The confinement was beginning to tell on me. My life had been exceptionally active, physically and mentally, and this prison life was as stagnant as the air of my cell. Thus "cabin'd cribbed, confined," I felt all my vital functions half arrested. Dejection I did not experience; my spirits were light and fresh; but the body revolted against its ill-treatment, and recorded its protest on the conscious brain.

How grateful was the brief hour's exercise on the Sunday morning! The muffled roar of the great city was hushed, and the silence served to emphasise every visual phenomenon. Even the air of that city courtyard, hemmed in by lofty walls, seemed a breath of Paradise. I threw back my shoulders, expanding the chest through mouth and nostrils, and lifted my face to the sky. A pale gleam of sunshine pierced through the canopy of London smoke. It might have looked ghastly to a resident in the country, unused to the light London calls day, but to one immured in a prison cell it was an irradiation of glory. The mind expanded under the lustre; imagination preened its wings, and sped beyond the haze into the everlasting blue.

Gallant Lovelace, in durance vile, boasted his unfettered mind, and sang—

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage."

True, but the model prison was not invented then, nor was the silent system in vogue. Lovelace's apartment was, perhaps, not so scrupulously clean as mine, but it commanded a finer prospect. He knew nothing of the horror of opaque windows, and his iron bars did not exclude the air and light.

At eleven o'clock my cell door was opened, and an officer asked me if I would like to go to chapel. "Yes," I replied, for I was curious to see what a religious service in Newgate was like, and any interruption of the day's monotony was welcome.

Standing outside my cell door, I perceived Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Kemp, and Mr. Cattell already outside theirs. The few other prisoners still remaining in Newgate (they are transferred to other prisons as soon as possible after sentence) were ranged in a similar manner. A file was then formed, and we marched, accompanied by officers, through a passage on the ground floor to the chapel, passing on our way the glass boxes in which prisoners hold communication with their solicitors. An officer stands outside during the interview: he can hear nothing, but he is able to see every motion of the occupants; the object of this mechanism being to guard against the passage of any interdicted articles.

The chapel was small, lighted by a large window on the left side from the door, and warmed by a mountainous stove in the centre. A few backless forms were provided on the floor for unconvicted prisoners. We were accommodated with the front bench, and requested to sit two or three feet apart from each other, the few other prisoners occupying seats behind us being separated in the same way. The convicted prisoners sit in a railed-off part of the chapel, and I believe there is a gallery for the women. On our right, facing the window, was a pulpit, below which was the clerk's desk, flanked on the right by the Governor's box and on the left by a seat for the officers.

After waiting some time, we heard footsteps at the door. In strode the tall Governor and the Chaplain, the one entering his box, and the other going to the clerk's desk, where he read the service, which was rushed through at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Mr. Duffeld started the hymns, but his voice is not melodious, and he has little sense of tune. The singing, indeed, would have broken down if it had not been for the Francatelli of the establishment, who had exchanged his kitchen costume for the official uniform, and sang with the fervor and emphasis of a Methodist leader or a captain in the Salvation Army.

Mr. Duffeld mounted the pulpit to read his sermon. His text was Matthew vii., 21: "Not everyone that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven." This text caused me a pleasant surprise. I had heard of Mr. Duffeld as a member of, or a sympathiser with, the Guild of St. Matthew; and I fancied that he meant to condemn our prosecution, not directly, so as to offend his employers, but indirectly, so as to justify himself and satisfy us. I was, however, greviously mistaken. Mr. Duffeld's sermon was directed against the large order of "professing Christians," who manage a pretty easy compromise between God and Mammon, between Jesus Christ and the world and the flesh, if not the Devil. It had no reference to us, and it was entirely inappropriate to the rest of the congregation, who, I must say, from the casual glimpses I caught of them, were glancing about aimless as monkeys, or staring listless like melancholy monomaniacs.

When the benediction was pronounced, Mr. Duffeld marched swiftly away; the tall Governor strode after him, and the prisoners filed in silence through the doorway back to their cells. What a commentary it was on "Our Father!" It was a ghastly mockery, a blasphemous farce, a satire on Christianity infinitely more sardonic and mordant than anything I ever wrote or published. Soon after returning to my cell I was glad of the substantial dinner and drowsy ale to deaden the bitter edge of my scorn.

After tea I settled down to the final preparations for my defence. My gas was left on for an extra hour to afford me the time I required. It was half-past nine when I retired to my hammock. Everything was then finished except the interview I had requested with my co-defendants. This the Governor was powerless to grant. He had applied to the visiting magistrates, who protested the same inability. A "petition" had then been forwarded to the Home Secretary, but no answer had been received. While I was pondering this difficulty, my cell door was suddenly opened, and the Governor entered. Apologising for disturbing me unceremoniously at that unseasonable hour, he informed me that a messenger from the Home Office had brought the necessary permission for our interview. It took place the next morning. We had just thirty minutes to arrange our plan for the approaching battle, the consultation being held in the courtyard before breakfast. The time was of course absurdly inadequate. We had a just claim to better treatment, Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Kemp and I; we were charged with the same offence; we pleaded to a common indictment; we stood together in the same dock; we were involved in the same fate; and witnesses would be called against us all three indifferently. Surely, then, as the jury had disagreed once, and we had to defend ourselves afresh, we were entitled to proper conference with our papers before us. This al fresco chat was the last of Judge North's "opportunities." At ten o'clock we were once more in the Old Bailey dock, fronting the judge and jury, surrounded by an eager crowd, and beginning a second fight for liberty and perhaps for life.



CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND TRIAL.

Before I had been in the Old Bailey dock two minutes on the morning of my second trial, I found that our case was hopeless. The names of no less than four jurymen were handed to me by friends in court, every one of whom had been heard to declare that he meant to bring in a verdict of Guilty. One of these impartial guardians of English liberty had stated, in a public-house, his intention to "make it hot for the Freethinkers." How many more had uttered similar sentiments it is impossible to say, but it is reasonable to suppose that, if four were discovered by my friends, there were others who had escaped their detection. One of the four, a Mr. Thomas Jackson, was called on the jury list. I at once challenged him. He was then put into the witness-box, and on examination he admitted that he "had expressed an opinion adverse to the defendants in this case."

Then ensued a bit of comedy between Judge North and Sir Hardinge Giffard, who both assumed a wonderful air of impartiality.

"Judge North: Sir Hardinge, is it not better to withdraw this juryman at once? Whatever the verdict of the jury, I should be sorry to have a man among them who had expressed himself as prejudiced.

Sir Hardinge Giffard: Oh yes, my lord; I withdraw him. It will be much more satisfactory to the Crown and everybody else concerned."

"I withdraw him," says Sir Hardinge; "I should be sorry to have him," says the Judge; both evidently feeling that they were making a generous concession in the interests of justice. But as a matter of fact they had no choice. Mr. Thomas Jackson could no more sit on that jury after my challenge than he could fly over the moon. I smiled at the pretended generosity of these legal cronies, and said to myself, "Thank you for nothing."

