Behind the Sun Read Online Free

superior standard of accommodation. Female prisoners, however, were all housed together in the same wing. No improvements had been made in those fifty years; facilities had not been maintained, and there had been no proper effort to clean the wards or rid them of vermin.
    It was common knowledge that many of Newgate’s wards stood deliberately empty because the governor liked to save money by crowding inmates into half the prison’s available space. Harrie’s ward was loathsome. Twenty-nine females were crammed into a space thirty feet by fifteen, with one barred, unglazed window too small to admit enough breeze to stir the damp, fetid air inside, but big enough to let in the biting cold. A perpetual chill crept through the ward’s oozing stone walls and floor, which were filmed with the accumulated slime and grime of fifty years, and seemed to permeate everything it touched. Everything dripped, everything remained continuously damp — clothes, blankets, hair and even skin wouldn’t dry. Rats scuttled across feet and sniffed around faces at night, and centipedes and slugs curled and writhed wetly under anything left on the flagged floor.
    The inmates slept on a barracks bed, a wide wooden platform built inches above the floor and lined with rope mats, each covered with a threadbare rug, though Harrie’s rug had been stolen. It didn’t much matter, however, as bodies were crammed so tightly together they drew warmth from each other. At times during the day they went out into the courtyard onto which all the ground-level women’s wards opened. Those who wanted to wash, and as far as Harrie could tell most didn’t, could do so at a pump in the yard. For calls of nature, there were two profoundly noisome water closets off the yard, and a bucket in each ward for use at night when the doors were locked.
    At the time of Harrie’s incarceration, there were about one hundred and fifty female prisoners in Newgate, from bright-eyed young girls of eleven or twelve to toothless crones bent almost double with age, all jammed into five wards. Some women had little ones with them and infants still on the breast; many of these children would remain with their mother for her entire sentence, perhaps years. There was no separation at all of inmates — tried were mixed in with untried, debtors with felons, minor offenders with murderers, the insane with those awaiting transportation.
    During her first six days in Newgate, Harrie had spoken to almost no one. Though a member of the class referred to as the labouring poor herself, she considered her station to be above the women with whom she was sharing a cell, albeit by only a couple of rungs, and she was shocked at their crude and rough behaviour and by the utter squalor of the environment. Her cellmates appeared almost accustomed to living in such horrible conditions; indeed she was discovering some of them had been inmates of, or in and out of, Newgate for years.
    This morning, crouched on her mouldy rope mat, she clamped her hands even more firmly over her ears. Mad Martha was in full flight: on and on it went, the old woman’s cackles and moans and off-key singing echoing off the cell walls, a constant irritant to allbut Martha herself, who was oblivious to the agitation she was causing. The wardswoman had already belted her once and now Harrie felt an overwhelming urge to do the same.
    She poked her fingers so far into her ears it hurt, but it was hopeless. Someone would murder Martha soon, she was sure of it, and when it happened she wouldn’t be sorry at all.
    At a great rattling of keys Harrie stood and moved towards the door, desperate to escape out into the courtyard, but when it opened the turnkey wasn’t alone — beside her stood the big red-haired girl, whom Harrie hadn’t seen since she’d been taken away four days ago for kicking and swearing at a warder.
    ‘Morning all!’ the girl announced, her cheerful face glowing as though she’d been up with the lark and