The reports as the years flow on reiterate the same complaints. Much bitterness of feeling is evidently engendered, and the corporation grows more and more angry with the inspectors. The prison officials appear to be on the side of the inspectors, to the great dissatisfaction of the corporation, who claimed the full allegiance and support of its servants. In a resolution passed by the Court of Aldermen on 18th March, 1842, I find it ordered "that the ordinary of Newgate be restricted from making any communications to the Home Office or the Inspectors of Prisons, and that he be required wholly to confine himself to the performance of his duty as prescribed by Act of Parliament." The inspectors were not to be deterred, however, by any opposition from the earnest discharge of their functions, and continued to report against Newgate. In their tenth report they state that they are compelled by an imperative sense of duty to advert in terms of decided condemnation to the lamentable condition of the prisons of the city of London,--Newgate, Giltspur St. Compter, and the City Bridewell,--in which the master evil of gaol association and consequent contamination still continues to operate directly to the encouragement of crime. "The plan adopted for ventilating the dining-room on the 'master's side' and that of the middle yard is very inefficient; it consists of several circular perforations, about two inches in diameter, slanting downwards from the top of the walls to the outside adjoining the slaughter-houses of Newgate market; and occasionally, in hot weather, instead of ventilating the apartments, they only serve to convey the offensive effluvia arising from the decaying animal matter into the dining-rooms. Sometimes the stench in hot weather is said to be very bad. Many rats also come through these so-called ventilators, as they open close to the ground at the back of the prison." At the same time the inspectors animadvert strongly upon the misconduct of prisoners and the frequency of prison punishments, both offences and punishments affording a sufficient index to the practices going forward; and they wind up by declaring that a strict compliance with their duties gave them no choice "but to report matters as we found them, and again and again to protest against Newgate as it at present exists." No complete and permanent improvement was indeed possible while Newgate remained unchanged. It was not till the erection of the new prison at Holloway in 1850, and the entire internal reconstruction of Newgate according to new ideas, that the evils so justly complained of and detailed in this chapter were entirely removed. But these are matters which will occupy a later page in my narrative. CHAPTER VI. EXECUTIONS (_continued_).