At about 5.15 a.m. the stillness of the prison was broken by many sounds. One of the unexpected things in prison life are the number of sounds one hears which one cannot interpret at the time, and which are never accounted for afterwards. One early morning sound, or rather wrenching noise, seemed to come from the ward or passages below our own, as if a giant iron fender, with the fireirons loose and rattling within it, were being dragged from one end of the building to the other.

At home I am no early riser, and I had looked forward with most cowardly dread to the prison routine in this respect. The puritanical elements in my character, which hitherto had failed to drill the rest of me on this point, took on a triumphant air of sanctimonious glee with the expectation that a fundamental reform would be wrought in me by at least this portion of my punishment. But neither the fears of my vices nor the hopes of my virtues were realised. To rise at 5.30 requires no heroism, under any conditions, when you have been allowed to retire to rest at 6.30 or even earlier; but when in addition your bed is extremely uncomfortable, your pillow seems stuffed with thunder, you have with difficulty been able to keep warm, and when you have scarcely been able to sleep a wink all night, then the virtue necessary to make you rise early is nil.

At 5.30 punctually, a little 3rd Division prisoner, who slept in one of the infirmary cells along our passage, came in to clean the grate and light the fire. She moved very quickly and did her work with precision and dexterity. She had a most attractive and lovable face, refined features and a beautiful expression. I wondered for what crime she had been sent to prison. She wore several stripes on her arm denoting good conduct during a protracted sentence.

Soon after this the wardress came near my bed and said it was time to get up. She told me to make my bed and gave me what she called a duster for the purpose of cleaning the iron bedstead. The duster was a strip of thick sail-cloth, which moved the dust but refused to absorb it. I dusted every part of the iron, turned the mattresses and re-made the bed. A thin counterpane of blue check gave a rather pleasing finish. This had to be folded in a particular way at the foot of the bed so as to fall over the side in rectangular fashion. The wardress came up to show me how to do it. It required a certain dodge which pleased me very much, as did all the other old-maidish fads of the kind in the prison routine. But I found that no two experts achieved this bed-cover fold in quite the same way. On that first morning several of the prisoners, two wardresses, and one of the overseeing wardresses (“officers” is the correct term) came up to my bed and refolded the corners of the bed cover, saying, “You haven’t got that quite right,” or “That’s wrong; this is the way you should do it.”

We took it in turns to wash. Hot water was brought by the 3rd Division servant of the ward in jugs. There were two crockery basins on the washing-stand, which stood against the wall in the centre of the ward. Such appointments seemed positively luxurious, but one detail was sorely lacking, and its absence marred all the rest—privacy.

When dressed a superintendent “officer” came into the ward. She looked extremely severe. She asked, “Had I dusted my bed thoroughly before I made it?” “Yes.” “Had I turned up the movable half of the iron frame, and dusted it underneath?” “No, I did not know there was a part that turned up.” She said that was wrong, that another morning I must be sure and do it, but she did not tell me to make the bed again. I was fortunate, for I heard afterwards that this same officer took hold of the bedclothes and threw them all off without explaining to their owner anything of what it was about.

Breakfast was brought in at about 6.30. The patients who were well enough to be out of bed laid the cloth and put out plates from a small cupboard hung on the wall near the door. Then a wardress and two 3rd Division prisoners carried in the hot milk and tea in large cans, loaves of bread, a small supply of butter and boiled eggs. The tea was ladled out from the cans with a long tin spoon and poured into the earthenware mugs. It looked as if it must make a great mess, but was always very skilfully done. The mugs and plates, I was pleased to notice, were made of leadless glaze. In ordinary life I have always considered hot boiled milk a very disagreeable drink, but that morning, after the long wide-awake night, it seemed to me positive nectar. In hospital we were allowed white bread; it was of excellent quality, made of seconds flour. Tea and eggs are no part of my diet, so I was limited to the milk and bread and butter, but they were dealt out abundantly, all except the butter, which was fresh and of fairly good quality. Those of us who were well sat at the table all together and waited on the patients in bed. We were not supposed to talk to each other, but we were allowed to communicate to a certain extent in whispers. We were very much amused at each other’s appearance in the strange clothes and cap.

