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Do the darkness and the terror plot against you?
We also plan.
Those who love you are more than those who hate you—
Trust God, O man.—From the Koran.

NOTE.

INTRODUCTION.

It is in the hope that we may be able to create a different impression by our Scenes from the Silent World, that we have brought them forth from their well-regulated obscurity.

If in all the distress and grief we see around us, that which is the most exceptionally bitter and hopeless has the greatest right to our sympathy and assistance, we may well claim it for the mournful wreckage of human life which is cast up on the gloomy prison strand from the ocean of this world's boundless suffering. There are elements in the agony of life as it is meted out to the inmates of a prison which have no place in the sorrows, cruel as they often are, of the poor and helpless without its walls. First and direst of the evils that weigh like a curse on the prisoner's existence, is the brand of crime, stamped on his inmost soul, no less than on his outer life, and all the more torturing that it is self-created. Is there any misfortune or trial, however heavy, which a man may not bear with serene courage, when he can hold his head erect in self-respect before his fellow-men, and with clear conscience look up to the free heavens and trust that they may yet smile on him with the sunshine of the love of God? But the blackness of the shadow which hangs for ever over the convicted criminal is that of a despair which seems to him irremediable both here and hereafter. Never while his mortal life lasts can the dark stain of his iniquity be hidden any more from the open gaze of his fellow-creatures; and he dares not hope that it can ever be effaced before the eyes of the Eternal Justice, if his mind be capable of imaging a life beyond the grave. Shame and disgrace will follow him when he passes through the prison gates. "Jail-bird," "felon," "convict,"—these are the epithets he will read in every look that meets him, if even he does not hear them loudly hurled at him. No man will trust him; none will have any dealings with him; he will be shunned by all: no honest employment will come within his reach; he must starve, or sin again to win a morsel of bread. Would that any words of ours could adequately reveal the depth and extent of a prisoner's utter hopelessness! Despairing of life, despairing of death, which he believes can lead to no heaven of hope for him,—does the world contain a more helplessly forlorn and desolate being than the guilt-convicted criminal? Does his anguish lack yet one sting?—it is in the thought that his wretchedness is all self-caused. Once he too was innocent, and could look up with fearless eyes to the wide pure skies: his own hand has dealt the death-blow to his honour and peace and freedom, and severed with keen relentless stroke the ties that bound him to his fellow-creatures. He is friendless for evermore; he has killed also the love and respect of those most dear to him; he is no longer the object of their affection; he is their disgrace;—for their own sakes he must strive that they shall never look upon his face again. Is this man deserving of no pity, no help, no effort to lift him out of the black gulf of his despair and set him upon the delectable hills, from whence he may yet catch a glimpse of the mercy of God and the sympathy of man? Surely of all who writhe in pain upon this lower earth, he most sorely needs the touch of human beneficence! But does he obtain it? Does not the world in general go on its way amid fair sights and engrossing interests, without one thought of those who are lying pent up in the perpetual gloom and silence of the prison walls? Unless some startling crime or exciting trial calls public attention to the Silent World, its denizens are left to pine out their dreary lives unheeded and unaided. We do not for a moment wish to ignore or undervalue such agencies as do exist in the present day for the relief and benefit of convicts,—prisoners' aid societies, police court missions, and other institutions, admirable so far as they go,—but these all deal with the criminal only after he is discharged from durance, when many opposing influences stand in the way to mar their efficacy. They cannot touch the man condemned to death, or to the harder fate of penal servitude for life, or even to a lengthened sentence. We know of no attempt among these agencies to reach prisoners during their period of incarceration, excepting one solitary effort in the shape of pious letters which are sent to prisoners at Christmas-tide, in order that they may have some little share in the goodwill and brotherly love called forth by that season. It is a kindly plan; but the writers of these well-meant epistles are, to the convicts, but nameless strangers,—they have never known them, and never will. The letters can only appear to them in the same light as a printed tract, and serve mainly to while away a few hours of the great annual festival which the prisoners spend exactly like a Sunday, no alteration even in their ordinary uninviting food being allowed to them.

Further, these efforts, such as they are, emanate from what may be called a handful of people, in comparison with the large majority we earnestly desire to interest in the Silent World and its inhabitants. It may be asked, through what means could any active interest be shown to them by the general public, when they are hidden away from their very knowledge behind immovable bolts and bars? This is undoubtedly true at present, but it is for that very reason that we have been anxious to make known the histories contained in this volume; for we cannot doubt that if public opinion were once aroused to the claims of these criminals on the charity and help of their fellow-mortals, the subject would be brought, perforce, under the consideration of those in authority; and we might then reasonably hope that it would have the desired effect of making the prisons in our land, homes of reformation and improvement, no less than of punishment. There are many different ways by which we believe this end might be attained, but the most efficacious would be the appointment of a properly constituted band of visitors, who would make personal acquaintance with every individual prisoner, and study his case in all its bearings, past and future, with a view to his amelioration.

Such a suggestion will be met by the conviction on the part of most persons who have thought on the subject, that it would only tend to create hypocrites and impostors among those of our "jail-birds," who are so hopelessly vicious and degraded that they are completely impervious to all good influences. We do not deny that such exist in the shape of professional thieves and villains, whose chief pleasure when at liberty is in cruelty and ruffianism of all kinds; but if only a small percentage of the prisoners were radically or permanently benefited, would not such a result be well worth all the efforts that could be made? And even in the case of those apparently utterly hopeless—who can say whether, at some stage of their after career, the memory of wise and true words spoken to them within the prison cells might not come back on them, to bear fruit in a tardy repentance?

There are, of course, many weighty considerations as to the treatment of criminals and the management of our penal establishments on which it would be manifest presumption in us to offer an opinion; but we do desire most earnestly to combat the theory put forward by some writers, that the subject is one which ought to be tabooed in polite society—that no good can possibly be done by prison revelations—that details from the lives of convicts are "nauseous" and "gruesome" (we quote expressions we have seen used), and that the most hopeless and wretched of all God's creatures ought to be left in well-merited oblivion by their happier brethren of the human race.

We cannot believe that such narrow and selfish views will long hold a place in this generation, when the best and noblest of its children are fired with the enthusiasm of humanity; and we venture to hope that the days are not far distant, when practical sympathy and earnest effort will follow the words which echo week by week from so many churches in our land—"That it may please Thee to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives."

SCENES FROM A SILENT WORLD.

CHAPTER I. A STRANGE LIFE AND DEATH.

IT is well known, of course, that there exists in most of our large cities, behind all their din and traffic and ceaseless energy of human existence, a silent world where life, as vivid and eager as that which teems in the busy streets, is pent up, for ever unheard and unseen. But the full significance of that fact, with its dire import on some of the most complex problems of our time, can only be rightly apprehended by those who are allowed to enter there as habitual visitors, and to hold unrestrained intercourse with its inmates. This is a privilege for which permission must be given by the highest authorities, and it is not always easily obtained. It was granted, however, to the present writer, and it has resulted in a ten years' most intimate acquaintance with the very peculiar population which is to be found in those criminal establishments. Persons who pay a mere visit of curiosity to a prison, and are conducted by an official along rows of immaculately clean cells, where orderly prisoners are at work in perfect silence, cannot have the smallest conception of the extraordinary revelations in human nature, and in possibilities of human destiny, which are made known to those who are allowed to penetrate into the unveiled realities of the strange life that writhes within the impervious prison walls. Hidden there are elements of the deepest tragedy: abnormal facts, which raise the most intricate questions in moral responsibility and other psychological problems; true histories, equalling the wildest romance that imagination could picture; while on the other hand the daily routine is constantly enlivened by incidents that are irresistibly comic. Volumes might be filled with illustrations from all the various phases of prison life, and we purpose in these pages to give a selection from such as seem to us most striking and suggestive; but we desire especially to bring forward those which, besides their strong human interest, have an important bearing on a question that has always roused much diversity of opinion—that of the Lex talionis.

The capital penalty enforced by the existing law of England on all who, under any circumstances short of self-defence, destroy the life of a fellow-creature, stands on a totally different footing from any other legal punishment, inasmuch as it is one of which no human being can gauge the meaning or the extent. Sentences which are to be carried out within the limits of this mortal life can be exactly proportioned to the crime, dealing with a man's visible existence only, and leaving wholly untouched his possible destiny in other unknown spheres; but once commit him to the great mystery of death, and the living spirit passes from the hangman's hands into conditions absolutely impenetrable to us, and with which, therefore, it may well be doubted if we have any right to tamper. The usual arguments in favour of capital punishment, which affirm that it is a deterrent from crime—necessary for the public safety, and the only penalty dreaded by the criminal classes—were all met in a rather remarkable manner by certain cases which occurred in the prison with which the writer is connected. Three men, at short intervals of time, were brought to that gaol charged with precisely the same crime—the murder of their wives; but the individuals were in character and antecedents, and in many other respects, so entirely dissimilar, that the deductions to be drawn from their histories are very different in their nature. The case of the first we shall record, illustrates very strikingly the difficulty of holding the scales of justice evenly in those momentous decisions, where the lives of persons more or less criminal hang in the balance,—as well as some other considerations which will be sufficiently obvious from a simple recital of the facts.

Ted Brown, whose real name is not given for necessary reasons, was an elderly man, and when his age came to be questioned, he himself declared that he was upwards of eighty—but he was generally believed to be in fact about sixty years old. His family, which had originally consisted of fourteen children, had been reduced by accidents and disease to three alone—a grown-up daughter, and a quite young boy and girl. We have had a good deal of information lately, in various ways, respecting the very low state of civilisation which obtains among the poorer classes in our large towns, but it is scarcely possible to realise a life so completely on a level with that of the beasts of the field—if not below it—as was the normal existence of Ted Brown and his family. The man himself was not only absolutely illiterate, but of so low an order of intelligence that he was very happily characterised by one of the prison officials as the missing link which Darwinism seeks to find between our race and the Ascidians. It may really be doubted, however, whether any respectable gorilla would have demeaned himself to Ted Brown's level.

