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 HENRY DOUGLASS BACON. 
 
 1877. 
 
 Accessions No. ../?.4?/s2___. Shelf No 
 
MEMOIRS 
 
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 JOHN HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST. 
 
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MEMOIRS 
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST; 
 
 COMPILED FROM 
 
 HIS OWN DIARY, IN THE POSSESSION OF HIS FAMILY; HIS CONFIDENTIAL LETTERS; THE 
 
 COMMUNICATIONS OF HIS SURVIVING RELATIVES AND FRIENDS ; AND 
 
 OTHER AUTHENTIC SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES BALDWIN BROWN, Esq. 
 
 OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. 
 
 When the ear liwd him, then it blessed him ; and when the eye saw him, it gave witness to him. 
 
 Because he delivered the poo.' *hnX cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. 
 
 The blessing of him that was ready 10 perish _..mc upon hiir ■ tuid he caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. 
 
 Job, chap. xxix. v. 11, It, 13. 
 
 Sine dubio inagnus omnium judicio hie vir extitit. ff-^~ " ■^^JCornelius Nepos in Timol. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED FOR REST FENNER, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 1818. 
 
si 
 
 7« 
 
 *(£> 
 
 .K 
 
TO 
 
 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, Esq. M.P. 
 
 &c. &c. &c. 
 THE ELOQUENT, INDEFATIGABLE, AND SUCCESSFUL ADVOCATE OF 
 
 THE ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE j 
 
 THE 
 
 ZEALOUS FRIEND, AND LIBERAL SUPPORTER OF EVERY SCHEME OF BENEVOLENCE, 
 
 WHICH HAS FOR ITS OBJECT 
 
 THE MITIGATION OF THE SUFFERINGS, THE AMELIORATION OF THE CONDITION, THE PROMOTION 
 
 OF THE HAPPINESS, PRESENT AND ETERNAL 
 
 OF 
 
 THE WHOLE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN: 
 
 AS A TRIBUTE OF ADMIRATION OF HIS PUBLIC CHARACTER ; OF VENERATION FOR HIS PRIVATE 
 VIRTUES ; AND OF GRATITUDE FOR MARKS OF PERSONAL ATTENTION RECEIVED 
 
 AT HIS HANDS, 
 
 THESE MEMOIRS 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN PHILANTHROPIST, 
 
 IN WHOSE FOOTSTEPS HE HAS TRODDEN; BY WHOSE MOTIVES HE IS ACTUATED; IN WHOSE 
 GLORIOUS RECOMPENSE HE WILL BE A FINAL PARTAKER, 
 
 ARE MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 BY HIS OBLIGED AND DEVOTED HUMBLE SERVANT, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 10, Harcourt-Buildings, Temple, 
 July 7, 1818. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The friends of the distinguished individual whose extraordinary deeds 
 of philanthropy form the principal subject of the following pages, have 
 long regretted that no memoir of his life has yet been presented to the 
 public, in which full justice is done to the motives by which he was 
 actuated in the unparalleled career of benevolence that has immor- 
 talized his name. The deficiency they have deplored, it is the object 
 of this work to supply, from information derived from a variety of 
 sources, of whose originality and authenticity a particular description 
 will naturally be expected at its author's hands. 
 
 About four years since, the confidential servant who had attended 
 Mr. Howard in most of his journeys abroad, and who was with him at 
 his death, closed a chequered existence in the infirmary at Liverpool, 
 
vm 
 
 and upon his death-bed sent for a respectable minister of that town, 
 into whose possession, and that of some other of its inhabitants, who 
 kindly visited him during his last illness, — and not without hopes of 
 having been the instruments of leading him to repent of the error of his 
 ways, — he delivered a rough journal of his travels ; the memorandum- 
 book which his master had with him at his death ; some of that master's 
 original letters ; and other papers, illustrative of his unwearied labors 
 in the cause of humanity, and the general excellence of his character, 
 in private, as in public life. These various documents were afterwards 
 submitted to one of the earliest, and most intimate of my friends, with 
 whom I have since become connected by nearer ties, the Rev. 
 Thomas Raffles, of Liverpool, who suggested to me the idea of pre- 
 paring for the press, from these, and other materials which he would aid 
 me in collecting, a Memoir of our Philanthropist's life, in whose com- 
 pilation his own want of leisure prevented his engaging. Having, 
 through his introduction, obtained the use of such of the papers, formerly 
 in the possession of Thomasson, the servant above alluded to, as are 
 still available for the purposes of a work like the present,— some of them 
 having unfortunately been lent and mislaid, — no time was lost in making 
 application to the successor of Mr. Howard's pastor, at Bedford, for 
 his assistance in procuring the information which that town and its 
 
IX 
 
 neighbourhood was likely to supply; and it was then I learned, for the 
 first time, that a life of this great and good man was in contemplation, 
 from materials in the possession of the family of the late Rev. Mr. 
 Smith, to which they had added every thing of interest that their long 
 and intimate connection with Mr. Howard and his friends enabled them 
 to obtain. Unwilling, therefore, to create a rivalry between those 
 whose object and views were precisely the same, though their re- 
 sources were perfectly distinct and independent the one of the other, 
 a communication was immediately opened with Mr. Newton Bos- 
 worth, of Cambridge, into whose hands the papers in question had 
 prudently been delivered; in consequence of which an arrangement 
 was made, transferring, for a second time, the task of becoming the 
 biographer of Mr. Howard from abler hands to mine. Thus furnished 
 with information, the greater part of which had never before met the 
 public eye, an announcement of the projected biography was made in 
 some of the principal periodical journals; in answer to which I was 
 most liberally furnished, by the near relative and acting executor 
 of Mr. Howard's will, in whose possession the invaluable original 
 remains, with several extracts from his own private diary of some of 
 the most interesting years of his singularly useful life. But valuable 
 as was the stock of materials now collected, it soon received a 
 
 b 
 
 
most important addition in the kind communication with which I was 
 most obligingly favored by Dr. Brown, Principal of the Marischal 
 College, Aberdeen, of the various entries he had made in his common- 
 place-book of the most striking particulars of Mr. Howard's journeys 
 of philanthropy, which he received from his own lips. These were, 
 from time to time, augmented by the reminiscencies of Dr. Lettsom, 
 the Rev. Mr. Lewin, and several other of the friends of this extraor- 
 dinary man, with whom, wherever it was probable that they could 
 give any authentic intelligence as to his manners and habits, I have 
 made it my business either to converse or correspond ; having also had 
 personal communications on this subject with his surviving domestics, 
 and some others, in the humbler walks of life, who were acquainted with 
 different parts of his eventful history. 
 
 In moulding the materials, thus carefully collected from every quarter 
 to which it was probable that reference could be made with any prospect 
 of success, into one connected narrative, it has been my anxious wish so 
 to detail every circumstance of his life, as to exhibit the illustrious 
 subject of my biography in the character which truly belonged to him, 
 as one of the most excellent of the earth, both in his private relations 
 and his public labors; no less ardent in his devotion as a Christian, in 
 
XI 
 
 the closet, nor less exemplary in the discharge of his duties as a 
 husband, a father, and a friend, in the retirement of the domestic 
 circle, than prompt, unwearied, and disinterested in the perfdrmance of 
 those unprecedented deeds of benevolence by which he has gained to 
 himself the honorable distinction of the Philanthropist of the World. 
 The peculiar traits in his private character — the principal incidents of 
 his domestic history — the record of his feelings, as a man and as a 
 Christian, under trials and dfficulties such as few are exposed to in 
 journeying through this vale of tears, are now, for the most part, for 
 the first time, presented to the public, either in his own language, or 
 from the authentic information of friends who knew him well. But 
 in this part of the following memoirs, as in that which relates to his 
 public conduct, it would be unpardonable in their author to omit 
 freely and fully acknowledging the assistance he has derived from the 
 View of the Character and Public Services of Mr. Howard, published 
 soon after his death by his friend Dr. Aikin, the undoubted authenticity 
 of the information which it contains, rendering that work a most indispen- 
 sable auxiliary to any one who should undertake the task of giving to the 
 world a more extended biography of that singular ornament of the human 
 race, whose life would, in all probability, never again have been composed, 
 had his family and friends thought proper to furnish this able writer with 
 
 62 
 
Xll 
 
 those materials which it is ray happier lot to have obtained. Through- 
 out the following pages their author trusts it will be evident also, that 
 all possible diligence has been used to extract from the other accoun 
 and anecdotes of Mr. Howard's life which have already appeared in 
 print, few and meagre as they are, every particular that can be deemed 
 interesting, whilst it may be relied on as authentic. In tracing the 
 progress of those journeys of philanthropy, which have given im- 
 portance to every thing connected with the benevolent being who 
 performed them, recourse too has, of necessity, been had to his own 
 ublications, and from their pages, with a degree of trouble and labor 
 inconceivable to those who may not follow me through the detail, the 
 whole of the more prominent circumstances of the condition in which 
 he found every gaol, and prison, and lazaretto, and hospital that he 
 visited in the course of his repeated journey ings at home and abroad, have 
 been thrown into a regular narrative, following the order of time, and 
 mitting the various minutiae of scite, dimensions, rules, and regulations, 
 which would prevent the general reader from entering on a perusal of 
 books not now very easily to be procured. This course appeared to me 
 the only one that could be consistently adopted, in a work professing 
 to give a full account of Mr. Howard's life, in which his travels on 
 these errands of mercy occupy so conspicuous a place ; and I hope the 
 
Xlll 
 
 readers of the following memoirs will have no reason to wish that 
 another had been pursued. With all those faults upon its head which 
 a first attempt at so difficult a line of authorship may be expected to 
 possess, — and which may, perhaps, in some measure, have been increased 
 by the circumstance of its having been composed during the few in- 
 tervals from drier and severer studies, which can be allowed to the pur- 
 suits of a laborious profession, requiring also frequent and protracted 
 absences from home, — this work is submitted to the public in a full re- 
 liance that it will experience the same liberality at their hands, and at 
 those of the periodical critics, who are supposed, to a certain extent, to 
 inform their judgments, and direct their taste, which its author gratefully 
 acknowledges to have received upon former occasions. 
 
 Before, however, these prefatory remarks are brought to a close, I 
 have to discharge the pleasing duty of publicly returning my thanks 
 to those kind friends and promoters of this undertaking, but for whose 
 liberal communications it would either never have been completed 
 or have been deprived of the greater part of the interest it may now 
 possess. But so numerous is the list of those to whom, upon the present 
 occasion, I am proud to acknowledge myself indebted, that it is difficult 
 to know where to begin, or when to end. To Nathaniel Bar- 
 
XIV 
 
 nadiston, Esq. of Charlotte-street, Bloombury-square, my best thanks are 
 due, for the liberal manner in which he furnished me with those extracts 
 from the diary of his distinguished relative, which, if I am not greatly 
 mistaken, the public will rank with the most valuable part of the fol- 
 lowing pages. Nor less deep are my obligations, nor less forcibly felt, for 
 the kindness with which the Rev. Dr. William Laurence Brown^ 
 D. D. Principal and Professor of Theology, in the Marischal College of 
 Aberdeen, undertook the task of transcribing for my use those highly 
 interesting memoranda of his conversations with the inestimable friend, 
 who knew and duly appreciated his talents and his worth, with which 
 this work is enriched. In both cases it is impossible not to feel equally 
 flattered and obliged, by so much trouble having been taken for a stran- 
 ger, who has no claims upon the time or attention of either of these 
 gentlemen, but what they may indulgently have been disposed to give to 
 the design which first introduced him to their correspondence and ac- 
 quaintance. These communications, important as they are, would, 
 however, have left much of the private history and domestic habits 
 of our great Philanthropist involved in the obscurity, or clouded by 
 the misrepresentations which have hitherto rested upon them, but for 
 the indefatigable exertions of Mrs. Greene, the eldest daughter of the 
 late Rev. Thomas Smith, of Bedford, the most intimate and confidential 
 
 W 
 
XV 
 
 of Mr. Howard's friends, and of her husband Mr. John Greene, of 
 Cambridge, in collecting all the information which the ravages of death 
 and time had left within their reach, to illustrate the character of a man, 
 in whose reputation they may naturally be supposed to take a peculiar 
 interest. To the former, I have great pleasure in publicly acknow- 
 ledging myself most deeply indebted for the pains she has taken to pre- 
 pare for my assistance, in the compilation of this work, a very full account 
 of her own recollections of the life and habits of her father's dis- 
 tinguished friend, interspersed with many original and authentic facts, 
 collected from conversations and correspondence with those who knew 
 him while living, and who venerate, as they ought to do, his ardent 
 piety, amenity of disposition, and universal benevolence, now that he is 
 no more. To the latter, in conjunction with Mrs. Greene, my thanks 
 are most justly due, not only for the confidential letters from Mr. 
 Howard to his friend, but for the promptitude and unwearied zeal 
 with which they have sought out information for the purposes of this 
 memoir wherever it was to be found. It is to their persevering efforts 
 that I owe the great advantages which have been derived from the short, 
 but valuable sketch of Mr. Howard's life, drawn up for publication by 
 the late Rev. Samuel Palmer, of Hackney, as an appendix to a second 
 edition of the sermon which he preached on his death, and most obligingly 
 
XVI 
 
 entrusted, by his widow, to the discretion of the present biographer 
 of that eminent character. Through their kind interference I have 
 also been furnished with several interesting anecdotes of Mr. Howard's 
 life a private as well as public, communicated to Mrs. Greene by Mrs. 
 Coles, widow of the Rev. Mr. Coles, of Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, 
 who lived upon terms of great intimacy with him, both before, and after 
 the death of his second, and favorite wife ; whilst their residence at 
 Cambridge has rendered them the channel of communication with Dr. 
 Edward Daniel Clarke, the celebrated traveller, who has kindly 
 answered every inquiry proposed to him, relative to the residence and 
 death of our illustrious countryman, in those distant regions, with whose 
 habits and manners his interesting work has made us so familiarly ac- 
 quainted. 
 
 It has been one of the pleasing circumstances issuing out of the 
 tedious and difficult work of collecting materials for the following 
 memoir, in which, for nearly two years, its author was occupied, that 
 by its means, he has been introduced to the acquaintance and friendship 
 of several excellent men, with whom, in all probability, he otherwise 
 should never have had any intercourse. In the first rank of these esteemed 
 individuals, he would place Mr. Newton Bosworth, of Cambridge, 
 
XVII 
 
 well known to the world as one of the editors of the Panlalogia, 
 but whose talents would have been still more fully developed, had 
 his numerous engagements permitted him to have changed places 
 with the friend, who now requests him to accept his most cordial thanks, 
 for the interest he has taken in a work, for whose execution he himself 
 had made some preparation, from which, as well as from his judicious 
 advice and kind assistance in collecting materials, considerable advantage 
 has been derived by the successor to his labors. Nor less has been the 
 pleasure experienced from the acquaintance and friendship of the Rev. 
 Samuel Hillyard, of Bedford, to Avhich his engagement in this work 
 has introduced its author, who now gladly embraces the opportunity 
 of expressing his grateful sense of the kindness with which that gentle- 
 man, at no small pains and trouble, procured answers to such inquiries 
 as, during its composition and progress through the press, it became 
 necessary to institute in the neighbourhood of Mr. Howard's resi- 
 dence, and the chief spot on whioh the more private virtues of 
 his heart were called into a full and constant exercise. Nor can 
 he possibly forget the friendly reception which he met with at his 
 hands, when paying a short visit to the interesting scene of their exhi- 
 bition, in order to glean every little incident in the domestic history, 
 every trifling peculiarity in the habits, manners, and character of the 
 
XV111 
 
 illustrious subject of his biography, which might have escaped the notice 
 of his fair fellow-laborer in this interesting field of inquiry. It was 
 in his company that I had the gratification of hearing from the lips of 
 Mrs. Prole, of her son, and of Joshua Crockford, the old and faith- 
 ful gardener at Cardington ; from Mrs. Preston, and other of Mr. 
 Howard's former tenants, or of the pensioners on his bounty, during 
 life, and the partakers of his remembrance of the poor at his 
 death, — the most unequivocal testimony to the general excellence 
 of his character, and the kindness of his disposition, which they illus- 
 trated by several little anecdotes engrafted on various parts of these 
 memoirs; and for whose communication I now tender my sincere 
 thanks to these humbler, but attached friends of him who was the 
 friend of all, but most of the poor, and those of low estate. To Mrs. 
 Prole, in particular, who, from the liberality with which her former 
 master recompensed those services, which both her husband and her- 
 self performed with a more than ordinary share of zeal, prudence, 
 and fidelity, is filling, in her latter days, a respectable station in 
 life, with credit to herself, and advantage to her family, I feel that 
 my acknowledgments are most justly due, not only for the information 
 with which she has furnished me, but for entrusting to my hands the 
 letters of Mr. Howard to her husband, which she so highly values, 
 
A1X 
 
 and for having enabled me to present to the public correct, and, — thanks 
 to the skill of the engraver, — most exquisitely-finished likenesses of our 
 great Philanthropist, and of the beloved wife, whose melancholy fate 
 had so decided an influence on the future usefulness of his life. The 
 Hon. Captain and Mrs. Waldegrave, the present occupiers of the 
 delightful retreat planned and laid out under the inspection of this 
 amiable and attached pair, though, alas ! but for too short a time enjoyed 
 in each other's endeared society, have also claims upon my gratitude for 
 the politeness with which they attempted to decypher the inscription 
 in the root-house at Cardington, and permitted my free access to the 
 house and gardens there ; whilst to their owner, John Howard Chan- 
 ning, Esq. I am under similar obligations for the assistance he so readily 
 afforded me, in procuring from others that information relative to the 
 property contingently bequeathed to him, — and to its original possessor, 
 which he was not sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Howard's private 
 character and history, to furnish himself. 
 
 Turning from Bedfordshire to Warrington, where much of the 
 time of the benevolent being, whose public virtues and private worth 
 these pages are intended to record, was passed, in the labors of phi- 
 lanthropy, to which he devoted the last sixteen years of his existence, 
 
 c2 
 
XX 
 
 I have great satisfaction in acknowledging the kindness with which my 
 inquiries in that quarter were forwarded by Peter Nicholson, Esq. of 
 that town : from whom, from his lady, the only daughter of Mr. Eyres, 
 the printer of all Mr. Howard's works, and from Dr. Kendrick, the 
 successor of Dr. Aikin, at Warrington, much assistance has been 
 derived, for the illustration of this period of the following memoir; 
 whilst the manner in which it was rendered has made the favor 
 doubly valuable to the individual on whom it was conferred. By their 
 instrumentality, the opportunity was afforded him of collecting, from 
 personal conversation with Mrs. Wilde, the lady in whose house Mr. 
 Howard lodged, Miss Eaton, a member of the Society of Friends, 
 with whose father he was in habits of intimacy, and Mr. John 
 Morris, the person principally employed in the printing of his various 
 works, all the particulars of his manners and habits, which survive in a 
 town, where his memory is still held in the highest veneration and 
 esteem. 
 
 Few persons, however, have contributed more extensively, by their 
 exertions and their influence, to the promotion of this design, than my 
 friend, and brother-in-law, the Rev. Thomas Raffles, of Liverpool ; 
 and I am persuaded he will believe me, when I thus publicly assure him, 
 
XXI 
 
 that his kindness upon this occasion will, if possible, tend to strengthen the 
 ties by which I have been bound to him from our boyish years, and which 
 have since been cemented by one of a still closer description. It is to 
 his exertions that the public and myself are chiefly indebted for the 
 preservation, in these pages, of those curious and interesting documents 
 formerly in the possession of Mr. Howard's confidential attendant, but 
 now in his own, and that of Adam Hodgson, Esq. and Mr. Thomas 
 Kaye, of Liverpool, who have kindly permitted me the use of them. 
 On his application also, I was liberally furnished by Mr. J. B. Wil- 
 liams, of Shrewsbury, with several interesting anecdotes of Mr. Howard, 
 and such of his letters to the Rev. Mr. Symonds, as he had not already 
 sent to the Editor of the Evangelical Magazine, by whom the former 
 ones were published, after he was informed of the use that was wished to 
 be made of them, as original documents, in these pages. In consequence 
 also of his request, the Rev. John Cockin, of Holmfurth, was at the 
 trouble of obtaining, from the Rev. Josiah Townsend, the son of Mr. 
 Howard's original pastor, such intelligence as he could furnish, for the 
 illustration of the character of his father's old and steady friend; accom- 
 panying that intelligence by several highly-interesting anecdotes, com- 
 municated to himself, by the late Rev. Mr. Iiealey, the Unitarian minister 
 at Warrington. For the valuable communications of another of Mr. 
 
XX11 
 
 Howard's friends, the Rev. Mr. Lewin, minister of Remhaw-slreet 
 chapel, Liverpool, I am likewise indebted to his introduction, as well 
 as for the trouble taken by that gentleman's son, Robert Lewin, 
 M. D. of the same town, in furthering my inquiries. 
 
 It will hardly be supposed by any one, that such a life of Howard 
 as the present, could have been undertaken without an application for 
 materials to the family of his friends and relatives, the Whitbreads. 
 But, alas ! ere such application could be made, the head and brightest 
 ornament of that family was snatched from his weeping country and 
 his friends, by a stroke of death, sudden, unexpected, and most deeply 
 felt by all. Recourse, therefore, was had to his noble relative, Earl 
 Grey, from whom, and from his widowed sister Lady Elizabeth 
 Whitbread, my request met with the most prompt and polite atten- 
 tion, though I am sorry to add, that on searching the papers of the 
 family, nothing was found in connection with Mr. Howard, which, in 
 the estimation of the person by whom that search was directed to be 
 made, could be at all interesting to the public. It only remains, there- 
 fore, for me, to express my sincere acknowledgments to these noble per- 
 sonages for the trouble they did me the honor to take in order to meet 
 my wishes, and to add a hope, that the time may arrive when they shall 
 
xxiii 
 
 see fit to reverse the opinion they have adopted, should any thing remain 
 in their possession that can throw light upon the character of one of the 
 greatest and best of men that any age or country has produced. 
 
 My thanks are also due for a variety of interesting information which 
 it would be needless and tedious to particularize, and for the readiness 
 with which they have, in various ways, promoted the collecting of 
 materials for the following work, or otherwise furthered its progress, 
 to John Nichols, Esq. F. A. S. the well-known historian of Leicester- 
 shire, and the author of several other valuable works ; to his son, John 
 Bowyer Nichols, Esq. F. L. S. ; William Morgan, Esq. F. R. S. 
 Actuary of the Equitable Insurance Office, and author of the admirable 
 Treatise on the Doctrine of Chances; the Rev. Robert Winter, D.D.; 
 Rev. William Bengo Collyer, D.D. F.A.S. ; Rev. Thomas Belsham ; 
 Rev. Thomas Mitchell; Rev. Joseph Brocksbank; Rev. Joseph 
 Brocksbank, Jun.; Miss Nesbitt; T. J. Pettigrew, Esq. F. L. S. ; 
 and Mr. Thomas Fisher, of London ; the Rev. James Plumbtree, 
 M. A. and F. Thackeray, M. D. of Cambridge ; Rev. Thomas 
 Waters, of Pershore, Worcestershire ; Rev. Joseph France, M.A. 
 of Lancaster; Rev. P. S. Charrier, Mrs. Hurry, and Mr. Phoenix, of 
 Liverpool; Rev. Joseph Stennet, of Calne; Rev. Mr. Ken worthy, 
 
XXIV 
 
 formerly minister of the Independent congregation at Warrington ; 
 his son, Mr. J. D. Kenworthy, and Robert Kaye, Esq. of Man- 
 chester; Rev. J. Anthony, Theed Pearse, Esq. and Theed Pearse, 
 Jun. Esq. of Bedford ; Capel Lofft, Esq. barrister at law, of Troston 
 Hall, near Bury ; Mr. Richard Howe, of Aspley, and Jeremiah 
 Holmes Wiffin, of Woburn, Bedfordshire ; and to Mr. Le Grand, 
 of Hoddesdon, in Hertfordshire. 
 
 To these my thanks may reach ; but there are some whose com- 
 munications and friendly exertions have imparted much of whatever 
 interest they may possess, to pages which they can never read, 
 whilst conveying acknowledgments, as voiceless to their ears, as are the 
 tombs in which they rest. Since this work was begun, no less than seven 
 individuals who have furnished, or assisted in furnishing its author with 
 materials for its composition, have followed to the world of spirits the 
 friend, or the Philanthropist, whose history, or whose character they 
 had contributed their assistance to place before the public eye in a 
 fuller and clearer light than has hitherto been cast upon them. Lady St. 
 John, of Bletsoe ; Dr. Lettsom ; the Rev. William Kingsbury, for- 
 merly of Southampton; his sister, Mrs. Taylor, of Portswood, in Hamp- 
 shire, but latterly of Caver sham, near Reading; and William Hol- 
 
XXV 
 
 lick, Esq. of Cambridge, all of them in the number of Mr. Howard's 
 friends, have, I trust, been called to join him in a better world, as these 
 memoirs of his useful, but toilsome pilgrimage on earth were preparing for, 
 or passing through the press. Nor has the world at large, nor have I, as 
 an individual, less cause to regret the sudden removal of the other two 
 contributors of some of the information on which this work has been 
 compiled. In the Right Hon. John Hiley Addington, M. P. the 
 late Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, his country has 
 lost an able, an upright, and a zealous servant ; his family and connections 
 a most affectionate relative and faithful friend ; and society at large a 
 worthy and excellent man. The information he was kind enough to pro- 
 cure for me, in connection with Mr. Howard's correspondence with the 
 different offices of government, though it was but little that he could ob- 
 tain, was one of the last of the many acts of kindness which I received at 
 his hands, during the very short period that I had the honor of number- 
 ing him with my friends. In Joseph Adams, M. D. F. L. S. his pro- 
 fession has recently lost one of its brightest ornaments, and his friends, 
 a man at all times ready to use his influence to serve them, as upon 
 this, and every other occasion, I uniformly found him to be. 
 
 Having thus performed the melancholy, as well as the pleasing part 
 
 d 
 
XXVI 
 
 of his duty, nothing now remains for the author of the following pages 
 but to commit them to the liberality of the public, with an intimation, 
 that, should they extend their indulgence to the faults of this attempt 
 to exhibit the character of an individual, of whom his country and the 
 world may be justly proud, in its proper light, so far as to require its 
 republication in an improved form, he will gladly avail himself of any 
 communication with which he may be favored, in the interim, from 
 any of the surviving friends (and many such no doubt there are, who have 
 escaped his most diligent researches) of a man, — to have shared in whose 
 friendship, — to have enjoyed whose conversation, must have been a source 
 of the purest happiness which the social intercourse of man with 
 his fellow can offer, upon this side the grave. 
 
 J. B. H. 
 
 Harcourl Buildings, Twnple, 
 July!, J8I8. 
 
XXI 
 
 For the following beautiful Lines I am indebted to Jeremiah Holmes Wiffin, 
 a youthful member of the Society of Friends, whose poetical talents, if the 
 partiality of friendship does not deceive me, will one day procure for him 
 a very large share of public approbation. 
 
 1. 
 
 Why, when the souls we loved are fled 
 
 Plant we their turf with flowers, 
 Their blossomed fragrance there to shed, 
 
 In sunshine and in showers ? 
 Why bid, when these have passed away, 
 The laurel flourish o'er their clay, 
 
 In Winter's blighting hours ; 
 To spread a leaf, for ever green, 
 Ray of the Life that once hath been? 
 
 It is that we would thence create 
 
 Bright memory of the Past ; 
 And give their imaged forms a date, 
 
 Eternally to last. 
 It is — to hallow, whilst regret 
 Is busy with their actions yet, 
 The sweetnesses they cast: 
 To sanctify upon the Earth, 
 The glory of departed worth. 
 e 
 
XXII 
 
 Such and so fair in Day's decline 
 
 The hues which Nature gives; 
 Yet— yet— though suns have ceased to shine, 
 
 Her fair creation lives. 
 With loved remembrances to fill 
 The mind, and tender griefs instil, 
 
 Dim radiance yet survives, 
 And lovelier seems that lingering light, 
 When blended with the shades of Night. 
 
 Else why, when rifled stands the Tower; 
 
 The Column overthrown ; 
 And, record of man's pride and power, 
 
 Crumbles the storying Stone; 
 Why does she give her Ivy- Vine, 
 Their ruins livingly to twine 
 
 If not to grant alone, 
 In the soliloquies of man, 
 To glory's shade an ampler span. 
 
 Still o'er thy temples and thy shrines, 
 
 Loved Greece ! her spirit throws 
 Visions, where'er the ivy twines, 
 
 Of beauty in repose. 
 Though all thy Oracles be dumb, 
 Not voiceless shall those piles become, 
 
 Whilst there one wild-flower blows 
 To claim a fond — a passing sigh, 
 For triumphs passed and times gone by. 
 
XXUI 
 
 6. 
 
 Still, Egypt! tower thy sepulchres 
 Which hearse the thousand bones 
 
 Of those who grasped, in vanished Years, 
 Thy diadems and thrones. 
 
 Still frowns — by shattering years unrent, 
 
 The Mosque — Mohammed's monument, 
 And still Pelides owns, 
 
 By monarchs reared, by shepherds trod, 
 
 His cenotaph — a grassy sod. 
 
 They were the Mighty of the world, 
 
 The Demigods of earth ; 
 Their breath — the flag of blood unfurled, 
 
 And gave the battle birth. 
 They lived — to trample on mankind, 
 And in their ravage leave behind 
 
 The impress of their worth. 
 And wizard Rhyme, and hoary Song 
 Hallowed their deeds and hymned their wrong. 
 
 8. 
 
 And thou, mild Benefactor! thou 
 
 To whom on earth was given 
 The sympathy for others' woe, 
 
 The charities of heaven : — 
 Pity for grief — a fever balm, 
 Life's ills and agonies to calm; — 
 
 To tell that thou hast striven, 
 Thou hast thy Records which surpass 
 Storying stone and sculptured brass. 
 e2 
 
XXIV 
 
 9. 
 
 They live not in the sepulchre 
 
 In which thy dust is hid, 
 Though there were kindlier hands to rear 
 
 Thy simple Pyramid 
 Than Egypt's Mightiest could command, 
 A duteous tribe — a peasant band, 
 
 Who mourned the rites they did ; 
 Mourned— that the cold turf should confine 
 A spirit, kind and pure as Thine. 
 
 10. 
 
 They are existent in the clime 
 
 Thy pilgrim steps have trod, 
 Where justice tracks the feet of crime, 
 
 And seals his doom in blood. 
 The Tower where criminals complain, 
 And fettered captives weep in vain, 
 
 The pestilent Abode — 
 Are thy Memorials in the skies, 
 The portals of thy Paradise. 
 
 11. 
 
 Thine was an Empire o'er distress, 
 
 Thy triumph — of the mind ; 
 To burst the bonds of wretchedness, 
 
 The friend of humankind. 
 Thy Name — through every future age, 
 By bard, philanthropist and sage, 
 
 In glory shall be shrined ; 
 Whilst other Nield's and Clarkson's show, 
 That still thy mantle rests below. 
 

 XXV 
 
 12. 
 
 I know not if there be a sense 
 
 More sweet than to impart, 
 Health to the haunts of pestilence, 
 
 Balm to the sufferers' smart, 
 And freedom to captivity : — 
 The pitying tear— the sorrowing sigh, 
 
 Might grace an Angel's heart ; 
 And e'en When sickness damped thy brow, 
 Such bliss was thine, and such wert thou. 
 
 13. 
 
 Serene, unhurt, in wasted lands, 
 
 Amid the general doom ; 
 Long stood'st thou, as the traveller stands, 
 
 Where breathes the lone Simoom. 
 One minute, beautiful as brief, 
 Flowers bloom, — trees wave their verdant leaf, 
 
 Another all is gloom. 
 
 He looks: — the green and blossomed bough, 
 Is blasted into ashes now 1 
 
 14. 
 
 But deadlier than the Simoom, burns 
 
 The fiery Pestilence ; 
 His Shadow into darkness turns 
 
 The passing of events ; 
 Where points his finger — lowers the storm ; 
 Where his eye fixes — feeds the worm, 
 
 On people and on prince; 
 Where treads his step— there Glory lies ; 
 Where breathes his breath— there Beauty dies. 
 
XXVI 
 
 15. 
 
 And to the Beautiful and Young, 
 
 Thy latest cares were given ; 
 How spake thy kind and pitying tongue 
 
 The benison of heaven ! 
 Soothing her pain, who fair and frail, 
 Waned paler yet, and yet more pale, 
 
 Like lily-flowers at even; 
 Smit by the livid Plague, which cast 
 O'er thee his Shadow as he passed. 
 
 16. 
 
 As danger deeper grew and dark, 
 
 Her hopes could Conscience bring g 
 And Faith, and Mind's immortal Spark 
 
 Grew hourly brightening. 
 One pang at parting— 'twas the last— / 
 
 Joy for the Future!— for the Past— 
 
 But Thou wert on the wing 
 To track the source from whence it came, 
 And mingle with thy parent-flame! 
 
 17. 
 
 The nodding hearse— the sable plume— 
 
 Those attributes of pride! 
 The artificial grief and gloom 
 
 Are pageants which but hide 
 Hearts from the weight of Anguish free; 
 But there were many wept for thee 
 
 Who wept for None beside ; 
 And felt— thus left alone below, 
 The full desertedness of woe. 
 
XXV 11 
 
 18. 
 
 And many mourned that thou shouldst lie 
 
 Where Dneiper rolls and raves, 
 Glad from barbaric realms to fly, 
 And blend with Pontic waves ; 
 A desert bleak — a barren shore, 
 Where Mercy never trod before, 
 
 A land whose sons were slaves, 
 Crouching, and fettered to the soil, 
 By feudal chains and thankless toil. 
 
 19. 
 
 But yet, methinks, in future years, 
 
 To raise exalted thought, 
 And soften sternest eyes to tears, 
 
 Will be thy glorious lot. 
 And oft the rugged Muscovite, 
 As Spring prepares the pious rite, 
 
 Shall tread that holy spot, 
 And see her offered roses showered 
 Upon the grave of gentle Howard ! 
 
 Woburn, 
 .huiuury 12, 1818. 
 
 20. 
 
 Those roses on their languid stalk 
 
 Will fade ere fades the day; 
 Winter may wither in his walk, 
 
 The myrtle and the bay 
 Which, mingled with the laurel's stem, 
 Her hands may plant : — but not with them 
 
 Shall Memory pass away, 
 Nor Pity cease the heart to swell : — 
 To thee there can be no Farewell! 
 
M EMOIRS 
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN HOWARD, 
 
 +40* +*+++*++ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 From his birth, to the death of his first wife, 1727 — 1755. 
 
 IT has been a source of frequent and deep regret to the biographer, that 
 the events of the earlier years of men, who in after life have become distin- 
 guished for the splendor of their talents, or the greatness of their actions, have 
 often been involved in doubt and obscurity. It may, however, reasonably be 
 questioned, whether, could the blank which now appears in the page of their 
 history be accurately filled up, the information obtained would not rather 
 tend to gratify our curiosity, than be productive of any practical good. For, 
 after all that has been said, or can be said, on the influence of education, and 
 the force of early habit, in forming the future character of the man — there are 
 springs of human action — there are bursts of energy in the human mind — 
 which set at defiance all the cool, calculating rules that philosophy has devised 
 for estimating the regular gradation of causes, in producing one grand and. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 unlooked-for effect. Hence, it has not unfrequently happened, as in all proba- 
 bility it will happen again and again, that the dull or the idle school-boy, the 
 thoughtless and dissipated young man, and even the listless saunterer of maturer 
 life, when roused to action by some sudden and unexpected impetus, have 
 called forth latent talents to adorn the period in which they lived, and to please, 
 and to instruct, in ages then unborn. And might we not even point to those 
 men of yet superior mould, whose splendid achievements, or whose public 
 virtues, have excited the wonder and the admiration of the world, and ask, 
 whether the most minute and exact detail of every occurrence of their earlier 
 years, would afford us equal instruction or delight, with that which we 
 should derive from a similar history of many of their associates ; the vices, 
 the follies, or the utter uselessness of whose manhood, belied the opening 
 virtues, and blasted the fairest promise of their youth ? 
 
 Such at least, there is every reason to conclude, was the case with one 
 of the brightest characters that ever attracted the admiration, or merited 
 the esteem of his fellow men. For so noiseless and so even was the tenor of 
 his way, until he had reached or even passed the meridian of his days, 
 that of the man, who, by the common consent of the civilized world, is distin- 
 guished by an appellation more honorable than sage ever assumed, or hero 
 ever won, — neither the place, nor the year, — to say nothing of the month or 
 the day of his birth, can now be ascertained with any certainty. 
 
 John Howard, emphatically and deservedly styled The Philanthropist, 
 appears, from the best information that can be obtained upon the subject, to 
 have been born about the year 1727,* at Clapton,)" in the parish of Hackney, 
 a large and well-known village immediately adjoining to London. To this 
 place his father seems to have removed, probably but a short time before, 
 
 * Aikin, p. 9. But see note II. 
 t Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171, 319. Note II. 
 
3 
 
 from a somewhat more distant retreat at Enfield, to which he had retired 
 from the pursuit of his business as an upholsterer and carpet warehouseman, 
 in Long Lane, Smithfield, where he had acquired a considerable fortune* 
 in the way of trade. The house in which he then resided, and where his son 
 was born, is described, in a sketch of that son's life written some years since, 
 as being his own freehold, ** a venerable mansion, situated on the western 
 side of the street, but now much decayed, and lately disfigui'ed .""j* 
 
 Soon after his birth he was sent to Cardington, near Bedford, to be 
 nursed by a cottager residing there upon a small farm, which was all the 
 property his father ever possessed in that village, afterwards so celebrated 
 as the favorite residence of the son ; when, by large purchases, he had con- 
 siderably increased this little patrimonial inheritance, in a county, which 
 from the tradition, now reduced to a matter of certainty by the most 
 unexceptionable evidence, of his having spent some of the earliest, as he un- 
 doubtedly passed some of the happiest years of his life there ; has sometimes, 
 and not very unnaturally, though very erroneously, been supposed to have 
 been the place of his birth. J 
 
 As Mr. Howard's father was a dissenter of calvinistic principles, as it 
 respects church government, there is every reason to believe an Independent, § 
 it was extremely natural that he should entrust the education of his son to 
 a tutor, professing those religious opinions which he himself entertained; and 
 which, of course, he would wish to be instilled into the minds of his children. 
 Yet, for adopting a plan so consistent with the ordinary course of human 
 actions, that we should never expect it to call forth either praise or blame 
 from any one, he has drawn down upon his head no inconsiderable share of 
 
 * Aikin, p. 9. Note I. f Rev S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. See Note II. 
 
 I Note III. § Note IV. 
 
 b2 
 
what the writer of these memoirs cannot but consider, unmerited obloquy. 
 And as the author, whose animadversions have occasioned this observation 
 has thought proper to accompany the expression of his disapprobation of 
 the conduct which an individual parent saw fit to pursue, in the instance 
 before us, by some general remarks, which seem to have a dangerous ten- 
 dency; — the great importance of the point at issue, in the view of every 
 religious parent, will surely be admitted as a sufficient excuse for a digression, 
 having for its object, an examination of the sentiments expressed upon this 
 subject by a writer possessed, beyond all doubt, of no ordinary powers; but 
 the bias of whose mind, upon certain polemical questions, it is not very 
 difficult to trace through all the productions of his prolific pen. 
 
 Speaking of the selection made by Mr. Howard of the person to whom 
 he might most safely commit the care of his son, Dr. Aikin observes,* that 
 *' his choice for this purpose was the source of a lasting misfortune, which, 
 as it has been too frequent an occurrence, deserves particular notice. There 
 was at that time a schoolmaster at some distance from London, who in con- 
 sequence of his moral and religious character, had been intrusted with the 
 education of the children of most of the opulent dissenters in the metropolis, 
 though extremely deficient in the qualifications requisite for such an office. 
 That persons whose own education and habits of life have rendered them very 
 inadequate judges of the talents necessary for an instructor of youth, should 
 easily fall into this error, is not to be wondered at ; but the evil is a real one, 
 though its- cause be excuseable : and as small communities, with strong party 
 attachments, are peculiarly liable to this misplaced confidence, it is right that 
 they should in a particular manner be put on their guard against it. They 
 who know the dissenters will acknowledge, that none appear more sensible 
 of the importance of a good education, or less sparing in their endeavours to 
 procure it for their children; nor, upon the whole, can it be said, that they 
 
 * Life of Howard, p. 9—12. 
 
are unsuccessful in their attempts. Indeed, the very confined system of 
 instruction adopted ia the public schools of this kingdom, renders it no 
 difficult task to vie with them in the attainment of objects of real utility. 
 But if it be made a leading purpose to train up youth in a certain set of 
 opinions, and for this end it be thought essential that the master should be 
 exclusively chosen from among those who are the most closely attached to 
 them, it is obvious that a small community must lie under great comparative 
 disadvantages." 
 
 s> 
 
 " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
 will not depart from it," is a command and an assurance of too high 
 authority for any stretch of human ingenuity successfully to impeach. 
 The christian parent, therefore, to whatever sect or denomination he may 
 belong, could neither find, nor wish to find, a more complete answer to the 
 argument here employed, than that with which he is so readily furnished by 
 this single precept of his divine master. If he believes, — however erroneous, in 
 point of fact, or on the principles of sound reason, that belief may be, — that he 5 
 and the body of christians to which he belongs, have more correct views of the 
 general doctrines of Christianity than others who differ from them; if he 
 considers as essential to salvation, certain peculiar tenets of the gospel, which 
 others may think non-essential, or may treat with levity, or even brand as 
 impious : surely it will be an object of the first moment with him, to choose 
 preceptors for his children, who will train them in the way, in which, 
 as a parent anxious to promote their best interests, and to secure their lasting 
 felicity, he thinks they should go. The man, for instance, who looked upon 
 the divinity of Christ; the doctrines of original sin; human depravity; 
 imputed righteousness ; and salvation by faith upon the Son of God (and 
 such an one there is every reason to suppose the person whose conduct is in 
 question to have been), could never entrust the education of his offspring to 
 a tutor, who was known openly to impugn, or secretly to undermine those 
 
6 
 
 very doctrines, as the fatal errors that had crept in to corrupt the original 
 system — the mud that had choaked up the pure fountain of Christianity ; 
 without evidencing to his fellow professors, and to the world around him, 
 — who, in all their dealings, act by a very different rule — that he was far 
 more anxious to enlarge their knowledge of the things that perish, than to 
 train them up to the anticipation and final enjoyment of those that endure for 
 ever. It may, indeed, and perhaps often does happen, that the tutor just 
 described, is possessed of far higher intellectual attainments, and much more 
 acquired knowledge in himself, and may have a happier method of im- 
 parting these advantages to others, than any who can immediately be met 
 with in the circle of those, whose religious views may be altogether such 
 as it is wished to instil into the mind of the child ; the formation of whose 
 character, the cast of whose opinions and sentiments, may, in a great measure, 
 depend upon which of the individuals here contrasted is selected for this 
 most important office. But reversing, for a moment, the picture that has 
 been drawn, let us ask the conscientious Unitarian, — and many such I know 
 there are, — whether he would choose as the place of education for his 
 children, an academy, over which a master presided, who, though eminent 
 for his learning, and distinguished by his superior mode of instruction, was no 
 less zealous, than learned in " the faith once delivered to the saints," which, 
 according to his interpretation, — erroneous and uncharitable as that interpre- 
 tation may be, — could know but little difference between the man who denied 
 the divinity of Christ, and the man who did not believe the existence of a 
 God. If he would make such a choice, on the ground that the best instructor 
 he could find within the pale of that religious communion, which he believed 
 alone to profess the genuine, unsophisticated doctrines of the gospel, was, in 
 the attainments desirable in a person filling such an office, somewhat behind 
 those whose theological opinions are so grossly erroneous, that they call light 
 darkness, and darkness light, and blindly worship the creature instead of the 
 Creator, who is God over all, blessed for ever: — if he could do this, and still 
 
preserve in the church, and in the world, the character of a man walking 
 consistently with the religious profession he is making, and the faith for which 
 it is his boast that he earnestly Contends, I concede the point to him ; and 
 admit that the censure passed by Dr. Aikin upon the father of Mr. Howard, 
 for having adopted a very opposite line of conduct, is well-founded ; — provided 
 the facts of the case be correctly stated. 
 
 That they are so, we have the express assurance of Dr. Aikin, on the 
 authority of the individual who is represented to have suffered most mate- 
 rially by the choice, in the passage immediately following that which was 
 last quoted. " The event, with respect to Mr. Howard was (as he has 
 assured me, with greater indignation than I have heard him express upon 
 many subjects), that, after a continuance of seven years at this school, he left 
 it not fully taught any one thing." But, surely, this might be strictly true, 
 without the master's having been " extremely deficient in the qualifications 
 requisite for his office ;" for there are few persons who have past through a 
 large school, public or private, but may have occasion to lament in themselves, 
 or must have had many opportunities of observing in others, the effects of a 
 disposition to idleness or levity, or of a want of steady application on the part 
 of the scholar, which have rendered abortive the best and most unremitted 
 efforts of the master to give them a taste for learning, and to forward their 
 advancement in if. All, it must be remembered, cannot depend upon the 
 merits of the teacher, be he ever so able ; — much may depend on the scholar, 
 however inferior the natural ability with which he is endowed. In the case of 
 Mr. Howard, it is not attempted to be insinuated that he was naturally dull, 
 or naturally idle ; for the history of his maturer years would give a complete 
 contradiction to the assertion. But then, it must not be forgotten, that the 
 full energies of his character were suddenly called forth, at comparatively so 
 late a period of his life ; — whilst we know but little of the history of his 
 earlier years, that we are not warranted in concluding, in the absence of all 
 
8 
 
 evidence on the subject, that his talents were so acute, and his ardor in the 
 pursuit of knowledge naturally so strong, that it was impossible for him to 
 leave school other than a good scholar, without his tutor having been either 
 totally incompetent to the work of instruction, or grossly neglectful of the 
 duties it imposed upon him. That the former of these suppositions is 
 incorrect, has been publicly maintained by the anonymous author of an 
 account of Mr. Howard's life, published many years since in the Universal 
 Magazine,* in which it is asserted that Mr. Worsley, for that was the name 
 of our ^philanthropist's first tutor, " was a man of considerable learning, and 
 author of a translation of the New Testament and of a Latin Grammar." 
 " Without inquiring," says Dr. Aikin, in his observations upon the above 
 statement,"!" " how far this may set aside his being deficient as an instructor, 
 I think it proper to say that my only foundation for that charge is Mr. Howard's 
 own authority." And on this authority, the present biographer of Mr. Howard 
 would add, no person of common candour could hesitate to receive as true, 
 a fact of much more importance than that for which it is adduced to vouch. 
 But still, on the other hand, it is but justice to the memory of the dead, to 
 remark, that, as the opinion which a person, when grown up into life, 
 may give of the qualifications of his tutor, must generally be founded upon the 
 impressions made on his mind whilst a school-boy, subjected to his controul, 
 common chai-ity would forbid our condemning, upon such testimony alone, 
 an individual now no longer able to defend himself. 
 
 From this academy he was removed, though it does not appear at what 
 age, to a school of a superior description in London, then under the direction 
 
 * Vol. LXXXVI. p. 170. See also Gentleman's Mag. Vol. LXX. Part I. p. 291, where 
 there is an obituary of " the Rev. Samuel Worsley, pastor of the congregation of Protestant Dissenters at 
 Cheshunt, son of Mr. John Worsley, that good greek scholar (who kept a school at Hertford) translator 
 of the New Testament edited by his son." 
 
 t Life of Howard, p. 10, note. 
 
9 
 
 of Mr. John Eames, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a man of considerable 
 erudition.* Amongst his fellow pupils in this seminary, was the late cele- 
 brated Dr. Price, with whom he contracted a friendship, ending but with his 
 life. To the same source was he also indebted for his first acquaintance 
 with several highly respectable dissenting ministers of different denominations, 
 who, from having been the companions of his scholastic hours, were, in after 
 life, numbered with his most intimate associates, and sincerest friends. 
 
 At what period Mr. Howard finally left school, we have no means of 
 determining. He was, however, in all probability, removed at about the 
 usual age with boys who are intended by their parents to increase the fortune 
 they will have it in their power to give them, by engaging in those commer- 
 cial pursuits, in which that fortune was acquired. And this being the path 
 of life in which his father, as might naturally be expected from his habits, 
 and the success that had attended his own pursuits in trade, seems to have 
 destined the subject of these memoirs to tread, it is not to be supposed that 
 he was over anxious to give him such an education as should render him the 
 accomplished scholar, and the finished gentleman, rather than the ready ac- 
 comptant, and the active tradesman. It is, therefore, a circumstance far from 
 surprising, that he should have left even Mr. Eames's academy, by no means 
 a profound classic, and but an indifferent grammarian, even as it respects the 
 proper construction of his own vernacular tongue. The first, it is more than 
 probable that those to whom the care of his education was entrusted, were 
 never instructed to attempt to make him; and as to the second, we must all 
 of us be well aware, that a critical acquaintance with the rules of English 
 grammar, would, more than half a century ago, have been considered much 
 less essential to the complete education of a gentleman, than classical learning 
 would now be thought necessary to fit the son of a tradesman for the exercise 
 of his father's honest, though most unclassical calling, of making boots and 
 
 * See note V. 
 c 
 
10 
 
 shoes, or gravely descanting on the newest fashions in haberdashery to a 
 group of shopping ladies. Whilst, therefore, we feel no disposition whatever 
 to controvert Dr„ Aikin's assertion, founded upon his own personal knowledge 
 of the fact, that Mr. Howard " was never able to speak or write his native 
 language with grammatical correctness, and that his acquaintance with other 
 languages (the French, perhaps, excepted) was slight and superficial ;" * it 
 will hardly be thought necessary to adopt his biographer's gratuitous assump- 
 tion, that his continuance in Mr. Eames's academy must therefore have been 
 but of short duration. This, unquestionably, might have been, and probably 
 actually was the case ; but the exception which the Doctor himself makes in 
 favor of the French language, qualified as it is by a. perhaps, tends strongly to 
 confirm the suggession just offered, that Mr. Howard never was intended to 
 have more than a good commmercial education, with such a portion of classical 
 learning as is generally acquired in every school, where the classics are 
 partially taught as a branch of liberal education, and not as a preparative for 
 the university, or an acquirement absolutely necessary to the exercise of either 
 of the learned professions. Be this, however, as it may, he left school quite 
 learned enough for the situation in which he appears to have been immediately 
 placed, which was that of an apprentice to Mr. Newnham, grandfather to the 
 late Alderman Newnham, a large wholesale grocer in the city, who received 
 a very considerable premium with him. f But his father dying before his 
 apprenticeship expired,]: his ill state of health, combined with a distaste for 
 a line of life upon which he no doubt entered in compliance with a parent's 
 wishes, rather than to gratify his own inclination, he gladly embraced the 
 
 * Aikin's Life of Howard, p. 13. 
 f Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI, p. 171. Gentleman's Mag. 
 Vol. LX, Part I, p. 277.— Note VI. 
 
 X Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. 
 
n 
 
 opportunity afforded by his coming of age, to make arrangements with his 
 master, for the purchase of the remainder of his time.* By his father's will 
 he was not to come into the possession of his fortune until he reached his 
 twenty-fourth year,f and then he became entitled to the sum of seven 
 thousand pounds, in addition to the whole of his father's landed property, his 
 plate, furniture, pictures, and the moiety of his books, besides being named 
 sole residuary legatee, in the event of his attaining to the age prescribed for 
 the full enjoyment of so ample an inheritance. His sister, who with himself 
 constituted the whole of the testator's family, on reaching the same age, was to 
 receive the sum of eight thousand pounds as her portion of his personal estate, 
 together with the other moiety of his books, and nearly the whole of the 
 jewels and wardrobe of her mother, and her stepmother. 
 
 The executors of this will were Mr. Laurence Channing, the husband of 
 the testator's sister ; Mr. Ive Whitbread, of Cardington, his first cousin ; and 
 Mr. Lewin Cholmley, a Blackwell-hall factor, who was one of his most 
 intimate friends, and also, I believe, some distant relation to his first wife, the 
 mother of the children whose persons and property were committed to the 
 joint guardianship of these gentlemen, until they attained the age of twenty- 
 one. But as the subject of these memoirs, even at an early period of his life, 
 was remarkable for prudence and discretion, a considerable part of the 
 management of the estate to which he was the sole heir, was entrusted to 
 his more immediate oversight, particularly the superintendence of those 
 repairs in the house at Clapton, which the parsimony of its late possessor had 
 rendered necessary. He went there for this purpose every other day ; and a 
 
 * Aikin, p. 15. 
 
 t Will, as registered in tbe Prerogative Office, Doctor's Common*. Dr. Aikin (p. 1 4) erroneously 
 states it to have been till his twenty-fifth year. 
 
 c2 
 
12 
 
 venerable old man, who had been gardener to Mr. Howard the father, for 
 many years, and who continued in that situation until the son let the house,* 
 would, in the year 1790, when he had attained the age of ninety years, take 
 great pleasure in relating, as an instance of his young master's punctuality 
 and goodness of disposition, that he never failed to be at the long buttressed 
 wall, which separated the garden from the road, just as the baker's cart was 
 going past, when he would purchase a loaf, throw it over the wall, and, 
 on entering the garden, goodhumouredly say, " Harry, look among the 
 cabbages, you will find something for your family." " To some readers " says 
 the anonymous author of the life of Mr. Howard, upon whose authority this 
 early proof of his kindness to his inferiors, and consideration for the wants of 
 the industrious poor, is here inserted/)" " this anecdote may appear trifling : 
 others will be pleased with the first traces of youthful benevolence in a 
 character, which, at a more advanced period cf life, became the admiration of 
 the world." It is for the latter description of persons alone, I would add, that 
 these memoirs are written. 
 
 The interest of the money bequeathed to him by his father, was sufficient 
 to enable him, soon after leaving the warehouse of Mr. Newnham, to set out 
 upon his travels to France and Italy, ;£ where he met with objects much more 
 congenial to his taste than the hogsheads and the ledgers which he most 
 cheerfully left behind him in Watling Street. In this tour he either acquired, 
 or strengthened that taste for the fine arts, which induced him, during his 
 earlier travels — for in his later ones he had more noble objects to attend to — 
 not only to embrace with eagerness every opportunity of contemplating with 
 the eye of an ardent, if not of an enthusiastic admirer, the most finished specimens 
 
 » Aikin, p. 15. — Note VII. t Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI, p. 171. 
 
 X Aikqt, p, 15. See NoteVUI. 
 
13 
 
 of the magic skill of their ablest professors, in ancient and in modern times; 
 but, as far as his comparatively limited means would allow, of becoming 
 himself the possessor of some of the productions of their creative genius. It 
 must have been during these travels, that he obtained those paintings of the 
 foreign masters, and other works of art, collected upon the continent, with 
 which he afterwards embellished his favorite seat at Cardington ; for when he 
 had once entered upon the execution of his great scheme of universal bene- 
 volence, it so completely absorbed all the energies of his mind, that he never 
 suffered himself for a moment to be diverted from carrying it into effect, even 
 by the most attractive of those objects which formerly possessed all their most 
 powerful influence upon his curiosity and his taste. 
 
 How long he continued absent from his native country is uncertain, 
 though it was most probably not more than a year or two. Soon after his 
 return, the delicate state of his health induced him to take lodgings at 
 Stoke Newington, where he lived a life of leisure, though not of idleness, 
 spending his time in the manner in which a man of fortune, whose religious 
 principles and natural inclination, alike prevented his plunging into any 
 of the fashionable dissipations of the day, may be supposed to spend it. Some 
 considerable portion of his leisure hours he there devoted to the improvement 
 of his mind, and engaged, amongst other pursuits, in the study of some of the 
 less abstruse branches of natural philosophy, and of the theory of medicine ; 
 of which he acquired sufficient knowledge to be of the most essential service 
 to him in his future travels, upon those errands of mercy, which exposed 
 him, in so peculiar a manner, to the danger of infection from contagious 
 diseases. * From the example of his parents, and the care bestowed upon 
 his own education, he had early imbibed those principles of piety, which 
 
 •Universal Mag. Vol. L.XXXVI, p. 171. 
 
14 
 
 never forsook him during the whole course of his active and most useful life. 
 From principle,, from habit, and from education, he was a dissenter; as it 
 respects church discipline an Independent, — in doctrine a moderate Calvanist. * 
 The congregation with which he first associated himself in church fellowship 
 was that of the Independent denomination, then under the pastoral care of the 
 Rev. Micaiah Townsend, now under that of the Rev. Thomas Mitchell, 
 formerly of Leicester. Of this church he was regularly admitted a member 
 but at what precise period of his life I have not been able to ascertain ; 
 the earlier records of the proceedings of the church still flourishing there, 
 if any such were at that time kept, having been either mislaid or destroyed; 
 and notwithstanding his subsequent residence in distant parts of the country, 
 he seems never to have dissolved the connection. Whilst regularly worship- 
 ping with this congregation, he set on foot a subscription for the purchase 
 of a house for the residence of the minister, to which he himself generously 
 contributed upwards of fifty pounds, f But his liberality was not confined 
 to those to whom he was bound by the tie of christian fellowship, in this 
 religious association. During the period of his life in which he resided 
 at Stoke Newington, he gave away a very considerable portion of his income 
 in deeds of charity to those who appealed to his benevolence, or whom his 
 ever active philanthropy sought out as fit objects of his bounty ; — remembering, 
 as he did, in the distribution of all his alms, " the words of the Lord Jesus, 
 how that he said it is more blessed to give than to receive." 
 
 His medical attendants considering his constitution much inclinable to 
 the consumptive, put him upon a very rigorous dietetic regimen, which is 
 said by one of his biographers, % to have " laid the foundation of that extra- 
 
 * Aikin p. 19. Rev. S. Palmer's Funeral Sermon on the death of Howard, p. 10. 
 t Aikin p. 1 8. R ev. S. Palmers MS. Memoir. Univ. Mag. Vol. LXXX VI, p. 172.— Note IX. 
 
 + Aikin, p. 16'. 
 
15 
 
 ordinary abstemiousness and indifference to the gratifications of the palate 
 which ever after so much distinguished him." He was also, about this time, 
 a frequent visitant at Bristol Hot- wells, and made several excursions to different 
 parts of the kingdom, for the benefit of his health, which was then suffering 
 under the continued depression of a species of nervous fever, and of a general 
 weakness of the whole system. * But notwithstanding these precautions he 
 was attacked with a severe fit of illness, whilst lodging in the house of 
 Mrs. Sarah Loidoire, |" a widow lady of small independent property, residing 
 in Church Street, Newington, to whose apartments he had removed in con- 
 sequence of not meeting with the attention he thought he had a right to 
 expect, from the person beneath whose roof he had taken up his abode, as 
 a lodger, on his first coming to live in this village. J Whilst here, he 
 experienced, on the part of his landlady, so many marks of kind attention 
 during his sickness, that, upon his recovery, he was induced, from a 
 grateful recollection of her kindness, contrasted with the utter want of it 
 in his former residence, to make her an offer of his hand in marriage, 
 though she was twice his age, extremely sickly, and very much his inferior 
 in point of fortune. Against this unexpected proposal the lady made many 
 remonstrances, principally upon the ground of the great disparity in their 
 ages ; but Mr. Howard being firm to his purpose the union took place, 
 it is believed in the year 1752, he being then in about the twenty-fifth 
 year of his age, and his bride in her fifty-second. Upon this occasion, he 
 behaved with a liberality which seems to have been inherent in his nature, 
 by settling the whole of his wife's little independence upon her sister. 
 
 The marriage thus singularly contracted, was productive of mutual 
 satisfaction to the parties who entered into it. Mrs. Howard was a 
 
 * Univers. Mag. Vol. LXXXVI, p. 170. t Note X. 
 
 i Univers. Mag. LXXXVI, p. 171. Gents. MajW'ol. LX, Part I, p. 276.— Note XI. 
 
16 
 
 woman of excellent character ; amiable in her disposition ; sincere in her 
 piety ; endowed with a good mental capacity ; and forward in exercising 
 its powers in every good word and work. Her husband, whilst she lived, 
 uniformly expressed himself happy in the choice he had made; and when, between 
 two and three years after their marriage the connection was dissolved by her 
 death, he was a sincere mourner for the loss he had sustained in her removal. * 
 She was buried in a vault, in the church-yard of St. Mary's, Whitechapel ; 
 where Mr. Howard caused a handsome tomb-stone to be erected to her 
 memory, bearing the following simple, but appropriate inscription : 
 
 Here lies the Body of 
 SARAH HOWARD, 
 
 Wife of John Howard, Esq. 
 
 of Stoke Newington, 
 
 in the County of Middlesex, 
 
 who died the 10th of Nov r . 1755, 
 
 Aged 54, 
 
 Jn hopes of a joyful Resurrection, 
 
 thro' 1 the merits of Jesus Chhist. 
 
 * Aikin, p. 17. Univ. Mag. Vol. LXXXVI, p. 172. Gent's. Mag. Vol. LX, Part I, p. 276. 
 Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. Chalmers' Biog. Diet. Art. " Howard."— Note XI. 
 
 «( 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 From the death of Mr. Howard's first Wife, to that of his second. 1755 — 1765. 
 
 THE character we are now contemplating was, in no respect, an ordi- 
 nary one. There was a singularity in Mr. Howard's mode of thinking and 
 acting, even in the more private concerns and relations of life, that dis- 
 tinguished him from the great mass of every day characters with which 
 the world so plentifully abounds. Of this he gave a very early proof, in 
 forming a matrimonial connection, so repugnant to those feelings which 
 nature herself has implanted in us, as the bond of that endeared connec- 
 tion, which is at once the source and chief solace of our existence ; and 
 yet so free from the mixture of any selfish, or unworthy motive, as that 
 the particulars of which have just been detailed. And yet in this, as in 
 every other circumstance of his life, he was not singular from an affec- 
 tation of singularity, as too many men who have stepped aside from the 
 ordinary course of human actions, unfortunately for themselves, and in some 
 measure for society at large, upon whose weaker members their example 
 has often had a contagious influence, have evidently been. Duty, and duty 
 alone, seems, from the earliest period at which we are acquainted with 
 his history, to have been the sole director of this great and good man's 
 actions in private, as in public life. And having been attended, during 
 his illness, with all the solicitude of a near and affectionate relative, by 
 a woman, upon whom he had no claims beyond those of suffering humanity, 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 which seldom makes its appeal to a female bosom in vain, he seems to 
 have felt himself impelled by this principle, to recompense such unlooked- 
 for kindness, by giving to the person who had displayed it, at once the 
 right, and the opportunity of becoming the constant soother of his days of 
 pain and sorrow ; as well as the sympathizing partner in his hours of joy. 
 From the great disproportion in their ages, it is hardly possible that any 
 of that ardor of passion, so natural to persons at his time of life, could have 
 entered into the offer which he thus made of his hand and his fortune, to a 
 woman, whose chief recommendation to his regard, had been her kindness in 
 voluntarily discharging the duties of a nurse. But, having once persuaded him- 
 self, probably without much difficulty, that it would be right in him to make 
 the offer, — the natural determination of character which directed all his 
 proceedings, would not suffer him to be diverted from his object by any 
 scruples on the part of the lady, addressed entirely to his prudence, without 
 in any measure affecting his principles. The opinion of the world was a 
 thing to which he never paid any attention, in what he did, provided he 
 had the approbation of his conscience, that he was doing his duty. In 
 marrying Mrs. Loidoire, he felt that he was actuated by no improper 
 motive ; but, on the contrary, by a principle of gratitude, that would never 
 permit him to be deficient in those attentions, which, when she had become 
 his wife, she would have a just right to expect at his hands. In those 
 attentions he never was deficient ; and the manner of her discharging 
 her part of the duty, which the relations they had mutually contracted 
 imposed upon them, so far increased Mr. Howard's regard for her, that, 
 soon after her death, he resolved upon leaving England on another tour, 
 with a view to divert his mind from the melancholy reflections which that 
 event had occasioned. But before his departure upon this journey, indeed 
 immediately after his wife's funeral, he broke up his housekeeping esta- 
 blishment at Stoke Newington, and gave another proof of the natural 
 generosity of his disposition, by distributing amongst the poorer housekeepers 
 
19 
 
 of that neighbourhood, such parts of the furniture of his house, as he had 
 no occasion for in the apartments which he took for his temporary resi- 
 dence, in St. Paul's Church-yard. The old gardener, mentioned in the 
 preceding chapter of these Memoirs, gratefully remembered to the day 
 of his death, that, upon this occasion, he had for his dividend, as he was 
 accustomed to call it, a bedstead and bedding complete, a table, half a dozen 
 chairs, and a new scythe ; — besides receiving a guinea for a single day's work, 
 probably in assisting in the removal of the portion of his furniture which 
 his former master reserved for his own necessary use, upon this charitable 
 distribution of the remainder.* 
 
 The country he intended first to visit was Portugal, then rendered par- 
 ticularly interesting by the situation of its capital, still smoking in ruins from 
 the effects of the tremendous earthquake that had recently shaken it to its 
 very foundations ; a great part of which, with the superb edifices erected 
 upon them, and thousands of their unfortunate inhabitants, had been suddenly 
 embowelled in the earth. It was to this sublime, but melancholy spectacle, 
 that Mr. Howard's attention was principally directed ; and he accordingly 
 took his passage in a Lisbon packet, called the Hanover, which had the mis- 
 fortune to be captured on its voyage by a French privateer. His captors used 
 him with great cruelty ; for after having been kept forty hours without food 
 or water, he was carried into Brest, and confined with the other prisoners 
 taken in the packet, in the castle of that place. Here his hardships were but 
 little, if they were at all diminished ; for, after being cast with the crew and 
 the rest of the passengers into a filthy dungeon, and there kept a considerable 
 time longer without nourishment, a joint of mutton was at length thrown 
 into the midst of them, which, for want of the accommodation of so much 
 as a solitary knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces, and gnaw like dogs. 
 Jn this dungeon he and his companions in misfortune experienced very similar 
 
 • Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 172. 
 d2 
 
20 
 
 treatment for nearly a week, having been compelled to lay for six nights upon 
 the floor of their miserable dungeon, with nothing but straw to shelter them 
 from its noxious and unwholesome damps. He was afterwards removed to 
 Morlaix, and thence to Carpaix, where he was two months upon parole ; or 
 rather, more correctly speaking, was permitted to reside in the town, though 
 not an officer, entitled by the law of nations and the usages of war to this 
 indulgence ; owing, we are told, to the humanity of his goaler, and the 
 confidence he reposed in his prisoner's honor. A similar conviction of his 
 integrity is also said to have induced the person in whose house he went to 
 board and lodge, amply to supply him, though an utter stranger, with both 
 clothes and money, of which he had been stripped at Brest; and to maintain 
 him, upon the faith of being paid for so doing, when he got back to his home, 
 or could get remittances from thence, — until he was allowed to visit England, 
 upon his promise to return to his captivity if his own government should 
 refuse to exchange him for a French naval officer. But as he was only a 
 private person, their consenting to do this appeared to be so much a matter 
 of doubt, that he requested his friends to suspend the congratulations upon the 
 recovery of his liberty, with which, upon his arrival amongst them, they were 
 ready to overwhelm him, until the success of his application to the British 
 ministry should satisfy him, that he might remain in his native country with 
 honor, which, with a man of his principles, was precisely the same thing with 
 his remaining there at all. This point being, however, happily accomplished 
 without difficulty, he was no sooner assured of his own liberty, than he exerted 
 all his influence to procure the liberation of some of his fellow-countrymen, 
 who were still imprisoned in the towns where he himself had been confined ; 
 or, at least, to secure a mitigation of those sufferings which he had been 
 convinced by too melancholy proofs, that they experienced there. Whilst 
 at Carpaix, as he himself informs us,* " he corresponded with the English 
 prisoners at Brest, Morlaix, and Dinnan : and had sufficient evidence of their 
 
 * State of Prisons, p. 11. — Note. 
 
21 
 
 being treated with such barbarity, that many hundreds had perished ; and 
 that thirty-six were buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day." His humanity 
 being excited by this affecting statement of the wretched situation of so many 
 of his gallant countrymen, to much of whose cruel treatment he had himself 
 been an eye-witness, and even shared in its horrors, he lost no time in making 
 so strong a representation upon the subject to the Commissioners of Sick and 
 Wounded Seamen, that they not only gave him their thanks for his infor- 
 mation, but took such immediate and effectual measures forgetting the injury 
 redressed, that he had soon the satisfaction of learning, that the prisoners at 
 war confined in the three prisons to which he had more particularly directed 
 their attention, were sent home in the first cartel ships that arrived in England ; 
 being entirely indebted for their deliverance from their accumulated sufferings, 
 to his benevolent and timely interference on their behalf. It is to this event 
 that Mr. Howard himself refers the first excitement of that attention to the 
 distressed situation of those of his fellow-creatures, who were sick and in 
 prison, with no one to visit or relieve them, which afterwards so fully occupied 
 the greater part of sixteen years of his useful, but most laborious life.* It was 
 some time, however, before the impression thus made upon his mind by the 
 barbarity with which he himself had been treated, or by the still greater 
 hardships which he had seen some of his countrymen undergo, coupled with 
 the witnessing of other scenes of a somewhat similar nature, had the effect 
 of inducing him to devote all the most active energies of his being to the 
 devising and carrying into execution his benevolent plans for the relief of 
 persons under similar circumstances of aggravated distress. 
 
 Soon after his return to England from this disastrous journey, he turned 
 his thoughts to the extension and improvement of his Cardington estate ; by 
 adding to the farm which he inherited from his father, another, situated in the 
 middle of the village. Here he seems principally to have resided for some 
 
 • Note I. 
 
22 
 
 years ; * most probably dividing his time between the superintending the alter- 
 ations which he found it necessary to make in his newly purchased property ; — 
 the promoting the comfort of his tenants ; administering to the wants of the 
 neighbouring poor ; and amusing himself, during his leisure hours, by those 
 researches into some of the less abstruse branches of philosophy, for which 
 he appears always to have had a strong predilection. It is not, however, 
 meant by this observation to insinuate, that he was a man of deep scientific 
 knowledge, or that he had very profoundly studied any of its various 
 branches : but he had a great taste for meteorological observations, which 
 he followed up with much assiduity, and was sufficiently interested in the 
 general pursuits of scientific information, to procure his being chosen a fellow 
 of the Royal Society, to which honor he was elected on the 13th, and admitted 
 on the 20th of May, 1756. f It is unquestionably true, that this species of 
 literary diploma is no proof whatever of the person upon whom it is conferred 
 being distinguished by his scientific attainments, or even for his love of 
 philosophical pursuits. The society has long been accustomed to enrol on the 
 list of its members, persons of rank and fortune, without any thing like a 
 scrupulous enquiry into their mental qualifications. Nor, in doing this, can 
 we conceive them at all to blame ; as whilst they add, in the eye of the 
 world, weight and respectability to their own body, they interest in the 
 general pursuits of science, men who have the means of contributing to its 
 advancement and diffusion, not, it is true, by the discoveries they themselves 
 are likely to make, but by the assistance which their wealth and influence 
 enable them to give to the promotion, and application to the most useful pur- 
 poses of life, of the discoveries of others. But with a man of Mr. Howard's 
 retired character, — so little emulous of distinction, that upon all occasions, he 
 rather shrunk from than courted the slightest mark of it ; the very circum- 
 stance of his admittance as a fellow of this learned body, were, in itself 
 sufficient to prove, that he at least felt interested in its pursuits, and associated 
 
 * Note II. 
 t Aikin, p. 21 ; Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 172. 
 
23 
 
 himself with its members, for ihe purpose of promoting, as far as in him lay, 
 the laudable object they had in view, in contributing to the extension of 
 knowledge ; and of adding to his own slender stock of information, by 
 the friendly intercourse to which that association introduced him, with some 
 of the most distinguished literary characters of the day. But that the bare 
 honor of the thing was not what he sought, is still more clearly proved by three 
 of the papers communicated by him to the society, the nature of which will 
 hereafter be more particularly noticed, having been printed in its Transactions. 
 
 But we must now return to the contemplation of Mr. Howard's character 
 in the domestic relations of life. He had not been many years in his native 
 country, after the hardships he had experienced abroad, before he formed 
 a connection which was at once the immediate source of some of the sweetest, 
 and, in its consequences, an occasion of some of the bitterest moments of his 
 existence. I allude to the marriage, which, on the 25th of April, in the year 
 1758, he contracted with Miss Henrietta Leeds, eldest* daughter of Edward 
 Leeds, esq. of Croxton, in Cambridgeshire, one of his Majesty's Serjeants at law, 
 and father to the late Edward Leeds, esq. a master in chancery, and member in 
 parliament for the borough of Ryegate, and of Joseph Leeds, esq. who died 
 some years since at his house at Croydon, where he had long resided, 
 like his elder brother, in what it is to be presumed he considered a state 
 of single blessedness, f This alliance was in every respect a suitable one. 
 The lady possessed, in no ordinary degree, all the softer virtues of her sex ; 
 and as far as we can judge from the miniature formerly in the possession 
 of her husband, and now in that of her female attendant, — from which the 
 engraving, illustrative of this work, was copied, — she was by no means 
 deficient in personal attractions. Her disposition was amiable, and her affec- 
 tion for her husband appears to have been ardent and sincere. She seema 
 
 • See Note III. 
 t Universal Mag. LXXXVI. p. 173; Aikin, p. 24.— Note III. 
 
24 
 
 most cheerfully to have seconded the execution of all his plans of benevolence, 
 and to have considered it no less her pleasure than her duty to conform herself 
 in all things to his wishes. I am indebted to a lady now in the decline of 
 life, but possessing in a remarkable degree all the vivacity and quick sensi- 
 bility of youth, for a few anecdotes of this amiable woman, with whom she 
 had the advantage of a personal acquaintance ; which, as they tend in a strong 
 degree to shew the propriety of Mr. Howard's choice of her as his wife, I 
 am sure the reader will not be displeased to meet with in this place. 
 
 Though educated in a manner suited to her father's fortune and pro- 
 fessional rank in life, she seems not to have imbibed any of that love of 
 dress but too common with females in her situation : or, at least if she did 
 imbibe it, she prudently and willingly relinquished it, upon her union with a 
 man who set a just estimation upon these meretricious ornaments, truly con- 
 sidering, that a beautiful woman never appears so lovely, as when the elegant 
 simplicity of her dress leaves her, " when unadorned — adorned the most." 
 As a proof of this, it appears that soon after her marriage she sold some 
 jewels she had no longer any inclination to wear, and put the money 
 into a purse, called by herself and her husband the charity purse, from its 
 contents being consecrated to the wants of the poor, and the relief of the 
 destitute. To how many a thoughtless daughter of dissipation — to how many 
 a fashionable wife, who is now sparkling in her jewels, in the dress box of a 
 theatre,— swimming down the circling mazes of the dance, or losing all the 
 modesty which was once the peculiar characteristic, and the most resistless 
 charm of her sex, in the wanton fascinations of the waltz, — as she blazes in the 
 splendor — whilst she rivets the eye of the lascivious, and crimsons the cheek 
 of the virtuous, by the voluptuousness of her dress, — might it not be said, in 
 the plain, but forcible language of inspiration, * Go thou and do likewise." 
 
 It must have been no inconsiderable source of happiness to our great 
 
25 
 
 Philanthropist, to meet with a partner thus cordially inclined to co-operate 
 with him in every work of charity and lahor of love, in which his active 
 benevolence prompted him to engage. There are many scenes of distress 
 which a female only can, or ought to visit, and where none but a female hand 
 can administer proper consolation and relief. Nor is it possible to conceive 
 of any thing capable of affording a purer satisfaction to a benevolent mind, 
 than to see the wife of your bosom occupying the time, not necessarily devoted 
 to her own domestic arrangements, in visiting the sick; in feeding the hungry; 
 in clothing the naked ; and, above all, in administering comfort to the poor 
 of her own sex, in an hour of pain and anguish, when they stand most in need 
 of that assistance and nourishment which the poverty of their own circum- 
 stances but too generally prevents their procuring for themselves. This satis- 
 faction was greatly increased, in the instance before us, by the pleasing con- 
 viction of the wife's being actuated in these deeds of mercy, by the same pure 
 motives as those which had long prompted and directed the charitable exer- 
 tions of the husband. Religion had a like influence upon both their minds ; 
 and Mr. Howard had the supreme delight of seeing the wife of his fondest 
 affections, as deeply impressed with the importance of this " one thing 
 needful," as, from the earliest period, his own mind evidently appears to have 
 been. Of this we have a striking illustration in another of her friends cha- 
 racteristic anecdotes. When Mr. Howard was in London, soon after his 
 marriage, he took his wife to a place of public resort, " I believe" says 
 Mrs. C " it was the Pantheon," which people of fashion used to frequent as 
 a promenade. His motive for so doing, was to ascertain what effect such a 
 scene would have upon her mind. As they were walking the gay, and idly 
 busy round, she appeared to be quite lost in thought, wholly unobservant of 
 what was passing around her. Her husband stopped, and turning round to 
 her said, " Now, Harriet" (for though her name was Henrietta, this was the 
 appellation by which he more familiarly addressed her) " I must insist on 
 your telling me what you have been thinking about :" to which she replied, 
 
 E 
 
26 
 
 " Well, if I must tell you, I have been thinking of Mr. • 's sermon last 
 
 Sunday." 
 
 With dispositions thus congenial, we may readily conceive that Mr. 
 Howard and his amiable partner passed the short period they were allowed 
 to spend in each other's society upon earth, in all the felicity that can possibly 
 spring from the endearing relations of a wedded life, when the wishes, the 
 opinions, and the principles of the parties contracting them, thus harmo- 
 niously accord, it might allowably be said, are thus sweetly blended into 
 one. So pure, indeed, was the felicity the disconsolate survivor of this happy 
 union derived from the endeared connection to which it introduced him, 
 that Dr. Aikin assures us,* he has " often heard him declare, that in it 
 he passed the only years of true enjoyment which he had known 
 in life." 
 
 Soon after his marriage, he brought his bride home to Cardington, his 
 house there having been previously furnished in that stile of peculiar neatness, 
 without any attempt at shew or splendor on the one hand, or any thing like 
 an appearance of meanness, or of studied singularity on the other, for which 
 throughout the whole of his personal and domestic economy, he was always so 
 remarkable. With his habitual attention to the interests of the industrious 
 poor, the greater part, if not the whole of the linen required upon this 
 occasion for the use of the table, and for other necessary purposes of 
 housekeeping, was spun by the neighbouring cottagers, under the more 
 immediate direction of Mrs. Howard herself; during the remainder of whose 
 life, and indeed until the period of his own death, whenever he could give 
 the necessary directions for its being done, he kept increasing his stock of 
 these useful articles by this judicious mode of employing such of the poor 
 around him, as were not able to get their livelihood in any other way. 
 
 * Life of Howard, p. 24. 
 
27 
 
 But he had not long been settled in this abode, before the delicate 
 state of his wife's health induced him to try the effects of a milder atmosphere 
 in invigorating her sickly constitution; and he accordingly removed to 
 Watcombe, near Lymington, in the New Forest, Hampshire ; where he pur- 
 chased a house and small estate for the sum of seven thousand pounds, from the 
 representatives of their late possessor, a gentleman of the name of Blake, who 
 had formerly been a captain in the East India Company's service.* 
 
 Of his manner of living there, we have no other account than that given 
 by Dr. Aikin, which is here transcribed in his own words : 
 
 " Concerning his way of life in this pleasant retreat, I find nothing cha- 
 racteristic to relate, except the state of perfect security and harmony in which 
 he managed to live in the midst of a people, against whom his predecessor 
 thought it necessary to employ all the contrivances of engines and guns in 
 order to preserve himself from their hostilities. He had, indeed, none of those 
 propensities which so frequently embroil country gentlemen with their neigh- 
 bours, both small and great. He was no sportsman, no executor of the game 
 laws, and in no respect an encroacher on the rights and advantages of others. 
 In possessing him, the poor could not fail soon to find that they had acquired 
 a protector and benefactor; and I am unwilling to believe that in any part 
 of the world these relations are not returned with gratitude and attachment. 
 After continuing at Watcombe three or four years, he sold the place, and went 
 back to Cardington, which thenceforth became his fixed residence." - )' 
 
 But whilst thus removed for a time to a distance from his tenantry, and 
 the dependants upon his bountyaon his patrimonial estate, — for such, for the 
 
 * Aikin, p. 24 ; Palmer's MS. Memoir ^nivers. Mag. vol. Ixxxvi. p. 173 ; Gent.'s Mag. vol lx. 
 jKiit 1. p. -21)9. 
 
28 
 
 sake of distinction, though not with strict propriety, his property in Bedford- 
 shire may be called ; he did not by any means forget their wants, or fail to do 
 every thing in his power to contribute to their happiness. To his old nurse, 
 in particular, he had always been remarkably attentive, carrying his care of 
 her so far, that he not only gave directions that in his absence she should never 
 be permitted to want for any thing which could administer to her comfort in 
 her old age, but whenever he was at Cardington, he was so mindful of her 
 minutest wants, and so anxious that they should not be forgotten, that he 
 would himself see that coals were regularly taken to her cottage to warm 
 her bed, whenever he thought the coldness of the weather, or the ill state 
 of her health, rendered such a mark of attention necessary. His kindness to 
 her continued to the last; for on her death, during his residence at Wat- 
 combe, he ordered her to be buried at his expence, in the church-yard of her 
 native village. 
 
 The reason for Mr. Howard's return to Cardington, is stated by Mrs. 
 Prole, the servant who attended her in the capacity of her waiting maid, to 
 have been the very delicate state of Mrs. Howard's health, and a persuasion 
 in her mind, that the situation of Watcombe did not agree with her. An 
 additional, though certainly a less powerful motive for this change of ha- 
 bitation, is, however, assigned by a gentleman who enjoyed the happi- 
 ness of Mr. Howard's friendship during his abode in Hampshire, namely, 
 that the proximity of his house to the New Forest, rendered it, on ac- 
 count of the vapour arising there, unfavorable to the pursuit of astro- 
 nomical observations, to which he was at that time much attached.* Here 
 he continued to carry into effect the plans he had laid, and partly completed 
 for the improvement of his estate. In th#house, which was but small, he 
 made some further alterations to render it plmmodious for his future residence j 
 and his taste, with the assistance of Mrf. Howard's, which was highly oul- 
 * Gentleman's Mag. Vol. LX. Airt I. p. 288.— Note IV. 
 
29 
 
 tivated and correct, soon gave to it an air of neatness and elegant simplicity 
 very different to the appearance it had formerly borne. The front he adorned 
 with lattice work, replacing by simple cottage windows the old fashioned 
 casements that had given to the whole building a character as sombre as that 
 of the church-yard into which they looked. To the back of the house he 
 made some additions, by the erection of a new set of rooms, abutting, somewhat 
 beyond the site of those he had pulled down, upon the pleasure grounds, to 
 which he made a handsome entrance from the house, near the end of the new 
 buildings. The grounds themselves were formed entirely under his own 
 direction, out of a field of about three acres, which had formerly been a kind 
 of homestead to the farm. They are laid out with great taste, having a 
 kitchen garden in the centre, so completely hid from observation by the shrubs 
 surrounding it, that you can have no idea of its existence until you arrive at 
 some of those narrow openings, over-arched by spreading boughs, through 
 which you enter it, without the intervention of any gate, or other artificial 
 barrier, to break the charm of so pleasing, and so harmless a deception. 
 Between the shrubbery and the house there is a very neat lawn, and the whole 
 is surrounded by a broad gravel walk, sheltered from the heat of the sun by 
 fine full-grown trees, or thickly-planted evergreens. In one part of the 
 grounds this walk is skirted on each side by a row of very majestic firs, the 
 plants, or seeds of which are said to have been brought by Mr. Howard from 
 abroad, on his return from some of his earlier travels upon the continent. 
 The still silence of this shady grove was his most favorite resort ; and in its 
 mossy path he spent many a solitary hour in devising, and many a social one 
 in communicating to his friends when devised, those glorious schemes of 
 benevolence, which will never cease to impart to every spot his footsteps 
 are known to have traversecLon so merciful an errand, a charm more powerful 
 than, without the magic influence of some such genius of the place, can dwell 
 in nature's loveliest or sublimest scenes. The trees are still standing where 
 thfl^were first planted by his hand, and the gardener who watered the nursling 
 
30 
 
 shoots is yet living, in his eighty-sixth year, to prune, though with a sparing 
 hand, — unwilliag to lop off any thing his master loved to cherish,— the exube- 
 rance of their spreading boughs. One tree, in particular, seems to be an 
 object of his especial care. It was planted, as he delights to tell you, by 
 Mrs. Howard, on the original formation of the walk, and therefore always 
 possessed a peculiar charm in her husband's eyes. Nor has the moss 
 with which Mr. Howard delighted to see the paths of his pleasure grounds 
 and gardens completely overspread, entirely disappeared. The old man, upon 
 a visit I lately paid to them, complained, however, most bitterly, that the 
 children of the present occupier of the house, had sadly spoiled its beauty, 
 and were in a fair way to root it up altogether ; whilst his indulgent master, 
 on the other hand, good-naturedly told me, that his old gardener, thinking 
 it little less than sacrilege to disturb it, would not suffer him, — for from the 
 length and the fidelity of his services to the successive residents at Cardington, 
 he is left to do pretty much as he pleases, in what he considers his own ter- 
 ritories, — to remove any of the dingy edges of the gravel walks, which, at least 
 in their present condition, he himself considers rather an eye-sore, than an agree- 
 able addition. It is now more than half a century since a master whom he lovedj 
 and a fellow-servant with whom he spent some of the happiest hours of his 
 life, labored with this attached domestic, then in the full vigour of his days, 
 during all the inclemency of a severe frost, in laying out those walks, and 
 in planting (chiefly by that master's own hand) the trees around it. Can we 
 be surprised, then, that he should feel a wish to preserve to those walks and 
 trees the general appearance which they wore, ere he or they had arrived at their 
 maturity; or that he should be particularly anxious that nothing in the garden 
 should be changed from the shape and character it bore when the trees were 
 last watered by the hand that planted them ; and the moss-covered walks 
 were rapidly traversed by the footsteps of the extraordinrry man, under 
 whose direction they had been laid out, as he gave orders for their preservation 
 during an absence from their beloved seclusion which the strong presentiment 
 
 
31 
 
 of his own mind assured him, (nor assured him falsely) would be eternal? Nor 
 has any thing been altered there, beyond the change which nature herself 
 has introduced by the ordinary process of vegetation ; except it be in a root 
 house at the end of the pleasure grounds, now not exactly in the state in 
 which Mr. Howard left it. 
 
 This little rural retreat is built entirely in the rustic style, without any 
 of those curious intermixtures of Chinese, Grecian, or Tuscan architecture? 
 which give to many buildings, intended for similar purposes, in our days, a 
 sort of non-descript character often truly ridiculous. The materials of which 
 it is formed are the roots and trunks of trees ; the roof thatch work, without 
 ceiling or pannelling on the inside, to mar the rude simplicity of the exterior. 
 The door and its portico are gothic, with windows of the same description on 
 each side, just admitting light enough into the hermitage within to fit it for 
 the purposes of study and retirement, for which it was intended, without 
 destroying the sombre and recluse appearance of the whole. The furniture 
 exactly corresponded with the room. In the centre are still the remains of a 
 lamp formed out of a root, and originally furnished with glasses, some of 
 which were broken the first time they were used, and have never been 
 replaced. In one corner there is a fire-place hid from observation by a 
 chimney-board, formed, like the rest of the interior of the building, of roots 
 and rough-hewn pieces of green wood. The place of chairs is supplied, partly 
 by some singular masses of peat, of a very curious description, in the precise 
 state in which they were cut out of a moss at Ampthill, a market town in Bed- 
 fordshire, distant from Cardington about seven miles ; — and on another side 
 of the room by benches, fastened into the wall, and covered with coarse 
 matting. Opposite to these is a stone slab, serving the purposes of a table, 
 and ornamented with a female figure in marble, seemingly a nun, in a 
 reclining posture; a model in wood of one of the public buildings which Mr. 
 i^oward had seen in the course of his travels ; and an hour-glass. Over these, 
 
32 
 
 in a recess in the wall, is a small book-case, with glass doors, still enclosing 
 a sufficient number of books to enable us to form a pretty accurate notion 
 of what description of reading our great philanthropist was most attached 
 to, from the little library he had selected for the spot where he was wont to 
 spend his more retired hours in study and meditation. Hervey, Flavel, 
 Baxter, and the divines of that class, seem to have been his favorite 
 authors. But besides a well chosen selection of writers of this cast, these shelves 
 contained the poems of Milton, Thomson, Young, Watts;— Lord Anson's 
 Voyages ; — The Wonders of the Universe Displayed ; and most of the popular, 
 with a few of the more abstruse philosophical treatises of the day; such 
 principally as are calculated to exhibit and to illustrate the wonders of crea- 
 tion and of providence ; and, whilst they inform the enquiring mind in 
 some of the minutest, as well as the grandest of her operations, to teach their 
 pupils, as a lesson habitually to be derived from all her works: — 
 
 " To look through Nature up lo Nature's God." 
 
 Nor does the book, in which, after all, that, and every other valuable 
 lesson is taught, at once in the simplest and the sublimest language, fail to 
 find a place in a retreat so admirably adapted to the serious contemplation 
 of its sacred page. The identical bible which was Mr. Howard's constant 
 companion in all his travels, undertaken for the sole object of carrying into 
 effect those principles of universal charity to the whole brotherhood of man, 
 which the bible, and the bible alone inculcates, still occupies the spot where it 
 was regularly placed, whenever its owner, for a few short days or weeks, 
 had found a resting place from his labors in the calm solitude of the shades 
 he loved. 
 
 With what delight, at proper seasons, he cherished, what anxiety he felt 
 duly to improve that solitude, and the advantages it gave him, may be 
 gathered from an inscription placed opposite to the door by which you enter 
 
33 
 
 the root house, but of which the first stanza alone remains entire. The whole 
 indeed was taken down upon my visit to this place in the course of the last 
 autumn, the better to enable the lady of the present tenant of the estate 
 (the Hon. Mr. Waldegrave) to execute the task she had most obligingly 
 imposed upon herself, of endeavoring to trace the words wanting to com- 
 plete it. The paper was, however, too completely corroded to admit of 
 any sense being given to the disjected fragments that remain, and I should 
 therefore have been reduced to the alternative of omitting the inscription 
 altogether, or of supplying the deficiency by the best conjectures I could 
 offer, were it not that a venerable friend of Mr. and Mrs. Howard's, 
 has kindly supplied me with a copy of the lines from her own recollection ; 
 by a comparison of which with the fragments of the original, the inscription 
 is thus completely restored : 
 
 " O solitude, bless'd state of man below, 
 Friend to our thought, and balm of all our woe ; 
 Far from throng'd cities my abode remove 
 To realms of innocence, and peace, and love ; 
 
 " That when the sable shades of death appear, 
 
 And life's clear light no more these eyes shall chear, 
 It's work may be fulfill'd ; its prospects won, 
 By virtue measured, not a setting sun." 
 
 " The four first lines,"' says Mrs. Coles, in her letter, " are in Brown's 
 Essay on the Universe ; the four last might be taken from another poem 
 or may have been composed by Mr. Howard himself." The tradition of 
 the place, I would add to this account, is that the whole of the inscription was 
 composed, not by Mr. but by Mrs. Howard ; and this probably was the case 
 with the latter part of it ; though even with regard to that, her only merit 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 may consist in its selection from the works of some of our poets, with whose 
 writings I must confess — it may hereafter turn out that I do it to my shame — 
 I am not sufficiently acquainted, to enable me to ascribe these lines to their 
 real author. • . 
 
 t'There is nothing else in the root house worthy of being noticed, unless 
 it be a copy of verses on the death of its original owner by the old gardener's 
 grandson ; and they are far more remarkable for the spirit of attachment to 
 the author's benefactor, breathed through their every line, than for the beauty 
 or harmony of the rustic poetry, in which the expression of that attachment 
 is conveyed. These of course are of modern date. 
 
 At the back of this peaceful hermitage you pass through a narrow door 
 to what was formerly a small, but very convenient bath. Here Mr. Howard, 
 when at home, used to bathe every morning, summer and winter; the root house 
 answering, upon these occasions, the purposes of a dressing room, from which, 
 by merely opening the door, he could immediately plunge into the water. 
 The bath, which was filled by means of an adjoining pump, is now 
 entirely neglected, being turned into a kind of storehouse for seeds and 
 vegetables. 
 
 I feel confident that the readers of these pages will not be displeased at 
 my closing this description of the house and grounds at Cardington, as de- 
 signed and laid out under the direction of Mr. Howard himself, by tran- 
 scribing the inscription on a pedestal erected in the gardens, long since his 
 death, to commemorate that circumstance, when I inform them that that 
 inscription was written by the late Samuel Whitbread, Esq. ;— a man of whom* 
 from the splendor of his talents ; the probity of his intentions ; and the 
 public spirit which so decidedly actuated him in all his undertakings, it may 
 truly be said, that he was as useful in his day and generation to the neigh- 
 
35 
 
 bourhood in which he lived, and to the country whose interest he at least 
 wished in all things to promote, as, — if we can confine our ideas of the services 
 he rendered to mankind to so limited a sphere of their operation, was the 
 great philanthropist to whose unrivalled merit he here bears so honorable a 
 testimony. Nor, on the spot where his public services, abstracted from the 
 doubtful merits of his foreign politics, and the part he took in questions merely 
 of a party nature, could be, and were the best appreciated, was his loss less 
 deeply felt, or less sincerely mourned. " Never," said poor old Joshua 
 Crockford, as we stood by the simple memorial which Mr. Whitbread had 
 erected in the lawn by the side of the house, to record the faithful attachment 
 of an old servant to the best of masters — his voice faultering, and a tear 
 standing in his eye as he spoke, " Never shall I see two such men again !" 
 and he pointed me to the following inscription on the pedestal : 
 
 This Garden was formed, the root-house built, and the trees which overshadow and adorn them, 
 
 were planted in the year 1762, by JOHN HOWARD, the philanthropist, who lived 
 
 for many years in this retirement, before his virtuous energies were called into action ; and he 
 
 quitted it to become the Benefactor of mankind. 
 To this spot he eagerly returned to pass the interval between those labors which ended in his death, 
 
 and have insured to him a guiltless and imperishable fame. 
 Joshua Crockford, whose hand put the seedlings into the earth, under his master's eye, has spent 
 
 the intervening years in watching and assisting their growth ; exhibiting in his narrow circle, a 
 
 model of sobriety, industry, and neatness. 
 He still lives, in his eightieth year, faithful to his duties, and strong to fulfil them ; contented in his 
 
 station ; pleased with his charge, and full of the remembrance of his beloved master. 
 
 August 10, 1812. S. W. 
 
 But it is time that I should turn from a description of the alterations made 
 by Mr. Howard, on his estate at Cardington, on fixing there as his future 
 residence, to the manner of life which he pursued when settled in his new 
 abode. His leisure hours here, as at Watcombe, seem to have been prin- 
 ts 
 
36 
 
 cipally devoted to meteorological pursuits ; for soon after his removal into 
 Bedfordshire, we find him addressing a letter to the Secretary of the Royal 
 Society, on a remarkable degree of cold which he had observed at Cardington, 
 during the severe frost in the winter of 1763. That letter is one of the three 
 papers of his contribution already stated to have been published in the Philo- 
 sophical Transactions; and as it is very short, I transcribe it here, with the 
 double view of showing with what ardor he pursued his favorite enquiries, 
 and of affording a specimen of his original style of writing, long before he had 
 any idea of ever presenting himself to public notice as an author: 
 
 " An account of the degree of Cold observed in Bedfordshire : by John 
 Howard, Esq. F. R. S. in a letter to John Canton, M. A. F. R. S. Read 
 April 12, 1764.* 
 " SIR, 
 
 " I would beg leave to acquaint you of a degree of cold that I observed 
 
 at Cardington, in Bedfordshire, the 22d of November last : just before Sun rise 
 
 Farenheit's scale, by one of Bird's thermometers being so low as ten and £. 
 
 If it will throw any light on the locality of cold, or think it worth the Society's 
 
 observation, would leave to your better judgment, and remain with great 
 
 esteem, 
 
 Sik, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 
 John Howard." 
 
 But a far more considerable portion of his time than was ever consumed 
 in philosophical, or mere sedentary pursuits, was actively employed, with the 
 assistance of his beloved and amiable wife, in forming and executing various 
 schemes of benevolence, for ameliorating the condition of his tenantry, and 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, Vol. LIV. p. 118. 
 
37 
 
 administering to the wants of the poor in his neighbourhood. Of this valuable 
 
 assistance he was, however, too soon deprived ; for his domestic happiness 
 
 received a sudden, but a final shock, by the removal of the beloved object of 
 
 his fondest affections, soon after she had given birth to a son, the first and 
 
 only issue of their marriage.* This afflicting event happened on the 31st of 
 
 March 1765; and though, as a Christian, Mr. Howard bowed with resignation 
 
 to the blow that laid his dearest enjoyments, and hopes of happiness in this 
 
 world in the dust, he felt it in all its poignancy as a man. He loved the 
 
 wife, thus unexpectedly torn from his embrace, with no common affection ; 
 
 and to the latest hour of his existence, he cherished her memory with a mixture 
 
 of fond regret and melancholy pleasure. Her miniature was his constant 
 
 companion in all his travels, at home and abroad, and he never mentioned her 
 
 name, but with sentiments of affection and veneration for her person and 
 
 character, and of the deepest sorrow at her loss. Those who knew him at 
 
 this period of his life, bear testimony, that while she lived, his behaviour to 
 
 her was always marked by the greatest kindness and attention ; nor did he 
 
 shew less respect to the amiable qualities of her heart and mind after her 
 
 decease. He caused a tablet to her memory to be erected in Cardington 
 
 church, where she was buried, bearing an inscription which speaks but the 
 
 genuine feelings of his'heart, at the loss he sustained by her early removal, whilst 
 
 it records, that there ; 
 
 In hope of a resurrection to eternal life, 
 
 Through the mercy of God by Jesus Christ, 
 
 Rests the mortal part of 
 
 HENRIETTA HOWARD, 
 
 Daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq. 
 
 Of Croxton, in Cambridgeshire - , 
 
 Who died the 31st of March 1765, aged 39".. 
 
 She opened her mouth with 
 
 Wisdom, 
 
 And in her tongue was the law of kindness. 
 
 Prov. xxxi. 26.. 
 • Note V.. 
 
38 
 
 A remarkable instance of his fond veneration for every thing with 
 which her idea was associated, has been communicated to the author of these 
 Memoirs, by the venerable lady to whose friendship with Mr. Howard, and 
 her readiness to contribute every thing in her power to the illustration of a 
 character she so highly esteems and venerates, he is indebted for several of 
 the anecdotes inserted in this chapter of his work. Some years after her 
 death, as he was walking with his son in the garden, he pointed out to him 
 a particular fir tree ; and addressing him by the appellation he familiarly used, 
 said, " Jack, I charge you upon my blessing never to remove that tree : it 
 was one your mother planted."* Such little incidents as these speak volumes 
 in refutation of the charge so maliciously and wantonly brought forward to 
 injure the character of the great and good man, whose domestic history they 
 are adduced to illustrate : — that with all his public spirited philanthropy, and 
 the extraordinary proofs he gave of commiseration for the sorrows of the 
 human race, he was lamentably deficient in the private charities of life, and 
 an utter stranger to all those tender endearments which spring from the 
 kindred relations of husband and wife — of parent and child. - }" Never, perhaps, 
 was a man more sincerely attached to a woman whose fortunes he had identified 
 with his own, than Mr. Howard appears to have been to his second, and his 
 favorite wife ; and never, according to the account of those who enjoyed the 
 happiness of her acquaintance, was such attachment fixed upon a more 
 worthy object. To such an extreme, indeed, I might almost say, did he carry 
 his veneration for her, that I have been informed from the most undoubted 
 authority, that he always kept the anniversary of her death as a kind of fast, 
 or time more peculiarly devoted to private meditation and prayer; shutting 
 himself up in his own room, and taking nothing in the course of the day but 
 an apple and a piece of bread, or some such slight refreshment. Nor was he 
 in this altogether singular : Johnson, it will be recollected did the same, or 
 rather observed the day of his wife's death with still more strictness ; and 
 
 * Note VI. t Note VII. 
 
though there is every reason to conclude, that these two extraordinary men 
 were influenced by very different views in the line of conduct which they 
 adopted upon this occasian ; and opposite, in most respects, as were their cha- 
 racters, and mode of action, it will not fail to strike an attentive observer of 
 both, that this is not the only coincidence to be traced in the peculiarities 
 which so strikingly distinguished them from the common race of men. 
 
 One simple tribute to the worth of a woman thus loved in life, and la- 
 mented at her death, has come to my knowledge, which I cannot permit 
 myself to withhold from that of my readers ; because, whilst it bears the 
 strongest testimony in her favor, it evinces the gratitude of an individual in a 
 humble station of life, who was the domestic the nearest to her person, and 
 therefore enjoying the best opportunities of observing, and forming a true 
 estimate of, her character. 
 
 When the lady to whose persevering zeal in collecting information to 
 illustrate the private virtues of that inestimable man, to whom her father had 
 stood in the endearing relationship of pastor and of friend, and whose kind 
 attentions she herself, when a child, had often experienced, I am so deeply 
 indebted, questioned Mrs. Prole as to the character and disposition of her de- 
 ceased lady, she described her, and has since repeated the description to me, as 
 a most amiable woman, of a very sweet temper and disposition ; an excellent 
 mistress to her servants, and very benevolent and kind to the poor: — adding, 
 with great emotion, that she should always remember her with respect and 
 affection. That these were not mere idle words was proved, not only 
 by the manner in which they were uttered, but from the circumstance of 
 her having, but a few days before, been very much hurt at a lady's 
 expressing a wish to purchase the miniature of her mistress, which Mr. 
 Howard had given to her immediately before his departure from England 
 upon his last journey. She suffered this valued relic to be sent out of her 
 
40 
 
 sight for the lady to look at, but the most liberal offers could not tempt her to 
 part with it; and when she named the circumstance to Mrs. Greene, she said, 
 with tears in her eyes, " No, I will never part with any thing, that was my 
 excellent master's and mistress's till I want a piece of bread. My master gave 
 me this picture because he knew I should value it, and I will keep it to the 
 day of my death." It was not without some difficulty, that, through the kind 
 interference of the Rev. Mr. Hillyard of Bedford, she was persuaded to en- 
 trust for awhile, to my keeping, the memorial of her departed benefactor's 
 kindness, upon which she sets so high a value. Nor would she have parted 
 with it (and she wept as she delivered it into my hands), even for so short a 
 time, as the copying it for the engraver has required, but that she understood 
 the work for which it was borrowed, had, for its chief object, the vindication 
 of her beloved master's character from imputations she well knew to be false, 
 and under which she had long grieved to see his memory so unjustly suffer. 
 
 Happy the heads of families who have such domestics ; and happy the 
 servants who have the privilege of living under so good a master, and so kind 
 a mistress. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 From the death of Mr. Howard's second Wife in 1765, to the autumn of the year 1769 ; 
 including a particular account of his treatment of his son during his infancy, and 
 the earlier period of his childhood ; and a view of his religious opinions and 
 associatiojis up to his departure from England, upon his fourth excursion of 
 pleasure upon the continent. 
 
 IN proportion as Mr. Howard was attached to the wife who had so suddenly 
 been removed from him, at the very moment when she had, if possible, 
 gained a yet stronger hold upon his affections, — in that proportion it is most 
 natural to expect, that he would feel all the fondness a heart so kind as his 
 was capable of feeling, centre in the dear pledge of their attachment, whose only 
 parent he was now become, by the afflicting dispensation, which had at once 
 deprived him of the wife of his bosom, and the mother of his infant son. And 
 yet the most — it may indeed be said, the only serious imputation that calumny 
 has dared to fix upon his character, is that of having acted the part of a cruel 
 and unnatural father to this, his only, and his motherless child, the offspring of 
 the woman whom he so affectionately loved, and whose loss he so deeply, 
 and so unceasingly deplored. This charge is, however, so revolting to all the 
 feelings of our nature, so utterly inconsistent with all the ordinary principles 
 of human action, that we could not, without the most unimpeachable evidence, 
 believe it to be true of any individual, even in the lowest and most degraded 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 walks of life. Much less then can we, without such overpowering proofs, be dis- 
 posed to think it possible, that a man, who sacrificed his time, his fortune, his 
 health, and ultimately his life, to the cause of universal benevolence ; who, like 
 the divine master, whose example was ever before his eyes, literally " went 
 about doing good," could be a merciless tyrant over the being to whom he had 
 given existence, and who was doubly endeared to him by the recollections 
 he must constantly have excited in a widowered father's mind, of the mother, 
 who lost her life in giving his. 
 
 The charge, however, inconsistent and unnatural as it is, has not only been 
 made, but, such is the proneness of the human mind to listen to with eagerness, 
 and to believe with readiness, every thing that can tend to bring down the 
 characters of men, whose talents, or whose virtues, have rendered them the 
 ornaments, or the benefactors of their race, to its own ordinary level ; — that 
 it has been widely circulated, and but too generally believed. It therefore 
 becomes a duty above all others incumbent upon the biographer of such a man, 
 to collect all the information he can, for the purpose of showing how little 
 foundation there ever was for such an accusation, or, more correctly speaking, 
 how entirely it originated in malice, in ignorance, or in wilful misrepresentation. 
 For this purpose, recourse has been had to those who were not only intimately 
 acquainted with the general benevolence of Mr. Howard's character, in the 
 more private, as in the public walks of life, but who were eye-witnesses to 
 the manner of his behaviour to his son, from the first hours of his infancy, to 
 the period of that son's unfortunate derangement of his intellects, and his sor- 
 rowing parent's own removal from this world of weariness, and labor, and strife, 
 to a world of eternal rest, and joy, and peace. It is from information of this 
 authentic nature, that the following account is drawn up, in the confident hope 
 that it will remove from every candid mind, even the strongest of those doubts 
 upon the point in question, which may long have lingered, not a cherished 
 guest, but an unwelcome intruder there. 
 
43 
 
 The loss of his wife, with whom he had spent so many happy hours, amidst 
 the calm retirement of the seat which her taste had greatly assisted him in 
 improving, lessened, if it did not dissolve, the charms that bound Mr. Howard 
 to his favorite residence ; and he thenceforward remained at Cardington, rather 
 because it was the sphere of his duty, than, as it hitherto had been, the spot 
 of his choice. Here he principally employed himself, for some time, in super- 
 intending the education of his infant son, the care of whose earlier years the 
 removal of the parent, on whom it would more naturally have fallen, devolved 
 upon him. " This," says Dr. Aikin,* " was an office which almost immediately 
 commenced ; for, according to his ideas, education had place from the very first 
 dawn of the mental faculties." ' 
 
 I shall give, in that author's own language, the explanation he has inserted in 
 his memoirs, of those ideas, and of the manner in which Mr. Howard acted 
 upon them, remarking by anticipation, that that explanation will be found to 
 be confirmed in most of its particulars, by the detail, or illustration of his 
 peculiar mode of management, which his present biographer is enabled to 
 communicate to the public from the various original and authentic sources 
 of information, from which the materials for the present narrative have been 
 derived. 
 
 " Regarding children," says the Doctor,! " as creatures possessed of strong 
 passions and desires, without reason and experience to controul them, he 
 thought that Nature seemed, as it were, to mark them out as the subjects of 
 absolute authority; and that the first and fundamental principle to be inculcated 
 upon them, was implicit and unlimited obedience. This cannot be effected by 
 any process of reasoning, before reason has its commencement ; and therefore 
 must be the result of coercion. Now, as no man ever more effectually com- 
 bined the leniter in modo with the fortiter in re, the coercion he practised was 
 * Page 42. t lb. p. 43—0. 
 
 G 2 
 
44 
 
 calm and gentle, but at the same time steady and resolute. I shall give an 
 instance of it, which I had from himself. His child one day, wanting some- 
 thing which he was not to have, fell into a fit of crying, which the nurse could 
 not pacify. Mr. Howard took him from her, and laid him quietly in his lap, 
 till, fatigued with crying, he became still. This process, a few times repeated, 
 had such an effect, that the child, if crying ever so violently, was rendered quiet 
 the hn?tant his father took him. In a similar manner, without harsh words and 
 threats, still less blows, he gained every other point which he thought necessary 
 to gain, and brought the child to such a habit of obedience, that I have heard 
 him say, he believed his son would have put his finger into the fire if he had 
 commanded him. Certain it is, that many fathers could not, if they approved 
 it, execute a plan of this kind ; but Mr. Howard, in this case, only pursued the 
 general method which he took to effect any thing which a thorough conviction 
 of its propriety induced him to undertake. It is absurd, therefore, to represent 
 him as wanting that milk of human kindness for his only son, with which he 
 abounded for the rest of his fellow-creatures ; for he aimed at what he thought 
 the good of both, by the very same means : and, if he carried the point further 
 with respect to his son, it was only because he was more interested in his 
 welfare. But this course of discipline, whatever he thought of it, could not 
 have been long practised, since the child was early sent to school, and the 
 father lived very little at home afterwards," * 
 
 The age at which young Howard was removed from the immediate in- 
 spection of his father, was that of between four and five years, — one but 
 little, if at all less advanced, than that at which, where a system of public, or 
 academical education is intended to be adopted, children are usually sent from 
 beneath the paternal roof. There would be nothing, therefore, at all remark- 
 able in this circumstance, were it not that the period of the son's removal from 
 the scenes of his infancy, was followed, at no very considerable distance, by 
 
 * Note I. 
 
45 
 
 t 
 
 that of the father's departure, and more continued absence from his home, 
 upon the first of those philanthropic expeditions, which, during the remainder 
 of his life, rendered him, not merely a citizen, but a benefactor of the world ; 
 giving up all that was left, or that might have been secured to him, of the 
 comforts of home, and of domestic life, for the purpose of administering to the 
 wants, and promoting the comforts of those who had no other claim upon his 
 regard, than that they were men, who, but for the exertion of his generous 
 compassion, would have had no earthly friend to pity, or to relieve their 
 distress. This, however, is not the time to enter upon an explanation, and 
 justification, if justification there possibly can be needed, of the motives that 
 induced him to take this step: the present business of his biographer, being 
 rather, to attempt something like a regular detail of the manner in which the son 
 of this extraordinary man was treated by his father, until that father felt him- 
 self called upon, — in the first instance, by a regard to the improvement of 
 his offspring, and afterwards by a sense of the duty which he owed to God 
 and to his fellow-creatures, whatsoever his hand found to do, to do it with 
 his might, to commit the immediate superintendence of his education to 
 others. 
 
 The loss of a fond and affectionate mother, nearly at the very moment of 
 giving birth to her child, is, in most cases, a more serious disadvantage than 
 any which that child could possibly experience. But, in the instance before 
 us, it was irreparable ; and in all human probability, had no small share in 
 producing that scene of domestic infelicity, which imbittered the latter days of 
 its surviving parent. Mrs. Howard, with all the softness, possessed all the 
 prudence necessary to the due discharge of the important duties of a mother ; 
 and to her care had her continued life been granted to his wishes, and to his 
 prayers, there is every reason to believe that her husband would have left the 
 delightful, but the difficult and the delicate task, of giving to the mind of her 
 infant son, its first impressions, and its future bias. It would then, doubtless, have 
 
46 
 
 been her delight, and the object of her most studious attention, to impress upon 
 the mind of that son, sentiments of filial reverence to the commands of a father, 
 the expression of whose every wish, as a husband, she herself was habitually 
 accustomed to meet with the most ready and cheerful compliance. By every 
 means which the deepest interest in the happiness of both the objects of her 
 fondest affection could inspire ; — in every mode which an intimate acquaintance 
 with the peculiarities of their characters and dispositions, and a most watchful 
 observation of their effects could suggest, she would have strove, by the gentle- 
 ness of her own manner, to have prevented an unfavourable impression being 
 made upon the mind of her son, by any apparent harshness in that of his 
 father. Nor would her influence have been exerted in vain, to correct 
 those errors which the rare combination of maternal solicitude and maternal 
 prudence she possessed, would have enabled her to discover in some of her 
 husband's notions upon the education of children, or at least in their practical 
 application to its earlier stages. It is true, indeed, that accustomed as she 
 appears to have been to look to his principles and conduct as the rule and 
 standard of her own ; and knowing, as she did, that in the ordering of his 
 house he was and would be implicitly obeyed, she would not openly, impru- 
 dently, and pertinaciously have opposed her opinions upon the subject to his ; 
 but she would have carried a point, she would not have wished to have carried 
 at all, but where she saw the future happiness of her husband, and her 
 child so nearly concerned in its issue, by exerting that nameless and 
 indescribable influence, which a prudent woman may always maintain 
 over a husband, whose devotion to her is not the child of caprice, but the 
 offspring of genuine affection, cemented by the bonds of mutual esteem, and 
 of long continued kindness. 
 
 Except, however, in as far as the vindication of Mr. Howard's character 
 is concerned, it is vain to reason on what might have been the mode of 
 education pursued with his only child, had not Providence, by a dispensation 
 
41 
 
 most afflicting to him, but over-ruled for the lasting benefit of the world, 
 in its wisdom seen fit to devolve the sole direction of that education upon him, 
 whilst his infant was yet wrapped in his swaddling-clothes. Suffice it to 
 say, that he himself often feelingly lamented the loss of his wife's assistance in 
 forming the early habits, and correcting what was wrong in the temper 
 of his son. He felt and acknowledged, as every sensible man must 
 acknowledge, how much more capable is a prudent and tender mother 
 of managing a young child, than the kindest father possibly can be. There 
 is a somewhat of gentleness, of fondness, of never-slumbering watchfulness, 
 and, as it were, of intuitive foresight in maternal solicitude, which no atten- 
 tion, however anxious on the part of surviving relatives, near as they may be, 
 can ever supply. But whilst he felt this deprivation most keenly, and for his 
 son's sake, as well as for his own, lamented it as bitterly as was consistent with 
 the duty that taught him as a Christian, not to repine at the dispensations of 
 Providence, dark and mysterious as they might appear to be, Mr. Howard 
 endeavored to obtain the best assistance he could in discharging the double 
 obligations which now centered in himself. With this view, he engaged a most 
 pious and excellent woman, still living, to superintend his domestic concerns; 
 and to her he chiefly entrusted the more immediate oversij 
 during his infancy, and the earlier years of his childhood. 
 
 The person whom he thus selected for this important officfe 
 respect worthy the confidence reposed in her, and most faithfully and 
 conscientiously discharged all the duties which that confidence required at 
 her hands. But well qualified as she appears to have been, in as far as kindness 
 of disposition, fidelity to her trust, and piety and consistency of character 
 could qualify her, for the care of a motherless babe, no one can suppose 
 that the father of that babe could be so unnatural, as not to take the 
 deepest interest in its welfare, or to neglect any thing in his power to 
 promote it. But whilst a child continues in the nursery, or, at least, whilst 
 
48 
 
 it is an infant dandled in its nurse's arms, unable to give utterance to its 
 wants, or any thing like a reason for its joy, or its grief, little is it that a 
 father can do to promote the one, or to soothe the other of its infant passions. 
 We have, however, already learnt from the passage transcribed from 
 Dr. Aikin's narrative, that, even at this period, Mr. Howard began to carry 
 into execution the scheme of discipline, from which, as it was founded in the 
 principles he uniformly acted upon, in every circumstance of his life, he saw 
 no reason to exempt his son ; but, on the contrary, anticipated the best possible 
 results from its early adoption, in securing that object, which, of all others, 
 of an earthly nature, he was the most anxious to secure — the happiness of a 
 beloved and only child. 
 
 His mode of quieting his son, when crying, as infants cry they know 
 not wherefore, as related by Dr. Aikin, has also been communicated to his 
 present biographer by some other of Mr. Howard's surviving friends, and 
 particularly by the late Doctor Lettsom, whose sudden removal from the 
 circle of his acquaintance, that biographer will ever have occasion most deeply 
 to deplore. No one could more highly esteem the character of our great Philan- 
 thropist, than did this benevolent man, who having been honored with his 
 friendship, followed through life his bright example in being unwearied in doing 
 good. And though he was far from approving the whole of Mr. Howard's 
 system of education for his son, I think it my duty to state, for the information 
 of those, who, from the character of the person who made, and the success which 
 is said to have attended this experiment, are inclined to repeat it — that, in a 
 lecture upon the education of children, delivered by the Doctor before a 
 society in which I had, for some time, the honor of holding an office 
 under his presidency, he expressed his unequivocal approbation of the 
 mode he thus adopted for subduing the passions, and silencing the cries of 
 infants. 
 
49 
 
 After having had somewhat more than a year's experience of the fidelity with 
 which his housekeeper discharged the duties of the confidential situation in which 
 he had placed her, sufficient to convince him that he might safely leave his infant 
 son under her care, Mr. Howard seems to have found it necessary for the recruiting 
 of his health, so materially injured by the mental affliction he had undergone 
 since the removal of his wife, to pay a short visit to Bath, where he re- 
 mained during a part, at least, of the months of November and December 
 176G. Whilst here, he amused himself with his favorite meteorological 
 pursuits, as appears from an " Extract from a letter from John Howard, 
 esq. F.R.S. to William Watson, M.D. F.R.S. giving some observations on the 
 Heat of the Waters at Bath," received January 30, 1767 ; read before the Royal 
 Society on the 2nd of April following ; and subsequently published in its Trans- 
 actions.* From a passage in the same letter, I am led to conclude that, either 
 on his way to, or from this place, he spent a short time in London, and availed 
 himself of the opportunity which his stay there afforded him, of enjoying the 
 society 'of some of his literary friends, and amongst others, of the gentleman 
 to whom this communication is addressed. In the following spring he resolved 
 upon taking a short tour through Holland, most probably for the purpose of 
 diverting his mind from the melancholy reflections which still associated 
 themselves with his abode at Cardington. The companion of his journey 
 appears to have been Edward Leeds, esq. the brother of his deceased wife ; 
 though a letter, now in my possession, shews that he was anxious to have made 
 an addition to his party, in the person of the late Mr. Gough, of Enfield, well 
 known to the public as the editor of Camden's Britannia, and by his many 
 other topographical and antiquarian labors. His acquaintance with this 
 gentleman is most likely to have originated in the meetings of the Royal 
 Society, which Mr. Howard, after his election as a member of that body, was 
 in the habit of pretty constantly attending, during his occasional visits to 
 London, or else in some of the literary parties which sprung out of them. This, 
 • Philosophical Transactions, Vol. LVII. p. 201, 2.— Note II. 
 
 H 
 
60 
 
 however, is mere matter of conjecture; but the following invitation will at least 
 prove, that he knew Mr. Gough as a man of letters, engaged in antiquarian 
 researches. It is, however, inserted here, more with a view to shew the kind- 
 ness of its author's disposition, in the anxiety he exhibits to be the means of 
 contributing to the gratification of his friend, than for the purpose of proving, 
 that, in the number of his correspondents, at a period of his life when there 
 was nothing either in his character or conduct to attract public attention, were 
 some men who had devoted their lives to literary pursuits, and who had thereby 
 gained for themselves a name and a reputation in the world. 
 
 To Richard Gough, esq. Winchester Streeet. 
 Dear Sir, 
 Having fix't, with my Brother Leeds, the tour thro' Holland, about the 
 week after next, I seem desireous If I could to persuade You to take the journey 
 with us for about a Month, as I am certain you will be highly entertained with 
 the excessive pleasantness of Holland. In the Spring of the year all is a neat 
 beautiful Garden, and not wanting in antiquities to entertain a Gentleman who 
 has a turn that way ; expence of traveling is less there than in England, and 
 dress not more regarded, care of a young Voyager permit me to assure Mrs. 
 Gough, shall not be wanting. I am sure, on the review, it will be a pleasing 
 jaunt to my friend ; as such, I could not go without givingyou a line, being with 
 much Esteem, 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 Cardington, Your M l , Humble Servant, 
 
 near Bedford. Jn°, Howard. 
 
 May 5, 1767. 
 
 To this friendly invitation Mr. Gough returned a polite answer, declining, 
 on account of the engagements then pressing upon his attention, a tour, than 
 which, he assures his correspondent, nothing could be more agreeable to him. 
 It is, therefore most probable that Mr. Howard set off at the appointed time, 
 
51 
 
 with no other companion than his brother-in-law. fat the absence of all 
 evidence to the contrary, we may also safely assume, that ho did not remain 
 abroad much, if any, longer than the period he had fixed upon ; and we have 
 no account of his having left England again, until the latter part of the year 
 1769. The interval he seems to have spent principally at Cardington, where 
 his time was chiefly occupied in the improvement of his estate. 
 
 In this domestic retreat, the engaging prattle of his little son, no doubt 
 afforded him a source of the purest enjoyment, of an earthly nature, that his 
 widowed heart could know. He witnessed, we may be assured, the expansion 
 of his infant powers with all a father's fondness, and not a little of a father's 
 pride. I have the uniform testimony, not of one or two only, but of many of 
 his surviving friends and domestics, now lying before me, to the fact of his 
 having, at this period of his life, shewn the strongest affection it was possible 
 for a father to shew to his interesting charge ; to his having had that character 
 as a parent in the circle of his acquaintance, at the time when it was exhibited, 
 and to his having maintained it amongst them ever after, in spite of the calum* 
 nious reports so industriously spread abroad after his death, but which they 
 always treated, either with silent contempt, or with merited indignation. All 
 these accounts agree in representing Mr. Howard to have been, not only re- 
 markably fond, but if I may use the expression without conveying any improper 
 notion to the minds of my readers, remarkably proud of his dear motherless 
 boy. Of this many instances have been given me, which I should have thought 
 of too trifling a nature to be communicated to the public, but that nothing can 
 be trifling, or unimportant, where the character of such a man is, in any measure, 
 at stake. 
 
 As soon as the child was old enough to sit in the chaise, his father used 
 generally to bring him by his side to Bedford, two or three times a week, to 
 see Mrs. Belsham (mother to the highly respectable minister of the Unitarian 
 
 h2 
 
52 
 
 chapel in Essex-street, and to the historian of the reign of George the Third), 
 and his other friends in that town: and upon these occasions his playthings 
 were always carefully put into the chaise along with him. With these sources 
 of childish amusement he was abundantly supplied, suitably to his years, and 
 to his father's ample fortune. At Cardington he had his carts and wheelbarrows, 
 and tools to dig and delve with in the garden, of a size proportioned to his 
 age, and consequent power to use them without danger of hurting himself; 
 and he was suffered to draw his childish vehicles in and out of the house at his 
 pleasure. He would load and unload his cart with leaves, and draw it back- 
 ward and forward between the garden and the parlour, in which his father was 
 sitting, by the hour together ; and so far was that father from checking him in 
 these amusements, that he was always delighted to see him busily employed 
 in his infantile pursuits, and never sent him from him, but when he was so 
 particularly occupied that he could not suffer his attention to be distracted, or 
 was engaged by company. Upon the latter of these occasions, indeed, when 
 he was enjoying the pleasures of social intercourse with his friends beneath his 
 own hospitable roof, he would often fetch his son from his attendants, or from 
 his play, and, putting him out of his arms at the door of the room, would send 
 him in first, telling him, with all the fondness and honest pride which a parent 
 is wont to feel for a beloved and interesting child, " There, John, my little 
 man, go and shew yourself to the ladies.'' In fact, whilst he was a child, his 
 father never appeared so happy as when he had him by his side ; nor so 
 highly gratified, as when others took notice of him ; which, as he was a very 
 fine boy, and when he went out, or was brought into company, was always 
 dressed with remarkable neatness, was frequently the case. 
 
 Mr. Howard, as might naturally be expected from a person of his decidedly 
 pious turn, was particularly careful that those who were about his son, at a time 
 when his young mind was open to receive any impression that might be made 
 upon it, should be persons of such unexceptionable character, as, that from 
 
53 
 
 being themselves actuated by the pure principles of Christianity, they would 
 instil into him such lessons of religion and morality, as he was capable of 
 receiving, so as to second his own most anxious desire to train him up in the 
 way from which he would never wish him to depart. But he did not, on this 
 account, forbid his associating with children of his own age, of whose educa- 
 tion in these principles, however humbly conducted, he was well assured. 
 With the children of John Prole, who, during the life-time of his second lady, 
 was Mr. Howard's coachman, and afterwards became his bailiff; and who 
 married the waiting-woman, of whom mention has already been made, he was 
 accordingly allowed to associate as his playmates, they having been religiously 
 and carefully brought up. With them, and with other children whom he was 
 permitted to make the companions of his youthful sports, though in the dis- 
 position which he at this time manifested, he was rather inclined to be steady 
 and sedate, he was lively, cheerful, and active ; nor did his innocent mirth ever 
 seem to be checked by the presence of his father.. 
 
 At the age of between three and four years, Mr. Howard always took 
 his son with him to Meeting, and I have the authority of the family who 
 sat in the next seat to him there, for asserting, that upon these occasions they 
 have often noticed the affectionate manner of his behaviour towards him. 
 He used himself to lift him upon the seat, and set him down again when 
 he was tired of standing ; and as soon as ever he could read, looked out the 
 hymns for him which the congregation was singing. Whilst standing up, 
 during the time that the minister was engaged in prayer, he had always 
 his arm round the waist of his child, who would stroke his shoulder 
 with his little hands, play with his buttons, and give other marks of 
 being in the habit of treating his father with the most perfect freedom and 
 familiarity, though, he had been too well taught how to behave in the 
 house of God ever to make a noise, or disturb any one there. Whilst thus 
 training up in his duty towards his heavenly father, and early taught to lift 
 
54 
 
 his infant hands to his Maker in his sanctuary, no wonder that his earthly- 
 parent should often look upon his interesting child, when thus engaged, 
 with a fondness parents only feel. That he often did so, I have the same 
 authority for stating, as that upon which the other parts of this pleasing 
 scene in domestic life have heen given to the public, coupling with it a 
 remark, that he would look much pleased if, at these times, any of the con- 
 gregation were to notice the child's behaviour. 
 
 Surely, surely, this was a very different line of conduct to that which a 
 father capable of treating his only child with severity, or even with morose- 
 ness, would, under such circumstances, have adopted ! Well, therefore, may 
 the lady from whose personal knowledge these particulars are derived, assert, 
 as she most unequivocally does, that the reports of Mr. Howard's harshness to 
 his son were never believed by any of his friends, as indeed it is impossible 
 that they should be by any one at all acquainted with his character and conduct ; 
 and that when, after his death, they were industriously put into general 
 circulation, they took great pains, as far as lay in their power, to expose 
 their falsehood, and to prevent their wider diffusion. How they came to 
 gain ground in spite of their efforts, it will, by and by, be my painful duty 
 to endeavor to explain. Well too may she declare, that she had always 
 defended him whenever she heard the subject mentioned, and should still 
 continue to do so, whenever the opportunity offers. To this she adds, as 
 a fact within her own observation at the time, and yet fresh in her memory, 
 that young Howard, when a lad, always appeared to be as much attached to 
 his father, as his father was to him. 
 
 But in thus earnestly and zealously endeavoring, by the most incon- 
 testible and unexceptionable evidence, to vindicate the memory of Mr. Howard 
 from so serious a charge, as that of being deficient in natural affection for 
 his son, it must not be supposed that I am at all anxious to conceal any 
 
55 
 
 of the peculiarities in his mode of treating that son, during the earlier stages 
 of his education, or to vindicate them from the imputation of being founded 
 in an error in judgment, wherever that imputation will fairly attach itself. 
 It is agreed, on all hands, that he entertained the most exalted notions of 
 the authority of the head of a family; — notions derived rather from the 
 scriptural history of patriarchal times, than from any of our modern codes 
 of ethics, or systems of education. Upon this point I would, however; 
 prefer giving the sentiments of those who speak from their personal know- 
 ledge of him, as far as I have the means, in their own language, to 
 offering any observations originating with myself. 
 
 " The truth is," says Mr. Palmer, in the manuscript memoir of his 
 distinguished friend, to which I have had, and shall have such frequent 
 occasion to refer, " he had a high idea (some of his friends may think too 
 high) of the authority of the head of a family. And he thought it right, 
 because most convenient, to maintain it, for the sake of avoiding the unhappy 
 consequences of domestic disputes. On this principle, I have more than 
 once heard him pleasantly relate the agreement he made with the last 
 Mrs. Howard, previous to their marriage, that to prevent all altercations 
 about those little matters which he had observed to be the chief grounds 
 of uneasiness in families, he should always decide. To this the amiable 
 lady readily consented, and ever adhered. Nor did she ever regret the 
 agreement, which she found to be attended with the happiest effects. Such 
 was the opinion she entertained both of his wisdom and hid goodness, that 
 she perfectly acquiesced in all that he did, and no lady ever appeared happier 
 in the conjugal bonds." 
 
 Learning, then, from this characteristic anecdote, that Mr. Howard, taking 
 the scripture in this, as in every other instance of his life, as the rule of his 
 conduct, in his connection and intercourse with others, required from the wife 
 
56 
 
 whom he tenderly and most affectionately loved, a constant and cheerful obe- 
 dience to the apostolic injunction, — "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own 
 husbands, as unto the Lord ;" we cannot be surprized that one of the first 
 lessons he would strive to impress upon the infant mind of his son, should be 
 that of implicit obedience to the commands of his parent. 
 
 a As to his son," continues Mr. Palmer's narrative, " during his minority 
 he taught him implicit obedience, and inured him to hardiness. But herein 
 he acted upon principle, and intended most effectually to secure his son's real 
 happiness, for whom it would be easy to prove he had a very tender affection, 
 while he avoided that foolish fondness, and excessive indulgence, which he had 
 often known to be as fatal to the true welfare of children, as to the comfort of 
 parents." 
 
 In confirmation of this statement of one who knew Mr. Howard well, I would 
 give the substance of a communication from another of his surviving friends, 
 a most respectable lady, who well remembers young Howard when he was quite a 
 child. In unison with every one who was acquainted with our illustrious philan- 
 thropist, and had an opportunity of observing his conduct as a parent, she states 
 that from what she herself witnessed of his uniform kindness to his son, she 
 never did, or could think, that there was any truth whatever in the reports 
 spread abroad respecting his harshness towards him. She knows that, from 
 what he had seen of other children, he had a great dread of his becoming a 
 spoiled child, and therefore kept him in, proper order and subjection ; but she 
 never knew him to treat him with any thing like severity. Upon the whole, 
 her opinion of Mr. Howard's treatment of his son, is now, on retrospection, 
 what it always was, whilst that treatment was immediately exposed to her 
 view, that " it was firm, but not harsh ; for his general manners" she continues, 
 ■" were so gentle and so kind to every one, that I never could believe him capable 
 of treating his son with unkindness." 
 
51 
 
 Convinced himself, both by reading and experience, that temperance 
 and plainness of food were most congenial to the health of the body, and 
 to the activity of the mind, he bestowed particular attention upon the diet 
 of his child, whose meals were always prepared according to his own direc- 
 tions; though he seems to have pursued no other system in giving them, than 
 that of taking care that his appetite should not be pampered with those *f nice 
 things," with which the stomachs of children are too often cloyed by the mistaken 
 fondness of their parents, or their nurses, until they learn uniformly to reject 
 that plain, wholesome food, which is alone proper for their nutriment, for the 
 sweet, the rich, or the high-seasoned viands, which pall their appetites, and 
 most seriously injure their health. From the same concern for the health and 
 real happiness of his offspring, he never allowed any of those cakes and sweet- 
 meats to be given him, with which persons, who ought to know better, are 
 apt to stuff the children who may visit them, or to whom they feel an attach- 
 ment, they seem not to have any other mode of evincing. 
 
 In all this, he surely did nothing but what every prudent parent must 
 approve, and every fond one — if fondness for a child means, as it certainly 
 does, in its proper and only legitimate sense, an anxious desire to promote its 
 best interests — ought to imitate. With respect to the extent to which he 
 carried his notions of filial obedience, and more especially the mode he adopted 
 in training up his son in the most rigid practice of it, there may perhaps be 
 somewhat more diversity of opinion as to its propriety. 
 
 From the earliest period of his infancy he was taught a lesson, it were much 
 to be wished that every child was as effectually taught, that he never was to 
 have any thing he cried for. From this rule he neither deviated himself, or 
 knowingly suffered those who had the care of his son's education to deviate, 
 upon any pretence whatever. By a similar firmness on all other points, he 
 brought him to that habit of implicit obedience to his commands, which induced 
 
 i 
 
58 
 
 hiin to express the opinion already given, in the words of the person to whom 
 it was delivered, that he would have put his finger into the fire, if he had ordered 
 him to do so. This, however, would have been a proof of docility, which the 
 natural kindness of Mr. Howard's heart, and the love he bore to his son, 
 would never, we may be sure, have allowed him to require at his hands : for 
 there was nothing of harshness in his mode of training up his child to a method 
 of discipline, which derived all its force from the knowledge, in that child's 
 mind, of its father's firmness to his purpose, and not from any fear that his severity 
 might have inspired. When walking with him in the garden, Mr. Howard has, 
 more than once, been known to bid him sit down upon the grass, and remain 
 there until he came back ; which he would instantly do, and sit quite still and 
 contented, until his father called him. This, however, was generally done 
 with a view to keep him out of mischief; and, as he never spoke, upon these 
 occasions, in a harsh, or severe, but rather in a playful tone of voice, the child 
 shewed no reluctance whatever to obey the direction. 
 
 Upon this point, I cannot avoid mentioning an instance of a somewhat 
 similar mode of treatment, whose good effects I lately witnessed with much 
 satisfaction. Whilst conversing, somewhere about a twelvemonth since, with a 
 lady, at whose house I had been dining, and her sister, the child of the former, 
 a fine boy of about two years of age, interrupted our conversation by the noise 
 he made at his play; when his mother, after having desired him, once or twice, 
 to make less noise, with no other effect than that of quieting him for the moment, 
 until the command was forgotten ; instead of beating him, turning him out of 
 the room, or threatening him with any other punishment, — much to my sur- 
 prize and gratification, took him by the arm, without any violence or shew of 
 anger, but that of a serious and determined look, to convince him that she was 
 in earnest, and sat him in one of the chairs in the room ; where he remained 
 perfectly still, and without evincing the least sign of /discontent with his 
 situation, until she took him down again, and told him he might go on with his 
 
59 
 
 play, but that he must make less noise. This he accordingly did, with the 
 most perfect good humour ; and when I expressed my astonishment at the 
 contented manner in which the child had borne his punishment, she told me that 
 he always did so, and that she never found it fail in keeping him quiet, and out 
 of mischief; as if she were to leave the room, even for a considerable space 
 of time, he would not remove from his seat until she came back. 
 
 It is highly probable that Mr. Howard adopted some such general system of 
 punishment, which is certainly infinitely preferable to those in common use ; 
 and really seems to be, not only as unobjectionable, but as worthy of imitation, 
 as any that could possibly be devised. Yet in a circumstance of this nature, 
 has originated a charge which has been pretty widely circulated, — that, by 
 way of punishment, he was in the habit of shutting up his son in the root- 
 house, erected in his garden, and of confining him there all night. I am happy 
 however, in having it in my power completely to vindicate the memory of this 
 great man from an imputation, which, if true, would give some colour to the 
 representations so industriously spread abroad, and but too readily believed, of 
 his having treated his son with a degree of harshness, which, at least towards 
 him, proved, that with all his philanthropy, he was deficient in natural affec- 
 tion, and in those feelings of parental fondness, which seem, as it were, to be 
 intuitive to the heart of man. The circumstance that gave rise to this ground- 
 less report, as communicated to me, not only by several of Mr. Howard's 
 surviving friends, to whom he related it soon after its occurrence, but by some 
 of his domestics, who have a distinct recollection of it, was briefly this. One 
 afternoon, as he was walking with the child in the garden, according to his usual 
 practice, whilst the servants were at dinner, he took him into the root-house, 
 and, after having been engaged in playing with him for some time, he sat him 
 down upon the matted bench, and being called away at the moment by the arrival 
 of a gentleman who wished particularly to see him, told him to stay there until 
 he returned. His mind being occupied with the business upon which he had 
 
 i 2 
 
60 
 
 been brought into the house, he unfortunately forgot the child and the situation 
 in which he had left him ; and it was two or three hours before he again came 
 into his mind, when he hastened to the root-house, and found him sitting very con- 
 tentedly where he had placed him. On finding that the child had been left so long 
 alone, he was very much vexed with himself at his absence of mind, and took 
 him immediately in his arms into the house; telling him, at the same time, in his 
 most affectionate manner, that he had quite forgotten him. And yet, upon this 
 single act of accidental forgetfulness, have those who envy the virtues, or hate 
 the religious principles of this most excellent man, raised the absurd story of his 
 not only habitually confining his son in this solitary place, but of his having 
 shewn himself so inhuman and unnatural a parent, as, upon more occasions than 
 one, to have imprisoned him there all night. But in refutation of this vile 
 calumny, I am enabled, from the testimony of the domestics who still survive 
 him, as well as of the family of the late Rev. Mr. Smith, who made diligent and 
 strict inquiry into the matter, the moment the charge reached his ears, upon its 
 first promulgation after Mr. Howard's death — most distinctly, and unequivocally 
 to state, that young Howard never was shut up in the root-house, either by his 
 father, or by his father's order, for a single moment, much less for a whole 
 night ; — that the circumstance of his even being left there at all, never oc- 
 curred but once, and that then, as has already been shewn, it was a pure 
 accident, — so far from being connected with the idea of punishment, that it 
 happened at a time when Mr. Howard was so perfectly satisfied with the 
 child's conduct, that he was playing with him in the most familiar and cheerful 
 manner.* 
 
 • 
 
 Such is the sandy foundation upon which the most serious charge ever ad- 
 vanced to blacken the character of John Howard the Philanthropist rests ; and I 
 cannot but please myself with the anticipation, that every other spot which the 
 eagle eye of envy or malignity has pleased itself with discovering in the fair 
 
 * Note III. 
 
61 
 
 sun of his unclouded reputation, will be as easily, and as completely effaced. 
 We have already seen, from the account of the mode of education he adopted, 
 as given by Mr. Palmer, that he was most anxious to form the character of his 
 son, the very reverse of that effeminacy, which, even in his days, had begun to 
 spread its unmanly, and unmanning influence, over the sons of our robust and 
 hardy ancestors, whose prowess and whose courage have reflected so much 
 honor upon the name of Briton. And he was the more so, from having wit- 
 nessed the ill effects of this unnatural taste upon some of the more servile and 
 degraded of the continental nations, the hermaphroditical character of whose 
 male population, if I may be allowed the use of so strong an expression, had 
 deeply impressed upon his mind a thankfulness to God that he was born an 
 Englishman, and had not forgotten that he was a man. But in order to 
 effectuate this object he was far from borrowing any lessons from the cold- 
 blooded and unrelenting code of discipline, which froze, in the veins of the fathers 
 and mothers of ancient Sparta, the genial current of natural affection, and 
 destroyed all that was delightful and endearing in the parental character. He 
 used him to no coarse diet ; he did not expose him to any of the inclemencies 
 of the season ; nor did he deny him a single gratification which was not injurious 
 to his health, or had not a direct tendency to destroy in him those habits of 
 virtue, and of the mild charities of Christianity, to the practice of which, from 
 the purest regard to his best interests, he was most anxious, from the earliest 
 period of his childhood, to mould his disposition, and form his character. 
 
 One anecdote has, indeed, been communicated to me, which I do not 
 conceive myself at liberty to suppress, though it may produce upon the minds 
 of the too indulgent parents — especially of the tenderer-nerved mothers of our 
 day — an impression very unfavorable to the method of early discipline of 
 which, as a whole, I feel myself much inclined to approve. — " When I was 
 with some friends upon a visit to Mr. Howard," says the venerable matron 
 to whose kind communications this part of the memoirs of his life are 
 
62 
 
 indebted for so large a portion of whatever interest they may possess, " he 
 took us into the garden, and, as we were walking, he bid the child put off 
 his shoe, which he did, and walked as well as he could upon the ground 
 for a short time, till his father bid him put it on again." To some of my 
 readers this act may appear to breathe a little of the harsh spirit of Lycurgus, 
 and of his stern republican institutions ; — and I am free to confess, that it 
 seems to have formed part of a plan, which, in the language of Dr. Aikin, 
 " many fathers could not, if they approved it, execute." But whilst readily 
 making this concession to the more indulgent systems of our own days, which 
 would explode putting children in the corner from the nursery, and flogging 
 them from our public schools, as marks of the barbarous tyranny of former ages 
 — though by the exercise of that tyranny (if, in deference to their prejudices, 
 the term may thus be misapplied) were trained in the paths of learning, of 
 science, of virtue, and of heroism, some of the brightest characters that ever 
 yet adorned, or, in all human probability, ever will adorn the page of history 
 — I cannot for a moment admit, that it affords the shadow of a proof of any 
 harshness, much less of any unnatural cruelty in Mr. Howard's habitual treat- 
 ment of his son. Considering who were the witnesses of the scene, there can 
 be no doubt but that the chdd was put to this proof of his hardihood, in a spirit 
 the very reverse of this : and knowing, as every observer of their natural 
 character must know, how delighted boys are, even at an early age, to shew 
 what they consider the spirit of a man, it must, I should think, strike the 
 mind of the reader, as it has struck my own, that the child was highly pleased 
 at such an opportunity of displaying that manly disposition, which he was 
 taught to know would gain him the praise and the esteem of others. That 
 there was nothing of harshness or severity exhibited upon this occasion is 
 evident, from the circumstance of the respectable lady who witnessed the 
 transaction she describes, and who is herself a parent, having communicated 
 it, in connection with the account of the child's being shut up in the root- 
 house, as a proof of the command Mr. Howard had obtained over his son, but 
 
63 
 
 without the most distant hint that that command had been obtained by any 
 undue coercion. On the contrary, the passage in her letter which imme- 
 diately precedes the relation of these two circumstances, is so clearly expres- 
 sive of her decided persuasion that this was by no means the case, that I am 
 not aware that I can better close the detail I have been enabled to give of 
 the mode adopted by the distinguished individual who is the subject of these 
 remarks, in the earlier stages of his son's education, whilst yet a child in his 
 father's house, than by transcribing it* 
 
 " As to his want of parental affection, and treating his son harshly, so far 
 as I know," says this most sensible woman, " I think it not only false, but 
 improbable. I believe he had the greatest affection for his amiable lady — 
 he was anxious for a child — when his wish was gratified, the dear mother 
 was soon removed. Putting these circumstances together, can it be supposed 
 that he should act a cruel part to this son ? At the same time, I believe he 
 had a very high idea of parental authority ; and though, I dare say, he 
 thought the principle he acted from was right, he might in some instances 
 err in the application ; at least in the apprehension of those who indulged their 
 children too much." 
 
 Whether the qualification contained in the close of this sentence should 
 not only be taken to express, in pretty direct terms, the impression upon this 
 lady's mind, that none but too indulgent parents would accuse Mr. Howard 
 even of having committed an error in judgement, in the manner in which he 
 trained up his child ; but, coupled with the detail of that manner here given, 
 upon her information and that of persons whose knowledge upon the subject 
 cannot be doubted, should convince us, that none but parents of this descrip- 
 tion can discover any ground for censuring him, is a point that will best be 
 considered hereafter, when his general character, as a father, comes to be 
 reviewed. At present, however, I flatter myself that the reader of these 
 
64 
 
 memoirs will find no difficulty in coming with me to the conclusion, that, if 
 there was anything approaching to unconcern in the happiness, or harshness 
 in his treatment of his son, we must look for it after that son had passed the 
 years of his childhood, which he spent beneath his father's more immediate eye. 
 
 But from the history of that period, it is now time to pass to another 
 view of Mr. Howard's character, which his biographers, where they have 
 not wilfully and most grossly misrepresented it, have hitherto kept in the 
 back-ground, chiefly, I would hope, from the absence of that information upon 
 the subject, the greater part of which is now, from entirely original sources, 
 for the first time, communicated to the public. I allude to his views and 
 conduct as a professor of the religion of Jesus Christ, and their influence upon 
 some of the principal events of his extraordinary life. 
 
 Upon this subject, his friend and principal biographer, Dr. Aikin, ob- 
 serves,* " As Mr. Howard was so eminently a religious character, it may 
 be expected that somewhat more should be said of the peculiar tenets he 
 adopted. But, besides that this was a topic which did not enter into our 
 conversations, I confess, I do not perceive how his general plan of conduct 
 was likely to be influenced by any peculiarity of that kind. The principle 
 of religious duty, which is nearly the same in all systems, and differs rather 
 in strength than in kind in different persons, is surely sufficient to account 
 for all that he did and underwent in promoting the good of mankind, by 
 modes which Providence seemed to place before him." 
 
 Without feeling myself called upon to controvert a position which seems 
 to place the disciples of Christ, of Mahommed, and of Brahma, upon the same 
 level, as to the benevolent actions which the principles of their religion may 
 lead them to perform ; and can therefore know no difference between the 
 
 * Pp. 236, 7. 
 
66 
 
 Christian martyr sacrificing his life, rather than give up an article of the 
 faith once delivered to the saints, and the self-devoted victim of the impure 
 and merciless Jughernaut, as to the principle by which they are actuated — 
 I think it sufficient to say, that the letters and papers of Mr. Howard do 
 most unequivocally prove, that he was influenced in all he did, in every part 
 of his conduct, both in public and in private life, by some of the peculiar 
 tenets he had adopted — though in those tenets the doctrine of predestination, 
 which some of his biographers have asserted to have had so unhappy an 
 influence upon his conduct, holds no very prominent, and certainly far from 
 a dangerous place. But, in making this remark, I wish to be most distinctly 
 understood as giving no opinion whatever upon the question, whether a person 
 who not only did not hold a single one of the tenets peculiar to the Calvinists 
 — the body of Christians to which, as it respects doctrine, Mr. Howard 
 belonged — but who even openly oppugned some of the most essential articles of 
 their faith, might not have devoted himself to the cause of humanity with as 
 much zeal, and precisely in the same manner as he did ; but I must maintain, 
 and the documents I shall hereafter produce will bear me out in the assertion, 
 that the motives that would actuate such a man — whether more natural, or 
 less scriptural is not the question here to be decided — would, in many respects, 
 have differed most essentially from those upon which Howard acted, and 
 by which he himself avers that he was supported through his great and 
 most laborious undertaking. 
 
 It has already been stated, that he was, in doctrine, a moderate Calvinist ; 
 as it respects church discipline, an Independent ; and that, about the time of 
 his first marriage, or it may be somewhat previous to it, he was admitted a 
 member of a church of this persuasion assembling at Newington, under the pas- 
 toral care of the Rev. Meredith Townsend. From that church, I have reason to 
 believe that he never received his dismissal ; and consequently that he continued a 
 member of it until the time of his death ; though after his removal into the country 
 
 K 
 
66 
 
 he had few opportunities of joining in communion with it. Upon whose 
 ministry he attended during his residence in Hampshire, I have no means of 
 ascertaining; but, from his general habit, there is reason to suppose it was 
 that of some dissenting preacher, if any such there were at that time, within a 
 convenient distance from his residence. If there were none, without the pale of 
 the establishment, who preached the gospel of Christ, in what he considered its 
 genuine purity and simplicity, neither at this, nor at any period of his life, was 
 Mr. Howard so bigotted to the opinions and practice of the sect to which he 
 belonged, in points of discipline, — the forms and ceremonies, and little outward 
 peculiarities, which, in but too many instances, have unhappily given to the 
 church of Christ, at least in the eyes of the world, the appearance of a house 
 divided against itself — that he would not enter within that pale, and con- 
 sequently join in the worship of God, in a form of prayer, which, in general, 
 breathes so pure a spirit of fervent piety, of deep humility, and of earnest sup- 
 plication, that his heart could not but join in most of its devout aspirations, 
 however he might, upon principle, deny the right of any human power to 
 prescribe the use of these, or any other set form of words, for his public worship 
 of the Deity. When he could hear the gospel faithfully preached by a dissenting 
 minister, it was natural, and consistent in him, as a dissenter, to prefer attending 
 a chapel, or meeting-house ; — but when that gospel was so proclaimed in the 
 neighbourhood of the place in which he had taken up his temporary, or more 
 permanent abode, only in the church, it was as natural and consistent in him, 
 as a Christian, to be found sitting in one of the pews of a more splendid edifice, 
 consecrated to the worship of God, according to the rites and ceremonies of the 
 church, by law established. The wife to whom he was so affectionately, and so 
 deservedly attached, was a member of the church of England, as indeed it has 
 been said was her predecessor also ;* and during her life, he seems to have made 
 it his regular practice to accompany her, in one part of the day, to the parish, 
 or other church, which she attended :— she, in return, usually, though not so 
 
 * Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 260. 
 
61 
 
 regularly, going with him, during the other part, to the chapel, or meeting-house, 
 which he frequented. This, at least, was their custom at Cardington ; and it 
 is to be presumed, that they only continued there a practice, which they had 
 begun immediately after their marriage ; as, from Mr. Howard's general mode 
 of acting, there can be no doubt but that this was a matter of previous arrange- 
 ment between them, founded on what he considered a duty imposed upon them 
 by the intimate relation they had mutually contracted. 
 
 The minister under whom Mr. Howard first sat as a regular hearer, after 
 his settlement at Cardington, was Mr. Saunderson, pastor of the Independent, 
 or free-communion church, at Bedford, once under the pastoral care of the 
 celebrated John Bunyan. With this church he continued to be an occasional 
 communicant, as long as Mr. Saunderson lived, which was but a very few 
 years, after he himself came to reside in Bedfordshire. Upon the ministry of 
 his successor, the Reverend Joshua Symmonds, he continued to attend until the 
 year 1772, when a division in the church took place, of which more particular 
 mention will hereafter be made ; and he then joined himself to the separatists. 
 At least until this period, and there is every reason to suppose until death dis- 
 solved the bond of union, Mr. Howard still considered himself to be, as upon the 
 principles of the Independent churches, he certainly was, a member of the church 
 at Newington ; and, in this capacity, he applied to Mr. Townsend, as his pastor, 
 to baptize his son, which he accordingly did, at Cardington, in the presence of 
 the servants of the family, and a few of its more intimate friends. 
 
 Perhaps this detail of our great philanthropist's connexion with particular 
 churches or congregations of Christians, may, to many a reader of these pages, 
 appear not only uninteresting, but unnecessary ; but it certainly will not be 
 thought so by those who feel interested in the character of this extraordinary 
 man ; not merely as the " friend of every clime, the patriot of the world," but 
 
 k 2 
 
as a zealous, though humble professor of the religion of Him, " who went about 
 doing good, leaving us an example that we should follow him." 
 
 In that capacity, it will be seen, from his own letters and private reflections, 
 which will constitute a great portion of the following pages, that he performed 
 the duties devolving upon him, as a member of the church of God upon earth, 
 with as much faithfulness, though not with so much eclat, as he trod that path 
 in public life, which placed him on the very pinnacle of fame, when he himself 
 was anxious for nothing so much, as for the obscurity, and retirement of a 
 private station. 
 
 To the inmost recesses of the privacy he loved ; — to his confidential cor- 
 respondence with his friends ; — to the seclusion of the closet ; — and to the 
 more secret meditations of his heart, the next chapter of these memoirs will 
 introduce the reader ; and lay open to his view the sources of those acts of 
 unexampled benevolence, which have gained for him, who made so glorious and 
 so extraordinary a display of them, the mingled applause and wonder of the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Mr. Howard's fourth journey to the continent in the years 1769, 1770; — including 
 various extracts from his journal, and private memoranda, and several of his 
 letters to his friends, during his absence^ 
 
 IT. is extremely natural to suppose that a person left, as Mr. Howard was, a 
 widower, with a motherless boy, whose education he himself was by no means 
 competent to undertake, — and the care of whose childish years he had no near 
 female relative qualified, or if qualified, disposed to superintend, should deter- 
 mine upon placing him, as soon as he was of a sufficient age, at some respectable 
 seminary ; where he would be satisfied that, whilst proper pains were bestowed 
 upon his education, every attention would be paid to his comfort, consistent 
 with that discipline, which it is absolutely necessary to keep up in all such 
 establishments. But he was as yet too young to encounter the bustle of a boy's 
 school, or to make his way through the difficulties and rebuffs he would meet 
 with there, from those more turbulent spirits, who think that the advantage of 
 a few years in age, of stronger nerves, and a more robust constitution, gives 
 them a right to tyrannize and domineer over their younger, weaker, and more 
 gentle companions. After diligent enquiry amongst his friends, he determined, 
 therefore, upon placing his son under the care of a very excellent woman, who 
 kept a boarding-school for young ladies at Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire ;* — those 
 
 * Gent?. Mag. Vcl. LX. P. I. p. 277, 287, 9. 
 
70 
 
 useful preparatory schools, which are now so general, not being then in existence. 
 About Michaelmas, 1769, appears to have been the time at which the child was 
 sent from beneath his paternal roof, to a school, the selection of which, neither 
 he who made it, nor he for whom it was made, ever had occasion to repent. 
 
 As soon as he had completed his arrangements for this commencement of his 
 son's education, Mr. Howard turned his thoughts to another excursion upon the 
 continent, for the purpose of relieving his mind from the perpetual l-ecurrence 
 of that scene of domestic desolation, which his now solitary residence at 
 Cardington would have presented to the recollection of one, who was ever 
 most feelingly alive to the irreparable loss he had sustained. From the following 
 letter to his friend Mr. Gough, whom he again wished to be the companion of 
 his tour, it would appear to have been his intention to visit Italy, and to pass 
 the winter in the romantic neighbourhood of Geneva, in a character, which no 
 one ever more honorably, or more consistently maintained than he did — that of 
 an English gentleman of the old school; without any of the glare, and show, and 
 parade, which are but the tinsel ornaments, engrafted from foreign climes, upon 
 that original sturdy and healthy stock of our own native growth, of which 
 hardly a specimen survives in our more polished — would it be too much to say, 
 at least in this respect — our more degenerate days. What were his views of 
 this character, and of the manner in which a person sustaining it, should unite 
 a proper attention to economy, with the gratification of a taste for visiting all 
 that is sublime in nature, or curious in art, his own letter will, in some measure, 
 explain. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " I have heard you express a desire of seeing Italy, I could not go abroad 
 
 without writing how much Your company would add to my pleasure, as our 
 
 thoughts relative to the gay and expensive Schemes are similar. My Boy 
 
 going from me to School, I intend AV the 21st of Sep", Crossing the 
 
71 
 
 Water for Calais, so to the southern part of France to Geneva, or going in a 
 Leghorn or Naples Ship by sea, as would afford greater variety, and not be so 
 fatigueing or expensive as by Land both ways, the accommodations aboard 
 those Ships being far preferable to any of the Packets. Shall probably be at 
 Geneva about Xmas, where I intend fixing my Winter Quarters. I am 
 sure I sh d be very happy if the Scheme was agreeable to you, as I intend it a 
 frugal one appearing as an English Gentleman without glare or show; the 
 passage, with a genty table always fresh meat or fowls 20 Guineas You 
 will favour me the first Opportunity with a Line. 
 
 " I am 
 " Sir, 
 
 u Your friend and servant, 
 " Cardington, " J. Howard." 
 
 * Augt. 30 1769. 
 
 " Would beg my best Comp t3 to our Friend Mr. Bush and to Mrs. Gough. 
 
 " P. S. one of my serv" will be a Monday at Mr. Tatnall's at Theobals and 
 returns that Evening ; perhaps it might be as convenient to favour me with a 
 line by him. 
 
 " Yrs J. H." 
 " To Richard Gough, Esq'. 
 
 " at Forty Hill, Enfield 
 
 " In Middlesex." 
 
 The servant alluded to in the above postcript, was one who will unfortu- 
 nately make rather a singular figure in some future parts of these memoirs. 
 His name was John Thomasson ; and, according to his own account, he seems 
 to have entered Mr. Howard's service, a lad just seeking out for his first place, 
 about a year, or a year and a half before he had projected this tour, in which 
 
72 
 
 ho was desirous of taking him as his attendant. The boy's father and mother 
 lived at a distance of about four or five miles from Cardington ; his master 
 therefore sent him over with a letter to them, expressive of his wishes upon the 
 subject : but, though he afterwards sent for the , father, to explain to him 
 personally, of what advantage such an opportunity of seeing the world might 
 hereafter prove to his son, the parental affection of these poor, but kind- 
 hearted people, prevented their listening to his representations, or to the 
 earnest entreaties of the lad himself, to be allowed to accompany him. Indeed 
 so strong was his wish to embrace this opportunity of seeing the strange things 
 which were to be met with, as he had heard, in foreign lands, that, when he 
 went to London, upon the eve of his master's departure for France, he begged 
 of him, in the most urgent manner, to take him with him, without the consent 
 of his parents, which, as we may well suppose, Mr. Howard refused to do ; 
 though, even at this period, he seems to have taken a great liking to the lad, — 
 who afterwards became his attendant upon most of his philanthropic tours, and 
 who was the only Englishman with him at the moment of his death, in a far 
 distant country. The chief ground of this partiality, if indeed there can be any 
 thing particular in it, when we consider that he was in the constant habit of 
 treating all his servants as his humble friends, leather than as menial dependents, 
 was the fondness he had shewn for his little son, whose infant steps he was 
 entrusted to watch 5 being hired more particularly for that purpose, as soon as 
 the child was old enough to go alone, and to amuse itself in the garden, and in 
 different parts of the house, where it was still necessary to have some one 
 present to keep a constant eye upon its movements, lest it should come to any 
 harm itself, or do mischief to the things by which it was surrounded, but of 
 whose use or value, it could know nothing. It is not, therefore, by any means 
 surprizing that the master and servant should, under these circumstances, part 
 with mutual regret ; though there can be little doubt upon whose side the disap- 
 pointment was the more severely felt, when that servant, in the rude journal 
 which he kept of some of the most important circumstances of his life, in 
 
73 
 
 ill- formed characters, and worse-spelt words, says with great simplicity, " and 
 so we parted, and a very sorrowful parting it was." 
 
 It was by no means Mr. Howard's wish, however, that the refusal of this 
 lad's parents to permit him to go abroad, should dissolve a connection 
 between them, in which both master and servant seem to have discharged 
 their respective duties, so much to the satisfaction of each other. He there- 
 fore wished him to return to Cardington, and employ himself in the garden, 
 or in any other way in which he could make himself useful, until he could 
 resume his personal attendance upon himself, on his return from the con- 
 tinent, which he expected would be in about fourteen or fifteen months. But 
 the lad was young, and, it would seem, naturally of an active, and somewhat 
 indeed of a roving disposition ; therefore, to use his own expressions, though 
 not in his own orthography, " to spend his time with an old woman [the 
 housekeeper], and to work in the garden, did not suit him much ; so he deter- 
 mined to get another place." This determination he succeeded in carrying 
 into effect ; for, going with the coachman to take two of his master's coach- 
 horses to Mr. Bush of Enfield, to whom he had sold them, that gentle- 
 man promised to look out for a place for him ; and, in a fortnight's time, 
 found him a very comfortable one, in which he continued for some months, until 
 a severe attack of fever compelled him to go to his father's ; where, as his 
 new master was not able to wait his recovery, he continued until Mr. Howard's 
 return ; when, in consequence of a letter from Paris, he joyfully went to 
 London, to attend him upon his arrival there. 
 
 I mention the seemingly immaterial circumstance of this man's short 
 absence from that service, which alone can rescue his name from an oblivion, 
 in which it would, in some respects, be desirable that it should for ever 
 moulder, for the purpose of introducing, as immediately connected with the 
 
T4 
 
 the subject, though somewhat out of its regular order, an anecdote related in 
 his journal, which, however unimportant in itself, is valuable, as it shews the 
 constant attention to propriety which Mr. Howard himself observed, and 
 taught others connected with him to observe, even in the most trifling things — 
 especially where they were in any measure connected with a grateful sense of past 
 kindness. When, in answer to his enquiries of how he had fared during his absence, 
 this servant told him how kindly his last master had behaved to him, he asked 
 whether, since his return to town, he had called upon him to thank him ; and, 
 on being told that he had sent him a letter of acknowledgment, he desired him to 
 call the first opportunity, as a proper and more respectful mark of his gratitude. 
 
 Before Mr. Howard quitted England upon this tour, he in a great measure 
 broke up his housekeeping establishment ; but he took care to provide for all 
 his old and faithful domestics. John Prole, who came into his service as coach- 
 man, upon his marriage with the second Mrs. Howard, when he laid down his 
 carriage at, or soon after her death, became a kind of bailiff, or steward, for the 
 management of his estate, which, in his master's absence, was committed to his 
 more immediate superintendence. During his first irregular journies on the 
 continent, this man and his wife continued to live in the house at Cardington ; 
 but when his absence from home became more continued, they resided in a 
 small cottage near to it. Prole continued in his service for more than thirty 
 years; and his wife, as has already been stated in a former part of these 
 memoirs, is still living, and has contributed much valuable information for 
 the compilation of this biographical account of a master, to whom both she 
 and her husband felt themselves to be bound, during his life-time, by the 
 strongest ties of gratitude and esteem, and the memory of whose virtues 
 and offices of kindness, when death had deprived them of their benefactor 
 and best earthly friend, they cherished with a veneration all but bordering 
 on idolatry. 
 
15 
 
 The seeond invitation given by Mr. Howard to Mr. Gough to become his 
 eonipagnon du voyage, seems, for what reason I am not informed, to have been 
 as unsuccessful as his first ; and he therefore left London upon his tour to 
 Italy, for any thing I have been able to discover to the contrary, alone. 
 On being thus entirely left to his own choice, he adopted the former of the two 
 plans he had proposed to his friend ; and, instead of going direct to Naples or 
 Leghorn by sea, he crossed over to Calais, and proceeded on through the south 
 of France to Geneva, where he spent a few weeks before he went into Italy. 
 
 It appears to have been at Milan, that he made the first of those reflections 
 upon the scenes he visited, with which I have been most kindly favored by 
 the liberality of the friend and relative, in whose possession the rough journals 
 or memorandum books, in which they are entered, remain. Upon the tran- 
 scription of those reflections, I now enter with no small pleasure ; inasmuch as, 
 by their means, my readers will be admitted to the most intimate acquaintance 
 with the secrets of that man's heart, whom they may hitherto have contem- 
 plated as the benefactor of mankind — the greatest, it may be, of mortal mould 
 and mortal birth, that ever arose among the sons of men, to bless his fellow- 
 creatures, by administering to their wants and relieving their distress ; but 
 whose extraordinary and untrodden path to that fame, which pursued him 
 but with the more eager step, the more anxiously he avoided its most distant 
 approach, might leave upon the minds of some, at least a lingering doubt of 
 the purity of his motives ; of the reality of his seeming humility, and more than 
 indifference to public applause ; and, above all, of the compatibility of that phi- 
 lanthropy which encircled in its wide embrace the whole brotherhood of man, 
 seemingly without any distinction but that which the degree of their suffering and 
 misery could impart, — with the ties of kindred, the duties of friendship, and all the 
 milder charities of domestic life. Here, however, they will learn, from the ha- 
 bitual feelings and the occasional overflowings of his own heart, traced in lines 
 and expressions which he thought no other eye than his would ever glance upon, 
 
 l2 
 
that this philanthropist of the world — this unrivalled henefactor of the human 
 race, became such from no other motive than that of a full conviction that it 
 was his duty to tread, though as he always felt he did, and must continue to 
 do, at an humble, an imperfect, and unworthy distance, in the steps of his 
 Divine Master ; who, through a life of suffering and of privation, but yet of 
 constant and never-ceasing exertion, went about doing good, and at length 
 sacrificed his life for a guilty, an obdurate, and a miserable race, leaving us an 
 example, that we should follow in his path. And if such, and such only, was 
 at once the pure and the exalted motive of his conduct ; such the example of 
 benevolence and of meekness which he always had before his eyes, who can 
 possibly doubt the genuineness of his humility, or suppose, for a moment, that 
 he professed to shrink from the honors which his grateful country, and the 
 distant regions of the globe he had traversed upon so generous, so disinterested 
 an errand of mercy, were anxious to heap upon him, only that he might the 
 more confidently secure, whilst he seemed so studiously to avoid, the praise of 
 men, rather than that of God? If any should still entertain a doubt upon this 
 point, let them read the genuine breathings of this genuine Christian's heart ; 
 let them mark the constant sense of his own unworthiness which pervades all 
 the secret meditations of his soul ; and the invariable ascription of all the 
 praise that might be bestowed upon any action which he should be the agent 
 in performing to God, the fountain of all good, and to the influence upon his 
 mind of that system of grace and of good-will to man, in which every deed of 
 pure and genuine love and mercy must originate and be carried on — and surely 
 that doubt must vanish. Nor can it, I should think, after this exposition of 
 his character and motives, be supposed, that so devoted a Christian, so kind, 
 so good, and so benevolent a man, as he unquestionably was, could be deficient 
 in any of the offices of kindness which he owed to his own house, to the child 
 of his prayers, or to the faithful friends, who shared in his sorrows, and 
 rejoiced with him in his hours of joy. If this can still be thought possible, 
 he must be proof against the strongest and most unobjectionable testimony 
 
77 
 
 that could be adduced in support of any proposition, and must doubt whether it is 
 light whilst the sun is shining in his face, in the full splendor of its meridian 
 beams ; or dark, when, at the dead of night, not a star is glimmering in the 
 heavens, when the moon gives no light, but the whole hemisphere is one 
 sheet of clouds, impenetrable from their density and gloom, — who will not 
 give up the opinion he has formed to Mr. Howard's prejudice, however long 
 it may have been cherished, or by whatever doubts, suspicions, or rumours it 
 may have been fed, to the clear proofs of its falsity which will be found in 
 the ensuing pages. 
 
 The first extract from the private memoranda in my possession, is dated 
 November 26th, 1 769, and would seem to have been written either at Milan or 
 Turin. It is literally as follows; having preserved in this, as in the other 
 extracts, which will be given in their proper order, for reasons hereafter to be 
 explained, the orthography of the copy in my hands, which has, I am persuaded, 
 been carefully transcribed from the original. 
 
