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 Ex tibris 
 C. K. OGDEN
 
 CHAPTERS 
 
 PRISONS AND PRISONERS, 
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 JOSEPH KINGSMILL, M.A., 
 
 'It is the duty of society not only to punish the crimes committed, but also carefully to seek 
 out their causes, and. so f:ir as it is in human power, to remove them." 
 
 Otcar, King of Sweden. 
 
 irti Coition, 
 
 LONDON: 
 LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 
 
 1854.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 REED AND PAEDON, PIUNTERS, 
 FATEENOSTEB ROW.
 
 o 
 
 it 
 
 PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 THIS book has, thus far, been successful beyond the ex- 
 pectations of the writer. The incidents of criminal life 
 interspersed through the various Chapters, have been de- 
 scribed by literary reviewers, as " facts stranger than fiction," 
 and more instructive ; and its suggestions and information 
 have found a favourable response amongst the intelligent and 
 influential public. It has not, however, carried off the 
 suffrages of all ; 
 
 " Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci." 
 
 The professors of the modern science of penology, who ad- 
 vocate protracted and indiscriminate separate confinement, 
 as the best hope of reclaiming criminals, consider it little 
 short of a betrayal of the cause of Prison Reform. The well- 
 meaning friends of total abstinence and compulsory temper- 
 ance, look upon its silence respecting their plans for pro- 
 moting national morals, naturally enough, with disapprobation. 
 But most of all, do the disciples of Roman doctrine dislike 
 it ; and, it is to be feared, if they should now favour it with 
 a perusal, they will dislike it more heartily. Not that the 
 writer has grown more intolerant or uncharitable towards 
 others in the carrying out their opinions and conscientious 
 convictions, (the reverse is the truth, if he knows anything 
 of his own heart ;) but because, in the treatment of his subject, 
 he has been led to adduce facts calculated to show that the 
 
 20151S7
 
 iv PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 papal system of Christianity, which arrogates to itself exclu- 
 sive sanctity, is more prolific in irreligion and vice than the 
 most fanatical Protestant sect in England. Notwithstanding 
 this drawback, the book before the reader professes to be an 
 improvement upon its predecessor. The subjects treated 
 upon are more copiously illustrated by living characters. 
 It is less documentary, and gives the history of Convictism 
 in a more readable form, from the days of Botany Bay, to its 
 last phase in England, as the home-ticket-of-leave system, 
 and Mr. Lucas's effort in Parliament to have attached to 
 our gaols salaried Roman Catholic chaplains. 
 
 How far such influence is worth paying for, (in pre- 
 ference too, to other claimants,) in the hope of reforming 
 criminals, which is proved so signally to have failed, in com- 
 parison with other denominations, above all proportion, and 
 fair consideration of circumstances, in keeping people out of 
 prison ; or how far it is consistent with English notions of 
 religious liberty to fasten its chains upon those who have lost 
 their civil rights, whether willing or unwilling to submit, is 
 left to others to consider. The writer only refers to the 
 subject in these pages in order to vindicate himself from the 
 animadversions of Mr. Lucas in the House upon his conduct 
 as Chaplain of Pentonville Prison, in reference to convicts of 
 the Honourable Member's adopted communion. 
 
 As regards the volume itself, it may be added, although 
 not deteriorated in any respect, (indeed, it reflects credit- 
 upon the press from which it issues,) it is reduced in price ; 
 and if any wish to present it to bond fide FREE libraries, or 
 institutions supported by voluntary aid, it may be worth while 
 on their part to communicate with the Author.
 
 THE HJGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, 
 
 IX UNFEIGNED ADMIRATION 
 
 OF 
 
 TALENT, BANK, AND INFLUENCE, 
 
 DEVOTED TO THE GOOD OF MANKIND, 
 
 IN THE REPRESSION OF IMMORALITY AND CR1MK, 
 
 THE ALLEVIATION OF HUMAN SUFFERING AND M1SKRY. 
 
 AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF TRUE RELIGION IN THE WORLD, 
 
 Efjts Uclutnr, 
 
 AIMING IN AN HUMBLER SPHERE AT THE SAME NOBLE OBJECT!?, 
 
 is. WITH HIS LORDSHIP'S PERMISSION, MOST RESPECTFULLY 
 
 DEDICATED I!V 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 (Page 1.) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT DPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Expense Enormous Cost of 14 Criminal Boys Amount stolen A Gang 
 of Thieves Moral Injury Young Men and Women who have not lost 
 Character used as Tools Schools for teaching Picking Pockets The 
 Interests of Humanity Bishop of St. David's admirable Sentiments 
 Beautiful Lines hy Prisoners Convict Soldier on his Mother's Death, &c. 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Proportion of Crime to Population Crime in England and France compared 
 Number of Irish Criminals in England Cardinal Wiseman's Testimony 
 respecting Westminster Causes of Crime Seduction Nefarious Traders 
 in this Crime Account of two young Ladies entrapped by these Monsters 
 Luxury of the Age Fraudulent Modes of Business The Public-house 
 Testimony of Forty-seven Chaplains on the Beer Bill The Stage Re- 
 form of Theatres attempted by Mr. Macready Gambling, &c. &c. . . 32 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME BY IMPRISONMENT. 
 
 State of Prisons when Howard began his Inspection Present State of some 
 The Newgate System Scenes in Prisons of this Kind The Silent- 
 associated System Separate Confinement King of Sweden on Separate 
 Confinement Prison of Civita Vecchia Murdering and Fasting . . 93 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 CONVICT SYSTEMS, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 Botany Bay Norfolk Island Assignment System Probation System of 
 Lord Stanley Earl Grey's Scheme Government Home Prisons Reviewed 
 New Ticket-of-leave System in England Brixton Female Convict Pri- 
 sonRoman Catholic Chaplains 129
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 PAOK 
 
 Notes of Ten Days' Routine of a Chaplain's Duties Visit from Cell to Cell 
 Refractory Ward The Visiting and Parting Room Affecting Scenes 
 Causes of their own Crime stated by a Hundred Convicts Letters to and 
 from Prisoners Prisoners' Lives saved by gallant conduct of a Governor 
 Remarkable Address from a Convict to his Fellow-Prisoners Some cases 
 of Clever Deception by Convicts 207 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 
 
 Rules in Government Prisons Officers addressed from these Rules A good 
 Discipline Officer a great Help to Reformation of Prisoners How best 
 to discharge his Duty Officers of Low Habits warned by Examples 
 Chaplains and Governors Addressed Suggestions to Magistrates upon 
 selection of Officers, &c 307 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT IN GENERAL UPON PRISONERS. 
 
 Convict-ships in former times and of late years Sir Edward and Lady 
 Parry at Port Stephen Elizabeth Fry Sarah Martin, of Yarmouth- 
 John Howard, Sketch of his Life and Labours 342 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 The Right of the State to inflict Capital Punishment The Expediency 
 Public Executions Howard on Capital Punishment . . . .376 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 Prevention of Relapse Continental and Home Institutions Prevention 
 of Crime in Classes most in danger Benevolent Plans Reviewed Pre- 
 vention of Crime by National Improvement The Result of Revived State 
 of Religion The Pulpit The School The Family Numbers of Roman 
 Catholics in England, and the Deplorable Excess of Crime amongst 
 them, &c 386 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 1. Comparative Statistics of Crime in England, Scotland, and Ireland . .491 
 
 2. Report of Chaplain of Pentonville Prison, referring to Changes in the 
 
 Discipline, &c. &c 493 
 
 3. The Crystal Palace Opinions of 599 Medical Men in the Metropolis, 
 
 on the subject, also of Seventy Prison Chaplains 502 
 
 4. Names and Localities of Convict Prisons .507 
 
 5. Form of a Ticket-of-leave as now granted in England .... 508
 
 CHAPTERS 
 
 PEISONS AND PRISONERS, 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE following pages have no pretensions to 
 literary merit, and, therefore, neither invite nor de- 
 precate criticism. They are the productions of a 
 hasty pen, noting down under convenient heads 
 such facts and observations as seemed likely to be 
 of use in meeting the question, WTiat shall we do 
 with our criminals ? and in promoting that other 
 more important one : What shall we best do to pre- 
 vent crime altogether ? or, if this cannot be looked 
 for, to check its progress in the land ? 
 
 They aim also, all through, at being useful, by 
 way of warning and example to the young and inex- 
 perienced, in the hands of those to whom the Chief 
 Shepherd has intrusted the care of souls parents, 
 pastors, and employers, and I would fain hope even 
 in their own. Tor although there is not very much 
 
 * B
 
 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 here to arrest the lively and the gay, most people, in 
 our inquiring age, like to know what is passing in 
 the world around them, even in things most foreign 
 to their own pursuits, and to be able to form an 
 opinion for themselves, on subjects popularly debated 
 in parliament and elsewhere : and all have their 
 moments either of vacuity or thoughtfulness, when 
 a book, on a subject not the most inviting, would 
 not be despised in lieu of a better. 
 
 It would not have been difficult (at least in other 
 hands) to make the subject more attractive to the 
 lover of light reading. There is more romance in 
 real life than is generally supposed, and there exist 
 materials in abundance within the walls of a prison, 
 for the construction of the most exciting tales. To 
 attempt, however, to gratify a taste of this kind 
 would be, in the writer's judgment, to pander to a 
 morbid appetite, and to plant with one hand some of 
 the germs of criminality in the breasts of the young, 
 whilst professing to eradicate them with the other. 
 Therefore, only such facts are here referred to as 
 seemed calculated from their truth, their painfulness, 
 and their moral, to engage the healthful sympathies 
 of the heart, and instruct as well as interest the 
 mind. A Christian cannot trine with the guilt or 
 misery of his fellow-man. 
 
 Much of the utility of the work will depend on 
 the manner in which it is taken up by my brethren 
 in the ministry; and by that great community 
 of Christians of every name in the land, who 
 holding in common the great principles of truth, are
 
 INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 seeking, by active, believing exertions, to promote 
 the Redeemer's kingdom, and the good of mankind. 
 Such individuals are labouring at the right end for 
 the prevention of crime, particularly when the sub- 
 jects of their benevolence are the labouring poor, or 
 the young. Eor their works and labours of love, 
 the writer desires to be a mere gatherer of the rude 
 material, " a hewer of wood or a drawer of water," 
 while he earnestly commends to their prayers and 
 sympathies the less promising field of labour, which 
 prison chaplains are called to cultivate. Happily, 
 our work is unsectarian, and may claim the sympathy 
 of every Christian heart. 
 
 I rejoice to know that already these humble pages 
 have attracted thus the attention of many pious 
 persons in and out of the Established Church, and 
 that some pastors have here found facts by which 
 to illustrate and enforce their godly admonitions 
 from the pulpit. It is also no small satisfaction to 
 find, that not a few families, saddened and dis- 
 honoured by the crime and punishment of some 
 unworthy, but still much loved, relative, (alas ! 
 many a respectable and virtuous home has this 
 bitter grief,) have found some alleviation of their 
 sorrow, from what they have here read, of the mercy 
 mixed with justice in the present generally-received 
 mode of treating prisoners in England, as well as of 
 the abundant means provided for their reclamation, 
 and the happy results, through the Divine blessing, 
 in cases not a few. 
 
 Painfully does the writer's heart sympathize with 
 
 B 2
 
 4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 such persons in their sore afflictions ; but he would 
 earnestly entreat them to bear in mind, that 
 " affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither 
 doth trouble spring out of the ground;" that it is 
 God himself who sends the trouble for some wise 
 and gracious purpose. Therefore, whilst they bitterly 
 bewail the grievous fall of some relative or friend, 
 and pray and long for his recovery and salvation, let 
 them " hear the rod, and who hath appointed it" 
 themselves. Let them receive the trial as from 
 heaven, and turn to the Lord with all their heart. 
 Thus, through grace, may their greatest troubles 
 prove the best blessings of their lives, and the bitter 
 tears of unprofitable regret give place to humble and 
 adoring confidence in Him, who can bring good out 
 of evil, and light out of thick darkness. 
 
 "No chastening for the present seemeth to be 
 joyous, but grievous : nevertheless afterward it 
 yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto 
 them ivhich are exercised thereby" 
 
 St. Paul teaches us to recognise an all-Avise and 
 gracious Providence in such dispensations, when he 
 writes to Philemon, concerning Onesimus, converted 
 under the preaching of the Apostle : " Perhaps he 
 therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest 
 receive him for ever." 
 
 God grant it may be so in your case, afflicted 
 reader, who have son, or brother, or husband, or 
 father, in the sad condition of a prisoner. 
 
 Whilst putting these thoughts to paper, a letter 
 from a clergyman to his brother here unhappily
 
 INTRODUCTION. O 
 
 a prisoner passed through my hands, which em- 
 bodies these sentiments very appropriately. As a 
 Christian, the writer sees the hand of God in the 
 terrible domestic calamity; and looks beyond the 
 disgrace and loss, to the fruit of the affliction 
 sanctified, as he hopes and prays it may be, to his 
 poor brother's salvation adding, what is very 
 affecting to my own heart, and very instructive to 
 persons in like circumstances : 
 
 " We seldom go to bed without praying for you ; I think I 
 never do. The sentence in the Litany, that God would show 
 mercy upon all prisoners and captives, has always a response in my 
 heart. ' We beseech thee, good Lord.' As I walk through my 
 parish, often is my heart lifted up to God on your behalf ; and at 
 the Lord's table, I always make special mention of you, my poor 
 dear brother." 
 
 Yes, dear reader, this is the only way by which 
 the sorrows of your heart can be assuaged. 
 
 There is an eye that never sleeps 
 Beneath the wing of night ; 
 
 There is an ear that never shuts, 
 When sink the beams of light 
 
 There is an arm that never tires, 
 When human strength gives way; 
 
 There is a love that never fails, 
 W T hen earthly loves decay. 
 
 That eye is fixed on seraph-throngs 
 That arm upholds the sky; 
 
 That ear is fill'd with angels' songs ; 
 That love is throned on high.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But there 's a power which man can wield 
 
 When mortal aid is vain, 
 That eye, that arm, that love to reach, 
 
 That listening ear to gain. 
 
 That power is Prayer, which soars on high, 
 
 Through Jesus, to the Throne, 
 And moves the hand which moves the world 
 
 To bring salvation down.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT UPON PUBLIC 
 CONSIDERATION. 
 
 " Nihil humani alienum a me puto." 
 
 THE subject of prisons and prisoners has become 
 a painfully interesting one, whether the expense 
 be regarded, the public morals, or the claims of 
 humanity. Pew persons, except those who are 
 compelled to encounter the repulsive study of blue- 
 book literature, or who are connected with the 
 detection or punishment of crime, have any ade- 
 quate idea of the magnitude of this evil, when viewed 
 in any of these respects. 
 
 The expense is enormous. The annual cost of 
 prisoners in England and Wales, Scotland and 
 Ireland, exclusive of the capital sunk in prison 
 buildings, the expense of the police force, the pro- 
 secution and trial of offenders, and the enormous 
 charge of a complete standing army of constabulary 
 and regular soldiers in the sister country, is about 
 one million sterling. 
 
 Let the matter be viewed a little in detail : 
 
 Mr. Rushton, the late experienced magistrate 
 of Liverpool, when giving evidence before Lord
 
 8 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 Brougham's Committee, in 1847, made the following 
 statement concerning fourteen criminal children : 
 " The average cost of these fourteen prisoners, 
 during their confinement, exceeded sixty guineas 
 each, exclusive of the expense of transportation, 
 subsequently, of the greater part:" which, upon a 
 moderate calculation, he estimated at forty more, or 
 a total loss to the public of one hundred guineas 
 each. And what was the result of all their impri- 
 sonment ? " Pour years afterwards," says Mr. 
 Hushton, " I went back to these fourteen cases, and 
 I ascertained what had become of them. Ten out 
 of the fourteen children had been transported ; one 
 had died ; one is now in custody ; one is among 
 the criminal population ; and of only one is there 
 any hope of reformation, and that one I have never 
 heard of. 
 
 Of the loss to the public in property stolen, it is 
 not possible to form any correct estimate. Some 
 approximation, however, to the probable amount 
 may be arrived at from such facts as the following : 
 The total number of convicts that is, persons 
 sentenced to transportation annually in England and 
 Wales has been, communibus annis, about 3000. Now 
 in one year, I ascertained that 500 prisoners of this 
 class, taken as they stood in order on the register- 
 book, had stolen property to the value of 10,000, 
 as estimated upon their trial. But, as these men 
 had, on an average, been convicted once before, this 
 sum may be safely doubled on that score, which will 
 give 120,000 as the aggregate discovered amount
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 9 
 
 stolen by the total number of convicts. Now, to 
 this may be added, at the most moderate calculation, 
 as much more, on account of depredations com- 
 mitted by the same parties when they escaped 
 detection, making in all about one quarter of a mil- 
 lion's worth of property taken from its rightful 
 owners by 3000 convicts i. e., by about one- thir- 
 tieth part of the total of individual criminals who 
 annually pass through our prisons ; so that it does 
 not appear unreasonable to suppose making very 
 large allowance for the more advanced stage of 
 crime in the convict or transported class that the 
 entire loss to the community, in annual depredations, 
 does not fall short of two millions sterling. 
 
 To give other data for the calculation of loss to 
 the public in stolen property, it may suffice to say 
 that thieves in all our great towns act on a system 
 of aggression, concealment, and defence, as complete 
 as can well be imagined ; that they are, as a body, 
 more than ordinarily clever, fertile in resources by 
 study and practice, and incomparable actors; that 
 the whole business of thieving is subdivided, in some 
 measure like that of a manufactory, so that each one 
 obtains as great a facility in his branch as ingenious 
 artisans in their respective trades. The consequence 
 is, that fraternities of such persons often share enor- 
 mous booty, each, however, if at 'all possible, de- 
 frauding his fellow. But, male parta, male dilabun- 
 tur ; ill-gotten, ill-gone; a man of this sort lives, as 
 a man of fortune, dresses, and smokes his cigar, as 
 gentlemen are supposed to do, attends the races,
 
 10 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 theatres, and other places of public amusement in 
 the character of a gentleman, and has expenses on 
 other accounts which cannot be so well specified. 
 How does he keep this up ? Exclusively by plun- 
 der. Yet it is notorious that he does not get more 
 than an eighth of the value of stolen goods from the 
 receiver. 
 
 Nor is this the case only with the well-dressed 
 and well-educated swindler, and the confreres of 
 the swell mob. A very ordinary, but expert house- 
 robber or shop-lifter, will plunder to the amount of 
 hundreds of pounds in a year, and must do so to get 
 a mere living, if he has addicted himself to the horrid 
 trade of thieving. All this loss, however, is only a 
 part of the pecuniary injury inflicted by a single 
 thief on the community, which has then to be 
 taxed for his detection, his punishment, and his 
 reformation. 
 
 Some curious particulars on this point are given 
 by my excellent friend, the Chaplain of Preston 
 House of Correction, in his Report for 1850. 
 Speaking of a gang of male and female pickpockets 
 which came under his notice, Mr. Clay goes on to 
 say : " The extensive demoralization laid bare by the 
 Clarkes, Planagan, and others, cannot but shock the 
 religious sense of every one who desires the real wel- 
 fare of aU classes. No doubt the moral aspect of the 
 case is, beyond all measure, of the greatest moment ; 
 at the same time, it will not diminish solicitude if I 
 present an economical view of it, and show how 
 much the public has probably been plundered of by
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 11 
 
 this very small detachment from the pickpocket 
 division of ' la classe danger euse' Flanagan's 
 fourteen years' course, and Kelly's twenty years' 
 (the latter worthy being still in practice), show, .too 
 plainly, that the law, or at least the police, is 
 unequal to a successful contest with such characters; 
 and it may, therefore, be of service to exhibit to the 
 public the amount of depredation they are exposed 
 to, that they may obviate, by their own watchfulness, 
 those losses which, if once sustained, can seldom be 
 recovered. 
 
 " Estimate of the loss inflicted on the public by 
 the undermentioned pickpockets, &c., during their 
 several careers : 
 
 1. Eichard Clarke, during a career of 6 years 2820 
 
 2. John Clarke, 5 500 
 
 3. Edward Clarke, 3 1650 
 
 4. Ellen Clarke, (O'Neill) 2| 1550 
 
 5. John O'Neill, 9 1450 
 
 6. Thomas O'Gar, 6 800 
 
 7. James O'Brien, 3 1400 
 
 8. Thomas M'Giverin, 7 1900 
 
 9. Thomas Kelty, 20 8000 
 
 10. John Flanagan, 14 5800 
 
 11. John Thompson, 5 ,, 1800 
 
 12. John Bohanna, 6 1500 
 
 13. J. Shawe, 3 600 
 
 14. W. Buckley, 7 2100 
 
 15. Sarah Dickenson, 3 630 
 
 32,000 
 
 "To give a more exact idea of the extent to 
 which the public may be plundered by a single
 
 12 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 hand, I subjoin the particulars of such robberies 
 as Flanagan can remember to have committed. 
 These particulars are arranged from Flanagan's MS., 
 in the order of their dates. In making out his list, 
 E. was directed to enumerate those robberies only in 
 which the value exceeded 10. He stated, how- 
 ever, that his robberies under 10 would far exceed 
 in amount those above that sum. * Oh, sir,' he said, 
 ' when Macready would be acting at the Manchester 
 Theatre, I could get three watches of a night, besides 
 purses.' 
 
 1838 and 1839. 
 
 Value. Where robbery committed. From whom. 
 
 20 Concert, Liverpool . . A gentleman. 
 
 15 Theatre, Liverpool . . A gentleman 
 
 11 Zoological Gardens . A lady. 
 
 30 Coach-office, Liverpool . Proprietors. 
 
 46 Auction, Broughton-road A lady. 
 
 30 Auction, Cheetham-hill . A lady. 
 
 1 5 Auction, Pendleton . . A lady. 
 
 21 Manchester . . . A till from a liquor-vault 
 
 50 Manchester . . . A till from a public-house 
 
 Leek, Stafford . . . A shopkeeper. 
 
 85 Hanley Races . . . A gentleman. 
 
 49 Northallerton Fair . . A drunken farmer 
 
 Liverpool Packet . . A passenger 
 
 18 Liverpool Packet . . A passenger 
 
 30 Liverpool Packet . . A passenger. 
 
 45 Horncastle Fair . . A. lady 
 
 17 Leeds Fair . . . A butcher. 
 
 1840 and 1841. 
 
 10 Lincoln Fair . . . A gentleman. 
 14 Lincoln Fair . . . Captain of a boat.
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 13 
 
 Value. Where robbery committed. From whom. 
 
 10 Spalding Fair . . .A farmer. 
 
 11 Horncastle Fair . . A maltster. 
 
 10 Liverpool Kaces . . A gentleman. 
 
 16 Liverpool Races . . A farmer. 
 
 17 Chester Races . . .A lady. 
 
 11 Manchester Races . . A lady. 
 
 1841 and 1842. 
 
 10 
 
 Manchester Theatre . 
 
 A lady. 
 
 70 
 
 Bury Fair .... 
 
 A cattle-dealer. 
 
 250 
 
 In the street, at Manchester 
 
 An officer. 
 
 15 
 
 Knutsford Races 
 
 A jockey. 
 
 30 
 
 Doncaster Races 
 
 A publican. 
 
 18 
 
 Nottingham Races 
 
 A butcher. 
 
 14 
 
 Derby Races 
 
 Unknown. 
 
 13 
 
 Crovvle, Lincoln 
 
 A publican's wife. 
 
 12 
 
 Caister, Lincoln 
 
 A farmer. 
 
 11 
 
 Market Raisin . 
 
 A gentleman's servant. 
 
 60 
 
 Brigg Fair 
 
 A farmer's wife. 
 
 21 
 
 Louth, Lincolnshire . 
 
 A coachman. 
 
 &c. &c. &c." 
 
 The depredations of Flanagan are given at length 
 by Mr. Clay in the subsequent years up to July, 
 1850, when he was apprehended at Burnley, and 
 transported. 
 
 This man was imprisoned about seventeen times. 
 " He was also apprehended and discharged for want 
 of evidence about fourteen or fifteen times." 
 
 This professor of thieving gave an account ol 
 female pickpockets, which will show how systematic 
 is this crime even in provincial towns : 
 
 " The women now travelling look so maidenlified and comely 
 in their person, that no human being would suspect them being
 
 14 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 pickpockets. Their attire is generally of the best, but it is not 
 so with all. Some of the female-ic/re* are dressed in the first 
 style. There are three of them attending the shops where the 
 most ladies go to : one woman acts as servant while the wire acts 
 mistress. When they go into one of these shops, as any other 
 lady might do, they are on the watch to see when purses are 
 pulled out, and the ' mistress' gets close to a lady who has shown 
 a purse, wires her of it, and then contrives to give it to the ' ser- 
 vant,' who goes away, while the mistress remains in the shop, 
 and, if she is clever, gets another purse before leaving it. There 
 are now in Manchester, three of the cleverest lady-tares travel- 
 ling: one from Birmingham, one from Leeds, and one from 
 Liverpool. The oldest of these three is about twenty-four, and 
 the youngest about sixteen. This youngest keeps a young man, 
 who is dressed like any gentleman, with his gold watch and curb 
 chain attached to it ; and she dressed so, that any magistrate 
 who saw her would say she never could be anything of the sort ; 
 only her speech instantly condemns her. Last summer, at Birken- 
 head and Chester Railway stations, one or two of these lady-like 
 wires attended regularly. They frequent, also, private sales in 
 town and country. One may see them with books in their hands, 
 like other ladies, and giving now and then a bid for an article, 
 but they never come away with anything fcn^fc at the sale. They 
 look into the newspapers for intelligence about sales, and also 
 about concerts, which they attend. I knew one woman and her 
 man who got more money than any three women travelling. 
 They had their own horse and gig, riding about from fair to fair. 
 Not long after coming out of Wakefield, where she had been 
 twelve months, both she and her man got transported about three 
 years ago at Derby. There is now in Manchester and Liverpool 
 about fifty or sixty of these -women-wires, one day dressed up in 
 their best, another day quite plain, to escape any information 
 that may have been given." 
 
 I saw this worthy (Elanagan) in Portland Convict 
 Prison in 1852. He was then near the close of his 
 probation, and I suppose by this time is at the 
 diggings. Of his success there I have no doubt. 
 
 Thus far with the mere money view of the subject.
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 15 
 
 But who can calculate the moral injury endured by 
 society from this source, when he considers that an 
 accomplished robber, in the climax of criminality, 
 becomes a teacher of gambling, a trainer of thieves, 
 an insinuating, and, too often, successful tempter of 
 young men's fidelity in offices of trust or service, 
 and the heartless seducer of female innocence in the 
 houses of the wealthy, often that he may perpetrate, 
 in greater security, his plans of robbery ? 
 
 The ramifications of vice from this quarter alone, 
 in our great towns, are extensive beyond all ordinary 
 belief. Inveterate and practised thieves work, 
 wherever they can, by means of dupes or victims 
 who have not yet lost character. Such tools are too 
 ready at hand for their purpose, young persons 
 of both sexes who have neither sufficient principle 
 to keep them from improper places, nor resolution, 
 when they find themselves in danger, to flee before 
 they are overpowered and ruined ; and who, in 
 general, by extravagance and folly, are in pecuniary 
 difficulties. For, truly, just as religion received 
 into the heart makes every one an agent for good, in 
 a greater or less degree ; so vice and ungodliness 
 are self-propagating, and, alas ! in too congenial a 
 soil. Wherever ungodliness is fully developed as 
 in the class of persons referred to, and its kindred 
 one in the other sex there will be found an active, 
 zealous, and successful missionary of evil. 
 
 Young men, as w r ell as young w r omen, in business, 
 and in service, should be made alive to the dangers 
 of this kind, which beset their path in life.
 
 16 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 To form no acquaintance with any but persons of 
 known respectability in their walk of life ; to spend 
 their evenings in reading well-selected books; in 
 communications with home, or in the family of a 
 virtuous friend ; and to be content with rational day 
 amusements, upon such occasions as almost every 
 employer will afford to his dependents is, it may 
 be thought, to be very precise, and to lose much of 
 the pleasures of youth ; but it is necessary, if young 
 persons would guard their virtue and integrity from 
 being tampered with by designing parties, who lie in 
 wait to deceive, and it is to lay the foundation of 
 real respectability and true happiness. 
 
 It is another horrid feature of this subject, that 
 there are places in all our large towns for directly 
 teaching the various branches of thieving ; and the 
 pupils, in these schools of infamy, are just that class 
 of children who, if taken in hand by kind and Chris- 
 tian instructors in time, seem most likely to become 
 active, useful members of society ; having, in general, 
 more than ordinary energy of character, shrewdness, 
 and ability. 
 
 In the following brief account, given by my 
 valued friend, the Chaplain of the City of London 
 House of Correction, there is reference to one of 
 these seminaries : 
 
 "James L 's father was a soldier, and died when he was 
 
 very young, leaving his mother unprovided for. The only means 
 of her support was obtained by begging in the streets. She died 
 about nine years ago. James, consequently, was left very young 
 without any one to look after him ; he soon fell amongst thieves, 
 and was taken to Wentworth- street, in Whitechapel, to a house
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 17 
 
 where he was boarded and lodged for six months, when he was 
 taught to pick pockets. He says, that there were twenty more 
 hoys kept, beside himself, for the same purpose, by a man and 
 woman who lived by their plunder. Daily the woman dressed 
 herself, put a bell in her pocket, also a purse, containing fid. ; 
 any of the pupils who could take the purse from her pocket, 
 without causing the bell to tingle, got the 6d. as a reward for his 
 dexterity. He remained until he was a proficient pickpocket." 
 
 The following account is from the painfully in- 
 teresting records of a City Missionary, concerning a 
 man who had kept a house of this sort, but was 
 apparently brought under religious convictions : 
 
 " The missionary found, on conversing with him, that he had 
 been twenty years living a criminal life, and had been twenty 
 times in prison. He resided in a low lodging-house, where he 
 carried on his craft of training young lads to steal. The best 
 hands among them were sent into the streets, and they brought 
 home the plunder, on which the criminal school lived. He was 
 too well known to the police to dare to go out himself. ' But,' 
 said he, ' I never can keep the young 'uns long, for as soon as 
 I have made them clever at their profession, if they are not taken 
 by the police, they leave me and start for themselves ; so that I 
 am obliged to look out for new hands.' This led the missionary 
 to ask him how many lads he supposed he had trained to be 
 thieves during the twenty years. He had kept no account, and 
 he could not exactly tell, but of this he was sure, that it was not 
 less than Jive hundred. How ramified the evil which this one 
 man had effected ! What a cost had he been to the country ! 
 How perfectly fearful the amount of wretchedness and ruin which 
 he had effected ! Happy that individual who has effected the 
 good which this one man had effected of evil." 
 
 Nor does the mischief stop here ; for a corruption 
 of morals goes on in prisons, subsequently, to an 
 amazing extent ; especially where the comparatively 
 innocent are not separated from the desperate and 
 
 c
 
 18 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 hardened, as will abundantly appear when I come to 
 that part of my subject. 
 
 The following extract from the Report (1849) of 
 the devoted Chaplain of Durham Gaol, will, how- 
 ever, here not be out of place : 
 
 "Eor the most part, all prisoners for trial do 
 nothing ; sometimes five or six months are spent in 
 perfect idleness, by which most injurious habits are 
 acquired. But this is not the principal root of the 
 evil. All prisoners for trial sleep in rooms contain- 
 ing six or eight men or boys each. Here it is that 
 burglaries and robberies are planned, and systems of 
 begging and fraud are discussed. Here they learn 
 each other's vices, and plot outrages during their 
 nocturnal association. 
 
 " An instance of the corruption of morals which 
 takes place among these prisoners, may be men- 
 tioned : Three men, one old and two young, were 
 committed for trial for a highway robbery of a few 
 pence. The old man made no secret of his guilt : 
 and stated, that he had never seen the two younger 
 prisoners before he met them on the road, onjfche 
 night of the robbery, and that they had nothing to 
 do with it. The young men further protested their 
 innocence ; and, after waiting several months in 
 the trial-room for the assizes, no evidence was 
 offered against the younger prisoners, and the old 
 man pleaded guilty. These men who, up to this 
 time, had borne a good character, had so well learnt 
 their lessons from their companions in the trial- 
 ward and sleeping -rooms, that both have since, at
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 19 
 
 different times, been convicted of felony, and each 
 confessed, that he had not worked from the time of 
 his discharge until he returned to gaol ; and that 
 the bad example and advice of his fellow-prisoners 
 had led him to adopt a course of crime for his support. 
 
 " From the age of twelve to twenty, young 
 persons easily receive impressions for good or evil ; 
 and in this prison, I observe a curiosity in the boys 
 to know all about the crimes of their fellow-pri- 
 soners ; and soon they learn to look upon the man 
 who has been oftenest in gaol as the greatest hero. 
 Thus the young are taught the vices of their elders, 
 and many who enter the prison naughty boys, it i^s to 
 be feared, leave it accomplished thieves. 
 
 " In the female part of the prison, all that can be 
 done is now done, to prevent contamination and to 
 maintain order ; yet it is to be lamented that, from 
 the form of the building, ten women at one time, 
 during this year, were all day without control in 
 the trial-room for many weeks. Among these, 
 were two of the worst women of Sunderland, and 
 two servants for stealing from their mistresses in 
 respectable places. One of these servants has re- 
 turned to prison. When discharged, she was met 
 by her parents at the gaol gates, and taken home, 
 where she remained only one week, and then ran 
 away to Sunderland, to the infamous lodging-house 
 of a prison companion, from whence she returned to 
 gaol. For one example of the utter ruin of morals, 
 thus directly traced to the prison contamination, 
 hundreds take place unknown." 
 
 c2
 
 20 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 But the interests of humanity have a claim at our 
 hands, as well as those of economy, or even of 
 morals. It was a noble sentiment from the lips of a 
 heathen: " Nihil humani alienum a me puto" 
 " What concerns man concerns me ;" and it met 
 with a hearty response in the breasts of a people, 
 pagan in religion, and fierce and terrible in war. 
 The Christian must go further. The heavenly doc- 
 trines of the gospel teach us, not merely to regard 
 all men as of one race, having common sympathies 
 and interests, philosophically, (these Romans noto- 
 riously did little more ;) but to do good unto all, and 
 to feel and act towards every one in distress as to- 
 wards a neighbour or a brother. 
 
 To neglect the virtuous in distress, and to honour 
 not the upright man struggling with adversity, and 
 still maintaining his integrity, is to fall below the 
 virtue of some heathen. To have no pity for the 
 guilty and depraved is, certainly, not to rise to the 
 character of the Christian. 
 
 Let vice be detested. None can so intensely 
 abhor it as the follower of Christ. Let crime be 
 punished promptly and severely; Christianity en- 
 forces the claims of human justice. Let the man be 
 pitied, and, if possible, restored. 
 
 What would have become of the best of men, if, 
 in the love of God towards his creatures, there 
 existed only complacency and delight towards those 
 who never sinned, and not compassion also for the 
 fallen ? " God commendeth his love toward us, in 
 that, while we were yet sinners., Christ died for us."
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 21 
 
 Some classes of criminals may be specified as par- 
 ticularly entitled to compassion. 
 
 Look at the case of the young. " When we are 
 considering the claims of such individuals upon our 
 pity," to use the language of the Bishop of St. 
 David's, preaching in behalf of the Philanthropic 
 Society, "we can only look upon them as our 
 fellow-creatures ; as partaking of our common 
 nature, with all its frailty and corruption, and with 
 all its dignity, its high destinies, and boundless 
 prospects ; but placed, by the inscrutable dispensa- 
 tions of Providence, in a situation widely different 
 from ours. And when we reflect on the disadvan- 
 tages to which they have been subjected, and on the 
 privileges which we have enjoyed, can we help ask- 
 ing ourselves, whether the vast difference between 
 our lot and theirs has been owing, either to their 
 fault or to our merit ? But, when the difference of 
 circumstances affects the interests, not merely of 
 time, but of eternity : when the health and safety 
 of the soul, and its final doom, the means of grace 
 and the hopes of glory are at stake, then, to be 
 distinguished by peculiar advantages, to abound 
 while others want, is indeed a high and precious 
 privilege : but it is, likewise, a most mysterious and 
 awful one, and, to a well-disposed mind, it would be 
 almost an insupportable burden, unless it were ac- 
 companied by the consciousness of an endeavour to 
 make a right use of it, and of a wish to communicate 
 it, as far as possible, to others." 
 
 So must every true Christian think, and be ready
 
 22 . CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 to say, with the holy apostle : " Who hath made us 
 to differ?" or, with the blessed martyr, when he 
 saw a criminal pass to execution, " Only for the 
 grace of God there goes John Bradford." Indeed, 
 the individual who is farthest from sympathy with 
 the crime, or, in other words, has imbibed most of 
 the spirit of Jesus, has generally the largest share of 
 pity for the criminal. He, who alone was without 
 sin, had of all that ever lived upon earth, most com- 
 passion for the sinner. 
 
 But, waiving such high considerations, there are 
 others which cannot fail to have weight with the 
 reflective and humane. All prisoners are not guilty. 
 Of the individuals committed to prison for trial, in 
 any year, there will be found about one in twenty, 
 or in the aggregate 4,000 or 5,000, against whom, 
 either no bills will be found by the grand jury, or 
 who will gain their acquittal at the bar. Now, a 
 large number of these are really innocent. Of the 
 condemned, even, some are subsequently proved to 
 be innocent, and are discharged by the Crown. This 
 is, it is true, a very rare occurrence ; but it happens 
 sufficiently often to justify a larger amount of 
 charity towards prisoners in the mass, than many 
 are willing to concede. 
 
 There is another class, which, although guilty, 
 and depraved, often in the highest degree, cannot be 
 viewed without emotions of deep concern. 
 
 I refer to the dupes and tools of primarily guilty 
 parties in concerted robberies, and, amongst female 
 prisoners, to the victims of wicked seducers, or
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 23 
 
 diabolical persons of their own sex,* who having 
 been beguiled, betrayed, or sold for money, have 
 after a little while been cast into the streets to perish, 
 and to spread around, in their moral death, a con- 
 tagion which affects the moral as well as the phy- 
 sical health of multitudes. Over these a Christian 
 may weep and not be ashamed, when he remembers 
 the example of his Lord. 
 
 It is a melancholy view of the subject, which a pri- 
 son chaplain, rehearsing proofs of the magnitude of 
 known crime, must give, when he declares that some 
 of the most heinous crimes, which are too the cause 
 of a long train of others, are little cognizable by 
 human law. Surely, there is a judgment to come, 
 in which " God shall render to every man according 
 to his works." 
 
 Then there are many in a prison who have fallen 
 into dishonest acts by a temptation the force of 
 which none but the very poor can really know : the 
 pangs of hunger in their own ill-fed bodies, or their 
 children's cry for bread when they had none to give. 
 There are the ignorant also, who had never the 
 opportunity of instruction; and the children of 
 drunken and unchaste parents, who, if not actually 
 trained to infamy, have been left to shift for them- 
 selves at the tenderest age, under circumstances 
 and in places wholly adverse to virtue or common 
 honesty, indeed, almost incompatible with either, 
 
 * There are not less probably tban 400 abominable miscreants 
 in London alone, of both sexes, apparently respectable, who get 
 their living by inveigling poor girls into a course of infamy.
 
 24 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 capable as I have said, at one time of being trained 
 for useful life, but, neglected when it was possible, 
 they have been made miserable outcasts, a pest, a 
 burden, and disgrace to the community, which can 
 hardly ever be got rid of. 
 
 One class more of prisoners may be named, over 
 whose degraded condition, pity may drop a tear, 
 the educated and well brought up. 
 
 Such was the writer of the following lines within 
 these walls : 
 
 " TO A WITHERED LEAF. 
 
 " ' Wither'd leaflet, wildly dancing 
 In the autumn's chilly breeze, 
 While the morning sunbeams, glancing, 
 
 Flicker through the sighing trees 
 Laurel leaflet, prithee say, 
 Whither speeding now away ?' 
 
 '" Care-worn mortal, wistful eyeing 
 
 As I hurry headlong by, 
 Soon thou'lt see me lowly lying, 
 
 Cast in some lone place to die ; 
 And the fate which falls to me 
 Will not linger long from thee. 
 
 " ' When the rays of summer morning 
 
 Fell on yonder laurel bough, 
 Bright I shone, the future scorning 
 
 So in heedless youth didst thou. 
 Falls that burning tear I see 
 For thyself, or is 't for me ? 
 
 " ' Balmy zephyrs, gently blowing, 
 
 Nourish'd me with silvery dew ; 
 O'er me thus, in beauty growing, 
 Quick the genial season flew :
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 25 
 
 So hath pass'd thy summer time, 
 When young life was in its prime. 
 
 " ' Wither'd now and tempest-driven, 
 
 See me fly before the gale : 
 Ne'er to me shall rest be given, 
 
 Till in yonder peaceful dale 
 I am trodden deep in earth, 
 Whence I had my primal birth. 1 
 
 " Thine my wretched fate resembles 
 
 Now beneath the chilling blast, 
 Lo ! my coward spirit trembles, 
 
 From its hopes for ever cast ! 
 Oh, to lie in death with thee, 
 By some aged moss-grown tree ! " 
 
 "These lines," he adds, " embody something deeper than a 
 passing sentiment. They were composed in the exercise-ground 
 of a prison, where, on a fine, clear July morning, the fresh breeze 
 blew a brown, withered laurel leaf over the head of one whose lot 
 in life might have been as happy as waywardness and guilt have 
 made it miserable." 
 
 What Christian can read that note and moral, 
 written by the prisoner's hand, and that last and 
 saddest sentiment, 
 
 " Oh, to lie in death with thee !" 
 
 so expressive of a state of mind without Christ, and 
 having no hope beyond the grave, and not feel a 
 desire to bring comfort, if possible, and salvation 
 to his heart ? Alas ! he knew the way to seek it, 
 but he sought it not. His mind was absorbed with 
 literary trifles, poetical fragments, and pagan fables 
 common sense seemed utterly to have left him, 
 and religion was wholly distasteful.
 
 26 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 The following lines by another Pentonville prisoner, 
 with less poetic merit, breathe a better spirit. 
 
 "THE PEISON BELL. 
 
 " 'Twas night and through my lonely cell 
 The pale moon's playful shadows fell ; 
 So bright I dreamt that all on earth 
 Was changed once more to smiles and mirth, 
 That tears were fled, that sighs were flown, 
 And so were all the griefs I'd known. 
 I woke, alas ! but through that cell 
 There echoed still the Prison Bell. 
 
 " The morning dawn'd the rising sun 
 His glorious course through heaven begun, 
 And honest toil, with hast'ning stride, 
 Went whistling by the prison side ; 
 While I in bonds, with heart downcast, 
 Deep grieving present and the past, 
 Lay half unconscious in my cell. 
 Till summoned by the Prison Bell. 
 
 " Day closed and when all days are past, 
 And I on death's dark waves am cast, 
 May there a pitying Saviour be 
 To set the captive prisoner free : 
 Then tears no more shall tinge my cheek, 
 Nor griefs my bleeding bosom break, 
 For I in endless joy shall dwell, 
 And hear no more the Prison Bell." 
 
 Often, doubtless, have the thoughts of the curious 
 and imaginative, the deep feeling of the benevolent, 
 and the pious aspirations of the Christian inhabit- 
 ants of this part of the metropolis, been awakened 
 by the sight of our prison. The gloomy aspect of 
 its massive porch perhaps attracted attention; the
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 27 
 
 cheerless monotony of its shrill matin and vesper 
 bell has struck painfully on the ear ; or its 500 
 solitary lamps have met the eye, extinguished suc- 
 cessively, as the clock strikes nine, by an unseen 
 hand emblem of happiness extinguished by the 
 just providence of God, and which His mercy alone 
 in Christ Jesus can light up again. But whilst the 
 thoughts of the free thus scaled the prison wall, and 
 passed from cell to cell in silent observation, perhaps 
 they little imagined that the captive's mind as free 
 as theirs, but pensive and mourning was roaming 
 without, mixed with the busy throng or noisy crowd, 
 longing to drink again the cup of pleasure, or wish- 
 ing to discharge neglected duties, and soothe hearts 
 broken by his misconduct. 
 
 There remain two points to which, before I close 
 this chapter, I would direct the reader's attention. 
 They are worthy of deepest thought and feeling. I 
 refer to the cup of sorrow which the innocent rela- 
 tives of the prisoners are doomed to drink, and the 
 terrible remorse and anguish which, when he comes 
 to himself, the prisoner is made to feel on their 
 account. It is a cruel mistake to suppose the con- 
 nexions of all criminals bad, it is often the very 
 reverse. One of our most painful duties, as Chris- 
 tian ministers in this place, is to endeavour to bind 
 up the broken hearts of such persons. Never truly 
 did I witness before such heart-rending scenes, nor 
 ever more devoted family attachments, than I have 
 seen since I became chaplain of a gaol. 
 
 It is a very sad reflection, that human punish-
 
 28 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 xnents fall so frequently with greater weight upon 
 the virtuous relative than the guilty criminal. In- 
 deed, the higher the degree of innocence, the more 
 sensitive is the feeling of the infamy attached, so 
 undeservedly, hut so commonly, to the family in 
 which a son, a husband, or a brother, has been con- 
 victed of crime. Oh ! that young people would 
 pause and consider what misery and ruin the first 
 act of rebellion against a father's command or 
 mother's counsel the first sabbath profaned the 
 first improper connexion formed, may bring upon 
 those who love them so tenderly, as well as upon 
 themselves. Little do they think, at the moment of 
 indulgence or waywardness, what remorse, on this 
 account, they are creating for themselves in after 
 life. 
 
 It often falls to our painful lot to communicate to 
 prisoners the death of relatives. Upon many of 
 these occasions the first burst of grief is very affect- 
 ing, and the expression at the moment often escapes 
 the lips : " I have been the cause ; I have broken 
 my poor mother's heart ; I have brought my father's 
 grey hairs with sorrow to the grave ! " In one year 
 I counted the number of those who said so to me, 
 and found that out of about 600 prisoners fifteen 
 had this intolerable burden upon their consciences, 
 in addition to all their sins. 
 
 The accompanying letter from a prisoner under 
 such circumstances will speak more to the heart 
 than any description of mine. To the intensity of 
 the writer's grief I can bear witness, and, through
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 29 
 
 the grace of God, to his subsequently hopeful and 
 consistent profession as a Christian. 
 
 He was a Highland soldier, sentenced to trans- 
 portation for striking, in a fit of drunkenness, a non- 
 commissioned officer : 
 
 " MY DEAR SISTER, 
 
 " I received your letter, and I need not say that I was grieved 
 to the heart. But what makes it lie heavier on my heart is my 
 undutiful conduct. If I had been a kind son, this stroke would 
 have been less severe. But I cannot describe to you the remorse 
 that is within me at the present moment. I am convinced that 
 my cruel and unfeeling conduct has hastened our dear mother's 
 death the mother that was so kind to me so affectionate to 
 one who had the hardness of heart to leave her when I should 
 have been a help and protection ; not only so, but to throw dis- 
 grace upon her unspotted name, by being the mother of a trans- 
 port. This has given me many a sore heart ; but I was living 
 in the expectation that I would wipe that stain off my character 
 by a new and dutiful life, if the Lord should spare me to regain 
 my liberty. But God has taken away her who it was my earnest 
 prayer should see the change. Oh ! if God had spared the life 
 of our mother till she was gratified with the sight of her 
 unworthy son, that she might have blessed him, and that he 
 should have acted the part of a son in carrying her to the grave ! 
 But His will, and not ours, be done. That this sacred duty 
 should be left to a stranger ! All her kindness rushes now on 
 my mind, and accuses me of being a heartless scoundrel. 
 
 "And you, my dear sister, have been afflicted in a double 
 manner : you have lost your promising boy. The Lord has 
 been pleased to afflict us severely for our sins. Let us fly to 
 Him, that He would remove His hand from us, and we, acknow- 
 ledging his visitation, for the future live only to His service. 
 And let us pray for one another, and console ourselves in the 
 hope that our dear mother and the dear boy are enjoying one 
 another's society in heaven ; and that we strive to enter into the 
 same place, never to part more, where there will be no grief to 
 wring our hearts. 
 
 " My dear sister, God, who sees our hearts, only knows how I
 
 30 CLAIMS OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 feel for your situation. I am of no use to you, instead of being 
 your protector, and the conductor of our blessed mother's 
 remains to the grave. Few are the tears I have shed. It seems 
 to me as if my heart would burst, but no tears. Not even our 
 brother-in-law can follow our mother's remains to the grave. 
 But although the hand of a stranger shall lower her body into 
 the pit, let us hope that the husband of her youth, and the 
 children gone before, shall welcome her spirit to heaven, through 
 the sake of that Saviour in whom she trusted. 
 
 " A. M. P." 
 
 On looking over the copy-books, distributed to 
 prisoners from time to time, I subsequently found 
 in this young man's the following prayers, written 
 before his mother's death : 
 
 " Lord God, my heavenly Father, I here prostrate myself 
 before Thee to beg Thy blessing, grace, and mercy upon my 
 earthly parent. Cast her not away in the time of her old age, 
 forsake her not when her strength fails, but have compassion, 
 Lord, on her infirmities, and help her in all her weakness ! O 
 that the true wisdom may be in her, and abundant grace upon 
 her, that her hoary head may be found in the way of righteous- 
 ness, and her soul be ever precious in Thy sight. Let goodness 
 and mercy follow her all the days of her life. Let her last days 
 be her best days ; and the longer she lives in this world, make her 
 the fitter to die, and to dwell with Thy blessed self in life ever- 
 lasting. be Thou her guide until death, and in death her 
 support and comfort; and when heart and flesh, and all here 
 shall fail her, do Thou never fail her, but be the strength of 
 her heart, and her portion for evermore. Amen." 
 
 " Lord, my God, infinitely kind and good, I have, through 
 Thy gracious indulgence, long enjoyed my freedom in the world. 
 But now that I am under restraint and confined to this place, O 
 how much sore affliction ought I with patience to endure, for 
 turning my liberty into licentiousness, and for wandering (as I 
 have done) from Thee, and wearying myself in the ways of 
 wickedness ! This confinement I acknowledge to be but a light 
 correction indeed to one who deserves to be shut up in the
 
 UPON PUBLIC CONSIDERATION. 31 
 
 eternal prison, from whence there is no redemption. But for 
 Thy dear Son, my blessed Saviour's sake, I beg, Lord, that this 
 restraint may be not in judgment, but in mercy to me; that it 
 may bring me to timely consideration, and to a deep repentance 
 for all those sinful liberties which I have taken. Let it remove 
 me out of the way of temptations, and engage me more closely 
 and dutifully to attend upon Thee, that in Thy service I may 
 find a better freedom than that which I have lost. Let me 
 obtain, by means of it, a freer access into Thy presence, and 
 power to tread down the enemies of my soul whensoever they 
 rise up against me. O that now I am sequestered from the 
 world, I may also be crucified unto it, and may leave it in affec- 
 tion, as I am shut out from its conversation. Let me in heart 
 and mind ascend and dwell above, and have my conversation in 
 heaven, and enjoy such fellowship with Thee, my God and 
 Saviour, as shall be infinitely preferable to all the society and 
 enjoyments of the world. If the Son of God shall make me free, 
 I shall be free indeed. O pity me, tied as I am and ' bound with 
 the chain of my sins.' Bring my soul out of prison, that I may 
 give thanks unto Thy name. ' Set my feet in a large room, that 
 I may be at liberty to run the way of Thy commandments.' 
 Then, however confined as to my body, even though I were to 
 lie in a gaol or a dungeon, I should be ' a prisoner of hope, look- 
 ing for that blessed hope to be delivered from the bondage of 
 corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.' I 
 ask this, for the sake of Him who was apprehended, and con- 
 fined, and put to death for us, and now liveth and reigneth with 
 Thy eternal self and Holy Spirit over all, God blessed for ever- 
 more. Amen." 
 
 Thus 
 
 " Short is the course of every lawless pleasure ; 
 Grief, like a shade, on all its footsteps waits, 
 Scarce visible in joy's meridian height ; 
 But downward as its blaze declining speeds, 
 The dwarfish shadow to a giant spreads." 
 
 MILTON.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES OF CRIME IN 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus." 
 
 MACAULAY, in his brilliant pages, gives the follow- 
 ing account of the social state of England in bygone 
 times : 
 
 " In the reign of Charles II., the traces left by 
 ages of slaughter and pillage were still distinctly 
 perceptible, many miles south of the Tweed, in the 
 face of the country, and in the lawless manners of 
 the people. There was still a large class of moss- 
 troopers, whose calling was to plunder dwellings, 
 and to drive away whole herds of cattle. It was 
 found necessary, soon after the Restoration, to 
 enact laws of great severity, for the prevention of 
 these outrages. The magistrates of Northumber- 
 land and Cumberland were authorised to raise 
 bands of armed men, for the defence of property 
 and order ; and provision was made for meeting the 
 expense of these levies by local taxation. The 
 parishes were required to keep bloodhounds, for the 
 purpose of hunting the freebooters. Many old 
 men, who were living in the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century, could well remember the time when
 
 CHARACTER OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 33 
 
 those ferocious dogs were common. Yet, even with 
 such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible to 
 track the robbers to their retreats, among the hills 
 and morasses ; for the geography of that wild 
 country was very imperfectly known. Even after 
 the accession of George III., the path over the 
 fells, from Borrowdale to Ravenglass, was still a 
 secret carefully kept by the Dalesmen, some of 
 whom had probably in their youth escaped from the 
 pursuit of justice by that road. The seats of the 
 gentry and the large farm-houses were fortified. 
 Oxen were penned at night beneath the overhanging 
 battlements of the residence, which was known by 
 the name of the Peel. The inmates slept with arms 
 at their sides ; huge stones and boiling water were 
 in readiness to crush and scald the plunderer who 
 might venture to assail the little garrison. No 
 traveller ventured into that country without making 
 his will. The judges on circuit, with the whole 
 body of barristers, attorneys, clerks, and serving 
 men, rode on horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, 
 armed and escorted by a strong guard, under the 
 command of the sheriffs It was necessary to carry 
 provisions ; for the country was a wilderness, which 
 afforded no supplies. The spot where the cavalcade 
 halted to dine, under an immense oak, is not yet 
 forgotten. The irregular vigour with which cri- 
 minal justice was administered, shocked observers 
 whose life had been passed in more tranquil dis- 
 tricts. Juries, animated by hatred, and a sense of 
 common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle 
 
 D
 
 34 THE CHARACTER 
 
 stealers with the promptitude of a court-martial in 
 a mutiny, and the convicts were hurried by scores 
 to the gallows. Within the memory of some who 
 are still living, the sportsman who wandered in pur- 
 suit of game to the sources of the Tyne, found the 
 heaths, round Keeldar Castle, peopled by a race 
 scarcely less savage than the Indians of California ; 
 and heard with surprise, the half-naked women 
 chanting a wild measure, while the men, with brand- 
 ished dirks, danced a war-dance." 
 
 This retrospect is consolatory to one viewing the 
 evils of the present times. England, after all, is not 
 retrograde. 
 
 The following account from the Athenceum of the 
 
 O 
 
 daring conduct of Italian brigands, not long since, 
 shows that this cannot be affirmed of other parts of 
 Europe : 
 
 " About eight o'clock in the evening, the greater 
 part of the inhabitants of the town of Eorlini-Popoli 
 a place of about 4,000 inhabitants, and within 
 less than three miles of the considerable city of 
 Eorli, to which in some measure it forms a suburb 
 were assembled in the theatre to witness the per- 
 formance of ' The Death of Caesar.' The first act of 
 the play was over, and the curtain had fallen, when 
 it was again suddenly raised, and discovered to the 
 audience not the artistes of the theatre, but a picked 
 company of brigands of the band of Pessatore ! 
 These ruffians were plentifully supplied with carbines 
 and pistols, and were not slow in reducing the audi- 
 ence to inactivity, by threatening to fire on the first
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 35 
 
 person who attempted any resistance. In a few 
 moments all the avenues to the theatre were seized 
 by another and more numerous detachment of the 
 gang, and every person in the building was placed 
 entirely at the mercy of the invaders. When the 
 agitation had a little subsided, and the captain of 
 the band had still further completed his command 
 over the town, he politely advanced to the front of 
 the stage, and said, ' Ladies and gentlemen, you will 
 perfectly understand, by this time, that we are 
 your masters. Behold, here are the keys of your 
 city ' (producing the keys) ; ' any resistance on your 
 part can only compel us to go to extremities, which, 
 if you please, you may avert. Understand, then, 
 what you have to do. I shall proceed to pronounce 
 the names of several among you ; and on the in- 
 stant that I pronounce the names of any of this 
 audience, I expect that particular person to step at 
 once out of his seat, and hasten to his house with 
 one of my friends, who will assist him to convey 
 here all the money he has in his possession, without 
 leaving behind a single papetto.' The orator drew 
 from his girdle a list, and at once commenced the 
 proscription. The first person summoned was the 
 Gonfalonier, or chief officer of the town ; and as 
 six of the twelve dragoons of the Papal force, who 
 formed the garrison of Forlini-Popoli, had been 
 already secured in the theatre, and the other six 
 locked up in their own guard-house, the Gonfalonier 
 and his fellow-citizens found themselves compelled 
 to submit to the brigand's terms. The process of 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE CHARACTER 
 
 individual assessment by means of these domiciliary 
 visits was of course rather tedious ; and by way of 
 engaging the attention of the rest of the audience 
 during the interval, the most expert of the band 
 undertook a tour through the different parts of the 
 theatre, collecting into a capacious pouch, the 
 chains, ear-rings, purses, loose cash, ornaments, and 
 choice articles of dress of the less aristocratic part 
 of the spectators. By midnight the spoliation of 
 the town of Forlini-Popoli, its theatre, its inhabit- 
 ants, its garrison, and its Gonfalonier, was com- 
 plete ; and Pessatore led off his freebooters in 
 perfect safety, carrying with him a sum of about 
 1200 in money, and about 2000 in jewels and 
 ornaments. On the following day, of course, a 
 strong detachment of Austrian and Papal troops, 
 from the regiments stationed at Porli, were sent off 
 in hot pursuit of the robbers ; but long before these 
 lumbering myrmidons of justice could be put in 
 motion, Pessatore could have dispersed his men 
 among the fastnesses of the Apennines, or perhaps 
 led them far across the Tuscan frontier. Surely 
 these are facts which exhibit in the plainest manner 
 the imbecile and miserable condition of the govern- 
 ments which profess to rule the Italian provinces. 
 In this country there has been nothing like the sack 
 of Porlini-Popoli by the banditti of Pessatore since 
 the time of the Border "Wars ; and it is very 
 probable that, if we put down the material and po- 
 litical civilization of South Italy at about three 
 imndred years behind that of these islands, we
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 37 
 
 shall not be very wide of the truth. We must also 
 endeavour to form some idea of the abject condition 
 of a population where it is better worth the while of 
 its more intelligent and active men to become ban- 
 ditti than to become industrious citizens." 
 
 " One of the brigands," writes the Roman corre- 
 spondent of the Daily News, concerning another 
 transaction, " who recently extorted 6,000 scudi for 
 the ransom of an inhabitant of Terracina, has been 
 captured. The system adopted by these scoundrels, 
 on gaming possession of a wealthy victim, is to cast 
 lots amongst themselves who shall undertake the 
 perilous message of venturing into the town to 
 inform the prisoner's relations of the sum required 
 for his release. The messenger presents himself 
 with the unwelcome tidings, adding, that if he is in 
 any way denounced, or prevented from returning to 
 his expectant comrades by a certain hour the 
 prisoner will be murdered. Anxiety for the hostage 
 usually insures the safety of the brigand, who 
 returns to the mountains with a messenger from the 
 family, bearing the required sum of money. If the 
 first brigand sentry perceives more than one indi- 
 vidual accompanying his comrade, or that one 
 armed, or discovers any appearance of gendarmes, 
 he fires his musket as a signal of alarm to the band, 
 who immediately stab their victim, shout tradi- 
 mento, and make off to a more distant lair. If, on 
 the other hand, the appearance of the messenger 
 and money-bag is en regie, the intelligence is con- 
 veyed from sentry to sentry, the hostage brought
 
 38 THE CHARACTER 
 
 down and consigned to the messenger, who pays his 
 money and departs homewards with as calm a step 
 as he and his released friend can muster on the 
 occasion." 
 
 The aspect of crime, however, in England and in 
 our times, is sufficiently serious to merit the most 
 thoughtful investigation of its probable causes, and 
 to demand from every one, in the writer's position, 
 the best help he can afford, towards the satisfactory 
 solution of its difficulties. 
 
 Under a sense, then, of grave responsibility, I pro- 
 ceed to the consideration of the subject, supplying to 
 the reader, in the first place, a series of facts con- 
 cerning criminals, who were for a long time under 
 my own care, which seem to me calculated to 
 remove some generally received incorrect ideas on 
 the subject. 
 
 The labours of the statistician, I am well aware, 
 have little of the character of mathematical cer- 
 tainty criminal statistics, least of all. The parties 
 examined have, or imagine they have, an interest 
 in falling in with the opinions of their superiors. 
 They have, in too many cases, the ability, moreover, 
 and the wish, to deceive. At all events, persons so 
 placed, naturally throw undue blame on circum- 
 stances, and especially on such as are thought to 
 extenuate crime as ignorance, drunkenness, and 
 the like. 
 
 I have no wish that my observations should be 
 considered above all necessity for caution. Let them 
 be compared with the statements of others, having
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 39 
 
 like opportunities. All I can say is, that they are 
 the result of long, patient, and impartial research, 
 on a subject important as it is difficult. 
 
 First, on education : 
 
 Of the first 1,000 convicts, as they stand on the 
 registry of this prison, in order (and the history of 
 subequent thousands is not materially different), 
 845 had attended some sort of school, as children, 
 for periods averaging about four years. Of these, 
 347 had received education in schools kept by 
 private persons, 221 in national schools, 20 in 
 grammar-schools, 92 in Sabbath-schools, and 160 in 
 other kinds. The attainments of these men were 
 not equal to their opportunities. More than half 
 could not read with understanding, or write their 
 own letters ; and 758 had no knowledge of any rule 
 in arithmetic beyond addition. The disproportion 
 between the periods of instruction, which these per- 
 sons had enjoyed in early life, and their state of pro- 
 gress when examined in prison, is to be accounted 
 for, probably, by the indifferent character of the 
 education itself, their own more than ordinary way- 
 wardness, and the labouring condition of life of by 
 far the greater part. 
 
 The convicts who could read with intelligence 
 were readers only of the light and trifling productions 
 of the day. Their minds were, therefore, like an 
 un weeded garden, in which the useless predominated. 
 The less educated had not tried, when at liberty, to 
 improve themselves in education. There was no thirst 
 for wholesome knowledge.
 
 40 THE CHARACTER 
 
 It is most deplorable to observe, that as many as 
 15 in the 1,000 were men of liberal education. Three 
 of these were schoolmasters, possessed of more than 
 ordinary talents and acquirements ; one had stolen 
 books, the others were condemned for forgery. The 
 cause of the ruin of these individuals was plainly 
 
 marked frequenting taverns, and other places of 
 
 resort, where their abilities enabled them to take 
 the lead. This drew two of them into habits of 
 intemperance, and the third, a man of extensive 
 reading and some genius, to gambling. 
 
 The knowledge of revealed religion, in all classes, 
 was less than of secular subjects. Children of nine 
 or ten years of age, in a well-ordered Christian 
 family, know as much as the very best informed in 
 this respect, with very few exceptions. These ex- 
 ceptions were found where some degree of piety had 
 marked the father or mother. Of children, trained 
 at all aright, the number is small indeed, which we 
 have had the pain of seeing here in the character of 
 the felon and the outcast ; but in such melancholy 
 cases that is, where there seem to have been any 
 pains bestowed, even by one parent, to train up the 
 child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, 
 there is in general more than ordinary ground for 
 hope. There exists a chord in the hearts of such 
 still, even when apparently most callous, which can 
 be touched. The last thing forgotten, in all the 
 recklessness of dissolute profligacy, is the prayer or 
 hymn taught by a mother's lips, or uttered at a 
 father's knee ; and the most poignant sting of con-
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 41 
 
 science, in solitude and adversity, is that which the 
 recollection of filial disobedience and ingratitude 
 inflicts. 
 
 Dividing the prisoners into classes, according to 
 previous education, I ascertained that two-thirds of 
 the crimes of those described upon reception as well- 
 educated, were forgery and embezzlement ; also, that 
 the total amount of property, taken by 1,000 pri- 
 soners, being, according to its estimated value on 
 trial, upwards of 20,000 the average proportion 
 to be set to the account of each man, in the well- 
 educated class, was above 50, but in the most 
 ignorant class, below 5. Further, only ten per 
 cent, of the well-educated seem to have fallen 
 through strong drink, but they were almost all 
 frequenters of evening entertainments, licentious 
 and extravagant. Some were plainly ruined by 
 gambling. The same love of excitement, and of un- 
 lawful or dangerous pleasures, marks all the classes, 
 varying, according to grade in life, and descending 
 from the tavern or saloon to the beer-house or 
 gin-shop. As we descend in the scale of education, 
 the proportion increases of those who fell from strong 
 drink. In the lowest class, full 50 per cent, fell 
 from habits of drinking in public houses. In crimes 
 of violence, a larger proportion exists ; and the 
 military offences which have come under our notice, 
 have been, in almost all cases, the result of strong 
 drink. Drunken habits, however, the source of such 
 multiform misery, disqualify, like gross ignorance, 
 for success in thieving.
 
 42 THE CHARACTER 
 
 Here arises a most important question. Had 
 these convicts fewer opportunities, or even smaller 
 attainments, than the classes of the population in 
 general from which they came? Probably, not 
 at all. What, then ! is education of no value as a 
 preventive of crime ? Education, as it is generally 
 communicated, is worth nothing for any purpose, 
 good or evil. The scanty and imperfect knowledge 
 acquired in school is soon lost in the hard daily 
 labour or service to which the poorer classes are so 
 early consigned. Education, intellectually what it 
 ought to be, is, to persons of good natural sense, or 
 who are surrounded by circumstances favourable to 
 virtue, of great value in a temporal point of view ; 
 and, if they are really Christian, it increases greatly 
 their usefulness. It advances the possessor in the 
 social scale, and supplies sources of enjoyment 
 superior to the indulgence of the more sordid or 
 sensual appetites. To those who are without good 
 common sense, or real religious principle, it is a 
 dubious benefit. It removes some of the grosser 
 temptations; it suggests others, which often lead 
 to worse results. New desires are created ; wants 
 are multiplied beyond means; steady, plodding 
 labour is despised ; the dress is altered, and the 
 outward appearance perhaps improved ; the inner 
 man is unchanged. Education, without motive and 
 sound Christian principles, is as the moving power 
 to machinery which has no regulator, or as wide- 
 spread sails to a ship which has neither chart nor 
 compass to steer by. Mere education changes the
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 43 
 
 character of crime. It gives increased power to the 
 dishonest for planning schemes of robbery, and then 
 of concealment and escape from justice. Education, 
 based on a Divine foundation, and carried out in its 
 fair proportions by Christian instructors, is of inesti- 
 mable value. 
 
 If asked to state the comparative value which 
 experience has led me to place upon the different 
 sorts of education, in their bearings upon religious 
 or merely social obligations, I should place first of 
 all that education which has received its first im- 
 pulse from a pious mother's lips, and is carried on 
 under a godly father, who inculcates, by his own 
 example and by cheerful discourse in the family, 
 lessons of wisdom and truth, until the impression is 
 made upon his children, that independent, hard- 
 working honesty is infinitely better than riches 
 without right, or advancement in life without fitness, 
 and who honours God by a stated religious service 
 in his family daily, and by the solemn, but happy, 
 observance of the Sabbath. Next would be the 
 instruction given in the really Christian Sunday- 
 school ; and so on, downwards, from that which is 
 religious in the highest sense, and only secondarily 
 educational, to that which is highly intellectual, 
 but godless. 
 
 Indeed, I must acknowledge, confining my view 
 still to the unhappy class with which I have had to 
 do, that where the desires were enlarged by an 
 increased grasp of mind consequent upon cultiva- 
 tion, but not satisfied with that which alone meets
 
 44 THE CHARACTER 
 
 the wants of the soul, the individual only became 
 more expert in wickedness, more mischievous, and 
 more miserable. This experience of a Gaol-Chap- 
 lain manifestly agrees with every intelligent per- 
 son's in ordinary life ; for few persons, whatever may 
 be their own religious character, selecting a servant 
 or agent to whom much was to be intrusted, would 
 hesitate to choose for the purpose the member of a 
 simple godly family, in preference to the better 
 educated, and more clever person, known to have 
 been reared by those who feared not God, an in- 
 voluntary homage, truly, of the world's experience 
 to Divine truth I 
 
 Next let us look at the means of Heine/ which 
 these criminals had. Of the 1,000 convicts, 67 had 
 been employed in office of trust, 71 as in-door and 
 out-door servants, 388 were tradesmen and me- 
 chanics, 50 weavers and factory-labourers, 100 farm- 
 labourers, 25 colliers, 15 boatmen, 10 common 
 sailors, 18 in the army and navy, and 256 general 
 labourers and hawkers. Their average earnings 
 (until character was lost) amounted, in the well- 
 educated, to upwards of 40s. weekly; in the next 
 highest school class to about 25s. ; in the next to 
 15s. ; and in the lowest to 12s. I expected to find 
 scarcely any who had saved money from their earn- 
 ings ; but as many as thirty-nine had put by money 
 from their wages beyond common annual savings 
 for clothes. This money was lost, in general, sub- 
 sequently by gambling, speculation, business, or 
 sudden fits of extravagance, which broke through
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 45 
 
 all bounds. These facts point rather to the mode of 
 spending earnings, than their inadequacy or want of 
 employment, as a cause of crime. Natural poverty 
 is no doubt a cause of crime, but poverty which is 
 the result of a bad course of life, of very much more. 
 It is distressing to see, in these returns, so many 
 as sixty-seven persons, previously engaged in places 
 of trust, and seventy-one domestic servants, all 
 young men who began life a few years back with 
 excellent prospects, according to their station. 
 Exposed, alas ! to all the seductive snares of our 
 great towns, betting-houses, theatres, concerts, 
 dancing, billiard-rooms, &c., in most cases without 
 sufficient warning as to what was before them, or 
 one wise and friendly hand at first to steady and 
 direct their course, without home, without religion, 
 they miserably fell, involving others as well as 
 themselves in ruin and disgrace. Eew masters 
 care, as they ought to do, for the young people 
 whom Providence has placed under their direction 
 and control. Many, alas ! instead of guarding and 
 helping their servants against temptations, put 
 them in their way ; and instances are, alas ! too 
 frequent, of employers directly teaching and requir- 
 ing their shopmen and shopwomen to be dishonest, 
 to defraud the public, and otherwise corrupting 
 their morals to such a degree, that to retain their 
 situation, and at the same time their integrity and 
 virtue, is perfectly impossible. 
 
 It would be well if all, who, being placed at the 
 head of a family or business establishment, have a
 
 46 THE CHARACTER 
 
 conscience in this matter, would examine them- 
 selves as suggested by the good Bishop in the 
 sermon already referred to. 
 
 "Has all the influence which you derive from 
 your station in society been uniformly exerted to 
 promote piety and virtue? Has the tendency of 
 your example, and of your conversation, been 
 always wholesome and edifying to those who have 
 been looking up to you for countenance and au- 
 thority, for instruction or advice ? Or, rather, 
 ought I not to put the question in a different form ? 
 Are you sure that you have not contributed, if not 
 by positive and flagrant breaches of morality, at 
 least by your carelessness and indifference, by your 
 levity and neglect, by some of those idle words of 
 which we shall have to give account in the day of 
 judgment, through some of those innumerable 
 channels by which evil communications corrupt 
 good manners ; are you sure, I say, that you have 
 not contributed, directly or indirectly, more or less, 
 to increase the amount of that licentiousness, guilt, 
 and misery, against which it is the object of this 
 Institution (the Philanthropic) to provide a remedy? 
 I fear there are few amongst us, who, if we would 
 seriously examine ourselves, and review our past 
 lives, as in the Divine presence, would not find 
 that they have something of this kind to answer 
 for." 
 
 Oh, that heads of houses did but consider what 
 terrible destruction to the virtue and happiness of 
 the most promising young persons in situations of
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 47 
 
 trust or service, even carelessness and want of 
 proper discipline on the part of masters, have 
 produced upon many to my knowledge ! I could 
 recite many a painful tale of the kind, from my 
 own experience, and shall have to refer to not a few 
 in a subsequent chapter. I prefer here to give an 
 illustration from another source, of a most touching 
 and instructive character, in the hope of directing 
 the reader to a work, which every master and every 
 mistress especially, should read, " The Prisoners of 
 Australia " (Hatchard). 
 
 " Another instance," writes the pious authoress, 
 " is that of a woman, now also a convict at Sydney, 
 sentenced to transportation for life upon the charge 
 of robbing, to a considerable extent, the lady with 
 whom she had lived for many years, in the high 
 and respectable capacity of lady's-maid. Her 
 history, too, is replete with the lamentable results 
 arising from an irreligious mistress ; but we will 
 not detail more than a brief outline of her story. 
 She was most respectably connected, entered service 
 in her nineteenth year, and became exceedingly 
 attached to her mistress, who deemed her worthy of 
 unbounded confidence. But she totally neglected all 
 her religious duties, was persuaded to believe it no 
 harm to work on Sundays, which her mistress fre- 
 quently required her to do; she rarely went to 
 church ; she never prayed ; nor did she even read 
 her Bible. On returning to England, after an 
 absence of some months on the Continent, whither 
 she had accompanied her mistress, she passed a
 
 48 THE CHARACTER 
 
 short time with a sister who lived as upper servant 
 in a pious family; and who, grieving to see the 
 total indifference of poor Maria to all that concerned 
 a future state, ventured seriously to expostulate with 
 her upon the sin of remaining longer in a family 
 whose ungodly habits had so fatally influenced her 
 own mind ; earnestly reminding her, that no bless- 
 ing could rest upon such an engagement, however 
 lucrative it might be. But it was all in vain. She 
 was happy and prosperous in a worldly sense, and, 
 scorning the affectionate, and, as she thought, the 
 'puritanical' counsel of her sister, she returned 
 to where she feared neither God nor man, in her 
 thoughtless course of impiety. Soon did that sister, 
 whose warning she despised, see her again but it 
 was in a prison I She wept over her, prayed for 
 her, and, without a reproach, now patiently en- 
 deavoured to urge her to ' repent and believe ; ' 
 and it was then, as she told me herself, that she 
 would have given all she possessed, could she 
 have begun life again as the poorest and meanest 
 of creatures, to be the humble, honest, happy 
 Christian, which she was whose religion she had so 
 often ridiculed and denied. Vain was now alike the 
 wish and "the regret ! Allured by a bad man to 
 commit a deed of the most aggravated dishonesty, 
 and that, too, against a mistress who, with all her 
 faults, had loved and trusted her she was about 
 to suffer for life the just but dreadful sentence of 
 perpetual exile. Yet, it is a striking fact, that, 
 softened and self-condemned as she was, in many
 
 OF CHIME IN ENGLAND. 49 
 
 respects, she expressed a bitterness of remembrance 
 towards her mistress, tracing all her own wicked- 
 ness to the ungodliness in which, under her guard- 
 ianship and example, she had been trained both 
 painful to hear, and unprincipled in her to admit, 
 against one who had been, to her at least, a kinc^ 
 and generous benefactress. True, it manifested the 
 worst so ; l of human nature, untouched by Divine 
 grace ; but would it have thus sprung up in weeds 
 of such deadly and unhallowed passion, had it been 
 cultured, watered, and planted with seeds of hea- 
 venly instruction, by the hand of a Christian guard- 
 ian ? No ; bad and ungrateful as the reproach 
 was, uttered under such circumstances, what was it 
 but the reaction of principles; evil falling back 
 upon evil ; ' the grain reproduced, but with thorns 
 around the ear ? ' for, ' Whatsoever a man soweth, 
 that also shall he reap.' ): 
 
 To recur to the table of occupations of the 1000 
 prisoners : one is astonished at finding in that 
 return so small a proportion of the most ignorant 
 and neglected part of the whole community factory 
 labourers, colliers, and boatmen. There is no cause 
 for rejoicing, however, in any superior morality in 
 these classes. An acquaintance with them in their 
 own districts, as well as in prison, enables me to 
 speak with greater confidence on this point; the 
 causes of the small proportion of criminals in those 
 classes being, rather that their wants are few ; that 
 they are accustomed from their childhood to the 
 hardest toil, and that, worn out by overwork, they 
 
 E
 
 50 THE CHARACTER 
 
 have little energy left for good or evil. Such a 
 condition is far from satisfactory. It is due to 
 society, to humanity, and to religion, to elevate 
 such classes, by proper intellectual cultivation, to 
 their proper station in a Christian land; and I 
 am fully persuaded, that thereby gross moral turpi- 
 tude would he greatly diminished, although, at 
 the same time, prepared to expect, from an en- 
 largement of their desires by education, and their 
 acquired notions of refinement, an increased craving 
 for money : and, from their increased power to do 
 evil, as well as good, an increase of crime as well as 
 an increase of virtue. 
 
 Let the domestic condition of the same convicts, 
 antecedent to legal criminality, now be viewed. 
 The proportion of the married to the single 
 amongst these convicts (whose age is from about 
 twenty to forty years), is the very reverse of that 
 which exists in a sound state of society. Three- 
 fourths were without the means appointed by God 
 for the security of man against a sin which most 
 prominently marks criminals, and which is so 
 conspicuously disastrous in its consequences to 
 youth, not in the matter of crime only, but of social 
 degradation, and bodily and mental disorder also. 
 In considering the causes of legal crime in those 
 convicts, we have, in fact, been only viewing so 
 many profligate persons, who, not having the fear 
 of God before their eyes, and driven by their 
 dissolute habits to the urgent want of money, were 
 led to commit acts of dishonesty to right them-
 
 OP CRIME IN ENGLAND. 51 
 
 selves, and again go on in their licentiousness. 
 With regard to the married convicts, the greater 
 part had no excuse for the wicked course they pur- 
 sued, in the character of their homes. Beginning 
 with drinking, and the neglect of their families 
 and place of worship, for the excitement of the 
 ale-house, or other improper place of resort, they 
 went on to form associations with abandoned 
 women and men, and consummated their career 
 by crimes from which they would, at first, have 
 shrunk with horror. Many of the number, never- 
 theless, had no home such as it ought to be, and 
 such as it would be if more attention were paid 
 to the thorough training of young women for 
 domestic life. When home is not a rest to a 
 labouring man ; or when, what is worse, dissatis- 
 faction, suspicion, and jealousy enter his mind, from 
 the conduct of his partner, the public-house is 
 looked to for relief, and ruin comes upon all. The 
 want of a home stands prominent in the history of 
 my whole people. The greater part were without 
 its blessed influences ; a good number through their 
 own sad wilfulness and a desire to be free ; some 
 from unhappy circumstances, as the death, or 
 profligacy of parents, or the second marriages of a 
 father or mother; a great many, from ambition 
 or covetousness, desiring to better their condition, 
 when they were favourably situated, as regards 
 virtue; but not a few, also, from the impulse of 
 those necessary laws of society which enjoin upon 
 every one grown up, independent labour, al- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE CHARACTER 
 
 though it may, unhappily, be far from home and 
 kindred. 
 
 The total absence of religion in these men pre- 
 viously is even a more prominent feature of their 
 condition than the want of home associations. That 
 one expression in our ancient form of law, " Not 
 having the fear of God before their eyes," describes 
 their previous state in this respect. In the greater 
 number of instances, this fear had never been im- 
 planted ; and in the rest, by indulgence in sin, it 
 had almost disappeared. The following case may 
 serve for an illustration : A prisoner states, that, 
 going into a part of the premises on which he was 
 employed in farm-service, he saw the carter's box 
 accidentally left open, and in this a smaller one, 
 which he had reason to think contained the proceeds 
 of a sale of farm produce, just effected. He opened 
 the box, and counted the gold, but, terrified with 
 thoughts of the consequences, put it back and went 
 away ; but the thirst for the gold followed him, and 
 he returned and took it. He told me that at the 
 time not one thought of God passed his mind : "if 
 it had, he could not have done the deed ; for, as it 
 was, he had a struggle." It was his first offence 
 against the laws of his country. 
 
 In the 1000 there was less infidelity than I was 
 led to expect. Where it did exist, it appeared rather 
 as the consequence of a reckless and abandoned life, 
 than as the cause. The mass, however, were prac- 
 tically atheistic " without Christ, having no hope, 
 and without God in the world." About one-fourth
 
 OF CRIME IX EXGLAND. 53 
 
 of the prisoners were stated to have regularly 
 attended, at one time of their lives, some place of 
 worship ; but not more than 1 in a 100 a short time 
 previous to crime. 
 
 Another mark of irreligion in these young men 
 was their neglect of parental counsel, their dis- 
 obedience to authority. No one sentence so often 
 strikes the eye in reading prisoners' letters to 
 parents as this : " Had I taken your advice, I never 
 would have been here." No sin is more universally 
 brought to remembrance amongst criminals than 
 filial disobedience, nor is any remorse more poignant. 
 I have seen the stoutest men subdued, and the 
 almost reprobate crying like children, at the recol- 
 lection of despised instruction or warning from a 
 mother's or father's lips. Sabbath-breaking, filial 
 disobedience, licentiousness, and an inordinate 
 desire for money, not in the way of accumulation, 
 but to have to spend upon what is described in Holy 
 Writ as " the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, 
 and the pride of life," were in a greater or less de- 
 gree the prevailing characteristics of these criminals, 
 and I believe of all. " The usual process," said the 
 late Chaplain of Clerkenwell, speaking of the descent 
 into crime of 100,000 prisoners, " has been impa- 
 tience of parental restraint, violation of the Sabbath, 
 and the neglect of religious ordinances. I do not 
 recollect a single case of capital offence where the 
 party has not been a Sabbath-breaker. Indeed, I 
 may say, in reference to prisoners of all classes, that 
 in nineteen cases out of twenty, they are persons
 
 54 THE CHARACTER 
 
 who have not only neglected the Sabbath, but all 
 religious ordinances." They had cast off the fear of 
 the Lord, and lived in open violation of those insti- 
 tutions and of that authority which the Creator has 
 placed at the foundation of all social well-being and 
 religion. It is no wonder, then, they were unable 
 to resist temptation in one particular species of 
 transgression, when opportunity and their imperious 
 necessities urged them to its commission. 
 
 Thus far concerning the character and causes of 
 crime in those 1000 convicts. I now proceed to 
 give the results of more extended observation since 
 the above facts were collected. 
 
 To make my statements more specific and intelli- 
 gible, it will be best, perhaps, to view in classes the 
 criminals of England and Wales. 
 
 1. We begin with those of the worst kind : viz. 
 persons convicted of murder.* 
 
 The number of these is so small (less than one in 
 a million of the population), that little need be said 
 as to the causes of the crime itself, with reference to 
 any remedy. The crime of murder in Great Britain 
 forms a minute though terrible exception to the 
 
 * The average commitments for murder in England and 
 Wales is the same for the last ten years as in the ten preceding, 
 viz. sixty-seven ; the average convictions also nearly the same, 
 being under twenty annually. The greater publicity given of 
 late to the crimes of enormously guilty persons, and the uncom. 
 mon prolongation of preliminary proceedings before coroners and 
 magistrates, as well as subsequently of the trial itself, bv the in- 
 genious ability of advocates, have left the erroneous impression 
 on the public mind that this crime is on the increase.
 
 OF CHIME IN ENGLAND. 55 
 
 general character of the whole country. It is an 
 isolated act. It excites the horror of the people, 
 even in the lowest grades of society. It proceeds 
 neither from popular ignorance nor from popular 
 education. If the ignorance of some murderers be 
 profound, the acute perception, great mental vigour, 
 and good attainments of others, are no less remark- 
 able. The worst species of this awful crime seem 
 to have come, of late years, from persons more 
 clever and better educated v that; the generality of 
 their class. 
 
 Murder generally in England is the result of some 
 sudden impulse, ungovernable passion, or execrable 
 covetousness, that auri sacra fames which so com- 
 monly characterizes the crimes of mankind. 
 
 In almost every case, however even where the 
 impulse seems to be most hasty there has been a 
 gradual depravation of morals and religion by spe- 
 cific sins, as adultery, fornication, and drunkenness. 
 Nemo repente f nit turpissimus. The contrast, in re- 
 spect of murder, between this country and other 
 countries of Europe, may be judged of by the report 
 of the Minister of Justice for France for 1849, in 
 which the following numbers are given; (let it 
 be observed, there are no Coroners' inquests in 
 France) : 
 
 "Among the number of prisoners accused of 
 crimes against the person (6983) were : 
 
 Parricides . . . . 19 
 For Poisoning ... 35 
 Attempts at Murder . . 824
 
 56 THE CHARACTER 
 
 Infanticides ... 203 
 
 Murders , . .329 
 
 910 
 
 Allowing for acquittals and population, this would 
 give at least fifteen or twenty cases of murder in 
 Prance in a million. Ireland, unhappily, resembles 
 her continental friends more than she does England, 
 in this particular ; for, even in the improved state 
 of things there in the same year, there were no fewer 
 than "175 charged with murder and shooting at 
 persons." 
 
 2. The next class of criminals to which I would 
 refer, consists of those who are undergoing the 
 penalty of the law for aggravated offences against 
 the person, unnatural crimes, and the worst kind of 
 robberies. This also is much less than is generally 
 imagined. 
 
 The annual mean for eight years, ending about 
 the same period, of persons transported for life was 
 153, the number of life sentences, in 1842, being 
 220, or 1 in 73,266 of the population, but only 91 in 
 1849, or 1 in 195,235. The sentences in 1842, for 
 21 years and upwards, the next in severity, were 36 ; 
 but in 1849, only 26. 
 
 In the returns of the French minister, we find the 
 following enumeration of offences, which in this 
 country would for the most part come under life 
 sentences, or at least twenty-one years :
 
 OF CRIME IX ENGLAND. 57 
 
 Cutting and Wounding . . . .516 
 
 False Swearing and Subornation of Perjury 75 
 
 Coining 121 
 
 Forgeries 503 
 
 Eape 260 
 
 Criminal Assaults on Children . 478 
 
 1958 
 
 In the same category may be placed the greater 
 part of the following crimes in Ireland : 
 
 Manslaughter 150 
 
 Arson . . . . . . .155 
 
 Attacking Houses 108 
 
 The character as well as the amount of crime in 
 Ireland, compared with England, shows how back- 
 ward that country is still in civilization. 
 
 In Ireland, in 1849, 5275 were charged with 
 offences against the person. In England, Wales, 
 and Scotland, with a population more than treble, 
 2852 ; offences against property, with violence, were, 
 in Ireland, 26S2 ; in Great Britain, 2786 : malicious 
 offences against property in Ireland, 707 ; in Great 
 Britain, 369. There has been since some improve- 
 ment. (See Appendix.) 
 
 3. Erom the highest order of crime, let us turn 
 now to the most venial in the estimation of the law ; 
 i. e. to cases summarily disposed of by the magis- 
 trate. 
 
 This is the largest class, and of late years, the
 
 58 THE CHARACTER 
 
 only one materially on the increase. Thus, whilst 
 the number of more serious offences tried by jury 
 at the assizes and sessions, has been gradually 
 lessening being in 1842, 31,160, or 1 in 511 of the 
 population ; and in 1849, 28,752, or 1 in 615 ; the 
 number of summary convictions, which was in 
 1842, 70,507, or 1 in 229, rose, in 1849, to 90,963, 
 or 1 in 193. 
 
 It is important to notice some of the elements of 
 this increase. There was an increase, then, of about 
 2000 under each of the following heads : malicious 
 trespassing, police acts and assaults (chiefly in 
 drunken broils and public-houses), the latter having 
 risen to 12,968 in 1849. The increase under those 
 heads no doubt is to be ascribed in part to the 
 greater number and efficiency of the police, espe- 
 cially in rural parts, before but little protected ; but 
 it was chiefly caused by the vast increase in the 
 formidable army of marauders, the vagrants, which 
 from 20,888 in 1842, grew into 28,139 in 1849 ; and 
 one is bound to state his persuasion, that were it 
 not for the influx of a pauper and disorderly popu- 
 lation from the sister island, for many years going 
 on, but particularly of late, England would now be 
 congratulating herself on the progressive and con- 
 siderable annual decline in the number of her 
 criminals. 
 
 The parish of Westminster will serve to illustrate 
 these remarks. Of this locality we have the follow- 
 ing graphic description from the pen of no less a 
 personage than Dr. Wiseman \
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 59 
 
 " Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie concealed 
 labvrinths of lanes, and courts, and alleys, and slums ; nests of 
 ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, 
 wretchedness, and disease ; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose 
 ventilation is cholera ; in which swarms a huge and almost 
 countless population, in great measure, nominally at least, Catholic ; 
 haunts of filth which no Sewage Committee can reach; dark 
 corners which no Lighting Board can brighten. This is the 
 part of Westminster which I covet, and which I shall be glad to 
 claim and to visit, as a blessed pasture in which sheep of Holy 
 Church are to be tended," &c. 
 
 " This witness is true ! " It appears by a return 
 from the House of Correction at Westminster, of 
 the different religious persuasions of prisoners, from 
 June 1, 1848, to May 31, 1849 (see Inspector of 
 Prisons' Report), that more than one third were 
 non-English, the numbers being : 
 
 Of the Church of England . 5711 
 Roman Catholic . . . 3281 
 Other Dissenters . 195 
 
 9187 
 
 The following account, of a single assizes lately 
 held at York, by a barrister, presents a similar 
 view. 
 
 " Number of prisoners : 
 
 In the Calendar . . . 119 
 Out on Bail .... 7 
 
 Total . . .126 
 Of these 27 were Irish : or about 25 per cent, of all the crime
 
 60 THE CHARACTER 
 
 committed in Yorkshire, and tried at the last assize, was com- 
 mitted by Irishmen. 
 
 " Of these crimes, ^9 were crimes of violence, murders, 
 manslaughters, robberies, and assaults ; and of these crimes, 
 19 were committed by Irishmen ; or about 66 per cent, of the 
 crimes of violence in Yorkshire. 
 
 " Of these orimes of violence eight resulted in death in 
 murder or manslaughter ; and of these eight crimes, six were 
 committed by Irishmen ; or 75 per cent, of the murders and 
 manslaughters in Yorkshire." 
 
 If we turn our eyes to those parts of the coast 
 where the debarkation of the Irish chiefly takes 
 place, we shall find the above view strongly corrobo- 
 rated. Mr. Clay gives the following account of the 
 matter : 
 
 " It is worth while to note the increase of the committal of 
 natives of Ireland within the last three years : 
 
 1846. 1847. 1848. 
 
 Sessions Cases . . .30 40 41 
 Summary Convictions . 6-2 98 196 
 
 "The Irish committed to the sessions, it will be observed, 
 have not augmented in the same proportion as those committed 
 summarily. The latter class chiefly consists of persons who 
 have recently come over to this country ; and who, whether from 
 previous habits, or, as it rather appears to me, from newly and 
 easily acquired practice, are plausible and incorrigible mendi- 
 cants. When these wretched people, however, settle in a to\vn, 
 their children contribute largely to the hopeless class of young 
 offenders. Had they (the children) remained in Ireland, pro- 
 bably in a rural district, and forming part of a population more 
 or less scattered, ignorance, indolence, and begging, might have 
 constituted the worst features of their character. But in a town 
 e "ch habits soon grow into more deplorable vices. In the most 
 ?hed and filthy localities, parents and children herd together
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 01 
 
 until an Irish colony is established. The boys and girls are sent 
 out systematically to beg! but the temptations of a town, the 
 thronged streets, the places of low amusement, the open doors 
 of yards and dwellings soon convert the little beggar into an 
 adroit and bold thief. One instance out of many which have 
 come under my observation during the past year, will serve to 
 illustrate this state of things. Six girls, whose ages varied from 
 eleven to sixteen years, were committed together as 'rogues and 
 vagabonds.' Their offence consisted in entering an unoccupied 
 house, and pilfering whatever was capable of removal. Most of 
 them had been driven out by their parents to beg ; and, accord- 
 ing to their own statement, were beaten or otherwise ill-used, 
 unless they carried home a certain sum in the evening. They 
 had been in the dangerous habit of lighting fires in the unoccu- 
 pied house. They had formed an acquaintance with a boy 
 employed in a dram-shop, who supplied them occasionally with 
 stolen spirits, and with which some of these little girls got 
 drunk. ' Worse remains behind.' The younger ones had been 
 trained by the oldest to a kind of profligacy for which, at their 
 early age, natural propensity could scarcely be alleged in excuse. 
 All these girls were the children of Irish parents ; the latter 
 settled in Preston, or tramping through the neighbouring dis- 
 trict, and living by imposture and vagrancy. I may add here, 
 that of nineteen juvenile offenders committed from the borough 
 of Wigau, eleven were the children of Irish parents." 
 
 " The proportion of Irish prisoners has been rapidly increasing 
 for the last three years, and particularly for the year now closing. 
 Out of a total increase, in three years, of 1837 prisoners, 1241 
 were Irish. . . . The number of felonies committed last year 
 in Liverpool by persons born in Ireland was 222 ; while the 
 whole number committed by persons born in Lancashire was 
 only 269. " To this statement by the Governor of the Liverpool 
 Prison, Mr. Hill, the Government Inspector, adds : " If to the 
 prisoners who are strictly Irish, those who, though born in 
 England, are of Irish parentage, were added, the proportion of 
 Irish prisoners would be yet greater. A return was made of 
 these two classes of prisoners on one day of my inspection, and 
 I found that they formed more than one-half of the whole 
 number of prisoners."
 
 (J2 THE CHARACTER 
 
 If England has thus suffered from the influx of a 
 disorderly, vagrant, and dishonest population from 
 Ireland, let it be borne in mind, that she has had 
 the occasion (followed more generally than is 
 imagined, by the result,) of removing prejudices 
 from a mistaught people ; of imparting instruction 
 in the arts of industry ; and of exhibiting to them 
 the blessings of liberty, and order, and peace. The 
 residence in England, even for a season, of the poor 
 Irish, is an education and training in habits, by 
 which many profit and return to their own country, 
 to propagate them amongst their countrymen. 
 
 But this country is not open only to such influx 
 from Ireland, to jostle out her own poor from the 
 market of labour, and to press them into dwelling- 
 places and localities which have become the seed- 
 plots of crime, England is the gold diggings of 
 Europe, where needy adventurers of all nations look 
 for a rich harvest : 
 
 Exilis domus est ubi non multa supersunt, 
 Et dominum fallunt et prosunt furibus. 
 
 We have, therefore, the vices of the continent 
 largely incorporated with our own. 
 
 4. I will now direct the reader's attention to 
 another class of prisoners ; viz. persons convicted of 
 dishonesty of the ordinary kind. These are either 
 professed thieves, or unhappy persons guilty of an 
 isolated act of dishonesty. I will confine my obser-
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 63 
 
 vations to the latter class, both because from this, 
 the former receives its recruits, and because it will 
 serve my purpose the better, of warning young 
 people who are yet respectable, but in the midst of 
 temptation, against those things which lead in 
 general to the first criminal acts. 
 
 At the head of the multitudinous causes of punish- 
 able crime in the land, must be placed in my judg- 
 ment that wickedness which itself escapes the arm 
 of the law, but which necessarily tends to de- 
 moralize those classes in society from which 
 criminals chiefly come. Tw^o species of this may be 
 particularized ; seduction, and the fraudulent prac- 
 tices of employers. Take, for instance, the case of 
 a libertine in the higher ranks, or in any class, who 
 has brought one woman to ruin. That ruined indi- 
 vidual descends into a lower deep, becomes in turn 
 the seducer of virtue, not in one, but hundreds of 
 young men ; robs them of their strength, their 
 money, their character; and then confederates them 
 in those bands of midnight robbers, and those 
 hordes of swindlers and gamblers, which make 
 necessary an army of police for the protection of 
 property and life; and innumerable prisons to 
 punish, correct, and lead them, if it be possible, 
 back to virtue. The deliberate seducer of female 
 innocence, whatever his position in life, should be 
 cast out of society as a liar, a robber of the vilest 
 description, and a murderer. It is not so, however. 
 Yet, thank God, there is an increasing feeling of 
 detestation of this crime in the better ranks of
 
 64 THE CHARACTER 
 
 society. With God, such a man will have an awful 
 reckoning, when the broken heart of the parent, the 
 sin of the seduced, and the loss of an undying soul, 
 are brought home to him as the chief cause. " If 
 we pursue the effects of seduction," says Paley, 
 "through the complicated misery which it occa- 
 sions, and if it be right to estimate crimes by the 
 mischief they knowingly produce, it will appear 
 something more than mere invective to assert, that 
 one-half of the crimes for which men suffer death 
 by the laws of England, are not so flagitious as this." 
 " Yet the law has provided no punishment for this 
 offence beyond a pecuniary satisfaction to the in- 
 jured family ; and this can only be come at by one 
 of the quaintest fictions in the world by the father's 
 bringing his action against the seducer, for the loss 
 of his daughter's service, during her pregnancy and 
 nurturing." 
 
