A Group of Gaol Birds.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 16, 19 April 1884, Page 5

A Group of Gaol Birds.

I was surprised, during the eighteen months I was in gaol, at the number of respectable men — such as solicitors, an ex-officer of Guards, a bank manager, a man of title, stockbrokers, cashiers, ex-officer of the army and navy, clerks, clergymen, &c— in Coldbath Fields. Some of these had quite lost (supposing they ever had any) their pristine semblance of respectability ; others, again, retained the appearance of persons of education, and spoke and deported themselves as such. A lamentable instance of the fatal effect of associating with the scum, and the ease with which a young man of good position can acquire the style and appearance of a vagrant, was exemplified in youngß .He was not more than 25 or 26, had been a subaltern in the Guards, and came, moreover, of a good county stock ; and yet in six months he had so far degenerated as to be punished on the day his sentence expired for stealing a loaf from a fellow-prisoner. A worthy old man with grey hair and venerable appearance, and who might have passed for the chairman of a board of directors, appeared every morning at mine and other cells in the passage with a dustpan, and with methodical precision removed the sweepings. He told me he had been a solicitor with a large connection, with chambers in street, and had a wife and grown-up family in a comfortable house in a well-known suburb. His imprisonment was perceptibly telling on him, and his hair and beard grew whiter every day. A bustling, business-like man, one day attracted my attention. He was connected with the stores, and brought me a new pair of boots. He had been the manager of a London bank, and undergoing retirement for six months for some error regarding the ownership of £300. A tall, smart-looking man that was pointed out to me was, I am informed, an individual who attained notoriety some two years ago over a mining scheme. He was suffering two years' incarceration for a miscalculation of over £7,000. A man who called himself Count HH — — , and an ex-convict to boot, was languishing for a year, because certain nobleman had had the bad taste to object to his having obtained money from them by false pretences. This nobleman had a mania for petitioning the Home Office. In addition to these, numerous individuals who had been gentlemen in their day was known to me by sight. Conspicuous amongst them was an old gaol bird and ex convict, who had twenty years ago been a captain in the army, and ever since had existed (and still is) in prison, for terms of seven, five, five, two, and one years. All the starch had been thoroughly wrung out of him, though he occasionally stood on a dilapidated kind of dignity. I once asked him where a friend of his had gone. He replied, "I don't know ; we don't speak now ; he's no gentleman. Will you believe it, he had the impertinence to doubt my word." As his word had been doubted a good many times during the past twenty years, I was considerably amused by this assumption of dignity. — "Eighteen Months' Imprisonment."