On the 26th February, 1838, a noble lord rose in his place to call the attention of the House of Lords to a grave failure in the administration of criminal justice. “All London, the whole country, was ringing with it,” said another noble lord. “It has been a topic of universal reprobation co-extensive with the hourly increasing sphere in which it has been known. All Westminster has talked of it, all Middlesex has turned its eyes to the quarter in which the abuse occurred. I will venture to say,” continued his lordship, “that it has been more talked of, more discussed, more indignantly commented upon in every corner of this great town and of this populous country, than any one subject either in or out of Parliament, or in any one of the courts of justice, civil or criminal.” It appeared that in Millbank, a prison exempt from the general jurisdiction of the county magistrates, and governed only by the Home Secretary, there had occurred five cases of unwarranted harshness and cruelty. Three little girls and two fine young men had been completely broken down by the system of solitary confinement therein practised. The children were mere infants: one, as it was alleged, was little more than seven years old; the other two were eight and ten respectively. Yet at this tender age they had been cut off entirely from the consoling influences of home and the kindly intercourse of relatives and companions, to be immured in solitary wretchedness for nearly thirteen consecutive months. So bitterly did these little ones lament the loneliness of their lengthened seclusion, that one asked piteously for a doll to keep her company, and all three were found at different times sleeping with their bedclothes twisted to simulate a baby, so earnestly did they yearn for something like ideal society in their dreary confinement. More than this: the punishment of continued solitude had produced in them a marked infirmity of mind, manifested by great impediment of speech, and general difficulty in the expression of ideas. A gentleman, one of the Middlesex magistrates, who had visited the Penitentiary, described the effect upon their speech such as to render their voices “feeble, low, and inarticulate—to produce a kind of inward speaking, visible to and palpable to every one who heard them.” So much for the children. As for the young men, one of them, who had previously been remarkable for great activity and intelligence, came out in a state of idiocy, and was afterwards retained as an idiot in St. Marylebone workhouse, reduced to such a state of utter and helpless imbecility as to be incapable of being employed even in breaking stones. The other was similarly affected. And yet all this was contrary to law. Here were prisoners subjected to uninterrupted solitary confinement for twelve and thirteen months, when by a recent Act it was expressly ordered that no such punishment should last for more than one month at a time, and never for more than three months in the year. Circumstances very disgraceful beyond doubt, if the charge were only proved, and entailing a weight of awful responsibility on those who were accountable to the public.
As the attack was made without a word of warning, Lord Melbourne, at that time the head of the Government, was unable to defend himself. All he could urge was that the House should reserve its opinion until upon a close investigation the grievances and evils alleged should be proved to exist. He felt certain that the whole statement was exaggerated and over-coloured; of this he had, indeed, no doubt, but he must claim a little time before he made a specific reply.
The next night he stated that full inquiry had been made. In the first place the ages of the children had been understated. Each of them was at least ten years old. But this was not a point of any very material importance. They were all three very profligate children. One of the worst signs of the day was the great increase of crimes committed by children of tender age. The principal cause of this was, no doubt, the wickedness of parents, who made their children the instruments for carrying out their own evil designs. In the present instance the three girls had been guilty of theft and sentenced to transportation, but they were recommended for the Penitentiary solely to remove them for a lengthened period from the influence of their parents, and to give the Government an opportunity of effecting a reform in their character and conduct. The only place suitable for such an attempt was the Millbank Penitentiary, and to this they were removed. This establishment was governed by rules laid down by the Lords’ Committee of 1835, and, therefore, if undue severity had been practised, it must have been in defiance of those very rules. But it was quite untrue that any of these prisoners had been subjected to protracted solitary confinement. There was no such thing in the Penitentiary except for prison offences, and then only for short periods. Separate confinement there certainly was, but solitary confinement—complete seclusion, that is to say, without being seen, without going out to public worship—as a general practice was practically unknown in the establishment.
“These children took exercise regularly twice a day, for half an hour at a time, in company with other prisoners of their ward; they had school also together twice a week; went to chapel on Sunday; and were regularly visited by benevolent Christian ladies (Mrs. Fry and her associates), who spent long hours in their cells. Surely their condition was not one of great hardship!
“The young men, Welsh and Ray, were notorious rogues, who had also been sent to the Penitentiary to effect, if possible, some reformation in their ill-conducted and irregular lives. Their behaviour had been very rebellious and disorderly, but though they had been frequently punished they had left the Penitentiary at the expiration of their terms of imprisonment in perfect health and full possession of all their faculties.”
