Marshalsea and Newgate down to the pettiest and obscurest provincial house of detention, was a disgrace to the age and country.

Though unknown to the laws of England, and scarcely credible, yet it is nevertheless a fact, that tortures worthy of the Spanish Inquisition were inflicted on the unhappy prisoners. In 1726, in Newgate, one Thomas Bliss, a carpenter, made an unsuccessful attempt at escape. He was dragged back, barbarously beaten, and put into irons. Afterwards, for the diversion of the governor, or lessee of the prison, and his companions, an iron engine or skull-cap was - screwed so tightly on his head that it forced the blood from his ears and nose, while at the same time his thumbs were so tightly screwed in thumb-screws, that the blood started from them. That these tortures eventually caused the death of the miserable victim is not to be wondered at. Not contented with such cruelties, these wicked keepers had invented a still more horrible punishment-they actually coupled the living with the dead, and locked up debtors who displeased them with human carcases. There is one instance on record of a poor debtor being kept six days with two dead bodies!

The custody of the Fleet prison was private property; the establishment was a business speculation, and every kind of iniquity and cruelty was resorted to in order to make it pay a large percentage. One Bambridge, who was warder at that time, was a perfect monster of barbarity. We could scarcely credit the stories

told of him, were they not confirmed by the reports of a Parliamentary committee of inquiry. To extort money, he would not only confine prisoners in filthy dungeons, loaded with irons, but would attack and wound the defenceless victims with his sword; he broke one prisoner's legs by forcing on them irons which were too small, and thus lamed him for life. This man, on petitioning the judges concerning the injustice of which he had been a victim, got no redress, the excuse being that it was out of term! One Captain Sinclair, a gallant but unfortunate officer, who had fought bravely for his king and country, but had excited the malice of this wretch Bambridge, was, after being wounded and maltreated by him, confined in a damp and loathsome dungeon till he had lost the use of his limbs and his memory, neither of which he recovered.

Howard saw that these abuses could only be remedied by abolishing the fees, and giving a salary to the gaoler. But as the magistrates could find no precedent for the county paying its own servants, they gave him no support in his work of reform. Towards the close of 1773 he began his tours of inspection of the prisons, first in the nearer counties, then all over England, and subsequently over the greater part of Europe.

In this short sketch of the philanthropist's life we can give but a very faint idea of the horrors he witnessed. At Northampton the gaoler actually paid £170 a-year for his situation the prisoners here

had no straw allowed them to sleep on. Beds for prisoners were never thought of in those days. At Salisbury, prisoners were chained together at Christmas time, and then sent into the city to beg; the gaoler made his living by farming out the diet of his victims. At Ely, the gaol belonged to the bishop. The building was rickety and ruinous. Of this the wardens were aware, but instead of strengthening the walls and doors, they adopted the cheaper plan of chaining the prisoners on their backs to the floor, having under them several bars of iron, and fastening an iron collar, with long sharp spikes, round their necks, and a heavy iron bar over their legs, to prevent attempts at escape. About a year before Howard's visit, a spirited magistrate had brought these atrocious cruelties before the king's notice; an inquiry was instituted, and in 1768 Bishop Mawson was compelled to repair the gaol, but in spite of these improvements it was still in a filthy, miserable condition, when Howard entered it. The gaoler had no salary, there was no chapel for public worship, no surgeon to attend the sick. At Exeter he found that the felons' gaol was the private property of one John Rolle, who received for it £22 a-year, paid by the keeper, which he obtained by fees from the prisoners; the surgeon here was excused by contract from attending any prisoner in the cells who might be suffering from gaol fever. The unsleeping energies of the great philanthropist had now found their fitting work; he threw himself into it with all the enthusiasm of his nature.

The

crusade had commenced in earnest.

In a series of

He

journeys he had travelled over the whole of England, to the north, south, east, and finally to the west. was never satisfied till he had explored the lowest and most wretched dungeon of every prison. Many an innocent person, detained till he could pay the gaoler's fees, and without the means or hope of obtaining deliverance, was set at liberty by his generosity, in paying the demand. In most of the prisons he had found the dungeons underground, damp, cold, and pestilential; their wretched inmates, deprived even of a sufficient quantity of pure water, pined and languished under these accumulated sufferings, till that fatal scourge, the gaol fever, carried them off by hundreds. Bad as the prisons were physically, they were even worse morally. Debtors and felons, young thieves and hoary-headed villains, guilty and innocent, tried and untried—often even male and female—were confined in the same dungeon, with nothing to do but to corrupt and demoralise each other.

Public attention about this period, was directed to the subject of prisons, and especially to the injustice of incarcerating a man, declared not guilty, on the pretence of a claim for fees. In February 1773, Mr Popham, the member for Taunton, brought in a bill to abolish gaolers' fees, substituting for them a salary paid out of the county rates. The bill was, after passing a second reading, withdrawn, to be amended. Meanwhile the two men most anxious for a reform in these matters came together, and before Howard started

B

for his western tour, the plan of campaign legislature, had been agreed upon, between the their mutual friends.

Howard was now examined on the subject House of Commons; his testimony against the fold abuses of the penal system, was logical a clusive. He was publicly thanked by the legislature of the country for his philanthrop tions, an honour seldom accorded to other :: heroes of war and conquest.

Not yet satisfied with his investigations, resolved to renew them. The gaols of Lond still unknown to him; he set to work to visit t He daily traversed the vast area of the me penetrating into all kinds of dark nooks and Nothing was too obscure to escape his vigila too paltry for his visitations. Petty prisons, b to courts, manors, and liberties, the existence was scarcely suspected, till he discovered the explored and reported upon. There was one in Whitechapel, used for the confinement of de sums of between £2 and £5. For these amounts, twenty-five persons were incarcerate gaoler had to share with the lady of the man private owner of the prison-the proceeds extortion, to the extent of £24 a-year. only a sample of many others.

On 31st March 1774, Mr Popham brought his two bills for the better regulation of prison in due course received the sanction of the leg