The more crying needs of the Newgate female prison at that date are indicated in a memorandum found among Mrs. Fry’s papers. It was greatly in need of room, she said. The women should be under the control and supervision of female, and not, as heretofore, of male officers. The number of visitors should be greatly curtailed, and all communications between prisoners and their friends should take place at stated times, under special rules. The prisoners should not be dependent on their friends for food or clothing, but should have a sufficiency of both from the authorities. Employment should be a part of their punishment, and be provided for them by Government. They might work together in company, but should be separated at night according to classes, under a monitor. Religious instruction should be more closely considered. It was to supply these needs that the committee devoted its efforts, the ladies boldly promising that if a matron could be found who would engage never to leave the prison day or night, they would find employment for the prisoners and the necessary funds until the city could be induced to meet the expense.

The matron was found, and the first prison matron appointed, an elderly respectable woman, who proved competent, and discharged her duties with fidelity. Mrs. Fry next sought the countenance and support of the governor and chaplain, both of whom met her at her husband’s house to listen to her views and proposals. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, was not encouraging; he frankly told her that “this, like many other useful and benevolent designs for the improvement of Newgate, would inevitably fail.” Mr. Newman, however, bade her not despair; “but he has since confessed that when he came to reflect on the subject, and especially upon the character of the prisoners, he could not see even the possibility of success. Both, however, promised their warmest co-operation.” Mrs. Fry next saw one of the sheriffs, asking him to obtain a salary for the matron, and a room in the prison for the Ladies’ Committee. This sheriff, Mr. Bridges, was willing to help her if his colleagues and the Corporation agreed, “but told her that his concurrence or that of the city would avail her but little—the concurrence of the women themselves was indispensable; and that it was in vain to expect such untamed and turbulent spirits would submit to the regulations of a woman armed with no legal authority, and unable to inflict any punishment.” Nevertheless, the two sheriffs met Mrs. Fry at Newgate one Sunday afternoon. The women, seventy in number, were assembled, and asked whether they were prepared to submit to the new rules. All “fully and unanimously” agreed to abide by them, to the surprise of the sheriffs, who doubted their submitting to such restraints. Upon this the sheriffs addressed the prisoners, telling them that the scheme had official support; then turning to Mrs. Fry, one of the two magistrates said, “Well, ladies, you see your materials.”

The next business was to obtain work. It had occurred to Mrs. Fry that the manufacture of clothing for Botany Bay would be a suitable sort of employment, and she accordingly called upon the city firm, Messrs. Richard Dixon and Co., of Fenchurch Street, who had hitherto supplied these articles. She told them plainly that she was seeking to deprive them of a part of their trade, whereupon they magnanimously altogether relinquished it, feeling loth “to obstruct her laudable designs.” The work obtained, the work-room was next prepared. The sheriffs sent in carpenters, and the old prison laundry was speedily cleaned, whitewashed, and got ready; after which Mrs. Fry assembled all the convicted prisoners, told them her views and hopes, read them her proposed rules, which, as she did not come among them with “any absolute or authoritative pretensions,” should be put to the vote. The women present voluntarily subscribed to all, although they were stringent, and aimed at the reform of evil and probably long-cherished habits. These rules need not be inserted here at length. It will suffice to say that they laid down the principle of constant employment at knitting, needlework, or so forth; that begging, swearing, gambling, quarrelling, and immoral conversation were forbidden; that the women should submit themselves to their monitors, elected by themselves, to the yard-keeper, similarly elected, and to the matron; that personal cleanliness, a quiet, orderly demeanour, and silence at the work-tables should be incumbent on all.

These rules were not only adopted readily, but strictly observed. In one month a complete transformation had taken place in the women. At first Mrs. Fry had wished to keep this gratifying result a secret, but it was thought expedient to report progress to the Corporation, so that the new system might be approved and established by the authority of the city. On a day fixed the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the sheriffs and several aldermen, attended at Newgate, and saw with their own eyes the remarkable change effected in so short a time. The daily routine went on before them exactly as usual. The prisoners assembled; one of the ladies read a chapter in the Bible, then the women proceeded quietly to their work. “Their attention during the time of reading, their orderly and sober deportment, their decent dress, the absence of anything like tumult, noise, or contention, the obedience and respect showed by them, and the cheerfulness exhibited in their countenance and manners, conspired to excite the astonishment and admiration of their visitors. Many of these knew Newgate, had visited it a few months before, and had not forgotten the painful impressions made by a scene exhibiting perhaps the very utmost limits of misery and guilt.”[59] The city magistrates at once accepted the results achieved. Mrs. Fry’s rules were adopted into the prison system, power was conferred on the ladies to punish the refractory, and the salary of the matron was incorporated with the regular expenses of the prison.

The evidence of a gentleman who visited Newgate within a fortnight of the adoption of the new rules may fitly be added here. He went one day to call on Mrs. Fry at the prison, and was conducted to the women’s side. “On my approach,” he says, “no loud or dissonant sounds or angry voices indicated that I was about to enter a place which I was credibly assured had long had for one of its titles that of ‘Hell above ground.’ The court-yard into which I was admitted, instead of being peopled with beings scarcely human, blaspheming, fighting, tearing each other’s hair, or gaming with a filthy pack of cards for the very clothes they wore, which often did not suffice even for decency, presented a scene where stillness and propriety reigned. I was conducted by a

Entrance to Mrs. Fry’s Ward.
Entrance to Mrs. Fry’s Ward.

decently-dressed person, the newly-appointed yards-woman, to the door of a ward where at the head of a long table sat a lady belonging to the Society of Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needlework around it. Each wore a clean-looking blue apron and bib, with a ticket having a number on it suspended from her neck by a red tape. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then at a signal given resumed their seats and employments. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they were placed. I afterwards visited the other wards, which were the counterparts of the first.”

The efforts of the ladies, which had been at first concentrated upon the convicted, were soon directed also upon the untried. These still continued in a deplorable state, quarrelling and disorderly, bolder and more reckless because they were in doubt as to their future fate. Unhappily the same measure of success did not wait upon the attempt on this side. Many of these women counted upon an early release, and would not take heartily to work, although when they did they were “really and essentially improved.” Nor could it be expected that the new régime could be established without occasional insubordination and some backsliding. The rules were sometimes broken. Spirits had been introduced more than once; six or seven cases of drunkenness had occurred. But the women were careful not to break out before the ladies; if they swore, it was out of hearing, and although they still played cards, it was when the ladies’ backs were turned. Mrs. Fry told the Parliamentary committee how she expostulated with the women when she found they still gambled, and how she impressed upon them, “if it were true that there were cards in the prison,” that she should consider it a proof of their regard if they would have the candour and kindness to bring her their packs. By and by a gentle tap came at her door as she sat alone with the matron, and a trembling woman entered to surrender her forbidden cards; another and another followed, till Mrs. Fry had soon five packs of cards in her possession. The culprits fully expected reproof, but Mrs. Fry assured them that their fault was fully condoned, and, much to their surprise, rewarded them for their spontaneous good feeling. This seems to have been in the ascendant on the whole, and at the end of the first year it was satisfactorily proved to competent judges, the past and present Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, gaolers, and various grand juries, the ordinary, and others, that an extraordinary change for the better had shown itself in the conduct of the females.

