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

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

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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

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    mination and inquiry, in concurrence with professional characters whose opinions he held himself bound to respect, the original communication was first made to His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, and is now submitted to the public—From that investigation the following facts appear to be incon- trovertibly established. I. That from the enormous height, extent, and compli- cation of the machinery of the Tread -Wheel, there ap- pears to be an insuperable difficulty in constructing it of iron, whether cast or malleable, sufficiently pure and pow- erful, to support the incumbent load or strain that is often imposed upon its shafts, with their subterraneous ramifi- cations to a perilous extent, -without breaking : that such accidents have already taken place in different Prisons, and not less than four times, in little more than three months, in the House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields, with precipitation, from a considerable height, of all the Prisoners employed at the time, who were thrown on their hades, with considerable injury to many of them.* II. That from the peculiar motion of the limbs for which alone this machine was intended, which is that of treading on tiptoe up an endless hill, with the body bent forward-f* and the hands rigidly and unremittingly grasp- ing a rail for support, an exertion is produced, so exhausting to the animal frame, that scarcely any Com- mittee of Visiting Magistrates have ventured to enforce * Other similar fractures have since taken place in the same prison, one of them since part of these sheets have been in the press. + Such was their position at the Cold Bath Fields Prison, when visited by the writer in May, 1822.