4. Prisoners charged with misdemeanours.
5. Debtors.
It was further ordered that male prisoners should be kept perfectly distinct from the females. King’s evidences were also to be lodged apart. Infirmaries separating the sexes were also to be provided, a chapel too, and warm and cold baths. “Care also was to be taken that the prisoners shall not be kept in any apartment underground.”
In an early report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, published some six-and-thirty years after the promulgation of this act, the flagrant and persistent violations of it and others, which had continued through that long period, are forcibly pointed out. In 1818, out of five hundred and eighteen prisons in the United Kingdom, to which a total of upwards of one hundred thousand prisoners had been committed in the year, only twenty-three prisons were divided according to law; fifty-nine had no division whatever to separate males and females; one hundred and thirty-six had only one division for the purpose; sixty-eight had only two divisions, and so on. In four hundred and forty-five prisons no work of any description had been introduced for the employment of prisoners; in the balance some work was done, but with the most meagre results. The want of room was still a crying evil. In one hundred gaols, capable of accommodating only eight thousand five hundred and forty-five persons, as many as thirteen thousand and fifty-seven were crowded. Many of the gaols were in the most deplorable condition: incommodious, as has been stated, insecure, unhealthy, and unprovided with the printed or written regulations required by law. To specify more particularly one or two of the worst, it may be mentioned that in the Borough Compter the old evils of indiscriminate association still continued unchecked. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or killed it by gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded almost inconceivably. In a space twenty feet long by six wide, twenty men slept on eight straw beds, with sixteen rugs amongst them, and a piece of timber for a bolster. Mr. Buxton, who found this, declared that it seemed physically impossible, but he was assured that it was true, and that it was accomplished by “sleeping edgeways.” One poor wretch, who had slept next the wall, said he had been literally unable to move for the pressure. “In the morning the stench and heat were so oppressive that he and every one else on waking rushed unclothed into the yard;” and the turnkey told Mr. Buxton that the “smell on first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse.” The hospital was filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with closed windows, where a lad lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first perfectly healthy, were lodged. Of course they were seized with the fever; so that the culprit, in addition to his sentence, had to endure by “the regulations of the city a disease very dangerous in its nature,” and ran the risk of a lingering and painful death.[64]
At Guildford prison, which Mr. Buxton also visited in 1818, there was no infirmary, no chapel, no work, no classification. The irons, which nearly every one wore, were remarkably heavy; those double ironed could not take off their small clothes.[65] No prison dress was allowed, and half the inmates were without shirts or shoes or stockings. The diet was limited to dry bread, which was of the best certainly, and a pound and a half in weight. Matters were on much the same footing at St. Albans. They were far worse at Bristol, although at Mr. Buxton’s visit a new gaol was in process of erection, the first step towards reform since Howard’s visitation in 1774. In 1818 the old gaol was so densely packed that it was nearly impossible to pass through the yards for the throng. One hundred and fifty were lodged in a prison just capable of holding fifty-two. In the crowd, all of them persons who had “no other avocation or mode of livelihood but thieving,” Mr. Buxton counted eleven children—children hardly old enough to be released from the nursery. All charged with felony were in heavy irons, without distinction of age. All were in ill health; almost all were in rags; almost all were filthy in the extreme. The state of the prison, the desperation of the prisoners, broadly hinted in their conversation and plainly expressed in their conduct, the uproar of oaths, complaints, and obscenity, “the indescribable stench,” presented together a concentration of the utmost misery and the utmost guilt. It was “a scene of infernal passions and distresses,” says Buxton, “which few have imagination sufficient to picture, and of which fewer still would believe that the original is to be found in this enlightened and happy country.”
There was still worse to come. Having explored the yards and adjacent day rooms, and sleeping cells, a door was unlocked, the visitors were furnished with candles, and they descended eighteen long steps into a vault. At the bottom was a circular space, through which ran a narrow passage, and the sides of which were fitted with barrack bedsteads. The floor was on the level of the river, and very damp. The smell at one o’clock of the day “was something more than can be expressed by the term disgusting.” On the dirty bedstead lay a wretched being in the throes of severe illness. The only ventilation of this pit, this “dark, cheerless, damp, unwholesome cavern—a dungeon in its worst sense”—was by a kind of chimney, which the prisoners kept hermetically sealed, and which had never been opened in the memory of the turnkey. Untried persons were often lodged in this nauseous underground den, and sometimes slept in “the pit,” loaded with heavy irons for a whole year, waiting the gaol delivery. Confinement for twelve months in the Bristol gaol was counted a punishment equivalent to seven years’ transportation.
