But nothing short of radical reform and complete reconstruction could touch the deep-seated evils of association, overcrowding, and idleness. The first still produced deplorable results—results to be observable for many years to come. Mr. Buxton mentions the case of a boy whose apparent innocence and artlessness had attracted his attention. He had been committed for an offence for which he was acquitted. He left Newgate utterly corrupted, and after lapsing into crime, soon returned with a very different character. Other cases of moral deterioration have already been recorded. Some attempt was made to reduce the overcrowding, on the recommendation of the House of Commons Committee of 1818, but this applied only a partial remedy. The bulk of the prisoners were still left in idleness. A few fortunate criminals, many of them kept back from transportation on purpose, who were skilled in trades, were employed at them. Painters, plasterers, and carpenters were allowed to follow their handicrafts, with the reward of sixpence per diem and a double allowance of food. They used their own tools, and this without any dangerous consequences as regards facilitating the escape of others, thus disposing of the objection so long raised against the industrial employment of prisoners in Newgate. But this boon of toil was denied to all but a very limited number. As the Prison Discipline Society pertinently observed in a report dated 1820, “It is obvious that reformation must be materially impeded, and in some cases utterly defeated, when the prisoners are defectively classed, remain without constant inspection or employment, and are consequently condemned to habits of idleness and dissipation.”
Newgate prisoners were the victims to another most objectionable practice which obtained all over London. Persons committed to a metropolitan gaol at that time were taken in gangs, men and women handcuffed together, or linked on to a long chain, unless they could afford to pay for a vehicle out of their own funds. Even then they were not certain of the favour, for I find a reference to a decent and respectable woman sent to Newgate, who handed a shilling to the escort warder to provide her with a hackney coach; but this functionary pocketed the cash, and obliged the woman to walk, chained to the rest. As the miserable crew filed through the public streets, exposed to the scornful gaze of every passenger, they were followed by a crowd of reckless boys, who jeered at and insulted them. Many thus led in procession were in a shocking condition of dirt and misery, frequently nearly naked, and often bearing upon them the germs, more or less developed, of contagious disease. “Caravans,” the forerunners of the prison vans, were first made use of about 1827. That the need for prison reform was imperative may be gathered from the few out of many instances I have adduced, yet there were those who, wedded to ancient ideas, were intolerant of change; they would not admit the existence of any evils. One smug alderman, a member of the House of Commons, sneered at the ultra philanthropy of the champions of prison improvement. Speaking on a debate on prison matters, he declared that “our prisoners have all that prisoners ought to have, without gentlemen think they ought to be indulged with Turkey carpets.” The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline was taxed with a desire to introduce a system tending to divest punishment of its just and salutary terrors; an imputation which the Society indignantly and very justly repudiated, the statement being, as they said, “refuted by abundant evidence, and having no foundation whatever in truth.”
Among those whom the Society found arrayed against it was Sydney Smith, who, in a caustic article contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ protested against the pampering of criminals. While fully admitting the good intentions of the Society, he condemned their ultra humanitarianism as misplaced. He took exception to various of the proposals of the Society. He thought they leant too much to a system of indulgence and education in gaols. He objected to the instruction of prisoners in reading and writing. “A poor man who is lucky enough,” he said, “to have his son committed for a felony educates him under such a system for nothing, while the virtuous simpleton who is on the other side of the wall is paying by the quarter for these attainments.” He was altogether against too liberal a diet; he disapproved of industrial occupations in gaols, as not calculated to render prisons terrible. “There should be no tea and sugar, no assemblage of female felons around the washing-tub, nothing but beating hemp and pulling oakum and pounding bricks—no work but what was tedious, unusual.”... “In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil-doers, there must be no sharings of profits, no visiting of friends, no education but religious education, no freedom of diet, no weavers’ looms or carpenters’ benches. There must be a great deal of solitude, coarse food, a dress of shame, hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour, a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort.”[69]
Undeterred by these sarcasms and misrepresentations, the Society pursued its laudable undertaking with remarkable energy and great singleness of purpose. The objects it had in view were set forth in one of its earliest meetings. It sought to obtain and diffuse useful information, to suggest beneficial regulations, and circulate tracts demonstrating the advantages of classification, constant inspection, regular employment, and humane treatment generally, with religious and moral instruction. It earnestly advocated the appointment of female officers to take exclusive charge of female prisoners, a much-needed and, according to our ideas, indispensable reform, already initiated by the Ladies’ Committee at Newgate.[70] It made the subject of the newly-invented tread-wheels, or stepping-wheels, as they were at first called, its peculiar affair, and obtained full details, from places where they had been adopted, of the nature of these new machines,[71] the method by which they were worked, and the dietaries of the prisoners employed upon them. Nor did it confine itself to mere verbal recommendations. The good it tried to do took active shape in the establishment of temporary refuges—at Hoxton for males, and in the Hackney Road for females—for the reception of deserving cases discharged from prison. The governor of Newgate and other metropolitan prisons had orders of admission to this refuge, which he could bestow on prisoners on release, and so save the better-disposed or the completely destitute from lapsing at once into crime. The refuge, which had for its object the training of its inmates in habits of industry, and in moral and religious duty, and which after a time sought to provide them with suitable situations, was supported entirely out of the funds of the Society. At the time of its greatest prosperity, its annual income from donations and subscriptions was about £1600.
