CHAPTER VI

.

THE NEW YORK TOMBS.

Dickens may fairly be said to have begun his sight-seeing in America by going to jail. He commenced with those in Boston, and wherever else he found a prison he had a look at it. The interest he took in penal reform, which rendered him familiar with nearly every gaol in England, did not desert him when he made his first voyage across the Atlantic. In the "American Notes," among a number of minor and comparatively unimportant observations, most of which are, in fact, long out of date, and lost in the changed conditions of jail construction, discipline and government, there are two descriptions, which retain their interest. The first in order of occurrence in the book, relates to a prison as famous throughout America as Newgate is in Great Britain, and which, indeed, is the closest approach we have to the gloomy criminal cage of London. You may find it in a description of a walk about New York in