The work done in Newgate soon obtained much publicity, to the undoubted and manifest distaste of those who had accomplished it. It was first noticed in the newspapers by the well-known Robert Owen, who adduced it as a proof of the effects of kindness and regular habits. Prison discipline was at this time attracting attention, and Mrs. Fry’s labours were very remarkable in this line. Very soon the female side at Newgate became quite a show. Every one of any status in society, every distinguished traveller, all people with high aims or deep feelings, were constrained to visit the prison. Royalty for the first time took an interest in the gaol. The Duke of Gloucester was among the visitors, and was escorted round by Mrs. Fry in person. Another day she was engaged with the Chancellor of the Exchequer; on a third with the Home Secretary and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Still higher and more public honour was done to this noble woman by the Marquis of Lansdowne in the House of Lords, who in 1818, in moving an address on the state of the English prisons, spoke in terms of the highest eulogy of what had been effected “by Mrs. Fry and other benevolent persons in Newgate.” After this, admission to view the interior of Newgate was eagerly sought by numbers of persons whose applications could not well be refused, in spite of the inconvenience occasioned by thus turning a place of durance into a sentimental lounge. A more desirable and useful result of these ministrations was the eagerness they bred in others to imitate this noble example. Numbers of persons wrote to Mrs. Fry from all parts of the country, seeking advice and encouragement as to the formation of similar societies. Even magistrates appealed to her regarding the management of their prisons. In consequence of the numerous communications received by the Newgate Association, a “corresponding committee” was formed to give information and send replies. Letters came from various capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburgh, Turin, and Amsterdam, which announced the formation of Ladies’ Societies for prison visiting.

During many years following its inauguration, the “Ladies’ Association” continued their benevolent exertions with marked and well-deserved success. They did not confine their labours to Newgate, but were equally active in the other metropolitan prisons. They also made the female transports their peculiar charge, and obtained many reforms and ameliorations in the arrangement of the convict ships, and the provision for the women on landing at the Antipodes. That the first brilliant successes should be long and continuously maintained could hardly be expected. As time passed and improvements were introduced, there was not the same room for active intervention, and it was difficult to keep alive the early fire. The energy of the Ladies’ Committee might not exactly flag, but it came later on to be occasionally misapplied. And it will be found in a later chapter, that the inspectors of prisons were not altogether satisfied with the ground taken up by the association.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEGINNINGS OF PRISON REFORM.

WHILE Mrs. Fry was diligently engaged upon her self-imposed task in Newgate, other earnest people, inspired doubtless by her noble example, were stirred up to activity in the same great work. It began to be understood that prison reform could only be compassed by continuous and combined effort. The pleadings, however eloquent, of a single individual were unable to more than partially remedy the widespread and colossal evils of British prisons. Howard’s energy and devotion were rewarded by lively sympathy, but the desire to improve which followed his exposures was but short-lived. It was so powerless against the persistent neglect of those intrusted with prison management, that, five-and-twenty years later, Mr. Neild, a second Howard, as indefatigable and self-sacrificing, found by personal visitation that the condition of gaols throughout the kingdom was, with a few bright exceptions, still deplorable and disgraceful. Mr. Neild was compelled to admit in 1812 that “the great reformation produced by Howard was in several places merely temporary: some prisons that had been ameliorated under the persuasive influence of his kind advice were relapsing into their former horrid state of privation, filthiness, severity, or neglect; many new dungeons had aggravated the evils against which his sagacity could not but remonstrate; the motives for a transient amendment were becoming paralyzed, and the effect had ceased with the cause.”

I have shown in a previous chapter what Newgate was at this period, despite a vast expenditure and boasted efforts to introduce reforms. Some of the county gaols, and one or two borough gaols, had been rebuilt, generally through the personal activity of influential and benevolent local magnates, but the true principles of prison construction were as yet but imperfectly understood, and such portions of the “improved” gaols of that period as were still extant a few years back, contrast ludicrously with the prison architecture based upon a century’s experience of our own age.

The neglect of prison reform in those days was not to be visited upon the legislature. The executive, although harassed by internal commotion and foreign war, was not entirely callous to the crying need for amelioration in gaols. Measures remedial, although at best partial and incomplete, were introduced from time to time. Thus in 1813 the exaction of gaol fees had been forbidden by law, and two other acts more peremptory and precise followed on the same subject in succeeding years. In 1814 a bill was brought in to insist upon the appointment of chaplains in gaols, and when this had passed into law, it was subsequently amplified, and the rates of salaries fixed. Various acts were also passed to consolidate and amend previous gaol acts. The erection of new prison buildings was made imperative under certain conditions and following certain rules; the principle of classification was freshly enunciated; prison regulations were framed for general observance. But the effect of this legislation was rather weakened by the remoteness of the pressure exercised. The onus of improvement lay upon the magistracy, the local authorities administering local funds, and they were not threatened with any particular penalties if they evaded or ignored the new acts. Moreover, the laws applied more particularly to county jurisdictions. The borough gaols, those in fact under corporate management, were not included in the new measures; it was hoped that their rulers would hire accommodation in the county prisons, and that the inferior establishments would in course of time disappear. Yet the borough gaols were destined to survive many years, and to exhibit for a long time to come all the worst features of gaol mismanagement.