 There are many shades, it must be confessed, in 
 this crime. The sin which leads so generally to 
 such devastation of character such a blight upon 
 the happiness of home such an obliteration of all 
 religion and hope, is often mutual; yea, not un- 
 frequently the greatest sufferer is first in the trans- 
 gression. 
 
 Pew women, strictly and uniformly modest in 
 dress and manner, have to complain of the ap- 
 proaches of badly-intentioned men. There is a 
 dignity in female modesty and virtue, powerful 
 enough to repel, in general, the first assaults of
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 
 
 the base seducer, whilst nothing so much excites the 
 admiration and affection of honourable men. 
 
 I have referred to monsters in human form who 
 live by trafficking in seduction, and pandering to 
 the lusts of the rich libertine and debauchee. These 
 are generally pretended masters and mistresses of 
 households, and their victims are simple girls from 
 the country, looking for place, or young women 
 thrown out of service by some haste of temper, or 
 liking for fine dress, or love of amusement and 
 change, who unhappily possess an attractive appear- 
 ance ; or children of tender years. The victims of 
 this abominable traffic are by no means exclusively 
 from the lower classes. Not long since, I heard a 
 nobleman mention the following heart-rending 
 tale : 
 
 A gentleman of rank in Ireland had two daughters 
 receiving education in Paris. They were to return 
 home during vacation. A friend was to see them 
 on board at Boulogne, and another had undertaken 
 to receive them in London. They arrived in town, 
 but have never been since seen nor heard of by 
 their family. The friend in London was not at his 
 post : a woman fashionably attired had ingratiated 
 herself into their favour, as was noticed on board 
 the packet, and on arrival took them to her home, 
 no doubt one of those elegantly furnished houses in 
 the West End (described by prisoners within these 
 walls), where gentlemen, whose fortunes are equal 
 to their atrocious villany, and who can satisfy the 
 cupidity of those traders in seduction, systematically
 
 66 THE CHARACTER 
 
 seek, by false introductions, visits to the opera, wine 
 (if needful, drugged), and other means, even to vio- 
 lence, to destroy a woman's innocence, happiness, 
 and soul, for ever. 
 
 The following is told by a trustworthy witness : 
 " Not long since, the only child of a respectable 
 tradesman in London, quite a young girl, was de- 
 coyed from her peaceful home and loving father by 
 a procuress. It was not done at night, but during 
 school hours, or when the girl was returning from 
 school. Vigilant search was made by the distressed 
 father, (" who, for a whole fortnight, never took off 
 his clothes,") accompanied by the officers of justice. 
 But it was not before the lapse of several weeks that 
 the girl was traced, and then not in time to save 
 her from ruin. When restored, her wonted inno- 
 cence and simplicity had departed, and such a 
 marked alteration was visible in her features that 
 her friends, at first, could scarcely recognize her, 
 and worse still, she had become so degraded as to 
 be careless whether she returned home or not. The 
 writer can testify to the truth of this statement, 
 the unfortunate father being intimate with his 
 family." 
 
 Rarely can the law reach a case of this mon- 
 strous kind ; still more rarely could it do so, were 
 it not for the exertions of a noble, but too little 
 known Society, The London Society for the Pro- 
 tection of Young Females; and when the law does 
 lay hold on the guilty party, it cannot inflict so 
 heavy a punishment as is every day awarded to the
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 67 
 
 stealer of a few shillings or pence-worth of paltry 
 property ! 
 
 In like manner, the master who teaches his 
 shopmen to defraud the public, and make a spoil 
 of the simple, or who employs the agency of 
 his servants in vitiating the food of the people ; at 
 once corrupts their integrity, makes them deceitful 
 and dishonest, and creates, as far as his miserable 
 cupidity can accomplish it, another tributary source 
 towards t^it congeries of vice and crime in the 
 country, which becomes so difficult, if not impracti- 
 cable to remove. The lying and frauds practised in 
 business are numberless, and their effect upon the 
 morals of the young people employed, male and 
 female, is disastrous and shocking in the extreme. 
 
 Nor is this all, for, as it is easy to conceive, 
 where moral principle is set at nought in the 
 matter of truth and honesty by the employer, other 
 vices must luxuriate and thrive ; and they do so to 
 the most fearful extent. 
 
 The most successful swindlers in such shops are 
 the favourites of the employers, and these are in- 
 dulged in every vice. The scrupulous, and those 
 who are not willing to part with their virtue, are 
 dismissed. 
 
 Looking at the less noticed causes of crime, we 
 are not to pass over the luxurious habits of the 
 wealthy, who multiply attendants beyond all possi- 
 bility of moral control; and who expose them by 
 their own habits, in the pursuit of pleasure, to 
 so manifold temptations beyond what is unavoidable 
 
 r 2
 
 68 THE CHARACTER 
 
 in the condition of a servant. The corruption of 
 morals which goes on in a great man's house where 
 the fear of the Lord is not the governing principle, 
 exceeds all ordinary belief. Nor is it confined there. 
 The contagion spreads to the families next in station, 
 and so downwards to the lowest. In the transactions 
 between servants, tradesmen, and shopkeepers, 
 fraud, in a variety of ways, is perpetrated and in fact 
 systematised, to such a degree, that it has almost 
 ceased to be thought culpable. 
 
 Of the 1000 convicts, let it be remembered, 71 
 were domestic servants ; of 1000 abandoned women 
 in the streets, even a larger proportion would be 
 found. Yet these are only some of the fruits of the 
 dissipated habits acquired by inexperienced persons 
 of the humbler classes, in the houses of luxury and 
 fashion. 
 
 " Increase of power begets increase of wealth, 
 Wealth luxury, and luxury excess ; 
 Excess the scrofulous and itchy plague 
 That seizes first the opulent, descends 
 To the next rank contagious, and in time 
 Taints downwards all the graduated scale." COWPEB. 
 
 Thus far with respect to the less noticed sources 
 of crime. Let us now view, for a little, a few more 
 obvious. Amongst these, special prominence is to 
 be given to the drinking habits of the lower classes 
 of the people. 
 
 Of the 28,752 prisoners tried at the assizes and 
 sessions in England, in the year referred to, 10,000 
 may be put down, without fear of exaggeration, as 
 having been brought to their deplorable condition,
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 69 
 
 directly or indirectly, by the public-house ; whilst of 
 the 90,963 summary convictions, 50,000, I fear not 
 to state, were the result of the drinking habits of the 
 individuals themselves or their parents. Yet, as I 
 am led to think, the evil results of drunkenness are 
 to be looked for elsewhere, even more abundantly 
 than in prison, especially among women. Drunken- 
 ness is in truth a monster evil in the land a drain 
 upon the national resources a stain upon the cha- 
 racter of England a plague in the midst of us, 
 more fatal than any malady which ever visited our 
 shores. Not one single vice contributes more to- 
 wards filling with wretched inhabitants the poor- 
 house, the hospital, the asylum, and the gaol. In 
 the year 1836, being a parish clergyman (in the 
 Staffordshire Potteries), I was led to make the fol- 
 lowing remark in an address to my parishioners : 
 " The people of this place take an awful part in this 
 pernicious expenditure. In our population of 12,000 
 people, there are 158 public-houses or beer-shops ; 
 that is, one for every 76 persons ! All these houses 
 are filled on Saturday night, and the early part of 
 the week ; that is, while the working classes have 
 any money to spend ; but on Thursday, Eriday, and 
 Saturday morning, riot and drunkenness have 
 ceased, and all is quietness and peace." It is too 
 true, I fear, yet of the same place, and of thousands 
 of others in this country. When I entered on that 
 parish, in the spring of 1833, the evil of the Beer 
 Bill was beginning to be felt. That measure had 
 for one of its objects, the drawing people off from
 
 70 THE CHARACTER 
 
 public-houses, by affording them a wholesome 
 beverage to be consumed at home at their meals ; 
 but the effect was, that a lower style of drinking- 
 place was opened in every quarter, and by a trifle 
 more tax and house-rent, the beer might be " drunk 
 on the premises ;" and thus the temptation of an 
 inferior public-house was brought to every poor 
 man's door. Frightful immoralities became common 
 in the place, and the vice of gambling was rapidly 
 generated. A bookseller in the town stated that the 
 demand for playing-cards was quite surprising, con- 
 sequent upon the opening of these houses. A similar 
 testimony I am sure would be borne by every clergy- 
 man who witnessed the opening of beer-houses in his 
 parish, under that calamitous Act of the Legislature. 
 
 The Opinions of Forty -seven Chaplains on the " J3eer 
 Bill" extracted from the Evidence before Lord 
 Harrowly's late Committee: 
 
 1. "Is convinced by experience of the evil effects of beer* 
 houses in the production of crime, the majority of cases of theft 
 and poaching being traceable thereto." 
 
 2. "Has ascertained by investigation that about four- fifths of 
 the offences committed by the agricultural population are trace- 
 able to beer-houses." 
 
 3. " Attributes most injurious effects to beer-houses ; several 
 prisoners under twenty years of age being now in custody, who 
 acknowledge that ' the beer-shop has done it all.' " 
 
 4. " Beer-houses are the sources of a very large proportion of 
 crime, the prisoners almost universally admitting that they trace 
 their disgraceful position to them." 
 
 5. " Believes the several Acts relating to the sale of beer to 
 have been productive of the most demoralizing effects." 
 
 6. " Suggests that the Legislature should repeal the whole of 
 the Acts relating to beer-houses."
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 71 
 
 7. " Gaols must continue to be filled with prisoners, unless 
 something be done to put down Jerry-shops." 
 
 8. "Judging from information obtained from prisoners, con- 
 siders beer-houses one of the most fruitful sources of crime." 
 
 9. " Considers beer-houses a curse in any parish, and produc- 
 tive of great domestic misery." 
 
 10. "Has no hesitation in stating that the number of beer- 
 houses, and their vicinity to the dwellings of the poor, has a 
 very pernicious effect." 
 
 11 "They (beer-houses) cannot be regarded otherwise than 
 as positive nurseries of vice and crime." 
 
 12. " Is convinced, from the additional experience of every 
 year, that beer-houses are one of the most fruitful sources of vice 
 and immorality in every form." 
 
 13. " Finds that nearly all houses of ill-fame are beer-houses, 
 and that spirits are sold in them, though the proprietor has no 
 license for so doing." 
 
 14. "Is inclined to consider beer-houses as dangerous to 
 public morals." 
 
 15. "Has been informed by prisoners and others, that much 
 of the seduction and corruption in early life among females is 
 to be traced to their being entrapped into these houses." 
 
 16. "For fostering vice, and for consummating reckless and 
 self-incurred pauperism, the beer-shop appears to furnish the 
 most fatal channel." 
 
 17. "However lucrative they may be to the revenue in the 
 way of excise duties, it is at the expense of the best interests of 
 the labouring poor, and entails an enormous expense in the 
 punishment of crimes concocted in the beer-shop." 
 
 18. "The effect of beer-houses is, and hitherto h&s been, to 
 let loose a flood of vice and immorality." 
 
 19. " Has no doubt as to the demoralizing effects of beer- 
 houses." 
 
 20. " Beer-houses the chief cause of crime." 
 
 21. " Is of opinion, formed deliberately and from long experi- 
 ence, that beer-houses are the promoters of crime." 
 
 22. " Is enabled to say, from seven years' experience, that the 
 operation of public-houses and beer-houses, in the production of 
 crime, is beyond any other instrumentality." 
 
 23. " From the facilities afforded by beer-houses to drinking,
 
 72 THE CHARACTER 
 
 many offences and crimes are therein committed, or committed 
 after leaving them." 
 
 24. " Certain beer-shops and public-houses are the constant 
 resort of youths who subsist upon whatever articles they can 
 steal and convert into money." 
 
 25. "From conversations with prisoners, concludes that the 
 tendency of beer-houses, in a moral point of view, is exceedingly 
 bad." 
 
 26. " It is a matter of frequent occurrence that young men, in 
 writing home, speak of the beer-shop having proved their ruin." 
 
 27. " From experience can express a very confident opinion, 
 that beer-houses must be looked upon generally as so many 
 nurseries of crime in the land." 
 
 28. " Has no hesitation in saying, that the beer-house has 
 been the source of ruin to most of the inmates of this gaol." 
 
 29. " Has no hesitation in declaring, from long experience, 
 that beer-houses are greatly and constantly productive of crime." 
 
 30. " Is led to conclude, from experience, that beer-houses, by 
 increasing the temptation to drunkenness, have greatly con- 
 tributed to the increase of crime." 
 
 31. " Having closely interrogated each prisoner as to the cause 
 of their incarceration, has received answer from every one (with 
 one single exception), that it was the facility afforded in beer- 
 shops for the indulgence of their drinking propensities." 
 
 32. " Beer-houses operate in producing crime, by providing 
 occasions, more numerous and cheaper than otherwise would 
 exist, for contracting drinking habits, bad companionships, and 
 directly criminal engagements." 
 
 33. "Cases of poaching, sheep-stealing, and labourers for- 
 saking their families, have originated in the facility with which 
 they (the labourers) could frequent beer-shops." 
 
 34. " Is of decided opinion that beer-houses in general operate 
 in the production of crime." 
 
 35. "A very considerable proportion of the crime for which 
 men are committed arises from their frequenting beer-houses. 
 Such houses are a crying evil to the country at large." 
 
 36. "The situation of many of these houses in by-places 
 just suits the views of poachers, thieves, and midnight 
 assassins." 
 
 37. "Crimes generally, if not invariably, originate in the
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 73 
 
 frequenting of beer-houses; and as corroborative of this, 15 out 
 of 20 men have so confessed during their imprisonment." 
 
 38. " Considers beer-houses exceedingly injurious to the lower 
 orders." 
 
 39. " The present law is decidedly pernicious in its con- 
 sequences, beer-houses being frequently resorted to by persons 
 bent on the commission of crime." 
 
 40. " Beer-houses are at least the means of spreading crime, 
 from the effects of bad company." 
 
 41. " It would be hard to overstate the extent to which the 
 beer-shop is connected and mixed up with the crime of the 
 country. Is at a loss for words to express the amount of evil 
 every day produced by the multiplication of these dens of iniquity 
 and curses of the poor." 
 
 42. " By far the great proportion of prisoners committed have 
 been in the habit of frequenting beer-shops." 
 
 43. " Drunkenness has increased in proportion to the facilities 
 given by the licensing of beer-houses." 
 
 44. " I have found them the resort of all sorts of thieves, 
 young and old, and places where the young find a ready instruc- 
 tion in crime." 
 
 45. "A very considerable portion of crimes may be traced to 
 the habits of idleness, intemperance, and profligacy engendered 
 in beer-houses." 
 
 46. " Beer-houses one among many causes which tend greatly 
 to the production of crime." 
 
 47. " I believe it is impossible for human language to describe 
 the misery and wickedness added to the previous sum of our 
 moral and social ill by beer-houses." Rev. J. Clay, Chaplain of 
 the Preston House of Correction. 
 
 Of the dram-shop worse must be told even than 
 of the beer-house, and it is important to note, that 
 just in proportion as you increase the facilities for 
 the sale of spirituous liouors, so do you increase 
 crime and the necessity for more police to repress it. 
 This is borne out by the following testimony. It is 
 part of the evidence given before the Parliamentary
 
 74 THE CHARACTER 
 
 Committee on Public Houses and other places of 
 public entertainment and amusement, by Mr. 
 Daiison, who appeared on behalf of the licensed 
 victuallers : 
 
 Mr. Barrow : Are you aware at all, of the comparative amount 
 of drunkenness between Liverpool and Manchester ? We have 
 got the number of population where cases of drunkenness are 
 reported for Dublin, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, 
 and Manchester, and in those cases we find that in Dublin there 
 is 1 out of 21 of the population. 
 
 Chairman: Convicted of drunkenness? Yes ; in Glasgow, 1 in 
 22 ; in Edinburgh, 1 in 59 ; in Liverpool, 1 in 91 ; in London, 
 1 in 106; in Birmingham, 1 in 113; and in Manchester, 1 in 
 600. In the three first places, Dublin, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, 
 there is the largest amount of drunkenness, and in those places 
 there is the free licensing system, where it is sold from grocers' 
 shops or any other place. Manchester is the largest population 
 of the kingdom, with the smallest number of licenses, and con- 
 sequently the smallest number of drunken persons ; and I 
 believe, for the amount of population, the smallest amount of 
 police are employed. Tn Liverpool there are 1470 public-houses, 
 as you will see by this return, and in Manchester there are 578. 
 In Liverpool, with a population of 25,000 less than Manchester, 
 we have 900 police. In Manchester there are only 443 police. 
 
 Chairman : Is the return which you have made of the propor- 
 tion of convictions for drunkenness in different towns for the 
 purpose of showing that the greater the facility afforded for 
 selling spirits the more is the drunkenness ? Yes. 
 
 11 Scotland affords a melancholy proof of the effect of cheapen- 
 ing spirits to a people, writes Mr. Thompson, of Banchory, in 
 his lately published work, (Nisbet), entitled Social Evils, their 
 Causes and Cure : 
 
 " In former years Scotland probably was, and certainly did 
 boast, ay, and still boasts, of being the most religious portion of 
 the empire. It was formerly, at least in the lower classes, the 
 most sober and temperate of the three kingdoms ; but one single 
 financial measure changed the whole aspect of the land. In 
 1825 the duty on whiskey was greatly reduced; intemperance 
 began to increase, and, in the 27 years which have since elapsed,
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 75 
 
 the consumption has become nearly fivefold greater ; crime, 
 disease, and death have increased in similar proportion ; and 
 the sober, religious Scotland of other days is now proved, by its 
 consumption of spirits, to be, without exception, the most 
 drunken nation in Europe." 
 
 Referring to this testimony of Mr. Thompson, 
 Colonel Jebb, in his report for 1852, as Surveyor- 
 general of Prisons, remarks : 
 
 It is a striking fact, in confirmation of the above view, that 
 no sooner does a regiment go to Scotland or Ireland, than the 
 same causes which operate in demoralizing the people there 
 are immediately perceptible in the increase of crime amongst 
 the soldiers. 
 
 In the statistics of the military prisons, which appear in my 
 Report for the year 1852, it will be found that whilst the com- 
 mittals for drunkenness among the troops quartered in England 
 amounted to about 7 in 1000 men, in Scotland and Ireland they 
 have amounted to about 20 in 1000. 
 
 Next to the drinking habits of the people, as an 
 obvious source of crime, may be reckoned the dif- 
 ferent licensed places of amusement, pleasure 
 gardens, dancing and concert rooms, night saloons. 
 &c. Many who drank deeply of the pleasures of sin 
 in the metropolis, and ended their miserable career 
 in this prison, have given me full descriptions of 
 these places and their consequences. They will not 
 bear recital in pages intended for general perusal. 
 These night rooms, allowed to be open under the 
 plea of providing places of refreshment for night 
 cabmen and persons coming to the early markets, 
 have naturally been converted into places of ren- 
 dezvous for the abandoned of both sexes, to prey 
 upon the persons and property of young men who
 
 76 THE CHARACTER 
 
 are enticed thither, when, heated with wine and 
 excitement, they are returning from the theatre, by 
 companions farther gone in sin, or acquaintances 
 formed at the play-house. In those infamous houses 
 everything calculated to steal away the heart is pro- 
 vided, music, wine, women, dancing, cards, &c. 
 Here may be seen the vilest and most depraved of 
 the human kind, mixed with young men of all ranks 
 and classes who have a genteel appearance. None 
 but well-dressed persons are admitted. Clerks, 
 warehousemen, gentlemen, country tradesmen, and 
 persons of such years and position as should guar- 
 antee better things ; shopmen, lads scarcely out of 
 their boyhood, thieves of the first class, and the most 
 attractive female deceivers. 
 
 Some visit these places " to see life," and in gene- 
 ral they pay dearly for their folly. " There 's no 
 fear," they would say, if remonstrated with by a 
 a friend. They buy repentance at a dear rate. The 
 excitement, the drink, the allurements of " the 
 stranger that flattereth with her tongue," over- 
 power reason ; and the victim of presumption and 
 folly " goeth after her straightway, as an ox goeth 
 to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of 
 the stocks ; till a dart strike through his liver ; as 
 a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that 
 it is for his life." A very few visits to such places 
 will serve to turn a virtuous youth with the best 
 prospects into an unamiable and ill-tempered brother, 
 a corrupter of his shopmates, a grief to his mother, 
 and a shame to his father, a shoplifter, or one of
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 77 
 
 the confederates of the swell-mob, haunting the 
 very place for prey where he himself was entrapped. 
 Nightly balls, masquerades, &c., in pleasure 
 gardens, of course are precisely of the same cha- 
 racter. Booths and sleeping- places are provided in 
 those places, under the pretext of accommodation to 
 parties coming from a distance. Dancing and 
 music-rooms, licensed under Act of Parliament 
 passed in George the Second's reign, better in some 
 particulars, are in this respect, perhaps, worse, 
 that virtuous young women, servants, milliners, 
 &c., frequent them in greater number, in common 
 with abandoned persons, and with the like disastrous 
 consequences. 
 
 It is a very small matter, when one is considering 
 the magnitude of the direct evils of such places, to 
 mention that everything which chemical knowledge 
 can suggest, and the most practised ingenuity of the 
 dealer in wines, spirituous liquors, &c., can devise, is 
 done to impose upon the consumer, instead of the 
 genuine article, some factitious compound, adulte- 
 rated, and often medicated with poisonous ingre- 
 dients. However, adulteration of these things is not 
 confined to such places. 
 
 It would be endless to describe the different 
 places of nightly excitement in the metropolis, 
 thrown open to our young men after the day's 
 business is over. They are arranged so as 4o meet 
 every taste. They all agree in an unprincipled thirst 
 for gain, and utter disregard to the ruin of the cha- 
 racter of individuals and the peace of families ; and,
 
 78 THE CHARACTER 
 
 without exception, generate in a frightful degree 
 drunken habits and profligacy. 
 
 Let theatrical amusements be considered: 
 Theatres vary very much in the character of their 
 pieces, their actors, and their company. I suppose, 
 however, no night's whole performance was ever wit- 
 nessed, in the best, not chargeable with the guilt of 
 downright profanity in tragedy, of immodest allu- 
 sions in comedy, and lascivious acting in the opera 
 and ballet. The greater number directly propagate 
 vice, immorality, and crime. Those for the lower 
 order seem as if this were their only business. On 
 the stage of the minor theatres may be witnessed 
 scenes of murder, housebreaking, highway robbery, 
 gambling, and thefts of all descriptions, drunken- 
 ness in high and low life, &c., without the pretext 
 of a moral ; and through them all runs a vein of wit 
 or humour, intended to tell upon the corrupt affec- 
 tions of the heart and inflame the passions. In the 
 house itself, drinking is carried on among the men 
 and women, spirits being carried in for the purpose, 
 and scenes of vice, theft, and angry contention are 
 enacted by the rabble spectators, which baffle all 
 description. " In the boxes and dress circles," says 
 one of my informants, himself once an actor, " may 
 be seen a great number of respectable people. What 
 can possess them to come to such houses," he adds, 
 " I cannot conceive." Many will freely denounce 
 places like these as the sources of crime, who can 
 see no evil in those which they themselves frequent. 
 I believe the difference to be simply this : The
 
 OF CHIME IN ENGLAND. 79 
 
 minor theatre directly teaches crime and immorality; 
 the superior sort, more speciously, immodesty and 
 vice, ichich tend to crime. The former effects its 
 mischief on the lowest class of society ; the latter, 
 amongst the middle and higher classes. The ques- 
 tion of the performance itself is a small part of the 
 matter. The necessary and uniformly accompany- 
 ing attendants upon the play-house are to be 
 weighed; and these are worse than can be described, 
 and numberless. What respectable neighbourhood 
 or proprietary, it may be asked, would not rise up 
 in arms against the location of a nightly place of 
 amusement, theatre, or opera-house amongst them ? 
 Why ? Because it is notorious, that the erection of 
 such an edifice would be an intolerable public nui- 
 sance ! Under its shelter immediately would spring 
 up, as in a kindred soil and congenial atmosphere, 
 infamous houses of every description, like so many 
 upas-trees ; and all persons who had respect to the 
 character of their daughters, or the morals of their 
 sons, would be compelled to flee. There are those 
 who see clearly enough the evils of drunkenness, 
 and yet patronize the stage. I would have such, 
 then, to consider whether drunkenness, so horribly 
 hideous, and the parent of such multiform wicked- 
 ness and misery, is not the natural result, as well as 
 the invariable accompaniment, of popular amuse- 
 ments. This I believe to be the fact ; and, there- 
 fore, that the theatre is to be considered, not merely 
 per se, with its own peculiar train of evils, but as 
 contributing largely to the vice of drunkenness.
 
 80 THE CHARACTER 
 
 The retailers of strong drink should be good wit- 
 nesses in this question ; but these persons as may 
 be already gathered from what has been said are 
 constantly offering their schemes of pleasure at a 
 mere nominal price, or even loss, as baits to catch 
 the simple in their nets their drinking and 
 smoking rooms. The temptation to take strong 
 drink, be it remembered, is neither the earliest nor 
 the most potent in our nature. No man is born 
 a drunkard. The love of pleasure, company, and 
 lascivious associations of thought, is innate in 
 fallen nature. The records of the prison-house, 
 if fully analysed, would show, that the first penny, 
 or the first pound, taken by a son from his parent, 
 or abstracted by the young man from his master's 
 desk, is for the theatre, not for the public-house. 
 But youth, being corrupted by the pleasures of sin, 
 drunkenness follows, and becomes the associate, or 
 the substitute of licentiousness, and completes the 
 ruin. Money becomes indispensable, and it is 
 gotten by some desperate and wicked means, at 
 the possibility of which, a few months before, the 
 mind would have recoiled with indignation, like 
 that of Hazael, when reproved by the prophet : 
 " Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great 
 thing ?" 
 
 The theatre produces habits inimical to frugality, 
 chastity, and uprightness. Time is wasted ; money 
 lavished away; the love of excitement generated; 
 the passions inflamed ; home made distasteful, with 
 its sober realities, and business odious ; associations
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 81 
 
 with the fallen and profligate formed ; till at last, 
 poverty comes, like an armed man, upon the 
 child of idleness and folly, and then crime, to be 
 punished by the law. It is well if poverty alone 
 comes, and that early ; by this means, a good 
 Providence interferes, sometimes, to rouse the 
 votary of pleasure from what else must be the sleep 
 of death. When all is spent, the wise counsel of a 
 friend may be heeded ; some kindly influence may 
 attract the wanderer, and the virtuous attachment 
 of home return. The grace of God may find the 
 sinner, and lead him to salvation and true 
 happiness. 
 
 Reformers of the stage have appeared, from time 
 to time persons of chaste lives and unblemished 
 character, who blushed for the immoralities and 
 vice of their unhappy profession. All their at- 
 tempts at reformation signally failed. Referring 
 to this, not long ago, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton 
 himself a writer for the stage in introducing the 
 health of Mr. Macready, at a public dinner given 
 to that eminent actor at the close of his theatrical 
 career, makes this remark : " That was only half 
 the merit of his management. He purified the 
 audience ; so that, for the first time since the reign 
 of Charles II., a father might take his daughter to 
 the public theatre, with as much safety, and as little 
 fear of any shock to decorum, as if he had taken 
 her to the house of a friend" Mr. Macready, in 
 his acknowledgment of this compliment, refers to 
 his conduct as follows : " To my direction of the 
 
 G
 
 82 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES 
 
 two patent theatres, on which my friend has so 
 kindly dilated, I wish to say but little. The pream- 
 ble of their patent recites, as a condition of their 
 grants, that the theatre should be for the promotion 
 of virtue and instruction to the human race I 
 think these are the words. I can only say, it was 
 my determination, to the best of my ability, to 
 obey that injunction ; and, believing in the prin- 
 ciple that property has its duties, as well as its 
 rights, I conceived that the proprietary should have 
 co-operated with me. They thought otherwise, and 
 I was reluctantly compelled to relinquish, on disad- 
 vantageous terms, my half-achieved enterprise. 
 Others will take up the unaccomplished work." 
 No ! never, Mr. Macready, with such an example 
 of failure before them ; if any do, it will only be 
 to subject them also to chagrin and loss. 
 
 The following is an illustration of the same thing 
 in America. The account is from a Boston corres- 
 pondent, to the Editor of the "New York Ob- 
 server :" " The Tremont theatre is in trouble. It 
 proves to be a losing concern ; and there appears to 
 be no way to make it profitable. It was built with 
 the avowed intention of raising the respectability of 
 the drama ; and I believe the manager has honestly 
 done his best to meet at once the demands of those 
 who love theatres, and those who love good morals. 
 Several years since, he abolished his bar for the 
 sale of intoxicating liquors ; in consideration of 
 which, he solicited, and obtained, a license for his 
 theatre, without paying the usual tax. He after-
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 83 
 
 wards attempted another reform, which he deli- 
 cately announced by a notice, that no lady would be 
 admitted to any part of the theatre unless accom- 
 panied by a gentleman ; thus excluding all ladies 
 in whose company no gentleman would be willing 
 to be seen. This was necessary, because so many 
 of both sexes utterly refused a place of amusement 
 where it was known such ladies would form a part 
 of the company. But the loss of the patronage of 
 such ' ladies,' and of those who stayed away when 
 those were excluded, was more than the manager's 
 purse could bear ; and, in a few iveeks, the rule was 
 suffered to fall into disuse. Of late there has been 
 an investigation of the affairs of the company, and 
 a report has been published, from which it appears, 
 that even if the manager had the building rent free, 
 the receipts would fall considerably short of meeting 
 the other expenses.'"' 
 
 Thus, the taste of the immoral, pleasure-loving 
 mass must be gratified, and the presence of aban- 
 doned characters allowed, or no theatre will pay the 
 proprietor. The more virtuous, the greater the loss. 
 The great by their wealth, or the virtuous in middle 
 life by associating together, may purchase for them- 
 selves immunity from some of the most offensive evils 
 of the place ; but ordinarily, persons must be con- 
 tent to let their wives, their daughters, and their sons, 
 sit side by side with the well-dressed and attractive 
 courtesans and their shameless paramours. I have 
 spoken the more largely upon this point because, 
 from the extreme popularity of the theatre, with all
 
 84 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES 
 
 classes, and the difficulty of fully exposing the 
 corrupting nature of its associations, I suppose, 
 moralists and divines have too much kept it out of 
 view. But the faithful minister of Christ, into 
 whose hands these pages fall, who would give to 
 all their portion in due season, will not fail, it is 
 hoped, when he looks into the matter thus brought 
 before him, to denounce the stage, with the Augus- 
 tines and Chrysostoms of old, as " the pest of souls, 
 the ruin of virtue and modesty, the fuel of the 
 passions, and as the pomps of this world, which 
 Christians solemnly denounce." 
 
 Another popular amusement, the abundant source 
 of crime, is the Race Course, the effects of which are 
 thus portrayed by the Rev. C. B. Tayler, from per- 
 sonal observations : 
 
 " I could, cite the testimonies of others to prove the evil of 
 races. I could refer to brother clergymen at Epsom and Don- 
 caster, who have spoken to me in decided terms of the effects 
 produced by them in both those well-known places ; but I confine 
 myself to the city of Chester, because I can speak from my own 
 experience, and record facts for the truth of which I can myself 
 vouch. The crime, the sorrow, the ruin, the deaths, which I have 
 witnessed, the lamentations which I have heard, are not to be 
 forgotten; and I would add, with all Christian gentleness, but with 
 all Christian faithfulness, they must not be kept back. I can well 
 conceive that many who defend and promote the evils of which I 
 speak have been ignorant of these things : but I have not been 
 ignorant ; and at the risk of displeasing some kind and friendly 
 persons, who, 1 fear, do not desire to have their eyes opened, 
 I must record my faithful testimony. Perhaps there is no place 
 in England in which the evils of the race-course are so mixed up 
 with the population of the place as the city of Chester : the race- 
 course may be said to form part of the place. There is no need, 
 as in other towns, to go even a short distance to be a spectator
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 85 
 
 of the proceedings : a person standing on the western walls of 
 the town, has the whole race-course spread out at his very feet. 
 
 "During the last few years, owing to the exertions of a worthy 
 magistrate of the place, at the time he was a mayor, the first day 
 of the race was altered from the Monday to the Tuesday, to 
 avoid the awful profanation of the Lord's -day with which that 
 day commenced. 
 
 " Before that change took place, the tumult of the streets, 
 even during divine service, was so great, that it was a continual 
 interruption to the congregations assembled in the churches. 
 I have been jostled almost off the steps which led from my own 
 church door, as I descended them, by a crowd of ill-mannered 
 fellows who came up arm in arm, one of the party puffing the 
 smoke of his cigar in my face : and the Sabbath evening in that 
 ancient Christian city presented on every side scenes that would 
 have been disgraceful even to a heathen land. Carriages of all 
 sorts came rolling into the town during the whole of the day ; 
 and there were sights and sounds on every side, as the night 
 drew in, ill-suited to the Christian Sabbath, drunkards reeling 
 and shouting about the streets, and the inns and public-houses 
 of all sorts filled to overflowing with noisy revellers. 
 
 " There was, a few years ago, one room in my own parish 
 which has been so crowded by the mixed multitude of gamblers 
 assembled thei-e, that the men sat upon one another's knees, and 
 there hundreds and thousands of pounds were betted and taken; 
 and not only there, but in every quarter of the old city, the gambler 
 and the blackleg of high and low life might be seen, with care- 
 worn brow and eager look, intent upon their close calculations 
 the bold and reckless gambler ready to stake his all upon his 
 favourite horse the selfish and the cautious exercising all his 
 skill in ' hedging' to secure and enrich himself. 
 
 " Year after year it seemed as if some advancement was made 
 in winning souls to God, and humanly speaking this was the 
 case : many an individual began to manifest a desire to walk in 
 the ways of godliness, and to take delight in the things of God ; 
 but perhaps at the very time that the snare of the fowler seemed 
 broken, and the soul about to escape, the snare was again set, 
 the temptation again presented, and the captive again secured. 
 I believe that this is not only my testimony, but that of several 
 other earnest and anxious ministers of Christ in Chester.
 
 86 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES 
 
 " How often have I seen some individual in whom I had 
 begun to take a deep interest, and by whose apparent consistency 
 in attending the means of grace I had been led to hope that he 
 was indeed strengthened, stablished, and settled, fall away, and 
 prove that he was utterly unable to resist the influence of the 
 periodical mania of the Chester race week ! With his eyes fully 
 opened to the folly and the sin of the way which he was about 
 to take, he had started aside from his new profession like a 
 broken bow, and realized the strong expression of the Apostle 
 Peter : " Like the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the 
 mire." Many an ingenuous youth well known to me has 
 deplored, with shame-stricken countenance and fast-falling 
 tears, the gross immoralities of that season. I have before 
 me the instance of two young men especially, in whom the 
 consistent godliness of several years was totally overthrown. 
 I rejoice to think that they have been both, by the grace of God, 
 brought back to the paths which they had forsaken, wiser and 
 humbler from their fall, and have since been enabled to stand 
 in a strength which they had not earnestly sought before. But 
 alas ! how many there are who have not returned, and who have 
 ended by hardening their own conscience, after having begun 
 by resisting its checks. 
 
 " There was a fine manly fellow of eight-and-twenty, appa- 
 rently a steady, sober-minded man, a constant attendant for 
 some time with his godly sister at my church. He was a kind 
 son, an affectionate brother, a good workman, and high in the 
 confidence of his employers. He had joined my Bible class 
 of young men, and had won my esteem by the simple frankness 
 of his disposition, and the plain manliness of his whole bearing. 
 But gradually he withdrew himself from the church, and from the 
 Bible class, and all my remonstrances, seconded by those of his 
 widowed mother and sister, were civilly and quietly received, but 
 steadily and inflexibly resisted. And yet there was no apparent 
 immorality to be discovered. Nothing in his life or conduct 
 which either I or his relations could censure, except his utter 
 disregard of the Lord's-day, and of all other means of grace. 
 He was still the same affectionate son and brother, he brought 
 faithfully to his mother, at the end of the week, the sum of 
 money not a small one which he had agreed to give her for 
 his board and lodging. But his anxious mother sighed in secret,
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 87 
 
 and felt that there was something wrong, though she hardly 
 liked to own it to herself, while his pious and exemplary sister 
 openly deplored to me the sad change in her beloved Charley. 
 
 " He was seized with an illness which filled them with alarm. 
 He had worked to the last moment ; and one morning about 
 eleven o'clock, he came in from his work quite exhausted, and 
 throwing himself on a chair, said, with a countenance of deep 
 sadness, ' I must give it up ; I can work no more.' He took to 
 his bed. His illness was of a lingering character, and at times 
 he seemed to rally ; but, although his apparent recovery filled 
 their hearts with more hope, still he was but the shadow of his 
 former self; and at last he returned to his bed, never to leave it 
 again. They wished him to see me, and I went to him imme- 
 diately. The poor fellow was pleased to see me, and many an 
 hour did I spend at his bedside. It was impossible not to be 
 pleased with him ; but though as his friend I loved him, as the 
 minister of Christ I could never feel satisfied with his state. 
 
 " He owned to me that he had given up every hope of 
 recovering his health. He said that he knew he should die ; 
 but there was something I could not discover it which made 
 me feel that there was no reality about his repentance, nothing 
 genuine in his faith. It was no immorality in the common sense 
 of the word to which he had yielded ; I questioned him plainly 
 but delicately on all such points. There was, however, a 
 holding back of something, a coldness, a want of heart in all 
 that he said, when replying to my earnest appeals on the one 
 point of vital importance. 
 
 " One evening on entering his chamber I found him in close 
 and earnest conversation with another man, a grave, middle-aged 
 man, who seemed to be as steady and respectable as himself. 
 His dress showed that he was well to do in the world, and his 
 manner was more than commonly civil and respectful. He 
 continued to converse with the sick man for a few minutes in a 
 calm, quiet voice ; but I saw a look exchanged between them, 
 and he rose up and took his leave. I remained with my poor 
 friend about my usual time, but the visit was, as before, 
 unsatisfactory, and yet I could hardly tell why. After I had 
 left him, I was again suddenly summoned to the house. The 
 mother met me with looks of alarm : poor Charley, she said, 
 had been suddenly taken much worse ; she feared he was actually
 
 88 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES 
 
 dying at that very time. I hastened up to the chamber, and his 
 sister quitted it as I entered. I think her brother had requested 
 to be left alone with me. He was, indeed, to all appearance a 
 dying man. Never have I witnessed so profuse a death sweat in 
 any dying person ; his hands, his face, his hair, his own linen, 
 and that of the bed, were reeking with the cold and heavy 
 moisture, its chilliness, when I touched his hand, alarmed me. 
 I placed my finger on his pulse, it was scarcely perceptible. 
 I spoke to him : his manly voice had died almost to a whisper. 
 I said no more. I saw what was needed, and instantly 
 quitted the room. ' I must have some strong hot brandy and 
 water immediately for him,' I said to his mother. ' But he is 
 forbidden,' she replied, ' to take wine or spirits of any kind. 
 The doctor has ordered nothing but gruel.' ' He must have 
 brandy, or he will sink at once,' I answered, ' and I will take the 
 risk upon myself.' The cordial was given, and he gradually 
 revived. I continued sitting by his bedside. I soon felt his 
 pulse returning to its strength, and not long after he was enabled 
 to speak to me. ' I must tell you, Sir,' he said, ' what is the 
 cause of all this. It is not bodily illness, it is not death, it is 
 the state of my mind. I must tell you everything : if I keep my 
 secret any longer it will kill me. I have made up my mind to 
 speak to you in confidence, as my friend. But you will promise 
 me not to tell my mother and sister : it would break their hearts 
 to know what my course has been, and how shamefully I have 
 deceived them. 
 
 '"Ah, Sir, those races ! they have been my ruin ! I had given 
 up for a time, when I came to your church, and to your young 
 men's class, my gambling and my betting ; but I did not know 
 my own weakness; and by degrees I fell back again: and the 
 worst of it all is, Sir, the secresy with which I have been going 
 on in my bad ways. I have had my betting books at many of 
 the public-houses, not only at Chester, but in Liverpool. The 
 man you saw in my room to-night is just such another as myself, 
 a respectable, industrious workman, but as entirely given up as 
 I was to that wicked gambling. He came to speak to me on the 
 subject, to-night ; but I had told him just before you entered 
 the room, never to come to me again, for that I had done with 
 the thing for ever. 
 
 " ' And now, Sir, let me tell you what have been the ways of
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 89 
 
 our set. We were all of us sober men, men of good character, 
 industrious, and well respected, but given up secretly to this 
 betting and gambling. And it was on the Lord's-day that we 
 made our plans and settled our books. We used to go quietly 
 one by one, from our own houses, taking a round by some of the 
 back streets of the town, to our place of meeting at the river 
 side, and there take a boat and go up the Dee for a few miles ; 
 and then when we were out of sight and hearing we settled our 
 business. You would scarcely believe, if I were to tell you, the 
 large sums that we have lost and won from our calculations and 
 our bets on the various races throughout the country. We made 
 it a matter of downright business, and carried on the work with 
 the same coolness and steadiness that we gave to our regular 
 calling. Oftentimes I have trembled to think of the risks I have 
 run, and the difficulties in which I have been entangled, and 
 the sums that were at stake, and the ruin that stared me in the 
 face. 
 
 " ' The wonder has been, how I have been able to bring my 
 mother my weekly pay, and to deceive her and poor Mary as I 
 have all along done ; but it is the secret deceit of the whole 
 that has cut me to the heart ; and as I lay and thought of it to- 
 night, it took me in such a way, that I think I have gone through 
 all the pains, and all the dreadful weakness and faintness of a 
 dying hour. Ill as I am, Sir, it was not my illness that reduced 
 me to the state you saw : it was this, and only this the horror 
 that came over me, and the shame, when I thought how I had 
 taken you all in ; and, Sir, I have never been in earnest though 
 I am all but a dying man notwithstanding all the pains you took 
 with me, and all the kindness you showed me till now. I have 
 never cared, really cared, for my soul, never loved my blessed 
 Saviour. How could I, Sir, keeping back my sin, and hiding 
 my secret in my heart as I have done ? But I am glad that I have 
 told you ; and that I have been open and plain-spoken at last. 
 Ah ! Sir, perhaps you never knew till to-night what a curse 
 these races have been to many a respectable man like myself, in 
 a secret way. Only let me beg that what I have told to you, you 
 will not let my poor mother and sister know ; for I cannot bear 
 to think of the grief which they would feel.' 
 
 " I said but little to him that night. There was now no cause 
 to impress upon him the greatness of the sin, of which he was
 
 90 THE CHARACTER AND CHIEF CAUSES 
 
 so deeply conscious. But in the little that I did say, I gravely 
 assured him how fully I concurred with the view he took of his 
 sin, how thoroughly I agreed with him in the abhorrence he felt 
 at the course of continued deceit which he had pursued ; and 
 kneeling down heside him, we poured forth together our solemn 
 and humhle prayer to Him who alone had the power and the 
 will to forgive him, in that prevailing name by which only the 
 guilty sinner can hope to find pardon and acceptance with an 
 offended and heart-searching God. 
 
 " When I went to him on the following day, his sister begged 
 to speak to me before I went up to his chamber. Charles had 
 told her and his mother everything. On quietly thinking the 
 matter over, he had judged it right to do so ; and though they 
 had not said a word in excuse of his sin, he had met with 
 nothing but tender affection from those two loving hearts. I 
 found him much better the burden which from the beginning 
 of his illness had oppressed his spirit had been removed, and he 
 had been enabled, not only to confide it to his earthly friends 
 he had laid the whole weight on that gracious Saviour who has 
 borne our own sins in his own body upon the tree, and who is 
 as willing as he is able to receive the returning and repentant 
 sinner. He was enabled to rejoice in that great assurance, that 
 ' if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our 
 sins.' He was strengthened in spirit, for he was now rejoicing 
 in hope ; and his bodily health, though he was unable to quit 
 his chamber or his bed, had apparently improved. The short 
 interval thus graciously granted to him, proved a season of great 
 blessedness. There could be no doubt that the Lord had put 
 away his sin, and had accepted him; and when his strength 
 once more failed him, and his redeemed spirit departed, it 
 seemed to all around him as if the Lord had said unto him, 
 ' Go in peace.' 
 
 " I am well aware that the worldly reader may say that, after 
 all, his sin was not a flagrant one. But those who have been 
 brought to know, that the dealings of God are with the heart, 
 will take the same view as poor Charles did of the course of 
 conduct which he had pursued, and will see in the peculiar 
 tenderness of his conscience, and the anguish of mind which 
 he suffered, a proof that he had at last entered into a true con- 
 ception of the character of God and the evil of sin. All however
 
 OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 91 
 
 must see from his case how fatal a snare those races had proved 
 to him." Facts in a Clergyman s Life. 
 
 I pass over for the present the subject of gam- 
 bling in general. 
 
 "Alea, scylla vorax, species certissima furti ; 
 Non contenta bonis, animum quoque perfida mergit ; 
 Fceda, furax, infamis, iners, furiosa ruina." 
 
 This destructive habit is, I fear, not on the de- 
 crease. The higher classes, improved in this respect 
 since the early days of George IV., must go farther 
 if they would suppress crime, and discountenance 
 wholly by their example a vice so ruinous to the 
 morals of a people. 
 
 In the foregoing remarks I have referred to what 
 I conceive to be the chief causes of crime in this 
 country; others might be mentioned, did space 
 permit, as the infidel and licentious literature of 
 the day, Sabbath desecration by pleasure traffic, &c. 
 In Ireland, where the proportion of serious crime is 
 still frightfully high, there are sufficient additional 
 causes to which to trace that excess. Happily, as 
 we believe, they are in process of removal. Edu- 
 cation is making resistless advances on the 
 ignorance and superstition of the people ; and 
 above all former years' experience, the Word of 
 God has access to the people to teach them what 
 true religion is, and to dispense the blessings of 
 liberty, order, obedience to the law, and industry 
 around. 
 
 The crimes of Ireland indicate a country emerging
 
 92 THE CHARACTER OF CRIME IN ENGLAND. 
 
 from barbarism, or relapsing into that state. De- 
 fiance of law violence and rapine treachery and 
 assassination, are the main features of the dark pic- 
 ture. As Popery declines in Ireland, so will her 
 crimes. Directly or otherwise, these, for the greater 
 part, are the fruits of a system of religion which, 
 preferring darkness to light, and the abject servi- 
 tude of its votaries, to their advancement in the 
 scale of civilization, thwarts or opposes the law, 
 maligns the magistracy and government, and endea- 
 vours to keep from her shores those who would 
 develop the riches of the country, and employ its 
 people.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF CEIME BY IMPKISONMENT. 
 
 " The criminal legislation and the penal institutions of a coun- 
 try involve questions of great extent ; they enter into the 
 moral life of the state, and form essential conditions for its 
 order and peace. They belong as well to the jurisdiction 
 of religion, as to those of justice and politics." Oscar, King 
 of Siceden. 
 
 PUNISHMENT for crime should be exactly what 
 the law imposes, and nothing more. An imprison- 
 ment which inflicts upon the condemned bodily, 
 mental, or moral injuries, beyond what is unavoid- 
 able, from the nature of all punishment and the 
 lapse of time involved in the sentence, is unjust 
 and cruel. 
 
 Let prisons, as they were, be viewed in this light. 
 
 The state of the prisons of England, when the 
 illustrious Howard began his work of inspection, 
 was wholly in contravention of this principle, and 
 in the highest degree disgraceful to the nation. 
 Constructed without regard to any of those con- 
 ditions now deemed so essential, I will not say to 
 the comfort of the unhappy prisoner, but to his very 
 existence, they were farmed out to individuals 
 willing to take charge of the inmates at the allow-
 
 94 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 ance of 3d. or 4d. per day for each ; the profit from 
 which, with fees made compulsory on the prisoners 
 when discharged, constituted the keeper's salary. 
 The debtor, the prisoner discharged by the expiring 
 of his term of sentence, by acquittal, or pardon from 
 the crown, had alike to pay those fees, or to lan- 
 guish in confinement. 
 
 It requires no reasoning to show the consequence 
 of a system so thoroughly vicious as this, carried 
 out by persons willing to trade in the sufferings of 
 their fellow-men. A committal to prison was in fact 
 equivalent, in many cases, to a sentence of death by 
 some frightful disease ; and in all, to suffering by 
 the utmost extremes of hunger and cold. One 
 disease, generated by the want of proper ventilation, 
 warmth, cleanliness, and food, became known as the 
 gaol fever. It swept away hundreds every year, and 
 sent out others on their liberation miserably en- 
 feebled. So rife was this disorder, that prisoners 
 arraigned in the dock brought with them on one 
 occasion such a pestilential halo, as caused many in 
 the court-house to sicken and die. 
 
 If such was the care shown for the bodily condi- 
 tion of prisoners, one may conceive how little con- 
 cern was felt for their souls, or their morals. 
 
 In some gaols men and women were together in 
 the day-room ; in all, idleness, obscenity, and blas- 
 phemy reigned undisturbed. The keeper cared for 
 none of these things. His highest duty was to keep 
 his prisoners safe ; and his highest aspiration, the 
 fees squeezed out of their miserable relatives.
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 95 
 
 The picture as regards debtors, who had of course 
 greater liberty and in general more money, is still 
 more revolting. The following account of the Fleet 
 Prison (now happily razed to the ground) may 
 serve as an instance : " This ill-regulated prison," 
 observes Dr. Aikin, Howard's first biographer, 
 " presented, indeed, every possible temptation to 
 dishonesty, riot, and dissipation. There were the 
 billiard-room, the fives and the tennis court, the 
 skittle-ground for the gambler to continue the 
 baneful practice which had brought him here, and 
 to qualify him for leaving as a finished sharper 
 the place of confinement. Wine clubs and beer 
 clubs, each lasting till one or two o'clock in the 
 morning, contributed, too, their ready and powerful 
 aid to drown every feeling of regret for the past, 
 every purpose of amendment for the future. To 
 crown the scene of iniquity, there had been printed, 
 in the very year in which Howard first visited 
 this prison, a code of laws enacted by the 
 Master's side debtors for the internal economy of 
 its various parts, some of which were immoral on 
 the very face of them ; such, for instance, was that 
 which required from every new-comer, upon the 
 first Sunday of his matriculation, in addition to 
 two shillings to be spent in wine, one shilling 
 and sixpence to be appropriated to the use of the 
 house." 
 
 Things are happily now changed, and almost the 
 worst prison in the country in our day is better 
 than the very best when the philanthropist probed
 
 96 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 and laid bare to public observation such flagrant 
 abuses. In many prisons, however, the improve- 
 ment as yet has been chiefly in the physical treat- 
 ment of prisoners. 
 
 The prisons of England may be classed under 
 three heads : prisons on the old system of associa- 
 tion, as Newgate, Horsemonger-lane Gaol, &c. ; 
 prisons on the silent associated system, as Coldbath- 
 fields and Westminster Houses of Correction ; and 
 prisons on the separate system, as Pentonville and 
 Reading Prisons, the Middlesex House of Deten- 
 tion, &c. 
 
 There have been of late years, in the first kind of 
 prisons, attempts made at classification. The mis- 
 demeanants and the felons are, as far as can be, 
 kept apart. Such classification is of little value. 
 Legal distinctions of crime form an imperfect 
 criterion of moral character. Convicted murderers 
 also, if possible, are kept separate ; but the receiving 
 yard takes in all the untried, the old and the 
 young, the confirmed villain and the novice in 
 crime, the thoughtless youth who has fallen into the 
 guilt or suspicion only of one solitary offence, as well 
 as the most hardened and brutal wretch. 
 
 It is not possible to convey to the mind of the 
 reader any adequate idea of the corruption in moral 
 feeling, and the completeness of education in crime, 
 which go on in the common gaols of the country, 
 especially before trial, when the legal presumption 
 of innocence prevents the application of discipline. 
 
 A boy commits a trespass steals some fruit
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 97 
 
 runs away from his master, or does some mischief ; 
 he is committed to prison forms acquaintances 
 learns generally some art in thieving, and gets the 
 impression that the life of a thief is better than that 
 of the honest, hard-working labourer, and, to the 
 clever and successful, one of distinction ; he comes 
 out of prison in a few weeks with his instructors, 
 or, at least, new acquaintances they invite him to 
 their haunts and amusements he is seen in their 
 company, and suspected finds a difficulty in getting 
 back to the factory, or farm, or shop, if inclined to 
 make the effort, and often has no home to go to 
 he commences the tour of the vagrant, or the trade 
 of the pilferer, or, in fact, both. 
 
 The scenes which take place in gaols of this 
 description, especially at night, when fourteen or 
 more are locked up together in one room, without 
 inspection, and with such light only as the moon 
 and stars furnish through the grated windows, baffle 
 all description. Gambling with stealthily fabricated 
 dice or cards for the next day's food, fighting, singing 
 vile songs, reciting tales of villany and debauchery, 
 teaching or concocting crimes, with the most virulent 
 oppression of the few who may be better disposed, 
 are the common features of the horrid scene. If 
 there be men who have a turn for the drama, plays 
 are acted, and the most solemn scenes of the court 
 of justice are the popular subjects. The most guilty 
 criminal is the one most looked up to. 
 
 The day-room or night-room in a prison of this 
 kind is a school of thievery and every vice, and a 
 
 H
 
 98 THE PUNISHMENT OF CHIME 
 
 place of torture to whatever right feeling may still 
 linger in the breasts of unhappy persons who have 
 fallen from better things. Nothing can be advanced 
 for the continuance of such places save the expense 
 of substituting better, and this truly must be a very 
 short-sighted economy. 
 
 Persons unacquainted with the deep and practised 
 cunning of professed thieves may well ask, How is 
 it possible that scenes should take place of the kind 
 referred to, in any prison ? The following extracts, 
 from accounts given by prisoners, will answer such 
 questions : 
 
 " You may inquire (says one to me) how gambling can go on 
 in prisons, when, on admission, all are deprived of their money, 
 &c. There is no difficulty in the case of the untried ; and, through 
 them, the other classes can work in one way or another. The 
 untried may write as often as they please to their friends; and, 
 for this purpose, can receive as much paper as their friends may 
 send them, together with postage stamps. The stamps, of 
 course, would pass as money in their gambling transactions. 
 The winner would pass them out to his friends, under pretence 
 that, if removed to some other prison, they might he of no use ; 
 the losers would get more from their friends, and thus the prac- 
 tice went on." 
 
 " The way we used to pass our time away (says another pri- 
 soner) was, some one would repeat over the robberies he had 
 committed, and how he did them, and when he failed. I know I 
 was wicked enough myself; but I heard more in that time than 
 in all the years I had lived. At other times, we would play at 
 draughts. They made the form of a frame on the table one 
 took the iron heel off his shoes, and made it sharp on the hearth; 
 then some of us cut pieces of the upper leather from our shoes, 
 and made the draughts. Some would play for so many spoonfuls 
 of their gruel, others for their dinner, and so on. I saw two 
 fights there, after we were locked up, from the parties that lost
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 99 
 
 refusing to pay the winner, and eating up the food when it 
 came." 
 
 " I was now (says another) with such a desperate host of vaga- 
 bonds as no person can imagine, who has not been in the same 
 unhappy circumstances. There was nothing to be heard but 
 blaspheming, cursing, and vowing vengeance on policemen and 
 others who were the means of bringing them to prison, in short, 
 it was a hell upon earth. After a little while, I discovered my 
 pocket turned inside out, and my bread gone. The discovery 
 caused a laugh, and much amusement on all sides. The account 
 which a young man gave me of what kind of a night I was likely 
 to pass, quite alarmed me ; so I determined to see the Governor, 
 and importune to be removed to some other part. The Deputy- 
 Governor did so immediately, to the best ward in the prison." 
 In this place, however, occurred the following affecting circum- 
 stance, as related by the same man : " The clock of St. Paul's 
 having announced the time for retiring to sleep, every one made 
 preparation for doing so, and most were soon stretched out at 
 full length ; but I noticed two men who did not seem anxious 
 to retire like the rest, for they remained sitting at the table- 
 When all seemed quiet, however, they prepared to da so likewise; 
 but, before this, one knelt down to say his prayers, and then the 
 other but some wretch threw a bundle of somewhat at them, 
 which alighted on the head of one of the men." 
 
 " In the assize-yard (writes a prisoner) there was a considerable 
 number of what are called first offenders, nine or ten, including 
 myself, the remainder forming an overwhelming majority ; two 
 of them murderers, both of whom were subsequently condemned to 
 death. I cannot reflect without pain on the reckless conduct of 
 these two unhappy men during the few weeks I was with them 
 As regarded themselves, they appeared indifferent to the pro- 
 bable result of their coming trial. They even went so far as to 
 have a mock trial in the day-room, when, one of the prisoners 
 sitting as judge, some others acting as witnesses, and others as 
 counsel, all the proceedings of the court of justice were gone 
 through, the sentence pronounced, and mockingly carried into 
 execution. I shall not soon forget that day, when one of these 
 murderers was placed in the cell amongst us, beneath the assize- 
 court, a few moments after the doom of death had been passed 
 upon him. Prisoners on these occasions eagerly inquire, 'What 
 
 H2
 
 100 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 is the sentence ?' Coolly pointing the forefinger of his right 
 hand to his neck, he said, ' I am to hang ! ' he then hroke into a 
 fit of cursing the judge, and mimicked the manner in which he 
 had delivered the sentence. The length of his trial was then 
 discussed : all the circumstances that had been elicited during 
 its progress were detailed and dwelt upon, the crowded state of 
 the court, the eagerness of the individuals present to get a sight 
 of him, the grand speech of his counsel, all were elements that 
 seemed to have greatly gratified his vanity, and to have drugged 
 him into a forgetfulness of the bitterness of his doom. He then 
 dwelt upon the speech he should make on the scaffold, was sure 
 there would be an immense concourse of people at his execution, 
 as it was a holiday week ; and from these, and numerous other 
 considerations, drew nourishment to that vanity and love of dis- 
 tinction which had, in no small degree, determined, perhaps, the 
 commission of his crime. To minds in the depths of ignorance, 
 and already contaminated by vicious and criminal courses of life, 
 such a man becomes an object of admiration. They obtain from 
 him some slight memorial such as a lock of his hair, or some 
 small part of his dress, which they cherish with a sentiment for 
 which veneration is the most appropriate term; while the noto- 
 riety he has obtained may incite them to the perpetration of some 
 act equally atrocious. 
 
 " Remand-wards are hotbeds of crime. During my stay in 
 the remand-wards myself, fifteen or sixteen boys, varying in age 
 from eight to fifteen years, passed through the remand-ward of 
 that prison. Throughout the whole day, these boys were asso- 
 ciated with men who had been in nearly every prison in London. 
 The offences for which these boys were arrested were in all cases 
 of a comparatively light nature ; and what appeared to me to 
 aggravate the evils induced by this vicious system was, that two 
 thirds of these boys, when brought up for examination a second 
 time, were acquitted. Here, then, we see a number of boys 
 condemned to association for four or five days with those whose 
 whole lives have been spent in a course of crime ; here they listen 
 to their relations of feats, the cleverness of which they can 
 readily perceive, whilst their minds are not sufficiently culti- 
 vated to feel the immorality; nay, they are even trained in 
 such places to that manual dexterity which characterises an 
 accomplished thief.
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 101 
 
 " A very young boy, seven years of age, was brought in a few 
 hours after me, charged, in company with other two boys, some- 
 what older, with stealing some iron piping from the street. The 
 little fellow it was the first time he had ever been in such a 
 place cried bitterly all the afternoon of the Saturday, but by 
 the Monday morning the exhortations of his companions, and 
 their sneers at his softness, had reconciled him to his situation, 
 and the eldest of the three was teaching him to pick pockets, 
 practising his skill on almost all the other prisoners. His 
 mother came to see him in the forenoon, and the boy was 
 again overwhelmed with grief. Again his companions jeered 
 him, called him by certain opprobrious epithets in use amongst 
 such characters, and in a short time the boy was pacified, and 
 romping merrily with his associates." 
 
 Another prisoner writes as follows : 
 
 " In the month of January, 1844, I "was committed to the 
 
 Gaol, in company with ten others, charged with 
 
 various crimes, but the greater part theft. Of the women who 
 formed a part, one had been discharged from the House of 
 Correction only three days before ; but having met some of 
 her companions, who were waiting at the prison gate for her 
 release, went to the nearest public-house, and became the worse 
 for liquor, and forthwith went and stole a large roll of cloth. 
 She was not the least disconcerted at her situation, and consoled 
 herself with the idea of being able at no very distant period to 
 see her father and mother, both of -whom had been transpoi'ted 
 five years previous. The remaining portion of this precious 
 cargo, men and women, amused themselves with singing obscene 
 songs, &c. The persons who drove the van indulged them by 
 stopping at every public-house on the road. After reaching the 
 gaol, and being freed from our fetters, we were ushered into 
 what is called by the prisoners the ' pen,' a kind of dungeon, 
 from which we were taken one at a time to be searched and 
 described. I was conducted into the felons' yard, being first 
 furnished with a quart wooden pail, bound with rusty iron 
 hoops, and also a wooden spoon. The yard was about twenty 
 yards square, and on one side I perceived the hall, which was 
 crowded with prisoners. I was ashamed for a long time to join 
 them, and continued to walk the yard with my wooden pail and
 
 102 THE PUNISHMENT OP CRIME 
 
 spoon I was reflecting on the uncertainty of human 
 
 affairs, I, who was only a few days previous pursuing my 
 business in seeming security, enjoying the affection of my wife 
 and children, was now thrust into a den of thieves. I was not 
 allowed to proceed further with this train of thought, for the 
 turnkey coming towards me, requested me to come into the hall, 
 at the same time taking my small hundle of shirts, &c., which I 
 had under my arm. He led the way and I followed. After we 
 were in the hall, he said, ' I had better put your things in my 
 closet, or some of these gentlemen may fancy a shirt or a pair of 
 drawers.' This being done, he requested that they would turn 
 out in the yard, and allow the new men to smell the fire, a 
 command which was instantly obeyed. I had now an oppor- 
 tunity of warming myself, and the turnkey had now a proper 
 time to ask me the nature of my offence, of which he was anxious 
 to know. I told him as briefly as possible. He did not seem 
 satisfied with my statement, but as the bell had rung for prayers, 
 he was prevented from putting farther questions. 
 
 " The prayers being over, to the apparent satisfaction of all, 
 preparations were made for the supper. At this time it was 
 impossible to distinguish any voice in particular ; all was con- 
 fusion. The noise occasioned by so many wooden pails and 
 spoons (with some of the prisoners who were bartering their 
 supper before they had received it, for a cotton handkerchief or 
 a bit of tobacco) is beyond description. A second bell now rang 
 for the prisoners to assemble in the yard to receive their supper, 
 which consisted of one pint of gruel and half a pound of bread. 
 I received mine with the rest, but I could not eat it. The 
 suppers soon disappeared, after which the prisoners repaired in 
 groups to the pump situated at one side of the yard, to wash 
 their spoons and pails. When this operation was completed, 
 the bell rang to prepare for bed. Accordingly, all the prisoners 
 had to form a line along one side of the yard, that their names 
 might be called over. During this time, I was wondering 
 where the sleeping apartments were situated. However, by this 
 time the foremost of the line had entered a small door, and I 
 soon found myself ascending a flight of stone steps. We were 
 ordered to halt on reaching the second story of the prison, 
 which being done, a large iron door was opened, through which 
 we entered. When we arrived at the iron door, our line had
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 103 
 
 been cut into parties of eight men. My group halted at 37 cell; 
 the door was opened, and we entered. On the door being 
 secured, I found myself in the company of seven indescribables. 
 They began by telling me that the night previous they were 
 singing, and being heard, the head turnkey came into their cell, 
 and ordered them into the passage, giving them only their 
 mattresses, and no covering whatever ; and as they could not 
 get any sleep themselves, they were determined the other 
 prisoners should have none ; therefore they ran whooping in the 
 passage the whole night. The bedsteads were of iron, each 
 fastened to the wall with a large chain. I threw myself on the 
 one I chanced to select, without undressing, and for a moment 
 could scarcely believe the scene reality. I, who had always the 
 greatest abhorrence of a thief, was now in the company of seven, 
 
 and in prison They had every one been 
 
 previously convicted. One of them, committed for horse- 
 stealing, had been, as he stated, tried twenty-four times. ' The 
 next,' said he, ' will make twenty-five,' and singing at the same 
 time a line from Rory O'More, 'There 's luck in odd numbers.' 
 ' Yet,' added he, ' I would rather have left off with two twelves.' 
 
 They now began singing. They continued to 
 
 sing until about eleven o'clock, when they one by one dropped 
 to sleep. At a quarter to eight the cell door opened, and a gruff, 
 hoarse voice ordered the windows to be thrown open, which 
 being done, we entered the passage, and put on our boots, &c., 
 and descended into the yard. The turnkey was waiting in the 
 hall to receive us, and gave the order for the prisoners to wash, 
 and straight their hair. This being done, he called me into his 
 closet, and told me that I could wait until all the prisoners were 
 washed, and he would then allow me to wipe on his towel, stating 
 that there were only four towels for the whole of the prisoners. I 
 thanked him for his kindness. He now persuaded me to keep 
 myself, adding, that he had ascertained the nature of my crime, 
 and was glad to find they had not got me right, and for little 
 things I wanted he was my humble servant ; ' and as to letters, 
 that could also be made square.' The prisoners were now all 
 washed, and he gave me his towel, and told me to leave my coat 
 on the hall table. I washed, and proceeded to my coat for my 
 pocket-comb. But what was my astonishment when I found 
 that all the pockets had been emptied !
 
 104 THE PUNISHMENT 01 CRIME 
 
 " The bell now rang for breakfast I fell in with the rest, but 
 did not take my allowance of gruel and bread. I stated to the 
 head turnkey, who served out the gruel, that I should maintain 
 myself. He stated that the prison diet was good enough for any 
 man. After all the prisoners were seated at their breakfast, my 
 homme a la provision, the turnkey, signified that we had better 
 prepare a ticket for the day's provision. Breakfast was now over, 
 and I was waiting to see how they employed their time between 
 meals. I observed a few Bibles and books on the shelves, with 
 some slates ; but, on a closer inspection, I found, from the dust 
 that was accumulated upon them, that they had not been 
 removed for sometime. The hall was so crowded with prisoners 
 that all could not be seated at one time. The turnkey offered 
 me his stool, which was close to the fire, which I gladly ac- 
 cepted. One of the prisoners now began to tell a story, which, 
 when he had finished, was loudly praised, and he was at liberty 
 to call on another prisoner for a second story. If the prisoner 
 so called upon can tell a story, and will not, from disinclination, 
 that prisoner must forfeit two potatoes out of his allowance at 
 the dinner to the prisoner who told the last story. A thief is 
 not considered accomplished unless he can tell a new story 
 almost every day ; therefore they take great pains to learn from 
 each other, or make an exchange of stories, each repeating bit 
 by bit until he has the whole story perfect. After spending 
 about two hours in this profitable manner, they were ordered 
 into the yard to walk ; the turnkey told me I was exempt. 
 When the hall was clear, he took another opportunity of telling 
 me of his readiness to serve me. I perceived his meaning, and 
 told him that, whether I wanted his assistance or not, I would 
 recompense him. This was what he was waiting to hear. The 
 hour for walking being expired, the prisoners returned to the 
 hall, and announced to the turnkey that the van for the convey- 
 ance of prisoners was just arrived, and that 'eight suits of county 
 were gone through the trap;' and now bets were offered as to 
 who was among the number of the prisoners arrived in the van. 
 So passed the time till the dinner-bell. After the prisoners had 
 entered the hall, all those from the town laid their dinners on 
 the shelves, in case that a companion might have arrived. About 
 half-past one, six men entered, who were instantly recognised 
 by their companions, and the dinners divided. Presently the
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 105 
 
 county men made their appearance, but not one offered them 
 anything to eat. These men, as well as the others, had all been 
 in the prison before, and consequently knew that they would not 
 get anything to eat until the supper time. In the evening, on 
 the names being called over, one of the county men was placed 
 next to me. This change did not seem to please; they told the 
 county man that if he had sense enough to have kept out of gaol, 
 they should not have lost their companion. This met with no 
 reply from the county man. One of them asked him how many 
 horse-beans he stole. But they could draw no answer from him. 
 After a short time, the county man began to ask me a few ques- 
 tions, and to tell me the nature of his offence. It appeared that 
 he had borrowed a spade from the constable of the parish where 
 he was living, to complete a job of work that he had undertaken, 
 having broken his own previously. His work was three miles 
 from his parish, and it was his custom to leave the spade with his 
 work, and not to carry it to and fro every morning and evening. 
 The evening prior to his being given into custody, he had returned 
 as usual from his labour, and was partaking of his supper, which 
 his good wife had prepared for him, when his neighbour the con- 
 stable entered his cottage and demanded his spade, stating he 
 wanted to use it that evening, and must have it. The borrower 
 told him that he had left it with his work, but that he would 
 return it him the first thing in the morning. But this would not 
 do for the constable, who said he had sold it ; and the next 
 morning his neighbour took him to a magistrate, a few miles 
 from the parish, who committed him to prison. The other pri- 
 soners were too busy planning future operations to interrupt us 
 in our discourse. This story did not strike me as being true, 
 though it proved afterwards to be quite correct. After a little 
 more conversation he fell asleep. I pitied the man's case. The 
 other prisoners were now snoring, and I was left to my own 
 reflections. I repeated aloud several passages from Young's 
 ' Night Thoughts,' also a prayer for my dear wife and children. 
 I slept soundly, not waking until seven o'clock in the morning, 
 and felt much refreshed. I seemed to have laid all my care on 
 Him who careth for us all. At nine o'clock I received a quantity 
 of letters one from my beloved wife, the remainder from Liver- 
 pool. I wrote a letter for the honest county man, and answered 
 my dear wife's. Nothing particular occurred throughout the
 
 106 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 day, the prisoners telling stories, and laying plans for future 
 operation, even beyond transportation. In the evening I was 
 shifted, and put into a cell with some Manchester pickpockets. 
 One only could write, and I was engaged to write for the whole 
 next day. Day after day did I pass in this way. The Governor 
 sent for me one day, to say that he felt obliged for my writing 
 the prisoners' letters, as he had less difficulty in reading them. 
 He ventured, at the same time, to say a little respecting my 
 case. He thought I had nothing to fear. I was now in the 
 confidence of all the prisoners ; every plan and every trouble 
 were communicated to me. About this time, it was drawing 
 near the sessions, and a more than usual quantity of letters were 
 being written ; and now I had to be taught the art of secret 
 writing, on the plan adopted by thieves when writing to each other 
 on important business. I venture to say that the receipt is not 
 to be found in all the books extant ; and the following is the 
 
 method I had my doubts as to the efficacy of this 
 
 ingenious gaol method, until I was convinced by seeing a 
 prisoner perform the operation on a letter which he had received 
 
 from a companion in Gaol. The thieves keep this 
 
 method a profound secret, as it is of especial service to them. 
 I still continued to sleep with the Manchester heroes, nor was 
 the county man shifted ; but I was astonished to hear, from his 
 sleeping companions, that he had agreed with them to rob his 
 parish church. He knew, they stated, where the church plate 
 
 was kept. They stated it would be a good thing, as Lord , 
 
 on whose estate the church stood, had presented 150 to the 
 vicar, for a new service of sacramental plate; 'and then,' 
 continued they, ' there is the old besides.' "When this was told 
 me, I could scarcely credit it ; but on asking the man himself, I 
 found it quite correct. They had talked him into an attempt to 
 rob the church. They had represented to him that his character 
 was now gone, through coming to prison, and, whether acquitted 
 or not, he would always be looked upon as a thief; and there- 
 fore it was as well for him to do something, and deserve it. The 
 next market-day his bail released him. A Scotchman had, with 
 the rest, admitted me into his confidence. He was holding the 
 office of barber to the prisoners no prisoner being allowed to 
 shave himself. At this custom, a few desperadoes in the hall 
 would remark that, if they could be prevented from cutting the
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 107 
 
 throats of others, there was no fear of them cutting their own. 
 My Scotchman was a returned convict, and was committed for 
 stealing a piece of beef-suet from a butcher's shop. He was 
 passing himself off as a sailor, which he did remarkably well. 
 He was also dressed in sailor's attire. He pleaded guilty to 
 having taken the suet, alleging to the committing magistrates 
 that he was drunk at the time, and had been in that state ever 
 since he was discharged from his ship ; and so well did he 
 manage his matters, that not only the magistrates and the 
 Governor believed him, but all the prisoners in the yard. He 
 was called Sailor Jack. He had not told this secret to any one 
 but myself, stating that he had had too much experience with 
 thieves, to trust them with secrets. The magistrates had 
 promised to speak for him at the assizes, so that his punishment 
 should be slight. He was intimately acquainted with every 
 settlement in Australia, and also with most of the notorious 
 convicts that had, in the preceding few years, been sent out. 
 He had also visited the Bermudas. He knew every street, 
 court, and alley in Sydney, and likewise all the convicts who 
 were keeping spirit-shops. Our numbers were now much in- 
 creased ; and those prisoners (chiefly boys) who were committed 
 for the sessions were removed into an adjoining yard. These 
 boys were desperate and daring thieves. One was stated to be 
 seven years of age, and so small, that, as the thieves of a larger 
 growth would sometimes say, 'he might be put through a key- 
 hole.' He had all the notions of a man, and prided himself in 
 being called, by those who knew him, ' The Pocket-pistol.' His 
 answers to questions that I would sometimes put to him were 
 really astonishing. I had much reason to believe that he was 
 at least ten years of age. He made several attempts to chew 
 tobacco, but it was too much for him. ' How,' said I, ' did you 
 spend your money?' 'Why,' said he, 'the greatest part was 
 spent at the theatre and the " Blue Pig " ' (a public-house 
 situated in a court frequented by male and female thieves of the 
 prisoner's own age). I would here add, that from conversations 
 I have had with prisoners of this description, they endeavour as 
 much as possible to imitate whatever character, in the shape of a 
 thief, they may have seen represented in the theatres ; and if 
 ever they purchase a book, it is certain to be the life of some 
 notorious robber. The name of a dead robber of note is venerated
 
 108 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 by a true thief. I have heard them dwell hours on a tale that 
 might have been related in five minutes. Tiie propensity for 
 thieving is so great in some, that they have declared to me, they 
 would rather steal a thing than have it given them. In this 
 state, I really believe it to be a disease of the mind, and totally 
 incurable. A thief, a native of Manchester, told me that he has 
 walked a mile, on some occasions, to a railway station, for the 
 purpose of feasting his eyes on the passengers' trunks and 
 boxes : though he well knew an attempt to steal would be fruit- 
 less. I had seen, in the turnkey's closet, some Voyages and 
 Travels in Persia, Palestine, and Arabia ; and I hit upon the 
 expedient of trying the effect of the Arab character upon them. 
 I now began to read the manners and customs of the Arabs. 
 This delighted them ; and numerous were the applications made as 
 to the distance between Australia and Arabia. I had no peace until 
 I had completed the Arab tales." 
 
 Thus, as the Bishop of London, in a sermon for 
 the Society for the Improvement of Prison Dis- 
 pline, wrote in 1828, 
 
 " The prison, instead of a school of discipline and 
 reform, may become the lazar-house of a moral pes- 
 tilence, in which those who are dying of the plague 
 and those who are only suspected of infection are 
 crowded together in one promiscuous mass of disease 
 and death. In this case, it is clear that the offender 
 is treated with injustice and cruelty. The punish- 
 ment which was justly decreed against him is aggra- 
 vated by unauthorised circumstances of horror 
 circumstances which inflict an undesigned but irre- 
 parable injury upon his soul, without adding in 
 any degree to the awfulness and exeinplarity of his 
 punishment. Upon the treatment which a youthful 
 delinquent receives when detected in his first offence, 
 depends, in all probability, his character and conduct
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 109 
 
 for the remainder of his life, and his prospects in 
 eternity. To consign him, when only suspected (and 
 therefore presumed by the law to he innocent), or 
 even when convicted of a slight offence, to a com- 
 mon punishment and an indiscriminate intercourse 
 with the most hardened and abandoned criminals, 
 is to force him into moral contagion, and, probably, 
 upon spiritual destruction." 
 
 The Silent Associated System. 
 
 It was a great step towards real improvement, to 
 prevent communication amongst associated criminals 
 by what is called the silent system. A stop is put by 
 this method at once to all open blasphemy, profane- 
 ness, riot, and obscenity ; but this discipline clearly 
 fails in some essential particulars, if reformation of 
 morals, as well as correction of the offender, be 
 attempted. 
 
 It keeps alive old associations by perpetual exer- 
 cise. On every side the individual is surrounded by 
 persons of the same stamp. If long in the trade of 
 thieving, he knows a great number. If only for the 
 first time committed, he has made some acquaint- 
 ances, if not in the streets, in the remand-prisons. 
 He now recognises them. He is recognised in turn. 
 Every sessions and assize bring him news in some 
 new comer ; and the winking of the eye, the move- 
 ment of the finger, a sneeze, or a cough, is enough 
 to communicate what is desired. The length of 
 sentences is discussed in this way by a great nuin-
 
 110 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 ber, and in the mind by all. Prisoners come in and 
 leave at different times ; so that every week, almost 
 every day, in a large prison, tells some tale. 
 
 Classification of prisoners according to the tech- 
 nicality of legal distinctions allows no approach, 
 seemingly, towards separating the very bad from 
 the better sort. They are continually changing 
 places, those in for felony in one sessions being in 
 for larceny or assault the next, and vice versd. 
 
 If the classification were left to able and expe- 
 rienced governors it would perhaps be better; but 
 no classification could prevent the evils referred to. 
 They are essential to the system. As things are, it 
 is a most distressing sight to see a child of nine or 
 ten years old sitting by the side of a man grown 
 grey-headed in wickedness ; a novice in crime next 
 to a receiver of stolen goods, who will meet him in 
 the streets in a week or two, and urge him on to 
 crimes of which he himself may reap the profit ; a 
 modest woman, perhaps, committed for some petty 
 theft, by the side of a shameless and abandoned 
 person, or a foul betrayer of her own sex. 
 
 It does more than keep alive such associations 
 and habits of thought, although these alone, whilst 
 permitted in the mind, can allow no reformation ; 
 for either the sympathies of the man, true to nature, 
 and the feelings of a heart not yet hardened in 
 viciousness, are so drawn out towards his com- 
 panions in suffering that he gradually becomes one 
 of them at last, in disposition and character; or, 
 wrapping himself up in selfishness and sullen pride,
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. Ill 
 
 he hardens his heart against all feeling, and hates 
 officers and fellow-prisoners alike. 
 
 Then the silent system presents so many tempta^ 
 tions to communication, as to render two things 
 inevitable, both unfriendly in the highest degree to 
 real reformation, perpetual surveillance and per* 
 petual punishment. 
 
 If there exist neither of these conditions in a pri- 
 son on that plan, then there must be the corruption 
 which marks the older styles of prisons. If strictly 
 carried out, the prisoner, though he mean to do 
 well, must be in constant fear. But the dread of 
 punishment is no element of real reformation. You 
 may make a man obedient by it, and passive even 
 under oppression, but in doing so you may be de- 
 stroying the only hope of such result. Distrust a 
 prisoner, and he will not trust you; oppress him, 
 he will kick against authority openly, or, retiring 
 within himself, will spend his time in concocting 
 plans for escape, for evasion, for annoyance. Treat 
 him as a fellow-man, though fallen and debased, and 
 there is hope. 
 
 How can a prisoner ever consider himself safe 
 from accusation or from punishment so surrounded 
 and so watched, watched in every movement of his 
 feet, his hands, his lips, his eyes, watched in his 
 sleep, watched in his very dreams ? 
 
 " The posture of stooping in which the prisoners 
 work at picking oakum or cotton (says a prisoner 
 from Lancashire) gives ample opportunities of carry- 
 ing on a lengthened conversation without much
 
 112 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 chance of discovery, so that the rule of silence 
 is a dead letter to many. At meals also, in spite 
 of the strictness with which they are watched, 
 the order is constantly infringed; but the time 
 of exercise affords an almost unlimited power of 
 communicating with each other. The closeness of 
 their position and the noise of their feet render 
 intercommunication a very easy matter. However, 
 all possible precaution is taken to prevent it, but, as 
 I have mentioned, without effect. But it may be 
 questioned (says this same man), whether this way 
 of forcing silence upon the prisoners, who are side 
 by side throughout the day, is not attended with 
 consequences as bad as might be looked for from 
 unrestricted conversation. Does it not (he asks) 
 conduce to the strengthening of deceitful habits, by 
 keeping all on the alert to avoid detection when 
 attempting to communicate with each other ? To be 
 sure, they attend chapel daily; but this may be 
 termed the golden period of the day to most of 
 them, for it is here, by holding their books to their 
 faces, and pretending to read with the chaplain, they 
 can carry on the most uninterrupted conversation." 
 
 The Separate or Cellular System. 
 
 Prom all these defects the discipline of separate 
 confinement is free. Under it the propagation of 
 crime is impossible. The young, the comparatively 
 virtuous, the penitent, are protected. All are 
 punished, and the worst most severely. The con-
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 113 
 
 tinuity of habits is broken off, the mind is driven 
 to reflection, and conscience resumes her seat. The 
 individual whose intentions are good, may begin to 
 cherish those feelings to which we have referred as 
 impossible when associated with the vilest of the 
 vile. It is sufficiently severe as a legal punishment 
 in itself. There is no need of harshness of manner, 
 nor loudness of voice to enforce order, nor occasion 
 for those feelings in officers, which so often find 
 vent in irritating language towards congregated 
 criminals. 
 
 It is interesting here to view the sketch which the 
 sagacious Paley drew by anticipation of this sort of 
 punishment : 
 
 " Of the reforming punishments," he writes, 
 " which have not yet been tried, none promises so 
 much success as that of solitary imprisonment, or 
 the confinement of criminals in separate apartments. 
 This improvement augments the terror of the 
 punishment ; secludes the criminal from the society 
 of his fellow-prisoners, in which society the worse 
 are sure to corrupt the better ; weans him from the 
 knoAvledge of his companions, and from the love of 
 that turbulent, precarious life in which his vices 
 , had engaged him, is calculated to raise up in him 
 reflections on the folly of his choice, and to dispose 
 his mind to such bitter and continued penitence, as 
 may produce a lasting alteration in the principles of 
 his conduct." 
 
 Separate confinement must not be confounded 
 with what is usually called solitary, from which it 
 
 i
 
 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 is distinguished by several particulars, which 
 modify the severity of the punishment, and render 
 more effectual the means to be applied for the refor- 
 mation t)f criminals. 
 
 In separate confinement the solitude is relieved 
 by more frequent intercourse with moral and 
 religious instructors, and by a more liberal use of 
 the means of improvement. The learning and 
 practice also of some sort of manufacture, alleviates 
 the tedium of the imprisonment, and especially 
 when the individual is made to understand that 
 these things are intended for his reformation, and 
 for the re-establishment of his character and pros- 
 pects in after life. Nevertheless, separate confine- 
 ment, with all the favourable circumstances which 
 are found in this National Prison, is felt to be a 
 punishment of more than ordinary severity. The 
 severity of separate confinement consists in its 
 opposition to the laws and impulses of our social 
 nature, and in the pressure which it exercises on the 
 mind. Hence may be derived some of its strongest 
 recommendations as a mode of reformation ; but to 
 the same cause are due many of its difficulties in 
 application, for mental sufferings cannot be mea- 
 sured nor adjusted. 
 
 Criminals are persons who more than others have 
 shaken off all restraint, and indulged in licentious 
 freedom from their youth. They derive countenance 
 and support in a profligate and lawless career, 
 from confederacy with others of a like character ;
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 115 
 
 and with companions in criminality they forget, in 
 continual excitement, all fear and self-reproach. 
 For such persons to be shut in from everything of 
 this kind, is to lose at once their only strength and 
 comfort. Their condition resembles that of the 
 drunkard after a night's debauch, when his frame is 
 subject to a painful depression. Men, before incon- 
 siderate, reckless, and self-willed to an amazing 
 degree, are now driven to reflection, not for a few 
 hours or days, but for months together; while 
 their hitherto dormant or untaught conscience is 
 aroused and enlightened by the Word of God. This, 
 without possibility of escape, constitutes a most 
 severe, but at the same time a most salutary, in- 
 fliction. 
 
 To form a just conception of separate confine- 
 ment as a punishment, we must not limit our view 
 to those persons who feel that they are actually de- 
 riving benefit from education, or other means of 
 improvement, for these have all the support which 
 progress and the prospect of bettering their con- 
 dition in after life supplies to the mind. To some 
 individuals in these circumstances, imprisonment 
 ceases almost for a time to be a punishment, be- 
 coming something eligible until they have acquired 
 enough of the knowledge or skill which they prize 
 for their own purposes. One should look also, and 
 I think more especially, because of the danger to 
 which they are exposed, at the condition of those 
 who, from previous education or acquired habits, 
 
 i 2
 
 116 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 take little or no interest in the occupation provided 
 for the prisoner, and are not deriving from their 
 situation any direct advantage. 
 
 Prom the severity and peculiar character of 
 separate confinement, it is calculated to strike 
 more terror into the minds of the lowest and 
 vilest class of criminals than any other hitherto de- 
 vised, whilst those who have not fallen so low, feel 
 more than compensated for its peculiar pressure, by 
 the protection and privacy which it affords, and 
 most of all the penitent. It will allow, also, from 
 these causes, a diminution of the term of imprison- 
 ment for minor oifences. This meets the objection 
 against its expensiveness ; and what is of greater 
 importance, it will thus prevent much evil, and 
 save whole families often from pauperism and 
 crime. In all cases, the disruption of domestic ties 
 for a lengthened period is most prejudicial in its 
 consequences. The wives of convicts, it is noto- 
 rious, who have but a distant hope of joining their 
 husbands, too often give themselves up to a reckless 
 way of living, and when they become degraded, the 
 children are suffered to grow up in ignorance and 
 vice, to be a charge or a pest to society. 
 
 Separate confinement requires no severity for 
 example's sake, I mean in punishing for prison 
 offences ; and so the peculiar character, disposition, 
 and circumstances of the delinquent, may fully be 
 taken into account in every case. A comparison ' 
 between the punishments in Pentonville Prison on 
 the separate system, and Cold-bath Fields Prison,
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 117 
 
 on the associated silent system, in any year, will 
 illustrate this. 
 
 Thus, in 1847 the number of punishments in 
 Pentonville was 220, the whole number of prison- 
 ers in that year being 701; in Cold-bath Fields, 
 10,807, amongst 8886 prisoners. It is to be noted, 
 also, that of these cases of punishment 25 men and 
 24 women were "in handcuffs or other irons," 
 whereas in Pentonville there was only one case 
 which called for such an infliction. 
 
 Yet I am very far from thinking, that we have 
 attained to the full benefits which the individuality 
 of the separate system holds out for admonition, 
 expostulation, and the use of moral means of cor- 
 rection for the breach of prison regulations. In a 
 prison of this kind, where so many advantages in 
 the way of trade, or education, and books exist, this 
 moral discipline may be carried out most beneficially 
 by the withdrawing for a time such privileges as 
 have been abused, and by advancing in severity, 
 according to the repetition of the offence or its 
 moral turpitude, until the refractory ward be used 
 in its different degrees, terminating in the depri- 
 vation of light and ordinary food, the two last 
 things of which a prisoner should ever be deprived, 
 especially under separate confinement. 
 
 Separate confinement, relieved from the necessity 
 of inflicting disproportionate punishment, admits 
 also of the application, under the very strictest 
 discipline, of much kindness. The stout-hearted 
 can be kept down without brute force ; all may
 
 118 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 be reasoned with, and every single prisoner expe- 
 rience the influence of that which Inspiration so 
 beautifully calls THE LAW or KINDNESS. Now, of 
 all things, kindness most smoothes the ruggedness 
 of temper, subdues antagonism, and clears the 
 ground of impediments to the culture of right feel- 
 ings and principle. If this be combined with firm- 
 ness of purpose, and a superior mind in the 
 Governor, discipline becomes a very valuable part of 
 such reformatory means as can be used in a prison. 
 
 The following case will show some of the ad- 
 vantages of separate confinement : 
 
 " E. E. S was a Jew, a young man of a 
 
 respectable German family, who had the calamity 
 of being confined in a common prison in this 
 country. Naturally not good-tempered, and now 
 greatly depressed, he felt little disposed to join in 
 the rough and boisterous games which take place in 
 the night-rooms of that prison after locking-up time. 
 The discovery of his temper and pride to his fellow- 
 prisoners heightened their merriment: they now 
 had one whom they could all torment, and no oppor- 
 tunity was ever lost, day or night. Awakened out 
 of sleep by the infliction of a blow or some sort of 
 torture, he was perpetually calling for help and 
 shouting murder. Officers came, of course, to calm 
 the tumult, but his complaints were drowned in 
 those of his more cunning and confederated adver- 
 saries. The consequence was, he was frequently 
 punished. He sought for protection from the higher 
 authorities whenever they visited the place, and got
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 119 
 
 no redress, but became as odious to bis officers as 
 he was to his oppressors. No prisoner dared to tell 
 the truth, though two or three were disposed to 
 stand by him. Eor months after he came to Pen- 
 tonville Prison the poor man could speak of nothing 
 but the injustice and cruelty of the English. At 
 last he became quiet, and even cheerful, under 
 different treatment ; studied most assiduously the 
 New and Old Testaments, in reference to the claims 
 of Christianity upon his belief ; withdrew himself 
 from the teaching of his Rabbi, who could not 
 satisfy Ms inquiring mind ; and before he left, pro- 
 fessed an entire acquiescence in the truths of our 
 Divine religion." 
 
 Against all these moral advantages of separate 
 confinement, it has been urged that, as a punish- 
 ment, it presses with undue severity upon the 
 physical and mental health of the prisoner. This is 
 not the fact, however, unless carried out with un- 
 necessary rigour ; to an extreme length ; or with an 
 absoluteness of rule, which allows no deviation of 
 treatment, notwithstanding the amazing diversity of 
 the human mind. It was, certainly, carried to an ex- 
 treme in America, with disastrous results ; also in 
 the Millbank Penitentiary after that model ; and it 
 has been proposed on the Continent, in different 
 places, to be carried out in the same manner. Thus 
 not long since, at the Congres Penitentiare held at 
 Frankfort: M. Mittermaier, President of the 
 Chamber of Deputies of the Grand Duchy of 
 Baden, stated that in Baden complete separation
 
 120 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 was limited, by law, to six years, unless the con- 
 demned expressly demanded a continuation of it. 
 M. Suringar, President of the Netherlands Society 
 for the amelioration of prisons in the same congress, 
 asks, " What should be the maximum duration of 
 separate imprisonment ?" " Formerly I considered," 
 he replies, "six or seven years as the term. I have 
 changed my opinion since I have seen Pentonville ; 
 and I am now satisfied that if imprisonment should 
 be continued for a longer time, means will be found 
 to render it more supportable to prisoners." 
 
 The opinion formed by M. Suringar from a visit 
 to Pentonville, and that of the Chaplain of Penton- 
 ville, after more than 10 years' experience, and 100,000 
 visits to separated prisoners, are widely different. 
 
 In fact, I look with no small alarm at such an 
 extension of separate confinement, under the most 
 favourable circumstances, and I am persuaded that 
 the means to be found to render it supportable do 
 not exist on the Continent. In despotic govern- 
 ments, or in bad hands at home, separate confine- 
 ment would soon be converted into absolute soli- 
 tude, and become an engine of most cruel torture. 
 
 Pentonville Prison was opened with every advan- 
 tage, which a philanthropy enlightened by a tho- 
 rough acquaintance with the evils of other systems 
 could suggest, or a powerful Government could 
 bestow. The mind of the prisoner was sedulously 
 cultivated, and his thoughts in solitude occupied by 
 trade and books. His teachers in trade in no case 
 degenerated into taskmasters. He was not over-
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 121 
 
 worked. If his trade proved too much for his 
 strength, it was at once changed by the medical 
 officer. The monotony of solitude was broken every 
 day by a religious service in which the prisoner took 
 a considerable part an immense support to the 
 mind and weekly, more than once> by collective 
 instruction in school. 
 
 Then the construction of the prison, in almost 
 every point a model a noble building -the very 
 reverse of gloomy (a matter of no small importance 
 to the spirits), was such as to show at once to a man, 
 on admission, that he was entering " a prison of 
 instruction and of probation rather than a gaol of 
 oppressive punishment." 
 
 The whole, moreover, was under the constant 
 superintendence of a Board of Commissioners, of 
 whom every one might be considered an authority 
 in questions of prison discipline as regards mind or 
 morals, men of rank, character, and benevolence, one 
 of whom every month visited* and conversed with 
 each prisoner in his cell. 
 
 Thus Pentonville had a combination of singular 
 advantages towards a most successful issue. Yet 
 
 * The value of such visits was very great : the prisoner was 
 protected, and every officer learned how to treat the men under 
 him. I may mention one Commissioner as particularly assi- 
 duous in this duty, the Duke of Richmond, to whose constant 
 visits, on the Lord's-day especially, to the cells of this prison, 
 as well as to the chapel service, his long practical experience, 
 strict habits of discipline, and great kindness, gave more than 
 ordinary weight, as an example to all officers in their treatment 
 of prisoners.
 
 122 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 the term of eighteen months' imprisonment proved 
 to be too long, and the rigour of even our modified 
 solitude too severe. (See, in Appendix, " Report of 
 Chaplain of Pentonville Prison.") 
 
 The following comparison between the silent 
 associated system of Auburn in America, and: the 
 Pennsylvanian solitary system, of which Pentonville 
 is a modification, will interest the reader, as coming 
 from the pen of no less a person than Oscar, the 
 present King of Sweden, in his work on punishment, 
 and gives a glance at the rival systems of penal dis- 
 cipline which have made so much noise on the other 
 side of the Atlantic. 
 
 " The possibility of the prisoners' improvement," 
 observes the royal author, " is an object of as great 
 consideration for the philanthropist, as it is im- 
 portant in a political point of view. It is a noble 
 endeavour, and worthy a state, to try to improve 
 those among its members that have fallen into the 
 paths of perdition, frequently enough in conse- 
 quence of faulty legislation or prevailing prejudices. 
 It is of importance to try, by preventing relapses, 
 to decrease the constantly augmenting expenses to 
 the state, for the conveyance and care of prisoners, 
 and the no trifling loss of so many days' work, 
 either thrown away or employed to little purpose. 
 
 " Both the American systems have in view the 
 prisoner's improvement, although they proceed on 
 different grounds, and employ different means. 
 
 "The Auburn acts properly through the outer 
 discipline, and has its support in an instantaneous
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 123 
 
 punishment for the least fault against that disci- 
 pline. The Philadelphian, on the other hand, leaves 
 to the conscience both the punishment and the 
 improvement. 
 
 " The Auhurn system surrounds the prisoner with 
 a variety of objects, which turn his attention to the 
 outer world, and give constant nourishment to his 
 evil inclinations. He is induced to deceive the 
 strictness of his keepers, to impart his thoughts to 
 his fellow-prisoners by whispers or by signs, and 
 when he succeeds, his cunning insolence is encou- 
 raged by their approving glance. The Philadel- 
 phian, on the other hand, removes from the prisoner 
 all dissipation, all support from injurious example, 
 and leaves him helpless to his inward consciousness. 
 
 " Both the systems endeavour to accustom the 
 prisoner to work and industry. But in the Auburn, 
 labour presents itself in a repulsive form, as a 
 punishment, an unavoidable constraint; in the 
 solitary cell, on the contrary, it forms the unhappy 
 being's consolation and only diversion. A natural 
 consequence of this will be, that it is embraced by 
 the prisoner willingly and with interest. 
 
 " Prom this comparison it seems that the follow- 
 ing conclusions may be drawn ; viz. 
 
 " That the Auburn system accustoms the criminal 
 to an instantaneous obedience, a punctual perform- 
 ance of the work appointed, and to the observance 
 of the prescribed discipline; but that his seeming 
 improvement rests only on the fear of punishment, 
 wherefore there is a danger of his relapsing into his
 
 124 THE PUNISHMENT OF CIIIME 
 
 former guilty way of life so soon as he feels himself 
 free from the keeper's lash. 
 
 " That the Philadelphia!! solitude acts more imme- 
 diately on the mind, or on the origin itself of good 
 or evil, and that the liberated prisoner takes with 
 him the fruit of a useful self-examination, and of 
 that inward warning voice to whose correcting 
 severity he has been left." * 
 
 I began this chapter with some scenes of prison 
 life in England, I would conclude with one from 
 the interior of a continental prison, taken from the 
 Memoir of Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, in a letter to 
 Samuel Hoare, Esq., in 1840, as follows : 
 
 " Rome, March 3. 
 
