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Title: The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. IV, No. II, April 1949)
Author: Anonymous
Language: English
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TERMS:--ONE DOLLAR A YEAR IN ADVANCE.
THE
PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL
OF
PRISON DISCIPLINE
AND
PHILANTHROPY.
PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
UNDER THE DIRECTION OF “THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR ALLEVIATING
THE MISERIES OF PUBLIC PRISONS,” INSTITUTED 1787.
VOL. IV.--NO. II.
APRIL 1849.
PHILADELPHIA:
E. C. AND J. BIDDLE,
SOUTHWEST CORNER OF FIFTH AND MINOR STREETS.
CONTENTS OF NO. II.
ART. I.--HOUSES OF REFUGE, 49
II.--MORTALITY AND CRIME, 63
III.--STATE PENITENTIARIES, 70
NOTICES.
No. 1.--Institutions for the Insane, 79
2.--The precise present character of transportation explained,
with suggestions by Ignotus, 86
3.--Statistics of Truantry and of Juvenile Vagrancy in the City
of Boston, 88
4.--The London Christian Observer’s notice of Rev. Mr. Field’s
work on the Advantages of the Separate System of Imprisonment, 92
5.--Kentucky State Penitentiary, 93
6.--An Inquiry into the Alleged Tendency of the Separation of
Convicts, one from the other, to Produce Disease and
Derangement, 94
7.--New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, 95
8.--Shelter for Colored Orphans, 95
9.--Paupers and Prisoners in Cincinnati, 95
10.--Insane Asylum in North Carolina, 95
11.--Corrupt Police, 96
CONSTITUTION
OF THE
“_Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons_.”
When we consider that the obligations of benevolence, which are founded
on the precepts and examples of the Author of Christianity, are not
cancelled by the follies or crimes of our fellow-creatures: and when
we reflect upon the miseries which penury, hunger, cold, unnecessary
severity, unwholesome apartments, and guilt, (the usual attendants of
prisons,) involve with them, it becomes us to extend our compassion to
that part of mankind who are the subjects of those miseries. By the
aid of humanity, their undue and illegal sufferings may be prevented;
the links which should bind the whole family of mankind together,
under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken; and such degrees
and modes of punishment may be discovered and suggested, as may,
instead of continuing habits of vice, become the means of restoring
our fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness. From a conviction of
the truth and obligation of these principles, the subscribers have
associated themselves under the title of “THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR
ALLEVIATING THE MISERIES OF PUBLIC PRISONS.”
For effecting these purposes, they have adopted the following
CONSTITUTION.
ARTICLE I.--The officers of the Society shall consist of a President,
two Vice-Presidents, two Secretaries, a Treasurer, two Counsellors, and
an Acting Committee, all of whom, except the Acting Committee, shall be
chosen annually, by ballot, on the second Second-day, called Monday, in
the month called January.
(See 3d page of Cover.)
[Illustration: FRONT VIEW.
J. M^C ARTHUR JUN^R ARCH^T.]
[Illustration: PLAN]
APRIL, 1849.
VOL IV.--NO. II.
ART. I.--HOUSES OF REFUGE.
I. _Twenty-first Annual Report of the Managers of the Philadelphia
House of Refuge to the Legislature and to the Contributors
thereto._ 1849, pp. 32.
II. _Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for
the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents to the Legislature of the
State and the Corporation of the City of New York._ 1849, pp. 50.
We need, in some parts of the United States, a grade of penal
institutions between what are called Houses of Refuge, or of
Reformation for Juvenile Delinquents on the one hand, and the highest
and best class of penitentiaries on the other.
As they are at present, our institutions of this class are neither
schools nor prisons. They employ the inmates at labor and instruct
them, as far as practicable, in the elements of useful knowledge and
thus far they resemble the Industrial Schools of Europe. But they
are places of close confinement--they have regulations and a police,
not unlike those of a prison, and their inmates are sent thither as
_offenders_--though _juvenile_ offenders. The worst that can be said of
some of them is, that they are incorrigible truants--of others, that
they are past parental control, (and in this respect, perhaps, “more
sinned against than sinning;”) but some are adroit thieves and bold
burglars--some skilful forgers--some incendiaries, and some assaulters
with intent to kill. Their ages, too, range from eight to sixteen or
even eighteen, and their size and physical strength are equally various.
This is a motley group to bring into the relation of schoolmates
or fellow-apprentices, and their care-takers must possess rare
endowments, so to administer discipline, as to prevent much harm from
being done to some in connection with all the good they do to others.
For, that they have done immeasurable good, no one who has investigated
their operations and results, can for a moment doubt. They have fully
justified the high anticipations which were entertained concerning
them at an early period of their history. “No disciplinary institution
in our country,” said the Rev. Dr. Alexander of New Jersey, “promises
to effect more for society, than a House of Refuge for juvenile
delinquents. If it were ever lawful to rejoice in an event produced by
crime, it would be, that these unhappy youth are, by the commission of
a crime, snatched from the sink of pollution in which they have been
immersed, and put to regular business, and educated as well as most
children in the land.”[1]
Having fully sustained their claim to confidence, as a system of
reformatory means, we naturally desire to see them rendered as
effective as possible. And to this end we would have them adhere
punctiliously to the original design for which they were instituted.
