When I found myself alone in my permanent cell, I sat down on the little three-legged stool and examined the furniture. There was a flap-table, two feet by one, fixed on the right wall. In the left corner behind the door were three minute quarter-circle shelves, containing a roll of bedding, a wooden salt-cellar, a wooden spoon, and a comb and brush, each about four inches long. In the opposite corner under the window stood the plank bed, and on the floor were three tin utensils—a dust-pan, a water-can, and a nondescript lidded article for baser uses. Fortunately, the urn-shaped abomination I found in the Newgate cells, and have already described, was absent in Holloway. When a prisoner wished to visit the water-closet, he rang his bell, and sooner or later (often later) he was let out. Each wing had two closets in a deep recess, the door shielding the occupant's person from mid-leg to breast. During the night the nondescript lidded article was brought into requisition. When the cell doors were opened at six o'clock in the morning every prisoner put out his "slops," which were emptied by the cleaners. This scavenger's work must be very distasteful, but so anxious are the prisoners to get out of their cells that there are always plenty of candidates for the office. The tins are kept clean by means of brick and whitening, which are passed into the cells every evening in little cotton bags. My dust-pan, at least, was always well polished, for I used it as a mirror to see how I was looking, being naturally anxious to ascertain what visible effect the prison life had upon me. One of the warders put me up to a very useful "wrinkle." By well cleaning the dust-pan with whitening, rubbing it up well with the clean rag until it had a nice surface, and then lightly passing a rag saturated with dubbin over it, you could produce a beautiful polish by a few slight touches of the "finisher." After this artistic process the dust-pan shone like an oriental mirror, and might have served a belle at her toilette. Every article of furniture has now been described, excepting the stool. It was a miniature tripod, fifteen inches high, with a round top about eight inches in diameter. A more uncomfortable seat could hardly be devised. There was no support for the back, and the legs had to be stretched out at full length. If you bent them you threw your body forward, and ran the risk of contracting round shoulders. Whenever I wanted a little ease, especially after dinner, when a V-shaped body is not conducive to digestion, I used to rest against the upright plank bed, extend my legs luxuriously, and dream of the cigar which was just the one thing required to complete a picture of comfort.
Such was the furniture of my apartment in Her Majesty's Holloway Hotel. Scantier appointments were impossible. Yet, to my surprise, an officer came in one day with an inventory, to see if anything was missing. Rather a superfluous check, when the iron cell door was constantly locked and there was no opening to the window! A prisoner could hardly bury his furniture in a concrete floor, and the most ferocious appetite would surely quail before deal planks and tin pans.
The cell itself was similar to the one I have already described. The ventilation was provided by an iron grating over the door, communicating with a shaft that carried off the foul air; and another iron grating under the window, which admitted the fresh air from outside. This grating, however, did not communicate directly with the atmosphere, for the prison is built with double walls. Eighteen inches or so below it was another grating in the outer wall. This arrangement prevented the prisoners from getting a glimpse of the grounds, as well as the air from rushing in too rawly. My cell was one of the old ones. In the new cells there is a slightly different method of ventilation. Two of the small panes of glass are removed from the window, and a little frame is placed inside, consisting of wood at the sides and fluted glass in the front. Flush with the window-sill at the bottom, it inclines inward at an angle of twenty degrees, so that there is room at the top for a six-inch flap, which works on hinges, and is elevated or lowered by a chain. This is an improvement on the old system, because the fresh air comes in straight, and you can regulate the inflow. But in both cases the fresh air has to ascend, and unless there is a wind blowing you get very little of it on a hot summer day. The ventilation depending entirely on temperature, without being assisted by a draught, if the outside temperature, as is often the case in the summer, happens to be higher than that of your cell, your atmosphere is stagnant, and you live in a tank of foul air. This defect might be partially remedied by leaving the cell doors open when the prisoners are out at exercise or chapel, and, as it were, refilling the tank. But keys are a fetish in prison, and the officials think it quite as necessary to lock up an empty cell as an occupied one.
The cell floor, I have said, was blackleaded and polished. A small fibre brush was supplied for sweeping up the dust, and a tight roll of black cloth for polishing. I used both these at first, but I soon dispensed with the latter. Having a slight cold, I found my expectoration black, a circumstance that slightly alarmed me until I reflected that my lungs were in excellent order, and that the discoloration must be due to some extrinsic cause. This I discovered to be the blacklead from the floor. It wears off under your tread, and as there is no draught to carry the dust away, it floats in the air and is inhaled. The only remedy was to avoid the blacklead altogether. When, therefore, the bucket containing a quantity in solution was next brought round, I declined to have any. "But you must," said the officer. "Well, I object," I answered, "and I certainly shall not put it on. If you like to do it yourself of course I cannot prevent you." He did not like to do it himself and disappeared, saying he would come again directly, which he forgot to do. Several days afterwards the Deputy-Governor came on a tour of inspection. Noticing that my floor was neither black nor polished, he attempted a mild reproof. I repeated my objection. "Well, you know," he replied, "you must keep your cell clean." "Yes," I rejoined, "and I do keep it clean for my own sake; but your blacklead is dirt." That ended the conversation, and the blacklead question was never agitated again, although once or twice, during my absence from the cell, the obnoxious stuff was put on the floor and polished up by one of the cleaners. Let me add that in the new cells the floors are all boarded, and the blacklead nuisance is there unknown.
