A visit to the Philadelphia prison; being an accurate and particular account of the wise and humane administration adopted in every part of that building; containing also an account of the gradual reformation, and present improved state of the penal laws of Pennsylvania: with observations on the impolicy and injustice of capital punishments ... In a letter to a friend / By Robert J. Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, Robert J. (Robert James), 1775-1833.
Date:
1797
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A visit to the Philadelphia prison; being an accurate and particular account of the wise and humane administration adopted in every part of that building; containing also an account of the gradual reformation, and present improved state of the penal laws of Pennsylvania: with observations on the impolicy and injustice of capital punishments ... In a letter to a friend / By Robert J. Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    one thing—want of infight into the bafe protedations and artifices of a feducer, a very different one. Let this falfe dep in a woman, however, bear even a deeper tint than the latter; let it be called imprudence; it may incline her, it is true, to her own prejudice, fo far as to incur the contempt of many around her ; but how can fhe fall under the cenfure of her own or any generous mind, when fupported by a confcioufnefs, that it was the want of her lover s virtue, not her own, that wreded from her a public efleem fhe had not defervedly forfeited ? But, notwithdanding, we mud applaud the example of Pennfylvania, in requiring probable preemptive proof of the fafl, before the conjlrained prefumption, that the child, whofe death is concealed, was therefore mur¬ dered by its mother, fhould be diffident to convid the party indi&ed; yet, what were her motives for adopting the miftaken policy of a fifter date,* and making the concealment of a badard’s death a punifh- able offence, I have not been able to difeover. It has been edablifhed, that “ every punifhment which “ is not abfolutely neceffary for the prevention of <c crimes, is a cruel and tyrannical a<dfo, on the fame principle, the neceffity of making any defined aflion a crime, ought only to arife from that aft having already proved a fource, or likely to occa- fion an injury to the community or an individual.— To make then this dep of a parent, a crime, puriifh- able by hard labour, fine, or imprifonment, is highly unneceffary and unjud. If its confequences at all affect the community, they are rather beneficial than otherwife; for a woman, by withholding her errors from the public mind, is happily preferved from various ads of defpair, to which her own didrefs, and the drong rr:r . . of popular infamy mud eventually have driven her, •New Hampftiire, The