Nevertheless, though repeated efforts were made to get this prisoner removed to the hulks or to some other prison, the Secretary of State would not give his consent. He said it would be considered discreditable to the Penitentiary if prisoners were transferred on account of its inability to secure them. “Why not chain him heavily?” asks the Secretary of State. “Why not?” replies Mr. Nihil. “Because if he is prosecuted and receives an additional sentence of three years, we cannot keep him all his time in chains. The peculiarity of our system,” goes on the governor, “hardly appears to be considered as an objection to his continuance here.” The principle of the Penitentiary was that it was not merely a place of safe custody and punishment, but a place of reformation; and, therefore, if it failed of this latter object in any instance, a power was reserved of sending away the prisoner as incorrigible, for fear of his interfering with the progress of the system among other prisoners. Next day he was told he would have to remain three years extra in the Penitentiary, whereupon he promised, of his own accord, to abstain from making any further attempts at escape, provided he were allowed to go among the other prisoners. He was so much more tractable and so much improved in temper that his request was granted, and he was brought once more under ordinary discipline.
Having remained quiet for a month or more, just to lull suspicion, he was again discovered—and just in the nick of time—to be on the verge of a second evasion. The window of his cell was found to have the screws taken out, with other suspicious symptoms. Smith declared that the state of his window was the result of accident. He was removed to another cell, and Mr. Nihil himself proceeded to examine the one he had left. His hammock when unlashed revealed the state of his rug and blankets. They had been torn up into convenient strips for scaling purposes. When the prisoner was himself searched, between his stockings and the soles of his feet were pieces of flannel, and in one of them was a small piece of metal, ingeniously formed into a kind of picklock. A piece of iron, for this purpose no doubt, was missed from one side of the cell window. He was placed in the infirmary “strong room” for safety; then apart in F gallery by day, sleeping at night in a small cell below. But soon he destroyed everything in F gallery, and then he was handcuffed. His next method of disturbance was to make a violent noise by beating with his handcuffs against the door; upon which he was ordered to be removed to a dark cell, not for punishment, but to prevent disturbance. Presently a noise of loud hammering was heard in this same dark cell. The officers on duty rushed to the spot, and found that by some extraordinary contrivance Smith had possessed himself of one of the staples by which the iron work was made fast on the back of the door to the dark cell. By means of this instrument he had worked away an iron grating fixed for ventilation, and had been engaged making a hole in the wall by which he would have soon escaped. Smith was handcuffed and taken to another cell.