John Howard, whose name as a philanthropist must be familiar to a
number of our readers, was born at Clapton, in the parish of Hackney,
in the immediate vicinity of London, in or about the year 1727. His
father was an upholsterer and carpet-warehouseman, who had acquired a
considerable fortune in trade, and had retired from business to live
at Hackney. Being a dissenter, and a man of strong religious
principles, he sent his son at an early age to be educated by a
schoolmaster named Worsley, who kept an establishment at some distance
from London, where the sons of many opulent dissenters, friends of Mr.
Howard, were already boarded. The selection appears to have been
injudicious; for in after-life Mr. Howard assured an intimate friend,
with greater indignation than he used to express on most subjects,
‘that, after a continuance of seven years at this school, he left it
not fully taught any one thing.’ From Mr. Worsley’s school he was
removed, probably about the age of fourteen, to one of a superior
description in London, the master of which, Mr. Eames, was a man of
some reputation for learning. His acquisitions at both seminaries seem
to have been of the meagre kind then deemed sufficient for a person
who was to be engaged in commercial pursuits; and it is the assertion
of Mr. Howard’s biographer, Dr. Aikin, founded on personal knowledge,
that he ‘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.’
In this, however, he did not differ perhaps from the generality of
persons similarly circumstanced in their youth, and destined, like
him, for business.
At the age of fifteen or sixteen Mr. Howard was bound apprentice by
his father to Messrs. Newnham and Shipley, extensive wholesale grocers
in Watling Street, who received a premium of £700 with him. His father
dying, however, shortly afterwards, and the state of his health or his
natural tastes indisposing him for the mode of life for which he had
been destined, he made arrangements with his masters for the purchase
of the remaining term of his apprenticeship, and quitted business. By
the will of his father, who is described as a strict methodical man,
of somewhat penurious disposition, he was not to come into possession
of the property till he had attained his twenty-fourth year. On
attaining that age, he was to be entitled to the sum of £7000 in
money, together with all his father’s landed and moveable property:
his only sister receiving, as her share, £8000 in money, with certain
additions of jewels, etc., which had belonged to her mother. Although
nominally under the charge of guardians, Mr. Howard was allowed a
considerable share in the management of his own property. He had his
house at Clapton, which his father’s parsimonious habits had suffered
to fall into decay, repaired or rebuilt, intending to make it his
general place of residence. Connected with the repairing of this house
an anecdote is told of Mr. Howard, which will appear characteristic.
He used to go every day to superintend the progress of the workmen;
and an old man who had been gardener to his father, and who continued
about the house until it was let some time afterwards, used to tell,
as an instance of Mr. Howard’s goodness of disposition when young,
that every day during the repairs he would be in the street, close by
the garden wall, just as the baker’s cart was passing, when he would
regularly buy a loaf and throw it over the wall, saying to the
gardener as he came in, ‘Harry, go and look among the cabbages; you
will find something for yourself and family.’
After passing his twentieth year, Mr. Howard, being of delicate
health, quitted his native country, and made a tour through France and
Italy, which lasted a year or two; but of the particulars of which we
have no account. On his return to England, probably about the year
1750, he took lodgings in Stoke Newington, living as a gentleman of
independent property and quiet, retired habits, and much respected by
a small circle of acquaintances, chiefly dissenters. The state of his
health, however, was such as to require constant care. His medical
attendants, thinking him liable to consumption, recommended to him a
very rigorous regimen in diet, which ‘laid the foundation,’ says one
of his biographers, ‘of that extraordinary abstemiousness and
indifference to the gratifications of the palate which ever after so
much distinguished him.’ This condition of his health obliged him also
to have recourse to frequent changes of air and scene. Newington,
however, was his usual place of residence. Here, having experienced
much kindness and attention during a very severe attack of illness
from his landlady, Mrs. Sarah Loidoire, an elderly widow of small
property, he resolved to marry her; and although she remonstrated with
him upon the impropriety of the step, considering their great
disparity of ages――he being in his twenty-fifth, and she in her
fifty-second year――the marriage was concluded in 1752. Nothing but the
supposition that he was actuated by gratitude, can account for this
singular step in Mr. Howard’s life. The lady, it appears, was not only
twice as old as himself, but also very sickly; and that no reasons of
interest can have influenced him, is evident, as well from the fact
that she was poor in comparison with himself, as from the circumstance
of his immediately making over the whole of her little property to her
sister. Mr. Howard seems to have lived very happily with his wife till
her death shortly afterwards, in November, 1755.
On his wife’s death, he resolved to leave England for another tour on
the continent. In his former tour he had visited most of the places of
usual resort in France and Italy; during the present, therefore, he
intended to pursue some less common route. After some deliberation, he
determined to sail first to Portugal, in order to visit its capital,
Lisbon, then in ruins from the effects of that tremendous earthquake
the news of which had appalled Europe. Nothing is more interesting
than to observe the effects which great public events of a calamitous
nature produce on different minds; indeed one of the most instructive
ways of contrasting men’s dispositions, is to consider how they are
severally affected by some stupendous occurrence. It is to be
regretted, therefore, that we are not informed more particularly by
Howard’s biographers of the reasons which determined him to visit the
scene of the awful catastrophe which had recently occurred in
Portugal――whether they were motives of mere curiosity, or whether they
partook of that desire to place himself in contact with misery, that
passion for proximity to wretchedness which formed so large an element
in Howard’s character, and marked him out from the first as
predestined for a career of philanthrophy.
Before leaving England to proceed on his tour to the south of Europe,
Mr. Howard broke up his establishment at Stoke Newington, and, with
that generosity which was so natural to him, made a distribution among
the poorer people of the neighborhood of those articles of furniture
for which he had now no necessity. The old gardner already mentioned
used to relate that his _dividend_ of the furniture on this occasion
consisted of a bedstead and bedding complete, a table, six new chairs,
and a scythe. A few weeks after this distribution of his furniture,
Mr. Howard set sail in the _Hanover_, a Lisbon packet. Unfortunately,
the vessel never reached her destination, being captured during her
voyage by a French privateer. The crew and passengers were treated
with great cruelty by their captors, being kept for forty hours under
hatches without bread or water. They were carried into Brest, and
confined all together in the castle of that place as prisoners of war.
Here their sufferings were increased; and after lying for many hours
in their dungeon without the slightest nourishment, they had a joint
of mutton thrown in amongst them, which, not having a knife to cut it,
they were obliged to tear with the hands, and gnaw like dogs. For
nearly a week they lay on straw in their damp and unwholesome dungeon,
after which they were separated, and severally disposed of. Mr. Howard
was removed first to Morlaix, and afterwards to Carpaix, where he was
allowed for two months to go about on parole――an indulgence usually
accorded to officers only, but which Mr. Howard’s manners and behavior
procured for him from the authorities. He was even furnished, it is
said, with the means of returning to England, that he might negotiate
his own exchange for some French naval officer, a prisoner of war in
the hands of the English. This exchange was happily accomplished, and
Mr. Howard was once more at liberty, and in England. His short
captivity in France, however, was not without its good effects, by
interesting him strongly in the condition of those unfortunate men
who, chancing like himself to be captured at sea during war, were
languishing in dungeons both in France and England, and atoning by
their sufferings for the mutual injuries or discords of the nations to
which they belonged. Mr. Howard’s imprisonment may be said to have
first given a specific direction to his philanthropic enthusiasm. In
his ‘Account of the State of Prisons,’ published a considerable time
afterwards, he subjoins the following note to a passage in which he
contrasts the favorable treatment which prisoners of war usually
receive, with the cruelties which domestic prisoners experience:――‘I
must 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 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 of Brest I lay for six nights upon straw; and observing how
cruelly my countrymen were used there and at Morlaix, whither I was
carried next, during the two months I was at Carpaix upon parole I
corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Morlaix, and Dinnan.
At the last of these 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 Commissioner of Sick and Wounded Seamen
the sundry particulars, which gained their attention and thanks.