It was in 1817 that a small band of philanthropists resolved to form themselves into an association for the improvement of prison discipline. They were hopeless of any general reform by the action of the executive alone. They felt that private enterprise might with advantage step in, and by the collection and diffusion of information, and the reiteration of sound advice, greatly assist the good work. The association was organized under the most promising auspices. A king’s son, the Duke of Gloucester, was the patron; among the vice-presidents were many great peers of the realm, several bishops, and a number of members of the House of Commons, including Mr. Manners Sutton, Mr. Sturges Bourne, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir James Scarlett, and William Wilberforce. An active committee was appointed, comprising many names already well known, some of them destined to become famous in the annals of philanthropy. One of the moving spirits was the Honourable H. G. Bennet, M.P., whose vigorous protests against the lamentable condition of Newgate have already been recorded. Mrs. Fry’s brother, Mr. Samuel Hoare, Junior, was chairman of the committee, on which also served many noted members of the Society of Friends—Mr. Gurney, Mr. Fry, Messrs. Forster, and Mr. T. F. Buxton, the coadjutor of Wilberforce in the great anti-slavery struggle. Mr. Buxton had already been associated with Mrs. Fry in the Newgate visitation, and his attention had thus been drawn to the neglected state of English prisons. When in Belgium he had examined with great satisfaction the admirable management of the great “Maison de Force” at Ghent,[60] which Howard had eulogized some forty years before. Mr. Buxton communicated what he had seen at Ghent to the Prison Discipline Society, and was induced to make the account public. In order to give greater value to the pamphlet, he personally visited several English gaols, and pointed his observations by drawing forcible contrasts between the good and bad.

Mr. Buxton’s small work on prison discipline[61] gave a new aspect to the question he had so much at heart. For the first time the doctrine was enunciated that prisoners had rights of their own. The untried, and in the eyes of the law still innocent, could claim pure air, wholesome and sufficient food, and opportunities for exercise. They had a right, Mr. Buxton affirmed, to be employed in their own crafts, provided it could be safely followed in prison. “You have no right,” he says, addressing the authorities, “to subject a prisoner to suffering from cold, by want of bed-clothing by night or firing by day; and the reason is plain: you have taken him from his home, and have deprived him of the means of providing himself with the necessaries or comforts of life, and therefore you are bound to furnish him with moderate indeed but suitable accommodation.” “You have for the same reason,” he goes on, “no right to ruin his habits by compelling him to be idle, his morals by compelling him to mix with a promiscuous assemblage of hardened and convicted criminals, or his health by forcing him at night into a damp, unventilated cell, with such crowds of companions as very speedily render the air foul and putrid; or to make him sleep in close contact with the victims of contagious and loathsome disease, or amidst the noxious effluvia of dirt and corruption. In short, attention to his feelings, mental and bodily, a supply of every necessary, abstraction from evil society, the conservation of his health and industrious habits, are the clear, evident, undeniable rights of an unconvicted prisoner.” Nor even when found guilty and his liberty forfeited did his privileges cease. The law appointed a suitable punishment for the offence; it was for those charged with the administration of the law to guard carefully against any aggravation of that punishment, to see that “no circumstances of severity are found in his treatment which are not found in his sentence.” No judge ever condemned a man to be half-perished with cold by day, or half-suffocated with heat by night. “Who ever heard of a criminal being sentenced to catch the rheumatism or the typhus fever?” “Disease, cold, famine, nakedness, and contagious and polluted air are not lawful punishments in the hands of the civil magistrates; nor has he a right to poison or starve his fellow-creatures.”[62] “The convicted delinquent has his rights,” said Mr. Buxton authoritatively. “All measures and practices in prison which may injure him in any way are illegal, because they are not specified in his sentence; he is therefore entitled to a wholesome atmosphere, decent clothing and bedding, and a diet sufficient to support him.”

These somewhat novel but undoubtedly indisputable propositions were backed up, not by sound arguments only, but by the letter of the law. As Mr. Buxton pointed out, many old acts of parliament designed to protect the prisoner were still in full force. Some might be in abeyance, but they had never been repealed, and some were quite freshly imported upon the Statute Book. As far back as the reign of Charles II., a law was passed[63] declaring that sufficient provision should be made for the relief and setting on work of “poor and needy prisoners committed to the common jail for felony and other misdemeanours, who many times perish before their trial; and the poor there living idle and unemployed become debauched, and come forth instructed in the practice of thievery and lewdness.” As a remedy, justices of the peace were empowered to provide materials for the setting of poor prisoners to work, and to pay overseers or instructors out of the county rates. Again, the 22 Charles II. c 20 ordered the gaoler to keep felons and debtors “separate and apart from one another, in distinct rooms, on pain of forfeiting his office and treble damages to the party aggrieved.” A much later act, the 14 Geo. III. c. 59 (1774), which was contemporaneous with Howard’s first journeys, laid down precise rules as regards cleanliness, and the proper supply of space and air. This act set forth that “whereas the malignant fever commonly called the jail distemper is found to be owing to want of cleanliness and fresh air in the several jails, the fatal consequences whereof might be prevented if the justices of the peace were duly authorized to provide such accommodations in jails as may be necessary to answer this salutary purpose, it is enacted that the justices shall order the walls of every room to be scraped and white-washed once every year.” Ventilators, hand and others, were to be supplied. An infirmary, consisting of two distinct rooms, one for males and one for females, should be provided for the separate accommodation of the sick. Warm and cold baths, or “commodious bathing tubs,” were to be kept in every gaol, and the prisoners directed to wash in them before release. These provisions were almost a dead letter. Yet another act passed in 1791, if properly observed, should have insured proper attention to them. By the 31 Geo. III. c. 46, s. 5, two or more justices were appointed visitors of prisons, and directed to visit and inspect three times every quarter. They were to report in writing to quarter sessions as to the state of the gaol, and as to all abuses which they might observe therein.

The most important gaol act of that early period, however, was the 24 Geo. III. c. 54, s. 4 (1784), which was the first legislative attempt to compel the classification of prisoners, or their separation into classes according to their categories or crimes. It was made incumbent upon the justices to provide distinct places of confinement for five classes of prisoners, viz.—

1. Prisoners convicted of felony.

2. Prisoners committed on a charge or suspicion of felony.

3. Prisoners guilty of misdemeanours.

4. Prisoners charged with misdemeanours.

5. Debtors.

It was further ordered that male prisoners should be kept perfectly distinct from the females. King’s evidences were also to be lodged apart. Infirmaries separating the sexes were also to be provided, a chapel too, and warm and cold baths. “Care also was to be taken that the prisoners shall not be kept in any apartment underground.”

