JOHN HOWARD,
Inheriting a handsome competence from his father, whom he lost while young, went abroad early, and in Italy acquired a taste for art. He made purchases of such specimens of the great masters as his means would allow, and embellished therewith his paternal seat of Cardington, in Bedfordshire. His first wife, who had attended him with the utmost kindness during a severe illness, and whom, though much older than himself, he had married from a principle of gratitude, died within three years of their union; and to relieve his mind from the melancholy occasioned by her death, he resolved on leaving England for another tour. The then recent earthquake which had laid Lisbon in ruins, rendered Portugal a clime of interest with him, and he set sail for that country. The packet, however, was captured by a French privateer; and he and other prisoners were carried into Brest, and placed in the castle. They had been kept forty hours without food or water before entering the filthy dungeon into which they were cast, and it was still a considerable time before a joint of mutton was thrown into the midst of them, which, for want of the accommodation even of a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces and gnaw like dogs. For nearly a week Howard and his companions were compelled to lie on the floor of this dungeon, with nothing but straw to shelter them from its noxious and unwholesome damps. He was then removed to another town where British prisoners were kept; and though permitted to reside in the town on his “parole,” or word of honour, he had evidence, he says, that many hundreds of his countrymen perished in their imprisonment, and that, at one place, thirty-six were buried in a hole in one day. He was at length permitted to return home, but it was upon his promise to go back to France, if his own government should refuse to exchange him for a French naval officer. As he was only a private individual, it was doubtful whether government would consent to this; and he desired his friends to forbear the congratulations with which they welcomed his return, assuring them he should perform his promise, if government expressed a refusal. Happily the negotiation terminated favourably, and Howard felt himself, once more, at complete freedom in his native land.
It is to this event, comprising much personal suffering for himself, and the grievous spectacle of so much distress endured by his sick and dying fellow-countrymen in bonds, that the first great emotion in the mind of this exalted philanthropist must be dated. Yet, like many deep thoughts which have resulted in noble actions, Howard’s grand life-thought lay a long time in the germ within the recesses of his reflective faculty. He first returned to his Cardington estate, and, together with his delight in the treasures of art, occupied his mind with meteorological observations, which he followed up with such assiduity as to draw upon himself some notice from men of science, and to be chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society.
After his second marriage, he continued to reside upon his estate, and to improve and beautify it. The grounds were, indeed, laid out with a degree of taste only equalled on the estates of the nobility. But it was impossible for such a nature as Howard’s to be occupied solely with a consideration of his pleasures and comforts. His tenantry were the constant objects of his care, and in the improvement of their habitations and modes of life he found delightful employment for by far the greater portion of his time. In his beneficent plans for the amelioration of the condition of the poor he was nobly assisted by the second Mrs. Howard, who was a woman of exemplary and self-sacrificing benevolence. One act alone affords delightful proof of this. She sold her jewels soon after her marriage, and put the money into a purse called, by herself and her husband, “the charity-purse,” from the consecration of its contents to the relief of the poor and destitute.
The death of this excellent woman plunged him again into sorrow, from which he, at first, sought relief in watching over the nurture of the infant son she had left him, having breathed her last soon after giving birth to the child. When his son was old enough to be transferred entirely to the care of a tutor, Howard renewed his visits to the continent. His journal contains proof that his mind was deeply engaged in reflection on all he saw; but neither yet does the master-thought of his life appear to have strengthened to such a degree as to make itself very evident in the workings of his heart and understanding. His election to the office of high sheriff of the county of Bedford, on his return, seems to have been the leading occurrence in his life, judging by the influence it threw on the tone of his thinkings and the character of his acts, to the end of his mortal career. He was forty-six years of age at the time of his election to this office, intellectual culture had refined his character, and much personal trial and affliction had deepened his experience: the devotion of such a man as John Howard to his great errand of philanthropy was not, therefore, any vulgar and merely impulsive enthusiasm. We have seen that the germ of his design had lain for years in his mind, scarcely fructifying or unfolding itself, except in the kindly form of homely charity. The power was now about to be breathed upon it which should quicken it into the mightiest energy of human goodness.
He thus records the grievances he now began to grow ardent for removing: “The distress of prisoners, of which there are few who have not some imperfect idea, came more immediately under my notice when I was sheriff of the county of Bedford; and the circumstance which excited me to activity in their behalf was, the seeing some, who by the verdict of juries were declared not guilty—some, on whom the grand jury did not find such an appearance of guilt as subjected them to trial—and some whose prosecutors did not appear against them—after having been confined for months, dragged back to gaol, and locked up again till they could pay sundry fees to the gaoler, the clerk of assize, &c. In order to redress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the county for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees. The bench were properly affected with the grievance, and willing to grant the relief desired; but they wanted a precedent for charging the county with the expense. I therefore rode into several neighbouring counties in search of a precedent; but I soon learned that the same injustice was practised in them; and looking into the prisons, I beheld scenes of calamity which I grew daily more and more anxious to alleviate.” How free from violence of emotion and exaggerated expression is his statement; how calmly, rationally, and thoughtfully he commenced his glorious enterprise!
He commences, soon after this, a series of journeys for the inspection of English prisons; and visits, successively, the gaols of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and Buckingham. In many of the gaols he found neither court-yard, water, beds, nor even straw, for the use of the prisoners: no sewers, most miserable provisions, and those extremely scanty, and the whole of the rooms gloomy, filthy, and loathsome. The greatest oppressions and cruelties were practised on the wretched inmates: they were heavily ironed for trivial offences, and frequently confined in dungeons under ground. The Leicester gaol presented more inhuman features than any other; the free ward for debtors who could not afford to pay for better accommodation, was a long dungeon called a cellar, down seven steps—damp, and having but two windows in it, the largest about a foot square; the rooms in which the felons were confined night and day were also dungeons from five to seven steps under ground.
In the course of another tour he visited the gaols of Hertford, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and Sussex; set out again to revisit the prisons of the Midlands; spent a fortnight in viewing the gaols of London and Surrey; and then went once more on the same great errand of mercy into the west of England. Shortly after his return he was examined before a Committee of the whole House of Commons, gave full and satisfactory answers to the questions proposed to him, and was then called before the bar of the House to receive from the Speaker the assurance “that the House were very sensible of the humanity and zeal which had led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communicate to the House the interesting observations he had made upon that subject.”
The intention of the Legislature to proceed to the correction of prison abuses, which the noble philanthropist might infer from this expression of thanks, did not cause him to relax in the pursuit of the high mission he was now so earnestly entered upon. After examining thoroughly the shameless abuses of the Marshalsea, in London, he proceeded to Durham, from thence through Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, and inspected not only the prisons in those counties, but a third time went through the degraded gaols of the Midlands. A week’s rest at Cardington, and away he departs to visit the prisons in Kent, and to examine all he had not yet entered in London. North and South Wales and the gaols of Chester, and again Worcester and Oxford, he next surveys, and discovers another series of subjects for the exertion of his benevolence.