MR STEAD IN PRISON.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1459, 26 January 1886, Page 2

MR STEAD IN PRISON.

On the day following sentence the Pall Mall Gazette states that the Rev. Benjamino Waugh was permitted by the courtesy of the Home Office to hold half-an-hour’s conversation with the prisoner on matter of business, Mr Waugh was shown into the waiting-room bare, barren, and forbidding, with a long deal table in the centre, and bench-like seats round it. There the visitor waited for a quarter of an hour, when he was taken up stairs to the visit-ing-room, where the prisoner was already. The visiting-roose, it is sufficient to say, is similar to the first, but with a better light. A warder sat in the room, and Mr Waugh sat at the Other end of the table, for he was not allowed either to shake hands with or otherwise welcome his friend. Mr Stead wore a yellow Glen-garry-shaped cap, of which he observed that it “ was like the cap he wore when a boy, but that it was without the ribbons.” He wore a loose- fitting short jacket of rough light yellow material, buttoned at the throat —of course without a collar—showing all the tops of the shirt and waistcoat in irregular line. He appeared to have been “ cropped,” but of course the visitor was allowed to ask no questions. His beard and moustache of coarse remained. His trousers were loose, baggy, of yellow linen of the duck type, with the Government arrow stamped with ink in four different places. His boots were largo and must have been uncomfortable; one was patched upon the toe, and the other had a thick new yellow leather sole upon it. He wore a round cloth label on his left breast marked R 2-8. Mr Stead looked very cold, and put bis hands inside his baggy sleeves as if for warmth. Ha was in good spirits, and seemed anxious to say many things, but the interview was business. Mr Stead was supplied with a mattress at night. By the regulation of the prison, ha had a Biblo in his cell, but, from its situation, Mr Waugh believed that he would not have light to read it, Mr Stead arrived at Coldbath Fields on a Tuesday night, when he received the regulation supper of skilly and brown bread. He was knocked up at six for a breakfast of skilly and brown bread, after which he saw the doctor. His dinner was suet pudding and brown bread, at noon, and supper, at 5.30, of skilly and brown bread. He would see no one again till breakfast the next morning, It may he said that a prisoner sentenced to hard labor has to pick 3 lbs of oakum as his daily task. Mr Stead, not having been so sentenced, would have to pick 1 Ibt