Mr. Thomas Jackson's exit made no practical difference. I felt, I will not say that the jury was packed, but that it was admirably adapted to the end in view. Ours being the only case for trial that day, it was not difficult to accomplish this result. A friend of mine said to one of the officers of the court before I entered the dock, "Well, how is the case going to-day?" "Oh," was the prompt reply, "they are sure to convict." He knew the character of the jury.

Some of the "twelve men and true" had not even the decency to attend to the proceedings. One was timed by a friend in court—dead asleep for sixty minutes. When that juryman awoke his mind was made up on the case. At the conclusion of a trial that lasted over six hours they did not even retire for consultation. They stood up, faced each other, muttered together for about a minute, nodded their heads affirmatively, and then sat down and gave a verdict of guilty.

Several of the jury, however, I am bound to admit, had no idea that Judge North would inflict upon us such infamous sentences, and they were quite shocked at the consequences of their verdict. Four of them subsequently signed the memorial for our release. A fifth juryman vehemently declined to do so. "No," he said, "not I. I'm a man of principle! They got off too easy. Two years' hard labor wouldn't have been a bit too much." This pious gentleman is a publican in Soho, and bears the name of a famous murderer, Wainwright.

But to return. Mr. Ramsey and I were represented this time on all legal points by counsel. Mr. Cluer watched our interests vigilantly, and performed a difficult task with great courage and judgment. He bore Judge North's insults with wonderful patience. "Don't mind what you think about, it, Mr. Cluer," "I don't want you to tell me what you think;" such were the flowers of courtesy strewed from the bench upon Mr. Cluer's path. Our counsel's colleague in the case was Mr. Horace Avory, who represented Mr. Kemp. He also had a somewhat onerous duty to perform.

There is no need to deal with the technical evidence against us. It was of the usual character, and we merely cross-examined the witnesses as a matter of form. One thing was brought out clearly. Sir Henry Tyler's solicitors were aiding Sir Thomas Nelson, and their clerks were produced as witnesses against us.

Judge North's reception of evidence was peculiar. Knowing that there was no Court of Criminal Appeal, he set the rules of procedure at defiance. Any tittle-tattle was admitted, and postmen and servants were allowed to swear as to the directions on unproduced documents alleged to have been addressed to me. When, several weeks later, I was tried a third time in the Court of Queen's Bench, I heard Lord Coleridge rebuke the prosecuting counsel for attempting to put questions against which Judge North would hear no objection. I understand now how much prisoners are at the mercy of judges, and I feel how much truth there was in the remark I once heard from a prisoner in Holloway Gaol, that "it's often a toss up whether you get one year or seven."

Let me here also ask why Mr. Fawcett, the late Postmaster General, allowed his letter-carriers to be employed as detectives in such a case. It was proved in evidence that a policeman had called at the West-Central Post Office, and obtained an interview with the manager, after which the letter-carriers were instructed to spy upon my correspondence. Mr. Fawcett subsequently denied that the letter-carriers had ever been so instructed; but in that case the Post Office witnesses must have committed perjury. I do not believe it. I am confident that they merely obeyed orders, and that the scandalous abuse of a public trust must be charged upon the district postmaster, who probably thinks any weapon is legitimate against Freethinkers. As Mr. Fawcett refused to censure the postmaster for exceeding his duty, or the letter-carrier for committing perjury, I cannot hold him altogether guiltless in the matter.

In opening my defence I took care to accentuate my appreciation of Judge North's kindness, as the following passage will show:

"Gentlemen of the Jury,—I stand in a position of great difficulty and disadvantage. On Thursday last I defended myself against the very same charges in the very same indictment. The case lasted nearly seven hours, and the jury retired for more than two hours without being able to come to an agreement. They were then discharged, and the learned judge said he would try the case again on Monday with a new jury. As I had been out on bail from my committal, and as I stood in the same position after that abortive trial as before it commenced, I asked the learned judge to renew my bail, but he refused. I pleaded that I should have no opportunity to prepare my defence, and I was peremptorily told I should have the same opportunity as I had had that day. Well, gentlemen, I have enjoyed the learned judge's opportunity. I have spent all the weary hours since Thursday, with the exception of the three allowed for bodily exercise during the whole interval, in a small prison cell six feet wide, and so dark that I could neither write nor read at midday without the aid of gaslight. There was around me no sign of the animated life I am accustomed to, nothing but the loathsome sights and sounds of prison life. And in these trying and depressing circumstances I have had to prepare to defend myself in a new trial against two junior counsel and a senior counsel, who have had no difficulties to contend with, who have behind them the wealth and authority of the greatest and richest Corporation in the world, and who might even walk out of court in the perfect assurance that the prosecution would not be allowed to suffer in their absence."

Those who wish to read the whole of my defence, which lasted over two hours, will find it in the "Three Trials for Blasphemy." One portion of it, at least, is likely to be of permanent interest. With Mr. Wheeler's aid I drew up a long list of the abusive epithets applied by Christian controversialists to their Pagan opponents or to each other. It fills more than two pages of small type, and pretty nearly exhausts the vocabulary of vituperation. I added a few pearls of orthodox abuse of Atheism, and then asked the jury whether Christians had taught Freethinkers to show respect for their opponents' feelings. "Nobody in this country," I continued, "whatever his religion, is called upon to respect the feelings of anybody else. It is only the Freethinker who is told to respect the feelings of people from whom he differs. And to respect them how? Not when he enters their places of worship, not when he stands side by side with them in the business and pleasures of life, but when he reads what is written for Freethinkers without knowing that a pair of Christian eyes will ever scan the page."

It may be asked why I adopted a course so little likely to conciliate my judges. My reply is that I did not try to conciliate them. Feeling convinced that their verdict was already settled, and that my fate was sealed, I cast all such considerations aside, and deliberately made a speech for my own party. I was resolved that my loss should be the gain of Freethought. The peroration is the only other part of my defence I shall venture to quote. It ran as follows:

