165
eretly approved of the event, conceiving, I suppose, that sending me out of the country, might save me from a still worse fate; and, that this was therefore, (to use the common phrase of parents on such occasions,) the best thing that could have happened for me.
After the first effects of our grief had subsided, the society of our fellow-prisoners, and the bustle constantly prevailing in the prison, soon banished every trace of sorrow, and we became as cheerful as the best. My father and mother paid me every attention, and the produce of my own effects was fully adequate to my support for several months: when that resource failed, my father contributed his mite; and with the help of another friend or two, I was comparatively comfortable during my continuance in Newgate. As for Bromley, his father, on hearing his sad fate, had allotted him a weekly pittance, sufficient, with care, to keep him above want.
About a month after the close of the session, the gaol being unusually crowded with prisoners, a most dreadful contagion, called the gaol fever, made its appearance, and spread so universally, throughout every ward and division of the prison, that very few escaped its attack. I was one of the first to contract it, and was immediately carried to the infirmary, or sick-ward of the prison, where I only remember having my irons taken off, and being put
