new cell, provided he was allowed to take his own hammock with him. It struck the governor at once that something might be concealed in it, and it was searched minutely. Inside the bedclothes they found a couple of yards of hammock lashing, one end of which was made into a noose, “leaving,” the governor remarks, “little doubt of his intention.” But to meet and frustrate these repeated attempts at suicide were by no means the governor’s only trials. The misconduct of many other prisoners must have made his life a burthen to him. Thefts were frequent: these fellows’ fingers itched to lay their hands on all that came in their way. The tower wardsman—a prisoner in a place of trust—steals his warder’s rations; others filch knives, metal buttons, bath brick, and food from one another. Then there was much wasteful destruction of materials, with idleness and carelessness at the looms, aggravated often by the misappropriation of time in manufacture of trumpery articles for their own wear: one makes himself a pair of green gaiters, another a pair of cloth shoes, a third an imitation watch of curled hair, rolled into a ball, which hangs in his fob by a strip of calico for guard. These were doubtless offences of a trivial character. The anxiety evinced by many to escape from durance was a much more serious affair. Surprising ingenuity and unwearied patience are exhibited by prisoners in compassing this, the great aim and object of all who are not free. As yet, however, the efforts made were tentative only and incomplete. To break a hole in the wall or manufacture false keys was the highest flight of their inventive genius, and the plot seldom went very far. One of the first cases was discovered quite by chance. On searching a prisoner’s cell, some screws, a few nails, and two pieces of thick iron wire were found concealed in his loom; and in one of his shoes as it hung upon the wall, a piece of lead shaped so as to correspond with the wards of a cell key. This the prisoner confessed he had made with his knife from memory, and altogether without a pattern. “I have a very nice eye,” he said, “and I have always carefully observed the keys as I saw them in the officers’ hands.” “And what did you mean to do with the key?” he was further asked. “To get away, of course.” “How?” “I can open the wooden door when I please, and then I should have unlocked my gate.”[1] On examination a hole was found in his door, just below the bolt and opposite the handle; through this, by means of a narrow piece of stuff, a knitting needle in fact, he could move back the bolt whenever he pleased. Once out in the ward, he meant, with a file he had also secreted, to get through the bars of the passage window. The wards of this key were fastened into a wooden handle, which was also found in his cell. Another prisoner, having been allowed to possess himself of a large spike nail, which had been negligently left about in the yard, worked all night at the wall of his cell, and soon