This was not to inflict a penalty, but to interpose a shield--not to
bring suffering upon the guilty, but to supply instruction, wholesome
discipline and kind offices to the neglected and exposed. They may
easily be perverted by opening their doors to youth (“young in years,
but old in sinning”) who are thought to require some milder discipline
than the penitentiary affords, but whose offences are really as rank
and as indicative of deep-seated depravity as those of the oldest and
the worst.
In determining, in any given case, whether to admit or reject an
applicant, the managers of a House of Refuge would be governed, we
presume, chiefly by the _character_, though in some degree by the size
and physical strength of the individual, as a subject of mild, parental
discipline. The question, how far a residence in the institution will
be likely to bring about his radical reformation and the establishment
of good habits has the first place; and another, and scarcely less
important question would be, what influence will his admission have
on others? If he is perverse and stubborn, and at the same time
overgrown in size, so as require a disproportionate measure of care
and vigilance, (in which case other and more hopeful subjects must be,
to an equal extent, neglected,) his admission would seem inexpedient.
Provision exists, or should be made for such an one elsewhere. So,
also, if one is presented, deformed in body, deficient in mind, or
of sickly constitution, and not likely to succeed in acquiring the
knowledge of a trade, or unfitted to bear the proper discipline, he has
higher claims on some other form of public charity. A House of Refuge
is not meant for him, nor is it likely to benefit him.
An institution designed to keep boys and girls in due order and
subordination, ought to be able to dispense with some of the more
revolting appendages of a prison--such as unscaleable walls--narrow
stone cells--and massive bars and bolts. We admit that all these are
necessary the moment it receives a sturdy, hardened, hackneyed rogue
of eighteen, sixteen or even fourteen; but it is a pity to force upon
the whole establishment the gloomy appearance of a prison, rather
than reject half a dozen youth of extra age and size, whom parents or
friends naturally feel disposed to save from a felon’s doom.
The inquiry of chief interest, however, relates to _character_. What
has been his career up to this time? Who have been his associates? To
what species of crime has he been chiefly addicted? Has he, in the fury
of unbridled passion, attempted the life of another? of his parent, or
associate, or enemy? Has he deliberately forged another’s name? Has he
been familiar with scenes of outrage and tumult? Is he a frequenter
of the haunts of infamy? Has he good fellowship with a large circle
of like characters with himself? These questions, or any of them, if
answered affirmatively, would go far to turn the scale against his
admission. The acts we have supposed, indicate in the perpetrator
of them, a confirmed habit or propensity, which may, perhaps, be
corrected; but not by the ordinary discipline of a proper House of
Refuge. Nor should the attempt be made to employ it on so unpromising a
subject, at the risk of introducing more evil than we can possibly hope
to prevent. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive any good reason why a
burglar or incendiary at sixteen, should be called a “delinquent,” and
put to school, while the same grade of criminals at twenty, are called
convicts, and sent to the penitentiary. Age, by itself, is a very
unsafe criterion by which to determine the turpitude of crime or the
appropriateness of punishment.
We do not say that no cases of this class can occur, in which the
admission of the party to a House of Refuge, would be expedient;
but, as a general thing, we should be disposed to confine its benign
influence to those whose proclivity to a criminal career is but feebly
though decidedly developed; whose delinquencies exist rather in an
impatience or contempt of domestic restraints, than in deliberate
violations of public law. The discipline, as well as the construction
of Refuge-buildings and the usual means of safe custody, evidently
contemplate a very young class of boys and girls, say from eight to
twelve years of age, who may be incorrigible truants, disobedient to
parents, insubordinate to masters, petty thieves, street-strollers,
without a home or worse,--uneducated, unaccustomed to any kind of
restraint. Such youth come under the discipline of an establishment,
like our Houses of Refuge, with a prospect of great advantage.
Even those who have acquired fixed habits of lying, stealing, deceit
and violence, are, at this age, physically reducible to order
and industry. They are incapable of using dangerous weapons with
effect--they are not likely to combine for outbreaks, nor to plot
escapes. With wholesome food, and an hour or two’s recreation every
day, they can be made to conform to stringent regulations, without
great or long continued severity of discipline. Active employment in
some handicraft, daily schooling, and proper religious culture, soon
work a wonderful transformation in such a class of children, and if
they can only be continued long enough to make their new course of life
_habitual_, so that to be idle shall be as irksome to them as it once
was to work, and to speak the truth shall be as easy as it once was to
lie, the benefit of such an institution could not be overrated.
If the discrimination we have suggested, should be faithfully
observed, we should find a very large class of youth who require penal
discipline of a severer type, and for whom no provision is now made
except in the penitentiary, which is quite as ill adapted to meet the
exigency at this point, as the Refuge is at the other. We should,
therefore, be disposed to take the most promising youthful inmates
of the penitentiary, and the least suitable or most unpromising
of the older inmates of some of the Houses of Refuge for juvenile
delinquents, and provide an institution for them, that shall combine
the severity of the former with the leniency of the latter. This idea
is substantially embraced in the Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight,
and is recognized to some extent in the new State Reform School at
Westborough, Massachusetts.
