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.)

    18/177
    was a still greater surprise upon them, when their assertions and assumptions were discredited, and their hold upon public confidence threatened with dissolution. At this critical moment, a distinguished member of the Suffolk bar, as we have already said, generously offered his services as an advocate of association, and furnished the public with a pamphlet of two hundred pages, with the imposing and com- prehensive title of Prison Discipline in America, and he does his work with an appearance of candour and of familiar- ity with the whole ground, that is really quite taking. He reminds us of some impatient judge, who comes to a case that has been long upon the docket, and determines, per fas aut nefas, to have it off; and walking over the heads of lawyers and witnesses, he sums up for both sides, gives the case to the jury, and retires to his lodgings for refreshment and repose. It is whispered among the bystanders that he evidently mis- took his calling, and went upon the bench with none of the attributes of a judge, save the wig and robes. The reader will not suppose, however, that this was Mr. Gray's first appearance in the controversy. During the pen- dency of the popular debate in the Tremont Temple, in May 1847, (as he is reported in the cotemporary journals,) he de- fended the position taken by the (Boston) Prison Discipline Society, in its opposition to the solitary system. He pre- sented, as it is said, a variety of facts, and a mass of statis- tical information, designed to show the ill-adaptation of that system to the highest purposes of prison discipline, and its tendency to undermine the bodily health, the mental powers, and even the reason of the prisoners subjected to its operation. In reference to the opinions of the foreign delegates, (from France and Germany,) who visited our prisons some years ago, and expressed their preference for the Pennsylvania sys- tem, Mr. Gray said, they came to the Charlestown prison with their minds made up in favor of the Pennsylvania system. He knew this from personal conversation with the gentlemen:' It is, of course, out of our power to know positively to which of the individuals composing the several delegations the <*entle-