SIX YEARS

IN THE

PRISONS OF ENGLAND.

BY

A MERCHANT.

EDITED BY FRANK HENDERSON.

REPRINTED FROM "THE TEMPLE BAR MAGAZINE."

LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

1869.

TO A
KIND AND DEVOTED BROTHER,
WHO CHEERED ME WITH WORDS OF
CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY AND BROTHERLY LOVE
DURING THE
DARKEST AND MOST DESOLATE HOURS
OF MY
PAST UNHAPPY CAREER,
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTERPAGE

  1.—My Commercial Antecedents—How I got into Prison1

  2.—My Feelings on First Entering a Prison—Treatment and Employment before Trial—My Trial and Sentence10

  3.—Three Months in a Scottish Prison—Begin my Study of the Convict and his Surroundings—An Old Jail Bird—A Soldier—An Innocent Convict—My First Cracksman Acquaintance—Conspiracy to Murder an Officer, and Escape—My Removal to England21

  4.—My Arrival at the Yorkshire Prison—In Simpliciter Naturalibus—Get Animal Food—Medical Treatment—Statuesque Christianity—Removed to the Hospital—Death of a Prisoner—My Leg gets Much Worse—Removal to Surrey Prison34

  5.—Surrey Prison—Daily Routine of Hospital Life—Set a Thief to Catch a Thief—My Leg gets Worse—Amputation—Life Despaired of—Prison Doctors—Want of Periodical Hospital Inspection44

  6.—I Petition the Home Secretary—Doctor pronounces me "Quite Well"—"Schemers," their Treatment and Fate—Death-Bed Scenes55

  7.—Thiefology—What the uninitiated Convict may Learn in Prison65

  8.—Another Companion—A Career of Crime—His Opinions about Religion and Church Rates—An Incurable: His Opinion about Flogging79

  9.—Another Prisoner—Happy as a King—Cure of a Doctor—The Tobacco and Food Exchange—Another Jail Bird—Civil and Lazy—Undeserved Remission—Prison Directors, and How they Discharge their Duties—I Petition to Go Abroad on "Insufficient Grounds"93

10.—The Prison—Daily Routine—Readings in Prison—Quarrels among the Prisoners—ProtestantsversusCatholics—School—Sundays in Prison—"Sacrament Blokes"—Turning Point in Prisoners' Career107

11.—Indiscriminate Association of Prisoners—Transportation, and the Cause of its Failure—A Gunsmith119

12.—How Rebels against Society are made—I am Removed to a Small Room, amongst Murderers—The "Highflyer" again—How a Young Gentleman was made a Warning to Others...