Prisoner for BlasphemyFoote, G. W. (George William)
Religion
Prisoner for Blasphemy
Foote, G. W. (George William)
Blasphemy; Trials (Blasphemy) -- Great Britain
On Sundays and Wednesdays, instead of the pea-soup, I was served with
six ounces of suet pudding baked in a separate tin. I never saw such
pudding, and I never smelt such suet. Brown meal was used for the dough,
and the suet lay on the top in yellow greasy streaks. I can liken the
compound to nothing but a linseed poultice. The resemblance was so
obvious that it struck many other prisoners. I have heard the
term poultice applied to the suet pudding more than once in casual
conversations in the exercise ground. Twice a week I was entitled to
meat. On Friday, instead of the pea-soup or suet pudding, there was
three ounces of Australian beef; and on Mondays _three-quarters of an
ounce_ of fat bacon with some white beans. The subtle humorist who drew
up the diet scale had appended a note that "all meats were to be weighed
without bone."
A good tale hangs by that bacon and beans. While I was awaiting the
second trial in Newgate, and providing my own food, I studied the
diet scale which hangs up in each cell, and was fascinated by this
extravagant quantity of pork, which seemed to evidence an unimagined
display of prison hospitality. One of the officers to whom I mentioned
the matter said, "Ah, Mr. Foote, I wish you would show that diet up
when you get out. Untried prisoners have the same fare as condemned
criminals, only they get less of it. There are lusty chaps come in here,
some of them quite innocent, who could eat twice as much, and look
round for the man that cooked it. I'll tell you a story about that
three-quarters of an ounce. A fellow rang his bell one day after the
dinner was served. 'Well,' I said, 'what's the matter?' 'I want's my
bacon,' said he. 'Well, you've got it,' said I. 'No I aint,' said he.
'It's in your tin,' said I. 'Taint in my tin,' said he. Then I fetched
up the cook. We all three searched, and at last we found the bacon in
one of the shucks of the beans."
The worthy fellow laughed, and so did I, as he ended his story. There
might have been some exaggeration in it, but you would not find it so
hard to believe if you had ever sat down to dine on three-quarters of an
ounce of fat bacon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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