A letter on the nature and effects of the tread-wheel, as an instrument of prison labour and punishment, addressed to the Right Hon. Robert Peel ... / with an appendix of notes and cases. [By J.I. Brisco] by one of his constituents, and a magistrate of the county of Surrey.

  • Briscoe, John Ivatt, 1791-1870.
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter on the nature and effects of the tread-wheel, as an instrument of prison labour and punishment, addressed to the Right Hon. Robert Peel ... / with an appendix of notes and cases. [By J.I. Brisco] by one of his constituents, and a magistrate of the county of Surrey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    343 it must be confessed, that it has an influence upon both ; for the first it hardens, and the second it debilitates. T T. page 51. It is notorious that the state of our prisons has been long the subject of just but unheeded complaint, not merely as receptacles of idleness, that 44 root of all evil,” but as hotbeds where the germ of every vicious propensity has room to grow and flourish, and to generate a fresh and more abundant crop of wickedness of a still deadlier kind. It is quite true that our Bridewells (to use the language of a distinguished Justice of the Peace, applied in 1819 to the House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields,) were at one time in such a condition that 44 a Ma¬ gistrate might be considered the ruler of a small state in which corruption had risen to its utmost height.” To which effect are the following words of another Justice of the Peace, applied to the County Gaol of Hertford, delivered in 1820. 44 Formerly, persons of all descriptions and of all ages, were indiscriminately mixed together, there being but one yard, and one day-room. Not having labour of any kind, the time of the prisoners was by necessity spent in idleness, no resource being left them but the miserable one of forming plans for future mischief, and instructing the less depraved, though unhappily willing learners, in the ways of wickedness and vice.” The same Magistrate proceeds to contrast this state of total idleness and a total absence of classification, with a subsequent division of the prisoners into classes, and the 44 horror of the Mill” since allotted them as task-work. The Engineer of Ipswich has, doubtless, profited by a most favourable opportunity to introduce his novel application of an old invention, in order to administer a remedy for these crying evils; to supply, if possible,