Under these circumstances it was decided to leave her where she was for the present, especially as a forcible removal might have created a general disturbance in the prison.
The next step in the case was her removal to Bethlehem Hospital as mad. But even this was misconstrued; for when, in the February following (1838), a discussion arose in the House of Lords as to alleged ill-treatment of prisoners in the Penitentiary, Newman’s case was mentioned as one in which, on the other hand, culpable leniency had been shown. Those who found fault declared that she had been sent to an asylum, not because she was mad, but because by birth a lady. The same people declared that it was well known that she was not mad, and that she never had been. The matrons at Bethlehem knew this well, and had told her to her face that she was only feigning; whereupon she ceased to feign. Then as it was clear she was not mad, it was equally clear that Bethlehem was not the place for her.
Accordingly, she was returned to the Penitentiary; and back she came, exhibiting throughout the most sullen contempt, and persistently refusing to open her lips. Directly she arrived she again began her tricks. Deliberately insolent refusals to execute the orders she received, and open contempt of punishment, were the leading points on which she differed with the authorities. Again the governor urges on the committee that she may be removed by transportation, she being, under existing circumstances, both intractable and incorrigible. “If I am to maintain discipline where she is, it must be by entering perpetually into fresh and perplexing contests, the outcome of which may be very awful as respects the prisoner and exceedingly embarrassing as respects the institution,” he writes. She next pretends to wish to lay hands upon herself, and her rug is found torn up and converted into a noose. It was hanging to a peg in her cell, like a halter ready for use. The authorities considered it advisable therefore to place her in restraint, in a new strait waistcoat which fitted close. In an hour or two she had torn it all to pieces. The next proceeding was to confine her hands in a very small pair of handcuffs, and to pinion her arms with strong tape. The waistcoat appearing to have been cut, she and her cell were searched, but no knife or scissors could be found, and only a piece of broken glass which she must have used for the purpose. She soon afterwards loosened the tape, and was then bound with strong webbing to the bedstead. Next morning she was found to have got rid of the handcuffs, had cut the webbing to pieces, broken her windows, and destroyed her bedding. One of the female warders was therefore sent to a surgical instrument maker’s to purchase some effectual instrument of restraint, and returned with a muff-belt and handcuffs, all united, and ingeniously contrived to defeat the struggles of lunatics—quite a new invention. Before long she completely destroyed the muff and got rid of the handcuffs attached to it. She was next secured to the wall by a stout chain.