 " I have had occasion to remember the excursion to the prison 
 at St. Albans, which you and I took long ago, when, on Monday 
 morning, Richards and I were trotting along in a diligence to 
 Civita Vecchia. The gaol there, which was the object of our 
 journey, is an old and strong fortress close by the sea, and con- 
 tains 1364 desperate-looking criminals, all for the most aggra- 
 vated offences. I am sure you never saw such a gang of male- 
 factors, or such a horrid dungeon. We went, first, into a vaulted 
 room, with a low ceiling, as I measured it, thirty-one yards long, 
 twenty-one broad. There was light, but obscure. A good deal 
 of the room was taken up by the buttresses which supported the 
 arches. The noise on our entrance was such as may be ima- 
 gined at the entrance of hell itself. All were chained most 
 heavily, and fastened down. The murderers and desperate 
 bandits are fixed to that spot for the rest of their lives ; they are 
 chained to a ring, fastened to the end of the platform, on which 
 
 * Those who wish to see the whole subject of prison disci- 
 pline fully and ably handled, must consult " Field on Prison 
 Discipline " (Longmans, London).
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 125 
 
 they lie side by side, but they can move the length of their chain 
 on a narrow gangway. Of this class, there were upwards of 700 
 in the prison ; some of them famed for a multitude of murders ; 
 many, we are told, had committed six or seven ; and, indeed, 
 they were a ghastly crew, haggard, ferocious, reckless assassins, 
 I do not think that the attendant gaoler very much liked our 
 being there. A sergeant in uniform'was ordered to keep close 
 by me ; and I observed that he kept his hand upon his sword, 
 as we walked up the alley between the adjacent platforms. 
 
 " There was a fourth room at some distance, and our guide 
 employed many expedients to divert us from going there. * * * 
 This was worse than any of the others : the room lower, damper, 
 darker, and the prisoners with, if possible, a more murderous 
 look. * * * The Mayor afterwards told us, that he in his official 
 capacity knew that there was a murder every month among 
 the prisoners. I spoke to a good many of them, and, with one 
 exception, each said that he was condemned for murder or stab- 
 bing. I will tell you one short conversation : ' What are you 
 here for?' said I to a heavy -looking fellow, lying on his back at 
 the end of the room. He made no answer ; but a prisoner near 
 him, with the sharp features and dark complexion of an Italian, 
 promptly said, ' He is here for stabbing ' (giving a thrust with 
 his hand to show how it was done). ' And why is he in this part 
 of the prison ?' 'Because he is incorrigible.' 'And what were 
 you condemned for?' Tor murder.' 'And why placed here?' 
 ' Sono incorrif/ibile.' * * * In short, this prison combines to- 
 gether, in excess, all the evils of which prisons are capable. It 
 is, as the Mayor said, a sink of all the iniquity of the state. The 
 Capuchins certainly preach them a sermon on the Sunday, and 
 afford them an opportunity of confession ; of which, if the pri- 
 soners avail themselves, the priests must have enough to do. 
 The sight of it has kindled in my mind a very strong desire that 
 the old Prison Discipline Society should make a great effort, 
 and visit all the prisons of the world. I had hoped that sound 
 principles of prison discipline had spread themselves more 
 widely ; but I now fear that there are places, and many of them, 
 in the world, in which it is horrible that human beings should 
 live, and still more horrible that they should die." 
 
 " March 4. 
 
 " In the citadel of Civita Vecchia, Gasparoni and his gang are
 
 126 THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME 
 
 confined, and have been so for the last fourteen years. There 
 are many renowned robbers in this country, but none so cele- 
 brated as this Gasparoni ; and I had the honour of an interview 
 of two hours with him and his band, He is a very fine-looking 
 fellow, about five feet eleven high, with as strong and brick-wall 
 an arm as ever I felt, except, perhaps, General Turner's ; he 
 wore an old velvet coat, which had seen service with him, and a 
 large peaked hat. There was nothing ferocious in the expression 
 of his countenance. I am going to have his picture taken, a 
 compliment which his appearance well deserves ; for he is the 
 beau-ideal of a Robin Hood or Bob Roy. By his side there was 
 a fiendish-looking wretch, who plagued us with his interruptions. 
 This fellow is said to have joined the band chiefly from his love 
 of human blood, and his post was that of executioner. 
 
 " Gasparoni was very communicative ; only that, either from 
 the modesty which belongs to great men, or some latent hope of 
 pardon, he greatly underrates his own exploits. For example, 
 to my question, ' How many people have you murdered ? ' he 
 replied, ' I cannot exactly recollect, somewhere about sixty ! ' 
 whereas it is notorious that he has slaughtered at least double 
 the number. Indeed, the Mayor of Civita Vecchia assured me, 
 that he had received authentic information of 200 ; but he be- 
 lieved that even that number was still below the mark. This 
 man, according to his own account, when he was but a young 
 lad, killed a person in a quarrel and fled to the mountains, 
 where he was joined by a few young men of similar character. 
 Before he was twenty years old he had committed ten murders, 
 and was at the head of a band of fifteen or twenty robbers, which 
 afterwards amounted to about thirty of his own body-guard ; 
 but there were two or three other bands under separate com- 
 mandei'S, one of whom was his brother ; he, however, was lord 
 paramount. 
 
 " It is incontestable that he kept a district of country of at 
 least one hundred miles in circumference, between Rome and 
 Naples, in the utmost terror and subjection. Those proprietors 
 who were not slain by him fled the country, and were obliged to 
 receive such a modicum of rent as the tenants who compounded 
 with Gasparoni chose to pay ; but the black mail which he levied 
 was not extravagant. The Government at first offered 200 
 crowns for his head. This mounted up at last to 3000 crowns,
 
 BY IMPRISONMENT. 127 
 
 and that was the fixed price for many years, and a thousand 
 soldiers were regularly employed in hunting him. 'But how 
 then,' said I, 'did you escape?' 'That you will never under- 
 stand,' he replied, ' till you see the rocks and precipices that are 
 there. I and my men knew every turn ; we have often been 
 close to the soldiers, and let them pass us, when they had no 
 notion they had such near neighbours.' Gasparoni had many 
 conflicts with the military, in which he was uniformly successful ; 
 but in one affair he received a ball in the lower part of his neck, 
 the scar of which he showed us. He described one conflict, in 
 which, with ten or twelve of his men, he beat off, as he said, 
 thirty soldiers ; but the ill-looking scoundrel by his side said 
 there were full sixty. 
 
 " Gasparoni 's head-quarters were at Sonnino, where his wife 
 and children resided, and where the whole population were de- 
 voted to him. This town had obtained so evil a reputation that 
 on his surrender the Pope made a great effort to get it rased to 
 the ground, but could not get the assent of the proprietor. I 
 was interested by learning from him that the haunts he chiefly 
 occupied for the purpose of observing the road were the three 
 little towns perched on the rock, and shining like silver, Cora, 
 Norma, and Sermoneta, which had so much attracted my admi- 
 ration when I was at Appii Forum. He told me that he had 
 spent a large proportion of ,his plunder upon spies at Eome, by 
 whom he was made acquainted with the plans designed for his 
 capture, and who also told him what persons coming along the 
 road were worth catching ; if emissaries were sent for the pur- 
 pose of entrapping him, he was forewarned, and the vengeance 
 he took on them was terrible. He crucified one of these men, 
 and wrote underneath, ' Thus Gasparoni treats all spies.' He 
 cut out the heart and liver of another, and sent them back to the 
 man's widow. 
 
 "If any persons in the towns were active against him he al- 
 ways found means to punish them. If their offence was not 
 very deep, they received a letter ordering them to pay on a cer- 
 tain day, at a certain place, 1000 or 2000 scudi; and such was 
 the terror of his name that these demands were generally 
 obeyed. Some of the magistrates in the strong tOAvn of Ter- 
 racina, thinking themselves secure within their walls, ventured 
 to incur his displeasure. Soon after the boys of the chief school,
 
 128 THE PUNISHMENT OF CEIME, ETC. 
 
 while taking a walk near the gates, were surprised by him and 
 his men, and carried away to the mountains ; and a message 
 was sent to the parents of almost all, fixing the amount of ran- 
 som, upon the payment of which they were restored. But the 
 children of those who had exasperated him were not allowed to 
 escape, their heads were sent back in a sack. Of the truth of 
 this dreadful story there can be no doubt. A friend of mine 
 asked Gasparoni about it; he admitted that he had seized the 
 children, but said nothing about the murders. The gentleman 
 said to him, ' I have heard more than this ; I have been told you 
 cut off the heads of three of them.' ' It is false,' said Gasparoni, 
 ' it was but two. ' 
 
 " It is odd enough that Gasparoni is very religious now ; he 
 fasts not only on Friday, but adds a supererogatory Saturday. 
 He told me that he repented of his former life ; but what it was 
 he regretted I could not well make out, for he expressly justified 
 the occasions in which he had proceeded to extremities with 
 spies or travellers who resisted him. But curious as his theology 
 now is, it is still more strange that, according to his own ac- 
 count, he was always a very religious man. I asked him whether 
 he had fasted when he was a bandit ? He said, ' Yes.' Why 
 did you fast ? ' said I. ' Perche sono della religione della Madonna,' 
 'Which did you think was worst, eating meat on a Friday or 
 killing a man ? ' He answered without hesitation, ' In my case 
 it was a crime not to fast ; it was no crime to kill those who 
 came to betray me.' With all his present religion, however, he 
 told the Mayor of the town the other day, that if he got loose, 
 the first thing he would do would be to cut the throats of all the 
 priests ; and the Mayor said in this he perfectly believed him, 
 and if he were now to break out he would be ten times worse 
 than ever. One fact, however, shows some degree of scrupu- 
 losity. The people of the country bear testimony that he never 
 committed murder on a Friday ! " 
 
 Over one of the gaols of Rome, Howard found the 
 motto : 
 
 " Parum est improbos coercere poena, nisi probos efficias 
 disciplina." 
 
 The foregoing is Rome's practical commentary 
 upon this admirable sentiment.
 
 CHAPTER, IV. 
 
 CONVICT SYSTEMS, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 ' ; The very end for which human government is established, 
 requires that its regulations be adapted to the suppression of 
 crimes." PALEY. 
 
 IN 1596, the first mention is made in an act of 
 Parliament of banishment from the kingdom, as a 
 punishment for rogues and vagabonds. No place of 
 exile is named. Probably the newly-founded colony 
 of Virginia was in the minds of those who proposed 
 that measure. In 1619, under James I., the practice 
 actually began of transporting criminals to America ; 
 and, during the next century and a half, great num- 
 bers were sent to work as servants for the colonists. 
 Under James II., at the close of the Duke of 
 Monmouth's Rebellion, Judge Jefferies consigned a 
 multitude of unhappy beings to the unwholesome 
 labours of the Southern plantations. And, after the 
 battle of Culloden, in the time of George II., great 
 numbers of the captured rebels were exiled to 
 America, and were actually put up to auction by~ 
 those entrusted with the care of transporting them, 
 
 K
 
 130 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 and sold to the settlers, at an average price of 20 
 a head. 
 
 The loss of the American colonies in 1783 put an 
 end to this system of transportation. The prisons of 
 England became crowded to excess. Howard, and 
 others of kindred character, called attention loudly 
 to the state of gaol-discipline, and to the dangers to 
 be apprehended from the continuance of the defective 
 arrangements which existed. It was suggested by 
 some to ship the convicts of England off to the 
 Western coast of Africa, there to be turned loose 
 among the negroes. Others were for building huge 
 penitentiaries, sufficient to hold the large body of 
 criminals under sentence of transportation. Both 
 these proposals were set aside by the grave objections 
 to which they were manifestly open. 
 
 At this juncture, the discoveries of Captain Cook 
 brought to light the capabilities of the vast island- 
 continent of Australia. The interest of his narrative 
 was attracting the attention of his fellow-country- 
 men of all classes, and, not the least, that of the 
 Government, who saw, in these new possessions of 
 the Crown, the means of removing their difficulty 
 respecting the disposal of convicts. They were so 
 far distant from England as to leave no chance, in 
 the existing state of navigation, that prisoners con- 
 veyed to those parts would ever find their way back 
 to their native land again. They were almost de- 
 void of population, and yet well suited for sustaining 
 life, and affording every ground for hoping, that, 
 after some years of safe custody and punishment,
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 131 
 
 the discharged criminals might become settlers, and 
 begin a new life of hope in another hemisphere. 
 
 One spot in particular, upon the Eastern shore, on 
 which Sir Joseph Bankes (the great naturalist of 
 Cook's Expedition) had landed, furnished to his 
 scientific researches many new plants, and gave 
 signs, it was thought, of extreme fertility. On this 
 account it had been named Botany Bay. To this 
 spot it was determined that a body of convicts 
 should be sent : and on May 13th, 1787, the first 
 expedition for this purpose left the shores of Eng- 
 land, under the command of Capt. Arthur Phillip, 
 B. N., who was also to be the Governor of the new 
 colony. The fleet consisted of the Sirius (frigate), 
 the Supply (armed tender), three store-ships, and six 
 transports, having on board 565 male and 192 
 female convicts, and a body of above 200 soldiers 
 in all more than 1,000 souls. This was the founda- 
 tion of our great Australian Empire. 
 
 It is a sad and humiliating fact, to the Church as 
 well as to the Government of England at the time, 
 which is related by the Rev. S. Marsden, who was a 
 chaplain in the colony for more than 40 years, and is 
 well known as the first who carried the Gospel to the 
 cannibals of New Zealand. When the fleet was on 
 the point of sailing with the first convicts for New 
 South Wales in 1787, no clergyman had been 
 thought of to accompany it. But a friend of his 
 own, a pious man of some influence, anxious for 
 their spiritual welfare, made a strong appeal to 
 those in authority upon the subject, and, through 
 
 K2
 
 132 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 the intercession of the Bishop of London, the Rev. 
 RICHARD JOHNSON was appointed as chaplain. 
 
 Botany Say. 
 
 It was soon found that the bay selected for the 
 new settlement was not at all adapted for the wants 
 of a colony, being deficient in fresh water, and too 
 confined for their numbers. The Governor resolved 
 to proceed along the coast, and examine Broken 
 Bay, some distance to the North. He stopped, 
 however, on his way thither, to look in at a small 
 inlet of the sea, marked in Captain Cook's charts 
 as merely a boat-harbour, and called, from the name 
 of the sailor who first discovered it, Port Jackson. 
 On passing the lofty headlands, which form the en- 
 trance to this "boat-harbour," he was astonished to 
 find himself in a haven, large enough to hold the 
 navy of England navigable for ships of war 15 
 miles from its mouth, indented with numerous coves, 
 and sheltered from every wind. Here then, on Jan. 
 26th, 1788, the colony was established on the banks 
 of Sydney Cove, then covered with thick woods, 
 whose still tranquillity was now to be broken by the 
 rude sound of the labourer's axe. The quiet of cen- 
 turies was henceforth to give way to the noise of 
 camps and towns, and the busy hum of men. 
 
 "We are told of the ceremonies which attended 
 this memorable occasion how the flag of England 
 was hoisted, and salutes were fired, " between which 
 the healths of his Majesty, King George III., and
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 133 
 
 the B-oyal Family, with success to the new colony, 
 were cordially drunk." No act of public wor- 
 ship, however, offered to the God of their fathers, 
 consecrated the spot. In the words of Judge Bur- 
 ton : " How different might have heen the effect 
 upon the minds of many of these poor convicts, if 
 the day of their first landing in a new world had 
 been solemnly marked, as the beginning of a new 
 life under God, by an act of confession and prayer ! " 
 One minister of religion, however, as we have 
 seen, did accompany the expedition as chaplain; 
 and the early Sabbaths of the new community were 
 not suffered to pass away without some due ob- 
 servance of the ordinances of public worship. All 
 that was possible under the circumstances was done 
 by the faithful pastor. He went continually from 
 settlement to settlement, from hut to hut, visiting 
 alike the sick and well, the freemen and the con- 
 victs sparing no pains, and losing no opportunity, 
 for teaching them the way of God in truth. But 
 his labours were but little appreciated by those in 
 authority ; and it causes, even now, a pang of regret 
 and shame, to read and to record the painful dis- 
 couragements he met with in the exercise of his 
 ministry. Thus, while buildings of various kinds 
 were erected by convict-labour for man's use bar- 
 racks for the soldiers and convicts, prisons for new 
 pffenders, houses for the Governor and his officers, 
 an observatory for the purposes of science no 
 building whatever, even of the commonest kind, was 
 reared for the worship of Almighty God. For six
 
 134 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 long years, and although the colony had greatly in- 
 creased in numbers, Mr. Johnson was left to minis- 
 ter in the open air, " wherever he could find a shady 
 spot," subject to all the inconveniences and inter- 
 ruptions of the climate. After the landing had 
 been effected, farms were laid out at Paramatta 
 and other places, and a few convicts were set free, 
 and received grants of land as settlers. A small 
 colony also was sent to Norfolk Island, to examine its 
 character, especially with a view to the growing of 
 flax. The evil tendencies and idle habits of the con- 
 victs, repressed only during the confinement of the 
 voyage, but not really corrected by religious in- 
 fluences, had become daily more apparent. Their 
 ill behaviour towards the natives had produced shy- 
 ness at first, which soon changed into open enmity, 
 and many cruelties on both sides were committed. 
 
 The soil around Sydney was found to be unpro- 
 ductive. The cattle were neglected, and so were 
 either lost or stolen. The convicts committed petty 
 thefts, and then deserted into the woods for fear of 
 the consequences. At one time forty persons started 
 off upon their travels, and, as they supposed, upon 
 their road to China. These travellers were mostly 
 Irish convicts, who had a notion that China lay 
 somewhere to the North, and were always making 
 up parties for the purpose of decamping thither. 
 Most of these wanderers perished by hunger. 
 
 The Governor considered it necessary to use very 
 great severity in repressing disorders. There were 
 many executions for small offences, or such as would
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. % 135 
 
 be considered small under other circumstances. Six 
 soldiers, for instance, some of whom had hitherto 
 home irreproachable characters, were hung at one 
 time, upon the information of an accomplice, for 
 having obtained a false key to a store, and pilfered 
 it. "Thefts innumerable were committed; and, 
 although severe punishment was sure to follow 
 detection, either it had lost its terrors, or the habits 
 of depravity were become so much a part of their 
 nature, as to subdue every other sensation." Much 
 flogging also was administered. And it is curious 
 to read (in our days) that one convict was heavily 
 punished for an attempt to "impose" upon the 
 people by the pretended discovery of a gold-mine. 
 Sydney Cove was " thrown into a state of great ex- 
 citement." He showed a piece of gold, which he 
 said he had found : but, being twice sent with a 
 police-party to point out the place, he failed in doing 
 so, and was "rewarded" accordingly. At last he 
 confessed that his story was a falsehood, and the 
 piece of gold a fabrication out of a guinea and a 
 brass buckle. But, says Col. Collins, the historian 
 of the first fourteen years of the colony, " Among the 
 people of his own description, there were many who 
 believed, notwithstanding his confession and punish- 
 ment, that he had actually made the discovery, and 
 that he was induced to say it was a fabrication, 
 merely to secure it to himself, that he might make 
 use of it at a future opportunity." The discontent of 
 the colony was increased also by another circum- 
 stance. Several of the convicts, after a certain time,
 
 136 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 claimed their liberty, alleging that the term of years 
 had elapsed for which they had been transported. 
 Unfortunately, it was found that the papers, which 
 would have shown whether their statements were 
 true or not, had been all left behind in England. To 
 have allowed the claim of one under these circum- 
 stances would have been to have opened the door 
 wide for all manner of imposition. Painful as it 
 was, the only course that could be taken by the 
 Governor was, to announce that all must continue 
 to work as convicts, until he could send word to 
 England, and receive a message back involving an 
 additional servitude of at least 18 months ; and that 
 then, any, who had a right meanwhile to be free 
 men, should be paid as free labourers for the extra 
 time they had wrought. 
 
 Difficulties thus increasing in Sydney, it was 
 deemed advisable to divide the colony, by sending 
 a large body of 200 convicts and two companies 
 of soldiers to join the little settlement on Norfolk 
 Island. Of course they went without a clergyman : 
 but, two years after, we are told that " the Rev. Mr. 
 Johnson voluntarily visited Norfolk Island, for the 
 purpose of performing those duties of his office, 
 which had hitherto been altogether omitted through 
 the want of a minister to perform them." 
 
 In 1793, the sixth year after their landing, 
 Mr. Johnson, "finding that, from the pressure of 
 other works, it was not easy to foresee when a 
 church would be erected," resolved to build a little 
 chapel at his own expense. It cost him only 40 ;
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 137 
 
 was begun in July and opened in August : so that, 
 neither as regards time nor expense, was there any 
 excuse for the long delay which had occurred. The 
 building was 73 feet long and 15 feet broad, and at 
 right angles with the centre projected another 
 building, 40 feet by 15 the whole rudely con- 
 structed of wattles and plaster, and thatched. One 
 of the first sermons which Mr. Johnson preached in 
 it was upon the sudden death of two convicts, who 
 were struck by lightning ; from the text, " There is 
 but a step between me and death." Three years 
 more were suffered to pass away before a similar 
 temporary building was erected at Paramatta. This 
 was in September : in the JaMuary previous we read 
 of the convicts being allowed to fit up and open a 
 playhouse in Sydney. 
 
 On Oct. 1st, 1798, the first of these little chapels 
 was destroyed by fire. " This was a great loss ; for, 
 during week days, the building was used as a school, 
 in which from 150 to 200 children were educated, 
 under the inspection of Mr. Johnson. There was 
 not a doubt that the atrocious act was the effect of 
 design, and had been perpetrated in consequence 
 of an order enforcing attendance on Divine Service, 
 and with a view af rendering the Sunday a day of as 
 little decency and sobriety as any other day in the 
 week. The workers of mischief were, however, 
 disappointed. For the Governor (Hunter), being 
 highly irritated at such a shameful act, suffered not 
 a single Sunday to be lost, having ordered a new 
 store-house, just finished, to be fitted up as a
 
 138 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 church.'' The same Governor, two years afterwards, 
 in 1800, built a stone church at Paramatta, and laid 
 the foundations of St. Philip's church at Sydney. 
 
 But Mr. Johnson was no longer alone. In 1794, 
 the REV. S. MARSDEN was sent as a second chap- 
 lain. Por six years they laboured together. And 
 then, upon Mr. Johnson's leaving for England in 
 1800, after twelve years of painful service, Mr. 
 Marsden was left for seven years more in sole charge 
 of the colony, with its increasing thousands of scat- 
 tered population, and its two " decent places of 
 worship," the store-house at Sydney, and the " hand- 
 some stone church " at Paramatta. In 1803, a 
 costly communion-service reached the colony for 
 St. Philip's church, the gift of the good King 
 George III. It was not till Christmas-day, 1810, 
 that this second stone church in N.S. Wales was 
 completed, and the store-house ceased to be the 
 place of public worship for the people of Sydney. 
 
 We have said that Mr. Marsden had the sole 
 spiritual charge of the convicts for seven years. 
 But this statement requires correction. Prom the 
 very first, all Irish convicts had been transported to 
 N. S. Wales, and very many of these were Roman 
 Catholics. Por the religious instruction of these, 
 in the year 1803, the Rev. James Dixon, a R. C. 
 Priest under sentence of transportation, was set 
 free, (in the words of the official notice,) in order to 
 " enable him to exercise his clerical functions." 
 
 The settlement of Norfolk Island, which had now 
 been a penal settlement since the year 1826, and
 
 PAST AXD PRESENT. 139 
 
 contained at this very time 200 convicts, of the very 
 worst class -men doubly steeped in crime besides 
 soldiers and civil officers and their families, was 
 without any minister of religion whatever, and had 
 been so from the very first occupation of the island, 
 forty years before, except for the single visit of 
 Mr. Johnson in 1791. This state of things remained 
 unchanged in Norfolk Island till the year 1836, at 
 which time it contained 1,000 convicts. 
 
 "In 1836," (we quote from the report of the 
 House of Commons on Transportation in 1838,) 
 " Sydney contained about 20,000 inhabitants, of 
 whom 3,500 were convicts, mostly assigned servants, 
 and about 7,000 had been prisoners of the Crown. 
 These, together with their associates among the 
 free population, were persons of violent and un- 
 controllable passions, incorrigibly bad characters, 
 preferring a life of idleness and debauchery, by 
 means of plunder, to one of honest industry. More 
 immorality prevailed in Sydney than in any other 
 town of the same size in the British dominions. 
 There the vice of drunkenness had attained its 
 highest pitch. The quantity of spirits consumed in 
 Sydney was enormous. Even throughout the whole 
 of N. S. Wales the annual average, for every human 
 being in the colony, had reached four gallons a-head." 
 
 In the very year (1838) in which the above report 
 was made, Judge Burton had the painful duty of 
 passing sentence of death upon seven persons, part 
 of a gang, who had butchered in cold blood a num- 
 ber of inoffensive natives "twenty-eight at least,
 
 140 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 or many more men, women, and children, old 
 men, and babes hanging at their mothers' breasts 
 poor, defenceless, human beings." (We quote 
 from the Judge's words on this dreadful occasion.) 
 " A party of blacks were seated around their fires, 
 which they had just made up for the night. They 
 were resting secure under the protection of one of 
 you they were totally unsuspecting when they 
 were suddenly surrounded by a band of armed men, 
 of whom you, the prisoners at the bar, were half, 
 and all of whom were equally guilty. The blacks 
 fled to the hut of one of you for safety ; but that 
 hut proved the mesh of their destruction. In that 
 hut, in which they had taken refuge, depending for 
 security in that hut, amidst the tears, the sobs, 
 and the groans of the unhappy victims, you bound 
 them, one by one, with cords the father, the 
 mother, and the child. You led them away a small 
 distance from the hut, where, one and all, with the 
 exception of one woman, they met with one common 
 destruction. You took extraordinary pains to keep 
 this affair from coming to light. You burned the 
 bodies for the purpose of concealment. But it 
 pleased God to send a witness to the spot, before 
 they were entirely consumed. Afterwards some one 
 removed even the remains that were left. The place 
 was swept and garnished, so that no vestige of this 
 deed might remain. But the crime had been wit- 
 nessed in Heaven, and could not be concealed. The 
 hundreds of birds of prey, that were floating about, 
 were evidence enough to the whole neighbourhood
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 141 
 
 that something dead was lying there, which would 
 attract even the least interested to the place, to see 
 if it were not his own ox or his ass. But, notwith- 
 standing all the efforts that were made, the rib and 
 jawbone of a child and some teeth were found on the 
 spot. And it pleased God, in His Providence, the 
 day before the crime was committed, to send rain 
 upon .the earth, through which your tracks were 
 easily traced. From the hut to the scene of murder 
 there were the marks of horsemen on each side, and 
 the naked feet of the blacks in the middle; while 
 from the spot there were no traces of the blacks 
 returning. This offence, too, was not committed 
 without premeditation ; for it was proved that the 
 party was collecting down the river some days be- 
 fore the murder. You were met preparing powder- 
 pouches, and putting straps to swords, doubtless for 
 this purpose. On Saturday you were asking for the 
 blacks, of course intending to do something with 
 them. On Sunday evening, after spending the day 
 in looking for them, you took them away from the 
 station, thus closing that hallowed day by a scene of 
 murder. You might have nattered yourselves that 
 you would have been protected and screened. Many 
 did seek to conceal it none endeavoured to bring it 
 to light : but, unhappy men, what you did was seen 
 by GOD ! 
 
 " I cannot but look at you with commiseration. 
 You were all transported to this colony, although 
 some of you have since become free. You were taken 
 out of a Christian country, and placed in a dangerous
 
 142 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 and tempting situation. You were entirely removed 
 from the benefit of the ordinances of religion. I 
 cannot but deplore that you should have been 
 placed in such a situation that such circumstances 
 should have existed -and, above all, that you should 
 have committed such a crime. But this commisera- 
 tion must not interfere with the stern duty, which, 
 as a judge, the law enforces on me which is to 
 order that you, and each of you, be removed to the 
 place whence you came, and thence to a place of 
 execution," &c. 
 
 It is plain that, up to this time, there was more 
 faith placed in mere brute force and a system of 
 severity and terror in the strength of police machi- 
 nery, the support of soldiery, the punishments of the 
 chain-gang, the lash, and the gallows than in the 
 power of that merciful Word, at which the stubborn 
 knee has been known ere now to bow, and the 
 hardened heart to melt. 
 
 Let us now look, for a moment, at the actual 
 interior of one of these chain-gangs, as described by 
 an eye-witness before the Transportation Committee : 
 
 "I visited a chain-gang near Paramatta on a 
 Sunday, for the purpose of administering religious 
 consolation. When I came to the place, I found 
 there a series of boxes, and, when the men were 
 turned out, I was astonished to see the number that 
 came out from each of these boxes. I could not 
 have supposed it possible that they could have held 
 such a number. I found that they were locked up 
 there usually during the whole of Sunday likewise
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 143 
 
 during the whole of the tww from sunset to sunrise. 
 On looking into one of these boxes, I saw that there 
 was a ledge on each side, and that the men were 
 piled upon the ledges, while others lay below upon 
 the floor." 
 
 Mr. M, Martin writes much to the same effect, as 
 follows : " I saw and conversed with ten criminals 
 in their condemned cells, on the eve of their exe- 
 cution. They had never heard the word of God 
 preached since their childhood some not even then. 
 They had never entered a church or chapel in the 
 colony, or attended a Sabbath service : and they had 
 fled to the bush because their backs had been bared 
 to the bone by repeated scourgings." 
 
 Norfolk Island, 
 
 In 1834, the Judge already referred to visited 
 Norfolk Island. " The beauty of its hills and glens," 
 says Judge Burton, " is remarkable, and the eye is 
 charmed by scenery such as might well betoken an 
 earthly Paradise. Nature has been profuse in her 
 bounty ; and thus the contrast is more painful, be- 
 tween the loveliness of the spot and the uses to 
 which it is applied between these beautiful works 
 of the Creator which praise Him, and of men who 
 praise Him not. No softening influence is here 
 exerted, by the delicious beauty of the place, upon 
 the seared and hardened hearts of its wretched in- 
 habitants. Alone, in the dismal horror of the soli- 
 tary cell or mixed in the guarded ward with others
 
 144 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 of a kindred nature, 'Evil men with men more evil,' 
 rotting and festering together, a seething mass of 
 moral corruption they have helped each other to 
 make a hell of that which else might be a heaven," 
 and we as a nation have sat by and suffered it. 
 " Little, indeed, has been done by the English 
 Government, and, until lately, nothing," writes 
 Judge Burton in 1840, " to render their captivity 
 productive of that improvement in them, which 
 should restore the Creator's image to their souls." 
 
 The island was first made a penal settlement of 
 New South Wales in 1826. Prom the very found- 
 ation of the colony, as we have seen, it had 
 been occupied by free settlers and their convict 
 servants. These settlers, or their descendants, were 
 not a little loth to be obliged to surrender their 
 beautiful island, at the demand of the Government, 
 which had sanctioned their first occupation of it, in 
 order to make way for its new tenants. The inn of 
 the settlement was turned into a gaol, its rooms and 
 outhouses into dungeons so insecure, however, that, 
 besides the walls and barred windows, a chain cable 
 had to be led through the rooms, to which the 
 wretched inmates were ironed. In this gaol the 
 most desperate prisoners were confined those who 
 had received sentence of death, which had been 
 respited, and those whose fresh crimes, since coming 
 even to Norfolk Island, were of a graver kind than 
 the magistrates of the island could deal with, and 
 required a higher judge to try them, with powers of 
 life and death.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 145 
 
 We are told by Judge Burton that " it was not 
 till after the lapse of more than ten years, from the 
 time of the island being made a penal settlement, 
 that its wretched inmates received any of the re- 
 proofs, comforts, or instructions, of religion. They 
 were, in the strongest sense of the term, souls cut off 
 from the congregation of the Lord, and delivered 
 over to Satan. What wonder, then, if they became, 
 in temper, disposition, and habits, like to those, 
 whom he leads captive at his will, and their place 
 of torment like his ! " 
 
 When the judge visited this island there were 
 130 prisoners in confinement, on a charge of con- 
 spiring to disarm and, if necessary, murder their 
 guard of 120 soldiers, and then to effect their 
 escape. The plot, well planned, and kept secret for 
 more than three months, was attempted, and well 
 nigh succeeded. For their share in this offence, 
 fifty-five prisoners were tried as ringleaders. " In 
 the course of these trials, eighty-seven different 
 witnesses were examined many of them five or six 
 times over during which they underwent a cross- 
 examination by the prisoners, such as no advocate 
 in the world could have conducted, and disclosed to 
 the Court a picture of depravity, which, it may be 
 safely asserted, no human judge ever had presented 
 to him before. But, beyond all these, the unhappy 
 prisoners themselves, when brought up for judg- 
 ment, (and, of the number tried, thirty were convicted 
 capitally and sentenced to death,) completed the 
 abominable revelation, by communicating to the
 
 146 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 judge, in earnest, deep, but calm, expostulation, the 
 crimes committed there, upon which to be now par- 
 ticular would not be meet." 
 
 " One of them, a man, who displayed singular 
 ability, and uncommon calmness and self-possession 
 under circumstances so appalling to ordinary minds, 
 represented it to be a ' hell upon earth.' And such 
 assuredly it was, so far as the torment of that 
 region is made up of the company of evil spirits, 
 glorying in evil deeds. 'Let a man's heart,' he 
 said, ' be what it will, when he comes here his 
 man's heart is taken from him, and there is given to 
 him the heart of a beast.' 
 
 " He represented, and others followed him in the 
 same course, that the crimes which had brought 
 them there, were not of a kind which should con- 
 demn them to such a state that many of them had 
 been decent men, possessed of means of support, 
 and had wives and families in the world ; and these 
 were sentenced to the same place of helplessness 
 and despair with others, whose crimes were of the 
 deepest die. One of them said, ' Sentence has 
 been passed upon us before, and we thought 
 we should have been executed, and prepared to 
 die, and wish we had been executed then. It 
 was no mercy to send us to this place. I do not 
 ask life I do not want to be spared, on condition 
 of remaining here. Life is not worth having on 
 such terms.' Another said, ' I pleaded guilty to the 
 charge against me, because I knew I was guilty, 
 and as the only expiation that I could make for my
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 147 
 
 offence, which, however, I committed only to get 
 clear of this accursed place.' Another made a 
 powerful appeal to the judge, founded upon some 
 discrepancy in the evidence, asserting his own inno- 
 cence, and that his person was mistaken. And, 
 finding that appeal ineffectual, and that he was 
 sentenced to die, he broke out into the most moving 
 and passionate exclamations and entreaties, that he 
 might not die without the benefit of confession. 
 1 Oh, your honour,' he said, ' as you hope to be 
 saved yourself, do not let me die without seeing my 
 priest. I have been a very wicked man indeed ; I 
 have committed many other crimes for which I 
 ought to die : but do not send me out of the world 
 without seeing my priest.' Poor soul ! he was a 
 Roman Catholic : and, when, after this, he was 
 taken away to his cell in miserable agony, he 
 employed his time in embracing and beating himself 
 upon a rude wooden figure of the cross, which a 
 fellow-prisoner had made for him, wildly and in- 
 cessantly pronouncing those brief cries for mercy, 
 which such an instructor could teach him." 
 
 Another said, and his statement was perfectly 
 true, " What is done, your honour, to make us 
 better ? Once a week we are drawn up in the 
 square, opposite the Military Barracks, and the 
 soldiers are drawn up in front of us, with loaded 
 muskets and fixed bayonets ; and a young officer 
 then comes to the fence, and reads part of the 
 service, and that takes, may be, about a quarter of 
 an hour, and that is all the religion we see." 
 
 L2
 
 148 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 The wretched men were returned to their cells, 
 and the judge withdrew to his sad meditation, the 
 result of which was that he asserted for himself a 
 power, which the law of the colony had not given 
 him. He reprieved the whole of the prisoners, until 
 he could lay their case before the colonial govern- 
 ment, and, at least, obtain for those who were to 
 suffer the last sentence of the law that spiritual 
 help, which they so much needed in their hour of 
 bitter distress. Eleven of the whole number finally 
 suffered death a Protestant and Roman Catholic 
 clergyman having been sent down from Sydney to 
 Norfolk Island, together with the warrants for their 
 execution. " This was the first visitation they had 
 ever had of the kind in their places of confinement. 
 It was thankfully received, and the opportunities 
 thus given of hearing religious advice and exhort- 
 ation were embraced, not only by the unhappy 
 persons under sentence of death, but by many 
 others upon the island." 
 
 These clergymen were sent only for the occasion, 
 and were again withdrawn from the island, as soon * 
 as the pressing necessity which brought them to it 
 had passed away. No provision was made for the 
 miserable state of those condemned to live. 
 
 Judge Burton, however, on leaving Sydney 
 for the island in 1834, was " empowered and 
 directed by the Government to make any alteration 
 in the system of management and arrangement of 
 the prisoners, which might appear to him necessary 
 for their spiritual and temporal welfare." He
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 149 
 
 availed himself of this authority, so far, as was 
 possible under the circumstances. His first efforts 
 were directed to the due observance of the Sabbath. 
 And, as no ministers were provided, though he found 
 750 prisoners on the island, besides soldiers and 
 civil officers, he selected as catechists two convicts, 
 one a Protestant, transported for forgery, who had 
 once been chaplain of a man-of-war the other a 
 Homan Catholic, who had been educated for a 
 priest. By these persons a separate and full service 
 was performed twice' every Sunday ; and similar 
 services were performed, at other places, for the 
 troops and free people, by two laymen, selected for 
 the purpose. Adult Sunday-schools were also 
 formed, and met for an hour, morning and evening, 
 being attended by from 200 to 250 prisoners of both 
 persuasions. This led to the public assembling of 
 many in their wards in barracks, for evening and 
 morning prayers. They were at first, indeed, scoffed 
 at by some of their companions, but were suffered at 
 last to continue their practice without molestation. 
 
 This excellent judge lost no opportunity of pressing 
 and reiterating his claims, on behalf of his unhappy 
 fellow- creatures. And " at last his public remarks 
 upon the subject, although they gave offence, were 
 followed by the appointment of a Protestant 
 chaplain in 1837, and a Roman Catholic chaplain in 
 1838." " But still," he writes in 1840, " there is no 
 church, or other building, adapted for public 
 worship, at the chief settlement, there being only a 
 small and inconvenient room appropriated for that
 
 150 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 purpose, and at the agricultural establishment at 
 Longridge, about a mile and a half distant, a barn, 
 which is sufficiently large, and much more commo- 
 dious." Yet in July 1838, there were 1411 prisoners 
 on the island, and the military force consisted of 6 
 officers and 170 men. The number of Protestant 
 prisoners at the close of 1837 was 743, of whom 120 
 attended at the Sunday-school. 
 
 Van Diemerfs Land. 
 
 This island received its first body of settlers in 
 1803, when a party of convicts was landed, and 
 Hobart Town was established on the banks of the 
 Derwent. In 1804 a new colony was sent from N. 
 S. Wales, who founded George Town on the banks 
 of the Tamar. These early settlers, like those at 
 Sydney, experienced many hardships at first. But 
 the soil was fertile, the live-stock rapidly multiplied, 
 and, in a few years things wore a very promising 
 appearance. About the year 1814, however, the prac- 
 tice of busliranging began. These bushrangers were 
 mostly runaway convicts, together with other des- 
 perate characters, too easily to be found in a coun- 
 try, where the same neglect prevailed as in N. S. 
 Wales, in regard to the provision of religious in- 
 struction for the wants of its increasing population. 
 These ruffians, hardened in wickedness by the de- 
 moralizing process of the chain-gang and gaol, 
 unchecked, as we have seen, by any influences of 
 religion, were either let loose, or else escaped, from
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 151 
 
 their chains, to retaliate upon the peaceable inhabit- 
 ants of the island in deeds of atrocious violence. 
 Herding together in the bush, they burst, every now 
 and then, from their secret lurking-places often 
 caves and dens of the earth, or the depths of the 
 primeval forest and changed, in a moment, the 
 happy and flourishing homestead of the industrious 
 settler into a scene of rapine and bloody massacre, 
 accompanied oftentimes with deeds of wanton 
 cruelty, or, if women were seized, of indescribable 
 brutality. One of them, by name Michael Howe, 
 was for years the terror of the whole island, ranging 
 it in all directions, at the head of fourteen wretches 
 like himself, and taking a diabolical delight in mur- 
 dering all who came within his grasp. Between 
 these bushrangers and the military many life-and- 
 cleath struggles took place. Some were slain on the 
 field others died of their wounds and numbers 
 perished on the scaffold. In five years, 1822-7, 
 more than 120 prisoners absconded from the penal 
 settlement of Port Macquarie. "With very few ex- 
 ceptions, the whole perished, being either hanged, 
 or shot in the woods, or starved to death, or killed 
 and eaten by their comrades. 
 
 In the year 1822, two convicts, named Pierce 
 and Greenhill, made off with six others. After 
 about ten days travelling in the woods, being in 
 want of food, these two agreed to murder one of their 
 comrades (Dalton), and eat him. Greenhill slew 
 the victim with an axe, and the body was consumed 
 by the whole party. A few days after this, the
 
 152 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 same monster, Greenhill, with the concurrence of 
 the others, butchered another comrade (Bodenham), 
 and he too was devoured. The next sufferer, John 
 Mather, seeing that he was doomed, begged and 
 obtained life for half-an-hour, and kneeled down to 
 p ra y after which he also underwent the fate of the 
 others. 
 
 The party was now reduced to three, by the death 
 of these and the defection of two others, who, after 
 seeing the murder of poor Mather, returned at once 
 to Port Macquarie, surrendered themselves to the 
 authorities, and died of exhaustion and misery 
 within a few days. Tr avers, the weakest of these 
 three, was soon sacrificed to satisfy the greedy crav- 
 ings of his companions. Part of his body was 
 eaten, and the rest dried and divided between the 
 two wretches. They had reached by this time a 
 beautiful country, abounding with the kangaroo and 
 emu ; but these it was beyond their skill to catch. 
 The pair of cannibals walked on, eyeing each 
 other with a glare of mutual distrust and ferocity, 
 each expecting that the other was watching for his 
 opportunity to complete the frightful massacre. 
 Pierce afterwards declared that he was haunted by 
 the words of one of his dead comrades, who said 
 that " Greenhill would kill his father, rather than 
 fast one day." Afraid, as he says, to sleep before 
 him, or to walk one step in advance, he kept on by 
 his side, placing the axe, which he had in his pos- 
 session, under his head at night, and carrying it on 
 his shoulder in the day-time. Such, at least, is the
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 153 
 
 statement made by himself in his confession. At 
 last Greenhill fell, either by accident or fatigue. 
 Pierce instantly sprung upon him, slew him, and 
 travelled on, bearing with him the thigh and arm of 
 his late associate. 
 
 This monster lived to perpetrate other enormities : 
 at length, he was captured, tried, confessed his 
 crimes, and was executed. 
 
 To pass now from penal settlements to penal 
 systems. 
 
 The Assignment System. 
 
 Up to the year 1838 the system of assignment was 
 in force in the penal colonies. All male and female 
 convicts, on their arrival in the colony, were either 
 assigned at once as servants to individuals, or, if 
 there was no demand for them, were kept in bar- 
 racks, at the cost of the Crown, and employed in 
 public works, until masters applied for them. The 
 assigned were required to live under the roof of 
 their employers received no wages were not al- 
 lowed to work for themselves, be out at night, or go 
 anywhere without a pass and might be flogged, or 
 imprisoned, on complaint of their masters, who were 
 bound to provide them with clothes and food. The 
 convicts unassigned were divided into six classes, 
 according to their character and conduct. The first 
 might work for themselves on Saturdays, and might 
 also sleep out of barracks the second had the 
 Saturday at their own disposal, but were not per-
 
 154 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 mitted to sleep out the third had the afternoon of 
 Saturday the fourth were worked in irons the 
 fifth, besides being worked in irons, were kept en- 
 tirely separate from the other prisoners the sixth 
 were sent to the penal settlements, and employed in 
 works of the severest description. A prisoner might 
 ascend or descend through all these six classes ; but 
 good behaviour would procure him, after a certain 
 number of years, a ticket-of -leave, that is, a license 
 to work for himself as a free man, on condition of 
 appearing at an annual muster, and not leaving the 
 colony until the term of his sentence had expired. 
 Purther, a free pardon was granted, after continued 
 good behaviour, to one transported for fourteen 
 years, after that two-thirds of his time had elapsed, 
 and, to one for life, at the end of twelve years. 
 
 Such was the old system, which had been in ope- 
 ration for half a century, and, upon the whole, had 
 not worked amiss in its effect upon the convicts 
 of whom many had been reclaimed, enabled to com- 
 mence a new course, and ultimately to become good 
 citizens, and the founders of some most respectable 
 families in the colony. But herein lay one very 
 grave objection to it, especially in later years, when 
 the comforts of life had been so abundantly multi- 
 plied around them, and the terrors of the long and 
 dangerous voyage to Botany Bay had been almost 
 exploded. There was an actual encouragement to 
 crime in the ease with which the convict went 
 through (if he pleased) his term of punishment, and 
 took his place among the settlers in his adopted
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 155 
 
 country often among the richest and most influ- 
 ential of them. 
 
 Besides this, there was a grievous inequality in 
 this mode of punishment. For, though the way to 
 the ultimate recovery of liberty, and even to afflu- 
 ence, was open to all, yet the pains of servitude, and 
 the chances of continuing in it, were greater or less, 
 according to the character of the master. Some 
 masters were mild and merciful in their treatment 
 of their servants, and did their best to help them in 
 endeavouring to return to the position in society 
 which their crimes had forfeited. In other cases, 
 where the family of the convict was respectable, 
 some member of it would follow the criminal to the 
 colony, and obtain him as an assigned servant. In 
 one notorious instance of this kind, where a man 
 had been transported for a bank-robbery, and the 
 proceeds of the robbery were not recovered, Ms wife 
 soon joined him, with the whole of the plunder, 
 applied for him as a servant, and " their fortunes 
 were made." But it too frequently happened, that 
 the master was a merciless tyrant, and, instead of 
 correcting their natural faults by his example and 
 influence, only communicated his own vices, or else 
 provoked them to acts of disobedience, by which 
 they forfeited all hope of shortening their convict 
 career, and became hardened in guilt. 
 
 These serious objections being found to lie against 
 the old system of assignment, certain changes were 
 introduced by Lord Glenelg in 1838, of which the 
 principal were the following, (i) that no convicts
 
 156 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 should in future be assigned as domestic servants, or 
 be employed for mere purposes of luxury, (ii) that 
 all should be first coerced in labour-gangs. 
 
 Thus was the first step taken by the British 
 Government in applying a remedy to the recognised 
 defects of the existing convict system. Something, 
 however, was yet wanting : and there is a passage 
 in a despatch in 1839, of the then JLieut.-Governor, 
 which shows strikingly the improved state of opinion 
 of those in office in the colony, upon the point of 
 most importance in reference to the whole matter. 
 "I am convinced," he writes, "that, were 2000 
 per annum expended by her Majesty's Government, 
 in supporting ten pious and zealous ministers, to be 
 employed in the interior of this colony, in preaching 
 daily, not in churches, but to the convicts in the 
 houses of the settlers, the benefit to be derived from 
 such a measure would be very great." 
 
 Lord Stanley's Probation System. 
 
 In 1842, the second step was taken, in the im- 
 provement of the convict system, by Lord Stanley, 
 who, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, commu- 
 nicated to the Governor (the lamented Franklin) 
 the system approved by Sir Robert Peel's Govern- 
 ment, and which is commonly called the probation 
 system. Convicts, under this mode of treatment, 
 were made to pass through five distinct stages (the 
 first, however, only in very aggravated cases) ; viz., 
 (i) Detention at Norfolk Island, (ii) Probation-
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 157 
 
 gang, (iii) Probation-pass, (iv) Ticket-of-leave, (v) 
 Pardon. 
 
 The pass-holders might hire themselves out in 
 private service. But these were divided into three 
 classes, according to their previous conduct. The low- 
 est had to pay in all their wages, and the second class 
 a third of their earnings, to an agent of Government : 
 the third class were allowed to retain their wages. 
 The money thus paid in might be forfeited by any 
 misconduct, which should throw the depositor back 
 into the probation-gang. Otherwise, it would be 
 refunded to him, when he obtained his ticket-of- 
 leave, which he might do, by good behaviour, at the 
 end of half his time, the term for life being 
 reckoned as 24 years. Having attained all this, 
 however, he was still liable, upon misconduct, to be 
 returned to the stage of a pass-holder or probationer. 
 Each probation-gang was to have a clergyman or 
 schoolmaster attached. The convicts were to be 
 taught to read and write, and religious instruction 
 was to be carefully given. 
 
 The eifect aimed at in this system was the im- 
 position of a very formidable punishment at first, 
 which should be gradually relaxed with the lapse of 
 time. The probation-gangs were the pivot of the 
 system, inasmuch as all, while passing through them, 
 would be, it was supposed, under close superintend- 
 ence, and within the reach of moral and religious in- 
 fluences. To this stage the refractory might be sent 
 back at any time a punishment most formidable, 
 which was expected to prove most effective.
 
 158 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 The result, however, of the trial given to this 
 system was, complete disappointment. The proba- 
 tion-gangs were found to be the nurseries of vice, 
 instead of the correctors of it. Men, who had been 
 passed into them, fresh from gaols in England, 
 and the crowded confinement of the convict ship, 
 were little likely to benefit each other by the close 
 contact of daily labour. But the following passage, 
 from a convict's letter, will best illustrate the evils 
 of the probation-system : 
 
 " A new scene in life has just begun with me. For two years 
 and upwards I have been serving under probation, and a trying 
 time I found it : but, thank God, I can now breathe a purer air, 
 and can lift up my head (as far as a convict can) once more, 
 being just escaped from the dreadful society of the probation- 
 gang. 
 
 "On Jan. 14, 1843, we arrived here, and in a few days were 
 separated, and most of us sent into the interior to our appointed 
 stations. Previously to our dispersion, we had an opportunity 
 of assembling for reading the Scriptures and prayer, as we had 
 been wont to do on board the ship. We all lodged in one poor 
 sorry outhouse next the barracks, the first night we spent on 
 shore in Van Diemen's Land. My dear companions were asked 
 if they would unite in prayer once more together, most likely for 
 the last time a proposal to which they all agreed, without one 
 dissentient voice ; and earnest were the prayers, and deep the 
 feeling, on behalf of our kind friend and patron (Dr. Browning) 
 we were about to part with, and fervently, too, we sought Divine 
 wisdom and grace, to guide and bless us in all our future steps. 
 
 " The time soon came for us to be marched off. Myself, and 
 five more shipmates, with twenty old hands, were yoked to carts, 
 loaded with picks and other heavy goods. An overseer took the 
 command, and, at the well-known sound ' Go on !' off we started, 
 not knowing whither : all we knew was that we were going to 
 form a new station fifty miles up the country. We had not pro- 
 ceeded many miles before I began to feel exhausted ; for, just
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 159 
 
 stepping on shore after a long voyage, you may suppose I was 
 unfit for hard travelling; added to this, my health was but deli- 
 cate. But journey on we must, up rugged hills, beneath a scorch- 
 ing sun, and amidst the hellish oaths and imprecations of our new 
 companions. My ears were unaccustomed to such wicked words 
 as proceeded from their lips. One particular oath, the first time 
 I heard it uttered, made me shudder, and that was from a poor 
 grey-headed man, when oppressed with dragging those heavy 
 carts. It is too awful and too grossly blasphemous to admit of 
 being written. Its purport was a wish that he might die that 
 moment, if he moved another step ; but the Lord had mercy on 
 him, and did not grant his request, for he still moved on. Surely, 
 I thought, I shall never hear such language again. But in this 
 I was greatly mistaken ; for it is common, awfully common, to 
 hear prisoners, and officers too, swear the same oath. 
 
 " We arrived at , and were put within the prison : and a 
 
 sad night I spent, as to outward circumstances. My friend and 
 shipmate, who was with me on board the hulk, desirous of doing 
 good, proposed to read a chapter from ' God's Word :' but oh ! I 
 shall never forget the dreadful cry they set up. ' You old hypo- 
 crite ! there 's no God in Van Diemen's Land, nor ever shall be!' 
 were the blasphemous words vociferated. Not till then did I 
 find banishment such a heavy chastisement. To be obliged to 
 hear and see what has passed before me, the last two years, is a 
 severe and heart-rending affliction. 
 
 " Morning came, and we pursued our journey. We had to 
 traverse the bush, with scarcely a track to guide us. Here and 
 there we saw a tent, or met a settler. The country became more 
 rugged; but we were compelled to drag and labour on, through 
 a very hot day, until we were nearly exhausted. Night came on ; 
 and truly thankful I was to lie down upon the ground, and obtain 
 a little repose. We encamped in the bush, with no other shelter 
 but God's own beautiful sky, bespangled with stars. Here we 
 found water a great blessing to us, for we were parched with 
 thirst, from the want of water during the day. Next day, on we 
 went, and, early in the evening, we arrived at the spot to which 
 we were ordered. I have been particular in describing this jour- 
 ney, for the circumstances connected with it made a powerful 
 impression on my mind. Never did I see beings sunk so low. 
 Here I beheld the fearful effects of the fall. The blasphemous
 
 160 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 expi-essions, respecting the Holy Comforter, produced horror 
 in my mind for the moment ; but I hope they also led me more 
 earnestly to implore His most gracious presence and power in 
 my own soul. 
 
 " At , we commenced our work. Then began the course 
 
 of government and discipline to which I have been subjected. 
 
 Gangs marched to the station as it enlarged, from , and 
 
 and other Second-Sentence stations. These men were supposed 
 to have been reformed : but, alas ! their conduct soon evinced 
 that the treatment they had received was calculated to harden, 
 rather than to soften, their moral feeling. They soon broke out. 
 Officers commenced their work, bringing many of them to trial 
 for various offences. The ' triangle ' was erected ; the horrid 
 ' cat' I saw, with grief and pain, flourished about the station by 
 a fellow-prisoner, appointed flagellator. It was soon laid upon 
 the backs of the unhappy convicts. Then my sorows began. 
 I was disappointed that a milder system was not in operation. 
 From what I conceived probation to be, I expected that men 
 would have been instructed and drawn, not driven encouraged, not 
 at once coerced. 
 
 " I should have told you that for three or four months we were 
 tolerably comfortable, owing to the influence of a pious visiting 
 magistrate, who was over us during that brief period, and paid 
 great attention to our spiritual interests, and instructed us, and 
 led our worship on most Sabbaths : but his stay was short. There 
 was no flogging during his time : but he would come and talk 
 with us, as a tender father to his children, and encourage us, in 
 every possible way, in the pursuit of useful knowledge. After he 
 had left us the scene changed." 
 
 The above extracts show that the wishes and in- 
 tentions of the Home Government were by no means 
 carried out in the distant colony, and at the same 
 time sufficiently indicate the chief causes of the 
 failure of Lord Stanley's plan. These were the fol- 
 lowing : the inadequate and unsuitable accommoda- 
 tion for the prisoners at night, the employment of 
 them in masses in the bush in the primary stage,
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. Ifil 
 
 the improper character of the overseers of the gangs, 
 for want of better men, and * the absence of every 
 thing like moral training and preparation for trans- 
 portation. The convict passed in general from the 
 debaucheries of a profligate life into the common 
 gaol, from thence into the convict-ship, and finally, 
 into the probation gang, growing worse and worse 
 at every stage. Besides all which, the very distance 
 at which the probation was carried on, so com- 
 pletely removed from the eye of the Home Govern- 
 ment and from the salutary influence of public 
 opinion, was sure to leave the way open to many 
 abuses, to which no remedy could be applied, except 
 after wearisome delays and difficulties, and then too 
 late to counteract the evil. 
 
 Lord Grey's Probation System. 
 
 In the general principles of this and the preced- 
 ing plan, there was no difference. A succession of 
 probationary stages, bearing proportion to the dura- 
 tion of the original sentences, and gradually advanc- 
 ing the well-conducted through the stages of ticket- 
 of-leave and conditional pardon to absolute freedom, 
 is the leading feature of both. In the mode of work- 
 ing them out were some points of difference. In- 
 stead of congregating the convicts in masses in the 
 first stage, without any other distinction of character 
 than that which the law defines, separate confine- 
 ment was substituted ; and both stages instead of 
 bring passed in Van Piemen's Land, were to take 
 
 M
 
 162 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 place at home, under the immediate inspection of 
 Government. 
 
 The duration of the first stage of discipline in 
 separate confinement was fixed at from about nine 
 to eighteen months, according to length of sentence 
 and other circumstances. A badly-conducted pri- 
 soner might have it protracted. He might also be 
 returned to it, to begin his course of probation 
 again. To carry out this stage of discipline there 
 were sufficiently ample facilities in Millbank, Wake- 
 field, Pentonville, Reading, and other prisons in 
 England, built after the model of Pentonville, avail- 
 able to Government, upon defraying the expenses of 
 the convicts' maintenance, &c.* 
 
 The second stage of discipline was penal labour 
 upon public works. 
 
 Many entertained, what appeared to me, the un- 
 reasonable fear that men really reformed in separation 
 would turn bad again in association. For my own 
 part I felt persuaded, if the same means were used to 
 keep them from falling which were first honoured of 
 God in reclaiming them, the faithful and affectionate 
 ministration of his Holy Word, fair and considerate 
 treatment by their officers, and a "fair amount of the 
 stimulus of hope, the good character of the convict 
 would not be deteriorated. I thought it would be 
 neither just nor wise, however, to test the religious 
 profession of men, under such circumstances, by the 
 
 * For the names of the prisons so used and the number of 
 convicts in England, see paper in Appendix.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 163 
 
 highest standard, and to condemn a man for a word, 
 an ebullition of temper, or the infringement of a 
 rule, at once as a hypocrite. This is constantly 
 done, and chiefly by persons who are themselves 
 irreligious altogether. Such is not the teaching of 
 our divine religion. " Brethren" said St. Paul, 
 "if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are 
 spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meek- 
 ness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." 
 
 There are prison offences, indeed, which show 
 plainly enough that the reported reformation of a 
 man is nothing better than gross self-deception, if 
 not hypocrisy. What then ? Surely, it is better 
 that this discovery should be made in time, and the 
 delusive expectation dispelled, than to let him free 
 upon the world again before the necessity, a really 
 bad man ; better, for the convict himself better un-. 
 questionably for society. A reformation which will 
 not stand the test of association, where it has more 
 safeguards and fewer temptations than in the icorld 
 at large, is manifestly not of the least value. 
 
 But the associated labour of convicts had been 
 already tried, it was said, with the most disastrous 
 results. This was undoubtedly true ; but there were 
 causes enough, as we have seen, for that failure, 
 besides the association itself. 
 
 " I regret to state my impression," says Mr. 
 Latrobe, acting Governor of Van Diemen's Land in 
 1846-7 " that, after all the stress laid upon the 
 necessity of providing adequately for the religious 
 and moral instruction of the convicts under the 
 
 it 2
 
 164 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 new system, in no particular has the difficulty of 
 attaining the object been" more glaringly apparent, 
 both in number and in general character and quali- 
 fications; the class of men whose services were at 
 command were not of the stamp that must be 
 employed, if a reasonable hope of success were to 
 be indulged." 
 
 "It further appeared to me," he writes, "that 
 the probation system, whether sound in principle or 
 not, had not a fair trial, and could never have a fair 
 trial in this distant colony." 
 
 It does not require colonial experience to be 
 assured of this. In a complicated system such as 
 that was, supposing it carried out ever so discreetly 
 and zealously, difficulties, never provided for, would 
 continually be starting up ; little in themselves, 
 perhaps, if promptly met, but fraught with dis- 
 astrous consequences to discipline and to morals, 
 if neglected or postponed for any considerable time, 
 which yet was generally inevitable. Norfolk Island 
 was nearly 1000 miles from the seat of colonial 
 government ; the communication from the bush to 
 Ilobart Town even was, necessarily, very slow ; and 
 when the reports did reach head-quarters in the 
 colony, the person invested with strictly-defined 
 authority would naturally shrink from undertaking 
 new responsibilities, and the more especially in a 
 country where everything assumed a party com- 
 plexion, and was 'sure to be misrepresented at home 
 by some one. The matter, therefore, would be sent 
 home for the decision of the supreme Government ;
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 165 
 
 and if the executive had not in the mean time 
 changed hands, or if no more important business 
 was being pressed upon it, the ultimatum would 
 come back in the course of perhaps eighteen 
 months ; a doubtful remedy, at any period, but 
 when it arrived, wholly unsuitable, or calculated to 
 aggravate the disease. 
 
 Nor was there the check upon the growth of ir- 
 regularities and demoralization which the presence of 
 an enlightened and Christian public interposes. 
 Here and there only, at the penal stations, occurred 
 any exception, and Norfolk Island was open only to 
 the officials of Government. Yet, of all things, the 
 treatment of those who have lost their liberty should 
 be most accessible to such observation and influence. 
 Man is naturally a tyrant over his species, and the 
 lower in feeling, if not in education and birth, the 
 officer is, in general, the greater. The exercise of 
 petty power by persons of this kind, brutalizes 
 further their own minds, irritates the feelings of the 
 prisoner, and renders almost every effort to com- 
 municate favourable impressions to the heart of the 
 oppressed abortive. If any doubt the value of such 
 impartial inspection, let them read the life of 
 Howard, when, moved by the generous and self- 
 devoted spirit of a pure religion, he visited the 
 prisons of Europe, and exposed to public view their 
 horrible condition ; let them consider what Newgate 
 and every convict-ship was, before Elizabeth Pry 
 and others, moved by the same spirit, and animated 
 by the example of that great man, undertook to
 
 166 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 carry the offers of mercy, in the accents of Christian 
 sympathy, to their unhappy inmates. The probation 
 scheme of Earl Grey secured all those helps. The 
 hest officers, from the highest to the lowest, could 
 be selected, or, if found unfit, immediately removed. 
 The eye of Government could personally survey the 
 whole, and apply to discovered evils a prompt and 
 efficient remedy; Members of Parliament, and 
 persons high in the estimation of their country, had 
 every opportunity to observe the working of the 
 plan, and to make public the result of their obser- 
 vation. Measures were taken to secure absolute 
 separation, moreover, during the night, for every 
 man worked in association. 
 
 To assist in carrying out this part of the plan, a 
 penal establishment was formed in the Isle of 
 Portland, near Weymouth. 1200 convicts, who 
 have passed through separate confinement, are here 
 now employed in the construction of a harbour of 
 refuge on that part of the coast ; a work long called 
 for as confessedly of great public utility, but which, 
 it is obvious, would not have been undertaken if free 
 labour were exclusively to be engaged. Another has 
 since been opened in Dartmoor for invalid and less 
 able-bodied convicts, for about the same number. 
 
 Also, a prison, with separate cells, for the con- 
 victs employed at Portsmouth, and preparations for 
 another in Woolwich, are in progress. The same it 
 is hoped, ere long, will be the case in Bermuda and 
 Gibraltar. In fact, it has long been felt by Govern- 
 ment to be a matter of great importance to carry
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 167 
 
 out these improvements as thoroughly and as expe- 
 ditiously as possible. The "hulks" originated in 
 the time of the war, from the difficulty of carrying 
 out the sentence of transportation, and the greater 
 value then of convict labour at home. In the best 
 hands they have proved to be indifferent prisons. In 
 the old days of neglect they became distinguished 
 amongst the worst. 
 
 A few years back a thorough reform of these 
 establishments was however instituted by Secretary 
 Sir George Grey, and committed to the management 
 of a gentleman of high character and experience, 
 Herbert P. Voules, Esq., now one of Her Majesty's 
 Inspectors of Prisons. At the same time, a clergy- 
 man of devoted Christian character, to take charge 
 of the convicts, was selected with special care by 
 the Secretary of State himself ; schoolmasters were 
 added, books for the moral and religious improve- 
 ment of the prisoners supplied, officers of unfit cha- 
 racter displaced, each class or " bay " properly 
 lighted, every hammock fully exposed to view, a 
 vigilant inspection kept up during the night ; and in 
 a space where 600 Or 700 men used to be berthed, 
 not more than 450 were allowed. 
 
 Looking at the hulks as they were, and the 
 obstacles which lay in the way of their improve- 
 ment, and especially the detention of so many con- 
 victs of the old stamp, men grown inveterate in 
 vicious habits, who could not be disposed of other- 
 wise, consistently with good faith, or the demands 
 of justice, I am astonished to observe how much
 
 168 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 good was, and since has been, effected by those 
 means. 
 
 Thus it was not long before it was reported by 
 the chaplain at Woolwich : 
 
 "There have been three services each Lord's Day 
 one in each ship j all the men attend, with the 
 exception of those of a religious persuasion differing 
 from the Church of England, and their attention 
 and devout behaviour have been most gratifying 
 to myself, as well as the subject of remark to others 
 who have casually witnessed it. 
 
 " The holy sacrament has been solemnized quar- 
 terly ; the number of communicants has been 
 gradually increasing up to 103 ; and I may add that 
 the conduct of these communicants has been most 
 consistent ; and among these are four who have 
 been baptized within the last year, at their own 
 express desire. The Wednesday and Thursday 
 evening services have been continued as usual. 
 
 " At the hospital there have been a daily service 
 and lecture. The sick who are able, gather round 
 the upper and lower decks, joining in the services 
 with earnestness, and often by the sounds of praise 
 soothing the sick, who, confined to their beds, can 
 follow the words they are singing from their books. 
 So much have they begun to value religious in- 
 struction, that they have applied to the mate cf the 
 hospital for leave to have a Bible and hymn class 
 in the evenings among those who can leave their 
 beds." 
 
 The number of communicants, about 100 in 1000
 
 PAST A!SD PRESENT. 169 
 
 prisoners, shows a wonderfully altered state of 
 things, where ten under the old regime would be 
 considered a large number. And it will be observed 
 that this change is accompanied by accounts of 
 general improved good conduct and industry. 
 
 Similar reports were made to the Directors from 
 the hulks at Portsmouth. 
 
 Portsmouth Convict Prison. 
 
 This prison was opened in the spring of 1852, and 
 given in charge to Captain Knight, formerly Go- 
 vernor of Portland prison ; an officer of well-tried 
 qualifications for the most difficult posts. At the 
 close of the year the Directors were able to say, 
 
 "We cannot conclude this Report without ex- 
 pressing great satisfaction at the successful result of 
 the first distinct experiment of removing convicts in 
 a body from the hulks into a prison, which allowed 
 of their being separated from each other at night and 
 at meals, and in which the authorities were provided 
 with the necessary means of enforcing a higher 
 degree of discipline. The progressive improvement 
 visible in the conduct of these men under the 
 superior means of discipline afforded by the prison 
 was very remarkable, and the degree of order, regu- 
 larity, and respectful submission to discipline, that 
 now prevail both inside the prison, and also on the 
 public works, is a satisfactory proof, if any could 
 have been wanting, of the disadvantage of using 
 hulks as places of confinement for convicts, when
 
 170 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 the object is, not only to enforce the sentence of the 
 law, but to maintain strict discipline, promote 
 habits of industry, and encourage every effort at 
 moral improvement among the prisoners. 
 
 The following results are noticed by Captain 
 Knight in his Report : 
 
 " Out of 1376 prisoners who have been confined 
 in this prison, 955 have not committed the slightest 
 breach of rules, and 66 more have committed only 
 one slight offence ; so, in fact, 1021 have not been 
 guilty of any actual misconduct, and thus every- 
 thing like misconduct has been confined to the 
 remaining 355. It may be further observed, that a 
 very considerable proportion of offences are attribut- 
 able to the repeated misconduct of a few almost 
 incorrigible individuals ; thus, for instance, 134 
 offences have been committed by 13 prisoners. 
 (Corporal punishment was inflicted on four men.) 
 
 About 152 offences (viz. "having possession of 
 money, tobacco, and other prohibited articles," have 
 been caused solely by the convicts being brought in 
 close contact daily with labourers, sailors, &c., and 
 many more are indirectly traceable to the same 
 cause; even persons of apparently higher position 
 occasionally assist the convicts to commit breaches 
 of discipline. I will give an instance of this kind. 
 A person passing a party of convicts at work on 
 Southsea Common threw one of them some money, 
 which he picked up unobserved by his officer, but 
 immediately and voluntarily gave it up. 
 
 Taking into consideration the trials and tempta-
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 171 
 
 tions to which the convicts in this prison are con- 
 stantly exposed, their general regularity and exem- 
 plary conduct hare far exceeded my expectations, 
 and convince me that their labour might be made 
 still more generally useful and profitable, and be 
 extended to situations and under circumstances 
 heretofore never thought of. 
 
 Various instances might be given in proof of the 
 comparatively favourable moral condition of the 
 convicts. The following may not be considered 
 altogether out of place : 
 
 Register 692 found a sovereign when at work in 
 the dockyard, picked it up unobserved by the officer 
 in charge of his party or by the other convicts. 
 
 Register in like manner also found a half- 
 sovereign in the Royal Clarence Yard. 
 
 Register 476 found, buried in the mud of one of 
 the moats, when employed with other convicts in 
 cleaning the same, a glazier's diamond, value about 
 1. 
 
 Register 576 likewise found a bunch of gold seals 
 and lockets on Southsea Common. 
 
 These articles were all voluntarily given up, and 
 have been restored to the lawful owners. 
 
 Dartmoor Prison. 
 
 This prison was partially opened in 1850, a re- 
 construction of the old war prison, so long happily 
 untenanted for its original purpose. Here were 
 more, at one time, than 9000 prisoners of war. The
 
 172 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 impression on one's mind is a very sad one, when lie 
 feels the chill blasts of that elevated spot, and 
 thinks of the warm regions from which so many of 
 those poor foreigners came. The mortality is said 
 to have heen very great amongst them. This is 
 stated to have been the result not only of the 
 climate, but of the want of proper supplies from 
 their own government, and a total recklessness of 
 living; for, being allowed wages for work, and 
 having it in their power to purchase spirits, they 
 consumed it largely, instead of procuring suitable 
 clothing and nourishment. 
 
 Over the ancient gate, built of large primeval 
 granite blocks, is the inscription 
 
 " PARCERE SUBJECTIS," 
 
 a good motto, but expressive of the intentions of the 
 British Government rather than of the results. 
 Those prisoners of war built the church in Princes' 
 Town, the barracks for the soldiery, the officers' 
 quarters, and one-fourth or more of the prison 
 itself. The climate suits well the constitution of 
 Englishmen in general. Nowhere can be seen more 
 health and vigour in adults or children. I spent 
 more than a week in a very indifferent inn, desig- 
 nated the Dutchy Hotel, in Princes' Town, to the 
 great benefit of my health, although the weather 
 was bad enough to remind one of the lines, 
 
 " The people all within this clime 
 Are frozen in the winter time,
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 173 
 
 Or drowned with snow or rain ; 
 
 And when the summer is begun. 
 
 They lie like silkworms in the sun. 
 
 And come to life again." Rowe's " Dartmoor." 
 
 I never saw any ordinary set of labourers work 
 more heartily than the convicts sent to refit this 
 prison. This may be accounted for in part, perhaps, 
 because they were employed at their own trades, 
 smiths, carpenters, farm labourers, &c. ; partly, be- 
 cause they had not the corrupting influence of the 
 old style of convicts before them, as at the hulks ; 
 but chiefly, as I believe, because they had passed 
 through prisons on the separate plan, where they 
 had been religiously instructed, and not kept over 
 long. An excellent crop of flax was gathered 
 on the farm of the prison, the first autumn. In the 
 course of a few years, it may safely be anticipated, 
 the benefits of this establishment will be felt for 
 many miles beyond the prison bounds, in the 
 stimulus given to industry thereby in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and the example of what may be effected 
 in reclaiming that now desolate-looking and barren 
 region. 
 
 Captain Gambier, the Governor, in his Report 
 for 1852, furnishes the following interesting in- 
 formation : 
 
 " Tradesmen and artisans have been employed as 
 much as practicable at their respective trades, in the 
 repairing of buildings, and in completing the con- 
 version of the old war prisons, erecting and fitting 
 up farm-buildings, tool-sheds, c., and in the con-
 
 174 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 struction of a large range of prisoners' baths ; 
 others in repairing roads ; a large number in agri- 
 cultural operations ; several gangs in cutting peat ; 
 during the proper season, a part of them, mixed 
 with invalids and light-labour men, in drying, 
 turning, and stacking it. This is then used as fuel 
 for the service of the prison, and likewise for 
 making gas, thus effecting a very considerable 
 saving in the articles of fuel and light. The in- 
 valids, of whom there is a large body here, are em- 
 ployed at light labour, also as tailors and shoe- 
 makers. 
 
 "I have likewise, under your sanction, selected 
 men of exemplary character, with short sentences, 
 who have performed a large portion of their terms 
 of punishment, and whose crimes were not heinous 
 ones, to be employed on * special service.' This 
 consists in looking after the cows, horses, pigs, &c. ; 
 driving carts, and carrying tools to the prison for 
 repair, from their respective gangs, &c. ; whilst 
 others have been employed at their trades. 
 
 " These men are not under the charge of any par- 
 ticular officer. Their dress is a distinctive one, 
 consisting of a blue jacket, waistcoat, and trowsers, 
 instead of the usual brown or drab clothing worn 
 by the other convicts. Those who are allowed the 
 privilege of this special employment outside the 
 walls of the prison, have a red cloth collar attached 
 to their jackets, and are allowed to pass out through 
 the gates to their respective occupations (during 
 working hours) without being in charge of an
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 175 
 
 officer. Those not having the red collar are only 
 allowed the privileges attached to the distinctive 
 dress inside the prison walls, and are therefore never 
 allowed to pass the gates, except in charge of an 
 officer. The distinctiveness of this clothing acts as 
 a guidance to the officers and military sentries, who 
 would otherwise immediately stop any convict who 
 was not in charge of an officer. 
 
 " I have found, Sir, this plan of yours, in em- 
 ploying these men as above detailed, to answer most 
 admirably, and I rejoice to state that I have had 
 no case of misconduct on their part. They highly 
 value the privilege, and eagerly seek for it, and are 
 very proud of the confidence placed in them. The 
 number thus employed now amounts to 53; viz., 18 
 outside and 35 inside the prison walls. 
 
 " There have been but two instances of corporal 
 punishment during the last twelve months. The 
 minor punishments have been bread and water, not 
 exceeding seven days (and this number of days very 
 rare), except when ordered by a director, for serious 
 offences, the usual punishments being from one to 
 three days bread and water, or the loss of a meal, 
 removal to a lower class, &c. These punishments 
 have been confined to 445 convicts out of 1695 : 
 and the reports to 600, the rest not having a report 
 against them." 
 
 Portland Breakwater and Prison. 
 The circumstances connected with laying the
 
 176 CONVICT SYSTEMS, * 
 
 foundation stone of the great Breakwater, near 
 Weymouth, for which the convicts now quarry 
 stones from the rocky peninsula called Portland 
 Isle, on the 25th of July, 1849, will long he remem- 
 bered in that locality. 
 
 All the local papers describing the events of that 
 day were bought up with extraordinary avidity. 
 New and enlarged editions were required to meet 
 the demand. 
 
 The national advantages of the projected Break- 
 water are : it will afford ample protection, and be 
 accessible at all times, and in all weathers, to vessels 
 of any size, and in immense numbers, as there will 
 be made a secure harbour, with deep water, for a 
 space of four square miles in extent. From mid 
 channel in fine clear weather, a vessel can command 
 a sight of Cape la Hogue and Alderney, on the 
 Erench side, and of Portland and the Isle of Wight, 
 on the English. A fleet here stationed would have 
 an uncontrolled sweep of the English Channel. 
 
 A great local advantage will be the shelter 
 afforded to Weymouth, to which there is annually 
 much damage done by south and south-east gales. 
 In 1825, the sea was driven with such fury into the 
 bay, that it destroyed the Pier at the entrance of 
 Weymouth Harbour and the greater part of the 
 Esplanade- wall, incurring an expenditure of several 
 thousand pounds to replace it. The Breakwater 
 would have prevented this loss, and also that of 
 several vessels and lives at the same time. 
 
 A greater advantage is the facility it will offer for
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 177 
 
 carrying on the Portland stone trade, which, during 
 the prevalence of easterly winds, is now seriously 
 impeded, and frequently totally suspended. The 
 shelter that will be afforded by the Breakwater will 
 enable vessels to load alongside a quay, and render 
 it unnecessary to employ lighters. The average 
 quantity of stone now annually shipped is between 
 30,000 and 40,000 tons. This will doubtless be 
 considerably increased, when there are greater 
 facilities for its shipment. 
 
 Though commonly called an island, Portland is in 
 fact a peninsula, being united to the main land by a 
 high bank of shingle, nearly ten miles in length, 
 known as the " Chesil Bank," composed of pebbles 
 which graduate off from the Portland end, where 
 they are of considerable size, growing smaller by 
 degrees, until near Abbotsbury they are less than 
 sparrows' eggs, and at Bridport they become a 
 coarse sand. So gradually does the size decrease, 
 that smugglers could, in the darkest night, tell 
 whereabouts they were by the size of the peb- 
 bles. 
 
 The island is one immense rock of stone, the best 
 quality of which, a good freestone, is greatly prized 
 for building purposes, St. Paul's Cathedral, Black- 
 friars and Westminster Bridges, the new Royal Ex- 
 change, and many other public buildings, being 
 erected with it. The stone was first brought into 
 repute in the time of James I., by whose architects 
 it was employed in the erection of the Banqueting 
 House at Whitehall. It is got out of the quar- 
 
 V
 
 178 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 ries of different sizes, from five or six tons' 
 weight.* 
 
 To inaugurate this great work, Prince Albert 
 attended in person. His Royal Highness was followed 
 in his whole course through Dorsetshire by the most 
 enthusiastic manifestations of loyalty to the Queen, 
 and attachment to his own person ; and having re- 
 ceived addresses from various public bodies in Dor- 
 chester, "Weymouth, and Portland, and replied to 
 them in his wonted felicitous manner, the ceremony 
 of laying the foundation stone was proceeded with ; 
 the Rev. D. Hogarth, Rector of Portland, having 
 offered the following prayer to the Most High : 
 
 " O Lord our Saviour, Thou art our keeper ; 
 Thou art the keeper of England; Thou hast kept 
 us in time past, we beseech Thee to keep us in time 
 coming. Thou hast heretofore kept us in peace, 
 and preserved us from foreign invasion. It is Thou 
 who hast kept us. Thou hast made this a great 
 nation ; but it is Thy power which kept us, not our 
 own wisdom. We disown all trust in an arm of 
 flesh; our trust is in Thee alone. God of our 
 fathers, keep us, their children, we entreat Thee. 
 
 "Bless this great work; make it a means of 
 protecting our navy, and a protection to our com- 
 merce. 
 
 " Bless our gracious Sovereign Queen VICTORIA ; 
 keep her, we beseech Thee, from all evil. Give her 
 
 * In the process of excavation, occasionally Roman antiqui- 
 ties are met with, as well as geological specimens.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 179 
 
 peace from outward foes; give her inward peace, 
 through the blood of her Redeemer. 
 
 " Bless Her Royal Consort, Prince ALBERT ; keep 
 him in all his outgoings and incomings. Let him 
 abide in peace, resting only on the merits of a cruci- 
 fied Redeemer. Bless the members of the Royal 
 Family and their children ; make them all thine by 
 adoption and grace. Amen." 
 
 The Lord's Prayer and Benediction followed. 
 
 After this beautiful prayer, uttered from the 
 heart, by one of the Lord's most faithful ministers, 
 the ceremony was proceeded with. 
 
 The Prince then made a few remarks, which we 
 regret we were unable to hear, and all being clear, 
 the stone was ordered by the Prince to be dropped, 
 and it fell to its resting place with a tremendous 
 splash, amidst the roar of artillery, and three cheers 
 for the Queen. The band immediately struck up 
 Rule Britannia, and some loads of loose stone were 
 deposited around the foundation stone. 
 
 The Royal party then minutely inspected the 
 prison and all its accompaniments, His Royal High- 
 ness frequently making particular inquiries respect- 
 ing the various matters falling under his notice, 
 Colonel Jebb, and Captain Whitty, then Governor, 
 affording him every information. 
 
 On that occasion the Prince was pleased to 
 present a Bible and Prayer-Book, for the use 
 of the chapel, in which he wrote the following sen- 
 tence : 
 
 N 2
 
 180 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 " PRESENTED TO THE CHAPEL OF THE CONVICTS 
 AT PORTLAND, AS A TOKEN OF INTEREST, AND IN 
 HOPE OF THEIR AMENDMENT. ALBERT." 
 
 I had on this occasion the honour of presenting 
 an address to His Royal Highness (in place of the 
 chaplain, who was unwell), which was graciously 
 received. 
 
 So far this great undertaking has progressed most 
 favourably, and the fears of those who anticipated 
 disastrous consequences to the moral and religious 
 improvement of the convict have proved to be 
 groundless. 
 
 The testimony of Capt. Whitty (to whose ability, 
 zeal, and efficient support of the department of 
 religion, much of the success is attributed), and the 
 Rev. Mr. Moran, then the chaplain, is the same. 
 
 " The subdued, improved, and disciplined state in 
 which the convicts generally arrive at Portland," 
 reports the Governor to Colonel Jebb, "from the 
 stage of separate confinement, appears to be an 
 admirable preparative for their transfer to the 
 greater degree of freedom unavoidable on public 
 works. Those convicts who have been for a con- 
 siderable time at Portland, have not usually indicated 
 any falling-off in morals or conduct, but, on the con- 
 trary, several instances have occurred in which men, 
 on whose conduct the comparative degree of liberty 
 here alluded to appeared to have at first an un- 
 favourable effect, have afterwards become orderly 
 and industrious, and content to work their way
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 181 
 
 cheerfully to the prospective advantages held out to 
 convicts of that character. 
 
 " In most cases I believe that the convicts have 
 lost the feeling, too prevalent amongst criminals 
 (and while it lasts constituting a great bar to their 
 reformation), that all officials or authorities who 
 enforce the laws must naturally be their enemies. 
 
 " Under the present system also they have hope, 
 without which element in their treatment I am 
 satisfied that no one else can have hope for them. 
 They are remarkably alive and submissive to treat- 
 ment guided by good faith and impartiality ; and, 
 with good officers to administer the system with 
 firmness and humanity, I see no reason whatever to 
 doubt of its successful result." 
 
 " I have now had every opportunity," says the 
 chaplain, " of observing the working of that system 
 with close attention, and further experience has con- 
 firmed the favourable opinion I had been led to 
 entertain of it. The effects of the discipline have 
 been such as may well encourage the Government to 
 persevere in the course they have entered on. 
 
 " It appears to me to be clearly established, that, 
 under certain conditions, convicts may be employed 
 on public works with great advantage. In order, 
 however, to secure these results, I consider it 
 ESSENTIAL that the two following particulars should 
 still continue to be regarded as part of the sys- 
 tem : 
 
 "1st. It is of the greatest importance that all 
 those men who are sent into association on public
 
 182 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 works, should have previously undergone a certain 
 period of probation in separate confinement. 
 
 " 2nd. That in both periods of probation, strict 
 discipline be combined with the inculcation of sound 
 religious and moral principles. I know you are 
 fully sensible of this ; nor is it too much to affirm, 
 that the great success which has already attended 
 the efforts made on behalf of * England's outcasts/ 
 is to be ascribed, under God, to the prominence 
 which has been given by the Government to the 
 moral and religious training of the prisoners. The 
 Gospel of Christ is the great remedy which has 
 been revealed from heaven for the recovery of guilty 
 and polluted man to the favour and to the image of 
 God ; and just in proportion as that Gospel is set 
 forth without addition and without reserve, in the 
 same proportion may we expect a blessing to attend 
 our labours. 
 
 " It may be safely affirmed that the moral and 
 religious condition of the prisoners has, on the 
 whole, been very satisfactory. Those prisoners who 
 came here with good characters have, with few ex- 
 ceptions, maintained their standing ; and a very 
 considerable number may be said to have greatly 
 improved. 
 
 " Let it, however, be borne in mind, that orderly 
 conduct and obedience to prison rules here is a much 
 higher test than it is in separate confinement, 
 because the temptations are much greater, and the 
 restraints necessarily fewer. The association of the 
 prisoners who are engaged early and late in the
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 183 
 
 labour of the prison or in the quarries, although 
 under inspection and control, is assimilated to that 
 of ordinary life ; and I feel no doubt that it would 
 prove a valuable training for their future conduct 
 in the colonies. The Lord's Supper has been ad- 
 ministered several times during the past year. We 
 have had about 150 communicants each time. The 
 candidates are carefully instructed each time before 
 the Lord's Supper is administered." 
 
 Those documents fully bear out the anticipations 
 which I ventured to make in a paper presented to 
 the " Commissioners of Pentonville Prison," in 
 1847, when such an opinion was by no means an 
 acceptable one to most of the acting members of the 
 Board. The following judgment, however, from one 
 of high authority on penal questions, who thought 
 differently at the beginning, must be considered of 
 far more value, and certainly reflects credit on the 
 candour of the writer. 
 
 " The convict, having passed the appointed term 
 in separate confinement," says Mr. Field, in his 
 Life of Howard, " is removed to the establishment 
 in Portland Island (or, it may be, when suitable 
 arrangements are made, to one of our dockyards), 
 to labour in the formation of the Harbour of Re- 
 fuge, or on some public work. There, although he 
 is still under religious instruction and very judicious 
 superintendence, his principles and the reality of his 
 reformation are subjected to a severe test. He is 
 associated with other convicts, and, as it cannot be 
 supposed that all have been reclaimed, he meets
 
 184 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 with many temptations. The opinions expressed on 
 this plan before the Select Committee of the House 
 of Lords, previously to its operation, by many of the 
 learned judges of the land, and by most persons 
 acquainted with penal discipline, were very decidedly 
 adverse to its adoption. The writer himself, when 
 questioned upon the subject, deprecated the proposal 
 in strong terms. He is glad of an opportunity to 
 retract them. Neither had others, nor himself, then 
 learned the efficacy of separate imprisonment to the 
 extent it has now been proved. The fear that most 
 of our convicts would relapse for a time, although 
 many good effects of former discipline would be 
 permanent, was, he is thankful to say, unfounded. 
 The author has received from time to time the most 
 satisfactory testimony to this effect, from the highly 
 intelligent and Christian men who superintend the 
 Portland establishment. Many letters received from 
 convicts have been of the most pleasing character ; 
 and by a recent visit, and personal converse with a 
 large number of them, he became thoroughly con- 
 vinced, and very thankful, that his former appre- 
 hensions were not realized." The punishments in 
 this prison have been very light, and the faults few. 
 Out of 1320 prisoners there were only 494 offences, 
 and but 3 cases of corporal punishment. Under 
 Captain Clay, the present Governor, the same strict 
 discipline prevails, combined with great kindness, 
 which characterized his predecessor.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 185 
 
 Parkhurst P)ison. 
 
 Parkkurst Prison, for juvenile convicts, embraces 
 the two stages of discipline, separate confinement 
 and penal labour, the first being considerably abbre- 
 viated. It is an admirable institution, and, under 
 the present Board of Directors, presents a most 
 encouraging prospect of improvement. In the 
 Governor, Mr. Hall, these criminal boys have truly 
 a Christian father ; and in their chaplains, earnest 
 and faithful ministers of Christ. Less time here is 
 now devoted to intellectual advancement more to 
 the formation of industrious habits by manual 
 labour, in the management of the land, brick and 
 tile-making, &c. The work done, and the distri- 
 bution of the boys' labour on the farm, reflect great 
 credit 011 the skill and judgment of the steward, 
 Mr. Strickland, to whom this province is assigned. 
 He is what every one engaged in arduous work 
 ought to be, to insure success, almost an enthusiast 
 in his line. 
 
 After a prescribed number of years' probation, in 
 one or other of those establishments, the convict 
 who had acquitted himself well, was transported 
 with a ticket-of-leave. Such, summarily, was the 
 plan of Lord John Russell's Government for carry- 
 ing out the sentence of transportation; and the 
 utmost care was taken to insure its success by the 
 selection of able and experienced officers to super- 
 intend the discipline and labour of the convicts, and
 
 186 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 of zealous and devoted Christian men, as ministers 
 and schoolmasters. Under this arrangement, trans- 
 portation assumed the severest, yet the most 
 humane and Christian, form yet tried. The sentence 
 struck terror into the stoutest heart, divested as it 
 was of well-known chances of escape, and involving 
 a course of previous discipline, penal and reform- 
 atory, distasteful beyond measure to criminals. It 
 came home to every class of mind. There is a great 
 diversity of feeling amongst prisoners respecting the 
 comparative degree of severity belonging to the 
 several sorts of punishment. Therefore, that which 
 is most uniform will be the most unequal in its 
 pressure. The adventurous young criminal, and all 
 who have no friends or home, make very light of 
 being sent out of the country. To many, indeed, of 
 this class, transportation has been an object of desire, 
 as giving them a chance of bettering their condition, 
 or of ambition, as the completion of their education 
 in crime ; but the thought of being shut up by him- 
 self for twelve or eighteen months first, with only 
 respectable and religious persons to speak to, the 
 persons he has been fleeing from all his life, fills 
 him with dismay. The educated and well-brought- 
 up, desiring concealment and having mental re- 
 sources, can bear the thought of seclusion for a 
 while, and of an exile to follow, in a country where 
 he is not known ; but his heart sinks within him 
 when he hears, that, after the ordeal of separate 
 confinement, he is to be worked at penal labour in 
 a convict dress, and in some measure exposed to
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 187 
 
 public view. Others again, and perhaps the greater 
 part, accustomed to labour, and contemplating the 
 advantages to be derived from education whilst in 
 prison, could bear both these stages of discipline with 
 little mental or bodily suffering, to whom removal 
 from home and country is perfectly appalling. The 
 diversity, therefore, in the character of punishment 
 in the several parts of this scheme of probation, 
 was not its least valuable part. 
 
 Millbank Prison. 
 
 This is the great central dep6t for convicts, and of 
 late years also a place of separate confinement. I 
 perceive with great satisfaction that the offences 
 last year were few, and humanely dealt with. Out 
 of 2909 convicts only 6 received corporal correction. 
 The reports of Dr. Baly, the experienced physician 
 of this vast prison, are of great value. 
 
 New System of Convict Discipline. 
 
 The discovery of gold in such large quantities in 
 Australia, rendered necessary the reconsideration of 
 the whole subject of transportation. 
 
 The value of convict labour to the colonist, 
 indeed, became thereby greatly enhanced, all free 
 labourers having left for the diggings, or only con- 
 senting to remain with their employers at a ruin- 
 ously high rate of wages. Hence the colonists, 
 members of the Anti-transportation League, as well
 
 188 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 as others, were to be seen looking out for the 
 arrival of each convict ship, with ticket-of-leave 
 men, and boarding her with a most ludicrous eager- 
 ness, that if possible they might forestall the market 
 and possess themselves of a large share in the 
 valuable cargo. The same circumstances, however, 
 which thus freed the Government at home from the 
 difficulty of actual disposal of the convicts created 
 a greater. It was obvious that the ultimate desti- 
 nation of the convict should not be a region of gold, 
 the very name of which, so alluring to the ordinary 
 population of the country, would prove to thieves, 
 whose life is one of exchange of certain good for the 
 chance of greater gain, a direct incentive to serious 
 crime. The terror of long and severe stages of 
 convict discipline to be passed through before the 
 possibility could occur of reaching the country 
 would have little effect upon ill-regulated minds, 
 occupied with the one idea of making a fortune by 
 a sudden effort. 
 
 Happily for Government and the ends of justice, 
 the difficulty did not occur a few years back, when 
 no adequate means existed at home to employ and 
 discipline transported persons. 
 
 As it is, the arrangements carried out by Colonel 
 Jebb, as described in this chapter, made the solution 
 of the question comparatively easy. Hence at the 
 close of 1852, seeing the necessity for a change, I 
 wrote as follows, and submitted my remarks to the 
 proper authorities :
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 189 
 
 " Crimes punished hitherto by transportation may 
 be summarily classed under the following heads : 
 
 " 1. Offences against the person, murder, attempts 
 to murder, unnatural crimes, &c., the sentence for 
 which has been commuted by the Crown to trans- 
 portation for life. 
 
 " 2. Offences against property with violence, &c., 
 malicious destruction of property, forgery, coining, 
 and robberies aggravated by frequent repetition. 
 
 "3. Offences which must be met with more than 
 ordinary severity, for example sake, as those com- 
 mitted in the army and navy, &c. 
 
 " 4. Simple offences against property, which form 
 the largest division of crimes punished hitherto by 
 transportation, and which have been so punished 
 with disproportionate severity. 
 
 "With respect to the first three classes, there 
 exist ample means for carrying out to the fullest 
 extent the sentence of transportation in the military 
 stations of Bermuda and Gibraltar alone, and, if 
 necessary, other like penal establishments may be 
 formed beyond the seas. 
 
 " The sentence of the judge, except in very 
 special cases, should be, in such stations, as fully 
 carried out as the necessity, for supplying some 
 glimmer of hope to cheer the convict's doom, will 
 permit. Life sentences, especially when substituted 
 for capital punishment, should be fully enforced. 
 
 " By such means transportation would retain, in 
 my opinion, its deterrent value as the highest of our
 
 190 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 secondary punishments, and at the same time be 
 divested of some of its inconsistencies. 
 
 " With respect to the remaining class to which 
 the sentence has been so long awarded rather than 
 applied (under the old regime seven years' trans- 
 portation meant always three-and-a-half years at 
 the hulks, &c.), I am persuaded that cellular im- 
 prisonment followed by hard labour on the public 
 works (and then it might be a repetition of cellular 
 confinement) under Government, for two to seven or 
 ten years, would prove a more efficacious and a less 
 costly punishment. Works like those of Portland 
 for the protection of our shipping, and others for 
 strengthening the defences of our coast, would turn 
 the labour of such convicts to good account. 
 
 " The rapidly increasing stream of emigration of 
 the peasantry of England and Ireland, removes the 
 objection of employing convict labour at home as 
 prejudicing the interests of those deserving classes, 
 and seems to point out the necessity of retaining at 
 home the services of such persons. 
 
 " Those suggestions are made subject to two con- 
 ditions, which appear to me absolutely indispensable. 
 The one is, that convicts now under discipline be 
 treated according to the regulations already made 
 known to them by authority, or have some satis- 
 factory equivalent. The other is, that the foreign 
 and new penal stations, be placed on a par with 
 those at home (with Portland for instance), as 
 regards the separation of the convict by night, 
 religious and educational superintendence, and dis- 
 cipline in general. To insure such uniformity of
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 191 
 
 humane and Christian treatment, I think that every 
 station should be visited periodically by some com- 
 petent person, deputed by the Government for the 
 purpose." 
 
 The plan decided on by Government is as follows. 
 
 Transportation and Penal Servitude. 
 
 According to the new Act relating to transport- 
 ation, no person is to be sentenced to transportation, 
 except for life, or fourteen years, or upwards. Any 
 person who might have been sentenced to transport- 
 ation for a term less than fourteen years, is to be 
 liable, at the discretion of the court, to be kept in 
 penal servitude. The following terms of penal 
 servitude are to be awarded, instead of the present 
 terms of transportation : Instead of transportation 
 for seven years, or for a term not exceeding seven 
 years, the penal servitude is to be a term of four 
 years. Instead of any term of transportation ex- 
 ceeding seven years, and not exceeding ten years, 
 the penal servitude is to be not less than four, and 
 not exceeding six years. Instead of transportation 
 exceeding ten, and not exceeding fifteen years, the 
 penal servitude is to be for not less than six, and 
 not exceeding eight years ; where it exceeds fifteen 
 years, the penal servitude is to be not less than six, 
 and not exceeding ten years ; and instead of trans- 
 portation for life, the penal servitude is to be for the 
 term of life ; and in every case where, at the dis- 
 cretion of the court, one of any two or more of the 
 terms of transportation might have been awarded,
 
 192 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 the court shall have the like discretion to award one 
 of the two or more terms of penal servitude in re- 
 lation to such term of transportation. There are 
 three clauses in the Act with regard to tickets-of- 
 leave in the United Kingdom, and the system is now 
 to be tried for the first time in this country. It is 
 declared to be lawful for her Majesty, by an order 
 in writing, under the hand and seal of one of the 
 principal secretaries of state, to grant to any con- 
 vict now under sentence of transportation, or who 
 may hereafter be sentenced to transportation, or to 
 any punishment substituted for transportation by 
 this Act, a license to be at large in the United 
 Kingdom and the Channel Islands, or in such parts 
 thereof respectively as in such license shall be ex- 
 pressed, during such portion of his or her term of 
 transportation or imprisonment, and upon such 
 conditions in all respects as to her Majesty shall 
 seem fit, and it shall be lawful for her Majesty to 
 revoke or alter such license by a like order at her 
 Majesty's pleasure. So long as such license shall 
 continue in force and unrevoked, such convict shall 
 not be liable to be imprisoned or transported by 
 reason of his or her sentence, but shall be allowed 
 to go and remain at large according to the terms of 
 such license. On a license being revoked the con- 
 vict may be apprehended, by justices' warrant, and 
 committed to the same prison, to undergo the 
 residue of his or her sentence there. The penal 
 servitude will be passed in the prisons described in 
 this chapter.
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. ' 193 
 
 The point of difficulty in this scheme is that 
 which I have marked by italics. 
 
