We are going to see an innocent man--a cultivated and honourable gentleman.

But the ordinary inmates of Holloway are not innocent men; for the most part, the remand cases on the male side are professional criminals, while the women are either petty offenders or chronic inebriates.

Most of them are regular customers at the prison--such is the idiotic state of the law--who come into the reception-room like travellers entering a familiar hostelry, address the prison officers by name and demand the usual privileges and extra comforts--the 'drunks,' for instance, generally ask for a dose of bromide to steady their nerves and a light in the cell to keep away the horrors.

And such being the character of the inmates, their friends who visit them are naturally of the same type--the lowest outpourings of the slums; and it is not surprising to find that the arrangements of the prison are made to fit its ordinary inmates.

The innocent man is a negligible quantity, and no arrangements are made for him or his visitors." "But shall we not be taken to Reuben's cell ?" asked Miss Gibson.
"Bless you! no," I answered; and, determined to give her every inducement to change her mind, I continued: "I will describe the procedure as I have seen it--and a very dreadful and shocking sight I found it, I can tell you.