"Gentlemen, carry your minds back across the chasm of eighteen centuries and a half. You are in Jerusalem. A young Jew is haled along the street to the place of judgment. He stands before his judge; he is accused—of what, gentlemen? You know what he is accused of—the word must be springing to your lips—Blasphemy! Every Christian among you knows that your founder, Jesus Christ, was crucified after being charged with blasphemy. Gentlemen, it seems to me that no Christian should ever find a man guilty of blasphemy after that, but that the very word ought to be wiped from your vocabulary, as a reproach and a scandal. Christians, your founder was murdered as a blasphemer, for, although done judicially, it was still a murder. Surely then you will not, when you have secured the possession of power, imitate the bad example of those who killed your founder, violate men's liberties, rob them of all that is perhaps dearest to them, and brand them with a stigma of public infamy by a verdict from the jury-box! Surely gentlemen, it is impossible that you can do that! Who are we? Three poor men. Are we wicked? No, there is no proof of the charge. Our honor and honesty are unimpeached. It is not for us to play the Pharisee and say that we are better than other men. We only say that we are no worse. What have we done to be classed with thieves and felons, dragged from our homes and submitted to the indignities of a life so loathsome and hideous, that it is even revolting to the spirits of the men who have to exercise authority within the precincts of the gaol? You know we have done nothing to merit such a punishment. Gentlemen, you ought to return a verdict of Not Guilty against us, because the prosecution have not given you sufficient evidence as to the fact; because whatever legal bigotry is gained from the decisions of judges in the past must be treated as obsolete, as the London magistrate treated the law of Maintenance; because we have done nothing, as the indictment states, against the peace; because our proceedings have led to no tumult in the streets, no interference with the liberty of any man, his person or property; because no evidence has been tendered to you of any malice in our case; because there is no wicked motive in anything we have done; because the founder of your own creed was murdered on a very similar charge to that of which we stand accused now; and, lastly, because you should in this third quarter of the nineteenth century assert once and for ever the great principle of the absolute freedom of each man, unless he trench on the equal freedom of others. I ask you to assert the great principle of the liberty of the press, liberty of the platform, liberty of thought and liberty of speech; I ask you to prevent such prosecutions as are hinted at in the Times this morning; I ask you not to allow sects once more to be hurling anathemas against each other, and flying to the magistrates to settle questions which should be settled by intellectual and moral suasion; I ask you not to open a discreditable chapter of English history that ought to have been closed for ever; I ask you to give us a verdict of Not Guilty, to send us back to our homes and to stamp your brand of disapprobation on this prosecution, which is degrading religion by associating it with all that is penal, obstructive, and loathsome; I ask you to let us go away from here free men, and so make it impossible that there ever should again be a prosecution for blasphemy; I ask you to have your names inscribed in history as the last jury that decided for ever that great and grand principle of liberty which is broader than all the skies; a principle so high that no temple could be lofty enough for its worship; that grand principle which should rule over all—the principle of the equal right and the equal liberty of all men. That is the principle I ask you to assert by your verdict of Not Guilty. Gentlemen, I ask you to close this discreditable chapter of persecution once and for ever, and associate your names on the page of history with liberty, progress, and everything that is dignified, noble and dear to the consciences and hearts of men."

When I sat down there was a burst of applause, which the court officials were unable to suppress. Mr. Ramsey followed with another written speech, well composed and very much to the point. I noticed some of his auditors outside the jury-box choking down their emotion as he touchingly referred to his sleepless nights in Newgate through thinking of wife and child. His Lordship, I observed only smiled bitterly.

Judge North's summing up was a fraudulent performance. He told the jury that the consent of the Attorney-General had to be obtained for our prosecution, as well as that of the Public Prosecutor, which was a downright falsehood, unless it was a piece of sheer ignorance. He pretended to read the whole chapter on Offences against Religion in Sir James Stephen's "Digest of the Criminal Law," while in reality he deliberately omitted the very paragraph which damned his contention and supported mine. He also produced a new statement of the Law of Blasphemy to suit the occasion. On the previous Thursday he told the jury that any denial of the existence of Deity or of Providence was blasphemy. But in the meantime the public press had condemned this interpretation of the law as dangerous to high-class heretics. His lordship, therefore, expounded the law afresh, so as to exempt them while including us. The only question he now submitted to the jury was, "Are any of those passages put before you calculated to expose to ridicule, contempt or derision the Holy Scriptures or the Christian religion?" This amended statement of the Law of Blasphemy went directly in the teeth of our Indictment, which charged us with bringing Holy Scripture and the Christian Religion into disbelief as well as contempt. The fact is, blasphemy is a judge-made crime, and the "blasphemer's" fate depends very largely on who tries him. Lord Coleridge holds one view of the law, Sir James Stephen another, and Justice North another still. Nay, the last judge differs even from himself. He can give two various definitions of the law in five days, no doubt on the principle that circumstances alter cases, and that what is true for one purpose may be false for another.

I have said that the jury, with indecent haste, returned a verdict of Guilty. The crowd of people in court were evidently surprised at the result, although I was not, and they gave vent to groans and hisses. The tumult was indescribable. Suddenly there rang out from the gallery overhead the agonising cry of my young wife, whom I had implored not to come, and whose presence there I never suspected. She had crept in and listened all day to my trial, never leaving her seat for fear of losing it; and now, overwearied and faint for want of food, she reeled under the heavy blow. My heart leaped at the sound; my brain reeled; the scene around me swam in confusion—judge, jury, lawyers and spectators all shifting like the pieces in a kaleidoscope; my very frame seemed expanding and dissolving in space. The feeling lasted only a moment. Yet to me how long! With a tremendous effort I crushed down my emotions, and the next moment I was mentally as calm as an Alp, although physically I quivered like a race-horse sharply reined up in mid-gallop by an iron hand. My wife I could not help, but I could still maintain the honor and dignity of Freethought.

Order was at length restored after his lordship had threatened to clear the court. Mr. Avory then asked him to deal leniently with Mr. Kemp, who was merely a paid servant of ours, and in no other way actually responsible for the incriminated publication. Justice North listened with ill-concealed impatience. He was obviously anxious to flesh the sword of justice in his helpless victims. Directly Mr. Avory finished he began to pronounce the following sentence on me, and while he spoke there was deadly silence in that crowded court:—

"George William Foote, you have been found Guilty by the jury of publishing these blasphemous libels. This trial has been to me a very painful one. I regret extremely to find a person of your undoubted intelligence, a man gifted by God with such great ability, should have chosen to prostitute his talents to the service of the Devil. I consider this paper totally different from any of the works you have brought before me in every way, and the sentence I now pass upon you is one of imprisonment for twelve calendar months."

Twelve months! It was longer than I expected, but what matter? My indifference, however, was not shared by the crowd. They rose, and as the reporter said, "burst forth into a storm of hissing, groaning, and derisive cries." "Damn Christianity!" I heard one shout, and "Scroggs" and "Jeffries" were flung at the judge, who seemed at first to enjoy the scene, although he grew alarmed as the tumult increased. "Clear the gallery," he cried, and the police burst in among the people. But before they did their work something happened. From the first I resolved, if I were found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment, that I would say something before leaving the dock. My first impulse was to hurl at the judge a few words of passionate indignation. But I reflected "No! I have been tried and condemned for ridiculing superstition. Sarcasm is Blasphemy. Well then, let me sustain my character to the end. I will leave with a stinging Freethinker sentence on my lips." Raising my hand, I obtained a moment's silence. Then I folded my arms and surveyed the judge. Our eyes flashed mutual enmity for a few seconds, until with a scornful smile and a mock bow I said, "Thank you, my lord; the sentence is worthy of your creed."

That retort has frequently been cited. It was a happy inspiration, and the more I ponder it the more profoundly I feel that it was exactly the right thing to say.

The officers behind gave me a pressing invitation to descend the dock stairs, and I complied. For a long time I waited in one of the little dens I have already described, pacing up and down, revolving many thoughts, and wondering what detained my companions. The fact is, the police had a great deal of trouble in executing the judge's orders, and some time elapsed before he could strike Mr. Ramsey and Mr. Kemp. Meanwhile I could hear through the earth and the brick walls the roar of that indignant crowd which filled the street and suspended traffic, and I knew it was the first sound of public opinion reversing my unjust sentence.

