Judith Lacy, having been accused of stealing tea from a matron’s canister, which had been put down, imprudently, too near the prisoner, was so hurt at the charge, that it threw her into fits. She soon recovered, and it was quite evident she had stolen the tea. Any complaint of the food was listened to with immediate attention. Thus the gruel did not give satisfaction and was repeatedly examined. “A large number of the female prisoners still refuse to eat their barley soup,” says the governor in his journal on the 23rd April, 1817, “several female prisoners demanding an increase of half a pound of bread,” being refractory. Next day some of them refused to begin work, saying they were half-starved. Mary Turner was the first prisoner released. She was supposed to be cured of the criminal taint. Having equipped her in her liberty clothing, “she was taken into the several airing grounds in which were her late fellow-prisoners. The visitor (Sir Archibald Macdonald) represented to them in a most impressive manner the benefits that would result to themselves by good behaviour. The whole were most sensibly affected, and the event,” he says, “will have a very powerful effect on the conduct of many and prove an incentive to observe good and orderly demeanour.” Next day all of the female prisoners appeared at their cell windows, and shouted vociferously as Mary Turner went off. This is but one specimen of the free and easy system of management. Of the same character was a petition presented by a number of the female prisoners, to restore to favour two other convicts who had been punished by the committee. Indeed, the whole place appears to have been like a big school, and a degree of license was allowed to the prisoners consorting little with their character of convicted criminals.