The Press.
London, England, 1856-08-23 00:00:00

Stetronglitan.

THE POOR-LAW BOARD AND ST. PANCRAS are on
the point of arriving at a serious disagreement.
The Poor• Law Board, it will be remembered, in April
last appointed Dr. Bence Jones to report upon the
state of the St. Pancras Workhouse. That report
disclosed a lamentable state of affairs. The parish
authorities have not remedied matters in the interval,
and the Poor• Law Board has now taken upon itself
to issue detailed and positive instructions for the
management of the workhouse, the administration
of out-door relief, and the general conduct of officers,
and also to appoint an auditor for the parish accounts.
Great indignation was expressed by the directors on
Tuesday when the communication from the office at
Whitehall was read, and the legal authority of the
board to act in this manner was questioned. A special
meeting of tho entire Board of Guardians is to be
called, and steps to be taken for testing the power of
the commissioners,

THE PRESS.

Mn. STEPHENSON, the medical officer of the Stepney
Union, has been suspended from office for neglect
in his duties of attendance upon pauper patients.
The patient Sheehan, a poor woman, died in conse-
quence of Mr. Stephenson's neglect. _ _

THE NEXT LORD MAYOR OF LONDON will be elected
on Monday, Sept. 29th. The ordinary practice is
for the Livery in Common Hall assembled to return
to the Court of Aldermen the names of the two
senior aldermen below the chair, of whom the senior
is chosen. These in the present case will be
Mr. Alderman Finnis and Alderman Sir Robert
Walter Carden. If there is no departure from the
practice on the 29th of September, Alderman
Finnis will be the next Lord Mayor of London.
The following gentlemen will then succeed
in the order in which their names are placed :
—1857 8, Sir R. W. Carden ; 1858 9, Alder-
man Wire; 1859.60, Alderman Carter; 1860.1,
Alderman Cubitt, M.P.; 1861 2, Sir Henry Mug-
geridge ; 1802-3, Alderman Kennedy ; 1863.4, Alder-
man Rose.; 1864-5, Alderman Eagleton ; 1865-6,
Alderman Lawrence.
THE THAMES NATIONAL REGATTA came off this
week with all the éclat possible in such agreeable
weather. The famous Claspers, Elswick and Man-
rhester men, entered, with several of the best London
watermen, for the 1001. grand champion four-oared
prize, open to all the world. There were also no loss
than three entries for the gold challenge cup, for
gentlemen's eight-oared boats, and the contest for
the other prizes was equally good. The prizes,
amounting in value to nearly 8001., were presented
to the winners at Cremorne, by the sheriffs, on Wed-
nesday evening, at nine o'clock.

THE PANOPTiCON is to fall under the auctioneer's
hammer on Monday next. It was established by a
public company, under a royal charter of incorpora-
tion, as an institution for the promotion and develop-
ment of science, and 80,0001. have been laid out upon
the building and its accessories.
THE ARTISANS AT MESSRS. BROADWOOD'S, who
suffered so severely by the fire in the loss of their
tools, in consequence of the general sympathy ex-
pressed, and the offers of assistance that have come
in from all quarters, have formed a committee to
receive subscriptions through one of the London
'aanks. Only a few of the men were insured, and
for not more than 101. each—about a seventh of the
amount of their loss. The cost of a pianoforte
workman's tools is estimated at about 701.
THE ROYAL DISPENSARY FOR DISEASES OF THE
EAR held its half-yearly meeting on Wednesday, Mr.
T. Cooper in the chair. Mr. Harvey, the surgeon
to the institution, submitted to the committee the
number of patients, amounting to 300, that had
been admitted on the books during the last six
month:. The committee acknowledged a donation
of one hundred guineas from B. V. 11. to the funds
of the institution, which are very inadequate to its
increasing demands. This institution has now been
established since 1810, during which period it has
afforded relief to upwards of 16,000 cases of deafness
and other diseases of the ear.

THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S RETURNS for the past
week show the high mortality of 1,250. The Regis•
trar•Genetal appends to his report some remarks of
interest upon atmospheric impurities, and upon what
has to be drained away before London becomes
pure, and tells us some unpleasant and unwholesome
truths :

The problem (concludes the report) for the enkineer to
solve is, how can 3,010 tons of town guano be returned
daily to the disinfecting soil, from which it was chiefly
taken, with the least offence to health, and with the least
cost? Shall it be distributed by pipes, or by railways ?
Shall it be disinfected by water, earth, ashes, or any chy-
mieal compound ?
Under the present arrangements some hundreds of
thousands of tons of this matter lie in store in London,
putrefying in cesspools and percolating the streets, while
the residue is thrown into the Thames at great cost.
1,575 births were registered last week.

Vroilintial.

NATIONAL REFORMATORY UNION.

