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John Howard, England's Great Prison Reformer: His Glimpse Into Hell Author(s): Leonard H. Roberts Source: Journal of Correctional Education (1974-), Vol. 36, No. 4 (December, 1985), pp. 136-139Published by: Correctional Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41971574Accessed: 10-12-2015 03:27 UTC

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JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION VOLUME 36, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER 1985

John Howard, England's Great Prison Reformer: His

Glimpse Into Hell

Leonard H. Roberts

Abstract

In 1 773 an obscure English country squire named John Howard was appointed honorary sheriff of Bedford- shire, England Part of his responsibilities was to inspect the local county jail What he saw shocked him . For the next seventeen years of his life Howard inspected prisons throughout England and the Continent His publication, the " State of the Prisons in England and Wales 99 had an everlasting impact on prison reform on both sides of the Atlantic. Several cities in the new American republic formed John Howard Prison Reform Societies . His writings influenced America's first prison reform organization , the Philadelphia Society for the Allevi' ation of the Miseries of Public Prisons . John Howard called for humane treatment of prisoners, proper diet, and improved sanitary conditions. As a result of his urgings before parliamentary committees, England eventually created a prison system that was a public responsibility rather than a private and inhumane system of exploitation.

During the early nineteenth century, England ex- perienced an outpouring of social reform fervor. The journal articles of Henry Mayhew shocked Victorian England with vivid descriptions of the poor and homeless of London. During the same period Karl Marx's colleague, Fredrich Engels, brought to the attention of the English public the plight of the poor working class in the industrial city of Manchester, England. ENGELS (1978)

It was John Howard, the great English prison reformer, who pioneered in exposing certain inequities of the English social system through his publications, his investigation of prison conditions first hand, and his appearances before parliament According to his biographer, James Baldwin Brown (1973), Howard was born in 1727 in Clapton, a village near London. His father was a prosperous merchant and a "Dissenter of Calviniste principles". BROWN (1973) At twenty- four years of age Howard came into a large inheritance of money and landed property upon his father's death. Independently wealthy for the rest of his life, Howard traveled extensively throughout the British Isles and the Continent On a trip to Russia he caught typhus after treating a patient (he sometimes posed as a doctor)

and died in the Black Sea port city of Cherson on January 20, 1790.

Howard first encountered prisons when he became a prisoner himself. On one of his countless travels, this time to visit Lisbon, Portugal, following a devastating earth- quake there, Howard's ship was commandeered by a French privateer. He and the rest of the captured passen- gers were brought to Brest, France and thrown "into a filthy dungeon and kept a considerable time without nourish- ment, a joint of mutton was at length thrown into the midst of them, which for want of a knife, they were obliged to tear to pieces and gnaw like dogs. In this dungeon he and his companions lay for six nights upon the floor, with nothing but straw." BROWN (1973) Eventually Howard was released.

Returning to England he settled into the comfortable life of a country squire on his estate in Cardington Parish, Bedfordshire. Over the years he was married and widowed twice. His only child suffered from mental illness and was eventually confined to an insane asylum for the rest of his life. Howard grimly bore his vicissitudes, devoting his attention to improving the living conditions of the inhabi- tants of his estate and a nearby village.

When he reached the age of forty-eight in 1773, he was appointed high sheriff of Bedfordshire county. A largely honorary position, he promptly carried out the duties of the office with a compulsive zeal that would only end with his death seventeen years later. One of the duties of his new office was inspection of the county jails ( a duty his fellow sheriffs thoroughly avoided out of fear of catching typhus, known then as "gaol fever"). What he observed in his own Bedfordshire jail, along with the memory of his own imprisonment, sparked an urge to inspect all the prisons not only in England but also on the continent. ERIKSSON (1976) He remarks in his State of Prisons (1792) work that "perhaps what I suffered (from my French imprisonment) increased my sympathy with the unhappy people whose whole case is the subject of this book."

For Howard a mission in life finally opened up to him that fitted his Puritan temperament. In the ensuing years he would make 38 inspection journeys throughout the English Isles and seven to the Continent HOWARD (1792) His obsession took him as far as Turkey; in Rome he attempted to enter the Italian Inquisition prison, but not before raising the suspicion of the priests. "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." BROWN (1973) Besides inspecting prisons the ubiquitous Howard also visited hospitals, schools and lazarettos (quarantine stations at seaports).

