the patient who has undergone
it is the proper person to apply to, if you wish to know the degree and
nature of the pain inflicted. I requested, therefore, and obtained
permission, to visit a portion of the prisoners without a third party
being present to prevent their being communicative; selecting some who
had been in but a short time, others who had been there for years, and
referring also to the books, as to the nature and degree of their
offence. I ought to state that I re-examined almost the whole of the
parties about six months afterward, and the results of the two
examinations are now given. I did not take their names, but registered
them in my notes as No. 1, 2, 3, etcetera.

No. 1--a man who had been sentenced to twelve years' imprisonment for
the murder of his wife. He had been bred up as a butcher. (I have
observed that when the use of the knife is habitual, the flinching which
men naturally feel at the idea of driving it into a fellow-creature, is
overcome; and a man who is accustomed to dissect the still palpitating
carcasses of animals, has very little compunction in resorting to the
knife in the event of collision with his own race.) This fellow looked
a butcher; his face and head were all animal; he was by no means
intelligent. He was working at a loom, and had already been confined
for seven years and a half. He said that, after the first six months of
his confinement, he had lost all reckoning of time, and had not cared to
think about it until lately, when he inquired, and was told how long he
had been locked up. Now that he had discovered that more than half his
time had passed away, it occupied his whole thoughts, and sometimes he
felt very impatient.

Mr Wood told me afterwards that this feeling, when the expiration of
the sentence was very near at hand, sometimes amounted to agony.

This man had denied the murder of his wife, and still persisted in the
denial, although there was no doubt of his having committed the crime.
Of course, in this instance there was no repentance; and the
Penitentiary was thrown away upon him, farther than that, for twelve
years, he could not contaminate society.

No. 2--sentenced to four years' imprisonment for forgery; his time was
nearly expired. This was a very intelligent man; by profession he had
been a schoolmaster. He had been in prison before for the same offence.

His opinion as to the Penitentiary was, that it could do no harm, and
might do muc