pairs of stockings and socks every month; they spin a little.  The earnings of work, we think, average about eighteenpence per week for each person.  This is generally spent in assisting them to live, and helps to clothe them.  For this purpose they subscribe out of their small earnings of work about four pounds a month, and we subscribe about eight, which keeps them covered and decent.  Another very important point is the excellent effects we have found to result from religious education; our habit is constantly to read the Scriptures to them twice a day.  Many of them are taught, and some of them have been enabled to read a little themselves; it has had an astonishing effect.  I never saw the Scriptures received in the same way, and to many of them they have been entirely new, both the great system of religion and morality contained in them; and it has been very satisfactory to observe the effect upon their minds.  When I have sometimes gone and said it was my intention to read, they would flock up-stairs after me, as if it were a great pleasure I had to afford them.”

“You have confined yourself to reading the Scriptures, and pointing out generally the moral lessons that might be derived from them?”

“Yes, generally so.”

“Without inculcating any particular doctrine?”

“Nothing but the general Scripture doctrine; in short, they are not capable of receiving any other.”

“Nothing but the morals of the Scripture,—­the duties towards God and man?”

“That is all; we are very particular in endeavoring to keep close to that.  We consider, from the situation we fill, as it respects the public, as well as the poor creatures themselves, that it would be highly indecorous to press any particular doctrine of any kind, anything beyond the fundamental doctrines of Scripture.  We have had considerable satisfaction in observing, not only the improved state of the women in the prison, but we understand from the governor and clergyman at the penitentiary, that those who have been under our care are very different from those who come from other prisons.  We also may state that when they left Newgate to go to Botany Bay, such a thing was never known in the prison before as the quietness and order with which they left it; instead of tearing down everything, and burning it, it was impossible to leave it more peaceably.  And as a proof that their moral and religious instruction have had some effect upon their minds, when those poor creatures were going to Botany Bay, the little fund we allowed them to collect for themselves, in a small box under our care, they entreated might all be given to those that were going, those who remained saying that they wished to give up their little share of the profit to the others.”

“Do you know anything of the room and accommodation for the women in 1815?”

“I do not; I did not visit it in that year.”

“What was it in 1817?”

“Not nearly room enough.  If we had room enough to class them, I think a very great deal more might be accomplished.  We labor very much in the day, and we see the fruit of our labor:  but if we could separate them in the night, I do think that we could not calculate upon the effect which would be produced.”