for that paragraph was burnt on my 
 memory when I heard it, and I believe it is here 
 reproduced word for word as the man uttered it. 
 
 The remaining occupant of our cell was an 
 elderly man who was in a deplorable state of dis- 
 tress. He wept like an hysterical woman all the 
 time and utterly refused to be comforted. 
 
 " Poor chap ! " said I to the brown-eyed 
 burglar, " I suppose he's got a heavier sentence 
 than yours." 
 
 " Not him," replied the burglar contempt- 
 uously ; " he's one of the sort that does bold bad 
 things when they're drunk an' howls like a little 
 kid when they're made ter toe the line. The 
 blighter's got six weeks, that's^ what he's makin' 
 al) this row about. He ought ter have a dose of 
 the cat, that's what he wants." 
 
 " What did he do, then ? " I asked, surprised 
 at the burglar's intolerance. 
 
 " Why, he 'ad a few words with his daughter 
 
 K
 
 130 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 when he was drunk, an' set his own house afire 
 just to make her sorry fer herself if she got out 
 of it alive. Look at 'im ; he seems the right 
 sort to frighten women an' kids, don't he? " 
 
 There was only one more addition to the 
 number in our cell before the arrival of the 
 prison-van. This was a man who had been 
 awarded five years for bigamy. 
 
 " No more wimmen for me !" he said gloomily. 
 " I've done with 'em as long as I live. I hate the 
 sight of a woman now, I do." 
 
 "Cheer up, matey," said the burglar; "you 
 won't be hurt by the sight of one fer three year 
 an' nine months at the least, an' then you'll be 
 glad ter see both them wives o' yours if they 
 'appen to meet you at the gate coming out." 
 
 What a wonderful thing is the elasticity of the 
 human mind! In that prison-van there were 
 two of us who had forfeited decent positions in 
 society which we could never hope to regain, 
 two who were in for a long period of what we 
 then believed to be very severe punishment, two 
 who thought that they were face to face with the 
 worst misfortune that can happen to a man who 
 has been in the habit of sleeping soft and eating 
 daintily. And what were we two doing ? Were 
 we sitting moody and silent, tormented by gloomy
 
 FELLOW PHILOSOPHER 131 
 
 thoughts and sad apprehensions ? Not a bit of it ! 
 We were laughing and chatting more like happy 
 bean-feasters. 
 
 The man who had six weeks and myself 
 were the only two in that van who had 
 not been sentenced to penal servitude, and the 
 man with the fleabite sentence of six weeks 
 was the only one who was crying over spilt 
 milk. 
 
 The liveliest of the lot was the man who 
 had the heaviest sentence — ten years. He was 
 wearing a brand new overcoat — a really good 
 one — which he offered to give to the dejected 
 man with six weeks, who had none at all. 
 
 "Here, stop that howling, mate," he said; 
 " anybody 'ud think as you'd got somethin' to 
 cry about. Here's a coat for you. It's a coat as 
 you'd never be able to get by yourself. I oney 
 got it the week afore I was pinched." 
 
 The mournful man shook his head dole- 
 fully. 
 
 "What! you won't have it?" he cried in 
 astonishment. "They carn't pinch yer fer 
 havin' it — you ain't supposed ter know how I 
 got it." 
 
 "I'd—I'd rather not have it, thank you," 
 stammered the mournful man, shrinking from
 
 132 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 the proffered coat as if contact with it would do 
 him actual bodily harm. 
 
 " Lummy," said his would-be benefactor 
 disgustedly, " I'd rather have my ten stretch 
 than your moon an' a half if I 'ad ter feel as bad 
 about it as you do."
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 A PRISONER IN EARNEST 
 
 WHEN the door of the "van was opened 
 and we were bidden to alight, we found 
 ourselves at the door of the reception-ward of 
 the prison. 
 
 We were ushered into a room where there 
 was a bright fire burning, and told to sit in a row 
 on a form facing a table at which a warder sat 
 with a book in front of him. 
 
 Presently a khaki-clad prisoner in his shirt- 
 sleeves appeared with a large can of oatmeal 
 porridge and some eight-ounce loaves of brown 
 bread. 
 
 "Who sez a late dinner?" he asked in a 
 subdued tone as if he didn't want to disturb the 
 v/arder sitting at the desk. " This is the way 
 we live here, me boys ; ain't you glad as you've 
 come? " 
 
 "Ah!" I said somewhat regretfully. "When 
 1 got up this morning I thought that I had a 
 
 '33
 
 134 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 very good chance of dining at Frascati's to- 
 night." 
 
 " Frascati's ! " said' the khaki-clad man with 
 well-simulated scorn. " They ain't got nothin' 
 like this at Frascati's ! " 
 
 Which was true, anyway. 
 
 There was a general snigger at this, which 
 attracted the official attention of the warder who 
 loudly admonished us to " Shut up." 
 
 "You're not allowed to laugh here, you 
 know," whispered the man with the porridge- 
 can in a pained tone as he went from one 
 to the other. " If you don't feel as mis'rable 
 here as you ought, you've got to pretend you 
 are." 
 
 After we had turned out our pockets, and 
 such of us as had them had divested ourselves 
 of rings and studs, we were ordered to go 
 through into a passage where there was a row of 
 bath cubicles closed by half-doors. Here our 
 prison clothing was handed to us and we were 
 told to strip and bathe. 
 
 As we handed out our own clothing it was 
 bundled up, without any pretence of folding, 
 by two prisoners, one of whom remarked, as I 
 looked shocked at the way they were treating 
 my clothes —
 
 A PRISONER IN EARNEST 13s 
 
 " It's all right, they'll be nicely pressed afore 
 you go out." 
 
 When we were all bathed and clothed in prison 
 dress we were called into the room again one 
 by one to sign the inventories of our clothing 
 and other property. Then, the doctor having 
 now arrived, we were medically examined as to 
 our fitness or otherwise for hard labour. 
 
 I was passed as fit for "industrial labour," 
 which is what happens to the bulk of " hard 
 labour" prisoners, comparatively few being 
 passed as capable of the hardest kind of work. 
 There is very little difference in the treatment 
 of those certified for "hard" and those certified 
 for " industrial " however, except in the first 
 month, when the "hard" man is put to picking 
 oakum and making coal-sacks, work which is 
 never exacted from a man who is only certified 
 as fit for " industrial" labour. 
 
 The medical examination finished, each man 
 was given a pair of coarse sheets, a pillow- 
 case, and a towel, and then a warder, saying 
 " Convicts this way," led off the penal servitude 
 men. 
 
 This left only three of us — the six-weeks' man, 
 an old man convicted of begging at the West 
 London Court, which is the only London police
 
 136 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 court that sends its prisoners to the "Scrubs," 
 and myself. 
 
 Another warder told us to " Lead on," and 
 took us to "A" Hall, which is the westernmost 
 block of the prison. 
 
 It was close on ten o'clock now, and, as the 
 prison bed-time is eight, every one of the 
 prisoners were in bed except the storeman of the 
 hall, who was waiting to give us our combs and 
 brushes, Bibles and prayer-books. 
 
 An elderly warder with a flowing white 
 beard was standing at a desk placed at the foot 
 of one of the iron spiral staircases leading 
 above, and we were brought to a halt in front 
 of him. 
 
 "Give the old gentleman a mattress," said he 
 to the storeman after we had been provided with 
 the combs, etc. He was referring to the old 
 beggar, who was palpably over sixty, and was 
 not therefore subject to the regulation which 
 requires a hard-labour prisoner to sleep on the 
 bare plank for the first fourteen days of his 
 sentence. 
 
 "Come along, my friend," said he, as he 
 beckoned to me, and proceeded to open the door 
 of a cell placed right opposite his desk. 
 
 I went into the cell, but recoiled
 
 A PRISONER IN EARNEST 137 
 
 "Haven't you made a mistake?" said I. 
 "This is a workshop." 
 
 He made a pretence of looking into the cell, 
 and then started back in feigned amazement. 
 
 "God bless my soul, so it is!" said he 
 beaming on me in a fatherly sort of way. " But 
 I think that it's also the boodwoor and the 
 chamber a coocher, as the French say. You'll 
 find a nice soft plank there and everything else 
 as you can possibly want. We alius try to make 
 our lodgers as comfortable as we can ; but if you 
 want an3'thing as you can't see there don't 
 trouble to ask for it." 
 
 Having worked off this bit of facetiousness 
 on me, the warder gave me a gentle shove inside 
 and closed the door on me. 
 
 On looking around me, I found that more than 
 half the space of the cell, which was only of the 
 ordinary size — about twelve feet by seven — was 
 taken up by a loom for making mats, leaving a 
 space of only about seven feet by five for my 
 occupation. 
 
 The bed-board was standing against the wall, 
 and I was putting it into position for my night's 
 repose when my eye caught a bale of coir fibre 
 that was stowed away behind the loom. 
 
 This, when spread out, mitigated the hardness
 
 138 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 of the bed-board pretty considerably, and for 
 the week I occupied that cell, waiting until an 
 ordinary cell should become vacant, I slept much 
 softer than the prison commissioners intended 
 I should. 
 
 The events of the day had excited my brain to 
 such an extent that I could not get to sleep at 
 all, and that night was the longest of all the 
 nights I passed in prison, with the single 
 exception of the night before my release, which 
 was longer still.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE OPTIMIST AND THE 
 BURGLAR 
 
 AT last the intolerable stillness was broken 
 by the welcome clang of the prison-bell, 
 and the warders tramped into the hall a few 
 minutes afterwards to commence the duties of 
 the day. 
 
 It was pitch dark in my cell, and as some 
 considerable time elapsed without my gas being 
 lighted, or any notice at all being taken of my 
 presence, I grew seriously afraid that I had been 
 overlooked; so I pressed the knob that rings a 
 bell and causes an indicator to fall down outside 
 the cell. 
 
 No notice was taken of this, so I rang again, 
 and, after a decent interval, yet again. This 
 brought a warder, who unlocked my cell door 
 and asked angrily. 
 
 " What are you kicking up that row for ? 
 Do you think that this is a bally hotel where 
 you can ring for the waiter when you like? " 
 
 139
 
 140 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I humbly explained that I thought that I 
 had been overlooked, and received in reply a 
 growling admonition to have more patience in 
 future. 
 
 That taught me that a man who rings his 
 bell is not popular in prison, and I never used 
 the bell again as long as I remained there. 
 Warders discourage the ringing of bells by 
 taking no notice of them unless the ring is 
 repeated time after time, and perhaps this is 
 necessary, inasmuch as a newcomer is prone to 
 make a great deal more use of the bell than 
 there is any necessity for. Men who know the 
 ropes and want to get through their time as 
 comfortably as possible never make use of the 
 bell unless they are absolutely obliged to 
 do so. 
 
 After the " cleaners " had collected my slops 
 and my water-can had been replenished, I was 
 left to kill time until breakfast by cleaning up 
 my cell and polishing my tins. After breakfast, 
 and while the other prisoners were at chapel, all 
 the men who had been admitted the previous day 
 were collected from the different " halls" by the 
 reception-warders and taken over to the prison 
 offices. Here we were taken in front of the 
 deputy -governor, who asked us one by one how
 
 THE OPTIMIST AND THE BURGLAR 141 
 
 much money we had brought in, and compared 
 our answers with the entries in the reception- 
 warder's book. 
 
 Mr Jabez Balfour, in his book " My Prison 
 Life," pokes fun at this interview with the 
 deputy-governor, and calls the question as to 
 money ridiculous and superfluous. He says he 
 was asked " if he had any money with him," 
 which was an absurd question to ask a man who 
 had been searched and had had all his belongings 
 taken from him the day before. All I can say is 
 that I did not see anything superfluous, absurd, 
 or ridiculous about it. The question I was asked 
 was, " What money did you bring in with you ? " 
 and its object was obviously to check the entry 
 made to the prisoner's credit by the searching- 
 warder. 
 
 After our interview with the deputy-governor 
 we were ushered in to the assistant chaplain, 
 who asked me firstly whether I acknowledged 
 the justice of my conviction. I replied that I 
 certainly did not. Then he inquired if I could 
 read and write, and I said that I could read 
 fairly well, but was afraid that I was a very in- 
 different writer. The schoolmaster in attend- 
 ance was on the point of handing me an 
 elementary reading-book to test my proficiency.
 
 142 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 when the clergyman suddenly looked at me and 
 asked where I was educated. 
 
 "Ah! I thought it was something like that," 
 he remarked when I had acquainted him with the 
 fact that I was a university man. He was rather 
 icy in his manner and I fancied that he resented 
 my reply to his reading and writing question, 
 thinking that I was trying to take a rise out 
 of him. As a matter of fact, my reply was a bit 
 jocular, as the absurdity of asking prisoners in- 
 discriminately whether they could read or write 
 somewhat tickled me. 
 
 We were now taken back to the reception- 
 ward again, where our bodies were carefully 
 scrutinized for marks, and the men who had been 
 sentenced to penal servitude had as much of 
 their hair taken off their heads and faces as could 
 be got off by scissors. There was not much hair 
 left when the prisoner who acted as barber in the 
 reception-ward had done with them, and I was 
 astonished to see the difference in the men's 
 appearance, which was so great as to make them 
 almost unrecognizable. It brought home to me 
 the fact, which I had never thought of before, 
 that men owe a great deal to their hair. One 
 man there, in particular, owed all his personal 
 appearance to a nicely trimmed beard, the
 
 THE OPTIMIST AND THE BURGLAR 143 
 
 moustache of a heavy dragoon of fiction, and 
 a magnificent head of curly black hair. With all 
 this hair doing duty he was a really handsome 
 man, with nothing sinister about his appearance 
 at all ; but when he was stripped of it, he showed 
 a chin tapering almost to a point, a weak sensual 
 mouth, and an animal head, which taken together 
 made one shiver involuntarily as one looked at 
 him. 
 
 The barber worked in the passage between 
 the baths and the search-room, and as we stood 
 in a line awaiting our turn, we chatted in under- 
 tones with no more restraint or hindrance than 
 an occasional " Shut up out there " from the 
 warder sitting at the desk in the search-room. 
 
 The old hands utilized the occasion by telling 
 us all about what was in store for us, and the 
 burden of their remarks was that prison life was 
 not by any means so bad as people who had 
 never been in prison imagined it to be. 
 
 The amiable burglar who had got ten years 
 spoke words of encouragement to the man who 
 was so terribly downhearted because he had 
 been sent to prison for six weeks ; but the poor 
 wretch was inconsolable and the kindly exhorta- 
 tions to "Cheer up" only brought forth fresh 
 floods of tears.
 
 144 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 " If we was all like 'im," whispered the burglar 
 to me, " there wouldn't be no need for more'n 
 half a dozen prisons in the whole country, 
 because nobody 'ud ever come to chokee a second 
 time. Just fancy the 'ell on earth that he will 
 have to put up with for the next six weeks, and 
 then arsk yourself if he'll ever be able to look at 
 a copper without a cold shiver runnin' down the 
 hollow in the middle of 'is back." 
 
 " I've no doubt that the six weeks will do him 
 a lot of good," I replied. " Have you met many 
 men in your time who have taken it as badly as 
 he is doing? " 
 
 " I shouldn't be proud of bein' a bloomin' 
 Englishman if I 'ad come across many of his 
 sort," he replied with a sniff. 
 
 That was my own feeling exactly, and I am 
 pleased to say that I never met another man who 
 took his punishment in such a cowardly spirit. 
 This man occupied the cell next to mine for the 
 first few days of his imprisonment, and I do not 
 think that he ate anything the whole time, for I 
 used to see him put his food out after every meal. 
 His diet was very uninviting, it is true, for as his 
 sentence was less than four months, he got 
 nothing but potatoes, bread, skilly, and suet 
 pudding for the first week; but hunger ought to
 
 THE OPTIMIST AND THE BURGLAR 145 
 
 make a man tackle many things worse than prison 
 porridge, and I was eating mine with enjoyment 
 on the second day, though I only had to face it at 
 breakfast and supper-time, while he had it for 
 dinner also. The man of good position who had 
 got three years' penal servitude, and who, like 
 myself, had never been in prison before, was 
 taking his medicine in a vastly different fashion. 
 
 "They tell me that you are much more to be 
 pitied than I am," he said to me, in a tone that 
 implied both sympathy for me and disinclina- 
 tion to change places, 
 
 " I'm hanged if I can see how that can be," I 
 replied. " To start with, you will be in a year 
 more than I shall be, for if you earn the 
 whole remission you will have to do two 
 years and three months, whilst I, under similar 
 circumstances, will be out in a year and a 
 quarter." 
 
 " That's true," he rejoined cheerfully ; " but 
 your year and a quarter will seem to be a longer 
 time passing over your head than my two years 
 and three months will appear to me. You see, 
 you will be passing about twenty-two hours out 
 of every twenty-four in your cell all the time, and 
 the days will pass very, very slowly for you ; 
 but I, after the first six months, will be out
 
 T46 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 working in a gang all day, and shall practically 
 only be shut up by myself at night and at meal- 
 times. Besides, I shall get better food than 
 you : I start on the diet you will have to wait 
 four months for, and when I get on to the works 
 I shall have such things as cheese and butter, 
 which you will never get. 
 
 " That's right," said the brown-eyed burglar, 
 as he nodded his head energetically in my 
 direction; "everybody as knows anythin' about 
 it would rather hev 'is dose than yours. His 
 worst time 'ull be the fortnight as he's got 
 to stop here afore they sends 'im off somewhere 
 to do his six months' separate." 
 
 Then the man with three years to do spoke 
 hopefully of his future when he would come out 
 after serving his time, though to my mind he 
 hadn't any future to speak about, and told me 
 that his wife had already made a good start in 
 maintaining herself and the children by taking 
 in lodgers. He and his wife were brave people, 
 it was easy to see that, and as I listened to him 
 I fervently wished that things would turn out 
 well for them. 
 
 This nice gossipy time came to an end all too 
 soon and from that time to this I have never seen 
 nor heard anything of the optimist with three
 
 THE OPTIMIST AND THE BURGLAR 147 
 
 years or the brown-eyed burglar with ten, though 
 both of them are often in my thoughts, for I like 
 to think of men who take the buffets of fate 
 as they come, which accounts for my kindly 
 remembrances of the optimist, and of men who 
 blame nobody but themselves when they get 
 into trouble, which explains my interest in the 
 brown-eyed burglar.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 EXERCISE 
 
 I HAD hardly been back in my cell five 
 minutes when the door was banged open 
 and a warder shouted " Exercise " as he hurried 
 past. 
 
 I knew, of course, what this meant from my 
 residence at Brixton, and was outside my cell 
 with my cap upon my head, and making my way 
 to the door that led into the yard, before the 
 warder had unlocked the cell next to me. 
 