Remonstrance was made to the French court; our sailors had redress;
and those who were in the three prisons mentioned above were brought
home in the first cartel-ships. Perhaps what I suffered on this
occasion increased my sympathy with the unhappy people whose case is
the subject of this book.’ In Mr. Howard’s conduct, as here described
by himself, we discern the real characteristic of active philanthropy.
How few men are there who, like him, would have turned a personal
misfortune to such good account; and who, while enduring sufferings
themselves, would have occupied their thoughts with the means of
putting an end, for all time coming, to the system which permitted
such sufferings! Most men would have occupied the time of their
imprisonment with sighs and lamentations; and once at liberty, they
would have returned gleefully to the enjoyment of their homes, without
troubling themselves about their less fortunate fellow-sufferers whom
they had left behind, or at least without conceiving that their
exertions could do anything for their benefit. But it is the
characteristic of men like Howard, when once their attention is called
to a wrong, not to rest until they have seen it rectified.
On his return to England, Mr. Howard went to reside on the small
estate of Cardington, near Bedford, which had been left him by his
father, and which he had increased by the purchase of an additional
farm. He appears to have resided here for the next two years, leading
the life of a quiet country gentleman, superintending his farms, and
earning the respect and good-will of all the neighborhood, by his
attention to the comforts of his tenants, and his charities to the
poor. It was during this period also, on the 13th of May 1756, that he
was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; an honor which did not
necessarily imply that he possessed reputation as a scientific man, or
even a man of brilliant abilities, but only that he was a gentleman of
respectability, who, like many others of his class, took an interest
in scientific pursuits. Howard’s attainments in science do not seem to
have ever been very great, and the only point of his character which
connected him particularly with a scientific body, was his taste for
meteorological observations.
On the 25th of April 1758, Mr. Howard contracted a second marriage
with Miss Henrietta Leeds, eldest daughter of Edward Leeds, Esq., of
Croxton, Cambridgeshire. The lady whom he had selected as his partner
in life is described as amiable, affectionate, pious, and in every way
worthy of such a husband. Her tastes were the same as his, and she
cordially seconded all his charitable plans for the assistance and
relief of those who depended upon his benevolence.
For seven years Mr. Howard enjoyed uninterrupted happiness in the
society of his wife. During this period he resided first at
Cardington, next for about three years at Watcombe in Hampshire, and
latterly at Cardington again. The even tenor of his existence during
these years presents few incidents worth recording. Reading,
gardening, and the improvement of his grounds, occupied most of his
time. His meteorological observations were likewise diligently
continued; and it is mentioned, as a proof of his perseverance in
whatever he undertook, that on the setting in of a frost, he used to
leave his bed at two o’clock every morning while it lasted, for the
purpose of looking at a thermometer which he kept in his garden. His
charities, as before, were profuse and systematic. His desire, and
that of his wife, was to see all around them industrious and happy. To
effect this, they used all the influence which their position as
persons of property and wealth gave them over the villagers and
cottagers in their neighborhood. One of their modes of dispensing
charity was to employ persons out of work in making articles of
furnature or ornament; and in this way, it is said, Mrs. Howard soon
increased her stock of table-linen to a quantity greater than would
ever be required by any household.
On the 31st of March 1765, Mrs. Howard died in giving birth to a son,
the first and only issue of their marriage. This event was a source of
poignant affliction to her husband. On the tablet which he erected to
her memory in Cardington church, he caused to be inscribed the
following passage from the book of Proverbs:――‘She opened her mouth
with wisdom, and on her tongue was the law of kindness.’ Her miniature
was ever after his constant companion by sea or land; and the day of
her death was observed by him annually as a day of fasting, meditation
and prayer.
From the death of his wife in 1765 to the end of the year 1769, Mr.
Howard appears to have remained in England, and at Cardington as
before, with the exception of a month or six weeks in the year 1767,
which he devoted to a tour through Holland. His principal occupation
during these four years was the education of his infant son. From the
circumstance that this boy, when he arrived at the years of manhood,
conducted himself in a profligate manner, and at last became insane,
much attention has been drawn to Mr. Howard’s mode of educating him in
his infancy; some insisting that his conduct as a parent was harsh and
injudicious, others going so far as to asert that this man――whom the
world reveres as a philanthropist, and whose benevolent soul yearned
for the whole human race――was in his domestic relations a narrow and
unfeeling tyrant. This last assertion――although, abstractly
considered, there is nothing impossible or absurd in it, inasmuch as
we may conceive such a thing as real philanthropy on a large scale
conjoined with inattention to one’s immediate duties as a husband or
father――appears to have absolutely no foundation whatever in Howard’s
case; and to have originated either in malice, or in that vulgar love
of effect which delights in finding striking incongruities in the
characters of great men. Nor does the other assertion――that Howard’s
mode of educating his infant son was harsh and injudicious――appear
more worthy of credit. The truth seems to be, that Howard was a kind
and benevolent man, of naturally Strict and methodical habits, who
entertained, upon principle, high ideas of the authority of the head
of a family. A friend of his relates that he has often heard him tell
in company, as a piece of pleasantry, that before his marriage with
his second wife he made an agreement with her, that in order to
prevent all those little altercations about family matters which he
had observed to be the principal causes of domestic discomfort, _he_
should always decide. Mrs. Howard, he said, had cheerfully agreed to
this arrangement; and it was attended with the best effects. The same
principle of the supremacy of the head of a family――a principle much
less powerful in society now than it was a generation or two
ago――guided him in his behavior to his son. ‘Regarding children,’ says
Dr. Aikin, ‘as creatures possessed of strong passions and desires,
without reason and experience to control 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.’ The plan
of education here described may to some appear austere and
injudicious, while others will cordially approve of it, as that
recommended by experience and common sense; but at all events, the
charges of harshness and cruelty which some have endeavored to found
upon it are mere calumnies, refuted by all who knew Mr. Howard, and
were witnesses to his affection for his son.
Sensible of the loss which the boy had sustained by the death of his
mother, Mr. Howard placed him, in his fifth year, under the care of a
lady in whom he had confidence, who kept a boarding-school at Cheshunt
in Hertfordshire. This and other arrangements having been made, he
went abroad on a fourth continental tour towards the end of 1769.
Proceeding through the south of France, and spending a few weeks in
Geneva, he visited most of the remarkable places in Italy, some of
them for the second time; and returned home through Germany in the
latter part of 1770, having been absent in all about twelve months.
When Howard had again settled at Cardington, he resumed his benevolent
schemes of local improvement. It appears that the vicinity of Bedford,
and Cardington especially, was inhabited by a very poor population,
liable to frequent visitations of distress from the fluctuations of
the only manufacture which yielded them employment――that of lace; as
well as generally from the unhealthy and marshy nature of the soil,
rendering agues prevalent. Mr. Howard’s first care with respect to
those to whom he was attached as landlord, was to improve their
dwellings. ‘At different times,’ says his biographer, Mr. Brown, ‘he
pulled down all the cottages on his estate, and rebuilt them in a neat
but simple style, paying 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 reërected 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 palings, enclosing a bed or two of simple flowers, with
here and there a shrub, or an evergreen; thus imparting to these
habitations of the poor, with their white fronts and thatched roofs,
that air of neatness and comfort so strikingly characteristic of
everything in which he engaged.’ ‘These comfortable habitations, which
he let at a rent of twenty or thirty shillings a year,’ says another
biographer, Dr. Aikin, ‘he peopled with the most industrious and sober
tenants he could find; and over them he exercised the superintendence
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 consequence of these exertions of Mr. Howard,
aided and seconded by those of his friend and relative, Samuel
Whitbread, Esq., who possessed property in the same neighborhood,
‘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.’ Industry and
cleanliness were the two virtues which Mr. Howard sought by all means
to naturalize among the villagers of Cardington. It was his custom to
visit the houses of his tenants now and then, conversing with them on
the state of their affairs. During such visits he was particular in
requesting them to keep their houses clean; and it was one of his
standing advices that they should ‘swill the floors well with water.’
After talking with the children, he would tell them, at parting, to be
‘good boys and girls, and keep their faces and hands clean.’