The Opposition laughed at the explanation. Not solitary confinement—what was it then? The children went out to exercise. Yes; but they were not allowed to communicate or talk to one another. They went to church, and to school, but only for a few hours together in the week, and for the rest of the time they were shut up in their cells alone, utterly alone. Was not this solitary confinement? Were these accusations all unfounded then? Had they been disproved? Let the Government wait till a committee of the House had been appointed to inquire and had reported upon the whole case.
A committee met, took evidence, and at the end of a month sent in their report. It was quite conclusive. The whole of the charges necessarily fell at once to the ground. “On the whole,” they stated, in summing up, “the committee think it due to the officers of the Penitentiary to state, that all the convicts have been treated with all the leniency, and—in the case of the female children particularly—with all the attention to their moral improvement that was consistent with the rules laid down for the government of the Penitentiary.” The children had come in dirty, ignorant, and in ill health; they were now cleanly, had learned to read, could make shirts, and were all quite well and strong. Nothing was wrong with their voices: one could shout as loud as any girl of her age, but she was shy before strangers; the second led the singing of the hymns in her ward, though her voice was only of ordinary power, and had been even husky from the time of her reception; the third usually spoke from choice in a low tone, but she had been heard to shout often enough to other prisoners. It was quite evident, then, that in these three cases, not only had the cruelty been distinctly disproved, but it was equally clear that their imprisonment in the Penitentiary had been a positive benefit to the children in question.
Nor was the charge a bit better substantiated in the case of the two “fine young men.” Both of them had been cast for death at the Old Bailey, which was commuted afterwards to one year in the Penitentiary. One, Welsh, was a good-for-nothing vagrant, who had spent most of the seventeen years he had lived inside the Marylebone workhouse, and to this he had returned on his release from Millbank. He was a clever but unruly prisoner; he could read and write well, and his faculties had been sharpened rather than impaired by his residence in prison. The master of the Marylebone workhouse was decidedly of opinion that he had improved much; he was more civil now than before, and he was greatly grown. Welsh said himself he had no fault to find with the Penitentiary; in fact, he was quite ready to go back to it, if they would only take him in. But this Welsh was in the habit of counterfeiting idiocy, either to procure some extra indulgences, or to amuse himself and others, and he played the part so well that many who saw him were deceived.
William Ray, the other “victim,” was older, having reached his twenty-fifth year. He also had passed the greater part of his life in the Marylebone workhouse; but he had enlisted twice into the army, and had gone with Sir de Lacy Evans to Spain. He had been discharged for incompetence, and it was perfectly clear from the evidence taken, that he was a person of very weak intellect long before he became an inmate of the prison: he had a vacant countenance, a silly laugh, and a habit of blinking his eyes and tossing his head about. Still he perfectly understood what he was ordered to do. He had become a good tailor, and had improved in reading.
Thus all the charges were disposed of, and the system in force having been held blameless, it might fairly be continued without change. The system then was as follows: The prisoners slept in separate cells which opened into a common passage, and at the centre of the passage was the warder’s bedroom. The cells were ten feet by seven, and had a partition wall between them fourteen inches thick. The entrance to each cell had two doors—one of open iron work, the other of wood. At the first bell, every morning about daylight, the prisoners were let out to wash, about six or eight at a time; and they then returned to their cells for the rest of the day, except during their two hours’ exercise, and twice a week when they attended chapel and school. Their meals were brought to them in their cells by other prisoners let out for the purpose. The chaplain, assistant chaplain, and schoolmaster were continually visiting them. All day long the wooden door of the cell remained wide open, and there were plenty of opportunities of talking to their neighbours through the gate of iron grating, where even a whisper could be heard. They were always talking—at washing time, at exercise, even when in their cells with both doors locked and bolted. Now this was manifestly not solitary confinement. Nay, more, it was not even separate confinement. But yet, without the latter, without perfect isolation and the prevention of all intercourse and intercommunication, it was felt by Mr. Nihil that his efforts to reform his prisoners were vain. Whatever good his counsels might accomplish was immediately counteracted by the vicious converse that still went on in spite of all attempts to check it. It was found that extensive communications were carried on; that prisoners learned each other’s histories, formed friendships and enmities, and contrived in many ways to do each other harm. Unless this were ended all hope of permanent cure was out of the question. Mr. Nihil says, in 1838, that he is in great hope that by the thorough separation of the prisoners, important advantages in respect to the efficiency of imprisonment and the reformation of the convicts would ensue. “The more perfect isolation of the prisoner by non-intercourse with fellow-criminals, not only renders the punishment more effective, but places him in a condition more susceptible to the good influences with which we seek to visit him—now constantly frustrated by communication through the wards.”