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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    It is not true that I ever put leading questions of any kind to the prisoners; I prosecuted my inquiries only so far as was necessary to substantiate or to disprove the impressions I had received from the previous and volun¬ tary description of their complaints, and from having personally suffered in a temporary though not a trivial degree in my attempting to continue the labour on a Wheel of more than ordinary severity. Many of the Cases derived from the Houses of Correction at Guildford and Brixton, I considered entitled to small regard until I found their subjects released from the Wheels by the direction <fi the Surgeon, and transferred to the Infir¬ maries. I then justly concluded their former complaints had been well founded, and I was as naturally disposed to think the complaints of others in like circumstances might be equally true, and that they wrere entitled to further investigation. The Tread-wheel is at all events a novel experiment in the art of punishment, an interpretation of the sentence of 44 Hard Labour” which was never contemplated, and I believe never would have been sanctioned, by the great and enlightened minds of the best jurists and wisest senators in former periods of our history. Great difference of opinion respecting it at this moment prevails among the magistracy of the country: and the period and operation of my inquiries has proved to be in unison with a second circular letter from the Secretary of State for the Home Department, renewing official inter¬ rogations concerning its nature and effects. I cannot therefore but feel that I have strictly adhered to my duty,in presenting the Cases which I did to my brethren in office at the Quarter Sessions held at Newington on the 13th of January ; and I think it right to add, that although the amendment against my motion for inquiry was carried