 The ticket-of-leave system in the widely dispersed 
 population of the Australian plains where labour 
 was scarce, and the colonists, looking to their neces- 
 sities and the habits of their adopted country, were 
 the less fastidious and the same system at home, are 
 two very different things. 
 
 Western Australia, still anxious to receive con- 
 vict-labour, by which the colony has been revived, 
 if not saved from utter ruin, will absorb but a fourth, 
 or at most a third, of the annual convict-population 
 of Great Britain and Ireland. The remainder, some 
 2 or 3000, after a while will annually be allowed to 
 mix in society, and to compete with the free labourer, 
 under the greatest disadvantages ; which some, as 
 wise as they are humane, would turn into the 
 absolute certainty of failure, by " imprinting on the 
 person of the unhappy convict some indelible brand." 
 
 Not a few of these men, indeed, will disappear 
 from the calendar of crime, being received by friends, 
 or otherwise helped ; some will take to the sea or 
 emigrate, and the able-bodied will get employment 
 without difficulty, where previous character is not 
 looked into ; but the mass, including all of the worst 
 class, will be thrown on society in a pitiable and 
 most hazardous condition. 
 
 Will employers in England knowingly give work 
 to ticket-of-leave holders ; or, discovering their real 
 position, retain their services ? 
 
 Will free labourers be content to be amalgamated
 
 194 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 with men of this class ? will those unhappy persons 
 be tolerated as neighbours, and treated with kind 
 consideration, or provoked to violence, and driven, as 
 a class, into confederacy and their old habits ? Will 
 our police and detectives not expose and worry 
 them? 
 
 That many of the number (say 50 in 1000) will 
 again perpetrate serious crimes, there can be no 
 reasonable question ; will the public not take alarm 
 at their evil deeds, and the press not aggravate it ? 
 
 These are questions to be answered only by ex- 
 perience. 
 
 Happily, if the scheme fail in this point, the main 
 parts will yet remain, thanks to the admirable 
 arrangements of Colonel Jebb ; and England's con- 
 victs may again be usefully employed in some of her 
 distant dependencies as pioneers of the free colonist, 
 or otherwise, as circumstances may point out, with 
 perhaps a severer punishment to the thoroughly 
 bad, and a larger measure of hope to those of a 
 better sort. 
 
 Reviewing the difficulties of the experiment from 
 other points of view than those to which I have 
 referred, the Times of Oct. 20th, 1853, concludes 
 its article by the following excellent remarks : 
 
 " Thus much, however, is certain, that by remov- 
 ing the punishment of our crime from distant and 
 unknown countries, and placing it in the very centre 
 of our social system, we shall bring home to the 
 minds of the people of this country that which they 
 have never had before a thorough sense of the re-
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 195 
 
 sponsibility of the community for the crime it brings 
 up, and for the necessity of dealing, not only with 
 the disease itself when fully developed, but with 
 what have been well called its premonitory symp- 
 toms. The more difficult, the more distressing, the 
 more humiliating we find it to punish the full-grown 
 criminal, the more sensible we are of the contamina- 
 tion which he carries with him, and the sacrifice at 
 which any attempt at his reformation must be car- 
 ried out, the more anxious shall we be to diminish 
 the numbers of this formidable and unmanageable 
 class, by counteracting the first incentives to vice, 
 and breaking up those seminaries and nurseries 
 where it is inculcated and instilled. The effect of 
 bringing secondary punishments nearer home will 
 be, to make that attention to the subject earnest and 
 incessant, which now is languid and intermitting. It 
 is the intention of Providence that every community 
 should bear the weight of the crime that it produces, 
 and, if we have hitherto contrived to evade, that in- 
 tention, we have paid the penalty of it in another 
 shape, by the encouragement of a spirit of remiss- 
 ness which has made us the prey of successive gene- 
 rations of criminals, whom we have brought up to 
 plunder us, that we in our turn may, at a vast ex- 
 pense and with much trouble, send them to perpe- 
 trate the same outrages on our remote dependencies. 
 We are now to bear our own burthen, and the result 
 will be, if we mistake not, a very serious determina- 
 tion on the part of the community to make that 
 burden as light as possible." I would add in 
 
 o 2
 
 196 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 dependence upon the blessing of that same Provi- 
 dence. 
 
 One necessary result from the new arrangements 
 will be, in my opinion, the establishment of one or 
 more doubly-penal institutions at home, for the 
 imprisonment of such convicts as shall be guilty of 
 grave offences in the ordinary Government prisons, 
 or otherwise seem to be incorrigible by ordinary 
 methods. 
 
 It is melancholy to contemplate such a necessity ; 
 but under the best management of our convict- 
 prisons it must, I think, be looked for. 
 
 Whether those doubly-penal establishments should 
 be attached to the existing convict-prisons, at the 
 public works, but distinguished by circumstances 
 likely to impress the whole body of the prisoners 
 with dread of the consequences of transgression, in 
 the construction of the building itself as well as in 
 its internal economy ; or, whether they should be 
 distinct prisons altogether on some dreary island 
 off the coasts of Ireland or Scotland, or elsewhere, 
 I am not prepared positively to affirm. I incline, 
 however, to the first plan as being likely to effect the 
 most good with the least amount of evil, and, no 
 doubt, the least cost. 
 
 "Wherever such a desperate felons' prison be lo- 
 cated, I fully anticipate that it will answer the ends 
 of justice and discipline better than Norfolk Island 
 ever did. To do so, however, the following con- 
 ditions appear to me absolutely necessary : 
 
 Hope must not be extinguished the earnest
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 197 
 
 ministrations of religion must not be diminished 
 the claims of a reasonable humanity, in any par- 
 ticular, must not be set aside. 
 
 A sentence pronounced at the public works by 
 competent authority of three, six, nine, or twelve 
 months, to the prison for the refractory, where it 
 was known that diet of the coarsest description 
 (though ample), the hardest bedding (though still 
 dry and clean), and the most intense solitude, con- 
 stituted the main elements of discipline, would 
 strike more terror into the minds of the mass of 
 convicts, than banishment to any region of the 
 earth where the association of persons of like cha- 
 racter was permitted, and the usual amount of 
 bodily comforts provided. 
 
 Brixton Female Convict Prison. 
 
 This is the Old Brixton House of Correction, lately 
 purchased by Government from the county of 
 Surrey, upon completion of its prison palace on 
 Wandsworth Common, and reconstructed under the 
 new convict arrangements for female convicts hence- 
 forth to be retained at home. 
 
 Separation at night is being secured for all the 
 women in this prison, and the establishment has 
 been placed under Mrs. Martin (relict of Rev. Mr. 
 Martin, the late highly-esteemed chaplain of Wool- 
 wich convict-establishment), with the authority of 
 governor and matron ; and Mr. Moran as resident 
 minister, whose unwearied labours as chaplain at
 
 198 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 Portland and elsewhere hare already, in these pages, 
 been alluded to. No selection of superior officers 
 could have been more promising ; and they begin 
 their most arduous work with the best wishes and 
 the most fervent prayers of their numerous Christian 
 friends. 
 
 Roman Catholic Convicts. 
 
 On the vote for Government prisons and convict 
 establishments at home, as reported in the Times of 
 August 10th, 1853, it will be remembered that this 
 subject was brought before the house by Mr. Lucas, 
 the member for Meath, and the recognized editor of 
 the Tablet. 
 
 In a speech well suited to the temper of the 
 House, Mr. Lucas pressed upon Government, that, 
 under the new regulations, Roman Catholic chap- 
 lains should be regularly attached and salaried in the 
 convict prisons of England, as has long been done in 
 Ireland, and in the penal colonies since Lord Derby's 
 administration of the Colonial Government. 
 
 Upon the general question involved in such a 
 measure I do not consider myself called upon to 
 enter. It will be discussed, doubtless, in its legitimate 
 place agreeably with its importance, as another sig- 
 nificant move towards the establishment of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in this country. Let it be 
 borne in mind that it is not a question of toleration, 
 but endowment. The Roman Catholic priest may 
 now visit and instruct all of his communion in our
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 199 
 
 prisons whenever he wills and they request it, con- 
 sistently with ordinary prison arrangements. 
 
 Neither is it a mere prison question, for if the 
 principle of an established religion in England be 
 violated in this respect, it will infallibly open a way 
 for inroads upon the constitution in other depart- 
 ments. In our prisons, also, such a measure must 
 introduce interminable contests, and confusion in 
 matters of discipline and instruction. There must 
 be, for instance, Homan Catholic schoolmasters as 
 well as priests, or you must forego school educa- 
 tion, and a selection of Roman Catholic books, 
 secular as well as religious, or no library. Then, 
 the law must be changed, or every minister of the 
 Established Church will continue to exercise his 
 right, as chaplain, of instructing all the prisoners in 
 the gaol, except those who formally place them- 
 selves under instructors of their own nominal 
 persuasion. 
 
 As Mr. Lucas, however, referred in his speech to 
 the manner in which he conceives that I have 
 thought it my duty to act with respect to Roman 
 Catholic convicts in this prison, I think it due to 
 myself, and my brother chaplains in the same service, 
 whose practice has been precisely my own, to state 
 what I have done in the matter to which the 
 honourable member refers. 
 
 The following is that part of Mr. Lucas's speech in 
 which the reference occurs : 
 
 " In the English prisons, nothing was known in law, but a 
 Protestant chaplain. If a prisoner chose to ask for the services
 
 200 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 of a Catholic chaplain, he could do so, and might receive those 
 services ; but the person whom he must try to please, if he 
 wished a character for good con-duct, was the Protestant 
 chaplain ; and the system worked so, that it was, in point of 
 fact, the interest of Catholic prisoners to attend the services of 
 the Protestant chaplain, though he did not mean to say the 
 system was intentionally worked so. He had that fact from the 
 very best authority namely, the evidence of the Kev. Mr. 
 Kingsmill, who for many years had been Chaplain of Penton- 
 ville Prison, and who was examined before a Parliamentary 
 Committee on the 22nd of March, 1847. [The hon. gentleman 
 read an extract from the evidence, stating that there was no 
 difficulty in a Catholic prisoner seeing his friends ; that there 
 were seldom in Pentonville Prison more than twenty out of 500 
 who professed, at entrance, to be Catholics ; hut that many 
 Catholics entered their names as Protestants, lest some feeling 
 should militate against them if it were known that they were 
 Catholics.] It must be obvious that those numbers could not be 
 true as respected the Catholics who entered Pentonville. The Right 
 Eev. Dr. Wilson, whose name was well known as connected with 
 the colony of Van Diemen's Land, and for the great services he 
 had performed with reference to convicts in that settlement, 
 stated the result of his experience to be, that he had always 
 found, with respect to the numbers who attended Catholic 
 services, that every ship from England carried from 15 to 20 
 per cent, of Catholics, and every ship from Ireland not more 
 than 10 per cent of Protestants. He had read an extract from 
 evidence given in 1847 by the Rev. Mr. Kingsmill, of whom he 
 did not wish to speak except in terms of respect. But it was 
 obvious that Mr. Kingsmill had got a very wrong notion of the 
 duties which attached to his functions. He had published a 
 book, in which he took notice of having made that invaluable 
 discovery that the Catholic Church was Antichrist, and the Pope 
 the Man of Sin. He had published that book in the character 
 of chaplain (there was not the least objection to his publishing 
 it in his personal character), and he expressed his rejoicing on ac- 
 count of persons being brought over to the service of the English 
 Church who had lived so long in Ireland that they knew better 
 than others how to deal with the Man of Sin and Antichrist. It 
 was not meant to say that he put it in an offensive way ; but he
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 201 
 
 had a wrong notion of his functions, and he acted on that 
 wrong view as a man who was anxious to fulfil his duty. He 
 evidently believed that his duty in the prison was to make 
 proselytes, to convert the benighted Papists into the profession 
 of the Protestant faith, and that nothing could be done for the 
 moral improvement of Catholic prisoners till he had done the 
 work of a controversialist. It was only recently that this fact 
 happened at Pentonville prison. Last Easter twelvemonth the 
 Catholic priest who was accustomed to attend that prison made 
 inquiry as to the number of Catholic prisoners, with the view of 
 attending them for their Easter duties. He got a list of eighty. 
 Some weeks before last Easter he was informed that such a list 
 would not be furnished to him in future. He was to have a list 
 only, it should seem, of those who were bold enough, in the face 
 of temporal interest, to make a demand for the services of the 
 priest. Last Easter he got a list of fifteen. With reference to 
 returns which had been ordered on his motion, he should 
 remark that the honest, straightforward manner of stating the 
 number of Catholics in prison was that which gave the 
 eighty." 
 
 In all this I have nothing personally to complain 
 of, and but little to explain. Mr. Lucas, I suppose, 
 r;ot his information in the matter to which he refers 
 from the Father Confessor of our Roman Catholic 
 prisoners, the Rev. Mr. Oakeley ; and I am not sur- 
 prised if that gentleman should feel chagrined at 
 finding so few of his nominal profession amongst the 
 prisoners consenting to receive the visits which he 
 had so zealously volunteered. The part which I 
 took in the matter will be fully seen from the 
 following letter to the Visiting Director on the 
 subject : 
 
 Pentonville Prison, April 29, 1852. 
 SIR, 
 
 A prisoner (Regr. No. 4218. BI, 42) having complained to 
 me, last evening, that he had been visited by a minister of his
 
 202 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 nominal persuasion, without any request on his part, and that 
 the visit had been repeated, and that, notwithstanding his 
 respectful remonstrance, the gentleman expressed his intention 
 of coming again, and desired him to be ready to confess on the 
 next visit, I referred him to the Governor for protection, not 
 knowing, nor interrogating him on, the grounds of his refusal. 
 
 This morning, the Governor, on my acquainting him with the 
 occurrence, showed me a copy of the minutes of the Board of 
 the 22nd ult., negativing a proposition, for the collective in- 
 struction of Eoman Catholic prisoners by a minister of their own 
 persuasion, but expressing their desire to carry into the fullest 
 effect the provisions contained in the Act 4. Geo. IV., cap. 64, 
 s. 31. 
 
 At the same time, the Governor informed me, that the 
 minister referred to, had been supplied, upon request, with a list 
 of prisoners of his persuasion, for the purpose of religious visi- 
 tation. 
 
 It is concerning this list I take the liberty most respectfully to 
 address you, and through you the Board of Directors. 
 
 That the fullest effect should be given to the provisions of the 
 Act referred to, I most cordially assent to. I hold the principle 
 of religious liberty to be a sacred thing; and have always clearly 
 enunciated to prisoners of a different persuasion from that of 
 the Established Church, their privileges, or rather rights in this 
 respect. The Governor, to my knowledge, does the same, and 
 by a late wise regulation the whole body of prisoners are 
 regularly, every month, informed in order of the regulations of 
 the prison in this and all respects by the schoolmaster. 
 
 To supply any minister, however, with such a list, is, in my 
 opinion, to go so very far beyond what the law contemplates, 
 that I take the very earliest opportunity of placing the matter 
 before you. 
 
 The words of the Act are : 
 
 "I/ any prisoner shall be of a religious persuasion differing from 
 that of the Established Church, a minister of such persuasion AT 
 
 THE SPECIAL BEQUEST OF SUCH PRISONER, shall be allowed to Visit 
 
 him," &c. 
 
 In most of the cases on the list referred to, it is my con- 
 viction, there has not been any request to see the person who 
 holds the list, and in those cases I hold it. that the provisions of
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 203 
 
 the Act are disregarded alike in the letter, and spirit of the law, 
 and the prisoner is coerced hy such a list put into the hands of 
 a spiritual person, unless possessed of uncommon moral 
 courage, into a system or religious persuasion, to which he may 
 most conscientiously object; simply because he has had the 
 misfortune to be born or brought up in it, or from ignorance, or 
 haste, or mere mistake happened to be set down in the books 
 under a certain denomination. 
 
 I would respectfully ask : Are the accredited ministers of all 
 persuasions, differing from that of the Established Church, to 
 be furnished with lists of persons nominally belonging to them ? 
 Or, is the Board prepared to affirm the application of a Mr. 
 Oakeley, and ignore a similar one from a Dr. Gumming? Why 
 should the special license be granted to the Roman Catholic 
 minister ? I most respectively submit that of all persuasions, 
 the ministers of that church are the very last to be so favoured ; 
 for they alone are bound to secresy as to what may transpire be- 
 tween them and prisoners, whether it affect discipline, morals, 
 the course of human justice, or even life. 
 
 I further beg leave to say what must also follow from ar 
 arrangement of this nature. Under the provisions of the same 
 Act (30th section) I shall consider myself, as chaplain of this 
 prison, to have free access for all spiritual purposes to all 
 prisoners, " except such as shall be of a religions persuasion 
 different from that of the Established Church, who SHALL HAVE 
 
 MADE A REQUEST THAT A MINISTER OF SUCH PERSUASION SHALL BE 
 
 ALLOWED TO VISIT THEM." Hence, inevitably, new and increased 
 difficulties, of a very delicate nature, must arise, in the govern- 
 ment of the prison, embarrassing, it may be, to Government 
 itself. If I have put a wrong interpretation on the law, of 
 course my case falls to the ground, but I have this presumption 
 in favour of my views, that supplying Eoman Catholic ministers 
 with lists of prisoners is quite a new proceeding. 
 
 I have confined myself to my own case, because I feel that I 
 am not justified in going further, but I venture to hope that the 
 Board will take occasion to consider the question in all its 
 bearings, and in reference to the whole convict-establish- 
 ments. 
 
 In consequence of my vindication of the civil and
 
 204 CONVICT SYSTEMS, 
 
 religious liberty secured to these poor men by the 
 law, the Board of Directors examined them indi- 
 vidually, and those who said they were Roman 
 Catholics and wished to be visited by the priest, 
 were alone left on his list. Hence the reduction 
 that Mr. Lucas speaks of, as being produced by an 
 improper or senseless sort of influence on my part. 
 
 What could the civil Government do ? coerce the 
 reluctants to confession, or recognize their legal 
 rights, and protect the men in their assertion of 
 them ? With respect to my mode of proceeding in 
 general towards Roman Catholic convicts, (the same 
 is pursued by all my brethren in like circumstances, 
 with whom I am acquainted,) it has always been as 
 follows : 
 
 Whenever a Roman Catholic prisoner requests to 
 see his priest, I cease to minister to him in spiritual 
 things, but acquaint him that he may have my 
 friendly counsel and help in all things as before. I 
 give direction to the schoolmaster to avoid, in circu- 
 lating the library, placing in the man's cell any 
 books which must necessarily oifend him ; and in 
 every other way possible I continue to seek to pro- 
 mote his comfort and well-doing. 
 
 The result has been, uniformly, that the prisoner 
 feels that difference in character and conduct only 
 can affect his condition and prospects. 
 
 If, however, the convict, under the instruction of 
 his priest, (as sometimes has happened, though, 
 very rarely,) feels so anxious about his salvation, 
 that he cannot refrain from seeking my advice re-
 
 PAST AND PRESENT. 205 
 
 specting it, I have certainly never failed to set before 
 the poor sinner, yet without controversy, Christ as 
 the way, the truth, and the life ; the only and the 
 all-sufficient Saviour. And this, by God's help, I 
 shall never cease to do. Nor can any Protestant 
 minister ever act otherwise ; unless prevented by 
 some new and strange law from entering into 
 conversation with the people of his nominal charge. 
 
 "To do the work of a controversialist," however, 
 which Mr. Lucas is pleased to represent as the first, 
 in my notions of duty, as a prison chaplain, has 
 been, neither first nor last, nor indeed any part of 
 them at all. 
 
 The Man of Sin, the Pope, Popery, or the Roman 
 Catholic Church, I have never once named, to the 
 best of my recollection, in my daily expositions of 
 Holy Scripture, or in rny Sunday sermons. 
 
 That I have been guilty of publishing " a book " 
 or books, in which neither the Pope nor his mission- 
 aries have been over-complimented, 1 cannot deny ; 
 but in nothing that I have written, have I ever 
 called "the Catholic Church, Antichrist." God 
 forbid ! The Catholic Church, in my belief, being the 
 " congregation of all believing people of every 
 country and age, in which the pure Word of 
 God is preached, and the sacraments duly minis- 
 tered according to Christ's ordinance." 
 
 Mr. Lucas has a right to his theology, and so 
 have I to mine ; and when I became the chaplain of 
 a prison, I did not forego that right. Unless, 
 therefore, the honourable member could have proved
 
 206 CONVICT SYSTEMS, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 that I had improperly exercised my office in any 
 respect, he had no business, in his place in Parlia- 
 ment to insinuate it.* 
 
 * With respect to my statement before Lord Brougham's 
 Committee in 1847, my experience then led me to entertain that 
 opinion. I had reason to think that the proportion of crime 
 amongst the Eoman Catholic population was really higher than 
 our returns showed hence, that there must have been decep- 
 tion. (Some of the cases of cunning hypocrisy amongst these 
 men, Mr. Lucas has brought to my recollection ; they will be 
 found appended to the next chapter.) On looking to the prison 
 books I find there were in the first 1000, 56 Koman Catholic 
 convicts, but according to Mr. Oakeley's list there are now some 
 150 in the 1000. This latter proportion agrees with Dr. 
 Wilson's experience, to which Mr. Lucas refers, and with the 
 returns of Millbank Great Convict Depot, which last year gave a 
 list of religious denominations as follows : 
 
 Of the Church of England . . 1657 
 
 Eoman Catholics . . 359 
 
 Dissenters .... 276 
 
 Jews .... 9 
 
 No denomination . 51 
 
 I may add, that Mr. Lucas's and Dr. Wilson's figures fully 
 bear out the statements made in a previous chapter, respecting 
 the great excess of crime amongst the Roman Catholic popula- 
 tion of England.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 " All are wanderers, gone astray, 
 Each in his own delusions ; they are lost 
 In chase of fancied happiness, still wooed 
 And never won." COWPER. 
 
 THE reader now may feel some wish to take a 
 view within the walls of the prison, and converse 
 with the unhappy inmates on the causes of their 
 downfall, their treatment, their feelings under cor- 
 rection, or their future prospects. 
 
 Let him in imagination, then, accompany, for 
 this purpose, the chaplain of this prison through the 
 round of his sad duties for a few days, and he will 
 have a clearer insight into these matters, than if he 
 inspected the building, but was precluded as all 
 ordinary visitors are from converse with its living, 
 thinking inhabitants. The writer will do his best, 
 in the simplest manner, by facts, and reflections, 
 such as may naturally arise from them, to gratify 
 the wish, and to meet such inquiries, as a mind in- 
 telligently and humanely interested in the subject 
 might make. There shall be no imagination, how-
 
 208 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 ever, on my part, nor any colouring or distortion of 
 the truth. 
 
 Notes of Ten Days' Routine of Duties. 
 
 Oct. 24. I conducted the evening daily service 
 with great confort. The prisoners were exceedingly 
 attentive to the exposition, and joined heartily in 
 the responses and singing. 
 
 The sick all visited prisoners in the refractory- 
 ward, and from cell to cell. Read the letters to and 
 from prisoners (each prisoner is allowed to send and 
 receive one every three months). Correspondence 
 relating to the prison, &c., attended to. 
 
 A missionary friend introduced to me a Hebrew 
 gentleman, physician to the next heir^of the Bey of 
 Tunis, for the purpose of visiting the establishment ; 
 obtained permission from the Governor,. and r.cconi- 
 panied them into the interior. 
 
 My friend wished the stranger to take back some 
 ideas favourable to the amelioration of the miserable 
 condition of prisoners and captives in Northern 
 Africa. The mission of the physician to England, 
 however, was to our hospitals. It is pleasant to see 
 symptoms of progress towards liberal views and hu- 
 manity in those dark Mahometan regions. 
 
 Oct. 25. The usual round of duties. Visited 
 three prisoners under punishment; of these, two 
 are for communicating, one for destroying prison 
 materials. 
 
 One of the former, a man of peculiar temper-
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 209 
 
 ament, told me lie did not want to see me in such a 
 place. If I came, he would not open his mouth to 
 me. "Well," said I, "I shall see you when you 
 return to your cell." " I shall be very glad," he 
 replied, " to see you there." He was in the re- 
 fractory ward before for three days, and, when going 
 down, said : "I shall not eat a morsel of bread 
 whilst I; am here;" neither did he (the allowance 
 to prisoners under punishment is bread and water). 
 May God turn his heart, and make this firmness 
 of purpose instrumental yet for good ! I visited the 
 sick. There are only two serious cases of illness, 
 and eight light ones. One of the sick is an old man. 
 He received sentence of transportation, for pur- 
 chasing a costly silk dress from- a woman in respect- 
 able life, not knowing it, as he alleges, to be stolen. 
 He was a licensed hawker, and had a good- service 
 pension from the 17th Lancers. He seems to have 
 been respectable in his line of life, up to this trans- 
 action, which, I believe, was the result of sheer 
 covetousness. He drank hard in India, but became 
 temperate of late years. He is now languishing in 
 prison, with a broken constitution has lost his 
 pension and can never enjoy liberty again, should 
 he live to regain it. Singularly enough, he came to 
 us from a gaol where the husband of his own sister 
 was governor. Both owned their unhappy brother, 
 and showed him the greatest kindness. By another 
 turn of events, the man who attends upon him as 
 nurse, in the infirmary (formerly in the 16th Dra- 
 goons), recognized him, after a few moments, as 
 
 p
 
 210 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 an old acquaintance in some town, where both 
 regiments were quartered, although so sadly altered. 
 
 Sunday, Oct. 26. Three full services in the 
 chapel. Visited a great many prisoners in their 
 cells. Sunday is the best time to visit prisoners for 
 the purposes of religion, but should not be the only 
 one, because of the many circumstances in their 
 condition, in which a chaplain should feel an inter- 
 est, or be called to give his counsel. 
 
 The assistant chaplain in the morning preached 
 a plain, practical, and forcible sermon on the fear 
 of God. I read prayers. The afternoon service 
 was conducted by the same. I conducted the 
 whole evening service. Lectured from the epistle 
 of the day (19th Sunday after Trinity), Ephes. iv. 
 17 to end ; remarking upon the condition of those 
 Ephesian Christians, when the grace of God found 
 them as described in this chapter the means by 
 which God brought them out of it the manifest 
 tendency to relapse in all who receive the truth 
 and the need, therefore, of such exhortations, as 
 here read ; see especially the 28th and 29th verses. 
 
 We have rather more singing than in ordinary 
 churches. I conceive it to be a relief to the mind ; 
 and, although little entitled to the name of music, 
 I look upon it as an element of civilization, and 
 some help to right feeling in the worship of Al- 
 mighty God. Well-selected Christian hymns, also, 
 are pleasing, and easily remembered sermons. 
 
 Monday, Oct. 27. The usual services, visiting, 
 &c. Observed in a prisoner's cell, long confined
 
 211 
 
 with a bad leg, a bit of mignonette which I plucked 
 from the little garden of a dear child. I had it in 
 my bosom ; but seeing the poor sufferer look wist- 
 fully at it, I presented it to him. He seemed as much 
 pleased as a man who had come in for an estate, and 
 evinced much gratitude, heartily blessing the " little 
 maid that plucked it." No man is hopeless who has 
 such feelings. 
 
 In visiting to-day, I entered the cell of a prisoner 
 who, having assaulted an officer of the prison when 
 in confinement here two years back, was tried, and 
 punished in the House of Correction for Middlesex, 
 by that additional length of service, and now re- 
 turns to begin afresh his probation of convict dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 Saw also four more in the same condition, for 
 having attempted to escape from the hulks, Dart- 
 moor, &c. ; also a Parkhurst boy, now ripe in years 
 and in vice, concerned in the late firing of that 
 prison. All these, in like manner, have to begin 
 again with separate confinement, &c. 
 
 The Parkhurst convict is in a reckless state of 
 mind : "he had passed half his time, and they 
 would not send a seven years' man abroad ;" "he 
 did not care about punishment," &c. 
 
 Visited a poor African, who scarcely knows a 
 word of English. I wish my good friend, Mr. Crow- 
 ther, now in London, himself once a negro-slave 
 boy, but now an enlightened and able missionary of 
 the gospel to Africa, could come and converse with 
 him. I must try to bring him. He is beginning to 
 
 p 2
 
 212 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 learn to spell English, but it is amazingly hard to 
 teach a language without some common me- 
 dium. 
 
 Visited a prisoner who, in a fit of jealousy, killed 
 his wife. He is an old pensioner, and the father of 
 three sons now serving her Majesty, two being non- 
 commissioned officers. There is nothing repulsive 
 in his countenance. Nevertheless, one cannot look 
 at a man whose hands have been embrued in blood 
 without horror. (Since writing the above, the eldest 
 son the pride and comfort of his father has died, 
 in consequence, the wretched man says, of the sad 
 news.) 
 
 A prisoner wished to know how he could obtain 
 information about a sister transported some years 
 back. Informed him. 
 
 He says she was a virtuous young woman, but 
 was induced by one of his bad companions, who was 
 in the habit of coming to see him, to pawn a stolen 
 gold watch. This is certainly a common trick of 
 thieves, and the person who pawns the stolen goods 
 is sure to be transported as an accomplice. 
 
 Tuesday, October 28. Usual routine of visiting, 
 reading letters, correspondence, &c. Very unsatis- 
 factory visiting in the refractory ward. There are 
 five cells in this ward dark, double-doored to-day 
 they are all full, and all the men have been down 
 before for different breaches of discipline. The effect 
 is lost, and the habit of violating rule acquired. One 
 has been trying all manner of games, and counter- 
 feited the madman well. The authorities wrote to the
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 213 
 
 prison from which he came, in his native town, and 
 ascertained that he was a practised impostor and 
 confirmed thief in prison twelve or thirteen times. 
 Another has been in the dark cell eight times three 
 days and nights each. This latter, from his youth 
 and general character, may escape the incorrigible 
 class ; but the other is sure to leave us in that piti- 
 able condition, and will feel more bitterly than he 
 has yet done the consequences of his evil course. 
 Another of the five is very indignant at the Governor 
 sending him down " on the word of a prisoner ;" he 
 acknowledges that he was talking in chapel, " but 
 the officers ought to have found that out." Had 
 more comfort in other parts of my duty to-day. 
 Pound a poor prisoner distressed in mind, and in 
 great agony from sciatica, waiting, half undressed, to 
 put his knife and the implements of his trade out, as 
 the rule is, it being near double-locking time, 8 P.M. 
 I pulled out the basket for him, spoke some words of 
 consolation and hope, and left him free to get into 
 his hammock again. Visited a prisoner from Bir- 
 mingham, one of the best and quickest clerks I have 
 yet met with. Two years ago he was a respectable 
 and promising youth; but gaiety, dress, and the 
 theatre, led to embarrassment, and in an evil hour 
 he abstracted money from his employer, and now is 
 confined in a felon's cell. He has an uncommonly 
 prepossessing appearance, and is of a kind and 
 gentle disposition. Happily, in his troubles and de- 
 gradation, his heart has been opened, as I believe, 
 to receive the truth; and if liberated to-morrow,
 
 214 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 knowing all the particulars of his case, I would not 
 hesitate to give him employment. 
 
 Wednesday, October 29. The usual routine. 
 Seventy new prisoners admitted this morning. The 
 Governor read an address to them in the court-yard, 
 setting before them plainly the regulations of the 
 prison, and exhorted them, from regard to their own 
 interests here and in their subsequent career, to 
 submit to the discipline, &c. 
 
 The prisoners paid great attention. The Chaplain 
 followed, and, referring to what they had just heard, 
 encouraged them to hope that their condition in this 
 prison, allowing for the strictness of the discipline, 
 would be much better than they might naturally 
 fear. He assured them they would be treated like 
 men, and never spoken to in irritating language, or 
 with harshness of manner. He told them that few, 
 comparatively, were punished at all, and the greater 
 part of these for offences of mere folly. It was the 
 wish of the authorities that they should be humanely 
 treated, and they were in general remarkably so in 
 this prison. 
 
 He then turned to things more important, which 
 if they regarded as they ought, matters of discipline 
 would be very easy, and exhorted them to begin that 
 very day, in the strength of the Lord, a new course 
 of life, and to serve Him henceforth. He knew they 
 all had made resolutions at some time previous in 
 their lives to leave off the ways of sin, but they had 
 not done so. Why not ? Because they formed the 
 resolution in their own strength, and were for lop-
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 215 
 
 ping off merely some one troublesome vice, instead 
 of parting with all, and giving up the whole heart 
 to serve the Lord. 
 
 He told them that they should have every help 
 from his brother Chaplain and himself. They might 
 use them as friends in every matter whatever which 
 was a burden to their minds. He felt for them ; and, 
 so far as advice and consolation could go, they would 
 always find him ready to help. Commending them 
 " to God, and the word of his grace." he wished 
 them every success, and hoped that at the end of the 
 year both the Governor and he would have the great 
 pleasure of reporting favourably upon their conduct 
 to Government. 
 
 As usually is the case, the tear stood in many an 
 eye, true to nature, when the ear hears the accents 
 of sympathy or kindness. 
 
 I perceived, from their attitude, that some soldiers 
 were in the group. They were impressed, but suc- 
 ceeded in concealing, from most, their emotions. 
 The regular thief class pickpockets and swell-mob 
 robbers listened inquisitively, as if to form a judg- 
 ment of the speaker's sincerity, or his knowledge of 
 their habits and character. Persons of this descrip- 
 tion assuredly will attempt to impose, if they detect 
 our simplicity or our ignorance. 
 
 I observed farm and other labourers. Some were, no 
 doubt, married. Alas ! of how many sad families was 
 there here the representative and the cause in this 
 small section of prisoners ! I did not touch, however, 
 on domestic ties. Enough feeling had been excited.
 
 216 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 A formal interview by a chaplain, book in band, 
 with prisoners, is of no use in a moral point of 
 view. As a first visit it is injurious, in my 
 opinion. 
 
 Saw several of these convicts in my ordinary 
 visiting in the evening. Some were from places 
 where I have clerical friends, about whom I in- 
 quired, which gave me better access to their minds. 
 I was interrogated by several other prisoners this 
 evening on passages of Scripture, in the reading of 
 which most of the prisoners spend some time before 
 going to bed. 
 
 The apostle handing over "the guilty person to 
 Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit 
 might be saved ;" " Christ preaching to the spirits 
 in prison;" and "the fire which was to try every 
 man's work," were amongst the subjects of inquiry. 
 One man whom lately I found sorrowing, as I 
 believe, after a godly sort, declares that he has 
 found peace with God through our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 I was also respectfully asked to explain Solomon's 
 wonderful description of old age. (Eccles. xii.) The 
 inquirer is one of our communicants, once by his 
 own account "the greatest of blackguards." His 
 full acknowledgment of sin is one of the hopeful 
 signs of conversion. It is singular, however, that 
 criminals professing repentance towards God are 
 less moved and less humbled than one often sees 
 amongst less guilty persons in society. This often 
 leads me to doubt the reality of the feeling. It
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 217 
 
 would be easy to put words in their mouths, by a 
 certain mode of conversing with them lecturing, 
 &c. but unless the feeling is spontaneous and from 
 God, this is of no use, and will come to nought. In 
 visiting this evening, I had some conversation with 
 one of the new men. He is a very remarkable 
 person, having energy and talent manifested clearly 
 in his countenance. He is only about twenty-two, 
 and is under sentence for life. He is rather small 
 of stature, and, I think, not very long in a course 
 of crime. Being principal in a desperate house 
 robbery, and acting, in fact, as captain of the gang, 
 he received that dreadful sentence. He said, " The 
 worst of it was, that he knew better, for he had 
 once been a member of a Christian church." He 
 said "he had repented, and found peace; he had 
 been greatly cast down." I recommended close 
 self-examination. He expressed himself obliged for 
 the address in the morning, and said " others felt 
 the same ; and whilst together, before entering their 
 separate cells, encouraged one another to a better 
 course of life." 
 
 A soldier about to go to Bermuda, begged to 
 know whether he might see his comrade, who, 
 having a shorter term of sentence, is to be removed 
 to a different convict station. Referred him to the 
 Director. 
 
 The first of those men, transported for life, for a 
 deadly assault on his sergeant, is, I fear, not peni- 
 tent. His comrade I believe to be renewed in the 
 spirit of his mind, and as such he was admitted to
 
 218 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 communion last Easter. Shortly afterwards, being 
 employed in association (between forty and fifty of 
 our prisoners are so employed, after a term of pro- 
 bation in separate confinement, in prison work 
 building, repairing, cleaning, &c.), he described 
 himself to me as falling away, and did not offer 
 himself on the next occasion. On the last, however, 
 he did, and was re-admitted, and is, I trust, in a far 
 more decided state of mind. 
 
 Erom the following letter to the minister of his 
 parish in Scotland (just now passing through my 
 hands), the reader may form some judgment for 
 himself in the case : 
 
 "It is with deep feelings of gratitude, and, I hope, a thorough 
 sense of my own unworthiness, I write to you : and although my 
 past life has been not such as deserved your countenance nor 
 regard, yet the continuance of your more than kind assistance 
 to me and my wife, makes me feel more disgusted at myself, 
 when I think of the bad return I have made you for all the 
 many kindnesses and lessons of instruction you have bestowed 
 on me. But I humbly trust, through the assistance of God, 
 that those seeds of religious instruction which you so faithfully 
 inculcated on my youthful mind, have now begun to take root; 
 and I can see, and do confidently believe, that the working of 
 the Almighty, by his Divine providence, has done this ; for al- 
 though my crime, as far as man's ideas, was met with too severe 
 punishment, yet, when I call to mind my manifold transgres- 
 sions against a just and merciful God, I am entitled to this and 
 more ; and I humbly thank his holy name that he has dealt so 
 mercifully with me, a stubborn and rebellious sinner. Had not 
 God by his providence brought round the circumstances which 
 led to my present situation, I believe, and with shame confess, 
 I should sooner or later have perished, a victim to the snares of 
 the enemy of souls ; and the more I meditate on my past and 
 sinful life, the more firmly am I convinced that it was an all- 
 wise and merciful God who saw fit to bring me into my present
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 219 
 
 distress. I feel truly sorry for the unhealthy state my poor 
 Mary is in. I pray God her present afflictions may prove the 
 means of strengthening her faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 whose compassion for us poor helpless sinners exceeds the care 
 of brother or sister." 
 
 Oct. 30. There were ten letters from prisoners 
 this morning, ahout the average. I have received 
 this day permission from Colonel Jebh for Mr, 
 Crowther to visit the African in his cell. The usual 
 round of duties. Our sick list contains this morning 
 only six out of 561 prisoners. This is, however, 
 below the average. Would there have been so few 
 sick of the same parties in free life ? Probably not. 
 The loss of liberty generates some diseases, aggra- 
 vates others, and impairs muscular action, especially 
 in separate confinement ; but, on the whole, seems 
 less unfavourable to health, where the prisoner is 
 properly treated, than the improvident and irregular 
 habits of such persons when free. One man whom 
 I have just seen, although he has felt the punish- 
 ment very severely, tells me that he never enjoyed 
 greater freedom from ill-health and headache than 
 in the twelve months of his imprisonment, now 
 drawing to a close. I asked him what he attributed 
 this to. His reply was, that he now drank water 
 only. At home (Italy) he drank daily a bottle of 
 wine. This man's case deserves some remark. His 
 crime is forgery on the Austrian Government Bank. 
 He had never read a page of Holy Scripture until 
 he entered this prison, and was taught to read in 
 the English tongue. As his term of sentence is
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 short, he may return to his wife and children, whom 
 he dearly loves, and by God's blessing prove a light 
 to them in that benighted land. He is now 
 anxiously looking for a letter, which I, too, shall be 
 rejoiced to see. He is a fine-looking man, and very 
 affectionate. He always smiles when I bid him 
 good evening, (as I have learned from him to do,) 
 in his own language. 
 
 A prisoner's letter to his wife lies on my table. 
 He was a railway porter a man of previous good 
 character, and a good husband and father. One 
 sentence may here be transcribed : 
 
 " I could not help shedding tears when I heard of my dear 
 little Maria asking, why I did not come home to see her ? Oh, 
 how happy I should be to do so ! " 
 
 In another letter before me, the convict writes : 
 
 "My dear Parents, I hope you will not grieve yourselves 
 about me more than you can help. I intend, if ever I regain my 
 liberty, to lead quite a different kind of life. Think not, my 
 dear parents, that this is merely the thought of one who will 
 forget this as soon as he regains his liberty. I earnestly pray to 
 God, who alone can help me, that he will give me his aid in 
 keeping my resolution for ever. My dear parents, I hope you 
 will warn sister Mary's children not to follow in my steps ; for, if 
 they do, their ruin is certain. Give my kind love to my dear 
 sisters ; I hope they will not fret about me. I do not deserve 
 that they should think about me," 
 
 Assisted this morning in classifying 70 prisoners 
 for the public works. I consider our classification 
 as little more than negative ; and am heartily glad 
 that, where found incorrect, by the more certain 
 test of character in associated labour, it may be 
 rectified.
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 221 
 
 Received from the schoolmaster the school classi- 
 fication of the 70 prisoners admitted yesterday : 33 
 of the number can write their own letters unassisted, 
 and 14 more with help ; 60 have been in some sort 
 of school in childhood. 
 
 Visited in the wards in the evening as usual. 
 This is as peculiar a species of labour as can well be 
 conceived. When physically low, one feels unequal 
 to it. When ordinarily well, I find it a means of 
 elevating rather than depressing the spirits. The 
 effort to relieve others' griefs, no doubt lightens 
 one's own lesser cares. 
 
 I stopped a little longer this evening than usual 
 with a downcast prisoner who feels the confinement 
 terribly. He is an old whale-fisher, and interested 
 in the fate of poor Sir John Franklin. He drank 
 in with avidity the few scanty particulars I was 
 able to communicate respecting the search. 
 
 Pursuing my round of visits, I had another re- 
 quest made by a convict soldier, now invalided, to 
 be allowed to see his comrade, about to be removed 
 to the public works in Bermuda. Referred him to 
 the Director. 
 
 Conversed with a convict who proves to be a na- 
 tive of my own town, and familiar with all the scenes 
 of my boyhood. "Who hath made us to differ ?" 
 To thy grace, O Lord, I ascribe it all. O Lord, 
 show pity upon this prisoner ! 
 
 In the draft of men under orders for Bermuda, 
 there are several soldiers. All ascribe their fall, 
 directly or indirectly, to drink. Several of them
 
 222 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 are from the army in Canada, having attempted to 
 escape into the States. Most of them have now 
 served nearly two years the greater part in soli- 
 tudeand they are now going to the public works 
 for years. Poor men ! I feel much for them. 
 
 A very deaf prisoner was allowed to-day a visit 
 from his friends in the same room. (In the ordinary 
 place for the purpose, they can only see and con- 
 verse with each other at a distance, being separated 
 by double bars, with an officer between, after the 
 manner of certain convents. It is the most repul- 
 sive part of the whole prison, but with criminals in 
 general, it is a necessity.) I permitted the visit to 
 take place in my office, and hearing the poor man 
 tell his friends of his great progress in reading, I 
 gave him a book to read for them. They were 
 quite surprised. It was extremely hard to teach 
 him; but he was very persevering, and now is 
 enjoying the comfort of it. 
 
 Had some conversation with one of the second 
 probation-class from the hulks a man who used 
 there to be in perpetual punishment for disobedience 
 or some other offence. He seems now to have some 
 religious impressions. He has greatly improved 
 himself in reading ; chiefly, he says, by following 
 us in our daily exposition. It was this man who 
 asked me to explain the passage about the fire to 
 try every man's work, in 1 Cor. iii., and to whom I 
 thought it well to give the tangible idea of sup- 
 posing it addressed here to prisoners, leaving sepa- 
 rate confinement for the ordeal of association. What
 
 NOTES OF A PHISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 223 
 
 is really good and solid in a man's profession of 
 religion will stand ; what is worthless will soon be 
 discovered and come to nought. He will, on the 
 Governor's recommendation and my own, be re- 
 moved from the doubly penal class. 
 
 Talked with an old Indian soldier. His stomach, 
 he said, was gone. He acknowledged that he had 
 been a hard drinker : " used to take two half-pints 
 of arrack before breakfast. It had no effect upon 
 him. The allowance for each man was half-a-pint 
 daily. The doctor said it was good for a man, if he 
 did not take too much." He said and others have 
 told me the same that the Company, in his time, 
 used to allow even the elephants employed in carry- 
 ing the tents of the regiments, &c., arrack " a 
 gallon a day each, till they killed some of the black 
 fellows, when they reduced it one-half." 
 
 This superfluity of folly and waste seems incre- 
 dible; but after all, perhaps, not more irrational 
 than the allowance of ardent spirits, as a daily beve- 
 rage, to the man. The effects of the arrack, also, 
 seemed identical the drunken elephant kills his 
 guide ; the soldier his officer. 
 
 In the drinking habits of the army in India, it is 
 said there has been of late years much improve- 
 ment, and that the reform is beginning at the right 
 end the officers' mess-room. It must be vain to 
 expect a temperate soldiery when those in command 
 do not show the example, or when military doctors 
 sanction such a daily universal allowance. 
 
 Oct. 31. The usual round of duties. Visited
 
 224 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 the sick, prisoners under punishment, and in the 
 wards generally. 
 
 Conversed with a prisoner whose father wrote to 
 me about him some time back. He was religiously 
 brought up ; put to business in town ; entered the 
 army, and in Canada deserted with three others. 
 He is now in a hopeful state of mind. His be- 
 lieving father's prayers are, I do trust, being heard. 
 
 Saw another soldier, transported for striking a 
 corporal. He was drunk ; knew nothing of it in the 
 morning ; had no ill-will against the corporal ; he 
 had been for years, in fact, his comrade. 
 
 Conversed with a Scotch farmer, one of the most 
 intelligent men of his class I ever met with. In 
 complicated pecuniary difficulties, arising from in- 
 adequate capital, and great haste to get on, he com- 
 mitted forgery. 
 
 A clergyman of African descent to-day visited me, 
 whom I accompanied through the prison the Rev. 
 E. M. Stokes, from Liberia. Had an opportunity 
 of collecting some information about that most in- 
 teresting colony of Africans, liberated from slavery 
 in the United States. 
 
 Although these emigrants are by no means of the 
 best sort the slave owners being slow to allow the 
 most useful to purchase their freedom the colony, 
 he states, is in a thriving state ; and the moral 
 influence of its Christian institutions is reaching far 
 into the interior like that of our own colony in 
 Sierra Leone to the damaging of the iniquitous 
 slave-trade, and the spread of the gospel. The
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 225 
 
 Government is republican on the model of the 
 United States. The President, Mr. Roberts, is a 
 Christian of the Wesleyan body. They have a 
 prison, which deserves the designation of a Model 
 Prison, better than ours. It has no inmates, and 
 is scarcely ever entered, except to " clear it of the 
 insects, and keep it clean." In Monrovia, the capi- 
 tal, there were only three places of public enter- 
 tainment ; and so high a tax upon spirits, that it 
 was but little used. I asked, if public-houses were 
 multiplied and the tax reduced, how would it be 
 with the prison? "It would soon be tenanted," 
 was the reply. This simple people have not at- 
 tained to the wisdom of older and greater States ! 
 
 The English language is the vernacular tongue, 
 and education is diligently prosecuted amongst the 
 population. 
 
 Mr. Stokes hopes to be useful to the colony, as an 
 agent of the Bible and Tract Society in Monrovia. 
 
 He has just come from Ireland. He says of the 
 natives of that country, " They are the lowest I have 
 yet seen in any part of the civilized world." 
 
 In Cork, he had to be protected from their vio- 
 lence, in consequence of the free expression of his 
 sentiments, as a Protestant Christian minister. 
 
 Subsequently, visiting in the prison, I asked a 
 convict whether he had seen me conversing in the 
 corridor with an African gentleman. He told me 
 he had. He was much interested in my account of 
 Liberia, as having traded formerly on that coast ; 
 also another prisoner, who, as -a boy, served under 
 
 Q
 
 226 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 his uncle, the master of a slaver. This sailor-lad is 
 now, I trust, a true follower of Christ. 
 
 Nov. 1. The usual round of visits. 
 
 Read some interesting letters from prisoners, 
 under orders of removal, to their friends. 
 
 The sister of one called upon me, to know my 
 opinion as to his state of mind. I was thankful to 
 he able to give a good account of his religious state. 
 He has heen here a very great sufferer from an old 
 complaint, hut has always said, it was little in com- 
 parison with what he deserved. Prom his relations, 
 I understand he used to he very irritable under 
 attacks of the same. Received for him a Bible, the 
 parting gift of an aged mother, unable to come to 
 see him, and who will never see him more on earth. 
 The Lord grant that they may meet at his right 
 hand in the great day. 
 
 Nov. 2, Sunday. I preached this morning from 
 the text, "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw 
 nigh to you ; " pointing out the only way in which 
 sinners can approach a just and holy God, Eph. 
 ii. 13. 
 
 In the evening, as a sequel and illustration of the 
 morning discourse, took the wondrously beautiful 
 parable of the prodigal son ; first, simply paraphras- 
 ing it, and directing attention to some of its touch- 
 ing features; and then, looking at it doctrinally, 
 as showing, distinctly, the sinner in his natural state 
 the sinner penitent and believing the sinner 
 pardoned, and received into the family of God. 
 
 I was encouraged to hope that there was joy in
 
 H VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 227 
 
 the presence of the angels of God over some poor 
 repenting sinner in the congregation. " His Word 
 shall not return to Him void." 
 
 Let the reader now look a little beyond the range 
 prescribed in the foregoing pages, and view a series 
 of cases, illustrative of character, crime, &c. 
 
 Twit from Cell to Cell. 
 
 Cell 1. A night cabman ; concerned in the rob- 
 bery of a drunken gentleman, in company with 
 abandoned women ; asserts his innocence, but knew 
 the character of the parties in whose hands the 
 victim was, and their design. He is extremely 
 wretched, and suffers great bodily pain from an 
 incurable complaint. 
 
 2. A vagrant tumbler, and low thief naturally 
 very shrewd, but from his habits of life, and some 
 bad falls on the head, very odd approaching to 
 derangement. He has made great progress in 
 books, and has imbibed religious knowledge almost 
 too rapidly, he is very excitable on this subject. 
 
 3. A sailor, of low drunken habits, transported 
 for stealing from a dwell ing-house. Having been 
 paid off from his ship, got into bad company, and 
 soon lost or spent all. Set out for another port, 
 to get a ship. In a lodging-house, made acquaint- 
 ance with a party who wanted to complete their 
 begging company of "shipwrecked sailors" by a 
 real seaman, who could stand the examination of 
 retired sea-faring persons. He joined them, and, by 
 
 Q2
 
 228 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 his means, they often got large sums from good- 
 hearted old sailors. 
 
 4. A very cunning pickpocket. He has been 
 frequently in gaol. When in the van, coming here, 
 described how he would impose upon the chaplains 
 by various schemes. He did not, however, attempt 
 to do so ; but proved to be a very troublesome 
 prisoner, and for his misconduct was put in the 
 lowest class on leaving. 
 
 6. A farm-labourer, from Somersetshire ; a spe- 
 cimen of the stolid ignorance of his class. He 
 could not tell whether the sun rose in the east or 
 west. Being asked in which quarter of the world 
 he was born Europe, Asia, Africa, or America? 
 answered, " In none of them in Somersetshire." 
 
 6. A native of London, quite as ignorant in 
 these subjects. He, too, was "born in none of 
 them places, but in "Whitechapel." Had no idea 
 what wheat was ; a spade he knew, " 'twas a 
 shovel;" & harrow he said he knew, "it was for 
 boys to shoot with." 
 
 7. A canal boatman, worn down at thirty, by 
 cold, wet, and hunger, to the lowest state of physi- 
 cal prostration. Never had a Sunday to himself 
 since he was a child. Deplorably ignorant of the 
 most common things, and, of course, of the things 
 of salvation. Had stolen some petty articles on 
 two or three occasions, and, for the last theft, got 
 transported. 
 
 8. A Suffolk farm-labourer. In order to test 
 this man's knowledge of what he must have heard
 
 VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 229 
 
 at church, to which he was obliged to go once on a 
 Sunday, I inquired to which he belonged the Jews 
 or the Gentiles ? He answered, " To neither." 
 This implying some definite idea, I then asked, what 
 he understood by these names? He said, "The 
 Jews were teetotallers the Gentiles, gentlefolk. 
 
 There warn't many of them in ; but there 
 
 was plenty about Ipswich." 
 
 To a prisoner of this class, the following commu- 
 nication was made by letter, not long since : 
 
 " Dear brother, You sent home word by Rebecca, to call 
 your donkey 'Jack.' Dear brother, don't think your name is 
 forgot, for your pig is called 'Jack,' and it's judged in ten 
 score." 
 
 9. A prize-fighter. Under a false name, he was 
 convicted of highway robbery, innocent, he alleges, 
 of that crime ; however, " has done as bad, and 
 worse, many times." Was, at the time of his appre- 
 hension, in a bad house, with thieves and loose 
 characters, spending 5s. he had gotten from a cler- 
 gyman in Derby, by attending his lecture, and 
 making out a pitiful tale. He took it all now as a 
 judgment from God, for that and other sins. He 
 had escaped justice in a case of manslaughter, 
 having killed a man in a prize-fight, and fled. 
 
 The preaching of God's word seems to have come 
 home to this man's heart. He delights in reading 
 the Holy Scriptures, which he has been taught here 
 to do ; and has become gentle, docile, and obedient. 
 The expression of his countenance is changed, and 
 he puts one in mind of the man who was found,
 
 230 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 when delivered by Jesus from the power of Satan, 
 "clothed, and sitting and in his right mind." 
 
 10. An American liberated black ; convicted of 
 tittering a forged note. In his muscular and general 
 structure this man seemed perfect. On this account, 
 in the first instance, he attracted the notice of Sir 
 Benjamin Brodie, then a member of the Pentonville 
 Board of Commissioners. Sir Benjamin offered, 
 most kindly, to send out his wife and child after 
 him to Australia. I recommended delay, having 
 some reason for caution. As soon as he landed 
 with a conditional pardon, (according to the then 
 arrangement,) he was known as a distinguished 
 pugilist, and laid hold on by publicans, who put 
 him forward again in his horrid business I am 
 sure, against his inclination. He was a most peace- 
 able and orderly man ; but thus, all his life long, 
 has he been drawn into wickedness by parties who 
 made a gain of him, or sport for their inhuman 
 fancy. 
 
 Many aristocratic young men patronized this prize- 
 fighter's preliminary performances in a public-house 
 in the West-end, and betted heavily upon him, who 
 did not appear at the brutal fight, and made him 
 
 large presents. " Lord gave him, on one of 
 
 these occasions, a 5 note." 
 
 In a Sydney sporting paper, forwarded to me by 
 some unknown friend, this convict's performance (in 
 a fight) was lauded to the skies, and his penal posi- 
 tion referred to with a degree of consideration, which 
 one would rejoice to have seen extended to others of
 
 VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 231 
 
 his class, pursuing a reputable and industrious call- 
 ing in the colony, but who met with different treat- 
 ment. 
 
 11. One of two brothers, transported for highway 
 robbery both here. On tramp from Birmingham, 
 for work, fell in with an old hand at robbery, and 
 were induced to join in his scheme. Stopped a gen- 
 tleman in a gig, and robbed him ; one of the brothers 
 holding the horse, the other a pistol, whilst the third 
 party rifled the traveller's pockets. This last man 
 was not taken. The brothers both assured me, that 
 whilst engaged in the affair, they trembled from 
 head to foot. Both truly repented of their great 
 wickedness, as I trust, whilst here. A cousin, filling 
 the situation only of clerk in a London house, sent 
 them, out of his savings, 15. They kept 5, and 
 sent, with the leave of the generous donor, 10 to 
 their poor mother. All this occurred to my certain 
 knowledge. 
 
 12. A soldier, transported for desertion. Came 
 with a very bad character from his regiment, having 
 been frequently punished for misconduct. After a 
 while here, appeared to be sinking into idiotcy ; was 
 under observation on that account ; suddenly, seemed 
 to shake it all off, and came out a different person 
 altogether ; and was, to the end, a most examplary 
 prisoner. 
 
 The idiotcy was counterfeited very ably. I had 
 the impression that it was put on. Saw the pri- 
 soner ; spoke to him, and after a while, having suc- 
 ceeded in eliciting some marks of attention, became
 
 232 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 certain, and told him so. Put before him the con- 
 sequence of both sorts of conduct ; appealed to him 
 as a man, and as one of whom I had hope, and 
 assured him, if he made the effort to do well, he 
 should have every help. I had told no one my mind 
 in this case, nor did I intend to do. He was over- 
 come, and afterwards, when speaking with me on the 
 subject of religion which he gave every evidence of 
 having truly received he told me, with tears, " that 
 talking was the turning-point of my life." 
 
 13. This man, transported for robbing from a 
 dwelling-house, assured me that, when in the old 
 prison of Stafford, he planned with another, confined 
 there for a few months, like himself, a robbery in 
 that county, and, if opposition were made, murder. 
 He told me, under convictions of conscience, that he 
 was so wicked a wretch, that one night, having 
 secreted himself in a barn, for the purpose of rob- 
 bing the house when the family had gone to sleep, 
 he fell asleep himself, and not awaking till day- 
 break, was so enraged, that he set fire to the barn, 
 and saw with pleasure, when a mile or so off, the 
 whole premises in a blaze, and the neighbours flock- 
 ing to put it out. 
 
 14. One of the men engaged in the Regent's 
 Park robbery transported for life ; now in a hope- 
 ful state of mind. These men have severally assured 
 me that that robbery was, as the phrase is, "a put- 
 up one." To explain : There are parties in London, 
 and all great towns, who never themselves rob, but 
 put up others to it, who are house-robbers, for some
 
 VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 233 
 
 valuable consideration. The " putters up" are de- 
 scribed to be dismissed men-servants, bell-hangers, 
 plumbers, painters, &c. The rendezvous is some 
 public-house in the vicinity often to all appearance 
 the most respectable. 
 
 15. A farm-labourer, of good capacity, who, hav- 
 ing mastered here the alphabet and the art of read- 
 ing, had from the library an account of our Pro- 
 testant martyrs, and being much interested in the 
 subject, asked me several questions in relation to 
 them ; one was, whether I knew Master Ridley ! 
 
 16. The subject of his questions brings to my 
 mind a peculiar case a man who entered this 
 prison professing not to know his letters, but, after 
 about nine months, he is found reading all books, 
 and asking subtle questions on points supposed by 
 Romanists to be the weakest in the Reformation. 
 
 The man had a good conformation of head cer- 
 tainly, and might have imbibed from oral instruc- 
 tion much controversial knowledge, for which there 
 was a great basis ; but it is probable that he was a 
 well-educated man, perhaps a Jesuit, in a wrong 
 place by some misadventure, and deceived us. 
 
 On all other subjects, but this of controversy, he 
 was silent and profoundly reserved. He made no 
 profession of any change of sentiment. 
 
 17. A hairdresser, transported for seven years for 
 killing his wife, under great provocation on her part ; 
 he struck the woman when she was drunk, and she 
 fell and received some injury from which she died. 
 He was a steady man, and an indulgent husband.
 
 234 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 The late good Duke of Cambridge, visiting in this 
 prison upon one occasion, happening to be told, when 
 in this prisoner's cell, what the prisoner's crime was, 
 hurried out of it with a characteristic exclamation 
 of great horror. 
 
 18. A licensed hawker a very clever impostor 
 in his line. He tells freely the tricks of his trade in 
 Sheffield-ware. "Used to sell good articles some- 
 times, when he succeeded in stealing them." Caught 
 in one of those thefts, and transported. 
 
 19. Another, in the same way of living, dealing 
 in soft goods. Carried on extensive business in pre- 
 tended contraband French cambric. " Sold once a 
 set of French cambric handkerchiefs, in Glasgow, 
 where goods are fabricated for this special purpose, 
 to the manufacturer's wife !" 
 
 20. A groom, dismissed from service. Stole once 
 a horse in the country, valued at a hundred guineas ; 
 rode him to town, and, having reason to fear appre- 
 hension if he attempted to dispose of it in an ordi- 
 nary way, cruelly maimed the animal, and sold it in 
 a knacker's yard, as if accidentally injured. 
 
 21. A poulterer. His uncle, he states, in that 
 line, has two sets of agents ; one class perambulate 
 a certain quarter of the metropolis, dressed as coun- 
 tryfolk, with " cheap poultry, and manufactured 
 articles, as large old French cocks, changed, by 
 blackening the feet, pressing up the breast, &c., into 
 young turkeys ;" the other, with his cart and name, 
 and good fowl. Prisoner has often heard from ser- 
 vants the story of how mistress and master had been
 
 VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 235 
 
 taken in, and what orders were given to deal only 
 with the respectable man who came round with the 
 cart. 
 
 22. A waiter in a hotel, concerned in the robbery 
 of money from a gentleman's portmanteau, left care- 
 lessly open, and observed by the chambermaid, who 
 told her gallant, and he, from fear of acting alone, 
 his friend, another waiter. They took the whole 
 amount ; but in trying to pass the notes, were de- 
 tected, and all transported. 
 
 23. A convict, from the public line. His ac- 
 counts of women frequenting the shop are distress- 
 ing. " Some, wives and mothers, stand or sit all 
 day long in the shop for gossip, and the chance of a 
 glass." 
 
 He does not know what is done with the spirits ; 
 but constantly helped " to turn three barrels of beer 
 into four." 
 
 A betting-book was kept, contrary to law, and 
 gambling carried on amongst the gentlemen who 
 spent their evenings at the house. " These gentle- 
 men were chiefly shopmen, clerks, &c." 
 
 24. A notorious burglar. This man had broken 
 prison several times, and had committed robberies 
 to an amazing extent. " He never took anything 
 but cash. He has been through houses looking for 
 the cash-box, and not finding it, has taken nothing. 
 Would make purchases in shops suited to his pur- 
 pose, as where there were elderly people, or other 
 favourable circumstances ; would put down a note, 
 and, when the cash-box was brought down, seize it,
 
 236 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 rush out, turn the corner, throw away the box, 
 pocket the money, and travel on foot that night, 
 by cross roads, from twenty to thirty miles, and so 
 escape." The strength, agility, and quick percep- 
 tion necessary for such exploits were manifest. I 
 tested his statements, in several instances, in my 
 own neighbourhood, where he occasionally lodged, 
 to all appearance a respectable person. 
 
 One man, who kept the " Caledonian Arms," op- 
 posite to this prison, I warned, and perhaps saved 
 from being robbed, in consequence of what this pri- 
 soner told me of plans laid for that purpose, in which 
 he had taken part, and which he thought would be 
 carried out when the long evenings set in, then just 
 at hand. 
 
 I never saw any one more frightened than this 
 publican, when, having sent for him to my office, I 
 told him where his cash-box was, and recommended 
 him to remove it elsewhere forthwith. I believe 
 this prisoner to have been changed, by the grace of 
 God, with others, under the faithful and zealous 
 ministry of the Rev. James Ralph, then senior chap- 
 lain of this prison, but now for several years rector 
 of St. John's, Horselydown. 
 
 I was not without fear that, when on board ship, 
 being known by so many as a hero in his former 
 line of life, he would be drawn into a recital of his 
 exploits, and so do mischief to others, and, as I 
 warned him, certainly fall back himself; but nothing 
 of the kind occurred. His mind was happily other- 
 wise directed, and he was entirely engrossed with
 
 VISITS FROM CELL TO CELL. 237 
 
 the salvation of his wife (who had been a partaker 
 in most of his evil deeds), the preservation of an 
 innocent child from infamy, and the having them 
 to him abroad, that he might perform to them a 
 husband and a father's part. With such feelings, 
 he composed prayers suitable for their use, wrote to 
 them most affectionate letters from this place, and 
 since then from Van Diemen's Land. He sent home 
 also two several remittances, amounting to 11, the 
 savings of honest industry. He assured a friend of 
 mine, in Van Diemen's Land, that the first shilling 
 he earned there, in an honest way, was sweeter to 
 him than hundreds of pounds gotten before by dis- 
 honest means. 
 
 25. A letter-carrier for a post-office felony. A 
 man of dissolute and drunken habits ; a professed 
 infidel ; never read the Bible until he was shut up 
 in this prison. Since his incarceration two of his 
 little children have died. He was very fond of them, 
 with all his faults ; and their death seemed to make 
 an impression. He studied Holy Scripture, and 
 professed, at least, belief in Revelation. 
 
 26. A policeman, for highway robbery. Had 
 been dismissed the service for drunkenness. The 
 revelations which this man makes of crime and vice 
 in the metropolis, are appalling. 
 
 27. Another dismissed policeman; transported 
 for a similar offence. No class is exposed to such 
 temptations as the police, directly and indirectly, 
 from first-class robbers, from keepers of infamous 
 houses, publicans, and the allurements of abandoned
 
 238 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 women. They are, moreover, overworked, under- 
 paid, and have but little access to the privileges of 
 Christianity. 
 
 It is more to be deplored, therefore, than wondered 
 at, that so many become, from being steady, well- 
 conducted men, first, tipplers ; then, from the love 
 of drink, not trustworthy, dishonest, criminal ; until 
 at last they occupy the place themselves of the pri- 
 soner, the felon, and the outcast. 
 
 28. A man convicted of picking pockets in a fair ; 
 asserts his innocence, and feels the greatest enmity 
 towards his prosecutor, and all who had a hand in 
 his conviction. His indignation apparently arises 
 from the fact of his being convicted of so low a piece 
 of dishonesty ; for he acknowledges that " he at- 
 tended the place, for a purpose quite as bad, and in 
 bad company" gambling, of which he was an adept. 
 
 29. I was attracted to this man's cell one even- 
 ing by a strange sort of rude music, and the move- 
 ment of the feet in dancing. I entered, and warned 
 him of the consequences if a discipline-officer should 
 hear his performance. No instrument appeared; 
 but a small piece of iron, with which, striking on the 
 different substances of brass, wood, and iron in his 
 cell, ingeniously arranged, he contrived to produce 
 an extraordinary variety of sounds, with a precision 
 of time, sufficient for his purpose of dancing. On 
 inquiring as to his past real employment, I learned 
 that he had been an inferior artist in the theatre. 
 
 30. A native of Scotland, transported for an 
 assault on a female, in a drunken fit. A strange
 
 VISITS FBOM CELL TO CELL. 239 
 
 mixture of cunning and simplicity ; intensely long- 
 ing for liberty, and trying every means to avoid 
 being sent out of the country. In a very soft, whis- 
 pering tone of voice he once said to me, " It would 
 be as good as a ten-pound note to you, if you got 
 me off." 
 
 31. A keeper of a whisky-shop, in Glasgow, 
 transported, with his wife (whom I saw on board a 
 female convict-ship), for receiving stolen property. 
 
 This man made a statement to me about parties 
 in that town, in respectable life, to whom he was in 
 the habit of selling choice articles. I put it before 
 our Board ; but the chairman thought, and no doubt 
 correctly, that the Board could not interfere without 
 the risk of an action for a libel for defamation of 
 character. 
 
 The same covetousness which leads in low life to 
 theft, gives rise to transactions of this nature in per- 
 sons of better circumstances. . 
 
 Erom this man's account, and others', under some 
 remorse of conscience, I have long since come to the 
 conclusion, that a regular thief is one of the most 
 heartless of wretches. Thus, in a robbery, the pro- 
 duce of which passed through this man's hands, an 
 article, highly prized as a family relic, was taken. 
 Great noise was made about it in the town. It was 
 burnt to ashes by the thieves in his house, as the 
 safest course. In the same affair, they allowed a 
 servant-woman in the house to be transported as an 
 accomplice in the robbery, of which, he said, she had 
 not the slightest cognizance, being culpable only in
 
 240 ILLTJSTRATOINS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 encouraging an acquaintance with one of the party, 
 whom she took for a respectable person. 
 
 32. A dismissed omnibus-servant, a man respect- 
 ably connected to my knowledge ; concerned in many 
 heavy robberies. Pew of this class, however, sink 
 into this condition. The end of their career, as an 
 overworked class, and exposed, by the arrangements 
 of their masters, to the perpetual temptations of the 
 public- house, is more usually premature decay and 
 death, the cab-stand, or absolute pauperism. 
 
 33. A draper's assistant, for embezzlement, the 
 eldest of three brothers, all transported for the same 
 crime : the two younger in another prison. He 
 declares that the young men in that establishment 
 (in the Borough) had no wages, but what they could 
 make over and above the price marked by the mas- 
 ters. "Fourteen or fifteen had been transported 
 from that house." 
 
 34. A person in the wine and spirit trade, trans- 
 ported for forgery ; was punished lately for obscene 
 writing in a library book, from which his character 
 may be plainly seen. This man received an excel- 
 lent education, and is well-connected. In early 
 married life he abandoned his wife, and took up with 
 another woman. He is extremely deaf ; and some 
 time back his wife, who, since his desertion of her, 
 has supported herself by honourable industry, brought 
 to the prison an expensive instrument, pur chased from 
 her savings, to assist his hearing. She had no wish, 
 however, to see him, 
 
 35. An artist ; once had paintings in the National
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 241 
 
 Gallery ; he informs his friends, by letter, that he is 
 employed here " in painting, in staring red colour, 
 the letters ' P. P.' on certain articles of convict cloth- 
 ing, for use in Pentonville Prison." This poor man, 
 now fifty years old, assured me, that since his con- 
 firmation, in boyhood, he had not been, to the best 
 of his recollection, once to a place of worship, as 
 such, till apprehended. He visited churches abroad, 
 in connexion with his art, assiduously. There is 
 good reason to hope that he has here found peace 
 with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is 
 really an amiable person, and very grateful for or- 
 dinary attention. 
 
 36. A German, for some years resident in Eng- 
 land, acting as teacher of his native language to 
 respectable persons. 
 
 Virtuously attached to a person rather above his 
 position, and too eager to raise money to begin mar- 
 ried life respectably, he caught at some bubble rail- 
 way speculation, and in the course of a few months 
 became reduced to absolute penury ; and in this con- 
 dition obtained money under false pretences, delud- 
 ing himself with the idea of making all right in a 
 few days. A less depraved mind, or a better natural 
 disposition, I have never seen in any prisoner. The 
 grace of God, also, has brought to him salvation, I 
 believe, in his deep degradation and misery. 
 
 He once consulted me upon the propriety of writ- 
 ing to the person to whom he was engaged. I re- 
 commended him to do so, in order to liberate her 
 from difficulties which a delicate sense of honour
 
 242 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 might suggest. He did so, in a remarkably becom- 
 ing manner, and received an equally proper reply, in 
 which, however, hope was by no means extinguished. 
 On the contrary, as I interpreted to him the hidden 
 meaning, he was encouraged to think that, if he 
 proved himself a respectable person in Australia, she 
 should like to hear from him again. I am happy to 
 know that he is doing so. 
 
 A prince and princess from Germany, visiting this 
 establishment upon one occasion, I introduced their 
 highnesses to this prisoner's cell, that they might 
 learn from him, in the readiest and most unsuspi- 
 cious form, any particulars they might wish to know. 
 
 It was a touching and beautiful sight to see the 
 unrestrained tears flowing down the cheeks of the 
 fair princess, and to observe how the fine, expressive 
 countenance of the poor prisoner was brightened up 
 as he conversed, after so long silence, in the beloved 
 tongue of his fatherland, with the unknown per- 
 sonage. 
 
 37. A man of very ill-favoured countenance; 
 transported for life for attempting to extort money 
 from a gentleman, under a threat of accusing him 
 of a great crime, a system of villany growing a few 
 years back very rife in the metropolis, but, by a 
 seasonable and prompt severity, in this and some 
 other cases which passed through this prison, almost 
 at once put down. This man, by religious profession 
 a Roman Catholic, was really an infidel. He was 
 occasionally a subordinate actor on the stage ; and 
 certainly, whenever necessary to represent the malign
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 243 
 
 passions of the human breast in a silent living sub- 
 ject, no one could have been better chosen for the 
 part than this poor man. Yet he is by no means 
 past hope. 
 
 38. A medical student ; one of a class of which 
 we have had a very large proportion transported 
 for rebellion in the London Chartist affairs. He was 
 one of their leading orators, most vehement and 
 warlike in tone, but, as he candidly acknowledged 
 to me, prepared to run at the first appearance of 
 danger : " the very sight of a red coat made him 
 afraid." 
 
 An unhappy facility for speaking led him to at- 
 tempt a first flight of public oratory at a Chartist 
 meeting, and, being successful, a boy's ambitious 
 folly inflated him, and extinguished whatever he 
 had of common sense and right feeling. He was a 
 type of others who have suffered in this prison in 
 like circumstances ; and my impression certainly is, 
 that however it may be in countries where liberty is 
 oppressed, and real grievances exist, this whole class 
 of disturbers of the peace in this country will always 
 be found as contemptible in deeds as they are ter- 
 rible in words. 
 
 In almost every one of these Chartist cases, there 
 was a heroine. In the case of this young man, there 
 were two. Of one he was the enamoured suitor ; 
 but she prudently hesitated to join her fortunes with 
 a convict exile. The other volunteered, as soon as 
 she heard of this hesitancy in her rival, and I believe 
 was accepted. Mr. and Mrs. Cobden showed much 
 
 R 2
 
 244 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 kindness to this youth and his really respectable 
 family, who have, through their means chiefly, 
 been enabled, I understand, to go out to their son 
 in Australia, who will again, I trust, be their com- 
 fort and their joy. 
 
 39. A prisoner remarkable for High-Church 
 principles. He came to Pentonville from Leeds. 
 Being a very reserved and downhearted man, I 
 wished to draw him out on some subject of interest, 
 and only succeeded, at the first, upon this one. 
 Being assured by my manner, he expressed himself 
 dissatisfied with our shortening the daily prayers, 
 and substituting hymns and scriptural exposition 
 for the appointed lessons. I urged necessity, and 
 an Act of Parliament allowing this latitude in 
 prisons. Being encouraged to proceed, he objected, 
 with many respectful apologies for his boldness, to 
 a practice which he had observed in myself, of using 
 the sacred vestment for the purpose of cleaning my 
 spectacles. The prisoner was relieved from all ap- 
 prehension of having proceeded too far in his strict- 
 ures, by the hearty laugh which involuntarily 
 escaped from the ecclesiastical delinquent. The 
 same man subsequently made use of a remark de- 
 serving better to be recorded in these pages. When 
 rehearsing the sad history of his embezzlements, 
 and comparing the guilt of the various transactions, 
 he said, " The first shilling was worse than the last 
 pound." 
 
 40. A prisoner of elegant manners and address, 
 now a second time sentenced to transportation for
 
 NOTES OF A PRISON CHAPLAIN'S DUTIES. 245 
 
 forgery ; educated at Eton, and highly accomplished. 
 In his first crime, he obtained a commutation of 
 sentence, on the ground of innocence as to actual 
 criminal intention, or some such plea. He com- 
 mitted soon again a similar offence. He was not 
 reformed when he left this prison. 
 
 41. Another specimen of the same class; con- 
 victed of obtaining money under false pretences. 
 His father, an officer in the army, assisted by his 
 petted boy, had wasted a fine fortune, sold his com- 
 mission, and used to write from a garret in an 
 obscure street in the West-end, to his son, a felon 
 in this prison. To break the monotony of solitude, 
 and to help to win the young man to better things, 
 he was allowed drawing materials, having consider- 
 able talent in that way. Amongst other things, he 
 conceived the idea of a series of sketches of a 
 convict's progress, after the manner of Hogarth's 
 famous illustrations of a kindred subject. As I 
 questioned the usefulness of this, he dropped it. 
 His first was a representation of himself, driving 
 a female companion in a fashionable cabriolet to the 
 Opera. 
 
 41. A prisoner, an officer himself in the army, 
 when committed ; highly connected, and educated 
 too at Eton. He fell into the same habits, and 
 committed a like crime. In his confinement, nothing 
 could stimulate him to exertion. He was dejected 
 and miserable; and in this condition left for the 
 second stage of convict discipline in Portland, and 
 there died.
 
 246 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 Both these cases bring to my mind many others, 
 in which the highest order of secular education, and 
 the strongest inducements to an honourable course, 
 from station, connections, and worldly interest, 
 were not sufficient to preserve the unhappy votary 
 of sinful pleasure and excitement from the com- 
 mission of acts, by which all these were forfeited for 
 ever. 
 
 "With respect to these young men, it may be 
 remarked, that their early entrance into life was 
 marked by amiable, pliant, and inconsiderate folly, 
 quite as much as by any excessive vicious pro- 
 pensity. 
 
 42. The last cell in this ward of selected prisoners 
 we shall look into (although here out of my order, 
 as to degree of education, position in life, &c.) is 
 that of a very desperate and well-known thief. He 
 was sentenced to transportation for fifteen years, for 
 house-robbery, and a most brutal assault upon a 
 policeman, who effected, however, his capture, on 
 Blackfriars Bridge, as he was proceeding in the 
 bottom of a cart to Epsom Races. This is the man 
 (Hackett) who succeeded in making his escape from 
 this prison, and about whom the public have shown 
 such a marvellous interest. I am far from wishing 
 to revive that interest. I want to draw a moral 
 from it which may find response in quarters where 
 it may do good. The eclat given by the press and 
 the public generally to this case, I hold to be exten- 
 sively mischievous. When divested of the romance, 
 it is painfully instructive. Here was a young, man
 
 247 
 
 of more than common ability and aptness for almost 
 any honourable line of industry, who, with ordinary 
 character, must have risen to considerable usefulness 
 and respectability. He turns his parts to the igno- 
 minious trade of thieving ; is amazingly successful ; 
 and although sentenced at length to transportation, 
 escapes out of prison. He is talked of by the public, 
 and looked up to by the thieves of London, as 
 another Jack Sheppard. Well, what is his con- 
 dition, when thus placed at the head of his class ? 
 A fugitive from justice, and an exile from home. 
 He escapes to America, not to begin an honest life 
 in that country, but to rob and thieve there as he 
 did here ! And with what result ? To be recap- 
 tured, and to have, as I understand from an 
 American gentleman connected with the police in 
 New York, ten years of terrible solitude in the 
 prison of Philadelphia, and, if ever retaken in this 
 country, to be banished to a penal station for life. 
 His brother, too, following his example, has lately 
 been transported ; and his mother, who is said to 
 have boasted, on his conviction, that no prison in 
 London would hold him, has now to weep over two 
 sons lost to her for ever, as well as to society who, 
 if brought up in the fear of the Lord, might have 
 been her support, her comfort, her crown of re- 
 joicing. Truly, the way of transgressors is hard ! 
 
 This same man (Hackett) had received once be- 
 fore the sentence of transportation, but, in conse- 
 quence of his assiduous attention to the sick and 
 dying in Millbank, during the fearful ravages of the 
 cholera, was pardoned.
 
 248 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A FUISOX. 
 
 Refractory Ward Cases. 
 
 Under any system of prison discipline, and under 
 the best governors and officers, there will be cases of 
 offence in prisons, and punishment, often very dis- 
 tressing to witness. Humanity, and the force of 
 public opinion, have well nigh disposed of flogging 
 as a punishment for adults, and I think rightly ; 
 but stern necessity has instituted another really 
 more formidable, viz., solitary confinement in a 
 dark cell, on bread and water. This punishment a 
 governor of a prison may inflict for three days, but 
 the Governing Board for twenty-eight. Having 
 stated in a former chapter my views on this point, I 
 will not here enlarge. Ill-conducted prisoners, in 
 my opinion, have gained nothing by the change 
 from the corporeal infliction, to one which tells upon 
 the mind and the constitution. Prisoners would do 
 well to think of this. To some readers, however, it 
 may appear a very small thing. Let a man make 
 it his own only for one day. Let him imagine him- 
 self travelling in one continuous tunnel, say, for 24 
 hours, with no other companions, than a bottle of 
 water and a pound loaf of bread, lying or sitting on 
 a hard wooden seat, and he will have a better idea 
 of the punishment. I have tried the experiment of 
 the dark cell for a little while during one day, and 
 I came out with an increased sense of the terrible 
 nature of the punishment, when prolonged, and 
 with the conviction increased, that, if one clav did
 
 REFRACTORY WARD. 2-19 
 
 not answer the reformatory end of the punishment, 
 three would not; if one week, certainly not four. 
 It is singular to observe, that, comparing the pun- 
 ishments in all the Government Prisons, they are 
 lightest in those governed by military men. 
 
 In our own, governed by a civilian, although the 
 law has in no case been exceeded, it has been ever 
 carried out to its utmost limit. 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that some bear an 
 extreme length of this punishment without much 
 apparent suffering, of which the first in my list of 
 cases is an instance. (The cases are not contempo- 
 raneous) : 
 
 1. This was a young man, sentenced by the 
 Board of Commissioners to seven days in the dark 
 cell, &c., for an outrageous violation of discipline. 
 He maintained a haughty, obstinate -spirit to the 
 end. I felt for him (as a prisoner once beautifully 
 expressed it, speaking of a very bad character, whose 
 doings here he was cognizant of, and whose sore 
 punishment, he knew, would follow) : " he was some- 
 body's son." 
 
 This applied particularly to the case before us. 
 He was one of a class of prisoners who furnish no 
 clue whatever as to who or whence they are leav- 
 ing the imagination to fill, up the sad outline of a 
 dark picture, with the still sadder details of doubt 
 and gloom, which must have been long distress- 
 ing the hearts of parents, or brothers and sisters, 
 as to the real fate of one whom they may have most 
 tenderly loved. The prisoner in this case was a
 
 250 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 well-educated youth ; nothing moved him but a 
 reference to his family, and the hope expressed by 
 me that, after all, he might prove the comfort and 
 joy of their hearts. 
 
 2 and 3. These prisoners were punished for three 
 days, for communicating with one another. They 
 had come from Scotland together, and were much 
 attached. The elder had been an infidel, the other a 
 believer in Revelation, and very anxious about his 
 friend, when he became really concerned respecting 
 his own soul. They had talked the matter over when 
 in gaol, in Edinburgh, and when the elder was jeered 
 at by his fellow prisoners for being down-hearted, 
 the young man took his part, and now, being brought 
 close together in our prison, they violated the rules, 
 and had to bear the consequences. Apart from this 
 suffering, it certainly was as pleasant a sight as it 
 was novel, to observe each offering to bear the pun- 
 ishment of the other with his own, the elder urging 
 that he was first in the transgression, the other, that 
 he was young, and could bear it all. 
 
 4. A gentleman's butler ; sent to the refractory 
 ward for feigning insanity : a very clever Irishman, 
 and up to every scheme in service (of which there 
 is a fearful amount). His case was for some time a 
 dubious one. He had shaved his head, abstained 
 from food to an incredible length, and was for hours, 
 without moving, on his knees. It turned out a de- 
 cided instance of deception. I have seen the man 
 frequently since, at the hulks, and elsewhere. 
 
 Nevertheless, it has not always been the case, that
 
 REFRACTORY WARD. 251 
 
 prisoners punished for this crime were really respon- 
 sible for their actions. For cases at all dubious, 
 nothing is worse, in my opinion, than the dark cell. 
 
 One of those dubious cases, which occurred in the 
 early years of the prison, I may here mention, 
 though not punished. Providentially, I entered 
 once the cell of a man who, in ungovernable rage, or, 
 as I think, unaffected madness, struck the warder in 
 my presence, with a heavy piece of wood, so terrible 
 a blow on the head that he was disabled, and in a 
 critical state for weeks, in bed. Before he could re- 
 peat the blow, or use his knife, I am thankful to say, 
 I was able to secure him, until help came. 
 
 5. A prisoner punished, for communication, in 
 the refractory ward for three days, whose case may 
 serve as an illustration of others. 
 
 This man wept like a child the whole first day, 
 and could not eat. I told our excellent chief 
 warder, then in entire charge of the prison (during 
 the Governor's absence), that the man had suffered 
 as much in one day as others in a week ; and he 
 promptly released him, with a decidedly good moral 
 effect. 
 
 6. A gentleman's son, whom I do not describe 
 more particularly, lest it may give pain to his 
 friends, into whose hands these pages may fall; 
 punished for obscene writing, and other communi- 
 cations of a like character. He is depraved, beyond 
 almost any prisoner in the place. Still, the grace of 
 God can change him. 
 
 7. This prisoner was sentenced to three weeks in
 
 252 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 the dark cell, for taking a draught of French polish 
 for the sake of the spirit it contained, having access, 
 accidentally, to the place where it was. The conse- 
 quence was, that he became drunk, and in all re- 
 spects like a maniac for several hours ; disturbing, 
 with his bellowings, the whole prison. It was well 
 that the surgeon was in the prison, or he might have 
 lost his life. His case is an illustration of the bane- 
 ful habit of drinking. 
 
 The last letter this convict wrote to his parents 
 was one deploring the sin, to which he had been 
 addicted, promising better things. In his copy-book 
 I found the same sentiments, with the account of 
 several awful deaths and accidents, through drunk- 
 enness, of which he has been witness, as a railway 
 labourer ; yet the first temptation to the same sin, 
 which met him even in so repulsive a form, overcame 
 his resolutions. After this, he did no good, and was 
 constantly being punished, intending, evidently, to 
 weary the authorities, that he might be sent out of 
 this prison ; until, on one occasion, receiving from 
 the Governor, on my intercession, an unexpected 
 mitigation of punishment, and being subdued by the 
 unexpected kindness to tears, he changed his course, 
 and conducted himself well the remainder of his year. 
 
 8. This man received the sentence of four weeks 
 in the refractory ward, for a desperate attempt to 
 escape. The period, however, was divided by the 
 interval of a month, and he suffered only the first 
 half. 
 
 When I went down to see him, he said, " I was
 
 REFRACTORY WARD. 253 
 
 more afraid of your coming than any one." I as- 
 sured him not to think I came to reproach him, or 
 to add to his punishment. He had committed him- 
 self, and must take the consequence. I visited him 
 to do him good, and give him counsel, if he desired 
 it. He told me what induced him to make the 
 attempt, and, in fact, opened his mind freely. 
 
 His history was a sad one. Erom a child, he loved 
 the stable ; and was -indulged became a first-rate 
 rider, and almost mad after horses ; rode at steeple- 
 chases, betted heavily, drank to excess, ruined him- 
 self, and brought unmerited disgrace upon a most 
 respectable family. 
 
 His conduct during the first fortnight having been 
 most proper, and his strength sensibly diminished, I 
 mentioned his case to the Duke of Richmond, who 
 presided at the next board, and the other half was 
 happily remitted. I acquainted the man with the 
 result, and told him that I was sponsor for his future 
 good conduct. He said I should never be disap- 
 pointed. And neither was I; only I could wish 
 that he had, poor man, received the grace of God in 
 his heart, which I fear was not the case. One re- 
 mark which he made to me, I often think of, as an 
 illustration of an important truth, respecting first 
 steps in evil : "I would have given the world to 
 have that first brick back in its place." 
 
 9. The case just mentioned brings to mind that 
 of another still wilder son of nature, visited some 
 twenty or thirty days, at different times, in the re- 
 fractory ward, a youth of only twenty-one years of
 
 254 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 age, and of the peasant class. When a boy this pri- 
 soner took to poaching, and the passion for pursuit 
 of all sorts of game grew with his growth, and he 
 became notorious in that species of crime. Thieves 
 have been called the Arabs of the city." This 
 young poacher was an " Arab of the country." He 
 assured me, and other poachers the same, that he 
 had been more than once employed by game-keepers 
 on ill-stocked property, to bring them game from 
 another, and well paid for it ; and that he brought 
 in a cart away, one night, as many as twenty quick 
 (live) hares from a distant preserve for this purpose. 
 (Did the keeper pay " ten shillings a piece" for these 
 hares out of his own pocket ? If not, who was the 
 chief culprit ?) 
 
 10. This man was one of a party of thoroughly 
 bad men, sent back to separate confinement from the 
 public works, in consequence of mutinous conduct. 
 I have seen him more than once storming and rag- 
 ing in his cell, threatening, with awful oaths, to 
 murder some one in this place. I have stopped with 
 him until he became calm, and then, in gentle voice, 
 expostulated with him, apparently with some effect. 
 But he would break out again, after a while, as bad 
 as ever, and get punished. " He was somebody's 
 son ;" and hereby hangs a tale, which, told to me 
 in the dark cell, when I was trying to move his 
 heart, brought tears, I confess, to my own eyes. 
 He had been transported once before, when a youth, 
 and having served his term in Bermuda, returned to 
 Dover, his native place, dressed and looking like a
 
 REFRACTORY WARD. 255 
 
 weather-beaten sailor. He first went to a public 
 house which his father used to frequent, and there, 
 as he expected, he found him, and fell into conver- 
 sation about foreign parts, the old man inquiring 
 about Bermuda, and the condition of convicts there, 
 where he had an unfortunate son, &c. The prisoner 
 then left the public house, and went and bought 
 some articles in a little shop which his mother kept, 
 without being recognised by her. Instead, however, 
 of walking out, he went into the parlour, and sat 
 down by the fire ; but even then she did not know 
 him, but tartly accosted him : " Really, my man, 
 you are making yourself very comfortable !" "Whilst 
 this talking was going on, his sister, listening from 
 up-stairs, recognised the voice, and ran down, crying 
 out, " It surely is our own Bill !" And so it was. 
 The lost one was found. But, alas ! not for long : 
 that very night he went out to see some ol^. friends. 
 Nothing would stop him. His mother said, " Then 
 the next I shall see of you will be in gaol." His 
 friends that night were preparing for a robbery. 
 He joined in had to fly was apprehended 
 brought back to Dover convicted and transported 
 for life ; and a broken-hearted father, mother, and 
 loving sister bid him farewell in Dover Gaol, never 
 to see him more. 
 
 It may here be added, that I saw the two last- 
 mentioned men on board the convict-ship Eliza, 
 with about forty others of like character, destined for 
 Norfolk Island, as incorrigible men. Not a few of 
 those men were, as may have been already gathered,
 
 256 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 very desperate and murderously inclined. There 
 was more than usual precaution, therefore, in berth- 
 ing them on hoard ship, and securing them against 
 the power of combination and mutiny. They were 
 divided into three compartments, strongly fortified, 
 and a sentry was posted continually outside. It be- 
 ing desirable to allow them daily some exercise and 
 air on deck, it was decided to be necessary that they 
 should be placed in irons. Before the irons were 
 put on, I wished to converse with, and bid farewell 
 to, the men, and visited for the purpose one division ; 
 and having spoken some solemn words of parting 
 admonition to them, I proposed prayer, and they 
 all knelt as well as they could, in the confined 
 place around me. In the other divisions I did the 
 like, with the same result. Surely God has given to 
 his servants power over even the wicked for good. 
 I confess that I was afraid when going down to the 
 ship and when first shut in with the men, not of per- 
 sonal violence, but of contemptuous rejection of my 
 message : I came away abashed, by the result, at the 
 weakness of my faith. 
 
 The Visiting Room. 
 
 Every convict is allowed to see his friends once in 
 six months, for twenty minutes, unless deprived of 
 the privilege by misconduct. The ordinary place for 
 the interview has been described. When about to 
 be removed to a foreign station only, the visit is per- 
 mitted to take place in the same room, as a parting
 
 THE VISITING ROOM. 25? 
 
 one. At the visiting hour there may be, at times, 
 seen assembled at the prison gates, waiting for ad- 
 mission in turn, a crowd of the friends and relatives 
 of prisoners. Under the -old regulations, this used 
 to be very great when an embarkation was suddenly 
 ordered. In that crowd may be easily observed 
 doubtful female relatives, designated (without any 
 power of disproof on our part) sisters, cousins, wives ; 
 friends, too, who have been used to such visits else- 
 where ; but mixed up with these, alas ! many of re- 
 spectable character. 
 
 There stands a family group, such as has often 
 brought tears to my own eyes, the hoary-headed 
 father leaning on his staff; the disconsolate mother, 
 and the weeping sisters and brothers of a convict. 
 They are of the peasant class ; and have come a long 
 and (to them) expensive journey. They have denied 
 themselves many necessaries to accomplish this 
 journey ; and one of the girls, in service, has from 
 her savings largely contributed. No one in the 
 family had such good prospects, at one time, as the 
 convict. All are overwhelmed with the sight : for 
 minutes, nothing is heard but sobbing and crying. 
 
 Next stands the worse than widowed wife, with 
 her group of children so young, that they are sad 
 only because mother is sad ; or, are even playful, 
 presenting the strangest contrast to the place and 
 company around. But near to them are children 
 who remember well their father ; who saw him 
 taken roughly out of the house by the police ; who 
 heard his sentence pronounced by the judge, and
 
 258 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 knew its terrible meaning by their mother's scream. 
 They are admitted ; they can, however, only see and 
 talk with the prisoner; there can be no fond em- 
 braceno kiss. "What a pity one thinks, that they 
 have come I 
 
 The wife and mother of a convict, having taken 
 farewell of the prisoner, request to see the chaplain. 
 In the county gaol from which he came, the wife 
 being admitted to an interview of this kind, supplied 
 the prisoner with means to attempt his escape. It 
 was discovered ; she suffered imprisonment for the 
 offence herself. He was placed in irons for several 
 months, night and day, in a cold winter, and dreary 
 prison. A finer-looking couple could not be seen 
 than this unhappy pair. The mother had long wept 
 over the folly and sin of them both, to no purpose ; 
 they were given to pleasure. Under the impression 
 that here her son was brought to Christ, she comes 
 to offer to me a very costly Bible, as a token of grati- 
 tude. I am compelled to refuse the kindness. I 
 hold it to be extremely culpable in any superior 
 officer of a prison to receive presents from prisoners' 
 friends, of any value, under any plea whatever. The 
 doing so, on the part of the subordinate, would lead, 
 and very properly, in my judgment, to his instant 
 dismissal. Prisoners' friends, and others, should 
 know this. Coming to inquire concerning him, 
 subsequent to his location in the colonies, they 
 brought a diamond ring, with the same purpose, 
 and pressed my acceptance ; but I was compelled 
 to pain their feelings by refusal.
 
 THE VISITING ROOM. 259 
 
 By way of digression ; in the ancient Republic of 
 Home the finger-ring of gold was a sign of the ordo 
 equestris, a rank corresponding with that of mem- 
 bers of our House of Commons, officers in Her Ma- 
 jesty's service, and the like. It is not certain what 
 civil rank the priests had, or whether it would have 
 been conceived presumptuous or unseemly in them 
 to wear such appendages ; but it is very clear, that 
 a young Roman, holding no office in the state, nor 
 command in the army, nor affianced to nobility, who 
 would strut along the Via Sacra (the Regent- street 
 of Rome in those days), displaying his hand orna- 
 mented in this way, would have been considered a 
 presumptuous upstart or effeminate simpleton. In 
 our age of enlightenment and Christianity, however, 
 it is not uncommon to see shopmen, clerks, and ap- 
 prentices so embellished ! In this prison, we have 
 seen, after a course of profligate folly, many a hand, 
 once ornamented in this style, scouring the prison 
 floor, mending turnkeys' clothes, darning their own 
 stockings, or rubbing in the wash-tub their fellow- 
 prisoners' shirts and flannels. Young men should 
 know that instead of raising themselves in respect- 
 ability by affecting the fashions of a class above their 
 own, they are taking one of the readiest ways to lose 
 that which really belongs to them, and which is 
 awarded by all sensible people to those who know 
 their proper position, and discharge its duties. 
 
 To return to my sketches. The next who ascends 
 the steps of the prison, to see the object of her affec- 
 tions, now degraded to the condition of a felon, is 
 
 s2
 
 260 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 the widowed lady of an officer who fought at Water- 
 loo. She lived in a garrison town ; and her only 
 son was, unhappily, introduced to a regiment, the 
 junior officers of which were addicted to gambling 
 and every fashionable vice. His course was short, 
 but it embraced the miseries of an ordinary long 
 life ; and was followed by the convict's doom. Ask 
 this young man what is now his greatest privation. 
 I asked him the question once ; he said, " The 
 absence of my toilet ! " True or false, how pitiable 
 such a moral prostration ! Perhaps it is true : he 
 is full of vanity and self-conceit even now ; and 
 morally and physically depraved by wine, women, 
 and dissipation of every kind. He has a ring on his 
 finger, woven from material with which he is obliged 
 to work in his cell ! 
 
 There is another request to see the chaplain. A 
 lady, from New York, has crossed the Atlantic, now 
 the second time, to see her sister's son, a convict, 
 with some expectation of getting him off. She has 
 strange stories about the youth, and the chaplain 
 has had much confidential correspondence about his 
 parentage. The tale is a romance, but shall never 
 be divulged. Her journey is in vain : " she is in- 
 formed, " the convict must pass through the ordi- 
 nary course." O Sin ! what misery thou hast created 
 in this one case. She takes the grandmother, by 
 whom the boy was nursed, to America with her ; 
 and if the young man lives to the expiration of his 
 sentence, she will have him too, she says, in her 
 house. AVould that it were a pious home ! but,
 
 THE VISITING ROOM. 261 
 
 with all this generosity, there is not the least indi- 
 cation of religion. 
 
 After all, this person did not exhibit so much self- 
 denial as others to my knowledge. She was wealthy, 
 had no dread of the sea, and found even pleasure in 
 visiting our metropolis. 
 
