Of course the monthly visit of the Grand Jury is known in advance. They are carefully piloted around through the halls where the floors have been mopped that morning and everything made to look “shiny” and neat for the occasion. As a rule they are taken through the new prison and down into the cellar where may be found the machinery all polished and bright. I would like to lock some of these gentlemen in one of the cells for an hour or two. As is well known, many of these cells are “reeking” with vermin and filth. Not of the Tombs only, but some of the district prisons. I have seen men in the Tombs and in other prisons of the City, who had hardly become inmates before the vermin would literally be found crawling over them. In summer time when the weather is warm and oppressive, the “Annex bug” (where the misdemeanants are kept) which is said to be an “Asiatic” brand of bug, comes out of the porous brick by thousands and for two or three months have their “fill” of human gore. I think the main trouble is with the bedding. It is sent to the Workhouse and washed about twice a year in ordinary water, instead of being boiled in a vat of carbolic acid or _aqua fortis_, and beaten for a few days with clubs. Not infrequently visitors and missionaries find vermin crawling over their clothing after they have returned to their homes. Politics and the Prisons I hope the time is not far distant when the prisons of greater New York will be conducted by the State authorities, as is the case in nearly all other countries. They are the proper custodians of the prisoner. It seems to me that this is the only cure for the rank abuses that have existed in these prisons for half a century. Under Tammany as everybody knows, the warden or other official could get as drunk as a lord, abuse everybody in sight and yet be considered a hero! Some men have been suspended for a few days but when the district leader took a hand in the matter that ended it.