obtained at a cost not higher than that within the wages of ordinary labourers. The experience of the effects of sanitary measures in banishing spontaneous disease from crowded prisons, offers further evidence of the health obtainable by simple means, under circumstances still more unfavourable.

The prisons were formerly distinguished for their filth, and their bad ventilation; but the descriptions given by Howard of the worst prisons he visited in England (which he states were amongst the worst he had seen in Europe) were exceeded in every wynd in Edinburgh and Glasgow, inspected by Dr. Arnott and myself, in company with the municipal officers of those cities. More filth, worse physical suffering and moral disorder than Howard describes as affecting the prisoners, are to be found amongst the cellar population of the working people of Liverpool, Manchester, or Leeds, and in large portions of the metropolis. As a standard of the progress made in ameliorating the condition of prisoners, I refer to his general statement of the condition in which he found the prisons when he inspected them in England.

"Water.-Many prisons have no water. This defect is frequent in bridewells and town gaols. In the felons' courts of some county gaols there is no water: in some places where there is water, prisoners are always locked up within doors, and have no more than the keeper or his servants think fit to bring them.

7

"Air.-And as to air, which is no less necessary than the two preceding articles, and given us by Providence quite gratis, without any care or labour of our own; yet, as if the bounteous goodness of heaven excited our envy, methods are contrived to rob prisoners of this genuine cordial of life, as Dr. Hales very properly calls it; I mean by preventing that circulation and change of the fluid without which animals cannot live and thrive. It is well known that air which has performed its office in the lungs is feculent and noxious. Writers upon this subject show that a hogshead of air will last a man only an hour: but those who do not choose to consult philosophers may judge from a notorious fact. In 1756, at Calcutta, in Bengal, out of 170 persons who were confined in a hole there one night, 154 were taken out dead. The few survivors ascribed the mortality to their want of fresh air; and called the place, Hell in Miniature.

"From hence any one may judge of the probability there is against health and life of prisoners crowded in their rooms, cells, and subterraneous dungeons, for 14 or 15 hours out of the 24. In some of those caverns the floor is very damp; in some there is sometimes an inch or two of water; and the straw or bedding is laid on such floors, seldom on barrack bedsteads. Where prisoners are not kept in underground cells, they are often confined in their rooms, because there is no court belonging to the prisons; which is the case in many city and town gaols; because the walls round the yard are ruinous, or are too low*

* An Act made in Ireland the 3rd year of his present Majesty " for better preventing the severities, &c., has the following clause :-"Whereas many infectious disorders are daily produced by the confinement of numbers in close prisons, where

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for safety; or because the gaoler has the ground for his own use. Prisoners confined in this manner are generally unhealthy.

"In Baker's Chronicle, p. 353, that historian, mentioning the assize held in Oxford Castle, 1577 (called, from its fatal consequences, the Black Assize), informs us, that all who were present died within forty hours; the lord chief baron, the sheriff, and about 300 more.' Lord Chancellor Bacon ascribes this to a disease brought into court by the prisoners; and Dr. Mead is of the same opinion.

"The first of these two authors, Lord Bacon, observes, that 'the most pernicious infection, next the plague, is the smell of a jail, when the prisoners have been long close and nastily kept; whereof we have had, in our time, experience twice or thrice; when both the judges that sat upon the jail, and numbers of those who attended the business, or were present, sickened and died.'

"Sir John Pringle observes that 'gaols have often been the cause of malignant fevers;' and he informs us that in the late Rebellion in Scotland, above 200 men of one regiment were infected with the gaol fever by some deserters brought from prisons in England.

"Dr. Lind, physician to the royal hospital at Haslar, near Portsmouth, showed me, in one of the wards, a number of sailors ill of the gaol fever, brought on board their ship by a man who had been discharged from a prison in London. The ship was laid up on the occasion. That gentleman, in his 'Essay on the Health of Seamen,' asserts that the source of infection to our armies and fleets are undoubtedly the gaols; we can often trace the importers of it directly from them. It often proves fatal in impressing men on the hasty equipment of a fleet. The first English fleet sent last war to America lost by it above 2000 men. In another place he assures us that the seeds of infection were carried from the guard-ships into our squadrons; and the mortality thus occasioned was greater than by all other diseases or means of death put together.'

"It were easy to multiply instances of this mischief; but those I have mentioned are, I presume, sufficient to show, even if no mercy were due to prisoners, that the gaol distemper is a 'national concern of no small importance."

"Sewers.-Some gaols have no sewers or vaults; and in those that have, if they be not properly attended to, they are, even to a visitant, offensive beyond description; how noxious, then, to people confined constantly in those prisons!

One cause why the rooms in some prisons are so close is the window-tax, which the gaolers have to pay; this tempts them to stop the windows and stifle their prisoners.

"Bedding. In many gaols, and in most bridewells, there is no allowance of bedding or straw for prisoners to sleep on; and if by any means they get a little, it is not changed for months together, so that it is offensive and almost worn to dust. Some lie upon rags, others upon bare floors. When I have complained of this to the keepers, unto there is no back-yard adjoining, and the lives of his majesty's subjects are endangered by the bringing of prisoners into public streets for air; be it enactedThat every grand jury at the assizes or quarter sessions may be enabled, and they are hereby required and directed to contract either by lease, or to purchase a piece of ground next adjoining the gaol, or as near as conveniently can be had thereto, and cause to be erected necessary houses, and a wall sufficient for the security of the said prisoners.

their justification has been: the county allows no straw; the prisoners have none but at my cost.'

