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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    A LETTER, &,C. Sir, Xhe cases annexed to this Letter, induce me thus publicly to address you on the nature and effects of the Tread-wheel. In taking this measure I am actuated solely by a sense of duty, and a desire to fulfil those obligations towards my Sovereign and my Country which I contracted on accepting my commission as a Magistrate. I candidly acknowledge that I was at first disposed to think favourably of this new mode of punishment, which is now in so many in¬ stances introduced into our Gaols and Houses of Correction, and has even made an entrance into the Workhouses of our Poor *. It was represented to me as a species of hard, yet salutary labour, from which the idle and the vicious were naturally averse, but precluding the possibility of evasion; whilst all were able to perform the task, without reference to age, or sex, or the necessity of previous instruction. Under these impressions, I was wil¬ ling to hail the discovery as an important event in the history of our Prison Discipline, and to antici-