Perhaps the most hideous and terrible of all evils was the disgraceful and almost indiscriminate overcrowding of the gaols. It was immediate parent of gaol fever. The rarity of gaol deliveries was a proximate cause of the overcrowding.
The expense of entertaining the judges was alleged as an excuse for not holding assizes more than once a year; but at some places—Hull, for instance—there had been only one gaol delivery in seven years, although, according to Howard, it had latterly been reduced to three. Often in the lapse of time principal witnesses died, and there was an acquittal with a failure of justice. Nor was it only the accused and unconvicted who lingered out their lives in gaol, but numbers of perfectly innocent folk
helped to crowd the narrow limits of the prison-house. Either the mistaken leniency, or more probably the absolutely callous indifference of gaol-rulers, suffered debtors to surround themselves with their families, pure women and tender children brought thus into continuous intercourse with felons and murderers, and doomed to lose their moral sense in the demoralizing atmosphere. The prison population was daily increased by a host of visitors, improper characters, friends and associates of thieves, who had free access to all parts of the gaol. In every filthy, unventilated cell-chamber the number of occupants was constantly excessive. The air space for each was often less than 150 cubic feet, and this air was never changed. Of one room, with its beds in tiers, its windows looking only into a dark entry, its fireplace used for the cooking of food for forty persons, it was said that the man who planned it could not well have contrived a place of the same dimensions more effectually calculated to destroy his fellow-creatures. The loathsome corruption that festered unchecked or unalleviated within the prison houses was never revealed until John Howard began his self-sacrificing visitations, and it is to the pages of his "State of Prisons" that we must refer for full details, some of which would be incredible were they not vouched for on the unimpeachable testimony of the great philanthropist.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction | [5] | |
| I. | The Gaol Fever | [19] |
| II. | The Rebuilding of Newgate | [37] |
| III. | Celebrated Crimes and Criminals | [53] |
| IV. | Newgate in the Nineteenth Century | [116] |
| V. | Philanthropic Efforts | [128] |
| VI. | The Beginning of Prison Reform | [150] |
| VII. | Interesting Instances | [171] |
| VIII. | Newgate Notorieties | [193] |
| IX. | Later Records | [251] |
| X. | The Tower of London | [297] |