The Sun.
London, England, 1853-10-14 00:00:00

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•

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1853.

Temple-bar was recently called by somebody
the old and leaden-headed gateway of an old and
leaden-headed Corporation. Was it not Mr.
DICKENS ii the conipaen ce men t of "Bleak-house,"
who gave it that apt ande:jcharacteristic designa-
tion ? Whoever the sa,tlrist, the object of his
sarcasm is by this time, aye fancy, pretty gene-
rally recognised as an eyesore and a public
nuisance. Foremost, in fact, among the many
unsightly obstructions still tolerated in the midst
of our great city improvements. Foremost, we
maintain, among them all—for while Middle-row
is what the Yankees might accurately call an in-
tolerable stumbling "block" of houses in the very
centre of Holborn, and while Holywell-street is
to the Strand at once a disgrace and an impedi-
ment—Temple-bar is the worst of all, because it
stands precisely in the mid-channel of the principal
thoroughfares connecting the City of London with
the City of Westminster. It is the worst of all,
because it is of no possible utility whatsoever.
Besides being wholly useless, Temple-bar cannot
but be regarded as certainly not in any way an
ornament. It may be pronounced, without any-
thing like exaggeration, to be almost as ugly as
it is obstructive. Situated exactly at the point
of union between the Strand and Fleet-street—
channels which together may be regarded as the
main artery for the traffic of the metropolis—
Temple-bar literally acts upon the current of that
traffic as a stricture would act upon the flow
of blood through an artery. Before the
broad flood of that incessant traffic can
pass in or out of the capital, it is com-
pelled to narrow itself to the petty width of the
old gateway, and so, by a painful struggle, to pass
onwards to its destination. And all this intoler-
able inconvenience for what ? To preserve a
hideous pile of masonry, because, forsooth, of its
antiquity ! An antiquity by the way, extending
back—how far may you suppose ? Why, scarcely
a couple of centuries ! Temple-bar, as it is, has
scarcely stood there, entirely useless and assuredly
not ornamental, for more than one hundred and
fifty or one hundred and sixty years at the very
utmost. Really, to hear some of those who advo-
cate the retention of the old gateway on the score
of its being a venerable memento of the past, one
might conjecture that they were arguing against
the removal of the Sphinx or the destruction of
one of the Pyramids. It might almost be fancied
that they were pleading with somewhat the same
reason with which the sentimentalist in the ballad
pleaded for the life of the old tree threatened by
the axe of the woodman. Instead of which the
champions of Temple-bar are beseeching the re-
formers to spare not one of the glories of the
forest, green after a thousand years' existence, not
some inestimable treasure of the classic ages, like
the House of SALLUST at Pompeii, but one of the
Follies of London, built just a little earlier than
the days of Joux GILPIN, citizen and haberdasher—
a more absurd Folly than the famous and hap-
pily long since extinct Folly on the Thames—a
Folly born out of a crotchet not of the Picts, or
of the Saxons, or even of the Normans, but of
our dear old blundering (may we not again apply
the phrase ?) and leaden-headed great-great-grand-
fathers. Call Temple-bar a relic of the past !
Rather term it a proof positive of the ignorance
of yesterday ! A structure that is, perhaps, all
things considered, about the most inappropriate
building that could by possibility have been
contrived as the porch to the metropolis of the
greatest of all the earth's trading populations.
Regarding Temple-bar in this light, considering
it to be at once, as we have said, an eyesore and
a nuisance, we are heartily rejoiced to observe
that the Report of the Committee appointed to
inquire into the question of the advisability or
non-advisability of its removal, yesterday, elicited
in the Common Council a really sensible, and,
as it happily came to pass, a pefectly suc-
cessful amendment. This amendment, which was
c irried by a majority of 12 in a Court of 58, was
briefly to the effect--" That the report be sent
back for further consideration, and that the plan
now submitted, or any other, having forits object
to obtain further roadway or footway in that por-
tion of Fleet-street, be considered." Let us hope
that, in this reconsideration of this difficulty, the
Committee may adopt some speedy and rational
plan for the removal of the present gateway—
though it may be for the substitution of some

sightlier and broader, and loftier structure of a
similar character.

It will be well for the metropolis, moreover, if,
together with this desirable change in the site of
Temple-bar, there may be organised, in connec-
tion with the locality, a number of scarcely less
anxiously looked-for city improvements. Where-
fore is it, for example, that New Cannon-street,
the noble thoroughfare now being opened from
Eastcheap to St. Paul's-churchyard, cannot be
carried yet a little further onwards ? So as to
emerge more immediately in the centre of Bridge-
street (Blackfriars) than is intended, and—skirt-
ing either directly to the north or directly to the
south of Bridewell—to pass into Fleet-street by
Water-lane, or somewhere in that neighbourhood.
A bold continuation. of New Cannon-street upon

this plan would wonderfully relieve the traffic at
present pouring to and fro along Ludgate-hill.
It would prove, in fact, we feel confident, as
advantageous an improvement as could well be
contrived for the British metropolis. Why can-
not a change of this obviously useful character
be effected ? We may surely venture thus far
at least, if we cannot hope yet a while to
accomplish some of the more splendid pro-
jects for the benefit of the general appearance
of the capital—such, for example, as the magnifi-
cent scheme for so connecting Holborn and the
Strand by a new street crossing the north-east
end of Long-acre, that the British Museum and
Somerset House might confront each other at the
extremities of a broad and noble thoroughfare.

