Memorandum of a late visit to some of the principal hospitals, prisons, etc., in France, Scotland, and England. Embraced in a letter to the acting committee of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.

  • Packard, Frederick A. (Frederick Adolphus), 1794-1867.
Date:
1840
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorandum of a late visit to some of the principal hospitals, prisons, etc., in France, Scotland, and England. Embraced in a letter to the acting committee of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. 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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    system, in its present form, must be abandoned; and that peni- tentiaries on the principle of solitude and separation should be established. And in a debate on the same subject in the House of Lords, the Archbishop of Dublin denounced transportation as the most odious system of slavery that ever existed in any- country—not even excepting the worst description of negro slavery. In the course of this debate it was stated that the average expense of a convict, on the most approved plan of dis- cipline, might safely be estimated at £18 (886.50) per annum, and that the most perfect description of penitentiaries might be built for £120 ($575) per cell. The whole character of the debate evinced a very general dissatisfaction with the present state of things; and the disclosures made, in the progress of it, of the cruelties and licentious practices connected with, and almost inseparable from, the colonizing of convicts, were truly appalling. There is at present, as you know, no system of prison disci- pline either in England or France. Indeed, the style of building, governing and furnishing prisons is far less uniform than with us—defective as our country still is in this respect. There is every reason to believe, however, that both England and France are much nearer to the establishment of uniform principles than we are, inasmuch as they have a national control of the subject, and we have not. In France public opinion is settled in favour of the Pennsyl- vania or separate system substantially—1, for all untried prison- ers of every grade; 2, for all juvenile delinquents; and 3, for all convicts whose sentence is for a less term than one year—and there seems to be no doubt that the same principle will soon be recognised in all terms and subjects of imprisonment. The efforts which have been made in our country to mislead the community respecting the tendency and results of the separate system, have had an unhappy influence abroad. Statements have been copied from the reports of the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia by the opponents of the separate system, without the explanations which accompanied them in their original form; and hence the most unreasonable and groundless prejudices have been excited in the minds of those who rely on these garbled representations. Some of the evils of the Auburn or silent system have been lately felt at a prison in Poissy. Complaint was made that the food was not half cooked; and because the governor did not heed