At noon the midday meal. The first sign of its approach is the sound of the fatigue party of prisoners bringing the food from the kitchen into the ward. I hear the ward officer passing with the weary group from cell to cell, and presently she will reach my door. My food is handed to me, then the door is closed and double locked. In the following two hours, having finished my meal, I can work or read. At two o’clock the fatigue party again goes on its mechanical round; the cell door is again unlocked, this time for the collection of dinner-cans. The meal of each prisoner is served out by weight, and the law allows her to claim her full quantity to the uttermost fraction of an ounce. She is even entitled to see it weighed if she fancies it falls short. Work is then resumed until five o’clock, when gruel and bread is again served, as at breakfast, with half an hour for its disposal. From that time on until seven o’clock more work, when again is heard the clang of the prison bell, and with it comes the end of our monotonous day. I take down my hammock, and once more await the opening of the door. We have learned exactly what to do. With the opening of our cells we go forward, and each places her broom outside the door. So shall it be known that we each have been visited in our cells before the locking of our doors and gates for the night. If any of us are taking medicine by the doctor’s orders we now receive it. On through the ten long, weary hours of the night the night officers patrol the wards, keeping watch, and through a glass peep-hole silently inspect us in our beds to see that nothing is amiss. THE CRUELTY OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT Solitary confinement is by far the most cruel feature of English penal servitude. It inflicts upon the prisoner at the commencement of her sentence, when most sensitive to the horrors which prison punishment entails, the voiceless solitude, the hopeless monotony, the long vista of to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow stretching before her, all filled with desolation and despair. Once a prisoner has crossed the threshold of a convict prison, not only is she dead to the world, but she is expected in word and deed to lose or forget every vestige of her personality. Verily, The mills of the gods grind slowly, But they grind exceeding small, And woe to the wight unholy On whom those millstones fall. So it is with the Penal Code which directs this vast machinery, doing its utmost with tireless, ceaseless revolutions to mold body and soul slowly, remorselessly, into the shape demanded by Act of Parliament. CHAPTER FOUR The Period of Probation A CHANGE OF CELL