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Prison Reforms

EARLY ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

Early efforts to improve prison conditions came from religious groups such as the Quakers. In the 1650s, their leader George Fox criticised prison hygiene and urged that ‘none stay long in prisons, let none be keepers of prisons but such as fear God and hate covetousness, gaming and drunkenness.’⁷⁷

In 1691, after a spell in the Fleet prison for debt, publisher and printer Moses Pitt issued an attack⁷⁸ on the prison’s warden, the ironically named Richard Manlove. Manlove was accused of abuses such as housing destitute prisoners alongside dead bodies in the prison’s dungeons and withholding the corpses of dead prisoners until their families had paid all their outstanding fees.

A decade later, the newly formed Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) investigated conditions at prisons such as Newgate and Marshalsea. Their report, authored by Thomas Bray, listed numerous problems: the lewdness of prison officers, especially towards women; officers taking payments to allow male prisoners access to the females; the unlimited use of wine, brandy and other strong liquors; gambling, swearing and blasphemy; the corrupting of newcomers by hardened prisoners; and neglect of all religious observances.⁷⁹ The society’s proposed reforms included the setting up of an overall management committee for the city’s prisons, an improvement in the character of persons appointed as officers, the provision of ministers to every prison, daily prayers, the strict separation of male and female inmates, an end to the ‘benefit of belly’ for pregnant felons, the provision of work for male inmates, restrictions on the use of strong liquor and – a radical suggestion for its day – the housing of every prisoner in a separate cell. However, apart from the distribution of some religious books to prisons in London and to all the county gaols, little resulted from this initiative.

A number of parliamentary inquiries into the prisons were also instituted. A Select Committee in 1729 accused the Fleet’s warden, Thomas Bambridge, of extorting exorbitant fees and keeping debtors locked in heavy irons. A second report laid charges against William Acton, chief officer at the Marshalsea, where up to fifty prisoners slept in a room 16ft square. At night, inmates had no toilet facilities and were forced to use the floor. Debtors who displeased the guards could be locked up for week alongside a vermin-ridden and putrifying corpse. Despite the apparent evidence against Bambridge and Acton, both were acquitted of all criminal charges (although Bambridge was barred from resuming his wardenship of the Fleet).⁸⁰

As well as efforts to reform existing prisons, various schemes for new types of prison were put forward. In 1753, Middlesex JP Henry Fielding and architect Thomas Gibson proposed the building of a combined prison, house of correction and workhouse, which would house 5,000 paupers and 1,000 convicts. Perhaps not surprisingly, this enormously ambitious project was never constructed. On a much more modest scale, in 1758, Robert Dingley, with help from philanthropist Jonas Hanway, set up a successful Magdalen house at Goodman’s Fields for ‘repenting prostitutes’. Prostitution in the capital at that time employed around 3,000 women with a similar number dying each year from venereal diseases. Whilst in the house, the inmates were expected to work or to sit alone in silent religious reflection – an activity whose benefits Hanway extolled in his 1776 publication Solitude in Imprisonment. By 1786, 2,415 women had passed through the house, with only a small number returning to the streets.⁸¹

One significant influence from outside England was the publication in 1767 of On Crimes and Punishment by Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria. Beccaria argued that punishment should be administered as soon as possible after a crime was committed in order to create a strong association between the two. Punishments should reflect the seriousness of the offence – crimes against property, for example, being punished by fines – and, where possible, be socially useful, such as labouring on public works. He strongly argued against indiscriminate use of capital punishment, suggesting that long-term punishments had a far greater deterrent value and could result in reformation of the offender. Beccaria’s ideas were widely debated and undoubtedly paved the way for reforms which, albeit slowly, came in their wake.

JOHN HOWARD

In 1773, at the age of 47, John Howard was appointed high sheriff of Bedfordshire. While attending court sessions he noticed that prisoners found not guilty were still being returned to the county gaol. The reason, he discovered, was that they needed to pay the gaoler for their release, plus any outstanding fees for their board and lodgings. Acquitted prisoners were also retained in case other charges were laid against them before the judge left town.⁸² Prisoners who were penniless could then remain in gaol indefinitely even though they were innocent. To try and remedy this situation, Howard requested that JPs appoint a salaried gaoler and abolish prison fees. After being told that this would only be considered if an existing precedent could be found, he visited other prisons in the area, and then further afield, eventually across the whole of Europe. The abuses he uncovered were detailed in his book The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, published in 1777.

