A visit to the Philadelphia prison ; being an accurate and particular account of the wise and humane administration adopted in every part of that building; containing also an account of the gradual reformation and present improved state of the penal laws of Pennsylvania: with observations on the impolicy and injustice of capital punishments. In a letter to a friend / By Robert J. Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, Robert J. (Robert James), 1775-1833.
Date:
M.DCC.XCVIII
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A visit to the Philadelphia prison ; being an accurate and particular account of the wise and humane administration adopted in every part of that building; containing also an account of the gradual reformation and present improved state of the penal laws of Pennsylvania: with observations on the impolicy and injustice of capital punishments. In a letter to a friend / By Robert J. Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    tiot been convi<Se4 of the charges they fland im« prifoned for, ought not, in juftice, to have a con- nexion with, and be placed among, fuch prifonersas have been condemned. The difference of their fituation demands a feparation. On the other hand, as the intention of the new fyftem of laws is not only to puniih offenders, but to reiliore' them reformed to fociety, it is more abfolutely neceffary, that the tonvids fliould be kept apart frorn the vagrants. It is well known, that in no one place are offered more injurious and vicious examples, than in a prifon, where condemned, iintried, and all other clailes of prifoners, are intermingled^ without regard either to age, fex, or condition. Thofe in many parts of Europe^ and feveral iii America, have long flood melancholy evidences of this fa6l'. Thoufands are committed annually for a trifling fault,- or mifdemea- rior—many ffom misfortune, or accident—and w© may venture to affert, that fcarcely one has beefi difmiffed, with the fame flock of morality he carried in with him^ Accuilomed to idlenefs, debauchery, and practice of frauds upon their keepers, upon tifiters, and upon each other, the young and unex- perienced criminal is early taught to imitate the dexterity of his elders-—-^the timorous foon Requires the audacity of his more hardened compariidns^—the modefi become fpedlators of, and inured to the inde-i licacy and indecency of others—and thus, amidfl fuch frequent opportunities for vice, are planned, iiot a trifling proportion of the murders, robberies, and other kinds of villany, perpetrated after their efcap^ t>r difcharge. In Philadelphia, the fepardtion of the different elaifes of prifoners wa? early deemed an objed of the highefl importance, by all who were in any wife interefled in the then contemplated reform of the prifon government, and as fuch fleadily adhered to. The inhabitants of the prifon were extremely averfe B to