earned the theory of picking pockets and the art of garotting in
these places, and being unequal to the former he would adopt the latter
as a means of earning a livelihood. Another cause of the increase in
the number of garotting cases, was the conduct of the directors who
visited the prisoners and punished the prisoners. Their injustice and
incivility to prisoners bore a striking contrast to the mild and
dignified civility of Sir Joshua their chief. I have known prisoners
return from the presence of a director, foaming with inward rage at
being bullied out of the room and punished without being permitted to
utter a word in their own defence. In many of these cases I have known
the prisoners to be innocent. Such men would go out of prison vowing
vengeance on some one, and ready for any deed of darkness that might
tempt them. I do not wonder that they took to garotting when I reflect
upon their character and the treatment they received in prison.
Prisoners seldom, if ever, vow vengeance against a judge or a
magistrate; the objects of their wrath are some policeman who has sworn
falsely, or some other witness who has committed perjury or betrayed
them; and we may naturally seek to inquire why the prison judge is not
as favourably regarded as his learned brother who holds open court? I
believe the reason is this, that a prison director can starve and flog
and retain prisoners in confinement for years, according to the length
of their respective remissions, and none but those directly interested
in full and quiet prisons know anything about it. If the governor and
directors of prisons had to dispense justice in presence of a reporter
for the press, how great would be the reformation immediately effected.
To the prisoner it would also be welcome, for if it ensured him of
nothing else but civility it would be a boon. A civil word goes a long
way with a convict, and it is so seldom he gets one from the chiefs of
prisons that he is apt to place a value upon it beyond its real worth.

CHAPTER XVII.

A NEW GOVERNOR--BREAD-AND-WATER JACK--SEVERE PUNISHMENTS--DIRECTORS
AGAIN--A HERB DOCTOR--EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

During my second stay in hospital the governor from another prison came
to rule over our establishment. He was known to most of the prisoners
as "Bread and Water Jack," some called him "Captain Spooney," some "the
Lurcher," and others "Mr. Martinet." The patients had just completed
their out-of-door exercise, and