 As we passed into the yard, a warder standing 
 at the door rubbed his hands down us to see if we 
 had anything concealed about our persons, and 
 woe betide the innocent newcomer who listens 
 to the persuasion of some hungry-fellow prisoner 
 and attempts to carry uneaten bread into the 
 exercise-yard to pass it on. He will almost 
 certainly be bowled out if the warder on duty 
 at the door is not one of those who perform 
 the rubbing down in a perfunctory manner, and 
 then it will be. a case of the using up of the one 
 
 148
 
 EXERCISE 149 
 
 offence without punishment that is generally 
 allowed a prisoner. 
 
 Let the reader try and fancy a grass plot 
 about fifty yards long and about twenty wide set 
 with two elliptical asphalted paths, one within 
 the other, the inside one being small and at 
 some distance from the outer one, having huge 
 concrete blocks at the ends and sides of the 
 outer path for the warders, of whom there 
 are always four to the eighty or so prisoners 
 allowed in the yard at the same time, to see 
 that the prisoners do not hold communication 
 with one another, and otherwise keep order. 
 At one end and at one side of this exercise 
 ground there are large plots of garden ground 
 which are tilled for vegetables by a gang of 
 "Star" class prisoners. 
 
 The exercise ground is therefore rather a 
 pleasant place, and the daily hour I spent in it 
 slouching round and round the path with 
 intervals of three feet between me and the men 
 before and behind me, was the brightest hour of 
 the whole twenty-four for me. This brightness 
 did not come altogether from the open air and 
 the restful green of the grass, which were 
 pleasant enough in all conscience after twenty- 
 three hours of whitewashed wall, but was largely
 
 ISO A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 made up of the little tit-bits of news from outside 
 that went round the circle at such times. The 
 silent system is more or less a dead-letter, for it 
 is not and cannot be so strictly enforced as to 
 prevent communication between prisoners, and, 
 notwithstanding the watching warders, conversa- 
 tion is pretty brisk at exercise time, and at many 
 other times too for that matter. At exercise 
 the warders are not sufficiently near to hear 
 conversation, except when prisoners are actually 
 close to their stands, and they are dependant 
 upon their sight for detecting talking. As most 
 men who have been in prison for any time 
 acquire the accomplishment of talking without 
 appreciably moving their lips or the muscles of 
 their throats, sight is no safe guide, and frequently 
 leads warders to check inexperienced prisoners 
 who are not talking at all, but simply swallowing 
 spittle or moving their lips to moisten them. 
 Warders seem to recognize this fact, for I never 
 knew of a man reported for talking unless he 
 had been cautioned more than once and there 
 could be no doubt whatever about the matter. 
 
 I didn't find this out all at once, of course, 
 and on this first day at exercise I was almost 
 terrified when I heard the man behind me 
 actually break out into song. A gentleman in a
 
 EXERCISE 151 
 
 rather loud-patterned ulster was passing along 
 the covered causeway at the end of the exercise 
 ground that led from hall to hall, and as he came 
 into full view the humorist at my back sang, 
 quite loud enough for me to hear quite 
 distinctly — 
 
 " Who will back a norse, boys, who will back a norse, 
 A shillin' to a fivah to any on the course ; 
 A fivah to a pony, or even to a plum, 
 
 Me name is ' Ookey Walkah,' an' I come from bloomin 
 Brum." 
 
 No warder's voice interrupted him, and he 
 proceeded to tell me that the ulstered gentleman 
 was known as "the bookie"; but I never heard 
 any one else so refer to him. 
 
 " I say," he continued after a pause, as we 
 passed a warder, "d'ye like 'addicks fer tea?" 
 
 I was afraid to open my mouth, and didn't 
 want him to think that I was "stuck up," so I 
 shook my head. 
 
 "Ah! that's a good job," he said, in a tone 
 of relief, " 'cause 'addicks ain't on the menoo 
 to-day." 
 
 "Now then, number nine, stop that talking," 
 shouted a warder. 
 
 I was number nine, and I hadn't said a single 
 word.
 
 152 ^ A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The number of men I met in prison whose 
 idea of happiness was the having of haddocks 
 for tea was surprising. Can there be any 
 connexion between this fish and an itching to 
 possess other people's property without those 
 other people's consent I wonder?
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 THE WARDER 
 
 AFTER the exercise I was shut up in my cell 
 for the remainder of the day with nothing 
 to do, and for a long time I sat idly on my stool 
 and listened to the sounds of movement outside. 
 
 The cell was on the ground floor, and the 
 ground floor of "A" Hall was a very busy 
 place in working hours, if one might judge by 
 the noise. One side of it was a rope walk, where 
 rope-making was always going on; in the centre 
 was a row of tables where mats were finished 
 off; and on the other side bags were being filled 
 with cork shavings for the interiors of the ships' 
 fenders that are made at Wormwood Scrubs 
 for the Royal Navy. If there is any hard labour 
 done in the prison at all it is done here ; but I 
 cannot say that even here I ever saw anybody 
 working as hard as an ordinary bricklayer's 
 labourer has to work outside. 
 
 It was Friday, one of the two days in the 
 week when the dinner includes a pint of delicious 
 
 153
 
 154 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 pea-soup, and I looked forward to the midday 
 meal, which is generally served in prison about 
 a quarter of an hour before noon, with pleasure- 
 able anticipation. But time hangs heavily indeed 
 when one has idle hands and wishes to avoid 
 the company of his thoughts, and dinner-time 
 was a long time coming, so, with a view to 
 obtaining something to do, I tapped on my door 
 to attract the attention of the warder who was 
 at the desk a few feet away. 
 
 No notice was taken of me for a long time, 
 but I persevered until a key was somewhat 
 viciously plunged into the lock and the door 
 was flung open. 
 
 "Now then, what do you want?" snapped 
 the warder who stood in the opening. 
 
 He looked so angry that I felt quite sorry 
 that I had troubled him. 
 
 " I only wanted to ask you, sir, if you could 
 give me some work to do," I said deprecatingly. 
 A wise man in prison always " sirs " the warders, 
 even assistant-warders, who like the practice so 
 well that they even "sir" one another. 
 
 "I've got nothing to do with your work," he 
 said sourly, "and I won't have you interfering 
 with mine, so just chuck that hammering on your 
 door."
 
 THE WARDER 155 
 
 He reached out for the handle of the cell 
 door to shut me in again, but stopped with the 
 handle in his hand and looked at me curiously. 
 
 " I've seen you before somewhere, haven't I ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Not to my knowledge," I replied. 
 
 "Oh yes, I have. You was in that Under- 
 ground Railway affair, wasn't you ? " 
 
 " This is the first ' affair ' I was ever in," I said 
 modestly. 
 
 "Oh, go and tell that somewhere else, you 
 can't kid me," he said dogmatically. " I never 
 forget a man's face, and I'll be able to put a name 
 to yours before long." 
 
 "Well, you're mistaken this time, sir," I 
 replied. " I've never been in trouble before in 
 my life, and I'm certain that you've never seen 
 me before." 
 
 " We'll see about that," he rejoined as he 
 shut the door. 
 
 I didn't pay much attention to this incident 
 at the time, but I fancy that it had a great 
 influence upon my prison career.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 THE "STAR" CLASS 
 
 AS is pretty generally known, men of 
 previous good character who are con- 
 victed for the first time are put in a class by 
 themselves to prevent contamination by habitual 
 criminals. 
 
 This is known as the "Star" class, and men 
 serving in it are distinguished from other 
 prisoners by a large red star on the front of 
 the cap and on the sleeve of the coat above the 
 elbow. 
 
 There is no doubt whatever that under the 
 most strict test of eligibility I was fully entitled 
 to be included in this class ; but I was never put 
 in it, and served the whole of my imprisonment 
 in contact with the most hardened offenders that 
 the prison contained. 
 
 I am not making any grievance out of it, 
 because I believe that I was much better off in 
 every way as I was than I should have been in 
 the " Star " class ; but as day after day went by 
 
 156
 
 THE "STAR" CLASS 157 
 
 at the commencement of my imprisonment and I 
 was not put in the class I began to feel hurt, and 
 a sense of injustice grew up in my mind. 
 
 Now all prisons are visited periodically by 
 inspectors of prisons, who generally visit the 
 exercise j^ards in the company of a principal 
 warder. 
 
 On arrival in the yard the principal warder in 
 attendance on the inspector shouts out, 
 " Exercise, halt. Inspector of Prisons. Any man 
 wishing to make a complaint fall out. Remainder 
 of exercise, move on." 
 
 Such a visit occurred when I was one day 
 watching the " Star " men engaged in gardening 
 whilst I was doing my daily hour's mooch round, 
 and it suddenly struck me very forcibly that if 
 I had my " rights" I might be among them. 
 
 I therefore fell out and made one of half a 
 dozen discontented ones who claimed the atten- 
 tion of the inspector. 
 
 " Well, what do you want ? " asked that 
 official when in my turn I stood before him. 
 
 " I wish to ask, sir, why I have not been put 
 in the 'Star' class?" I said respectfully. 
 
 "What's the use of asking me silly, foolish 
 questions like that ? How the devil should I know 
 why you are not in the ' Star ' class ? It's nothing
 
 158 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 to do with me what class they put you in. That's 
 the visiting magistrates' affair, and you must ask 
 them if you want to know. I've no doubt that 
 they have very good reasons for keeping you 
 where you are." 
 
 That is all the satisfaction I got out of His 
 Majesty's Inspector of Prisons, and it was given 
 to me in a testy, querulous tone that implied that 
 I was a most unreasonable man to expect any 
 satisfaction at all. 
 
 That same afternoon I received a visit from a 
 clerk in the prison office, accompanied by a 
 principal warder— not the one who had shown 
 the inspector round. 
 
 "You complained to the inspector about 
 not being put in the 'Star' class?" asked the 
 clerk. 
 
 I nodded my head. 
 
 "Well, if you'll give me the names of your 
 last two employers, and any other references as to 
 respectability you may be inclined to offer, the 
 matter shall be inquired into." 
 
 " I can't refer you to employers because I've 
 never been in the position of having an employer," 
 I answered; "and as to furnishing you with 
 references, the idea is too absurd for me to enter- 
 tain it for a moment."
 
 THE "STAR" CLASS 159 
 
 " In that case," said the clerk, " I am afraid 
 that nothing can be done for you." 
 
 " Mind you," said the principal warder 
 aggressively, "you've got no grievance any more. 
 If you won't give us information to enable us to 
 find out who you are, you can't grumble at not 
 being put in the ' Star' class." 
 
 I pointed out that the police would probably 
 be able to assure the magistrates, or whoever it 
 was that wanted my biography, that I had never 
 been convicted before and that I had hitherto had 
 no stain of any sort on my character; but he 
 shook his head as much as to say that the police 
 wouldn't commit themselves to anything of the 
 sort. 
 
 Next morning I thought that I would carry 
 the game a step further, and put down my name 
 to see the governor. 
 
 The governor was very sympathetic and 
 gentlemanly; but he said that the point had 
 nothing to do with him. 
 
 " You can see the visiting justices at their 
 next visit to the prison, if you like," he con- 
 tinued; "but if you take my advice you'll let 
 the matter drop. I don't say that because I 
 have any doubts as to the justice of your 
 claim, but simply because I fancy you wouldn't
 
 i6o A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 like the ' Star ' class so well as your present 
 surroundings." 
 
 I took the governor's word for it and moved 
 no further in the affair. It was made clear to me 
 afterwards that the " Star " men don't have nearly 
 such good times in prison as the old hands do ; 
 for the warders do not trouble habitual offenders 
 more than they are obliged to do, while they 
 look very sharply indeed after the "Star" men. 
 Further, I fancy that habitual offenders are more 
 lively companions in prison than those who are 
 there for the first time. 
 
 It appears to me that I was denied entry into 
 the "Star" class owing to the warder professing 
 to recognize me as an old criminal; but it may 
 have been due to the police for all 1 know. In 
 any case, it shows how easily the authorities are 
 misled in such matters.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 DINNER 
 
 LET me now go back to my first dinner at 
 Wormwood Scrubs. The dinner consisted 
 of about a pint of good thick pea-soup with a 
 distinct meaty flavour, three-quarters of a pound 
 of indifferent potatoes, and a six-ounce loaf of 
 brown bread. With the potatoes mashed into 
 the soup it formed a dinner with a suspicion of 
 Irish stew about it, and I never wish to eat 
 anything better. 
 
 While on the subject of dinners, I may say 
 that the only bad dinners one gets in prison are 
 those allotted to Wednesdays and Saturdays, 
 which consist of suet pudding made with brown 
 flour, potatoes as on other days, and bread. I 
 never could manage the suet pudding, so to the 
 end of my time my dinner on those days con- 
 sisted of potatoes and bread only ; but use made 
 even this meagre diet acceptable and satisfying. 
 In the early days of my imprisonment I had some 
 difficulty with my Monday dinners, which were 
 M i6x
 
 i62 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 composed of haricot beans stewed in fat, a cube 
 of bacon fat that was supposed to weigh two 
 ounces, and potatoes and bread as usual. At 
 first, I used to regard this as very unsatisfactory, 
 and made no use whatever of the bacon fat, and 
 very little use of the beans; but I very soon 
 discovered that the piece of bacon fat, if allowed 
 to get cold, made an excellent relish for the dry 
 bread at supper-time, and after I had got through 
 the first four months of my imprisonment, when I 
 got a pint of thick greasy navy cocoa for supper 
 instead of porridge, I used to have quite famous 
 suppers on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, 
 and Thursdays, for by restraining my appetite 
 for luxury I would make that nominal two ounces 
 of fat serve me as a supper relish for those 
 four days. The beans, when mashed up in 
 the liquid fat in which they were always swim- 
 ming, became very palatable, and would have 
 been almost an epicurean dish if a little pepper 
 could have been added to them ; but although 
 prisoners are allowed to have as much salt as 
 they want, they are allowed no pepper at all. 
 Thursday's dinner was four ounces of boiled fresh 
 beef, with a small quantity of the liquor it was 
 cooked in, which was tasty enough for any one, 
 but there was barely enough meat and liquor to
 
 DINNER 163 
 
 help the potatoes and bread down. After four 
 months the quantity of meat was increased by an 
 ounce, and, strange as it may seem, that ounce 
 seemed to be an appreciable increase that made 
 a skimpy meal into a good one. On Sundays we 
 got a gruesome reminiscence of the Whitechapel 
 murder of thirty-odd years ago, for the prisoners 
 called the preserved meat which was the staple 
 of our Sunday meal " Harriet Lane," which, as 
 middle-aged people will remember, was the name 
 of the victim of that atrocious tragedy. 
 
 After dinner on that first day I was idly 
 turning over the potato-tin, which fits into the 
 top of the dinner-tin proper, when I saw some 
 writing that had been scratched on the bottom 
 with a needle or something of the sort. It ran : 
 " May the Lord look sideways on Judge ; 
 
 he gave me twenty moon when I was only 
 entitled to a stretch " — as to which I may say 
 that " moon " is the prison vernacular for a month 
 and " stretch " for a year. 
 
 Judge was the very judge who had 
 
 sentenced me, and I was strongly tempted to add 
 " Amen" to the legend on the tin ; but I refrained 
 on discovering that I had nothing that would 
 make a scratch. 
 
 I used to inspect all my dinner-tins after this,
 
 i64 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 and came across many queer things written on 
 them, but most of them were such as will not 
 stand cold print. On one occasion, though, I 
 happened on a couplet written in German that 
 seemed to me at the time to be peculiarly 
 apposite. It read — 
 
 " Gott lasst die Bose hier auf Erden 
 Oft ihre eignen Henker warden." 
 
 and may be very freely translated — 
 
 " God lets bad men here below 
 Often hang themselves you know." 
 
 This is very true indeed of the habitual 
 criminal, so true that it would be pretty safe to 
 say that the police would not get hold of half of 
 them if they did not give themselves away by 
 some act of folly. 
 
 The dinner interval in prison is very long, 
 for after the prisoners are served the warders 
 have to go away to their own meal, for which 
 they are allowed an hour, so that the prisoners 
 get an hour and a half at the least. After I got 
 settled down in prison, I made a practice of 
 passing this long middle-day interval on my 
 back in comfort, by putting my bed-board down 
 and lying on the top of the mattress and bed- 
 clothing as folded. It was easy to replace the
 
 DINNER 165 
 
 bed-board and bedding in the regulation position 
 for the day-time as soon as the bell rang for the 
 resumption of the prison routine, and by the 
 time my door was opened everything appeared 
 as it ought. The one warder left in the hall at 
 dinner-time on patrol must often have seen me 
 passing the time in this unauthorized fashion, 
 as it is part of his duty to look in at the 
 prisoners through the "observation holes;" but 
 nothing was ever said to me about it, which is 
 one more reason for my opinion that prison 
 warders do not go out of their way to make 
 trouble for prisoners.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 SOLACE 
 
 ON that first day's dinner-time I had not hit 
 upon this pleasant way of passing the 
 time; but I found something else that occupied 
 all my spare moments for the first month of my 
 imprisonment, when no library books are allowed. 
 I started to read the Bible from cover to cover. 
 How many of you who read this have ever read 
 that book of books all through ? How many of 
 you will ever read it as long as you can get 
 anything else to read ? Not one in a hundred, 
 I'll wager. Well, you'll miss something, let me 
 tell you, if you don't read it. I read it through 
 from end to end twice over during that first 
 month, and I didn't have a dull hour the 
 whole time. Putting its sacred character aside 
 altogether, the Bible ought to be read by every- 
 body for the worldly wisdom it contains, and I 
 became more and more surprised every day that 
 I had never discovered this fact before. Hafiz, 
 Omar Khayyam, and Co. are simply "not in it " 
 
 i66
 
 SOLACE 167 
 
 with the Bible, if you will but take the trouble 
 to think as you read, and I hold the opinion that 
 if my imprisonment had done nothing else for 
 me, the new ideas and the new outlook on life 
 that I got from that month's close thoughtful 
 reading of the Scriptures would have been ample 
 compensation for the inconvenience I suffered. 
 I don't want to be misunderstood, so I will say 
 that my remarks on this head are not to be taken 
 as an admission that I "got religion" during the 
 process, because, as a matter of fact, I was no 
 more religious when I had finished the course of 
 reading than I had been at the start. I am not 
 touching upon the question of religion at all, 
 and my recommendation to read the Bible is 
 based on the conviction that it is one of the best 
 storehouses of secular wisdom in existence.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 GOOD-NIGHT 
 
 THAT night, about two hours after supper- 
 time, when all prisoners were locked 
 in their cells, the stillness of the prison was 
 suddenly broken by the opening and shutting 
 of cell doors and the voices of warders giving 
 some two-worded order which I could not make 
 out. They did not come to my cell and I got no 
 explanation of the tumult for several days after- 
 wards, by which time my curiosity was at fever- 
 heat as the same thing happened every night. 
 Then I discovered that the cell doors were 
 opened in order that the prisoners should put 
 any work or material they had in their cells out- 
 side the door for the night, and that the short, 
 sharp two-worded order that was repeated at 
 every cell and had puzzled me so much was 
 simply "Workout." 
 