Among Mr. Howard’s other benefactions to the locality of Cardington,
he established schools for the education of the boys and girls of the
neighborhood, in the rudiments of knowledge. Of these it was strictly
required that they should regularly attend some place of worship on
Sundays; whether the established church, or any other, was
indifferent, provided it was a church at all. His anxiety on this
point also led him to convert one of his cottages into a preaching
station, where the neighboring clergymen of different pursuasions, or
occasionally a clergyman from a distance passing through the village,
might officiate to such as chose to attend; and very rarely was the
little congregation without at least one sermon a week. Mr. Howard,
when at Cardington, was invariably present at these meetings. His
regular place of worship was the Old Meeting-house at Bedford, of
which the Rev. Mr. Symonds was pastor for 1766 to 1772. In the latter
year, however, when Mr. Symonds declared his adherence to the
theological tenets of the Baptists, Mr. Howard seceded along with a
considerable part of the congregation, and established a new
meeting-house. The truth is, however, that, with all his piety, and
indeed on account of the very strength and sincerity of it, the
theological differences of sects occupied very little space in his
attention, and did not in the least affect his schemes of
philanthropy; and though a dissenter of a particular denomination
himself, dissenters of all other denominations, as well as members of
the established church, were equally the objects of his respect and
his benevolent solicitude.
The following recollections of Mr. Howard’s habits at this period, by
the Rev. Mr. Townsend, who resided with him at Cardington for a short
period, in the interval between the secession from the Old
Meeting-house, and the erection of the new one, may be interesting:
‘He found him,’ he said, ‘not disposed to talk much; he sat but a
short time at table, and was in motion during the whole day. He was
very abstemious; lived chiefly on vegetables, ate little animal food,
and drank no wine or spirits. He hated praise; and when Mr. Townsend
once mentioned to him his labors of benevolence’――not those general
ones for which he is now so celebrated, but his exertions for the
improvement of the condition of the people in his neighborhood――‘he
spoke of them slightingly, as a whim of his, and immediately changed
the subject.’ ‘He was at all times,’ adds his biographer, Mr. Brown,
‘remarkably neat in his dress, but affected no singularity in it.
Though he never thought it right to indulge in the luxuries of life,
he did not despise its comforts. Wine or fermented liquors of any kind
he himself never drank; but they were always provided, and that of the
best quality, for his friends who chose to take them. He always
maintained an intercourse of civility with some of the most
considerable persons in the country, and was on visiting terms with
the greater part of the country gentlemen around him, and with the
most respectable inhabitants of the town of Bedford, churchmen and
dissenters. His aversion to mix much with promiscuous assemblies was
the result of his religious principles and habits, which taught him
that this was no very profitable method of spending his time; yet
however uncomplying he might be 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_.’
From these details our readers will be able to fancy Mr. Howard as he
was in the year 1773――a widower country gentleman, of plain, upright,
methodical habits, aged about forty-six; devout and exemplary in his
conduct, and a dissenter by profession, but without any strong
prejudices for or against any sect; temperate and economical, but the
very reverse of parsimonious; fond of traveling, and exceedingly
attentive to what fell under his observation; of a disposition
overflowing with kindness at the aspect of a miserable object, and
prompting him to go out in search of wretchedness, and to distribute
over his whole neighborhood the means of comfort and happiness. Such
was Mr. Howard in the year 1773; and if he had then died, his name
would never have been so celebrated as it is over the world, but would
only have been remembered in the particular district where his lot was
cast, as the names of many benevolent landlords and good men are
locally remembered all over the country. Fortunately, however, a
circumstance happened which opened for this unostentatious benefactor
of a village a career of world-wide philanthropy. This was his
election, in the year 1773, to the important office of high-sheriff of
the county of Bedford. Regarding the special circumstances which led
to his election to such a post, we have no information. It may be
mentioned, however, that, in accepting the office, he subjected
himself to the liability of a fine of £500――the laws which
disqualified dissenters from holding such offices not having been yet
repealed, although they were practically set at defiance by the
increasing liberality of the age. A story was indeed once current that
Mr. Howard, on his nomination to the office, stated to earl Bathurst,
then lord chancellor, his scruples about accepting it, arising from
the fact of his not being a member of the Church of England; and that
lord Bathurst, in reply, gave him an assurance of indemnification, in
case any malicious person should endeavor to put the law in force
against him. This story, however, does not appear to have been
well-founded.
The duties of a high-sheriff in England are important and various. To
him are addressed the writs commencing all actions, and he returns the
juries for the trial of men’s lives, liberties, lands and goods. He
executes the judgments of the courts. In his county he is the
principal conservator of the peace. He presides in his own court as a
judge; and he not only tries all causes of forty shillings in value,
but also questions of larger amount. He presides at all elections of
members of parliament and coroners. He apprehends all wrongdoers, and
for that purpose, he is entitled to break open outer-doors to seize
the offender. He defends the county against riot, or rebellion, or
invasion. The sheriff takes precedence of all persons in the county.
He is responsible for the execution of criminals. He receives and
entertains the judges of assize, on whom he is constantly in
attendance whilst they remain in his shire. To assist him in the
performance of his duties, the sheriff employs an under-sheriff, and
also a bailiff and jailers, from whom he takes security for their good
conduct. Such was the office to which, fortunately for society, Mr.
Howard was appointed at the annual election of sheriffs in the year
1773.
The office of high-sheriff became a different thing in the hands of
such a man as Howard from what it had been before. It was no longer a
mere honorable office, all the drudgery of which was performed by the
under-sheriff; it was no longer the mere right of going in state twice
a-year to meet the judges, and of presiding during the gayeties of an
assize-week; it was a situation of real power and laborious
well-doing. Already alive to the existence of numerous abuses in
prison management――as well by his general information respecting the
institutions of the country, as by his own experience of prison life
in France seventeen years before――he had not been a month in office
before all the faculties of his heart and soul were engaged in
searching out and dragging into public notice the horrible corruptions
and pollutions of the English prison system.
Within Mr. Howard’s own cognizance as sheriff of Bedfordshire, there
were three prisons――the county jail, the county bridewell, and the
town jail, all in Bedford; and, as a matter of course, it was with
these that his inquiries commenced. Various abuses struck him in their
management, particularly in that of the county jail, the
accommodations of which, whether for the purposes of work, health, or
cleanliness, he found very deficient. But what roused his sense of
justice most of all, was to find that the jailer had no salary, and
depended for great part of his income on the following clause in the
prison regulations:――‘All persons that come to this place, either by
warrant, commitment, or verbally, must pay, before being discharged,
fifteen shillings and fourpence to the jailer, and two shillings to
the turnkey.’ The effect which this and similar exactions from
prisoners in the Bedford jail made upon him, will be best learned from
his own statement prefixed to his ‘Account of the State of Prisons.’
‘The distress of prisoners,’ he says, ‘of which there are few 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 seeing some who, by the
verdict of juries, were declared _not guilty_――some on whom the grand
jury did not find such an appearance of guilt as subjected them to
trial――and some whose prosecutors did not appear against them――after
having been confined for months, dragged back to jail, and locked up
again till they should pay sundry fees to the jailer, the clerk of
assize, etc. In order to redress this hardship,’ he continues, ‘I
applied to the justices of the county for a salary to the jailer 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 expense.’
With a view to find the precedent required, Mr. Howard undertook to
visit the jails of some of the neighboring counties, that he might
inquire into the practice adopted there. His first visits were to the
jails of Cambridge and Huntingdon; and in the course of the same
month――November 1773――he prosecuted his tour through those of the
following counties in addition――Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham,
Derby, Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Gloucester, Oxford, and
Buckingham. In each and all of these jails he found abuses and
grievances; different, indeed, in one from what they were in another,
and in some fewer and less shocking than in others, but in all
disgraceful to a civilized country. In all of them, the income of the
jailer was derived, as at Bedford, from fees exacted from the
prisoners, and not from a regular salary; nay, in one of them the
sheriff himself drew fees from the prisoners; and in another, that of
Northampton, the jailer, instead of having a salary, paid the county
£40 a-year for his office. To enter into the details of his
investigations of the abuses of the various prisons above enumerated,
as these are given in the first edition of his ‘Account of the State
of Prisons,’ would be impossible; suffice it to say, that Mr. Howard’s
reports on the various jails he visited are not mere general
assertions that this or that jail was defective in its arrangements,
but laborious and minute accounts of the statistics of each――containing
in the briefest possible compass, every circumstance respecting every
jail which it could possibly be useful to know. Indeed no
parliamentary commission ever presented a more searching, clear, and
accurate report than Howard’s account of the state of the prisons he
visited.
