The name of Jeremy Bentham is forever associated with Millbank Penitentiary. In his plans for its erection nearly a century ago he anticipated exactly the modern methods of to-day. During the time that Millbank was used as a prison, nearly a century, among the inmates were many notorious rogues and criminals. As a reformatory it was not a success, but the expensive experiment served as a lesson to the government and it paved the way for the model prison of to-day.]
All this of itself was harmless enough, the reader may say: and such it would have been undoubtedly in a boys’ school next door to some seminary for young ladies, in the suburbs; but it was hardly in accordance with the condition of prisoners, or the seclusion that was a part of their punishment. And no sooner was this intrigue detected, and put an end to, than another of similar character was discovered between the male convicts in the kitchen and certain maid-servants kept by the superior officers. The steward on searching the kitchen drawer of his housemaid—it does not appear what led him to ransack the hiding-places of his servants’ hall—found a letter addressed to the girl by the prisoner named Brown. Brown, when taxed with it, admitted the letter, but declared that the first overtures had come from the maid. He had been cleaning the steward’s door-bell, when this forward young person nodded to him from the passage, and he nodded back. At the same time another prisoner was caught at the same game with the female servant of the resident surgeon. On searching the prisoner-cooks a letter from the girl was found in this man’s pocket, and a lock of long hair, neatly plaited. The first-mentioned girl had not confined her smiles to Brown, for in her possession was another letter from John Ratcliffe, a prisoner who had been working in the starching yard close by the steward’s quarters. Betsy S., the surgeon’s second maid, had become also the object of the affections of a prisoner named Roberts, who had thrown a letter to her through the open window. But Betsy would not encourage his advances, and took the letter at once to her master. Moreover the chaplain’s maid was always at her kitchen window, making signs.