 Following the first warder on these occasions 
 comes a prisoner, whose duty it is to collect the 
 scissors and other tools in use, and he is quickly 
 
 1 68
 
 GOOD-NIGHT 169 
 
 followed by the second warder who, after 
 satisfying himself that all the prisoner's work 
 is outside, closes the cell door and locks it for 
 the night. This ceremony is called " Locking," 
 and no prisoner is supposed to go to bed before 
 it has been performed. Almost immediately 
 after the warders have finished their round the 
 prison-bell rings for bed, and a few minutes 
 after this the lights are turned out, so that by a 
 quarter-past eight at the latest the cells are in 
 darkness. 
 
 Many of the old hands among the prisoners 
 take advantage of the two warders being em- 
 ployed on another landing or at the other end of 
 their own, as may be gathered from the banging 
 of doors and clashing of keys, to shout greetings 
 to one another by kneeling down and applying 
 their mouths to the crack between tbe bottom of 
 the door and the floor, so that there is a pretty 
 continuous run of shouts like "Good-night 
 Billy," " Cheer up Jimmy," and so on, all the 
 time the warders are locking up. This sort of 
 thing only happened in "A" Hall of the two 
 halls in which my imprisonment was served. In 
 "B" Hall I never heard a single shout during 
 the locking time, but three out of the four 
 " wards " or landings in this hall were occupied
 
 I70 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 by " Star men," " Second Division " men, and 
 " Debtors" who would naturally be too subdued 
 to do anything of the kind, and the eighty men 
 on the top landing who belonged to neither of 
 these classes could hardly be called old hands, 
 as there were few who had been in prison more 
 than once before. 
 
 I slept as well as I could wish on the second 
 night of my imprisonment, although my couch 
 was not as comfortable as might be desired, not- 
 withstanding the fact that my find of the bale of 
 coir fibre kept me off the bare board, and from 
 this time onwards until the last night of my 
 imprisonment, when I didn't sleep at all, I never 
 had a bad night's rest. After the bare-board 
 stage I found the prison beds very comfortable 
 indeed, though I must stop short of calling them 
 luxurious, and I imagine that few people who 
 find themselves in prison sleep softer outside 
 than in.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 A TEMPTATION 
 
 NEXT morning, immediately after tlie 
 breakfast interval I made my first visit 
 to the prison chapel. "Chapel" is part of the 
 daily routine, and takes up about three-quarters 
 of an hour of the fourteen which comprise a 
 prisoner's waking day. Of this three-quarters 
 of an hour to an hour the actual service occupies 
 about half an hour, the remainder of the time 
 being taken up with the filing in and out, which 
 is rather a long process. The seating of the 
 prisoners is managed so that the convicts who 
 are making a temporary stay in the prison enter 
 the chapel first and sit right in front, thus seeing 
 nobody but themselves and the officiating clergy- 
 man. Then come the hard-labour men of the 
 general class, who can see the convicts but 
 cannot see any class superior to themselves. 
 Next in order are the "Star" men, behind them 
 again come the " Second Division," and right at 
 the back are the " Debtors," who can see all 
 
 171
 
 1/2 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 classes in the prison but cannot be seen them- 
 selves. In going out after the service the order 
 is reversed, the debtors leaving first, so it will 
 be seen that a hard-labour man in one of the 
 front rows has to sit still waiting for some time 
 before and after service. 
 
 A great deal of conversation goes on during 
 these intervals, in spite of the warders perched 
 up at the end of about every third form, and 
 also in spite of the fact that there is an interval 
 of about two feet between each prisoner. Many 
 and many a tale of unpunished robbery, and 
 many and many a discussion as to future coups 
 have I listened to as I sat in chapel ; and I could, 
 had I been so disposed, have told the police 
 many things that they would have been glad to 
 hear. But I judged, and rightly so I think, that 
 it was no duty of mine to act the part of informer 
 and I do not think that I would have been 
 willing to speak even if I had been directly 
 questioned. I was asked on one occasion to 
 repeat a conversation that I had overheard 
 between two prisoners who were plotting the 
 downfall of a warder who they thought had not 
 treated them fairly in the matter of the quantity 
 of "snout," or tobacco, and eatables that he had 
 smuggled in to them in exchange for money
 
 A TEMPTATION 173 
 
 provided by their friends. The warder's con- 
 science must have been uneasy, for he came to 
 my cell after chapel and offered to bring me in 
 some ham sandwiches — terrible temptation !— if I 
 would tell him what they had been talking about. 
 I tried hard to put away from me the instan- 
 taneous vision of nice new slices of sandwich 
 loaf and pink and white ham plentifully be- 
 spattered with mustard — the mustard was almost 
 a greater temptation than the bread and ham, 
 for prison food is terribly wanting in piquancy ; 
 but it would float about in mj'^ mind's eye, and I 
 almost fancied that I could feel that much-desired 
 bite of the mustard on my tongue. If it had 
 been merely a question of deciding between the 
 warder plus sandwiches and the prisoners minus 
 sandwiches, I should certainly have succumbed ; 
 but I was mortally afraid of having anything to 
 do with trafficking, and this fear turned the scale 
 in the prisoner's favour. 
 
 I had to lie boldly if I lied at all, so I replied 
 to the effect that I had not heard them talking at 
 all, and that I did not believe that they had been 
 talking. 
 
 " I saw them," he retorted. 
 
 " I shouldn't like to say that you were 
 mistaken," I replied in an indifferent tone; " but
 
 174 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I can't understand how it was that they could 
 manage to talk without my hearing them, seeing 
 that they were sitting right in front of me." 
 
 This seemed to satisfy him, and he went away 
 rather more reassured than he ought to have 
 been. He disappeared from our view some 
 little time after this, and it was rumoured that 
 he had been dismissed the service for trafficking ; 
 but whether his dismissal was brought about 
 by the machinations of those two particular 
 prisoners I cannot say.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 COMPLAINTS 
 
 ON the first occasion of my attending 
 chapel at the " Scrubs " I overheard a 
 conversation between two men seated behind 
 me that got firmly wedged in my memory. 
 
 " It sez in my libery book," remarked the 
 first, " that pris'ners in gaol live longer than 
 other people. That's curious, ain't it?" 
 
 " Don't see anythin' curious abaht it," growled 
 number two ; " ev'ry bloke as I've ever come 
 acrost knows as a 'moon ' in here is as long as 
 a 'stretch 'outside. 
 
 " I know all about that meself," said the other 
 one grumpily. "Wot I mean is that men in gaol 
 get older than people as keeps out." 
 
 " My oath they do," chuckled number two ; 
 "ther's nothin' like 'stir' fer makin' a bloke old." 
 
 "I don't want ye to take no liberties wi' me," 
 said number one sourly. "You know what I 
 mean as well as I do, an' if you want ter take a 
 
 175
 
 176 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 rise out of anybody you'd better try someone 
 else." 
 
 " AH right, mate ; don't get shirty," replied the 
 other soothingly. " It's all right wot it sez in 
 the book ; but I don't want ter live long, fer one, 
 if I've got ter do most of the livin' in 'ere. I'd 
 rather hev one year wi' the pals an' the gels up 
 'Oxton way than ten year in the most comfortable 
 ' stir ' as was ever invented." 
 
 I suppose he was exceptionally successful 
 outside. My experience of the genus gaol-bird 
 leads me to think that the bulk are poor miser- 
 able creatures who return to gaol time after time 
 because they are more comfortable there than 
 they are outside. 
 
 Another means of communications between 
 prisoners in chapel is furnished by the singing. 
 On my first appearance there I was asked how 
 long I had got, what it was for, and if I had 
 managed to smuggle any "snout" in with me, all 
 to the tune of the Magnificat, while the congrega- 
 tion was singing that anthem ; and, though it 
 went sorely against my grain to profane the 
 service in this way, I felt constrained to answer 
 in the same manner, inasmuch as a friendly warder 
 had cautioned me at the very start of my prison 
 life not to be stand-offish or stuck-up with my
 
 COMPLAINTS 177 
 
 fellow-prisoners, as if they once got the idea 
 into their heads that I was giving myself airs, 
 they could make things very uncomfortable for 
 me in ways that carried no redress. 
 
 Immediately after chapel on that Saturday 
 came exercise, and a very exciting time it was. 
 Being only a new-comer, I didn't know at the 
 time what led up to the scene I am about to 
 describe; but I learned afterwards that just 
 about that time there had been an attempt to 
 enforce the labour regulations with greater 
 strictness, and that there was great dissatis- 
 faction among the old hands in consequence. 
 For instance, the labour regulations require that 
 a man who is sentenced to "hard labour," and 
 is passed by the doctor as being physically fit 
 for it, shall pick three pounds of oakum per day, 
 if he is set to picking oakum, during the time he 
 is in the first stage — that is, until he has earned a 
 certain number of marks, which he can do in 
 twenty-eight days if he gets the full number of 
 marks allowed. Now it appears that a custom 
 had grown up of being satisfied with much less 
 than the regulation three pounds ; in fact, a man 
 told me that he had never picked that quantity 
 in a day in his life, though he had been sentenced 
 to " hard labour" no less than eleven times, and 
 
 N
 
 178 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 had been employed on picking oakum during his 
 first stage on every occasion. 
 
 Few people in this world are as keen on 
 sticking up for their "rights" as habitual 
 criminals in gaol, and as the old hands at the 
 " Scrubs " at that time had previously only done 
 about as much work as they wanted to do, they 
 were naturally very much hurt at the attempt of 
 the authorities to exact something more nearly 
 approaching the regulation pound of flesh than 
 had been the custom, though I do not think that 
 even then they stuck out for the full three 
 pounds laid down on the labour card. 
 
 I am told that in some workhouses honest 
 paupers are compelled to pick four pounds of 
 oakum a day ; that is, a pound more than a man 
 sentenced to hard labour has to do in the initial 
 stage only of his punishment, A man sentenced 
 to hard labour does not pick oakum at all, or he 
 didn't do so at Wormwood Scrubs during my time 
 there, after he passes out of the first stage ; but 
 the honest pauper, I am told, has to pick oakum 
 all the time. My informant on this point assured 
 me that he once got seven days' hard labour in 
 Chelmsford Gaol, where his maximum task was 
 three pounds of oakum a day and he actually 
 got off with about half that quantity, for refusing
 
 COMPLAINTS 179 
 
 to pick four pounds of oakum a day in Dunmow 
 Workhouse. 
 
 The dissatisfaction in the prison culminated 
 on this Saturday morning in the visit of either 
 an inspector of prisons or a visiting magistrate, 
 I am not sure which, as I did not hear the 
 principal warder who accompanied the visitor 
 announce his quality. 
 
 There were a large number of men — two or 
 three dozen I would say — who fell out of the 
 ranks to make complaints, and I was told after- 
 wards that all of them were indignant at the 
 tightening of the labour screw. 
 
 One of them in particular was very much 
 excited, and shouted what he had to say, so that 
 there was no difficulty in hearing him. 
 
 "They're treatin' us like dogs," he howled, 
 as soon as his turn came to interview the 
 visitor. 
 
 I was passing close by at the time and heard 
 the visitor's answer. 
 
 "We don't lay ourselves out to give you all 
 the comforts of home," he said good-humouredly. 
 
 " They want me to do three pound of oakum a 
 day," yelled the complainant. " I ain't never 
 done it afore, an' I ain't agoin' ter do it now." 
 
 " Well, I'm afraid I cannot help you," replied
 
 i8o A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 the visitor. "You must settle that little matter 
 with the governor." 
 
 "I'll report you to the Sekittary of State," 
 foamed the now furious prisoner. "You're 
 supposed ter come 'ere ter see as they don't 
 jump on us — an' you bloomin' well 'elp 'em ter 
 do it." 
 
 The visitor walked away without making any 
 reply, and the prisoner was hustled back into 
 the ranks. 
 
 When all the complainants had been inter- 
 viewed and most of them were almost as excited 
 and unreasonable as the one reported in detail, 
 the visitor went into the next yard, the gate of 
 which was left standing open. 
 
 Then it suddenly occurred to the man whose 
 remarks are given above that he had something 
 more to say, and he left his place in the ranks 
 and started in the direction of the adjoining 
 yard. 
 
 " Get back into your place," shouted the 
 warder in charge of the exercise. 
 
 " I wanter see the inspector agin, and I'm 
 goin' to, whether you like it or not," yelled the 
 prisoner, who, by the way, was a big athletic 
 customer that few men would have cared to 
 stand up to.
 
 COMPLAINTS i8i 
 
 The warder made no reply in words, but 
 got down from his perch on the block of 
 concrete and caught the prisoner by the arm 
 with the intention of pushing him back into the 
 ranks. 
 
 As soon as the prisoner felt the warder's 
 touch on his arm, he swung round on his heel, 
 and bringing his left fist plump on the point of 
 the officer's jaw, he felled him like a pole-axed 
 bullock. 
 
 The exercise stopped like one man, and the 
 other three warders jumped off their pedestals 
 and rushed on the mutineer, taking out their 
 "coshes," or staves, and blowing their whistles 
 as they ran. 
 
 The first officer to reach the prisoner rushed 
 on him with uplifted truncheon, but before he 
 could bring it down the prisoner had caught 
 him under the arm with his right hand and given 
 him a punch on the solar plexus with his left 
 that doubled him up. 
 
 He tried the same dodge with the second 
 warder; but the officer was too sharp for him, 
 and brought the cosh down with a swinging 
 blow on to the prisoner's head, laying him out 
 at full length on the ground, looking just like a 
 statue that had been pushed off its pedestal.
 
 i82 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 It was the regular father and mother of a 
 crack, that was, and it echoed all over the yard 
 with a sort of sickening smashing sound, just as 
 if someone had hit a half-ripe pumpkin as hard 
 as possible with a broomstick. 
 
 When the prisoner knocked out the warder 
 there were smiles on the faces of many of the 
 other prisoners, but the knocking down of the 
 prisoner was not approved of at all, and was 
 greeted with " boos" and cries of "shame." 
 
 This had all taken place in the space of a 
 minute or two, and so far no reinforcement of 
 warders had arrived in response to the whistles ; 
 but now the jingling of keys was heard from 
 inside the hall and, the locked grille being opened, 
 half a dozen officers rushed into the yard. 
 
 The scene at that moment looked more like 
 melodrama than real life. There was the prisoner 
 lying on the ground, his face like the face of a 
 wax figure, with a little rivulet of blood running 
 down it from the gash made by the warder's 
 truncheon ; the knocked-out warder was lying 
 a few yards away all in a heap like a man 
 struck by lightning ; the warder that had been 
 punched in the solar plexus was leaning against 
 the wall looking very sick, and the prisoners at 
 exercise stood in the ranks as they had halted,
 
 COMPLAINTS 1S3 
 
 looking very much interested and murmuring 
 among themselves. 
 
 Then the irrepressible "Back a norse" man, 
 who was again placed behind me, imported a 
 glimmer of comedy into the situation by singing, 
 in tones that suggested amused sarcasm — 
 
 " Oh me ! oh my ! Wormwood Scrubs afore the Union 
 fer me, 
 For they feeds yer an' they clothes yer, 
 Kerwite as good as any workin' man or soljer ; 
 An' ye does a httle work fer a portion of the day, 
 While ye all goes ter chapel on a week-day." 
 
 This is horrible doggerel of course, but it 
 didn't sound so bad as it looks in print, and the 
 funny way he droned it out caused me to smile 
 in spite of the tragical surroundings. He him- 
 self smiled on the other side of his face a few 
 seconds afterwards, for, counting too much on 
 the confusion, he raised his voice as the song 
 progressed and was heard by a warder, who 
 came up behind him to assist in moving the 
 exercise on. On the next day but one, Monday, 
 he had an interview with the governor, and got 
 three days' bread and water, with the consequent 
 loss of three days' remission, a punishment that 
 also carries with it loss of exercise and depriva- 
 tion of chapel, a very real punishment indeed, 
 for the bread-and-water period.
 
 i84 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The first thing the warders did on the arrival 
 of the reinforcement was to draw their truncheons 
 and threateningly order the nearly mutinous 
 prisoners to move on, and after a momentary 
 hesitation the exercise began to move round 
 again, the officers taking the numbers of several 
 men who showed unwillingness to move. Then 
 the wounded prisoner was carried to hospital 
 and the knocked-out warder, who had recovered 
 consciousness, was led away. 
 
 I heard afterwards that, in addition to the 
 crack on the skull, which kept him in hospital for 
 some time, the mutinous prisoner was sentenced 
 by the visiting magistrates to lose the whole of 
 his remission and be kept for a considerable 
 period on punishment diet. 
 
 The bulk of the prisoners thought that the 
 row did good, though, for the work-warders 
 after this were said to moderate their demands ; 
 but I personally know nothing of all this, as I 
 hadn't been put to work at all at the time of the 
 disturbance, and when I was found something to 
 do, the work-warders didn't trouble me much, as 
 will be seen later.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 SUNDAY 
 
 THE next day was Sunday, and Sunday in 
 gaol is the worst day of the week, for 
 there is no bustle and nothing to help the flight 
 of time, except reading and the two chapel 
 services, which each last about an hour and a half. 
 The evening service commences at half-past one 
 in the da}^ and finishes at three. Supper is 
 served before four, and after supper most of the 
 prisoners go to bed. It is a common practice 
 of prisoners to seek to mitigate the terrible 
 monotony of the prison Sunday by secreting a 
 part of their work instead of putting the whole 
 of it out on Saturday night, and surreptitiously 
 doing it on Sunday. I myself only had four or 
 five dismal Sundays, for early on in my imprison- 
 ment I discovered that there was a way of 
 getting a supply of books from outside which 
 could be kept in one's cell and used to vary the 
 literary pabulum issued from the prison library. 
 I was put up to this by a man who occupied the 
 
 185
 
 186 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 next cell to the one in which I was placed a few 
 days after my first Sunday in prison. 
 
 " What a terrible day Sunday is ! " I said to 
 him on my second Sunday, as we were waiting 
 our turn to come out of chapel after service. 
 