In an early report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, published some six-and-thirty years after the promulgation of this act, the flagrant and persistent violations of it and others, which had continued through that long period, are forcibly pointed out. In 1818, out of five hundred and eighteen prisons in the United Kingdom, to which a total of upwards of one hundred thousand prisoners had been committed in the year, only twenty-three prisons were divided according to law; fifty-nine had no division whatever to separate males and females; one hundred and thirty-six had only one division for the purpose; sixty-eight had only two divisions, and so on. In four hundred and forty-five prisons no work of any description had been introduced for the employment of prisoners; in the balance some work was done, but with the most meagre results. The want of room was still a crying evil. In one hundred gaols, capable of accommodating only eight thousand five hundred and forty-five persons, as many as thirteen thousand and fifty-seven were crowded. Many of the gaols were in the most deplorable condition: incommodious, as has been stated, insecure, unhealthy, and unprovided with the printed or written regulations required by law. To specify more particularly one or two of the worst, it may be mentioned that in the Borough Compter the old evils of indiscriminate association still continued unchecked. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or killed it by gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded almost inconceivably. In a space twenty feet long by six wide, twenty men slept on eight straw beds, with sixteen rugs amongst them, and a piece of timber for a bolster. Mr. Buxton, who found this, declared that it seemed physically impossible, but he was assured that it was true, and that it was accomplished by “sleeping edgeways.” One poor wretch, who had slept next the wall, said he had been literally unable to move for the pressure. “In the morning the stench and heat were so oppressive that he and every one else on waking rushed unclothed into the yard;” and the turnkey told Mr. Buxton that the “smell on first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse.” The hospital was filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with closed windows, where a lad lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first perfectly healthy, were lodged. Of course they were seized with the fever; so that the culprit, in addition to his sentence, had to endure by “the regulations of the city a disease very dangerous in its nature,” and ran the risk of a lingering and painful death.[64]

At Guildford prison, which Mr. Buxton also visited in 1818, there was no infirmary, no chapel, no work, no classification. The irons, which nearly every one wore, were remarkably heavy; those double ironed could not take off their small clothes.[65] No prison dress was allowed, and half the inmates were without shirts or shoes or stockings. The diet was limited to dry bread, which was of the best certainly, and a pound and a half in weight. Matters were on much the same footing at St. Albans. They were far worse at Bristol, although at Mr. Buxton’s visit a new gaol was in process of erection, the first step towards reform since Howard’s visitation in 1774. In 1818 the old gaol was so densely packed that it was nearly impossible to pass through the yards for the throng. One hundred and fifty were lodged in a prison just capable of holding fifty-two. In the crowd, all of them persons who had “no other avocation or mode of livelihood but thieving,” Mr. Buxton counted eleven children—children hardly old enough to be released from the nursery. All charged with felony were in heavy irons, without distinction of age. All were in ill health; almost all were in rags; almost all were filthy in the extreme. The state of the prison, the desperation of the prisoners, broadly hinted in their conversation and plainly expressed in their conduct, the uproar of oaths, complaints, and obscenity, “the indescribable stench,” presented together a concentration of the utmost misery and the utmost guilt. It was “a scene of infernal passions and distresses,” says Buxton, “which few have imagination sufficient to picture, and of which fewer still would believe that the original is to be found in this enlightened and happy country.”

There was still worse to come. Having explored the yards and adjacent day rooms, and sleeping cells, a door was unlocked, the visitors were furnished with candles, and they descended eighteen long steps into a vault. At the bottom was a circular space, through which ran a narrow passage, and the sides of which were fitted with barrack bedsteads. The floor was on the level of the river, and very damp. The smell at one o’clock of the day “was something more than can be expressed by the term disgusting.” On the dirty bedstead lay a wretched being in the throes of severe illness. The only ventilation of this pit, this “dark, cheerless, damp, unwholesome cavern—a dungeon in its worst sense”—was by a kind of chimney, which the prisoners kept hermetically sealed, and which had never been opened in the memory of the turnkey. Untried persons were often lodged in this nauseous underground den, and sometimes slept in “the pit,” loaded with heavy irons for a whole year, waiting the gaol delivery. Confinement for twelve months in the Bristol gaol was counted a punishment equivalent to seven years’ transportation.

In this prison there was no female infirmary. Sick women and their children remained in the ordinary wards, and propagated disease. No prison dress was allowed; no reception-room was provided, no soap, towels, or baths. The bedclothes consisted only of a single “very slight” rug. The allowance of food daily to felons was a fourpenny loaf, a price which in those days fluctuated enormously—as much as a hundred per cent. in a couple of years; but as no similar variation occurred in the prisoner’s appetite, his ration was somewhat precarious. As for the debtors, they had no allowance whatever, and were often in imminent danger of starvation. With all this, the inmates were crowded together at night to such a degree as to excite surprise that they should escape suffocation. There reigned through the whole edifice a chilly, damp, unwholesome atmosphere, and the effluvia from the prisoners was so nauseous that the chaplain found it necessary to take his place before they entered chapel, as he could not otherwise have faced the smell.

It is consoling to know that there were a few brilliant exceptions to this cruel, callous neglect. Already, as early as 1818, a prison existed at Bury St. Edmunds which was a model for imitation to others at that time, and which even fulfilled many of the exacting requirements of modern days. The great principles of classification, cleanliness, and employment were closely observed. There were eighty-four separate sleeping-cells, and unless the gaol was overcrowded, every inmate passed the night alone, and in comparative comfort, with a bed and proper bedding. The prison stood on a dry, airy situation outside the town. Prisoners on reception were treated as they are now-a-days—bathed, dressed in prison clothes, and inspected by the surgeon. No irons were worn except as a punishment. Personal cleanliness was insisted upon, and all parts of the prison were kept scrupulously clean. There was an infirmary, properly found and duly looked after. No idleness was permitted among the inmates. Trades were taught, or prisoners were allowed to follow their own if suitable. There was, besides, a mill for grinding corn, somewhat similar to a turn-spit, which prisoners turned by walking in rows. This made exertion compulsory, and imposed hard labour as a proper punishment. Another gaol, that of Ilchester, was also worthy of all commendation. It exhibited all the good points of that at Bury. At Ilchester the rule of employment had been carried further. A system not adopted generally till nearly half a century later had already prevailed at Ilchester. The new gaol had been in a great measure constructed by the prisoners themselves. Masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters had been employed upon the buildings, and the work was pronounced excellent by competent judges. Industrial labour had also been introduced with satisfactory results. Blanket weaving and cloth spinning was carried on prosperously, and all the material for prisoners’ apparel was manufactured in the gaol. There were work-rooms for wool-washing, dyeing, carding, and spinning. The looms were constantly busy. Tailors were always at work, and every article of clothing and bedding was made up within the walls. There was a prison laundry too, where all the prisoners’ linen was regularly washed. The moral welfare of the inmates was as closely looked after as the physical. There was an attentive chaplain, a schoolmaster, and regular religious and other instruction.