 " 1769, Nov. 26th. Having bought an Italian Almanack I counted the 
 Holydays in Italy and they amount to 80 which with Titular Saints 3 more 
 make 83 of which 52 are Sabbath days so remains 31. Oh ! how is pure Reli- 
 gion debased in these Countries who despice and hate all others who differ from 
 them, preventing on many days providing for a Family by work either in Town 
 or Country and allowing every species of wickedness at little Cabarets on 
 Sabbath days — how different from the primitive sacred Sabbath ! When men 
 leave the holy word and set up own Inventions, God often leaves them — then 
 how low do they fall ! — Blessed be God who has called us Protestants out of 
 Darkness into his marvelous light — make me more sencible ! more thankful oh 
 my God ! How much Reason have I to bless God for the Reformation : how is 
 religion debased into Show and Ceremony here in Italy — what Curtseys 
 bowings and ceremonies to the sound of Music have I seen at Turin, how is a 
 
78 
 
 sacred Sabbath called a Feast Day not for holy but unholy things— Operas — 
 Ballad singing Concerts 138 Lights at the Altar for a feast of St. Anthony — 
 what dressing and undressing of the Arch Bishop what Parade before the 
 Cardinal at Milan ! My soul enter thou not into their Secret — 20 Saints days 
 near together at Christmas — poor Creatures prevented getting their daily bread, 
 thousands idling and miserable in the Streets — " 
 
 Here we may at once trace the serious turn of the writer's mind ; his real 
 attachment to pure and undefiled religion ; and the strong impressions which 
 he had even at this time imbibed of the great and primary importance of train- 
 ing up the people in habits of industry, not only to secure their own happiness, 
 but to promote the prosperity of the state. Hence does he mingle with his detesta- 
 tion, as a Protestant, of the worse than unmeaning forms, and ceremonies, and 
 pomps, and solemn mockeries of the Church of Rome, his reprobation, as a man 
 and a member of society, of the miserable system of setting apart a particular 
 day for every priest, or nun, or Jesuit, whom the Pope may chuse to canonize as a 
 saint, or beatify as a martyr, as a high and holy day, ostensibly for the worship 
 of God, and the glorification of his saints in heaven, and the encouragement of 
 those of them who are yet upon earth, waiting their departure in the faith ; 
 whilst, in reality, they are days consecrated with more than ordinary devotion 
 to the vain and frivolous amusements, but too generally the parents of the vices 
 and the sorrows of life ; — thus confirming, in effect, the higher and the middle 
 orders of society in habits of dissipation, of thoughtlessness, and extravagance ; 
 whilst by their example the poor are led to plunge into the same vortex of folly, 
 and of vice. Thus early too, in the course of his extensive journeyings in 
 foreign lands, did our great Philanthropist direct all his observations upon 
 men and manners to that general usefulness, to the promotion of which he 
 subsequently devoted himself with such astonishing ardor and perseverance, 
 as thereby to have immortalized his name, as long as such deeds of mercy 
 shall continue to attract the esteem and admiration of mankind, whose lot, 
 
79 
 
 while sojourners in this vale of tears, would, but for their exertion, be cheerless 
 and miserable indeed. 
 
 When Mr. Howard left England, it was, we may recollect, with a design of 
 spending the winter either at Geneva, or in the south of Italy; but that plan he 
 abandoned, upon his arrival at Turin, for reasons which cannot better be 
 explained than by the following extract from his own journal. 
 
 " Turin 1769 Nov r 30 My return without seeing the Southern part of Italy 
 was on much deliberation as I feared a misimprovement of a Talent spent for 
 mere Curiosity at the loss of many Sabbaths, and as many donations must be 
 suspended 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 death Bed 
 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 determines 
 me to check my curiosity and be on the return. — Oh! why should Vanity and 
 Folly Pictures and Baubles or even the stupendious mountains beautiful Hills or 
 rich Vallies 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 sanctified by Faith in the Blood of the divine 
 Redeemer ! look forward Oh! my Soul ! how low, how mean, how little is every 
 thing but what has a view to that glorious World of Light Life and Love — the 
 Preparation of the Heart is of God — Prepare the Heart Oh ! God ! of thy 
 unworthy Creature and unto Thee be all the glory thro the boundless ages of 
 Eternity. 
 
 Sign'd " 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 
 
80 
 
 Sorrow fled away — God my Redeemer all in all — Oh ! happy Spirits that are 
 safe in those Mansions." 
 
 Throughout this extract from his private reflections, and most secret medi- 
 tations ; this faithful and invaluable record of every disposition of his mind, and 
 every emotion of his heart, we cannot fail to trace that habitual sacrifice of his 
 pleasures "to his duties, of his own comfort and gratification, to the comfort and 
 gratification of others, which afterwards became the chief impetus in forming, 
 and the ruling principle of his life in carrying into execution, that boundless 
 plan of benevolence for the relief of the most destitute, and the most abandoned 
 of his fellow-creatures ; which has deservedly procured for this extraordinary 
 man, so distinguished a place in the list of the benefactors of mankind. As a 
 Christian, we here behold him most cheerfully sacrificing the delight which the 
 contemplation of all that is most sublime in nature, and most curious in art, 
 must have afforded to a taste so cultivated, and a heart so formed for the 
 enjoyment of the beauty and grandeur of the creation, as were his, because it 
 could not be purchased but by the loss of many of the religious privileges to 
 which he had been accustomed ; and especially of that he most of all delighted 
 in, the going up with his family and Christian friends, to worship God in his 
 sanctuary, according to the dictates of his conscience, no man daring to say 
 him nay. As a father, we find him checking his curiosity to examine the 
 choicest monuments of the ancient, and the noblest specimens of the modern 
 grandeur of the arts, on the very spot where that curiosity could have been 
 the most readily, and the most completely gratified, because every step he took 
 in pursuit of this very allowable source of rational enjoyment, would have 
 removed him still further from his child, and have delayed the happiness 
 he promised himself, when he should again behold his face in peace. Yet this 
 is the man upon whom the envenomed tongue of slander has dared to fix the 
 charge of being a cruel and unnatural parent !— As a man too, entrusted with 
 riches, but as the steward of his Heavenly Father's bounty, he is hastening 
 
81 
 
 home, lest, while lingering to admire the splendid cities — the luxuriant plains of 
 Italy, and the romantic, yet majestic scenery of Switzerland, some poor cottager 
 upon his estate at Cardington, or some distressed family in its neighbourhood, 
 should want any of those comforts which his bountiful hand was ever ready 
 most liberally to supply. 
 
 Whilst he continued in Italy, his generous heart was deeply grieved at 
 witnessing the luxury, the profligacy, and the gross superstition of the inha- 
 bitants of one of the loveliest regions of the earth ; where the edifices erected 
 by human ingenuity, seem, as it were, to be proudly vying with those stupendous 
 proofs of the power of the Creator of the Universe, by which they are every where 
 surrounded ; whilst fruits of the sweetest taste, and flowers of the loveliest hue, are 
 springing spontaneously from the earth, to add to the gay luxuriance of so rich 
 a scene. He left them, therefore, we may well suppose, without much regret ; 
 and, recrossing the Alps, returned to Geneva, on his way to France. Here he 
 seems to have met with some persons whose characters and religious principles 
 he greatly admired ; yet had he occasion to notice and to deplore the influence 
 of the corrupt manners of the neighbouring French, and of the opinions of 
 their infidel philosophers ; to both of which he had an antipathy alike insur- 
 mountable — in destroying the ancient purity, simplicity, and, as he considered 
 it, the genuine faith of this celebrated city. 
 
 He spent about ten days in Paris, which he characterizes as " the dirty 
 city;" an epithet, to which every one who recollects it in the year 1770, will, 
 no doubt, readily admit the justice of its claims ; whilst those who have spent a 
 portion even of the last summer there, will not, I should imagine, be of opinion 
 that those claims are entirely abrogated by the improvements it has since under- 
 gone. Whilst there, his right to the respect due to the character of an English 
 gentleman, seems to have been so well established, that we find him dining 
 with a party of his countrymen at the table of Lord Harcourt, at that time our 
 
 M 
 
82 
 
 ambassador at the court of Versailles, to whom, he most probably had letters of 
 introduction. 
 
 From Paris he proceeded to Holland, at all times a favorite country with 
 him, chiefly from its resemblance, in many points, to his own ; and from the 
 respect shown by its government to religious liberty, and the rights of con- 
 science. It was on his way thither, that he wrote the only letter by which I 
 have been enabled to trace his route, in carrying into execution the plan for 
 returning home, which he had formed at Turin. It is addressed to the 
 Reverend Joshua Syraonds, minister of the congregation at Bedford, with 
 which, when at Cardington, he was then in the regular habit of wor- 
 shipping ; and as it contains many striking remarks, illustrative of the 
 serious turn of mind, and of the habitual piety of its author, I here transcribe 
 it from the Evangelical Magazine, for January, 1816 ;* for which it was copied 
 from the original, by a gentleman of Shrewsbury, to whose kindness I am 
 indebted for the communication of some unpublished letters from Mr. Howard 
 to the same respectable minister. 
 
 " Abbeville, Jan y 4th, 1770. 
 " Dear Sir, 
 " Having an opportunity, by an Italian gentleman with whom I have 
 travelled, I thought a few lines would not be unacceptable. After I landed in 
 France, my first object was Geneva, where I spent some time before I went 
 into Italy. The luxury and wickedness of the inhabitants would ever give a 
 thinking mind pain, amidst the richest country, abounding with the noblest 
 productions of human power and skill. I was seven days re-crossing the 
 Alps. The weather was very cold: the thermometer 11 degrees below the 
 freezing point. The quick descent by sledges on the snow, and other parti- 
 culars, may perhaps afford a little entertainment some winter's evening. — I 
 
 » Vol. XXIV. p. 10, 11. 
 
83 
 
 returned to Geneva. There are some exemplary persons : yet the principles 
 of one of the vilest men (Voltaire) with the corruptions of the French, who 
 are within one mile of the city, has greatly debased its ancient purity and 
 splendor. I spent about ten days at the dirty city of Paris. The streets 
 are so narrow, and no footpaths, that there is no stirring out but in a coach ; 
 and as to their hackney-coaches, they are abominable. There were but few 
 English at Paris. I dined with about twenty at our ambassador's (Lord Har- 
 court). I am now on my route to Holland, a favourite country of mine ; the 
 only one, except our own, where propriety and elegance are mixed. Above 
 all, I esteem it for religious liberty. 
 
 " Thus, dear Sir, I am travelling from one country to another ; and I trust, 
 with some good hope, through abundant grace, to a yet better. My know- 
 ledge of human nature should be enlarged by seeing more of the tempers, 
 tastes, and dispositions of different people ; — but shudder, my soul, at the glimpse 
 of a thought of its dignity and excellence — for ' how is the gold become dross !' 
 
 " I bless God I am well. I have a calm and easy flow of spirits. I am 
 preserved and supported through not a little fatigue. My thoughts are often 
 with you on the Sabbath-day. I always loved my Cardington and Bedford 
 friends ; but I think distance makes me love them more. But I must conclude 
 with my affectionate remembrance of them ; and my ardent wish, desire, and 
 prayer for your success in promoting the honour of God, and the love of our 
 divine Redeemer. 
 
 " I am truly, 
 
 " Your affectionate friend, &c. 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 In lieu of imbibing that spirit of pride and self-conceit, which is but too 
 
 m 2 
 
84 
 
 often the only acquisition of our modern tourists, whilst thus strengthening 
 in his own mind, by all that he saw in the course of his travels, an habitual 
 spirit of humility, and a corresponding sense of the imperfection which attaches 
 itself to our nature, under all circumstances, and in all climes ; and still feeling, 
 as he passed from country to country, a higher veneration for his own, and an 
 attachment, increased by distance, for the friends whom he had left behind him 
 there ; this excellent man proceeded on to the Hague, where we find him enter- 
 ing the following Sabbath-evening reflection in his memorandum book. 
 
 " Hague 1770 Sunday Even g 11th Feb y . I would record the goodness of 
 God to the unworthiest of his Creatures — for some days past an habitual serious 
 frame relenting for my Sin and folly applying to the Blood of Jesus Christ, 
 solemnly surrending myself and Babe to Him beging the conduct of his holy 
 Spirit. — I hope a more tender Conscience by a greater fear of offending God — 
 a Temper more abstracted from this World more resigned to death or Life 
 
 thirsting for union and Communion with God as my Lord and my God 
 
 Oh ! the wonders of redeeming Love ! Some faint Hope even I ! through 
 redeeming Mercy in the perfect righteousness — the full attoning Sacrafice shall 
 ere long be made the Monument of the rich free Grace and mercy of God thro' 
 the divine Redeemer — Oh ! shout my Soul Grace Grace free sovereign rich 
 and unbounded Grace ! not I, not I, an ill deserving Hell deserving Creature ! — 
 but where Sin has abounded I trust Grace superabounds — some hope what Joy 
 in that Hope that nothing shall seperate my Soul from the Love of God 
 in Christ Jesus — and my Soul as such a frame is thy delight pray frequently 
 and fervently to the Father of Spirits to bless his Word and your retired 
 moments to your serious Conduct in Life. 
 
 ' f Let not my Soul the Interests of a moment engross thy thoughts or be 
 preferred to my Eternal Interests — Look forward to that Glory which will be 
 
85 
 
 revealed to those who are faithful to death— my Soul walk Thou with God be 
 
 faithful hold on hold out— and then — what words can utter. 
 
 " J. H." 
 
 To some of my readers, this may appear to be the language of enthusiasm ; 
 Ihe wild ravings of a fanatic. But others will recognize in it the ardent 
 breathings of a spirit longing to be set free from the struggles it must perpetually 
 maintain with sin and imperfection, whilst imprisoned in this lower world ; — 
 and panting to be delivered from every folly, every vice, and every temptation 
 to do evil that can assail it here ; and so to enter on its rest. All too, will 
 surely admit, from the whole tenor of his life, that Howard was no enthusiast ; 
 but that every thing he did was the result of mature and deliberate reflection, 
 and of a firm conviction that it was his duty so to do. Few men were less the 
 victims of their feelings, at the expense of their judgment, than he was : nor 
 could any one possibly be less open to a suspicion of writing a single sentence, 
 or uttering a single word, which was not the genuine sentiment of his heart, 
 and the honest, and sincere conviction of his mind. Every thing, therefore, 
 that he here expresses, we must take it for granted that he really and actually 
 felt, and thought, at the moment that he committed these sentiments to paper : 
 And if, like St. Paul, he should by some be thought to be beside himself, we 
 shall have abundant reason to see that there was a method in his madness ; 
 whether good, or bad, every reader will determine for himself, according 
 to the views of religion which he entertains, and to the effect they may 
 have had upon his mind, his actions, and his heart. But, in doing this, we 
 must not separate his faith from his practice — his feelings as a Christian, from 
 the actions to which those feelings prompted him, as a man. If he prayed for 
 a serious conduct in life, let us not forget that it was a most useful, a most 
 benevolent, and a most active one. If he entertained the lowest possible 
 opinion of his own merits and conduct in the sight of God, let us recollect that 
 he recognized, and professed to act upon a principle, sufficiently powerful in its 
 operation to render him the agent in performing more essential, and more 
 
disinterested services, of a temporal nature, to his fellow-creatures, than 
 any man ever did before, or since his time. His religious principles too, 
 be they right, or be they wrong, were not selfish ones ; for whilst looking 
 forward to the happiness that awaited him beyond the grave, through faith 
 in his Redeemer's sacrifice, his most earnest prayer to God was, that he 
 might be made useful in his day and generation, so as to be enabled to 
 give up the account of his stewardship with joy, at the great day of final 
 reti'ibution ; whilst the same breath which committed his own future way to 
 the merciful guidance of a superior providence, commended to the same 
 sacred influence and protection the babe that had been entrusted to his pa- 
 rental care. 
 
 The plan which Mr. Howard had formed at Turin, for returning home 
 earlier than, when he left England, he had originally intended, he afterwards 
 abandoned, principally it would seem from the weakness of his constitution 
 and the lowness of his spirits, not allowing of his continuance, for a long 
 period, in ally one place ; and therefore, from circumstances already suf- 
 ficiently explained, least of all permitting his return, in such a state, to his 
 own residence, with which so many melancholy recollections were necessarily 
 associated. He therefore determined upon revisiting Italy, in the hope that 
 a change of scene and of climate might be of advantage in restoring his health 
 and recruiting his spirits; though there can be no doubt, but that, during his 
 continuance in France and Holland, he availed himself of the greater facility 
 of communication with his friends in England, to prevent, as much as possible, 
 the evils which he apprehended might result from his protracted absence, and 
 greater distance from his home. 
 
 A short account of the route he pursued on leaving Holland, is contained 
 in the extracts from his journal, now in my possession, which I shall insert, in 
 such portions as appear to be most convenient for the introduction of some 
 other reflections made by the way. Their commencement is as follows : 
 
87 
 
 " I would acknowledge it is thro' the goodness of God alone that I enjoy 
 so many travelling Mercies, such comfortable degrees of health and strength 
 with such an easy calm flow of spirits. 
 
 " When I left Holland the beginning of March I went to Paris and tra- 
 velled thro' Champaine and Burgundy to Lions on the 1st of April, the best 
 view of which City is from a Monastery on a Hill to the S° West of the 
 Town." 
 
 In this city he appears to have remained for a few days ; for, in his 
 journal, we meet with the following reflections, or memoranda of the state of 
 his feelings, and the motives which seemed to justify, in his mind, the journey 
 he was entering upon, made at this place. They are characterized by the 
 same strain of fervent piety, of devotedness to the service of God, and of humble 
 dependence upon him for every gift that he stood in need of, spiritual or tem- 
 poral, as those last inserted in these memoirs. 
 
 " 1770 Lyons, April 4th. Repeated instances of the unwearied Mercy 
 and goodness of God preserved hitherto in health and safety ! Blessed be 
 the name of the Lord ! endeavor Oh my soul ! to cultivate and maintain 
 a thankful serious humble and resigned Frame and Temper of mind. May it 
 be thy chief desire that the Honour of God the spread of the Redeemer's name 
 and Gospel may be promoted — Oh ! consider the everlasting worth of spiritual 
 and divine Enjoyments — then thou wilt see the Vanity and nothingness of 
 worldly pleasures. Remember Oh my soul Saint Paul who was determined to 
 know nothing in comparison of Jesus Christ and him crucified — A tenderness 
 of Conscience I would ever cultivate — no step would I take without aknow- 
 ledging God — I hope my present Journey, tho' again into Italy is no way 
 wrong rejoycing if in any respect I could bring the least improvement that 
 might be of use to my own Country — but oh my soul! stand in awe and sin 
 
88 
 
 not daily fervently pray for restraining Grace remember if thou desirest the 
 death of the righteous and thy latter end like his thy Life must be so also — In 
 a little while thy Course will be run thy Sands finished — a parting farewell with 
 my ever dear Boy, and then, Oh my Soul be weighed in the Balance — wanting 
 wanting ! but oh ! the glorious Hope of an interest in the blood and righteous- 
 ness of my Redeemer and my God ! — In the most solemn manner I commit 
 my Spirit into thy Hand oh Lord God of my Salvation ! — 
 
 " My Hope in time ! my Trust thro' the boundless ages of Eternity ! — 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 Here we may again mark the workings of that ardent desire for general use- 
 fulness, which, at all times, seems to have been the chief end of this great and 
 good man's thoughts, and words, and deeds, as they respected this present 
 world ; and which, in the latter years of his extraordinary life, prompted him 
 to exertions for the attainment of this grand object of his existence, that seemed 
 to rouse to action, and completely to occupy all the energies of his mind, and 
 to which he himself ultimately fell an honorable, but a lamented victim. Yet 
 was his good will to men always subservient to the glory of God, which he 
 was ever most anxious, in all that he did, uniformly to promote. Another 
 proof too is here afforded of the strength of his attachment to his motherless 
 child ; for we find him unwilling, or rather, if such should be his heavenly 
 Father's will, desirous not to depart this world of sin and sorrow, which he 
 yet well knew would to him be far better, until he had been permitted to take 
 another, and a last farewell of his own dear boy. And what stronger, or more 
 convincing proof, I must be permitted to ask, could any parent give of 
 a father's tenderness, than this single expression, were there no other upon 
 record, so abundantly supplies. Surely, when the circumstances under which, 
 and the character of the individual by whom this wish was uttered and put 
 
89 
 
 upon record, and the train of feelings of which it forms a part are taken into 
 consideration, together with the utter impossibility of its having been com- 
 mitted to paper with any expectation that it would ever meet another eye 
 than the author's own, no one will hereafter venture to assert, that the man 
 who could thus wish, as it were, to delay his own flight to heaven, his entrance 
 into the realms of eternal bliss, that he might have but one parting embrace 
 of his child, did not love that child with all the fondness that a father's heart 
 can feel. 
 
 Quitting Lyons, " I then," says Mr. Howard's short narrative of his route, 
 " descended the Soane to Avegnion, the great beauty of which are its walks 
 — from thence I went to Aix — thence to Marseilles whose course is elegant and 
 its Harbour commodious — the Road to Toulon is remontick and pleasant — I saw 
 many of our flowering shrubs in the Hedges and in most Gardens Oranges 
 and Lemons — from Touloun I travelled to Antibes — from thence i sailed in 
 
 a Felluca to Nice and Monanco 1 then travelled over the Mountains to 
 
 Genoa the stateliness of which City is not exceeded by any I have seen — from 
 Genoa I went to Pisa remarkable for its elegant Church the Gates of which 
 were brought from Jerusalem — from thence I went to Leghorn & Florence 
 from Florence the Road is pleasant tho' depopulated thro' Sciena to Rome 
 where there are many Monuments to humble the pride of Man and shew how 
 Luxury and Wickedness will sink a Nation" — 
 
 From this city, no less celebrated in the page of modern history as the 
 centre and fountain of superstition, than it was in ancient times as the seat of 
 empire and the capital of the world, our traveller sent a farther account of his 
 tour, in a letter to his friend and correspondent, the Rev. Joshua Symonds ; 
 which is here extracted from the Evangelical Magazine for February, 1816.* 
 
 * Vol. XXIV. pp. 51, 2. 
 
 i N 
 
90 
 
 " Rome, May 22nd, 1770. 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " With great pleasure I received your obliging letter as I passed through 
 Flanders. The esteem yourself and some of my friends have for me, humbles 
 me to think what I ought to be. But, how mean and defective ! yet, amidst 
 all, a sincere love I hope I have to all who bear the impress of our divine 
 Master. 
 
 " Since I left Holland, and through all the southern part of France, and 
 over the Appenine mountains into Italy, I travelled not a mile with any of 
 our countrymen. Those mountains are three or four days in passing: for 
 many, many miles, there is hardly a three foot road, with precipices into the 
 sea, I should guess, three times the height of St. Paul's ; but the mules are so 
 sure-footed there is nothing to fear, though the road is also very bad. Through 
 the mercy and goodness of God I travel pleasantly on. I have an easy calm 
 flow of spirits. A little tea equipage I carry with me, with which I regale, 
 and little regard if I have nothing else. 
 
 " Florence being the seat of the arts, I visited the famous gallery many 
 days, from whence I travelled to this renowned city. The amazing ruins of 
 temples, palaces, aqueducts, &c. gives one some faint idea of its ancient 
 grandeur ; but comparatively now a desert — The description of them, as also of 
 St. Peter's Church and the Vatican, I must defer till I have the pleasure of 
 seeing you. The Pope passed very close by me yesterday ; he waved his hand 
 to bless me. I bowed ; but not kneeling, some of the cardinals were displeased. 
 But I never can nor will to any human creature or invention, as I should 
 tremble at the thought of the adoration I have seen to him and the wa- 
 fer. My temper is too open for this country, yet an important piece of 
 news of this court (expuls-n of the J-s-ites) that I now know I durst not 
 
91 
 
 commit to writing. That cruelist of all inventions, the Inquisition, stops 
 all mouths. 
 
 ** I set out to-morrow for Naples. As I return to see the great procession 
 on the 15th of June, I intend staying about a fortnight. Afterwards I am 
 bound for Loretto, Ancona, Bologna, and Venice ; at which last place it will 
 be a great pleasure to receive a line from you. My thoughts are often with 
 my Bedford friends. I beg to be remembered to Mrs. Symmonds, Mess. 
 Neguses, Mr. Palmer, Mr. Odell, Mr. Wiltshire ; and as they know it is the 
 divine presence and favour that makes every place happy and comfortable, 
 my most grateful acknowledgements for any interest I have had in their 
 sacred moments. 
 
 " Thus, my dear friend, am I travelling over desolate places of ancient 
 grandeur, and felt it to overpower that selfish and vain principle that is rooted 
 in my constitution, and humble the pride of one's heart ! And when at other 
 times I view in statues, paintings, architecture, &c. the utmost stretch of 
 human skill, how should one's thoughts be raised to that glorious world, that 
 heavenly city, the city of the living God, — where sin, sorrow, and every 
 imperfection will be done away ! Oh, the free, sovereign, unbounded grace 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ! how thankful should we Protestants be for this 
 glorious gospel which we have in our hands. The happiness we are exulting 
 in, millions in this country are denied. But I must conclude that I remain 
 with much esteem, 
 
 " Dear Sir, yours «&c. 
 
 " J. Howard." 
 
 The gratitude he here expresses, for the privilege of having been born in 
 a Protestant country, was a feeling which Mr. Howard constantly experienced, 
 and frequently avowed in his confidential communications to his friends, 
 
 n 2 
 
92 
 
 when travelling through the catholic states of Europe. For superstition, in 
 all its shapes, he entertained the most rooted aversion : he therefore witnessed 
 its triumph over some of the fairest regions of the globe, with a mingled sen- 
 sation of deep regret, and of chilling horror. For the freedom of religious 
 opinion, he was a most zealous advocate : no wonder, then, that he felt indig- 
 nant at the cruel shackles imposed upon the energies of the mind, by the 
 unknown terrors and hellish tortures of the Inquisition. No wonder, that 
 from the mummeries which rendered religion at Rome nothing but a gilded 
 pageant— a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, — a substitution of worse than 
 unmeaning forms, and ceremonies, and solemn mockeries of God, for living 
 faith and genuine repentance, he should turn with delight to his Christian 
 friends at Bedford, and desire to be remembered in the prayers they offered 
 up in the unadorned edifice, which their ancestors had consecrated to the 
 worship of God, in the simplicity of the earlier, and the happier ages of the 
 church ; — in the family altars erected in their houses ; and in the more secret 
 devotions of their closets. 
 
 But whilst thus maintaining his Christian fellowship with his friends in 
 England, we find him no less anxious to contribute to their amusement, by a 
 description of the countries through which he had passed, and the curiosities 
 he had there beheld ; — reserving, to entertain the friendly circle which should 
 be gathered around him, when they met again, the further details of his jour- 
 neyings and various adventures. He visited every thing in Italy that could 
 give him an idea either of its ancient grandeur, or of its celebrity in more 
 modern times, in taking the lead in the re-establishment of letters, and the 
 revival of the arts. From all these monuments of human skill, these extraor- 
 dinary proofs of the vast capacities of the mind of man, he drew lessons for the 
 future conduct of his life, worthy an intelligent being, who felt that this world 
 was not to be his rest, but that he was a candidate for a brighter, and a more 
 enduring inheritance, beyond the grave. 
 
93 
 
 At Naples his mind was still deeply impressed by the most serious thoughts, 
 and he occupied a portion of one of the sabbaths which he spent there, in 
 preparing', and deliberately signing a covenant, in which he cheerfully, but 
 with all due solemnity, consecrated all that he had, and all that he was, to his 
 maker and bis God ; resigning into his hands, and to his disposal, himself, and 
 every thing most dear to him on earth ; not forgetting especially to include in 
 this solemn dedication, as next in value and importance to his own soul, his 
 dear child. Few of. my readers will need perhaps to be informed that the 
 practice of entering into a solemn engagement of this kind, and in this form, 
 was very frequent amongst the earlier of our Non-conformists, and that it has 
 been adopted by many of their descendants, and by serious persons of various 
 denominations in the Christian world, for the strengthening of their faith, and 
 their encouragement in the performance of the many important duties which 
 the profession of that faith imposes upon them. It is worthy of particular 
 remark, that this covenant, and the other engagements of a similar nature still 
 preserved amongst the few remaining papers of this most exemplary believer, were 
 renewed at Moscow, on his last journey, and within a few months of the close 
 of his extraordinary career of Christian charity, and universal benevolence. I 
 give the original engagement, and the memorandum of its renewal, in the 
 precise terms in which it has been communicated to me, by the gentleman 
 with whom the original now remains : — and I give it without note or comment, 
 for none can surely be needed, to point out to the reader's notice the spirit offer- 
 vent piety, of deep humility, of ardent love to God, of devotedness to his service, 
 and to the relief of his suffering creatures, which it breathes in every sentence. 
 
 " 1770. Naples, May 27. When I left Italy last year it then appeared 
 most prudent and proper : my return I hope is under the best direction not 
 presumptious being left to the Folly of a foolish Heart, not having the strongest 
 Spirits or Constitution my continuing long in Holland or any place lowers my 
 Spirits so I thought returning would be no uneasiness on the Review as sinful 
 
94 
 
 and vain diversions are not my Object but the Honour and glory of God my 
 highest Ambition did I now see it wrong by being the cause of Pride I 
 would go back but being deeply sencible it is the Presence of God that makes 
 the Happiness of every place so Oh my Soul ! keep close to Him in the amiable 
 light of redeeming Love and amidst the Snares thou art particularly exposed to 
 in a Country of such wickedness and folly stand thou in Awe and Sin not — 
 commune with thine own heart — see what progress thou makest in thy Religious 
 Journey ! art Thou nearer the heavenly Canaan ? the vital flame burning 
 clearer and clearer or is the concerns of a moment engrossing thy foolish 
 Heart — Stop remember Thou art a Candidate for Eternity — daily fervently 
 pray for Wisdom— lift up your Heart and Eyes to the Rock of Ages and then 
 look down on the glory of this World — A little while and thy Journey will 
 be ended, be thou faithful unto death— Duty is thine, tho' the Power is God's, 
 pray to him to give Thee a Heart to hate Sin more, uniting thy Heart in his 
 Fear — Oh! magnify the Lord my Soul and my Spirit rejoyce in God my 
 Saviour! his free Grace unbounded Mercy — Love unparalleld Goodness 
 unlimited and Oh this Mercy this Love this goodness exerted for me, Lord 
 God why me ! When I consider and look into my Heart I doubt — I tremble ! 
 such a vile Creature Sin folly and imperfection in every action ! oh dreadful 
 thought a Body of sin and death I carry about me ever ready to depart from 
 God and with all the dreadful Catalogue of Sins commited my Heart faints 
 within me and almost despairs but yet oh my Soul why art thou cast down 
 why art thou disquieted ? hope in God ! his free Grace in Jesus Christ ! Lord 
 I believe help my unbelief shall I limit the Grace of God ! can I fathom his 
 goodness ! here on his Sacred Day I once more in the Dust before the Eternal 
 • God acknowledge my Sins heineous and agravated in his Sight I would have 
 the deepest Sorrow and contrition of Heart and cast my guilty and poluted 
 Soul on thy Sovereign Mercy in the Redeemer — Oh compassionate and divine 
 Redeemer save me from the dreadful Guilt and power of Sin and accept of my 
 Solemn free and I trust unreserved full surrender of my Soul my Spirit my 
 
95 
 
 dear Child all I am and have into thy hands! unworthy of thy acceptance! yet 
 oh Lord God of Mercy spurn me not from thy presence — accept of me vile us 
 ,1 am — I hope a repenting returning Prodigal — I glory in my choice, acknow- 
 ledge my obligations as a Servant of the most high God and now may the 
 Eternal God be my Refuge and Thou oh ! my Soul faithful to that God that 
 will never leave nor forsake Thee. 
 
 " Thus oh my Lord and my God is humbly bold even a Worm to covenant 
 with Thee ! do Thou ratify and confirm it and make me the everlasting Monu- 
 ment of thy unbounded Mercy — Amen, Amen, Amen. Glory to God the 
 
 Father God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost for ever and ever, Amen ! 
 
 " Hoping my Heart deceives me not and trusting in his Mercy for restrain- 
 ing and preventing Grace tho' rejoycing in returning what I have received of 
 him into his hands yet with fear and trembling I sign my unworthy Name. 
 
 " John Howard. 
 " Naples 27th May 1770." 
 
 " N. B. This Solemn Covenant renewed at Moscow Sep' 27 th 1789 " 
 
 Whilst in Naples, he gratified at once his curiosity and his taste for meteo- 
 rological researches, by ascending to the summit of Mount Vesuvius, and 
 making an observation on the degree of heat at its highest point, and even in 
 its very crater, into which he made a small descent for the purpose of being 
 more accurate in his remarks. With this view he was often obliged to lay 
 himself down upon the hard masses of lava, the heat of which was not so 
 intolerable as to prevent his continuing upon them, whilst he accurately noticed 
 the rise of the quicksilver in his thermometer when immersed in the hottest 
 liquid in their interstices at the mouth of the volcano. The result of his observa- 
 
96 
 
 tions was communicated to the Royal Society upon his return to England, and 
 by them published in their Transactions.* 
 
 He arrived again, however, at Rome, as he had proposed, in time to witness 
 the splendid pageant of superstition and of priestly pride, for which, in his 
 letter to Mr. Symonds, he expressed his intention of returning. But how 
 different its effects upon his mind, to that which it produced upon the ignorant 
 crowd of devotees, who flocked from all parts of Italy to be present at this 
 vain, but imposing ceremony of their most costly, vain, yet too imposing faith. 
 From the abuse of the sabbath, and of all the most sacred rites of religion, 
 which he witnessed here, and in other parts of the continent, he was most 
 anxious to learn how to value them more highly than he had done, and to 
 improve them as became a professor of the gospel, who enjoyed the inestimable 
 privilege of being born in a Protestant land. From every thing, indeed, that 
 he saw in the course of his travels he was desirous of deriving such useful 
 instruction as should return him to his native country wiser and better than 
 when he quitted it. To that country, and to the face of the dear boy he had 
 left behind him there, his heart still fondly turned, amidst all the objects to 
 gratify his curiosity, by which he was surrounded in this magnificent city. This 
 will plainly appear from the following short reflections, entered in his memo- 
 randum book there, but two days after he had seen it glittering in all the pomp 
 and pride of its gay, and all the mockery of its most solemn pageantry. 
 
 " Rome 17th June 1770. Almighty God my Preserver hoping I shall be 
 carried safely to my native Country and Friends and see the face of my dear 
 Boy in Peace remember then Oh my Soul to cultivate a more serious humble 
 thanklul and resigned Temper of Mind ! as Thou hast seen more of the world 
 by travelling than others more of the happiness of being born in a Protestant 
 * Philosophical Transactions, Vd. LXI. pp. 53, 4. 
 
97 
 
 Country and the dreadful abuse of holy Sabbaths ! so may thy walk thy Sabbaths 
 thy conversation be more becoming the holy Gospel, let not pride and vanity 
 fill up so much of thy Thoughts learn here the vanity and folly of all earthly 
 grandeur — endeavor to be a wiser and better Man when thou returnest 
 remember many Eyes will be upon you and above all the Eye of that God 
 before whom thou wilt shortly appear ! Oh Lord God put thy fear into my 
 Heart and may I never depart from Thee !" 
 
 How long Air. Howard remained in Italy, or by what precise route he left 
 it, I am not informed. His stay there could not, however, have been very 
 protracted ; as upon the 29th of July, we find his thoughts occupied on the 
 Sunday evening which he spent at Heilderberg, in the circle of Franconia, in 
 Germany, by the serious subjects contained in the following reflections, which 
 he seems to have considered in the nature of the more regular consecration of 
 himself and his to God, which he so solemnly signed at Naples, two months 
 before ; having renewed them at Moscow, at the same time that he again set 
 his hand to that engagement. 
 
 " Heilderberg Sun. Ev ? 29 July 1770. Through the goodness of my unwearied 
 Father and God I am still a Monument of his unbounded Mercy. Thou my 
 Soul record his Goodness but what are the returns for all this Mercy and 
 goodness — How should it have led thee to a Life of exemplary Piety and 
 holiness, but alas ! how low art Thou ! My God I take shame to myself lie 
 low before Thee and cry earnestly for pardon Mercy and forgiveness for 
 Christ's sake — would to God I had Wisdom given me to redeem the time 
 lost to live a Life suitable to the Mercies I am receiving; and if Thou art spared 
 to return acknowledge the goodness of God both Public and Private look into 
 thine own Heart and beg of God to show thee the Evil of it and if thou 
 bringest home a better Temper and art a wiser man then Thou wilt have cause 
 to rejoyce that the great end of travelling is answered. 
 
 " Renewed Moscow 27th Sep. 1789." 
 
 o 
 
98 
 
 Thus lamenting his own infirmities, and want of ability to reach that pure 
 standard of Christian perfection, which was constantly before his eyes ; — thus 
 grateful to God for all the mercies he was daily and hourly receiving at his 
 hands, in the course of his travels ; and thus earnest in his desire that those 
 travels should answer their proper end, by enabling him to return home with a 
 better temper, and a wiser man ; he proceeded to Rotterdam, where the 
 feelings of his heart on the last Sabbath evening which he expected to spend 
 before his return to his beloved native country, are thus recorded : — 
 
 " Rotterdam Sun Even B 2 Sep 1770. This morning on the review of 
 the Temper of my Mind how humbled I ought to be before God— an evil and 
 wicked Heart ever ready to depart from him starting aside like a deceitful 
 Bow, mourning yet trusting in my Lord and my God when by calm retired 
 thoughts I would hope I am one step forward in my Christian Journey ; yet 
 alas! in company how many Steps backward! God give my Wisdom — Mercy 
 and goodness compass my Paths yet how little sencible of it oh hard and 
 obdurate Heart— with such an Heart how watchful how careful how earnest 
 at the Throne of Grace that as Jesus Christ died for such as Thou ! Thou 
 mightest have an Interest in the glorious Salvation He has wrought out. The 
 Review of the Temper of my Mind on probably the last Sabbath before 
 I return to my happy native Country — I desire with profound veneration to 
 bless and praise God for his merciful preservation of me in my long Journey 
 no danger no accident has befallen me but I am among the living I trust ever 
 to praise and as to my Soul among all its weakness and folly yet I have some 
 hope it has not lost ground this year of travelling — very desirous of returning 
 with a right Spirit not only wiser but better a cheerful humility a more general 
 Love and benevolence to my fellow Creatures watchful of my thoughts my 
 Words my Actions resigned to the will of God that I may walk with God and 
 lead a more useful and honourable Life in this World." 
 
 That he returned to England, as he had anticipated, without spending 
 
99 
 
 another sabbath on the continent, there is every reason to conclude. That he 
 returned thither also as he had wished and prayed he might, with a more 
 general love and benevolence toward his fellow-creatures, will be abundantly 
 proved by the extraordinary efforts, public and private, to promote their 
 happiness, and to alleviate their distress, which, in the succeeding Chapters of 
 these memoirs of his life, it will be their author's pleasing task to detail; and 
 he hopes his readers still more pleasing employment, not only to approve and 
 to admire, but, as far as in them lies, to imitate— it is not possible to excel 
 them. 
 
 o 2 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 From Mr. Howard's return from his fourth journey of pleasure upon the continent, 
 in 1770, to his receiving the thanks of the House of Commons, for the information 
 which he communicated to them respecting the state of prisons in England, in 
 March, 1774. 
 
 RETURNING to the shores of his native country, with so strong a dis- 
 position to render himself increasingly useful to his fellow-creatures, Mr. 
 Howard did not continue many days in London, after his arrival in England; 
 but set off, without delay, to Cardington ; where, in the midst of his tenantry, 
 and the dependants on his bounty, he could best reduce this disposition to 
 practice. The sudden removal of his beloved wife, and the consequent destruc- 
 tion of his domestic happiness, seems, however, to have given a shock to his 
 health and spirits, from which they never entirely recovered ; and he had ac- 
 cordingly been but a very short time in Bedfordshire, before the state of his health 
 compelled him to try the effects of a change of air, by an excursion to the more 
 western parts of the kingdom, in strengthening his debilitated constitution. 
 In the course of this journey, he took lodgings, for a short time, at Southampton ; 
 where he was introduced, in a somewhat singular manner, to the acquaintance of 
 the Rev. William Kingsbury, M. A. at that time, and indeed until within these 
 few years, pastor of the independent church at this place. The occasion of 
 their meeting was briefly this : Mr. Howard having sent a note, requesting an 
 interest in the prayers of his congregation, as a person detained by indis- 
 
101 
 
 position from the house of God, the circumstance of receiving such an 
 application from a stranger, induced this highly respectable minister to inquire 
 whence it came ; and, having learnt his temporary abode, to call, upon the 
 following day, on the writer, with whose conversation and behaviour he 
 was so much delighted, that he entreated him to return the call ; which he 
 accordingly did : and thus laid the foundation of an intimate friendship with 
 Mr. Kingsbury and his family, ending but with his life. He did not, how- 
 ever, long remain stationary in any part of the country which he visited ; but 
 finding travelling from place to place better calculated to relieve his mental 
 and bodily pain, than any thing to which he had yet had recourse, he made 
 a short tour through some of the counties in the south of Ireland and part of 
 Wales, whence he crossed over, by the New Passage, to Bristol Hot Wells. 
 The day after his arrival there, he was unfortunately attacked by a fit of the 
 gout, so severe as to confine him to his room for six months. It was upon 
 this occasion, according to the account of Thomason,* the only servant who 
 accompanied him upon this tour, that he made a resolution, if he got the better 
 of this attack, never again to drink wine or spirituous liquors of any kind ; 
 a resolution, which I have the same authority for asserting, that he most scru- 
 pulously kept to the day of his death. Indeed, it was not the character of any 
 of his determinations, that they were made to be broken ; especially those of 
 them on which he conceived the continuance of the invaluable blessing of health, 
 even in the very moderate proportion in which he enjoyed it, in any measure, 
 to depend. It is, perhaps, in a great degree, to the watchful and unwearied 
 solicitude with which this man attended Mr. Howard, during his tedious and 
 protracted illness, that we are to ascribe the high opinion he ever afterwards 
 entertained of his firm attachment to his person, and zeal for his interests, and 
 the peculiar kindness and confidence which consequently marked his future 
 behavior towards him. So close, indeed, does he himself represent his at- 
 tendance on the sick chamber of his master to have been, that when he 
 
 * M.S. Journal. 
 
102 
 
 was not willing, during the height of his disorder, to be waited on by any one 
 else, he would often express his fears lest he should kill him with hard work. 
 Thomason, however, was young and robust, and being blessed with a good 
 constitution, was enabled to bear up under the exertion ; for which, we 
 may be assured, that his patient, on his recovery did not suffer him to go 
 unrewarded. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Howard had gained sufficient strength to be removed 
 without inconvenience, he returned to Cardington ; where he continued for 
 many months longer in but a very indifferent state of health ; a severe ague, 
 accompanied by a considerable degree of fever, which did not leave him for 
 three quarters of a year, having brought him very low. But though thus 
 rendered incapable of taking much bodily exercise, the powers of his mind 
 were actively employed in devising plans for the amelioration of the condition 
 of the poor, in the immediate neighbourhood of his own residence, and espe- 
 cially in the village, in the midst of which his house was situated ; and there 
 was then — I regret to add there still continues to be, much need for such 
 charitable exertions of the more opulent inhabitants of this part of a county, in 
 which, perhaps, of most others in England, the poor have the greatest difficulty 
 in finding employment ; especially in the immediate neighbourhood of Bedford, 
 which from its isolated situation, and the total absence of all manufactures, 
 except that of lace, fluctuating and uncertain at most times, and altogether 
 inadequate to the providing a family with the means of support at the 
 best, is unable to afford that assistance to the adjacent villagers, which is 
 usually derived from proximity to a county, or large manufacturing town. 
 The low, marshy situation of the village, was also much against the health of 
 its inhabitants, rendering them particularly subject to the ague, from which, 
 probably from the same cause, Mr. Howard himself was at this time suffering. 
 With a view, therefore, to remedy this inconvenience, he at different times 
 pulled down all the cottages on his estate, and rebuilt them in a neat, but 
 
103 
 
 simple style ; paving particular attention to their preservation, as much as 
 possible, from the dampness of the soil. Others which were not his property 
 before, he purchased, and re-erected upon the same plan; adding to the 
 number of the whole, by building several new ones in different parts of the 
 village. To each of these he allotted a piece of garden ground, sufficient to 
 supply the family of its occupier with potatoes and other vegetables; and 
 generally ornamented them in front with a small fore-court, fenced off from 
 the road by neat white pailings, enclosing a bed or two of simple flowers, with 
 here and there a shrub, or an evergreen, in the midst of them ; thus imparting 
 to these habitations of the poor, with their white fronts and thatched roofs, — 
 uniform in their rustic simplicity, though purposely varied in external form 
 and appearance, — that air of neatness and of comfort, so strikingly charac- 
 teristic of every thing in which he engaged. 
 
 This project for improving the general condition of the village where he 
 resided, no less creditable to his taste, than it is strongly illustrative of his bene- 
 volence, he had begun to carry into execution before he was deprived of the 
 invaluable assistance of his beloved partner in life, of whose entire concurrence 
 and active co-operation in this, as in every other plan of usefulness, we may be, 
 as her husband was, most fully assured. " I remember," says Dr. Aikin, in 
 his memoirs of that husband's life,* " his relating that once, having settled his 
 accounts at the close of a year, and found a balance in his favor, he proposed to 
 his wife to make use of it in a journey to London, or any other gratification she 
 chose." " What a pretty cottage it would build," was her answer; and the 
 money was so employed. " These comfortable habitations," continues his 
 biographer,^ on precisely the same information with my own, though, as I do 
 not flatter myself that I can clothe it in better language, I gladly avail myself 
 of that in which he first communicated it to the public, " he peopled with the 
 most industrious and sober tenants he could find ; and over them he exercised 
 
 * P. 28. t P. 29. 
 
104 
 
 the superintendance of master and father combined. He was careful to furnish 
 them with employment, to assist them in sickness and distress, and to educate 
 their children. In order to preserve their morals, he made it a condition that 
 they should regularly attend their several places of worship, and abstain from 
 public-houses, and from such amusements as he thought pernicious ; and he 
 secured their compliance with his rules by making them tenants at will." 
 The cottages which he thus improved so materially to the promotion of the 
 health and comfort of their tenants, he always let at their original rent of from 
 twenty to thirty shillings per annum ; so that there was scarcely a poor person 
 in the village, who was not anxious to have the privilege of residing in them. 
 The care with which he selected the most deserving of the applicants for this 
 favor, was, however, a source of dissatisfaction in those who were not the 
 objects of his preference ; to which might perhaps be traced most of the gossip- 
 ping tales to his prejudice so industriously circulated in his neighbourhood, 
 immediately after his decease. 
 
 When he had recovered from his severe indisposition, it was his principal, 
 and most delightful employment, to superintend these useful improvements in 
 his estate ; the main object of which was— and if he may be said to have been 
 particularly ambitious of any distinction it was of this — to render himself the 
 landlord of a happy tenantry, than which there should not be found in the 
 whole kingdom, any who were neater in their persons or habitations ; more 
 decent or orderly in their behavior ; possessing and enjoying in a more be- 
 coming spirit, a greater portion of the comforts of this world ; or more sedu- 
 lously taught the grounds on which alone they might look forward with hope 
 to those of a better. For the accomplishment of a purpose so desirable for 
 them, and so honorable to himself, he spared no expense ; and its advantages 
 were soon extended beyond the limits of his own small property, by the 
 cordial co-operation of his friend and relative Samuel Whitbread, Esq., father 
 to the late member for Bedford, and himself one of the representatives for that 
 
105 
 
 borough, in several successive parliaments. At the same time, and with the 
 same benevolent intentions, this gentleman accordingly rebuilt, in a similar 
 style of neatness, several of the cottages upon his estate, comprehending the 
 greater part of the village in which Mr. Howard lived ; " so that," as it is 
 well observed by one of the anonymous biographers of the latter of these 
 generous benefactors to the industrious poor,* " Cardington, which seemed at 
 one time to contain the abodes of poverty and wretchedness soon became one 
 of the neatest villages in the kingdom ; exhibiting all the pleasing appearances 
 of competence and content, the natural rewards of industry and virtue." 
 
 Whilst these alterations were making, and they were carried on upon a 
 larger or a smaller scale during the whole of Mr. Howard's life, they were the 
 means of finding employment for many of the inhabitants of the village ; and as 
 he always considered idleness to be the root of all evil, he was then, and at all 
 other times, particularly careful to prevent its entrance into the cottages he 
 had built, as an encouragement to those industrious habits, whose primary 
 importance he was ever most anxious to impress upon his dependants, and his 
 poorer neighbours ; to whom indeed they came strongly recommended by the 
 force of his own example, in occupying every moment of his time by some 
 useful pursuit. With this view, whenever the female branches of any of the 
 families in his vicinity could not get work elsewhere, he continued the highly 
 commendable practice, adopted during the life of his second wife, of employing 
 them in the making of linen for his household purposes ; and he did this to so 
 considerable an extent, as to supply himself with a stock, which, at the time of 
 his decease, would, in all probability, have lasted him to the present period. 
 But whilst thus teaching them to labor for the support of themselves, and of 
 their families, and finding them when it was needed, whereon to labor, he was 
 not neglectful of the improvement of their minds, which he well knew to be 
 the best means of securing, as far as mortal foresight can secure, at once their 
 * Universal Magi Vol. LXXXVI. p. 17-1, note. 
 P 
 
106 
 
 independence and their happiness. This important point, in the case of the 
 young, he effected by the establishment of schools, not only for those whose 
 parents were his tenants, or with whom his property, in some other way, more 
 immediately connected him,— the diffusive spirit of his philanthropy admitting 
 of no such narrow limits — but for all who were within the circle of his neigh- 
 bourhood. In these most useful institutions, some of them situated in Carding- 
 ton, others at Cotton-end, and the adjoining hamlets, the most judicious plans of 
 instruction were pursued, whilst their discipline would have i-eflected no discredit 
 on the superior skill in the great work of education, to which — thanks to the 
 discoveries of a Lancaster and a Bell, and to the persevering zeal of those 
 enlightened individuals, who have already reduced, or are now reducing them 
 to practice in every part of the kingdom, and every quarter of the globe — we 
 in our days have happily attained. The girls were taught reading and plain 
 needle-work, to fit them for servitude in respectable families, and to become 
 useful and industrious wives to men in their own station of life, above which it 
 was neither his object to elevate them, or to give them the dangerous wish to 
 be elevated. The boys all learned to read, and those of them who seemed to 
 have the best capacities, or who had conducted themselves with the greatest 
 propriety, were also taught writing, and the first and most useful rules in 
 arithmetic, but beyond these they never went, nor was it, perhaps, to their 
 advantage that they should go. It was a duty most strictly required of them all, 
 that they should attend divine service every sabbath ; but the mind of their bene- 
 factor was cast in too liberal a mould to prescribe whether it should be in a meet- 
 ing house, where his own principles led him, whenever he had the opportunity of 
 making his election, regularly to attend, or in the established church ; this was 
 a matter left entirely to the choice of their parents ; and the condition upon 
 which alone they were suffered to continue in his schools, was most fully satis- 
 fied, if they went regularly to hear the gospel somewhere, both morning and 
 afternoon. Might not, I would here just take the liberty to suggest, the 
 conductors of some of our schools for the education of the poor, upon a much 
 
107 
 
 larger scale, or be it National— or be it British — derive a most useful lesson from 
 the conduct, in this respect, of the Philanthropist of the World, — the genuine 
 Christian, who, remembering that we have one master even Christ, knew no 
 distinction of party or of sect, but that of those who love the Lord Jesus in sin- 
 cerity, and those who love him not. Some bishops, deans, and archdeacons; aye, 
 and some stiff dissenters too, may, perhaps, answer No! But did they breathe 
 the mild, the benignant spirit of a Howard — and who will say that spirit was 
 not a proper one ? they must answer to this question, Yes ! The number of 
 persons brought up in these schools of course varied at different times, but for 
 suoh small country places, it was always considerable, and consequently pro- 
 ductive of great advantage to the neighbourhood, the effects of which, are 
 visible to the present hour, in the order, neatness, and regularity, which still 
 distinguishes Cardington from most of the English villages that I have ever 
 seen. 
 
 The spirit of active benevolence which was then about beginning to stir 
 amongst the richer classes of society, in the same extraordinary manner, as of 
 late years it has operated on the minds of all, had not as yet devised any 
 remedy for the want of education in early life, similar to that which the institu- 
 tion of adult schools has, in these times, so happily provided. Leaving, there- 
 fore, in accordance with the general notions of the age, as a hopeless task, the 
 furnishing the minds of those who had unfortunately grown up to man's estate in 
 ignorance, and all the ills to which it leads, with lessons of piety and virtue, 
 by enabling them to read for themselves the pages in which they are written, 
 Mr. Howard endeavored by every means he could devise, to excite them to a 
 constant attendance on the ordinances of religion, that they might thereby be 
 instructed in the way in which they ought to walk. It was in execution of 
 this purpose, that he made the stipulation with his tenants already noticed, that 
 they should go to church or chapel every Sunday; and it was in the same 
 3pirit of Christian concern for the immortal interests of his poorer brethren, 
 
 p 2 
 
108 
 
 that he had one of his cottages fitted up as a place for preaching in, whenever any 
 of the ministers of the adjacent places could spare time for an occasional service 
 there. By their kindness, or by that of some of the itinerant preachers in differ- 
 ent parts of the county, the place was generally supplied at least once a week, 
 and the group of attentive village auditors, upon these occasions, soon became 
 so large, that the room, originally appropriated to their use, was far too small 
 to hold them. Upon this Mr. Howard directed openings to be made into the 
 adjoining room and the yard behind, which was often crowded, in order that no 
 one anxious to hear the word of truth dispensed, though in so lowly an edifice, 
 and often in as humble a manner, should be disappointed. But lowly as was 
 this edifice, and humble as, at times, might be the preacher who proclaimed the 
 glad tidings of salvation there, they could often boast the presence of a man, 
 who, perhaps of all others of his fellow-mortals, since the apostolic ages, has the 
 most closely followed the example of the divine teacher, who first published 
 those tidings to a lost world, in going about to do good, on those very prin- 
 ciples which his gospel has pointed out to our imitation ; and which he himself, 
 as judge of all, in the presence of an assembled universe, will hereafter re- 
 cognize and approve. Never, indeed, was he absent from these meetings 
 when at Cardington, except prevented by indisposition, or by unavoidable en- 
 gagements ; as it was not his disposition to expect from others the discharge 
 of any duty, which he himself neglected regularly to perform. 
 
 But his concern for the welfare of the inhabitants of a village, which, though 
 not the place of his birth, was the earliest in his recollection, stopped not here, 
 nor with any of the more comprehensive schemes of benevolence, embracing 
 in their extended arms, not only the whole of its inhabitants, but the wider 
 circle of its immediate neighbourhood. With that minute attention to the 
 wants and the comfort of every individual object of his bounty, which charac- 
 terized all his philanthropic exertions for the good of his fellow-creatures, he 
 entered into every habitation, and engaged in the most familiar converse with 
 
109 
 
 every person, where he thought that his assistance could in any way be service- 
 able. " He would visit the farmers, his own tenants especially," says a letter 
 from my kind and excellent friend, the Rev. Samuel Hillyard, now minister of 
 the church and congregation which Mr. Howard first attended at Bedford, 
 " and converse with them in the most affable manner. He also visited the 
 poor ; sat down in their cottages, and generally ate an apple while he talked 
 with them. Even the schoolboys whenever they had an opportunity, would 
 place themselves in his way ; for he never failed to speak kindly to them, and 
 to give each of them a halfpenny if he had enough in his pocket to supply them, 
 invariably concluding his advice by telling them to be good children, and to 
 wash their hands and faces. To the cottagers he was also very particular in 
 requesting them to keep their houses clean ; especially recommending that the 
 rooms should be swilled (a provincial expression for washing the brick floors, 
 by plentifully sluicing them with water), and he had sinks made in them for 
 that purpose. He not only gave away the milk of his dairy, which was not 
 used in the house ; but sent it round to the poor, that they might not lose their 
 time in coming for it." In fact, I may add, in the language of one who knew 
 him well,* " his charity had no bounds, except those of prudence ; and was 
 not more commendable for the extent of it, than for the manner in which it 
 was exercised. He gave not his bounty to countenance vice and idleness, but 
 to encourage virtue and industry. He was singularly useful in furnishing 
 employment for the labouring poor of both sexes, at those seasons when a scarcity 
 of work rendered their situation most compassionable." " In a word," says 
 one of his anonymous biographers, f in reference to that portion of his life 
 which he passed at Cardington, before the extraordinary exertions of his 
 philanthropic disposition for the public good, had fixed upon him so large a 
 portion of the public attention as he afterwards attracted, " he hardly ever 
 took one of his daily rides in the neighbourhood, without enjoying the delightful 
 
 * Rev. S. Palmer, in his Funeral Sermon on Mr. Howard's death, 
 t Univ. Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171. 
 
no 
 
 satisfaction, on his return, that he had contributed to the relief, the welfare, or 
 the consolation of a fellow-creature," for " whilst living in retirement," adds 
 Mr. Palmer,* " it was his meat and drink to make Ins neighbours happy." 
 
 By these continued and unwearied efforts to promote the prosperity of his 
 poorer neighbours, Mr. Howard secured to himself their love and veneration, 
 to a much greater extent than is often bestowed upon their benefactors, whose 
 bounty, though more munificent in amount, may be less gracious in the manner 
 of its bestowment. To them his behaviour was uniformly kind, as it was 
 beneficent; and though he, in many respects exercised a control over their 
 conduct, it was constantly exerted for their good ; and more nearly resembled 
 that of a kind but prudent parent, over his children, than of a superior over 
 his inferiors. And whilst thus beloved by the poor, whom he cherished and 
 protected, he was no less respected by the rich with whom he associated, or to 
 whom the excellencies of his character were known ; for towards them his conduct 
 and manners were invariably obliging and conciliatory ; except, indeed, where the 
 wanton, or deliberate invasion of his own just rights, or those of his tenants or 
 dependants, compelled him, most reluctantly, to adopt a different line of conduct. 
 
 His mode of living, and personal habits at this period of his life, partook 
 much of the peculiarities which distinguished them to its close. In the distri- 
 bution of his time he was very exact ; punctual in all his engagements with 
 others, and expecting others in return to be punctual with him. His whole 
 manner of conducting himself might, indeed, be described as precise and me- 
 thodical; but it was so from principle and confirmed habit, not from any 
 desire to be thought singular, and therefore, had nothing disgusting, or even 
 unpleasant about it. On the contrary, the natural dignity of his deportment, 
 combined with the general benevolence of his disposition, was well calculated to 
 inspire the grateful veneration of his inferiors, while it ensured to him the 
 
 * Funeral Sermon on Mr. Howard. 
 
Ill 
 
 esteem of all whose esteem was worth possessing. It was but the erroneous 
 impression of those, who knew him not at all, or who knew him but imperfectly, 
 to suppose that there was any thing stern or forbidding in his general behaviour 
 — for in all his intercourse with others, whatever were their rank or circum- 
 stances in life, rich or poor, lowly or exalted, he united the politeness of the 
 gentleman with the firmness of the man of principle, and the genuine humility 
 of the Christian ; carrying withal the air of this finished character in a very 
 striking manner in his general appearance and deportment. He was at all times 
 remarkably neat in his dress, but affected no singularity in it ; being always 
 attired in a manner suitable to his age and rank in life, without consulting the 
 endless variations of fashion, in the cut, and shape, and colour of his garb ; — 
 alterations often without improvement, and changes but for the sake of 
 changing. The same love of neatness and simplicity, characterised his taste in 
 the furniture of his house, and the exterior appearance of every thing belonging 
 to him ; though I am rather inclined to think that it was the general morality of 
 their conduct, and their love of peace and order, which rendered him an 
 admirer of the Quakers as a body, and induced him to form a most intimate 
 connection with many individual members of their society ; rather than as 
 has been supposed, this conformity of disposition in externals, which, as they 
 respect modes of dress and matters of mere taste, when compared with the 
 virtues of the heart, and the moral conduct of the life, he justly considered to 
 be points of a very inferior importance. Though he never thought it right to 
 indulge in the luxuries of life, he did not despise its comforts ; and when they 
 interfered with none of his schemes of usefulness, or plans of benevolence, 
 he thought it allowable moderately to enjoy them. It does not appear that he 
 had as yet entirely abandoned the use of animal food, though lie partook of it 
 very sparingly, and generally preferred pastry and vegetables, with which, in 
 every variety the season or an ample stock of preserved fruit would afford, his 
 table was most abundantly supplied, even when he dined alone. Wine, or 
 fermented liquors of any kind, he himself never drank ; but they were always 
 
112 
 
 provided, and that too of the best quality, for his friends who chose to take 
 them. To them — and the circle, though select, was by no means narrow — his 
 house was at all times open ; and on their visits, which were frequent, as he 
 delighted to enjoy with them the pleasures of social converse, they were always 
 entertained in a genteel and hospitable manner ; though he thought it incon- 
 sistent with his Christian profession, to give sumptuous and expensive enter- 
 tainments, considering himself, with respect to his property, but as the steward 
 of God, to whom he must give an account of its disposition. In short, during 
 the few years which he passed in retirement, after the loss of his wife, he 
 pursued, with but little variation, the plan of living he had adopted during 
 her life, which was that of a country gentleman, with a small estate, and a 
 handsome, though not a splendid fortune. He always maintained an intercourse 
 of civility with some of the most considerable persons in the county, who 
 duly appreciated his unassuming worth ; and was on visiting terms with the 
 greater part of the country gentlemen around him, and with the most respect- 
 able inhabitants of the town of Bedford, churchmen and dissenters, several of 
 whom, of both parties, were numbered with the more intimate of his friends. 
 After Mrs. Howard's decease, he mingled less than he had done with general 
 society ; but his aversion to mix much with its promiscuous assemblies, was 
 more the result of his religious principles and habits, which taught him that 
 this was no very profitable method of spending his time, than, as Dr. Aikin 
 represents it to have been, of the sobriety of his manners, and his peculiarities 
 of living not fitting him for its enjoyment. " Yet, however uncomplying he 
 might be," his biographer goes on with more correctness to observe,* " with 
 the freedoms and irregularities of polite life, he was by no means negligent of 
 its received forms; and though he might be denominated a man of scruples and 
 singularities, no one would dispute his claim to the title of a gentleman.-'' 
 
 But we must not forget, that in Mr. Howard's character there was a mark 
 
 • P. 26. 
 
of distinction, higher than any which this world can bestow. He was a genuine 
 and devoted Christian ; and it is in this light that my readers are now entreated 
 to spend a few minutes of their time, I hope not without profit, in contemplat- 
 ing the consistency of his conduct. . 
 
 After his wife's death, whenever the ill state of his health did not confine 
 him at home, he was a regular attendant and communicant with the church 
 assembling in the old meeting-house at Bedford ; which, from the earlier part of 
 the year 17G6, was under the pastoral care of the Reverend Joshua Symonds. 
 On the repairing of that place of worship, in 1770, he gave a proof of his 
 liberality, in addition to a handsome contribution towards the general expence 
 of the repairs, by putting up, at his own cost, a neat pulpit, in lieu of that 
 formerly occupied by John Bunyan, and coeval with the meeting itself; but 
 which, on its removal, was cut to pieces, and distributed amongst the numerous 
 admirers of that faithful minister, and excellent, but singular writer, in the 
 town and neighbourhood which had been the jn'incipal scene, alike, of his labors 
 and of his sufferings. On the same occasion, his friend and relative, the elder 
 Mr. Whitbread, exhibited an example of christian kindness, well worthy of 
 imitation : for, though himself a decided churchman, he presented this con- 
 gregation of dissenters with a set of chandeliers, still suspended in the 
 meeting-house, with the name of their generous donor inscribed upon them. 
 In somewhat less than a year and a half after the re-opening of the meeting, 
 on the completion of these repairs, the division of the church and congrega- 
 tion assembling within its walls, incidentally noticed in the second chapter 
 of these memoirs, unhappily took place. The ostensible, and indeed a very 
 principal cause of the separation of several of its members from their minister, 
 and such of the congregation as still adhered to him, Mas a declaration made 
 by Mr. Symonds, on the sabbath morning of the 9th of February 1772, that he 
 could no longer practise infant baptism, because he had changed his sentiments 
 on that subject. Hitherto the church had admitted of a free communion, and 
 
 Q 
 

 114 
 
 the pastor had latterly been, as he still is, a paedobaptist. Mr. Symonds, 
 however, when he had altered his own opinion, on the proper mode of admi- 
 nistering the rite of baptism, used all his influence — and, in doing so, as he 
 acted conscientiously, he was not to blame — to induce the people of his charge 
 to follow him in his change. Several of them did so ; and, together with those 
 who had always adopted the mode of immersion at riper years, in preference 
 to that of sprinkling in infancy, constituted the majority of the church, and 
 remained with their pastor at the old meeting. Differences and dissatisfactions 
 of a more personal nature, had, however, for some time, existed in the church 
 and congregation ; and though these were not serious enough, either in their 
 nature or extent, to induce such a measure, — when coupled with this alteration 
 in the manner of administering the ordinances, as well as in the actual government 
 of the church, they were yet sufficient to lead many of its members entirely to 
 withdraw themselves from its communion, and to form themselves into a new 
 society. In this secession, Mr. Howard took a leading part ; but he con- 
 ducted himself throughout the business with so much moderation, delicacy, 
 and christian tenderness for the feelings of every one concerned in the affair, 
 as to please all parties, by the calmness of temper and true dignity of charac- 
 ter which he exhibited, and to retain through life the unabated respect and 
 esteem both of the minister and people, from whose communion, as a church, 
 a regard to his own principles compelled him to separate. With the former, 
 in particular, he ceased not to live on terms of the most familiar intercourse ; 
 and, long after the relation which had subsisted between them was dissolved, 
 he was numbered with the few of the more intimate friends with whom he 
 maintained an epistolary correspondence during his tours of benevolence 
 upon the continent; as will appear from some of the letters inserted in the 
 succeeding pages of this work. After Mr. Symonds's decease, and indeed 
 until his own death, he also regularly continued his former subscription towards 
 the support of the meeting, and his contribution for the relief of the poor of 
 the church from which he had seceded. 
 
 ■ 
 
116 
 
 I am aware that the very respectable tody of dissenters, whose opinions 
 and practice with regard to the external initiatory rite of the christian church, 
 agree with those of the pastor, and such of the members of this society as 
 approved of the change in his sentiments upon that point, have claimed the 
 illustrious subject of these memoirs, as having belonged to their denomination. 
 ]\ T or am I surprised at such a claim having been preferred ; for where is the 
 sect that might not justly be proud of enrolling the name of Howard on the 
 list of its distinguished members? The only proof, however, which can be 
 adduced in support of this proposition is, I am bound to add, the circumstance 
 of his having, when in London, pretty constantly attended the ministry of 
 Dr. Stennet, well known to have been a distinguished preacher in that per- 
 suasion, with whom he also lived on terms of the closest intimacy. But, after 
 having made the most diligent enquiries upon the subject, I am enabled most 
 positively to state, and that upon the authority of one of the Doctor's succes- 
 sors, that Mr. Howard never was a member of this church, and, I believe I may 
 add, never sat down to the Lord's table with it ; as, if I am not greatly mis- 
 informed, the rule adopted there, was that of strict communion with those only 
 w r ho had been baptized by immersion ; which, beyond all doubt, was not 
 a qualification ever possessed by him, for a full and free participation in 
 every ordinance of the church of Christ. As he himself had been baptized 
 by sprinkling, so also, it will be recollected, was his only son ; and that too 
 by his own regular pastor, who, to the day of his death, had the ministerial 
 charge of an independent and pocdobaptist church. And if there could yet 
 remain a doubt upon the subject, after the statement of these two convincing 
 facts, surely that doubt must be removed from every candid and unprejudiced 
 mind, by the detail just entered into, of the causes of that separation, in which, 
 however mixed may have been the motives of some of his fellow seceders, he 
 himself was compelled to join, by a public declaration of his pastor, — for whom 
 as a man, a christian, and a friend, he still preserved the highest esteem,— of 
 a change in his sentiments on the subject of baptism, and on the subject of 
 
 Q2 
 
 
116 
 
 baptism alone. It has never been pretended that he afterwards altered his 
 own views upon a point on which it is certain that he then maintained the 
 opinions in which he had been educated, and in the belief of which he died. 
 Whether he did so or not ; — whether he was an independent or a baptist, are, 
 I admit, questions of very trifling importance ; except, indeed, that it is to 
 the general interests of truth, that we never should suffer any misconception 
 to go abroad into the world, however immaterial in itself, whilst we have the 
 means of correcting it in our own hands. 
 
 Immediately on their secession, the separatists formed themselves into 
 a new church, with which Mr. Howard regularly worshipped and communi- 
 cated, whenever he was at Cardington, until his departure from that place 
 upon a tour, from which it was decreed in the secret counsels of God that he 
 never should return. And when once united with them in the bonds of chris- 
 tian fellowship, he entered so warmly into every thing likely to promote their 
 interests, as a body, that he was looked upon in the country, and not without 
 reason, as their principal support. When they had determined on building 
 anew place of worship, he gave them 200/. towards it; and, besides other 
 considerable sums, at various times, which he was repaid without interest, 
 lent them two hundred more upon a bond, for the repayment of the principal 
 only, which, some years after, he generously cancelled. He made them also, 
 as he had done to the society he had left, a present of their pulpit, which 
 is particularly neat. Until this edifice was completed, the congregation assem- 
 bled at a temporary meeting-house, and were supplied by various ministers, 
 amongst whom was the Reverend Josiah Townsend, son of the Reverend Me- 
 redith Townsend, the independent minister at Stoke Newington, and, strictly 
 speaking, still Mr. Howard's pastor ; who, having just finished his studies at 
 the Daventry academy, was invited to Bedford, for four sabbaths. " It gra- 
 tified him highly," says an account of this gentleman's recollections of this 
 occasional service, communicated to me through the kindness of the Reverend 
 
UT 
 
 John Cockin, jun. of Holmfurth, " to find that he was appointed to sojourn at 
 Mr. Howard's house during his visit to the people. He found him not disposed 
 to talk much; and supposed that he talked to him less than he would otherwise 
 have done, because he was young in years, and almost boyish in appearance : 
 besides, that he sat but a short time at table, and was in motion during the 
 whole day. On the sabbath, he ate little or no dinner, and spent the interval 
 between the morning and the afternoon service, in a private room, alone. 
 He had prayer in his family every day, morning and evening, and read the 
 scriptures himself; but asked his guest to pray. He was very abstemious, lived 
 chiefly upon vegetables, ate little animal food, and drank no wine or spirits. 
 He hated 2Ji'aise ; and when Mr. Townsend once mentioned to him his labors 
 of benevolence"— those of a more private nature, in his own neighbourhood, it 
 must have been; for he had not yet entered on the extraordinary exertions for 
 the public good, which have since immortalized his name, — " he spoke of them 
 slightingly, as a whim of his, and immediately changed the subject." 
 
 Mr. Howard always set a very high value upon the sabbaths which he spent 
 in England ; and we know from the extracts from his own diary already in- 
 serted in this work, that during his various journeys upon the continent, he 
 had felt, and deeply deplored the loss of the religious privileges which he 
 enjoyed upon these sacred days at home. After the new meeting-house was 
 opened, and the Rev. Thomas Smith had accepted the pastoral charge of 
 the church and congregation assembling beneath its roof, — that he might not 
 increase the necessary labor of his domestics, or infringe upon their time for 
 religious improvement, it was his constant practice, if the weather per- 
 mitted, to walk from Cardington to Bedford, a distance of nearly three miles, 
 before the morning service, and to return home in the same manner, directly 
 after the conclusion of that in the afternoon. This, indeed, was a habit he 
 so regularly pursued, that the only enemy he ever had — and it is a melan- 
 choly proof of the depravity of the human heart, that a man like him could 
 
118 
 
 have even one — an idle and dissolute wretch, whom he had often, but in vain 
 reproved for his vices, determined to avail himself of it, to carry into execution 
 the diabolical purpose he had formed of way-laying and murdering him. 
 " But Providence," says Mr. Palmer,* upon whose authority this anecdote is 
 related, " remarkably interposed to preserve so valuable a life, by inclining 
 him that morning to go on horseback a different road." For the purpose of 
 securing a retirement for his devotions, he built a house within a few doors of the 
 meeting, which he suffered a family to occupy without paying him any rent, upon 
 condition that he should have the use of the parlour when he was at Bedford on 
 a Sunday. There he spent the intermediate time between the two services in 
 solitude ; the woman of the house preparing for him some slight refreshment. 
 
 Considering himself to stand in a peculiar relation to the church and con- 
 gregation with which he thus regularly worshipped, he was in the habit of 
 giving annual donations to its poorer members, and of otherwise assisting them 
 by every means in his power. To those of a higher rank, he was always ready 
 to render any service which his own personal exertions, his influence, or his 
 connections, would enable him to perform. His benevolence, was not however, 
 confined within such narrow limits, but knowing no distinction of sect or party 
 in the labors of love to which it prompted him, he was at all times as willing to 
 do an act of kindness for those who were of a different persuasion to himself, 
 as he would be for an individual whose religious sentiments were but the exact 
 counterpart of his own. u In every way," says his intimate friend and 
 biographer, Dr. Aikin, " in which a man thoroughly disposed to do good with 
 the means providence has bestowed upon him, can exercise his liberality, Mr. 
 Howard stood among the foremost. He was not only a subscriber to various 
 public schemes of benevolence, but his private charities were largely diffused, 
 and remarkably well directed. "f " Though never inattentive to the tale of 
 woe," adds another of his friends,;]: in illustration of this part of his character 
 * Funeral Sermon for Mr. Howard. f P- 36. £ Rev. S. Palmer's Funeral Sermon for Mr. Howard. 
 
119 
 
 and of this period of his history, " he was not easily imposed upon by it, hut 
 made himself acquainted with the case. He had indeed a general acquaintance 
 with the cases and characters of the poor around him, and made it his business 
 to visit the abodes of affliction. In circumstances of bodily disorder, he often 
 acted the part of a physician as well as a friend. But his kindness was not 
 confined to the bodies of his fellow-creatures, it extended to their spiritual and 
 immortal part. He carefully watched over the morals of his neighbourhood, 
 and used his advice, his admonitions, and influence, to discountenance, immorality 
 of all kinds, and to promote the knowledge and practice of religion. — In short, 
 he was an universal blessing to the village where he resided, in every part of 
 which are to be seen the pleasing monuments of his munificence and taste. His 
 liberality extended also to adjacent places, in which there are many who will call 
 him blessed. Nor was it confined to persons of his own religious persuasion, 
 but comprehended the necessitous and deserving of all parties ; while he was 
 particularly useful in serving the interest of the Christian society to which he 
 belonged. What wonder if such a man were universally beloved ?" 
 
 And universally beloved, he most unquestionably was, in the neighbourhood 
 in which he lived ; happy in a private station, whilst diffusing happiness to all 
 around him. From that neighbourhood, after having once returned to it, he 
 does not appear to have been long absent, during the period of his private life, 
 which this chapter of its history embraces; except that on his recovery from 
 his illness so far as to enable him to bear the fatigue of a long journey, he 
 endeavored to forward the complete re-establishment of his health, by taking, 
 in the summer and autumn of the year 1772, a short tour through Guernsey, 
 Jersey, and the smaller dependant islands of the English channel. The winter 
 of that year he passed partly with his friends in London, but principally in 
 retirement at ('aldington. Nor from the privacy of the walk of life, which he, 
 from choice, adopted there, would he, in all human probability, ever have 
 emerged, or even have wished to emerge, had not the sphere of his benevolent 
 
120 
 
 exertions for the good of his fellow-creatures, been providentially enlarged, hv 
 his being called to the office of high sheriff of the county of Bedford, at the 
 annual appointment of persons to fill that high and important situation, for the 
 various counties in the kingdom, in the year 1773. How he came to be nomi- 
 nated to such a post, I am utterly uninformed. There was, however, a very 
 idle story formerly in circulation,* of his having declined taking its duties upon 
 him, on the ground of his being a protestant dissenter, and therefore prevented 
 by scruples of conscience from receiving the sacrament, according to the 
 rites of the church of England, as he was required by law to do ; and that upon 
 stating these scruples to Earl Bathurst, then Lord Chancellor, he received from 
 him, an assurance of indemnification from any prosecution that might be com- 
 menced against him for not having complied with the provisions of the act of 
 parliament establishing this test of orthodoxy, in those who are permitted to 
 take any, the smallest share, in the administration of the laws of their countrv. 
 But this was an assurance, which Lord Bathurst was too well acquainted with 
 the free constitution of that country, ever to have given ; knowing, as a lawyer 
 of his eminence must have known, that it was one he never could have redeemed : 
 the power of dispensing with any law, however revolting to humanity, or 
 opposed to the more enlightened sentiments of this age ; no longer vesting, as 
 he must have been well aware, in chancellor, or prince, or king, since the day 
 on which the obstinate and infatuated maintenance of this very doctrine, lost 
 the hereditary and legitimate monarch of these realms his throne, and trans- 
 ferred his sceptre to a family not in the direct order of lineal descent. Mr. 
 Howard, therefore, took upon himself the office, whose duties he discharged in 
 so exemplary a manner, at all hazards ; trusting, no doubt, to the liberal opinions 
 which began to prevail even in those days, to protect him from the pains and 
 penalties of an act, which, in times as factious as they were intolerant, first 
 found a place upon our statute books ; which an unaccountable dread of innova- 
 tion, producing an adherence alike to the folly, and the wisdom, the injustice, 
 
 * Univ. Mag. Vcl. LXXXVI, p. 174. 
 
121 
 
 and justice of our ancestors, has still permitted them to disgrace. At no period 
 of his life did he indeed, suffer himself to be diverted from his duty, by the 
 apprehension of any personal danger or difficulty, in which he might be involved 
 by resolutely entering upon its discharge. Yet those which he ran the risk of 
 incurring, upon the present occasion, were neither few, nor inconsiderable; 
 the legislature having left it in the power of any bigotted, or mercenary indi- 
 vidual, who might choose to sue for his own use and benefit, to subject him 
 to a penalty of five hundred pounds ; besides disqualifying him for ever from 
 holding any, the lowest office in church or state ; — from suing a person who 
 should inflict the most grievous civil injury upon him ; — from prosecuting the 
 most just demands on those who wrongfully withheld from him his most 
 acknowleged rights ; from being guardian to any child ; or executor or admi- 
 nistrator to any person whatever, even though the ties of the nearest kindred, 
 the bonds of the closest friendship, or a character for the highest ability and 
 integrity, should point him out as the man of all others, upon whom these trusts 
 should most fitly and most naturally devolve. And all this might be done too, 
 without the judge before whom the suit for the recovery of this penalty was tried, 
 or any other person or authority in the realm, an act of the legislature in its 
 three estates alone excepted, having the power to mitigate these dreadful pains 
 and penalties, which might be the while, as in the case before us they actually 
 were, incurred in the pursuit of objects the most benevolent ; — the discharge of 
 duties the most honorable ; — the correction of abuses the most flagrant ; — the 
 furtherance of public improvements, the most salutary that ingenuity could 
 devise, or the purest patriotism, the most unbounded love for the whole bro- 
 therhood of man could prompt any one to undertake. Yet even to the pre- 
 sent day, this is the established and acknowledged law of a land of liberty 
 and toleration; — the deliberate enactment of a legislative code, professing 
 to derive all its authority over the consciences of men from that benign system 
 of religion, whose fundamental precept, whose distinguishing characteristic, 
 whose peculiar test is the love exhibited by its followers, in all their actions 
 
 K 
 
122 
 
 one towards another ; knowing in the exercise of this Christian virtue neither 
 distinction of sect or party, of name or denomination amongst men ; " neither 
 Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond 
 nor free." I will not, however, pause to examine the justice or propriety of 
 these enactments — for my feeble, but public and decided testimony has some 
 years since been borne against provisions of a similar nature, where they would, 
 at first sight, seem to admit of a somewhat better justification ;* and I have as 
 yet seen no reason whatever for altering my opinion upon the subject. I shall 
 therefore content myself with remarking, that, as it respects alike the argu- 
 ments and the motives of the majority of those men — (some of them I know are 
 cast in a more honorable mould) — who can contemplate with complacency, in 
 all its extent, this rigorous proscription of so large a proportion of their coun- 
 trymen and fellow Christians, merely for differing from them in some of the 
 outward forms and ceremonies of their religion, whilst they are fully agreed 
 upon all its most essential doctrines ;— who view too with horror, the most 
 distant approaches of a more liberal and a more scriptural system of legislation 
 — the conviction of my judgment, as well as the language of my heart may be 
 briefly expressed in the words of the patriarch, " O my soul come not thou 
 into their secret ; unto their assembly mine honor be not thou united."-}' 
 
 No sooner had Mr. Howard entered upon his new office, than with the zeal 
 and promptitude which characterized all his proceedings, he applied himself to the 
 active discharge of its duties, which he resolved not to leave, as they generally 
 are left, to an under sheriff, whose chief object is but too often to put as much 
 money as he can into his pocket, by performing all the drudgery, and taking 
 upon himself all the responsibility of a station, the honor and expense of which, 
 and the honor and expense alone, belong to his principal. Nor would either 
 
 » In " An Historical Account of the Laws enacted against the Catholics in England and Ireland, with 
 copious notes, tending to illustrate the views and cenduct of the Church of England, the Presbyterians and 
 Sectarians, with regard to Toleration when in the enjoyment of power." t Genesis, XLIX. 6. 
 
123 
 
 his temperament or his principles permit him, indeed, to rest satisfied that lie 
 had done all that could be required of a high sheriff, when, preceded by 
 his javelin men, and followed by a long retinue of the principal gentlemen 
 of the county, he had, twice a year, paraded in his carriage to meet the judges 
 on their entrance into the circuit town, and to escort them to their lodgings, 
 amidst the merry pealing of the bells, which in a few short days might toll the 
 knell of some unhappy wretch, then immured within the walls of a prison, and 
 whose righteous, but dreadful doom it would be a part of their fearful commis- 
 sion to pronounce. He had no wife whose vanity could be gratified by reign- 
 ing the unrivalled queen of an assize ball, at which all the belles and beaux of 
 the neighbourhood, and many a gay Lothario from more distant parts, trip it 
 merrily on the light fantastic toe — it may be on the very eve of a publio execu- 
 tion, which ere their jocund dance has well ended, and the gay assembly have 
 separated to their various homes, may launch some miserable fellow-creature 
 to the dread confines of an eternal world. His Henrietta was not: — and had 
 she been spared to witness the elevation of her beloved husband to a post which 
 she would have known him to be so well qualified to fill, there can be little 
 doubt but that she would have joined with him in opinion that these i-ejoicings 
 and gay amusements did not altogether accord with the solemnity that should pre- 
 vail at such a season, and might, therefore, easily have been better timed. Such, 
 however, has been the practice established for a long series of years; but whether 
 Mr. Howard, as far as he had a discretionary power upon the subject, complied 
 with it or not, I have no means of ascertaining. In either case we may be 
 assured, that he was deficient in no proper mark of respect for those, who 
 charged with the king's commission to administer justice in the various parts of 
 his dominions, at a distance from the capital, where it is ordinarily dispensed, 
 came into the county of which he was then the chief civil officer of the crown, 
 as the representatives of the sovereign in his courts, and who upon this account, 
 as well as from the veneration due to their own characters as judges of the 
 land, were most justly entitled to every attention in the discharge of their 
 
 r 2 
 
124 
 
 arduous and most responsible office that could possibly be shewn to them. His 
 wand, therefore, was regularly to be seen in the court ; but, without the insignia 
 of his office, he was as regularly to be met with in the prison, examining into 
 the condition and government of its every part, even to its inmost cell. The 
 consequence of this minute inspection of the gaol, which was then nominally 
 under his official keeping and jurisdiction, was that devotion of every faculty of 
 his existence to the correction of the abuses existing in similar institutions, and 
 to the promotion of the comfort and reformation of the prisoners confined within 
 their walls, which has immortalized his name, as the friend of those who had no 
 friend ; — the Philanthropist of the World. The origin of such a devotion to 
 this singular and untrodden path of benevolence, and the first steps taken in its 
 pursuit, are thus recorded in the introduction to the work which gave to the 
 public its results; — and when we compare the account of those first steps with 
 what was afterwards accomplished, it surely affords another useful lesson in 
 addition to those which the page of history has often read to us, never to despise 
 the day of small things. " The distress of prisoners, of which there are few," 
 says Mr. Howard, in the prefatory remarks to his State of Prisons,* " who 
 have not some imperfect idea, came more immediately under my notice when I 
 was Sheriff of the county of Bedford ; and the circumstance which excited me 
 to activity in their behalf was, the seeing some, who by the verdict of juries were 
 declared not guilty, some, on whom the grand jury did not find such an appear- 
 ance of guilt as subjected them to trial ; and some whose prosecutors did not ap-' 
 pear against them ; after having been confined for months, dragged back to gaol, 
 and locked up again till they should pay sundry fees to the gaoler, the clerk of 
 assize, &c. In order to redress this hardship, I applied to the justices of the 
 county for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees. The bench were properly 
 affected with the grievance, and willing to grant the relief desired : but they 
 wanted a precedent for charging the county with the expence. I therefore rode 
 into several neighbouring counties in search of a precedent ; but I soon learned that 
 
 * P. 1, 2. 
 
125 
 
 the same injustice was practised in them ; and looking into the prisons, I beheld 
 scenes of calamity, which I grew daily more and more anxious to alleviate." 
 
 The principal local defects which he noticed in the construction of the gaol 
 at Bedford, were that the two dungeons for felons, from their being eleven feet 
 underground, were often very damp; that the court yard was common to 
 prisoners of both sexes — a most improper circumstance, but before he first 
 pointed the public attention to its incorrectness, one of too frequent occurrence ; 
 the want of apartments for the gaoler, and of an infirmary.* Every prisoner, 
 whether debtor or felon, whatever might be the circumstances under which he 
 was committed, or however justly he might be entitled to his discharge out of 
 custody, by the clearest establishment of his innocence, or the payment of the 
 debt for which he was confined, was compelled to pay fifteen shillings and four 
 pence to the gaoler, and two shillings to the turnkey, before he could ob- 
 tain his liberty. An extortion this, which gross, and manifestly unjust as it is 
 upon the very face of it, had been so generally sanctioned by long continued, 
 and uninterrupted usage, that on his visits to the different places of confinement 
 in England, Mr. Howard scarcely met with a solitary exception to its universal 
 prevalence ; so that in tracing the progress of his inquiries into the extent of 
 this, and other abuses in the regulation of prisons, it must be taken for granted, 
 that fees of this description were every where regularly demanded ; and that 
 the only difference he noticed, was some slight variation in their amount, 
 except, indeed, where any of the circumstances of their payment shall seem to 
 require more particular notice. The clauses of the act against the sale of 
 spiritous liquors were not hung up in this gaol as they ought to have been, an 
 omission also of very general occurrence. " When I was Sheriff," says our 
 Philanthropist, " I was culpably ignorant of that act ;"y so ready was he to 
 acknowledge his own faults, whilst reluctanctly compelled, for the good of his 
 fellow-creatures, to expose the faults of others, 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 243, 4. t lb. p. 244. 
 
126 
 
 It would seem to have been on, or about the 4th of November, 1773, that he 
 took the first of his shorter excursions for the purpose of visiting the gaols of 
 some of the counties, either immediately adjoining to, or not very remote from 
 his own ; since on that, and the following day, we find him inspecting those 
 at Cambridge and Huntingdon, the places nearest to his abode. In neither of 
 these did he meet with any thing remarkable. The first was not very secure, 
 and besides the gaoler, the sheriff himself was entitled to a small fee on the 
 discharge of every prisoner.* It was also without a chaplain. In the latter, 
 the gaoler had no salary except as keeper of the Bridewell and Town Gaol, 
 which were united with the county prison. The two dungeons for men 
 and women felons were both under ground, the one descending by nine, and 
 the other by seven steps. The prison was too small, but on the whole, he 
 found it remarkably clean. — It had no infirmary .f 
 
 From the 15th to the 27th of this month, both inclusive, he was 
 occupied in visiting the gaols for the counties of Northampton, Leicester, 
 Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and 
 Buckingham. At Northampton, the gaoler/ instead of having a salary, paid 
 40/. a year to the county for his place; though as keeper of the Bridewell, 
 which was united with the gaol, he had 36/. 10 s. a year. The felons court- 
 yard was close and confined ; they had no straw allowed them ; and though 
 some commodious rooms had recently been built for their use, there was still 
 a dungeon eleven steps under ground, in which some of them were con- 
 fined .% The chapel was the upper room in the gaoler's house ; a circumstance, 
 upon which Mr. Howard,§ with hi3 characteristic humanity, and minute 
 attention to the comfort of those unfortunate people, as far as may consist with 
 their proper restraint, observes — " it is painful for Prisoners loaded with irons to 
 go up and down stairs." The next stage in this philanthropic tour was Leicester ; 
 and there the situation of the gaol was most miserable ; — so confined, indeed, 
 * State of Prison*, 1st Edit. p. 248, 9. t lb- P- 245, 6. i lb. p. 308, 9. \ lb. p. 309. 
 
127 
 
 that it could not be made either convenient or healthy. The free ward for 
 debtors who could not afford to pay for better accommodation, was a long dun- 
 geon called the cellar, down seven steps ; damp, as might naturally be expected, 
 and having but two windows in it, the largest about a foot square. From a tract 
 printed in 1691, under the title of the " Cry of the Oppressed," to which Mr. 
 Howard refers in one of the notes to his State of Prisons, it appears that this very 
 dungeon was then in existence, and was complained of by a debtor confined in 
 it, as damp and unwholesome ; from which, and from some other facts there 
 related, it would appear, as he justly remarks, that some of the incon- 
 veniences which he observed in gaols had been of long standing. They 
 would, however, have been of much longer, we may add to this modest and 
 unassuming statement, had it not been for his unwearied exertions to correct 
 and remove them. But this was not all • the rooms in which the felons were 
 confined night and day, were also dungeons from five to seven steps under 
 ground In these they slept upon thick mats, which with the addition of 
 coverlids would have been better than straw, but without these, even of the 
 thinnest description, they must have been cold and comfortless indeed. The 
 whole prison we cannot, after this, be surprized to learn was close and offensive* 
 — the court-yard small, — with no chapel for the prisoners; — no salary for the 
 gaoler.* The gaol at Nottingham is situated on the side of a hill : down about 
 twenty-five steps were three rooms for criminals who could pay for them • but 
 those who could not, were compelled to descend by twelve more, into some 
 deep dungeons cut in the sandy rock for their reception. Only one of them 
 however, was used, and that was twenty-one feet long, thirteen broad, and 
 seven feet high ;|— a fit place truly for the abode of human beings for days, and 
 weeks, and months— it may be years! To these two wretched places of con- 
 finement, that at Derby presented a striking, and a pleasing contrast. It had 
 been erected about fifteen years in a very healthy situation ; — the court-yards 
 of the debtors and of the felons were properly separated ; — it had a neat chapel, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 276, 7. t lb. p. 288. 
 
128 
 
 an infirmary, and a bath, in which the prisoners were compelled to wash 
 before the assizes and quarter sessions. The keeper had a salary, which in 
 comparison with those allowed in other places, was liberal in its amount, as 
 was also the allowance to the pi-isoners, which was half as much again as that 
 of some of the places already mentioned, with this further advantage that it 
 was given alike to the debtor and the felon, whereas in many of the other 
 prisons the poor wretches of the former class confined within their walls, were 
 for any provision made for their support, very quietly left to starve. Here, on 
 the contrary, in addition to the prison allowance, a person went round the 
 county about Christmas, collecting for these debtors, at the houses of the dif- 
 ferent gentlemen, who entered their names and the amount of their donations 
 in a book presented to them for the purpose. The county also allowed eight 
 guineas a year for straw, and annually gave two hundred weight of coals in 
 common between the prisoners of both descriptions. There were yet some few 
 defects even here, the debtor's court required to be further separated from the 
 Bridewell ; — their floors were tarras, not easily washed ; — the night room of the 
 men felons was a dungeon, though but three steps under ground, whilst those of 
 the women were too close to be wholesome.* At Stafford, Mr. Howard found 
 both the felon's court-yard, and the whole gaol much too small for the number 
 of prisoners which the place contained. The dungeon too, though but two steps 
 lower than the passage, was close ; there was no infirmary, and the gaoler had 
 no salary. The allowance both to debtors and felons, was, however, even 
 more liberal than at Derby, and he was gratified at seeing plenty of clean straw 
 in the dungeon, owing to what he denominates " the generous and exemplary 
 practice of not farming it, but allowing the gaoler to order it whenever wanted, 
 and the county paying for it themselves."! The gaoler also, very much to his 
 credit, had abolished the garnish usually demanded of the felons. Of Litchfield 
 city gaol, the defects are thus briefly stated, " rooms too small and close ; no 
 yard ; no water ; no straw ; — might be improved upon the ground behind it.";j 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. 282, 3. t lb. p. 326, 7. $ lb. p. 329. 
 
129 
 
 Nor was the county gaol at Warwick in a much better condition ; the night 
 room of the men felons being an octagonal dungeon, about twenty-one feet in 
 diameter, down thirty-one steps, close, damp, and offensive. The gaoler had 
 no salary ; the sick prisoners no infirmary. The custom which had formerly 
 prevailed of loading even the women felons with irons, was then, however, 
 discontinued; and the judicious practice of fixing the allowance of the prisoners 
 by weight, and not by the ever varying price of the loaf, was also adopted 
 here.* The castle at Worcester, seems, on the whole, not to have been so ill- 
 adapted to the purposes it was iutended to answer,, as wefe some of the places 
 of confinement which this active inspector of their condition had recently 
 visited. The dungeon for the male felons was twenty-six steps under ground, 
 but it had over it an aperture into the yard, covered with an iron grate, and was 
 also cooled and freshened, to a very considerable degree, by a hand- ventilator, 
 which the prisoners cheerfully worked a quarter of an hour before they went 
 in, and after they had come out of it. Yet, notwithstanding these prudent 
 precautions, the surgeon, who had some years before caught the gaol fever 
 here, was so fearful of descending into it, that whenever any person confined 
 there was sick, he ordered him to be brought out for his inspection. There was, 
 moreover, no infirmary here ; — the gaoler had no salary — the debtors no allow- 
 ance. As was the case at Warwick, a considerable portion of the adjoining land 
 belonged to the county, and might easily have been appropriated to improve- 
 ments, some of which were much wanted. \ The condition in which Mr. Howard 
 found the castle at Gloucester was wretched in the extreme. The night room, 
 or main, for the male felons, though up many stone steps, was close and dark ; 
 the floor so ruinous that it could not be washed, and the whole prison, indeed, 
 much out of repair. Many prisoners died there in the course of the year, a 
 circumstance which he attributes in part to the large dung-hill, which was 
 constantly to be seen opposite to the steps leading to the sleeping rooms of the 
 prisoners ; though it cannot be doubted that the singular refinement in 
 • State of Prisons, IstEdit. p. 269, 2?0. t lb. i>. 321, 2. 
 
130 
 
 economy which prevented the attendance of any medical man in this prison, 
 however emergent might be the case requiring his assistance, without the 
 direction of a magistrate, must have greatly contributed to this mortality. The 
 gaoler, as usual, had no salary — the debtors no allowance.* The city gaol was 
 too small for the prisoners often confined within its walls ; the natural conse- 
 quences of which was a state of discipline, or rather of indiscipline, totally 
 subversive of all the effects such places were destined to produce. Debtors, felons, 
 and petty offenders, — young and old, — penitent and hardened, — all huddled 
 together in one confined room ; the women separated from the men but during 
 the night, and all of them without any court-yard to walk in — such was the 
 miserable scene that here presented itself. -j* Nor was the prospect much 
 improved at Oxford, the city which our benevolent traveller next visited in 
 the course of his journey. The debtor's apartments in the castle were small, 
 and not enough in number for the prisoners generally confined there. They 
 had no free ward, but even those who slept in the tower upon their own beds, 
 were obliged to pay eighteen pence a week for the privilege of being kept there 
 against their will, because they had no money to pay their just debts ; yet were 
 they obliged to find it to pay their gaoler. At Aylesbury, he found but one 
 court-yard for prisoners of all descriptions ; no free ward for debtors ; no in- 
 firmary. The gaoler had no salary, but contracted with the county to supply 
 both debtors and felons with a pound of bread a day each, and two hot dinners 
 a week, besides conveying transports to London, — at 70 1, a year. J 
 
 From Aylesbury Mr. Howard returned home to Cardington, having wit- 
 nessed, in the course of his journey, enough of the misery existing in our 
 prisons, to induce him to form the benevolent resolution to obtain a more 
 perfect knowledge of the particulars and extent of it, by enlarging the sphere 
 of his observations to most of the county gaols in England. Ten days had 
 accordingly scarcely elapsed, from the completion of his former tour, ere be 
 * State of Prisons. 1st Edit. p. 343, 4. f lb. p. 350. J lb. p. 241, 2. 
 
131 
 
 set off upon a third, in the course of which he visited the gaols for the counties 
 of Hertford, Berks, AVilts, Dorset, Hants, and Sussex, being out from the 9th to 
 the 17th of December inclusive. The c first of these, since pulled down, con- 
 tained two small day-rooms for men felons, in which they were always locked 
 up, without fire in winter, or exercise at any time, being moreover as closely 
 confined at night in their dungeons, the one of which was eighteen, the other 
 nineteen steps under-ground. The court-yard, which was small, was entirely 
 appropriated to the use of debtors and of women felons. There was neither 
 infirmary or chapel attached to the gaol ; and the keeper, instead of a salary, 
 had the improper advantage of farming the felons from the county.* At 
 Reading, the court-yards of the debtors and felons were separated by iron rails. 
 The former, however, had no free ward, or allowance ; nor had any of the 
 prisoners straw. A very good custom prevailed here of stripping all the felons 
 when they first came into the prison, washing them, and putting on them 
 cloaths provided by the county, which they wore until called to appear 
 upon their trial, when their own cloaths, which were ticketed and hung up 
 for the purpose, were restored to them ; and those belonging to the county were 
 washed, mended, and purified in an oven, for the use of future criminals.^" 
 The gaol at Salisbury had but one yard, and no day-room for either felons or 
 debtors, each of whom had their fire on a brick hearth raised in their respective 
 lodging- rooms, without chimneys. The women felons had a separate and 
 more commodious room. Just without the prison-gate was a chain passed 
 through a round staple fixed in the wall, at each end of which a debtor, padlocked 
 by the leg, stood offering to those who passed by, nets, laces, purses, &c. made 
 in the prison. Mr. Howard was told also of a still more singular custom which 
 prevailed here, of permitting felons chained together to go about the city at 
 Christmas, one of them carrying a sack or basket for food, another a box for 
 money. That part of the prison which was meant for the county bridewell 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 211, 212. t lb. p. 311, 312. 
 
 »1 
 
132 
 
 not being secure, petty offenders were at this time confined in the gaol. As 
 keeper of the former, the county very properly allowed the gaoler 10/. a 
 year in lieu of the fees of prisoners acquitted at Quarter Sessions. Those de- 
 manded at the assizes before any man whom a jury of his country had declared 
 not to he guilty of the crime laid to his charge, could avail himself of his 
 acquittal so as to he released from his confinement, were still most exorbitant, 
 amounting to a fine of 1/. 6 s. 8d. for being innocent of any crime of which the 
 law takes cognizance. The gaoler had no salary ; but, instead of it, made 
 what he could of farming the diet of his prisoners.* Only one yard, out of 
 repair, and dirty ; such is the short account of the state in which Mr. Howard 
 found the gaol at Dorchesteiyf whence he passed on to Winchester, where he saw 
 a destructive dungeon for felons, eleven steps under ground, dark, damp, and close. 
 In it the surgeon to the gaol informed him that twenty prisoners had died of 
 the gaol fever in one year, his predecessor himself having also fallen a victim 
 to the malignancy of the same distemper. The felons confined here had the 
 advantage of a very liberal benefaction, in meat, bread, and beer, regularly 
 distributed by the college in this city every week, as it would seem, from time 
 immemorial. The gaoler was allowed two guineas a year for keeping a bread 
 account, to check the baker ; the justices themselves also seeing into this matter., 
 by which means a very considerable saving to the county was annually produced.^ 
 In the gaol at Horsham, the rooms were too small, except the free ward for 
 debtors. It had no yard, though there was ground enough behind the gaol to 
 make one ; no straw ; no chaplain, but a clergyman to attend condemned 
 criminals, and who for his trouble had 5 1, a year.§ The last place which our 
 traveller inspected in the course of this journey was the bridewell for the 
 county of Surrey, at Guildford, in which he found neither bedding, straw, nor 
 work for the prisoners, who, upon their entrance into the prison, were yet 
 compelled to pay a shilling each for the use of the court-yard, which was 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 360, 361. t lb. p. 367. J lb. p. 354. ^ lb. p. 228. 
 
133 
 
 rendered very disagreeable by the want of a sewer. Two of the rooms had an 
 iron grated lattice in the roof, about five feet by four, with an open turret 
 above, — a very useful contrivance for freshening them.* 
 
 From Guildford it is probable that Mr. Howard proceeded to London, and, 
 after spending the sabbath there, went on to Pinner to take his son home to 
 Cardington for the Christmas holidays, he having been removed from Cheshunt 
 to a school at this place, kept by a very respectable dissenting minister of the name 
 of Madgwic, somewhere, as I should think, about a year, or a year and a half 
 prior to this period. My reason for conjecturing that he did so, is, that from the 
 17th of December, 1774, to the 23d of January in the following year, a period 
 which would embrace the time usually allowed for their vacation at this season 
 of the year in academies of the description of that in which his son was 
 placed, — he seems to have laid aside his philanthropic tours, which he resumed 
 the very day upon which, according to the best calculation that can now be 
 made, his child would leave him to return to school. His first visit was at 
 that time to Okeham, in Rutlandshire, where he found the small prison which 
 answered the triple purpose of county and town gaol, and of county bridewell, 
 empty. One of the felons' night rooms being small and close, the gaoler, by 
 whose family the office had been held in a direct line for four generations, had 
 very considerately made apertures in the door, both at top and bottom to let in 
 the air. Ifi two rooms up stairs, strongly planked with oaks, were beds for the 
 debtors, and there was also a large work room on the ground floor.f From this 
 prison, for the smallest, he passed on to that belonging to the largest county in 
 the kingdom, the castle (St York ; where he found the felons' court-yard small 
 and without water, the pump being just withoutside the palisades; the prison, 
 therefore, was dirty: " indeed," as he justly remarks, " a clean prison is scarcely 
 ever seen, where the water is to be brought in by the gaoler's servants." The 
 felons' cells were in general about seven feet and a half by six and a half, and eight 
 • Stale of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 240. t lb. p. 307. 
 
134 
 
 and a half high ; close and dark, having only a hole about four inches by eight 
 over the door, or a few perforations of about an inch in diameter in it, to let in 
 what little air could find its way through the passages and entries into which 
 they opened. Yet in most of these confined places, three prisoners were 
 generally locked up for the night, which in winter lasted from fourteen to 
 sixteen hours, with nothing but straw spread on the stone floor of their dungeon 
 to lie upon. To add to the loathsomeness of their confinement, a sewer in one 
 of the passages often made them very offensive. The infirmary, near the gate 
 of the prison, was but a single room, so that when prisoners of the one sex were 
 there, those of the other were excluded, as happened to be the case with a sick 
 man at the time of this visit. In the spacious area of the castle, Mr. Howard 
 was, however, much gratified by finding a noble prison for debtors, which he truly 
 says " does honour to the county." The rooms were airy and healthy ; those 
 on the ground floor for masters'-side debtors full sixteen feet square, and near 
 twelve feet high ; whilst of those above, as large in size, though not quite so 
 high, one or two were for the use of the debtors on the common side. The 
 county paid a man ten pounds a year to inspect and weigh the bread, and to 
 deliver it out to the prisoners, as he constantly attended the gaol to do every 
 Tuesday and Friday.* The gaol for this city, and for its jurisdiction as a 
 county in itself, was, at this time in such a situation, that its visitor 
 declares it were in vain to offer any hints for its improvement, as it never 
 could be made a good one. The debtors' wards were on one side of the Ouse 
 bridge, the felons' on the other ; the former convenient, and their accommoda- 
 tion attainable at the cheap rate of six-pence a-week ; but all the latter close 
 and offensive. The wooden door of this part of the prison was left open in 
 the day time, to give its inhabitants a little air ; whilst at its inner one, which 
 was of grated iron, Mr. Howard himself saw liquors handed in to those, who 
 seemed to have had enough before. The prison had no water, except when 
 it had too much; that is, in a high flood, when it overflowed the rooms, f 
 • State of Prisons, let Edit. p. 396, 7. t lb. p. 404, 5. 
 
13S 
 
 Turning his steps towards home, he visited the castle at Lincoln, which he 
 found to be out of repair ; probably, as he suggests, because the county in- 
 tended to build a new prison. Its floors were of tarras, and could not be 
 cleaned; the passages but six feet wide; and their windows close glazed. 
 The free ward for debtors, was but a room at the end of the building, 
 serving as a thoroughfare to sundry places : for, first, by a trap-door in its 
 pavement of small stones, you went, down ten steps, to two vaulted dungeons 
 for criminals, the first called " the pit," and within it, the condemned cell, 
 both dirty and offensive ; — secondly, you passed through it to the women felons' 
 ward ; — thirdly, to the men felons' sizeable day room ; — fourthly, to the small 
 court, without water or sewer ; — and, fifthly, to a room for the closer confine- 
 ment of debtors who did not behave themselves well. The gaoler had no 
 salary; but farmed the victualling of his prisoners.* The city gaol was 
 better constructed, and better regulated. The felons' dungeons, which 
 were but a little underground, were furnished with bedsteads, that their 
 wretched inmates might not be compelled to sleep upon the damp earth floor : 
 yet it had neither court-yard, water accessible to the prisoners, nor straw. f The 
 state of the gaol at Huntingdon, which Mr. Howard visited in his way to Ely, 
 has already been described : that at the latter place, was in a somewhat better con- 
 dition. It is the property of the Bishop, as lord of the franchise of the isle, and 
 had been partly rebuilt, about two years previous to this visit, by the then prelate 
 of the see, " upon complaint of the cruel method, which, for want of a safe gaol, 
 the keeper took to secure his prisoners. This was by ohaining them down on 
 their backs upon a floor, across which were several iron bars ; with an iron collar 
 with spikes about their necks, and a heavy iron bar over their legs. An 
 excellent magistrate, James Collyer, Esq. presented an account of the case, 
 accompanied with a drawing, to the King ; with which his Majesty was much 
 affected, and gave immediate orders for a proper inquiry and redress." But 
 though this savage practice, more characteristic of the familiars of the inqui- 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 295, 6. t Ibid. p. 303, 4. 
 
136 
 
 sition than of an English gaoler, the servant of an English bishop, was thus 
 happily abolished, by the direct interference of a prince, to whose generous 
 spirit such cruelty could not but be abhorrent, — the prison might yet have 
 been materially improved, had its right reverend owner condescended to have 
 included it even in his triennial visitations of his diocese. The only window in the 
 cell, or night room of the felons, was but a foot square ; their court-yard had 
 an offensive sewer in it, but no water; the debtors were without a free ward; 
 the prison without either straw, or an infirmary.* In the gaol for the city 
 and county of the city of Norwich, Mr. Howard found but one court-yard ; 
 many rooms for masters'-side debtors, and one for those on the common side, 
 who were freemen of the city ; but for those who did not enjoy this privilege, 
 no place to sit in but the felons' day room, which was thirteen steps under 
 ground — their dungeons, or night rooms, descending eleven steps lower, and 
 one of them being quite dark, the other almost so ; the womens' dungeon, ten 
 steps under ground, was, however, furnished with a fire-place ; but they had 
 no separate day room, though the keeper's stable would have made them 
 a very good one. Instead of having any salary, the gaoler of this prison paid 
 the under sheriff of the city forty pounds a year for his place. Gaol delivery 
 but once a year ; allowance for straw, for the whole prison, only a guinea 
 annually .*j* In the castle in this city, the gaol for the county of Norfolk, he 
 descended into a dungeon for men felons, down a ladder of eight steps, in 
 which there would often be an inch or two of water. There was also a small 
 room for women, " which kept them," he tells us, " always separate from the 
 men, except when delicacy would most of all require it." There were, how- 
 ever, two airy rooms for the sick, so distinct from the rest of the prison, that 
 there could be no danger of spreading any infection thence. These had 
 a nurse, or matron, to attend, and to provide for them, when the surgeon 
 ordered it, both gruel, milk pottage, and extra firing : it was also her business 
 to see that the prisoners were duly served with their bread, which was remark- 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 252, 3. t lb. p. 257, 8. 
 
137 
 
 ably good, and she too ordered the straw, which was not farmed, but paid for 
 per load by the county. The gaoler had no salary ; but, on the other hand, 
 as in the city, paid to the under sheriff thirty guineas annually for his office; 
 but, notwithstanding such a temptation to abuse his trust, he was a humane 
 man, and much respected by his prisoners. Here felons, as well as debtors, 
 were permitted to sell, at the grates of their separate day rooms, laces, purses, 
 nets, &c. of their own manufacture ; * as was also the case at Ipswich, where 
 many other good regulations prevailed. The night room, for instance, was 
 furnished with beds, described " as excellently contrived for cleanliness and 
 health ;" each prisoner being moreover furnished with a crib bedstead, for 
 which the county provided a straw bed and a blanket. The women, however, 
 had no separate day room, and the gaol but one court yard.f 
 
 « 
 From Ipswich Mr. Howard proceeded to London, where he continued 
 about a fortnight, with the exception of a short excursion to Colchester, for 
 the purpose of inspecting the castle there, which had formerly been the gaol for 
 the county of Essex. The portion of it then occupied as a bridewell, he found 
 to be tolerably commodious, except that the court yard, which was but little 
 used by prisoners, had no water. The gaoler had no fees, and his prisoners no 
 employment. J During his stay in the metropolis, he also visited the new 
 gaol for the county of Surrey, then recently erected in Horsemonger-lane, in 
 which the rooms for debtors were very convenient, the gaoler taking proper 
 care to prevent their being crowded with the wives and children of his pri- 
 soners. For these prisoners there was a court yard, into which felons were 
 not admitted, except in the instance of a few, whom the gaoler had reasons — 
 of what description we are not informed, but may readily guess — for indulging 
 with that distinction : — but both the men and women felons had a sepa- 
 rate court yard of their own. The prison consisted of nineteen rooms, some of 
 them large, yet were they not sufficient for the number of prisoners which it 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Kdiu p. 254, 5. t U>. P- 264. t lb. p. 219, 220. 
 
 T 
 
138 
 
 contained ; so that some of the men felons were obliged occasionally to be put 
 into rooms in the women's ward. No bedding ; no straw ; no infirmary ; no 
 chapel, divine service being performed in a parlour, too small for the purpose, 
 being but about 16 feet square:* such is the list of some other of the principal 
 defects in a gaol, recently erected by a populous and opulent county, immediately 
 adjoining to the metropolis — a great part of which, with many of its largest 
 suburbs, is indeed embraced in its own limits. And if such abuses were suffered 
 to prevail in the very heart of the kingdom, the seat of government itself, 
 we cannot surely be surprised, that, at its western extremity, towards which 
 our Philanthropist next bent his benevolent course, these mischiefs should exist 
 to a similar, or even to a greater extent. At Exeter, therefore, the first place 
 which he stopped at, in the course of his journey, he found the felons' gaol 
 for the large county of Devon, to be the property of an individual, whose 
 family had long held it by grant from the dutchy of Cornwall, and who, at 
 this time, received for it, from the gaoler, a rent of twenty-two pounds per 
 annum, which he had no means of raising, but out of the fees extorted from 
 felons on their discharge, and the profit arising from the sale of small beer 
 in the gaol. The yard and the prison itself were too confined ; and the three 
 night dungeons, though but three steps under ground, were close and un- 
 healthy, their windows being too small. An infirmary had lately been built ; 
 but the stairs which led up to it, were intolerably bad. The surgeon told 
 Mr. Howard, that he was excused, by contract, from attending, in the dun- 
 geons, any prisoners who should have the gaol fever ; — a strange perversion 
 of the duties of an office, whose exertions ought to increase with increasing 
 danger ; striving, in all its stages, to arrest the march of pestilence to its dread- 
 ful height, instead of fearfully shrinking from its very first approach. This 
 gaol also afforded a striking proof of the cruelty and injustice of compelling 
 felons, before their discharge, to pay the fees of the gaol ; since two sailors, 
 whose crimes had appeared to the court, before whom they were tried, to be 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit p. 233. 
 
139 
 
 of so slight a nature, as to be adequately punished by the infliction of a flue 
 of but one shilling, were detained in prison until they had paid their fees of 
 1/. Is. Ad. each to the clerk of the peace, and of 14s. 4c?. to the gaoler. The 
 prisoners in general were properly occupied in making cabbage nets, at two 
 p^nce, and purses, of different sorts, at from four pence to seven pence a dozen, 
 the turnkey finding the twine and thread. Garnish too was here abolished ; 
 and " it was commendable and exemplary in the justices of this county," says 
 our author, " to fix the felons' allowance, by a certain weight of good bread, not 
 variable with the price :" the quantity, at this time being two-and-twenty 
 ounces a-day.* In the sheriff's ward, in this city, which was the prison for 
 the county debtors, the rooms were large and convenient, but out of repair ; 
 the court-yard spacious ; the rules for the economy of the prison good. The 
 keeper was a humane man, and > kept, at his own cost, a comfortable fire for 
 common-side debtors. He said, that he would gladly relinquish his fee 
 of fourteen shillings and four pence, on the discharge of each prisoner, for 
 a salary of one hundred pounds ; and told his visitor, that, during his time 
 (about twelve years), no more than four or five debtors had been able to obtain 
 from their creditors, their aliment of the groats. There was neither surgeon 
 to this gaol, nor chaplain ; but, on a Sunday, one of the prisoners read prayers, 
 and, as a reward for so doing, dined with his worthy keeper, f The gaol for 
 the city and county of the city of Exeter, contained, in the keeper's house, con- 
 venient apartments for debtors ; but those for felons, on the other side of the 
 street, were very close and offensive ; with neither chimney, court-yard, water, 
 or sewer. J Between the Friday and the Sunday, on which these visits to 
 the gaols in the city of Exeter were paid, our Philanthropist made an excur- 
 sion to Launceston, to inspect the gaol for the neighbouring county of Cornwall, 
 which, though built in a large court belonging to the old ruinous castle there, was 
 very small. The prison for this extensive county was, in fact, but a room, or 
 passage, twenty-three feet and a half, by seven and a half, with only one small 
 * State of Prisons, \a Edit p. 371, 2. t lb. p. .'i"3. J lb. p. 377, 8. 
 
 T 2 
 
140 
 
 window in it: opposite to that window there were, however, three dungeons, 
 or cages, about six and a half feet deep ; one nine feet long ; another about 
 eight ; the third not five ; the last for women. They were all, as we may 
 naturally suppose, very offensive. No chimney; no drains; no water ; damp 
 earth floors ; no infirmary ; the yard not secure, and prisoners seldom per- 
 mitted to go into it ; the whole prison out of repair, yet the gaoler living at a 
 distance : here we have a short, but a melancholy description of the wretched 
 state of this wretched prison. No wonder then, that the benevolent 
 being, who so accurately and so dauntlessly examined its condition, in the 
 hope of procuring its improvement, should find the gaol fever raging here 
 with such virulence, that the keeper, his assistant, and all the prisoners but 
 one, were sick of it. But a few years since, indeed, and many prisoners had 
 died of this malignant distemper ; — the gaoler and his wife in one night. 
 The provision of the prisoners confined in these pestilential abodes, was at all 
 times conveyed to them through a hole in the floor of the room above, which 
 was used as a chapel ; and when the fever was making its ravages amongst the 
 wretched inhabitants of the gloomy cells beneath, those who served them 
 often caught the dreadful contagion, which rapidly hurried them to their 
 graves. Yet, in such a loathsome and unhealthy place, had a woman, dis- 
 charged but just before this visit, by the grand jury making a collection for 
 her fees, been confined for three years, in consequence of proceedings instituted 
 against her " pro salute animce" in an ecclesiastical court. The King, of his 
 royal bounty, had offered two thousand pounds towards the erection of a new 
 gaol, in lieu of one which reflected so much disgrace upon the inhabitants of 
 this populous county ; but nothing had as yet been done, upon their parts, to 
 second his gracious intentions, for the relief of his suffering subjects.* The 
 gaol at Ilchester reflected somewhat more credit upon the county at whose 
 expence it was erected ; for its apartments were roomy, and it had no offensive 
 sewers. The court yards were, however, too little, though there was room to 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 382. 
 
T41 
 
 enlarge them ; and the men felons had no day room ; one which was fit, and 
 that seemed, indeed, to have been designed for the purpose, being taken pos- 
 session of by the gaoler for his own stable. The assizes never being held in 
 this town, though the only gaol for the county was there, prisoners were 
 removed for trial alternately to the bridewell at Taunton ; to Bridgwater, 
 where the prison was but one room ; or to Wells, where there was no prison 
 at all ; yet in the latter city they were sometimes kept for eight days.* The 
 gaol for the city and county of the city of Bristol, called Newgate, was 
 too small for the number of prisoners generally confined there ; its passages too 
 were very narrow, and it consequently required the utmost attention to keep 
 it healthy. Its visitor did not, however, find it sickly, but, on the contrary, 
 clean, considering that it was so crowded, and so close. There was no free 
 ward for debtors, the poorest of whom were obliged each of them to pay 
 tenpence halfpenny a week, for being kept in confinement on account of their 
 poverty not permitting them to pay their just and lawful debts. The dungeon 
 or night room for the male felons was eighteen steps under ground, close and 
 offensive ; its only furniture barrack bedsteads, without either bedding or straw. 
 An excellent minister of this city, the Rev. James Rouquet, officiated as chaplain 
 to this prison, and had done so for near twenty years without a salary, or any 
 other reward for his services than a solitary gratuity of twenty pounds ; yet was 
 he, as we are informed, " unwearied in attention to the spiritual and temporal 
 interestsof the prisoners," whose eternal welfare was doubtless the solerecompence 
 he sought. | At Hereford the county gaol contained no free ward for debtors, 
 though the apartments and court yard for those upon the masters'-side were 
 spacious, as was also the felons' court behind the gaol. Their night room was, 
 however, too close, and the chapel belonging to the prison very damp. During 
 the time that the gaoler had held his office, a space of forty years, not a single 
 debtor had ever, as he assured his visitor, obtained bis groats,;); yet had they no 
 allowance from the county. This was the case also at Monmouth, where their 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 888. f lb. p. 392. $ lb. p. 335, 6. 
 
142 
 
 rooms too were small. The night room of the felons was in this prison at the 
 top of the house, which was certainly a very improper situation for it, when 
 we consider the difficulty of going up and down stairs in irons, as were the 
 prisoners here compelled every day to do, the staircase being moreover narrow 
 and inconvenient, which was also a great obstacle to keeping the rooms clean 
 and healthy. So widely different indeed was the state of the prison at this time 
 to what it ought to have been, that the gaol fever had broken out in some of 
 its confined cells, and swept away, in its destructive progress, the keeper, 
 several of his prisoners, and some of their friends. There was, nevertheless, 
 neither infirmary, nor chaplain to the prison ; and the gaoler had no salary, 
 but contracted with the county for twenty pounds a year, to find each of the 
 felons with a pennyworth of bread a day,* a bargain by which, if he honestly 
 performed his part of it, he could not gain more than a pound or two at the 
 utmost ; whilst, on the other hand, he ran the risque of losing a much larger sum. 
 
 From Monmouth this indefatigable man, most probably, proceeded direct 
 to London, where he could scarcely have been above a day or two, before we 
 find him visiting, for the first time, the Wood-street compter, which was then 
 so crowded with debtors, that those on the common-side were sleeping on 
 beds placed upon broad shelves, in three rows or galleries one above the other, 
 in the same close apartment, at once their day room, night room, and kitchen ; 
 and which then contained thirty-nine debtors, seven of them with their wives 
 and children. The room withal was dark and dirty ; we need not, therefore, 
 be surprised to learn that it swarmed with bugs. Of the rooms in which felons 
 were confined one was a dark cell, and the whole were without bed or bedding, 
 except for those who were able and willing to pay a shilling a night for the use 
 of them. The prison was greatly out of repair, the main wall on one side being 
 propped and shored up ; — it had no infirmary, though there was a chapel 
 with a tap-room directly under it. In the beginning of the year 1773, eleven 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 339, 40. 
 
 
143 
 
 of the prisoners had died ; but since that period the gaol had been much more 
 healthy, from its being regularly visited by the common friend of Mr. Howard 
 and of his present biographer, the friend too of all the sons and daughters of 
 aflliction, the late Dr. Lettsom ; who, as physician to the General Dispensary, 
 was requested by the governors of that charitable institution to give the 
 prisoners confined in this compter the advantage of his professional attendance; 
 in the course of which it is almost needless to add, on the testimony of 
 Mr. Howard, that he secured their respect and esteem.* 
 
 The wretched state of our gaols, and the still more wretched condition of 
 their inhabitants, would never, perhaps, have been known in all extent even 
 to this day, had it not been for the persevering exertions of the singularly 
 humane individual, whose progress in his extraordinary tours of benevolence, 
 from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, has just been traced. One 
 of the principal abuses in their regulation of which he complains ; that too, 
 indeed, by which his own attention was first directed to the subject, had not, 
 however, escaped the notice of others, even before it had attracted his. I 
 allude to the shameful, but universal practice of detaining in custody for the 
 payment of their fees, persons who had been acquitted by a jury of their 
 country of the crimes laid to their charge, or otherwise discharged by procla- 
 mation of the court before which they were brought for trial ; for the abolition 
 of which fees, or rather for their payment out of the county rates, a bill was 
 introduced intothe House of Commons by Mr. Popham, the member for Taunton, 
 on the 18th of February, 1773. That bill, after having been read a first and second 
 time was dropt in the committee to whom it was referred,^ probably from the 
 perseverance of one of its members (Sir Thomas Clavering), in an opinion he 
 had expressed in the House, when the motion for leave to bring in the bill was 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 174- G. 
 
 t Journals of tlie House of Commons. Vol. XXXI V, p. 138, 142, 28S : Index. 
 
144 
 
 
 
 originally made, that, if its provisions did not extend to the reimbursing to the 
 
 persons it was meant partially to relieve, the whole of the expence they had 
 been, or should be put to, in their conveyance to, and from the places of their 
 confinement, it ought to be entirely rejected.* The subject was, therefore, 
 dropped until the next sessions of parliament, when Mr. Popham renewed his 
 motion, adding to the object of his bill the more effectually securing the health 
 of prisoners in gaols during their confinement there. That he did so in conse- 
 quence of the melancholy proofs of the want of some legislative enactments 
 upon this point, which Mr. Howard had collected in the course of that minute 
 inspection of the state of our English prisons, for the completion of which he 
 left the metropolis, most probably on the very day that this motion was made, 
 for the western extremity of the kingdom, there surely can be but little doubt ; 
 especially when we find upon the list of the members appointed to prepare and 
 bring in the bill then moved for, the names of his friend and neighbour 
 Mr. St. John, and of his relative Mr. Whitbread ; neither of whom was at all 
 concerned in the preparation of that introduced to the house upon the former 
 occasion. Soon after his return from his western journey, which he performed 
 in the short space of a single week, he was also himself examined before a 
 committee of the whole house ; when he gave such full and satisfactory answers 
 to the questions proposed to him, as to the unhealthy condition of many of the 
 English gaols at this time, the cause of this alarming evil, and the best modes of 
 removing it, that upon the house being resumed, the chairman (Sir Thomas 
 Clavering) reported, that " he was directed by the committee to move the 
 house, that John Howard, Esquire, be called in to the bar, and that Mr. Speaker 
 do acquaint him that the house are very sensible of the humanity and zeal 
 which have led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communi- 
 cate to the house the interesting observations he has made upon that subject."! 
 And the house having been moved accordingly, and the motion carried nemine 
 
 * Almon's Debates and Proceedings of the House of Commons. Vol. VIII. p. 215. 
 
 t Journals of the House of Commons, f'eneris, 4° die Martii, 1774. Vol. XXXIV, p. 533. 
 
 
145 
 
 contradicente, our illustrious countryman had the honor of receiving, in the 
 midst of an assembled senate, the meed of praise which he so richly merited from 
 those, who now conveyed to him his country's grateful thanks for his benevo- 
 lent exertions in behalf of the most destitute and outcast members of her 
 community. So little, however, were the principles by which he had been 
 actuated in making those exertions understood, even by some of those whose 
 voices mingled in the general murmur of applause, which the simple narrative 
 of the dangers he had been exposed to in the execution of this singular plan of 
 benevolence excited, that one of the members of the house asked him, in the 
 course of his examination before the committee — at whose expence he travelled ? 
 " a question," says one of his biographers,* " which Mr. Howard could scarcely 
 answer without some indignant emotions." But those emotions must have 
 soon been subdued by the flattering testimony borne to his philanthropy and 
 his patriotism, when he was called upon to receive an honor rarely .conferred 
 upon an individual in a private station, yet never more properly than now, 
 that it reflected no less credit on those who bestowed it, than it did upon him on 
 whom it was bestowed. 
 
 * Aikin, p. 57. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Continuation of Mr. Howard's first general inspection of English prisons ; — his standing 
 as a candidate to represent the borough of Bedford in Parliament, 1774 — 5. 
 
 COULD the subject of these memoirs have required a stimulus to perse- 
 verance, in the extraordinary career of benevolence which he had marked out 
 to himself, it would readily have been afforded him in the approbation of his 
 conduct, which had been so unequivocally expressed by the representatives of 
 the people, in the senate of his country, whose vote of thanks is, in fact, 
 the meed of a whole nation's praise. But he needed no other inducement to 
 continue in his course, than those which the kindness of his own heart would 
 abundantly furnish, and the destitute condition of a large proportion of his 
 fellow-creatures, would spontaneously educe. Scarcely, therefore, had he 
 received the highest honor which the free-born spirit of an Englishman could 
 covet, than we find him resuming his labors, in detecting the abuses, and 
 pointing out the defects, but too general in our prisons, with a view to suggest 
 to those who had the power, the best methods of removing them. On the 16th 
 of March, he paid his first visit to the Marshalsea, a prison in the borough of 
 Southwark, in which pirates, and persons arrested for the lowest sums for which 
 an arrest can be made, any where within twelve miles of the king's palace at St. 
 James's, except in the city of London, are confined. The number then in custody 
 was 167 ; but though there were near sixty rooms in the gaol, only six of them 
 
141 
 
 were left for common-side debtors ; ». e. for those who either could not, or 
 would not, purchase better accommodations from a rapacious gaoler, at the 
 expence of their creditors who had placed them in his custody, in the hope of 
 getting satisfaction for their just demands. Even of those who did so, — so small 
 and incommodious was the gaol, that many prisoners on the masters'-side had 
 neither bed, nor place to sleep in, but the chapel, or the tap room ; yet, 
 with all this w T ant of room, so shamefully w r ere the purposes for which this 
 prison was erected abused, that five of the apartments were let to a man who was 
 not amongst the prisoners, two of which he re-let to those who were ; keeping 
 a chandler's shop, and living, with his wife and family, in the others. There 
 were but four rooms for women ; the more modest of whom complained, and 
 with great reason, of the bad company in which they were confined. The 
 whole prison, indeed, was too small, and greatly out of repair ; * as I believe it 
 continues to be, even to this day. 
 
 Within four days after his visit to this miserable place of confinement for 
 debtors in the metropolis, — such was the ardor of his spirit, and the rapidity of his 
 movements, — we find him at the northern extremity of the kingdom, inspecting 
 the high gaol at Durham ; which, though the property of the Bishop, as lord of 
 the palatinate, was the abode of wretchedness and want, at the bare recital of 
 which, the blood freezes with horror in our veins. The court yard, even for 
 the privileged debtors on the masters'-side, was only twenty-four feet by ten ; 
 whilst those on the common side had none at all, but were immured in the low 
 gaol, two damp unhealthy rooms, sadly misnomered free wards, whence they 
 were never suffered to go out, unless to the chapel, on a Sunday, and not always 
 there ; as was the case when Mr. Howard paid them his first visit. Yet this 
 was an episcopal prison, and had a regular chaplain attached to it. There were 
 no sewers in the place, a very common defect ; and upon this, and other occa- 
 sion?, its careful inspector learned, that the dirt, ashes, and filth of the gaol had 
 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 205, 6. 
 v 2 
 
148 
 
 lain in the places in which they had accumulated, for many months. The 
 common side debtors, whom he himself saw eating boiled bread and water, 
 assured him that this was the only nourishment some of them had taken for 
 nearly twelve months ; as they had no allowance, and, from two of the legacies 
 bequeathed for their support, by the humanity of former bishops of the diocese, 
 they had received, as he afterwards learnt from the gaoler, no benefit for some 
 years past. Such being the miserable state of the debtors confined here, and of 
 their accommodations, we cannot expect that the felons should have been in any 
 better condition. In the " great hole," or dungeon, in which the men were 
 put at night, he saw six prisoners, most of them transports, chained to 
 the floor ; in which situation they had been for many weeks, and were con- 
 sequently very sickly. Their straw, upon the bare stones, was almost worn to 
 dust ; and long confinement in such a wretched state, unjustly deprived of the 
 king's allowance of 2s. 6d. a week, had induced them to attempt an escape; 
 for which the gaoler had chained them to their prison-hold in the manner 
 here described.* 
 
 During the course of the following week, our Philanthropist visited the 
 gaols for the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and 
 Lancaster ; in the former of which, situate at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he met 
 with an honorable exception to the general remissness of those who are offi- 
 cially charged with the inspection of prisons, in the execution of their important 
 trust. The gaoler had a salary ; and the debtors an allowance, which, on com- 
 parison with those at other places of a similar description, was extremely 
 liberal. The rooms were airy ; and Mr. Howard, at all his visits, found them 
 remarkably clean, and strewed with sand, &c. The corporation, much to its 
 honor, allowed both debtors and felons firing and candle in plenty, and 
 provided every prisoner with a chaff bed, two blankets, and a coverlid. 
 "Debtors," says our author, "are not thus accommodated in any other prison 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 416—418. 
 
149 
 
 in England." Brooms, mops, and all such necessaries, were also provided by 
 the generosity of the same body ; who, in these articles alone, liberally ex- 
 pended between forty and fifty pounds per annum. In the same praise- 
 worthy spirit, the fees of those prisoners who were acquitted of the crimes 
 laid to their charge, and who, for some years past, had very properly been 
 discharged in open court, were paid out of its funds, whenever they were too 
 poor to pay them for themselves. What an example is here held out to the 
 imitation of other, and richer corporations, even in the days in which we live ! 
 Would that, for their own credit's sake, and the comfort of those miserable 
 beings who are subjected to their control, they may hasten to follow it ! 
 Nor was such a benevolent attention to their wretched condition here confined 
 to the corporate body, for it actuated Dr. Rotheram, a physician in the town, fl 
 very assiduously to visit the prisoners in the gaol, without fee or reward. 
 u This," says Mr. Howard, " is the only instance of the kind I have met with." 
 One other circumstance in the management of this well-regulated prison is also 
 worthy of notice ; no prisoner was ever put in fetters unless he was riotous.* 
 But twelve miles further north, and how changed, alas! the scene which this 
 solitary instance of the diffusion of a humane and generous spirit into the 
 regulations of a prison, like the momentary irradiation of the sun breaking 
 through a clouded sky, renders but more gloomy than it was before ! At 
 Morpeth, in a gaol for the same county, were three transports, chained to the 
 floor, in an offensive dungeon, merely on suspicion of intending to escape, when 
 deprived of the king's allowance for their support. f This last act of injustice 
 prevailed also at Carlisle ; though there the prospect was upon the whole 
 somewhat, though not much, improved. The wards for felons were down a 
 step or two, dark and dirty ; their night room small and close. Few gaols, 
 however, had so many convenient rooms for common side debtors, which 
 rendered more inexcusable the too general practice of not separating the male 
 from the female prisoners. The court yard was spacious, but it was common to 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 421, 2. t lb- P- 426. 
 
ISO 
 
 all.* At Appleby, the situation of the gaol was so ill chosen, that its walls 
 were marked to the height cf three feet by floods. The Earl of Thanet, , as 
 hereditary sheriff of the county, paid the gaoler his pittance of a salary of 
 ten pounds a year ; " but happily for the prisoners in a gaol so circumstanced," 
 as Mr. Howard justly remarks, the person who then filled this office, was " a 
 man of temper and humanity." The debtors had no allowance, though that 
 of the felons was comparatively liberal. f The gaol wanted alike a chaplain to 
 attend to the spiritual concerns, and a surgeon to administer to the bodily 
 diseases of its wretched inhabitants. The castle at Lancaster, with much in 
 it to condemn, was, even at this time, in many respects, worthy of commend- 
 ation. The free ward for the debtors was large, though dark ; and persons 
 confined in it, as well as those on the masters' side, were allowed to walk and 
 work at spinning, knitting, &c. in the crown and nisi-prius courts. The petty 
 offenders sent hither on account of the distance of some of the bridewells in 
 this large county, were kept, as they ought to be, separate from felons : both 
 these and the debtors had an allowance. On the other hand, one of the night 
 rooms for the men, called " the low dungeon," was ten steps under ground, 
 extremely close, dark, and unwholesome ; being, moreover, so very hot, even in 
 winter, that coming from it in the morning into the cold air could not be other- 
 wise than pernicious. Their other cell, called " the high dungeon," was larger, 
 but still close and offensive, though not under ground.^ From Lancaster, 
 Mr. Howard, most probably, proceeded to Liverpool, but in his way inspected 
 the county bridewell at Preston, all the rooms of which he found to be in a 
 very dirty state, and the whole prison out of repair.^ Since that period, 
 it has undergone very great alterations, and it is now perhaps as con- 
 venient a place as most of its kind in England. I cannot indeed avoid 
 suspending the progress of my narrative for a moment, when arrived at the 
 detail of the former state of the prisons in the county, with which my pro- 
 fessional avocations have, in some measure, connected me, without bearing my 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 431 t lb. p. 433. $ lb. p. 43.5, G. \ lb. p. 439. 
 
151 
 
 cheerful testimony to the extraordinary attention which is now bestowed upon 
 their proper regulation, by as active, judicious, and humane a bench of magis- 
 trates as are to be found in any part of the kingdom. Through their careful and 
 anxious selection of proper persons to fill this important office, I have also the 
 satisfaction of stating, that whether we look to Lancaster, to Preston, to Man- 
 chester, or Liverpool, the gaols and bridewells of this populous county are 
 under the care of gaolers no where to be excelled in humanity, or in proper 
 attention to the prisoners committed to their custody, rough and disorderly as 
 those prisoners are generally disposed to be. 
 
 From Liverpool, Mr. Howard crossed over the Mersey to Chester, where 
 he found the county gaol in the old castle in a very miserable condition. Under 
 the pope's kitchen, used as a free ward for debtors, descending from the yard 
 by twenty-one steps, was a dark room, or passage, twenty-four feet in length, 
 and ten in breadth, having, on one side of it, six cells, each about seven feet 
 and a half, by three and a half, within which narrow space three or four felons 
 would sometimes be confined all night. With no window in them, except a 
 small aperture over the door, and another with a grate over it in the ceiling of 
 the passage, opening into the pope's kitchen above, not a breath of fresh air 
 could ever find its way into these pestilential abodes. They were pitched three 
 or four times a year, and from their colour and intolerable closeness combined, 
 might well bring, as, when he had caused the door of one of them to be shut upon 
 him, he assures us that his situation aotually brought to the recollection of their 
 benevolent visitor, the shocking accounts he had heard of the black hole at Cal- 
 cutta. The day room of the felons was as insecure as these dungeonsin which they 
 were confined at night were dreary and unwholesome.* The city gaol, in the 
 latter respect, was but little preferable to that belonging to the county, though 
 in many others it was far superior, and comparatively well regulated and 
 commodious.'!" The keeper of the castle, instead of receiving a salary, actually 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit, p 443. t H>- p. 449. 
 
152 
 
 paid to its constable a rent of forty pounds a year for the prison, looking of 
 course for the reimbursement of this expence, as well as for the maintenance 
 of himself and of his family, entirely to his fees. In his way from this place to 
 Shrewsbury, our traveller passed through Wrexham, one of the largest towns 
 in the principality of Wales, where he found the county bridewell occupying 
 a small part only of a house, the remainder of which was then appropriated to 
 the use of the parish poor. The two rooms in which prisoners were confined 
 were dark and offensive, without any window, and having a wall within six 
 feet of their doors; no wonder then that their wretched inmates should at 
 times have complained of being almost suffocated, and have begged to be let 
 out for a breath of air into the keeper's garden. The whole place was out of 
 repair, dirty, and without water. The keeper was a sheriff's officer, who had 
 rooms of a somewhat better description up stairs for those who could pay for 
 the use of them.* In the gaol at Shrewsbury, considerable improvements were 
 at this time going on for the separation of the men from the women felons, 
 and for rendering it in other respects more commodious. Between two and 
 three months previous to this visit, the justices of the county had also been so 
 considerate and humane, as strictly to prohibit the requiring from any prisoner 
 received into this gaol, or into the county bridewell, any money for drink, 
 which, under the name of garnish, was at this time regularly demanded, and 
 paid with the knowledge and connivance of their keepers, in most of the 
 prisons in the kingdom.^ The county bridewell was still, however, in a state 
 to admit of much improvement. The men were not separated from the women 
 during the day time, and in one of the two night rooms of the latter, Mr. Howard 
 saw a poor young creature, too ill to come down stairs, languishing on the floor 
 in a consumption. The night room for the men was, as usual in those days, a 
 dungeon ten steps under ground. By means of a door which opened a com- 
 munication between the two court yards, prisoners confined in this bridewell 
 had the privilege, very unusual in such places, of attending public worship on 
 * State of Prisons, let Edit. p. 458. t lb- P- 331, 2. 
 
153 
 
 a Sunday in the chapel of the county gaol. In his way home our Philanthropist 
 re-visitedthe gaols at Stafford, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, and Northampton. 
 In the borough gaol at Leicester, which he had not visited before, he found 
 that even the women felons and the common side debtors were confined in 
 dungeons five steps under ground.* 
 
 Scarcely, however, had he enjoyed a week's repose at Cardington after his 
 return from this long journey, which, notwithstanding the distance he travelled, 
 and the number of places he visited, he had performed in little more than 
 a fortnight, than he made a short tour for a couple of days into the county of 
 Kent, for the purpose of inspecting some of the principal prisons there. On 
 the 13th of April he was at Maidstone, where he found the county gaol in a 
 far better condition than most of those which he had lately visited. The 
 felons' yards, though very properly separated the men's from the women's, 
 were yet far too small, and for want of a chapel, divine service was performed 
 upon the prison stairs: but both these inconveniencies were, however, likely to 
 be removed on the pulling down of the bridewell, as soon as the new one then 
 erecting could be completed. The county, with a liberality highly praise- 
 worthy, had for some years past voluntarily paid the fees of poor prisoners 
 who were acquitted, and of convicts sentenced to be transported. To the 
 latter the allowance which they had before conviction was also generously 
 continued, in addition to that granted by the king, which was faithfully paid 
 to them. In the same spirit a salary of sixty pounds a year was allowed to 
 the keeper, instead of the privilege he had formerly enjoyed of keeping a tap, 
 which was very prudently put down. Mr. Howard, on examining two of the 
 sick prisoners, was pleased also to find that they had no irons on ; and he 
 learnt from the surgeon that the gaoler was always ready to take them off 
 whenever he requested him to do so.f The only wish expressed by the 
 prisoners was for a larger allowance of bread, and they said, that if they could 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 281. t lb. p. 222, 3. 
 
 X 
 
154 
 
 have this, they would willingly do with less beer, of which each felon had a 
 quart a day ; the debtors having no allowance at all, except the thirteenth loaf 
 given by the baker who supplied the prison, with every dozen that he sent in. 
 On the same day he visited one of the bridewells for this well regulated county 
 at Canterbury, which he found to be remarkably clean, though there was no 
 water within reach of the male prisoners, who had only a hall or kitchen toward 
 the street, in place of a court yard, which might easily have been taken out of 
 the keeper's garden.* The city gaol was neither so well constructed, nor so well 
 managed. It contained but one day room both for men and women, with a 
 small night room in each of its two towers. There was no court yard, and it 
 was but seldom that prisoners were permitted to walk even on the leads. The 
 keeper of the gaol was also keeper of an adjoining public house, in which were 
 two or three rooms for masters'-side debtors.f The city gaol at Rochester was 
 in much the same condition, but dirtier, and having no water accessible to the 
 prisoners.;}: 
 
 The latter part of this month, and the few first days of the next, our good 
 Samaritan spent in inspecting some of the prisons in London, which he had 
 not before visited, and in going again over others which he had already carefully 
 gone through. Amongst the former was the bridewell at Clerkenwell, which 
 was out of repair, and had not been so much as whitewashed for years. The 
 night rooms for the women were dark and unwholesome, with beds for such 
 only as could pay for them, the others not being allowed so much as a little 
 straw to lie upon. One of those for the men was so crowded, that some of 
 the prisoners were obliged to sleep in hammocks slung to the ceiling. There 
 was no infirmary to this prison, and the county allowance was but a penny loaf 
 a day. Few or none of the prisoners were at work, though sentenced to hard 
 labour here ;§ but this, even to the present day, is too much the case in all our 
 places of confinement of a similar description, the majority of which, instead of 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit p. 225. t lb. p. 226. J lb. p. 227. § lb. p. 185— 1S7. 
 
155 
 
 houses of correction, would be more properly named houses of corruption, for 
 such they undoubtedly are, at least to the younger offenders confined within 
 their walls. The bridewell in Tothill Fields was, on the whole, much better 
 regulated ; but this was principally owing to the exemplary conduct of its 
 keeper, of whom Mr. Howard makes very honourable mention. Besides their 
 penny loaf, the prisoners were allowed a penny a day ; — they were, however, 
 quarrelsome, and many of them idle, for want of sufficient room to keep them 
 properly separated, and to set them at work. There being no chaplain, 
 Mr. Smith, the keeper of the bridewell, very much to his credit, read a 
 chapter and a portion of the Bible to his prisoners every day ; whilst by his 
 directions no person was admitted into the prison on a Sunday between the 
 hours of nine in the morning, and five in the afternoon.* In the Fleet, its 
 vigilant inspector discovered many very flagrant abuses ; one of which was 
 that the whole of the rooms on the cellar floor of the prison, and a part of 
 the one above it, were in the hands of the tapster, who had bought the re- 
 mainder of the lease of them at a public auction, and now let them out to the 
 debtors confined in the prison at the exorbitant rent of from four to eight 
 shillings a week ; whilst the highest rent of the other and better rooms, in 
 which the right of succession by seniority, totally excluded here, prevailed, was 
 but fifteen-pence. This ill-regulated prison, but too ill regulated still, I fear, 
 presented every possible temptation to dishonesty, riot, and dissipation, in 
 those who here could have no property of their own to spend. There was the 
 billiard table, 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 which 
 he had entered as a ruined dupe. Wine clubs and beer clubs, each lasting 
 until one or two o'clock in the morning, contributed too, their ready and 
 powerful aid to drown in the intoxicating bowl every feeling of regret for the 
 past, every purpose of amendment for the future, which a place like this ought 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 193,4. 
 
 x2 
 
156 
 
 to awaken in each inmate's breast. To join them in their revels and 
 their gaming, and to give fresh spirit to their ill-timed mirth; butchers 
 from the adjoining market, and other idle visitors, were also as regu- 
 larly admitted into the tapster's room as they would be into any other 
 public house. " Besides the inconvenience of this to prisoners," as Mr. Howard 
 justly remarks, " the frequenting a prison lessens the dread of being confined in 
 one ;" it is, however, too general a consequence of a gaoler being allowed to 
 keep or let a tap within his prison. To crown the scene of iniquity and fraud, 
 there had been printed, in the very year in which our Philanthropist first visited 
 this prison, a code of laws enacted by the masters'-side debtors for the internal 
 economy of its various parts. These invested a committee elected monthly, 
 with powers to raise contributions by assessment, to hear complaints, determine 
 disputes, levy fines, and seize goods for the payment of them. Some of their 
 rules were good in themselves, though most highly objectionable as it respects 
 the authority by which they were enacted, and the mode of enforcing obedience 
 to their requisitions. Others were immoral and iniquitous on the very face of 
 them ; such, for instance, was that which required from every new comer, of 
 all days in the week, upon the first Sunday of his matriculation into this 
 honourable society, in addition to two shillings to be spent in wine, one 
 shilling and sixpence to be appropriated to the use of the house, as these 
 self-constituted lawgivers stiled their own body ; having, in the plenitude of 
 their power, issued a decree enacting, that the common side debtors, the most 
 honest, as well, perhaps, as the most unfortunate in the prison, should be kept 
 to their own apartments, and never be permitted to associate with their 
 arrogant legislators, or to intrude themselves into any place which they might 
 have occasion to frequent.* The King's Bench, though, from any thing which 
 appears in Mr. Howard's work, free from the tyranny of such rules as 
 these, in other respects presented to the observation of its inspector, defects and 
 abuses of the same nature with those he had noticed in the Fleet, though not 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 157—164. 
 
157 
 
 carried perhaps to quite so great a height. As it is, therefore, needless to enter 
 into particulars, I pass on to the Poultry compter, which he visited on the same 
 day with the two prisons just named. This, like all other places of confine- 
 ment in the metropolis, whether for debtors, for felons, or for both, he found 
 excessively over crowded, as excessively over crowded it still continues to be. 
 In each of the debtors' wards, for want of sufficient room, men were sleeping 
 on broad shelves or cabins over those on the lower beds, neither straw nor 
 bedding being allowed them. There was here, however, a separate ward for the 
 Jews, " a just and generous indulgence," as Mr. Howard very properly stiles it, 
 " which it were to be wished that in other prisons these people enjoyed." The 
 keeper purchased his place of the City of London for life, and sometimes let it 
 to others ; he paid besides into its chamber a rent of 30 /. a year, which was cha- 
 ritably refunded to him in discharge of the fees of his poorer prisoners.* The new 
 Ludgate, like the Poultry compter, was found to be much out of repair ; though, 
 being plentifully supplied with water, the floors of the rooms were kept clean by 
 the debtors confined in them.f To both of these prisons, and, in fact, to every 
 prison in the city of London, Messrs. Calvert, of the Peacock brewhouse, White- 
 cross-street, were, at this time, in the regular habit of sending gratuitously, every 
 week, two barrels of table beer ; J an example which it would be well if some 
 of the more opulent tradesmen in London had the disposition, as they certainly 
 have the ability to follow. In the course of this peregrination of the streets of 
 the metropolis, on the errand of mercy, which now engrossed the attention 
 and time of this extraordinarily active man, there was no place too obscure 
 to escape his notice, though but a solitary prisoner should be confined within 
 its walls. Hence we read in his pages, of prisons belonging to liberties, 
 manors, and petty courts, possessing an exclusive jurisdiction in trifling cases, 
 within certain narrow limits, of whose very existence few had ever heard, 
 until he penetrated into their secluded cells, to report. to the public, with 
 a view to their correction, the abuses practised there. Of this description is 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit p. 170— 172. t lb. p. 165— 171. t lb. p. 166, 172. 
 
158 
 
 a prison in Whitechapel for debtors, sued in the manor courts of Stepney and 
 of Hackney, for debts above two, and under five pounds. For these paltry 
 sums, he found, no less than five and twenty of his fellow-mortals incar- 
 cerated, in a prison out of repair, and possessing but miserable accommo- 
 dations even for those who could satisfy the exhorbitant demands of a gaoler, 
 who paid twenty pounds a year rent for his prison to the lady of the manor, of 
 whose court he was also an officer, a sum which he reimbursed himself by keeping 
 a tap there, and, by his legalized extortions from his miserable captives. 
 Though committed to his custody for debts which none but the poorest class 
 of people could not pay, they were yet compelled to find two shillings and 
 ten pence halfpenny for liquor, to be drank from the keeper's tap, as garnish, 
 upon their entrance into this miserable abode. Even of the few daily pence 
 which were the produce of their begging box, none were allowed to partake, 
 but those who, on first coming into the prison, had paid the gaoler half- 
 a-crown, and treated their fellow-prisoners with half a gallon of beer : yet so 
 poor were the persons confined here, that, at one of Mr. Howard's visits, he 
 found only three prisoners who had purchased this privilege. Those who lay 
 on the masters' side — the only tolerable rooms in the place — paid, moreover, 
 two shillings and six pence a week for half a bed. " As debtors here," says 
 our author, " are generally very poor, I was surprised to see ten or 
 twelve noisy men at skittles ; but the turnkey said, they were only visitants. 
 I found they were admitted here, as at another public house, but no prisoners 
 were at play with them."* A few days after his visit to this prison, we find 
 him inspecting that belonging to the Tower-hamlets, at a public house, of which 
 an honest Swede was at once the landlord and gaoler. It was out of repair 
 and insecure ; but at none of his visits to it, did it contain more than one 
 prisoner, f He did not however, on this account, pass it by in his regular 
 rounds of inspection through the metropolis, no more than he did a prison for 
 the liberty of St. Catharine's, at which, on his first visit, he saw a gaoler with- 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 189, 190. t lb. p. 191- 
 
159 
 
 out prisoners ; and, having called since, two or three times, he always found 
 the house uninhabited.* The last place he visited, during his present stay 
 in London, was the Borough compter; in which felons and debtors were 
 huddled together, both day and night. Among the latter, were many poor 
 creatures, sent here from the court of conscience, to lie in gaol until their debts, 
 which could never exceed five pounds, were paid.-f 
 
 From the 4th of May, when this visit was paid, to the 24th of June, Mr. 
 Howard seems to have rested from his labors ; probably in the circle of his 
 friends at Cardington, whose society, at all times welcome, was peculiarly so, 
 when fatigued by his incessant exertions, in pursuit of the great object to which 
 his every energy was directed, he snatched a short period of repose in the 
 shades of his favorite walk, in which that object had first presented itself to 
 his mind, with a power increasing with time, and gaining strength with every 
 difficulty which he encountered in its attainment. But even in this peaceful 
 seclusion, he had not, for a moment, lost sight of the distressed condition 
 of the miserable beings, whose sufferings he had undergone so much fatigue 
 and personal inconvenience to relieve; and having the gratification to learn, 
 that the legislature had given effect to some of his suggestions for the ame- 
 lioration of their wretched condition, by passing, though not without some 
 difficulty and opposition, two bills, formed out of the original one of Mr. Pop- 
 ham : £ the first for paying the fees of felons, when discharged out of prison, 
 from the county rate ; and the other for better providing for the health of pri- 
 soners whilst confined in gaol, he caused both of these acts to be printed at his 
 own expence, in a large character, and sent a copy of them to the keeper of every 
 prison in the kingdom. § But, in about six weeks' time, he again quitted his 
 retirement, and the personal inspection of the improvements which were still 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 191. t lb. p. 208, 9. 
 
 { 14 Geo. III. cap. xx. lix. The one passed on the Slst of March, the other on the 2d of June, 
 1774.— See Note I. ^ Aikin, p. 58. 
 
160 
 
 carrying on upon his estate, for promoting the comfort of his tenantry, and 
 bettering the condition of the poor of his neighbourhood. His absence was not, 
 however, above a fortnight ; though he made such good use of his time, 
 as, in that space, to have visited the gaols in the different counties of North, 
 and one in South Wales, besides re-visiting in his way those of Chester, Wor- 
 cester, and Oxford. The Welch gaols contained little that is remarkable ; 
 except that they were generally in as bad a condition as those in England. 
 At Flint, felons and petty offenders were confined in two dark closets, five 
 feet by four, very properly called " black holes ;" and these had been the only 
 receptacles for criminals until a few years previous to Mr. Howard's visit, 
 when a dungeon had been built in the yard, eight steps under ground, through 
 which the rain already made its way into the barrack beds of its inhabitants.* 
 Such was the mode of performing county contracts in those days ; and I have 
 known instances of their being but little better executed in these. At Ruthin, 
 a new gaol was then building — but two of its cells were only three feet wide.f 
 The gaol for the island of Anglesey, at Beaumaris, he found to be dirty ; but 
 its rooms for felons were convenient, though but seldom occupied. $ In the 
 Welch gaols, to the credit of the people be it spoken, this is even now fre- 
 quently the case. Those at Caernarvon and Dolgelly were both dirty ; and the 
 former otherwise incommodious. Neither of them had the clauses of the act 
 against the sale of spirituous liquors in prisons hung up; an omission very 
 general throughout the principality, as it was also in many of the English 
 counties. At the latter place, our benevolent tourist was gratified by another 
 proof of the honesty and general morality of the Welch ; in the circumstance 
 of there having been but two executions in the county of Merioneth for the 
 last fifty years. § The gaol at Montgomery is finely situated, on a rising 
 ground ; the apartments for debtors, and the wards for felons, Mr. Howard 
 found to be convenient and kept clean, though the yard was common to pri- 
 soners of all descriptions, and of both sexes. || That at Presteign, the only 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 454. t lb. p. 456, 7. + lb. p. 461. § lb. 462, 3. || lb. p. 460. 
 
place in South Wales which he visited during this tour, was out of repair ; 
 with but one court-yard ; the felons' night-room down three steps, and not 
 secure ; with an earth floor, and no straw to cover it. The keeper's house was 
 at a distance from the gaol ; which had neither surgeon, nor chaplain. * His 
 return home was through Ludlow, Worcester, and Oxford ; at the latter of 
 which places he found the small-pox still raging in the gaol : and, though eleven 
 had died of this disease, in the preceding year, it was yet without an infirmary, f 
 
 In the course of this vigilant and minute inspection of the county gaols in 
 England and Wales, the circuit of which he had now nearly completed, a new 
 subject of investigation presented itself to the ever active mind of our illustrious 
 Philanthropist, the origin and principal results of which, are thus stated in his 
 own unassuming language. " Seeing in two or three of the county gaols, 
 some poor creatures whose aspect was singularly deplorable, and asking the 
 cause of it, I was answered, ' they were lately brought from the bridewells.'' 
 This started a fresh subject of inquiry. I resolved to inspect the bride- 
 wells : and for that purpose I travelled again into the counties where 
 I had been ; and indeed into all the rest, examining houses of correction, 
 city and town gaols. I beheld in many of them, as well as in the county gaols, 
 a complication of distress : but my attention was principally fixed by the 
 gaol-fever, and the small-pox, which I saw prevailing, to the destruction of 
 multitudes, not only of felons in their dungeons, but of debtors also." J It was 
 on or about the 28th of July, 1774, that, after having returned home from his 
 former journey but little more than three weeks, Mr. Howard set out upon 
 the completion of his tour through all the counties of England and Wales, by 
 a journey into the southern parts both of the kingdom and the principality. 
 Re-visiting the gaols for the counties of Berks and Somerset, at Reading and 
 Ilchester, he passed on to the inspection of the bridewells of the latter county, 
 at Taunton and Sheptoh Mallet ; the last of which only he had before inci- 
 dentally visited. The apartments and accommodations of the first of these 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 470. t lb. P- 316. J lb. p. 2. 
 
 Y jM 
 
162 
 
 houses of correction, he found to be convenient ; — those of the second, too small 
 and close, the keeper seeming to have appropriated to his own use, as a malt- 
 loft, a part of tiie women's night-room. It had no infirmary, though the gaoler 
 informed his visitor, that but a few years ago, the prison had been so unhealthy, 
 that he had buried three or four of its inmates in a week. Here, as at Taunton, 
 and in the gaol at Ilchester, the county had generously gone to the full extent 
 of the act, authorizing the providing for a chaplain for such places out of the 
 county-rate, by allowing them each a salary of 50/.* In many of the county 
 gaols it was at this time but 30/. in others only 20/. In the county bridewell 
 at Devizes, which was also the town gaol, the day-room and court-yard were 
 common to debtors and felons — to men and to women ; and the gaoler kept a 
 public house. All the occupied rooms of the other bridewell at Marlborough, 
 were upon the ground floor, and rendered very offensive by a sewer within 
 doors, especially the men's night-room, in which a man was at this time dying 
 upon the floor, of the gaol fever ; a distemper of which another prisoner had 
 died there just before ; and a third soon after his discharge from it. Up stairs 
 were some healthier rooms ; but they were only for those who paid for the use 
 of them. Mr. Howard learnt that the justices had visited the outside of this 
 prison ; and it is to be hoped for the credit of their humanity, though not for that 
 of the faithful discharge of their duty, that they had never been within its walls, 
 or they would have seen amongst the many sad defects, alike in its construction 
 and its regulation, that it had neither court-yard, water accessible to prisoners, 
 or straw ; and that there was no allowance at all for petty offenders.^ In the 
 city gaol at Bath, then recently built in a meadow, occasionally overflowed with 
 water, the sewers in the court-yard were offensive, and too near the house. 
 Debtors had no allowance ; — offenders, no straw. " The city," says our author, 
 ** will perhaps appoint a chaplain and a surgeon ;"J a very gentle hint to 
 persons who were so well able to afford a liberal salary to those who should hold 
 these very necessary appointments. After inspecting the county gaols of 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 389, 390. t lb. p. 365. J lb. p. 394, 5. 
 
 i 
 
163 
 
 Gloucester and Hereford, our Philanthropist visited, for the first time, the county 
 bridewell in the latter of these cities, which exhibited as wretched a picture of 
 desolation and distress as any he had met with in the course of his travels. It 
 was so completely out of repair, as not only to be ruinous but dangerous, a 
 cross-wall having actually parted from that against which it abutted ; whilst 
 the day-room contained a large quantity of water, which had poured in through 
 the roof. No fire-place ; offensive sewers ; no yard ; no water ; no stated 
 allowance ; no employment : — such is the short, but melancholy catalogue of 
 the defects of this miserable place. Six of the prisoners who had been sent 
 here from the assizes, but a few days before this visit, to hard labour as 
 the sentence usually, but uselessly runs, for six months, already complained of 
 being almost famished ; for though the justices had ordered the keeper to supply 
 each of them daily with a two-penny loaf, he had shamefully neglected to do so. 
 No wonder then that they took the earliest opportunity of escaping from their 
 confinement, as upon his next visit to this wretched prison, Mr. Howard was 
 informed that they had done.* After revisiting the county gaol at Monmouth, 
 our traveller began his inspection of the places of confinement in South Wales, 
 at Brecon, where he found the gaol to be out of repair ; felons and debtors 
 lodged together, and almost starved by the gaoler, to whom the former descrip- 
 tion of prisoners were farmed for thirty guineas a-year, for which he was to 
 provide them with necessary food. " Two gentlemen of the county, who were 
 then in the gaol with me," says our author, " seemed to resent the 
 abuse."")- At Cardigan, a new gaol and bridewell was just finished, though 
 not inhabited ; its rooms w r ere, however, too low, close glazed, without casements, 
 and it had no water in the court-yard ; so little were the health and comfort of 
 prisoners attended to, even in the new buildings which were at this time erecting 
 for their accommodation, and safe custody .J The two lowest of the six rooms, of 
 which the gaol and house of correction for the county of Pembroke, at Haver- 
 fordwest consisted, Mr. Howard found to be very damp dungeons, in one of 
 * State of Prison?, 1st Edit. p. 338. t lb. p. 4/1. $ lb. p. 464. 
 
 Y 2 
 
164 
 
 which he was informed that a prisoner lost, first the use of his limbs, and then 
 his life ; in consequence of which no person had since been confined in either of 
 them. But even the upper rooms were dirty and offensive, with small windows; 
 the gaol too being without sewers or court-yard.* The rooms in the town 
 gaol at this place were convenient and kept clean, but it had neither court nor 
 water.)* This was also the case in the borough gaol at Carmarthen, the keeper 
 of which, one of the town sheriffs, lived at a distance. The food, &c. of the 
 prisoners was put in at an aperture in the bottom of the door, through which 
 a little girl, the daughter of the only felon or debtor the gaol contained, could 
 just contrive to creep to fetch water, or whatever else might be wanted, by its 
 solitary occupant. J The castle at this place, which is both the county gaol and 
 bridewell, in its new, as in its old apartments, except those for the master-side 
 debtors, which were convenient, was too close and confined ; — the condemned 
 dungeon damp, with but one small window in it. It was also without water, its 
 well being useless ; and the whole prison was offensive. A house had lately 
 been built for the gaoler in the prison yard, but he was still permitted to reside at 
 a distance.§ At Cardiff, a new gaol for the county of Glamorgan, was building, 
 but not finished.- The gaoler informed Mr. Howard, that an exchequer debtor 
 confined in the old prison for ten years, for a debt of seven pounds, had died 
 but a short time before his visit. || Had he survived but a few weeks longer, 
 there can be no doubt but that he w T ould soon have been set at liberty by the 
 generous commiserator of the prisoners' woes, who could now but look with a 
 sigh upon the dungeon, in which he had so long been immured. In the 
 bridewell for this county at Cowbridge, the keeper told him that many 
 had died of the gaol fever; a man and a woman but a year before, when 
 he himself and his daughter were ill of it ; and this principally from the 
 want of a proper circulation of air; of sewers; and of water to keep the 
 prison clean. It contained no court-yard, though one might easily have 
 been enclosed from the ground adjacent; fortunately, however, a place so 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit, p 465. f lb. p. 466. * lb. 467. § lb. p. 469. || lb. p. 474. 
 
165 
 
 ill fitted for their reception, did not at this time contain any prisoners.* Return- 
 ing into England, by Monmouthshire, Mr. Howard's attention was first directed 
 to the bridewell, for the use of that county, at Usk ; where he was told by the 
 keeper's wife, that many years ago the prison was so crowded, that herself, her 
 father, who was then keeper, and many others of the family, had the gaol fever, 
 of which, three of them, and several of the prisoners died. " The danger of such 
 a calamity, for the future," says he, " would be much lessened, if an additional 
 room or two were built in the garden. "-f- At Berkley, which was his next 
 stage, he met with a keeper of a bridewell of a very different description to 
 those with whom it was usually his lot to converse. This sensible old man 
 "lamented," as he tells us, "the bad effects of close confinement in idleness upon 
 the health of even young strong prisoners. Many such, he said, he had known 
 quite incapable of working some weeks after their discharge. He told me, 
 that some years ago, his prisoners used to grind malt for a penny a bushel ; 
 and the justices would not licence any victualler whose malt was not ground 
 here : but that of late years they had done no work at all." It is a pity, per- 
 haps, that this custom, when once established, was ever discontinued ; at least, 
 it should not have been so, until some other mode of employment was substituted 
 in its place. This prison was quite out of repair, and consisted but of one room 
 for men and women, without a chimney ; the yard not secure ; no water ; no 
 straw. J In another of the bridewells of this county (Gloucester), situated in 
 Lawford's-gate, Bristol, the rooms were also without chimneys, and though 
 there was a small court-yard, with a pump in it, the prisoners were closely con- 
 fined to their rooms, because it was not secure. " It might be enlarged," says 
 Mr. Howard, " from the keeper's garden ; and should be made secure, that 
 prisoners may use it, and have access to the pump. The keeper readily agreed 
 with me in that opinion. "J The city bridewell was in pretty much the same 
 condition ; for part of it, with the keeper's house, in which master-side debtors 
 were confined, being on one side of the way, and part on the other ; and the 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 475. f lb. p. 342. % lb. p. 347. 
 
166 
 
 court in the latter being quite out of sight of the keeper's residence, he did not 
 suffer the prisoners confined there, to use either it, or the pump which it con- 
 tained, so that they had no water but what was handed to them, the necessary 
 consequence of which was, that all the rooms were very dirty. The keeper 
 regularly received the money for bread allowance to each of the prisoners, at 
 two-pence a-day, but those for whose use it was received, assured their visitant, 
 that what he gave them from his own loaf, was far short of two-penny worth.* 
 
 From the benefit which his health at all times derived from the hot-wells in 
 this city, I am induced to suppose that Mr. Howard spent rather better than a 
 fortnight here, in the course of this journey; as from the 23d of August, on 
 which day, besides visiting the bridewell, he revisited the gaol for the city and 
 county of the city of Bristol, we do not meet with him again in pursuit of the 
 benevolent object of his tour, until the 10th of September, when we find him 
 revisiting the bridewell at Taunton, and inspecting, for the first time, the gaol 
 of the town of Bridgewater, both in the county of Somerset. The latter, he 
 found to consist of a single middle-sized room, with one of its two windows 
 stopped up ; yet in this miserably close place, at the Midsummer quarter sessions 
 of 1774, twenty-seven, and at the summer assizes in the same year, thirteen 
 prisoners, two of them women, were shut up, in the last case for nearly a week. - ]" 
 The next county visited in the course of this journey was Devonshire, the bride- 
 well belonging to which, at Exeter ? was spacious, but out of repair ; the windows 
 small, and glazed, yet without casements. The keeper had a salary of 60^. 
 instead of fees, and being himself a woollen-manufacturer, he employed some of 
 his prisoners in his own business; others of them might have been easily set to work 
 in the large yard and garden at rope and packthread- making, &c. but they 
 were not.j: That for the county of Cornwall, at Bodmin, he found, as usual, to be 
 much out of repair ; the walls round the yard being moreover not safe enough to 
 suffer the prisoners to use it. The night-rooms were two garrets, with small sky 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 394. t lb. p. 395. t lb. p. 3/G. 
 
167 
 
 lights, seventeen inches hy twelve, and close glazed ; he could not, therefore, he at 
 all surprised at learning that the gaol fever had some years since been very fatal, 
 not only in this prison, but in the town to which it spread.* The sheriffs 
 ward at this place, the prison for the debtors of the county, was like its 
 bridewell out of repair. The keeper, who had been in that situation above 
 twenty years, assured his visitor that during that time only four prisoners had 
 obtained from their creditors the allowance commonly called their groats jf so 
 difficult was it for persons in their situation, to enforce obedience to the humane 
 provisions of the law in their behalf. At Lostwithiel, where there is a gaol 
 for debtors belonging to the Prince of Wales as Duke of Cornwall, and Lord 
 of the Stannaries, he was told however, by the keeper, " that he had lately had 
 a prisoner who was arrested for 6/. : the man had a large family, and not a bad 
 character, yet the plaintiff paid him his groats for two years ; and dying then, 
 bound his estate for the continual payment of them : but the insolvent act 
 freed the prisoner and the estate.";}; In the town gaol at Plymouth, one of 
 the rooms for felons, called the Clink, seventeen feet by eight, and about five 
 feet and a half high, had neither light nor air, but what was admitted through 
 a wicket in the door, seven inches by five in its dimensions, to which Mr. 
 Howard was informed that three men who were confined here near two months, 
 under sentence of transportation, came by turns for breath. At the period of 
 his visit the door had not been opened for five weeks, when he himself with 
 difficulty entered, to see a pale inhabitant of this living grave, of which for 
 ten long weeks he had been the solitary and wretched inmate. He too was 
 confined there under sentence of transportation, but he declared to the bene- 
 volent being who ventured at such imminent hazard of his health to explore 
 the misery of his drear abode, that he would rather have been hanged than 
 confined in this loathsome cell — nor can we wonder at his choice. The gaol 
 had no yard ; no water ; no sewer ; no straw : and its keepers, who were 
 the three Serjeants at mace, lived at a distance from their charge.§ 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 383. f lb. p. 384. $ lb. p. 386. § lb. p. 359. 
 