 " Indeed ! I don't find it so," he replied. " I 
 think that it is the best day in the week, and I 
 think that you will come to the same conclusion 
 if you will do as I have done. This isn't my first 
 experience of prison, unfortunately, so I am up 
 to all the ropes. Among the things I learned 
 when I was here before was that if one goes 
 judiciously to work it is possible to have books 
 sent in from outside, the conditions on which 
 this is allowed being that the books must be of 
 an instructional nature, and that they must be 
 given to the prison library after you have done 
 with them." 
 
 " But the amount of amusement to be got 
 out of school-books is very limited, surely," I 
 objected. 
 
 "Just so; but the old chaplain is a very 
 liberal-minded man, and his definition of a book 
 of instruction is very wide. I have books in my 
 cell that are anything but school or college text- 
 books, and they help me to pass the time very 
 well."
 
 SUNDAY 187 
 
 I opened the ball the next morning by put- 
 ting down my name to see the chaplain, who 
 never intrudes on a prisoner unless the prisoner 
 expresses a desire to see him. I had been 
 warned not to prefer my request to the assistant- 
 chaplain if he came instead of the chaplain, as 
 he was one of that large class of men who 
 always seek some reason for refusing a request 
 instead of an excuse for granting it, and that the 
 chaplain himself could hardly stultify his assis- 
 tant by granting a request after he had refused 
 it. Accordingly, when the assistant-chaplain, 
 turned up in the dinner-time, which is the time 
 the chaplains generally make their rounds, I 
 switched myself off the request I was going to 
 make to be allowed to have some books sent in, 
 and asked simply if there were any German 
 Bibles in the prison, and, if so, whether I might 
 have one instead of the English one that had 
 been served out to me. 
 
 "What do you want a German Bible for?" 
 asked the assistant-chaplain, in a tone which 
 suggested that I might possibly want it to make a 
 hole in my cell wall with. " Are you a German ? " 
 
 I replied to the effect that I was not a German, 
 but that I was able to read the German language, 
 and wanted the Bible for purposes of study.
 
 i88 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 "No," he said, " I am afraid that you cannot 
 have a German Bible. We have them, of course, 
 but they are for German prisoners, and there is 
 no precedent for issuing one to an English 
 prisoner." 
 
 On my telling my next-door neighbour the 
 result of this interview, he said that I had better 
 not apply again to see the chaplain until I got into 
 the second stage, as although instructional books 
 are allowed to prisoners in the first stage, it was 
 extremely doubtful whether permission would 
 be given for any books to be sent in to me until 
 I was over my first month. 
 
 As soon as I reached the second stage I put 
 down my name again to see the chaplain, and 
 this time it was the dear old chaplain himself 
 who came to see me. He was very sympathetic, 
 said not a single word about religion, and readily 
 gave me permission to tell my friends when I 
 wrote to them, which I should not be entitled to 
 do for another twenty-eight days, as one is not 
 entitled to write or receive a letter or have a 
 visit until he reaches the third stage. 
 
 I pointed this out to him, when he at once 
 volunteered to write to my friends himself, 
 and in a few days afterwards the schoolmaster 
 brought to me a book of mathematical examples
 
 SUNDAY 189 
 
 taken from University Examination Papers, a 
 Russian grammar and reader, "Don Quixote" in 
 the original Spanish, and Schiller's "Thirty Years' 
 War" in the original German. Later on I got 
 other books as I needed them, but I was not 
 allowed to have more than six in my cell at any 
 one time. In addition to these books of my 
 own, I got the usual one book a week during the 
 time I was in the second stage, that is during 
 my second month in prison, and two books a 
 week afterwards, from the prison library'. There 
 were no dull Sundays or any other dull days 
 for me then.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 HARD LABOUR 
 
 I HAVE been anticipating a bit and must 
 get back to my second week in gaol. When 
 I had been in the "Boodwoor" for a week with 
 nothing to occupy my hands all the time, I was 
 taken to a cell on the "Twos" or first floor 
 landing. I hadn't been in possession of my 
 new abode for an hour when I received a visit 
 from a warder who was accompanied by two 
 prisoners carrying a sort of stool with a pair of 
 scales on it, and a box containing chopped pieces 
 of rope, while another prisoner followed behind 
 with a sack on his shoulders. 
 
 A quantity of the rope was put on the scale 
 and a pretence made of weighing it. Then it 
 was pitched into my cell. 
 
 " Slip into that now," said the warder. " You're 
 tasked to do that lot in a day, you know." 
 
 " What have I got to do with it ? " 1 asked. 
 
 "Never been in prison before?" he asked 
 suspiciously. 
 
 190
 
 HARD LABOUR 191 
 
 I replied in the negative, and he signed to one 
 of the men with him. The man came into my 
 cell, sat down on my stool, and showed me how 
 to unravel the pieces of rope, while the man with 
 the sack took a handful of the finished product 
 out and showed it to me. 
 
 It was lightly twisted coir rope, not tarred 
 hemp which is the rope that oakum-pickers have 
 to deal with, and the picking it into fibre was as 
 hard work as whittling a soft stick with a sharp 
 penknife would be. I found it a pleasant pastime, 
 as the light employment for the fingers made 
 the thoughts flow easily, and time went by as 
 rapidly as could be desired. Notwithstanding 
 the warder's injunction to " slip into it," there 
 was never any pretence of making me do any 
 specified quantity, and I did just as much as 
 suited me. I always had the sense to pretend to 
 be very hard at work when the governor, deputy- 
 governor, or chief warder was knocking about, 
 and that was apparently all that the work-warder 
 expected of me. 
 
 When I had been in prison ten days the 
 warder in charge of my landing brought me a 
 mattress as an intimation that my bare plank 
 period was over. 
 
 " But I have only been here ten days," 1
 
 192 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 objected, " and I am not entitled to it for another 
 four days yet." 
 
 " Take it in and be thankful," he rejoined. 
 "You was transferred to me as being entitled to 
 your bed to-da}^, and here it is. I've got enough 
 troubles of my own without worrying myself 
 over other people's mistakes. If you'll take my 
 tip, you won't put yourself out if you're offered 
 anything you're not entitled to in here ; they're 
 not likely to make many mistakes that way." 
 
 I took the mattress and was thankful, for 
 even with the mitigation I had been lucky 
 enough to secure downstairs, the bare plank was 
 rather inconvenient, and I had been exposed to 
 the full rigour of it since I came upstairs four 
 days before. That coir fibre mattress seemed to 
 me to be the ver^^ last word in comfort that 
 night. 
 
 About a fortnight after this I was transferred 
 to " B " Hall, which was a great change for the 
 better, inasmuch as I now had a cell with a 
 boarded floor instead of the asphalte which is 
 the rule in " A " Hall. There was also an 
 absence of the clanging and banging that went 
 on all day in "A" Hall, as " B " Hall is devoted 
 to the manufacture of mail-bags for the post- 
 office and bed-casings for the army.
 
 HARD LABOUR 193 
 
 I was located here on the top floor, or the 
 " Fours," as the top landing is called in prison, 
 and was set to sewing brown canvas casings 
 for army beds. These casings are made in 
 three pieces, and the sewing required is simple 
 backstitching with an ordinary sewing-needle and 
 waxed thread. It could hardly be described 
 truthfully as hard labour for a girl of fourteen, 
 and for a man it was simply child's play. I was 
 six months on these cases with an occasional 
 change to mail-bags, which work was just a 
 trifle harder, and I jogged along very comfortably 
 on about one case a day, which was less than 
 half of what I was supposed to do according to 
 the labour card. Beyond saying occasionally 
 that he wished I would try and do a little more, 
 the work-warder never worried me, and my days 
 passed peacefully and happily, which is, I take 
 it, hardly the effect aimed at by our prison 
 system. 
 
 If one worked the hours supposed to be 
 devoted to labour they would only amount to 
 about six hours a day ; that is to say, an hour 
 before breakfast, an hour and a half between 
 breakfast and dinner, and three hours and a half 
 between dinner and supper. But as there is 
 practically no supervision over the eighty or so 
 o
 
 194 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 per cent, of the prisoners who work in their 
 cells, they can work or not as they please during 
 these hours, provided they manage to turn out 
 enough work to satisfy the work-warders. As 
 the work-warders are pretty easily satisfied, 
 there are few prisoners work the full labour 
 time if they can find something else to do. I 
 never worked, or played at working rather, 
 for more than four hours a day during all the 
 time that I worked in my cell, which was for 
 the first ten months of my sentence, and as 
 far as I could ascertain no other prisoners did 
 more as long as they had something to read. 
 
 Yet, strange to say, Wormwood Scrubs has 
 a bad name among habitual criminals. I have, 
 over and over again, heard old hands abuse it as 
 being the strictest prison in their experience, 
 and one of them told me that he "would a' most 
 as soon be in the work'us." I also saw many 
 remarks to the same effect scratched on the 
 whitewash in the conveniences in the exercise 
 yard, one of them running— "This is the wustest 
 stir as ever was." What must the favourite 
 prisons of the criminal be like?
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 *'THE FERRET" 
 
 THE warder in charge of the "Fours" in 
 "B" Hall in my time was a little sharp 
 cockney who was, by the prisoners, nicknamed 
 " The Ferret." And a very apt nickname it was 
 too. He was a very decent chap indeed when 
 one got to know him, and I never knew him to 
 report any one unless he was absolutely obliged 
 to do so. One of the few prisoners I knew him 
 to report was my next-door neighbour on the 
 right, and him he reported so often that the poor 
 devil seemed to me to be passing about half 
 his time on bread and water. He was a young 
 fellow, not yet nineteen years of age, and the 
 conviction he was then serving out was his 
 eleventh. He would neither wash himself if he 
 could help it, nor would he keep his cell clean, 
 and the warder, after standing this sort of thing 
 as long as he could, would report him, and he 
 would get three days' bread and water. I 
 
 195
 
 196 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 thought at the time that a much better way of 
 dealing with him would have been to hand him 
 over to three or four clean prisoners and let 
 them teach him cleanliness in their own way ; 
 but of course such a proceeding would never 
 be countenanced under our ultra-humanitarian 
 prison system. 
 
 The Ferret fell foul of me on one occasion. In 
 every cell there hangs a card drawing prisoners' 
 attention to the Prisoners' Aid Society, and 
 giving instructions as to how to go to work to 
 obtain the assistance of that organisation. The 
 card hanging in my cell was dirty and dilapidated 
 and The Ferret brought me a new one. Now I 
 was in the habit of using the old card as a sort of 
 dustpan to collect the sweepings of my floor and 
 put the dust outside my door for the cleaners to 
 take away. I did the same thing with the new 
 card, and went off to chapel unconscious of 
 having done The Ferret any wrong. 
 
 I had no sooner got back from chapel, 
 however, than he came to my cell and spoke to 
 me very rudely indeed. 
 
 " I shall report you," he said, " if I catch you 
 using your Aid card to put dust on any more. 
 Here am I doin' every mortal thing in my power 
 to make you happy and comfortable, even going
 
 "THE FERRET" 197 
 
 out of my way to get you a nice new card, that 
 I wasn't obliged to do at all, and you go and 
 make a dustpan of it. Chaps like you are 
 enough to break a feller's 'art." 
 
 " It is only clean dust here," I said soothingly, 
 "and wouldn't do the card any harm." 
 
 " Yus it would," he replied. " When you get 
 a nice clean new card like that you shouldn't 
 touch it at all. If you must use a card for your 
 dust, use your prayer-card ; that's dirty enough 
 now and won't hurt." 
 
 And as he said, so it happened : henceforth 
 the card that was supposed to guide my morning 
 and evening devotions became my dustpan, and 
 I daily blew the dust off the Prisoners' Aid 
 Society Card as it hung on the wall, not daring 
 to finger it. 
 
 When I had been a member of The Ferret's 
 flock for about six months, and thought that I was 
 settled down for the rest of my sentence, he cast 
 me out as an undesirable, and I was returned to 
 the residuum in " A " Hall. 
 
 I was a bit hurt at the time, for I had been 
 hugging the belief that I was a model prisoner 
 and that the warder would not part with me 
 while there was any one else left to part with, 
 but 1 soon came to see The Ferret's point of view
 
 198 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 and am convinced that I would have done as he 
 did had I been in his place. 
 
 In short, I had got into the habit of giving 
 The Ferret trouble, and he didn't see why he 
 should put up with it. The trouble, both for 
 me and for The Ferret, arose in this way : 
 
 I always had a loaf of bread a day that I 
 could not eat, and for some time I passed it on 
 to one of the cleaners who had confided to me 
 that he couldn't sleep o' nights for the hunger 
 that tormented him. One day The Ferret saw 
 me passing the loaf, and told me paternally that 
 it was a very wrong thing to do. Now I didn't 
 want to be reported for doing a thing like that, 
 for if 1 had, it would certainly mean my staying 
 another three days in prison, as well as having 
 three days bread and water on the spot, so I 
 struck the idea of handing over the daily surplus 
 loaf to The Ferret himself If I had known 
 what a mean and paltry revenge I was taking 
 I would not have done it, but I didn't know it 
 for long afterwards, when it was too late. It 
 appeared that my handing that loaf to the 
 warder imposed upon him the task of entering 
 it in a book called " The Returned Food Book," 
 which is so seldom used that it is not taken into 
 account when a warder reckons up his clerical
 
 "THE FERRET" 199 
 
 duties, and returning the loaf to the kitchen, 
 where it caused further trouble. 
 
 Naturally enough, when The Ferret was 
 requested one day to send half a dozen strong 
 able-bodied men over to "A" Hall for the 
 purpose of being employed on turning the crank 
 of the rope-making machine, his thoughts turned 
 to me, though he must have had some slight 
 doubt in his mind as to whether I properly 
 came under the definition, and to "A" Hall I 
 went accordingly, much to my indignation and 
 distress, for I was very comfortable in "B" 
 Hall and my wildest hopes did not picture me as 
 being anywhere near so well off elsewhere. 
 One never knows, however, how the most un- 
 promising prospects are going to turn out, and 
 in this case the change was all for the better and 
 I blessed The Ferret in my heart.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 HARD IDLENESS 
 
 AS soon as I got over to "A" Hall I was 
 promptly rejected with contempt for 
 crank-turning work, the opinion as to my worth- 
 lessness being cordially endorsed by me, and I 
 was put into a cell on the top floor, from whence 
 I could, by climbing up to the window, see 
 football matches and cricket matches in their 
 respective seasons being played on the adjacent 
 Scrubs, and could also take a look at the country 
 whenever I felt disposed to do so. There were 
 also musical evenings twice a week for some 
 months, provided by some friends of my next- 
 door neighbour, who used to come and stand 
 under the prison wall with a cornet, a fiddle, 
 and a banjo, and play such tunes as " Down by 
 the Suwanee River." They always finished up 
 with "Auld Lang Syne" and "Home Sweet 
 Home," after which they would shout in 
 chorus : " Good night, Billy. Be a good boy 
 and get on with your oakum." 
 
 200
 
 HARD IDLENESS 201 
 
 My neighbour on the other side even managed 
 to do a little flirting over the wall. One evening 
 he shouted to a girl who was walking in the 
 field, and struck up a conversation with her. 
 She came many times after that until the gay 
 Lothario got tired of her and told her that it 
 was no use her waiting for him as he was "in 
 for life." 
 
 They made mail-bags on the top floor of "A" 
 Hall, like they did in the hall I had come from, 
 but I was not considered worthy of being 
 employed in this way, and was put on picking 
 fibre again, which is almost tantamount to saying 
 that I had all my time at my own disposal. 
 
 Free from all care, able to eat the prison food 
 with enjoyment, and with practically as many 
 books as I wanted, I had an enviable time of it ; 
 and I often thought with something like dismay 
 of the time when I would be compelled to again 
 mix in the busy world and be worried by the 
 landlord and the rate-collector. Our prisons 
 would have to be considerably enlarged, I think, 
 if struggling, harassed men realized what a 
 haven of rest they provide for those who are in 
 danger of breakdown from sheer worry. 
 
 My next door neighbour, the Lothario, was a 
 barber, who was in for stealing inclosures from
 
 202 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 letters addressed to persons occupying offices 
 in the building of which his shop formed the 
 ground floor. His "hard labour" consisted in 
 cropping the heads of his fellow-prisoners, and 
 a very nice job he had, for the hair-cutting is 
 done in the open air at exercise time, and as 
 there were three or four separate "exercises" 
 of eighty men in the hall, he was in the open air 
 for three or four hours a day with every facility 
 for gossip pour passer le temps. He was a very 
 cheerful and optimistic character, as was in fact 
 my neighbour on the other side, and we got on 
 famously together. He used to say jocosely 
 that he had always had an ambition to work at 
 his trade in the West End of London, but was 
 afraid that he had overshot the mark this time 
 and got too far west. 
 
 My neighbour on the other side was a medical 
 student who was serving an imprisonment of 
 fifteen months for obtaining cash for a worthless 
 cheque, and the friends who used to come and 
 serenade him were medical students also. His 
 case appeared to me to be a very hard one. 
 According to his own account the cheque had 
 been given to him in payment of a card debt, and 
 he had no idea that it was not a good one. 
 Unfortunately he had previously been fined for
 
 HARD IDLENESS 203 
 
 being in unlawful possession of some billiard- 
 balls that had been taken from a public billiard- 
 room. This counted as a previous conviction 
 and may have had something to do with the 
 severe sentence. He explained this conviction, 
 by saying that the balls were in his possession 
 as the result of a practical joke. He and some 
 other students in a rather elevated condition 
 had been playing billiards, and, in coming away, 
 one of the others had slipped the balls into his 
 overcoat pocket without his knowledge, which 
 is an extremely likely thing to happen, and has, 
 in fact, happened to me. The balls were missed, 
 and he was followed and given into custody, 
 being in the result fined forty shillings. He 
 told me all this with such a truthful air, and 
 seemed such a decent fellow, that I could not 
 help but believe him, though it does seem hard 
 to credit that the magistrate paid no heed to his 
 explanation if it was so obvious as he made it 
 out to be. I asked him what effect his conviction 
 would have upon his career, and he considerably 
 astonished me by replying that he did not antici- 
 pate that it would have any effect beyond the 
 loss of time, as the authorities of the medical 
 school he was attending took the view that he had 
 been guilty of nothing more than carelessness
 
 204 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 and were willing to take him back. He didn't 
 know anything about the dodge of getting 
 books sent in, so I put him up to it, and he was 
 able to minimise the waste of time by getting 
 text-books for study.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE 
 
 ONE Saturday afternoon, while I was in this 
 cell, I witnessed the only attempt at escape 
 that occurred in the prison, as far as I know, 
 while I was an inmate. I was perched up at my 
 window as usual, watching a football match, when, 
 casting my eyes down into the prison yard, I saw 
 a prisoner rush round the corner of the block 
 and make for the wall. He had a sort of roughly 
 made ladder over his shoulder, and placing this 
 against the boundary wall of the prison, he 
 commenced to mount it. The ladder was a long 
 piece of scantling to which cross-pieces had been 
 nailed so as to leave a foothold on the projecting 
 ends. When he was about half-way up, the con- 
 traption turned over and left him hanging on the 
 underside, like a monkey on a stick, and this 
 happened two or three times ; but he tried over 
 and over again, and at last got his hands on the 
 top of the wall, when he stopped to take breath. 
 Up till now, he did not appear to have been 
 
 205
 
 2o6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 missed, and some people will no doubt argue that 
 it was my duty to give the alarm. I don't think 
 that it would have been a sportsman-like thing for 
 me to have done so, and I did nothing. Things 
 were in this interesting position when the sound 
 of a measured tramp coming along the landing 
 in my direction warned me that a warder was 
 approaching and that it was therefore necessary 
 for me to get down as the officer might look in on 
 me and consider it his duty to report my breach of 
 regulations, for it was forbidden to climb up and 
 look out of the windows. 
 