Consider it for a moment. There is no allusion to outraged feelings, much less any suggestion of "indecency." It is a plain declaration of theological hatred; it breathes the spirit which animated the Grand Inquisitors when they sentenced heretics to be burnt to ashes at the stake. "Listen," says the judge. "I am on God's side. You are on the Devil's. God doesn't see you, but I do; God doesn't punish you, but I will. We have hells on earth for you Freethinkers, in the shape of Christian gaols, and to hell you go!"

Presently Mr. Ramsey came down with nine months on his back, and then Mr. Kemp with three. They had my sentence between them. Mr. Cattell afterwards joined us without any sentence. He was ordered to enter into his own recognisances in L200, and to find one surety in L100, to come up for judgment when called upon.

People have wondered on what principle Judge North determined our sentences. One theory is that he punished us according to the amount of his time we occupied. I made a long speech and got twelve months; Mr. Ramsey made a short speech and got nine; Mr. Kemp made no speech and got only three; while Mr. Cattell cried Peccavi and got off with a caution.

"Ready," cried the old janitor, in response to a distant voice. Our den was unlocked and we were marched back to Newgate for the last time.



CHAPTER X. "BLACK MARIA."

When we entered Newgate as "condemned criminals," we were theoretically under severe discipline, but the officers considerately allowed us a few minutes' conversation in the great hall before we marched to our cells. We shook hands with Mr. Cattell, whom I rather contemptuously congratulated on his good fortune. He went into the office to receive back his effects, and that was the last we saw of him. Vanishing from sight, he vanished from mind. During my imprisonment I scarcely ever thought of him in connexion with our case, and in writing this history I have had to tax my memory to record his insignificant role.

According to the "rules and regulations," all our privileges ended on our sentence. We were therefore entitled to nothing but prison fare after leaving the Old Bailey. But the hour was late, the cook was probably off duty, and our tea and toast had been waiting for us since five o'clock; so the head warder decided that we might postpone our trial of the prison menu until the morning. When it was brought to me, my toast (to use an Hibernicism) proved to be bread-and-butter. There were three slices. I ate two, but could not consume the third, my appetite being spoiled by excitement and the tepid tea.

The officer who acted as waiter informed me that the Old Bailey Street had been thronged all the afternoon, and was still crowded. "We all thought," he said, "that you would get off after that speech—and you would have with another judge. But you won't be in long. They're sure to get you out soon." I shook my head. "Take my word for it," he answered. Thanking him for his kindness, I told him I had no hope, and was reconciled to my fate. Twelve months was a long time, but I was young and strong, and should pull through it. "Yes," he said, with an appreciative look from head to feet, "there isn't much the matter with you now. But you'll be out soon, sir, mark my word."

I have learnt since that the crowd waited to give Judge North a warm reception. But they were disappointed. His lordship went home, I understand, via Newgate Street, and thus baffled their enthusiasm. Mr. Cattell was, I believe, less fortunate. He was hooted and jeered by the multitude, and obliged to take ignominious shelter in a cab.

Strange as it may seem, my last night in Newgate was one of profound repose. I was wearied, exhausted; and spent nature claimed an interval of rest. For a few minutes I lay in my hammock, listening to the faint sound of distant voices and footsteps. Memory and fancy were inert; only the senses were faintly alive. Consciousness gradually contracted to a dim vision of the narrow cell, then to a haze, in which the gaslight shone like a star, and finally died out. But by one of those fantastic tricks the imps of dreaming play us, the last patch of consciousness changed into my wife's face. It was too dim and distant to stir grief or regret; like the vague vision of a beloved face hovering over eyes that are waning in death.

In the morning I was awakened as usual by the officer bringing the light for my gas. At eight o'clock the little square flap in my door was let down with the customary bang, and, on looking through the aperture, I perceived a big pan containing a curious clotted mixture, which resembled bill-stickers' paste. Behind the utensil I saw part of an officer's uniform. This worthy stirred the mixture with a ladle, while he jocosely inquired, "D'ye want any of this?" I did not. "Come," he continued, "put out your tin and I'll give you some." I told him my appetite was not robust enough for his hospitality, and he passed on, probably feeling sure I should not eat the prison fare, and thinking the stuff too good to be wasted. I took the little brown loaf he offered me and examined it closely. It was very hard, and apparently very dry. Depositing it on the shelf, I breakfasted on cold water and the slice of bread-and-butter left over night.

After this sumptuous repast I was let out for exercise. This time the three "condemned" blasphemers were not taken to a separate court. We paraded the common yard with the other prisoners. They were few in number, but they showed many varieties of disposition. One hung his head, and doggedly tramped round the wretched enclosure; another walked erect and stiff, with an air of defiance; another shuffled along with a vacant stare, as though dazed by his fate; another looked as indifferent as though he were walking along the street; and another leered at his companions in misfortune, as though the whole thing were an elaborate joke. For a few minutes I trotted behind Mr. Ramsey, with whom I exchanged a few cheerful words, but the vigilant officers soon separated us. "How long have ye got?" was the constant question of the man at my rear, until the officers detected, and removed him. I was surprised and annoyed at this easy familiarity, but I grew accustomed to it afterwards. The rules of civilised society naturally lapse in prison. Talking is strictly prohibited, "pals" are rigorously kept apart, nobody knows who will be next him in the exercise ring, and any man who wants to wag his tongue must strike up a conversation with his immediate neighbor. "How long are ye doing?" is almost invariably the introduction. This muttered question brings a muttered answer. Confidences are exchanged, and the conversation grows animated, until at last the speakers forget prudence, and betray themselves to the eyes or ears of an officer, who immediately parts them, or makes them both fall out, and reports them to the Governor for violating the rules. The old stagers acquire a knack of talking without moving their lips, so that the words just reach the man in front or behind. If an officer suspects one of these worthies, he calls out, "Now then, seventeen, I see ye!" "See me what?" says the indignant innocent. "Talking," replies the officer. "Why, I never opened my lips," says the prisoner, and his defence is perfectly true.

On returning from the exercise yard to our cells, we were furnished with a sheet of paper and an envelope to write the last letter which "condemned criminals" are permitted to send from prison after their sentence. The privilege is almost a mockery, for no answer is allowed, and there is little consolation in flinging a final word into the vast silence, which seems deaf because unresponsive. A last interview, however brief, would be far more merciful.

We were summoned from our cells at eleven o'clock for conveyance to Holloway Gaol. All our effects were handed over to us, and we formally signed a receipt for them in the big book. While this process was going on the officers allowed us to chat, and endeavoured to console us by insisting that we should "soon be out." One of them, with a practical turn of mind, recollecting that I had complained of my apartment, informed me that there were some beautiful cells at Holloway.

Having pocketed our belongings, we were conducted through the subterranean passage I have several times mentioned to the great courtyard. The head-warder conversed with us very genially, but when we emerged into daylight and faced the prison van drawn up to receive us, his manner changed. Holding a formidable document, he called out our names and descriptions, officially satisfying himself that we were the persons under sentence. I told him, with mock solemnity, that I had no doubt I was the George William Foote described on the blue paper, and my fellow prisoners gave him a similar assurance.