168 
 
 After losing sight of him for a week, we trace this indefatigable man 
 pursuing the objects of his philanthropic enquiry, by visiting the county gaol 
 at Dorchester, where two debtors assured him that they had lived for five or 
 six weeks upon nothing but the county bread and water.* The bridewell at 
 Sherborne, in the same county, he found to be too small ; the ceilings low ; the 
 prisoners without employment, and without straw. The justices had however 
 recently passed some very humane resolutions pi*oviding for the conveyance of 
 the prisoners to be tried at the different quarter sessions, on horseback, or 
 in carts or other convenient carriages, instead of on foot, loaded as they 
 hitherto had been with very heavy irons.f After revisiting the gaol for the 
 county of Wilts, at Salisbury ; and that for Hampshire, at Winchester ; he 
 inspected the county bridewell at the latter place, the rooms of which were 
 too close, and the yard too small for the prisoners frequently confined in it, 
 to vast numbers of whom it had often been fatal. The misery which they 
 endured had excited the compassion of the Duke of Chandos, who much to his 
 honor, had for some years past sent them thirty pounds of beef and two 
 gallon loaves, the county allowance being but a three-penny loaf in two 
 days. At Gosport, the apartments of another of the county bridewells were 
 convenient, but not kept clean. There was an oven to purify the clothes of the 
 prisoners, but it was rendered useless by the county penuriously withholding the 
 fuel that should heat it. J In the bridewell for the town of Southampton, as 
 in those of the county, of which in general acceptation, though not in legal 
 strictness it forms a part, there was as usual no straw and no employment ; to 
 which were added two other grounds of complaint not very uncommon, — 
 no yard ; and no water. These equally applied also to the sheriff's ward 
 for debtors, and to the gaol for felons in this town.§ No bedding; no straw; 
 debtors and felons lodging together ; such is the short summary of the condition 
 of the town gaol at Portsmouth ; which with the complaint of no yard, no 
 water, in the bridewell of Newport, in the Isle of Wight, one of its two 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 367. t lb. p. 369. i lb. p. 380. § lb. p. 358, 9. 
 
169 
 
 rooms quite dark, and the farming of the prisoners to the keeper and owner of 
 
 the prison ; and of no yard, no water, in its borough gaol, concludes the 
 
 catalogue of abuses and defects observed by their accurate inspector in the 
 
 prisons of this county.* In the county of Sussex, the next and last which he 
 
 visited in the course of this tour, he found the bridewell at Petworth too small 
 
 for the number of prisoners which it generally contained ; with no chimney ; 
 
 no yard ; no water ; no employment. The allowance to each prisoner a penny 
 
 loaf a day, weighing but seven ounces and a half. The keeper told him that 
 
 all his prisoners were, upon discharge, much weakened by close confinement 
 
 and small allowance. At Chichester city gaol, and at the other bridewell for 
 
 the county, at Horsham, the allowance was double, and it was not at all too 
 
 large ; at that belonging to the town of Portsmouth, it was four times as much. )" 
 
 At Horsham the prisoners were always kept locked up in one room, — for the 
 
 prison consisted of no more, — about ten feet and a half by six and a half in 
 
 length and breadth, and not six feet and a half in height. At this time it had 
 
 no inmates except the keeper, the widow of the former gaoler, who had died 
 
 of the fever, j; From this place Mr. Howard returned to his home, from which 
 
 he had been absent somewhat more than two months, in which time he had 
 
 traversed fifteen counties, and carefully inspected fifty prisons, all of them the 
 
 abodes of wretchedness, and some the tainted walks of pestilence and death. 
 
 The unwearied perseverance with which he had now, for nearly a twelvemonth, 
 pursued this singular object of a philanthropy, as unbounded in its extent, as it 
 was pure in its source, coupled with the proofs he had so unceasingly given of 
 being actuated by the same liberal spirit in the more private walks of life, 
 could not fail to procure for this benevolent being, in the neighbourhood in 
 which the excellence of his character was the best appreciated, as it had been 
 the longest known, the esteem of men of every party, who had sufficient 
 liberality about them to be lovers of genuine worth wherever that worth was 
 
 * Stale of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 358, 9. f lb. p. 230, 231, 359. J lb. p. 230. 
 
J 
 
 no 
 
 to be found, whether in their own, or in any other body of men. A striking 
 proof of the truth of this remark was afforded within a few days of his return 
 to Cardington, by a solicitation from the very respectable body of burgesses of 
 the borough of Bedford in the independent interest, that he would become a can- 
 didate to represent them in parliament at the election, then on the eve of taking 
 place. With the same illiberality which characterises the whole of his libellous 
 memoir of this great and good man's life, the anonymous author of the short 
 biographical account of Mr. Howard, inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine 
 soon after his death, pretty broadly insinuates, indeed, that it was to the 
 factious spirit of the sectaries of the town that he was alone indebted for the 
 honor of this invitation.* But the calumny is groundless as it is false ; for 
 amongst the most active supporters of his interests at the election, were not 
 only many of the staunchest members, but several of the most orthodox 
 ministers of the established church in Bedford and its neighbourhood ; the 
 grounds of the severe contest, which then took place in the borough, being 
 perfectly distinct from any difference that might prevail amongst the electors 
 as to their religious opinions. In the year 17G9 the corporation of this town had 
 avery serious dispute with the grandfather of the present Duke of Bedford, whose 
 ancestors have long possessed an influence here, the natural consequence of the 
 vicinity of their princely residence, and of the very large property which they 
 possess in this part of the county, and even within the limits of the borough 
 itself. During the height, therefore, of the popular mania for Wilkes and 
 liberty, and the consequent unpopularity of the duke, who was at that time 
 in the ministry, they determined upon destroying this influence, by resorting to 
 the singular expedient of making five hundred honorary freemen of the borough 
 in one day, at the head of whom were Aldermen Townshend and Sawbridge, 
 John Home Tooke (then parson Home), and other self-bedubbed patriots of the 
 day. Six years after this extraordinary exertion of a power so extremely 
 questionable, and so obviously open to the grossest abuse ; and in the minority 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 277. 
 
m 
 
 of the last lamented duke of the house of Russel, the members of this corpo- 
 ration determined to make use of these mere nominal freemen to serve 
 their own purposes in the representation of the borough, which it was then 
 said, and very generally believed, that they unblushingly offered for sale to the 
 highest bidder. After various unsuccessftd negotiations to procure persons of 
 property to stand upon such an interest, Sir William Wake, Bart, and Robert 
 Sparrow, Esq. both alike strangers to the great body of electors, were 
 announced as the corporation candidates for the suffrages of the people of 
 Bedford. The resident burgesses who were not linked in with the faction, 
 determined however to resist, with all their might, what they justly considered 
 a direct attempt at the complete subversion of their rights, and very naturally 
 looked to their neighbours Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Howard, men with whose 
 worth and public spirit they had long been acquainted, and of whose inde- 
 pendence they might well be assured, as the most proper persons to maintain 
 them inviolate. To the latter of these gentlemen, at least, the application to 
 stand forward in their support was altogether unexpected, and took him, 
 indeed, so completely by surprise, upon his return to Cardington, within at 
 the furthest, twelve days before the election began, that he was actually forced 
 to the hustings without time to deliberate upon the propriety of the step his 
 friends were about to take. Of the circumstances of the contest into which 
 he was thus hurried, the only one that survives in the recollection of the older 
 inhabitants of Bedford, to whom I have applied for information upon the 
 subject, except that party spirit at this time run very high in the borough, is, 
 that a clergyman of the established church, a warm supporter of the patriotic 
 candidates, one sabbath morning, during the heat of the election, took for his 
 text that passage of St. Matthew's gospel, in which the question is pro- 
 posed by our Lord to his disciples, " Are not two sparrows sold for a 
 farthing?" whence this encouragement to their perseverance and their faith is 
 deduced, " fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." 
 He did not, however, carry the allusion further in his discourse ; and certainly 
 
 z2 
 
172 
 
 he would have better consulted the dignity of his own character, and the 
 sacredness of his office, had he not made it at all ; but his having done so, 
 proves, at least, that Mr. Howard was not upon this occasion left, as it has 
 been more than insinuated that he was, entirely to the support " of the 
 Presbyterians, Moravians, and other sectaries," with which that borough 
 abounds, whose representative in parliament he had very nearly become. That 
 he was not returned as such, was openly asserted at the time, and afterwards, to 
 a certain extent, proved, before a committee of the House of Commons, to have 
 been owing to the gross partiality of the returning officers, in improperly 
 rejecting an immense number of votes which had never before been disputed, 
 when tendered on behalf of himself and of his relative ; and in receiving 
 many others which ought not to have been received, when tendered for the 
 opposing candidates. In consequence of these unjust and arbitrary proceed- 
 ings in those who, being officers of the corporation, were naturally inclined to 
 favor the candidates set up by their own junto, whom they are accused, and 
 it is to be feared not without reason, of having determined, at all events, to 
 return — the numbers upon the poll-book were, for Sir William Wake, 527 ; 
 Mr. Sparrow, 517; Mr. Whitbread, 429; Mr. Howard, 402.* The two 
 former gentlemen were accordingly declared to be duly elected ; whilst the latter 
 were left to the only remedy they could have ; that of petitioning the House of 
 Commons against this return, which both their friends and themselves instantly 
 determined to do. 
 
 But in the meanwhile, Mr. Howard was so far from suffering this unex- 
 pected call to a more public station than any he yet had filled, to draw him 
 aside from the benevolent purposes which, as a private individual, he had 
 formed for the public good, that ere the bustle of the election could well 
 be over, and when he had been but a month at home, he resumed the 
 work he had set himself to perform ; and, in the space of a fortnight, had 
 * Douglas's Reports of Controverted Elections, Vol.11, p. 71. 
 
1T3 
 
 completed his survey of the large manufacturing counties of York, Lancaster, 
 and Warwick, besides taking two of the bridewells belonging to the counties of 
 Huntingdon and Lincoln in his way, and re-inspecting the gaol at Aylesbury in 
 his return. His account of the bridewell at Fokingham is short, but most affect- 
 ing: "Damp rooms: no chimney: small yard : no pump : no sewer. Yet the 
 keeper said, a woman, with a child at her breast, was sent hither for a year 
 and a day : the child died."* That at Peterborough, for the soke of the same 
 name, which comprises thirty-two towns, had a very small court, not secure, 
 on which account the prisoners were always kept within doors : they were also 
 without water. In the gaol belonging to the same soke, and used likewise 
 as the prison of the dean and chapter of the cathedral, the prisoners had 
 no allowance.! From this city he proceeded to Kingston- upon- Hull, where 
 he, for the first time, inspected both the gaol and bridewell for this town and 
 county in itself. The ground room of the former was a damp dungeon; but 
 the gaoler, who had a character for humanity, assured him that no one 
 had been confined in it for many years. There was no court yard to the prison, 
 though the debtors were allowed to walk on the leads ; no water accessible to 
 prisoners ; no sewer ; and the felons' rooms were offensive ; yet in them might 
 some unhappy being be confined for three years, as the assizes here were not, 
 at this time, held oftener, and then be acquitted of the crime laid to his charge 
 by the verdict of a jury of his country. The bridewell consisted of but four 
 rooms, about twelve feet square, without fire places and very offensive ; the court 
 yard but twenty-two feet by ten, and not secure enough even to permit the 
 prisoners to go to the pump in the middle of it ; no sewer ; no allowance ; no 
 straw. The prison had not been white-washed since it was built, which was 
 then above seven years : its inmates were employed in pounding tile-sherds, to 
 mix in mortar — among them was a poor raving lunatic.^ At Beverley, the 
 bridewell for the east riding of the county of York, contained three small 
 night rooms, with four others above for those who could pay : — the court yard 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edil. p. 301: f lb. p. 310. i lb., p. 411, 2. 
 
114 
 
 had not only a pump, but a cistern for rain water. The prisoners, however, 
 had neither straw nor employment, though a new work room had lately been 
 erected.* From this place our Philanthropist proceeded to York, where he 
 re-visited both the city and the county gaol, and also inspected, for the first 
 time, the bridewell of the former, every part of which he found to be dirty 
 and offensive. The women's day room was very damp, and both their night 
 rooms, and those of the men, were four steps under ground, the former fur- 
 nished with barrack bedsteads ; no court yard ; no water ; no sewer ; no bread 
 allowance ; little or no employment. The gaol for the liberty of St. Peter, 
 comprehending certain parishes in the city, and in various counties in the king- 
 dom, was out of repair ; dirty and offensive ; no court yard ; no sewer ; no 
 allowance : — the gaoler, a bailiff, with no salary, yet paying rent.f The 
 bridewell for the west riding of the county, at Wakefield, was showy, but 
 unfortunately built upon such low ground that it was damp and exposed to 
 floods. Some of the wards were spacious, but all of them dark, and made 
 very offensive by sewers. The court yard, and indeed the whole prison, was 
 out of sight of the gaoler's house, though adjoining to it, in consequence of 
 which some of the criminals had escaped. There was little or no employment 
 for the prisoners, who had no allowance of food but by order of a justice. J 
 The catalogue of defects in the town gaol at Leeds is short, no court yard ; 
 no water; no sewer; keeper living at a distance. § At Rothwell, in the same 
 county, was a prison for the manor of Wakefield, in the honor of Pontefract, 
 which belongs to the duchy of Lancaster, much out of repair. In it was a 
 weaver, who had been imprisoned since the month of May, for having given 
 a bad name to a woman who was said not to deserve a very good one, but who 
 cited him to the ecclesiastical court for the licence he had imprudently given to 
 his tongue, in consequence of which he was here incarcerated " until he had 
 made satisfaction to the holy church ;" in default of which he was imprisoned 
 in this gaol until released by the insolvent act, in July, 1776, which was 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 403. + lb. p. 407, 8. t lb. p. 402. § lb. p. 41 1. 
 
115 
 
 more than two years after his commitment.* In Lancashire a new county 
 bridewell had just been erected at Manchester, containing separate court yards 
 and apartments for men and women. The night rooms of the former were 
 close, eleven steps below the yard, but not properly under ground, being 
 si dialed on the declivity of a hill : there was a dungeon built for the women, 
 but they were never put into it.-j- The prisoners, at that time, had no allow- 
 ance ; at this they have, perhaps, too liberal an one. The gaol for the borough 
 of Liverpool, principally for debtors, was out of repair ; its apartments close 
 and dirty ; seven confined dungeons, ten steps under ground, six feet and a half 
 by five feet nine inches, and six feet high ; had three prisoners locked up in each 
 of them at night, a larger dungeon which the prison contained not being 
 secure. The gaoler was one of the Serjeants at mace, who put in a deputy, 
 from whom he received sixty-five pounds a year for his sinecure. From the 
 offensiveness of the dungeons, and the number of his prisoners, Mr. Howard 
 told this man that there was great danger of the gaol fever breaking out here, 
 as in fact it did very shortly after his visit, when twenty-eight were ill at 
 one time.;}; In the bridewell belonging to the adjoining county of Chester, at 
 Middlewich, some of the rooms were without w indows, having no air admitted 
 into them but through some small perforations in the door. § That at Warwick, 
 though the only one for the county, was too small, close, and offensive. It 
 had no water accessible to the prisoners, the handle of the pump having been 
 most sagaciously placed, by the wiseacres under whose direction it was built, 
 on the outside of the wall of the court yard. Like the county gaol, which 
 Mr. Howard at this time re-visited, this prison might easily have been enlarged 
 on the ground adjacent. The prisoners had no employment. || The gaol for 
 the populous town of Birmingham, very properly called the dungeon, was 
 small and extremely inconvenient ; the day room, common alike to men and 
 women, having no windows in it ; and the court yard, which was also far too 
 small, containing (besides the litter from the gaoler's stable) a stagnant puddle 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 413. t lb. p. 439, 440. t lb. p. 440. § lb. p. 447 || lb. p. 272. 
 
176 
 
 for the gaoler's ducks ; a nuisance of very frequent occurrence, but in so 
 scanty a place intolerably offensive, as indeed was the whole prison.* The 
 last place which he visited, before he reached his home, was Aylesbury, where 
 he found that six or seven prisoners had died of the gaol distemper, in the 
 county prison, since his former visit, in the latter end of November, 1773, a 
 space short of a twelvemonth by about fifteen days.f 
 
 It was not until the 6th of December that this indefatigable man resumed 
 his labors, by a short tour of ten days, in which he visited the county, and 
 some other of the principal towns of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, 
 and Hertfordshire. The bridewell for the former county at Chelmsford he 
 found to have a court yard, small, and not secure, so that the prisoners were 
 always kept within doors : the rooms, therefore, were offensive, though the 
 water was properly laid on. The keeper informed him that many of his 
 prisoners had been ill of the gaol fever brought from the county gaol, so that 
 the mischief of transferring this pestilential disease from one species of prison 
 to another was in some cases reciprocal. Fees were very properly abolished 
 here, and there was an allowance both for coals and straw, and one also of 
 three halfpence a day to sick prisoners beyond the prison diet.J In the bride- 
 well at Ipswich, neither were any of the rooms, nor the court yard secure ; no 
 fees were, however, allowed to be taken from the prisoners, who, instead of 
 any allowance, had half the price of their labor for their support. § That at 
 Bury St. Edmunds in the same county, formerly, it is said, a Jewish synagogue, 
 had neither court yard nor water. || In the gaol and bridewell for the town of 
 Thetford in the adjoining county of Norfolk, the dungeon for the felons, 
 descending by a ladder of ten steps, was but eighteen feet by nine and a half 
 in length and breadth, and nine feet high, with one solitary window in it, 
 about eighteen inches by twelve in diameter. Yet in this miserable hole from 
 sixteen to twenty persons, men and women together, were regularly confined 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 274, 5. t lb. p. 242. | lb. p. 219. § lb. p. 265, 6. || lb. p. 268. 
 
m 
 
 for four or five nights during the assizes, which are always held in this 
 town iu the summer season.* With just about eight square feet for each 
 prisoner to move, or lie him down in, what must have been their dreadful 
 situation during the raging heat of the dog days, in some of which they might 
 not unfrequently be the miserable tenants of this miserable dungeon ? The 
 court yard of the prison, according to custom, was not secure ; and it had no 
 water. Without either salary or fees, having only the house to live in for his 
 trouble, it is difficult to conceive how the keeper of this gaol made shift to get 
 his living, unless he had some other mode of fleecing his prisoners. At 
 Norwich, Mr. Howard re-visited both the city and county gaol, and also in- 
 spected the city bridewell, which he found to be both convenient and clean ;~f 
 as, except, that the court yard was small, was the case also with the town 
 gaol at Lynn,^ but not with the county bridewell at Swaffham, the sewers 
 there being offensive ; its court yard confined, and without water ; its pri- 
 soners, amongst whom was a lunatic, always locked up. At Cambridge, the 
 county bridewell, in the castle yard, had nothing particular in its construction 
 or regulation : in that belonging to the town the prisoners slept upon the 
 ground ; the womens' work room was without a fire-place ; the court yard of no 
 use to the prisoners, because it was not secure ; the prison itself being also 
 without water, or sewer, and altogether much out of repair. The keeper had a 
 salary in lieu of fees, and as he was himself a clothier, he employed many of 
 his prisoners in working for him. The town gaol had neither court yard, nor 
 water accessible to prisoners: the gaoler no salary. § At Ely, and after- 
 wards at Hertford, he re-visited the county gaol ; and inspected the bridewell 
 at both places, in which he found that the prisoners were always locked up 
 within doors, though there was a yard to each of them. |( 
 
 With the inspection of the latter of these bridewells, Mr. Howard's labors 
 for the year ended on the 14th of December; but on the very first day of the 
 * State ef Prison*, 1st Edit. p. 261. f lb. p. 260. * lb. p. 262. § lb. p. 250, 1. H lb. p. 213,253. 
 
 A A 
 
178 
 
 ensuing January he set out upon a tour to Scotland and Ireland, re-inspecting 
 the gaols of those towns in England, through which he passed on his way. 
 In the bridewell for the county of Nottingham, at Southwell, which he had not 
 before visited, he found a dungeon but fourteen feet square, ten steps under 
 ground : — seven prisoners had died here of the gaol fever, as well indeed they 
 might, in the space of two years.* That at Durham was left to the care of a 
 woman, the keeper residing at the high-gaol in a distant part of the city .-J" 
 In Scotland, the only place of his visit to which, upon the present occasion, any 
 account seems to be preserved is Glasgow, where the magistrates had ex- 
 pressly ordered, " that the gaoler every morning and evening, at the opening 
 of, and before the shutting up the prison, should personally visit every room 
 and place therein." Those magistrates were so early sensible of the public 
 utility of that general investigation of the abuses and defects of prisons in which 
 our illustrious countryman was then engaged, that upon his very first visit to 
 their city on this merciful errand, they made him a present of its freedom ; an 
 honor for which he has left upon record his grateful acknowledgments, as 
 well as for their general politeness and civility during his short continuance 
 amongst them.J Of the result of his visit to the sister kingdom no memorials 
 exist, except a few short notices in the first edition of his work on Prisons, § in one 
 of which he expresses his surprise at finding that no liquors were sold in any of the 
 prisons which he saw in Ireland, in consequence of an act of the parliament of 
 that country, which prohibited so improper a practice. By another statute the 
 clergyman of the parish, in which any gaol was situated, was empowered to 
 order the felons' bread, for which he was allowed a salary of 10/. a year. A 
 third provided for the separation of men and women felons ; and a fourth 
 prohibited the gaolers keeping any cows, &c. in yards appropriated to the use 
 of prisoners, which a fifth authorized grand juries to provide, where there were 
 none already. But notwithstanding these salutary provisions of the statute books 
 for the due regulation of the Irish gaols, it would appear that their practical 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 293. t lb. p. 420. % lb. p. 53. § lb. 14, 44, 52, 60, 62. 
 
119 
 
 arrangements were to the full as faulty as were those of our own country ; for 
 Mr. Howard speaks of the shocking intercourse of the sexes which took place in 
 the old Newgate at Duhlin, in terms of strong reprohation.* On his return to 
 England, he re-visited the gaols at Chester, and on his first inspection of the city 
 bridewell there, found it to contain two new dungeons, about nine feet under 
 ground, in which he told the keeper he hoped that their contrivers might be 
 the first to lodge.| 
 
 From Chester he probably proceeded direct to Cardington, to prepare for 
 supporting by evidence the two petitions which had been presented to the 
 House of Commons, on the 6th of December, 1774, the one by himself nd 
 Mr. Whitbread, the other by certain burgesses of the borough of Bedford, 
 complaining of the undue return of Sir William Wake and Mr. Sparrow as 
 their representatives, and imputing to the returning officers the being in- 
 fluenced by motives the most corrupt and partial in making it. These petitions 
 were originally ordered to be taken into consideration on the 10th, but were 
 afterwards deferred until the 14th of March, on which day — the petitioners, 
 Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Howard, their counsel and agents being present, — the 
 committee to try the merits of this election was appointed, Lord George 
 Germaine being their nominee.J The great point for the sitting members to 
 establish was the legality of the votes of the honorary freemen already men- 
 tioned ; whilst the attention of the petitioners was principally directed to 
 restoring to the right of suffrage which they had enjoyed at all former 
 elections, a very large proportion of the resident burgesses of Bedford, who 
 partook of the benefits of a noble charity distributed, in various ways, to the 
 inhabitants of the town, from the munificent bequest of one of its natives, Sir 
 William Harpur, who more than a century ago had attained to the dignity of 
 Lord Mayor of the city of London. Both of these points were somewhat 
 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, p. 108. t State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 451. 
 
 } Journals of the House of Commons. Vol. XXXV. p. 22, 179, 194. 
 
 A a2 
 
180 
 
 singularly decided in favor of the party to whom their establishment was of 
 the greater importance ; and though as the poll stood when thus cor- 
 rected, the material alterations introduced into its numbers, seemed to be 
 decidedly advantageous to the petitioners, — in a letter written to his friend the 
 Reverend Joshua Symmonds, immediately after a determination of the 
 committee which promised him his seat, we find Mr. Howard expressing his 
 willingness to renounce all the benefit which he himself could derive from it, 
 could he, by so doing, have preserved to the freemen and resident burgesses of 
 the borough, that protection for their rights which a contrary decision of the 
 other, and as it respected them, the more vital question would have afforded. 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 " I would beg to acquaint you that the great question relative to Honorary 
 freemen was determined in favour of them. The Certificate Voters are allowed 
 and this day at three o'clock the recipients of Harpur's bounty were declared 
 not disqualified, which determination, most probably, will give us our seats, yet 
 as our opponents declare they shall object against other votes, the contest still 
 continues. I would have the deepest sense of that hand which ruleth the 
 hearts of men, and turneth them which way soever he pleaseth. We are in 
 the hopes that the Committee will report to the house that great abuse of 
 power in the Corporation, by which influx your liberties are destroyed. 
 Could I have gained the first question at the expense of the seat, with pleasure I 
 would have embraced it. 
 
 " I desire my sincere compliments to Mrs. Symmonds, with my best thanks 
 for your assistance care and concern ; a grateful sense I hope I shall ever retain, 
 being with much esteem 
 
 " Sir, 
 
 " Your affect, friend & 
 " Beaufort buildings, " obliged hum: servant 
 
 " March 18, 1775." " John Howard." 
 
 •>-, 
 
181 
 
 The committee, after having decided that persons resident in Bedford under 
 certificates from other parishes, or receiving there the advantages of Sir William 
 Harpur's, and of some other charities, were not thereby disqualified from 
 voting, drew, however, a very nice distinction, the correctness of which we 
 have no means of examining, to the exclusion of the partakers of another gift, 
 the greater part of whom had voted for the petitioning candidates. But 
 notwithstanding this reduction, they had now the majority of voices, which 
 at this stage of the proceedings were for Whitbread 574 ; Howard 542 ; 
 Wake 541 ; Sparrow 530.* But a further, and as it respected Mr. Howard's 
 claim to be declared the sitting member, a fatal diminution in this number w r as 
 made, by striking off the poll all those persons who, within six months 
 previous to the electron, had received parochial relief, and it then stood for 
 Whitbread 568; Wake 541 ; Howard 537 ; Sparrow 529 ;f leaving him in a 
 minority of but four votes, when at the close of the poll upon which the return 
 was made, he was 125 behind his successful, and 115 below his unsuccessful 
 opponent, whom he now outstripped by eight votes : so well founded was the 
 complaint of the corruption and partiality which, upon this occasion, had been 
 displayed against him. It were almost needless to add, that, upon the close of 
 this parliamentary scrutiny, on the 23d of March, the chairman of the com- 
 mittee reported to the house that Sir William Wake was duly elected, but that 
 instead of Mr. Sparrow, Mr. Whitbread ought to have been returned, and that 
 the return was amended accordingly.^ With what feelings our Philanthropist 
 viewed this defeat of expectations which he appeared to be so justly entitled to 
 cherish, we may learn from the following letter to his friend Mr. Symmonds, 
 written but four days after the final decision of the committee had been pronounced.. 
 
 '5 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Accept of my best thanks for your kind assistance and zealous attachment 
 in an affair in which it has pleased God to rebuke us, I may say us Dissenters ;. 
 
 * Douglas's Reports of Controverted Elections, Vol. I. p. 122. t lb. p. 121. 
 
 t Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. XXXV. p. 220—2. 
 
182 
 
 for having the honour of being supported by them and a Dissenter, I was a 
 victim of the Ministry. Most surely I should not have fallen in with all their 
 severe measures relative to the Americans, and my constant declaration that 
 not one emolument of 5 shillings, were I in Parliament, would I ever accept of, 
 marked me out as an object of their aversion. Two or three of the members 
 told me of it on Monday, but I insisted as the Committee were on oath that 
 they must be consistent in their resolutions as to the Charities and as ancient 
 usage was the line, they went on, the free men they never would disqualify in the 
 town, as we knew many non-residents who were Paupers, but we never objected 
 to them. Yet, alas ! when one would not do, both must be brought, even re- 
 solutions tortured sooner than one private independent person have his seat. 
 
 " I sensibly feel for an injured people, their aifection and esteem I shall 
 ever reflect on with pleasure and gratitude. As to myself, I calmly retire. 
 It may be promotive of my best interest. My large and extensive acquaint- 
 ance, the very kind part the Protestant Dissenters of all denominations took in 
 the affair hurts me not a little, yet in the firm belief of an over-ruling Pro- 
 vidence I would say — It is the Lord let him do what seemeth right. He maketh 
 light arise out of darkness. 
 
 " I had begun this letter before I received the late fresh instance of your 
 affection and esteem. I sincerely thank you for it. My ardent wishes will 
 ever be for your happiness and success in that great and good cause vou are 
 engaged in : And permit me to say I shall ever remain 
 
 " Rev. and dear Sir 
 
 " Your affect, friend and Serv'. 
 " John Howard." 
 " London March 27 th , 1775. 
 
 Whether the suspicion here expressed, of his not having been fairly treated 
 by the committee to whom the merits of his petition were referred, was well 
 
183 
 
 founded it is, of course, at this distance of time, impossible to determine ; 
 but that, by the ministry of that day, a man of Mr. Howard's inflexible 
 integrity of his determined character — of his religious principles (still more 
 unpopular in those days, in the higher ranks of life, than in ours), and, above 
 all, of the sentiments he entertained, and which, when particularly questioned 
 upon the subject, he had openly avowed,* on a point that, coute qui coute, they 
 were madly determined to carry, — would not have been held as a most desirable 
 person to fill a seat in parliament, may readily be conceived. In the wish 
 which they would, therefore, very naturally entertain for his exclusion from 
 this distinction, whether they took any active part in its accomplishment or not, 
 they were most amply gratified ; though the object of their aversion retired at 
 the close of a contest which he had pursued, as far as it could be pursued, — in a 
 spirit that did honor to himself and to his numerous supporters. In the disap- 
 pointment of their hopes, and of their hopes alone, did he feel the mortification 
 which he here expresses in stronger terms than it was usual with him to adopt. 
 The dissenters of every denomination had been, as it was reasonable to expect 
 they should be, most warmly engaged in his interest during the struggle ; his 
 defeat he therefore regarded as theirs ; yet was he of too public a spirit to confine 
 his commiseration within such narrow bounds ; for, looking beyond every consi- 
 deration of sect or of party, he felt extremely indignant that a decision of the 
 House of Commons, manifestly unjust upon the very face of it, should have put 
 the elective franchise of the great body of burgesses, with whom he was so 
 nearly connected by vicinity and friendly intercourse, at the disposal of an 
 arbitrary, a mercenary, and a time-serving corporation. Habitually referring 
 every circumstance of his life to the wise ordering of an unerring, though, at 
 times, a seemingly mysterious, providence, he did not, however, as far as it 
 respected himself, in any measure regret the issue of this event ; but, as we 
 learn from the journal of his confidential attendant, seemed rather to rejoice 
 that it left him at liberty to pursue, without interruption, his investigation of 
 the accumulated sufferings of the prisoner and the captive, in foreign climes, 
 
 * Rev. S. Palmer's Letter to the Editor of the Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 318. 
 
184 
 
 as well as in his native country. Of that first object of his benevolent regard 
 he was not, indeed, unmindful whilst detained in London for the purpose of 
 establishing his right to a seat in parliament, as on the fourth, fifth, and sixth 
 of March, we find him re-visiting some of the prisons in the metropolis, and, 
 amongst others, the Marshalsea ; which, yielding in its incommodiousness to 
 none in the kingdom, besides one hundred and seventy-five persons confined 
 there as prisoners, contained at this time no less than six and forty others, in 
 the shape of their wives and children.* These and many other defects in the 
 regulation of our gaols, as common as they were flagrant, there can be no 
 doubt but that as a legislator he would have used his best endeavours to 
 correct ; and by the patient pei-severance with which he was so eminently 
 gifted — like the unwearied champions of the abolition of the slave trade, the 
 followers in his footsteps — and the companions of his fame, he might, to a cer- 
 tain degree, have succeeded in his attempt. But the faithful discharge of the 
 important and multifarious duties of that high office would have permitted to 
 a man, whose views of the solemn obligation to their performance under which 
 he would have been laid, were so proper as were his, but little, if any, leisure for 
 collecting that valuable stock of information which has left for future cor- 
 rectors of the abuses and defects of our prisons little but a disposition to adopt 
 the improvements which the extent of his enquiries on that subject enabled him 
 to suggest. In this, therefore, as in numberless other instances, an event, 
 which the short-sightedness of a mortal prudence would lead us to deplore as 
 singularly unfortunate, was over-ruled, for the benefit of thousands yet unborn, 
 by his irresistible decree, whose ways are not as our ways, but whose wisdom 
 cannot err. 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 206. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Mr. Howard' 8 first and second journey on the continent, for the purpose of inspecting the 
 state of the prisons of France, Holland, a part of Flanders, Germany, and Switzer- 
 land ; — his second general inspection of English gaols, and the publication of his State 
 of Prisons : — 1775 — 7 ; — with the history of his private life to the close of the latter year. 
 
 ON Mr. Howard's return from his tour in Scotland and Ireland, eai-ly in the 
 year 1775, it was his intention to have given to the world the result of his 
 enquiries as to the state of the prisons of those countries, and of their sister 
 kingdom ; but, in the modest and unassuming language of the work in which that 
 valuable information was afterwards communicated to the public, with some very 
 interesting additions, " conjecturing that something useful to his purpose might 
 be collected abroad, he laid aside his papers, and travelled into France, 
 Flanders, Holland, and Germany.* The precise route which he pursued in 
 this journey, neither does his own printed account of its results, nor any in- 
 formation in my possession, enable me to trace. But it is of infinitely less 
 importance to follow his footsteps from stage to stage, as he rapidly proceeded 
 on his way, than it is to collect the few scattered fragments that the low estima- 
 tion in which he always held his own exertions has suffered to remain upon 
 record, of the difficulties he had to contend with, in penetrating the gloomy 
 recesses of the dungeon, whilst his fellow countrymen on their travels, often 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 78. 
 B B 
 
186 
 
 the companions of his journies from town to town in the public conveyances, 
 were eager in the chase of pleasure, from the palace to the theatre, from the 
 theatre to the public walks, and from the public walks to the ball room, or to 
 the fashionable party ; — of the firmness, the courage, and the address with 
 which those difficulties were surmounted, if surmountable at all, that cannot 
 fail to give an additional interest to the sedulous anxiety with which he 
 drew from the management of those abodes of wretchedness abroad, every 
 hint they could furnish for the improvement of similar receptacles for the guilty 
 and the unfortunate at home. 
 
 He most probably left England, on this tour, about the middle of April, 
 1775, and proceeded directly to Paris, where he visited most of the prisons 
 and houses of correction, and some of the principal hospitals. It was not, 
 however, without much difficulty that he got admission to the chief places of 
 confinement, for different descriptions of offenders, in this populous city, such 
 was the strictness of its police, and the jealousy of its government, especially 
 with regard to all its state prisoners, even to those whose rank, or the political 
 magnitude of whose offences, did not entitle them to the unenviable distinction 
 of being shut up for life in the dungeons, or iron cages of the Bastille. But 
 even to the gloomiest of those dungeons did the deep commiseration which 
 he felt for the distresses of the most wretched and forlorn of his fellow crea- 
 tures induce him to wish to penetrate ; and in the hope of being able to draw 
 from these abodes of hopeless misery some information for the comple- 
 tion of his great design, he would not have hesitated to trust himself in the 
 power of strangers, and those strangers the keepers of a state prison like 
 this, in the strongest of these cages, surrounded, as they were, by an insur- 
 mountable wall and an impassable ditch, which prevented the possibility of 
 esoape when once their massive doors had grated on their iron hinges, and the 
 long draw-bridge had been lifted up, to shut their prisoners in. With this 
 
18T 
 
 view, and I am here adopting the unassuming account which he himself has 
 given of so bold, and so dangerous an enterprize :* " he knocked hard at the 
 outer gate, and immediately went forward, through the guard, to the draw-bridge 
 before the entrance of the castle ; but while he was contemplating this gloomy 
 mansion, an officer came out of the castle, much surprised, and he was forced 
 to retreat through the mute guard, and thus regained that freedom which for 
 one locked up within those walls it would be next to impossible to obtain." 
 " In the space of four centuries from the foundation to the destruction of the 
 Bastille, perhaps," observes one of his biographers upon this singular, but cha- 
 racteristic, adventure, " Mr. Howard was the only person that was ever com- 
 pelled to quit it reluctantly."! It was, however, in all probability most fortu- 
 nate for himself, and for the eause of humanity which he had so nobly espoused 
 at all personal risks, and through all personal privations, that he quitted it as he 
 did, for had he advanced but a few steps further, his laudable curiosity might 
 have cost him dear. He would scarcely have been more successful in gaining 
 admission to the other prisons of the city, had he not, with equal address and 
 humanity, availed himself of one of the articles of the very judicious arret of 
 parliament of the 18th of June, 1717, for the regulation of the several prisons 
 in the city of Paris, which directs their gaolers to admit to the places of con- 
 finement under their superintendance, all persons desirous of bestowing any 
 charitable donations on the prisoners in their custody, and to permit them to 
 distribute their alms with their own hands, except in the instance of persons 
 confined in the dungeons, to whom they are to be given by the gaoler in the 
 donor's presence. Pleading this humane provision before the commissary of 
 police, to whom he had been referred by the keeper of the Grand Chatelet, 
 one of the principal prisons in Paris, which he was anxious to inspect, he not 
 only succeeded in obtaining admittance there, but, by its means, was permitted 
 to visit the Petit Chalelet and For FEveque, and to have an opportunity of 
 ' State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 9$. f Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 256. 
 
 bb2 
 
188 
 
 seeing almost every individual confined within their walls. The two latter 
 prisons he describes as some of the worst of the numerous places of confinement 
 in Paris and its suburbs.* The dungeons in which the more hardened descrip- 
 tion of felons were confined were under ground, damp, gloomy, and, as 
 places of dwelling for a human being, to the last degree revolting to every 
 kindlier feeling of our nature. In the Bicetre, a police establishment upon a 
 very large scale, serving the double purpose of a prison, and a hospital for the 
 poor, he also found eight such dreadful places of confinement, descending 
 beneath the level of the earth by sixteen steps, in size about thirteen feet by 
 nine, with two strong doors, three chains fastened to the wall, and a stone 
 funnel in one corner for air, to each cell. From the situation of these dreary 
 caverns, and the difficulty he found in procuring admittance to them, he con- 
 cluded that hardly any other stranger had ever seen them, and therefore 
 thought it his duty to give the more particular account of them.)' The use of 
 these subterraneous abodes, which he describes as " totally dark, and beyond 
 imagination horrid and dreadful," J; in most of the French prisons, forms indeed 
 the principal drawback from the commendation he justly bestows upon the 
 general humanity of the legislative provisions of that kingdom for the regula- 
 tion of its gaols and other places of confinement. In their gloomy recesses, 
 " poor creatures," he tells us, " were confined night and day for weeks, for 
 months together." 
 
 From France and French Flanders Mr. Howard proceeded to the Austrian 
 Netherlands, arriving at Brussels on the 16th of May, whence he addressed 
 the following account of his journey, and of the avidity with which he was 
 pursuing its great object, allowing himself, but with much unwillingness, even 
 the relaxation which he found to be necessary for his health, in a letter to his 
 friend, the Rev. Thomas Smith, of Bedford. 
 
 * State of Prisons, 3d Edit. p. 165. f lb. 1st Edit. p. 87. * lb. p. 90, 91. 
 
189 
 
 " Deak Sir, " Bruxelles May 17, 1775. 
 
 " The very kind part you take in my Affairs makes me flatter myself that 
 a line will not be disagreeable, — Since I left England I have visited several 
 Gaols in french Flanders, as almost every one in Paris, and indeed with no 
 little trouble or Resolution did I get admittance into those Seats of Woe, as at 
 this time both at Paris, Versailles and in many Provinces there has been the 
 greatest Riots and Confusion. The Military patrole the streets of Paris Night 
 and Day, daily executions, one of which with pain I attended last Thursday ; 
 I came late last Night to this City ; the day I have employed in Visiting the 
 Gaols and collecting all the Criminals Laws as I have got those of France ; 
 however rigorous they may be, yet Their great care and attention to their 
 Prisons is worthy of commendation, all fresh and Clean no Gaol Distemper, no 
 Prisoners Ironed, the Bread allowance far exceeds that of any of our Gaols e. g. 
 every Prisoner here has Two Pound of Bread a day, once (a day) soup, and a 
 Sunday 1" of meat. But I write to my friend for a relaxation from what so 
 much engrosses my thoughts. And indeed I force myself to the public 
 Dinners and Suppers for that purpose, tho' I shew so little respect to a sett of 
 Men who are so highly esteemed (the french Cooks) as I have not tasted fish 
 flesh or fowl since I have been this side the Water. Thro' a kind Providence 
 I am very well, calm easy Spirits, the public Voitures has not been crowded, 
 and I have met in general with agreeable Company : I hope to be in Holland 
 the beginning of next week : the Country especially Flanders affords the 
 pleasing prospect of the greatest Plenty, this dry weather affects them less than 
 in other Countries. I beg my best Comp\ to Mrs. Smith, remember me to 
 Mrs. Belsham and any of our Friends who may be so kind to think of me ; 
 Permit me to remain With Affect". & Esteem 
 " To 
 
 " The Rev d . Mr. Smith " D r Sir 
 
 " at Bedford " Y r obliged friend & serv'. 
 
 " Par la Poste de Londre." " Jn° Howard." 
 
190 
 
 At Brussels he met with nothing remarkable in the prisons then in existence. 
 A house of correction upon the largest scale of any structure of the kind he 
 had yet seen was, however, erecting for all the provinces of Brabant at 
 Vilvorde, upon the banks of the canal, leading to this city, and at no great 
 distance from it. From this place he most probably proceeded to Ghent, 
 where he found a house of correction for the provinces of Austrian Flanders 
 on a very similar plan, about half completed. It was already inhabited by 
 159 male prisoners, each of whom had a separate bed room, furnished with a 
 bedstead, a straw bed, a mattrass, a pillow, a pair of sheets, and two blankets in 
 winter, and one in summer. Their, food was equally good and sufficient ; their 
 linen and sheets regularly changed ; and the attention paid to the preservation of 
 their health in every respect most exemplary. The number of women confined 
 there was fifty-nine, whose treatment was similar to that of the men, except 
 that they had not separate bed rooms. There were distinct work-rooms for 
 each of the sexes, who were carefully kept from all communication with each 
 other. The women were employed in combing and spinning wool, in washing 
 and mending the cloathes, and in the other domestic arrangements of the 
 house ; the men principally in weaving. An exact account of the work daily 
 performed by each individual, who was regularly paid for what he did beyond 
 the task allotted, was kept in a book methodically ruled for the purpose, a 
 column being left blank for the magistrates, who visited the prison at stated, 
 and at short intervals, to write the punishment of those who had neglected, or 
 badly performed it. This Mr. Howard particularly examined, and found that 
 their directions were judicious, but not severe ; varying according to the 
 different circumstances of each particular case. Sometimes they had written 
 " make up in next piece ;" sometimes " to work alone ;" " to bread and 
 water;'' seldom "to rasping log wood," the hardest work at which they 
 could be set ; but often " excuse," on account, no doubt, of the offence not 
 having been frequently repeated, and it may fairly be presumed in con- 
 sideration also of the offenders being reprimanded. With every other part of 
 
101 
 
 the internal arrangement of the place, he seems to have been equally satisfied. 
 Spirituous liquors, and gaming of every kind were strictly prohibited, and the 
 most excellent rules were established for preventing all quarrelling, for cor- 
 recting the morals of the prisoners, and for making them, for the future, useful in 
 society.* No wonder, therefore, that with so much in it to commend, and so little 
 to censure, he should style this " a noble institution." The house of correction 
 for the city, though not so commodiously built, or kept quite so clean as some 
 other Flemish prisons, he found, in other respects, to be under similarly excellent 
 regulations. The magistrates met there once a week to inspect it, and to appoint 
 the sort and quantity of provision for every day of the ensuing week. The 
 prisoners were kept close to task-work of different descriptions, but the profit 
 of their extra labor was their own.f Their diet was good and sufficient ; but 
 at another prison adjoining the superb Maison de Ville, it was even more ; for 
 there the allowance for food was so ample that the prisoners were able to save 
 something out of it, after paying for the weekly washing of their linen. But 
 Ghent contained one striking contrast to the general excellence of its prisons, 
 and the humanity of their regulations. The church has generally provided 
 the strictest gaolers ; and the prison belonging to the rich monastery of the 
 Benedictines, in the abbey of St. Peter, which had many lordships, and a part 
 of the city itself in its jurisdiction, formed no exception to the rule. It con- 
 tained three dreary dungeons, down nineteen steps, with a little window in 
 each; but at the time Mr. Howard visited them, there were happily no 
 prisoners immured in these living graves. With his usual perseverance in 
 investigating every thing to the bottom, he himself descended into their 
 gloomy caverns ; but his noting the dimensions of the windows, and the number 
 of the steps, so enraged the worthy keeper of these abodes of wretchedness, 
 that he would not indulge his laudable curiosity any further.^ To atone, however, 
 in some measure for such a scandal to the ministers of religion, he had the 
 gratification of visiting the Hospitable Mansion, a religious house for females, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 135, 140—145. t lb. p. 139, 140. % lb. p. 139. 
 
192 
 
 but open for the reception of insane persons of the other sex, and for aged 
 women. The lunatics, if necessary, had male attendants ; hut the tenderness 
 with which both these and the poor women were treated by the sisters gave no 
 little pleasure to their philanthropic visitor.* At Bruges, he noticed two 
 things in the prison as remarkable, and well worthy of imitation ; the care 
 taken of the sick, and of the legacies and donations for the relief of the 
 prisoners. The physicians were required to write all their prescriptions in a 
 book left at the gaol for the inspection of the magistrates, who liberally 
 allowed fourteen-pence a day to the gaoler for every person on the sick list, 
 to provide them with white bread, soup, &c. until countermanded by the 
 medical attendant. These books Mr. Howard spent several hours in . looking 
 over, and probably gained from them some valuable additions to his knowledge 
 on infectious diseases, and the best means of preventing their contagion, to 
 which it would seem that their prescriptions had a particular reference. A 
 regular list of the benefactions to the prison, for more than four hundred years 
 past, and of the time at which they were severally to be distributed, was 
 printed and hung up in the council chamber. - !" In Antwerp, which seems to 
 have been his next stage, he met with nothing remarkable in the state of the 
 prisons, except that the allowance of food to the criminals was scanty, though 
 the deficiency was fully made up by supplies from the monasteries, and other 
 charitable institutions for their relief.^ From the very slight notice that is 
 taken of the places of confinement in this city, in the account which he 
 himself gave to the public, of his two first visits of benevolence to the continent, 
 it is, however, highly probable, that, from some cause or other no longer to be 
 explained, he was not able to pay that minute attention to their regulations 
 which he afterwards bestowed upon them. 
 
 This might too, in some measure, be the case at Rotterdam, which would be 
 the first town he came to upon his arrival in Holland, of which he has given 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 140. t lb. p. 137, 8. J lb. p. 134. 
 
 »' 
 
193 
 
 us any account. What little he had the opportunity of observing, or has 
 thought it necessary to report, is, however, very favorable to the police of the 
 place, and to the wisdom and humanity of the laws of the country in which it 
 is situated. In the prison under the stadt-house were neither felons nor 
 debtors : in the rasp and spin-house, about forty men, and a hundred women. 
 The former were employed, three or four in a room, in making fishing-nets, 
 carding wool, sorting coffee, &c. ; the latter principally in a worsted manu- 
 facture, spinning, and working at a great wheel similar to those which, in 
 the silk mills at Derby, are turned by water. He also visited the pest-house 
 across the Maes, and nearly opposite to the town, and has noticed it in his book, 
 not only because it occurred to him that it would be a good plan for a house 
 of correction, being airy, and built round a court communicating with the 
 river ; but on account of the sentiments of veneration it inspired when he trod 
 upon the ground under which such piles of his brave countrymen lie buried, as 
 had died in this place when it was used as a military hospital for our soldiers, 
 after the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom.* So mingled in his generous heart were 
 the feelings of the patriot, with those of the citizen of the world ; and thus 
 carefully did he treasure up the slightest hint he could derive from the 
 institutions of other countries for the benefit of his own. At Delft, as in fact 
 in every place he visited in Holland, he found the criminals confined in the 
 prisons hard at work, chiefly on woollen manufactures. Their task was not, 
 however, so heavy, but that they were able, if they chose to exert themselves, 
 to do somewhat beyond it, though here they had but half the profit of the 
 overplus ; a narrow policy, which must in the end lose more to the public than 
 it could save. Not more than eight or ten men were allowed to work in one 
 room, a regulation of which Mr. Howard most cordially approved ; " for when," 
 as he justly observes, " large numbers are together, one idle person corrupts 
 more ; and there is not generally so much work done." A rule, no less politic 
 than it is humane, was also adopted by the magistrates for the encourage- 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 133. 
 c c 
 
 U"' 
 
194 
 
 ment of good behaviour, that when a prisoner had conducted himself well 
 for a few years, they began to abridge the time for which he was 
 sentenced.* From Delft our illustrious countryman proceeded onward to the 
 Hague, where he mentions, in terms of grateful recollection, having been 
 honored with the polite assistance of Sir Joseph Yorke, afterwards Lord 
 Dover, at that time his Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary at the 
 Hague, in forwarding the objects of his research.! It wa s most probably 
 through so high an introduction, that one of the magistrates of the town 
 accompanied him to the prison, where all was quiet and in order. The same gen- 
 tleman presented him with copies of the instructions to the Sheriff of the Court, 
 and the officers of the Attorney- General, and with a MS. copy of forty-four 
 rules for the management of the prison. The whole of these seem to have been 
 admirably adapted for the purposes they were intended to answer. One of 
 the rules for the safe custody of prisoners is, however, very revolting to our 
 ideas of justice and equity, for it directed, that if any one of them escaped, 
 whether by his own immediate fault, or the fault of his servants, the keeper 
 should suffer the punishment due to the felon's crime. The other rules for the 
 regulation of his conduct, which prohibited him to keep either a tavern or 
 alehouse, to game with his prisoners, or directly or indirectly to accept any 
 treat or present from them, whether it be during, or after the expiration of 
 their confinement, are not only unexceptionable, but well deserving to be 
 adopted and most strictly enforced in all places of a similar description. He 
 was further required to keep the prison neat and clean ; to supply the prisoners 
 with good bread, soup, and beer ; with fresh straw once a week ; and in winter 
 with coverlids. The whole arrangements of the gaol were under the immediate 
 superintendance of the Attorney- General, who by himself, or by his deputy, was 
 expected to see that all the rules established for its regulation were duly comjjlied 
 with. The rules for officers of the Attorney- General, and of the Sheriff, Air. 
 Howard informs us, had such an admirable effect in preserving peace and order, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 132, 3. t lb. p. 128. 
 
 V 
 
195 
 
 that he could not forbear abstracting a few of them ; a temptation which Mr. 
 Howard's present biographer finds it equally difficult to resist, and he therefore 
 follows his example, in the hope that his so doing may be the means of recall- 
 in <r the attention of those who have the power of correcting them", to the 
 abuses which still exist in that department of the administration of justice, 
 which is entrusted to officers of a similar description in England ; where, 
 though he freely admits that much has already been done in the way of 
 improvement in this respect, much, very much indeed— yet remains to do. 
 Neglect of their duty, through drunkenness, was then, by these admirable 
 regulations, punished by their being compelled to live in the prison upon bread 
 and water, at their own expense, for three days, eight days, and, if the 
 offence was a third time repeated, by being discharged from their office. 
 They were not to keep company with any persons in public-houses, or other 
 places of idle resort. Giving abusive language to any one was punished by a 
 fine; quarrelling with them, at the discretion of the magistrates; and not 
 giving information of other defaulters, with the loss of the situation which 
 they themselves held. They were also further directed to guard against being 
 guilty of ill behaviour of any sort, that no dishonor might be cast upon the 
 court of judicature, whose ministers they were ; a consideration this, which, 
 even by the infliction of the severest penalties on those who lost sight of it, 
 could not the object be otherwise effected, it would be extremely desirable to 
 impress upon the minds of the inferior officers of justice charged with the 
 execution of process from the various courts of our own country. Each officer 
 was to have a copy of these rules ready to shew upon demand, on pain of 
 being fined, and the whole of them were to be read over to them when assem- 
 bled together, once in every month, by the sheriff.* How different the whole 
 of this system to that pursued with us! but our judges and our legislators are 
 not yet too old to learn ; and they often more highly prize the wisdom collected 
 from foreign lands than that originally suggested by the natives of their own. 
 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 128—130. 
 c c 2 
 
196 
 
 In the prison at Amsterdam, which is under the stadt-house or town- 
 hall, Mr. Howard found that the rooms for criminals were down fifteen steps, 
 a situation one would imagine, in so damp a country, not very conducive to 
 their health. It was in this place that one of the magistrates, conversing on 
 the subject of our English prisons, said, " nourish your prisoners well, and 
 keep them in dry rooms, and they will be healthy." This advice is certainly 
 good, but it is much better than the example set in the particular prison 
 in which it was given, the allowance for food not being regulated there 
 upon a very liberal scale. It was, however, highly honorable to the 
 police of this populous city, and to the morals of the country, that there 
 were but six delinquents confined here. The number of debtors was but 
 eighteen in the whole city, though its population amounted to 250,000 souls, 
 which is about one-third of that of London ; a circumstance no less creditable 
 to the honesty and industry of its inhabitants. But with respect to this class 
 of prisoners a very bad practice seems to have prevailed, of permitting them 
 to buy an anker of wine each, which they deposited with the keeper, who 
 allowed them to call for a bottle a day, on paying him ten stivers for the privi- 
 lege of drinking it. The attention paid to condemned criminals is also worthy 
 not merely of commendation, but of imitation. After sentence of death had 
 been passed upon them, they were never left alone, but two prisoners from the 
 rasp-house were constantly with them to prevent their destroying themselves, 
 to evade the execution of their sentence, which was generally performed within 
 forty-eight hours after it had been passed. The persons thus properly 
 appointed to watch their movements, we are told, were well pleased with 
 their office, for if they performed it faithfully they were rewarded by a dimi- 
 nution of their own period of confinement. Mr. Howard was credibly informed 
 that there had not been a single execution in the city of Amsterdam during the 
 ten years immediately preceding his visit ; and that, for a hundred years past, there 
 had not been, communibus annis, more than one in each year.* How striking, 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 124, 5. 
 
197 
 
 how disgraceful the contrast, when we consider that in less than one-fourth of 
 that period, namely from the year 1749 to 1771, the number of persons actually 
 executed within the city of London alone amounted to 678, averaging nearly 
 thirty a year. Yet what difference, we may safely ask the advocates for the 
 continuance of this sanguinary system, can there possibly exist in the circum- 
 stances of these two great commercial cities to call for this marked distinction 
 in the nature and the administration of their punishments for crime I It 
 cannot surely be contended that it is in a superior temptation to those frauds 
 against which, from the facility of their commission, and the extent of the 
 mischief they may accomplish, it is most undoubtedly necessary to guard 
 a commercial community, by the infliction of the severest pains and penalties 
 that can be devised, short of the death of the offender ; and it may even be 
 by that, provided it can be shewn that none can be so effectual in de- 
 terring others from following his example. If it should be, the answer is 
 obvious; — during the greater part of the period which this calculation embraces 
 the superior temptation existed, where the milder punishment prevailed, and 
 therefore the reasoning built upon this consideration falls to the ground. Is it 
 said, that the stricter morals of the people of Holland renders capital punishment 
 less necessary there than in England ? That is the strongest possible argu- 
 ment to shew, that hanging with us is not the way to mend them. Surely, surely, 
 the time will at length arrive, though we see not as yet the dawn of its approach, 
 when our legislators will remove this stain from a code of laws which might 
 otherwise be a model for the world ; and learn, though late, that it is not by a 
 prodigal waste of the blood of offenders that offences are to be checked, but, 
 that it is only by the adoption of a mode of discipline suited to reclaim evil doers 
 from the error of their ways, that this object may be accomplished,, and that 
 the injury they do to society can in any measure be repaired. To this correc- 
 tional discipline the greatest attention is paid in every part of Holland. At 
 Amsterdam, as m the other great towns of this commercial country, there is a 
 rasp-house, in which the men convicts are employed in the laborious occupation 
 
198 
 
 of rasping logwood, whence the name of the place is derived. In the particular 
 species of labor in which they were engaged, regard was however had, not 
 only to their strength, but to the various degrees of their criminality, some 
 being employed in winding silk and thread, and others in sorting and weighing 
 the wood which the stronger and more hardened offenders were compelled to 
 cut. If they were idle, or refractory, they were shut up in closer confinement 
 under ground ; but on careful inquiry, Mr. Howard found that the general 
 report of persons of this description being put into a cellar, in which they were 
 obliged to pump out the water, or be drowned in it, was not true. The 
 prisoners confined here were kept to hard work for nine hours a day, being 
 permitted to employ the remainder in making tobacco boxes, and other fancy 
 articles, for sale to visitors, who were suffered to go into the prison on paying 
 two stivers, which is nearly equal to two pence farthing of our money. They 
 were daily visited by the medical attendants of the establishment, and had 
 generally a healthy appearance. Mr. Howard was anxious to obtain some 
 further particulars of the regulations of this celebrated prison, but he could 
 scarcely ever get from its old cautious keeper, a direct answer to any one 
 question which he put, in the course of five visits paid to him for that 
 purpose. It was not until the last of these occasions, that he was even per- 
 mitted to go into the rooms, and then only because he was accompanied 
 by a magistrate, whose presence did not, however, dispel a particle of 
 the provoking reserve of the Dutch gaoler ; his conduct being still marked by 
 all the taciturnity and suspicion so strikingly characteristic of most of his coun- 
 trymen. Without asking him the question, his visitor saw that his prison was 
 dirty.* On nearly the same plan with the rasp-house, for the men, there was 
 here, as in most of the larger cities and towns in Holland, a Spin-huis, or spin- 
 ning-house for the women. Some of these, formerly of characters the most 
 abandoned, our philanthropic tourist had the pleasure to find sittings in the 
 presence of their mistress, pursuing their different employments, spinning, 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 126, 7. 
 
109 
 
 plain work, Sec. in a quiet and orderly maimer ; such is the effect of 
 the wholesome discipline judiciously adopted in these admirable institutions. 
 Under proper and vigilant inspection, they were thus kept to work, chiefly 
 for persons who sent it in from the city, for thirteen hours a day. From 
 their work Mr. Howard saw them go to their dinner, and could not hut 
 be most highly delighted at the order and regularity with which that 
 meal was conducted. It was indeed, a sight but seldom witnessed within 
 the walls of a prison. . The keeper, whom they call father, presided ; and 
 after leaving off their work at his command, they sang a psalm before 
 they left the room, and descended into a neat dining-room, where they seated 
 themselves at two tables, and had several dishes of boiled barley, agreeably 
 sweetened, set before them. On the father's striking his desk with a hammer, 
 they all stood up, when one of them read, with great propriety, a short 
 prayer of four or five minutes length. Their fare was humble, but it was 
 wholesome ; and after having thus supplicated the blessing of heaven upon its 
 enjoyment, they sat down cheerfully to it, each filling her own bowl from a 
 large dish that held enough for four, when one of them brought on a waiter 
 slices of bread and butter, which she served out to her fellow prisoners. " As 
 I staid longer than a common visitant," adds our author at the close of his 
 description of this pleasing scene, " one of the prisoners went up to the mistress 
 with the timid modesty of a suppliant, and asked leave to offer me the plate. 
 The leave was granted. The mistress keeps what is given, till it amounts to a 
 sum sufficient to purchase a little tea or coffee, for all to partake." But besides 
 these two admirable institutions for the punishment and reformation of crimi- 
 nals of both sexes, there was in Amsterdam, as in some other of the towns of 
 Holland, a prison, or workhouse, for slighter offenders, who were employed in 
 spinning, weaving coarse carpets, picking oakum, <fcc* From Amsterdam our 
 traveller proceeded to Utrecht, bearing with him letters of introduction, most 
 probably from our ambassador at the Hague, to Dr. Robert Brown, at this time 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 127, 8. 
 
200 
 
 minister of the English church, and his Britannic Majesty's agent in that city ; 
 hut who being confined to his bed by indisposition, sent his nephew, the Rev. 
 William Laurence Brown, D.D. now principal of the Marischal College, Aberdeen, 
 but then a student in divinity, residing in his uncle's house, to apologise for not 
 waiting on him in person, and shewing him those attentions which he was so 
 desirous he should receive at his hands. In this circumstance originated an 
 intimate friendship, to which, through the kind communications of the sur- 
 vivor, the subsequent parts of these memoirs will be indebted for much of 
 whatever, interest they may possess. There was nothing very particular in the 
 prison in the stadt-house here, except that there were no prisoners in it. The 
 keeper told Mr. Howard, that their allowance was twelve stivers a day, " for," 
 said he, " confinement here is not meant as punishment ; but only as safe custody 
 till trial. After which, some who are to be punished by a short imprisonment, 
 are sent to another prison, where they live on bread and water only." Of 
 this, however, they had a sufficient quantity, and if ill, their food was altered.* 
 At Groningen, Mr. Howard found the rasp and spin-house together, the ground 
 floor being appropriated to the use of the men, who worked and slept in the 
 same rooms, on which account they were somewhat offensive. The work, and 
 lodging rooms of the women were quite separate, and both of them very clean. 
 All the prisoners were occupied on a woollen manufacture."!" In the rasp-house 
 at Lewarden, a few of the men were employed in rasping logwood, with an 
 instrument composed of ten saws united ; others in combing and spinning wool, 
 spinning twine, weaving sacks, coarse linen cloth, &c. In the spin-house 
 adjoining, were thirty women all at work, preparing thread, &c. except one, 
 whom the mistress, on going up with her visitor from her breakfast, found idle 
 in a warehouse, fur which she not only rated her sufficiently, but entertained 
 him with her murmurs upon the offence for a considerable while after, whence 
 he naturally concluded that it was one of not very frequent occurrence.;]; " All 
 at work" seems indeed to be the grand secret of the orderly state of the Dutch 
 . * Slate of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 131, 2. t lb. p. 130, 131. I lb. p. 131. 
 
201 
 
 prisons; as all at play? or something worse, is most undoubtedly one of the prin- 
 cipal causes of the vice and immorality so generally prevalent in those of our own 
 country. It was impossible, therefore, for Mr. Howard to leave Holland, — 
 and Lewarden would seem to have been the last place he visited in it, during 
 the present journey — without being deeply impressed by a contrast which can- 
 not fail to strike every one who peruses the account here given of the obser- 
 vations which he made there. 
 
 At Bremen, the first town in Germany of which he gives us any account, 
 the prison for debtors contained four rooms, but the magistrate who accompanied 
 him in his visit to them, assured him, that they had not had an occupant for 
 above thirty years, until one had been fitted up but a short time since, for a 
 debtor who was confined in it for a few weeks. Over its outer gate was this 
 appropriate inscription, " Hie fraudum terminus esto." Mr. Howard found, 
 also, that there were but few debtors, or none at all, in such towns as Mentz, 
 Coblentz, Manheim, &c. ; a circumstance which he ascribes to their being 
 places of but little trade. " In such large trading cities as Hamburgh, and 
 Bremen," he goes on with equal justice to observe, " it seems owing to the 
 little credit that is given — the expence of aliment, &c. falling on the creditor — 
 the being deprived of every kind of amusement and diversion while in prison — 
 and the disgrace of being there."* It would be well, perhaps, could we import 
 some of these feelings into another great commercial city, or rather commercial 
 country through its wide extent, where imprisonment for debt is so far from 
 being a disgrace, that it is considered to be one of the mere every day occurrences 
 of life ; certificated bankrupts riding the while unblushingly in their carriages, 
 and mingling with the first circles of fashion and of taste, whilst the honest and 
 industrious creditor to whom they may have paid five shillings in the pound, 
 is left with his wife and family to rot in gaol. It might, too, be advisable 
 to adopt in England, as a general rule, the practice which at this time prevailed, 
 
 * State of Prison?, 1st Edit. p. 117. 
 UD 
 
202 ' 
 
 and I believe still prevails, in most of the German cities, not to permit the 
 wives and children of debtors to live with them in prison,* though some cases 
 might possibly arise, and that which has just been put for another purpose, would 
 seem to be one of them, in which a special exception might justly b.e allowed. 
 The house of correction in this city, Mr. Howard found to be " indeed a house 
 of industry ;" yet was it clean, and very quiet. The prisoners were all at work, 
 except one woman, who had broke her leg ; their employment being pretty 
 much the same as in Holland. The keeper, contrary to our then general practice 
 in England, had a salary, and was not allowed to sell any thing to his 
 prisoners.)- In the city of Hamburgh, supposed at that time to contain ninety 
 thousand inhabitants, there were but three debtors ; in the neighbouring town of 
 Altena but two. Here Mr. Howard spent a week in visiting the prisons ; which 
 he did with every possible advantage, through the kindness of his friend Senator 
 Voght. One of these is a place of confinement for slight offences, an esta- 
 blishment of a very useful description, by no means unfrequently met with 
 in Holland and Germany, though very much wanted, even to the present 
 day, in our own country. The principal house of correction is a sort of work- 
 house, in which it is not reckoned infamous to be confined. It contains many 
 hundreds, and at this time about three hundred women and girls were all busily 
 employed in its great room. Their work was chiefly knitting and spinning ; that 
 of the men weaving linen, hair, and wool ; and rasping logwood and hartshorn. 
 A regular account was kept of their earnings, one-fourth of which was given to 
 them for their own use. The whole establishment was under the government 
 of eight directors, who were required to be married men, as on their visits to 
 the prison, two and two in rotation, every Saturday, they were attended by 
 their ladies, who delivered out the women's work in a room appropriated to that 
 purpose : but besides this they themselves regularly visited it every Wednesday. 
 In the spin-house, which was considered infamous, and therefore contained, of 
 course, the more hardened offenders, it was somewhat singularly ordered, that 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 118. t Ibid. 118. 
 
203 
 
 the work should be of a less laborious description than in the institution just 
 described, for even the most robust of the men were employed in spinning in 
 rooms lighter, and therefore more cheerful than those of the work-house. But 
 with all these pleasing indications of a more enlightened and liberal, whilst it 
 was unquestionably a more politic method of punishing offenders, which Mr. 
 Howard witnessed in this great and nominally free city, there were circum- 
 stances of severity, and even of cruelty, connected with other parts of its 
 administration of justice, from which, as his heart sickens at the recital, 
 the free-born spirit of an Englishman will naturally revolt. " Among the 
 various engines of torture, or the question," says our author, in speaking of the 
 Butteley, the chief prison for felons in Hamburgh, " which I have seen in France 
 and other places, the most excruciating is kept and used in a deep cellar of this 
 prison. It ought to be buried ten thousand fathoms deeper. It is said the 
 inventor was the first who suffered by it : the last was a woman not two years 
 ago." The felons here were also all in irons, a circumstance not very usual in 
 the continental prisons.* 
 
 Entering the electoral dominions of the King of England, at Lunenburgh, 
 our traveller found that the criminals were here employed in a different manner 
 to any he had yet witnessed : that of digging stone from a large chalk hill, 
 preparing it for the kiln, grinding, sifting, and packing it in casks in the ware- 
 houses, whence it was sent to Hamburgh, and other places where it is made 
 into a most excellent cement. In this work they were not employed alone, 
 but were injudiciously, it might perhaps though be unavoidably, associated in 
 their labor with many honest persons, from whom they were, however, dis- 
 tinguished by having a chain of about four pounds weight fastened to the leg. 
 Their allowance was liberal; a pound and a half of bread, and three-halfpence 
 in money every day; provisions there being much cheaper than in England.f 
 At Zell, there was a large house of correction, of which we find nothing par- 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 115—117. t lb. 1 14—115. 
 D D 2 
 
204 
 
 ticular recorded, except that, like most of the German prisons, it was judiciously 
 built near a river, that situation being most conducive to cleanliness, of the 
 necessity of which in their places of confinement, — it would be well also did 
 their foresight extend to their habitations, — these people are represented to have 
 been fully aware.* This was the case also at Hanover, where the prison was 
 commodious, and well-regulated. It contained indeed a chamber of torture, 
 but its philanthropic visitor learned with pleasure that the two cruel engines 
 with which it was furnished, had not been used for four years.-)- The only 
 wonder is, that they should ever have been used at all, during the reign of the 
 benevolent prince who, for eleven years prior to the discontinuance of this 
 singular mode of measuring the guilt of a prisoner by the degree of physical 
 strength he might possess, had been the sovereign of the electorate.- Such, 
 however, is the force of custom, and the dread of innovation, that practices as 
 absurd as they are cruel, may long be suffered to prevail even under the govern- 
 ment of the mildest and most benignant monarch that ever swayed a sceptre. 
 
 In the capital of the dominions of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, our tra- 
 veller met with a house of correction, upon a very large scale, containing a 
 work room one hundred and ten feet long. He does not, however, give us any 
 description of the discipline adopted there, assigning as a reason for the omission, 
 that the institutions of a similar description in Holland and Flanders are much 
 better conducted than this, or other houses of the same sort in Germany £f and 
 of those a very particular account has already been given. In the neigh- 
 bouring city of Hanau, the chief town of the little principality of that name, 
 the galley slaves, as persons sentenced to hard labor in different houses of 
 oorrection in Germany, and some other parts of the continent, are very im- 
 properly called, were divided into two classes, honnctes and dcxhonnctes. The 
 former were condemned to work for three, four, seven, nine, or fourteen years, 
 according to the nature and magnitude of their offences ; but their term was 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 104. 1 Ibid. 114. % Ibid. 119. 
 
205 
 
 sometimes shortened on account of their good behaviour. These wore a hrown 
 uniform, and a small chain from the girdle to one leg; the dress of the other 
 class, consisting for the most part of such as had committed capital offences, 
 being a white coat, with one black sleeve, with a chain from the girdle to each 
 leg. The latter were never sent out of town, but were always put to the 
 most disagreeable services in it. The honnlies were set to work upon the 
 road, and on Mr. Howard asking several of them whether they liked to be 
 thus employed, or would rather choose to be confined in idleness ? they readily 
 answered, " much rather be thus abroad at work." On the Saturday afternoon 
 they swept the bridges, the entrances to the town, &c. Whatever might be 
 their number, they were attended by a guard of four soldiers, with bayonets 
 fixed, a subaltern, and the keeper. At their work, and in the prison, they 
 were kept perfectly separate from the deshonnttes, but even these were not 
 doomed to despair, but for their good behaviour were sometimes promoted to 
 the rank of honneti's, an advancement which made one of them with whom our 
 Philanthropist conversed, soon after it had taken place, extremely cheerful. 
 They were well fed, cloathed, and regularly visited by a deputy from the 
 regency, who made his report every morning to the colonel, who conveyed it 
 to the prince, when he was residing at Hanau. Of his kindness to them the 
 prisoners seemed to be duly sensible, and spoke also with grateful respect of the 
 attention shewed them by his deceased mother. On his repeated visits they 
 always looked healthy.* At Manheim, Monsieur Babo, counsellor to the Regency, 
 very politely gave orders for our traveller to be shewn every room in the 
 Maieon de la Force, which was clean and admirably regulated. Both men and 
 women were all at work, either at their own trades, or at one of the manufac- 
 tures of the prison, which were of cloth and cards. So closely, indeed, were 
 they employed, that they had but little time to work for themselves ; yet their 
 labor did not maintain the house. Their allowance of food was good ; they 
 had clean linen, washed by the women prisoners once a week, and the sick were 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 109—111. 
 
206 
 
 indulged with white bread, veal, &c. Such also wa3 the strict attention paid 
 to cleanliness, that by one of the rules for the regulation of the prison, — a 
 copy of which was given to every prisoner, and another hung up in his room, 
 the whole being also publicly read every Sunday morning after divine service, 
 that no one might plead ignorance of them ; — it was provided, that whoever 
 saw the least offence against it should immediately inform the inspector, upon 
 pain of close confinement, on bread and water, and the most rigorous chastise- 
 ment. Prisoners committed to this well-regulated house of correction, were 
 greeted on their entrance with what was quaintly called the bien-venit, or wel- 
 come, which consisted in their being fastened by the neck, hands, and feet into 
 a machine, stripped, and receiving, according to the magistrate's order, from 
 twelve to thirty stripes ; after which they kissed the threshold, and went in. 
 Some were treated with the same compliment on their discharge ; a singular 
 but salutary ceremony, observed also at some other towns in Germany. A 
 capuchin friar said mass every morning in the chapel of the prison, at which 
 time Pi'otestants and Jews were ordered to their private devotions, the latter 
 being also excused in the same liberal spirit from working on their sabbath.* The 
 prisons of Mentz were equally well regulated, their keepers making a daily 
 report of their condition to an attentive Lieutenant of Police, and the Con- 
 seiUer de Regence, the Secretaire and Conseiller des Finances visiting them 
 once a fortnight, to hear their complaints, and to inquire if cloaths, or any other 
 necessary was wanting. None of their keepers were permitted to sell liquor, 
 but prisoners were allowed to send out for a quart of beer each a day, though 
 they were not suffered to have any spirits. In the house of correction for this 
 city, all was neat. The delinquents worked for two hours in the morning, and 
 two in the afternoon, at a mill in the prison, where most of the flour for the 
 city was ground. In the separate gaol for debtors, there were at this time no 
 prisoners ; when there were any, they received, at their creditors' cost, a daily 
 allowance of two pounds of bread, and about four pence English each. Every 
 
 * State of Prison?, 1st Ed. p. 112, 114. 
 
207 
 
 prison here had in each of its rooms a German stove, which in winter was heated 
 two or three times a day. Their inmates had clean linen onoe a week. 
 On Mr. Howard's observing to the Brigadier of the Police how healthy his 
 prisoners looked, he told him that " some years ago they were unhealthy, and 
 the Regency removed them from the dungeons under ground, upon which they 
 recovered, and had been remarkably healthy ever since." The dungeons were 
 now totally disused. The admirable rules adopted in this city for the regulation 
 of its places of confinement, are given by our author as a specimen of the 
 economy observed in other German prisons, most of them being governed upon 
 the same principles, though not all with the same attention.* 
 
 This seems to be the last place which he visited in Germany, or indeed in 
 any other country, during his present journey, of the state of whose prisons 
 he has preserved any account ; for turning his steps towards home, we find him 
 addressing the following letter to his friend, the Rev. Mr. Symmonds, from Bonn, 
 a small town upon the Rhine, in the circle of Lower Saxony : — 
 
 " Dear Sir, " Bonn, June 20, 1775. 
 
 " I flatter myself a line will not be unacceptable. As one's spirits are 
 tired with the same subject, it is a relaxation and pleasure to write to a 
 friend; which indeed is my case at present, being just come from the prisons 
 in this place. I had visited many in France, Flanders, and Holland; but I 
 thought I might gain some knowledge by looking into the German police. I 
 have carefully visited some Prussian, Austrian, Hessian, and many other gaols. 
 With the utmost difficulty did I get access to many dismal abodes; and, through 
 the good hand of God I have been preserved in health and safety. I hope I 
 have gained some knowledge, that may be improved to some valuable purpose. 
 Though conscious of the utmost weakness, imperfection, and folly, I would hope 
 my heart deceives me not, when I say to my friend, I trust that I intend well. 
 
 » State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 107—109. 
 
208 
 
 The great example, — the glorious and divine Saviour ; — the first thought humbles, 
 abases, — yet, blessed be God, it exalts and rejoices in that infinite and boundless 
 source of love and mercy. 
 
 " The state of the weather makes travelling not a little fatiguing. I have 
 the pleasure of now coming homeward. There are many travellers at the first, 
 or great houses ; but these three or four weeks I have not met one Englishman. 
 We are here surrounded with vineyards, so I must not say it is hot ; yet I 
 cannot help wishing for my refreshing Bath. 
 
 " I have spent some Sundays with the French Protestants. I love and 
 esteem them. Though separated, yet truly united. I trust and hope we shall 
 make one great and glorious body. In which wish, 
 
 • " I truly remain, <&c. 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 " P. S. Mr. Castleman, Mr. Freelove, &c. with gratitude. I think of their 
 late instance ofaffection; and with pleasure on some sacred moments. Adieu. 
 I pray God bless you ; and may many be your crown of rejoicing in that great 
 and glorious day. — J. H."* 
 
 The postscript to this letter alludes, without doubt, to the exertions which had 
 been made by his friends to secure his return to parliament, in which the gentle- 
 men here named, though both of them, if I am not greatly misinformed, members 
 of the established church, took a very active part. Of their kindness, and of 
 that of his other friends upon this occasion, he was never forgetful to the day of 
 his death, and he frequently mentions the grateful sense he entertained of it in 
 his letters. And whilst thus consistently discharging all the duties of friendship 
 and of private life, it cannot be supposed that a person of Mr. Howard's ardent 
 * Evangelical Magazine, Vol. XXIV. p. 86, 7. 
 
200 
 
 disposition, and unconquerable perseverance, should have returned to England 
 with any diminution of his zeal for that single object of pure, disinterested, and 
 universal benevolence, which had induced him to undertake so long and weari- 
 some a journey through foreign lands; or that he should be languid in its 
 pursuit at home, when he had been so active and so unwearied in following it 
 through danger and difficulty abroad. Scarcely, indeed, had he again set his 
 foot upon the shores of her sea-girt isle, than he hastened to visit, it would seem 
 for the first time, the gaol of the borough of Dover, the port at which he most 
 probably landed from his continental tour, on or about the 25th of July, 1775. 
 The majority of the prisons abroad he had found to be spacious, open to the air, 
 healthy, and secure ; the allowance to the prisoners, in general, liberal ; and the 
 salary of the gaoler sufficient to prevent his being driven to obtain his own 
 living, by taking from the poor destitute wretches, committed to his custody, 
 the little property that was still left to them, or the paltry pittance which they 
 might be enabled to obtain from their friends. How degrading, therefore, 
 must it have been to his feelings as an Englishman — a title which, as his 
 birth-right, he so highly and so justly valued — that of the first place of confine- 
 ment to which his steps were directed on returning to his own dear hind of 
 liberty, from traversing countries whose constitutions were some of them most 
 despotic, none so free as her's, he should be compelled to record, that it consisted of 
 but two rooms on the ground-floor, and two above, without fire-places, and all 
 close and offensive ; the court-yard not secure ; the allowance to each prisoner 
 but four-pence a-day ; the keeper without salary, or perquisite, except a chaldron 
 of coals, and therefore left, we may fairly conclude, to remunerate himself for 
 his trouble by extorting from his prisoners as much more than his regular fee of 
 8s. Id. as he could find the means of inducing, or compelling them to pay.* 
 
 From the day upon which this visit was paid, to the 19th of October, a 
 period of nearly three months, Mr. Howard seems to have rested from his 
 
 * Stale of Prisons, l*t Edit. p. 227. 
 v. v. 
 
210 
 
 more active labors in the great cause to which he had devoted himself, probably 
 spending the principal part of his time in the circle of his friends in Bedfordshire ; 
 in superintending the improvements still carrying on upon his estate ; and in 
 promoting, by his personal attention to their wants, the comfort of his tenantry, 
 and the pensioners upon his bounty there. Some part of it we may also 
 reasonably suppose that he devoted to the reducing to some order his loose 
 memoranda of the results of his inquiries into the one grand object of his late 
 extensive journeyings, both at home and abroad. And even upon the day last 
 mentioned, those journeyings seem to have been but incidentally and partially 
 resumed, Chelmsford being the only plpoe to which his benevolent footsteps can 
 at this time be traced. Hither he was, perhaps, attracted by a circumstance 
 which would have deterred every other man from approaching its wretched 
 and polluted gaol, where the distemper, which the closeness of its cells naturally ■ 
 and frequently engendered, had just been raging with such virulence that the 
 head turnkey himself had fallen among its victims. The gaoler here was a 
 woman, and in the tap-room which she was licensed to keep, was hung a paper 
 upon which was written, amongst other rules and regulations, " prisoners to pay 
 garnish or run the gauntlet ;" a species of rough and lawless discipline in use 
 among the lower orders, which I am persuaded few of my readers would be 
 willing for any consideration to undergo.* 
 
 It was on the 8th or 9th of November in this year, that our ever active 
 Philanthropist set out from his comfortable abode at Cardington, upon his second 
 general inspection of the English gaols, with a view to the correction of any 
 errors into which he might have fallen upon his former visits ; spending the 
 whole of an inclement winter in traversing the kingdom from one extremity 
 to the other, to commiserate, and as far as possible to relieve, the distresses of 
 the outcast — exposing himself the while to the cold that would strike through 
 his frame from the dampness of their miserable abodes, and to the burning fever 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 217. 
 
211 
 
 which might commence its destructive ravages in his veins the moment he had 
 inhaled hut a particle of their infectious breath. His course was through 
 Huntingdon and Oakham to Leicester, where he noticed, and has recorded in 
 terms of merited approbation, a most benevolent practice, originating with the 
 grand jury, and cheerfully adopted by the clergy of the county, of making 
 voluntary annual collections in the parish churches for the relief of the unfortunate 
 beings confined in the county gaol, by clothing and discharging debtors, and 
 feeding and warming all the prisoners, during the inclemency of the winter 
 season. " I wish," says the prisoner's friend, and who but will join him in the 
 wish, " that every county would imitate this exemplary benevolence."* From 
 this place he proceeded through Nottingham and Derby to Stafford, where he 
 found the county bridewell very dirty, yet were the prisoners always shut up 
 in it. They had no employment, and were under the care of a deputy keeper, 
 who served the office for living in the prison rent free.f After having re-inspected 
 the principal gaols and houses of correction in the counties of Lancaster, Chester, 
 Salop, Montgomery, Radnor, Worcester, Hereford, and Monmouth, he visited 
 at St. Briavels, a small inconvenient gaol for debtors within the forest 
 of Dean, greatly out of repair : with no yard ; no water ; no allowance ; 
 no firing. One of the two sickly objects whom he found here, the joint 
 tenants of this miserable hole, told him that he had been confined a twelve- 
 month, without having ever been suffered to go out of the dismal room, 
 which his fellow prisoner had, under similar circumstances, inhabited almost as 
 long.J Re-visiting in his way those cities and towns in Gloucestershire, Somer- 
 setshire, and Devonshire, whose gaols and bridewells he had before inspected, 
 Mr. Howard examined for the first time the town gaols of Falmouth, Truro, 
 Penryn, and Penzance, in Cornwall, neither of which at that time contained 
 any prisoners, and it was a fortunate circumstance that they did not, as, except 
 the second, which was more than usually convenient, they were but ill fitted 
 for their reception, most of them having neither court-yard nor water.f At 
 State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 277, 8. t lb. 329. * lb. 349. § lb. p. 385, 6. 
 
 B V. 3 
 
212 
 
 the latter place was also a prison for the liberties of Penwith, consisting of but 
 two rooms, in the keeper's stable-yard, so distant from his house as to be quite 
 out of sight and hearing. The room for men was full eleven feet square, and 
 six high, but had a window only eighteen inches in size, no chimney, and an 
 earth floor, which was very damp. In this place was a solitary prisoner, 
 whose wretched situation cannot better bo described than in the words of his 
 benevolent visitor's simple, but affecting narrative : " The door had not been 
 opened for four weeks when I went in ; and then the keeper began shoveling 
 away the dirt. — There was only one debtor, who seemed to have been robust, 
 but was grown pale by ten weeks' close confinement, with little food, which he 
 had from a brother, who is poor and has a family. He said, the dampness of 
 the prison, with but little straw, had obliged him (he spoke with sorrow) to 
 send for the bed on which some of his children lay. He had a wife and ten 
 children, two of whom died since he came thither,and the rest were almost starv- 
 ing. — He has written me a letter since, by which I learn that his distress was not 
 mitigated, and that he had a companion, miserable as himself." Never, perhaps, 
 could those well-known lines of the poet of nature and of feeling, which Mr. 
 Howard so appropriately selected as a motto to the work from which this 
 narrative is taken, be better applied than to a scene of misery like this: 
 
 " Ah ! little think the gay, 
 
 " Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround ; 
 " How many pine in want and dungeon — glooms. 
 " Shut from the common air." Thomson. 
 
 From such accumulated sufferings who would not wish to escape? We 
 cannot therefore be surprised at learning, that about two years previous to this 
 visit, five prisoners, rendered desperate by what they had undergone in this 
 wretched hole, broke out of its hated and its hateful walls.* In the felons' 
 gaol at Launceston, the prisoners were chained two or three together ; whilst 
 alike inattentive to their spiritual instruction, and to their temporal necessities, 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 385, 6. 
 
213 
 
 the justices of this large, but parsimonious county, had recently reduced the 
 salary of t lie chaplain from -50 to 30/. a year; yet such was his exemplary 
 conduct, that our Philanthropist assures us, he was much edified by his 
 behaviour, and that the prisoners highly respected him. He had a large family, 
 and on this, and every other account, Mr. Howard regretted the reduction 
 which he found to have taken place.* At Dorchester, the next county gaol 
 which he re-visited, he found the small-pox raging with great virulence, yet 
 was there no infirmary to remove the infected patients to, and thus to save the 
 rest of the prison from the ravages of so dreadful a contagion.^ The gaol for 
 the city of Salisbury, which he now visited for the first time, was the property 
 of the bishop, one of whose domestics received from its keeper an annual rent of 
 eight pounds, to be levied by fees from felons who had but a very small allow- 
 ance, and from debtors who had none at all. This prison was as usual, out of 
 repair, and neither furnished with water, court-yard, or straw.J In the county 
 gaol at Winchester, its benevolent inspector was pleased to find that many im- 
 provements had been made since his last visit, well calculated to preserve the 
 health of its prisoners. Such indeed was the attention now paid to cleanliness, 
 as the handmaid of health, in this altered gaol, that the prisoners were every day 
 provided with a clean towel, hung on a roller, one of their number who took 
 care of it, and delivered it back the next day, being paid a penny for his trouble.^ 
 In this city was also a prison for debtors, in the liberty of the soke, the property of 
 the bishop, and like all bishops' prisons, out of repair. Its wretched inmates were 
 principally supported by the regular weekly bounty of the Duke of ChandosJ| 
 
 The first day of the year 1776, our philanthropic tourist spent at Reading, 
 in visiting the county and town bridewell, which was a spacious room, formerly 
 a church, with four small cabins on one side for night rooms. It had, however, 
 neither court-yard, nor water. The keeper had half the profits of the prisoner's 
 work, so that it was to his interest that they should not be idle.^ A similar 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 380, 381. t lb. p. 367. J lb. p. 363. 
 
 § lb. p. 354. || lb. p. 356. 1f lb. p. 313. 
 
214 
 
 regulation prevailed in the other bridewell for this county, at Abingdon ; but 
 the night rooms there were dark and offensive, besides there being neither yard, 
 water, nor chimney to the prison. The petty offenders were also in irons, and 
 one of them had lately died of the small- pox, a disease which in so confined a 
 place, must be very destructive in its ravages.* In the adjoining county of 
 Oxford, the greater part of the house at Thame, given to the county in 1708 
 for a bridewell, was at this time occupied as a parish workhouse ; whilst the 
 few petty offenders committed there were locked up all day long within doors, 
 men and women in the same room ; and confined at night in two small rooms 
 in a dungeon, eleven steps under ground. No allowance ; no employment ; no 
 water ; no sewer ; so closes the catalogue of the deficiencies of this house of 
 correction ;f whence Mr. Howard proceeded so near to his own house at 
 Cardington, as Aylesbury, without appearing to have visited it for a single day, 
 ere he bent his course toward the most northern extremity of the kingdom. 
 In his way thither he re-inspected the county, and visited for the first time the 
 town gaol at Northampton. The latter he found to be without either court- 
 yard or water. " So," he observes, with his usual minute attention to the 
 truth and accuracy of all his statements, " the prisoners told me at the large 
 grate, where I could see the room ; into which, for that reason, I happened not 
 to go ;" a circumstance which he mentions "because it occurred no where else." 
 Close rooms ; no yard ; no water ; no prisoners ; such is the short account 
 which he gives us of the gaol at Daventry, in the same county ;J a description 
 which, with the exception of the want of prisoners, and the addition of that of 
 employment, and of sewers, is equally characteristic of the bridewell of the 
 neighbouring city of Coventry, which he visited for the first time two days 
 after.§ Very similar too in the nature and quantum of its defects, was the 
 bridewell for the county of Derby, at Chesterfield, of which we find it recorded 
 that it had no court-yard ; no water ; no straw ; no fees ; no allowance ; no em- 
 ployment. The room for the men was a cellar, descending under the keeper's 
 house by eight steps, but level with the ground behind it : — the provision of 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 314. t lb. p. 319. J lb. p. 309. § lb. p. 271. 
 
21,5 
 
 its wretched inmates was generally conveyed to them through a hole in the 
 floor.* Entering on his inspection of the gaols of Yorkshire, at Sheffield, 
 where he found that the court-yard of its prison wanted enlarging,!" he visited 
 the bridewell for the North Riding of this extensive county, at Thirsk, which 
 was in a similar condition, though, like the prison just mentioned, there was 
 ground adjoining, and already the property of itsowners, sufficient for the purpose. 
 The prisoners confined here had lately had the gaol fever, the spread of which 
 might easily have been checked had they been provided with an iniirmary. Here, 
 as in the West Riding, no fees were allowed ; but the prisoners had neither straw 
 to lie upon, nor employment. J On his former visit to Durham, our Philanthropist 
 found the felons in a most wretched state, for the want of a court-yard to the 
 county gaol ; yet he now had the mortification to learn that a piece of ground 
 immediately adjoining, and in every respect convenient for this purpose, though 
 hitherto used but as a receptacle for the gaoler's lumber, had recently been 
 granted by the bishop to the surgeon of the prison, who had the additional merit 
 of being the gaoler's uncle, on a lease for one-and-twenty years, at the annual rent 
 of a shilling. He had accordingly built a little stable for his horse upon the 
 ground, which ought to have been appropriated to the use of his patients, who, 
 for want of such a place for air and exercise, were at this time the unpitied 
 victims of those loathsome diseases, which are the natural consequences of the 
 filth and close confinement of a place like this.§ In the gaol for the separate 
 jurisdiction of the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, the rooms were sizeable, but 
 dirty ; yet like most of those in England, it had neither court-yard, nor 
 water, and its gaoler kept a public-house at a distance. || In that for the city 
 of Carlisle, Mr. Howard learnt that many a poor traveller from the north, who 
 by some unexpected calamity had contracted a debt of forty shillings, had been 
 immured, at a distance from his friends, in a close confined prison, where there 
 was no provision, nor any means of procuring it, the only allowance here being 
 a very small quantity of peat, taken as a toll upon that commodity, and water, 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 285. t lb. p. 412. t lb. p. 403. § lb. p. 418. || lb. p. 429. 
 
216 
 
 which was brought up twice a day.* A similarly disgraceful want of all allow- 
 ance for prisoners, except straw, prevailed also in the bridewell for the county 
 of Westmoreland, at Appleby, which was subject to the further inconvenience 
 of beino- liable to floods. This it will be recollected, was the case also with the 
 gaol at this place, on Mr. Howard's former visit in 1774, but he had the plea- 
 sure to find that a new building had since been erected on the highest part of 
 the yard, consisting of four vaulted wards for felons, with a window in 
 each, but no chimney ; and over them three good rooms for debtors, with 
 chimneys.-f The other bridewell for this county, at Kendal, consisted of but 
 one room for men and women, with a single window in it about two feet 
 square ; no chimney ; no yard ; no water ; no sewer. Its town gaol was, 
 however, in a still more miserable condition, containing only two dungeons, four- 
 teen steps under ground, which were not furnished even with straw for their 
 prisoners to lie upon ; nor had the prison either yard, or w T ater, but fortunately 
 for the interests of humanity, it was also at this time without prisoners; the 
 borough magisti'ates humanely committing their criminals to the county bride- 
 well. % Returning from Westmoreland into Yorkshire, Mr. Howard found 
 the prison for debtors in the manor of Wakefield, at Halifax, so greatly out of 
 repair, that the rain came through upon the beds. The rooms, nevertheless, were 
 clean, and of a convenient size, but the fees were more than usually high, and 
 the gaoler paid its noble owner, the Duke of Leeds, an annual rent of 21/. for the 
 prison. § Entering Lincolnshire at Gainsborough, he visited the county bridewell 
 there, which, besides the usual deficiencies of no water ; no straw ; no allowance ; 
 no work ; was subjected to the further, and rather unusual hardship of requiring 
 its keeper to convey his prisoners to the quarter sessions at his own expence, 
 out of a salary of 30 /. without fees. The other bridewell, at Spalding, was 
 far more convenient ; but though built within a few years, it had neither court- 
 yard, nor water accessible to prisoners. When they worked, they had 
 three-fourths of the profit, and the turnkey the i - emainder. | Turning aside 
 * State of Prisons, fest Edit. p. 432. + lb. p. 433. + lb. p. 434. § lb. p. 4 J 5. || lb. p. 300, 30J. 
 
217 
 
 into Cambridgeshire] lie found a county bridewell at Wisbeach, which, like 
 that at Gainsborough, and many other places, might easily have been improved 
 by taking in a part of the keeper's garden : — it had neither court-yard, nor 
 water.* In the city gaol at Norwich, he saw that considerable improvements 
 had been made, since his last visit, and others were then carrying on, amongst 
 which was the addition of a bath, and two airy rooms for the sick:| so early 
 did some of the poor wretches, whose complicated sufferings he took such pains 
 to alleviate, experience the benefit of his humane exertions in their behalf. In 
 the gaol for the adjoining county of Suffolk, at Ipswich, he found also that a 
 neat chapel had lately been erected ; but he heard, on the other hand, complaints 
 from the prisoners of their being neglected by the surgeon, whose name, upon 
 this account, he has, contrary to his usual custom, omitted ; being at all times 
 more anxious to correct a fault, than to expose the fellow-creature who had 
 committed it. J The county bridewell at Woodbridge consisted of two dirty 
 rooms, that of the women without a chimney: and, as usual, it had neither 
 straw, firing, nor water, whilst its court-yard was small, and not safe, though 
 capable of enlargement. The prisoners were allowed half their earnings, 
 which at this time, however, were none at all, as they were not at work. 
 The same regulation prevailed at Beccles, where the bridewell consisted of 
 but one room, and a dungeon seven steps under ground. § After re-visiting 
 most of the gaols in this and the adjacent county of Cambridge, Mr. Howard 
 returned home, through Stamford, in Lincolnshire, || where he found that a new 
 town gaol was building, with windows more like pigeon-holes than apertures to 
 circulate the air through such confined habitations of men. His continuance 
 at Cardington was, however, but of short duration, for reaching it on the 11th, 
 or, at the earliest, on the 10th of February, he spent the two following days in 
 re-visiting the county gaol at Bedford, and in inspecting the bridewell there, 
 which he found to be without court-yard, fire-place, or water, accessible to its 
 prisoners;^! and on the 14th commenced a journey through the counties of 
 ♦ State of Prisons, 1st Ed. p. 253. tlb.p.257. * lb. 263, 4. §Ib.p.26G. || lb. p. 301. fib. p. 21 4. 
 
 9 F 
 
218 
 
 Hertford, Kent, Sussex, Hants, and part of Dorset; which he completed on 
 the 28th of the same month. In one of the bridewells for the former county, 
 at Hitchin, there was no chimney in any of the rooms; no yard; no straw; no 
 water; and so inconveniently had it been built, that the women went up stairs 
 to their rooms, which were over the men's, by means of a ladder.* The 'part 
 of Dover Castle which was used as a prison for debtors in the Cinque Ports, 
 he found to be very dirty, for which the keeper apologized, by saying that he 
 had been absent for some weeks on his business as a bailiff; an office which 
 should never be united, as it then frequently was, and I fear still is, with that 
 of gaoler: the union being invariably productive of the greatest abuses.t The 
 bridewell for the county, at Maidstone, was newly-erected, and presented to the 
 observation of its visitor many pleasing points of contrast to those which he had 
 lately inspected in other parts of the kingdom. It had separate wards, areas, 
 workshops, and infirmaries for men and women, with windows opposite to 
 each other, for the transmission of fresh air. $ In the neighbouring county of 
 Sussex he found also that the same judicious separation of the sexes prevailed 
 in the bridewell at Lewes, which he now visited for the first time. The great 
 object of such places to correct the bad habits of their prisoners, by keeping 
 them closely to work, was here, however, so entirely overlooked, that for the 
 last three years the produce of their labor had not been twenty shillings 
 a-year, though the average number of persons committed had been sixty-five. § 
 What a loss to the country, in every point of view, does the mean spirit of 
 commercial jealousy, which thus systematically confirms our criminals in 
 habits of idleness and of dissipation, the fruitful parents of every crime, annually 
 produce. Yet, after the exertions of a Howard, in pointing out and removing 
 this dreadful evil, and the fearful lessons which forty years' experience of the 
 truth of his admonitions has vainly read us, who so sanguine as to hope that 
 he shall live to see the mischief remedied, or even partially removed ? In 
 other respects, however, neither was the legislature, or the public, altogether 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 213. t lb. p.227. * Ib.p.225. § lb. p. 230. 
 
219 
 
 inattentive to the judicious plana for bettering the condition of the prisoner 
 and the captive, which the enlightened philanthropy of this great and good 
 man proposed to their attention ; for at this very time, a new gaol for this 
 county was erecting, on a plan which seemed to him to be particularly well 
 suited for the purpose, and in a situation very judiciously chosen.* But very 
 different was the scene which presented itself at the bridewell for the town of 
 Poole, in Dorsetshire, which consisted of three dirty rooms, in the work-house 
 yard, the master of which was its keeper, and farmed alike the felons of the 
 bridewell and the poor of the parish : of the former, however, he had fortunately 
 but one under his care, but he was a lunatic, and could not therefore complain 
 of the treatment which he received from his gaoler.-j~ In that for the county 
 of Hants, at Odiam, which consisted of but three rooms for prisoners, the 
 keeper, a sheriff's officer, had very quietly taken possession of the largest for 
 his brew-house and dairy, leaving his unfortunate prisoners pent up in the other 
 two, without straw or employment, and with an allowance of but a pound 
 of bread a day.J 
 
 The whole of the months of March and April, and the greater part of Alay, 
 seem to have been spent by our Philanthropist in frequently and carefully 
 re-visiting the gaols of the metropolis, and its immediate vicinity, and in 
 reducing to a more methodical arrangement the observations he had made 
 during his recent journeys. In his way, however, from Hampshire to London, 
 he visited Windsor, where he found the prison in the Castle for debtors, of 
 which the king is proprietor, out of repair, and the town gaol without chimney, 
 yard, or water.§ He afterwards inspected the gaols at St. Alban's, all of which 
 he found to be without court-yard, or water ; the borough gaol and bridewell 
 being also unprovided with straw. The two night rooms of the felons, in the 
 former, were close and offensive; and the allowance of their wretched inhabi- 
 tants was but a pound of bread a-day. The rooms of the latter were all up 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 229. t H>. p. 370. + lb. p.3J7 § lb. p.3M. 
 
 FF 2 
 
220 
 
 stairs, and airy, but those who were confined in them had no allowance but 
 
 their earnings,* which, if they were regularly supplied with work, when they 
 
 chose to do it, would be more than sufficient to keep them, and would, perhaps, 
 
 be the best possible plan of providing for their maintenance ; though where 
 
 this is not the case, as it is to be feared it was not here, it is of all others the 
 
 most cruel and unjust. On the very day on which he visited Windsor and St. 
 
 Alban's, Mr. Howard appears to have minutely inspected the gaol of Newgate, 
 
 which had not long been erected, in lieu of one " whose builders," he tells us*, 
 
 " seem to have regarded in their plan nothing but the single article of keeping 
 
 prisoners in safe custody." Approving, therefore, as we might naturally 
 
 expect he would do, of the resolution of the corporation to build a new prison, 
 
 the inspection of it, which he now made, compelled him to limit his 
 
 commendations to the avoidance of many of the inconveniencies of the 
 
 old gaol, with the continuance of many manifest errors in the new one. 
 
 Yet, of the plan upon which the condemned cells are constructed he seems 
 
 highly to have approved. " I was told," says he, " by those who attended 
 
 me, that criminals who had affected an air of boldness during their trial, and 
 
 appeared quite unconcerned at the pronouncing sentence upon them, were 
 
 struck with horror, and shed tears when brought to these darksome solitary 
 
 abodes." This is precisely the effect such places ought to produce ; the end for 
 
 which they were erected is, therefore, fully answered here. The chapel he 
 
 describes as plain and neat; and, as was his frequent custom when visiting 
 
 places of confinement, he once went to prayers there. " Mr. Villette, the 
 
 chaplain," he tells us, " read them (as he did every day) distinctly, and with 
 
 propriety : the few prisoners who were present seemed attentive : but we were 
 
 disturbed by the noise in the yard. Mr. Villette told me ' that was always the case, 
 
 even on Sundays.' Surely they who will not go to chapel, who are by far the 
 
 greater number, should not be suffered to hinder the edification of such as are 
 
 better disposed."'f Such are the remarks of this pious and devoted Christian upon 
 
 * Slate of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 214, 5. t lb. p. 151—3. 
 
221 
 
 a practice so disgraceful to any land professing the true religion, much more so 
 to one which pretends to set an example to other nations of purity of doctrine, 
 and of conformity to the precepts of the gospel, in all its institutions — civil, 
 social, and religious. Very different was the scene he had witnessed in some 
 of the prisons of the continent, especially in those of Holland. Very different 
 too, in fact, was that which presented itself to his notice in the bridewell for 
 this city, in Blackfriars, where all the prisoners were required to go to the 
 public chapel every Sunday morning, the men and women being separated 
 there from each other, and from the rest of the congregation. In most other 
 respects he found also that the regulations of this house of correction were 
 infinitelv superior to most of those which he had visited in other parts of Eng- 
 land. The men and" women were kept quite apart, but they were confined 
 within doors, without proper exercise, though the prison was well aired, ven- 
 tilated, and supplied with water. They were generally set close to work 
 for a hemp-dresser, who resided in the prison, and had the profit of their labor, 
 which they were sufficiently provided with food to be enabled to perform. In 
 winter they were allowed firing, and their night rooms were always supplied 
 with straw, an exception to a general rule highly disgraceful to the magistracy 
 of the metropolis, no other prison in London having either straw, or other 
 bedding. An infirmary was then building.* Of the new gaol, in Horse- 
 monger-lane, a very different account has already been given : and his second 
 visit did not at all remove the unfavorable impression which, at first sight, had 
 been made upon its inspector's mind. On the contrary, that impression was 
 strengthened by his finding several felons sick on the floors-t ^ n the New 
 Ludgate an addition had recently been made to the allowance of the prisoners 
 of a penny loaf each.^ The pleasing hope which this circumstance afforded of 
 some attention being at length paid by the magistrates of the capital to the 
 wretched condition of the prisoners under their superintendence, was, however, 
 most completely disappointed, when he learnt, the very next day, that the Middle- 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Ed. p. 17B, 'J. + lb. p. 233. t lb. p. 165. 
 
222 
 
 nex justices had taken off the salary of the keeper of the bridewell at Clerkenwell, 
 and augmented his fees from five shillings and sixpence to seven shillings.* 
 True indeed it was, that those fees were no longer payable by acquitted 
 prisoners, but it was little less unjust that those who had suffered the punish- 
 ment of the law, should be detained in prison until they could satisfy the 
 demands of their ruthless janitor. In the bridewell for the county of Surrey, 
 in St. George's-fields, several prisoners were at this time sick on the floors, 
 neither bedding nor straw being allowed them, and the prison containing no 
 infirmary. The rooms were dirty ; without firing ; and the prisoners were not 
 at work. Garnish was prohibited, but it was regularly taken ; so useless is it 
 to make rules where no one sees that they are adhered to.i In the military 
 prison at the Savoy many were sick and dying, and had so infected the gaol, 
 that the distemper was caught there by other prisoners, whom Mr. Howard, two 
 months after this visit, saw sick of it in these very rooms. The whole prison was so 
 much out of repair, that hardly any part of it was safe.$ Early in the month of 
 April he paid two visits to the Fleet, on the latter of which he found, from an accu- 
 rate list, that when the number of debtors were 2 13, their wives, including women 
 of an appellation not so honorable, and children, amounted to 475.§ Towards 
 the latter end of the month he made a short excursion into Kent and Surrey, 
 for the purpose of inspecting the county bridewells at Dartford and Kingston. 
 The former had no chimneys; offensive sewers; and dirty rooms: no water; 
 no straw; though it had mats, which were quite worn out; and no yard. 
 About two years ago a malignant fever had raged here, which the keeper, 
 his wife, and family, and every fres^ prisoner caught, and two died of it. 
 They were now, however, healthy, and employed in flax-dressing and weaving 
 sacks. [| The other, which had only been erected in the preceding year, was, 
 in all -respects, commodious, except that it wanted an infirmary. The prisoners 
 were at work, but they had no bedding, and were very improperly required to 
 pay a shilling on their entrance for the use of the court-yards. One of them 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 186. t lb. p. 236, 7. % lb. p. 1 92. § lb. p. 160. || lb. p. 226. 
 
223 
 
 had been sent back hither from the preceding quarter sessions, at Ryegate, 
 where there was no prison ; and having heard of the hardships suffered by 
 prisoners when conveyed for trial to such towns, Mr. Howard asked this man 
 what was his situation there ? " He said, that ' he and fifteen others were 
 confined two or three days in a very small room, and almost suffocated !' The 
 keeper, who was present, confirmed the fact."* My own limited experience 
 enables me to add my testimony to the mischievous consequences resulting from 
 the practice of holding quarter sessions in towns where there are no prisons 
 to put offenders in, though I am happy in adding, that, at this very time, the 
 magistrates of the two counties, with whose sessions' practice I am the best 
 acquainted, are remedying the evil, by the erection of two very spacious, and 
 convenient houses of correction, at Liverpool and Knutsford, the sessions having 
 been removed to the former town from Ormskirk and Wigan, from the want 
 of proper accommodations for prisoners there. It would be well if the magi- 
 strates of other districts would follow their good example, which in the end 
 would produce a considerable saving. In the borough gaol of Kingston, the 
 rooms were dirty, the court-yard not secure; and the gaoler kept a public- 
 house.-j- 
 
 The same desire to be accurate in all his statements, which had induced 
 Mr. Howard to spend nearly three months in the metropolis of his own coun- 
 try, in repeated and (to guard against imposition) unexpected visits to its 
 numerous gaols, determined him to pass the summer months of this year in a 
 .similar re-inspcction of the prisons he had formerly visited abroad. He ac- 
 cordingly left London upon the 25th of May, and by way of Calais, reached 
 Paris by the 1st of June, or perhaps a few days earlier. Without entering into 
 minute particulars, it may suffice generally to observe, that his second in- 
 spection of the places of confinement in this capital, confirmed the favorable 
 opinion he had formed of the great superiority of their internal economy over 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. -2Z7, 8. t lb. p. 239. 
 
221 
 
 those of our own country. There, the gaoler always resided in the prison, 
 whilst with us, he but too frequently lived at a distance. In most of the 
 Parisian, and indeed of the French gaols, the very appearance of the prisoners 
 shewed that humane attention was paid to them, a circumstance of such rare 
 occurrence in ours, as to require honorable mention whenever it presented 
 itself. Their prisoners were never ironed, and the women were universally 
 separated from the men ; and where there was but one court-yard, the men 
 were locked up while they had the use of it for a couple of hours every day. 
 Such indeed was the importance attached to these places of exercise, that they 
 were regularly washed three or four times a day, so that they were perhaps 
 the cleanest places in the city. They had all infirmaries, judiciously placed at 
 the top of the house, the best situation both for air and for preventing the 
 spread of any infectious disease ; and learning wisdom from past experience, 
 the great cause of such disorders, in the want of cleanliness in prisons, was 
 removed, by the exertions of benevolent societies for providing their inmates 
 with proper changes of linen. Garnish was strictly prohibited ; the food of the 
 prisoners was sufficient ;. and the gaolers were punished by fines and by stripes 
 if they furnished them with wine or spirituous liquors ; whilst these and 
 other admirable regulations for preserving order, and suppressing profaneness 
 in their gaols, were strictly enforced under the most careful inspection of officers 
 of government, specially charged with their superintendance.* In all these 
 particulars, it is needless to point out the disgraceful contrast, which, at this time 
 the gaols of England universally exhibited, and which but too many of them con- 
 tinue to exhibit to the present hour. In one respect, however, it is jjleasing to 
 record, that the amiable example of the French ladies of the old regime, in taking 
 the prisoners, particularly those of their own sex, so far under their protection 
 as to visit and relieve them in their distress, has, to a certain extent, been 
 recently followed in England by some charitable females, principally amongst 
 the Society of Friends, the diffusion of whose benevolent spirit to the members 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 79 — 91. 
 
225 
 
 of other sects, and through a wider field of usefulness, is devoutly to be wished 
 by every friend to the sex, to the cause of humanity, and to the best interests 
 of their country. Societies of this description, which do so much honor to the 
 female character, originated in England, if I am not misinformed, with Mrs. 
 Fry, of Mildred's-court, to whose humane exertions in behalf of the prisoner 
 and the captive, though I have not the honor of her acquaintance, I cheerfully 
 give my feeble tribute of applause ; whilst, to my fair countrywomen in 
 general, I would say, u go ye and do likewise." But to return to our narra- 
 tive ; one exception to the humane regulations of the prisons of the French 
 metropolis, and one exception only, seems to have presented itself at the 
 Bkttrc; which was very dirty, and had no fire-place in any of its rooms, so 
 that in the severe cold of the winter of 1775, several hundreds had perished 
 there.* 
 
 After spending two or three weeks in Paris, Mr. Howard determined to 
 visit Switzerland, no part of which had been included in his former journey. 
 Iu his way thither, he saw in the prison de St. Joseph, at Lyons, formerly a 
 convent, four horrid dungeons, containing twenty-nine criminals ; though 
 the heat was so excessive, that few of them had any other garment on than 
 their shirts. Some of them were sick, and none, as we might naturally sup- 
 pose, looked healthy. In the Pierrecize, the state prison of this city, our 
 benevolent countryman sat and conversed with a prisoner who was then in 
 the fiftieth year of his confinement. He was much pleased, however, with 
 the Hotel Dieu, or principal hospital of this place, especially with two cham- 
 bers of convalescence, whose airy situation, and pleasant appearance, soon 
 completed the recovery of the patients removed thither for that purpose. He 
 was induced to take particular notice of these rooms from his friend, Dr. 
 then Mr.) Aikin, having proposed the adoption of a very similar plan in his 
 " Thoughts on Hospitals," a work whose judicious suggestions, it were much to 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 92. 
 G G 
 
226 
 
 be wished, that those who have the management of such institutions, would more 
 generally adopt than they hitherto have done.* In the little republic of Geneva, 
 he found but five criminals, none of them in irons ; they had an allowance of 
 about sixpence a day, and looked healthy. There were no debtors in confine- 
 ment here, as in fact it seldom happened that there were any, their creditors 
 being compelled to allow them as much as felons had from the public ; or on their 
 failing to do so, they were discharged. But mild as were the general laws of 
 this little state, they were yet very severe against bankrupts and insolvents, 
 who were rendered incapable of all honors, and deprived of the freedom of 
 the state, as were also such of their children as should not pay their proportion 
 of their parents' debts.-j" In the cantons of Switzerland, which Mr. Howard 
 visited in the course of this journey, felons had each a room to themselves, 
 that they might not tutor one another in vice. None were in irons; and the 
 rooms in which they were confined, though all of them very strong, were 
 darker or lighter according to the crimes with which they were charged : — most 
 of them contained a German stove. In some cantons there were no criminals, 
 a circumstance which he principally attributes to the great care which was 
 taken to give even the poorest children a moral and religious education ; 
 though he very properly assigns, as a secondary cause, " the laudable policy 
 of speedy justice,'' a criminal having notice of his death, though not the 
 manner of it, but a short time before he was to suffer. He was then some- 
 what singularly indulged with his choice of food, wine, &c. ; the women 
 being uniformly beheaded, instead of being hung, as the men frequently 
 were. In the houses of correction many of the prisoners were women, 
 who were all at work.J At Lausanne, the gaol contained several dun- 
 geons, but they had cellars underneath ; there were, however, no prisoners 
 in any part of it. Conversing here with Dr. Tissot, our Philanthropist was 
 assured that he would not find the gaol distemper in Switzerland ; and, his 
 informant added, that he had not heard of its being any where but in England, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 95—97. t lb. p. 97, 8. t lb. p. 98, 9. 
 
227 
 
 a circumstance which the famous Haller, in discoursing with him, on the same 
 subject, at Bern, attributed to the prisons here being so over-crowded. This 
 assurance he found to be perfectly correct, and he did not, in fact, meet with the 
 gaol fever in any part of the continent.* In the principal canton of Bern, there 
 was one prison which contained 124 galley-slaves, who, though they had not 
 each a separate room, were distinguished, according to their degree of cri- 
 minality, both in their rooms and their work. Most of them were employed 
 in cleaning the streets and public walks, or removing the rubbish of buildings, 
 and the snow and ice in winter, so that this city, on the common confession 
 of all travellers, was rendered one of the cleanest in Europe. Whilst thus 
 occupied, they were four or five of them chained to a small waggon, which 
 they drew along, for others more at liberty to load it with the muck which 
 they swept up from the streets. They had all of them an iron collar round 
 their necks, with a hook projecting above their heads. Like those who were 
 employed in a similar manner at Hannau, they assured Mr. Howard that they 
 would much rather work thus than be confined within doors. The less criminal 
 offenders were in separate wards, and were kept to work in a large room at 
 spinning, &c. without the iron collar on their necks. Those of both descriptions 
 were compelled to labor for nine hours in summer, and six in winter, being 
 permitted during the other parts of the day to make trifles for sale, mend shoes, 
 &c. which those who went out might deliver as they passed on at work. Their 
 prison was neither commodious nor clean ; but their food and clothing good and 
 sufficient. Gaming, and the sale of wine, spirits, or provisions, by the keeper to 
 his prisoners, were strictly prohibited, and the greatest possible attention was paid 
 to their religious instruction, the gaoler and turnkey being strictly charged to see 
 that they regularly performed their devotions every morning and evening ; 
 and the chaplains of the gaol praying with them and instructing them in their 
 duty every Sunday and Thursday. Once a month other clergymen superintended 
 the public services. In a conspicuous part of the common prison of this city 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 99, 100, 103. 
 GG 2 
 
228 
 
 was hung up a serious exhortation on the awful nature of an oath, the breach 
 of which in this country was as rare as it is frequent in England, a circumstance 
 i n a great measure to be attributed to the different mode of its administration, 
 which with us is a disgrace to a civilized country, and an insult to that 
 Almighty Being whose name is treated with such gross irreverence in our 
 courts.* The gaol at Solothurn, or Solure, was built entirely of a sort of 
 marble, found in a quarry near the town, and therefore not easy to be broken 
 through. This Mr. Howard thought must have been the case too with one of 
 the strongest rooms in that at Basil, into which the prisoner descended through 
 a trap-door in the roof, by means of a ladder, which was then taken up, his 
 victuals being put through a wicket on one side. Yet when he remarked to 
 the gaoler the uncommon strength of this place, he was told that a prisoner had 
 recently made his escape from it. Unable to devise by what means this could 
 possibly have been effected, he learnt that having a spoon for his soup, he 
 sharpened it so as to cut out a piece of timber from his room, with which he 
 ingeniously struck the bolts and fastenings of his door, when the strokes of the 
 great clock in the tower of the prison drowned the noise of his blows, 
 and thus in fifteen days he had opened a passage to the top of the tower, but 
 attempting to let himself down from its vast height, by a rope which he 
 found there, it failed him, and in his fall he broke so many of his ribs, that the 
 surgeons pronounced his recovery impossible : he did however recover, and 
 was pardoned.-j- 
 
 In those parts of Germany which he re-visited, Mr. Howard did not meet 
 with any thing that could materially vary the account of the state of their 
 prisons already given, in tracing the progress of his former journey. The 
 galley-slaves had every where a prison to themselves, and were set to work 
 upon the roads, fortifications, chalk-hills, and other public services, for four, 
 seven, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, according to the nature of their crimes ; 
 • State of Prisons, IstEdit. p. 100—103. t lb. p. 104, 5. 
 
229 
 
 being amply clothed and fed during those periods at the expenee of govern- 
 ment. There were no underground dungeons in the newly-erected prisons 
 of Germany, or indeed of any other part of the continent which our philan- 
 thropic traveller visited during either of his tours abroad ; nor did he meet 
 with any prison in which felons had not, either from the public allowance, 
 or from charitable institutions, somewhat more to live on than bread and 
 water. There were, however, some separate prisons in which confinement for 
 a week or two on this food was all the punishment that petty offenders ever 
 underwent, and it were much to be wished that there were similar institutions 
 in our own country. " Perhaps," remarks our author, with his usual judgment, 
 " when a condemned criminal is only to live a day or two, such diet may be 
 more proper than the indulgence with which the Germans treat prisoners, after 
 sentence of death, which is commonly executed within forty-eight hours. The 
 malefactor has then his choice of food, and wine, in a commodious room, into 
 which his friends are admitted ; and a minister attends him during almost all 
 his remaining hours." The medium between this extreme indulgence and the 
 extreme mortification practised in our prisons, might, however, I would venture 
 to suggest upon this statement, be the fittest mode of treating those who will 
 so soon have done with this world, and all its sensual gratifications, and who 
 ought, therefore, to have their undivided attention directed to that spiritual 
 and eternal state to whose everlasting happiness, or everlasting misery, a few 
 short hours will introduce them. In the German prisons were often to be 
 seen the doors of sundry rooms marked Ethiopia, India, Italy, France, 
 England, &c. in which rooms parents, by the authority of the magistrates, 
 confined their dissolute children, answering, in the meanwhile, to the inquiries 
 which might be made after them, that they were gone to whatever country 
 might be written upon the place of their confinement, whose duration, it 
 is to be supposed, the better to sanction this pious parental fraud, was regulated 
 by the time which a journey thither might be expected to occupy.* In a fine 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 105—7. 
 
230 
 
 new church, which had recently been built at Cassel, Mr. Howard was struck 
 by the circumstance of there being a gallery erected for the galley-slaves, with 
 sepai-ate seats for the honnUes and deshonnHes, though the whole number of the 
 two classes was but seventeen, so attentive were these governments to that 
 important object of correctional police, the separation of the less from the 
 more hardened offenders.* At Strasburgh, which does not seem to have lain 
 in the way of his former route, he was much pleased at finding a spirit of 
 liberality prevailing, so completely after his own heart, that in its hospital 
 were separate chambers for Lutherans, in which they were allowed the 
 attendance of their own ministers.t 
 
 Holland, so favorite a country with him upon many accounts, still presented 
 in the regulations of its police, and especially of its prisons, a model, which, 
 except in a very few points, he would wish to have seen adopted in England, 
 and by every nation of the globe. So quiet were the places of confinement 
 there, and most of them so clean, that a visitor, he assures us, could hardly 
 believe that he was in a gaol. They were commonly white-washed every year, 
 and a prisoner told him, that it was no small refreshment to go into one of 
 their rooms after so thorough a cleansing. A physician and surgeon were 
 appointed to every prison, whose inmates were in general healthy. In most of 
 them, each criminal was kept separate, having a bedstead, straw, and coverlid 
 to his room. The States never transported criminals, but male offenders were 
 put to labor in the rasp-houses, and women to work fitted for their sex, in the 
 spin-houses, which have already been described, professedly upon this admi- 
 rable maxim " make them diligent, and they will be honest." The rasping of log- 
 wood, which was formerly the principal occupation of the men, being done 
 much cheaper at the mills, more profitable manufactures of woollen cloths had 
 of late years been established in most of the Dutch houses of correction ; in some 
 of which, the work done by the prisoners so entirely maintained them, that 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 112. t lb. p. 107. 
 
231 
 
 they were allowed a little extra time to earn what they could for their more 
 comfortable living 1 in prison, or for their benefit afterwards. Of this prac- 
 tice Mr. Howard relates the following very interesting anecdote. " I have 
 heard in England that a countryman of ours, who was a prisoner in the rasp- 
 house, at Amsterdam for several years, was permitted to work at his own 
 trade, shoe-making ; and by being kept constantly employed, was quite cured 
 of the vices which brought him to confinement. My informant added, that the 
 prisoner received at his release a surplus of his earnings, which enabled him to 
 set up in London, where he lived in credit, and at dinner commonly drank, 
 ' Health to his worthy masters at the Rasp-house.' " Nor was this by any means 
 a singular case, as he learnt, from good authority, that many came out of these 
 places sober and honest, great care being taken to give them there all the ad- 
 vantages of moral and religious instruction, and to reform their manners, for 
 their own and for the public good. With this view, the chaplain attached to 
 every house of correction, notjonly performed public worship regularly, but 
 privately instructed the prisoners in their religious duties, and catechised them 
 every week, to ascertain that they were, at least, theoretically acquainted with 
 them. In some places, especially those where rasping log-wood was the principal 
 employment of the men, the work of the prisoners did not defray the expences 
 of these useful institutions, though none of them were suffered to be quite idle 
 but the sick ; even the infirm being compelled to earn what little they could. 
 " This," as our author judiciously remarks, " is surely excellent policy ; for, 
 besides guarding against the pernicious effects of idleness in a prison, and 
 breaking criminals to habits of industry, if work so constant does not support 
 the houses, how much heavier would be the public burden of maintaining the 
 many offenders in these prisons, if, as in many of our bridewells, no work at all 
 were done there ?" Some of our parliamentary returns might, perhaps, enable 
 us to give an answer to this question, not very favorable to our national mo- 
 rality or national policy, as they would show the thousands and tens of thou- 
 sands, or even millions, which have been expended in England in the main- 
 
232 
 
 tenance of convicted offenders, without a return to the state, of, upon a very 
 liberal average, half a farthing in the pound. As an encouragement to that 
 sobriety and industry which this system of punishment is so admirably calcu- 
 lated to produce, some few of the subjects of it, who had distinguished them- 
 selves by their good behaviour, were generally discharged, by the magistrates 
 going out of office, before the expiration of the term of their imprisonment, 
 which, to prevent despair, was seldom for life ; so that fourteen years would 
 sometimes be reduced to eight, ten or twelve, to six or seven. " This practice 
 of abridging the time of punishment upon reformation," observes Mr. Howard, 
 " is in every way wise and beneficial. Indeed, I have some reason to think 
 that (in Holland) criminals are often doomed to a longer term, with an inten- 
 tion to make such deductions upon their amendment." The debtors imprisoned 
 in this country were but few, the magistrates being unwilling to confine, in 
 idleness, any that might be usefully employed, and their creditors being com- 
 pelled to make them a daily allowance of from about 8|rf. to \9id. for their 
 maintenance in gaol. Another reason for the smallness of their number was, 
 that their situation was considered a very disgraceful one. " But, perhaps," 
 adds our author, " the principal cause that here debtors, as well as capital 
 offenders, are few, is the great care that is taken to train up the children of 
 the poor, and indeed of all others, to industry." " No debtors," he also tells us, 
 " have their wives and children living with them in prison: but occasional visits 
 in the day-time are not forbidden. You do not hear in the streets as you pass 
 by a prison, what I have been rallied for abroad, the cry of poor hungry 
 starving debtors."* The same mode of treatment with respect to them was 
 also adopted throughout the Austrian Netherlands ; the general character of 
 whose prisons at this time is, that they were commonly clean, and had no 
 sickness prevailing in any of them, though few had court-yards ; but every 
 prisoner was confined to his own room. |" It was in this country that, towards 
 the close of the month of August, our Philanthropist completed the object of his 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 1 19— 123. f lb. p. Ui. 
 
233 
 
 journey with the re-inspeelion of the prisons of the city of Ghent, the description 
 of whose excellent regulations he has accompanied by a few general reflections, 
 which will explain his views in undertaking it, the spirit in which his inquiries, in 
 connexion with those views, were pursued, and the advantages which he hoped 
 the statement of its results might produce to his own country. " When I for- 
 merly made the tour of Europe," says this genuine patriot, " I seldom had 
 occasion to envy foreigners any thing I saw with respect to their situation, 
 their religion, manners, or government. In my late journeys to view their prisons, 
 I was sometimes put to the blush for my native country. The reader will scarcely , 
 feel from my narration the same emotions of shame and regret as the comparison 
 excited in me, on beholding the difference with my own eyes. But, from the 
 account I have given him of foreign prisons, he may judge whether a design of 
 reforming our own be merely visionary — whether idleness, debauchery, disease, 
 and famine, be the necessary attendants of a prison, or only connected with it in 
 our ideas for want of a more perfect knowledge, and more enlarged views. I 
 hope too he will do me the justice to think that neither an indiscriminate 
 admiration of every thing foreign, nor a fondness of censuring every thing at 
 home, has influenced me to adopt the language of a panegyrist in this part of 
 my work, or that of a complainant in the rest. Where I have commended I 
 have mentioned my reasons for so doing; and I have dwelt perhaps more 
 minutely upon the management of foreign prisons, because it was more 
 agreeable to me to praise than to condemn. Another motive induced me to 
 be very particular in my accounts of foreign houses of correction, especially those 
 of the freest states. It was to counteract a notion prevailing among us that 
 compelling prisoners to work, especially in public, was inconsistent with the 
 principles of English liberty ; at the same time that taking away the lives of 
 such numbers, either by executions, or the diseases of our prisons, seems to 
 make little impression upon us. Of such force is custom and prejudice in 
 silencing the voice of good sense and humanity ! I have only to add that, fully 
 sensible of the imperfections which must attend the cursory survey of a 
 
 ii n 
 
234 
 
 traveller, it was my study to remedy that defect by a constant attention to 
 the one object of my pursuit alone, during the whole of my two last journeys 
 abroad."* 
 
 How constant, how unwearied, how ardent was the attention with which 
 that object was still pursued, we may learn from his not having indulged himself 
 with a day's repose, upon his return to England from this long and fatiguing 
 journey, ere he set out upon the completion of his second inspection of the prisons 
 of his native country, in the course of which he met with much to confirm the 
 unfavorable opinion he had formed of their construction and regulation, on a 
 comparison with those of foreign states. Yet here and there, in his pro- 
 gress, he saw some symptoms of amendment, and hailed them with delight, as 
 the harbingers of better things to come. Thus, in the county gaol at Salisbury, 
 he inspected a new building in the yard, consisting of a stable, cart-house, 
 and brew-house, with two rooms, for an infirmary, over them : but he could 
 not help wishing that the lower part had been two day-rooms for common-side 
 debtors, and felons, both of whom were still without these very necessary accom- 
 modations.f The bridewell for the county of Gloucester, at Cirencester, was 
 quite out of repair, the yard being not secure enough to let the prisoners have 
 the use of it. There was no allowance but to the convicted felons occasionally 
 committed hither ; and no employment.^ In that at Devizes, in Wiltshire, 
 the gaol fever, two or three years ago, had carried ofF many, but an infirmary 
 and more commodious night-rooms having since been added, there was now 
 little danger of that distemper again breaking out here.§ Passing through the 
 counties of Gloucester and Monmouth, he found, in the castle at Carmarthen, 
 two offenders confined for fines which they could never pay, and, not 
 having the county allowance, they were almost starved. The gaoler was de- 
 sirous of farming his prisoners, but the abuse of such a trust by the keeper of 
 the gaol at Brecon having been detected on our Philanthropist's first visit there, 
 his request was not granted, as such requests, in fact, should never be.j| 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 145, 6. f lb. p. 361. t lb. p. 348. § lb. p. 364. || lb. p. 468. 
 
23.5 
 
 The gaol for the city of Hereford he found to be clean ; the debtors' rooms 
 commodious, but that of the felons too close; the former only had a little 
 court-yard. The keeper was a widow.* Re-inspecting the prisons of Wor- 
 cester and Birmingham, in his way he came, for the first time, to Wolver- 
 hampton, where the county bridewell consisted of but two rooms, of about 
 twelve feet square, the one a day-room common to both sexes, and in which 
 the women slept ; the other a night-room over it for the men. The whole 
 gaol was greatly out of repair, and so insecure that prisoners, even those com- 
 mitted for the slightest offences, were kept in irons, though the county might 
 easily have redressed this cruel grievance."!" Proceeding in his tour of in- 
 spection through Shropshire, Flint, and Denbighshire, Mr. Howard learnt 
 that since his last visit to Chester castle the felons confined there had broke 
 through the slight floor into the king's cellar below, through the decayed walls 
 of which they made their escape. In the neighbouring town of Macclesfield the 
 bridewell was a ruinous room behind the keepers house, who told his visitor 
 that he was sometimes obliged to confine men and women together, by night, 
 of course, as well as day. The prison here for the hundred, manor, and forest 
 of the same name, was a slight and ruinous building, with a dungeon under 
 ground ; its gaoler a bailiff, who kept a public-house.J In the house of cor- 
 rection at Manchester he found that the keeper's salary had lately been raised 
 from twenty-five to sixty pounds in lieu of fees.§ After having re- visited 
 some other of the prisons of this and the adjoining county of York, he 
 inspected, for the first time, the bridewell at Cockermouth, and the town 
 gaol at Whitehaven, both in the county of Cumberland ; the first of which was 
 quite out of repair and insecure, and it had, moreover, neither straw, water, 
 nor food for its prisoners. The second, which was part of the work-house, was 
 dirty and offensive in the extreme ; || but fortunately neither of them had any 
 prisoners. Thence, through Carlisle, Kendal, Appleby, York, Beverly, and 
 Hull, he reached, on his way homeward, the town of Newark-upon-Treut, 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 338. 1 lb. p. 329. * lb. p. 443, 451, 2. § lb. p. 440. || lb. p. 342. 
 
 ii u 2 
 
2a6 
 
 where he found the prison, consisting of but two small rooms, without court- 
 yard, water, sewer, or straw; and its keeper living at a distance.* The bridewell 
 for the county of Leicester, at Melton Mowbray, had no court-yard, nor any 
 room for one ; was without water, and also without prisoners.'! In the gaol 
 for the adjoining county of Nottingham, a cheerful and exemplary obedience 
 had been paid to the act for preserving the health of prisoners, whose provisions 
 were neatly painted over the keeper's door. A large and most commodious 
 bath had accordingly been built, very unlike those in most other gaols, which 
 were, in fact, but inconvenient and almost useless tubs, this being plentifully 
 supplied with river water, and furnished with a copper to warm it when ne- 
 cessary. An infirmary of two rooms adjoined, and the justices had allowed 
 the gaoler to provide the sick with better nourishment, &c. to the 
 amount of seven shillings a week. " Gentlemen so remarkably considerate 
 and humane will, I hope," says our benevolent author, " abolish the unwhole- 
 some dungeon," which was still in use, as well as in existence, here. He also 
 found a prisoner in this gaol, who had received his majesty's free and gracious 
 pardon, but who yet was detained in custody for the fees of the gaoler and of 
 the officers through whose hands that pardon passed. Together they amounted 
 to 3/. 9 s. 10 c?. ; and as we do not hear of this man's further imprisonment there 
 can be little doubt but that his bands were loosened by the liberality of the be- 
 nevolent being, whose pen has recorded the gross injustice of his prolonged con- 
 finement. Improvements and repairs to a very considerable extent had also 
 been recently made in the town gaol at this place, amongst which was the 
 plentiful supply of the back court with water. Its bridewell, however, still 
 stood in need of much alteration, there being no court-yard to it, though there 
 w T as ground to have made one both before and behind the house. Its rooms 
 had no fire-place; and for some of its prisoners no better accommodation 
 was provided than a dungeon nine steps under ground could afford. J At Oak- 
 ham, the justices, since his last visit, had ordered the keeper of the county 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 294. t lb. p. 279. % lb. p. 288, 9, 292, 3. 
 
237 
 
 gaol and bridewell to provide clothing for some of the most destitute of his 
 prisoners, and a partition which they had directed to be put up, in order to 
 make separate court-yards for debtors and felons, having- intercepted the pump 
 from the latter, they had been so considerate as to put down another for their 
 use.* At Huntingdon, Mr. Howard was sorry to find an alteration of a very 
 different description, in the dismissal of the chaplain of the county gaol, who 
 had regularly officiated twice a week, for the poor pittance of twenty pounds. 
 He would nevertheless have continued his attendance without fee or reward, 
 but an order was made expressly forbidding him to do so ; yet did the county 
 provide no other person in his placcf The senseless and indiscriminating cry of 
 methodism had hardly yet began to be raised against every minister of the gospel 
 who was at all conspicuous for the zealous and faithful discharge of the duties 
 of his office ; it is therefore difficult to conceive what motives the justices 
 possibly could have had for adopting this line of conduct, unless it were a 
 parsimony as disgraceful as it was mean and paltry. Passing on to Cambridge, 
 he saw in the town gaol a most miserable object, who, for several weeks had 
 been the solitary tenant of this wretched hole, without any allowance to save 
 him from starvation there. In the bridewell, bedsteads had, however, recently 
 been put up for straw or coverlids, so that the prisoners no longer slept upon 
 the naked ground.^ 
 
 With the exception of Ely, Cambridge seems to have been the last - place 
 whose gaol our Philanthropist visited, ere he reached his home on the 28th or 
 29th of September, where he continued to be occupied in the arrangement of 
 his papers, until the 22d or 23d of the following month, when he set out upon 
 a short tour of a fortnight, to inspect some prisons belonging to a few local 
 jurisdictions in Yorkshire, of whose very existence he had but just been informed. 
 That at Richmond, for the liberty of the same name, he found to contain two 
 dungeons for men criminals, down five steps, with a room above for women, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 307. t lb. p. 2 16. t lb. p. 250. 
 
238 
 
 and a kitchen and bed-room for debtors, close glazed. It had a court-yard 
 and well, but no straw. Of those for the liberty and the borough of Ripon, a 
 bailiff was the keeper. They both had good rooms for debtors who could pay 
 for the use of them, but no free ward ; whilst the rooms in which felons were 
 confined were quite dark. That for the honor and forest of Knaresborough, 
 was almost the only remains of its ruinous castle, consisting of but two small 
 rooms without a window ; the keeper living at a distance, as indeed he needs 
 must do if he meant to live at all. But the gaol for debtors in this town 
 was, in a condition more wretched and horribly disgusting than any which 
 has yet been described. It consisted of but one room, difficult of access, and 
 having an earth floor, no fire-place, and a common sewer from the town running 
 through it uncovered. Yet in a hole, to which a dog-kennel were a palace, 
 Mr. Howard was informed that an officer had been confined some years since, 
 but for a few days, and taking with him his dog to defend him from vermin, 
 the animal was soon destroyed, and his own face much disfigured by their 
 attacks. Is it possible, we are almost tempted to exclaim, that such a thing 
 could ever be permitted in a free and a christian land ? yet many an abuse as 
 shocking to humanity, as disgraceful to our national character as this, might 
 have existed unnoticed and unknown even to the present hour, but for the 
 unwearied exertions of that extraordinary being, who, at the risk of his life, 
 penetrated into the darkest dungeons and the most pestilential gaols, to bring 
 the fearful secrets of their prison-house to light. The gaol for felons too consisted 
 of but a single room, about eight feet by five, with two windows in it, eight inches 
 bv six ; yet in this confined dungeon, six or seven prisoners, men and women, 
 would sometimes be shut up for a night or two during the quarter-sessions, 
 which are still held by rotation in this town.* He had, however, the pleasure 
 to find a new and commodious prison recently built at Batley, in lieu of the 
 ruinous one for the manor of Wakefield at Rothwell. It contained in a 
 separate court two rooms for women debtors, a provision which he truly cha- 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit, p. 408—410. 
 
239 
 
 racterizes as kind and prudent, but which, strange as it may appear, he believed 
 to be peculiar to this place.* In the dirty and offensive town gaol at Derby, 
 the prisoners were always locked up, as its court, or passage of thirty-four 
 feet by seven, was of little use but to the gaoler's fowls.|" Returning home- 
 ward through the counties of Leicester and Warwick, he visited, at Witney 
 in Oxfordshire, an insecure county bridewell, situated in the yard of its keeper's 
 public-house, and saw a crowd of men talking at the grates with the prisoners, 
 all of them women; a facility of converse often productive of riot and 
 confusion.]; At Reading, the town gaol consisted of three rooms, in a public- 
 house belonging to the corporation, of which the senior serjeant at mace gene- 
 rally had the refusal : it had neither court-yard nor water.§ In one of the 
 bridewells for the county of Hertford, at Berkhamstead, was a dungeon nine 
 steps under ground, with an earth floor, very damp, but no window. The 
 prison had neither court-yard, straw, water, or, fortunately for them, prisoners.;! 
 
 From Berkhamstead Mr. Howard proceeded to London, where his time 
 was very closely occupied in preparing for the press his observations on the 
 prisons he had visited in the course of the three last years ; a work in which 
 he was materially assisted by his friend and former tutor, the Rev. Mr. Den- 
 sham, who at this time resided in or near the metropolis, where Mr. Howard 
 spent the two last months of this year, with the exception of two or three 
 short journeys into different parts of the country, whose prisons he had over- 
 looked in the regular course of his second round of inspection. The first of 
 these was into the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, in the former of 
 which, a prisoner in the bridewell at Wymondham complained of being 
 obliged to lay in one of the pent-up closets, used for night-rooms, with two 
 boys who had a cutaneous disease upon them. Neither were the rooms in this 
 prison, nor the spacious yard attached to it secure; on which account the 
 prisoners were not only confined within doors, but always in irons.^f This 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 413. + lb. p. 285. * lb. p. 320. § lb. p. 313. || lb. p. 214. IT lb. p. 261. 
 
240 
 
 was the case also in one of the bridewells for the county of Suffolk, at Laven- 
 ham, except that a padlock only was put upon their legs. The court-yard of 
 the gaol at Colchester was also insecure, and the prisoners without water, or 
 straw. The county bridewell at Halstead was quite out of repair, though the 
 prisoners were permitted to use its court-yard, the men during one part of the 
 day, the women in the other : the two sexes had separate work rooms, and 
 there was a place provided for the sick. Before he returned to London, here- 
 visited the county gaol at Hertford, and found that since he last had been 
 there the gaol fever had carried off seven or eight prisoners, and two turnkeys. 
 Four persons were still sick of it, yet was there no infirmary.* About a week 
 after this, he inspected for the first time, the bridewell for the county of Essex, 
 at Barking, the rooms of which were without chimneys, and made very 
 offensive by sewers, whilst the prisoners could make no use of the court-yard, 
 which, according to custom, was not secure. - }" He took another journey to 
 Newport, to inspect the bridewell for this county there, built in the preceding 
 year, on a plan which seems in all respects to have met with its visitor's 
 approbation, — except, so minute were his observations, — in the omission of a fire- 
 place in the women's room. The prisoners confined here had no allowance 
 but what they earned, but they were well provided with convenient rooms to 
 work in. This was not the case with that belonging to the county of Suffolk, 
 at Clare, which was rendered extremely offensive by a nuisance that might 
 easily have been removed. The prison walls were of clay, the lodging rooms 
 had no chimneys, and their windows were close glazed. Its court-yard was 
 not secure, and the prisoners had therefore no access to the fine well of water 
 which it contained : the only one indeed, at this time confined there, though 
 a woman, was at work in irons, the insecurity of the prison rendering this 
 mode of restraint necessary.;}; The gaol for the borough of Sudbury in the same 
 county, had an insecure court-yard, and water inaccessible to prisoners, who 
 had no allowance : the day room of the male felons contained however, a loom, 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 212. f lb. p. 221. J lb. p. 220, 1—2-1-6, 7. 
 
241 
 
 at which, if they knew how to weave, they might work for their support.* 
 From this short excursion Mr. Howard could have heen returned to Lon- 
 don but four or five days, ere he set out upon another, into some parts of 
 the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, and Wilts. In the bridewell of the first, 
 at Winchcomb, which was the keeper's freehold, and much out of repair, 
 prisoners were formerly kept altogether in the cellar, but they were now confined 
 in two small low garrets, with a window in each close glazed, the rooms being 
 also without chimneys. The female delinquents were spinning.! In the city 
 bridewell, at Bristol, he found an acquitted woman prisoner detained in custody, 
 and she must have been so even from the last session, for at least ten weeks, 
 for her fees of 3 s. 6 c?. " These fees," says our author, "were paid, and the 
 prisoner was released. "J — He has not told us by whom they were paid, but we 
 may be assured that it was by himself. 
 
 It is most probable, that soon after returning from this short journey, in which 
 he was absent from London but five or six days, Mr. Howard either proceeded 
 to Cardington, or to the house of his brother-in-law in Cambridgeshire, where 
 his son usually spent a part of his vacations, to pass a few days of the Christmas 
 holidays, as from the 26th of December to the 8th of January, we cannot 
 trace him in any part of the round of re-inspection of the London prisons, in 
 which, during the latter part of this year, and the beginning of the next, he 
 was very actively engaged. On the last- mentioned day he was at the bride- 
 well in Tothill-fields, where he found locked up among the felons two debtors, 
 from the court of conscience, the one for a debt of 17 s. 6d. the other of but 
 1 1 ». 1 d. § Two days after, he saw several of the prisoners in Clerkenwell 
 bridewell, sick, and lying upon the floors, being for the most part women of 
 the poorest sort, who could not pay for beds. They complained of sore feet, 
 which the turnkey said were quite black, but the surgeon seems not to have 
 paid any attention to them. || 
 
 * State oll'ii.-ons, 1st Edit. p. 268. t lb.'p. 349. * lb. p. 394. & Hx p. 194. || lb. p. 197. 
 
 I I 
 
242 
 
 Having now completed his intended inspection of English gaols, and fur- 
 nished himself with a greater stock of information respecting their regulations 
 and actual condition than had ever before been collected, Mr. Howard left 
 London for Warrington, where he had determined to have the work printed, 
 which should give to the public the result of those laborious investigations, 
 on which he had been engaged for more than three years, and had travelled 
 upwards of ten thousand miles. To a step which in our days would appear 
 so singular, he was in some measure induced by the high reputation which 
 Mr. Eyres of that town then very deservedly enjoyed, as one of the neatest 
 and most careful printers in the kingdom. Another, and, with a man of 
 his minute accuracy, perhaps a stronger motive, was the superior facility 
 which a provincial press afforded him of having his book printed under his 
 own inspection, in his own manner, at his own time, and with all that 
 precision in correcting its topographical errors which he was determined to 
 bestow upon it. A third inducement remains, however, to be stated, more 
 powerful perhaps than either. At Warrington he hoped to benefit by the 
 literary assistance of a gentleman, then rising rapidly into that eminence, as 
 an author, which he has now so deservedly maintained for the greater part of 
 half a century, and which for the best interests of science, of morality, and of 
 polite literature, it is to be hoped, as it may pretty confidently be predicted, 
 he will enjoy in his writings long, very long, after he himself shall cease to 
 be numbered with the living — leaving, as few parents placed in his situation 
 can leave, his talents with his name an inheritance to his children. It is 
 scarcely necessary to state, that I here allude to Mr. Howard's friend and 
 biographer Dr. (then Mr.) Aikin, who was a resident surgeon in this town. 
 From him we learn the manner in which this and the other works of our 
 Philanthropist gradually assumed the form in which they were eventually 
 presented to the public ; and as the firmest reliance may be placed on its 
 authenticity, I shall transcribe the account he has given of it in his memoir. 
 " On his return from his tours he took all his memorandum-books to an old 
 retired friend of his, who assisted him in methodizing them, and copied out the 
 
243 
 
 whole matter in correct language. They were then put into the hands of 
 Dr. Price, from whom they underwent a revision, and received occasionally con- 
 siderable alterations. What Mr. Howard himself thought of the advantages 
 they derived from his assistance, will appear from the following passages in 
 letters to Dr. Price : " I am ashamed to think how much I have accumulated 
 your labours, yet I glory in that assistance to which I owe so much credit in 
 the world, and, under Providence, success in my endeavours." — " It is from 
 your kind aid and assistance, my dear friend, that I derive so much of my 
 character and influence. I exult in declaring it, and shall carry a grateful 
 sense of it to the last hour of my existence." With his papers thus corrected, 
 Mr. Howard came to the press at Warrington ; and first he read them all over 
 carefully with me, which perusal was repeated, sheet by sheet, as they were 
 printed. As new facts and observations were continually suggesting them- 
 selves to his mind, he put the matter of them upon paper as they occurred, 
 and then requested me to clothe them in such expressions as I thought proper. 
 On these occasions, such was his diffidence, that I found it difficult to make 
 him acquiesce in his own language, when, as frequently happened, it was un- 
 exceptionable. Of this additional matter some was interwoven with the text, 
 but the greater part was necessarily thrown into notes, which, in some of his 
 volumes, are numerous."* To second to the utmost of his power, the laudable 
 anxiety which Mr. Howard felt to render his work as free from faults as 
 possible, Mr. Eyres selected one of his compositors, on whom he could place 
 the greatest dependence, to devote his whole time to it, and to receive from 
 the author himself such directions as he should think proper to give, as 
 to the mode in which he would have it printed, and the alterations he 
 might make as it passed through the press. For the purpose of being near 
 the scene of his labors in superintending the progress of his w r ork, he took 
 lodgings in a house close to his printer's shop ; and so indefatigable was 
 he in his attention to the business which had fixed his temporary abode there, 
 that during a very severe winter he was always called up by two in the morning, 
 
 * Aikin, p. 64—6. 
 
 i i 2 
 
244 
 
 though he did not retire to rest until ten, and sometimes half after ten at 
 night. His reason for this early rising was, that he found the morning the 
 stillest part of the day, and that in which he was the least disturbed in his 
 work of revising the sheets as they came from the press, either before they 
 were submitted to the inspection of Dr. Aikin, or after they had undergone his 
 revision, lest some little typographical error might have escaped his notice. 
 At seven he regularly dressed for the day, and had his breakfast ; when 
 punctually at eight he repaired to the printing-office, and remained there until 
 the workmen went to dinner at one, when he returned to his lodgings, and 
 putting some bread and raisins, or other dried fruit, in his pocket, generally 
 took a walk in the outskirts of the town, during the time of their absence, 
 eating as he walked along his hermit fare, which, with a glass of water on his 
 return, was the only dinner he ever took. Sometimes he would call in upon 
 a friend in his way, though the acquaintance he formed in this town was not 
 very numerous, consisting principally of a few members of the society of 
 Friends, to whose habits and manners he was at all times attached, and some 
 of the literary men of Unitarian sentiments, whom the academy for training 
 young men to the ministry in that denomination, had attracted there. With 
 persons of his own religious views he had but little opportunity of associating, 
 the Calvinistic Independent interest there being even lower at that period than 
 it is in the present day. With some few of this persuasion he did, however, 
 occasionally mingle in the social intercourse of private life, as well as in the ser- 
 vices of the sanctuary which he regularly attended in their humble place of wor- 
 ship. When he had returned to the printing-office, he generally remained there 
 until the men left work, and then, I am informed, repaired to Mr. Aikin s house, 
 to go through with him any sheets which might have been composed during 
 the day, or if there were nothing upon which he wished to consult him, would 
 either spend an hour with some other friend, or return to his own lodgings, 
 where he took his tea or coffee in lieu of supper, and at his usual hour retired 
 to bed. He did not do this, however, without closing the day with family 
 prayer, a duty which he never neglected, though there was but one, and that 
 
245 
 
 one his domestic, to join with him in it ; always declaring that where he had a 
 tent God should have an altar. And this was the case not only in England hut 
 in every part of Europe which they visited together, it being his invariable 
 practice wherever and with whomsoever he might be, to tell Thomasson to 
 come to him at a certain hour, at which, well knowing what the directions 
 meant, he would be sure to find him in his room, whose doors he would 
 order him to fasten; when, let who would come, nobody was admitted until 
 this devotional exercise was over. " Very few," says the humble narrator of 
 this proof of the invariable consistency of our Philanthropist's Christian pro- 
 fession, " knew the goodness of this man's heart." It is upon his authority, 
 and that of Mr. Howard's landlady, and other persons whom he associated, and 
 I have recently conversed with there, that this account of his manner of life 
 upon the first visit of any length which he paid to Warrington, is here given 
 to the public. Whilst there he suspended, though for a very short time, his con- 
 stant and vigilant inspection of the progress of his work through the press, when 
 within a few weeks of its completion, to inspect, on the 19th of March, 1777, a 
 manorial gaol, at Houlton Castle, in which, for a number of years no prisoners had 
 been confined, so that he scarcely would have mentioned it, but that he found, by an 
 inscription in the court-room, dated 1737, it was' still called a gaol, with a court- 
 yard : so anxious was he that no place of confinement, of whose existence he was 
 aware, should be overlooked in his survey, in which we find nothing recorded 
 of this obscure and deserted gaol, but that two cellars appear formerly to have 
 been used for the purpose of confining its prisoners. The next day he visited 
 the bridewell of the town of Warrington, which consisted of two confined rooms 
 in the work-house yard. Prisoners here were not provided with employment 
 but their allowance for diet was the same as that of the poor, who, by their ap- 
 pearance, seemed to have a humane attention paid to them. The keeper was the 
 master of the work-house, but he had neither salary nor fees for his extra duties of 
 gaoler, which would not seem to be very heavy, as he had at this time no prisoners.* 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 452, 441. 
 
246 
 
 In about a fortnight after this visit, the printing of Mr. Howard's first 
 work was finished ; its dedication, or inscription, to the House of Com- 
 mons, " in gratitude for the encouragement which they had given to Us 
 design, and for the honor they had conferred upon its author," being dated 
 from Cardington, on the 5th of the following month. Its modest title is. 
 " The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Obser- 
 vations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons. By John Howard, F. R. S. ;" 
 and though it consisted of 520 quarto pages, with four large and well- 
 engraved plates, " so zealous was he," to use the words of his friend and 
 coadjutor in preparing it for the press, " to diffuse information, and so 
 determined to obviate any idea that he meant to repay his expences by the 
 profitable trade of book-making, that — he insisted on fixing the price of the volume 
 so low, that, had every copy been sold, he would still have presented the public 
 with all the plates, and great part of the printing."* The introductory part of 
 the work, so unassumingly described in its title-page as " preliminary observa- 
 tions," contained, in fact, besides a singularly modest preface explanatory of 
 the motives which induced its composition, the invaluable results of its author's 
 extensive inspection of prisons at home and abroad in the judicious suggestions 
 which he offered for their improvement. Its first section consists of " a ge- 
 neral view of distress in prisons," embracing that scanty supply of the neces- 
 saries of life, in some instances — particularly in our bridewells, and as to 
 debtors in half our county gaols — amounting to the total want of food at all ; 
 that legalized extortion of gaolers in the shape of fees ; that too prevalent 
 lack of water so essentially necessary to the cleanliness, and of air and sewers, 
 so vitally important to the preservation of the health of their inhabitants ; 
 together with the deficiency, in many gaols, and nearly in every bridewell, of 
 bedding of any kind, even of a little straw, for these poor wretches to lie 
 upon ; which every reader of these pages, who has traced the progress of Mr. 
 Howard's inquiries from county to county, and from place to place, will not have 
 
 * Aikin. p. 61,2. 
 
341 
 
 failed to have noticed, with deep commiseration, for himself. From evils thus 
 seriously affecting- the health and lives of prisoners, he proceeds to those which 
 were pernicious to their morals, amongst which he classes, in the foremost rank, 
 the mischievous practice of confining all sorts of prisoners together, debtors and 
 felons ; men and women ; the young beginner and the old offender ; and the too 
 general want of all employment in our prisons, in consequence of which young 
 delinquents especially were trained in habits of idleness, and schooled in every 
 vice. He then calls the attention of his readers to that dreadful malady (the 
 gaol fever) which, as the natural consequences of their filth and closeness, had 
 raged with such violence in our prisons, and often spread its poison thence to 
 Our fleets, our armies, our courts of justice, and our towns, destroying in its 
 progress many more than were put to death by all the public executions in 
 the kingdom. Closely connected with this ground of complaint was the gross 
 inattention to the sick, which he witnessed in some of our gaols and in a 
 very large proportion of our bridewells. He closes his account of these evils 
 with an appeal to the hard-heartedness of those pharasaical Christians, who 
 felt no compassion for the outcast objects of his commiseration because 
 they had fallen from the paths of rectitude, and thus brought all the 
 misery they suffered upon their own heads. It is short, and, therefore, as 
 it breathes that spirit of genuine Christian benevolence and Christian hu- 
 mility, which shines so conspicuously through all his writings and all his 
 works of charity and labors of love, I shall transcribe it here. ** Those gen- 
 tlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, 
 content themselves with saying, ' Let them take care to keep out, 7 prefaced, 
 perhaps, with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favour of 
 Providence which distinguishes them from the sufferers : they do not remember 
 that we are required to imitate our gracious heavenly Parent, who is ' kind to 
 the unthankful and the evil.'' They also forget the vicissitudes of human 
 affairs; the unexpected changes to which all men are liable; and that those 
 whose circumstances are affluent, may in time be reduoed to indigence, and 
 
248 
 
 become debtors and prisoners." His next section is upon " bad customs in 
 prisons ;" amongst which he particularly notices those of permitting garnish 
 to be demanded, and gaming to be carried on ; and the loading prisoners, in 
 some places even women, with heavy irons. To these he adds the want of a 
 regular gaol delivery in some parts of the kingdom twice every year ; the 
 confinement of acquitted prisoners until the judges or justices had left the town, 
 in the hope of extorting from them the fees which the clerks of assize and of 
 the peace still claimed to be entitled to ; the distance at which some gaolers 
 lived from their charge ; the crowding of other prisons with the wives and children 
 of debtors ; and the suffering some of them still to remain private property, 
 exempted from the control of the magistrates. In one of these he learnt, that 
 not many years ago, a prisoner had been tormented with thumb-screws, a 
 hellish invention which we could never have expected to have been adopted 
 in England, at a period so enlightened as was the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century. He closes this section with a statement of the number of prisoners 
 in the different places of confinement in England and Wales, which he visited 
 in the spring of 1776, amounting in the whole to 4,084 ; of whom 2,437 were 
 debtors. Allowing, therefore, on an average, to each of these, two dependents 
 upon his exertion, he calculates that 12,252 persons were distressed by these 
 imprisonments ; a number which, though it had been greatly magnified by 
 conjectural computation, presented, as he truly observes, an object well worthy 
 the further attention of the legislature. His third section is entitled, " pro- 
 posed improvements in the structure and management of prisons," begin- 
 ning with their situation, which he recommends to be always in a spot that is 
 airy, and, if possible, one situated near a river or brook, or else on an eminence 
 or rising ground, where the necessary height of their walls would be the less 
 likely to prevent the free circulation of air. He then proceeds to give a plan 
 for their construction, whose chief peculiarities are, that the wards for the 
 felons should be raised upon arcades, at once to render escapes less easy, to 
 make them more airy, and to afford the prisoners a place to walk in, in wet 
 
♦ 
 
 249 
 
 weather ; that these wards should contain so many rooms, or cabins, that each 
 criminal might sleep alone, and be separated, at least by night, from that com- 
 pany which must destroy all reflection, and prevent even the opportunity for 
 repentance; and that provision should be made for the effectual separation of 
 the women from the men, and of the young from older and more hardened 
 offenders. With more particular reference to the preservation of their health, 
 he strongly insists on the importance of furnishing every prison with a bath, 
 an oven for the purification of clothes, hand ventilators, and an infirmary, 
 quite detached from the rest of the gaol. He also urges the necessity of a total 
 separation of the debtors from the felons, by day as well as night, as the only 
 means of securing the peace, cleanliness, health, and morals, of the latter class 
 of unfortunate beings, for whose use he very properly recommends the 
 erection of a work -shop, that they might, if so disposed, employ themselves in 
 their several trades for the better support of their families. " Prisoners 
 indicted" for felony, he contends, " should not be compelled to work ;" and until 
 convicted, they certainly ought to be left to their choice, though it would be 
 humanity to themselves, and a benefit to the community, if they were permitted 
 to earn something for their more comfortable maintenance ; for which purpose 
 such conveniences should be made in our gaols, as would not be inconsistent 
 with their safe custody. Passing on to what is of still more importance than 
 the safe and convenient structure of a prison, a due attention to its economy 
 and government ; he throws out some judicious hints for their better regulation, 
 the result of a more extensive observation, of a maturer deliberation, and of a 
 sounder judgment than any man ever applied to this important subject before, 
 or since his time. " The first care," he very truly states, " must be to find a 
 good man for a gaoler ; one that is honest, active, and humane." He then 
 insists upon the necessity of not suffering either gaoler or turnkey to keep a tap, 
 or to have any connection with the sale of liquors of any kind. With this 
 view, he very justly proposes that they should have salaries proportioned to 
 their trouble ; yet he would not have them receive so much as to raise them 
 
 K K 
 

 250 
 
 ♦ 
 
 above attention to their duty, and the daily inspection of their gaols. From 
 this office he very properly excludes sheriffs' officers, and reprobates with 
 equal justice the practice of employing prisoners as turnkeys. Ever concerned 
 for the interests of others as he was for his own, in that eternal world for which 
 this is but a state of probation, 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 con- 
 verse with the prisoners; admonish the profligate; exhort the thoughtless; com- 
 fort the sick ; and make known to the condemned that mercy which is revealed 
 in the gospel." Such a man would not think the 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." Very different was the practice of some gaolers, who, upon his asking 
 " Why there were so few prisoners at prayers?" answered him that "they 
 were drinking with their friends ;" of course, from the tap which they them- 
 selves kept. It were almost needless to remark, that he enforces the necessity 
 of appointing to every gaol as surgeon, a man of repute in his profession ; and 
 of abolishing all fees either to gaolers or turnkeys, whose salaries he would on 
 this account have considerably raised. The chamber-rents for master-side 
 debtors he proposes to regulate on a much lower scale, and to provide free 
 wards for the others, who should either be promptly alimented by their 
 creditors, or receive from the county at least the same allowance of every 
 kind as felons. For promoting that cleanliness in these places, which is so 
 essential to the health of their wretched inmates, he recommends that 
 every room in them should be scraped and lime-washed twice every year, 
 and that they should be swept and washed by their inhabitants every day, a 
 
251 
 
 practice, which, instead of endangering their health, would greatly benefit it. 
 Every prisoner coming into the gaol he would have washed in the cold or 
 warm bath, and his clothes purified in the oven. He would also have them 
 compelled to put on a change of linen once a week, and to be supplied in each of 
 their wards with a clean towel on a roller, every day. If straw is used for bedding, 
 he recommends its being put into a coarse canvas bag, or, if not so inclosed, to 
 be changed every week ; each bed to be provided also with a coarse coverlid 
 or two. A strange mistaken notion has gone abroad, that Mr. Howard 
 attempted to introduce, and has even partially succeeded in introducing into 
 our prisons a diet for offenders there, which operates rather as a premium 
 to tempt them to get in, than, as its coarseness but not its insufficiency ought 
 to do, as a terror to keep them out of confinement. But to this charge let him 
 answer for himself. " The reader will plainly see that I am not an advocate for 
 extravagant and prof use allowance to prisoners. I plead only for necessaries, in 
 such a moderate quantity, as may support health and strength for labour." 
 These necessaries were, for those who are allowed nothing to drink but water, 
 at least a pound and a half of bread a-day, with a penny each for cheese, butter, 
 potatoes, peas, or turnips, or a pennyworth of one or other of these articles. 
 Beyond this he proposes their being allowed nothing, except once a week 
 half a pound of the coarse pieces of beef without bone, which had been boiled 
 in a copper to make broth, of which also he would give them each a quart. 
 This indulgence he proposes to fix for their Sunday's dinner, as it might help 
 to remove a bad custom, then very prevalent, of admitting the friends of pri- 
 soners into our gaols, so as to keep them from public service upon that day, under 
 pretence of furnishing them with better food and drink than they were usually 
 allowed. But even then he would make it an encouragement to peaceable and 
 orderly behaviour, by withholding it from those who had been refractory, and 
 on the days on which it was given would allow them but a pound of bread. 
 Surely, then, if any fault is to be found with this table of diet, it is rather 
 that it is too scanty than too liberal ; falling short of the end our Philanthropist 
 
 ill 
 
 W 
 4 
 
 ■^ ^^ 
 
 «* 
 
252 
 
 proposed to himself in its establishment, the enabling those for whom it 
 was framed to go through with their work, rather than going beyond it. In 
 the allowance of food to his prisoners, whatever it might be, he strongly insists, 
 however, on the necessity of the gaoler and his turnkeys being absolutely ex- 
 cluded from all concern by which, directly or indirectly, any profit might arise 
 to them ; and he would wish it always to be fixed by a certain weight, and not 
 by a variable price. Fighting, abusive language, and other disorderly behaviour, 
 he would in ordinary cases have the keeper punish by a closer imprisonment of 
 the aggressor, though faults deserving a more severe animadversion should be re- 
 served for the cognizance of the magistrates, or of an inspector which he pro- 
 poses to have appointed for each prison. It would be his duty to visit once 
 a-week, or at furthest once a fortnight, at times when he was not expected, 
 every room in the place, to see that it was clean and in a proper state ; to speak 
 with every prisoner ; inquire into the observance or neglect of every regulation ; 
 hear all complaints, and immediately correct whatever he found to be mani- 
 festly wrong. " This honorable delegate," he observes in conclusion, " should 
 have no salary : he should engage from the noble motive of doing justice to 
 prisoners, and service to his country." Had this plan been adopted, the county 
 of Bedford would, no doubt, have been provided with an inspector ready and 
 willing to undertake this arduous duty, without needing the excitement of any 
 other motives than these, so long, at least, as it could boast of a Howard for 
 its inhabitant. But in other counties it is to be feared that there would be 
 more difficulty than the generosity of his own heart, and the purity of his 
 benevolence, would suffer him to anticipate, in finding even " one man gene- 
 rous enough to undertake this important service." A subdivision of this section 
 is devoted to the very important article of " bridewells," which its author 
 exhibits a very laudable anxiety to restore to the wise purposes they were 
 originally intended to answer, the reclaiming of less hardened offenders by 
 moderate correction and by keeping them to hard labor, instead of becoming, 
 as, by utter neglect of their object, they long since had done, abodes of 
 
 z 
 
253 
 
 wretchedness and schools for vice. The great engine of effecting this desirable 
 reformation which he proposed to adopt is one that, if properly employed, 
 could not fail of success, — the suffering no one capable of working to be idle. 
 With this view he would have the keeper a master manufacturer, who would 
 keep his prisoners at work for ten hours a-day, including the time allowed for 
 meals, their earnings during that period going towards the expences*of the 
 establishment. If they chose to work extra hours he would give them their 
 extra earnings for themselves ; and judiciously suggests the allowing them also 
 some small proportion of the profit of their regular labor, as an encouragement 
 to industry. The sober and diligent among them he proposes to distinguish by 
 some preference in their diet and lodging, or by shortening the term of their 
 confinement, and giving them a character for good behaviour when discharged ; 
 whilst the idle and refractory, whose faults were not to be corrected by milder 
 discipline, should be punished by solitary imprisonment, on bread and water, for 
 a period proportioned to their faults. In other respects the measures he would 
 wish to be adopted for the preservation of the health and amendment of the 
 morals of these minor delinquents are similar to those which have already been 
 detailed in their application to our gaols. His suggestions for the improvement of 
 these and other descriptions of prisons are then closed by answering an objection 
 which he anticipated, that " from the many conveniences suggested in their 
 structure, and the removal of those hardships which rendered them so terrible, 
 the dread of being confined in them would in a great measure be taken off, and 
 the lower classes of people would find them more comfortable places of resi- 
 dence than their own houses." To which he rejoins, with great force and 
 truth, that " with respect to the more humane treatment of the prisoners in 
 the article of food, lodging, and the like, he ventured to assert that if it be 
 joined with such strict regulations in preventing all dissipation and riotous 
 amusement, as he had inculcated, confinement in a prison, though it might 
 cease to be destructive of health and morals, would not fail to be sufficiently 
 irksome and disagreeable, especially to the idle and profligate." Of the truth 
 
*#•* • J, 
 
 2Si 
 
 of this assertion, the condition in which he found some of the houses of 
 correction abroad, whose regulations are detailed in his fourth section, 
 afforded the most convincing proof. But as a full account of the general 
 spirit of those regulations, as well as of the state of every other prison there de- 
 scribed, has already been given in these memoirs, this interesting portion of 
 his work may be dismissed without further notice. And a similar course having 
 been pursued in tracing his visits to our English gaols, it is equally unne- 
 cessary to say any thing more of the " particular account'' which he gives of 
 them in the fifth section of his book, occupying near 330 of its pages, than 
 that it enters most minutely into the state of every prison in the kingdom, of 
 whose existence he was at all aware ; comprising regular lists of the names of their 
 gaolers or keepers ; the amount of their salaries; the fees which they claimed, 
 and the nature of their emoluments ; the allowance to prisoners, the garnish 
 they were required to pay, and their number at his several visits ; the name 
 of the chaplain, if any, the nature of his duty, and the amount of his salary ; 
 with the name and salary of the surgeon. These particulars he follows up by 
 such remarks upon the construction and regulations of the prison he is describing 
 as he conceived might be useful to the great end of his visiting it ; — the re- 
 formation of the abuses existing not only there but in every similar place in 
 the kingdom. These were the results of the most minute inspection of every 
 part of the building, which did not contain a room, dungeon, or cell, that he 
 did not himself enter with his memorandum-book and his rule in his hand, to 
 measure its dimensions, and note down the condition in which he found its 
 inhabitants. With the same accuracy he transcribed the table of fees, the 
 rules and regulations for its government, and the list of legacies left for the 
 benefit of its inmates, which he has given at length at the close of his account 
 of every prison ; at the end of which he has printed accurate tables of the fees 
 demanded by the clerk of assize, upon the different circuits, on the acquittal 
 or conviction of offenders ; of the number of prisoners tried and acquitted in 
 some of them, and of those who had been capitally convicted, or delivered for 
 
4. 
 
 255 
 
 transportation, in others. In a few concluding remarks, he expresses his per- 
 suasion that nothing could be done in reforming the state of our prisons till a 
 thorough parliamentary inquiry concerning them should be set on foot. 
 " Should this be undertaken," he adds, " I would cheerfully (relying still 
 on the protection of that kind hand which has hitherto preserved me, and to 
 which I desire to offer my most thankful acknowledgments !) devote my time 
 to one more extensive foreign journey, in which the Prussian and Austrian 
 territories, and the most considerable free cities of Germany, would probably 
 afford some new and useful lights on this important national concern :" and 
 with this pledge of his continued zeal in the noble cause to which he had 
 devoted himself, he closes his work. 
 