 When I got up again, after the warder had 
 passed, I saw the prisoner over on the free side 
 of the prison wall, running across country for all 
 he was worth, while the footballers suspended 
 their game to stare after him. No one appeared 
 to be pursuing him at the moment, but some one 
 must have gone round to the prison gate and 
 given the alarm, or the man must have been 
 missed from within, for a few minutes afterwards 
 a posse of warders appeared and started off in 
 the direction taken by the fugitive, who had now 
 got out of sight. More warders presently 
 appeared on the scene, and as long as there was 
 sufficient light I saw them spread out searching 
 the country, apparently without success,
 
 AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE 207 
 
 I heard next morning in chapel that the man 
 was eventually discovered hiding in a ditch by 
 two boys, sons of warders, who were out bird- 
 nesting, and that the boys had dissembled their 
 discovery, so as to leave the escaped prisoner 
 under the impression that they had not seen him 
 at all, until they met a party of warders and led 
 them to the spot. It was reported that the 
 governor made the two boys a present of two 
 pounds each, and that the poor devil of a 
 prisoner was very roughly handled by the warders 
 who captured him, which was very likely the 
 case, as warders do that kind of thing I am 
 afraid. 
 
 The version of the escape that came round to 
 me was to the effect that the man was a carpenter 
 who had only a few weeks more to serve, and 
 that he had been left unattended in the carpenter's 
 shop on that afternoon sufficiently long for him 
 to improvise the ladder to get over the wall. 
 How he managed to get out of the building with 
 his ladder over his shoulder I never heard, and 
 that was the most interesting part, for it must 
 have required either remarkable ingenuity or an 
 astonishing amount of bluff.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 THE SUSPECTS 
 
 FOLLOWING closely on this attempted 
 escape there was a remarkable upset in 
 the prison. All the prisoners in one of the halls 
 were turned out of their beds one night and 
 thoroughly searched to discover those who were 
 concerned in alleged extensive trafficking opera- 
 tions. I cannot say anything about this incident 
 from my own personal knowledge, because it did 
 not occur in my hall, but I overheard a prisoner 
 who had been concerned in it, and who had been 
 transferred to my hall afterwards, give a most 
 interesting account of it in chapel. I made 
 a note of this at the time, and reproduce it 
 here in the man's own words as nearly as 
 possible : 
 
 "Yes, they had a fine time," he said, in answer 
 to a question. "They cased" (confined to cell 
 with all furniture taken out and fed on bread and 
 water) " about twenty-four in the hall together, 
 mostly on the 'twos' and 'threes.' There was 
 
 208
 
 THE SUSPECTS 209 
 
 about twenty found with 'snout,' and a good 
 many with cheese and eggs. I had about two 
 ounces of thin twist in my cell, but they didn't 
 find it, and they didn't find any grub either, 
 though I had plenty sent in. I don't believe in 
 keeping any of that stuff about, so I alius wolfed 
 it as soon as the screw gev it to me. Directly 
 after locking up, when I'd just had time to get 
 into bed, my door was opened and two screws 
 and a principal comes in. 
 
 " 'Git up,' sez the principal. 
 
 " I knowed what was up in a minute, but I was 
 on velvet meself, 'cos I knowed as they'd find 
 nothin' in my place or on me. 
 
 " ',Take off your shirt,' sez the screw ; an' I 
 took it off an' stood there shivering as naked as 
 I was born. 
 
 " They turned me shirt inside out, and went 
 over me as I stood there naked, as if they 
 expected to find that I'd got pockets in my 
 skin. 
 
 "Then they took my other clothes and 
 turned them inside out, searched the seams, an' 
 all that kind of thing. After they had done this, 
 they pitched all my clothes on to the landing out- 
 side the cell and told me to go out and put 
 'em on.
 
 210 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 " While I was outside they turned over 
 my cell. One o' the screws ripped up my 
 mattress and turned out all the fibre, while the 
 other two went over the whole cell, as they 
 thought, but didn't find nothin'. 
 
 " ' I carn't make it out,' sez that screw wi' the 
 nose as is on probation for principal. 'The 
 whole place stinks of tobacco.' 
 
 " ' Yus, sir,' sez I, 'it's them blokes in the 
 work'us'" (the workhouse infirmary is next door 
 to the prison). " ' They smokes very strong snout, 
 an' I leaves the ventolator open so's I can get a 
 sniff of it.' 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' sez the screw, ' that's it, is it ? You 
 ain't dropped it through the vent'lator I suppose ? 
 Just run round and see if it's outside,' he sez to 
 one of the other screws. They never come back 
 to me an' I didn't expect 'em, because I knowed 
 as they'd find nothing outside." 
 
 " Where was it, then ? " asked the man he 
 was talking to. 
 
 " Why, I'd got a lot of fibre, you know, for 
 wet days an' Saturday afternoons, when we don't 
 go on the works, an' I alius hid my snout by 
 putting a little bit in the centre of a bit of rope 
 and twisting it up agen." 
 
 " I don't see anythin* clever about that," said
 
 THE SUSPECTS 211 
 
 the other drily, "they must ha' been mugs not 
 to tumble to it." 
 
 " Well, they are mugs ; didn't you know that ? 
 If they wasn't mugs, they wouldn't take on a job 
 like theirs. Why, a chap on the 'Twos' had 
 his snout in his hand all the time they was 
 searching him and they never found it, an' 
 another feller had a couple 0' quid in his cell 
 that they never tumbled to, 'cause it was smeared 
 over with wet brickdust and stood edgeways 
 agin the wall right under their very eyes." 
 
 "Who was it gev the game away — did you 
 hear?" asked the other. 
 
 "Nobody give it away as far as I know; it 
 give itself away by bein' carried too far. It was 
 all the fault of an adjectived fool that was rotten 
 with money and wanted all sorts of things 
 brought in. He wasn't satisfied with a bit of 
 snout, an' a chop or steak or bit of 'am, an' a 
 drop of port wine, but he wanted noosepapers an' 
 cigars and fancy truck of all kinds, an' the screw 
 took to bringin' of 'em in because there was any 
 amount of money knockin' about. They do say 
 that he was at the screw ter bring him in a 
 mouth-organ, but the screw struck at that, an' 
 told him that he barred mouth organs an' even 
 grand pianos."
 
 212 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 " It's alius the way," sighed the other ; " when 
 you've got a screw properly straightened there's 
 alius somebody spoils the game by being to 
 greedy or too careless." 
 
 "Look out, there's the Talking Fish got his 
 lamps fixed on us," remarked the same man 
 suddenly before the other man had time to 
 speak, and the conversation ended.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 "THE TALKING FISH" 
 
 THE Talking Fish was a warder who had a 
 watery, fish-like eye, and was very fond 
 of hearing himself talk. He was very strict in 
 chapel, and was always reporting men for talking 
 or otherwise misbehaving there. He was any- 
 thing but strict outside, however, and when he 
 was in charge of the exercise his watery 
 witticisms did much to enliven the monotony of 
 the hour's tramp in single file with big intervals. 
 " Now then, eighty-four," he would call out, 
 " don't wobble about like a paper man in a gale 
 of wind. We shall have to send you to the 
 knackers if you've got the staggers " ; or to a man 
 who had his cap on "at the slope" and was 
 marching with squared shoulders : " Very pretty, 
 seventy-two ; but you ain't in the militia now, so 
 we'll have your cap straight on your head, if 
 you please." Or again, to two prisoners talking: 
 " Now then, fifty-six an' fifty-seven, haven't you 
 told one another all about her yet ? If you've got 
 
 213
 
 214 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 so much to say to one another, you'd better ask 
 the governor to put you into one cell together." 
 
 "I've got my eye on you, forty-two," he 
 shouted to me one day. 
 
 " I'm not talking, sir," I said meekly. 
 
 "No, I know you ain't; but you're looking as 
 ifyou'dliketo." 
 
 All this warder's remarks, except in chapel, 
 were made in a bantering tone, which took all 
 the sting out of them, and he was very popular 
 generally, though he was recognized to be a 
 very dangerous character indeed to men who 
 happened to be anywhere in his neighbourhood 
 in chapel. 
 
 It was The Talking Fish who gave me the 
 only report I got in prison, and it was for 
 reading the Bible in chapel. It appeared 
 that there was an old prison regulation to the 
 effect that men should not read their books in 
 chapel except when the service was actually in 
 progress, but this was not on the rule-card 
 supplied to prisoners and I knew nothing about 
 it. Moreover, I had done it regularly for months 
 without anything being said to me. 
 
 " I shall report you," said the warder to me 
 as I was passing out of chapel. 
 
 I smiled and thought he was joking. I hadn't
 
 "THE TALKING FISH*' 2iS 
 
 said a word to anybody since I entered tlie 
 building. It is true that he had somewhat 
 arbitrarily ordered me to close the Bible I was 
 reading; but I had done so, and I couldn't con- 
 ceive that he could possibly found any report 
 on that. 
 
 The first intimation I had that he was in grim 
 earnest was on the next morning, when I was 
 prevented from going out to exercise with the 
 men on my landing, and was kept back from 
 chapel. While the rest of the men were in 
 chapel I was examined by the doctor, and at ten 
 o'clock I was brought before the deputy governor 
 who was temporarily acting as governor. After 
 he had heard the warder state that I was 
 reading a book in church, and on my admitting 
 that I was reading a foreign edition of the 
 Bible, he " admonished " me, which meant 
 that he was treating me just the same as he 
 would have done if I had been reported for any 
 offence but a very serious one ; for it is an un- 
 written law that a prisoner is entitled to be let 
 off with a caution from the first report against 
 him. I pointed out that the regulation was 
 quite unknown to me, as it was not mentioned 
 on the " Rule" card, and that it was not a case 
 where one's own sense of right or wrong would
 
 2i6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 be helpful ; but the deputy governor refused to 
 dismiss the charge, so I then said very respect- 
 fully that I wished to appeal against his decision 
 if there was any appeal allowed. He got angry 
 at this, and said : " You can see who the devil 
 you like, but it won't make any difference." 
 
 "All right; you can see the visiting com- 
 mittee," said the chief warder as he pushed me 
 out of the room. 
 
 About a month afterwards I was ushered 
 into the presence of about a couple of dozen 
 magistrates, and in reply to the chairman's 
 question as to what 1 had to complain about, I 
 said that I wished to complain of having been 
 made the subject of a frivolous complaint by one 
 of the warders. 
 
 " What was the subject of the report ? " asked 
 the chairman. 
 
 " Reading the Bible in church," I replied. 
 
 There was a stir of astonishment at this, and 
 I felt that every eye in the room was fixed upon 
 my face. 
 
 The chairman whispered to the governor, 
 who handed him a large blue sheet of paper. 
 
 " But what is your grievance ? " he asked, 
 turning to me. "You were not punished." 
 
 "With all respect, sir, an 'admonition' is a
 
 "THE TALKING FISH" 217 
 
 punishment, because it disposes of the only 
 chance I am supposed to get, and I should be 
 punished in earnest if I were reported again for 
 the most trivial infraction of the rules." 
 
 "But what do you wish us to do?" asked 
 the chairman. 
 
 " I wish you to order that the entry against 
 me shall be expunged," I said. 
 
 "The Home Secretary alone could do that," 
 replied the chairman, " and you may petition him 
 to that effect if you like. I do not think that we 
 have the power to do anything at all for you." 
 
 " I will undertake that the entry shall not be 
 counted against him," said the governor; "there 
 seems to have been some misunderstanding." 
 
 " Will that satisfy you ? " asked the chairman, 
 
 "Quite," I replied. " I have every confidence 
 that the governor will treat me fairly, and I do 
 not think that it would have been necessary to 
 trouble you at all if he had been here at the 
 time." 
 
 Then the deputy governor got up as I was 
 being hustled out, to explain that it was not he 
 but his predecessor who had admonished me. 
 
 It was all a regular storm in a teacup; but I 
 felt very bad about it at the time, and if the 
 governor had not caved in gracefully I would
 
 2i8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 certainly have kicked up as much dust over the 
 affair as my heels were capable of raising 
 
 I don't imagine that I should have got much 
 change out of petitioning the Home Secretary, 
 for some thousands of petitions are addressed to 
 him every year by prisoners, and I never heard 
 of one that elicited any other than the stereotyped 
 reply that "there do not appear to be any 
 grounds for granting the prisoner's request." 
 
 Every prisoner has the right to petition the 
 Home Secretary whenever he likes, in reason, 
 and this acts as a valuable safety valve, for 
 when in the petitioning stage of his imprison- 
 ment a man does not know that he might just 
 as well petition the old woman who sells apples 
 and oranges at Charing Cross.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 LIBRARIAN 
 
 WHEN I had six months still to serve before 
 my release the schoolmaster came to 
 my cell one day and asked me if I would like 
 to be appointed librarian. There was nothing I 
 would have liked better and I jumped at the 
 chance, so librarian of that hall I became, and 
 kept the job until the day of my release. 
 
 There was one drawback, and this was that 
 there would be no more chance of viewing foot- 
 ball and cricket matches in the summer evenings 
 and on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons all 
 the year round, but this was a minor considera- 
 tion in face of the great privileges attached to 
 my new job. My new cell was situate next to 
 the library, and I was seldom in it except after 
 supper and at meal times. All the rest of the 
 day I was either pottering about in the library, 
 or roaming about the hall with one or other of 
 the two schoolmasters changing the prisoners' 
 books. 
 
 219
 
 220 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 It takes a man who has been shut up in a cell 
 by himself for twenty-three hours of the twenty- 
 four for a month to appreciate the value of a 
 book to a prisoner. 
 
 Men who, when at liberty, never think of 
 picking up a book, and seldom read even a 
 newspaper, take full advantage of their library 
 privileges when in prison, and are clamorous to 
 get books with plenty of reading in them. 
 
 To the prisoner in the first stage the longed- 
 for day when he will have reached stage two and 
 be entitled to one book a week from the prison 
 library seems as if it will never come. When it 
 does at last arrive, and the creaking of the book- 
 basket heralds the approach of the schoolmaster, 
 expectation rises to fever heat, and the serving 
 of the two or three prisoners immediately 
 preceding seems to take an unconscionable time. 
 
 At last the basket is put down in front of the 
 cell door and the schoolmaster turns the key in 
 the lock. 
 
 " Give me your blue card," is all he says to 
 the prisoner. 
 
 He takes the library card, selects a book 
 from the basket, enters it, places book and card 
 on the cell table, and closes the door. This is 
 the usual procedure of the old-fashioned type of
 
 LIBRARIAN 221 
 
 schoolmaster, who generally does not consult 
 the taste of the prisoner at all, and contents 
 himself with seeing that the book he proposes to 
 issue is not already noted on the card as having 
 been issued before. My own first book was 
 dealt out to me in this manner, and it is no 
 exaggeration to say that I could almost have cried 
 with disappointment when I found that it was a 
 juvenile book of some three hundred pages of 
 large print. 
 
 Totally unsuited as the book was to a man of 
 my tastes and education, I could not afford to be 
 prodigal with it. I divided it into seven portions, 
 and successfully resisted the very strong temp- 
 tation to anticipate the daily allowance. I had a 
 hard job to get over Sunday without encroach- 
 ing on the unread portion, but I resolutely 
 set myself to continue the reading of the Bible, 
 which had been my recreation during the 
 previous month. 
 
 The old type of schoolmaster is, however, 
 dying out, and is being replaced by a class of 
 warder-schoolmasters who, if not so highly 
 educated, are more complaisant and take some 
 trouble to consult a prisoner's tastes. My chief, 
 when I became librarian, was one of the best of 
 this class. No trouble was too great for this
 
 222 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 really good fellow to take to give a prisoner the 
 class of book he desired. I have even known 
 him to take the library catalogue to hypercritical 
 prisoners so that they might make their own 
 selection, and at any time he would allow a 
 man to take his pick of the books in the 
 basket. 
 
 He lightened my own imprisonment con- 
 siderably before I became librarian by bringing 
 me (they are not kept in the library of the hall, 
 being general to the prison) books in French, 
 German, and Italian, of which there are a fair 
 number in this prison for the use of the 
 numerous foreigners who find their way there. 
 These foreign books were of a very mixed 
 character, ranging from bound volumes of a 
 German Sunday school magazine to Gustave 
 Droz's " Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe," which 
 must surely have got there by mistake. 
 
 After the second month of imprisonment a 
 prisoner may, unless he forfeits his stage privi- 
 leges by misconduct, exchange his book twice 
 a week, except bound volumes of magazines, 
 which have to last a week, and there are few 
 prisoners who do not avail themselves of this 
 privilege to the full. 
 
 The class of literature provided is somewhat
 
 LIBRARIAN 223 
 
 disappointing to an educated man. It consists 
 almost entirely of sensational fiction, the favourite 
 authors being Miss Braddon, Mrs. Henry Wood, 
 and Besant, in the order named; and of boys' 
 books of the Henty and Ballantyne type, with a 
 few bound volumes of the popular magazines. 
 The magazines in the library are " Good Words," 
 "Leisure Hour," "Strand," "London," "Wide 
 World " " Windsor,", " Chums," and " Boy's Own 
 Paper," with " The Lamp " for the special use of 
 Roman Catholics. 
 
 The most popular book in the whole prison 
 library, the book most eagerly sought after and 
 appealing to almost every class of prisoner, was 
 undoubtedly the "London Magazine"; and all 
 the magazines are much sought after, with the 
 exception of the "Leisure Hour" and "Good 
 Words." Most prisoners will not have the two 
 latter magazines at any price if they can help 
 it, under the mistaken impression that they are 
 mainly composed of religious or semi-religious 
 reading. 
 
 Prisoners are terribly afraid of any reading 
 with a suggestion of religion in it. An an illus- 
 tration of this, I may mention that Grant Allen's 
 " Tents of Shem " was given to a man who was 
 choked off by the title, and preferred to go three
 
 224 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 days without any reading at all rather than 
 tackle it. 
 