Compared with those highly meritorious institutions Newgate still showed but badly. Its evils were inherent and irremediable, but some ameliorating measures had been introduced, mainly through the exertions of a new governor, Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Newman at Newgate in 1817.[66] The most noticeable of the improvements introduced was a better regulation of dietaries within the prison. The old haphazard system, by which meat was issued in bulk, a week’s allowance at a time, was abolished, and there was a regular scale of daily rations adopted. The diet was now ample. It consisted of a pound and a half of bread per diem; for breakfast a pint of gruel; for dinner half a pound of boiled meat, or a quart of soup with vegetables, on alternate days. The food was properly prepared in the prison kitchen. Meat was no longer issued raw, to be imperfectly cooked before a ward fire and bolted gluttonously, the whole two pounds at one sitting. Mr. Brown confidently asserted that no gaol in England now fed its inmates so well as did Newgate. So plentiful was this dietary, that although the old permission remained in force of allowing the friends of prisoners to bring them supplies from outside, the practice was falling into abeyance, and the prisoners seldom required private assistance to eke out their meals.[67] It was also claimed for the more ample and more orderly distribution of victuals, that the general health of the prisoners had greatly improved. Mr. Brown also, much to his own credit, brought about the abandonment of the practice of ironing all prisoners as a matter of course.

In 1818 prisoners awaiting trial in Newgate, were at length relieved from this illegal infliction. Convicts were not even compelled to wear irons, providing they behaved well. It was found that shackles might be safely dispensed with, even in the case of the most desperate characters. This was effected by stopping the nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, which had hitherto prevailed all over the gaol. Ironing it will be remembered,[68] was a distinguishing badge, so that when the gaol was cleared the free might be readily known from the captive, and escapes prevented. Under the new rule visitors were not allowed to pass into the interior of the prison, but were detained between the grating. This change led to some discontent, until it was found that the much greater boon of relief from irons accompanied it, and the reform was quietly accepted. Indeed the best consequences followed from the removal of irons. The prisoners were much better disposed; there were no riots, and fewer disturbances.

But nothing short of radical reform and complete reconstruction could touch the deep-seated evils of association, overcrowding, and idleness. The first still produced deplorable results—results to be observable for many years to come. Mr. Buxton mentions the case of a boy whose apparent innocence and artlessness had attracted his attention. He had been committed for an offence for which he was acquitted. He left Newgate utterly corrupted, and after lapsing into crime, soon returned with a very different character. Other cases of moral deterioration have already been recorded. Some attempt was made to reduce the overcrowding, on the recommendation of the House of Commons Committee of 1818, but this applied only a partial remedy. The bulk of the prisoners were still left in idleness. A few fortunate criminals, many of them kept back from transportation on purpose, who were skilled in trades, were employed at them. Painters, plasterers, and carpenters were allowed to follow their handicrafts, with the reward of sixpence per diem and a double allowance of food. They used their own tools, and this without any dangerous consequences as regards facilitating the escape of others, thus disposing of the objection so long raised against the industrial employment of prisoners in Newgate. But this boon of toil was denied to all but a very limited number. As the Prison Discipline Society pertinently observed in a report dated 1820, “It is obvious that reformation must be materially impeded, and in some cases utterly defeated, when the prisoners are defectively classed, remain without constant inspection or employment, and are consequently condemned to habits of idleness and dissipation.”

Newgate prisoners were the victims to another most objectionable practice which obtained all over London. Persons committed to a metropolitan gaol at that time were taken in gangs, men and women handcuffed together, or linked on to a long chain, unless they could afford to pay for a vehicle out of their own funds. Even then they were not certain of the favour, for I find a reference to a decent and respectable woman sent to Newgate, who handed a shilling to the escort warder to provide her with a hackney coach; but this functionary pocketed the cash, and obliged the woman to walk, chained to the rest. As the miserable crew filed through the public streets, exposed to the scornful gaze of every passenger, they were followed by a crowd of reckless boys, who jeered at and insulted them. Many thus led in procession were in a shocking condition of dirt and misery, frequently nearly naked, and often bearing upon them the germs, more or less developed, of contagious disease. “Caravans,” the forerunners of the prison vans, were first made use of about 1827. That the need for prison reform was imperative may be gathered from the few out of many instances I have adduced, yet there were those who, wedded to ancient ideas, were intolerant of change; they would not admit the existence of any evils. One smug alderman, a member of the House of Commons, sneered at the ultra philanthropy of the champions of prison improvement. Speaking on a debate on prison matters, he declared that “our prisoners have all that prisoners ought to have, without gentlemen think they ought to be indulged with Turkey carpets.” The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline was taxed with a desire to introduce a system tending to divest punishment of its just and salutary terrors; an imputation which the Society indignantly and very justly repudiated, the statement being, as they said, “refuted by abundant evidence, and having no foundation whatever in truth.”

Among those whom the Society found arrayed against it was Sydney Smith, who, in a caustic article contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ protested against the pampering of criminals. While fully admitting the good intentions of the Society, he condemned their ultra humanitarianism as misplaced. He took exception to various of the proposals of the Society. He thought they leant too much to a system of indulgence and education in gaols. He objected to the instruction of prisoners in reading and writing. “A poor man who is lucky enough,” he said, “to have his son committed for a felony educates him under such a system for nothing, while the virtuous simpleton who is on the other side of the wall is paying by the quarter for these attainments.” He was altogether against too liberal a diet; he disapproved of industrial occupations in gaols, as not calculated to render prisons terrible. “There should be no tea and sugar, no assemblage of female felons around the washing-tub, nothing but beating hemp and pulling oakum and pounding bricks—no work but what was tedious, unusual.”... “In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil-doers, there must be no sharings of profits, no visiting of friends, no education but religious education, no freedom of diet, no weavers’ looms or carpenters’ benches. There must be a great deal of solitude, coarse food, a dress of shame, hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour, a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort.”[69]

Undeterred by these sarcasms and misrepresentations, the Society pursued its laudable undertaking with remarkable energy and great singleness of purpose. The objects it had in view were set forth in one of its earliest meetings. It sought to obtain and diffuse useful information, to suggest beneficial regulations, and circulate tracts demonstrating the advantages of classification, constant inspection, regular employment, and humane treatment generally, with religious and moral instruction. It earnestly advocated the appointment of female officers to take exclusive charge of female prisoners, a much-needed and, according to our ideas, indispensable reform, already initiated by the Ladies’ Committee at Newgate.[70] It made the subject of the newly-invented tread-wheels, or stepping-wheels, as they were at first called, its peculiar affair, and obtained full details, from places where they had been adopted, of the nature of these new machines,[71] the method by which they were worked, and the dietaries of the prisoners employed upon them. Nor did it confine itself to mere verbal recommendations. The good it tried to do took active shape in the establishment of temporary refuges—at Hoxton for males, and in the Hackney Road for females—for the reception of deserving cases discharged from prison. The governor of Newgate and other metropolitan prisons had orders of admission to this refuge, which he could bestow on prisoners on release, and so save the better-disposed or the completely destitute from lapsing at once into crime. The refuge, which had for its object the training of its inmates in habits of industry, and in moral and religious duty, and which after a time sought to provide them with suitable situations, was supported entirely out of the funds of the Society. At the time of its greatest prosperity, its annual income from donations and subscriptions was about £1600.