 As soon as the printing of that work was completed, he proceeded to 
 London, where, with a liberality bordering on profusion, he presented copies 
 of it to most of the considerable persons in the kingdom, and to all his own 
 particular friends, into whose more immediate circle he retired as soon as he had 
 accomplished this object ; and spent with them, at Cardington, and in its 
 neighbourhood, the remainder of the spring, and nearly the whole of the 
 summer and autumn, with great part of the winter of this year. But before 
 we follow him to his retreat, it may be necessary, in a few words, to state the 
 particulars which are preserved, or which I have been enabled to recal, of the 
 manner of his performing those journeys of benevolence in which we have 
 already traced his footsteps, and some of those whose results yet remain to be 
 detailed. In his earlier tours through England, Scotland, and Ireland, he was 
 usually attended by his faithful domestic John Prole, who still occasionally 
 acted as his groom. They travelled on horseback, about forty miles a-day. 
 " He was never," says a gentleman of Dublin, who had much free conversation 
 with him on this subject, " at a loss for an inn. When in Ireland, or the 
 Highlands of Scotland, he used to stop at one of the poor cabins that stuck up 
 a rag by way of sign, and get a little milk. When he came to the town he 
 was to sleep at, he bespoke a supper, with wine and beer, like another traveller, 
 
2,56 
 
 but made his man attend him, and take it away, whilst he was preparing his 
 bread and milk. He always paid the waiters, postillions, &c. liberally, because 
 he would have no discontent or dispute, nor suffer his spirits to be agitated for 
 such a matter ; saying, that in a journey which might cost three or four hundred 
 pounds, fifteen or twenty pounds addition was not worth thinking about."* 
 In his two first visits to the continent, he took no attendant with him, but tra- 
 velled from place to place, either by the public conveyances or post. A ridicu- 
 lous story has indeed been told of his having usually availed himself of the former 
 provision for travelling in England, and of his having upon these occasions uni- 
 formly exchanged name, character, and consequently dress, with his servant :f 
 but it is almost needless to say, that this tale is as false as it is absurd. When he 
 went to Warrington, he was accompanied by Thomasson,who had previously been 
 his attendant upon some of his longer journeys, when, from his being a married 
 man with a family, he was unwilling to take Prole from home. On his return 
 to London, he was joined in a chaise by a gentleman, who related to Dr. Aikin 
 the following characteristic anecdote of the mode he had adopted in order to 
 make the post-boys drive him fast or slow according as he gave directions ; 
 when, in some of his journeys in the winter he chose this method of travelling. 
 Finding they would seldom comply with his wishes, " at the end of a stage, 
 when the driver had been perverse, he desired the landlord to send for some 
 poor industrious widow, or other proper object of charity, and to introduce 
 such person and the driver together. He then paid the latter his fare, and told 
 him, that as he had not thought proper to attend to his repeated requests as to 
 the manner of being driven, he should not make him any present; but, to show 
 him that he did not withhold it out of a principle of parsimony, he would give 
 the poor person present double the sum usually given to a postillion. This he did, 
 and dismissed the parties. He had not long practised this mode, he said, before 
 he experienced the good effects of it on all the roads where he was known. "J 
 
 * Aikin, p. 224, 5. t Life of the late John Howard, Esq. with a Review of his Travels, p. 72, 3. 
 
 i Aikin, p. 218. 
 
231 
 
 It is natural to suppose, that the friends who had so highly esteemed him 
 whilst his worth was scarcely known beyond the limits of their little circle, 
 now that the fame of his extraordinary benevolence was spread, not only from 
 one end of his own country to the other, but through some of the most consi- 
 derable states of Europe, should hail his return to the scene of his more private 
 charities, and of his social intercourse, with peculiar pleasure. By them his 
 occasional visits to Cardington were at all times anticipated with delight, and 
 enjoyed with real satisfaction, as towards him they always felt an attachment 
 warm and sincere as was his friendship for them uniform and steady ; so 
 erroneous and so unfounded is the idea which has been entertained by those 
 who did not know him, that he sacrificed the private and domestic affections 
 of the heart to his more enlarged views of general benevolence. " Those 
 persons, however, who were in the habit of seeing him in the midst of his 
 family and his friends," says a lady who often saw him there, " and therefore 
 had the best opportunity of judging, know that no man ever enjoyed domestic 
 life more than he did, or was more beloved and respected in it." These short 
 residences at home he always considered as relaxations from his laborious 
 public exertions, and he, therefore, indulged himself freely in the converse of 
 his friends, and completely unbended himself in their society. Towards his 
 tenants and the poor of his neighbourhood he still continued that exemplary 
 kindness, whose pleasing effects upon their happiness have already been de- 
 scribed. He still built new cottages, and it was still thought a privilege to 
 inhabit them. The schools also which he had established, flourished in his 
 absence, and were constantly visited by him when at home. 
 
 His son, it will be recollected, must have been about nine years old when 
 our great Philanthropist entered on those extensive tours of benevolence, which 
 took up so large a portion of his time, at whose commencement he was 
 removed, as has already been stated, to Mr. Madgwick's academy at Pinner, 
 
 L !. 
 
258 
 
 where he remained at this period,* his father having taken every pains to 
 satisfy himself that such attention would be paid to him there, that it could 
 no longer be necessary for him to confine himself at home, or even in England, 
 upon his account, when his duty so powerfully called him to a temporary 
 absence from both. The school at which he was placed was also so near 
 London that he was scarcely an hour's ride from the residence of his aunt, 
 his nearest relation on the father's side, with whom, and with his maternal 
 uncles, or with some other of his more distant relatives, or of his father's friends, 
 he passed his vacations, at least as pleasantly as a child of his lively disposition, 
 naturally fond of change, could have done beneath his paternal roof. But 
 whenever he was in England, Mr. Howard always had him with him at 
 Cardington, or wherever he might be staying, except during that part of 
 his holidays which, as a treat, he suffered him to spend in visiting his relatives 
 and friends. At those, and indeed at all other times, when with him by his 
 conversation, when absent by his letters, he endeavoured to impress his 
 youthful mind with the primary importance of religion and morality to his 
 present and eternal happiness. Mr. Howard was very fond of children, and in the 
 habit of familiarly noticing them, and in those families where he was particu- 
 larly intimate, in Mr. Smith's especially, he generally brought them a pocket full 
 of fruit, and was even so desirous of contributing to their innocent gratification, 
 that he would buy toys for their amusement during his tours abroad. His 
 behaviour towards them was, however, as we might expect from such a 
 man, rather kind and affectionate, than lively or playful. To a child, there- 
 fore, of his son's buoyant spirits, and somewhat volatile disposition, his manner 
 would naturally appear more reserved and austere than he himself meant it to 
 be, and it cannot be thought very surprising, if, together with the efforts which 
 he used to curb that violence of temper and loftiness of spirit which he ob- 
 served in him with pain during his earlier years, it should have inspired rather 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 287, 9. 
 
2S9 
 
 more awe at his presence than is consistent with that warmth of affection 
 which a child naturally feels towards a parent. Yet for the attainment 
 of the desirable object which he proposed to himself, he did not now 
 employ, as he had not done during the period of his infancy, any violent or 
 coercive measures, so contrary to his general disposition and character, but 
 still continued to adopt towards his son that expectation of an uniform, imme- 
 diate, and unreserved obedience to his commands, which, as its head, he always 
 would receive from every other part of his family. His friends, and amongst 
 the rest the most intimate of them, the Rev. Mr. Smith, thought that in the case 
 of his son he carried those patriarchal ideas rather too far, and that by a lad of 
 his temper he would have been more respected, and would have possessed more 
 real authority over him, had he endeavoured to convince him of the reasonable- 
 ness of his commands, instead of always enforcing obedience to them on his 
 parental authority. But the ill effects of this mode of treatment did not yet 
 appear, as young Howard still seemed to be very fond of his father, though 
 his lively disposition sometimes drew upon him the heaviest punishment that 
 father ever inflicted, which was to make him sit still in his presence without 
 speaking, for a time proportioned to the nature of his offence. Whilst, indeed, 
 he was under Mr. Madgwick's care, the public testimony of that gentleman's 
 daughter has been borne to the whole conduct of Mr. Howard towards his 
 son, being " such as discovered him to be a kind parent."* From beneath that 
 care it is, however, most probable that he was removed after the Christmas 
 vacation of this year, which, as well as the summer one, he spent principally at 
 Cardington, to the academy at Daventry, then under the direction of the 
 Rev. Mr. Robins.f 
 
 As a Christian, Mr. Howard continued to maintain the consistency of his 
 practice with his profession, of his faith with his works, in the same exem- 
 plary manner as he hitherto had done, in proof of which I will here transcribe 
 
 * Rev. S. Palmer's Letter to the Editor of the Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 318. 
 t Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 287, 9. 
 
 ll2 
 
260 
 
 a few expressions of his feelings interspersed amongst the heads of sermons, 
 which he had noted down about this period in a memorandum-book, formerly 
 in the possession of his servant, but which, through the kindness of its present 
 owner, is now lying before me. The first is, " Let me not forget that time is 
 always on the wing: that my Acc t- is every moment hastening on." A 
 second, " God grant that I may not only live in faith, but may I die in 
 faith, approving, preserving, and embracing the sacred truths of the Gos- 
 pel." The third asks, " What will riches, what will honours do : will 
 they give me hope thro' Grace ? Lord give me a new heart by faith in Christ 
 Jesus, a Faith not to be ashamed of Religion." In a fourth he thus unequivocally 
 bears his testimony against the efficacy of human works in contributing to our 
 salvation. " The doctrine of merit is diametri y opposite to the genius of 
 the gospel : By grace we are saved." And in another passage, " Salvat" 
 in every step, in every stage is of Grace." To the sanctifying influence of this 
 principle upon the heart and conduct of those who were the subjects of it, he 
 gave, however, its full importance, and hence he observes, " true Xtians have 
 risen superior to y e frowns or favors of this World ;" adding, " would to God 
 I was thus perfect." Contemplating the termination of his career on earth, 
 and looking forward to that period when death shall be swallowed up in 
 victory, in another part of this book, we have this Christian prayer : u My 
 God my God give me the victory thro' Jesus Christ." At the close of his 
 very copious notes upon the discourse which gave rise to this pious exclamation, 
 whose text was 1 Corinthians xv. 58 : " Therefore, my beloved brethren, 
 be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, 
 forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord," he has 
 made the following application of the subject to himself: — " Oh my 
 Soul, seek the Lord while He may be found call upon Him consider well y r 
 sacred engagements ; be not conformed to this World, die unto sin, live unto 
 righteousness. Think on those things that belong to y r everlasting peace, 
 for you are dead, and y r life is hid with Christ in God. Let every darling 
 sin be removed for sin is enmity to God, and put on bowels of mercy 
 
261 
 
 shew yourself the servant of Christ. Oh set these sacred truths home on my 
 Heart and after the great things Thou hast done in and by me, oh let not 
 the poor weak helpless and useless instrument be lost and cast into the fire but 
 oh God for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake make Him the everlasting monum' 
 of free sovereign and divine Grace and to thee be all the praise." Upon his 
 shorter notes of another discourse from a part of the twenty-first verse of the first 
 chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, " neither were thankful," in which the 
 main object of the preacher seems to have been to reprobate the vice of ingra- 
 titude to man, rather than that of which all men are guilty towards God, to 
 which the text alone alludes, and in illustration of it, to show how often even the 
 merits of the man who should spend his whole life in promoting the interests of 
 his fellow creatures were overlooked and forgotten in the grave, Mr. Howard has 
 made this short but characteristical remark, "Alas! how little profitable would 
 such discourses be." To a man who had rendered his fellow-men the services he 
 had from the motives by which he was actuated, the world's ingratitude, 
 or the world's applause, were indeed matters of equal indifference. What was 
 the impulse under which he acted, what the object he was most solicitous to 
 promote, are fully expressed in his reflections on the next sermon which he 
 appears to have heard, " May I see the wisdom and power of God in y' 
 Gospel. May I feel its power, and its Wisdom. It has made us to do good and 
 promote y e temporal and eternal interest of Men." What, too, was the 
 assistance upon which he alone relied to enable him to perform the arduous 
 work in which he was engaged, what the reward he was looking forward to 
 at its close, may be gathered from the devout, but unconnected, aspiration 
 which he has entered in this memorandum-book. " Ere long my Work shall 
 be at an end, do not grow weary in well-doing, for You shall reap if You faint 
 not. Hold thou up my Goings." 
 
 But, for the performance of that work, years of labor and of usefulness 
 yet lay before him, and his means of doing good were considerably in- 
 
262 
 
 creased by the death of his only sister, which happened on the 12th of 
 August, 1777, as appears from a letter to Thomasson, of which the following 
 is an extract : — 
 
 " Thomas, 
 
 " I got to Town about 7 o Clock this Morning but Alass too late to 
 see my poor Sister and take one final leave, she died five o Clock Yesterday 
 afternoon. You will come to Town a friday, bring all my black C loathes — 
 Butter, Cheese, Sage, Balm & Mint. Ann will buy a Mourning Gown, I will 
 pay for it. I hope to be down some time next week. I am 
 ", Lambs Conduit Street " yrs 
 
 " Aug' 13. 1777. " John Howard." 
 
 By this lady's death he obtained a considerable addition to his property, 
 though its amount has been variously stated. In Thomasson's journal it is 
 represented to have been thirty thousand pounds in ready cash, with every 
 thing she had ; whilst in Mr. Palmer's MS. memoir it is a legacy of ten 
 thousand pounds, without mention of the house in Great Ormond Street, 
 which he certainly inherited from her ; — I should imagine that this sum is 
 more likely to be the correct one. But be this as it may, it is certain 
 that he considered this accession to his fortune a providential supply for the 
 extension of his plans of benevolence, without injury to his paternal estate, 
 which he thought it his duty to leave unencumbered to his son. Yet for 
 having applied the greater part of it to such an object, the biographer of the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, so often alluded to already in terms of merited repre- 
 hension for his illiberality, has strove to blacken his memory by an insiduous 
 remark emphatically printed in italics, that he made use of ih& money ac- 
 cordingly, though his sister had made no provision for his son. " This illiberal 
 sneer," says Mr. Palmer in his memoir, " proceeds from its author's igno- 
 rance of a material fact, that his son was already amply provided for. 
 
203 
 
 For which reason I have heard him say, that he should not restrain his 
 liberality on his son's account. It would be well," he adds, " if other persons 
 of fortune acted in the same manner, many of whom, by hoarding for their 
 children more than they can enjoy innocently, or spend usefully, prevent them- 
 selves from doing that good to their fellow-creatures, for which the liberal 
 gifts of providence are bestowed." To another friend he observed to the 
 same effect, " that he should not have thought himself warranted to break-in 
 upon his own fortune in the manner he had ; but that in respect to his son, he 
 would inherit, from certain relations (whom he named), a fortune sufficiently 
 ample, even if he was to spend the whole of his own in the pursuits in which he 
 was engaged ; but that was by no means likely to be the case, as the legacy 
 from his sister would more than indemnify him."* Who those relations were 
 it is now no longer necessary to conceal : from his mother's brothers, Edward 
 and Joseph Leeds, Esquires, young Howard was secure of receiving a very 
 considerable addition to his paternal property, which in itself was handsome, 
 besides what was secured to him out of his mother's fortune, and which he 
 enjoyed when he came of age independent of his father's control. With the 
 only being for whom he was called upon to provide, thus amply provided for, 
 who then can have any right to object to Mr. Howard's spending the property 
 left him by his sister in any manner he chose ; and if he devoted it as he did to 
 mitigating the distresses of the most wretched of his fellow-mortals, who but 
 the most sordid, or the most envious of mankind, will venture to say that it 
 was not most nobly spent. Certain it is, as I shall hereafter have occasion 
 more particularly to show, that the son whose interests were the most materially 
 affected by this mode of disposing of the surplus of his father's wealth was not 
 of this number, and if he was satisfied, what pretence is there for any other 
 person to complain ? 
 
 * Letter from W. F. Plymouth, Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 288. See also on this 
 subject Dr. Aikin's Letters, ib. p. 290, 491, in which the selfishness and illiberally of (his writer's remarks 
 are most ably exposed. 
 
*• 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Mr. Howards third journey on the continent for the purpose of inspecting the prisons and 
 hospitals of Holland, Flanders, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France ; his third 
 general survey of the English, his second of the Scotch and Irish gaols, and the publi- 
 cation of his first Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1778 — 1780. 
 
 IT was impossible but that a work like that of Mr. Howard's upon the State 
 of Prisons, should have excited, upon its first appearance, an unusual portion of 
 public attention. To English readers, at least, its subject was novel, and to 
 every one possessed of the common feelings of humanity, the information it 
 conveyed must have been in the highest degree interesting, whilst it could not 
 fail to awaken the mingled wonder and admiration of all, that any man should 
 have been induced by the mere wish to alleviate the distress of the very 
 outcasts of society, to put to such imminent hazard his health and his life, to 
 make so large a sacrifice of his comforts and of his property, and cheerfully to 
 encounter such a constant succession of labor, and difficulty, and toil, as did 
 the author of this singular production. The different periodical critics were 
 accordingly liberal, it was impossible to be lavish, in their praises of the purity 
 of the motives that had induced, the unwearied perseverance that had 
 accomplished, and the unassuming modesty which characterised the statement 
 of the results of this unexampled labor of Christian love. But this was 
 not all ; the attention of the legislature was immediately arrested by some 
 
26o 
 
 <rf the abuses which this work pointed out, particularly by those relating to 
 persons under sentence of transportation, of whose situation Mr. Howard gives 
 the following brief account. " I had taken some pains to make inquiries con- 
 cerning the state of transports, with regard to whom many cruelties and 
 impositions were commonly practised, and whose condition was in many 
 respects equally contrary to humanity and good policy : I flattered myself 
 that I had discovered means of remedying these evils in a considerable degree, 
 and of disburdening the counties of a heavy expense with which they were 
 charged ; and was preparing to lay them before the public, when a new turn 
 was given to the matter by act of parliament. Since this has taken place, I 
 suppress what I had written."* 
 
 Scarcely, however, had the provisions of the bill which occasioned this 
 suppression commenced their operation, than this ever-active Philanthropist 
 was to be seen moving like the spirit of benevolence and compassion amongst 
 the unfortunate beings confined in the places appropriated to the keeping them 
 employed at home, instead of sending them at an immense expence, and 
 situated as the mother-country then was with respect to her American colonies, 
 at no inconsiderable risk, to our distant possessions abroad. It was to a visit 
 of this kind in the autumn of the year 1776, that the following note in the 
 passage from his State of Prisons just quoted alludes — " I went one Sunday in 
 October last to see the Men-Convicts on board the Justitia near Woolwich. I 
 wished to have found them more healthy ; and their provision good of the 
 sort ; arid to have joined with them in divine service. But as the scheme is 
 new, and temporary, I am not willing to complain."— But though he considered 
 it indecorous to expose to the public eye the abuses, or even the defects, of a 
 system adopted by the legislature itself avowedly but as an experiment, and 
 which was then under its own more immediate supervision, he did not hesitate 
 to detail them faithfully, and without reserve, when he was called upon to 
 tiive his opinion upon the subject. This he had an opportunity of doing, 
 
 State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 75, 6. 
 N M 
 
266 
 
 when, on the 15th of April, 1778, he was examined before a select committee 
 
 of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the measures which had 
 
 been pursued for carrying into execution the act of 16 Geo. III. c. 43, and 
 
 into the effects it had produced. It was in answer to their questions that 
 
 Mr. Howard gave an account of his first visit to the Justitia, in which 
 
 he stated that he saw the convicts altogether upon deck, and walking twice 
 
 round them, he looked into the face of every person, and found, by their 
 
 wretched appearance, that there was some mismanagement in those who had the 
 
 care of them. Many had no shirts, some no waistcoats, some no stockings, 
 
 and others no shoes. Several of them knew him, and seeing from their sickly 
 
 looks that they required medical attendance, he asked particularly whether 
 
 they had it, and found that they had not. By waiting to see their messes weighed 
 
 out, he ascertained that the broken biscuit actually given to them was green 
 
 and mouldy, though that which the captain shewed him as a sample was 
 
 good and wholesome, a piece of deception for which he indignantly reproached 
 
 him, as he convicted him of falsehood, by shewing him the biscuit in the face of 
 
 the whole crew. In every other respect, these poor wretches were as miserably 
 
 neglected. Even the sick, who were only separated from the healthy, if any 
 
 such there could be in this loathsome prison, by a few boards roughly nailed 
 
 together, had nothing to sleep upon but the bare decks. Their drink was 
 
 water, and many of them told him in a whisper, lest their inhuman task-masters 
 
 should overhear their complaints, that their meat was much tainted. The 
 
 undressed ox- cheeks which were shewn to him as their provision seemed, 
 
 however, to be sound, but so we may recollect did their biscuit which he found, 
 
 on farther examination, to be quite the contrary. With so much food for 
 
 pestilence, we need not wonder that he discovered in this ill-conducted hulk 
 
 a disagreeable smell like that of a gaol ; or that he should express his decided 
 
 conviction, that had not the legislature turned its attention to the subject, 
 
 instead of a third or a fourth part, all the convicts confined here would have been 
 
 lost. Sunday, it will be remembered, was the day he had chosen to visit the 
 
 wretched place, because on no other could the benevolent purposes of his visit- 
 
26T 
 
 ing it at all be answered ; but he found that the Sabbath was there no other- 
 wise observed than by a cessation from labor, and consequently by an increased 
 facility for its profanation.* 
 
 This visit, though its results were never laid before th^ 
 without its immediate effects, for the determined resolution which MrTHoward 
 then exhibited of inspecting into every abuse that had been suffered to creep in 
 under a very negligent and defective system of control and of misplaced con- 
 fidence, induced an alteration in the mode of treating the convicts confined on 
 board this floating prison, the beneficial consequences of which will be evident 
 from the account given to the committee of the House of Commons, in the 
 course of this examination, of a second visit to the hulks on the 26th of 
 January, 1778. On board the Censor, a ship then employed as an additional 
 hulk, as well as in the Justitia, he found that the convicts were much 
 better treated than when he saw them last, as was evident from their 
 very looks. They now had regular medical assistance : the sick were all 
 in separate beds, their irons were off, and in other respects they seemed 
 to have the utmost attention paid to them. He inspected their bread, 
 meat, and small beer, and found them to be good and wholesome. They 
 themselves, indeed, made no complaint of their food, except wishing for more 
 bread, the allowance of which he had reason to suppose had since been 
 increased. Their cloathing was not regulated on any uniform plan, some 
 being decently clad, and others wanting shirts, and even shoes, such as 
 they could possibly work in : — the whole appearance of several of them was also 
 extremely dirty, looking as though they had not been washed for many weeks. 
 Their bedding was a mat to lie upon, with nothing under or over them but a 
 rug, which would cover about two men. He did not discover that disagreeable 
 Miiell on board which he had noticed on his former visit, and indeed, upon the 
 whole, the persons confined here were in a healthy state, having but few sick in 
 
 * Journals of the House of Commons, Mercurii, 15° die Aprilis, 1778, Vol. XXXVI. p. 928, 9. 
 
 M H 2 
 
268 
 
 the hospitals. From the hulks he proceeded to the Warren, where all the convicts 
 who were employed at all, amounting but to 103 out of 289, were at work, 
 though but for three hours, or three hours and a half, a-day ; and even then, for 
 want of being properly overlooked, they performed, in fact, but little more work 
 than a third of what a voluntary laborer would do in the same space of time. 
 This, however, he in some measure attributed to the mode of chaining both their 
 legs together, instead of having one chain only from the leg to the girdle, 
 which would permit them to work with more ease and dispatch. In the 
 Warren he found that, in general, they were orderly in their behaviour, having 
 observed but little profaneness there, as every effort was made to keep it under. 
 
 Being asked whether, if the bill providing for the maintenance and regulation 
 of these hulks, then about expiring, were suffered to drop, there were, in his 
 opinion, any places in the houses of correction, fit for the reception and safe keep- 
 ing to hard labor of felons; he answered, that he had seen very few strong enough 
 for this purpose, adding, that though the judges had mentioned in their charges the 
 clauses of the act,* which requires the justices of every county to prepare their 
 houses of correction for the reception of such offenders, not the least attention 
 had been paid to its provisions, so that in the situation in which bridewells then 
 were, it was impossible to use them for their confinement. He pointed out 
 to the consideration of the committee a very great hardship to which convicted 
 felons were subjected, on account of the bridewells being insecure, in the term of 
 their transportation or confinement to hard labor not beginning until they were 
 sent away from the county gaol, which, in some instances, was not until three 
 or four years after they had received sentence. In France, he informed 
 them, the term for which offenders were condemned to the galleys, commenced 
 within twenty-four hours after conviction, though they might not be sent on 
 board for some months; and having directed their attention to foreign countries 
 one instance, he did it also in another, by telling them that the Maiaon de la 
 
 * 16 Geo. III. e. 43. p. §13. 
 
269 
 
 Force, at Ghent, was constructed upon a better plan, and for better reo-ulated 
 than any house of correction he had seen in England. 
 
 Such is the substance of Mr. Howard's second examination before a com- 
 mittee of the House of Commons,* upon a subject on which they could not pos- 
 sibly have called before them a man capable of giving them so much authentic 
 and valuable information. I have given it much at length, because it is only to 
 be found in an immense collection of public documents, to which comparatively 
 few can have access. It is evident from that examination, that he considered 
 the hulks the best places of confinement for convicts sentenced to hard labor, 
 then in existence, though, to make use of a somewhat homely phrase, bad indeed 
 were they at the best. In consequence, therefore, of the information which he 
 gave of their improved state, and of the still more favorable accounts of the 
 superintendents and other persons concerned in their management, the com- 
 mittee recommended to the House an adherence to the system, - )' and a bill was 
 accordingly brought in for continuing this mode of confinement, and received 
 the royal assent on the 28th of May following.^ 
 
 The legislature was anxious, however, to extend these provisions still 
 further, by the establishment of places of confinement, for offenders of 
 this description,- on the plan of the rasp and spin houses in Holland, of 
 whose regulations Mr. Howard had spoken in terms of such high, yet me- 
 rited encomium. The draft of a bill to this effect having accordingly 
 been prepared by Sir William Blackstone and Mr. Eden, — within two days 
 after his examination before the House of Commons, he set out upon a tour to 
 that country, with a view to gain further information on this branch of its well- 
 regulated police.§ He arrived at Harwich upon the 18th of April, and after 
 inspecting the gaol there, which he found to be in a bad condition, but 
 
 * Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. XXXVI. p. 929, 930. 
 f Ibid. p. 932. : lb. p. 996. § Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 3.. 
 
270 
 
 without prisoners,* he crossed over to Helvoetsluys, where he landed in the 
 evening of the following day, and immediately proceeded to the Hague, and 
 thence to Amsterdam. He had not been in the latter place above a day or two 
 before he had the misfortune to meet with a very serious accident from a horse 
 running away with a dray, which catching him by the coat, as he was walking 
 along the street, threw him upon a heap of loose stones with such force, as to 
 bruise his sides so severely, as to prevent, for some days, his removal to the 
 Hague, where the pain he suffered brought on an inflammatory fever that con- 
 fined him to his room for six weeks, and for a considerable part of the time 
 placed his life in great jeopardy .f How constantly he was supported under 
 this affliction — how ardent too were his desires that it might be sanctified to 
 himself and to others, the following short extracts from his diary, when so far 
 recovered as to be able to write but a few lines a day, will abundantly testify : 
 
 " Hague May 11 1778. Do me good oh God! by this painful affliction, 
 may I see the great uncertainty of health ease and comfort that all mv 
 Springs are in Thee — Oh the painful and wearisome Nights I posses, may I 
 be more thankful if restored to Health, and more compasionate to others, more 
 absolutely devoted to God. J. H. 
 
 " May 12. In patience may I possess my Soul, and say it is the Lord let 
 him do what seemeth him good. J. H. 
 
 " May 13th. In pain and anguish all Night, my very Life a burthen to me— 
 help Lord, vain is the help of Man — in Thee do I put my Trust, let me not be 
 confounded — All refuges but Christ are refuges of Lies, my soul stay Thou on 
 that Rock. 
 
 " May 14. This Night my Fever abaited, my Pains less, I thank God I 
 had 2 hours sleep prior to which for 16 days & nights not 4 hours 
 sleep — Righteous art Thou in all thy ways, and holy in all thy works — 
 sanctify this affliction and shew me wherefore Thou contendest with me, bring 
 me out of the Furnace as Silver purified seven times. J. H. 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 127. t Thomassou's Journal. Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. 
 
271 
 
 " May 15. Shew me oh God wherefore Thou contendest with me? that I 
 may recover Strength before I go hence and am no more seen, May this great 
 affliction he to try me, to prove me, and to do me good in my latter end, to 
 wean my affections from this world, and fix them on the rest that remaineth 
 for the people of God. 
 
 " May 16. A more quiet Night and less fever, yet much pain until 
 morning, if God should please to restore me to days of prosperity may I 
 remember the days of Sorrow, to make me habitually serious and humble, 
 may I learn from this affliction more than I have learnt before, & have 
 reason to bless God for it. J. H. 
 
 " May 17, 1778. Lords day. This Night I bless God less pain tho' 
 more Fever, so that I have not strength to attend the public worship of God, 
 yet I have hope I shall be raised up a monument of his Goodness, Oh ! may 
 I not be a cumberer of the ground, but live to the glory of God, and made 
 thro' grace, an Honor to my Christian profession, may I have a prudent 
 Zeal and a humble hope in the Mercy of God thro' Christ. 
 
 " May 19. A better Night less pain Thou art putting a Song of Praise 
 into my Mouth, oh thou God that hearest Prayer! perfect Mercy began, & 
 may I never forget the mercy of God. J. H." 
 
 During the whole of this long confinement to the bed of sickness, in a 
 foreign land, whose irksomeness he seems so severely to have felt, whilst 
 confessing the hand that had afflicted, and praising the goodness which was 
 about to restore him to health, Mr. Howard received from Sir Joseph Yorke 
 instances of a kind and friendly attention, his grateful recollection of which is 
 evinced by the assurance he has left upon record — and words with him were 
 not of course — that he never could forget them.* About ten days after 
 the above extracts from his diary were written, being sufficiently recovered to 
 bear the fatigue of so short a journey, he went back again to Amsterdam, and 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 22. 
 
272 
 
 there attended, for the first time since his accident, the public service of God, 
 to return thanks for his deliverance from the serious consequences which 
 seemed at one time likely to have resulted from it. Here he made the two 
 following entries in his diary : 
 
 " Amsterdam May 30th. Less pain in the Night, more revived this morn- 
 ing — put under me thine everlasting arms, succour and support for thy Mercy 
 sake, oh my Saviour and my God ! 
 
 " May 31. A poor Night, faint, yet blessed be God enabled to attend his 
 Public worship, Lord revive and put a new Song of Praise into my Mouth." 
 
 In this serious frame of mind, and thus anxious to devote his renewed life 
 with redoubled activity to the service of God and of his fellow-creatures, this 
 excellent man and devout Christian most probably returned in the course of 
 a few days to the Hague, and then, as soon as his medical attendants would 
 permit him to gratify his impatient desire to begin the work that had brought 
 him to Holland, he cheerfully entered on the business of his journey at Rotter- 
 dam,* the general features of whose prison regulations very much resembled 
 those of the other large towns of Holland. Being in this city on a Sunday, 
 he was desirous of ascertaining whether there was such dissipation in its 
 prisons as in our's, and therefore attended the public service at the rasp- 
 house, which he found to be conducted with the greatest possible order and 
 decorum. The chaplain, after a short prayer and extemporaneous ser- 
 mon, catechized for about three quarters of an hour, six of the women (it 
 being their turn to be examined), to whom he explained the responses they 
 made, for the correctness of which they afterwards received some token of 
 approbation from the regent who attended this interesting service in his regular 
 rotation. " The decent behaviour and attention of the audience evidently 
 proved," says Mr. Howard, " that the service, though of two hours and a half, 
 was not tedious or disagreeable. I cannot," he adds, " forbear closing this 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 3, 4. 
 
2T3 
 
 account, with mentioning the ardent wishes it inspired in me, that our prisons 
 also, instead of echoing with profaneness and blasphemy, might hereafter 
 resound with the offices of religious worship ; and prove, like these, the happy 
 means of awakening many to a sense of their duty to God and man .•" a wish 
 in which I am persuaded, not only that every Christian, but every friend to 
 the best interests of the human race will most cordially join.* At Gouda, the 
 prison for debtors had not been occupied for seventeen years, and such was the 
 cleanliness of its spin-house, that each of its inmates was regularly provided 
 with a clean towel every week.f In that at Harlem, the female offenders 
 were close at work, making and mending the linen of the house under 
 the direction of their superintendant, or mother, the men being employed the 
 while either in weaving, or at the various callings to which they had been 
 brought up.J Returning to Amsterdam, Mr. Howard carefully re-inspected 
 all the prisons of that populous city, and obtained the most accurate and 
 minute information respecting the regulations adopted there. He particularly 
 noticed, and has very properly commended, the care taken by the magistrates 
 of the children of the few malefactors executed here, who were " sent to the 
 orphan-house, and there brought up in industry, instead of being left destitute 
 vagabonds, to become unhappy victims to the wickedness and folly of their 
 parents." At the rasp-house prayers were regularly read morning and 
 evening, and before and after meals, by one of the best behaved of the convicts ; 
 such was the attention universally paid in Holland to the training in religious 
 habits even the most abandoned of the people. Hither, too, the superior magis- 
 trates of the city repaired once a-year to contract or lengthen the terms of con- 
 finement of the prisoners, according to the report of their good or bad behaviour 
 which the regents, then about to resign their situations, should make. Here, 
 however, as in many other parts of Holland, a mode of confinement prevailed 
 which our Philanthropist justly reprobates as liable to great abuse, — contrary to 
 the general notions of public justice, and which he, therefore, wished to be uni- 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 4—9. f lb. p. 9. % lb. p. 10. 
 
 N N 
 
214 
 
 versally suppressed ; — that of imprisoning persons in private rooms, to which 
 none could have access but in the presence of the regents. For the support of 
 the spin-house here, a small tax was laid upon the sellers of beer, liquors, and 
 tobacco, aided by the very equitable appropriation of one-fourth of the receipts 
 of public exhibitions and diversions to the same purpose. It would be well if 
 in other countries these fruitful sources of temptation to crime were thus com- 
 pelled to contribute to the expences attendant on its punishment. The 
 workhouse of this city Mr. Howard found to be a well-regulated house of 
 industry, in which beggars, vagabonds, drunkards, and petty thieves, were 
 confined for a limited time to the hard labor to which all the inmates of this 
 large establishment were not nominally sentenced, but actually and closely 
 kept.* Such indeed was the admirable effect of the system of correctional police 
 so judiciously applied in Holland, in this and other instances, to the lowest, as to 
 the highest gradation of offences, that our benevolent tourist found upon 
 inquiry at Utrecht that there had not been a single execution either in the city 
 itself, or the province in which it is situated, for the last fourteen years. Yet 
 where, we may ask, and ask it to our shame, is the city or county in England, 
 small as may be its extent, of which a foreigner could make so favorable a 
 report? The spin-house here was under the most judicious regulations, the 
 keeper having a very liberal salary, the prisoners sufficient food, and constant 
 work, for which the manufacturers were obliged to pay them the same wages 
 as they would have done had they employed others. By a particular per- 
 mission from the magistrates, the overseer or keeper of the house took per- 
 sons of bad behaviour as boarders, at the desire of their parents, guardians, or 
 relations.'!" Our Philanthropist went over this institution with Mr. Van 
 Goens, one of the magistrates, to whom he was introduced by Dr. Brown, who, 
 upon his uncle's death in the beginning of the preceding year, had succeeded as 
 minister of the English church in this city, to whom and to the family of his 
 uncle, with whom he lodged, he then assigned as one of the primary causes of 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 19, 20. f lb. p, 20, 21. 
 
215 
 
 his undertaking those journeys of benevolence in which he had so long been 
 engaged, the death of his second and favorite wife, which rendered his abode 
 at Cardington irksome and unpleasant ; a reason which he also gave to some 
 other of his friends, and as he gave it to one of them his gushing tears evinced 
 how sharp was the pang, which, even after an interval of sixteen years, the re- 
 collection of that severe domestic affliction occasioned him, which Providence 
 had so wisely over-ruled as a source of lasting benefit to the world.* 
 
 The prison at Deventer Mr. Howard found to be clean, but containing no 
 prisoners. Grateful to the almighty hand which had led him thus far on his 
 journey in safety, he here erected his Ebenezer, in the following ascription of 
 praise to his maker and his preserver, the restorer of his health, and the 
 renewer of his strength, which he entered in his diary at this place : — 
 " Deventer June 14 Blessed be the name of my Father and my God who 
 supports and carries me on." 
 
 In this spirit and in this strength he proceeded to Middleburg, where he 
 found three dungeons to force a confession, there being no direct torture here 
 employed, though the execution of every criminal was absurdly delayed until 
 he had confessed his crime. At Breda,, the last place which he seems to 
 have visited in Holland, he was pleased to learn, that the torture-stool, in the 
 chamber of examination, had not been used for three years. In the house of 
 correction, all the prisoners were employed in the manufacture of coarse car- 
 peting, as were those at Middleburg on a more profitable one of cloth or 
 sacking for the East India company .f After giving some particulars of the 
 judicious plan upon which this prison was constructed, our Philanthropist 
 closes his account of the places of confinement in Holland, with the following 
 short, but merited panegyric upon the general excellence of their regulations. 
 " I leave this country with regret, as it affords a large field for information on 
 * Dr. Brown's MS. Mr. Wood's Letter to the Editor of the Monthly Ma-. Vol. IV. p. 339. f lb. p. 21 , 2. 
 
 NN 2 
 
• 216 
 
 the important subject I have in view. I know not which to admire most, the 
 neatness and cleanliness appearing in the prisons, the industry and regular 
 conduct of the prisoners, or the humanity and attention of the magistrates 
 and governors." One of the principal defects which he noticed in their general 
 arrangements, was the payment to the gaoler of the sum allowed to each pri- 
 soner for his maintenance, out of which, as he himself found by weighing the 
 allowance, he derived considerable profit. Another was the want of an 
 infirmary.* 
 
 From Holland our traveller proceeded to Germany, which he entered the 
 latter end of June, by way of Osnaburgh and Hanover. The state of the 
 prison at the former of these places was so wretched, that he would entirely 
 have omitted to notice it, but that he was in hopes the description he gave of 
 it might meet the eye of the amiable prince who then was, and still is, the 
 bishop of that city, " and so be the means of alleviating the sufferings of its 
 miserable prisoners." It consisted of seventeen chambers for criminals, having 
 no light but by a small aperture over each door. But these dreary dungeons 
 at this time contained but a solitary prisoner, though he had been immured within 
 their walls for three years, and had survived the cruelty of the torture, which 
 was more excruciating here than in most other countries. In another part of 
 the gaol he found many miserable and sickly objects, men, women, and chil- 
 dren, nearly all of them without shoes and stockings, spinning in different 
 rooms, which were dirty beyond description. These rooms opened into a 
 passage, which a gentleman in office, to whom he had letters of introduction, 
 durst not enter. Its noxiousness did not, however, deter his intrepid com- 
 panion. With his usual attention to all the minutiae of the regulation 
 of such places, he inquired of the gaoler the particulars of the diet of his 
 prisoners ; but the misery expressed in their countenances made him totally 
 disregard the information given him by words.f At Brunswick he visited the 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 12, 19, 21, 22. t lb- P- 24, 5. 2d Edit. p. 20. 
 
277 
 
 habitations of the slaves, who had heavy irons on, and looked unhealthy. Those 
 at Magdeburg were employed on the fortifications, digging sand, and otherwise 
 assisting the masons — many of them had, however, been taken to recruit the 
 army. The house of correction contained three large chambers of silk-worms, 
 which the female prisoners were employed in attending.* The prisons of 
 Berlin were in general convenient and clean. In the Mahon de Travail, four 
 hundred and fifty persons, old and young, men and women, were actively 
 employed in spinning and carding wool, and every time he visited them, Mr. 
 Howard was pleasingly struck with their cleanly appearance : such great atten- 
 tion was indeed paid to them, as to prevent every possible ground of complaint. 
 He speaks also in terms of high commendation of the strict police of this 
 capital, by which it was kept entirely free from beggars :f — would, we may 
 add, that this were the case with our own. Nor did the prisons of this city, or 
 in any part of the Prussian dominions, contain a torture-chamber, Frederic 
 the Great, having humanely set the example in Germany, of abolishing the 
 cruel practice for which they were required. From this capital he addressed 
 to his friend, the Reverend Thomas Smith, who, agreeably to his earnest request 
 before he left England, was at this time occupying his house at Cardington, 
 as an occasional summer residence, the following letter, of which but a few 
 short extracts have as yet been laid before the public : 
 
 " Dear Sir, Berlin June 28 1778 
 
 " It is with pleasure I heard by John Prole's Letter which I rece« 
 last Thursday (on my arrival) that you are at Cardington, it gives me pleasure 
 to think that a place on which I have employed so many of my tho", should 
 afford my friend any entertainment ; My Pain and fever brought on by the 
 accident I met with in Holland made me almost despair of accomplish* my 
 Journey or even ever returning to England, but thro' sparing Mercy I am 
 recovered and have now the pleasing Hope before me; I was presented a 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 25. t lb. p. 26 — 8. 
 
2T8 
 
 friday to Prince Henry, who very graciously converst with me 10 minutes, 
 said ' He could hardly conceive of a more disagreeable Journey but the Object 
 was great and Humane.' 
 
 " We are here just on the Eve of an Important Event — the King 
 of Prussia in Silesia, and the Emperor encampt within a few Miles of 
 Him — 40,000 men ready to destroy one another, as the Prejudices or Pas- 
 sions of an arbitrary Monarch may direct, this would be a matter of great 
 concern to a think? mind, had it not the firm belief of a Wise and over-ruling 
 Providence ; I hope in about a fortnight to be clear of the Armies and to be 
 at or near Vienna, till which Time a tho 1 of England is too distant. 
 
 a . I have both parts of this day joined with the French Protestants, a 
 pleasure I shall be debarred of many Weeks — I am here nobly Lodged, 
 drank Tea this afternoon with Prince Dolgoruky the Russian Am- 
 bassador, yet I thirst for the Land of Liberty, my Card" friends, and 
 Retreat. 
 
 " Please Sir to tell John Prole, I observe the Contents of his Letter, I shall 
 write in five or six Weeks and that I must build no more Cottages (as he is 
 still fetching Materials to finish the last) till I have quite done with my Gaol 
 Schemes. 
 
 " Thro' the Hanoverian Dominions and that part of Germany 1 have 
 seen, there is prospect of great plenty of Corn, which must prevent it being 
 very dear in England ; I take my leave with affectionate comp\ to Mrs. 
 Smith and a kiss for the babe and accept the tenderest assurances of regard 
 from 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 " Your friend and Serv', 
 " Thermo r 79° in the Shade." " J. Howard." 
 
 " I beg to be remembered to any enquiring friends at Bedford that I am 
 Well : and in spirits to undertake any enterprize but one which I hope never 
 
219 
 
 more will be pressed on me, as totally destructive of that tranquillity and 
 ease in which I hope to pass the few remains years of my Life. 
 " Adieu my friend Let me share your serious moments. 
 
 " To the Rev". Mr. Smith, " J. H." 
 
 " Cardinglon near Bedford Angleterre." 
 
 The euterprize here alluded to, is obviously that of making a second attempt 
 to obtain a seat in the legislative assembly of his country, which he was ap- 
 prehensive that his friends at Bedford would endeavour to persuade him to, 
 on the first vacancy in the representation of that borough. And had he 
 afforded the slightest encouragement to their wishes, instead of taking the 
 earliest opportunity of crushing them in their very birth, there can be little 
 doubt but they would have been crowned with a success which was wanting 
 upon the former occasion, but because it was not known that he would permit 
 himself to be proposed as a candidate, until he appeared upon the hustings 
 on the day of election, when many of his friends had already promised their 
 votes to his opponents.* The ground of his declining an honor, for which 
 so many persons are at all times ready to make the greatest sacrifices, even 
 to the utter ruin of their fortunes ; whilst, when earnestly and gratuitously 
 pressed upon his acceptance, scarce any one would shrink from it; was, 
 as we may here perceive, the apprehensions he entertained that the duties it 
 would call him to, would withdraw him from that retirement from the busy 
 scenes of life, in which he always, but vainly hoped to pass its closing scenes. 
 And who will say, that for the enjoyment of that retirement, that otium cum 
 utilitate, rather than cum dignitate, which he sought, he was not most emi- 
 nently qualified by his steadiness, in discharging all the duties, and the warmth 
 with which his heart expanded to the pure delights which friendship imposes 
 on the one hand, or can impart upon the other. The little circle which he 
 remembered with so much affection when at a distance, could not fail, we 
 * Letter from Rev. S. Palmer. Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 318. 
 
280 
 
 may be assured, to be still more strongly endeared to him by the reciprocal 
 kindnesses of a more frequent and a more social intercourse. Nor in that 
 intercourse would any one of its members have been either overlooked or for- 
 gotten by that kind-hearted being, who, when eagerly pursuing, in the capital 
 of a distant empire, those philanthropic inquiries whose sole object was the 
 relief of the most wretched and most abandoned of his fellow-creatures of every 
 kindred and of every clime, could pause in his glorious career to remember, 
 by the fond token of a kiss, the infant daughter of his absent friend. ' Morose- 
 ness should be made of sterner stuff,' and he who under such circumstances 
 could take so lively an interest in the child of a stranger, alike by the ties of 
 relationship and of blood, could surely never be deficient in affection for his 
 own. But whilst naturally, and most allowably, looking forward to a rest 
 from his labors, when the object of his present journey should be accomplished, 
 in the bosom of his family, small as was the remnant of it now left to him, 
 and in the social converse of his friends, he i-elaxed not in the ardor of his 
 pursuit, whilst aught of that object remained to be accomplished. From the 
 last of his letters transcribed into these pages, we have seen that to its attain- 
 ment he cheerfully postponed the completion of improvements upon his estate, 
 closely connected with that judicious scheme of private benevolence to which 
 he had devoted so much of his attention, ere the accumulated sufferings of 
 the prisoner and the captive had enlarged the sphere of his unwearied exer- 
 tions for the good of mankind, from the village in which he dwelt, beyond 
 the furthest confines of that vast and populous quarter of the globe, on whose 
 extended map that village was an imperceptible speck, a drop of water in the 
 mighty ocean, or a grain of sand amongst the myriads that lie scattered on its 
 shore. Another striking instance of his entire devotedness to the single and singu- 
 lar object of pursuit, which had led him to such a distance from his home, occurs 
 in the few particulars remaining upon record of his conversation with Prince 
 Hemy of Prussia, on his first introduction to him, of which his letter to Mr. Smith 
 has given a brief account. In the course of that conversation, he was asked 
 
281 
 
 whether he ever went to any public place in the evening, after the labors of 
 the day were over. He answered, that he never did, as he derived more plea- 
 sure from doing his duty, than from any amusement whatever.* 
 
 In the discharge of that duty, he proceeded from Berlin to Spandau, where, 
 as in all the Prussian prisons, the criminals were very properly kept close to 
 work. Some few of them were rasping logwood, but most of the men were 
 occupied in spinning, knitting, and carding wool : the women in attending 
 silk-worms. In the house of correction for Lusatia, at Lukau, the former 
 were treading a large wheel to grind corn, five and five by turns. In the 
 castle at Spandau, the male criminals (for no woman was ever permitted to 
 remain there, upon any pretence, for a single night) were badly lodged, and 
 seemed to have but little attention paid them. If, however, he might judge 
 from what he saw of the state prisoners here, and at Magdeburg, Mr. Howard 
 assures us, that all their apartments were not so dreadful as some imagine, 
 nor were the persons confined in them miserable and unhealthy objects, kept 
 on a small quantity of bread and water, in cells of four feet square, and six feet 
 high, loaded the while with seventy-eight pounds weight of iron, as had been 
 the case for six years with the ingenious and intrepid Baron Trenck, whilst a 
 prisoner in the latter of these impregnable fortresses."!" At Dresden he found the 
 slaves and prisoners strongly ironed, even those who were sick ; most of them, 
 women as well as men, when not at work, being fastened by a chain to a 
 staple in the wall of their prison. Those prisons were dirty and offensive, 
 owing to the negligence of their gaolers, a circumstance which our independent 
 countryman, with his usual plainness, where the interests of humanity were 
 concerned, represented to the grand bailiff of the city, when he returned him 
 his acknowledgements for the permission he had given him to inspect the 
 places of confinement under his jurisdiction.;]: 
 
 * Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 257. t Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 29. 
 
 * lb. p. 30. 
 o o 
 
282 
 
 As he crossed Silesia, the errand he was travelling upon, and the scenes 
 he witnessed, must have presented themselves in singular contrast to the mind 
 of this benevolent being ; who, like some commissioned angel of mercy, wing- 
 ing rapidly on his way through fields of carnage and the valley of the shadow 
 of death, passed hastily, yet unmolested, through hostile armies and military 
 entrenchments, on whose approaching shock hung the destiny of empires, — to 
 pour the balm of consolation into the wounded spirit of some wi'etched captive, 
 the solitary tenant of a gloomy dungeon in some deserted town, the mass of 
 whose population either swelled the ranks of glory, soon to swell the ranks of 
 death, — or had fled affrighted from their homes the moment that two ambitious 
 mortals, sporting with the lives of thousands of their fellow-creatures at their 
 pleasure, had once again been permitted by Heaven, as the ministers of its 
 wrath, " to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." But of the observations 
 which he made upon the Silesian prisons, at this time we have no memorials 
 left ; nor did those of Bohemia furnish him with any thing very remarkable. 
 The male delinquents in the Maison de Force, at Prague, worked out of the 
 house, under the inspection of a guard, at sawing wood, &c. for somewhat 
 less than the common wages of laborers, and received for their own use one- 
 third of their earnings. Whilst thus employed, they had chains on one, or 
 both legs, according to the nature of their crimes, and the different terms of 
 their confinement.* In this city he seems to have made a slight deviation from 
 his usual rule, of strictly confining his attention to the inspection of such places 
 as were likely to afford him information on the great object of his journey ; 
 for he paid a visit to one of the principal monasteries of the Capuchin friars, 
 which gave birth to rather a singular adventure. On reaching this convent, 
 he found the holy fathers at dinner, round a table, which, though it was 
 meagre day with them, was sumptuously furnished with all the delicacies the 
 season could afford, of which he was very politely invited to partake. This 
 however, he not only declined to do, but accompanied his refusal by a pretty 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1 st Edit. p. 30. 
 
283 
 
 severe lecture to the elder monks, in which he told them that he thought they 
 hnd retired from the world to live a life of abstemiousness and prayer, but he 
 found on the reverse, that their monastery was a house of revelling and drunken- 
 ness. He added, moreover, that he was going to Rome, and he would take 
 care that the Pope should be made acquainted with the impropriety of their 
 conduct. Alarmed, or at least thinking it prudent to seem to be alarmed at 
 this threat, four or five of these holy friars found their way the next morning 
 to the hotel at which their visitor had taken up his abode, to beg pardon for 
 the offence they had given him by their unseemly mode of living, and to 
 entreat that he would not say any thing of what had passed to his holiness, or to 
 any of the officers of the papal see. To this request our countryman replied, 
 that he should make no promise upon the subject, but would merely say, that 
 if he heard that the offence was not repeated, he might probably be silent on 
 what was past. With this sort of half-assurance, the monks were compelled 
 to be satisfied ; but before they took leave of the heretical reprover of their 
 vices, they gave him a solemn promise that no such violation of their rules 
 should again be permitted in their time, and that they would keep a constant 
 watch over the younger members of their community, to guard them against 
 similar excesses ; and here the conference ended.* 
 
 From Prague Mr. Howard proceeded directly to Vienna, where he arrived 
 on the 1st of July, and continued until the loth, during which time he visited 
 all the prisons of the city, which he found to be old buildings, and affording no 
 instruction. In the principal one, called La Maison de Bourreau, were many 
 horrid dungeons, in connection with which he has inserted in his work a note 
 relative to the precautions he adopted to secure himself from contagion in visit- 
 ing infected places, which, from the spirit of humble dependence on the protec- 
 tion of Providence, whilst in the path of duty, which it breathes, the reader will, 
 I am sure, be pleased to meet with in this place : " Here, as usual,'' says he, 
 
 * ThomassorTs MS. Journal. 
 oo 2 
 
284 
 
 " I enquired whether they had any putrid fever, and was answered in the 
 negative. But in one of the dark dungeons down twenty-four steps, I thought 
 I had found a person with the gaol fever. He was loaded with heavy irons, 
 and chained to the wall : anguish and misery appeared, with tears clotted on 
 his face. He was not capable of speaking to me ; but on examining his breast 
 and feet for petechia or spots, and finding he had a strong intermitting pulse, I 
 was convinced that he was not ill of that disorder. A prisoner in an opposite cell 
 told me, that the poor creature had desired him to call out for assistance, and 
 he had done it, but was not heard. This is one of the bad effects of dungeons. 
 I have frequently been asked what precautions I use to preserve myself from 
 infection in the prisons and hospitals which I visit. I here answer once for all, 
 that next to the free goodness and mercy of the Author of my being, temperance 
 and cleanliness are my preservatives. Trusting in Divine Providence, and be- 
 lieving myself in the way of my duty, I visit the most noxious cells, and while 
 thus employed, ' / fear no evil.'' — I never enter an hospital or prison before 
 breakfast, and in an offensive room I seldom draw my breath deeply." In 
 the house of correction for this city all the prisoners were at work, principally on 
 woollen manufactures, and received the whole of their earnings for them- 
 selves. Warehouses were attached to the prison, for the sale of the cloth, 
 stockings, &c. which they had made. The house was, however, too much 
 crowded, and too little attention was paid to the lodging of its prisoners, who 
 were without coverlids; so that neither of this, nor of any other place of con- 
 finement in the Austrian capital, could their visitor speak in terms of com- 
 mendation. To the subject of hospitals, our Philanthropist had partially 
 directed his attention during his two former continental tours, but he now 
 avowedly made them an object of general inquiry. It would be incompatible, 
 however, with the nature and limits of a work like this, to notice the parti- 
 cular observations which he made upon them, as they severally presented 
 themselves to his inspection in the various places through which he passed. 
 With those at Vienna he expresses himself to have been greatly pleased, as 
 
285 
 
 they were such as did honor to the citizens in general, but especially to the 
 empress queen, who was their great promoter and supporter. There was also 
 another subject of police regulation, to which, in his journeys through foreign 
 states, he was always minutely attentive, — the strictness with which the assize 
 of bread was regulated, and any deficiency in its weight punished. In this 
 city, bakers who were guilty of any fraud in this respect, were subjected to 
 the salutary, but disgraceful discipline of the ducking-stool, being fastened in 
 their baskets to the end of a long pole, and immersed in the waters of the 
 Danube. During his stay in this capital, our illustrious countryman was intro- 
 duced to the Queen of Hungary, and had the honor of dining with her on some 
 public occasion, when the nobles of her court and the foreign ambassadors were 
 her guests. With his usual attention to the gratification of his inferiors, 
 he procured permission from some of the queen's household, for his at- 
 tendant to pass through the room whilst her majesty was at table, which 
 he describes in his journal as a very grand sight.* A circumstance also 
 occurred here which strongly evinces his love of truth, and the fearlessness of 
 his character in speaking it at all times, and in all companies. Dining one 
 day at the table of Sir Robert Murray Keith, our ambassador at the Austrian 
 court, the conversation turned upon the torture, when a German gentleman of 
 the party observed, that the glory of abolishing it in his own dominions be- 
 longed to his Imperial Majesty. " Pardon me," said Mr. Howard, " his 
 Imperial Majesty has only abolished one species of torture, to establish in its 
 place another more cruel ; for the torture which he abolished, lasted, at the most, 
 a few hours ; but that which he has appointed, lasts many weeks, nay some- 
 times years. The poor wretches are plunged into a noisome dungeon, as 
 bad as the black hole at Calcutta, from which they are taken only if they 
 confess what is laid to their charge." " Hush," said the ambassador, " your words 
 will be reported to his majesty." * What!" replied he, " shall my tongue be 
 tied from speaking truth by any king or emperor in the world? I repeat 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 31 — 4. Thoumsson's MS. Journal. 
 
286 
 
 what I asserted, and maintain its veracity." Deep silence ensued, " and every 
 one present," says Dr. Brown, to whom I am indebted for this interesting 
 anecdote, " admired the intrepid boldness of the man of humanity." From 
 Vienna Mr. Howard proceeded to Gratz, where the prisoners in the house of 
 correction had a far more healthy appearance. Of the prison at Laubach, in 
 Carniola, he has given us no particulars, as he could not say a word in favor 
 of it.* At Trieste, where he spent three days, he found the prison to consist 
 of eight or ten very close, offensive rooms, with only one small window in 
 each ; whilst the pale countenances of the prisoners bespoke at once their own 
 misery, and the negligence of the magistrates, and of their keepers. The con- 
 victs in the castle seemed, however, healthy, clean, and well, and were em- 
 ployed, for about ten hours a day, upon the roads, in clearing the harbour, and 
 other public works. To prevent those in the harbour from escaping, they had 
 a guard of soldiers whilst at their work, which they did cheerfully, because 
 they had an extraordinary allowance of three farthings a day each; that which 
 they usually received being four farthings, and two pounds and a half of bread 
 a man. Their bread was sweet and good, such indeed as their visitor assures 
 us he himself would have been happy to have met with in many parts of his 
 tour. They were also well supplied with clothes, and lay in good beds, with 
 coverlids, in large airy rooms. They were treated with humanity, though 
 under strict discipline, and, when at work, were distinguished from other 
 labourers by a light chain on their legs, and another supported by a girdle of 
 leather at their waists.")- 
 
 At Trieste Mr. Howard embarked in a small shallop to cross the gulf to 
 Venice, but, from contrary winds, was two days and two nights on his passage. 
 He entered Italy, he tells us, with " raised expectations of considerable infor- 
 mation, from a careful attention to the prisons and hospitals, of a country 
 abounding with charitable institutions and public edifices." As it respected 
 the former object of so laudable a curiosity, Venice, the first place he visited, 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 34. t lb. p. 34 — 6. 
 
281 
 
 afforded but little to gratify his hopes, as, in the prison in the doge's palace, 
 one of the strongest he had ever seen, his humanity was shocked at finding 
 three or four hundred persons, many of them confined in dark and loathsome 
 cells for life ; capital punishments being here of rare occurrence. On being 
 asked whether they would not prefer the galleys, they all answered in the 
 affirmative; " so great a blessing," observes our author, " is light and air." No 
 fever, or other disorder prevailed in this close prison, and none of its inmates 
 were in irons. The chapel was for the use of those condemned to death alone, 
 and they continued in it a night and a day before their execution. The galleys 
 here were dirty and crowded, except one moored but two boats' lengths from 
 the shore, in which a few slaves were kept until they could be sent off to the 
 others. One of these Mr. Howard saw dead on the sands, and he concluded 
 he had destroyed himself in despair, as he could not have hoped to escape by 
 swimming, from the heavy chains of seven-and-twenty pounds weight which 
 these poor wretches always wore. In this city a society was established for 
 the relief of prisoners, both civil and criminal, four of whom were appointed 
 visitors of the gaol.* At Padua, a singular custom prevailed, of setting in- 
 solvent debtors, who wished to avoid a further imprisonment, three times upon 
 a high stone stool, sometimes called the stool of disgrace ; but at his visit to the 
 prison there Mr. Howard was informed that no one had submitted to the 
 ignominy for ten years. Those of Ferrara and Bologna contained nothing 
 remarkable. From the latter place he proceeded to Florence, where, through 
 the introduction of Sir Horace Mann, our ambassador, the grand duke issued 
 orders for his admission to all the prisons in his dominions, in his visit to which 
 in the capital, he was accompanied by a physician, who was then inspecting 
 its hospitals by his royal highness's orders, to ascertain what improvements 
 might be advantageously introduced into their regulation. None of the pri- 
 soners here were in irons, but some of them were in solitary confinement in the 
 woret chambers. The women were entirely separated from the men, though 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 37. Thomaswn's MS. Jonrnah 
 
288 
 
 the debtors were not from the criminals ; and in the larger of the two prisons 
 was an infirmary for each of the sexes. In this prison, which in its 
 arrangements somewhat resembled the plan he himself had proposed for gaols 
 in his own country, Mr. Howard found that the allowance of food was fifteen 
 ounces of good bread every day ; but leaving some money behind him to pur- 
 chase beef and mutton for all the prisoners, and a little tea and sugar for the 
 women, when he visited it a few days after, he was unexpectedly greeted on 
 his entrance into the wards by hymns and chorusses from the recipients of his 
 bounty, whose language of fervent gratitude and of ardent devotion, was more 
 applicable to a visitant from heaven, than a benefactor of mortal mould. So 
 high indeed did they carry their admiration of a commiseration to which they 
 were so little accustomed, and a liberality whose motives they could not under- 
 stand, that his attendant very seriously expresses his persuasion that they 
 would have sainted him had he not prevented it. But if his piety as well as 
 his modesty was shocked at this idolatrous devotion of the inhabitants of the 
 Florentine prisons, he was too liberal-minded and too just to withhold from the 
 religious orders the praise they so richly merited for their extraordinary atten- 
 tion to the sick in this city, and in other catholic states of the continent, where 
 nuns were the nurses, and monks the physicians, as well as the priests of the 
 hospitals and charitable institutions with which they abounded.* At Leghorn, 
 as at Venice, some of the galley-slaves, under the care of a guard of soldiers, 
 were employed in cleaning out the harbour, being chained together two and 
 two, by a chain about eighteen pounds weight. Forty-seven others were occu- 
 pied on the new Lazaretto, then building. When working for the state, they 
 were paid about three halfpence a day each, over and above their allowance of 
 thirty ounces of bread, and a mess of soup ; but when employed by other 
 persons, their pay was doubled or trebled according to the nature of their work . 
 When refractory, they were reported to government, and punished, by its 
 orders with closer confinement; wearing additional irons; or by the bastinado. 
 • Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 38 — 41. Thomasson's MS. Journal. 
 
289 
 
 In case of desertion, if taken the same day, they wore a chain of eighteen 
 pounds weight, and had half their earnings stopped, till they amounted to about 
 9 s. 3d. which was paid to the person who retook them ; but if they were sen- 
 tenced for five years, their term recommenced, and for repeated desertions, 
 they were severely punished, sometimes even by the torture. They were well 
 cloathed ; a chaplain instructed them in their religious duties; and attached to their 
 prison was an hospital, in which they had whatever nourishment the physician 
 ordered.* After crossing the country, and staying two days at Loretto, 
 where be does not seem to have procured any information calculated to further the 
 object of his journey, our philanthropic tourist proceeded to Rome, in which 
 magnificent city he found that the external elegance and simplicity of the new 
 prison but ill corresponded with the misery and wretchedness he saw within. 
 The secret chambers, of which there were eighteen for the men, contain- 
 ing sixty-eight prisoners, and several others for women, were strong, but close 
 and offensive rooms, with but one window in each to admit either light or air. 
 They were never opened without an order from the governor of the city, nor 
 were their inmates permitted to go out of them but for examination. Some 
 of them having been confined there many years, appeared, as we might expect 
 they would, with pale, sickly countenances; but none were in irons. The 
 prison was furnished with two infirmaries, clean and well supplied with 
 necessaries for the sick, one of which was for prisoners a la secrete : and it had 
 wide and very convenient staircases, which most of our prisons, even those 
 recently erected, much wanted; but its visitor regrets that he could not say it 
 was without a torture-chamber. At one corner of the front of this prison a 
 pulley and rope were placed, by which malefactors, with their hands tied behind 
 them, were pulled up ; and after being suspended for some time, were inhu- 
 manly let down part of the way, when, by the sudden jerk, their arms were 
 dislocated. In the prison in the castle San Angelo, for state prisoners, all the 
 rooms were empty except one, which had been occupied for twenty years by 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 11 — 4. 
 F 1' 
 
290 
 
 a bishop, who was distracted, probably by the length of his confinement. 
 Eighteen condannati, or galley-slaves, who were at work in the fortress here, 
 seemed quite healthy, each of them having a light chain on. Of the prison of 
 the Inquisition, at this fountain-head of that intolerant faith, which alone can 
 suffer such a hellish institution to exist, or can stand in need of its support, our 
 author tells us, that " the chambers of its silent and melancholy abode were 
 quite inaccessible to him; and yet he spent two hours about the court and the 
 priests' apartments, till his continuance there began to raise suspicion." Had 
 he kept his station much longer, it is not improbable that he might have 
 become better acquainted with the dreadful secrets of its interior than he 
 could have wished ; because his close confinement there would have prevented 
 his communicating to the world the information he would have obtained at so 
 dear a rate. In this city, as in many others in Italy, he met with a very 
 singular society, which, with much of the ostentatious charity and pompous 
 humility of the Romish church, seems to have caught a spark of that purer 
 flame of Christian benevolence, which shines as brightly in the solitary dungeon 
 of the captive, as in the face of an applauding world. It was a Confrattzrnita 
 della miserecordia, or Brotherhood of Mercy, of the order of & Giovanni di 
 Fiorentini, which, at Rome, consisted of about seventy members, chiefly noble- 
 men of the best families ; one or two of whom, after a prisoner was condemned, 
 came on the midnight before his execution to inform him of his sentence, and 
 continued with him until his death, joining the confessor in exhorting and com- 
 forting him, and, at the same time, according to the general practice of the conti- 
 nent, offering him his choice of the most delicious food. The whole fraternity 
 afterwards attended the execution, dressed in robes of white ; and leaving the 
 criminal to hang till evening, one of their members, generally a prince, then cut 
 down the body, and ordered it to be interred in the burial-place appro- 
 priated by the order to malefactors. Mr. Howard was in Rome on the 
 29th of August, the only day on which this cemetery was opened to the public, 
 and of course embraced the opportunity of inspecting it. It was a square court, 
 
291 
 
 Adjoining to an elegant church ; one side being- formed by a chapel, the others 
 by handsome porticoes, supported by Doric pillars. In the middle of the 
 pavement of the front one, the women, and of those of the two side ones, the 
 men criminals were buried ; the latter in the same dress in which they were hung, 
 coffins not being in general use in Italy. Their tombs were marble squares, 
 with circular apertures for the reception of their bodies, having round the 
 stones this appropriate text inscribed — " Domine, cum veneris judicare, noli 
 nos condemnare ,•" " O Lord, when thou shalt come to judge, do not condemn 
 us." From this splendid, but useless exhibition of Italian munificence, he 
 passed to one of less imposing appearance, but of far greater utility — the 
 hospital of S. Michele, a large and noble edifice, a great portion of it oc- 
 cupied by various manufactories and shops, where orphan or destitute boys 
 were instructed in some useful trade, in which, when they had attained the 
 age of twenty, they were set up by this excellent institution, whose governors 
 at the same time completely cloathed them. Their number was about 200 : 
 more than twice as many aged and infirm people being maintained in the clean 
 apartments of another part of the building, in whose comfortable retreat 
 our Philanthropist found them happy and thankful. In this hospital 
 was a prison for boys and dissolute young men, bearing a Latin inscription, 
 which imported that it was erected in 1704, by Pope Clement XI. " for the 
 correction and instruction of profligate youth : that they, who when idle, were 
 injurious, when instructed, might be useful, to the state." In one of its rooms, 
 the following admirable sentence was inscribed, " in which," says Mr. Howard, 
 with great truth, " the grand purpose of all civil policy relative to criminals is 
 expressed : — Parum est coercebe improbos poena nisi probos efficias 
 discipmna ;' 'It is of little advantage to restrain the Bad by Punishment, unless 
 you render them Good by Discipline.'''' To have met with a prison conducted 
 upon principles so perfectly accordant with the views which he himself enter- 
 tained upon the important subject of their regulation, must have afforded to the 
 benevolent heart and liberal mind of a Howard as pure a source of delight as 
 
 p p 2 
 
292 
 
 any thing in this world could have furnished. Nor are we, perhaps, when 
 applied to such a man, to consider as a mere figure of speech the assertion of a 
 biographer, who knew his ardent disposition well, that he believed " he would 
 almost have thought it worth his while to have gone to Rome for this sentence 
 alone."* In furtherance of the enlightened objects of the policy so judi- 
 ciously expressed in this inscription, Mr. Howard saw fifty boys spinning 
 in a room, in the middle of which was suspended, in large letters of gold, 
 the word Silentium. He also saw another room, for women, having on the 
 outside of it an inscription, stating that it was erected by Clement XII. 
 in 1735, " for restraining the licentiousness and punishing the crimes of 
 women." The hospitals for the sick in this magnificent city were numerous, but 
 generally crowded and offensive, though they had never more than one patient 
 in a bed. Rome, however, contained one institution which, in the midst of those 
 of every description that do so much honor to its benevolence, London still 
 seems to want, — a hospital for convalescents, into which recovering patients, 
 when dismissed, might enter and lodge for three days, in airy rooms, and dine 
 in the refectory, being well attended during the whole of that time.'l" 
 
 From Rome Mr. Howard proceeded to Naples, where the principal prison, 
 under the courts of justice, contained, according to its keeper's account, 980 
 prisoners ; and in about eight large rooms, communicating with each other, 
 he himself saw 450 sickly objects, who had access to a court surrounded by 
 buildings so high as to prevent the circulation of air. In this court was a recess 
 under arcades, in which some of the prisoners were employed in knitting, and 
 others in making shoes, though by far the majority were quite idle. Six cham- 
 bers, opened into a spacious hall furnished with plenty of beds for those who 
 could pay for them ; but seven others, close and offensive in the extreme, con- 
 tained thirty-one prisoners, almost in a state of nudity, on account of the great 
 heat of these places ; and in six dirty rooms, communicating the one with the 
 
 • Aikin, p. 97. + Appendix to the State of Prisons, p. 44—51. Thomasson's MS. Journal. 
 
203 
 
 other, were fifty women. Of all these numerous prisoners hut one was u 
 irons, in a dungeon near a small chapel, allotted to the condemned hefore exe- 
 cution. The allowance in this gaol was twenty-two ounces of good hread a-day 
 to each prisoner. It contained an airy infirmary, hut here, as indeed throughout 
 Italy, Mr. Howard observed that great attention was in general paid to the sick, 
 whilst too little care was taken to prevent sickness. In the prisons of his own 
 country, however, with but few exceptions, both these objects were alike 
 shamefully neglected. From the heat of the climate he expected to have found 
 the gaol fever prevailing in Italy, but he never met with it in any of its prisons. 
 The Neapolitan galleys, four in number, were moored about ten feet from 
 the shore, and contained upwards of 1200 slaves, chained two and two together. 
 Their bread was hard, but sweet, the quantity allowed them about twenty-six 
 ounces daily, though when employed in the arsenal and other public works they 
 had an extraordinary allowance of near a penny a-day. When retaken after 
 an escape, tlte term of their confinement was doubled ; and as no regular plan 
 had yet been settled for their employment, the king had recently made a present 
 of such of them as had been condemned for life to the Maltese, so easily and 
 unceremoniously, under these despotic governments, are their slaves transferred 
 from one owner to another, like flocks of sheep, or herds of other cattle. Each 
 galley had its chaplain, and its public worship on Sundays and holidays, which 
 in all Catholic states are of far too frequent occurrence. In the Serraglio, or great 
 alms-house, an immense edifice already extending 1300 feet in front, were 
 about 450 condannati, in eight or nine rooms, some of whom were at work on 
 this great building with chains on their legs, varying in weight according to 
 the terms of their confinement. In some of those rooms, as in some of the 
 galleys, the prisoners were at work as shoemakers, though most of them here 
 had no employment. This building, when completed, was intended for a 
 receptacle for the aged and infirm, for beggars and idle persons, which, with 
 the addition of convicted felons, would form a strange and injudicious mixture 
 of the vicious and the unfortunate, the helpless and the idle, in one place of con- 
 
294 
 
 finement. There was an hospital on the shore for the sole use of the galley 
 slaves and of their guards, with spacious and airy wards, cleaner than were 
 most of those in this city ; the attention paid to the patients admitted there 
 being, in other respects, equally praiseworthy. On Mr. Howard's telling the 
 surgeon of this very necessary institution that in some of the countries which 
 he had visited, a part of each galley was made an hospital, he very quaintly, 
 but judiciously, remarked, that " this must soon make the whole an hospital ;" 
 a very natural inference which those who had, at this time, the superintendance 
 of our English gaols, seem most unaccountably to have overlooked in their 
 arrangements for the sick. The large and crowded hospitals of S. Apostoli and 
 Li Annunziazione had wards for the cure of persons wounded by the stilettoes 
 of bravoes and assassins, a race of desperadoes with which every part of Italy 
 abounded, and still abounds ; so that Mr. Howard calculates that more murders 
 were then committed in the city of Naples or of Rome in a year than in 
 our three sister kingdoms put together. " Many of the common people," he 
 tells us, " seemed indeed to be insensible of the crime of murder," having himself 
 heard criminals in prison express their satisfaction that, though they had stabbed, 
 they had never robbed. With his wonted anxiety to turn every thing he heard, 
 or saw in other countries to the improvement of his own, he very pertinently 
 asks, whether this striking difference in the character of the two nations in this 
 respect " does not prove that the English are not naturally cruel ? And might 
 not arguments," he continues, " be derived from hence for the revisal and 
 repeal of some of our sanguinary laws ?"* It is near forty years since this 
 plain question was proposed to the consideration of our legislators, by a man 
 whose name is often on their lips, but whose humane, yet prudent, suggestions 
 for the improvement of our code of criminal jurisprudence have as yet had but 
 too little influence upon their conduct, or their hearts. Had they done so, some 
 radical distinction would long ere this have been made, between the taking a 
 penny from another in a public road, or goods to the amount of forty shillings 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 53 — 6. 
 
295 
 
 from his dwelling, and wilfully and barbarously depriving a fellow-creature of 
 his life. Jurors, from a mistaken view of their duty, would not then have 
 foresworn themselves to save the passing of a sentence seldom executed, nor 
 judges have lowered their dignity to suggest to them some quibbling expedient 
 to reconcile their humanity with the solemn obligation of their oath. From 
 this city he returned to Rome, and thence proceeded to Civita-Vecchia, where 
 the Pope's galleys lay ; the slaves being confined in them for different terms, 
 according to the nature of their crimes ; vagabonds for three years ; persons 
 convicted of theft, for not less than seven ; of forgery, for life ; and if, by the 
 instruments they had forged, large sums were obtained, they were also com- 
 pelled to wear an iron glove. These slaves for life were chained two and two 
 together, whilst the others wore but a single chain. If any of the latter escaped 
 they were compelled to finish the term of their first condemnation, and then to 
 serve for another of an equal length, whilst those sentenced for life received from 
 one to two hundred lashes a-day, for three days after their return. None were 
 sent to the galleys under twenty years of age, younger offenders being confined 
 till then in the hospital of S. Michele, employed the meanwhile in spinning, and 
 fed on bread and water. The allowance of the galley slaves was three pounds 
 of bread each every day, with soup made of beans boiled in oil, about every 
 other day ; and at the great Catholic festivals of Easter, Christmas, and 
 the Carnival, a pound of beef and half a pint of wine a man. Their 
 cloathing was coarse, and not very liberally supplied, the expence of that 
 and of their maintenance, including their chains, being computed at 3/. 13s. 9 c/. 
 English each. They had, however, the whole of their earnings for themselves, 
 which, when employed for the public,— some of them upon a canvas and calico 
 manufactory, — varied from a penny to eight pence a-day, according to the 
 nature of their work. The superintendance of these galleys was committed to 
 Mr. Denham, an Englishman, to whom Mr. Howard was indebted for the mi- 
 nute account which he has given of their management. They were five in num- 
 ber, but three were out on a cruise. Throughout the night in which he slept 
 
296 
 
 in a felucca by their side, the greatest silence prevailed in the other 
 two, though containing about 400 prisoners chained in each. The hospital 
 for their use on shore he found to be clean and commodious.* At this 
 port he intended to have continued for four or five days, but a Neapo- 
 litan vessel, bound for Leghorn, putting into harbour the day of his arrival, he 
 embarked on board of it that evening, as he had all along proposed, if opportu- 
 nity offered, to proceed thither by sea. On the evening of the second day, 
 the captain put into a creek on the coast, and pitched a tent for his passenger 
 on shore, in which he passed a fine Italian night very pleasantly, surrounded, 
 as he was, by some very beautiful Italian scenery. In the morning the 
 scene, however, was completely changed ; for scarce were they out of sight 
 of land, than there arose a dreadful tempest, accompanied by thunder and 
 lightning, which drove them to one of the smaller islands on the Italian coast 
 of the Mediterranean, where they anchored for the night under the walls of a 
 town, whose inhabitants refused to let them land, on account of a rumour 
 that prevailed of the plague having broke out at the port to which their ship 
 belonged. The next morning they got out to sea again, and the storm in- 
 creasing, were driven upon the African coast, where even the piratical 
 Algerines would not permit them to land, as it seems they otherwise would 
 have ventured to do, without performing quarantine, which neither the captain 
 nor his passenger would consent to. They therefore stopped one night upon 
 the coast, from which they set sail the next morning, with a good wind 
 blowing from this inhospitable shore, though the tempest had not entirely 
 subsided, when, three days afterwards, they made land at the back of the island 
 of Gorgona, where they anchored for the night, the. tide being against their 
 making for its port. The next morning the governor sent his long-boat, 
 with four and twenty rowers, to bring Mr. Howard and his servant on 
 shore, and in the course of the day the vessel was got round to a safe 
 anchorage in front of the island. They continued here for five or six days, 
 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 51—3 ; 2d Edit. p. 78. 
 
297 
 
 during which time the governor and inhabitants of the place shewed our Phi- 
 lanthropist the greatest attention.* At the top of the castle on this island he 
 found two rooms' used as a prison, a place of confinement, as he very justly 
 remarks, very different from the ancient cruel mode of shutting up prisoners in 
 pits and dungeons of castles. - }" He left this barren rock as soon as the wind 
 would permit, for Leghorn, where he stopped for six or seven days, and then 
 proceeded to the little state of Lucca, whose convicts were formerly sold to 
 the Genoese or Venetians, but the markets there being most probably over- 
 stocked with slaves of this description of their own, they now kept them in 
 prison without any employment.^ It is hard to determine whether their present 
 practice was the more injurious to their criminals, or their former traffic in 
 human life and liberty, the more disgraceful to themselves. At Lerice, whither 
 he had proceeded with the intention of coasting it by sea to Genoa, he met 
 with the Hon. Philip Yorke, now Earl of Hardwicke, who put into this port 
 becalmed in his way from Leghorn to Genoa, but who, on being informed by 
 Mr. Howard, that he would be compelled to perform quarantine there, 
 from a false rumour, similar to that which he himself had suffered from, 
 accompanied him by land to Genoa, where he arrived in the course of 
 the following day. In this city our Philanthropist continued for five days, 
 busily occupied in inspecting the prisons and hospitals. The former were 
 under very excellent regulations ; in the principal one for male criminals (those 
 for female offenders and for debtors being perfectly distinct establishments), the 
 keeper was made personally responsible, and liable to punishment, for any the 
 least fault or neglect of his assistants ; and he was directed to take particular 
 care that his prisoners did not play at cards, or any other games. These, and 
 other excellent rules, framed for the government of the prison by the superior 
 syndics of the city, were ordered to be hung up in the criminal courts, and in the 
 apartments of the prisoners, whilst, the better to secure their strict observance, 
 the advocate-fiscal was required once a week, not at fixed times, but when he 
 * Thomasson's MS. Journal. f Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 65. t lb. p. 57. 
 
298 
 
 might least be expected, to visit every cell in the gaol, and to enquire diligently 
 how the prisoners were treated by their keeper, in order that he might make a 
 report of their condition to the senate. The galleys here were also under 
 similarly careful inspection ; five superintendants drawing lots every month to 
 determine which of them they should take. Their food too was infinitely 
 better than any where else in Italy, being constantly supplied with broth in 
 the winter, and with a weekly allowance of it in the summer months. The 
 superintendants also, at certain seasons, ordered them supplies of meat, cheese, 
 oil, and stock-fish ; and when these were discontinued, the chaplain was desired 
 to see that they were regularly furnished with half a pint of wine a man. The 
 great hospital here, into which patients from all nations were admitted, was 
 one of the best and least offensive in Italy, but the ward for foundlings was 
 crowded and close, and its visitor complains of the poor infants being cruelly 
 bound hands and feet with bandages. The apartments for the insane were also 
 close and dirty, and the calm and quiet, of these unhappy beings, were inhu- 
 manly confined in the same room with the noisy and turbulent. An asylum 
 for boys and girls in this city, something similar to the noble and well-regu- 
 lated hospital of St. Michael, at Rome, had over the door of the great room, 
 in which numbers were spinning and weaving, this short but appropriate in- 
 scription, " Silentium et Obediential '* In the great trading city of Milan, 
 to which his benevolent course was next directed, he found but four prisoners 
 confined for debt, whilst in London the number, at this time, could not have 
 been less than a thousand. Besides the great prison, which contained twenty 
 secret chambers for hardened criminals, and those condemned for life, there were 
 two prisons here called L 'Argastro and La Casa di Correzione, which did honor 
 to the country. Both of them were for criminals condemned to hard labor, 
 either for a term of years, or for life ; the more atrocious working in chains in 
 the streets, watering them, repairing the pavement, &c. ; the others being 
 employed in the house, at the various trades and manufactures carried on 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 57 — 9. Thouiasson's MS. Journal. 
 
299 
 
 there for the public benefit. Many of them were taught several of these occu- 
 pations, so that there might be the greater probability of their becoming useful 
 members of society, when the term of their imprisonment should be expired, 
 which, as Mr. Howard truly observes, " should be the grand object in all such 
 houses." To encourage them in their industry, they very properly received 
 a third of their earnings for their own use. Their daily allowance of food was 
 thirty-five ounces of bread, and a mess of good vegetable soup ; their dormitory 
 was airy ; and they had a regular change of linen once a- week, so that their visitor 
 remarked to one of them that they were cleaner than most working men, to 
 which he very sensibly replied, " or else the confinement would be intole- 
 rable.'' They had each a chain to the leg, and if they made their escape, and 
 were retaken, the term of their imprisonment was renewed, with the addition 
 of half as much more. The house of correction was not quite completed, but 
 the dormitory and work-rooms for the men were already occupied. The whole 
 was on a noble and spacious plan. In one of the rooms forty looms were 
 employed in weaving linen, cotton, and diaper, and in others, opening 
 into it, were warping and twisting-mills, and winding-wheels, to prepare the 
 materials, which, in their raw state, were beat and made ready for these processes 
 by other prisoners. To complete the whole, the house was furnished with a 
 calendar, and conveniences for bleaching the cloth, thus entirely manu- 
 factured within its walls. Such of the prisoners as were not engaged in 
 any of the branches of this extensive manufactory were employed as 
 masons and laborers in completing this noble edifice. The work-rooms 
 for the women were just finished, and were large, light, and lofty ; 
 having, morever, stone basons in one corner of each, with water laid 
 into them. Over those of the men was their dormitory, which was 
 spacious, airy, clean, and sufficiently light, having three stone galleries 
 round it, into which 120 good sized chambers opened, each of them having 
 a window to the street, or court-yard, and another smaller one towards 
 the room, so that a thorough air passed through the building. They 
 
 qq2 
 
300 
 
 were furnished with a bed and bedding, a stool, and other conveniences; and 
 both in the area of this hall, and in the infirmary were stone sinks, with water 
 laid on. Near to the end of the room was an altar, opening from which, on 
 the right and left, in the form of a cross, was the dormitory for boys, 
 and the infirmary. There were already nearly 300 prisoners in this noble 
 prison, twenty of whom were chained to the benches ; but at the same time 
 occupied in spinning, or in making and mending cloathes for the house : all 
 the prisoners being also compelled to work in irons. With the exception of 
 this practice, to which we may be assured he would have objected, this house 
 of correction, not only in name, but in deed, was precisely of the description 
 of those he would have wished to have seen erected as penitentiary-houses in 
 his own country. He therefore took his servant with him to see it, and from 
 his journal we learn, that he here exercised one of those acts of mercy upon 
 which his own narrative of his visits to these places of confinement, which he 
 seldom left without making some of their wretched inmates happy by some 
 deed of kindness, usually preserves the silence of the grave. Amongst the number 
 of, its prisoners was a young man of superior talents, who was working upon a 
 very fine gold brocade. On entering into conversation with him, Mr. Howard 
 found that he was highly accomplished, and could speak four or five different 
 languages. The crime for which he was confined here, was that of having 
 more wives than one living at the same time, — an offence which, in Italy, does 
 not seem to have been viewed in so serious a light as it is with us ; since, on 
 finding that the correction he had undergone in this prison seemed to have 
 produced a salutary effect upon his mind, our benevolent countryman was 
 permitted to purchase his ransom, and to furnish him with money to carry 
 him to some other country, probably to that of which he was a native. For 
 this unexpected generosity, the young man, who appeared not to be above 
 four or five and twenty years of age, was very grateful, and shewed his 
 benefactor all possible respect and attention during his continuance in Milan. 
 Before he left it, he visited the great hospital, but the high expectations which 
 
30] 
 
 the extravagant accounts of former travellers had warranted him to form of its 
 judicious regulations were completely disappointed ; as its rooms were low, 
 dirty, and offensive. Most of the chirurgical patients here had been wounded 
 in assaults, or sudden quarrels.* Our traveller left Lombardy, by whose go- 
 vernor, the Count de Firmian, he had been furnished with every advantage 
 for examining the prisons in that country, for Piedmont ; where, in the citadel 
 at Turin, he found 170 prisoners in irons, in which state they always remained 
 without employ, till sent to the galleys at Villa- Franca: — their unhappy counte- 
 nances plainly shewed the little attention paid to them.f In his way across the 
 mountains, from this city, where he staid four or five days, into Savoy, he over- 
 took a lady on horseback, accompanied by four servants, to whom, with his 
 wonted gallantry to the sex, he offered his protection, and a seat in his travel- 
 ling-carriage, which she politely declined; alleging as her reason, that she 
 preferred travelling on horseback, or she could have brought her own coach. 
 At Chamberry he staid but one day, in the course of which he inspected its 
 prison, and was pleased to find that the salutary practice of frequently washing 
 its rooms was here adopted. Besides their stated allowance of good bread, the 
 prisoners were often supplied with soup, and in winter with clothes and 
 coverlids, by one of those charitable societies of ladies, which did so much 
 honor to the females of the southern part of the continent of Europe. At 
 Geneva he spent five days, and was greatly pleased with the attention paid to 
 the prisoners there, for whose use new floors were then laying down in the 
 gaol, lest the rooms should be damp, and injurious to their health. t 
 
 In entering Switzerland from this romantic town, as he himself now did, 
 the " traveller," he informs us, " will be surprised to meet frequently with a 
 gibbet on the road, if he be not informed that almost every seigneurie or 
 bailiwick has a prison, and possesses the power of trying criminals and 
 
 'Appendix to State of Prisons, p. 59—63. Thomasson's MS. Journal. t lb. p. (il. 
 
 * lb. p. 63, 4. Thomasson's MS. Journal. 
 
302 
 
 capitally convicting them." One of these prisons he visited, and found it to 
 consist of four rooms, at the top of a castle, which were empty, as wa? 
 commonly the case with prisons in this country, " in consequence," he tells us, 
 " of the virtuous education and industry of the inhabitants." Thus it was 
 with the gaol at Freyburg : but in its house of correction were a few 
 male convicts, who, as was usual in Switzerland, were employed abroad in 
 cleaning the streets.* In one of those at Bern, an old keeper having left the 
 door of the men's ward unlocked, twelve of the convicts forced the outer 
 one open, and walked off; the people suffering them to pass, because they 
 thought they were going to their work in the city. When five of them 
 were afterwards retaken, the magistrates ordered that they should not be 
 punished, as every one must be desirous of gaining his liberty, and they had 
 not been guilty of any violence in obtaining theirs ; the punishment, therefore, 
 fell, where it ought to fall, upon the keeper, for his negligence. Fifteen women 
 were unemployed in this place, and seemed miserable for want of something to 
 do. Of the practice which prevailed here, of setting them to work like the 
 men, in cleaning the public streets, Mr. Howard expresses his disapprobation 
 in terms more than usually strong. " I detest," says he, " the custom of dailv 
 exposing that sex to such ignominy and severity, unless when they are totally 
 abandoned, and have lost all the softer feelings of their sex."f At Zurich 
 was a prison for capital crimes, somewhat singularly situated in the middle of 
 the river, but it contained only a single prisoner. In the room for examina- 
 tion were five different weights for torture, the heaviest of which, of 120 
 pounds, — if tradition may be depended up»n, — was used in torturing a 
 burgomaster of this city. In the house of correction, which was convenient 
 and spacious, were about sixty prisoners ; nineteen of the men working abroad 
 for different citizens, who paid them at a somewhat lower rate than they 
 would have done other laborers. The rest were spinning within doors, or at 
 work at different trades; one woman at colouring botanical prints. They had 
 • Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 64, 5. t lb. P- 65, 6. 
 
303 
 
 a chapel, in which they attended divine service, and were catechised every 
 Friday. Three times a day, such of them as did not work abroad walked 
 under the arcades of a large court ; during which time, by the advice of one 
 of the physicians of the city, their rooms were thoroughly aired, the doors 
 and windows being thrown open. They had good bedding, and were well 
 supplied with bread and soup every day, but no meat. On inquiring of one of 
 the magistrates if they ever banished any of their criminals, he seemed sur- 
 prised at the question ; and asked, in the true pithy style of Laconia, if he did 
 not see in the mountains many manufactories. At Schaffhausen he found 
 but three prisoners, and they were in the house of correction.* 
 
 From Switzerland Mr. Howard returned into Germany, to visit some pri- 
 sons which he had not yet seen, especially those of the free, or imperial cities. 
 That at Augsburg had engines of torture in two of its rooms, and dungeons for 
 persons convicted of witchcraft, which were in a ruinous condition and seemed 
 to have been as long without inhabitants, as we should have expected that these 
 instruments of cruelty would have been without use. Condemned criminals 
 were brought out, three days before their execution, into two light rooms, opening 
 into a Roman Catholic chapel, in which, if Lutherans, a member of their own 
 persuasion, with the liberality so general in Germany, was permitted to attend 
 them. The same Christian spirit prevailed also in the house of correction, where 
 Catholic and Protestant prisoners were confined in separate buildings on the two 
 sides of a spacious court, each of them having a chapel for their use. The 
 rooms were all clean and airy, being regularly whitewashed once a-year. At 
 Munich, in one of the prisons, the instruments of torture were in a dark, damp 
 dungeon, seventeen steps under ground. In the other they were in a room 
 containing a table and six chairs for the magistrates and their secretaries, all 
 covered with black cloth and fringe, and elevated above the floor by two steps 
 of the same sable hue. Various engines of torture, some of them stained with 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 66, 7. 2d Edit. p. 88. 
 
304 
 
 blood, hung round the room. When these were applied to criminals, or to 
 persons suspected of being such, candles were lighted, as the windows were 
 closed to prevent the cries of the sufferers from being heard abroad. " But it 
 is too shocking," says our author, " to relate their different modes of cruelty: 
 even women are not spared ;" and he closes his short description of so horrible 
 a scene by comparing the torture-room in the free city of Munich to that of the 
 Inquisition at Madrid, which Limborch* very justly characterizes as " the very 
 mansion of death, every thing appearing so terrible and awful." The house 
 of correction here, afforded a scene but little less revolting to the humanity of 
 its visitor, as the keeper ordered his servant to attend him with charcoal and 
 frankincense, a sure sign of negligence and inattention, which the countenances 
 of the prisoners confirmed. But he was agreeably relieved from the pain the 
 inspection of these wretched places of confinement had occasioned him r by 
 viewing the two hospitals of the brothers and sisters of charity, where all was 
 neat, clean, and quiet, the great attention paid to the patients being also every 
 where apparent, He saw the operation of bleeding performed here by the 
 nuns with great dexterity and tenderness.f In the prison at Ratisbon most 
 of the chambers were airy, and had stoves in thein. There were no dungeons, 
 but three dismal cellars for torture, at the infliction of which two of the senators, 
 their secretary, and the hangman with his valets — a most goodly company — 
 attended. At Munich, as in some other cities, a surgeon was also present, but 
 Mr. Howard heard of no such practice — I will not call it a humane one, for 
 in connection with a work of cruelty like this it were a profanation of the term — 
 prevailing here.* Nurenburg contained one of the worst prisons he had ever 
 seen, whose dark, unhealthy dungeons and dismal torture-chamber did no honor 
 to its magistracy. The gaoler made use of a low trick to prevent the escape 
 of his prisoners, by terrifying them with the apprehensions of falling under the 
 power of witches, a bugbear which was not then without its effect in Ger- 
 
 * History of the Inquisition, translated by Chandler, Vol. II. 4to. p. 211. 
 
 t Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 68, 9. f lb. p. 69, 70. 
 
305 
 
 many, as down to the present hour it is not powerless with the vulgar of our 
 own enlightened isles. In the house of correction the prisoners were chiefly 
 employed in the unhealthy business of grinding spectacle-glasses, being allowed 
 for themselves all they earned above eighteen pence a-week, which might 
 amount to about sixpence each. Some of the women were working gold and 
 silver lace on cushions.* The large house of correction at Schwabach, in the 
 margraviate of Anspach, was clean and well regulated. Some of the men 
 were .grinding glasses, but others were employed, in different apartments, in 
 polishing steel buttons, wire-drawing, and making spinning-wheels, at which 
 the women were kept to work. Twelve of the male convicts were upon the 
 roads. The gaoler readily supplied his visitor with a book containing the 
 regulations of the prison, interspersed with many liberal and sensible remarks, 
 some of which appeared to Mr. Howard, as they now do to his biographer, to 
 be worth transcribing, in the hope that they may be of assistance in promoting 
 that reformation in the disposal of our convicted criminals, which is every day 
 but the more loudly called for. It was there truly remarked, — and this is a rock 
 upon which our legislators and writers upon legislation have often split, — " that 
 there is a great ei'ror in expecting that a house of this kind should be made to 
 maintain itself; since with the strictest economy, a considerable annual sum will 
 be found necessary for its proper support." With equal truth is the too prevalent 
 notion deprecated as false, " that a man who lives upon bread and water can 
 work hard and be kept in health;" and a daily allowance of hot provisions 
 and beer, though none of meat, but on a Sunday, was therefore ordered for 
 the criminals who were kept to hard labor in this well-regulated prison, those 
 whose labor was lighter living upon humbler fare. For the preservation of order, 
 and the prevention of abuses, it is also laid down as a most essential point, 
 " that one of the city magistrates should every week in rotation visit the 
 house, and closely inspect every thing relative to its management." In ac- 
 cordance with these and other similarly excellent rules, the greatest attention 
 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 70, 71. 
 
 R K 
 
306 
 
 was here paid to cleanliness, bathing-rooms being provided for the prisoners, 
 and the expence of washing for them being justly considered an object not to 
 be regarded, in comparison with the advantages it produced, in the preservation 
 of their health. Such of the prisoners as had been publicly whipped were 
 called infames, and were distinguished from the rest, by having a particular 
 place appropriated to them in the chapel, and by being the last in re- 
 ceiving the sacrament.* In the large house of correction near Bayreuth, in 
 Franconia, the male convicts were all employed in polishing and working up 
 the marble of the neighbouring mountains, some abroad, and others in the house, 
 a mode of employment similar to that which Dr. Fothergill, two years previous 
 to this period, had proposed for our own convicts. Here, however, the 
 pale countenances of the prisoners thus occupied, was but too true an indication, 
 not only of their work being laborious, but of their keeper receiving the whole 
 profit of it. The women were spinning worsted, but appeared to be objects of 
 compassion, like the men. Their dirty rooms, sickly looks, and cutaneous 
 complaints, evidently bespoke inattention and neglect. The rules by which 
 this prison ought to have been regulated were good ; " but of what advan- 
 tage," asks Mr. Howard, " are the best rules when not enforced ?" That at 
 Wurtzburg was under much better management, the whole of its prisoners, 
 men and women, being employed in a woollen manufactory for cloathing the 
 soldiery, and for the use of the hospital and poor-houses, each of them being 
 tasked to earn three pence halfpenny a-day. There was a Roman Catholic 
 chapel here, and its attendant priest resided in the house, upon which account 
 Roman Catholic prisoners were sometimes sent here from other states, for the 
 term of their confinement ; as were those of a different persuasion to Bay- 
 reuth.f In Frankfort on the Maine Mr. Howard found five prisons, but all of 
 them either quite empty, or having but few prisoners in them. The house of 
 correction, for instance, contained but two women and one man, the former 
 being employed in the work-house, the latter in pounding a porous stone to 
 * State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 71 , 2. t lb. p. 73—5. 
 
307 
 
 powder to make cement. At Cologne a similar employment was adopted for 
 the men, the women being occupied the while, in spinning, or in knitting stock- 
 ings. In the prison in the tower of this city there were, however, neither 
 felons nor debtors at this time confined, the magistrates never permitting a 
 debtor who had no effects to be kept in gaol. The city had not the power of 
 executing criminals, but when they were condemned, they were delivered over 
 to a high officer of the elector, and confined in a dungeon in his house, where, 
 three years ago, our traveller had seen a man incarcerated.* After continuing 
 here for four days Mr. Howard proceeded to Aix-la-Chapelle, whose great 
 prison he found unoccupied ; but in that near the town-hall were two prisoners, 
 one of whom was a very old man with irons on his hands, and who, though 
 confined but on suspicion, had twice suffered the torture to force a disco- 
 very of his confederates.-}" During his short stay here we find the following 
 devout ejaculation of praise to his Creator and Redeemer entered in his memo- 
 randum-book : — " Hallelujah, Blessing, Honor, Glory and power, be unto 
 God, and the Lamb for ever and ever. Sunday evening Aix le Chapelle 
 John Howard 8 Nov r 1778." The next place he visited was Liege, whose 
 prisons he found to be in a situation of wretchedness as to their condition, and 
 cruelty as to their government, scarcely to be paralleled by any thing he had 
 met with in the whole course of his extensive journeyings. His own unvar- 
 nished tale of what he saw and felt on their inspection will, however, be infi- 
 nitely more affecting than any high-wrought picture of their misery from 
 another hand could possibly be made, and I therefore give it without or note, or 
 comment of my own. " The two prisons (distinguished by the names of the 
 old and the new) near La Porte de St. Leonard in Liege are on the ramparts. 
 — In two rooms of the old prison I saw six cages made very strong with iron, 
 four of which were empty. These were dismal places of confinement ; but I 
 soon found worse. In descending deep below ground from the gaoler's 
 apartments, I heard the moans of the miserable wretches in the dark dungeons. 
 • State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 75, 6. \ lb. p. 76. 
 
 If R 2 
 
308 
 
 The sides and roof were all stone. In wet weather, water from the fosses gets 
 into them, and has greatly damaged the floors. Each of them had two small 
 apertures, one for admitting air, and the other, with a shutter over it strongly 
 bolted, for putting in food for the prisoners. One dungeon larger than the 
 rest was appropriated to the sick. In looking into this, with a candle, I disco- 
 vered a chimney, and felt some surprize at this little escape of humanity 
 from the men who constructed these cells. The dungeons in the new prison 
 are abodes of misery still more shocking ; and confinement in them so over- 
 powers human nature, as sometimes irrevocably to take away the senses. I 
 heard the cries of the distracted as I went down to them. One woman, how- 
 ever, I saw who (as I was told) had sustained this horrid confinement forty- 
 seven years without becoming distracted. The cries of the sufferers in the 
 torture-chamber may be heard by passengers without, and guards are placed 
 to prevent them from stopping and listening. A physician and surgeon always 
 attend when the torture is applied ; and on a signal given by a bell, the gaoler- 
 brings in wine, vinegar and water, to prevent the sufferers from expiring. 
 ' The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel? — I will only add, that in this prison 
 there are rooms appropriated to prisoners en pension ; that is, to such as are 
 confined by the magistrates, at the desire of their parents, guardians or rela- 
 tions. A shocking practice which prevails also in some of the neighbouring 
 countries." To these gloomy dungeons and these cruel tortures, more charac- 
 teristic of demons than of men, and fitter for their abodes, the house of cor- 
 rection here, presented in some points a pleasing contrast, and a great relief to 
 the harrowed feelings of their humane inspector. All the prisoners were occu- 
 pied in a manufactory of linings for soldiers' clothes, persons residing in the 
 house to instruct them in its various branches. None of them were in irons, but 
 they all had separate beds, and were supplied with good rye bread, meat three 
 times a-week, two quarts of beer for each every day, and soup every other day. 
 The chaplain, who lived in the house, accompanied our Philanthropist in his 
 inspection of its various parts, and entering into the true spirit of the institu- 
 
309 
 
 tion, noticed the propriety of solitary confinement for those who were riotous 
 and refractory on their first coming into prison, as after four or five days of 
 this discipline they become very tractable and submissive.* 
 
 Proceeding into Flanders, Mr. Howard spent a fortnight at Brussels, where 
 he found the prisoners in the old house of correction all employed, under a 
 careful and attentive keeper. Some who were tailors and shoemakers, were at 
 work at their own trades ; but the majority of the male convicts were occupied 
 in the various branches of a paper-hanging manufactory which was carrying on 
 in the prison. The women were entirely separated from the men, and were 
 employed in making lace. All the prisoners had clean linen once a-week. 
 They were soon, however, to be removed to the new prison at Vilvorde. From 
 this city he passed on to Ghent, and going over the noble house of correction 
 there with one of the magistrates, found the prisoners still employed on 
 a well-regulated manufactory of cloth, specimens of which he purchased and 
 brought home with him, as he did also of the paper-hangings made at Brussels, 
 and the marble ornaments carved at Bayreuth, to counteract the unfounded 
 notion which prevailed, and still prevails, in England, that no manufacture 
 can be carried on by convicts, to any valuable purpose. The women were 
 knitting and spinning in the dress of the house, and were attentive and quiet. 
 The mode of rewarding the prisoners of both sexes for their industry was 
 somewhat altered since his former visit to this admirable institution, as 
 they were now allowed a fifth of their earnings, whatever might be their 
 amount.f From this city he sent his servant home, whilst he himself 
 went on to the Hague, to pay his respects to Sir Joseph Yorke. In 
 his way thither, he inspected more attentively than he formerly had done, 
 the prisons of Antwerp, and found in the principal one a cage, about six feet 
 and a half square, into which prisoners were put before they underwent the 
 torture, which was here administered in all its wonted severity, the prisoner 
 * State of Prisons, 1 st Ed. p. 76—8. f lb. p. 78, 9. 
 
310 
 
 while he suffered it, being clothed in a long shirt, having his eyes bound, and 
 being attended by a physician and surgeon, to ascertain the precise degree of 
 racking pain which he could undergo, without risking the anticipation of that 
 mercy which his tormentors did not yet intend him to experience at their 
 hands — a release by death from all his sufferings. Should a confession be 
 forced from him, he was required to sign it, and forty-eight hours afterwards 
 he was executed. In a small dungeon of this gaol was a stone seat, like some Mr. 
 Howard had seen in other old prison-towers, on which it was said that prisoners 
 were formerly suffocated by brimstone, when their families wished to avoid 
 the disgrace of a public execution. But no person in Antwerp remembered an 
 instance of this kind ; though about thirty years ago a private execution had 
 very improperly been permitted in a prison, which, fortunately for the interests 
 of humanity, had at this time but two occupants. The male prisoners in the 
 house of correction here were all employed in spinning cotton, as were also 
 some of the women, the remainder being engaged in making lace. They had 
 the whole of their earnings, which amounted but to from eight to fourteen 
 sous a week, for themselves ; but out of that they were to purchase whatever 
 food they chose to have, beyond the rye-bread and water, which was their only 
 allowance from the public purse ; and also to contribute a sous towards the 
 washing of their linen, which they were obliged to change once a-week. There 
 were three rooms for the ungovernable, one of which had a floor composed of 
 triangular pieces of wood, a few inches asunder, to which the delinquent was 
 chained in such a position, that, as he was allowed no shoes, whether he stood 
 up, or laid down, he must needs be in a very uneasy posture. This room was, 
 therefore, much dreaded by the prisoners, as indeed were the other two, so 
 dark and solitary were they made. The regulations for the government of the 
 prison, most of which were very judicious, were regularly read by the chaplain 
 the first Sunday after the admission of every new prisoner.* In his way back, 
 he found the prison at Lille under no proper regulation ; the unhealthy coun- 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 79—82. 
 
311 
 
 tenances of the prisoners at the citadel also intimating the pernicious effects of 
 lying in damp rooms, under the fortifications; a circumstance which he the 
 more particularly noticed, because he had reason to apprehend that some of the 
 English prisoners of war at Dinan would be removed hither.* 
 
 Returning home through France, Mr. Howard revisited the prisons of its 
 metropolis, in one of which he found an ingenious expedient adopted for pre- 
 venting escapes, in a partition of lath and plaster, at such a distance from the brick 
 wall as to admit of an aperture between them, through which the mortar, detached 
 by the slightest perforation, would fall into the keeper's court beneath. The 
 physicians and surgeons to the different gaols, he now learnt, were appointed 
 and paid by government ; but the fuel, broth, drugs, linen, and other neces- 
 saries for the sick, were principally furnished by those female charities, of 
 which honorable mention has already been made. Here, as indeed through- 
 out the country, no prisoner, who had received his liberty from the king, or 
 from his creditors, could be detained a moment longer for his fees, the hire of 
 his rooms, debts contracted in prison, or on any pretence whatever. Gaolers 
 were nominated by the magistrates, and after strict inquiry into their character 
 by the procureur-general, were fixed in their offices without paying any thing for 
 their places, or their prisons. Their revenues were not small ; " and all things 
 considered," as a prisoner of rank and sense observed to our Philanthropist, 
 " prisoners had no reason to complain of this class of men in France." He 
 spent two mornings of his stay in Paris at the Bicetre, in whose two halls he 
 saw above 200 persons confined together in idleness, to the great corruption of 
 their own manners, and the serious injury of the state. Many, he assures us, 
 and on this point we might readily believe a less credible witness, have, at their 
 unhappy end, ascribed their ruin to the flagitious examples they had seen, and 
 to the instructions given them in this place. And has not this often been the 
 case, we may ask ourselves, in our own country, and in our own times ? Yet how 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 82. 
 
312 
 
 seldom have we imitated the conduct of our neighbours, who, sensible at last 
 to the bad policy of confining persons in idleness, had, within the last two 
 years, set some of their prisoners here to work, on polishing plate-glasses, 
 whilst a mill was then erecting for grinding corn, which was to be worked by 
 sixteen men at a time. Sixty were then ill in the infirmary, chiefly of a cuta- 
 neous distemper, contracted from their confinement, which was so extremely 
 close, that they were never suffered to go out of their rooms. The hospital of 
 St. Louis and P Hotel de Dieu, he describes as two of the worst he had ever 
 visited : abominable, and a disgrace to Paris ; being so crowded, that he himself 
 had seen four or five patients in one bed, some of whom were dying. This 
 city, nevertheless, contained, he tells us, many other charitable foundations 
 which did honor to it, and from which this country might derive useful 
 information. Some of these he briefly notices, though foreign to his chief 
 purpose, as they certainly are to ours.* Whilst travelling through France, 
 during the subsistence of a war between that country and his own, it 
 is extremely natural to suppose, that a recollection of the sufferings which 
 he himself had endured under similar circumstances, should induce him to 
 ascertain, by personal inspection, the actual condition of such of his coun- 
 trymen as were, at this time, confined as prisoners of war, in the power of 
 an enemy, whose inhuman treatment of her captive foes had, he hoped, 
 been softened, in consequence of the representations which, two and twenty 
 years ago, he had made upon the subject to his own government. Nor in 
 these hopes was he altogether disappointed. At Dunkirk, these prisoners still 
 lay, as he had done, upon straw, though it was with the addition of a coverlid, 
 to every three persons ; and in the rooms of a prison supplied with firing, 
 instead of a damp dungeon underground. Nor were they kept, as for a 
 time he had been, without a drop of water, and hardly a morsel of food, being 
 now regularly and sufficiently supplied with good bread, beer, and soup, and 
 with tolerable beef, which is all an Englishman ever expects to meet with in 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 83 — 7. 
 
313 
 
 France. Instead, loo, of being treated with such barbarity, that hundreds of 
 them had perished from hunger, from fever, and from damps, as they had 
 done during the former war, the sick were taken to the military hospital, and 
 had great attention paid them there. At Bergues the victualling-table was 
 hung up in the prison, as at Dunkirk, but the provisions were not so 
 good. At Calais the prison was excessively crowded, so that seventeen 
 sailors lay in one room upon straw, without coverlids, and some of 
 them even upon the bare ground. In consequence, however, of the 
 manly remonstrances of our intrepid countryman, upon this gross neglect 
 of his duty, the commissary promised to send immediately to St. Omers 
 for coverlids for them. On his second visit, the rules issued by the French 
 government for the regulation and treatment of its prisoners of war, were 
 also hung up, both within and without-side the gaol, as he remarked that 
 they were not, when he first inspected it. He found six-and-twenty of his 
 countrymen in a spacious ward in the military hospital here, to whom the 
 greatest attention was paid. In the prison at this, as well as at the other 
 places he had visited, many of them, however, had no change of linen, whilst some 
 were almost destitute of cloathes, being the crews of vessels wrecked on the 
 French coast in the violent storm which had raged on the 31st of the preceding 
 December.* These objects of compassion, though, with his usual modesty, his 
 own works contain not the slightest hint upon the subject, we are assured from 
 an authority which cannot be questioned, he generously cloathed at his own 
 expence. We learn also from the same respectable quarter, that he, at this 
 time, exerted himself, with that genuine, but unobtrusive patriotism for which he 
 was so remarkable, in dissuading the English prisoners of war whom he visited 
 from enlisting in the enemy's service, as they were strongly, but most ungene- 
 rously incited to do ; by which means he gave great offence to the French 
 government, who could not possibly persuade themselves that he did this in 
 his private capacity, but as a spy, or secret agent of the English ministry; a 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 89—94. 
 s s 
 
314 
 
 supposition not very unnatural on their parts, but which we shall find to have 
 had a more serious effect upon the benevolent schemes of the innocent object 
 of it, than had the suspicion and illiberality with which he was always 
 treated in that country, and for which Dr. Aikin very candidly offers this 
 circumstance as some apology.* 
 
 At Calais, Mr. Howard completed his third journey of benevolence upon 
 the continent, in the course of which he had travelled 4636 miles, for the 
 sole purpose of mitigating the sufferings of the most abandoned, or the most 
 wretched of his fellow-creatures, by softening the horrors of that confinement 
 which they had merited by their crimes, or incurred by their misfortunes, and 
 of rendering it subservient to the improvement of their morals, and the 
 advancement of the best interests of society. Embarking for Dover, he pro- 
 ceeded direct to London, where Thomasson was wailing for him, in consequence 
 of the orders he had given him at Ghent, to fetch his son from school, and - 
 take him to Cardington, and after continuing there six days, to go to town, 
 where, if nothing unexpected should occur to detain him in Holland or in 
 France, he hoped to arrive about that time : as, true to his appointment, he 
 according did.f His first object, when he reached the metropolis of his own 
 country once more, was to wait upon the commissioners for sick and wounded 
 seamen, to report to them the representations of the commissaries for 
 prisoners of war, and other French gentlemen with whom he had recently 
 conversed, of very serious complaints having been made by their prisoners, of 
 the treatment they met with in England ; giving them, at the same time, an 
 account of that, which those of our own nation experienced there, and an- 
 nouncing to them his intention of ascertaining, by personal inspection, whether 
 these complaints were founded in truth. To assist him in the attainment of 
 his patriotic object, these gentlemen, with a readiness which did them honor, 
 accordingly furnished him with letters of introduction to their agents in the 
 * Aikin, p. 101, 2. f Thomasson's MS. Journal. 
 
315 
 
 several prisons, in which persons of this description were confined, in various 
 parts of the kingdom.* As soon as he had dispatched his business with the 
 members of this board, he set off for Bedfordshire, where he had the happiness 
 to find his dear boy in good health and spirits, and rejoicing in the opportunity 
 of spending a few weeks with his father, after having been prevented that 
 happiness by his absence on the continent during his last vacation, which he 
 had, however, spent very pleasantly with his maternnal uncles, who, 
 having no children of their own, were extremely fond of him, and always 
 treated him with great, perhaps too great, indulgence. With him he conti- 
 nued during the remainder of his holidays, either at Cardington, or in 
 travelling from place to place to visit his relatives, or those friends whom he 
 would feel a natural anxiety to see after so long an absence ; and on these 
 occasions he always delighted to have his son with him, either in his chaise 
 or, as he was now capable of managing it, on a pony by his side. As soon, 
 however, as he had returned to school, he lost not an hour in commencing a 
 fresh inspection of the English gaols, in order that he might be enabled to 
 lay before the public, in an appendix to his former work, an accurate account 
 of their condition, and of the alterations and improvements made in their con- 
 struction and regulation since he last had visited them. His first journey was 
 into the west of England, where he reached Exeter on the last day of 
 January, in whose crowded and offensive gaol the men were still together, 
 confirming one another in wickedness; and the women, during the day-time, 
 obliged to associate with them, and to witness, if not to share in, every scene 
 of iniquity here presented to their view. In the county bridewell, some im- 
 provements had been made in the separation of the women from the men, but 
 all of them were unemployed, and their countenances were but too strongly 
 expressive of misery and neglect. Since his former visit, the surgeon and two 
 or three prisoners had died of the gaol fever.f On commencing his inspection 
 of the prisoners of war at the Mill prison, at Plymouth, he was grieved to 
 * Appendix to the Stale of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 94. f lb. p. 169, 170. 
 
 8 8 2 
 
316 
 
 find that there was but too much reason for the complaints he had heard in 
 France, especially where the most humanity ought to have been exhibited, — 
 during their sickness ; the hospital here being dirty and offensive, and having 
 but three pair of sheets in use for the whole of its patients, which at this 
 period amounted to fifty. Too little attention was also paid to them on board 
 the prison-ship, though an hospital-ship was fitting up for an infirmary, not 
 before it was wanted. The bread here was heavy, and the meat bad ; whilst 
 in the prison on shore, the French, both in their accommodation and their 
 provisions, seem to have been worse treated than the captives of other nations. 
 The wards of the prison in Bristol were more spacious, and less crowded than 
 those at Plymouth, and contained two day-rooms, in which several men were 
 at work at their various trades of shoemakers, tailors, &c. an advantage 
 which those confined at Plymouth had been very desirous of enjoying, but 
 could not obtain. Their bread was good, but their sick were not much better 
 attended to ; as, from there being no infirmary in the prison, they were 
 victualled in a small house adjoining, seven shillings a week being paid for 
 each patient, five of whom were at this time lying in a dirty and offensive 
 room.* The merited exposure of their criminal neglect of the health and safe 
 custody of their prisoners, which Mr. Howard's former publication had made, 
 seems to have had the effect of awakening the gentlemen of the county of 
 Cornwall out of their long and disgraceful slumber ; so that, accepting of the 
 proffered bounty of their sovereign, which their own niggardliness, or want 
 of a proper attention to the comfort of their fellow-creatures, had formerly 
 induced them to decline, they had erected a new and, it would seem, a conve- 
 nient, though small county gaol at Launceston, for the confinement of male 
 felons, the old gaol being intended to be repaired for those of the other sex, as 
 the additional 500/. of the king's munificent present was appropriated to that 
 object. They had, however, done more for the effectual redemption of their 
 character, by the erection of a very convenient and spacious county gaol and 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 95, 6. 
 
317 
 
 house of correction at Bodmin, on an eminence, where there was a constant 
 current of water, and furnished with separate rooms of confinement for each 
 prisoner, a chapel, infirmary, and every other convenience. " By this spirited 
 exertion," says the individual, but for whose humane remonstrances that exertion 
 had never been made, or, at the best, had very long been deferred, " the gentle- 
 men of this county have erected a monument of their humanity, and attention 
 to the health and morals of prisoners."* So ready was he to give praise where 
 praise was due, as he was fearless in employing censure where he thought it 
 called for, and hoped its administration might be productive of a good effect. 
 After revisiting several other gaols in these and in the adjacent counties of 
 Somerset and Dorset, in which he found no alteration worth noticing, Mr. 
 Howard returned home on the 11th or 12th of February. 
 
 After spending about a fortnight at Cardington, our Philanthropist, on the 
 25th of this month, commenced, at Aylesbury, what he terms his southern 
 journey ; in the outset of which he visited the county gaol at Oxford, on whose 
 condition he observes, that " it is very probable, that the rooms in this castle 
 are the same that the prisoners occupied at the time of the Black ass/ze," in 
 1577, when the lord chief baron, the sheriff, and all who were present, 
 amounting to about 300 men, died in the course of forty hours, in consequence 
 of a disease with which the court was infected by the prisoners. " The wards 
 are close and offensive, so that, if crowded, I should not greatly wonder to 
 hear of another fatal assize at Oxford.'' At both the bridewells belonging to 
 this county, at Thame and at Witney, the prisoners were now employed, 
 instead of living in idleness, as they before had done.f In this respect, the 
 adjoining county of Wilts seems, however, even to have retrograded ; as, at 
 the bridewell at Marlborough, its visitor found no one at work, though a 
 prisoner complained to him, with evident concern, that " he had been there 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 170, 1. 
 t lb. p. 158. State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 18. Baker's Chronicle, p. 853. 
 
318 
 
 thirty weeks, and had not earned one halfpenny." In that at Devizes, the 
 windows of the work-room were nailed up, an indication, it is to be presumed, 
 of the intention of the magistrates never to have it used again. As they did 
 not give the prisoners confined here the means of earning any thing, either for 
 themselves, or for the county, they had, however, acted with the common 
 justice of paying the keeper's fees for them.* In the town gaol at Ports- 
 mouth, he found that the debtors and felons had been very properly separated 
 since his last visit. At Winchester 1062 French prisoners of war were confined 
 in one large prison, the wards of which were lofty and spacious, but for want of 
 work-rooms the prisoners were indolently lying in their hammocks in the day- 
 time, both in this prison, and in that at Plymouth. Several prisoners were here 
 put into the dark hole for forty days on half allowance, until, by that means, 
 they had paid ten shillings to the person who had apprehended them after their 
 escape ; " a punishment," says Mr. Howard, " which seems to be too severe. 
 On such occasions, the observation of the worthy magistrate at Bern always 
 occurs to my mind, ' that every one must be desirous of regaining liberty," 
 especially, he might in this case have added, those whom the chance of war 
 has made captive in a foreign land, whose laws for their detention they are not 
 bound by any moral obligation to respect, and from whose bondage they have, 
 therefore, a natural right to break. The wards of the hospital, like those of 
 the prison, were lofty and commodious ; each patient was provided with a 
 cradle, bedding, and sheets ; and the surgeon paid them great attention. The 
 agent was also very assiduous in his department, and mentioned to Mr. Howard 
 that he thought it would be of advantage if one of the two French priests, 
 who were then at a little distance, on their parole, were permitted to 
 attend their prisoners, as their visits might be the means of comforting some, 
 of awing others, and of giving information of any abuses of which there was 
 just ground of complaint. These enlightened and prudent suggestions would 
 perhaps, however, have been far too liberal for the British ministry of that, or 
 * Appendix to the Stale of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 168, 9. 
 
319 
 
 indeed of any day to have ventured to listen to, shamed as our countrymen ought 
 to have been into the adoption of a more Christian practice, by the example of 
 some of the Catholic states of Germany, where toleration, as a mere principle 
 of civil policy, was much better understood and acted upon, than, as an essential 
 doctrine of our purer faith, it was practically maintained with us. In a prison, 
 not very convenient, at Forton, near Gosport, he found the bread defi- 
 cient in weight ; and the meat, on the day he visited the place, was also 
 bad, but the agent had it exchanged. The straw, by long use, was turned to 
 dust in the mattresses ; and many of them here, as at other places, had been 
 emptied to clear them of vermin. The floors of the bed-rooms and the hospital, 
 being laid down in the rough, could not but be dirty, as, from the same cause, 
 would inevitably be the case in the new prison erecting here.* At the bride- 
 well for the county of Sussex, at Petworth, he had the satisfaction to learn 
 that the representation he had given in his former publication of his having 
 found the daily allowance to the prisoners but a penny loaf, weighing seven 
 ounces and a half, had induced the justices to increase the food provided for 
 each prisoner to two full pounds of bread a-day.f 
 
 After a respite of about ten days, spent chiefly at Cardington, Mr. Howard 
 sel out upon his eastern journey, which he commenced at Newport Pagnefl, 
 where was a bridewell for the county of Buckingham, consisting of two 
 close and unwholesome cells, in the back court of a public-house ; without 
 water, or allowance for the prisoners, who had lately made their escape, owing 
 to the keeper's living at a distance.}: In the county gaol at Northampton, the 
 chapel was now in a more convenient situation than when, on his former visits, 
 he found so much occasion to complain of it. The whole prison was clean, its 
 gaoler humane and attentive, and its prisoners all at work in spinning, making 
 pegs for shoemakers, and other modes of employment. Two-pence a-day 
 was now allowed to each of the felons for meat. In the town-gaol, the corpo- 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 96, 7; 168. t lb. p. 130, J. } lb. p. 133, 4. 
 
320 
 
 ration had also made a court-yard for debtors and felons, with sewers, &c. : 
 both of which conveniencies were wanting when he last was there.* In the 
 bridewell for the city of Coventry, the old town-hall was now made into a 
 work-shop, and two lodging-rooms for men, so that the women had a 
 separate day-room and court-yard, the latter object having also been 
 provided for in the county gaol for Rutlandshire, at Oakham ; whilst in 
 the miserable one at Leicester, garnish had been abolished.-)" The bridewell 
 for the county of Norfolk, at Wymondham, containedfour dirty, pale, and sick 
 women, at work with padlocks on their legs > though never suffered to go into 
 the spacious but insecure court of this prison, except on Sundays. The very 
 small quantity of straw upon the floor of their room was almost worn to dust. 
 Another of these bridewells at Aylsham, had in the floor of its day-room a 
 trap-door into a dungeon, nine feet and a half by six. Above were three 
 rooms, not secure, as was the case also with the court-yard. There was no 
 fire-place in the prison, nor any straw, water, sewer, implements for work, or 
 allowance, except two-pennyworth of bread a-day to vagrants. Another at 
 Acle was equally insecure, and had two dark, close dungeons, down nine steps, 
 without court-yard, allowance, straw, or water accessible to prisoners, of 
 which fortunately there were none. In the gaol for the city of Norwich, the 
 allowance to prisoners had lately been increased to twelve ounces of bread 
 a-day, which was all they had. Its bridewell, Mr. Howard now learnt for the 
 first time, contained dungeons fifteen steps under-ground, four for men, and 
 three for women, but which he expresses his hopes that the corporation would 
 bar to all but the refractory and the disobedient.^ Those for the adjoining 
 county of Suffolk, at Ipswich and Woodbridge, he found to be much im- 
 proved by very considerable enlargements of their rooms and court-yards, 
 and, in the latter, by the addition of windows and fire-places. In that at Laven- 
 ham, a prisoner had lately escaped, for which the keeper was fined, though the 
 neglect lay in the magistrates, the prison being greatly out of repair. To 
 •Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 153,5. t lb. p. 146, 152. t lb. p. 138— 140. 
 
321 
 
 avoid a similar fate, the keeper of the bridewell for this neglected county at 
 Clare, had put a heavy chain on each of his prisoners, three of whom were 
 women, and a log besides on two impressed men in his custody. These prisoners 
 paid him a penny a-day for straw, which those at Lavenham were entirely 
 without ; but his prison had not been inspected by a single magistrate for fifteen 
 years past.* At Chelmsford the new county gaol, formerly most significantly 
 characterized as a stately fabric, was now occupied ; but the felons' apartments 
 were out of sight of the gaoler's house ; whilst a window opening from the 
 debtors' court-yard towards the street, afforded an avenue for introducing, at all 
 times, spirituous liquors, tools, &c. into the prison.f From this town he pro- 
 ceeded through Barking to Loudon, where he arrived on the 8th of April. 
 
 His next journey, commenced on the 15th of this month, was into Kent, Sus- 
 sex, Berks, and part of Buckingham and Hertfordshire. At Dartford, he found 
 that his hints for the improvement of the confined county bridewell there had 
 not been thrown away, as the keeper had been very properly deprived of a 
 part of his garden to make a court-yard for each sex, furnished with pumps 
 and sewers ; a room in the men's court being also appropriated to the sick. 
 The mats which, three years ago, were nearly worn out, had not, however, 
 been replaced, so that, no straw being found them, the women were without 
 bedding of any kind. That at Maidstone, which had not been erected more 
 than three or four years, was already dirty and offensive, chiefly, it would 
 seem, from the inattention of its keeper. The prisoners were at work, but 
 were injudiciously allowed no part of their earnings. Two of them Mr. Howard 
 saw ill of the small-pox, lying on loose straw, with no covering but common 
 mats. In the town gaol at Dover, he did not find, as he had done upon former 
 occasions, company drinking; and the keeper had now a salary of 10/. a-year. 
 To a convenient temporary gaol for French prisoners at Deal, he made his first 
 visit, as he always did, without the agents or contractors, and had the pleasure 
 to hear the prisoners express their satisfaction at the treatment they met with $ 
 ♦ Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 141, 3. f lb. p. 126. 
 
 T T 
 
322 
 
 their food being good, and great attention paid to their sick.* In the 
 adjoining county of Sussex, the wretched bridewell at Horsham was discon- 
 tinued, and its keeper discharged : in that at Lewes, the prisoners were occa- 
 sionally employed in making whiting, but their keeper had the whole profit of 
 their labor .f Crossing the country to Reading, Mr. Howard found the bride- 
 well there still dirty and out of repair, and the men and women together 
 in the day-time.;}; One of the bridewells for the county of Buckingham, at 
 West (formerly at High) Wycomb, consisted but of two garrets in the keeper's 
 house, the windows of which were almost closed up by strong pTanks nailed 
 across to prevent prisoners escaping. In that at St. Alban's, he found two 
 soldiers, and a girl, sentenced to a year's imprisonment, locked up all day 
 together.^ 
 
 Returning home from this journey but on the 24th or 25th of April, on the 
 5th of May, Mr. Howard left Cardington for the north of England, taking his 
 way through Folkingham, Lincoln, Gainsborough, and Beverley, to York, 
 where the grand jury had presented the county gaol, in consequence of which 
 he found the ground marked out for additional buildings for the separation of 
 felons, and rooms for the sick. In the city gaol, a new and convenient room 
 had been made for prisoners committed on suspicion of felony, and water had 
 also been laid on. The largest room in the horrible prison at Knaresborough 
 was now boarded, so that rats could no longer make their way from the 
 sewer, to maim and disfigure its wretched inmates.|| The county gaol at Car- 
 lisle had undergone some improvements since our Philanthropist's last visit ; 
 amongst which was the providing a separate court-yard for the felons : two 
 rooms, formerly used as taps, seemed also to be intended as a ward for the 
 women, but three men and four women now lodged in one of them. In a 
 large room in the debtors' ward, twelve French prisoners lay upon straw, 
 without coverlids.^[ In the castle at Lancaster, he had the pleasure to find 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 128, 9 ; 98. f lb. p. 1 30, 1 . J lb. 1 56. 
 
 § lb. 134, 126. || lb. p. 172—4. f lb. 178; 98. 
 
323 
 
 that a suggestion of his, for the conversion of the stable into night-rooms for 
 men-felons had been promptly attended to ; as had also another for adding an 
 infirmary. In the county bridewell at Manchester, the prisoners were occupied 
 in spinning candlewick at three-halfpence a pound, the keeper being a chand- 
 ler.* It is a singular proof of the rapid increase of crime in this popif.jus 
 town and its neighbourhood, that at this time only eleven prisoners were 
 confined in the house of correction here, whilst for the last two years, the ave- 
 rage number of prisoners in custody, either for trial, or under sentence, in that 
 which has since been erected in its stead, has amounted to at least five hundred. 
 Returning into Yorkshire, Mr. Howard saw a new prison at Bradford, for 
 debtors in the court of requests in that honor, consisting of four rooms and a 
 work-room, yet without water, and with a court-yard, though newly made, 
 not secure.'!" On his way homeward through the north-west of England, he 
 found that in the county gaol at Hereford, the chapel was now boarded, and 
 dry ; but in the bridewell, the cross wall which, at his former visit, had parted 
 from that it abutted upon, had since fallen in, so that the county was at 
 last obliged to repair a place so confined, that it never could be convenient. 
 In the county gaol at Worcester, which was as clean, as that for the city was 
 dirty, a larger and more convenient room had lately been fitted up for a 
 chapel. | The bridewell for the county of Gloucester, at Winchcomb, was still 
 so ruinous, that its keeper told its benevolent inspector, that he should be obliged 
 to put irons on all the prisoners to secure them. With this prison he con- 
 cluded a tour, in the progress of which he had travelled 957 miles, in fifteen days. 
 
 The partiality which Mr. Howard always entertained for Bristol Hot 
 Wells, induces me to conclude, that the period during which I am unable to 
 trace him in his circuit of philanthropy through the whole of the three king- 
 doms, namely, from the 19th of May to the 1st of June, was spent at that 
 place, or in its neighbourhood. On the day last mentioned, he visited the 
 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 179, 180. t lb. p. 175. $ lb. p. 163, 4. 
 
 TT 2 
 
324 
 
 castle at Gloucester, where he learnt that eight prisoners had not long since 
 died of the small-pox ; yet was there still no infirmary. Another very serious 
 defect in this inconvenient gaol, was the want of a proper separation of the 
 sexes, and of the bridewell prisoners from the rest. From the gross inattention 
 of the magistrates to this point, the most licentious intercourse prevailed ; so 
 that all the endeavors of the chaplain to promote reformation amongst its 
 wretched and abandoned inmates were thwarted and defeated, by the encou- 
 ragement in vice which the less hardened offenders were daily receiving, from 
 those who were further advanced in their profligate career. Five or six 
 children had lately drawn their first breath in this hot-bed of iniquity.* En- 
 tering South Wales by Brecon, he found a new gaol building near the 
 river ; its situation was, however, so low, that at times it would be exposed 
 to floods : the miserable and insecure bridewell was discontinued. The gaol at 
 Cardigan, though built but three or four years, was very dirty, and swarmed 
 with vermin, as was often the case where there was no water. In that at Car- 
 marthen a number of idle and profane people were playing at tennis, — one of 
 the bad consequences of granting licences to gaolers : the borough gaol here 
 abounded also with vermin, and probably had never been washed since it 
 had been a prison."!" On the 5th and 6th of June, he was occupied with the 
 inspection of the places of confinement for French and American prisoners 
 in the town of Pembroke, 113 of whom he found in the gaol and in two old 
 houses; most of them with neither shoes nor stockings on, and some also 
 without shirts. There was no victualling-table, nor did they know what was 
 their allowance ; two or three of them receiving it in money, at the rate of 
 three shillings, instead of three and sixpence a-week, as it ought to have been. 
 The common men lay, in general, on the boards, or upon straw, which had not 
 been changed for many weeks. Those in the gaol were often neglected in then- 
 supplies of water, and the provisions of the whole were rather scanty, and 
 some of them not very good of their sort. In a house appropriated for an 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 165. t lb. p. 189, 190. 
 
32.5 
 
 hospital, twelve of them were laying upon straw, without sheets, mattresses, 
 bedsteads, or any thing but a mere coverlid. Such observations as these con- 
 vinced their benevolent visitor, that humanity and good policy alike required 
 the appointment of an inspector of prisoners of war, who should be obliged to 
 report quarterly their state, as to health, provisions, &c* Returning into 
 England, he finished, at Cirencester, in Gloucestershire, on the 9th of June, 
 his sixth journey of inspection during the present year. 
 
 He had been at home but a fortnight, ere he set off upon another to Scot- 
 land and Ireland. In his way to the former country, he found in the gaol at 
 Durham five boys, between thirteen and fifteen years of age, confined with the 
 most abandoned of the felons : but he was gratified to learn that the bishop had 
 filed bills in Chancery for recovering the legacies, which his account of former 
 visits to this place points out as having been lost, for want of proper attention to 
 their regular payment. The county bridewell was much altered for the better, 
 as its prisoners were at work, and their looks bespoke the attention of a good 
 keeper, now resident in the prison, instead of the old woman who, at his last 
 visit, was put in there as the deputy of the county gaoler. To the bridewell at 
 Newcastle six rooms had lately been added ; but the walls of the court-yard, 
 though newly made, not being secure, prisoners had no access to it."|" Arriving 
 in Edinburgh, on the 5th or 6th of July, Mr. Howard found in the two tolbooths 
 ten felons, and eighteen debtors ; and in the house of correction, fifty-three 
 women, crowded into dirty and offensive rooms. In that at Glasgow, 
 seventeen women, decently clothed, were employed in spinning ; but in no 
 other prison in this country did he find above four or five prisoners. This 
 he attributes partly to the shame and disgrace annexed to imprisonment, 
 partly to the solemn manner in which oaths are administered, and trials 
 and executions conducted ; and partly,— he might have said principally, — to 
 the general sobriety of manners produced by the care taken to instruct the 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 98, 9; 102; 189. t lb. p. 176, 7. 
 
326 
 
 rising generation in that country. From these combined causes it appears that 
 during the ten years and a half immediately preceding this visit only thirty-nine 
 persons were executed in the whole of Scotland, a number which falls short of 
 that of one of the smallest of our English circuits, whilst it does not amount to a 
 tenth part of those who suffered in the metropolis alone during that period. 
 The debtors confined in prison here were also but few, principally from the 
 humane law of the country, commonly called the cessio bonomm, by which a 
 debtor, after being a month in prison, might obtain his liberty, and be secured 
 against execution for any previous debts, by making a surrender of all his effects 
 o his creditors ; though the property he might afterwards acquire was liable to 
 be attached for his old debts. There too, if a prisoner declared upon oath that 
 he had not the means of maintaining himself, his creditor was compelled to 
 aliment him at three pence a-day at the least, though the magistrates generally 
 ordered sixpence. Hence creditors seldom put their debtors in gaol but where 
 they had good reason to believe that they were acting fraudulently. Criminals 
 were here tried out of irons, and when acquitted, immediately discharged in 
 open court ; but, notwithstanding all these good signs, Mr. Howard observes that 
 all the prisons which he saw in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Jed- 
 burgh, Air, &c. were old buildings, dirty and offensive, without court-yards, 
 and also generally without water. They were not visited by the magistrates, 
 and their gaolers were allowed the free sale of the most pernicious liquors.* 
 The treatment which the French prisoners of war experienced here was, how- 
 ever, far better than they generally met with in England ; so that those whom 
 he visited in the castle at Edinburgh had not a complaint to make. But 
 very different was the scene which presented itself when he landed in Ireland, 
 at Belfast, on the 13th of July, as they there seemed to be very much neglected, 
 many of them being sick, but not taken into the hospital, from the want both 
 of room and of accommodation. In Dublin, however, a temporary room 
 was fitted up as a prison for their confinement, where their provisions were 
 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 103—108. 
 
327 
 
 very good, and they themselves were treated with all the humanity and kind- 
 ness that could be expected.* In this city Mr. Howard was happy to find that 
 the new Newgate was almost ready for the removal of prisoners into its more 
 airy and convenient apartments, in which the shocking intercourse he formerly 
 had reason to complain of in the old prison would be avoided, as it had sepa- 
 rate courts for men and women, well supplied with water. He hoped too 
 that there would be no repetition of the dreadful scene he had witnessed 
 there in the winter of 1775, when numbers of poor creatures ill of the gaol 
 fever were unattended and disregarded. The sick rooms were too small, and 
 likely to breed infection ; and the stairs and passages were also so narrow as to 
 require the greatest attention, lest they should become offensive, and produce 
 the same mischievous consequences. In passing the old Newgate frequently, 
 our patriotic countryman could not but observe, with regret, officers from the 
 recruiting regiments waiting to receive offenders upon their discharge ; and, 
 as he observed it, he was filled with the most melancholy apprehensions 
 of the dreadful consequences likely to result from the mixture of such 
 characters, with persons of a sober education ,who had entered voluntarily into 
 the service of their country, and also of the danger to society in general, by 
 turning such a set of wretches loose upon the public at the close of a war. 
 Upon this practice, prevalent also in England by the permission given to 
 offenders to enlist into the army or navy, he makes this very pointed remark, 
 — " if it be a necessary one, the legislature may receive some satisfaction 
 from the effects of their late salutary laws respecting the health of prisoners. 
 If this mode had been adopted while prisons were in their former state, it 
 would have been the occasion of carrying the most fatal diseases into the midst 
 of our seamen and soldiers." A new Marshalsea had been erected for this city 
 about four years ago, but many debtors confined in the other prisons, not being 
 alimented, were objects of compassion, though the most needy of them were 
 relieved by the care of a humane society in Dublin, similar to that at the 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 100, 101. 2d Edit. p. 155. 
 
328 
 
 Thatched-house in London. " Such societies," says our author, " deserve the 
 highest praise. I wish however to recommend to compassion other prisoners, 
 who, though they seem to deserve assistance less, yet need it more, to save them 
 from the ruin to which the bad state of the Irish prisons exposes them." In 
 those prisons the common and pernicious use of spirituous liquors generally 
 prevailed ; and acquitted prisoners were continued in confinement till they had 
 discharged their fees to the clerk of the crown or of the peace, the sheriff", 
 gaoler, and turnkeys, so that even boys under the age of twelve years, and 
 almost naked, would sometimes be kept in prison for them, for two years, 
 with the aggravated cruelty of generally losing their allowance of bread the 
 while. Some of these boys Mr. Howard humanely released from the county 
 gaol at Kilmainham, by paying half their fees, and procured the discharge of 
 others from the Newgate at Dublin, on the sheriffs relinquishing the whole of 
 theirs. But, as they had been associated with the most profligate felons for 
 many months, their generous liberator was two well aware of the necessary 
 effects of such company, to be the least surprized at the return of some of them 
 to their former habitation, in the course of a few days. We cannot, therefore, 
 wonder that the Irish gaols were very crowded, when so much pains seems to 
 have been taken to find them inhabitants, whose number was increased by 
 there being no houses of correction in this country, unless an exception were 
 to be made in favor of a house adjoining to the Newgate, and another close to 
 the workhouse of Dublin, in which their visitor found eleven young creatures, 
 who, for trifling offences, were confined with outrageous lunatics of both sexes, 
 notwithstanding a compassionate clause in an act of their legislature, expressly 
 forbidding such an improper mixture.* An act had indeed passed the parlia- 
 ment here for the punishment, by hard labor, of offenders liable to trans- 
 portation, about the same time that one for similar purposes was made in Eng- 
 land ; " but the hulks on the Thames" says our author, " having cruelly destroyed 
 many healthy and robust young men, their cries probably reached the Irish 
 
 * 3 Geo. III. cap. xxviii. §9. 
 
329 
 
 shore, and prevented any proceedings upon it."* Returning from a country, 
 the condition of whose prisons he had so much occasion, to condemn, and so 
 little to commend, Mr. Howard made the best of his way through Carnarvon, 
 Ludlow, and Oxford, to Cardington^ where he arrived on the 30th of July, and 
 remained until the 4th of August, when he proceeded to London, for the pur- 
 pose of re- visiting its numerous gaols. 
 
 He continued in the metropolis about a fortnight, busily occupied with 
 the work which led him there, though rewarded for his unwearied labors by 
 comparatively few improvements in the condition of the places of confinement 
 which he visited. Some, however, had been made ; and others were projected. 
 In the bridewell in Tothill-fields some of his suggestions had been attended to ; 
 and he saw with pleasure an additional day-room for women felons, and a 
 separate yard, with water, &c. appropriated to their use ; that for the other 
 female prisoners having been enlarged, too, out of the keeper's garden: a 
 workshop had also been added. " As I have seen several sick objects on the 
 floors," he observes, however, with his usual gentleness of censure and 
 promptitude to praise, where he witnessed a disposition for amendment, " the 
 gentlemen, who are so ready to relieve the sufferings of their fellow-creatures 
 will forgive the intimation, that an infirmary might be made over the women's 
 ward." Adjoining to this bridewell a prison had recently been erected, in lieu 
 of that usually called the Gate-house, but it was not yet inhabited. Provision 
 was here made for the proper separation of debtors and felons ; and in the 
 court of the latter were four small rooms for the refractory : the keeper could 
 easily overlook them both when locked up. The court-yard was to be plen- 
 tifully supplied with water, laid on from the main : its walls were, however, too 
 low, so that tools, &c. might easily be conveyed over them. The men's side 
 of the New Prison, Clerkenwell, he found to be very clean ; but there was 
 a want of accommodation for such as had turned king's evidence, who, to 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 108— 1 12. 
 V V 
 
330 
 
 secure them from the resentment of their fellow-prisoners, were improperly put 
 into the women's ward. In the bridewell here, a small close room was now 
 used as an infirmary for the men, and two of their dark, unwholesome night- 
 rooms were made into one for the women. The prison was clean, and its pri- 
 soners were employed in picking oakum. Since the publication of his 
 book, the allowance had been raised from a penny loaf to three-pence 
 a-day. In the Marshalsea the chamber-rents wanted regulating, each pri- 
 soner having three shillings and sixpence a week extorted from him for 
 half a bed. Some judicious rules for the better regulation of this matter 
 in the King*s Bench had lately been passed by the court, under whose 
 jurisdiction that prison is placed ; some of the old buildings also had 
 been taken down, and a new wing and a chapel added, but no infir- 
 mary. In the well-regulated prison of Bridewell, a good rule had been 
 made, restricting those committed there a second time to half allowance, 
 which, where it was so ample, its visitor considered a very proper check 
 upon the repetition of crimes. In the Savoy, the prisoners were healthy, 
 from their rooms having been made more airy, and some others converted 
 into an infirmary. Every part of Newgate was clean, and on the felons' 
 side but three were sick: an infirmary was building. Of the 141 felons 
 which this prison contained, ninety-one had only the prison allowance of a 
 penny loaf a-day ; but Mr. Ackerman, the keeper, with that humanity which 
 distinguished him during a long life of active duty, contributed, out of his 
 own pocket, to their relief. It deserves to be recorded as a proof of the 
 anxiety which Mr. Howard felt, not to omit visiting any place of confinement, 
 from which he could hope to derive information, that on his friend Mr. Aikin 
 incidentally mentioning his having overlooked the Tower, he took an early 
 opportunity of visiting it during his present stay in London, though he met 
 with nothing there worthy of particular notice.* 
 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 117—124. Aikin, p. 210, 211. 
 
331 
 
 After spending about five days at Cardington, this indefatigable man set out 
 upon what he calls his tour into North Wales, though, in fact, he only visited 
 some few gaols there, which lay out of the road, on his return from Ireland. In 
 that at Dolgelly he had the satisfaction to learn that a chaplain and surgeon 
 had been appointed since the publication of the work, in which the want of 
 these two necessary officers was first pointed out. The county bridewell here 
 consisted of two rooms under the town-hall, without court-yard, water, resident 
 keeper, or employment for its prisoners, as was pretty much the case with the 
 other at Bala, except that it had a keeper with the noble salary of two pounds 
 a-year, and what he could make by the allowance of three shillings a-week 
 each to the prisoners, passing through his hands, which, if he followed the ex- 
 ample of some of his brethren, might be a pretty help, as the keeper of the 
 gaol at Carnarvon regularly stopped sixpence from the meagre allowance of 
 each felon, for what he called his trouble of weekly payments.* The 
 county bridewell at Denbigh was a ruinous house, without court-yard, water, 
 or sewer ; and under the town-hall was the black chamber, twenty-four feet 
 by ten, which was also used as a prison."} - In Chester castle a room had 
 been fitted up for a chapel, and the chaplain's salary had been increased from 
 ten to thirty pounds, in consequence of which he now did duty on a Sunday. 
 Twenty-three French prisoners of war, confined in this gaol, were healthy 
 and well, and made no complaints. In the city gaol, the felons were again 
 confined in the night-room, " very injudiciously,'' says Mr. Howard, " not 
 to say cruelly, sunk several feet," in defiance of the act for remedying this, 
 among other abuses in our gaols. To prevent the prisoners crammed into this 
 wretched and unwholesome dungeon from being entirely suffocated for want of 
 air, two leaden pipes, of about an inch diameter, were very humanely laid into 
 it from the gateway.]: Returning into Wales, he visited a bridewell for the 
 county of Flint at Hanmer, consisting but of two rooms, in a ruinous 
 
 • Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 188. State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 462. t ">• P- 186. 
 
 } lb. p. 182; 99. State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 448. 
 
 u u 2 
 
332 
 
 thatched house, without court-yard, water, or employment for its prisoners. 
 At Taunton, he found that in the county bridewell there, all the prisoners 
 were in irons, which they were not at his former visit.* Here he seems to 
 have finished his journey, upon the 2d of September. 
 
 It was not until the 19th of this month that he left Cardington again, to 
 re-inspect the places of confinement in the counties of Nottingham and Hun- 
 tingdon, making a circuit into Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and 
 Herts, on his return. The gaol for the first of these counties had lately been 
 still further improved, by making the court-yard of the felons more airy, and 
 by an entire separation between them and the debtors. In the town bridewell 
 was a mill for employing the prisoners in grinding horse beans.f In that 
 at Cambridge, in the spring of this year, seventeen women were confined 
 in the day-time, and some of them at night, in the work-room, whose 
 extreme offensiveness occasioned a sickness, which so alarmed the vice-chan- 
 cellor, that he ordered them all to be discharged. Two or three of them 
 died, however, within a few days after their release. Two rooms, without 
 fire-places, had since been added, in one of which were five cages about seven 
 feet square.^ At Thetford he learnt that, at the preceding Lent assizes, 
 twenty-seven persons were confined four nights, most of them in the suf- 
 focating dungeon formerly described. In the county of Suffolk, one of the 
 bridewells at Mildenhall was much out of repair, and consisted but of two 
 rooms, without fire-places, with a court-yard, not secure, and no sewer. He 
 also went over the work-house at this place, which he describes as the cleanest 
 he had ever seen, adding that, " if all the parishes had been as careful to promote 
 cleanliness and industry in their own work-houses, there would have been no 
 occasion for other houses of industry, most of which he had visited in this 
 and the adjoining county." § Passing through Essex into Hertfordshire, 
 he found that the new county gaol was judiciously provided with separate 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 159, 171 t lb. 149, 151. * lb. 135—7. §Ib. 138, 143. 
 
333 
 
 wards and courts for debtors, for men, and for women felons. He was informed 
 here also, that a prisoner, brought out of the dungeon as dead of the gaol fever, 
 on being pumped upon in the yard, recovered ; and he assures us, that he had 
 known other instances of the same kind. The last place which he visited pre- 
 vious to his return to Cardington, was Buntingford, where was a county bride- 
 well, consisting of but two rooms, that for women having been newly erected ; 
 without water or court-yard, though the keeper had a large garden.* 
 
 His next journey, commenced on the 8th, and finished on the 14th of Octo- 
 ber, was through other parts of some of the counties he had last visited, and 
 those of Lincoln, Northampton, and Buckingham. At Walsingham he in- 
 spected an insecure bridewell for the county of Norfolk, containing but one 
 day-room, with two dark lodging-rooms about seven feet square, with nothing 
 for their miserable tenants to sleep upon, but a little straw on the brick floor : 
 the prisoners were in irons. The town gaol and bridewell at Boston, contained 
 two damp offensive rooms for men felons, and had neither court-yard nor 
 water. One of the bridewells for the county of Northampton, at Kettering, 
 was in the back court of its keeper's public-house, with a night-room for men 
 three steps under ground, into which no air was admitted, but through an 
 aperture in the door of fifteen inches by elven. The floor of the women's 
 room was of clay ; its windows close glazed. Each sex had a separate 
 court-yard, if court-yard it could be called, about nineteen feet and a half 
 square, but they had neither water nor sewers. The gaol at Brackley in this 
 county, consisted of a room called the dungeon, four feet square, under the 
 staircase of the town-hall, with an oval aperture in its door of eight inches by 
 six ; of course it had neither court-yard, nor water, f That for Buckingham 
 had no water, and the gaoler no salary ; nor had he at this time any prisoners, 
 except a raving lunatic. J 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 125. t lb. p. 152, 4, 5. $ lb. p. 134. 
 
334 
 
 Within two days after his return from this journey, our Philanthropist re- 
 visited the prisons of Bedford, in none of which had any alteration been made. 
 A new town gaol had, however, been built, consisting of two rooms, but without 
 any apartment for the gaoler, court-yard, or water.* About the 25th of Oc- 
 tober, he left Cardington for London, where he remained until the middle of 
 November, busily employed in arranging his papers for publication, a work in 
 whose first stages he was again assisted by his friends Mr. Densham and Dr. 
 Price; and in occasionally visiting some of the prisons of the metropolis. On 
 the 16th of November, he re-inspected the hulks, where he found the situation of 
 the convicts greatly altered for the better ; the ships in which they were con- 
 fined being clean, and their own appearance in general healthy and contented. 
 Bedding was now provided ; none of them, as was the case upon his former 
 visits, were without shoes or stockings, and their provisions were good of the 
 kind, though their allowance of bread was hardly sufficient In the hospital- 
 ship, one of whose decks was for the separate use of recovering patients, the 
 cleanliness and quiet which pervaded every part did honor to its conductor. 
 The few who were sick had their irons off, and they were all laid in single beds, 
 their only want being better nourishment than was allowed them. About a 
 hundred and fifty were at work in the Warren, decently cloathed in a brown 
 uniform. Having completed, by this visit, the object of his journey to London, 
 after spending about a week in Bedfordshire, Mr. Howard set off for Warring- 
 ton, to superintend the printing of the Appendix to his State of Prisons, in 
 which the result of his two years' extensive journeyings, at home and abroad, 
 in the course of which he had travelled 10,955 miles, would be laid before 
 the public. 
 
 Reaching this place about the 27th of November, he had no sooner, with 
 Dr. Aikin's assistance, prepared a part of his work for the printer, than he 
 proceeded to Liverpool, where he found the borough gaol much cleaner than at 
 * Appendix to the State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 1 35. 
 
 • 
 
335 
 
 his former visits, but the unhealthy dungeon still in use. The surgeon informed 
 him that many more prisoners had the gaol fever here in 1775, than ho had 
 mentioned in his publication. The bridewell erected in 1776, contained sepa- 
 rate, but close rooms, and court-yards for the two sexes, with a pump in that of 
 the men, to which the female prisoners were tied every week to receive the 
 discipline of the gaol, which, it is to be presumed, was a severe whipping. In 
 this court-yard was also a bath, with a new and very singular contrivance at- 
 tached to it, consisting of a standard and a long pole, with a chair fastened 
 at its extremity, in which all the female prisoners (and female prisoners only), 
 after being asked a few questions at their entrance, were placed, with a flannel 
 shift on, and, in this garb, underwent a thorough ducking, thrice repeated. "An 
 use of a bath," says our Philanthropist, " which I dare say the legislature 
 never thought of, when they ordered baths with a view to cleanliness and 
 preservi/ig the health of prisoners ; not for the exercise of a wanton and danger- 
 ous kind of severity.'''' The employment of the prisoners thus singularly purified, 
 was picking oakum ; their allowance two-pennyworth of bread a-day. In 
 this town 453 French, and 56 Spanish prisoners of war, were confined in 
 four or five rooms, crowded with hammocks three tiers high, but they had a 
 spacious airing ground. Thirty-six others were sick in some of the small dirty 
 rooms of a house, where they had no sheets to their beds, though they seemed 
 to have great attention paid them by the surgeon, and made no complaints of 
 their treatment. The meat and beer for the prisoners was fine and good, but 
 their bread heavy.* During his stay here, the corporation of Liverpool pre- 
 sented Mr. Howard with its freedom, as a just tribute to the extraordinary 
 benevolence which had induced him to make such sacrifices of his time, his 
 wealth, and his comfort, and to risk, as he had done, his health, and even his 
 life, for procuring a reformation of the abuses existing in gaols, and amongst 
 others in the very defective ones under their superintendance and control. In 
 about two months after this, his book was completed, bearing for its title 
 
 ' Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 180, 181 ; 99, 100. 
 
336 
 
 " Appendix to the State of the Prisons in England and Wales, &c. By 
 John Howard, F.R.S. containing a farther Account of Foreign Prisons and 
 Hospitals, with additional Remarks on the Prisons of this Country." Its 
 motto was the admirable inscription in the hospital of St. Michael, at Rome, 
 which so well expressed his own views of the proper object of prison disci- 
 pline — " Parum est coercere Improbos Poena, nisi Probos efficias DiscipUna,* 
 This Appendix forms a quarto volume of 220 pages ; but as it is illustrated 
 by seven plates, most of them double, and two very highly finished, its price 
 was a guinea ; which, had all the copies been sold, would yet scarcely have 
 paid the expence of paper and print. After it was completed, he was detained 
 several weeks longer in Warrington, superintending through the press a 
 cheaper edition, in octavo, of his former work, with which the new matter in 
 his Appendix was incorporated. He also printed, at the same time, in a small 
 pamphlet of about forty octavo pages, a translation of a very scarce tract, 
 containing an account of the Bastille, by a person who had been a prisoner 
 there, but the sale of whose exposure of the severities of this inquisitorial gaol 
 was strictly prohibited by the French government, under the severest penal- 
 ties ; so that it was not until after many fruitless endeavors, that he was at 
 length fortunate enough to meet with a copy of it, in the course of his last 
 journey upon the continent, nor without some hazard that he brought it with 
 him to England, where he now presented its contents, in their own language, 
 to his countrymen ; " not merely as an object of curiosity, but as affording a 
 very interesting and instructive comparison between the horrors of despotic 
 power, and the mild arid just administration of equal laws in a free state.'* He 
 also reprinted, in the same size and form, the French original ; accompanying 
 both these editions of the work with a copy of the engraving of the plan of 
 the Bastille, with which the original was furnished, and which he has also 
 inserted in his Appendix to the State of Prisons; together with the most 
 material circumstances of the description it was intended to illustrate. Each 
 * Historical Remarks and Anecdotes on the Castle of the Bastille, translated from the French, published 
 in 1774. Advertisements: Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 87. 
 
331 
 
 of these detached, but fuller accounts of this celebrated prison, to the adver- 
 tisement of which he boldly affixed his name, as having caused it to be 
 reprinted and translated, was sold at the low price of sixpence; yet, upon the 
 printing of them, he bestowed as much attention as he did upon the larger 
 works, in whose preparation for the press he was at the same time busily 
 engaged ; and the better to secure the accuracy and neatness of the whole, he 
 was at the expence of having the compositor brought from London who had 
 printed his former work, but who had left the service of Mr. Eyres, and come 
 to the metropolis, whither he returned at Mr. Howard's charge, as soon as he had 
 accomplished the business he was brought down to Warrington to perform. 
 Whilst these memoirs were passing through the press, I have conversed 
 with the press-man principally employed in printing all Mr. Howard's 
 works, and have learnt from him, that whilst engaged in their superin- 
 tendence, he behaved with his usual liberality to the workmen in the print- 
 ing-office, and to every one who rendered the smallest assistance to their 
 completion. With himself, and to a journeyman with whom he worked, 
 he always took the opportunity of their being separate, to slip half-a-crown 
 into their hands, at least once a week; and oftener, if either they, or the 
 compositor, to whom he was still more liberal, had made any extra efforts 
 to complete the daily proofs, which he was always particularly anxious to take 
 home with him every night. When the whole work was finished, he gave 
 them two or three guineas each. The second time of his visiting Warrington 
 (in 1779), instead of giving them their gratuities by a few shillings at a time, 
 as he had done when he first went there, he made them each a present of a 
 guinea, at such intervals as he thought proper, and as the exertions they made 
 to meet his wishes might seem, to his liberal mind, to merit at his hands. 
 
 The contents of the Appendix, thus carefully prepared for the public 
 eye, have been so completely interwoven with the preceding narrative 
 of the journeys, in which the materials for it were collected, wherever they 
 
 x x 
 
338 
 
 present any thing of interest to the general reader, that little now remains 
 to be said of them. In some additional remarks on the gaol fever, inserted 
 in the body of this work, Mr. Howard ascribes the prevalence of this re- 
 lentless malady in our English gaols, though he did not find it raging in 
 any one of them in the course of his last general inspection, in a great 
 measure, to the sudden change of diet and of lodging; the former of 
 which is so low and scanty, as to affect the spirits of prisoners to that degree, 
 that the powers of life soon become incapable of resisting so many causes of 
 sickness and despair, as are to be found in the unfortunate situation in which 
 they are placed. For purifying a prison in which this dreadful distemper has 
 rnged, he recommends the mode of fumigation practised by Dr. Lind in 
 infected ships, the particulars of which he had obligingly communicated for 
 the purpose.* The value of the observations contained in this volume upon 
 foreign hospitals, have been so justly appreciated by a gentleman so much 
 better qualified to form a just estimate of their merits than I can be, that I 
 need make no apology for transcribing his remarks upon the subject : — " The 
 tours now before us," says Dr. Aikin, " were rendered richer in utility by the 
 comprehension of another great object, that of hospitals. To these institutions 
 of humanity Mr. Howard had long been attached ; he had been a promoter of 
 them, and attentive to their improvement; and in his journeys through this 
 kingdom, he had seldom failed to visit the hospitals and infirmaries situated in 
 our principal towns. He had also, in his first publication, taken cursory 
 notice of a few which he saw abroad. But he now made them an avowed 
 object of his examination ; a circumstance, it may be supposed, not a little 
 pleasing to his medical friends. For, although the knowledge collected by a 
 professional man with similar opportunities, would doubtless have been more 
 applicable to the purpose of science, yet matter of fact, accurately stated by a 
 sensible observer, must ever have its value. Besides, when can we expect to 
 see the spirit and qualities of a Howard, united in one of our profession, with 
 his fortune and leisure?"! I n tne conclusion of the work, thus rendered addi- 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 114—1 16. t Aikin, p. 91, 2. 
 
339 
 
 tionally interesting to the public, its benevolent author states the determination 
 he had formed of retiring, immediately after its publication, " to the tranquil 
 enjoyment of that easy competence a kind Providence had bestowed upon 
 him:- -happy in the idea, that he had in some degree been the instrument of 
 alleviating the sufferings of a numerous and unhappy set of people, and had 
 excited the attention of hi* countrymen to an important object of civil policy." 
 But the resolution he had thus formed " of resigning all further public concern 
 in this matter, was broken in upon," as he himself informs us, " by the urgent 
 persuasions of some, who were pleased to think him a proper person to assist in 
 the superintendence of one of those great and useful plans he had recommended 
 to the notice of the public. I was the more readily induced to comply with 
 their solicitations," he continues, " from a confidence that the persons asso- 
 ciated with me had the same general ideas with myself respecting the 
 execution of the proposed plan, and would co-operate in it with the greatest 
 zeal and intelligence. It remains now to be tried, how far the wise and 
 humane intentions of the legislature can be accomplished in this country ; and 
 in what degree we can avail ourselves of those lights, which it was the parti- 
 cular purpose of my foreign journeys to collect."* Such is the concluding sen- 
 tence of Mr. Howard's second work on prisons, in which he announces his 
 appointment to an office he was so pre-eminently qualified for, — the 
 superintendence, jointly with two other commissioners, of the execution of 
 the act of the 19th George III. c. 74. for the erection of two penitentiary 
 houses in Middlesex, Essex, Kent, or Surrey, which received the royal assent 
 on the 30th of June, 1779.f How far the hopes he was so fully justified in 
 cherishing, that this measure might produce all the benefit its humane pro- 
 jectors anticipated, were realized, it will be the business of the following chapter 
 of these memoirs to trace ; that of the present extending not beyond the pub- 
 lication of the work in which those hopes are expressed. 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 194, 195. 
 t Journals of the House of Commons, Vol. XXXVII. p. 456. 
 
 xx2 
 
340 
 
 Of the particulars of the various tours undertaken by this indefatigable 
 Philanthropist in the course of the years 1778, 9, little that is interesting 
 remains upon record. In England he adopted the same mode of travelling as 
 he had done upon his former tours, still ordering his meals and wine, as any 
 other traveller would do, at the inns where he stopped, but directing his servant 
 to take them away as soon as they were brought in, and to give what he him- 
 self did not eat and drink to the waiter. But on the continent he performed 
 the greater part of his journeys in a German chaise, which he purchased for the 
 purpose, never stopping on the road but to change horses, until he came to the 
 town he meant to visit ; travelling, if necessary to the effecting his 
 purpose, the whole of the night ; and sleeping, from habit, as well in his 
 vehicle as in a bed. He always carried with him a small brass tea-kettle, a 
 tea-pot, some cups and saucers, a supply of green tea, a pot of sweetmeats, 
 and a few of the best loaves the country through which he passed could furnish. 
 At the post-house he would get some boiling water, and where it was to be pro- 
 cured, some milk, and make his humble repast, while his man went to supply 
 himself with more substantial food at the auberge.* The publication of the 
 result of his former travels had caused him to be held in such deserved estima- 
 tion, not only throughout his own country, but in every part of Europe, that 
 upon entering on the tours whose progress has here been traced, he might 
 allowably assume that tone of authority which enabled him to pursue his 
 inquiries with more ease to himself, and more effect in securing the object for 
 which they were undertaken. Upon these, as upon his former journeys on the 
 continent, though he often thought it advisable to furnish himself with recom- 
 mendations to persons high in rank or office, by whose means he might more 
 effectually prosecute his researches, he preferred, whenever he could, entering 
 the different prisons abroad as an unknown individual, whose visits were not 
 expected, and therefore could not be prepared for. And it was his general 
 custom, whenever he had obtained access to a place of confinement by means 
 
 * Aikin, p. 225. 
 
341 
 
 of persons in authority, to remain for some days longer in the town, for the 
 purpose of revisiting every part, alone and unexpected. " Thus careful was 
 he," observes his friend and biographer Dr. Aikin, " to guard against decep- 
 tion ; and with such coolness of investigation did he execute a design which it 
 required so much ardour of mind to conceive."* Yet, notwithstanding all his 
 caution, he was charged by some persons, not ill-disposed to give the just 
 tribute of applause to his conduct, with being prejudiced, in the course of his 
 visits of philanthropy, by first impressions, whose effects it was very difficult to 
 remove ; — with sometimes giving greater credit than they deserved to persons 
 in inferior stations, — and with being, on the whole, more inclined to censure 
 than to commend. But these charges, an attentive perusal of his books, and 
 a proper consideration of the nature of the work in which he was engaged, will 
 surely dispel from every candid and ingenuous mind. It is from superiors, 
 and not inferiors, that abuses generally proceed; and it is always by their 
 neglect that, in any concerns of a public nature, they can be permitted to con- 
 tinue unredressed ; it is not, therefore, to them that any man in his senses 
 would resort, in the first instance, for their detection. The high commendation 
 which he bestows upon Mr. Smith, Abel Dagge, and many other gaolers, for their 
 humanity and care of their prisoners, and the readiness with which he notices, 
 in terms of approbation, the various improvements introduced into the prisons 
 he inspected, proves, that if he justly censured, to improve, he never was back- 
 ward to encourage by his praise, wherever praise was due. The scrupulous exact- 
 ness with which he has corrected in the work just noticed, even the minutest 
 errors he might have been led into in the hurry of his first inspection of our gaols, 
 shews also that he never intentionally misrepresented, or was willingly deceived 
 in the wish he felt to lay before the public an accurate description of scenes of 
 misery which no one had ever visited before. It was in this spirit too, that, even 
 before his first work was sent to press, he performed a second tour through the 
 whole of England and Wales, that he might be quite accurate in his statements 
 
 * Aikin, p. 89. 
 
342 
 
 of the condition of prisons, none of which he visited less than twice, and some of 
 them as often as three, four, and even five times. " I was determined," said he 
 upon this subject to a reverend friend, who has recently followed him into the 
 world of spirits, " that no one should have to accuse mad Jack Howard (for so 
 he would often call himself, in allusion to some sarcastical remarks which had 
 already been made upon his conduct) of falsehood ; and thus Religion should be, 
 disgraced in me." 
 
 The history of his private life during the two years which this chapter of 
 our memoir embraces is not very fruitful in incidents, the principal part of his 
 time having been spent in his journeys of benevolence at home or abroad. One 
 letter written during this period has, however, been confided to my hands, an 
 extract from which I shall here insert, as a proof of the minute attention he 
 always paid to the keeping his grounds in order, and to the regulation of his 
 private concerns; — of his continual remembrance of his friends in all those little 
 civilities of social life of which great men are generally so unmindful ; and of 
 his never forgetting, under any circumstances, the numerous pensioners on his 
 bounty. It is addressed to the faithful bailiff so often mentioned in the course 
 of this narrative. 
 
 " John Prole 
 " I have settled the Account, you have now in hand 12 : 16 : 8 you will 
 sign the inclosed receit for the Interest. Let Haines girls have each their half 
 Guinea which you will directly pay to M rs Preston for them ; and lett then- 
 father make each of them a pair of Shoes which you will pay for. You keep 
 the two Horses constantly at work, What Lime have you fetcht, the Dung in 
 the Yard are you carrying into the Great Close ; take John Joices and all you 
 can buy, the great Close looks bad, we must get it in order. Have you gone 
 down the Hedges with the Sheers. Has Jos took off any of the Turf, is any 
 thing done at the Clumps, trench them very deep. — One of the Hatts (in the 
 

 343 
 
 Hamper) give to Jos Hopkins at finlake, the rest Ann will take care off.- I 
 have workt hard this week but cannot yet fix my journey. — 
 
 " Yrs 
 " Ormond street Oct 30 1779." " Jn Howard." 
 
 " When the Cart goes for the Doors &c. Carry a Basket of Pears for M" 
 Belsham and another for M" Gadsby." 
 
 The journey mentioned here was that he was about to take into Lancashire, 
 to superintend the printing there of the work which was to give to the world 
 the further results of that extraordinary plan of universal benevolence in which, 
 for the last six years, he had been so actively engaged. It was, therefore, a 
 trait not the least surprizing in his character, that whilst his heart was ex- 
 panded to pity, and to succour the distresses of the most wretched and outcast 
 of the human race, and every faculty of his being seemed to be absorbed in 
 the glorious work of devising some general plan for their relief, he could yet 
 individualize the objects of his private bounty, and administer to their wants 
 with as constant and minute attention, as though he had no other pursuit to en- 
 gage his time or his thoughts, and had been but the benefactor of his village, 
 rather than of the world. 
 