 I remember an instance of more single-minded 
 affection. We had here once, a prisoner from York- 
 shire, a married man, who, I have no doubt, with all 
 his faults, loved tenderly his wife. No man could 
 have done otherwise. She was the model of a wife, in 
 her station in dress, manner, and general appearance. 
 Three times "this faithful creature came from beyond 
 Hull to see her husband for a scanty twenty or thirty 
 minutes, having worked at factory labour almost 
 night and day in order to accomplish it. I told this 
 man, in his cell : " You will deserve a worse punish- 
 ment than your present one, if you don't make that 
 woman happy yet, when you shall have it in your 
 power." " Yes," said he, " I shall richly deserve it. 
 If I had been ruled by her advice, and kept at home, 
 instead of going to the cursed public-house, I should 
 not now be a convict in Pentonville." 
 
 Sometimes respectable persons masters, employ- 
 ers, Sunday-school teachers visit prisoners. Peers 
 of the realm have not disdained thus to show kind- 
 ness to the fallen. The Earl of Carlisle, when Lord 
 Morpeth, frequently visited one of our prisoners. 
 The first time he came, after some correspondence 
 with the chaplain, he happened not to be provided 
 witli an order to see the prisoner in his cell ; and
 
 262 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 when I mentioned the matter to the Governor, that 
 gentleman judged that he had no discretion in the 
 matter. I suggested that, if his lordship had no 
 objection, he might have an interview with the pri- 
 soner in the ordinary way, as one of the prisoner's 
 friends: he immediately assented, and in this humble 
 manner visited the convict that time. I do hope all 
 the kindness shown to the man (I have told but a 
 part) was not thrown away. 
 
 In this honourable connexion, I would mention 
 the pious zeal of a true Christian of the Wesleyan 
 body, who used to come to town to see a young man, 
 one of our convicts, formerly in his Sunday school. 
 He did more ; he followed the wayward, erring youth 
 with constant, believing prayer, until, as I have every 
 reason to think, the sinner was brought earnestly to 
 seek the Lord ; and, since his discharge, received 
 him as a father, having got a situation for him, &c. 
 
 It lias been intimated that doubtful characters 
 come to see prisoners. They are sometimes worse 
 than ambiguous. I recollect a convict, a man truly 
 reformed, as I believe, being greatly distressed by 
 the visit of an old accomplice a man of very re- 
 spectable appearance in dress. The prisoner felt it 
 kind in his friend, at some personal risk, to come, 
 and therefore did not request to be withdrawn ; but 
 he felt greatly distressed during the interview, and 
 begged it might not be repeated. 
 
 I remember being sent for by a prisoner (already 
 mentioned No. 24), as I had wished him to do 
 when in any trouble or excitement. He had just
 
 THE VISITING ROOM. . 263 
 
 had a visit from his wife and daughter, who were, 
 he said, in deep distress. I gave him my sympathy 
 and counsel, and stopped with him some consider- 
 able time. His temptation, first, when he returned 
 to his cell, was to self-destruction, but the awfulness 
 of the crime appalled him. He then thought of 
 attempting his escape, and plans before successfully 
 tried crossed his mind. He hesitated, and happily 
 sent for me, told all that was in his heart, and found 
 relief. 
 
 About two years back I saw on board a convict- 
 ship a prisoner, who having been sent, some years 
 ago, from this prison to Australia, with a ticket-of- 
 leave, and rising there to the conditional-pardon 
 class, came back before the expiration of his sen- 
 tence, and was detected, tried, convicted, and re- 
 transported. That young man's poor mother often 
 visited him here, and corresponded with me about 
 him. It is painful to think, that she was sister of 
 no less a person than the successful defender of 
 Acre against Bonaparte, Sir Sidney Smith ; and 
 that this reckless young man, by his misdeeds, had 
 forfeited all the advantages of such a connexion in 
 following the profession of his uncle. 
 
 About three years back, a poor woman, in deep 
 distress, requested to see me. Her tale w r as a long 
 one, but such as no heart could shut out. Her hus- 
 band, an invalided soldier of the Life-guards, had 
 been transported from South Wales for horse- 
 stealing. She declared that he had never an idea of 
 stealing the horse, but in a drunken frolic took it
 
 264 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 from the roadside, and rode it a good many miles to 
 the place where she and their baby were lodged, in- 
 tending to return on the same to his " job of work" 
 at a railway. He was pursued and taken. The 
 convict told me the same tale, and he certainly 
 doted on this young woman. Both were Irish. 
 The prisoner was never of strong mind ; and perpe-, 
 tual fretting about his w r ife and child at last un- 
 hinged it altogether, so that when she reached her 
 destination, travelling, child in arms, on foot, her 
 husband was a maniac. To my lot it fell to break 
 the sad news to the poor wife, and to find shelter 
 and employment for her, that she might be saved 
 from beggary, or a much worse fate, in London ; for 
 she had a good personal appearance. 
 
 We have had lately, also, a very sad interview. 
 The aged father, sister, and wife of a young man from 
 Exeter, well known in that city. Dissipated, extra- 
 vagant, and covetous, he committed the grave crime 
 of firing his premises, to defraud an Insurance Com- 
 pany, and received the terrible sentence of transport- 
 ation for life. His relatives came to bid him a 
 long and last farewell, as he was about to be sent 
 to the public works in Gibraltar. The scene quite 
 overcame me. I had for a while to leave. 
 
 Yet the recollection of that parting does not 
 oppress my mind with such sadness as another to 
 which I now refer. In that case there was hope that 
 the profligate, in his degradation and misery, had 
 sought and found peace with God. In this there 
 was no such relief. The condemned one, a gentle-
 
 LETTERS TO THE CHAPLAIN. 265 
 
 man by birth and station, is brought into my room 
 by the officer, and, to spare feeling, the chaplain 
 volunteers to act as the officer at the interview. 
 The father hastened towards his son, and literally 
 " fell on his neck and kissed him." 
 
 "Here," thought I, "is a picture from life of 
 the father in the parable ; but where are the tears 
 of contrition, the acknowledgment of sin, the cry 
 for mercy, from the prodigal?" Unmoved, shed- 
 ding no tear, expressing no remorse, the young man 
 stands erect, and, anxious only about his liberty, 
 inquires what interest is being used to get him off. 
 He became worse, after that interview, more proud, 
 more troublesome. A father's forgiveness, without 
 the son's contrition, had seemingly a bad effect. 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 1. From a Sunday School Teacher to the Chaplain. 
 
 " REV. SIR. A short time since I visited a prisoner in Penton- 
 ville Prison, and had a very interesting interview with him. I 
 have known him for several years, and being a teacher in the 
 Sabbath-school with which he was connected, and also a member 
 of the same church as his parents are, I have felt individually 
 interested in him long before his committal to prison. My 
 object in writing to you is to make you more intimately ac- 
 quainted with the state of his mind, as, having known his pre- 
 vious habits, and being on more familiar terms with him from 
 long acquaintanceship, he has made known to me, most probably, 
 more fully than he would to you, the state of his soul. 
 
 " The parents of this^youth are deeply anxious about his spi- 
 ritual welfare, and feel very thankful for the kind interest you 
 manifest toward the prisoners. Their son has spoken, in his 
 letters to them, most affectionately and thankfully of the interest
 
 266 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 you manifest for his spiritual welfare. Would you, dear and 
 rev. sir, direct your especial attention to him in your next visit, 
 if convenient, and question him very closely to ascertain the 
 real state of his mind, as he may need especial counsel and 
 encouragement, if seeking earnestly for pardon and reconcilia- 
 tion with God ? " 
 
 2. From a Gentleman concerning his Brother. 
 " MY DEAR STB, I thank you very truly for your kind and 
 Christian letter to me about my brother. I have, of course, been 
 very unhappy on his account, and I'm afraid any interference on 
 my part would only unsettle him, and bring him no relief. I 
 think the longer he is kept from drink, the greater is the proba- 
 bility that he will turn well hereafter. I hope he is not incapable 
 or undesirous of receiving religious impressions, in which case 
 his term of imprisonment may turn out to be the best thing 
 that ever happened to him. He will have time to think, to get 
 the better of his passion for drink. Nothing could cure him but 
 forcible detention from it. His was the severest sentence I 
 recollect ever to have read. Poor fellow ! he has been sinned 
 against as well as sinning. By the time he will leave the 
 country, I hope something will be done for him to make his con- 
 dition more tolerable. I am very anxious to know the state of 
 his mind ; and if I may venture to make the request, I shall be 
 thankful if you will tell him to write fully to me, and let me 
 know his wishes and plans." 
 
 3. From a Clergyman, about two Youths. 
 
 " KEVEREND SIR, When I mention that I have a poor parish- 
 ioner who, in addition to a painful and incurable disease, is 
 suffering great mental anxiety in consequence of two of his 
 sons being under sentence of transportation, but now confined 
 in Pentonville Prison, and very desirous of ascertaining what 
 progress they are making towards repentance and amendment 
 of life, I trust you will pardon my intruding upon your time, 
 and kindly inform me if there is any hope of their ultimate 
 reformation." 
 
 4. From a Gentleman in Devonport. 
 
 " The prisoner's father is an old inhabitant of the town, and 
 for a great number of years was a faithful servant in the employ-
 
 LETTERS TO THE CHAPLAIN. 267 
 
 luent of one master. At the time of the prisoner's apprehension 
 he had also a mother and a sister. The latter had for some 
 time been afflicted with a disease of the heart ; and the excitement 
 consequent upon the prisoner's apprehension caused her death almost 
 immediately. The mother also died very shortly after, her death being 
 accelerated, as it was supposed, by the prisoner's disgrace. The 
 whole family universally bore a good character. 
 
 " The prisoner became known to me for the first time upon 
 being introduced to me by his father, to serve whom I was 
 instrumental in getting the prisoner appointed at the Post-office. 
 1 have understood, since his commitment, that the prisoner was 
 just about to be married ; and I fear was tempted to commit the 
 crime in the eager desire to acquire money to settle himself." 
 
 Subsequently I had the painful duty of announc- 
 ing to this prisoner the death of his father. 
 
 The following may serve to show how the bless- 
 ings of the Gospel may be extended, by its reception 
 in the heart of even an outcast member of a family : 
 
 5. " I hope," writes the clergyman of the parish, " you have had 
 satisfactory evidence of the reality of the conversion of this 
 prisoner; if so, I. shall rejoice. Of one thing I am certain : his 
 letters to his parents have, under the blessing of God, produced 
 a very favourable change in his family, which was a terror to the 
 village. Several of the younger branches of the family attend 
 my day and Sunday-schools, and behave with great propriety, 
 both at school and at church. His parents are frequently to be 
 seen in the house of prayer." 
 
 6. From the Surgeon of a Convict Ship. 
 
 "You will find in the paper a brief allusion to H. E. from 
 Pentonville, and W. M. from Wakefield, who, while in the grasp 
 apparently the deadly grasp of cholera, were able to rejoice 
 in Christ Jesus as their refuge and their strength, in whom they 
 were persuaded they had believed, to whom they had both dedi- 
 cated themselves while in prison, to whom death appeared to 
 have lost all his terrors, and who were, in the midst of agonies 
 endured during the terrific progress of the disease, filled with 
 the joys of salvation, arid cheered by the blessed hope of seeing
 
 268 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 Jesus as he is, and of soon being like him. Their spirit and 
 carriage, ever since they were brought out of the furnace, 
 has been in accordance with the blessed hope that maketh not 
 ashamed." 
 
 7. From a Prisoner in Associated Labour. 
 
 " KEVEBEND SIB, I had been thinking during the week of par- 
 taking of the Lord's Supper ; but Satan knew my thoughts, and 
 suggested to me what scorn and ridicule I should have to con- 
 tend with from my unconverted fellow-prisoners. Some would 
 say I was an hypocrite, especially those who had known me 
 formerly. I then felt and said that I should be ashamed, forget- 
 ting our blessed Saviour's words, ' For whosoever shall be 
 ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man 
 be ashamed when he shall come in his own glory and in his 
 Father's, and of the holy angels.' I then gave up all thoughts 
 of it ; but I could not rest. I thought, I cannot love my Saviour, 
 or T should not hesitate for a moment. I then spoke to one of 
 my fellow-prisoners who had received the Lord's Supper, and to 
 another one who could not receive the Lord's Supper, because 
 he had not been christened ; and we talked of the danger of 
 neglecting so great salvation. I entered into conversation with 
 one of them on the Saturday in question ; and I do believe that 
 God did make that poor man the instrument, in His hands, of 
 bringing it home to my soul, and telling me that I must either 
 give up all my sins and all my wicked companions, or lose my 
 Saviour. I fully resolved from that moment to devote myself to 
 God's service. When I came to myself, I prayed to God, and 
 for the first time I believed my prayer was heard. God grant 
 that I may be enabled for the future to live a godly life." 
 
 8. From a Prisoner on the Public Works in Portland. 
 
 " I am pleased to say, that my stay here has done much 
 towarus recruiting my health, and fitting me to undergo the 
 long voyage now before me. Though all my hopes and expecta- 
 tions for obtaining a pardon, and returning to my native land, 
 have proved vain, it has pleased God to give me strength to bear 
 my disappointment. It is needless for me to speak here in
 
 LETTERS FROM CONVICTS IN AUSTRALIA. 269 
 
 terms of praise of our most excellent chaplain, Mr. Moran, and 
 to tell you how much he has done towards mitigating my trials, 
 and keeping alive in me the good resolutions taken when 
 surrounded by less temptations than we are here. I have, too, 
 met with two or three fellow-prisoners, with whom I have been 
 able to make hard work not only pleasant to myself, but to most 
 of the gang. Altogether, I am happy to say that the general 
 character and demeanour of the prisoners is different from what 
 I feared it to be. It is but seldom one hears a curse or vulgar 
 word ; very often religion is made the subject of conversation, in 
 spite of the ridicule of the few. I cannot speak in too high 
 terms of commendation of that liberal and humanizing system 
 by which the poor prisoner, when secluded from the world, is 
 enabled to pass his hours of solitude by reading. You would be 
 pleased, sir, to hear men here, of whom you might least expect 
 it, saying how happy they were by reading this or that particular 
 book when in solitary confinement. It is here where the benefit 
 of that system becomes most evident." 
 
 9. Letters from Convicts in Australia. 
 
 " REVEREND SIR, I beg to be excused for taking the liberty of 
 addressing myself to you ; but I feel it my bounden duty to 
 return you my sincere and humble thanks for all the instruction 
 and many good advices I have received from you, which I hope 
 have not been altogether in vain. Since my arrival in this 
 colony I have had an opportunity of observing the general 
 conduct of many of the first P. P. exiles, and I am happy to say 
 that many seem to have profited by their late afflictions, and to 
 live an upright and honest life. But, on the other hand, I am 
 sorry to say, that some appear to be almost past recovery, and to 
 have forgotten all the good resolutions and the many solemn 
 promises made whilst in their solitary cell. The same is to be 
 observed in the case of my own shipmates. Some keep the 
 narrow path which they entered first, perhaps under your 
 instruction and guidance, and others have thrown off all regard 
 for religion, and fear neither God nor man. Be not discouraged 
 in your good work, but persevere, putting your trust in the 
 Lord ; for your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord." 
 
 10. " DEAR MOTHER AND RELATIONS, I write these few lines, 
 hoping they will find you all well, as they leave me. I have now
 
 270 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 been in this colony six months, and I have seen a little of the Bush. 
 My next-door neighbour is three miles off, where we are obliged 
 to go two or three times a day often, upon any little errand ; 
 but three miles are thought no more here than 300 yards in 
 England. I very seldom see any fresh faces. In Britain, the 
 merry church-bells are to be heard on Sundays in all directions, 
 but here there are no churches, only in the towns, and they are 
 few and far between. I am at present upwards of sixty miles 
 from a church, and thirty miles from the nearest place of worship, 
 which is a Mission Station. The natural result of the absence of 
 places of worship is, that there is very little difference between 
 Sunday and another day. It is a common saying, that Sunday 
 don't cross the Breakwater (which is a bridge near Corio] ; but 
 public-houses are to be met with in all directions, and they are the 
 ruin of hundreds in this colony, wine and spirits being very 
 cheap. The man and woman living at the next station to mine 
 are almost as father and mother to me ; she is from Ambwlch, 
 in Wales. Our stillness is often interrupted by the appearance 
 of the native blacks, and a strange sight it is to us some with 
 blankets, some naked men and women together with their 
 spears and other weapons in their hand and some with a little 
 child on their back, one with a dog, another a cat, surrounding 
 the hut, begging for a bit of bread, flour, or anything ; and if 
 anything be in the way, they '11 take it. They are very active, 
 and can throw their spears upwards of 300 yards as straight as a 
 line. My kind respects to all my friends and relations, hoping 
 to see them yet all well. I intend, if spared, to write once in 
 four months, and I beg you to do the same. I remain your 
 loving and affectionate Son." 
 
 11. "DEAR , John and I have travelled many thousand 
 
 miles since we last saw you at Woolwich, but we are still togr. 
 and under the same master. Our mode of life is very different 
 here to what we have ever been used to. The heat is excessive, 
 as it is summer with us now. Our bedding is a few sheep's 
 skins and wool bags to lay on, with a blanket to cover us, but we 
 sleep as soundly as if we were reclining on the softest pillow. 
 The blacks around us are very ignorant and degraded ; they do 
 not appear to have any idea of a God. I heard one of the 
 'lubras,' that is, women, sing 'Hallelujah, praise the Lord.'
 
 LETTERS FROM CONVICTS IN AUSTRALIA. 271 
 
 She had no idea of the meaning of it ; she had heard ' white 
 fellow corrobara like it that,' or sing it in that manner. She 
 asked iis if it was ' merry gig,' very good. 
 
 " We are under a pretty good master. We often talk of home, 
 and of those who are dear to us; and we long for that time, 
 which we hope will soon arrive, when we shall be able to return 
 to our native land, and to our dear friends. 
 
 " I am sorry to say this is a land of great depravity, so that a 
 young man has great need to keep a strict watch over himself, 
 and continually to seek for grace to help in time of need. 
 I hope and trust we shall be kept from going astray again. We 
 have one great disadvantage, that is, we have to go out with the 
 sheep on Sunday as well as on other days ; but we can take our 
 Bibles with, us, that is a blessing." 
 
 12. REVEREND SIR, Had I remained in England I could not 
 have ventured to address you lest I should be suspected of having 
 other motives than the one I have in view, which is to convey to 
 you the sincere thanks of a grateful heart for the interest you 
 took, and in your prayers, I have no doubt, will continue to take, 
 in our eternal welfare and happiness ; and I feel confident it will 
 not be among the least of consolations on your dying bed, that 
 the Almighty graciously vouchsafed to incline your heart to 
 sacrifice your social comforts, and, in some degree, your happi- 
 ness, to mix among the poor prisoners, and to bring home the 
 glad tidings of peace and deliverance to the unhappy, to sympa- 
 thize with the wicked and unhappy, and to point us to a gracious 
 Saviour, and assure us God is a very present help in trouble 
 to proclaim liberty to the captive, and to open the prison-doors 
 of our minds, and point us to the redeeming blood of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 "I feel confident your pious efforts have not been in vain; 
 but that many a heart has been melted and moved under your 
 discourses that had neither the power nor the opportunity to 
 express their feelings. Continue, dear sir, to go forward in 
 your work. Trust the Almighty, who can and will, in his own 
 good time, bring forth a hundredfold. It may probably occur to 
 your mind to ask how the writer came to take the liberty to 
 address you. I will tell you, sir. I am aware that the very 
 best men are apt to become discouraged at the seeming hope-
 
 272 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 lessness of the cause in which they may have embarked their 
 most anxious hopes. It is this consideration, coupled with the 
 sincere desire that my fellow-prisoners should not lose the 
 benefit of any future exertions you may employ in your work of 
 mercy in their behalf, either in your prayers, or in books of 
 instruction, that has induced me to do so. I feel confident you 
 will pardon the manner for the sake of the matter. It may not 
 be. uninteresting to you to hear a few words that more imme- 
 diately concern the unhappy person that addresses you, as we 
 shall, most probably, never see each other any more in this 
 world. 
 
 " I had the very great privilege to be born of very pious 
 parents, whose anxious endeavour it was to train me up in the 
 paths of piety and virtue ; but, notwithstanding all their prayers 
 and all their care, I lived the greatest part of my life in open 
 rebellion against my God, and though scarcely a day passed 
 without my receiving some special mercy at the hands of my in- 
 dulgent Maker, still all this was without effect, and at last I was 
 given up to my wicked heart, and finally to the commission of 
 crime, which has brought punishment and infamy on myself, 
 and misery and disgrace on all my friends. Yet, even in this 
 dire place, at the thought of which, in happier days, my heart 
 would recoil with horror, I have been enabled to view the bitter 
 anguish and folly of my mis-spent life. In conclusion, allow 
 me, dear sir, to express a hope that the Almighty may be 
 graciously pleased to prolong your life, and bless you with 
 health and increase of success in the cause of humanity ; and 
 late, very late in life, may He receive you to Himself, finally to 
 mix with that happy number unto whom it should be said, on 
 the last day of account, ' Come, ye blessed children of my 
 Father, receive the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the 
 world.' 
 
 " Dear sir, I have written several letters to my friends, and 
 have received no answer from them as yet ; if you would forward 
 a line to them, stating that I am alive, I would feel greatly 
 obliged." 
 
 13. Letter from this Convict's Parents, 
 
 " DEAR HONOURED SIR, We take it very kind and condescend- 
 ing of you to write to such poor, insignificant people as we are,
 
 LETTERS TO PRISONERS. 273 
 
 but it was a great comfort to us to hear that our poor misguided 
 son had received spiritual and temporal comforts from you, and 
 that he had profited from them, and likewise that he did grate- 
 fully acknowledge it. We also beg of thee to accept our un- 
 feigned thanks for the same, and am happy to inform you that 
 we have received two letters from him, and we have answered 
 them both. One was posted on the 4th of April, and the other 
 on the 28th of May, 1847, following ; who knows but he may 
 have got one by this ? His uncle assures us that he has freely 
 forgiven him, and believes that what he did was done at the 
 moment without thought or consideration, and assures him that 
 the proceedings went on without his knowledge or consent, as he 
 was not at home. We only pray that every privation, disappoint- 
 ment, and painful feeling, may be sanctified for good to the soul." 
 
 14. Letter to a Prisoner from a Brother. 
 
 " I can assure you, my dear brother, that I have felt very 
 much pleased and happy in my mind, from the remark you made 
 in one part of your letter, respecting what I said to you when I 
 saw you, about going abroad ; and in case that you are sent away, 
 I certainly will sell my business and go with you, for I can assure 
 you, the day that you were unfortunately convicted, I made up my 
 mind that I would go with you whenever you went, and I have never 
 altered my thoughts since. 
 
 " I have thought of you continually, and have prayed for you 
 many a night and morning to the Lord, to give you health and 
 strength to bear up under your affliction, so that you might once 
 more have a brother that ever will assist you, and give you good 
 advice, as I trust you will now feel that I always endeavoured to 
 do so when we were in London together. And I deeply lament, 
 my dear erred brother, that the society you fell into, and the 
 persons you came in close contact with, when unhappily I was 
 not by to direct you, were of such a contaminating nature, that 
 your youth and inexperience fell a prey to their wiles and 
 devices, for your corruption, in which, alas ! they so far suc- 
 ceeded by Divine permission, perhaps to teach not only you, but 
 all of us, how frail a foundation we stand upon, when our walk 
 is not close to Him. 
 
 " I hope, my dear brother, this will find you still in good 
 health, and of as much happiness as your present lot of priva- 
 tions will admit. 
 
 T
 
 274 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 " One thing 1 feel assured will be a great comfort to you, and 
 that is, the undiminished affection not only of myself, but of 
 that of all the rest of your family. Be assured you are ever in 
 our thoughts, and our prayers ever directed to the throne of grace 
 in your behalf: and we do most fully trust that the Lord, having 
 been so far gracious unto you as to let you see the error of your 
 ways, will still go on to perfect his good work in you, and will, 
 in his own good time, once more restore you to the bosom of 
 your family." 
 
 15. From a Captain in the Army to a Convict Soldier. 
 
 " MY DEAR , I was very much gratified by the receipt of 
 
 your letter. If we have had any differences of opinion as to the 
 light on which all the events of your conduct should be viewed, 
 this letter has set them all at rest in my mind. I rejoice indeed 
 to think that it has pleased the Holy Spirit to give you a right 
 understanding and a penitent heart. 
 
 " I still hope you will be able to succeed in remaining at 
 home ; what delight it woiild give to your aged parents, to return 
 to them regenerated, and anxious to support them ! 
 
 " Should it please God to let me arrive in England, you may 
 rest assured that I will not allow many days to pass before I 
 present myself at Pentonville, to see you again. I say, should 
 it please God, for at present I am under deep sorrow and afflic- 
 tion for the loss of my only brother, who was cut down in the 
 prime of life in a far country, without a human being near him 
 to whom he could speak and with his heart full of joy, on his 
 way home from a service of six years in India. 
 
 " He was a brother, too, whom in all things I preferred before 
 myself, even giving to him, or rather forcing on him, the landed 
 inheritance of my father, as being more worthy to occupy it than 
 myself. I tried to build up for him a house here below, but 
 God, in his mercy, I trust, promoted him to an inheritance 
 in the heavens. No wonder, then, that at this moment I am 
 ever thinking of the uncertainty of human life. I have heard 
 a sermon indeed, which, I trust, has made an impression that I 
 must habitually bear about me, the remembrance that it may 
 be my turn next. 
 
 " He was young and strong ; you are young and strong ; but 
 it may be your turn next. The messages in your letter have
 
 LETTERS TO PRISONERS. 275 
 
 all been delivered. And I could not refrain from placing the 
 
 letter itself in the hands of some of the men. Sergeant M , 
 
 now the senior sergeant here, told me that it was the general 
 wish of the men to have their remembrance sent to you. 
 
 " The men have been behaving well, and we have had but 
 few court-martials for a long time past. Oh ! may the Lord 
 keep and preserve you from backsliding ! And now, truly 
 hoping that I may see you again, and also doing myself the 
 pleasure of hearing from the lips of your chaplain an account of 
 your exemplary conduct in prison, ." 
 
 16. Letter to a Convict from his Brother, a Clergyman. 
 
 " I would not contrast our situations for any other purpose 
 than to show you the truth of the promises of God, and to beg 
 you to think of them. We were once in the same condition 
 precisely ; at another time you were far better off, and I was 
 deep in misery and sin ; but it pleased God to give me a sense 
 of my danger, and the religious principle, which was not quite 
 extinct within me, and which I (and I hope I may say we] derive 
 from our beloved mother, was awakened and revived within me. 
 From that time to the present, God's hand has been upon me 
 for good, and why has it not been upon you ? Because you 
 have profaned his name and his word ; and his face is against 
 them that do evil. If ever there was a proof of the truth of 
 God's Word, it is in our respective conditions at this moment. 
 
 " Keligion is real it is no fiction no mere idea, but a fact 
 a thing to be marked, noted, and experienced like other facts, 
 and this you may one day be brought to feel. You may find, 
 too, how true it is that God desires not the death of a sinner, 
 and may you also feel that he has abundantly pardoned you. 
 Keep your mind calm ; pray to Him : there was a time when 
 you did so. Many a sinner, in former days, stricken with the 
 sense of his wickedness, has confined himself in the deepest 
 solitude, perhaps in a desert, perhaps in some such a cell as 
 you now inhabit, and has there, in penitence and prayer, hum- 
 bled himself before his God, and been forgiven. Suppose your- 
 self to be such a man make use of the opportunity which 
 mercy has forced upon you, and you will come abroad again into 
 the world with new feelings and a new heart, for you will be a 
 new creature, and then we will worship God together. . . . 
 
 T 2
 
 276 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 " May it please God to bless and keep you, and enable you so 
 to employ your now solitary hours, that when you again mix in 
 the traffic and activity of life, you may be so thoroughly fortified 
 by his grace, that you may recover lost time. Look back upon 
 the past with sorrow, but to the future with hope, and live to the 
 glory of God and your own salvation." 
 
 17. To a Convict from his Daughter. 
 
 " Many a secret prayer has risen to God while here on your 
 behalf. Dear father, think not you are forgotten ; words cannot 
 express what my heart feels. Dear father, I would willingly re- 
 linquish my many comforts to be companion in your solitude, 
 sharer of your sorrow, and bearer of your burden, but at present 
 such is not the will of our heavenly Father. 
 
 " Dear father, you said right, that you had left a happy home, 
 ours was worthy the name of home ; and truly you have a 
 loving family. How could it be otherwise ? The training we got 
 was to love one another with a pure heart, and God supremely." 
 
 [The prisoner to whom this is addressed is in course, I trust, 
 of proving his innocence. My own impression is, that he is not 
 guilty.] 
 
 18. To a Convict from his Sister, a Servant. 
 
 " DEAE BROTHER, It is with sorrowful heart that I take up my 
 pen to write a few lines in answer to your letter. It grieves me 
 very much to think of your unhappy state, and often do I shed 
 tears when I think of you, and, moreover, that you are still un- 
 converted. The soul is of more value than the body ; therefore, 
 dear brother, let me beg of you not to neglect your soul. What 
 are the sufferings of the present world when compared with the 
 torments of hell? Although your sufferings may be severe, yet 
 it is a consolation to know they will not last for ever ; but the 
 soul must live for ever in endless happiness or endless woe. Let 
 me entreat of you to live every day as 'twere your last. Oh ! how 
 would a sinner plead for mercy, if he knew that he had but one 
 day longer to live ! Therefore, live in continual preparation for 
 death, as we know not what a day may bring forth. If we have 
 found peace with God, and are found ready when it shall please 
 him to call us, oh ! how welcome will the message be when it 
 comes to set our captive soul at liberty from these prisons of
 
 LETTERS TO PRISONERS. 277 
 
 clay ! and angels will convey us to our Father's house, where our 
 souls shall ever be at rest; where we shall see our Saviour as he 
 is, and praise him as we ought. 
 
 " Perhaps you are ready to say that your sins are too great to 
 l>e forgiven. No, my brother ! for the blood of Jesus cleanseth 
 from all sin. ' Come now, and let us reason together, saith the 
 Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as 
 snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' 
 (Isaiah i. 18). And again, ' Come unto me, all ye that labour and 
 are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' (Matt. xi. 28). And 
 again, ' Whosoever cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast them 
 out." 
 
 " Dear brother, come, then, and embrace the promise, while it 
 is offered to you. Come to-day ; to-morrow may be too late 
 now is the accepted time, this is the day of salvation. Believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. All things 
 are possible to him that believeth. Take it then. I believe 
 that Jesus diod for me. Yes, brother, he died for you, that you 
 might live. Put your trust in him ; call upon him ; he will hear 
 and answer your prayer, and out of every temptation he will 
 make a way for your escape. Don't listen to the enemy of your 
 soul, nor to the advice of bad men ; but do your duty to God 
 and man, and I doubt not but all things will work together for 
 your good. I shall still remember you at the throne of grace ; 
 and if we do not meet on earth, I hope and pray we shall meet 
 in heaven, to part no more. I now commit you to the care of 
 my heavenly Father ; may he keep you, and guide you through 
 life, and at last receive you into his heavenly kingdom. 
 
 Letters from Convicts in this Prison. 
 
 19. " MY DEAR SISTER, My dear Margaret, I wish you would 
 return to your Sunday-school ; have you done any good since 
 you left it ? I don't think you have. 
 
 " You may for a short time have false enjoyment in idle plea- 
 sure on the Sabbath, but it will not last. I ought to be a warn- 
 ing to you in that particular. I was, and all of us were doing 
 well until we clisregai'ded the Sabbath. What has been the con- 
 sequence ? I have become a felon and an outcast ; I have brought 
 you to shame and misery. Do you gain anything by stopping 
 away ? No ; but you spend that, if valued, would keep good and
 
 278 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 warm clothing on you. I have been reckoning what we have 
 spent in folly these five years the sum would astonish you ; I 
 hope you will return to the Sunday-school again. 
 
 " I hope Daniel is a good boy, and sincerely hope he does not 
 go to the theatre as he used to do. I consider that was my ruin 
 here in London. There he will get acquainted with bad com- 
 pany, and will get on by degrees until he gets where I am. I 
 hope he will take warning by my folly, and think of me when I 
 am in a distant land, perhaps never to see any of you any more 
 in this world." 
 
 20. " MY DEAR FRIEND, If the worst happens, and I am sent 
 abroad, I must submit; but had I a choice, I would prefer in- 
 stant death. 
 
 " I request Mr. G. will deliver to you immediately on receipt 
 of this, my diamond ring, diamond pin, watch, gold chain, &c" 
 
 21. "My PEAR FATHER, I have just come from ehapel, and 
 have heard promising and joyful hopes for poor sinners like my- 
 self, from the text, 1 Peter v. 6, 7. 
 
 " Oh that I should ever have caused tears to flow down your 
 cheek, and brought you to see me in prison, a guilty criminal !" 
 
 22. " DEAR FRIENDS, Do not, I entreat you, distress yourself 
 on my account. Although my confinement and solitude since my 
 committal (now twenty months) have been a severe punishment, 
 deprived as I have been of intercourse with every person except 
 the authorities and officers set over me (for here one prisoner 
 cannot even see another to distinguish his features, much less to 
 speak), I can without hesitation declare, that I would not ex- 
 change this state of trial for that in which some of my years have 
 been passed in affluence and voluptuousness. 
 
 " I feel now the importance of being a Christian indeed, I can 
 now say, it is good for me that I have been afflicted. Having no 
 hope of seeing you again in this world, and not thinking I shall 
 be able to write, I must take leave of you, commending you from 
 this time forward to God, and the word of his grace. May the Lord 
 bless and keep you ! May he give you that peace and joy which 
 the world cannot take away ! " 
 
 OS. "DEAR FRIEND, You cannot but have learned (to my 
 eternal disgrace be it said) that I also forged upon my father,
 
 LETTERS FROM PRISONERS. 279 
 
 and defrauded him likewise of some other moneys. Such being 
 the case, how can such a wretch as I am approach him who has 
 been so kind and indulgent a father, and ask a single farthing ? 
 Although I have obtained his and my employer's forgiveness, 
 yet my heart sickens at the recollection." 
 
 24. " DEAR PARENTS, I rejoice to send you these few heart-full 
 lines, hoping you are all in good health, as it leaves me at pre- 
 sent, thank God for it. Your letter I received with thankfulness, 
 but I could not read it without sighing deeply, to think that such 
 a kind father as you have been to me should have been so ill- 
 used by me. Dear father, when I read your letter, all my bad 
 conduct at once rushes on my mind ; my heart is then and re- 
 peatedly filled with your affections to me, and my poor mother's 
 words, ' Oh ! my lad, thou will break my heart ! ' I cannot 
 think about you once without crying deeply ; nothing in the 
 world can stop my tears at that moment. Your parting words, 
 dear mother, let me tell you, have brought me on my knees, to 
 feel my need of a Saviour, and I trust my sins are pardoned." 
 
 25. "DEAR COMRADE, I have given you a picture of my situa- 
 tion, and I have pointed out the advantages attending it. But, 
 alas ! is it not an unenviable situation, contrasted with the one 
 I held two years ago ? Instead of being a comfort, and of some 
 assistance to my parents in their declining years, and a credit to 
 my profession, what am I ? the degraded inmate of a prison ! Is 
 it not heart-rending, that the damning influence of drink should 
 rob one of health, and render him an object of contempt in this 
 world, to say nothing of the punishment which awaits him in 
 that to come ? I entreat you to give this your serious consider- 
 ation ; shun the temptations that surround you ; avoid dram- 
 drinking, for it ends in drunkenness, and drunkenness, where 
 does it end? or to what end will it lead its wretched victim? 
 Pause, then, ere it is too late. Intemperance has ruined its thou- 
 sands and tens of thousands, and is the curse of the British army. 
 How many painful sights would its officers be spared were this 
 pernicious habit banished from its ranks ! " 
 
 26. " MY DEAR NEPHEW, The good gentlemen of this prison 
 have allowed me to write to you concerning my papers from 
 H.M.S. I hope you will get on better than me, by God's help. 
 Consider the affliction that I am in. I have been kept in solitude
 
 280 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 for eighteen months so long that it lias made me miserable, and 
 I am good for nothing. Give my kind love to my good old pa- 
 rents ; I hope that the Lord will keep them from all trouble. 
 Tell them not to think about my condition, as I know that such 
 thoughts would soon bring them down to the grave. Don't let 
 my dear ivife and children know the miserable condition that has be- 
 fallen me ; as I know that I shall never see them again in this 
 icorld, the trouble is more than I can bear. My mind is so full 
 that I cannot say much : I hope the Lord will give you grace, 
 and keep you out of such sorrow. 
 
 " My dear nephew, as you are the only relative that I have 
 which follows the sea, I hope you will use all my sea clothes. 
 
 I hope that Captain II settled all my accounts with ,you ; 
 
 and I hope that you will, by God's help, look after home the 
 same as if I were there. I have suffered deeply for my folly and 
 extravagance ; but I have been led to hope that this imprison- 
 ment, though so degrading, will eventually prove the best thing 
 which ever happened to me, as it has already led me to reflect, 
 and has given me to see where I went wrong in my first starting 
 on life's journey. It is heartbreaking, however, to look back at 
 the time when I set out, with fairer prospects than almost any 
 one of my acquaintances, and then to look at rny present degra- 
 dation, and to be tormented by the thought that I have slighted 
 the advice of those who wished me well. I have, however, my- 
 self to blame. I pray to God for grace to act up to my present 
 resolutions." 
 
 27. " DEAR BROTHER, I have information that I am about to 
 leave for Bermuda. I thank you for your very kind letter. I 
 hope, by the grace of God, that this awful visitation may prove 
 a blessing. I am willing to give Christ all ; to submit to his 
 teachings, in the full assurance that He who died for me will so 
 rule my heart as to bring all its affections under his sway ; nor 
 will he ever leave me if I serve him in sincerity and truth. Oh : 
 my dear brother, I little thought that matters would have brought 
 this condition down upon me. I am sorry to hear of the de- 
 parture out of this life of your dear wife. I believe that she had 
 her lamp trimmed. Your trials are great in this respect. Mine 
 are on account of past transgressions; but I hope to hear of 
 your commencing to seek the Lord while he mav be found. I
 
 LETTERS FROM PRISONERS. 281 
 
 hope that our dear Mrs. is still living. Tell her not to 
 
 sorrow for me ; but rather to rejoice in hope that these my 
 afflictions may work together for my salvation. I am afraid that 
 it would be too much for my poor mother to come to see me. 
 If not, I should look upon it as one of the greatest blessings 
 that could be conferred upon me in this life. The Lord will 
 strengthen her. St. John, I read, rode when he was a hundred 
 years old after one whom he counted dear to him as a son, that 
 had fallen into sin, and became a robber ; and he recovered the 
 lost one, for the Lord was with him. I should like to have a 
 last welcome from my poor mother, as a token of her forgiveness. 
 When I next write, I will tell you what the Lord has done for 
 one so great a sinner." ^ 
 
 28. " DEAR FATHER, Oh ! how often do I wish that I had never 
 been bom, to have brought such disgrace upon such a kind 
 father ! but I hope you freely forgive me. Oh ! that I could com- 
 fort you in your old age, instead of being a burden ! I know, 
 my dear father, that you have shed many tears, and uttered 
 many sighs, on my account. How many hours do I keep 
 awake, and fancy that I hear your voice speaking, and telling 
 me to keep from bad company, or it would be the ruin of me. 
 If I had done this, it would have been different with me at the 
 present, but it is too late now. I hope it is not too late to be 
 forgiven for all my wickedness. I pray to God morning, noon, 
 and night, to give me a new heart, instead of this wicked one 
 that I have got." 
 
 29. " AFTER spending eighteen months' wages in two weeks, I 
 shipped again on board the barque Sarah, of Boston, bound to 
 Boston, with a cargo of whalebone. We left the Sandwich 
 Islands, and pursued our course towards Cape Horn, calling at 
 Juan Fernandez to take in water. We laid off and on two days, 
 and having shot a hatf-dozen goats, caught a few score of 
 lobsters, and loaded the boat three times with peaches, we left 
 the solitary shore of Selkirk, upon which there was then living 
 two Spaniards and their families. Before we got round the 
 Horn, we experienced one of the heaviest gales that I had ever 
 been in, our decks were clean swept of all they contained, our 
 two boats taken off them, and the bulwarks stove from head to 
 stern, scudding before it under bare poles. I had just been
 
 282 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 relieved from the helm at twelve o'clock one night, and having 
 got about abreast of the mainmast, we shipped a sea in which 
 I was swimming for two or three minutes, without knowing 
 whether the vessel or the unfathomable deep was beneath me. 
 Oh ! had I been then consigned to the deep, I should have 
 awoke in the middle of hell ; the thought has only very lately 
 occurred to my mind. When we weathered the Horn, we pur- 
 sued our way to Rio Janeiro, where all was refitted, and after 
 five weeks' stay amongst the swarthy Portuguese, we steered to 
 the north, and after embracing another heavy gale off Cape 
 Attrass, we soon run into Boston Bay ; but the wind blew so 
 hard that we were driven out again, and remained out a fort- 
 night before we got back. We then took the pilot on board, 
 and he soon brought us into the harbour, where a tug-boat took 
 us in tow, and brought us alongside of the wharf. So having 
 by the providence of God escaped the perils of the sea, I safely 
 landed on shore, where I intended to make my home, but 
 what has been the home of sin too often to me, and to many 
 more who follow the same occupation. My heart often sickens 
 when I sit for hours contemplating the state of the poor sailor. 
 Immediately he arrives at the place he expected rest, he falls a 
 prey to the first that greet him. Well may they be called land- 
 sharks. Far different from friends that would lead the poor 
 storm-beaten sailor to a place of virtue, quiet and order. But 
 far different is their object; it is for the sake of gain, to intro- 
 duce ail-to the haunts of immorality and vice, where the hardly- 
 earned wages that is needed by an aged parent or a sickly sister 
 are quickly dissipated in riot and excess, to our own injury in 
 body and soul, and the extension of that demoralizing vice 
 which renders our streets, and those of every large town, abroad 
 as well as at home especially seaports offensive to all and 
 contagious to many that pass through them. I know not how 
 to account that I have been so blind as not to see my folly 
 before. I cannot understand why I failed to perceive that I 
 was rushing into destruction. But it has pleased Him whom I 
 have denied and despised to make me an object of his mercy. 
 He has opened my eyes to see my guilt of past years. He has 
 led me to seek his face, and to cry for pardon through the 
 blessed Saviour."
 
 LETTERS FROM PRISONERS. 283 
 
 30. " REVEREND SIR, I was one of a number of soldiers that 
 saved the principal magazine and repository from being blowed 
 up. I should say that I was one of the instruments in the 
 Almighty's hands, in saving them. 
 
 " The small but beautiful island named St. Helen's lies in the 
 river St. Lawrence, about a musket-shot from the city of Mon- 
 treal. It is a mile and a half in circumference, and half a mile 
 wide. Respecting its fortifications, it has a formidable appear- 
 ance on the north side, and is the repository for that part of 
 Canada East, for their munition and implements of war. I was, 
 unfortunately, the same night a prisoner in one of the cells of 
 the provost, for a breach of military discipline. I had lain down 
 and fallen asleep, when I was awakened by a loud cry of * Fire ! ' 
 from the sentry. I heard the bell ringing, but did not think the 
 fire would be of as much consequence as it was. I lay quietly 
 in bed, as I thought it would be soon extinguished. To my 
 astonishment, it appeared to increase. I perceived sudden 
 blazes and sparks corning up into my cell through the pipes ; 
 and the cell was filling with smoke. I immediately leaped out 
 of bed and dressed myself, thinking that the cell door would be 
 opened to let me out, as the fire was making rapid progress. 
 I and some more fellow-soldiers were locked in, and no possi- 
 bility of getting out. What was to be done ? The smoke was 
 suffocating me. I wanted air, and I tried to open the window, 
 but I could not, it was icebound. I took off my shoe, and 
 broke several panes of glass ; but, greatly to my distress, instead 
 of air came thick volumes of smoke. I now begau to draw my 
 breath with greater difficulty, and I found I was getting weak 
 through the want of air. The perspiration was running down 
 my face. I gave myself up as lost, as the staircase on one side 
 was on fire, that led to the corridor I was in, so I had no hopes 
 of being saved in that direction. The prisoners now began to 
 cry for assistance ; but their cries seemed to no purpose, as 
 none dare venture up that were down in the yard. I gave my 
 last prayer (as I then thought it was) to that Almighty Being who 
 is able to save. Shortly afterwards a key was put in the door, 
 and it opened in a moment. It was the Captain of the Military 
 Prison that endangered his life to save ours.* I exerted my re- 
 
 * Captain Knight, now Governor of Portsmouth Convict 
 Prison.
 
 284 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 maining strength in getting as quickly as possible out of the 
 cell I thought I was going to suffer such an awful death in, and 
 I succeeded in reaching the open air. But what a night it was ! 
 The recollection of it I 11 never forget. The snow was falling 
 heavily, and there was upwards of three feet of it on the ground 
 already. Such a cold night seldom is felt in England ; the 
 thermometer was below the freezing point, and we had to stand 
 up to our waist in the snow, handing the fire-buckets from one to 
 the other. A new cause of alarm began now to appear. The 
 fire was rapidly advancing towards the Magazine, and there was 
 hardly a possibility of stopping its progress, except that the 
 wind, which blew pretty hai'd, changed. As misfortunes never 
 come alone, the fire-engine was rendered useless, by being ice- 
 bound and out of repair. What was to be done we did scarcely 
 know. To allow the fire to advance was instant death ; and to 
 make our escape off the island was nearly an impossibility, as 
 the island was ice-bound at that time of the year (December), 
 and large fields of ice were continually coming down the river, 
 so that if a boat put out at that time of night it would be 
 smashed in pieces. Notwithstanding all this, there would be a 
 better chance of our lives by floating down the river on a field of 
 ice, than by stopping on the island to be blown up. We worked 
 in a state almost of desperation, until break of day. When we 
 had made a large gap, so as we thought the fire could not get 
 past it, by that means we stopped the advance of the fire on 
 the Magazine. It was said that there were upwards of 50,000 
 barrels of powder in the Magazine; there might be more, and 
 there might be less, I only take it from hearsay. If that had 
 taken fire, what would have been the consequence? It would 
 have sent one hundred and twenty souls into eternity instantly, 
 and in all probability have rooted the island up altogether, and 
 never be seen more. There was one fine young soldier lost his 
 life in his too eager endeavours to help to quench the fire ; he 
 fell from the top of the building, and in coming to the ground 
 he came in contact with a ladder, which caused his death ; for 
 I think, if he fell on the snow that was thick on the ground, he 
 would very probably not have been severely hurt. But it was 
 otherwise ordered ; he died in a few hours afterwards. Through 
 the effects of that night standing from half-past ten P.M., till 
 seven o'clock in the morning, in the snow and heavy bitter frost,
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 2S5 
 
 we could not walk, from our feet and legs being swelled, nor 
 sleep, from the pain we suffered from them. Some poor fellows 
 had to be sent home to England, invalided and unfit for further 
 service, through the effects of that night." 
 
 It may now be well to let the prisoner, in his 
 own words, state specifically the causes which led to 
 his downfall. 
 
 The following are written answers to the question , 
 "What was the first cause of all your troubles ?" 
 proposed by me to men under orders for a foreign 
 station, with the assurance that they should not be 
 read until after their departure. They are selected 
 from a larger number only for their greater brevity 
 and clearness. Prom the circumstance of being 
 written, and by men after a long course of disci- 
 pline, they are entitled to more than ordinary 
 attention. 
 
 The Causes of their own Crime stated by one Hundred Convicts. 
 
 1. " The cause of all my troubles was, my mother died when 
 I was about eight years of age, and my father married his second 
 wife, and she was always railing at me ; and I was at last turned 
 out of doors, and went to the ale-house from that to poaching, 
 and from that to prison." 
 
 2. " The first cause of my troubles was bad company and the 
 love of money, and because I would not hearken unto my 
 parents' good advice, but followed the inclinations of my own 
 wicked heart." 
 
 8. " The first cause of my troubles was drinking, and seeking 
 for the pleasures of this world. I have been a lover of the plea- 
 sures of this world more than of God ; have indulged my body, 
 but neglected and starved my soul." 
 
 4. " False witnesses and a bad character : disobedience to 
 parents ; and forsaking the house of God." 
 
 5. " Bad company, drink, and idleness."
 
 286 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON*. 
 
 6. " By being thrown out of employment, I became acquainted 
 with a most dissolute set of people, which proved my ruin." 
 
 7. " Disobedience to parents, and from that to Sabbath- 
 breaking and gambling." 
 
 8. " The first cause of my troubles was drink, which got me 
 out of work. I then got into bad company, and then here." 
 
 9. " Staying out late at night, and bad company ; not taking 
 good advice, and disobedient to parents : gaming, and such-like 
 practices." 
 
 10. " Disobedience towards both my heavenly and earthly 
 father." 
 
 11. "When my mother died, my brother put me into the 
 workhouse, and there I fell into bad company." 
 
 12. " A passionate desire for gambling, intemperance, and a 
 desire for gay society." 
 
 13. " Bad company, card-playing, the ale-house, drunkenness, 
 and night-work, brought on a house-breaking job." 
 
 14. "Profligate companionship, depraved excitements, con- 
 tempt of the Sabbath, disobedience, extravagance, obduracy of 
 heart, despising all warning and caution from pious friends and 
 ministers ; beginning with small sums, intending to replace 
 them, these are the principal causes ; but there are others 
 which I cannot mention." 
 
 15. "Through keeping late hours at night, and getting into 
 bad company, which caused me to neglect my work." 
 
 16. " A bad wife was the first cause of all my trouble ; for I 
 would not have married when I did, if I had not been imposed 
 upon ; and the same person who commenced my trouble made 
 bad worse afterwards." 
 
 17. " Jealousy began, and made things worse." 
 
 18. "Had a dispute with my master, and left him ; got into 
 bad company on the railroad." 
 
 18. "Keeping bad company, regardless of the remonsti-ances 
 of my father, who at last turned me out of doors ; so, having no 
 home, I fell to dishonest means. The pleasures of sin were 
 sweet ; and one crime brought on another, until God, in his 
 providence, put a stop to my career." 
 
 20. " Disobedience to my parents, and profaning the Lord's- 
 day : then commencing with little things, such as a few plums 
 from a garden, &c." 
 
 21. "I was a fool, and said in my heart, There is no God."
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 287 
 
 22. "When I was eleven years of age, I went to serve a 
 farmer, who gave me beer to drink every day, so that I soon got 
 very fond of it." 
 
 23. " Leaving my master's house at night without his know- 
 ledge, for the purpose of gratifying my sinful propensities, which 
 at last caused me to be dismissed from my place without a 
 character. I then" fell to drinking and gambling, until I was 
 almost starved, having neither food nor clothing. So drink has 
 brought me here, and here I hope to leave it." 
 
 24. "The first cause of my trouble I can trace back to a dis- 
 regard of the Sabbath-day, by following the counsel of bad 
 youths, who enticed me every Sunday to come with them to the 
 very spot where this prison is now built, instead of attending my 
 chapel, as my poor mother thought I did." 
 
 25. "I may very justly attribute it to my disobedience to my 
 parents (parent, for my father died when I was an infant). My 
 mother was too kind to me, and so well I am repaying her. I 
 have brought down her gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." 
 
 26. " I trace the source of all my misery, first, to disobeying a 
 pious parent ; and next, to the profanation of the Lord's-day ; 
 and from thence to the perpetration of worse crimes (if such 
 there be), which soon hurried me on to the consummation of 
 my fate." 
 
 27. " Twelve months before my father's death I stopped at my 
 aunt's, where a sailor was boarding, and in the house opposite 
 there was a boy who kept pigeons. He told me that I should 
 have half of them if I would get as much money as would buy 
 some to put with his ; and this sailor having received his pay, 
 I took 1 out of his pockets, and bought a basketful of them." 
 
 28. "Frequenting wicked places of amusement, and not 
 taking kind friends' advice." 
 
 29. " Not paying due respect to the Sabbath-day. The first of 
 my breaking the Sabbath was my running away from Sunday- 
 school. I believe that I got into sins at the first of my staying 
 away from school ; but you know that it is very easy to go from 
 one stage of sin to another ; and so it was with me. I got into 
 bad company on the Sabbath-days. The devil always presents 
 some enticements for those who become his servants ; and so it 
 was with me. I was enticed to garden-robbery ; and, overcoming 
 the remonstrances of conscience, I soon yielded to other allure- 
 ments of a deceitful world."
 
 288 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 30. " Breaking the Sabbath-day, and keeping company with 
 thieves, and telling my father and mother I did not care for 
 them, and not being corrected by them for it." 
 
 31. " Leaving home to go and travel about the country, from 
 town to town, and from fair to fair, seeing all kinds of wicked- 
 ness ; following the occupation of a hawker of hardware, some- 
 times with a waggon, but often on foot." 
 
 32. " It was disobeying my parents, taking to poaching, 
 getting into bad company, going to fairs, and all that was bad. 
 Instead of going to a place of worship on the Sabbath-day, I 
 went to the ale-house, and there made jests of those who 
 did go." 
 
 33. " At the age of seventeen I was taken away from a good 
 and pious mother, and likewise a good master, and sent to a 
 rich and ungodly family, where the fear of God was not before 
 their eyes. This was the cause and the beginning of all my 
 troubles." 
 
 34. " Disobedience to parents, sir, I am ashamed to confess. 
 This led to Sabbath-breaking, and bad company. The conse- 
 quences, sir theft, hatred, lying, and every other vice fol- 
 lowed ; and now I am undergoing a punishment I richly 
 deserve." 
 
 35. " Living with the Jews ; for I can assure you, that I lived 
 eighteen months between two churches, and only could get 
 leave three times to go to one of them ; and then, I am sorry to 
 say, after church I had to wait upon a card and dancing party on 
 the Sabbath-day ; and now God is visiting me for so great a 
 crime." 
 
 36. " The first chief cause was truant from the Sunday-school, 
 after I went to work. Neither I nor my elder brother thought 
 it right to be sent to school after we had been to work all the 
 week ; so, we agreed not to tell of each other. We succeeded so 
 well for a time, that we thought it was all right, and began to be 
 more barefaced, by staying about home ; but mother seeing us, 
 and being satisfied that we were found out, we altogether aban- 
 doned school " 
 
 37. " I became acquainted with some young fellows who had 
 less regard for Sunday than I had been accustomed to. By de- 
 grees, I went once, instead of twice, to chapel ; then I got fond 
 of theatres, going, perhaps, once or twice a week ; then came 
 public-houses, a distaste for religion, novel-reading, Sunday
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 289 
 
 newspapers, and an ardent desire to see what is termed 'London 
 life,' that is, scenes of profligacy and vice." 
 
 08. " Disobedience to parents, and then masters ; Sabbath- 
 breaking, and the love of vain company, theatres, concerts, 
 balls, dances, night-walking, card-playing, and pleasure of all 
 kind." 
 
 39. "Being so fond of going to the play and the singing- 
 rooms, and the bad company I got acquainted with there. One 
 female so persuaded me to adopt her life, that, in order to 
 gratify her wishes, and have an opportunity of seeing the plays, 
 I was led to steal." 
 
 40. " Breaking of the Sabbath-day, and being so fond of 
 pleasuring about on the water, in a boat, on that day, led me 
 into all kinds of company that I ought to have avoided, and not 
 minding what my father said to me." 
 
 41. "Low company, a harsh schoolmaster, attending minor 
 theatres, reading novels, romances, &c." 
 
 42. "Forsaking my wife, who is a pious, good woman ; and I 
 hope the blessed Lord will forgive me for it." 
 
 43. " My being of a covetous disposition, and given to spiritous 
 liquors ; and seeing a deal of money in the shop the day previous 
 to my going at niglit to break into it." 
 
 44. " A stubborn and unbending temper, that would never 
 listen to good advice." 
 
 45. "Bad company, particularly females'." 
 
 1<. " The love of pleasure, covetousness, and an ignorant 
 mind." 
 
 47. " Associating with bad company, and frequenting theatres." 
 
 48. "Because I did not attend to the instructions given to me 
 at the Sunday-school, and seeking worldly pleasure after church 
 service." 
 
 49. " Associating with bad company, and then taking to 
 poaching." 
 
 50. " The cause of all my trouble has been through drinking 
 and gambling, and being out all night eard-playing, which caused 
 me to spend a great deal of money, much more than I could 
 earn by my own honest industry. So that, to supply my wants, 
 I became dishonest, which got me into trouble, and was the 
 means of my being sent for one month to the Warwick House of 
 Correction. In this prison I was used well ; knew some of the 
 
 U
 
 290 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 prisoners ; but, instead of being made better by the punishment, 
 my mind became more abandoned." 
 
 51. "While still very young, I began to ramble about the 
 streets ; and my parents being at work, they could not avoid it, 
 although they put me to school. But I used to play truant. I 
 got such a habit of playing in the streets, and thereby getting 
 among others that were alike inclined with myself, that, young 
 as I was, I found pleasure in deeds of mischief. land my com- 
 panions were in the habit of encouraging each other, and others, 
 in vice. I went on fi-om bad to worse, until my parents could 
 not stop me." 
 
 52. " By keeping bad company and gambling, staying away 
 from church on the Lord's-day, and playing at cricket. I used 
 to win a good deal sometimes ; and, being a good hand, I was 
 much sought after by my companions and others. But we are 
 told not to go in the way of evil men ; to avoid it, and pass 
 by it." 
 
 53. " Covetousness, and associating with bad shopmates." 
 
 54. " I attribute the whole of my present misfortunes to the 
 persecutions and machinations of my late master, who was jealous 
 at my prosperity in trade. But may God forgive him for his in- 
 justice and wickedness." 
 
 55. " Sir, I can blame all my troubles in having given heed to 
 my shipmates, when requested by them to go to the public- 
 houses, and there drink all my money." 
 
 56. " In the first instance, disobedience to my parents, and 
 the manner in which I was treated by my father. This made 
 me abscond from under his control, and I went to my uncle, 
 where I remained until I was apprenticed. During the three 
 years and a half that I remained with my master, I occasionally 
 obtained permission to ride for my uncle at several races. Con- 
 sequently I became a lover of gay company." 
 
 57. " It was disobedience to my friends, and running away 
 from them, getting into bad company, and then from bad to worse, 
 till at length I was transported." 
 
 58. " Being left destitute at an early age, without father or 
 mother." 
 
 59. " I think the first cause of all my troubles was through the 
 neglect of my parents in not teaching me the things that were 
 good and profitable ; and another cause, the love of money, which
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 291 
 
 led me to pilfer from my parents. I always had a propensity for 
 amusement, occasioned by having money given me for going of 
 errands, and seeing it lay about unnoticed. I do not know that I 
 am right in attributing my troubles, or rather my gross sins, to 
 my poor parents. Would to God they had some one to point 
 out to them their folly and danger ! I should have written some 
 portions of Scripture to them if I had known their address." 
 
 60. " Casting off the fear of God, putting him and his com- 
 mandments out of my thoughts, stifling the convictions of con- 
 science, self-dependence, forsaking home, throwing myself in the 
 way of committing sin, by being employed in an unjust system 
 of transacting business, for the sake of lucre. These formed the 
 source of my present fall." 
 
 61. " This was no theft of my own that I am here for; but for 
 allowing a person to leave some property at my house, which (it 
 appeared afterwards) he had stolen from his employers. I refused 
 to inform those who searched my house how I came in possess- 
 ion of the property, and was consequently not only brought in 
 as an interested party, but was also punished as the same. But 
 if innocent of this sin, I was guilty of thousands quite as bad. 
 Therefore I most justly deserved the severest chastisement that 
 God could put upon me." 
 
 6v!. " Leaving my home, and mixing with bad company. But 
 I think what chiefly helped to make things worse was, that, when 
 I was overtaken in doing wrong, I was not corrected in a proper 
 and gentle manner, but with hard blows and bitter words, which 
 tended to harden my heart. I now refer to the time when Hived 
 with my parents, my crimes beginning while I was with them. 
 And I can only account for their conduct from the use of the 
 cursed intoxicating drinks. I believe my mother took to drink 
 through father's bad conduct. Oh ! what sin and misery abounds 
 in this country through the infernal poisonous drinks, which 
 are allowed to be sold to increase the revenue of Government ! 
 Why do they not do away with such an evil ?" 
 
 63. " Frequenting public-houses and liquor-shops, which lead 
 a man to almost every other crime. The conversation he hears 
 there corrupts his morals, banishes the love of virtue from his 
 heart, and prepares and opens the door to adultery and for- 
 nication." 
 
 64. " My negligence of the things that belong to my ever 
 
 u 2
 
 292 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 lasting peace, going a-pleasuring on the Lord's-day, neglecting 
 the Bible and a place of worship." 
 
 65. "My idol, alas! was money; because it enabled me to 
 support a spirit of independence, in which I prided myself ; and 
 in supportiug this pride, as well as gambling, I spent all I got, 
 although at the time I was getting, including presents, upon an 
 average, from 4 to <5 per week ; indeed I have received nearly 
 30 for one race." 
 
 66. " Idleness, and keeping bad company with people that 
 were more depraved than myself." 
 
 67. " I trace my first inclination to immorality from the time 
 I left my Sunday-school, which I had been in the habit of attend- 
 ing from my earliest childhood, and for a considerable period 
 before my leaving was employed as a teacher ; and I may safely 
 affirm, it was the happiest period of my life. No sooner did I 
 leave my school, than I began to absent myself from church, and 
 ofttimes made the Sabbath a day of pleasure ; and this, I be- 
 lieve, was all through getting acquainted with ungodly com- 
 panions." 
 
 68. " In answer to this, I could not possibly give a more cor- 
 rect account or idea of the cause of my trouble, than by referring 
 you to the parable of the prodigal son, in the 15th chapter of St. 
 Luke ; for most truly it was through leaving my father's house, 
 in order to avoid the restriction it was needful for him to put upon 
 me, as well as the tender and pious and affectionate admonitions 
 and entreaties of a dear, tender mother." 
 
 69. " A total mistrust in the providence of God, when I could 
 not by honourable means obtain a long-desired object, the speedy 
 attainment of which would have completely sealed my happiness 
 for life; was despairingly induced to commit an unlawful act, 
 which, instead of realizing my once anxious hopes, has completely 
 proved my lasting disgrace, and I sometimes think my inevitable 
 ruin separated me from my friends, and transported me for ever 
 from the endearing object of my bosom." 
 
 70. " Was wont to accompany my father from childhood to 
 public-houses, plays, race- courses, and such places ; and I always 
 after looked for such company, in spite of all my poor mother 
 could do to prevent it. But the father shall not suffer for the 
 sins of the son, nor the son for the sins of the father; so my 
 father will not bear the punishment due for my sins, but I must
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 293 
 
 bear my own, as well as he his. I knew to do good, and did it 
 not ; therefore to me it is sin." 
 
 71. " Having too quiet pai'ents, who let me have my own ways 
 too much, in not chastising me while I was young ; but no, they 
 were too kind ever to hurt me in that way ; and by being let 
 have my own way so much, I took to go to a public-house, where 
 I got into bad company, which gave my parents so much trouble, 
 that I believe I was the cause of my kind mother's death years 
 before she would have died if I had been a good son ; and after 
 losing her, I was cared but very little about ; so I went on my 
 own way, till I finally brought on my transportation." 
 
 72. " I was fond of going to the theatre ; that was the cause 
 of my troubles." 
 
 7o. " Leaving my work ; and then I began going with bad 
 company what did nothing for a living, but what they got by 
 stealing." 
 
 74. " Dissipation and company were some of the causes." 
 
 75. "It was leaving Sunday-school. When I was about eight 
 years old, I went to work in the factory ; and so soon as I began 
 to earn wages, in my ignorance I thought it was not right to be 
 going to school and factory ; but the reason was, I had got on 
 with a bad companion, that did not go ; so that made me to 
 
 think I should not go, His name was G H ; I 
 
 kept company with him for a great while. I got many a 
 beating for not going to sehool. The man that I worked 
 for always gave me two-pence a week to myself, and my mother 
 gave me one, and that led me to begin a-gambling, and I con- 
 tinued gambling every week for a long time." 
 
 70. " I can safely say this, that I never lived at a situation 
 that did not try and get as much for an article as they possibly 
 could ; and they would practise deceit and deception where 
 they could ; and they would never lose the opportunity of taking 
 the advantage of another man's ignorance ; and they never went 
 to church, though they kept large shops and warehouses, most 
 of them ; so that by me having such bad masters, I did not 
 think I should be doing wrong by following those examples ; 
 and the first temptation that presented itself, I yielded to it, and 
 now am clearly suffering for it. A poor woman went into a 
 draper's shop, and asked the prices of some shawls. Being 
 shown one marked 7s. <W.. t-hc said she should like one the
 
 291 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 same pattern as the 7s. &d. one, but higher in price, as she 
 wanted it for the winter. The 7s. Qd. shawl was taken, and put 
 into a parcel of shawls, prices 14s. 6d. The first shawl that met 
 her eye in this fresh bundle was the 7s. Qd. shawl. Ah ! ' says 
 the poor woman, ' I will have this one, sir. What is the price 
 of it?' Shopman: '14s. 6d.' So she paid 14s. 6d. for the 
 shawl that she was once told she might have for 7s. fid. It was 
 no mistake of the shopman ; for he knew her heart was set on 
 that pattern, and so took her in, and was praised by the masters 
 for his cleverness, and got a reward. I might mention several 
 others, but this will show you, sir, the nature of my temptations, 
 and how young-men drapers ai'e led into sin." 
 
 77. " Being always with men who tried to entice the mind 
 with all sorts of amusements, and kept the mind from re- 
 flection." 
 
 78. " Through falling out of situation and quarrelling with 
 my friends, leaving my home, and falling into bad company, 
 turning a deaf ear to good advice that my friends tried to give 
 me ; but I had already tasted some of the pleasures of sin, not 
 thinking of the bitterness that I should taste through it after- 
 ward, even in this world. My feet had already slipped, and my 
 friends' advice to me was all in vain." 
 
 79. " Through taking up with horse-dealers. When I think 
 of the warnings I received from my mother ! She used to tell 
 me that our sins were like arrows piercing the Saviour's heart 
 afresh. I could not see it then, but now I see it plain enough." 
 
 80. " A desire to have money became my ruin, and when I 
 could not get it in a right way, which led me to try to get it in a 
 dishonest way." 
 
 81. "It was from being indulged, and then comes the play- 
 house and fair; then 'way goes I with some more of my play- 
 fellows, thinking it a very fine thing to go to the fair; then comes 
 playing about on the Sabbath. And I need not add any more." 
 
 82. " My father's second marriage, haughtiness and disrespect 
 to my step-mother, and consequently not being able to implore 
 Divine assistance for to help me through my difficulties." 
 
 83. " I absconded with a sum of money from my father, now 
 four years since, from which time I have never been happy. I 
 was always very fond of visiting theatres, which called for more 
 money than I could find by honest means, yet it was as much
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICTS' CRIME. 295 
 
 per week as some men earn. After being so wicked to so good 
 a father, and being forgiven by him, I was so bad as to commit 
 the same act again, since which I have never been home but for 
 a few hours, when he came and received me from the' City 
 Compter. I then thought I could do better for myself, and al- 
 ways endeavoured to shun my parents when I met them, nor 
 did I speak to them again until I saw them here. My dear sir, 
 pray for me, that God may forgive so wicked a son. I cannot 
 blame my home nor my parents. I had a wicked heart, and 
 I gloried in my wickedness. I was very fortunate as it was 
 called. By my crimes I got a deal of money, and so my heart 
 and mind were puffed up. Having found some companions as 
 bad as myself, I thought I was quite safe ; yet I think had I 
 been sent to prison where talking is not allowed, instead of the 
 City Compter, I should have been now a happy young man. I 
 came from that ' school of vice ' worse than when I entered it." 
 
 84. " Seen by parties in bad company led to my appre- 
 hension, of which I had not the least idea at the time that the 
 malt that I received was stolen property." 
 
 85. " The chief cause is keeping bad company ; and having 
 traced frequently back as far as possible, to see how I fell first 
 into it, I have almost always come to the same conclusion ; viz., 
 that when sent to church by my mother, instead of going I went 
 bathing, or seeking for birds'-nests ; and so I proceeded from 
 one degree of depravity to another, until I cared as little for the 
 Sabbath as any other day. And it is from this time I began to 
 keep company with the persons who have at last brought me to 
 my present bodily circumstances ; and if I remember right, it 
 was on a Sabbath, while squandering away my time in walking 
 in the country that I first met with her." 
 
 86. " The first cause of my troubles, for which I have no per- 
 son to blame but myself. I was left without a father when at the 
 age of five years old. I had a tender mother ; never lived one so 
 fond of a child as my mother was of me. I was allowed any- 
 thing she could get for me ; I was allowed pocket-money to do 
 as I liked with ; I went to school when I thought proper, and 
 stayed away when I liked. I often went to play-houses ; when 
 quite young I was put apprentice to a master who had a great 
 many men, and I often went to beer-houses with them on Satur- 
 day nights, and there I learnt to drink, play at cards, and go
 
 29G ILLUSTRATIONS FItOM A PRISON. 
 
 home any time to my master's house. I was let in, and nothing 
 said to me. I am sorry to say, it was keeping of late hours of 
 night, going to play-houses and other amusements, and drink, 
 and so on, till one sort of vice followed another, and when I 
 gave way to it, it came on stronger and stronger, and now I have 
 found it out. Those people that I have spent my money with, 
 now if I wanted a meal of bread they would not give me one ; 
 but I hope, please God, that I have learnt better ; if a man gives 
 his mind to drink, and to get drunk, that man is no good to 
 any master nor himself; that is the cause of my troubles, no- 
 thing else." 
 
 87. " By not obeying a kind and good father, nor taking the 
 advice of them that wished me well : but would and did at the 
 age of eighteen years marry into a family that were not even 
 acquainted with the things that belong to morality : after a 
 few months my eyes were opened ; then my troubles began." 
 
 88. " Being fixed in business too soon, getting married too 
 young, and against my parents' consent, I have had nothing else 
 but troubles since I have been able to do for myself, and through 
 110 misconduct that I am aware of. I have always been a steady, 
 sober, and industrious man, but nothing which I have under- 
 taken has prospered. I have had a very drunken father. (The 
 sins of the parent shall be on the children.) If my misfortunes 
 and sufferings will bring him to a knowledge of his sins I shall 
 be a happy man." 
 
 89. " We had now come to the greatest height of poverty ; we 
 thought ourselves well off if we got one meal in two or three 
 diiys ; we had sold and pledged everything we had ; we only had 
 a Bible and a few other books left, which we sold, and two days 
 after we set out for another journey, not knowing what to do or 
 where to go, as we were penniless and were almost starved to 
 death ; it rained very hard all that day, and in the evening we 
 committed the crime of sheep stealing." 
 
 90. " After I had worked hard all the week, and then took my 
 wages, as much as one pound or five-and-twenty shillings, I was 
 led by bad companions to spend half of it away from my wife 
 and family ; if it had not have been for bad company, I should 
 never have been brought here to be a poor prisoner." 
 
 91. "Leaving off going to Sunday-school as soon as I was 
 put to basinet,*, seeking pleasure on the Lord's-day in roaming
 
 CAUSES OF CONVICT'S CRIME. 297 
 
 about to gardens and going out in boats, and breaking the Sab- 
 bath in everything that was wrong. I do not mention it for any 
 reproach, but my parents were too kind to me, letting me have 
 my own way in everything, which led me to honour my father 
 and mother less. I truly think, that giving up going to Sunday- 
 school was the commencing of all my trouble. Not having a 
 love for home, though there could not be a kinder, I think the 
 greatest happiness I ever enjoyed was when, by sickness or other 
 cause, I was kept at home in the evening, and reading aloud to 
 my father and mother ; but I was easily led away by the first 
 temptation. What I think the greatest cause of all my trouble 
 was frequenting theatres with gay companions, and from that 
 which I humbly beg you will excuse me mentioning, for I am 
 quite ashamed to look back to it, but it has been the chief cause 
 of bringing me to my present condition, to houses of ill-fame. 
 Liquors, and dancing, and swearing, I always did detest, and I 
 humbly trust that them, and all my other vices, I always shall. 
 Mine has truly been a miserable beginning of life, for I am only 
 nineteen years of age ; may God grant that it may have a happy 
 ending. O Lord ! pardon what I have been, amend what I am, 
 and let thy goodness direct what I shall be." 
 
 U-.2. " Neglect of my duty in not obeying the instructions of 
 my parents, because I was not closely watched ; habits of gamb- 
 ling I cherished from a child, which first commenced in the 
 childish game of cherry-stones, then marbles, then buttons, then 
 halfpence, and then draughts and bagatelle, the latter of which 
 caused my downfall." 
 
 93. " Running away from my master, and Sabbath-breaking, 
 associating with bad company, and giving myself up to lewd- 
 ness." 
 
 94. " My tirst misfortune was to be placed among wicked, 
 drunken men, when serving my time in Edinburgh to the 
 plumber trade. I remember well the night I paid my entry, as 
 it was the custom then to do. When the glass of ardent spirits 
 was handed to me for to drink, I cared nothing about it, or in 
 other words, I had no love for it, so I only took a little of it, 
 when some one of the men said to me, 'You'll never make a 
 plumber if you cannot drink a glass of whisky.' But little did I 
 think that night, whisky was to be my downfall. Plumbers in 
 general arc very much exposed, because they are going about
 
 298 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 from one house to another repairing baths, washhand basins, 
 &c., and there is hardly one gentleman's house but gives them 
 ardent spirits to drink." 
 
 95. "You are aware when children are young they are pleased 
 when they can get some one to tell them stories ; and, sir, I 
 dare say you know that old sailors and soldiers are just the boys 
 for that; for they will tell children any stuff to please them : so 
 it was with me, sir : if I could get with some old sailors or 
 soldiers I was as happy as the day was long ; for there were 
 several in the village where I come from, and I did believe all 
 they told me ; and it so filled my young mind with the hopes of 
 seeing some of these strange things they told me, that I got 
 quite discontented with my own happy home, and I was deter- 
 mined to go either for a soldier or sailor ; so I ran away from 
 home several times ; at last I got away, and I was ashamed to 
 go back, so I got into company, and crime soon after followed." 
 
 96. " When I was eighteen years old I took to going to the 
 play-house and concert-rooms, and staying out of nights, neg- 
 lecting my work ; my money soon went ; I took to a bad girl, 
 and after a little time my master told my father how I behaved 
 to him ; my father used to talk to me, but all in vain I took no 
 heed of him whatever. After I left my master I still went with 
 that bad girl, and I almost broke my poor mother's heart with 
 my conduct." 
 
 97. " Leaving home and having a wish to get money and to 
 see life, as some persons call it, but it is the only way to shorten 
 life ; I then fell into bad company, keeping gay company, and 
 fond of merry-making and gratification." 
 
 98. " I disobeyed my Sunday-school teacher's advice, and 
 then I broke the Sabbath-day ; that was the first cause of all my 
 troubles." 
 
 99. " Breaking the Sabbath, which is a breach to the rest." 
 
 100. " There can be, I think, but one answer, however large 
 a number may be asked this question : The absence of the fear 
 and love of God." 
 
 A remarkable Address from a Prisoner under sentence of Trans- 
 portation, to his Fellow-Prisoners. 
 
 " MY FRIENDS AND BROTHERS IN ADVERSITY, Now that we are 
 reaping the first fruits of that bitter harvest that we have taken
 
 A REMARKABLE ADDRESS. 299 
 
 so much pains and wasted so much precious time in sowing, I 
 have no doubt that many of you, like myself, in the solitude of 
 your lonely cells, with no companion but your own thought, and 
 no eye but that of the Almighty upon you, occasionally call to 
 remembrance portions of that holy volume, the neglect of which 
 in our former career has brought us to our present condition. 
 I remember it is there written, ' Be ye sure your sins will find 
 you out ;' ' Though hand join in hand, yet shall not the evil doer 
 go unpunished ;' ' The way of transgressors is hard.' On these 
 points your experience must agree with mine. Are we not 
 realizing in our own case the literal truth of all this to the letter? 
 Our sins have found us out ; and God and man have combined 
 to punish us ; and truly, the way in which we must walk for a long 
 time to come is a hard, a rough, and a painful one, quite enough 
 so to make the heart that is not entirely dead to all human 
 emotion tremble at the prospect, even if the words above quoted 
 had no reference to the more awful but quite as certain punish- 
 ment that awaits us in a future state, unless God in his infinite 
 mercy so soften our hearts by his grace as to bring them with 
 feelings of contrition and true penitence to the cross of that 
 blessed Saviour, who died to save us from the eternal and terrible 
 consequence of our rebellion against a good and a gracious God. 
 The more I reflect upon this subject and upon my past life, my 
 resolutions of amendment, broken almost as soon as formed, and 
 my many feeble attempts to resist the stream of iniquity and sin 
 in which I found myself floating, the more deeply am I convinced 
 that nothing but the sovereign and almighty grace of our Father 
 who is in heaven can enable any of us to effectually withstand 
 the temptations and allurements to sin that meet us at every 
 step, and find in every one of our hearts an inclination and 
 strong bias towards compliance with their solicitations ; but as 
 this view of the subject on which I wish to address a few words 
 to my fellow- sufferers can be more consistently and ably de- 
 lineated by others, I will not further dwell upon it, but I will 
 simply ask each one of you, my poor fellow-sufferers, to join 
 with me in looking at the more obvious points of our position 
 as it is at present, as it has been in our past experience, 
 and as it is likely to be for the future, in a temporal sense, 
 leaving altogether out of the question the dreadful realities of 
 eternity, and a future judgment. I am like yourself a con-
 
 300 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 vict, suffering a severe punishment for an act of dishonesty. 
 We are separated from our friends, and from all society that we 
 ought to desire to be admitted into. Several of the best years 
 of our lives are as absolutely struck out of the account as far 
 as respects all temporal enjoyments, benefits, or advantages as 
 if we remained in the grave for that period. We are doomed to 
 live without enjoyment, and to labour hard without deriving 
 the reward that usually I may say invariably accompanies a 
 life of honourable exertion. The hearts of our friends, who 
 still continue to love us, though the rest of the world regard us 
 with abhorrence, are bleeding with anguish ; and the blush 
 of shame is upon their cheeks when they hear us named as 
 convicts, our respectability and character gone, if ever we had 
 them ; and, if we had not, the fault rests only with ourselves. All 
 these sufferings we have inflicted upon ourselves, all these sacri- 
 fices we have made. And for what? Where is the equivalent the 
 gain the value received for this frightful outlay '? I can say, for 
 myself, that I have none absolutely nothing ; in fact, I am, in a 
 temporal sense, poorer, worse off, in every respect, than if I had 
 never incurred it ; and I am quite sure this is the case with each 
 of us. If it is so with us now, let us have the courage to look back 
 upon the career that brought us to this. Let us, like rational crea- 
 tures, and sensible men, calmly take a survey of the pleasures, 
 the enjoyments, the delights that accompanied us in our evil 
 practice, such of us as made dishonesty and thieving the pro- 
 fession by which we expected to live. What incited us to enter 
 that profession ? What encouraged us to continue it ? What 
 was the prospect of reward held out ? Did we not enter it with 
 the hope of leading an easy and idle life, with plenty of money 
 at command, without work, and without exertion ? Did we find 
 this the case ? Did we not find it entailed upon us constant 
 anxiety and disappointment, watching and following our victims 
 for hours, or it may be days, before the opportunity offered, and 
 then, frequent disappointment; where we expected treasure, 
 behold emptiness, copper for gold, pebble-stones instead of 
 jewels literally, stones instead of bread ? I know this has 
 been the case often with many of us. Then, there was the con- 
 stant dread of detection, and, not unfrequently, the actual 
 occurrence of it ; then followed punishment, labour, the scorn 
 and execration of the community. Did we feel pleasure or
 
 A REMARKABLE ADDRESS. 301 
 
 satisfaction under all this '.' Answer yourselves, as I do, truly 
 None. Would not a life of labour, or honourable exertion, 
 have been better, in every sense of the word ? ay, and more 
 profitable more money might have been made by it. I know 
 that many have been compelled to turn out in the morning, like 
 the wild beast in the forest, to hunt down the prey before they 
 could break their fast. I repeat the question, Where was the 
 profit, where the gain, even if it had not brought you to what 
 you now are ? And strange infatuation ! you knew this would 
 be the result ; you knew it would all end, and that before long, 
 in transportation. You know that all thieves, after a time, 
 become known to the police ; that they are marked men, and 
 that they all at last get transported ; that it is impossible to 
 escape. You know those of your companions, who have hitherto 
 escaped, will follow you before your time is out. You know 
 how many of your companions fall before you, like grass before 
 the mower ; and, whether you or they fell in the first or last 
 swathe, their and your fate was equally sure from the time you 
 entered the profession. Let us deal with ourselves honestly, what- 
 ever we have done with others, if these are facts and I know, 
 and you know, they are. What fools we have been ! what a bad 
 trade we have followed ! What prevented us from finding this 
 out befoi-e we were brought to this point? And this leads me 
 to speak of what incited us to continue the profession : it may 
 be, in here and there a rare instance, a prize affording the 
 means of sensual and beastly gratification for a few days' excess, 
 seldom more ; oftener, the reward was barely the wages of a 
 clever, active, industrious working man for although we might 
 get property to the value of many pounds, how little did it 
 yield us about 3s. for 1 value ! Was it the pleasure we 
 derived from the society of those who were following the same 
 life as ourselves their conversation, the information we derived 
 from them ? Let us look back calmly now, and weigh this point 
 in our minds. Was not their conversation generally such as we 
 ought to blush for? Could we venture to use the language, or 
 express the ideas, we were constantly hearing from them, in the 
 presence of any one of either sex of any degree of respecta- 
 bility? And does not our own natural sense tell us, that what wo 
 hesitate or fear to utter before the good and virtuous members 
 of society, must be in itself very wicked? Then, again, were
 
 302 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 these parties of such character and fidelity that we could rely 
 upon their honour and faithfulness ? Was not the case exactly 
 the reverse ? Would they not over-reach, defraud, cheat, and 
 betray their most intimate and, apparently, bosom friends ? 
 Were we not in constant dread of one or another amongst them 
 saving themselves at our expense ? Did we not, in short, live 
 a life of constant toil, anxiety, suspicion, and fear, with a positive 
 conviction that, in the end, our present fate would reach us ? 
 I repeat, then, have we not been fools and madmen, to give up a 
 fair chance, nay, almost a certainty, of becoming, by honesty 
 and industry, respectable and useful members of society, as 
 husbands, fathers, citizens, and subjects, for vicious indulgence, 
 often degrading want, contempt, abhorrence, misery, and, finally, 
 banishment? May God, in his infinite mercy, grant that this 
 may be the sum total of our self- inflicted punishment ; that to it 
 may not be added the bitter pangs of eternal death ! And now, 
 my friends and brothers in suffering, it only remains just 
 rationally and calmly to look the future in the face. I mean, as 
 regards this life. We have been playing a losing game, in the 
 run, by constantly doubling the stakes, we must lose all. Our 
 life is not all expended : we are many of us young, and have a 
 prospect of years, either of increased misery, or, in some degree, 
 rescued respectability and credit, before us. The law has struck 
 us this once heavily, but we may recover the effects of this blow 
 by resolutely doing right. 
 
 " I cannot use a more expressive term, Let us be honest and 
 just in all our dealings for the future. Dishonesty will not, cannot 
 answer in any case ; and now in our case least of all. If we do 
 wrong after this, the law will surely strike again, and then it will 
 utterly destroy us. Every good gift comes from God. I know 
 that he has given me both mental and physical powers sufficient, 
 by their proper exercise in useful, lawful, and honourable pur- 
 suits, to live honestly, creditably, and comfortably ; and I know 
 the same is the case with you. I know that the same fixedness 
 of purpose, the same energy and perseverance, the same ingenuity 
 and industry, that you have exercised in unlawful and unworthy 
 pursuits, would, if as constantly exerted in a right direction, 
 have caused you to be now prosperous, happy, and respected 
 members of society, instead of what we now are. I know it is 
 the fashion amongst those who have not tasted the terrors of the
 
 ADDITIONAL CASES. 303 
 
 law, but who are in training for it, to jeer and laugh at its penal- 
 ties ; but to us who are fairly involved in its meshes, and have 
 the prospect of years of banishment from the joys of society, of 
 love, of friendship, its reality is dreadful. Let us, then, as we 
 value the peace and happiness of our future days, so endeavour 
 to direct our thoughts, hopes, and actions, that we may, after our 
 term is expired, enter the world with higher motives and purer 
 aims ; so that our latter days may be better than our beginning, 
 and our end may be peace." 
 
 Additional Cases. 
 
 Mr. Lucas's remarks concerning Roman Catholic 
 prisoners in Pentonville, as noticed in the last 
 chapter, have brought to my recollection the follow- 
 ing cases, which will serve to illustrate the honour- 
 able member's observations, as well as the subject 
 before us. 
 
 In 1845, as well as I can remember, a convict 
 came to us from Millbank who was entered there as 
 a Protestant, and of course as such on our books. 
 The man was examined, and classed by the school- 
 master amongst the non-readers. In the course of 
 nine or ten months, however, he was found not only a 
 proficient in reading, but well made up, mid able in 
 controversy, urging against Protestantism all the 
 usual arguments, in the way, however, of respectful 
 inquiry. Such a prisoner naturally attracted much 
 of my attention. Was he an educational prodigy, or 
 a member of some mysterious order, in a strange 
 predicament, wishing to do a good turn to the 
 Church (perhaps to convert the chaplain) ? He was, 
 I think, of respectable parentage, but under a false 
 name. He gave us no reference for character, and
 
 304 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 was reserved upon all matters referring to his 
 former life. I inclined to the opinion that he had 
 put on the guise of ignorance, and was really an 
 educated man. 
 
 It would now almost seem that I was right in 
 this conjecture, and that this able ultramontanist has 
 returned from exile, his sentence having expired, and 
 communicated with Mr. Lucas, for I recollect not 
 another single case in which I have entered upon 
 the popish controversy with a prisoner. 
 
 Another Roman Catholic convict is entitled to 
 notice in this connexion, as a specimen of another 
 species of hypocrisy. This man had been a butler 
 in high families, and was up to every scheme. 
 Irish-born, he had contrived to anglicanize his 
 name, and, in some measure, his tongue. At first 
 sight, however, I caught in his visage the linea- 
 ments of the true Celt, and calling him by his right 
 name, the mask fell off. After a while, however, he 
 essayed to play another part. He now fasted to an 
 incredible degree, and on bended knees for hours, 
 with uplifted eyes and fixed gaze, his hands crossed 
 on his breast in the crypto-catholic style, he seemed 
 lost in contemplation and devotion. No one dis- 
 turbed him. He was closely observed, however ; 
 was he an ecstatic, a monomaniac, or a malingerer ? 
 He made no inquiries for his priest. This was sus- 
 picious. We wished, and indeed intimated our wish 
 to him, to that effect. His spiritual director might 
 have explained the phenomenon. The prisoner now 
 advanced another step. He shaved his head of his
 
 ADDITIONAL CASES. 305 
 
 bushy reel hair, as if with a razor, one morning, and 
 again assumed the motionless attitude of prayer. 
 On my next visit, when I saw the man in this 
 strange condition, I confess that I laughed outright, 
 convinced that he was playing a part, but was stag- 
 gered in my belief by seeing that even this did not 
 discompose him in the least. There he knelt, mo- 
 tionless as before, like a statue. I addressed him, 
 but his contemplations were too absorbing to permit 
 him to answer, or, seemingly, to hear. 
 
 The man was removed at length to another prison 
 and associated, and discovering, I suppose, there that 
 an honest course was, after all, the best policy, he 
 allowed his hair to grow, and behaved like other 
 men. He was, on the expiration of his time, libe- 
 rated, and paid me a visit in my office, dressed once 
 more in the gentleman-butler fashion. The London 
 manufacturers of character no doubt had set him 
 right again! 
 
 There was an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, I 
 believed, who stated to me that he had been once 
 employed by the Irish Scripture-Heading Society. 
 This man was on our books a Protestant, and after 
 a while expressed a desire to come to the commu- 
 nion of the Lord's Supper. Not being satisfied, 
 however, with the state of his mind, I did not admit 
 him, but recommended delay. His real character 
 upon this became disclosed. He flew into a great 
 passion, and his look said as much as " If I had you 
 in Tipperary I know how I would serve you." 
 
 Against this class of pure Roman Catholic Irish, 
 
 x
 
 306 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM A PRISON. 
 
 or Celtic St. Giles' people, every chaplain of a gaol 
 must especially be on his guard. They are wholly 
 given to lying, and are as clever as they are deceit- 
 ful. If I might be so bold, I would warn their own 
 priests not to trust them too far, but even in their 
 most solemn intercourse with their catechumens, to 
 take care of their pockets, and to consider nothing, 
 however sacred, safe which is within their reach, 
 and which can be turned into money or tobacco. 
 
 To limit myself to things profane. It is not long 
 since a spiritual director (not in this prison, and I 
 will not say where), having absolved two penitent 
 convicts, left them with his blessing, and retired. 
 The gentleman was addicted to much snuff, and 
 carried three handkerchiefs for distinct stages of use, 
 one in his breast, the others in his hinder pockets. 
 The first he was fortunate enough to retain, but the 
 absolved contrived to begin life again by abstracting 
 the other two. One of their messmates, however, a 
 Roman Catholic also, having a higher sense of what 
 was right, or, as it is probable, only deeper hypocrisy, 
 informed the Governor of the theft, who thus reco- 
 vered the property, had the handkerchiefs washed, 
 and restored them to their owner upon his next 
 visit to the prison.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 
 
 " The great object of reclaiming the criminal should always be 
 kept in view by every officer.' ROLES IN CONVICT PRISONS. 
 
 THE following Rules respecting Officers who have 
 the charge of Prisoners are laid down by authority 
 in Government prisons. 
 
 ' First, Concerning their oicn Personal Character and Conduct. 
 
 " All officers placed in authority over prisoners, and all per- 
 sons employed in the prison, must be men of moral principle 
 and unblemished character. Any disreputable conduct will 
 render an officer liable to dismissal. 
 
 " Intoxication will be visited with dismissal ; and it will not 
 be taken into consideration at what place the act of intemper- 
 ance was committed, nor whether the officer was or was not 
 thereby considered incapable of performing his duty; it being 
 absolutely necessary that all persons connected with the prison 
 should be perfectly sober at all times. Swearing and improper 
 language; knowingly incurring debts which they are unable to 
 pay ; the habit of frequenting public-houses ; keeping bad com- 
 pany : gambling or card-playing, will severally be considered a 
 sufficient reason for the dismissal of an officer. 
 
 " If there be any reasonable ground to believe that any officer 
 or servant betrays the confidence placed in him, by making 
 any unauthorized communications concerning the prison to the 
 friends of prisoners, or any other person not belonging to the 
 establishment, he will be deemed not trustworthy, and he will 
 be dismissed." 
 
 x2
 
 308 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 Next, Respecting their Treatment of Prisoners. 
 
 "In maintaining order and discipline among prisoners, 
 punishment must sometimes be resorted to by the Governor, 
 upon their report ; but good temper and good example on the 
 part of subordinate officers, will have great influence in preventing 
 the frequent recurrence of offences and the necessity for punish 
 ment. 
 
 " It is the duty of all officers to treat the prisoners with kind- 
 ness and humanity, and to listen patiently to, and report their 
 grievances or complaints, being at the same time firm in main- 
 taining order and discipline, and enforcing a strict observance 
 of the rules of the establishment. The great object of reclaiming 
 the criminal should always be kept in view by every officer in the 
 prison, and they should strive to acquire a moral influence over 
 the prisoners, by performing their duties conscientiously, pa- 
 tiently, and without harshness. They should especially try to 
 raise the prisoners' minds to a proper sense of moral obligation, 
 by the example of their own uniform regard to truth and integrity, 
 even in the smallest matters. Such conduct will, in most cases, 
 insure the respect and confidence of prisoners, and will render 
 the duties of officers more satisfactory to themselves." 
 
 There must, however, be no familiarity between officers and 
 prisoners. " No officer or servant of the prison shall converse 
 with a prisoner except in the discharge of his duties, or on sub- 
 jects connected therewith. 
 
 " The Warders and Trade Instructors are to enforce their 
 orders with firmness, but also with humanity, towards all the pri- 
 soners under their care. On the other hand, they are not to 
 converse with them unnecessarily, but shall treat them as persons 
 under their authority, and not as companions or associates." 
 
 Eulesfor the Chief Warder. 
 
 " He shall consider it a main part of his duty to exercise a 
 sound moral influence over both the officers and prisoners placed 
 under his supervision. He shall frequently visit the prisoners 
 in their cells, for the purpose of promoting, by his advice and
 
 IX CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 309 
 
 conversation, the object of their reformation. He shall restrain 
 by his authority every tendency to oppression or harshness on the 
 part of officers ; and likewise every tendency to levity, rudeness, 
 or insubordination on the part of prisoners ; and shall discou- 
 rage by his own example, and by the maintenance of a high moral 
 standard, every disposition to deceit, falsehood, immorality, and 
 idleness ; constantly aiming to raise the minds of the prisoners 
 to a sense of their responsibility, and of the comfort and advan- 
 tage of a conscientious discharge of their duties, and a cheerful 
 submission to the rules." 
 
 The Governor to be an Example to all his Officers, Sen-ants, 
 and Prisoners. 
 
 " The Governor shall exercise his authority with firmness, 
 temper, and humanity ; abstain from all irritating language, and 
 shall never strike a prisoner except in self-defence, should such 
 necessity occur. He shall bear in mind that the object of his 
 duties, and of those of all officers and servants under his direc- 
 tion, is not only to give full effect to the penal sentence awarded 
 to the convicts, but also to instil into their minds sound, moral, 
 and religious principles, and induce habits of industry, regularity, 
 and good conduct. With this view, while enforcing strict 
 observance of the rules regarding labour and discipline, the 
 Governor will be careful to encourage every effort at amendment 
 on the part of the prisoners, and will require all officers and 
 servants of the prison, in their several capacities, to do the 
 same." 
 
 These admirable regulations are the result of 
 an enlightened view of the claims of justice and 
 humanity , derived from experience in the treatment 
 of prisoners. 
 
 They reflect honour on those who framed them, 
 and the Government which gives them their force
 
 310 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 and authority. The great difficulty is to carry them 
 out, both as regards the selection of officers, and 
 their subsequent conduct. The oversight of pri- 
 soners is not likely to attract many to desire it, but 
 from necessity ; and it often happens that those 
 who have most of the moral qualifications, have 
 least of those which, it must be confessed, are in- 
 dispensable, when the safe custody of prisoners is 
 to be taken into account, and a strict discipline en- 
 forced. Military men, therefore, are in general 
 considered by the authorities the most likely can- 
 didates for such employment; and, if they are 
 capable of acting up to the spirit of the above rules, 
 they probably are the best for the purpose. A good 
 selection of subordinate officers is a matter of first 
 importance in a prison. Upon them rests the car- 
 rying out the details of daily discipline. They come 
 into closest contact with the prisoner. Their cha- 
 racter is studied and known by the prisoner. . 
 
 The officer may altogether misjudge the character 
 of the prisoner; but the latter, with little to distract 
 thought, forms an accurate estimate of the charac- 
 ter of his superior, and even of his habits outside 
 the prison walls. 
 
 A high-principled officer of the lowest rank is a 
 constant daily lesson, therefore, to the prisoner, 
 an example of what may be attained in humble life. 
 He becomes a valuable auxiliary to the direct means 
 used for the instruction and reformation of the pri- 
 soner. The superiority of his moral character, his 
 fidelity to the trust reposed in him, his zeal, and
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 311 
 
 strict attention to his superiors' commands, insure 
 respect from the prisoner, and prompt obedience to 
 his own orders, whilst the gentleness of his voice 
 and manner will often win his regard. Prisoners 
 know well the necessity of strict discipline. If well 
 disposed, they feel the comfort of it. To such it is 
 protection. But necessary strictness is one thing ; 
 harshness of manner is another. The first is what 
 the law requires; the second is the arbitrary tyranny 
 of an officer ill instructed in his duty. Protected 
 by the former, and freed from the irritation of the 
 latter, the prisoner ceases to regard his punishment 
 as a thing against which he must struggle and 
 revolt, and, if opportunity occurs, escape from. It 
 becomes in a measure reformatory, and facilitates 
 the access of the teaching of religion to the heart. 
 
 The combination of great strictness in discipline, 
 with humanity, of firmness with gentleness, is cer- 
 tainly rare ; but it is found in some, and may be 
 attained to by all officers. "Why should not every 
 one, intrusted with the charge of prisoners, labour 
 to attain to it ? 
 
 It is a secondary consideration to suggest, that 
 such a course, steadily pursued, in general com- 
 mends a man to his superiors, and leads to promo- 
 tion. Officers of such character are continually 
 wanted for more responsible duties. This is not 
 to be overlooked. Men, as they advance in years, 
 generally need an advance in income, and become 
 fitter for duties which require experience and high 
 moral character, rather than activity and strength.
 