At the time when the event took place which brought him under the grasp of the law, Ted inhabited a mansion of his own construction, on an open common in the vicinity of a large town. It consisted of two or three old blankets suspended over upright sticks, so as to form a species of tent, in which he burrowed with his wife and two younger children. The eldest daughter had long before abandoned this uninviting family home, to get her living in a manner far from conducive to even the lowest standard of morals. The income of the whole party was limited to such small sums as could at irregular intervals be obtained by the manufacture of wooden pegs for clothes-lines, which were sold by Mrs Brown in the streets of the town, to which she was daily sent by her husband for that purpose. Ted himself meantime reclined luxuriously on a heap of straw in his airy abode, smoking the short black pipe which was the one possession in the world that was truly dear to his soul. His wife was therefore eminently useful to him. She did all the work, and procured the means of subsistence for the entire family, toiling from morning till night, while the life which her husband was enabled to lead by her labour, might have been compared to that of a Turkish Pasha in reduced circumstances. The woman was a poor simple creature, harmless enough, but with the mildest possible conception of the difference between right and wrong. She had lived with Ted for more than thirty years, and been the mother of his fourteen children, but she had not always been his wife; that dignity had been conferred upon her at a much later period, in the interests of the higher morality, by a benevolent clergyman who had come across them in the course of their wanderings from place to place. The couple had lived more or less harmoniously together till a few years previously, when Ted had been laid aside for a time by an attack of rheumatic fever—a malady which, considering the nature of his abode, might have been expected to fasten permanently on the whole family. During his compulsory retirement from this cause in some pauper hospital, he believed that his wife had acted in a manner to arouse his jealousy. For this offence, real or supposed, he never forgave her; and when any circumstance recalled it to his memory, he was in the habit of beating her in a very violent manner.

On a certain cold winter's night the family went to bed as usual—that is, they lay down on the ground of the open common, sheltered only by their blanket tent—the two children sleeping one on each side of their mother. Ted had bestowed high-sounding appellations on his progeny, which contrasted very oddly with their circumstances. The boy was invested with the titles as well as the name of a royal personage; and the girl was endowed with a designation, probably taken from that of a ship, which was equivalent to the word Britannia. It was from her account that the events of that fatal night became known. She was apparently about ten or eleven years of age, though said to be older, and in her the resemblance to the gorilla tribe was quite as strongly marked as in her father. In all her ways and movements she was exactly like a monkey, with the one exception that she could speak with a human tongue, in the lowest dialect of her native county. According to her statement, she awoke on the night in question to find that her "dad"—stung probably by some sudden recollection of his grievance against his wife—was stretching across her in order to reach her "mammy," whom he was "hitting," as she expressed it, with great fierceness. Britannia lay still and watched the proceedings,—it was only what she had witnessed many times before; but on that starlit night Ted went further than he intended or knew. When at last he desisted, and turned round to go to sleep again, his unfortunate wife, who is not said to have uttered a single cry or complaint, "scrawled," to use Britannia's peculiar phraseology, out of the tent, apparently with the intention of getting some water to drink from a little streamlet which ran through the common at a few yards' distance. She did not return, and presently the child went out to see what had become of her. She found the poor woman lying quite dead, with her feet in the water. Britannia ran back to her father and told him that her mother would not move or speak. Ted rose and followed her to the spot she pointed out. There, in the dim starlight, he looked down into the dead woman's face, and gradually became aware of the result of the discipline to which he had subjected her. Having satisfied himself that life was extinct, he dragged her inanimate form back into the tent with the help of his little daughter. Then the remaining members of the family composedly lay down by the side of the corpse and slept till morning. So soon as the daylight dawned, Ted went out to gather sticks wherewith to kindle his fire, and being apparently somewhat embarrassed by the lifeless burden of which he had become possessed, he told Britannia to go to the cottage of a labouring man who had occasionally passed through the common and spoken a few friendly words to him, and tell him that he wished to see him.

This neighbour presently arrived, and Ted went cheerfully to meet him, carrying the sticks with which he was about to prepare his breakfast. He at once announced the tragic event of the preceding night in the following terms: "We have got a dead 'un here this morning." The labourer went into the tent, and what he saw there decided him to go for the nearest policeman, without any intimation of his intention to the family. That functionary speedily arrived, and had no doubt whatever as to his duty. On the following night Ted slept within four stone walls, sheltered from the wind and weather, the first time for many a year.

In due course he was brought to trial. His own little girl was the principal witness against him, and the judge, having heard Britannia's account of the tragedy, practically directed the jury to find him guilty of the wilful murder of his wife.

Now, as a matter of fact, Ted had been guilty of wilful cruelty to an extent which no doubt deserved severe punishment; but of wilful murder he was not either legally or morally guilty. To kill his wife was the very last thing he either wished or intended: not that he had any real love for her,—his pipe being, as we have said, the sole object of his affections,—but because the loss of her useful services would have rendered her death, even from natural causes, a most dis- astrous calamity to him. However, the usual grim sentence followed the verdict; and Ted—such as we have described him in his mental and moral characteristics—was left to face, within little more than a fortnight, what Carlyle was wont to call "the eternities."

The duty of preparing him for this tremendous change necessarily devolved on the prison chaplain, and all that zeal and earnestness could effect, that good man would undoubtedly have brought to bear on the task; but he was met at the very outset by a serious difficulty. Ted, in his cogitations over his terrible position, which was quite inexplicable to himself, had evolved out of his gorilla-like consciousness a very peculiar explanation of the whole affair. He became convinced that his impending doom, instead of being appointed by the law, was really a commercial transaction harmoniously arranged, for their own pecuniary benefit, between Jack Ketch and the chapel-man, by which names he designated the executioner and the clergyman. He imagined that they would be given an equivalent in money for value received, so soon as they could deliver up the strangled body of Ted Brown to the authorities; and as his life was decidedly precious to himself, he fixed in his own mind what he considered to be the very high sum of £5, as being the price bargained for by the two partners in the arrangement. When the chaplain, therefore, proceeded to the condemned cell to commence the course of theological training which was to fit Ted in seventeen days for an entrance on the eternal mysteries, he was dismayed by the very unexpected greeting with which he was received. Poor Ted fell prone upon his knees before him, and holding up beseeching hands, implored of him generously to forego the £2, 10s., which would be the clerical gentleman's share of the price to be paid for himself, when he should have been effectually done to death by the hangman's rope. If the chapel-man would thus give up his half of the gratuity, Ted considered it would be of no use for Jack Ketch to try and hold on to his fifty shillings, and he would be ready to make any amount of wooden pegs for them both in the course of his future career, so as to liquidate the debt which he would thus incur towards them. The unfortunate chapel-man was left to grapple with the difficulty of raising Ted, in one fortnight, from this level of intelligence respecting his position, to a fitting state of preparation for his departure into the realms unseen.

Meantime another person connected with the prison was occupied with the fate of the little Britannia.

It had been this child's evidence, and hers alone, which had brought her father to the scaffold; and as it had not been by any means to Ted's mind that the girl who had been his small slave all the days of her life should give a detailed account of his manners and customs in open court, he had glared upon her from the dock with a look of fury which she could not easily forget. In spite of her great affinity in many respects to the monkey tribe, Britannia had one prominent human trait, in her strong power of affection. The manner in which she attached herself with an absolutely blind trust to the prison visitor who took an interest in her was very touching; and it was evident, from her references to the scene at the trial, that in after years, if her intelligence were developed by education, the recollection of her own share in her father's fate, and his consequent rage against her, might be to her a source of lasting pain. Her friend was anxious, therefore, to win his forgiveness for her before the end, and arranged to have an interview with him for that purpose within a few hours of his execution. It seemed that the near approach of death was rousing some feelings of natural affection in Ted's darkened mind, and that it might afford him a gleam of comfort in his sad position, to hear that the child had been placed in a home where she would be kindly treated and provided for. To procure him this consolation, therefore, the arrangements for sending her to an orphanage a long distance from the city where he was waiting his doom were hastily concluded, and her friend went to visit her there, in order to receive from her some kind messages to be conveyed to the rapidly dying man. These plans were, however, instantly overthrown by that which is the bane of many of our modern schemes of benevolence—a species of moral red-tapism that surrounds otherwise useful charities with a number of petty stringent rules, so despotically maintained as often to frustrate entirely the good objects for which the institutions were founded. Instead of being able to receive Britannia's last messages to her father, the visitor was ushered into a committee-room, where a formidable circle of portentous-looking females announced that the poor half-monkey child had infringed certain small regulations of the establishment, and must be instantly dismissed, to find another home as best she could. The head and front of her offending appeared to be, that she had, with other reckless statements, informed a small companion that her father was about to be hanged, which information she had been ordered not to impart to any one.

Of course, if she were to be thus summarily expelled, all hope seemed at an end that the poor father, on the brink of death, could have the comfort of hearing she was safe in a permanent home, and this plea for her being retained was anxiously pressed on the redoubtable committee. The painful facts were heard with sphinx-like imperturbability, and the decision was repeated. The ladies wished the child to be removed, and the money which had been paid for a year's maintenance would be returned, deducting her board for the few days she had inhabited the house.

Fortunately a person of more liberal mind than this "charitable" committee, volunteered to give the poor child a home under the sad circumstances, and thus afford the unhappy man a last consolation. Having seen her safely housed under the kind care thus secured to her, Britannia's friend was therefore allowed to go to the condemned cell very shortly before the execution, to tell Ted that the child was definitely provided for, and to beg him to send her some kindly message of forgiveness, which would be a comfort to her in after years. The iron-banded door having been unlocked, the warder in charge was told to wait outside by a superior official, and a chair placed for the visitor, who took the dying criminal's band and said a few words to satisfy him, in the first instance, that it was a friend and not an enemy who had come to him; for poor Ted might well have arrived at the conclusion that all the persons who approached him were united in a conspiracy to remove him, as speedily as possible, from this visible sphere. Despite his affinity to the gorilla nature, Ted Brown was not insensible to the touch of human sympathy; and he never relaxed his grasp of the visitor's hand during the whole interview. It was somewhat like a bad dream to sit beside that strong, stalwart man, full of life and energy, and to know that in a few hours he would be lying stiff and stark under six feet of earth in the prison yard—and his own remarks, which reverted perpetually in a very curious manner to the fate awaiting him, did not tend to lessen this impression. Naturally he was anxious to explain his reasons for the peculiar treatment of his wife, which had terminated—to him so unexpectedly—in her death, and in touching on this topic he suddenly displayed a degree of delicacy which seemed strangely at variance with his grosser characteristics—he stopped short in his recital of her misdeeds, and asked leave to whisper to the officer present, some details which he did not consider fit for the ears of his visitor. It was, however, worse than useless that he should continue to go back over the irrevocable past; his future, of which the minutes might easily have been counted, was all that was left to him.

When the conversation was forcibly brought round to the subject of Britannia, he indulged at first in a fierce burst of passion against her for having brought him to the gallows; but he soon saw that this was very distasteful to his visitor, and poor Ted evidently thought that, in his critical position, it would be his wisest policy to try and please every one all round—so he changed his tone, and meekly agreed to do whatever was required of him with regard to the child.

"Yes, I'll forgive her," he said. "I'll not think no more of them lies she told, for all I never did nothink worse to my wife nor she deserved—a hussy! Just you think of it—me lying crippled up with the rheumatics, and her agoing flaunting out with that there fellow—"

"But about Britannia," interrupted the visitor, stopping these reminiscences—"you will send your love to her, will you not?"