After breakfast we cleared the table, the gate of the ward was unlocked and we carried the crockery to baskets on the floor in the passage. From there the 3rd Division prisoners took them and washed them out in the bath room cell next door. The hospital wardress had to stand at the gate all the time that we were doing this. Some wardresses allowed us sometimes to come and go freely; others, or the same wardresses on different days, would allow only one of us out of the ward at a time. This and all other rules of the kind would hardly ever be told to us in so many words, but suddenly the wardress would step out and block the way, laying her hand upon us without a word as if we were animals. This being handled when there is no occasion for it seems very insulting. Like all these prison methods, it seemed curious and interesting when first done to oneself, but aroused a feeling of indignation when one saw it being done to others. It gave one the feeling of belonging to a race apart, something degraded and imbecile, despised not only for the particular crime one had committed but as an all-round inferior being. The moral influence of this kind of treatment is rubbed in afresh through every hour of prison life and has a bad moral influence on both prisoners and wardresses. It seemed, moreover, quite unnecessary.

After breakfast the chief wardress who had reproved us for not lifting up the movable section of the beds, beckoned me to her—“Take off your slippers. Bring your shoes; you have to go before the Senior Medical Officer.” This made me anxious. I knew quite well that I was not in a state of ill-health to cause the release of an ordinary prisoner; I knew, too, that many suffrage prisoners had been kept in prison when much more seriously ill than I was. But I remembered the specially constructed rule which had sanctioned a letter being delivered to me, and I was on the look-out for more privileges of the kind. The wish was strong in me to have personal experience of the inflictions which a Liberal Government thought suitable to woman Suffragists, to share every incident of the treatment which my leaders and friends had suffered in our cause and to gain some experience of prison life from within for the sake of one day being equipped to work for prison reforms.

Outside the ward I was told to put on my shoes. I hated those shoes with the vigorous hatred of a child. The laces had no tags, my fingers were very cold, and being hurried up by the wardress made them the more awkward. I was given a cloak of green cloth and taken downstairs. The staircase was of stone and, with my feet encased in these thick unyielding shoes, I was afraid of slipping. I laid my hand on the banister to steady myself. “If you must have hold of that rail, can’t you use the uprights? Don’t you see the top’s polished, you’ll soil it.” This remark was made by the wardress who shouted past me with a sort of bark. At the foot of the stairs she pulled at my cloak, “Got it on inside out, is that how you mean to wear it?” This was said in the same voice, but I thought I caught something of a twinkle in her eye as if she were not without a sense of humour and would welcome an appeal to the same. I noted this for future experimenting, but was at the moment unable to take advantage of it. I felt mentally stunned, physically cowed, morally indignant, a blend of sensations which I think must be common to many prisoners.

The doctor’s room was a sort of office well lit by several large windows. The Senior Medical Officer was a different man from the doctor who had inspected us the previous night. I had expected a struggle on the question of tonics, but to my delight he quickly agreed that I should survive without drugs. He spoke in an ordinary voice, his expression of face and the things he said were quite natural, he treated me as though I were an ordinary mortal. After even twelve hours of prison customs this seemed a remarkable and gladdening thing. Up till that moment I had incessantly wished that I should some day be able to tell the officials the entirely harmful impression conveyed by their manner to the prisoners. It was obvious that this official manner was quite detached from the individual personality of those who assumed it. They looked and spoke in this way, not to serve their private ends, but in compliance with some strangely mistaken tradition, as a matter of conformity. When under the heel of it, one felt a conviction that no reform of prison regulations would alter the maiming influence of prison life until this tradition were altered. Now, on the contrary, I felt equally desirous of proclaiming that here was an individual with an innate gift to usefully fill the part of prison official; he had mastered the fundamental matter of treating prisoners as he would treat other human beings. I think this doctor tried some slight persuasion to obtain my release by consenting to be bound over. He quickly saw, however, that my imprisonment was not due to any hasty or unconsidered act, and he did not press the matter for long.

It was agreed that I should go back to bed for the benefit of my heart condition. After the prolonged strain I was only too glad to do this. The morning, however, was taken up with many visits of inspection. The Governor made his rounds in a formal way and never relaxed his official muscles, but he seemed kindly, nevertheless, and I felt sorry for him having to play what I supposed was a disagreeable game for him. The matron wore a quite different expression from when I had seen her the evening before. She looked very tired, and I wondered whether any part of her work gave her satisfaction. The Chaplain, too, looked ill and I thought what a harrowing life his must be, always pouring out sympathy for sorrows and sufferings that he had no power to relieve. He came up to my bed with a smile and said, in a voice well-flavoured with contempt: “Well, you must have done something very wicked to find yourself in here?” I was surprised, supposed he meant it for a joke; supposed, too, that possibly from his point of view it was an entirely comic thing that we should be in prison. But it seemed odd that his imagination and sympathy should not at least have led him to inquire first what was our point of view in the matter, and he seemed not to consider it possible that our actions should have entailed self-sacrifice and the pain of bringing anxiety to those we loved. I answered: “If I had thought what I did very wicked, I should not have done it.”

