A bustling, business-like man, one day attracted my attention. He was connected with the stores, and brought me a new pair of boots. He had been the manager of a London bank, and undergoing retirement for six months for some error regarding the ownership of £300. A tall, smart-looking man that was pointed out to me, was, I was informed, an individual who attained notoriety some two years ago over a mining scheme. He was suffering two years’ incarceration for a miscalculation of over £7000. A man who called himself Count H—, and an ex-convict to boot, was languishing for a year, because certain noblemen had had the bad taste to object to his having obtained money from them by false pretences. This nobleman! had a mania for petitioning the Home Office (I will give a specimen of his style hereafter). In addition to these, numerous individuals who had been gentlemen in their day were known to me by sight. Conspicuous amongst them, was an old jail bird and ex-convict, who had 20 years ago been a captain in the army, and ever since had existed (and still is) in prison, for terms of seven, five, five, two, and one years. All the starch had been thoroughly wrung out of him, though he occasionally stood on a dilapidated kind of dignity. I once asked him where a friend of his had gone. He replied, “I don’t know; we don’t speak now; he’s no gentleman. Will you believe it, he had the impertinence to doubt my word.” As his word had been doubted a good many times during the past 20 years, I was considerably amused by this assumption of dignity. Many prisoners are under the impression that they have only to petition the Home Office to procure a remission of their sentence. It seems perfectly immaterial to them, whether they have the slightest grounds for this assumption or not, and it frequently happens that, instead of mitigating their offence, they put matters in a more unfavourable light by airing their grievances, whilst others make a rambling statement referring to every subject but the one particularly concerning themselves.