that there was anything unusual in the events which CHAP. he gravely relates.1 Such was the place in which Mrs. Fry's noble ministry was carried on. Efficient prison discipline was, in fact, almost impossible, because the construction of the prisons was so faulty that the warders were unable to enforce their authority. There were no means of isolating refractory prisoners; there were no means of no means of preventing the prisoners from combining with each other; and in the case of revolt the collective force of the convicts II. ticon. was arrayed against the warders. A A very different person to either Howard or Mrs. Fry was urging the Government to construct a prison on an improved principle. It is necessary to reserve for a future chapter any detailed consideration of the work of Jeremy Bentham: it is sufficient, in this place, to observe that Bentham, amidst Bentham's his other avocations, was constantly pressing on the PopGovernment the desirability of constructing a prison on a totally different model from any which had previously been adopted. Bentham saw that a number of galleries radiating from a common centre might be effectually guarded from a single standpoint: and that therefore, without increasing the number of warders, their efficiency might be almost indefinitely augmented. Bentham's model was known as the Panopticon, a name which happily expresses the power of the single warder to command any number of galleries radiating from a common centre. It ultimately led to the construction of the Penitentiary. at Millbank by the Government. But the history of the Penitentiary at Millbank was, in its way, hardly more creditable than that of the older prisons of the metropolis. Vast sums of money were wasted on the building. sanitary condition proved anything but satisfactory, and mistaken notions of philanthropy relaxed the reins of discipline. Men made the common mistake of leaping at a 1 Ann. Reg. 1816, Chron. p. 129. Its СНАР. II. Police. bound from one system to another, and did almost as much harm by pampering the convicts as they had done previously by degrading them.1 The change of feeling, which was clamouring for the reform of prison discipline, was at the same time insisting on the abolition of degrading punishments. In 1815 the punishment of flogging was still publicly inflicted on women. It was not abolished for two years afterwards.2 Men, however, were still whipped by the score; 6,959 persons were flogged in seven years. The punishment of the pillory was abolished for every offence except perjury in 1815, and the old parish stocks were gradually removed from the metropolis. All these changes indicated a more humane disposition towards offenders. But the true humanity, which endeavours to prevent crime, not to punish it, was still hardly known. There was no efficient police force in London. A small horse patrol nominally guarded the suburbs; a small foot patrol nominally guarded the metropolis. The horse patrol consisted of only fifty-four, the foot patrol of only one hundred men. The peace of London, otherwise, depended on the parish constables in the daytime, on the old watch at night. The ingenuity of man could have hardly devised a feebler protection. The watchman was appointed by the parish. His duties did not extend beyond the bounds of his parish. He would not cross those bounds to arrest a criminal or to prevent a felony. He was only required to move out of his watch-box twice in every hour, and his beat was so short that he could be in his box for fifty minutes out of every sixty. No pains were taken to obtain the services of efficient men; no 1 See the recently published history of Millbank. 2 Hansard, vol. xxxvi. pp. 833, 932. 3 Hansard, New Series, vol. viii. p. 1438. Flogging women in pri vate was retained up to the year 1819. The last stocks in London were in Portugal Street, St. Clement le Danes. They were removed in 1826. Ann. Reg. 1826, Chron. p. 117. II. means were taken to increase their efficiency. From СНАР. motives of humanity old men were retained in the service long after they had ceased to be active. From motives of economy men were engaged who asked the lowest wages, and who notoriously supplemented their wages by contributions from the bad characters around them. In addition, indeed, to the night watch the authorities of each parish regularly elected either constables or headboroughs. But these officers rarely served in person. Their deputies levied a kind of black mail on the suspicious characters within their jurisdiction; and, in consequence of this black mail, the constable's office, though singularly ill-paid, was sought after by many persons. The headboroughs in Shoreditch received, for instance, only 47. 