It was a critical moment. Will they, I thought, try to handcuff us? I hoped not, for I had resolved not to submit tamely to any gratuitous indignities, and I should have felt it necessary to offer what resistance I could to such a flagrant insult. Happily the handcuffs were kept out of sight. One by one we ascended the steps, entered the narrow passage in the van, and huddled ourselves into the narrower boxes. They were so small that no ordinary-sized man could sit upon the little bench at the back. I was obliged to crouch on one ham diagonally, my shoulders stretching from corner to corner. Half a dozen holes were bored through the floor, and there was a space between the side of the box and the roof of the van, which sloped away like an eave. Probably the ventilation was ample, yet I felt stifled, and so powerful is imagination that I breathed heavily and irregularly. But reason soon came to my assistance and allayed my apprehensions, although a remnant of fancy still speculated on what would happen if the vehicle upset.

Presently the door was banged, and "Black Maria" started with her living freight. We had the conveyance, or rather its interior, all to ourselves. Surely the boxes we were pent in never held such company before. Three "blasphemers," who had never injured man, woman or child, were travelling to gaol under a collective sentence of two years' imprisonment, for no other crime than honestly criticising a dishonest creed. We were going to spend weary days and months among the refuse of society. We were doomed to associate with the criminality which still curses civilisation, after eighteen centuries of the gospel of redemption. Posterity would condemn our sentence as a crime, but meanwhile we were fated to suffer.

Rattle, rattle, rattle! How the wretched machine did rattle! Even the roar of the streets we traversed was inaudible, quenched in the frightful din. All I could do was to inspect the memorials of my predecessors in that box. The sides were scrawled over with their names (or nicknames) and sentences. Their brief observations had a jovial tone. I suppose the miserable passengers in that black ferry-boat to Hades are too full of care to indulge in such trifling, and only wanton larrikins and old stagers employ their pencils in illustrating the planks.

After a long drive we entered an archway and stopped. A heavy door was closed behind us, and another opened in front. The van moved forward a few yards and turned round. Then the door was opened, and looking out I saw the front of Holloway Gaol.

Several minutes elapsed before we descended from the prison van. During this interval I chatted freely with my fellow-prisoners, although we could not see each other. But I have always found, as one of George Meredith's characters says, that observation is perhaps the most abiding pleasure in life, and I watched with great amusement the antics of a sprucely-dressed young fellow who sat on the step behind, and held a facetious conversation with the pleasant officer who "delivered" us at Holloway. This natty blade was, I presumed, our driver. His talk was of horses and drinking, and I wondered how he obtained the money to purchase all the liquors which he boasted of having imbibed that morning. He seemed to possess a sort of right divine to enjoyment on this earth, and I felt strongly tempted to offer him the few shillings I had in my pocket. The money was useless to me in prison, but it would serve as buoyant air to the wings of this human butterfly. What a contrast between our lots! His head was untroubled with thought, he knew nothing of convictions (except legal ones), and sacrifices for principle had probably never entered within the range of his imagination. He chattered away like a garrulous daw, perched upon the step; while we three in the van were just leaving the sunlight of life for the darkness of imprisonment. Our devotion to principle seemed almost folly, and our passion for reforming the world a species of madness. So it must have appeared eighteen centuries ago, when the Prophet of Nazareth stood in the hall of a palace in Jerusalem. The men and damsels who warmed themselves at the fire must have marvelled at the infatuation of Jesus as he courted the shadow of death.

When "Black Maria" disgorged her breakfast, we were ushered into the great hall of Holloway prison. The Deputy-Governor at once accosted us, and told us to wait, standing against the wall, until he could "see about us." Forgetting the rules and regulations, we resumed our conversation, until we attracted the attention of an underling, who marched up with a lordly air and sternly ordered us to stop talking. Presently two figures leisurely descended the flight of stone steps leading to the offices and the interior of the prison. I recognised one of these as the Governor of Newgate. He had evidently come to introduce us. His companion was Colonel Milman, the Governor of Holloway. After a few minutes' conversation, of which I inferred from their looks that we were the object, they parted, and Colonel Milman then advanced towards us with a genial smile. He busied himself about us in the most hospitable manner, as though we were ornaments to the establishment. Interrogating us as to our occupations, he found that only Mr. Ramsey was acquainted with any mechanical work. In his younger days he had practised the noble art of St. Crispin, but he found that no shoes were made in the place, and he had little taste for cobbling. Relying on some information he had received in Newgate, he inquired, with an air of childlike sincerity, whether there was not some work to do in the Governor's garden. Colonel Milman smiled expressively as he answered that he was "afraid not."

The gallant Governor then went into an office, and as I wanted to speak to him before we were marched off, I walked in after him. "Hi!" exclaimed the officious underling, "you mustn't go in there." But I went in, nevertheless, followed by the fussy officer, who was quietly told by the Governor that he "needn't trouble." I explained to Colonel Milman that my position was peculiar. "Yes," he said, "I know; I saw you at the Old Bailey yesterday," and his look expressed the rest. I then stated that, as there was no Court of Criminal Appeal, I wished to make representations to the Home Office as to the character our trial and the almost unprecedented nature of our sentence; in particular, I wished the Home Secretary to say whether he would sanction our being classed with common thieves for a press offence. I was told that I could have an official form for this purpose; and, thanking the Governor, I withdrew to join my companions.

Let me here thank Colonel Milman for his unvarying kindness. During the whole of my imprisonment he never once addressed me in any other way than he would have addressed me outside; and although he had to carry out a harsh sentence, it was obvious that he shrank from the duty. But this eulogium is too personal. I hasten, therefore, to say that I never heard Colonel Milman speak harshly to a prisoner, or saw a forbidding look on his fine face. One of nature's gentlemen, he could hardly be uncivil to the lowest of the low.

Colonel Milman always dressed well, and the little color he always affected was in harmony with his exuberant figure. It was refreshing to see him occasionally in one's weariness of the dingy prison. He usually stood at the wing-gate as the men filed in from exercise, and answered their salutes, with a word for this one and a smile for that. One day I heard a handsome eulogy on him by a prisoner. He was standing in the open air outside the gate. It was a pleasant summer morning, and he was radiantly happy. A man behind me was evidently struck by the Governor's appearance, for I heard him mutter to his neighbor, "Good old boy, ain't he?" "Yes," said the other, "you're right." "Fat, ain't he?" rejoined number one. "Yes," said number two, "like a top. It do yer good to see somebody as ain't thin."

From the great hall of Holloway prison we were conducted through a passage under the staircase to the basement of the reception wing. Our pockets were emptied, but not searched, and every article stowed away in a little bag. One by one we went into an office, where a clerkly official wrote our descriptions in a book. "What religion?" he inquired, when he came to the theological department. "None," I replied. "What!" he rejoined, "surely you're Catholic or Protestant or something." Then, with a flourish of the pen, and an air of finality, he put the question again more decisively, "What religion?" "None," I said. He stared, gave me up as a bad job, and wrote down "Religion none." That extremely succinct description figured for twelve months on the card outside my cell door, and I have heard prisoners speculating as to what sort of religion "none" was. It was the name of a sect they had never heard of.

