CHAPTER XXI.

PRISON CELEBRITIES.

I WAS surprised at the number of respectable men—such as solicitors, an ex-officer of Guards, a bank manager, a man of title, stockbrokers, cashiers, ex-officers of the army and navy, clerks, clergymen, etc.—in Coldbath Fields. Some of these had quite lost (supposing they ever had any) their pristine semblance of respectability; others, again, retained the appearance of persons of education, and spoke and deported themselves as such. A lamentable instance of the fatal effect of associating with the scum, and the ease with which a young man of good position can acquire the style and appearance of a vagrant, was exemplified in young B—. He was not more than 25 or 26, had been a subaltern in the — Guards, and came, moreover, of a good county stock; and yet in six short months he had so far degenerated as to be punished on the day his sentence expired for stealing a loaf from a fellow prisoner.

A worthy old man with grey hair and venerable appearance, and who might have passed for the chairman of a board of directors, appeared every morning at mine and other cells in the passage with a dust-pan, and with methodical precision removed the sweepings. He told me he had been a solicitor with a large connection, with chambers in — Street, and had a wife and grown-up family in a comfortable house in a well-known suburb. His imprisonment was perceptibly telling on him, and his hair and beard grew whiter every day.

A bustling, business-like man, one day attracted my attention. He was connected with the stores, and brought me a new pair of boots. He had been the manager of a London bank, and undergoing retirement for six months for some error regarding the ownership of £300.

A tall, smart-looking man that was pointed out to me, was, I was informed, an individual who attained notoriety some two years ago over a mining scheme. He was suffering two years’ incarceration for a miscalculation of over £7000.

A man who called himself Count H—, and an ex-convict to boot, was languishing for a year, because certain noblemen had had the bad taste to object to his having obtained money from them by false pretences. This nobleman! had a mania for petitioning the Home Office (I will give a specimen of his style hereafter).

In addition to these, numerous individuals who had been gentlemen in their day were known to me by sight. Conspicuous amongst them, was an old jail bird and ex-convict, who had 20 years ago been a captain in the army, and ever since had existed (and still is) in prison, for terms of seven, five, five, two, and one years. All the starch had been thoroughly wrung out of him, though he occasionally stood on a dilapidated kind of dignity. I once asked him where a friend of his had gone. He replied, “I don’t know; we don’t speak now; he’s no gentleman. Will you believe it, he had the impertinence to doubt my word.” As his word had been doubted a good many times during the past 20 years, I was considerably amused by this assumption of dignity.

Many prisoners are under the impression that they have only to petition the Home Office to procure a remission of their sentence. It seems perfectly immaterial to them, whether they have the slightest grounds for this assumption or not, and it frequently happens that, instead of mitigating their offence, they put matters in a more unfavourable light by airing their grievances, whilst others make a rambling statement referring to every subject but the one particularly concerning themselves.

Count H— was a specimen of this class. He was undergoing a well-merited 12 months’ imprisonment for defrauding the Dukes of S— and M— and other noblemen of sums of money, by representing himself as the son of some individual, which he certainly was not. It is, of course, possible that he may (to use a vulgar expression) have been “changed at nuss,” though the fact that he had previously undergone five years’ penal servitude for a similar offence minimizes the probability that he was acting under a misapprehension. The Count! had no sooner taken up his quarters than he expressed a desire to petition the Home Secretary. A “form” being supplied him, which he retained four days, eventually reappeared so blurred and smeared with blots and erasures that its transmission was impossible. A second attempt was more successful, and the following exhaustive specimen of penmanship and veracity struggled up to the Home Office, and eventually struggled back:—“That your petitioner, on being discharged from Pentonville Convict Prison, at the expiration of five years’ penal servitude, found that certain moneys and property, valued at several hundred pounds, had been stolen by his agent, who collected his rent on his estates in Italy; that being at that time without funds to go abroad, he had written to the Duke of S— and Duke of M— and others, asking for a loan until he received his rents. That his father really was Count H— and a friend of these noblemen, and that the charge of false pretences was consequently incorrect. That he had held diplomatic appointments, and been decorated for gallant service, and that he possesses a coronet with S.P.Q.R., all of which clearly proves his identity. In conclusion, your petitioner appeals to you with confidence as a lawyer of renown, and a scion of the noble house of Vernon.—Signed, H—.”

I have corrected “the Count’s” spelling as far as possible; the logic and composition were, however, past redemption. The rogue evidently knew the Home Secretary’s claim to “Royal descent,” as delicately hinted at in the concluding paragraph.

Another individual petitioned against his hair and beard being cut, on religious grounds, and quoted the Law of Moses as forbidding these formalities. This specimen did not, I believe, leave the establishment.

I was frequently struck by the vast difference in the sentences awarded in what appeared to me to be parallel cases, and tried in vain to discover any system that might be supposed to regulate them. It cannot be denied that a great difference of opinion exists apparently amongst judges on the subject of crimes and their punishment, and that whereas one judge will administer justice with harshness, another will attain the same desirable end with a regard to humanity. With these respective characteristics, the criminal classes are thoroughly conversant, and it would astonish the Bench if they heard how accurately their respective peculiarities are summed up. Thus one judge is credited with being very severe on conspiracy and long firm cases, whilst another is supposed to be “down” on burglars, whilst it is generally conceded that a plea of guilty will invariably fare better than one of not guilty. For my own