Arthur Griffiths

“ It is easy to imagine the condition of Millbank then. A small colony apart from the great world; living more than as neighbours, as one family almost—but not happily—under the same roof. The officials, nearly all of them of mature age, [46] having grown-up children, young ladies and young gentlemen, always about the place, and that place from its peculiar conditions, like a ship at sea, shut off from the public, and concentrated on what was going on within its walls. ”

“ Gossip, of course, prevalent—even malicious; constant observation of one another, jealousies, quarrels, inevitable when authority was divided between three people, the governor, chaplain, and matron, and it was not clearly made out which was the most worthy; subordinates ever on the look-out to make capital of the differences of their betters, and alive to the fact that they were certain of a hearing when they chose to carry any slanderous tale, or make any underhand complaint. ”

“ Having been appointed governor of this institution, I desire to express to the inferior officers my earnest and sincere hope that they will one and all bear in mind the objects of a penitentiary. The reformation of persons who have been engaged in criminal acts and habits is the most difficult work in the world. God alone, who rules the heart, can accomplish it; but God requires means to be used by man, and amongst the means used here, none are more important than the treatment of prisoners by the officers in charge of them. That treatment should always be regulated by religious principle. ”

“ If it is a principle of our criminal jurisprudence, that the guilty should escape rather than the innocent suffer, it appears equally a principle, in the infliction of punishment, that every regulation connected with it, from the first committal of a prisoner to gaol to the termination of his sentence of transportation, should be characterized rather by an anxious care for the health and convenience of the criminal than for anything which might even by implication appear to bear on him with undue severity. ”

“ The truth is, the prisoner was very difficult to deal with, and they were all more or less afraid of her. “It is no wonder,” says the governor, “that a person of her strength, violence, and mental superiority, combined with reckless determination and obstinacy, should inspire these terrors; and I really cannot blame these officers. Without perpetually searching her person, as well as her bedding, it would be impossible to guard against the practices just reported, but this would occasion perpetual disturbance, leading to no good end, but doing much mischief in the Penitentiary.” ”

“ The female prison population in the north are a rough, headstrong lot, very difficult to manage, and at that time the chief matron was a timid person, who found it pleasanter to give way than to drive, and, of course, the warder staff took their tone from her. It transpired afterwards that it was the custom to let the prisoners who should have been in cellular separation collect together in parties of four or more in one of the large workrooms, where they could gossip and idle their time away for hours together, never doing a hand’s-turn of work, and thus persistently breaking the regulations. ”

“ Most of these genteel people who found themselves in Millbank owed their fate to forgery or fraud. There was the old gentleman of seventy years of age, who had been a mayor in a north-country manufacturing town, and who had forged and defrauded his nieces out of some £360,000. The officers spoke of him as “a fine old fellow,” who took to his new task of tailoring like a man, and who could soon turn out a soldier’s great-coat as well as any one in the prison. Another convict of this stamp was Mr. T., a Liverpool merchant in a prosperous business, who was a forger on quite a colossal scale. ”

“ Baron Trenck’s escape from Spandau, and Casanova’s from the Piombi, are as familiar to us as household words.
In this present time escapes are of rarer occurrence, and for many reasons. It is not that prisons are really more secure per se:—so far as construction can be depended upon, a gaol like Newgate seems as safe as stone and iron can make it:—but the principles of security are so much better realized and understood. Our forefathers trusted to physical means, and thought enough was done. To-day our reliance is placed on the moral aid of continuous supervision. ”

“ Again the governor urges on the committee that she may be removed by transportation, she being, under existing circumstances, both intractable and incorrigible. “If I am to maintain discipline where she is, it must be by entering perpetually into fresh and perplexing contests, the outcome of which may be very awful as respects the prisoner and exceedingly embarrassing as respects the institution,” he writes. She next pretends to wish to lay hands upon herself, and her rug is found torn up and converted into a noose. It was hanging to a peg in her cell, like a halter ready for use. ”

“ They reported to the House of Commons that “there were among the prisoners some profligate and turbulent characters for whose outrageous conduct the punishments in use under the rules and regulations of the Penitentiary were by no means sufficient.” They found by experience that “confinement in a dark cell, though in most cases a severe and efficacious punishment, operates very differently on different persons. It appears to lose much of its effect from repetition; it cannot always be carried far without the danger of injuring health; and on some men as well as boys it has no effect.” ”

“ He was an old police sergeant, long pensioned off, but he had his wits about him still. The office was approached by a narrow lane, with room for one set of wheels only, a quarter of a mile in length, and branching off from the high road to Uxbridge. Up this lane, half hidden by the hedge, Mr. Power drove to the foreman’s shed. The ex-sergeant was alone, and readily fell in with the plan proposed. “Here!” he cried to a young fellow who went his errands and assisted in the office; “run up to the field and ask Dan Cockett if he wants a job for that idle young nephew. ”

“ To-day she is as bad as ever. No doubt in time she would come all right, but in the meantime what is to be done with her? I cannot venture to place her among other prisoners. If she is to be kept apart the whole time of her imprisonment (of which three and a half years are unexpired) , there is every reason to expect a constant recurrence of violence and other modes of annoyance; for she has no respect for authority, and after assaulting the governor and counterfeiting madness with impunity, she will be emboldened to act as she likes. ”

“ Then the ringleaders, having been again confined to their cells, commenced a hideous din and continued it for hours.
Soon after this a violent attack is made upon the chief matron: a woman assaults her, and deals [114] her a blow that makes her nose bleed. This is the signal for a general disturbance. All the ward join in the uproar: those not under lock and key crowd round the matron with frightful yells and imprecations, and from those in their cells, come shouts through the bars, such as “Give it her! give it her. I’d make a matron of her, if I was out. I’d have her life.” ”

