I have now brought my experiences of Newgate to a close, and shall briefly describe our departure to our final and respective destinations. An unusual bustle one morning indicated that something out of the ordinary was about to happen, and though we received no actual warning, it was generally buzzed about that we were to make a start after breakfast. At breakfast-time the warder told me to put my things together, and half an hour later found me and sixteen others marshalled in the corridor, where, being carefully compared with our respective descriptions, we were formally handed over to a detachment of warders from Coldbath Fields. Other parties were being simultaneously paraded for Holloway and Pentonville, the latter all in convict dress and as pitiable a looking set as can well be conceived. I discovered, both now and subsequently, that a human being is invariably referred to as if he were a parcel. Thus, on arrival, one is said to be “received,” and one’s departure is described as being “sent out.” This is not intended in an offensive sense, but may be taken rather as a figure of speech. In the adjoining yard were half a dozen vans—indeed, I had never before seen such a formidable array, except, perhaps, a meet of the four-in-hand club on a rainy day—and into one of these I was politely conducted, with a degree of precaution as unnecessary as it was absurd. No reader can accuse me of rounding the points of this ungarnished story, or endeavouring to conceal any incident, however unpleasant. As, however, my subsequent experiences may discover a treatment so kind and exceptional as to appear almost incredible, I must only ask the reader to credit me with the veracity that my previous frankness entitles me to expect. My anxiety on this point is considerably enhanced by the contradiction it will bear to other narratives I have read, and which, purporting to describe prison life, invariably represent it as a hot-bed of cruelty, where prisoners are starved and otherwise ill-treated, all of which I emphatically deny, and cause me to doubt whether one single specimen of these so-called personal narratives is anything else but an “idle tale,” written with a view of enlisting sympathy, and possibly turning an honest penny. If these writers and these prisoners had seen as much as I have (from outside) of prisons on the Continent, in Morocco, and in China, they would think themselves very fortunate in their present quarters. I—who have seen prisoners starving in prisons in Morocco, and absolutely “unfed,” except by the charity of visitors, who usually scramble a few shillings’ worth of bread amongst them; and who, for a dollar to the jailor, have seen a Chinaman at Shanghai brought out, made to kneel down and have his head sliced off like a water-melon—have no patience with these well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed rascals. I would send all these discontented burglars and their “converted”