The String of Pearls (1850), p. 520

The turnkey went back and took up his post again outside Todd's door, and in the course often minutes or so, without making the least hurry of the subject, the Governor and the jail surgeon arrived and entered the cell.
Todd was picked up, and then it was found that he had struck his head against the stone floor, and so produced a state of insensibility, but whether he had done it on purpose or by accident, they could come to no opinion.
"Lay him on the bench," said the surgeon, "I can do nothing with him. He will come to himself again in a little while, I daresay, and be all right again
in the morning."
"He seems really, indeed, to be a very troublesome man," said the Governor to the surgeon.
"Very likely. Have you a mind for a game of cribbage to-night, Governor? I suppose this fellow will hang?"
"Yes, I don't mind a game. Yes, they will tuck him up."
With this they left Todd's cell, and the turnkey closed the door, and made the highly philosophical remark to himself of—
"Werry good."
Todd remained until the morning in a state of insensibility, and when he awakened from it he was very much depressed in strength indeed. He lay for about two hours gazing on the ceiling of his cell, and then the door was opened, and the turnkey appeared with a bason of milk-and-water and a lump of coarse bread.
"Breakfast!" he cried.
Todd glared at him.
"Breakfast; don't you understand that, old cock? However, it's all one to me. There it is—take it or leave it."
Todd did not speak, and the not over luxurious meal was placed on the table, or rather upon the end of the bench upon which he lay, and which served the purpose of a table.
The moment Todd heard the door of the cell closed behind the turnkey, he rose from his recumbent posture, and, although he staggered when he got to his
feet, he seized the bason, and at once, without tasting any of its contents, broke it against the corner of the bench to fragments.
"I shall elude them yet!" he said. "They think they have me in their toils—but I shall elude them yet!"
He selected a long jagged piece of the broken bason, and dragging down his cravat with one hand, he was upon the very point of plunging it into his throat with the other, when the turnkey sprang into the cell.
"Hold a bit!" he cried. "We don't allow that sort of thing here with any of our customers. You should have thought of those games before you got into the stone jug!"
With one powerful blow, the turnkey struck the piece of the broken bason from the hand of Todd, and with another he felled him to the floor.
"None o' your nonsense," he said; and then he carefully collected the pieces of the broken bason.
"Why should you grudge me the means of death/* said Todd, "when you know that you have brought me here among you to die?"
"Contrary to rules."
"In mercy, I ask you only to give me leave to take my own life, for I have failed in the object of my living."
"Contrary to rules."
The turnkey left the cell, then, as coolly as if nothing had happened, and carefully locked the door again, while he went to report the attempted suicide of the prisoner to the proper quarter.
Foiled, then, in every way, Todd looked round the cell for some means of ridding himself of his life and his troubles together; but he found none. He then paced the cell to and fro like a maniac, as he muttered to himself—
"All lost—lost—lost—all lost! Foiled, too, at the moment when I thought