- m* 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ■ 
 
 Mr. Howard's acting as supervisor of the penitentiary houses intended to be erected near 
 the metropolis ;— his resignation of that office ; — his fourth journey upon the continent, 
 in the course of which he inspected the prisons and hospitals of Denmark, Sweden, 
 Russia, and Poland, and re-visited many of those of Holland and Germany ; — his 
 fourth general inspection of English prisons, and his third and fourth visits to Scot- 
 land and Ireland, 1780 — 1782. 
 
 THE valuable and novel information which Mr. Howard's two first journeys 
 to the continent of Europe, in pursuit of the benevolent object to which he 
 had devoted himself, had enabled him to communicate to his countrymen re- 
 specting the regulation of prisons in foreign states, could not fail to place before 
 their eyes, in the most striking point of view, some of the principal defects in 
 their own. With as strong a partiality to their institutions, — I might say with 
 as proud a conviction of their superiority, as any nation under the sun, there is 
 not, perhaps, on the face of the globe, a people more alive to the calls of hu- 
 manity, or more ready to adopt any suggestion, not too revolting to their, 
 prejudices, for mitigating the sufferings of the distressed, than are the English. 
 As soon, therefore, as they were aware of the excellency of the discipline em- 
 ployed in Holland for the correction of offenders, by rendering their imprison- 
 ment a means at once of their punishment and their reformation, our legis- 
 lators determined to try the effects of a similar system in their own country, 
 
IV 
 
 * f 
 
 34o 
 
 - 
 
 and accordingly passed the bill, mentioned in the last chapter of these 
 memoirs, for the erection of penitentiary houses for the metropolis and 
 the adjoining counties, in such situations as to three supervisors, appointed 
 by virtue of this act, should seem proper. In the execution of such a plan 
 it was impossible but that the attention of government should be imme- 
 diately directed to the individual in whose recommendation that plan origi- 
 nated, and who, therefore, was of all others the best qualified for its establishment 
 on a solid and permanent basis. Mr. Howard was accordingly the first super- 
 visor named for carrying into effect the purposes of the new act, having asso- 
 ciated with him in this honorable and important office his intimate friend, Dr. 
 Fothergill, and Mr. Whatley, the treasurer of the Foundling Hospital. For 
 the appointment of the former of these gentlemen he made an express stipulation 
 before he would consent to act upon his own ; and even when his wishes on 
 this point were complied with, as they were without much difficulty, other 
 obstacles presented themselves to his acceptance of an office for the discharge 
 of whose duties the whole kingdom, could the opinion of its inhabitants have 
 been collected, would have pronounced him to be so admirably qualified. And 
 though these obstacles would never have arisen in a mind less humble, or less 
 selfish than his, it was with no small trouble that his unaffected modesty, 
 and the low estimate which he at all times set upon his own abilities and 
 exertions,yielded to the strong solicitations of his friends, particularly 
 of the late Sir William Blackstone, the great promoter of the design, to 
 take upon himself a duty which no man living could so well, or so satis- 
 factorily perform. Determined, however, to adhere to that absolute disinterest- 
 edness which he had hitherto observed, in all his exertions for the good of his 
 fellow-creatures, he declined accepting any recompense for his services upon this 
 occasion, the trifling salary provided by the act for their performance having 
 operated as an objection to his acquiescence in an appointment which would 
 justly entitle him to its receipt. But these difficulties having, at length, been 
 happily surmounted, he set himself, with his wonted zeal and perseverance, to 
 
 Y Y 
 
346 
 
 the execution ofhis important trust, and carefully inspected several pieces of 
 ground in the vicinity of London, for the erection of the projected penitentiary 
 houses. The spot he fixed upon for this purpose was Islington, and in this choice 
 he was supported by Dr. Fothergill, whilst their colleague gave the preference 
 to Limehouse, and adhered to his selection with so much pertinacity that his 
 associates were about to refer their views to the decision of the twelve judges, 
 when the advice of Mr. Justice Blackstone upon his death-bed, to adhere firmly 
 to their own, left Mr. Howard, upon the decease of Dr. Fothergill, in the latter 
 end of the year 1780, no alternative between the giving up an opinion, of the 
 propriety of which he was every day the more firmly convinced, and the re- 
 signation of an office which had occasioned him little but trouble and vexation. 
 His adoption of the latter was accordingly signified to Earl Bathurst, then lord 
 president of the council, in the following letter, written in January, 1781 : — 
 
 " My Lord, 
 " When Sir William Blackstone prevailed upon me to act as a super- 
 visor of the buildings intended for the confinement of certain criminals, I was 
 persuaded to think that my observations upon similar institutions in foreign 
 countries would, in some degree, qualify me to assist in the execution of the 
 statute of the 19 th year of his present Majesty. With this hope, and the pros- 
 pect of being associated with my late worthy friend D r Fothergill, whose wishes 
 and ideas upon the subject I knew, corresponded entirely with my own, I cheer- 
 fully accepted his Majesty's appointment, and have since earnestly endeavoured 
 to answer the purpose of it; but, at the end of two years, I have the mortification 
 to see that not even a preliminary has been settled. The situation of the in- 
 tended buildings has been made a matter of obstinate contention, and is at this 
 moment undecided. Judging therefore from what is past, that the farther 
 sacrifice of my time is not likely to contribute to the success of the plan, and 
 being now deprived, by the death of D r Fothergill, of the assistance of an able 
 colleague, I beg leave to signify to your Lordship my determination to decline 
 
347 
 
 all further concern in the business ; and to desire that your Lordship will be so 
 good as to lay before the King my humble request, that his Majesty will be 
 graciously pleased to accept my resignation, and to appoint some other gentle- 
 man to the office of a supervisor in my place. I have the honor to be, 
 
 * With great respect &c. 
 
 u John Howard."* 
 
 This resignation having been duly accepted, it is natural to suppose that 
 Mr. Howard would gladly have availed himself of the opportunity now 
 afforded him, of passing the remainder of his days in the retirement he loved, 
 the charm of whose seclusion from all the bustle and inquietude of public life, 
 would have been heightened by the recollection of the incalculable benefits he 
 had been the means of conferring on thousands of the most miserable of the 
 human race. But it was not his disposition to rest satisfied with what he had 
 accomplished in the great cause to which he had consecrated some of the best 
 years of his existence, whilst any thing remained to be done for the further 
 advancement of his benevolent design. Vast regions were still unexplored, and 
 he therefore determined to visit, without delay, the northern courts of Europe, 
 and to carry the torch of philanthropy to Denmark's seas of ice, and Russia's 
 fields of snow. In prosecution of this design, he reached Ostend on the 27th 
 of May, 1781, and entering Holland by way of Rotterdam, spent a few days 
 in re-inspecting the prisons there. In the rasp-house he found the men's rooms 
 very close and offensive, their inhabitants being taken out only once in the 
 week. At the whipping-post, which was in the middle of the court, in full 
 view of the male criminals, some of our dexterous countrymen, but a few 
 months before, had undergone a severe flagellation for melting their pewter 
 spoons, and forming them into keys, for the purpose of opening the doors of 
 their prison. The metal was hardened with a mixture procured from an 
 apothecary as a remedy for the tooth-ach. The scheme was defeated, however, 
 by the treachery of an English Jew, who, for this service, obtained his liberty, 
 
 * Account of llm Lazarettos of Kuropr, p. 226. 
 Y Y 2 
 
348 
 
 though he had been committed for thirty years. In the house of correction at 
 Leyden, fourteen men and twenty women were employed in spinning wool, 
 the task for each being thirty-two stivers (nearly three shillings) a-week.* 
 
 At Bremen, the first town he stopped at in Germany, our traveller was obliged 
 to apply to the magistrates for permission to visit the prison, one of the keepers 
 having lately been confined for fourteen days to bread and water, for suffering 
 a townsman to converse with a prisoner. In the gaol in the tower of one of 
 the gates, he found a pi'isoner in the same cell in which he had seen him five 
 years ago : he had made his escape, but been retaken. The doors to the cells 
 here were five inches thick, and had plates of iron between the boards : the 
 windows were only very small apertures. In another prison, descending by ten 
 steps from the street, were six close dungeons, without windows, one of them 
 but six feet nine inches, by four feet and a half, and seven feet high. This 
 dismal abode of human wretchedness contained at this time no prisoners ; one 
 who had been confined there having lately beat himself to death against the 
 wall, which was stained with his blood. The poor-house in this city was so 
 admirably conducted that it could not but give pleasure to its benevolent visitor, 
 as he assures us it would do to all who should inspect it, so liberally were the 
 poor accommodated in the decline of life, and so cheerful were their counte- 
 nances. Not long before this visit, Bremen was remarkable for the number of 
 children begging in the street, but a workhouse had lately been established for 
 the purpose of employing them, the expence of which was defrayed by volun- 
 tary contributions, collected weekly from house to house. Here he saw about 
 170 of these little urchins from six to nine years of age, clean, cheerful, and 
 happy, whilst busily employed in spinning at small wheels, under the direction 
 of proper masters and mistresses, being allowed twelve sous (6^c/.) a week at 
 least, but neither boarded nor lodged in this well-regulated house. At Har- 
 burg, thirteen slaves were working on the fortifications with irons on one leg, 
 and chains, supported by girdles round their waists. They were guarded by 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 2, 3, 6 ; 104. 
 
349 
 
 soldiers, who had orders to lire on them if they attempted to escape ; but, not- 
 withstanding' this, when the Elbe was frozen over in the preceding year, five 
 got away to Hamburg. In the Biitteley in the latter city, were only two 
 criminals and one debtor. Mr. Howard saw them at chapel, where divine 
 service was constantly performed every Sunday and Thursday, and they 
 seemed very attentive and much affected. The prison was clean, but its visitor 
 perceived by the countenance of the gaoler, and his unwillingness to shew him 
 the torture-room again, that he had seen his publication. The whole number 
 of prisoners in the great house of correction for the reception of the poor, 
 beggars, and petty offenders here, was about 600, and Mr. Howard was happy 
 to find a great alteration in the countenances of the inhabitants, and the state 
 of the house, as to cleanliness. One of the regents gave him a copy of the 
 regulations of this institution, which are very excellent; great care being 
 taken to instruct all persons confined here in their moral and religious duties, 
 and to make them orderly and industrious citizens. Such of them as had 
 learned a trade, and appeared to be reformed and diligent, were, upon their 
 humble petition, discharged. Their diet was good, and the sick were allowed 
 whatever was ordered for them by the physician. The hospital in this city 
 was formerly the pest-house, a name which, from its close and crowded wards, 
 its visitor thought that, even now, it might properly bear.* 
 
 At Rendsburg, the first town in the Danish territories of which we have 
 any account, our benevolent tourist found seventy-seven slaves, who, when not 
 prevented by sickness, were employed on the fortifications, receiving the 
 while the same quantity of bread, and half as much money as was allowed to 
 the soldiery. Their countenances were more clear and healthy than those of 
 the common people, who had opportunities of procuring spirituous liquors. At 
 the entrance of this, and many towns in Denmark, a whipping-post stands 
 conspicuous, on the top of which the figure of a man is placed with a sword 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st Edit. p. 23 — 8. 
 
350 
 
 by his side, and a whip in his hand ; an exhibition which induced Mr. Howard 
 to suggest the propriety of some such intimation of the punishment that will 
 follow crime, in his own country. But the success of such a measure in Eng- 
 land would perhaps be problematical ; though one of the modes of punishing 
 offenders in the lower walks of life, resorted to in that country, would hardly 
 fail of being beneficial, if introduced with some modifications here. It is that 
 of walking them through the streets, attended by the officer of justice, in what 
 is called a Spanish mantle ; which, as well as words can describe, what Mr. 
 Howard has accurately represented in a plate, resembles, as near as possible, one 
 of those tubs used for ale in some parts of England, which are formed of unbent 
 staves, narrowing from the top to the bottom, through a hole in which the delin- 
 quent puts his head, his body being covered to the knees by the tub, whose weight 
 is supported on his neck and shoulders. So much is this disgraceful punishment 
 dreaded in Denmark, that it is one cause of night-robberies never being heard 
 of in Copenhagen. In that country gibbets and wheels are also placed on 
 eminences, on which the bodies of malefactors are sometimes left after execu- 
 tion, to deter others from their crimes ; but criminals are never put in irons 
 there before their trial, unless when apprehended in the act of murder, or some 
 other little less atrocious crime. The common mode of execution is behead- 
 ing ; but for the more heinous offences, the barbarous custom of breaking on 
 the wheel, was still resorted to. After the sentence of a criminal was con- 
 firmed by parliament, he was allowed, from eight, to fourteen days to prepare 
 himself for death, as the chaplain might think that he required. Executions in 
 this country were, however, rare : a great number of women for the murder 
 of their children, being condemned to the spin-houses for life ; a sentence so 
 much more dreaded than death itself, that since its adoption, this crime had 
 been of much less frequent occurrence. Since 1771, the punishment of grand 
 larceny had been whipping and slavery for life.* In Copenhagen, where Mr. 
 Howard arrived early in the month of July, he observed, in the state prison of 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 28, 9. 
 
3,51 
 
 the citadel, a prisoner guarded by an officer and a soldier, in the room with 
 him, and another soldier at the door, though the guard-room was below. The 
 weather being very warm, the window was thrown open, and this was all the 
 fresh air ever allowed to prisoners here, who were not suffered to stir out of their 
 rooms : they had, however, an ample allowance for diet from the king. In one of 
 the rooms of this prison, which, though close was clean and white-washed, 
 Mr. Howard observed chains fastened to the wall, which had been used to 
 render more irksome the confinement of Counts Struensee and Brandt, who 
 were immured in this prison on account of the infamous and unfounded charge 
 which her weak but tyrannical husband thought proper to prefer against the un- 
 fortunate Caroline of Denmark, the sister of our venerable sovereign. In the 
 prison at the state-house, which contained several damp dungeons, the female 
 delinquents were at work in their several apartments ; their allowance being two 
 shillings a week. A resident chaplain read prayers to the prisoners every day. 
 In the prison in the blue tower, for the servants of the court, as in that at the 
 state-house, Mr. Howard could not but remark a striking contrast between the 
 cleanness of the women's apartments, and the dirtiness of the men's, which he 
 attributed to the gaolers' wives inspecting those of their own sex, and being 
 more attentive to their duty than their husbands. The allowance of prisoners 
 confined here was two-pence a-day, with which they purchased what they 
 chose from the gaoler, who kept a public-house. In the prison in which cri- 
 minals from the garrison, and slaves, were confined, two rooms, though only 
 ten feet high, contained two tiers of barrack beds, dirty beyond description ; 
 the place being so crowded as to be very unhealthy; as were also two close 
 rooms for the sick, over them. Here were 143 male slaves, who never put 
 off their clothes at night, and therefore, having new ones but once in two 
 years, and those very slight, many of them were almost naked. Some 
 had light chains upon one leg only, others heavier ones upon both,- and 
 some iron collars. One was chained by his wrists to a wheelbarrow, the 
 punishment of those who had attempted to escape. On another side of 
 
352 
 
 the court were seven dungeons, descending by ten steps under ground, 
 with a small window in each, and containing amongst them eleven pri- 
 soners. " The distress and despair in the pale and sickly countenances of 
 these slaves," says our author, " were shocking to humanity." On the 
 Sunday he attended public service in the chapel of the gaol, where, of the 
 few convicts whom he saw, the man chained to the wheelbarrow was one. A 
 guard of twenty men always attended them at chapel, and at their work upon 
 the fortifications, where they were kept to hard labor for eleven or twelve 
 hours a day, their pay being a stiver each, or a stiver and a half when they 
 worked more hours, with seven pounds of black bread in five days. In 
 returning from their work, some of the worst among them, who had 
 passed under the hands of the executioner and been branded, were chained to 
 each other, in pairs, with loose chains. At his third visit to this prison, our 
 Philanthropist was pleased to find that it was put in better order, and swept : 
 such was the effect of his remonstrances, even in foreign countries, where he 
 was comparatively unknown. Its offensiveness, however, always gave him a 
 head-ache, such as he suffered from on his first visits to our English gaols. 
 In the spin-house, about three or four hundred prisoners were employed in 
 sorting, carding, and spinning wool for the king's military cloth manufactory, 
 an immense establishment, which employed from five to six hundred persons, 
 and consumed all the wool spun in the various houses of correction throughout 
 the Danish dominions. The rooms of this prison were spacious, but close 
 and offensive, the windows never being opened. In the court-yard were 
 several small rooms, with a man in each, employed either in chopping or 
 rasping logwood. Sixty-six women were confined here for life, and all 
 at work in carding or spinning wool, in one room. Separate rooms were 
 assigned to the sick. The mode of providing for the poor in this city, was 
 one which our author justly characterizes as good, but not common, nearly a 
 thousand of them being lodged in the great hospital, where they were 
 employed by a Scotch manufacturer, mostly in spinning worsted ; and being 
 
3,53 
 
 allowed to keep all they could earn, they purchased their own provisions, 
 according to the regulations, and at the prices fixed by the directors. The hos- 
 pitals here were generally clean and well regulated, except the orphan-house, 
 in which were 225 boys, most of whom had cutaneous disorders upon them, 
 and were very sickly in their appearance ; the rooms being close and dirty, 
 and the whole establishment without proper management. When the director 
 shewed our illustrious countryman the sick-rooms, he told him, with his usual 
 plainness of speech, that they were all such. He remained in Copenhagen six 
 days, and then crossed the Sound at Elsineur, for Stockholm.* 
 
 In travelling through Sweden, Mr. Howard found the houses much cleaner 
 than in Denmark ; whence he was very naturally led to hope that he should see 
 the same difference in the prisons, especially as he was told that they were visited 
 every Saturday by an officer from the Chancery. In this reasonable expecta- 
 tion he was, however, completely disappointed, as he found them full as dirty 
 and offensive as those he had recently inspected. In Stockholm he visited 
 three prisons, none of whose prisoners were ever in irons : if their offence was 
 capital, they were sent, after condemnation, to the great prison, whence they 
 might appeal to parliament, which, as in Denmark, must confirm their sen- 
 tence before it could be executed. The general mode of execution was by the 
 axe ; women being beheaded on a scaffold, which was afterwards set on fire, 
 and consumed with the body. The reigning king, Gustavus III. had 
 humanely abolished all torture in his dominions, and had ordered a dark cellar 
 applied to this purpose, in one of the prisons of Stockholm, to be bricked up ; 
 but, strange to say, that order had not been obeyed ; for on Mr. Howard's 
 insisting on seeing the wall, to assure himself of the fact, he found it still open. 
 The prison for the southern district of the city consisted of six rooms, four of 
 which were so dark, dirty, and offensive, that five prisoners immured within 
 their walls were almost stifled, in consequence of receiving no air but through 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 28 — 35. Thomasson's MS. Journal. 
 
 z /. 
 
354 
 
 a small aperture in the door of each room : the other two were light and airy, 
 and were sometimes used as an infirmary. The gaoler here, as in all the 
 prisons of this country, sold liquors ; so that his room exhibited a scene which 
 our Philanthropist had but too often witnessed with a vain regret at home, 
 being filled with idle people drinking with the prisoners. In the felons' 
 prison for the city the rooms were very dirty, and the windows of all but one 
 shut, so that it was not at all surprising that the countenances of their wretched 
 inmates should bespeak neglect and oppression. In one of two rooms appro- 
 priated to criminals sentenced to confinement on bread and water, were two 
 persons who seemed to be almost starved, being allowed only two pennyworth 
 of bread a day, and that sold to them by an unfeeling gaoler. Seeing these 
 miserable objects thankful for a small donation of bread, which his own liberal 
 hand no doubt bestowed, Mr. Howard remarked, that " a sentence for twenty- 
 eight days must be very severe ;" to which the savage brute replied, that " it 
 was good for their health." There was no chapel in this gaol, nor were its 
 prisoners ever allowed to leave their noxious cells. Coffins were here 
 kept ready for the dead, a precaution which, in such a place, and with such a 
 keeper, was any thing but needless. The Smed garden, or prison for con- 
 demned criminals, already mentioned, was more spacious, and better regulated. 
 It was in an airy situation, and furnished with a court-yard, in which the men 
 and women were each allowed to walk an hour every morning, and another in 
 the afternoon. The latter were never put in irons, as, except when very re- 
 fractory, they never should be : five of them were employed in their rooms at 
 needle-work. In a room on the other side of the court were two barrack beds, 
 in which were three men loaded with irons. Their allowance was two pence^ 
 a-day, with which they could purchase thirty ounces of bread, though they were, 
 perhaps not very judiciously, allowed to spend it as they pleased. In a bed 
 in the chapel convicts rested till their execution, which was sometimes three 
 weeks after their sentence was definitively pronounced : two days before they 
 suffered their irons were taken off. The rooms of the prison for debtors being 
 
355 
 
 all open, their inhabitants associated with each other as they pleased, so that 
 from the want of a proper separation of prisoners, a practice, very unusual on 
 the continent, prevailed here, of taking garnish, according to the custom so 
 general in England, wherever a similar intermixture was allowed. Being in 
 a close part of the city, this was one of the unhealthiest gaols in Stockholm, 
 but it was about to be removed to a more airy situation. The spin, or rasp- 
 house contained about 180 prisoners, who were employed in sorting, carding, 
 or spinning wool, and were paid for whatever they did above their task, at the 
 rate of a half-penny a pound ; and, as a further encouragement to industry and 
 good conduct, became entitled to an abridgement of their confinement, in pro- 
 portion to their diligence. The women's rooms were clean ; but the counte- 
 nances of the men and boys sickly ; and the younger prisoners of both sexes 
 were very improperly confined with older, and more hardened offenders. The 
 rooms employed as an infimary were clean, but the scurvy very generally pre- 
 vailed here, owing to close confinement, the want of cleanliness, and the use 
 of salt provisions. The prisoners were obliged to attend prayers in the hall 
 every day, morning and evening. An inspector resided on the premises in a 
 convenient house, and with what in Sweden was considered a large salary, 
 being four times that of the gaoler ; but neither the condition of the wards, nor 
 the general appearance of the prison did him any credit, so that by what he 
 witnessed here, Mr. Howard was but the more confirmed in the opinion he had 
 long entertained, that it was only in houses of correction, where there were 
 not resident inspectors with large salaries, that humanity, care, and attention, 
 could be looked for. During his stay in the Swedish capital he visited many 
 of its charitable institutions, though he particularizes but one, where all was 
 neat and clean, the floors of its wards, as was the case also with the rooms of 
 most private houses, being strewed with the shoots of the spruce fir, or of the 
 juniper tree, to prevent infection.* 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, p. 36—9. Thomassons's MS. Journal. 
 
 sal 
 
356 
 
 Whilst in Sweden, Mr. Howard had been exposed to more than the usual 
 hardships of travelling in that cold and inhospitable clime, as he could get 
 nothing to eat but sour bread and sour milk, neither fruit nor garden stuff being 
 frequently to be met with ; though confirmed habit confined him to a vege- 
 table diet, and the resolution of his earlier life, to which he always inflexibly 
 adhered, prevented his ever taking either wine or spirits on his journeys. 
 His principal, and almost his only support was, therefore, tea, and the unwhole- 
 some bread of the country, which he was compelled to eat, so that he had little 
 reason to regret quitting Sweden for Russia, a country whose rapid march from 
 barbarism to civilization, and from insignificance to importance among the 
 nations of the globe, had at this time powerfully directed the eyes of all 
 Europe to her movements, and rendered the uncontrolled power, which was 
 directing the energies of an immense population to plans of grandeur and of 
 public utility, an object of general curiosity. Her rising institutions could 
 not, therefore, fail to interest a man, to whom, more justly perhaps than to any 
 other of his race, might the adage of the Roman poet be applied, " humani 
 nihil a me alienum puto ;" for it was upon this principle, sublimized by the purer 
 motives of the Christian faith, that he was now traversing a country whose 
 inhabitants, scarce half a century before, were looked upon as semi-barbarians, 
 unknowing and unknown to all the refinements of civil and of social life. In the 
 modern capital of that country, which was of itself a proof of the magnificent 
 spirit of its late and of its present ruler, rising as it had done in the space of a few 
 years from the midst of a desert into one of the largest cities in the world, he 
 spent three weeks in inspecting its prisons and its charitable institutions. He 
 entered it, however, in the most private manner, having himself told the late 
 Dr. Lettsom that, as he approached the city, he left his carriage and horses at 
 some short distance from it, and walked in alone, in order that he might re- 
 main unknown, and visit the prisons in the state in which they were commonly 
 to be found, not in one prepared for his inspection. The Empress had, 
 however, gained intelligence of his arrival, and sent him a permission to come 
 
35? 
 
 to court, of which he never availed himself, as he told the messenger who 
 brought it, that he had devoted himself to visit the prisons of the captive, and 
 not the courts, or the palaces of kings. At this time all the peasantry and 
 servants of Russia were the bondmen, or slaves, of their feudal lords, who might 
 inflict upon them any corporal punishment they thought proper, short of death, 
 or banish them to Siberia, on giving notice to the police of the oflence they had 
 committed. If, indeed, in the severity of their chastisement they should even 
 be the cause of their deaths, the punishment of the law was easily evaded by 
 those who had any interest at court. Yet, even in such a state of wretched 
 degradation as was this, kindness and humanity lost none of their native influ- 
 ence on the human heart ; and Mr. Howard was gratified in learning, that in- 
 stances of the most devoted attachment of peasants to their lords, when they 
 had been kindly treated, were by no means uncommon ; in proof of which a 
 gentleman was pointed out to him in Petersburg, whose peasantry, hearing of 
 his intention to sell his estate, gave him all the money they had saved, on con- 
 dition that he should keep his land, and still continue to be their master. So 
 interwoven, indeed, was the spirit of slavery with the whole fabric of the 
 Russian laws, that debtors were very often employed as slaves by the govern- 
 ment, who paid them the yearly wages of twelve roubles — about forty-eight 
 shillings of our money — which went in discharge of their debts. In some cases, 
 if any person chose to give security for the payment of this sum so long as the 
 slave should live, or till his debts should be discharged, he might take him out 
 of confinement ; but if he failed in producing him when demanded, he would be 
 liable to pay the whole debt immediately. What a pity would it seem to the 
 devisers of so ingenious a method of paying off old debts, that they could 
 not pursue their victim beyond the grave, but must end their devices " where the 
 cruel cease from troubling — where the weary are at rest." Yet Mr. Howard 
 reminds us that a very similar plan had lately been suggested by a writer in 
 our own free country ; but I am rather proud, than ashamed of my ignorance, 
 alike of its principles and its author. Whoever he may have been, — and if I 
 
358 
 
 ever read his work, I have forgotten it, — I hope he lived to follow the example 
 of the Marquis de Beccaria, who, in the first edition of his celebrated Treatise 
 on Crimes and Punishments, proposed the adoption of this very principle, but 
 being afterwards convinced of his mistake, very candidly confessed that he had 
 injured the rights of humanity, and was heartily ashamed of ever having 
 avowed so cruel an opinion. It was perfectly characteristic of so despotic a 
 government as that of Russia, that there should be no regular gaolers in any 
 of its prisons, but that they should all be guarded by the military : nor can we 
 be surprised that, when the lower orders of the people were looked upon as 
 slaves, little or no attention should have been paid to the reformation of their 
 morals, when they had sunk, if sink they could, a step lower in the scale of 
 society by becoming criminals. No capital punishment was there in use for 
 any crime but treason, though that of the knout was often dreaded more than 
 death, so that it sometimes happened that a criminal would endeavour to bribe 
 the executioner to kill him. In connection, however, with this subject, I have 
 been favored with a very curious anecdote, communicated by Mr. Howard 
 himself to Dr. Brown, and by his kindness transmitted to me, very nearly 
 in the words in which I now relate it. 
 
 Mr. Howard had heard it repeatedly asserted, that capital punishments had 
 been abolished in the Russian dominions, and had even read that they were 
 so, in books of very high authority, but suspecting that this boast was not 
 correct in all the latitude which had been ascribed to it, he determined to 
 satisfy himself of the fact. He did not, however, look for exact information to 
 the courtiers of the empress, or to the chief ministers of justice, because he judged 
 that they would be disposed to exalt by their representations the glory of their 
 sovereign ; but taking a hackney-coach, he drove directly to the abode of the 
 executioner. The man was astonished and alarmed at seeing any person, hav- 
 ing the appearance of a gentleman, enter his door, which was precisely the 
 state of mind his visitor wished to find him in; and he endeavoured to 
 
359 
 
 increase his confusion by the tone, aspect, and manner which he assumed. 
 Acting, therefore, as though he had authority to examine him, he told him 
 that if his answers to the questions he should propose were conformable to 
 truth, he had nothing to fear. He accordingly promised that they should be 
 so ; when Mr. Howard asked, " Can you inflict the knout in such a manner as 
 to occasion death in a short time ?" " Yes, I can," was the answer. " In 
 how short a time ?" " In a day or two." " Have you ever so inflicted it ?" 
 " I have." " Have you lately ?" " Yes ; the last man who was punished 
 with my hands by the knout, died of the punishment." " In what manner do 
 you thus render it mortal ?" " By one or more strokes on the sides, which 
 carry off large pieces of flesh." " Do you receive orders thus to inflict the 
 punishment ?" " I do." At the close of this curious dialogue, Mr. Howard left 
 the executioner, fully satisfied that the honor of abolishing capital punishment had 
 been ascribed to the infliction of a cruel, lingering, and private death, in lieu of one 
 sudden and public. It was most probably to this very instance of the fatal 
 infliction of this barbarous punishment that he himself was an eye-witness, and 
 which he thus describes: " August 10, 1781, I saw two criminals, a man and 
 a woman, suffer the punishment of the knoot. They were conducted from 
 prison by about fifteen hussars and ten soldiers. When they arrived at the 
 place of punishment, the hussars formed themselves into a ring round the 
 whipping-post, the drum beat a minute or two, and then some prayers were 
 read, the populace taking off their hats. The woman was taken first ; and 
 after being roughly stripped to the waist, her hands and feet were bound with 
 cords to a post made for the purpose, a man standing before the post, and 
 holding the cords to keep them tight. A servant attended the executioner, 
 and both were stout men. The servant first marked his ground and struck 
 the woman five times on the back. Every stroke seemed to penetrate deep 
 into her flesh. But his master thinking him too gentle, pushed him aside, took 
 his place, and gave all the remaining strokes himself, which were evidently 
 more severe. The woman received twenty -five, and the man sixty: I pressed 
 
360 
 
 through the hussars, and counted the number as they were chalked on a board ; 
 and both seemed but just alive, especially the man, who yet had strength 
 enough to receive a small donation with some signs of gratitude. They were 
 conducted back to prison in a little waggon. I saw the woman in a very weak 
 condition some days after, but could not find the man any more." The kind 
 of weapon from which he no doubt received his death wound, is thus described 
 amongst the instruments of punishment which the governor of the Petersburg 
 police himself showed to our illustrious countryman, and explained to him 
 their use. " The knoot whip, is fixed to a wooden handle a foot long, and 
 consists of several thongs about two feet in length twisted together, to the end 
 of which is fastened a single tough thong of a foot and a half, tapering towards 
 a point, and capable of being changed by the executioner, when too much 
 softened by the blood of the criminal." But besides this savage scourge, he 
 was shewn the axe and block ; the machine then out of use for breaking the 
 arms and legs, and the instrument for splitting the nostrils of offenders ; 
 that for branding them, by punctuation, and then rubbing a black powder on 
 the wounds ; and another called a cat, which consisted of a number of thongs 
 varying from two to ten. From examining the instruments of a punishment, 
 at whose severity his heart sickened, he turned to inspect the prisons in which 
 those who had been, or might be subject to their cruel discipline, Mere confined ; 
 — but there his harrowed feelings met with no relief. In the fortress were many 
 vaulted rooms, used as a prison for deserters, and criminals of various sorts, who 
 worked on the fortifications, or in drawing wood out of the Neva. Thirty-five of 
 these poor wretches were crowded into one room, insufferably hot, from having 
 no air but what was admitted through two small apertures of ten inches by nine. 
 In another part of the building, 75 slaves, with logs fastened to both their legs, 
 were lodged in four rooms still more close and offensive. Every room was, how- 
 ever, furnished with an oven, or stove, and most of them with barrack beds, con- 
 veniences which the gaols of our more humane and civilized country were but too 
 generally without- In two low cellars of the police prison, very hot and offensive, 
 
301 
 
 Mr. Howard saw fifteen men, most of them in irons, and all subsisting on 
 voluntary contributions collected in boxes before their grates, and at the 
 adjoining church, which was of no other use to them, as they were never per- 
 mitted to go out of their rooms, except on particular occasions, when they 
 were attended by a guard of soldiers. The new government prison exhibited a 
 scene of equal wretchedness ; for there, sixty-eight prisoners, including two 
 confined for debt, and twenty-seven male and female vagrants, were crowded 
 together into one little room. The suburbs of the city contained another 
 prison, consisting of several timber houses, surrounded by high pallisades, in one 
 of which were twenty-five prisoners, all of them with irons on both legs. Their 
 whole number was near eighty, some being out at work. Amongst them 
 were many boys of twelve or fifteen years of age, all of them seeming to be 
 under close confinement, though there was a large court, in which they might 
 be allowed to walk with safety. Nor was this the lot of felons only, but of 
 debtors also, none of whom were ever permitted to go out of their rooms in 
 the prison appropriated to their use, subsisting there entirely on what alms 
 they could collect in the boxes hung out of their windows, as is still the case with 
 many an unhappy wretch confined in our English gaols. Government, however, 
 supplied them with wood for fuel, but with nothing more. One of them told 
 his benevolent visitor, that he had been confined five years for a debt of fifteen 
 roubles (three pounds); and another for four years, for one of five pounds. A 
 house of correction was, however, building in this city, whose external con- 
 struction, at least, augured something like an attention to the improvement of 
 its prisons. It was an elegant though plain building, with wide stone stair- 
 cases, good sized and lofty rooms, with windows, and an aperture in the 
 ceiling, to each. But, disgusted as he was with the places of confinement 
 already in existence here, and slender as were his hopes, that by so despotic a 
 government any radical alteration would ever be effected in the internal 
 arrangements of those now erecting with an exterior splendor, that would but 
 belie their inward wretchedness, he viewed several of the hospitals of Peters- 
 
 3 a 
 
362 
 
 burg with pleasure ; the rooms even of the insane being as clean as those of 
 Holland, and the attention paid to their patients as exemplary. In his 
 account of these institutions he has noticed, with proper commendation, a 
 wise expedient peculiar to this country, of providing summer-rooms for con- 
 valescent patients, by the use of which the evil common to all other hospitals, 
 of contaminating their walls by a constant succession of sick, was avoided. 
 But still more was he delighted with an institution of the reigning empress, 
 for the education of the female children of the nobility, and of a limited 
 number of commoners, on a plan most admirably adapted to preserve their 
 health, and to promote their instruction in every branch of learning, every 
 accomplishment of social, and every duty of domestic life, which would 
 be useful to them in the stations in which they were likely to be placed. On 
 his visit to this noble establishment, its royal protegees made him a present of 
 a very curious piece of their work in ivory, which long adorned his favorite 
 root-house at Cardington. Of the plan upon which it was conducted, he has 
 given a very minute and interesting detail, furnished by his countryman, Dr. 
 Guthrie, at this time physician to the military cadet corps of nobles. Its 
 benefits had very recently been extended to 280, instead of 240 children of 
 commoners, by the generosity of General De Betskoi, " the enlightened and 
 liberal head and director-general of this, and all the other institutions of the same 
 kind, established by" the munificent but eccentric Catharine.* To the public 
 worth of this excellent man no higher tribute could possibly be borne, than 
 such a commendation from such a man must necessarily convey. But I am 
 happy in having it in my power, through the kindness of Dr. Brown, to lay 
 before the public another proof of the diffusion of a spirit of genuine benevo- 
 lence through this northern clime, which, whilst it reflects the highest credit 
 upon one of this gallant veteran's companions in arms, evinces how correct an 
 appreciation of the merits of our great Philanthropist had even then been 
 formed in this distant region of the globe. A public society in Russia had 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 40—7. 
 
363 
 
 testified to General Bulgarkow the high sense they entertained of his worth, 
 by presenting him with a gold medal, for the services he had rendered to his 
 country, by endowing and enlarging some of her noblest and most useful 
 charities, especially a seminary, upon a very large scale, for young ladies 
 without fortunes. With a liberality which does him honour, he evinced how 
 well this mark of public gratitude was bestowed, by declaring, that what he 
 had done regarded his own country only ; but that there was another gentle- 
 man, whose extraordinary philanthropy was well known to the world, who 
 had extended his humanity to all nations, and was therefore alone worthy of 
 this distinction ; and he accordingly sent the medal to Mr. Howard. 
 
 From Petersburg our traveller made an excursion to Cronstadt, the principal 
 station of the Russian navy, where he found 151 slaves, malefactors, debtors, 
 and peasants sent here by their lords, busily occupied in removing ballast 
 from the ships. They had healthy countenances, and were robust and strong, 
 though their diet seemed but scanty. They were coarsely, but warmly clad 
 by government, who also allowed them fuel. Of the prison here Mr. Howard 
 says nothing, the ground being already marked out for a new one, which was 
 to be erected under the superintendence of our countryman, Admiral Greig. 
 The naval hospital contained many spacious rooms, all perfectly clean ; 
 whilst the appearance of the patients lodged in them gave plain proofs of the 
 care and attention with which they were treated.* It was not until after he 
 had repeatedly visited every prison and hospital it contained, that Mr. Howard 
 made preparations for leaving the modern capital of the Russian empire, where 
 he had been, if possible, more than usually diligent and minute in his inspec- 
 tions ; because the first man in the empire had assured him, that the publication 
 which gave an account of them would certainly be translated into the Russian 
 tongue. Before he set off, he was, however, attacked by a fit of the ague ; 
 but he did not suffer so unpleasant a visitor to prevent his pursuing a long and 
 
 * Appendix lo Stale of Prisons, 2(1 Edit. p. 47, 8. 
 
 3a 2 
 
364 
 
 fatiguing journey through this inhospitable climate, and at an inclement season, 
 in the course of which, to use his own expression, " he travelled his ague off." 
 The roads from Petersburg to Moscow were intolerably bad, and not very 
 safe, yet did he decline an offer pressed upon him by the Russian government, 
 of the sure protection of a soldier, as his escort on the way ; but seating himself, 
 with his servant, in a light and easy travelling carriage of the country, which he 
 purchased for this purpose, he set off upon a journey of 500 miles, which he 
 accomplished in less than five days, never having his cloathes off for a moment, 
 either by night or day. During this extraordinary expedition, — the first, 
 beyond all doubt, performed with such rapidity, on a line of road, and upon an 
 errand so singular as this, — I am informed by two friends of Mr. Howard, who, 
 whilst this work was passing through the press, have rejoined him in a better 
 world, that a little circumstance occurred strikingly characteristic of his 
 habitual generosity, whilst it shows the wretched condition of the lower orders 
 of the people, through whose bleak and barren regions he was thus hastily 
 passing. On arriving at the end of one of the stages of his journey, in which 
 he had been driven more than usually well, he was anxious to reward his 
 drivers for the attention they had shewn to his wishes, and therefore offered 
 them each a sum equal to about half-a-crown of our money, where others would 
 have given but a few copecs, perhaps to the value of two-pence or three- 
 pence of English currency. The poor fellows were, however, afraid to 
 accept so unprecedented a gratuity ; but Mr. Howard told them, that he had 
 committed his life to them, and he therefore must insist upon their taking 
 the money ; as, after some little hesitation, they eventually did. " This," says 
 Mr. Kingsbury, upon whose authority, and that of his excellent relative, the 
 late Mrs. Taylor, of Caversham, but formerly of Portswood, I have related 
 those particulars of his journey to Moscow, which his own letter does not 
 supply, " was like Howard." Of the fidelity of the Russian peasantry to 
 their trust, another anecdote has been communicated to me by a female 
 friend of his, still living. In his way to Moscow, he met with a young 
 
365 
 
 lady on a journey of several hundred miles, under the protection of a Siberian 
 of the lower order, to whose care she was committed, and who, he was con- 
 vinced, from the attention he showed her, would sooner lose his life than she 
 should receive any injury which he could prevent. " We," said Mr. Howard, 
 as he related this circumstance, " call such persons savages ; but in this respect 
 they are not to be compared with some of our own people." In the course of 
 this journey, though he delayed not its progress for a single hour to take either 
 rest or refreshment, he visited the prisons at Wyschnei Wolotschok, and at 
 Tver; in the former of which he found sixteen prisoners employed on the 
 public works, all except one in irons, two of them being even chained together 
 by the neck. The rooms of the latter were so offensive, that a medical gentle- 
 man who visited them with him did not choose to look into more than one; 
 though, fearless in the path of duty, he ventured into all. This was a 
 new prison, but the state he found it in, induced him to express a hope 
 that it might not be a model for others, as it was reported that it would. The 
 poor wretches confined in both these prisons subsisted entirely on charitable 
 contributions.* These were also the chief, though not the sole support of 
 the seventy-four prisoners in the great prison at Moscow, which consisted of a 
 number of wooden houses, containing one, two, or three rooms each; furnished 
 with a barrack bedstead, or shelves, for its inmates to sleep upon. In the 
 day-time they were allowed to walk in the courts, excepting those in the houses 
 in the two upper courts, in one of which a Russian gentleman was always locked 
 up by himself, for having cruelly whipped his slaves. In another part of the 
 prison were four wooden cages, in which two men, with irons on their legs, 
 were chained by the neck to the wall. The prison was guarded by soldiers, 
 and provided with a hut for the sale of a sort of sour small beer, the favorite 
 beverage of the Russians, apples, and bread, the only articles, it would seem, in 
 which the alms collected at the begging boxes were allowed to be spent. The 
 women were in a separate court, but none of them in irons ; and in two cha- 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 48. 
 
366 
 
 pels in the prison divine service was regularly read. In the new government 
 prison, in this city, sixty-nine petty offenders subsisted on charitable donations, 
 and looked dirty and sickly. In a room upstairs Mr. Howard saw eight cri- 
 minals with irons round their necks, each of them being also fastened by a 
 heavy chain to a log. In every room a soldier stood with a drawn sword in 
 his hand. The prison for debtors was very dirty, and in five of its rooms its 
 benevolent visitor saw above a hundred miserable wretches lying on the floor, 
 most of them half naked ; whilst, at a little distance, were six criminals in one 
 of the most offensive rooms he ever entered. Nor did even the soldiery of this 
 absolute government meet with more merciful treatment at its hands, for the 
 military prison of its ancient capital consisted of but one room, into which, 
 though its dimensions were only twenty-nine feet by twenty-six, and nine feet 
 high, 130 prisoners were crowded, sleeping upon two tiers of barrack bed- 
 steads without beds. The pale sickly countenances of these unhappy men 
 bespoke oppression and misery, and prepared their compassionate visitor to 
 witness, with the less surprise, the crowding of fifty-five of their sick into one 
 small ward in the military hospital. In another prison he found fifty-seven 
 men and seventeen women huddled together in a single room. The latter were 
 employed in weeding the garden, the former in emptying a moat at a palace 
 near the place of their confinement, all of them without irons, and distinguished 
 but by a black cross on the back of their cloathes. They worked from morning till 
 night, except for two hours at noon, and w r ere allowed nearly three halfpenny- 
 worth of bread a-day, but were denied salt by way of punishment. One of 
 his visits happening to be on a Sunday, our pious countryman was surprised to 
 find these prisoners at work as upon any other day, some of them in cutting 
 the barberry hedges of the palace garden. In that garden the female prisoners 
 confined for petty offences in the convent prison, about a mile out of the city, 
 were also employed in weeding, the men being engaged in sawing wood. 
 An unoccupied palace, consisting of near a hundred rooms, had been used as a 
 lazaretto when the plague was raging here in 1772, and in going over it Mr. 
 
367 
 
 Howard could not but think that it was well adapted for a healthy prison. The 
 hospitals at Moscow were much better regulated than its prisons, and in some 
 points exhibited an attention to cleanliness, from which the directors of similar 
 institutions in England might have learned a useful lesson. Their principal 
 defect was the want of air, from the injudicious practice of keeping the win- 
 dows constantly closed. Some of these Mr. Howard flung open whilst walking 
 round the military hospital with its physician, which purified it more than all 
 the shoots of fir with which its rooms were plentifully strewn. In the garden 
 of this hospital he met with a wooden building for drying herbs, the com- 
 pletest of the kind he had ever seen, and his partiality to botanical and 
 horticultural pursuits induced him to give in his work an accurate representa- 
 tion of it from a drawing by his countryman, Mr. Dickinson. Whilst here he 
 also frequently visited the great Foundling Hospital, at the particular desire 
 of his friend the good General De Betskoi, but lest a description of it should 
 be thought a digression from the main subject of his work, he refers his readers, 
 as his biographer must also do, to Mr Coxe's " Account of the Prisons and 
 Hospitals in Russia, Sweden, and Denmark," for further information on 
 the rules and regulations of this celebrated institution.* During his stay in 
 this city, our Philanthropist addressed a letter to his friend the Rev. Mr. Smith, 
 conveying to him the intelligence which, of all others, he knew would be the 
 most interesting to himself, and to his other friends at Cardington — by whom, 
 from his great aversion to letter-writing, he always wished that his commu- 
 nications to his pastor should be considered as a kind of epistles general — 
 that he was well ; had succeeded in the objects of his journey ; and was now 
 turning his steps homeward. 
 
 it 
 
 Dear Sir " Moscow Sept r 7 th 1781 
 
 1 am persuaded a line will not be unacceptable even from such a 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 48—53. 
 
368 
 
 Vagrant, I have unremittedly pursued the object of my journey and have 
 lookt into' no palaces or seen any Curiosities — so my letters can afford little 
 entertainm' to my friends : I staid above three weeks at Petersburg. I de- 
 clined every honour that was offered me, and when pressed to have a soldier to 
 accompany me, I declined that allso. Yet I fought my way pritty well 500 
 miles and bad roads in less than five days ; I have a strong, yet light and easy 
 Carriage, which I happily bought for 50 Rubles, (aV 10 Gu s ) This City is situated 
 in a fine plain totally different from all others, as each house has a garden 
 which extends the City 8 or 10 miles, so that 4 and 6 horses are common in the 
 streets ; I content myself with a pair, tho' I think I have drove to day near 
 20 miles to see one Prison and one Hospital ; I am told sad stories what I am 
 to suffer by the Cold yet I will not leave this City, till I have made repeated 
 visits to the Prisons and Hospitals, as the first Man in the Kingdom assured me 
 my publication would be translated into Russian. My next step is for Warsaw 
 ab' 7 or 8 Hundred miles — every step being homeward I have spirit to encoun- 
 ter it, tho' thro' the worst Country in Europe : I bless God I am well, with 
 calm easy spirits, I had a fitt of the ague a day or two before I sett out from 
 Petersburg, but I travelled it off, the nights last week being warm — I tho 1 
 I could live where any Men did live, but this Northern Journey especially in 
 Sweden I have been pincht, no fruit no garden stuff, sour bread, sour milk, 
 but in this City every luxury even pine apples and potatoes. Baron Dimsdale 
 and his Lady will be on his return ab 1 my time, we purpose meeting at Berlin, 
 but I am under a promise to visit Professor Camper and Mr. Hope in Holland, 
 who has sent me into Russia an order to see the Prisoners of Warr so that 1 
 cannot accompany them ; I must allso review some places in Flanders before my 
 return ; a line to the Post house at Amsterdam would be a cordial to me ; I have 
 no time yet to write to John Prole, please to acquaint my boy I am well and 
 will write to him from Warsaw ; I hope Mrs. Smith has any thing she chusea 
 out of my Garden. Remember me to our friends Mr. Gadsby Mr. Belsham 
 
369 
 
 Load)* Mr. Costing &c. How does Mr. ******* g ( , on at ******* 
 * * * *, shall I find him a usefull Neighbour, relative to my Schools &c. ? Accept 
 the best wishes of " D r Sir 
 
 " The Rev" M r Smith, Bedford " Your Affectionate friend 
 
 " ParLondre en Angleterre." " John Howaud." 
 
 The unhappy country to which our philanthropic countryman now turned his 
 footsteps from the ancient capital of that empire, the hands of whose warriors, 
 so deeply dyed in blood, put the finishing stroke to the disgraceful partition 
 which blotted out her name from amongst the nations of the world, furnished 
 nothing to divert his mind from the scenes of wretchedness which, with an 
 almost unvarying constancy, had presented themselves to his observation since 
 he entered on his inspection of the prisons of the more northern states of 
 Europe. In that in the town-house at Warsaw, he saw eight new dungeons 
 for criminals, four on each side of a passage only six feet wide ; whilst in ano- 
 ther, five, out of seven prisoners were in irons ; the allowance there being little 
 more than three-halfpence a-day. The entrance to a third was through a 
 guard-room full of soldiers. In one of its rooms, only twenty feet by ten, in 
 its dimensions, were twenty-six miserable objects, some of them sick upon the 
 dirt floor. That near the Vistula, contained eighty-one prisoners, who were most 
 of them employed in sawing wood, and in other occupations in the streets, for the 
 inhabitants, who got their labor at one-third less than that of others, by which 
 means the public were eased of a part of the expence of supporting them. In 
 the suburbs of the city was the spin-house, improperly so called, many of the 
 miserable wretches confined there seeming to have nothing to do. Such of 
 them as were employed, for working eleven hours a-day, were paid 3id. each, 
 which went to their keeper for feeding, " or rather," says Mr. Howard, " as 
 appeared by their looks, for starving them." The sick were lying on floors of dirt, 
 without medical or any other assistance, a circumstance which gave our Philan- 
 thropist so unfavorable an opinion of the police of this country, that he felt no 
 
 3 B 
 
310 
 
 inclination to visit the prisons in its provinces ; or, as was his constant practice 
 in other places, to revisit those of the capital. Nor were the hospitals of 
 Warsaw in a much better condition than its prisons, as, with the exception 
 of the clean rooms of the great hospital, in which 800 patients were attended 
 to by the Sisters of Mercy, with their wonted kindness, they were in general 
 crowded, close, and offensive ; that of St. Lazarus, in particular, being charac- 
 terized as the worst he had ever seen.* 
 
 Proceeding into Silesia, our traveller was gratified to find a somewhat more 
 humane mode of treatment adopted towards persons under confinement there. 
 At Breslau none were in irons, though most of the rooms in the city prison had 
 a staple in a strong timber of the floor, to which criminals might be chained if 
 they should be refractory ; and also two dungeons, ten steps under ground. Their 
 general allowance here was near two pounds of bread a-day; in addition to which, 
 those confined in another small gaol near the guard-room, Mere provided with 
 fire and candle. These latter were employed for seven or eight hours a-day 
 out of doors. The spin-house contained thirty-six poor people, besides eigh- 
 teen persons committed for slight offences : the latter, fed upon soup or bread, 
 were occupied in spinning for eleven hours a-day; and were required regu- 
 larly to attend the chapel of the work-house every Sunday and Thursday. The 
 regulations of one noble hospital here did great honor to the Brotherhood of 
 Mercy, to whom it belonged ; but the others contained nothing remarkable.-)" 
 In the capital of the Prussian dominions, which was the next place he visited, 
 several of the more atrocious criminals in the city prison were in irons, and 
 chained to staples in the wall of dungeons ten steps under ground, which were 
 solely used for their confinement, the others being kept in different rooms, 
 never containing more than three or four each. The allowance to cri- 
 minals was near 2%d. a-day ; and after trial, which, except on extraordinary 
 occasions, must be within three months from their commitment, they were 
 • Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 53—5. t lb. \>. 55, 6. 
 
311 
 
 allowed to go into the court-yard, the men for three hours a-day, an hour 
 each time, the women but for one. Previous to trial, to avoid confederacies, 
 they were, however, kept in close custody, and a very singular custom pre- 
 vailed of compelling them to pay the gaoler on their discharge, a grosche 
 (about l;\f/.\ or 5 after three months confinement, half a grosche a-day for this 
 }KM-iod of their imprisonment, unless the judge should order otherwise. Debtors 
 were alimented by their creditors, at 31 d. a-day; and on failure of payment 
 but for one week, were immediately discharged. Besides a resident inspector 
 of this prison, which was under very excellent regulations, one of the judges was 
 compelled to visit it once every week. In one of its rooms was an alphabetical 
 list of the prisoners who had been confined here, in order that, if they should come 
 a second time, they might suffer a severer punishment ; a practice which I have 
 known to be adopted with great advantage in some of our English gaols, particu- 
 larly in the houses of correction in the county of Lancaster, where the black book 
 of the gaoler regularly lays before the chairman of the quarter-sessions, as a guide 
 for proportioning the punishment of the court to the character of the offender, 
 who may have been more than once under its correction. In the court, as in 
 the city prison, all the rooms contained barrack beds and German stoves ; and 
 on Mr. Howard's observing to the gaoler the propriety of having fires in the 
 latter, though it was then early in October, the man asked whether criminals 
 had no firing allowed in England ; and on being told that in some prisons 
 they had not, he exclaimed with evident astonishment, " how then do they exist 
 in winter ?" — a question very natural for him to ask, but rather more difficult 
 for those who withheld this necessary accommodation to answer. Here our 
 traveller saw two Spanish vests, one of them weighing fifty, the other seventy- 
 five pounds, which were sometimes worn by criminals at the gate of this pri- 
 son, and by smugglers confined here, at the custom-house, for one, two, and 
 even three, hours. The vigilance of the police of this well-governed city, in 
 clearing its streets of beggars, had, since his former visit, increased the number 
 of prisoners in its admirably-regulated house of correction from 450 to 546. 
 
 3b 2 
 
372 
 
 In its orphan-house, forty-six boys and forty-one girls, all healthy and cheer- 
 ful, were employed in spinning wool, in two spacious rooms ; and looking 
 into their bed-rooms, its visitor was pleased to observe, that they were all 
 clean and airy. The infirmary contained but one sick child, and the whole 
 appearance of the place was so clean and healthy, as to exhibit a striking 
 contrast to the institution of this description at Copenhagen, though Mr. 
 Howard's conductor pretended that the employment of the children, which 
 was precisely the same as at Berlin, was the cause of the cutaneous disorders 
 prevailing there. In the house of correction at Spandau, he learnt that a 
 distinction was very properly made, by confining such prisoners as were 
 l-eckoned infamous in a room by themselves. On inquiring here, as he had 
 done at similar places of confinement elsewhere, whether the work of the pri- 
 soners maintained them, he received the same general answer as he had before 
 done of — no, no.* In proceeding hence into the Hanoverian electorate, he had 
 an opportunity of exhibiting that determined spirit which never forsook him, 
 whatever might be the circumstances in which he was placed. " Travelling 
 in the King of Prussia's dominions," says Dr. Aikin, whose account of this charac- 
 teristic adventure agrees, in substance, with two or three manuscript ones by some 
 other of Mr. Howard's friends, now in my possession, " he came to a very narrow 
 piece of road, admitting only one carriage, where it was enjoined on all pos- 
 tillions entering at each end, to blow their horns by way of notice. His did so ; 
 but, after proceeding a good way, they met a courier travelling on the king's 
 business, who had neglected this precaution. The courier ordered Mr. Howard's 
 postillion to turn back ; but Mr. Howard remonstrated, that he had complied 
 with the rule, while the other had violated it ; and therefore that he should 
 insist on going forwards. The courier, relying on an authority, to which, in 
 that country, every thing must give way, made use of high words, but in vain. 
 As neither was disposed to yield, they sat still a long time in their respective 
 carriages : at length the courier gave up the point to the sturdy Englishman, 
 who would on no account renounce his rights"-\ 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 57—60. } Aikin, p. 219. 
 
373 
 
 At Brunswick, Mr. Howard re-visited the prison for slaves, and was pleased 
 to find that a material alteration had taken place for the better ; their appear- 
 ance being now healthy and clean, and their cloathing good. The prison for the 
 confinement of citizens (for debt it is to be presumed), in the town-house, 
 and that for capital offenders, were alike unoccupied, and had been so for a 
 considerable time ; nor had any execution taken place here for fourteen years 
 past. The house of correction contained about seventy prisoners, who were 
 always locked up, and furnished with very curious dormitories, in rows of boxes 
 in the passages. It was Sunday when Mr. Howard visited this wretched 
 place; he was surprized, therefore, to find all the prisoners, except some 
 lunatics in chains, at work in carding and spinning wool ; a circumstance which 
 sufficiently accounted for the keeper's preventing him seeing the chapel, on 
 pretence that no person was admitted during service time. After it was over, 
 he was, however, suffered to go in, when he concluded, from the sand on the 
 floor near the prisoners' benches, that few or none of them had attended. His 
 conductor insisted on carrying a pan of charcoal through the rooms, but his 
 fumigation could not overcome the offensiveness of this dirty house, which in all 
 probability was but seldom visited, notwithstanding the public notification upon 
 its doors, that any decent people might inspect it, on putting a florin (about 
 2 s. 6d.) into the box, to assist prisoners whose terms should be expired, on their 
 journey, without begging or stealing by the way. Nothing was, however, to 
 be given to the keepers, or to the prisoners. In the prison at Hanover, he 
 found twenty-nine prisoners, many of whom had been confined six months, and 
 others even a year, without being brought to trial ; a delay of justice which 
 would seem to have been peculiar to England, and to the countries under her 
 dominion. The seven lower rooms of the prison were appropriated to the 
 more atrocious criminals, one of whom Mr. Howard saw in each room secured 
 by chains on his feet, fastened to the walls, and by irons on the wrists, with a 
 bar between them, two feet long, so that he could neither make use of arms or 
 legs. The keeper was old and infirm, and as he grew older, his prison evi- 
 
314 
 
 dently grew dirtier. It was with grief he learnt that, in the electoral domi- 
 nions of the sovereign of his own free country, the horrid and execrable prac- 
 tice of the torture, on whose discontinuance, at his last visit to them, he had 
 felicitated himself, had lately been revived, a prisoner having twice suffered the 
 Osnaburgh torture in the gaol here, about two years ago. The executioner 
 had already torn off the hairs from his victim's head, breast, &c. when a con- 
 fession was wrung from him by the excruciating pain he endured, and an end 
 was then put to his sufferings by his execution. The time for performing 
 these deeds of darkness here, as in other countries, in which they were still 
 permitted to disgrace humanity, was two o'clock in the morning, — the scene, the 
 gloomy cellar of the prison, in which the horrid engines of this fiend-like 
 cruelty were kept. On such occasions, a counsellor of justice and a secretary 
 attended, with a doctor and surgeon, an Osnaburg executioner; and sometimes 
 the gaoler. If the criminal fainted, strong salts were here applied to him, in- 
 stead of the vinegar used in other places. Such was the refinement in barba- 
 rity practised in a country under the government of George the Third, when 
 he had been eighteen years seated upon the British throne ! Very different, 
 however, was the scene which presented itself on turning from this wretched 
 gaol to the house of correction for the Hanoverian capital, which, within the 
 last two years, had been founded by its director, Burgomaster Aleman, to 
 whose memory, says the kindred spirit of a Howard, this prison " is the best 
 monument that can ever be erected." This house, appropriated to vagrants, 
 children and petty offenders, was in an airy situation, and under careful in- 
 spection. The children, fifty-four in number, were cloathed in a neat uniform 
 made in the house ; where, besides the cloathes 6f all its inmates, the coverlids 
 of the beds had been manufactured. The girls were all employed in spinning 
 cotton and wool, the boys in carding and spinning linen and wool, and in making 
 list shoes and carpeting for sale ; specimens of which Mr. Howard brought with 
 him to England. In one room, six boys, the eldest only twelve years of age, 
 were working at so many looms for saddle-girths and cloths. In two others 
 
SIS 
 
 the women were spinning, and there were smaller rooms tor the men, who were oc- 
 cupied in rasping hartshorn and logwood. The rules for regulating the hours of 
 work, learning, recreation, &c. were hung up in the school-room ; both old and 
 young were neat and clean ; and every thing in the house appeared quiet and 
 orderly.* 
 
 This was universally the case in Holland, whenever he visited its well- 
 regulated places of confinement, of which he commenced a review upon his 
 return homeward, at Utrecht, where he found the criminals in the stadt- 
 house confined to bread and water ; and in the spin-house nine women, who 
 had been publicly whipped, very properly separated, both in their work and 
 bed-rooms, from the other prisoners. The prison at Zwolle, in Overyssel, had 
 no felons, nor had there been an execution there for many years. The house 
 of correction was a neat building, in which, however, the male prisoners were 
 injudiciously set to work, at spinning or weaving, in their sleeping-rooms. In 
 two separate working-rooms the women were knitting and spinning ; but nine 
 of them, who had been branded, were working in a room by themselves, and 
 had also a separate lodging-room. As Mr. Howard examined this prison at 
 the express desire of his friend Professor Camper, who thought it one of the 
 best in Holland, he procured a plan of it, from which he afterwards had an 
 engraving made.f At Dort he inspected the prison in the stadt-house, which 
 seldom contained any prisoners, though the jurisdiction of its magistrates 
 extended over thirty villages ; and he was credibly informed, that for the last 
 thirty or forty years there had been but one debtor here, and he continued in 
 confinement but for fourteen days.J At this time it had, however, for a 
 wonder, one solitary criminal within its walls. But one criminal, either, did 
 he find, and that one a boy, in the prison at Breda, though thirteen villages, 
 and some of them large ones, were under the jurisdiction of this city : its 
 house of correction contained, however, fifteen men and four women. At 
 Groningen, on the gallows, placed on an eminence at a little distance from the 
 * Appendix to State oi Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 21—3. t Il>. p. 15—17. J 11). p. 18. 
 
316 
 
 town, he saw a criminal hanging, who had heen executed the year before ; 
 malefactors being often left, in Holland, to hang thus, until they dropped into 
 a deep pit underneath, which was designed for the reception of their hones. 
 In the rasp-house at Leeuwarden he noticed two closets for the refractory, the 
 bottoms and sides of which were composed of pieces of wood placed edgeways, 
 so that prisoners confined there without shoes must be in a painful situation.* 
 From the latter town Mr. Howard proceeded to Amsterdam, to pay his pro- 
 mised visit to Mr. Hope, and to avail himself of the order for inspecting the 
 prisoners of war in that country, which this gentleman forwarded to him in 
 Russia, as he did by visiting the few English sailors confined in the Admiralty 
 at Rotterdam, who appeared healthy, though several had died but a short 
 time before, owing in part, perhaps, to their being confined in a small, close, 
 and dirty room, misnomered an hospital. Their allowance was eight stivers 
 (about 7^d.) a-day ; they had each a bed and coverlid, and on most days 
 were allowed to walk for some hours in the court-yard of their prison. 
 In the pest-house, near Ley den, the crew of the Barker East Indiaman, 
 just wrecked on this coast, were confined. One of its large rooms was 
 fitted up with beds, &c. for wounded seamen, but it had been very injudiciously 
 contracted, by two partitions through its whole length. During his stay at 
 Amsterdam he learnt, from good authority, that in the eight years preceding 
 his visit only five criminals had been executed there, of whom two had been 
 beheaded, one broke on the wheel, and two hanged/]" In London, the number 
 had been 302 — a disproportion disgraceful to our national character, and 
 shocking to humanity. 
 
 Entering the Netherlands by way of Antwerp, Mr. Howard re-inspected 
 the prisons, and visited the hospital and orphan-house of that city ; the former 
 of which, though commodious, was offensive ; but the latter was spacious, and 
 quite clean.J In Brussels, he visited the prison for debtors, to whom their 
 
 * State of Prisons, 3d Edit. p. 63. f Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 2, 3, 9. $ lb. p. 103. 
 
377 
 
 creditors were compelled to advance a month's aliment. The old house of 
 correction here was at this time empty, its prisoners having been removed to 
 the new one at Vilvorde, where they were confined in apartments less airy 
 and convenient. That prison was then occupied by 186 men and 8G women, 
 cloathed in an uniform ; and principally employed in spinning cotton, though 
 some of the men were weaving, others making cloathes, or shoes; and some of 
 the women spinning flax, making lace, or mending the cloathes of the house. 
 Each of the three classes, into which the prisoners were divided, had a sepa- 
 rate refectory and work-room, which Mr. Howard found to be offensive, from 
 the windows being all shut, though the weather was calm and fine. But the 
 passages into which all the bed-rooms opened were more offensive still, as, 
 when he saw this house before it was inhabited, he thought they would be. 
 Most of the floors were of plaster, and could not be washed. The prison 
 contained a room for the magistrates, but, on account of its distance from 
 Brussels, they too seldom visited it : the countenances of the prisoners, indeed, 
 evidently bespoke inattention and neglect. The hospital de St. Jean, which 
 was under the care of the religeuse of the order of St. Augustine, was in a still 
 more wretched condition ; the wards being close, and, as the surgeon himself 
 observed, " offensive beyond description."* At Alost the gaol, for a territory 
 which included 137 villages, contained but seven prisoners ; three of whom 
 were confined in a dark room, one in another still more horrid, and the 
 remaining three in a strong cage, notwithstanding the security of which, two 
 of them were wantonly loaded with irons : they were never permitted to go out ; 
 though one of them said that he had been confined for four months, another 
 for seven. The pale sickly countenances of the whole bespoke inhumanity and 
 misery. )• The male prisoners in the house of correction at Ghent were 
 considerably increased in number since Mr. Howard's last visit, as they 
 now amounted to 206, beside 106 petty offenders. The former were occupied 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prison*, 2d Edit. p. 97—9. t lb. p. 103. 
 
 3c 
 
378 
 
 in spinning, weaving, making nets, making, mending, or washing cloathes, 
 or working in the hake-house and kitchen. They all appeared clean and 
 healthy, the greatest pains being taken to keep them so. For this pur- 
 pose the doors of the bed-rooms were left open while the prisoners were out of 
 them, so that they were not in the least offensive. In another, and quite a 
 separate quarter of the building, the petty offenders were employed in the same 
 way as the criminals, except that some of them worked as carpenters, turners, 
 and smiths, for the use of the prison. The bread, soup, and meat provided for 
 the prisoners were good and sufficient, and every thing in the arrangement of 
 the house bespoke the care and attention of its director. " If, however," says 
 the minute inspector of this noble prison, " I venture to point out some defects 
 in so good an institution, that others may avoid them, I hope to be excused. 
 The rooms and corridors are too low — the infirmaries are not sufficiently 
 detached — there are not proper work-rooms — the women have not separate 
 dormitories — the sewers are improperly placed — the distribution of provisions, 
 being but once a day, is not frequent enough — and the bowls, being of wood, 
 cannot easily be kept clean."* In the rasp-house at Bruges, he found 
 fifty-eight men, spinning and weaving, each of them having a separate dor- 
 mitory over the work-rooms. A man had been confined in this prison thirty- 
 four years, for an attempt to set fire to it ; since which the ceilings had been 
 arched with brick between the joists : it was now in the care of four 
 friars and the same number of nuns ; under whose management few of the 
 prisoners earned more than two-pence a-day. The hospital of this city, a 
 spacious and airy room, with a wainscot partition, dividing the men from the 
 women, was attended by twenty nuns, who, rising every morning at four, 
 were constantly employed about their numerous patients. The directress of 
 the pharmacy had celebrated but the last year her jubilee, or fiftieth year of 
 residence. These charitable sisters asked their visitor whether he was a 
 • Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 99, 100. 
 
3T<) 
 
 Catholic ; to which, with his wonted liberality, he replied, " I love good 
 people of all religions.'' " Then," said they, in the true spirit of those who 
 think their faith the right one, " we hope you will die a Catholic.''* 
 
 This appears to have been the last place whose prisons Mr. Howard visited 
 during his present tour, in the course of which he had travelled 4,465 miles, 
 and he most probably returned to England, by way of Ostend, about the 
 middle of December, time enough to fetch his son home for the Christmas 
 vacation, part of which was spent at Cardington, and part in London. During 
 their short visit to the metropolis, he inspected the prisons erected in lieu of 
 those destroyed by the populace in the alarming riots of 1780. The King's 
 Bench was rebuilt on the plan of the former new buildings, but still without 
 an infirmary. Many good regulations had been recently introduced for 
 putting a stop, in a great measure, to gaming, and to the illicit practice of 
 selling spiritous liquors and smuggled goods. The keeper of the Borough 
 Compter, whose prison was destroyed in the general wreck, had hired an 
 adjoining house, in which twenty-three prisoners were crammed into one 
 lodging-room, but sixteen feet in length, and fourteen broad ; the women 
 sleeping in the common day-room, about the same size, with a stone floor, and 
 none of the prisoners having any bedding.f The Fleet was also rebuilt, nearly 
 upon its former plan, and with some of its former abuses, for the tapster still 
 had the cellar floor. The billiard and Missisippi tables were now, however, 
 put down, and the code of laws enacted by the master-side debtors was very 
 properly abolished.}; 
 
 After continuing about a week in London, Mr. Howard returned to Car- 
 dington with his son, for whom he was anxious to mark out some plan for the 
 completion of his education, which, whilst it should give him all the advantages 
 he had such frequent occasion to wish that he had himself enjoyed, should 
 Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 103, 4. t lb. p. 177, 180. $ lb. p. 170. 
 
 3 c 2 
 
380 
 
 keep his morals uncomtaminated by the admixture of the vicious with the vir- 
 tuous, the idle with the industrious, which must inevitably take place in all semina- 
 ries of public education. It has been said, I know not on what authority, that it 
 was Mr. Howard's intention to have brought this young man up for the ministry 
 amongst the Protestant dissenters ; but that this was not the case must, I should 
 think, be pretty evident from his having determined to send him to Eton, and 
 even proceeded so far in the execution of his purpose as to have arranged every 
 thing for his comfortable residence there, when, on asking the master with 
 whom those arrangements were made, what care was taken of the morals of 
 his pupils, and of their religious improvement, and learning that there was 
 none, or, at least, that in those respects their tutors could have no effectual con- 
 trol over them, the negociation was completely broken off. He then took a 
 journey into the north of England, to advise with his friends on the course he 
 should adopt, when, on the recommendation of a highly respectable dissenting 
 minister at Liverpool, by whom I have been favored with the conversation which 
 he then held with him upon the subject, he was induced to place him for a while 
 under the care of the Rev. Mr. Walker, of Nottingham, " whose great abili- 
 ties," says another gentleman whose opinion, I believe, was asked upon this 
 occasion, " were only equalled by the amiableness of his manners."* 
 
 To this new seminary Mr. Howard himself conducted his son, and it was 
 this circumstance which induced him to commence his third general inspection 
 of its gaols in the north, rather than as he formerly had done, in the west of 
 England, as he accordingly did at Nottingham, on the 21st of January, 1782. 
 After spending a couple of days here with his son and his new tutor, he pro- 
 ceeded into Derbyshire, where, in the bridewell at Chesterfield, he saw one 
 sickly object in the cellar in which the women were confined.f In the prison 
 for debtors, at Sheffield, a cutler was at work, whose debt was only fifteen 
 
 * Dr. Aikin's Letter. — Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 289. 
 t Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 213. 
 
381 
 
 pence, though the charges of recovering it, for which he was imprisoned, were 
 
 lT.v. Gd. In the fortress at Hull he found the Dutch prisoners of war duly 
 
 sensible of the kindness with which they were treated, as were seven others in 
 
 Lincoln castle of the assistance they derived from a charitable collection made 
 
 for them by the chancellor of the cathedral there, when they were taken ill 
 
 upon their march from Hull to Shrewsbury, to which place a great number of 
 
 their countrymen had lately been removed* The court-yard of the bridewell 
 
 for the county of Norfolk, at SwafTham, had been enlarged since Mr. Howard's 
 
 last visit to it, and a work-room erected, yet had the prisoners no employment ; 
 
 and were still confined to their rooms. In the gaol at Ely the debtors and 
 
 felons were together ; one of the former, who had a wife and five children, 
 
 being kept in prison for the costs of his debt, which amounted to 4s. 9d. and for 
 
 3s. Gd. more as the gaoler's fees. There can be no doubt but that he was 
 
 soon set at liberty when his situation was thus made known to one who, in 
 
 similar cases of distress, had so often proved himself the prisoner's friend. (" • 
 
 Finishing his northern journey on the 7th of February, on the 22d of the 
 same month Mr. Howard set out upon a tour to the west of England, in which 
 he was occupied until the 5th of March. At Winchester he found that many 
 improvements had been made in the place in which prisoners of war were con- 
 fined, since his last visit, the whole prison being also much cleaner than it then 
 was ; though on inquiring for the surgeon, with whose attention to his patients 
 he had been so highly delighted, he was sorry to learn that he had died of the 
 gaol fever, which had been fatal to many persons confined here. Very dif- 
 ferent was it, however, at Bristol, where the wards of the newly-erected prison 
 were dirty ; the bread of the prisoners was not good ; and less attention was paid 
 them than in the old one.;]; At Devizes, the bridewell for the county of Wilts 
 at this time contained a weaver, who had five children, confined there for a debt 
 of 10s. 2d. and the costs, amongst which was a charge of 10s. Gd. for bringing 
 •Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 251, 142. f lb. p.201, 199. I lb. p. 136, 7. 
 
382 
 
 him to prison, though from a distance of but seven miles. The same charge 
 was made for bringing a woman hither, whose original debt was only 2s. 3d. 
 In the other bridewell at Marlborough, on their visitor's asking the prisoners 
 whether they should like to work, they readily answered that they should, one 
 or two of them adding, that their wives had even brought them wool, but that 
 the keeper would not permit them to spin it.* 
 
 Mr. Howard's third journey, in the course of this year, was into Scotland, 
 on his way to which country he re-visited, on the 25th of Mai*ch, the bridewell 
 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where the prisoners were at work, as indeed he 
 always found them, beating hemp and flax by a machine, the keeper having the 
 profits of their labor, instead of any salary. The prisoners of war in the castle 
 at Edinburgh were well treated, though some of them were rather too closely 
 confined. This was not the case, however, with the poor criminals in the 
 Tolbooth, who were crammed into a horrid cage, the condemned being chained 
 to an iron bar. "I say poor," observes their compassionate visitor, "because 
 such as have money have too much liberty. For in the same prison, I lately 
 saw some, who were confined for a riot, drinking whiskey in the tap-room, in 
 company with many profligate townsmen, who were readily admitted, as they 
 promoted the sale of the gaoler's liquors." Their visitor, however, touches but 
 lightly on these faults, because the late lord provost, Mr. Stuart, was using his 
 best endeavours to get a new gaol built, in a more airy situation, and under 
 better regulations. With the Royal Infirmary here he was much delighted, 
 few hospitals in England exceeding it in airiness and cleanliness, whilst the 
 greatest attention was paid to its numerous patients. He also noticed, with 
 particular commendation, the Orphan-house, every part of which was clean, 
 as were also the children, who looked cheerful and healthy. During his con- 
 tinuance in Edinburgh the freedom of the city was presented to him, a compli- 
 ment which he duly acknowledges in his work. As he considered that it 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 236, 7. 
 
383 
 
 would answer no end to describe all the prisons he saw in this country, Mr. 
 Howard has only given us the particulars of those at Dumfries, Aberdeen, and 
 Inverness, the two former of which, having been burnt down, the one wholly, 
 the other in part, some few years since, by persons confined in them, had now 
 their rooms very properly vaulted with brick. The Tolbooth at Aberdeen was 
 a neat and clean prison, but that at Inverness was the dirtiest and most 
 offensive in Scotland.* 
 
 Shortly after his return from this journey, early in the month of April, 
 our Philanthropist proceeded to London, where he remained about ten days, 
 in the course of which he re-inspected a few of its prisons, and amongst them 
 that for the manor of Stepney and Hackney, which, in consequence of the 
 act, in the preceding year, for diminishing its fees, and regulating the proceed- 
 ings of the court which committed hither, was in a ruinous condition, and but 
 rarely had a prisoner or two within its walls.! On the 24th of this month 
 he set out upon a tour into the north-west and midland counties of England, 
 commencing at Worcester; but affording nothing new or interesting until 
 he arrived at Warwick, where the debtors' rooms, in the county gaol then 
 erecting, opened into passages but three feet wide. From that part of it 
 which was already executed it seemed, indeed, that the whole place was more 
 adapted for show than for security, health, or convenience. He was also sur- 
 prised to learn that to the prisoners still confined in the old gaol, divine service 
 had not been performed for two years, except to the condemned, yet was 
 there a regular chaplain appointed, and in the receipt of a salary of fifty 
 pounds, the largest the county could by law be charged with. In the bride- 
 well the prisoners were now all at work, beating hemp, spinning flax or jersey, 
 or carding wool. In the city gaol at Coventry one of the felons had received 
 his Majesty's free pardon, on condition of going to sea, but the clerk of assize 
 wrote on the letter which inclosed that pardon, " the secretary of state's fee is 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 144; 151, 3, 4. t Vo. p.174, S. 
 
384 
 
 £1:7:0 and my fee £l : 1 : which you'll take care to receive on the back of 
 the pardon from the officer who receives him ;" but as no officer would take 
 him on condition of paying these and the gaoler's and under sheriff's fees of 
 19s. Ad. Mr. Howard found this poor wretch still languishing in prison on his 
 pound of bread a-day, more than eight months after this free pardon had been 
 received.* At Leicester, a suggestion in the first edition of his Appendix had 
 been attended to, by building a wall to its county bridewell of brick, instead 
 of clay, to prevent the necessity of a chain and a log to secure the prisoners 
 •while in the court-yard, which, as he there recommended, had been enlarged. 
 The prison was kept remarkably clean, but a proper separation of the men and 
 women was still wanting. At the back of the county gaol and bridewell at 
 Huntingdon a hemp-dresser was provided with a small house, and allowed a 
 salary of eleven pounds a- year, on condition that he found work for the bride- 
 well prisoners in beating hemp at three pence a stone."f" The prisoners in the 
 bridewell for the county of Essex, at Newport, now had an allowance of two 
 pounds of bread a-day each ; whereas formerly they had none at all. On the 
 7th of May Mr. Howard finished this tour at St. Alban's, in whose borough 
 gaol debtors from the court of requests were confined with felons, and though 
 cleared in forty-two days, as the act does not specify the gaoler's fees, these 
 unfortunate beings were kept in this loathsome prison until they had paid 
 whatever he thought proper to exact.$ 
 
 After a respite of a fortnight, this indefatigable man resumed his laborious 
 undertaking, by a journey to Ireland ; and on his way thither, inspected the 
 prisons at Chester, where, both in the castle and the city gaol, he found that 
 there still was no proper separation of the sexes. The county gaol at Beaumaris 
 had been much altered for the better, and had now a separate court-yard for 
 debtors, but was still unprovided either with water or straw. § On his arrival 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 208—210. f lb. p. 198. % lb. p. 181. 
 
 § lb. p. 259, 260, 265. 
 
38o 
 
 in Dublin, the attention of the House of Commons was immediately directed 
 to the object of his benevolent visit, and much to their honor, a bill was instantly 
 brought in by the secretary of state, the Right Hon. John Hely Hutchinson, 
 for discharging the prisoners then in custody for their fees, a committee having 
 been previously appointed to inquire into the general state of the Irish gaols. 
 To that committee, Mr. Howard reported the condition of several of the pri- 
 sons in the metropolis which he had re-visited, especially the new Newgate, 
 which he assured them that he had found in every respect the reverse of any 
 idea he could form to himself of a well-regulated gaol ; as he even saw two or 
 three of its prisoners dying upon its stone floors, destitute of all assistance. 
 It contained a chapel, it was true, but from the best information he could 
 obtain, there had been no service in it for two years ; no wonder, therefore, 
 that the morals of the prisoners should be, as he considered they were, totally 
 neglected. Such indeed was the licentiousness permitted here, that spirits were 
 openly sold in the gaol, and he found fifteen or sixteen male felons mingled with 
 the women on their side of the prison, and three women on that appropriated to 
 the men. The day-room of the women was always locked up, and those sen- 
 tenced to hard labor were confined in a room in which they could not work. The 
 gaol was dirty beyond description, so that he was persuaded that should it 
 be crowded with prisoners, confined in the under-ground cells as they now were, 
 the gaol fever would break out here, and destroy many of its wretched inmates. 
 On the 11th of June, two of the committee accompanied him to this scene of 
 misery, and vice, when they were most fully convinced that his account of its 
 wretchedness was not at all exaggerated ; but though the prison was extremely 
 dirty then, he assured them that it was much cleaner than it had been at his 
 former visits. Several of the men they found living almost entirely among 
 the women, having free access to their cells in the day-time ; they were not, 
 therefore, surprised to learn that many illegitimate children had been brought 
 into the world in such a sink of iniquity.* The old Newgate here contained 
 
 "Journals of the Irish House of Commons. Vol. X. p. 369, 385; DXZXtlli Appendi.i to State 
 of Prisons, 2d Edit p. 159, 160. 
 
 3 D 
 
386 
 
 at this time thirty-two prisoners of war, in one large room, on an allowance 
 of sixpence a-day each ; but they were soon afterwards removed to Kilkenny, 
 where the crews of several privateers were confined, and on Mr. Howard's 
 visit to them they all looked healthy, and had no cause of complaint.* At 
 Trim, the only building designed for a bath which he saw in the prisons of 
 Ireland was turned into a stye for the gaoler's pigs. Whilst in this country, 
 he directed his philanthropic labors into a new channel, by inspecting most of 
 the Protestant charter-schools in the kingdom, in which he found the greatest 
 abuses to prevail, though it was not until he had visited the whole, in 1787, 
 that he laid before the public a minute account of them. Upon the present 
 occasion, he took with him the sermon preached before the society incorpo- 
 rated for their management in 1781, to which was annexed an account of the 
 several schools ; and he was greatly surprised to find that this official state- 
 ment gave a very false representation of their condition ; as in the two schools 
 near Dublin, he found the actual number of scholars was only 80, instead 
 of 140, at which it was there stated ; and there was a like deficiency in some 
 others ; but the committee of general management learning that these mis- 
 representations were detected, and would be exposed, discontinued the prac- 
 tice, and in their next annual account gave the true number, which was 700, 
 or near a third less than that which they had formerly presented. The school- 
 masters contracted for clothing and dieting the children, but at prices so low 
 that the condition in which their visitor found most of them, sickly, naked, 
 and half-starved, was so deplorable as, to use his own strong, but just expres- 
 sions, " to disgrace Protestantism and encourage Popery in Ireland," rather 
 than the contrary. Indeed so wretched and so disgraceful was that condition, 
 that he expresses his decided conviction, that nothing but a thorough parlia- 
 mentary inquiry could remedy an evil of such extent, and productive of con- 
 sequences so injurious. And having suggested this measure, he quits the 
 subject by offering some hints for the improvement of these institutions, 
 characterised by his usual minute attention to the health, cleanliness, and 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 145, 160. 
 
381 
 
 comfort of the objects of his benevolent regard, especially where the interests 
 of the rising generation were concerned.* In a nation so grateful as are the 
 Irish for any concern for the promotion of their real interests without attack- 
 ing their national prejudices, we may be assured that the attention paid by 
 our illustrious countryman to the reform of their gaols and their charter- 
 schools could not fail to be highly acceptable ; and as a proof that they were 
 so, the university of Dublin conferred upon him the honorary degree of doctor 
 of laws, a mark of respect on which he has publicly declared that he " should 
 always reflect with pleasure." Never certainly had such a distinction been 
 more richly merited, and never could it be more worthily bestowed.f On 
 returning into England through North Wales, Mr. Howard inspected the 
 new gaol at Ruthin, which contained separate courts for debtors and felons, 
 each of them furnished with a pump of excellent water, and a bathing-room, 
 with a copper, &c. made so convenient as to be in constant use. The gaol, 
 however, was not yet white-washed, a fault too common in new prisons, nor 
 was a proper separation made between the male and female prisoners.^ In 
 the county gaol at Shrewsbury, the men and women felons were together in 
 one common day-room, and amongst the convicts was one not yet delivered 
 in execution of the sentence of transportation passed upon him at the summer 
 assizes of 1777, so that five years of imprisonment had thus been most un- 
 justifiably added to his term. The bridewell here was the only one for the 
 county of Salop, and the gaol adjoining to it being too small and confined, 
 Mr. Howard suggested that if the whole were converted into a house of cor- 
 rection, where every convenience might be made for labor and solitary confine- 
 ment, the county would have an opportunity of erecting a gaol which 
 would do them credit, which the present one certainly did not.§ A large, 
 elegant, and convenient building, erected here upon the banks of the Severn, 
 in 1765, for the reception of children from the Foundling Hospital in London, 
 contained at this time 338 Dutch prisoners of war, twenty-seven of whom 
 
 ' Appendix to State of Prions, 2d Edit. p. J 61, 3. f lb. J 57. J lb. p. 263, 4. k lb. 227, It 
 
 3u2 
 
388 
 
 were in a very roomy hospital, where they had the greatest attention paid 
 them. Most of them were without shoes or stockings, having received no 
 supply from the States, as the French and Spanish prisoners had from their 
 courts. A subscription had, however, some time since been set on foot for the 
 purpose of supplying them with necessary cloathing, but at the time of his visit 
 there was great difficulty in applying its produce to the objects for which it 
 had been raised. Yet that difficulty was surmounted by his perseverance ; 
 and as his conduct upon this occasion evidenced both the benevolence 
 and the firmness of his character, I shall give the particulars of it as they are 
 to be collected from a letter from the gentleman who had the management of 
 the business, published some years since in the Monthly Magazine, and 
 from Mr. Howard's own account of the transaction, as communicated to his 
 friend Dr. Brown, and by him very obligingly transcribed, from a minute 
 made at the time, for the use of this work. Learning from the surgeon who 
 attended these prisoners, that such a subscription had been made for them, but 
 that the commissary had forbidden the articles purchased for their use to be 
 given them, in order to compel them to enter into our navy with an officer 
 whom he had in readiness to receive them, Mr. Howard went to the prison, 
 and ascertained that this statement was correct. He then called upon the 
 gentleman who had the chief direction of the subscription, requesting 
 that he might be allowed to deposit ten guineas in aid of this fund, and 
 that if a second collection should be necessary, further application might be 
 made to him : he learnt also from him that access to the prisoners could not be 
 procured. He then desired that the shoes and stockings which had been pur- 
 chased for them might be brought to the prison next morning, and the com- 
 missary not daring to resist him, in consequence of the orders which he bore from 
 the Transport Board for free admission into every part of the prison, and also no 
 doubt from the weight of his own character, he then had all the prisoners assem- 
 bled together, and after distributing the different articles of cloathing amongst 
 them, told them, that if any of them should so far forget their duty to their 
 
389 
 
 country as to serve against her, though in the pay of /its, he would take care 
 that their names should be transmitted to Holland, where they might be assured 
 that if ever they should be taken they would inevitably be hung. Charging 
 some of the petty officers to take care that the cloathing now given to the men 
 was properly applied, and, giving them each a small gratuity to quicken their 
 diligence, he then dismissed the assembly which had been convoked by his sole 
 authority.* But connected with this proof of the love of justice, and of the 
 liberal spirit of a citizen of the world, which actuated this great man in all his 
 public proceedings, is an anecdote of his private benevolence which cannot fail 
 to be acceptable, even to such of my readers as may have met with it before. 
 Amongst the unfortunate men whose distress he was thus the chief instrument 
 of relieving was one, of a singular character for a common sailor. He was ex- 
 tremely attentive to those of his fellow-captives who were ill, in sitting up 
 with them at night, administering their medicines, praying by them, and in 
 discharging, in a very rational and consistent manner, the offices of a nurse, and 
 of a spiritual physician. It cannot, therefore, be surprising that Mr. Howard 
 should have been most forcibly struck with the conduct and conversation of 
 such a kindred spirit, nor that he should feel a particular inclination to do every 
 thing in his power to make his temporary confinement as comfortable as it could 
 be. And the manner in which he did it furnished a striking instance of that 
 minute and delicate attention to the feelings and the wishes of the objects of 
 his bounty, in the mode of its bestowment, which always characterised his 
 deeds of benevolence, and which, to the feeling mind, is often more valuable 
 than the relief bestowed, In answer to his repeated inquiries of how he could 
 serve him, this modest, but interesting prisoner told him, that when the neces- 
 sities of his fellow-sufferers were provided for, he himself should feel no want, 
 nor regret the deprivation of those little indulgences which he could not 
 expect in his present situation. At length, however, he drew from him a 
 confession, that when at home his greatest enjoyment was to partake of a 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 142. Dr. Brown's MS. Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 339. 
 
390 
 
 comfortable dish of tea with his wife and family. About a week after this 
 visit the gentleman upon whose authority this anecdote is related received a 
 letter from Mr. Howard, informing him that he had consigned a parcel from 
 London to his care, which he requested him to deliver to this Dutch sailor. 
 That parcel contained a small sugar loaf, a pound of tea, and, that nothing 
 might be wanting to enable the poor fellow to enjoy his favorite beverage, a 
 tin tea-kettle with the other necessary apparatus.* From Shrewsbury this 
 benevolent being proceeded to Birmingham, where he inspected the prison of 
 the court for the recovery of small debts, whose prisoners were not permitted 
 to work ; the keeper informing him that he himself had been obliged to pay 
 the debt and costs of a shoemaker committed to his custody for sixteen or seven- 
 teen shillings, for permitting him to finish a piece of work which he had begun 
 before his confinement. Yet every prisoner was expected to pay eighteen 
 pence a-week for his bed, though this absurd system of forcing the payment of 
 a debt, by keeping the debtor in idleness, or of clearing him from it by a con- 
 finement of forty days, absolutely prohibited his using the means to procure it. 
 Here was but one day-room for men and women ; and only one very small 
 court-yard.-}" In returning to London Mr. Howard stopped awhile at High 
 Wycomb, to re-examine the county bridewell, which had been removed again 
 to this place, though it still consisted but of two back rooms in its keeper's 
 public-house.;]: 
 
 After remaining in London somewhat more than a week, he proceeded into 
 Norfolk, where he learnt with pleasure that, at the preceding Lent assizes at 
 Thetford, Lord Loughborough had laid a fine of twenty pounds upon the gaoler 
 for putting irons on a woman, a practice which he himself every where most 
 strongly reprobates, and which seems to have been almost peculiar to England. 
 In the city gaol at Norwich two ounces of bread had been added to the daily 
 
 * Mr. Wood's Letter to the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 339. 
 t Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 210, 211. t Ibid. p. 195. 
 
391 
 
 allowance of the prisoners, which even now was but fourteen ; those in the city 
 bridewell had, however, two pennyworth of bread a-day, and two hot dinners 
 a-week. By a local act, debtors from the court of conscience of this city might be 
 detained in the prison here until they obeyed the orders of the court, i. e. as long 
 as that court should think proper to keep them there, though their debt might be 
 only a few shillings. At Yarmouth, the prisoners of war looked healthy and 
 well, but most of them had been brought in but a few days. Their provisions 
 were good ; but their rooms, court-yard, and infirmary, were too close.* 
 From the ruinous bridewell belonging to the adjoining county of Suffolk, at 
 Lavenham, two more prisoners had lately escaped ; and the magistrates, 
 instead of repairing the prison, had sent the gaoler some thumbscrews, to 
 secure those which remained.^ That this was not the conduct of a board of 
 Spanish inquisitors, rather than a bench of English magistrates, it requires a 
 character for veracity high and unimpeachable as that of Mr. Howard, to 
 induce us to believe ; yet, on his testimony, the fact, surprising as it is, cannot 
 be doubted. At Halstead, the wretched bridewell for the county of Essex 
 was destroyed by fire, in March, 1781, when four of its prisoners unhappily 
 perished in the flames : a new one was now erecting. In returning home to 
 Cardington, he re-inspected the county gaol at Bedford ; where he learnt, with 
 pleasure, that in winter the justices allowed firing both to felons and 
 debtors, a practice which he strongly recommended to general adoption, not 
 only as one which humanity demands in our climate, but as essential to the 
 preservation of the health of prisoners, by promoting the circulation of air, 
 and preventing those mortifications in the feet to which they are so liable. 
 " I well know," he adds, " that the want of firing joined to scanty provision 
 has been the cause of great mortality in our prisons during the winter.'J; 
 
 Allowing himself but a week or ten days of tranquil enjoyment in his 
 peaceful retreat, this unwearied Philanthropist re-commenced his tour of 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 9& Edit. p. 200, 201 ; 143. f lb. p. 207. t ll>- p. 184, 190. 
 
392 
 
 examination at Exeter, on the 27th of July. The sheriff's ward in that city 
 contained a woman prisoner, who had been there for nearly two and forty 
 years. In the offensive town gaol at Plymouth, two prisoners were confined 
 in a little narrow room, with a window but eighteen inches by fourteen in size, 
 and a wall two feet eight inches thick ; one of whom assured his visitor, that 
 he had been shut up there upwards of seven weeks, sometimes with four or 
 five other prisoners, when they were almost suffocated. The new gaol for 
 prisoners of war was now finished and occupied, the old onet^eing dis- 
 used. It stood on a hill ; the wards were spacious, and it had a large area, 
 circumstances which greatly contributed to the health of the prisoners, who 
 had also the advantage of Dr. Farr's frequent visits.* With the new gaol and 
 bridewell at Bodmin, the more closely he inspected it, the more was he de- 
 lighted. Situated on a fine eminence, at a little distance from the town, where 
 there was a constant supply of water ; it contained separate rooms and courts for 
 each sex, of debtors, of felons, and of bridewell prisoners ; and each prisoner 
 had a separate lodging-room, furnished with a bedstead, a straw bed, two 
 blankets, and a coverlid. It had both a chapel and an infirmary, and two of 
 the court-yards were furnished with baths. Male prisoners confined for petty 
 offences were here employed in sawing and polishing stone, and as they 
 received the county allowance, they had only a sixth of their earnings for 
 themselves. " By a spirited exertion, the gentlemen of the county," says our 
 Philanthropist, " have here erected a monument of their humanity, and atten- 
 tion to the health and morals of prisoners :"f but when we look at what w r as 
 the condition of the wretched gaols whose place this noble building was 
 to supply, when, in the course of his journeys of benevolence, a Howard's 
 steps were first directed thither, and recollect too the condition in which, 
 for at least three years after that visit, they were suffered to remain, we cannot 
 fail to see to whom the cause of humanity was indebted, for calling those 
 exertions forth. And had his labors been crowned with no other success, we 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 239, 240 ; 136. f lb. p. 241, 2. 
 
303 
 
 may be assured that he would have considered himself well repaid for all his 
 fatigue, and trouble, and expence, in producing such a general reformation in 
 the construction and management of prisons as, in a particular instance, he 
 had here the pleasure to see accomplished. In Somersetshire, the justices seem, 
 however, to have repented them of the liberality for which he formerly gave 
 them so much praise, as they had reduced the salary of the chaplain to the 
 county gaol from fifty to thirty, and to the bridewell at Taunton to twenty 
 pounds; whilst that at Shepton Mallet was without any chaplain at all, 
 the late one having been dismissed for neglect of duty, and no other appointed 
 in his stead. The town gaol at the former place consisted of two insecure and 
 offensive rooms, without court-yard, sewer, or water, in an old house, rented 
 at ten pounds a-year by the keeper, who, being without a salary, was left to 
 pay his rent, per fas aut nefas, out of his fees and emoluments.* At Dor- 
 chester was a town gaol, consisting of two small and offensive rooms, in one 
 of which a debtor, the only prisoner in the gaol, had been confined for fourteen 
 weeks; and though he had eight children, he had not earned a halfpenny 
 during the whole of that time,-)" 
 
 For reasons which have before been assigned, it is most probable that Mr. 
 Howard availed himself of the opportunity of being in the west of England, to 
 spend, at Bristol Hot-wells, the greater part of the interval between his inspect- 
 ing the gaols at Dorchester, on the 3d of August, and his setting off upon a 
 second visit to Edinburgh, where we find him re-examining the state of the 
 prisoners of war confined in the castle, on the 17th of the same month. He 
 also re-visited the prisons of that capital, and of Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, 
 Jedburgh, Haddington, Ayr, Kelso, Nairne, Bamff, &c. but without gaining 
 any new information by the tour. At Inverness he saw a small vaulted room, 
 in one of the piers of the bridge, intended for a prison, but it had not been 
 opened for three years before he entered it. It had a small window, and two 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 245—7. t lb. p. 237, 8. 
 
 3 E 
 
 / 
 
394 
 
 apertures for dipping water from the river ; the entrance being by a trap- 
 door near the wall of the bridge, leading to an iron one, which opened on the 
 stairs descending into this subterraneous dungeon.* Returning into England 
 on the 1st of September, he found that the city gaol of Carlisle had lately been 
 repaired ; but the yard of the county prison was graced by the too common 
 nuisance of a dunghill, which seemed to have been accumulating for a year or 
 two. In the castle at Lancaster many alterations were still carrying on ; and, 
 from what he witnessed there, he was induced to express a wish, which has 
 since been most amply realized, that much good would result from the exertions 
 which were then making by the gentlemen of this large and public-spirited 
 county for the improvement of their prisons. Their magistrates were 
 amongst the first, — I believe, indeed, that they were the very first, — to adopt 
 his prudent suggestions for the abolition of the baneful practice of suffering 
 the keepers of gaols and houses of correction to sell beer and wine to their 
 prisoners ; so that, both at Preston and Manchester, he had now the satisfac- 
 tion to learn that the salary of these officers was increased, in consequence of 
 the adoption of so salutary a measure. In the bridewell at Liverpool he was 
 also gratified to find that the improper use of the bath, which he noticed at 
 his last visit, had ever since been discontinued, though the severe correction 
 of the women prisoners was still persisted in. Here, as at every other place 
 where he had visited prisoners of war, he found that the French government, 
 very much to its credit, allowed its subjects, according to their rank, from a 
 penny to three-pence a-day; besides supplying them with cloathes, linen, and 
 shoes. He was afterwards informed that this practice was adopted by his own 
 court towards English prisoners in France, so far as an allowance of money 
 was concerned, which, to the common men, was even more liberal than that of 
 the French government : it did not, however, provide them with cloathes. t 
 
 From this port he sailed for Dublin, to re-inspect the gaols of that city, the 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 144, 7 ; 154. t lb. p. 255, 8; 141. 
 
395 
 
 prison at Kilkenny, and many of the places of confinement, and schools, 
 which he had before visited. He had also the pleasure to learn, that the two 
 bills for the regulation of gaols, and the discharge of all their prisoners in con- 
 finement for their fees, in progress there in June, were, in the following month, 
 duly passed into laws ; and that the committee for the further improvement of 
 gaols was still pursuing its inquiries, from which he hoped the perpetual 
 abolition of fees would result. By one of these acts, 21 and 22 Geo. III. 
 c. 42, the judges were required to give in charge to the grand juries at the 
 assizes two former acts of the Irish legislature, for preventing the extortion of 
 gaolers, and preserving the health of prisoners ; and on their default in pre- 
 senting any gaol which was out of repair, or wanted enlarging, were 
 empowered to lay upon the county or city to which such gaol should belong, a 
 fine not exceeding 500/. to be applied to that purpose.* Returning through 
 North Wales, he saw, in the county gaol at Dolgelly, a man who had been 
 sentenced to fourteen years' transportation six years before, but whose term 
 was not yet begun. That for Radnorshire, at Presteign, had been greatly 
 improved since he last saw it : amongst other enlargements, the keeper's 
 garden having been taken into the prisoners' court-yard. From the day on 
 which he inspected this gaol, the 27th of September, to the 18th of the fol- 
 lowing month, we lose sight of this benevolent traveller in the round of 
 inspection in which he was engaged ; and as it is still in Wales that we meet 
 with him again, it is unreasonable to suppose that he went home in the interim : 
 he must therefore either have been stopped in his progress by illness, or have 
 availed himself of the salubrity of the air and the beauty of the scenery of South 
 Wales, to have snatched a short repose from his labors, with which he was not 
 often in the habit of indulging himself. It was at Brecon that those labors 
 were resumed, under the gratifying circumstance of being called to the in- 
 spection of the new county gaol, which was now finished there, and was, 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons. 2d Edit. p. 145, 157, 161. Journals of the Irish House of Com- 
 mons, Vol. X. p. 285. Irish Statutes of 21 and 22 Geo. III. c. 41, 42. 
 
 3 e 2 
 
396 
 
 upon the whole, a very convenient building ; though, as he had predicted, 
 its low situation had so exposed it to floods, that the water had been as high as 
 three feet in its cells : precautions were, however, taken to prevent the recur- 
 rence of such a mischief. The gaol was not kept clean, but the new bridewell, 
 which adjoined it, was perfectly so. This building was in every respect con- 
 venient, being furnished, as was also the gaol, with separate court-yards, and 
 with work-rooms for men and women, with a pump and bath in each of 
 them, an infirmary, and a chapel common to both prisons. The keeper was a 
 weaver and dyer, and kept the prisoners at work at spinning-wheels, and cards 
 for wool, found by the county, they receiving two-thirds of their earnings for 
 themselves. In another new gaol for the county of Pembroke, at Haverford- 
 west, the cells, though roomy, were four feet under ground, and damp ; and 
 there was no infirmary or bath. A third was erected at Pembroke for pri- 
 soners of war, but its rooms were dirty and offensive, though containing only 
 six Frenchmen, who had been confined to their rooms, on short allowance, 
 more than five weeks, for attempting to escape. They complained of being 
 half-starved; their bread was very brown, and the weight of their daily 
 allowance only sixteen ounces : their bedding was on the floor, and the straw 
 in some of their mattresses had not been changed for eighteen weeks. A fourth 
 new gaol at Cardiff was without water in the felons' court, or bath in any.* 
 In his w 7 ay home through the counties of Monmouth, Gloucester, and Oxford, 
 the only alteration in the prisons which Mr. Howard visited worth noticing, is 
 that in the bridewells at Witney two new cells had been built, with apertures 
 in their doors of but nine inches square ; whilst two small rooms were pro- 
 vided up-stairs for the sick, on whose feverish frames not a breath of heaven 
 could blow, but what could find its way through a similar opening of fourteen 
 inches by twelve-f- 
 it was to the counties of Herts, Berks, Hants, Dorset, Sussex, and Surrey, 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 266—271 ; 140. f lb. 223. 
 
39? 
 
 that, after remaining but three days at Cardington, our Philanthropist's foot- 
 steps were next directed. In the prison at Forton, for prisoners of war, he found 
 the wards dirty ; and on weighing the bread with a pair of steelyards, which he 
 always carried with him for the purpose, all the loaves wanted some ounces in 
 weight.* At Portsmouth he was informed, that the sick in one of the hos- 
 pital-ships were grossly neglected by the surgeon, and though this was an 
 abuse not exactly falling in with those whose correction had brought him 
 there, he no sooner learnt that any of his fellow-countrymen were suffering 
 from the inattention of those whose duty it was to attend to them, than he 
 hastened to their relief, and going through the whole ship, and inquiring of 
 every sick sailor what was the treatment he met with, he found that the 
 report which had accidentally reached his ears was but too true. Having 
 satisfied himself upon this point, he sent for the surgeon, and represented to 
 him in the strongest terms the infamous dereliction of duty of which he had 
 been guilty, when the man pleaded in excuse for his conduct the danger of 
 going among so much contagion as was then raging in the ship to which 
 he was appointed. " Then," said Mr. Howard, " you should not take 
 government wages for doing that which you are afraid to do ; and I assure you 
 that when I get to London, I will represent your conduct to the admiralty, 
 and have you dismissed from a station whose duties you do not choose to per- 
 form."! At Horsham he very carefully inspected the new gaol, with which 
 he could not fail to be highly delighted, as, in its every particular, the gentle- 
 men who had the superintendence of its erection, seem to have adopted the 
 plan for a county gaol which he had himself recommended. The county of 
 Sussex had set a noble example of abolishing all fees, and had also put 
 down the privilege of the tap, in consequence of which its inspector found 
 this new prison as quiet as a private house. But from this pleasing scene he 
 passed to one of a very different description, and he himself tells us that he 
 was most forcibly struck with the contrast which the wretched condition of 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 138. t Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
398 
 
 the prisoners in the bridewell at Kingston exhibited, many of whom were 
 lying sick upon the floors. One woman was in bed on the men's side, and two 
 others in the room for faulty apprentices ; a privilege for which they paid 
 the keeper. There was a door from the men's court into the women's, the key 
 of which was kept by one of the male prisoners, who could let himself, or any 
 other person into the women's apartments.* With this ill-regulated prison 
 Mr. Howard ended his tour, and proceeded on to London, to put in execution 
 his threat against the Portsmouth surgeon, who was instantly dismissed the 
 
 service. 
 
 Four days only could have been spent at Cardington after the completion 
 of this tour, ere this extraordinary man set off upon another and a longer one, 
 into Yorkshire, and some of the midland counties. The representation he 
 had given of the horrid gaol at Knaresborough had not failed in producing 
 its proper effect ; for on visiting it now, he found the doorway altered, the 
 floor paved with flag- stones, and the drain covered. Its town gaol was also 
 enlarged, and made more convenient. In the gaol for debtors at Bradford, 
 which now consisted of four rooms at the back of the keeper's public-house, a 
 poor wretch was confined for a debt of 4 s. though he had never been in prison 
 before, and had a wife and five children, to whom we may be assured he was 
 soon restored, without completing the sixty days confinement which would 
 clear him from his debt.f At Nantwich a new town gaol had been erected in the 
 course of this very year, containing two dungeons, twelve steps under ground, 
 with an aperture in each for air, only twelve inches by nine. The wretched 
 bridewell at Wolverhampton had undergone no alteration, though fourteen or 
 fifteen prisoners were sometimes confined there, and almost suffocated.^ 
 
 Returning home from this tour on the 27th or 28th of November, by way 
 of Daventry, where his son was now placed, Mr. Howard entered upon his 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 188, 9 ; 1 92. + lb. p. 251 , 2. % lb. p. 262 ; 226. 
 
390 
 
 Kentish and Sussex journey, upon the 1st of the following month ; in which 
 he found thai the town gaol at East Grinstead, consisted of a single room 
 only six feet eight inches square, and five feet eight inches in height ; so that 
 during the Lent assizes the prisoners were confined in the garret of an ale- 
 house.* From this place he returned to London, where, from the 13th to the 
 20th of this month, he was busily occupied in re-inspecting its gaols, which 
 presented nothing worthy of particular notice. 
 
 The last journey which Mr. Howard took in the course of this year was one, 
 on the 23d of December, into Gloucestershire, to re-inspect the insignificant 
 gaol of St. Briavel's, which had undergone no alteration since he last was 
 there. In his way back he visited several bridewells and town gaols in Ox- 
 fordshire and Berkshire ; and the day after his arrival in London went on board 
 the hulks, which he found to be clean, and much better regulated even than 
 when he last inspected them. He then closed his labors for the year by re- 
 inspecting the Fleet prison on the 30th of December. - !" 
 
 In the course of that year he had travelled 8,165 miles in re-visiting the 
 prisons of the British Isles ; and when we add to this 4,465 miles of the 
 European continent, which he traversed nearly from one extremity to the 
 other, in the course of the preceding year, upon a similar errand of mercy, 
 we must readily admit the justice, as well as the eloquence of the eulogium 
 pronounced upon him, during that period, by the most powerful orator that 
 ever graced the senate of his country, when in quoting his authority to justify 
 himself from a charge made against him by his mercantile constituents, of 
 having favored a bill for the relief of debtors, he made use of this energetic 
 language : " I cannot name this gentleman without remarking, that his labours 
 and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has 
 visited all Europe, — not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, id Edit. p. 190. f lb. p. 233; 164, 5; 171. 
 
400 
 
 of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient gran- 
 deur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art ; not to collect medals, or 
 collate manuscripts : — but to dive into the depths of dungeons ; to plunge into the 
 infection of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain ; to take the 
 gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt ; to remember the for- 
 gotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate 
 the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original ; and it is full of 
 genius as it is of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery ; a circumnavigation 
 of charity. Already the benefit of his labour is felt more or less in every 
 country : I hope he will anticipate his final reward, by seeing all its effects 
 fully realised in his own. He will receive, not by retail but in gross, the 
 reward of those who visit the prisoner ; and he has so forestalled and monopo- 
 lised this branch of charity, that there will be, I trust, little room to merit by 
 such acts of benevolence hereafter."* This was a panegyric worthy the lips 
 of a Burke to have pronounced ; but who will say that it was not one which 
 the extraordinary benevolence of a Howard as richly deserved to receive. 
 
 * Speech at the Guildhall, in Bristol, previous to the election in 1780.— Burke's Works, Vol. III. 
 p. 380, 1.. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Mr. Howard's fifth journey upon the continent, for the purpose of inspecting the prisons 
 and hospitals of Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Holland ; — his fifth 
 journey to Ireland; — the completion of his fourth general inspection of English gaols ; 
 and the publication of the second edition of his Appendix to the State of Prisons, 
 1788, 1784. — With the history of his private life to the close of the year 1785. 
 
 " Nil actum credens, dum quid superesset agendum" is a maxim which 
 could never be more correctly applied than to the illustrious subject of these 
 memoirs. He had visited every state in Europe whence he could hope to 
 derive assistance for the completion of his great design, except the two 
 southern kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, and towards them he now deter- 
 mined to direct his course. Accordingly, after he had spent nearly the whole 
 of January, 1783, with his friends, and with his son at Cardington, he took 
 his departure on the last day of that month, by way of Falmouth, for 
 Lisbon, whither his steps were now allured by a sublimer object than that by 
 which they had been attracted there seven and twenty years ago. His object 
 then was to witness the grand, but melancholy, spectacle of a city smoking in 
 its ruins, under a dreadful chastisement from heaven ; — now it was to pierce 
 into the depths of dungeons, in which man had unfeelingly immured his fellow 
 man ; to cheer with a ray of mercy their drear and solitary gloom ; to unveil the 
 secrets of the torture-chamber, shrouded in the sable robe of night, that they 
 
 3 1 
 
402 
 
 might wither in the blaze of day ; to lighten the load of human suffering ; to 
 wipe the tear from the prisoner's eye ; and to set many a captive free. 
 
 In Portugal none but criminals were to be met with in the prisons, confine- 
 ment for debt having been prohibited by an ordinance of 1774. Both in the 
 gaols and infirmaries an entire separation was made between the sexes In the 
 former no garnish was allowed, but the same bad custom prevailed here as in 
 England of detaining prisoners for their fees, though those of Portugal had the 
 advantage of being frequently released, by their payment by a charitable society, 
 or order, of which many families of the first rank were members. They sent 
 provisions twice a-week to several prisons, and, like the Brotherhood of Mercy 
 at Rome, paid great attention to condemned criminals. It was no uncommon 
 thing here to detain prisoners several years in custody before they were brought 
 to trial, and even after condemnation they were sometimes left years longer 
 in gaol before they were executed. Previous to the vigilant administration of 
 the celebrated Marquis de Pombal gaolers were in the habit of letting even 
 capital convicts out upon parole, and it is said that a person who had obtained 
 this indulgence was actually ordered for execution seven years after sentence of 
 death had been passed upon him. He was then at work in the country, but 
 upon the gaoler's summons he immediately returned to prison to meet his doom, 
 when, for his punctual regard to his promise, he obtained a pardon. Convicts 
 wer-e very frequently transported hence to the Brazils and the Indies : for those 
 enrolled to serve as soldiers in the latter country a house was provided on the 
 banks of the Tagus, where they were kept for some weeks to bathe, and be 
 better clothed and fed, to prepare them for so long a voyage. The great 
 prison at Lisbon, Limoiero, formerly a palace, was used for the reception of 
 prisoners from the provinces as well as from the capital, the number at this time 
 being no less than 774. None of them were in irons ; the poorer were on the 
 ground-floor, but in the rooms above were many who paid for better accommo- 
 dations, and received no assistance from the Miserecordia. The prisoners slept 
 
403 
 
 in the large hall, in which civil and criminal causes were tried, and used it 
 also, when the courts were not sitting, as their day-room. The infirmaries 
 were spacious, clean, and airy. In the prison at the castle, as well as the 
 Limoiero, were several secret chambers, in which prisoners were closely con- 
 lined ; and neither of these gaols had any court-yard. At the former was a 
 manufactory for the employment of vagrants and deserted children in carding, 
 spinning, and weaving, making lace, embroidery, &c. at which about a 
 thousand children were at work. The two latter employments Mr. Howard 
 has significantly marked in italics, and, with his rooted aversion to all finery in 
 dress, asks whether it would not be better if greater numbers were employed 
 in the arts which are most useful and necessary ? He forgets, however, that 
 the object of such establishments is to enable the subjects of their discipline to 
 get their living by their own industry ; and that in Portugal that object may be 
 more easily secured by making lace and embroidery than by spinning wool or 
 weaving broad-cloth. The fault, if fault there be, in consuming so much time 
 in the manufacture of mere ornaments, is not in those who make, but 
 those who wear them. The ecclesiastical prison contained six priests and three 
 women, a goodly company, committed hither, it is to be presumed, by the 
 most holy church pro salute animiarum. This too was the object of the Inqui- 
 sition, into the secrets of whose prison-house Mr. Howard was not allowed to 
 penetrate. When it was re-built, after the earthquake of 1755 had buried it 
 where it ought to be buried again, a person, who saw the rooms for the con- 
 finement of its hapless prisoners, told our traveller that they opened into a long 
 passage like those of the prison near the rope walk, but they were smaller and 
 under-ground. That prison, in which many noblemen and priests were con- 
 fined during the administration of the Marquis de Pombal, contained nineteen 
 vaulted rooms, separated by walls six feet two inches thick, with three doors at 
 the entrance to each of them, the middle one being an iron grate. Over each 
 of these doors was an aperture for the admission of light, except in two rooms 
 called secrete, which were totally dark. In the arsenal were four large rooms 
 
 3f 2 
 
404 
 
 for slaves or convicts, most of them Moors. Some worked at the rope-walk ; 
 others carried water to the prisons and infirmaries, guarded by the military ; 
 a few were closely imprisoned, and three or four chained to one spot, one of 
 whom had been so for eight years, and another for four. The rest were 
 chained two and two, and those who went out had a running chain between 
 them, which was taken off as soon as they returned into the arsenal. Their 
 allowance was a pound of biscuit a-day, and some rice, with half a pound of 
 meat three times a-week. The infirmary for their use, and that of the ma- 
 rines, consisted of two remarkably good rooms, lofty, clean, and quiet, even 
 the slaves having each of them a bed, with sheets to it, and the greatest atten- 
 tion paid to them. In another prison at Bellem, about two miles from the 
 city, criminals of a less atrocious description were confined, and subsisted on 
 charitable donations. The hospitals of Lisbon were generally spacious, but 
 some of their rooms were too close : that for English seamen in the merchants' 
 service was particularly clean and well regulated, under the careful inspection 
 of six visitors named by the consul. At Evora and Elvas, the prisoners sub- 
 sisted entirely by charity, and, like several other prisons in Portugal, the gaols 
 there had a passage to the street, and to the lodging-rooms secured by iron 
 grates, at which most of the prisoners were begging.* 
 
 Mr. Howard entered Spain by Badajoz, on the 9th of March, and he found 
 the country, which he now for the first time visited, abounding with charitable 
 institutions, and having few or no beggars in it. Most of the prisons had 
 courts for the men, with fountains, or running water in the centre, and corri- 
 dors surrounding them for shade. The same separation of the sexes was here 
 observed as in Portugal, and in another point the customs of the two countries 
 in the regulation of their prisons were alike ; for fees were demanded by the 
 gaolers from discharged prisoners in both. But in the execution of justice 
 upon the guilty, another and a more commendable course was adopted, as a 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 105—109. 
 
405 
 
 condemned criminal was here seldom pardoned by the king, but being called 
 into the chapel of the gaol, where his sentence was read to him, a friar 
 attended to administer spiritual consolation, and never left him till he was 
 executed, which was generally on the Monday after his sentence had been 
 communicated to him on the preceding Saturday. When a confession was 
 extorted from a criminal by torture, a practice which was only in use in some 
 provinces, it was always read to him twenty-four hours afterwards, that he 
 might either confess or retract it. At Badajoz, the prisoners in one of the 
 prisons, consisting chiefly of deserters and smugglers, looked unhealthy. Those 
 at the other were begging at the grates, as they subsisted partly by alms, and 
 partly by selling purses and other articles which they made in prison.* The 
 city of Toledo contained two prisons, in the larger of which were 220 pri- 
 soners, most of them lying under the corridors of a small court, all looking 
 unhealthy, and many loaded with irons. In two sick-rooms on the first floor, 
 several miserable objects were dying in their beds. On Mr. Howard's ob- 
 serving to the gaoler that his prison was erowded, he informed him that a 
 fortnight before it had been more so, 100 having then been removed to the 
 arsenal at Carthagena. The hospitals here were spacious, airy, and covenient.f 
 Proceeding hence to the capital of the kingdom, he found in the principal 
 prison several rooms with stone bedsteads, and iron hooks for chaining the 
 prisoners to. Some of the men had irons on both legs, with a strong bolt 
 between them. These lay on barracks in dungeons down twenty-two steps, 
 in one of which the gaoler had beds, which he let at a real vellon and a half 
 (3'M.)j a-night. The women, however, were in a large room, and none of 
 them in irons. The gaoler had the privilege of taking such of the prisoners as 
 chose to pay him twenty-five dollars for the term of their confinement, into 
 his own house, and was also empowered to take off the irons of any who 
 should pay him ten dollars. This gaol was clean, and the gaoler humane and 
 attentive to his prisoners, who all looked healthy. Their provisions were 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 3d Edit. p. 1 10. t lb. p. 1 II. 
 
406 
 
 good, their bread fine, and the allowance of it exactly a pound a-day ; the 
 prison had also two courts to it with arcades. The city prison resembled in 
 its construction the Carcel de Corte just described, except that it had only 
 one court-yard. Its rooms and dungeons too were offensive, and very dirty, and 
 the walls of one of its torture rooms were stained with blood. " I was sorry," 
 says our Philanthropist, " to see such traces of this practice among a people, 
 in other respects generous and humane." In the prison near the Prado, was 
 one long room furnished with barrack bedsteads, and containing upwards of 
 100 prisoners, some of them chained to the floor, or to their bedsteads, whilst 
 others worked on the roads, bridges, &c. ; and some having been marines, 
 were sent to the docks. These three classes had a daily allowance of different 
 amount ; and on asking some of them whether they preferred working or 
 confinement, he was readily answered the former, though they added, that 
 they were not forced to work hard. On one of his visits to this place, two of 
 the privy council were there, as it was often their custom to go to the various 
 prisons of the capital, to reverse or alter the sentences of the inferior judges ; a 
 power which, at this time, they carried so far as to change an imprisonment of 
 eight years into one of four months, whilst in another case they exercised the 
 prerogative of mercy with which they were invested, in behalf of a man who had 
 been sentenced to confinement for six months, but who, on account of his hav- 
 ing a large family, they now released. At San Fernando, about eight miles 
 from this city, was a house of correction for petty offenders, vagrants, and 
 beggars, some of whom were employed in carrying stones to a lime-kiln ; others 
 in spinning linen and worsted ; and the women in making and washing the 
 cloathes of the house. The apartments of the men were clean, but, as was 
 generally the case in the Spanish prisons and hospitals, those of the women 
 were much cleaner. Every prisoner had a bed, a mattress, and two coverlids. 
 The women had a court as well as the men, and both were very properly 
 commanded by the keeper's balcony. The provisions of this well-conducted 
 house were good and sufficient ; there was a shop attached to it for the sale of 
 
401 
 
 wine of a fixed quality and price, but no spirituous liquors were permitted to 
 be sold. The prison was regularly attended by a physician, a surgeon, and a 
 chaplain, and had attached to it a guard of thirty horse and eight foot, changed 
 every month. No fees were taken, either at the entrance, or on the discharge 
 of a prisoner, and the keeper seemed humane and attentive. A very similar 
 institution existed in Madrid itself, which served the double purpose of a prison, 
 and a well-regulated manufactory for the idle and the destitute. A consider- 
 able number of men advanced in years were there employed in picking the 
 wool, which in one room 150 boys were spinning into worsted ; and in another 
 sixty were engaged in carding ; forty or fifty looms were also employed in 
 weaving linen or wide cloth. In two rooms Mr. Howard observed stocking 
 and waistcoat frames ; in others some boys were engaged in carding and spin- 
 ning hares' and rabbits' down for gloves, and in the different branches of a pin 
 manufactory. A number of men were at work also as tailors and carpenters, 
 whilst fifty of the boys, at least, were under instruction in the school, so that the 
 lazy Spaniards, as we are apt, with our national surperciliousness, to call them, 
 here set an example of training to habits of industry the idle and the dissolute, 
 from which the notable English might learn a very useful lesson. The 
 sexes were here entirely separated, and the provisions of the whole were 
 good and sufficient. The hospitals of this capital were most of them upon a 
 scale of splendid magnificence, the Real hospital-general being attended by 
 one principal, and eighteen other physicians, six surgeons, with 200 assistants, 
 and twenty-three priests, all of them lodged and boarded in the house, which 
 contained somewhat less than 900 patients. This immense establishment, and 
 the multitude of visitors admitted to its patients, rendered the wards dirty and 
 noisy ; whilst here, as in some institutions of a similar description in Portugal, 
 convalescents were put into the closest and worst rooms. In this country, the 
 old popish custom of fleeing for refuge from debt, and for a sanctuary from 
 crime, to the porch of a church, still existed, though comparatively few of its 
 sacred edifices were prostituted to such a purpose ; the large city of Madrid 
 
408 
 
 containing but two, one for men and another for women. The former shel- 
 tered five persons, one of whom had been there for two years : at the latter 
 there was but one. In both cases, a pavement of about three feet wide was 
 the verge of this dangerous privilege. In inspecting the public institutions of 
 the Spanish capital, Mr. Howard was indebted for facility of access to their 
 every part, and for the liberty of making the most minute inquiries into their 
 regulations, to the introduction to Count Compomanes, with which he was 
 kindly furnished by Count Fernan Nunez, the Spanish ambassador at Lisbon. 
 By his orders, every prison was thrown open to his inspection, except one, to 
 which the mandate of a secular minister could not reach, — that of the Inquisi- 
 tion. Yet even here the effort was made, and our fearless countryman was 
 introduced to the grand inquisitor, who receiving him at prayers, at seven 
 in the morning, conducted him to the tribunal of his dreadful court, which 
 was hung with red, having over the inquisitor's seat a crucifix, and before it a 
 table, with seats for the two secretaries, and a stool for the prisoner, on his exa- 
 mination before them. Beyond this room Mr, Howard could not prevail upon 
 his guide to suffer him to go a single step, but he told him that he himself went 
 round the prison once a month, attended by a secretary, and asked every indi- 
 vidual prisoner whether he had any complaint to make.* At Valladolid he 
 was, however, somewhat more fortunate in gratifying the curiosity he felt to 
 penetrate into the secret chambers of that dreadful engine of ecclesiastical 
 tyranny, whose object was to forge fetters for the mind, and to prohibit men 
 from speaking, or even from thinking, but as a Pope should dictate, or an 
 assemblage of priests, calling themselves the church, should think proper to 
 approve. Yet even here his success fell far short of his wishes, though it w T ent 
 beyond his expectations. His admission to the prison of the Inquisition in 
 this city was owing to letters with which he was furnished to every town 
 in the provinces through which he purposed to pass, on whose receipt the 
 gates of every other prison were flung wide open for his entrance ; and even 
 • Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. Ill— 117. 
 
409 
 
 those of this sanctum sanctorum of the church turned further on their hinges 
 than they ever had done before for the admission of a heretic, whom they were 
 not to enclose for ever in the gloomy caverns to which they led, or open for 
 him again but on his passage to a martyr's grave. He was received here by 
 two of the inquisitors, their secretaries, and two magistrates, who conducted 
 him into several rooms, one of which was graced by a fit ornament for such a 
 place — a representation of an Auto de Fe in 1667, when ninety-seven persons 
 were burnt in presence of the Spanish court, whose residence was then at Val- 
 ladolid. This scene was well characterised by Pegna, himself an inquisitor of 
 no small note, as horrendum, ac tremendum spectaculum ; yet was it here en- 
 shrined as a memorial of the church's power, and of the zeal with which this 
 most holy court then earnestly contended for the faith. The tribunal-room 
 resembled that of Madrid, except that.it had an altar, and a door, with three 
 locks, into the secretary's room, over which was inscribed the greater excom- 
 munication denounced against all strangers who should presume to enter there. 
 In two other tribunal-rooms were the insignia of the holy office ; whilst a large 
 room near them contained many of the books, whose pages these saintly 
 guardians of the public morals and of the public faith had, in the plenitude of 
 their power, forbidden all who did not wish to feel its weight, to venture to 
 peruse ; — some because their tendency was vicious, but many more because it 
 was what they thought proper to style heretical : many of the latter were English. 
 Another was filled with crosses, beads, and small pictures, together with the 
 painted cap and vestments of the unhappy victims of the tender mercies of the 
 church. After much deliberation amongst his conductors, he was permitted to 
 go up the private staircase by which prisoners were brought to their dread 
 tribunal, and which led to a passage with several doors in it, which he was 
 not allowed to enter. So ardent, however, was his desire to ascertain what was 
 the cruelty and rigor of confinement practised here, that on one of the secreta- 
 ries assuring him that none but prisoners ever passed their threshold, he 
 courageously answered, that he would willingly be confined there a month to 
 
 3g 
 
410 
 
 gratify his curiosity ; but being told that none ever came out under three 
 years, he was compelled to rest satisfied with what he had seen. By walking 
 in the court, and conversing with the inquisitors he learned, however, that 
 the cells of this horrid prison had double doors, and were separated by two 
 walls, to prevent prisoners communicating with each other ; and that over those 
 walls was a sort of funnel, inclosed at the top, but having perforations in the 
 sides, through which some air, and a glimmering of light, might enter. They 
 were double barred, and one of them served two cells ; the passages having 
 also small apertures for the admission of light. A gloomy area at the back of 
 the prison contained but a great mastiff dog. From the sentence of the court 
 to which these cells of hopeless misery belonged, no appeal could ever lay : the 
 irrevocable certainty of its doom, the horrid severity, and the impenetrable 
 secrecy of its proceedings, excited, therefore, such general alarm in those 
 who, for aught they knew, might the next hour be its victims, that the very 
 sight of the walls of this inquisitorial gaol struck terror into the common 
 people as they passed ; yet, by a monstrous perversion of language, the tribu- 
 nal, whose house of incarceration, of torture, and of death it was, styled itself 
 a holy and apostolic court! But in Valladolid the prison of the Inquisition was 
 not the only place of torture, nor its familiars the sole ruthless janitors. In 
 the city prison most of the prisoners were crowded into one long room : nor 
 did it want for dungeons, as its benevolent visitant passed through two, into 
 another dark, damp, and dismal one, in which he saw a poor creature lying 
 on his back, chained to a great stone. Yet in such miserable places prisoners 
 often were confined for a long time before they were brought to trial, and if 
 then discharged, were compelled to pay their gaoler's fees. Not long before 
 Mr. Howard visited this wretched gaol, a man had been put to the torture, 
 on his denial of the crime he was charged with, in which he still persisted ; 
 but confessing that he had committed a murder, of which he never had been 
 accused, he was executed for that.* At Burgos, the next place he visited, 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 117, 118. 
 
411 
 
 such a mode of administering justice could not have been resorted to, as its 
 prison, which was spacious and convenient, was without a torture-chamber. 
 The women here, as in the other gaols in this country, were always locked up. 
 In the Hospicio, which answered the double purpose of a house of correction 
 and a hospital for foundlings, were some dark rooms, where the disorderly 
 were confined. A woman was at this time undergoing such wholesome disci- 
 pline, and having requested, with tears in her eyes, the interposition of her 
 visitor in her behalf, he applied to the chaplain and superintendant of the 
 house, who readily consented to her release. The hospital del Rey he charac- 
 terises as a noble one, and the three others resembled it. The prison at Pam- 
 plona was an old building with three small courts, but provided with stocks 
 and a dark vaulted room, for the punishment of offences committed there. 
 The prisoners lay in boxes, without mattresses or bedding, their allowance 
 being about two-pence a-day. Their rooms were dirty and offensive, and Mr. 
 Howard learnt, that about eight years since, eighteen or twenty prisoners had died 
 here in a short time. The upper floor of this prison was used as a house of correc- 
 tion for women, and in it twenty-eight were spinning. Their rooms were clean. 
 Each prisoner had a bed to herself; the bread was good, and the allowance of 
 it to each a pound and a half a day. The term of imprisonment was from 
 four to eight years ; but if any man should think proper to select one of these 
 slight offenders for his wife, the magistrates were very ready to suffer him to 
 redeem her at such a price. One of those magistrates told our philanthropic 
 countryman that he regularly visited this prison every week to hear any com- 
 plaints that might be made, but it appeared that he injudiciously took the gaoler 
 round the prison with him. Neither in this city, nor in any part of the pro- 
 vince of Navarre, was the torture used ; but a very singular custom was esta- 
 blished there for the viceroy, twice a-year, to release such of the prisoners as 
 he thought fit. The day before Mr. Howard l'eached Pamplona he had there 
 released thirteen ; and but a few years before, to the great surprise of the 
 magistrates, he took it into his head to set them all at liberty. Two out of the 
 
 3 g 2 i. 
 
412 
 
 four churches in this city were asylums for debtors and criminals, to one of 
 which a felon had fled for sanctuary. The citadel contained 120 slaves, or 
 convicts, crowded into five or six rooms. Those in the upper rooms had only 
 a ring upon one leg, but on the lower floor, though sickly, they were chained 
 together, two and two, some of them for very slight offences. Their daily 
 allowance was a jDOund and a half of brown bread each, and about five farthings 
 in money. Those who had only the ring on, found sureties for not escaping, 
 and were sometimes employed in the houses in the citadel, and paid for their 
 labor. If they did escape, their sureties were obliged to put on their ring and take 
 their places until they were re-captured, when the term of their imprisonment 
 was doubled. Those who had been guilty of the more atrocious crimes were 
 sent, some of them to Carthagena, and others to the African settlements of the 
 Spanish crown. This city contained also a large building, called the Misere- 
 cordia, in which beggars, vagrants, and refractory children were confined, 
 whilst workmen were here engaged, and apprentices taken, to assist in carrying 
 on a manufactory of coarse cloth, established for their employment. Near to 
 this institution was another hospital, for orphans and children of the poor, 
 supported in part by the contributions of those who played at ball in a building 
 erected by the city for that diversion ; a similar appropriation prevailing at 
 Madrid of a part of the money collected at the play-house and the bull- 
 feasts. In the great hospital was a ward for sick prisoners, to whom as much 
 attention was paid as to any other patients. Near the women's ward Mr. 
 Howard saw nine or ten infants, bound hand and foot, in a smoky kitchen, their 
 governess lodging the while in a spacious room close by. On his mentioning to 
 the physician, in her presence, that the children should be in that room, she said 
 it was too cold for them ; but, with his usual bluntness when the cause of truth 
 and humanity required him to speak plainly, he told her that the true meaning 
 of her not wishing to have them there, was that she thought they would dis- 
 turb her rest.* Pamplona was the last place whose prisons Mr. Howard visited 
 * Appendix !o Slate of Prison?, 2d Edil. p. 119— 121. 
 
413 
 
 in Spain ; but whilst taking a day or two's rest there, before he crossed the 
 Pyrennees, he addressed to his friend, the Rev. Mr. Smith, the following 
 account of his journey, and plan of his future course : — 
 
 " Dear Sir " Pamplona April 17 1783 
 
 " I am still in Spain, the manner of traveling with mules is very slow, 
 I was 14 days betwixt Lisbon and Madrid (400 Miles) You carry all y r pro- 
 visions ; the luxury of milk with my Tea I very seldom could get, I one 
 morn 8 robbed a Kid of two Cups of its mothers milk : — but I bless God I am 
 pure well calm spirits; the greatest kindness I rec" from Count fernan 
 nunez the Spanish Ambassador at Lisbon, thro' whose recommendat" to 
 Count Compomanes, every Prison has been flung open to me, I have a Letter to 
 one of the Magestrates thro' every City that I pass ; I have been here three 
 days, but must stay a few days longer before I cross the Mountains. The 
 Spaniards are very sober and very honest, and if he can live sparingly and lay 
 on the floor, the traveller may pass tolerably well through their Country : I 
 have come into many an Inn and paid only 5 pence for the Noise (as they term 
 it) I made in the House ; as no bread, eggs, milk, or wine do they sell. Peace 
 has not been declared, many will hardly believe it ; they talk of Gen 1 Elliot 
 with a spirit of Enthusiasm, never were two Nations so often at Warr and 
 Individuals have such esteem and Complacency one towards another. I travelled 
 sometime with an English Gentleman, but my stops for the Prisons &c not 
 being convenient he went off with his Spanish servant — I go thro' Bayonne, 
 stoping only one day, and pitch my tent at Bourdeaux where I have much 
 business, some horrid dungeons &c. I am still in time for my Irish Journey in July 
 and Aug' as I promised the Provost, that Parliament meeting in October, I 
 have very little more to do in England before I go into the press, after which 
 I hope to be in comfort at my own fire-side Remember me to Mr. Barham, 
 Gadsby, and our united friends. " With much esteem I remain 
 
 " Your friend and serv' 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
414 
 
 " I hope you have fine weather, as I have every Shutter open till night, 
 many Towns have not one pane of glass — Thermonr 68° in the shade" 
 " The Rev" M r Smith at Bedford 
 " via London." 
 
 The anticipations he had formed of the wretched state of the prisons at Bor- 
 deaux were too fully realized ; for reaching that city about ten days after this letter 
 was written, he found in its town-house three rooms, or rather dungeons, twenty- 
 seven steps under ground, in which were fifteen prisoners in irons, who never 
 were permitted to go out of the holes in which they were confined, either by 
 night or day. In two rooms, still four steps lower, he saw ten men, and in another, 
 on the same level, a solitary woman, pent up in custody as close and as destructive 
 of their health. The ground floor was appropriated to those confined for slight 
 offences. In the Palais, the prison for the province, the men, however, were 
 permitted the use of the court ; and in the house of correction, which was in a 
 convent, the rooms were both neat and clean : twenty -four women were here at 
 work at their needle, but when Mr. Howard entered their hall they put on 
 their veils.* Proceeding to the French capital he found two of the worst 
 prisons there, the Petit Chatelet and For-F Evcqne, with their horrid dungeons, 
 entirely abolished, debtors now being sent to a new prison called IS Hotel de la 
 Force, and criminals to the Conciergerie, or the Grand Chatelet. The declara- 
 tion issued by the king for this alteration, promulgated some of the most 
 humane and enlightened sentiments on the conduct of prisons, amongst 
 which was the construction of airy and spacious infirmaries, separate places of 
 confinement, and court-yards for men and women, and for offenders of 
 different classes, and the total abolition of under-ground dungeons for the 
 confinement of prisoners who had not yet taken their trial. Pity but 
 that the same humanity had gone a little further, and prohibited the use 
 of such unwholesome places at all. But this was not the case, as the 
 dungeons of the Conciergerie were dark and offensive, yet contained sixteen 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 131. 
 
415 
 
 wretched inmates. To the honor, however, of the police of the metropolis, a tap- 
 room, formerly much used, was now abolished, and a new infirmary had been 
 added. At the Grand Chc'itelet, as at the prison just described, prisoners paid for 
 their rooms according to their g-oodness, even those who lay upon straw being 
 compelled to raise a sous a-night for this indulgence. There were eight 
 dungeons here, opening into dark passages, and they now shut out from the 
 breath of heaven sixteen prisoners, two of them in irons, but all lying upon 
 straw. With his wonted attention to the comfort of the objects of his bounty, 
 he always chose to visit prisoners who were thus immured, on meagre days, 
 because their allowance then being only bread, the present of a little wine 
 was the more acceptable. Of these wretched dungeons, the military prison of 
 VAbbaye had six very small ones, into which fifty prisoners were sometimes 
 crammed. To such miserable places of confinement, the Hotel de la Force 
 exhibited a striking and agreeable contrast, being an airy and spacious build- 
 ing, with several courts and areas for the separation of the men from the 
 women, and of prisoners of different kinds, debtors, vagrants, deserters, and 
 petty offenders, from each other. Those courts were all clean, and well sup- 
 plied with water. For debtors, beds were provided at from five to thirty sous 
 a-night, and rooms and beds of an inferior description were also furnished to 
 those who could not pay ; each of these being allowed a pound and a half of 
 bread and a mess of soup every day. Here was a chapel and an airy infirmary 
 for each sex, together with a well-furnished apothecary's shop, from which the 
 other prisons were supplied with drugs. The arret of parliament for the regulation 
 of this prison was ordered to be read in the chapel on the first Sunday in every 
 month, and to be fixed up in several conspicuous parts of the building. Amongst 
 other judicious rules, it contained one which prohibited the payment of fees. 
 Taking advantage of a longer continuance in this city than at most of his former 
 visits, Mr. Howard inspected several other prisons, either newly erected, or 
 which he had overlooked. In that of St. Martin, where loose women were 
 confined for a period seldom exceeding fourteen days, he found no less than 
 
416 
 
 115 prisoners; so that its rooms, of which there were but ten, were very 
 crowded. The refractory were punished by solitary confinement. Another 
 prison for women, called Saint Eloi, contained thirty-eight prisoners, some of 
 whom had been confined for three or four years. All of them were troubled 
 with a cutaneous disorder, some to a very great degree. They had a pound 
 and a half of bread a-day, and, from a charity, a mess of soup four days in the 
 week. The water, which at the Bicttre was formerly drawn up by horses, was 
 now drawn up by seventy-two prisoners, each working five hours in the day, and 
 earning for himself about eight sous. In consequence of their being thus 
 employed, they were much healthier than at any of Mr. Howard's former 
 visits. The great hospital, or Salpetriere, near this city, for women and girls, 
 amongst upwards of 6,000 poor, insane, and orphans, contained 820 juvenile 
 delinquents of the female sex, most of them sent here by their relatives, and 
 kept quite separate from the rest ; generally unemployed, and seldom seen by 
 strangers. The other girls were at work, chiefly on the finest embroidery, 
 and owing to the very great attention of the religious sisterhood who resided 
 in, and had the superintendence of the house, every part of it was kept clean 
 and quiet. In the very minute inspection which he now bestowed upon the 
 hospitals and other charitable institutions of this celebrated metropolis, our 
 benevolent tourist was much gratified ; as, upon the whole, he found them 
 clean, airy, and well-regulated ; so much so indeed, that to some of them he 
 paid repeated visits, to gather that useful information which he thought his; 
 own country might derive from institutions which did so much honor to that 
 in which they were found.* After passing about ten days in Paris, Mr. 
 Howard proceeded to Lille, where, on the 24th and 26th of May, he visited 
 the citadel, where the scurvy had already made great havoc among the priso- 
 ners ; though 340 men, most of them deserters, were still left in confinement 
 here. Eighty-six of these were in the sick-rooms, some of whom, though 
 dying, were in irons. These rooms were very close and dirty, and the general 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 122—9. 
 
417 
 
 slate of the prison induced its visitor to make a remark which those whom it 
 may concern, in England as well as France, will do well to observe, namely, 
 that " particular attention should be paid to air and cleanliness, where prisoners 
 have no employment : humanity to them, and also to their keepers and visitors, 
 demands this." The general hospital, or work-house for the poor, and the in- 
 firmary of this city, were well regulated ; upwards of 300 girls being employed 
 in the former in making lace, for each piece of which they received a small 
 gratuity. Many of the boys, though lodged and boarded here, learned trades 
 in the city; and at twenty years of age both sexes were discharged from this 
 useful institution, taught to get an honest livelihood. But very different was 
 the condition of the Tour de St. Pierre, an old building, in which were three 
 debtors, five smugglers, and five vagrants, a motley group, but none of them 
 in the small and dark dungeons, fifteen steps under ground, which were now, 
 as they always should have been, unoccupied. Four of them, however, were 
 sick in a very offensive room, with only one bed in it ; and in repeating his 
 visit to them for the benevolent purpose of administering to their wants, this 
 good Samaritan had nearly fallen himself a victim to the malignancy of their 
 disorder. But he was mercifully preserved for some few added years of 
 usefulness, and he has thus publicly recorded his acknowledgments for so 
 gracious an interposition in his behalf: " I have abundant reason for thank- 
 fulness to Divine Providence, for recovering me from a fever which I caught 
 of the sick, in this prison, at my last visit."* But his private expressions of 
 gratitude are still more fervent; for in his diary he thus gives utterance to the 
 feelings of his heart : " Record and remember the mercy and goodness of 
 God, for many days I have been in pain and sorrow, the sentence of death 
 was as it were upon me, but I cried unto the Lord and He delivered me, 
 Blessed for ever blessed be the name of the Lord. Oh! God do my soul good 
 by this affliction, make me more sensible of my entire dependence on Thee, 
 more serious, more humble, more watchful, more abstracted from this world, 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 104, 5. 
 
 3h 
 
418 
 
 better prepared to leave it — live a Life of Faith in the great Redeemer, 
 whom having not seen, yet I hope I love, and desire to serve to the end of 
 my Life.— J. H." 
 
 Though his danger upon the present occasion seems to have been very 
 great, his life was not long in jeopardy, nor his recovery tardy, as in about 
 ten days he was able to go on to Amsterdam, where he continued for four or 
 five days, re-inspecting, as his strength would let him, its prisons, but without 
 gaining much additional information as to their economy. It is worthy of 
 remark, however, because it shows us the firmness of his trust in Providence 
 for that protection in the discharge of his duty of which he had just received 
 so signal a proof, that though it was only on the 26th of May that he had 
 caught this contagious fever at Lille, on the Gth of the next month he was to 
 be found accompanying the physicians at Amsterdam in their rounds through 
 a prison which had no infirmary, though at this time it fortunately contained 
 but two patients, whose disorders were of a very slight description. In the 
 orphan-house he found about 1,300 children of both sexes. The rooms for the 
 directors, and the kitchen, were neat and clean, but the bed-rooms close and 
 offensive, being crowded with beds, with three or four children in each of 
 them. Even those in the infirmary had two or three in every one of them, 
 and were inclosed in boxes in the wall. For want of air, the work-rooms, 
 school-rooms, and refectories were so unhealthy, that the children here, as 
 indeed in three other orphan-houses in this city, and in that at Rotterdam, 
 were objects of great compassion ; many of the servants of these houses being 
 old and indolent, and suffering the children to be miserably nasty ; in 
 consequence of which most of them were troubled with cutaneous disor- 
 ders to a very great degree. On pointing out this latter circumstance to 
 the directors of this institution, our Philanthropist felt his pity and his indig- 
 nation at once aroused, when they coolly replied : " It is the house disorder ; 
 all our children must have a seasoning." " Thus," he exclaims, " do the 
 
419 
 
 physicians and governors excuse the abuse of their trust ; the consequence must 
 be, that few of the children reach manhood, and that such as do, are a feeble 
 and sickly race."* After re-visiting Utrecht, the state of whose prisons 
 require no particular notice, Mr. Howard, on the 16th of June, entered the 
 Netherlands by the way of Antwerp. 
 
 Meeting with nothing remarkable in this city, except that it contained 
 but one prisoner, he passed on to Brussels, where he re-inspected the 
 prison in the Porte de Halle, and learnt that the torture was not abolished, as 
 the gaoler told him that he had seen a man suffering on the torture-stool for 
 forty-eight hours. Thence he proceeded to Ghent, where he found that the 
 house of correction, which he had formerly so much admired, and held up as a 
 pattern for imitation in his own country, had lately undergone a melancholy 
 alteration. When he waited on the burgomaster for permission to inspect it, 
 he was told that the emperor had issued an order prohibiting any person's 
 entrance there. " But you Sir," said the worthy magistrate, " are an exception 
 to all rules : you must not, however, impute to me the unhappy changes which 
 you will observe in this prison." He was accordingly admitted, and was 
 grieved to find that the encouragement of those habits of industry, which 
 ought to be the leading object of all such houses, was now completely lost 
 sight of here. Many had formerly ascribed the comfort and happiness of 
 their future lives to the trades which they had learnt, and the attention paid to 
 the correction of their evil habits in this prison; but now, alas! the useful manu- 
 factory, whose flourishing condition but a year and a half ago had afforded him 
 so much satisfaction, was destroyed, and the looms sold ; so that the 476 pri- 
 soners here did not earn, one with another, so much as seven-farthings a-day. 
 With this reduction in their labor, a correspondent one had been made in the 
 quantity and quality of their food. In consequence of this " vile policy," Mr. 
 Howard found the aspect of the prisoners quite changed ; and was not at all 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 1 J, 12, 15. 
 3 ii 2 
 
420 
 
 surprised to learn, that an entire quarter of this nohle building was soon to be 
 fitted up as an infirmary. This change was owing entirely to the too hasty 
 attention which the Emperor Joseph had paid to a petition from a few inte- 
 rested persons, in consequence of which he had ordered the manufactory here 
 to be discontinued, as injurious to the private manufacturers of his vast 
 dominions. Besides the alteration in their diet, he also directed that less care 
 should be taken to keep the rooms of the prisoners neat and clean, in the 
 mistaken hope that their confinement would thus be rendered so disagreeable, 
 that they would be more cautious how they rendered themselves obnoxious to 
 it again. As some encouragement to good and orderly behaviour in this prison, 
 its imperial visitor had, however, commanded, that a list of such of the subjects 
 of its discipline, — if any thing worthy the name of discipline he can be said to 
 have left, — should annually be sent to him ; and, in the course of the year before, 
 twelve had accordingly received a pardon. The prison De Mamelocker, near 
 the town-hall, was also made very offensive, by sewers ; and he learnt that the 
 torture was not abolished there, as a man had lately sat for twenty-four hours 
 upon the edged-stool.* Re-visiting the prisons of Alost on the 18th, and those 
 of Ostend upon the 21st, of June, without gaining any information of interest, 
 our traveller embarked at the latter place for England, and reached his home 
 on the 24th or 25th of the same month, after having been absent nearly five 
 months, in the course of which he had travelled 3,304 miles, a great part of them 
 in a mode to which he was unaccustomed, and which all who have been com- 
 pelled to use it represent as most irksome and wearying ; and often too without 
 being able to procure the little refreshment his abstemious habits required, to 
 recruit his spirits, and re-invigorate his frame. 
 
 These things, however, moved not him ; but after spending about a month 
 in the circle of his friends and the company of his son, whose vacation com- 
 menced but on the day he embarked for England, he set out upon his tour to 
 » Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 99 — 101. Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
421 
 
 Ireland, which he had promised to take, for the purpose of again going 
 through some of the principal gaols before its parliament should re-assemble. 
 In that, tour he was accompanied by his son, now about eighteen years of age, 
 and who had finally left the last academy in England at which he was placed. 
 Arriving in Dublin -the latter end of this month, he immediately set about the 
 careful inspection of its various gaols, especially of the new Newgate, of whose 
 defects he gives us a brief, but a most melancholy summary. It was not kept 
 clean, and had no regular supply of water ; the sexes were not properly 
 separated ; petty offenders were confined with the most abandoned criminals ; 
 numbers of acquitted felons were still in custody for their fees, whilst such as 
 were committed to hard labor were confined in idleness. Spirituous liquors were 
 openly sold in the prison ; whiskey at so low a rate, that the prisoners would 
 often intoxicate themselves almost to madness ; whilst to procure it new comers 
 were robbed, or stripped, and grossly abused for their garnish of 3s. 9^d. 
 Those for whose use day-rooms were provided were, in some cases, never 
 allowed to enter them ; that on the women's side being always shut up, for the 
 accommodation of two or three felons, who lodged in the deputy-keeper's 
 house, to play there at tennis and other diversions ; whilst in that for the men, 
 the condemned criminals were locked up, prisoners who had not yet been tried 
 being lodged the while in the dungeons under ground. The gaol contained no 
 bath ; and one of the two physicians who, since Mr. Howard's former visit, 
 nad been ordered to attend its sick, having fallen in the vigor of youth, and 
 the dawn of splendid talents, a lamented victim to the contagion of a fever, 
 which a gaol wretched and filthy as was this could not fail to breed, — the efforts 
 of the survivor to stop the progress of such dreadful ravages were rendered 
 abortive, by the disgraceful parsimony, or the gross neglect, which left the 
 sick without bedding, ehange of diet, or nurses of any kind to administer to 
 their wants. And if their temporal ills were thus unprovided for, their spiri- 
 tual welfare and moral improvement was as shamefully overlooked, divine 
 service never being performed within the walls of this wretched and most pro- 
 
422 
 
 fligate place. Yet, with all these abuses to correct, the keeper did not reside 
 in the prison ; whilst the criminals themselves were its turnkeys, and a military 
 guard its best security. Its floors were of stone, yet were they without bed- 
 ding, or any thing for the prisoners to lie upon ; and though their allowance 
 was two-penny worth of bread each a-day, as it was delivered but twice a 
 week, and not fixed by weight, this description of the miserable condition of 
 these unfortunate beings closes by a statement, for which we may well be pre- 
 pared, that some of them were almost starved. Yet this gaol had ample 
 appointments, " but such appointments," its visitor very justly remarks, " can 
 be of little consequence, while the sheriffs and magistrates neglect their duty, 
 and seldom or never visit the goals or punish defaulters. Are not such magi- 
 strates," he pointedly asks, * inexcusably guilty? Should they not be 
 considered as accessary to the crimes and abuses and miseries occasioned by 
 their neglect ?" Yet was this neglect a very prevailing one, as we are told 
 that these remarks were applicable to many of the county gaols in Ireland, 
 though he made,— as we may be assured he would make, — this observation on 
 their defects, not with a wish to aggravate the inattention paid to these 
 objects in that country, or to make a comparison between the management of 
 their gaols and of those in England, which was still abundantly defective, but 
 with a view of exciting the public-spirited members of the Irish legislature, 
 whose attention was then occupied by the subject, to set an example of a 
 thorough reform in prisons, which might be imitated in his own country. 
 But whilst the defects in their management, which he pointed out for correc- 
 tion, were still suffered to exist, he was not backward in doing every thing in 
 his power to mitigate them ; and procuring from the keeper of the new prison at 
 Dublin a list of sixteen prisoners detained in his custody for the payment of 
 their fees, and finding fifteen others confined in the dungeons of the neigh- 
 bouring gaol at Kilmainham upon the same account, he restored to their 
 families such of these unhappy beings as seemed to be the most proper 
 objects of compassion ; some of them having children dying with the small- 
 
423 
 
 pox, whilst others had hardly a rag to cover them: yet, strange to say, 
 this distress had no more effect on the clerks of the crown, the sheriff*, 
 and gaolers, than to engage them to take half their fees from the pri- 
 vate purse of this benevolent Englishman, instead of continuing the con- 
 finement of their own unhappy countrymen until the whole was paid, a 
 period which, from their poverty or death, never might arrive. In the midst 
 of such a scene of inhumanity and distress, Dublin presented, however, one 
 object capable of affording real gratification to its humane visitor, in the house 
 of industry, whose progressive improvements he observed with pleasure. At 
 his last visits the house, infirmary, and cells for lunatics were quite clean, and 
 their numerous inhabitants quiet and orderly, circumstances t which he chiefly 
 attributes to the daily inspection of the governors in regular rotation. In the 
 year ending March 25, 1782, 2,819 persons came voluntarily into the house, 
 and 460 more by compulsion : the number of its inhabitants was at this time 
 1440.* He was pleased also to find that the new Lord Lieutenant, Earl 
 Temple, had paid such attention to the reform of prisons, that soon after his 
 arrival, in the autumn of 1782, he ordered the sheriffs to report to him the state 
 of the county gaols, at the same time directing that the six acts relative to 
 their regulation should be sent to them. On his return to England, about the 
 middle of August, Mr. Howard and his son took their passage in one of the 
 regular packets to Holyhead ; and in the course of their short voyage two 
 little incidents occurred, which have been rescued from oblivion by an anony- 
 mous correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine, who happened to be their 
 fellow-passenger ; and as they are both strikingly illustrative of the benevolence 
 of that great and good man's character, I transcribe them here in the words of 
 their narrator :— " Whilst we were on the deck of the packet young Howard 
 spoke with great roughness to a child that was playing with his coat, and drove 
 it from him. This appearance of inhumanity his father instantly took notice 
 of, and reprimanded him for not behaving with greater tenderness. But at 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 157—161. 
 
424 
 
 night Mr. Howard had an opportunity of shewing his disposition more plainly. 
 On coming to take possession of his birth, he found that a maid-servant 
 belonging to some of the passengers was not provided with a bed, and imme- 
 diately giving up to her his own, he spent the night upon the cabin floor, 
 choosing rather to inconvenience himself than to disturb that son on whose 
 account he is now calumniated. In these little incidents," continues my 
 authority for relating them, " we see a man alive to every feeling of humanity ; 
 uneasy at a word spoken with harshness to a child ; submitting to an inconve- 
 nience to relieve from a trifling distress a stranger whose rank gave no claim to 
 attention ; and leaving his son in possession of an accommodation which his 
 own age rendered almost necessary. These were not the effects of a mind 
 heated by enthusiasm, but the effusions of a truly benevolent heart, to which 
 that noble sentiment, humani nihil ti me alienum puto, might deservedly be 
 applied. I knew not," he adds, " Mr. Howard's name during these transac- 
 tions, and learned it only by accident a short time before we landed."* Such 
 anecdotes require no comment ; but they speak volumes in refutation of the 
 absurd charges which have been preferred against the illustrious subject of 
 them, of his having been deficient in parental affection, and in all the milder 
 charities of private life. 
 
 On his arrival in England he immediately proceeded to its metropolis, 
 where he was closely occupied for about ten days in another re-inspection of 
 its gaols, his son accompanying him to town, as he now usually did in all his 
 journeyings. No very material circumstance occurred, however, in these visits. 
 About ten days afterwards he returned to London, where he spent another 
 fortnight in arranging his papers for publication, a work in which he availed 
 himself of the same friendly assistance as he had experienced on former occa- 
 sions ; after which he took a short tour to Worcester and Gloucester, in the 
 latter of whioh cities he found a new gaol nearly finished ; but it was built upon 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part II. p. 1090. 
 
42 
 
 ■> 
 
 too small a scale ; the walls and rooms were low, and no proper separation 
 could be made either between male and female prisoners, or debtors and felons. 
 He learnt also with great satisfaction that a new county gaol was intended to 
 be built, and a reform effected in the bridewell, chiefly owing to the spirited 
 exertions of Sir George Onesiphorus Paul, the foreman of the grand jury. In 
 this very year several had died, in the old prison, of the small-pox and the 
 gaol fever.* The former part of the month of October was spent either at 
 Cardington or in London, in the further arrangement of his papers ; the latter 
 in visiting some of the prisons of the metropolis, and in re-inspecting the 
 hulks, where he found the convicts on board the Justitia looking well, a cir- 
 cumstance which he attributed, in a great measure, to their being employed, 
 and restrained from spirituous and other strong liquors. Of late but few of 
 them had died, which " shews," says their inspector, '• that their situation is 
 better with respect to health, but the association of so many criminals is utterly 
 destructive of morals." The Censor had on board 137 transports for our 
 settlements, many of whom were such sickly objects, and so greatly in want 
 of cloathes, that he was persuaded they would die on their passage ; a thought 
 which caused him to revert to the Portuguese method of treating their con- 
 victs, and to wish that ours was but as humane.f He afterwards took three 
 short trips to Kingston, Hertford, and Chelmsford ; in the county bridewell at 
 the latter of which towns he found several sick and dirty objects upon the 
 floor with little or no covering. This was the case also with the new gaol for 
 the county of Surrey, at Horsemonger-lane, where one of the turnkeys had 
 recently died of the fever ; whilst of the fifty-five criminals which it contained 
 twenty-five were convicts, left to languish in this sickly gaol, instead of being 
 delivered, in execution of their sentence.^ 
 
 Having now completed his fourth general inspection of our English gaols, 
 Mr. Howard, early in the month of November, set off for Warrington, to 
 arrange with Dr. Aikin, and to superintend through the press a second edition 
 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 231—3. f lb. p. 165. % lb. p. 183, 191. 
 
 3 i 
 
42G 
 
 of his Appendix to the State of Prisons, and a third edition of the whole work, in 
 both of which the important information obtained during his lengthened jour- 
 neys, both at home and abroad, in the years 1781, 2, 3, was carefully interwoven 
 with the original text. 
 
 When those journeys were finished, he summed up, in one of the rough me- 
 morandum-books in which he inserted the particulars of his tours, the amount 
 of the number of miles which, in less than ten years, he had travelled in his 
 own country and abroad, on the reform of prisons, and found that they formed 
 a total of 42,033. By the kindness of the relative, in whose possession the 
 original remains, I am enabled to furnish my readers with a copy of this 
 curious document which they will find inserted in the notes,* though I cannot 
 refrain from transcribing here the ascription of all the praise and merit of these 
 deeds of benevolence to the Almighty, with which this record of their extent is 
 so characteristically closed : — " To God alone be all the Praise. I do not regret 
 the loss of the many Conveniencies of Life but bless God who inclined my 
 Mind to such a Scheme." 
 
 In the former of the publications, recording the results of labors thus 
 appreciated by the benevolent being who undertook them, little or nothing 
 of interest is contained which has not already been noticed in the regu- 
 lar detail of the progress of his inquiries. It may, however, be worthy 
 of remark, that he there assigns as a principal reason for the cleanliness and 
 order which he observed in the prisons and work-houses of Holland, the 
 attention and humanity of the governesses, four of whom took the charge 
 of inspection in each institution. From the observations which he made, 
 both in this country and in Switzerland, he expresses himself also to be 
 but the more confirmed in the opinion he had formerly advanced, that no 
 mercenary views whatever should be held out to those who are charged 
 with the inspection of such places, whose services there were gratuitous, but, 
 
 * Note 1. 
 
427 
 
 as they ought to bo, particularly honorable. " Nor can I doubt," he adds, 
 " that in our own country, as well as abroad, men might readily be found, 
 who, merely from a sense of duty, and love to humanity and their country, 
 would faithfully and diligently execute such an office, with no other reward 
 than the approbation of their fellow-citizens, and of their own consciences." 
 In closing his account of the plans of improvement of the latter republic he 
 observes, with a more particular reference to the prisoners confined in their 
 houses of correction, " No visitants are admitted on Sunday. Thus a principal 
 object here is to make them better men. This, indeed, should always be the 
 leading view in every house of correction ; and the earnings of the prisoners 
 should only be a secondary object. As rational and immortal beings, we owe this 
 to them ; nor can any criminality of theirs justify our neglect in this particular."* 
 Such and so correct were his views of the purposes of punishment, and of our 
 duties towards those who had merited its infliction by their departure from the 
 paths of rectitude. In connection with the police regulations of his own coun- 
 try, he points out two customs in the metropolis which have since been discon- 
 tinued. The one is a remnant of the ancient mode of torture observed at the 
 Old Bailey, in the executioner slipping a whip-cord noose about the thumbs of 
 convicts when asked what they had to say why judgment of death should not 
 be pronounced upon them : a practice which he recommended to be abolished, as 
 it accordingly has long since been. The other was the improper custom of pa- 
 rading criminals through the heart of the metropolis to the gallows at Tyburn, in 
 consequence of which, as he very justly observes, " an execution-day teas too 
 much, with us, a day of riot and idleness, and it was found by experience that the 
 minds of the populace were rather hardened by the spectacle than affected in 
 any salutary manner." For remedying these evils, he suggests the propriety 
 of making the report within a week after sentence, and ordering the execution 
 soon after, either in the area before Newgate, or before the Sessions-house. The 
 latter of these judicious hints has been acted upon ; and it would be well, for the 
 more efficient administration of justice, were the former also attended to, as the 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 'id Edit, p. 7; 89. 
 3 i 2 
 
428 
 
 crime and its punishment would not then be separated from each other at such 
 a distance as they now frequently are. It would be of still more importance, 
 however, to the general interests of humanity, and of a sound and liberal 
 policy, would our legislators deign to listen to the voice of a man, from whose 
 enlightened philanthropy they have already derived so many important 
 lessons, and might, if they would, derive so many more, when on mentioning 
 the tables published in 1772, by Sir Stephen Theodore Janssen, of the number 
 of criminals executed in London in the twenty-three preceding years, he 
 observes, " I am sorry to be reminded by these tables of a judicious remark of Mr. 
 Eden's Principles of Penal Laws, page 306 : ' the accumulation of sanguinary 
 laws is the worst distemper of a state. Let it not be supposed the extirpation 
 of mankind is the chief object of legislation,' I would wish,'' adds the benevo- 
 lent being, whose chief object was their preservation and reformation, " that 
 no persons might suffer capitally but for murder ; — for setting houses on fire; — 
 for house-breaking, attended with acts of cruelty. The highwayman ; — the 
 footpad ; — the habitual thief, and people of this clan, should end their days in a 
 penitentiary-house, rather than on a gallows." For the government of such 
 houses, should their erection upon the enlarged and improved plan which he 
 himself was selected to superintend ever be accomplished, he offers, at the close 
 of his work, some general heads of regulation, to which those who may be 
 called upon to legislate upon this important subject will do well to attend.* 
 
 By the addition of new matter, this reprint of his Appendix was 
 swelled from 218 to 302 more closely-printed pages, whilst the number of 
 plates was increased from eight to eighteen, some of them being very beauti- 
 ful views, executed in a style of highly-finished engraving. The whole of 
 these were of course added to the third edition of the entire work, which 
 consisted of 516 pages of a very large and closely-printed quarto. When he 
 had completed the task of superintending these two works through the press, — 
 and he must at least have been engaged in it for three or four months, — he re- 
 * Appendix to State of Prisons, 2d Edit. p. 170, 272. 
 
429 
 
 turned to London, and distributed copies of them with the same liberality as 
 he had exercised upon former occasions. One of these he presented to his 
 Royal Highness the Duke of York, then but Prince Bishop of Osnaburgh, to 
 whom he had been introduced on his last visit to that place ; when he embraced 
 the opportunity of informing him of the existence in his principality of that ex- 
 cruciating system of torture, whose pre-eminence in barbarity has already 
 been stated. The young Prince was very anxious to know in what its parti- 
 cular cruelty consisted, but Mr. Howard assured him that he would not shock 
 his feelings by such a dreadful detail, but begged of him to give orders to his 
 ministers to inquire into the circumstances of its infliction. The result of this 
 interview was a promise for the abolition of the practice when the Prince came 
 of age, and he now delicately reminded him of it, by fixing the ribband of an 
 elegantly-bound copy of the work in which that practice is described, at the 
 place where he expresses his conviction that it would not long be suffered 
 to exist. " Mr. Howard," says the reverend gentleman, to whose urbanity I 
 am indebted for this anecdote, " told me, that if he had chosen he might have 
 filled a book with an infinite variety of tortures practised in Europe. But 
 although the horrid narrative would have secured the rapid and extensive sale 
 of the collection, he preferred to bury in silence such shocking scenes, for fear 
 of instructing some in certain modes of tormenting with which they were un- 
 acquainted, and leading ferocious natures to introduce them where they were 
 unknown — what a picture of human depravity ! " * But what a picture, I would 
 add, of human benevolence, when under the influence of a right spirit, does 
 the conduct of the illustrious subject of these memoirs present to us, in the care 
 he took to abstain from furnishing to that depravity fresh food for a cruelty to 
 glut itself upon, from which we should have thought that the very devils them- 
 selves would have shrunk with horror ! 
 
 There are no other circumstances of the journeys, of near 5,000 
 miles, performed in the course of the active year of his valuable exist- 
 
 * Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
430 
 
 ence which this chapter of his memoirs embraces, upon record, but those 
 which have already been related. The kindness of Dr. Brown has, however, 
 put me in possession of an anecdote of the extraordinary influence which he 
 had acquired over the unhappy objects of his solicitude, as exemplified at this 
 period of his life ; and as there can no longer be any reason for its suppression, 
 I transcribe it from the memorandum made by him, soon after it had 
 been communicated from Mr. Howard's own lips. " When Ryland, the 
 celebrated engraver, was under sentence of death for forgery, a gentleman 
 came one morning to Mr. Howard, during one of his temporary visits to 
 London, and, begging pardon for his intrusion, informed him that some years 
 ago a maid-servant in a house opposite to Ryland's had suddenly left her 
 situation, and could not be heard of. In her room, however, some scraps of his 
 writing were discovered, and application was immediately made to him to 
 learn what had become of her. But the only answer he would give was, that 
 she was provided for ; and with this, during the days of his prosperity, her 
 friends were obliged to be satisfied. When, however, his fortune was ruined 
 by his condemnation, they desired to be more particularly informed of 
 her condition, in order that they might take her home to prevent her coming 
 upon the town. They accordingly applied to him in Newgate, but could get 
 no specific answer to their inquiries ; when hearing that Mr. Howard had 
 great influence over persons in Mr. Ryland's situation, they had determined 
 upon soliciting his assistance, which he was now come to ask, in the hope that 
 he would be able to procure from the criminal the desired information. He 
 promised that he would bring back an account of the unfortunate girl's situa- 
 tion in twenty-four hours ; and he fulfilled his promise. She had been kept by 
 Ryland, in a village at some distance from London, where she was found 
 by her relations, and restored to their protection." From the same authentic 
 source, I am also enabled to furnish my readers with a proof of the courage and 
 presence of mind which this extraordinary man possessed, as exhibited during 
 one of his visits to the metropolis, at this period of his life. " During an 
 alarming riot at the Savoy," says Dr. Brown, " the prisoners had killed two 
 
431 
 
 of their keepers, and no person dared to approach them, until the intrepid 
 Howard insisted on entering their prison. In vain his friends, in vain the 
 gaolers endeavoured to dissuade him : in he went among two hundred ruffians, 
 when such was the effect of his mild and benign manner, that they soon listened 
 to his remonstrances, represented their grievances, and at last allowed them- 
 selves to be quietly re-conducted to their cells." 
 
 Another circumstance is said to have occurred about the same time, which, 
 though rather of a ludicrous description, and not resting on the very best 
 authority, is neither improbable in itself, nor disbelieved by several of his 
 surviving friends. A lady, whose admiration had been very powerfully at- 
 tracted by the extraordinary benevolence of his character, feeling an eager curio- 
 sity to behold and converse with him, is represented to have called several times 
 at his house before she had the good fortune to meet with him, and when she 
 did gain admittance, her appearance was so little prepossessing, that the mind 
 of Mr. Howard could not divest itself of a certain dread of assassination. Her 
 amazing height, indeed her tout ensemble, was so extremely masculine, that the 
 idea of a man disguised in woman's cloathes instantly occurred to his imagina- 
 tion, and he hastily rung his bell, and by a look gave his servant to understand 
 that he wished him to wait in the room. His fears were, however, groundless, 
 for the good woman, after having sufficiently wearied his patience with a bom- 
 bastic display of the vast veneration in which she held his labors in the cause 
 of humanity, very quietly took her leave— declaring that she could now die 
 in peace.* 
 
 When, in the spring of 1784, Mr. Howard had laid before the public the 
 result of his minute inspection of the prisons, and many of the hospitals of his 
 own country, and of the principal states of Europe, during the greater part of 
 the three preceding years, he retired to his estate at Cardington, in whose calm 
 
 * Life of John Howard, Esq. with a brief Review of hi? Travels, p. 48, 9. 
 