A CONFERENCE of the friends of this institution was
opened at Bristol, on Wednesday, and continued for
the two following days. Lord Stanley, M.P., pre-
sided at each of the meetings, and on Wednesday
delivered the inaugural address.
A letter from Lord Brougham, the President of
the Union, apologising for his unavoidable absence,
having been read,
Lord STANLEY proceeded to deliver the inaugural
address. The noble lord, after some brief state-
ments relative to the amount of adult and juvenile
crime, the former (between the ages of seventeen
and twenty-one) amounting to twenty-five per cent.,
and the latter (under seventeen) amounting to
eleven and a half, of the 100,000 criminals annually
tried, came direct to the point whether any other

801

agency than that of reformatories existed by which
crime would be decreased ; and stated as his convic-
tion that the more he looked into the subject the
more fully assured he felt that " the only direct and
immediate agency exists in the detention, the train-
ing, and the giving honest employment to criminal
children whom the neglect of such means will
render offenders for life." The noble lord then
alluded to the successful results of the Red•hill es-
tablishment, and explained that the object of the
National Reformatory Union was to form a centre of
action to such local efforts, to aid and promote the sys-
tem, to assist in placing out youths who leave reforms.
tones, and to become, in fact, the central authority
in connection with the movement. To the practical
questions, WAR it necessary and would it succeed, he
thought on the first there was little diversity of
opinion. The circumstances of the time were pecu-
liar; we were cut off from transportation, and we had
no other alternative but to reform our criminals ; and
then came the question—" Can you really reform a
depraved character ?" He replied :

answer, first, by pointing to that statement of Mr
Clay's respecting the causes of juvenile crime—a statement,
observe, which does not stand alone, which is in the main
corroborated by most persons who have had anything to do
with prisoners and prisons. Mr. Clay tells you that three-
fourths of the young offenders who enme into his hands
have been made such by parental misconduct in one form
or another. Some, one may suppose, have been directly
urged by parents into the commission of crime. Some,
even though not so urged. are the children of men and
women living habitually by dishonest means—children who
have no respectable protector and scarcely a chance of
getting employment in any business. Others, whose
parents may not be themselves dishonest, have grown up
in mere brutal ignorance, and are enticed into mischief by
older lads, knowing literally nothing of duty or morality,
of credit or disgrace, of what society approves or what it
condemns. A few were driven into vice by actual ill-
treatment, by hunger, by cold, by fear of starvation, and by
the fear of blows. Now, of all who come under these four
beads—those whose parents teach them to steal—those
whose parents set them ibis example of stealing—those
who have been taught nothing at home—and those who
have been left or turned adrift to shift for themselves—one
may say, without exaggeration, that their guilt is the result
of circumstances, and not of choice. Clearly, therefore,
they at least see not to he given up as hopeless. They are
worse than others, not because their inclinations are worse,
hut because the option of good or evil has never been
placed fairly before them. And these, I believe, form the
great bulk of our juvenile offenders.

There remained, however, a elass, with regard to
which he could not speak with so much confidence :
I mean the class, met with both among adults and
young persons, in whom the tendency to commit criminal
acts appears to arise rather out of a morbid action of the
mind than out of any external compelling rause. Even
in these less hopeful cases the morbid tendency cften
appears to be connected with the physical organisation,
and disappears or diminishes under the combined influ-
ences of example, of teaching, and of healthy bodily
training. On that last chance 1 don't dwell, though a good
deal might be said touching the connection of some forms
of criminality with unnoticed cerebral disease; 1 am con-
tent to acknowledge the fact that in certain instances the
propensity to crime appears due to organisation and not
to social accidents ; all contend for is—first, that this
class forms a minority, and probably a small one ; next,
that even here a cure may sometimes be effected Where
the intellect is weak good influences will work upon it, at
least, meeting with little active resistance ; where it is
acute, the disgrace, the outlawry, the misery of a life of
crime may commonly be made intelligible; and thus in
neither case is there reason for absolute despair.
There was still a third class with whom managers
of reformatories will have occasionally to deal,
though perhaps it would he better that they should
not—the class of casual offenders :

Youths who have been led into what the law designates
as crime on some single occasion, bat whose general
tendencies and habits are good, and with regard n) whom
the process of reformation is comparatively easy. I name
these only because the mention of them gives me an
opportunity of suggesting, for the consideration of law
reformers, an improved classification of offences. To
have been in gaol in England is a serious thing; the
stigma clings to a man for life. No allowance, or very
little, is made for youth, for temptation, for ignorance ;
self-respect is destroyed, and, once destroyed, it is not
easily created anew.

Finally, to the question what is it that reformatories
can do for their inmates, and with what hope of
success? he replied :
They can do this. They can remove the boy from con-
taminating associations, they can teach him habits of
cleanliness, temperance. industry; they can give him what
in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred he has never hod
before—a chance in life—a fair start in the world. They
can insure his having addressed to him, I robably for the
first time, words of judicious kindness. They can show
him what is the social state of those who live in violation
of the law ; so that if in later sears he chooses that
career, he does it with full knowledge of the consequence
to himself. They render impossible henceforth that re•
proach to law and to society which arises when a convicted
criminal can say with truth to hie judges, " You punish
me, but you never taught toe."