His visits to the jails of the counties adjoining Bedford had only
disclosed to him those depths of misery which he was yet to sound.
‘Looking into the prisons,’ he says, ‘I beheld scenes of calamity
which I became daily more and more anxious to alleviate. In order,
therefore, to gain a more perfect knowledge of the particulars and
extent of it, by various and accurate observation, I visited most of
the county jails in England.’ This more extensive tour was begun in
December 1773, and by the 17th of that month he had inspected the
jails of the counties of Hertford, Berks, Wilts, Dorset, Hants, and
Sussex; occupying, therefore, it will be perceived, a much less space
of time in his survey than most official commissioners, and yet
probably doing the work much better. The next six weeks he appears to
have spent at Cardington with his son, then about eight years of age,
and at home no doubt on his Christmas vacation; but towards the end of
January 1774, his philanthropic tour was resumed. The jails of
Rutlandshire were first visited, then those of York: on his journey
southward from York he passed through the shires of Lincoln, Norfolk,
Suffolk, and Essex, visiting the prisons of each: a fortnight was then
devoted to an examination of the monster prisons of London: from
London he set out on a journey to the western counties, inspected the
jails of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Hereford, and Monmouth; and, after
a short absence, returned to London, having, in the course of three
months of expeditious and extensive, but most thorough scrutiny,
acquired more knowledge of the state of English prisons than was
possessed by any other man then living. Such is the effect of having a
definite object in view, and attending exclusively to it. If we
measure ability by mere largeness of intellect, there were undoubtedly
hundreds of abler men than Howard then alive in England; but what is
the lazy and languid greatness of these intellectual do-nothings
compared with the solid greatness of a man like Howard, who, gifted by
God with a melting love for his fellow-men, laboriously and steadily
pursued one object, made himself master of one department, and dragged
into daylight one class of social abuses till then unknown or
unheeded?
It happened by a fortunate conjunction, that at the time Mr. Howard
was pursuing his prison inquiries, a few members of the legislature
were interesting themselves in the same subject. In the previous
session of parliament a bill had been introduced into the House of
Commons by Mr. Popham, member for Taunton, proposing the payment of
jailors, not by fees from the prisoners, as heretofore, but out of the
county rates. The bill had been dropped in committee on the second
reading; but the subject of prison management was resumed next
session, the principal movers in the inquiry being Mr. Popham, and Mr.
Howard’s intimate friends, Mr. St. John and Mr. Whitbread. It would
appear that it had been in consequence of consultations with Mr.
Howard that these gentlemen broached the subject in parliament at so
early a period in the session; at all events, we find Mr. Howard
immediately after his return from his western tour, examined before a
committee of the whole House regarding his knowledge of the state of
English prisons. So full and valuable were the details submitted to
the committee by Mr. Howard, that on the House being resumed, the
chairman of the committee, Sir Thomas Clavering, reported that ‘he was
directed by the committee to move the House that John Howard, Esq., 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 jails of this kingdom, and to communicate to the
House the interesting observations he has made upon that subject.’ The
motion was adopted unanimously; and Mr. Howard had, accordingly, the
honor of receiving the public thanks of the House for his
philanthropic exertions. To show however, how little the spirit which
animated these exertions was understood or appreciated, we may mention
that it is related that during his examination before the committee,
one member put the question to him, ‘At whose expense he traveled?’
Mr. Howard, however, was still only at the commencement of his labors.
In the month of March 1774, only a few days after receiving the thanks
of the House of Commons, he set out for the extreme north of England,
to visit the jails there. In an incredibly short space of time he had
traversed the counties of Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland,
Westmoreland, Lancaster, Chester, and Shropshire, visiting the jails
in each; then, after revisiting those of Stafford, Derby, Nottingham,
Leicester, and Northampton, he returned home to Cardington; from
which, after a week’s repose he sent out for Kent. With the
examination of the jails of Kent, Mr. Howard’s first survey of the
jails of England may be said to have been finished. To give once for
all, an idea of the minute and thorough manner in which he discharged
his self-imposed duty, we may quote his remarks on the county jail at
Durham. After giving a list of the officials and their salaries, he
proceeds thus:――‘The high jail is the property of the bishop. By
patent from his lordship, Sir Hedworth Williamson, Bart., is perpetual
sheriff. The court for master’s side debtors is only 24 feet by 10:
they are permitted sometimes to walk on the leads. They have beds in
the upper hall, and in several other rooms. Their rooms should be
ceiled, that they might be lime-whited, to prevent infectious
disorders, and that great nuisance of bugs, of which the debtors
complain much here and other places. Common side debtors have no
court; their free wards, the _low jail_, are two damp, unhealthy
rooms, 10 feet 4 inches square by the gateway. They are never suffered
to go out of these except to chapel, which is the master’s side
debtor’s hall; and not always to that: for on Sunday, when I was
there, and missed them at chapel, they told me they were not permitted
to go thither. No sewers. At more than one of my visits I learned that
the dirt, ashes, etc., had lain there many months. There is a
double-barreled pump, which raises water about 70 feet. Felons have no
court; but they have a day-room, and two small rooms for an infirmary.
The men are put at night into dungeons: one, 7 feet square, for three
prisoners; another, the _great hole_, 16½ feet by 12, has only a
little window. In this I saw six prisoners, most of them transports,
chained to the floor. In this situation they had been for many weeks,
and were very sickly; their straw on the stone floor almost worn to
dust. Long confinement, and not having the king’s allowance of two
shillings and sixpence a-week, had urged them to attempt an escape;
after which the jailer had chained them as already mentioned. There is
another dungeon for women felons, 12 feet by 8; and up stairs, a
separate room or two. The common side debtors in the _low jail_, whom
I saw eating boiled bread and water, told me that this was the only
nourishment some had lived upon for near a twelvemonth. They have,
from a legacy, one shilling and a sixpence a-week in winter and one
shilling a-week in summer, for coals. No memorandum of it in the jail:
perhaps this may in time be lost, as the jailer said two others
were――namely, one of Bishop Crewe, and another of Bishop Wood, from
which prisoners had received no benefit for some years past. But now
the bishop has humanely filed bills in Chancery, and recovered these
legacies, by which several debtors have been discharged. Half-a-crown
a-week is paid to a woman for supplying the debtors with water in the
two rooms on the side of the gateway. The act for preserving the
health of prisoners is not hung up. Jail delivery once a-year. At
several of my visits there were boys between thirteen and fifteen
years of age confined with the most profligate and abandoned. There
was a vacant piece of ground adjacent, of little use but for the
jailor’s occasional lumber. It extends to the river, and measures
about 22 yards by 16. I once and again advised the enclosing this for
a court, as it might be done with little expense; and it appears that
formerly here was a doorway into the prison. But when I was there
afterwards in January 1776, I had the mortification to hear that the
surgeon, who was uncle to the jailer, had obtained from the bishop, in
October preceding, a lease of it for twenty-one years, at the rent of
one shilling per annum. He had built a little stable on it.’
Having completed his survey of the English jails, Mr. Howard turned
his attention next to those of Wales; and by the end of the autumn of
1774, he appears to have visited the principal jails in that
principality. During these last months the field of his inquiries had
been extended, so as to embrace a new department. ‘Seeing,’ he says
‘in two or three of the jails some poor creatures whose aspect was
singularly deplorable, and asking the cause of it, the answer was,
‘They were lately brought from the _bridewells_.’ This started a fresh
subject of inquiry. I resolved to inspect the bridewells; and for that
purpose traveled again into the counties where I had been; and indeed
into all the rest, examining _houses of correction_, _city_ and _town
jails_. I beheld in many of them, as well as in the _county jails_, a
complication of distress.’