Another point to which the Society devoted infinite pains was the preparation of plans for the guidance of architects in the construction of prisons. A very valuable volume published by the Society traced the progress of prison architecture from the days when the gaol was the mere annexe of the baronial or episcopal castle, or a dungeon above or below the gate of a town, to the first attempts at systematic reconstruction carried out under the advice and supervision of Howard.[72] It is interesting to observe that the plan of “radiation,” by which the prison blocks radiated from a central hall, like spokes in a wheel, was introduced as early as 1790 by Mr. Blackburn, an architect of eminence who was very largely employed in the erection of prison buildings at the close of the last century. With some important modifications this principle of radiation is still the rule. The Society did not limit its remarks to the description of what had already been done, but it offered suggestions for future buildings, with numerous carefully-executed drawings and designs of the model it recommended for imitation. Experience has since shown that in some respects these plans are defective, especially in the placing of the governor’s residence in the centre of the prison. It was thought that this would guarantee constant supervision and inspection, but it did nothing of the kind, and only the presence of warders on duty is found now-a-days to be really efficacious. The main recommendations, however, are based upon common sense, and none are more commendable than that which deprecates the excessive ornamentation of the external parts of the edifice. “The new gaols,” as Howard says, “having pompous fronts, appear like palaces to the lower class of people, and many persons are against them on this account.” The Prison Society reproves the misdirected efforts of ambitious architects, who by a lavish and improvident expenditure of public money sought to “rank the prisons they built among the most splendid buildings of the city or town.” Absence of embellishment is in perfect unison with the character of the establishment. These are principles fully recognized now-a-days, and it may fairly be conceded that the Prison Discipline Society’s ideal differed little from that kept in view in the construction of the latest and best modern gaols.

After a few years of active exertion the Society was rewarded by fresh legislation. To its efforts, and their effect upon Parliament and the public mind, we must attribute the new Gaol Acts of 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, and 5 Geo. IV. cap. 85, which having gone through several sessions, at last became law in 1823-4. By the preamble of the first-named act it was declared “expedient to introduce such measures and arrangements as shall not only provide for the safe custody, but shall also tend more effectually to preserve the health and improve the morals of the prisoners, and shall insure the proper measure of punishment to convicted offenders.” Accordingly due provision was made for the enforcement of hard labour on all prisoners sentenced to it, and for the employment of all others. As a rider to this enactment, it was laid down that any prisoner who could work and would not had no claim to be supported in gaol, “unless such ability (to work) should cease by reason of sickness, infirmity, the want of sufficient work, or from any other cause.” It was distinctly laid down that male and female prisoners should be confined in separate buildings or parts of the prison, “so as to prevent them from seeing, conversing, or holding any intercourse with each other.” Classification was insisted upon, in the manner laid down by the 24 Geo. III. cap. 54,[73] with such further separation as the justices should deem conducive to good order and discipline. Female prisoners were in all cases to be under the charge of female officers. Every prison containing female prisoners was to have a matron who was to reside constantly in the prison. The religious and moral welfare of the prisoners were to be attended to, the first by daily services, the latter by the appointment of schoolmasters and instruction in reading and writing. Last, but not least, the use of irons was strictly forbidden, “except in cases of urgent and absolute necessity,” and every prisoner was to be provided with a hammock or cot to himself, suitable bedding, and, if possible, a separate cell. The second act, passed in the following year, enlarged and amended the first, and at the same time gave powers to the House to call for information as to the observance of its provisions.

The promulgation of these two Gaol Acts strengthened the hands of the Prison Discipline Society enormously. It had now a legal and authoritative standard of efficiency to apply, and could expose all the local authorities that still lagged behind, or neglected to comply with the provisions of the new laws. The Society did not shrink from its self-imposed duty, but continued year after year, with unflagging energy and unflinching spirit, to watch closely and report at length upon the condition of the prisons of the country. For this purpose it kept up an extensive correspondence with all parts of the kingdom, and circulated queries to be answered in detail, whence it deduced the practice and condition of every prison that replied. Upon these and the private visitations made by various members the Society obtained the facts, often highly damnatory, which were embodied in its annual reports. The progress of improvement was certainly extremely slow. It was long before the many jurisdictions imitated the few. Gaols, of which the old prison at Reading was a specimen, were still left intact. In that prison, with its cells and yards arranged within the shell of an ancient abbey chapel, the prisoners, without firing, bedding, or sufficient food, spent their days “in surveying their grotesque prison, or contriving some means of escape by climbing the fluted columns which supported the Gothic arches of the aisles, and so passing by the roof down into the garden and on to freedom.” In a county prison adjoining the metropolis, the separation between the male and female quarters was supposed to be accomplished by the erection of an iron railing; in this same prison capital convicts were chained to the floor until execution. In another gaol not far off male and female felons still occupied the same room—underground, and reached by a ladder of ten steps. In others the separation between the sexes consisted in a hanging curtain, or an imaginary boundary line, and nothing prevented parties from passing to either side but an empty regulation which all so disposed could defy. Numbers of the gaols were still unprovided with chaplains, and the prisoners never heard Divine service. In many others there were no infirmaries, no places set apart for the confinement of prisoners afflicted with dangerous and infectious disorders. No attempt was made to maintain discipline. Half the gaols had no code of rules properly prepared and sanctioned by the judges, according to law.