The prisoners' cards, affixed to their cell doors, and containing their name, age, crime, sentence, class and creed, were of two colors—white (the emblem of purity) for the Protestants, and red (the symbol of sin) for the Catholics. These criminal members of the two great divisions of Christendom, like their better or more fortunate co-religionists out of doors, do not mix in their devotions. They worship God at different times, although, alas! the same building has to serve for both. No special color has been found requisite for Freethinkers, who seldom trouble the prison officials, although this fact is only another proof of their uncommon obstinacy; for it is clear that, according to their principles, they ought to fill our gaols, yet they perversely refrain from those crimes which every principle of consistency obliges them to commit.

After this ceremony we were conducted upstairs to our cells in the reception wing, to await an opportunity of washing and changing our clothes. We passed several prisoners at work in the corridors. All were silent and stolid, and I could hardly resist the impression that I was in a lunatic asylum. We were handed over to a red-haired and red-bearded warder, who locked us up in separate cells. Before closing my door, he asked whether I was a German, and had any connection with Herr Most. I explained that the Freiheit and the Freethinker were very different papers. "What's your sentence?" he said. "Twelve months." "Whew! but it's a long time." Yes, my red-headed friend, you were quite right. It was indeed a long time!



CHAPTER XI. HOLLOWAY GAOL.

A few minutes afterwards the red-haired warder returned with what he called "some dinner." It consisted of a little brown loaf, two or three coarse potatoes, and a dirty-looking tin of pea-soup. I was hungry, but I could not tackle this food. From my earliest childhood I have always had a physical antipathy to pea-soup. The very sight of it raises my gorge. Nor have I any special relish for potatoes, unless they are of good quality and well cooked. I therefore munched the brown bread, and washed it down with cold water. It was a Spartan meal, but a very indigestible one, as I can certify from painful experience. Why a prisoner's stomach should be so grossly abused by a sudden change of diet passes my comprehension. Surely it would not be difficult to introduce the prison fare gradually. There is real danger in a shock to the basic organ of life when all the other organs are painfully accommodating themselves to a radical change of environment. Weak men are sometimes shattered by it. Those who talk about the healthiness of prisons (a subject on which I shall have something to say by-and-bye) would be astonished at the quantity of physic dispensed by the doctor. My constitution is a strong one, and a dyspeptic old friend used to envy my "treble-distilled gastric juice." Before I went to Holloway Gaol I scarcely knew, except inferentially, that I had a stomach; and while I was there I scarcely knew I had anything else.

After dining I walked up and down my cell—tramp, tramp, tramp. How the time crawled, weary hour on hour, like a slow serpent over desert sands. There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to hear, and nothing to see. I was steeped in nothing. And as the senses were unexercised, thought worked on memory till the brain seemed gnawing itself, as a shipwrecked man might assuage his thirst at his own veins. Then imagination, the magician, lovely in weal but terrible in woe, began to weave his spell, and visions arose of dear loved ones agonising beyond the prison walls, to whom my heart yearned through the dividing space with an intense passion that seemed as though its potency might almost annihilate our barriers. Alas! hearts yearn in vain. Nothing avails but strength, and what we cannot achieve the Fates never bestow. My cell walls stood cold and impassable around me, like sentinels of destiny, too vigilant for evasion and too strong for resistance. Brute force overmatches even genius and divinity in the ultimate appeal. Prometheus lies chained to his Caucasian rock, in eternal pain though in eternal defiance; and Napoleon frets away his mighty life at St. Helena watched by the callous eyes of Sir Hudson Lowe.

About three o'clock my cell door was again unlocked and I was invited to take a bath. In the corridor I met my two fellow prisoners, and we were all three marched back to the reception room. Three good baths of warm water were awaiting us. What a glorious luxury after the six days' confinement, without any means of washing one's skin! Some of the prisoners, I understand, regard the first bath as the worst part of the punishment. They are brought up in dirt, and love it; like the Italian who deserted the English girl he was engaged to, and justified himself by saying: "Oh, if I marry her, she wash me, and then I die." We, however, splashed about in our baths, uttering ejaculations of pleasure, and congratulating each other on at least one pleasant bit of prison experience.

The doors of our bath-rooms were about five feet high, with an open space of nine or ten inches between the bottom and the floor. Over the top of these an officer passed us each a couple of shirts (under and over), a pair of drawers, a pair of trousers, and worsted stockings. The drawers and the under-shirt were woollen, and the outer-shirt coarse striped cotton. The trousers seemed a mixture of cotton and wool. They are brown when new, but they wash white, and look then very much like canvas. My pair was a terrible misfit, and had to be exchanged for another nearly twice the size. We were also provided with a net bag to put our own clothes in. My good black suit, dirty linen, hat and boots, were all crushed in together After this performance the bags are hung up, and either the next day, or at their leisure, the officials make an inventory of the contents, and stow them away until the day before the prisoner leaves, when they are taken out in readiness for donning on the blessed morning of release.

Clad in shirt, trousers and stockings, we walked from our baths to the reception room, where we found several officers and the Governor and Deputy-Governor, who had apparently come to superintend our toilet. Each of us was fitted with a new pair of shoes, a waistcoat and a coat. These arrangements were the subject of a good deal of pleasantry. Our garments were not of a Bond Street pattern; indeed, it takes a very handsome man to cut an elegant figure in a prison suit. I maliciously remarked to Mr. Ramsey that he looked like a gentleman out yachting; but somehow he was unable to see himself in that light. My own clothes were sadly defective. The biggest shirt-collar they had would not button round my throat, and the longest stock was so inadequate that a special one had to be made for me. Nor would the biggest coat fasten across my chest. A broad expanse of waistcoat yawned between the button and the button-hole. Fancying that my complaint was merely fractious, the Deputy-Governor—a tall, powerful man—tried to pull them together, and miserably failed. "Well," he said, "it's the largest in stock, and we can't give you what we haven't got." "Yes," I exclaimed, "that's all very well; but if I go about with an open throat like this I shall get an attack of bronchitis. Pray let me have a stock as soon as possible. And do you really mean that you can't possibly find me a bigger coat?" The Deputy-Governor eyed me smilingly as he said, "Come, Mr. Foote, don't be so particular; the clothes don't quite fit you now, but they will." And the worst of it was they did. My coat, however, was always tight across the chest. I changed my trousers and waistcoat as I grew slimmer, but the solid structure of my back and chest (built up by athletics in youth and sustained by lecturing in manhood) always taxed the resources of the establishment in the matter of coats.