10s. a year. Out of that sum they had to pay several small fees. Yet there was no difficulty whatever in obtaining persons to act as headboroughs. Little reflection, indeed, is sufficient to show that the office must have been a very lucrative one. Some one kept a disorderly house, or infringed the licensing laws. If the headborough were dishonest and the offender were rich, the offence could easily be compounded. If composition were from either cause impossible, the offender could be prosecuted at the Old Bailey, when the headborough obtained his expenses. The expenses which a headborough was allowed for a prosecution at the Old Bailey amounted from twenty-eight to thirty-six shillings a day. The expenses were allowed on each case, and an active headborough in a disorderly parish could, therefore, easily make a very good thing out of his office. The ingenuity of the headboroughs, indeed, was sufficient to enable them to improve on this position. If one headborough brought a charge, and another appeared as a witness, both headboroughs were allowed their expenses.1 Nothing, therefore, was easier than for one jack in office to serve a 1 Report of 1818, p. 137. СНАР. II. Blood money. friend in office a good turn by dragging him in as a witness. So long as people only broke the law, the parish constables and the headboroughs could easily make a living. It was stated, indeed, on authority, which it is difficult to gainsay, that the headboroughs did not always wait till the law was broken to commence a prosecution. Instances commonly occurred where the headboroughs invented the charge for the sake of getting money for the prosecution of it; and language was put into the mouth of persons, whom they wanted to become prosecutors, solely for the purpose of affording the headboroughs an excuse to attend at the Old Bailey.1 The conduct of the headboroughs in promoting prosecutions was excusable because it was imitated or even exceeded by the other police authorities. By various parliamentary statutes, commencing with the reign of William and Mary, and concluding with the reign of George II., rewards, varying in amount from 10l. to 40%. were paid on their conviction for the apprehension of any highwaymen, coiners, burglars, sheep-stealers, and convicts at large. No less than 18,000l. were paid in such rewards in the single year 1815. But, in addition to these rewards, an old Act of William III. authorised the issue of what was technically called a Tyburn ticket, to any person who apprehended a felon. A Tyburn ticket' exempted the holder from serving in any office in the parish in which the felony was committed. It was transferable; it was usually sold; and was worth from 12. to 401.-the price varying in the different parishes. Any person, who succeeded, therefore, in apprehending the utterer of false money, or even a man with false money upon him, was entitled, on the conviction of the offender, to 401. from the public purse, and to a parochial ticket which in certain cases was worth 401. more. An instance has already been given in this chapter 1 Report of 1818, p. 137. II. of an officer, who confessed that he had succeeded in СНАР. hanging an innocent man for the sake of this reward. Other instances of the same character may unfortunately be found by the diligent enquirer. No less than eight persons, one at least of whom was a Bow Street officer, were condemned in 1817 for 'seducing people into the commission of criminal offences for the purpose of obtaining the parliamentary reward on their conviction.' 'Blood money,' as the parliamentary reward was commonly called, was, moreover, productive of other evils than these. As blood money was only offered for particular offences, it was the interest of the police officer to avoid interference with the criminal until he committed a 40%. crime. Young children were left unpunished for the minor depredations, committed at the commencement of their criminal career, and carefully watched, in the full expectation that they would ultimately do something which would justify the grant of a reward on their apprehension. The criminal, in fact, was fostered up to a certain period of his course by the very officers who ought to have busied themselves in stamping out crime." The thief-takers as a Middlesex magistrate put it-were interested in concealing and encouraging thieves until their crimes arrived at the highest point. Conscious of these facts, jurymen were in the habit of discounting police evidence. They could not resist the suspicion that the constable was perjuring himself for the sake of the reward. While then the detestable system led to the occasional conviction of innocent persons, it concurrently produced the constant acquittal of real offenders. The reward defeated the very purpose which had induced the legislature originally to offer it. 8 It may perhaps be thought that the police officers clung to a system which enabled them occasionally to 1 See Police Report, 1816, p. 264; Report, 1817, pp. 324 and 423. 2 3 Report, 1816, p. 65. |