Another point to which the Society devoted infinite pains was the preparation of plans for the guidance of architects in the construction of prisons. A very valuable volume published by the Society traced the progress of prison architecture from the days when the gaol was the mere annexe of the baronial or episcopal castle, or a dungeon above or below the gate of a town, to the first attempts at systematic reconstruction carried out under the advice and supervision of Howard.[72] It is interesting to observe that the plan of “radiation,” by which the prison blocks radiated from a central hall, like spokes in a wheel, was introduced as early as 1790 by Mr. Blackburn, an architect of eminence who was very largely employed in the erection of prison buildings at the close of the last century. With some important modifications this principle of radiation is still the rule. The Society did not limit its remarks to the description of what had already been done, but it offered suggestions for future buildings, with numerous carefully-executed drawings and designs of the model it recommended for imitation. Experience has since shown that in some respects these plans are defective, especially in the placing of the governor’s residence in the centre of the prison. It was thought that this would guarantee constant supervision and inspection, but it did nothing of the kind, and only the presence of warders on duty is found now-a-days to be really efficacious. The main recommendations, however, are based upon common sense, and none are more commendable than that which deprecates the excessive ornamentation of the external parts of the edifice. “The new gaols,” as Howard says, “having pompous fronts, appear like palaces to the lower class of people, and many persons are against them on this account.” The Prison Society reproves the misdirected efforts of ambitious architects, who by a lavish and improvident expenditure of public money sought to “rank the prisons they built among the most splendid buildings of the city or town.” Absence of embellishment is in perfect unison with the character of the establishment. These are principles fully recognized now-a-days, and it may fairly be conceded that the Prison Discipline Society’s ideal differed little from that kept in view in the construction of the latest and best modern gaols.
After a few years of active exertion the Society was rewarded by fresh legislation. To its efforts, and their effect upon Parliament and the public mind, we must attribute the new Gaol Acts of 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, and 5 Geo. IV. cap. 85, which having gone through several sessions, at last became law in 1823-4. By the preamble of the first-named act it was declared “expedient to introduce such measures and arrangements as shall not only provide for the safe custody, but shall also tend more effectually to preserve the health and improve the morals of the prisoners, and shall insure the proper measure of punishment to convicted offenders.” Accordingly due provision was made for the enforcement of hard labour on all prisoners sentenced to it, and for the employment of all others. As a rider to this enactment, it was laid down that any prisoner who could work and would not had no claim to be supported in gaol, “unless such ability (to work) should cease by reason of sickness, infirmity, the want of sufficient work, or from any other cause.” It was distinctly laid down that male and female prisoners should be confined in separate buildings or parts of the prison, “so as to prevent them from seeing, conversing, or holding any intercourse with each other.” Classification was insisted upon, in the manner laid down by the 24 Geo. III. cap. 54,[73] with such further separation as the justices should deem conducive to good order and discipline. Female prisoners were in all cases to be under the charge of female officers. Every prison containing female prisoners was to have a matron who was to reside constantly in the prison. The religious and moral welfare of the prisoners were to be attended to, the first by daily services, the latter by the appointment of schoolmasters and instruction in reading and writing. Last, but not least, the use of irons was strictly forbidden, “except in cases of urgent and absolute necessity,” and every prisoner was to be provided with a hammock or cot to himself, suitable bedding, and, if possible, a separate cell. The second act, passed in the following year, enlarged and amended the first, and at the same time gave powers to the House to call for information as to the observance of its provisions.
The promulgation of these two Gaol Acts strengthened the hands of the Prison Discipline Society enormously. It had now a legal and authoritative standard of efficiency to apply, and could expose all the local authorities that still lagged behind, or neglected to comply with the provisions of the new laws. The Society did not shrink from its self-imposed duty, but continued year after year, with unflagging energy and unflinching spirit, to watch closely and report at length upon the condition of the prisons of the country. For this purpose it kept up an extensive correspondence with all parts of the kingdom, and circulated queries to be answered in detail, whence it deduced the practice and condition of every prison that replied. Upon these and the private visitations made by various members the Society obtained the facts, often highly damnatory, which were embodied in its annual reports. The progress of improvement was certainly extremely slow. It was long before the many jurisdictions imitated the few. Gaols, of which the old prison at Reading was a specimen, were still left intact. In that prison, with its cells and yards arranged within the shell of an ancient abbey chapel, the prisoners, without firing, bedding, or sufficient food, spent their days “in surveying their grotesque prison, or contriving some means of escape by climbing the fluted columns which supported the Gothic arches of the aisles, and so passing by the roof down into the garden and on to freedom.” In a county prison adjoining the metropolis, the separation between the male and female quarters was supposed to be accomplished by the erection of an iron railing; in this same prison capital convicts were chained to the floor until execution. In another gaol not far off male and female felons still occupied the same room—underground, and reached by a ladder of ten steps. In others the separation between the sexes consisted in a hanging curtain, or an imaginary boundary line, and nothing prevented parties from passing to either side but an empty regulation which all so disposed could defy. Numbers of the gaols were still unprovided with chaplains, and the prisoners never heard Divine service. In many others there were no infirmaries, no places set apart for the confinement of prisoners afflicted with dangerous and infectious disorders. No attempt was made to maintain discipline. Half the gaols had no code of rules properly prepared and sanctioned by the judges, according to law.