Since Howard succeeded in gaining national attention to the condition of prisoners, the evils of prison management have been removed. A large proportion of the prison population is taken from the worst regulated and most confined neighbourhoods, which have been the subject of examination; and, with the view to judge what might be effected by sanitary regulations, I have made frequent inquiries as to the effects of sanitary measures on the worst class of persons, the larger proportion of whom are taken from the worst neighbourhoods, that is, as to the effects of living in the same atmosphere, on a less expensive diet than that of the general labouring population, but provided with clean and tolerably well-ventilated places of work and sleeping-rooms, and where they are required to be cleanly in their persons.

I have obtained through Mr. Hill, the prison inspector of Scotland, an accurate return of the number of days which the prisoners had been absent from labour on the ground of ill health in the celebrated prison at Glasgow, where the separate system of confinement has been tried (Return No. 1); a similar return from the Edinburgh prison, (No. 2). I also obtained a careful examination of the amount of sickness prevalent amongst the prisoners at Salford prison, (No. 3). The average cost of the diets, (principally vegetable,) at Salford, varied from 1s. 4d. to 1s. 6d. per week; at Edinburgh, 1s. 9d. per week; and at Glasgow, 1s. 7d. per week. Vide Appendix.

The medical practitioners, who are well acquainted with the general state of health of the population surrounding the prisons concur in vouching to the fact, upon their own knowledge, that the health of the prisoners is in general much higher than the health almost of any part of the surrounding population; that the prisoners, as a class, are below the average of health when they enter the prisons; that they come from the worst neighbourhoods; that many of them come from the lodging-houses, which, in those towns, as will be shown, are the constant seats of disease; that they are mostly persons of intemperate habits; that many of them come in in a state of disease from intemperance and bad habits; and notwithstanding the depressing influence of imprisonment, the effect of cleanliness, dryness, better ventilation, temperance, and simple food, is almost sufficient to prevent disease arising within the prison, and to put the prisoners in a better working condition at the termination than at the commencement of their imprisonment. At the Glasgow bridewell, the prisoners are weighed on their entrance and at their discharge, and it is found that, on the average, they gained in weight by their imprisonment.* At Edinburgh, there

Thirty-three males who were imprisoned for six months gained 37 lbs. total weight; five females gained 19 lbs.; twenty-two males, confined during twelve months, gained 3 lbs.; eight females, during the same period, gained 5 lbs.; seven males in eighteen months gained 24 lbs.; and two females 10 lbs. At Edinburgh also they were weighed, and, on the whole, they gained. See Appendix, statement

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were instances of poor persons in a state of disease committed from motives of humanity to the prison, that they might be taken care of and cured. The tables are to be taken as showing imperfectly the comparative effects of the different circumstances; because, when a labourer is obliged to leave work he loses wages; and it is known of large classes of them, that they often work improvidently and injuriously to their chances of recovery by continuing at work in impaired health too long; the prisoner, on the contrary, by absence on the sick list, gains ease and exemption from slave labour; and the officers have constantly to contend against feigned sickness to avoid task-work and punishment. It should also be noted that a large proportion of the sickness of the prisoners is of a character that is excluded from all tables of insurance, from the benefit societies as being specially excluded from their benefits. The numbers imprisoned at the lower ages, or above 36 years of age, were too few to form any comparison:

The total number of male prisoners in the three prisons from which the returns were compiled was 7,328; of which number, in the Glasgow prison there were 1,796, in the Edinburgh prison 1,256, and in the Salford prison 4,276 prisoners. The columns inserted in the above table from the prisons give only the amount of the periods of confinement and weight of prisoners at the commencement and termination of their imprisonment.

of sickness prevalent amongst the males. The returns which are given in full in the Appendix contain the amount of sickness prevalent among the female prisoners also.

The information as to the actual amount of sickness prevalent amongst the labouring classes is at present extremely defective for the purposes of insurance. One of the most authentic tables is that compiled by Dr. Mitchell, from returns we obtained under the Factory Commission of Inquiry, of the experience of sickness amongst the labourers employed by the East India Company in their warehouses in London. The experience was from 2461 workmen employed during ten years. (Return No. 4.)

This is a highly favourable table, inasmuch as the men were, in the first instance, select, nearly as much so as recruits in the army; care was also taken to give men who became infirm such labour as they could perform without exertion; but, above all, they had the benefit of medical advice without any expense, and being thereby induced to make early application, disease was cut short at once on its first appearance. Moreover, they were not allowed to return to work until they had a medical certificate of their cure.

Another table (No. 5) given is one of the amount of sickness experienced by the male operatives in the cotton mills in England, also deduced from the returns directed to be made under the Factory Commission of Inquiry. But these returns do not include the experience of the mills in Manchester, which was not collected by the district commissioners.

The table (No. 6) is that made up by Mr. Tait, surgeon, from his inquiries of the experience of sickness in the wynds of Edinburgh.

The next table (No. 7) is made up from the experience of benefit societies in Scotland, subsequent to the experience tables which were compiled by the Highland Society; but this is the experience of a select class, which appears to me to be too favourable for general use in Scotland.

The next table (No. 8) is one in use by Mr. Finlaison, the actuary at the National Debt Office, prepared from various sources of information. It has been tried by the experience of a large benefit society in Bethnal Green, and the allowance for sickness was found to be low as compared with the sickness occurring amongst the labouring classes in that district.

The account given by Mr. Tait, of his investigation of the sickness which had prevailed amongst 335 persons in 180 families, exhibited in column No. 5, is as follows:

:

"The parts visited may be considered a fair specimen of the Edinburgh wynds and closes. They consist of Gillon's and Gibb's Closes, Canongate, Blackfriars' Wynd, Bremot's and Skinner's Closes, High Street, and Meal-market Stairs, Cowgate. The drainage of all these places is bad; the sewers are without exception open, and those in Gillon's and Gibb's Closes being nearly on a dead level, keep these places