The origin and peculiarities of these institutions, involve the vast
and interesting subject of juvenile delinquency; its causes, effects
and preventives, upon an investigation of which we promise ourselves
some future opportunity to enter. As it is, our limits require us to
pass abruptly to a few general remarks upon the present condition of
our principal institutions designed for its correction.
From the twenty-first report of the Philadelphia House of Refuge, we
learn, that during the year 1848, one hundred and sixty-eight inmates
were received, (129 boys and 39 girls,) and 153 discharged, (116 boys,
and 37 girls,) of whom, 89 were by indentures. Of the commitments, 86
were by request of parents or near friends. The average age of both
sexes was a fraction over 14 years; but so far as the prospect of
reformation is concerned, a girl is as old at 14 as a boy is at 18.
There was only one death in the House during the year. Of the 65 boys
indentured, 30 went to farmers; and of the 24 girls all were indentured
to housewifery. The occupations of the inmates are, cane-chair seating,
(48,) umbrella furniture, (57,) and razor-strop making, (71.) The
income from the labor of boys during the year, was $5,598,88, and the
total expenditures of the establishment, were $13,987,39. The principal
of this institution has, at our request, furnished some valuable
suggestions respecting the methods of administration and discipline, in
establishments of this class, of which we gladly avail ourselves in the
present connection.
He ranks classification, among the most obvious, important and
difficult objects to be attained in such an institution. He admits that
education, moral, intellectual, and religious, is all important; but he
insists, that habits of industry and obedience, should be regarded as
among the first and most desirable fruits of it. The power of habit, he
thus forcibly describes:
“A boy, who has been unaccustomed to obey his parents, or respect his
superiors, and has been allowed to spend most of his time in idleness
before he is brought to the Refuge, if kept regularly at work, and
at the same time compelled to obey those who have the care of him,
will, in time, become so accustomed to labor, that he will even, in
some cases, prefer it to idleness, and obedience will also become
habitual. But this must be a work of time. He should be kept until he
is thoroughly weaned from his former indolent ways. I have known boys
who have remained three or four years in our institution and who have
run away from their masters soon after they were bound out, come back
to the city and resort to their old haunts and habits; but finding few
if any of their old associates, they have soon felt that their former
habits were not so pleasant, and having lost all relish for a vagabond
life, have voluntarily returned to the house and asked admission and
employment as a boon!”
He justly animadverts upon the unreasonableness of those who expect
“a House of Refuge will accomplish, in a few months, what respectable
and even religious parents find it difficult to do even in a series
of years.” They have their children from the first hour of their
existence, and through all that precious period of childhood, while
they are comparatively strangers to evil habits and associations, and
yet how often do they fail to secure their standing in good habits and
sound principles? How preposterous then, must be the expectation that
the House of Refuge will take them, when their moral and intellectual
nature is so completely perverted and corrupted, and thoroughly reform
them in a few months!
Touching the employment of boys in the institution, and after they
leave it, many difficulties are experienced. The modes of labor which
are adopted, are, of course, fitted to the age and physical ability
of such children, but are by no means calculated to prepare them
for that sort of life, which most of them expect to lead. To remove
them completely from the temptations and exposures of city life, is
considered very desirable; and hence, to place them with farmers in
the country, where the means of indulging vicious inclinations are
supposed to be few and far between, is always preferred to placing them
with mechanics, where they will be likely to find associates who will
be the subjects or agents of corruption. But to bind a boy to a farmer
till he is of age, is regarded by most parents as a very undesirable
disposition to make of him, and when a boy is thus bound, he generally
understands that his parents or friends will readily connive at his
escape. The general wish is, that they should be bound to trades, if
bound at all.
It seems to be admitted that, as a general thing, city boys are not
likely to make good farmers, unless put to it very young, and by
degrees accustomed to hard work. “The routine of labor pursued in the
Refuge, does not seem fitted to prepare boys for that kind of life,
to which the greater part of them are destined. A boy here, works
from five to seven hours a day at very light work, in a room that is
warmed and made comfortable in winter, and sheltered from the wet and
heat of summer. He has from one to two hours for play every day, and
an abundance of playmates. After living in this way about one year,
(sometimes a little less, and sometimes more than a year,) he is bound
to a farmer, who makes him work, perhaps ten or twelve hours in a day,
and at labor which is much harder than any thing he has been accustomed
to before. He has, perhaps, repeatedly been told, while in the Refuge,
to behave well, and he should soon have a good place, and it has been
told in such a way, that to be with a farmer is, in his mind, to be
in a kind of paradise. But when he finds hard work, no time for play,
frequent exposure to heat and cold, few or no companions, it is not
strange that some are disappointed and disposed to abscond.”
In contrast with this mode of proceeding, our correspondent proposes
the following outline. “If it were possible,” he says, “I would keep
every boy at least three years, and I would have him understand, when
he comes into the Refuge, that he must not expect to be discharged
in less than three years, so that his mind should be at ease on that
point. I would have them employed at trades, that would be useful
to them after their discharge. In three years they would acquire so
much knowledge of a common trade, that their services would become
desirable to respectable mechanics. In three years, if properly
disciplined, their habits of industry, obedience, &c., would acquire
a degree of strength. They would become weaned from their old
associates and habits. In three years the older ones, (if too old for
apprentices,) would become sufficiently acquainted with their business
to earn their living. Their parents would not feel that their time was
lost. They would see, and the boys themselves would see, that they are
acquiring that sort of knowledge that will be useful to them in after
life. Many of our older boys think now, that their time is in a good
degree lost. They know, indeed, that the intellectual education they
acquire will be of service to them, but they feel, at the same time,
that they are not learning any thing that will secure them a livelihood
after their discharge.”