Mr. Howard’s philanthropic labors for now nearly a twelve-month had of
course made him an object of public attention, and it became obviously
desirable to have such a man in parliament. Accordingly, at the
election of 1774, he was requested by a number of the electors of
Bedford to allow himself to be put in nomination for that town, in the
independent interest, along with his friend Mr. Whitbread. Mr. Howard
consented; but when the polling had taken place, the numbers stood
thus――Sir William Wake, 527 votes; Mr. Sparrow, 517; Mr. Whitbread,
429; and Mr. Howard, 402. A protest was taken by the supporters of Mr.
Whitbread and Mr. Howard, most of whom were dissenters, against the
election of the two former gentlemen, on the ground that the returning
officers had acted unfairly in rejecting many legally good votes for
Messrs. Whitbread and Howard, receiving many legally bad ones for the
other two candidates. Petitions impeaching the return were also
presented to the House of Commons by Mr. Whitbread and Mr. Howard.
Nothing, however, could divert our philanthropist from his own
peculiar walk of charity, and the interval between the election and
the hearing of the petitions against its validity was diligently
employed by him in a tour through Scotland and Ireland, for the
purpose of inspecting the prisons there, and comparing them with those
of England and Wales. With the Scotch system of prison management he
seems to have been, on the whole, much better pleased than with that
of England; and he mentions, with particular approbation, that in
Scotland ‘all criminals are tried out of irons; and when acquitted,
they are _immediately_ discharged in open court,’ and that ‘women are
not put in irons.’ Still he found sufficient grounds for complaint in
the state of the prisons themselves. ‘The prisons,’ he says, ‘that I
saw in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Jedburgh, Haddington, Ayr,
Kelso, Nairn, Banff, Inverness, etc., were old buildings, dirty and
offensive, without courtyards, and also generally without water.’ ‘The
tolbooth at Inverness,’ he afterwards observes, ‘has no fire place,
and is the most dirty and offensive prison that I have seen in
Scotland.’ In the Irish prisons he found, as might have been expected,
abuses even more shocking than those he had generally met with in
England.
In March 1775, Mr. Howard having by this time returned to England, his
petition and that of Mr. Whitbread against the return of Sir William
Wake and Mr. Sparrow were taken into consideration by a committee of
the House of Commons. On a revision of the poll, the numbers, after
adding the good votes which had been rejected, and striking off the
bad ones which had been accepted, stood thus――Mr. Whitbread, 568; Sir
William Wake, 541; Mr. Howard, 537; Mr. Sparrow, 529. Thus, although
by a small majority, Mr. Howard lost the election; his friend, Mr.
Whitbread, who had formerly been in the same predicament, was now
returned at the top of the poll in lieu of Mr. Sparrow.
It was perhaps a fortunate circumstance for the world that Mr. Howard
did not succeed in being returned to parliament. He might no doubt
have been of great service as a member of the legislature; but his
true function was that which he had already chosen for himself――a
voluntary and unofficial inquirer into the latent miseries of human
society. It was not so much as a propounder of schemes of social
improvement that Mr. Howard appeared; it was rather as an explorer of
unvisited scenes of wretchedness, who should drag into the public gaze
all manner of grievances, in order that the general wisdom and
benevolence of the country might be brought to bear upon them. In a
complex state of society, where wealth and poverty, comfort and
indigence, are naturally separated from each other as far as possible,
so that the eyes and ears of the upper classes may not be offended and
nauseated by the sights and sounds of wo, the interference of this
class of persons――_inspectors_, as they may be called, whose business
it is to see and report――is among the most necessary of all acts for
social wellbeing.
Mr. Howard having completed his survey of the prisons of Great
Britain, began to prepare his reports for publication. ‘I designed,’
says he, ‘to publish the account of our prisons in the spring of 1775,
after I returned from Scotland and Ireland. But conjecturing that
something useful to my purpose might be collected abroad, I laid aside
my papers, and traveled into France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany.’
The precise route which he pursued during this, his fifth continental
tour, is not known; he appears, however, to have gone to France first.
He gives the following account of his attempt to gain admission to the
famous Bastile of Paris. ‘I was desirous of examining it myself, and
for that purpose knocked hard at the outer gate, and immediately went
forward through the guard to the drawbridge before the entrance of the
castle. But while I was contemplating this gloomy mansion, an officer
came out much surprised, and I was forced to retreat through the mute
guard, and thus regained that freedom which, for one locked up within
those walls, it is next to impossible to obtain.’ On this singular
adventure of Mr. Howard one of his biographers makes the following
remark. ‘In the space of four centuries, from the foundation to the
destruction of the Bastile, perhaps Mr. Howard was the only person
that was ever compelled to quit it reluctantly.’ Although denied
admission to the Bastile, Mr. Howard was able to obtain entrance into
the other prisons of Paris. His first application, indeed, for
admittance to the _Grand Chatelet_ was unsuccessful; but happening to
remark that, by the tenth article of the arrêt of 1717, jailers were
authorized to admit persons desirous of bestowing charity on the
prisoners, he pleaded it before the _Commissaire de la Prison_; and in
this way gained admission not only to that prison, but to the others.
Except for the horrible subterranean dungeons, in which he found that
certain classes of prisoners were sometimes confined in France, he
appears to have considered the prisons in that country better managed
than those of England.
Mr. Howard’s proceedings in France, French Flanders, and the
Netherlands, will be best gathered from the following letter to a
friend:――‘I came late last night to this city; the day I have employed
in visiting the jails, and collecting all the criminal 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 jail distemper; no prisoners ironed. The bread
allowance far exceeds that of any of our jails; for example, every
prisoner here has two pounds of bread a-day; once a-day, soup; and on
Sunday, one pound of meat. I write to you, 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, though I show so
little respect to a set of men who are so highly esteemed (the French
cooks), that I have not tasted fish, flesh, or fowl since I have been
this side the water. Through a kind Providence I am very well; calm,
easy in spirits. The public voitures have not been crowded, and I have
met, in general, agreeable company. I hope to be in Holland the
beginning of next week.’
After visiting the principal prisons in Holland and part of Germany,
most of which seem to have particularly pleased him, when contrasted
with those at home, Mr. Howard returned to England in the end of July,
1775. Not to rest, however; for he immediately commenced a second
survey of the English prisons. This was interrupted, in the beginning
of the year 1776, when he made a trip to Switzerland to visit the
Swiss jails, taking some of the French ones in his way. Returning to
England, he resumed his second survey of the English and Welsh
prisons; and when this was completed to his satisfaction in the
beginning of 1777, he took up his residence for the spring at the town
of Warrington, in Lancashire, where he had resolved to have his work
on prisons printed. His reasons for printing the book there, rather
than in London, were various; one of them was, that he wished to be
near his friend Dr. (then Mr.) Aikin, employed as a surgeon in
Warrington, whose literary talents were of assistance to him in
fitting the work for publication. Dr. Aikin gives the following
account of the process which Mr. Howard’s notes underwent, in order to
qualify them for being sent to press――his own composition, as our
readers are already aware, being none of the most correct in a
grammatical point of view. ‘On his return from his tours,’ says Dr.
Aikin, ‘he took all his memorandum-books to an old, retired friend of
his, who assisted him in methodising them, and copied out the whole
matter in correct language. They were then put into the hands of Dr.
Price, from whom they underwent a revision, and received occasionally
considerable alterations. With his papers thus corrected, Mr. Howard
came to the press at Warrington; and first he read them all over
carefully to me, which perusal was repeated sheet by sheet, as they
were printed. As new facts and observations were continually
suggesting themselves 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 unexceptionable. Of
this additional matter, some was interwoven with the text, but the
greater part was necessarily thrown into notes.’ So intent was he upon
the publication of the work, that, ‘for the purpose,’ we are told by
his biographer, Mr. Brown, ‘of being near the scene of his labors, he
took lodgings in a house close to his printer’s shop; and during a
very severe winter he was always called up by two in the morning,
though he did not retire to rest till ten. His reason for this early
rising was, that in the morning he was least disturbed in his work of
revising the sheets as they came from the press. 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 till 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, eating, as he
walked, his hermit fare, which, with a glass of water on his return,
was the only dinner he took. When he had returned to the
printing-office, he generally remained there until the men left work,
and then 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, he would either
spend an hour with some 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.’
