MikhailT/lj-speech huggingface dataset:
The prison allowances were eked out by the broken victuals generously given by several eating-house keepers in the city,
such as Messrs. Birch of Cornhill and Messrs. Leach and Dollimore of Ludgate Hill.
These were fetched away in a large tub on a truck by a turnkey.
Amongst the heap was often the meat that had made turtle soup, which, when heated and stirred together in a saucepan, was said to be very good eating.
The bedding was scanty; fuel and light had to be purchased out of prisoners' private means; clothing was issued but rarely,
even to prisoners almost in nakedness, and as a special charitable gift. Extortion was practiced right and left.
Garnish continued to be demanded long after it had disappeared in other and better-regulated prisons.
The fees on reception and discharge must be deemed exorbitant, when it is remembered the impoverished class who usually crowded the jail;
and they were exacted to relieve a rich corporation from paying for the maintenance of their own prison.
This imposition of fees left prisoners destitute on their discharge, without funds to support them in their first struggle to recommence life,
with ruined character, bad habits, and often bad health contracted in the jail.
A further and a more iniquitous method of extorting money
was still practiced, that of loading newly-arrived prisoners until they paid certain fees.
Ironing was still the rule, not only for the convicted, but for those charged with felonies; only the misdemeanants escaped.
At the commencement of every sessions, such of the untried as had purchased "easement" of irons were called up and re-fettered,
preparatory to their appearance in the Old Bailey. Irons were seldom removed from the convicted until discharge;
sometimes the wearer was declared medically unfit, or he obtained release by long good conduct,
or the faithful discharge of some petty office, such as gatesman or captain of a ward.
The irons weighed from three to four pounds, but heavier irons, seven or eight pounds' weight,
were imposed in case of misconduct; and when there had been an attempt at escape,
the culprit was chained down to the floor by running a chain through his irons which prevented him from climbing to the window of his cell.
Among other excuses offered for thus manacling all almost without exception, was that it was the best and safest method
of distinguishing a prisoner from a stranger and temporary visitor.
Clothes or prison uniform would not have served the purpose, for a disguise can be rapidly and secretly put on,
whereas irons cannot well be exchanged without loss of time and attracting much attention.
The unchecked admission of crowds of visitors to the felons' as well as the debtors' side was another unmixed evil.
By this means spirits, otherwise unattainable and strictly prohibited, were smuggled into the jail.
Searches were made certainly, but they were too often superficial, or they might be evaded by a trifling bribe.
Hence the frequent cases of drunkenness, of which no notice was taken, unless people grew riotous in their cups
and attracted attention by their disorderly behavior.
Another frightful consequence of this indiscriminate admission was the influx of numbers of abandoned women,
only a few of whom had the commendable prudery to pass themselves off as the wives of prisoners.
Any reputed, and indeed any real, wife might spend the night in Newgate if she would pay the shilling fee, commonly known as the "bad money,"
which might have done something towards increasing the prison receipts, had it not been appropriated by the turnkey who winked at this evasion of the rules.
Among the daily visitors were members of the criminal classes still at large,
the thieves and burglars who carried on the active business of their profession, from which their confederates were temporarily debarred.
One notorious character, while a prisoner awaiting transfer to the hulks,
kept open house, so to speak, and entertained daily within the walls a select party of the most noted thieves in London.
This delectable society enticed into their set a clerk who had been imprisoned for fraud,
and offered him half the booty if he would give full information as to the transactions and correspondence of his late employers.
Owing to the facility of intercourse between inside and outside, many crimes were doubtless hatched in Newgate.
Some of the worst and most extensive burglaries were planned there.
"I believe," says Mr. Bennet in the letter already largely quoted,
"that there is no place in the metropolis where more crimes are projected or where stolen property is more secreted than in Newgate."
These malpractices were fostered by the absence of all supervision and the generally unbroken idleness.
but just open (1816), the regular employment of prisoners had never yet been accepted as a principle in the metropolitan prisons.
Insuperable difficulties were still supposed to stand in the way of any general employment of prisoners at their trades.
There was fear as to the unrestricted use of tools,
limits of space, the interference of the ill-disposed, who would neither work nor let others do so,
and the danger of losing material, raw or manufactured.
Many years were to elapse before these objections should be fairly met and universally overcome.
It was not strange, therefore, that the inmates of Newgate should turn their unoccupied brains and idle hands to all manner of mischief;
that when they were not carousing, plotting, or scheming,
they should gamble with dice or cards, and play at bumble puppy or some other disreputable game of chance.
The report of the Committee of the House of Commons painted so black a picture of Newgate as then conducted, that the Corporation were roused in very shame
to undertake some kind of reform.
The above-mentioned report was ordered to be printed upon the 9th May.
Upon the 29th July the same year,
the court of aldermen appointed a committee of its own body, assisted by the town clerk, Mr. Dance, city surveyor, son to the architect of Newgate,
and Mr. Addison, keeper of Newgate, to make a visitation of the jails supposed to be the best managed, including those of Petworth and Gloucester.
This committee was to compare allowances, examine rules, and certify as to the condition of prisoners;
also to make such proposals as might appear salutary, and calculated to improve Newgate and the rest of the city jails.
This committee made its report in September the following year, and an excellent report it is, so far as its recommendations are concerned.