432 
 
 seclusion he purposed to spend the remaining years of his existence. During 
 his protracted absences from the society of the friends by whom he was sur- 
 rounded there, he never was absent from their remembrance, as the few letters 
 which he wrote during his tours abroad evince that they still lived in his : nor 
 is it easy to describe the joy with which the friendly epistles that proved 
 they did so were received, or the eagerness with which they were perused by the 
 little band with whom his hours of social converse were generally spent at 
 home. But in that band one individual held a most distinguished place, and, 
 when his friend was in Bedfordshire, Mr. Smith gave up, for the enjoyment of 
 his society, all other engagements but those which his pastoral duties called him 
 to ; whilst upon his part, Mr. Howard was equally delighted with the opportu- 
 nity of such frequent communion with the companion of his most private 
 thoughts. He would then often call upon his pastor to ride out with him on 
 horseback, and there was nothing he more enjoyed than the engaging him in 
 conversation so earnestly, as to keep him out an hour or two after his dinner- 
 time, without his being aware how rapidly the time had passed ; when he 
 would smile and say, " I find, my friend, that you can fast as long as I can ; 
 but now you must go to Cardington and spend the day with me, as Mrs. 
 Smith will have dined long before this time." " My father," says the lady to 
 whom I am indebted for the principal circumstances of our Philanthropist's 
 private history contained in this chapter of his memoirs, " has often said those 
 were some of the most delightful hours of his life ; for that Mr. Howard would 
 then completely unbend himself, and give him the most entertaining accounts 
 of his past travels ; open to him all his future plans — all his trials and sorrows ; 
 in short, every feeling of his heart, in the most free and confidential manner." 
 He often spent several days together with him in this delightful intercourse at 
 Cardington, where, during its owner's absence, he and his family frequently 
 took up their abode, as at such times he had a discretionary power over his 
 household, and the general superintendence of his domestic affairs. To his 
 other friends his behaviour was still marked by that kindness and readiness to 
 
433 
 
 oblige which had always distinguished it; whilst with his neighbours he conti- 
 nued to live in the constant interchange of mutual good offices. 
 
 His house was at all times open to his friends, as it had been before those 
 tours of philanthropy, which had taken him so much from it, had rendered him 
 an object of general curiosity, and attracted thither many to whom the more private 
 virtues of his heart either might not have been known, or, if they had been, would 
 not have induced a wish for a more intimate acquaintance with their possessor. 
 Upon the grounds attached to it, he had always bestowed the greatest pains to 
 keep them in order when at home, and it was his strict charge to his gardener 
 that they should not be neglected during his absence, as in fact they never 
 were. The celebrity which their owner had attained, gave to both house and 
 grounds a more general attraction than in themselves they had any claim to ; 
 and hence they were frequently visited by parties from the neighbourhood, and 
 even from a distance, who were readily suffered to inspect them. Mr. Howard had 
 a very great objection to the custom of giving vails to servants, and therefore 
 issued strict orders to his own never to receive them ; and such was their 
 cheerful obedience to his commands, that they were never known to accept 
 any present during his absence, though they might often have done it without 
 fear of detection. They knew, however, that if their having done so should 
 ever come to his knowledge, they should forfeit his favour, and be dismissed his 
 service, than which nothing could have been a greater affliction to them. 
 Having been long in that service, they were accustomed to all his ways, and 
 had become as regular in their habits as he was in his. At this period of his 
 life his attachment to a vegetable diet was so confirmed, that he never 
 tasted any animal food, not so much as an oyster. Some have supposed, from 
 the extraordinary benevolence of his character, that he did this upon prin- 
 ciples of humanity, as not thinking it right that the life of any creature should 
 needlessly be taken away to pamper his appetite : but though this consideration 
 might have had some weight with him, it is certain, from the concurrent testi- 
 
 3k 
 
434 
 
 mony of many of his surviving friends, that his chief motive for this abstinence 
 was an idea he had imbibed, that animal food had a decided tendency to irritate 
 the system ; whilst a vegetable diet contributed at once to keep the intellects 
 clear, and the whole frame free from the effects of the irrascible passions. To 
 his adherence to it, he in a great measure ascribed the unvarying calmness of 
 his temper, and the presence of mind which he possessed upon all occasions ; 
 so that he was wont to say, if his house should fall under him, or any other 
 sudden accident occur, he should not feel the slightest perturbation or discom- 
 posure. Yet, with this exception, he was careless what he ate, as he cheer- 
 fully partook of whatever vegetable diet was set before him, or could the most 
 readily be procured, and would even dine very heartily upon a crust of bread 
 and a glass of water : nor was he at all more particular as to the time at which 
 he took his meals, though when at home he practised regularity in this, as well 
 as in other respects, not merely for the sake of example, but from inclination. 
 There his meals were always served up, whether he had company or was alone, 
 in a style suited to his rank in life ; and those who saw him the most frequently, 
 and under circumstances of the least reserve, declare that they never were in a 
 house whose domestic arrangements exhibited more regularity and real comfort 
 than his, whether he was at home or abroad. In his mode of living, as in 
 other respects, Mr. Smith, who of all others was the best qualified to speak 
 correctly of them, often said, that the descriptions given to the public were 
 rather caricatures, than faithful portraits. Had it not been for his public cha- 
 racter, Mr. Howard would, indeed, have been known to his neighbourhood 
 and the circle of his friends as a retired country gentleman of great benevo- 
 lence and some few peculiarities, which would soon have been forgotten, while 
 his kindness and his charity would long have been remembered with merited 
 approbation. But the public display of those virtues, which would not less 
 have adorned him in a private station, excited the curiosity, as well as the 
 admiration of the world, and have been the means of his peculiarities becoming 
 known and magnified ; and as comparatively few persons were acquainted 
 
435 
 
 with him in his private character, we cannot be surprised that an erroneous 
 opinion should have been formed of his manners and habits in the retirement of 
 his domestic circle. Thus, though his singular temperance has justly been 
 ranked high in the scale of his extraordinary virtues, " the merit of it con- 
 sisted," as the daughter of his most intimate friend very truly remarks, " in 
 the command he had acquired over his inclinations, so as to enable him to 
 forego every comfort in the prosecution of his extensive schemes of benevo- 
 lence, at whose call he would cheerfully make the greatest sacrifices, rather 
 than in any austerity which he practised at home." Besides his house at Car- 
 diugton, he had now, since the death of his sister, another in Great Ormond- 
 street, which he kept for his occasional residences in town ; his table being 
 supplied, when there, by vegetables, household bread, butter, and cheese, from 
 his own farm. He frequently spent a few days or a week there, even during 
 the short period that his gaol schemes, as he himself used to call them, were 
 laid aside ; sometimes travelling to and fro in his own chaise, or on horse- 
 back, at others going by the coach. It was upon one of these latter occasions 
 that he exhibited an instance of the kindness of his disposition, and his habitual 
 attention to the female sex in every rank of life, which the object of it, a 
 respectable woman, who lived seven and twenty years in the families of the 
 late Mrs. Belsham, and of the Reverend Mr. Smith, assured the daughter of 
 the latter that she never should forget. Having met with some family misfor- 
 tunes, this worthy woman was coming back from London, when Mr. 
 Howard happened to be in the coach, and seeing, at the first inn they stopped 
 at, that she was in trouble and unwell, he fetched her a glass of warm wine 
 and water, speaking to her at the same time with so much kindness, that the 
 impression it made upon her mind will never be effaced. But his attentions 
 stopped not here ; for as soon as there was room inside the coach, he desired 
 that she might come in, and he would pay the additional fare ; when he talked 
 to her in so fatherly and affectionate a manner on her misfortunes, as greatly 
 to calm her mind, and to enable her to support her trials with patience and 
 
 3k 2 
 
436 
 
 resignation. " I found," said she to Mrs. Greene, " more consolation from 
 his conversation and kindness than I can possibly express." He left the coach 
 at Cardington Cross, about three miles from Bedford, but he gave the coach- 
 man something to see his passenger safe home, and told him to take particular 
 care of her and of her luggage ; " for," said he, turning to the object of his 
 kind solicitude, " you appear so ill and distressed as not to be able to take care 
 of yourself." Well, then, may she say, as she does from her own experience, 
 as well as from the opportunity which her long residence in his neighbourhood 
 gave her of learning from others, that Mr. Howard was beloved by every body, 
 so kind was he to them, especially to poor widows. Another such proof, of 
 the general benevolence' of his conduct in private, as in public life has come 
 to my knowledge through the same respectable channel, and with great 
 pleasure I now communicate it to the public. A lady of Bedford, who knew 
 Mr. Howard well for many years, and whose testimony in behalf of his kind- 
 ness to his son has already been given in the earlier part of these memoirs, 
 when about fifteen years of age, was attacked by a fever of so malignant a 
 description, that many persons were fearful of coming into the house ; but even 
 when the disorder was at its height, Mr. Howard visited her every day : and 
 so constant was his kindness and attention, that her mother ever spoke, as she 
 herself still speaks of it, in terms of the warmest gratitude; adding, that if it 
 had not been for his truly Christian advice, she must have sunk under the fatigue 
 and anxiety she underwent, but she always felt fresh strength and support after 
 his visits. He gave her many useful directions as to the proper management of 
 the fever, and when her patient got better, brought her recipes for jellies and 
 other strengthening things ; and, when she was sufficiently recovered, very 
 kindly asked her to go over to Cardington for a change of scene ; adding, in a 
 good-tempered manner, " the air will do you good, and young lasses need not 
 scruple coming to see such old widowers as I am." That he had so long con- 
 tinued unmarried, after having enjoyed so much happiness in the marriage state, 
 seems to have been owing to his never having met with a person of congenial 
 
437 
 
 sentiments to his own, rather than to any disinclination which he felt again to 
 taste in a mingled cup the joys and the anxieties of a wedded life. To female 
 society he was very much attached, and nothing could delight him more, in his 
 hours of relaxation, than the conversation of women of education and of culti- 
 vated manners. Of the respect due to the sex he had indeed a very high idea, and 
 his behaviour to them was always singularly kind, polite, and respectful. But, 
 without yielding to the most celebrated beau of Paris, in the observance of the 
 golden rule of his poliiesse — place aux dames — there was something more manly, 
 dignified, and flattering, in the attention which he paid them, than in the mere 
 round of gallantry, compliments, and prettinesses, which forms the sum total 
 of the politeness of modern fine gentlemen. He never returned from his foreign 
 tours, and seldom indeed from any of his English ones into the manufacturing 
 districts, without bringing some little elegant article or other, often of so deli- 
 cate a fabric as to require not a little care and caution on the journey, as a 
 present for some of his female friends, to whom, by every mark of attention 
 in his power to pay, he endeavoured, and, not without success, to render 
 himself agreeable. " In his judgment of female character, it was manifest," 
 says Dr. Aikin,* " that the idea of his lost Harriet was the standard of ex- 
 cellence ; and, if ever he had married again, a resemblance to her would have 
 been the principal motive of his choice. I recollect to this purpose a singular 
 anecdote, which he related to us on his return from one of his tours. In going 
 from one town in Holland to another in the common passage-boat, he was 
 placed near an elderly gentleman, who had in company a young lady of a 
 most engaging manner and appearance, which very strongly reminded him of 
 his Harriet. He was so much struck with her, that, on arriving at the place 
 of destination, he caused his servant to follow them, and get intelligence who 
 they were. It was not without some disappointment that he learned, that the 
 old gentleman was an eminent merchant, and the young lady, — his wife." Nor 
 was this the only adventure of the kind he met with, as I have been in- 
 
 * Aikin, p. 233, 4. 
 
438 
 
 formed by a lady to whom he himself related the circumstance, that his first 
 visit to a considerable town in the north of England, at a period of his life when 
 he had not contemplated the extension of his tours of philanthropy beyond the 
 limits of his native country, if indeed he had then entered upon them at all, was 
 for the purpose of gaining an introduction to a lady who had already acquired a 
 literary reputation by her maiden name, which has been very deservedly in- 
 creased since she bore another, with a view, should he find the fascination of 
 her manners, and the virtues of her heart equal to the brilliancy of her 
 talents, to make her an offer of his hand. When he arrived at the inn, he fell 
 in company with a gentleman of whom he made some inquiries respecting 
 the lady and her family, when he had the mortification to learn that she was 
 engaged to the person whom she soon afterwards married, though he was 
 somewhat amused at finding, in the course of conversation, that his informant 
 was as much disappointed at this circumstance as himself, having come to 
 ****** precisely on the same errand. He therefore returned home, and 
 for the remainder of his days led there the life of a widower, his family con- 
 cerns being under the superintendence of a housekeeper, who was faithful to 
 the confidence he reposed in her. 
 
 To his tenants he was still a most indulgent landlord ; to the poor ever 
 the kindest benefactor. " It is impossible," says Dr. Aikin, with equal force 
 and truth, that " any stronger proof can be given, that the habit of doing 
 good was wrought into his very nature, than that, while his public actions 
 placed him without a rival for deeds of philanthropy, he should be unable to 
 satisfy his benevolent desires without his accustomed benefits to his neighbours 
 and dependents."* On all his tours of benevolence he had them in his remem- 
 brance, sending from Sheffield, and the other manufacturing towns of his own 
 country, presents to be distributed amongst them, and generally bringing 
 home with him, for their use, some of the articles manufactured by the pri- 
 
 * Aikiu, p. 37. 
 
439 
 
 soners whom he visited both at home and abroad. Whilst absent on these 
 journeys, he left Mr. Smith and John Prole to be his almoners in his private 
 charities, desiring them, when they gave any thing in h/'s name to put themselves 
 in his place, and give what they thought became his circumstances. In the course 
 of one of his later visits to the continent, he met with a cottage in Italy 
 which particularly struck him from the attention paid by its builder to conve- 
 nience and comfort. He therefore drew a rough plan of it, and took down its 
 dimensions, and immediately after its return to Cardington, had one erected 
 upon a similar plan, and would have had others built had he not been prevented 
 by those objects of higher importance which soon re-engaged his attention. 
 
 In his Christian profession Mr. Howard was uniform and consistent. When 
 at Cardington, he was regular in his attendance upon the ministry of his friend 
 Mr. Smith, and when he came on foot to Bedford on the Sabbath morning, he 
 invariably called at his pastor's house, which was just at the entrance to the 
 town, in order to walk to meeting in the family party, of which, upon these oc- 
 casions, he always desired to be one. " I well remember," says the lady, who in 
 her childhood formed one of this happy group, " how anxiously we used to 
 w r atch his knock, and how pleased we were to walk to meeting by his side." 
 By the members, as by the minister of that church with which he thus 
 regularly worshipped when at home, he was always esteemed one of its brightest 
 ornaments ; and even to the present hour, such of them as are still numbered 
 with the church-militant on earth, speak of him in terms of attachment and of 
 fond regret. During his occasional residences in London, he generally at- 
 tended the ministry of Dr. Stennet, to the erection of whose meeting-house in 
 Wild-street, he was a liberal contributor, accounting it, as he himself declared, 
 an honor to join his name with the congregation which assembled there. 
 Nor was he less generous in other instances, many a place of worship having 
 been largely indebted for its building or repairs to the contributions of his 
 Christian benevolence.* Yet with all this zeal for the truth, he was no bigot, 
 
 * Dr. Stennet's Funeral Sermon, p. 32. 
 
440 
 
 but faithfully discharged all the offices of friendship, and mingled in all the 
 intimacies and charities of social life, with many an one whose opinions upon 
 some of the leading doctrines of the Christian faith were diametrically oppo- 
 site to his own. Yet, instead of branding with the charge of the most 
 damnable heresy, and loading with unavailing anathemas such men as Price, 
 and Enfield, and Aikin, he extended to them, — not the right hand of Christian 
 fellowship and communion, for that he could not do, — but that of cordial friend- 
 ship and brotherly love, praying the while for their conversion from the error of 
 their belief; as if their attachment to the faith they professed, was as sincere as 
 we have every reason to believe it to have been, they were bound to pray in- 
 cessantly for his. " He was less solicitous," says Dr. Aikin, " about modes and 
 opinions, than the internal spirit of piety and devotion ; and in his estimate of 
 different religious societies, the circumstances to which he principally attended, 
 were their zeal and sincerity. — His connexions were, I believe, less with that 
 class called the Rational Dissenters ; yet he probably had not a more intimate 
 friend in the world than Dr. Price, who always ranked among them : — and 
 though he was warmly attached to the interests of the party he espoused, 
 yet he had that true spirit of Catholicism, which led him to honor virtue and 
 religion wherever he found them, and to regard the means only as they were 
 subservient to the end."* But with many striking features of the character 
 of this great man, correctly delineated in this description, candor requires this 
 observation to be made, that however he might respect these rational dissen- 
 ters (though why more so than others I know not), ready as he might be, and 
 always was, to do justice to their talents, their virtues, and their motives, the 
 ideas of vital Christianity which he had formed, and on which he acted, had some- 
 thing essential in them which it was and is the boast of theirs to want. It is not 
 my business to sit in judgment upon their differences ; but leaving to every 
 one the same right of thinking for himself in matters between God and his con- 
 science, which I claim in my own case, and referring the responsibility of his think- 
 ing erroneously to the decision of our common judge, my earnest desire is, that 
 
 * Aikin, p. 19, 20, 21. 
 
41 1 
 
 through life I may be enabled to follow the example of the subject of my 
 biography, at least in this point, to live in charity with all men. Mr. Howard 
 was a dissenter from principle ; but he was not of the number of those whose 
 adherence to, or departure from, certain forms and ceremonies of religion was 
 guided by no better rule than that of acting diametrically opposite to the 
 established church. He did not sit, because her rubric directed the per* 
 formance of particular acts of worship standing, or stand for no other reason 
 than that her members knelt. An organ was not to him an abomination, nor 
 a gown and cassock part of the raiments of the priests of Baal. This was not 
 his spirit ; nor would it surely have been the practice of his divine master, or 
 of his disciples, had they dwelt upon earth in these latter days: — would, too, 
 for the honor of their profession, it was not that of some of his people, who 
 pride themselves on their non-conformity, rather than on their Christian libe- 
 rality, and brand as trimmers and time-servers those whose consciences will not 
 let them be churchmen, but whose Christianity forbids them to be bigots. •* He 
 did not object," says the Reverend Mr. Townsend, in a letter now lying before 
 me, " to ministers reading their sermons, but thought the conclusion should be 
 extemporaneous ; his expression was, " he would not give a fig for a minister 
 who could not shut his book when he came to the application." In conducting 
 the worship of his family he used no set form of words ; but when a minister 
 was present, always requested him to engage in prayer, reading a portion of 
 scripture himself, a practice which upon no occasion, either at home or abroad, 
 was ever omitted. 
 
 Thus, eminently consistent, in every relation of life which he was called upon 
 to sustain, our illustrious Philanthropist passed nearly two years in retirement, 
 after the completion of his great design of visiting the principal places of confine- 
 ment in every nation of Europe, with a view to the radical improvement of those 
 of his own country. But it was not in his nature to be idle there ; and, besides 
 the occupation of a large portion of his time by works of private benevolence 
 
 3l 
 
442 
 
 in his village and its neighbourhood, he was much taken up in fixing on a plan for 
 completing his son's education. That son had now arrived at an age when the 
 mode of treatment which his father had adopted towards him might naturally 
 be expected to have some effect upon his conduct and his character. What 
 that method was, has already been too fully presented to the reader's notice in 
 its principal outlines, and even in its earlier details, to need to be re-stated 
 here. One great error in it — the enforcing obedience to his commands, 
 reasonable and proper as they were, chiefly, if not entirely, on his parental 
 authority, has been amply commented upon : but some of his friends thought 
 that another was, his not having made himself sufficiently familiar with his 
 son, as he was growing up to man's estate, which gave those who were so dis- 
 posed an opportunity of prejudicing his mind against him. Their fear there- 
 fore was, lest the son, being a high-spirited young man, should, as he advanced 
 in years, contract a prejudice against his father, and a contempt for his autho- 
 rity and advice. Of this defect he himself was afterwards sensible, and lamented 
 that he had in some measure mistaken the mode of forming his character, though 
 never charging upon himself any of those effects from his conduct towards him, 
 which since his death have been, and even during the latter years of his life 
 were, most illiberally imputed to it. In fact, he never was guilty of any 
 neglect in taking the means which he thought to be the best adapted for se- 
 curing his happiness ; and however his friends might differ from him on the pro- 
 priety of some parts of his mode of managing his child, they always respected 
 his motives, and believed him to be actuated by a sincere and earnest desire to 
 promote his welfare. The most intimate of those friends was, indeed, always 
 of opinion, that the chief cause of his error was an over anxiety to discharge 
 his duty, in correcting the temper of his child, which induced him often to 
 deny himself the expression of the fondness he felt, lest he should be tempted 
 to relax in the discipline necessary to the attainment of his purpose, the sense 
 of duty having habitually become paramount with him to every other feeling 
 or affection whatever. Another disadvantage under which he thought that 
 
443 
 
 Mr. Howard labored, was the peculiarity of his general manners, and the 
 unusual disparity of years between him and his son ; so that his views and 
 habits were too firmly rooted and confirmed to be materially altered, before he 
 became a parent. Those manners were cheerful, but it was the calm, serene 
 cheerfulness of a man past the meridian of life, and who lived under the con- 
 stant impression of this state of existence being but a scene of preparation for 
 another. There was nothing, indeed, of that liveliness of disposition and 
 playfulness of manner about him, which is so well calculated to please a 
 sprightly and high-spirited youth; who therefore, as his commands and direc- 
 tions were very methodical and minute, was likely to form the erroneous 
 idea of his father being a very particular, precise, religious old gentleman, 
 who would be a constant check upon his pleasures and amusements. 
 With the same regard to his real happiness, the schools at which he 
 was successively placed were chosen with much care, and after advising with 
 friends in every way competent to assist him in making a proper selection ; 
 and though he was imperceptibly led on to the extension of his tours of bene- 
 volence, and consequently of the period of his being from home to a far greater 
 length than he at first intended, he never left England without earnestly entreat- 
 ing his friends, especially his pastor, to supply the place of a father to his son during 
 his absence. This request was, we may be assured, most cheerfully complied with, 
 so that all Mr. Howard's friends took the most lively interest in the welfare 
 of his son for his father's sake, Mr. Smith in particular considering him a 
 charge over whom he was bound to watch with as unceasing a solicitude as he 
 felt for his own children : he therefore, at his father's request, often wrote to him 
 at school, giving him the same excellent advice as was contained in the very affec- 
 tionate letters which that father himself frequently addressed to him, during 
 the course of his various tours at home and abroad. He was then looking for- 
 ward with a pleasing hope and expectation that his child, the only pledge of 
 love his dear Henrietta left him, would become the support and comfort of his 
 declining years; but, alas! how bitterly, and by what means these well- 
 
 3 l 2 
 
444 
 
 founded expectations were levelled with the dust, it now becomes my painful 
 duty to explain. A hint in the earlier part of these memoirs will, I doubt not, 
 have excited in the mind of the reader a suspicion of the fidelity of Mr. 
 Howard's favorite servant, which I am sorry now to confirm to an extent to 
 which few, I am persuaded, will have gone in their anticipations. In fact he 
 was a complete villain, utterly unworthy of the good opinion which, to the 
 hour of his death, his generous master entertained of him, having taken ad- 
 vantage of the situation of trust in which he was placed about his person to 
 inflict upon him the deadliest wound a parent's heart can feel. As he always 
 accompanied him to London when his son was with him during his vacations, 
 and, after he had left school, he embraced the opportunity of his absence from 
 home in visiting the gaols of the metropolis, or of his close engagements there, 
 to instil into the mind of his youthful charge every thing that was bad ; and, 
 ere he had completed his seventeenth year, after his father had retired to rest 
 at his usual early hour, wearied with his labours of philanthropy during the day, 
 he had the unparalleled baseness to take him out to places of the worst resort, 
 particularly on the last time that they were all in London together, just before 
 his master went abroad in 1785. It was not until after he had set off upon 
 this journey, on which he travelled alone, and sent Thomasson to Cardington, 
 that any of the servants there knew how grossly he had been deceived, by a 
 man of whose fidelity they always entertained some considerable doubts, 
 though he was so very specious in his conduct, and Mr. Howard so pre- 
 judiced in his favor, that he was little influenced by any thing which they 
 might say against him. Without assigning any particular reasons for his doing 
 so, the oldest and most faithful of his domestics, John Prole, nevertheless, en- 
 deavoured to persuade him to take his son with him upon this tour, a request to 
 which he would not listen, because he considered the journey so very danger- 
 ous an one that he would not even suffer Thomasson to accompany him. 
 Some time after he was gone, it was found, however, that there was but too 
 much reason for this advice being given, and to regret that it was not taken, 
 as this faithless attendant boasted to his fellow-servants of the tricks he and 
 
U5 
 
 his young master had often played to deceive Mr. Howard, before whose face 
 he always pretended the greatest respect, and professed to be every thing that 
 was good, whilst behind his back he early taught his son to laugh at his pecu- 
 liarities, and to despise -his authority. To the day of his death Prole therefore 
 attributed, as he had such abundant reason to do, the ruin of young Howard 
 to the scenes of depravity into which he was initiated by Thomasson. But 
 from the contagious influence of his society he was removed for some time, 
 soon after he had commenced the disgraceful work of corrupting him, by his 
 entrance at the university of Edinburgh, whither his anxious parent accompa- 
 nied him, when he was in about the eighteenth or nineteenth year of his age, and 
 placed him under the immediate care of the venerable Dr. Blacklock, in whose 
 house he resided. At this time he was a fine, tall, pleasing, and promising 
 young man, several persons being still alive who remember him at Bedford, 
 whither he regularly accompanied his father on a sabbath to the meeting-house, 
 and was always to be seen in his pew there when at Cardington alone ; nor 
 did he at this period exhibit the slightest symptoms of that mental derange- 
 ment with which he afterwards was so severely afflicted. Whilst at Edin- 
 burgh those symptoms, however, unfortunately made their appearance, for there 
 the ground of them was entirely laid, though it was some years before they 
 exhibited themselves so unequivocally as to attract particular attention. Hav- 
 ing materially injured his health whilst in that city, by an indulgence in some 
 excesses, in which he had been but too well schooled in London, he unhappily 
 attempted to conceal a conduct, of which he was not too far gone in vice to 
 be ashamed, by the administration of some very powerful medicines, whose 
 eventual operation was the cause of that mental malady which at last cut 
 him off in the meridian of his days. The first sign of this dreadful disease, 
 which a very respectable physician who, whilst pursuing his medical studies 
 at Edinburgh, lodged in the same house with him, observed, was a nervous 
 and hypochondriacal temperament, and an occasional aberration of mind, 
 which afterwards assumed the more formidable appearance of an unremit- 
 
446 
 
 ting and incurable disease. These infirmities, which his own imprudence 
 had rendered constitutional, probably operated in disposing him, though he 
 often exhibited proofs of a naturally good disposition, to discover and play 
 upon the follies and peculiarities of his fellow-students and others, to such a 
 degree as to render his society generally unpleasant. " But, whatever was the 
 prevailing disposition of the moment,'' says a friend of Mr. Howard, who, 
 by Dr. Darwin's authority, and indeed at his express request, communicated 
 these circumstances to the public, " if the name of his father was mentioned, 
 he never failed to manifest the strongest degree of filial affection, and spoke 
 of him with that exultation, which manifested the pride he took in his descent. 
 Any encomium upon his father operated with much greater force upon his 
 mind than any other subject whatever. And, on the other hand, when those 
 whom he had provoked, wished to irritate him, they could not do it so effec- 
 tually by any other means as by throwing out reflections on his father. 
 To Dr. R. Darwin, in the moments of unreserved confidence, he always 
 spoke with gratitude of his father's uniformly kind treatment of him ; 
 sometimes adding, by way of illustration, that though in many respects 
 the disposition of the- father and son were different, though he did not like 
 to live in the same abstemious way which his father had accustomed 
 himself to, and which, indeed, the young man's nervous habits of body must 
 have rendered uncomfortable to him ; yet his father always allowed him to live 
 as he chose. This difference of disposition might, however, make it not so 
 agreeable to a young gentleman of his age to reside much with his father (if 
 the pursuits of the latter had rendered that practicable) without implying the 
 least estrangement of affection : but the following circumstance is decisive of 
 the point in question. At the time young Mr. Howard was nearly of age, he 
 and Dr. R. Darwin, dined together with a lady who was a friend of the family. 
 She lamented the expence of what she was pleased to call his father's extrava- 
 gant, though amiable eccentricities : said, that charity began at home, and that 
 his father's pursuits might ultimately ruin his family. She hoped, therefore, 
 
447 
 
 that when he came of age, if any of the property was settled, he would not join 
 to cut off" the entail. The young gentleman, with great warmth and indignation, 
 replied, that he would with delight cut off the last shilling; as the only credit 
 he had in life was derived from his being the offspring of such a parent; 
 adding, " what good can I do with money, which will bear any comparison 
 with the good he has done ?" After leaving the room, he observed, with great 
 indignation, to his friend, who had been present at this conversation, — " See 
 this ****** *** ***** ? vvno calls herself the friend of my father, w-ishes me to 
 embarrass him !" and again repeated with great warmth, and a degree of 
 enthusiasm, — " What good could I possibly do, compared with that which has 
 been effected by my parent !" Such was the uniform tenor of Mr. John 
 Howard's conduct and conversation respecting his father, during the whole 
 time Dr. R. Darwin lived with him."* Nor is it at all difficult to prove, if any 
 proof in addition to that already given can be required, that this affection was 
 reciprocal, and that Mr. Howard always entertained for his son those senti- 
 ments of parental fondness, which we should expect him to cherish for the 
 only remaining pledge of her connubial love, whose loss he never ceased to 
 deplore, and the preservation of whose features in the countenance of her child 
 served doubly to endear him to his heart. " He spoke of this son," says the 
 gentleman upon whose authority the above anecdote is given, "with an ardour 
 of parental affection, opposite in the extreme to that cold, unfeeling severity, 
 of which he has been most falsely and most foully accused. It was in these 
 moments of unreserved confidence, that the soul of Howard shone forth in all 
 her native lustre. To have seen him at such a season, and to have heard him 
 on such a subject, would have convinced the most incredulous that this calumny 
 is the offspring of the mod detestable malignity. And now," let us ask in the 
 language of this writer, " whether it be possible to reconcile so much sensibility 
 of temper, such an extraordinary degree of affection as was thus manifested 
 for each other, both by father and son, and the voluntary confidential declara- 
 tion of the latter to his bosom friends, that ' his father always suffered him to 
 * Mr. Wood's Letter, Monthly Magazine, Vol. I V. p. 340. 
 
448 
 
 live as he chose;' with that, accusation of morose, unrelenting severity, which, 
 without any proof has heen advanced against" this unrivalled Philanthropist?* 
 Precisely to the same effect is the testimony of every one who had an opportu- 
 nity of observing his behaviour to his son, whom he now thought it necessary to 
 remove from Edinburgh, in order to break off the improper connections which 
 he was daily forming there. For some time after his return he continued at 
 Cardington, where, as he was now grown up to manhood, he kept a phaeton 
 and horses, and lived in muoh greater stile than ever his father did, who yet 
 never restrained him in any reasonable expence, knowing that in all proba- 
 bility he would inherit a much larger fortune than he himself possessed. But 
 he had now unhappily contracted habits of dissipation and extravagance which 
 were his own ruin, and well nigh broke his father's heart. Connected with these 
 vicious propensities, it is not at all surprising that he should have imbibed a 
 rooted contempt for the authority and admonitions of a parent, who was too good 
 a man, and too affectionate a father, not to lament and to reprove him for his ex- 
 cesses, though the latter was done with that mildness of manner which ever ac- 
 companied his firmness to his purpose. In this contempt he was the more con- 
 firmed, from the knowledge he possessed of the independence of his prospects in 
 life of his father's control ; and was also, it is to be feared, but too much encou- 
 raged in it by some of his relations, now no more, whose views were so very 
 different to those of Mr. Howard, that they were frequently at variance with 
 him, and at no time disposed to put the most favorable construction upon the 
 peculiarities of his character and conduct, or to teach his child to do so. That 
 he felt this undutiful behaviour of his son, and felt it most keenly, we could not 
 possibly doubt, were I not enabled to state that he did so, from the information 
 of several of his surviving friends, to whom he complained very bitterly of it. 
 But that the affection he bore him surmounted every temporary resentment 
 which his behaviour might inspire, was most fully evinced by his accom- 
 panying him to Cambridge, to introduce him to his friends there, and to 
 commend him to their kind attentions during his residence in the university, 
 * Mr. Wood's Letter, Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 339,340. 
 
449 
 
 where he was entered a fellow-commoner of St. John's college, in the summer 
 of the year 1784. Amongst those friends was the late Reverend Robert 
 Robinson, than whom few persons were better qualified to watch over the 
 conduct of a young man, whose after-life was to reflect honor or disgrace on a 
 name, which, through the matchless deeds of benevolence his father had 
 achieved, now stood higher than it ever had done before in those lists of fame, 
 where for ages and for centuries it had been conspicuously emblazoned. 
 
 3 M 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Mr, Howard? s sixth journey upon the continent, for the purpose of inspecting the prisons, 
 hospitals, and lazarettos of Holland, France, Italy, Malta, Turkey, and Germany ; — 
 his fourth journey to Scotland ; — his fifth and sixth to Ireland ; — his fourth general 
 inspection of English gaols; — the publication of his account of the principal 
 lazarettos of Europe, 1785 — 9 ; — with the history of his private life during that 
 period. 
 
 AFTER having devoted more than eleven years of his valuable existence 
 to the reformation of the gaols, and the improvement of the hospitals of his 
 own country, and, with a view to this sole object, having traversed as many 
 thousand miles of foreign land, the illustrious subject of these memoirs deter- 
 mined once again to quit the peaceful quiet of his home, the bosom of his 
 family, the circle of his friends, and the shores of his country, on a journey 
 of benevolence, more important to the interests of the human race, though 
 fraught with greater danger to himself, than any he had yet undertaken. 
 His plan was, indeed, as has been correctly stated by one of his biographers, 
 ** the most humane and beneficent that ever entered into the mind of man ;" 
 for it was " to check the progress of devouring pestilence," that, unat- 
 tended and alone, — for he would neither suifer son nor servant to share with 
 him the dangers of his voyage, — he once again bade adieu for many months to 
 England, and every thing dear to him that it contained. Conceiving that the 
 
451 
 
 examination of the principal lazarettos in Europe might throw considerable 
 light on that most dreadful of all the scourges of mankind, the plague, and 
 afford many a useful hint for preventing the spread of its contagion, against 
 which he had observed that too little precaution was taken in his native land, 
 he had already, in the last edition of his work on Prisons, thrown out a hint 
 to some future traveller to furnish plans of these useful buildings ; but no 
 attention having been paid to this suggestion, he determined to procure those 
 plans himself, and the information necessary to render them useful to the 
 purposes to which he wished them to be applied.* Towards the latter end of 
 November, 1785, he accordingly set sail for Holland, having previously fur- 
 nished himself with a set of queries, drawn up by his friends, Dr. Aikin and 
 Dr. Jebb, with a view to ascertain, from the opinions of continental physi- 
 cians, the nature, symptoms, and treatment of this infectious disorder.*)" The 
 point at which he wished to commence his new investigations was Marseilles ; 
 but the extreme jealousy of the French government respecting their Levant 
 trade had long kept the lazaretto of that port carefully concealed from the 
 eye of every foreigner ; but, as Mr. Howard's object was such as ought to 
 have awakened neither political nor commercial jealousy in any one, Lord 
 Caermarthen, then secretary of state for foreign affairs, undertook to make an 
 application to the French minister, for permission for him to view this cele- 
 brated building.£ After waiting some time at the Hague, in expectation of 
 its arrival, he went to Utrecht to visit his friend, Dr. Brown, at whose house 
 he received a letter from his lordship, informing him, not only that the request 
 he had preferred had been peremptorily refused, but that he must not think of 
 entering France at all ; as, if he did, he would run a risk of being committed 
 to the Bastille. When he shewed this unwelcome epistle to his friend, he 
 kindly endeavoured to dissuade him from persisting in his project, but without 
 effect ; as he told him that the die was cast, and he was determined to run the 
 hazard, in a full reliance on the protection of Providence, as he thought it 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 1. t lb. p. 32. % Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 258. 
 
 3m 2 
 
452 
 
 essential to his plans that he should personally inspect the lazarettos of Mar- 
 seilles and Toulon. He accordingly returned to the Hague, whence, by the 
 way of Dort and Antwerp, he went to Brussels, and took his place in the 
 diligence for Paris, which he reached in a couple of days. Immediately on his 
 arrival, he took his ticket for a seat in the Lyons diligence ; and, that he 
 might incur less risk of discovery, lodged in an obscure inn, near the place 
 whence that conveyance started. Having gone to bed, however, according to 
 his usual custom, about ten o'clock at night, he was awoke between twelve 
 and one in the morning by a tremendous knocking at his room door, which, 
 sarting up in somewhat of an alarm, he immediately opened ; and having 
 returned instantly to bed, he saw the chambermaid enter with a candle in each 
 hand, followed by a man in a black coat, with a sword by his side, and his 
 hands enveloped in an enormous muff. This singular personage immediately 
 asked him if his name was not Howard. Vexed at this interruption, he 
 hastily answered, " Yes, — and what of that ?" He was again asked if he had 
 not come to Paris in the Brussels diligence, in company with a man in a black 
 wig ? To this question he returned some such peevish answer, as that he paid 
 no attention to such trifles ; and his visitor immediately withdrew in silence. 
 Not a little alarmed at this strange adventure, though losing none of his self- 
 possession, and being unable to re-compose himself to sleep, Mr. Howard got 
 up, and having discharged his bill the night before, took his small trunk, and 
 removing from this house, at the regular hour of starting took his seat in the 
 diligence, and set off for Lyons. In this journey he met with agreeable com- 
 pany, and had the good fortune to conciliate their favour, by acting as physi- 
 cian to a lady of the party, who found herself indisposed, but to whom his 
 prescriptions afforded immediate relief. At Lyons he kept himself as private 
 as possible, visiting only two or three Protestant clergymen, the name of one of 
 whom was Mons. Froissart.* Whatever might be the danger to which he 
 exposed himself, he could not, however, refrain from visiting the prisons and 
 
 * Dr. Brown's and Mrs. Cole's MSS. 
 
453 
 
 hospitals of this city. In Hie prison de St. Joseph he was gratified to perceive 
 the effects of a more liberal spirit towards the prisoners than he had observed 
 at his first visit, several of those confined in the dark under-ground dungeons 
 at night, being permitted in the day-time to be in the court. A new prison 
 was also erecting without dungeons at all, and with rooms for the separation of 
 prisoners, less close and offensive ; — a plan which he had also the satisfaction 
 to learn was carrying into execution, even on a still more liberal principle, at 
 Thoulouse. In the general hospital, a great number of poor foundlings and 
 orphan children, clean and neatly cloathed, were employed in a large silk- 
 manufactory, at which they were kept to work until they were twenty-five years 
 of age, both that they might contribute somewhat to the expence of their educa- 
 tion, and be better able to maintain themselves after their discharge. The prin- 
 cipal hospital here was now in a very different situation to that in which he found 
 it at his last visit, its rooms being nasty and offensive, and two patients frequently 
 lying in one bed. In the prison at Avignon, which he visited in his way to Mar- 
 seilles, on the 7th of January, 1786, none of the prisoners were in irons; the thick- 
 ness of the walls, the proximity of the gaoler's apartments, and the fierceness 
 of his dogs, rendering this cruelty unnecessary : but on his pointing out to 
 him another, in the rings, pulleys, and other implements of torture, this 
 man assured him that he had seen drops of blood mixed with the sweat of 
 some who suffered it. The allowance here was a pound and a half of bread 
 a-day ; but as at Lyons, and in other parts of the south of France, on Sundays 
 and Thursdays, the prisoners were supplied with a white loaf, broth, and 
 wine, by a Brotherhood of Mercy, who attended the condemned, during the 
 night preceding, and at their execution, as was the practice with this order 
 in Italy.* On his arrival at Marseilles, our Philanthropist observed the 
 same privacy as he had done at Lyons, visiting no one but a Protestant cler- 
 gyman of the name of Durand ; who, upon his entering his house, said, " Mr. 
 Howard, I have always been happy to see you till now. Leave France as fast 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 52, 3. 
 
454 
 
 as you can ; I know they are searching for you in all directions." He learned 
 here also, that the man in the black wig was a spy sent with him to Paris hy 
 the French ambassador at the Hague, and that he himself would have been 
 arrested there, if Mons. Le Noir had not been at Versailles on the day of his 
 arrival, and several persons having recently been arrested on very false or 
 frivolous grounds, he had left orders for no arrests being made before his 
 return, which was not until late in the evening of the next day, when he was 
 pursued, but not overtaken. Yet, notwithstanding the conviction he now 
 felt that his personal safety was in jeopardy, he persisted in attempting to 
 execute the intention which had induced him to incur so much danger ; and by 
 the assistance of Mons. Durand, he eventually succeeded in gaining admission 
 to the lazaretto of Marseilles, which he found to be spacious, commodious, 
 and calculated to afford important information for the furtherance of the pur- 
 poses of his voyage : he procured, therefore, a plan of it, of which he gave to 
 the public the first engraving ever made, with an ample description attached. 
 The prison here was small, and excessively crowded with prisoners, most of 
 whom were extremely dirty ; but the great hospital was a very convenient one.* 
 Whilst in this city, he learned from good authority that a person was confined 
 in the arsenal at Toulon, merely on account of his having professed the Pro- 
 testant religion, and that he had been so at least for five and thirty years : 
 with his wonted zeal for the discovery of truth, and abhorrence of all religious 
 persecution, he determined therefore, at all events, to visit this alleged sufferer 
 for conscience sake, and to ascertain what was the real cause of his confinement. 
 He accordingly set off for Toulon, and dressing himself on his arrival in the height 
 of the French fashion, — for Englishmen were strictly prohibited from viewing 
 it at all, — he found means to gain admittance into the arsenal, probably with the 
 less difficulty, as he always had much the air and appearance of a foreigner, 
 and spoke the French language with fluency and correctness. Spending some 
 hours here on two several days, he learnt that Protestants were not compelled 
 * Dr. Brown's and Mrs. Coles's MSS. Account of Lazarettos, p. 3 — 5 ; 54. 
 
455 
 
 to attend at mass, and that the last person confined here expressly on account 
 of his religion had been released eight years ago. But this intelligence did not 
 deter him from asking for the slave, who was the particular object of his visit ; 
 On conversing with whom he learnt, that instead of thirty-five, he had been 
 confined in the galleys, here and at Marseilles, for forty-two years, the 
 original ground of his commitment having been a charge of taking part with 
 some boys in a quarrel with a gentleman, who lost his gold-headed cane in a 
 private house in Paris. He was then but fourteen years of age, and lame of 
 one arm ; yet for this offence was he condemned to the galleys for life. After 
 having been there for four or five years, he procured a Bible, and having learnt 
 himself to read, through close attention to the Scriptures he became convinced 
 that the religion in which he had been educated was anti-Christian, and there- 
 fore publicly renounced it, and declared and defended his sentiments on all 
 occasions. From that period this singularly interesting man. had continued 
 steady in his attachment to the Protestant faith, though humble and modest 
 in his deportment, with a character irreproachable and exemplary, and much 
 esteemed by his officers and fellow-prisoners. He was now past work, and 
 was therefore confined in the galley appropriated to the infirm and agedj who, 
 besides their due share of bread, had from the king a daily allowance of 
 nine sous each. Struck with admiration at his character, his sympathizing 
 visitor left him some substantial token of his commiseration and regard, be- 
 sides bringing away with him, as a memorial of the mournful pleasure he had 
 experienced in conversing with him, some musical pipes which he had turned 
 and tuned, for the purpose of whiling away the hours of confinement, from 
 which he could now expect to be released but by death. As he had been led to 
 this part by so singular an object of curiosity and of pity, he embraced the 
 opportunity of inspecting the galleys, which had been removed from Marseilles 
 and moored off the arsenal here. They were five in number, and contained 
 about 1,600 prisoners, who were kept clean and neatly clothed, and were 
 allowed a pound and three quarters of good brown bread each, besides sonic 
 
456 
 
 little allowance of money to them all ; and to those who worked for govern- 
 ment a further one of three sous each a-day for wine. These were employed 
 in the arsenal, on the public works, being chained together the while two and 
 two, though some who worked out of this building were loaded with still 
 heavier irons. About two hundred were occupied on a cotton and thread ma- 
 nufactory, and lodged in an adjoining hall. These and some others in the 
 arsenal had only a ring on one leg, which, together with a choice of irons, was 
 a distinction money could easily purchase. Many of the slaves worked at their 
 own trades of making shoes, baskets, &c. but none were allowed to keep 
 shops, as had formerly been the case in some instances at Marseilles, nor had 
 they the same conveniences for the sale of their work. Some of them had been 
 confined here for forty, fifty, and even sixty, years ; and, so heavily were they 
 ironed, and so securely watched when working out of the arsenal, that few of 
 them could escape. When they did, and were retaken r they were punished, 
 some with heavier irons, others by a recommencement of the term of their 
 confinement, or by whipping ; whilst those condemned for life were invariably 
 hung. Even some of the sick in the hospital were in irons, though in other 
 respects they were humanely treated.* Having now procured all the informa- 
 tion he wished, particularly concerning the Protestant slave, with whom he 
 had more than one conversation, and whose prolonged confinement, consider- 
 ing the slightness of his offence, and the excellency of his character, he could 
 not but attribute to the open profession which he had made of his faith, he 
 was most anxious to get safely out of France, which his friend, M. Durand, 
 apprehended to be impossible. By land he himself thought it too difficult to 
 attempt; but, after staying four days at Toulon, by the offer of five louts' 1 d'or, 
 he succeeded in inducing the master of a vessel wind-bound there, to put to 
 sea in spite of contrary winds, and convey him to Nice. Scarcely, however, 
 had they got out of harbour when they were forced to put into the little 
 island of Port Crosce, near its mouth, where he was obliged to pass a night or 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 54 — 6. Dr. Brown's MSS. 
 
461 
 
 two in the old castle of Portman, in which he found an ancient prison, whose 
 descent was, through a stone aperture of four feet in diameter, by a ladder 
 which, when drawn up, left the dungeon below a secure, but dreadful place of 
 confinement. As this prison was very similar in its construction to those of many 
 other ancient baronial castles, its visitor thought a drawing of it would not be 
 unacceptable to the readers of his work, which he has therefore illustrated with 
 a plan of this circular dungeon, and a very beautiful view of the castle in 
 which it is situated. 
 
 After tossing about for several days, our intrepid countryman got safe to 
 Nice, and thus escaped the researches of the French government after him. 
 I am aware that it has been publicly denied by an anonymous writer in a highly 
 respectable periodical work,"f" that the danger to which he conceived himself 
 exposed upon occasion of this visit to France was all imaginary, originating 
 entirely in the idle talk of some officious people there, who were in the habit 
 of telling a thousand other as ill-founded tales. But, though the author of 
 this statement took the trouble of writing to Paris, and ascertaining from M. 
 de Vergennes, the minister of police, that he had never heard of any com- 
 plaint against Mr. Howard that could have induced the French government to 
 wish to arrest him, and that, on searching the books of his office, no such 
 complaint, without which orders never were given to arrest a stranger, could 
 be found, it by no means follows that such a measure never was in contem- 
 plation, Mr. Howard's own account of the transaction being too minute and 
 consistent to admit of such a conclusion. Nor will the positive manner in 
 which, in some of his letters to his friends, he speaks of such a design having 
 been entertained, diminish the difficulties of those who, in this instance, take 
 upon themselves the vindication of a government who, upon one single ground 
 of disobedience to its decrees, on a point of religious controversy, once issued 
 no less than 52,000 lettres de cachet for the imprisonment, without trial, of its 
 » Account of Lazarettos, p. 56. Dr. Brown's MS. f Gent. Mag. Vol. LXI. Part II. p. 893. 
 
 3 N 
 
458 
 
 own subjects, and who could not therefore be supposed to feel any extraordi- 
 nary respect for the liberty of a foreigner. Nor are we left at all in the dark as 
 to the grounds upon which this measure was resorted to, the principal of which 
 were his conduct in dissuading the English prisoners of war at Dunkirk to 
 yield to the enticements of the French officers to enter into their navy, even 
 threatening them, if they did commit such an act of treason to their own 
 country, that he would have their names reported, in order, that, if they ever 
 should be captured, they might receive the punishment due to their treachery ; 
 and his having republished in French, as well as in English, the prohibited 
 exposure of the economy of the Bastille.* Soon after his arrival at Nice he 
 addressed to Mr. Smith the following account of his having got safely out of 
 France, and of his future plans : — 
 
 "Sir, " Nice Jan y . 30. 1786. 
 
 " I persuade myself that a line to acquaint you that I am safe 
 and well out of France will give you pleasure. I had a nice part to act, I 
 traveled as an English Doctor and perhaps among the number of Empirics I 
 did as little mischief as most of them ; I never dined or supped in publick, the 
 secret was only trusted to the french Protestant Ministers ; I was 5 days at 
 Marseilles and 4 at Toulon, it was tho 1 I could not get out of France by 
 land so I forced out a Genoise ship and have been many days striving against 
 Wind and tide, three days in an almost desolate Island, overgrown with 
 Myrtle Rosemary and Tyme. 
 
 " Last Sunday fortnight at the Meeting at Toulon, tho' the door locked 
 Curtains drawn, one coming late, put the Assembly in fear, even to enquiry 
 before the door was opened. I was twice over the Arsinal, tho' a strickt prohi- 
 bit" to our Countrymen, there is a singular slave, who has publickly pro- 
 fessed himself a Protestant these 36 years, a sensible good Man, with an 
 unexceptionable and even amiable Character. The last person who was con- 
 
 * Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
459 
 
 fined merely for his religion was released ab' 8 years ago. My friend may 
 think I have taken a final leave of a perfidious jealous and ungenerous Nation 
 
 " I am bound this week for Genoa and then to Leghorn where a Lazarett 
 has been built within these few yeai*s. I know Sir, you will not treat any new 
 attempt as wild and chimerical, yet I must say it requires a steadiness of 
 resolution not to be shaken, to pursue it — 
 
 " My best Comp s to Mrs. Smith and our Bedford friends and please to 
 inform J n0 Prole that I am well. 
 
 " I write this with my windows open in full view of an Orange Grove, tho' 
 the Mountains at a great distance I see covered with Snow. 
 " With my best Wishes I remain 
 
 " Y r affectionate friend 
 
 " John Howard." 
 " The Rev. Mr. Smith Potter Street, 
 Bedford, Angleterre." 
 
 It was most probably too at this place that he recorded the following 
 summary of his Opinion of a people, on the shores of whose country he seems 
 to have determined never again to set his foot : — " However I may esteem 
 some few of the French, yet their Government I dislike — their National Cha- 
 racter I detest." Nearly about the same time he also entered in his diary 
 two or three thoughts as they occurred to his mind, strikingly illustrative of 
 the correctness of his views on the important subject of a correctional police ; 
 the general benevolence of his character ; and the firmness of his trust in 
 Providence under all its dispensations, dark and mysterious as they might 
 appear to be ; I therefore insert them here, as they were transcribed for me by 
 the gentleman in whose possession the valuable originals remain: 
 
 " Very important is a well-regulated Police, does not the certainty of 
 Punishment keep the Foot Guards who are very profligate from the commis- 
 
 3 n 2 
 
460 
 
 sion of Crimes? so that we seldom hear of Robberies by them. Why may not 
 the same strickt Police be kept towards other Offenders? Is it not injustice to 
 Individuals and cruelty to the Public frequently to pardon notorious Offenders?" 
 
 " Let this Maxim be a leading Feature in my Life, Constantly to favour 
 and relieve those that are lowest." 
 
 " The ways of God are a uniform scheme of Providence — What God does 
 now We shall know hereafter." 
 
 During the short stay which he made in Nice, Mr. Howard inspected the 
 prison there, which consisted of three stories, with four or five good rooms on 
 each, opening into an airy gallery eight feet wide. Irons were never used 
 here but when the prisoners were riotous, and then they were chained to the 
 wall. Their beds were supplied with mattresses and blankets, and they had a 
 daily allowance of two pounds of bread, besides charitable contributions. 
 About 250 galley-slaves were lodged here in dirty rooms, near the water, and 
 employed in clearing the harbour ; their provisions, upon the whole, being good 
 and sufficient. As the term of their confinement drew nearer to its close, its 
 severity was relaxed, and they had some indulgences.* Visiting the well- 
 regulated hospital of Savona in his way, our traveller proceeded to Genoa, 
 where he found the great hospital adorned with the statues of its benefactors, 
 the amount of their donations being so precisely marked by the position in 
 which they were placed, that a person who had given 90,000 crowns had one 
 of his legs under the chair, in which a bequest of 100,000 would have fairly 
 seated him : the ambition of such a seat had however seriously hurt many fami- 
 lies. The occupation of a very large portion of this hospital by a convent of 
 but ten lazy friars, occasioned, as he apprehended, the death of twice as many 
 patients every year. The lazaretto here was spacious and convenient, being 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 56. 
 
461 
 
 plentifully supplied with a stream of water descending from the mountains into 
 its area, but its windows were too small. He visited another, but a smaller 
 lazaretto of the Genoese at Varignano, in the gulf of Spezia, of which, as of 
 that at Genoa, he has given in his work a very beautiful view; the magis- 
 trates of this republic having not only granted him permission freely to inspect 
 those buildings, but to copy the plan on which they were erected, besides 
 furnishing him themselves with their regulations.* At Leghorn, whither he 
 next proceeded by sea, the lazaretto of San Leopoldo, upon whose erection 
 he saw, in 1778, forty-seven slaves employed, was now finished ; and ships 
 with the plague on board were received there, instead of being chased away or 
 burnt, as was the practice but at too many places. The greatest attention was 
 here paid to the health of the passengers, and to the preservation of goods. Mr. 
 Howard was accompanied in his visit to this place, and to the lazaretto of Sa/i 
 Roco, by the governor of the city, Frederigo Barbolani, who presented him with 
 plans of the three lazarettos of this extensive port, and with the rules for their 
 regulation, which he himself had just published, in a quarto volume, after a 
 person sent by the grand duke to the Levant on purpose to gain information on 
 the subject, by returning thence, and performing quarantine at Marseilles, had 
 furnished him with the observations he had made in the course of his voyage. 
 In consequence of the great pains which had been taken to render them so, 
 these lazarettos were now admitted to be the best in Europe. At the time he 
 visited them, the grand duke, to whose liberal and enlightened policy they 
 were chiefly indebted for this honorable distinction, happened to be at Leg- 
 horn ; and hearing that Mr. Howard was there, sent him an invitation to 
 dinner, which he very politely declined ; because, without advancing the 
 grand objects of his journey, it would occasion him the loss of three hours, 
 which were then of more than usual importance, as he was anxious to get to 
 the place of his destination as soon as he possibly could, and the opportunities 
 of conveyance thither were neither very frequent, nor very certain. He was 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 5 — 7 ; 56, 7. 
 
462 
 
 not, however, by any means backward in doing justice to the virtues of this ex- 
 cellent prince, whose character and pursuits, in some respects, bore a striking 
 resemblance to his own. " The repeated visits," he observes, " which I have 
 paid to his prisons, hospitals, &c. have given me the fullest conviction that 
 he is the true father and friend of his country."* From Leghorn he pro- 
 ceeded to Pisa, with whose hospital he was highly delighted, especially with 
 the clean and elegant ward for the women, which was furnished with iron- 
 grated doors, for the free admission of light and air, through which the 
 patients had a very pleasant view of the botanic garden. At Florence, in the 
 prisons and hospitals which he had visited seven years before, he found that the 
 most pleasing alterations had been made, in consequence of the great attention 
 paid by the grand duke to their improvement. A well-regulated house of correc- 
 tion had lately been built in this capital, and its admirable rules were now copied 
 for its visitor, by the express order of the sovereign, whose " excellent new 
 code of criminal laws," says Mr. Howard, to whom a copy of them were sent 
 by his royal highness's command, " evinces his great attention to the happiness 
 of his people." The wards of the hospital of San Maria Nova, in this city, 
 being very properly placed round a spacious garden, so as to promote the 
 health and spirits of the patients, especially of convalescents, he has given a 
 very elegant plan of it in his work. At Rome, he passed two mornings in the 
 noble hospital of San Michaele, but was grieved to find it sadly neglected by the 
 cardinal and other inspectors, under whose superintendence it was placed, but 
 who never visited it. The favorite institution of the reigning pontiff was a 
 seminary for young women, " whose neatness, economy and industry," says 
 its delighted inspector, " must give pleasure to every visitant." To its vene- 
 rable patron, the dignified but unfortunate Pius VI., Mr. Howard was privately 
 introduced ; and upon this occasion the ceremony of kissing the pope's toe, 
 indeed every ceremony of every kind, was dispensed with ; as the indepen- 
 dence, as well as the piety of our illustrious countryman's character, would never 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 7. Dr. Brown's MSS. , 
 
463 
 
 have permitted him to prostrate himself before a fallible mortal like himself. 
 At parting, however, his holiness laid his hand upon his heretical visitor's 
 head, at the same time good-humoredly observing, " I know you English- 
 men do not mind these things, but the blessing of an old man can do you no 
 harm :" and I am persuaded that the spirit of Howard was too Catholic an 
 one to hold the benediction of such an old man in light esteem, not on account 
 of the dignity of his station, but of the solidity of his virtues.* After spend- 
 ing about a fortnight in this capital, as he had done in that of Tuscany, this 
 philantln-opic traveller weut on to Naples, where he was occupied about the 
 same length of time in re-inspecting the prisons and hospitals, which he found 
 to be in the same condition as when he last had visited them. The lazaretto 
 here was very small ; and as he was informed that too little attention was there 
 paid to passengers and shipping under quarantine, he has contented himself 
 with giving a view of the health-office.|" 
 
 From this city he took shipping for Malta, but on his way thither 
 encountered a violent tempest, in which the vessel he was in had nearly 
 perished, though it happily escaped without sustaining any injury. As he 
 passed the island of Sicily in his voyage, he had a full view of the lazaretto at 
 Messina, but did not land to visit it, because the city was almost depopulated, 
 and its trade destroyed, by the dreadful earthquakes, which two years since had 
 engulphed some of the fairest and most populous portions of this devoted island 
 in the bowels of the earth. He afterwards obtained, however, a plan of this 
 building from the English consul at Trieste, from which he had a very fine 
 engraving made for the illustration of his work.;]; He arrived at Malta on the 
 29th of March, and immediately entered on the inspection of two large, 
 splendid, but ill-regulated, dirty, and most offensive hospitals, one for each sex; 
 in which, as the natural consequence of the closeness, uncleanliness, and inat- 
 tention reigning in every part of them, the slow fever prevailed to a very 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 57, 8. -Mrs. Gules'* MS. t M>- !»■ 8 ; 58. J lb. p. 8. 
 
464 
 
 alarming extent. But it was not until after he had been once through both 
 these charitable foundations of a charitable order that Mr. Howard pre- 
 sented to the grand master the letter of introduction with which he had been 
 furnished by Sir William Hamilton, our ambassador at Naples, and he was 
 then very readily and kindly assured, that the prisons and hospitals of the 
 island should all be open to him. On a subsequent visit, he asked him what he 
 thought of his hospitals ; when, with his wonted faithfulness, he told his 
 highness his sentiments on their wretched condition, specifying, in proof of it, 
 some of the particulars, which he afterwards published ; and adding, that if 
 he himself would sometimes walk through them, many of their abuses would 
 be corrected. He found, however, that his animadversions were thought too 
 free ; yet, encouraged by the satisfaction which the patients expressed at his 
 frequent visits, he continued them during his stay upon the island, and had 
 reason to believe, before he left it, that they had produced an alteration for the 
 better, in the attention paid to their cleanliness and comfort. The greatest 
 care was taken here to prevent the spread of the plague, and for this purpose 
 lazarettos were provided, which, when completed, would be very convenient 
 ones. The prison consisted of several dirty and offensive rooms, which at this 
 time contained nine prisoners, one of whom, a Turk, had suffered the torture to 
 such a degree, that a mortification had taken place. The slaves had many 
 rooms for their confinement, and each sect had its chapel or mosque, and its 
 sick-room, apart : some of them were employed in a woollen-manufactory, 
 but the majority were blacks, and appeared to be most unhappy objects ; for 
 the religion, as the knights collectively were called, having sworn to make 
 perpetual war with the Turks, carried off by piracy, whenever the opportunity 
 offered, many of the fishermen, peasants, and mariners, from the Barbary 
 coast. " How dreadful," says this benevolent being, who had not so learned 
 Christ, as to make a zeal for his cause a cloak for cruelty and oppression, 
 " that those who glory in bearing on their breasts the sign of the Prince of 
 peace, should harbour such malignant dispositions against their fellow- 
 
46-5 \ 
 
 creatures. — Do not these knights by such conduct make themselves the worst 
 enemies to the cross of Christ, under the pretence of friendship ?"* 
 
 During his protracted residence amongst these knights crusaders, of as into- 
 lerant a faith as that they had vowed to exterminate, Mr. Howard addressed 
 to those he had left in his native country two letters, giving an account of the 
 progress of a journey, whose object, like that of the Master whom he served, 
 was to save life, and not to destroy. The first was dispatched to his faithful 
 bailiff, two days after his arrival on the island, and contains some directions, 
 which prove that, even when in full pursuit of his great scheme of universal 
 benevolence, he never neglected the due ordering of his private affairs. 
 
 n John Prole " Malta March 31 st 86. 
 
 " I am well with intrepid firm spirits and resolution in 
 persuing my determined Object, but have had a sad Winter to combat with ; 
 some days on a desolate Island on the South of france, and last Sunday 
 morm a sad storm from ] 2 to 4, we expected our watery grave, tho' our 
 Sailors all cryed to St. Anthony to save them, it was God that had mercy 
 on Us. 
 
 " I have had my Audience of the grand Master and He granted my request, 
 so that every place is flung open [to] me, we are here as warm as June, yet 
 the first salutat» is, it is cold Sir, which they find, as they [are] wrapt up in 
 great Coats, I see pease and beans in plenty in the streets ; but I take my tea in 
 the morn 8 and a little weak Chocolate in the evening. I sail for Turkey in 10 
 days, if every thing succeeds as I have laid my Plan I have hopes to be at 
 Vienna in Germany, on my return home, the latter end of July or beginning of 
 Aug 1 , my object is great and liable to a fatal miscarriage, my Zeal I hope will 
 not abate, nor will I look back. — My best comp s to my Card" friends Mr. 
 Smith Mr. Gadsby Mr. Costin Mr. King Mr. Leachs &c. &c. 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 8, 9 ; 58 — 60. 
 
 3o 
 
• 466 
 
 " The old Smith's Shop You and Jos may take down, Mr. Smith may 
 directly have all the Materials for the Henhouse that he desired. He to sett 
 it up with his workmen and tell him I will allow and pay him the expence 
 thereof. You will then make footpath, the side of some Hurdles that you will 
 put up, all neat &c. 
 
 " I remain Yrs to serve you 
 
 " Jn°. Howard. 
 
 For the second letter I am indebted to the Rev. Mr. Palmer's manuscript 
 memoir. To whom it was addressed I am not certain, the initial of the 
 name alone appearing; I have no doubt, however, but that it was to his 
 maternal relative, Mr. Tatnall. Yet this, at any rate, is matter of small 
 importance, compared with the light which this letter throws upon the 
 unwearied philanthropy, the inflexible firmness, the unaffected humility, and 
 the ardent piety of its author, as he thus unbosoms to his distant friend the 
 discouragements, the consolations, the hopes, and the supports of his active 
 mind, on the most hazardous, though the most honorable journey of benevo- 
 lence he had yet undertaken. 
 
 " Dear Sir " Malta April 9, 1786. 
 
 " As the French minister thought proper to deny Lord Carmarthen's 
 request for me, I travelled incog, as on a Physician's Tour, and did my business 
 both at Marseilles and Toulon. In the latter place, in one of the Galleys in 
 the arsenal, there is one Protestant who openly makes the profession thereof, 
 and his exemplary character for 30 years does us credit. I was informed that 
 no strangers are to enter, but particularly no Englishman on any account. 
 However, I passed several hours there on two days, but was advised to get off 
 by shipping as soon as possible. My advisers were the Protestant ministers, 
 who alone were trusted with the secret, and who perhaps were the only persons 
 to be trusted. At Genoa and Leghorn I was received in the most generous 
 
461 
 
 manner ; was allowed to visit the Lazarettos : the plans sent to my lodgings 
 to copy, &c. 
 
 " I visited Florence, Rome, and Naples, about a fortnight in each place, 
 to review the places in my line. I then took shipping for this Island. We 
 lay by contrary winds several days close to Messina, Catania, Syracuse, &c. 
 and saw the dreadful effects of the earthquake about 2 years ago in Sicily. 
 Soon after we met a sad storm ; but happy for us, it lasted only four hours, 
 and we arrived here about 10 days ago. I have paid two visits to the Grand 
 Master. Every place is flung open to me. He has sent me, what is thought a 
 great present, a pound of nice butter, as we are here all burnt up ; yet peas 
 beans in plenty ; melons ripe, roses and flowers in abundance ; but at night 
 tormented with millions of fleas, gnats &c. 
 
 " I am bound for Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople. We have here 
 many Turks, the accounts from thence are not favourable. A ship to day 
 arrived from Tripoli : the plague now ravages that city. The crew &c. went 
 into strict quarantine. 
 
 " One effect I find during my visits to the Lazaretto, viz. a heavy head- 
 ach, a pain across my forehead ; but has always quite left me in one hour 
 after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I have need to 
 summon all my courage and resolution. You will say it is a great design, and 
 so liable to a fatal miscarriage. I must adopt the motto of a Maltese Baron — 
 Non nisi per ardua. I will not think my friend is amongst the many who 
 treat every new attempt as wild and chimerical, and as was first said of my 
 former attempt, that it would produce no real or lasting advantage. But I 
 persevere ' through good report and evil report.' I know I ruri the greatest 
 risk of my life. Permit ine to declare the sense of my mind, in the expressive 
 words of Dr. Doddridge — '•' I have no hope in what I have been or done.' Yet 
 there is a hope set before me. In him the Lord Jesus Christ, I trust. In him 
 I have strong consolation." 
 
 3 o 2 
 
468 
 
 " These days (Sundays) I go little out. I have the notes of several 
 sermons, and my Bible, with me. It is a pain to see, in almost all the churches, 
 in large gold letters — 
 
 ' INDULGENTIA PLENARIA.' 
 
 And before the [crucifixes] of canvas or stone in the street with — Qui elucidant 
 me vitam eternam habebunt — and poor creatures starved and almost naked, 
 putting into the box grains, 5 of which make one halfpenny. 
 
 " I am, I bless God, pretty well : calm steady spirits. All see at the Inns, 
 &c. that I have the mode of travelling, and try to oblige me ; but I inflexibly 
 keep to my mode of living, with regimen or low diet. The Physicians in 
 Turkey, I hear, are very attentive too in the time that the plague is there. 
 
 " In many instances God has disappointed my fears, and exceeded my 
 hopes. 
 
 " Remember me to any of our friends. A share in your serious momenta. 
 Thanks for kindnesses shewn to mind and body. With great esteem I am 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your affectionate Friend 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 It was not until ten days after this letter was written that our intrepid 
 countryman embarked on board a vessel for Smyrna, for the express purpose 
 of visiting the cities of the plague, and ascertaining there, at the risk of falling 
 a victim to its fury, more of the nature, progress, and cure of this dreadful 
 scourge, than he had been enabled to obtain in any part of Europe ; " pleasing 
 himself (as he said) with the idea of not only learning, but of being able to 
 communicate somewhat to the inhabitants of those distant regions."* The 
 first port which he made in the course of this voyage was Zante, where he 
 found a convenient and well-regulated lazaretto, which he has the more parti- 
 cularly described, because it struck him as affording some good ideas for the 
 * Rev. S. Palmer's Funeral Sermon, p. 22, 3. 
 
469 
 
 construction of a house of correction. Coming from Malta, he was permitted, 
 as was usual with persons from any other parts than the Levant, the Barbary 
 coast, or the Morea, to pass through the health-office into the city. In the 
 prison at the back of the guard-house he found five or six prisoners, very dirtv, 
 yet scarcely more so than the Venetian soldiers in whose custody they were left. 
 In another room adjoining the health-office was a prison, in which the prin- 
 cipal pirate concerned in seizing the ship the Grand Duchess, from Leghorn to 
 London, had been confined, and where, after three volleys of shot had been 
 aimed at him without killing him, he was dispatched by a pistol applied to his 
 ear. His head, and those of his two companions, were afterwards fixed on 
 poles, when the two latter became mere skulls within two months ; while 
 that of the chief desperado, even to the very countenance, continued, as Mr. 
 Howard was assured, much the same, though three years had elapsed since his 
 execution.* Reaching the place of his destination about the middle of Ma}', 
 1786, he found it not quite free from the plague, though it prevailed but very 
 partially ; taking, therefore, a dragoman into his service, he immediately set 
 about examining the prisons and hospitals which the city of Smyrna contained. 
 At the gate of the principal prison he found three Turks sitting, smoking 
 their pipes, who made a very surly reply to his application for admittance, 
 though after his interpreter had told them that he was a physician, they 
 addressed him with more civility, and allowed him to enter. This prison for 
 criminals consisted of two rooms, near the sea-side, with a court; yet so 
 speedily did execution in this country follow the commission of a crime, that at 
 none of his three visits did it contain more than seven prisoners. At the first 
 of these, they shewed him a young man who had been bastinadoed so 
 severely, that his whole body was prodigiously swelled from head to foot. 
 He said he thought he could cure him ; and desired them to bathe him in the 
 sea, to apply to the soles of his feet plaisters of salt and vinegar, and to keep 
 him upon a cooling regimen. These remedies, with the addition of two doses 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 9 ; 61, 9. 
 
410 
 
 of Glauber's salts, had the desired effect : so that, contrary to the expectation 
 of his keepers, the prisoner recovered ; and he acquired such credit with them, 
 that at his subsequent visits they were particularly attentive to him, and soon 
 spread his fame as a physician through the whole city. It was most probably 
 to the reputation which he enjoyed in this character, that he was indebted for 
 permission to attend the Cadi, and the other officers of the police, on their 
 peregrination of the city, to examine the weights used in the shops, and the 
 quality of the bread sold by the bakers. All false and light weights were cut 
 and carried away, as in England ; but those who used them were either sent to 
 prison, or bastinadoed instanter for their frauds, as long as the Cadi should 
 think fit to order. The humane witness of his summary infliction of 
 justice upon the present occasion was told, indeed, that a person had 
 once received four or five hundred strokes, but he could hardly suppose 
 it possible to survive the infliction of a much less number. " Such hasty exe- 
 cutions of what is here called justice,'' he very truly observes, " are very im- 
 proper and cruel. The terror which appeared in the countenances of all the 
 shopkeepers at these times implied, that the innocent as well as the guilty 
 might suffer; and, indeed, it is scarcely possible this should not some- 
 times happen, the Cadi, who orders and superintends these punishments, con- 
 tinuing in his office only a year, and being generally young and unexperienced." 
 With another practice prevailing not only here, but in every City which he saw 
 in the Turkish dominions, he was, however, much better pleased — the appropri- 
 ation to the use of debtors of a prison entirely separate and distinct from that of 
 felons; a just as well as a humane provision, without whose establishment in Eng- 
 land " a thorough reformation of the gaols," as he rightly^ remarks, " can never be 
 effected." That at Smyrna consisted of four or five rooms, and a court to 
 walk in ; but, populous as was this great commercial city, Mr. Howard 
 never saw more than fourteen prisoners here at one time, their subsistence de- 
 pending the while chiefly on casual charity, and^the collections made for them in 
 the Greek and Roman Catholic churches. There were several hospitals here, but 
 
471 
 
 they all seem to have belonged to the Franks, as in Turkey the European 
 nations are indiscriminately called, or to the Greeks. That belonging to the 
 Venetians, or rather to the Italian states generally, was under the government 
 of a good prior, Father Luigi di Pavia, who, having formerly been ill of the 
 plague, made a vow, in fulfilment of which he had ever since assiduously at- 
 tended on others in the like perilous situation. Conceiving therefore that, 
 though like himself no physician, he must be a man much experienced in this 
 dreadful malady, Mr. Howard proposed to him the questions with which he 
 had been furnished before he left England ; and, from his answers, it appears 
 that, from the care taken of patients infected with this dreadful disorder in the 
 hospital under his superintendence, the number of those who recovered had, for 
 the last eighteen years, exceeded that of its victims. In the English factory in 
 this city he had an opportunity, which he did not enjoy at any of the hotels of 
 our ambassadors, of attending public worship on a Sunday, and he accompa- 
 nies the notice of this circumstance by some reflections which do him infinite 
 honor, as they exhibit not merely the decided piety, but the fearlessness and 
 independence of his character, in censuring, where censure was called for at all, 
 the conduct of the representatives of his sovereign in foreign courts, to whose 
 attention, as a body, and as individuals, he yet takes every opportunity of ac- 
 knowledging his deep obligation, with equal freedom as he would that of the 
 keeper of the obscurest gaol, or the attendant on the meanest hospital : — 
 1 I take this occasion," he observes, " of mentioning a secret source of 
 contagious irreligion, that most of our ambassadors have no chaplains, nor any 
 religious service in their houses. — With pain I have observed on Sundays, many 
 of our young nobility and gentry, who are to fill eminent stations in life, 
 instructed in their houses, by example at least (especially in Roman Catholic 
 countries), to make the Lord's day a season of diversion and amusement. — How 
 have I been mortified by the comparison, when, after calling at their 
 hotels, I have seen, upon my return from thence, the chapels of the Spanish 
 and French ambassadors crowded." He also consulted the members of this 
 
472 
 
 mercantile establishment on the propriety of erecting a lazaretto in England, 
 an idea with which he was struck on seeing three English ships perform a long 
 and tedious quarantine at Malta, and in whose importance to the interests of 
 commerce, in saving both time and expence, these most competent judges fully 
 coincided, as appears by a letter which they addressed to him at Constanti- 
 nople, and which he has inserted in his work, with some few omissions, which his 
 singular modesty induced him to make.* From this city he proceeded by sea 
 to the Turkish capital, where he remained for a month, not without imminent 
 hazard of catching the plague, from frequently visiting all the hospitals or 
 pest-houses there. The medical reputation he had acquired at Smyrna, and 
 which in this country was so essential to the execution of his benevolent design, 
 happily followed him hither ; afforded him free access to the various institutions 
 he was so anxious to visit, and thus facilitated the inquiries he had taken so 
 long and so hazardous a journey to institute. In this character he was called 
 upon to visit the daughter of a Turk, high in office at the Ottoman Porte, 
 whose disease baffled all the skill of the Constantinopolitan physicians, but the 
 medicines which he prescribed happily succeeded in giving her relief; when her 
 delighted parent evinced the gratitude for which his countrymen are so de- 
 servedly celebrated, by pressing on his acceptance a purse of 2,000 sequins 
 (about 900/.), which he positively refused, alleging that he never took money ; 
 but adding, that a plate of grapes from his garden would not be unacceptable. 
 Astonished at its moderation, this request was immediately complied with, and 
 an ample supply of the finest fruit was regularly sent to him during his resi- 
 dence in the neighbourhood. This anecdote has been before told, with some 
 variations in its particulars, but I now give it from the relation of one of Mr. 
 Howard's Shrewsbury friends, who had it from himself. In the prisons of 
 Constantinople their visitor found nothing remarkable, except that they were 
 very still and quiet, — a circumstance for which he was at a loss to account, 
 until he reflected on the only beverage of their inmates being water. That for 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 26—29 ; 33, 4 ; 62, 3. Dr. Brown's MSS. 
 
413 
 
 debtors at Galata, one of the two suburbs of the city, contained but eighteen 
 prisoners, who were maintained, partly on collections made for them in the 
 churches, and partly from a bag hung up in the street leading to the prison, to 
 receive contributions of bread, meat, &c. from charitable persons. Prisoners 
 of different sects, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, Mahommedans, had very pro- 
 perlydifferent apartments allotted to them, the number of the latter being always, 
 according to Mr. Howard's observation, fewer than those of any other faith. 
 Into this prison a fine stream of water had lately been brought by a pious Greek, 
 as a proof of his devotion on the loss of his only son. It were well if supersti- 
 tion could always be directed into so useful a channel. The prison for slaves was 
 very large, but nearly empty, the captain pacha having taken most of them into 
 his galleys. The few who remained where healthy, and a very humane atten- 
 tion was paid to them. To the prison of the Seven Towers he could not gain ad- 
 mittance ; four of those towers, however, had been laid in ruins by the ravages of 
 time, or by the swifter destruction of a recent fire ; the remaining three were 
 very lofty, and stood in the corners of a large area. Through an aperture he 
 had a view of one of the dungeons, which seemed to be about five feet below 
 the surface of the ground : to that dungeon the Russian ambassador had lately 
 been conveyed, in outrage of all the laws of nations, on the breaking out of a 
 war between his government and the Porte, though he soon had a better apart- 
 ment assigned him. In the Greek hospital at Galata, the sick were lying on the 
 floor, and the prior himself was ill of the jaundice, and of a dreadful cutaneous 
 disorder ; they were all therefore miserably neglected, as none of the faculty 
 would attend them ; but, with his wonted zeal to do good to all men, Mr. 
 Howard requested a young physician, who accompanied him on his visit, to 
 set the charitable example. The Turks themselves had a few hospitals in Con- 
 stantinople, but they were a mere sort of caravansaries, in one of which he 
 was shocked by the sight of many sick and dying objects lying on dirty mats 
 on the floors, the surgeon who attended them, being either extremely stupid, or 
 intoxicated with opium. The two for lunatics were admirable structures, built 
 
 3 p 
 
 
4T4 
 
 entirely of stone, and proof against fire : the rooms were lofty, and opened 
 under a corridor into a spacious area plentifully supplied with water ; yet but 
 little attention appeared to be paid here to cleanliness, nor was much indeed in 
 any respect shown to the patients. In the midst, though, of all this neglect 
 of the miseries of human beings, the feeling commiserator of their sufferings 
 noticed with astonishment an asylum for cats, near the celebrated mosque 
 of San Sophia.* When he had been about a fortnight in this singular 
 capital of so singular a race, he addressed to his friend Dr. Price a letter, 
 giving an account of the perils he had undergone in getting there, and 
 those to which he was still exposed, from the city being partially infected 
 with the plague. Learning, however, from the near relative and able bio- 
 grapher of this distinguished writer, that the several epistles which Mr. 
 Howard addressed to him upon his tours, if in existence at all, are not so, it is 
 feared, in England, I am compelled to be satisfied here with transcribing the 
 extract from them, which Dr. Aikin has inserted in his memoirs. The letter 
 in question was dated June 22, 1786, and contained the following interesting 
 particulars of its author's proceedings : — " After viewing the effects of the earth- 
 quake in Sicily, I arrived at Malta, where I repeatedly visited the prisons, hospi- 
 tals, poor-houses, and lazarettos, as I staid three'weeks. From thence I went to 
 Zant: as they are all Greeks, I wished to have some general idea of their 
 hospitals and prisons, before I went into Turkey. From thence, in a foreign 
 ship, I got a passage to Smyrna. Here I boldly visited the hospitals and 
 prisons ; but as some accidents happened, a few dying of the plague, several 
 shrunk at me. I came thence about a fortnight ago. As I was in a miserable 
 Turk's boat, I was lucky in a passage of six days and a half. A family ar- 
 rived just before me, had been between two and three months. 
 
 " I am sorry to say some die of the plague about us ; one is just carried 
 before my window ; yet I visit where none of my conductors will accompany 
 me. In some hospitals, as in the lazarettos, and yeterday among the sick 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 63, 4. 
 
41 
 
 o 
 
 slaves, I have a constant headach, but in about an hour after it always leaves 
 me. Sir Robert Ainslie is very kind ; but for the above, and other reasons, I 
 could not lodge in his house. I am at a physician's, and I keep some of my 
 visits a secret."* 
 
 During his protracted stay in this infected city, an instance of the despotism 
 of its government, and of the summary and sanguinary administration of its jus- 
 tice, was the public talk, for the particulars of which I am indebted to the 
 valuable memoranda of Dr. Brown, so often referred to in the course of this 
 narrative. About a fortnight before Mr. Howard's arrival in Constantinople, 
 the grand vizier sent for the grand chamberlain, who had the charge of sup- 
 plying the city with bread. Yielding immediate obedience to the summons, 
 this officer arrived at the palace of the minister in great state, and, being intro- 
 duced into his presence, was asked why the bread was so bad ? He answered, 
 that the last harvest had been but a very indifferent one. " Why," continued 
 the vizier, apparently satisfied with this excuse, " is the weight so short?" 
 " That," replied the chamberlain, " might have happened by accident to two 
 or three amongst such an immense number of loaves as are required for the 
 supply of so large a city;" but he assured his highness that greater care should 
 be taken for the future. Without further observation, the vizier ordered him to 
 quit his presence ; but no sooner had he left it, than he commanded an execu- 
 tioner to follow him, and to strike off his head in the street, where his body 
 was publicly exposed for a day and a half, with three light loaves beside it to 
 denote his crime. When Mr. Howard was told that the body had lain there 
 for three days, he expressed his surprize that it had not bred a contagion. He 
 learnt, however, that in point of fact it had not been left so long, as they 
 were not entire days ; for it being the evening when the head was struck oft", 
 this was reckoned one ; it remained the whole of the second ; and was re- 
 moved early in the succeeding morning, which was accounted the third. 
 
 * Aikin, p. 132, 3. 
 3 p2 
 
476 
 
 " Thus," as Dr. Brown very properly remarks on this circumstance, " the man- 
 ner of computation in use at the time of our Saviour's crucifixion and burial 
 still subsists among the eastern nations." 
 
 To his free and independent spirit, a country, the security of whose inha- 
 bitants was but the mere whim of a despot ; whose ministers commanding, in 
 the plenitude of their power, on the one day the heads of those who had 
 offended them to be cut off at their pleasure, had their own existence terminated 
 by a bowstring on the next; whilst the grand tyrant, who ordered then- 
 removal by a nod, was, on the succeeding one, either stabbed by the swords of 
 his tumultuous janissaries, or quietly carried off by poison mingled with his cup 
 of sherbet in the haram — we may be assured offered no attractions to detain a 
 Howard in his course, for a moment longer than the benevolent object of his 
 visiting it at all was completely answered. He was, therefore, about making 
 arrangements for returning by land through Vienna, when suddenly struck 
 one evening by the thought, that all his information concerning the economy of 
 pest-houses and lazarettos was mere hearsay, and might as easily have been 
 procured by a written application to our ministers and consuls, he resolved on 
 the bold and hazardous measure of silencing this objection by personally un- 
 dergoing their discipline himself. With this view he determined to sail again 
 for Smyrna, where the plague had lately raged, and was not so entirely subdued 
 that any ship could be permitted to leave its port with a clean bill of health. He 
 proceeded thither, however, by way of Salonica, in order that he might inspect 
 two celebrated hospitals there for persons infected with this dreadful malady. 
 In the course of his voyage to this place, the captain of the little Greek boat in 
 which he sailed, considering him to be a physician, brought to him one of his 
 passengers who was very much indisposed, and begged his advice. He accord- 
 ingly felt, the man's pulse, and soon perceived, from his fetid breath, that he 
 was infected by some contagious disorder, an opinion which was completely 
 confirmed, when he found behind his ear the black spot which was a sure indi- 
 
411 
 
 cation of the plague. Convinced now, that the danger was unavoidable, he 
 resolved to shew no sign of terror, for fear of spreading it amongst the crew, 
 and he therefore communicated the discovery he had made to no one but a 
 French officer, who was with him in the cabin, and whom he cautioned not to 
 approach the infected person, advising him also to abstain from animal food. 
 The day after their arrival at Salonica the man died of the plague.* Here he 
 inspected the Greek hospital for infected patients, in a burying-ground out of the 
 city, injudiciously enclosed by very high walls, and, from its closeness, giving 
 its visitor, though it was quite empty, the same kind of head-ache which he 
 felt in the foul lazarettos. With this he contrasted the hospital of the Jews, 
 which was situated on a rising ground, in the midst of their burying-place, 
 some of the tombs serving for tables and for seats. The whole building was 
 light and airy, and better accommodated to the purpose it was intended to 
 answer than any he had ever seen. Whilst there, he also submitted to the 
 only two English mercantile bouses in the place, the letter he had received 
 from the gentlemen of the factory at Smyrna, with whom they most fully 
 agreed in opinion on the great importance of establishing a lazaretto in Eng- 
 land for the preservation of our trade to the Levant, and of ourselves from 
 the dangers to which that trade exposes us. Previous to his departure in a 
 small Greek vessel for Scio, he addressed to a friend of his in the neighbourhood 
 of Shrewsbury an account of his residence in Turkey, the following extract 
 from which was published in a periodical journal during its author's life :— -■ 
 
 " Salonica, July 22. [1786.J 
 With pleasure 1 will converse an hour with my worthy friend, who, I 
 doubt not, has been informed of my intention to visit and collect all the plans, 
 regulations, &c. of the principal lazarettos in Europe. I have been at Mar- 
 seilles, Genoa, Leghorn, Naples, Malta, &c. &c. Several questions (with 
 consulting fees) have been put to the first physicians of those places, relative 
 
 * Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
418 
 
 to their treatment of persons in the plague : but thinking I should gain more 
 knowledge in the Greek hospitals for that disorder I have been at Zante, 
 Smyrna, and Constantinople, and I came hither about a week ago. I visit 
 boldly, but am forced to keep it secret : I always have in those places a painful 
 head-ach, but it has ever left me in an hour after my removal. 
 
 " I came hither on Saturday in a Greek boat, full of passengers, one of whom 
 being taken ill, he was brought to me, as I always pass for a physician. I felt 
 his pulse, looked at the swelling, and ordered him to keep warm in a little 
 cabin, as he had caught cold ; in two hours after, I sent for a French captain, 
 desiring him to give no alarm, but said that I was persuaded that man had the 
 plague ; and, on Tuesday after, I saw the grave in which he was buried. 
 
 " I visit all the prisons, to inform myself; but my interpreters are very 
 cross with me ; — I am bound for Scio, as in that island is the most famous hos- 
 pital in the Levant. My quarantine of forty days imprisonment is to be, I hope, 
 at Venice. I could easily have made my route by land to Vienna, without 
 being stopped, as no quarantine is performed on the confines of the emperor's 
 dominions ; but should such an establishment for our shipping be ever intro- 
 duced into England, things which now may appear trivial, may be of future 
 importance, in case of such a new foundation ; I have therefore procured from 
 the Venetian ambassador, the strongest recommendation to assist me in the 
 minutest observations I may make during my quarantine. I bless God, I am 
 quite well, calm, and in steady spirits ; indeed I have at times need of deter- 
 mined resolution, as, since I left Helvoetsluys, I have never met with any 
 English ship, or travelled one mile with any of my countrymen. 
 
 " I am persuaded I am engaged in a good cause, and confirmed of having 
 a good God and Master ; his approbation will be an abundant recompence for all 
 the little pleasures I may have given up. 
 
 " At Smyrna, the Franks, or foreigners' houses are shut up; every thingthey 
 receive is fumigated, and their provisions pass through water ; but in Con- 
 stantinople, where many of the natives drop [down dead], houses of the Franks 
 
4T9 
 
 are still kept open. I there conversed with an Italian merchant on Thursday, 
 and had observed to a gentleman how sprightly he was ; he replied, he had a 
 fine trade, and was in the prime of life ; but, alas ! on Saturday he died, and 
 was buried, having every sign of the plague. 
 
 " A line, through our ambassador's, at Vienna, will be a cordial to the 
 drooping spirits of * Your affectionate friend 
 
 " John Howard."* 
 
 On his arrival at Scio, our traveller visited the only hospital for lepers he 
 had ever seen, containing 120 patients of both sexes, lodged in separate rooms 
 elevated above the ground, most of them being furnished with little gardens 
 which supplied them with pot-herbs, almonds, and delicious figs and grapes. 
 The situation was airy and pleasant, and water had lately been conducted hither 
 from the mountains in two streams, the one for the use of those in health, the other 
 for the lepers. With his usual attention to cleanliness, he persuaded the vice- 
 consul to recommend to the directors of the hospital to add a bath for each 
 sex.t On his arrival at Smyrna he succeeded to his wishes in meeting with a 
 vessel bound to Venice, with a foul bill of health : in his voyage thither, 
 shortly after leaving the port of Modon, in the Morea, where they touched 
 for water, his life was placed in most imminent danger by the vessel he was 
 aboard of being suddenly attacked by a Tunisian privateer, which fired into 
 them with great violence. The men defended themselves for a considerable 
 time with much bravery, but were at length reduced, as it would seem, to the 
 alternative of striking, or being butchered by the Moors, when, having one 
 very large cannon on board, they loaded it with spikes, nails, and whatever 
 missiles they could lay their hands upon, and, pointed by Mr. Howard himself, 
 it was discharged amongst the corsair crew with such effect, that a great number 
 of them were killed, and the others thought it prudent immediately to sheer 
 
 Gent. Mag. Vol. LVII. Part II. p. 725: Life of the late John Howard, Esq. p. 51, 2, &c. : Account 
 of Lazarettos, p. 64, 5. t Account of Lazarettos, p. 65. 
 
480 
 
 off. During the whole of this engagement our intrepid countryman found him- 
 self supported, as he himself declares, in the most surprising manner by the 
 Almighty Being who had hitherto so wonderfully protected him, but he did 
 not know the extent of his danger, until after the action, the master of the 
 vessel declared, that had every other resource failed him, he had determined 
 to blow up the ship rather than submit to perpetual slavery; the dreadful fate 
 from which, in his own language, they were " saved by the interposition of 
 Providence."* After this merciful deliverance the ship proceeded on its way, 
 touching at Corfu and at Castel-Novo, in Dalmatia, neither of whose lazarettos its 
 passenger was permitted to enter, from the vessel having a foul bill. The 
 former was finely situated on a rock, surrounded with water, about a league 
 from the city ; whilst, at the back of the latter, was a delightful hill, where 
 persons performing quarantine were, after a few days, allowed to walk and 
 divert themselves with shooting, or any other amusement. The care taken to 
 prevent the spread of infection here was however very trifling, or rather none 
 at all, as the captain and passengers went into the city, and the mate openly 
 took goods to his friends in the country every day. Mr. Howard observed 
 also, that a half-naked soldier came on board the vessel twice a-day, and re- 
 ceived biscuit and hot victuals. At first he imagined that he came for charity, 
 but soon learnt that he was the guard appointed to the ship by the health -office, 
 but who, like many of his superiors, contented himself with receiving the per- 
 quisites, without performing the duties of his station. f On their arrival at 
 Venice, after a tedious and dangerous voyage of two months, he accompanied 
 the captain to the health-office, to see the manner in which his report was 
 made, his letters delivered, and his examination taken. The next morn- 
 ing he himself was conducted by a messenger to the new lazaretto, being 
 placed with his baggage in a gondola, fastened by a cord to another boat, in 
 which were six rowers, who, when they reached the landing-place, pushed his 
 boat on shore, where he was received by the person appointed to be his guard, 
 * Dr. Brown's MS : Aikin, p. 134 : Account of Lazarettos, p. 10, 22. f lb. p. 22. 
 
481 
 
 and conducted to his lodging in a very dirty room, full of vermin, and with- 
 out table, chair, or bed, in the lazaretto chiefly assigned to the use of Turk.*. 
 soldiers, and the crews of ships infected with the plague. The whole of the 
 first, and part of the second day of his residence in this miserable place, a person 
 was employed by him in cleaning his room, but this purification did not re- 
 move its offensiveness, or prevent that constant head-ache which he so often 
 complains of having felt in visiting other lazarettos, and some of the hospitals 
 of Turkey. In a few days, however, his guard, having sent in a favorable 
 account of his health, on the representation of the English consul he was 
 removed to the old lazaretto, where, as he had brought the prior a letter from 
 the Venetian ambassador at Constantinople, he hoped to have a more com- 
 fortable lodging. But in this expectation he was disappointed, the apartment 
 assigned him being no less offensive and disagreeable than the former one, as 
 in the lower room, in which he lay, he was almost surrounded with water ; 
 having made a large fire to dry the flags nearest to it, upon which he fixed his 
 bed. But, after six days, the prior thought proper to remove him to an 
 apartment in some respects better, and consisting of four rooms, but they were 
 without furniture, very dirty, and as offensive as the sick wards of the worst 
 hospitals. The walls of his chamber not having been cleaned, in all proba- 
 bility, for half a century, were saturated with infection ; he therefore got 
 them repeatedly washed with warm water, in the hope of removing the 
 offensive smell, but without any effect, so that he found his appetite fail him, 
 and concluded that he was in danger of the slow hospital fever, to save him- 
 self from whose contagion he proposed to white-wash his room, but was op- 
 posed by strong prejudices. These however he surmounted, or rather frustrated, 
 by the assistance of the English consul, who furnished him with brushes and some 
 lime, which he bribed his attendant to assist him in reducing to white-wash, 
 and in purifying the walls of his apartment with it, having previously deter- 
 mined to lock up his guard if he offered any resistance to his operations. The 
 consequence of this salutary precaution was, that his room was immediately 
 
 3q 
 
482 
 
 rendered so sweet and fresh, that he was able to drink tea in it that afternoon, 
 and to lie there with comfort on the following night. On the next day, the 
 walls were dry as well as sweet, and he very soon recovered his appetite. 
 ' Thus,' he observes, i at a small expense, and to the admiration of the other 
 inhabitants of this lazaretto, I provided for myself and successors, an agreeable 
 and wholesome room, instead of a nasty and contagious one." Here he per- 
 formed his quarantine of forty days more comfortably, in all probability, than 
 any one had ever done before him, though he lived the while upon tea and 
 bread, which had long been his principal nourishment. He was chiefly occu- 
 pied, during his confinement, in translating and abridging the sketch of an 
 information sent to the British government on the state and regulations of 
 the office, whose commissioners had the general superintendence of every 
 thing connected with the public health, with which he was furnished by our 
 consul at Venice ; and a copy of their printed instructions to the prior of the 
 lazaretto, which that officer presented to him. These regulations were in 
 theory most wise and wholesome, but there was now so much remissness in 
 their execution, as to render the quarantine which they directed to be so strictly 
 performed almost useless, and their lazarettos little more than an establishment 
 for officers and infirm people, who, though expressly prohibited from taking 
 more than their regular pay, extorted gratuities by their inattention to the 
 duties of their office, which even when thus encouraged, they were many of them 
 but ill qualified to discharge.* But whilst thus occupied in the detection of the 
 abuses of this necessary, but neglected institution, by voluntarily exposing him- 
 self to all the dangers which those abuses created or increased, he received 
 from England intelligence of two circumstances which had transpired there, 
 both of them the occasion of the deepest affliction to his mind. The first w 7 as 
 the formation of a fund for the erection of a statue to his honor ; — the second, 
 the misconduct of his only son. 
 
 It was in the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1786, that a writer, signing 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 10— 22. Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
483 
 
 himself Anghis, proposed the erection of a public monument to the worth of u 
 man whom he styles " the most truly glorious of mortal beings." This person 
 had just returned from Italy, where he had enjoyed the pleasure of Mr. Howard's 
 conversation for an hour at Rome, and had imbibed such an exalted opinion of 
 his character, that, in his own expressions, " he all but worshipped him." 
 Arriving, therefore, in the country that gave him birth, in the full enthusiasm 
 of these honorable feelings, he felt anxious that no time should be lost in profit- 
 ing by the only opportunity which, in all probability, would ever be afforded 
 for the execution of his scheme, conscious as he was, from the slight acquaint- 
 ance with his disposition which he had obtained, that if it were not com- 
 pleted before his return, he would most certainly prevent its ever being executed 
 at all. In this design he calculated on the assistance not only of all the gene- 
 rous and humane amongst his countrymen, but of the Philanthropist's more 
 intimate friends, who, judging by his own feelings, he supposed to have honored 
 him but just on this side idolatry. The former expectation was completely 
 realized ; but in the latter he was grievously disappointed, as I am not aware of 
 any persons who could be considered as intimate friends of Mr. Howard, having 
 given their names to the fund for carrying into effect the recommendation of 
 this letter, except Dr. Lettsom, the Rev. Dr. Stennet, and Mr. Capel Llofft. 
 The first of these gentlemen was a warm promoter of the design, which, in the 
 very next number of the work in which it was proposed, he supported by a re- 
 commendatory letter, by a donation of ten guineas, and by offering, in con- 
 nection with the worthy printer of the Magazine, to receive subscriptions for 
 the purpose.* Some of his friends viewed the measure, however, in a far cor- 
 recter light, and ventured to suggest their doubts whether, instead of honoring, 
 they would not be most seriously hurting the feelings of the object of their 
 admiration. - !" But the subscription still went on; peers, ministers, and others 
 who were first in rank and character in the nation, feeling proud to enrol 
 their names upon the list ; whilst the pages of the journal in which this design 
 * Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LVI. Part I. p. 360, 1 ; 447. t lb. Part. II. p. 537* 628. 
 
 3«2 
 
484 
 
 was first announced were filled with projets and counter-projets ; with argu- 
 ments for and against columns, statues, chapels, alms-houses ; discussions on the 
 superiority as a scite for whatever description of edifice might be fixed 
 upon, of St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster-Abbey, St. George's Fields, 
 or Shooter's-Hill ; and proposal after proposal for the most appropriate in- 
 scription upon it, in Latin and in English, in prose and in rhyme, to his honor, 
 to whose extraordinary virtues this tribute of national approbation was 
 to be consecrated.* But those who knew him best, in the meanwhile, with- 
 holding their countenance from every plan which could draw him into a pub- 
 licity they were convinced that he was most desirous to shun, lost no time 
 in giving him information of the steps which the admirers of his character 
 were so ill-advisedly taking. 
 
 With this information it was the painful duty of some of the most intimate 
 of his friends to acquaint him with conduct on the part of his son that could 
 not fail to be most painful to a father's heart. When that father quitted 
 England upon his hazardous expedition his sou was left the uncontrolled 
 master of his house whenever he thought proper to take up his abode in it ; 
 and he invited whoever he chose to be his companions there. Notwithstanding 
 the care which had been taken on his entrance at Cambridge to introduce 
 him to the acquaintance of serious and pious people, it unfortunately happened 
 that the young men with whom he chiefly associated there, were some of the 
 most dissipated that the university could produce, and in their company the 
 outrageous freaks which he would take it into his head to play, were the cause 
 of frequent uneasiness and alarm to the villagers of Cardington, and its peaceful 
 neighbourhood. Towards the old and valued domestics of the family, who 
 had every one of them dandled him an infant on their knees, and who therefore, 
 for his own, as well as for his excellent parent's sake, felt every disposition to 
 obey his commands, and even anticipate his wishes, where they were reasonable 
 
 # Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LVI, Part II. p. 535, 6; 627—632; 723, 4, 7, 8; 823, 4. 
 
48J 
 
 and proper, he, at times, behaved in the most capricious and tyrannical man- 
 ner, so much so, indeed, that they would often go over to Mr. Smith to com- 
 plain that his temper was so violent that they could not live with him, entreat- 
 ing him at the same time to go to Cardington, and exert that influence over him 
 which he always retained, in some degree, so long as he was capable of listen- 
 ing to, and comprehending his friendly remonstrances. But even thus early this 
 attached friend, alike of the father and the son, thought that he saw in the 
 mind of the latter the seeds of that dreadful malady which destroyed the do- 
 mestic happiness of both. It was, however, very slow in its approaches, 
 shewing itself at this time but by his taking violent prejudices, and putting 
 himself into most ungovernable passions. All, therefore, that could now be 
 done was to give his father some particulars of his conduct, without hinting at 
 the cause from which it was feared that it originated ; and this course was 
 accordingly pursued ; one of the instances of the gross impropriety of his 
 behaviour which was thus communicated to him being, as I am informed by 
 the daughter of the gentleman by whom it was communicated, that of his having 
 so far forgot himself as to join some of his brother Cantabs in the disturbance 
 of a congregation of dissenters, peaceably assembled for the worship of their 
 Maker. How deeply the intelligence of the double misfortune which had befallen 
 him in his public character, as in his nearest domestic relation, affected this 
 great and good man, whose commiseration for the sufferings of others at no 
 time steeled his heart against a proper sense of his own,— yet with what 
 patience, firmness, and Christian resignation he met this trial of his faith, the 
 letters which he wrote whilst under quarantine at Venice will sufficiently 
 evince. The first in date in my possession is the following, addressed to 
 Thomasson soon after his arrival there :— 
 
 " Thomas, " Venice Lazaretto Oct. 12th, 1786. 
 
 " I am just arrived here, having had a two months voyage being 
 tossed by the equinoctial stormy Winds, and was nearly taken by a Tunis Pri- 
 vateer, with whom the Venetians arc at warr, but one of our cannon, which 
 
486 
 
 was well loaded with Old nails, Spikes, &c. came directly in the midst of All 
 the Men on deck, and made a dreadful slaughter ; they directly hoisted their 
 sails and went off, to our gi-eat joy : am now in an infectious Lazaretto, yet my 
 steady spirits never forsook me, till yesterday on the receit of my Letters, the 
 accumulated misfortunes almost sinks me ; I am sorry very sorry on y r ac- 
 count, I will hasten home no time will I loose by night or Day, but 40 
 days I have still to be confined here, as our Ship had a foul bill of Health, the 
 Plague being in the place from whence we sailed, but we were healthy ; whilst 
 others anchored to burn the Cloaths of those that died of the plague aboard 
 two ships. — I am fully persuaded had you been with me this Turkey Tour You 
 would have died by the fatigue, or plague that rages in that Country. 
 
 " Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that is taken in 
 London, wounds me sadly indeed, alas what a sad mixture of folly and Sin 
 is there in our best performances, such praise is highly displeasing to a thinking 
 Mind. — Never have I returned to my Country with such a heavy heart as I 
 now doe — Our Consul deceived me in not sending the Currants for my poor 
 friends at Card" but the Vice Consul will cheerfully send them from Zante, 
 and they are much finer this year than last : distribute them to my Tenants and 
 the poor Cottagers. — 
 
 " Make my Comp' and tell my friends that I am pretty well ; namely Mr 
 Smith Mr Leach Mr King Mr Caston Mr Gadsby Mr Lovesey Mr. Symonds 
 Mr. Odel Mrs Smith Mr Willan Mrs Morgan Rubin, &c &c 
 
 " I hope Samuel Preston's family Jn° Prole's farmer Smith's &.c are all 
 well — 
 
 " Desire Jn° Prole in ab l 10 Weeks to write to me at the Post-house 
 in Amsterdam. 
 
 I have such an head-ach I can only add 
 
 that I am Y r friend to serve you 
 " To Thomas Thomason Jn° Howard." 
 
 a at Cardington Bedfordshire." 
 
487 
 
 About four or five days after this letter was witten, a second was dispatched 
 to Mr. Smith, in which, according to the recollection of that gentleman's 
 daughter, and of some other of his friends, Mr. Howard spoke still more fully 
 his sentiments upon the two subjects which then lay nearest to his heart, and ex- 
 pressed in the strongest terms the grief he felt at the vicious courses of his son, 
 and the inconsiderate conduct of his friends, or rather of his admirers. The 
 two first pages of that letter are, however, unfortunately lost, except a short 
 extract from them, with which Dr. Aikin was furnished for his memoir, and 
 which I here re-transcribe from that work :* — " To hasten to the other very 
 distressing affair : oh, why could not my friends, who know how much I de- 
 test such parade, have stopped such a hasty measure ! — As a private man, with 
 some peculiarities, I wished to retire into obscurity and silence. — Indeed, my 
 friend, I cannot bear the thought of being thus dragged out. I immediately 
 wrote, and hope something may be done to stop it. My best friends must dis- 
 approve it. It deranges and confounds all my schemes — My exaltation is 
 my fall, my misfortune." As to the other point of his confidential communi- 
 cation with his bosom friend, it will be evident from what remains of the 
 original, that no intimation whatever had yet reached him of his son's conduct 
 being any thing more than the effects of that high spirit and impatience of 
 control, which he had long observed with deep regret, and which had led 
 him into courses, from whose errors he was pleasing himself with the hope 
 that he had turned. The fragment of this epistle is as follows : 
 
 " a As to my burial, not to exceed ten pounds — 
 
 " b My tomb to be a plain slip of Marble, placed under that of my dear 
 Henrietta's in Cardington Church, with this inscription — 
 
 " John Howard, died aged 
 
 ** My Hope is in Christ.'''' 
 " This Thomas will remember I also repeated to him just before I left 
 Cardington, as knowing I was going on a long and dangerous expedition. 
 
 * Aikin, p. 144, 5. 
 
488 
 
 " I am now in the secret relative to that Officer of the Police who 
 forced himself into my room the night I lay at Paris : a happy escape for me. 
 
 " If my son is at Card" please to tell him I will write to him in about 
 a week ; and to Jn° Prole in a fortnight— I see you have had constant rains 
 in England, I did not see showers for 4 Months in Turkey. Yet by the 
 Dews a fine Climate, a fruitful Country. In Dalmatia I saw fine Beef bought 
 at 2 pence farding the Oke w h is 2 lb 12 oz ; Mutton the same price; A Calf 
 6 s 3' — Claret 1 penny fard 5 3 pints. 
 
 " Do me the favour of writing to Sir Robert Keith's at Vienna, it must be 
 7 Weeks before I get there Adieu Adieu 
 
 " To The Rev d Mr. Smith « J. H." 
 
 " Potter Street Bedford (Angleterre)" 
 
 In the course of the following week he addressed to the friend, whom I sup- 
 pose to have been Mr. Tatnall, a letter, in which, with all the confidence of 
 friendship, he unbosoms the state of his feelings upon the two distressing events 
 which occupied so much of his thoughts, and whose exposition cannot fail to 
 exalt still higher, if it be possible, the impressions we have formed of the ex- 
 cellence of his character, both as a man and a Christian. I regret, however, 
 that I am only enabled to lay it before my readers from the copy taken by the 
 late Rev. Mr. Palmer, who seems here and there to have omitted a word or 
 a sentence, which a sight of the original would have enabled me to supply. It 
 may also be proper to state, that such parts of this, and of another letter to the 
 same gentleman, already transcribed, as are printed in italics, have kindly 
 been decyphered for me, from Mr. Palmer's short-hand, by my friend, the 
 Rev. P. S. Charrier of Liverpool, who entertains some little doubt as to the 
 correctness of the proper names, which are very injudiciously written in steno- 
 graphical characters. The letter therefore is given in a less correct state than 
 I could wish, though in as good an one as I am able to present it in. 
 
489 
 
 " Dkar Sir " Venice Lazaretto Octr. 25, 1786. 
 
 " I fear you think your wandering friend lost ; but when I was at 
 Constantinople, it struck my mind that, should I perform Quarantine I might 
 make some observations that other passengers, who are weary of their confine- 
 ment, never think of, and that otherwise the observations would be only what 
 government might have from ambassadors, consuls, &c. I with no little reluc- 
 tance went again to sea, as with ease I could have been at Vienna in 6 and 20 
 days, and not travelling post. So I went to Salonica, Scio, and again to 
 Smyrna ; as I preferred a foul bill to see the strictest quarantine. I have been 
 these two months tossed about with the equinoctial and contrary winds, but 
 arrived about 10 days [ago], just before a ship where the Captain and four of 
 the passengers and crew died of the plague in the voyage. In consequence I 
 was ordered to a sad infectious place ; but being alone, and my guard's report 
 to the Magistrates that I was well, they had compassion on me, and removed 
 me to another lazaretto. Here, for a few nights I was in a room almost swim- 
 ming with water ; but I was told I should soon be removed to a better lodg- 
 ing. But neither here, or at sea when my cabin and baskets floated with 
 water, or during an engagement with a Tunis privatteer, did my spirits or re- 
 solution forsake me. But, alas ! I was nearly overset, when about 10 days 
 past I received my letters. My Son gives me no little concern ; but I must 
 say with Job, ' Shall I receive good at the hand of God, and shall I not 
 receive evil ?' All hearts are in his hands, there I must leave it. Many com- 
 fortable sabbaths I have had in my little cabins, as one to myself is a sine qua 
 non. In all my voyages, the notes of many sermons that I have taken, my 
 Bible, and 2 admirable old Sermons in a little book which I bought at a stall 
 in Zante for 5 paras (2^rf.) is my library. But to hasten to the other distressing 
 affair. Could none of my friends, who know how much I hate show and pa- 
 rade, have stopt it ? When I have been publicly desired to sit for my picture 
 not a moment have 1 hesitated in shewing my aversion to it.— A hasty, sad, 
 unkind measure. — I hope I have drank into the spirit of one of my most ad- 
 
 3 R 
 
490 
 
 mired characters, viz. Mr. Scougal, who on his death-bed said to his friends ' If 
 you have the charity to remember me in your prayers, do not think me a better 
 man than I am ; but look upon me, as indeed I am, a most miserable sinner.' 
 — And in our best performances what a sad mixture of corruption, that the 
 desire of praise is vanity and presumption. — As a private Man, a firm Dissenter, 
 some peculiarities. — I ever wished to have retired in obscurity and silence. 
 
 " My burial, tomb, &c. I had fixed to this purpose.* I have wrote to one 
 or two friends. Nothing I hope will be done in my lifetime. It deranges and 
 confounds all my schemes. Little shall I be able to do more. My exaltation 
 is my fall my misfortune. I shall hasten home. I hope the German snows 
 will not stop me. But I have still 30 days quarantine. Compliments to 
 Mr. Brown or any enquiring friends not forgetting my Bath and Leeds friends. 
 
 *' With much esteem, I remain 
 " Dear Sir, 
 
 " Your affectionate friend 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 Amongst the friends to whom he wrote, to request them to use their in- 
 fluence in preventing a measure from which every feeling in his nature re- 
 volted, we may be assured that Dr. Price was not forgotten, though, for reasons 
 already assigned, I am unable to give more of the contents of his letter to him 
 than the two short sentences inserted by Dr. Aikin in his memoirs :f — " My 
 truest, intimate, and best friends, have, I see by the papers, been so kind as 
 not to subscribe to what you so justly term a hasty measure. Indeed, indeed, 
 if nothing now can be done, I speak from my heart, never poor creature was 
 more dragged out in public." In a similar strain, in a letter to Dr. Stennett, 
 he thus expressed his sentiments upon this subject, as in substance, and indeed 
 nearly in the very words, he had done to others : — " Alas ! our best performances 
 have such a mixture of folly and sin, that praise is vanity and presumption, and 
 * Sec letter to Mr. Smith, p. 487, where the same direction is given. f p. 146. 
 
491 
 
 pain to a thinking mind.'* Nor was this language which he held only to such 
 of his friends whom he might expect to communicate his sentiments to the 
 world, but even to his faithful domestics he could not write without pouring 
 out the bitterness of his disappointment, that he had not been permitted to 
 pursue " the noiseless tenor of his way," unnoticed, as he wished ; or to have 
 appeared before the public but for their benefit, and not his own honor. This 
 he did most feelingly in the last epistle written during his confinement in the 
 close cells of the Venetian lazaretto, now in my possession ; and sure am I 
 that those who love to contemplate the character of a great man in the privacy 
 of domestic life, that they may ascertain whether he carried the same spirit 
 with him into its retired walks, which he displayed in the face of an applauding 
 world, will not be offended with the minutiae of his private charities, and his 
 constant attention to the due ordering of his own affairs which that letter 
 exhibits. 
 
 " John Prole " Venice Lazaretto Oct. 31 st 1786 
 
 " It is with great Concern I hear the account of my Son's 
 behaviour, I fear he gives you, as well as others a great deal of trouble, A great 
 loss to Children, is their Mother ; for they check and form their Minds, curb- 
 ing the corrupt passions of pride, and self Will, which is seen very early in 
 Children. I must leave it to Him, with whom are all hearts; and sigh in 
 secret : trusting, that the blessing of such an excellent Mother is laid up for 
 him. — As to another Affair it distresses my Mind ; whoever set it afoot, I know 
 not ; but sure I am, they were totally unacquainted with my Temper, and 
 Disposition ; 1 once before, on an application to sit for my picture to be placed 
 in Public, hesitated not a Moment, in shewing my Aversion to it : and as I 
 knew I was going on a dangerous expedition ; Thomas will remember, almost 
 the last words I said to him; If I die abroad, do not let me be moved, let there 
 ' Dr. Stennett's Funeral Sermon on Mr. Howard, p. 38. 
 
 3*9 
 
492 
 
 be only a plain slip of marble, placed under that of my Wife's Henrietta with 
 
 this Inscription— John Howard died Aged— My hope is in Christ. — This 
 
 I said that Mr. Leeds and my Son might know that my Mind was fixed, and 
 still unaltered. — I have set many engines to work, to check the flames, for I 
 bless God, I know myself too well, to be pleased with such Praise ; when alas ! 
 we have nothing of our own, but Folly and Sin. 
 
 " Now as to our Cardington Affairs, I hope every thing goes smoothly on ; 
 Mr. ****** ; &c. and Cottagers do not get behind hand in their rent ; when 
 Rubin leaves his farm, if you chuse it, it shall not be raised ; if otherwise should 
 it not be nearly the same as Smiths. I wish to give a look on my Garden, the 
 hedge in Close lane and Clumps, I hope the sheep are prevented jumping over. 
 Walkers Close and my Closes I hope are neat, the latter were very indiferent 
 when I last returned ; there were many nettles and weeds ; take in for a month 
 Jn° Nott m or W m Wiltshire to keep them down, by spading them quite up. 
 After Xmas desire Mr. Lilburn to settle your Accounts to the 2 Chrismasses ; 
 as it will be easier for me ; seperating the School Bills, Donations, Taxes, &c. 
 from other things. 
 
 " Samuel Preston I hope is well ; if otherwise any thing I will do for the 
 two Widows. Mrs. Morgan I hope is well, tell her if Notting™ 3 girl con- 
 tinues good; Two Guineas she will lay out for her, in any manner she thinks 
 proper. Some fine New Currants will I hope soon come ; as I was ab' six 
 Weeks ago at Zante, and are finer this Year than usual, (as indeed I have not 
 seen a shower of rain in Turkey, for 4 or 5 Months, but fine dews) they are 
 for my Tenants ; Widows, and poor familys, at Card" Ab' 3 p'' each. You will 
 pay to Mr. Symmonds my Subscrip n to Mich 8 . At Christmas give Mrs. Thomp- 
 son and Beccles each 1:1: — Rayner what I usually give him 10:6, if not given 
 last Christ" then 1:1:0 Dolly Basset 1 : 1 : the blind Man's Widow 10 s Five 
 Guineas to ten Poor Widows, that is to each half a Guinea where you think it 
 will be most acceptable; One of which Widows Mrs Tingey in Memory of 
 Jos h Tingey ; Who I promised to excuse One Year's rent, Five Guineas also to 
 
493 
 
 Ten Familys that you think proper Objects one of which Rich" Ward. — I 
 think you said Abraham Stevens left a Girl and a boy ; one of which is dead ; 
 privately enquire: the Character, Disposition, Circumstances of the other. 
 You will accept of Coat, Waistcoat and Breeches. I hope the Walks before 
 my House, Jos a Crockford's the New one near the bridge and by Broadfield's 
 and Walker's are neat, — tell Joseph Walker to remind Mr. Whitbread relative 
 to his Brother's pay, &c. 
 
 " Is my Chaise horse gone blind, or spoiled ? Duke is well, must have his 
 range when past his labour ; not doing such a cruel thing as I did with the old 
 Mare ; I have a thousand times repented it. I mentioned in Thomas's Letter 
 that you will write to me at Amsterdam ; but when my Confinem' is finished 
 I have a long Journey, thro' bad roads and Snow ; but thro' Mercy, my calm 
 spirits, and steady resolution do not forsake me ; Which the Sailors observed, 
 during the Action with the Barbary Pyrate ; and I well remember I had a good 
 night, When one evening my Cabin Baskets &c were floated with Water ; and 
 thinking I should be some hours in drying it up ; I went to bed, to forget it." 
 
 The genuine benevolence of this epistle requires no comment. The currants 
 mentioned in this and in a preceding letter were duly sent and distributed, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Howard's directions, amongst his Cardington tenants ; but such was the 
 veneration in which his character was held, that I am informed by my excellent 
 friend, the Rev. Samuel Hillyard, that several most respectable inhabitants of 
 Bedford, apprehensive that their generous donor would never return from the 
 perilous expedition on which he had embarked, came over to beg a handful as a 
 memorial of his kindness and his worth. 
 
 After the expiration of the period of his quarantine, from which, as not an 
 hour of it was abated, he came out in a very weak state of health, and with a 
 remitting fever upon him, the consequence of the closeness and unhealthiness of 
 his confinement ; he continued therefore in Venice a week to recruit himself for 
 
404 
 
 the long and fatiguing journey that still lay before him. He inspected, during 
 his stay there, the great prison and the galleys, in the former of which the sick 
 were separated from the other prisoners, though in a close part of the prison ; 
 whilst the latter were clean, and not at all offensive, in consequence of possess- 
 ing one of the best means of cleanliness in an easy access to water.* Of the 
 despotism of this free government, he learnt, whilst residing under its protec- 
 tion, two instances, which, on his return to England, he related to his friend 
 Dr. Brown, from whose memoranda they are now transcribed nearly verbatim .•— 
 " A German merchant happening to be at Venice on business, supped every 
 night at a small inn, in company with a few other persons. An officer of the 
 state inquisition came to him one evening, and ordered him to follow whither 
 he led, and to deliver to him his trunk, after having put his seal upon it. The 
 merchant asked why he must do this, but received no answer to his inquiry, except 
 by the officer's putting his hand to his lips as a signal for silence. He then 
 muffled his head in a cloak, and guided him, through different streets, to a low gate 
 which he was ordered to enter; and, stooping down, he was led through various 
 passages under ground to a small, dark apartment, where he continued all that 
 night. The next day he was conducted into a larger room hung with black, 
 with a single wax light, and a crucifix on its mantle-piece. Having remained 
 here in perfect solitude for a couple of days, he suddenly saw a curtain drawn, 
 and heard a voice questioning him concerning his name, his business, the com- 
 pany he kept, and particularly whether he had not been, on a certain day, 
 in the society of persons who were mentioned, and heard an abbe, who was 
 also named, make use of expressions now accurately repeated. At last he was 
 asked if he should know the abb6 if he saw him, and on his answering that 
 he should, a long curtain was drawn aside, and he saw this very person 
 hanging on a gibbet. He was then dismissed. The other circumstance, or 
 rather combination of circumstances, happened but a short time before Mr. 
 Howard's visit, to a senator of this arbitary republic. Called up from his bed 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 65. 
 
495 
 
 one night by an officer of this same inquisition, and commanded to follow him, 
 he obeyed the summons, and found a gondola waiting near his door, in which he 
 was rowed out of the harbour to a spot where another gondola was fastened to 
 a post. Into this he was ordered to step, and the cabin-door being opened he was 
 conducted into it, and as a dead body with a rope about its neck was shown to him, 
 he was asked if he knew it. He answered that he did, and shook through every 
 limb as he spoke ; but he was then conveyed back to his house, and nothing more 
 was ever said to him upon the subject. The body he had seen was that of the 
 tutor to his children who had been carried out of his house that very night and 
 strangled. The senator, delighted with this young man's conversation, used to 
 treat him with great familiarity, and in those unguarded moments communi- 
 cated to him some political matters of no great importance, but which he 
 thoughtlessly mentioned again to others ; an imprudence for which he paid 
 dearly with his life, whilst his generous patron was thus admonished of his 
 indiscretion by the sight of his strangled body." " Has not the vengeance of 
 Heaven," asks Dr. Brown, in transcribing for the use of this work these two 
 interesting anecdotes, " been justly inflicted on such a government by sweep- 
 ing it from the face of the earth ?" A question to which every friend of liberty 
 and humanity will surely answer, that it has ; since, of all tyranny, that of a re- 
 public is at once the most anomalous, and the worst. I have been informed, how- 
 ever, by a gentleman of Manchester, but formerly of Warrington, who had the 
 happiness of knowing, and of being noticed by Mr. Howard in his youth, that 
 during a residence in this city in the years 1802,3, his extraordinary philanthropy 
 was the frequent subject of conversation in the circles with which he mingled. Yet 
 that a man of his property and rank should have no other object in view than the 
 ostensible one of visiting prisons and lazarettos, seemed to a people like the Vene- 
 tians wholly inexplicable, and yet remains an impenetrable mystery. But still 
 more were they astonished at his going about the streets during a hard winter 
 without boots or gaiters on his legs, with no great coat, and sometimes even no 
 cravat on ; though, at this time, the poorest citizen dared not to venture out of 
 
496 
 
 doors unless lie was almost buried in furs or in broad-cloth. An old priest with 
 whom Mr. Kenworthy lodged, was well acquainted with our philanthropic 
 countryman, and he alone seemed duly to appreciate his views and motives. 
 With that zeal for what he believed to be the truth, which, to a certain extent, 
 should actuate every good man of every religion, he only regetted that he was 
 not of the Catholic faith. 
 
 From Venice Mr. Howard crossed the Adriatic for Trieste where he 
 found the rooms of the prison very offensive, from the constant confinement of 
 their inmates. They were not, however, in irons, and seemed in other 
 respects to be somewhat better treated than at his former visit. The galley 
 slaves were now lodged in a house of correction, where the same humanity 
 was shown to them as formerly had been in the castle. The women were 
 carding and spinning, and the healthy and placid countenances of the whole 
 of the convicts bespoke the attention of their keeper. The two lazarettos 
 here were both clean, and a contrast to those he had lately seen at Venice. 
 He was kindly furnished with the i - ules and regulations of the new one by 
 the director of the health-office, who also gave him permission to copy its 
 plan with which he afterwards embellished his work.* At this place he con- 
 tinued to suffer from the effects of the slow fever contracted amidst the filth 
 of the Venetian lazaretto. He attempted, nevertheless, to push on for Vienna 
 with his usual rapidity, but was forced to allow himself one night's repose 
 out of the four which were taken up in this journey ; yet, notwithstanding his 
 unwonted indulgence to the demands of wearied nature, and of a frame most 
 dreadfully shattered in the service of humanity, he entered Vienna, as pri- 
 vately as he had done St. Petersburgh, on the fifth day, nearly worn out 
 by fatigue both of mind and body. He soon, however, set himself to the 
 great work, which through so much peril and fatigue had brought him 
 hither ; commencing it with the re-inspection of the great prison, very few 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 23 ; 65, 6. 
 
49T 
 
 of whose dungeons were empty, some of them having three prisoners in 
 each, whilst in three of the most horrid, twelve women were crowded. 
 All the male prisoners lived in total darkness, not being permitted to shed a 
 ray of light on their gloomy cells, to whose walls they were constantly chained, 
 though they were so strong, and so completely defended by double doors, as to 
 render such rigorous security needless. No clergyman had been near them 
 for eight or nine months, a privation which was reckoned, even by these cri- 
 minals, so great a punishment, that they complained of it with tears in their 
 eyes. Their visitor recollected the horrid dungeon in which he had seen a 
 prisoner dying unpitied and unattended to ; and on inquiring this poor 
 wretch's fate, one of the turnkeys said that he had died about a year ago, 
 which another confirmed. " This, however," he observes, " must have been a 
 different person ; for eight years had elapsed since my former visit." All 
 the prisoners confined in this miserable place were to be removed to a prison 
 lately built by the emperor. This new edifice consisted of forty rooms, and of 
 twenty dungeons at the depth of two and twenty steps below the surface of 
 the ground, the latter being boarded with thick planks, in which were strong 
 iron rings, for chaining prisoners to. They were larger, and in other respects, 
 though still horrid enough, less horrid than those in the old prison : as yet they 
 were empty, but above them were 214 criminals, crowded into a few rooms. 
 In the Great Casern were eighty-six male convicts, all in one large room, in 
 which they lay at night with their cloathes on, and chained to the floor ; 
 though their room, having no other windows than two holes in the ceiling, 
 was, even in the day-time, offensive beyond expression. u Indeed," says their 
 compassionate visitant, " it would not be wonderful if the effluvia from these 
 prisoners, while they work in the streets, should spread through this city an 
 infection destructive to the health, and fatal to the lives of the inhabitants." 
 In the Little Casern, another prison for convicts, were forty-two criminals in 
 two rooms, in one of which about a third of them were at work, the rest being 
 idle in the other. Both these places of confinement were attended by a 
 
 3 8 
 
498 
 
 military guard, who would suffer nothing to be given to their inmates, a similar 
 prohibition being also strictly enforced in this city with regard to vagrants. 
 In the house of correction women only were confined, their allowance being a 
 pound of bread and two dishes of soup a-day. Their rooms were clean, and 
 great attention seemed to be paid to their sick, of whom there were thirty-five 
 out of 153; " a high proportion," remarks our author, " but not higher than 
 might be expected in a prison where no bedding is allowed." To this prison 
 the criminals sent off to Hungary were first brought to be cloathed in an 
 uniform, and chained in companies, five and five together, with irons round 
 their necks, and on their feet, besides a chain about ten inches long between 
 the feet of each of them, and another about six feet in length for fastening him 
 to the next person. Thus secured, Mr. Howard was told, that the hard work 
 they were employed in, of drawing boats up the Danube, with the coarse fare 
 upon which they were fed, wore them out so fast, that few lived in this state 
 for above four years. The rooms and passages of another house of correction, 
 chiefly for vagrants and a few debtors, were airy, spacious, and well supplied 
 with water, by a stream which was constantly running. The vagrants were 
 employed in carding, spinning, weaving, &c. ; and, owing to the great atten- 
 tion of Count Pergen, they were always orderly at all our Philanthropist's 
 visits, and their prison clean.* 
 
 Whilst actively engaged in this inspection of the prisons of the capital of 
 the Austrian dominions, Mr. Howard received intelligence from home of the 
 continuance of both the causes of his uneasiness, in unabated force. The design 
 of erecting a statue to his honor was still persisted in, and those who knew him 
 not, as they ought to have known him, were ardent in their expectations that the 
 objections to the measure, which his singular modesty had raised, must at length 
 yield to the public voice, and that he would, sooner or later, consent to receive 
 from the hands of his grateful countrymen that tribute of approbation which his 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 66, 7. 
 
499 
 
 conduct had richly merited from an assembled universe. But with the more 
 rational of them, — for some few fondly, I might say enthusiastically, adhered to 
 their opinions to the last, — these hopes were soon levelled with the dust on the 
 receipt of a letter, which I now transcribe from the copy, most obligingly 
 furnished to me by the gentleman in whose possession Mr. Howard's rough 
 draft remains ; the letter being dispatched immediately, with the few verbal 
 alterations noted at the bottom of the page, from the copy afterwards published 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine :* — 
 
 " Gentlemen 
 
 " I shall ever think it an honour to have my weak endeavours 
 approved by so many respectable Persons, who devote their time, and have 
 so generously subscribed, towards a Fund for relieving Prisoners and reforming 
 Prisons — But to the erecting a Monument, permit me in the most fixed & 
 unequivocal manner to declare my repugnancy to it,f and that the execution of 
 it, will be a punishment to me, it is, therefore, Gent", my particular and 
 earnest request, that it % may, for ever, be laid aside, with great respect, § I 
 am, Gent", 
 
 " Your most oV Serv' 
 
 " Vienna Dec r 15 lh 1786." " J. H.' 
 
 M I 
 
 The same letter which assured this most excellent man that nothing short 
 of a direct application from himself could induce those who, from the best 
 motives, had imprudently engaged in a scheme so painful to him to lay aside 
 their design, brought him the intelligence of the continuance of that gross 
 impropriety of conduct on the part of his only son, which had now, for some 
 time, pressed so heavily upon his spirits as well nigh to have broken his heart. 
 But still the worst was not told him, as few who had opportunities of observ- 
 
 * Vol. L VII. Parti, p. 101. 
 t " Such a design." * " So distinguished a mark of me" S " Regard." || " John Howard." 
 
 3 s 2 
 
500 
 
 ing this unfortunate young man's behaviour now entertained any doubt but 
 that he was fast approaching to a state of confirmed insanity, though as yet 
 seeming to possess the use of his mental faculties in a sufficient degree to render 
 him accountable for their perversion. That a suspicion of the dreadful truth 
 of apprehensions which his friends but just hinted at in their letters, had 
 already crossed his anxious parent's mind, is evident from the following letter 
 from Vienna, the perusal of which must surely do away with every unfa- 
 vourable impression of its writer's parental affection, or of his fondness for the 
 mother of his unhappy child, if such can still linger in a single breast : — 
 
 "My good Friend " Vienna, Dec r 17. 1786. 
 
 " I acknowledge it is too long since I last wrote to You : various 
 Occurrences as a Traveller in an unfrequented path, has happened to me 
 " perils by land, perils by Water," after a long and dangerous Voyage, the 
 immediate Confinem' in one of the most offensive Lazarettos, without 
 Chair Table or a board to lay my bed on ; with the dreadful Accounts I 
 rec d of my Son, almost broke my steady spirits : the ill judged zeal of some 
 persons in another Affair vexed me not a little, but in this, my Mind was fixed ; 
 a Statue I detest, 1 should have carefully avoided the sight of it, it would 
 indeed have been a punishment of me ; and as I have last post wrote to the 
 Committee in the most plain and unequivocal manner, I am persuaded that 
 Affair is at an end. The Money will be far better employed in the Fund for 
 relieving Prisoners and reforming Prisons — My Son's conduct is a bitter 
 affliction to me, the loss of his Mother and such a Mother, to check and guide 
 the Infant passions, the uninterrupted health and strength he enjoyed was 
 productive of many an anxious thought, yet I hoped the best— By my Accounts, 
 he has lost his Senses ; if so, calm restraint and confinement, with proper Me- 
 dical assistance is necessary ; I have wrote last post to M r Tatnall with my free 
 consent, and full acquiescence in whatever steps He and his Uncles may 
 think proper to take ; as I can form no proper judgment at this distance ; and 
 my presence or Commands would have little weight with him, and still less if 
 
601 
 
 distracted. Yet I shall hasten home as fast as possible, but as my Apartm' 
 at the Lazaretto was as offensive as a sick Ward is at night; (the Venetians 
 being very dirty) the Walls probably not washed these fifty years, I soon lost 
 all stomack to my bread and Tea and was listless, as I have known several 
 persons in similar Circumstances by their Confinem' in our Gaols : I talked 
 of lime whiting my room, but I soon found the prejudices the Venetians had 
 ag 5t it ; so I privately procured a j of a Bush 1 of Lime, and a few days 
 after proper brushes ; early one Morn s , three hours before my guard was up, 
 I began with my Valet who was sent to light my fires (having determined to 
 lock up my guard if he opposed me) and slacking the fresh lime at different 
 times, always with boiling Water, (my brick Walls and ceiling being before 
 brushed down) We washed every part of my room, and afterwards the floor 
 with boiling Water, and finished our jobb by noon, so that at 4 o'Clock I drank 
 my Tea, and at night lay in a sweet and fresh room ; and in a few days my appe- 
 tite and strength returned. — I had before tryed the washing the Walls with 
 boiling Water, but it had no effect on the infectious Walls &c 
 
 " I staid a week after I left the Lazaretto, at Venice, and in 3 days 
 came by sea to Trieste ; I found at the former and at this place, the slow hos- 
 pital fever creeping upon me, by my long confinem 1 , the whole air of the 
 Lazaretto being infected : M r Murray our last Ambassador from Constantinople 
 died there of the putrid fever. — But the sub Governor of Trieste spared me 
 his easy and good Carriage, and I came here last Tuesday, in 4 nights and 
 5 days : three of the former I traveled but one night I was forced to stop ; I 
 am much reduced by fatigue of Body and Mind, I have great reason to bless 
 God that my steadiness of resolution Does not forsake me in so many solitary 
 hours ; — if my night fever keeps off, I will soon go the long stride to Amster- 
 dam ; pray let me there receive a Letter from you (at Mess" Hopes Bankers) : 
 give me your advice, fully and freely : Is my son distracted ? Is it from the 
 probability of his Vice and folly at Edinburg? How could M r ******* 
 receive him to the Sacrament ? What do you advise ? — My old Servants Jn° 
 
.502 
 
 Prole, Thomas, and Jos" Crockford, have had a sad time, I hear they have been 
 faithfull, wise, and prudent : please to thank them, particularly in my Name 
 for their Conduct ; Two of them I am persuaded have acted out of regard to 
 his excellent Mother : Who I rejoice is dead. 
 
 " Remember me to our connected friends at Bedford, 
 
 " I am, with all good wishes, 
 
 " ever Yours 
 
 " John Howard." 
 
 " P. S. Excuse Writ« &c as wrote early by a poor lamp. What I suffered I 
 am persuaded I should have disregarded in the Lazaretto ; as I gained useful in- 
 formation ; the Regulat" 5 are admirable, if they were better kept. Venice is 
 the Mother of all Lazaretto's, but O ! my Son, my Son. 
 
 P S the post not going out till this evening the 19th, I just add ; that I had 
 a poor night, much of my fever, tho' quite off now 6 6Clock ; yet must stop 
 2 or 3 days longer : The Mountain Air I hope will take it off, and I shall get 
 on by the light nights ; I only want a Month's rest, for indeed nobody knows what 
 I have suffered this journey ; many weeks dry biscuits and tea, often have I wished 
 for a little of my skimed milk, yet I bless God for many comfortable Sabbaths, 
 and my Mind steadily approving the Object I had in persuit. Adieu Adieu. 
 
 "PPS,I saw Mr. Jenkins our friend Anthony's kinsman at Rome, I told 
 him that A. was a humble good Man, in his line I hardly knew his equal, 
 modest difidence unimposing, such a relation that I should not be ashamed of — 
 He replyed Mr H. since you first mentioned him I have writen to my kinsman 
 in Dorsetshire, he writes he knows no Relationship. Pray get the particulars 
 very explicid from Anth y , and I will write to Mr. Jenkins." 
 
 " To Rev. Mr. Smith Potter Street. 
 " Bedford. (Angleterre."j 
 
 For six days after this letter was dispatched its benevolent author was 
 
503 
 
 actively engaged in the inspection of the hospitals and charitable institutions 
 of Vienna, with which, upon the whole, he was still very much delighted. 
 " Being the objects of the emperor's particular attention, and having been 
 either founded or improved by him, they manifested" he tells us, " a public 
 spirit which did him great honor, and gave a striking example to other 
 potentates." When he had finished his visits to them he received, from our 
 ambassador at his court, a notification of their imperial patron's desire to have 
 a private conference with him on the condition of establishments on which he 
 had bestowed much attention, and expended very large sums of money. " Can 
 I do any good by going ?" was the first question which Mr. Howard asked ; 
 at the same time declaring, that, as he had many things to object to his ma- 
 jesty's plans, he would, if interrogated respecting them, freely speak his mind ; 
 for, great as was the honor to which he was invited, he would not accept of it 
 unless he was assured that it might promote the cause to which he had devoted 
 himself.* Being told that it would do so, he accepted the invitation, and 
 was admitted to an audience with the emperor, his own account of which I 
 now transcribe from his diary : — 
 
 " Xmas day 1786 Vienna. I this day had the Honour of near 2 hours 
 conversation in private with the Empourer his very condescending and affable 
 manner gave me that freedom of Speech, which enabled me plainly and freely 
 to tell him my Mind. — His majesty began on his Military Hospital, then 
 the great Hospital also the Lunatic Hospital the defects of which I told him. — 
 On Prisons I fully opened my Mind, it pleased God to give me full recollection, 
 and freedom of Speech — his Majesty stoped me, and said ' You fang in your 
 country? I said ' Yes, but death was more desireable than the misery such 
 Wretches endure in total darkness, chained to the Wall, no visitor no Preist, 
 even for 2 years together, it was a punishment too great for human Nature to 
 bear, many had lost their rational Faculties by it.' — His Majesty asked me the 
 
 " Dr. Brown's MSS. 
 
504 
 
 condition our Prisons were in at London, I said ' they were bad, but in a way 
 of improvement, But that all Europe had their Eyes on his Majesty, who had 
 made such alterations in his Hospitals and Prisons' I said ' the object was to 
 make them better men and useful subjects' — The Emperor shaked me by the 
 hand, and said I had given him much pleasure. — The Emperor freely and 
 openly conversed with me I admire his Condescention and affability his 
 Thirst and desire to do good, and to strike out great objects He was not a 
 Month on the Throne before He saw every Prison and Hospital, now he conti- 
 nually and unexpectedly looks into all his Establishments I have seen him go 
 out in his Chariott with only one Footman — no Guards, no attendance, some- 
 times drives himself with only his Coachman behind, looks into every thing, 
 knows every thing — I think means well. — The Emperor told his Minister he 
 was greatly pleased with my Visit, I had [not] pleaded for the Prisoners with 
 soft and flattering Speach that meant nothing, some things I advised He should 
 do, others He should not do." 
 
 But of the circumstances of this interesting meeting of these two 
 great men, I am happy in having an opportunity of communicating some 
 further particulars to the public, from the notes made of Mr. Howard's own 
 account of it in conversation with his friends, the Rev. Dr. Brown, and the late 
 Dr. Lettsom, the substance of whose memoranda, — of which those of the former 
 gentleman are by far the more copious and valuable,— is here thrown into one 
 connected narrative. It was in a little apartment, up three pair of stairs, that 
 our illustrious countryman, received, through his minister, Count Kaunitz, an 
 intimation from the emperor, that he should be pleased by a visit from him ; 
 to which he returned for answer, that he was sorry that his intention of leaving 
 Vienna on the next morning would prevent him the pleasure of waiting upon 
 his majesty. He then received a second message through the ambassador from 
 his own court, informing him that the emperor would receive him at the ear- 
 liest hour he chose to name before his departure, and then, after the conversation 
 
505 
 
 already detailed, he named nine o'clock for the interview. Punctually at that 
 hour he was announced at the palace, and was ushered into an apartment 
 resembling a counting-house, where he found the emperor attended by a single 
 secretary. He was desired to step into another room, so plainly furnished, that 
 it had neither looking-glass nor chair. Hither his imperial majesty immediately 
 followed, and soon directed the conversation into the channel he wished 
 it to take, by asking his visitor's opinion of his new military hospital. Before 
 he returned an answer to this question, Mr. Howard begged to know 
 whether he might speak freely what he thought, and being assured that he 
 might, he replied, " I must then take the liberty of saying that your majesty's 
 military hospital is loaded with defects. The allowance of bread is too small : 
 the apartments are not kept clean, and are also, in many respects, ill-constructed. 
 One defect particularly struck me: the care of the sick is committed to men, who 
 are very unfit for that office, especially when it is imposed upon them as a punish- 
 ment, as I understand to be the case here." To these free observations, the emperor 
 replied, that " as to the bread, the allowance was the same as that of every 
 other soldier, a pound per day ;'' to which our Philanthropist unceremoniously 
 rejoined, that " it was not sufficient for a man who was obliged to do any kind 
 of work, or who was recovering from sickness, being barely adequate to the 
 support of life." The next question was concerning the new tower for lunatics 
 of whose condition Mr. Howard briefly observed, " by no means such as I 
 could wish : it is too confined, and not properly managed." He then particu- 
 larized several defects, for which purpose he had taken his notes with him. 
 Next of prisons: — here he hesitated, as if afraid of having said too much, 
 and apprehensive of giving still greater offence by what he was about to utter. 
 " Speak without fear," said the emperor, on observing this hesitation. " I saw, 
 in them then," said his faithful, and his fearless monitor, "many things that 
 filled me with astonishment and grief. They have all dungeons. The torture 
 has been said to be abolished in your majesty's dominions — but it is only so in 
 
 3t 
 
506 
 
 appearance : for what is now practised is in reality worse than any other torture. 
 Poor wretches are confined twenty feet below ground, in places just fitted to 
 receive their bodies, and some of them are kept there for eighteen months. 
 Others are in dungeons, chained so closely to the wall that they can hardly 
 breathe. All of them are deprived of proper consolation and religious support.'' 
 Here the monarch seemed to feel some uneasiness, and abruptly said, " Sir! in 
 your country they hang for the slightest offences." " I grant," replied Mr. 
 Howard, " that the multiplicity of her capital punishments is a disgrace to 
 England ; but as one fault does not excuse another, so neither in this case is 
 the parallel just ; for I declare that I would rather be hanged, if it were possible, 
 ten times over, than undergo such a continuance of sufferings as the unhappy 
 beings endure who have the misfortune to be confined in your majesty's prisons." 
 Resuming the thread of his discourse where it had been so suddenly broken off, 
 he thus continued his remonstrance in behalf of the violated rights of huma- 
 nity. " Many of these men have not yet been brought to trial, and should 
 they be found innocent of the crimes laid to their charge, it is out of your 
 majesty's power to make them a reparation for the injuries you have done 
 them ; for it is now too late to do them justice, weakened and deranged in their 
 health and faculties as they are, by so long a solitary confinement." He then 
 objected to the allowance of bread to the convicts condemned to clean the streets ; 
 and, in order to touch his majesty by the point of honor, told him how ex- 
 cellent, in this respect, were the regulations of the Prussian hospitals and 
 prisons. The next topic of conversation was work-houses. " In them too," 
 said our Philanthropist, " there are many defects. In the first place, the people 
 are obliged to lie in their cloathes, a practice which never fails to produce dis- 
 tempers in the end. Secondly, little or no attention is paid to cleanliness: and, 
 thirdly, the allowance of bread is too small." " Where," asked his majesty, 
 " did you see any better institutions of this kind ?" " There was one better," 
 replied the hero (" for how much more," observes Dr. Brown, in relating the 
 particulars of this interesting interview, " is this title due to such characters 
 
50? 
 
 than to those who drench the earth with blood !") " at Ghent ; but not so now ! 
 not so now !" At this the emperor started, and seemed a great deal shocked, 
 but he had magnanimity enough to take the bold reprover of his conduct by 
 the hand, as he had done more than once during the preceding part of their dis- 
 course, and, on his taking leave, thanked him most cordially for his advice. 
 On the next day, he told our ambassador that his countryman was without 
 ceremony or compliment, that he liked him the better for it ; adding, moreover, 
 that he should follow some of his recommendations, others he should not. 
 " Conviction," remarks Dr. Brown, " dictated the first of these resolutions : 
 pride had probably some share in the second." From the impression which he 
 evidently saw that some parts of his discourse had made upon the mind of his 
 imperial auditor, our benevolent countryman was induced to remain a day 
 or two longer in the capital of his dominions, to ascertain what practical 
 effects it would produce, and he had the satisfaction to know, before he left 
 Vienna, that orders had been issued for amending, in many particulars which he 
 pointed out as defective, the regulations of the prisons and charitable institu- 
 tions of that city, especially by the speedy trial of such of the prisoners in the 
 dungeons as had not yet been tried, and the immediate release of others against 
 whom no further proceedings were to be instituted. During this protracted 
 stay, the very generous reception which he had experienced from the emperor, 
 rendered the sycophants of his court anxious to pay him every attention, and 
 none more so than the vain governor of Upper Austria, with his still vainer 
 countess, who (as they thought) honored him by a visit. The former, in a 
 tone of hauteur, rather than in that which a spirit of philanthropy would have 
 dictated, inquired into the state of the prisons in the government to which he 
 had recently been appointed. " The worst in all Germany," said Howard, with- 
 out a moment's hesitation, particularly in the condition of the female prisoners, 
 and I recommend your countess to visit them personally, as the best means of 
 rectifying the abuses in their management." " I !" said she haughtily, " I go 
 into prisons !" and Mr. Howard told Dr. Lettsom, as he related to him this sin- 
 
 3t 2 
 
 % 
 
508 
 
 gular conversation, that she so rapidly descended the staircase with her hus- 
 band, that he was afraid some accident would befal them before they got into 
 the street. Yet, notwithstanding the precipitancy of their retreat, the indig- 
 nant Philanthropist called after her, in a loud tone of voice, " Madam, remember 
 that you are a woman yourself, and must soon, like the most miserable female 
 prisoner in a dungeon, inhabit but a small space of that earth from which you 
 equally originated." 
 
 It is the generally received opinion that one of the motives which induced 
 Mr. Howard at first to decline the honor of a personal interview with the em- 
 peror, was his rooted aversion to the rule of court etiquette, which required 
 persons presented to the sovereign to kneel before him ; an act of adoration 
 which he would never pay to any but the Supreme. It is added, however, 
 that the emperor magnanimously waved this mark of respect in his favor, and 
 that about six weeks after he had admitted him to an audience, he abolished 
 the ceremony altogether by a general edict. But as I do not find this circum- 
 stance noticed in any of the original sources of information in my possession, it 
 is merely mentioned here as one of the on dits connected with the life of our 
 great Philanthropist. 
 
 It was previous to his departure from this city, that he seems to have entered 
 in his diary the following judicious remarks on a mode of punishing criminals 
 common on the continent, though very opposite to that resorted to in his own 
 country. " Persons in high Life may think sweeping the Streets drawing 
 Barges and other such works is worse than Death, but they should consider, 
 their rank, character, and habits of thinking are very different from those Per- 
 sons who are so punished. The desire of Life, and hope of seeing better days, 
 are the strongest Passions in them, and, therefore Death they dread and most 
 fear. — a line should be drawn, Justice is due to the injured, and we should be 
 careful to prevent the Honest being plundered." 
 
 / 
 
m 
 
 509 
 
 m 
 
 In making the best of his way into Holland, — and he travelled the first 500 
 miles without stopping for rest or refreshment, — Mr. Howard revisited, at 
 Francfort, the house of correction and poor-house, which were under one 
 direction. Though an old building, it was clean, one half of the Saturday 
 being always devoted to the business of purifying the apartments, which, on 
 the female side, were under the inspection of ladies. The men were still em- 
 ployed in making cement, and the women prisoners in doing the more labo- 
 rious work in the rooms of the poor. Passing on thence through Nassau, Aix- 
 la-Chapelle, andBois-le-Duc, he reached Utrecht on the 15th of January, 1787, 
 where he was sorry to find, that in the April of the preceding year, his friend, 
 Dr. Brown, had the misfortune to have his house burnt down whilst he and his 
 family were at church, and learning from him, that from the exact order 
 observed in such cases, he had not lost a single thing that was taken out of his 
 house, he requested him to commit to paper the excellent regulations of the 
 police upon this subject, the substance of which he afterwards inserted in the 
 account of his journey.* From this city he proceeded to Amsterdam, where, 
 in the new work-house and house of correction, he found 350 persons spinning 
 in one long room ; others being employed in preparing ropes for oakum. In 
 the infirmary, the patients and rooms were both of them so dirty, that he was 
 not surprized at not being readily admitted to inspect it. " A great degree of 
 inhumanity, and abuse of trust," he observes, after having gone through this 
 house, " must be imputed to the resident governor" Whilst here, he learnt that 
 in Holland accomplices were never admitted as what we call king's evidence, 
 no one but the Stadtholder being able to promise them impunity on discovering 
 their accomplices ; nor was a prisoner who effected his escape liable to any 
 punishment for so doing, though other persons for assisting in breaking open 
 a prison were punishable with death. He noticed, also, that perjury was not 
 so frequent here as in other countries, owing, he thought, in part, to the 
 solemnity of the administration of oaths. " I could wish," he goes on to 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 74 : Dr. Brown's MSS. 
 
 m 
 
510 
 
 observe upon this point, " from the clearest principles of reason and sound 
 policy, that the use of oaths, in almost all cases were abolished, and that the 
 affirmation of the fact should be sufficient; and that he who asserted or af- 
 firmed a falsity, should be punished and disgraced as a perjurer."* Agreeably 
 to his urgent request, he received in this city a letter from his friend Mr. Smith, 
 to inform him of the real state of things at Cardington ; and melancholy indeed 
 was the intelligence which that letter, and the communications of his other friends, 
 which came to hand about the same time, conveyed. Shortly after he had first 
 written him an account of his son's extraordinary behaviour, Mr. Smith was 
 fully confirmed in the suspicion, which he even then entertained, of that beha- 
 viour proceeding from, at least, a temporary derangement of the intellects, yet, 
 for some months, this did not appear with sufficient certainty to authorize his 
 friends to exercise such a control over him as to employ any person to watch, 
 much less to restrain his movements. Yet such was the opinion which Mr. 
 Smith at this time had formed of the unsteady state of his mind, that he 
 was greatly alarmed when, on coming home one night, he found that, during 
 his absence, young Howard had called and taken his son with him to Carding- 
 ton, where, as during his college vacations was always the case, he was the 
 master ; occupying the best rooms in the house, and having every attention paid 
 to him, which, as Mr. Howard's son, he could have a right to expect. The next 
 morning he went over to bring him back, but it was not without much ma- 
 nagement and entreaty that he persuaded him to let the lad go, being unwilling 
 to irritate him if he could avoid it, as he was very resolute for a long while 
 in refusing to part with him. He often declared afterwards that the period 
 which this unhappy young man spent at home at this juncture of his malady 
 was the most harassing time he ever passed, as he was always in fear of 
 his growing suddenly worse, and doing either himself, or some one else a very 
 serious mischief. From a portion of this excessive anxiety he was, however, 
 partially relieved, by his return to college, where he continued occasionally to 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 73, 4. 
 
exhibit similar marks of a disordered imagination, one of which was related to 
 the lady, to whom I am indebted for nearly the whole of the particulars of this 
 severe affliction, by a gentleman of Cambridge, recently deceased, to whom 
 young Howard had been introduced by his father. One morning he took a vio- 
 lent prejudice against the persons who waited upon him at college, and insisted 
 that they had put poison into his milk. Full of this idea, he went to Mr. 
 Hollick and begged of him to come and examine the provisions they had 
 brought him for his breakfast, which he accordingly did, and found nothing 
 the matter with them ; yet it was with some difficulty, and not without him- 
 self drinking a considerable portion of his milk, that he could persuade him 
 that it was so, and that no person had any intention to injure him. It was 
 after he had exhibited this evident symptom of insanity that he circulated a 
 tale, which the detractors from the merit of his father's actions have not suf- 
 fered to be buried in oblivion, viz. that that father had once knocked him 
 down. Yet for this report there was not the shadow of a foundation but what 
 existed in the unnatural prejudices of his distempered mind ; as, immediately on 
 its circulation, whilst Mr. Howard was living, his friends, particularly Mr. Smith, 
 made diligent inquiry of his domestics, who all declared their utter disbelief 
 of it, as they never had known their master to strike his son even the 
 slightest blow at any period of his life ; and he was still less likely to 
 have done it when that son was grown up to man's estate, as he was of a 
 very tall and athletic make, and more likely to knock his father down, than to 
 be knocked down by him. But, besides this testimony, Mr. Howard himself 
 declared to more than one of his friends, that he never, upon any occasion, had 
 inflicted corporal chastisement of any description whatever upon his son. It 
 is therefore to the insanity of this unfortunate young man that we are to trace 
 the origin of this and of similar reports of the harshness of his father's treat- 
 ment which (as the approaches of this dreadful disease were so gradual, that 
 its existence was not suspected by strangers when what ultimately proved to 
 have been its strongest symptoms first appeared) were too widely circulated 
 
4G» 4J£ 
 
 512 
 
 to permit his friends wholly to remove the prejudices which the public mind 
 had on this point imbibed against him. One of these symptoms, and, with 
 those who knew him best, the strongest one, was the aversion he now 
 manifested to his father, and the stories he circulated to his prejudice ; 
 but, lest those who are unacquainted with the tendency of this malady, to 
 make us hate the most those who formerly were the most beloved, should 
 consider this circumstance but a convincing proof of the too generally re- 
 ceived opinion, that parental severity was the cause of this most severe 
 affliction, it may be necessary to state that, during the whole of his de- 
 rangement, he exhibited the same rooted antipathy to Thomasson, who 
 before had been one of his chief favourites, the companion of his guilty 
 pleasures, and his initiator into every scene of gaiety and vice. When he had 
 left Cambridge for the long vacation, from which he returned not to it 
 again, his conduct was so increasingly eccentric and outrageous, that the 
 servants were afraid to live with him, as he entertained the same suspicion 
 of their intentions to poison him as he had done of his attendants at the uni- 
 versity ; whilst such was the violence which, upon these occasions, he exhibited, 
 that he sometimes threatened to be the death of them. To Thomasson, in 
 particular, his aversion was so strong and decided that he would not suffer 
 him to come near him ; and when he one day accidentally came into the room 
 in which he was sitting, he threw the poker at his head with such force that, 
 had he hit his aim, it must inevitably have killed him. It was shortly after 
 this outrage that, towards the close of the year 1786, he suddenly left Car- 
 dington, and, without communicating his intentions to any one, — for he was 
 under no manner of control, — went over to Daventry, where the Rev. Thomas 
 Belsham, now minister of the Unitarian Chapel in Essex-street, then resided. 
 He continued at an inn in that town a week, though he spent a great part of 
 his time at Mr. Belsham's house, where Mrs. Greene, then Miss Smith, hap- 
 pened to be upon a visit, my mixing the while with the family, and at intervals 
 conducting himself very rationally. Of the daughter of his father's most intimate 
 
,513 
 
 friend he took a great deal of notice, buying her cakes, fruit, and other pre- 
 sents, and frequently wishing to play with her, — for she was then but a child, 
 — as he had been accustomed to do when at home ; but, frightened at his be- 
 haviour, and thinking that he was out of his mind, she avoided him as much as 
 possible, a circumstance at which he was very angry. Mr. Belsham, observing 
 his conduct upon these and other occasions, which was often violent, and ex- 
 travagantly eccentric, and not being able to persuade him to return home, 
 very prudently wrote to Mr. Whitbread, to inform him of his conviction that 
 he ought to be put under restraint, and he immediately sent two keepers from a 
 private lunatic asylum in London, to take him back to Cardington, where he 
 remained under their care until his father's return ; his maternal uncles and Mr. 
 Tatnall, his paternal relative, joining Mr. Whitbread in opinion that this was 
 the fittest measure that could be adopted. Here Dr. Monro visited him, and 
 immediately that he saw him, " he pronounced," says a letter which Mr. Bel- 
 sham was so obliging as to address to me in answer to some inquiries upon the 
 subject, " that his disorder was the worst kind of insanity, brought on in the 
 worst way. There was nothing extraordinary, however, in this young 
 man's case," continues this reverend and highly respectable gentleman, " and 
 though Mr. Howard had some strange whims about his education, there is not 
 the slightest reason to believe that his insanity is to be attributed, in any degree, 
 to undue severity in his father." So decided a testimony from such a man, on 
 such a subject, must surely remove the doubts of the most incredulous, and alter 
 the opinion of the most prejudiced. His derangement, indeed, was of a very 
 different kind to that which is usually occasioned by the spirits being broken, 
 or the mind depressed, either by severity or misfortune, as from its very first 
 appearance it was of a violent, and most outrageous nature ; and I have 
 authority to say, that these unfavorable symptoms were, in all probability, 
 aggravated, though not altogether occasioned, by an hereditary tendency to 
 this most dreadful of all human ills in some branches of his family. 
 
 When these measures were taken, it became no longer possible, and it 
 
 3 v 
 
514 
 
 would have been utterly useless to have attempted, to conceal from the parent of 
 this unfortunate young man, the melancholy truth that his son was now a lunatic, 
 under restraint in his father's house. Yet it does not appear that any one but his 
 faithful servant Prole had had the courage to communicate to him the dreadful 
 intelligence, when he wrote to Mr. Smith the following letter from Amsterdam, 
 requesting that nothing might be concealed from him, but that on his arrival in 
 London, whither he was hastening as fast as possible, a true account of the actual 
 »tate of mind in which his son then was, might await him : — 
 
 " Dear Sir « Amsterdam, Jan J 18 ,h 1787. 
 
 " I thank you for your kind Letter which I have just received as 
 I came here last night, The first 500 miles I never stopped but to change 
 Horses for being alone my Tea once a day, and some bread and apples in my 
 Chaise did not detain me ; in the remaining Three hundred miles I stopped a 
 night or two as they were so very cold, and perhaps I was more sensible of it, 
 as we had a hott summer in Turkey. In ten days after my arrival at Vienna my 
 fever left me, and my usual Calm, steady, and permit me to say resolute spirits 
 flowed in their usual Channel ; The Emperor desired to see me, with whom I 
 had the Honour of a private Audience above an hour and a half; He took me 
 by the Hand three times in Conversat" and thanked me for the Visit, and afterw* 13 
 told our Ambassador that " his Countryman spoke well for Prisoners, that he 
 used no flowers, which others ever do, and mean nothing." — But His greatest 
 favour to me was His immediate alteration in the relief of Prisoners ; that Sir 
 Rob 1 Keith said " if I would not permit my Statue to put up in England, the 
 Prisoners would do it at Vienna," and indeed of the Two, I sho d like it best, 
 as the latter would be out of sight, as nobody is permitted to come there but 
 by an Order. 
 
 " I propose being in London ab< the 7* Feb y I have a melancholy Letter 
 from Jn° Prole relative to my unhappy young Man, it is indeed a bitter 
 Affliction, a Son, an only Son ! 
 
 " Mr. Leeds has kindly done, what I think I should have done for the first 
 
615 
 
 trial, to see what effect it will have on him : but in such a situation I cannot 
 live in the House. I shall request once more a line to meet me the 7' 1 ' of 
 next Month, and inform me how things really go at Cardington. I am anxious 
 to know the true state of things there. 
 
 " How I come ever to mistake Jn°. Antill's name I know not ; I will write 
 to his kinsman M r Jenkins before I leave the Continent. 
 
 " Best Comp 3 to M" Smith ; Remember me to M r Read, you remind me of 
 the saying of an excellent good Man, Indocti codum rapiunt" 
 
 " With all good Wishes, I am 
 " Sincerely Yours 
 
 " John 
 " P. S. Who is at ***** Meeting ? I shall not any more stir there, but 
 leave it to themselves to act as they think proper. 
 
 " P. P. S. Please Sir to order Thomas or Jn° Prole to send to M r Whit- 
 bread's in Chiswell Street what mourning Cloths they shall find in my Trunk 
 in my study, a Monday the 5 lh of Feb y 
 
 " To the Rev d M r Smith " excuse yrs &c 
 
 " in Potter's Street Bedford. (Angleterre.") " J. H. 
 
 5> 
 
 Sad indeed was the scene of domestic affliction, and worse than desolation, 
 to which this disinterested friend, this most illustrious ornament, of the 
 human race was introduced, on his return to England, early in February, 
 1787. After a very short stay in London he went to Cardington, the scene of 
 the purest joys and deepest sorrows which had as yet chequered his existence, 
 to satisfy himself of the extent of the heaviest affliction that had ever 
 befallen him ; and he found his son, his only son, a raving maniac, threaten- 
 ing destruction to his dearest friends, and ready to vent his fury upon the 
 very author of his being. Surely then this was not a spectacle for a father 
 to witness unmoved ; nor was the spot on which it was exhibited a fit 
 residence for him : he therefore returned to the metropolis, and strove to divert 
 
 3l2 
 
.516 
 
 his attention from this heavy calamity, which seemed for ever to have withered 
 the happiness of his domestic life, to one of a public nature, that continued to 
 press with no trivial weight upon his sensitive mind. The design of erecting a 
 statue to his honor was still persisted in, and but a very few days before his 
 arrival, a letter from one of the most ardent of its promoters was inserted 
 in the Gentleman's Magazine, recommending an adherence to the plan, with- 
 out yielding to his extreme delicacy ; as reflection, it was contended, would 
 " correct the wrong suggestions of sensibility, and Mr. Howard would at 
 last respect that decision which he was unable to control."* But those who 
 argued thus knew not the man with whom they had to deal, and were igno- 
 rant of the important fact, of what they called a wrong sensibility, being the 
 result of mature reflection, and of an estimate of his own character, formed 
 upon the principles of Christianity, and not upon those of the world. They 
 were soon, therefore, undeceived in the expectations they had cherished, on 
 the publication of the following letter to the subscribers to the fund which, 
 without his consent, and in direct opposition to his wishes, had been called 
 after his name : — 
 
 " My Lords and Gentlemen, 
 
 " You are entitled to all the gratitude I can express for the 
 testimony of approbation you have intended me, and I am truly sensible of the 
 honour done me ; but at the same time you must permit me to inform you, that 
 I cannot, without violating all my feelings, consent to it, and that the execu- 
 tion of your design would be a cruel punishment to me : It is therefore my 
 earnest request, that those friends, who wish my happiness and future comfort 
 in life, would withdraw their names from the subscription, and that the exe- 
 cution of your design may be laid aside for ever. 
 
 " I shall always think the reform now going on in several of the jails 
 of this kingdom, and which I hope will become general, the greatest honour 
 and the most ample reward I can possibly receive. 
 
 » Gents. Mag. Vol. LVII. Part I. p. 44. 
 
611 
 
 " I must further inform you, that I cannot permit the fund, which in my 
 absence, and without my consent, hath been called the Howardian Fund, to 
 go in future by that name ; and that I will have no concern in the disposal of 
 the money subscribed : my situation and various pursuits rendering it impossible 
 for me to pay any attention to such a general plan, which can only be carried 
 into due effect in particular districts, by a constant attention and a constant 
 residence. " I am, my Lords and Gentlemen, 
 
 •' London, Feb, 16, 1787." " Your obedient and faithful 
 
 " To the Subscribers for erecting " humble servant, 
 
 a Statue, &c. to Mr. Howard." " John Howard." 
 
 A copy of this letter was sent to all the principal public journals, having 
 previously been communicated to several of his private friends, and, amongst 
 others, to Dr. Lettsom (from whose manuscript it is here transcribed,) 
 accompanied by the following note : — 
 
 « Sir, 
 
 " Permit me to enclose you a Copy of an intended Advertize- 
 ment which (on the maturest deliberation) my mind is fixed upon. 
 
 " Some of my friends may perhaps blame me, yet with much esteem I shall 
 ever remain 
 
 " Sir 
 " Y r Obliged Hum Ser' 
 London Feb* 16 1787 " John Howard." 
 
 On the receipt of these letters Dr. Lettsom sought and obtained an inter- 
 view with their author ; but, though he was closeted with him for three hours, 
 and used all the arts of persuasion with which he was so eminently gifted, he 
 could not induce him to accept of any marks of public approbation whatever ; 
 
518 
 
 though, in order to prevail with him, he introduced him to several persons of 
 high rank and celebrity, who were amongst the warmest promoters of the 
 scheme, whose execution, under every modification proposed to him, he 
 steadily, and successfully resisted. Nor was there, or could there indeed be, 
 any affectation of modesty in this conduct, as he uniformly expressed the same 
 determination to the most intimate of his friends in his confidential communi- 
 cations with them, and the whole tenor of his life bore witness to the sincerity 
 of his perseverance in it. Soon after his return to England, the relative, in 
 whose possession his papers remain, said to him, " Mr. Howard, you may be 
 sure you would have seen my name in the subscription set on foot during your 
 absence, if I had thought the measure would be acceptable to you." To which 
 he replied, " My dear friend, I am sure you know me too well ; I thank you, 
 and all my best friends, for not assisting to wound my feelings." Being at the 
 Rev. Mr. Symonds's at Bedford, during one of his earliest visits to Cardington, 
 after he had again reached the shores of his country, that gentleman said 
 to him, " So, Sir, you would not receive the honor which was intended you." 
 " O no, Sir," replied Mr. Howard, " who that knew his own heart could re- 
 ceive it." To his bosom friend, Mr. Smith, he said, " conscious as I am of 
 my many sins and imperfections, I must always view with pain and abhor- 
 rence every attempt of my friends to bring me forward to public view and 
 public approbation. If, therefore, you love me, if you value my peace of mind, 
 you will use your utmost endeavours to prevent any similar attempt in future." 
 To him, and indeed to all his friends, he also declared, that, had the design of 
 erecting his statue been persisted in, it would have been such a weight on his 
 mind as materially to have affected the comfort and usefulness of his future 
 life, as he should in that case have been banished from his country for ever. 
 Precisely to the same effect was his reply to prince Kaunitz, when he had told 
 him, that though he would not suffer a statue to be erected to him in his own 
 country, one would certainly be placed by their grateful inhabitants in the 
 
.510 
 
 prisons of Vienna : — "' I have no objection to its being erected where it shall be 
 invisible."* Such indeed was the natural modesty of his disposition, and the 
 humility which, as a Christian, he habitually cherished, that nothing could do 
 greater violence to his feelings than to say any thing in praise of his conduct 
 in the singular path of benevolence to which he had devoted himself. A gen- 
 tleman of Hoddesdon has obligingly communicated to me an instance of this, to 
 which he himself was witness when he once had the happiness to be in his 
 company. One of the party was extolling him in the highest terms for his 
 meritorious services in the cause of humanity, when he interrupted him by 
 exclaiming, with a peculiar smile upon his countenance, " Oh, dear Sir, as 
 for the merit, I'll say it is my hobby-horse." 
 
