Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in SolitudeBidwell, Austin
General
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Bidwell, Austin
Bank fraud -- England; Bank of England; Bidwell, Austin; Criminals -- Biography
After a few more remarks of a very personal and pungent nature the
little fellow marched off with a delicious swagger and an heroical air.
I at once turned to the warder and asked, "Who is that little fellow?"
"The Governor!" he gasped out. "If he had only heard you!" and then
followed a pantomime that implied something very dreadful. Then I
marched off to the doctor, and next to the chaplain, who (knowing who I
was) asked me if I could read and write, to which I meekly replied,
"Yes, sir;" but apparently being doubtful upon the point he gave me a
book. Opening it and pretending to read, I said in a solemn tone of
voice: "When time and place adhere write me down an ass." He took the
book from me, looked at the open page, gazed solemnly in my face with a
funny wagging of his head, as much as to say, "you will come to no
good," and followed the little major.
Then my cicerone took me into the main building, filled up to the brim
with what seemed to be little brick and stone boxes, and, halting in
front of one, said, "This is your cell." Looking around to see if it was
safe to talk, he began to question me rapidly about my case, and getting
no satisfaction he wound up the questioning with the remark: "Well, you
tried to take all our money over to America." Then, becoming
confidential, he told me what wicked fellows the other prisoners were,
chiefly because they went to the Governor and reported the officers,
charging them with maltreatment and bullying particularly, and knocking
them about generally. Of course, the warders never did such things, but
were really of a very lamblike and gentle nature. In order to back up
their lies the prisoners would knock their own heads against the walls
and then swear by everything good that some one of the warders had done
it. I said, perhaps he had.
Well, he said, perhaps an officer might give a man "a little clip," but
never so as to hurt him, and "only in fun, you know." I felt at the time
that I would never learn to appreciate Chatham "fun," but on the very
next day I was convinced of it when a man named Farrier pulled out from
his waistband a piece of rag, and, unrolling it, produced two of his
front teeth with the information that a certain warder had struck him
with his fist in the mouth and knocked them out.
But to return to my narrative. After many "wise saws and modern
instances," he locked me up in the little brick and stone box and
departed, having first informed me that I "would go out to labor in the
morning."
I looked about my little box with a mixture of curiosity and
consternation, for the thought smote me with blinding force that for
long years that little box--eight feet six inches in length, seven feet
in height and five feet in width, with its floor and roof of
stone--would be my only home--would be! must be! and no power could
avert my fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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