While I was meditating on my luxurious surroundings, the warder entered again with a prisoner, who carried a bag. "Well, Mr. Foote," said the genial officer, "how are you getting on? I've brought you some work. It isn't hard, and you needn't task yourself; you'll find it help to pass away the time." Some of the contents of the bag were then emptied on the floor. They consisted of fibre-rope clipped into short lengths. These had to be picked abroad. The work was light, but very monotonous. It did help to kill time, and it was less troublesome than picking oakum. Mr. Truelove tells me that they made him pick oakum in prison till his fingers were raw, and laughed at him for complaining. He was then seventy years old! Think of it, reader, and reflect on the tender mercies of the religion of charity.
During my imprisonment I never worked at anything but fibre-picking. Gladly would I have wheeled a barrow in the open air, but that is a privilege reserved for felons; misdemeanants are locked up in their cells night and day. Once there was an attempt made to instruct me in the art of brush-making, but it egregiously failed. An officer from the D wing, where the mats and brushes are made, opened my cell door one afternoon, and shouted, "Come along!" "Where?" I asked, not liking his manner. "Where!" he ejaculated, "Come along." "Thank you," I said, "but you must please tell me where." He was very much annoyed by my freezing civility, which I always found the best represser of impertinence; but recognising his mistake, he changed his tone, and vouchsafed an explanation. "The Governor," he said, "wants you to come and see how brushes are made." "Oh, of course," I said, and marched after him.
Arriving at the D wing, I was silently introduced to a prisoner sitting on a stool, who had been brought out of his cell to give me lessons in brush-making. He worked and I watched. Presently the officer had to attend to some other business a few yards off. Directly his back was turned the prisoner eagerly whispered, "How long are ye doin'?" I told him. "I'm doin' fifteen months," he confidingly said. Then he added, with look half positive and half interrogative, "Time's damned long, ain't it?" I agreed. Forgetting his work, he spliced a bit of rope badly. "See," I said, "that splice is wrong." "Ah," he replied, his face brightening, "you're a salt un too, are ye? Hanged if I didn't think you was a barnacle." He informed me that he had been in the English and American navies, and all round the world. Where had I been? I was obliged to explain that I was a journalist. Quill-driving, as he called it, was evidently, in his opinion, an ignominious employment. However did I learn splicing! When I explained that I was bred at the seaside, and passionately loved boating, his sailor's heart warmed towards me again. "This work ain't hard," he said; "you can make two brushes in an hour and a half, and I makes a dozen a week." I smiled. It was a fine illustration of what is called prison labor. Resuming, he said: "I'm the only one as makes 'em now, and I s'pose they wants more. The chap as made 'em afore me used to do three dozen a week. Wasn't he a darned fool? Now, don't you go makin' more than two a day, or you'll put my nose out of joint." "No," I promised, "I won't make more than two a day." "Ah," he said, looking at me with a comical twinkle of the eyes, "I see you ain't a goin' to make brushes."
At this point the warder stepped up, and invited me to try my hand. "Thank you," I replied; "the Governor told you to let me see how brushes are made, and I have seen how brushes are made." Then bowing slightly, I walked straight back to my cell, leaving the officer almost petrified with astonishment. I heard no more of brush-making.
My objection to the work was simple. It was more interesting than picking fibre, but it necessitated stooping, the brush being held, like a shoe, between the knees. As a lecturer, I knew too well the value of a sound chest to engage in such employment.
I come now to the diet. Third-class fare, to which I was entitled by the doctor's order, was almost entirely farinaceous, and miserably monotonous. Breakfast and tea (or supper), served at eight and six respectively, consisted of six ounces of brown bread and three quarters of a pint of gruel, or "skilly." The latter was frequently so fluid that spooning was unnecessary. The dinners, served punctually at twelve o'clock, were more varied. Brown bread and browner potatoes were the staple of each mid-day meal. The bread was always excellent. The potatoes were abominable. I have said that they were browner than the bread, and I may add that the color was not caused by cooking, but purely original. As the old potatoes were leaving the market, and the new ones were too expensive for prisoners, the most robust appetite must have turned with disgust from the supply which fell to our share. I should imagine that every swine's trough around the metropolis must have been plundered to provision Holloway Gaol.