 "Give us something that I can read, please 
 sir," he said pathetically to the schoolmaster on 
 the next changing day. 
 
 "Why, what's the matter with this?" asked 
 the astonished schoolmaster, holding up the 
 book named. 
 
 "Oh," replied the man with disgust in his 
 tone, "I'd rather spend my time tramping round 
 my cell than in readin' any o' your religious 
 books." 
 
 "But this is not religious," protested the 
 schoolmaster; "it is a novel by Grant Allen, 
 and a very interesting novel too." 
 
 " Oh, you don't kid me," retorted the prisoner 
 with a leer. " I know all about Shem-— read 
 about 'm, an' 'Am and Japhet too, in the Bible 
 when I was a nipper. Give us a Braddon." 
 
 "Miss Braddon! Miss Braddon!" is the 
 continual cry, and the prison commissioners 
 must be very good customers indeed to that 
 lady's publishers. 
 
 Another prisoner kept " Ivanhoe" in his cell 
 for four days, including a Sunday, because he 
 " did not fancy the title." 
 
 Of solid reading and of classical novels there
 
 LIBRARIAN 225 
 
 is poor provision. There were only odd volumes 
 of Scott, Dickens, Thackeray and Fenimore 
 Cooper; "Monte Christo" was the sole repre- 
 sentative of Dumas ; and there was nothing at all 
 by George Eliot or Meredith. There was not a 
 single volume of Carlyle ; practically no standard 
 works of History, Biography and Travel ; and 
 the supply of poetry was limited to a few odd 
 volumes. Such books as "Jane Eyre" and 
 " Tom Brown's School Days," which one would 
 expect to find in any library, were conspicuous 
 by their absence. 
 
 I drew the schoolmaster's attention to many 
 of these deficiencies, and things may be on a 
 better footing now ; but the state of the library in 
 my time was just as I have written it. The 
 magazines are " censored" before being put into 
 circulation, and any articles that it is considered 
 that prisoners ought not to read are cut out. 
 The greatest sufferer in this respect is "The 
 Wide World"; indeed, so much was cut out of 
 the last volumes received before my discharge 
 as to constitute a very serious mutilation. Sir 
 Arthur Conan Doyle's stories were excised from 
 " The Strand " with few exceptions, and even 
 The "Leisure Hour" and "Good Words" did 
 not escape. 
 Q
 
 226 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 It is difficult to see any system in these 
 mutilations, for two very objectionable articles 
 indeed, from the prison point of view, were 
 allowed to remain in " The London Magazine " for 
 1904. These articles were written by a criminal, 
 and detailed the methods he followed in com- 
 mitting some crimes for which he was never 
 brought to account, and also gave instances of 
 criminals getting the better of detectives. 
 Surely, if there is any reason at all in sub-editing 
 the magazines for prison reading, these articles 
 should have been scissored ; but there they were 
 in my time, and there they are, probably, to 
 this day. 
 
 Some of the schoolmasters allow prisoners 
 to put their names down for certain books. Both 
 the schoolmasters in my hall did so ; and as a 
 consequence there was always a waiting-list 
 for certain books. There were two copies of 
 "Monte Christo" in our library, and the book 
 was always engaged half a dozen deep ; and, as 
 some evidence of the number of old soldiers who 
 find their way to prison it may be mentioned that 
 there were always more than a dozen waiting 
 their turn for each of the two copies of " Cassell's 
 History of the Boer War," which seemed to be 
 almost exclusively read by men who had served
 
 LIBRARIAN 
 
 ■yi 
 
 ^/ 
 
 in that campaign. The bound volumes of " The 
 London Magazine" and "Chums" had also a 
 waiting-list sometimes. 
 
 As librarian I had excellent opportunities of 
 conversing with and studying the prisoners in 
 my hall, and I availed myself to the utmost of 
 my chances in this direction. What struck me 
 most, I think, on our rounds with the book- 
 basket was the few prisoners whom we caught 
 at work when the cell doors were opened. For 
 the most part they were in the act of walking 
 listlessly about the cell when discovered, as if 
 they were so excited at the prospect of getting 
 another book to replace the one that they had 
 probably finished a couple of days before that 
 they could do nothing but feverishly wait for it. 
 Another thing that obtruded itself on my notice 
 was the weakness that most prisoners have for 
 pretending to be what they are not. It is no 
 uncommon thing to find the whole of the books 
 of an educational character, which the prisoners 
 may have possession of in addition to the 
 ordinary library book, in the cells of men who 
 cannot understand them and have no intention 
 of trying to understand them. Such men have 
 applied for the books and got them to the 
 detriment of men who w^ould really make proper
 
 228 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 use of them, simply to give themselves an air of 
 superiority. A man of this sort really " swanked " 
 me into the belief that he was an exceptionally 
 well-educated man. When we went round with 
 the book-basket he would always ask for a 
 foreign book, and I consequently took some 
 interest in seeing that there was always a foreign 
 book for him. The language did not seem to 
 matter to him ; he was satisfied if he could get 
 a book in any language that wasn't English, and 
 I got to look upon him as being a linguist 
 of somewhat exceptional ability, though I never 
 spoke to him in a foreign language, as the 
 schoolmaster had forbidden me to speak to 
 any prisoner in any language but English, un- 
 less I was required to act as interpreter, 
 which was often the case. One day I hadn't 
 got a foreign book that this prisoner had not 
 already had, and I asked the schoolmaster to 
 bring one over from the prison office, where 
 the books common to the whole prison were 
 kept. 
 
 "Oh give him one of those he has had 
 already," said the schoolmaster indifferently. 
 
 This was a staggerer to me, for if there is 
 one thing that a schoolmaster has to be careful 
 of, it is not to give a prisoner a book which he
 
 LIBRARIAN 229 
 
 has already had, unless of course he specially 
 asks for it. 
 
 "Give him one he has already had!" I 
 gasped. 
 
 " Yes," he replied, enjoying my mystification, 
 "he won't mind a bit." 
 
 " I'll bet he will mind," I retorted ; " he doesn't 
 seem to be one of the sort that takes oppression 
 lying down." 
 
 "Quite right — he isn't," rejoined the school- 
 master smiling, "but he won't mind for all that. 
 He won't know the difference, in fact, because he 
 can't read in any language, not even English. 
 He has these foreign books because he thinks it 
 looks well. The picture-books that we have 
 for prisoners who can't read are no use to him, 
 for he has had them over and over again until he 
 is sick at the sight of them."
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 "SCHOLARS" 
 
 ONE would think, seeing that compulsory 
 education has been the rule for nearly 
 forty years, that persons who cannot read and 
 write are somewhat difficult to find. This is 
 not the case in prison anyway, or it wasn't at 
 Wormwood Scrubs in my time, for there were 
 quite a number of men always on the picture- 
 book list, and many others who could only read 
 very easy books, for whom "The Children's 
 Friend" and "The Prize," and books of the 
 same class, were provided. It was to me a 
 curious circumstance that nearly all these men 
 were ashamed of their illiteracy, and took every 
 opportunity that offered of making excuses 
 for it. 
 
 There were no less than twelve prisoners in 
 my hall at one time who claimed to have had a 
 university education, and I do not think that 
 
 in any one case of these tw^elve the claim was 
 
 230
 
 "SCHOLARS" 231 
 
 well founded. There were at least a couple of 
 bond fide ex-university men in the hall, and very 
 likely more, but these are not reckoned in the 
 twelve, as they never made any claim to be 
 better educated than their fellows, and if they 
 did things that betrayed their education they 
 did them unobtrusively. 
 
 One of the twelve claimed to be a Bachelor of 
 Music of Cambridge at one time, and several 
 months afterwards I overheard him telling 
 another prisoner that he was a Bachelor of 
 Medicine of London. That he was neither, nor 
 a university man of any sort, I inferred from the 
 fact that he couldn't read a verse out of the 
 Greek Testament he had got by special applica- 
 tion. Inability to read a Greek Testament is 
 not, of course, conclusive evidence against any 
 one claiming a university degree, for many 
 degrees can now be got without a knowledge of 
 Greek ; but the fact that a man procures a book 
 which he is not able to read and pretends that 
 he can read it fluently is a pretty safe indication 
 that his pretensions to a university education 
 are mere bounce. I wondered why the assistant- 
 chaplain had looked so sceptical, and had for- 
 borne to ask me for particulars when, in answer 
 to his questions as to my education, I had told
 
 232 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 him that I had had a university training ; but I 
 knew the reason before I had been librarian 
 long — he met so many university men in the 
 course of this duty of fixing the degree of a 
 prisoner's education that he accepted the state- 
 ment for what it was worth and said nothing 
 about it. 
 
 I found, too, that " journalists " were" almost 
 as plentiful as university men, and that their 
 claims were about as well founded. I met 
 altogether eleven "journalists" in gaol; but 
 they all of them seemed to have no better reason 
 for so describing themselves than some ladies 
 of a certain class have for describing themselves 
 as " actresses." 
 
 One particular "journalist" was serving his 
 sixth conviction, his offence being the theft of 
 a cash-box from a public-house where he was 
 in service as barman. On my remarking that 
 serving behind a bar was strange work for a 
 journalist to turn his hand to, he told me that he 
 had only adopted such work temporarily until a 
 fitting journalistic job turned up. He must have 
 often been without employment, and have been 
 " called to the bar," on each occasion, inasmuch 
 as the warder told me that his other five con- 
 victions were all for thefts while occupying the
 
 "SCHOLARS" 2S3 
 
 position of barman. This man got through his 
 "hard labour" very comfortably by painting 
 the words " Post Office Notices " on the pieces 
 of wood which may be seen holding the notices 
 in any post-office. When he was about to be 
 discharged he told the chaplain that he could 
 earn a decent living by painting small pictures 
 and selling them to the dealers, and the chaplain 
 gave him a complete outfit to start him in this 
 line. I have watched the papers pretty closely 
 since my discharge to see how many of my old 
 prison acquaintances are going back, and I have 
 not seen, so far, that he has been practising his 
 peculiar form of "journalism " again, so am 
 hoping that the painting outfit has turned up 
 trumps. 
 
 Another "journalist," who had seven previous 
 convictions "behind " him, including two terms 
 of penal servitude, amused us by his affected 
 aristocratic speech and the absurd airs he put 
 on. He used to address me as " my good man," 
 and he would talk to the schoolmaster as if 
 the prison officer was his menial servant. The 
 schoolmaster was a very sensible sort of fellow, 
 and took no notice of people like this, but we 
 often used to laugh over them when we were in 
 the privacy of the library. This particular man
 
 234 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 was a " bunco steerer " or confidence trick man 
 by profession, and the schoolmaster told me 
 that he was very clever at the game too, though 
 how people could be found who would be taken 
 in by him passes my comprehension.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 SEARCHES 
 
 WHEN going round with the books on one 
 occasion, I witnessed the performance 
 of a very clever trick by a prisoner. Men who 
 are entitled to good conduct privileges are 
 allowed to have their cell doors open for two 
 hours on alternate afternoons, Saturdays and 
 Sundays excepted, and on these occasions much 
 is done that is not contemplated by the prison 
 regulations. Such prisoners as have managed to 
 make a shaving instrument, and prisoners make 
 practicable razors out of many things, gener- 
 ally takes advantage of this open-door time to 
 sharpen his " razor " on the slate lintel. On this 
 occasion the doors on the right side of number 
 two landing were open — when the doors on 
 one side of a landing are open the doors on the 
 opposite side are always kept closed — and a 
 principal warder going along the top landing on 
 the opposite side, and happening to look down, 
 saw a man on the " Twos " busily engaged in the 
 
 235
 
 2^6 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 razor-sharpening process. He quickly descended, 
 and presently, in company with the warder on 
 duty on the "Twos," he paid that prisoner a 
 surprise visit in the full confidence that he would 
 find material for a report. 
 
 They found the prisoner busily engaged in 
 sewing his mail-bag, and at once made him strip 
 to the buff. Having thoroughly searched his 
 clothing after he had taken it off, they sent the 
 prisoner on to the landing to put it on again 
 while they turned the cell inside out, but a 
 minute search failed to bring to light anything 
 incriminating. The principal warder came to 
 the conclusion that he had mistaken the cell, and 
 told the warder accompan3nng him that they 
 would search the cells on either side of it, and 
 the warder went to the cell next door on the left 
 to tell the prisoner to strip. The principal 
 warder was turning away to follow him, when 
 the prisoner whom he had just searched 
 addressed a question to him, and he stopped to 
 answer it, I was at the next-door cell on the 
 right with the book-basket, and I distinctly saw 
 the prisoner edge gradually up to the principal 
 as he stood just outside the doorway and take 
 something from the pocket of that officer's 
 jacket. When we moved up to the cell to
 
 SEARCHES 23; 
 
 change the prisoner's book, the principal warder 
 and the warder who accompanied him were 
 searching the next-door cell further on. The 
 schoolmaster, wishing to speak to the principal 
 warder, went into this cell, and left us with the 
 book-basket standing at the door of the cell that 
 had been searched. 
 
 Taking advantage of the opportunity, I 
 inquired what had been the matter. 
 
 "Why," replied the searched man with a 
 chuckle, "I was rubbin' a 'chiv' (knife) on the 
 doorstep when the principal spotted me from the 
 ' Fours.' I see him going along, and tumbled as 
 he'd be here to see me directly, so I was going 
 to chuck the chiv out of the vent'lator; but there 
 was an exercise out in the yard, and the screws 
 would have seen it, so that was no good ; so I 
 put it up my sleeve and went on with my work, 
 trusting to luck. When the principal came in, 
 he stood so close to me while he was asking me 
 where was the knife he had seen me sharpening 
 that I thought at once that 1 might as well shove 
 the chiv into his pocket, an' I done it at once. I 
 didn't expect as I should be able to get it out 
 again, but I thought as I'd try when he was goin' 
 away to the next cell ; so just as he was turnin' 
 away and had his side pocket just under my nose,
 
 238 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I arsks him if he thought as it 'ud be any good 
 me makin' an application to the governor for a job 
 out, and as he was tellin' me that he thought as 
 I'd better wait a week or two, I just dipped my 
 hook (hand) in and got it again. I never " 
 
 What he was going to say further I don't 
 know, as just then the schoolmaster came back 
 and said : " I can't go away for a minute without 
 you fellows start talking. Just stand away from 
 one another, and keep your mouths shut. If the 
 deputy governor or the chief warder happened 
 to see you I should get into a nice old row." 
 
 It is surprising what risks and trouble a 
 prisoner will take to get hold of something with 
 which they can take the hair off their faces. The 
 "knife" this prisoner so cleverly concealed on 
 the principal warder's person was simply a 
 shaped bit of tin which is lent to prisoners on 
 Thursdays at dinner-time to cut up their meat, 
 and the kind of shave that could be got by its aid 
 can be easily imagined. 
 
 Some of the men have to use real knives for 
 their work, and these have to be looked after 
 very strictly indeed. Should one be missing, it 
 is regarded as being a very serious matter, and 
 the search for it is very strict. On an occasion 
 such as this no man in the hall is allowed to
 
 SEARCHES 239 
 
 leave his cell, excepting such cleaners as are 
 absolutely necessary to collect slops and carry 
 the meals round, and these men are locked up 
 again as soon as these duties are performed. 
 The ordinary cleaning and the whole routine 
 work of the hall is entirely suspended, the 
 prisoners not being allowed to take in their 
 work until the search is over, so that sometimes 
 a whole day is spent in absoluteidleness. There 
 is no chapel and no exercise, so that these 
 searches are a severe punishment to every one in 
 the hall, and public opinion is very much against 
 any man doing anything that will lead to one. 
 
 There are periodical searches by the warder 
 in charge of the landing, usually about once a 
 fortnight, but these are largely a matter of form. 
 They generally took place in the afternoon, and 
 the first intimation a prisoner had of them was 
 when the warder, who was always accompanied 
 by an assistant-warder, threw open the cell door 
 and ordered the inmate to take his bedding out- 
 side the cell, and hang it on the rail. This done, 
 the assistant-warder examined the bedding by 
 passing his hand through each fold of the bed- 
 clothes, while the prisoner took off his coat and 
 waistcoat and handed them to the warder, who 
 examined them and threw them on the floor.
 
 240 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The prisoner then held up his arms, and the 
 warder ran his hands over him to make sure 
 that he had nothing concealed about him. 
 Finally the two warders looked round the cell, 
 flapped the ventilator, and poked an iron searcher 
 into the warm-air grating. 
 
 The whole operation did not take more than 
 a couple of minutes, and it was certainly not 
 effectual in discovering anything that a prisoner 
 took any pains to hide. I myself kept pen and 
 ink, strictly forbidden, in my cell for many 
 months without its ever being discovered, and 
 used the same pen and ink every day without 
 being once detected. My inkpot was a tailor's 
 thimble stuck into a piece of soap cut in halves, 
 one half being made to fit on the other so that 
 the whole looked like a solid piece of soap, not- 
 withstanding the fact that the thimble, full of ink, 
 was inside. This piece of soap always stood on 
 my shelf in the place allotted to soap, where it 
 could be seen by anybody as soon as they 
 entered the cell. The pen-nib occupied a recess 
 made for it in the soap next to the inkwell. 
 When I wanted to write, I would tie the pen-nib 
 on to the handle of my wooden spoon, which was 
 quite round, with a piece of thread, and set to 
 work on the sanitary paper. When the ink-stand
 
 SEARCHES 241 
 
 wanted replenishing and I was not entitled to 
 write a letter, I would apply to the governor 
 for permission to write a petition to the Home 
 Secretary, which was given as a matter of course, 
 and then pen and ink were supplied to me and I 
 replenished my little inkwell out of the warder's 
 bottle. I sent, I think, fifteen petitions to the 
 Home Secretary during my imprisonment, and 
 in every case the moving power was my want of 
 ink, and not any feeling that I had a grievance 
 that wanted redressing. I wrote a novel in this 
 way, but I was deprived of the manuscript a 
 week or two before my discharge because I was 
 fool enough to tell another prisoner that I had 
 got it. This prisoner assured me solemnly that 
 the warder did not get an}' information from him ; 
 but I cannot see how else he could have got it, 
 as I told no one else. At any rate the warder 
 came to me and asked me point blank for the 
 manuscript, saying, handsomely enough, that he 
 didn't want to deprive me of it, but that he 
 would himself get into a row if it came to other 
 ears that such a thing was in existence, and that 
 he didn't care to run the risk. He said at first 
 that he would give me the stuff back again on 
 the day before I went out ; but he afterwards 
 cried off that bargain on the ground that an
 
 242 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 order had been given out that greater strictness 
 must be used in searching prisoners before 
 discharge to see that they carried no letters for 
 outside, and that the manuscript would certainly 
 be discovered if he gave it back to me. It may 
 be that I could have had it forwarded to me for 
 a consideration, but I did not think of that at the 
 time, and when I did venture to mention the 
 subject to the warder some time afterwards, and 
 just before my discharge, he said that he had 
 destroyed it. I believe that it would have been 
 a successful novel, which is not altogether 
 tantamount to saying that it was a good one, 
 but I have never had the heart to re-write it; 
 indeed, I doubt if I could re-write it. Original 
 ideas do not come so freely outside as they did 
 in the calm atmosphere of the prison cell, and 
 felicities of expression do not flow so easily 
 from the pen. But although the labour was lost, 
 I cannot say that it was wasted, for the writing 
 of that novel provided me with many hours of 
 happiness. 
 