"Yes, yes; you can tell her I bears no malice, and as how I hopes she'll grow up a bright woman;" and then he suddenly interpolated his paternal good wishes with the ghastly question—"Do you think, now, it will take them five minutes to kill me?"

The visitor was not experienced in details of the hanging process, but answered as soothingly as possible, and after a little time led him gently back to his child's message of love to him. This was at last quite effectual in reconciling him to her, and he even volunteered to "make up a letter," as he expressed it, to be given to her on the day of his death. Ted could neither read nor write, so this could only be done by dictation to one of the warders who watched him night and day, to prevent him from forestalling the hangman's work by any private proceedings of his own; but as it was likely to be a valuable document to the poor girl in the future, the offer was gladly accepted. A most extraordinary letter it proved to be: he had evidently thought it desirable to make it highly ecclesiastical, so that it consisted of the most curiously metamorphosed fragments from the chapel-man's teaching, interspersed with amazing reflections of Ted's own, and scraps of hymns heard in the Sunday services, inverted in such a manner as to become the most ineffable nonsense. The whole sum of Ted's religious knowledge when he first entered the prison had consisted in the following four lines, which he had quoted triumphantly as containing the entire body of sound doctrine taught by the Christian Church:—
"There are four corners to my bed,
And four angels at my head—
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on." After a fortnight's instruction, however, he had got hold of the idea of a lost sheep, and he put that unfortunate quadruped through its paces in his letter in a truly remarkable manner. Nevertheless, poor little Britannia, who is at this date gradually being educated into the semblance of a human being, will one day value very highly that strange message from the dead.

The end of the tragedy for poor gorilla-like Ted came in the shape of a fainting-fit, complete enough to produce total insensibility, into which he fell on the scaffold, from sheer terror of the death that overtook him before he recovered—and so terminates the history of the application of human justice to his individual case.

It is one of the peculiarities of the Silent World—where men and women have sometimes to expiate their offences by a dreadful death at the hands of their fellow-creatures—that the other criminals located there remain in total ignorance of the tragedy being enacted in their midst. The officers are never allowed to hold any communication with the convicts except such as may be necessary for the enforcement of discipline; and even the appointed visitor who is privileged to talk to them freely of their own concerns, is bound to adhere to the same rule with regard to all other subjects. Thus it is that the only pris- oners who can have even a suspicion that an execution is going to take place under the very roof which shelters themselves, are the men who are told off to dig the grave of their yet living companion, on the day before his death.

It chanced, therefore, that the visitor had, during this same period, to pass from the ghastly associations of the condemned cell to the female prison, where the officials were being kept in a state of lively excitement by the proceedings of one of the inmates. While strange aspects of human nature and most pathetic histories are brought to light in intercourse with convicted women, it often happens that strangely eccentric characters appear among them, whose fantastic careers cannot be accounted for on any known principles of human action. Such an individual was No. 26, who was undergoing a long sentence in the same prison with Ted Brown at the time of his compulsory exit from it. She was a tall, handsome woman, with fine features and brilliant black eyes, which were for ever flashing restlessly from side to side. She had been well educated, and carried herself with the air of a princess—maintaining in her quiet days a haughty demeanour, which she seldom relaxed, except in the case of the prison visitor, of whom she was graciously pleased to approve.

No. 26 shared in one invariable characteristic of female prisoners whose crimes have not been of the gravest type, that she was, according to her own account, a model of all the virtues. Women who are committed on charges of murder, manslaughter, or attempted suicide, are generally in too despairing a frame of mind to attempt any denial of the truth; but where their offences have been theft, assault, or other minor misdeeds, they systematically invent the most plausible explanations of the misadventure which has consigned them, as they affirm, in perfect innocence, to the prison cells. Sometimes, according to their statement, it has simply been the dense stupidity of the benighted judge who sentenced them, which has led to the catastrophe; but more frequently it has been a false friend, who has taken advantage of their confiding docility to shelter all manner of crimes behind their own immaculate virtue. The perpetual appearance of this stereotyped false friend, soon taught the visitor to dismiss the phantom on all occasions very summarily; and the imaginary deceiver of No. 26 having been so dealt with, she ceased any attempt to set aside the grim evidence given by the judicial record of her former convictions, and was fain to admit that she had been incarcerated many times before, for offences of various kinds. It soon became known that in every one of these prisons she had made the lives of the officials a burden to them, and some of her freaks were certainly of a very exasperating nature. On one occasion, when she was inhabiting the convict establishment of a large city, she announced that she had a complaint to make respecting the prison authorities, and demanded to be taken before the magistrates for that purpose. This is a request which is never denied to a prisoner who desires to bring forward any serious charge against the governing officials—and as No. 26 preserved an imperturbable silence on the subject of her grievance, it was concluded that it must be of a formidable nature. There was, therefore, quite an array of magistrates assembled to hear her statement, and the governor, chaplain, and other superior officers of the prison were summoned to be present. No. 26 was conducted before them, and solemnly ordered to proffer her accusation against those to whose custody she had been committed. She at once replied, in stately measured tones, that she felt it her duty to bring a charge against the chaplain,—the reverend gentleman there present,—for the criminal dulness of the wretched sermons to which he condemned his ill-used congregation Sunday after Sunday. They were not only quite worthless, she said, in style and composition, but also extremely illogical, inasmuch as he was perpetually attacking the female prisoners for their slight misdemeanours, while he passed lightly over the offences committed by the persons of his own sex on the male side of the prison. She requested that the magistrates would order an inquiry into his preaching powers, when she believed it would be found that he was possessed of none whatever. The countenance of the chaplain was seen to assume various shades of blue and green during this address, delivered much after the fashion of a counsel for the prosecution, until the magistrates could sufficiently overcome their smothered laughter to reprove the critical prisoner with befitting sternness, and order her immediate removal to her cell. A considerable time elapsed before she completed the term of her sentence in that city, and after a very brief period of liberty some fresh misdeeds consigned her to the jail which was the last home of Ted Brown.

When No. 26 came under the visitor's notice in her new compulsory retirement, she manifested so strong a desire to listen to advice and reform her ways on all points, that it was resolved to make a great effort to effect a radical change in her mode of disposing of her existence. It was known that her relations were highly respectable people, who had done their utmost for her many times, only to see her fall back into her wild lawless life more recklessly than before, and they had finally given her up in despair, and refused to recognise her at all. Plans were made, however, by the visitor for placing her in a position where she could begin a new life, and gain her own livelihood in an honest and suitable manner. She professed herself much pleased with the arrangement, which she knew involved considerable outlay, and the demons of passion and unrest with which she had been formerly possessed appeared to be completely laid. She went on thoroughly well till within a short time of the day when she was to obtain her discharge from prison, and then there was a lamentable change: she had scented the breath of freedom approaching speedily, and became simply intoxicated with it. One morning the visitor was met, on arriving at the jail, with the information that No. 26 had "broken out"—the prison term for a wild fit of seeming madness which from time to time seizes on the women confined within its walls. What had been the cause of this sudden attack?—there was literally no cause. The regulation breakfast had been brought as usual to No. 26, being absolutely identical with that provided for all the other women, when she had instantly burst into a wild fit of fury, declaring that her bread was less in weight than that destined for her companions. She tore off her cap, always an object of abhorrence, sent her long black hair flying out on the wind, and dashed like a maniac into the courtyard which separated her from the men's side of the prison, wrenching herself out of the hands of the officers who tried to control her. There she announced her intention of scaling the wall,—a feat that at any other time would have been absolutely impossible, but did not at that moment seem beyond the preternatural strength with which her passion had endowed her; and once on the other side, she declared she would make her way to the kitchen, take violent possession of the cook, a stout man some six feet high, and then and there boil him to a pulp in his own copper. These—the visitor was told—were her precise words, shouted out at the top of her voice; and although it had been found possible to prevent her from carrying out this unusual culinary operation, she could not be hindered from spreading ruin and devastation round her in the punishment- cell, to which she had been conveyed by the united efforts of a considerable number of prison officials. She had not been many minutes securely locked in there, when ominous sounds of a very violent description were heard to proceed from her abode; and a view of her position being taken through the inspection grating, she was seen standing clothed in dilapidated garments, and surrounded not only with everything the place contained smashed to atoms, but with quantities of the plaster and lime from the walls. She must have sprung at them like a wild cat to a considerable height, and she had succeeded in laying the actual stones bare to a very great extent. Enveloped in the clouds of dust she had raised, No. 26 poured forth such a volley of threats and blasphemous invectives against the officer, whose presence she detected behind the grating, that the visitor was strongly recommended not to attempt to have an interview with her—it was thought to be decidedly unsafe. That, however, was not the opinion of the individual in question, whose experience had shown that even the most lawless spirits can be tamed by kindness when once their affections have been roused. The idea of leaving the unfortunate No. 26 in the deplorable condition to which she had reduced herself was not to be entertained for a moment. By dint of obstinate insistence on the right of seeing any prisoner in that portion of the jail, however refractory, the visitor had the door of the punishment-cell opened, and entered it alone, knowing well that the presence of an official would have been fatal to any hope of quieting the woman. Certainly there proved to be no need for the least exercise of courage. The moment No. 26 saw her friend, she stopped short in a renewed attack she was making on the walls, let her hands fall by her sides, and opened wide her great black eyes in a look first of amazement, then of distress.

"You!" she exclaimed at last,—"is it really you come into this horrible place! I could not have dreamt that you would come here! If I had only known it, I would never have made such a frightful mess—I never thought for a moment you would have to stand in the midst of it! Stay; you must not set your feet in all that rubbish,"—and quickly tearing off a handkerchief which covered her shoulders, she went down on her knees and spread it on the stone floor of the cell—insisting that the visitor's feet should be placed on it, so that they might avoid all contact with the heaps of lime and dust she had accumulated there. It was a touching instance of the good feeling which underlay poor No. 26's fiendish temper, and which generally does exist more or less, even in the most brutalised prisoners.

A quiet conversation followed, during which she became perfectly meek, and really remorseful for her conduct. Unfortunately she could not always be under influences of this description—prison rules required the infliction of penalties for her insubordination, and poor No. 26 soon forgot her temporary conversion and went from bad to worse, till the day of her discharge arrived. By that time she had succeeded in inventing serious charges against every one of the prison authorities, from the governor downwards, including even the once-favoured visitor; and she announced her in- tention of making their various iniquities fully known to the world, by proclaiming them aloud, during her very first moments of freedom, when she would walk for that purpose through the public streets of the city in which the prison was situated.

