There is an axiom in prison, “The worse the woman, the better the prisoner.” As one goes about the prison, and observes those women who are permitted little privileged tasks, such as tidying the garden, cleaning the chapel, or any of the light and semi-responsible tasks which convicts like, one will notice the privileged are not, as a rule, the young or respectably brought up, but old, professional criminals. They know the rules of the prison, they spend the greater part of their lives there, and they know exactly how to behave so as to earn the maximum of marks; their object is to get out in the shortest possible time, and to have as light work as possible while they are in. The officers like them because they know their work without having to be taught. “There is no servant like an old thief,” I have heard it said. “They do good work.” This is quite typical of a certain kind of prisoner who is the mainstay of the prisons. The conviction of young girls to penal servitude is shocking, for it destroys the chief power of prevention that prisons are supposed to possess, and accustoms the young criminal to a reality which has far less terror for her than the idea of it had. Prison life is entirely demoralizing to any girl under twenty years of age, and it is to prevent such demoralizing influence upon young girls that some more humane system of punishment should be enacted. SELF-DISCIPLINE In saying a word on what is, perhaps, best described as “prison self-discipline,” I trust the reader will acquit me of any motive other than a desire that it may result in some sister in misfortune deriving benefit from a similar course. That the state of mind in which one enters upon the life of a convict has some influence on conduct--whether she does so with a consciousness of innocence or otherwise--should, perhaps, go without saying. Nevertheless, innocent or guilty, a proper self-respect can not fail to be helpful, be the circumstances what they may; and from the moment I crossed Woking’s grim threshold until the last day when I passed from the shadow and the gloom of Aylesbury into God’s free sunlight, I adhered strictly to a determination that I would come out of the ordeal--if ever--precisely as I had entered upon it; that no loving eyes of mother or friends should detect in my habits, manners, or modes of thought or expression the slightest deterioration.