THE NINE WHITE STONES

Observer, Volume 3, Issue 70, 14 January 1882, Page 280

THE NINE WHITE STONES

Passing out of this building, I am in the penal yard, a spacious enclosure. Over the entrance to this yard might be written for many that which was inscribed over the doors of Dante's Inferno, " All hope abandon ye who enter here." Many that have walked in have never come out alive, never come out at all. It is the yard in which the gallows is erected when an execution is to be carried out. A row of eight whitened stones, with a ninth standing out in front like a sentinel, marks the last resting places of that number of murderers who expiated their crimes with their lives. I cannot enter this yard without an involuntary shudder. It recalls to my mind a dreadful scene of which I was, in my professional capacity as a journalist, a horrified spectator. It was the hanging of a man who shall here be nameless. "He that dies pays all debts," so let his soid rest, haply if in peace. A row of bath-rooms is erected at one end of this yard. We pass on to the penal mess room, a spacious room in which the prisoners in this department take their meals. It is furnished with long wooden tables and benches, white as when they were first tr.mcd out of the carpenter's hands. The room is used on Sundays for the Roman Catholic services. On the walls are hung the prison regulations, rules, directions, and the catalogue of a small, but well selected library.