One by one we went into the booking-clerk's office again, where we were scaled and our weights entered in a book. Then we had an interview with the doctor, whose duty it was to examine us to see whether we were suffering from any complaint. I was pronounced quite sound. Dr. Gordon spoke pleasantly then, as he always did afterwards. "I suppose you've lived pretty well?" he said. "Not epicureanly," I answered, "but still well." "I'm afraid you won't like our hospitality," he rejoined. "I suppose not," I replied grimly. "However," he continued, "I shall put you on third-class diet at once, and order you a mattress." What the third-class diet was the reader shall learn presently. The second-class diet, which I should otherwise have had for the first month, consists of nothing but bread and sloppy meal-and-water, three times a day. Mr. Kemp had to put up with this wretched fare for a while, and he tells me he was ravenously hungry morning and night, so that it was a luxury to pick up a chance piece of bread from a dinner-tin in the corridor or from a friendly prisoner "off his feed."

Bathing, clothing, and doctoring over, we were marched back to our cells, each loaded with a new mattress and a pair of clean sheets. A few minutes later I was summoned to the schoolroom with Mr. Ramsey, where we were furnished with pen and ink and a sheet of foolscap to write our "petition" to the Home Secretary. The schoolmaster officiated on this occasion. He was a tall, pleasant-looking man, something over forty, with a tendency to baldness. I believe he instructs prisoners who cannot read or write in those useful arts. But his general duty is to play factotum to the chaplain. He takes the singing class, leads the music in chapel, plays the harmonium (the chaplain always calls it the organ), acts as parson's clerk, and reads the lessons when his superior's throat is hoarse with raving. He has a clear and powerful voice, which often serves him in good stead. The congregation has a knack of getting out of time and tune when the melody is unfamiliar; this, in turn, distracts the choir, who flounder hopelessly, until the schoolmaster drags them back by putting full steam on the harmonium and singing at the top of his voice. Every Sunday afternoon, at least, he was obliged to display his vocal prowess in this manner. After every one of the commandments read out by the parson the prisoners chanted the response, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." Nine times they chanted thus, gathering momentum as they went along, so that they took the tenth in brave style. But, alas! the tenth was different. "Lord have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee," were the words, and the tune was correspondingly altered. Fortunately, just at the point of change, there was a strong crescendo, which gave the schoolmaster a fine opportunity of asserting himself. Dragging them back was impossible, so he drowned them, and concluded with the solemn diminuendo amid the breathless admiration of the audience, who went wrong and wondered at his going right every Sunday with the most astonishing regularity.

Looking after the library was the part of the schoolmaster's duty which brought him in frequent contact with me. I always found him very civil and obliging; and from all I could ascertain he was not only generally liked in the prison, but considered a better gentleman than the chaplain.

My "petition" to the Home Secretary was a lengthy document. I assigned many reasons for considering our sentence atrocious. I will not recite them, because they will easily suggest themselves to the readers who have followed my narrative. In conclusion I asked, if our release was impossible, that we might be treated as first-class misdemeanants, according to the general European custom in the case of press offenders, or at least supplied with books and writing materials. Sir William Harcourt sent no answer for a month. At the end of that interval the Governor called me into his office and read out the brutal reply: "The Home Secretary requests Colonel Milman to inform Foote and Ramsey that he sees no reason for acceding to their request."

That was the only instruction Colonel Milman ever received from the Home Office concerning us. Two months later, when public opinion was more fully aroused in our favor, Sir William Harcourt allowed paragraphs to circulate in the papers, stating that orders were given for our being granted every indulgence consistent with our safe custody. It was a brazen lie, which we were prevented from contradicting by the prison rules. So carefully is every regulation contrived for shielding officials that a prisoner is not allowed, in his quarterly letter, to give any particulars of his treatment. Sir William Harcourt also permitted the newspapers to announce that our health would not be allowed to suffer. Another lie! When, after six weeks' incessant diarrhoea, I complained that my stomach would not accommodate itself to the prison food, and asked to be shifted to the civil side, where I could provide my own, Sir William Harcourt did not even condescend to reply, although he was duly informed that if Mr. Ramsey and I had been found Guilty at the Court of Queen's Bench, on our third trial, Lord Coleridge would not only have made his sentence concurrent with that of Judge North, but also have removed us from the criminal-wards to the debtors' wing. Nay, more. When Mr. Kemp had to be taken to the hospital, where he was confined to his bed, and so weakened that he had to be assisted to the carriage on the morning of his release, Sir William Harcourt would not remit a day of his sentence, or take any notice of his representations. It is well that the public should know this, and contrast Sir William Harcourt's treatment of us with his treatment of Mr. Edmund Yates. From the first I had no expectation of release. I told Colonel Milman that Sir William Harcourt was merely a politician, who cared for nothing but keeping in office; and that unless our friends could threaten some Liberal seats, or seriously affect a division in the House of Commons, he would keep us in to please the bigots and the Tories.

Our "petition" to the Home Secretary being finished, we returned to our cells, where tea was served at six o'clock. It consisted of gruel, or, in prison parlance, "skilly," and another little brown loaf. The liquid portion of this repast was too suggestive of bill-stickers' paste to be tempting, so I made a second meal of bread and water.

The red-haired warder gave me a lesson in bed-making before he locked me up for the night. Hammocks had been dispensed with in Holloway ever since Sir Richard Cross groaned in the travail of invention, and produced his masterpiece and monument—the plank bed. Yet so slow is the official mind, that the rings still lingered in some of the cells. The plank bed is constructed of three eight-inch deals, held together laterally by transverse wooden bars, which serve to lift it two or three inches from the floor. At the head there is a raised portion of flat wood, slightly sloping, to serve as a bolster. For the first month (such is Sir Richard Cross's brilliant idea) every prisoner, no matter what his age or his offence, must sleep on this plank bed without a mattress, unless the doctor sees a special reason for ordering him one. During the second month he sleeps on the plank bed three nights a week, and during the third month one night. Sleeps! The very word is a mockery. Scores of prisoners do not sleep, but pass night after night in broken and restless slumber. Fancy a man delicately brought up, as some prisoners are, suddenly pitched on one of these vile inventions. He tosses about hour after hour, and rises in the morning sore and weary. He has no appetite for breakfast, and is low all day. The next night comes with renewed torture, and on the following day he is still worse. He then applies to see the doctor, who gives him a bottle of physic, which forces an appetite for a while. But it is soon powerless against the effects of nervous exhaustion, and before the poor devil can obtain relief, he is sometimes reduced to the most pitiable condition. I have seen robust men in Holloway, by means of this plank bed and other superfluous tortures of our prison system, brought to the very verge of the grave; and I can scarcely control my indignation when I remember that Mr. Truelove, at the age of seventy, was subjected to this atrocious discipline.

The mattresses are stuffed with fibre. They are tolerable at first, but in a few weeks the stuffing runs into lumps, and your mattress gets nearly as hard as the plank. Shaking is no good; I tried it, and found it only shifted the lumps out of the places my body had forced them in, and left me to repose on a series of hillocks. I got my mattress changed once or twice, but ordinary prisoners are seldom so fortunate.

I retired to rest early that first evening in Holloway. The day had been eventful, and I slept heavily. Breakfast the next morning was a second edition of the tea—bread and skilly; and again I refreshed myself with the little loaf and cold water.

