An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania.

  • Packard, Frederick A. (Frederick Adolphus), 1794-1867.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    the separate system was either unduly esteemed abroad, or quite misrepresented at home. The reports of the Boston So- ciety had been brought into review, and subjected to severe animadversion in the legislative halls and in the public journals of Europe, and its friends and patrons were naturally led to inquire what position they occupied, as a society, in relation to these reports. It will be remembered that, during all this long interval of twenty years, in which the advocates of congregate or Auburn prisons, had been so diligently at work, the separate system was without any permanent medium of communication with the pub- lic, and was, of course, placed at great disadvantage; but its friends confidently relied on the soundness of the principle to sustain the system, rather than upon the laudation of the sys- tem to give currency to the principle. For the same reason, it is not surprising, that after listening for the like period of twenty years to the earnest condemnation of that system, and an equally earnest advocacy of the other, the people, living in the focus of such an influence, should be shocked at the idea of erecting a separate prison within a stone's cast of the Boston Society's rooms! Yet such a pro- position was seriously entertained; and it was found, not only that some very wise and humane men were quite inclined to try it, but serious doubts were then, and had been be- fore entertained, touching the correctness of the impressions made by the Society's reports. Indeed, so definite had these doubts become, that at the Twentieth annual meeting of the Society, held at Boston, May 27 1845, a member was bold enough to suggest a query, whether some of the statements made in the draft of a report then presented, could be sustained. The subject was referred to a committee of eight, to inquire whether any modifications of the report were necessary, pre- vious to its publication. The committee was authorized, in the name of the Society, to ask permission to examine the Phila- tors as speculatists, if not as barbarians. (See pp. 131—135.) He thinks we know more than they do, and the Chinese think they know more than either of us. Facts, like pictures, constitute a universal language. 2