At ten o’clock hot milk was again brought into the ward for those who wished for it, also fruit, but, to my great relief, this was optional. The morning was taken up with cleaning the ward. The 3rd Division prisoner by a series of processes and with the aid of a long-handled polisher, first swept, then beeswaxed, then polished the wooden floor. She did it with the skill of an expert and her graceful gestures were a pleasure to watch. She never paused for a moment in her work except when the entry of some official necessitated a temporary suspension.

Then followed a polishing of metal fixtures and dusting of the walls, shelves, books, etc. To my great joy, the patients not in bed were ordered to take part in the dusting. It was a means of practising my favourite hobby of cleaning, also of keeping warm, of helping the little 3rd Division prisoner, and occasionally exchanging a whispered word with her, though this was rarely achieved. The dust was continuously stirred throughout the morning, moved from the floor, then from the wall. The grey fluff that came from the bedding and floated about the floor gathered a certain amount of dust as it was swept up and eventually burnt in the fire, but no damping or reasonable process to get rid of the dust was used, so that shelves, books, beds, were no sooner dusted than they were again covered as before. On one or two occasions I ventured to damp my duster, but this, of course, made it very dirty, which result met with disfavour. It was no doubt felt that as the more vigorous patients had nothing much better to do, they might as well go on dusting throughout the morning. In an ordinary home the daily processes of sweeping and dusting always seem to me absurdly laborious, elaborate and inadequate; the workers at these household crafts having had so little share in the application of modern invention to their toil, and little appeal on behalf of public service and utility has been made to women of higher education and greater leisure than the workers themselves. The housecraft of prison, as one watched it day by day, pressed one’s thoughts on to the subject. The collecting of dust by means of damp cloths immediately followed by a dry rubber would certainly be more effective.

At about twelve the midday food was served, it was the most solid meal in the twenty-four hours. It consisted every day of fried fish, potatoes, cabbage, bread, butter and a custard pudding or boiled rice pudding made with eggs. I, being a vegetarian, did not eat fish. After some days I had the courage to ask for a rice pudding made without eggs and was allowed this. The food was good and well cooked, but the absolute monotony of the bill of fare was a great trial to some of the prisoners, more especially the bed patients.

In the afternoon, those who were allowed out exercised for an hour walking round and round a yard with high walls to it. We were exercised at a different time from ordinary prisoners. We were not allowed to talk to each other and had to walk single file one behind the other at a given distance apart. As there were never more than four or five of us from the hospital a certain amount of laxness was allowed. We could go our own pace, the faster walkers from time to time overtaking the slower and now and then one was allowed to stop and lean up against the wall. The weather was cold, we had frost and snow, during most of my time in Holloway, and being used to furs, gloves and muffs, I felt the cold very much especially in my hands. The only extra garment for out of doors was an unlined cloth cape with hood attached. This was warmer than it looked. I used to do arm exercises as I walked to stir my blood. The discomfort of the shoes prevented any joy in walking, there was no yield in the soles and the hard leather pressed the feet in a way to make every footstep a consideration. I have sensitive feet and may have suffered more in this respect than others, but to judge from appearance the tread and gait of all prisoners is laborious and artificial, affecting the hang of the whole body, on account of the shoes.

I did not go out for the first two or three days. In the afternoon the sense of fatigue overcame one. Unless the patients were ill enough to undress and get into bed, they were not allowed to lie on it, we, however, sometimes sat on a chair close to the bed, leaned our heads upon the pillow and slept.

Some read books, others did needlework, others tended the bed patients.

I am a little deaf, and found it a tiring business after no sleep at night to hold intercourse by means of whispers, the only form of conversation allowed, but nevertheless this was far the most interesting occupation available. People are inclined to be communicative, although total strangers to each other, when cut off from their homes and friends and all sharing the same fate. I heard life stories in Holloway hospital that would fill many novels. I wondered, as I have always done, how it is that people can trouble to read books when romance, adventure, comedy, tragedy and pathos are to hand at all times in more living form and with far greater variety of event and character.

