On this female side, where the Ladies' Association still reigned supreme, more system and a greater semblance of decorum was maintained. But there were evils akin to those on the male side, prominent amongst which was the undue influence accorded to prisoners. A female prisoner kept the registers. Wards-women were allowed much the same authority, with the same temptations to excess, and intoxication was not unknown among them and others. The clothing was still meagre and ragged: the washing places insufficient, and wanting in decency; in some yards the pump was the only provision, and this in a place within sight of visitors, of the windows of the male turnkeys, and unprotected from the weather. There was the same crowding in the sleeping arrangements as on the male side; the same scarcity of bedding. It was a special evil of this part of the prison, that the devotional exercises, originally so profitable, had grown into a kind of edifying spectacle, which numbers of well-meaning but inquisitive people were anxious to witness. Thus, when the inspectors visited there were twenty-three strangers, and only twenty-eight prisoners. The presence of so many strangers, many of them gentlemen, distracted the prisoners' attention, and could not be productive of much good.
The separation of the sexes was not indeed rigidly carried out in Newgate as yet. We have seen that male prisoners visited their female relations and friends on the female side. Besides this, the gatesman who prepared the briefs had interviews with female prisoners alone while taking their instructions; a female came alone and unaccompanied by a matron to clean the governor's office in the male prison; male prisoners carried coal into the female prison, when they saw and could speak or pass letters to the female prisoners; and the men could also at any time go for tea, coffee, and sugar to Mrs. Brown's shop, which was inside the female gate. In the bail-dock, where most improper general association was permitted, the female prisoners were often altogether in the charge of male turnkeys. The governor was also personally responsible for gross contravention of this rule of separation, and was in the habit of drawing frequently upon the female prison for prisoners to act as domestic servants in his own private dwelling. Some member of the Ladies' Association observed and commented upon the fact that a "young rosy-cheeked girl" had been kept by the governor from transportation, while older women in infirm health were sent across the seas. His excuse was that he had given the girl his promise that she should not go, an assumption of prerogative which by no means rested with him; but he afterwards admitted that the girl had been recommended to him by the principal turnkey, who knew something of her friends. This woman was really his servant, employed to help in cleaning, and taken on whenever there was extra work to be done. The governor had a great dislike, he said, to seeing strangers in his house. This girl had been first engaged on account of the extra work entailed by certain prisoners committed by the House of Commons, who had been lodged in the governor's own house. The house at this time was full of men and visitors; waiters came in from the taverns with meals. Some of the prisoners had their valets, and all these were constantly in and out of the kitchen where this female prisoner was employed. There was revelling and roystering, as usual, with "high life below-stairs." The governor sent down wine on festive occasions, of which no doubt the prisoner housemaid had her share. It can hardly be denied that the governor, in his treatment of this woman, was acting in flagrant contravention of all rules.