The noble lord then briefly explained the object of
reformatories, characterising it as a moral and indns.

802

trial, not an intellectual one—cleanliness, tem-
perance, honesty, and hard work being what it was
desired the inmates should be taught to practise.
Having dwelt ou the necessity of adopting what had
been called the " family system "—that is, of keeping
the inmates of each house so few in number as to be
all under the direct and personal supervision of the
teacher—the noble lord next urged the propriety of
encouraging competition by giving rewards to the
most industrious of the children, and, after glancing
cursorily at the question of the exclusion or non-
exclusion of the penal element from the reformatory
process, on which he pronounced no decided opinion,
he called attention to the relation in which reforma-
tory schools stood to the Executive, and, while ad-
mitting that it was a fair question to consider whether
the present rate of Government allowance might not
be advantageously raised, be expressed himself as
totally averse to a proposal that Government should
undertake the entire cost of the schools, leaving
nothing for private subscribers to do. He affirmed
that the cause was a national one, and that the moral
health, the social stability, and the internal well-
being of the empire would be immensely promoted
by the undertaking and completion of this task. The
noble lord then concluded his address :

Do not let us fancy that criminals form a set of men
apart, who exercise no influence on the rest. Whence are
their ranks recruited, except from among the innucent ?
And do not let ns imagine that though their existence may
lower the tone and feeling among the poor, we, the wealthier
portion of society, remain unaffected. It is not—it cannot
be so. To hear of crime,—to read of it—to see it around
us—if it hurt us in no other way, yet lessens the respect,
the sympathy, the fellow•feeling as Englishmen, which we
might otherwise entertain towards the working part of the
population. I cannot treat this subject here, it would
require a volume rather than a few sentences at the end of
a long discourse ; but I assert this as a truth, confident that,
if needs were, I could prove it by argument,—that the purity
of the moral atmosphere in which we live exercises over us
an influence as real as the purity of the physical atmo-
sphere—that this influence is felt irrespective of class, of
habits, or of occupation ; that the parallel between the in.
faction of disease and the infection of crime holds strictly ;
and that if we suffer pollution to remain uncleansed in the
hovel it will take its revenge on the palace.

The following evening a conversazione took place
in the Victoria-rooms, when a paper on "The Bristol
Reformatory Institution," by Miss Carpenter, was
read by Mr. Bengough. The paper was one of detail,
but concluded by urging the necessity of the com-
pulsory attendance of children to industrial schools
being sanctioned by law. The Dean of Bristol, Dr.
Elliot, also read a paper, communicated by Lord
Brougham, " On the Inefficiency of Simple Penal
Legislation," in which the noble and learned lord
pointed out that in reasoning upon the tendency of
punishment, a serious error had been committed in
regarding crimes as insulated, considering each
offence as originating in an occasional gust of pas-
sion or view of interest; whereas the great majority
of offences in every civilised community were the
result of immoral character, of gross ignorance, and
of bad habits, and the graver sort were committed
after a series of faults less aggravated in their
character. The guilty disposed person, Lord
Brougham maintained, was to be not merely deterred
from doing one wrong act by the fear of punishment,
bat was to be reclaimed from a course of thinking,
feeling, and acting into which he had fallen. They
might, upon the whole, regard the criminals who
infested society as being a class who had turned
crime into a trade or calling : and, considering how
many offences a thief must commit to earn his daily
bread, it was evident that absolute impunity was the
rule and detection only the rare, and as it were
accidental, exception. The noble lord observed :
Undoubtedly, the most important portion of a reforma-
tory system was the general establishment of infant train-
ing. And how long (continued the noble lord) are we to
wait before the most scandalous disgrace resting on our
character as a people shall be removed ?—how long before
the bitterness of sectarian controversy shall so far be
allayed by the Christian feeling of mutual forbearance. and
the heats of a'polemical conflict be so far tempered by
brotherly love, as to allow us to feel that " the greatest of
all these things is charity," and that the triumphs of
sect over sect are as absolutely nothing compared with the
mighty and the holy conquests of sound knowledge over
ignorance ? How long must it be before we see the
adversaries in such miserable contests prefer that victory
which is far greater than his who conquers a great city—
the victory over their own temper—leading to the sapping
or the storming of the strong but not impregnable fort-
resses of ignorance, immorality, and irreligion? It is
our highest duty to rescue the people from ignorance and
vice by giving them the inestimable blessing of a sound
moral and religions education, to prevent the growth of
crime, while we provide for reclaiming from their vicious
courses those who have been led astray—a cure only to
be effected by making the punishment of criminals the
instrument of their reformation. Tbat duty we have not
discharged. But if we have planted no schools where
habits of virtue may be induced, stretched forth no hand
to extirpate the germs of vice, we have kept open other
schools where vice is taught with never-failing success,
and both hands ince .santly to stifle the seeds of virtue ere
yet they had time to sprout, and laid down many a hotbed
where the growth of crime in all its rank luxuriousness