Recollections of Windsor Prison; / Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline, with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection

by of Vermont John Reynolds

It would be unavailing for me to propose any plan of operation in this great work. I am by far too microscopic an object in the public eye to hope for the smallest attention to any thing that I can offer. I do not, however, regret this, for I am not much enamoured with plans. The best plan would not avail any thing, without a proper spirit in the management of it, and with this, the poorest would be better than any which has yet been devised. On the spirit of prison discipline, then, I rely for success, and on this, whether they are heeded or not, I shall make a few remarks.

Those who go on errands of mercy to prisons must convince the prisoners that they are their friends, or they can do them no good; and this can be done only by being their friends. When they shall have accomplished this—when the prisoners feel that they have found friends, they will become better. With this lever, the hardest heart can be turned. Goodness finds a worshipper in the wickedest heart, and no sooner is it perceived in the holiness of its nature and the benevolence of its exercise, than the heart instinctively does it reverence and receives its impression.

The first thing then for a minister of reformation to prisons to do, is, to be good and feel a love for the sinner; and the next is, to make this goodness and love apparent by long and steady perseverance in acts of mercy.

The fact that goodness will beget its likeness in all minds that experience and perceive its effects, is taught plainly in the Scriptures. "We love God because he first loved us."—"The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance."—"He to whom much is forgiven, the same loveth much." The song of saints in heaven is grounded on the personal benefits they have received from Christ. Christians are exhorted by the mercies of Christ to live holy and godly lives. And the Psalmist says, that they that know the name of the Lord, will put their trust in him.

The truth of these principles has been practically demonstrated by those who have been humanely and charitably conversant with the suffering poor. It has not been the benefaction, that has bound them to the hearts of the distressed, but the spirit of mild, heavenly, sympathetic, unassuming, and unaffected condescension, with which they have personally and perseveringly ministered to their wants. Not the value of the gift, but the manner and spirit of it, has converted the recipient into gratitude. All experience proves this.

"But beside the degree of purity in which this principle may exist among the most destitute of our species, it is also of importance to remark the degree of strength, in which it actually exists among the most depraved of our species. And, on this subject, do we think that the venerable Howard has bequeathed to us a most striking and valuable observation. You know the history of this man's enterprises, how his doings, and his observations, were among the veriest outcasts of humanity,—how he descended into prison houses, and there made himself familiar with all that could most revolt or terrify, in the exhibition of our fallen nature; how, for this purpose, he made the tour of Europe; but instead of walking in the footsteps of other travellers, he toiled his painful and persevering way through these receptacles of worthlessness;—and sound experimentalist as he was, did he treasure up the phenomena of our nature, throughout all the stages of misfortune, or depravity. We may well conceive the scenes of moral desolation that would often meet his eye; and that, as he looked to the hard and dauntless, and defying aspect of criminality before him, he would sicken in despair of ever finding one remnant of a purer and better principle, by which he might lay hold of these unhappy men, and convert them into the willing and the consenting agents of their own amelioration. And yet such a principle he found, and found it, he tells us, after years of intercourse, as the fruit of his greater experience, and his longer observation; and gives, as the result of it, that convicts, and that, among the most desperate of them all, are not ungovernable, and that there is a way of managing even them, and that the way is, without relaxing in one iota, from the steadiness of a calm and resolute discipline, to treat them with tenderness, and show them that you have humanity; and thus a principle, of itself so beautiful, that to expatiate upon it, gives in the eyes of some, an air of fantastic declamation to our argument, is actually deponed to, by an aged and most sagacious observer. It is the very principle of our text, and it would appear that it keeps a lingering hold of our nature, even in the last and lowest degrees of human wickedness; and that when abandoned by every other principle, this may still be detected,—that even among the most hackneyed and most hardened of malefactors, there is still about them a softer part, which will give way to the demonstrations of tenderness: that this one ingredient of a better character is still found to survive the dissipation of all others;—that, fallen as a brother may be, from the moralities which at one time adorned him, the manifested good-will of his fellow man still carries a charm and an influence along with it; and that, therefore, there lies in this an operation which, as no poverty can vitiate, so no depravity can extinguish.

"Now, this is the very principle which is brought into action, in the dealings of God with a whole world of malefactors. It looks as if he confided the whole cause of our recovery to the influence of a demonstration of good will. It is truly interesting to mark, what, in the devisings of his unsearchable wisdom, is the character which has made to stand most visibly out, in the great scheme and history of our redemption; and surely, if there be one feature of prominency more visible than another, it is the love of kindness. There appears to be no other possible way, by which a responding affection can be deposited in the heart of man. Certain it is, that the law of love cannot be carried to its ascendency over us by storm. Authority cannot command it. Strength cannot implant it. Terror cannot charm it into existence. The threatenings of vengeance may stifle, or they may repel, but they never can woo this delicate principle of our nature into a warm and confiding attachment. The human heart remains shut, in all its receptacles, against the force of all these applications; and God who knew what was in man, seems to have known, that in his dark and guilty bosom, there was but one solitary hold that he had over him, and that to reach it, he must just put on a look of graciousness; and tell us that he has no pleasure in our death, and manifest towards us the longings of a bereaved parent, and even humble himself to a suppliant in the cause of our return, and send a gospel of peace into the world, and bid his messengers to bear throughout all its habitations, the tidings of his good will to the children of men. This is the topic of his most anxious and repeated demonstrations. This manifested good will of God to his creatures, is the band of love, and the cord of a man, by which he draws them; and this one mighty principle of attraction is brought to bear upon a nature, that might have remained sullen and unmoved under any other application."—Thomas Chalmers, D. D.

The principle so eloquently and correctly stated in the above quotations from Dr. Chalmers, is fully demonstrated and exemplified by the philanthropic efforts of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry in the famous prison of Newgate, in England, an account of which is here presented to the reader. It was written by Madame Adile De Thou, but I have copied it from the Ladies' Magazine.

"Mrs. Fry, on being informed of the deplorable state of the female prisoners in Newgate, resolved to relieve them. She applied to the governor for leave of admittance; he replied that she would incur the greatest risk in visiting that abode of iniquity and disorder, which he himself scarcely dared to enter. He observed, that the language she must hear would inevitably disgust her, and made use of every argument to prevail on her to relinquish her intention.

Mrs. Fry said that she was fully aware of the danger to which she exposed herself; and repeated her solicitations for permission to enter the prison. The governor advised her not to carry in with her either her purse or her watch. Mrs. Fry replied, "I thank you, I am not afraid: I don't think I shall lose any thing."