As it was decidedly desirable to prevent such a proceeding, if possible, No. 26 was told that her railway fare would be paid to a place at a distance, where it was known she really wished to go, and an elderly warder was desired to accompany her to the station and see her safe off. He did not relish his task, but scarcely anticipated the extent of his difficulties. The moment No. 26 found herself outside the door of the prison, she knew that she was a perfectly free woman, and that the authorities had no longer any power over her, whereupon she gave the reins to her capricious temper, and declared that she would not go to the station till she had carried out her purpose of marching through the streets of the town, and there publicly announcing that the once respected officials of the jail were arrant villains, one and all.

At that moment the chaplain, most unfortunately for himself, came in at the outer gate, and instantly darting towards him, No. 26 collared him, metaphorically, and violently demanded instant redress for her injuries, while the officers still remaining safely within the walls looked out from the windows, and, it is to be feared, greatly enjoyed the scene. The elderly warder was, however, equal to the occasion. He blandly approached the woman while she was executing a species of fancy dance round the passive form of the dismayed clergyman, and reminded her that if she carried out her plan of a public denunciation of the prison authorities in the open streets, she would thereby reveal the disagreeable fact that she had herself been a denizen of that unsatisfactory abode; whereas, if she accompanied him to the station with all the airs and graces she could so well assume, it would be concluded that she was simply a fascinating lady, being escorted by an admiring gentleman on a journey of pleasure.

These tactics prevailed. No. 26 released the chaplain, whom she, like the Ancient Mariner, had been holding with her glittering eye, and departed elegantly for the station. Thither she arrived, after having had one or two renewed outbursts on the way, which the warder afterwards declared had sent a cold tremor through him; but he at last succeeded in getting her into the train, and returned home in an exhausted condition.

It might seem at first sight as if this system of periodical "breakings out," which is largely adopted by the lower class of female prisoners, were a mere unreasoning indulgence in temper; but it is not so—it has a distinct rationale of its own, illogical enough, no doubt, but a well-considered method in the apparent madness. The object of it is simply one of deliberate revenge for the pains and penalties to which their imprisonment subjects them. The women are perfectly aware that by these paroxysms of violence they give a great deal of trouble and annoyance to the officers, whose duty it is to carry out all the unpleasant conditions of the sentences they have brought on themselves by their offences against the law. And it is really extraordinary what an amount of extra punishment they will willingly undergo in order to have the gratification of thus revenging themselves. We had a curious instance of this on one occasion. A woman who had frequently been imprisoned for small offences was brought before the magistrates, on a charge which would only have involved the detention of a few weeks. She prided herself on her elegance of manner and diction, having in former times been a governess; and nothing could be more meek or graceful than the way in which she pleaded with the magistrates to let her off for once. She assured them that if they abstained from sending her to prison, she would immediately retire into a virtuous seclusion, and enter on a course of the highest morality. They were deaf to her entreaties, however, and felt bound to inflict on her what was really a very lenient sentence. No sooner was it pronounced, and the police were approaching to remove her, than she executed with amazing dexterity the plan which had been in her mind from the first. During the very time when she was mildly pleading for indulgence, she had managed, by a subtle unseen movement, to remove one of her shoes, and hide it under her shawl: and the moment the chief magistrate ceased speaking she drew it out, as quick as lightning, from its concealment, and flung it at his head with such precision of aim as effectually to land it in the position she most desired. Of course the result of such an outrage on the judicial dignity was the immediate doubling of her sentence under severe conditions. But that was simply nothing to her, in comparison with the exquisite enjoyment of that moment, when she saw her muddy old shoe flying through the air to lodge on the magisterial cranium. Even when she spoke of it afterwards in the presence of the visitor, to whom she wished to be abnormally respectful, she had difficulty in repressing her shrieks of delight at the recollection of that ineffable moment.

These are merely the lighter aspects of prison life; but they can only afford a very passing relief to the sadness and pain which must habitually weigh on those who are brought in contact with all the dark and tragic episodes that usually mark the records of that strange silent world.

Our connection with it has mainly brought before us the more serious conditions of convict existence; and we venture to hope that what has been learned by practical experience as the appointed visitor of a model jail, may prove usefully suggestive to some of those who are concerned in the administration of the law and the general treatment of criminals.

CHAPTER II. THE END OF A BITTER EXPERIENCE.

In spite of the well-known fact that there has always been an influential minority in England who doubt the expediency of the capital penalty, and that the question has been repeatedly raised in Parliament, only to be summarily dismissed with the stock arguments on the subject,—the prejudice in its favour continues to be so strong amongst us, that we have not even arrived at any consideration of a desirable change in the mode of its enforcement, such as has lately become law in America.

We venture to think, however, that the simple record of the working of the lex talionis in individual cases, which our prison experience enables us to bring before our readers, may tend to show that the theories on which the capital penalty is founded and maintained do not always hold good when confronted with the stern reality of actual facts.

Before entering on this comprehensive theme, we must ask leave to make a personal explana- tion, like a maligned member of Parliament, in the shape of a strong protest against the charge that we are actuated by motives of "benevolence" in any statements we may make which suggest a doubt as to the righteousness or wisdom of the death penalty.

No sooner does any one presume to write or speak in any way against this irremediable punishment, than they are immediately stigmatized as "benevolent" persons,—that courteous term being merely a thin disguise for the conviction that they are weak-minded idiots, who give all their pity to bloodthirsty murderers, and are blandly indifferent to the fate of the murdered.

Prison visitors see too much of crime in its worst aspect to be capable of false benevolence, or to have the smallest desire that assassins should escape the direst penalty which can be awarded to them for their cruel deeds; but we cannot be blind to the facts bearing on the administration of the law in all its phases, which are brought into strong relief by the true histories we have to tell. These facts may be left to speak for them- selves, as the subject is assuredly not one in which there is any room for private fancies, or for the indulgence of an unreasoning sentimentality; but we will briefly enumerate some of the difficulties respecting capital punishment which they seem most forcibly to illustrate. We may instance, first, the inequalities and actual failures of human justice in meting out a penalty that can never be revoked, even if proved to have been mistakenly awarded to the innocent. This argument was very comprehensively stated by Lafayette when he declared that he would oppose the death decree until the infallibility of human judgment could be demonstrated to him; and the position was to some extent borne out, we think, by the history, already given in these pages, of a man who was executed for the wilful murder of the woman he most desired, above all others, to preserve in life. Our experience has also brought to our knowledge certain most startling revelations on the subject of the miscarriage of justice, which we shall endeavour in these pages to bring, at least to some extent, to the light of day.

For the present, however, the true stories we have to relate will be found to bear mainly on our conviction that capital punishment is not a deterrent of crime, but rather in some strange instances the reverse; that it is not the punishment most dreaded by criminals; and further, that it is not necessary or even conducive to the public safety.

Within a very short time after Ted Brown, the human gorilla, had passed from our prison to the realms unseen, a man, whom we will call John Butler, was brought to it on a charge of wilful murder. His personal appearance was very unlike that with which an assassin is usually credited—there was nothing in the slightest degree cruel or sinister in the expression of his countenance, which was on the contrary remarkably gentle and pleasant. He was a handsome fair-haired man, tall and strong, in the very prime of life. He gained his living at a lucrative trade, and had always occupied a position of great respectability in his native town, where he was much esteemed and beloved by numerous friends and relations. Butler had married at an early age, and with his young wife and four fine children, to whom he was deeply attached, he led a happy, peaceful life for several prosperous years. Then suddenly a dark shadow fell on the brightness of his days, the fiat came to him as to Ezekiel in the ancient time—"Behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke"—death entered into the midst of the little family in their pleasant cottage home, and took away the tender wife and mother, who was the source and centre of all their happiness. Butler followed her to her grave, half stupefied, and came back to look sorrowfully on his children—the youngest little more than an infant—and wonder what was to become of them while he was absent all day at his work; indeed, even if he had been able to stay at home, which as the bread-winner of the family was impossible, he would not have known how to care for them properly. A very poor expedient was resorted to for a time in the shape of a visit from his old mother, who reluctantly left her own household gods to come and indulge John's children in the most injudi- cious manner possible, and make abortive attempts with her failing eyesight to cook suitable dinners for them.

She found the little girls comparatively easy to manage, but the two boys, left to run wild, tormented her to the gradual extinction of her small stock of patience, and within a very few months the old woman struck work altogether, and declared she would have no more of it. She gathered up her small personal effects and went back to her own home, leaving John, as the patois of his native place expressed it, to "fend" for himself as best be could. Now John had an intimate friend, a very respectable man, generally supposed, we believe, to be gifted with great common-sense. This admirable quality he forthwith exercised on behalf of Butler, in a piece of advice which he was destined to expiate at a later period of his life in the bitterest regret and remorse: he solemnly counselled him to make a mariage de convenance—just such an alliance as in France is contracted between the son of a marquis and the daughter of a countess, from motives of the purest expediency, without any pretence of an attachment subsisting between them. John was personally not at all desirous to replace the dear wife he had lost, but he was ready to make any sacrifice on behalf of his children, whom he loved with a very unusual strength of affection. He answered his wise counsellor, therefore, by saying that he supposed it was the best plan he could adopt for the proper care of his little ones, only he did not know of any woman that would suit. His friend intimated that he did;—there was a certain single woman, robust and capable, living in the place, with apparently no family ties or encumbrances of any kind, who appeared to be very respectable, and likely to prove an excellent manager of a household. Butler might try her for a week or two in that capacity first, and if she proved efficient he had better marry her at once. It seems not to have occurred to this friend, in spite of his remarkable common-sense, that the fact of the woman living a long way apart from all her relations might indicate some strong peculiarity in her temper or disposition which made her absence from those bound to her, even by the ties of blood, an imperative necessity; nor did any such ominous thought pass through the mind of poor John himself. He meekly consented to follow his friend's advice, and annex this desirable female to his little kingdom if she were willing to become his second wife.

On that point the lady left no room for a moment's doubt. She closed with John's offer in so vehement and expeditious a manner as to suggest the probability that she looked upon it as her sole chance of matrimony.

Mainly by her strongly expressed will, the marriage was hurried on as quickly as possible, and the unfortunate John had literally no knowledge whatever of her character when he was summarily borne to the church, and there bound to her irretrievably till death should them part. On their return to John's house from the due performance of the ceremony,—at about that stage in the wedding festivities when in another rank of life the bridegroom is expected to rise to his feet and declare that it is the proudest and happiest day of his life,—the newly made Mrs Butler took her husband by the sleeve and led him into a corner apart from the guests, in order to make him a confidential communication: it was expressed in the following words—

"John Butler, now I have got you, I'll let you know what I am."

