prosecutors did not appear against them, after having been confined for months, dragged back to jail and locked up again, till they should pay sundry fees to the jailer, the clerk of assize, etc. In order to redress this hardship I applied to the justices of the county for a salary to the jailer in lieu of fees. The Bench was 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 neighboring 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."

It was to no light or easy task that Howard addressed himself. In Mr. Hepworth Dixon's "Life" there is an interesting chapter describing the state of some prominent prisons in the earlier part of the last century. Let one example suffice in place of many. What was the state of the Marshalsea in the beginning of the present century has been made familiar to all by the genius of Dickens in "Little Dorrit." Here is part of an account of it as it was in 1728: "The common side is enclosed with a strong brick wall; in it are now confined upward of 330 prisoners, most of them in the utmost necessity; they are divided into particular rooms called wards, and the prisoners belonging to each ward are locked up in their respective wards every night, most of which are excessively crowded, thirty, forty, nay, fifty persons having been locked up in some of them, not sixteen feet square; and at the same time that these rooms have been so crowded, to the great endangering the health of the prisoners, the largest room on the common side hath been kept empty, and the room over George's ward was let out to a tailor to work in, and nobody allowed to lie in it, though all the last year there were sometimes forty, and never less than thirty-two persons locked up in St. George's ward every night, which is a room of sixteen by fourteen feet, and about eight feet high; the surface of the room is not sufficient to contain that number when laid down,

State of the English Jails in 1773.

25

so that one-half are laid up in hammocks, while the other lie on the floor under them; the air is so wasted by the number of persons who breathe in that narrow compass, that it is not sufficient to keep them from stifling, several having in the heat of summer perished for want of air." Horrible as this account is, its horrors do not nearly come up to some of the scenes witnessed by Howard in his career of prison exploration.

It was about the close of the year 1773 when he set out. There is no need to enter upon a full account of the state of every prison he visited. At Northampton he found that the jailer, in place of receiving a salary, actually paid £40 a year for his situation, so profitable were the "sundry fees" of the poor prisoners found to be. Nor was this a solitary case. At Norwich the keeper paid the same to the under-sheriff for his situation; and at Exeter £22 a year was paid by the keeper. After reading this one does not wonder to find that when Howard visited Exeter he found two sailors in jail, who for some trifling fault had been fined by a magistrate 1s. each, and were detained because unable to discharge the large fees of the jailer and the clerk of the peace-the first amounting to 14s. 4d., the latter to £1 1s. 4d. Even in places where these shameless extortions do not appear to have been practised the state of the prisons was loathsome in the extreme. The condition of the criminal department of York Castle has been thus described: "Its court-yard was small and without water. The pump being ingeniously placed just outside the palisades, water had consequently to be carried in by the servants of the establishment—a circumstance which sufficiently accounted for the filthiness of the place. Considering the very imperfect means of ventilation then known, the cells were horribly small, being only seven and a half feet long, six and a half wide, and eight and a half high; that is, each cell contained about 414 cubic feet of air, being less than thirty-six hours' consumption for a single individual; in addition to which they were close and dark, having only a hole of about four inches by eight over the door, or half a dozen perforations of an inch

or so in diameter, by which the scanty and poisoned air of the narrow passages, serving to divide the cells, might enter, if it could. Yet in each of these dungeons three human beings were commonly locked up for the night, which in winter lasted from fourteen to sixteen hours! There could be no wonder that the destroyer was so busy in this jail-for into these loathsome holes the victims were thrust nightly, with only a damp floor, barely covered by a wretched pittance of straw, for their bed of rest; while a sewer, which ran through one of the passages, rendered them still more offensive. The infirmary for the sick consisted of a single room, so that when there was an inmate of one sex in it, the sick of the other-should there be any, as was frequently the case-had to remain in their noisome dens until death relieved them from their sufferings. A case of this kind came under Howard's immediate notice. At the time of his visit a woman was sick, and of course she occupied the infirmary; a man was afterward seized with the distemper, always raging with more or less violence in the prisons of that period, but he was forced to remain, ill as he was, in his infected cell." At every second prison he visited Howard met with cases of the kind, all of which he carefully examined. His work was not of a kind which could have been accomplished by a kid-gloved philanthropist.

The report of Howard's labors at length reached the House of Commons, which had been lately concerning itself about such things; and Howard was called to give evidence regarding what he had seen. After the clear and satisfactory answers to the questions addressed to him were heard, it was moved, "That John Howard, Esq., be called to the Bar, and that Mr. Speaker do acquaint him that the House are very sensible of the humanity and zeal which have led him to visit the several jails of this kingdom, and to communicate to the House the interesting observations he has made on the subject." Howard was accordingly called to the Bar, and received the thanks of the House. An odd incident occurred during his examination. One of the members, surprised at the

State of the Bridewells.

27

extent of his information, and unable to believe that any one should have gone through so much for purely philanthropic considerations, asked him at whose expense he travelled. We need not be surprised to learn that Howard could hardly reply to this question without expressing some indignant emotion.

Howard had soon the satisfaction of seeing the first practical fruit of his labors by two bills being passed, one to remunerate the jailer by a salary instead of by fees, the other having reference to the ventilation of prisons and the health of prisoners. At his own expense Howard caused these bills to be reprinted in large character, and sent a copy of them to every jailer and warder in the kingdom. Having once found out wherein his life-work was to consist, he devoted his whole energies-mental, moral, and physical-to it. No sooner was his examination before Parliament finished than, after a brief interval of rest, he resumed his investigations into the state of the prisons of England, devoting much attention to the state of the London jails in particular. On the passing of the acts above mentioned, the latter of which became law in June, 1774, he commenced a tour to see if their provisions had been carried out, visiting the principal jails in North Wales and many of those in South Wales, as well as revisiting such of the English prisons as lay in his route. While thus engaged his attention was turned to a new sphere of exertion, of which he thus writes: "Seeing in two or three of the country jails 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, city and town jails. I beheld in many of them, as well as in the county jails, a complication of distress; but my attention was particularly fixed by the jail-fever and small-pox which I saw prevailing to the destruction of multitudes, not only of felons in their dungeons

but of debtors also."

During the year 1774 Howard com

pleted his survey of English jails.

Toward the close of the same year occurred an important event in Howard's life. To many it appeared desirable that a man with the public interest so much at heart should have a seat in the House of Commons, and he was asked to stand as candidate for Bedford. After a severe struggle on the hustings, it was found that he stood last on the poll. A petition impeaching the return was presented to the House of Commons, which materially diminished the majority of the successful candidates; and in the end it was found that he had lost the seat by only four votes. Howard appears to have felt his defeat not a little; but we cannot think it was at all an unfortunate circumstance. He would never have made a distinguished appearance as a member of Parliament; nay, probably he would at once have sunk into the insignificant position of a silent member; while, occupied by his attendance at the House, he would not have been able to devote so much time to the special work in which he was qualified to engage better, it is probable, than any man living.

The interval between the election and the hearing of the petition Howard employed in visiting the prisons of Scotland and Ireland, for the purpose of comparing their condition with that of the prisons of England and Wales. The Irish prisons he found in an even worse condition than those of England. With the prisons of Scotland, on the other hand, he was considerably better pleased. There he found that the prisoners when acquitted were immediately discharged in open court, that the jailers received no fee from any criminal, and that women were not put in irons. So far as concerned their internal condition, however, the prisons manifested little improvement on those in England. Most of those he saw were old buildings, dirty and offensive, and also generally without water. The Tolbooth in Inverness comes in for particular mention, as the most dirty and offensive prison he had seen in Scotland.

Having now completed his survey of the prisons of England