Indeed, not only from this branch, but from all his subordinates, Captain Groves appears to have got but half-hearted service. The double-faced backbitings, which had brought many to preferment in the last regime, were thrown away on the new governor. He preferred to see things with his own eyes, and he did not encourage officers to tell tales of one another. When a senior officer reported a junior for using bad language, Captain Groves remarked, “I must state my apprehensions that the practice which has prevailed of _watching_ for bad or gross language uttered by warders off duty, and reported without their knowledge, accompanied by additions to the actual offence, will be most certain to introduce discussion and discord into the prison, and produce universal distrust and fear. No warder can feel himself safe when he knows that an unguarded word may be brought against him at some future day.” The practical common sense of these remarks no one can deny; but those who knew Captain Groves will smile as they remember that his own language at times savoured “of the camps,” and he possibly felt that under such a system of espionage he might himself be caught tripping. But in setting his face against the old practices he was clearly right, although it might bring him into disfavour with those hypocritical subordinates who felt that their day of favour was over. Of most of the Penitentiary officers, indeed, Captain Groves had formed but a low estimate. In more ways than one he had found them lax, just as he found that the routine of duties was but carelessly arranged. There was no system: the night patrols, two in number to every two pentagons, slept as they pleased half the night or more, and were seldom subject to the visits of “rounds” or other impertinences from over-zealous officials; no one was responsible for the prison during the night; by day, strangers came and went through the inner gates and passed on to the innermost part of the prison, ostensibly to buy shoes and other articles made by the prisoners, but really to see their friends among the latter; coal porters, irresponsible persons, often from the lowest classes (one was afterwards a convict), were admitted with their sacks into the heart of the wards, male and female, and could converse and traffic with the prisoners all day long. There was no notice board at the gates or elsewhere to warn visitors of the penalties of wrong-doing.