Soon after breakfast I was invited to attend chapel. It was a welcome summons, for the cell is so drearily monotonous that any change is agreeable. The corner of the chapel we entered was partitioned off from the rest of the building, and capable of seating twenty or thirty prisoners. Besides ourselves, there were present ten or twelve boys, three or four old men, and two or three persons who looked slightly imbecile. The service was read by the chaplain, whose voice was loud, authoritative, and repellant. Some people would call it gruff. It was certainly the most unpersuasive voice I ever heard. As I listened to its domineering tones I could hardly refrain from laughing, for they elicited an old story from the depths of memory. An aged pauper lay dying, and in the parson's absence the master officiated at the sinner's exit from this world. "Well, Tom," he began, "you've been a dreadful fellow, and I fear you are going to hell." "Oh, sir," said the poor old fellow, "you don't say so." "Yes, Tom," the master rejoined, "I do say so; and you ought to be thankful there's a hell to go to."

After chapel we spent an hour or so in our cells, and were then conducted to the basement of the reception wing, where we met the Governor, who conducted us through several dark passages that led to the foot of a spiral iron staircase. We ascended this, and found ourselves on the ground floor of the criminal side of the prison. Four wings radiated from a common centre, distinguished by the first four letters of the alphabet. I was taken to the first cell in the first wing, Mr. Ramsey to the second cell in the second wing, and Mr. Kemp to the second cell in the third wing; our numbers being A 2, 1—B 2, 2—and C 2, 2. Colonel Milman personally placed me in charge of a warder who has since left the prison, and I believe the service. He was a good, kind-hearted fellow, who never spoke harshly to anybody. Following me into my cell, he took pains to "put me through the ropes." Before leaving he said, "I'm very sorry to see you here, Mr. Foote. I've been reading your case in the papers. It's a great shame. But I'll do my best to make you comfortable while you're with me." And I must say he did.

There were several prisoners standing mute in the corridor outside, and I remarked that they were a pale looking crew. "Yes," said the warder sadly, "confinement tells on a man." Then he gently closed and locked the door, leaving me alone to begin my long ordeal, with the words humming in my ears like the whisper of a fiend—Confinement tells on a man!



CHAPTER XII. PRISON LIFE.

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, survivals in our civilised age of the lower types of barbarous or savage times. Most of them were young and had a reckless bearing, but a few were middle-aged, and some were obviously old hands who "knew the ropes," were reconciled to their fate, and resolved on making the best of the situation. Tramp, tramp, tramp! My very life seemed reduced to this monotonous shuffle. I half fancied myself in a new kind of hell, ranked in an everlasting procession of aimless feet, mechanically following a convict's coat in front of me, and as mechanically followed by the wearer of a similar coat behind. But as I passed the great window at the end of the wing the blessed light of the silvery winter sun sometimes streamed through the dense glass upon my face, rays of the eternal splendor coming so many millions of miles from the great fire-fount, how indifferent, as Perdita saw, to the artificial distinctions of men! I felt refreshed, but the feeling wore off as I returned to the gloomy corridor, skirting cells on the right, and on the left a low rail that offered the suicide a tempting leap into the arms of Death. All this time I was living an intense inward life, but I suppose there was a far-away look in my eyes, for now and then a prisoner would say "Cheer up, sir." I smiled at this consolatory effort, for although I was disgusted, I was not despondent. Occasionally an attempt was made to drag me into conversation, but I parried all advances with as little offence as possible. One dirty short man, grievously afflicted with scurvy, or something worse, several times manoeuvred to get behind me, and at last he succeeded. "How long ye doin', mate?" No answer. "I say, mate, how long ye doin'?" No answer. "A damned long time, I know, or they wouldn' give ye a —— new suit like that, ye stuck-up ———."

What oaths I heard in that wretched gaol! No abomination of human speech is unknown to me. One particularly vile expletive was fashionable during my imprisonment; it seasoned every phrase, and preceded every adjective. Its constant iteration was sickening, until long experience made me callous. How thankful I should be to Judge North for trying to purify me in that mud-bath of rascality. I can never forget the debt of gratitude—and I never will!

Among the prisoners I noticed one of robust physique and martial bearing. Seldom had I seen so fine a figure. Within six months I saw that man reduced almost to a skeleton by solitary confinement, wearily trailing one limb after the other, and looking out despairingly from cavernous, moribund eyes. Well did Lord Fitzgerald (I think) in a recent speech in the House of Lords describe this torture as the worst ever devised by the brain of man. His lordship added that the Governor of a great prison told him that he never knew a man undergo twelve months of such punishment without severe suffering, or two years of it without being terribly shaken, or three years without being physically and mentally wrecked. In the penal servitude establishments the discipline has to be relaxed, or the prisoners would die or go mad before their terms expired. They work out of their cells in the daytime, and on certain occasions (Sundays, I believe) they are allowed to walk in couples and exercise their faculty of speech.

The poor fellow I refer to, fearing that he would die, and having learnt that I was a public man, managed to tell me something of his case. He had been a warder in Coldbath Fields Prison, where he officiated as master-tailor. In an evil moment he "cabbaged" some cloth, was detected, tried, condemned, and sentenced to twenty months' imprisonment. He had been in the army for over twenty years without a scratch of the pen against his name, and his officers had given him excellent characters; but the judge would hear of nothing in mitigation of sentence, although he knew it deprived the man of a pension of thirty-six pounds a year, which he had earned by long service in India, where the enemy's blades had drunk deeply of his blood. His wife and children had gone to a work-house in Leicestershire, and as they had no money for travelling, he had never received a visit. He pined away in his miserable cell until he became a pitiable spectacle which excited the compassion of the whole prison. The doctor ordered him out of his cell, but the authorities would not allow it. He told me how much he had lost round the chest and calf, but I have forgotten the precise figures. One fact, however, I recollect distinctly; he had lost eight inches round the thigh, and his flesh was like a child's. Eventually the doctor peremptorily ordered him into the hospital, and the Prison Commissioners and Visiting Magistrates were reluctantly obliged to let him save the man's life.

Dreary indeed was the life in my prison cell, sitting on the three-legged stool picking fibre, or walking up and down the twelve-foot floor. I used frequently to stand under the window for long intervals, resting my hand on the sloping sill. It was impossible to see through the heavy-fluted panes, but outside was light, liberty and life. Sometimes, especially on Saturdays, when I had been accustomed to run down to the North, the Midlands or the West, to fulfil a lecturing engagement, the muffled shriek of a distant railway whistle went through me like the clash of steel.

My library, during the first three months, consisted of a Bible, a Prayer Book and a Hymn Book. Although I was really there for knowing too much about the "blessed book" already, I read it right through in the first month, and again in the second, besides reading it discursively afterwards. And still, I am a sincerely impenitent Freethinker! You may knock a man down with the Bible, and make an impression on his skull; but when he picks himself up again, you find you have made no impression on his mind, except that his opinion of you is altered. I remember the chaplain calling to see me one day as I was just concluding my inspection of what Heine calls the menagerie of the Apocalypse. He could not help seeing the Bible, for when it lay open there was very little table visible. "Ah," he said, "I see you have been reading the holy Scripture." "Yes," I replied, "I've read it through this month, and I believe I'm the only man in the place who has done it—including the chaplain."