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.

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    exertion many of the Female Prisoners have been sud¬ denly obliged to descend from the Tread Mill in the Prison in Cold Path Fields in the midst of their task work,* accompanied with circumstances of the most repulsive indelicac}^, insomuch that the Female Pri¬ soners confined within these walls,-]* as well as in most other Prisons, have been of late, altogether or in a great degree, exempted from this kind of labour. VI. That the concurrent testimony of numerous Me¬ dical Practitioners, of high character and extensive expe¬ rience, has proved that habitual labour of a like descrip¬ tion, as that of Mariners, and even of a lighter kind, as the ladder-treading in thatching and among Masons’ La¬ bourers, Miners, &c. has a gradual tendency to produce ruptures and varicose veins, or nodulous tumours on the legs; and, in numerous instances, has actually pro¬ duced them. Whence it has been reasonably appre¬ hended by other practitioners of great talents and attain- * See also the Official returns from Dorsetshire. + The preceding paragraph is left in the state in which it was written before a recent visit to the Prison in Cold Bath Fields, and it is, possibly, with no small regret, the public will hear, that since the circulation of the subjoined address to the Secre¬ tary of State (which was also transmitted to the Clerks of the Peace in the several English Counties,) and the publica¬ tion of the Official Returns to Government, the female pri¬ soners confined in this House of Correction, have been ordered to resume their station on the tread-wheel, with the only change in the superintending them—offemale for male keepers during the time of work. This very change proves sufficiently an expectation of the ill effects already pointed out, in the minds even of those by whom this return to the anterior discipline has been directed, and is, perhaps, one of the strongest arguments that can be adduced of its impropriety.