6 A.M. Rise, and roll up your bed. 6.30 ,, Breakfast. 11 ,, Visit by surgeon. 12 (noon) Dinner. 3 to 4 P.M. Exercise. 5 ,, Supper. 6 ,, Bed. The dietary is the simple prison fare, although many (I amongst others) are on what is known as ordinary diet—_i.e._, cocoa, mutton broth, and a chop—and others on low diet, consisting of tea, bread-and-butter, beef-tea, rice pudding, etc. Discipline is little or nothing relaxed here; indeed the general system is evidently based on what is considered applicable to confirmed patients not suffering from any acute disease, and lunatics real and pretended. Shortly after rising a shout of “Physic!” causes a rush to get the first pull at one’s respective medicines; and as the same mug does duty for everything, and as time is an object, it has been found that a dose of hop mixture is not improved if augmented by the dregs of the black draught left by one’s predecessor. Being always up and washed whilst my brother-reprobates were still dozing, I was invariably the first to benefit by a clean mug, and devoted the next few minutes to watching the frowsy cluster of depravity, half dressed, half awake, and just out of bed, drink or throw away their doses as opportunity permitted. Although strictly prohibited, many of these wretches usually turned in with their stockings on, and in some instances with their trowsers; and on rising, having previously assumed boots and vest, proceeded to wash. I minutely watched this ceremony, and seldom detected the slightest desire to do more than make clean the extreme outer rim of their cups and platters, extending—humanly speaking—from the hand to the elbow, and from the chin to the ear. Although in many respects preferable to the prison proper, this convalescent ward was one of the severest ordeals I had to undergo. I would not have missed it for the world, nevertheless, to sleep, live, move, and have one’s being amongst thirty or forty pickpockets, idiots, burglars, and lunatics, implies an experience that baffles description. At 6.30 the advent of two wash-tubs, containing respectively cocoa and gruel, announces breakfast, which, being carefully measured into tins, is consumed in an incredibly short time, and devoured with the voracity never to be seen except in menageries or prisons. It must be remembered that the room contains specimens of some of the sharpest pickpockets in London, and experts at every dodge for the deceiving of their fellows, compelled by circumstances to be huddled together, and relieved from the isolation of separate cells that makes them comparatively powerless for mischief. It cannot be wondered at, then, that the rules require, if anything, to be more stringent; but all the vigilance of the sharpest warder is powerless, and no two eyes capable of seeing or preventing the wholesale exchange of food that now begins. If the warder is looking this way, a