The justices flattered themselves that some of their prisoners were reformed; as, however, the re-committals for serious offences were not diminished, they were in this respect probably sanguine.
In fact the crank variation of the separate system was the very thing which the public had been crying for. It satisfied the requirement of able editors and the justices.
It was in vain that Messrs. Clay, Field, and others protested that the cell without any addition was already penal to the very verge of safety; that Mr. Osborne, of Bath, who spoke from what he had seen in his own gaol, stigmatised crank labour as torture, and foretold the inevitable consequences.
The committee adhered to their opinion, the public approved, and even Sir J. Jebb, who should have known better, appeared as quite a connoisseur in patent cranks, and spoke strongly in their favour.
To such august authority the magistrates in various districts bowed at once, sharpened their discipline, and laid in a stock of cranks.
It was solemnly believed that there was a reformatory as well as a deterrent potency in the appointed 14,000 revolutions per diem, yet to warrant such a belief there was not even the plea that the irksome toil was productive.
It was impossible to find grist for all the penal mills, and the justices were therefore compelled to put their rogues to barren air grinding.
Among the earliest converts to the efficacy of sharp discipline in general, and penal air grinding in particular, were the borough justices of Birmingham.
They were but acting in perfect accordance with the popular philosophy when they ousted Captain Maconochie, and proceeded to rectify his benevolent eccentricities by appointing a strict disciplinarian, duly instructed to adopt the deterrent method.
At the end of two years the public became anxious that the new governor should give an account of the management of the gaol.