In 1777, Howard's epic work, The State of the Prisons of England and Wales , appeared and was fol- lowed in 1789 by An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe . All his publications passed through numerous editions. Through these works we are given a glimpse into

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VOLUME 36, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER 1985 JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION

the 18th century hell of prison conditions. At the county jail in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Howard recorded, "women in irons, though confined to their day-room and dungeon; the men double ironed, and chained to the floor at night - - a publican with cans of beer was waiting on Sunday, in the inside to serve the prisoners". HOWARD (1791)

At Chester City and County Jail, Howard noted:

The convicts and prisoner for trial, were severely ironed, by the neck, hands, waist and feet and chained to the floor, and at night to their beds in the horrid dun- geon... debtors and felons are permitted to beg some hours in the day. That prisoners are not supplied with necessary food is a disgrace to such an opulant city. No proper separation of men and women here or in the county jail. HOWARD (1791)

At the notorious Newgate Prison in London, Howard recorded that "In three or four rooms there were near one hundred and fifty women crowded together, many young creatures with the old and hardened, some of whom had been confined upwards of two years; on the men's side likewise there were many boys of twelve or fourteen years of age; some almost naked." HOWARD (1791)

"His Majesty's Prison the Fleet for Debtors" was once a major prison for those con- victed by the Star-Chamber, (the monarch's private court, abolished by Charles I) had by Howard's time "become a prison for deb- tors". Howard found the inmates quite active: "they also play in the court-yard at skittles, Mississippi (a card game), fives and tennis, etc. And not only the prisoners. I saw among them several butchers and others from the market; who are admitted here as at another public house - the same may be seen in many other prisons where the jailer keeps or lets (leases) the tap (tavern).... On Monday night there was a wine-club: on Tuesday night a beer- club: each lasting usually till one or two in the morning..." In his count Howard found "their wives, in- cluding women of an appellation not so honorable, (Le., that is mistresses and prosti- tutes, LH.R) and children were 475." HOWARD (1792)

At the Chesterfield jail owned, Howard noted, by the Duke of Portland, he found, "Only one room with a cellar under it; to which the prisoners occasionally descend through a hole in the floor. The cellar had not been cleaned in many months. The prison door had not been opened for several weeks, when I was there first There were four prisoners who

told me they were almost starved: one of them said, with tears in his eyes, 'he had not eaten a morsel that day'; it was noon. Their meager sickly countenances confirmed what they said... each of them had a wife; and they had in the whole thirteen children, cast on their respective parishes." HOWARD (1792)

John Howard might have become a minor footnote in the history of prison reform, a mere eccentric gadfly if only he pursued endless prison visitations. But this was not the case. Howard s vision was translated into a clear agenda of action for clearing out England's prison verions of the ancient Greek Augean stables. Like a latter day Hercules he carried out his task with unrelenting energy. KILLINGER (1973)

Howard's major goals were to make prisons and prisoners a public responsibility and establish a "rational" approach to prison administration. He vigorously attacked a whole range of prison customs and practices. In a section of his work on prisons (1792) Howard assailed the "bad customs in prisons", such as:

A cruel custom obtain(ed) in most our jails, which is that of the prisoners demanding of a newcomer garnish or (as it is called in some London jails) chummage. "Pay or strip", are fatal words, for they are so to some; who having no money, are obliged to give up some of their scanty apparel and then if they have no bedding or straw to sleep on, contract disease, which I have known to prove fataL HOWARD (1792)

Howard opposed the common practice of loading down prisoners, including women, with "heavy irons". Gaming should be curbed, he said: "I am not an enemy to diverting exercise: yet the riot, brawling and profane- ness, that are the usual consequences of their play "leads to disruptions among the confined". In Howard's day quarter sessions and assizes (circuit courts) were, in many cases, held but once a year in distant towns that might require prisoners in irons to walk ten or fifteen miles. On arrival, according to Howard "numbers of both sexes are shut up together for many days and nights. This occasions such confusion and distress, and such shrieks and out- cries, as can be better conceived than described." HOWARD (1792)

Prisoners were incarcerated for up to a year before being brought to trial, a practice Howard found abhorrent. "At Hull they used to have an assize once in every seven years. Peacock, a murderer, was in prison three years: before his trial the principal witness died; and the murderer was acquitted. They now have it once every three years". HOWARD (1792)

Since the jails were run essentially as private enterprises, prisoners were a major source of income. Inmates were charged fees for every conceivable kind of service, even for the privilege of being imprisoned or discharged! Such fees were posted in every jail. Prisoners were not released until all

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JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION VOLUME 36, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER, 1985

fees were paid, which might take months or years to pay. Some jails allowed prisoners to obtain fee money by begging at a special grated window. A sample of fees included:

A Every prisoner shall pay at his or her coming in. (one shilling)

B. On the discharge of every such prisoner, to the said jailer or keeper, (six shillings, ten cents)

C. Two prisoners lie together in one bed (four cents) D. For every debtoťs discharge, (eight shillings, ten

cents) E. For every felon's discharge, (eighteen shillings, ten

cents) F. Every prisoner not being intitled to partake of the

pooťs box, to pay to the porter and jailer, now called turnkeys, on his commitment (two shillings) HOWARD (1791)