 312 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 In my opinion, a man should, by such a course of 
 conduct, look forward to promotion, and, by dili- 
 gently cultivating his mind and extending his know- 
 ledge in the peculiar sphere of his duty, prepare 
 himself for it. An officer who is not thoroughly in 
 his work, will never discharge it satisfactorily, and 
 'Is rarely good for anything. But there are higher 
 motives. Is it not worth aspiring to, to feel that 
 one has discharged his duty towards his superiors 
 to the best of his ability, "with good will doing 
 service as unto God, and not unto men ? " Is it 
 nothing to have soothed the sorrows of a heart 
 which was ready to break, to have supported a 
 mind from sinking under its load, or to have 
 calmed an irritation of temper which might have 
 burst forth into desperation? Crimes of a desperate 
 character, by desperate men in prison, are often 
 prevented by the steady, consistent, feeling conduct 
 of officers. 
 
 But who is that wretched man in yonder felon's 
 cell? or that twice-fallen woman in her prison dress? 
 Once they were children, blithe and merry, their 
 father's pride and their mother's joy. They grew 
 up, and for a while were virtuous, and they were 
 happy and free. Oh ! how sadly altered now ! Who 
 are they ? That man is thy brother ; that woman, 
 thy sister. Oh ! act as a brother towards them. 
 "Which of you," said our blessed Lord, "shall have 
 an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straight- 
 way pull it out?" Wilt thou let thine own flesh 
 and blood lie in a more pitiable condition, and not
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 313 
 
 hasten to deliver ? Remember that rule : " Tlie 
 great object of reclaiming the criminal should always 
 be kept in mind by every officer." But where is 
 this high tone of feeling to come from ? Erom the 
 benign and blessed religion of the Gospel. Yes, the 
 individual who has been, by Divine grace, brought 
 to know what sin really is, so as to have sought his 
 own pardon as one guilty in the sight of God, will 
 feel for his fellow-creature, condemned by human 
 laws indeed, and an outcast from society, but in the 
 sin which is the cause and the worst part of crime, 
 obnoxious to the Divine justice like himself. 
 
 The real Christian is himself a pardoned convict. 
 He has obtained liberty only through the interces- 
 sion and good deeds of that adorable One, who in 
 infinite love submitted to servitude, and suffering, 
 and death for his redemption. By the death of the 
 sinless Jesus, he, a guilty and condemned sinner, 
 has obtained life. By His resurrection, free and 
 full justification, with a title to an inheritance in 
 the kingdom of glory, and by the sanctifying grace 
 of his Holy Spirit, a meetness for that glorious 
 possession. As he grows in grace and the know- 
 ledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, and knows more of 
 the vileness of his own heart, and the utter worth- 
 lessness of his own doings; he feels more for his 
 fellow- sinner, hates more all wickedness in others, 
 and strives the more zealously and lovingly to re- 
 claim the wanderer, to reform the criminal, to save 
 the sinner. " Brethren," says St. Paul, "if a man 
 be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual,
 
 314 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 restore such an one in the spirit of meekness ; con- 
 sidering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." Gal. 
 vi. 1. 
 
 But an officer may say, Can a man in my situa- 
 tion be thus a real disciple and follower of Christ ? 
 it seems impossible. If it be impossible, then, in 
 the name of God, without delay, give it up ; it is 
 better for a man to lose his place than his soul ! 
 " What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
 world, and lose his own soul, or what shall a man 
 give in exchange for his soul ? " But it is not im- 
 possible. On the contrary, the best way to discharge 
 a man's duty is to be a decided and consistent Chris- 
 tian. Alas ! this is the almost universal excuse of 
 men, when pressed by conscience, by God's Word, 
 and by God's ministers, to give themselves to his 
 service, I cannot now ; by-and-by I will. I shall 
 be more favourably situated for religion after a 
 while, have less to do, and more time for thought. 
 " Go thy way for this time, and at a more conve- 
 nient season I will send for thee." 
 
 I tell thee, O man, solemnly and affectionately, 
 this is an awful delusion of the soul which, unless 
 removed, will end in thy everlasting shame and con- 
 fusion of face. " Now is the accepted time, this is 
 the day of salvation." It is in the time of God's 
 choosing, and not man's, that repentance unto life 
 is given, and salvation secured. That which keeps 
 thee back from Christ, is the evil heart of unbelief, 
 and not thy office or thy business. " Ye will not 
 come to me, that ye may have life," was the com-
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 315 
 
 plaint of the Saviour over the Jews : it is his com- 
 plaint now over thee. 
 
 From the want of faith in God's promises and 
 threatenings, officers are more concerned about what 
 their fellow-sinners think of them than about God's 
 judgment. Next to the want of will in the natural 
 man, this feeling, " I must do as others do," is the 
 grand hinderance everywhere to a man's yielding 
 himself to the service of God. To be decided for 
 Christ and religion, is to take up a peculiarity of 
 position in a man's class. It is to go against the 
 stream of opinion around, and to condemn, silently 
 at least, the practices of others. It is to experience 
 in a man's self the truth of the apostle's words, "All 
 that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer per- 
 secution." Hence, in order to stand well with a 
 man's comrades, or to escape from the sneers and 
 banterings of the ungodly, reason is renounced, the 
 convictions of conscience are belied, God is dis- 
 honoured, and the hopes of a blessed immortality 
 beyond the grave, gradually, but in most cases, cer- 
 tainly and for ever extinguished. Yes, you have 
 either no will to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 therefore never pray for the power, or, having some 
 feeble and faint desire of the kind, you do not cry 
 to God for strength to go forward to take up the 
 cross and follow Christ. Remember the words of 
 the Lord : " He that is ashamed of me and of my 
 word, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when 
 he cometh in the glory of the Father." To be 
 ashamed of being the servant of God, the follower
 
 316 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 of the blessed Redeemer ! what ingratitude what 
 perversion of reason what indescribable madness ! 
 
 'Ashamed of Jesus ! can it be ? 
 A mortal man ashamed of thee ! 
 Scorned be the thought, by rich and poor, 
 O may I scorn it more and more. 
 
 Ashamed of Jesus ! of that friend 
 On whom my hopes of heaven depend ! 
 No ! when I blush, be this my shame 
 That I no more revere his name. 
 
 Ashamed of Jesus ! yes, I may, 
 When I Ve no sins to wash away ; 
 No tears to wipe, no joys to crave, 
 And no immortal soul to save. 
 
 Till then nor is the boasting vain 
 Till then, I 11 boast a Saviour slain ; 
 And O, may this my portion be 
 That Saviour not ashamed of me." 
 
 Indeed, for a man to say, My place, my family, 
 or my business, prevents my being religious, is no 
 less than to throw upon God the blame, by ivhose 
 providence he is so circumstanced. It is also alto- 
 gether to misunderstand the nature of true religion. 
 Godliness is designed to fit a man for the duties of 
 this life, as well as prepare him for a better ; and 
 is so really blessed a thing for calming the perturba- 
 tion of temper, in the hurry and anxieties of secular
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 31 7 
 
 duties for strengthening our weakness in tempta- 
 tion for balancing the mind in prosperity, and 
 cheering or supporting it when things are adverse 
 that the more arduous and embarrassing the office, 
 the more earnestly should the possession of it be 
 sought. True religion is God's own medicine for 
 the ills, and troubles, and cares of life. " Godliness 
 hath the promise of the life that now is, and of 
 that which is to come." The excuse of official duty 
 for not being religious is therefore a delusion, and 
 those who give way to it are placed by their own 
 repeated acts more and more under its soul-destroy- 
 ing influence ; and repentance is put off, farther and 
 farther, till the heart is " hardened through the de- 
 ceitf illness of sin." 
 
 There is a day coming when vain excuses of this 
 kind will not stand. They will not satisfy conscience 
 on a death-bed ; or if, by perpetual resistance, the 
 conscience become " seared as with a hot iron," the 
 delusion will be dissipated when the Lord shall 
 appear, the Judge of all, by whose providence those 
 very cares and anxieties, pleaded during life as ex- 
 cuses for not accepting his grace, were thrown 
 around the man as the cords of his love, to draw him 
 to Christ and salvation. 
 
 Let us take the case of an individual in the most 
 difficult situation which can be conceived, and see, 
 from the result, whether the service of God is in- 
 compatible with the right discharge of any lawful 
 secular duties. The person I allude to is an officer 
 in the army, brought up from childhood without the
 
 318 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 true knowledge of God, or acquaintance with his 
 holy Word, and surrounded to mature years with the 
 most untoward circumstances as regards morals and 
 religion, without one God-fearing friend, or a single 
 guide to truth. He is a soldier in a heathen army, 
 an officer over men, the fiercest, as well as the bravest 
 in the world, in his age. In the course of his duty 
 he is stationed in a land where alone the knowledge 
 of the true God existed, the land of Judaea. He is 
 brought to reflection, he casts aside the prejudice 
 and contempt with which every Roman was wont 
 to view the Jews, embraces their religion, and 
 becomes a bright example to God's own favoured 
 people. This is no imaginary case. The Saviour of 
 the world pronounced this wonderful encomium on 
 the man : "I have not found so great faith, no not 
 in Israel." Luke vii. 9. 
 
 It occurred a second time, as if to prevent for ever 
 such vain excuses, in the case of Cornelius, Acts x. 
 This centurion also was most remarkably favoured. 
 Upon the preaching of an apostle, brought by express 
 Divine direction to teach him, the Holy Ghost 
 in a miraculous manner descended upon him, 
 " his kinsmen, and near friends," and they became 
 the first-fruits of the Gentile world gathered to 
 Christ. Remember these cases of military men. 
 Most discipline officers seem to think, when we are 
 expounding God's Word in their hearing, that it is 
 for prisoners only. They are too often, alas ! like the 
 elder brother in the parable, or the Pharisee in the 
 temple, proud and self-righteous. "They that be
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 319 
 
 whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." 
 They are not conscious of any spiritual malady, they 
 are not sick, they feel no need of Christ. 
 
 Prison chaplains have little encouragement in 
 their ministry amongst prison officers. What, if we 
 are ourselves in some measure the cause ? Do we 
 think of all, pray over all, and preach to all our 
 hearers without distinction, bond or free, as those 
 who are responsible for all, for the souls of the 
 keeper as well as of his prisoner ? I know the diffi- 
 culty : officers must not be lowered before prisoners. 
 Still, I believe it feasible. " If any man lack wis- 
 dom, let him ask of God." 
 
 What I have aimed at in my own ministry is, 
 to identify myself with the officer in every address 
 made particularly to his class, and from time to 
 time selecting such passages of Scripture as those 
 just referred to, to show the claims of religion upon 
 all, and its compatibility with every lawful employ- 
 ment. Much, however, might be accomplished in 
 private, with God's blessing ; and to fulfil in some 
 measure this duty towards the officers around my- 
 self, and to strengthen the hands of others in like 
 circumstances, is the chief end I have in view in 
 putting forth these remarks. 
 
 Whilst, however, mourning over the spiritual 
 apathy of a respectable class, I thankfully recognize 
 this encouragement at least, that in every prison 
 where there is the faithful preaching of the Gospel, 
 the daily reading and exposition of God's Word, 
 and the consistent example of an affectionate and
 
 320 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS. 
 
 earnest minister, the tone of feeling towards Us un- 
 happy inmates, and the mode of treating them, is 
 decidedly better than where these things do not 
 exist. This is a great matter, although far short 
 of what we wish to see. Another remark I am 
 bound to make on this point. The officers whom I 
 have been exhorting, may be upright in their con- 
 duct, and zealous and able in their duties, although 
 so deficient as regards religion, having no communion 
 with God, having no experience of the forgiveness of 
 their own sins in Christ Jesus, or of the renewal 
 of their hearts by the Holy Ghost. They are not to 
 be confounded with the class of officers to whom the 
 rules so pointedly refer. 
 
 It is a grievous thing to read in these rules con- 
 templating as they do, so high a moral standard for 
 officers, and such active co-operation from them in 
 the reformation of prisoners of penalties to be in- 
 flicted upon officers for "swearing and improper 
 language, incurring debts which they are unable to 
 pay, frequenting public-houses, keeping bad com- 
 pany, gambling, or card-playing," &c. 
 
 That men intrusted with the moral discipline of 
 prisoners should themselves be guilty of these 
 practices is preposterous, and discreditable in the 
 highest degree. What ! are not these some of the 
 prominent causes of crime in those unhappy persons 
 now committed to your charge ? Surely, you would 
 be alike forgetful of your duty, and the many sad 
 examples before your eyes, if you would pursue a 
 course which militates so directly against the law,
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 321 
 
 under which you are called to act; which would 
 frustrate the efforts of humanity and religion in 
 behalf of these poor men, which would degrade 
 you in the eyes of those who are under your charge, 
 and which, if persisted in, will most prohably he 
 followed by disastrous personal consequences. These 
 prohibitory regulations, I grieve to say, are no dead 
 letter. They are too much needed. Select a body 
 of men ever so carefully, you will find improper 
 persons, when tested by experience, amongst them. 
 The history of every prison with which I am ac- 
 quainted, illustrates this truth too plainly. I throw 
 out a hint on this point. Let every officer in a 
 prison make out for himself a list of officers who 
 have been dismissed within a few years, and put 
 opposite to their names the cause; then let him 
 ask, What has become of those men, who took such 
 pains, by the solicitation of friends, by personal 
 interviews, and by testimonials, to secure the ap- 
 pointment of which their misconduct subsequently 
 deprived them ? In general, as degraded men, they 
 have been compelled to take very inferior employ- 
 ment, or are in miserable poverty. Wlio can help 
 a man to an office of trust who has violated trust ? 
 Who can recommend, for a duty which requires 
 perfect sobriety at all times, a frequenter of the 
 public-house ? It has been perfectly astonishing to 
 observe, apart from all considerations of morals and 
 religion, the reckless conduct of some officers of this 
 character. Their appointment was everything to 
 them and their families. They eagerly tried for it ; 
 
 Y
 
 322 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 but, when they gained the situation, acted as if it 
 were worth nothing, or as if they were entitled to 
 hold it' without any honest effort to perform its duties. 
 The natural consequence was, they lost it, and 
 with it their character and chance of other employ- 
 ment. The same men, who, when they had their pay, 
 could not dispense with the luxury of the cigar, the 
 daily allowance of a very questionable beverage, the 
 evening lounge in the tavern or public-house, or 
 some other supposed necessary which the usages of 
 a man's class create for him, had, for their folly, to 
 go wearily and sadly along the rest of their dishon- 
 oured lives, without sufficient meat often, or clothing 
 for themselves, their wives, or their children, whom 
 it may be, after all, they love most tenderly. Com- 
 mon sense, ordinary good conduct, and a little self- 
 denying frugality, would have secured for them a 
 continuance, or an increase of comforts ; but with- 
 out strength of character enough to say, " No, I do 
 not approve, or, I cannot afford it ; " or sense enough 
 to sit down and do a simple sum in moral arith- 
 metic, and see what an amount of necessaries and 
 comforts, for sickness or old age, may be secured by 
 giving up unnecessaries and imaginary luxuries, and 
 what a state of mental satisfaction and manly inde- 
 pendence may be attained by a right course, instead 
 of the miserable labour and anxiety which they have 
 to submit to who borrow money from lending so- 
 cieties, &c., they have unhappily reaped the fruits 
 of their own sowing, and gathered the discomforts 
 in abundance of that irreligion which has so fre-
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 323 
 
 quently the curse of the life that now is, and so 
 certainly of that which is to come. The real neces- 
 saries of life may be cheapened ; it makes no differ- 
 ence with persons of this improvident class. They 
 enlarge their desires, increase their expenses, and 
 adopt a higher style of living. They are often the 
 poorer for advantages of this kind. I never could 
 tell why men should not be content with the same 
 amount of comforts which their fathers, or those of 
 the last generation in like circumstances, were satis- 
 fied with, and to be in their station respected and 
 respectable as they were. Many are not content 
 with anything of the kind, and so they sink below 
 the real respectability of their fathers. They must 
 dress better, furnish their houses better, live more 
 delicately, see more sights, and be more like the 
 class above them. Thus they incur debts which 
 they are not able to pay; go to loan societies to 
 help them to clear off these, and contract new ones 
 with heavy interest, and then have a serious addition 
 put on everything they purchase, because they are 
 not punctual in their payments. 
 
 It requires but a few years of folly of this kind, 
 to make a salary of 60 or 70 a year of no more 
 real value than 40 or 50 on the frugal, paying- 
 as-you-get plan, and so to entangle and hamper a 
 man that he has neither proper spirits for his work 
 nor any comfort at home. His health, his character, 
 or both, in consequence give way. 
 
 Perhaps the subordinate officer will say, It is easy 
 for a gentleman to talk in this way ; he can know 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 little of such difficulties as mine. This is a mis- 
 take. There are thousands of persons in the situa- 
 tion of the writer, in the Established Church and 
 out of it, whose available incomes from all sources are 
 not a whit better than those of warders, clerks, and 
 schoolmasters in prisons. There are thousands of 
 gentlemen in the army, and in the learned profes- 
 sions, &c., who have to struggle on for years before 
 they obtain a situation, or pay equal, all things 
 considered, to that of some subordinate officers in 
 our prisons. I am far from thinking the pay of 
 subordinate officers excessive. It is not as good as 
 I should wish to see it. I thoroughly concur in the 
 view taken by a late Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 when, in answer to an Honourable Member's motion 
 for a revision of official salaries, he concluded by 
 saying, " that there were not above 50,000 persons 
 engaged in the civil service of the country ; that 
 there was no nation served by so few people, pro- 
 portionately to the work they had to do, and served 
 so well ; and that the way to insure heart-service, 
 and not lip-service, was, in every department, to 
 pay poor servants well, treat them with consideration 
 and kindness, and not to discourage them by seeming 
 willing to sacrifice their feelings and interests" My 
 argument is, that whatever a man's salary is, he 
 ought to live within it, and encounter rather the 
 difficulties of self-denial and frugality for a time^ 
 than the discredit and lasting misery which follow 
 an opposite course. Let not the times we live in 
 be blamed. If they have their peculiar difficulties
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 325 
 
 and temptations, they have their helps too, in more 
 than proportionate abundance. To refer only to one 
 the better means of mental occupation and im- 
 provement than existed in the last generation. I 
 do not mean by reading trashy books or Sunday 
 newspapers, which are intellectual as well as moral 
 poison, but by pursuing some one or more subjects 
 of wholesome study, for which there is some taste. 
 True intellectual cultivation ceases when moral or 
 religious declension begins. Let a man take to the 
 proper cultivation of his mind in his leisure hours, 
 and he will bear to be alone, or, if he has a family, 
 he will be happiest at home, and soon rise above 
 the folly and the extravagance of inhaling and puff- 
 ing out smoke, and the graver criminalities of the 
 bottle. The habit of smoking has grown, of late 
 years, into a vice, as well as a nuisance. In the 
 army it called forth the following order from its 
 late illustrious chief: 
 
 " General Order, 
 
 Horse Guards, 2Qth November, 1845. 
 
 " The Commander-in-chief has been informed that the prac- 
 tice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars, or cheroots, has 
 become prevalent among the officers of the army, which is not 
 only in itself a species of intoxication, occasioned by the fumes 
 of tobacco, but undoubtedly occasions drinking and tippling by those 
 who acquire the habit. He entreats officers commanding regiments 
 to prevent smoking in the mess-rooms of their several regiments, 
 and in the adjoining apartments, and to discourage the practice 
 among the officers of junior rank in their regiments. 
 
 John Macdonald, 
 
 Adjutant-General."
 
 32(5 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 I have seen cases of folly and ruin, such as I have 
 referred to, in this prison. I have forewarned the 
 individuals, in private, of the coming calamity, but 
 in vain, When men get into a certain habit, or run 
 a certain length in an evil course, nothing short of 
 a miracle of grace can save them nothing but down- 
 right poverty and distress can arouse them to a pro- 
 per sense of their condition. My heart sickens at 
 the remembrance of these unhappy persons ; and I 
 think, when I see or hear of them, how happy, 
 useful, and respected they might have been how 
 degraded and wretched they are. Persons in this 
 situation unhappily imagine that the more they ape 
 the higher classes, the more they will be thought of. 
 It is a miserable mistake. Such conduct is calcu- 
 lated to make them ridiculous. I never knew an 
 instance to the contrary. A steady, consistent 
 course in that state of life in which it has pleased 
 God to place a man, is the best means of obtaining 
 the good opinion of our equals, if they are men of 
 sense, and most decidedly of our superiors. To dress 
 one's self or one's family beyond one's proper posi- 
 tion, or otherwise to exceed propriety and prudence 
 in expenditure, under the notion of attaining to 
 greater respectability, is to misunderstand alto- 
 gether the meaning of the word. I am far from 
 wishing to confine my remarks here to subordinates. 
 The folly has less to excuse it in those of my own 
 rank and profession. 
 
 The officers of Pentonville and Portland Prisons 
 will remember the case of - , a prisoner under
 
 IX CHARGE OF PEISONERS. 327 
 
 their charge, but a short time previously, himself 
 an officer in charge of prisoners. Up to his pro- 
 motion to a situation fully corresponding with 
 that of Governor of an ordinary prison, he seems to 
 have been really a respectable person, and to have 
 brought up his children well. At least, he was no 
 hinderer, by immorality or otherwise, as far as I 
 can learn, to his more worthy partner's efforts in 
 this respect, upon whose Christian management the 
 children's conduct reflect, and will continue, I trust, 
 to reflect, the greatest credit. 
 
 Through the kindness of influential persons who 
 had opportunities of observing the family, he got 
 an appointment, rather, perhaps, too much above 
 his natural position (always in itself an evil, unless 
 there be more than ordinary good sense in the indi- 
 vidual, or real godliness). Prosperity and pride, I 
 suppose, bred irreligion and sensuality. He gradu- 
 ally neglected religion, and at last gave it up 
 violated his convictions formed an improper inti- 
 macy (first observed by prisoners) embezzled 
 money fled spent all gave himself up to jus- 
 tice (he said through remorse) was convicted, 
 and, as a felon, was immured in this prison, which 
 a twelvemonth before, or less, he had entered 
 as a visitor, to receive instruction in the discharge 
 of the duties over prisoners, then devolving upon 
 him. 
 
 A ruin in character, and, I fear, in health a 
 miserable and degraded outcast from his family 
 and country that individual stands forth a ter-
 
 328 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 rible warning to officers having the oversight of 
 prisoners. 
 
 Every congregation of prisoners brought under 
 the officer's eye in our own chapel, has many 
 instances of the like descent from station and 
 respectability, in consequence of the habits repro- 
 bated in the rules which form the foundation of 
 these remarks. 
 
 There are yet two points on which I would 
 briefly touch, referred to in the rules. 
 
 The first is, the high duty of always speaking 
 the truth. The officer is bound to report to the 
 Governor all breaches of discipline : let him be 
 careful to do so without .exaggeration or any degree 
 of colouring. If he entertain a doubt as to the 
 individual, let him state it. If he has anything to 
 offer in extenuation, let him not be so ungenerous, 
 or rather so unjust and cruel, as to keep it back. 
 Let him remember, that the prisoner in general can 
 have no witness on his side, and that his officer's 
 word will be taken, if there be contradiction, by 
 the authority which awards punishment, and that 
 the punishment may be lasting as it is severe 
 affecting his condition for life. If the officer's own 
 temper has given occasion to the offence of the pri- 
 soner, let him be manly enough to own it. Let the 
 awarder of punishment, moreover, bear constantly 
 in mind the possibility of provocation on the part of 
 the officer, his liability to err, and the disposition to 
 exaggerate, so natural to man. Let him weigh all 
 extenuating circumstances, and consider well the
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 329 
 
 peculiarities of disposition in prisoners, and the fact 
 that the punishment which is a terror to one is 
 mere play to another. Let him also remember, that, 
 as judge himself, he may greatly err, and in doubt- 
 ful cases, therefore, let him incline to mercy. A 
 slight wrong done to a prisoner may be the cause 
 of irreparable mischief. A considerate allowance of 
 circumstances, or a doubt in his favour, with a faith- 
 ful and affectionate admonition at the time, may be 
 the turning-point of his life for good. 
 
 The other matter is : familiarity of officers with 
 prisoners. The same rules which require the pri- 
 soner to be treated with the utmost humanity, 
 strictly prohibit all intercourse of officers and pri- 
 soners, beyond what is absolutely necessary. This 
 is a wise precaution. Constant intercourse with 
 criminal or fallen characters, unless there be a good 
 object in view, or at least a conscientious sense of 
 duty, leads to the lowering of the moral tone of 
 feeling in the superior, without benefit to the 
 inferior. 
 
 In conclusion, as I said to the officers, whom I 
 addressed more particularly in the first part, I 
 would say now to you, If you would discharge 
 your duties to man aright, you must begin by 
 remembering your obligations to God. If you 
 would learn to hate sin and pity the sinner, you 
 must go to the cross of Calvary yourself, and see 
 what Christ, the spotless and the blessed one, suf- 
 fered for your sin, from love to your soul. Ah ! 
 where should you or I, or the best of men, be, after
 
 330 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 this our mortal existence, if He had not thus died, 
 " the just for the unjust, to bring us to God ? " 
 
 If you desire to rise to the dignity and blessed- 
 ness of the true Christian, living for the glory of 
 God and the good of your fellow creatures, fulfilling 
 aright the duties of that station of life into which it 
 has pleased God to call you, " Seek first the king- 
 dom of God and his righteousness, and all ^these 
 things shall be added unto you." The world says, 
 last. The deceitful heart of man says, last. The 
 enemy of souls says, last. The Redeemer of the 
 soul, and the Judge of all men, says, first. Seek 
 then the Lord, first now "while he may be 
 found, call upon him while he is near." 
 
 Happily, there are instances of officers advancing 
 in personal character, instead of retrograding. My 
 prayer is, that their hands may be strengthened by 
 these remarks that their number may be greatly 
 increased, until the true profession of Christ's holy 
 religion may become as general amongst those who 
 have the oversight of prisoners, as it is now, not- 
 withstanding much improvement, unhappily rare. 
 
 The keeper of the prison in Macedonia (Acts xvi.), 
 in his unconverted state, was so harsh as "to thrust 
 Paul and Silas into the innermost prison, and to make 
 their feet fast in the stocks" and so proud and im- 
 petuous in spirit, that when he thought his prisoners 
 had escaped he drew his sword to take away his life. 
 Of the same man, under the Divine Spirit's power 
 through belief in the truth which Paul preached, 
 we read, " In the same hour of the night, he took
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 331 
 
 them and washed their stripes ; and when he had 
 brought them into his house, he set meat before 
 them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his 
 house." 
 
 SPEAK GENTLY! 
 
 SPEAK gently : it is better far 
 
 To rule by love than fear ; 
 Speak gently, let not harsh words mar 
 
 The good we might do here. 
 
 Speak gently to the young, for they 
 
 Will have enough to bear ; 
 Pass through this life as best they may, 
 
 Tis full of anxious care. 
 
 Speak gently to the aged one, 
 
 Grieve not the care-worn heart ; 
 The sands of life are nearly run, 
 
 Let such in peace depart. 
 
 Speak gently, kindly to the poor, 
 
 Let no harsh tones be heard ; 
 They have enough they must endure, 
 
 "Without an unkind word. 
 
 Speak gently to the erring, know 
 
 That thou thyself art man ; 
 Perchance unkindness made them so, 
 
 Oh win them lack again. 
 
 The foregoing address, in its original form, was 
 placed in the hands of every subordinate officer in 
 the convict service, by order of Sir George Grey, the 
 Secretary of State for the Home Department. 
 
 I would venture now to add a few remarks, for 
 the consideration of superior officers in prisons, and
 
 332 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 those who have the selection and supervision of them 
 in their responsible duties. I do so, I am well aware, 
 at the risk of being considered very presumptuous ; 
 but as, in the first instance, I took up my pen to 
 benefit (if it might be), rather than to please men, 
 so now I feel this to be more plainly my duty, be- 
 cause of the unexpected degree of influence which 
 has since, by the public, been attached to these pages. 
 To begin with officers of my own class. The im- 
 provement in the penal institutions of England has 
 in nothing been more apparent than in the depart- 
 ment of the chaplain. 
 
 The gaol chaplain of the old school, (like another 
 functionary, not to be named,) was an official kept 
 for state occasions, then so terribly frequent, and 
 not for the every-day exercise of his ministry 
 amongst the unhappy and guilty persons committed 
 nominally to his spiritual care. He was taken of 
 necessity from the roughest mould, as one who had 
 to encounter continually the recurrence of appalling 
 spectacles (a single one of which would fill many a 
 man's mind with horror for a lifetime), not as a 
 distant spectator, but standing on the very brink of 
 the fearful precipice down which he witnessed his 
 hapless fellow-men successively hurled. His busi- 
 ness was not to seek to reform the living, and to 
 benefit society in their improvement, but adhering to 
 the traditional usages of his office from Papal times, 
 to administer to those appointed to die "the conso- 
 lations of religion," as the phrase still is, and, in 
 general, " the holy sacrament." The penitent and
 
 IN CHARGE OF PEISONERS. 333 
 
 impenitent alike received comfort at his hands. 
 Remorse and anguish of soul too readily passed 
 for contrition. 
 
 The duty which was thus assigned to the chaplain 
 helped further to unfit him for the real work of a 
 minister of the Gospel. It is not long since an in- 
 valided chaplain of a certain gaol died, and in a 
 cabinet of curiosities which he left, there were noted 
 as articles of vertu of the rarest kind, various relics 
 taken from the persons of notorious highwaymen and 
 murderers whom he had attended to the scaffold, 
 which he was wont in his life to exhibit and dilate 
 on to the curious. Another has just gone to his ac- 
 count, of like character. The judge of assize, a man 
 of humanity and religion, had delayed sentencing a 
 prisoner convicted of a capital offence to the follow- 
 ing morning. In the interval, he found occasion to 
 converse with the chaplain, and asked him his opinion 
 as to what might be a reasonable time within which 
 contrition in a criminal might be looked for. " You 
 mean," says the chaplain, " sufficient to prepare him 
 to die ! I would undertake, my lord, to prepare 
 any man for death in three weeks." " Indeed ! " 
 replied the judge, with an air of incredulity and re- 
 proof. His sense of religion was shocked, and next 
 morning he sentenced the criminal to transportation 
 for life, remarking to the sheriff that he dared not 
 incur the responsibility of leaving the wretched man 
 to die under such an instructor. 
 
 In our tune, probably no part of the church is 
 served by more excellent, faithful, and painstaking
 
 334 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 clergymen than the prisons of England. Their own 
 higher characters and the duties now assigned to 
 them, however, expose them to peculiar difficulties. 
 So long as the chaplain had to confine himself to a 
 mere round of professional acts, and looked indul- 
 gently upon others' derelictions of duty, there was 
 no likelihood of any misunderstanding with the lay 
 officials around him. They lived generally on the 
 best terms with one another ; the governor, in 
 many gaols, frequently reading prayers for the chap- 
 lain when he failed to come. The evil to be ap- 
 prehended now, is the invasion of the governor's 
 province by the chaplain, from over-earnestness in 
 his profession, or a wrong estimate of his position 
 and duties. Discretion is not always the companion 
 of zeal, nor good common sense of undoubted talent 
 or genuine piety. Some chaplains, conscious of their 
 moral superiority, aim at what does not belong to 
 them in a prison official pre-eminence ; or, mistak- 
 ing their vocation, intermeddle with matters of mere 
 discipline ; or, as if they had not responsibility 
 enough in the exercise of their own most onerous 
 duties, seem anxious to take upon them that of 
 governor, and others even in higher authority. 
 These are very great mistakes, and they are too 
 common, producing, in many gaols, disputings and 
 bickerings, which turn off attention from weighty 
 matters, and end in mutual distrust and ill-will. By 
 such means a minister of religion assuredly loses his 
 proper influence. As an order of men, it must be 
 confessed, we are dogmatical and intolerant of others'
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 335 
 
 opinions, above most classes, whether from our oc- 
 cupying the chair of the lecturer and instructor so 
 continually, or from the deference so freely paid to 
 us as clergymen, or from both these causes. 
 
 The highest far of all our duties is, beyond ques- 
 tion, the full and faithful exercise of " the ministry 
 of reconciliation as ambassadors of Christ" to the 
 poor people committed to our charge, in the pulpit 
 and the cell. If this be not interfered with, we have 
 the greatest power for good placed in our hands, and 
 may well bear with many hinderances and disagree- 
 ables in other things. If this our ministry be 
 thoroughly entered into, a thousand offices of sym- 
 pathy and kindness towards our flock will follow, 
 and react again, with God's blessing, upon their 
 spiritual condition. 
 
 To discipline and improve the intellectual capaci- 
 ties of the prisoner, by education, books, and every 
 available means, is a high duty of a chaplain, and 
 a most interesting one. 
 
 A more difficult task than either to the faithful 
 chaplain yet one that cannot be dispensed with 
 is formally to report upon all matters coming legiti- 
 mately before him, to those under whom he is placed, 
 and who have the supreme direction of affairs. In 
 this delicate work, he should keep himself aloof from 
 all party feeling, or prejudice in favour of this or that 
 system, and be above every species of exaggeration. 
 Where other officers are concerned, he should deal 
 frankly with them, as circumstances occur and give 
 opportunity of explanation, and by no means treasure
 
 336 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 up grievances for some favourable occasion. If im- 
 portant, they should have been noticed at once. 
 He should conceal nothing in his reports in con- 
 nexion with religion, or morals, or education, in the 
 prison, or with the treatment of the prisoner, which 
 the authorities ought to know, and cannot know 
 otherwise. In 110 part of his duty will he find more 
 need of prudence and caution, combined with fear- 
 lessness of personal consequences. Having faithfully 
 reported, he transfers the burden to other shoulders, 
 and may return, with satisfaction, to his blessed and 
 honourable work. An assistant-chaplain has not the 
 responsibility of reporting, unless to his principal, or 
 when in complete charge of the prisoners, or when 
 called upon by the governing body. 
 
 I must pass on now to speak of governors and 
 their duties, not indeed in my capacity of chaplain, 
 but as an individual writing for the public. The 
 tendency of power is to absolutism and tyranny. 
 The governor of a gaol, within certain limits defined 
 by the law, is possessed of great power. Invested 
 with the keys of office, he reigns over subordinates 
 and prisoners, in the best visited prisons, almost 
 every hour of the day. His commands must be 
 obeyed. In general, he can inflict fines upon offi- 
 cers, and by law can punish prisoners with solitude, 
 darkness, and bread and water for three days. He 
 can report and recommend both for higher penalties. 
 He has the ear of the visiting magistrates, and if 
 possessed at all of their confidence, or even of good 
 personal address, he can influence their minds to a
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 337 
 
 serious extent. He has control over all witnesses 
 within his dominion, and can make his favour or 
 displeasure sensibly felt. He may worry his officers 
 with impunity, stop their promotion, and refuse 
 satisfactory testimonials to them upon leaving. In 
 nine cases out of ten, the exercise of this petty sove- 
 reignty, when not effectually controlled by superior 
 authority, or public opinion, proves prejudicial to 
 the individual himself, as well as to the establish- 
 ment over which he has been placed. In cases not 
 a few, now within our own knowledge, the tempta- 
 tions of the office in these and other respects were 
 too strong for the possessors, and they have ended 
 their career in utter disgrace and abject poverty, as 
 fugitives from justice, or like the wretched person 
 referred to in a previous part of this chapter. 
 
 There are ungodly governors, who treat all religion 
 as a delusion, or, at best, a merely subordinate agency, 
 and they infuse too readily their own spirit into their 
 officers, from . whom it passes, by easy transition, 
 upon the unhappy prisoner. Some attend the church 
 service only by deputy, or so seldom, and then so 
 listlessly, that every one can see they come for mere 
 show, or detection, or from constraint, not from 
 any interest in that which after all must be admitted, 
 except by infidels, to be the prune agency for reform- 
 ing the characters of the fallen, and restoring them 
 to society as useful members. Many have not an 
 idea in their system of government of any moral in- 
 fluence. The fine for the officer, the dark cell for 
 the prisoner, and a suspecting surveillance over all, 
 
 z
 
 338 A CHAPTER FOR OFFICERS 
 
 is to do everything. The result is, an instant but 
 heartless obedience; mutual distrust amongst officers, 
 with an unanimous dislike to their chief; and a con- 
 fusion of mind in prisoners between acts of folly and 
 of guilt, when they see that one penalty awaits all 
 offences alike. 
 
 There are, happily, governors the reverse of all 
 this (several have already in these pages been referred 
 to), who take the liveliest interest in the moral ele- 
 vation of the prisoner, and encourage everything 
 tending in that direction ; who sustain a high influ- 
 ence over officers and prisoners, by a just and strict 
 discipline, a courteous and kind treatment of subor- 
 dinates ; but most of all, by the example of their own 
 personal character, and diligence in the performance 
 of duty. 
 
 In conclusion, I would add a thought or two for 
 the consideration of magistrates having the over- 
 sight of our gaols. 
 
 This is a prison-palace-building age. Unquestion- 
 ably, good construction is a great point, and public 
 edifices should never be unsightly nor unmeaning 
 objects. It is immensely more important, however, 
 in the question of prison improvement, to consider 
 how the prison shall be officered, than how the ma- 
 terials of brick and mortar shall be disposed. Expe- 
 rience has already too painfully shown how, with all 
 the external and internal architectural improvements 
 of prison building, you may have yet, in the living 
 machinery by which mind and character are to be 
 disciplined, a system of folly or cruelty carried out
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 339 
 
 which would have disgraced even Newgate in 
 Howard's days. The magistrates of Birmingham 
 seem to have thought their work completed when 
 they paid the last hill for the elegant prison struc- 
 ture which adorns their suburbs, whereas it was only 
 then fairly begun. Beyond the selection of a good 
 chaplain, and a few worthy minor officials, they ap- 
 pear to have taken but little pains in getting good 
 officers or they were the most unfortunate of men 
 and then everything was left to find its own level, 
 and the hackneyed " all right" of their functionaries 
 was sufficient attestation of the discharge of their 
 own most important duty as visitors. But not to 
 be tedious in my homily to visiting justices (the 
 greater part of whom, however, I do not address, for 
 they are far above my praise or censure), I would 
 sum up my remarks in a few short sentences. 
 
 1. Do not select for your superior officers men 
 who have prison crotchets, nor yet untried men who 
 have mere paper qualifications. Eor governors, 
 choose men of well-known ability, discretion, and 
 humanity men of fixed principles in religion, and, 
 c&teris paribus, educated gentlemen. Let your- 
 medical men not only have their professional diplo- 
 mas and proper skill, but also good moral charac- 
 ters, and good repute for kindness to the poor. In 
 your chaplains, look for the same qualifications, com- 
 bined with an " aptness to teach," and the well- 
 earned reputation of the painstaking pastor, especially 
 amongst the lower classes and the poor. There are 
 many such in your manufacturing towns and else- 
 
 z2
 
 340 A CHAPTER FOE OFFICERS 
 
 where. Beware of formalists and ceremonialists. 
 There is acting enough among criminals. 
 
 Pension off old servants. Do not imagine that 
 you can make them effective agents of an improved 
 style of discipline by giving them an uniform, with 
 bright buttons, instead of their private clothes ; or 
 the euphonious designation of warders, instead of 
 turnkeys. 
 
 2. Having chosen your officers, and found them 
 efficient, treat them liberally, raise their pay and 
 promote their comfort, and that of their families, in 
 every way, that they may have a beneficial interest 
 in the concern. Dismiss at once the improper. One 
 or two hands less, and the rest above par, will do 
 more real work. It is most preposterous to be neg- 
 ligent or stingy in these things, and profuse to ex- 
 travagance in things of show. Some of my brethren, 
 it is to be feared, domiciled in the spacious and costly 
 edifices which ornament the grand entrances of new 
 prisons (as in Wandsworth new House of Correc- 
 tion), or disfigure it (as in the new City Prison at 
 Holloway), are in danger of getting into the debtors' 
 side of their own prison, from the disproportionate 
 style of their stipends. In itself this is a great mis- 
 take. A large house is a large drawback upon salary, 
 where private means do not exist, and pupils are 
 properly prohibited. "Warders are miserably stinted, 
 and every expense connected with educational and 
 moral improvement grudged in some prisons, built 
 at enormous cost, ostensibly for improved prison dis- 
 cipline. Raise the moral tone of your officers, and
 
 IN CHARGE OF PRISONERS. 341 
 
 you may hope beneficially to influence your crim- 
 inals. 
 
 3. Gentlemen, visit your prisons ; visit visit 
 visit. Not the governor's or chaplain's office, or 
 the board-room merely ; but the prison cells the 
 prison schools the prison church the prison-offi- 
 cers' quarters the prisoners. See with your own 
 eyes ; hear with your own ears. Converse with 
 officers of every grade, concerning their duties. 
 Instruct them how to treat their prisoners. The 
 dignified, unaffected manner, and the gentle voice, 
 which mark the highly born in their intercourse with 
 their inferiors, will in themselves be a lesson to 
 officers, and leave a salutary impression upon the 
 whole establishment. Your presence during divine 
 service (not with friends to gaze, and, least of all, 
 ladies) will show to all its importance in your 
 esteem, and render it unnecessary to enforce attend- 
 ance upon governors. Your perfect supervision will 
 prevent difficulties disorders outbreaks ; it may 
 be, suicides cruelties. Howard's first enterprise of 
 prison benevolence was as a magistrate in his own 
 prison (and no charity is worth much which does not 
 begin at home) . If you must have a day's hunting or 
 shooting in the week, let a previous hard day's work 
 in the prison add a healthful zest to your pastime.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT UPON 
 PRISONERS. 
 
 " And Moses cried unto the Lord ; and the Lord shewed him 
 a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were 
 made sweet." EXODUS xv. 25. 
 
 THE worse a man is, the more need he has of 
 Christian treatment, and there is no hope from any 
 other. Ordinary motives to virtue may have weight 
 with persons before the loss of character and self- 
 respect. After this, they become comparatively 
 powerless, and there is absolute need of the sublime 
 and gracious doctrines of the Gospel to elevate the 
 mind and character. Wherever Christianity has 
 been brought to bear upon criminals, in its real 
 power and blessedness, good has been accomplished, 
 although under the most untoward circumstances : 
 sinners have been brought to Christ and salvation ; 
 and the mass, if not converted unto God, have been 
 marvellously civilized. 
 
 The reader of the foregoing pages will not have 
 failed in collecting and observing many illustra- 
 tions of those principles already. The contrast in 
 the treatment, of convicts under the old system,
 
 EFFECTS OF CURISTIAN TREATMENT, ETC. 343 
 
 and the present, has convinced, I hope, the most 
 sceptical that the application of the Gospel is the 
 best remedy for the worst diseases of man's depraved 
 nature ; and the law of love, the most effectual for 
 restoring to order the wild turbulence of human pas- 
 sions. It may be well, however, to add a few more 
 instances, and to notice some illustrious persons who 
 made full experiment of these truths. 
 
 * " In December, 1798, Dr. Vanderkemp, accom- 
 panied by three brother missionaries, Messrs. Kit- 
 cherer, Edwards, and Edmonds, sailed for the Cape 
 of Good Hope. The vessel in which they sailed 
 was the Hillsborough, a Government transport-ship, 
 bound for New South Wales with convicts. Among 
 these miserable creatures the missionary brethren 
 determined to commence a course of instruction. 
 They were told, indeed, that if they ventured into 
 the hold among the convicts, they would certainly 
 throw a blanket over them, and rob them of what- 
 ever they had in their pockets ; but, notwithstand- 
 ing this representation, the missionaries determined 
 to make the attempt, and happily they were received 
 with every mark of respect, and listened to with the 
 greatest attention. By the kindness and affability 
 of their manners, they in a few days so conciliated 
 the regard of the prisoners, that they found them- 
 selves completely at their ease among them, ventured 
 into the midst of them without the smallest dread, 
 and conversed as freely with them as if they had 
 been their most intimate friends and acquaintances. 
 * Missions in Caffraria. (Nisbet.)
 
 344 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 This was the more remarkable, considering the man- 
 ner in which others were handled by them. One 
 day, before they sailed from Portsmouth, several 
 naval officers came on board in search of some de- 
 serters, who, it was supposed, had concealed them- 
 selves among the convicts ; but no sooner had one of 
 the officers, with his men, attempted to pass the en- 
 trance of the orlop deck, than the prisoners seized 
 him, beat him most unmercifully, and wounded him 
 in the head with his own dagger. Two days after, a 
 cutter, with some officers, and a detachment of ma- 
 rines, came to renew the search ; but the convicts 
 threatening to murder them if they entered the hold, 
 they wisely desisted from the attempt. About the 
 same time, the prisoners engaged in a plot to murder 
 the officers of the Hillsborough, seize the vessel, and 
 carry her over to France ; and, though the conspi- 
 racy was providentially discovered and defeated, yet 
 this did not hinder them, about ten days after, from 
 entertaining the horrid design of sinking the vessel, 
 and escaping in the boats ; and, with this view, many 
 of them had even found means to cut off their chains 
 and handcuffs. 
 
 " Such was the description of men among whom 
 the missionaries sought to labour at the hazard of 
 their lives. About two hundred and forty of these 
 miserable creatures were chained in pairs, hand to 
 hand or leg to leg, in the orlop deck, to which no 
 light could find admission except at the hatchways. 
 At first, the darkness of the place, the rattling of the 
 chains, and the dreadful imprecations of the prison-
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 345 
 
 ers, suggested ideas of the most horrid nature, and 
 combined to form a lively picture of the infernal 
 regions. Besides, in a short time, a putrid fever 
 broke out among the convicts, and carried off no 
 fewer than thirty-four of them during the voyage to 
 the Cape of Good Hope. The state of the prison was 
 now loathsome beyond description, yet, in this as 
 well as in the hospital, surrounded with infection, 
 disease, and death, did the missionaries daily labour 
 to pluck these brands from everlasting burnings. 
 Nor did they seem to labour in vain. In a short 
 time, a number of these unhappy outcasts appeared 
 to be impressed with anxious concern about their 
 souls. Some of them even agreed to have a prayer- 
 meeting among themselves 'three times a week* 
 Many who once could scarcely speak but to blas- 
 pheme, had learned the songs of Zion, and their 
 horrid imprecations were changed into the language 
 of humble praise. There even seemed reason to hope, 
 that some of those who died, departed in the faith 
 of Christ, and were admitted into ' the general as- 
 sembly and church of the first-born,' to unite with 
 them in the sacred services of the temple of God on 
 high." 
 
 The following is an account, given in " The Con- 
 vict Ship," by Dr. Browning, of the results of 
 Christian treatment upon criminals, many of whom 
 were doubly and trebly convicted felons :
 
 346 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 " Impression Bay, Tasman's Peninsula, 
 ff Van Piemen's Land, April 8. 
 
 " Arrived tliis morning. Debarkation has taken 
 place. Voyage completed in one uniformly interest- 
 ing style. Not one punishment on board. The be- 
 haviour of the prisoners surprised everybody, and 
 themselves more than any. I can scarcely say I re- 
 ceived a complaint from the petty officers during the 
 passage. Just before they debarked, the prisoners 
 unanimously voted an address to me, which is full of 
 interesting statements, and is signed on behalf of all 
 by the petty officers and heads of messes. They 
 speak of the triumph of Christian instruction and 
 faithful kindness over mere brute force. 
 
 " The men were given to me in double irons ; I 
 debarked them without an iron clanking among them. 
 I am told that this is the first and only instance of 
 convicts removed from Norfolk Island having their 
 irons struck off during the voyage, and being landed 
 totally unfettered. They are almost uniformly cross- 
 ironed, and often chained down to the deck, every- 
 body afraid of them. I was among them at all 
 hours, and the prison-doors were never once shut 
 during the day. 
 
 " To God be all the glory 1 The Gospel of his 
 well-beloved Son, and gracious answers to believing 
 prayer, have been all the means. All is of Christ 
 Jesus!" 
 
 Similar results followed a second deportation in 
 1847, by Dr. Browning, of convicts :
 
 TPON PRISONERS. 347 
 
 " We had no punishments ; improper speech had 
 almost entirely vanished ; and the general behaviour 
 of the men excited amazement and admiration : con- 
 sidering I had so few petty officers, it was equal, if 
 not superior, to that of our first body of Norfolk 
 Island men. J. K. W., whom I made my clerk and 
 right-hand man, I found to be a Christian, brought 
 to the saving knowledge of Christ through the deep 
 and bitter waters of affliction. One after another 
 was added to the number of the declared and ap- 
 parently real followers of Christ, until it reached 
 twenty-four, of whom about half seem to have been 
 turned to the Lord since they came on board. 
 
 " One man, who had harboured a spirit of revenge 
 towards a fellow-prisoner ever since he was detected 
 in a plot to ruin him on their passage from. England, 
 embarked in this vessel with the fullest intention of 
 taking the life of his enemy ; but since he came on 
 board, light had gradually shone into his mind, giv- 
 ing him to see himself in his true character ; and 
 last Sabbath, while at church in the prison, he was 
 brought to cast himself at the feet of Jesus, confess 
 his sins, forgive his enemy, and cherish towards him 
 a spirit of peace and love. 
 
 " The power of Christianity on the minds and man- 
 ners of the men, both in this trip and the former one, 
 has exceeded anything of the kind I ever witnessed 
 either at sea or on shore." 
 
 Such is Christian instruction and discipline in the 
 hands of one whose motives and character are con- 
 sistent enough to stand the watchful and experienced
 
 318 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 scrutiny of bad men. Such an officer is looked up 
 to almost as a being of a superior kind, and the infe- 
 rior pays homage to the superior nature, and dreads 
 his rebuke more than the lash or fetters of iron. 
 
 The next illustration is taken from a most inter- 
 esting book, published by Hamilton and Adams 
 ("The Seed of the Righteous ") : 
 
 " It would be wrong to pass unnoticed the bless- 
 ings which attended Mr. Rogers's labours " (Rev. 
 Thomas Rogers, who about the beginning of this 
 century entered on those labours), writes his bio- 
 grapher, " as Chaplain to the House of Correction at 
 "Wakefield, which he found in a deplorable state of 
 moral disorganisation ; its inmates under no moral 
 or religious restraint, and kept under only by force. 
 On the first Sunday morning, he beheld nearly three 
 hundred prisoners, forty or fifty of wliom were in 
 irons; and such was their conduct, their restless- 
 ness, fierceness, and contempt, that, as he wished the 
 Governor good morning, Mr. Rogers said, 'You will 
 never see me here again ; I had never before such an 
 idea of the infernal regions.' The Governor assured 
 him they had never behaved so well before. By 
 faithful perseverance, however, and the adoption of 
 a judicious line of conduct towards the prisoners, 
 the chapel soon presented a congregation as orderly 
 and well-behaved as any other place of Christian 
 worship. 
 
 " In his weekly visits to the wards he soon won 
 upon their attention, and a desire to read was mani- 
 fested; and, through the influence of some over
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 349 
 
 others, the wards ceased to be the scenes of daily 
 uproar and confusion. 
 
 " The sick-room engaged much of his attention, 
 and there is good evidence that some left it healed 
 in soul as well as in body, and that others went from 
 the sick bed of a prison to join the church of the 
 First-born in the bright and holy regions of heaven. 
 So effectual were Mr. Rogers's labours, that irons 
 ice re no longer necessary to restrain the convicts, nor 
 severity exercised ; and many testimonies, given by 
 visitors and strangers, served to prove that no estab- 
 lishment of the kind in the kingdom could exhibit 
 more of order, comfort, and everything proper, than 
 this one did. Such was the result of Christian 
 patience, forbearance, and decision ; and the exhibi- 
 tion of true religion, not in precept only, but in, 
 what is far more persuasive, example." 
 
 Some most interesting instances of the like kind 
 are given in "The Prisoners of Australia." (Hat- 
 chard.) 
 
 11 Providentially, this man," says the writer, " had 
 been assigned to the service of the Agricultural Com- 
 pany, and under the Christian teaching of Sir Ed- 
 ward Parry, both he and his wife had, humanly 
 speaking, been led to see the folly of worldly wicked- 
 ness, and the deep importance of those better things 
 which now formed their highest privilege and con- 
 solation. Her husband, she said, had long since 
 become a reformed character, and was now all that 
 she could wish as a Christian husband and father. 
 This account was afterwards affirmed to me by
 
 S50 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 others, who spoke of him as an honest, industrious, 
 and most deserving man ; and I also found that he 
 gave many sweet evidences of his sincerity as a pro- 
 fessing Christian. He never entered upon his daily 
 labours, nor lay down to rest at night, without read- 
 ing a portion from the Bihle, and gathering his little 
 family around him for prayer and thanksgiving. 
 He devoted all his leisure hours to the instruction 
 of his children in reading, writing, and arithmetic ; 
 and many there are who might add their testimony 
 to mine, that these children, who never failed in 
 their attendance on the church services, behaved with 
 a quietness and reverential attention during the time 
 of such services, that might prove them examples to 
 many of our own more civilized families at home, 
 who are educated with far higher advantages. These 
 blessings were among the many fruits of the mission- 
 ary exertions of Sir Edward Parry and his now sainted 
 lady, who both lived in the grateful affections of many 
 a chastened heart long after they had ceased to take 
 a personal share in the interests of that far- distant 
 colony. And if this be a case rather of exception 
 than of general result, it is by no means a singular 
 instance of excellent conduct, good order, and, at 
 least, of moral reformation among the convict families 
 of Port Stephen and other settlements connected 
 with it, under the admirable government both of Sir 
 Edward Parry and his talented successor. I would 
 also instance the establishments of St. Helier's and 
 St. Aubyn's, the joining possessions of that successor 
 and his excellent brother, situated on the border of
 
 UPON PRISONEKS. 351 
 
 the Hunter's River, about one hundred and eighty 
 miles north-west of Sydney. The former has been 
 already noticed by Dr. Lang, in his publication on 
 Australia, as the best-organised farm in the colony. 
 And why ? Because the blessing of God was made 
 the paramount interest, and Christian instruction 
 the basis of its moral discipline ; while every encou- 
 ragement has been given to the efforts of industry 
 and good conduct, and vice been visited with firm 
 and judicious coercion. Ear removed from the 
 superintending care of any clergy, the beloved pro- 
 prietor of this extensive property had not neglected 
 to provide for the spiritual welfare of his exiled de- 
 pendants. Divine service and a sermon were regu- 
 larly read to them ; together with rest, and every 
 means of instruction afforded them on the Sabbath- 
 day which circumstances permitted. Rewards were 
 also occasionally distributed to the industrious and 
 well-conducted, both among the men and women. 
 Regular hours were preserved, and good order main- 
 tained as far as possible, where the master was him- 
 self necessarily removed from the personal charge of 
 his estate ; but never, I believe, were the returning 
 visits of an absent master hailed with more grateful 
 and cordial welcome than those of him who was be- 
 loved, respected, and honoured by all, even by those 
 who also feared him. The establishment of St. 
 Aubyn's was favoured with yet higher advantages ; 
 for although neither so extensive nor so advanced in 
 its exterior operations, it had the privilege of a mas- 
 ter's immediate superintendence, who was himself
 
 352 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 peculiarly fitted for the duties of an arduous and 
 most difficult stewardship. Here, too, the whole 
 structure was raised upon the solid groundwork of 
 religious principles. Yes, and under such circum- 
 stances of discouragement as few can imagine who 
 know nothing of Australia, who have never ex- 
 perienced the persevering opposition which, perhaps, 
 in every country, more or less, follows upon the 
 tread of a Christian's influence ; but above all, where 
 such influence is isolated, unsupported, ridiculed, 
 and often slandered ! Nevertheless, amidst all this 
 the respected proprietor of St. Aubyn's steadily pur- 
 sued a course of government which has been singu- 
 larly blessed to many ; and' by united firmness in 
 discipline, and uniform kindness and consideration 
 towards his convict labourers, few masters in the 
 colony have been so influential as himself in pro- 
 moting the reformation and well-being of his de- 
 pendants. 
 
 Morning and evening his family assembled for 
 religious worship, at which all his household domes- 
 tics were required to attend. Every Sunday morn- 
 ing he met the convicts of his farm establishment 
 in a large barn, arranged for divine service as 
 well as the nature of the building would admit, his 
 own family being also present; while the Roman 
 Catholics, whose attendance was not compelled, 
 were, nevertheless, required to appear neatly dressed 
 and ranged with the others, as prepared for prayers, 
 that none might absent himself from the camp on 
 that hallowed day, unnoticed by the master's eye :
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 353 
 
 but such as declined uniting in the Protestant 
 prayer were expected to return quietly to their 
 respective huts during the hours of divine service, 
 that they might at least have time and opportunity 
 for private devotion, if they chose to avail themselves 
 of it, according to the dictates of their conscience. 
 The remainder of the day was equally marked as a 
 Sabbath-day, no work being permitted but that of 
 actual necessity ; even the family dinner was dressed 
 on the preceding day, that the example of the mas- 
 ter might prove to the servants how sacredly impor- 
 tant he considered those duties to be which were 
 enforced upon themselves ; and to all this were added 
 affectionate exhortation and counsel whenever cir- 
 cumstances called forth interference, reproof, or 
 advice. Another admirable feature of judicious 
 management was the permission granted to the 
 prisoners of St. Aubyn's, of working after their 
 appointed hours of service for pecuniary remunera- 
 tion, according to the rate of free labour. Such 
 devoted and disinterested care could not fail of pro- 
 ducing vital benefits; nor do I hesitate to assert 
 that many who came to their destined captivity 
 ignorant, depraved, and profane, have become faith- 
 ful servants both of God and man ; manifesting 
 their genuine repentance, and sincere desire to de- 
 part from all iniquity, by a change of heart and 
 life, which soon springs up in fruits of grace and 
 reformation. Some such have expressed to me with 
 much feeling, that to the pious influence of their 
 invaluable master and mistress, under God's bless- 
 
 A A
 
 354 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 ing, they trace that change and happier state of 
 mind, and have deplored that their earlier career 
 had not heen blessed with such guidance and guar- 
 dianship. 
 
 The " Memoir of Elizabeth Pry" is full of illustra- 
 tions of the amazing power of the Gospel over the 
 minds of the fallen, in the hands of devoted Chris- 
 tians. The following extracts will not be considered 
 here out of place. The first is a description of the 
 female wards in Newgate, given by a gentleman 
 who visited the gaol one fortnight after the adop- 
 tion, by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City, 
 of the new rules proposed by Mrs. Pry's Committee 
 for the better regulation, discipline, and instruction 
 of female prisoners : 
 
 " I went and requested permission to see Mrs. 
 Pry, which was shortly obtained, and I was con- 
 ducted by a turnkey to the entrance of the women's 
 wards. On my approach, no loud or dissonant 
 sounds or angry voices indicated that I was about 
 to enter a place which, I was creditably assured, 
 had long had for one of its titles that of ' Hell above 
 ground.' The court-yard into which I was admit- 
 ted, insteadfiof being peopled with beings scarcely 
 human, blaspheming, fighting, tearing each other's 
 hair, or gaming with a filthy pack of cards for the 
 very clothes they wore, which often did not suffice 
 even for decency, presented a scene where stillness 
 and propriety reigned. I was conducted by a de- 
 cently-dressed person, the newly-appointed yard's- 
 woman, to the door of a ward, where, at the head of
 
 UPON PEISONERS. 355 
 
 a long table, sat a lady belonging to the Society of 
 Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen 
 women prisoners, who were engaged in needlework 
 around it. Each wore a clean-looking blue apron 
 and bib, with a ticket having a number on it sus- 
 pended from her neck by a red tape. They all rose 
 on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then, at 
 a signal given, resumed their seats and employments. 
 Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I 
 observed upon their countenances an air of self- 
 respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their 
 improved character, and the altered position in which 
 they were placed. I afterwards visited the other 
 wards, which were the counterparts of the first." 
 
 It need scarcely be added, that the book read to 
 those poor people was the Word of God. 
 
 The following account of one of this singularly 
 eminent woman's visits to a convict-ship, taken from 
 the same volume, is exquisitely touching : 
 
 " The last time that Mrs. Fry was on board the 
 Maria, whilst she lay at Deptford, was one of those 
 solemn and interesting occasions that leave a lasting 
 impression on the minds of those who witness them. 
 There was great uncertainty whether the poor con- 
 victs would see their benefactress again. She stood 
 at the door of the cabin, attended by her friends and 
 the captain; the women on the quarter-deck faei 
 them. The sailors, anxious to see what was gom, 
 on, clambered into the rigging, on to the capstan, or 
 mingled in the outskirts of the group. The silence 
 was profound, when Mrs. Fry opened her Bible, and, 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 in a clear, audible voice, read a portion from it. 
 The crews of the other vessels in the tier, attracted 
 by the novelty of the scene, leant over the ships on 
 either side, and listened apparently with great atten- 
 tion ; she closed the Bible, and after a short pause 
 knelt down on the deck, and implored a blessing on 
 this work of Christian charity from that God who, 
 though one may sow and another water, can alone 
 give the increase. Many of the women wept bit- 
 terly, all seemed touched ; when she left the ship 
 they followed her with their eyes and their blessings, 
 until, her boat having passed within another tier of 
 vessels, they could see her no more." 
 
 But it may be said, Elizabeth Ery was a person of 
 no common-place mind and education, and those 
 natural and acquired advantages would have given 
 her a powerful influence, independent of religion, 
 over the fallen of her own sex ; and so they doubt- 
 less would have done, combined as these were in her 
 with a kind and sympathizing heart. But she never 
 could have reached the conscience by such means, 
 nor have kindled hope within their breasts, were she 
 not able as a believer, who had obtained mercy her- 
 self, to point them to Him who spurned not from 
 his feet the woman that was a sinner, but pronounced 
 so full and gracious a pardon upon the penitent ; and 
 it is beyond question, that were it not for the love of 
 Christ constraining her, the thought of such a work 
 would never Jiave entered her mind ; or, if enter- 
 tained for awhile, her natural timidity, exquisite 
 sensitiveness, and the very purity of her character,
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 357 
 
 would have made her shrink from its accomplish- 
 ment. What woman but a Christian ever devoted 
 herself to a work so arduous, self-denying, and re- 
 pulsive as this, without fainting or wearying, to the 
 end of life ? 
 
 I pass now from. Elizabeth Pry devoting the prime 
 of her life, the gifts of her mind, and the graces of 
 her person, to her Divine Master's service, in seek- 
 ing to reclaim the fallen of her own sex, to a woman 
 of like benevolence in humble life, who having been 
 first brought herself " out of darkness into light,", 
 from scepticism and obduracy of heart, in fact, 
 to be a meek and lowly follower of Jesus, felt a 
 longing to impart, to prisoners and the poor, the 
 blessings which she had received, and was enabled, 
 in the providence of God, to do so in a very high 
 degree, not only to the fallen of her own SQX, but to 
 male criminals also, in the gaol of Yarmouth Sarah 
 Martin. 
 
 Speaking of the moral and religious instruction 
 communicated in that prison, Captain Williams, 
 Government Inspector, reports : 
 
 " With regard to this branch of my inquiry, the 
 particulars are of so singular a nature, that it may 
 be better to transcribe the notes made at the time. 
 
 "Sunday, November 29th, 1835. Attended Di- 
 vine service in the morning at the prison. The male 
 prisoners only were assembled ; a female, resident in 
 the town, officiated ; her voice was exceedingly melo- 
 dious, her delivery emphatic, and her enunciation 
 exceedingly distinct. The service was the Liturgy
 
 358 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 of the Church of England ; two psalms were sung 
 by the whole of the prisoners, and extremely well, 
 much better than I have frequently heard in our 
 best-appointed churches. A written discourse, of 
 her own composition, was read by her ; it was of a 
 purely moral tendency, involving no doctrinal points, 
 and admirably suited to the hearers. 
 
 " During the performance of the service the pri- 
 soners paid the profoundest attention and most 
 narked respect, and, as far as it is possible to 
 j udge, appeared to take a devout interest. Evening 
 service was read by her afterwards to the female 
 prisoners. This most estimable person has, for the 
 long period of seventeen years, almost exclusively 
 given up her time to bettering the wretched condi- 
 tion of the prisoners who are confined in the gaol. 
 She is generally there four or five times every week, 
 and since her first commencing these charitable 
 labours she has never omitted being present a single 
 Sabbath-day. On the week-days she pursues, with 
 equal zeal, a regular course of instruction with the 
 male and female prisoners. Many of the prisoners 
 have been taught to read and write, of which very 
 satisfactory examples were produced ; and the men 
 are instructed and employed in binding books, and 
 cutting out of bone, stilettoes, salt-spoons, wafer- 
 stamps, and similar articles, which are disposed of 
 for their benefit. The females are supplied with 
 work according to their several abilities, and their 
 earnings are paid to them on their discharge; in 
 several instances they have earned sufficient to put
 
 UPON 1'UISONERS. 359 
 
 themselves in decent apparel, and be fit for service. 
 After their discharge they are, by the same means, 
 frequently provided with work, until enabled to pro- 
 cure it for themselves. Only a single instance is re- 
 corded of any insult being offered her, which was by 
 a prisoner of notoriously bad character ; upon this 
 she gave up her attendance upon the ward to which 
 he belonged : after his discharge, the other prisoners 
 came forward and entreated most earnestly that she 
 would be pleased to resume her visits. 
 
 " There are several cases where her attentions 
 have been successful, and have apparently reclaimed 
 the parties, if the continued good conduct of the dis- 
 charged be admitted as satisfactory proof. That of 
 four smugglers is singular, from the fact that, upon 
 their discharge after a long imprisonment, they ad- 
 dressed the felons, and entreated them to listen to 
 her advice and treat her with respect." 
 
 Six years subsequently to this period, the same 
 gentleman, in his official report, makes the following 
 remarks : 
 
 " There being no chaplain regularly appointed by 
 the town-council to perform the duties and take the 
 responsibility of the office as required by law, I am 
 of opinion that no time should be lost in making 
 the appointment ; the more so, as that extraneous 
 assistance which has for so many years been so 
 kindly and effectually rendered by the exemplary 
 Miss Martin is now withdrawn for ever. 
 
 " This admirable person, of humble condition, but 
 exalted mind, for a period of twenty-three years, and
 
 360 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 until broken down in health for a short time before 
 her death, devoted all her energies to the moral and 
 religious instruction and reclamation of the other- 
 wise utterly neglected prisoners in this gaol. Her 
 influence over those who came within the pale of 
 her attention was great, although her means were 
 small, and her manner simple and unpretending in 
 the extreme. She was no titular Sister of Charity, 
 but was silently felt and acknowledged to be one, by 
 the many outcast and destitute persons who re- 
 ceived encouragement from her lips, and relief from 
 her hands, and by the few who were witnesses of her 
 good works." 
 
 As the description of the sermon, which Captain 
 Williams heard, may leave a wrong impression, and, 
 perhaps, different from what that gentleman meant 
 to convey, when he said that it " involved no doc- 
 trinal points," i.e., no abstract or abstruse disquisi- 
 tion in theology, it appears due to her memory to 
 give here a short extract from one of her sermons : 
 
 " c The Lord will have mercy : he will abundantly 
 pardon.' Mark the riches of the blessing. Mercy 
 in Christ, pardon for his sake. This is just what 
 we need. Oh ! for a heart to embrace it ! Mercy 
 is an attribute of God, not opposed to his holiness, 
 nor at war with justice ; but it meets the eye of 
 man in the incarnate Jehovah, the Saviour ; for he 
 displayed the Divine holiness in enduring the curse 
 that sin deserved, for our salvation. He magnified 
 justice by rendering perfect obedience to the Divine 
 law, and making an atonement for sin ; and now
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 361 
 
 the mercy which shines in his blessed work is set 
 before us to engage our love, our gratitude, and our 
 obedience. And can you resist it ? Are you not 
 subdued by the loving-kindness of Jesus, of your 
 God ? Reflect on what is herein proposed to you. 
 To make your guilt-stained soul as pure as an un- 
 fallen angel ; to make you whiter than snow by the 
 precious blood of Christ ; to create a new heart, and 
 renew a right spirit within you ; to remove the filthy 
 rags of self-righteousness from your soul, and clothe 
 you with the righteousness of Christ." 
 
 In this sermon may be seen the constraining 
 motive of Sarah Martin's life, and the secret of her 
 strength. 
 
 Since writing the above, the following has fallen 
 into my hands. It is an account given, by a convict 
 to me, of the effects produced upon his fellow-pri- 
 soners at Woolwich, in consequence of the changes 
 introduced in the hulks by Sir George Grey, who, 
 having determined upon the thorough reform of 
 these establishments in all things possible, concluded 
 that the first thing to be done was to place them 
 under the best Christian influence. 
 
 " At this time," writes the convict, " there was 
 service once on a Sunday on board the Justitia ; in 
 the week, no religious instruction, no school, no 
 library, no care exhibited as to the moral improve- 
 ment of the prisoners, from week's end to week's 
 end. This was a lamentable state of things ; but in 
 the hospital ship, the almost total want of all these 
 advantages was still more striking. When a prisoner
 
 362 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 died, he was laid in a coffin no shroud, nor any- 
 thing but a little sawdust under the body ; and, in 
 a day or two, two men carried the coffin to the 
 burial-ground, and placed it in the earth. Notice 
 was then sent to the chaplain that a body was ready 
 for having the funeral service read over it ; and in a 
 day or two more, he came down, went to the grave, 
 attended by some one, and read the ritual, or part of 
 it. When he did not come during the day to read 
 prayers, they were read by one of the officers, or one 
 of the prisoners. In the latter part of the period 
 preceding his (the chaplain's) death, the writer read 
 them every night, in presence of an officer. 
 
 " After his death, the appointment of a new chap- 
 lain was looked for by the prisoners with consider- 
 able curiosity, I may say, anxiety. The complaints 
 and observations as to the conduct of the former 
 were loud and severe, his treatment of the sick espe- 
 cially, and also his mode of neglecting the corpse. 
 He never spoke to a prisoner unless from necessity ; 
 but seemed, from the time he came on board, uneasy 
 to get ashore again as soon as possible. 
 
 " The newly-appointed chaplain arrived (the Rev. 
 Mr. Moran). Now indeed was a change. I re- 
 member well his first arrival, attended by two gen- 
 tlemen. He went round to every bed that was 
 occupied in the hospital, announced himself, talked 
 (and prayed where desirable) to all of them in a 
 kind manner, and took an early opportunity of ad- 
 dressing the convalescents. The following morning 
 he read prayers. All those able to be up, went down
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 363 
 
 to the lower deck, under an opening, from whence 
 all he said might be distinctly heard on the upper 
 one ; he read the prayers, and afterwards expounded 
 a portion of Scripture ; and if at any time thence- 
 forth a prisoner wished any particular passage com- 
 mented upon, he had only to write it out, and place 
 it between the leaves of the chaplain's book, when 
 his object was attained. 
 
 " Bibles, prayer-books, and hymn-books were dis- 
 tributed to each bed; and when it could be done 
 without annoying any particular patient, a hymn 
 was sung at the commencement of the service each 
 day. A desk was made for the chaplain, and one 
 attached to it for the prisoner who acted as clerk. 
 On Sunday, service was regularly performed at a set 
 hour, followed by a sermon we never had sermons 
 in hospital before and everything conducted in a 
 most regular manner. A library was got for the 
 use of the prisoners ; and the two gentlemen who 
 came with the chaplain proved to be religious in- 
 structors, who daily attended to the sick, and read 
 to them : the chaplain himself also visiting those in 
 bed daily, and praying with them where he judged 
 it necessary. All this gave the prisoners very great 
 pleasure. They felt that they had now a friend they 
 could confide their sorrows to, and one who to a 
 most pleasing manner added a very benevolent cha- 
 racter. Soon one of the patients died ; and now a 
 great degree of excitement was evinced as to his 
 mode of burial, whether, as the men said, he 
 would be buried, as before, 'like a dog.' 'But,'
 
 364 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 said they, ' Mr. Moran is a good man ; he won't do 
 that.' Suddenly, in a day or two, some one an- 
 nounced the moving of the funeral procession. 
 Every one who could, ran on deck to see it ; and 
 even those in bed crawled to the port-holes to look 
 at it. Mr. Moran, in his surplice, led. The body 
 was borne next, covered with a pall, carried by four 
 men, and followed by all the prisoners belonging to 
 his (the dead man's) ward. The feeling evinced 
 was not at the moment loud, but it was deep. 
 Many an eye that had been a stranger to tears, now 
 glittered with them ; and when all was past, then 
 the praises of the ' new parson ' were indeed loud, 
 numerous, and heartfelt. * He does care for us,' 
 said one ; ' God bless him ! ' said another ; ' Let us 
 hope he will himself go to heaven,' said another, 
 again ; ' for he would get us there if he could. See 
 how he visits us, and prays by us ! ' The contrast 
 was complete. The conduct of the prior chaplain 
 was the constant theme of blasphemous abuse ; and 
 it need not be said that this was not unfrequently a 
 medium of scurrility against religion altogether ; 
 for prisoners are very severe in their observations on 
 the conduct of their religious teachers. Nothing 
 escapes them; and the negligence of the minister is 
 sure to do injury to the cause of religion itself. But 
 there was no more of this after Mr. Moran came, 
 he went through his duties in such a devout and 
 careful manner." 
 
 Erom the perusal of the foregoing facts, I trust 
 the reader will have strengthened in his mind, the
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 365 
 
 persuasion which experience has fixed upon my own, 
 that the pure and benign religion of the gospel is 
 the most powerful, and the most economical influ- 
 ence which can be brought to bear upon criminals, 
 for their reformation or the good of society ; and if 
 this be so, then, doubtless, upon the population of 
 which they are unfavourable specimens. Of no 
 other law or system can it be affirmed, that it "is 
 perfect, converting the soul." Assuredly, if we 
 desire success in our labours, whether devoted to 
 the reformation of the convicted and criminal out- 
 cast, or to the more worthy object of preventing 
 crime and infamy by the removal of their causes, 
 we must do so on the basis of a scriptural Chris- 
 tianity, which, implanting in the human breast the 
 fear of God, gives the highest sanction to human 
 laws, and the most enduring motives to obedience to 
 authority, and although infinitely pure in itself, as 
 well as in the source from which it springs, extends 
 to suffering and guilty man a very real sympathy, 
 which nothing else in this world does. It is " the 
 leaves of the tree of life," which are appointed for 
 "the healing of the people," and true religion 
 alone can make sweet the bitter waters of guilt and 
 sorrow. 
 
 One name, above all others, deserves to be men- 
 tioned in this connexion, that of the illustrious 
 John Howard, the friend of the friendless and the 
 benefactor of mankind, to whose virtues, when the 
 world was doing homage, it was attesting un- 
 consciously (partly from the unostentatiousness of
 
 366 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 his piety, but much more from the anti-evangelical, 
 if not Socinian leaven of his literary friends, upon 
 whom his own deficiency in letters made him 
 too dependent) the triumphs of a pure faith, and 
 of the believing prayers of an humble follower of 
 Christ. 
 
 Concerning this great man the following extract 
 from the Third Report of Inspectors will supply 
 some interesting information, and at the same time 
 serve to show how men, to be presumed sound in 
 their creed, whilst extolling his merits, resolve 
 them all into little more than Christian courage, 
 or a concern for the physical sufferings of pri- 
 soners : 
 
 " The earliest steps which were taken in the im- 
 provement of prison discipline undoubtedly origin- 
 ated in the public exposure made by Mr. Howard of 
 the deplorable condition of our gaols. 
 
 " He has himself ascribed the commencement of 
 that interest, which he so long and ardently felt in 
 the mitigation of the sufferings of prisoners, to an 
 incident which occurred in the early part of his life. 
 On his voyage to Lisbon, in 1755, which city he 
 designed to visit immediately after the earthquake 
 by which it had been destroyed, the packet in which 
 he sailed was taken by a French privateer. The 
 barbarous treatment which he, with the rest of the 
 passengers, experienced in the castle of Brest, in a 
 dungeon in which they were all confined for several 
 days, led him, in the first instance, to seek the 
 mitigation of the sufferings of such of his country-
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 367 
 
 men as were imprisoned in the places where he 
 had himself been confined in Prance. This humane 
 feeling gained further strength and development 
 from what he observed in the prisons of his own 
 country, and particularly from what came under 
 his immediate notice, when some years after, 1773, 
 he was high sheriff of the county of Bedford. He 
 refers, in his account of the prisons of England and 
 Wales, to the circumstances with which his dis- 
 charge of the duties of that office made him ac- 
 quainted, as those which excited him to undertake 
 his humane journeys of inspection, in the course of 
 which he visited most of the prisons in England. 
 In 1774 he was examined on this subject by the 
 House of Commons, and had the honour of receiving 
 the thanks of that body. 
 
 "Together with the remonstrances of this dis- 
 tinguished benefactor of mankind, another circum- 
 stance powerfully co-operated to produce a general 
 desire for the improvement of our prisons. At the 
 termination of the American war, the loss of our 
 transatlantic dependencies had deprived us of those 
 remote colonies to which we had been accustomed 
 for a long time to transport many of our convicted 
 felons, and imposed on us the necessity of imme- 
 diately devising a substitute for the system of trans- 
 portation which had been hitherto pursued. 
 
 " The result of this combination of humane re- 
 monstrance and political necessity appears to have 
 been, a general desire that something should be 
 speedily done to improve our prison discipline. The
 
 363 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 first impulse to public feeling was given by the 
 labours of Howard ; and great is the obligation 
 which the cause of humanity owes to the unwearied 
 industry and ardent benevolence of this distin- 
 guished philanthropist. His labours were rewarded 
 by that deep and national feeling of commiseration 
 for the sufferings of prisoners, which followed that 
 faithful exposure of them, which his earnest wishes 
 for their mitigation and his truly Christian courage 
 prompted him to make. But the attention of this 
 excellent man seems to have been almost absorbed 
 by the physical sufferings which it was his lot to 
 witness. The very magnitude and intensity of those 
 sufferings seem to have prevented him from looking 
 beyond them to a consideration of the moral evils of 
 imprisonment, which are even still more deplorable 
 than the prisoner's privations and discomfort, and 
 without a proper remedy for which, even an improve- 
 ment of his physical condition is but too often a 
 greater incentive to his further advancement in crime 
 and vice. The impulse, however, was thus given to 
 the desire and demand for prison improvement ; it 
 was prompt and decisive, and to Howard the praise 
 is most justly due." 
 
 After his death, a statue, by Bacon, was erected to 
 his memory in St. Paul's,* from funds collected to do 
 him honour whilst living, against his most earnest 
 remonstrances. It was the first monument placed 
 
 * It is one of the four uniform statues of illustrious English- 
 men occupying the angles of the aisles and transepts.
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 369 
 
 in that cathedral. On its pedestal is inscribed as 
 follows : 
 
 This extraordinary Man had the Fortune to be honoured whilst 
 
 living 
 In the manner which his Virtues deserved ; 
 
 He received the Thanks 
 
 Of both Houses of the British and Irish Parliaments, 
 For his eminent Services rendered to his Country and to Mankind. 
 
 Our national Prisons and Hospitals, 
 
 Improved upon the Suggestions of his Wisdom, 
 
 Bear Testimony to the Solidity of his Judgment, 
 
 And to the Estimation in which he was held. 
 
 In every Part of the Civilized World, 
 
 Which he traversed to reduce the Sum of Human Misery ; 
 
 From the Throne to the Dungeon his Name was mentioned 
 
 With Respect, Gratitude, and Admiration. 
 
 His Modesty alone 
 Defeated various efforts that were made during his Life 
 
 To erect this Statue, 
 
 Which the Publick has now consecrated to his Memoiy. 
 He was born at Hackney, in the County of Middlesex, 
 
 Sept. Hd. MDCCXXVI. 
 
 The early Part of his Life he spent in Retirement, 
 Residing principally upon his paternal Estate, 
 
 At Cardington, in Bedfordshire ; 
 For which County he served the office of Sheriff in the 
 
 Year MDCCLXXIII. 
 He expired at Cherson in Eussian Tartary, on the xx th of Jan. 
 
 MDCCXC, 
 
 A Victim to the perilous and benevolent Attempt 
 To ascertain the Cause of, and find an efficacious Remedy 
 
 For, the Plague. 
 
 He trod an open but unfrequented Path to Immortality 
 In the ardent and unintermitted Exercise of Christian Charity : 
 
 May this Tribute to his Fame 
 Excite an Emulation of his truly glorious Achievements. 
 
 This inscription was indited probably by Dr. Aiken, 
 his Socinian biographer. Who would think from it, 
 
 B B
 
 370 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 that Howard's greatness and success were the fruits 
 of a self-denying imitation of Christ, and of humble, 
 believing prayer ? That they really were so, will 
 appear from his diary, and the characteristic epitaph 
 which he left inscribed for himself: jealous of the 
 honour of his Saviour, and apprehending, as the 
 result proved there was just ground for fearing, that 
 a far different one would be written by his friends 
 and admirers. 
 
 " Turin, 1769, Nov. 30. My return without see- 
 ing the southern part of Italy was on much deliber- 
 ation. I feared a misimprovement of a talent spent 
 for mere curiosity at the loss of many Sabbaths, 
 and as many donations must be expended for my 
 pleasure, which would have been, as I hope, contrary 
 to the general conduct of my life, and which, on a 
 retrospective view on a deathbed, would cause pain 
 as unbecoming a disciple of Christ, whose mind 
 should be formed in my soul. These thoughts, with 
 distance from my dear boy, determine me to check 
 my curiosity, and be on the return. Oh, why should 
 vanity and folly, pictures and baubles, or even the 
 stupendous mountains, beautiful hills, or rich valleys, 
 which ere long will all be consumed, engross the 
 thoughts of a candidate for an eternal, everlasting 
 kingdom ; a worm ever to crawl on earth, whom 
 God has raised to the hope of glory, which ere long 
 will be revealed to them who are washed and sancti- 
 fied by faith in the blood of the Divine Redeemer ? 
 Look forward, oh, my soul ! how low, how mean,
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 3?1 
 
 how little is everything but what has a view to that 
 glorious world of light, life, and love the prepara- 
 tion of the heart is of God. Prepare the heart, oh, 
 God ! of thy unworthy creature, and unto thee be 
 all the glory, through the boundless ages of eternity. 
 (Signed) J. H." 
 
 " This night my trembling soul almost longs to 
 take its flight to see and know the wonders of 
 redeeming love join the triumphant choir sin and 
 sorrow fled away God my Redeemer all in all. 
 Oh, happy spirits, that are safe in those mansions !" 
 
 The following is from his memorandum-book : 
 
 " ' Do thou, O Lord ! visit the prisoners and cap- 
 tives : manifest thy strength in my weakness ; help, 
 Almighty God ! for in thee I put my trust, for thou 
 art my rock.' ' I would rejoice in a sense of thy 
 favour.' ' And may not even I hope that God, who 
 ' spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for 
 us all, but that he shall not with him freely give us 
 all things,' even me life everlasting.' 
 
 On the same page with these devout meditations 
 may be also transcribed, the following sentiments 
 (many like which pervade his private papers), as 
 illustrative of his views of the inemcacy of good 
 works, as a primary, or even a secondary, cause 
 of salvation. ' The doctrine of merit is diame- 
 trically opposed to the genius of the Gospel ; ' ' By 
 grace we are saved ; ' ' not of ourselves, it is the gift 
 of God.' In other parts are various detached excla- 
 
 BB 2
 
 372 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 inations and remarks, abundantly illustrative of the 
 evangelical character of his belief, and of his pos- 
 sessing that meekness and humility which are the 
 peculiar virtues of the Christian, in connexion with 
 every other grace that is the offspring and evidence 
 of faith. Such are the following : ' I am ashamed, 
 and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God/ 
 ' Oh, God ! soften my heart ; it is thy work, to thee 
 be all the praise, faith is thy gift.' ' All that I have 
 and am flows from his benignity and indulgence ; I 
 am in the hand and at the disposal of One who is 
 good, and to whom I am indebted for the blessings 
 by grace.' ' Behold, I am vile : what shall I answer 
 thee, oh, my God ! I have no claim on thy bounty 
 but what springs from the benignity of thy, nature. 
 God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of 
 Jesus Christ.' ' Oh, what goodness have I sinned 
 against, how have I abused this astonishing love, 
 and grieved the Spirit of God ! ' ' Lord God, for 
 Christ's sake, succeed my combat, and make me 
 conquer.' ' Awake thou that sleepest ! thou that 
 raised so many, do thou, O God, compassionate me.' 
 ' I venerate that man who is possessed of riches, yet 
 fears God. It is less wonderful how a poor man 
 gets to heaven, than a prosperous or rich man. The 
 necessaries of life come within a very narrow com- 
 pass indeed.' ' A few of God's people that met 
 in an upper room, appear, in my eye, greater than 
 all the Roman empire. God kept them.' ' Turn 
 me from all sin, that my soul may not be gathered 
 unto sinners.' 'A poor feeble worm surely stands
 
 UPON PllISONEllS. 373 
 
 in need of the protection of Providence. Deliver 
 me from the evil in my heart, the evil in the world.' 
 ' Eaith is the gift of God ; Lord, give me saving 
 faith in his sacrifice and his righteousness.' Oh, 
 that I might know that Christ is mine ! ' ' Oh, 
 you who pride yourselves on your wisdom, your 
 knowledge, your goodness, but I hope I am among 
 the mourners for sin.' * I will cheerfully employ all 
 my faculties for God's glory.' 'Oh, how amiable 
 must be the society of saints in heaven ! ' ' Ex- 
 amples of tremendous wrath will be held up, and 
 what if I should be among those examples ? ' ' We 
 are high-minded : oh, incline my heart to walk in 
 the way to heaven ! ' ' Do I renounce all sense of 
 merit before God, and receive a free and full salva- 
 tion through Jesus Christ ?' ' Let me walk not as 
 fools, but as wise.' ' How may I adorn the doctrine 
 of Christ in all things?'" 
 
 Howard's appreciation of the value of Christian 
 instruction for prisoners, and of the sort of persons 
 in whose hands such a work should be intrusted, 
 appears from his own work, entitled " The State of 
 the Prisons in England and Wales," in which, 
 
 " He urges upon magistrates the great importance of selecting 
 for the office of chaplain to their gaols (and both chapel and 
 chaplain he would have in every place of confinement) a person 
 'who is in principle a Christian, who will not content himself 
 with officiating in public, but will converse with the prisoners, 
 admonish the profligate, exhort the thoughtless, comfort the 
 sick, and make known to the condemned that mercy which 
 is revealed in the Gospel.' Such a man would not think the
 
 374 EFFECTS OF CHRISTIAN TREATMENT 
 
 duty hard which he required him to perform, a sermon and 
 prayers once, at least, on every Lord's Day, and prayers on two 
 other fixed days in the week. 'And if,' he adds, ' a chapter of 
 the New Testament were read daily in order by one of the 
 prisoners to the rest, or by the gaoler, before the distribution of 
 prison allowance, the time would not be mis-spent. The reader, 
 if a prisoner, might be allowed a small weekly pension.'" 
 
 The will of this eminently good and holy man 
 closes with this characteristic sentence : 
 
 " My immortal spirit I cast on the sovereign mercy of God, 
 through Jesus Christ, who is the Lord, my strength and my 
 song, and, I trust, is become my salvation ; and I desire that a 
 plain slab of marble may be placed under that of my late wife, 
 containing an inscription as follows : 
 
 " John Howard. 
 Died 
 Aged 
 MY HOPE is IN CHRIST." 
 
 This inemorial of the philanthropist, so suitable 
 for one to whom Christ was " all and in all," stands 
 in the village church of Cardington. 
 
 Never, perhaps, was there a man who might with 
 greater truth have said, " When the ear heard me, 
 then it blessed me ; and when the eye saw me, 
 it gave witness to me : because I delivered the poor 
 that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had 
 none to help him. The blessing of him that was 
 ready to perish came upon me : and I caused the 
 widow's heart to sing for joy." But he had learned 
 to say with the holy Apostle of the Gentiles, " Not 
 by works of righteousness which we have done, but
 
 UPON PRISONERS. 375 
 
 according to His mercy He saved us." And as in 
 another place : "I count all things but loss, that I 
 may win Christ, and be found in Him, not having 
 mine own righteousness which is of the law, but 
 that which is through the faith of Christ, the 
 righteousness which is of God by faith." (Phil, 
 iii. 9.) 
 
 To the honour of the Nonconformist body, Howard 
 was a Dissenter, but of the large-hearted school, em- 
 bracing as brethren all who " loved the Lord Jesus 
 in sincerity." 
 
 Reader, when you think of his character and 
 labours, remember his motto : 
 
 SPKS Ml'lA IN ClUUbTUM.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 " The land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there- 
 in, but by the blood of him that shed it." NUMBERS xxxv. 33. 
 
 THE right of the State to inflict capital punish- 
 ment has been of late much questioned. One may 
 be surprised that persons accepting the Scriptures as 
 of Divine authority should entertain doubts on this 
 subject. It has been said that the noted verse, " He 
 that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood 
 be shed," is a prophecy, not a command. But if it 
 be a prophecy, it has failed in countless instances. 
 It is obviously a command, but a general one, which 
 leaves room for the consideration of circumstances. 
 It authorizes the penalty in cases of unjustifiable 
 homicide. This command respected the whole 
 family of man. The civil law given to the Israel- 
 ites enacted, likewise, that death should be inflicted 
 for various crimes, but afforded a mode of escape in 
 the case of involuntary homicide. But if capital 
 punishments were wrong in principle, how can we 
 account for their forming part of the code of laws 
 given by God himself to his chosen people r In the
 
 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 377 
 
 New Testament, the power of the civil magistrate to 
 inflict capital punishment is referred to as conferred 
 by Providence for a wise end : "He beareth not 
 the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God, an 
 avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." 
 
 The same principle is allowed by St. Paul in his 
 own case, when he said before his judges : " If I 
 have been an offender, or have committed anything 
 worthy of death, I refuse not to die." But it may 
 be considered that Christianity does not impose any 
 law of general obligation in this respect. The reli- 
 gion of Christ enjoins justice, charity, and fidelity in 
 our social duties, and leaves us, for the most part, 
 to determine what is just and right, in particular 
 cases, by the reasonable application to them of 
 general principles. 
 
 There is no question, that a State may enact laws 
 to prevent crimes which would cause the dissolution 
 of society if widely perpetrated. This is the same 
 right of self-defence which justifies an individual in 
 using arms in defence of his life, and in slaying one 
 who attacks him with murderous intent. The inter- 
 vention of the law would be too late in such a case ; 
 and, therefore, a power of self-defence in extreme 
 cases, even though it issue in homicide, is tolerated. 
 
 A nation has a similar right to punish capitally 
 such offences against social order as cannot be re- 
 strained efficiently by lighter penalties. In fact, if 
 a State has not such a right, neither has it the right 
 of taking away the life of an enemy in war. A mur- 
 derer or a traitor is punished capitally, just as an
 
 378 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 enemy may be shot while endeavouring to land on 
 our shores, and lay all waste with fire and sword. 
 
 The only ground on which the question can be 
 debated appears to be that of expediency. Is it 
 necessary for the good of the community that 
 capital punishments be inflicted for certain crimes ? 
 Human justice is supposed to inflict punishment 
 not by way of revenge, or returning evil for evil 
 but to prevent crime by the influence of fear. It is 
 quite a mistake, in my humble apprehension, to 
 suppose that the primary object of legal punish- 
 ment is to reform the criminal. Some have thought 
 it a great objection to capital punishment, that such 
 an end cannot be answered in the criminal subjected 
 to it. But the main design of human punishments 
 is to secure society by checking offences against life, 
 property, and social order. And if the defences of 
 these be not strong and well guarded, the wealth 
 and happiness of the nation, and its population, too, 
 will infallibly be diminished. If the State does not 
 secure wealth, it will be carried to other lands. And 
 if life be not sufficiently guarded by the State, mu- 
 tual revenge, and feuds, and homicide, will ensue, 
 as in all ill-regulated communities. If the State is 
 remiss in executing justice, the people will learn the 
 dangerous habit of becoming themselves the judges 
 and executioners of the law. Capital punishments 
 are necessary, as the greatest terror which can be 
 presented to the imagination of criminals, or those 
 who contemplate crime ; and, in fact, the only terror 
 which can be exhibited to some.
 
 OX CA VITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 379 
 
 There are many degrees of felony. Will penal 
 servitude, transportation, or an imprisonment, which 
 differs only in duration, correspond to all those de- 
 grees, from petty robbery to arson, attempted assass* 
 ination, and murder? Murder itself has its de- 
 grees. There is a murder in revenge for real wrong, 
 and murder for the purpose of robbery murder 
 with circumstances of cruelty ; and suppose the 
 guilt of the parricide, are all these to be alike 
 deterred from by the threat of some secondary 
 punishment ? Can the idea be entertained, that 
 solitary confinement for life will be an adequate 
 punishment ? " Vincula vero, et ea sempiterna 
 certe ad singularem pcenam nefarii sceleris ? " 
 (Cic.) Solitary imprisonment for life of desperate 
 criminals, convicted of crimes of the deepest dye, 
 is, however, the best alternative. Is it practicable ? 
 I think not. To most criminals of that class, the 
 sentence would, if fully carried out, prove equiva- 
 lent to the deprivation of reason, or of life by sui- 
 cide, or pining disease. It would, therefore, be 
 relaxed, and the person stained with such enor- 
 mous guilt placed in association with criminals or 
 free persons. If such a prisoner commit another 
 murder in prison, how is this to be punished ? 
 And how will it be possible to secure the lives of 
 the officers of such prisons, if the worst criminals 
 whom they are obliged frequently to report to the 
 authorities know they can commit murder without 
 additional suffering ? In fact, remove the terror 
 of death from the minds of those who contemplate
 
 380 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 great crimes, and, when the chances of escape are 
 weighed, no consideration remains sufficient to check 
 the perpetration of them. My own decided impres- 
 sion is, that if capital punishment be wholly abo- 
 lished, murder for the purpose of concealment or 
 escape will become as common a sequence to mid- 
 night robberies as it is at present, happily, a rare 
 one. As to the vile perpetrators of systematic rob- 
 bery having no dread of death by the executioner's 
 hands it is altogether contrary to my observation 
 of their real character. The worse the villain, the 
 greater the coward. 
 
 But it is said that public executions actually en- 
 courage the commission of deeds of blood. This is 
 contrary to common sense, and equally to experi- 
 ence. It is well known that the timely severity of 
 justice, in certain parts of Ireland, has suppressed 
 though certainly but for a time the constant occur- 
 rence of assassination. 
 
 It has often happened, too, that gangs of murder- 
 ous robbers have been totally broken up by the exe- 
 cution of some of the leaders. And when juries do 
 their duty, such crimes cannot be long perpetrated 
 with impunity ; and the evil trade will not be soon 
 taken up by others. 
 
 But if public executions, of the kind which take 
 place in England, shock the innocent, and tend to 
 demoralise the masses of the people, then let them 
 be conducted in a less public, although still in a 
 formal manner say in the gaol-yard, admission 
 being given to the representatives of the people,
 
 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 381 
 
 jurymen, the press, and a limited portion of the 
 population, excluding females and all the ends of 
 public justice will be equally satisfied. 
 
 This seems to be due to the growing humanity of 
 the age. The objections made, then, to the right or 
 expediency of inflicting capital punishment accord- 
 ing to the laws of the State are altogether futile, and 
 rest upon a most dangerous principle. This prin- 
 ciple would strip the peaceable, the loyal, and the 
 virtuous, of all security against the most fearful in- 
 juries, and place them in a state of terror; and, if 
 carried to its legitimate consequences, it would strip 
 the whole nation of its defences against foreign ag- 
 gression, and actually invite murder and rapine. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I think there is 
 great matter for congratulation in the improved 
 spirit of the country, shown in the amelioration of 
 its penal code with respect to offences against mere 
 property ; although I cannot delude myself into the 
 pleasing persuasion, that the relaxation of the law 
 has not had the tendency to increase, in some mea- 
 sure, the crimes from which the terrible penalty of 
 death has been removed. We must be content to 
 pay for our humanity. But when the question is, 
 whether the guilty murderer shall be put to death, 
 or the life of the innocent and good member of 
 society be constantly imperilled, neither reason nor 
 Christianity warrants the sacrifice ; and this is the 
 opinion of almost every one who has to do with 
 criminals. 
 
 " The valuable distinction made bv the law be-
 
 382 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 tween 'robberies with violence,' and ' larceny from the 
 person, unattended with personal injury' (observes 
 my friend, the Chaplain of Durham Gaol, in his 
 valuable report for 1853), 'appears to check the per- 
 petration of the graver crimes ; and the character of 
 habitual burglars and highwaymen plainly indicates 
 that they are restrained from committing acts of 
 brutish violence by the fear of the severer punish- 
 ments. For this same reason it cannot be considered 
 (whatever be the opposite conclusion of many worthy 
 people), that it is desirable to effect the entire aboli- 
 tion of the punishment of death. The terror of that 
 punishment deters many wicked, and very many 
 semi-insane people, from the commission of violence 
 and of murder, with a view to conceal their other 
 offences ; and ' there is no reason,' as the Ordinary 
 of Newgate has expressed it, ' why the same feelings 
 of mercy should not be extended to persons about to 
 be murdered, as to persons about to be executed.' ' 
 
 " Respecting the expediency of abolishing capital 
 punishments (reports Lord Brougham, in 1847), the 
 Committee found scarcely any difference of opinion. 
 Almost all witnesses and all authorities agree in 
 opinion that, for offences of the gravest kind, the 
 punishment of death ought to be retained." 
 
