“When the weather was poor the men would sit together in Minor's room - a small and practically furnished cell not too dissimilar from a typical Oxford student's room...it was lined with bookshelves, all except for one glass fronted case that held the rarest of the 16th and 17th century works....The fireplace crackled merrily. Tea and Dundee cake were brought in by an inmate whom Minor had hired to work for him - one of the many privileges Nicholson, like Orange before him, accorded his distinguished inmate. There was a whole raft of other perks besides. He was able to order books at will from various antiquarian dealers in London, New York, and Boston. He was able to write uncensored letters to whomever he choose. He was able to have visitors more or less at will. his biographer, Simon Winchester, is outraged when these perks are taken away ordered by a new warden Doctor Brayn, which Winchster calls "a cruel outrage committed by a vengeful man" (198). "George Merrett, who was his victim, was an ordinary, innocent, working class farmer's son who was shot dead, leaving behind a pregnant wife and seven young children. The family was already living in the direst poverty, and with Merrett's murder things took a terrible turn for the worse. (postscript) One of the sons killed himself, and the wife drank herself to death. Another son became a gambler. ”