In this prison there was no female infirmary. Sick women and their children remained in the ordinary wards, and propagated disease. No prison dress was allowed; no reception-room was provided, no soap, towels, or baths. The bedclothes consisted only of a single “very slight” rug. The allowance of food daily to felons was a fourpenny loaf, a price which in those days fluctuated enormously—as much as a hundred per cent. in a couple of years; but as no similar variation occurred in the prisoner’s appetite, his ration was somewhat precarious. As for the debtors, they had no allowance whatever, and were often in imminent danger of starvation. With all this, the inmates were crowded together at night to such a degree as to excite surprise that they should escape suffocation. There reigned through the whole edifice a chilly, damp, unwholesome atmosphere, and the effluvia from the prisoners was so nauseous that the chaplain found it necessary to take his place before they entered chapel, as he could not otherwise have faced the smell.
It is consoling to know that there were a few brilliant exceptions to this cruel, callous neglect. Already, as early as 1818, a prison existed at Bury St. Edmunds which was a model for imitation to others at that time, and which even fulfilled many of the exacting requirements of modern days. The great principles of classification, cleanliness, and employment were closely observed. There were eighty-four separate sleeping-cells, and unless the gaol was overcrowded, every inmate passed the night alone, and in comparative comfort, with a bed and proper bedding. The prison stood on a dry, airy situation outside the town. Prisoners on reception were treated as they are now-a-days—bathed, dressed in prison clothes, and inspected by the surgeon. No irons were worn except as a punishment. Personal cleanliness was insisted upon, and all parts of the prison were kept scrupulously clean. There was an infirmary, properly found and duly looked after. No idleness was permitted among the inmates. Trades were taught, or prisoners were allowed to follow their own if suitable. There was, besides, a mill for grinding corn, somewhat similar to a turn-spit, which prisoners turned by walking in rows. This made exertion compulsory, and imposed hard labour as a proper punishment. Another gaol, that of Ilchester, was also worthy of all commendation. It exhibited all the good points of that at Bury. At Ilchester the rule of employment had been carried further. A system not adopted generally till nearly half a century later had already prevailed at Ilchester. The new gaol had been in a great measure constructed by the prisoners themselves. Masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters had been employed upon the buildings, and the work was pronounced excellent by competent judges. Industrial labour had also been introduced with satisfactory results. Blanket weaving and cloth spinning was carried on prosperously, and all the material for prisoners’ apparel was manufactured in the gaol. There were work-rooms for wool-washing, dyeing, carding, and spinning. The looms were constantly busy. Tailors were always at work, and every article of clothing and bedding was made up within the walls. There was a prison laundry too, where all the prisoners’ linen was regularly washed. The moral welfare of the inmates was as closely looked after as the physical. There was an attentive chaplain, a schoolmaster, and regular religious and other instruction.
Compared with those highly meritorious institutions Newgate still showed but badly. Its evils were inherent and irremediable, but some ameliorating measures had been introduced, mainly through the exertions of a new governor, Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Newman at Newgate in 1817.[66] The most noticeable of the improvements introduced was a better regulation of dietaries within the prison. The old haphazard system, by which meat was issued in bulk, a week’s allowance at a time, was abolished, and there was a regular scale of daily rations adopted. The diet was now ample. It consisted of a pound and a half of bread per diem; for breakfast a pint of gruel; for dinner half a pound of boiled meat, or a quart of soup with vegetables, on alternate days. The food was properly prepared in the prison kitchen. Meat was no longer issued raw, to be imperfectly cooked before a ward fire and bolted gluttonously, the whole two pounds at one sitting. Mr. Brown confidently asserted that no gaol in England now fed its inmates so well as did Newgate. So plentiful was this dietary, that although the old permission remained in force of allowing the friends of prisoners to bring them supplies from outside, the practice was falling into abeyance, and the prisoners seldom required private assistance to eke out their meals.[67] It was also claimed for the more ample and more orderly distribution of victuals, that the general health of the prisoners had greatly improved. Mr. Brown also, much to his own credit, brought about the abandonment of the practice of ironing all prisoners as a matter of course.
In 1818 prisoners awaiting trial in Newgate, were at length relieved from this illegal infliction. Convicts were not even compelled to wear irons, providing they behaved well. It was found that shackles might be safely dispensed with, even in the case of the most desperate characters. This was effected by stopping the nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, which had hitherto prevailed all over the gaol. Ironing it will be remembered,[68] was a distinguishing badge, so that when the gaol was cleared the free might be readily known from the captive, and escapes prevented. Under the new rule visitors were not allowed to pass into the interior of the prison, but were detained between the grating. This change led to some discontent, until it was found that the much greater boon of relief from irons accompanied it, and the reform was quietly accepted. Indeed the best consequences followed from the removal of irons. The prisoners were much better disposed; there were no riots, and fewer disturbances.