With regard to prison buildings, Howard noted that they often had barred windows or gratings which opened directly onto the street outside. Inmates could easily communicate with friends outside and obtain beer and spirits, or even a file with which to cut through the bars and escape. Rooms were frequently badly lit and ventilated, and the floor generally damp or even flooded with one or two inches of water. Proper sanitary provision was almost unknown. At Knaresborough in Yorkshire, he found that the prison for town debtors had:

Only one room, about fourteen feet by twelve. Earth floor; no fireplace; very offensive; a common sewer from the town running through it uncovered. I was informed that an Officer, confined here some years since, for only a few days, took in with him a dog, to defend him from vermin; but the dog was soon destroyed, and the Prisoner’s face much disfigured by them.

The town gaol at Plymouth had a room for felons known as the clink which was:

Seventeen feet by eight, by about five feet and a half high, with a wicket in the door, seven inches by five, to admit light and air. To this, three men who were confined near two months, under sentence of Transportation, came by turns for breath. The door had not been opened for five weeks, when I with difficulty entered to see a pale inhabitant. He had been there ten weeks, under sentence of Transportation, and said he had much rather have been hanged than confined in that noisome cell. No yard; no water; no sewer. Fees 15s 10d. No table. Allowance to Debtors, none but on application; Felons twopennyworth of bread a day. No straw.

An engraving of Francis Wheatley’s 1787 painting of John Howard Visiting and Relieving the Miseries of Prison. Howard (third from right) is shown reproaching an indifferent gaoler over the condition of the prison’s hapless inmates.

At the start of Howard’s investigations, he travelled in the comfort of a post-chaise carriage. After realising how offensive his clothes became after visiting so many prisons and dungeons, he took to travelling on horseback. To protect himself from the fetid atmosphere and the smallpox and gaol-fever that were rife in many prisons, he carried a phial of vinegar which he sniffed whilst inside.

Although the prison buildings left much to be desired, the inmates were often treated with considerable laxity. No tools or materials were supplied to provide work, and prisoners were allowed to spend their time in ‘sloth, profaneness, and debauchery’.⁸³ Drinking and gaming were the main occupations with the most popular pastimes being cards, dice, skittles, Mississippi, Portobello, billiards, fives and tennis. At the Fleet, there was a wine club on Monday nights and a beer club on Thursdays, each lasting until 1 or 2 a.m. At the Marshalsea, on one Sunday in the summer of 1775, almost 600 pots of beer were brought in from a nearby public-house, the prisoners not liking the prison’s own beer.⁸⁴

In a large part due to Howard’s revelations, two Acts of Parliament were passed in 1774. The Discharged Prisoners Act required that a prisoner acquitted or discharged by a court be set free immediately, with any outstanding discharge fee being paid out of the rates up to a maximum of 13s 4d. The Health of Prisoners Act directed that prison rooms should be scraped and whitewashed at least once a year, and constantly supplied with fresh air by means of ventilators. Warm and cold baths were to be installed in each prison, and separate rooms were to be provided for sick inmates. Finally, each prison was to appoint an experienced physician who was to make a report to the local Justices each quarter.

As a result of his visits to continental prisons, Howard outlined his ideal institution. It would be on an airy site, near to running water. The gaoler would be a sober man of good character who would live on the premises and receive his income from a salary rather than fees. There would be separate quarters for men, women and juveniles. Debtors and felons would also live apart, with a workshop for those debtors willing to work. Each inmate would have his own sleeping cell. The prison would have its own bath-house and infirmary, and chapel with a separate section for women, out of sight of all the other prisoners. Howard’s own designs for a model county gaol were published in The State of the Prisons and in the following decade influenced the construction of new buildings such as Bodmin Gaol in Cornwall.