In April 1777 appeared the work which had cost him so much labor. Its
title was, ‘The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with
Preliminary Observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons. By
John Howard, F.R.S.’ Although the work was very bulky, consisting of
520 quarto pages, with four large plates, yet ‘so zealous was he,’
says Dr Aikin, ‘to diffuse information, and so determined to obviate
any idea that he meant to repay his expenses 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.’ Besides,
he distributed copies profusely among all persons who possessed, or
might possibly possess, influence in carrying his benevolent views
into effect. ‘As soon as the book appeared,’ continues Dr. Aikin, ‘the
world was astonished at the mass of valuable materials accumulated by
a private unaided individual, through a course of prodigious labor,
and at the constant hazard of life, in consequence of the infectious
diseases prevalent in the scenes of his inquiries. The cool good sense
and moderation of his narrative, contrasted with that enthusiastic
ardor which must have impelled him to the undertaking, were not less
admired; and he was immediately regarded as one of the extraordinary
characters of the age, and as a leader in all plans of meliorating the
condition of that wreched part of the community for whom he interested
himself.’
To give an idea of the extent of the evils of the prison system in the
time of Howard, and of the thorough manner in which these were taken
cognizance of by him, we will present our readers with an abridgment
of the introductory section of his work, in which, before passing to
his special report on the state of the various prisons which he had
visited, he gives a summary, or ‘General View of Distress in Prisons.’
The extracts will be found not only interesting in their connexion
with Howard’s life, but also interesting in themselves.
‘There are prisons,’ he begins, ‘into which whoever looks will, at
first sight of the people confined, be convinced that there is some
great error in the management of them; their sallow, meagre
countenances declare, without words, that they are very miserable.
Many who went in healthy, are in a few months changed to emaciated,
dejected objects. Some are seen pining under diseases, ‘sick and in
prison,’ expiring on the floors, in loathsome cells, of pestilential
fevers and confluent small-pox; victims, I must not say to the
cruelty, but I will say to the inattention, of sheriffs and gentlemen
in the commission of the peace. The cause of this distress is, that
many prisons are scantily supplied, and some almost totally destitute,
of the necessaries of life.
‘_Food._――There are several _bridewells_ in which prisoners have no
allowance of food at all. In some, the keeper farms what little is
allowed them; and where he engages to supply each prisoner with one or
two pennyworths of bread a-day, I have known this shrunk to half,
sometimes less than half the quantity――out of, or broken from, his own
loaf. It will perhaps be asked――Does not their work maintain them? The
answer to that question, though true, will hardly be believed. There
are few bridewells in which any work is done, or can be done. The
prisoners have neither tools nor materials of any kind, but spend
their time in sloth, profaneness, and debauchery, to a degree which,
in some of those houses that I have seen, is extremely shocking.… The
same complaint――_want of food_――is to be found in many _county jails_.
In above half of these debtors have no bread, although it is granted
to the highwayman, the housebreaker, and the murderer; and medical
assistance, which is provided for the latter, is withheld from the
former. In many of these jails, debtors who would work are not
permitted to have any tools, lest they should furnish felons with them
for escape, or other mischief. I have often seen these prisoners
eating their water-soup (bread boiled in mere water), and heard them
say, ‘We are locked up, and almost starved to death.’ As to the relief
provided for debtors by the benevolent act 32d of George II, I did not
find in all England and Wales, except in the counties of Middlesex and
Surrey, _twelve debtors_ who had obtained from their creditors the
fourpence a-day to which they had a right by that act. The truth is,
some debtors are the most pitiable objects in our jails. To their
wanting necessary food, I must add not only the demands of jailers,
etc., for fees, but also the extortion of bailiffs. These detain in
their houses (properly enough denominated _spunging-houses_), at an
enormous expense, prisoners who have money. I know there is a legal
provision against this oppression; but the mode of obtaining redress
is attended with difficulty, and the abuse continues. The rapine of
these extortioners needs some more effectual and easy check: no
bailiff should be suffered to keep a public-house.… Felons have in
some jails two pennyworth of bread a-day; in some, three
halfpennyworth; in some, a pennyworth; in some, none. I often weighed
the bread in different prisons, and found the penny loaf seven ounces
and a half to eight ounces; the other loaves in proportion. It is
probable that, when this allowance was fixed by its value, near double
the quantity that the money will now purchase might be bought for it;
yet the allowance continues unaltered, and it is not uncommon to see
the whole purchase, especially of the smaller sums, eaten at
breakfast――which is sometimes the case when they receive their
pittance but once in two days; and then on the following day, they
must fast. This allowance being so far short of the cravings of
nature, and in some prisons lessened by farming to the jailer, many
criminals are half-starved; such of them as at their commitment were
in health, come out almost famished, scarcely able to move, and for
weeks incapable of labor.
‘_Water._――Many prisons have no water. This defect is frequent in
bridewells and town jails. In the felon’s courts of some county jails
there is no water; in some places where there is water, prisoners are
always locked up within doors, and have no more than the keeper or his
servants think fit to bring them; in one place they were limited to
three pints a-day each――a scanty provision for drink and cleanliness.
‘_Air._――And as to air, my reader will judge of the malignity of that
breathed in prisons, when I assure him that my clothes were, in my
first journeys, so offensive, that in a postchaise I could not bear
the windows drawn up, and was therefore obliged to travel commonly on
horseback. The leaves of my memorandum-book were often so tainted,
that I could not use it till after spreading it an hour or two before
the fire; and even my antidote――a vial of vinegar――has, after using it
in a few prisons, be come intolerably disagreeable. I did not wonder
that in those journeys, many jailors made excuses, and did not go with
me into the felons’ wards. From hence any one may judge of the
probability there is against the health and life of prisoners crowded
in close rooms, cells, and subterranean dungeons for fourteen or
fifteen hours out of the four-and-twenty. In some of these caverns the
floor is very damp; in others there is an inch or two of water; and
the straw, or bedding, is laid on such floors――seldom on barrack
bedsteads. Where prisoners are not kept in underground cells, they are
often confined to their rooms, because there is no court belonging to
the prison――which is the case in many city and town jails; or because
the walls round the yard are ruinous, or too low for safety; or
because the jailor has the ground for his own use. Some jails have no
sewers or vaults; and in those that have, if they be not properly
attended to, they are, even to a visitor, offensive beyond
description. How noxious, therefore, to people constantly confined in
those prisons! One cause why the rooms in some prisons are so close,
is the window tax, which the jailors have to pay; this tempts them to
stop the windows, and stifle the prisoners.
‘_Bedding._――In many jails, and in most bridewells, there is no
allowance of bedding or straw for prisoners to sleep on; and if by any
means they get a little, it is not changed for months together, so
that it is offensive, and almost worn to dust. Some lie upon rags,
others upon the bare floors. When I have complained of this to the
keepers, the justification has been, The county allows no straw; the
prisoners have none but at my cost.
‘_Morals._――I have now to complain of what is pernicious to the morals
of prisoners; and that is, the confining all sorts of prisoners
together――debtors and felons, men and women, the young beginner and
the old offender; and with all these, in some counties, such as are
guilty of misdemeanors only. In some jails you see――and who can see it
without sorrow?――boys of twelve and fourteen eagerly listening to the
stories told by practised criminals of their adventures, successes,
stratagems, and escapes.
‘_Lunatics._――In some few jails are confined idiots and lunatics.
These serve for sport to idle visitants at assizes, and at other times
of general resort. Many of the bridewells are crowded and offensive,
because the rooms which were designed for prisoners are occupied by
the insane. When these are not kept separate they disturb and terrify
the other prisoners.
