Proceedings of the grand juries, magistrates, and other noblemen and gentlemen, of the county of Glocester, on designing & executing a general reform in the construction and regulation of the prisons for the said county ... / by Sir G. O. Paul.

  • Paul, George Onesiphorus, Sir, 1746-1820.
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Proceedings of the grand juries, magistrates, and other noblemen and gentlemen, of the county of Glocester, on designing & executing a general reform in the construction and regulation of the prisons for the said county ... / by Sir G. O. Paul. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Cornwall, by conflruction of a new prifon, “ erefted “ a monument to their humanity,”* they endowed it with this, amongft other merciful regulations—“ That “ irons be provided at the county expence, and kept “ ready, but not ufed, except they are abfolutely ne- “ ceflary for punifhment or fecurity.” In the various prifons Mr. Howard vifited on the continent, he faw no fetters, except in one or two particular inftanccsjf but, when returned, he remarked at Salilbury, “ two crown-debtors coupled “ together, and chained to the outward door of the “ prifon, begging alms of the paflengers.” With refpe£f to prisoners for debt, it is not the bufinefs of our prefent meeting to arraign the equity of our laws, in ordaining a privation of liberty to debtors, without refpedt to the merits of their in- dividual cafes. It is fufficient that it has fo ordained; with us, it refts only to fee the legal ordinance mea- fured to them in mercy. The law has decreed imprifonment for debt; but the law has not intended, by the lofs of liberty, that the health, perhaps the life, of the debtor fliould be de- * Howard, p. 353, 395, 396. •j- “ J11 Paris, I was furprifed at feeing that none of the prifoners in the courts were in irons. No gaoler may put them on any prifoner, without exprefs order from the judge ; and yet, in fomc of the ptifons, there were more prifoners than in any of the London gaols.”——Howard, p. 166. flroyed