Nor was the charge a bit better substantiated in the case of the two “fine young men.” Both of them had been cast for death at the Old Bailey, which was commuted afterwards to one year in the Penitentiary. One, Welsh, was a good-for-nothing vagrant, who had spent most of the seventeen years he had lived inside the Marylebone workhouse, and to this he had returned on his release from Millbank. He was a clever but unruly prisoner; he could read and write well, and his faculties had been sharpened rather than impaired by his residence in prison. The master of the Marylebone workhouse was decidedly of opinion that he had improved much; he was more civil now than before, and he was greatly grown. Welsh said himself he had no fault to find with the Penitentiary; in fact, he was quite ready to go back to it, if they would only take him in. But this Welsh was in the habit of counterfeiting idiocy, either to procure some extra indulgences, or to amuse himself and others, and he played the part so well that many who saw him were deceived. William Ray, the other “victim,” was older, having reached his twenty-fifth year. He also had passed the greater part of his life in the Marylebone workhouse; but he had enlisted twice into the army, and had gone with Sir de Lacy Evans to Spain. He had been discharged for incompetence, and it was perfectly clear from the evidence taken, that he was a person of very weak intellect long before he became an inmate of the prison: he had a vacant countenance, a silly laugh, and a habit of blinking his eyes and tossing his head about. Still he perfectly understood what he was ordered to do. He had become a good tailor, and had improved in reading.