The Sun.
London, England, 1846-02-02 00:00:00

PRISON DISCIPLINE.

The subject of prison discipline has, of late, under-
gone a great deal of what is called consideration and
discussion in the Court and in the Committees of Alder-
men, and the crowded state of the City gaols :has from
time to time forced itself not only upon the attention of
the City Magistrates, but of the Home-office, by the
mere dint of its importance. The followieg statement
embodies the views and opinions of the opposers of the
existing system, and of those who contend that the in-
terposition of the Government, in the City gaol affsirs,
would be of injurious tendency not only as regards the
privileges of the citizens of London, but as respects the
improvement of the mural condition of society.
It is admitted by the former, who constitute the mi-
nority in the Court of Aldermen, that of late years the
establishment of the Central Criminal Court, with its
monthly sessions, and the power given to the Middlesex
Magistrates of committing prisoners for trial at the
Westminster sessions, have greatly reduced the numbers
confined within the walls of Newgate, and so far have
operated most beneficially upon the state of that prison;
but those partial improvements have struck far, very far
short of the root of the evil. One of the City prisons,
Giltspur-street Compter, affords a most impressive in-
stance of the bad consequences which result from over-
crowding those receptacles of crime and misfortune.
Giltspur-street Compter was originally intended for City
debtors, and if it had been confined to that purpose,
was capable of affording tolerable accommodation ; but,
in the year 1812, an Act of Parliament was obtained
for building a debtors' prison in Whitecross-street, and
ever since that period the Giltspur-street Compter has
been used as a City house of correction, and also as a
place of confinement for remanded prisoners, and for
those who are committed for want of hail. The prison
itself stands upon a site containing less than half
an acre of ground, and the number of prisoners
confined within its walls varies generally from 240
to 300, and sometimes even exceeds the latter number.
By the new Building Act, no prison can now be erected
upon an area of less than five acres, and this rule is ap-
plicable to provincial as well as to metrrpolitan districts.
Giltspur-street Compter, therefore, standing upon an
area of less than half an acre, though it does not come
under the provisions of the Act, which has no retrospec-
tive operation, is condemned by it as deficient in she pro-
portion that less than half an acre bears to five acres,
the smallest scale upon which the Legislature has de-
clared future prisons shall be built. If the only objection
to small prisons, and the consequent overcrowding of
prisoners, were the injury thereby inflicted on the bodily
health of that wretched portion of our fellow creatures,
it would be a sufficient reason for correcting the defect.
But the great evil is to be found not in its physical, but
in its moral consequences. An injury to the constitution
from confined and unwholesome air would be bad enough,
but here is an injury preying upon the mind, penetrating
the heart and soul, and producing a moral contagion on
the human subject which may be said to affect eternity
itself. Want of room includes want of classification, and
want of classification prevents anything like a remedial
or beneficent spirit from mingling with the severity of
our criminal laws. Far from encouraging, or facilitating,
or indeed permitting the return of a young offender to
♦irtue, it shuts the door of repentance for ever in his face
by placing him in the society, and as it were under the
instruction of the most experienced practitioners in every
species of enormity. The child who has committed a first
offence, the adult who has arrived at the full maturity of
crime, and the veteran more hardened by his vices than
his years, who seems to take a pride in the empire of
wickedness, are all huddled together, breathing the same
tainted atmosphere, and assimilating with a sort of ma-
lignant rivalship to the worst specimen amongst them.
Such is the state of that part of the prison known as the
Compter, where prisoners untried and of course uncon-
victed, and possibly innocent, are associated with some of
the most depraved characters on the face of the earth;
but bid as this division of the prison is, the other divi-
sion, now known as the house of correction for the city
of London, is by many degrees worse. Here are to
be seen in the same room from fifty to sixty male prison-
ers of all ages, and of almost all degrees of criminality
siting together, closely packed on benches, picking
oakum. The most disgusting conversation is continu-
ally going forward; the most revolting levity pervades the
whole demoralised and demoralising mass, and the
wretch who might, in the first instance, have been sent
there for some slight offence, soon finds the sort of school
he has been introduced to, and there treasures up lessons
and forms connexions, well calculated to fit him for the
mischievous career which society may be said to have
destined and fitted him to run. Immediately above this
den of infamy stands the treadmill, on which a similar
number of persons are kept constantly at work, and
there, as in the oakum room, their intercourse with each
other is perfectly unrestrained and their conversation
distinguished by the same reckless disregard of all de-
cency and order. The sleeping apartments are over-
crowded in the same manner, and the same want of
classification and arrangement, proceeding from the same
cause, is observable in the wretched wards devoted to
rest and forgetfulness.