 Finding, therefore, that his objections to their schemes were insurmountable, 
 the committee for managing the Howardian Fund, as this subscription hitherto 
 had been, and, in spite of his prohibition, still was called, expressed their readiness 
 to return the money of such as should think proper to reclaim it ; and about 500 A 
 was accordingly refunded, out of a subscription of 1,533/. 1 3s. 6d., the remainder 
 being placed in the stocks, either to be applied, at some future opportunity, to 
 the purposes for which it was originally contributed, or to the promotion of the 
 objects to which the benevolent being, whose unexampled philanthropy it was 
 raised to celebrate, had devoted so large a portion of his existence. Two 
 hundred pounds of this sum were afterwards appropriated to the discharge 
 of 55 poor prisoners in the metropolis, and a further sum was expended for 
 striking a medal in honor of him, for each subscriber ; whilst the surplus was 
 eventually employed in erecting that memorial to his worth after his decease, 
 which, whilst living, he steadily refused to receive at their hands.f Nor was 
 this the only instance of his declining to accept of any thing which bore the 
 
 semblance of a public acknowledgement of his labors in the cause of humanity ; 
 
 < 
 
 * Dr. Stennett's Funeral Sermon, p. 3. t Gent. Mag. Vol. LXV. Part I. p. 278; LVII. Part 
 
 I. p. 284 ; 464. Part II. p. 149: Universal Mag. Vol. LXXXVI.p. 262. 
 
520 
 
 for a tradesman, evidently a member of the Society of Friends, who, like him- 
 self, " did good by stealth, and blushed to find it fame," having deposited 365 
 guineas in the hands of a banker, as the amount of a year's savings by habits 
 of frugality, he refused to interfere with its application, when its generous, but 
 unknown contributor requested him to undertake its disposal.* 
 
 But, whilst he thus firmly and scrupulously insisted every attempt on the part 
 of the admirers of the extraordinary benevolence of his character, to pay to his 
 unassuming worth the tribute of public applause which it so richly merited to 
 receive, he was not backward in performing those deeds of universal charity 
 to the whole brotherhood of man, which advanced still higher his claims to the 
 honors from which he shrunk. Knowing no distinction of kindred or of clime 
 in his efforts to mitigate the sufferings of the human race, he embraced the 
 earliest opportunity which the distressing state of his family affairs would allow, 
 to apply to the English ministry to interest themselves in behalf of the unfortu- 
 nate protestant slave, who had so long been languishing the victim of religious 
 intolerance in the galleys at Toulon : nor was his application unavailing, the 
 English and French courts then being on very amicable terms, and in habits 
 of constant communication during the negociation of the celebrated commercial 
 treaty, in which the late Lord Auckland displayed his admirable talents as a di- 
 plomatist. As the latter, therefore, had no peculiar interest in continuing the sla- 
 very of this oppressed, but virtuous man, whilst by his release they would have 
 an opportunity of obliging the English government, they readily acceded to the 
 request made in his Britannic Majesty's name by lord Carmarthen, who, on Mr. 
 Howard's representation, took up the matter very warmly, as did also our am- 
 bassador at the French court. This benevolent being, therefore, soon had the 
 satisfaction to learn that he was made the providential instrument of loosing the 
 chains of a deserving and patient sufferer in the cause of religion and of 
 conscience.! 
 
 * Gent. Mag. Vol. L VII. Part I. p. 102. t Dr. Brown's MS. 
 
:>2\ 
 
 It was soon after achieving this generous action that Mr. Howard entered 
 upon another, and, as it eventually proved, a final inspection of the prisons of liis 
 own country, into whose condition he felt a natural anxiety to inquire, in order 
 to ascertain what improvements had been made in them since the tour of re- 
 inspection, which had now been completed somewhat more than three years. 
 He commenced this laborious work, on or about the 18th of March, with the 
 gaols of the metropolis. In many of these he found various alterations for the 
 better, but some of the abuses on which he had laid the greatest stress were still 
 permitted to exist. Thus the New Prison, Clerkenwell, was still without 
 bedding ; prisoners of all sorts associated together in playing at cards, &c. whilst 
 those who were most iniquitously detained for their fees, were often reduced 
 to the necessity of pawning their scanty cloathing to procure their 
 discharge. In the bridewell there, the same want of bedding was suffered 
 to prevail, as was indeed the case in all the gaols of the metropolis but 
 one, and too generally in most of the English prisons. The prisoners upon 
 both sides were miserable objects, being very dirty, some of them almost naked, 
 and all without employment. The keeper's salary here, and at the New Prison, 
 was but 50/., but at both places it was to be made up 300/. by fees and perqui- 
 sites, exorted from their wretched and half-naked prisoners, or the county 
 engaged to pay the deficiency. At Tothill-fields, its excellent keeper, Mr. Smith, 
 was no more, and the room which he used as a chapel was now turned into a 
 night-room for the women, though, on the men's side of the prison, — some of the 
 male prisoners, in return, sleeping in a room in the women's court. Another 
 room was appropriated to the deposit of articles of cloathing, as a security for 
 the keeper's fees : but one woman was released by Mr. Howard's generosity, 
 who having no property in this pawn-shop, had been detained here for four 
 days after the expiration of the term of her imprisonment. By conversation 
 with the keeper, he learnt that this term always ended at midnight, a practice 
 which he very properly reprobates, from its natural tendency to expose to temp- 
 tation such as, at this unseasonable hour, might be turned out into the streets 
 
 3x 
 
k z 
 
 >22 
 
 without either money, friends, or home. His next visit was to the hulks, which 
 were clean ; the prisoners healthy ; their bread good, and many of them at work ; 
 whilst their hospital-ship was cleaner and quieter than most county hospitals. 
 Several convicts had lately come from the county gaols, and the captain justly 
 remarked to him, how different were the health and complexion of such persons 
 then, to what they were when he first visited these receptacles for them. This 
 alteration had entirely been produced by his exertions, but there were others 
 which he had as yet labored in vain to effect, as he still had to repeat his 
 complaint of the destructive consequences of such a pernicious assemblage as 
 was here permitted, upon the morals of the younger convicts ; the profaneness 
 of the prisoners not being properly checked, and even their guards setting 
 them a bad example.* In the bridewell for the county of Surrey, in St. 
 George 's-fields, no alteration had been made, except a very singular expedient 
 of the justices, adopted also in those of Guildford and Kingston, to keep its 
 prisoners from the dangerous effects of idleness, by ordering some loads of 
 gravel, or dirt to be brought into the men's and women's court, for them to 
 remove it in baskets from one side to the other. " This reminds me," says Mr. 
 Howard, e( of what I once heard a keeper say, ' I endeavour to plague and teaze 
 my prisoners by making them saw wood with a blunt saw.' " In the Fleet, the 
 King's Bench, and the Marshalsea, he found the provisions of a late act of par- 
 liament absolutely prohibiting gaolers from having any concern or interest in the 
 sale of liquors, totally disregarded. Observing to the marshal's substitute of 
 the latter ruinous, yet unaltered gaol, that several prisoners were drinking, he 
 very truly replied, " the chief vice among prisoners is drunkenness ; and that 
 brings them here ; and while they can drink and riot in prison they disregard 
 the confinement." The Borough compter he describes as a new gaol on a 
 bad plan ; very dirty, and having for its keeper a sheriffs-officer without a 
 salary .-f" It was on the 4th of April that the last of these visits was paid, 
 and it is not until the 15th of May that we meet with any further traces of the 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 127—129; 216. t lb. p. 125; 130; 147. 
 
523 
 
 progress of his benevolent inquiries, an interval, which when compared with 
 those of the former periods of his life, affords a melancholy proof of the un- 
 toward effects of the dreadful calamity that had blighted his domestic pro- 
 spects upon his public exertions, which were now pursued, as it were, by fits and 
 starts, rather than with the regularity and incessant devotedness by which they 
 had formerly been distinguished. It was on the last of these days that he wrote 
 to his faithful bailiff the following letter, in which he communicates his intention 
 of soon setting out for Ireland, but which is inserted here for the proof it affords 
 of his habitual attention to the regulation of his private affairs, which were 
 never for a moment neglected, in the midst of public avocations that would have 
 so completely absorbed every faculty of most other men's minds, as to have left 
 them no time to attend to their own concerns, much less to have administered 
 to the wants and comforts of their tenants, and the poor of their neighbourhood, 
 with the minute solicitude which he here exhibits. 
 
 " John Prole " Great Ormond Street, May 15, 1787. 
 
 " I was uneasy you did not acknowledge the receit of the Hundred 
 Pound. Have you laid Gravel enough to the New Stile, have you raked off 
 the great stones, does it look a neat and good job. 
 
 " I observe you finish sawing &c.this Week, if any thing beside Oak that will 
 make pails saw it up ; pile them up to dry. Take no further Notice ab'. the 
 Newport pagnel Man, there are Cottages enough. I rec". for Walker 4. 3. 10. 
 from his Brother's effects. I am quarreling for more as I charge the Col 1 , with the 
 watch which he shuffles about, and I insist He or his Agent had it. This money 
 for him shall be put in a gaily pot with blue paper for Tho* Walker. 
 
 " Cloath Nott ra girl neatly and properly and if her Master says she behaves 
 better, I will give her half a guinea at Mic\— Let some of the Books in the 
 Closet in the passage be given away to the Schools and others. 
 
 "At******* from Mr. * * * * 's leaving them, I return to my former 
 subscript", of 2 Gain*. 
 
 3x2 
 
.524 
 
 " I will keep the Chaise horse and try him, many fine horses in Town are 
 blind and yet never fall, they give them the smoothest quarter and use them 
 to a check in rough places and gutters which they run over. 
 
 " I hope to go for Ireland the end of next Week, but send me the begining 
 thereof some Butter and a good Loaf of Bread with some rye in it, as I live 
 upon it all the Week. 
 
 " The field Potatoes are kept weeded. The Widow Preston must do what 
 is most agreeable to herself either in staying or going out of her house. I 
 respected her husband and shall ever regard her family. 
 
 « Mr * * * ****** should look into and inform me ab l . his Brother's arid 
 His joint Bond : ask Him to whom I shall apply for a Dividend, and the re- 
 mainder after what is paid off, He must settle. 
 
 « Yrs J. H. 
 " Mr John Prole 
 
 " Cardington near Bedford." 
 
 At the time he here fixes he set out upon his tour, and appears not to have 
 stopped for the purposes of his undertaking it, until he reached Dublin, where he 
 commmenced his re-inspection of the prisons on the 28th of May, when, in the 
 Newgate, he found that many of the women were still lying upon the flag- 
 stones with nothing under them but a little straw, worn to dust; whilst 
 on the men's side, boys of not more than nine years of age were left to 
 associate with the most daring and obdurate offenders. Garnish was not 
 abolished, and prisoners would sell their bread at any price to procure whiskey, 
 with which they were here so plentifully supplied, that a puncheon had been 
 drank in a week. The consequence of this pernicious practice was — and who 
 could be surprised at it ? that prisoners frequently died of intoxication, and of the 
 fighting to which it led : one, indeed, lay dead from this cause, in the infirmary, 
 at the period of Mr. Howard's visit, and another was killed in a drunken affray 
 a few days after. The magistrates had, however, determined to make an altera- 
 
626 
 
 tion in this prison, and its visitor entertained no doubt but that a proper 
 separation of prisoners, and a compulsion on the gaoler to reside in the prison, 
 would prevent many irregularities, especially as, — thanks to his exertions, — 
 they now had the assistance of a worthy and attentive clergyman. The 
 rooms of the Four-court Marshalsea prison were dirty, without furniture, yet 
 crowded with wives, or reputed wives, of prisoners,children, and dogs. In most 
 of the lower rooms whiskey was sold by the debtors, and, as a means of pro- 
 curing it, one of them was converted into a pawn-broker's shop. The marshal 
 assured his visitor that when his prison was full, a hogshead of whiskey had 
 been disposed of in a clandestine manner in a week, besides what was sold at 
 his own tap. Well, therefore, might the committee of the House of Commons 
 report, as they had done about two months before, that " this prison appeared 
 a scene of disorder, irregularity, and intoxication." A repetition of this dis- 
 graceful exhibition presented itself in the City Marshalsea, where there had been 
 so serious a riot the night before Mr. Howard's visit, in consequence of the in- 
 toxication of the prisoners, that the sheriff and city guard had been brought 
 thither, and succeeded in quelling the disturbance, but by taking three of the 
 rioters to Newgate. The garnish here was two bottles of whiskey, a liquor 
 withwhich the jail was plentifully, and but toocheaply supplied, by the wivesof 
 debtors bringing in spirits, and converting most of the lower rooms into gin- 
 shops. Fuel), however, were the dreadful effects of this system, that the physician 
 to the two Marshalseas informed their benevolent inspector, that he had just 
 lost three men out of four, from a drunken carousal in this prison, in which they 
 had, in the course of one morning, drank twelve shillings-worth of brandy, in 
 punch, beside porter and other liquors. To this shocking scene, the house of 
 industry still presented a most pleasing contrast, as although it now contained 
 1,375, and at another time 1,627 inhabitants, it was clean and orderly, the gover- 
 nors continuing, with unabated zeal and assiduity, to superintend its arrange- 
 ments.* After having completed his inspection of the gaols of this metropolis, 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 79, 80. 
 
526 
 
 Mr. Howard occupied himself for three or four days in visiting its hospitals 
 and charitable institutions, in whose construction and management he found 
 many errors, which he afterwards pointed out for correction ; and he then 
 commenced a regular round of examination into the abuses and defects of the 
 Irish charter-schools. Of those defects it cannot be supposed that any minute 
 account should here be given : they may, however, be summed up in a few 
 words. The supply of linen and cloathing was very insufficient, made of the 
 very worst materials, and therefore soon worn out, leaving the children in rags, 
 and on that account unable to go to church. Their education was so grossly neg- 
 lected, that at seventeen or eighteen years of age they were sent into the world, 
 many of them unable to read ; anatural consequence of requiring the masters and 
 mistresses to pay a certain sum per head for their work, though in some places 
 they had nothing for them to do, and lost money by them in all. Upon such a 
 system, in sickness, little attention could be expected to be paid to them ; their 
 infirmaries, therefore, were without beds, which, in several of the schools, were 
 also wanting for those who were in health, so that they sometimes slept three in 
 a bed ; whilst in other places the infirmaries were without doors, or converted 
 into pig-styes, stables, potatoe, or fuel houses ; were overflowed with water, or 
 the boys occupied them as sleeping-rooms in friendly joint-tenantcy with fowls 
 and turkeys, from whose filth they seemed not to have been cleansed for six 
 months: — from the dirtiness of their habitations many of their inmates also had 
 the itch and other cutaneous disorders. Their provision was too little, and even 
 what was allowed was often withheld, so that the children in some of the schools 
 were almost starved, often going without some of their meals altogether. As 
 little attention was paid to their cleanliness, no proper allowance being made for 
 linen, soap, and other necessaries, for this most desirable object ; while in one 
 instance sheets had been applied for for two months, yet were not sent, so that, 
 in the words of one of the local committee, " their beds were scandalously dirty, 
 the bedcloaths ruinous, torn and filthy." In several places the schools for 
 the boys and girls were under the same roof, the children of the two sexes not 
 
6>1 
 
 bemo- properly separated, whilst their masters and mistresses were often very 
 
 incompetent to the duties of their stations, some of them being drunkards, 
 
 some only seventeen or eighteen years of age, and others eighty. He visited 
 
 also in this tour three out of the four nurseries for the reception of children, 
 
 from two to six years of age, and he paid the more minute attention to their 
 
 condition, because their tender years rendered them incapable of struggling with 
 
 hardships, or of making complaints. He was sorry, therefore, to find the same 
 
 gross neglect of their health and cleanliness, as disgraced the schools for the elder 
 
 v 
 children. The master of that at Monastereven pretended to be an apothecary, 
 
 but a pretty con-ect judgment may be formed of his medical skill, from his giving 
 all his infant scholars regularly sulphur and milk for their breakfast, and from his 
 declaring his intention of having a general anointing for the itch, whether they 
 had, or only might have, that unpleasant disorder, though their beds and their 
 persons were certainly quite dirty enough to give it to them all round. It was 
 still further proclaimed too, by the uncommon mortality amongst his nursling 
 patients, for whom in one quarter's bill, there was a charge for eleven coffins. At 
 the time Mr. Howard visited these most pitiable objects, they were dining, at 
 three o'clock, on potatoes not properly boiled ; five or six of the most sickly 
 being indulged with a piece of half-baked cake or bread, but drinking the com- 
 mon beverage of the whole, sour butter-milk.* 
 
 In performing this inspection of so large a proportion of these ill- 
 conducted schools, our philanthropic countryman took two distinct journeys, 
 the one into the north, the other into the south of Ireland, in the course of 
 both of them inspecting the prisons at every town which came in his way. 
 He does not, however, give any enlarged description of their abuses, as, in 
 consequence of the exertions to which he had stimulated the Irish parliament 
 at his former visits to this country, an inspector-general of prisons had been 
 appointed, whose first report very fully exposed many scenes of exaction, 
 
 * AccoudI of Lazarettos, p. J 01 — 117. 
 
528 
 
 abuse, and cruelty, which were, in a great measure, to be attributed to the gross 
 neglect of the magistrates in the discharge of their duty. Some of the prin- 
 cipal of them he does, however, notice, and such as are the most interesting 
 are here extracted from his survey. In that for the city and county of 
 Kilkenny, on weighing the bread, he found that each loaf was deficient consi- 
 derably more than a third of its proper weight ; whilst that at Cloninel was in 
 so close and unhealthy a state that several prisoners had died there but a short 
 time before. Into those for the city and county of Cork, he himself saw spirituous 
 liquors conveyed through the windows, as always will be tlie case where those 
 windows are towards the street. In the house of industry he had an opportu- 
 nity of witnessing the beneficial effects of a measure for which he always was a 
 zealous advocate, as, in consequence of allowing its inmates one-fourth of their 
 earnings, and another fourth to the steward, the profits of their work were in- 
 creased from eighteen to twenty-six pounds per annum. During his stay here he 
 received another proof of the gratitude of Irishmen to their real benefactors, in 
 the presentation of the freedom of the second city in the kingdom, a mark of 
 attention which, as was his regular practice, he duly acknowledges in his 
 work. In the gaol for the city and county of Limerick sixty or seventy men 
 would sometimes be crowded into a room, or crib, only twenty-two feet by 
 twenty in its dimensions ; the bridewell being a miserable dungeon of the 
 same size. It had neither court-yard nor water. Returning to Dublin from 
 this southern journey on the 27th of June, he inspected an old house which was 
 repairing for a police prison under the provisions of the act of 26 Geo. III. c. 24 : 
 he hoped, however, that one of its directions for employing the dangerous 
 discipline of the ducking-stool w r ould not be resorted to, though a large bath 
 in the middle of the yard was designed for that purpose. The night-rooms 
 were dungeons seven steps underground.* 
 
 In the north of Ireland, the countenances of the prisoners in the county gaol 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 79; 83; 88; 89; 91. 
 
529 
 
 at Mullingar showed that a humane and proper attention was paid to them ; 
 but he was sorry to learn that a most infamous fraud had lately been detected, 
 in the case of the clergyman who had the inspection of this prison, who received 
 four times as much money for bread, firing, and candles for the prisoners, as he 
 had actually expended, though he had made affidavits to the correctness of his 
 accounts. This ruinous system of jobbing, clerical as well as lay, which has 
 been one of the heaviest curses of Ireland since she was first blessed with 
 English governors, had deprived the gaoler of Cavan of his salary, and his allow- 
 ance for the fees of acquitted prisoners, for four or five years, the money lying 
 the while in some right honorable, or right reverend jobber's pocket. Though 
 lately built, this prison had no court-yard, and its rooms were very dirty and 
 offensive. The hospital for the county of Tyrone, at Omagh, was so dirty 
 that the felons in the gaol were far better accommodated as to cleanliness and 
 bedding, and their cells were much less offensive : two boys lay there in a small 
 bathing-tub. At Belfast he inspected the incorporated poor-house, many of 
 whose lodging-rooms were down ten steps, whilst the spacious hall and rooms 
 adjoining seemed to be used but for the occasional diversion of young people of 
 the town.* 
 
 From this place Mr. Howard proceeded into Scotland by the passage 
 across the channel from Donaghadee to Port Patrick. At Glasgow the 
 transports were confined in a new prison where each had a separate room, but, 
 not being strong, they had chains on their necks, as well as on their feet. Some 
 of their rooms were also very offensive, and others very damp. No en- 
 deavours whatever were made to reclaim these unhappy beings, whom long 
 confinement, together with the great severity of their chains, and the scanti- 
 ness of their food, had reduced to the extremity of misery and desperation. 
 In the house of correction the prisoners laid in bed all Sunday because there was 
 no religious service, a singular stain upon the piety of this religious country. At 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 91 — 6 ; 99. 
 3 v 
 
530 
 
 Paisley the magistrates presented Mr. Howard with the freedom of their corpo- 
 ration, a favor which he duly acknowledges ; as he does also their politeness 
 in accompanying him to their poor-house, and the readiness they exhibited to 
 make any alteration his experience could suggest for the benefit of such of 
 their fellow-creatures, as by their crimes, or their misfortunes were placed under 
 their control. Passing on to the capital, he was sorry to learn that the designs 
 of Mr. Steuart, the former lord provost, to procure the erection of a new 
 gaol had been frustrated ; whilst to the chief magistrate now in office he freely 
 stated his opinions of the condition of the prisons under his jurisdiction, com- 
 plaining, amongst other things, that " in the house of correction there were 
 forty-seven women in three close rooms, some of them lying sick ; that no 
 magistrate ever looked in upon them, and that no clergyman ever attended 
 them, or used any endeavours to reclaim them. He replied " they were so 
 hardened it could have no effect." In this point, however, our Christian Phi- 
 lanthropist differed most materially from his lordship, and told him that, on 
 seriously conversing with several of these prisoners, he saw tears in their 
 eyes ; and he further added, with his wonted faithfulness to the cause he 
 had espoused, that " the splendid improvements carrying on in their places 
 of entertainment, streets, squares, bridges, and the like, seemed to occupy 
 all the attention of the gentlemen in office, to the total neglect of this essen- 
 tial branch of the police." He also observed, that, " though, as a pri- 
 vate person, he might not expect their regard to the remarks he had made 
 in his repeated visits and publications ; yet he hoped they would have paid 
 some deference to the opinion of the legislature, expressed in the humane and 
 salutary clauses of the late acts of parliament, which, from the unaltered state 
 of the prisons of this city, they seemed entirely to have disregarded." On re- 
 turning into England, he found in the county gaol at Morpeth a woman com- 
 mitted there but for stealing a handkerchief, heavily ironed, though lately 
 brought to-bed ; but, on his humane interposition, her irons were taken off.* 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 75, 6; 199. 
 
531 
 
 After a repose of about three weeks, Mr. Howard set off upon a tour into 
 the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge. At the gaol for the city of 
 Norwich, the magistrates met him, and he pointed out to their notice the dir- 
 tiness of the prison, the non-observance of its rules, and several other defects, 
 none of which were corrected when he next visited the place, except one, in 
 the construction of the infirmary. His former representation of the abuse of 
 the sheriff's receiving a fee from the gaoler for his place had, however, already 
 been attended to ; and in their bridewell they had considerately forbidden the 
 use of the dungeons ; some of its prisoners were now too employed, as in 
 Holland, in rasping log- wood. In the town gaol at Yarmouth liquors were 
 still sold by the gaoler, who had no salary. The bridewells for the county of 
 Suffolk, at Woodbridge and Beccles, had been still further improved, whilst, 
 in its gaol at Ipswich, the total abolition of the tap had wrought an evident 
 alteration in the health and morals of the prisoners. A new county bridewell 
 had been erected at Bury, but it was neither substantially built, nor secure. To 
 this place his friend Mr. Capel Lofft, who then resided at Troston-Hall, near 
 this town, where he called on his way from Ipswich, offered to accompany him ; 
 but he would not permit him to do so, as he wished to go there as a stranger, 
 without any preparation for his coming, and to see things in the condition 
 they might chance to be in at the moment of his arrival. This was on the 
 28th of September, 1787; and, to commemorate the visit of such a man, his 
 classical host planted upon that day a sprig of the common laurel, which is 
 now, he informs me in a letter written in March last, a spreading tree in his 
 garden ; and long, I would add, may he live in health and prosperity beneath 
 its shade ! In the castle at Cambridge, though two courts had been made, 
 they were little used, for Mr. Howard always found the prisoners locked up ; 
 as was generally the case, indeed, where the keeper lived at a distance.* 
 
 It was on the last day of September that this journey was completed, and 
 
 ' Account of Lazarettos, p. 151, I i>3 — 6. 
 3 y2 
 
532 
 
 it was not until the 21st of October, that our Philanthropist left Cardington 
 on another into some of the Midland counties. At Derby he found both the 
 town and county gaol much improved, the latter particulary so by the abo- 
 lition of the tap, as the gaoler himself readily declared ; but in that for the 
 adjoining county of Nottingham the felons continued to sleep in two dark 
 offensive dungeons down thirty-six steps, another being occupied by a man sen- 
 tenced to two years solitary imprisonment. The same ruinous practice was 
 continued also in the county gaol at Leicester, where even the free ward for 
 debtors was a dungeon : the felons both here, and in those of the town gaols 
 had mats provided for them, but one of the prisoners complained of illness 
 contracted by lying upon them. Proceeding to the metropolis, through 
 Northampton and Hertford, he saw the prisoners in the county bridewell at the 
 latter town, chained to a post in the dungeon.* 
 
 During his continuance in London, for about a week, Mr. Howard inspected 
 the close and ill-constructed gaol in Horsemonger-lane, and found there the 
 same dreadful assemblage of criminals, of all descriptions, as he had done upon 
 former occasions. Of these, fifty were transports, sentenced in 1783 and the 
 following years, but lying almost perishing in gaol, not yet delivered in execution 
 of their sentence, their allowance the while being only three halfpence a-day 
 in bread, and the precarious charity of a little meat, broth, &c. collected from 
 the neighbours, who knew their distress. Many had worn out their shoes, 
 stockings, and shirts, and had hardly cloathes to cover them ; whilst, by being 
 forced to live in idleness, and to associate together, they were driven to acts of 
 desperation. " Such dreadful nurseries," says our author, " have been a prin- 
 cipal cause of the increased number of crimes, and the shocking destruction of 
 our fellow- creatures. I am persuaded this would have been in a great measure 
 prevented it penitentiary houses had been built on the salutary spot at Islington 
 fixed on by Dr. Fothergill and myself: the gentlemen whose continued oppo- 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 142; 160 — 162. 
 
533 
 
 sition defeated the design, and adopted the expensive, dangerous and destruc- 
 tive scheme of transportation to Botany Bay, I leave to their own reflections 
 upon their conduct." In the new Ludgate he found that several improvements 
 had been made, one of which was, that in the large work-room, the prisoner?, 
 were at work, either at making chairs and baskets, or as coopers.* Within a 
 day or two after this visit Mr. Howard directed his benevolent course into the 
 the west of England, arriving at Plymouth, on the 10th of November, where 
 he reached the house of a friend, with whom he became acquainted during his 
 residence in Hampshire, about four in the afternoon, and though he had been 
 travelling two nights without having been in bed, or taking any other refresh- 
 ment than a cup of tea in the morning, he appeared to be in as good spirits, 
 and active and fit for business, as if neither sleep nor food had been wanting. 
 He at this time mentioned to the gentleman upon whose authority this anec- 
 dote is given, his being sixty-one years old, adding that he hoped to hold out 
 four years longer in full vigor ; " and this," says his intelligent friend, " in the 
 ordinary course of things, there was all reason to expect he might, as few, 
 even at half his age, would have been able to go through the fatigue he did." 
 The convicts on board the hulks at this port, with whom he commenced his 
 inspection, were healthy and well, their provisions being good, but their 
 allowance of bread not sufficient. Among these were some fine young fellows 
 who, with the rest, lived in total idleness, though some useful employment 
 might, without difficulty, have been found for them.f Proceeding on, through 
 Launceston and Tavistock, to Exeter, he met with an extraordinary instance 
 of conjugal affection in the high-gaol there, in the case of a man who was 
 working as a shoemaker in the women's ward, where his wife was under sen- 
 tence of transportation for stealing a calf's skin, and he himself remained a 
 voluntary prisoner, declaring his firm purpose to accompany her to Botany 
 Bay, or wherever she was removed to. Soon after Mr. Howard's return 
 to London the woman, however, received a free pardon, through his ap- 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 126 ; 147. t lb. p. 216 : Gent. Mag. Vol. LX. Part I. p. 287. 
 
534 
 
 plication in her behalf to Lord Sydney, and he had afterwards the satisfac- 
 tion to learn that this couple were useful and worthy members of the com- 
 munity. The county gaol at Salisbury was close and confined, and had 
 not been whitewashed since 1784, when a turnkey and seventeen prisoners 
 died of the gaol fever. At Dorchester a new gaol had been very slightly 
 built, on a bad plan, having no free ward for debtors. Their rooms too were 
 very dirty, and the bread bad. " White without and foul within," is the 
 brief description he gives us of the close Newgate at Bristol.* In his way 
 home he inspected a new county gaol erecting at Oxford, under the direc- 
 tion of Mr. Blackburn, of whose plans for prisons he highly approved, the 
 favorite scheme of Dr. Fothergill, to employ convicts in the erection of such 
 places, being also adopted with such success, that by their labor upwards of 113/. 
 was saved to the county. So orderly, too, was their behaviour that they re- 
 quired but one guard, though for their good conduct several were permitted to 
 work without their irons. " This proves," says their humane inspector, 
 " that among such delinquents many are reclaimable, and not so entirely 
 abandoned as some are apt to suppose. The encouragements here given with 
 respect to their diet, cloathes, and term of confinement, have been the means 
 of recovering many from their bad habits, and of rendering them useful mem- 
 bers of society." On the debtors' side of the county gaol at Aylesbury, owing 
 to the interference of the Marquis of Buckingham, great improvements had 
 been made ; but the felons' side was still close, particularly their bed-rooms, so 
 that its inhabitants must ever be subject to the gaol fever, of which their last 
 keeper had died. By the exertions of the same public-spirited nobleman, a 
 new bridewell had been erected here in lieu of the miserable hole at Newport 
 Pagnell, but it was not secure. A new county gaol, he informs us, was 
 intended to be built at Bedford ; whilst in that part of his work, which notices 
 the unaltered condition of the old one, he makes a short digression to recom- 
 mend to notice and imitation the neat and most convenient work-house of 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. J 83, 5, 6, 9. 
 
his own parish of Cardington, whose poor were comfortably clad, and their 
 diet, employment, and treatment in sickness and in health, all regulated 
 with strict order and humane attention by the unremitting zeal and assiduity 
 of a young lady, whom it were easy to name, but that like the illustrious 
 Philanthropist, whose able coadjutor in many of his schemes of benevolence 
 for the benefit of the parish in which he resided she had long the honor 
 to be, she does not wish her deeds to be spoken of beyond the district 
 where they cannot be concealed, and where the name she once bore will ever 
 be held in deserved estimation. Proceeding to London through Huntingdon- 
 shire, Cambridgeshire, and Essex, Mr. Howard inspected, at Chelmsford, the 
 gaol for the latter county, which he found to be clean, and rendered more con- 
 venient than at his former visits, nor had he now any complaint to make of 
 neglect of duty by the chaplain, his remarks upon this subject in his last pub- 
 lication having produced their proper effect.* The condition of the unhealthy 
 bridewell was, however, still unaltered, several sick objects lying on the floors of 
 the same room in which the healthy were confined, whose noise often deprived 
 them of sleep ; the sick room for the men, for the sake of a small emolument, 
 being filled the while by the arms of the militia. 
 
 Completing this journey on the 6th of December, on the 17th or 18th of 
 the same month he commenced a more extensive one into the north of 
 England, where, in Chester Castle, he was pleased to find a capital convict, 
 who had been reprieved, employing himself in the instruction of nine young 
 prisoners whom he had taught to read. The city gaol was still insecure, in 
 consequence of which the convicts and prisoners for trial were alike strongly 
 ironed by the neck, hands, waist, and feet, besides being chained to the floor 
 in their room in the day-time, and to the beds in their horrid dungeon at night. 
 Here Mr. Howard saw the first iron glove he had met with in England, which, 
 though not yet used, showed the severity of the gaoler's disposition. Debtors 
 • Account of Lazerettos, p. 143, 4 ; 148—151 ; 170, 171. 
 
S36 
 
 and felons were permitted to beg for some hours in the day ; but, as their visitor 
 truly remarked, it was a disgrace to this opulent city that its prisoners were 
 not supplied with necessary food. At Liverpool he found a prison erecting, 
 under the direction of Mr. Blackburn, on which the corporation were sparing 
 no expence, so that with a view to security, health, reformation, and con- 
 venience, he apprehended that it would be one of the first borough gaols in 
 the kingdom. In the bridewell of this town all the men were in heavy irons, 
 and seven out of eight women were chained to the floors, and in bed at noon 
 on Sunday, having had no fire for several days, though it was the depth of a 
 most inclement winter. The day after his visit two of them were released, 
 and set to picking oakum.* At Manchester, a new bridewell upon Mr. Black- 
 burn's plan, and on a very large scale, was building at the expence of the 
 hundred of Salford, upon " whose good sense and liberality," says our Phi- 
 lanthropist, " it will reflect much credit." He has not, however, told us to whom 
 the enlightened magistrates of that spirited hundred conceived themselves 
 indebted for the chief excellence of their plan : but the following extract from 
 the inscription on the foundation-stone of the prison they erected must supply 
 the deficiency his modesty has created : — " That there may remain to Posterity 
 a Monument of the Affection and Gratitude of this County, to that most 
 excellent Person, who hath so fully proved the Wisdom and Humanity of 
 the separate and solitary Confinement of Offenders, This Prison is inscribed 
 with the name of John Howaud." Another was building by this liberal 
 county, at Preston, on the same plan, and, in their present condition, these 
 admirable houses of correction have amply fulfilled the expectations of their 
 visitor when in an incomplete state, that they would do honor to those who 
 erected them, as they now reflect it upon every one concerned in their 
 management.! In the county gaol at Appleby, and the prison for debtors at 
 Batley, the gaolers had killed themselves by drinking from their own tap; a 
 fate by no means uncommon whilst this nuisance was allowed : in the 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 159; 206—208. f See Note I. 
 
6'S1 
 
 Hall-garth, at Beverley, a prisoner had lately been killed in one of the drunken 
 quarrels which so baneful a practice engendered. At Hull, the old gaol was 
 disused, and a new one built in a fine situation out of the town, which, with 
 some trifling alterations, would be a good prison. The mayor and aldermen 
 attentively inspected it, each in his regular monthly rotation, and wrote their 
 observations in a book ; a worthy clergyman attending also every Wednesday 
 without salary. Whilst in Yorkshire he visited the school belonging to the 
 Society of Friends at Ackworth, of which his friend Dr. Fothergill had been 
 the great supporter, and he was highly delighted with the neatness, cleanliness, 
 and order, which pervaded every part of this well-regulated establishment. He 
 embraces too the opportunity which the allusion to the chief place for the 
 education of their children afforded him, to bear his public testimony to the 
 worth of a body of men with whom he had often associated, and of whose 
 valuable qualities no one was more competent to speak, as none more duly 
 appreciated them. t( This much-respected people," says he, " with whom I 
 have passed many agreeable hours of my life, I trust will believe me when I say I 
 cordially join in opinion with Dr. Percival, who in his Dissertations, says, ' The 
 people improperly, because opprobriously, called Quakers, certainly merit a 
 very high degree of esteem from their fellow citizens, on account of their 
 industry, temperance, peaceableness, and catholic spirit of charity.' To 
 which I will add, as an amiable property, their uncommon neatness in their 
 persons and houses." In returning home through Lincoln, he found a new 
 county gaol erecting, whose passages would be close and dark, though happily 
 it was without dungeons. In that for the city no alteration had been made, 
 though through the windows of their two damp cells, both the male and 
 female prisoners freely conversed with idle people in the street, who often 
 supplied them with liquors till they were intoxicated. The offensive bridewell 
 for this county at Folkingham was still also unimproved, its keeper being 
 allowed a salary of forty pounds to maintain, or, more correctly speaking, to 
 starve his prisoners.* 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 163; 192, 3; 196, 7. 
 
 3z 
 
538 
 
 Taking about ten days repose after his return from tins northern tour, on 
 the 29th of January Mr. Howard took a direction for the southern parts of 
 the kingdom, where, at Gloucester, he found a new county gaol and house of 
 correction building near the river, under the direction of Sir George Onesipho- 
 rus Paul, Bart, whose zealous and unremitting attention to this object promised 
 to render it a lasting monument of his skill and humanity. In the wretched 
 gaol at St. Briavelts, some of the poor debtors would have perished for 
 want, but for the humanity of Mr. Milson, a maltster, who, living near, sent 
 them provisions, and procured collections in the neighbouring towns for their 
 release. One prisoner had been confined here for near a twelvemonth, for a 
 debt of three shillings, the costs of recovering it amounting to 41. lis. 4d. 
 another for near two years for a debt of forty shillings, costs 11. 15 s. 8 d. 
 - l Their cases," says Mr. Howard, " surely coidd not be known to Lord 
 Berkeley, the proprietor, who never visits the town." The gaol for the county 
 of Monmouth was still without a chaplain, and felons continued to be chained 
 to the floor at night : a new one was, however, erecting on a fine eminence 
 near the water, under the direction of Mr. Blackburn, the ground having been 
 generously given for the purpose by the Duke of Beaufort. Entering South Wales 
 by way of Brecon, our Philanthropist released from the new, but slightly-built 
 county gaol there, a poor shoemaker, with a wife and four children, who was in 
 custody for a debt of twelve shillings, and 17 s. 6d. costs ; from that at Presteign, 
 which was still in its former bed condition, he set some others free, whose 
 debts were yet less, and costs greater. At the county gaol in Hereford he 
 found that sixteen new, though low, and inconvenient rooms, and a court-yard 
 for the men felons, had been added ; but most of the women were in irons, a 
 fact upon which he makes an observation not at all too strong in its expressions 
 of abhorrence of such a practice, when he terms it an indecent, wanton, and cruel 
 custom, not practised in any of the most uncivilized countries he had visited. 
 In the castle at Worcester, which had been enlarged, the felons very im- 
 properly slept two together on the floors, and notwithstanding the fearful 
 lesson, which, in the space of a very few years, had been read him, by the death of 
 
.530 
 
 his two predecessors of the gaol fever, the gaoler, — who was a butcher, living at 
 some miles distance, whilst his son, a young man, had the care of the prison, — was 
 so inattentive to the health of his prisoners, as to suffer their cells not only to be 
 extremely dirty, but to have every aperture for air stopped up. It was in this 
 large, but ill-regulated gaol, that three years before his visit, Dr. Johnstone, a 
 young, but very rising physician of this city, fell a lamented victim to his hu- 
 manity, in attending the prisoners confined here during the prevalence of that 
 virulent distemper, from whose contagion, Mr. Howard, in all his visits, was so 
 mercifully preserved. " In the course of my pursuits," he observes, with his 
 usual benevolent regard to the welfare of his fellow-creatures, " I have known 
 several amiable young gentlemen, who, in their zeal to do good, have been 
 carried off by this dreadful disorder ; and this has been one incentive to my en- 
 deavours for its extirpation out of our prisons." A new county bridewell was 
 erecting here, but in the meanwhile the prisoners in the old one, for want of 
 blankets, were obliged to lay all night in their cloathes. In that at Shrews- 
 bury, he was sorry to learn, that the prisoners had of late years been de- 
 prived of all opportunity of religious instruction, from a prohibition to attend 
 public worship in the gaol adjoining, in which no alteration had been made, 
 unless it was one for the worse. The women were now in irons, though 
 closely confined to their day rooms and dungeons ; the men, meanwhile, 
 being doubly ironed, and chained to the floor at night : their bread also was 
 miserably short of weight. The county had, however, at length determined on 
 building a new gaol and house of correction, and had fixed on a fine situation 
 for that purpose. The crowded county goal at Stafford was still also without 
 any alteration in its wretched condition, as in the dungeon for male felons 
 he saw fifty-two chained down to the floors, with hardly fourteen inches 
 allowed to each of them to move in. The moisture from their breath ran 
 down the walls ; it was needless, therefore, for him to intimate the heat 
 and offensiveness of this dungeon, or the pallid countenances of its prisoners. 
 But the very year before, seven had died here of the gaol fever, and the 
 
 3 z2 
 
540 
 
 free ward for the debtors being directly over it, nine out of fourteen 
 of its unfortunate inmates, fell victims to the negligence and inhumanity 
 of the magistrates of this opulent county. The gaol contained neither infir- 
 mary nor bath, nor was its keeper humane or attentive. The women were in 
 irons, and lay in a dungeon. Many of the windows of this prison were towards 
 the street, a defect which Mr, Howard very properly condemns as having a mani- 
 fest tendency to harden and encourage, rather than to reform criminals. 
 Opposite to it were also three adjoining ale-houses, one of which having 
 harboured a gang of thieves, some of whom were executed, Mr. Justice Bul- 
 ler had taken away its licence, which the magistrates had since renewed, 
 though the house was again said to be the resort of bad company. " The great 
 and increasing number of ale-houses that I observe in my tours through this 
 kingdom," adds our enlightened Philanthropist, with great force and truth, 
 " I cannot but lament ; as it is one great and obvious reason why our prisons 
 are so crowded, both with debtors and felons. Many magistrates are sensible 
 of this evil, yet so dreadfully supine and timid, as to grant fresh licences (often 
 at the intercession of their interested clerks) in which their conduct is highly 
 culpable. It should be remembered, that it is the spirit of our laws, and there- 
 fore the duty of magistrates, by every means to prevent, if possible, the commis- 
 sion of crimes."* In the prison for the court of conscience, at Birmingham, he 
 had the satisfaction to learn, that debtors under twenty shillings, were now dis- 
 charged in twenty, instead of forty days. The gaol for the county, at Warwick, 
 was sadly crowded, thirty-two men lying chained in a dungeon thirty-one steps 
 under ground, and but twenty-two feet in diameter ; two of whom were ill of 
 a slow fever, as were three others, in a room in which they also were in irons. 
 Before the convicts were sent off to Plymouth, the condition of this black-hole 
 was, however, still more intolerable, as some of the poor wretches confined in it 
 were then forced to stand up and keep a sort of miserable night-watch while 
 the others slept. From the aperture of this dungeon, which was but three feet 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 1 72—8 ; 214, 21 5. 
 
o41 
 
 three inches wide, as from the door and the two funnels of that at Stafford, the 
 steam of the prisoners' breath came out in winter-time like the smoke of a 
 chimney. In two rooms, seven feet and a half by six and a half, with apertures 
 only in the doors, lay fourteen women almost suffocated, but not in irons. No 
 coals being here allowed, the prisoners of this sex, as in other gaols similarly 
 circumstanced, often sold their bread to procure fuel.* 
 
 It was on the 16th or 17th of February that this long tour was completed, 
 and on the 28th of the same month Mr. Howard left Cardington upon his sixth 
 journey to Ireland, inspecting, in his way thither, the prisons and hospitals of 
 some of the English and Welch counties through which he passed. At Flint 
 he found a convenient gaol built on a fine spot in the castle-yard, but though 
 new, it was not kept clean, as was the case also with that at Ruthin, where 
 there was still no proper separation of the sexes. At Beaumaris the bread 
 was miserably deficient in weight, and adulterated in quality. At Dublin he 
 began a minute inspection of the various places of confinement and charitable 
 institutions, to ascertain and to report whose actual condition he had once again 
 visited Ireland. In the gaol for this county, at Kilmainham, spirituous liquors 
 were so freely conveyed into the prison, through the windows of the rooms 
 which fronted the street, that prisoners were often so completely intoxicated, as 
 to endanger their own lives, and that of their fellow-prisoners. At one of his 
 visits, indeed, Mr. Howard providentially came into the gaol just in time to 
 extinguish a fire which, in one of their drunken carousals, had been kindled in 
 the straw upon which they lay. The debtors here were drinking wine so freely 
 as to be drunk by eleven in the morning. The dungeons at this time were 
 very crowded ; the rooms dirty ; and several prisoners sick.f It was about ten 
 days after he had visited this wretched prison that our philanthropic country- 
 man addressed to his friend Dr. Price, an account of his plans and pursuits in 
 Ireland, of which I here give the extract published by Dr. Aikin,^; the letter 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 158, 9. t lb- P- 211, 213; 83. J P. 148, 9. 
 
.542 
 
 it is taken from having been dated on the 23d of March, 1788: — "My 
 journey into this country was to make a report of the state of the charter- 
 schools, which charity has long been neglected and abused ; as indeed most 
 public institutions are made private emoluments, one sheltering himself under 
 the name of a bishop, another under that of a lord ; and for electioneering 
 interest breaking down all barriers of honour and honesty. However, Parlia- 
 ment now seems determined to know how its grants have been employed. I 
 have, since my visits to these schools in 1782, been endeavouring to excite the 
 attention of Parliament ; and some circumstance being in my favour, a good 
 Lord Lieutenant, a worthy Secretary (an old acquaintance), and the First Secre- 
 tary of State, the Provost, a steady friend, I must still pursue it ; so I next 
 week set out for Connaught and other remote parts of this kingdom, which 
 indeed are more barbarous than Russia. By my frequent journies my 
 strength is somewhat abated, but not my courage or zeal in the cause I 
 am engaged in." Connecting this new object with his old one, it was on 
 the 31st of March that, proceeding into the southern and western counties, 
 he found, at Castlebar, an old, unhealthy, and ruinous prison without water, in 
 which many poor wretches had often been almost suffocated, forty-two pri- 
 soners being confined in a room only twenty-one feet by seventeen. A new 
 prison was built, but on a very low scale, being also close and dark. The 
 bridewell for the county of Galway, at Loughrea, was an old house, with two 
 dark rooms on the ground floor, and one over them ; the prisoners being with- 
 out allowance or employment, and the prison without water but when flooded. 
 In the new bridewell for the county of Cork, erected by Lord Kingsborough, 
 at Mitchel's Town, a sickness had lately prevailed among the prisoners, from 
 the very offensive sewers in the rooms, and the want of a court-yard and of 
 water. At Maryborough, in Queen's county, he visited the infirmary, as 
 indeed he did the hospitals and charitable institutions wherever he went, 
 though not noticed in this narrative, except where there was something parti- 
 cularly striking in their condition, of which this may serve as a specimen. It 
 
543 
 
 was an old house, with four rooms in it for patients, on the floor of one of which 
 some dirty hay was spread as a bed for the nurse, the patients themselves, of 
 whom there were twenty, laying in dirty blankets, without sheets. The furni- 
 ture of the surgery consisted of ten vials, some of them without corks, a 
 little salve stuck upon a board like a hod of mortar, some tow, and pieces of 
 torn paper scattered on the floor. Yet this infirmary, besides the parlia- 
 mentary allowance of 100/. had an annual county presentment of the unusual 
 amount of 200/. more. Such was the system of jobbing in those days, — etfelix 
 si non nostris! At Roscommon the gaol was clean and quiet, but a new one 
 was building on a very bad construction. In that for the county of Leitrim, 
 at Carrick, the prisoners were confined in black and dark cells several steps 
 under ground, from which they were never suffered to go out : the walls of 
 the prison being in a ruined condition. At Mullingar a new prison was 
 building on a fine spot, with a stream running through the court, but on 
 too small a scale for solitary confinement at night, so that two prisoners 
 would have to sleep together in one cell, to which, says Mr. Howard, 
 " I have a much greater dislike, than to the crowding of many into one 
 room." The county gaol at Longford was a bad prison, yet within its 
 loathsome walls a prisoner, committed for a month, had lately been detained 
 for his fees, amounting to 11. 10s. 3d., several months more, though, as was 
 generally the case, the expence of his maintenance the while exceeded that 
 sum. The chartered schools which he visited in the course of this tour, he 
 still found in a most disgraceful condition. Into that at Castlebar fourteen 
 girls had been received from the nurseries without shoes or stockings, and suf- 
 fering most dreadfully from cutaneous disorders, the consequence of gross inat- 
 tention there. They were, as might naturally be expected, puny, sickly objects, 
 and at this time almost naked, so that the apothecary dared not give them any 
 medicine, and they had never been to church since they came, from having no 
 cloathes to cover them :— they could not earn their master a halfpenny. Their 
 wretched situation had been made known to the committee of fifteen by the 
 
544 
 
 local committee nearly five months ago, yet it was only on the Friday before Mr. 
 Howard saw them that an answer was sent to their representation, — in a printed 
 recipe for the cure of scald-heads, with which most of them were afflicted. In 
 the school at Ballinrobe twenty-two boys had lately been sent from these same 
 nurseries in as wretched a state ; but, though there were many of them eight years 
 old, they did not know a letter. In the Connaught nursery, at Monivea, the 
 children were in a very sickly condition, as well indeed they might be, when 
 so little care was taken of them that some were left grovelling in the turf-ashes. 
 That at Shannon Grove, for Munster, was still more sickly, fifteen out of 
 ninety having died in the last six months, and fourteen being then in the infir- 
 mary. To the school at Longford twelve boys had lately been transferred 
 from that at Castle-carberry, half-starved and almost naked, one of them being 
 an idiot. That at Maynooth presented, however, a pleasing contrast to most 
 others he had visited, as it contained thirty-five fine healthy boys, who, together 
 with the master, kept a garden of about three Irish acres in the nicest order. 
 The house and bedding were perfectly clean.* 
 
 After remaining three or four days in Dublin, Mr. Howard commenced a 
 second tour of inspection at Waterford, where, in the county gaol, a woman 
 was confined with the men in their dungeon, the women's room having been 
 occupied by a lunatic for twenty-seven years. About a week previous to this 
 visit, seven prisoners had unri vetted the bolts with which they were ironed, 
 and, having made an aperture through the wall, effected their escape. He 
 had often before complained of the too general use of these bolt-h'ons in Ire- 
 land, as being very painful to the prisoners, and dangerous instruments when 
 they got them off, as they could do without much difficulty. A new gaol was 
 built here on a plan far more splendid than useful, but not yet occupied. The 
 keeper of the prison was at this time committed to the city gaol for having 
 struck a saucy boy who would persist in delivering spirituous liquors in at the 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 86, 7 ; 90; 91—6; 106,7; 109; 112; 117. 
 
S4S 
 
 window, though several prisoners were already intoxicated. The surgery in the 
 county infirmary here contained but one pot of ointment, a sovereign remedy, 
 it is to be presumed, for every ill ; and eighteen empty drawers. In the county 
 gaol at Clonmell the dungeons were very dirty and crouded ; and the men 
 and women debtors were confined in the same room. The women felons, 
 however, were not in irons, as England had a peculiar and exclusive claim to 
 the honor of so savage a practice. A new gaol was building here. The only 
 circumstance which he met with in his visits, at this time, to the chartered schools 
 in the north of Ireland, deserving of particular mention was, that in that at Dun- 
 manway, in the county of Cork, the children were objects of the greatest com- 
 passion, being dirty, sickly, without shoes or stockings, many of the boys without 
 breeches, and others almost naked. The master excused himself from accom- 
 panying his visitor into the bed-rooms, from his being afraid of catching there 
 a disorder, at which the mistress also seemed to be somewhat alarmed, though 
 the rooms were empty, except one child who was ill of the ague. Yet " the 
 humane and faithful committee;," says our indignant countryman, " lately 
 reported, that the children are healthy, and taken proper care of, and we 
 recommend the master and mistress as deserving the society's bounty."* It was 
 whilst Mr. Howard was engaged in his tour into the south of Ireland, that the 
 committee of the House of Commons there, appointed, in consequence of his 
 recommendation, on the 13th of March, 1778, made their report upon the 
 condition of the chartered schools, in which his evidence occupies the principal 
 place. That evidence was accompanied by some most judicious hints for their 
 improvement, though they are too minute and particular to be here transcribed.! 
 His closing remarks are, however, so characteristic of the soundness as well as 
 the liberality of his views, as richly to deserve to be extracted from the 
 work in which he gave the information he had collected on the subject, in a 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 85, 7, 8 ; J 13, 114. 
 
 t See Account of Lazarettos, p. 1 18 — 124; Steven's Inquiry, p. 52—69 ; Journals of the Irish House- 
 oE Commons, Vol. XII. 
 
 4, A. 
 
546 
 
 more enlarged form than he had done to the committee. " I cannot forbear," 
 he observes, " expressing a wish that the benefits of education were more 
 generally extended over Ireland than they are by these schools. If frek- 
 schools were instituted in every parish for instructing in the lower parts of 
 learning, and the principles of morality, children of each sex, and of all per- 
 suasions; it would perhaps more than any thing tend to soften the manners of 
 the Irish poor, and enable their youth to resist the various temptations to vice, 
 to which they are inevitably exposed in their crowded huts and cabins." In 
 speaking of the ruinous system of compulsory proselytism, which was the 
 original and main object of these ill-conducted seminaries,— in a spirit that 
 does equal honor to his Christianity and his philanthropy, he afterwards adds, 
 " I hope I shall not be thought, as aprotestant dissenter, indifferent to the pro- 
 testant cause, when I express my wish, that these distinctions were less 
 regarded in bestowing the advantages of education ; and that the increase of 
 protestantism were chiefly trusted to the dissemination of knowledge and sound 
 morals." The labor which he bestowed upon these institutions seems, however, 
 to have been completely thrown away, as nothing whatever was done in con- 
 sequence of the report of the Irish parliament ; money being still voted, year 
 after year, to be squandered away, or embezzled, as it had been before ; whilst 
 an inquiry into their actual condition, recently instituted by a man who appears 
 to have caught a spark of that pure flame of benevolence which glowed in the 
 bosom of a Howard, proves that, if any thing, they have degenerated in utility, 
 and increased in mismanagement since his days. It were almost needless to 
 add, that I here allude to the " Inquiry into the Abuses of the Chartered 
 Schools in Ireland," published, about a twelvemonth since, by Robert Steven, 
 Esq. the indefatigable promoter of the Hibernian-school society; a work which 
 cannot be too strongly recommended, or too generally read. But the condition 
 of her charter-schools was not the only object to which this visit to Ireland 
 awakened the attention of her legislators : for the day after the committee to 
 inquire into that subject was appointed, Mr. Howard having then been in Dub- 
 
547 
 
 lin but three or four days, another was moved for to investigate the state of the 
 hospitals throughout that country, to whom he gave in evidence the observations 
 he had made upon the construction and regulation of these institutions, in his 
 tour of 1787, which were reported to the house, — as he afterwards published 
 them, though with considerable additions, in his work on lazarettos, — on the 
 15th of April, 1778, the day following the presentation of the report of the 
 other committee.* 
 
 It was on the 18th of May, 1788, that Mr. Howard finally left the shores 
 of the sister-kingdom ; and probably the last act he performed there was, — 
 after solemn meditation on its importance, — the consecration afresh of all 
 that he had, and all that he was, to his Maker and his Preserver, of which we 
 have the following short minute in the memorandum-book so often mentioned 
 before in the course of this narrrative : — " I hope my renewed vows were 
 sincere. Ireland, May 18, 1788. Help me oh Lord God of my Salvation !" 
 In his way home through some of the counties of Wales and of the south of 
 England, he found that the gaol for the county of Pembroke, at Haverford- 
 west, was clean and quiet ; but he was sorry to add, that divine service had 
 not been performed there for some time past. In the town-gaol at Swansea 
 he learnt that prisoners of both sexes were, during the quarter sessions, con- 
 fined, for some days, in a room called the black-hole, which had only a small 
 aperture for air in the door, the same being the case also at Neath, where one 
 of the four sessions for the county of Glamorgan was held. The Newgate at 
 Bristol was cleaner than when he last saw it, but the bath was used as a vault. 
 In the new county bridewell and town-gaol, at Devizes, injudiciously built on 
 the same close and confined spot as the old one, a prisoner had lately died in 
 one of the solitary cells, and the verdict of the coroner's jury having been, 
 died by hunger and cold, the allowance had since been augmented. The other 
 bridewell, at Marlborough, had been so much enlarged as to be almost a new 
 * Journals of llie Irish House of Commons, Vol. XII. p. 10'2, 4 ; 425, 6; dcccxliii — viL 
 
 4 a 2 
 
548 
 
 prison ; and it was now a clean and well-regulated one, except that there was 
 no employment for its prisoners. The two poor-houses here, with their inmates, 
 (for to poor-houses Mr. Howard now pretty generally extended his humane in- 
 quiries) were in such a wretched condition, that the putrid fever had lately 
 raged there, and exposed the inhabitants of the town to the danger of its infec- 
 tion. Here his long journey of three months terminated on the 30th of May.* 
 
 Probably spending the interval at Bristol Hot Wells, Mr. Howard resumed 
 his western tour at Bodmin, on the 25th of June, where the gaol was neither so 
 clean, nor in such order as at his former visits, from the multiplicity of its keeper's 
 avocations, nor was the chaplain's curate very attentive to his duty. On board 
 the hulks, at Plymouth, the convicts were too much crowded, and still living 
 in idleness. One ingenious man had made an inkstand out of a bone of his 
 meat, which Mr. Howard purchased of him, but his knife was now taken from 
 him, so that he should not work any more. Some of them had Bibles in their 
 hands, but there was neither chaplain nor religious service here, and several of 
 their keepers, by their profanity, set them but a bad example.f The bridewell 
 for the county of Somerset, at Taunton, was dirty and neglected, and it had now 
 no chaplain at all, whilst the chapel, being used for the confinement of the dirtiest 
 of the prisoners, was in a condition as bad as a pig-stye. That, in the other 
 bridewell, at Shepton Mallet, was made into a lodging room for women prison- 
 ers, of whom six, who paid the keeper two shillings a-week for part of a 
 bed, had the privilege of being in his house, and of drinking and smoking in 
 his room : at neither place had they any employment. At Ilchester, a new 
 gaol for the county was nearly finished, but there were four rings fixed in the 
 floor of each cell, which could be for no other purpose than the chaining down 
 prisoners in their solitary confinement. The cells, rooms, and passages, in the 
 new county bridewell at Sherborn, in Dorsetshire, were close and confined, and 
 prisoners committed to hard labor, were locked up in solitary cells, from which 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 213, 215; 183, 4, 9, 190. fib. 188; 216, 
 
549 
 
 they were let out but for one hour a day — a favorite, though somewhat singu- 
 lar method with the magistrates for curing prisoners of their habits of idleness. 
 At Winchester, he visited with pleasure, a new and spacious county gaol with four 
 courts, having a pump in each, a chapel, and an infirmary. The prison was 
 kept very clean, and constantly inspected by a worthy nobleman, residing in the 
 city. The convicts on board the hulks, at Gosport, were clean, and had a 
 healthy and placid look, more than half of them being employed on land in 
 moving mould, having irons on both legs, and a chain between them. Accomo- 
 dations were now preparing for their dining on shore, instead of returning to 
 their vessels, as at Woolwich. This judicious regulation was already effected 
 at Portsmouth, where the greater part of the convicts were at work upon a 
 new fort, some as masons, others as bricklayers, but most as mere laborers. Their 
 bread and beer were good, but they complained sadly of their meat, which was lean, 
 full of bones, and not half the proper allowance. In Sussex, the well-conducted 
 gaol at Horsham was without an infirmary, but attention to cleanliness and order 
 had hitherto prevented the want of it. The bridewell for the county of Berks, 
 at Reading, was a new prison, consisting of six close cells for the refractory, eight 
 solitary cells, and six wards for prisoners, permitted to be together. Some of 
 those confined alone, were sentenced for a year, " a severe confinement," ob- 
 serves their compassionate visitor, " to be so long in solitude, unemployed, in 
 nauseous cells, and without fire in winter." But, as very erroneous impressions 
 are still abroad of Mr. Howard's sentiments upon this subject, it is but justice to 
 his memory, that he should be permitted to state for himself his views of the 
 uses and abuses of a species of prison discipline, for which, when confined within 
 its proper limits, he was a staunch advocate, as he does in the following note upon 
 this passage : — " I wish all prisoners to have separate rooms; for hours of thought- 
 fulness and reflection are necessary. — I am glad to take this occasion of making 
 some remarks on solitary confinement. The intention of this, I mean by day as 
 well as by night, is either to reclaim the most atrocious and daring criminals ; 
 
550 
 
 to punish the refractory for crimes committed in prison ; or to make a strong 
 impression, in a short time, upon thoughtless and irregular young persons, as 
 faulty apprentices, and the like. It should, therefore, be considered by those 
 who are ready to commit, for a long term, petty offenders to absolute solitude, that 
 such a state is more than human nature can bear, without the hazard of dis- 
 traction or despair ; that it is repugnant to the Act which orders all persons in 
 houses of correction, to work ; and that for want of some employment in the 
 day (as in several houses of correction), health is injured, and a habit of idleness 
 or inability to labour in future, is in danger of being acquired. The beneficial 
 effects on the mind, of such a punishment, are speedy, proceeding from the horror 
 of a vicious person left entirely to his own reflections. This may wear off by long 
 continuance, and a sullen insensibility may succeed." The county gaol here was 
 clean and quiet ; Lord Craven and other of the magistrates visiting both it and 
 the bridewell, and entering their reports, every month. The gaoler informed 
 his visitor, upon the 12th of July, 1788, that of the eleven convicts whom he car- 
 ried, on the 1st of April in the preceding year, to the hulks at Portsmouth, three 
 only were alive. " I have observed," remarks Mr. Howard, on this circum- 
 stance, " that convicts from the country often pine away and die without any 
 apparent sign of illness; and that of equal numbers, from the country and from 
 Newgate, three or four of the former die for one of the latter." At Windsor 
 Castle, the old keeper had been murdered by his prisoners in his tap-room, and 
 the prison had been some time discontinued, though it was now used again. In 
 the gaol for the county of Kent, at Maidstone, several good alterations had been 
 made, but others were still wanting, the infirmary and many of the rooms being 
 small and close, so that, two years since, twenty had died of the gaol fever. 
 The irons here were very light, in consequence of which the prisoners were able 
 to use sufficient exercise. At Rochester, the windows of the city gaol were 
 towards the street, and its keeper informed Mr. Howard that the liberality of 
 the public was so great, that he could not keep his prisoners sober, some persons 
 
551 
 
 having even desired to be confined there, merely that they might have the 
 liberty of the begging grate.* 
 
 On the 2d of August our Philanthropist left Cardington upon a short circuit 
 through some of the midland counties, which occupied him about a week, and ex- 
 tended as far as Sheffield, in whose prison for debtors, he found that people were 
 sometimes confined for a debt of but six-pence and the costs. " I have often 
 wished," he observes, and the wish is well worthy the attentive consideration 
 of the legislature " that in all bills for small debts, there was a clause to prohibit 
 arrests for debts contracted in public-houses." In Huntingdonshire the county 
 gaol was still without a chaplain, though its visitor hoped, from the books which 
 the prisoners were reading, that some of them were seriously disposed. Many 
 alterations were making here, yet being originally built upon a bad plan, it 
 never could be made a convenient prison, as was the case also with a bridewell 
 newly erected here, in a very low situation. At St. Alban's he found the liber- 
 ty-gaol much improved, but the other two were in their usually wretched situa- 
 tion ; in which it would appear, from the minute inquiries into the condition of 
 these and some other of our English prisons, recently instituted by the humanity 
 and public spirit of Mr. Buxton, they are still suffered to remain/) - 
 
 Spending the latter part of the month of August and the beginning of 
 September in London, Mr. Howard re-inspected the prisons of the metropolis 
 and its neighbourhood, and digested, with the same assistance that he had 
 before received, the result of his recent visits, for publication. In Newgate he 
 found that no alteration had been made, nearly 150 women being crowded 
 together in three or four rooms, many young creatures with old and hardened 
 offenders, as was the case also on the men's side, with many boys of twelve and 
 fourteen years of age, some of whom were almost naked. The men's infirmary 
 
 * Account of Lazaretios, ]>. 145, 6, 8, 9 ; 170; 218. 
 
 t lb. p. 143; 130; 151 ; 196. Buxton on Prisons, p. 30. 
 
552 
 
 contained but seven bedsteads ; therefore, as there were twenty sick, some of them, 
 though without cloathes, and in a most wretched condition from their sores, lay 
 upon the floor covered only with a rug. In his present visit he was accompanied 
 by Mr. (now Sir William) Curtis, from whose activity and zeal as sheriff, he 
 prognosticated, and prognosticated truly, that something would be done for the 
 miserable objects left by his predecessors. Both the compters were in a far 
 better condition than they before had been, as since he had first directed 
 the public attention to the state of prisons, they were regularly visited by 
 the sheriffs, and by their liberal contributions, and that of other benevolent per- 
 sons, the debtors confined there, lived better than many industrious tradesmen : 
 but little attention was as yet paid, however, either to the separation of pri- 
 soners, or to their morals.* 
 
 It was on the 8th of September that Mr. Howard left London on a short 
 tour into Norfolk, where his principal object was the inspection of the newly- 
 erected bridewell at Wymondham, which he found to be a convenient structure, 
 within whose walls ample provision was made for keeping its prisoners at work 
 at a hemp manufactory, they having, for their own use, three-fourths of their 
 earnings, and the keeper the other. Their diet was, however, too scanty, and 
 they were allowed nothing but water to drink. Mr. Howard has been the 
 more particular in his account of this prison, because it afforded one of the 
 best examples he had anywhere met with of the proper management of a house 
 of correction, so as to render it, what it ought to be, a place of reformation for 
 the idle and the dissolute. It was to the unremitted attention of a neigh- 
 bouring magistrate, Sir Thomas Beevor, excited by our Philanthropist's pathetic, 
 though faithful, representation of its former condition, that the public was in- 
 debted for the improvement of this house, and for the strict execution of its 
 salutary regulations. A near relative of his, the Rev. Mr. Beevor, was equally 
 exemplary in the discharge of the duties of a chaplain, which he had voluntarily 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 124 — 6. 
 
553 
 
 taken upon himself. The other bridewells of the county, than which, in their for- 
 mer state, he had never seen worse, Mr. Howard understood to be upon the same 
 improved plan. He did not, however, visit them, as during his latter tours of re- 
 inspection, he omitted also many other county bridewells, the attention of the 
 magistracy having recently been so generally directed to their improvement as to 
 render his examining them unnecessary, county gaols and hospitals being the prin- 
 cipal objects which he now had in view.* On his return to London he com- 
 pleted his inspection of the metropolitan prisons, which presented little further 
 requiring particular notice. At Bridewell the men were in irons, from the 
 prison not being sufficiently strong for their confinement : their chief em- 
 ployment was a new and very appropriate one of making ropes. A great 
 part of the prison at the Savoy having been burnt down in the preceding 
 February, its prisoners, in number forty-five, were at night crowded into 
 two rooms, which, like the rest of the gaol, were very dirty. Some of them 
 were without shirt, shoes, or stockings ; indeed almost naked. Several pri- 
 soners had died here in the course of the last spring, as Mr. Howard now 
 predicted that many more would in the ensuing one, if greater attention 
 was not paid to them. He here saw six of the guards in the black-hole, a 
 close and very offensive room, in which they were confined for twenty- 
 four, or forty-eight hours, for drunkenness, contempt or neglect of duty, and 
 other similar breaches of military law.f From the 17th to the 26th of Sep- 
 tember he was closely occupied in examining the principal hospitals of this 
 metropolis, of whose condition he gives a minute account. The chief de- 
 fects of a more general nature, which he pointed out, are those of the se- 
 curities and fees required on admission bearing hard on the poor ; the want 
 of proper inspection in the governors; of clerical assistance to the sick; of 
 rooms for convalescents ; and of a due attention to cleanliness, and to the puri- 
 fication of the wards, from the prejudices absurdly entertained against the wash- 
 ing of floors, and the admission of fresh air. To these he adds the neglect of 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 152,3; H9.- Gent. Mag. Vol. LV11. Part I. p. 481. t lb. p. 127,8. 
 
 4b 
 
554 
 
 bathing, from its giving too much trouble to the attendants ; the too free 
 introduction of beer from the ale-houses ; and the preference given to governors 
 in furnishing food and necessaries to the house, in which he never would suffer 
 them, directly or indirectly, to be concerned. He closes his observations upon 
 the subject by some hints for the proper construction and regulation of such 
 institutions, from which those who are engaged in their erection, or manage- 
 ment may derive much useful information.* 
 
 It was whilst he was pursuing this useful investigation that he wrote a letter 
 to his bailiff, who had the chief management of his concerns at Cardington, 
 from which the following is an extract : — 
 
 "John Prole, 
 
 " I made a good meal I bless God from the nice bread you sent 
 to day ; you did not receive my Letter or you would have sent me some 
 sweetmeats, next time will do, as I cannot leave town till friday or Saturday 
 night in the next Week. But I have a very important business now on my 
 hands, the examination of all the London Hospitals, the public know it, and 
 look for my free thoughts on those Institutions so that I cannot have my 
 tho u diverted from my Object by coming to Card". 
 
 " I will send money to settle with Mr. Morgan, &c. As when I now leave 
 
 Lond n to go to Warrington I will not owe one Guinea there ******. 
 
 " As there is to be no further rates for the poor, I can have no object" to 
 
 Miss W continuing another 3 yrs, for if she marries or leaves it, all the furniture 
 
 belongs to the Parish, and I am try* to persuade Mr. W**** to make over 
 
 the build 63 in fee to the parish : this you will acquaint Mr. Smith. 1 am 
 
 trying to get a School house erected but have not yet succeeded ; I cannot do 
 it at present — 600 1. I have already paid for Paper engravings &c. yet should 
 it please God I live some few years longer, I will live in a Cottage sooner than 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 131 — 142. 
 
555 
 
 not accomplish my plan. I still exult in free and vigorous spirits and am not 
 afraid to undertake any task. 
 
 " I do go abroad again, I think it my duty and a call of providence, and I 
 durst not go back ; I will spend some weeks at Card", when my publicat" is 
 finished ; my Mind will be at ease and rest, and perhaps the only rest on this 
 side the grave ; for my time of zeal and activity is soon passing away. 
 
 " Respects to friends at Card 11 . I shall write from Warrington for my horse 
 I think just before Xmas, thank your wife for her kind care and attention to my 
 house. The widow Thompson may as well continue there, she will have her 
 firing and things in the Garden and Cheese, safe the sage Cheese. 
 
 " Yrs J. Howard." 
 
 At the time he had proposed, about the 9th or 10th of October, Mr. Howard 
 left London for Warrington, where, for sixteen weeks, he was closely occupied 
 in superintending the printing of the result of his philanthropic tours during 
 the last three years. In the work of preparation he was still principally in- 
 debted to the kind co-operation of Dr. Aikin, though in that of correction 
 he frequently consulted both Dr. Enfield and Mr. Bealey, the Arian minister 
 in that town ; the latter of whom, upon this occasion, rendered him much 
 assistance. When he brought the proof-sheets to this gentleman, to ask 
 his opinion upon any point of which he was doubtful, if he found him at his 
 meals he never partook with him, but would frequently say, when he came into 
 the room, " Now, Sir, I have just half an hour to spare, go on with what you 
 are about, and we will talk together." Though the weather at this time was 
 intensely cold, he was always up, and at work before three o'clock in the morn- 
 ing, taking his breakfast, which his servant had laid ready for him over night, 
 at about six, that he might be dressed, and in the printing-office by eight. 
 When there, he kept the men close to work by his presence, but he rewarded 
 them most bountifully for their diligence, as indeed he always did every one 
 who rendered him the slightest assistance, so that during the progress of his 
 
 4 b2 
 
556 
 
 various works through the press at Warrington, the fame of his liberality 
 was so widely spread in the town, that he always found plenty of hands ready 
 to offer him their services. The men at the printing-office never needed, 
 therefore, to hesitate employing people in bringing the paper sent from 
 London into the warehouse ; in packing up the books when printed ; or in 
 conveying them to the inn, or wharf whence they were to be forwarded, 
 as, upon these occasions, he always paid the assistants they called in 
 about twice as much as any other person would have done. Yet in thus 
 liberally recompensing the lower classes of society for their labor, there 
 was this honorable peculiarity in his conduct, that he never employed, 
 or presented with a gratuity, a second time, any one from whose lips an oath 
 or profane expression was ever known to proceed. Of this habit a curious 
 anecdote has been related to me by Mr. Morris, the pressman, chiefly en- 
 gaged upon his works. Standing one day near the door of the printing- 
 office, he heard some dreadful volleys of oaths and curses discharged from a 
 public-house opposite, and whilst buttoning his pockets up before he went into 
 the street, he said to the workmen who were near him, " I always do this 
 whenever I hear men swear ; as I think that any one who can take God's name 
 in vain, can steal, or do any thing that is bad." In other respects, his mode of 
 passing his time whilst at Warrington, at this time, differed little, if at all, 
 from that which he had adopted on former occasions. His chief associations 
 were still with the Arians, the Unitarians, and the members of his favorite 
 religious sect, the Society of Friends. It was when passing a leisure hour in 
 the evening with one of the latter most respectable community and his 
 daughter, that one of their body, now an eminent merchant in Liverpool, 
 coming into the room, made a very singular mistake by taking him for a 
 dancing-master, though, in truth, the frequency of his visits to the continent had 
 given him much the air and appearance of a foreigner, and rendered so extra- 
 ordinary a metamorphose of character on the part of this plain friend not very 
 unnatural. We may be assured, however, that it was with no small pleasure, that, 
 
551 
 
 instead of reproving his young female acquaintance for the unseemly company 
 she kept, and the vain amusement to which she appeared to addict herself, he 
 shook by the hand the benefactor of the world, as she introduced her compa- 
 nion to him as John Howard— a name then held in higher honor, and more 
 general esteem than that of any other living being the universe could produce. 
 Notwithstanding the inclemency of the season, he still took his daily walks 
 during the hour that the printers were at their dinner ; and, in the course of 
 them, he would enter into very free and familiar conversation with any persons 
 he might meet with in his way, to whom he could either impart useful infor- 
 mation, or give good advice, or who were likely to increase, in any degree, his 
 own stock of knowledge. On these, as on most other occasions, he was particu- 
 larly pleased with the company of children, with whom he would talk in the most 
 engaging, yet instructive manner. The son of the Independent minister at War- 
 rington (the Rev. Mr. Kenworthy), then a child at school, amongst others, was 
 one day overtaken by him in his walks ; and after he had put a few questions 
 to ascertain the extent of his knowledge of the history and doctrines of the 
 Bible, Mr. Howard gave him, as it was his frequent custom in such cases to do, 
 a shilling for his pertinent answers. And whilst conducting himself towards 
 those amongst whom for a short period his lot was cast, he was not neglectful 
 of the duties of self-examination and the cultivation of vital godliness in his 
 own heart, as the following reflections, maxims, and resolutions, entered, at 
 various times in his diary, during his continuance at Warrington, abundantly 
 evince. 
 
 " 1789. Misery is always an Object of Compassion, and the Word of God 
 saith, that to the miserable, Compassion should be shewn. 
 
 " Generosity and self-command are the striking Aspects of Benevolence. 
 " Courage and Humanity are inseparable Friends. 
 
 " God will accept I trust my sincere intentions, tho' I effect nothing. — 
 " A Traveller should have Temperance, Prudence, and Fortitude, a firmness 
 
558 
 
 of mind to bear suffering and meet dangers undaunted — these are necessary for 
 the active scenes of Life, and maintenance of the Rights of others, for the 
 truest pleasures arise from extencive Benevolence — Dejection and dispair, are 
 the consequence of pusalinimity. — 
 
 " My deliberations are more swayed by what I myself think right, than by 
 what is likely to be thought Right by others. — 
 
 " A fearless temper and an open Heart, are seldom strictly allied to Prudence. 
 
 " Christ has made Poverty and meaness, joined with Holiness, to be a state 
 of Dignity. — 
 
 " It has been said, l that the Torch of Philanthropy has been conveyed by 
 Howard.' — May he not hope in that God whose Arm is not shortened, that He 
 will spread it to the Eastern Nations. He worketh by the weakest of all In- 
 struments, to Him to him alone be all the Glory. — God forbid that / should 
 glory, save in the Cross of Christ. — 
 
 " The Enthusiasm of even a Mistaken Principal warms the mind, and sets it 
 above the fear of death, which in our cooler moments, if we really think of it, 
 is at least very awefull ; and shall a mistaken Principal, do more than calm rea- 
 son and reflection. Oh ! surely No — yet there is no rational Principal by 
 which a man can die contented, but a Trust in the Mercy of God, thro' the 
 merits of Jesus Christ. 
 
 " It has been observed one has a strange Propencity to fix upon some point 
 of time from whence a better course of life may begin, — May I not hope, do I 
 not earnestly beg of God, that his Grace may be sufficient for me, and his 
 strength perfected in my weakness — that I may, from this Moment, walk 
 with God, adorn my Christian character, more and more serious, watchful, 
 humble, and by the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, made Partaker 
 of the divine Nature, thus formed in me the Hope of Glory. — 
 
 " Warrington, 30 th Jan. 1789. 
 
 " Employ the time of every Sunday in sacred Study and in Books, in which 
 the spirit of Christianity, Piety, and Morality prevail." 
 
559 
 
 Surely it is not possible to read these extracts from the private meditations 
 of this extraordinary man, without receiving as strong impressions of the fervor 
 of his piety, and the rapid advances he was making in every Christian grace, in 
 which he was soon to be perfected in heaven, as the world has hitherto most 
 correctly imbibed of the benevolence of his disposition, and the boundless ex- 
 tent of his philanthropy. 
 
 It was on or about the 20th of February, 1789, that the printing of the work 
 which gave to the public the result of Mr. Howard's late journeys of humanity, 
 was completed, as appears from a note written to his friend Dr. Lettsom, on that 
 day, accompanying some of the first copies of the book, as presents to himself, the 
 Duke of Portland, and some other of his friends. The title of that work is " An 
 Account of the principal Lazarettos in Europe ; with various Papers relative 
 to the Plague : together with further Observations on some Foreign Prisons 
 and Hospitals ; and additional remarks in the present State of those in Great 
 Britain and Ireland. By John Howai'd, F. R. S." The motto which it bears 
 upon its title page is this appropriate text of scripture, " O let the sorrowful sigh- 
 ing of the Prisoners come before thee;'''' its author having been led to its adop- 
 tion by the effect which he observed it to produce upon the minds of several 
 of this unhappy class of beings, when read in the course of the daily Psalms, 
 on his attendance at public worship in the chapel of Lancaster castle.* At 
 the back of that title page is also printed a sentence from Cicero, scarcely 
 less descriptive of the great object of his labors, " Nihil est tarn regium, tarn 
 liberate, tamque munificitm, quam opem ferre supplicibus, excitare afflictos, dare 
 salutem, liberare periculis homines." Besides the minute account of the va- 
 rious lazarettos, hospitals, and prisons visited during his journeys at home and 
 abroad in the years 1785, 6, 7, 8, the more interesting particulars of which 
 have already been detailed in these memoirs, the second section of this 
 work consists of a very judicious plan for a lazaretto, which its author 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 201. 
 
560 
 
 was very anxious to have erected in England, as well from its importance 
 in a commercial point of view, as from its tendency to prevent the re-entrance 
 there of that most dreadful of all contagions with which, as the minister of 
 heaven's wrath, our country has, in her turn, been visited. To that plan he 
 has appended a sketch of the regulations to be adopted in its government, 
 characterized by his usual discrimination and benevolence. The third sec- 
 tion contains the result of his inquiries concerning the plague, having regu- 
 larly submitted the queries, with which his medical friends in England had 
 furnished him, to the principal physicians at Marseilles, Leghorn, Malta, Venice, 
 Trieste,and Smyrna, accompanying his application to each of them with a regular 
 consulting fee. Their answers were reduced to a methodical arrangement bv 
 Dr. Aikin, who also translated and abridged the regulations for the prevention 
 of the spread of pestilential contagions, drawn up, at the desire of the court of 
 Russia, by the first physician to the health-office at Venice ; a relation of the 
 ravages of the plague at Spalato in 1784 5 and the order issued upon that 
 occasion by the proveditor-general of Dalmatia and Albania. It is doubtless 
 also to his professional skill that we are indebted for the very valuable remarks 
 by which these papers are accompanied, on the fatal errors into which medical 
 men of high repute have fallen, whilst contending in support of a favorite hypo- 
 thesis, in opposition to the fearful lessons which experience has so often read them, 
 that the plague is not contagious, — an error to which, in the beginning of the last 
 century, 43,000 of the inhabitants of Marseilles were the hapless victims. At the 
 close of his account of the situation of our English prisons, he has reprinted the 
 general heads of regulation for penitentiary-houses, which he introduced into the 
 last of his two appendices to his former work on prisons, accompanying it, in the 
 present instance, by some most judicious observations on the importance of such 
 establishments, in preventing the needless waste of blood which had hitherto 
 disgraced, and, alas! though to a much less extent, still disgraces the admini- 
 stration of criminal jurisprudence in Great Britain ; and in adopting, in lieu of 
 the sanguinary system of excision which our legislators have pursued with hut 
 
.561 
 
 too unwearied a constancy — that plan of reforming the morals of delinquents by 
 an attempering of justice with mercy — of firmness with kindness, which had been 
 more successfully resorted to by many of the continental nations. But to produce 
 this reformation, he was convinced of the necessity of a thorough alteration in the 
 whole system of constructing prisons, and of managing the prisoners and convicts 
 they were destined to contain, which had hitherto been followed with such ruin- 
 ous effect in England ; and that could only be done by the continued attention 
 of parliament to this momentous branch of national police, and by the unwearied 
 vigilance of magistrates in superintending the execution of such regulations as 
 the wisdom of the legislature might enact. Drunkenness he justly considered to 
 be the root of all the evils which were so alarmingly prevalent in our gaols, and 
 he, therefore, entertained no hopes of an effectual reform ever being introduced 
 within their walls, until every temptation to the commission of this vice was com- 
 pletely removed. In this respect, he could observe no medium of indulgence to 
 particular classes of prisoners, without ruin to his whole design. He therefore pre- 
 pared a draught of a bill absolutely prohibiting the introduction into our gaols of 
 any kind of liquor, except milk, whey, butter-milk, and water, contending with 
 confidence that the health and real comfort of their prisoners would be promoted 
 by such a measure. " After all, however," observes Dr. Aikin,* in his remarks 
 upon Mr. Howard's proposed alterations in the diet of persons under confinement, 
 debtors as well as criminals, — for his plan was to extend to all, though he earnestly 
 wished that, of the former class, none but the dishonest and the fraudulent should 
 ever be placed in a situation which should subject them to its restraints, — " many 
 will suppose, that in his feelings, both with respect to these privations, and to 
 his proposed indulgences of tea, and other vegetable articles, he was in some 
 measui-e under the influence of his own peculiar habits of life ; so natural is it 
 for our judgment of particulars to be warped, when our general principles 
 remain fixed and unaltered. The draught of a bill will, I presume, appear 
 in most respects, excellent ; and the great purpose of preserving sobriety in 
 gaols, cannot, surely, be too much insisted on." 
 
 * P. 179,180. 
 4 c 
 
562 
 
 By way of appendix to his work, Mr. Howard imprinted the regulations for 
 prisoners of war in England, given in the last edition of his State of Prisons, 
 and added a variety of curious and useful tables connected with the subject of 
 his inquiries, amongst which was one of the number of prisoners in the gaols 
 he had visited in England and Ireland, in the years 1777, 8, from which it 
 appears that these wretched abodes of misery and crime at one time incarcerated 
 no less than 9,056 individuals. He also illustrated it by two-and-twenty plates, 
 most of them being picturesque and highly-finished views, or very accurate 
 plans, of the lazarettos and hospitals he had seen abroad, many of them 
 taken under his own eye by a young Italian artist whom he met with in his 
 travels, and who, for a few sequins, cheerfully gave him the assistance of his 
 pencil, his sketches being afterwards very admirably engraved by some of the 
 first artists in Holland. But besides these elegant, as well as useful embellish- 
 ments, he was at the expence of having re-engraved for its use, on a very 
 large sheet, the table published by Sir S. T. Jansen, in 1772, of the number of 
 offenders sentenced to death for their crimes at the Old Bailey, for the twenty- 
 three years preceding its publication : that curious and authentic document 
 having become extremely scarce, whilst the official records from which it was 
 compiled had been destroyed in the riots of the No-Popery mob of 1780. In 
 concluding is account of the labors of benevolence in which for the last three 
 years his time had been principally occupied, he suggests a plan in connection 
 with them, which it was perfectly characteristic of his attention to the comfort 
 of his fellow-creatures of every class to have devised, — in a provision for the 
 widows and children of every faithful and attentive gaoler who should die in 
 that important office. " Should the plan take place," he adds, with his wonted 
 combination of the most unbounded philanthropy, with the most genuine humi- 
 lity, " during my life, of establishing a permanent charity, under some such title 
 as that at Philadelphia, viz. A society for alleviating the miseries of public pri- 
 sons, and annuities be engrafted thereupon for the abovementioned purpose, 
 I would most readily stand at the bottom of a page as a subscriber of 500/. ; 
 or if such a society shall be constituted within three years after my death, this 
 
563 
 
 sum shall he paid out of my estate." And with this pledge of his concern for 
 the great object of his public labors through life, extending beyond the grave, 
 he closes the last work which he himself was permitted to present to the world, 
 with the exception of a translation of the penal code of the Grand Duke of 
 Tuscany, which he superintended through the press, ere he left Warrington, 
 never to return to it again. The greater part of the impression of that little 
 pamphlet he distributed amongst the heads of the law, and other persons of 
 rank and influence, both in and out of parliament, to many of whom, as to the 
 circle of his private friends, he at the same time, with his usual liberality, pre- 
 sented copies of his new work on Lazarettos, which he published at so low a 
 price as to give its purchasers the whole of the plates by which it was illus- 
 trated gratis ; and so eager were the buyers of books to share in this liberal 
 boon, that all the copies were bought up in a very short time after its 
 appearance. 
 
 There are a few circumstances in the history of Mr. Howard's public life 
 and labors during the period which this chapter of its memoirs embraces, which 
 yet remain to be noticed. The mode of travelling which he pursued in England 
 was the same as he had adopted on his former journeys, and his diet was 
 at least equally abstemious, generally consisting, for the whole day, of two penny 
 rolls, with some butter, cheese, or sweetmeats, a pint of milk, five or six cups 
 of tea, with a roasted apple just before he retired to bed. To tea, in particular, 
 he was always remarkably partial, conceiving it to be a great exhilirator of the 
 spirits ; whilst, contrary to the general opinion, he considered green more con- 
 ducive to health than black, always providing himself with a sufficient quantity 
 of it to last him during his various journeys abroad, and drinking it freely, with- 
 out experiencing any of those deleterious effects on the nervous system which 
 are generally, I know not how truly, attributed to the use of it. The singula- 
 rity of his mode of living contributed, perhaps, in some, though in a very small 
 degree, with the correct estimate he set upon the value of his time, to induce 
 
 4 c 2 
 
564 
 
 him to decline most of the invitations to dinner, and other parties, which, in the 
 course of his travels, he was in the constant habit of receiving. One instance 
 of his departure from his general rule, has, however, been communicated to me 
 on the authority of the late Rev. Mr. Bealey, of Warrington, which, as it may 
 serve to illustrate one of the harmless peculiarities of his character, will be worth 
 relating here. A nobleman in Ireland importunately entreated the honor of his 
 company at dinner, and he, at length, accepted the invitation, on the express 
 condition, that the dinner should consist of nothing but potatoes. When intro- 
 duced to the table, he accordingly found it spread with nineteen dishes of that 
 useful vegetable, each cooked in a different manner. Such an unexpected display 
 of ingenuity caused him, however, to regret the condition he had imposed, 
 thinking that he should have given less trouble to his noble host and hostess, and 
 to their servants, had he left them to prepare a dinner in their own way. 
 From the same respectable quarter I have been furnished with a proof of 
 his inflexible integrity, as exhibited during one of the later of his visits to 
 this sister kingdom. In the course of his inquiries into the abuses to whose 
 correction the chief energies of his life were devoted, it was his inflexible 
 rule never to accept of a present, whatever might be the pretence under which 
 it was offered. On detecting some very gross mismanagement in a prison in 
 Ireland, the nobleman under whose hereditary jurisdiction it was placed, learn- 
 ing the name of the stranger who had visited it, and alarmed lest the particulars 
 of the wretched condition in which he found it should be made public, in order to 
 conciliate his favor, pressed upon his acceptance a very valuable jewel, ostensibly 
 as a token of his esteem for his extensive and unremitted exertions in the cause of 
 humanity. That token, however, Mr. Howard firmly refused to receive at 
 his hands ; but on obtaining from him a solemn promise that the abuses which 
 he minutely pointed out to his attention should forthwith be corrected ; and finding 
 on a subsequent visit to the prison in question that they were so, he suppressed 
 the representation it was his intention to have given, with his wonted faithfulness 
 to the public ; his sole object in detailing the particulars of his various visits to 
 
565 
 
 places of a similar description being, the improvement of their condition, with- 
 out the needless exposure of their former mismanagement, or rather of the 
 individuals whose neglect had been the occasion of it. It was probably to this 
 very instance of his forbearance that a letter from the late Rev. Mr. Kingsbury 
 refers, in relating some of the circumstances of one of Mr. Howard's prison 
 visits, communicated to the writer, but not noticed in any of his own publications. 
 On visiting the gaol of a town which Mr. Kingsbury declines naming, its philan- 
 thropic inspector found twelve prisoners confined in one room, which they used 
 for all occasions. They looked, as we might naturally suppose they would do, very 
 wretchedly, and the effluvia which proceeded from their persons and their habi- 
 tation was of the most nauseous and unpleasant description. They were all of them 
 ill, but as soon as he had cast his eyes upon them, and surveyed their miserable 
 residence, he was perfectly informed of the nature of their malady — that thev 
 were perishing from inattention, and poisoned with filth. On making a minute 
 inquiry into their treatment, he learnt that they had received no other food 
 than a little weak broth, without bread, for the last twenty-four hours, and 
 was assured also that the same meagre allowance had been their only fare for 
 the day and night preceding. This was enough to satisfy him that without 
 immediate interposition on their behalf, these unfortunate beings must inevita- 
 bly be starved to death ; and learning from the gaoler, when he remonstrated 
 with him upon their deplorable condition, that there was no allowance for 
 sufficient food, he made such a representation to his superiors, as caused this 
 mischief to be instantly redressed. But such also was the filth of this horrible 
 place of their confinement, that he assured the friend upon whose authority 
 this anecdote is given to the world, that in measuring its dimensions he care- 
 fully pinned his cloathes about his body, lest he should be contaminated by a 
 contact with the filthy walls, and though, on returning to his inn, he completely 
 washed himself from head to foot, and bathed his whole body with vinegar, 
 he added, that his fingers retained, for some time, the insufferably foetid smell 
 of the scene of wretchedness and disease from which he had just escaped. 
 
.566 
 
 That scene was the more distressing to him, not only from his particular love 
 of cleanliness in his own person, but from the conviction he felt, and fre- 
 quently expresses in his works, that nothing could more powerfully conduce 
 to the health and comfort of prisoners, than an habitual attention to this object 
 in their persons, and the places in which they are confined. It was this well- 
 founded impression that made him insist so frequently and so urgently on 
 the great importance of furnishing our gaols with a plentiful supply of water. 
 " He never approached a prison," says his friend Dr. Lettsom, in one of the 
 letters which his own kindred spirit induced him some years since to publish in a 
 periodical journal on the regulation of places of confinement, " without enquiring, 
 ' Is it well supplied with good water ?' He informed me of an anecdote, in some 
 measure connected with this idea. He went to Litchfield, with a view of ex- 
 amining the prison there ; but previously presented himself at the habitation of 
 the Rev. Mr. Seward, to whom he was then a stranger. The celebrated 
 Poetess, the amiable daughter of the Clergyman, received the visitor till the 
 return of her worthy parent, who had taken an excursion into the city. 
 Intelligent minds soon coalesce in rational conversation; and the enquiries of 
 Howard were so appropriate and minute respecting the prison, and particularly 
 as to the convenience of water, that the lady, soon suspecting the character of 
 this illustrious visitor, quickly asked, ' Are you not Mr. Howard, to whom I 
 have the honor of addressing myself ?' "* 
 
 It was during the last visit he ever paid to Ireland that this benevolent being 
 exhibited an instance of the generosity of his character, and the disinterestedness 
 of his labors, which,atthe same time, afforded aproof of his deep concern in every 
 thing connected with the welfare of that country, one of whose charitable institu- 
 tions was upon this occasion unhappily deprived, by an unforeseen accident, of the 
 liberal assistance he had intended to afford it. During his residence in Dublin, in 
 March 1788, he executed an authority (since published in the Gentleman's Ma- 
 gazine|) to one of the most eminent booksellers in that city, by which he was 
 * Gent. Mag. Vol. LXXIV. Part I. p. 3, 4. f Vol. LX. Part II. p. 685. 
 
661 
 
 empowered to sell a large case of his first work on Prisons, and of his Account of 
 the Bastille, at the original publication price; and to pay over the amount, after 
 deducting the carriage, freight, and commission, to the treasurer of Mercer's 
 Hospital, for the use of that excellent and greatly-improved institution. The 
 books, however, having unfortunately been shipped on board a vessel which 
 was wrecked off Wicklow-head, this generous gift never reached the place 
 of its destination, and could not therefore be appropriated to the purpose 
 for which it was so munificently bestowed. This loss was the more to be 
 regretted as it was the means of preventing the general diffusion of the 
 important information he had obtained, at so much cost and labor, in the 
 hope of procuring that thorough reformation in prison discipline, which no 
 country stood more in need of than that, amongst whose more opulent inha- 
 bitants he was desirous of rendering the interests of one of its favorite cha- 
 rities a means of spreading his views upon this important subject more 
 extensively abroad. Yet it was not merely in pointing out defects, or 
 in suggesting improvements in the management of our gaols, that this 
 great and good man showed himself the prisoner's friend ; for he seldom 
 visited any of their habitations of misery and woe without leaving behind 
 him some substantial token of his commiseration for the wretched condition 
 to which, by their folly or their crimes, their inmates were reduced. Towards 
 persons confined for trifling debts, or unjustly detained in custody for their 
 fees, he frequently exercised a liberality, which, considering the comparatively 
 narrow limits of his means, should make our rich ones blush for their want of 
 attention to such of their suffering fellow-creatures, as are sick and in prison, 
 aw} they visit them not. " I have often seen him come to his lodgings," says 
 the journal of his attendant on most of his tours, " in such spirits and joy, when 
 he would say to me, ' I have made a poor woman happy ; I have sent her 
 husband home to her and her children.' He would often tell me, too, of such 
 and such a man being kept in prison for his fees, which he had paid, and sent 
 the poor man to his family and home." Kindness like this could not fail to 
 
568 
 
 beget kindness and gratitude in return ; and it must be pleasing to every 
 lover of his species, to be informed, that even in its lowest and most 
 degraded state, Mr. Howard found human nature not so utterly depraved, 
 but that it could venerate the motives, and respect the person of one, 
 the chief business of whose life it was to succour, to relieve, and to console the 
 most wretched and outcast of his race. He accordingly informs us, in the last 
 work he ever published, that in all his visits to various gaols in this and other 
 kingdoms, he never received any insult either from the keepers or prisoners, 
 nor ever lost any thing there, except that in one of them a handkerchief 
 disappeared from his pocket, which, on a subsequent visit, was restored 
 to him by a prisoner, who, as he presented it, said, that he believed he had 
 dropped it when he last was there.* It is worthy also of notice, that though 
 he very frequently travelled by night as well as day, both in his own country 
 and in some of the wildest and least cultivated regions of Europe, in an age when 
 depredations on the highway were of as frequent, as, with us, they are now of rare 
 occurrence, he never was attacked by a robber, or met with any molestation on 
 his way.f Once, indeed, and once only, was he a sufferer from that disposition 
 to pilfering which will always prevail, to a certain extent, wherever a large mass 
 of people are congregated together in one crowded city. On his return from his 
 Turkish tour, one of his boxes was stolen, as he was getting into a hackney- 
 coach in Bishopsgate-street, from the stage in which he had travelled from 
 Dover. It contained a duplicate of his travels, twenty-five guineas, and a gold 
 watch. The plan of the lazaretto at Marseilles, of which he possessed no dupli- 
 cate, was happily in the other box ; had it not been so, he declared to his friend, 
 Dr. Lettsom, that notwithstanding the risques he had run, in procuring that 
 document, so important did he consider it to the attainment of his object, that 
 he would a second time have exposed himself to the danger of a visit to France, 
 to supply its place.;]: It was the same singular devotedness to the great work in 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 215. t Rev. S. Palmer's MS. Memoir. J Gentleman's 
 
 Magazine, Vol. LVII. Part II. p. 1151. 
 
£69 
 
 which he was engaged that induced him, not only to decline so generally as he 
 did, every invitation to dinner or to supper whilst upon his tours, but to abstain 
 from visiting every object of curiosity, how attractive soever it might be to his 
 taste and natural thirst for information, and even from looking into a news- 
 paper, lest his attention should be diverted for a moment from the main 
 end of his pursuit ; the whole of the time which was not necessarily consumed 
 in sleep, or occupied in his devotions, being employed in arranging the mi- 
 nutes and observations he had been making during the course of the day. Once, 
 indeed, and it would seem only once, he deviated from the rule he had 
 prescribed to himself, by yielding to the entreaties of some of his friends, who 
 wished him to accompany them to "hear some extraordinarily fine music in 
 Italy ; but finding his thoughts too much occupied by its melody, he could 
 never be persuaded to repeat the indulgence.* The value he set upon his time, 
 especially whilst engaged in the singular path of philanthropy to which he 
 devoted himself, was indeed most remarkable. Punctual to a minute in every 
 engagement be made, he usually sat, when in conversation, with his watch in 
 his hand, which he rested upon his knee, and though in the midst of an in- 
 teresting anecdote or argument, so soon as the moment he had fixed for his 
 departure arrived, he arose, took up his hat, and left the house. He calculated 
 also how long it would take him to walk or ride to the place of his next en- 
 gagement with such nicety, that he was seldom a second beyond his appoint- 
 ment. Yet in the midst of so entire a consecration of his time, his fortune, and 
 every faculty of his existence, to the service of the very outcasts of society, 
 he preserved the most lowly estimation of his own character ; and whilst yield- 
 ing the most exemplary obedience to the injunction of scripture, which commands 
 us " to do justice, and to love mercy," he was so far from forgetting the remain- 
 der of the precept, "walk humbly with thy God," that the genuine humility 
 of his character was " known and seen of all men." " I had heard a person ex- 
 press his surprise," says his venerable friend Mrs. Coles, " that he could interest 
 
 * Aikin, p. 212. 
 
 4d 
 
570 
 
 himself so much about such depraved characters as prisoners generally were, 
 and having an opportunity of mentioning the subject to him in that person's 
 presence, Mr. Howard said — ' I consider that if it had not been for divine 
 grace, I might have been as abandoned as they are.'" Upon another occasion 
 the same lady observed to him, in the course of a very interesting conversation 
 on his various tours of benevolence, " Sir, you must have witnessed many scenes 
 of misery," to which he replied, in the same spirit of genuine kindness, " Yes, 
 more than I could relieve ; I could, therefore, only drop a tear over them." 
 Such was the modesty with which, when the subject was introduced by others, 
 he uniformly spoke of those labors of philanthropy, whose fame was now 
 spread, not only to the remotest parts of his own country, but over most of the 
 various regions of the vast continent of Europe. The public voice, in- 
 deed, was loud in his praise, and every rank of society joined in the admiration 
 which the extraordinary virtues of his character had so justly excited. It was 
 whilst he was engaged in his tour through Ireland, in May 1787, that 
 the Lord Chancellor (Thurlow), in an admirable speech delivered in the 
 House of Lords, in opposition to a proposed bill for the relief of insolvent 
 debtors, took occasion to advert to the mode of management and discipline 
 adopted in our prisons, and, in the course of his observations, paid a merited 
 tribute to the correctness of Mr. Howard's views upon these points, now tran- 
 scribed into these memoirs, in the language in which Dr. Aikin has recorded 
 it — " He had lately,' he said, ' had the honor of a conversation upon the 
 subject, with a gentleman who was, of all others, the best qualified to treat of 
 it — he meant, Mr. Howard, whose humanity, great as it was, was at least 
 equalled by his wisdom ; for a more judicious, or a more sensible reasoner upon 
 the topic, he never had conversed with. His own ideas had been turned to 
 solitarv imprisonment and a strict regimen, as a punishment for debt ; and that 
 notion had exactly corresponded with Mr. Howard's, who had agreed with 
 him, that the great object ought to be, when it became necessary to seclude a 
 man from society, and imprison him for debt, to take care that he came out of 
 
511 
 
 prison no worse a man in point of health and morals than he went in.' His 
 Lordship afterwards recited a story which Mr. Howard had told him, in proof 
 of the corruption and licentiousness of our prisons. A Quaker, he said, called 
 upon him to go with him and witness a scene which, if he were to go singly, 
 would, he feared, be too much for his feelings : it was, to visit a friend in 
 distress — a person who had lately gone into the King's-bench prison. When 
 they arrived, they found the man half drunk, playing at fives. Though greatly 
 shocked at the circumstance, they asked him to go with them to the coffee-room, 
 and take a glass of wine. He refused, saying he had drank so much punch, 
 that he could not drink wine — however, he would call in upon them before 
 they went away. Mr. Howard and his friend returned, with feelings very dif- 
 ferent from those with which they entered the place, but not less painful."* 
 
 It was not, however, in the legislature alone that the tribute was paid to his 
 worth, which, by his incessant labors in the cause of humanity he had so hardly 
 earned, and so richly merited to receive ; for the harp of the poet soon caught 
 the eloquent strains of the orator, and embodied, in glowing verse, the praises 
 which were now showered by every friend of the human race upon him, who 
 was most justly considered its brighest ornament. Amongst others, the elegant 
 but eccentric muse of Darwin selected his deeds of philanthropy as a fit sub- 
 ject for one of the numerous episodes with which his Loves of the Plants, the 
 most extravagant of his singular productions, is embellished. The lines, though 
 characterized by several of the faults of this Delia Cruscan writer, have too 
 many beauties not to deserve transcription here. 
 
 " And now, Philanthropy ! thy rays divine 
 
 Dart round the globe from Zembla to the Line ; ' 
 
 O'er each dark prison plays the cheering light, 
 
 Like northern lustres o'er the vault of night. — 
 
 » Aikin, p. 180—182. 
 
 4d2 
 
512 
 
 From realm to realm, with cross or crescent crown'd, 
 
 Where'er Mankind and Misery are found, 
 
 O'er burning sands, deep waves, or wilds of snow, 
 
 Thy Howard journeying seeks the house of woe. 
 
 Down many a winding step to dungeons dank, 
 
 Where anguish wails aloud, and fetters clank ; 
 
 To caves hestrew'd with many a mouldering bone, 
 
 And cells, whose echoes only learn to groan ; 
 
 Where no kind bars a whispering friend disclose, 
 
 No sunbeam enters, and no zephyr blows, 
 
 He treads, inemulous of fame or wealth, 
 
 Profuse of toil, and prodigal of health, 
 
 With soft assuasive eloquence expands 
 
 Power's rigid heart, and opes his clenching hands ; 
 
 Leads stern-ey'd Justice to the dark domains, 
 
 If not to sever, to relax the chains ; 
 
 Or guides awaken'd Mercy through the gloom, 
 
 And shews the prison, sister to the tomb ! — 
 
 Gives to her babes the self-devoted wife, 
 
 To her fond husband liberty and life ! 
 
 — The Spirits of the Good, who bend from high 
 Wide o'er these earthly scenes, their partial eye, 
 When first, arrayed in Virtue's purest robe, 
 They saw her Howard traversing the globe ; 
 Saw round his brows her sun-like Glory blaze 
 In arrowy circles of unwearied rays ; 
 Mistook a mortal for an Angel-Guest, 
 And ask'd what Seraph-foot the earth imprest. 
 — Onward he moves ! — Disease and Death retire, 
 And murm'ring Demons hate him, and admire." * 
 
 • Loves of the Plant*, canto ii. line 439—471. 
 
5T3 
 
 The hate of demons and the applause of men were, however, alike indif- 
 ferent to him, who was actuated in all he did by a sense of duty, mingled 
 with an habitual impression of the worthlessness of his best services, but as 
 they might be the means of bringing that honor to his Creator, which the 
 world around were so liberally bestowing upon a creature, who was but an in- 
 strument in his hands, from whom, he was assured, that every good disposition 
 and benevolent action must alike proceed. So closely, indeed, was this habit 
 of thinking and acting inwoven with his very nature, that though so early 
 as the year 1780, Mr. Hay ley had published an ode in commemoration of 
 his deeds of mercy ; and scarcely a month had since passed without the 
 appearance, in some of the periodical journals, of a new ode, elegy, or 
 sonnet, on the same subject : — after the lines of Dr. Darwin had been 
 for some time before the public, he assured a friend, who asked whether 
 he had seen them, that he never read any thing written in his praise, adding, 
 that no one could disoblige him so much as by mentioning him in any 
 publication whatever. It was the same principle which induced him to 
 refuse the applications which were frequently made to him to sit for his 
 picture ; so that there is no portrait of him extant but what was taken by 
 stealth, though that copied for these memoirs, from a sketch in this manner, 
 by an artist of some eminence in his day, is considered by his surviving 
 friends and domestics to be a very striking resemblance of features, whose 
 benign expression they will not easily forget. ^ 
 
 The unassuming and unassumed modesty that gave the finishing stroke to a 
 character, which the combination of the rarest, with the greatest virtues so 
 eminently adorned, operated, however, as an additional excitement to the gene- 
 ral curiosity to become acquainted with its peculiarities, rather than, as Mr. 
 Howard wished that it should do, as a veil to conceal them, in the retirement 
 he loved, from the obtrusive scrutiny of the public eye. A singular instance of 
 the interest he had awakened in the minds of men, raised far above the ordinary 
 
514 
 
 influence of vulgar motives, is thus recorded by Dr. Aikin, to have occurred 
 during his absence from home, on the last tour of inspection which he per- 
 formed through the various counties of his native land. Whilst engaged 
 in one of the journeys of that circuit, " a very respectable-looking elderly 
 gentleman, on horseback, with a servant, stopt," says his biographer, " at 
 the inn nearest Mr. Howard's house, at Cardington, and entered into con- 
 versation with the landlord concerning him. He observed, that characters 
 often appeared very well at a distance, which could not bear close inspection ; 
 he had therefore come to Mr. Howard's residence in order to satisfy himself 
 concerning him. The gentleman then, accompanied by the innkeeper, went 
 to the house, and looked through it, with the offices and gardens, which he 
 found in perfect order. He next enquired into Mr. Howards character as a 
 landlord, which was justly represented ; and several neat houses which he had 
 built for his tenants were shewn him. The gentleman returned to his inn, 
 declaring himself now satisfied with the truth of all he had heard about Howard. 
 This respectable stranger was no other than Lord Monboddo ; and Mr. Howard 
 was much flattered with the visit, and praised his Lordship's good sense in 
 taking such a method of coming at the truth, since he thought it worth his 
 trouble."* 
 
 The domestic history of the illustrious subject of these memoirs was not, at 
 this period of his life, fruitful in incidents which could interest the general 
 reader of pages, ove> which a melancholy shade is cast, as, in drawing near to 
 the close of his existence, they become but the record of his sufferings, whose 
 lot, were the happiness] which this world can bestow the recompense of the 
 just and good, should have been a succession of unwearied and uninterrupted 
 felicity — a path strewn with perennial flowers, watered but by the gentlest dews 
 of heaven — a journey through this lower vale to fairer worlds on high, sweet 
 and lovely in its opening scenes ; brilliant, yet softened in its mid-day splendor ; 
 
 * Aikin. p. 150, 151. 
 
5"i5 
 
 calm, tranquil, and sorene, at its evening's close, as to the traveller in a genial 
 clime, are the heams of the rising, the meridian, and the setting sun, in a 
 clear and an unclouded sky. It was far different, however, with him, for 
 though the morning and the meridian of his days had been overcast by many a 
 cloud, they gradually thickened round their closing scenes, until they had now 
 assumed the appearance of a settled and impenetrable gloom. The dreadful 
 malady of his son so far from promising any symptom of amendment, seemed 
 only every day to exhibit but the more decidedly the fearful characters of con- 
 firmed and incurable derangement. His afflicted parent, after having tried the 
 effect of a milder restraint in his own habitation, much longer than there could 
 be a rational, or well-grounded hope of its being in any degree efficacious to 
 his recovery, yielded to the advice of his medical attendants and his friends, in 
 permitting his removal to the well-regulated lunatic asylum, which for so many 
 years has been, and I believe still is, under the care of Dr. Arnold, at Leicester. 
 From the skill and constant attention of a man so experienced in the diseases of 
 the mind as this celebrated physician, there was every prospect of his receiving 
 all the benefit which medical aid could possibly afford, in circumstances so dis- 
 tressing, and so destructive of all hope, as were those in which this unhappy 
 young man was placed. His removal from Cardington left his father at liberty 
 again to visit, during the intervals of his public labors in the cause of humanity, 
 the village and the neighbourhood which had now for nearly thirty years been 
 the scene of a benevolence in private life, as constant, as unwearied, as soli- 
 citous for the welfare of his fellow-creatures, as had been that which, when ex- 
 hibited on a wider field, rendered him during the greater part of the same 
 period, an object of wonder and admiration to the world. " He still con- 
 tinued," says a letter from his most intimate friend, Mr. Smith, to Mr. How- 
 ard's former biographer, Dr. Aikin, " to devise liberal things for his poor 
 neighbours and tenants ; and, considering how much his heart and time were 
 engaged in his great and comprehensive plans, it was surprising with what 
 minuteness he would send home his directions about his private donations. 
 
576 
 
 His schools were continued to the last."* For these schools, it will not fail to 
 be recollected, how anxious one of his letters, inserted in this chapter of his 
 memoirs, evince him to have been, to make a more permanent provision than 
 he hitherto had done, by the erection of suitable buildings for the accommoda- 
 tion of their scholars ; an object for whose attainment, could it not otherwise 
 be effected, he declared, that when he had completed those more extensive 
 schemes of benevolence, in which, besides so large a portion of his time as he 
 had devoted to their pursuit, thirty thousand pounds of his property had been 
 consumed, he would cheerfully end his days in a cottage. One instance of 
 his kind concern for the welfare of his poorer neighbours, exhibited upon his 
 return from the last journey to the continent which he was permitted to 
 complete, has been preserved, in a letter to the editor of a periodical journal, 
 the substance of which is now transcribed into these pages, with some slight 
 corrections which personal inquiry on the spot enables me to make. During 
 his absence from England, a journeyman wheelwright had succeeded his master 
 in his shop at Cardington, and had also taken a young woman of the village 
 for his wife. As soon as Mr. Howard had satisfied himself of the deranged 
 state of his son's mind, and ascertained, by an experience the most painful to 
 a father's heart, that his presence augmented, rather than decreased the virulence 
 of his dreadful malady, he endeavored to soothe the distress which such a 
 heart-rending scene must have occasioned, by taking a walk through the 
 neighbourhood of his once happy, but now cheerless dwelling, to inquire after 
 the health and circumstances of his old acquaintance, and the numerous depend- 
 ants on his bounty. Amongst the cottages of his tenants, he entered that of 
 the newly- married wheelwright, whom he thus addressed : — " If I had been 
 at home at your marriage, I should have made you a wedding present, and 
 you shall not lose it now, though it shall be a gift to your wife and not to 
 yourself. Come to my house to-morrow morning, and you shall know what 
 it will be." On returning home, he asked his bailiff which was the best 
 
 * Aikin, p. 37. 
 
51% 
 
 cow in his farm-yard, and on its being pointed out to him, directed it to be 
 driven, on the next morning, to the wheelwright's house. " But no," he im- 
 mediately added, " the poor fellow has nothing to keep her on this winter : 
 we will keep her for him till she has calved." This was accordingly done, 
 and in the Spring this industrious mechanic's wife was made happy in the pos- 
 session of a fine cow and calf, of which her husband and herself were the 
 owners, at his decease, doubly valuing their gift from the veneration in which 
 they held the character of the giver.* The memory of his virtues still lives, 
 indeed, in the hearts of these, and many other recipients of his bounty; nor 
 less fondly is it cherished by the survivors of the large circle of friends whom 
 his kindness and hospitality gathered round him when at home, and in 
 whose prosperity he always took the deepest interest, when separated by 
 distance from the society and the converse which he loved. In that circle 
 several persons were included, whose situation in life was greatly inferior to 
 his own, but the excellence of whose character recommended them to his 
 notice, and secured them a place in the list of friends, to whom he was in the 
 habit of sending some token of his remembrance, in the letters which he, from 
 time to time, addressed to the few individuals with whom he maintained an 
 occasional correspondence when abroad. Of this description was Mr. Read, 
 a painter, at Bedford, mentioned in one of his letters to Mr. Smith, of whose 
 church he was a most valuable member. From his exemplary conduct, Mr. 
 Howard generously assisted him with money to carry on his business ; and as 
 he particularly excelled in painting horses and other animals, he took great 
 pains to recommend him to such of his friends as were most likely to 
 encourage him in his professional pursuits ; a line of conduct which he in- 
 variably adopted, whenever he thought that he could serve a deserving and 
 industrious tradesman in his neighbourhood, either by his recommendation, or 
 his purse. 
 
 * Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 426. 
 4 E 
 
518 
 
 With a private character so perfectly consistent with his public actions, 
 it only remains that we should compare both of them with those records of 
 his feelings and his opinions, which, traced for no other eye than his, have 
 happily been preserved, to show that there was no hypocrisy in his conduct, 
 but that he was, in truth, the kind, benevolent being ; the pious, humble, devoted 
 Christian, that he appeared to be. The extracts from his diary, with which his 
 relative has so kindly favored me, contain several reflections, maxims, and 
 remarks, written after he had visited Warrington for the last time, which 
 will abundantly justify this observation, and raise him to as high a place in 
 the esteem of every good man, as one of mortal mould can desire to occupy : 
 they are therefore inserted in the order in which they were transcribed, 
 without further note or comment, on the spirit of pure philanthrophy, genuine 
 humility, and exalted piety, which they breathe in every word. 
 
 " If the projectile Motion shews a, forming God, the centripedal force, acting 
 incessantly, shews a preserving God — ' for verily there is a God, and thou God 
 seeth me' — and he who is the hand of Providence directs the course of things to 
 the general good — so may / endeavour in my poor Manner, to engage in 
 Works which tend to increase human happiness and to God be all the praise. — 
 " God considers what weak Creatures we are, therefore gives us every 
 Motive to do good. 
 
 " Jacob speaks of the Angel who had been his Guide in all his Journeys, 
 and had delivered him out of all his Dangers ;— and Jacob's God I trust is my 
 God, and my Guide, and my Portion for ever. 
 
 " An approving Conscience adds Pleasure to every Act of Piety, benevo- 
 lence, and self-denial. — It inspires Serenity and brightens every gloomy Hour, 
 disarming adversity, disease, and death — Is it my ambition to put on the Lord 
 Jesus! — ' to have the same mind in me which was also in him.' 
 
 " Health, time, powers of Mind, and worldly Possessions are from God, do 
 I consecrate them all to Him. — So help me oh my God ! — 
 
5T9 
 
 rt The peculiar doctrines of Christianity, the degradation of human Nature, 
 our inability to restore ourselves, — our need of a Mediator, and of divine Aid, 
 are doctrines which strike at the Root of vain glory — we are justified by Faith, 
 by the grace of God, thro' the redemption that is in Jesus Christ — where then 
 is boasting ? it is excluded Romans 3 & 27. — Aim at what is praise-worthy 
 and then at the approbation of God, who alone is an impartial infallible Judge. 
 — Let it be my earnest enquiry, how I shall best serve God in the station which 
 he has assigned me. 
 
 "• I am not at all angry with the reflections that some Persons make, as 
 they think to my disparagement, because all they say of this kind, gives God 
 the greater Honour — in whose Almighty hand, no Instrument is weak, in whose 
 Presence no flesh must glory,— but the whole conduct of this Matter must be 
 ascribed to Providence alone, and God by me intimates to the World, however 
 weak and unworthy I am, that he espouses the Cause, and to Him, — to Him 
 alone be all the Praise. 
 
 Ease, Affluence, and Honours, are temptations, which the world holds 
 out — but remember • the fashion of this world passeth away' — On the other 
 hand Fatigue, Poverty, Sufferings, and Dangers, with an approving Con- 
 science—Oh God ! my Heart is fixed trusting in Thee ! My God ! Oh glo- 
 rious Words ! there is a Treasure ! in comparison of which all things in this 
 
 world are dross. 
 
 " Sunday even 8 15 March 1789. 
 
 " Our Superfluities, should be given up for the convenience of others — 
 " Our Conveniencies should give place to the necessities of others — 
 " And even our necessities give way to the Extremities of the Poor — 
 " Oh God ! May the Angel which conducted the Israelites thro' the De- 
 sert, accompany and bless Me — 
 
 * In all my Dangers, and dificulties, may I have full confidence in that un- 
 seen Power, to believe in hope, as the Lord orders all things— therefore I 
 leave every thing to him, trusting he will always give his Angels charge con- 
 
 4 e 2 
 
580 
 
 cerning me, and then I am equally safe in every place, therefore I will fear no 
 Evil for Thou art my God." 
 
 The smaller memorandum-book which was the companion of his hazardous 
 expedition to Turkey, the soother of his solitary hours in the Venetian laza- 
 retto, and the depository of the pious breathings of his soul when on the very 
 borders of the grave, amongst the notes of sermons which he heard during the 
 last year he ever spent in his native land, contains some reflections and secret 
 aspirations of his own, strikingly characteristic of the fervency of his piety, and 
 the soundness of his faith. In one of these he thus earnestly supplicates di- 
 vine assistance, to support him in his course, and to enable him to finish with 
 joy the race that was set before him. " Oh God, succour me in time of trial 
 and help me to maintain my integrity. My eyes are up to thee Oh God to 
 help me to encounter the Danger leave me not to my own strength but may I 
 rely on Him in whom is everlasting strength. I come to y e throne of God 
 for Mercy and help in time of need and that I may finish my course in peace — 
 Be diffident of yrself and look up to God." In a second, he expresses his 
 determination to persevere in the path of duty, and to continue to serve the 
 Loi'd, so long as the strength he prayed to be constantly imparted, should not 
 be withheld from him. " Where there is most holiness there is most humility 
 Never does our understand 8 shine more than when it is employed in Religion 
 In certain Circumstances retirem 1 is criminal with a holy fire I would proceed. 
 What is our profession of Religion if it does not affect our Heart, shall I de- 
 sert his Cause and God may I thro' divine Grace persevere to y e end 
 My [end] too is approaching." The notes of the sermon giving rise to the last 
 remark, are followed by some detached prayers and exclamations, evidently 
 written at different periods of his last journey through England and her sister 
 kingdoms — " Do thou O Lord," is the fervent supplication of one of them, " visit 
 the Prisoners and Captives. Manifest thy strength in my weakness, help almighty 
 God for in Thee I put my Trust for thou art my Rock." " I would rejoice," he 
 
581 
 
 exclaims in a second, and a shorter aspiration, " in a sense of thy favour ;" 
 whilst a third thus briefly records the scriptural ground of all his hopes — " 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 everlast g ." On the same page with these devout meditations he 
 has also transcribed, with a short addition, a remark which has already been 
 quoted, from a former part of this memorandum-book, as illustrative of his views of 
 the inefficacy of good works, as a procuring, or even a secondary cause of sal- 
 vation : " The doctrine of merit is diametrically opposite to the genius of the 
 Gospel, ' By Grace we are saved,' * Not of ourselves,' * it is the gift of God.' " 
 We have already learnt, from one of his letters to his friends, that it was his fre- 
 quent habit, when journeying in distant countries, where he was deprived of the 
 advantages of a gospel ministry, to supply the deficiency, as well as he was able, 
 by perusing his notes of the sermons he had heard in his own more favored 
 land, and making them the foundation of some profitable meditation during 
 the sacred hours of the sabbath ; doubtless, therefore, it was upon one of 
 these occasions, that he gave a more prominent character and place to a 
 sentiment, with which he was but the more satisfied, when he came to review, 
 at leisure, what had at first been committed to paper in haste. That sentiment 
 formed, indeed, a prominent feature in his religious creed, of which salvation 
 by faith in Jesus Christ was the foundation, and the chief corner-stone. Thus, 
 mingled with the last notes he appears ever to have taken from a preacher's 
 lips, we find this unequivocal testimony of his attachment to the doctrine of the 
 cross — " My desire is to be washed cleansed and justified in the blood of X and 
 to dedicate myself to that Sav r . who has bo', us with a price." " That his 
 hope for salvation was founded upon Christ alone,'' observes the daughter of 
 the excellent man by whom that doctrine was long faithfully published in his 
 ears, " was eminently displayed in all his conversations on religious topics, in 
 which he always disclaimed every idea of merit, and spoke of his best works 
 as coming far short of the requirements of the gospel, though he, at the same 
 
582 
 
 time, had formed a very high idea of the obligations under which Christians were 
 laid, by a profession of religion, ' to abound in every good word and work.' " 
 In these too, he did abound, as much as any man, in modern times, ever did before 
 him ; yet such was the humility which shone most resplendant amidst the 
 virtues of a character, whose excellencies it seemed anxious to conceal from 
 public observation and applause, that the more rapidly he was advancing to the 
 standard of Christian perfection, in as far as that standard is to be attained in 
 this lower world, the more fervent, the more earnest was he in mingling his 
 voice, while on earth, with the song which the myriads of the redeemed, whom 
 he has since joined in heaven, are perpetually chaunting before the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb. " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be 
 all the glory!" 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Mr. Howard's seventh, and last journey upon the continent, in which he inspected the 
 prisons and hospitals of Holland ; part of Germany ; Prussia ; and Russia ; — his 
 death and character. 1789—1790. 
 
 IT was a matter of but little surprise to Mr. Howard's friends, or, indeed, to 
 the public at large, that his work on Lazarettos should contain an intimation of his 
 purpose to undertake another foreign journey, with a view, should he be spared 
 to finish it, of giving to the world some further information on those inquiries 
 so interesting to humanity, which, through such incessant toils and dangers, he 
 had long been engaged in instituting. At the very period of forming this re- 
 solution, he seems, however, to have anticipated the unfavorable construction 
 which might be put upon it, by some who were not fully aware of the motives 
 by which he was actuated, and he thus mildly and unostentatiously repels the ob- 
 jections they might urge against it. " To my country I commit the result of my 
 past labors. It is my intention again to quit it for the purpose of revisiting 
 Russia, Turkey, and some other countries, and extending my tour in the East. 
 I am not insensible of the dangers that must attend such a journey. Trusting, 
 however, in the protection of that kind Providence which has hitherto preserved 
 me, I calmly and cheerfully commit myself to the disposal of unerring wisdom. 
 Should it please God to cut off my life in the prosecution of this design, let not 
 
584 
 
 my conduct be uncandidly imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious, 
 deliberate conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty ; and to a sincere 
 desire of being made an instrument of more extensive usefulness to my fellow- 
 creatures than could be expected in the narrower circle of a retired life."* But, 
 notwithstanding this vindication of his motives, his conduct in acting upon 
 them, has not passed without animadversion ; and it is not a little singular that, 
 whilst the biographer, who, in other instances, has been the first to malign his 
 principles, and misrepresent his actions, most fully acquits him of all temerity 
 in venturing once again to risk his life in the cause of humanity ,f one of the 
 most intimate of his friends, the minister upon whose lessons of Christian duty, 
 and expositions of Christian conduct he from time to time attended, with mingled 
 pleasure and profit, felt it necessary to caution him, on this occasion, against " the 
 mistake of suffering himself, through an earnest desire of doing good, to be pre- 
 cipitated beyond the clear line of duty, which might possibly be sometimes the 
 case. "J The person, however, who of all others was the most competent to put 
 a proper construction upon this measure, viewed it in a very different, and 
 surely a more correct light, when he considered it, as he always did, perfectly 
 in unison with the principles which had already impelled him to make such 
 sacrifices as he had done in the cause to which he had devoted himself. To 
 Mr. Smith he at all times unbosomed himself with far more freedom than 
 he seems to have used towards any other individual, and he was so far from 
 looking upon his friend's last journey as a tempting of providence, that he 
 thought it the most advisable step, which, in the circumstances he was placed 
 in, he could possibly have taken. Had he followed the dictates of his own in- 
 clination, we may be assured that he would have used all his powers of persua- 
 sion to have kept him at home, that he might have enjoyed the pleasure of 
 his company there ; but more anxious for the happiness of his friend, than for 
 his own gratification, and willing to lose every selfish feeling in the contem- 
 plation of the sublime object which this benevolent being proposed to himself, 
 
 * Account of Lazarettos, p. 235. t Gent Mag. Vol. LX. Part I. p. 278. 
 
 i Dr. Stennet's Sermon, p. 39. 
 
585 
 
 m the course of many conversations which they held upon the subject, ho 
 used not a word to divert him from his glorious purpose. Deeply, far more 
 deeply than the world has ever thought, had the last severe stroke of his 
 Almighty Father's chastening hand sunk into his soul ; and as it did so, it 
 unstrung the firmest fibres of a frame, which, hitherto but little moved by 
 all the fatigues he had undergone in traversing so large a portion of the globe 
 on the errand of mercy that first led him from his home, was now rapidly 
 breaking up, by those sorrows of the mind, which earnestly as the Christian 
 strove to calm them to repose, at times harrowed up, to a pitch of anguish, 
 difficult to be borne, all the parental feelings and anxieties of the man. But 
 too fully satisfied by the able practitioner under whose care his son was placed, 
 that his recovery from the mental malady with which he was afflicted, must, 
 to all human appearance, be the work of time, if indeed, a hope could be enter- 
 tained of its ever being accomplished, he determined, — and who will say un- 
 wisely? — to take another journey to the continent of Europe, which, by the 
 spheres of usefulness, and deeds of mercy to which it would introduce him, 
 would afford the best antidote that any human pursuit could offer, to the 
 depression of spirits, which the scenes that must surround him in his home, 
 or even in his native land, must inevitably increase, rather than diminish. The 
 severe domestic affliction which occasioned him to take this step (for without 
 it, there is abundant reason to think that he never again would have left his 
 country), was the disappointment of all the hopes he had fondly cherished, of 
 finding in his son the support and comfort of his declining years ; but like 
 every afflictive dispensation with which the Christian is visited below, this was 
 mercifully over-ruled for the promotion of his best interests, as it evidently 
 weaned him from the world, and more fully prepared him for entering into 
 his heavenly rest. 
 
 His plan, so far as it can now be collected from the recollections of his sur- 
 viving friends, and from such as have been preserved of those who are deceased, 
 
 4 v 
 
586 
 
 was to have spent three years abroad, in which time he Moped that the fate 
 of his unhappy son would be determined, and his restoration to reason per- 
 fected, or his malady pronounced incurable, when he could accommodate his 
 future plans of life to either of the events, which would then have less of that 
 uncertainty in them, whose alternate vaccillations of hope and fear now agi- 
 tated his parental bosom. The object of his pursuit during this period, seems 
 not, however, to have been defined with that accuracy which marked all 
 his schemes, ere the extraordinary precision and minuteness of arrange- 
 ment which had formerly characterized them, had, in some slight mea- 
 sure, been affected by the derangement and incertitude which clouded his 
 domestic prospects. " I had various conversations with him," says Dr. Aikin,* 
 " on the subject ; and I found rather a wish to have objects of enquiry pointed 
 out to him by others, than any specific views present to his own mind. As, in- 
 deed, his purpose was to explore regions entirely new to him, and of which 
 the police respecting his former objects was very imperfectly known to Europe 
 (for the Turkish dominions in Asia, Egypt, and the Barbary coast, were in 
 his plan of travels), he could not doubt that important subjects for observation 
 would offer themselves unsought. With respect to that part of his tour in 
 which he was to go over ground he had already trodden, I conceive that 
 he expected to do good in that censorial character, which his repeated publica- 
 tions, known and attended to all over Europe, gave him a right to assume ; 
 and which he had before exercised to the great relief of the miserable in vari- 
 ous countries. If to these motives be added the long formed habitude of pur- 
 suing a certain track of enquiry, and an inquietude of mind, proceeding from 
 domestic misfortune, no cause will be left to wonder at so speedy a renewal of 
 his toils and dangers.'' One object of his pursuit, and perhaps the principal 
 one, was certainly to obtain further information respecting the plague, by ex- 
 tending his visits to those parts of the world in which it rages with the greatest 
 virulence ; and in some of whose infectious coasts it is supposed to take its rise. 
 
 * P. 184, 5. 
 
581 
 
 Nor was he without hopes of being able to communicate to the inhabitants of 
 those pestilential regions, a remedy that might stay the ravages of the dreadful 
 scourge with which they were visited, or at least lessen the fearful terrors of its 
 march of death. Having witnessed, in many cases of malignant fever, the 
 efficacy of Dr. James's Powders, which were at this time in very high repute, 
 he felt a strong persuasion that their administration would be useful in the 
 plague, and he therefore resolved to take a wearisome and dangerous journey 
 beyond the confines of Europe — to the deserts of Egypt, and the piratical shores 
 of Barbary, to try an experiment which would probably cost him his own life, in 
 the effort to save the lives of others, who had no claims upon his attention, but 
 that they were men, though differing from him in faith, manners, habits, cha- 
 racter, — every thing, in short, as widely almost as it is possible for beings of 
 the same common race to do. The danger to which he thus exposed himself 
 was one, however, which he had contemplated, and conceived that it was the 
 path of his duty to encounter ; though it is somewhat remarkable, that when 
 he left England with that determination, he had evidently a strong impression 
 on his mind that he never should return to her shores again. As soon as he 
 had resolved to undertake this hazardous journey, he seems, indeed, to have 
 associated with it in his mind this forcible persuasion that it would be his last ; 
 and as he took leave of one and another of his friends, he did it as one whose 
 face they would see no more on this side the grave. These circumstances 
 gave to his parting words a peculiar interest, and fixed them deeply on the 
 minds of those by whom they have already been laid before the public, 
 or, in many cases, originally communicated to me. The last time he was 
 at Shrewsbury, which would seem to have been in February 1788, he took 
 his leave of Mr. Lucas, on whose ministry he always attended when in that 
 town, in the vestry of his meeting-house, nearly in these words, which were evi- 
 dently used in allusion to a favorite saying of Philip Henry : " I hope, if we 
 meet again on earth, we shall be nearer heaven ; but, if we never see each other 
 more below, I trust we shall meet in heaven." To the Rev. Mr. Lewin, the 
 
 4 f2 
 
588 
 
 last time he was in Liverpool, he said, " I am going to the Mediteranean, and 
 elsewhere (naming some other places) : I have had several malignant disor- 
 ders ; yet I am persuaded that I shall not return, and be permitted to lay my 
 bones in my native land. If, however, I should, I think that I shall then 
 have done all that duty can require of me ; and I shall most probably seek a 
 peaceful retirement for the residue of my days." To another friend he observed, 
 that he should once more quit his native land, probably never to return to 
 it again ; and on his starting some objections to his plan, from the length 
 and danger of his journey, he added, " You will probably never see me again ; 
 but, be that as it may, it is a matter of no concern to me, whether I lay down 
 my life in Turkey, in Egypt, in Asia Minor, or elsewhere ; my whole en- 
 deavor is to fulfil, according to the ability of so weak an instrument as I am, 
 the will of that gracious Providence who has condescended to raise in me a 
 firm persuasion that I am employed in what is consonant to his divine 
 approbation."* About the same period, in a conversation with Mr. Black- 
 burn, the architect, he is represented f to have expressed a conviction 
 that his death was at no great distance, on the somewhat singular ground, 
 of his mode of diet, and living, exactly resembling that of the Chinese, 
 few of whom survived their sixty-third year ; as, in fact, he himself did 
 but by a very few months. Calling upon the Rev. Mr. Palmer, of 
 Hackney, a little before his departure on his journey, he todk his leave in 
 a cheerful, though very affectionate manner ; yet, at the same time, expressing 
 an opinion that he should not live to return. He said, however, that he was 
 perfecty easy as to the event of his apprehensions ; adding, in the words of 
 Father Paul to his physician, when he had told him that he had not long to live, 
 " It is well ; whatever pleases God pleases me." When another friend, I be- 
 lieve it was his old pastor, Mr. Townsend, expressed his concern at parting with 
 him, from a persuasion that they should never meet again on earth, he cheerfully 
 replied, " We shall soon meet in heaven :" and as he rather expected to die of the 
 » European Mag. Vol. XVIII. p. 416. t Gentleman's Mag. Vol. LX. Part II. p. 1050. 
 
S89 
 
 plague in Egypt, than elsewhere, he added, " the way to heaven from Grand 
 
 Cairo is as near as from London."* The last time, too, that he attended at Dr. 
 
 Stennet's meeting, in expectation that it would indeed be his last, he said to 
 
 one of his fellow-worshippers who sat near him, " Well, we shall not perhaps 
 
 meet one another again till we meet in heaven."f The very day before he left 
 
 home, he called upon a lady, whose lively recollections of his virtues have 
 
 added much to the interest of this narrative, and in taking leave of her, in a 
 
 most affectionate and affecting manner, said, " I am going a very arduous 
 
 journey ; probably, my friend, we shall never meet any more in this world ; 
 
 but it is the path of duty ; and, with respect to myself, I am quite resigned to 
 
 the will of God." 
 
 Previous to his quitting Cardington, as he in some measure antici- 
 pated, and it but too surely proved, for the last time, he arranged all his worldly 
 affairs with as much exactitude as though he had received an immediate command 
 from heaven, to set his house in order, for on the morrow he should die. His will 
 had been made about a year before, bearing date the 24th of May, 1787, by 
 which he bequeathed all his real estates in trust for the benefit of his son, so 
 long as he should remain in the unhappy state of mind in which he then was, and 
 on his recovery to be vested in him for life, with the remainder to his children, or, 
 on failure of issue, to Mr. Howard Channing and his heirs ; this gentleman being 
 the next of kin; as he is, if I mistake not, the son of Mr. Howard's maternal 
 aunt, whose husband, Mr. Lawrence Channing, was one of the executors to his 
 father's will. Of his personal property, a considerable part was bequeathed 
 in legacies to the poor, the objects of his testamentary bounty having been 
 selected with the same discrimination as had characterized the distribution of 
 his alms during the whole course of his life. Of his charitable bequests of this 
 description, the first was one of two guineas each to twenty poor widows whom 
 his executors should think proper objects : a second, a donation of 5 1, each 
 * Rev. Mr. Palmer's Sermon, p. 27. f Dr. Stennet's Sermon, p. 39. 
 
590 
 
 to ten poor cottagers at Cardington, masters of families, who should not have 
 been in an ale-house for twelve months preceding his death: the third, a bequest 
 of a similar amount to any ten poor families in the same village, not receiving 
 parochial relief, who should have been the most constant at any place of public 
 worship during the same period ; whilst, by a fourth, to mark the affection 
 which he cherished to the last for his beloved Henrietta, he left to the poor of 
 the parish of Croxton, where he married his last invaluable wife, 501. to be 
 distributed amongst them at the discretion of his executors, who were his two 
 brothers-in-law, Edward Leeds, Esq. of that place, and Joseph Leeds, Esq. of 
 Croydon. To each of these gentlemen he bequeathed the sum of 20/. as 
 he did also to William Tatnall, Esq. of Ironmonger-lane, who, on the decease 
 of either of them, was to succeed to their trust. To his faithful servant Prole, 
 he left a legacy of 50 /. ; to Thomasson, an annuity of 10 /. a year for life ; 
 to Crockford, 20 L ; and to his under-gardener, and the son of his son's nurse, to 
 whom he was very kind whilst she lived, 10/. To one of his tenants, who had 
 also been a laborer on his farm, he left 20 /. ; to two others, who were widows 
 ten guineas each ; whilst to the occupiers of the remainder of his cottages he be- 
 queathed 5 /. a-piece. Nor was he unmindful of his relations and connections as a 
 Christian, Mr.Townsend, Mr. Smith, and Dr. Stennet, the ministers upon whose 
 preaching he more regularly attended, receiving, as a slight memorial of his 
 regard, the sum of twenty guineas each, whilst to ten poor members of their 
 respective congregations, and also of those of Mr. Symonds and of the 
 church at Cotton-end, to both of which he was a subscriber to his death, he 
 left two guineas each. Dr. Price, Dr. Aikin, Mr. Densham, and Mr. Cole, 
 the friends who had principally assisted him in the composition of his works, 
 were also remembered in his will, by the same legacy as he bequeathed to his 
 pastor, and the more intimate of his ministerial friends. After specifying some 
 other trifling pecuniary legacies to the poorer of his relatives, two of whom, at 
 least,were brought up entirely at his cost ; — a gift of any three or four of his pictures 
 and prints that he might choose to Samuel Whitbread, Esq. as a memorial of 
 
591 
 
 their long friendship ; — and directing that his body might be buried wherever he 
 should happen to die, so that the expence did not exceed ten or fifteen 
 guineas ; he constituted his son the sole residuary legatee under a will 
 which 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 slip of marble may be placed under that of my 
 late wife, containing an inscription of my name, and the year that I died ; 
 with this motto, Spes men Christus." Though in this will he had not been un- 
 mindful of the unhappy class of beings who, during so long a period of his life, 
 had been the objects of his peculiar solicitude, — having bequeathed as one of its 
 first legacies, the sum of 100/. to be distributed at the discretion of his exe- 
 cutors, amongst such poor prisoners as they should think proper objects, or for 
 their benefit ; the one half to debtors, and the other to persons confined in 
 houses of correction, for providing them with linen and other necessaries ; — by 
 a codicil, dated July 2, 1789, which could have been but a day or two before 
 he left his home and his country for ever, he made a more munificent bequest 
 in their favor, by redeeming his pledge of leaving 500/. to a society for al- 
 leviating the miseries of the public prisons, on the plan suggested at the close 
 of his last work, provided, as he there stipulates, such society should be formed 
 within three years after his decease. By that codicil, besides bequeathing two 
 additional legacies of 50/. to a relative whom he had brought up, and 20/. to a 
 widowed friend, he extended his residuary disposition of his freehold estates, 
 in the case of the failure of issue, both to his son and Mr. Howard Channing, 
 in favor of the family of his relative, Mr. Whitbread, in whose grandchild, the 
 second son of the late lamented member for Bedford, the reversionary interest 
 now vests, as the possesion itself, at some distant period, most probably will do.* 
 After having made so complete, as well as just and charitable a disposition of his 
 property, our Philanthropist's next care was to select a proper guardian for his 
 * For an extract from this will, see Gent. Mag. Vol. LX. Part II. p. 713. 
 
592 
 
 son, so long as he should continue to need a guardian's care, as there was hut 
 too melancholy a prospect of his doing, during the period he had fixed for his 
 absence abroad ; and his choice very prudently fell upon Mr. Whitbread, who 
 had the entire control and direction of the person and fortune of this unhappy 
 young man, until he was released from a state of continued derangement, by 
 his death, which happened in the asylum at Leicester, on the 24th of April, 
 1799, in the thirty-fifth year of his age; and during the whole of that period 
 it is due to the memory of this worthy man to state, that he discharged the 
 duties of so painful and so delicate an office with exemplary tenderness, pru- 
 dence, and fidelity.* 
 
 If, in the uncommon assemblage of virtues which concentrated themselves in 
 Mr. Howard's character, one shone with a superior lustre to the rest, it was his 
 unfeigned humility ; and of this he gave the most unquestionable proofs to the 
 latest hour of his existence. Previous to his departure from Cardington, on his 
 last journey, he spent much of his time in free and unreserved converse with 
 his confidential friend Mr. Smith, chiefly respecting the arrangements he had 
 made in the event of his death, to which he was now evidently looking forward 
 as a change at no great distance. Should he die in England, he repeated to him 
 the directions he had given in his will as to his funeral, which he always 
 wished to be plain, and without parade. His monumental inscription he had 
 fixed upon some years before ; but in order to secure its adoption, he 
 now had it cut upon a tablet, which he directed to be placed under 
 that which he had erected in Cardington church to the memory of his 
 beloved Henrietta, leaving blank spaces for the insertion of his age, and the 
 day, year, and place of his decease. Naturally supposing, too, that a funeral 
 sermon would be expected at his death, from the minister who, for so many 
 years, had performed towards him all the duties of a faithful pastor, as well 
 as of a most intimate and affectionate friend, he gave Mr. Smith very particu- 
 
 * See Note I. 
 
593 
 
 lar directions hoth as to the text he should take, and the sermon he should 
 preach upon that occasion. For the former he selected the last verse of the 
 17th Psalm, as being expressive of the prevailing desire of his heart. " That 
 text," said he, Ci is the" most appropriate to my feelings of any I know : for 
 I can indeed join with the psalmist in saying, ' As for me, I will behold thy 
 face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.'" 
 Nor could he have chosen one more strikingly characteristic of his religious 
 principles, and of the uniform bias of his mind, which was strongly and most 
 decidedly marked by an habitually humble view of his present attainments, 
 and a constant and earnest desire after a greater conformity to the divine 
 image. Feeling and acknowledging that, even in his best actions, he was 
 influenced by a mixture of motives partaking of the imperfections of our 
 nature ; and conscious of being sinful and unprofitable at the best in the 
 sight of God ; he had at all times an unconquerable aversion to being held 
 up to the admiration of his fellow-creatures. He therefore uniformly com- 
 bated, with arguments drawn from these views of his own character, the re- 
 monstrances which Mr. Smith occasionally addressed to him, on what he 
 could not but consider, at times, a too scrupulous dislike to publicity. That 
 dislike lie was convinced, however, did not arise from false modesty, or even 
 from any reservedness of disposition, but was founded upon truly Christian 
 principles, as he would come forward with great readiness, freedom, and 
 energy, whenever he thought that, by so doing, he could render a service 
 to his fellow-creatures. This disposition he carried with him to his grave, 
 as from his particular aversion to any thing being said of him in public, he 
 now exacted from his friend a solemn promise, that in the sermon which he 
 might preach upon occasion of his death, he would not enter into any par- 
 ticulars of his life and actions. To the exposure of these to the public eye, his 
 singular modesty had long engendered in his mind a rooted and insuperable 
 dislike, thinking, as he did, that the world had no claim to know any thing 
 of him, beyond what they were made acquainted with through the medium of 
 
 4 G 
 
594 
 
 his own publications. Further than that he never wished to be known but to 
 the circle of his chosen friends ; and in order, as much as in him lay, to pre- 
 vent his being so after his decease, he spent some time, during the last days 
 of his residence at Cardington, in destroying all the letters and papers 
 which might be of use in such an attempt. Some of these, and not the 
 least interesting, happened, however, not to have been in his possession at 
 this time, and have thus been preserved for the illustration of a character, 
 which, however much opposed to his wishes, the general interest of society 
 requires us to hold up to the admiration and imitation of others. 
 
 To the care and attention of his kind friend, Mr. Howard commended, 
 during his absence, his schools and other charitable institutions for the benefit 
 of his villagers, tenants, and poorer neighbours ; and under his superintendence, 
 and the fostering care of the Whitbread family, they long continued in a con- 
 dition as flourishing as that in which he left them. The parting of these two 
 excellent men, and inseparable companions, was affecting on both sides, though 
 Mr. Smith was not without strong hopes that the forebodings of his 
 friend, that he should return to him no more, would not be realized. Their 
 conversation, during the last few days they were permitted to spend toge- 
 ther on earth, was, however, particularly serious and impressive, and con- 
 templated as probable, an event for which Mr. Howard himself was as fully 
 prepared, as though it was certain. This was particularly the case, I learn 
 from Mrs. Greene, the last time he walked with their family party to meeting, 
 but a few days before he set out upon that journey of philanthrophy which 
 closed his singularly honorable career. 
 
 Ere he left Cardington upon his merciful errand, he made a point of visit- 
 ing all his tenants, and every individual in his neighbourhood who was either 
 a recipient of his bounty, or ranked in the number of his humble friends. He 
 scrupulously discharged too, every debt which he had contracted in the vi- 
 
595 
 
 cinity, or elsewhere, so that when he left England he owed not a single farthing 
 to any one. In this respect he was always remarkably punctual, paying him- 
 self, and directing his servants to pay, the odd pence in every bill, since, as he 
 observed, they were as justly due to the creditor as the shillings and the pounds. 
 The evening before his departure, he walked with his old gardener, Joshua 
 Crockford, to a very late hour, in the beautiful fir-walk of his garden, which 
 their own hands and those of a beloved wife, who was then a sainted spirit in 
 heaven, had planted in happier hours ; giving him directions in what way he 
 would wish the grounds to be kept up, whether he should ever return or not. 
 In the course of his conversation with this faithful and attached domestic, he 
 intimated that he had now got every thing in his garden exactly in the order 
 he wished, though he was about to leave itj but he added, that should he 
 be spared to reach the shores of his native land again, he intended to end his 
 days there. He told him, at the same time, that in the event of his death, 
 he had made provision for his continuing in his situation as long as he chose 
 to remain there, which he has done to the present hour. John Prole, his old 
 and trusty bailiff, he had just put into one of his farms ; but as he was taking 
 leave of his wife, he said to her, in his usual kind manner, " If the farm does 
 not answer your purpose, I will take it into my own hands again, and your 
 husband shall manage it for me. If I come back again, I will have a gate 
 made into the close, and we can then be good neighbours." The day before, 
 he had given her a very pretty tea-caddy, and the miniature of her former 
 mistress, from which the engraving to this work was taken, desiring her to 
 keep them for his sake, should she never see him again. To these presents, on 
 the morning of his departure, he added another, for as his faithful domestic 
 brought him his horse to the door, mounted on a second, which he himself was 
 to ride, he said to her, " I must take your husband away from you for a little 
 while," but, slipping a guinea into her hand, added, " there is something as a 
 recompence for his loss of time ; it is not fair to take him from you without 
 
 4 o 2 
 
596 
 
 making you some amends." That guinea this excellent woman still treasures 
 up as a memorial of a beloved master, to whom both she and her husband were 
 most devotedly attached, by every tie of gratitude and affectionate esteem. 
 Even this, however, was not the last mark of a generous acknowledgment 
 of faithful services, and long and tried attachment which she received at his 
 hands, for when her husband was about to take his leave of him in London, 
 whither he had accompanied him on his last journey thither, Mr. Howard said 
 to him — " Stop, John, I have some things for you to take with you to Car- 
 dington :" and presently a man brought in two or three paper parcels. " These," 
 said his master, as he delivered them into his hands, " are a present for you 
 to take to your wife, for you must not go home to her empty-handed." On 
 opening them, Mrs. Prole found that they contained a quantity of very fine 
 tea and sugar, a portion of which is still left in the caddy which Mr. Howard 
 gave her before his departure, and which, together with the last guinea she 
 received from him, she declares her determination to keep as long as she lives, 
 and then they will, no doubt, be bequeathed as invaluable relics to her children, 
 who have been taught, from their earliest years, to venerate the name of 
 Howard, as that of the earthly benefactor, to whose kindness, under God, the 
 survivor of their parents owes the comfortable provision which is made for 
 her in her old age, and both were indebted for their all. 
 
 It was originally Mr. Howard's intention to have taken the toilsome and 
 dangerous journey which he meditated, as he had done the preceding one, 
 alone ; but the urgent entreaties of the servant who had attended him in most 
 of his former tours, at length obtained him permission to accompany him, and 
 he was sent on before to London, to make preparations for their departure. 
 He himself spent but a very short time in the metropolis, in bidding a hasty 
 farewell to his friends who resided there, or in its immediate vicinity. It 
 was at this time, and but a few hours before he get out on his long journey, 
 
591 
 
 that, to avail myself of the affecting description which Dr. Aikin has given 
 of so interesting a scene,* " he and his very intimate and highly-respected 
 friend, Dr. Price, took a most affectionate and pathetic leave of each other ; 
 from the age and infirmities of the one, and the hazards the other was going to 
 encounter, it was the foreboding of each of them that they should never meet 
 again in this world ; and their farewell corresponded with the solemnity of 
 such an occasion. The reader's mind will pause upon the parting embrace of 
 two such men ; and revere the mixture of cordial affection, tender regret, phi- 
 . losophic firmness, and christian resignation, which their minds must have 
 displayed." 
 
 It must have been on the 4th or 5th of July, that, attended by his servant, 
 Thomasson, this excellent man left the shores of his native country to 
 return not to them again ; for, ¥ In confidence on God, who had been his 
 help," he himself informs us, that " he cheerfully set out on his journey, 
 and came to Amsterdam the 7th of July, 1789 ; where he first visited the 
 hospitals for the sick," which he found, on the whole, in a clean and improved 
 condition, though, in their persons and linen, their patients were very dirty. In 
 the prison in the stadt-house, many judicious alterations had been made in the 
 debtors' rooms ; the burgomaster and one of the sheriffs of the city accompany- 
 ing him in his visits to them, and to the dungeons for the felons, who, much 
 against their wishes, were still liable to be subjected to all the agonies of the 
 torture. In visiting the rasp-house, on a sabbath morning, he had, however, 
 the gratification of witnessing a very different scene, in a like orderly 
 attendance of the prisoners on public worship in the chapel, as, in a former part 
 of this work, he has been described to have been so highly delighted with, in that 
 at Rotterdam. The infirmary attached to this house of correction was somewhat 
 cleaner than at his former visits, but the patients had no sheets. The other 
 bed-rooms of the house were full of vermin, and the mendicants were too 
 
 * P. 186, 7. 
 
598 
 
 thinly clad. At Utrecht, whither he next proceeded, he met with nothing re- 
 markable in the prisons, except that no persons were confined there for capital 
 crimes, as they contained but a few petty offenders, who were kept upon bread 
 and water, for a longer or a shorter period, at the discretion of the magistrates.* 
 In this city, where he learnt with pleasure that there had been no execution for 
 the last three-and-thirty years, he spent a day or two with his friend Dr. 
 Brown ; and whilst sojourning beneath his hospitable roof, was induced to break 
 through the rule he had laid down to himself, of never accepting any invitations 
 to dinner whilst engaged on his tours of benevolence, though he did so under 
 some peculiar circumstances, which the Doctor has thus obligingly communi- 
 cated to me : " There resided at this time, in Utrecht, a very worthy and 
 humane gentleman of the name of Loten, who had been for many years the 
 Dutch governor of Ceylon. I had the honor of his particular acquaintance ; 
 and he expressed to me the strong desire he felt to be introduced to Mr. 
 Howard, though, as he was confined to his house by asthma, he could not go 
 out to wait on him. I mentioned this circumstance to Mr. Howard, and de- 
 scribed to him Mr. Loten's character in that amiable point of view in which it 
 so fully deserved to be placed. The Philanthropist immediately requested me to 
 introduce him to my friend ; and added, ' for such a man as you have described 
 this gentleman to me, I will depart from my rule ; and if he does me the honor 
 of asking me to dinner, I will certainly accept the invitation.' This reply I 
 reported to Mr. Loten, and he sent an immediate invitation to Mr. Howard, 
 who dined with him accordingly, though without violating his constant regi- 
 men, in abstaining from animal food and wine." During his short stay with his 
 revered and amiable friend, our Philanthropist explained to him the views by 
 which he was actuated in undertaking the long and hazardous journey he 
 was now entering upon, more fully than he appears to have done to most of 
 his other friends. " His object," says the Doctor, in his valuable memoranda, 
 " was to acquire the most accurate information possible relative to the plague, 
 * Appendix concerning Foreign Prisons, p. 3 — 6. 
 
599 
 
 the nature of the disease, the best mode of treating it, and the means most 
 effectual for its cure, or its prevention. This information he intended to com- 
 municate to the world in order that all Europe might be benefited by his re- 
 searches, and a plan, perhaps, ultimately devised for preventing this direful 
 scourge from being introduced into those countries whose governments might 
 possess judgment to adopt, and energy to execute such a scheme ; or, in the event 
 of its dismal introduction, for arresting its progress, and accomplishing its cure." 
 His views and opinions with respect to this dreadful enemy of the human race, 
 whose ravages he was so anxious, at the risk of his own life, to lessen, if he 
 could not stay, are, however, more fully explained, in the following passage in 
 his diary, written, as I should conjecture, about this period : " It is very 
 probable that the Plague flies about from one Country to another as 
 accident or negligence give it opportunity, so that disease rises spon- 
 taneously, that is without our being able to trace its imported Infection, 
 tho' it must have originally taken its rise in some particular Place, as perhaps 
 in Egypt or the Coast of Barbary— Important is the Enquiry whether it is 
 ever found thus to arise spontaniously — But as to the Nature or Cause of this 
 Malady I do not entertain much hope of seeing that investigated and ascer- 
 tained with precision, any more than the essence or Cause of the Small Pox 
 or Measles &c I would look to the Moral Source from whence all evil and 
 suffering have been derived, and would at least endeavour to diminish their 
 bitterness — And Oh ! how should I bless God if such a Worm is made the 
 Instrument of alleviating the Miseries of my fellow Creatures — and to connect 
 more strongly the social Bond by mutual exertions for mutual relief. — If one 
 Person has received good, spiritual good by my Labours, it is an Honour for 
 which I cannot be too thankful — Let us bless the Lord for all things." — From a 
 letter which he wrote but a short time previous to his departure from England 
 to a person who had sent him a French treatise on the plague at Marseilles, it 
 would appear also that, with the views he had formed upon the subject, he was 
 not desirous of consulting many books on the nature of this singular disease. 
 
600 
 
 " I read very little," he there observes, " on the subject of the plague, as I wish 
 to draw my inferences from close observation on the disorder itself, and not 
 from the theories of persons who never visited patients in that distemper ; and 
 indeed my general opinion of it is different from any thing I have yet found 
 in books."* 
 
 To satisfy himself of the correctness, or the error of these opinions, he was 
 now upon his way to those parts of the globe where this fiery pestilence reigns 
 in all its accumulated horrors, over an immense population of besotted devotees 
 to a faith, whose tenets prevent their taking the proper precautions to arrest its 
 destructive progress. " I was deeply impressed," says Dr. Brown, as well he 
 might be, " by the sense of the danger to which my friend would unavoidably 
 be exposed in this expedition, and the risk which the civilized world would 
 run of losing so valuable a life. I cOuld not, therefore, avoid expressing to Mr. 
 Howard my anxiety on this subject. He replied, with his usual decision, that 
 he was resolved to undertake the journey, and, convinced of its probable utility 
 to mankind, to place his confidence in that Providence which had hitherto so 
 wonderfully protected him. He added, that if his life was spared, he should 
 be enabled to enlarge the sphere of his usefulness, and if he was appointed to 
 terminate, in this journey, his terrestrial career, he rejoiced to reflect that his 
 life had not been wholly passed in vain ; and that others might, perhaps, be 
 prompted by his example to complete what he had left unfinished. When I 
 bade him farewell, taking me by the hand, he said, ' Well, my dear friend ! 
 if we do not meet again in this world, I hope we shall meet in heaven.' These 
 were the last expressions which I heard from the lips of the incomparable 
 Howard." Thus did these two friends part, as it proved, for ever, until they 
 shall rejoin each other in the realms of glory : and here, too, must we take our 
 leave of those kind communications of the survivor of this congenial intimacy, 
 which have furnished so much interesting matter for the biography of the be- 
 
 * Gillct's Weekly Register, Vol. I. p. 146. 
 
601 
 
 loved companion of some of the happiest of his earthly hours, which were spent 
 in his society and pleasing converse. 
 
 Entering Germany by the bishopric of Osnaburgh, our philanthropic traveller 
 was grieved to learn that the mode of torture adopted there, always more excru- 
 ciating than in other places, had recently been improved upon, in the refinements 
 of its cruelty, by a coriseiller from Paderborn. In one of the noxious cells below 
 ground, already described in the account of his former visit, was a poor object, 
 ironed hands and feet, and also chained to the walls of his dungeon. His wife 
 was in an offensive and dark chamber on an upper floor, weeping and bitterly 
 lamenting her unhappy situation, which, as far as respected the rigor of her 
 confinement, when he humanely represented it to the chief magistrate of 
 the city, our benevolent countryman was assured should immediately be 
 softened. On mentioning to Baron de Borsch, one of the ministers of state, 
 the dirty and offensive condition of the rooms appropriated to prisoners under 
 correctional discipline, which were no cleaner than when he last visited them, 
 he received, too, from him, an assurance that these criminals should, as in Hol- 
 land, have the whole of every Saturday devoted to the washing and cleansing 
 of their habitations. He was pleased also to find that the food of the pri- 
 soners was now good, and sufficient ; the alteration having, no doubt, been 
 occasioned by his representations of the defects which he had formerly noticed 
 in these particulars. In another point, the regulations of this prison were de- 
 serving of particular commendation : all its inmates regularly attended public 
 worship on the Sabbath, in a chapel containing separate desks for the books and 
 ornaments of the Protestant and Roman Catholic chaplains, the prisoners of 
 each persuasion attending the service of their own sect at different parts of the 
 day. In the same liberal and Christian spirit, — alas, how unlike that which per- 
 vades but too large a proportion of our own boasted land of toleration and liberty 
 of conscience ! — every indulgence was allowed to the Jews, in their Sabbath, 
 their diet, and their cloathes. Passing on to the capital of the Hanoverian 
 
 4n 
 
602 
 
 dominions of his Britannic Majesty, he found, on the 22d of July, no criminals 
 in the prison there for capital offences ; but in the rooms above stairs were seven 
 prisoners, one of them a very pale object, who had marked by chalks upon the 
 floor the weeks of his tedious confinement ; and on counting them, Mr. Howard 
 found that they amounted to forty -two, though his guilt or innocence of the 
 crime laid to his charge, and consequently the justice or injustice of his pro- 
 longed detention here, was not yet decided. This grievous evil he had long 
 since exposed, yet was it undiminished ; nor was the still more execrable prac- 
 tice of torturing prisoners abolished; as it was at all times in the power 
 of the magistrates to inflict it. " Have I not reason," exclaims the man 
 of humanity, as he records this gross instance of inattention to its most 
 powerful claims, on the part of the ministers of his own benignant monarch, 
 " with a sigh, to say, f I labour in vain, and spend my strength for nought ?' 
 But I have resolved, by the help of God, to give myself wholly to this work." 
 He was grieved to learn that the good burgomaster Aleman, the noble founder 
 of the new orphan-house, and house of correction for juvenile delinquents in 
 the suburbs of this capital, had died since his last visit ; and the more so, as 
 when he saw the children at dinner, he could not help observing from their 
 countenances, that, though it appeared to be in the best order, something was 
 wrong in the institution which he had so ably and so humanely superintended. 
 For this he was but too well able to account, when, in going through the house, 
 he discovered that the bed-rooms were dirty, the bedding scanty, and without 
 linen ; and learnt also, that the children were fed by contract with the master 
 at 2d. a day each. But having pointed out these defects to Mr. Conseiller 
 Falke, the kinsman of the founder, and his successor in the direction of this 
 useful establishment, he felt firmly persuaded that they would speedily be recti- 
 fied. In an older institution, of a somewhat similar description, in the heart 
 of the town, he saw that gentleman, the minister, and two or three others, distri- 
 bute the weekly allowance to the poor, who received what was given to them 
 with thankfulness; those women who did not refuse to sweep the streets 
 
603 
 
 having a small addition made to their share. The town, he was informed, 
 was divided into seven districts, to each of which a respectable person was 
 appointed, to whom the poor, in case of sickness, were to make application, 
 when he reported their condition to a magistrate, specially appointed for that 
 purpose, who immediately ordered the physician for the district to attend the 
 pauper. That part of this institution which was used as a prison for men was 
 empty, but that for the women was dirty, and intolerably offensive. The hos- 
 pital of this capital was only one large room, crowded with beds, containing 
 patients of both sexes : a new one was then building for the military, on an 
 improper spot, and on a contracted and bad plan. At Brunswick he again 
 read the order for admitting any decent person to inspect the house of correc- 
 tion on putting a florin into the box to assist prisoners whose term was expired 
 in passing on their journey, and conformed to it with pleasure ; though he was 
 grieved, on his entrance into the prison, to find it in as dirty a condition as ever. 
 The torture was not abolished here, but he had the satisfaction to learn 
 that the last instance of any person having suffered it was about eighteen years 
 previous to this visit, and that the room had not since been opened, until now, 
 that, by order of one of the counsellors of justice, its doors were unbarred for his 
 admission. Through these doors he was ushered into a small, black, and dark 
 cellar, which, in its hellish paraphernalia, too closely resembled the torture-rooms 
 already described to need more particular notice here. The time for administer- 
 ing the question, as the absurd and barbarous custom of putting criminals, or 
 suspected criminals, to the rack was technically and judicially called, was the 
 midnight hour ; though the thickness of a three-feet wall ; the four doors through 
 which the benevolent inspector of this dreadful chamber passed; its dirt floor, 
 and depth under ground, must have prevented the most agonizing cries from 
 being heard beyond the precincts of this horrid den. Several of the engines of 
 this diabolical practice were kept in the place where, in former times, they 
 had been but too often used ; the remainder Mr. Howard saw at the house of 
 the executioner. " He seemed," says his indignant visitor, " with pleasure to 
 
 4 h 2 
 
604 
 
 shew the mode of application on the first, second and last question, and 
 very readily answered any enquiries, having been several years in that occu- 
 pation at Hanover ; though here (he said) he had only beheaded four or five. 
 On asking if nothing was put into the tortured person's mouth, as I had in 
 some places seen, he replied, ' No, the Osnaburgh executioner thinks they 
 suffer less;' and on his describing some of the modes of torture (which the 
 art of devils and men had invented), he said, ' Sir, the Osnaburgh torture is 
 still ruder.'"* 
 
 But, readily, I am sure, will the reader hasten with him from scenes of 
 horror such as these, " to another country, where the torture had not been in- 
 flicted for above twice eighteen years." At Berlin, the prisons were in general 
 clean, well regulated, and, on the whole, in an improved condition, except 
 that for the city, which, in its every part, was very dirty, appearing never to 
 have been whitewashed. The legal process against the prisoners confined here 
 was long, tedious, and dilatory; the court yard was common to men, women, 
 and boys; and the gaoler freely sold liquors of every description. In this city, 
 besides the Spanish vest for certain male offenders, which has already heen de- 
 scribed, a singular machine, called a fiddle, was used for offenders of the other 
 sex, into which their hands and neck were fastened, whilst they were exposed 
 to the public gaze, for an hour at a time, on three successive days. The Maison 
 de Travail was in the same excellent order as Mr. Howard had found it in at 
 his former visits, but he now very properly noticed the very great number of 
 men, women, and children who were at work together in one room of a house, in 
 which a proper separation might so easily have been made, as objectionable in 
 many points of view. He found no military hospital in the capital of this 
 military kingdom, every regiment being provided with one or two sick-rooms, 
 each of them containing seven or eight beds. Those he visited were clean, 
 and most of them empty, a circumstance which he attributed to the strict 
 * Appendix concerning Foreign Prisons, p. 6 — 9.. 
 
60S 
 
 discipline, constant exercising, and frequent reviewing of the Prussian troops, 
 and also to many of them having wives, to whom a small weekly pay was 
 politically, as well as humanely allowed, whilst, jointly with their husbands, 
 they occupied a -separate room in each caserne, or barracks. In the fortress at 
 Spandau, he found, on the 4th of August, one hundred and seventy-one pri- 
 soners, several of them condemned for life, and one having actually been con- 
 fined there for thirty-two years. Their allowance was but two pounds of bread and 
 water a-day, and after the first year one suit of cloathes annually. They were 
 required to work four hours of every day for the king, and when the governor 
 employed them as carpenters or masons, he gave them about 3ld. each for their 
 daily labor. Many were spinning cotton at their leisure hours for their own 
 emolument ; whilst several others had an iron collar round their necks, the mark 
 of their contentions and quarrels. Their rooms under the ramparts were very 
 close, dirty, and crowded, but as their governor, who was an Englishman, seemed 
 desirous of softening the rigor of their confinement, Mr. Howard gave him 
 some very useful hints for the purpose, which, after his death, were printed 
 among the other memoranda of this journey. The upper room of one of the 
 towers contained a state prisoner ; whilst from a dreadful dungeon underneath 
 another criminal had been removed on the very morning of his visit. It has 
 been formerly stated, that no woman was ever permitted to continue a night 
 within the walls of this castle ; the prohibition seems not, however, to have 
 extended to their occasionally visiting it during the day, as whilst our Philan- 
 thropist was walking round with the governor, the mother of one of the 
 convicts humbly petitioned for liberty to see her son, and it was readily granted, 
 though a guard was directed to attend her during their conference. AtKo- 
 ningsberg, the prison was in a close part of the city ; the rooms on the two 
 upper floors being inhabited, the one by seven men, the other by eight women, 
 who were occupied in spinning. Their visitor observed that none of the men 
 were in irons, which were never put on, in any case, until after conviction. He 
 notices here also a practice highly worthy of commendation, which he was 
 
606 
 
 informed prevailed in several Roman Catholic countries, of a refusal on the part 
 of the priests of that faith to administer the sacrament to prisoners until their 
 irons were taken off. In an upper room of the gaol were eleven sick women, 
 whom he understood not to be prisoners, though, if he might conjecture from 
 the appearance of their rooms, and from their own, they were some poor 
 wretches sent there to perish from nastiness and neglect. In the house of 
 correction, no separation was made between old and young, greater and 
 lesser criminals, nor was any inducement held out of shortening their term in 
 consequence of their good behaviour, whilst the first view of the countenances 
 of the whole convinced him of sad neglect in their management. Their prison 
 was without an infirmary, the sick having hardly a blanket to cover them, 
 and the men being also in irons. From two or three who were dying, Mr. 
 Howard requested the magistrates to let their irons be taken off; the surgeon 
 who attended them through the gaol having no feeling whatever for his hapless 
 patients. The sick women, in three other rooms, were dirty beyond descrip- 
 tion, and seemed in want of every comfort of life. The inspector and keeper 
 were both old and infirm ; and so miserably dirty was the prison confided to 
 their care, that the magisti-ates, who went through it with our humane 
 countryman, were covered with vermin before they had completed their round. 
 Taking advantage of this circumstance, he enforced upon their attention the 
 custom observed in the Dutch spin-houses, of devoting the whole of every 
 Saturday to the work of purification ; a practice which he further commended, 
 from its manifest tendency to introduce habits of cleanliness among the female 
 sex. In connection with these few, but salutary remarks, he inserted in his journal 
 the following general observation, which, in the account of his last tour, given 
 to the public after his decease, is very properly printed as a note upon the 
 passage whence the above account is taken. — " In several places I now take 
 the liberty to mention what seemed to me an obvious remedy to some de- 
 fect that happened to strike me. I hope it will not be thought by any 
 gentleman, that I do it in the style of a dictator. Yet should it be asked, 
 
60? 
 
 why I did not so generally do it in my first publications, I reply, that my 
 purpose then was to collect what was good, with a view of a reform in my 
 own country ; as I did not think any observations of so private an individual 
 would either reach the eye of foreign magistrates, or be attended to by them : 
 but, it has pleased God to order it otherwise ; it would therefore be, on my part, 
 refusing to do the good offered to my endeavours, were I to abstain from such 
 remarks as may correct abuses, and alleviate misery in all the places I visit." 
 In the old house of correction, which had been burnt down in the course of 
 the preceding winter, a singular mode of employment had been adopted for the 
 prisoners, who were set to turn the two heavy wheels of a machine for stamping 
 dyers' wood, which escaped the ravages of the conflagration, two working each 
 wheel a hundred times, when they were relieved by a second set. In the 
 suburbs of the city was another house of correction, with a neat garden at- 
 tached to it, and situated near a pleasant lake. The prisoners, of whom there 
 were about thirty, were confined in separate rooms, and looked clean and 
 healthy, which their keeper, who had lived thirty-seven years in Russia, prin- 
 cipally ascribed to the use of a warm bath, which, after the manner of that 
 country, he had erected in his garden, compelling the prisoners every Saturday 
 morning thoroughly to wash and clean themselves, in a warm room. The kind 
 attention which he received from the magistrates induced Mr. Howard to ask 
 permission to copy the plan of this bathing-house, and he was readily permitted 
 to do so. The castle at Memel contained, on the 17th of August, fifty-seven men 
 and eleven women, most of them confined in dark and damp rooms, built against 
 the fortifications, and unprovided with bedding. The allowance was the 
 same as at Spandau ; their employment removing the ballast flung out of 
 the ships in the harbour. In this work only twenty-two were now engaged, 
 but at times there were vessels enough in port to find employment for the 
 whole, women as well as men : some of the prisoners were sick, and they all 
 had a pale and languid look. At Mittau, in Courland, twelve of the criminals 
 or slaves, who were in irons, with a chain between each leg as at Memel, were 
 
608 
 
 at work in hewing and sawing timber for repairing the palace, which had been 
 greatly injured by fire in the preceding winter. Mr. Howard observed that 
 they were quite as handy and quiet as the other workmen, and though he 
 repeated his visit to them alone, not one stopped from his work, or gave the 
 least hint of a request for money.* 
 
 Entering the extensive territories of Russia by way of Riga, our traveller 
 inspected the prison and house of correction there, which was a square building 
 in the citadel, the prison part of which was very dirty and offensive, and seemed 
 to have but little attention paid in it, to the separation of the sexes, or to proper 
 order and regulation in any respect, though in that appropriated to the house of 
 correction the prisoners had a cheerful and healthy look, and the rooms were 
 clean. Here were several bread-mills, at some of which six men were grinding 
 corn, six women being at work in another part, on a lighter mill, the other 
 prisoners, who were not capable of such hard labor, being employed the 
 while in spinning. Their hours of work were fourteen in summer, and thirteen 
 in winter; their food a sufficient quantity of bread and gruel. Every fortnight 
 they were all compelled to use the warm bath, which adjoined the prison. In the 
 stadt-house were rooms for the town debtors, in which not more than two or 
 three were now incarcerated. Down twenty-five steps were two dungeons 
 confining but one prisoner, and he was not in irons, and could receive 
 alms at a grated window, the Russians being very kind to persons in his 
 pitiable situation. The military hospital contained, at this time, upwards of 300 
 sick, who were crammed into two dirty and offensive wards, the few beds 
 in them being so extremely crowded, that several of them lay upon 
 boards saturated with infection, though the wall seemed to have been newly 
 whitewashed ; they were rendered more offensive too, by poisonous sewers in 
 the passages into which they opened. These circumstances, even without at- 
 tending to the improper diet of the patients, prevented any surprise on the 
 * Appendix concerning Foreign Prisons, p. 9 — J2. 
 