By degrees, however, the changes necessary to bring the prisons into conformity with the recent acts were attempted, if not actually introduced into the county prisons, to which, with a few of the more important city or borough prisons, these acts more especially applied.[74] Most of the local authorities embarked into considerable expenditure, determined to rebuild their gaols de novo on the most approved pattern, or to reappropriate, reconstruct, and patch up the existing prisons till they were more in accordance with the growing requirements of the times. Religious worship became more generally the rule; chaplains were appointed, and chapels provided for them; surgeons and hospitals also. Workshops were built at many prisons, various kinds of manufactures and trades were set on foot, including weaving, matting, shoe-making, and tailoring. The interior of one prison was illuminated throughout with gas,—still a novelty, which had been generally adopted in London only four years previously,—“a measure which must greatly tend to discourage attempts to escape.” There were tread-wheels at most of the prisons, and regular employment thereon or at some other kind of hard labour. In many places too where the prisoners earned money by their work, they were granted a portion of it for their own use after proper deduction for maintenance. Only a few glaring evils still demanded a remedy. The provision of separate sleeping cells was still quite inadequate. For instance, in twenty-two county gaols there were 1063 sleeping cells in all (in 1823), and the average daily number committed that year amounted to 3985. The want of sleeping cells long continued a crying need. Four years later the Prison Society reported that in four prisons, which at one time of the year contained 1308 prisoners, there were only sixty-eight sleeping rooms or cells, making an average of nineteen persons occupying each room. At the New Prison, Clerkenwell, which had become the principal reception gaol of Middlesex, and so took all the untried, the sleeping space per head was only sixteen inches, and often as many as 293 men[75] had to be accommodated on barrack beds occupying barely 390 feet lineal. The “scenes of tumult and obscenity” in these night rooms are said to have been beyond description; a prisoner in one nocturnal riot lost an eye. Yet to Clerkenwell were now committed the juveniles, and all who were inexperienced in crime.
Great want of uniformity in treatment in the various prisons was still noticeable, and was indeed destined to continue for another half century, in other words, until the introduction of the Prison Act of 1877.[76] At the time of which I am writing there was great diversity of practice as regards the hours of labour. In some prisons the prisoners worked seven hours a day, in others ten and ten and a half. The nature of the employment varied greatly in severity, especially the tread-wheel labour. In some county gaols, as I have already said, female prisoners were placed upon the tread-wheel; in others women were very properly exempted from it, and also from all severe labour. Earnings were very differently appropriated. Here the prisoners were given the whole amount, there a half or a third. Sometimes this money might be expended in the purchase of extra articles of food.[77] The rations varied considerably everywhere. It was still limited to bread in some places, the allowance of which varied from one to three pounds; in others meat, soup, gruel, beer were given. Here and there food was not issued in kind, but a money allowance which the prisoner might expend himself. Bedding and clothing was still denied, but only in a few gaols; in others both were supplied in ample quantities, the cost varying per prisoner from twenty shillings to five pounds. It was plain that although the law had defined general principles of prison government, too much discretion was still left to the magistracy to fill in the details. The legislature only recommended, it did not peremptorily insist. Too often the letter of the law was observed, but not its spirit.
One great impediment to wide amelioration was that a vast number of small gaols lay out of reach of the law. When the new acts were introduced, numerous prisons under local jurisdiction were exempted from the operation of the law. They were so radically bad that reform seemed hopeless, and it was thought wiser not to bring them under provisions which clearly could not be enforced. Mr. Peel, who as Home Secretary had charge of the bill, which became the 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, said that he had abstained from legislating for these small jurisdictions “on mature deliberation.” “It is not,” he said, “that I am insensible of the lamentable and disgraceful situation in which many of them are, but I indulge a hope that many of them will contract with the counties, that many of them will build new gaols, and that when in a year or two we come to examine their situation, we shall find but few which have not in one or other of these ways removed the grievance of which such just complaint is made. When that time arrives I shall not hesitate to ask Parliament for powers to compel them to make the necessary alterations, for it is not to be endured that these local jurisdictions should remain in the deplorable situation in which many of them now are.”