hitherto made, or whether they are hardening
themselves in their vices, so that when they
are set free they will fall again, and perhaps
fall lower than before. What criminal women
do when in prison has never troubled the world
much; but now, a certain prison matron has
expressed her experiences most admirably, in a
work extremely interesting to any student of
human history, anxious to know the truths of
human life.*
* Female Life in Prison. By a Prison Matron.
Published by Hurst and Blackett.

The surging sea of crime flings up its female
waifs and strays, with the sentence of the judge
still ringing in their ears, to the dark stones
of Millbank prison. The outer bell rings, and the
gatekeeper unlocks and opens the first great
gates; the inner gates of strong ironwork are
next unfastened by the second gatekeeper, and
the prison-van rolls in through the court
to the door of the reception-room, where
the matron receives the women, and learns who
and what they are, and why they are come.
Name, age, crime, and length of sentence, are
then registered, and the "prison bird" is
delivered to the hands of the prison authorities.
Her first trial is the hair-cutting. Women who have
murdered child, or friend, or husband, weep, and
moan, and shiver, as the shears go round their
heads, and their long dirty matted locks strew
the floor. Some try what coaxing will do, and
"my dear" and "God bless" the haircutter,
in the hope of an extra half-inch left on for
grace, if they cannot escape the penalty
altogether; some weep passionately, and beseech
the matron on their knees to spare them, and
will she go to the lady superintendent and state
their case, when surely the rule will be relaxed
for this once and for them; others have violent
shiverings and hysterical fits; others, again,
set their lips hard, and submit without a
murmur, sitting down in the chair and marching off
to the bath afterwards, in quite a business-like
way; others will yell, and kick, and bite, and
are only to be kept quiet by handcuffs, and
superior force, and by the guards in the outer yards
called in to tame their tigerishness. One old
woman past sixty, and with about a dozen grey
hairs to fight for, resisted for a long time, on the
plea that since she was last there, she had got
married, and her hair was now her husband's, and not
the Queen of England herself dare touch it;
and one fair-haired Scotch girl was delirious for
thirty-six hours— "Dinna cut my hair; oh!
dinna cut my hair!" wailing through the
deserted corridors all the night long. But
criminals have not in general such sensitive
organisations as this; and, besides, her "haar"
has always been more sacred to a Scottish
maiden than to an English one. After the hair
then has been cut to the required length, and the
due cleansing in the tepid bath administered, the
prisoners are clothed in the brown serge gown,
blue check apron, and white muslin cap, of
prison uniform; then, each is assigned her cell in
the solitary ward; and the key is turned on
one more wretched outcast from liberty and
love.

This is the uniform routine of prison life; day
by day the same, varied only by the "breaks
out" of the more fractious, or the illness of the
delicate and diseased. At a quarter to six in the
morning the guard, going off night duty in the
yard, rings up the prison, and by six every woman
is expected to be up and dressed in her cell, ready
for inspection by the matrons of the ward as
they pass down, unbolting the inner door of each
cell and flinging it back to make sure that the
prisoner has not torn her clothes, or strangled
herself in her sheets, or opened a vein with a
jagged stone, or hung herself to the grating, or
done any other of the many acts of violence and
self-damage that are not uncommon. The life
of the day then begins. A certain number are
let out to clean the flagstones in the ward, with
a matron in guard over them; the best-behaved
clean the matrons' rooms and make their beds;
each cell is scrubbed, the deal table polished, the
bed folded up, and the blankets, shawl, and bonnet
are placed on it. At half-past seven, comes the
breakfast of a pint of cocoa and a four-ounce loaf;
and after this the day's work is fairly set in hand
— coir-picking for the new comers, bag-making,
shirt-making, and other work, all done silently
and apart, each woman in her separate cell.
At a quarter-past nine, the chapel bell rings, and
service begins at a quarter to ten; at half-past
twelve, water is served out; at a quarter to one,
dinner— four ounces of boiled meat, half a
pound of potatoes, and a six-ounce loaf; after
dinner, coir-picking and shirt-making as before;
in the morning or afternoon an hour's exercise
in the yard: the women walking in Indian file,
tramp, tramp, round and round the yard, under
the care of a matron who not unfrequently falls
asleep as she paces with them. For, this weary
walking in the exercise-yard, shivering in the
winter winds or fainting under the summer sun,
is one of the most trying duties of the matron
in charge; and the authoress of the book tells us
how she once "nodded on her post," dreaming
of the green lanes and the home friends she had
lately left— a breach of duty which would
infallibly have been seen and reported by the
principal who just then entered the yard, had
not one of the women lightly twitched her by
the shawl as she passed. At half-past five, a
pint of gruel; in the later evening, prayers read
by a matron standing in the centre of each ward,
so that all can hear her; after which, work again
till half-past eight; then, bed-making; and at a
quarter to nine the gas is turned off from each
cell, and the prisoners are, or are supposed to
be, in their beds and quiet for the night.

Supposed to be, in truth, and quiet very often
not; for the night matron, whose duty it is to
pace up and down the wards, passing once in
the hour before each cell, has frequently to
report some "break out" of one more turbulent
than the rest, some coarseness of speech worse
than usual, some insolent or blasphemous song,
some smashing of windows, or tearing of clothes,
or wild unbridled violence, which ensures the