609 
 
 part of its visitor, when he was informed that four or five hundred recruits 
 had died in this pest-house in the beginning of the year. About ten miles 
 from this town, he visited the slaves, or convicts, who were confined there in a 
 prison or ostrog very similar to that at Moscow, formerly described as con- 
 sisting of several wooden houses surrounded with high pales. The whole number 
 of prisoners was 387, amongst whom were forty -two foreigners confined here 
 for debts, some of them of so trifling an amount as from three to four roubles, 
 (eight to eleven shillings) though contracted under some circumstances which 
 would not permit their being immediately released by the payment of their 
 debt, as in some cases, they otherwise would have been, by the humanity of 
 their visitor. During their confinement in this gaol, they were ironed, 
 and set to labor with the criminals on the public works, being allowed the 
 while from government, twenty copecs (6%d.) a-day, eight of which went to 
 provide them in food, cloathes, and other necessaries; the remaining twelve 
 being paid to their creditors until their whole debts were discharged. The 
 rooms in this prison, or rather the separate wooden huts of which it was com- 
 posed, contained about forty-two persons each, every slave having his separate 
 bed, and most of them a little bedding. All their inmates, unless they were 
 sick, which the surgeon came every morning to examine into, were in irons,- 
 and worked, in that state, fourteen hours a-day, in hewing timber, driving 
 piles, and wheeling and carrying the stones for a fine large mole, on which they 
 had been employed for six years, receiving an allowance of six copecs a-day to 
 provide them with food and cloathing, the former of which was very bad, and 
 the latter very indifferent. Their religious instruction was so shockingly 
 neglected, that it was only once in a-year that they went to the chapel in the 
 citadel, every other Sabbath being occupied in amusing themselves, by making 
 shoes, and similar modes of employment. In a small inner room, Mr. Howard 
 found two Russians, sent hither about four years before, since which period they 
 had never been out of their room, where they were heavily ironed, both by 
 
 4 l 
 
610 
 
 their hands and feet ; a guard being constantly placed also at their door. They 
 never were spoken to, nor was their crime known, or, indeed, any thing re- 
 specting them, but that they had suffered the punishment of the knout, had a 
 piece cut out of each nostril, and the mark on their cheeks which denotes their 
 condemnation for life. Several others were marked in this way, for murder 
 and other capital crimes ; no offence, not even the crying one of wilfully shed- 
 ding human blood, being then punished in Russia with death. Of this new mode 
 of legislation, a very singular illustration was here presented, in the case of the 
 head knout-master, at St. PetersbUrgh, who had been brought hither, about a 
 fortnight before, for having very coolly murdered his two colleagues, by striking 
 off the head of one of them, as they were quarrelling in a public-house, and very 
 dexterously decapitating the other the next instant, for seeming to resent the 
 sudden fate of his comrade. For so daring and brutal an outrage, this man 
 was sentenced to receive 270 strokes of the knout, which were administered by 
 the executioner from Moscow, who was brought to Petersburgh for the express 
 purpose. Being condemned to slavery for life, he was also sent to this prison 
 with the mark of his sentence on his cheek. Here he met with several of his 
 former acquaintance, to whom he had administered the discipline, which, in his 
 turn, he had himself received ; and, on being asked in how many strokes he 
 could kill a man, he answered, with perfect nonchalance, that if the criminal 
 were a strong man, he could dispatch him with five and twenty, if not with 
 twenty blows. 
 
 During Mr. Howard's continuance in Riga and its neighbourhood, he en- 
 tered in his diary the last observations and reflections with which I have been 
 favored by the present possessor of that invaluable relic, in -which it is highly 
 probable that his hand never traced any characters again. The first of these 
 contains a singular exposition of his ideas on the superiority of a vegetable, 
 over an animal regimen, in which, I apprehend, few will coincide ;— the 
 
611 
 
 last, a statement of the source of his purest enjoyments here, and a proof of his 
 constant preparation for an hereafter, which all surely must approve, and would 
 do well to imitate and realize themselves. 
 
 " I am firmly perswaded as to the Health of our Bodies, Herbs and Fruits 
 will sustain Nature in every respect, far beyond the best flesh meat, is there any 
 comparison to be made between an Herb Market and a flesh Market? The 
 Lord planted a Garden for Mankind in the beginning, and replenished it with 
 all Manner of Fruits and Herbs, — this was the place ordained for Man, if these 
 had still been the Food of Man, he would not have contracted so many diseases 
 in his Body, nor cruel Vices in his Soul — The Taste of most sorts of flesh is 
 disagreeable, to those who for any time abstain from it, and none can be com- 
 petent Judges of what I say, but those who have made tryal of it. 
 
 I hope I have sources of enjoyment that depend not on the particular spot 
 I inhabit, a rightly cultivated mind, under the power of Religion, and the 
 exertion of beneficient dispositions, are a ground of Sattisfaction little affected 
 by heres and theres. 
 
 " I hope my Soul thirsts for the Ordinances of God's House, which I am 
 
 this day deprived of, but I will make it a day of rest — Thro' Mercy brought 
 
 here in safety, I have this Morning read over some solemn transactions of my 
 
 Soul, many years past, and in the most solemn and devout manner renew 
 
 those Vows, which alas ! have been too often broken, and acknowledge Thee — 
 
 the Almighty Jehovah, for my Lord and my God — oh! God hear my Prayer and 
 
 let my Cry come before Thee. 
 
 " Riga Aug 1 23 rt " 
 
 The solemn transactions here referred to, were the covenant, and the other 
 paper in the nature of a covenant, to which he deliberately signed his name in 
 the year 17G6, and which have already been inserted in the history of that 
 period of his life. They were now, with equal deliberation, re-signed and 
 renewed three-and-twenty years after they had first been framed and 
 
 4 i 2 
 
612 
 
 executed. From Riga our traveller proceeded to St. Petersburgh, where he 
 pursued nearly the same round of inspection of the prisons as he had done just 
 eight years before, and found but little alteration in their condition, except 
 that the new house of correction, which was then nearly finished, had never 
 been inhabited, but was now going to ruin, many of the upper floors 
 having already fallen in. He therefore passed with pleasure from the places 
 of confinement, to inspect the hospitals of this capital, in which several 
 very judicious improvements had been made since he last went through 
 their wards. A new and splendid one, recently erected just out of the city, 
 afforded an opportunity of usefully employing several male and female pri- 
 soners, who came thither every day, the latter to wash and clean the rooms, 
 the former to perform other menial offices about the place. In the foundling 
 and inoculating hospitals, and the noble institution for the corps of military 
 cadets, our humane and independent countryman passed three or four morn- 
 ings in inspecting every part of their economy, on which he freely spoke his 
 mind, either in commending what was right, or pointing out for correction 
 what he thought amiss, endeavoring, in the latter case, to enforce his observa- 
 tions by appealing to the practice of other countries in similar circumstances, 
 or by showing the plans and models of such parts of buildings of this description, 
 as were best fitted for the purposes they were intended to answer, in his own. 
 He mentions also having spent another pleasant hour with the good old 
 General de Betskoi. On the 9th and 10th of September he visited the marine 
 hospital at Cronstadt, which he now found in a much worse condition than 
 when he had formerly inspected it ; the entrance being through very dark and 
 offensive rooms ; the wards narrow, low, and without apertures for air ; the 
 floors dirty ; and many of the beds very close to one another, so that a patient 
 could have very little hopes of recovering in such a foetid air as these various 
 circumstances combined to produce. The adjoining summer-houses were, 
 however, airy and spacious, though here, as in the other parts of the hospital, 
 the attendants on the sick were, very improperly, all of them men. The diet 
 
613 
 
 of the patients, too, was very ill suited to the nature of their complaints, which 
 were chiefly scorbutic disorders and an intermittent fever. " With what con- 
 cern," exclaims their pitying visitor, " must a feeling mind be struck, when 
 many objects are looking up for help, and the probability of a cure is thus cut 
 off!" The condition of such of the sick sailors of the fleet as were on the upper 
 floor of the barracks, whilst used as a temporary hospital, presented, however, 
 a pleasing contrast to this distressing scene, and did great credit to the 
 physician who presided over them, and who was one of our own countrymen. 
 The sick mariners in the hospital, and the slaves in the prison, had indeed alike 
 reason to regret that they had not the opportunity of deriving further benefit 
 from the attendance and humanity for which the natives of Great Britain are 
 deservedly celebrated, as the death of Admiral Greig put a stop to many 
 improvements which he had commenced, in accordance with his favorite 
 maxim, " If I cannot do what I would, I will do what I can." In 
 consequence of that lamented event, the new prison, for which the ground 
 was already marked out, eight years ago, had never been erected ; and in the 
 old one, both the criminals and the slaves, sent thither by their masters or 
 landlords, seemed to be equally neglected ; none of them having beds, and 
 their rooms being excessively dirty. In his way to Moscow, our Phi- 
 lanthropist again inspected the miserable prison at Tver, which was very dirty, 
 and had not been whitewashed since he had last visited it, soon after its 
 erection. It contained, however, no dungeons, and the prisoners were now 
 allowed as much bread as they chose, beside the charitable contributions from 
 the box, which was fixed on a pillar on the outside. At Moscow, the prison 
 or ostrog, which Mr. Howard visited in 1781, was now destroyed, its place 
 having, about four years since, been supplied by a new and more commodious 
 brick building, in which provision was made for the proper separation of pri- 
 soners of different descriptions. No wine or spirits were permitted to be 
 brought within its walls ; and its rooms were furnished with stoves and barrack 
 bedsteads, but not with bedding. This want was experienced even by 
 
614 
 
 the sick in the infirmary, which consisted of but one large room for both sexes, 
 though it now contained only eighty-eight men, most of them miserable 
 objects ; several in high fevers, yet having so little attention paid to them, that 
 when Mr. Howard visited their wretched pest-house, some of them declared that 
 they had not had any refreshment that day, though it was then five o'clock. The 
 prisoners still subsisted on charitable contributions ; and their looks bespoke the 
 liberality of their countrymen, as they did not appear to be in any great want 
 of necessaries. " Hence," says our author, " I conclude, that the nation is 
 humane ; and in travelling through a great tract of the country, the peasants 
 appeared to me of a kind and hospitable disposition." The other government, 
 or city prison, consisted of two dirty and damp rooms, in which both debtors 
 and criminals, men and women, were confined without any distinction. They 
 had neither bedding nor allowance, as they subsisted entirely on occasional cha- 
 rity. Their number was but eighty, though at times a hundred and fifty were 
 orowded into one of these offensive rooms. " Such a prison," exclaims our Phi- 
 lanthropist, with merited indignation, " is a disgrace to any civilized country." 
 The grand duke's hospital, which had been burnt down since his last visit, was 
 re-erected on a very improved plan, and its provisions and regulations were 
 so excellent as to do credit to any country. The military hospital was not, 
 however, in nearly so good a condition, the bread of the patients being very 
 black, and neither well made nor baked. Mr. Howard showed it to the first 
 physician, asking him as he did so, whether he thought the recent alteration 
 in the diet of the military and the marine for the better ; a question to which 
 he cautiously evaded giving any reply. " The purpose of this alteration," 
 observes this humane querist, " is to fortify them, and render them able to 
 endure hardships ; but it should have been considered, that the prevalent dis- 
 orders among those people are scurvy and putrid fevers." Here, as in most of 
 the other hospitals of this country, every aperture for air was carefully stopped 
 up, on some of the fairest, and the mildest days.* 
 
 * Appendix concerning Prisons, p. 12 — 17. 
 
615 
 
 From this capital Mr. Howard addressed to his friend Dr. Price, one of the 
 last letters he ever wrote, and which, upon that account, cannot fail to be ac- 
 ceptable to the admirers of his character, as it is now printed in its entire state 
 from Mr. Palmer's manuscript copy. 
 
 " Moscow, Sept. 22, 1789. 
 " My Dear Friend, 
 
 " Your kind desire of hearing from me engages me to write. 
 When I left England, I first stopped at Amsterdam. I proceeded to Osnaburgh, 
 Hanover, Brunswick, and Berlin : then to Koningsbergh, Riga, and Peters- 
 burgh, at all which places I visited the prisons and hospitals, which were all 
 flung open to me, and in some the Burgomasters accompanied me into the 
 Dungeons, as well as into the other rooms of confinement. 
 
 " I arrived a few days ago in this City, and have begun my rounds. The Hos- 
 pitals are in a sad state : upwards of 70 thousand sailors and recruits died in them 
 last year. I labour to convey the torch of Philanthropy into these distant re- 
 gions, as in God's hand no Instrument is weak, and in whose presence no flesh 
 must glory. 
 
 " I go through Poland into Hungary. I hope to have a few nights of this 
 moon in my journey to Warsaw, which is about a thousand miles. I am pure 
 well — the weather clear — the mornings fresh. Thermometer 48°, but have 
 not yet begun fires. I wish for a mild winter, and shall then make some pro- 
 gress in my European expedition. 
 
 " My medical acquaintance give me but little hopes of escaping the plague in 
 Turkey ; but my spirits do not at all fail me : and, indeed, I do not look back, 
 but would readily endure any hardships, and encounter any dangers, to be an 
 honour to my Christian Profession. 
 
 " I long to hear from my friend, yet I know not where he can direct to me, 
 unless at Sir Rob'. Ainslie's, Constantinople. I will hope all things. Re- 
 member me to Sister, Nieces, and Mr Morgan. 
 
 " I am, my much esteemed friend, 
 
 " Most affectionately and sincerely Your's, 
 " Rev' D r Price." « John Howard." 
 
616 
 
 From the route he here marks out for himself, our Philanthropist was sud- 
 denly diverted by the commiseration which he felt for the wretched condition 
 of the sick soldiers in the Russian military hospitals ; and to gain further informa- 
 tion on this subject, instead of retracing his footsteps over the path he formerly 
 trod, we must now prepare to follow him, in his career of humanity, through the 
 deserts of Tartary, to the confines of the Euxine sea. The first place he visited 
 in these wild and unfrequented regions was Crementschuok, where a new 
 hospital had recently been erected, on the banks of the Nieper, for recruits who 
 fell sick on their march to the army, containing, at this time, in its crowded 
 wards, 400 patients, several of them very ill of the scurvy, yet dieted on sour 
 bread, and still sourer quas. By way of change, they had a sort of water-gruel, 
 which, if not eaten one day, served them for the next ; all the patients, how- 
 ever varying the nature and symptoms of their disease, being tied to a certain 
 diet, which their medical attendants had it not in their power to change. Their 
 rooms were quite clean ; yet, from the improper mode of treatment to which 
 they were subjected, by an authority that must be obeyed, from one-third to 
 a half of their number died here, their intermittent, soon turning into a putrid 
 fever, which swept them off" by scores at a time, the younger of them falling its 
 readiest victims. A bathing-house was erecting, which, from the dirtiness of 
 the patients, seemed to be much wanted, and the more so, as, according to the 
 invariable practice of the country, their attendants were uniformly men.* The 
 next place he visited was Cherson, and on his way thither, his baggage was 
 stolen from behind his carriage, while he and his servant refreshed themselves 
 with a nap. On discovering his loss, he immediately hastened back to the 
 nearest village, in which he recollected to have seen a party of Russian recruits, 
 whom he charged with having taken his property. While he waited in his 
 carriage until a magistrate could be applied to, the articles he had lost were 
 brought to him ; first a hat box, and then a trunk, the latter of which had been 
 found half buried in the road, by the side of a field which some men were 
 ploughing, one of whom, startled at seeing the nails of the trunk shine just 
 above the ground, was afraid to touch it without his companion. When opened 
 
 * Appendix concerning Prison*, p. 17, 18. 
 
61T 
 
 by Mr. Howard, every article it had contained, both of linen and money, was 
 found in statu quo ; but the suspicion of having concealed it until an opportu- 
 nity should offer for carrying off and sharing its contents, fell so strongly ou 
 the recruits, that the magistrate ordered seven of them to be exiled to Siberia.* 
 At Cherson, he found a second military and naval hospital, in a state no less 
 wretched than that he had recently visited ; its wards and passages never being 
 washed, the bedsteads and bedding being equally dirty, and the latter never 
 changed after a patient's death. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to learn 
 that the unhappy beings who were successively stretched upon these hot-beds 
 of infection, should have been in a very filthy condition, both in their persons 
 and their linen, or that their rooms were close and offensive, when pa- 
 tients suffering under every variety of disease, one or two only excepted, 
 were indiscriminately mingled in the same ward. The more prevalent of 
 those diseases were scurvy and intermittent fever, which, from the closeness 
 and dirtiness of the wards; the scantiness of linen and bedding; improper diet; 
 and bad attendance, soon turned into a putrid fever, which hurried these hap- 
 less victims of inhumanity and neglect unpitied to their graves. The attendants 
 on the sick in this wretched hospital, — a pest-house, when the plague was in the 
 town ten or twelve years before, and certainly, though changed in name, a pest- 
 house still — were men sent from different regiments on account of their being 
 useless, from stupidity or drunkenness. The baths, from being badly situated 
 at the bottom of a steep descent, were seldom used ; and those who ought to have 
 superintended the management of this institution, were so negligent of their 
 duty as to permit the grossest frauds and abuses. At one of Mr. Howard's visits, 
 they brought the physician some of the bread and quas about to be served 
 out to his patients, as he informed him that they did every day, though 
 his vigilance soon detected its superiority to that which he had tasted in the 
 messes actually distributed, and convinced the doctor of the imposition practised 
 
 * Gent. Mag. Vol. LX. Part I. p. 278, 9. 
 
 4k 
 
618 
 
 upon him, not only in this, but in other respects ; for when he had told him that 
 the wards were furnished with towelling, on asking to see it, much to his in- 
 formant's surprise, not any was to be found. " The primary objects in all hos- 
 pitals," says our benevolent countryman, in concluding his remarks on the 
 gross defects of this, " seem here neglected, viz. cleanliness, air, diet, separation, 
 and attention. These are such essentials, that humanity and good policy equally 
 demand, that no expence should be spared to procure them. Care, in this 
 respect, I am persuaded, would save many more lives than the parade of medi- 
 cines in the adjoining apothecary's shop." Visiting the rooms for the sick 
 soldiers of the regiment quartered in this town, he found as evident marks of 
 too little attention being paid to the patients, as he had done in the great hos- 
 pital, whence several had been brought hither after remaining there for many 
 months uncured, a fate which, if he might judge from appearances, those 
 whom death should spare, would continue to experience, for as long a period, 
 in a place whose rooms were low, close, and offensive ; many of the sick lying 
 upon mats, or barrack-beds, with nothing but one blanket to cover them. From 
 this place, on the 17th of November, Mr. Howard addressed a letter to a friend 
 in England, of which but the following short extract has been given to the 
 public : — " Many are here shivering with the ague (a morass of twenty miles 
 is before my window). I give the ounce of bark, and drachm of snake-root 
 and wormwood, which has not failed me once." He mentions also having 
 received information on which he could rely, that no less than 70,000 recruits, 
 soldiers and sailors, had died in Russia in the course of the preceding year, — 
 a mortality which he attributed, in a very great degree, to the inattention, 
 ignorance, and inhumanity which he had witnessed, with so much pain, in their 
 hospitals. Whilst here, he read, too, in the public journals, an account of the 
 demolition of the Bastille, an event which afforded him peculiar gratification, 
 as he thought the account he had published of the gloomy horrors of its iron 
 cages, and impenetrable dungeons, might have hastened its destruction. His 
 
619 
 
 eye, therefore, sparkled with peculiar delight as he expressed to his servant his 
 intention, should he live to return to England, of visiting its ruins.* From 
 Cherson he made a short excursion to Witowka (now Bokoiaulenskoe), a 
 new settlement, about forty miles distant, where was another hospital for 
 soldiers and recruits, consisting of eight long lazaretts, enclosed with reeds, and 
 situated near the river Bog, with the advantage of a fine stream of soft running 
 water, but deprived of that of wood for firing ; the eyes of its visitor never 
 having been gladdened by the sight of a single tree, either in his journey from 
 Cherson hence, or for some hundred miles of his dreary way from Moscow to 
 the former town. The rooms were twenty-seven feet wide, and each of them 
 contained about 230 sick, lying in two rows, on barrack-bedsteads, without 
 any partitions, and so closely stowed, that in the space of thirty feet, he assures 
 us that he had counted sixteen, seventeen, and even eighteen patients. Their 
 beds were dirty, as were also their linen and their persons : some had an old 
 blanket over them ; but by far the greater part were lying under a stiff black 
 woollen coverlid, overspreading three or four of them. Their provisions were 
 bad ; they had neither water nor towels to wash themselves with ; and their 
 bath was filthy beyond description. On asking the apothecary to show him 
 his bark, his boy, after searching five minutes, produced to Mr. Howard a pot, 
 containing scarcely an ounce of an article, which he would not have known to 
 be that medicine, had it not been produced as such. " In short," he adds, 
 " every department of this hospital seemed neglected and abused. When I 
 saw so many brave fellows, who had fought so well for their country 
 before Otschakow, suffered to perish here with filth, neglect, and vermin, 
 how did my heart melt within me !" Nor was the condition of the convales- 
 cents in any respect more tolerable ; for, on observing one afternoon, 
 during his stay here,, about twenty poor objects standing together at the 
 end of the town, our Philanthropist, with his wonted humanity, approached 
 them to inquire into the particulars of their wretched condition, when he 
 
 * Appendix concerning Prisons, p. 18, 19 : Gent. Mag. Vol. LX. Part I. p. 82: Aikin, p. 195, 6: 
 Mrs. Greene's MS. 
 
 4 k 2 
 
620 
 
 learnt that they were recruits just out of the hospital, and waiting for 
 orders to go to the next town, about sixteen wersts distant, on a road with 
 neither house nor tree for shelter, though the night was dreadfully wet, and 
 the poor shivering wretches, scarcely recovered from a fever, were so weak 
 and ill cloathed, that he did not doubt but that several of them died upon the 
 way. A gentleman who accompanied him in his visit to Witowka, informed 
 him, indeed, that between that place and Cherson, he himself had counted 
 twenty-four such miserable objects lying dead by the road side. Nor can we 
 wonder that he should have done so, when we learn that the usual winter 
 lodgings of the Russian soldiery in these parts were cells under ground, covered 
 over with sticks and earth, with a hole at the top to let out the smoke ; — damp 
 and dreary caverns, in comparison with which, the huts of the Hottentots, 
 and even the dens of the wild beasts, were comfortable shelters. About a mile 
 from the new town of St. Nicholas, which was just begun to be built, our 
 traveller inspected four rooms for the sick of the recruits and prisoners of war, 
 who were compelled to work very hard in the erection of the buildings here, 
 though they had no proper accommodations provided for them. The number 
 crowded into these rooms was, at this time, upwards of three hundred, many 
 of whom were extremely ill, yet was their food little but very black and 
 heavy bread, and quas of quite as bad a quality. They had all, however, 
 been carefully shifted on the morning of Mr. Howard's visit : most of them 
 had coverlids ; and the surgeons were in waiting to receive him, the period of 
 his coming having been previously fixed by the Brigadier Falajef, who was going 
 to inspect the works, and took him and the physician whom Prince Potemkin 
 had sent to examine into their condition, in his carriage. Having been in- 
 formed, however, that there were actually about 500 sick in this place, he was 
 extremely urgent to see the remainder of them, which, as he was not to be 
 diverted from his purpose when he had reason to suspect that an attempt had 
 been made to impose upon him, he was at length permitted to do, the phy- 
 sician who had accompanied him hither, and several officers, attending him 
 
621 
 
 back to the town, where he found fifty objects of such extreme wretchedness 
 as, in the whole course of his extensive visits to the abodes of misery and vice, 
 he had never before seen together. Most, or all of them were recruits, in the 
 prime of life ; many of whom were dying upon a bed of hard coarse reeds, 
 without linen or coverlids, with nothing, indeed, but a few remnants of their 
 old cloathes to cover them ; their persons dirty beyond description, and with 
 their shirts in rags. With every kindlier feeling of his nature shocked beyond 
 description at so barbarous a scene, our intrepid countryman turned to the 
 officers at his side, and directing their attention to their fellow creatures who 
 were thus inhumanly treated, told them, in a tone of the bitterest reproof, " that 
 in none of the countries he had ever visited, had he found so little attention 
 paid to the military as in Russia. He knew, however," he added, that " what 
 he said would have no other effect on them but to make them despise him, but 
 he should assuredly relate what lie had with so much concern and indignation 
 beheld." As he had anticipated, his military auditors immediately left him, 
 and he then walked on to inspect several of the recruits at their work, which 
 was that of carrying sand on their backs to fill a mole then making. Many 
 of them looked sickly, and were tottering under their burden, which, with 
 his characteristic humanity, he proposed to lessen by the use of wheel-bar- 
 rows, or light carts, with a horse or an ox to each, which, as the ground 
 was level, would expedite the work, as well as save the men, whose 
 strength and spirits were already sufficiently broken before they got here, 
 by long and tedious marches. I know not whether a recommendation, 
 as politic as it was humane, was attended to ; but there can be no 
 difficulty whatever in pronouncing that it ought to have been. " Let 
 but a contemplative mind," says Mr. Howard, in concluding his remarks on 
 the sufferings of these miserable objects of his compassionate regard, " reflect 
 a moment upon the condition of these poor destitute wretches, forced from their 
 homes and all their dearest connections, and compare them with those one has 
 seen, chearful, clean, and happy at a wedding, or village festival ; let them 
 
622 
 
 be viewed quitting their birth-place, with all their little wardrobe, and their 
 pockets stored with rubles, the gifts of their relations, who never expect to see 
 them more ; — now joining their corps in a long march of one or two thousand 
 wersts ; their money gone to the officer who conducts them, and defrauds them 
 of the government allowance ; arriving, fatigued and half naked in a distant 
 dreary country, and exposed immediately to military hardships, with harassed 
 bodies and dejected spirits ; — and who can wonder that so many droop and die, 
 in a short time, without any apparent illness ? The devastations I have seen 
 made by war among so many innocent people, and this in a country where there 
 are such immense tracts of land unoccupied, are shocking to human nature!" In 
 the beginning of January, Mr. Howard returned to Cherson, where he was not at 
 all surprised to learn, a day or two after his arrival, that since he had left Witowka, 
 thirty or forty had died in a day. So great indeed, was the mortality in this ill- 
 regulated hospital, that in the last thirteen months, of 11,319 patients admitted, 
 1949 had died whilst under cure. Soon after he had received this dismal intel- 
 ligence, he went again, on the 6th of January, the round of all the wards of the 
 military hospital, and the sick rooms of the regiment quartered at Cherson. In 
 the former, he was gratified to find a very material alteration since he last was 
 in them, with respect to cleanliness, alike in the persons, linen, and bedding of 
 the sick ; as was also partially the case in the latter. In the hospital he was 
 sorry, however, to observe, that the pittance of meat given to many of the men 
 was not two ounces, whilst the grits, of which their gruel was made, were very 
 musty. Still more concerned was he to notice, that some of the attendants on 
 the patients were intoxicated, one of them being furnished with a brandy-bottle 
 holding two quarts, out of which he had reason to fear that he supplied the sick 
 who could pay him for it, with a beverage that must inevitably defeat the best- 
 concerted means for their recovery. " How many patients do I see," he feel- 
 ingly exclaims, " in many disorders, which, I am persuaded, proceed from the 
 use of spirituous liquors! What strict care should be taken that the attendants 
 do not bring any to sell in the hospital ! Have I not seen unmixed spirits served 
 
623 
 
 round to sick and dying patients, by persons intoxicated themselves ; when, to 
 nay great surprize, I was told, that the physican had ordered it as a treat to the 
 patients! If my visits had any share in promoting this, I fear I killed half a 
 dozen of them ; or, at least, put them some days sooner out of their misery !"* 
 
 With this characteristic sentence ends the memorandum-book in which Mr. 
 Howard was in the habit of noting, as they occurred, the observations that 
 struck him in the course of his visits to the various prisons and hospitals of the 
 vast continent of Europe, on whose confines he had now paid his last. Amidst 
 such scenes of infection and disease, as those to which he was continually 
 exposing himself, " his health and life," as it has been very truly observed, 
 "could not be a day secure." Yet it was not from the putridity of a neglected 
 hospital, or the contagion of a crowded gaol, that he caught the infection which 
 terminated his glorious career. To those he had frequently been exposed, and 
 had generally escaped from them unhurt, whilst one and another was dying on 
 his right hand and on his left, whose danger seemed never to have been half so 
 imminent as his. But now, after having braved the raging fever and the de- 
 vouring pestilence, in all the terrors of their dreadful march ; after encountering 
 perils innumerable, by land and by water, in the full conviction that he was in 
 the path of duty, whilst laboring to mitigate the sufferings of thousand sand even 
 millions of the human race, the destined period was arrived when this patriot 
 and benefactor of the world was to fall the lamented victim of his humanity, 
 to a single, and, comparatively speaking, an insignificant and obscure indivi- 
 dual. He had not indeed correctly anticipated the mode of his death, but it is 
 somewhat extraordinary, that the impression which had been so forcibly made 
 upon his mind before he left England, that the period of it was not far distant, 
 continued to operate with unabated force to the day on which he caught the 
 infection, that eventually realized his expectations. In this persuasion, but a 
 very few pages before the end of the rough memoranda of his philanthropic 
 
 * Appendix concerning Prisons, p. 19— 21. 
 
624 
 
 visits, he wrote the two following sentences : "lama stranger and pilgrim 
 here ; but I trust, through grace, going to a land peopled with my fathers and 
 my kindred, and the friends of my youth. And I trust my spirit will mingle 
 with those pious dead, and be for ever with the Lord."* The particulars of the 
 interesting but melancholy event, which he had long been contemplating, are 
 already before the public in the narrative communicated to Dr. Aikin by 
 Thomasson, and in the very affecting account of it, contained in Dr. Clarke's 
 recent visit to the spot where it took place. A combination of these accounts 
 will embrace every thing that is known upon the subject, with the exception 
 of some pious reflections written by Mr. Howard during his illness, and 
 now printed, for the first time, from his original memoranda. During his pro- 
 tracted visit to Cherson, the commander of the Russian army at Bender, after 
 the taking of that fortress, gave permission to several of his officers to visit 
 their friends at the former place, the winter being so far advanced, that the 
 severity of the season would not permit a further prosecution of the war against 
 the Turks. Cherson was consequently much crowded with company, and its 
 inhabitants very naturally testified their joy at the success of the Russiau arms 
 by balls and masquerades, which were attended by most of the officers, and 
 of the neighbouring gentry, as well as the residents in the town, several of whom 
 of each class, were almost immediately attacked with a fever, which Mr. 
 Howard believed to be one of an infectious kind, brought thither by the military 
 from Bender. Amongst the number of sufferers by their attendance on these 
 amusements was a young lady, residing about twenty-four miles from the town ; 
 and as the symptoms of her disorder soon assumed a very alarming appearance, 
 the fame which Mr. Howard had acquired during his residence in the neighbour- 
 hood, by the exertion of his medical skill, induced her friends to prefer an 
 earnest entreaty that he would visit her. This, however, he at first refused to 
 do, on the ground that he was a physician only to the poor ; but hearing that 
 her danger was increased, he at length consented to pay her a visit, which 
 
 * Appendix concerning Prisons, p. 21. 
 
625 
 
 he did, for the first and second time, in the latter end of December, 1789. 
 Having, on these occasions, prescribed what he thought proper, he returned to 
 Cherson, to pursue the purposes of his visit to so distant a region of the 
 globe, leaving directions with the family to send for him again if she got 
 better ; but adding, that if she grew worse, as he feared would be the 
 case, it would be to no purpose to do so. Some time after he got back 
 to his temporary habitation, a letter, stating that the lady was better, 
 and begging that he would come over without loss of time, unhappily 
 miscarried, and was not delivered for eight days after it was written. 
 As soon as he perceived the date, he resolved to go immmediately ; and 
 though the weather was very cold and tempestuous, and the rain fell 
 in torrents, such was his impatience to execute his benevolent design, 
 that, as no other conveyance could so readily be procured, he mounted 
 an old dray-horse, upon whose back he proceeded, as expeditiously as he 
 could, to the residence of his patient, whom he found in a dying state. 
 The concern which, in these circumstances, he felt, at not having been able to 
 reach her before, added to the fatigue of his journey, affected him so much as 
 to bring on a fever, though he attributed the disease, which was the cause of 
 his death, to a very different origin. Having, soon after his arrival, ad- 
 ministered to his patient something to excite perspiration, and feeling unwilling 
 to check its efficacy by uncovering her arm, — as soon as the symptoms of its 
 operation began to appear, he put his hand under the bed-clothes to feel her 
 pulse, and as he did so, the effluvia from her body was so very offensive, that 
 it always was his own opinion that her fever was then communicated to him. 
 She died on the following day, and he was much affected by her removal, as, 
 to the last, he had flattered himself with hopes of her recovery. He imme- 
 diately returned, however, to Cherson, and, a day or two after, having princi- 
 pally confined himself within doors till then, went out to dine with Admiral 
 Mordvinof, who lived about a mile and a half from his lodgings. He staid 
 later than usual, and when he returned, found himself unwell, and thought he 
 had something of the gout flying about him, as it was not improbable that he 
 
 4h 
 
626 
 
 should have, being subject to the attacks of that disease from an early period 
 of his life. He immediately took some sal volatile in a little tea, and thought 
 himself better, until three or four o'clock on the following morning, when, 
 feeling not quite so well, he repeated his former dose. Soon after his usual 
 hour he got up and walked out, but finding himself worse, he soon returned 
 home and took an emetic, which did not prevent a violent attack of fever, on 
 the following night, to arrest whose progress he had immediate recourse to 
 his favorite remedy of James's Fever powders, which he regularly took every 
 two or four hours, till Sunday, the 17th ; for though, as soon as he was ac- 
 quainted with his illness, Prince Potemkin kindly sent his physician to attend 
 him, his own prescriptions were never interfered with during this period, in 
 which he continued to be perfectly sensible and collected, except that, on the 
 12th, he had a kind of fit, in which he suddenly fell down; his face became 
 black ; his breathing difficult ; and he remained senseless for half an hour. On 
 the 17th, the fit was repeated ; but, as in the former instance, the insensibility 
 which it occasioned was but of a very short continuance ; and it was probably 
 at about this period of his illness, or perhaps a few days earlier, that he thus 
 recorded in his memorandum-book the grateful sense he entertained of the 
 mercies he had received at the hands of the Lord, in seasons that were past, 
 and of his ardent desire to be enabled to put his trust and confidence in him, 
 for the future. " May I not look on present difficulties or think of future 
 ones in this world as I am but a pilgrim or ware-faring Man, that tarrys but 
 a night ; this is not my home, but may I think what God has done for me, 
 and relie on His power and His grace ; for His promise, His Mercy endureth 
 for ever : but I am faint and low, yet I trust in the right way, persuing though 
 too apt to forget my Almighty friend and my God. 
 
 " Oh ! my Soul, remember and record how often God has sent an answer of 
 Peace, Mercies in the most seasonable times, how often better than thy fears, 
 exceeded thy expectations. Oh why should I distrust this good and faithful 
 God. In His word, He has said, ' In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He 
 will direct thy path.' Lord leave me not to my own Wisdom which is folly, nor 
 
627 
 
 to my own strength which is weakness. Help me to glorify Thee on Earth, and 
 finish the work Thou giveth me to do and to Thy name alone be all the Praise." 
 The latter of these two pious reflections and devout aspirations, is inscribed 
 upon the cover of the book ; and, beneath it, evidently written at a somewhat 
 later period, are two short sentences, rendered doubly valuable from their being, 
 in all probability, the last that Mr. Howard ever wrote, and from their bearing 
 his dying testimony to his belief in the doctrines, which had formed so promi- 
 nent a feature in his creed through life, and which led him to place his firm 
 and sole dependence for salvation on the rock of ages, — in the hour of 
 death. " Oh! that the Son of God," he there exclaims, " may not die for me 
 in vain." 
 
 " I think I never look into myself but I find some corruption and sin in my 
 heart ; oh God, do thou sanctify and cleanse the tho ts . of my depraved heart." 
 
 Thus fully preparing himself for a change which was now rapidly approach- 
 ing, on the 18th of January, the symptoms of this great and good man's disease 
 began to assume a still more alarming appearance, for he was then seized with 
 a violent hiccupping, which continued the next day, until it was somewhat 
 allayed by some musk draughts, administered by direction of his medical 
 attendant. Whilst in the enjoyment of health, it had been Mr. Howard's 
 frequent, indeed his almost daily custom, at a certain hour, to visit his friend 
 Admiral Priestman, who resided at Cherson, and who, on finding that he 
 failed in his usual calls, went some few days after he had been totally confined 
 to his house, to see him, when he found him weak and ill, sitting before a 
 stove in his bed-room. On inquiring after his health, he replied that his 
 end was approaching very fast, that he had several things to say to him, 
 and thanked him for having called upon him. The Admiral concluding from his 
 answers, that he was in a melancholy mood, endeavoured to turn the conversation, 
 imagining the whole, or the principal part of his disorder might be the mere 
 effect of low spirits. Mr. Howard, however, assured him that it was not ; and 
 added, in a very impressive, yet cheerful manner, u Priestman, you style this a 
 
 4 l2 
 
628 
 
 dull conversation, and endeavour to divert my mind from dwelling upon death, but 
 I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me : it is an event 
 I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure ; and be assured, the 
 subject is more grateful to me than any other. I am well aware that I have 
 but a short time to live ; my mode of life has rendered it impossible that I 
 should get rid of this fever. If I had lived as you do, eating heartily of animal 
 food, and drinking wine, I might, perhaps, by altering my diet be able to 
 subdue it. But how can such a man as I am lower his diet who has been ac- 
 customed for years to exist upon vegetables and water, a little bread and a little 
 tea ? I have no method of lowering my nourishment,- — and therefore I must die. 
 It is such jolly fellows as you, Priestman, who get over these fevers :" — then 
 turning from that subject he spoke of his funeral, and cheerfully gave directions 
 where he would be buried. "There is a spot,'' said he, "near the village of 
 Dauphigny ; this would suit me nicely, you know it well, for I have often said 
 that I should like to be buried there ; and let me beg of you, as you value your 
 old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my funeral ; nor any monument, 
 nor monumental inscription whatsoever, to mark where I am laid : but lay me 
 quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotten." 
 Having given these directions, he was desirous that no time should be lost for 
 securing the object of his wishes ; for which purpose, the admiral soon after- 
 wards, though very reluctantly, left the house, and he had not been gone long, ere 
 a letter was brought to Mr. Howard from a friend in England, who had lately 
 seen his son at Leicester, and expressed his hopes that, on his return, he would find 
 him considerably better. When this pleasing account was read to him by his 
 servant, for he was too ill to read it himself, it affected him very sensibly ; and 
 his expressions of the delight it afforded him, were peculiarly strong. Amongst 
 other things, he repeatedly desired Thomasson, should his son, by the blessing 
 of God, ever be restored to his reason, to tell him how much and how fervently 
 he had prayed for his happiness, during an illness which he was now most firmly 
 convinced would be his last. He also observed to him, in reference to the spot 
 he had selected for his grave, — and which he probably was induced to choose, 
 
629 
 
 in preference to any oilier in the neighbourhood, from its being situated in the 
 grounds of a French gentleman, who had shown him many acts of kindness 
 during his residence at Cherson, — that he should be at the same distance from 
 heaven there, as if brought back to England ; adding, that he had long felt no 
 other wish for life, but as it afforded him the means of relieving the distresses 
 of his fellow-creatures. When his friend returned to him with the intelligence 
 that he had executed his commission respecting the place of his interment, his 
 countenance brightened ; a gleam of satisfaction came over his face ; and he 
 prepared to go to bed. As the admiral still remained with him, he gave him 
 the letter to read which communicated the improvement that seemed to have 
 taken place in his son's health ; and when he had read it, he turned his languid 
 head on his pillow, and asked, " Is not this comfort for a dying father?" He 
 then expressed great repugnance to being buried according to the rites of the 
 Greek church, and begged the admiral not only to prevent all interference on the 
 part of the Russian priests, but himself to read the burial service of the church of 
 England over his body, at his interment, which was the last request he ever made, 
 and indeed nearly the last words his lips pronounced, as he was soon afterwards 
 seized with a third fit, and ceased to speak for an hour or two previous to his 
 decease. Still, however, he was sensible for awhile ; as, on being requested to 
 let the physician be sent for, who was then at some little distance from his 
 residence, he nodded his head by way of assent, though it was too late, as 
 before he could arrive, the rattling in the throat had begun, and he soon after- 
 wards breathed his last, at about eight o'clock in the morning of the 20th of 
 January, 1790. 
 
 Such were the closing scenes of the existence of John Howard, the Philan- 
 thropist, who thus fell a victim to a humanity which had led him to a distance 
 of 1,500 miles from his home and native land : yet he died not among strangers 
 there ; for every good man, in every clime was Mb friend, who, through a life 
 of extraordinary activity and unwearied benevolence, had proved himself the 
 friend of all — but most of those who seemed to have no other earthly one. 
 
630 
 
 And some of these, amidst the wilds of Tartary, and the frozen chill of Russia's 
 deepest snows, administered to his comfort in his dying hours, and saw, in his 
 tranquil and happy dissolution, a full verification of the Scripture testimony, 
 that " the last end of the good man is peace." Nor was the veneration which 
 his virtues had inspired confined to the higher ranks of the country in which 
 his latter days were spent ; for whilst they testified their regard for his un- 
 common worth, and regret at his loss, by bestowing on his body a more 
 magnificent interment than accorded with his wishes, or was in fact consistent 
 with his express directions on the subject, the peasantry, whose hard lot he had 
 commiserated — whose gratuitous physician he had been ; the soldiery and the 
 sailors, whose wrongs he had so feelingly espoused ; the slaves whose chains he 
 would have broken, partook in the general sentiment of admiration for his 
 character, and, mourning for the common loss to humanity, by hundreds and 
 by thousands poured their tears upon his grave. That grave was made for him 
 on the spot he had chosen, near the village of Dauphigny, which is about five 
 wersts distant from Cherson; and his body was carried to it on a bier drawn by 
 six horses, and followed by the carriages of the Prince of Moldavia, Admirals 
 Priestman and Mordvinof, each of them with the same number of horses : by 
 the general, and staff officers of the garrison, and the magistrates and merchants 
 of Cherson in carriages ; a large party of cavalry and other persons on horseback, 
 and between two and three thousand people on foot. A small brick pyramid is 
 erected over the sod where his ashes rest, instead of the sun-dial which he had 
 wished to be the sole memorial of his grave. That rude, but honest tribute to his 
 worth is still pointed out to the notice of the few travellers who may chance to 
 visit these wild and unattractive regions, by a race of men who, low as they may 
 rank in the scale of society, are justly proud of the honor of entombing in the 
 solitude of their desert village, the remains of the Philanthropist of the world, 
 whose pilgrimage of humanity was terminated near the spot which he himself 
 selected for his body to mingle with his parent earth, when his spirit should 
 have returned to God who gave it. Nor can his countrymen do otherwise than 
 rejoice that, since, by his own express directions, that body was not to be 
 
631 
 
 removed from the country, whatever it might be, in which he died— his relics 
 should be deposited in the territories of a monarch who has proved himself to 
 be actuated by the same anxiety to promote the best interests of his fellow- 
 creatures, of every color — kindred — clime, as was the ruling principle of 
 his life ; and that they are committed to the protection of a people who, next 
 to those who boast of him as the brightest ornament of their native land, hold 
 his labors and his virtues in the highest estimation.* 
 
 Before his interment, two casts of the face of this illustrious man were taken, 
 in plaister, by directions of Prince Potemkin — the one for himself, and the 
 other for Mr. Howard's servant, from whom, on his return to England, it was 
 purchased by the elder Mr. Whitbread, in the possession of whose family it 
 still remains. The melancholy intelligence of his master's death preceded, 
 however, by some days, the arrival of that servant in England ; having been 
 communicated by private letters to his friends, and afterwards announced to 
 the public in the London Gazette of the 23d of March, 1790, a distinction never 
 before or since conferred upon any private individual, but one which his exten- 
 sive labors in the cause of humanity over the wide extent of the vast continent 
 of Europe, had richly merited at the hands of the government that did itself 
 honor, by so public an announcement of an event, which could not but interest 
 every friend to his species throughout the civilized world. The particulars of 
 that melancholy event were soon afterwards communicated to the friends of the 
 deceased, on Thomasson's reaching England, with his papers and other effects/f 
 and some short directions to his executors, written on the Thursday preceding his 
 death. Such of those particulars as were of more general interest, as has already 
 been stated, were subsequently communicated to the public by Dr. Aikin, accom- 
 panied by some medical remarks on the nature and symptoms of his disorder, the 
 result of which is a persuasion in their author's mind, that the length of time which 
 elapsed between his last visit to her, and his own seizure, renders the fact of 
 
 * Aikin, p. 189—196 ; Clarke's Travels, vol. 1. p. 601—610 j Note II. t Note III. 
 
632 
 
 Mr. Howard having caught the fever from the young lady whom he so kindly at- 
 tended, at least dubious, it being more probable, that the disease of which he died 
 was brought on by his subsequent visits to the hospitals at Cherson, or by his 
 walk home at so late an hour, in a cold, severe,and an unwholesome climate, on the 
 night of the 8th of January. He is also of opinion that it is far from improbable 
 that part of his illness was a wandering gout, to whose attacks he was constitu- 
 tionally liable, and is still more strongly inclined to suspect that his name may 
 be added " to the numerous list of those, whose lives have been sacrificed to the 
 empirical use of a medicine of great activity, and therefore capable of doing 
 much harm as well as good." * But whatever may have been the precise nature 
 of the complaint which terminated his valuable existence, in a world which he 
 was born at once to benefit and to adorn, it is certain that few persons have been 
 called from their earthly labors to their heavenly reward, whose loss was more 
 generally lamented than was that of this distinguished Philanthropist. Soon 
 after the intelligence of his death had reached the shores of his native 
 country, at least five sermons were preached in commemoration of his piety 
 and his worth, by those ministers, and to those congregations with whom he was 
 more intimately connected by the bonds of Christian fellowship. Of these, Dr. 
 Stennet's and Mr. Palmer's were immediately printed, and bought up with 
 great avidity ; not only on account of their general excellence, but of the 
 authentic particulars of his life, which the habits of friendship in which their 
 authors had lived with him enabled them to give. The text taken by both of 
 these reverend gentlemen, was the' very appropriate one of " Who went about 
 doing good ;" the same passage of Scripture having also been selected for a similar 
 purpose by the late Mr. Bull, of Newport Pagnell, who was then supplying at 
 the church of which Mr. Symonds was pastor till his death, which happened 
 but a short time before, having lived in habits of intimacy with Mr. Howard 
 to the last ; many of his fellow-worshippers, from whom he was obliged to 
 separate, having also done so during his life, as they were now numbered with 
 
 * Aikin, p. 196— H. 
 
633 
 
 the sincerest mourners for his death. With the text taken by bj? pastor, Mr. 
 Townsend, I am unacquainted ; whilst that of Mr. Kilpin, the pastor of the 
 Baptist church at Cotton-end (Eccl. viii. 8.), seems not to have had any par- 
 ticular reference to the character of the individual whose death was to be im- 
 proved, but rather to the certainty of that event happening unto all. Mr. 
 Smith, in obedience to the express directions he had received, preached, upon 
 this occasion, from the last verse of the 17th Psalm; and in doing so, he en- 
 deavored, as much as possible, to conform himself to the injunction which 
 Mr. Howard had laid upon him, to abstain from entering into any of the par- 
 ticulars of his life. An immense concourse of people was, however, collected 
 together from the town of Bedford and its vicinity, in expectation of hearing 
 something which should have an immediate relation to the conduct, cha- 
 racter, and death of the man, who had for so long a period been an orna- 
 ment and a blessing to the village in which he lived, and to the neigh- 
 bourhood around. To prevent, therefore, the total disappointment of hopes so 
 naturally excited, he did, towards the close of his discourse, just glance at 
 those topics on which he was forbidden to enter as largely as he could have 
 wished, by a promise, of which he was almost fearful, that even this glance 
 might be an infringement. Whether it was so or not, the reader may be 
 enabled to judge for himself, by turning to the notes to this work, in which he 
 will find those passages in Mr. Smith's sermon that relate to Mr. Howard, as 
 they have been transcribed from bis original manuscript, by his son-in-law, 
 Mr. Greene.* 
 
 But it was not in the pulpit, or by the divine alone, that the extraordi- 
 nary virtues of his character were celebrated, or the loss which the world 
 at large had sustained by his removal was deplored. The judges of his 
 country from the bench, and her senators in both houses of parliament, bore 
 witness to the merit, and expressed their sorrow at the death of one of the 
 brightest ornaments of his race that any age or nation had produced. The 
 
 Note III. 
 4 M 
 
634 
 
 Muses had not been silent in his praise during his life-time, and their tears 
 now flowed from many a poetic stream upon his grave. The periodical 
 journals of the day contain numerous odes and elegies on his death ; many of 
 them more remarkable for the excellence of their sentiments, than the harmony 
 of their versification, or the beauty of their imagery. One, however, which 
 was the production of Dr. Aikin's pen, deserves a very different character ; and 
 sure am I that no reader of taste will regret that it is now transcribed into 
 these memoirs of the distinguished individual, whose entrance on his glorious 
 reward it thus vividly describes : 
 
 " Howard, thy task is done ! thy Master calls, 
 " And summons thee from Cherson's distant walls. 
 
 * Come, well approv'd ! my faithful servant ! come ; 
 ' No more a wand'rer, seek thy destin'd home. 
 
 ' Long have I mark'd thee with o'er-ruling eye, 
 
 ' And sent admiring angels from on high, 
 
 ' To walk the paths of danger by thy side^ 
 
 ' From death to shield thee, and thro' snares to guide. 
 
 * My minister of good, I've sped thy way, 
 
 ' And shot thro' dungeon glooms a leading ray, 
 ' To cheer, by thee, with kind unhoped relief, 
 ' My creatures lost and whelm'd in guilt and grief. 
 ' I've led thee, ardent, on thro' wond'ring climes, 
 ' To combat human woes and human crimes. 
 ' But 'tis enough ! thy great commission's o'er ; 
 ' I prove thy faith, thy love, thy zeal, no more. 
 
 * Nor droop, that far from country, kindred, friends, 
 ' Thy life, to duty long devoted, ends ; 
 
 ' What boots it where the high reward is giv'n, 
 
 ' Or whence the soul triumphant springs to heaven V "* 
 
 The ' melancholy event which gave rise to these animated lines created so 
 general a sensation in the public mind, that even the gay amusements, and the 
 
 * Aikin's Life of Howard, p. 248. 
 
635 
 
 fictitious woes of the theatre seem to have been tinged for a moment with a 
 gloomier shade of real grief, to which utterance was given in a monody on 
 Mr. Howard's death, written by Mr. Merry, of Delia Cruscan notoriety, and 
 spoken at Covent Garden Theatre, after the representation of " Such Things 
 Are," a piece whose principal character was obviously moulded on the peculiar 
 cast of his philanthropy; and which, from that circumstance, obtained a tempo- 
 rary popularity. 
 
 But whilst public applause was thus liberally bestowed, in every way 
 in which it was possible to bestow it, on him who had fallen the victim of 
 a humanity which, in so surprising a manner, had shown itself the ruling principle 
 of his life, — the sole memorial which he wished, and could he have had the 
 earnest desire of his heart, which he would have suffered to remain to posterity 
 of his having lived and died, was completed, by inserting the place and time of 
 his decease in the blanks which he had left in the following inscription, now 
 placed under that to the memory of his beloved wife, in the body of the neat, 
 but retired church of the village in which he dwelt. 
 
 John Howard, 
 
 Died at Cherson, in Russian Tartary, 
 
 January 21st, 1790, Aged 64, 
 
 Christ is my Hope. 
 
 But the singular humility which had dictated this simple epitaph, did not 
 repress, as indeed it ought not to have done, those sentiments of esteem and 
 veneration in which his character was held by every friend to humanity, in the 
 country which gave him birth ; and from the produce of the fund which had 
 so honorably, though imprudently been raised for bestowing some mark of 
 public approbation of his conduct, during his life, a statue, by Bacon, was 
 soon after his death erected to his memory in St. Paul's Cathedral, whose vast 
 and magnificent interior was first converted into a receptacle for the monuments 
 by which a nation's gratitude might celebrate the deeds of those who were her 
 
 4m 2 
 
636 
 
 boast, her ornament, and her pride, by placing foremost in the rank of her 
 illustrious dead the friend and benefactor of the human race, whose actions the 
 inscription on the pedestal of his statue thus records : 
 
 This extraordinary Man bad the Fortune to be honored 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 Memory. 
 He was bom at Hackney, in the County of Middlesex, Sep 1 . IP. 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 MDCCLXXIIT. 
 He expired at Cherson in Russian Tartary, on the XX™. 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 
 
631 
 
 By a memorandum written upon the blank leaf of the book in which Mr. 
 Howard, according to his usual practice, had made a fair transcript of his 
 daily observations on the prisons and hospitals which he had visited during 
 his last journey, except some few of the latter ones, which he had been too 
 ill to copy from his rough notes, the task of revising and publishing them, 
 should it be thought proper to print them at all, was committed to his friends 
 Dr. Price and Dr. Aikin, with an intimation of his wish for the latter to 
 correct the press. In consequence of this direction, these papers were sent to 
 Dr. Price, at a period when he was incapacitated from attending to them, 
 by the illness which terminated his useful career, soon after the close of that 
 of his illustrious friend, whose memoranda were then transmitted to Dr. 
 Aikin, by whom they were prepared for the press, and presented to the 
 public in December 1791, in a quarto pamphlet of thirty-two pages, bearing 
 for its title " Appendix ; containing Observations concerning Foreign Prisons 
 and Hospitals collected by Mr. Howard, in his concluding Tour. Together with 
 two Letters to Mr. Howard, from John Haygarth, M. D." The chief object of 
 these letters, written but a short time previous to our humane countryman's last 
 departure from England, is to suggest to him some further inquiries respecting 
 the plague, in the journey he was about to undertake, and to propose to his 
 consideration several improvements in his plan for establishing lazarettos in 
 England, of which his correspondent most cordially approves ; their subject, 
 therefore, justly entitled them to be appended to the account of the results 
 of Mr. Howard's last journey, with the brief notice of which we must close 
 the history of his extraordinary life. 
 
 If the object which the author of these memoirs of the Philanthropist 
 whose memory is so deservedly honored by his country, and whose deeds of 
 benevolence, whose pre-eminence in virtue, are no less celebrated in some of 
 the most distant regions of the globe, has in any measure been accomplished, 
 it will not be necessary to say much, in bringing them to a conclusion, on those 
 
638 
 
 peculiar features in his character, with which he has strove to make his readers 
 intimately acquainted, as the circumstances in which they were exhibited, or 
 the incidents which illustrated them were brought under their notice, in the 
 regular narrative of this eventful history. Some description of this person, and 
 a general outline of his character will, however, naturally be expected in this 
 place ; though, in attempting the sketch of them, the writer can, of course, do 
 nothing more than abstract and combine the various particulars which have 
 either been communicated to the public, or to himself, by those who had the 
 advantage of that personal acquaintance with the subject of them, which it is 
 impossible that he ever could have enjoyed. In stature, Mr. Howard was 
 rather beneath, than above the common size ; thin and spare in his make, 
 there was nothing commanding, but rather mean and forbidding in his general 
 appearance, which, in the latter period of his life more especially, was that 
 of a foreigner, rather than of an English gentleman ; the character of all 
 others, in his private relations, which he most affected, and undeviatingly sus- 
 tained. His complexion was somewhat sallow, though it varied, so as at times 
 to assume a much paler hue. His features were large, though not nearly so 
 disproportionate to his figure as his statue, and several of the portraits of 
 him which have been published, would lead us to suppose. His nose was 
 prominent, and is said to have borne a very striking resemblance to that of 
 the poet Gray : but it was the keen, penetrating glance of his eye that lit up 
 his whole countenance with that quickness and energy of expression which, 
 in spite of the insignificance of his appearance, gave strong indications of a 
 readiness of perception, and a rapidity of execution in whatever he might direct 
 his attention to, far above the grasp of an ordinary mind. There was also a 
 vivacity in his manner ; an alertness in his gait ; an animation in his gesture, 
 which fully confirmed this opinion of the activity of his mental powers. But 
 with these were united a softness — verging, indeed, on an effeminacy of voice; 
 a gentleness of demeanor ; an indescribable sweetness and benevolence in his 
 smile, which tempered the harsher features, and sobered the livelier casts of 
 
639 
 
 expression in his intelligent face and characteristic air. Such, indeed, was the 
 energy of his nature, that whatever he took in hand (and at no period of 
 his life was he without some object of active pursuit), he accomplished in as 
 complete and perfect a manner as it was possible for human exertions to attain; 
 whilst such was the celerity of his movements, that, in the language of one of 
 his biographers, who knew him well,* " Give him a hint of any thing he had 
 left short, or any new acquisition to be made, and while you might suppose he 
 was deliberating about it, you were surprised with finding it was done.'''' Nor 
 was it, as is often the case with men of extraordinary powers, but by fits and 
 starts that he was ardent in pursuit of the object he proposed to himself, for 
 his was the rarer gift of perseverance in the course he had marked out, without 
 abating the avidity with which he commenced it, whatever the difficulties or 
 the delays that might be thrown in the way of its progress, or protract its final 
 accomplishment. Having once bent all the faculties of his mind, and every energy 
 of his being, to one definite point, nothing could divert him from following it 
 up, whithersoever it led him, with the same constancy and intensity of purpose 
 as though it had been the sole end of his existence. The extraordinary 
 feature of his character by which he was thus pre-eminently distinguished, not 
 merely from the common race of men, but from every other man with whose 
 history we are acquainted, has been sketched with so masterly a hand by one 
 of the most powerful and eloquent writers of the present day, that it would 
 be presumption to attempt it in other words than his. " The energy of his 
 determination," says Foster, in his celebrated Essay on Decision of Character,! 
 " was so great, that if instead of being habitual, it had been shewn only for a 
 short time on particular occasions, it would have appeared a vehement im- 
 petuosity ; but by being unintermitted, it had an equability of manner which 
 scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally 
 the reverse of any thing like turbulence or agitation. It was the calmness of 
 an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to 
 * Dr. Aikin, p. 210. t Fosters Essays, p. 122—5. 
 
640 
 
 be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The 
 habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling almost equal to the 
 temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds : as a great river, in its 
 customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen to a torrent. 
 The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in 
 action, was the same. I wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe 
 in emolument or pleasure, that would have detained him a week inactive after 
 their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity, was not 
 more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings towards 
 the main object. The importance of this object held his faculties in a state of 
 excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on 
 which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had 
 no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innumerable 
 varieties of the extensive scene which he traversed ; all his subordinate feelings 
 lost their separate existence and operation, by falling into the grand one. There 
 have not been wanting trivial minds, to mark this as a fault in his character. 
 But the mere man of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard ; 
 he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfil their 
 commission of philanthropy among mortals, do not care about pictures, 
 statues, and sumptuous buildings ; and no more did he, when the time in which 
 he must have inspected and admired them, would have been taken from the 
 work to which he had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might feel, 
 was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive, when its gi-atification should be 
 presented by conscience, which kept a scrupulous charge of all his time, as the 
 most sacred duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when it came, 
 fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might 
 be sure of their revenge ; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a 
 despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for surveying the magni- 
 ficence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reaeh of 
 common saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of convic- 
 
641 
 
 tion, that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing 
 in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of 
 his forces, as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like 
 insanity. His attention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, 
 that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian Pyramids to travellers, it 
 appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and be- 
 guiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprize by which he was to reach it. 
 It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, 
 and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method re- 
 ferred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not 
 relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what is the utmost 
 effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent ; 
 and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond 
 the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of 
 Omnipotence." 
 
 The sublimity of this course is far above the level of ordinary compre- 
 hension ; we cannot, therefore, be surprised that the motives of the exalted 
 being who pursued it, unmoved alike by the applause, or the derision of the 
 world around him, should have been misrepresented ; and that those who might 
 hesitate to brand him as a madman, should have thought him an enthusiast. 
 If, however, we take this term in its general acceptation, never certainly was 
 it less appropriate to any one than to Mr. Howard ; for in no one instance of 
 his life did his feelings overcome his judgment, or the coolness of his temper, 
 and the steadiness of his purpose give way to the wild extravagances of a 
 heated imagination. In every thing he undertook he was actuated by a sense 
 of duty : and to that sense every passion, and feeling, and inclination, was 
 habitually subjected. Not, indeed, but that he felt as other men, for he had a 
 heart most keenly alive to every kindly emotion, and every vivid impulse which 
 the good can cherish, or receive. " I have equally seen," says his friend and 
 
 4n 
 
642 
 
 biographer, Dr. Aikin,* " the teat of sensibility start into his eyes on recalling 
 some of the distressful scenes to which he had been witness, and the spirit of 
 indignation flash from them on relating instances of baseness and oppression." 
 But every passion and every emotion was under such complete command, that 
 in no circumstances in which he was placed, though many of them were trying 
 and critical in the extreme, was he ever agitated, or thrown for a moment off 
 his guard ; but master of himself at all times, and upon all occasions, his self- 
 possession never forsook him, as he was prepared to act with firmness, with 
 coolness, with prudence, whatever might be the extremity to which he was 
 unexpectedly reduced. Calm, steady spirits was, indeed, the chief subject 
 of his self-gratulation, and of his grateful acknowledgments to the God by 
 whom they were imparted. — Intrepidity, courage, fortitude ; — these are features 
 in his character which, through the whole course of the preceding narrative 
 of his life, the reader cannot fail to have observed. Whatever his sense of 
 duty called him to perform, no danger could deter him from engaging in ; for 
 having made up his mind that it was his duty, to use his expression to a friend who 
 once intimated his apprehensions for his safety, " he thrusted all consequences 
 from his view, and was resolved to follow wherever Providence led." j- Fear- 
 less of the face of man, however exalted his station, he told the bold and naked 
 truth, disagreeable as it might be to their ears, alike to the emperor and the 
 slave ; and advocated the cause of humanity, as firmly, as freely, and as faith- 
 fully, in the presence of kings, senators, and magistrates, as of turnkeys and 
 goalers. Yet he did not this, from any disrespect to constituted authorities, 
 which, in obedience to a divine command, and from a love of social order, he 
 was at all times ready to support ; being a staunch friend to due subordination 
 in every state, and to a vigorous exertion of civil authority, wherever it was 
 directed to the attainment of a laudable purpose. Still, however, he was duly 
 sensible of the inestimable advantages of a free constitution, and, though inter- 
 fering but little with the politics of the day, he was one of those who rejoiced 
 * P. 214. t Dr. Stenuet's Sermon, p. 26. 
 
• 643 
 
 at the issue of the improvident contest into which we were foolishly plunged 
 with our American colonies; and, in the narrow circle in which he 
 moved at home, evinced himself, on several occasions, a spirited oppo- 
 nent of aristocratical influence. The benevolence, the humanity, the disin- 
 terestedness of the man, who, at an expence of thirty thousand pounds, travelled 
 between fifty and sixty thousand miles, for the sole purpose of relieving the 
 distresses of the most wretched of the human race, can require no comment here. 
 The fatigues, the dangers, the privations, he underwent, or encountered for the 
 good of others, were such as no one else was ever exposed to in such a cause, and 
 as few could have endured. He often travelled several nights and days without 
 stopping, over roads almost impassable; in weather the most inclement; with 
 accommodations the meanest and most wretched. Summer and winter; heat 
 and cold ; rain and snow, in all their extremes, failed alike to stay him for a 
 moment in his course ; whilst plague, pestilence, and famine, instead of being 
 evils that he shunned, were those with which he was the most familiar, and 
 to many of whose horrors he voluntarily exposed himself, that, at the risk of his 
 own life, he might devise the means of saving the lives, or mitigating the suffer- 
 ings of their hapless victims. This was benevolence ; this was humanity ; this 
 was disinterestedness indeed : — conduct above all praise, as it is removed from 
 the hope of successful imitation. But for the accomplishment of this glorious 
 purpose he was endued, or, more correctly speaking, had acquired habits of 
 temperance and a command over all corporeal appetites, which would rival, or, 
 if we look to their motives, excel those of the most self-denying philosopher 
 of ancient, or rigid ascetic of modern times. The abstemious diet which, at an 
 earlier period of his life, he adopted from a regard to his health, he afterwards 
 continued, and even increased in its rigor, from principle, and from choice ; and 
 though many good men will no doubt feel disposed to controvert the reasons 
 which, in a moral point of view, led him to its adoption, there cannot be two 
 opinions on the advantages he derived from it. For the greater part, if not 
 the whole of the period in which he was engaged in the pursuit of his grand 
 
 4 n 2 
 
 j 
 
644 
 
 scheme of benevolence, he discarded from his alimentary regimen everything in 
 the shape of indulgence, which even the most temperate have held to be essential 
 to the preservation of their health and strength. In the number of these was 
 animal food, and fermented liquors of every kind, even to an oyster, or a glass of 
 table-beer. Tea, milk, butter, cheese, fruit, vegetables, were his greatest luxu- 
 ries ; and those were enjoyed but in very moderate quantities, and with a perfect 
 indifference as to the times at which they were taken. " Thus," as his friend Dr. 
 Ai kin very justly observes,* " he found his wants supplied in almost every place 
 where man existed, and was as well provided in the posadas of Spain and 
 caravanseras of Turkey, as in the inns and hotels of England and France. 
 Water,'' he continues, " was one of his principal necessaries, for he was a 
 very Mussulman in his ablutions ; and, if nicety or delicacy had place with 
 him in any respect, it was in the perfect cleanliness of his whole person." 
 These ablutions he regularly performed in the depth of the coldest winter, 
 by plunging into a bath, whenever he had the opportunity of doing so ; 
 and I am informed, from the most undoubted authority, that when he had not, 
 he would frequently lay himself down, for some considerable time, between two 
 sheets, damped for the express purpose of communicating to his body that 
 degree of cold, which, by accidentally striking from wet linen unto frames less 
 hardy, has been the immediate cause of death. With the same view of lessen- 
 ing the liability to suffer from exposure to sudden damps, and to render the 
 constitution more robust, he always remonstrated with great earnestness against 
 the airing of linen, either for children or persons grown up in life, never suffer- 
 ing his own, under any circumstances, to be placed near a fire, before he put it on. 
 But the extent of his conquests over the wants, or supposed wants, of our 
 nature ended not here, as even sleep seemed not necessary to him in the propor- 
 tion which other men require. When at home, six hours appears to have 
 been his maximum; but whilst travelling, he could, and did, for a long while 
 together, pursue his journeys with but one night's rest in three, and that, upon 
 
 * P. 222, 3. 
 
645 
 
 more than one occasion, taken in his carriage, as he proceeded on his way through 
 five or six hundred miles of wretched road, without stopping hut to change 
 horses. To these hardships, as most people would consider them, he did not, 
 however, inure himself from any cynical austerity, but merely as they the 
 better qualified him for the performance of the great work to which he had 
 devoted all the energies of a mind, to which those of the body were in a state 
 of the most complete subjection. 
 
 For the completion of that work, he was also happily endowed with an 
 understanding precisely fitted to the singular line of inquiry which he marked 
 out to himself. Its powers cannot better be described than in the language 
 of one who had such peculiar opportunities of forming a correct judgment 
 of their extent, as his biographer Dr. Aikin. " He had not, in a high 
 degree," says this able and judicious writer,* " that extensive comprehension, 
 that faculty of generalizing, which is said to distinguish the man of genius, but 
 which, without a previous collection of authentic materials, is ever apt to lead 
 into erroneous speculations. He was rather a man of detail ; of laborious accu- 
 racy and minute examination ; and therefore he had the proper qualities for 
 one who was to lead the way in researches where all was ignorance, confusion, 
 and local custom. Who but such a man could have collected a body of informa- 
 tion, which has made even professional men acquainted with interesting facts 
 that they never before knew ; and has given the English reader a more exact 
 knowledge of practices followed in Russia and Spain, than he before had of 
 those in his own country ? This minuteness of detail was what he ever re- 
 garded as his peculiar province. As he was of all men the most modest 
 estimater of his own abilities, he was used to say, * I am the plodder, who 
 goes about to collect materials for men of genius to make use of.'" His 
 judgment was sound, as his understanding was clear; and though he had not 
 enjoyed such advantages of education as his fortune and station in life required, 
 
 * P. 225—227. 
 
§40 
 
 he had a taste for polite literature, and even for philosophical research, which, 
 had not his mind been occupied by higher objects, he might have cultivated 
 with considerable success. His letters and other original papers have, for the 
 most part, been carefully printed in these pages precisely as he wrote them, in 
 order that the reader may form an estimate himself, of the extent of his ortho- 
 graphical and grammatical deficiencies, and institute a comparison between them 
 and his style and form of expression, which are open to infinitely less objection. 
 He was not, nor did he, indeed, profess to be a good classical scholar, though he 
 seems to have been able to read Latin without difficulty, but for want of practice 
 he had probably forgotten his Greek. French he spoke fluently ; and in most of 
 the modern languages he was sufficiently versed to maintain a conversation in 
 them, having taken no small pains to acquire such a knowledge of them as should 
 enable him to carry on the investigations which led him into foreign countries, 
 without being subjected to mistakes, from the ignorance or misrepresentations 
 of interpreters. 
 
 Such, then, were the virtues, such the qualifications of a Howard for the 
 
 extraordinary part which he acted on the theatre of public life ;— and they 
 
 followed him into the retirement of the social, and the privacy of the domestic 
 
 scene. Ever consistent with himself, he was the same benevolent being; the 
 
 same decided character; the same temperate liver, in the circle of his friends, 
 
 and the bosom of his family, as he was when the gaze of the world was upon 
 
 his conduct and his path. This remarkable correspondence of every action in 
 
 every relation of life which he was called upon to sustain, so as to form one 
 
 beautiful and harmonious whole, is strikingly depictured by the eloquent pen of 
 
 Chalmers,* who, after describing, with his usual force of language and glow of 
 
 imagery, the individual who extends his affections and his benevolence from his 
 
 family to his neighbourhood— from his neighbourhood to his country, closes his 
 
 well- wrought climax with this animated sketch : But, " I can conceive a still 
 
 * Discourses on the Christian Revelation, in connection with Modern Astronomy, p. 172 — 6. 
 
647 
 
 loftier flight of humanity— a man, the aspiring of whose heart for the good 
 of man, knows no limitations — whose longings and whose conceptions on 
 tliis subject, overleap all the barriers of geography— who, looking on himself 
 as a brother of the species, links every spare energy which belongs to him, 
 with the cause of its melioration — who can embrace within the grasp of 
 his ample desires, the whole family of mankind— and who, in obedience to 
 a heaven-born movement of principle within him, separates himself to some 
 big and busy enterprise, which is to tell on the moral destinies of the world. 
 Oh! could such a man mix up the softenings of private virtue, with the 
 habit of so sublime a comprehension — if, amid those magnificent darings 
 of thought and of performance, the mildness of his benignant eye could 
 still continue to cheer the retreat of his family, and to spread the charm and 
 the sacredness of piety among all its members — could he even mingle him- 
 self in all the gentleness of a soothed and smiling heart, with the play- 
 fulness of his children — and also find strength to shed the blessings of his 
 presence and his counsel over the vicinity around him ; — oh ! would not the 
 combination of so much grace with so much loftiness, only serve the more to 
 aggrandize him ? Would not the one ingredient of a character so rare, go to 
 illustrate and to magnify the other ? And would not you pronounce him to 
 be the fairest specimen of our nature, who could so call out all your tenderness, 
 while he challenged and compelled all your veneration ? And, were I in search 
 of that fine union of grace and of greatness which I have now been insisting on, 
 and in virtue of which, the enlightened Christian can at once find room in his 
 bosom for the concerns of univei-sal humanity, and for the play of kindliness to- 
 wards every individual he met with — I could nowhere more readily expect 
 to find it, than with the worthies of our own land — the Howard of a former 
 generation, who paced it over Europe in quest of the unseen wretchedness 
 which abounds in it — or in such men of our present generation, as Wilberforce, 
 who lifted his unwearied voice against the biggest outrage ever practised on our 
 nature, till he wrought its extermination. — " 
 
648 
 
 And such, indeed, in the grand outline of their character, was Howard ; 
 and such is Wilberforce ; but it is only to some of the minuter features of the 
 former that our attention is at present to be directed. 
 
 As a husband, then, he was kind and affectionate ; not treating his wife as 
 a being of inferior order, though exercising, with mildness, and in love, the au- 
 thority with which he was divinely invested, for her benefit, as well as for 
 •4iis own. Both his marriages were sources of great connubial felicity to the 
 parties contracting them, for they all seem to have acted in that spirit of 
 mutual concession to each other's opinions and prejudices, which can alone be 
 productive of happiness in the wedded state. On Mr. Howard's part, this 
 was particularly remarkable, in his having, though a decided Dissenter, regu- 
 larly accompanied both of his wives, on one part of the Sabbath, to the esta- 
 blished church, as they had been brought up within its pale. 
 
 As a parent, his conduct has been too freely and too fully discussed in the 
 preceding part of this memoir, to require many words upon the subject now. 
 That he was an affectionate father has been clearly proved ; — that he was 
 a severe one, as completely negatived. If he was not an indulgent one, it 
 was because he was fearful, by giving way to the feelings of his heart, 
 that he might spoil a son,— an only son, whom he most tenderly loved, 
 and whom he was, above all things, anxious to train up in the paths of 
 religion and of virtue. To effect this object he unhappily resorted to 
 measures not the best adapted for securing the affections of a child, lively and 
 volatile as was his ; but, in firmly, yet mildly commanding, instead of gently 
 warning and calmly winning, — in deterring by punishment, though it was so 
 slight as never to have amounted to a blow, or exceeded a direction to sit in 
 silence in his presence — rather than in alluring by rewards and expressions of 
 satisfaction, — he committed, and he afterwards acknowledgd that he had com- 
 mitted, a fatal error. It was an error, however, of judgment, and of judgment 
 
649 
 
 only; for it proceeded from the purest intentions, and the most ardent affection 
 for the object of its discipline ; and, bitterly — bitterly indeed, did he suffer for it, 
 though there is not the shadow of a pretence for attributing, as some inhumanly 
 have done, the dreadful malady, with which his son was visited, to this cause, 
 originating, as it entirely did, in the young man's own misconduct. 
 
 In the midst of his family, as a master, no man ever acted more con- 
 sistently with the apostolic injunction, " Give unto your servants that which 
 is just and equal : knowing that ye also have a master in heaven," — than he 
 did. He preserved over them a mild, steady, uniform authority, and expected 
 prompt and implicit obedience to his commands ; but they were plain, clear, 
 simple, and always delivered in a kind and gentle manner. He maintained, 
 indeed, his influence as a master, by laying down and strictly adhering to a 
 regular system of management, rather than by any particular exercise of his 
 authority. They, on their parts, cheerfully obeyed his commands, because they 
 were fully sensible of the reasonableness of them; and knowing that their master 
 duly appreciated their services, they feared to displease him more than any other 
 earthly evil that could befal them. Aware that he always studied their hap- 
 piness and comfort, they knew that he was a friend in whom they could confide; 
 who was interested in their welfare ; and ready, in every season of distress and 
 affliction, to do every thing in his power to relieve them. From the prudent line 
 of conduct which they mutually pursued, his servants lived happily whilst in his 
 employ, and he possessed their attachment to such a degree, that they all but 
 idolized him, and were ready to make any sacrifice in his service. They all 
 lived with him many years, none less than twenty, some more than thirty ; 
 and, with the exception of the Judas whose treachery has already been suffi- 
 ciently exposed, they were pious, excellent people, who, by their conscientious 
 discharge of the duties of their stations, eminently adorned their Christian pro- 
 fession. Possessing the same spirit of integrity with their master, they paid 
 as strict an attention to his wishes and commands when they knew him to be 
 
 4 o 
 
650 
 
 many hundred miles distant, as they possibly could have done had he been 
 present; and had he at any time returned unexpectedly, he would have found 
 every thing a*bout his house and premises exactly as he had arranged it, even to 
 his minutest order :— so true, though so trite is the observation, that good masters 
 make good servants. John Prole, his faithful bailiff, survived him for some 
 years, and, on his death-bed, spoke with rapture of the hopes he entertained of 
 once more meeting with his beloved master, as a saint in glory. After his de- 
 cease, an address was also found amongst his papers, intitled " A Father's Legacy 
 to his Children," in which he proposed Mr. Howard's example to their imita- 
 tion, in their Christian course, as the best they could follow, next to that of their 
 divine Saviour. That address was afterwards privately printed for the use of 
 his family ; and, both as it contains the dying testimony of a pious and faithful 
 servant to the excellence of his master's character, and relates some incidents in 
 his earlier travels of benevolence with which I was not acquainted time 
 enough to insert them in their proper place, some extracts from it will be found 
 in the notes to this work.* 
 
 In his character of a landlord, our Philanthropist most studiously endeavored, 
 by every means in his power, to promote the happiness of his tenantry, whose 
 industry he was continually encouraging by presents, sent or brought to them 
 from abroad, or from the manufacturing towns of his own country. For them 
 and for the poor of his neighbourhood, he was constantly devising liberal things ; 
 and by the schools he established for the education of their children ; the assist- 
 ance he afforded them from his purse ; and, above all, by the excellent advice 
 which he gave them, as he moved, like the father of the village, from house to 
 house ; he introduced amongst them a love of neatness, cleanliness, and order, 
 whose pleasing effects on the village they inhabited, have not yet been, and, 
 probably, never will be utterly lost. The extreme moderation of his own 
 desires enabled him to be munificent in his benefactions to those who needed 
 
 Note V. 
 
651 
 
 them, far beyond any thing that could have reasonably been expected from a 
 man of hi* moderate fortune. " Perfectly contented with the competence which 
 Providence had bestowed on him, he never,'' says one who knew him well,* " had 
 a thought of increasing it ; and even when in a situation to expect a family, he 
 made it a rule with himself to lay up no part of his annual income, but to expend 
 in some useful and benevolent scheme the superfluity of the year." Thus, 
 during his residence at Cardington, it was for many years his constant custom 
 to add, at least, one additional cottage to those he had already built upon his 
 estate, not for the increase of his own revenues, but for the comfort of his 
 tenantry. He did this though, it should be recollected, without injury to his 
 family, as, besides leaving his patrimonial inheritance in an improved condition 
 to his heirs, he possessed the best-grounded assurance that his children would be 
 far richer than he was, from sharing largely in the wealth of their maternal 
 relations. By the complete independence of his mind of the most baneful lust 
 of growing rich, " he was elevated," as it has been no less truly than forcibly 
 remarked,! " to an immeasurable distance above every thing mean and sordid ; 
 and in all his transactions he displayed a spirit of honour and generosity which 
 might become the ' blood of the Howards] when flowing in its noblest channels." 
 It was also a consistent feature of a character like his, that he should be, as he 
 always was, as ready to maintain the rights, as to promote the comforts of the 
 poor— though the notion of those rights which his well-regulated mind had 
 formed, were, we may be well assured, as distinct as is the heaven from the 
 earth, from those wild vagaries and absurd speculations, which, first promulgated 
 soon after his death, have been productive of such incalculable mischief, down to 
 the very days in which we live. 
 
 As a friend, he was faithful and affectionate, though the number of persons 
 with whom he shared his confidence were comparatively few ; yet by the kind 
 
 * Aikin, p. 219, 220. + lb. p. 220, 221. 
 
 4o2 
 
052 
 
 ness of his disposition, and the suavity of his manners, he secured their attachment 
 as strongly as, by the extraordinary virtues of his character, he had awakened 
 their admiration. With that promiscuous society in which a man of fashionable 
 habits spends so much of his time, it was alike contrary to his principles and his 
 mode of living to mingle ; but he enjoyed, as highly as it was possible for any 
 one to do, the rational converse of a select circle. Though shy and reserved, 
 if accidentally cast into a larger party, to such an one he was open and com- 
 municative ; often delighting them, when led by others to the subject, with the 
 most interesting accounts of his travels and various adventures ; no man ever 
 having made it more his study to gratify and please his friends, and those with 
 whom he associated, than he did. He, therefore, rendered himself in the social 
 circle, a cheerful and entertaining companion ; and was universally beloved by 
 all who had the opportunity of observing the estimable qualities of his heart, 
 whatever might be the political party, or religious denomination to which they 
 belonged. It has already been stated, in these memoirs, that he was remarkable 
 for that polite, yet respectful attention to the female sex which characterizes the 
 real gentleman, and more than one instance has been related of his having cheer- 
 fully given up his own comfort and convenience for theirs. Their society, 
 when the charms of a cultivated mind, and of engaging manners were added to 
 those indescribable attractions which women of virtuous and correct habits 
 will always possess in the eyes of a man of a similar character to their own, was 
 to him a source of the purest enjoyment ; and his prediliction for it might be 
 traced, partly to the happiness he had enjoyed in the wedded life, and, in part, 
 to his abhorrence of every thing gross and licentious. " His own language and 
 manners," says Dr. Aikin,* " were invariably pure and delicate ; and the free- 
 doms which pass uncensured or even applauded in the promiscuous companies 
 of men, would have affected him with sensations of disgust. For a person pos- 
 sessed of such feelings," he very properly adds, " to have brought himself to 
 submit to such frequent communication with the most abandoned of mankind, 
 
 * Aikin, p. 235. 
 
653 
 
 was perhaps a greater triumph of duty over inclination than any other he 
 obtained in the prosecution of his designs." 
 
 His habits, as it will already have struck the reader, were in many respects 
 singular; yet they were so in none from the mere affectation of singularity, but 
 from motives which to his mind sufficiently justified their adoption, by their 
 extending the sphere of his usefulness, and preserving him from being contami- 
 nated, by the vices and the follies of the world. In his manner, as in his dress, 
 he was somewhat precise ; so much so, indeed, as to give him the appearance of 
 an old bachelor, rather than of a man who had twice been married. The reso- 
 luteness of temper which he possessed, and which he manifested in private as 
 in public life, " displayed itself,'' says Dr. Aikin,* " in a certain peremptoriness, 
 which, when he had once determined, rendered him unyielding to persuasion 
 or dissuasion, and urged him on to the accomplishment of his purpose, regard- 
 less of obstacles. He expected prompt obedience in those from whom he had 
 a right to require it, and was not a man to be treated with negligence aad in- 
 attention. He was, however, extremely considerate, and sufficiently indulgent 
 to human frailties ; and a good-will to please him could scarcely fail of its effect. 
 That his commands were reasonable, and his expectations moderate, may be 
 inferred from the long continuance of most of his servants with him, and his 
 steady attachment to many of those whom he employed. His means of enforcing 
 compliance were chiefly rewards ; and the withholding them was his method 
 of showing displeasure." Like many other great and virtuous characters, he had 
 a fondness for gardening, and other rural occupations, particularly the cultiva- 
 tion of plants, vegetables, and fruits, both of the useful and ornamental kind. 
 And such was the taste he displayed in these pursuits, that his gardens and 
 grounds were, and still continue to be, objects of curiosity, both for the skill 
 with which they are laid out, and the rarity of some of their productions, 
 whose seeds he frequently brought with him from foreign countries, distributing, 
 with his wonted liberality, a portion of his stock among his friends. 
 
 * Aikin, p. 216, 2>7. 
 
654 
 
 But in one other point of view does the character of this great and good 
 man remain to be contemplated, yet it is that which crowned the whole — the 
 excellence and consistency of his walk and conduct in the Christian profession. 
 He was, through life, a firm, real, and experimental believer in the truths of 
 revelation ; and was never ashamed of professing and maintaining them in the 
 face of an evil and a gainsaying world. Nor did he content himself with 
 a bare profession of these truths, but lived in the daily and habitual discharge of 
 the duties they require to be performed. His piety and devotion were genuine ; 
 fervent ; unaffected ; unobtrusive. Constant and exemplary in attending the public 
 services of the sanctuary, his deportment in the house of God was such as became 
 the Christian, who entered into the spirit of the gospel ; fell its power ; partici- 
 pated in its hopes ; and enjoyed its consolations. In a similar spirit, the whole of 
 the sabbath, whether spent at home, or abroad in parts where he could not 
 enjoy the delight of going up to the courts of the Lord with the assembly of 
 his people, was passed in a manner which strictly accorded with the gracious 
 design of its institution. Nor in the midst of a life of extraordinary activity 
 did he ever neglect the more retired exercises of religion, his house never being 
 " other than the house of God," and the quiet seclusion of his closet often the 
 very " gate of heaven." Dissenting from the established church, on principle, 
 and well understanding the grounds of his dissent, he was not afraid to have it 
 known to all the world, that he was of a religious profession whose members the 
 laws of his country had prescribed from promoting her interests, however quali- 
 fied to do so by their virtues and their talents, in any department of the state. 
 When called, however, to the exercise of an office in which he thought that he 
 could be serviceable to the cause of humanity, he shrunk not from taking it upon 
 him, at the risk of incurring pains and penalties of the most serious nature, 
 which the bigotry, or the avarice of any single individual could call down upon 
 his head, without its being in the power of any, or all of his friends, however 
 exalted their rank, or predominant their influence in the government, to save 
 him from their effects. Yet, whilst he scrupulously declined to violate his 
 conscience by prostituting a religious rite as a mere touchstone of eligibility 
 
(565 
 
 to civil office, he uniformly protested against the injustice of depriving any 
 man of his rights, as a member of society, on account of the religious tenets 
 which he might hold. He was no bigot, but revered good men of every deno- 
 mination, and abhorred nothing more than the least approach to that little, 
 narrow, contracted, and unchristian spirit, which disgraces but too many of 
 the professors of religion, both within and without the pale of the established 
 church. With many of the ministers and members of that church he lived in 
 habits of the closest intimacy, and was held by them, and by the liberal-minded of 
 all parties, in the highest possible esteem. In the same spirit of candor and 
 brotherly love, whilst he looked upon the frauds, superstitions, and gross 
 absurdities of the church of Rome, with utter abhorrence, he did full justice to 
 the motives of many who were educated in its bosom, and zealously supported 
 all its errors ; paying the same honor to that vital religion, which, however 
 heterodox in some of its views, was deeply rooted in the heart, whether he 
 found it under the cowl of a monk — the cassock of a priest — or the plainer 
 habiliments of a dissenting teacher. Throughout his works, as well as in his 
 conversations with his friends, he always spoke, therefore, in terms of high com- 
 mendation of that ardent zeal for the spiritual and temporal good of mankind, 
 which he had frequently the happiness to witness among the Roman Catholic 
 clergy, regular as well as secular. Nor did the principles of Protestant dissent 
 in which he had been educated, induce him to view, with any thing like compla- 
 cency, that hasty dissolution of the monasteries and convents of his dominions, 
 which formed one of those sweeping measures of reform to which Joseph the 
 Second of Germany lent all the energies of his capacious, but too boldly specula- 
 tive mind. " He pitied," says Dr. Aikin,* " the aged inmates, male and 
 female, of these quiet abodes, who were driven from their beloved retreats 
 into the wide world, with a very slender and often ill-paid pittance for their 
 support. Why might not these (he would say) be suffered gradually to die 
 away, and be transplanted from one religious house to another as their num- 
 
 * P. 241, 2. 
 
656 
 
 hers lessened ? Those orders, which make it the great duty of their profession 
 to attend with the kindest assiduity upon the sick and imprisoned, and who 
 therefore came continually within his notice, seemed to conciliate his good 
 will to the whole fraternity ; and the virtues of order, decency, sobriety, and 
 charity, so much akin to his own, naturally inclined him to a kind of fellow- 
 ship with them." That fellowship, however, it were needless to add, was 
 one inspired by the esteem which he felt for them as men, without involving 
 any thing like an approbation of their theological tenets, or their religious 
 ceremonies. This very proper line of distinction regulated his intercourse also 
 with some of the leading ministers of a body of protestant dissenters, to 
 whose views on some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, his own 
 were as opposite as light and darkness. He esteemed them, however, for 
 the virtues of their character, and the splendor of their talents, as highly as 
 he would have done men who held the same opinions with himself; and how- 
 ever deeply he deplored what he held to be their errors, he did not drive them 
 from the circle of those with whom he maintained a friendly intercourse in 
 the world, by his unavailing and unauthorized anathemas; but leaving the 
 condemnation of their heresy to Him to whom judgment in such cases can 
 alone belong, he strove rather to commend his own views of the gospel dispen- 
 sation to their adoption, by showing its accordance with the distinguishing 
 feature of that religion, which commands us to love, and to live in peace with 
 all men. Claiming, in short, for himself the unalienable right of thinking, in 
 matters of religion, as he chose, he permitted, in its fullest latitude, the same 
 riffht to others ; whilst in the exercise of that active benevolence which has 
 immortalized his name, he would as freely have risked his Fife to relieve the 
 miseries of a Papist, a Mussulman, or an Hindoo, as of a Calvinist, a Baptist, 
 or an Independent. The same genuine Catholicism directed the constant, 
 but unostentatious liberality by which his Christian profession was distinguished, 
 in contributing largely of his abundance to the support of the cause of Christ, 
 in various ways, and amongst various denominations of the religious world. 
 
65T 
 
 But commensurate with, if not exceeding, every other Christian grace which 
 shone with such singular lustre in his character, was his extraordinary humi- 
 lity ; a virtue, of which too many and too striking instances have been given 
 in the preceding pages of these memoirs, to call for any further illustration 
 here. The higher he was exalted by his benevolent deeds in the esteem of 
 others, the lower, indeed, does he appear unaffectedly to have sunk in his own ; 
 and whilst daily acquiring correcter views of the requirements of the gospel, 
 he felt but the more strongly, and lamented the more bitterly, the imperfec- 
 tions of his nature, which tainted with impurity, in the sight of God, the 
 best and holiest of his services. 
 
 Having made up his mind on his religious sentiments, he was not to be 
 removed from the steadfastness of his faith by novel opinions obtruded on the 
 world. Those sentiments, it has already been stated, were such as are commonly 
 known by the name of moderate Calvinism, and he was never ashamed of 
 freely and unreservedly avowing his firm belief in the leading tenets of that 
 particular denomination of the Christian world. Of those tenets he has chiefly 
 left upon record the most unequivocal proofs of his full and cordial reception 
 of the doctrines of original sin ; the total depravity of our nature ; our inability 
 to do any thing towards our own salvation, which is entirely through faith in 
 Jesus Christ, and that not of ourselves but the gift of God ; the necessity of 
 regeneration ; and the utter worthlessness of all our best services, but as the 
 evidence of the renewing and sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit upon 
 our hearts. Of the personality of that Spirit he was most firmly convinced, 
 as he was also of his essential deity and co-equality with the Father and the 
 Son, in a Trinity formed of three persons, though forming but one God. He 
 held also, without doubt, the doctrines of predestination and final perseverance 
 as laid down in the Scriptures, though his own papers furnish not the slightest 
 evidence of his having pushed either of these controverted points to those ex- 
 
 4 p 
 
658 
 
 tremes, bordering upon the grossest absurdities, for which some of their more 
 ignorant, as well as their more zealous devotees have earnestly contended. 
 Upon his riveted belief in the former of these tenets, his calumniators have, 
 however, charged a rigidity of character, and a sternness of purpose similar to 
 that which the Turks are said to derive from the blind devotion to alike article 
 of their faith, which leads them to act as the mere victims of an uncontrollable 
 fatality, as minute in its decrees, as it is absolute, implacable, and unjust in the 
 principles and extent of its operation. But to this groundless accusation it 
 may be, as in substance it already has been, answered, that Mr. Howard never 
 appears to have acted, in any thing he took in hand, as though he was 
 forced to do so by some irresistible impulse, all his designs having, on the 
 contrary, been the subject of mature deliberation, and of much discussion with 
 his friends; nor did he ever engage in them, but from a conviction of their 
 utility, and after a due appreciation of the difficulties by which their accom- 
 plishment would, in all probability, be attended, and the dangers to which they 
 would expose him. Nor were those difficulties and dangers at length confronted 
 in any enthusiastic persuasion that he should miraculously be preserved from 
 their natural consequences ; but in a full consciousness that, by an habitual sense 
 of duty, he was elevated above them. " Being in the way of my duty, I fear 
 no evil :" this was the language he uniformly held, and the principle upon 
 which he invariably acted ; and, in this respect, his confidence differed not at 
 all in its nature, however it might in its degree, from that which every good and 
 pious man must feel, or wish to feel, in the over-ruling care of a kind and mer- 
 ciful Providence ; and which, ere the names of Predestination or of Calvin were 
 heard of, induced the royal psalmist to exclaim, "Though I walk through the 
 valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod 
 and thy staff they comfort me." 
 
 Such are the general outlines, and such the more striking features of the 
 
659 
 
 character of one of the greatest and best of men that the world has ever pro- 
 duced. That faults and foibles mingled in its composition we cannot doubt, for 
 he was human ; but surely of him, if of any one, it may be said with truth, that 
 
 " E'en his failings leaned (o virtue's side." 
 
 To attempt to pronounce his eulogium, were useless ; for the best eulogium of 
 his virtues, is a faithful record of his life, and such, it is hoped, these pages have 
 preserved. Nor can we expect that the proposing his character and his actions 
 as a model for others, would be attended with any better success. True, it is, 
 that in the last conversation which he held with one of his most intimate friends, 
 who was vainly endeavoring to persuade him to continue at home, to per- 
 fect the generous plans he had framed for the good of his own country,- — he ex- 
 pressed his persuasion that when he was gone, some one else would take up his 
 work and carry it through : and the time now seems to be approaching when, 
 after a long slumber in his grave, these hopes will be realized. Readily is it 
 admitted too, that in many single points of his character, he may, and ought to 
 be held up to an imitation, in which no one who is sincerely desirous of copying 
 his excellences need be hopeless of success. Britain has produced since his 
 time, and Britain and other countries, doubtless, will yet produce many philan- 
 thropists, whose benevolence, like his, would circle in one extended grasp the 
 miseries of the world. But in the rare union of intrepidity with coolness ; 
 decision with enterprize ; disinterestedness and humility ; temperance and 
 benevolence ; fearlessness of man and devotedness to God ; — in short, of 
 every virtue which can adorn a public or a private life, crowned and per- 
 fected as they were by every Christian grace, neither can his country nor the 
 world expect a second Howard to appear, as a commissioned angel of mercy, 
 to the very refuse and outcasts of the earth. 
 
 4p 2 
 
NOTES. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Note r. p. 3. — Mr. Palmer's MS. memoir states, that " Mr. Howard was the son of an 
 eminent merchant in the metropolis, who, by business, acquired a considerable fortune ;" and 
 that " he was born at Clapton, where his father had a country-house." This passage would 
 seem to imply, that the father of Mr. Howard was in a somewhat higher station of life than 
 that in which Dr. Aikin has placed him, and that his son was born before he retired from 
 his mercantile pursuits ; yet, as that gentleman speaks so positively and circumstantially on 
 the subject, I have preferred following his account, rather than that of a biographer who 
 does not appear, in this instance, to have possessed any superior means of information, 
 and whose language, upon the occasion, is not capable of a very definite interpretation. 
 The accuracy of that account is, in this particular, confirmed by the following entry in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, amongst the obituaries of the 9th of September, 1742:* " John 
 Howard, Esq ; formerly an Upholsterer, who three years ago fined for Sheriff." This latter 
 circumstance shows, that he must have been a man not only of considerable property, but 
 of some consideration amongst his fellow-citizens, the honor of being drank to as sheriff 
 of <he city of London not being quite so cheap, seventy years ago, as it has of late become. 
 The author of the anonymous memoirs of Mr. Howard, published in the Universal Maga- 
 zine for the months of April and May, 1790, gives, indeed, to our Philanthropist, and con- 
 sequently to his father, a descent so illustrious as, in the estimation of those who plume 
 themselves on the pride of ancestry, would render the highest civic honor an object in- 
 finitely below his notice : — " John Howard," says this unknown writer, f " was descended 
 from a branch of the noble family of that name which makes such a distinguished figure 
 
 • Vol. XII. p. 499. See also a Letter, signed R. G. (Richard Gough) in Yol. LX. Part II. p. TIT. 
 t Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 170. 
 
G62 
 
 in the British peerage." The only evidence, however, attempted to be offered, in support of 
 this noble pedigree, is that contained in the following note upon the above passage : — " The 
 family arms of the Duke of Norfolk, and of the Earls of Suffolk, Effingham, and Carlisle, 
 are placed at the head of the tomb-stone which Mr. Howard erected to the memory of his 
 first wife, on the south side of Whitechapel Church-yard :" and, as far as this solitary fact 
 can go, from actual inspection of the mouldering monument, I can assure those of my 
 readers, who may feel any curiosity upon the subject, that this description of its armorial 
 bearings is correct. But whether John Howard, the Philanthropist, was entitled to 
 claim kindred with the ducal house of Norfolk (holding, as it does, the first and proudest 
 place in the peerage of his country), with the Earls of Suffolk, Effingham, and Carlisle, the 
 deeds of whose ancestors are so splendidly emblazoned in the page of our history ; — or whe- 
 ther he was descended from one of the meanest of our mechanics — or even from the lowest 
 menial in the retinue of either of these princely houses — can surely be a matter of no import- 
 ance whatever, to those who estimate the characters of men by what they are, not what their 
 ancestors have been ; — by what they do, not what their ancestors have done. And, weighed 
 in this balance, — by the active exertions of his unwearied benevolence for the relief of his 
 suffering fellow-creatures, and by the uniform consistency and strict integrity of his life, 
 influenced, as it so invariably was, by the purest principles of Christianity, he has gained for 
 himself a name and a reputation in this world, and secured a crown of glory in that which 
 is to come, that will infinitely exceed, in duration, as in splendor, all the lustre that has glit- 
 tered in the coronets, and all the virtues, and all the advantages of a noble birth, that have 
 ever attracted the esteem or admiration of their fellow-mortals for " all the blood of all the 
 Howards." 
 
 But, descending from the fancied elevation upon which this anonymous writer of his 
 life has placed a man, who needed nothing but the greatness of his own actions, and the 
 intrinsic excellence of his character to set him on a level with the noblest and the best of 
 the human race, I would observe, that the account which that biographer has given of Mr. 
 Howard's father offers a further confirmation of the correctness of the description of his 
 situation in life, which has been adopted in these memoirs, from the biographical sketch of 
 Dr. Aikin. " His father, Mr. John Howard," says our author,* " was partner in a very 
 considerable upholstery and carpet warehouse, under the firm of Howard and Hamilton, in 
 Long Lane, West Smithfield." An account, agreeing in substance with this statement, is also 
 
 * Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 170. 
 
663 
 
 contained in a short Memoir of Mr. Howard's Life in the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 
 1790,* upon which I shall hereafter have occasion to make some very severe strictures. Its 
 correctness, in this particular, is also confirmed, beyond the possibility of a doubt, by the fol- 
 lowing entry upon the court-rolls of the king's manor of Enfield, of his admission to some pro- 
 perty which he held there ; as transmitted to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, by a 
 correspondent, signing himself R. G.t but who was, no doubt, Mr. Richard Gough, the 
 celebrated antiquary, then residing at that place, and an intimate friend of Mr. Howard's, 
 as he is well known to have been, for many years, one of the principal contributors to the 
 valuable periodical work, through whose pages he communicated this piece of informatioa 
 to the public : — 
 
 " John Haward, alias Howard, civis et tapetiar de London, admitted to six acres in 
 Carter-hatch Leas, Le Pottash House, and an acre turned into an orchard, before 1704." 
 
 It may be worthy of remark, in this place, to avoid the necessity of making it in any 
 other, that the memoir, published in the Universal Magazine, from which the most circum- 
 stantial information upon this point has been derived, is characterized, in a letter addressed 
 by Mr. Palmer to the editor,* as " such as does him honor, and must be gratifying to his 
 readers. It is much the best," he goes on to add, " that has yet appeared ; and, so far 
 as, from my long and intimate acquaintance with him, I am able to judge, it is very ac- 
 curate, excepting in a few small particulars," which, in this, and a subsequent Ietter,§ he 
 himself corrected. After so unequivocal a testimony to its general accuracy, from one in 
 every way competent to decide upon it, I need scarcely add, that I have made frequent use 
 of this biographical sketch in the course of these memoirs, always referring, however, to 
 its pages for any statement made, either wholly or in part, upon its authority. 
 
 Note ii. p. 3. — Dr. Aikin's account of the place of Mr. Howard's birth is, — "his 
 father — retired from business, and had a house first at Enfield and afterwards at Hackney. 
 It was, I believe, at the former of these places that Mr. Howard was born."|| The MS. 
 memoir by Mr. Palmer states, however, most explicitly, that this event took place at Clap- 
 ton ; and, from an intimate friendship of thirty years with this distinguished character, 
 and from his own residence in the immediate vicinity of the spot he describes, it is hardly 
 
 * Vol. LX. Part I. p. 276. t Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. IX Part II. p. 717. 
 
 t Universal Marine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 236. 
 § lb. p. 318, 319. || View of the Character, &c. of Mr. Howard, p. 9, 
 
6G4 
 
 possible that he could have been mistaken on a point, upon which Dr. Aikin merely ex- 
 presses his own belief. The anonymous life of Mr. Howard, published in the Universal 
 Magazine,* informs us, however, more particularly^ that " he was born, about the year 1725, 
 at Lower Clapton, — in an ancient house, which had been many years in the possession of his 
 father and grandfather." 
 
 As far as respects the spot which had the honor of giving birth to this celebrated in- 
 dividual, Mr. Palmer, in the second of the two letters alluded to in the preceding note, 
 confirms this account, in these express terms :J — "As some doubts have arisen concerning 
 the place of Mr. Howard's birth, it may not be improper to inform you, that I have more 
 than once heard him speak of the house, which you have described at Clapton, in Hackney, 
 as the house in which he was born :" and so unqualified an assurance of its correctness 
 would have been abundantly sufficient to have induced me to adopt this statement without 
 hesitation or observation, were it not for the circumstance of Dr. Aikin's Life of Howard 
 having been published two years subsequent to the memoirs from which it is extracted, and 
 consequently to Mr. Palmer's observations upon them. As he must, therefore, have read those 
 memoirs, because he most distinctly refers to them,§ I cannot suppose that he would not, 
 in this instance, have followed the account there given, had be not had some reason 
 for doubting its accuracy, though I cannot but think that doubt could not have rested 
 upon any very solid foundation. Having, however, met with a passage in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for April, 1790, || affording to it, at least an appearance of plausibility, I cannot, 
 injustice to him, omit inserting it in this note. " The birth-place of Mr. Howard," observes 
 the editor of that curious and valuable miscellany, " having been doubted, a correspondent 
 says, ' I can only say, that I was told by a gentleman who was well acquainted with him, 
 and whom I consider as a man of knowledge and of veracity, worthy to be depended on 
 (though I pretend not to say, infallible), that he was born at Enfield : and I have since 
 heard that his mother went on a visit thither, from about the corner of Long-lane, in 
 Smithfield (where, not many years since, I understand, was an upholsterer's warehouse), 
 and was taken ill, and delivered there, before she was able to return home.' ' I believe, but 
 am not certain,' adds this correspondent of Mr. Urban, ' that his mother's name was 
 Cholmley, and that she was sister to the wife of the late Win. Tatnall, Esq. formerly of 
 Ironmonger-lane, Cheapside, and afterwards of Theobalds, Herts.'" 
 
 • Vol. LXXXVI. p. 169—174; 255—263. t lb. p. 170. f lb. p. 319. § p. 10, note. 
 
 || Vol. LX. Part I. p. 369. See also, in favour of Enfield, a letter signed R. G. (Richard Gough) lb. Part II. p. 717. 
 
G65 
 
 As it regards the time of Mr. Howard's birth, the letters of Mr. Palmer which have 
 already been published, and his short manuscript memoir of his illustrious friend, now in 
 my possession, are alike silent. Whether, therefore, the date assigned to this event by 
 Dr. Aikin (about 1727), or that given in the passage here quoted from the Universal 
 Magazine be the correct one, I have no means whatever of deciding. The memoir 
 inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine* gives indeed a still earlier date to the birth of 
 this distinguished character, which is there referred to the year 1724, but on what authority 
 I know not In a letter from one of Mr. Howard's friends at Plymouth, exposing some of 
 the shameful misrepresentations of the character and conduct of that excellent man, 
 with which this ill-natured and malevolent caricature of his most useful, — I had almost 
 said, his blameless — life, so plentifully abounds ; we have, however, a statement which 
 may throw some material light upon this doubtful point. " The age of Mr. H.," says 
 the writer of this letter,t " I can very nearly ascertain, as, in a visit which he made 
 me in Nov. 1787, he mentioned ' his being then sixty-one years of age.'" Now if this 
 representation be quite correct as to its dates, and it is difficult to conceive how it should be 
 otherwise, the subject of it must have been born in 1726; which, after all, is the most 
 likely to have been the precise year of his birth ; or is, at least, that which it would be 
 most prudent to adopt, as the intermediate period between the two different years fixed 
 upon by the most correct of his biographers, as about the date of that event. 
 
 Note III. p. 3. — The cottager here alluded to was the mother of Mrs. Prole, who after- 
 wards became lady's maid to the second Mrs. Howard, and the wife of his faithful bailiff, 
 John Prole. It is from conversation with her that these particulars of our Philanthropist's 
 childhood, as well as many others of his maturer years, have been derived. 
 
 Note iv. p. 3. — In the absence of all direct evidence in support of this opinion, it 
 becomes necessary to state the reasons that have induced, in my mind, a persuasion of, at 
 least, the great probability of its correctness. These then are — first, that both the school- 
 masters, under whose care the elder Mr. Howard placed his son, were of these sentiments : 
 secondly, that the first congregation which that son, when grown to man's estate, appears 
 regularly to have attended, was one of the same denomination : and, in the last place, as 
 will clearly be proved in the course of these memoirs, that, having been regularly joined to 
 
 • Vol. LX. Part I. p. 277. t Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part X. p. 287. 
 
 4Q 
 
GG6 
 
 that congregation, the younger Mr. Howard, in all the intimate connections which he 
 formed with many ministers and members of churches of other denominations (more par- 
 ticularly the Baptists), seems never to have departed from the discipline of that, in which, 
 for these reasons, he is supposed to have followed the footsteps of his fathers. 
 
 Note V. p. 9. — Of this very learned man, who is described by the author of the Life 
 of Mr. Howard published in the Universal Magazine,* as " one of the best scholars of his 
 time," I regret to say, that the only account which I have been enabled to discover, is 
 that contained in some pieces of neglected biography furnished to the Monthly Magazine,f 
 I believe by the late Dr. Joseph Toulmin, and which is here transcribed for the reader's 
 information : — 
 
 " Mr. John Eames is a character, to which due and full respect has not been paid in 
 season, as only a slight and incidental mention has been made of him, and that not till lately, 
 in the biography of other characters.^ He was a native of London, and received his 
 classical learning at Merchant-taylor's school. He afterwards pursued a course of 
 academical studies, with a view to the Christian ministry ; yet he never preached but one 
 sermon, when he was so exceedingly agitated and confused that he was scarcely able to 
 proceed. There was also, unhappily, a great defect in his organs of speech, and his 
 pronunciation was exceedingly harsh, uncouth and disagreeable. These circumstances, 
 discouraged him from renewing the attempt, so that, quitting the pulpit entirely, he devoted 
 himself to the instruction of young men, whose education for the pulpit, among Protestant 
 Dissenters, was patronized and assisted by the Independent Fund. His department 
 included the languages, mathematics, moral and natural philosophy. On the death of 
 Dr. Ridgely, who filled the divinity chair in the same seminary, he was prevailed upon to 
 add to his course on those subjects, lectures in divinity, and to teach the Oriental 
 languages, assisted in the other branches by a learned colleague, Mr. Densham. Mr. Eames- 
 was deemed remarkable, as a man of extensive learning, and a universal scholar. Dr. 
 Watts once said to one of his pupils, Mr. Angus, ' Your tutor is the most learned man 
 I ever knew.' He excelled, particularly, in classical literature, and in a profound 
 knowledge of mathematics, and natural philosophy. His scientific learning procured 
 
 • Vol. LXXXVI. p. 170. t Vol. XVI. p. 241, S. 
 
 t Biographia Britannica, article Amory ; Memoirs of Dr. Savage, prefixed to his Posthumous Sermons. Dr. Gibbon's 
 Memoirs of Dr. Watts, and Mr. Chaplin's Funeral Sermon for the Bev. John Angus. 
 
G67 
 
 him the acquaintance, esteem, and friendship of Sir Isaac Newton, to whom he was, on 
 some occasions, singularly useful ; and who introduced him to the Royal Society, of which 
 he became a member, and was employed by it, in conjunction with another gentleman, 
 to prepare and publish an abridgment of their Transactions. With all these qualifications, 
 Mr. Eames was remarkable for a diffidence and bashfulness, which greatly overshadowed 
 and concealed his great talents : ' He was modest,' said Mr. Angus, ' to a fault.' The 
 writer of this has authority for adding, that he was candid and liberal, and a friend to religious 
 inquiry; but through the timidity and modesty of his temper, he was exposed to the 
 insolence of bigotry, and suffered opposition and uneasiness from those who had not the 
 generosity to pay a due deference and respect to his abilities and learning. Among 
 those who were formed under him for the stations, which they afterwards filled with 
 reputation and honour, were Dr. Fumeaux, Dr. Price, and Dr. Savage. This latter 
 gentleman adopted some of his tutor's lectures, in his own course of academical instructions; 
 particularly 1hose on conic sections, and a small system of ethics, drawn up in Latin, 
 and he always spoke of Mr. Eames with high respect and con amore. Mr. afterwards the 
 eminent Archbishop, Seeker received part of his academical education under this learned 
 man, and by him, on discovering a disposition for a freedom of thinking, which would have 
 had an unfavorable aspect on his acceptableness as a minister among the Dissenters 
 of that day, was advised to lay aside his design of appearing in that character, and to direct 
 his attention to the study of physic. Mr. Eames died suddenly, June 29, 1744. 'What 
 a change,' says Dr. Watts, who dedicated to him his Treatise on Geography and Astronomy, 
 ' did Mr. Eames experience! but a few hours -between his lecturing to his pupils, and his 
 hearing the lectures of angels.' " 
 
 To this short memoir I have but little to add. The institution of which Mr. Eames was, 
 for some years, the principal tutor, was an academy founded by Mr. Coward, for the educa- 
 tion of young men for the work of the ministry among Protestant Dissenters, by a will, 
 which directed that all persons enjoying the advantage of his bequest, are to be trained up 
 in the theological tenets of Calvin; a direction which of course imposes upon the divinity 
 tutor the necessity of moulding his lectures mi the plan of those of Geneva, or, at least, 
 of taking especial care that nothing they contain shall be contrary to the doctrines formerly 
 taught there by the genuine disciples of its great apostle ; and it is to this circumstance that 
 the following short notice of Mr. Eames, in the life of his pupil Dr. Price, published 
 
 4q2 
 
668 
 
 some years since in the Universal Magazine,* alludes, " To complete his studies, Mr. 
 Price placed his nephew at an academy in Moorfields, of which the principal tutor was 
 Mr. John Eames, one of the council of the Royal Society, and appointed by that society, 
 in conjunction with Mr. Martyn, to abridge their Philosophical Transactions from the 
 year 1719. This gentleman — who could boast of uncommon learning, was endued, at 
 the same time, with the most invincible modesty. But his divinity lectures did not 
 correspond with his many excellencies ; for his fine genius was cramped and chained 
 down to the explanation of Marc's Medulla, — the very marrow of Dutch Calvinistical 
 divinity, and all free inquiry among his pupils was narrowly watched and attempted 
 to be stifled in the very birth." 
 
 That this attempt did not, however, succeed the doctrines afterwards promulgated 
 from the pulpit by Dr. Price, Dr. Furneaux, and several other ministers, who received 
 their education in this academy, under his tuition, most abundantly proves. From the 
 valuable memoirs of the former of these two learned, though somewhat heterodox divines, 
 recently published by his nephew Mr. Morgan, the well-known author of the " Doctrine 
 of Annuities," we learn that he always spoke of the ability and virtues of his venerable 
 tutor with respect and esteem, and that it was by his recommendation that Dr. (then Mr.) 
 Price, obtained the situation of chaplain and companion to Mr. Streatfield, of Stoke 
 Newington, in whose family he resided in that capacity for thirteen years, after his leaving 
 the academy in Moorfields.f 
 
 Note vi. p. 10. — In reference to this event, Dr.Aikin observes,:}: " It was, probably, in 
 consequence of the father's direction that he was bound apprentice to a wholesale grocer in 
 the city. This will appear a singular step in the education of a young man of fortune ; but, at 
 that period, inuring youth to habits of method and industry, and giving them a prudent 
 regard to money, with a knowledge of the modes of employing it to advantage, were by many 
 considered as the most important points in every condition of life. Mr. Howard was 
 probably indebted to this part of his education for some of that spirit of order, and 
 knowledge of common affairs, which he possessed; but he did not, in this situation, 
 contract any of that love of aggrandisement which is the basis of all commercial exertions; 
 and so irksome was the employment to him, that, on coming of age, he bought out 
 * Vol. LXXXVIII. p. 422. t Morgan's Life of Price, p. 11. } Life of Howard, p. 14, 15. 
 
609 
 
 the remainder of his time, and immediately set out on his travels to France and Italy." 
 The Doctor is here, however, evidently mistaken in his assumption that it was by any testa- 
 mentary directions of the elder Mr. Howard, that his son was put apprentice to Mr. Newn- 
 liain, as it appears, as well from the account inserted in the Universal Magazine, and 
 from that given by Mr. Palmer in his manuscript, as from the utter silence of the will 
 upon the subject, that this step was taken during the father's life time. In point of fact, 
 the death of his father, which happened on the 9th of September, 1742,* must, in all pro- 
 bability, have been after the commencement of this apprenticeship ; as, according to Dr. 
 Aikin's account of the year in which the subject of his memoir was born, he would then 
 have been either in the fifteenth, or sixteenth, though, according to that given in the Uni- 
 versal Magazine, he might have reached the seventeenth, and even entered upon the eighteenth 
 year of his age. Nor is it, surely, by any means natural to suppose that that father, who was 
 a man fully aware of the value of money, should have given so large a premium as 700/. 
 (for that was its amount), if he had not hoped that his son would, at some future period, be 
 actively and lucratively engaged in the pursuits of trade, into the mysteries of which he 
 was, for so valuable a consideration, to be duly initialed. Both of his other biographers 
 referred to in this note, accordingly represent our immortal Philanthropist as having been, 
 originally designed for business.f In the following passage of his life, the latter 
 of these authors gives us some particulars of his treatment during his apprentice- 
 ship, which, though not of sufficient importance to find a place in the body of these me- 
 moirs, may yet not improperly be inserted here. " Mr. Howard was intended originally 
 for a man of business, and was accordingly bound apprentice to Messrs. Newnham and 
 Shipley, wholesale grocers, in Watling-street ; by whom he was treated with that distinc- 
 tion to which a premium of seven hundred pounds entitled him. He was indulged with his 
 own separate apartments, and allowed to keep a servant and a couple of saddle-horses."^ 
 Of the habits and character of Mr. Howard's father, I transcribe, from the work last men- 
 tioned, the only account that I have been able anywhere to meet with. " He was," says 
 this anonymous author,§ " in very opulent circumstances, but of a penurious disposition. 
 He maintained great order and regularity in his house ; and to his constant observation of 
 the Sabbath, and of the duty of family prayer, his son was perhaps indebted for that piety, 
 which, ever after, formed a distinguished feature in his character." 
 
 • Universal Magazine, Vol. XII. p. 492. t Rev. S. Maimer's MS. Memoir : Univ. Mag. Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171. 
 
 t Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171. $ lb. p. 170. 
 
670 
 
 Note vii. p. 12. — This was most probably done, either by the executors of his father's 
 will, or by Mr. Howard himself, with their consent, before he left the counting-house of 
 Messrs. Newnham and Shipley. We learn from the memoirs so often quoted in this part 
 of our Philanthropist's life, that he had such a veneration for this house, that he would 
 never let it on lease ; but that, about five years before his death, he sold it, for three thou- 
 sand pounds, to Thomas Smith, Esq. afterwards of the Clock House, Tottenham, of whom it 
 was purchased by Mr. Gornham, an eminent surveyor, in King's-road, Gray's-Inn-lane.* 
 
 Note viii. p. 12. — It is not a little remarkable, that neither Mr. Palmer, nor the author 
 of either of the Memoirs of Mr. Howard, printed in the Universal, and in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, take any notice whatever of this journey to the continent ; yet, as Dr. Aikin 
 speaks of it in so clear and distinct a manner, I cannot but suppose that he had informa- 
 tion upon the subject which neither of these writers possessed ; and I therefore 
 felt myself bound to follow his account, in preference to theirs. This has been done 
 too, the more readily, because, as has been already observed in a former note, Dr. 
 Aikin had evidently seen the memoirs in the Universal, and, as will hereafter most satis- 
 factorily be shown, was fully acquainted with the contents of those published in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine ; and could not but have been aware that Mr. Howard is there represented to 
 have gone to lodge at Stoke Newington, immediately on leaving Mr. Newnham, without 
 any thing being added of his ever having left that place for the continent, until after the 
 death of his first wife, whom he married while residing there.f With this account Mr. 
 Palmer's shorter biography of his deceased friend, in substance, entirely agrees. 
 
 Note ix.p. 14. — The Universal Magazine informs us, that the subscription of Mr. Howard 
 amounted to 571. 14s. 6d. ; so odd a sum, that it would scarcely have been thus minutely 
 stated, had it not been the one actually given, under some circumstances, or for some parti- 
 cular reasons, with which we cannot now expect to become acquainted. 
 
 Note X. p. 15. — The Memoirs of Mr. Howard's Life published in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine,;}: states, that her name was Lardeau, and that she was " widow of a man who had 
 been clerk at Sir James Creed's White-lead works ;" further describing her as " a worthy, 
 
 * Universal Magazine, Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171, in noiis. t lb. p. 171 ; Gentleman's'Mag. YoLLX. Parti, p. '276. 
 
 } Gentleman's Mag. Vol. LX. Part I. p. 276. 
 
671 
 
 sensible woman, but a poor invalid, who had not had a day's health for twenty years." 
 Dr. Aikin's Memoir* has an alia dicta to her name — Lardeau (or Loidore) ; but Mr. 
 Palmer,f and the writer in the Universal Magazine,^ have the latter mode of spelling only. 
 
 Note xi. p. 15. — We are informed, in the Memoirs of Mr. Howard published in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine,§ that during the period of his residing as a lodger in the house of 
 Mrs. Loidore, " he used to ride out in the morning- for a few miles, with a book in his 
 pocket, dismount, turn his horse to graze upon a common, and spend several hours in reading." 
 " On a very particular inquiry, however," says the author of the Life of Mr. Howard 
 inserted in the Universal Magazine, || in express allusion to this passage, " of persons very 
 intimate, and who had often rode out^ with him, we are assured that they never saw, nor 
 ever heard, of such a practice." 
 
 Note XII. p. 16. — In a pamphlet published in 1790, under the title of "The Life 
 of the late John Howard, Esq. with a Review of his Travels," in a description of this 
 lady's death, and of her husband's sorrow upon account of it, we are told** that, " as a 
 remembrance of her, he ever after carried about with him, and when alone always used, 
 a dessert-spoon that had belonged to her." I have endeavored to find some better 
 authority for this anecdote than that of a writer so grossly ignorant of the history of 
 Mr. Howard's earlier life, as to assert that " his youthful years were spent abroad, and 
 that he returned not to England till he arrived at age, and came to take possession of 
 bis estate,"ff but I have endeavored in vain. It is not, however, at all likely that 
 such a memorial of his first wife should have been so fondly cherished, and so carefully 
 preserved, after he had married a second, to whom he was most doatingly attached, 
 not from a principle of gratitude, but from the strongest ties of genuine affection ; though 
 the author of these professed memoirs of his life is so ignorant of this circumstance, 
 that he merely notices this second marriage en passant, without making a single 
 observation upon it, except that the lady was very accomplished, the only daughter 
 of a master in chancery ; (which she certainly was not) that Mr. Howard received 
 an ample portion with her ; and that she unfortunately died in child-bed of her first 
 child 4| The servants of Mr. Howard inform me, indeed, that they never saw this spoon, 
 
 * V. 17. t MS. Memoir. { Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171. § Vol. LX. Part I. p. 276. || Vol. LXXXVI. p. 171. i„ M d>. 
 ** P. 70. tt lb. p. 60. :» lb. p. 70. 
 
G72 
 
 or heard any thing of it, which could not have been the case had he used it so constantly 
 as he is represented to have done. 
 
 The same writer relates two other circumstances connected with the first marriage 
 of Mr. Howard, resting upon no better authority than that just noticed. One of them, 
 indeed, is to the full as improbable: for, after giving an account of the origin of this 
 connection with Mrs. Loidore, and of the motives which induced its formation, differing 
 but little from that already inserted in the body of this work, we are very gravely assured* 
 that, " on the first opportunity he expressed his sentiments to her in the strongest 
 terms of affection ; assuring her, that if she rejected his proposal, he would become an 
 exile for ever to his family and friends. The lady was upwards of forty" (the truth 
 is, she was more than fifty), " and therefore urged the disagreement of their years, as well 
 as their circumstances ; but after allowing her twenty-four hours for a final reply, his 
 eloquence surmounted all her obstacles, and she consented to a union, wherein gratitude 
 was to supply the deficiency of passion. "f The former part of this most pathetic 
 scene is, no doubt, a gratuitous embellishment of this author's fertile imagination, and 
 it is even inconsistent with other parts of his own statement. 
 
 It is more than probable that a very similar character will apply to the former part of the 
 assurance he gives us, J that " Mr. Howard has often declared, that to the amiable example 
 of this lady, and the distress he experienced when taken by the French privateer, he owed 
 that strong attachment to the relieving of the distressed," " which he manifested in the 
 after period of his life," or somewhat to that effect, ought to have been added, to 
 complete the sentence ; but this writer's style is no less inaccurate and inelegant, than 
 the majority of the circumstances he relates are either grossly false, or shamefully mis- 
 represented. 
 
 I have met, however, with an anecdote or two of this marriage, which, though perhaps, 
 in some respects, a little too highly coloured, it may be but right to insert in this place, 
 because they are derived from a quarter entitled to infinitely more credit than this paltry 
 scribbler possibly can be. The Memoir of his Life in the Universal Magazine,§ in speaking 
 of Mr. Howard's treatment of his first wife, informs us, that " he uniformly behaved 
 to her with the greatest tenderness : he has been often heard to say, that he would freely 
 part with a hundred pounds to give her one good night's rest ; and, after her death, he has 
 more than once declared, that, were he to marry again, he would prefer just such another 
 
 • P. 69. t lb. p. 69, 70. t lb. p. 70. $ Vol. LXXXVI. p. 172. 
 
G73 
 
 person and mind as hers, to all the charms of yonjli and beauty. He ever after entertained 
 a great respect for her memory, and, about five years ago, visited her tomb, and gave 
 directions to have that, and the iron rails around it, repaired and beautified." 
 
 The recent visit paid by Mr. Howard's present biographer to the tomb-stone which 
 his respect for the memory of the excellent woman over whose grave it is erected, 
 induced her husband, more than forty years after her decease, thus to endeavor to 
 preserve from the ravages of time, enables him to state, that it is now in so dilapidated a 
 condition, that unless those who are interested in keeping it from mouldering to decay, 
 if any such are still in existence, shall give directions for its immediate repair, the inscription 
 it bears will, in the space of a very few years, no longer be legible. 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Note i. p. 21. — Mr. Howard's own account of this event is contained in the following 
 note upon the first section of his work, on " The State of Prisons," p. 1 1. "I most not be 
 understood here to mean a compliment to the French. How they then treated English 
 prisoners of war, I knew by experience in 1756; when a Lisbon packet (the Hanover) in 
 which I went passenger, in order to make the tour of Portugal, was taken by a French 
 privateer. Before we reached Brest, I suffered the extremity of thirst, not having for 
 above forty hours one drop of water; nor hardly a morsel of food. In the. castle, at Brest, 
 I lay six nights upon straw : and observing how cruelly my countrymen werg used there, and 
 at Morlaix, whither I was carried next ; during the two months I was at Carhaix upon 
 parole, 1 corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Morlaix, and Dinnan : at the 
 last of those towns were several of our ship's crew, and my servant. I had sufficient evidence 
 of their being treated with such barbarity, that many hundreds had perished ; and that 
 thirty-six were buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day. When I came to England, still on 
 parole, I made known to the commissioners of sick and wounded seamen, the sundry par- 
 ticulars : which gained their attention, and thanks. Remonstrance was made to the French 
 court : our sailors had redress : and those that were in the three prisons mentioned above, 
 were brought home in the first cartel-ships. — A Lady from Ireland, who married in France, 
 
 4r 
 
G74 
 
 had bequeathed in trust with the magistrates of St. Malo's, sundry charities ; one of which 
 was a penny a day to every English prisoner of war in Dinnan. This was duly paid ; and 
 saved the lives of many brave and useful men. — Perhaps, what I suffered on this occasion, 
 increased my sympathy with the unhappy people, whose case is the subject of this book." 
 The additional particulars contained in these pages, were derived, either from the per- 
 sonal communications of Mr. Howard to his friend the Rev. Samuel Palmer, and by him 
 recorded in the biographical sketch now in my possession, or, from the Memoir of his Life, 
 drawn up by some person, evidently most intimately acquainted with its history, for the 
 Universal Magazine for April, 1790.* That which was furnished to the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, for the preceding month, contains a representation of the conduct of Mr. Howard 
 upon this occasion, and of the probable cause of the harsh treatment that he experienced 
 during his detention in France, as unfounded, as, in common with the whole article of which 
 it forms a part, it is illiberal. "After mature consultation with a Dissenting minister, his 
 intimate friend," says the author of this choice specimen of faithful biography,^ " on his 
 intention of visiting Lisbon after the earthquake of Nov. 1, 1755 ; and being earnestly dis- 
 suaded from his purpose, as tempting Providence-, from the risque of being taken by some 
 of the ships of France, then at war with this country, he resolved to visit that desolated 
 capital, and left his house at Newington, at Midsummer, 1756. He set sail for Lisbon on 
 board the Hanover packet, which was taken by a French privateer ; and he behaved with so 
 much hauteur, so much a I'Anglois, to the captain of the privateer, as might probably be 
 the cause of his suffering so severely as it appears he did." 
 
 As to the first part of this singular account, I have only to remark that, resting as it 
 entirely does upon the mere ipse dixit of a writer anxiously seeking every opportunity of 
 blackening the private character of Mr. Howard, whilst pretending to eulogize his public 
 services, and to venerate that very philanthropy, whose source he so shamefully misrepre- 
 sents, I have not thought proper to make any use whatever of it, in the body of this work ; 
 nor would it have been inserted here, but to avoid the suspicion of suppressing anything that 
 has been communicated to the public, with regard to this extraordinary man, bearing even 
 the remotest semblance to authenticity. 
 
 With respect to the second of these charges, the hauteur exhibited by Mr. Howard to 
 the captain of the privateer, who made him prisoner, not only is it equally unsupported by 
 evidence, but its manifest improbability will clearly appear from the whole history of the 
 
 • Vol. LXXXVI. p. 173. t Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LX. Part I. p. 276, 7. 
 
675 
 
 treatment of the English soldiers aud sailors, at that lime prisoners of war, in this part of 
 France, as well as of Mr. Howard, and the persons captured with him— who, it must he 
 remembered, experienced precisely the same degree of severity as himself — and of their 
 subsequent liberation. So soon, indeed, as sixteen days after the first publication of this 
 calumny, a letter was addressed to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine,* demanding of 
 its author the evidence of this, among many other " facts there related, to which the friends 
 of that gentleman were strangers." But no such evidence was ever produced. Well, 
 therefore, might the writer of that letter assert, that in those memoirs Mr. Howard's friends 
 found " a character delineated of which they never discovered the least trait." "That 
 their anonymous author has resorted to fiction," he goes on to observe, " for the purpose of 
 assassinating- his character, is an idea too horrible to be easily admitted." There is, how- 
 ever, but too much reason to conclude, that such a supposition is not more horrible, than 
 it is correct. 
 
 Note n. p. 22. — Between the period of his return from France, after having been con- 
 fined there as a prisoner of war, and his second marriage, the author of the Memoirs of 
 Mr. Howard's Life published in the Gentleman's Magazine, informs us,t that " it is believed 
 he made the tour of Italy ;" but upon this statement one of those friends of this most 
 excellent man who so properly took up their pens to vindicate his character from the foul 
 aspersions aud gross misrepresentations of this anonymous libeller, in a letter to the editor 
 of the valuable miscellany in which they were unfortunately, and most unaccountably, 
 permitted to appear, relates that — " Mr. H., after being liberated from the French prison 
 in 1756, went to Berlin; for which his chief inducement, I believe, was to gain a more 
 intimate knowledge of the king of Prussia ; but I do not recollect hearing that he had made 
 the tour of Italy."* 
 
 The silence of all the most authentic accounts of Mr. Howard's life upon such a 
 journey, at this time, induces me, however, to think that there must be an error even in 
 this statement, and that his visit to Berlin must have been at some other period of his life 
 and travels; both Dr. Aikin§ and Mr. Palnier|| agreeing in their representation of his not 
 having left England, upon his return from his unfortunate expedition to Lisbon, until after 
 the second Mrs. Howard's death ; though the author of the Memoirs of his Life published 
 in the Universal Magazine,^ informs us, that " he soon after followed the impulse of an 
 
 • Vol. LX. Part I. p. 290, Letter signed A. B. and dated April 16. t VoL LX. Part I. p. 877. J lb. p. 287, 
 
 $ P. 23. || MS. Memoir. \ Vol. LXXXVI. p. 173. 
 
 4 R2 
 
676 
 
 ardent curiosity, and made the tour of Italy." This, however, must, I am inclined to think, 
 have been the same journey with that which Dr. Aikin represents him to have taken 
 before his first marriage ; and which, upon his authority, I hav» referred to that period of 
 Mr. Howard's history. 
 
 Note hi. p. 23. — The authors of the life of Mr. Howard published in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine, and of the anonymous pamphlet, bearing the title of " The Life of the late 
 John Howard, Esq. with a Review of his Travels," represent this lady to have been the 
 only daughter of Mr. Leeds. But with respect, as well to the general accuracy of their 
 relation, as to the justice and liberality of their remarks, it may fairly be said of these 
 two slanderous publications, par pari, verily they are worthy of each other. In this, as in 
 numerous other instances, the information they give is quite incorrect ; Mr. Leeds having had 
 two daughters, the younger of whom was married to John Barnadiston, Esq. of Lincoln's-Inn, 
 barrister at law, ancestor to the gentleman to whose kindness I am indebted for the commu- 
 nication of several of Mr. Howard's original papers, which came to his hands as acting 
 executor of the will of his maternal uncle, George Leeds, Esq. of Croxton, and, in his 
 right, to that of Mr. Howard himself. 
 
 Note IT. p. 28. — " As an instance," says a note upon the letter of Mr. Howard's 
 Plymouth friend to the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine,* upon whose authority this 
 statement is given, " that, in whatever Mr. H. engaged it was summis viribus, it may not 
 be unworthy of notice to mention, that on the frost setting-in, he used, during the con- 
 tinuance, to leave his bed at two every morning, for the purpose of observing the state of a 
 thermometer, which was placed in his garden, at some distance from his house." 
 
 Note v. p. 37. — The circumstances attending Mrs. Howard's removal were more 
 than usually melancholy and distressing. She was safely delivered of her infant on the 
 Wednesday, and was doing so well on the Sunday, that when her husband went to church 
 in the morning she was not considered to be in the slightest danger. Soon after his return, 
 however, she was suddenly taken ill, and in a very short time expired in his arms, almost 
 in the act of taking a cup of chocolate, or some such slight nourishment, which he had 
 given her, at her own request. » 
 
 * Vol. LX. Tart I. j>. 288. 
 
677 
 
 Note vi. p. 38. — Another proof, precisely of the same description, though varying in 
 some few of its circumstances, isWready before the public, in a letter addressed to the 
 editor of the Gentle^n#!# Magazine, by one of Mr. Howard's friends at Plymouth, soon 
 after the intelligence of his decgBse had reached England, \vh»h I shall here transcribe in 
 the relator's own words.* " I recollect his telling me, just before he set out on one of his 
 foreign excursions, as he was walking with his son round some plantations he had been 
 making at Carding fort, and pointing out to him farther improvements which he had in 
 contemplation, These, however, Jack" (I think he called him) " in case I should not come 
 back, you will pursue or not, as you may think proper ; but remember, this walk was 
 planted by your mother ; and if you ever touch a twig of it, may my blessing never rest 
 upon you !" 
 
 Note vii. p. 38. — The author of the Life of Howard published in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine for 1790, in a letter addressed to Dr. Aikin, in reply to his severe, but most 
 merited animadversions upon the malignancy, and the falsehood which characterized that 
 article, and to the other friends of Mr. Howard, who lost not a moment in publicly express- 
 ing their surprise and indignation at its gross misrepresentations, — persists, however, in 
 Charging this most benevolent being with having been a tyrant in the midst of his family, 
 both to his wives and to his son. " I repeat it," he exclaims, in this lame vindication of 
 his memoir, but still grosser libel upon tbe subject of it, " and can substantiate the charge, 
 that Mr. H. was a severe husband and a severe parent. Not that he disgraced himself by 
 giving way to passion so far as to strike either wife, son, or servant. If that is all which in 
 your opinion constitutes severity, you are an incompetent judge of that disposition, the 
 true name perhaps for which, in the present instance, is austerity of temper. Such a 
 temper may diffuse benevolence and relieve distress, but can never constitute domestic 
 happiness.''^ Why he did not substantiate his charge, — or how he could suppose that any 
 man in his senses would believe it, upon the mere assertion of an anonymous writer, a con- 
 cealed assassin of the character of one of the best of men that ever appeared upon the 
 face of the earth, — it will be for him, if he be still in the land of the living, to inform us. 
 
 For my own part, I can only say, that every friend of Mr. Howard's with whom I have 
 either conversed or corresponded upon this subject, or whose observations upon his 
 general character and conduct have been communicated to me by surviving relatives 
 * Gentleman's Magaone) Vol. LX. Part I. p. 288. t lb. p. 116. 
 
678 
 
 (and in this number are included his own and his wife's relations ; his pastor j the ministers 
 upon whose preaching he attended, and with whom he lived on terms of the closet inti- 
 macy; his confidential correspondents; his neighbbours ; hi» tenants ; and his servants), 
 1ms contributed to furnish me with the most ample testimony to the falsehood of this base 
 and wicked calumny. Of these materials I have availed myself in the b«dy of this work, 
 where it will most distinctly appear, that he behaved to both his wives with the greatest 
 kindness, and was deeply afflicted by their loss ; and that to his second, in particular, he 
 was most doatingly attached, never having known what domestic happiness was after her 
 removal. Surely, then, that man deserves to be branded as a most infamous calumniator, 
 who could deliberately publish to the world, that the individual who felt and acted thus 
 towards the wife of his bosom, was a severe husband, merely that he might draw from 
 these false premises as absurd a conclusion — that he was so, because he was a rigid Predes- 
 tinarian : yet this is the logic, and this the justice of the anonymous writer, who, unfortu- 
 nately for the credit of that admirable work, was permitted to subscribe himself, in the 
 pages of the Gentleman's Magazine, " One of Mr. Urban's Biographers."* 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 Note i. p. 44. — No sooner had the gross libel on Mr. Howard's character, to which 
 most of the reports injurious to his memory are to be traced, made its appearance in the 
 Gentleman's Magazine, than his friends hastened to refute the infamous calumny on his 
 parental character which it contained. Foremost in the number of these generous vindi- 
 cators of the aspersed Philanthropist was Dr. Aikin, who addressed to the editor, a letter 
 upon the subject, which does the highest honor both to his head and heart. The follow- 
 ing extract from it will, I am sure, be acceptable to the readers of these Memoirs : — 
 
 " Mr. Urban, " Yarmouth, April 15 [1790]. 
 
 " The occasion which at present urges me to write, made me some time in doubt whe- 
 ther I should desire you to convey what 1 had to say to the publick ; but at length I was deter- 
 mined to adopt this mode, both as a means of affording you the opportunity of making that 
 
 * Vol. LX. Part I. p. 416—418. 
 
C79 
 
 retribution for an injury which every man of candour and liberality would wish, and as 
 the best method of circulating an antidote as far as the poison had reached. 
 
 " It was naturally to be expected, that your periodical work, which took so distin- 
 guished a part in a scheme for doing honour to Mr. Howard when living, should be the 
 first to pay him a tribute of respect and veneration when no more. I was therefore not at 
 all surprised to see your Obituary furnished with a long article respecting that great phi- 
 lanthropist. I shall not now say in how many respects that article is faulty and defective. 
 I mean to confine myself to a charge openly and positively brought against Mr. Howard, 
 of a nature so heinous, that it cannot fail, where it is believed, greatly to injure his cha- 
 racter in the estimation of the world : the charge of having, by severity, driven an only 
 child into a state of insanity. My hands, Mr. Urban, tremble with indignation and 
 honor while I copy it ; and scarcely can I restrain myself within temperate bounds, whilst 
 I refute a slander black as hell, against a man whose unparalleled benevolence rendered 
 him the pride and ornament of human nature. He honoured me with his friendship ; and 
 ill should I deserve it, could I remain cool and indifferent on such an attack upon his 
 memory. 
 
 " That Mr. H.'s idea of education led him (as it has done many other wise and good 
 men) to regard implicit obedience in a child as an essential ground-work, I readily admit ; 
 and that he managed so as to attain this point completely, I likewise know to be true : but 
 the manner in which this was effected was not of a kind that could make any dangerous 
 impressions on a child's mental faculties, since it was free from every thing hasty, violent, 
 and capricious, and consisted in a very steady, cool, and uniform course of discipline and 
 authority, in such points alone as were thought important to the child's welfare. Mr. H. 
 has more than once affirmed to me, that he never struck his son in his life, which is 
 certainly what few indulgent parents could say. And how long did even this course con- 
 tinue ? Your writer has thought fit, by way of sneer, to mention the child's being sent to a 
 girl's school. The fact was, that having had the misfortune to lose his mother at his birth, 
 he was, while yet extremely young, put under the care of a very sensible school-mistress. 
 After this, we are told of his being sent to a boarding-school for boys ; and here the re- 
 lator has chosen to stop in the account of his education. I shall now take up this history 
 (which is only important, as it has been brought to affect such a character), and then 
 leave your readers to their own convictions of the monstrous falsity of this tale of 
 calumny." 
 
680 
 
 The Doctor then proceeds to relate the various removals of young Howard to Da- 
 ventry, Nottingham, Edinburgh, and Cambridge, which will be regularly noticed, in their 
 proper places, in the body of this work. 
 
 Note ii. p. 49. — The observations to which this paper relates were made at Bath, 
 Bristol, Claverton, and Lansdown, in the course of the preceding September and Novem- 
 ber. In point of composition it is even inferior to Mr. Howard's former communications 
 to the Society. 
 
 Note III. p. 60. — This calumny was circulated during Mr. Howard's life-time, while 
 he was absent on one of his continental tours ; but after his death it was more widely 
 spread, and more generally believed. His friends, however, lost no time in refuting so 
 false and so ridiculous a tale, and, amongst others, Mr. Palmer was particularly active in 
 this commendable work, addressing to the editor of the Universal Magazine the following- 
 letter upon the subject : — 
 
 To the Editor of the Universal Magazine. 
 " Sir, 
 " Notwithstanding what has been said and written, in vindication of the late excellent 
 Mr. Howard, I find there are still persons who are determined to believe and propagate 
 the idle and cruel report respecting his severity to his son. As I have had the satisfaction 
 to trace it to its origin, which was indeed a very trivial circumstance, I think myself in 
 duty bound, from a regard to equity, as well as veneration for the character of my excel- 
 lent friend, to relate that circumstance to the public as I received it, from the best autho- 
 rity ; which I cannot do better than by means of your valuable miscellany. The authority 
 I refer to, is that of the very respectable and Rev' 1 . Mr. Townsend, many years Mr. 
 Howard's pastor at Stoke Newington — That you may have his genuine narrative, I here 
 enclose his original letter.* 
 
 " Hackney, " I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 Sept. 9, 1796." " S. PALMER. 
 
 • " I lately communicated a brief abstract of this letter to the General Evening Post, from whence I suppose the 
 Editor of the Gentleman's Magazine copied it, as addressed to Mr. Urban, though I never had, and never intend, any 
 correspondence with him upon the subject. The print which he has given of Mr. Howard, must be intended to burlesque 
 him. — Strange! that not only his character must be traduced, but his very person must be disfigured !" 
 
681 
 
 " Dear Sir, 
 " That so very an uncommon instance of heroic and persevering philanthropic as was 
 our excellent friend, the late Mr. Howard, should meet with enemies, among the selfish, 
 the envious and malevolent of mankind, doth not much surprize me, after having read the 
 abusive attack that was made — by the grand calumniator, upon the character of Job, who 
 was pronounced by the Almighty himself, the most perfect and upright man at that time 
 existing. While he was pursuing, shall I say, his godlike course I heard him repre- 
 sented as mad, attended with many a significant shrug of the shoulders, and twist of the 
 mouth, expressive of much more contempt, than pity, in the breast of the speaker. Some 
 years ago, several stories were circulated, on purpose, no doubt, to tarnish the lustre of 
 this exalted character ; among which it seemed to be a favourite one, that he was so exceed- 
 ingly severe and cruel in the treatment of his son, as to lay a foundation for the unhappy 
 state of mind he is now in ; particularly, that for some offence he committed when a child, 
 1 he once locked him up for several hours in a solitary place, having soon after gone to Bed- 
 ford with the key in his pocket, and did not return till night.'* From what I know of Mr. 
 Howard, I was persuaded this dismal story was an absolute falsehood : but had it not in my 
 power to contradict it, till I had an opportunity of mentioning it to him, which I did at his 
 next visit, and then received from him an account of the following incident, which be 
 supposed must ha"ve given rise to the scandalous report. It was Mr. Howard's constant 
 practice to walk out with his child in the garden while the servants were at dinner. In one 
 of these little excursions, with master Howard in his hand (who was then about three 
 years old) the father being much entertained with the innocent prattle of his son, they 
 went on till they came to the root-house or hermitage, in a retired part of the garden, with 
 which the young gentleman was familiarly acquainted, and were there for some time, di- 
 verting one another. During this, the servant came in great haste to inform his master, 
 that a gentleman on horseback was at the door, and desired to speak with Mr. Howard 
 immediately, upon business of some importance ; and as he wished to be with him as 
 soon as possible, he said to his son, ' Jack, be a good boy, and keep quiet, and I shall 
 come very soon to you again,' and so locking the door to prevent the child from going out 
 and prowling about the garden by himself to the hazard of getting some mischief, he put 
 the key in his pocket, and ran to the person in waiting, as fast as he could. The con- 
 
 * " Some related that he was put upon a high shelf, from whence a fall might have been fatal. But there was no inch 
 
 •belt in the place. S. P." 
 
 4 S 
 
682 
 
 venation between them lasted much longer than he expected, and put the thought of the 
 child out of his mind. Upon the gentleman's departure he asked the servant where Jack 
 was, and received for answer, that he supposed him to be in the root-house where he had 
 been left. And then instantly recollecting the incident, he flew to set him at liberty, and 
 found him quietly asleep on the matting of the floor * : and when he was waked could not 
 perceive that the confinement had made any disagreeable impressions upon his mind. 
 
 " This was Mr. Howard's account of the trifling incident, which was worked up, either 
 by ignorance or malevolence, into so hideous a tale of cruelty. And I believe all who 
 knew him will agree with me that so sacred did he hold truth, that he would have lost 
 his life rather than have told a known falsehood. And who can soberly think that a man 
 of such exalted benevolence could possibly treat his only child, then as it were but an 
 infant, with the deliberate severity that has been imputed to him I 
 
 " I have, dear Sir, now related to you, as exactly as I could from memory, the con- 
 versation I had with Mr. Howard upon this story, and leave it to you to make what use of 
 it, you shall think proper. 
 
 I remain, your affectionate friend and obliged Serv 1 
 
 « Fairford, July 8, 1790." " M.TOWNSEND." 
 
 Another circumstance which may, perhaps, have been equally misrepresented, magnified, 
 and distorted, as its particulars passed from one tale-bearer to another, has been kindly 
 communicated to me by the Rev. Mr. Lewin, of Liverpool, in. whose presence it occurred, 
 in the following terms : — 
 
 " Mr. Pickard, the minister of Carter-lane, being at Bedford, to wait on Mr. Sander- 
 son's widow, he, with myself, were invited to dine with Mr. Howard, at his seat at Car- 
 dington. After dinner we took a walk in the garden, accompanied by Master Howard, of 
 whom his father appeared to be very forid, and seemed highly gratified at our admiration of 
 his son. Mr. Howard observed that he was a very good child; and, as a proof of his obe- 
 dient disposition, placed him in a situation where he could view the whole garden, and 
 bade him stay there till he came back. It unfortunately happened, that instead of a mere 
 walk round the garden, we went into a kind of arbour, called the root-house. There a 
 conversation ensued for a few minutes, when we returned to the house. As we were walk- 
 ing I observed to Mr. Pickard, that the child was still where we left him. Mr. Pickard 
 
 * " Rather, a matted bench, which went round the room. The floor, which was of clay, was not covered. S. P." 
 
683 
 
 upon this observed, that we hid forgotten Master Howard. Instantly his father, with con- 
 siderable emotion of mind, ran to the young gentleman, carressed him, and expressed no 
 small concern at the accident. I saw, during the whole of the business, not the least token 
 of overbearing authority, or any studied display of ostentation. The transaction seemed 
 purely accidental, and to have arisen merely from our observing that he was a fine little boy." 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 Note i. p. 159. — The former of these acts directs, that all prisoners, against whom no 
 bills of indictment shall be found by the grand jury, or who shall be discharged by procla- 
 mation, for want of prosecution, shall be immediately set at large in open court without 
 payment of any fee, or sum of money, to the sheriff or gaoler in respect of such discharge ; 
 and, abolishing all such fees for the future, it directs the payment, in lieu of them, of a 
 snm, not exceeding thirteen shillings and four-pence, out of the county-rate, or of the 
 public stock of cities, towns, &c. not contributing to such rate, for every prisoner dis- 
 charged, in either of the cases provided for by this statute. The other authorizes and 
 requires the justices in quarter-sessions assembled, to order the ceilings, wards, and other 
 rooms, both of debtors and felons, in those prisons within their jurisdiction, in which felons 
 are usually confined, to be scraped and whitewashed, once in the year at least; to be re- 
 gularly washed and kept clean ; and constantly supplied with fresh air by means of hand- 
 ventilators or otherwise. It further directs them to appropriate two rooms for the use of 
 the sick in each gaol ; the one for men and the other for women, and to order their removal 
 into them as soon as they shall be seized with any disorder, that they may be kept separate 
 from the prisoners who are in health ; to provide in every prison a warm and cold bath, or 
 commodious bathing tubs, and to direct the prisoners to be washed in one or other of them 
 before they are suffered to go out of the gaol upon any occasion whatever ; and also to 
 appoint to them an experienced surgeon or apothecary, at a stated salary, who shall 
 report to the justices, at every quarter-sessions, a statement of the health of the prisoners 
 under his care and superintendence. By the second section of the act, they are also au- 
 thorized to direct the courts of justice within their jurisdiction to be properly ventilated, 
 
 4s2 
 
G84 
 
 to order clothes for the prisoners when they shall see occasidn ; to prevent their being kept 
 under-ground whenever they can conveniently do so ; and, finally, to make such other orders, 
 from time to time, for restoring or preserving their health as they shall think necessary. 
 The last section provides for the payment of the expence of the execution of these orders 
 out of the county-rate, or the public stock of places not contributing to it ; and directs 
 that any gaoler who shall neglect, or disobey the orders made in pursuance of this act may 
 be summarily proceeded against, either before the judges of assize, or justices in quarter- 
 sessions, and be sentenced to pay such fine as the court before whom he is brought, shall 
 direct, or in default of payment be committed to gaol. The better to secure the execution 
 of these most humane and salutary provisions, the act is also directed to be painted in-large 
 and legible characters on a board, and hung up in some conspicuous part of every gaoh 
 It is much to be lamented, that those provisions are so little attended to. 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 Note I. p- 426. — " An Account of the Number of Miles travelled on the reform of Prisons. 
 
 Journeys. 
 
 
 
 
 Miles. 
 
 In Great Britain and Ireland 
 
 1773, 4, 6, and 6 10,318 
 
 First Foreign Journey 
 
 1775 .... 1,400 
 
 Second ditto 
 
 1776 
 
 
 
 . 1,700 
 
 Third ditto . 
 
 1778 
 
 
 
 . 4,636 
 
 In Great Britain and Ireland 
 
 1779 
 
 
 
 . 6,490 
 
 Fourth Foreign Journey 
 
 1781 
 
 
 
 . 4,465 
 
 In Great Britain and Ireland 
 
 1782 
 
 
 
 . 8,165 
 
 Fifth Foreign Journey 
 
 1783 
 
 
 
 , 3,304 
 
 To Ireland 
 
 » 
 
 
 
 715 
 
 To Worcester . 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 238 
 
 To Hertford, Chelmsford, and W 
 
 wrington 
 
 
 
 602 
 
 
 To 
 
 tal 42,033 miles. 
 
685 
 
 Journeys in 1779 
 
 1781 
 
 
 Uliles. 
 
 Miles 
 
 1st, Western 
 
 . 534 
 
 538 
 
 2d, Southern 
 
 . 368 
 
 273 
 
 3d, Eastern 
 
 . 512 
 
 803 
 
 4th, Kent, &c. . 
 
 . 353 
 
 516 
 
 5th, Northern 
 
 . 957 
 
 932 
 
 6th, South Wales 
 
 . 580 
 
 472 
 
 7th, Scotland and Ireland 
 
 . 1151 
 
 537 
 
 8th, North Wales 
 
 . 690 
 
 2030 
 
 9th, Notting m and Hunts 
 
 . 450 
 
 924 
 
 10th, Lincolns r and Bedf" 
 
 . 500 
 
 845 
 
 1 1th, Liverpool, &c. 
 
 . 395 
 
 295 
 
 Total 6490 Miles. 8165 
 
 To God alone be all the Praise ! I do not regret the Loss of the many Conveniencies of 
 Life, but bless God who inclined my mind to such a Scheme." 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 Note I. p. 536. — Lest it should be thought that any undue partiality should have in- 
 duced this representation, I would just state here, the particulars of an account given to me 
 at the last quarter-sessions, at Preston, by the keeper of the house of correction there ; 
 from which it appears, that in the course of the year ending the 2d of April, the prisoners 
 confined there, the average number being 291, earned by their labor, chiefly in the 
 various branches of the cotton manufacture, 12861. 12s. of which 879^. 17*. 3H. was 
 paid over to the county treasurer, towards defraying the expence of their maintenance, 
 the remainder being consumed by the allowance of 10 per cent, to the task-master, and 
 by the encouragement so judiciously held out to the convicts, of receiving at their dis- 
 charge, one-fourth of the sum they might have earned during their confinement. The 
 average expence of dieting each prisoner for the year round is calculated at nearly 2 s. 5d. 
 per week, which amounts to 18281. 9s. for 291 persons: so that more than half the sum 
 expended in their food, is the clear produce of their own labor. But to this very consider- 
 
686 
 
 able saving to the county, another is to be added, for the employment of upwards of thirty 
 prisoners for the year round, as laborers in the new buildings erecting in the gaol, each of 
 whom did the work of a man, whose wages would have been eighteen shillings per week ; so 
 that to the 879Z. 17s. 3kd. already stated to have been paid over to the treasurer, we must 
 add, upon this account, at least 1,404£. more, which will give us a surplus of 455 1. 8«. 3?tf. 
 applicable to the other expences of the establishment, after the diet of the whole of its 
 prisoners is completely paid for out of their earnings. I have reason to believe that the 
 other bridewells of this country are quite as well managed, though I am not in possession 
 of the particulars of their expenditure. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Note i. p. 592. — The remains of this unhappy victim of his own imprudence were re- 
 moved from Leicester to Cardington, and deposited rn the same vault with those of his 
 mother ; a tablet having since been erected, above that to her own and her husband's me- 
 mory, bearing this short inscription : — 
 
 John Howard, 
 
 Only Son and Heir of 
 
 John and Henrietta Howard, 
 
 Died the 26th of April, 1799, 
 
 Aged 34 Years. 
 
 Note ii. p. 631. — It is with great concern that I add, from Dr. Clarke's Travels,* the 
 following account of a meditated profanation of the grave of our illustrious countryman. "A 
 circumstance came to our knowledge before we left Russia, concerning Howard's remains, 
 which it is painful to relate ; namely, that Count Vincent Potocki, a Polish nobleman of the 
 highest taste and talents, whose magnificent library and museum would do honour to any 
 country, through a mistaken design of testifying his respect for the memory of Howard, had 
 signified his intention of taking up the body, that it might be conveyed to his country-seat, 
 where a sumptuous monument has been prepared for its reception, upon a small island in 
 the midst of a lake. His Countess, being a romantic lady, wishes to have an annual fete, 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 610, 611. 
 
687 
 
 consecrated to Benevolence ; at this the nymphs of the country are to attend, and strew the 
 place with flowers. The design is so contrary to the earnest request of Mr. Howard, and 
 at the same time so derogatory from the dignity due to his remains, that every friend to his 
 memory will join in wishing it may never be fulfilled : Count Potocki was absent during 
 the time we remained in that part of the world, or we should have ventured to remonstrate : 
 we could only therefore entrust our petitions to a third person, who promised to convey 
 them to him after our departure." May they have been conveyed, and listened to, is the 
 earnest wish of Mr. Howard's biographer, as it must be of every admirer of his virtues ! 
 
 Note hi. p. 631. — We are informed in a svork to which, as it respects Mr. Howard, 
 for reasons which have already been assigned, implicit credit is by no means due, that it 
 was an express direction of his to Thomasson, that his body should be kept five days 
 before it was interred, and that he himself should remain at Cherson for as many weeks 
 after his master's decease. Whether in fact these directions were ever given, or if given, 
 whether they were acted upon, I know not, nor is it a point of any importance, could the 
 truth now be ascertained. With respect to this man, a more unpleasant duty remains to 
 be performed, by giving such an account of his history, after his return to England, as 
 shall justify the very different light in which he appears before the public in these pages, 
 and in those of Dr. Aikin, which were printed before the infamy of his character was 
 discovered. Charged to bring home to his executors the valuable effects which his master 
 had with him at his death, he was liberally recompenced by them for the care he had taken 
 of his property, and the supposed fidelity of his services. Amongst other things they gave 
 him, partly by Mr. Howard's written directions, his gold watch, his clothes, and some of the 
 money he had about him at the time of his decease. The character he had always borne, 
 and the attachment he professed to entertain for his former employer, induced Mr. Whit- 
 bread also to take him immediately into his service, from which, however, he was soon 
 dismissed, on the discovery of some vicious propensities, of so flagrant a nature as to in- 
 duce that gentleman to insist on his quitting his neighbourhood for ever, if he would avoid 
 a prosecution for his offences, which a respect for the sense Mr. Howard entertained for 
 his services alone prevented his instituting. With these conditions he complied; and 
 on calling at Mrs. Prole's, but a few days before his departure, he pulled out two or three 
 guineas, exclaiming as he did so, " See, these are the last of my master's money:" to 
 
G83 
 
 which the good old lady replied, " For shame, Thomasson, to Lave squandered all his 
 bounty ; but you know it was ill-gotten gain, and that never prospers ; I expect you will 
 live to want." These were the last words that any of his former fellow-servants ever spoke 
 to him, and they were very strikingly verified ; for, retiring into the neighbourhood of War- 
 rington, he took a public-house, in which he failed, principally from the indifference of his 
 character and of his conduct ; and ultimately died, as has been stated in the preface to this 
 work, a pauper in the Liverpool Infirmary. Before he was summoned hence, there is ground, 
 however, to hope that he had repented of his sins, of which his ingratitude to the best of 
 masters was not by any means the least. 
 
 Note IV. p. 633. — The Conclusion of the Funeral Sermon for Mr. Howard, preached by 
 Rev. Thomas Smith, at the New Meeting, Bedford, March 7, 1790. 
 
 " This view of things affords us the most solid and abundant comfort on the loss of 
 pious and valued friends. With what satisfaction may we reflect upon them as having ex- 
 changed these abodes of disorder and sin, for those of everlasting purity and joy. We 
 cannot help mourning when those we valued are taken from us ; yet our grief is mixed with 
 a sweet and [pleasing] consolation, when we have reason to hope they have entered the joy of 
 their Lord. This consolation we have on the death of our highly esteemed and worthy 
 friend, Mr. Howard, who has been in intimate and affectionate connection with this Chris- 
 tian Society, from its first formation. I intend no laboured encomium on his character; 
 were I disposed, and better able to do justice to his uncommon virtues, I am not at 
 liberty in this respect to do it. What he was you too well know to need information, 
 and, if you wish to dignify your characters, you will remember and imitate him. Some- 
 thing it is necessary to say ; something I think myself at liberty to say, suffice it there- 
 fore to observe, that his piety was uniform aud consistent ; displayed in the even tenor 
 of an honorable walk with God, without parade or ostentation. 
 
 He had a lively zeal for the honor and interest of the Redeemer, which he was ready 
 to assert upon all occasions, where the honor and success of the gospel could be promoted. 
 His concern for the support and welfare of this Christian Society, and the various services 
 he rendered it, will long be remembered with pleasure and gratitude. 
 
 His loss, too, will be severely felt by us, unless a gracious Providence should raise up 
 unto us, one like-minded with himself. 
 
 He lived, beloved by those who were most intimately connected with him ; — his beneiac- 
 
689 
 
 tions to the poor, were uncommonly numerous and liberal ; — he went in search of misery, in 
 order to relieve it. Every benevolent mind must love the man who devoted his time, his 
 fortune, his health, and life, to schemes and labours, which had for their object, the mise- 
 ries of the most wretched of his fellow-creatures ; — the relieving those who were already 
 bound, and preserving others from becoming so. 
 
 " He is now gone from our world. His death is followed by general respect, and we 
 who are lamenting his loss are comforted by the persuasion that he is now translated to the 
 mansions of the just. 
 
 " Had it pleased an all-wise Providence to have returned him to his native country and 
 friends, we should have rejoiced in the event ; but that Being, whose ways are always wise 
 and kind, has thought proper to take him from our world. This is the will of God, and to 
 that will it is our duty to submit. With the greater acquiescence and consolation may we 
 submit to it, as we have such solid grounds to hope that our departed Friend is gone to 
 those mansions where he shall behold the divine face in righteousness, and be satisfied with 
 his complete likeness. God giant that all of us may be imitators of him in his piety, purity, 
 and usefulness. Once more, let us all be concerned to have more of the image of God. 
 upon us in this life, — Let us be concerned, as far as human infirmity will admit, and looking 
 to God for assistance, to be holy, as he is holy, remembering that it is by a patient continu- 
 ance in well-doing that we are to seek for glory, honor, and immortality, remembering 
 that the Gospel teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, to live righteously, soberly,, 
 and godly, in this present evil world, whilst we are encouraged by it to look for the blessed 
 hope and the glorious appearance of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, who loved, 
 us and gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself 
 a peculiar people zealous of good works." 
 
 Note v. p. 650. — Extracts from John Prole's Address to his Children, entitled " A 
 Father's Legacy to his Children ;" printed for their ownuse after his death : — 
 
 " A little more than two years and a half after I lost my much-esteemed master, where 
 I was very happy, and then the Lord directed me to that worthy, benevolent, and good 
 man, Mr. Howard, with whom, for the first six or seven years, 1 enjoyed all the happiness 
 that a rational mind could wish, for here the Lord had again fully answered my poor un- 
 worthy requests far beyond all my wishes and expectations.* 
 
 • This refers to the time he livedin Mr. Howard'sfamily. He afterwards married, and became a sort of bailiff to liiin. 
 The former master he mentions was Mr. Penny, of Lymington. 
 
 4t 
 
090 
 
 *' How Kiriiiy have been the kind and gracious appearances of the great Jehovah for 
 MM of late, which some of you have known. How kindly did that great Preserver protect 
 me and my good master in that hazardous journey into Scotland, in the deep snow, when 
 we went through drifts in many places deeper than our horses and ourselves. And in a 
 remarkable manner was I preserved on our journey from Newcastle, for about five o'clock 
 in the morning, as I was riding on before my master, when getting out of the road, both 
 my horse and myself fell into a pit which I could not see, it being made level by the snow, 
 and in which we were covered; but, having a strong horse, he worked himself out with me 
 on him, without any hurt: — and many other dangers my master and myself were, in our 
 journey, preserved from, while many that we heard of lost their lives in that severe season ; 
 and all our escapes from death were owing to that kind hand, which, in the moment of 
 danger, is often remarkably seen. 
 
 " I could wish and pray you to make it your study to copy the example of my much- 
 esteemed and worthy master, Mr. Howard, especially in his diligence and activity in pro- 
 moting the honor and glory of God, and the real good of his fellow-creatures. What an 
 example has he left ! No time was lost with him, but all improved for the most valuable 
 purposes. No parade of equipage, nor outward appearance ; no superfluities, nor indul- 
 gence in eating and drinking, but the strictest abstinence from everything that could be 
 in the least a let or hindrance to him in performing what he well knew was his incumbent 
 duty as a rational and immortal being, who would be called to a strict and impartial ac- 
 count of the talents with which a good and gracious Creator had endowed him. And I 
 can assure you, that nothing was lost or unimproved by him, but all was faithfully im- 
 proved to some valuable end or purpose. Let us endeavour, like him, to improve the 
 talents that a wise and good God has entrusted us with, and may we be ever mindful that, 
 in a little time, we must give a strict account what use we have made of those precious 
 advantages with which we are so richly endowed. I mean our spiritual gifts, and the many 
 opportunities we have for our improvement in divine life, especially our solemn Seasons, 
 let none of them be lost. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 S. Curtis, Printer, Camberwell Press. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page xxiii, line 12, — Chances, r. Annuities 
 
 14 & 15, — Brocksbank, r. Brooksback 
 
 17, — M. A. r. B. D. 
 
 14 6, — Micaiah, r. Meredith 
 
 15 — 8, & 18 — 18, — Loidoire, r. Loidorc 
 
 16 — 20, — Note xi. r. Note xii. 
 31 — 19, dele there 
 
 33 — 19, for chear, r. cheer 
 
 71 — 25, — John, r. Thomas 
 
 89 — 4, author's, dele apostrophe 
 
 111 — 15, dele rather 
 
 117 — 1, — jun. 
 
 119 — 8, after discountenance, dele comma 
 
 175 — 10, for high ; r. high, 
 
 247 — 10, — violence, r. virulence 
 
 268 — 28, — one instance, r, in one instance 
 
 275 28, — lb, r. Appendix to State of Prisons, 1st. Edit. 
 
 287 — 16, — whom, r. whose members 
 
 336 — 31, for advertisements, r. advertisement 
 
 337 — 16, dele Mo 
 
 349 — 29, for 1st. r. 2d. 
 
 396 — 23, — bridewells, r. bridewell 
 
 399 — 2, East Grinstead, dele comma 
 
 405 30, for 3d. r. 2d. 
 
 419 4, — require, r. requires 
 
 422 — . 6, — weight, r. weight : 
 
 426 — 25, — this, r. that 
 
 439 — 8, — its, r. his 
 
 450 4, — fourth, r. fifth ; for fifth and sixth, r. sixth and 
 
 seventh ; and for fourth, r. fifth 
 
 457 — 8, after situated, add* _ 
 
 471 — 2, for nations, r. Christians 
 
 507 — 20, — generous, r. gracious, 
 
 512 — 29, dele my 
 
 533 _ 7, — the 
 
 543 — 13, for ruined, r. ruinous 
 
 562 — 20, — is, r. his 
 
 576 — 3, — evince, r. evinces 
 
 630 — 30, — Note m. r. Note iv. 
 
A 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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