"They (the men's wards) are provided, like the wards of the women's side, with mats and rugs, which are disposed of in the same manner during the day; the only very striking difference between their appearance and that of the wards inhabited by the women is the utter absence of employment. Huddled on two opposite forms by the fireside sit twenty men, perhaps; here a boy in livery; there a man in a rough great-coat and top-boots; further on, a desperate-looking fellow in his shirtsleeves, with an old Scotch cap upon his shaggy head; near him again, a tall ruffian in a smock-frock; next to him a miserable being of distressed appearance, with his head resting on his hand--all alike in one respect, all idle and listless; when they do leave the fire, sauntering moodily about, lounging in the windows, or leaning against the wall, vacantly swinging their bodies to and fro. With the exception of an old man reading a newspaper, in two or three instances this was the case in every ward we entered. The only communication these men have with their friends is through two close iron gratings, with an intermediate space of about a yard in width between the two, so that nothing can be handed across, nor can the prisoner have any communication by touch with the person who visits him. The married men have a separate grating at which to see their wives, but its construction is the same."
When the prisoners had visitors a keeper always sat in the space between the gratings, so that private communication was practically impossible. The only exception was made in favor of lawyers in visiting their clients; but prisoners of note could secure the privilege of privacy through the pressure of official influence on the head keeper. In fact, during later years an effort, only partially successful, was made in Newgate to grade the prisoners according to their criminal standard, and to keep the classes apart. So, persistent and desperate offenders were assigned to one ward and those less confirmed in crime to another, while boys and youths were separated from the older prisoners, whose influence on them could not be but for evil. Under the more humane management of the present century Newgate was even provided with a school. "A portion of the prison," says Boz, in his "Visit," "is set apart for boys under fourteen years of age." "In a tolerable sized room, in which were writing materials and some copybooks, was the school-master with a couple of his pupils; the remainder having been fetched from an adjoining apartment, the whole were drawn up in a line for our inspection. There were fourteen of them in all, some with shoes, some without; some in pinafores without jackets, others in jackets without pinafores, and one in scarce anything at all. The whole number, without an exception, we believe, had been committed for trial on charges of pocket-picking; and fourteen such terrible little faces we never beheld. There was not a glance of honesty, not a wink expressive of anything but the gallows and the hulks, in the whole collection. As to anything like shame or contrition, that was entirely out of the question. They were evidently quite gratified at being thought worth the trouble of looking at; their idea appeared to be that we had come to see Newgate as a grand affair, and that they were an indispensable part of the show; and every boy as he 'fell in' to the line actually seemed as pleased and important as if he had done something excessively meritorious in getting there at all."