Among the obvious evils of a short continuance in the Refuge, (besides
the impracticability of forming new habits in the children,) are, (1.)
The state of constant restlessness in the alternation of hope and
disappointment, respecting a release. Parents are permitted to visit
their children once in two months, and in these visits the principal
subject of conversation is about their “getting out.” The children
are constantly urging their parents to have them released, and the
parents are equally constant in promising to do so. This excites much
uneasiness in the former, and neutralizes what would otherwise be the
useful discipline of the house; and, (2.) The institution is deprived
of the fruits of its good discipline as fast, nearly, as they appear.
“By constantly sending out the best, we lose their influence, which
might be of much service with the more vicious. If, in any community,
the best members were constantly leaving, and only bad members coming
in to supply their places, the condition of that community, with regard
to morals, would become very low, if not hopeless.”
These opinions, formed from an intimate acquaintance with the
practical working of the system, are entitled to weight. We do not
adopt nor reject them. We do not say that any material modification
of the present rules of admission, or of the form of discipline is
practicable. But, if the views we have ever held respecting the design
of a House of Refuge are just, viz., to rescue those whose childhood
lies all _open to evil examples and influences, and to put them under
treatment, which shall resemble, in its main features, that of a good
home_, then are we clear, that a more rigid discrimination in the
admission of inmates should be observed. The most hopeful subjects of
such domestic discipline, are those who have not past into that stage
of moral and intellectual stupor and impenetrability, on which ordinary
sympathies fall as water-drops upon a marble slab. Notwithstanding the
sad neglects and abuses they have suffered, there are still impulses
in their young natures, which can be worked upon by kind words and
approving smiles, and indeed, their present unhappy condition is owing,
in no small measure, to the absence of such influences from the place
which (for want of a better) they call their _home_. We have known
cases, not a few, in which the manifestation of a real interest in the
welfare of a child at a favorable moment, has been, in its effects,
like the gushing forth of a living spring from the smitten rock. And it
is in this view, that we most highly commend a recent measure in the
institution, whose report is now under review, viz., the employment of
an intelligent, judicious, capable female, to supervise with maternal
care and tenderness the moral and physical condition of the boys.
We all know with how many chords the human heart is strung, which
vibrate only to the soft breath of sympathy. A gentle accent--a
trifling act of kindness, or even a glance of pity, will awaken their
harmonies, and fill the heart of the rudest child with what may well
pass for rapture. There is a period, however, at which these better
feelings become comparatively incapable of excitement. They have either
lost their vitality by abuse or neglect, or they have been overborne
and swallowed up by the ebbless tide of vicious associations and
indulgencies. The voice of virtuous charmers is no longer heard, charm
they never so wisely.
But we cannot enlarge on this fruitful topic, suffice it to say that
some of the defects of the present system are remediable, as we have
already intimated, and others are inseparable from the very nature and
design of the institution, and can only be set over against the greater
good.
The report furnishes a very gratifying account of the progress which
has been made in the erection of a new Refuge for Colored Juvenile
Delinquents. A front view and ground plan of the structure accompanying
our present number and the following general description of the
arrangement of the various departments, may be interesting to our
readers.
The site embraces eleven acres of ground, and is intended to afford
ample room, (at some future time,) for a new Refuge for white children.
The lot lies in the form of a parallelogram, 400 feet by 210, and is
enclosed by a wall varying in height from 20½ to 30 feet.
“The arrangement of the buildings within the enclosure, which are
all of brick, with slate roofs, is made with reference to a total
separation of the boys and girls, and to the existence of three
separate classes of both male and female inmates: the first (or
best) and second classes each to have a play-ground and work-room,
and the members of one class not to be allowed to converse with
those of the other, on any occasion; the third class, consisting
of the most depraved inmates, to be kept, until in a condition to
warrant promotion to a higher class, in separate confinement, with
a suitable allowance of out of door exercise for the preservation
of health, said exercise to be taken in an enclosure specially
designed for this purpose, where no conversation between the
inmates shall be permitted.
“The numbers of these three classes which can be accommodated when
the buildings marked on the plan shall be erected, as ultimately
designed, are--
Boys. Girls.
1st Class 40 27
2d Class 56 45
3d Class 30 22
--- --
Total 126 94
“Dormitories for the first and second classes are at present provided
for--
Boys. Girls.
1st Class 30 14
2d Class 42 22
-- --
Total 72 36
“The erection of all of the other buildings specified in the plan,
was authorized, with reference to the accommodation of 250 inmates.
They consist of--
“1. A main building, three stories in height, containing offices
and chambers for the officers, school-rooms and infirmaries for
the male and female inmates, a dining and sitting-room for the
girls, &c.
“2. Two buildings projecting from the rear of the main building;
the one in the male department, two stories in height, and
containing the chapel and the boys’ dining-room; the other in the
female department, three stories in height, and appropriated for
the kitchen, the wash-room, store-rooms, &c.