By degrees, however, the changes necessary to bring the prisons into conformity with the recent acts were attempted, if not actually introduced into the county prisons, to which, with a few of the more important city or borough prisons, these acts more especially applied.[74] Most of the local authorities embarked into considerable expenditure, determined to rebuild their gaols de novo on the most approved pattern, or to reappropriate, reconstruct, and patch up the existing prisons till they were more in accordance with the growing requirements of the times. Religious worship became more generally the rule; chaplains were appointed, and chapels provided for them; surgeons and hospitals also. Workshops were built at many prisons, various kinds of manufactures and trades were set on foot, including weaving, matting, shoe-making, and tailoring. The interior of one prison was illuminated throughout with gas,—still a novelty, which had been generally adopted in London only four years previously,—“a measure which must greatly tend to discourage attempts to escape.” There were tread-wheels at most of the prisons, and regular employment thereon or at some other kind of hard labour. In many places too where the prisoners earned money by their work, they were granted a portion of it for their own use after proper deduction for maintenance. Only a few glaring evils still demanded a remedy. The provision of separate sleeping cells was still quite inadequate. For instance, in twenty-two county gaols there were 1063 sleeping cells in all (in 1823), and the average daily number committed that year amounted to 3985. The want of sleeping cells long continued a crying need. Four years later the Prison Society reported that in four prisons, which at one time of the year contained 1308 prisoners, there were only sixty-eight sleeping rooms or cells, making an average of nineteen persons occupying each room. At the New Prison, Clerkenwell, which had become the principal reception gaol of Middlesex, and so took all the untried, the sleeping space per head was only sixteen inches, and often as many as 293 men[75] had to be accommodated on barrack beds occupying barely 390 feet lineal. The “scenes of tumult and obscenity” in these night rooms are said to have been beyond description; a prisoner in one nocturnal riot lost an eye. Yet to Clerkenwell were now committed the juveniles, and all who were inexperienced in crime.

Great want of uniformity in treatment in the various prisons was still noticeable, and was indeed destined to continue for another half century, in other words, until the introduction of the Prison Act of 1877.[76] At the time of which I am writing there was great diversity of practice as regards the hours of labour. In some prisons the prisoners worked seven hours a day, in others ten and ten and a half. The nature of the employment varied greatly in severity, especially the tread-wheel labour. In some county gaols, as I have already said, female prisoners were placed upon the tread-wheel; in others women were very properly exempted from it, and also from all severe labour. Earnings were very differently appropriated. Here the prisoners were given the whole amount, there a half or a third. Sometimes this money might be expended in the purchase of extra articles of food.[77] The rations varied considerably everywhere. It was still limited to bread in some places, the allowance of which varied from one to three pounds; in others meat, soup, gruel, beer were given. Here and there food was not issued in kind, but a money allowance which the prisoner might expend himself. Bedding and clothing was still denied, but only in a few gaols; in others both were supplied in ample quantities, the cost varying per prisoner from twenty shillings to five pounds. It was plain that although the law had defined general principles of prison government, too much discretion was still left to the magistracy to fill in the details. The legislature only recommended, it did not peremptorily insist. Too often the letter of the law was observed, but not its spirit.

One great impediment to wide amelioration was that a vast number of small gaols lay out of reach of the law. When the new acts were introduced, numerous prisons under local jurisdiction were exempted from the operation of the law. They were so radically bad that reform seemed hopeless, and it was thought wiser not to bring them under provisions which clearly could not be enforced. Mr. Peel, who as Home Secretary had charge of the bill, which became the 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, said that he had abstained from legislating for these small jurisdictions “on mature deliberation.” “It is not,” he said, “that I am insensible of the lamentable and disgraceful situation in which many of them are, but I indulge a hope that many of them will contract with the counties, that many of them will build new gaols, and that when in a year or two we come to examine their situation, we shall find but few which have not in one or other of these ways removed the grievance of which such just complaint is made. When that time arrives I shall not hesitate to ask Parliament for powers to compel them to make the necessary alterations, for it is not to be endured that these local jurisdictions should remain in the deplorable situation in which many of them now are.”

At this time there were in England one hundred and seventy boroughs, cities, towns, and liberties which possessed the right of trying criminals for various offences. Nearly every one of these jurisdictions had its own prison, and there were one hundred and sixty such gaols in all. Many of them consisted of one or two rooms at most. The total number of prisoners they received during the year varied from two persons to many hundreds. It was in these gaols, withdrawn from the pressure of authority, that the new rules were invariably ignored. The right and privilege of the borough to maintain its own place of confinement was so “ancient and indisputable,” that for long no idea of interfering with them was entertained. All that was urged was that the borough magistracy had no right to govern their gaols so as to corrupt those committed, “to the injury of the peace and morals of the public.” As time passed, however, these magistrates made no effort at reform. They neither built new gaols nor contracted with the counties, as had been expected, for the transfer of their prisoners. As the Society put it in 1827, “the friends to the improvement of prison discipline will regret to learn that the gaols attached to corporate jurisdictions continue to be the fruitful sources of vice and misery, debasing all who are confined within their walls, and disseminating through their respective communities the knowledge and practice of every species of criminality.” The Society proceeded to support this indictment by facts. It is much the old story. The prisoners were lodged in rooms whence they could converse with passengers in the streets, and freely obtain spirits and other prohibited articles. All descriptions of offenders congregated together in the felons’ wards. The keeper and his officers resided at a distance from the gaol, and left its inmates to their own devices. There was no decency whatever in the internal arrangements; still no separation of the sexes, no means of ablution or other necessary services. One borough prison consisted of nothing more than a couple of cells, about ten yards square, and absolutely nothing more. In another borough, with a population of ten thousand, the prison was of the same dimensions. One cell was a dungeon, and the other an “improper and unhealthy abode for any human being,” with a watercourse running through it.

Most of these small gaols were still in existence and in much the same state eight years later, as is shown by the report of the Commissioners to inquire into the state of the municipal corporations in 1835. An examination of this report shows how even the most insignificant township had its gaol. Thus Dinas Mwddy, in Merionethshire, had, “besides the pinfold and the stocks or crib, a little prison.” Clun, in Shropshire, had a lock-up under the town hall. At Eye, in Suffolk, the gaol was part of the poor-house; so it was at Richmond, in Yorkshire, where the master of the workhouse was also keeper of the gaol. At Godmanchester there was no gaol, but a cage to secure prisoners till they could be taken before a magistrate. Kidderminster had a prison, one damp chill room, “the only aperture through which air could be admitted being an iron grating level with the street, through the bars of which quills or reeds were inserted, and drink conveyed to the prisoners.” At Walsall, in Staffordshire, the gaol consisted of six cells, frequently so damp that the moisture trickled down the walls; there was not space for air or exercise, and the prison allowance was still limited to bread and water.

