Six Years in the Prisons of England | Page 9

like himself, when a gentleman noticed them and asked them into a photographer's to get their portraits taken, and gave them a shilling each as being the two ugliest specimens of the human race he had ever seen!"
"How long has he been in prison?" I enquired.
"Goodness knows!" he exclaimed; "I think about eight or nine-and-twenty years, and the longest sentence he ever had, except the first, was sixty days!"
"What are his offences usually?"
"Oh, nothing but kicking up rows in the streets, or smashing a window. Last time it was for a fight with a poor man with a large family. He got up the fight on purpose, and as both were about to be apprehended, 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!"
[3] Penal servitude.
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.