Six Years in the Prisons of England. Various
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he says to the man he was fighting with, 'Jack, give me half-a-crown and I'll swear all the blame on myself;' poor Jack was glad to accept the offer, so when they were taken before the magistrate the old beauty said—'Please sir, it was me that assaulted that man, and as I am entirely in the fault I hope you will give me all the punishment.' So Jack got out rejoicing, and the beauty got in, chuckling over his half-a-crown, and speculating on the feast he would get with it when his sixty days expired!"
"How long does he generally remain out of prison?" I then enquired.
"Why," said my friend, "two days is a long time for him; if he is beyond that time he will come to the prison and beg a meal!"
"Why does he not go to the poorhouse?" I asked.
"Because he is more accustomed to the jail, and likes it better. He is generally employed in cleaning windows and other parts of the prison, and he likes a 'lark' with the prisoners, most of whom he knows!"
Finding my companion so communicative I continued my enquiries, and asked him, "What young fellows are these in the next cell?" "They have both been in the army," he replied. "One of them committed a small forgery, I think he forged the captain's order for some boots. He expected to get 'legged,'[3] and get out of the army, but he has been sucked in. They only gave him a few months' imprisonment, and he will have to go back to his regiment again when his time's up. His brother's now at Chatham, doing a four years 'legging,' but he hasn't to go back again to the army. This fellow swears he'll commit another crime as soon as he gets out!"
Whether this threat of committing another crime was carried out or not I cannot tell, but in the earlier years of my imprisonment I came in contact with several prisoners who had committed offences for the purpose of getting out of the army. Of late years I have not met with any having been perpetrated with that motive.
Noticing a delicate, melancholy-looking young man opposite to us, I enquired who he was. "O! I pity that man very much," said my friend. "He has got a sentence of twenty-one years' penal servitude, and is as innocent of the crime as the child unborn."
"How do you know he is innocent?" I asked, in amazement.
"The guilty man has turned up, now that they cannot punish him, and confessed."
Shortly after this conversation took place, I had an opportunity of learning, from the lips of one of the principal offenders in the case for which this young man was unjustly punished, the following particulars in reference to it, which I give in my informant's own words:—"I and other two miners like myself went to a horse-race a few weeks ago. Towards evening we got a little on the spree, and I asked my two chums to come along and see a woman of my acquaintance. This woman was kept by a gentleman in the neighbourhood, but this was only known to a few. She was about forty years of age, and although she was supposed by some to be 'fast,' I knew long before that she was 'loose.' Well; as we were all enjoying ourselves in this woman's house, who should come in but her brother! and so, to clear her character with him, she swore a rape against us. But the worst of it was, that that poor married man there got convicted instead of one of us. When we ran from the house, the other fellow split out from us, and after we got away a bit, we met the married man. As we were chatting together we were all three arrested. The woman, it seems, had an ill-will either to that man or his wife, and she swore against him on that account. And we have all three got twenty-one years a-piece."
I was glad to hear afterwards that this man got his liberty after suffering six months' imprisonment. But had it not been for great exertions on the part of his friends, he would have had to pay the full penalty. I have known, in the course of my prison experience, about a dozen well authenticated cases of innocent convictions, but only two of them succeeded in getting a pardon. The one after enduring about eighteen months' imprisonment, the other a shorter period, but strange to say his pardon arrived on the very day of his death in prison.
I have generally observed in cases of rape, and crimes of that kind, when the female was advanced in life, that the crimes were not so black in reality as they were represented in the newspapers, and that the offenders, if not made actually worse in prison, would be much more easily cured than the thief genus, who require special, and as I think, very different treatment to that which they now receive.
In this prison I also made the acquaintance of a professional "cracksman," or burglar. He was a man of fair education, good appearance, and considerable natural ability; much above the average of his professional brethren. He had been living luxuriously in London, on the fruits of his professional industry and skill. Till now he had escaped all punishment, with the exception of a few months' imprisonment, for a "mistake" committed at the outset of his professional career. In answer to my enquiries as to his case, he volunteered the following information:—
"A few weeks ago, one of my 'pals' (companions) showed me the advertisement of a Scottish jeweller, wherein he boasted of his safe having successfully resisted the recent efforts of a gang of burglars. I said to my pal, 'Get Bob, and let us go down to-morrow by the mail train to Scotland, and we will see what this man's safe is like.' We all three came down here a few weeks ago, inspected the jeweller's premises, and decided on doing the job through an ironmonger's shop at the back. We had got the contents of the ironmonger's till, and were just through the intervening back wall, when the 'copper'[4] heard us, and signalled for another 'bobby'[4] to come and help him. Out I sprang, and had a fight with the policeman, and got knocked down insensible. My pal bolted and got off; Bob and I got 'copt,'[5] and as we had first-class tools on us, new to the authorities here, they have given it us rather hot."
"Do you think you could have opened the safe? I understand those patent locks are very difficult to pick," I remarked.
"Oh!" said he, "I would not waste time trying to pick the lock. Drill a hole and get in the 'jack,' and I can bring power to bear on it sufficient to open any safe. The great thing is to be able to get the time, the work I can easily do; then Bob, my pal, is one of the best blacksmiths in England, and as true as steel. I always take him with me in a job of that sort."
It so happened that I had a very good opportunity of proving that the burglar's high opinion of his "pal's" ability was not without foundation. On our removal to England, the "cracksman," was leg-ironed to me as an additional security against his making his escape. There were five couples besides ours, and after we arrived at our destination, and whilst the prison blacksmith was engaged hammering and punching off my irons, Bob, with a smile of contempt at his efforts, took up some tools that lay beside him and liberated the other five couples before the blacksmith had freed me and my clever companion.
The chief incident which occurred during my imprisonment in Scotland, was a conspiracy among the convicts to murder the night officer and make their escape in a body. I was not considered "safe" for the job, and knew nothing of it until it had miscarried. The chief conspirator was my friend the "cracksman," who made tools out of portions of his bedstead, that opened not only the lock of our own cell, but that of every other cell in the prison, if required. The prisoners were generally in couples in each cell at that time, and the plan agreed upon was as follows: One of the convicts was an old man subject to fits, and it was arranged that he was to feign a fit for the occasion; the assistance of the night officer was to be called, who was to have his "light put out" by the fellow prisoner of the one in fits, who was a strong muscular fellow. Meanwhile the "cracksman," whose cell was opposite, was to unlock the cell doors of all the prisoners in the plot. This dark and desperate scheme was frustrated, however, by a little lad, who had heard two of the convicts conversing about it. His term of imprisonment expired on the day preceding the night fixed for the accomplishment; and he gave information to the governor, who placed officers with fire-arms in the ward all night. Next morning the suspected prisoners were searched, and the lock-picking instruments were found on the "cracksman," and there the affair ended. The only result which followed the discovery of the plot, so far as I could discover, was that we were removed from this prison to England rather earlier than we otherwise should have been.
Previous to our removal, the governor, who was a very sensible man compared with those under whom I was afterwards placed, told me that I was about to be sent to England along with some of the worst characters he had ever known; that they were all leaving the prison with the character of