“3. Two wings, each three stories in height; the one, in the female
department, containing the dormitories and bathing-rooms for the
girls; the other, in the male department, containing the boys’
dormitories.
“4. A building, two stories in height, near the southern wall
of the male department, the first and second stories of which
are designed for work-rooms, and the basement for a washing and
bathing-room for the boys.
“A corridor, 12 feet in width, extends the whole length of the main
building and wings, a distance of 243 feet.
“Many important points, in addition to the classification of the
inmates, claimed the attention of the Board, in the preparation of
the plan--_e. g._ security against the escape of the inmates, and
their constant supervision by an officer at all times of the day;
the proper ventilation and warming of all the apartments; provision
for out of door exercise for the inmates in all states of the
weather, &c. These, it is believed, have all been kept in view and
provided for, in the plan adopted.
“The wall of enclosure, excepting the gate-way and a portion of the
pointing, is completed; the work-shop is finished; and of all the
other buildings the walls are up, the roofs on, and a small part of
the flooring laid.”
Extracting flues, connecting with shafts leading to the external air,
have been inserted in all the dormitories and other rooms, to ensure a
good ventilation at all times; and suitable arrangements have also been
made for heating the different apartments. We trust the Managers have
succeeded in securing these two most important requisites to the health
(physical and moral) of their new institution. A full supply of good
water, fresh air and wholesome warmth, is what every institution of the
kind wants; and yet in one or more of them almost all are deficient.
The second document, at the head of the present article, shows a
prosperous state of the institution of which it treats. The whole
number of children and youth who have found refuge within its walls
is 4,397. Of these, 568 were under its care, at different periods,
during the year 1848. The number remaining January 1, 1849, was 355;
and 213 were disposed of during the year. The chief branches of labor
are, making and seating chair frames and manufacturing razor strops.
Among the improvements of the year is the introduction of a small steam
engine, to relieve the severity of some parts of the labor, which is
not unfrequently prejudicial to the immature strength of the inmates.
The disbursements of the year amounted to $22,896 10, and the receipts
$24,122 32. Of the latter sum, $7,198 77 is from the labor of the
inmates, $7,323 83 from the State, $4,600 from the city of New York,
and $4,026 50 from theatre and circus licenses. The chief items of
expense were food and provisions, $9,106 41; salaries, $4,875 89;
clothing, $2,297 90.
The importance of more perfect classification and separation,
especially among the female inmates, is urged. “Contact with the
older and more depraved of their sex, is, for obvious reasons, far
more destructive to young and comparatively innocent females than to
males.”[2]
In confirmation of the views we have presented in a former part of this
article, we cite the following passage from the report now before us.
“This is the proper place to allude to a practice of which we have
already complained more than once--that of sending to the Refuge,
from mistaken ideas of humanity, subjects so far advanced in years
and in crime as to give but faint hopes of their own reformation,
while by example and influence they are calculated to do infinite
harm to others. Those who have travelled long and far on the
downward road of vice, are most unfit companions for such as have
been arrested at the outset of their guilty career. It is to guide
and to reclaim the latter, that houses of refuge are established;
the reformation of the former must be attempted in other places
and by other means. To this practice of sending to the refuge
hardened offenders, whose proper place is a State prison, the
managers ascribe the frequency of attempts to escape. Many sent to
us as boys, are men in size and strength, impatient of restraint,
reckless of consequences, hardened, daring and ingenious in all
mischief. While such subjects are sent us, to corrupt, to organize,
and to lead the younger and more orderly, attempts at escape will
continue to be made, and in spite of all the vigilance of the
officers, will occasionally be successful.
“The rapid increase of crime in our city, and the constantly
augmenting numbers of vicious and vagrant youth, is a subject of
serious contemplation. It would be serious enough, if it only kept
pace with the astonishing increase of our population, but it even
outstrips it. There is no way of getting at complete statistics in
this matter, but all the details that can be obtained confirm this
view. Thus there were committed to prison in the city, including
those sent before trial, and after sentence, and excluding summary
convictions,
in 1835, 2387 persons,
in 1844, 9153 persons.
During this time the population increased from 270,089 to 312,710
(in 1845) or about 35.1 per cent., while the increase in crime
was 354.6 per cent. The average number of inmates in the Tombs
was, in 1846, 174; in 1848, 216, an increase of 21.2 per cent.
in two years, or over three times the growth of the city, which
of late was about 6.90 per cent. for two years. This startling
disproportion, is more or less true of all large cities. It is a
law of our social state, that growing prosperity shall find its
drawback in the parallel increase of misery; and that crowded
communities, as they offer the most liberal rewards to good conduct
and enterprise, so shall contain likewise the most seeds of evil,
the strongest temptations to vice, the largest amount of misery.
And besides our own neglected and depraved population, the tide of
emigration, now setting in stronger and stronger every year, while
it enriches our country, leaves much of its refuse in our city.
Pauper families, and even felons, are not unfrequently sent over
to us, as a cheap way of disposing of them, by the selfishness or
mistaken humanity of those whose duty it is to provide for them at
home, thus swelling the number of houseless, friendless and lawless
youth, drifting loose upon society, to become utterly ship-wrecked,
unless the active hand of benevolence is stretched out to save
them.”
