Sedens Judex inter nubes;
Jesus, pro me perforatus,
Condar intra Tuum latus.
APPENDIX (Page [236]).
From the “Memoirs of Howard, compiled from his diary, his confidential letters, and other authentic documents, by James Baldwin Brown,” it appears that in the year 1755, on a voyage to Portugal, the vessel in which he was, was captured by a French privateer, and carried into Brest, where he and the other passengers, along with the crew, were cast into a filthy dungeon, and there kept a considerable time without nourishment. There they lay for six days and nights. The floor, with nothing but straw upon it, was their sleeping place. He was afterwards removed to Morlaix, and thence to Carpaix, where he was two months upon parole. At the latter place “he corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Morlaix and Dinnan; and had sufficient evidence of their being treated with such barbarity that many hundreds had perished; and that thirty-six were buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day.”
Through his benevolent and timely interference on their behalf, when he himself had regained his freedom, the prisoners of war in these three prisons were released and sent home to England in the first cartel ships.
Till the year 1773 it does not appear that he was actively engaged in any philanthropic work on behalf of prisoners. In the year 1730 there had been a commission of enquiry in the House of Commons on the state of prisons, and condition of their inmates, but nothing seems to have followed from it, and it was not till March, 1774, when Howard received the thanks of the House for the information which, he communicated to them on the subject, that the great work assumed shape. In 1773, having been appointed sheriff of Bedford, the distress of prisoners came under his notice. He engaged himself in a most minute inspection, and the consequence was the devotion of every faculty of his existence to the correction of the abuses existing in similar institutions as the friend of those who had no friend.
In that Christlike work he continued till his death, on 20th January, 1790, at Cherson, Russian Tartary, having in the meantime inspected prisons in England, Scotland and Ireland, France, Holland, Flanders, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Malta, Turkey, Prussia and Russia.