A strange delusion has gone abroad with respect
to the alleged mildness and humanity of the Eng-
lish law—the gentle treatment of prisoners, and
the persuasive methods adopted to win them back
from vice, and instruct them, at the termination
of their incarceration, to "go forth and sin no
more." A true Englishman will rejoice in the
supposed abolition of capital punishments, except
in cases of wilful and deliberate murder—at the
disuse of the degrading and brutalising " Cat"—
and will speak with horror of the dungeons of
Tuscany, from which the fair propagandist, Miss
CUNNINGHAME has just been rescued. But, unfor-
tunately, it appears that these vauntings and self•
gratulations have been a little premature. The
" secrets of the prison-house" are oozing out by
degrees, thanks to the movement originated by the
zealous, humane, and disinterested exertions of
Mr. JOSEPH ALLDAY, of Birmingham ; and each
day some new abomination, some unparalleled
cruelty, is brought to light, which, although per-
fectly illegal, is inflicted by model governors with
the tacit connivance of visiting justices. Far
better would it be that we retained the most san-
guinary provisions of our old penal code—that
with more than Draconic severity we visited any
breach of the law with a painful and ignominious
death on the scaffold, than to consign the offenders
to the tender mercies of Lieutenant AUSTIN, to be
experimented on by that benevolent officer, whom
the visiting justices found to be so " faithful, ener-
getic, and painstaking in the discharge of his difficult
and laborious duties "—far better that the sturdy
vagrant should be publicly launched into eternity
by the common hangman than that he should be
driven to lay violent hands upon himself in the
refractory cell. A felo de se from the impossibility
of enduring the horrible barbarities to which he
was subjected, or dismissed with broken constitu-
tion to linger out the residue of his miserable
life, unable to earn an honest subsistence for
himself. Far better that there should be corporal
punishment administered as of old at the cart's
tail or the public whipping-post, than the lash
should be privately laid on in the seclusion of the
gaol at the mere will and pleasure of a man
" whose appetite for punishing breaches of what
he calls discipline" is described by a competent
authority to be "insatiable ;" who, " when a boy
had to be flogged, seemed as though he could not
miss the opportunity of being present," and ap-
peared to derive " a direct gratification " from
being present. Better that the " rack " and the
" boot," the " pilniwinks" and " thumbikins,"
and other instruments of torture formerly in use
should be revived, if only brought into operation
under the direction and in the presence of a mem-
ber of the Privy Council, than that the "crank,"
with its attendant "debility, swelling of the legs,
wasting of the flesh, and paleness when at work,"
and followed by the new disease consequent on its
use, and known to the prison officials as " crank
adema" should be brought into operation by an
irresponsible governor, and warders who thought
that their authority was supreme, and that they
could do as they pleased with the wretched vic-
tims placed under their control—who could wel-
come a prisoner with the intimation that an indi-
vidual warder " would drive the soul out of him,
and see that he did not leave the prison alive (!)"
a promise too truly fulfilled in one instance at
least.

Bat, in addition to the " crank," there was
the strait-jacket, the collar, handcuffs, strap-
ping to the wall, deprivation of bed and gas, de-
I privation of exercise and attendance in chapel,
flagellation, sousing with cold water, and, above
all, semi-starvation—a most efficient means of
torturing when the diabolical ingenuity of those
in whose hands the power was conferred of thus
maltreating the miserable beings placed under
their charge is taken into consideration. Surely,
then, the system formerly adopted, although hun-
dreds were publicly strangled in each and every
year, was far superior to that so recently in
use in Birmingham and Leicester and other
prisons, into the management of which no inquiry
has as yet been instituted, and in favour of which
there are, doubtless, many of the great unpaid
ready and willing to certify.
But it is not merely convicts who have been
subjected to this stringent discipline, these painful
privations. Persons who are awaiting their trials
and merely detained for safe custody, who by the
theory of the British law are supposed to be inno-
cent, are regarded as fitting subjects for these
experiments, and punished for " attempting to
communicate" with each other ; nay more, debtors,
whose only crime is poverty, are more harshly
treated, and subjected to greater indignities than
convicted felons in the olden times. Witness Lei-
cester and Winchester In the former, we find
" the dinners of nine county debtors stopped,"
because one of them had laughed loudly when an
officer ,'had just quitted the room, and no one
would tell who was the offender. In the latter, we
see mere debtors never allowed a morsel of meat
from year's end to year's end, not permitted to
receive anything, however trifling, from their
friends, but kept strictly on the prison allowance,
no matter how long their incarceration may be
prolonged.
And what is that allowance We take it
from the evidence adduced before the Coroner and

a very respectable Jury, at the inquest held on
an unfortunate gentleman, who died on Saturday
last, in the Queen's Prison, from illness occasioned
by the low scale of diet sanctioned at Winchester,
and the debility thus brought on an illness from
which thekind attention and nutritiousfood allowed
by the authorities of the Queen's Prison was ina-
_

- --- dequate to restore him. The allowance then was—

For breakfast and supper, each day, four oz._ of
bread, and a pint of gruel (convicted felons are
allowed eight oz. of bread at each meal, double that
given to the unfortunate debtor), and for dinner on
Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays four oz. of bread

and three oz. of cheese ; Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Saturdays, four potatoes and four oz. of

bread ; and on Thursdays the ordinary four oz.
of bread, and what is called a pint of soup, being
made of " the meat boiled for the more fortunate
and better-fed felons ! " Well might the humane
and efficient medical officer of the Queen's Prison
(Dr. WALKER) declare that the diet was too