Newgate prisoners were the victims to another most objectionable practice which obtained all over London. Persons committed to a metropolitan gaol at that time were taken in gangs, men and women handcuffed together, or linked on to a long chain, unless they could afford to pay for a vehicle out of their own funds. Even then they were not certain of the favour, for I find a reference to a decent and respectable woman sent to Newgate, who handed a shilling to the escort warder to provide her with a hackney coach; but this functionary pocketed the cash, and obliged the woman to walk, chained to the rest. As the miserable crew filed through the public streets, exposed to the scornful gaze of every passenger, they were followed by a crowd of reckless boys, who jeered at and insulted them. Many thus led in procession were in a shocking condition of dirt and misery, frequently nearly naked, and often bearing upon them the germs, more or less developed, of contagious disease. "Caravans," the forerunners of the prison vans, were first made use of about 1827. That the need for prison reform was imperative may be gathered from the few out of many instances I have adduced, yet there were those who, wedded to ancient ideas, were intolerant of change; they would not admit the existence of any evils. One smug alderman, a member of the House of Commons, sneered at the ultra philanthropy of the champions of prison improvement. Speaking on a debate on prison matters, he declared that "our prisoners have all that prisoners ought to have, without gentlemen think they ought to be indulged with Turkey carpets." The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline was taxed with a desire to introduce a system tending to divest punishment of its just and salutary terrors; an imputation which the Society indignantly and very justly repudiated, the statement being, as they said, "refuted by abundant evidence, and having no foundation whatever in truth."