fair-haired woman, quiet, orderly, well conducted,
with a horror of the other women, and
inordinately vain of her singing (which was wretchedly
bad), she gradually passed from constant ill-
health to decided mania, and left Brixton prison,
or rather the infirmary, only for the criminal
lunatic asylum of Fisherton, where she died—
hopelessly mad as she had been, poor wretch, all
along, though not patently so. And there was
a woman named Kearns, who was mad for some
time before any one acted on the knowledge
that she was; she nearly murdered one of
the matrons, against whom she had long
cherished a grudge, on account of that matron's
having given her, as she thought, a cap and
gown of inferior quality to the other prisoners.
By means never clearly ascertained, she secreted
a knife for days in her cell, her mind all the time
persistently bent on this one design, and early
one morning she called to the matron, begging
her company for a few moments; "she had found
such a beautiful verse in the Bible, and would
she come and read it to her?" The matron
went and took the Bible from her hands.
"You'll see better near the light," said Kearns,
craftily; and the matron drew to the window;
when, quick as thought, the door was flung to,
and with a wild beast's spring, Kearns was at
the matron's throat, flinging her down on the
ground and stabbing at her face and neck with
the knife. Assistance came just in time, two other
prisoners near at hand rousing up the jail, and
themselves rescuing the matron; but the poor
woman's life was long despaired of, and Kearns
was taken off to Fisherton, a raving maniac,
with her madness fully developed.

Another woman, one Mary Johnson, a jealous
unfriendly sullen woman, had a quarrel with
her "pal," and consequently was doubly
insolent and aggressive to the officers. One
evening she begged the favour of a staylace, and
the matron, willing to oblige her, went to the
store-room for one. On returning she noticed
that Johnson's door was not properly closed,
and that the woman was standing by it as if
waiting for her. She paused a moment before
entering, when Johnson, full of fury and
madness, rushed out upon her. The matron ran
back to the store-room and shut herself in, and
the wretched woman, "baffled, turned suddenly
to the railing, and with one awful leap cleared
it, and went dashing to the bottom. The dead
heavy thud on the flagstones below, the bloody
heap of clothes lying there to blanch every face
and sicken every heart, the hush and horror of
prisoners and prison matrons, will be remembered
by all whose business lay in that prison on that
memorable and awful night."

Pretty vain fair-faced Edwards was another
mad prisoner, whose special horror it was to be
called "Irish," and who took in intensest hatred
one Love, who was always calling after her,
"You know you are Irish, Edwards; why can't
you say so and be quiet! Everybody knows
you are Irish as well as I do!" Whereupon
Edwards would fly after Love and dodge her all
round the airing-ward, swearing to have her life;
as she would have done had not the matron and
the other prisoners prevented her. Suddenly
Edwards refused to go out into the airing-yard.
"I shan't go, without you carry me out!" she
said sullenly, so they left her to her ill humour,
not sorry to save poor Love the usual chase.
Edwards's cell looked into the yard; and, before
the women were taken abroad, she managed to
tear out the frame and glass of her cell window
and press herself up into the space: holding in
her hands, ready for a "shy at Love," two jagged
pieces of stone, used in cleaning the pavement
of the wards. Love was not out that day,
fortunately for her; and next day Edwards,
whose trick was not then discovered, refused to
go out, as before. This time she was watched,
and caught in her wild-beast attitude as if
waiting for a spring; so she was sent to the "dark"
for her destruction of prison property and
murderous designs. When brought out, she did the
same thing again, but, as Love was transferred to
another part of the prison, she was let to sit out
in the frost and snow, as probably a good natural
corrective of her overheated blood. One day,
long after this, she heard Love's voice in the
ward. To rush out of her cell, and down the
ward, to be at the heels of her old tormentor,
before any one knew where she had gone, was
the work of a moment; and then a matron flung
herself in her arms and clung round her neck,
Edwards still running with the matron hanging
to her; but they got Love out of her way in time,
and poor mad Edwards went off to Fisherton.

Who would expect coquettish dress at
Millbank, or fashionable arrangement of prison
uniform! And yet that was Mary Anne Ball's
speciality. Mary Anne was a bold handsome girl
of nineteen, whose charms would not be lost for
want of their owner's consciousness of their
power, and determination to give them full value.
Mary Anne would rip up her mattress for cords
to make a mock crinoline, and would tear out her
window wires for stay bones; and she would twist
and alter her gown so that the dull brown serge
of antiquated cut, in which she disappeared
behind her grating last night, would come out next
day a fashionable flowing robe, with an elegant
long waist, and a crinoline, and tight-fitting pair
of stays, to match— so tight, indeed, that one day
she fainted in chapel, owing to them. She would
roll her hair, à I'lmpératrice, under the prison
cap, and would manipulate her poke bonnet into a
capital imitation of the Haymarket and
Cranbourne-alley; and she made a kind of bandoline
out of candle-grease, and smoothed her dark hair
off her brow with the best effect possible. But
she was a very Devil. Strong as a lioness and
as violent, she was for ever being sent off to
the "dark"— her way thither, strewn with shreds
and patches of prison stuff, tufts of whiskers,
uniform buttons, and handfuls of men's hair: as
slight tokens of "her mind," and what she felt
on that occasion. Anything and everything put
her out. Not that she was thoroughly
bad-natured, but so violent and "hot," so apt to
take offence, and so untameable when offended.
And yet she could be managed sometimes— only