‘_Jail Fever._――I am ready to think that none who have given credit to
what is contained in the foregoing pages, will wonder at the havoc
made by the jail fever. From my own observations in 1773, 1774, and
1775, I was fully convinced that many more prisoners were destroyed by
it than were put to death by all the public executions in the
kingdom.[3] This frequent effect of confinement in prison seems
generally understood, and shows how full of emphatical meaning is the
curse of a severe creditor, who pronounces his debtor’s doom to _rot
in jail_. I believe I have learnt the full import of this sentence
from the vast numbers who, to my certain knowledge, and some of them
before my eyes, have perished by the jail fever. But the mischief is
not confined to prisons. In Baker’s Chronicle, p. 353, that historian,
mentioning the assize held in Oxford in 1577 (called, from its fatal
consequences, the _Black Assize_), informs us that ‘all who were
present died within forty hours――the lord chief baron, the sheriff,
and about three hundred more’――all being infected by the prisoners who
were brought into court. Lord Bacon observes, that ‘the most
pernicious infection next the plague, is the smell of a jail when the
prisoners have been long, and close, and nastily kept; whereof,’ he
says, ‘we have had in our time experience twice or thrice, when both
the judges that sat upon the jail, and numbers of those who attended
the business, or were present, sickened and died.’ At the Lent assize
in Taunton, 1730, some prisoners who were brought thither from
Ivelchester jail infected the court; and lord chief baron Pengelly,
Sir James Sheppard, sergeant, John Pigot, Esq., sheriff, and some
hundreds besides, died all of the jail distemper. At Axminster, a
little town in Devonshire, a prisoner discharged from Exeter jail in
1755, infected his family with that disease, of which two of them
died; and many others in that town afterwards. The numbers that were
carried off by the same malady in London in 1750――two judges, the lord
mayor, one alderman, and many of inferior rank――are well known. It
were easy to multiply instances of the mischief; but those which have
been mentioned are, I presume, sufficient to show, even if no mercy
were due to prisoners, that the _jail distemper_ is a national concern
of no small importance.[4]
‘_Vicious examples._――The general prevalence and spread of wickedness
in prisons and abroad by discharged prisoners, will now be as easily
accounted for as the propagation of disease. It is often said, ‘a
prison pays no debts;’ I am sure it may be added, that a prison mends
no morals. Sir John Fielding observes, that ‘a criminal discharged,
generally by the next session after the execution of his comrades,
becomes the head of a gang of his own raising.’ And petty offenders
who are committed to bridewell for a year or two, and spend that time,
not in hard labor, but in idleness and wicked company, or are sent for
that time to county jails, generally grow desperate, and come out
fitted for the perpetration of any villainy. Half the robberies in and
about London are planned in the prisons, and by that dreadful
assemblage of criminals, and the number of idle people who visit them.
Multitudes of young creatures, committed for some trifling offense,
are totally ruined there. I make no scruple to affirm, that if it were
the wish and aim of magistrates to effect the destruction, present and
future, of young delinquents, they could not devise a more effectual
method than to confine them so long in our prisons, those seats and
seminaries of idleness and every vice.
‘These gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our
prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, “let them take care
to keep out,” prefaced perhaps with an angry prayer, seem not duly
sensible of the favor 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 to 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 reduced to indigence, and
become debtors and prisoners. As to criminality, it is possible that a
man who has often shuddered at hearing the account of a murder, may,
on a sudden temptation, commit that very crime. Let him that thinketh
he standeth take heed lest he fall, and commiserate those that are
fallen.’
Such, in an abridged form, is the introductory section of Mr. Howard’s
work, entitled ‘A General View of Distress in Prisons;’ but in order
fully to appreciate the enormous extent of his labors, it would be
necessary to follow him into the remainder of the work, in which he
describes and criticises, one by one, the various prisons, both
foreign and British, which he had visited during the preceding four
years. It is only in this way that one can gain an adequate conception
of the misery and wretchedness of the prison system of Great Britain
in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Mr. Howard did not consider that his labors were over when he had
published his work on prisons, and laid before the world grievances
which had long flourished in society undetected and unknown. In the
end of the first edition of his work, he had made a promise that, ‘if
the legislature should seriously engage in the reformation of our
prisons, he would take a third journey through the Prussian and
Austrian dominions, and the free cities of Germany. This,’ he says, ‘I
accomplished in 1778, and likewise extended my tour through Italy, and
revisited some of the countries I had before seen in pursuit of my
object.’ His observations during this tour he published in a second
edition of his work in 1780. Wishing, before the publication of a
third edition, to acquire some further knowledge on the subject, he
again visited Holland, and some cities in Germany. ‘I visited also,’
he says, ‘the capitals of Denmark, Sweden, Russia, and Poland; and, in
1783, some cities in Portugal and Spain, and returned through France,
Flanders, and Holland.’ The substance of all these travels he threw
into a third and final edition of his work on prisons.
Thus, during ten years, had Howard labored incessantly at a single
object, allowing no other to interfere with it; traveling almost
without intermission from place to place, and undergoing innumerable
risks. From a table drawn up by one of his biographers, it appears
that, between 1773 and 1783, he had traveled on his missions of
philanthropy, at home and abroad, upwards of forty thousand miles.
Forty thousand miles traveled in ten years!――not from mountain to
mountain, or from one object of natural beauty to another, but from
jail to jail, and bridewell to bridewell――no wonder that Howard, on
the retrospect of such a labor fairly accomplished, wrote in his
diary, ‘I bless God who inclined my mind to such a scheme.’
During his journeys in Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Howard was
usually accompanied by a single servant. He traveled generally on
horseback, at the rate of forty miles a-day. ‘He was never,’ says his
biographer, Dr. Aikin, ‘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 traveler; but made his man attend him, and take it away
while he was preparing his bread and milk. He always paid the waiters,
postilions, etc., 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 in addition were not worth thinking
about.’
In the spring of 1784 Mr. Howard, now about fifty-seven years of age,
retired to his estate of Cardington, intending to spend the remainder
of his life in peace and quiet, assisting in his private capacity in
furthering those schemes of prison improvement which his disclosures
had set on foot. He resumed the mode of life which he had led before
commencing his prison inquiries; with this difference, that, being now
a distinguished public character, his visitors were more frequent and
more numerous than formerly. There was one sad circumstance, however,
which embittered the peace of this benevolent man. His only son, who
had received his early education at several academies in England, and
had been sent in his eighteenth year to the university of Edinburgh,
and placed under the care of the venerable and well-known Dr.
Blacklock, had unhappily contracted habits of extravagance and
dissipation; which, to any parent, and especially to one of Howard’s
principles, must have caused poignant grief. Already the unfortunate
young man had shown symptoms of that malady, brought on by his own
imprudent and vicious conduct, which ultimately settled into complete
insanity. Of the full extent of this domestic misfortune Mr. Howard
was not yet aware.
After nearly two years of repose, interrupted only by the circumstance
to which we have alluded, Mr. Howard resolved to quit home on a new
mission of philanthropy, fraught with greater danger than the one he
had accomplished so successfully. During his inquiries into the state
of prisons, his attention had been often directed to the spread of
infectious diseases, and the inadequacy of the means provided for
checking the progress of fever, pestilence, etc., whether originating
in jails or elsewhere. The subject thus suggested to him occupied much
of his thoughts during his leisure at Cardington; and he at length
determined to devote the remainder of his life to an inspection of the
principal hospitals and lazarettos of Europe, with a view to ascertain
their defects, and the possibility of effecting such improvements in
them as would in future preserve the populations of Europe from the
ravages of that dreadful visitation――the plague.
Towards the end of November 1785, Mr. Howard left England on his new
expedition of philanthropy. He proceeded first to France, with a view
to inspect the lazaretto at Marseilles; but, owing to the jealousy of
the French government, it was with the utmost difficulty he could
accomplish his object; indeed he narrowly escaped apprehension and
committal to the Bastile. After visiting the hospitals of Genoa,
Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence, he next proceeded to Rome. Here he was
privately introduced to Pope Pius VI, himself a benevolent man. On
this occasion the ceremony of kissing the pope’s toe was dispensed
with; and at parting, his holiness laid his hand on his visitor’s
head, saying kindly, ‘I know you Englishmen do not mind these
ceremonies, but the blessing of an old man can do you no harm.’ From
Rome our traveler went to Naples, and thence to Malta, pursuing
always, as his single object, a knowledge of the state of the
hospitals on his route. Writing from Malta to a friend in England, he
says, ‘I have paid two visits to the Grand Master. Every place is
flung open to me. I am bound for Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople.