Such is the information, and such are the opinions
gathered from those who view with indignation and
contempt the civic gaol system. They call for a remedy
for so monstrous a state of things. They say the neglect
is inexcusable, not only because the evils resulting
from it are so formidable, but because the remedy is so
palpable to the slightest consideration, and so obviously
within the reach of the civil authorities. To erect a
house of correction adequate to the wants of the city of
London, would, they assert, require an area of from
five to tea acres, and if a prison of such extent were built
they would hope to see a proper classification of prison-
ers enforced and the working of a system of prison dis-
cipline calculated, not only to punish, but to reform
those who become amenable to its regulations.
The gentlemen who consider the above description as
a mere picture reflected from a diseaied imagination,
which "sees more devils than all hell can hold," inva-
riably condemn and discourage allusions to the Giltspur-
street Compter. In the Court of Aldermen, at any rate
in the presence of the members of the press, if we may
judge from the newspaper reports of the business trans-
acted there, where hints have been, from time to time,
thrown out expressive of a suspicion that improvement is
unattainable without the means of affecting classification,
a general murmer is heard, and a peremptory reference
is made to the Gaol Committee, in which " profound" it
is doomed to repose until some new occasion arise, or
some new member, uninstructed in the ways of the
Court, is shocked at the horrible reality, and speaks
what he thinks. It has, however, been sometimes the
case that a plump denial has been given to all charges
of bad arrangement and management in the prison, fol-
lowed up by a high compliment to those by whose judg-
ment and assiduity the reform has seen brought to per-
fection, and by a sneer at the menaced interference of a
Secretary of State with the functions of the magistrates
of the City of London.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.
COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH, Jan. 31.
TILE QUEEN V. TILE REV. JOSIAh BARTLETT.
This was a rule whick had been obtained in the Bail
Court a short time since, for a criminal inf,rmation
against the defendant for the publication of a libel on
Mrs. Marianna Tozer. At the time the rule was ob-
tained the particulars of the libel were make public,
and they then appeared to be of a most defamatory
character.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL having now moved to make
the rule absolute,

Mr. Sergeant WuxiNs said he had been instructed to
show cause against it, but that it would rather be his
duty to declare to the Court that the defendant
extremelyinsinua
tien rseg her elf; tae what he
dd
uttered
against had
tohn a
the lady
ndthat
we
were
ea l h
alto-
gether
t e
without foundation. Some erroneous impression
under which defendant had laboured, had prompted him
to take the course which he now so deeply lamented, and
influenced by them he was induced to believe that the
lady had given rise to disorder in his family. In a fit
bordering on madness the letters had been written, but
he was now ready to avow that it did not contain a word
of truth. lie would also say that the lady was in fact
a most excellent person, and that to the last day of his
life he would deplore his having ever attacked her so
unjustifiably and so improperly. In making this state-
ment he hoped he had only done his duty.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL expressed himself fully sa-
tisfied with so ample a retraction of so foul a calumny,
and one which had been so handsomely made by his
Learned Friend. Under ordinary circumstances he
would have been content to discharge the rule on pay-
ment of the costs, but in the present instance he must
press the Court to make the rule absolute.—Rule ab-
solute.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
SOUTHWARK.

On Saturday two policemen of the M, or Southwark
division, named Roberts and Parsons, were, by direction
of the Commissioners of Police, charged before Mr. Traill
with assaulting and threatening a man:named Evans,
keeping a lodging-house in the ricinity of this Court.
The complainant stated that on Wednesday morning,
between one and two o'clock, while he was sitting in
the front parlour with two of his lodgers, a loud knock
came to the street door, and on opening it the two de-
fendants rushed in and asked him what business he and
his lodgers had to be up at that hour of the morning?
Before, however, he had time to answer such a ques-
tion, one of the defendants (Roberts) struck him a
severe blow on the face, which knocked him up against
the wall, and the other defendant pulled out his staff',
and, flourishing it about, said that he would like to lay
it about the head of the complainant, and ultimately
struck one of' the lodgers, who had given no kind of
offence. The defendants, before they quitted the house,
expressed their determination not to rest until they suc-
ceeded in routing the complainant out of the house.
In reply to Mr. Traill, the complainant said he never
' gave the policemen any provocation.
Roberts, in defence said, that on the morning in
question, on passing the complainant's house, he heard
talking in the parlour, and on listening he overheat•d
some person threaten to throw a brickbat at Parsons
when an Opportunity presented itself ; that he (Roberts)
informed his brother constable of what he heard, and
they accordingly went together into the house, but he
denied having used the violence attributed to him.
James Humphries, an old man, confirmed the com-
plainant's account of the transaction in every particular,
and added, that the purport of the conversation pre •
viously to the intrusion of the two policemen, had no
reference to any member of the police force ; that the
fact was they were talking about the repeal of the corn-
laws.

In reply to the magistrate, the witness said the police-
men on rushing into the house did not say what they
were there for, but without any ceremony one of them
(Roberts) struck the complainant.
Parson, in reply to the charge, said that his brother
constable informed him that he heard threats used
against him by persons in the complainant's house, and
that was the reason he accompanied him there. He,

however, denied assaulting any person, and concluded
by saying the house was one of very bad repute.
Air. TRAILL —Have you reported the character of the
house to the superintendent, far that would have been
your duty, and not to have intruded yourself into it in
the way described. Both the defendants admitted they
made no report on the subject, but they maintained that
they considered it a part of their duty to enter houses
of a similar character, if they heard anything was going
forward of an improper description.
The complainant said that he kept a lodging-house,
and that he was doing nothing that should have sub-
jected him to such treatment as he experienced at the
hands of the two policemen.
Mr. TRAILL said, that even admitting the defendants,
in passing the house, had heard the threats they men-
tioned, they would not be justified in entering the house,
far less in assaulting the landlord of it, for if that were
permitted, no man's house would be safe from the intru-
sion of the police, when they thought proper to enter.
The magistrate then inflicted penalties of 20s. each on
the defendants; and, addressing the superintendent, said
the conduct of the constables was quite indefensible, and
deserved severe reprehension.
It may be proper to remark that the infliction of a
fine, by a magistrate upon a policeman, disqualifies him
from serving in future in the police force.