The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-09-19 00:00:00

A NEW "WORKMAN'S CITY" IN
LONDON.

The success of the scheme for providing improved
dwellings for the working classes having now been fully
demonstrated on the Shaftesbury Park Estate and else-
where, the demand for houses in London having steadily
increased, the directors of the Artisans', Labourers', and
General Dwellings Company lately obtained a site of
SO acres in the west of the metropolis on which the
erection of a new city, to accommodate no less than
16,000 persons is about to be commenced. The plans
have been drawn up and the roads marked out, and
the city will be constructed on the same general
principles as those carried out on the Shaftesbury
Park Estate. Already, though not a single brick has
been laid, applications for upwards of 1,000 houses
have been made. The work has received the approval
of the Premier, and, in fact, all the distinguished per-
sonages who take an interest in the progress of the
movement for providing suitable homes for the working
classes. The capital of the company, which was at first
£250,000, has been increased to £1,000,000. The estate
will be called the Queen's Park, and, like Shaftesbury
Park, it will be made as attractive as possible ; four out
of the 80 acres will be appropriated in the centre to
a garden and recreation-ground; the roads and
streets will be planted throughout their entire length
with trees, and special inducements will be offered
to the inhabitants to lay out the gardens both front
and back in as beautiful a manner as their time and
means will permit. The inducement has hardly been
found necessary at Shaftesbury Park, for there, long
before the announcement was made that prizes would
be offered for the neatest forecourt or best show of
flowers, the inhabitants had been vieing one with the
other to make theirs the best, with the result that
during the past summer thousands of persons have
visited the estate as much to see the various displays
of flowers as to view the houses. At Queen's Park
the lecture hall and institute will be a large and im-
posing building, and there will be co-operative stores,
coal depot, dairy farm, baths, and wash-houses, and
other buildings. The estate is near the Harrow-road,
from which it will be approached, and there is constant
communication with the district and various parts of
London, both by omnibus and rail. The foundation-
stone will be laid next month, when the work will be in
full progress, but the ceremony will be purely formal, as
it is intended to ask her Majesty to lay the mem9rial-
stone early next season. 'Vile work is one of the
most important which has ever been commenced in
London, and it is now occupying much public atten-
tion. It is fully intended to have no public-house on
the property, and, as at Shaftesbury Park, every op-
portunity will be taken to promote and develops
temperance principles by the formation of temperance
souieties, bands of hope, reading rooms, discussion
clubs, libraries, and other substitutes for "the house
round the corner."

PROFITABLE PRISON LABOUR.
The Annual Report of the 'toward Association,
London, just issued, states that many prison governors
and magistrates inform the committee that they have,
notwithstanding the penal labour restrictions of the
Act of 1865, been able to introduce much profitable
labour among their prisoners. Mr. Tallack, the secre-
tary, has visited some of those gaols lately. Among them
is Devonport, where Mr. Edwards, the governor,
stated that he expects this year not only to
avoid coming upon the ratepayers for any de-
mands for the gaol expenses, but, on the contrary,
to make them a present of about I:100 revenue
from the establishment. [This is not as in some of
the American gaols net revenue from prison labour
only. Two prisons at Boston, United States, return
net profits to the State—viz.. the State Prison £3,000
cash surplus, and the House of Correction £3,500
profit; in both eases, after paying all expenses and
salaries, from the results of making shoes, chains, iron
bedsteads, brushes, smithwork, itc., in prison.] It
arises partially from the circumstances that a number
of naval prisoners are sent to this gaol by Govern-
ment, for whom £6OO is paid. But Mr. Edwards'
almost unsurpassed resort to the labour of the pri-
soners alsO largely influences this result. For two
years past no tradesmen or artificers have been called
in to do work in the prison, but all needful labour
has been done by the inmates. Masonry, carpentry,
tee., which would have cost £2,400 outside, was done
by prisoners for £1,200. Colonel Du Cane, Surveyor-
General 1)f Prisons, pronounces the portion erecteu by
the prisoners to be superior in workmanship to those parts
previously constructed by regular tradesmen. Most of
this work was done by men previously unacquainted
even with the tools to be employed. It is due to the
deterring effect of useful work at Devonport, that when
Mr. Edwards became governor 13 years ago, there
were 77 civil prisonersthere, now there are only 11. At
the Devonport Midsummer Sessions, 1874, there was
only one prisoner for trial. On that occasion, the
Recorder, in praising the industrial system of Quit
gaol, said that, "he knew of his own knowledge that
many prisoners had gone forth from the gaol, and had
obtained very good work and very good wages too," in
consequence of the training there received. This train-
ing is economical in many ways. It prevents such waste-
ful results as the case of an habitual thief lately commit-
ted again to a London prison for six weeks. He replied
to the magistrate, "I can't do anything but thieve,
and I will thieve, whenever I can." It may be men-
tioned in contrast to Devonport Gaol, that at Durham
(whose Governor, however, deserves much praise in
general for his promotion of useful work) an advertise-
ment appeared this year for 12 stone-wallers for half-
a-year's employment at the gaol. The local authorities
could probably have done the work by prisoners'
labour at a great saving to the county, as the governors
of various other gaols have k done. Strange to say,
there are still wide-spread prejudices against profit-
able gaol labour. A magistrate in one of the
principal counties of England wrote to Mr. Tallack
this year :—" There is scarely a single magistrate
attending our Quarter Sessions but disapproves
industrial employment in prison." The Committee,
indeed, find that there is much need for
the continuance of their efforts in informing
the public mind on this question. "Dr. Mona, late
Inspector of Bengal prisons, a most competent authority,
lately declared, 'My test of the management of is
prison would be its balance-sheet. My test of the
behaviour of a criminal is his balance-sheet.' (No
room for hypocrisy or deception there). And, it may
be added, a test of an able Governor in his ability to
produce a good balance-sheet of prison labour with
corresponding good cash results. It is true that good
cash results are not everything ; but the experience of
the best gaols shows their intimate connexion with
criminal reform and the prevention of re-committals."
The Times.