The committee seems to have fully realized, even at this early date (1815),
many of the indispensable conditions of a model prison according to modern ideas.
It admitted the paramount necessity
for giving every prisoner a sleeping cell to himself, an amount of enlightenment which is hardly general among European nations at this
the latter end of the nineteenth century, several of which still fall far short of our English ideal,
that all prisoners should always be in separate cells by night, and those of short sentences by day.
It recommended day cells or rooms for regular labor, which should be compulsory upon all transports and prisoners sentenced to hard labor,
the work being constant and suitable, with certain hours of relaxation and for food and exercise.
The personal cleanliness of all prisoners was to be insisted upon; they should be made to wash at least once a day,
with the penalty of forfeiting the day's allowance of food, an increase of which the committee had recommended.
The provision of more baths was also suggested, and the daily sweeping out of the prison.
The clothes of prisoners arriving dirty, or in rags, should be fumigated before worn in the jail,
but as yet no suggestion was made to provide prison uniform.
A laundry should be established, and a matron appointed on the female side, where all the prisoners' washing could be performed.
Proper hours for locking and unlocking prisoners should be insisted upon;
a bell should give notice thereof, and of meal-hours, working-hours, or of escapes.
The committee took upon itself to lay down stringent rules for the discipline of the prison.
The jailer should be required to visit every part and see every prisoner daily; the chaplain should perform service, visit the sick,
instruct the prisoners, quote, give spiritual advice and administer religious consolation, end quote. to all who might need them;
the surgeon should see all prisoners, whether ill or well, once a week, and take general charge of the infirmaries.
All three, governor, chaplain, and surgeon, should keep journals, which should be inspected periodically by the visiting magistrates.
It should be peremptorily forbidden to the keeper or any officer to make a pecuniary profit out of the supplies of food, fuel, or other necessaries.
No prisoner should be allowed to obtain superior accommodation on the payment of any fees. Fees indeed should be generally abolished, garnish also.
No prisoners should in future be ironed, except in cases of misconduct,
provided only that their security was not jeopardized, and dependent upon the enforcement of another new rule,
which recommended restrictions upon the number of visitors admitted.
No wine or beer should be in future admitted into or sold in the jail,
except for the use of the debtors, or as medical comforts for the infirmary.
Drunkenness, if it ever occurred, should be visited with severe punishment;
gaming of all sorts should be peremptorily forbidden under heavy pains and penalties.
The feelings of the condemned prisoners should no longer be outraged by their exposure in the chapel, and the chapel should be rearranged,
so that the various classes might be seated separately, and so as not to see each other.
It will hardly be denied that these proposals went to the root of the matter.
Had they been accepted in their entirety, little fault could in future have been found with the managers of Newgate.
In common justice to them, it must be admitted that immediate effect was given to all that could be easily carried out.
The state side ceased to exist, and the female prisoners thus regained the space of which their quadrangle had been robbed.
The privileges of the master's side also disappeared; fees were nominally abolished, and garnish was scotched, although not yet killed outright.
A certain number of bedsteads were provided, and there was a slight increase in the ration of bread.
But here the recommendations touched at once upon the delicate subject of expense, and it is clear that the committee hesitated on this score.
It made this too the excuse for begging the most important issue of the whole question.
The committee did not deny the superior advantages offered by such prisons as Gloucester and Petworth,
but it at once deprecated the idea that the city could follow the laudable example thus set in the provinces. Quote,
Were a metropolitan prison erected on the same lines, with all the space not only for air and exercise, but for day rooms and sleeping cells
End quote. it would cover some thirty acres, and cost a great deal more than the city, with the example of Whitecross Street prison before it,
could possibly afford.
The committee does not seem to have yet understood that Newgate could be only and properly replaced
by a new jail built on the outskirts, as Holloway eventually was, and permitted itself to be altogether countered
and checked in its efforts towards reform by the prohibitory costliness of the land about Newgate.
With the seeming impossibility of extending the limits of the prison as it then stood,
all chances of classification and separation vanished, and the greatest evils remained untouched.
All the committee could do in this respect was to throw the responsibility on others.
It pointed out that the Government was to blame for the overcrowding, and might diminish it if it chose.
It was very desirable that there should be a more speedy removal of transports from Newgate to the ships.
Again, there was the new Millbank penitentiary now ready for occupation.
Why not relieve Newgate by drawing more largely upon the superior accommodation which Millbank offered?
The Chronicles of Newgate, Volume 2. By Arthur Griffiths. Section 7: 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 jails 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 jails, and one or two borough jails, 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" jails 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 jails.
Measures remedial, although at best partial and incomplete, were introduced from time to time.
Thus in 1813 the exaction of jail 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 jails, 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 jail 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 jails, 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 jails were destined to survive many years, and to exhibit for a long time to come all the worst features of jail 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 Honorable 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,
which Howard had eulogized some forty years before.
In order to give greater value to the pamphlet,
he personally visited several English jails, and pointed his observations by drawing forcible contrasts between the good and bad.
Mr. Buxton's small work on prison discipline 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 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 offense;
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."
"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 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 misdemeanors, 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 jailer 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 George 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 jail, 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 George 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 jail, and as to all abuses which they might observe therein.
The most important jail act of that early period, however, was the 24 George 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 misdemeanors. 4. Prisoners charged with misdemeanors. 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,