Howard died in 1790 from gaol-fever, contracted on a visit to a prison at Kherson in what is now Ukraine. In 1866, his name was adopted by the newly formed Howard Association, now the Howard League, a charity campaigning for penal reform.

JAMES NEILD

James Neild came from a Quaker family in Cheshire but moved to London in 1760 where he later became a successful jeweller. He became involved in penal reform after visiting the King’s Bench prison where a fellow apprentice was being held as a debtor. Shocked at what he saw, he visited a number of other prisons in England and France, becoming increasingly disturbed by the number of people incarcerated for owing small debts. In 1773, he helped found The Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts and became its treasurer. The group raised funds to secure the release of debtors, especially those who owed less than £10 and who were judged worthy of assistance, such as men with dependant families. By 1800, the society had achieved the release of 16,405 prisoners at a total cost of £41,748 – averaging out to a very small amount. ⁸⁵ Despite this success, imprisonment for non-payment of debts was not abolished until the passing of the Administration of Justice Act in 1970.

Neild also became increasingly concerned that the reforms initiated by John Howard were often being ignored, frequently because of the apathy of local magistrates. A significant improvement in this state of affairs occurred in the years from 1803 to 1813, when the Gentleman’s Magazine regularly published reports of Neild’s far-flung prison visits, written in the form of letters to his friend John Lettsom. Neild’s eye-opening detail of the abuses taking place in some particular prison invariably provoked rapid action from those in charge. Typical was his 1804 description of the gaol and bridewell at Sudbury in Suffolk:

This miserable prison has for debtors and criminals two rooms on the ground-floor fronting the street, about 13 feet square. A fire-place in each, with iron-bar grated windows, and a small aperture to beg through ... The court-yard being insecure, prisoners have no use of it; and water is not accessible to them. There is no necessary; a bar of wood across one corner of each room with a little straw on the floor is used for this purpose. Gaol very dirty.⁸⁶

ELIZABETH FRY

Perhaps the most influential reformer of the nineteenth century was Elizabeth Gurney, daughter of a large Quaker family in Ipswich. Following her marriage to businessman Joseph Fry in 1800, she eventually settled near London, at East Ham, to bring up her own growing family. In 1813, she heard the report of a visit to Newgate prison by a group of American Quakers who had been shocked to find scenes of ‘blaspheming, fighting, dram-drinking, half-naked women’. ⁸⁷ Her own visits to Newgate, where she witnessed ‘riot, licentiousness, and filth’ led to her campaigning for the reform of prison conditions and of the inmates themselves. Several years later, following discussions with the prison authorities and the prisoners, a number of changes were introduced, including a scheme of classification and segregation, a prison uniform, paid work, educational and religious classes, and a system of constant supervision by a matron and monitors chosen by the prisoners from their own number.⁸⁸ Although some of the changes, such as the banning of alcohol and playing cards, were not totally popular, there was a marked improvement in the prisoners’ conduct.

Fry travelled widely, promoting her work, and in 1821 set up a national body – the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners – to co-ordinate the work of the numerous local prison-visiting groups that had sprung up. The society spawned offshoots in a number of other countries including Holland, Italy, Russia and the USA where a group of Quaker women began visiting the Arch Street prison in 1823.

At the heart of Elizabeth Fry’s philosophy was that the treatment of prisoners should be based on the principles of justice and humanity. The aim of prison should be reformation – achieved through kindness – rather than degradation, cruelty and neglect. Her particular concern for female prisoners led to significant improvements in their treatment, for example the 1823 Gaols Act, which required the complete segregation of male and female prisoners, led to females being supervised by female officers. Her efforts also resulted in improved conditions for those being transported to Australia aboard convict ships. She arranged for each woman to receive a ‘bag of useful items’. These included a Bible, two aprons, a black cotton cap, a large hessian sack (for transporting her clothes) and a sewing kit and material to make a patchwork quilt. The quilt could then be sold or used as proof of her sewing skills for a potential future employer.

Elizabeth Fry on a visit to Newgate. In 1817, Fry and a group of like-minded, mostly Quaker, women formed the Ladies’ Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate which, amongst other activities, provided daily visits and Bible readings for the inmates.