“He found from 600 to 700 prisoners in the jail, in the worst state of insubordination, and whose excesses, he was told, defied the harshest and most stringent discipline; the prisoners were all chained together, and attached to each chain was an iron weight, which the strongest found difficulty in dragging along. The guard consisted of about 100 soldiers, who did duty not only at the gates and around the walls, but also in the passages, and even in the workshops and dormitories; and, strangest of all protections against the possibility of an outbreak or individual invasion, twenty to thirty large savage dogs, of the bloodhound breed, were let loose at night in the passages and courts to keep their watch and ward. {172} According to his account the place was a perfect Pandemonium, comprising, within the limits of a few acres, the worst passions, the most slavish vices, and the most heartless tyranny.” M. Obermair gradually relaxed this harsh system. He greatly lightened the chains; and would, if allowed, have thrown them aside. The dogs, and nearly all the guards, were dispensed with; and the prisoners were treated with such consideration as to gain their confidence. Mr. Baillie-Cochrane, who visited the place in 1852, says the prison-gates were “Wide open, without any sentinel at the door, and a guard of only twenty men idling away their time in a guard-room off the entrance-hall. . . . . None of the doors were provided with bolts and bars; the only security was an ordinary lock, and as in most of the rooms the key was not turned, there was no obstacle to the men walking into the passage. . . . . Over each workshop some of the prisoners with the best characters were appointed overseers, and M. Obermair assured me that if a prisoner transgressed a regulation, his companions generally told him, ‘Es ist verboten’ (it is forbidden), and it rarely happened that he did not yield to the opinion of his fellow-prisoners. . . . . Within the prison walls every description of work is carried on; the prisoners, divided into different gangs and supplied with instruments and tools, make their own clothes, repair their own prison walls, and forge their own chains, producing various specimens of manufacture which are turned to most excellent account—the result being, that each prisoner, by occupation and industry, maintains himself; the surplus of his earnings being given him on his emancipation, avoids his being parted with in a state of destitution.” And further, the prisoners “associate in their leisure hours, without any check on their intercourse, but at the same time under an efficient system of observation and control”—an arrangement by which, after many years’ experience, M. Obermair asserts that morality is increased.