A GREAT variety of trades are represented in Coldbath Fields—such as tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, worsted-workers, laundrymen, bakers, needlemen, basket-makers, mat-makers, printers, bookbinders, carpenters, plumbers, and glaziers. Of these mat-making and laundry-work are considered the hardest. The men selected for following any of the above vocations are looked upon as privileged individuals, and infinitely better off than the ordinary oakum-picker—a task that everyone has to submit to for one month, although many never get beyond it and its accompanying isolation during the two years of their imprisonment. A good deal of the comfort or otherwise with which these trades are followed depends on the warders in charge. If the warder is a brute, the prisoners become demoralized, crime is rampant, and reports and punishment the natural consequence. If he happens to be reasonable and just in his dealings, contentment reigns, the work is well done, and insubordination is unknown. I saw and heard a great deal in support of this assertion, and during my few months’ retirement managed to poke my nose into a good many queer corners. The laundry bears an unenviable notoriety, both on account of the excessive hard labour and the brutality with which it is enforced. There are about sixty men employed in this department, who have severally to wash one or other of the following quantities daily:—30 shirts, 80 sheets, 200 towels, 500 pocket-handkerchiefs, 18 blankets, 250 pairs of socks. Such quantities would tax the capacity of an expert washerwoman; but when a novice—probably a clerk or respectable tradesman—is put to the task, its magnitude is at first insurmountable. Instead of 30 shirts, the poor wretch finds he cannot manage more than 5, which next day he succeeds in bringing up to 15. Meanwhile his hands become chafed and sore, and he sees the doctor in hopes of getting relief; but the doctor is powerless. A cut finger is not a serious complaint though probably a very painful one; and he has no alternative but to send him back. This in itself is considered as malingering; and the poor devil is brought before the Governor for idleness and feigning sickness, and is sentenced to one day’s bread and water as a first offence. Should this “crime” be repeated, he gets an increased punishment, and is either flogged or sent to the punishment cells. This is no overcoloured description. A prisoner in such a case has neither justice nor any means of proving the injustice. Any report, however garbled, is necessarily believed; and if corroboration is necessary, a dozen turnkeys, from every part of the prison, will come forward, and emphatically endorse their comrade’s charge. The prisoner meanwhile is not allowed to speak, and if he did would not be believed, and, as often happens with the lower classes, is actuated by fear, which only increases his apparent guilt.