And she did let him know—during several years of unutterable wretchedness, which, in all that concerned the fate of his miserable children, may be said to have become absolute torture.

The woman his sensible friend had so obligingly recommended to him proved to have the temper of a fiend, and to be endowed also with certain other qualities which are supposed to be eminently characteristic of the denizens of an unmentionable region. Within ten days from the time of their marriage, she had, according to her promise, imparted to poor John such a remarkable knowledge of what she really was, that he went off in hot haste to the distant village where her parents lived, in order to ascertain, as far as possible, what her character and antecedents had really been. A terrible revelation was made to him there! He learned that no human being had ever been able to live with the woman; that she was malicious, cruel, and vindictive; and that her own father and mother had for their very peace and safety been compelled to dismiss her from their home and repudiate her altogether. Nevertheless, John Butler had taken her for better, for worse, and he had no alternative but to return to his own abode, and bear the curse he had brought upon his life as best he could. Then, in that cottage home where he had hitherto reigned as undisputed lord and master, there occurred a phenomenon—one not unknown to history certainly, but still surely a phenomenon! John Butler was, as we have seen, a man of extremely powerful physique, and his wife was a small wiry-looking woman of very insignificant appearance. Yet she managed in some inscrutable manner to acquire a despotic power and dominion over her husband, which reduced him to a condition of the most abject submission and slavery. How helplessly he writhed under her indomitable tyranny, was soon very sadly proved by his utter inability to shield even his children from her cruelty. It seemed incredible weakness on his part; yet he spoke of it to the writer as if he had been under a spell which bound him as in chains of iron. During the years which elapsed before he broke through his terrible bondage by a stroke that brought death to himself as well as to her, he saw—first his youngest child—once a merry rosy-cheeked girl—done to death by ill-usage, and laid, a wasted, pallid little corpse, by the side of its true mother. Then he had to endure the sight of his eldest boy Harry, his especial favourite, and his only remaining daughter, a gentle young girl, being turned out of the house by their step-mother, and told that they were to darken her doors no more,—they might find a home and a living for themselves in any way they could. A lady consented to take the poor girl into her service, and the boy went to London, where he succeeded in getting only a very hard ill-paid situation, in which after-events proved that he had been exceedingly unhappy. There remained the younger boy, who earned a little money at his father's trade, and the woman therefore allowed him to remain at home; but she indemnified herself for this indulgence by systematically starving him. How she intended him to live without food has never been explained: the mode in which he actually received his necessary nourishment was by his father concealing certain portions from his own meals in a secret place known only to the boy, where he went to find them when he could succeed in eluding his step-mother's notice.

It may be imagined that during these miserable years the unhappy man often felt that he must free himself from his terrible tyrant by any means, right or wrong. He knew too little of legal processes to be aware that he might have sued for a formal separation; and even if he had known it, most probably the expense of such a proceeding would have been beyond his means. Anyhow, he did continue to endure his misery, although his wife gradually became a confirmed drunkard, and also, it is said, added to her other misdeeds by certain sins against her husband, for which, had he been a Turk resident in Constantinople, he might have openly tied her up in a sack and plunged her into the Bosphorus, with the entire approval of the public and all judicial authorities. The true gentleness and generosity of his nature were, however, shown on one occasion, when, by merely remaining passive, he might have got rid of his incubus for ever. In a fit of drunkenness the woman suddenly attempted to destroy herself, and Butler's little son one day ran to tell him that his step-mother had hung herself in the cellar. The man instantly rushed to the place, cut the rope which held her, carried her tenderly up-stairs in his arms, and by the most strenuous exertions succeeded in restoring her to the life that was not yet extinct. This was certainly a sufficient proof that no premeditated idea of violence towards her had entered into his mind.

About a fortnight before the day when John Butler was brought handcuffed between two policemen to the prison, he had one morning received a telegram from London, vaguely stating that his boy Harry had committed suicide, but with no details as to the circumstances under which the tragedy had taken place. Now Harry had only left his father's house the day before, having been allowed to go home from his situation for a very short holiday. What might have occurred there to drive him to quench his own young life is not known, but the act was very significant. Butler was almost beside himself with distress at this terrible news respecting his favourite son, and wished to start instantly for London to learn what had really occurred; but his determined tyrant peremptorily stopped him from doing anything of the kind. She intimated that he was to stay at home and attend to his work, while she herself would go to London to investigate the matter, and at the same time pay a visit to her sister who resided there. She coerced the unfortunate man into submitting to this arrangement, and departed. Of course he expected to hear from her immediately; but for three days she left him in his cruel suspense without any tidings from her whatever. At last she sent merely a vague telegram saying that the inquest on his son was over, with the usual verdict; and then, half maddened by his continued uncertainty as to the cause and manner of his poor boy's death, Butler took the next train to London, and went first to the house of his sister-in-law, where he believed his wife to be. She was not there, nor had she slept in the house at all. Where was she, then? The woman was compelled to admit that her sister had spent the time, when she was supposed to be inquiring into the death of her step-son, in a disreputable house, drinking and otherwise indulging her peculiar tastes.

For ten days after that date Butler remained in his cottage, to which both he and his wife had returned, maintaining an imperturbable silence,—while he struggled fiercely with the storm of resentment and intolerable misery that raged within him. A touch must have opened the flood-gates of his almost uncontrollable wrath at any time; and at length the fatal moment came.

He returned home from his work one day, tired and wretched, and fell asleep before the fire. He had that morning sold some of his possessions, probably requiring in that way to meet the unusual expenses his poor boy's death had brought upon him; and when he woke, he found that his wife had rifled his pockets of the money thus acquired. and had gone out to spend it in the public-house. After he had ascertained this he returned to his place, and sat there silent and immovable. There seems to have fallen on his spirit in that terrible hour a darkness that might be felt—an utter hopelessness—a conviction that his life-agony had become unendurable,—who could gauge the intense bitterness of the pain that held him as in a vice? His daughter came in to see him just then for a few minutes, and to her he spoke quietly and kindly. She was soon followed by her step-mother, who instantly began to taunt him about the suicide of his beloved son, in terms so cruel and revolting that the young girl told the writer afterwards, she felt as if she could herself at that moment have killed the woman who was casting such vile aspersions on her dead brother. Child-like she thought only of escaping from the sound of those horrible words, and she went away, leaving her father alone with the deadly enemy of his children. What passed during the next fateful moments can never be fully known, though it is a significant fact that when Butler was next seen he had a fresh wound on his face as if some assault had been made upon him; but it is certain in any case, that the pent-up exasperation and misery of all the past years culminated then and there in one instant of blind unreasoning passion, which drove him to snatch up a knife from the table and put an end to the woman's life and his own agony with one swift stroke.

Where, in the sudden madness of that white heat of ungovernable rage, was there any room for the supposed deterring influence of the death penalty on murder? If the hangman and his rope had been facing him at the moment, it would have made no difference to the frantic impulse which goaded him to avenge the wrongs of his children and himself with a single fierce blow. When John Butler came to his right mind and saw what he had done, he went and called for his next-door neighbour to be a witness against him, and then calmly gave himself up to justice so soon as the police could be brought on the scene.

The popular sympathy on behalf of this man was widespread and deep; even his wife's own sister and other relations declared to the writer, that all their compassion was for him, and not for the unprincipled woman who had driven him to madness. In prison his demeanour was uniformly gentle and humble, and he manifested unbounded gratitude for the simple fact that no one molested him or spoke any harsh or cruel words, which seemed to him, in comparison with his home life, to be extraordinary kindness.

Moreover, his repentance, as in the sight of God, for his one moment of fatal anger, was profound and genuine. He told the writer, with tears streaming from his eyes, that he repented of his crime with all his heart and soul, and was prepared to expiate it to the uttermost. He had not the smallest wish to live, he said—only he felt for his children!—worse than motherless so long, and now fatherless! Sobs choked his utterance. He wrung his visitor's hand in a passionate grasp, and tried to stammer out words of blessing on any who would care for his children.

The day of Butler's trial came, and he took his place in the dock. The counsel engaged to defend the prisoner devoted himself to the case with the utmost earnestness, and with much skill and talent but on account of some legal technicality, rather incomprehensible to ordinary mortals not learned in Blackstone and other authorities, it was considered undesirable to bring forward any witnesses as to the provocation the man had received. Practically, therefore, the evidence simply went to prove the self-evident fact of the murder, and the attempt to reduce it to manslaughter failed. The judge's charge said nothing of extenuating circumstances; and the jury were, with extreme reluctance, compelled to pronounce the man guilty. They accompanied their verdict with a strong recommendation to mercy, of which the judge took no notice whatever.

The dramatic effect of the scene at the moment when the sentence was pronounced was very striking. His lordship was a small elderly gentleman, whose appearance, so far from being imposing, was somewhat ludicrously feminine in his red gown and grey wig. Sitting in his chair, he leant forward on his cushioned desk, and facing the powerful, fine-looking man who stood before him, and who could easily have flung him aside with a movement of his strong hand, he composedly doomed him to be hanged by the neck till he was dead; and further informed him that his body was to be buried in the precincts of the prison.

John Butler heard his sentence standing motionless, with head erect. Only once during the whole course of the trial had his self-command given way, and that was when allusion was made to the suicide of his son: then tears burst from his eyes, and his broad chest heaved with smothered sobs; but it was only for a moment. He speedily regained his composure; and as he turned to leave the dock, he calmly waved his hand in token of farewell to some of his friends in the crowded court, who on hearing his sentence had given vent to their feelings in piteous cries and exclamations.

It so happened that very soon after the capital penalty had been adjudged to John Butler for the murder of his wife, a man was tried in London for precisely the same crime, and we copy from the official report of the case the sentence pronounced on him. In this instance, although the woman was effectually killed, it had been permitted that the deed should be entitled manslaughter. The judge described the provocation the man had received from his wife, and then said that "the prisoner seemed, in a paroxysm of rage, to have inflicted injuries upon her which caused her immediate death. He had indeed been guilty of manslaughter; but he could not bring himself to pass a longer sentence upon the prisoner than that of a term of imprisonment, the result of which was that he would be discharged." The term of imprisonment to which he was sentenced being, we believe, less than the time he had spent in jail awaiting his trial, the practical result of the punishment awarded to him was, that he left the court at once a free man, entirely exempt from any legal consequences of his crime.

We do not for a moment doubt that the judges who tried these two cases were both men of the highest principle and integrity, conscientiously desirous of performing their onerous duties to the very best of their power; but they differed in opinion and disposition, as units of the human race are wont to differ, and the consequence was, that to the one criminal was awarded life and honourable liberty, while to the other was given death, with irremediable disgrace on the children who survived him. We would venture merely to ask whether it is well that the lives of our fellow-creatures should be dependent on peculiarities of temperament in her Majesty's judges?