The clerks of the assizes who issued the court docu- ments such as prison discharges also collected fees from the prisoners for their services:

A For petty larceny and acquitted, (one pound, seven shillings)

B. Petty larceny (one pound, eight shillings, four cents) C. Whipped publicly (one pound, three shillings, four

cents) D. Bastardy (seventeen shillings, four cents) HOWARD

(1792), HINDE (1951)

Judges actually sold assizes clerkships to "gentle- men" for as much as twenty- five hundred pounds, a huge sum of money in those days. The clerks also squeezed money out of the jailers by charging them for a copy of the court calendar! The fee to the jailer for a copy in the County of Surry was seven pounds, six cents. Howard brought to the attention of the English public a criminal justice extortion system feeding off of human misery which even at this distance in time is shocking. HOWARD (1792), HOWARD (1777)

Howard, in his writings and his appearances before parliament expressed concern about jail conditions such as lack of proper diet, poor sanitary conditions, prisoners' poor health and general well-being and the lack of proper prison design and construction. Howard's reforms led to the end of prisons as private enterprises. Jailers and their helpers were soon to come under public control, and receive wages from public treasuries. HOWARD (1791)

By sharing his glimpse of hell with us, Howard literally opened up the prisons to public scrutiny; and what the public saw shocked them. On account of Howard's pioneer work the prisons of England and America would never be the same. Thereafter public opinion demanded they should be public responsibilities rather than private exploitations. Howard's findings helped initiate an overhaul of the whole English criminal justice system, led by the distinguished parliamentarian, Joseph Romilly. IGNATIEFF (1978) As a

result Parliament reviewed the English criminal law, and many of the statutes, some dating as far back as the 13th century, were removed from the criminal code (dubbed the Bloody Code). The 222 capital punishment statutes were drastically reduced. BARNES (1972) Statutes, for example, requiring the death penalty for anyone stealing over five shillings worth of silk, were eventually abolished.

Howard's prison reform efforts inspired the creation of prison reform organizations throughout Europe, Eng- land and America. When America's first prison reform society, The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Mis- eries of Public Prisons was established, the Society's president corresponded with Howard. TEETERS (1937) Soon after, John Howard Societies were organized in Boston and New York.

Howard's work raised the public conscience and set into motion humanitarian concern about prison con- ditions that is still with us. Our own age has witnessed many problems with prisons; nevertheless, John Howard gave us standards to meet; he pointed us in the right direction. What he said some 200 years ago still holds true today:

Let them (the prisoners) be managed with calmness, yet with steadiness; show them that you have humanity, and that you aim to make them useful members of society. HOWARD (1792)

*NOTE: Words such as "gaol" and "pence" have been changed to "jail" and "cents." L.H.R.

Barnes, H. (1972). The Story of Punishment , 2nd ed. Montclair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith, p. 65.

Brown, J. (1973). Memoirs of Howard, Abridged. New York: AMS Publisher. A facsimile copy of an edition published in Boston: Lincoln & Edmans, 1831, pp. 22, 27, 147.

Engels, R. (1978). The Condition of the Working Class Poor in England. Quoted in the Marx- Engels Reader ; 2nd ed, edited by Robert C. Tucker, New York: W.W.Norton, Inc., 1978, pp. 579-585.

Eriksson, T. (1976). The Reformers. New York: Elsevier, p. 33.

Hinde, R (1951). The British Penal System: 1773 - 1950. London: Gerald Duckworth, Inc., pp. 30, 32.

Howard, J. (1777). The State of Prisons in England and Wales , 1st ed. London: William Eyres, pp. 477-478.

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VOLUME 36, ISSUE 4, DECEMBER, 1985 JOURNAL OF CORRECTIONAL EDUCATION

Howard, J. (1973). An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe, 2nd ed., Vol. II. Montclair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith. A facsimile copy of an edition published in London in 1791, pp. 13, 173, 174, 208.

Howard, J. (1973). The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, 4th ed., VoL I. Montclair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith. A facsimile copy of an edition published in London in 1792, pp. 12, 13, 15, 16, 39, 219, 276, 320.

Ignatieff (1978). A Just Measure of Pain : The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, p. 65.

Killinger, G. (1973). Penology: The Evolution of Corrections in America St Paul, Minnestoa: West Publishing Co., pp. 9- 11.

Teeters, N. (1937). They Were in Prison A History of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, 1787-1937. Chicago: The John C Winston Co., pp. 34-39.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Roberts is presently an assistant pro- fessor of foundations of education at Troy State University, Dothan, Alabama In 1977 and 1981, he earned an Educational Spec- ialist degree and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Florida. While working on his Ph.D., Dr. Roberts taught college level courses at Florida State Prison for Lake City Community College.

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