Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1875 — A Troublesome Female Prisoner. [ARTICLE]

A Troublesome Female Prisoner.

Moncure D. Conway in a recent letter fives an interesting account of the famous lillbank Prison, London, and tells the following concerning an old-time female prisoner: The chief difficulties of the prison authorities have always been with female prisoners; since flogging and various other penal punishments are not permitted in the case of women. But there was one young woman, the mention of whose name still blanches the cheek of the Millbank official 1 . This was Julia St. Clair Newman. Her prison career was so revolutionary that she was discussed in Parliament and referred to a special committee of the House of Lords. She was—may yet be, for all known at Millbank—a Creole, bom in the West Indies, a lady by birth and education, and accomplished as artist and musician. Nay, she wrote clever poetry or anything else she pleased. Her guardian at Trinidad, having given her mother and herself too small an allowance, they attempted to increase it by the addition of their landlady’s silver plate. The mother died in Millbank soon after her arrival, and this young girl, whose sentence of transportation had been commuted because she was “ a lady,” began to try and bribe the wardswomen. She afterward, by the skillful use of chalk, went into a swift decline, deceiving the physicians. She invented ink, extemporized paper and smuggled letters in and out despite all vigilance. When caught in any misdemeanor she clasped people’s knees, wept, and set all the wardens and keepers to sobbing around her. Her acting showed power enough to have made a Fortune. She feigned insanity, and ancient as the trick was she everybody until she took a whim to try something else. She sent the police hunting up fictitious treasures buried in a flower-pot, and fictitious criminals, She wrote very clever lampoons of the chaplain and an able paper on the character of the Queen. She wrote this impromptu on an ill-humored matron: What a pity hell’s gates are not kept by Dame King; So surly a cur would let nobody in. Her hands were so small that no handcuffs could hold them. They sent her to a dark cell, and she refused to eat. She was so near death that the keepers had to yield. They sent her to Bedlam, but the physicians there discovered she was feigning, and she had to be sent back to Millbank. She perpetually tore up her clothes, and to keep her in wearing apparel whole wardrobes of clothes had to be sacrificed. Surgical-instrument makers took her exact measure to devise some contrivances that would hold her. She beat them all. The greatest manufacturer of restraints for the insane “made a pair of leather sleeves of extra length and fitted them himself. They came up to her shoulders, were strapped across, then also strapped around her waist, and again below, fastening her hands close to her side. Next morning the task mistress took the sleeves to the Governor. In the night Julia had extricated herself from them and cut them into ribbons, using a piece of glass she had secreted.” A yet more powerful strait-waistcoat was devised, and a collar put around her neck to keep her from biting it with her teeth. Next morning she was free, as usual. Finally the authorities of the prison notified the Government that they had not the power to restrain or rule this Creole girl, and that she kept the whole establishment in panic. So she was sent, on the Nautilus, to Van Dieman’s Land. Whethershe has carried thither her reign of terror I know not, but her career makes the great chapter in the history of Millbank.