“Exercise” was an indispensable feature of life in Newgate, and nothing, I believe, could have exempted one from this ordeal. It answered, indeed, more purposes than one. Health was doubtless essential; identification, however, was considerably more important. Three times a week, and before starting on our circus-like walk, all the prisoners awaiting trial, amounting to over two hundred, were ranged shoulder to shoulder round the walls, a preliminary that at first puzzled me considerably. I was not, however, left long in ignorance. [Picture: “Should old acquaintance be forgot.”] A little way off, and apparently approaching, I heard the measured tramp of an advancing crowd, and suddenly there appeared a long string of men in single file; these were the detectives, some seventy or eighty in number, bent on a mission of recognition. Slowly they passed before us, each one staring and occasionally stopping and addressing a prisoner, or whispering to one of their companions. These preliminary enquiries often led to minuter inspections; and if they expressed the wish, a prisoner was afterwards honoured by a private view, and carefully compared with photographs and police descriptions. This, no doubt, is a very essential proceeding, and many a man “wanted” for an undiscovered crime in another part of the kingdom, and committed months or years previously, is recognized by this salutary custom. As may be supposed, this inspection had absolutely no personal interest to me. Still the ordeal, degrading in the extreme, never failed to inspire me with horror; and I dreaded the mornings when the “detecs,” as they were lovingly termed, made their appearance. There was something so weird and uncanny in the whole thing—the distant tramp, the solemn march past, the offensive leer, the familiar stare, all combined to make a horrible impression. A more repulsive body of men than these “detecs” can hardly be conceived, got up as they were in every kind of costume—men in pot hats and slap-bang coats, others in shabby-genteel frock coats and tall hats; some in fustians and others in waterproofs and leggings, but all with the same unmistakable expression. I hope the authorities are not under the impression that these individuals are unknown to the law-breaking community, for no greater fallacy can possibly exist. I never missed an opportunity hereafter of asking habitual criminals this question, and am satisfied that their appearances, their beats, and their daily routine are known to every habitual criminal in London. I’ll prove this hereafter. Meanwhile, one has only to look about in the streets, and he cannot fail to observe a civilian frequently talking to a policeman. This man is not asking his way, but is in nineteen cases out of twenty a “recogniser”; nor can it be wondered at if their foolish actions and evident unwillingness to conceal their vocation makes them as distinguishable as they are. I will confidently assert that every