Newgate through all these years continued a bye-word with the Society. Some reforms had certainly been introduced, such as the abolition of irons, already referred to, and the establishment of male and female infirmaries. The regular daily visitation of the chaplain was also insisted upon. But it was pointed out in 1823 that defective construction must always bar the way to any radical improvement in Newgate. Without enlargement no material change in discipline or interior economy could possibly be introduced. The chapel still continued incommodious and insufficient; female prisoners were still exposed to the full view of the males, the netting in front of the gallery being perfectly useless as a screen. In 1824 Newgate had no glass in its windows, except in the infirmary and one ward of the chapel yard; and the panes were filled in with oiled paper, an insufficient protection against the weather; and as the window-frames would not shut tight, the prisoners complained much of the cold, especially at night. There was a diminution in the numbers in custody, due to the adoption of the practice of not committing at once to Newgate every offender for trial at the Old Bailey, but nothing had been done to improve the prison buildings. In 1827 the Society was compelled to report that “no material change had taken place in Newgate since the passing of the prison laws,[78] and that consequently the observance of their most important provisions was habitually neglected.” It was enacted that the court of aldermen should make rules for the government of the prison, and that these should be posted publicly within the walls. As yet no rules or regulations had been printed or prepared. By another clause of the Gaol Act, two justices were to be appointed to visit the prison at least thrice in every quarter, and “oftener if occasion required.” These justices were to inspect every part of the prison, and examine into the state and condition of prisoners. The city justices had not fulfilled this obligation. Idleness was still the general rule for all prisoners in Newgate, in defiance of the law. There was no instruction of adult prisoners, in accordance with the law. The sleeping accommodation was still altogether contrary to the latest ideas. The visits of friends was once more unreservedly allowed, and these incomers freely brought in extra provisions and beer. Last, and worst of all, the arrangements for keeping the condemned prisoners between sentence and execution were more than unsatisfactory. They were not confined apart from each other, but were crowded thirty or forty together in the press yard, so that “corrupt conversation obliterated from the mind of him who is doomed to suffer every serious feeling and valuable impression.”[79] I shall have more to say on this subject, and upon the state of Newgate generally, in the following chapter.

The Prison Society did not relax its efforts as time passed, but its leading members had other and more pressing claims upon their energies. Mr. Buxton had succeeded to the great work which William Wilberforce had commenced, and led the repeated attacks upon slavery in British colonies till the whole body of the slaves were manumitted in 1833. In the year immediately preceding this, Parliament was too busy with the great question of its own reform to spare much time for domestic legislation. Nevertheless a committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1831 to report upon the whole system of secondary punishments, which dealt with gaols of all classes, as well as transportation. This committee animadverted strongly upon the system in force at the metropolitan gaols, and more especially upon the condition of Newgate, where “prisoners before and after trial are under no efficient superintendence,” and where “there was no restraint, or attempt at restraint.” Mr. Samuel Hoare was examined by this committee, and stated that in his opinion Newgate, as the common gaol of Middlesex, was wholly inadequate to the proper confinement of its prisoners. From the moment of a person’s committal he was certain to be plunged deeper and deeper in guilt. The prisoners were crowded together in the gaol, contrary to the requirements of the 4 Geo. IV. Again in 1835 prisons and their inmates became once more the care of the senate, and the subject was taken up this time by the House of Lords. A committee was appointed, under the presidency of the Duke of Richmond, “to inquire into and report upon the several gaols and houses of correction in the counties, cities, and corporate towns within England and Wales; upon the rules and discipline therein established with regard to the treatment of unconvicted as well as convicted persons.” The committee was also to report upon the manner in which sentences were carried out, and to recommend any alterations necessary in the rules in order to insure uniformity of discipline. It met on the 31st March, 1835, and continued its sittings well into July, during which time a host of witnesses were examined, and the committee presented three separate reports, embodying recommendations which may be said to have formed the basis of modern prison management.

It was laid down as a first and indispensable principle that uniformity of discipline should prevail everywhere, a theory which did not become a practical fact for forty more years. As a means of securing this uniformity, it was suggested that the rules framed for prison government should be subjected to the Secretary of State for approval, and not, as heretofore, to the judges of assize; that, both to check abuses and watch the progress of improvement, inspectors of prisons should be appointed, who should visit all the prisons from time to time and report to the Secretary of State. It was recommended that the dietaries should be submitted and approved like the rules; that convicted prisoners should not receive any food but the gaol allowance; that food and fuel should be issued in kind, and never provided by the prisoners themselves out of monies granted them. The use of tobacco, hitherto pretty generally indulged in both by men and women, should be strictly prohibited, “as a stimulating luxury inconsistent with any notion of strict discipline and the due pressure of just punishment.” Prison officers should not have any share in prisoners’ earnings, which should be paid into general prison funds, and no part of them handed over to the prisoners themselves. As a means of increasing the severity of imprisonment, letters and visits from outside should not be permitted during the first six months of an imprisonment. Various other recommendations were made as regards the appointment of chaplain and schoolmasters; the limitation of the powers of wardsmen, or prisoners employed in positions of trust, who should not be permitted to traffic with their fellow-prisoners in any way. The committee most of all insisted upon the entire individual separation of prisoners, except during the hours of labour, religious worship, and instruction, as “absolutely necessary for preventing contamination, and for securing a proper system of prison discipline.” This was the first enunciation of the system of separate confinement, which was eventually to replace the attempted arrangement of prisoners by classes according to antecedents and crimes, an incomplete and fallacious method of preventing contamination. The Lords’ Committee fully recognized the painful fact that the greatest mischief followed from the intercourse which was still permitted in so many prisons; to use its words, “the comparatively innocent are seduced, the unwary are entrapped, and the tendency to crime in offenders not entirely hardened is confirmed by the language, the suggestions, and the example of more depraved and systematic criminals.”

This committee, as well as the one preceding it, also reported in terms of strong reprobation on the small prisons and gaols still under the borough corporations. The Commons’ Committee gave it as their opinion that they were in a deplorable state. The same language was used by the commissioners appointed to inquire into the municipal corporations in 1835, when speaking more particularly of the borough gaols. In these the commissioners found “additional proof of the evils of continuing the present constitution of the local tribunals. Instances rarely occur in which the borough gaols admit of any proper classification of the prisoners. In some large towns, as at Berwick on Tweed, Southampton, and Southwark, they (the prisons) are in a very discreditable condition. In many of the smaller boroughs they are totally unfit for the confinement of human beings. In these places the prisoners are often without a proper supply of air and light; frequently the gaols are mere dungeons under the town hall.... It was frequently stated in evidence that the gaol of the borough was in so unfit a state for the reception of prisoners, that plaintiffs were unwilling to consign the defendants against whom they had obtained execution to confinement within its walls.” The Lords’ Committee on Gaols were of the same opinion, and considered the prisons under corporate or peculiar jurisdiction in a very unsatisfactory condition. They therefore recommended that the prisoners should be removed to the county gaols from such prisons as were past improvement, and that the borough funds should be charged for the accommodation. The whole question was again dealt with in Lord John Russell’s bill for the reform of the municipal corporations, and with a more liberal election of town councillors, and the establishment of municipal institutions upon a proper footing, the borough gaols were brought more into accordance with the growing demand for a more humane system of prison management.