“It is quite evident that there are so many prisoners (180) assembled an outbreak would be difficult to quell; and in my opinion the situation is a serious one, calling for immediate consideration. Many of them are athletic, and fierce in point of temper likewise.”
The governor decided to place patrols in the juvenile ward taken from the garden, although he was loath to denude the garden of guards, seeing that the prison was full to overflowing of convicts.
I have dealt in the last few pages with the misconduct of the boys as it showed itself in a comparatively short period of time.
The contumacy of these lads continued for more than a year: again and again they broke out, insulted, bearded, browbeat their officers till the latter stood almost in awe of their charges; night after night the pentagon was made hideous with their outcries and uproar. The governor was pressed to abolish the ward altogether; but the project was a pet one, and he hesitated to abandon it. He never quite got the better of the boys; but in the end firmness and a resolute exhibition of authority had its effect, and the ward, if not entirely quelled, was at least brought to something like subordination and order.
It is of course clear to the reader that the convicts who were now and hereafter contained within the Millbank walls comprised the worst of the criminal class. There is this difference between the calendars at Newgate and at Millbank, that at the former place the worst criminals passed without delay to the gallows, while at the large depot prison they remained to continually vex their keepers.
The life of Millbank was prolonged until the end of the nineteenth century, by which time the new and palatial buildings at Wormwood Scrubs, on the western outskirts of London, had been completed. A word is appropriate here as to this imposing edifice which was begun in a very small way by the writer, in the winter of 1874. The plan pursued was identical with that of Elam Lynds when he built Sing Sing on the banks of the Hudson. Lynds must have been a fine self-reliant character, of such unwavering courage that it gave him personal ascendency over the dangerous elements in his charge. When they told him that a certain convict openly threatened to murder him, he sent for the man, who was a barber, and made him shave him. “I knew you had said you would kill me,” he remarked quietly after the shaving was over. “I despised you too much to believe you would do it. Here alone, unarmed, I am stronger than you, and the whole of your companions.”