Of those children received in 1848, 209 were boys, (192 white and 17
colored,) and 55 were girls, (45 white and 10 colored.) 140 of the
whole number were from the Police and Sessions of the city, and of the
white children only THIRTY-NINE were of American parentage. 127 were
of Irish birth! Of 141 boys discharged, 53 were indentured to farmers,
14 to shoemakers, and 19 sent to sea; and of 47 girls discharged,
33 were indentured to housewifery. The average age of the inmates
received during 1848, was thirteen and two and a half twelfths years.
Seventy-seven were over fifteen when received.
_New House of Refuge at Rochester._--Our readers are perhaps aware,
that an institution similar to the present House of Refuge in New York,
is about to be established in Rochester for the accommodation of the
Western counties of the State. A friend has kindly furnished us with
the following description of the buildings, &c. Mr. Wood, the present
superintendent of the New York House of Refuge, is expected to take
charge of the new establishment, and the discipline will probably be
substantially the same. An appropriation is expected at the present
session of the legislature, that will enable inmates to be received
this spring. No provision is yet made for females.
“At present,” says our correspondent, “they have only erected a main or
centre building and one wing. The whole length of this building is 234
feet. Main building 86 by 60 feet. Wing 148 by 32 feet, terminated by a
building 37 feet square. The basement of stone, 10 feet in the clear,
walls above of brick. The basement in the main building is intended for
the culinary department; that in the wing for wash-rooms, bathing-room
and workshops. The first and second floors of the main building are
divided into four rooms, with suitable closets, and three halls, with
staircases. The main hall in the centre is 15 feet wide; side halls to
communicate with the wings 12 feet wide. The rooms on the first floor
of the main building are intended for superintendent, matron, &c. The
rooms on second story for hospitals and sleeping-rooms for the officers
of the institution. The upper or third story of main building is
intended for a chapel, 60 by 60 feet, the entrance to which is from the
side hall.
“The first story of the wing is divided into two rooms for school and
dining rooms, each 70 by 30 feet. In second story of wing are the
dormitories for the inmates, two tiers in height, and 86 in number,
arranged next the outside wall. Hall 15 feet wide in the centre. Each
dormitory is 7½ feet wide and 7½ feet high, and is furnished with a
narrow window reaching from floor to ceiling. Dormitory doors are of
cast-iron open work for summer ventilation, allowing the air to pass
directly across the building; in addition, each dormitory is supplied
with fresh air, descending from the cornice by iron pipes, and passing
through the iron doors. This building is surrounded by a stone wall,
to two feet at the top, 23 feet from the foundation, and 20 feet above
ground. The wall is 500 feet long and 400 feet wide, embracing about
4½ acres of land, and cost $12,000. The building, as above described,
cost $26,000. The whole is a most perfect piece of workmanship in
every respect, built in the very best manner, and is considered a most
complete model for such a purpose.
“Attached are 40 acres of land, which it is intended the inmates shall
cultivate, thus affording them a healthy employment, and, at the same
time, furnishing a supply of vegetables, &c., to the institution. The
buildings are situated about a mile from the centre of business, in a
fine dry sandy soil.”
We had prepared a sketch of the proceedings at the opening of the State
Reform School in Massachusetts, and of the discipline, &c., prescribed
there, together with a view and ground plan of the buildings, but our
limits are so contracted as to forbid its appearance in the present
number.
ART. II.--MORTALITY AND CRIME.
It is not generally known, although the fact has been sufficiently
demonstrated by different vital statisticians, that great annual
mortality is accompanied by a proportionate increase of births, so
that the population is kept at its usual average even if it does not
increase. One effect of this mortality and increase of births is the
disproportion between the numbers of the young, the improvident, and
the thoughtless, and the older, more prudent and considerate. Mr.
Slaney, in his report on Birmingham and other towns, made to the
commissioners for inquiry into the state of large towns and populous
districts, after referring to Mr. Chadwick’s exposure of the popular
fallacy, that the sufferings caused by disease, especially among the
poor, restrained the increase of population, says: “I have constantly
observed, wherever the mortality was high in close, narrow, neglected
courts and alleys, there the children swarmed, as if to fill up the
places; and it has been demonstrated again and again, that a high
mortality in an increasing country, only leads to a great increase of
births.” After this preliminary notice, the reader will be able to
understand the force of the following remarks on the connection between
mortality, (including, of course, its physical and moral causes,) and
crime.
Mr. Slaney contrasts the two classes or kinds of inhabitants of the
same city, in the one of which the annual mortality is but two, and in
the other four per cent. “We shall find the rate of mortality one great
criterion of comfort, therefore, of contentment, of good conduct, of
moral habits, of intelligence, docility, usefulness and value.”
