Prison labour, &c. : correspondence and communications addressed to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning the introduction of tread-mills into prisons : with other matters connected with the subject of prison discipline / by Sir John Cox Hippisley.

  • Hippisley, John Cox, 1748-1825.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prison labour, &c. : correspondence and communications addressed to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning the introduction of tread-mills into prisons : with other matters connected with the subject of prison discipline / by Sir John Cox Hippisley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    “ solitary confinement, ought to be made, because of its dif- et ferent effect in different people. Some years ago he had <c two men (as he believes from the same farm-yard) con- “ demned to solitary confinement: one, a stupid, sluggish “ fellow, who slept away his time 3 the other, an active ener- “ getic man, was almost driven out of his senses, so much so “ as to render it necessary to relax his punishment. His ex- “ perience (he adds) has led him to approve of labour, as “ not only contributing to the security and morals, but also “ to the comfort, of the prisoners.” Of the same Gaol at Bury, Mr. Buxton also states, “ that “ it is calculated to hold 84 prisoners, that now there are “ 84 separate sleeping-rooms 3 but that (when he wrote) “ there ivas considerably more prisoners, and therefore neces- “ sary to place more than one in a room : that the Governor, “ finding by experience the mischief of placing only two, in “ these cases places three togetherin fact, within the limited space of a cell, calculated for a single person, in which three are to be thus immured, in all the vicissitudes of the seasons 3—but, the Governor could find no alternative. In a recent debate in Parliament, Mr. Lockhart, (one of the Members for Oxford,) speaking of the same County Gaol, as being calculated for about eighty, represents it as being, at that time, overcharged to the extent of two hundred pri- soners. And the undersigned, himself, can produce state- ments which he has received from the Keepers of some of the most celebrated of the newly-constructed Prisons, inti- mating their difficulties arising from similar causes. In the account of the Prison at Philadelphia, Mr. Buxton, speaking favourably of the system of solitary confinement resorted to as the means of punishment and reformation, admits it to be “ a dreaded discipline.” And in another ac- count of the same Prison, (published by Phillips) it is observed of solitary imprisonment, “ that it is sufficient to “ bring down the most determined spirit, and to tame the most “ hardened villain. Some veterans in vice (it is observed) “ have declared their preference of death by the gallows.” The author then proceeds to state the chief ground of those impressions,—“ That in the cells, the construction of which “ renders conversation among them difficult, the miserable “ man is left to the greatest of all punishments—his own re- ” flections.” But, if in the dreary cell even the hardened ruffian feels all the acuteness of reflection, in proportion to his solitude,—in a similar state of awful and helpless se- clusion, may not the sensibilities of wounded innocence be as F f