“ No warder can feel himself safe when he knows that an unguarded word may be brought against him at some future day.” The practical common sense of these remarks no one can deny; but those who knew Captain Groves will smile as they remember that his own language at times savoured “of the camps,” and he possibly felt that under such a system of espionage he might himself be caught tripping. But in setting his face against the old practices he was clearly right, although it might bring him into disfavour with those hypocritical [299] subordinates who felt that their day of favour was over. ”

“ To lose a key entails exemplary punishment, heavy fines, or immediate dismissal. Yet in these old Millbank days we find an officer coolly lending his keys to a prisoner to let himself in and out of his ward; and another who wakes up in the morning without them, asserts at once that they have been stolen from him in the night. In this latter case instant search was made, and after a long delay one key was found in the ventilator of a prisoner’s cell, and below his window, outside, the remaining three. ”

“ They were re-echoed by the shouts of the many prisoners who, standing at their open cell doors, were spectators of the scene. One man, Nolan, climbing up to his window, gave the alarm to the tower below. Assistance soon arrived—the taskmaster followed by two others, who met first Morris and King as they were returning to their cells. “What has happened?” they asked. “I haven’t an idea,” Morris replied coolly. King, too, is equally in the dark. The officers pass on and come to other cells, in which the prisoners are seen grinning as if in high glee, and when questioned they only laugh the more. ”

“ Had he been more unrelenting it is probable that the worst offenders would never have gone such lengths in their insubordination. A word or two of contrition, often the merest sham, was sufficient generally to secure his pardon. Thus when a man has worked himself into a fury and appears ready for any act of desperation, the mere appearance of the governor calms him, and the prisoner, softened, says, “You, sir, use me much better than I deserve. Put me in [92] the dark.” ”

“ The peculiarity of our system,” goes on the governor, “hardly appears to be considered as an objection to his continuance here.” The principle of the Penitentiary was that it was not merely a place of safe custody and punishment, but a place of reformation; and, therefore, if it failed of this latter object in any instance, a power was reserved of sending away the prisoner as incorrigible, for fear of his interfering with the progress of the system among other prisoners. ”

“ It was but natural that the old officers, receiving little or no increase of pay, while their duties were generally augmented, should have felt some dissatisfaction, and that a portion of it should have vented itself in personal feelings towards the governor, who appears to be both a zealous and energetic officer, giving his orders in a peremptory manner as a man accustomed to military life, and expecting them to be obeyed with soldierlike precision. ”

“ Madame Rachel, the would-be benefactor to her sex which she desired to make beautiful for ever, tried her blandishments on more than one Millbank matron. It was my fate to welcome the Tichborne claimant to durance vile, to watch him wasting [324] from excessive obesity to a decent and respectable size, lachrymose and repentant, but secretive and defiant to the last. The moving spirits in the De Goncourt affair, Kurr and Benson, made Millbank their medium of communication with the dishonest detective officers who for a time shook public confidence in the London police force. ”

“ I never knew but two instances of a matron in a prison, and those were the wives of turnkeys or porters. In the present case it is necessary that a person should be selected of respectability as to situation in life. How difficult must it be to find a female educated as and having the feelings of a gentlewoman, who would undertake a duty so revolting to every feeling she has hitherto possessed, and even so alarming to a person of that sex. ”

“ No account of escapes from prison would be complete without some reference to George Hackett, who escaped from Pentonville in a manner nearly marvellous. Through some neglect he had been allowed to take his sheets and bedrope into chapel with him. At that time the chapel was divided into a number of small compartments, one for each prisoner. Hackett worked unobserved in his, till he had forced up the flooring, and so gained the gallery; whence, by breaking a zinc ventilator, he climbed through a window on to the parapet leading to the governor’s house. ”

“ Nevertheless their proceedings were more or less tentative, for as yet little was known of so-called “systems” of prison discipline, and those who had taken Millbank under their charge were compelled to feel their way slowly and with caution, as men still in the dark. The Penitentiary was essentially an experiment—a sort of crucible into which the criminal elements were thrown, in the hope that they might be changed or resolved by treatment into other superior forms. The members of the committee were always in earnest, and they spared themselves no pains. ”

“ The evident animus of the subordinates against their governor is very clearly shown in every page: nothing he did was right, and the complaints when not actually false, as in the case of prisoner Chinnery, were childish and almost beneath consideration. One [305] officer declared that Captain Groves did not like the old prison officers; that he had said openly “he would get them all out.” They could never please him; they got no credit however much they might exert themselves. Another told the governor he was breaking his (the officer’s) spirit and his heart. ”

“ The prisoners seem to have grown all at once alive to the power they possessed of combination. It had been suspected for some time that a conspiracy was in progress among the denizens of D Ward, Pentagon two, and a minute search of the several cells brought to light a number of clandestine communications. These, written mostly on the blank pages of prayer-books, and spare copy-book leaves, were all to the same effect: exhortations to riot and mutiny. ”

“ Two notorious offenders in B Ward, Hawkins and John Caswell, are busy at the work of destruction, and already everything is in ruins. The tumult is so tremendous, so many others contribute their shouts, and the thieves’ whistle runs [95] so quickly from cell to cell, that sleep is impossible to any one within the boundary wall; and presently all officials, chaplain, doctor, manufacturers, and steward, have joined the governor, and are helping to quell the disturbance. ”