Something was indeed up; a letter, in fact, that I had clandestinely written had been intercepted. Personally I was indifferent to the result; the worst had been done to me when I found myself in prison. Degrees of punishment had no terrors for me, and I was equally callous as to whether employed in a “situation of trust” or languishing in a punishment cell. To me all appeared tarred with the same brush, and I loathed the privileges and punishments, the indulgences and deprivations, the spiritual comforts, and every other contingency with the same intensity. As regards the turnkey, however, my sympathy was enlisted. Here was a poor man, with a wife and family, liable to dismissal, and even imprisonment, if convicted of carrying letters. At the time I was at a loss to understand how the traffic could possibly have been discovered. I was confident I had not been observed writing, and had seen the letters securely secreted in the warder’s pouch. Unless, then, he had been guilty of some indiscretion, the discovery seemed impossible. Such a contingency as foul play from without never entered my head, and yet, alas, such a thing had actually occurred. A servant in the family of one of my correspondents had lately been detected in a series of systematic thefts from her employers, extending over many months. The discovery naturally involved her immediate dismissal, and by way of gratitude for their refraining from prosecuting her, she purloined my letter, and assuming a position of authority, called at the prison and produced the document. Her motive was clearly revenge, but the truth (as it always does) eventually came out, and the mystery that shrouded the transaction for months has happily been dispelled, and the temporary doubt (almost excusable) that associated the act with very dear friends has given way to a regret that I could ever have doubted their honour. As to the thieving, sneaking wretch, she decamped with her spoils; and though her photograph has been freely distributed in the “three ball” quarter, she has hitherto evaded discovery. For my part I would gladly subscribe a trifle for the present address of Mrs. Smith. With the mystery that surrounded everything that occurred in the place, I tried in vain to ascertain whether anything had really been discovered, but day after day passed, and the affair had apparently blown over. This, however, was an erroneous impression; it was only the lull that precedes the storm, and not a stone was being left unturned to sift the matter. The turnkey, at the time only suspected of complicity in the matter, was carefully watched. When he left of an evening his every footstep was dogged, and a nightly report of his rambles duly made. A letter, too, that he foolishly posted in a neighbouring pillar-box pointed indirectly to his connivance, and subsequent inquiries at the district receiving office made matters possibly clearer. A close relationship exists between such Government institutions as post-offices, prisons, and police-stations, which affords greater facilities to constituted authorities for unearthing mysteries than to ordinary mortals. I was ignorant in those days of this affinity, and an easy prey to such trumpery contingencies; but I eventually reduced the trafficking to a science impossible of detection, and unfailing in its results. Can it be wondered at—surrounded as one is by underpaid officials, who begin at twenty-one shillings and twenty-three shillings a week, with a gradual increase, after years of toil, to a possible twenty-eight shillings, and with a prospect, after twenty years’ service, of receiving a pension of ten shillings a week—can it be wondered at, I ask, that these worthy men are unable to resist a bribe? I should regret to have to prove my words, but if I was in the position again, I think I could undertake to be in daily communication with the outer world, despite bolts and bars and the “special” observation I was always subject to. This is no idle boast, as subsequent events will prove; and the authorities have only themselves to thank for exercising no discretionary power in their treatment of prisoners, when the facts I mention prove conclusively that a great difference does exist and always will between the vagrant and the gentleman, even in prison, in more ways than one. The underpaid turnkey is still more unfairly handicapped, and it resolves itself into his choosing between my £5 and the Government £1. What more natural than that he should elect the former, when the most ordinary precaution will guard against detection. I don’t think the authorities ought to begrudge the so-called gentleman this solitary advantage. No one can deny that six months to a man of education is an infinitely severer trial than eighteen to a costermonger. The one has to battle with the mind, conscience, remorse, shattered prospects, loss of caste, a blighted future, food, clothing, surroundings, all inferior to what he has been accustomed to; to submit, moreover, to be addressed by inferiors in a tone of authority, besides a hundred-and-one other humiliations impossible to remember: the other finds himself amongst friends, loses nothing by his incarceration, is better clothed, fed, and housed than if he were at home, and, in the case of an artizan, reverts to his every-day employment; and yet this is seldom taken into consideration, and justice is ladled out to gentleman and vagrant alike. I cannot assert this as my own experience, for justice was indeed tempered with mercy to me, and I am fully sensible of the consideration I received, both at my trial and hereafter. Under ordinary circumstances one would be accused of ingratitude for breaking rules and deceiving those in authority who had treated one well, but I never took this personal view of it. I was fighting a system that I despised, not individuals that I respected. So I looked on it as a game of “brag,” a kind of “French and English,” a question of bolts and bars versus brains, where the latter had apparently the worst of it, where undue importance was attached to watching and spying, and nothing left to one’s parole. About a week after my transfer (I was now in the needlework ward, and being initiated into the mysteries of darning stockings) I received a summons to appear before the Governor. I knew now that the letter-writing had been discovered, or, as my friend the turnkey had expressed it, “Summat was up.” He told me, in a few words, that it had come to his knowledge that I had been sending out clandestine letters, and requested me to inform him if that was the case, and who had been my channel