 It is generally taken for granted that Howard was 
 an advocate for the total abolition of capital punish- 
 ment ; it may be well, therefore, to set the reader 
 right on this matter, and at the same time supply 
 some information on the subject of this article. In 
 " Foreign Prisons," page 63, he thus writes :
 
 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 383 
 
 " From a book containing the names and crimes 
 of all who have been executed at Amsterdam, from 
 January, 1G93, to the end of 1766, the number 
 amounts to 336 : but only 25 were executed in the 
 last 20 years of that term. 
 
 " Of late, in all the seven provinces, seldom more 
 executions in a year than from four to six. One 
 reason of this, I believe, is the awful solemnity of 
 executions, which are performed in the presence of 
 the magistrates, with great order and seriousness, 
 and great effect on the spectators." 
 
 In his work, " State of Prisons," page 11, he 
 writes : 
 
 " From my own observations, I was fully convinced 
 that many more were destroyed by the gaol-fever 
 than were put to death by all the public executions 
 in the kingdom. I have a Table printed from a large 
 copper-plate, in 1772, by Sir Stephen Theodore Jans- 
 sen, showing the number of malefactors executed in 
 London for the twenty-three preceding years, and 
 the crimes for which they suffered. In it will be 
 seen that the total number of executions in London, 
 for those twenty-three years, was 678 : the annual 
 average is between 29 and 30. I leave to others the 
 discussion of the questions, whether those executions 
 were too numerous whether all the crimes for which 
 they were inflicted were deserving of death"
 
 384 ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 
 
 
 
 Pardoned, 
 
 
 
 Sentenced 
 to Death. 
 
 Transported, 
 or Died in 
 
 Executed. 
 
 
 
 Gaol. 
 
 
 Shoplifting, Riot, and twelve -i 
 
 240 
 
 131 
 
 109 
 
 Defrauding Creditors .... 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Returning from Transportation . 
 
 31 
 
 9 
 
 22 
 
 
 11 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 
 95 
 
 24 
 
 71 
 
 
 90 
 
 68 
 
 22 
 
 Highway Robbery 
 
 362 
 
 111 
 
 251 
 
 
 208 
 
 90 
 
 118 
 
 
 81 
 
 9 
 
 72 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 1121 
 
 443 
 
 678 
 
 " Happily," writes Field (the last and best bio- 
 grapher of the philanthropist, page 170), " the 
 Christian principle which induced Howard to pro- 
 test against sanguinary laws, has impelled others to 
 labour with success for their repeal. The exertions 
 of Wilberforce, Buxton, and others, have not been 
 vain ; and the number of crimes declared capital is 
 now, perhaps, reduced to its proper limit. Life is 
 forfeited upon the conviction of a few heinous of- 
 fences ; but the penalty of death is seldom inflicted, 
 except for murder. God forbid that our laws, in 
 this respect, should ever cease to accord with his de- 
 crees ; and that anything short of the death of the 
 murderer should be regarded as the condign punish-
 
 ON~CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS FOR MURDER. 385 
 
 ment for such guilt. In expressing these senti- 
 ments, it is satisfactory to observe, that they accord 
 with the wisdom and humanity which prompted 
 the following expressions of the subject of our bio- 
 graphy : 
 
 " ' I would wish that no persons might suffer capi- 
 tally, but for murder ; for setting houses on fire ; 
 for house-breaking , attended with cruelty. The 
 highwayman, the footpad, the habitual thief, and 
 people of this clan, should end their days in a peni- 
 tentiary house, rather than on a gallows.' " 
 
 There are not a few persons, in the present day, 
 who do not scruple to apply the epithets of bar- 
 barism and cruelty to the sentiments advanced in 
 this paper. 
 
 Those who do maintain these principles, however, 
 may be well content to bear the obloquy, attached 
 to them, in common with Howard, the friend of 
 mankind, but the assertor of the claims~of justice. 
 
 c c
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 " Principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur, 
 Cum morbi longa convaluere mora." 
 
 THE prevention of crime in one's country is an 
 object worthy of deepest thought to the moralist, 
 the legislator, and the Christian. Questions of prison 
 discipline derive from this their chief importance. 
 If these are radically vicious, they foster and multi- 
 ply crime. If indifferent, they discharge only part 
 of their functions they merely punish. If wise 
 and good, they repress crime, and lessen the expen- 
 diture of the State. Prevention of crime may he 
 viewed either in reference to the lapsed members of 
 society, the classes most in danger of falling into 
 crime, or to the community at large. 
 
 To begin with the lapsed : 
 
 About 30,000 individuals, that is, one-fourth of 
 the whole annual prison population of this country, 
 return to prison again. The aggregate of these 
 numbers is fearful, and shows the importance of the 
 subject. But the proportion is encouraging, and 
 demonstrates a fact, too little credited, the willing-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 387 
 
 ness of the great majority of criminals to turn from 
 their evil course. 
 
 Ninety thousand criminals in a year, whether 
 deterred by punishment, and sheer dread of the law, 
 or reformed in character, or influenced by mixed 
 motives, do actually, by their own efforts, against 
 extraordinarily great disadvantages, return to a 
 better course of life after legal punishment. 
 
 Paley states it to be the principal difficulty in the 
 treatment of prisoners, " how to dispose of them 
 after their enlargement," and remarks : " By a rule 
 of life, which is, perhaps, too invariably and indis- 
 criminately adhered to, no one will receive a man or 
 woman out of a gaol into any service or employment 
 whatever. This is the common misfortune of public 
 punishments, that they preclude the offender from 
 all honest means of future support." He suggests 
 that "until this inconvenience be remedied, small 
 offences had better, perhaps, go unpunished. I do 
 not mean," he says, "that the law should exempt 
 them from punishment, but that private persons 
 should be tender in prosecuting them." 
 
 Facts, after all, show that the State has only to 
 consider how to prevent relapse into crime in 25 per 
 cent, of the discharged. How far present improve- 
 ments in our penal regulations may effect a further 
 diminution remains to be proved. Should they 
 reduce it only by one-third, i. e. 10,000 individuals, 
 it will yet be a glorious result, and worth more than 
 all the trouble and expense lavished, as some would 
 say, with this object. Should no such result be 
 
 c c 2
 
 388 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 manifest, it must not be too hastily concluded that 
 those improvements have failed in their grand pur- 
 pose ; for the fact is, that by those means, as well as 
 by the general efforts of benevolence and Chris- 
 tianity, we are, in the present day, not only 
 meeting old difficulties, but a host of new ones 
 continually, from increase of population, and other 
 causes, springing into existence. 
 
 Is it Christian is it politic not to lend a helping 
 hand, in some way, to those who are willing to be 
 reformed? What, if some have been rescued from 
 crime, in the very act, by the voice of sympathy and 
 Christian feeling ! 
 
 On one occasion, the late Rowland Hill preached 
 a funeral sermon on the death of his servant man. 
 In the course of that sermon he said : " Many 
 persons present were acquainted with the deceased, 
 and have had it in their power to observe his cha- 
 racter and conduct. They can bear witness, that for 
 a considerable number of years he proved himself a 
 perfectly honest, sober, industrious, and religious 
 man ; faithfully performing, as far as lay in his 
 power, the duties of his station in life, and serving 
 God with constancy and zeal. Yet this very man 
 was once a robber on the highway. More than thirty 
 years ago, he stopped me on the public road, and 
 demanded my money. Not at all intimidated, I 
 argued with him ; I asked him what could induce 
 him to pursue so iniquitous and dangerous a course 
 of life ? 'I have been a coachman,' said he ; ' I 
 am out of place, and I cannot get a character ; I am
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 389 
 
 unable to get any employment.' I desired him to 
 call on me. He promised lie would, and he kept 
 his word. I talked further with him, and offered to 
 take him into my own service. He consented ; and 
 ever since that period has served me faithfully, and 
 not me only, but has faithfully served his God. 
 Instead of finishing his life in a public and igno- 
 minious manner, with a depraved and hardened 
 heart, as he probably would have done, he died 
 in peace, and, we trust, prepared for the society 
 of { just men made perfect.' Till this day the extraor- 
 dinary circumstance I have related has been confined 
 to his breast and mine. I have never mentioned it 
 to my dearest friend." 
 
 " Respecting the reception of the liberated pri- 
 soner again into society," writes the King of 
 Sweden, "a feeling of morality, degenerated to 
 implacability, ought not to repulse 'his contrition, 
 or suppress his good intentions ; but his return to 
 evil must be prevented by his being enabled to 
 obtain honest employment. There is an extensive 
 field for communal and private exertion. After the 
 law has executed the punishment, and the State has 
 taken care of the inward improvement, it is the 
 business of the citizen to offer a helping hand to the 
 individual restored to freedom. Both charity and 
 prudence urge this ; for it is the noblest and safest 
 means of preventing new crimes." 
 
 Now, it is no longer a question that society can 
 really do a great deal in preventing relapse into 
 crime, and that it is plainly the interest, and the
 
 390 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 duty, of the State to assist their efforts, but a 
 matter of actual observation, wherever the experi- 
 ment has been tried, either abroad or at home. 
 
 Reformatory agricultural schools, for juvenile 
 offenders, have now for years been tried in France 
 with great success ; and it is delightful to observe, 
 how much Christianity, in its general characteristics 
 of morality and benevolence, in the hands of earnest, 
 large-minded, and good men, has accomplished in 
 that country, for the amelioration and improvement 
 of that class, particularly at Mettray. 
 
 The directors of this famous establishment were 
 formerly two Monsieur Demetz, and the Vicomte 
 de Bretigneres ; to these gentlemen, a third, the 
 Vicomte de Villiers, nephew of Monsieur de Bretig- 
 neres, has been lately added. The first of those 
 gentlemen must be regarded as the founder. M. 
 Demetz began his good work by the formation of 
 the Societe Paternelle, under the presidency of 
 M. le Comte de Gasparin, Peer of Erance. 
 
 The first Article of the Constitution of this 
 Society, thus denotes its objects : 
 
 1. To exercise a benevolent guardianship over 
 children, acquitted on the ground that they had 
 acted without discernment, who may be confided 
 to its care by the magistrate, in administering the 
 judicial instruction, dated 3rd Dec. 1832 ; to procure 
 for such children (being in a state of conditional 
 liberty, and sent to an Agricultural Colony,) a 
 moral and religious education, as well as elementary 
 instruction ; to have them taught a trade, to accus-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 391 
 
 torn them to agricultural labour, and place them out 
 afterwards in country situations with artificers and 
 agriculturists. 
 
 2. To watch over the conduct of these children, 
 and assist them by the guardianship of the Society 
 so long as they may require it. 
 
 Of this institution, the Rev. Mr. Turner of the 
 Philanthropic gave an interesting account a few 
 years back, and a most favourable report to the 
 British public. 
 
 "At present," he says, "nothing is merely 
 routine, merely mechanism; all is pervaded and 
 animated with the earnest, real character of the 
 resident director. The question naturally and con- 
 tinually suggests itself, How will this go on ? how 
 can the work be made to prosper when he is re- 
 moved from it ? 
 
 " To this question Monsieur Demetz would an- 
 swer, that all would depend upon the work being 
 taken up on the same principle, and carried on by 
 the same means that he has triumphed by the prin- 
 ciple) namely, of religious charity , and the means of 
 specially prepared and educated agents. Engaged 
 in as a work of religion, to be mainly promoted and 
 sustained by voluntary zeal, and to be wrought out 
 by young and earnest men, devoted and prepared to 
 enter on it as a mission which they have to live for, 
 it will succeed. Taken up as a piece of government 
 or corporate machinery, to be carried on by a mere 
 code of discipline, and by hired servants, who enter 
 it solely as a calling they may live by, it will, pro-
 
 392 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 bably and, perhaps, justly fail. Let us address 
 ourselves to it ' with the Gospel in our hand,' (to use 
 Monsieur Demetz's words,) and we shall be sure of 
 the Divine blessing on our efforts." 
 
 The particulars of this interesting establishment 
 will be found in a pamphlet, by M. A. Cochin, 
 translated by my friend Mr. Hamilton, the chaplain 
 of Durham Gaol (Whittaker, London). Prom that 
 document it appears that : 
 
 " 856 children have left Mettray, of whom up- 
 wards of 633 have been placed in situations, or been 
 restored to their families. 
 
 " 223 are in military service ; 185 in the army 
 and 58 in the navy. 
 
 " Of those who have left the Institution, 708 are 
 irreproachable. 
 
 " 47 conduct themselves tolerably well. 
 
 " 16 have faeen lost sight of. 
 
 " 85 have relapsed." 
 
 M. Cochin also acquaints us that : 
 
 " One portion of these admirable results is attri- 
 butable to the watchful solicitude with which the 
 directors and the Societe Patemelle continue to 
 patronize the former inmates ; every effort is made 
 to place them with respectable persons, and this is 
 not difficult on account of the numerous applications 
 made to the directors, which gives them a consider- 
 able choice of situations ; the example of Mettray 
 has been followed by the establishment in France 
 alone of thirty-two similar institutions; and on a 
 recent occasion, July, 1852, the Governmental In-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 393 
 
 spector-General of these agricultural colonies re- 
 ported most favourably of the Institution." 
 
 M. de Metz borrowed his ideas of the institution 
 at Mettray from the Ranhen Hans in Hamburgh, a 
 reformatory home for criminal boys, under the pre- 
 sidency of Dr. Wichern. 
 
 The success of this institution in its infant state 
 may be illustrated by the following anecdote : 
 
 During the last calamitous fire in Hamburgh 
 those once criminal boys having offered to their 
 excellent president their assistance towards rescuing 
 property, it was accepted, and so well did they dis- 
 charge their duty that they received the public 
 thanks of the city subsequently, for their meritorious 
 and valuable services. Xor was this all; for they 
 next requested permission to give up their beds and 
 bedding to as many houseless persons as could 
 thereby be accommodated, which was, also, wisely 
 and humanely granted. The self-denying and 
 honoured person who contrived that most bene- 
 volent scheme, devoting both time and property to 
 the work, that he might become a father to the 
 fatherless, and provide a home for the outcast, 
 ascribes all his success to the blessing of God, in 
 answer to believing prayer. 
 
 Those w r ho desire further information respecting 
 the Rauhen Hans and its results must consult the 
 evidence of George Bunsen, Esq., before the Com- 
 mittee of the Commons on Juvenile Criminals in the 
 session of 1853. 
 
 Since giving that evidence Mr. Bunsen has
 
 394 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 obligingly communicated with me on the subject, 
 and confirms his previous statement from renewed 
 opportunities of observation. The number of refor- 
 matories, he informs me, is increasing, and is now 
 probably not far from 72 in Protestant Germany. 
 They are all independent of the Government, 
 although " some may receive assistance from the 
 State." 
 
 Let us now glance at some institutions, with a 
 like object, at home. 
 
 In 1849 His Royal Highness Prince Albert laid 
 the first stone of the farm-school for criminal and 
 vagrant boys at Bed-hill, Reigate, Surrey, under the 
 Philanthropic Society. The new institution consists 
 of eight houses, each calculated to accommodate 
 about sixty boys, arranged on either side of a 
 commodious and handsome chapel; thus carrying 
 out the system of domestic management and associa- 
 tion, which has been adopted with such success at 
 Mettray, as well as at Hamburgh. Each house is 
 so fitted and arranged as to allow of the "family" 
 of boys contained in it being instructed in cooking 
 and all common domestic occupations, as well as in 
 husbandry and gardening, and such mechanical arts 
 as are connected with farm-labour. The houses, and 
 everything relating to the accommodation and 
 treatment of the boys, are arranged on a studiously 
 economical and simple principle. 
 
 A very complete account of this Reformatory farm- 
 school will be found in the Minutes of Council on 
 Education, 1852-1853, in an elaborate report by
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 395 
 
 Mr. E. Carleton Tuffnell, one of Her Majesty's 
 Inspectors of Schools : 
 
 "The boys who compose the school, 178 in 
 number at the date of my visit, may be divided 
 into three classes. First, there is the voluntary 
 class, who come entirely of their own free will, 
 consisting of youths tired of a life of vice and crime, 
 and wishing to reform. Secondly, there is the com- 
 pulsory class, being boys who have been sentenced 
 to transportation, and have received a pardon condi- 
 tional on their submitting to the regulations of this 
 establishment. Thirdly, there is a class sent by 
 their parents or immediate relatives for reformation, 
 and who may be said to be compulsorily detained, so 
 far as the parental control may be considered com- 
 pulsory. Eor this latter class a payment, usually 
 5s. per week, is asked; but in the case of poor 
 parents much less is taken. 
 
 "The inmates are divided into four separate 
 households, which are in a great measure kept dis- 
 tinct, each under a superintendent, responsible only 
 to the resident chaplain, who is supreme director of 
 the institution, subject of course to the Committee, 
 who meet every fortnight. Two of these households 
 consist of 50 each ; one embraces 60 of the older 
 lads, and the fourth contains 20 lads employed in 
 the stable, cow-house, and farm-yard, who are 
 changed for others at the beginning of each month. 
 The class of 60 is considered too large, and it is 
 intended to diminish it and to add to the farmyard 
 class of 20.
 
 396 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 
 
 " The number of youths that have been received 
 at E/edhill since the school was opened in 1849, is 
 461, up to 1st June, 1853. Of these 289 have been 
 discharged in the following ways : 157 have emi- 
 grated either to Australia or America ; 1 has been 
 sent to sea ; 70 have been apprenticed or assisted to 
 employment in England; and 60 have been dis- 
 charged at their own request, or as unimprovable, or 
 have deserted. Of this latter class, however, several 
 have been ascertained to have subsequently reformed, 
 the good seed sown in them while within the walls 
 of this institution having at a later period produced 
 its fruits. The success that attends the operations 
 of this society may be epitomized as follows : Of 
 the whole number of criminal boys received, 75 per 
 cent, are reformed, and become honest and indus- 
 trious members of the community ; 25 per cent, re- 
 lapse into their former' courses, at least for a time, 
 though several of these eventually shake off their 
 evil habits, and turn to the paths of honesty and 
 respectability. 
 
 " If I might be allowed to criticise the arrange- 
 ments of this establishment I should say that the 
 household plan was not sufficiently carried out, and 
 that 40 or 50 are too many to place under one 
 teacher. The two most noted institutions in Europe 
 for the reclamation of juvenile offenders are the 
 school at Mettray in Erance, and the Eauhen Haus 
 at Hamburgh. In the former one a teacher is allowed 
 to every 20 boys, and in the Eauhen Haus one to 
 every 12. I have inspected the Hamburgh school,
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 397 
 
 which has been very successful, not only in reforming 
 those sent to it but in training teachers for the busi- 
 ness, who are in great request for similar establish- 
 ments in other parts of the continent. The Mettray 
 reformatory school is of world- wide celebrity ; and in 
 both the principles that ought to govern such insti- 
 tutions have been so long studied and practised that 
 I should hesitate to doubt the correctness of the 
 conclusions to which they have arrived. Perhaps it 
 is owing to this variation of management that the 
 number of those who relapse into crime is two or 
 three times less at Mettray and Hamburgh than at 
 Bedhill." 
 
 This account by Mr. TuffneD, and especially the 
 comparison which he institutes, calls for one or two 
 remarks. 
 
 It might appear to some, comparing the general 
 results of imprisonment in England, and the results 
 of the Reigate farm-school, that this institution is 
 in reality accomplishing nothing ; for the proportion 
 of relapses in both is the same. But the fact is, 
 that of this particular class in the general prison 
 population the proportion of relapses is probably 
 full forty per cent., if not even more. 
 
 Then, Mr. Tuffnell does great injustice, (most un- 
 designedly, doubtless,) to the Philanthropic school, 
 in the comparison which he draws between that 
 establishment, and those on the continent ; and his 
 representations might leave, if unexplained, an 
 injurious impression on the public mind as to the 
 utility of the institution. There is unquestionably
 
 398 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 much in what he says with respect to the manage- 
 ment. The fewer in the family, the better, for good 
 moral supervision. But he has not observed two 
 points of difference between the English and Erench 
 reformatories, which are really so essential as to 
 destroy all analogy in the cases. 
 
 1. The juvenile offender in Erance has not the 
 stigma of crime upon him, and consequently feels 
 differently from the individual of that class in 
 England.* And, 
 
 2. Society there, freely receives him, upon libe- 
 ration, as really not degraded by his detention. The 
 honourable services of the army and navy, as we 
 see in the return, are open to him, and on account 
 of his superior education, at Mettray, he has even 
 " a choice of situations." How different it is with 
 us, I need not point out. 
 
 A small but most useful institution, which will 
 bear comparison with any in its results, was formed 
 in connexion with the gaol of Durham, in 1848, by 
 the excellent Governor and Chaplain, assisted by 
 friends and magistrates in their private capacity, 
 which may serve to sho*w the exceeding great value, 
 economically and morally, of efforts in behalf of 
 released prisoners. The total expenditure for 1848, 
 1849, 1850, 1851 and 1852, was under 300. The 
 
 * If I had been able to attend the late Conference at Bir- 
 mingham to which I was honoured with an invitation, I would 
 have pressed upon that distinguished assembly the importance 
 of having our law in this respect assimilated to the penal code 
 of France, at least up to the age of 14.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 399 
 
 number of discharged prisoners restored to their 
 relatives, or placed in situations where they 'could 
 earn an honest livelihood, was 804. Of these only 
 26 were re-committed to prison, and 31 were con- 
 sidered failures, but not re-committed. 
 
 The cost here is so trifling, when compared with 
 the results, that one naturally inquires by what 
 machinery the work is accomplished. Nothing is 
 more simple. The refuge for young women is a 
 room in the house of a married schoolmaster. The 
 domestic discipline of the family, and the instruction 
 and advice of the Christian ladies who visit the 
 prison, are the chief influences. Friends are com- 
 municated with, employers are obtained, by means 
 of those zealous and benevolent persons, &c. Some- 
 what similar arrangements are made for male 
 prisoners. The co-operation of the magistrates, 
 chiefly in carrying out a suggestion of the chaplain, 
 " to sentence each member of a gang to a different 
 term of sentence," is stated greatly to have con- 
 tributed to the success. It is to be hoped that this 
 admirable institution will be imitated in every 
 county in England. 
 
 In Great Smith-street, Westminster, may be seen 
 an institution, of a most interesting character, 
 having the same object, under the able management 
 of Mr. Nash, formerly of the City Mission, who has 
 given himself for years to the work of reclaiming 
 criminals. To show how such a refuge is needed 
 and appreciated, it is enough to state that during a 
 single year there have been upwards of 1500 volun-
 
 400 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 tary applications, by perhaps the most accomplished 
 thieves and vagrants in the metropolis, all earnestly 
 soliciting, some even with tears, a share of that 
 bounty so providentially afforded to others. Some- 
 times they seem nearly broken down with grief when 
 they find they cannot be admitted. This is the case 
 with many who, by cleverness in their degrading 
 profession, could rob from the public enough to 
 supply all their wants, and to enable them to indulge 
 in their propensities of riot and excess. 
 
 The probation before admission to the benefits of 
 the institution is a fortnight's voluntary imprison- 
 ment on bread and water, in a comfortless room ! 
 
 I rarely ever witnessed a more affecting scene 
 than upon a visit to this establishment; when, 
 having expressed a wish to address and pray with 
 the inmates, they were called together for the 
 purpose, and stood around me, first singing the 
 appropriate anthem, " I will arise and go to my 
 Father;" then listening to my exhortation; and 
 joining heartily in responses to the prayer. The 
 thought of what they had been, and what inevitably 
 they must have come to, only for this timely Chris- 
 tian help, came very forcibly to my mind. 
 
 During the absence of the Governor for a few 
 weeks, a few summers back rendered necessary for 
 his health these thieves were left wholly to them- 
 selves, one of their own number acting as temporary 
 superintendent. They did not disappoint the ex- 
 pectations entertained. They wrought most dili- 
 gently at their trades, of printing, carpentry, shoe-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 401 
 
 making, and tailoring, and conducted themselves in 
 every respect in the most proper and orderly 
 manner. 100 young men now are sheltered in this 
 refuge, trained for useful life, and sent out annually 
 to benefit, instead of injuring, society. 
 
 Such houses of recovery, then, are facts, not ex- 
 periments ; and show to demonstration how much 
 may be done, at very little cost, for prevention of 
 crime in the lapsed, under wise and Christian influ- 
 ence. It is to be hoped that they will be multiplied, 
 rather than a few excessively enlarged, beyond the 
 personal control of one energetic Christian mind. 
 Ten men like the superintendent of this establish- 
 ment, with a family each of some seventy or eighty 
 criminal youths, in Lambeth, Whitechapel, Clerken- 
 well, and such localities, would sensibly tell upon 
 this dangerous class in the metropolis. 
 
 I rejoice to know that such are now springing up 
 in various parts of this great city. Sectarian 
 theology, that fruitful source of discord, has not, as 
 yet, marred these philanthropic enterprises. Never- 
 theless there is too much division, on other matters, 
 amongst as ardent persons engaged in carrying out 
 experimental institutions, which might be avoided 
 by a little mutual concession. 
 
 One institution, a home for forty or fifty of the 
 most wretched, criminal, juvenile outcasts of Lon- 
 don, deserves here especial notice. A noble-minded 
 woman, of private rank, is the sole supporter 
 of this home, for houseless little wanderers, at the 
 cost of about 800 per annum. 
 
 D D
 
 402 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 To remember what these poor children were a few 
 months back, and now to see them so happy, 
 orderly, and industrious, must be, to the benevolent 
 heart of their patroness, a continual banquet. Miss 
 Portall, however, aspires to more their spiritual 
 regeneration and salvation. May her best desires 
 be accomplished, and may not a few of these chil- 
 dren, in the great day, rise up to call her blessed ! 
 
 With equal success renewed efforts are being 
 made to rescue the fallen and abandoned of the 
 other sex. 
 
 In the year 1848 an able article was published in 
 the " Quarterly Review " on the subject of Female 
 Penitentiaries. The writer of that article, amongst 
 other humane suggestions, penned the following 
 sentence : "It may seem somewhat wild to speak 
 of going out to fetch wanderers home, when so 
 many of those who have already risen up like the 
 prodigal, and are at the very door of the home of 
 penitents, have none to lead them in; but we 
 cannot entirely put out of sight the duty of search- 
 ing for the lost sheep in the wilderness. It is not 
 enough to wait for the returning wanderers. There 
 is a sort of missionary machinery required, by 
 which especially the beginners in this vicious life 
 might be pleaded with." 
 
 The judicious recommendation thus made has 
 been for some time acted on by Lieutenant Black- 
 more, R.N., the Superintendent of the London 
 Female Dormitory, (27, Gloucester Place, Camden 
 Town) . In company with other Christian friends,
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 403 
 
 it is his practice, at stated intervals, to traverse 
 by night the streets of this vast metropolis, to dis- 
 tribute tracts to unhappy wanderers from the paths of 
 female virtue, and to plead with them to accept the 
 shelter from a life of infamy which the Institution 
 above named presents to them. 
 
 As the result of one evening's mission, about 
 TWENTY unhappy females, desirous of being re- 
 formed, called at the Dormitory, and were sheltered 
 in it, or placed in other institutions of a similar 
 kind. This fact will explain more forcibly than any 
 comment the usefulness of such labours, and there 
 needs but a generous co-operation on the part of the 
 public to enable the institution to add largely to the 
 numbers of those sheltered within its walls. Only 
 those who have seen the misery endured by these 
 unhappy objects, and who know their willingness, 
 nay, their eagerness to be rescued, can have any 
 adequate conception of the immense amount of 
 good which an agency of this kind can effect. To 
 restore, as this Institution has been the means of 
 doing, unhappy females to their sorrowing relatives, 
 to procure for others situations in which they can 
 win back lost usefulness and respectability ; and, 
 higher still, to bring them in penitence and faith to 
 the feet of the Saviour this surely is a work in 
 which all should rejoice to join. Let those who, by the 
 grace of God, have been kept in the path of safety, 
 help by their prayers and pecuniary aid to lift up 
 those that are fallen. In conclusion, to quote the 
 words of the same article in the " Quarterly Review," 
 
 D D 2
 
 40i THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 " Many who have lived deeply to regret the stains 
 which discoloured their opening years, are now 
 among the best and foremost in all works of good, 
 and are living as altered men with their wives and 
 children happy about them. Not so with those 
 with whom they sinned. Some have perished in 
 their sins ; others with broken hearts are forced to 
 continue their pilgrimage of guilt and woe. For 
 these we claim not words alone, nor thoughts, but 
 deeds of pity. Restitution is a part of penitence ; 
 it is at least possible to give year by year penitential 
 contributions to those asylums (like the present) 
 devoted to the reformation of fallen women."* 
 
 In establishing new institutions of this kind, let 
 not the old be suffered to languish. There are 
 many of the most admirable character in our 
 metropolis, and elsewhere in the country, which 
 only need to be inspected by the benevolent, to 
 engage their best support. One visit less to the 
 Opera in a season, and one visit more to a benevolent 
 institution, with the price of the amusement, as a 
 donation, by a small part of the fashionable world, 
 would place them in a flourishing financial position, 
 and leave a more lasting pleasure, and a more 
 beneficial impression on the heart. One entertain- 
 ment less in the year in a rich man's house, would 
 enable him to place under Christian influence, tens, 
 or even hundreds of his hapless fellow-creatures, 
 
 * The details of that night's missionary tour are given in 
 a paper, entitled London by Moonlight, They are exquisitely 
 affecting and instructive.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 405 
 
 who, if not taken by the hand at the critical 
 moment of remorse or penitence, must sink irre- 
 coverably into the depths of vice and misery, if not 
 into eternal perdition. 
 
 During the forty-six years that the Refuge for 
 the Destitute, now at Dalston, has been in opera- 
 tion, about four thousand young women have expe- 
 rienced its advantages. 
 
 Eor about the same period, supported altogether 
 by voluntary help, the London Female Penitentiary, 
 Pentonville, has sheltered 3175 ; nearly 2000 of 
 whom have been placed out to service, reconciled 
 and restored to their friends, or otherwise satisfac- 
 torily disposed of. The London Magdalen, estab- 
 lished in 1758, more than double that number. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Wright, of Manchester, has shown, 
 by his own example, how much may be accomplished 
 in preventing relapse into crime by the earnest and 
 benevolent zeal even of an individual in humble life. 
 
 This gentleman stated before Lord Brougham's 
 Committee, in 1847, that he had been in the habit 
 of visiting Salford Prison every Lord's-day for nine 
 years up to that time, for the purpose of imparting 
 religious instruction, and that he had been instru- 
 mental in procuring situations for upwards of 150 
 prisoners after their discharge becoming personally 
 responsible in certain cases for their rectitude, by 
 way of surety ; of these 150 he had heard of only one 
 solitary case of relapse. 
 
 Whilst, then, no opinion is more convenient for 
 persons who would excuse themselves from co-ope-
 
 406 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 rating in works of charity of this description than 
 that, however benevolent these may be, they are 
 altogether hopeless, nothing is more contrary to the 
 fact. The greater part of the lapsed in every insti- 
 tution of Christian mercy are rescued from vice and 
 criminality, and some are savingly converted to God. 
 
 But, it may be said, this after all is a very partial 
 view of the subject. The great work of the philan- 
 thropist is not to recover the fallen and reclaim the 
 vagrant, but if possible to prevent the loss of charac- 
 ter and virtue altogether to check the disease in 
 its rise and premonitory symptoms. Very well. I 
 have nothing to object to this philosophy. Only let 
 those noble-minded persons who have given them- 
 selves to the more difficult and more hopeless task 
 be duly honoured, and not reckoned amongst pseudo- 
 philanthropists, or good-natured enthusiasts. 
 
 They are surely following their blessed Master, 
 who " went about doing good and healing all man- 
 ner of sicknesses among the people," just as if this 
 were the end of his mission. 
 
 Those deep-thinking people, who would direct you 
 to the better end to begin at, are not usually the per- 
 sons to set you the example. Indeed, your philoso- 
 pher rarely condescends to put his shoulder to the 
 wheel. He stands calmly looking on, and when the 
 catastrophe takes place, he pronounces his opinion 
 that it might have been averted by a little fore- 
 thought. 
 
 To come, then, to the second part of our subject. 
 The classes most exposed to the peril of falling into
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 407 
 
 criminality, are pre-eminently the poor and our 
 working people. Strenuous efforts should be made 
 to remove, or greatly diminish, the physical evils 
 which afflict the labouring classes. 
 
 If any are yet ignorant as to what those evils are, 
 they cannot do better than take up any of the Re- 
 ports of the Labourers' Friend Society, the Ragged 
 School Union, or the City Mission. The first-named 
 society supplies most valuable information on the 
 whole subject to those who have it in their power, 
 and feel the wish, to improve the condition of their 
 poorer brethren. In some country parts, the condi- 
 tion of the poor man's habitation is disgraceful ; in 
 our large towns, it is horrible beyond description. 
 
 The physical condition of the poor cannot be 
 viewed as separated from the moral. The want of 
 a proper dwelling-place for the working-man is one 
 of his greatest trials, and is as injurious to his spirit- 
 ual as to his bodily health. The crowding together 
 of a whole family in one room weakens domestic 
 virtue, destroys self-respect, modesty, and delicacy 
 of feeling, and utterly removes all opportunities for 
 self-improvement. A home which is miserable from 
 physical causes, is the half-way-house to the gin- 
 palace oi\beer-shop. The pestiferous, overpowering 
 atmosphere of the dwellings of the poor in London 
 and elsewhere, undoubtedly generates the thirst for 
 intoxicating drink, and thus leads to crime and 
 greater misery. The working classes, when placed 
 in proper lodging-houses, are as remarkable for 
 sober and domestic habits, as the inhabitants of
 
 408 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 our courts and alleys are for drunkenness, immo- 
 rality, and crime. Sanitary reform is moral reform. 
 
 Every one can do something in this work, in his 
 parish and neighbourhood, and he is bound to do 
 his very utmost : the health, the lives, of the poor 
 are involved ; yea, their morals, and, in no small 
 measure, their eternal interests. 
 
 Attention, however, to the improvement of the 
 habitations of the labouring classes is only part of 
 the duty, even as regards their physical condition, 
 which rests upon those whom Providence has placed 
 in better circumstances. There is a growing system 
 of business in England which grinds the face of the 
 poor, and unquestionably demoralises them. The 
 system of doing work by public tender is one of 
 these, and slop-selling is another. The cupidity of 
 companies or individual employers, in the fearful 
 competition of the times, is putting forth, also, con- 
 stant efforts to deprive the working-man of his birth- 
 right in a Christian land, one day's rest from toil in 
 seven ; so necessary for the preservation of his health, 
 his home-feelings, and his very apprehension of the 
 existence of a God, who regards the poor and the rich 
 alike. The rest which the owner gives to his hard- 
 worked cattle he refuses to his fellow-man. The 
 brute is his property ; the moral debasement of his 
 servant is no money-loss in his account ; his sickness 
 and death certainly none, and therefore no concern 
 to his selfish heart ; covetousness is cold-hearted 
 and iron-handed. The railway director and pro- 
 prietor enjoy their day of rest as God ordained it
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 409 
 
 one day in seven and attend the place of worship. 
 To their servants they give a day of rest, one in four- 
 teen, or one in twenty-eight days, or not one at all ! 
 On what ground do these parties lay aside the law 
 of God ? Of necessity, piety, or mercy ? Eew put 
 forth so hypocritical a pretence. Their sole object, 
 if they will suffer themselves to look the matter 
 honestly in the face, is to swell their dividends, 
 to make money ! Would they run their Sunday 
 pleasure-trains if they brought in no gain ? Let 
 them be consistent, and follow their other money- 
 making trades on the Lord's-day, till the whole 
 working population of their country become ener- 
 vated, homeless, demoralised, and lose the character 
 of Englishmen and Christians. This is the natural 
 result of such money-making, grasping cupidity, 
 and it is the duty of society to protect the labour- 
 ing classes from every encroachment, of this kind, 
 on their rights, their liberties, their property ; for 
 these are all bound up in Heaven's gift to them 
 the Sabbath. Christianity is the best protector and 
 friend of the poor. 
 
 It is most incumbent upon all who are raised 
 above the condition of actual labour themselves, in 
 every way which Providence enables them to do it, 
 " to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the 
 heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free." In 
 performing this high duty, they will at the same 
 time most surely be helping to lighten the evils of 
 their country by diminishing its crime. 
 
 There is one division of this class to which, it
 
 410 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 seems to me, of no small importance to have public 
 attention directed. 
 
 There are some hundreds of thousands of young 
 men and women employed in the various towns in 
 the kingdom as drapers' and milliners' assistants, 
 &c. These young people are primarily amongst the 
 most respectable, and belong to the most virtuous, 
 walks of life. Yet it is, to my own mind, a matter 
 of certain persuasion, that an undue proportion of 
 their number sink into the lowest depths of crime 
 and infamy. If this be true, there must be a 
 cause ; and humanity, and a sense of public interest, 
 should ascertain what that cause is. Erorn conver- 
 sation with many degraded persons of this class, I 
 am led to consider their moral and religious con- 
 dition, in general, in the houses of their employers, 
 as most deplorable. They are, in almost all cases, 
 removed from home influences, and placed, at the 
 most critical period of life, in the midst of 
 temptations. The love of money is the reigning 
 principle of their new abode. Everything must be 
 sacrificed to this truth, integrity, honour, con- 
 science. Here, perhaps, the evil begins ; for, con- 
 science being ill at ease, the worship of God, the 
 reading and hearing of his word, are given up ; the 
 Lord's-day is devoted to pleasure, and the evenings 
 of the week to dancing-parties, theatres, and the 
 like, when the descent to crime, penury, an early 
 grave, or even worse, becomes frightfully rapid. 
 
 A book written by a competent person in this 
 class, corrected by the experience and observation of
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 others, having for its object the religious improve- 
 ment of the people employed, and at the same time 
 fully exposing the iniquities of trade, would, under 
 God, be productive of great good. The " early 
 closing " movement only touches one point of their 
 social condition. It is to be hoped, however, that 
 it will prove the precursor of a thorough investi- 
 gation of their moral and religious state. In some 
 establishments, it is expected that the young people 
 will leave after breakfast, on Sunday, and not return 
 till night. Where do they spend the day ? In trips 
 on the railway, the river, and in infamous gardens. 
 
 They are dismissed at a moment's notice. What 
 becomes of young women or young men who have 
 no money nor friends near, or are ashamed to apply 
 for help in proper quarters ? The condition of both 
 sexes at such a crisis is appalling enough. That of 
 young women is, of course, the worst. A home, in 
 Christian hands, in every considerable town, would 
 in itself be a haven of refuge to hundreds of this 
 class in a year, and at the same time furnish oppor- 
 tunities for deliberating upon and carrying out 
 further measures. 
 
 "May the Lord prosper you," said a prisoner 
 once to me who had been a shop-walker, with whom 
 I was speaking on the subject, " in your wishes in 
 behalf of these poor young women, I now say, who 
 have been their most terrible enemy, in sending 
 them off about their business at a minute's notice, 
 and abusing them also in a most shameful manner, 
 in my days of darkness."
 
 412 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 There are honourable exceptions in the drapery 
 business. I had the exceeding great pleasure not 
 long ago of witnessing in the City a gathering of 
 the young people, in one large concern, around their 
 principal and friends, to tea. The sight was to me 
 most novel, and I hailed with delight the prospect 
 of such meetings being multiplied in the metropolis. 
 Prom a Report read by one of the young men, I 
 learned that, amongst themselves, during the year, 
 100 had been collected for Missionary purposes; 
 and from a most feeling and faithful exhortation 
 addressed by the principal of the firm, that thirteen 
 of his household in the same period had been con- 
 verted truly, as he hoped, to the Lord. In all our 
 great towns there are, happily, heads of houses of 
 business of like character, who do their utmost to 
 preserve a proper feeling of self-respect in this class, 
 and to show how, by commercial integrity and 
 perseverance, to seek ultimate advancement for 
 themselves. Such masters discharge a high duty ; 
 and whilst preserving the morals of the young 
 persons committed to their charge, are at the same 
 time advancing their own interest and that of 
 society. 
 
 I say their own interest, for the success of every 
 establishment depends in great measure upon the 
 characters of the agents employed. Subordinates 
 who have no interest in a concern, but mere sub- 
 sistence, until they can better themselves, are much 
 more likely to swamp it altogether, than the reverse. 
 Trustworthy agents, treated by their employers
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 413 
 
 with liberality and kindness, who " do service, not 
 as men-pleasers, but as in the sight of God," bring 
 an amount of zeal, and a power and freshness of 
 mind, to their work, which makes their service of 
 incalculable value. 
 
 This has been proved incontestably over and over 
 again, but never more strikingly than lately in the 
 manufactory of " Price's patent Candles," at Bel- 
 mont, Vauxhall. 
 
 The subjects of the experiment in this case were 
 boys. A few of the lads in one department had 
 set about improving themselves in writing, after 
 work. The foreman sympathized in the effort, and 
 encouraged it. More boys joined in. He applied 
 to Mr. Wilson, the managing director, and ob- 
 tained for them some rough moveable desks, from 
 that gentleman, who now warmly took oversight of 
 the matter, and distributed prizes of books, calcu- 
 lated to assist the boys in their plan of mutual im- 
 provement, and keep alive the desire : without any 
 effort or compulsion the school increased. Mr. 
 Wilson did not hesitate to provide a school-building 
 and a teacher, a cricket-ground and other helps, out 
 of his own pocket, until the number of scholars 
 rose to 800, and the annual expense to 130. The 
 expense of the cricket-ground and gardens alone, for 
 three years, amounted to 249, which Mr. Wilson 
 considered was money well laid out. 
 
 But I must let Mr. Wilson speak for himself, in a 
 report to the proprietor :
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 " When you remember that the hour and a-half of schooling 
 was always after a hard day's work, you will not wonder that the 
 boys did not all offer themselves. Compulsion being out of the 
 question, the course we took was to try to join on some harm- 
 less pleasure to the school, and also to make a marked dis- 
 tinction between those who did, and those who did not, belong 
 to it, not by putting disgrace upon these last, but by putting 
 honour on the others. With this view we repeatedly, in the 
 spring and summer of 1849, asked all the school to a tea-party 
 in the new room. The first tea was an interesting one. Very 
 many of the boys had not been at anything of the sort before, 
 and many of them had never, perhaps, put themselves into 
 decent clothes at all. Those who came untidily or dirtily dressed 
 to our first tea, feeling themselves out of keeping with the 
 whole thing, tried hard to avoid this at the next party. To 
 several our first tea was the ^occasion of their taking to neat 
 dressing for life. I will just mention here, that so far as our 
 experience goes, there is not with boys as there is with girls, 
 any danger whatever of leading them to think much of their 
 dress. Almost all our best boys now come to the chapel in 
 plain black, though not a word has ever been said to them 
 about their dress. One evening last summer a friend, who had 
 met a troop of them on the way to one of our cricket-matches, 
 asked me afterwards whether the boys he had met could be our 
 factory boys, as they were, he said, more neatly dressed than his 
 school-fellows used to be. By the help of these tea-parties, we 
 made the boys who did not belong to the school feel awkward 
 and uncomfortable about not doing so, and very many joined, 
 several, however, stipulating that they were not to be asked to 
 the next tea, lest that should be supposed to be their motive for 
 joining. 
 
 " It was on Easter Monday that our first tea-party was held, 
 partly in order to try our powers of attraction against those of 
 Camberwell and Greenwich fairs, both of which are within 
 reach of the factory. Ours wen the stronger, both then and on the 
 Whit Monday following. 
 
 " In following up our plan of combining as much pleasure as 
 possible witb the schools, the next step was to teach the boys 
 cricket, yet it was anything but a pleasant occasion which 
 decided the time of beginning this. In the summer of 1849
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 415 
 
 the cholera came, and it was fearfully severe in Battersea Fields 
 and the lower part of Lambeth, where numbers of our people 
 live. For a time the first thing every morning was to compare 
 notes, as to the relations whom the men and boys had left dead 
 or dying on coming to work, and in the latter part of the time 
 no doctors were to be had, as they were all knocked up. Before 
 it got very bad we got good medical advice, as to whether any 
 precautions against it were possible for our boys, and decided 
 that fresh air and exercise out of the factory were the best 
 preventives. We therefore closed the school entirely, and a 
 gentleman (Mr. Symes) having most kindly let us take pos- 
 session of a field, which was waiting to be occupied by a builder, 
 we set to work hard at learning cricket after working hours. I 
 say learning, for cricket is not a game of London boys of the 
 class of ours, as was proved, by the fact of hardly any of, even 
 the elder ones, knowing anything at all about it when we 
 began. 
 
 " The cholera seems an odd reason for taking to cricket, but 
 I daresay the cricket had a very happy effect on the general 
 health of our boys, and so may have strengthened them against 
 catching it. We lost one (an amiable and well-conducted boy 
 of seventeen), although many of our boys lost relations living in 
 the same houses with them. Always when the game was finished 
 they collected in a corner of the field, and took off their caps for a 
 very short prayer for the safety from cholera of themselves and 
 their friends ; and the tone in which they said their ' Amen ' to 
 this has always made me think, that although the school was 
 nominally given up for the time, they were really getting from 
 their game, so concluded, more moral benefit than any quantity 
 of ordinary schooling could have given them. They also met 
 every morning in the school-room at six o'clock, before 
 beginning work, just for a few minutes, to give thanks for 
 having been safely brought to the beginning of the day, and to 
 pray to be defended in it." 
 
 Nothing, surely, can be more cheering to a Christian phi- 
 lanthropist than such scenes as these, where the evils of the 
 accumulation of numbers in factories are not only overcome, 
 but actually made to bring forth good upon a large scale ; where 
 a religious spirit is seen pervading the whole mass; no doubt 
 producing individual instances of great utility, and sending out 
 a much more extended influence of moral good.
 
 416 TdE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 Mr. Wilson then goes on to describe his summer excursions 
 to the country with the boys, and their exceeding great delight, 
 and the moral benefit. 
 
 It is important to have Mr. Wilson's account of the prosperity 
 of the establishment under this system : 
 
 " I was also, if possible, to state the amount of direct pe- 
 cuniary advantage to the company from all that has been done, 
 and is doing. This I find to be impossible. One can only say 
 generally that the whole spirit of a factory, such as I trust ours is 
 now in prospect of becoming, will be different from that of one in 
 which the giving and taking of wages is the only connexion 
 between the proprietors and their people. One feels intuitively 
 the moment the idea of two such different factories is presented 
 to one's mind, that the difference does, and must necessarily by 
 the very laws of human nature and of religion, ensure to the 
 one much greater prosperity than to the other, although it may 
 be impossible to trace out the details of this, and say, such and 
 such a hundred pounds, spent at such a time on the boys, has 
 brought back two hundred pounds before such a date afterwards. 
 If I were forced to come to some particular, proved instances of 
 benefit to the business, I should take first the one which you wit- 
 nessed the other night after coming down from the schools into the 
 factory, a number of boys working so steadily and well at what, 
 a few years back, we should not have thought of trusting to any 
 but men, it being work requiring much greater care and 
 attention than can be reckoned upon from ordinary untrained 
 factory boys. Yet even here the exact pecuniary benefit cannot 
 be stated, for the boys whom you saw at work are not substi- 
 tutes for men, but for machinery. It is the fact of our having 
 at command cheap boy-labour, which we dare trust, that enables 
 us now to make by hand the better sorts of candles, which we 
 used to make, like the other sorts, in the machines, and which, 
 on account of the hardness of the material, when so made were 
 never free from imperfection. The benefit will come to us, not 
 in saving of wages (for had the choice been only between the 
 men's dear labour and the machines, we should have stuck to 
 the machines), but in increased trade through the imperfections 
 of the candles alluded to being removed." 
 
 The next thing brought under our notice is the resolution 
 proposed and passed at a full meeting of the proprietors on the
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 417 
 
 24th March, 1852, for the support of their educational system, 
 not including the expenses of the chapel. Mr. Conybeare 
 moved the following resolution, adding some remarks to the 
 proprietors, from which we make an extract : 
 
 " ' That the shareholders, cordially coinciding in the views of 
 the company's duty with regard to education, which are ex- 
 pressed in the report, presented hy the educational committee to 
 the directors, authorize the directors to expend a sum not ex- 
 ceeding 900 per annum in maintaining the educational system 
 now in operation in connexion with the company's factories.' 
 
 " The sum I have named, though it includes the salaiy of the 
 chaplain, who is daily employed in teaching in our several 
 schools, and whose various duties you will find enumerated in 
 the second page of our report, does not include the expenses of 
 the chapel. Public worship not being so much a part of the 
 ordinary factory routine as our school training is, it seems better 
 that the directors should not officially move any resolution for 
 providing it, but, however strongly they may feel individually on 
 the subject, should leave it to shareholders to propose whatever 
 may seem to them right. Such proposal may, of course, be 
 made by any shareholder, either by way of amendment on my 
 motion, or as a substantive motion of his own." I cannot 
 avoid here giving some of the philosophic sentiments of this 
 Christian manufacturer. After having given due praise to the 
 manager, Mr. Wilson, for his originating and carrying on the 
 great work at a great expense to himself, he thus speaks : 
 
 " Which of us does not know too well the great evil and intense 
 temptations to which the uncared-for children of our English 
 factories are necessarily exposed when herded together in hot 
 contaminating crowds, and regarded, as the very term 'hands 'so 
 generally applied to them itself suggests, rather as so many mere 
 component parts of the machinery than as human beings ? Shall 
 not we, in our factories, obviate the evil, by increasing, so far as 
 we may, by education, the average moral strength of those by 
 whose toils we profit ? And shall we not, at the same time, 
 strive earnestly to purify the moral atmosphere in which they 
 work, by shutting out, or at least mitigating, the temptations 
 and occasions of evil which the average moral strength of 
 factory children is found incapable of resisting? It is said 
 you must all have frequently heard it that joint stock 
 
 E E
 
 418 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 companies have no consciences. Let this company prove itself 
 an exception to any such rule by acting towards its factory 
 ' hands ' as not forgetting that those ' hands ' have human 
 hearts and immortal souls." 
 
 * An extensive field for the elevation of one of the 
 lowest classes in the country has been, as yet, com- 
 paratively, but little cultivated, I mean, the masses 
 of the poor immured in workhouses. 
 
 The condition of criminals and that of paupers is 
 often compared in the present day. As regards the 
 greater abundance of the necessaries of life provided 
 for the prisoner, there is plainly an error in pre- 
 suming both in similar circumstances, and therefore 
 to be treated alike, in this respect. Society has 
 taken away the liberty of the one, and is directly 
 responsible that he suffers nothing beyond his legal 
 punishment. The other is free to leave, and has the 
 possibility (I am far from saying in all cases) of 
 bettering his condition, through relatives or other- 
 wise. With respect to the moral and spiritual 
 treatment of criminals and paupers, it forms, so far 
 as I have had opportunities for judging, a painful 
 contrast. 
 
 Gentlemen are willing to take charge of prisoners, 
 but they would think it degradation to be governors 
 of poor-houses. Why ? I believe the answer simply 
 to be, in one case they are enabled to keep their 
 natural place in society by adequate support ; in the 
 other, not. The same remark applies to chaplains 
 and schoolmasters. A false notion of economy de- 
 bars the poor in the workhouse from the inestimable
 
 TFIE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 419 
 
 advantage of a high sort of religious and moral 
 influence wholly devoted to their spiritual and social 
 advancement, and entails a loss upon society. 
 
 Are these classes alone incapable of moral eleva- 
 tion ? Are they alone unworthy of the philanthro- 
 pist's regard ? Some Christians are willing to 
 explore this region of benevolence in the spirit of a 
 Sarah Martin, and gratuitously to bring a high 
 moral influence to bear upon its inhabitants. Why 
 are they not welcomed ? 
 
 " It is an observation," writes the British Ladies' 
 Society for visiting Prisons, " which has been made 
 by an experienced member of this Committee, that 
 the worst Prison cases come from Workhouses, and 
 it is greatly wished that the simple means of good, 
 which have been found efficacious in prisons, might 
 be extended to these establishments. From the 
 gratuitous visits of Christian ladies, whose main 
 object, under the blessing of God, is to bring the 
 Scriptures in their practical and experimental power 
 to bear upon those visited, we may surely hope that 
 much benefit might arise, particularly to the young, 
 who have fallen probably through the ignorance, 
 neglect, and misrule of their parents; and to the 
 aged, who, from this, their last resting-place on 
 earth, must shortly pass into a boundless eternity." 
 
 It is no small cause for thankfulness to observe, 
 lately, in the Minutes of the Council of Education, 
 " accounts of the establishment of normal and model 
 schools, with the object of training masters of 
 schools for pauper and for criminal children ;" 
 
 E E 2
 
 420 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 and forming, in connexion with education, in coun- 
 try parts, " school field-gardens ; " and in towns, 
 workshops for trades; and in both, "wash-houses 
 and kitchens," " in which girls may be successfully 
 instructed in domestic economy." 
 
 The early example set by the guardians of the 
 Bridgnorth Union, in the employment of pauper 
 children, and the improvement of bad land in the 
 neighbourhood, deserves universal imitation. 
 
 They have a school-farm at Quatt, the children 
 being separated from the workhouse at Bridgnorth. 
 It is managed by a master, acting in the double 
 capacity of master of the house and schoolmaster, 
 and his wife is matron. Their united salary is 50, 
 with rations. The house is capable of accommo- 
 dating 49 children. The school is industrial, the 
 boys being employed in the cultivation of four and a 
 half acres of land, and in the management of cows, 
 pigs, and pony. Three, and occasionally four, cows 
 are kept, and from four to eight pigs. The girls are 
 employed in the house and dairy- work, in washing, 
 ironing, and baking, together with sewing, knitting, 
 and making their own clothes, &c., &c. The produce 
 is disposed of first, in supplying the inmates of the 
 school with milk and potatoes, charged at market 
 prices ; and the rest, such as butter, pigs, &c., is 
 sold at Bridgnorth. The children, like all others 
 in a workhouse, are clothed and fed by the union. 
 Their time is usually thus employed : they rise at 
 half-past 5 in the summer, and at a quarter before 
 7 in the winter ; they work till 8 ; school from 9
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 421 
 
 till 12 ; dine at 1 ; and at 2 P.M. they go to their 
 work the boys to their field and garden, and the 
 girls to their sewing, knitting, &c. They leave work 
 at 5, and sup at 6, after which they play an hour, or 
 more, if the weather permit ; and, as they sing in 
 church, they practise the psalms and chants for the 
 following Sunday, and the day is closed with prayers. 
 The profits of the farm are carried to the account of 
 the union ; they amount to from 60 to 70 per 
 annum on an average, after paying rent and taxes, 
 together with a per-centage on the buildings, 
 draining, &c. 
 
 Mr. Tuffhell, the Government Inspector, reports 
 most favourably of schools of this kind ; and in this 
 communication throws out a suggestion which, to 
 me, considering the wants of our Australian colonies, 
 and the excessive number and consequent demorali- 
 zation of poor friendless girls in this country, appears 
 very valuable : 
 
 ''1 believe that there is no description of children dependent 
 on the poor rates who would not be materially benefited by a 
 transference to our southern colonies ; but the scheme is pecu- 
 liarly fitted to orphan children, as they are too often perfectly 
 friendless, and would have no ties to sever by emigration. In 
 order, however, to benefit to the utmost both England and her 
 colonists, it would be desirable to send them out at the earliest 
 possible age, and to keep them for a certain period in orphan 
 asylums to be erected in the colonies, where they might be 
 taught such trades and occupations as are most in demand. 
 
 These colonial asylums should be erected, maintained, and 
 managed entirely under the supervision of the colonists, while 
 the passage-money should in all cases be paid by the parishes 
 or friends of the emigrants. The cost to all parties of such
 
 422 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 a scheme would, I am confident, be considerably less than 
 what is incurred at present.* 
 
 With respect to two schools, easily approached by 
 rail from London, on the Croydon and Epsoin line, 
 Mr. Tuffnell writes as follows : 
 
 " The Central London District School at Norwood proceeds 
 under the same successful system of management that has 
 characterized it for many years. Agricultural labour is now 
 about to be added to the other forms of industrial employment 
 provided for the boys, and a handsome chapel has been built, 
 capable of containing the 1,000 souls who constitute the popu- 
 lation of the school. But the results obtained in the North 
 Surrey District School, owing to its later foundation, afford by 
 far the most remarkable proof of the advantages that would 
 ensue from the general establishment of this description of 
 pauper schools. As this school has been little more than two 
 years in operation, it is possible to make an accurate comparison 
 between what the children were under the old workhouse sys- 
 tem, and what they are under the district school system. The 
 improvement in morals, manners, discipline, and instruction is 
 so great, that I think no one who sees it could doubt the supe- 
 rior efficacy of the system of education here pursued. Stealing, 
 lying, deception, writing improper words upon the wall, insub- 
 ordination, and mistrust, were a few of the evils with which the 
 managers had to contend on the opening of the school. At 
 present the above vices are hardly known. The getting rid of 
 
 * Emigration, as a remedy for some of our social anomalies, 
 is now gone by, except of this kind, or of poor families in which 
 females greatly predominate. 
 
 I may take occasion further here to add, by way of answer to 
 many inquiries respecting Mrs. Chisholm, that I believe that 
 lady to be thoroughly benevolent ; but, as a sincere Roman 
 Catholic, she must use her influence for the good of her church, 
 and much farther, perhaps, than she ever intended. If her 
 efforts had been amongst her co-religionists in Ireland, they 
 would have been less open to suspicion.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF C1UMK. 423 
 
 the mistrust and suspicion which the boys mostly felt towards 
 their officers, and persuading them that those who were set over 
 them were really actuated by a desire to promote their welfare, 
 was the most difficult feat to perform. But I believe that this 
 most important point, which was quite essential to the moral 
 success of the school, has now been fully attained. 
 
 "I will mention a few facts which will place in contrast the 
 change that has been worked in the character of these children. 
 In the first week of the opening of the establishment, they broke 
 out into open riot, in which 100Z. worth of damage was done to 
 the building. At present, though the number of children has 
 been doubled, the risks of such a disorder occurring are hardly 
 within the bounds of possibility. But perhaps the ease with 
 which the truth is arrived at, when the master makes inquiry 
 respecting any offence that has been secretly committed, is the 
 most gratifying proof of the moral status of the children. Of 
 this I will mention an instance. 
 
 " Three of the boys, when the school was out walking, robbed 
 a poor woman of her apples from a tree in her garden. She 
 complained to a policeman, who brought the complaint to the 
 chief schoolmaster. Upon which he assembled the boys, told 
 them of the disgrace that had been brought upon the establish- 
 ment, and expressed his hope that those boys who had com- 
 mitted the crime would come forward and confess their guilt. 
 The three delinquents immediately came forward. The master 
 then said, that, in consequence of their ready confession, he 
 would not punish them ; but he appealed to the whole school 
 on behalf of the poor woman who had lost her property, and 
 hoped that those who had any halfpence would subscribe them 
 to recompense her. This appeal was immediately answered by 
 the collection of 6s. 6d. in halfpence ; which sum was committed 
 to the care of the three criminals, who took it to the poor 
 woman, asked her forgiveness, and so ended one of the worst 
 offences that for some time has appeared in the North Surrey 
 School. Such an instance could not occur in a school which 
 was not in a sound moral condition ; and it should also be re- 
 membered that it happened among children taken from the 
 lowest grade of London poverty." 
 
 The following two cases will illustrate the economy
 
 42 L THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 of the two systems. They are supplied to me by th< 
 excellent chaplain of the North Surrey School : 
 
 "In one of the unions comprised in our School District, there 
 is a pauper who became chargeable to his parish at a very early 
 age, and received his education in the workhouse school. He is 
 now 25 or 26 years old, and has never ceased to be chargeable 
 to his parish (except when in prison) for more than a week or 
 two at a time. He is, at the moment I am writing, in the 
 county gaol for the 15th time, and is undergoing a sentence of 
 2 years imprisonment, with hard labour, for threatening the life 
 of the Vice-Chairman of the Board, who had officially, one day, 
 to convey to him the refusal of the Guardians to allow him out- 
 door relief. This is probably an extreme case. But still I fear 
 many a case might be found in other workhouses, parallel in all 
 its essential features. 
 
 " Now contrast with this a case of a boy from the same union 
 who has recently left our school. 
 
 " This boy was admitted into the school very shortly after the 
 opening of the establishment. He was then nearly 14| years of 
 age. The account I received of his former career was not fa- 
 vourable. Still, his conduct with us was generally good ; though, 
 had I been asked to point out the most promising case, I cer- 
 tainly should not have selected him. Being a strong, active 
 lad, we sent him to work on alternate days at the farm. He 
 soon imbibed a great fondness for his employment, and, at the 
 expiration of his first year, he had learned to follow the plough, 
 reap, and tend the cattle, in a very creditable manner. At length 
 he was sent for by the Board, who had obtained a situation for 
 him at some marble works in town. The boy at first exhibited 
 great reluctance to accept the situation, on account of his pre- 
 ference for agricultural work. He was desired to withdraw from 
 the Board-room, while the Guardians consulted what was to be 
 done with him. Upon being readmitted, he at once said that 
 he had changed his mind, and would accept the situation. The 
 Guardians were naturally surprised at this sudden change of 
 resolution, and inquired the cause of it. ' Gentlemen,' he 
 replied, ' it is true I should much prefer being a farm labourer, 
 but I am afraid if I do not accept this offer, I shall have to 
 go back, not to the school, as I am now 16, but to the work-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CUTMK. -125 
 
 house; and I would do anything rather tftan that.' It is much 
 to the credit of the Board that they immediately sent him back 
 to the school to await a more eligible offer ; and, very shortly, 
 they obtained a situation for him in a neighbouring gentleman's 
 family, to look after his horse and garden. He has now been 
 there nearly a year. He frequently obtains leave to attend 
 our Chapel services on Sunday, and I hear that he gives his 
 master perfect satisfaction." 
 
 Bagged and industrial schools, in Christian 
 hands, are of double value in the prevention of 
 crime. They give education on a sound basis, and 
 to the class most in danger of falling from virtue. 
 They become, also, the centres of improvement in 
 depraved localities. 
 
 A public-house in the worst part of Westminster, 
 once the resort of Turpin and his gang, now con- 
 verted into a school, a reading and lecture-room, by 
 Home Missionary enterprise, is not only a fact, but 
 an illustration of the work itself, and the social 
 benefits it becomes the parent of, in such regions. 
 A short time back, a respectable person could not 
 be seen to walk in Duck-lane. A self-denying City 
 missionary opened a passage. The Earl of Shaftes- 
 bury planted his schools, and the character of the 
 very place was elevated. A few hours spent there in 
 company with the missionary are amongst the most 
 pleasing reminiscences of my life. 
 
 The great value of industrial schools, in a 
 financial as well as a moral point of view, is now 
 ascertained 'in almost all our great towns. The par- 
 ticulars of one in Aberdeen, as stated in a pamphlet
 
 426 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 by my honoured friend Mr. Thompson, of Banchory- 
 house, must suffice : 
 
 " A few years since, there were 280 children in Aberdeen 
 who had no visible means of subsistence but by begging and 
 stealing. A begging child is now seldom to be seen in our 
 streets or in the county, and juvenile delinquency has considerably 
 diminished. The former result has been produced by the estab- 
 lishment of Schools of Industry ; and, in order still more to 
 diminish juvenile delinquency, an improved system of indus- 
 trial training is earnestly recommended. 
 
 "In April, 1846, the Rural Police Committee of the county of 
 Abei'deen, in referring to the great diminution of juvenile 
 vagrants in the county, thus allude to the effects of the Schools 
 of Industry : 
 
 " ' But the most gratifying part of the results of last year's 
 experience consists in the almost complete disappearance of 
 juvenile vagrants from the county. During the whole year only 
 fourteen cases of juvenile vagrancy have occurred. The follow- 
 ing are the numbers for each year : 
 
 1840-41 321 
 
 1841-42 297 
 
 1842-43 397 
 
 1843-44 345 
 
 1844-45 105 
 
 1845-46 14 
 
 " ' Your Committee desire to draw particular attention to this 
 subject, feeling it to be of the highest importance, because 
 juvenile vagrancy is, they are persuaded, the nursery whence a 
 large proportion of the crime and pauperism of after years is 
 furnished.' " 
 
 The sentiments of Mr. Thompson fully agree 
 with my own, as to the chief value of all 
 schools : 
 
 " No industrial school can prosper unless placed under the 
 management of persons of firm, immovable principles, whose 
 hearts are full of love to the souls as well as to the persons of 
 the pupils, and whose great desire is to bring them to the
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 427 
 
 knowledge of the only Saviour, while they neglect no other 
 needful care and instruction. One great object to be ever kept 
 in view is to make the school, as it were, ' a happy home ' to the 
 children." 
 
 The pamphlets of Mr. Thompson and the Rev. 
 Dr. Guthrie (published by Nisbet) should be perused 
 for further information on this important subject. 
 The first-named gentleman has since published a 
 valuable book on this and kindred subjects (" Social 
 Evils ; their Causes and Cure." Nisbet.) 
 
 The number of Ragged Schools in the metropolis 
 is now about 120, attended by some 20,000 chil- 
 dren, and nearly 2,000 teachers, on the Lord's day, 
 of whom about 200 are paid teachers, and assistants 
 in the week. 
 
 To give some of my readers, who have not had 
 the opportunity of observing, an idea of the mate- 
 rials of which these schools are formed, and the 
 effect which they produce upon the population 
 around them, it may be as well here to add an 
 account of one or two, in the metropolis, given by 
 eye-witnesses. 
 
 Charles Dickens has given a graphic description 
 of Field Lane School. A writer in the " Edinburgh 
 Journal," thus describes his visit to the same, in 
 1845 : 
 
 " The Smithfield ' Ragged School ' is situate at 65, West 
 Street, a locality where vice and fever hold fearful sway. To 
 open it in any other neighbourhood would be to defeat the 
 object of the projectors. The very habiliments of the boys, so 
 patched, that the character of the original texture could scarcely 
 be gleaned, would almost be sufficient to preclude their ingress
 
 428 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 to a more respectable neighbourhood, and make them slink 
 back abashed into their loathsome dens. The house has 
 that battered, worn aspect, which speaks of dissolute idleness ; 
 the windows are dark and dingy, and the street too narrow to 
 admit a current of fresh air ; and it needed, on the rainy day in 
 March in which it was visited, but a slightly active imagination 
 to call up visions of the robberies and murders which have been 
 planned in it, and of which it has been the scene. 
 
 " The entrance to the school was dark, and there being no 
 windows to illuminate the rickety staircase, we stumbled into 
 the school-room on the first floor, before we were aware. On 
 entering, the eye was greeted by a spectacle to which, from its 
 mingled humour and pathos, the pencil of Hogarth could have 
 alone done justice. We found a group of from forty to fifty 
 girls in one room, and about sixty boys in another ; the girls, 
 although the offspring of thieves, quiet, winning, and maidenly ; 
 but the boys full of grimace and antics, and, by jest and cunning 
 glances, evincing that they thought the idea of attending school 
 fine fun. Foremost amongst them was a boy apparently aged 
 seventeen, but as self-collected as a man of forty, of enormous 
 head, and with a physiognomy in which cunning and wit were 
 equally blended, whose mastery over the other boys was 
 attested by their all addressing him as ' captain.' The boys had 
 their wan, vice-worn faces, as clean as could be expected, and 
 their rags seemed furbished up for the occasion ; whilst their 
 ready repartee, and striking original remarks, and the electric 
 light of the eye, when some peculiar practical joke was perpe- 
 trated, evinced that intellect was there, however uncultivated or 
 misused. Unless we are greatly self-deceived, we beheld in this 
 unpromising assemblage as good a show of heads as we have 
 ever seen in any other Sunday School, and the remark is 
 justified by what we learned with respect to the shrewdness 
 generally evinced by these children. The predominant tempe- 
 rament was the sanguine, a constitution which usually indicates 
 great love for animal exercise ; and during the time we were 
 present, they appeared as if they could not sit quiet one 
 moment hands, feet, head, nay, the very trunk itself, seemed 
 perpetually struggling to do something, and that something 
 generally being found in sheer mischief. 
 
 " Hymns were occasionally sung to lively measures, the girls
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 429 
 
 singing with a sweetness and pathos that sunk deep into the 
 heart; but the boys were continually grimacing and joking, yet 
 all the time attempting to look grave and sober, as if they were 
 paying the most respectful attention. When the superintendent 
 told the boys that he was about to pitch the tune, and that they 
 must follow him, the boy before mentioned as the captain cried 
 
 out in a stage-whisper, ' Mr. says we are to follow him I 
 
 wonder where he 's going to ? ' a jest hailed with a general 
 laugh by his confederates. 
 
 " Amongst these boys, however, were some to whom the word 
 of kindness was evidently a ' word in season,' and who drank in 
 the tender accents with which they were addressed perchance 
 for the first time as if it were music to their souls. Then, 
 again, was to be seen some poor puny lad, as gentle in mind as 
 in body, who was obviously dying from unfitness to cope with 
 the requirements of his circumstances poor tender saplings, 
 growing in an atmosphere which was too bleak for any but the 
 forest oak to brave. Untrained, except to crime, as most of the 
 children are, much good has already been effected." 
 
 The Lamb and Flag Ragged School is planted in 
 another bad region of the metropolis, and has pro- 
 duced the most pleasant fruits. 
 
 Clerkenwell was once a lovely country of hill 
 and dale, sparkling streams, and sheltering woods. 
 Fitzstephen,* writing in 1196, speaks of the "open, 
 pleasant meadow, the flowing rivulets, and the noise 
 of the water-wheels," in the suburbs on the north 
 side of the City wall. How altered now ! A writer 
 in the " Illustrated News," thus describes it : 
 
 " Many of our readers are, no doubt, familiar with the densely- 
 peopled, dirty, confused, huddled locality which stretches round 
 the Middlesex Sessions House. Many of them have, we doubt 
 not, been bewildered amid the dingy, swarming alleys, crowded 
 
 * Cromv.-ell's "History of Clerkenwdl."
 
 430 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 with tattered, sodden-looking women, and hulking, unwashed 
 men, clustering around the doors of low-browed public-houses, 
 or seated by dingy, unwindowed shops, prosy with piles of dust, 
 rickety rubbish, or reeking with the odour of coarse food, lumps 
 of carrion-like looking meat simmering in greasy pans, and 
 brown, crusty morsels of fish, still gluey with the oil in which 
 they have been fried. In Clerkenwell there is grovelling, 
 starving poverty. In Clerkenwell broods the darkness of utter 
 ignorance. In its lanes and alleys the lowest debauch, the 
 coarsest enjoyment, the most infuriate passions, the most un- 
 restrained vice, roar and riot. It is the locality of dirt, and 
 ignorance, and vice, the recesses whereof are known but to the 
 disguised policeman, as he gropes his way up rickety staircases 
 towards the tracked house-breaker's den, or the poor shabby- 
 genteel City Missionary, as he kneels at midnight by the foul 
 straw of some convulsed and dying outcast." 
 
 In the centre of this " locality of dirt, ignorance, 
 and vice,"* and close to the "Clerke's "Well" of 
 old, Lamb Court is situated. At the time the above 
 sketch was written, a stranger sometimes paused at 
 its entrance, but never ventured through ; even the 
 police seldom went there alone. But now, though 
 the inhabitants are much the same, the habitations 
 quite as wretched, visitors no longer need to fear 
 insult or violence, but invariably meet with civility 
 and respect. By what has this change been 
 wrought ? The reformatory influence of a Bagged 
 School. 
 
 The Lamb and Elag Bagged School has been 
 established nearly seven years. Its origin is traced 
 to the active zeal of the City Missionary. The inte- 
 rest of Mr. Humphrey was awakened on behalf of 
 
 * Ragged School Magazine, Feb., 1853.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 431 
 
 the hundreds of poor, naked, ignorant children with 
 which these courts abounded. He often saw them 
 taken, and tried by justice for the breach of laws of 
 which they were ignorant, and which no one had 
 ever taught them they were to respect ; and he 
 asked, Could nothing be done for those poor neg- 
 lected little ones ? Eaith whispered, Try. He took 
 a small ill-ventilated room in Lamb Court, and on 
 the Sabbath-day collected together as many as it 
 would contain, and there taught them the first prin- 
 ciples of that truth, which to know aright " is life 
 everlasting." His self-denying efforts having come 
 to the knowledge of the Rector of the parish, through 
 his District Visitors, a Committee was formed for 
 carrying on the work thus commenced. The lease 
 of a house in Lamb Court, locally known as " Jack 
 Ketclis Warren" from the fact of its having been 
 a training-place for young thieves, was obtained, and 
 altered, at a considerable cost, into a school-room. 
 Thus was the foundation of a good work laid, and, in 
 carrying it on, many difficulties were to be sur- 
 mounted. Amid much insult, and some personal 
 violence, did the teachers prosecute their labours, 
 endeavouring to remove the prejudices of the people, 
 and striving to disperse that gross darkness with 
 which ignorance had enveloped the inhabitants of 
 these courts. Nor did their patient labour lose its 
 reward. 
 
 An interest in their welfare, and the voice of 
 gentle kindness and compassion, were things almost 
 unknown to the dwellers in these courts, and it was
 
 432 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 
 
 some little time before they could believe that the 
 profession of friendliness made to them was sincere 
 and disinterested. But, this discovered, from foes 
 they became friends from hinderers, helpers" of the 
 work. Soon realizing the advantage of the school 
 to their children, they solicited the Committee to 
 open a Day School. Mr. Vanderkiste, the then 
 Missionary of the district, warmly espoused the 
 cause. Funds were placed at the disposal of the 
 Committee,* which enabled them to open a Daily 
 School, under the care of a duly -trained Master and 
 Mistress. By much toil, and through much trouble, 
 a Free Day School was also established, and was 
 speedily filled. The attention of the Committee was 
 now turned towards improving the outward ap- 
 pearance of the poor ragged ones attending the 
 schools. A Clothing Fund was therefore estab- 
 lished, to which the parents of the children pay 
 according to their means, from one penny upwards ; 
 to every shilling so subscribed, the Committee add 
 a bonus of fourpence. Many a bare foot was soon 
 covered, many a half-naked body decently clad, and 
 protected from the cold and rain. An Adult Even- 
 ing School we find next established. Its teachers 
 were voluntary, and the scholars of the most disor- 
 derly characters. Strict discipline, firmness, and 
 kind treatment, in a great measure shortly changed 
 these rough features into those of a more pleasing 
 description. The Committee opened an Infant 
 
 * See "Notes and Narratives of a Six Years' Mission." Nisbet.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 433 
 
 School, which has proved a most valuable auxiliary 
 to the other schools. The room fitted up for this 
 purpose was only capable of containing sixty child- 
 ren, and it was immediately filled, and it became 
 evident that this branch of the Committee's labour 
 was the most appreciated. 
 
 The school-rooms were opened in the Sabbath 
 evening for a Devotional Service, consisting of 
 prayer, reading and expounding the Scriptures, and 
 exhortation. 
 
 The schools were now all crowded, but the rooms 
 were small and ill- ventilated, and, consequently, the 
 health of the teachers failed. Children and infants 
 were every week refused admission for want of ac- 
 commodation. An enlargement of the premises was 
 decided upon. Two small tenements adjoining the 
 old school-house were taken and pulled down, and 
 upon this enlarged site the present schools were 
 erected, and re-opened in October, 1852. 
 
 The friends and teachers have abundant testimony 
 that they have not laboured in vain. We will, how- 
 ever, only state one fact illustrative of the silent 
 influence such institutions have upon the neighbour- 
 hood in which they are situated : Lamb Court is, 
 as has been stated, a locality of filth. Its inhabit- 
 ants, principally costermongers, Smithfield drovers, 
 etc., throw their refuse into the court, where it often 
 remains until swept away by the scavenger. On a 
 recent occasion, a public meeting of the subscribers 
 and friends was held at the school-rooms, which 
 becoming known to the inhabitants of the court,
 
 434 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 just before the meeting assembled, unsolicited by 
 any, they appeared with broom and pail, and tho- 
 roughly washed the court from end to end, as though 
 they were anxious to redeem their character, and 
 that nothing unpleasant to the eye or nose should 
 annoy the visitors to their schools. 
 
 Upon visiting these schools, a stranger is struck 
 with the neat and orderly appearance of the child- 
 ren, especially on the Sunday, and naturally thinks 
 that many are fit for higher, or paid schools. But 
 a more careful scrutiny will remove this impression. 
 The operation of the Clothing Fund, and careful 
 training, have produced these results. The teachers 
 have strict instructions to admit no children but 
 such as belong to the class for whom they are in- 
 tended. 
 
 The class of children found in Ragged Schools 
 may fitly be described in the words of a lady who 
 has devoted her talents to the prevention of crime : 
 
 " A large proportion are decidedly of the perishing classes, in 
 their lowest condition of abject poverty and want, uncertain of 
 every meal, and careless, therefore, of everything but obtaining 
 the bread that perisheth ; a smaller proportion are of the dan- 
 gerous classes themselves, or those connected with them, being 
 known to be engaged in practices directly or indirectly injurious 
 to society; while a smaller proportion still are members of 
 families who should be in a different position, but who have 
 been sunk by circumstances which may or may not have been 
 under their own control, but from which they cannot free them- 
 selves without a helping hand."* 
 
 Many of the children present a sad spectacle 
 
 * Carpenter on Reformatory Schools.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 435 
 
 pale and emaciated, their physical growth stunted 
 for want of proper food, while the intellect is pre- 
 cociously sharpened children of five years of age 
 with the wit and shrewdness of adults. It is not an 
 unfrequent thing for some of the children to enter 
 school eating a raw carrot or turnip, or some equally 
 unnutritive article of diet, and which forms their 
 only breakfast ; while others are known to come 
 without food at all, when the little ones gladly share 
 such as they have with their less fortunate com- 
 panions. The master informs us that in a recent 
 visit to the homes of the children in Turnmill Street, 
 and the courts and alleys adjacent, he found " want, 
 wretchedness, and misery, abounding on every side, 
 owing, in very many cases, to want of employment, 
 in others to idleness and drunkenness ; and yet, to 
 judge by the appearance of many of the children, no 
 one would have considered such to be the fact," 
 there being a strong desire in many of the parents 
 to send their children clean and neat, though the 
 garments obtained through the Clothing Fund are 
 often paid for by the sacrifice of necessary daily 
 food. 
 
 John Pounds, a crippled cobbler of Portsmouth, 
 with a canary-bird on one shoulder, and a cat on 
 the other, first teaching, as he wrought in his little 
 wooden house, a crippled nephew ; then, to do more 
 in the same time, the child of a very poor neighbour ; 
 and, at length, a class of dirty ragged boys, who 
 crowded themselves around him on his working 
 days, and followed him to church on the Lord's- 
 
 F F 2
 
 436 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 day, taught the true philosophy of Ragged 
 Schools. 
 
 This singular, but gifted and pious poor man, in 
 this way instructed hundreds of children, who grew 
 up to he useful members of society, many of whom 
 would have otherwise perished in the vortex of vice, 
 nowhere worse than in that most wicked town. 
 
 Pounds died in 1839, and many an honest trades- 
 man, and stout-hearted sailor and soldier, have wept 
 since over his grave, remembering the kind-hearted 
 and generous friend of their boyhood, who taught 
 them to read and to think, to pray, and to labour 
 honestly for their bread ; who played with them as 
 he taught, nursed them when they were sick, and 
 cheered their friendless, homeless poverty. 
 
 Thomas Cranfield, a pious operative of London, 
 did the same in the metropolis ; and entered into 
 the joy of his Lord about the same time. 
 
 How very small a thing is this world's greatness, 
 compared with the nobility of such followers of 
 Christ, and benefactors of mankind ! 
 
 Now arose, in God's good providence, an institu- 
 tion, which has since brought, by its direct labour, 
 an untold amount of blessing to this million-peopled 
 city, and has become the pioneer and preparer of 
 the ground for many other enterprises, designed for 
 the physical and moral improvement of the poor, 
 the London City Mission. 
 
 I refer the reader here to this noble enterprise and 
 achievement of unsectarian Christian philanthropy, 
 merely in its subordinate and less noticed features,
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 437 
 
 as one of the most seasonable agencies raised up 
 in our times for the prevention of crime. I look 
 upon the 320 missionaries of this society, stationed 
 in the worst parts of London, as so many moral- 
 force constables, and worth to society more than 
 tenfold the number of the best organized police. 
 
 The magistracy, under existing statutes, and the 
 legislature, by new or amended laws, could prevent 
 much crime. 
 
 A thorough, sifting investigation by magistrates, 
 and the enforcement of law in the better regulation 
 of public-houses, pleasure-gardens, casinos, and 
 other places of resort, would repress much crime, by 
 the removal of some of its most prolific causes. 
 
 I have noticed with great satisfaction a wise move 
 on the part of the Total Abstinence Society, depu- 
 ting a properly qualified person to attend on 
 licensing day, and prove to the bench of magistrates 
 the absence of necessity for granting new licenses in 
 several towns, and neiv licenses, in most cases, were 
 not conceded. If this were done in every town for 
 three years, and those licenses withdrawn which were 
 proved to have been abused it would do more to 
 repress crime and the growth of immorality in the 
 country, than all our prisons or reformatories. As 
 to the people's amusements being interfered with, 
 this is a chimera, got up by interested parties, to 
 deter magistrates from doing their duty. The people 
 to be dealt with are thoughtless juveniles, miserable 
 drunkards, thieves, abandoned women, and the 
 like. Are not the parents of young persons, their
 
 4*38 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 teachers, and their friends, who would save them 
 from rushing into ruin ; the many wives pauperized 
 by the drunkard's habits, and the whole moral and 
 religious public of the country, as much entitled, to 
 say the least, to be called the people ? One might 
 very well be content to abide by the suffrages of the 
 very drunkards and pleasure-takers in their sober 
 moments. None curse with bitterer imprecations 
 the public-house and the Sunday pleasure-ground, 
 which have proved the sources of such wretchedness, 
 if not ruin, to themselves. 
 
 When one compares, in their moral aspect, the 
 Middlesex House of Detention with the demoralizing 
 prison of Clerkenwell, which it displaced; or the 
 new prison of Wandsworth, and the London House 
 of Correction in Holloway, with the vile prison of 
 Brixton and Giltspur Street, he sees a step taken 
 towards stopping crime in the metropolis : but I 
 most respectfully submit it to the magistrates of 
 Middlesex and Surrey, and the City, whether the 
 same amount of energy and public spirit put forth 
 in stopping the supplies of crime., such as I have 
 referred to, would not accomplish infinitely more 
 good, and at very much less cost ? 
 
 Upon the magistracy undoubtedly rests an awful 
 responsibility, in respect to places licensed by their 
 authority for public entertainment. The facility 
 with which licenses are granted is most astonishing. 
 Places, notoriously of the most demoralizing de- 
 scription, where not only drunkenness, but vice in 
 .every shape, is practised, and the young of both
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 439 
 
 sexes are continually debauched, are year after year 
 permitted to renew their horrid trade, by those 
 whose office it is to protect the morals of the people. 
 The mere presumption that a house is orderly, seems 
 sufficient for it to pass muster. " It is the property 
 of a most respectable individual ;" yes, but that most 
 respectable proprietor only looks to his rent, and the 
 interest of the money which he has embarked in 
 the concern, and so the most hideous evils grow, and 
 gather strength; the moral public being deterred 
 from exposing them, by the difficulty of obtaining 
 direct proof, and the fear of an action for libel, or 
 the odium attached to the gratuitous informer. 
 
 How gentlemen invested with this office can 
 satisfy their conscience in this matter, without per- 
 sonal and repeated scrutiny, must be left to them- 
 selves to say. 
 
 Our garrisoned and sea-port towns are amongst the 
 saddest of all places in these respects, as borough 
 magistrates are the worst. In almost all, you have 
 a noble Christian company of persons, lay and cleri- 
 cal, labouring with all their might to save our brave 
 sailors and soldiers from the hands of enemies more 
 destructive than the engines of war, the fury of the 
 elements, or the malaria of climate ; * but you see 
 
 * I cannot help noticing here an act of wise and munificent 
 benevolence, in the sailor Duke of Northumberland, who has 
 lately signified his intention of erecting and presenting to the 
 port of North Shields, a handsome Sailor's Home, the cost of 
 which would be 4000 ; the land, which has also been contri- 
 buted by his grace, is worth 1000 more. All that the duke 
 has requested of the shipowners is, to raise 2000 for its en- 
 dowment. This sum has now been subscribed.
 
 440 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 the treacherous foe housed, sheltered, and accredited 
 by the magisterial residents, and that in such 
 strength, that our sailors and soldiers must only 
 move forth in a body, if they would be safe from 
 the solicitations of barefaced open-day profligacy, 
 or the merciless fangs of thieves and crimps. 
 
 As for a soldier, after a hard field-day, or march 
 in summer, having it in his power to get an honest 
 pint of beer in the vicinity of his barrack-home, or 
 without having an abandoned companion forced 
 upon him, the thing seems next to impossible. I 
 have heard of one commanding officer prohibiting 
 his men from walking through a street, where every 
 third or fourth house was one of those licensed 
 places of entertainment, with what effect I am not 
 able to say ; but what a libel upon the magistracy ! 
 
 Of all these hotbeds of profligacy and crime, 
 Portsmouth is perhaps the worst. 
 
 Some magistrates, by a benevolent exercise of the 
 discretionary power left in their hands, repress crime 
 in many cases without the cost and degradation of im- 
 prisonment. The learned Recorder of Birmingham, 
 for instance, has shown, by his own practice, how 
 much crime may be checked by one in his official 
 station, by calling in the aid of domestic discipline, 
 or of prudent and kind employers in the primary 
 stages of criminality, as appears by the subjoined 
 extract from his evidence before Lord Brougham's 
 Committee in 1847 :- 
 
 " What punishment do you generally give those 
 children ?
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 441 
 
 " I am rather fortunately situated in that respect, 
 because many of the children at Birmingham have 
 either friends, or relatives, or masters, who are 
 kindly disposed, and a considerable number of them 
 I am enabled to return to their masters or friends, 
 and I do that under this guarantee : the master 
 enters into an obligation to take care of the child ; 
 his name is inscribed in a register, and at certain 
 frequent but undetermined periods he is visited by 
 an officer of the police, without notice, for the pur- 
 pose of ascertaining what has been the conduct of 
 the boy, and hoic he has been treated. 
 
 " Generally speaking, has the result been favour- 
 able ? 
 
 " It has been favourable not so much so as your 
 lordships may perhaps expect ; but what I consider 
 favourable, under all the circumstances. The last 
 time I saw the account, there had been 113 persons 
 so disposed of. Of those, 44 maintained their posi- 
 tions without a single relapse ; and of the conduct 
 of 29 we were from one cause or other ignorant; 
 the remaining 40 had relapsed." 
 
 Our laws should be made better known to the 
 masses of the people. 
 
 I should like to see a reading lesson on the sub- 
 ject of crime, its causes, and its punishments, in 
 the hands of every child taught under Govern- 
 ment ? 
 
 An intelligible and thorough publication of good 
 laws must constitute a great part of their value. 
 In the books of the National Board of Education
 
 442 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 in Ireland, you have copious lessons upon Money, 
 Exchange, Commerce, and the like subjects ; but 
 there is not a single page devoted to this purpose ! 
 Yet, of all places in Her Majesty's dominions, the 
 people in that country require most to be taught the 
 nature and functions of government, and the value 
 of laws to the poor as well as to the rich. Can 
 there be a party in Ireland to whom it would really 
 give offence to teach, that property has rights as 
 well as duties, that the persons of jurors and 
 witnesses should be held sacred, that the law, 
 which is "a terror to evil-doers," is protective of 
 the rights of the well-disposed, that societies which 
 contemplate and carry out secret and bloodthirsty 
 vengeance on obnoxious individuals, are ruinous to 
 the best interests of the poor, deterring from 
 amongst them capital, enterprise, and employment, 
 which would feed and clothe them, that atrocious 
 criminals are not martyrs, that assassination is 
 murder, and all who are silently privy to it, before 
 or after, are implicated in its awful guilt ? It seems 
 that such doctrines would give offence. So the 
 functions of government are shared with the trans- 
 gressors of law, and justice is compromised or 
 defeated. Lord Derby's government, in 1852, was 
 a most honourable exception to this truckling 
 system, and the laws were beginning to be re- 
 spected. 
 
 " The certainty of punishment " says Paley, " is of 
 more consequence than the severity. Criminals do 
 not so much natter themselves with the lenity of the
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 443 
 
 sentence, as with the hope of escaping. They are 
 not so apt to compare what they gain by the crime 
 with what they may suffer from the punishment, as 
 to encourage themselves with the chance of conceal- 
 ment or flight. For which reason, a vigilant magis- 
 tracy, an accurate police, a proper distribution of 
 force and intelligence, together with due rewards 
 for the discovery and apprehension of malefactors, 
 and an undeviating impartiality in carrying the laws 
 into execution, contribute more to the restraint and 
 suppression of crimes than any violent exacerbations 
 of punishment. And, for the same reason, of all 
 contrivances directed to this end, those perhaps are 
 most effectual which facilitate the conviction of 
 criminals." 
 
 The want of certainty of punishment in Great 
 Britain cannot be much complained of juries can 
 act according to their conscience, and witnesses 
 show themselves in the streets. In Ireland the case 
 is reversed, the ride there rather is, certainty of 
 escape from justice, ESPECIALLY IN CRIMES OF 
 BLOOD. 
 
 Does the honourable profession of the law do 
 much towards increasing the certainty of conviction 
 and the condign punishment of the guilty ? Are its 
 doctrines sound ? 
 
 The practice of our advocates in general is, I fear, 
 too correctly expressed by one of the most eminent 
 of their number in our times, who thus lays down 
 the duty of an advocate : 
 
 " An advocate, bv the sacred duty which he owes
 
 444 THE PREVENTION OF CEIME. 
 
 liis client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but 
 one person in the world his client, and none other. 
 To save that client by any expedient means to pro- 
 tect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, 
 and among others to himself, is the highest and 
 most unquestioned of his duties ; and he must not 
 regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the 
 destruction, which he may bring upon any other. 
 Nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from 
 those of an advocate, and casting them, if need be, 
 to the wind, he must go on, reckless of the conse- 
 quences, if his fate should unhappily be to involve 
 his country in confusion for his client's protection." 
 
 Very different were the sentiments of the illus- 
 trious Englishman, Sir Matthew Hale, who thus 
 speaks of his own practice : 
 
 " I never used the advantage of elocution or 
 rhetoric to deceive people, or to cozen them into 
 a thing. My heart always went along with my 
 tongue, and if I used intention of speech upon any 
 occasion, it was upon an intention of conviction in 
 myself of the truth, necessity, usefulness, and fitness 
 of what I was so persuaded ; if my judgment was 
 doubtful or uncertain, so was my speech. I never 
 used elocution or specious arguments to invite any 
 to that which, in my own judgment, I doubted, or 
 doubted whether it were fit or seasonable, all cir- 
 cumstances considered. I never used my elocution 
 to give credit to an ill cause ; to justify that which 
 deserved blame; to justify the wicked, or to con- 
 demn the righteous ; to make anything appear more
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 445 
 
 specious or enormous than it deserved. I never 
 thought my profession should either necessitate a 
 man to use his eloquence, by extenuations or aggra- 
 vations, to make anything worse or better than it 
 deserves, or could justify a man in it ; to prostitute 
 my elocution or rhetoric in such a way, I ever held 
 to be most basely mercenary, and that it was below 
 the worth of a man, much more of a Christian, to 
 do so. When the case was good, and fully so ap- 
 peared to me, I thought then was that season that 
 the use of that ability was my duty, and that it was 
 given me for such a time as that, and I spared not 
 the best of my ability in such a season ; and, indeed, 
 elocution, or rhetoric, is a dead and insipid piece, 
 unless it come from, and with a heart full of the 
 sense and conviction of what the tongue expresseth, 
 and then, and not till then, elocution hath its life 
 and its energy. I esteemed these cases best deserv- 
 ing my elocution, and in these I was warm and 
 earnest ; the setting forth of Thy glory ; the assert- 
 ing of thy truth; the detection and conviction of 
 errors ; the clearing of the innocent ; the aggra- 
 vating sins, oppressions, and deceits ; and though I 
 was careful that I did not exceed the bounds of truth 
 or of moderation, yet I ever thought that these were 
 the seasons for which that talent was given me, and 
 accordingly I employed it." 
 
 " Hoffman, a celebrated American advocate, and 
 author, in his ' Course of Legal Study addressed to 
 Students and the Profession generally,' among other 
 rules, has the following :
 
 446 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 " When employed to defend those charged with 
 crimes of the deepest dye, and the evidence against 
 them, whether legal or moral, be such as to leave no 
 just doubt of their guilt, I shall not hold myself pri- 
 vileged, much less obliged, to use my endeavours to 
 arrest or to impede the course of justice by special 
 resorts to ingenuity to the artifices of eloquence 
 to appeals to the morbid and fleeting sympathies 
 of weak juries, &c. Persons of atrocious character, 
 who have violated the laws of God and man, are 
 entitled to no such special exertions from any mem- 
 ber of our pure and honourable profession; and, 
 indeed, to no intervention beyond securing to them 
 a fair and dispassionate investigation of the facts of 
 their cause, and the due application of the law ; all 
 that goes beyond this, either in manner or substance, 
 is unprofessional, and proceeds either from a mis- 
 taken view of the relation of client and counsel, or 
 from some unworthy and selfish motive, which sets 
 a higher value on professional display and success, 
 than on truth and justice, and the substantial inte- 
 rests of the community.' " * 
 
 In suppressing crime by legal measures, a great 
 point would be gained if the punishment of the 
 doubly guilty receiver of stolen property were made 
 more severe. As soon as such persons are appre- 
 hended, they fee the best lawyer, and transfer their 
 property the produce of a thousand robberies, per- 
 
 * See " The Lawyer : his Character and Rule of Holy Life. 
 By Edward O'Brien, Barrister-at-law." (Pickering.)
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 447 
 
 haps to some relative. This could be prevented. 
 All parties convicted of receiving stolen goods should 
 forfeit all their estate and effects which they pos- 
 sessed at the time of the purchase, or which were 
 held by any person in trust for them ; and all trans- 
 fers of property should be null and void if made 
 after such purchase. 
 
 If the legislature would zealously set about re- 
 pressing crime, let all laws which have been proved 
 directly to generate and increase immorality and 
 vice be repealed, as the laws for preservation of 
 game. The preservation of human life annually 
 sacrificed in their maintenance, and the preservation 
 of the morals of our peasantry, are surely of more 
 importance. Let the rich and the noble, however, 
 be protected in their private demesnes, just as much 
 as the poor man in his garden. If still retained, 
 let all trespassers after game or unlicensed persons 
 with guns be considered as volunteers for Her Ma- 
 jesty's service, and be at once drafted accordingly. 
 Such men would prove good soldiers, although bad 
 citizens and costly criminals. Some would say, 
 " Then why not repeal the laws for the preservation 
 of hen-roosts ?" The case is essentially different. 
 To pursue wild animals does not carry upon the face 
 of it immorality and crime. To invade a farmyard 
 and steal, does. Poaching is the parent of many 
 crimes and gross vice ; fowl-stealing is an evil per 
 se. The preservation of game has the frightful se- 
 quel every year of some twenty coroner's inquests. 
 About one-fourth of the cases of murder and man-
 
 448 THE PREVENTION OP CRIME. 
 
 slaughter in Great Britain are the result of poaching. 
 No species of robbery results in such destruction of 
 human life as this. The best that can be said for 
 the Game Laws, is, that they keep alive a martial 
 spirit in the peasantry, and that poachers may be 
 converted, in a crisis, into good riflemen, game- 
 keepers into non-commissioned officers, and their 
 young masters into subalterns and captains. Be- 
 tween 3000 and 4000 individuals, under these laws, 
 are committed to prison annually. The half of these 
 might perhaps be at once enlisted, and would form 
 an admirable corps. (Offenders against the Excise 
 being able-bodied, I should like to see sent at once 
 to man our navy.) 
 
 Many of the aristocracy are humanely and wisely 
 relaxing their game-preserving regulations. Of the 
 late Duke of Wellington, the following is related : 
 " One of his keepers was killed in an affray with 
 poachers, who were arrested and convicted. He im- 
 mediately ordered his well- stocked preserves to be 
 thrown open, saying he would not allow his men to 
 be murdered, and other people to be transported, 
 for the sake of a parcel of birds and some paltry 
 game." 
 
 If these laws have been the cause of crime in 
 thousands, the Beer Law may reckon its victims 
 by tens of thousands. 
 
 This most unfortunate act of parliament, which is 
 now almost confessed by all to have increased in- 
 temperance and pauperism, multiplied houses of 
 resort for the gambler, the thief, and the disposer of
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 449 
 
 stolen property, and so demoralized to a fearful ex- 
 tent the labouring classes, is retained for the pur- 
 pose of money supply to the treasury of the state ! 
 Can any one persuade himself, that the source of so 
 much costly evil, immorality, and crime, can be any 
 real profit to the state ? 
 