The law—or rather the State—had not yet done its worst for John Butler: a further penance was decreed for him, which according to the legal code in America would there have been wholly impossible. The man had been recommended to mercy; and as the circumstances which had led to his crime were well known—(some not very scrupulous persons even affirming that he had done right in ridding the world of such a being)—it was confidently expected that the sentence would not be carried into effect. Nevertheless strenuous efforts were made to ensure this result. A petition was sent to the Home Office from Butler's native town, which was signed literally by almost the whole population; another went from the city where the trial had taken place, endorsed by the most distinguished names belonging to it, including one very eminent legal authority; and lastly, the jury forwarded an appeal of their own, signed by every one of the twelve men, good and true, who had been unwillingly compelled by the machinery of the law to pronounce the word "guilty;"—and no one doubted that such an array of petitioners united in opposition to the execution of the sentence would prevail.

It had been impossible to conceal these efforts from the prisoner himself. His children and other near relations were allowed to visit him, and they naturally told him what had been done, and gave him the further information that a preliminary answer had been received from the Home Office, which stated that the prisoner's case, with the appeals made on his behalf, were under consideration. After that, no doubt was felt by most that Butler would be reprieved; and this opinion received strong confirmation from the fact, that nearly the whole of the short period alloted to criminals between their trial and execution had passed away, before the decision of the State authority as to his life or death was made known. Then the answer came—the law was to take its course; he was to die,—early on the second morning after the letter reached the prison. Little more than forty hours was granted to this man to prepare for his dreadful doom.

This is no unusual circumstance in connection with the infliction of the capital penalty. Whenever a criminal has been recommended to mercy, and there is a further appeal for his life in consideration of extenuating circumstances, the decision of the Home Secretary is almost invariably delayed till within a day of the execution, and the inadequate space of time thus allotted to a preparation for the dread mystery of death, has been repeatedly brought into notice in the public papers by prison chaplains and others.

A law has recently been passed in America which deals with the whole subject of capital punishment, and a good deal of interest attaches to some of its more important enactments as compared with our English customs; but we may here transcribe the clause which defines the due interval of preparation to which every criminal has a right, in face of his irreversible doom:—

From section 491 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the State of New York.

"When a defendant is sentenced to the punishment of death, the judges holding the court at which the conviction takes place must make out . . a warrant . . . appointing a week within which sentence must be executed."

(Section 492.) "The week so appointed must begin not less than four weeks, and not more than eight weeks, after the sentence."

The rule in England, even in cases where there is no doubt that the sentence will be carried out, allows three Sundays only to intervene between the trial and the execution—so that if a man is tried on a Saturday, he has very little more than a fortnight allowed him to prepare; but where there is hope of a reprieve, the delay of the announcement that the man is to die, till within a few hours of his execution, not only adds a torturing element to his punishment which he has not legally incurred, but it limits the time of his real preparation to the one last agitating day when his friends come to take a final leave of him. The matter is not one of minor importance, as was keenly felt, we believe, by the saintly Abbé Croze, the chaplain of La Roquette in Paris, who ministered to all the culprits who during a period of twenty-five years expiated their crimes on the guillotine. The French system of leaving a man in complete ignorance of the time when his execution is to take place until the fatal hour actually arrives, told very heavily against that good priest's efforts to bring such criminals as Tropman, Avignoin, and Billoir to a fit state of preparation for their entrance on the dread eternity. The strange laxity of French prison discipline allowed some of these men to be engaged in playing cards with their jailers till within a few hours of their death; but it may be doubted whether the more decent provisions of our English custom, which dedicates a condemned man's last day to farewell interviews with his friends, can avail to render that brief space of time sufficient for the heavy responsibilities with which it is weighted.

In the case of poor John Butler, who was passionately beloved by his children and brothers, it was spent in all the agony of mind which the sight of their uncontrollable distress could not fail to awaken in him. One of his brothers was an invalid helplessly crippled, and as he looked up at the tall powerful man glowing with health and vigour, who was some years younger than himself, he exclaimed impetuously—

"John, John! I wish to heaven they would let me die instead of you! You might have a long life before you still—strong and hearty as you are, and fit for good work wherever you might be; and here am I but a useless burden on my family,— I'd go to the gallows for you willingly if they'd only let me!"

"No, Richard, no! I would never consent to that," said the doomed man, pressing his brother's hand; "it is I alone must suffer, for it is true that I did the deed, and it was very wrong and cruel—it was done in a moment of madness, when I was quite beside myself, and no one on earth knows what I had suffered till I was fairly driven out of my senses. They made no account of that at my trial; but I can tell you this, my life at home was rendered such a hell upon earth, that I have felt quite happy and peaceful since I have been here away from it all, though the time has been spent in a jail, with the sentence of death hanging over me."

John Butler's singularly affectionate disposition became strongly manifest in the few last hours allowed him by the State after his death-warrant arrived. It was with difficulty that his children were torn from his arms, and he could scarcely bear to lose sight even for a moment of the chaplain, to whom he had become strongly attached. His last messages on his way to the scaffold next morning were for those who had shown him sympathy and kindness. Thus every instant of his brief interval in articulo mortis was saturated with the influence of his strong earthly affections; and it must have been wellnigh impossible for him to turn his dying eyes from the beloved faces he should see no more, in order to look into the mysterious darkness of the unknown state that awaited him beyond these farewell hours.

Since it is no part of the law that a criminal should be kept in ignorance as to his doom till within a few hours of its accomplishment, and the matter is entirely dependent on the will of one State official, it is to be hoped that the strong representations already made on the subject may produce a change, at least in this particular, as regards the treatment of prisoners.

The story of John Butler is a very clear illustration of the truth which, as we have already said, has been forcibly demonstrated to us in our visits to the Silent World—that the capital penalty is not a deterrent of crime. We shall give in a future chapter the history of a very singular case, in which the prospect of death following at once on a murder, seemed to have been one of the motives for its commission by a most unhappy man; but for the moment we are only concerned to show that this portion of the penal code in our country has no real effect in the prevention of deeds of violence.

There is one factor in the inducements to crimes of this description, as regards the weaker sex, which has a force that dominates their whole being, to the exclusion of any other influence whatever—and that is the uncontrollable passion which often takes possession of a woman for the man who is her lover.

Where there is no moral or religious principle to produce self-restraint, as is generally the case among the uneducated classes, the hopeless abandonment of a woman with all her natural affections and impulses to this one overpowering sentiment, is often a very remarkable spectacle. Some time previous to the death of John Butler, that same prison held within its silent walls a young woman who had been condemned to death for the murder of her only child. At the time when she was seen by the writer, there was no reason to doubt that the sentence would be carried out; though ultimately it was found that her condition of health formed a legal obstacle to her execution, and her sentence was commuted to that of penal servitude for life. A visit was paid to her when only a short interval remained before the day which, according to the law, was to be her last.

When the door of the condemned cell was opened, and she was first seen, she had no idea that any hope of reprieve could exist—there had been no recommendation to mercy in her case, and she believed herself irrevocably doomed to suffer the extreme penalty. All that she said, therefore, was uttered with the black shadow of death shrouding her from any participation in the living world, and thus giving a strange significance to the burning words in which she told her history.

Judging by her appearance, it would have seemed impossible that she could be capable of any act of violence whatever. She was young and fair, with delicate features and large blue eyes—her flaxen hair drawn round her head, and leaving exposed a face of waxen whiteness, set in the patient calm of despair. She was placed on the one seat which the cell afforded, quite unoccupied, with her hands folded in her lap. She looked like a meek and harmless young girl, and she spoke in a soft low tone, with no emotion apparent in her voice.

"Yes, I have got to die," she said, when some gentle allusion was made to her sad position. "I know that quite well, but it is not a matter of any consequence now."

She appeared to lay great stress on that last word, and then remained silent, but gradually the expression of her visitor's compassion and desire to serve her broke through the cold apathy in which she seemed plunged, and she manifested at last an eager desire to tell her whole story to her hearer. It was evident that it would be the greatest relief to her to do so, for she had already passed many days in the regulation silence of prison discipline, and she had found no vent for the memories and thoughts that were for ever curdling round her heart in its sleepless agony.

"Let me tell you how it has all been with me," she said, flinging out her hands as in a despairing appeal; and while she spoke with rapid eager utterance, her whole appearance became transformed by the passionate excitement of feeling which caused her to live again in the days that were past. The pale, half-insensible statue she had looked when first seen, appeared to spring into vivid burning life, that flamed in the sudden brightening of her great blue eyes, and sent a crimson flush to her white cheeks.

"Listen!" she cried—"I will tell you all. I was a poor wretched creature, with no one to care for me or wish me any good. I had been betrayed and left with an infant on my hands when I was little more than a child myself, in ignorance and helplessness. Then in all my misery I met him, the one who is all the world to me, and he said he loved me—do you hear?—he loved me! and he offered me to come and live with him always, and he would take care of me and make me happy, and give me all my heart's desire; but oh! my heart's desire was for him and him alone! he was so kind, so good, and grand to look upon, there was no one like him in the world for goodness and beauty, and I just adored and worshipped him. I can't find words to tell you how I loved him—there are no words that could tell it: he was my treasure, my joy, my king. I'd have laid down my life for him a thousand times over if he had asked it. A look, a whisper from him was enough to make me do anything he pleased; and I was happy—oh, how happy!"

She stopped for a moment to dash away the passionate tears which the remembrance of her past happiness had evoked, and then went on in a lower tone. "There was just one trouble—the child. It had grown to be some years old, and he hated it—he always did from the very first. I hid it away from him as much as I could, and it was easy while it was still a baby; but when it could run about and call me mother, he saw it and heard it, and he grew to detest it so, that he said he could not endure it in the house any longer. He had threatened me many times that if I did not get rid of it he'd leave me; but I could not believe at first he really meant it. I was willing enough to be quit of the child; for I could not think of it at all when I had him. I had given all my love and heart and soul to him, and he filled my whole life. There was no room for any other—not even the child I had borne. There came a day when it had angered him more than ever before, I don't know why. He was going away for a night to a town at a distance, and when he was ready to start he came to me. He put his two hands on my shoulders, and fixed his eyes on mine, and looked stern and fierce as I had never seen him. 'Now, understand,' he said, 'I'll have no more delay. You must take that cursed child away while I am gone, and leave it where I can never set eyes on it again, or else all will be at an end between you and me. I tell you plainly, if I find that child here when I come back to-morrow, I will leave you then and there, as sure as there's a sun in heaven, and I'll never look on your face again, or have anything more to do with you as long as you live.' He pushed me away from him and went out, but I rushed after him and flung my arms round his neck and cried out, 'Don't—don't say you'll leave me—I can't bear it; Ill do what you wish—I'll find a place for the child—I'll take it away,—only don't leave me—never, never!' 'See you do it, then,' he said; 'take the brat to the workus and have done with it.' He went away, and I had no thought but to make sure that he'd not leave me, whatever it might cost me to keep him with me. I knew it was no use to take the child to the workus, for I had tried that before; but they would not take it unless I'd go in too and stay in the house myself altogether. That would have been worse than death to me, as it would have parted me from him. I never gave the workus another thought. That evening after he was gone, and I knew he'd be back next morning, and would leave me for ever if he found the child still there, I do not think I rightly knew what I was going to do; only I took it in my arms and walked with it as quickly as I could towards the river. When I got to it, there was not a creature to be seen far or near, and it was nearly dark. All the way as I went I had seemed to hear his voice saying over and over that he'd never see my face again, and it goaded me on, and left me no power to choose. The sound of his words came so loud, just when I got to the river, that I rushed down to the edge as if I had been driven by some one at my back; and then,—oh, to think of it!"