 In the last few months of my imprisonment 
 I sat as a model for one of the apostles. I 
 forget which one it was, but I fancy that it was 
 Saint Luke. The artist was a prisoner, and a 
 very clever prisoner too. He painted a set of
 
 ^ 
 
 SEARCHES 243 
 
 full-length pictures of the twelve apostles for 
 the chapel, while another artistic prisoner did a 
 large canvas of Jerusalem or something of that 
 sort, for an altar-piece. Painting pictures is 
 work, of course, but I don't think that anybody 
 would go so far as to say that it is the sort of 
 hard labour contemplated by the prison regula- 
 tions. I never knew the name of the man who 
 did the altar-piece, so I cannot say how he has 
 gone on since, but the man who did the apostles 
 is now doing five years' penal servitude. As 
 far as I could judge, he was not only an able 
 painter but a man of commanding ability in 
 other directions, and it is quite beyond me to 
 find any excuse whatever for such a man em- 
 bracing dishonesty as a profession. I think 
 that there must be some sort of fascination about 
 crime that appeals to men of a certain tempera- 
 ment, and that such men become criminals or at 
 any rate remain criminals, for the sake of the 
 sport they get by setting their wits against the 
 wits of the police and because they enjoy being 
 hunted.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 THE COMPLETE BURGLAR 
 
 THERE was a professional burglar em- 
 ployed as a cleaner on my landing who 
 used to boast openly that, although he had been 
 getting a good living " on the cross " for the 
 past fifteen years, he was only then serving his 
 second term of imprisonment, and that he had 
 not been properly and squarely " copped " on 
 either of those occasions. On my remarking to 
 him one day that he appeared to have been 
 exceptionally lucky, as there were not many who 
 got off so lightly, he remarked that there were 
 plenty of men who got off better, and that he 
 knew one who had been living by burglary for 
 something like twenty years without ever having 
 seen the inside of a prison. 
 
 " How do you account for that ?" I asked. 
 
 " There's only one way of accounting for it," 
 he replied, " and that is that he works by himself, 
 never talks about business matters to a woman> 
 
 244
 
 THE COMPLETE BURGLAR 245 
 
 and doesn't drink. If I had always been as care- 
 ful, I shouldn't have been landed either. I got 
 my first dose for housebreaking — six months it 
 was — through a woman rounding on me; and 
 this nine months that I'm doing now I got 
 through being taken up for being drunk and 
 disorderly, and having housebreaking tools on 
 me when I was searched at the station." 
 
 I give this story just as it was told to me, and 
 it must be taken with reserve ; but I really do 
 not see why a man could not carry on business 
 as a burglar for some considerable time if he 
 worked alone, took nothing that could be 
 positively identified, and let no woman into his 
 secrets. All the same, I must say that I person- 
 ally do not believe for a moment that any 
 burglar lived by burglary for twenty years and 
 went scot free.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 THE SUICIDE 
 
 AN event happened just after my appoint- 
 ment as librarian that made a deep im- 
 pression on me. One morning on unlocking 
 there seemed to be something uncanny in the 
 air; the warders seemed to open the cell doors 
 with less clatter and bang than usual, the cleaners 
 were more subdued than ordinary, and a general 
 gloom seemed to take possession of everybody. 
 Then, at chapel, the word went round until 
 every one there knew that in one of the first cells 
 opened in "A" Hall that morning the inmate 
 was discovered hanging to the iron peg that was 
 placed in the wall for the towel to hang on. He 
 was stiff and cold when discovered, and must have 
 been dead for some hours. The strange thing 
 about this suicide, the thing that impressed me 
 more than anything else, was the fact that the 
 man was within a short time of his release, and I 
 pondered over the probable motives that led 
 him to the act of self destruction until I began 
 
 246
 
 THE SUICIDE 247 
 
 to fear that I was getting into a very morbid 
 frame of mind myself 
 
 It was book-changing day that day, and we 
 started on our rounds immediately after chapel. 
 When we got to the fatal cell, the schoolmaster, 
 either because he had not been told or through 
 inadvertence, pushed his key in the lock and 
 threw the door open in the usual way. The 
 corpse was there lying on the floor, waiting for 
 the coroner's officer to see it, I suppose, and 
 round its neck, cutting into the flesh, was the 
 piece of tarred twine that had sufficed to strangle 
 him. On the table, open at the last page just as 
 he had finished reading it, was his library book, 
 and the title of that library book was "To the 
 Bitter End." 
 
 We shrank back horror-struck, the school- 
 master quickly closed the door, and we passed 
 on ; but there was none of the chaff and gossip 
 that made book-changing days so enjoyable on 
 that day. 
 
 Next morning I was at exercise when a 
 number of men from outside passed across the 
 exercise ground on their way to the hall. 
 
 " Look at the visiting committee," said the 
 
 man behind me. 
 
 "Visiting committee be blowed," said the
 
 248 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 man behind him, " that's no visiting committee. 
 The visiting committee are gentlemen, an'nothin' 
 like that adjectived lot. They're oney jurymen ; 
 anybody can see that." 
 
 Coroners' juries were often seen in prison, 
 for even if a prisoner dies from natural causes 
 an inquest has to be held on his remains, and 
 to my eyes the gentlemen composing them 
 looked every bit as respectable as the visiting 
 magistrates ; but that prisoner saw some subtle 
 difference that was not apparent to me. 
 
 The immediate consequence of this suicide 
 was that all the iron pins were removed and 
 replaced by wooden ones fixed so loosely into 
 the wall as to give way as soon as any weight 
 was hung on them; but I think that there 
 still remained plenty of ways for a prisoner 
 to commit self-destruction if determined on it. 
 
 This was the only case of suicide that 
 occurred in the prison, as far as I know, whilst 
 I was there, but there were man}' attempts. A 
 great many of these attempts, perhaps every one 
 of them, were made in a half-hearted manner and 
 ought not to be taken seriously, so it is not fair 
 to assume that prison discipline is conducive to 
 suicide. Indeed, if the motives that cover 
 suicides and attempts at suicide in prisons
 
 THE SUICIDE 249 
 
 could be laid bare, it would be found, I think, 
 that it is despair of the future more than dis- 
 comfort in the present that is the moving cause. 
 To any man who is not a professional criminal 
 and has no intention of becoming one, the future 
 must of necessity look sombre, and constant 
 brooding on it may well beget the conviction 
 that life is not worth living; but I have no 
 sympathy with any man who harbours the 
 thought of escaping the greater part of the 
 penalty of his misdeeds in this way. The period 
 of imprisonment is only the overture to the 
 punishment a convicted man who does not 
 belong to the regular criminal classes has to 
 undergo, and I believe in a man facing the whole 
 of the music his actions have produced and not 
 the overture only. No matter what social 
 position a man may occupy before his con- 
 viction, he will surely find that the actual 
 imprisonment is but a very small part of his 
 punishment ; but the man of good social position 
 will never finish his punishment as long as he 
 lives, while the ex-prisoner of the working and 
 lower-middle classes will get rid of the prison 
 stigma in the course of years.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 THE DOCTOR 
 
 BEFORE leaving the subject of suicide, I 
 may say that though the idea never 
 entered my head, the doctors at Wormwood 
 Scrubs, like the medical officer at Brixton, 
 seemed to think that I had a tendency that way. 
 I gathered this much from a warder, who told 
 me, after I became quite an old hand, that when 
 I first entered the prison the warders had 
 instructions to watch me very closely, and that 
 this close watch on my actions was only relaxed 
 after I had got into the habit of seeing the 
 doctor two or three times every week. 
 
 I should never have had to trouble the doctor 
 after the first time of seeing him had it not been 
 for prison red tape; for I enjoyed very good 
 health when I entered the prison, and got into a 
 better physical state with every day I remained 
 there. The fact was that in my early days in 
 prison I found that my digestive apparatus was 
 not strong enough to cope with the prison food, 
 
 250
 
 THE DOCTOR 251 
 
 which is the experience of most people of 
 middle age who go to prison for the first time. 
 I accordingly put my name down to see the 
 doctor with the intention of asking him to give 
 me something that would take some of the 
 weight off my unfortunate stomach. In due 
 course I was visited by the assistant medical 
 officer, who does most of the work in the prison 
 itself, the medical officer finding most of his 
 work in the hospital, and he ordered me the 
 treatment usually given to almost every prisoner 
 when he applies to see the doctor for the first 
 time, so that he shall not be unduly encouraged 
 to see him a second time I suppose : that is to 
 say that I got a dose of general service purgative 
 mixture and "a day's rest in cell." 
 
 The man who invented that " day's rest in 
 cell " was a bit of a genius. It meant that the 
 prisoner's work was taken away from him ; he 
 was not allowed to go out to exercise, and not 
 allowed to leave his cell at all. As all 
 prisoners who apply to see the doctor are kept 
 back from chapel, the unfortunate prisoner who 
 got "a day's rest in cell" as a prescription 
 was in for a day's severe punishment. No doubt 
 the prescription was intended as some sort of 
 punishment for asking to see the doctor
 
 252 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 unnecessarily, but this was never admitted, as it 
 would look so inhuman if it got about outside. 
 The assistant medical officer had so much to do 
 that he was not able to devote much time to 
 each individual prisoner, so that it very often 
 came about that a man who really had good reason 
 for seeing the doctor, and did not need purgative 
 medicine, got treated in the same way as those 
 whose illness only existed in their imagination. 
 
 Whether I had good reason for seeing the 
 doctor or not, as seen from the doctor's point of 
 view, I do not know ; but I thought myself that 
 there was reason enough and I was determined 
 not to be choked off" by the " day's rest in cell " 
 dodge. 
 
 I accordingly put down to see him again on 
 the following day, and when he came to see me 
 I told him good-humouredly that I was ready to 
 put up with another " day's rest in cell " if he 
 thought it necessary before listening to what I 
 had to say ; but that I should put down my 
 name to see him again on the day after. 
 
 "Well, go ahead," he replied smiling; "but 
 cut it as short as you can, for I have a lot of 
 work to do before lunch-time." 
 
 When I explained that I couldn't digest the 
 food very well, he said that he didn't expect that
 
 THE DOCTOR 253 
 
 J could or would be able to until I got used to 
 it, and he recommended me to eat as little as 
 possible for the time being in preference to 
 taking drugs. 
 
 I demurred to this, and he then ordered me 
 six rhubarb tabloids, which I found so efficacious 
 that I put down to see him again two days 
 afterwards when I had used them up, and asked 
 him to give me a week's supply all in a lump. 
 
 He told me, in reply to this request, that the 
 regulations did not permit him to give me more 
 than two days' supply at once, and that if I 
 wanted to continue using the tabloids I would 
 have to see him every other day. He strongly 
 advised me not to make a habit of taking the 
 tabloids ; but they took away all the digestive 
 discomfort in such a thorough manner that I 
 disregarded his advice and took them practically 
 all the time I was in the prison. 
 
 The procedure I had to go through to get 
 those six tabloids twice a week bordered on the 
 ridiculous. When the cell door was opened at 
 six o'clock in the morning the warder in charge 
 of the landing walked from cell to cell with a 
 slate and pencil in his hands, repeating the 
 formula: " Any applications?" This is the time 
 to speak if one wants to write a letter, receive
 
 254 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 a visit, or see the governor, doctor, or chap- 
 lain. " Doctor," I would ejaculate as the warder 
 came up. 
 
 " Righto," he would reply as he entered the 
 number of my cell on his slate under the 
 heading " Medical officer." 
 
 When he had gone round the whole of the 
 cells on his landing, he would come back to mine 
 and hang a card on the door with the word 
 " Surgeon " on it, which was an intimation that I 
 was not to be let out to go to chapel, or to 
 exercise either until the doctor had seen me. 
 
 About ten or half-past the warder in charge 
 of the ground floor, whose duty it was to 
 go round with the doctor, would bang open my 
 door and shout " Medical officer." When this 
 happened, I was supposed to place my stool in 
 the centre of the cell and stand "at attention" 
 against the wall near the door. In another 
 moment the assistant-surgeon, carrying a memo- 
 randum book in his hand, would bounce into the 
 cell and ask in a curiously high-pitched voice, 
 "What is your name?" He never failed to ask 
 this question right up to the last time I saw him, 
 which was on the day before my discharge, 
 though after the first few times he must have 
 known my name almost as well as I knew mj'self.
 
 THE DOCTOR 255 
 
 I used to give my name at first, but 1 
 gradually got into the habit of leaving the name 
 out as a useless formality, and replying to the 
 question by merely saying " Tabloids." 
 
 Then he would nod his head, make an entry 
 in his book, and depart, the tabloids being 
 brought to me by the dispenser about dinner- 
 time. 
 
 At intervals he would remonstrate with me, 
 and his remonstrances were always in the same 
 terms, thus : " You know that this tabloid habit 
 of yours is all fudge, of course. Don't you think 
 that you have had enough of them?" 
 
 " Possibly," I would reply, " but, fudge or 
 not, I am certain that they do me good and 
 that I could not digest the food without them," 
 
 "All fancy," he would retort. " If you would 
 only make up your mind to digest the food you 
 could do it right enough. Now just try this faith 
 cure prescription, will you?" 
 
 Just by way of humouring him I would do 
 without the tabloids for a few days, and then 
 the same routine would commence over again. 
 
 There was a young doctor from somewhere 
 outside who used to deputize for the assistant- 
 surgeon when he was away or doing the duty 
 of the surgeon, and this medico was vastly
 
 256 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 amused at my perseverence in the matter of 
 these tabloids. On one occasion when he was 
 so acting, I had no tabloids for a whole week. 
 One day as I was going from cell to cell exchang- 
 ing the prisoners' library books, I ran up against 
 the doctor as he was going his rounds. When 
 he saw me he started back as if astounded. 
 
 " What ! " he exclaimed, " are you still alive ? 
 This is marvellous ! Why, you haven't had any 
 tabloids for a whole week. You must have some 
 at once, or the consequences may be serious." 
 
 And he ordered me six without consulting 
 my inclinations at all. 
 
 When he was doing duty on another occa- 
 sion I was off tabloids again and he met me on 
 the stairs. 
 
 " Don't you want any tabloids ?" he asked. 
 
 I replied to the effect that I did not. 
 
 "Oh, do have some," he pleaded with mock 
 earnestness, "I shall be so unhappy if you 
 don't." 
 
 I have the most pleasant recollections of 
 my dealings with prison doctors all round, 
 even if they did regard me as a hopeless 
 hypochondriac, which I certainly am not; but 
 I came across several instances of other 
 prisoners having differences of opinion with them.
 
 THE DOCTOR 257 
 
 One of them was a next-door neighbour of 
 mine. He had been in prison nearly eighteen 
 months and had never troubled the doctor the 
 whole time. Feeling somewhat run down, he 
 asked the assistant-surgeon one day to give him 
 a tonic. The doctor nodded his head, which the 
 man took as a sign that his request would be 
 granted ; but when the dispenser came round, the 
 prisoner found that he had only been ordered 
 the inevitable white mixture, as it was called. 
 
 "I don't want that," he protested, "my 
 bowels are perfectly regular." 
 
 "You've got to take it, or be reported," 
 insisted the dispenser. 
 
 The man declined to take it, and, with a view 
 to hedging against the report that he thought 
 was coming, he made a complaint next day to the 
 governor. The governor directed the surgeon 
 himself to examine the man, and the surgeon 
 took him into the hospital for the purpose of 
 keeping him under observation. He was dis- 
 charged from hospital in three days' time 
 without the tonic, but was excused the white 
 mixture. 
 
 Another prisoner scored right royally off the 
 doctors. He was an old hand who knew all 
 there was to know about prison life and 
 s
 
 258 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 prisoners' " rights." There was no doubt as to 
 his being in ill-health for he was suffering from 
 tubercle of the lung ; but tuberculous prisoners 
 are not taken into the hospital as long as they 
 are able to move about, and he was put into the 
 prison proper. 
 
 This man told the assistant-surgeon point 
 blank that a man in his condition ought to be 
 taken into hospital under the prison regula- 
 tions, but the assistant-surgeon refused to see 
 things in that light. 
 
 Then the prisoner appealed to the surgeon, 
 who also disagreed with him. 
 
 Next he tried to enlist the sympathy of the 
 governor, but didn't succeed. 
 
 Finally he appealed to the visiting magistrates 
 and won a modified victory, for it was ordered 
 that he should do the remainder of his imprison- 
 ment in alternate periods of six weeks in the 
 hospital, and six weeks in the prison proper.
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 THE CANTANKEROUS 
 
 THIS man was a most cantankerous fellow, 
 and got his own way in almost everything 
 by dint of perseverance. He fell foul of the 
 schoolmaster because he could not get just 
 exactly what books he wanted at the time he 
 wanted them. When he complained to the 
 chaplain, and the chaplain decided that he had 
 nothing to complain of, he sought to bring the 
 padre to his senses by threatening to turn 
 Roman Catholic. Even this dreadful alternative 
 didn't make the chaplain admit that the school- 
 master was in the wrong, so the prisoner gave 
 him up as a bad job, and appealed to the 
 governor. 
 
 But the governor was even more unsympa- 
 thetic than the chaplain had been, and the man 
 asked that all his books might be taken away, 
 as those books that were issued to him were 
 no use, and if he could not get some that were 
 useful to him he would have none at all. 
 
 259
 
 26o A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 The governor said that he would have to 
 keep his Bible, his prayer-book, his hymn-book, 
 and his " Narrow Way," a manual of devotion 
 issued to all prisoners ; but that his educational 
 books and his library book could be given in if 
 he did not want them. 
 
 We accordingly took them away and left him 
 without any reading matter at all, except what he 
 could find in his devotional books ; but that didn't 
 satisfy him, and he complained to the inspector 
 of prisons that he could get nothing to read. 
 
 The inspector ordered his educational and 
 his library books to be given back to him on the 
 old conditions ; but the man still sulked and 
 would not make a choice from a number of 
 books offered to him, saying that none of them 
 suited him. 
 