of communication, adding that he was prepared to take down any statements I might feel disposed to make. The idea of denying it never entered my head—I was perfectly indifferent as to what might happen; I thereupon informed him that I had written, as he alleged, three letters, and that I was quite prepared to bear the consequences. I, however, respectfully declined to give him any information as to my employÉ. I was then requested to wait outside, and the order was given to send for Mr. B—. “Well,” I thought, “if poor old B— tells them as much as I have he need not fear being identified as my brother conspirator.” A moment later, and I was recalled: a glance at the unhappy B— convinced me that fear had robbed him of his self-possession, and that he had not observed the salutary advice he had given me as to “telling ’em nothink.” His face was the colour of a boiled turkey, and the keys at his side (a sorry burlesque on authority) were rattling from tremour. The Governor then said, “Mr. B— has admitted that he took a letter for you, so I presume you have now no objection to admit it.” In courtesy to the nervous donkey I asked him if that was correct, and on his replying in the affirmative, I at once made a clean breast of it. The poor man was thereupon suspended from duty, and a week later summarily dismissed. I tried to make him every reparation in my power, and shortly after I procured him a billet at thirty shillings a week, but when I sent to his lodgings I found he had left. I heard afterwards he had gone into the country, where I hope by this time he has recovered his position. My case had yet to be dealt with, and as the Governor was not qualified to adjudicate on such a serious offence as this is considered, I was remanded to appear before the Visiting Justices. I heard terrible rumours of these avenging Solons, and of the floggings, solitary confinements, and other barbarities that followed in the wake of their fortnightly visits, and was prepared—but perfectly indifferent—for the worst. My information for the most part was derived from brother malefactors, and consequently likely to be considerably exaggerated. I found, indeed, that this was the case, and when the eventful day—Black Wednesday—arrived, I discovered that the dreaded justices were a full bench of Middlesex magistrates, my old friends who had smashed, pulverized, and otherwise annihilated Barnabas Amos on my representations, and who I hoped and believed were gentlemen capable of weighing the pros and cons of my peculiar case. My expectations were more than verified. The punishment cells, as I had had them described, and of which I hereafter got a bird’s-eye view—from outside—were not inviting abodes. There are twelve of them, fitted with double doors, warranted to preclude all sound from penetrating beyond. They contain no furniture, except a plank and a stool, both fixed to the floor, and the two blankets and rug that constitute the entire bed and bedding are issued every night and removed every morning. Water is supplied three times a day, and the food is stirabout and dry bread, administered on homoeopathic principles. Books there are none—indeed, the subdued light would make them superfluous; the occupants, moreover, have no employment, the distraction of oakum-picking even being fiendishly denied them. Men who had undergone this punishment told me that the effect was indescribable, this combination of gloom, idleness, and profound silence, and their wasted appearance after a fortnight’s incarceration fully confirmed their assertions. The penalty, as I was credibly informed, for sending a letter out was ten days at least in the punishment cells; and a preliminary I underwent of being carefully weighed on the morning of the eventful day raised the betting in my estimation to six to four on the cells. A kind friend expressed great sympathy for me, but feared I must make up my mind to this degrading punishment. But he was wrong; the weighing was superfluous, and I got off with a reprimand.

The Middlesex magistrates having heard the case, which was put before them in the kindest light by the Governor, and taking into consideration the dastardly act, whereby the offence was in a measure discovered, informed me through the chairman that they knew my position and were sorry for it, pointed out the gravity of my offence, and finished with an admonition—a treatment that only gentlemen could have accorded to such as I. This generosity induced me to register a mental vow that I would not abuse their kindness. I felt indeed as if I were on my parole; but the foolish act of an illiterate jailor—instigated, I suspect, by a vindictive snob—a few days after, armed with the authority, but incapable of discriminating between the treatment most likely to be deterrent to a man like myself and that desirable with a costermonger, turned me from my good resolutions. I saw it was a question of the “best man wins,” that confidence was a thing that never entered their heads, and that I had nothing to gain by passive submission. For the first and only time in my career I felt insulted, and determined henceforth to double my precautions, to evade every regulation, and to lose no opportunity of bribing everything and everybody with whom I came in contact. The act that decided me in this course was being formally searched. A few days after my admonition I was unexpectedly visited by two warders, and ordered to change everything I had on for a fresh supply, which they brought in. Meanwhile my cell was turned upside down. The salt was capsized into the plate; my bed minutely examined; the table and stool tapped and shaken; and matches struck and poked down the ventilators; and when they discovered I had neither pencil nor paper, I was left to readjust my apartment. As I said to them at the time, nobody in his senses would have supposed that a man who had so lately escaped a severe punishment would be such a fool as to incur the risk of possessing contraband articles. As a fact, I had got rid of all my combustibles a few days before; and if any of the officials can remember a stoppage in a certain drain about that time, they can make a pretty shrewd guess at what became of them. The above incident may, I hope, attract the notice of someone in authority, and be the means of giving a discretionary power to governors of prisons as regards the treatment of a certain class of prisoners. Sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander, and it’s for the authorities to decide whether certain results cannot be attained by tact that can never be assured by brutality.