Suddenly a spasm of pain passed across the woman's face, and she put her hands over her ears as if to shut out some torturing echo from the past, to which yet her blanched, quivering lips were constrained to give utterance. "Then," she whispered hoarsely, "the child said to me, 'Oh, mother! don't put me in the dark water.' Yes, he did—he did—"and her voice rose to a shriek. It was evident that this dreadful remembrance scorched her very heart, and drove her to put into audible words the piteous cry that haunted her night and day. "Yes, he said that—my child did; but I only cried out—'I can't part with my love for ever,' and I let the little one drop out of my arms into the deep rushing river. The moment it was done, I would have snatched it out if I could, but the stream carried it away, and I saw it no more." She let her head fall down to her very knees, and crouched there in the grasp of an intolerable agony.

Presently she lifted up her convulsed face, and said with a bitter withering smile, "Do you know what was the end of it? As I walked home I met a woman who had seen me go out with the child in my arms, and she was one who knew well how he hated it. She asked me where it was, and what I had done with it. I said I had left it with a friend; and she answered, 'Yes, a fine sort of a friend, I expect;' and she went straight away to the police. That was a kind neighbour, was it not? They took me that same night, and locked me up,"—then she broke into a wild despairing cry, as she exclaimed—"I've never seen him since. His words came true, for all I gave up my child so cruelly, only to keep him with me—to be near him—my only love. We are parted now—parted for ever. I can't break down these walls to go to him. Oh, I hope they'll kill me soon! I can't live without him; let me die—let me die!"

What deterring power had the thought of any ulterior consequences on this woman's crime? If this passion of love—"strong as death, and cruel as the grave,"—could overcome the laws of nature and the divine instincts of motherhood, it would certainly make no account of the worst that human laws could do, to avenge the guilt of its unbridled indulgence.

We had another instance once, in a very different case, of the extraordinary power which such indomitable affection has over the life and soul of a woman. There came into the prison on a trifling charge which did not involve a long detention, one of the most pitiable-looking beings it was possible to see,—a woman young in years, but haggard and wasted to the last degree, and with a great gaping wound, still open, on her forehead, which seemed to have been caused by a blow from a hatchet. She made no difficulty in explaining how she had received this serious injury; it had been done by her lover, with whom she had lived some years, though he was not her husband.

"He has a terrible temper," she said; "the least thing puts him in a fury, and then it's always on me he takes revenge. He has brought me nigh to death's-door many a time; and I know very well that he'll kill me in the end. I know he will."

She went on to give further details of the utter misery in which she lived. The man spent all his earnings in drink, and starved her. She toiled beyond her strength to gain a little money for food, and when she came home after a hard day's work, he snatched her wages from her, and went off to the public-house. Then when he came back, he beat her because she had not got a supper provided for him. There seemed no possible element of attraction in the life she led with him, even apart from the certainty which was ever present in her mind, that he would compass her death at last—some destined day. Yet when the visitor, anxious to rescue her from the sin and wretchedness of such an existence, offered to provide for her entirely if she would leave the miscreant to whom she was not bound by any righteous tie, she only lifted up her hollow mournful eyes, and said, "I will never leave him—never!"

Finally, in answer to the strong remonstrances made to her on the ground at once of the guilt and the misery of her life, she answered that she knew it was all true. She suffered night and day, she owned, from hunger and pain and ill-usage, and she could not even pray to God to help her, because of her sin. She knew she would be murdered in the end, and she supposed her soul would be lost, but still—"I cannot leave him—I will not—never, never—though you offered me to live in the Queen's palace: I'll go back to him the moment I am free, and I'll stay with him to the last hour of my life, however it may end,"—and she did. The utmost efforts to shake her resolution availed nothing—no human power could cope with the might of her passion for her destroyer; and she went back to him, saying that she would rather die by his hands than live without him.

The conviction that no case is absolutely hopeless, no criminal, however guilty, altogether im- pervious to good influences, is that which mainly sustains those who have to work among the inmates of a prison; but the instance we have just recorded was undoubtedly an exception to the rule—it was literally impossible to help the woman in any way. She would not abandon the fascination which held her as in bonds of iron, even to save her own life; and it is certain that no dread of legal penalties would have deterred her from any crime her tyrant had willed her to commit.

The instances we have as yet recorded of the working of the lex talionis in individual cases, apply only to those arguments in its favour which concern the policy and expediency of its enforcement in relation to the practical results; but there are other and far deeper principles involved in its theoretic position as a righteous enactment of the law, which must sooner or later be thoroughly investigated in the light of a more advanced civilisation than that of the days when the death penalty was left to be the punishment of one especial crime, even while happily banished from the code of lighter offences. On those weightier matters we have yet to speak; but meanwhile, we earnestly trust that the readers of these pages may share our conviction—that the whole subject we have so far endeavoured to elucidate by the painful histories we have given is of far more serious importance than appears on the surface. Many wise persons among our legislators, and others, are of opinion, judging by the signs of the times, that the lower stratum of society, from which the criminal classes are recruited, may at some future period, more or less distant, become a great, perhaps a dominant, power in the kingdom. Surely, therefore, it would be well, while there is yet time, that a careful consideration should be given to such portions of the existing legal code as may seem to them to savour of injustice or oppression. An eminent counsel speaking recently in defence of a prisoner, stated openly that various important changes in the administration of justice were already in contemplation by the authorities. We trust, therefore, that such light as these scenes from prison life can cast on the subject will prove to be not ill-timed.

CHAPTER III. THE ACQUITTAL OF A MURDERER.

So far as a ten years' experience with these advantages may be trusted, we are decidedly of opinion that the risk of evil influences to a prisoner within the jail has been greatly overrated.

It is a rigid rule in all penal establishments that the inmates are not to be allowed the smallest intercourse among themselves. Such communication, therefore, as they do succeed in holding with each other, is obtained surreptitiously by means of much ingenious trickery, and it is too circumscribed and dangerous to admit of any elaborate tutoring of the younger prisoners in crime. It frequently happens, also, that some sparks of latent good feeling in the minds of the older and more hardened criminals, lead them to look with a certain sorrowful pity on the immature aspirants to their craft; and they are more inclined to warn them of its miserable results than to guide them into its lower depths.

While, however, we are disposed to deny, generally speaking, the existence of any active agencies for evil within the jail, we freely admit that unless strong measures are taken for the improvement and moral education of the prisoners, it is likely that they will undergo a passive deterioration, during the long solitary hours spent in sullen brooding in their cells over the crimes of the past and the possibilities of the future. As the prison system is at present constituted, we do not hesitate to say that the remedial means provided are inadequate for the purpose. These consist for the most part solely of the duties devolving on the prison chaplains. We cannot speak too highly of that admirable body of men. Those whom we have been fortunate enough to know intimately, have been absolutely devoted to their onerous duties, and have done all that human beings can do under the circumstances. But if a single solitary man is set in face of a large number of criminals, succeeding each other more or less rapidly, as their sentences are long or short, and is told that it is his business to bring them one and all from darkness into light, it is physically impossible that, even with the sacrifice of his whole life, he can really accomplish what he is supposed to undertake. In the case of the female prisoners he has a special difficulty of a most formidable kind. According to a stringent rule which obtains in all convict establishments of every description, the chaplain is not allowed to see the women alone—a female warder has to be present during all his interviews with them, even when they are sick or dying in the jail infirmary. This rule is not only right, but rigorously necessary for the protection of the clergyman himself from the false statements which would infallibly be made respecting him by the lawless and utterly reckless beings with whom he has to deal, were no witnesses present at his interviews with them; but we need scarcely say that it renders his ministrations among them almost entirely fruitless. He can never gain their confidence, or hear the truth from their lips, while they are conscious of being watched by a prison official.

Admitting, then, that the measures at present adopted for the moral and religious improvement of the prisoners are out of all proportion to the object it is desired to attain, there seems to be only one remedy that could meet the necessities of the case—and that is a regular system of visitation by volunteers from without, who, under the direction of the governor and chaplain, should co-operate with them in efforts for the reformation of the criminal.

That such extraneous help is a distinct necessity in the case of the female prisoners, for the reason we have given above, seems to have been to some extent recognised by the Prison Commissioners, as lady visitors have now been appointed for the women in a few of the principal jails of the kingdom. The number is as yet, however, very small where such additional help is afforded, and we are not aware that it has been extended in any instance to the male prisoners.

There would be one advantage in the admission of supernumerary workers to prisons, which might not occur to the minds of those interested in the subject, but which is none the less a very cogent reason for their employment,—it lies in the fact that they would be unpaid volunteers, known by the prisoners not to be in receipt of an official salary as an equivalent for their labours among them. We can best prove the truth of this statement by giving a brief account of a prisoner, whose history was also in other respects somewhat remarkable.