“In the one case we shall find a population having little to
complain of, ready to attend to advice, having had time to learn
and to think, having experience from lengthened life, and being
valuable subjects, docile and industrious, possessing their chief
safe-guard against tumults or disorders, ‘the hope of improving
their condition.’ In the other will be found a body, consisting
in a great measure of the young, who cannot repay their support;
a large proportion of the rest will be inexperienced, untaught,
untried, having had no time to learn or to think. All will be
more or less reckless, and hard in mind and conduct; they have
been formed by the cautious course of circumstances around them;
poison to the mind, to the body, has been the course of their only
education. Their maxim will be the heathen maxim of old, ‘Eat and
drink, to-morrow we die;’ forced by their necessities to labor,
experience and wisdom will be wanting; they will not husband their
wages, but seek for excitement in intemperance, or low sensual
indulgences; their consumption of spirits will be ten times that
of the happier class. The gratification of their animal passions
will be their chief object; illicit connections will be formed;
early ill assorted marriages will take place without any chance
of provision for offspring; there will arise multitudes of sickly
and neglected children, pressing into the place of those early
victims just departed, and to be cut off by the same melancholy
process; and thus the scene revolves. This class will eagerly join
in mobs or disturbances, partly for the sake of excitement, and
because they have _not_ that security for good conduct--the hope of
improving their condition.”
Dr. Lyon Playfair, one of the commissioners, in his report on the large
town in Lancashire, remarks: “The tendency to crime is increased by
the comparatively few old and experienced men left to counteract the
haste and inexperience of youth. In the recent mobs in Lancashire, the
great majority of the rioters were found to consist of persons just
emerging from boyhood; the absence of elderly persons among them was a
matter of common remark. Mr. Combe has observed, that the comparative
paucity of aged and cautious persons is the cause of the inconsiderate
and turbulent movements in America. The obstacles in the spread of
education are, also, connected with these causes.”
Dr. Playfair said previously, “The facts exhibited in the preceding
sections, will, I apprehend, convincingly show, that a crowded and
unhealthy district, with all its inevitable accompaniments of low
morals and low intelligence--where the condition of human beings is
scarcely above that of animals--where appetite and instinct occupy
the place of the higher feelings--where the lowest means of support
encourage the most improvident and early marriages,--is not the place
where we shall find a diminishing or even stationary population. For
the early unions there, are followed by early offspring; and although
more than half that offspring may be swept away by disease during
early infancy, yet nearly a third of it will grow up, in spite of all
the surrounding evils, to follow in the steps of their parents, and
in their turn to continue a race ignorant, miserable and immoral as
themselves.” In a note, Dr. Playfair makes the following estimate. “If
we suppose a district of 50,000 inhabitants, with births as 1 in 22,
and deaths as 1 in 33--a ratio not actually as unfavorable as that of
Holme--a little calculation will show that, by the end of twelve years,
the population will have swollen it to nearly 60,000!”
_Sameness of the Causes of Crime and of Disease._--Dr. Lyon Playfair,
in the report already referred to, says expressly: “All the experience
acquired during this inquiry, points out that one immediate effect of
the operation of morbific causes, even when not present in sufficient
intensity to produce direct disease, is to create an appetite for
vicious indulgences. It is too common a mistake to transpose the effect
for the cause, and to ascribe the disease to the indulgence of those
passions, which, in the first place, were created by the low sanatory
state of the district.”
To the same purport are the pointed conclusions of Mr. Slaney. He had
just been describing the low class of dwellings of the poor and the
wretched, and the self-interest of small capitalists to prefer the
erection of these to ones of a better description. He goes on to say:
“I have endeavored to describe some of the evils arising from the
want of proper sanatory regulations in many of these crowded and
neglected places. They may be summed up as follows:
“1st. Shortening the duration of the lives of the community.
“2nd. Disease, suffering and inability to work on the part of many
who survive--the cause of great cost to the country.
“3d. Crimes, theft, and the loss of property, which the police
constantly point out as arising from these neglected classes.
“4th. Riots, disturbances and drunkenness, which may generally be
traced to the same class of persons, often to the same place.
“5th. Great injury to the education of the poor, which is
constantly neutralized in its good effects by the neglect and
evils they see around them. The same observation applies to the
inestimable advantages of religion and of attendance on religious
worship.
“6th. Great discontent in some, and sluggish apathy in others,
producing recklessness of conduct, indifference, and want of
attachment to the institutions of our country.
“7th. The loss in the humbler classes of the cheapest, best and
most enduring pleasures, viz., those arising from the kindly
influence of the domestic relations between husbands and wives,
parents and children, brothers and sisters--this pure source
of happiness derived from mutual kindness, attachment and good
offices--is, amid the hardening and disgusting scenes described,
almost destroyed.
“Amid such scenes, the children become hardened, careless of
cleanliness, unused to order, and all the benefits derived from the
best education which may be given, is destroyed by the constant
evil examples they see around their homes. This is especially the
case with the female sex, who, if early tainted by the disgusting
scenes existing in the places described, and by the want of all
decency and self-respect there exhibited, become at a future
day, the nursing mothers of vice and wretchedness, instead of
inculcating the household virtues.”
The sameness of the causes of diseases and of crime, are clearly
indicated by the Rev. Mr. Clay in his report in the borough of Preston,
as where he says:--
“A map of the town has been made, shaded in those districts which
are ill ventilated, drained and cleaned; the increased depth of
tint indicating a proportionate degree of dirtiness, &c. The
number of deaths in the respective streets is also given, every
blue spot representing a death from fever or epidemic disease, and
the red spots showing the frequency of death from other disorders.
The residences of persons charged with offences during the last
year are also indicated, and the whole tends to show, that dirt,
disease and crime are concurrent.”
