Foremost on the Millbank calendar stand those of the upper classes, who were afterwards styled in Australia, “specials,” or “gentlemen convicts.” It was said that of these there were at one and the same time in Millbank two captains, a baronet, four clergymen, a solicitor, and one or two doctors of medicine. The tradition is _ben trovato_, if not exactly true. Of course in such a prison there would be representatives of every class, and although the percentage of gentlemen who commit crimes is in the long run far below that of the middle or lower classes, there is no special natural law by which the blue blood is exempted from the ordinary weakness and imperfections of humanity. Most of these genteel people who found themselves in Millbank owed their fate to forgery or fraud. There was the old gentleman of seventy years of age, who had been a mayor in a north-country manufacturing town, and who had forged and defrauded his nieces out of some £360,000. The officers spoke of him as “a fine old fellow,” who took to his new task of tailoring like a man, and who could soon turn out a soldier’s great-coat as well as any one in the prison. Another convict of this stamp was Mr. T., a Liverpool merchant in a prosperous business, who was a forger on quite a colossal scale. It was proved at his trial that he had forged thirty bills of exchange, amounting to a total of £32,811, and that he had a guilty knowledge of one hundred and fifteen other bills, which were valued in all at £133,000. In his defence it was urged that he had taken up many bills before they were due, and would undoubtedly have taken up all had not the discovery of one forgery exposed his frauds and put an end suddenly to his business. Still, said his counsel, his estate could have paid from twelve to fifteen shillings in the pound, and it could hardly be maintained against him that he had any moral intention of defrauding. Judge Talfourd appears to have commented strongly, in summing up, upon such an idea of morality as this; and then and there sentenced Mr. T. to transportation for life. Unfortunately for the criminal himself, his sentence came a little too late: had he gone out to New South Wales twenty years earlier, with his commercial aptitude and generally unscrupulous plan of action, he would have run well to the front in the race for wealth amidst his felon competitors.