g
that my health would never be restored in confinement I wrote a
petition to the Home Secretary, in the expectation that I would be as
mercifully considered as my predecessors in misfortune. While my
petition was under consideration I was encouraged in my expectations by
the fact that one of my companions who had nothing the matter with him
but a dislocated hip joint, was liberated on medical grounds three or
four years before his time was up. My hopes were somewhat damped,
however, by another circumstance which just then occurred. The prison
director arrived on his monthly visit, and on passing through the ward,
the medical officer who accompanied him stopped at the foot of my bed
and informed him that I was the man whose leg he had amputated, and
that I was "quite well now!" The director, seeing me in bed and looking
very poorly, and noticing the general stare with which the doctor's
remark was received, asked in a somewhat doubtful way, "Is he quite
well?" "Oh! yes quite well," the doctor replied; and off they went.

I was sixteen months in hospital after the above remark was made, and I
was then unable to get up to have my bed made, nor did I leave my bed
during the whole winter and spring that succeeded! I received an answer
to my petition, shortly after the visit to which I have referred, in
the usual form of an official negative, "Not sufficient grounds." Being
now free from acute pain, I conversed freely with my companions, and
taught some of them to spell, read, and cypher. After I was able to get
out of bed I read aloud for an hour every evening, for the benefit of
all the patients. In time I became popular, and intimate with many of
them. I wrote letters and petitions for them, encouraged them with good
advice, and succeeded in obtaining considerable influence over them.

In return for these trifling services, which also to some extent
relieved the monotony of the long period I spent in hospital, they told
me their history and experiences. I learnt their slang and thiefology,
and as a theorist became tolerably conversant with all the mysteries by
which the professional thief and scoundrel preys upon society.

The first of my companions who attracted my attention was a young
Scotchman. He appeared to be a very strong hearty fellow, but when he
attempted to walk, he was the most pitiable looking cripple imaginable,
and excited the sympathy of all who saw him. His sentence was
twenty-one years, four of which