 Then he appealed to the visiting com- 
 mittee and the committee ordered that the 
 schoolmaster should wait on him with the 
 library catalogue and give him any book he 
 chose, provided that it was in the library avail- 
 able for issue, and that, if it was not in the 
 library at the time, it was to be reserved for him 
 when it came in. 
 
 That is the way they pamper cantankerous 
 prisoners in our gaols, and it is in striking
 
 THE CANTANKEROUS 261 
 
 contrast with the manner in which poor but 
 honest men are treated in our workhouses. 
 
 There was another troublesome prisoner on 
 my landing at one time, whose speciality was 
 making complaints about his food. B3' dint of 
 long practice or a natural gift he could estimate 
 the weight of anything to a nicety, and for some 
 time no meal hour went by without his making 
 a formal complaint that his bread, or his potatoes, 
 or something else was short of quantity. He 
 was never caught out in making a groundless 
 complaint, though the deficiency was never any- 
 thing that mattered, so he could not be punished, 
 and the only thing to do to stop him was to have 
 his meals specially weighed and measured before 
 they were handed in to him. Then he started on 
 the cooking, and gave so much trouble over this, 
 still without giving the warders any hold over 
 him, that at last his meals were not only specially 
 weighed, but they were specially selected so as to 
 leave him no possible grounds of complaint, and 
 he thus became the best-fed man on prison diet. 
 
 He had to mind his p's and q's all the time, of 
 course, for there wasn't a warder in the prison 
 who wouldn't have taken any opportunity he 
 gave for a report ; but he was a wily character, 
 and they never got a fair chance at him.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 
 
 I ONLY spent one Christmas Day in gaol, but 
 it was the most memorable Christmas Day 
 I ever spent in my life, though I have passed 
 that season in many queer circumstances. On 
 Christmas Eve I asked an old hand who was a 
 cleaner on my landing if any difference was made 
 in the food on Christmas Day. 
 
 " Do they make any difference at Christmas ? " 
 he repeated in a surprised tone. " Why, of course 
 they do. The}^ gives you roast beef, plum duff, 
 an' a pint o' beer for dinner, an' haddicks for 
 tea." 
 
 That night as I lay tucked up in my com- 
 fortable prison bed, I dreamed of roast beef, plum 
 pudding, and — shall I admit it? — particularly of 
 that pint of beer. 
 
 There was no joyous ring in the prison bell, 
 when, at seven o'clock on Christmas morning, it 
 clanged out its summons to its slaves to leave 
 their beds ; nor was there any Christmas 
 
 262
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 263 
 
 kindness in the warder's tones when, a few 
 minutes afterwards, my cell door was banged 
 open and the command, "Slops out, and shut 
 your door" was hurled at me. 
 
 Immediately after the last of the eighty odd 
 cell doors on the landing had been opened for 
 the slops to be put out, the clanking of cans that 
 always heralds the approach of breakfast was 
 heard, and although the cleaner had not told me 
 that there would be any change in the menu of 
 the morning meal, I hoped for the best, and 
 weighed up the chances for ham and eggs, plain 
 bacon, or bloaters ; but though I put my nose to 
 the crack at the bottom of the door, I could 
 detect no unusual odour. 
 
 Alas! the prison commissioners had not 
 carried their liberality to the extent of providing 
 a Christmas breakfast, and the only difference 
 between the pint of porridge on this morning as 
 compared with other mornings was that it was 
 only half-cooked and quite uneatable. I consoled 
 myself with the reflection that it did not really 
 matter, as I was down to receive Holy Com- 
 munion, and sufficient time was not allowed to 
 eat a breakfast even if I had one, as five minutes 
 after the food was put in my cell I was called 
 out of it to go to chapel.
 
 264 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 There were only three communicants in my 
 hall out of its three hundred odd inhabitants, and 
 not many more from the other " hard case " halls, 
 as there were only sixty-nine communicants in 
 the prison altogether, and fifty odd of these came 
 from "B" Hall, where the "Debtors," the "Second 
 Division " men, and the " Star " class were located. 
 In addition to these sixty-nine prisoners 
 there partook of the celebration one warder, the 
 assistant medical officer, the two daughters of 
 the chaplain, and three other ladies, who by their 
 dress seemed to be warders' wives. 
 
 Although the communion service was short- 
 ened by being commenced at the exhortation, it 
 lasted until it was time for the regular chapel 
 service to commence, so we prisoners remained 
 in the chapel instead of being taken back to our 
 cells. 
 
 There was a distinct Christmassy flavour 
 about the ensuing service, the chapel being 
 tastefully decorated and the hymns being all 
 well-known carols. When sermon-time came 
 the dear old chaplain, than whom I am convinced 
 no better or more earnest member of his cloth 
 exists, sympathetically said that it would be a 
 mockery to wish us a Merry Christmas, but that 
 as far as in him lay he would try and carry our
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 265 
 
 minds away from our painful surroundings 
 during the time we were with him, and, instead 
 of giving us a sermon, he would sing to us. He 
 could sing, too, and his performance was followed 
 by hearty applause in the shape of a shuffling of 
 feet that was opposed to all official ideas of 
 decorum. The warders were immediately on 
 the alert to catch the offenders ; but every face 
 wore an intensely devotional look and was 
 turned straight to the front so that they did not 
 bag any one ; perhaps, indeed, they didn't 
 particularly wish to. 
 
 "That noise is very unseemly," said the 
 chaplain deprecatingly, holding up his hand. "If 
 I am to sing to 3'ou again it must be on the 
 distinct understanding that what you no doubt 
 mean as kindly encouragement only distresses 
 me. Please do not do so again." 
 
 Then he sang again, and this time when he 
 had finished not a sound broke the stillness left 
 when his voice died away. I do not think that 
 there was a single man in that chapel who had 
 not a distinct feeling of respect for the chaplain, 
 and there were many of us, I am sure, who re- 
 garded him with something approaching to real 
 affection. If every prison chaplain were built 
 upon the same model men might be reformed
 
 266 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 in prison, for more than one old offender has 
 confided to me that what he dreaded most on 
 returning to prison was to see the distress of 
 this good old man. Speaking for myself, I can 
 say truthfully that the fear of meeting him again 
 as prisoner would be likely to keep me out of 
 prison if nothing else would. 
 
 We were marched straight from the chapel 
 to the exercise yard, but the usual hour in the 
 open air was abridged to a quarter or at most 
 twenty minutes. Then we were rushed back 
 to our cells and left to fill in the hour that yet 
 remained till dinner-time as best we could. I 
 had nothing light to read, my library book 
 having been finished the day before, and the 
 thoughts of the dinner in store made me too 
 restless to concentrate my mind on study. 
 
 At last the welcome shout " Cleaners " came 
 up from below, being the signal for the orderlies 
 to parade downstairs to be marched to the 
 cookhouse for the dinners, and ten minutes 
 afterwards the sound of the dinner-trays being 
 carried upstairs announced that there was not 
 much longer to wait. 
 
 Presently the opening and shutting of the 
 cell doors gave the information that the distri- 
 bution had begun, but it seemed to be an age
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 267 
 
 before the sound got to be so near as to indicate 
 that the distributors were approaching my end. 
 At last, by peering through the pinhole in the 
 lid of the observation window of my cell I could 
 see that they were right opposite to me, and 
 that there w^ere thus only eleven more cells for 
 them to serve before my turn came. 
 
 What a time they were to be sure ! It 
 seemed as if they were taking three times as 
 long to distribute the dinners to-day ; but then 
 that was to be expected, I thought, because of 
 the extra quantity to be handed in. 
 
 After an unconscionable time there was the 
 welcome sound of a basket creaking as it was 
 pressed against the wall, and my door being 
 thrown open, a warder took a six-ounce loaf 
 from the basket and, throwing it on the table, 
 moved on to the next cell, leaving my door open. 
 Two prisoners carrying a great wooden tray 
 now came along, followed by a warder who, 
 when he reached my door, took one of the 
 dinner-tins off the tray and banged it on my 
 table. So far there was nothing out of the 
 ordinary course, but the warder made a remark 
 as he put the tin in that was a great departure 
 from rule. 
 
 " Roast beef course," he said jocosely : " beer
 
 268 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 and duff to follow." Then he banged the door 
 to, and left me to my long-anticipated enjoyment 
 
 The top tin only disclosed potatoes in their 
 jackets as usual, and I felt somewhat disappointed 
 that a half-formed hope that we would have baked 
 potatoes was not realized. 
 
 I took the top tin out of the other with the 
 keenest anticipation and recoiled under the 
 greatest disappointment I remember : the tin 
 only contained the usual dinner set down in the 
 dietary for that day of the week, and the cleaner 
 stood revealed as a heartless, cold-blooded liar, 
 who had practised upon my credulit}' and let 
 the warder into the secret of the cruel joke. 
 
 Truth compels me to say that my chagrin 
 was so bitter as to cause me actually to sink 
 down on my stool, hide my head on my arms 
 and blubber. My hunger, however, soon re- 
 minded me that there was something to eat, if 
 not what I had expected, and I dolefully, but at 
 the same time with relish, gobbled up the miser- 
 able dinner even to the skins of the potatoes. 
 
 Now ensued another wretched hour which I 
 spent ranging round my cell like a tiger in a 
 cage. At half-past one the prison bell rang 
 again, and we were marshalled into chapel again 
 for the evening service.
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 269 
 
 On the way there the diabolical cleaner 
 whispered to me, " 'Ow did ye like your 
 dinner? They do ye well in stir on Christmas 
 Day, don't they ? " 
 
 When we got into chapel, he took advantage 
 of one of the warders not having seated himself 
 to ask genially " if I had ever been to evening 
 service before the mornin' pubs were shut 
 afore ? " but I only gave him the frozen face. 
 
 The afternoon, or evening, service consisted 
 of a service of song in which the chaplain took 
 the solo parts and the choir did the rest, the 
 congregation having nothing to do but listen. 
 It was over all too soon, and then back again we 
 went to our dreary cells to tramp aimlessly 
 round until supper-time, which on this day was 
 at half-past three. 
 
 Having disposed of the pint of greasy cocoa 
 and the half-pound loaf that formed the supper, I 
 made my bed down, and got into it at about four 
 o'clock to sleep off the remainder of the most 
 wretched and dispiriting Christmas Day I ever 
 spent.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 NEARING THE END 
 
 WHEN I was within about six weeks of 
 my discharge, a warder came to fetch 
 me one morning, and took me over to the 
 waiting-room adjoining the room where the 
 visiting magistrates met. He there took my 
 finger-prints again ; but there was not the 
 scrupulous care exercised over the operation 
 that was the case at Brixton, though I suppose 
 the result was good enough for all practical 
 purposes. 
 
 Then, a week after this, I was taken over to 
 the reception-ward in company with a fairly 
 numerous lot of other prisoners, and our own 
 clothes were handed out to us. 
 
 Mine were just bundled up as they were 
 when I entered the prison, and when, in obedience 
 to orders, I had put them on, I was rather glad 
 that there was no looking-glass handy, for I must 
 have looked a startling object, and if I had caught 
 a glimpse of myself it would probably have 
 
 270
 
 NEARING THE END 271 
 
 destroyed what rags of self-esteem I had left. 
 Then we went one by one into a room where 
 there was a man with a camera, who took two 
 photographs of each man — one full face with 
 the hands crossed on the breast, and the other 
 side face. 
 
 A few days after this my number was called 
 out whilst I was at exercise by a principal 
 warder who told me to " Lead on." 
 
 " What's the matter now, sir ? " I asked. 
 
 " Oh, nothing much " was the reply. " You'll 
 know all about it directly." 
 
 It was nothing much, but I couldn't make out 
 the meaning of it at all. I was ushered into the 
 presence of the deputy governor who merely 
 looked at me and said, " That will do." 
 
 In the course of the morning I asked an old 
 hand, who explained the mystery by telling me 
 that the "deputy" was simply comparing my 
 face with the photographs — a thing he was 
 obliged to do by the regulations. I am rather at 
 a loss to estimate the value of that photograph 
 to the authorities, because I am certain that 
 between myself as I appeared when it was 
 taken and my appearance after I had been dis- 
 charged from prison for a month or two there 
 was no sort of resemblance whatever.
 
 272 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 I was entitled to a visit about a fortnight 
 before my discharge was due, and I gave the 
 friend who came to see me instructions to send 
 me in a complete rig-out, so that I might emerge 
 presenting some sort of respectable appearance. 
 A day or two after this I happened to mention 
 what I had done to a warder, who informed me 
 that it would be necessary for me to get special 
 permission from the governor or the things 
 would not be received, or, if received, would not 
 be given to me until I was actually going out of 
 the prison gate, so that I would have to go out 
 in the disreputable outfit I had had my photo 
 taken in. 
 
 I accordingly put my name down to see the 
 governor next morning, and he readily gave me 
 the required permission. 
 
 " I cannot give you permission to write a 
 special letter telling your friends to send them 
 though," he said, "so that if you are not entitled 
 to write a letter, I am afraid that you will have 
 to do without the clothes." 
 
 " What do you want clothes sent in for 
 anyway ? " interrupted the chief warder. " Your 
 own clothes can be brushed and pressed for 
 you." 
 
 I said that I was afraid that would not do,
 
 NEARING THE END 273 
 
 and that I had already asked a friend to send 
 the clothes in. 
 
 "Well, you had no business to," snapped the 
 chief warder, " and it would serve you right if 
 the clothes were not taken in." 
 
 " I am entirely in your hands, sir, " I said, 
 ignoring the chief warder and turning to the 
 governor. " I really took your permission for 
 granted." 
 
 "That's all right," replied the governor good- 
 humouredly. " I'll mark the application as 
 granted, and 3'ou shall have your clothes in time 
 to put them on before you go out." 
 
 At last the day before my discharge came. 
 My sentence required that I should serve the 
 following day in prison ; but prisoners are always 
 discharged at seven o'clock in the morning of 
 the last day of their imprisonment, and I would 
 have my breakfast on the following morning in 
 freedom. 
 
 I had a farewell interview with the governor, 
 who was kind enough to tell me that I had been 
 a model prisoner; then, in the dinner-time, the 
 chaplain came to my cell and asked me if he 
 could assist me in any way. I replied to the 
 effect that I did not require any assistance, but 
 that I believed that he had already assisted
 
 274 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 mc more than either he or I knew at that 
 moment, and that I was deeply grateful to him. 
 
 " Well, good-bye and good luck to you," he 
 said, holding out his hand. " I have the feeling 
 that this imprisonment is only an incident with 
 you and that you will do well in spite of it. I 
 know that I shan't see you any more — in prison 
 at any rate." 
 
 " I don't think you will," I replied. " My 
 stay here has done me an immense amount of 
 good, and on the whole I have enjoyed it ; but I 
 am quite satisfied with the experience, and do 
 not propose to repeat it." 
 
 I had also to see the doctor, who asked me if 
 I was all right, and smilingly counselled me to 
 drop the taking of tabloids or an}' other kind of 
 drugs because I did not need anything of the 
 sort, 
 
 " I quite agree," I said ; " but I shall be in a 
 position to choose my own food from to-morrow 
 you know." 
 
 There still remained the two schoolmasters, 
 who had been extraordinarily kind to me, and 
 one or two warders to take leave of; but I had 
 no opportunity of doing so because, owing to the 
 crowded state of the prison, and the fact of the 
 Old Bailey Sessions being on, my cell was
 
 NEARING THE END 275 
 
 required for fresh guests expected that evening ; 
 so I was bundled out of it at a moment's notice 
 in the afternoon, and put with a dozen other 
 men of all sorts who were to go out also next 
 morning to pass my last night in the storeroom 
 of another hall, where we were provided with 
 mattresses and told to camp down on the floor.
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 RELEASE 
 
 THERE wasn't much sleep in that storeroom 
 that night, and I learnt enough from the 
 conversation of the men who shared the room 
 with me to make a very interesting book. It 
 was very instructive as to the reforming power 
 of prisons to listen to these men who were going 
 out into the world again, for there was not 
 one of them who spoke of getting work. Work 
 did not appear to have any place in their 
 thoughts at all, and the word was never 
 mentioned, only in the criminal sense of stealing 
 or swindling. 
 
 Morning came at last, and as soon as the 
 warders entered the hall to commence the day's 
 work we were let out and taken over to the 
 reception-ward, where our clothes were given to 
 us ; we were searched for the last time, and then, 
 when we were dressed, taken over to the prison 
 office, where 1 was given my gratuity of ten 
 shillings, the highest amount a hard labour 
 
 276
 
 RELEASE 277 
 
 prisoner can earn, and was also handed a letter 
 that had been written to me by a friend on the 
 day I was convicted and withheld from me until 
 now. That letter was an expression of belief 
 in me from a person whose good opinion I 
 valued above the opinion of everybody, and yet 
 it had been cruelly kept from me all the time I 
 had been in the prison. Surely it might have 
 been given to me as soon as I was entitled 
 under the regulations to receive a letter. 
 
 "Where are your old clothes?" asked the 
 chief warder. 
 
 I pointed to the prisoner to whom I had 
 given them, who looked so very disreputable in 
 them that 1 shuddered at the thought that I 
 might have had to wear them myself 
 
 The chief warder grunted something about 
 my not being supposed to give my own clothes 
 away without permission, and I took him up 
 rather sharply. 
 
 "You are not discharged yet," he said 
 grimly. 
 
 "No, but 1 shall be in a minute," I replied, 
 " and I have so much to thank you for that I do 
 not wish to part bad friends." 
 
 "That's all right," he said in a mollified tone. 
 "Good-bye, and good luck to you."
 
 2/8 A HOLIDAY IN GAOL 
 
 Then we filed off to the front gate in company 
 with a warder in plain clothes, who was to see 
 us to the railway station and take our tickets 
 for us. 
 
 The gate-keeper let us out of the prison 
 wicket one by one, first asking our names and 
 comparing them with a list he had in his hand, 
 and we found ourselves in the private road 
 leading from the prison, free men once more. 
 
 I walked down to the station with the warder, 
 the other men straggling along in front. 
 
 "Well, what do you think of us?" asked the 
 officer. 
 
 " I think that you are a jolly decent lot of 
 fellows," I replied heartily, "and the marvel to 
 me is how it happens that such a smart, 
 intelligent lot of chaps can be got to do the 
 work you have to get through for the miserable 
 pay they give you." 
 
 And that is my feeling at the present moment. 
 If there are any persons in our prisons who do 
 work that can honestly be described as " hard 
 labour" it is the warders, and not the men who 
 are sentenced to it.
 
 PRINTED BV 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 LONDON AND BECCLES.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 FEB 9 1944 
 
 
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