The variable part of the dinner was as follows. Pea-soup, to which, as I have already said, I had a physical antipathy, was served up three days out of every seven—on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. And such pea-soup! The mixture used to rise as I swallowed it, and I have often grasped my throat to keep it down, knowing that if I did not eat, however nauseous the food, my health would necessarily suffer. It was not pea-soup before the joint, but pea-soup without it, and in that case the quality of the compound is an important matter. When I read the Book of Job afresh in my cell, I found in the sixth chapter, and seventh verse, a text which admirably suited my situation: "The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat." Three days a week I could have preached a better, or at least a more feeling, sermon on that text than any parson in the kingdom.
On Sundays and Wednesdays, instead of the pea-soup, I was served with six ounces of suet pudding baked in a separate tin. I never saw such pudding, and I never smelt such suet. Brown meal was used for the dough, and the suet lay on the top in yellow greasy streaks. I can liken the compound to nothing but a linseed poultice. The resemblance was so obvious that it struck many other prisoners. I have heard the term poultice applied to the suet pudding more than once in casual conversations in the exercise ground. Twice a week I was entitled to meat. On Friday, instead of the pea-soup or suet pudding, there was three ounces of Australian beef; and on Mondays three-quarters of an ounce of fat bacon with some white beans. The subtle humorist who drew up the diet scale had appended a note that "all meats were to be weighed without bone."
A good tale hangs by that bacon and beans. While I was awaiting the second trial in Newgate, and providing my own food, I studied the diet scale which hangs up in each cell, and was fascinated by this extravagant quantity of pork, which seemed to evidence an unimagined display of prison hospitality. One of the officers to whom I mentioned the matter said, "Ah, Mr. Foote, I wish you would show that diet up when you get out. Untried prisoners have the same fare as condemned criminals, only they get less of it. There are lusty chaps come in here, some of them quite innocent, who could eat twice as much, and look round for the man that cooked it. I'll tell you a story about that three-quarters of an ounce. A fellow rang his bell one day after the dinner was served. 'Well,' I said, 'what's the matter?' 'I want's my bacon,' said he. 'Well, you've got it,' said I. 'No I aint,' said he. 'It's in your tin,' said I. 'Taint in my tin,' said he. Then I fetched up the cook. We all three searched, and at last we found the bacon in one of the shucks of the beans."
The worthy fellow laughed, and so did I, as he ended his story. There might have been some exaggeration in it, but you would not find it so hard to believe if you had ever sat down to dine on three-quarters of an ounce of fat bacon.
I was confined in my cell twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four, and during the first week my one hour's exercise was mostly taken in the corridor instead of in the open air. The prison authorities are careless about a man's health being subtly undermined, but they do not like him to catch cold, which may produce visible and audible consequences. Whenever it is snowing or raining, or whenever the ground is wet, the prisoners exercise in the corridors, where the air is scarcely purer than in their cells. During the first week, the weather being bad, I only went out once. On Saturday, which was cleaning day, I had no exercise at all, and on Sunday I was entitled to none—prisoners not being allowed that privilege on the blessed Sabbath until a month of their sentence has expired. I was therefore confined to my cell without exercise or fresh air from Friday morning until Monday morning, or three clear days. The exercise out of doors is a delightful relief from solitary confinement in a brick vault. The prisoners walk in Indian file in circles: a regular thieves' procession, the Rogue's March without the music. The new comers, who violate the rule of silence, are soon detected by the vigilant officers, but the old hands, as I have said, acquire a habit of speaking without moving the lips, and in a tone which just reaches their next neighbor. Ten days or so after I entered Holloway I overheard the following conversation behind me:—
"Who's that bloke in front o' you?" "Dunno," was the reply. "Queer lookin' bloke, aint he?"—"How long's he doin'?"—"A stretch," which in prison language means twelve months, and having served that term, I know that it is a stretch. "What's he in for?"—"Dunno, but I hear he put somethin' in a paper they didn't like."—"What, a stretch for that!"—And I venture to assert that, although the prisoner who uttered this ejaculation was on the wrong side of a gaol, his unsophisticated common sense on this point was infinitely superior to the bigotry of Giffard, Harcourt, and North, and of the jury who assisted in sending us to gaol for "putting something in a paper they didn't like."
During my first week's residence in Holloway Gaol, owing to the bad weather, I exercised in the corridor with the other inmates of the A wing. There is little more room between the cell doors and the railing overlooking the well than suffices for the passage of a single person. The prisoners therefore walked in Indian file, and as they were practically beyond supervision except when they came abreast of one of the three or four officers in charge, a great deal of conversation went on, and I wondered why the chief warder below did not hear the loud hum of so many voices. I afterwards discovered the reason. When you stand under the procession you can hear nothing but the trampling of dozens of feet, which reverberates through the wing, and drowns every other sound.
At first I marched as stiff as a poker, drawing myself together, as it were, into the smallest compass, to avoid the contamination of the company, most of whom were poor, repulsive specimens of humanity,............