March 16th 1879.

It had been a long, hard slog. Sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for stealing £20 from a wealthy nobleman is certainly tougher in real life than on paper. You are worked like a dog day and night for no other reason than the belief that enduring insurmountable suffering and back-breaking hard work would, in society’s eyes, “put you right”. It was work that would have no reason. Work for work’s sake. Like carrying a cannon ball across the yard – only to turn around and carry it back again, all day every day. Work like turning the heavy crank, yet its mechanisms drove nothing, for weeks on end. When your hard days work came to an end, the real work was only just beginning. A tiny cell of just a few squared yards, the size of a shed in fact, would house three men.

Surviving the night was the hardest part of prison; if you didn’t drop down dead from the crippling workload then the other elements surely would get you. Constant brawling and vicious attacks were common place. Disease ran wild amongst the inmates. Malnourishment and poor, sewage-ridden, water supplies lead to dysentery. This and being chained should-to-shoulder for 10 hours a day, like sardines in a tin, saw the floor awash with infected human waste, teeming with rodents and lice. On top of that it was hot and the smell was intolerable.

But worse than this, much worse than the inhumane conditions, were the gaolers. Permitted by law to be able to charge for ‘bed and board’ within their prisons, they were the real threat. For men with money, prices were generally extortionate but bearable and you could get by. For the many with no money, those for example that needed to steal from others to survive in the world (and got caught for it), were in serious trouble. They would have to open an account with the gaoler and would wind up being owned by them.

But today was the last day. The trembling wreck of what the prison service saw as a ‘reformed man’ would be set free. A man who, in almost six months, hadn’t seen proper daylight due to his water-pumping duties. For the last time would he have to live with the fear of being attacked or raped in the dark. It was the last time he would have to hear the slamming of heavy doors, the sound of the sliding bolt that kept him imprisoned or the feel of the heavy iron shackles on his wrists that caused deep wounds and weeping sores.

The big iron gates creaked as a guard unlocked them and the daylight flood in as they opened. Squinting with the pain of such a bright light, he was lead by the shoulder and marched outside. The gaolers showed no change toward a now free man. They were Screws and that’s all they knew. He was escorted to the perimeter, and without muttering a single word, the gaoler turned and scuttled back inside. For the first time in years, he had found himself alone.