‘It is an odd thing, the breaking-out,’ she said, ‘and quite peculiar to female gaols.’ She said there is a thought that prison women have an instinct for it; she knows only that, at some point in their terms at Millbank, her girls will nearly all of them submit. ‘And when they are young and strong and determined—well, then they are like savages. They shriek and crash about—we cannot get near them, but have to send for the men. The entire gaol hears the racket, and it takes all my power to calm the wards. For when one woman has broken out, another is sure to follow. The urge, that has been
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