Chronicles of Newgate Vol 2 — The Beginnings of Prison Reform part 1

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."