At about five the supper was brought in, the food being the same as at breakfast. I sometimes kept back a potato from the midday meal to eat cold with the bread and butter. As soon as this was cleared away we were let out in turns to the bath-room, where a hot foot bath was provided, and privacy. This was a most welcome luxury. Two mornings after we had been in, a screen was put round the washing table so that the morning ablutions became more effective. From this time forward I experienced nothing to complain of in the washing line.

These first days of prison, although immensely interesting, were, nevertheless, longer in point of time than anything I remember in life, not excluding early childhood. The novelty of every detail and the fact that observation was sharpened to a pitch only known at moments of great emotion, no doubt partly accounted for this.

I knew that my eldest sister had intended to come and visit me as soon as she could get a permit; I supposed she would have no difficulty. The first and second day went by and she did not come. I became a prey to a morbid depression of spirits. Being completely cut off from previous existence, one rapidly fell into the belief that all friends and belongings had discarded and forgotten one. This state of mind was one of the most melancholy experiences of prison. It seems childish and absurdly unreasonable when remembered after release. It nevertheless was bitterly real at the time, and a few hours within prison walls were sufficient to develop the illusion. As with so many other prisoner sensations, it is akin to child life, engendered from complete helplessness, subjection to others, ignorance and uninformedness as to what is happening outside the cramped horizon of the life to which one is subject. The sense of continuous expectancy and comfort for present distressful monotony in the belief that undreamed of good might happen at any moment is also very similar to the mental outlook of children.

The next day, February 26, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence was summoned out of the ward. She came back radiant, having had a visit from her husband. Her happiness and the news she brought back of the outer world shed joy upon us all, but, nevertheless, I had the feeling all the more strongly that my own people had forgotten me, since they, I argued, could have obtained the same privileges as Mr. Lawrence. The ordinary prisoner is usually allowed a visitor only after the first month of the sentence has expired.

The members of the Freedom League were in great excitement, expecting that their leader would be coming to prison that day and very likely be sent to hospital. She had been arrested at the head of a deputation when the other members of the Freedom League had been imprisoned, but her case had been remanded. In the afternoon the prayer card at the head of one of the spare beds was altered to one of Roman Catholic prayers. This was taken to indicate beyond doubt the coming of Mrs. Despard. I read the Roman Catholic card and thought it compared favourably, in point of suitability to prisoners, with the selection made by the Church of England. The hymns, biblical passages and prayers were more tender and personal and less concerned with misdoing. They were rather childish, but, as I have pointed out, prisoners resemble children.

In the evening, when the curfew hour of our bedtime was already past, a stranger prisoner, a very remarkable looking woman with white hair, a fine face, and stately carriage came into the ward, and was immediately recognised by her followers as their deservedly beloved leader. She came up to greet Mrs. Lawrence, and they were about to shake hands with cordiality when the wardress interfered, angrily forbidding them to touch one another.

When the poison basket came round that night, I noticed with admiration and envy Mrs. Despard’s dignified but effectively determined refusal of the proffered tonic. She discarded the hospital whisper and said out loud to the drug dispenser: “I have never taken medicine in my life and I am not going to begin now; I will explain to the doctor to-morrow.” She was a most vigorous lady. I have never heard of a prisoner before or since who slept soundly through the first night of sentence. She walked round the exercise yard, too, at a pace beyond my powers. I was fortunate in achieving one very interesting conversation with her, when she told me of how the women’s workrooms instituted under the recent Local Government Board’s Central Unemployment Fund had been closed down, on the ground that they were not self-supporting, although they were worked at less loss and at far less cost per head than some of the workshops for unemployed male workers. £28,000 was said to have been spent on one farm colony for men which had produced only £1,000 return. Yet there was no complaint, no talk of closing down because of its unremunerative character. £750 had been allotted for widows’ and single women’s workrooms. These, too, were worked at a loss as there was not sufficient sale for the clothes they made, and because of this loss, small in total and far smaller in proportion than in the men’s work, the room was closed. To our great surprise Mrs. Despard was released “on medical grounds,” after serving only a week of her sentence, although she was in robust health. The weekly paper The Christian Commonwealth had taken up her case and the House of Commons was circularised by the editor, Mr. Dawson. This is supposed to have moved the Home Office to clemency.

