The carpenters’ and smiths’ shops call for no special notice beyond the custom in vogue, whereby all men are carefully searched before returning to their cells. This is, no doubt, an essential ceremony, as turnkeys’ scalping-knives, in the shape of chisels, might occasionally go astray, not forgetting the modest pencil, the most treasured possession of Her Majesty’s prisoners. The oakum shed finds employment for about a dozen men. In it piles of old rope are being continually chopped up, weighed, and tied into bundles varying from one to three pounds in weight. I have often seen van loads of this apparently worthless rope discharging cargo at this shed, and was surprised to see the same though quite unrecognisable rope leaving the prison a week or two after converted into the finest oakum, to be again utilized for the manufacture of rope. The paper room is the most original and interesting of the various institutions in this original and interesting place. I do not know if it lies in the route through which visitors are conducted, but if it does it will repay a minute inspection. Into this room the sweepings of the Houses of Parliament and the various Government Offices in the United Kingdom find their way. All old telegrams, after being kept six months at the General Post Office, are sent here to be destroyed, to say nothing of old ledgers, directories, blue books, almanacks, etc.; in short, a heterogeneous mass of things useful and things useless, all higgle-de-piggledy, to be sorted and torn into small pieces, and eventually converted into paper by Alderman Waterlow and his sons (these last named individuals do their share of the work at home). Amongst this pile the most valuable discoveries are of daily occurrence; and articles priceless in the estimation of a prisoner, such as pen-knives, boxes of cigarettes, butt-ends of cigars, writing paper, envelopes, novels, coins, pencils, and postage stamps, are hourly exhumed. About 200 men are employed in this department, whose duty is to tear up into small atoms a certain amount of waste paper daily. Of the above number some 20 of the most trustworthy (_i.e._, those who are the greatest adepts in the art of secreting property about their persons) are employed in overhauling the supply, and delivering up contraband goods—that they may not require—before passing it to be manipulated by their less trustworthy _confrères_. Great precautions are supposed to be taken against the possibility of a prisoner appropriating any of this “treasure trove,” and they are each and all subjected to a minute examination before returning to their cells. That this search meets all the requirements of the case may be gleaned from the quantities of things that find their way into the prison. I was never without a capital pen-knife, and when I lost mine (or when it was stolen), as I did on more than one occasion, I never had any difficulty in procuring another. The stationery that I used for my