Convict’s leg-iron

The Convict’s leg-iron is a filed manacle found beside Mrs. Joe after she is attacked at the forge. It turns an object from Pip’s secret childhood encounter into evidence in a later crime: Joe identifies it as an old prison iron, and Pip recognizes it as the one he had seen on the marshes. Yet the manacle does not establish who used it against Mrs. Joe, and Pip’s suspicions remain divided between Orlick and the strange man who had shown him a file.

Discovery and Physical Evidence

After Joe finds Mrs. Joe on the kitchen floor, the household is examined for signs of what happened. Nothing has been taken, and the room is otherwise undisturbed apart from the effects of the attack and a candle that had been blown out. The manacle lies beside Mrs. Joe when Joe picks her up. Its presence is the striking physical clue in an assault for which there is no clear witness.

Connection to the Marshes

Joe examines the iron with a smith’s practiced eye and judges that it had been filed apart some time before the attack. People from the prison ships confirm that it had belonged to a manacle, but cannot say when it left the ships. They also establish that it was not worn by either of the two convicts who escaped the previous night: one had already been recaptured and was still wearing his iron.

Pip privately connects the object to the convict he had met on the marshes. He remembers seeing and hearing that man filing at an iron, and believes the manacle found at the forge is the same one. This recognition connects the attack to Pip’s earlier secret assistance to the convict, but Pip does not conclude that the convict himself attacked Mrs. Joe.

Unresolved Ownership and Consequences

Pip instead suspects that someone else acquired the filed iron and used it in the attack. He considers Orlick, who had quarrelled with Mrs. Joe, and the strange man who had shown Pip the file. The available circumstances do not resolve which, if either, was responsible. The manacle therefore functions as a tangible clue without serving as proof of a particular assailant.

Its discovery also deepens Pip’s private burden. He believes he may have supplied the weapon indirectly, though unintentionally, and repeatedly debates whether to tell Joe the story of his encounter with the convict. He keeps silent, fearing that the revelation would estrange Joe or be dismissed as another fabrication. The manacle thus carries both investigative uncertainty and the weight of Pip’s concealed guilt.