One of the patients who slept in a separate cell, but came to the ward for meals, had a particularly attractive face and personality. She was exceptionally gentle and courteous in her manner, but her outward calm nevertheless suggested a reserve of inward force; her eyes had a way of lighting up suddenly with sympathy, pathos, or fun. I longed to have a free talk with her. Her name was Mrs. Clarke; she was one of three Suffragettes, the others being Miss Irene Dallas and Miss Douglas Smith, who had been arrested on a deputation to Downing Street on January 24. I had sent in my name for the larger deputation to the House of Commons. I had been invited to go instead on this smaller one to Downing Street, but I had refused. When I saw the women afterwards who had undertaken this much more disagreeable job than mine, I felt again thoroughly ashamed of myself. I should say they were all three unusually sensitive to the odiousness of the errand which had appalled me to the point of shirking it. I did not realise until after she had left the prison that Mrs. Clarke was a sister of Mrs. Pankhurst.[5] These three were released on the morning of February 27. We could just hear the sounds of their welcome and the band playing the Marseillaise outside the prison, but, of course, could see nothing through the high, grained-glass windows. One was filled with a great longing to join them. This was after only thirty-six hours of prison, I imagined what it must be to those under long sentences when a fellow prisoner is released.

On that day, Saturday, at about the time for our exercise, one of the superior officers came into the ward and, singling me out from the others, ordered me to leave my slippers, bring my shoes to put on outside and follow her. I had already learnt the order of the daily routine, and every event that was slightly exceptional filled me with hope that my turn had come for a “visitor,” but I had had several disappointments in this line and so steeled myself not to expect too readily. I was taken across the yard of the main entrance and ushered through a part of the prison where I had not been before to a row of rooms looking like small offices with glass doors, giving on to a passage. On the door to which I was led was written the word “Solicitor,” and almost before I had time for joyous conjectures as to who my “visitor” could be, the door was opened and my sister, Betty Balfour, was facing me. It was like seeing the sun after a long time of darkness. I only then realised to what an extent the gloom of prison surroundings and anxiety about my home people had taken hold of my mind. The sight of my sister did not dispel them, but seemed to take me from within their grip to an independent position outside of them, the physical trials of my fellow Suffragettes in our ward, the anti-happiness get up of the prison building, clothing, food, equipment, and the general vitality-destroying framework of the prison system and its officials, seemed suddenly to be a thing apart from me instead of one with my very self.

We were told to seat ourselves on opposite sides of a small table and not to touch each other nor pass anything from one to the other. The door was left open and the wardress sat just outside so as to hear, and if necessary control our communications. She was a benignant, kindly woman whom I had not seen before; she reminded me of Madeleine de Rohan, of the Theatre FranÇais, in Le Monde oÙ l’on s’ennui. She was dignified, gentle, sympathetic. I was nevertheless afraid of her, or rather of the office which she filled, and wished her miles away. I never saw her again, either during my month in Holloway or on the many occasions when I have since revisited it on behalf of other prisoners. I have tried several times to write down my impressions of this “visit” from my sister. I have to own myself beaten. The joy of it seems so exaggerated, I cannot trust myself to convey it for publication. All prison sensations are exaggerated from the point of view of those out of prison, that is their essential characteristic. Still more exaggerated must a genuine description of them seem to a prison official who is used to witness without sharing them. For men and women who have experienced them, it is never again possible to discredit their intensity or to be contemptuous towards those who try to give expression to them. My own recollections of prison are isolated from other parts of my life by a kind of halo of reverence. Awe comes over me whenever they are in my mind; this awe and reverence are twice as powerful in connection with those moments when joy had her turn, and these rare occasions of gladness outweigh from their importance the much more numerous experiences of gloom, anxiety, anger and physical suffering.

After twenty minutes of eager and joyful ecstasy of communication, during which I drank in the sight and sound of my sister’s loved personality, the wardress told us that our time was up and I was taken away. My sister and I were allowed to kiss each other before parting. When I got back to hospital I had three very distinct sensations. That of having experienced a good thing which was over; distress at not being able to impart my joy to my companions nor discuss it with them, since none of them knew my sister; indignation when I realised that no ordinary prisoner, who needed the help of joy so much more than I did, and no Suffragette prisoner without influential friends, would be able to have a similar experience until after the first month of imprisonment. In the practical sense more especially, for the settlement of business and family affairs, it is on first being imprisoned that letters and interviews are needed by prisoners.

