“Seeing,” says he, in his uniform and characteristic vein of modesty, “in two or three of the county gaols some poor creatures whose aspect was singularly deplorable, and asking the cause of it, I was answered they were lately brought from the Bridewells. This started a fresh subject of inquiry. I resolved to inspect the Bridewells; and for that purpose I travelled again into the counties where I had been, and indeed into all the rest, examining houses of correction and city and town gaols. I beheld in many of them, as well as in county gaols, a complication of distress; but my attention was particularly fixed by the gaol-fever and small-pox which I saw prevailing to the destruction of multitudes, not only of felons in their dungeons, but of debtors also.” His holy mission now comprehended for the philanthropist the enterprise of lessening the disease as well as unjust and inhuman treatment of prisoners.
The most striking scene of wrong detailed in any of his narratives is in the account of the “Clink” prison of Plymouth, a part of the town gaol. This place was seventeen feet by eight, and five feet and a half high. It was utterly dark, and had no air except what could be derived through an extremely small wicket in the door. To this wicket, the dimensions of which were about seven inches by five, three prisoners under sentence of transportation came by turns to breathe, being confined in that wretched hole for nearly two months. When Howard visited this place the door had not been opened for five weeks. With considerable difficulty he entered, and with deeply wounded feelings beheld an emaciated human being, the victim of barbarity, who had been confined there ten weeks. This unfortunate creature, who was under sentence of transportation, declared to the humane visitor who thus risked his health and was happy to forego ease and comfort to relieve the oppressed sufferer, that he would rather have been hanged than thrust into that loathsome dungeon.
The electors of Bedford, two years after Howard had held the shrievalty of their county, urged him to become a candidate for the representation of their borough in Parliament. He gave a reluctant consent, but through unfair dealing was unsuccessful. We may, for a moment, regret that the great philanthropist was not permitted to introduce into the Legislature of England measures for the relief of the oppressed suggested by his own large sympathies and experience; but it was far better that he was freed from the shackles of attendance on debates, and spared for ministration not only to the sufferings of the injured in England but in Europe.
He had long purposed to give to the world in a printed form the result of his laborious investigations into the state of prisons in this country; but “conjecturing,” he says, “that something useful to his purpose might be collected abroad, he laid aside his papers and travelled into France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany.” We have omitted to state that he had already visited many of the prisons in Scotland and Ireland. At Paris he gained admission to some of the prisons with extreme difficulty; but to get access to the state prisons the jealousy of the governments rendered it almost impossible, and under any circumstances dangerous. The intrepid heart of Howard, however, was girt up to adventure, and he even dared to attempt an entrance into the infamous Bastille itself! “I knocked hard,” he says, “at the outer gate, and immediately went forward through the guard to the drawbridge before the entrance of the castle; but while I was contemplating this gloomy mansion, an officer came out of the castle much surprised, and I was forced to retreat through the mute guard, and thus regained that freedom, which, for one locked up within those walls, it would be next to impossible to obtain.” In the space of four centuries, from the foundation to the destruction of the Bastille, it has been observed that Howard was the only person ever compelled to quit it with reluctance.
By taking advantage of some regulations of the Paris Parliament, he succeeded in gaining admission to other prisons, and found even greater atrocities committed there than in the very worst gaols in England. Flanders presented a striking contrast. “However rigorous they may be,” says he, speaking of the regulations for the prisons of Brussels, “yet their great care and attention to their prisons is worthy of commendation: all fresh and clean, no gaol distemper, no prisoners ironed. The bread allowance far exceeds that of any of our gaols; every prisoner here has two pounds of bread per day, soup once every day, and on Sunday one pound of meat.” He notes afterwards that he “carefully visited some Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian gaols,” and “with the utmost difficulty” gained access to “many dismal abodes” of prisoners.
