Leaving Leicester he migrated to London and set up a hosiery establishment, which, however, he soon converted into the more congenial bookshop. It was the success of the Leicester Herald that, probably, led him to think of starting a new periodical. Upon consultation with Priestley and other friends he was encouraged to proceed, and the Monthly Magazine was the result. It commenced in July 1795 and proved to be a most decided success. At first conducted by Priestley, it was afterwards partly under the editorship of Dr. Aikin, author of the Country Around Manchester. The proprietors shared in the management of the magazine, but to what extent it is difficult to ascertain. Amongst the contributors was “Peter Pindar,” so well known as the author, amongst other satirical rhymes, of the verses upon George III., perplexed by the celebrated “apple dumpling.” The monthly receipts from the sale amounted to £1,500. A quarrel with Aikin was followed by the resignation of the editor. Increase of business soon led to a removal of the publishing-house from St. Paul’s Churchyard to a much larger establishment in Blackfriars. His home was at Hampstead where, in a beautiful neighbourhood and in an elegant villa, the opulent publisher enjoyed the refined pleasures which his humaneness of living, as well as beneficent industry, had justly deserved. At this time he began a correspondence with C. J. Fox, on the subject of the History of James II., upon which the famous Whig statesman was then engaged. Four letters addressed to him by Fox have been printed, but they have no special importance. He was already married, and the story of his courtship has more than the mere gossiping interest of ordinary biography. Upon his first arrival in London, he had taken lodgings in the house of a milliner. One of her assistants was a Miss Griffiths, a beautiful young Welsh girl, who, learning the unconquerable aversion of their guest from the common culinary barbarism, had amiably volunteered to prepare his dishes on strictly anti-kreophagist principles. This incident induced a sympathy and friendship which speedily resulted in a proposal of marriage. They were a handsome pair; and a somewhat precipitate matrimonial alliance was followed by many years of unmixed happiness for both.
In 1807 the “Livery” of London elected him to the office of High Sheriff of the City and County of Middlesex for the ensuing year. This responsible post put to the proof the sincerity of his professions as a reformer. Nor did he fail in the trial. During his term of power he effected many improvements in the treatment of the real or pretended criminals who, as occupants of the jails, came under his jurisdiction. No one who has read Howard’s State of the Prisons, published thirty years before Phillips’ entrance upon his office, or even general accounts of them, needs to be told that they were the very nurseries of disease, vice, misery, and crime of all kinds—one of the many everlasting disgraces of the governments and civilisation of the day. Nor had they been appreciably improved during the interval of thirty years.
The new Sheriff daily visited Newgate and the Fleet prisons and, by personal inquiry, made himself acquainted with the actual state of the occupants, and in many ways was able to ameliorate their condition. By his direction several collecting boxes were conspicuously displayed, and the alms collected were applied to the relief of the families of destitute debtors. He further insisted that persons, whose indictments had been ignored by the grand jury, should not be detained in the foul and pestilential atmosphere, as was then the case, but should be immediately released.
In his admirable Letter to the Livery of London, he begins with an appeal to the common sentiments of humanity which ought to have some influence with those in authority. He reminds his readers that:—
“It is too much the fashion to exclude feeling from the business of public life, and a total absence of it is considered as a necessary qualification in a public man. Among statesmen and politicians he is considered as weak and incompetent who suffers natural affection to have any influence on his political calculations.”
In a note to this passage he adds:—
“It appears to me that political errors of all kinds arise, in a great degree, from the studied banishment of feeling from the consideration of statesmen. Reasoning frequently fails us from a false estimate of the premises on which our deductions are founded. But feeling, which, in most respects, is synonymous with conscience, is almost always right. Statesmen are apt to view society as a machine, the several parts of which must be made by them to perform their respective functions for the success of the whole. The comparison is often made, but the analogy is not perfect. The parts of the social machine are made up of sensitive beings, each of whom (though in the obscurest situation) is equal, in all the affections of our nature, to those in the most conspicuous places. The harmony and happiness of the whole will depend on the degree of feeling exercised by the directors and prime movers.”
After this preliminary exhortation, he presents to their contemplation an appalling revelation of the stupid cruelties of the criminal law and its administration. He gives a graphic account of the jail of Newgate—both of the felons’ and the debtors’ division. The dimensions of the entire building were 105 yards by 40 yards, of which only one-fourth part was used by the prisoners. Into this space were crowded sometimes seven or eight hundred, never less than four or five hundred, human beings of both sexes and of all ages. “Felons” and debtors seem to have fared pretty much the same, and filth, fever, and starvation prevailed in all parts of the jail alike. The women prisoners he describes as pressed together so closely as, upon lying down, to leave no atom of space between their bodies. As for the results of this neglect on the part of the State, he finds it impossible to draw an adequate picture of them, and is at a loss to imagine how the whole city is not carried off by a plague. By persevering energy he obtained some reformation, although he failed in his proposal for a new building.
As to the individual occupants of these pest-houses, he found a large number whose offences were comparatively of an innocent kind, but who were herded with the most savage criminals. He espoused the cause of several of these prisoners—especially of the women—who, after some years of incarceration, were frequently drifted off to Botany Bay, which, besides its other terrors, was for almost all of them a perpetual separation from their homes, their husbands, and families. Twice he vainly addressed a memorial to the Secretary of State (Lord Hawkesbury) on their behalf. The traditions and routine of office were too powerful even for his persistent energy.
Romilly had lately introduced his measure for amendment of the barbarous and bloody penal code of this country. Sir Richard Phillips addressed to him also a thoughtful letter, in which were pointed out some of the more glaring abuses in the administration of the laws, with which his official experience as High Sheriff had made him familiar. When Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, and Thurlow Lord Chancellor, the hangings were so numerous that, as he informs us, on one “hanging holiday” he saw nineteen persons on the gallows, the eldest of whom was not twenty-two years of age. The larger number, probably, had been sentenced to this barbarous death for theft of various kinds. Three hundred years had passed away since the animadversions of More (before his accession to office) in the Utopia, and some half-century since Beccaria and Voltaire had protested against this monstrous iniquity of criminal legislation, without effect, in England, at least. As far as their contemporaries and their successors for long afterwards were concerned these philanthropists had written wholly in vain.