The glow of my own happiness, however, triumphed over all else until bed time, when with a perversity born, I suppose, of the accumulated fatigue of recent days and nights, the one flaw in my sister’s visit came uppermost in my thoughts and possessed my brain with an unconquerable tyranny. Some days before the deputation, she had been in correspondence with a leading Conservative M.P., one whose lifelong belief in Woman Suffrage had become a little rusty. The questions he put to my sister proved that he had not kept pace with recent events in the movement and was unaware of the tremendous demand made by women themselves for the vote as evidenced by the resolutions, petitions, and unreceived deputations of organised societies of working and professional women, quite apart from the unions that had sprung up everywhere expressly in support of the Suffrage. I had sent her a collection of printed evidence to this effect for the benefit of her correspondent and I inquired of her eagerly that afternoon as to the result. She told me that she had unfortunately lost the papers. I was annoyed and wasted several minutes of our precious time together in reproof. The memory of my anger came back to me now in exaggerated dimensions. Why had I allowed myself to be reproachful to her? She had been so dear to me, so prompt and efficient in her efforts to come and see me, so comforting in her wealth of sympathy, and I had rewarded her with reproaches! As I went back over the scene, my heart was wrung with longing to send her some little message of good-will and my inability to do so appeared to me then as nothing short of a tragedy. For the fiftieth time in those first hours of imprisonment I seemed to be and to feel like a child, at the mercy of fluctuating emotions extreme in their intensity. I longed to be alone, but that night the ward patients kept unusually wide awake and I had to restrain myself over and over again. As the night wore on, the avenue of beds became less troubled, a sense of privacy grew in proportion and at last I gave way to my grief and sobbed. I covered my face in the bedclothes, but in spite of this precaution the wardress heard me and before long she came and stood by my side. I expected a scolding. She very seldom took any notice of the patients till morning, I knew it was her business to reprove me, but on looking up at her face I saw that the customary mask-like expression had vanished. She was kind, she inquired tenderly why I was crying, sat down on my bed and held my hands, told me that my sister would not remember my reproaches but would be unhappy if she knew of my present distress. She did not laugh at me, she showed as much sympathy as a friend. It was a great surprise. She stayed talking to me in whispers for a considerable time, though looking continually towards the door as if in fear of being detected in a kindness, for through the night as through the day, she was liable to unseen inspection through the locked gate and open door, or through the spy-hole of the door when closed. I was most deeply grateful to her, it was a delightful discovery that underneath her rigid exterior she was an unspoiled human being. I longed to return her kindness and ventured to propose that I should rub her chest to ease her hacking cough. At first she would not hear of it, but at last, after I had fetched some ointment from the bed-head of one of the patients who had a cough, she consented and allowed me to open her dress. She seemed much afraid and told me she would probably be dismissed if we were seen. My attempts to allay her distress eased my own mind of its childish trouble, for which reason she had probably allowed me to help her. I would gladly have talked to her all night about prisoners, the working conditions of wardresses, her own life, but this, of course, was forbidden. She soon went back to her table, her face resumed its former expression and I never again held any intercourse with her. If the horrors of prison existence are enshrined in an atmosphere of nightmare, the rare happy moments have the glamour of a good dream. This kind act of the night-wardress remains as one of the sunlit flower patches of my time in Holloway.

The next morning after the superior officer had been her rounds taking temperatures, she beckoned me to her. “What have you been complaining about?” she asked sharply. “I haven’t been complaining,” I answered. “Yes, you have—you complained of something to a visitor.” I then remembered that, when reassuring my sister as to my health and to prove to her the genuineness of my statements as to prison conditions being in no way harmful to me, I had mentioned two things which proved rather trying, viz., that my underclothes and stockings were too short to cover my knees, and the fact that one small towel had to do service for all purposes during a week. I reported this to the wardress, but explained that I had mentioned these not in complaint but to prove to my sister that my discomforts were insignificant. “Well,” she retorted, “next time you have anything to complain of come to me with it—if not I shall get into trouble.” This seemed the very reverse of prison regulations, for usually the trouble was caused by anything out of the ordinary being granted to a prisoner. From that time forward I was supplied with two towels, one of them renewed every week, and two rolls of flannel bandages were brought to me to cover my knees. I supposed that the ordinary cells, to which I expected soon to be transferred, would be much colder than the hospital, so I held the flannel bandages in reserve. After I came out of prison I heard that my family were troubled, knowing how dependent I was upon warm underclothes, especially at night. My eldest brother had interviewed the head of the Prison Commissioners Department, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, who had said that I should at once be supplied with bed-socks. Bed-socks, of course, do not grow in prisons. They were represented, I suppose, by my flannel bandages, but the official statement had the desired result of quieting my family’s anxiety.