 Heavy, ruinous fines upon all proprietors of houses 
 of entertainment where thieves and such characters 
 are harboured, or crime perpetrated and planned, 
 would bring into the treasury a healthier revenue, 
 and save a vast public loss ; and publicans, from 
 being the abettors of crime, would be converted into 
 officers of justice and useful citizens. We have the 
 health of towns board, why not a commission for 
 the morals of towns ? 
 
 Laws protective of the working-classes in hours of 
 labour, for which there is a precedent in the Factory 
 Bill, are called for in this age of fearful competition, 
 monster companies, and exacting toil. 
 
 The late act for not opening public-houses, on Sun- 
 day till after morning service, sensibly lessened crimes 
 in towns; why should not the prohibition be ex- 
 tended to the remainder of the day, excepting, if it 
 must be, the hours of dinner and supper, for the 
 sale of beer, not to be used on the premises ? 
 
 With respect to pleasure-traffic on the Lord's- 
 day, there should be no hesitation about prohibiting 
 it. The vast majority of those who avail themselves 
 of it, are, young men and women employed at hard 
 work, or sedentary employment in the week, who 
 have the use of their legs, and to whom a brisk 
 
 IT G
 
 450 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 walk with a friend, rational converse, a good book, 
 and their money saved, would be infinitely more 
 conducive to their every-day health and happiness, 
 than being whirled along in a railway from one ter- 
 minus to another, and the public-house or pleasure 
 garden, with worse than doubtful acquaintances. 
 Vast numbers in our great towns have relatives in 
 the country. By all means let such connexions be 
 kept up. An enactment prohibiting a reduction of 
 fares on the Sunday, and compelling companies to 
 carry passengers in the second-class carriages, with 
 lights, at a proper speed, after seven o'clock to eleven 
 in the evening of Saturday, and back early on Mon- 
 day morning, at single fares, would injure no com- 
 pany, would give to thousands of overworked railway 
 servants a day of rest in their families, and greatly 
 conduce to public morals. 
 
 In the appendix will be found a petition on the 
 subject of the Crystal Palace, which will explain my 
 views on that question, and that of nineteen twen- 
 tieths of the prison chaplains of the metropolis. 
 
 At a meeting of the Lord's-day Society, which I 
 had the honour of attending, the Archdeacon of 
 Salisbury exposed by astounding facts, the evils of 
 pleasure-trains in our provincial towns : " The 
 greatest evil and innovation in connexion with the 
 Sabbath with which he was acquainted was the 
 running of Sunday excursion trains. These trains 
 were not so visible in the metropolis as in the coun- 
 try towns through which they ran. He could state, 
 for example, in reference to the city of Salisbury,
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 451 
 
 that the days on which excursion trains arrived were 
 days on which the saddest scenes were witnessed, 
 days in which the public-houses were filled ; and he 
 was told by one who employed a large number of 
 working men, that, so far from those who took part 
 in such excursions being benefited by what was 
 termed relaxation, a great number of them were 
 utterly unfitted for pursuing their labours on the 
 following day. Almost every public conveyance 
 was hired to go to Stonehenge, or some other place 
 of interest in the neighbourhood ; and the driver of 
 a fly had declared to him that while the excursion 
 trains were running, he scarcely ever had a day of 
 rest. Such being one of the evils of Sabbath dese- 
 cration, and seeing how much that evil would be 
 multiplied if the Crystal Palace were opened on 
 Sunday, (for then there would be one constant ex- 
 cursion train running, without intermission every 
 Sunday,) he most readily entered into the present 
 feelings of those who were engaged in working the 
 Society." 
 
 Industrial, preventive, and reformatory schools, 
 should be encouraged and helped by annual parlia- 
 mentary grants, after careful inspection as to moral, 
 rather than to intellectual, progress. Society, in 
 enterprises of this nature, I am satisfied, should take 
 the initiative, and government stimulate by suitable 
 rewards such as are proved to be really useful. 
 
 An enlightened public press is a great power for 
 the suppression of immorality and crime. Upon 
 the whole, in Great Britain, public morals are in- 
 
 G G 2
 
 |,V2 Till-: PREVENTION OF OBIME. 
 
 to the press. It is sad that there should be 
 exceptions, and that literary men should prostitute 
 their talents for doing good, to the purposes of gain, 
 or a transient popularity, and unsettle the founda- 
 tions of the morals of the people. 
 
 A public exposure in Household Words, or some 
 other popular paper, of the frauds of business (as 
 the Lancet lately put forth in matters of food), 
 would be of great service. The weekly periodical, 
 the Leisure Hour, for adults, and the Band of Hope 
 Review, for children, are illustrations how the 
 working-classes and young people may be interested 
 and benefited at little cost. The true way to keep 
 immoral reading out of the hands of people is to put 
 before them a cheaper and better literature. To a 
 great extent those publications have shown how 
 this may be done. A cheap weekly newspaper, 
 edited by an able Christian man, of catholic spirit, 
 open to the literary contributions of working people 
 only, might be made extensively attractive, com- 
 bining the elements of sound knowledge, and funda- 
 mental Scripture truths. 
 
 I proceed now, in the last place, to consider how 
 the community, in its most general sense, may be 
 influenced, so as to prevent much crime. 
 
 This is the most important division of our sub- 
 ject ; yet I must lightly touch upon it, as the pro- 
 vince I conceive to be assigned to me, is rather the 
 region of facts and experience, than of opinion. 
 
 If society in the main were sound in morals and 
 religion, the public sentiment itself would be a most
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 453 
 
 effective law; discountenancing vice, and making 
 crime in every form disreputable and odious. It 
 would also help further to promote virtue and 
 honour ; not only by direct instruction in the cul- 
 ture of youth, but far more forcibly by example, so 
 as to bequeath the richest legacy to posterity. A 
 generation rising in the scale of morals itself, will 
 be followed by a still better, and vice versd. In 
 such a condition of society, not only would the thief, 
 the burglar, the murderer, be condignly punished ; 
 but also all who contribute to the burdens of their 
 country, by propagating and perpetuating vice. 
 The neglect of children by drunken parents; the 
 direct teaching of dishonest arts in business, by em- 
 ployers ; the oppression of the employed poor ; and 
 all profligacy in every rank, would receive, at the 
 bar of public opinion, at least, a penalty which 
 forms the heaviest part of legal punishment, degra- 
 dation from a man's class, and universal contempt. 
 Such a healthy aspect of society would soon come to 
 .be reflected in the every-day press, which rather 
 follows than directs the public mind, and no less 
 distinctly by the legislature itself, which in a free 
 country partakes much of the like character. Hence 
 laws would be originated, not only for the repression 
 of crimes by suitable punishment, but for the pro- 
 tection and encouragement of the useful members of 
 the community, and government would fulfil the 
 twofold office assigned to rulers in Holy "Writ, bo- 
 coming " a terror to evil doers, andybr the praise of 
 tikem thai <lo
 
 454 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 Hence, also, would spring up the most powerful 
 support which laws can receive, the public approval, 
 and an enlightened enforcement of them upon the 
 people, by powerful and practised writers. Nor is it 
 to be omitted, that the most effective agents in every 
 enterprise would then be at hand, both to carry out 
 measures for the reformation of the lapsed, and the 
 prevention of evil in those parts of the population 
 exposed especially to danger. 
 
 On the other hand, if the general tone of morals 
 be low, and the public sentiment irreligious, the 
 popular representatives, supposing them to be well 
 disposed, would lose, at least, one great incentive to, 
 what I would call, moral legislation, and laws, good 
 perchance, and exceptional, would prove compara- 
 tively powerless; not being backed by public 
 opinion. The press, also, would too readily pander 
 to the vitiated popular taste, and further corrupt it ; 
 and things would go from bad to worse, until the 
 efforts of virtue, patriotism, and humanity, in behalf 
 of the poor, the oppressed, and the fallen, were well- 
 nigh extinguished, or completely overwhelmed by a 
 mass of newly-created evils, and increasing aggrava- 
 tions of the old. 
 
 In which of these conditions is our country ? 
 
 Some would unhesitatingly answer in the latter. 
 These see gloom in its present aspect, and thicker 
 clouds gathering in the distance. The tendency of 
 everything is to greater corruption in morals and 
 religion. Reported improvements are specious, 
 superficial, exceptional !
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 455 
 
 Others are just as confident that the nation is in 
 the course of rapid and unbounded moral progress, 
 in fact, already entering upon a sort of social millen- 
 nium. This was the prevailing feeling, remarkably, 
 when the Industrial Exhibition was uppermost in the 
 public mind, and peace enjoyed its jubilee in the 
 land. 
 
 The truth seems to lie between the two extreme 
 opinions, or rather, to express more correctly my 
 own views, is partially involved in both. Virtue 
 and morality are advancing with the progress of the 
 truth itself, on the one hand ; specious vice, system- 
 atized crime, and infidelity, on the other! The 
 wheat and the tares in the same field, are both 
 ripening for the harvest. Were I to confine my 
 view to the peculiar subjects of my own spiritual 
 care, and the diversified scenes of guilt and misery 
 with which I am placed continually in contact, I 
 should be as full of gloom as the most desponding ; 
 but such a partial view, in my judgment, would 
 manifestly lead to very wrong conclusions. At all 
 events, I love to look beyond the bars of my prison- 
 house, and to contemplate man in the aggregate, as 
 well as in his exceptional condition. 
 
 Now, I think, anyone who will thus regard 
 society, must see unmistakable signs of advance- 
 ment in the moral character of the country, say 
 within the last half century. 
 
 In the aristocratic ranks of society, it cannot be 
 doubted that a great moral improvement has taken 
 place since the regency, and reign of the fourth
 
 456 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 George, during which there had been sensibly a 
 decline. The virtuous courts of the lamented 
 Adelaide, and of our own illustrious Queen, have 
 more than restored the morals of this class. The 
 marks of this progress are visible in the more tem- 
 perate habits of the great, more enlightened notions 
 of personal honour (the barbarous and criminal 
 practice of duelling being now well-nigh exploded), 
 their greater concern for the wants of the classes 
 beneath them, and, consequently, a much more dis- 
 interested and beneficial legislation, on their part, 
 for the community at large. Everyone must have 
 observed, of late years, a remarkable drawing toge- 
 ther of the two extremes of society the rich, the 
 noble, and the prince, intermixing with the masses 
 of the people, in kindly sympathy and thorough 
 co-operation. It would be invidious to mention 
 instances in the upper ranks, of this sort of enlight- 
 ened patriotism and philanthropy. Happily, also, 
 they are becoming too numerous to be particularized. 
 These distinguished persons should be especially 
 regarded with honour by their peers, for they are 
 the best conservators of their order, in times when 
 the marked tendency of the world is to democracy, 
 and the levelling of classes. 
 
 In religion, it is thought the tendency of the 
 upper classes is to superstition and Romanism. This 
 is probably the fact in a larger proportion than in 
 any other. Nor is it difficult to divine, at least, the 
 chief causes of this tendency. A religion of senti- 
 ment, and pageantry, must have peculiar attractions
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 457 
 
 for them. Outward acts of devotion, such as build- 
 ing and embellishing churches, flatter the pride of 
 the rich, and too readily suggest the notion of com- 
 pensation or merit, which is the very essence of 
 popery. Moreover, the rich have always been, in 
 the estimation of the keen sportsmen of Rome, the 
 best game. They are most worth catching, and they 
 are perhaps the most easily caught. Too many of 
 the nobility and high gentry of England are, it is to 
 be feared, profoundly ignorant of Holy Scripture, 
 and the distinguishing doctrines of the Reformation 
 (no credit this to their dignified tutors in early life, 
 or their present parochial instructors). Unless, more- 
 over, history be all fable, and papal bulls, condem- 
 natory of the Jesuits, all lies, that mysterious, and 
 ever active order, has been, of late years, not 
 neglectful of its old arts, at such a crisis in the 
 Church of England, and by professors of language, 
 music, &c., in the modern rage for foreign accom- 
 plishments, has certainly corrupted the female mind, 
 extremely in the aristocratic circles. 
 
 The noble Eldon was a Pharisee to the day of his 
 death, and the more gifted Pitt, when induced by 
 Wilberforce to hear Scott, the commentator, preach, 
 confessed that he could not understand him. Still, 
 I believe, a favourable change has, with all this, been 
 going on, pari passu, amongst those classes, in the 
 direction of true and spiritual godliness, and the 
 very existence of conscientious earnestness in religion, 
 although so lamentably misdirected, is rather symp- 
 tomatic of this revived state of feeling than other- 
 wise.
 
 458 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 To descend from the highest, to the very lowest 
 walks of life, 
 
 St. Bartholomew's Pair, for centuries the annual 
 plague of London, has of late years been forced to 
 migrate from the City (to remove perhaps some of 
 the moral reproach from Smithfield, to the suburban 
 fields, now rapidly disappearing), contiguous to 
 this prison. I have had, therefore, the most abun- 
 dant opportunities for observing at all' hours, from 
 noon till midnight, the habits of that part of the 
 population which occasionally emerges from the 
 countless lanes and courts, and rookeries of London. 
 The festival usually lasts for a week, exclusive, 
 happily, of the Sunday, (this exception being in itself 
 rather a modern improvement) . Innumerable crowds 
 throng the wide road, from King's Cross to the 
 Copenhagen Fields, opposite to our gates, the ter- 
 minus of the penny ride to the fair. From morning 
 till night, the tom-tom is continually going, and 
 a confused sound of music and shouting direct you 
 to the space where the orgies are being celebrated. 
 Looking over the terrace wall of our prison, I have 
 repeatedly watched the multitudes passing to and 
 fro. Now and then, I espied a policeman, moving 
 slowly along. There were few of these conservators 
 of the peace. I estimated the proportion as one con- 
 stable to a thousand of the people, and it appeared to 
 be quite sufficient. All were in their holiday trim, 
 such as it was, and no doubt on their best behaviour. 
 They took the jokes and jostlings of the passers-by 
 with the utmost good humour, avoided giving
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 459 
 
 offence, and displayed even politeness, after their own 
 fashion. I am free to confess, that, although repro- 
 bating in the strongest manner the perpetuation of 
 this nuisance, year after year (more than I do even the 
 transplantation of Smithfield itself to this field), the 
 predominant feeling in my mind, was astonishment at 
 the good conduct and sobriety of the rabble multitude, 
 and I thought, surely this people are more worthy 
 to be taken in hand by those whom Providence has 
 placed in better circumstances, educated, and helped 
 to innocent and rational amusement, than is usually 
 imagined ; and the government and legislature 
 which neglect their instruction, their elevation, their 
 comforts, neglect no less the interests of the nation. 
 
 During the Great Exhibition, we were favoured 
 with an extra week or more of the fair, as a means 
 of amusing the people who could not pay the 
 shilling. It would have been better, in my opinion, 
 to have permitted them for a trifle to view that 
 instructive spectacle, and I am satisfied, with the 
 exception of my peculiar friends, of the thief class, 
 they might have been most safely trusted. 
 
 A word about the honest workmen of England, 
 and labouring persons in general, the largest section 
 of the people, and the broad base of the social 
 pyramid. 
 
 In no part of the community probably has there 
 been so great and so beneficial a change, notwith- 
 standing all the demoralizing influences brought to 
 bear upon it. 
 
 A commission was appointed a few year back, to
 
 460 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 report upon the physical and moral condition of the 
 mining districts of England. The Commissioner 
 thus speaks of Staffordshire : 
 
 " In estimating the present state of this im- 
 portant field of mining labour, it must not be 
 forgotten how much it has been altered for the 
 better within the living memory. The cruel and 
 brutalizing sports to ivhich the population were 
 then addicted, have greatly decreased; the extent 
 to which they used to be carried on appears in 
 strong contrast with the habits of the present day. 
 The present Incumbent of "VVednesbury, the Rev. 
 Isaac Clarkson, informed me, that only twenty- two 
 years ago he saw brought to the baiting-place of 
 that village-town, in one day, no less than seven 
 bulls, three bears, and a badger, besides dogs and 
 cocks for fighting. With the decline of these 
 exhibitions of cruelty, the manners and language 
 of the lower classes have improved, and scenes of 
 violence are less frequent." 
 
 Fearful and many are the malign influences at 
 work amongst our labouring people. " In a collec- 
 tion," says the same Commissioner, " of all the low- 
 priced periodicals circulating in the towns of Wed- 
 nesbury and Bilston, being fifteen in number, I 
 found seven contained portions of very inferior 
 novels and tales ; eight were written in a spirit of 
 hostility either to the institutions or the religion 
 of the country, or both. All these publications of 
 the latter class (anarchical, socialist, and infidel,) 
 have a considerable and increasing sale in these 
 districts."
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 461 
 
 The conduct of our working classes, on the excit- 
 ing subjects of labour, wages, and food, stands out in 
 the main as a happy contrast with that of the last 
 generation. 
 
 Physical force, stack-firing, destruction of machi- 
 nery, &c., are giving way to pacific and constitu- 
 tional agitation, although, it is greatly to be deplored, 
 our operatives are as yet too easily led, by clever, 
 but empty talkers, if not designing knaves, to the 
 adoption of measures, which, whatever be the imme- 
 diate result, must tend, ultimately, to their injury 
 as a class. 
 
 The behaviour of our working people, on the 
 various solemn or festive occasions of late years, our 
 national fasts, and thanksgiving days, has not been 
 surpassed by that of any portion of Her Majesty's 
 subjects. 
 
 Again, what could have been better than their 
 whole bearing during their visit to the Great Exhi- 
 bition, from all parts of the country ? What more 
 sublime than their homage, in common indeed with 
 all classes, to the memory of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton, on the 18th of November, 1852, that day of 
 England's universal sadness ? 
 
 Yet he was a man, of all others, who had never 
 for a moment courted the popular applause, nor 
 regarded its frown. They were paying respect, 
 therefore, to his principles rather than to the man ; 
 and in the act showed the soundness of their own. 
 
 Well might the Prime Minister, the Earl of 
 Derby, congratulate the House of Lords, and the
 
 462 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 country, upon the conduct of the people on that 
 occasion, when, with feelings of deep emotion, and 
 chastened eloquence, he thus referred to it, in his 
 ever memorable speech of the day following, in the 
 House : 
 
 " My lords, when you consider how large a por- 
 tion of the population of the United Kingdom was 
 for that single day crowded in the streets of the 
 metropolis when you remember those at least to 
 whose lot it fell to take a part in that procession, and 
 to see it throughout its whole length when you 
 remember that throughout that long line, extending 
 to about three miles, from Grosvenor Place to St. 
 Paul's Cathedral, there was not one single unoc- 
 cupied foot of ground, and that you passed through 
 a living sea of faces, all turned to look upon that 
 great spectacle when you saw every house, every 
 window, every house-top, loaded with persons anxious 
 to pay their last tribute of respect to the memory of 
 England's greatest son when you saw those persons 
 (those at least in the streets) remaining with entire 
 and unflinching patience for many hours, in a position 
 in which movement was scarcely possible, and yet that 
 hardly a single accident occurred to the most feeble 
 woman or child among that vast assemblage when, 
 through the whole of that route, not only was a 
 perfect decorum preserved, and a perfect and ready 
 assistance given to the efforts of the police and mili- 
 tary, but that there was no unseemly eagerness to 
 witness the magnificent spectacle, no light or 
 thoughtless applause of its splendour; but the
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 463 
 
 people of England, in the awful silence of those 
 vast crowds, testified, in the most emphatic manner, 
 the sense in which every man among them felt the 
 public loss that England had sustained. My lords, 
 I know not how you looked upon this great mani- 
 festation of public feeling, and of public good sense 
 and order ; but I know this, that as I passed along 
 those lines, it was with pride and satisfaction I felt 
 that I was a fellow-countryman of those who knew 
 so well how to regulate and control themselves. 
 (Hear, hear.) And I could not help entertaining a 
 hope that those foreign visitors, who had done us 
 and themselves the honour of assisting at this great 
 ceremonial, might, on this occasion, as well as on 
 the occasion of the 1st of May, 1851, bear witness 
 back to their own countries how safely and to what 
 an extent a people may be relied upon, over whom 
 the strongest hold of their government was their 
 own reverence and respect for the free institutions 
 of their country, and the principles of popular self- 
 government, controlled and modified by a constitu- 
 tional monarchy." 
 
 Other indications of moral progress are not 
 wanting : 
 
 Of the 250,000 teachers ascertained by the late 
 census to be employed in the Sunday Schools of 
 England and Wales, the great majority are of the 
 operative classes. This fact shows religious, as well 
 as intellectual and moral progress. It indicates 
 also one of the chief sources of improvement in the 
 humbler walks of life, the Sunday School, which,
 
 464 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 with all its defects, has proved itself to be more than 
 equal to the many malign influences, brought lat- 
 terly to bear upon the people. 150,000, at least, of 
 those most honoured and most useful teachers were 
 themselves, a few years back, scholars on the same 
 forms. I shall take leave to mention another sign 
 of progress; the 1000 essays on the Sabbath, by 
 working men, and on the same subject, the Pearl of 
 Days, by the Gardener's Daughter.* 
 
 Erom its style and tone of feeling, so much above 
 what seem to belong to any but those who have 
 enjoyed the advantages of a polite education, the 
 genuineness of the Pearl of Days has been called in 
 question. I may mention, however, that a Christian 
 friend of my own saw the gifted authoress washing 
 potatoes before the door of her cottage, for her 
 father's dinner. Conversing with her, subsequently, 
 in that humble but hospitable abode, he found her, 
 as her work so plainly denotes her to be, an intel- 
 lectual, sober-minded, and godly woman, herself, 
 through grace, a pearl, though somewhat rudely set. 
 
 Of the middle classes less need be said. They 
 are subject to less change than either of the extremes 
 in the social fabric. They cause, in general, but 
 little concern to the state, except as to how far they 
 may be taxed. They are naturally conservative of 
 
 * I know no individual enterprise in the field of Christian 
 charity more to he admired than the munificence of Mr. Hen- 
 derson, of Park, Glasgow, which originated those essays, and 
 which has since so largely put them into circulation in every 
 walk of life, from the palace to the convict-ship.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 465 
 
 order, good government, and peace. By these trade 
 flourishes, commerce is increased, wealth realized, 
 the comforts and luxuries of life enjoyed. 
 
 Their very faults, as they must be esteemed when 
 measured by the standard of truth, tend to the 
 national security and welfare. 
 
 From morning till night, from early manhood to 
 hoary age, they toil on to amass wealth, that they 
 may enjoy the comforts of life, and bequeath them 
 to their children. Comforts, and even luxuries, 
 have now, through long prosperity, come to be 
 reckoned by them as necessaries. Prom an over- 
 estimate of the value of the things of this present 
 life, and inordinate pursuit after the means by 
 which these may be secured, they fall too generally 
 into that specious sin, the love of money, which an 
 inspired apostle designates as idolatry. Nor is that 
 upper portion of this class, which of all others should 
 " flee these things," the ministers of Christ, exempt 
 from their dangerous influences. Hence we are 
 warned by two apostles against this sin in particu- 
 lar, both denouncing it, as a most vile and debasing 
 passion, under the name of "filthy lucre.''' 
 
 The fact is, covetousness is the vice of respectable 
 people the sunken rock upon which most professors 
 of religion make shipwreck of faith. 
 
 That the morality of the middle classes suffered 
 very extensively during the railway mania of gain- 
 getting speculation must have been manifest to 
 every observer. In our younger branches chiefly, 
 it is now being endangered by the gold-digging rage. 
 
 H H
 
 466 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands, who by steady industry, 
 and desires moderated by Christian principles, might 
 have had a competent support, and wherewithal to 
 help forward the work of the Lord in the world, 
 have, in their haste to be rich, lost their footing 
 in religion, and been precipitated into difficulties, 
 penury, and vice. 
 
 Nevertheless, a revived spirit marks many portions 
 of the middle classes, and instances are growing less 
 rare of great self-denial and devotedness of life to 
 the noblest purposes of humanity and faith. Two 
 pleasant features of this progress are : the associa- 
 tion of so many thousands of our young men 
 throughout the country for mutual improvement, 
 and the promotion of Christian objects; and the 
 very active part which so many of their number are 
 taking in the very work itself, on the committees of 
 Ragged-schools, Refuges, &c., and in many other 
 ways. 
 
 After all, it will be questioned perhaps by many, 
 whether the good is not counterbalanced by the evil, 
 in our days. I do not stop to debate this question, 
 preferring the more practical one, viz., What can 
 give decided preponderance to the good the peo- 
 ple's advancement, in morality and virtue? My 
 answer is, A revived spirit of genuine religion in 
 the church. This would be followed by extensive 
 national reformation. The general tone of morals 
 would be improved, and crime become more and 
 more exceptional. 
 
 Christianity at the first triumphed over the cruel-
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 467 
 
 ties and abominable vices of the heathen world, as 
 well as over its vaunted philosophy, and gave civili- 
 zation to barbarous and savage life. Christianity, 
 revived in the 16th century, diffused again light and 
 liberty and virtue upon Europe. Shut out from 
 some kingdoms by suicidal folly and infuriate cru- 
 elty, she " shook off the dust of her feet, as a testi- 
 mony against them." They declined in the scale 
 of nations, and have gradually, as regards religion, 
 been sinking into infidelity or mediaeval darkness ; 
 and, as regards government, into a condition of per- 
 petual oscillation between despotism and revolution, 
 both alike injurious to national prosperity and 
 national morals. Welcomed and cherished by 
 others, as the rays of returning day, these have 
 advanced in all the useful arts of life, and the en- 
 joyment of intestine peace, settled government, 
 and rational liberty. 
 
 That which raised this country from a third or 
 fourth-rate kingdom in Europe in that age, to its 
 present height of commercial and moral greatness, 
 can most assuredly now restore any of its decaying 
 parts. 
 
 Religion thus revived would find her chief spheres 
 of action, in the school the family the pulpit. 
 
 The School. The theories of the mere education- 
 alist are not borne out by facts. Literary men are 
 not more moral than the unlearned. Men of genius 
 have generally been below par. The learned resi- 
 dents of our universities are probably little, if at all, 
 more virtuous than our farmers or tradesmen ; the 
 
 H n 2
 
 468 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 students of our colleges, civilian and military, than 
 the peasant youth of the country. But if education 
 really does accomplish the moral renovation of the 
 man, an immeasurable difference would manifestly 
 mark those classes, surrounded as one is by a thou- 
 sand safeguards to morals, and motives to virtue, 
 which are wholly wanting to the other. 
 
 As regards criminals, education has been generally 
 looked upon as the direct antagonist of the vices 
 which cause their degradation. One hears continu- 
 ally the statistics of our gaols cited by the philan- 
 thropist, the social reformer, and the judge on the 
 bench, to demonstrate this view. The reader of 
 these pages thus far need not be informed of the 
 writer's experience in this abode of crime. Every 
 year's observation makes it only more evident to his 
 mind that the advantages, in this respect, of a culti- 
 vation of the mind have been greatly over-estimated, 
 and that men have lost sight of this, that educa- 
 tion gives increased power to the evil-disposed as 
 well as to the good. Education, I would repeat, 
 changes the character of the crime rather than of the 
 man. With those who espouse the opposite view, 
 I leave the difficulty of accounting for a higher de- 
 gree of education amongst criminals of the worst 
 description, as convicts are, than in the ordinary 
 run of prisoners in the gaols of the country. 
 
 The cleverest persons- in this prison will not be 
 found amongst the officers, but the prisoners. And 
 although the highest class of educated villains do 
 escape from the meshes of the law, beyond all pro- 
 portion, there has never been a year in the history
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 469 
 
 of this place, in which we could not avail ourselves 
 of professional advice, legal, medical, and otherwise, 
 in the dim retirement of a solitary cell. 
 
 Our ablest men, at this moment, are three prison- 
 ers a returned convict,* a German noble, (?) and a 
 doctor of laws. The first man left this prison some 
 years back, as an exile, with a special recommenda- 
 tion from our governor, and a gentlemanly outfit 
 from his wardrobe, as I understand. In Australia 
 he became resident tutor in the family of a man 
 of wealth. How long he remained there, or what 
 mischief he did, we know not. At the expira- 
 tion of his time he returned, began life under a new 
 name, paid his addresses to a widow lady, swindled 
 her of much property, took up with an elegantly- 
 dressed female, who of course passed for his wife, 
 robbed tradesmen in a variety of ways, committed 
 forgery, and was convicted and sent back to us. 
 
 The foreigner professes to be a Catholic. I believe 
 him to be an infidel Jew, and no Baron. 
 
 This man's victims were jewellers in our large 
 towns, the most wary of all shopkeepers. By his 
 successful business in this line he contrived to keep 
 up the show of rank for years. Even here, in one 
 of the closest of all prisons, he has succeeded in 
 effecting a clandestine correspondence with the ex- 
 ternal world, without the detection of his agency. 
 He is master of several modern languages, and 
 learned in Hebrew. 
 
 The LL.D. is a clergyman the saddest instance, 
 
 * Referred to as case 41, in page 245. The first; for, by 
 error of the press, the number is there repeated.
 
 470 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 therefore, in these cases of perverted talent and ac- 
 quirements. Three times did this man, after com- 
 plete shipwreck of character and means, contrive to 
 start again in respectable life, as the teacher of 
 youth, by sheer talent and well-acted hypocrisy. 
 
 His victims were clergymen, young and old 
 high-church, low-church, and broad-church; prin- 
 cipals of schools wishing to retire, and having an 
 " interest to dispose of ;" and, of course, unfortu- 
 nate tradesmen. He is now devoid of shame and 
 feeling, energetically planning, as I think, a new 
 campaign, if not at home, at least, in America. He 
 has been trying, with partial success, to raise money 
 amongst the superior officers of this very prison, to 
 get his parchments out of pawn. He has applied to 
 myself for help, but I could be no party to his as- 
 suming again, with a ticket-of-leave in his pocket, 
 the clerical garb, though of the precisest Oxford cut. 
 
 His knowledge of the laws would fully entitle 
 him to his degree. In prison here, he has spent his 
 leisure hours in making a new translation of the 
 Book of Job, 'parts of which he has also turned into 
 tolerable Greek sapphics, and in reiterated able peti- 
 tioning on the ground of innocence. 
 
 Notwithstanding such cases, however, I entertain 
 no doubt about the great value of a thorough and 
 general education, provided it be conducted by com- 
 petent persons, whose highest aim is to discipline 
 their pupils for the great end of man's existence 
 the bringing glory to God, and the conferring good 
 upon their fellow-creatures.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 471 
 
 I think it would be impossible to over-estimate 
 the blessings which would arise in the coming age, 
 if the teachers of youth in this were animated by this 
 high and holy ambition. 
 
 Oh ! that the Spirit of God were poured out upon 
 the schools of our country, both high and low, then 
 would every doubt concerning the benefit of educa- 
 tion be soon set at rest, and we should feel sure in- 
 deed that Providence had still a higher destiny for 
 England to fulfil in the world. But woe to the 
 church established in these realms, and woe to the 
 nation, if the fountain be polluted at its source, or 
 diverted into poisoned channels. 
 
 "We have in the schools of the Church of England 
 about a million and a half of the children of the 
 humbler classes, and not far short of 200,000 gra- 
 tuitous teachers on the Sunday. What a magnifi- 
 cent agency for good ! 
 
 It is manifestly of the utmost importance that our 
 schoolmasters and mistresses should be thoroughly 
 trained for their arduous and honourable mission, 
 and still more so, that they should be sound in the 
 faith, exemplary in piety, and zealous promoters of 
 the happiness and moral improvement of the chil- 
 dren. To meet these wants of the church, the Home 
 and Colonial Infant School Society has long most 
 effectively laboured, and, of late years, the training 
 colleges for masters, at Cheltenham and Highbury. 
 I speak only of institutions with which I am par- 
 ticularly acquainted. I trust there are others in 
 various parts of the country equally entitled to com-
 
 472 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 mendation and support. In proportion to the vast 
 importance of such institutions should they be 
 watched by all who feel interested in the preser- 
 vation of the Church in its Protestant integrity. 
 Here our Christian laity may be, and have been, 
 of the greatest use. 
 
 There has been lately an exceedingly wise move 
 in the formation of a Society designated the " Work- 
 ing Men's Educational Union," having for its object 
 the elevation of the working classes by the following 
 means : 
 
 1st. Encouraging the delivery of popular literary 
 and scientific LECTURES, imbued with a sound Chris- 
 tian spirit ; by preparing suitable diagrams and other 
 aids to lecturers. 
 
 2nd. By promoting the formation of popular 
 LENDING LIBRARIES and MUTUAL INSTRUCTION 
 
 CLASSES. 
 
 This society, within the first year of its opera- 
 tions, succeeded in producing illustrations for popu- 
 lar lecturing by clergymen and others, of the follow- 
 ing subjects : 
 
 NINEVEH and ASSYRIA, with 30 diagrams. 
 
 THE SOLAR SYSTEM, 23 diagrams. 
 
 EASTERN HABITATIONS (a commencement of a series 
 
 on the Manners and Customs of Scripture nations), 
 
 10 diagrams.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 347 
 
 HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, in relation to Health, 10 dia- 
 grams. 
 
 THE CATACOMBS AT EOME and Early Christianity, 
 21 diagrams. 
 
 PAGANISM, its Practices, 6 diagrams. 
 
 In all, 100 diagrams. 
 
 It has begun its second year with renewed vigour 
 in the propagation of illustrations of missionary 
 scenes, for the Church Missionary Society ; and 
 other works of interest. 
 
 The following extracts from a letter volunteered 
 by a well-known clergyman, labouring in a London 
 district, to Mr. Benjamin Scott, the indefatigable 
 honorary secretary, to whom chiefly the credit of 
 the enterprise belongs, will show the beneficial 
 working of the institution : 
 
 " MY DEAB SIR, I am most anxious to bear testimony to the 
 great service your Society is rendering to all who, like myself, 
 are striving in vain by the ordinary means to bring the masses 
 under a religious influence. g 
 
 " Since I have been in this neighbourhood, I have been con- 
 stantly extending the various forms of pastoral agency by which 
 we usually hope to elevate the condition of the working-man. The 
 weekly services have been nearly trebled, the schools quadrupled, 
 adult classes, male and female, formed, several Scripture readers 
 and lay agents constantly engaged, libraries, provident societies, 
 district-visiting, all being extended in the same proportion, and 
 yet no access, comparatively, seemed to be obtained to the work- 
 ing-men. To get thirty or forty of them to a religious service 
 seemed to be a large number. 
 
 " By the aid of your Nineveh diagrams (some of which I had 
 shown to the children at the school first), I have been able to 
 get this important class together in most extraordinary numbers.
 
 474 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 
 
 I announced a lecture, to which admission was to be obtained for 
 working-men only by tickets, and several days before the lecture 
 we were obliged to stop the issue, tickets to the number of six 
 hundred and fifty having been asked for. 
 
 " And a most intensely interesting sight was that assemblage 
 of flannel and fustian, and never did auditory seem to be more 
 interested. When, at the end of an hour-and-a-half, I told them 
 I was sorry I must draw to a close, there was a cry, ' Plenty of 
 time, sir.' However, I wanted to give them some twenty minutes 
 upon my last head ' Nineveh, a great practical lesson to man- 
 kind,' and though passing at once to pulpit topics and a pulpit 
 style, the men listened with unabated attention, allowed me to 
 speak of the men of Nineveh rising ' in the judgment ' against 
 those who enjoyed such religious advantages as are offered in 
 this country, and of the certainty that, sooner or later, the stern- 
 est retributions of Heaven must be expected to fall on every ' re- 
 joicing city that dwelt carelessly.' 
 
 " In consequence of the numbers whom we were obliged to 
 send away, I have promised to repeat the lecture ; and 1 cannot 
 help thinking that your Society is opening a new door of pas- 
 toral influence, which all of us in charge of large working popu- 
 lations shall be most glad to enter. 
 
 " To B. Scott, Esq., Hon. Sec. W. M. E. U., 
 
 " 24 and 25, King William-street, Trafalgar- square." 
 
 The Family. Religion revived in the church 
 would here find a soil and atmosphere most suited 
 for its extended reproduction and perpetuation in 
 the land. 
 
 Every professed Christian family would become 
 a nursery for the church. Parents receiving the 
 truth in their own hearts would hand it down to 
 their children. This is, assuredly, the divine order. 
 (Ps. Ixxviii.) In aiming at this, they would not 
 make their children the less cheerful and happy. A 
 wise infusion of religion into our homes would take
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 475 
 
 nothing from the real happiness of the young, but, 
 on the contrary, give a permanence and solidity to 
 their otherwise fleeting and evanescent joys. At the 
 same time, they would train them by precept, conver- 
 sation, and example, for works of charity and large- 
 hearted enterprise, in the world, as soldiers and ser- 
 vants of Christ not for a lukewarm profession of 
 his religion, with an active pursuit after this world's 
 wealth and distinctions. It is very deplorable, that 
 parents who have, through Divine grace, risen above 
 the things of the world for themselves, should fall 
 into a hankering after them for their children ; and 
 whilst formally teaching them sound doctrine should 
 be communicating, in the way of table-talk, in which 
 instruction is drunk in with the greatest avidity, 
 principles which are unsound or maxims which are 
 completely worldly. 
 
 I know it is very commonly said that the children 
 of religious people are the wildest and the worst 
 when let loose in the world, but I do not believe it. 
 That it is too generally true of the children of clergy- 
 men and others professedly religious, may be freely 
 admitted. Neither need it be denied that godly 
 parents perhaps from no fault of theirs, but more 
 frequently, it is to be feared, from their inconsist- 
 encies, their over-indulgence on the one hand, or over- 
 severity and want of sympathy on the other have 
 been most sadly disappointed in their fondest hope. 
 But that a godly parentage, and a wise bringing-up, 
 should be generally or extensively followed by a 
 reverse issue, is as great a libel upon common sense
 
 476 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 as it is upon the revelation of God, which enjoins 
 the duty. For has not the experience of the world's 
 history, in every nation, attested the pre-eminent 
 power of parental influence in the formation of 
 mind and character, for good or evil ? 
 
 My own view of the facts of the case I find ex- 
 actly expressed by the Rev. Albert Barnes, the 
 American, on that most comfortable text of Isaiah 
 lix. 21, " My spirit that is upon thee, and my words 
 which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out 
 of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor 
 out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, 
 from henceforth and for ever." 
 
 " There is no promise of the Bible that is more full of conso- 
 lation to the pious, or that has been more strikingly fulfilled, 
 than this. And though it is true that not all the children of 
 holy parents become truly pious, though there are instances 
 where they are signally wicked and abandoned, yet it is also true 
 that rich spiritual blessings are imparted to the posterity of those 
 who serve God and keep his commandments. It is well known 
 to all who have ever made any observations on the subject, that 
 the great majority of those who become religious are the descend- 
 ants of those who were themselves the friends of God. Those 
 who now compose the Christian churches, the world over, are not 
 those generally who have been taken from the ways of open vice 
 and profligacy ; the church is composed mainly of the families 
 of those who trained their children to walk in the way of pure 
 religion." 
 
 He adds; " The secretary of the Massachusetts Sabbath School 
 Society made a limited investigation, in the year 1838, for the 
 purpose of ascertaining the facts as to the religious character of 
 the families of ministers and deacons, with reference to the 
 charge so often urged, that their sons and daughters were worse 
 than common children. The following is the result : In 268 
 families which he canvassed he found 1290 children over fifteen
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 477 
 
 years of age. Of these children 884 were hopefully pious ; 
 794 have united with the churches ; 61 entered the ministry ; 
 only 17 were dissipated ; and about half only of these became 
 so while with their parents. In 11 of these families there were 
 123 children, and all but 7 pious. In 56 of these families there 
 were 249 children over fifteen, and all hopefully pious. When 
 and where can any such result be found in the families of infi- 
 dels, of the vicious, or of irreligious men ? Indeed, it is the 
 great law by which religion and virtue are spread and perpetu- 
 ated in the world that God is faithful to this covenant, and that 
 he blesses the efforts of his friends, to train up generations for 
 his service. All pious parents should repose on this promise of 
 a faithful God. They may and should believe that it is his de- 
 sign to perpetuate religion in the families of those who truly 
 serve and obey him. They should be faithful in imparting re- 
 ligious truths ; faithful in prayer; faithful in meek, holy, bene- 
 volent example ; they should so live that their children may 
 safely tread in their footsteps ; they should look to God for his 
 blessing on their efforts, and their efforts will not be in vain. 
 They shall see their children walk in the ways of virtue, and 
 when they die they may leave the world with unwavering con- 
 fidence that God will not suffer his faithfulness to fail, that he 
 will not break his covenant, nor alter the thing that is gone out 
 of his lips. 
 
 " It is a fact, too," he continues, " that comparatively a large 
 proportion of the descendants of the pious become themselves 
 for many generations true Christians. Some of the most de- 
 votedly pious people of this land are the descendants of the 
 Huguenots who were expelled from France. A very lai'ge pro- 
 portion of all the piety in this country has been derived from 
 the 'Pilgrims' who landed on the rock of Plymouth; and God 
 has blessed their descendants in New England and elsewhere 
 with numerous revivals of religion. 
 
 " I am acquainted with the descendants of John Rogers, the first 
 martyr in Queen Mary's reign, of the tenth and eleventh generations. 
 With a single exception, the eldest son in the family has been a minis- 
 ter of the Gospel, some of them eminently distinguished for learning 
 and piety ; and there are few families now in this land, a greater 
 proportion of whom are pious, than of that family.''
 
 478 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 The Pulpit. The aspect of religion, viewed in this 
 relation, is calculated to awaken painful reflections. 
 
 In the Established Church there are in England 
 and Wales more than 18,000 clergymen, that is, 
 one for about every 1000 of the people. 
 
 In the most solemn moment of their lives, did 
 those individuals, professing to be " moved by the 
 Holy Ghost to take upon them the office of the 
 ministry," promise "to instruct the people com- 
 mitted to their charge, with all faithful diligence 
 out of Holy Scripture to drive away all erro- 
 neous and strange doctrines contrary to God's 
 Word to be diligent in prayer and reading of 
 Holy Scripture, and such studies as help to the 
 knowledge of the same, laying aside the study of 
 the world and the flesh and so to fashion their 
 own selves and their families, according to the 
 doctrine of Christ, as to be wholesome examples and 
 patterns to the flock of Christ" How are those 
 ordained teachers of the people employed, and of 
 what sort is their work ? 
 
 Thousands, thank God, are doing the work 
 they have undertaken, indoctrinating their people, 
 out of Holy Scripture, visiting them in their 
 families, looking after their little ones, following 
 these, as they grow up, into life, with wise and 
 affectionate counsel, and watching over all as good 
 shepherds of the flock of Christ ! Alas ! many are 
 of a very different character. Some dance; some 
 hunt with horn and hounds ; not a few are licensed 
 to kill game ; and preserve all their energies for
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 479 
 
 this sport ; still more follow their high vocation as a 
 mere business, and practically reverse the saying, 
 "We seek not yours, but you;" many, from igno- 
 rance of the truth, through sheer neglect of Holy 
 Scripture, teach error in a thousand forms, and 
 turn the people aside from the way of salvation. 
 Some are immoral, a scandal to the name of Christ. 
 
 " I keep a dog to bark," said an old clergyman of 
 his curate ; "why should I bark myself?" Poor man! 
 he did not know how accurately the prophet of the 
 Lord had described him : " They are all ignorant, 
 they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark ; sleeping, 
 lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy 
 dogs which can never have enough, and they are 
 shepherds that cannot understand : they all look to 
 their own way, every one for his gain, from his 
 quarter." Isaiah Ivi. 10, 11. 
 
 It is melancholy to think how much might be 
 done in many parts of the country by our clergy 
 towards repressing crime, and lessening human 
 misery ; not to speak of higher concerns, if their 
 minds were less set upon " lucre," worldly plea- 
 sures, or ecclesiastical frivolities, and their attain- 
 ments and zeal were devoted to the promotion of 
 godliness, in its most general acceptation. 
 
 Many a criminal has said to me of his pastor, 
 " He never taught us never visited us," &c. One 
 convict, describing his clergyman, and the eifect of 
 his life on the parish, said, he was once working with 
 others in a field when the fox-hounds passed, and 
 the observation fell from some one, "There goes
 
 480 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 Parson ! I wonder, does he believe there is a 
 
 God?" 
 
 If the clergy fail in these particulars, the gentry 
 are little likely to he elevated to a sense of their 
 duty to the population around them. Hence, places 
 having every possible advantage towards producing 
 the highest scale of morals, fall often below par 
 from a combination of causes of this character. 
 
 My friend Mr. Clay, of Preston, published a few 
 years back some curious comparisons of this nature, 
 assisted by the Tables of Mr. Redgrove, of the Home 
 Office. 
 
 Mr. Clay congratulates the magistrates of North 
 Lancashire on comparison of that part of the country 
 with more externally favoured places ; showing that, 
 with all the drawbacks on the morals of people which 
 prevail in that great factory district, the proportion 
 was, in 1841, only one criminal in 631 of the popu- 
 lation (about the average of England), and this was 
 reduced, in 1847, to one in 999; whilst the proportion 
 of criminals to the population in Devon was. in 1841, 
 one in 776 ; in 1847, one in 587. It is curious to ob- 
 serve, that in Cornwall, the proportion, in 1841, was 
 only one in 1081. These last are humiliating figures 
 to Churchmen, for the influence of the Church in 
 Cornwall is, in comparison, small. What are those 
 circumstances that prevent Devonshire from taking a 
 high place in the scale of moral elevation ? Is it 
 that the gentry are given up so much to pleasure ? 
 In no part of England, I understand, are so many 
 packs of dogs for hunting foxes, hares, otters, &c.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 481 
 
 Is it that the clergy are engaged in " doubtful dis- 
 putations," and things which edify not, and, pre- 
 suming that their people are all Christians, do not 
 teach them " according to the doctrine of Christ," 
 that they must " turn from dead works to serve the 
 living God ? " I believe, the fault lies mainly with 
 ourselves ; our sacerdotal pride, worldly conformity, 
 and self-congratulations, leave the people who attend 
 our churches comfortably in their sins ; and by con- 
 sequence the morals of the people grow worse, and 
 crime more rampant. 
 
 In no town in England may vice be seen walking 
 forth in " the twilight " with greater effrontery than 
 in Exeter. Conversing with an intelligent inha- 
 bitant on the subject, he admitted the discreditable 
 fact, and attributed it to an imperfect police. This 
 may be the secondary cause ; if, however, the tone 
 of religious feeling were elevated, the police, as well 
 as the public morals, would be improved. Later 
 occurrences show that there has been no improve- 
 ment. 
 
 Can we meet all the wants of our increasing 
 parishes ? If not, let us rejoice in the help of 
 zealous Christians labouring in City and Town 
 Missions. 
 
 Now, that public morals are affected by the degree 
 of Scriptural Christianity communicated, is capable 
 of sufficient demonstration within the borders of 
 our own islands. 
 
 Thus, in Ulster, the northern province of Ire- 
 land, although it has the poorest soil, and densest 
 
 i i
 
 482 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 population, but is about two-thirds Protestant, the 
 proportion of criminals to the population is one only 
 in 600 ; whereas, in Munster, the southern province, 
 although the most. fertile, but intensely Romanist, 
 the proportion is one in 273 !* 
 
 The same sort of proportion, so fatal to the 
 boasted morality of the religion of the confessional, 
 meets the eye in England. 
 
 The reader will not have forgotten the statement 
 made by Mr. Lucas, on the authority of Dr. Wilson, 
 Roman Catholic Bishop of Tasmania, (referred to 
 on pages 200 201) that " in the convicts who had 
 been transported to that island from Ireland," Dr. 
 Wilson had found " not more than ten in the 100 
 who were Protestant ; " but in those who came 
 from England, " from fifteen to twenty were Roman 
 Catholics." 
 
 According to this gentleman's account, then, 
 assuming that during the period of his residence in 
 Australia, the proportion of Protestants to Roman 
 Catholics in Ireland was only one-fourth ; (it is now 
 more than one-third,) the matter stands thus : 
 
 10 Protestants in 100 convicts. 25 in each 100 of the population. 
 90 Roman Catholics in 100 convicts. 75 in 100 of the population. 
 
 In words more significantly, treble the amount of 
 the gravest crimes of Ireland was perpetrated by 
 those who had the least portion of Scriptural light. 
 In deeds of blood it is perfectly notorious this pro- 
 portion is more than tenfold. As regards England, 
 * See further particulars in Appendix.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 483 
 
 the case stands out still more distinctly, and with 
 less possibility of mistake on the one hand, or of 
 satisfactory explanation on the other. 
 
 I call the attention, to this point, particularly of 
 that party who has been, ever since the Reformation, 
 and at no period more than of late years, blackening 
 the character of the religion and morals of England ; 
 and trying (with praiseworthy zeal, if they really 
 believed their own statements,) to draw back the 
 people to the wholesome pastures of the Roman 
 communion. Let our own people consider it also 
 for a few moments, and they cannot fail to see the 
 true nature and practical character of the system 
 which they are so earnestly being pressed, inter- 
 mediately and cautiously, or per saltum, to adopt. 
 Here they will observe, that however it may be (and 
 as I believe is) with very many most honourable, 
 virtuous, and conscientious persons in that com- 
 munion, Romanism in itself is essentially rotten in 
 morals, and therefore unsound in the faith. 
 
 That Mr. Lucas's proportion of " from fifteen to 
 twenty Roman Catholics in the convicts of England," 
 is not far from the truth, maybe gathered from Father 
 Oakeley's list of 80 in 560 in Pentonville Prison, and 
 from the Millbank returns on page 206. 
 
 Let the Bishop's lowest number be taken. 15 in 
 every 100 of the worst criminals in England, then, 
 are Roman Catholics. What is their proportion in 
 the population ? By the accredited returns of the 
 census, not Jive m the 100 ! Roman Catholics, in 
 England and Wales, are just three-quarters of a
 
 484 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 million, or one-twenty-fourth of the population, at 
 the very outside. 
 
 A very ingenious gentleman, Mr. J. E. Wallis, 
 writing from the Temple to the Times, on the 16th 
 of January, has tried to work up the numbers of 
 Roman Catholics in this country to a proportion more 
 consistent with papal pretensions, and the Wiseman 
 theory that England's re-conversion was at hand ; * 
 and concludes it to be "not without confirmation 
 from an independent source," that they are " from 
 a million and a quarter to a million and a half." 
 
 Mr. Wallis's reasoning is after the most approved 
 Roman style. He casts suspicion upon the un- 
 doubted facts before him in the census returns, and 
 would have us build our faith in his views upon the 
 apocryphal manuscript of a deceased priest (quoted 
 by a foreign Protestant), and upon certain returns 
 in the hands of the clergy, of births and baptisms of 
 Catholic children, not made public ! 
 
 The marriage returns of Roman Catholics, to 
 which Mr. "Wallis refers, give their highest admis- 
 sible numbers, remembering how that rite is re- 
 garded by them, as one of the sacraments of the 
 church, and these were, in 1851, 6570, which, in 
 proportion to the total marriages, would give three 
 quarters of a million as their number in the popu- 
 lation. 
 
 * The fact is now pretty manifest that the process of conver- 
 sion or absorption has been very much the other way, and that 
 every sort of emigration, like education, helps to free the slaves 
 of superstition and priestcraft.
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 485 
 
 If any still think they are more, be it so. Say 
 they are a million, then they are just one-eighteenth 
 of the population of England, or not six in the 100, 
 but they are fifteen in every 100 of the felonry of the 
 country. 
 
 To suppose them a million is most damaging to 
 their pretensions of sanctity. Upon this calcula- 
 tion there were attendances in Roman Catholic 
 places of worship, less than 35 in the 100, whilst 
 in the Protestant churches there were more than 
 60 ! (the total attendances on Census Sunday being 
 10,896,066, of which 383,630 were Roman Catho- 
 lics.) 
 
 Upon what I believe to be the true proportion, 
 their attendances were little more than 50 in the 
 100. Hence it is certain, that the largest portion 
 of our English infidelity is to be found under the 
 guise of the Church of Rome. On the Continent, 
 it is notorious that Romanism has three grand 
 divisions pietists, papists, sceptics ; the latter, 
 even beyond the Alps, the largest. We were not 
 prepared for the development of the same state of 
 things in England. 
 
 It is a very melancholy fact to Rome, that not- 
 withstanding all the attractions of her worship, and 
 the meritoriousness of attendance upon it, she falls 
 so short, in this grand particular, of " irreligious, 
 godless Protestants ! " 
 
 There is another feature in the census returns, 
 bearing upon this part of our subject, little flatter- 
 ing to our own pride as churchmen, but not less
 
 486 THE PREVENTION OF CHIME. 
 
 instructive. Of the total number of attendances on 
 public worship on Census Sunday, viewed in relation 
 to Dissenters, the smaller part were in the churches 
 of the established religion. The total attendances 
 were 10,896,066, of whom the Church of England 
 had only 5,292,551. 
 
 Of the total number of sittings provided being 
 10,212,563, only 5,317,915 were in our churches, 
 chapels, and cathedrals. 
 
 I confess these results are astounding to my own 
 mind. What effect they have produced in my 
 brethren of a higher school, I cannot say. I did 
 think that, with all our drawbacks, we had the 
 people decidedly with us ; but these returns make 
 this more than doubtful : for although, beyond 
 question, a vast number of those who attended 
 other places of worship were not Dissenters, yet 
 the fact stares us in the face that, with innumer- 
 able advantages on our side, we were not able to 
 keep them within our own enclosures. Why not ? 
 There are two chief reasons, in my opinion. Our 
 method of teaching is bad unattractive, and, to the 
 mass, unintelligible. Written discourses, accord- 
 ing to the received models abounding in hard 
 words, theological terms, and un-English phrases, 
 without illustration and without point, delivered 
 formally and lifelessly are incomprehensible and 
 repulsive. The advance of education will remedy 
 part of this evil. People will understand better, but 
 the Church will lose even more unless the clergy 
 take proportionate pains to interest and engage
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 487 
 
 the mind. Of late years, the matter of the clergy's 
 teaching, with the mode adopted by so many of 
 celebrating divine worship, has repelled multitudes 
 from her worship. Requirements and observances 
 which, by tacit consent, had grown well-nigh obso- 
 lete, as foreign to the spirit of Protestant Christ- 
 ianity, have been revived and made the fundamentals 
 of the Church. Microscopical particles of the old 
 leaven have been laboriously collected and worked 
 up at Oxford, and retailed, for numberless parishes, 
 as the sole food of the people ; with occasional inti- 
 mations, by word and example, that if they desired 
 full nourishment for their souls, they must go back 
 to Rome. Now, in proportion as the Bible has been 
 circulated and read in the land, has this teaching 
 and worship been repudiated ; for there is nothing 
 more clear in Holy Scripture than that Christ- 
 ianity is not a ceremonial religion. This tractarian 
 system, like another Delilah, was too long dallied 
 with by our bishops. A little more encouragement 
 of its harlotry would have overturned the Church 
 mitres, cathedrals, and all. 
 
 Of the teaching in the pulpits not belonging to 
 the Church of England, of course I am not compe- 
 tent to speak. Under the more politic system of 
 Rome many of the fanatics which disgrace Protest- 
 antism would be turned to good account in her 
 minor orders sodalities, sepulchral cloisters, or dis- 
 tant missions, or be otherwise disposed of. 
 
 In a state of liberty, we must accept the evil issue 
 as well as the good : any condition is better than
 
 488 THE PREVENTION OP CRIME. 
 
 the sleep of death, and the grave ; any diversity of 
 colour, than the uniformity of darkness. 
 
 The great sections of the Nonconformist Christians 
 in England essentially accept the articles of our own 
 faith, and their pulpits resound with the same calls 
 to " repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." 
 I wish I could say more. But although the fasci- 
 nations of the ball-room, or the inspiriting cry of 
 the hounds in hot pursuit, do not enthral their min- 
 isters, the world, it is to be feared, has just as strong 
 a hold upon them as upon ourselves. Error is de- 
 nounced, and establishments and formularies are 
 pointed at. The deformity of vice is depicted, but 
 it is vice in remote parts, or amongst the great, or 
 the low populace. Error and sins nearest home are 
 the most tenderly dealt with, especially that grand 
 error and great sin of our times the love of 
 money. Men of Wesley's stamp, or Whitfield's, 
 of Doddridge's, and the Henry's spirit, are as ex- 
 ceptional, I fear, as amongst ourselves. Of late 
 Dissenters seem to have come down just to our 
 own folly, of supposing that man can make a min- 
 ister. Hence their colleges and schools, in which 
 much literary poison, more injurious far, because 
 more congenial to the taste, than the classical abomi- 
 nations of our own schools, is copiously imbibed ; and 
 vice, though more specious, is as surely practised. 
 
 A revival of religion is devoutly to be prayed for 
 among Dissenters. Would to God it were less 
 needed, and that, by their greater faithfulness to 
 our common Lord, and deadness to the world, they
 
 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 489 
 
 were able to provoke us to " faith and good 
 works ! " 
 
 I may be mistaken, but I think I see more signs 
 of a revival of vital godliness in the Church of Eng- 
 land than elsewhere. This once revived, reform- 
 ation from within would follow. Things non-es- 
 sential in our formularies, having a Popish aspect, 
 would be expunged. She would become less secu- 
 lar, more parochial, more remedial of our social 
 evils ; and her temples, instead of being half-de- 
 serted, would be thronged by devout worshippers, 
 and thereby national morals be elevated and im- 
 proved on the best basis. Unreformed by such 
 means, she may at no distant day again experience 
 the rude handling of external violence. 
 
 When we see the picture, drawn by our matchless 
 allegorist, exhibited in living characters, and greater 
 numbers, in the pulpits of the land, we shall have 
 before us the best sign and surest precursor of an 
 advancing, wide-spread reformation in morals, to 
 this and future generations : 
 
 " Then said the Interpreter, Come in : I will shew 
 thee that which will be profitable to thee. So he 
 commanded his man to light the candle, and bid 
 Christian follow him ; so he had him into a private 
 room, and bid his man open a door ; the which 
 when he had done, Christian saw the picture of a 
 very grave person hang up against the wall ; and 
 this was the fashion of it : it had eyes lifted up to 
 heaven, the best of books in its hand, the law of truth 
 was written upon its lips, the world was behind its
 
 490 THE PREVENTION OF CRIME. 
 
 back ; it stood as if it pleaded with men, and a 
 crown of gold did hang over its head. 
 
 " Chr. Then said Christian, What meaneth this ? 
 
 " Inter. The man whose picture this is, is one of 
 a thousand. He can say in the words of the Apos- 
 tle, ' Though ye have ten thousand instructors in 
 Christ, yet have ye not many fathers ; for in Christ 
 Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel.' 
 'My little children, of whom I travail in birth 
 again until Christ be formed in you/ 1 Cor., 
 iv. 15. Gal., iv. 19. And whereas thou seest him 
 with his eyes lift up to heaven, the best of books 
 in his hand, and the law of truth written on his 
 lips ; it is to shew thee that his work is to know 
 and unfold dark things to sinners; even as thou 
 seest him stand as if he pleaded with men. And 
 whereas thou seest the world as cast behind him, 
 and that a crown hangs over his head : that is to 
 shew thee, that slighting and despising things that 
 are present, for the love that he hath to his Master's 
 service, he is sure in the world that comes next to 
 have glory for his reward. Now, said the Inter- 
 preter, I have shewed thee this picture first, because 
 the man whose picture this is, is the only man whom 
 the Lord of the place whither thou art going hath 
 authorized to be thy guide, in all difficult places 
 thou mayest meet with in the way ; wherefore take 
 heed to what I have shewed thee, and bear well in 
 thy mind what thou hast seen, lest in thy journey 
 thou meet with some that pretend to lead thee right, 
 but their way goes down to death."
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 I. 
 
 COMPARATIVE STATISTICS OF CRIME, IN ENG- 
 LAND, SCOTLAND, AND IRELAND, 1852, 
 
 KXCLUSIVJE OF CASES OF SUMMARY JURISDICTION, 
 BY MR. CLARKE. 
 
 TABLE No. I. 
 
 Proportion of Offenders to Population of Convictions 
 Acquittals, &c. 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 J' *- 
 
 
 S3 
 
 
 o 
 
 ho & 
 
 S 
 
 
 u 
 
 | 
 
 PH 2 
 
 Division. 
 
 || 
 
 -go 
 
 d-S 
 
 '" 31 
 
 o 3 
 
 O T3 
 
 11 
 
 OJ C" 
 
 Is 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 2 "5 
 
 
 fl 
 
 
 
 
 I in 
 
 
 
 
 ENGLAND & WALES 
 
 17,922,768 
 
 27510 
 
 651 
 
 77+ 
 
 17 
 
 ^4 
 
 
 
 
 1-7 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 515 794 
 
 17678 
 
 3084 
 
 53A 
 
 191 
 
 27 
 
 
 2 870 784 
 
 4027 
 
 712 
 
 76 1-5 
 
 51 
 
 171 
 
 
 
 
 3-5 
 
 
 
 
 TOTAL 
 
 27,309,346 
 
 49216 
 
 554| 
 
 .. 
 
 .. 
 
 .. 
 
 TABLE No. II. 
 
 Part of United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 ENBLAND ( 
 
 IRELAND 
 
 SCOTLAND 
 
 TOTA 
 
 Offences L ca i n B? C pJo Offences against 
 
 afraiii>t the ST r , v tt ith Proi^rty with- 
 
 Person. j ^ioTeMe. I "W^**""*- 
 
 1503 376 21,309 16,811 33?i 
 948, 302 9,75r 6,735' 1867 
 MX) III 43; l,974| 1,563 89 
 ~ ' 
 
 535 1620 
 
 rt 
 
 Property. 
 
 ,.-, 
 
 650 M4 l* 
 
 II 
 
 977 164 4167 1
 
 492 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 TABLE No. III. 
 
 Number charged with Offence from 1848 to 1852. 
 
 Division. 
 
 1848. 
 
 1849. 1850. 
 
 1851. 
 
 1852. 
 
 Average. 
 
 ENGLAND & WALES 
 
 30,349 
 
 27,816 26,813 
 
 27,960 
 
 27,510 
 
 28,089 
 
 
 38,522 
 
 41,980 ' 31,326 
 
 24,684 
 
 17,678 
 
 30,838 
 
 
 * 
 
 4,357 4,468 
 
 4,001 
 
 4,027 
 
 4,209 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * No return. 
 
 The important facts which the foregoing tables, compiled from 
 pai'liamentary returns, disclose, are these : 
 
 1. England and Wales shows a decrease of the number com- 
 mitted for trial, or bailed for appearance at Assizes'and Quarter 
 Sessions in 1852, as compared with 1851, of 450 individuals. 
 
 2. Ireland of same, a decrease of 7,006. 
 
 3. Scotland of same, a small increase of 26. 
 
 4. England and Wales gives a proportion of such cases (ex- 
 clusive of those of summary jurisdiction), to her population 
 of 1 in 651 
 
 Ireland, of similar cases 1 in 368 
 
 Scotland, of same 1 in 712 
 
 Although the proportion of offenders in Ireland to her popula- 
 tion, when it is compared with that of England and Scotland, 
 is lamentably great, yet the decided progressive improvement 
 in her social state, as evinced by the decrease in thejiumber 
 charged with offence, must be most gratifying to those interested 
 in her welfare. 
 
 1850, compared with 1849, showed a decrease in the 
 number charged with offence before the tribunals of 
 Assizes and Quarter Sessions, of .... 10,663 
 
 1851, compared with 1850, a decrease of ... 6,642 
 And now, 1852, compared with 1851, shows a further 
 
 decrease of 7,006 
 
 Being a total decrease in the last three years of . 24 3 1 1 
 
 1852: 
 
 Ulster, proportion of offenders to population 1 in 600
 
 APPENDIX. 493 
 
 Munster 1 in 27^ 
 
 Leinster 1 in 313 
 
 Connaught 1 in 462 
 
 Average of Ireland 1 in 368 
 
 Ulster yet maintains her proud position in the social scale) 
 and this is further confirmed by the returns of outrages reported 
 in 1852 to the constabulary office, as given by the Inspectors- 
 General of Prisons, in their report to Parliament. Of those 
 reported offences 
 
 Ulster, with a population of 2,004,289 is charged with 1,518 
 Leinster .... 1,667,771 . . . 2,346 
 Munster .... 1,831,817 . . . 2,619 
 Connaught . . . 1,011,917 . . . 1,341 
 
 E. M. CLARKE, 
 
 Local Inspector and Chaplain of the Gaol, 
 County Donegal. 
 
 II. 
 REPORT OF CHAPLAIN OF PENTONVILLE PRISON, 
 
 EEFERRING TO CHANGES IN THE DISCIPLINE, ETC. 
 
 GENTLEMEN, Pentonville Prison, January, 1853. 
 
 I HAtfE the satisfaction to report favourably of the educational 
 and moral improvement of the prisoners during the past year. 
 Their progress in elementary knowledge has been fully equal to 
 that of any former year, if allowance be made for the shorter 
 period of detention under the present convict arrangements. 
 
 I have already explained to you, so fully, my views respecting 
 the education which should be given to convicts in this the first 
 stage of their discipline, that I will only here repeat, summarily, 
 that its benefits, in my opinion, should be secured, in the first 
 place, to those prisoners who cannot at all read, or who read 
 without any intelligence of the meaning of words which they 
 mechanically spell ; and then, when it is possible to go farther, 
 that the teacher should aim at laying a good foundation for the 
 convict's improvement by his own efforts, and the assistance of 
 the schoolmaster, in his next and longer stage. To confer the
 
 494 APPENDIX. 
 
 advantages of a superior education on criminals, I hold to be 
 wrong in principle. A superficial one is worse than useless. 
 What such men need is principle ; not mere intellectual de- 
 velopment. That mere education does not produce moral 
 elevation is too apparent, from the fact that convicts have had 
 as large a share of its advantages as the non-criminal classes in 
 society. Nevertheless, as men without some rudimentary educa- 
 tion cannot read for themselves that book which alone teaches 
 infallibly the things pertaining to godliness, nor understand its 
 truths as generally taught by the ministers of religion, it is a 
 matter of primary importance that all should be made, as soon 
 as possible, acquainted with the language in which those truths 
 are conveyed to them. 
 
 The thorough carrying out even of this principle, I am aware, 
 will have many attendant drawbacks. A perverted nature will 
 lead multitudes to abuse the acquired power, and unprincipled 
 literary men will not be wanting to provide books in fearful 
 abundance, licentious, immoral, and such as directly generate 
 crime. On the whole, however, I am satisfied that the spread of 
 knowledge would tend to the increase of good morals in any 
 people where religion exists in a free and healthful state. But 
 great exertions are required on the part of the community, the 
 Government, and the Legislature, to meet the most pernicious 
 efforts continually being put forth by authors and publishers 
 who prostitute talent, education, and character to the detestable 
 purpose of mere money gain, neutralizing the benefits of educa- 
 tion to the lower classes, and poisoning the sources of their 
 temporal, no less than of their eternal happiness. Such persons, 
 if they cannot be reached by the arm of the law, should be 
 scouted from society, as wholesale traffickers in the production 
 of crimes which it costs the State so much to punish, and the 
 miseries which follow in the train of crime to so many thou- 
 sands, which no remedy can ever remove. 
 
 It may be well to show the enormous and increasing magni- 
 tude of this fertile source of crime, as detailed by Mr. Knight, 
 the publisher, and other competent witnesses. 
 
 " Since the year 1844, when Eugene Sue's ' Mysteries of Paris ' 
 appeared in London, a great number of penny papers of a vitia- 
 ting character have been published in London, Manchester, 
 Liverpool, and other large towns. Many men of the lowest class
 
 APPENDIX. 495 
 
 have started into notice, and become comparatively rich, by the 
 sale of these most immoral works. I am acquainted (says the 
 writer) with no less than six men who are in a position to keep 
 their town and country houses by these pernicious enterprises ; 
 men who were saddled with debts a very few years ago. The 
 mischief already done is considerable. The young people of 
 both sexes in the families of the mechanic and the shopkeeper 
 are now habituated to a course of reading in which felony, 
 murder, and violation, forgery, adultery, and all other crimes are 
 treated of as the common occurrences of life. The consequence 
 is, that the minds of thousands are depraved by that very exercise 
 which ought to improve them. There is no use in denying that 
 some of these felonious tales are written with ability ; but that 
 only aggravates the evil, for it serves as an excuse to the common 
 reader, and has the effect of attracting some readers of a better 
 class. There are four of these weekly Felonists (for that is the 
 nickname they have adopted) whose combined sale is calculated 
 to amount to 350,000, and whose readers must, I should say, ex- 
 tend to 1,000,000 a week. One of these Felonists, and the most 
 prosperous, has several gentlemen of ability among its con- 
 tributors, and will probably be won over to the cause of order 
 and good morals the moment the newspaper press begins to stir 
 upon the subject. 
 
 " At the beginning of April one thousand eight hundred and 
 fifty (says Mr. Knight) there were issued from the London press, 
 to be continued in weekly numbers at a penny and three-half- 
 pence each, one hundred separate publications. Of these, sixty 
 were wholly works of fiction and ribaldry. Of the professed 
 works of fiction a great number were of the ' Jack Sheppard ' 
 school, such as 'The Freebooters,' 'Dick Turpin,' ' The Bold 
 Smuggler,' 'Paul Jones,' ' Gentleman Jack,' ' The Brigand,' &c. 
 The hash is varied by every variety of tales of murder. The 
 influences of such publications are counteracted by twenty-two 
 weekly journals for the most part innoxious. 
 
 " The circulation of pernicious publications is immense. In 
 1845 it was calculated from London alone there was a yearly 
 circulation of stamped and unstamped newspapers and serials of 
 a decidedly pernicious character, to the extent of 28,86i2,000 ! 
 During the last five years, while cheap religious periodicals have 
 made limited progress either in numbers or interest, the corrupt
 
 496 APPENDIX. 
 
 printing press has been unceasingly at work. The present circu- 
 lation in London of immoral unstamped publications of a half- 
 penny to three half-pence each must be upwards of 400, 000 weekly, 
 which would give the enormous issue of 20,800,000 yearly ! In 
 addition to these there is the weekly importation of French 
 prints and novels, of so indecent a character that once they could 
 only be obtained by stealth, but may now be purchased openly 
 from any vendors of the other periodicals. We lately observed 
 a shop called the ' Parisian depository for the sale of French 
 prints,' where the business was entirely confined to that class of 
 publications. 
 
 " In the beginning of 1851 above 100 new penny periodicals 
 were started, and again in January 1852 at least an equal num- 
 ber, the greater part of these being calculated to do harm rather 
 than good." 
 
 To the almost hopeless task of undoing the mischief inflicted 
 upon society by such means, we are called, who are appointed to 
 minister to the felon and outcast, and, under our direction, the 
 schoolmasters engaged to labour amongst prisoners. Our aim 
 should not be dissimilar. No schoolmaster is worth much 
 anywhere, and least of all in a prison, who confines his view to 
 the merely intellectual progress of his scholars, and does not 
 consider mental improvement as a means to the higher end, the 
 formation of character on Christian principles. 
 
 With respect to direct moral and religious improvement 
 effected amongst the prisoners during the past year, there con- 
 tinues to be less profession of a religious change than in former 
 years, but not less real amendment. Of some we have reason 
 to hope that they have indeed been renewed in the spirit of 
 their minds. Of the very great majority, we have no doubt but 
 that they will approve themselves in after-life to be reformed, in 
 the general acceptation of the word. The number of really con- 
 verted persons amongst prisoners has been, I am satisfied, 
 greatly over-rated by many sanguine minds, which have not 
 taken into sufficient consideration the peculiar circumstances 
 and characters of prisoners. The situation of prisoners is one 
 of affliction, and the absence of active temptation to their 
 besetting sins, especially in separate confinement. They are in 
 a subdued, softened state of mind. Religious instruction is 
 daily communicated to them, and they become enlightened.
 
 APPENDIX. 497 
 
 They are conversed with by zealous and affectionate persons, 
 who impress them with their views. Their teachers come to 
 them, with the authority of superior officers, upon whose good 
 opinion much is known to depend, and from whose kind offices 
 much is expected by persons so circumstanced. Hence, without 
 supposing gross hypocrisy to any considerable extent, the de- 
 scription by our blessed Lord will constantly be found applicable 
 to a great many of the most hopeful, " when they heard the 
 word they received it immediately with all gladness, but they 
 have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time ; after- 
 ward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, 
 immediately they are offended." 
 
 On the other hand, the number of prisoners who have become 
 better members of society in consequence of the affliction and 
 punishment which have followed their course, and the encourage- 
 ment and instruction how to do better which they have received 
 in prison, is placed in general much under the mark. In accord- 
 ance with those views, when classifying, with the Governor, the 
 convicts about to be removed to the second stage of their disci- 
 pline, I do not hesitate to give the advantage of the first class 
 to all who have not by some overt act, or the exhibition of a 
 confirmed habit, disclosed a really depraved character, or, by the 
 frequent repetition of some ordinary prison offence, an insub- 
 ordinate spirit. It appears to me a matter of great importance 
 to extend, as far as possible, to men in their circumstances, the 
 stimulus of encouragement and hope. To attempt a more re- 
 fined estimate of the convict's character in a state of separation 
 is only to deceive oneself with the delusive idea of possessing a 
 power 'which no man can have; and, if religious improvement 
 be made the test of classification, to generate extensively an in- 
 sincere profession. The opportunities for forming a judgment 
 upon the character, whilst a prisoner is on the public works, are 
 so many and various, and the time of detention so much longer 
 than with us, that the result of observation there must be con- 
 sidered the main element for fixing his ultimate destination. 
 
 I am happy to perceive, that few men on the public works 
 forfeit the class which they receive thus so liberally from us. 
 This confirms me in the persuasion, that the more credit you 
 give to fallen persons for real desire to reform their ways, the 
 more likely you are to secure this result. The reverse of this 
 
 K K
 
 498 APPENDIX. 
 
 principle I believe is as generally verified. Degrade a prisoner 
 from his class for some trivial offence, by punishment, when an 
 admonition and a warning would suffice, and you will most pro- 
 bably have to do it again and again. 
 
 Many a convict has thus come at last to be reputed incorri- 
 gible, who originally, in his criminal character, was much less 
 vile than others who have attained to the first class, under a 
 happier course of treatment. Many more, in my opinion, would 
 certainly sink gradually into the incorrigible class, from the 
 indignation or recklessness produced by a heavy punishment for 
 some offence involving no moral turpitude, were it not that it is 
 the business of the minister of religion to visit them under 
 punishment, and, whilst maintaining to the prisoners the 
 necessity of discipline, and their duty, to infuse hope and 
 encouragement into their minds. In cases where excessive 
 punishment for the first offence has not been followed by rapid 
 deterioration and an insubordinate spirit, the existence of this 
 influence must continually be borne in mind. 
 
 The beneficial moral results of the discipline and instruction 
 of the prison have in no degree been lessened, in my opinion, 
 by the mode of exercise adopted during the year past, in lieu of 
 the separate yards. There has been actually less communication' 
 between the prisoners. The good effect of the change upon the 
 mental condition of the prisoners has been to my perception 
 most marked. From an early period in the history of this 
 prison, you are aware, I was led to advocate a mitigation of the 
 rigorous character of separate confinement originally instituted 
 in Pentonville ; and I have hailed with no small satisfaction, on 
 the ground of humanity, every approximation to such a course of 
 treatment, as should secure a better prospect of continuing what 
 is useful in this discipline without perpetuating the serious evils 
 which a growing experience led me to apprehend from its indis- 
 criminate application. I am now enabled, by very distinct 
 recollection of my early impressions, to compare the convicts of 
 the first years, in general appearance and manner, with those of 
 the last ; and I have no hesitation in affirming that the present 
 healthful mental aspect of the prisoners forms a complete con- 
 trast to the nervous, agitated condition of the first, allowance 
 being made for the many cases of debility and age now admis- 
 sible to the prison, which were so carefully excluded at the first,
 
 APPENDIX. 499 
 
 It is really no small relief to my own mind, remembering the 
 past, to turn my eyes for a moment from this paper, as I write, and 
 view the manner now in which one hundred prisoners in the 
 spacious ground before my window are being exercised. Sepa- 
 rated by moral discipline and simple arrangement, they walk 
 erect, like men. Their whole frame is in motion, and they move 
 at so lively a pace as almost to provoke competition ; fast enough, 
 however, to render much thought, for the while, impossible. To 
 the young and active it is enjoyment. To the less vigorous and 
 the sluggish it gives a stimulus which cannot fail to be of use to 
 the mind as well as body. The picture is happily removed of 
 the convict, pensively, thoughtfully, at the best leisurely, tread- 
 ing his solitary little yard, the boundaries of which were high 
 walls, massive iron palings, and a door with inspection plate 
 through which an officer's eye was perpetually on all his actions. 
 When officially interrogated by you on the probable effects of a 
 change in such points of our discipline as seemed to press 
 heavily upon the mind of the prisoner, I anticipated those re- 
 sults with confidence. 
 
 The experience of the physician of the Penitentiary in New 
 Jersey, lately brought before the British public, has long been 
 my own. " The more rigidly the plan is carried out, the more 
 its effects are visible upon the health of the convicts. A little 
 more intercourse with each other, and a little more air in the 
 yard, have the effect upon the mind and body that warmth has 
 on the thermometer ; almost every degree of indulgence showing 
 a corresponding rise in the health of the individual. That an 
 opinion to the contrary should have been advocated at this time 
 seems like a determination to disregard science in support of a 
 mistaken but favourite policy." 
 
 The separation of the convicts in the chapel (the effect of 
 which I was desired to state) I did not, nor do I now, think 
 oppressive to the mind to any perceptible degree. The process 
 of instruction going on in the school, the considerable part 
 which the prisoners take by responding and singing in the 
 religious service, and the interest so generally felt in the con- 
 secutive reading and simple exposition of the Holy Scriptures, 
 make this continuation of separation wholly harmless. If no 
 interest were imparted to those exercises (as is the fact still as 
 regards some exceptional cases), the continued separation would 
 
 KK 2
 
 500 APPENDIX. 
 
 certainly tell, in some measure, unfavourably upon the mind. 
 Viewed in its moral aspect, the separation of prisoners during 
 divine worship is only justifiable on the ground of necessity, the 
 existence of which is, however, now confidently denied, by not a 
 few excellent persons who have tried both plans. I am too 
 sensibly alive to the evils attached to either plan to advocate a 
 sudden departure from an established course. 
 
 The uses, and the danger of the convict's peaked cap (another 
 point upon which a question was raised) I think have been alike 
 exaggerated. 
 
 In advocating, in consequence of my first few years' experience 
 in this prison, a modification of separate confinement, and the 
 necessity of combining it with a system of well-regulated labour 
 on public works, under the direction of Government, I was 
 guided wholly by my own observation, and the conviction that 
 the ends of justice, and the reasonable demands of the colonies 
 of Australia, could only be met by such a course. I had my 
 misgivings, moreover, that the reformation effected under such 
 complete separation from the temptations of life, would not 
 prove to be of a permanent character. I feared that the long con- 
 tinuance under a system of such restraint, physical and moral, 
 would be followed by a reaction, where there was not a real change 
 of heart by the Holy Spirit. However this might be, I thought 
 I saw distinctly marked, such effects of separate confinement as to 
 put out of the question its exclusive application for a lengthened 
 period, as the sole or greater part of a convict's treatment. 
 
 Among the convicts of the first years, most carefully selected, 
 as they were, in the matter of general health, age, crime, and 
 sentence, there was an undue proportion, as you are aware, of 
 mental disturbance and excitement, from insanity downwards to 
 a sort of indescribable nervous or hysterical condition, which 
 was partly observable in the prison, but much more so on board 
 ship, where a large proportion were seized with convulsions. 
 This was the case in the Sir George Seymour. In the Stratheden, 
 which next sailed with our prisoners, twenty out of one hundred 
 were thus affected, but none of the convicts, on board, from the 
 other prisons, as I reported at the time to the board. It was 
 reasonable to infer, that where no such actual result followed, 
 there was yet an effect produced upon the system of an unfavour- 
 able character ; and this I thought observable in the appearance
 
 APPENDIX. 501 
 
 of our convicts, viewed in comparison with the others around 
 them. Could it be imagined that longer detention in such a 
 state would not aggravate this mischief? It was so thought by 
 some, whose judgment might justly be considered much safer 
 to follow than mine. Tables were prepared to show that cases 
 of insanity and delusion occurred, in the first, rather than in the 
 last period of the eighteen months here experimented on. That 
 result, however, in my opinion, seemed consistent enough with 
 the supposition of a gradual and perhaps imperceptible decline of 
 the physical and mental energies of the mass of persons subjected to 
 the trial. Active disease might be developed in the first stage of 
 confinement, whilst general debility or prostration of spirits 
 would mark the latter part of a long confinement in separation ; 
 and when released the sufferers would not be competent to work 
 their way in the world like other men ; and having this dis- 
 advantage, with the loss of character, would be doomed in too 
 many cases to hopeless pauperism, vagrancy, or crime. 
 
 Further, gentlemen, I considered that religion could gain 
 nothing by such results. Depression of spirits is not contrition ; 
 remorse is not repentance ; resolutions and vows of amendment, 
 made whilst suffering the penalty of transgression, imply no 
 change of principle, no real reformation of character. The 
 weakening of man's physical and mental energies does not gene- 
 rate piety. Religion cannot be in a healthy state which originates 
 in disturbance of the mental powers. You are acquainted with 
 the results, as regards the religious and moral condition of our 
 convicts of the early years, about whom such sanguine expecta- 
 tions were entertained. Too many witnesses, having opportuni. 
 ties for observation and inquiry in the colonies, have affirmed a 
 deplorable falling away in them, to allow one to question the fact. 
 Indeed, on the whole, there appears reason to fear that the 
 operation of the discipline on the minds of the exiles, sent from 
 Pentonville, was not so friendly to religion as even its most 
 moderate advocates, like myself, ventured to anticipate. 
 
 It is increasingly, therefore, a matter of satisfaction, to nie at 
 least, that the experiment of subjecting convicts to one proba- 
 tionary period of a lengthened term of separate confinement was 
 not further persevered in, but that a system of convict discipline 
 has been put into operation, which secures whatever advantages 
 belong to separate confinement, consistently with mental safety ;
 
 502 APPENDIX. 
 
 is combined with active bodily exertion and training in out-door 
 labour; incorporating all through the elements of a wholesome 
 severity with those of humanity and religion. Character formed 
 under such circumstances will be less specious, but more stable ; 
 and the convict, at the expiration of his probation, will be quali- 
 fied to return to the honest pursuits of hard labour, if such had 
 been his condition, or have recourse to them for a livelihood, 
 when crime has degraded him from a better condition. 
 I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 To the Directors of Convict Prisons. J. KINGSMILL. 
 
 III. 
 THE CRYSTAL PALACE. 
 
 OPINIONS OF 599 MEDICAL MEN IN THE METROPOLIS, ON THE SUBJECT; 
 ALSO OF SEVENTY PRISON CHAPLAINS.* 
 
 ON~the important subject of opening the Crystal Palace on the 
 Lord's Day, the Committee felt that it would be very important to 
 obtain the opinions of Chaplains of Prisons ; they therefore put 
 themselves'in communication with the Kev. J. Kingsmill, Chap- 
 lain of the Pentonville Model Prison, to whom a similar idea had 
 occurred. Mr. Kingsmill in consequence drew up an able peti- 
 tion to both Houses of Parliament, expressive of his own views 
 on the subject, to which he obtained the signatures of Chaplains 
 of Prisons in the Metropolis and its neighbourhood. The Com- 
 mittee forwarded a copy of this petition to the other Chaplains 
 of Prisons in England for signature. Seventy Chaplains signed 
 this petition. 
 
 The following is a copy of this important petition : 
 
 " The Petition of the undersigned Chaplains of her Majesty's 
 
 " Prisons 
 " HUMBLY SHOWETH, 
 
 " That your Petitioners, from the nature of their duties, are 
 especially interested in the promotion of public morals. 
 
 " That your Petitioners are well acquainted with the many ob- 
 structions to virtue, and direct incentives to a vicious course, 
 which have been allowed for a long time to gather round the 
 
 * Extracted from quarterly paper of the Lord's Day Society.
 
 APPENDIX. 503 
 
 humbler classes in the metropolis and other parts of the coun- 
 try ; and in discharge of their painful duties, are continually 
 witnessing the most deplorable effects. 
 
 " That your Petitioners have therefore hailed, with more than 
 ordinary satisfaction, every movement of late years, originated 
 by Parliament or private enterprise, for the amelioration of the 
 social and moral condition of the labouring classes ; and espe- 
 cially such as tended to raise their tone of self-respect, and to 
 demonstrate to the upper classes how well deserving their poorer 
 brethren are of their most considerate regard. 
 
 " That, next to the bond of a common Scriptural faith, your 
 Petitioners know none more likely to consolidate society, and 
 prevent a decline in national morals, than the love of country 
 generated by a kindly sympathy pervading all classes of the 
 community. 
 
 " That accordingly your Petitioners regarded the late Indus- 
 trial Exhibition as a design most happily conceived and accom- 
 plished, emanating, as it did, from the high, the noble, and the 
 wealthy, for the gratification and instruction of all. 
 
 " That your Petitioners would view with like satisfaction the 
 rising Palace at Sydenham ; but that they understand an at- 
 tempt is likely to be made to induce Parliament to sanction a 
 departure from its great model of 1851, in that one distinguish- 
 ing feature the scrupulous observance of the Lord's Day 
 which secured at once the regard of all persons in Great Britain 
 who preferred the religion and the customs of their country to 
 continental habits, and made it a grand exposition to all the 
 world of the religious principles and character of England. 
 
 " That your Petitioners are convinced that a departure from 
 that example in this particular, would be followed by most dis- 
 astrous consequences to public morals and religion, for the fol- 
 lowing amongst other reasons : 
 
 All unnecessary labour on Sundays has the invariable ten- 
 dency to produce irreligion, immorality, and the disruption of 
 family ties. By the proposed arrangements it is certain that 
 Sunday labour would be greatly increased. All Sunday amuse- 
 ments accomplish the like result, only with greater certainty. 
 The workman, with his shopmates, or less select companions, 
 deserts his family for the excitement of the Sunday amusement ; 
 and the young of both sexes, breaking loose from the feeble and 
 inconsistent restraints of home and religion, take the first step
 
 504 APPENDIX. 
 
 in evil, and sink with fearful rapidity into profligacy and crime. 
 The recreations to be offered in the new Palace of Sydenham, 
 being in themselves innocent and attractive, would introduce tit 
 once a multitude of persons to the practice and habit of Sunday 
 pleasure-taking ; parents and teachers, who have hitherto found 
 no difficulty in keeping young people from the infamous gardens 
 in and around the metropolis, open at present on Sundays by 
 an evasion of the law, would find it in too many cases impossible 
 to prevent their going to Sydenham Garden on that day, if, un- 
 happily, the full sanction of the Legislature of their country 
 could be pleaded on the side of passion and self-will ; and thus 
 it would happen, that although those vile places might suffer at 
 the first, they would ultimately the more flourish, from the 
 greater numbers which had contracted habits of Sunday pleasure- 
 taking, and the innate tendency of man to pass from the more 
 innocent and rational excitement to the more gross and sensual. 
 " That your Petitioners further would urge upon your honour- 
 able House, that the opening of the Exhibition at Sydenham on 
 Sundays would not prove any boon to the working classes. A 
 single visit, with a family of average number, would cost the 
 working man at the least a sum equal to the rent he pays for 
 the apartments which he occupies. Unless, thei'efore, he 
 launches into extravagant habits, or deserts his family for his 
 own selfish gratification, his visit with his family must be only 
 on such occasional holidays in the course of the year as his 
 means and opportunities will permit. Nor is there any neces- 
 sity. The operatives of London, and the country generally, 
 keep two or three holidays in Easter or Whitsuntide ; to these, 
 others might be added by a mutual good understanding be- 
 tween employers and their people, with advantage to both par- 
 ties, without encroaching on the sacredness of the Lord's Day. 
 " That your Petitioners, therefore, upon a calm and thought- 
 ful consideration of the subject confining their attention 
 to public morals, and the interests of the humbler classes, 
 and not going into the consideration of the obligation on 
 Christians of preserving inviolate the whole Sabbath (which 
 yet they firmly believe) do earnestly implore your honour- 
 able House not to let any Bill pass permitting the Palace 
 at Sydenham, or its grounds, to be opened on any part of 
 Sunday ; but to adhere in this, as well as all other things,
 
 APPENDIX. 505 
 
 to those great principles of the Scriptural religion so hap- 
 pily and so long established in these realms, under which 
 England has risen to her present greatness and prosperity." 
 
 All the Metropolitan Prison Chaplains signed this petition, 
 one only excepted that^is, 19 out of 20. 
 
 Some* T medical gentlemen having learned that petitions in 
 favour of opening the Crystal Palace on the Lord's Day had 
 been introduced into some of the hospitals of the metropolis 
 for signature, conceived the design of originating a counter 
 petition. They accordingly prepared the following, which 
 was numerously and most respectably signed : 
 
 '' To the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland in 
 Parliament assembled : the Petition of the undersigned Physi- 
 cians, Surgeons, and General Practitioners, resident in London, 
 
 " HUMBI,Y SHOWETH, 
 
 " That your Petitioners, from their acquaintance with the la- 
 bouring classes, and with the laws which regulate the human 
 economy, are convinced that a seventh day of rest, instituted by 
 God, and coeval with the existence of man, is essential to the 
 bodily health and mental vigour of men in every station of life. 
 
 " That the system which provides for the gain of some, and 
 the recreation, the amusement, and the vices of others, at the 
 expense of their fellows, who require and are entitled to a day of 
 rest as much as they, and thus consigns a large and yearly-grow- 
 ing proportion of the community to a life of unbroken toil, be- 
 sides being at variance with that law of charity which enjoins us 
 to do to others as we would they should do to us, has a direct 
 tendency to undermine the health, exhaust the strength, and 
 shorten the lives of those who are its victims. 
 
 " That the proposal to open for profit the Crystal Palace, now 
 in course of erection at Sydenham, and to create in connexion 
 with it an enormous amount of railway traffic during a portion 
 of the Lord's Day, lying manifestly open to these objections, and 
 confessedly implying a still further extension of this hurtful 
 system, appears to your Petitioners pregnant with disastrous 
 results to the labouring classes, because directly tending to de- 
 fraud them of that boon which the Sabbath-law of a beneficent 
 Creator provides for the whole family of man.
 
 506 APPENDIX. 
 
 " That while they are more especially called to minister to the 
 physical sufferings of their fellow-creatures, your Petitioners 
 cannot overlook the close relationship subsisting between moral 
 and physical disease, or entertain the hope that any plans which 
 do not make full provision for their spiritual as well as for their 
 physical necessities, will effect any great or permanent improve- 
 ment in the health and the habits of the labouring population ; 
 and that, even if your Petitioners could altogether shut their 
 eyes to the moral aspects of the above-mentioned proposal, in 
 favour of which their opinion has been expressly invoked by its 
 promoters, it would, according to their experience of the wants 
 and slender resources of the labouring poor, be a mere mockery 
 to offer the much-needed blessings of health, fresh air, and re- 
 creation, at an expense far beyond the means of the vast ma- 
 jority, and sure to entail serious subsequent privation even on 
 the few who might venture to incur it at distant intervals. 
 
 " That your Petitioners, deeply sympathizing with the hard 
 and cheerless lot of multitudes of their fellow-countrymen, of 
 whose health they may be considered in some sense the guard- 
 ians, feel bound to protest against any encroachments, from 
 whatever quarter they may come, on that day of rest which is 
 the birthright of the poor, and to claim for them far greater op- 
 portunities of healthful and innocent recreation than they now 
 enjoy. Convinced that the present protracted hours of labour 
 are not only hurtful but needless, and anxious to lighten instead 
 of adding to the pressure of toil that now weighs so heavily on 
 the working classes, your Petitioners desire to express'their be- 
 lief that the requirements of the Divine law, and the interests 
 both of employers and artisans, may be harmonized by the con- 
 cession, as in Manchester, and (to some extent) in Glasgow, of a 
 portion of one of the working days as a weekly half-holiday ; and 
 the provision, free of cost, in all the large towns of the United 
 Kingdom, of parks and gardens, and of public museums of art 
 and science, fitted to elevate the habits and refine the tastes of 
 the labouring population. 
 
 " May it therefore please your honourable House to refuse 
 your assent to any measure calculated in any way to set aside 
 the law actually in force, and to legalize the opening of the Crystal 
 Palace and its grounds for gain on any portion of the Lord's Day. 
 
 " And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."
 
 APPENDIX. 507 
 
 IV. 
 NAMES AND LOCALITIES OF CONVICT PRISONS. 
 
 THE accommodation at the disposal of the Government, and 
 the distribution of the convicts, are detailed hi the following 
 Return, taken from the Report of Lieut.-Colonel Jebb, C.B., 
 Surveyor-General of Prisons, Chairman of the Directors, &c., in 
 1853. 
 
 ESTABLISHMENTS AT HOME FOB MALE CONVICTS. 
 Prisons for Separate Confinement. 
 
 Millbank 1,100 
 
 Pentonville 561 
 
 Wakefield 412^. 
 
 Preston 50 
 
 Leeds 50 Cells in county or 
 
 Leicester 112 I borough prisons 
 
 Northampton .... 60 [ rented by the 
 
 Bath 24 Government. 
 
 Reading 40 
 
 Bedford 70- 
 
 Perth 180 For Scotch prisoners. 
 
 2,659 
 
 Prisons and Hulks for Public Works. 
 
 Portland 1,070 
 
 Portsmouth 1,020 
 
 Dartmouth; able-bodied . . . 650 
 
 \ " Warrior " 450 
 
 3,720 
 
 Parkhurst (for Juveniles) . . . . 625 
 Invalid Depots. 
 
 Dartmoor 
 
 " Stirling Castle " Hulk, Portsmouth 
 
 Total in England and Scotland . . 8,030 
 Ireland, including Males and Females 5,246 
 
 ABROAD. 
 
 Gibraltar, say . . 690 
 
 Bermuda, say . . . 1,700 
 Western Australia . . 550 
 
 2,850 
 
 General Total . 16,126* 
 
 * Exclusive of Brixton Female Convict Prison, for 600.
 
 508 APPENDIX. 
 
 V. 
 FORM OF A TICKET-OF-LEAVE 
 
 AS NOW GRANTED IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Order of License to a Convict, made under the Statute 
 16 rf 17 Viet., chap. 99, sect. 9. 
 
 WHITEHALL, 
 
 day of 185 HEK MAJESTY 
 
 is graciously pleased to grant to , who was 
 
 convicted of , at the , for the 
 
 of , on the day of , 
 
 and was then and there sentenced to be transported beyond the 
 Seas for the term of years, her Koyal License to be at 
 
 large in the United Kingdom, from the day of his liberation 
 under this Order during the remaining portion of his said term 
 of Transportation, unless it shall please Her Majesty sooner to 
 revoke or alter such License. And Her Majesty hereby orders 
 that the said be set at liberty within 
 
 days from the date of this Order. 
 
 Given under my Hand and Seal 
 
 Signed, 
 TEUE COPY. 
 
 Chairman. 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 1. The power of revoking or altering the License of a Convict will most 
 certainly be exercised in case of his misconduct. 
 
 2. If, therefore, he wishes to retain the privilege which, by his good 
 behaviour under penal discipline, he has obtained, he must prove by his 
 subsequent conduct that he is really worthy of Her Majesty's clemency. 
 
 3. To produce a forfeiture of the License, it is by no means necessary 
 that the Holder should be convicted of any new Offence. If he associates 
 with notoriously bad characters leads an idle and dissolute life or has no 
 visible means of obtaining an honest livelihood, &c. it will be assumed 
 that he is about to relapse into crime, and he will be at once apprehended, 
 and re- committed to prison under his original sentence. 
 DESCRIPTION. 
 
 Hair 
 
 Eyes 
 
 Eyebrows .... 
 
 Nose 
 
 Mouth 
 
 Complexion . . . 
 
 Visage 
 
 Make 
 
 Height ft. in. 
 
 Trade 
 
 Born at 
 
 Friends reside . 
 
 Reed and Pardon, Printers, Paternoster Row, London.
 
 CHAPTERS 
 
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 easy, flowing, graceful, and unaffected style. From Gay and Fielding, to Dickens, 
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 in the experiments now being made for the prevention of crime as well as the 
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 ian Times. 
 
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 the state of society, to which those who crowd our gaols belong, are lucid and 
 forcible, and his exposition of profligate character, and the best means to be 
 adopted for its amendment, is sound and judicious." Bell's Weekly Messenger. 
 
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 ian spirit It may be read with advantage in Christian families." 
 
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 arises from a wide and comprehensive view of Christian missions, beginning with 
 the first, with those inspired messengers who were most eminently the Lord's wit- 
 nesses, and proceeding through the ancient missions to our own country, and mediaeval 
 missions, down to the great evangelising institutions of our own time." Christian Times. 
 
 " It delights us to find a man rising above the distinctions of sects and churches; 
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 bringing honour to this or that denomination, but simply because souls are being 
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 studying the Popish controversy." Bulwark. 
 
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 readers, as containing some striking illustrations of the violent and unscrupulous 
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 success of Protestant missions in all parts of the world." Evangelical Magazine. 
 
 LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GBEEN, AND LONGMANS.
 
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