Returning to England, he travelled through every county repursuing his mission, and after devoting three months to a renewed inspection of the London prisons again set out for the continent. Our space will not allow of a record of the numerous evils he chronicles in these renewed visits. The prisoners of Switzerland, but more than all, of Holland, afforded him a relief to the vision of horrors he witnessed elsewhere. We must find room for some judicious observations he makes on his return from this tour. “When I formerly made the tour of Europe,” are his words, “I seldom had occasion to envy foreigners anything I saw with respect to their situation, their religion, manners, or government. In my late journeys to view their prisons I was sometimes put to the blush for my native country. The reader will scarcely feel, from my narration, the same emotions of shame and regret as the comparison excited in me on beholding the difference with my own eyes; but from the account I have given him of foreign prisons, he may judge whether a design for reforming their own be merely visionary—whether idleness, debauchery, disease, and famine, be the necessary attendants of a prison, or only connected with it in our ideas for want of a more perfect knowledge and more enlarged views. I hope, too, that he will do me the justice to think that neither an indiscriminate admiration of every thing foreign, nor a fondness for censuring every thing at home, has influenced me to adopt the language of a panegyrist in this part of my work, or that of a complainant in the rest. Where I have commended I have mentioned my reasons for so doing; and I have dwelt, perhaps, more minutely upon the management of foreign prisons because it was more agreeable to praise than to condemn. Another motive induced me to be very particular in my accounts of foreign houses of correction, especially those of the freest states. It was to counteract a notion prevailing among us that compelling prisoners to work, especially in public, was inconsistent with the principles of English liberty; at the same time that taking away the lives of such numbers, either by executions or the diseases of our prisons, seems to make little impression upon us; of such force are custom and prejudice in silencing the voice of good sense and humanity. I have only to add that, fully sensible of the imperfections which must attend the cursory survey of a traveller, it was my study to remedy that defect by a constant attention to the one object of my pursuit alone during the whole of my two last journeys abroad.”
He did not allow himself a single day’s rest on returning to England, but immediately recommenced his work here. He notes some pleasing improvements, particularly in the Nottingham gaol, since his last preceding visit; but narrates other discoveries of a most revolting description. The gaol at Knaresborough was in the ruined castle, and had but two rooms without a window. The keeper lived at a distance, there being no accommodation for him in the prison. The debtors’ gaol was horrible; it consisted of only one room difficult of access, had an earthen floor, no fire-place, and there was a common sewer from the town running through it uncovered! In this miserable and disgusting hole Howard learned that an officer had been confined some years before, who took with him his dog to defend him from vermin: his face was, however, much disfigured by their attacks, and the dog was actually destroyed by them.
At length he prepared to print his “State of the Prisons of England and Wales, with preliminary observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons.” In this laborious and valuable work, he was largely assisted by the excellent Dr. Aikin, a highly congenial mind; and it was completed in a form which, even in a literary point of view, makes it valuable. The following very brief extract from it, is full of golden reflection: “Most gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, ‘Let them take care to keep out,’ prefaced, perhaps, with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favour of Providence, which distinguishes them from the sufferers: they do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is ‘kind to the unthankful and the evil!’ They also forget the vicissitudes of human affairs; the unexpected changes, to which all men are liable; and that those whose circumstances are affluent, may, in time, be reduced to indigence, and become debtors and prisoners.”
As soon as his book was published he presented copies of it to most of the principal persons in the kingdom,—thus devoting his wealth, in another form, to the cause of humanity. When it is recounted that he had not only spent large sums in almost incessant travelling, during four years, but had paid the prison fees of numbers who could not otherwise have been liberated, although their periods of sentence had transpired, some idea may be formed of the heart that was within this great devotee of mercy and goodness—the purest of all worships.
The spirits of all reflecting men were roused by this book: the Parliament passed an act for the better regulation of the “hulk” prisons; and on Howard’s visiting the hulks and detecting the evasions practised by the superintendents, the government proceeded to rectify the abuses. Learning that government projected further prison reforms, he again set out for the continent to gain additional information in order to lay it before the British Parliament. An accident at the Hague confined him to his room for six weeks, by throwing him into an inflammatory fever; but he was no sooner recovered than he proceeded to enter on his work anew, by visiting the prison at Rotterdam,—departing thence through Osnaburgh and Hanover, into Germany, Prussia, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and back through France, again reaching England. Not to enumerate any of his statements respecting his prison visits, let us point the young reader to the answer he gave to Prince Henry of Prussia, who, in the course of his first conversation with the earnest philanthropist, asked him whether he ever went to any public place in the evening, after the labours of the day were over. “Never,” he replied, “as I derive more pleasure from doing my duty than from any amusement whatever.” What a thorough putting-on of the great martyr spirit there was in the life of this pure-souled man!