a taste of it
by selling their food. An inch of tobacco will fetch four ounces of
cheese, or mutton, it will also procure one and a-half pounds of bread.
Sometimes it is worth more, according to the business abilities of the
trader. The exchange of food is a daily custom. One prisoner with a
good appetite requiring double the allowance of food, will give four
ounces of cheese for twenty-three ounces of bread, or five ounces of
mutton for the same quantity. In this way the man with the capacious
stomach gets it filled, and the man with a dainty appetite gets better
food. All this sort of traffic is quite contrary to the prison rules,
and in the case of tobacco it is severely punished, but prisoners will
have it, and many of them do have it regularly. The prisoner referred
to at the commencement of this chapter was remarkable for his love of
the weed, and it was not often he missed a day without getting a taste
of it, at the sacrifice, however, of nearly all his food. He was only
fit for the jail or the workhouse, and would commit a theft rather than
deny himself a single meal."

"I will mention only another of my companions in hospital, whose case
will illustrate with what wisdom and discrimination the prison
directors and governors use the powers delegated to them, encouraging
the well-behaved and reforming the penitent convict!"

This prisoner had been a long time a convict. I asked him when he was
first convicted.

"In 1838," he replied.

"What sentence did you then receive?"

"I got two sentences, one seven years and the other eight years, making
fifteen together, and I did about seven years and eight months out of
the fifteen years.

"You got a free pardon, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"Did they not send you abroad, then?"

"My health was not very strong and I did my time at the ships."

"How did you like them?"

"Oh, very well, there was not so much of this stupid
humbugging-us-about system as there is now, but we were not kept so
clean. The Scots-greys were frequently on the march on the clothes of
the convicts."

"What was your next sentence?"

"Life."

"How many years did you have to do?"

"I got off on 'medical grounds' when I had done about two years and
a-half. I got 'copt' again, however, and was sent back to do 'life' a
second time; then I was liberated after I had done seven and a-half
years more, making ten years altogether out of two 'life's.'"

"What have you got this time?"

"Ten years