This man had been in prison for a considerable time, and only two months of the term to which he had been sentenced remained to be gone through, when he became very ill with what was pronounced to be pulmonary consumption. He was passed into the infirmary ward, and there he came under the notice of the visitor attached to that jail. The account given of him, previous to his failure in health, was extremely unsatisfactory. When he first entered the prison to await his trial, he had not only refused to give his name, but said in the most determined manner that none should ever know who he was or where he came from, or anything whatever concerning him. If they must have a name whereby to designate him in the prison records, they might take Jack Smith—it would do as well as any other. During the whole time of his imprisonment after conviction, he maintained the same obstinate silence as to his antecedents,—in fact, his demeanour was characterised by an unvarying sullenness, and he never opened his lips to any one unless he were compelled. The chaplain did his best with him, but he certainly could never have had a more hopeless subject for his ministrations. The man was not openly rude or insolent, as he knew that such conduct could only bring down condign punishment upon himself; but he took care to make it distinctly evident that when the clergyman tried to instruct or admonish him, he deliberately fixed his mind on some thoughts of his own, so as to avoid even hearing the words which were addressed to him; and he never made the slightest response of any kind. In chapel, it is the defiant custom of prisoners who, like himself, have no desire to share in the services, to stand like soldiers on parade, the arms hanging straight by the side, the eyes fixed on the wall, and the lips firmly closed, as if the singing of the hymns and chants were as meaningless to them as the moaning of the wind outside the narrow windows. It seemed plain that the chaplain's visits served only to confirm him in his dogged reserve and silence. Several other convictions were recorded against him, and the opinion held of him by the authorities was clearly expressed in one brief sentence addressed by the governor to the visitor who asked to see him—

"You can go to him, of course, if you like, but you had better understand at once that he is a thoroughly bad fellow in every way, without a redeeming point about him."

He received his visitor in perfect silence, and his aspect at first sight was certainly not encouraging—a gaunt, haggard-looking man lying motionless in bed, with his eyes dark and keen as those of a hawk, fixed on the one narrow window high up in the wall, through which a strip of blue sky could be seen—his breathing hurried and feverish, and his large wasted hands, where the bones stood out like those of a skeleton, clenched every now and then as if some secret thought moved him to sudden anger.

On this first occasion the visitor turned the conversation entirely to the state of his health, promising to obtain from him, with the doctor's permission, the means of alleviating the thirst which consumed him, and showing all possible sympathy with his physical sufferings. The prisoner answered very briefly; but towards the close of the interview he suddenly turned his eyes on his visitor with a long scrutinising gaze, which seemed to have some peculiar meaning. What that had been was explained next day, when the chief warder informed the visitor of a brief conversation he had held with the sick man the evening before. The prisoner had begged leave to ask a question: he wished to know whether the individual who had visited him that day was a paid official like the chaplain, so that any attention shown by that visitor to the convicts was simply the accomplishment of a routine duty necessarily performed as an equivalent for value received. The warder was somewhat indignant, and responded angrily that it was like his insolence to ask any such question: he might have been sure that the attendance at the prison of a person of that description was entirely voluntary, and that no payment ever could or would be made for it. The prisoner answered that he meant no offence; but he thought the officer might under- stand that it made all the difference in the world to himself and to every other prisoner, if they had to listen to a chaplain who was hired to preach to them, or to a person who came to them out of pure goodwill. Subsequent inquiries proved that this is a universal feeling on the part of criminals, who would scarcely have been expected to indulge in so refined a sentiment; but it certainly affords a strong reason for the employment of voluntary workers in addition to the regular officials.

The information given on the subject to this especial prisoner produced a remarkable change in his demeanour. When he next saw his visitor, though he was still a man of few words, he showed himself decidedly grateful and pleased at the attention paid to him; and towards the close of the interview he suddenly raised himself on his elbow, turned round and faced his visitor with a keen eager look, while he said—

"I want to know this—have you the least idea how bad I have been, and am? I won't have you deceived in me. I tell you I have been just as bad as a man can be, and I delighted in all my wickedness, and never wished to leave it off. I have done every wrong thing you could think of, excepting murder. I never got let in for that, or I'd have swung for it long ago; but it was a chance I didn't, for I never stopped at any crime that came in my way. You ought to know the truth if you are coming often to see me."

"I do know it," was the answer; "but it makes me only the more anxious to be a true friend to you."

"A friend!" he exclaimed—"a friend!" He remained silent for a few minutes with his piercing eyes staring into the face of his visitor, then he suddenly flung himself back on his pillows, muttering, "Well, when I came into this hateful place, ay, and long before, I thought I had done with friends for ever and ever! It goes very hard with me to believe I've got one now."

Nevertheless he did come to believe, not only in the sympathy of his visitor, but in the existence also of a Friend perfect in love and power, to whom he turned in all sincerity for pardon and peace before the termination of his life on earth.

The end came for him in a very singular manner. Far above all his remorse for the past, and the maddening recollection of certain dark episodes in his secret history, there was one dominant passion which had entire possession of his whole being, and that was the burning desire of liberty—the almost frantic craving to be free,—to escape from these stone walls which held him captive, from that closely barred window where the light of day was only granted in such niggard fashion to his longing eyes; from the resistless authority of his jailers, and from the very sound of those clanking keys which always pervades the atmosphere of a prison as unceasingly as the air of the sea-shore is filled with the perpetual moan of its waves;—if only—he used to sigh out—the long days and nights would pass more quickly, till that blissful hour should come when by law he must be liberated, when the iron gates would open wide and he would go forth! He counted the very moments he had yet to pass in durance, over and over again. "One day less, one night less, twelve hours less," he would exclaim triumphantly when his visitor came in, and soon only a week or so of the time remained. Nevertheless the doctor had grave doubts whether the man would live to go out. His malady was increasing with alarming rapidity, his strength ebbing away, and the symptoms of approaching dissolution becoming plainly visible,—yet it never seemed to occur to him that he could fail to obtain his release at the destined hour. He listened eagerly to the arrangements which, by his own wish, had been made for his removal, on the day when the term of his sentence was to expire. It came at last—a beautiful morning, so bright that even the high narrow window admitted a little ray of sunshine, which fell on the wan face of the prisoner as the visitor came to stand by his bedside. One glance was enough to show that the shades of death had already gathered there. He was silent and almost motionless, exhausted by the convulsive struggle for breath in which he had passed the night. If he still remembered that the day of his release had dawned, he knew also that he was about to obtain a more perfect liberty than ever he had dreamt of in all his longings—that the hour waited for with such passionate desire would render him, in the highest sense—free indeed! and so it was. The ceaseless prayer he had so long unconsciously made in the words of the Psalmist, "Bring my soul out of prison," was granted at last, and before the sun set on that appointed day, he had passed to the pure airs and boundless expanse of regions far beyond the confines of this mortal world. The dreary cell of his slow painful penance retained only the lifeless form that could suffer no more.

For the reasons illustrated by the above narrative, and many others, we are disposed, as we have said, to advocate strongly the employment of voluntary workers among the inmates of our prisons; but at the same time we are perfectly aware of the serious difficulties which stand in the way of such a scheme.

At present the rules against the admission of outsiders within the walls are most stringent, and it might seem as if any infringement of these enactments would be subversive of all proper discipline.

Apart from those few prisons where, of late years, lady visitors have been allowed to penetrate to the women's cells, no unofficial persons are ever allowed to pass the gates, except the relations of the prisoners themselves. These are permitted to have an interview with them once in three months. It is limited to twenty minutes, and takes place in the presence of a warder, the visitor standing outside the cell door, where a grating admits an imperfect view of the captive within, and allows his carefully guarded words to be heard by his friend and the officer in charge. No doubt it would be a great innovation on this disciplinary system to open the doors to unofficial persons, and allow them such free access to the prisoners as would be necessary to render their ministrations of real use. It must be owned, also, that there would be considerable difficulty in obtaining workers properly qualified for so peculiar a position; in fact, some among the lady visitors recently chosen have had to be summarily withdrawn, in consequence of injudicious proceedings. A sound judgment, and a high sense of honour as regards the slightest infraction of rule, with various other less conspicuous qualities, are imperatively required to form an efficient worker; and unhappily these are not often found in combination. For this reason, probably, the governors of prisons, generally speaking, so greatly dislike the idea of an invasion of unofficial visitors, that it is to be doubted if they would even welcome a select band of sensible angels, if such could be sent them, from the celestial hierarchy. Of course the office is one which involves many strange and unexpected perplexities: amongst others, we may mention that the visitor is apt to become the recipient of dangerous secrets. We can give an instance of this kind in a history, which is valuable also as illustrating the fallibility and uncertainty of human justice, to which we have alluded in some former records from the Silent World,

A man and his wife were sent to the prison with which the writer is connected, having been committed to take their trial for the alleged murder of a child. It had been the woman's own offspring, but was only step-son to the male prisoner. The facts brought out in evidence at the inquest were simply these: The man had been alone in an up-stairs room with the child when its death took place. The only other person in the house was his wife, the little one's own mother. She remained in the kitchen below, and did not go near the child till she was told by her husband that it was dead. A doctor was then sent for, although, of course, it was evident that his services could be of no avail. He stated at the inquest that all the indications, from the state of the child's head, pointed to murderous violence having been used against it; but he admitted that it was within the range of possibility that the fatal injuries it had sustained might have been caused by an accidental fall out of its little chair, which the step-father affirmed to have been the origin of the disaster. The coroner was of opinion that the case was one which ought to be brought under the searching investigation of a court of justice, and he therefore sent both the persons implicated to await their trial in prison. They had a younger infant, the legitimate child of the man, for which it seemed both had always shown a marked preference: it was left in the care of a neighbour.

The woman, who was young, timid, and weak, was in a state of nervous excitement which rendered her unceasingly restless, and she welcomed the visitor's interviews with her eagerly, as a relief from the monotonous solitude of her cell. She maintained at first a cautious reserve on the subject of the supposed crime, and of course her silence was respected. After a time, however, she ascertained that any statement made to the person who alone was allowed to converse with her, was always received in strict confidence—certain not to be reported to either prison authorities or magistrates; and further, that the visitor was not there to intervene in any way respecting either the crime or the punishment of prisoners, but only to offer them advice and consolation in the present, and such help as might be possible in the future. Being at last fully satisfied on this point, her reserve gave way, and one day, when she was more than usually depressed, she burst out with the whole truth as to the death of the child, giving every particular with a vehemence which the visitor had no power to check.

She began by explaining that the unfortunate little boy had been a source of discord and contention between herself and her husband ever since the birth of the infant which was legally his own; then without the least attempt to palliate the enormity of the act, she stated in so many words the terrible truth that he had indeed deliberately murdered him. She knew that he went to the room where the boy was for the purpose, and it seems almost incredible that she should have been so unnatural a mother as not to have even tried to protect her own child; but it is to be feared that she had no desire to do so. The only trace of feeling she showed while minutely describing the harrowing details we gladly withhold from our readers, was in the admission that she could not, as she expressed it, follow her husband up-stairs "to see it done!" By her passive connivance at the crime, she was of course virtually as guilty as the man himself. The full revelation of the murder thus made remained of neces- sity a secret, known to no single individual except the writer, who was present a little later at the trial of the accused persons.

It took place at the next assizes, and the first proceeding of the grand jury was to throw out the bill against the woman altogether. She was instantly discharged, and the man alone appeared in the dock.

The witnesses against him were few in number. His wife, of course, could not be examined, and the evid