One effect I find during my visits to the lazaretto; namely a heavy
headache――a pain across my forehead; but it has always quite left me
in an hour after I have come from these places. As I am quite alone, I
have need to summon all my courage and resolution.’
After remaining about three weeks at Malta, Mr. Howard set out for
Zante. ‘From thence,’ he says, ‘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 to Constantinople, where I now am, 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. 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 yesterday among the sick slaves, I have a constant headache; but
in about an hour after it always leaves me. I lodge at a physician’s
house, and I keep some of my visits a secret.’ From Constantinople he
returned to Smyrna, where the plague was also raging; his object being
to obtain a passage from that port to Venice, in order that he might
undergo the full rigors of the quarantine system, and be able to
report, from personal observation, respecting the economy of a
lazaretto. On the voyage from Smyrna to Venice, the ship in which he
sailed was attacked by a Tunis privateer, and all on board ran great
risks. At length, after a desperate fight, a cannon loaded with
spikes, nails, and old iron, and pointed by Mr. Howard himself, was
discharged with such effect upon the corsair vessel, that it was
obliged to sheer off. From Venice he writes thus to his confidential
servant Thomasson, at Cardington; the letter being dated Venice
Lazaretto, October 12, 1786:――‘I am now in an infectious lazaretto,
yet my steady spirits never forsook me till yesterday, on the receipt
of my letters. Accumulated misfortunes almost sink me. I am sorry,
very sorry, on your account. I will hasten home; no time will I lose
by night or day. But forty 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. Then that very hasty and disagreeable measure that
is taken in London wounds me sadly indeed. Never have I returned to my
country with such a heavy heart as I now do.’ The two circumstances
which he alludes to in this extract as distressing him so much, and
making him so anxious to leave Venice and return home, were the
misconduct of his son, of which he had received further accounts, and
a proposal which had just been made in London, and of which
intelligence had been conveyed to him, to erect a monument to
commemorate the nation’s sense of his former philanthropic labors.
The term of his quarantine at Venice being finished, he proceeded to
Trieste, and thence to Vienna. How the thoughts of his sad domestic
affliction mingled and struggled with his daily exertions in connexion
with the great object of his tour, we may learn from the following
touching postscript to a letter to Mr. Smith of Bedford, written from
Vienna, and dated 17th December 1786:――‘Excuse writing, etc., as wrote
early by a poor lamp. What I suffered, I am persuaded I should have
disregarded in the lazaretto, as I gained useful information. Venice
is the mother of all lazarettos; but oh, my son, my son!’ At Vienna
Mr. Howard had an interview with the Austrian emperor, who entered
into conversation with him on the subject of his tour, discussed with
him the state of the prisons and hospitals in his Austrian dominions,
and expressed his intention to adopt some of his suggestions for their
improvement. The attention shown by the emperor to his distinguished
visitor procured him the notice of many of the courtiers; and a
characteristic anecdote is told of his interview with the governor of
Upper Austria and his lady. The Austrian noble asked Howard, in a
somewhat haughty manner, what he thought of the prisons in his
government. ‘The worst in all Germany,’ said Howard; ‘particularly as
regards 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 the astonished countess; ‘I go into prisons!’
and she rapidly descended the staircase with her husband, as if
shocked beyond measure. The philanthropist indignantly followed, and
called after her, ‘Madam, remember you are but a woman yourself; and
must soon, like the most miserable female in a dungeon, inhabit a
little piece of that earth from which both of you sprung.’
Returning home in February 1787, after an absence of fifteen months,
Mr. Howard found his unhappy son a confirmed and incurable lunatic.
For some time he attempted to keep him in his own house at Cardington,
under a mild restraint; at length, however, he yielded to the advice
of the medical attendants, and suffered him to be removed to a well
conducted asylum at Leicester.
The proposal to erect a memorial to Mr. Howard, was so strenuously
resisted by him on his return to England, that it was obliged to be
given up. Out of £1533 which had been subscribed for the purpose,
about £500 pounds were returned to the donors: the remainder was
placed in the stocks――£200 of it being employed in obtaining the
discharge of fifty-five poor prisoners in London, a similar sum in the
striking of a medal in memory of Howard, and the rest being
appropriated, after his death, to the object for which it had been
collected. Howard’s opposition to the scheme of erecting to him any
species of monument, amounted to positive antipathy; indeed nothing
was more remarkable in his character than his dislike to be praised
for what he had done. When one gentleman happened to speak to him
respecting his services to society in a flattering manner, Howard
interrupted him by saying, ‘My dear sir, what you call my merit is
just my hobby-horse.’
The three years which followed Mr. Howard’s return from his first tour
through the lazarettos of Europe, were spent by him in a new general
inspection of the English, Scotch, and Irish prisons, with a view to
ascertain whether any improvements had been effected in them since his
former survey; and in the preparation of a work giving an account of
his recent continental journey. This work was entitled, ‘An Account of
the Principal Lazarettos of Europe, with Papers Relative to the
Plague;’ and was published in the year 1789. It contained, in the form
of an appendix, additional remarks on the state of British prisons.
In the conclusion of his work on Lazarettos, Howard announced his
intention of again quitting England to visit the hospitals of Russia,
Turkey and the Eastern countries, in order to gain more accurate and
extensive views of the plague. ‘I am not insensible,’ he says, ‘of the
dangers that must attend such a journey. Trusting, however, in the
protection of that 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 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.’ With regard to his
objects in undertaking this journey, his biographer, Dr. Aikin,
observes that he had various conversations with him on the subject;
and found rather a wish to have objects of inquiry pointed out to him
by others, than any specific views present to his own mind.
On the 4th of July 1789, Mr. Howard, accompanied by a single servant,
quitted England on his last philanthropic journey. He passed through
Holland, part of Germany, Prusia, and several cities of Russia,
examining the state of the hospitals; and about the end of the year
had reached Cherson, a new settlement of the Russian empress at the
mouth of the Dnieper. This was destined to be the closing scene of his
labors.
Visiting, according to one account, the Russian hospital of the place;
according to another, a young lady, whose friends were anxious that he
should prescribe for her, as he had done successfully in many similar
cases, he caught a malignant fever, which, after an illness of twelve
days, carried him off on the 20th of January, 1790, in the
sixty-fourth year of his age. On his deathbed he showed the same calm
and Christian spirit which had distinguished him through life. To
Admiral Priestman, who resided at Cherson, and who visited him during
his illness, and endeavored to amuse and cheer him by his remarks,
thinking to divert his thoughts, he said, ‘Priestman, you style this a
dull conversation, and endeavor to divert my mind from dwelling on
death; but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors
to me; it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with
pleasure; and be assured the subject is more grateful 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. I have
no method of lowering my nourishment, and therefore I must die. It is
such jolly fellows as you, Priestman, that get over these fevers.’
Then alluding to the subject of his funeral, he continued――‘There is a
spot 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 I 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 whatever, to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in
the earth, place a sun-dial over my grave, and let me be forgotton.’
These directions were in spirit, although not strictly complied with;
and on the 25th of January 1790, the body of Howard was buried in the
spot which he had chosen near the village of Dauphigny, at a little
distance from Cherson.
The authorities and the inhabitants of the place testified their
respect for him by attending his remains to the grave. Instead of the
sun-dial, a small brick pyramid was erected on the spot. In Cardington
church, according to his direction, a plain slip of marble was erected
by his wife’s tomb, bearing this inscription: ‘John Howard; died at
Cherson, in Russian Tartary, January 20th, 1790. Aged 64. Christ is my
hope.’ A more stately monument was soon afterwards erected to his
memory in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Howard’s son, who never recovered from
his malady, died in April 1799, in his thirty-fifth year.