_Overcrowding and Defective Ventilation._--Dr. Southwood Smith, in his
evidence before the commissioners for “_Inquiring into the state of
large towns and populous districts_,” adduces the following painful,
but yet instructive observations. We reproduce them here, not merely
as a warning against a remote, or even a threatened evil, but with
the hope of stimulating our fellow-citizens to the adoption of such
measures as shall eradicate similar nuisances too near their own doors.
“I wish particularly,” Dr. S. Smith states, “to draw attention
to the importance of having a certain number of rooms in the
dwelling-houses of the poor, though I am aware of the difficulty
of legislating on this matter, and of the still greater difficulty
of carrying out practically what the legislature may declare to
be its intention and will. Still it is right, that the attention
of the legislature and other public bodies should be called to
the physical deterioration and moral degradation, which results
from the want of proper room in the dwelling-houses of the poor.
Besides the evidence on this subject, which has been published in
the report on the sanitary condition of the laboring population,
a large mass of evidence to the same effect will be found in the
reports of the sub-commissioners under the Children’s Employment
Commission, and in the statements of a great number of witnesses
examined by them. Instances such as the following are given: ‘A
mother and her son, being an adult, sleep in the same bed. Grown-up
females and unmarried young men sleep in the same room. A man,
his wife, and his wife’s sister, the latter being an adult, sleep
together in the same bed.’ I have myself seen, a young man, twenty
years of age, sleeping in the same bed with his sister, a young
woman, sixteen or seventeen years old. That incestuous intercourse
takes place under these circumstances, there is too much reason to
believe; and that when unmarried young men and women sleep together
in the same room, the women become common to the men, is stated as
a positive fact; but I regard another inevitable effect of this
state of things as no less pernicious; it is one of the instances
which, for want of a better term, may be called _unhumanizing_,
because it tends to weaken and destroy the feelings and affections
which are distinctive of the human being, and which raise him above
the level of the brute. I have sometimes checked myself in the
wish, that men of high station and authority, would visit these
abodes of the less fortunate fellow-creatures, and witness with
their own eyes the scenes presented there; for I have thought the
same end might be answered in a way less disagreeable to them. They
have only to visit the Zoological Gardens, and observe the state of
society in that large room, which is appropriated to a particular
class of animals, where every want is relieved, and every appetite
and passion gratified, in full view of the whole community. In the
filthy and crowded streets, in our large towns and cities, you see
human faces retrograding, sinking down to the level of those brute
tribes; and you find manners appropriate to the degradation. Can
any one wonder that there is among these classes of the people so
little intelligence--so slight an approach to humanity--so total an
absence of domestic affection, and of moral and religious feeling?
The experiment has been long tried on a large scale with a dreadful
success, affording the demonstration, that if, from early infancy,
you allow human beings to live like brutes, you can degrade them
down to their level, leaving to them scarcely more intellect, and
no feelings and affections proper to human minds and hearts.”
Dr. Lyon Playfair adduces instances of the crowding of persons in the
same room, without even the plea of necessity. They are not, he informs
us, the most extreme cases of the kind.[3]
In Preston, out of 442 dwellings examined in unhealthy localities, and
inhabited at the time of the inquiry by 2400 persons sleeping in 852
beds, it appeared that
In 84 cases 4 persons slept in the same bed,
In 28 “ 5 “ “ “
In 13 “ 6 “ “ “
In 3 “ 7 “ “ “
In 1 “ 8 “ “ “
“Amidst the dirt and disease of filthy back courts and alleys, vices
and crimes are lurking,” says the Rev. Mr. Clay, “altogether unimagined
by those who have never visited such abodes.” The inspectors of prisons
in Scotland, from separate inquiries, have also come to the conclusion,
that the physical causes of disease, indirectly become the causes of
crime.
_Public Lodging Houses_, are another prolific source of disease and
vice. They are, in nearly all large cities, the nightly resorts not
only of the migrating laborer, and travelling artisan, but, also, of
the lower mendicants, thieves, and prostitutes. These resorts are well
known to the criminal police. In 1831, Mr. James knew a house of this
description in London, to contain 126 persons, many of them women
and children, and perhaps not more than a dozen beds in the place.
At the census of 1841, there were not more than 30 to 40 in any of
these houses; “still these numbers crowd the houses most annoyingly.”
It is no uncommon thing, as we learn from Dr. Duncan, (_Report on
the Sanatory State of Liverpool_,) for the keepers of lodging houses
to cover the floor with straw, and allow as many human beings as can
manage to pack themselves together, to take up their quarters for the
night, at the charge of a penny each. The havoc made by the cholera in
the lodging houses at Manchester, in 1832, was terrible. In some of
these houses, as many as 6 or 8 beds were contained in a single room,
which are crowded promiscuously with men, women, and children. Dr.
Howard, after showing the lamentable extent to which they become the
hot-beds of _febrile_ diseases of the most violent and fatal character,
owing mainly to their filthy and unventilated condition, thus describes
the morals of their frequenters, and their malign influence in this
way on the young and inexperienced. “They serve as open receptacles
of crime, vice, and profligacy, and as nurseries in which the young
and yet uninitiated, become familiar with every species of immorality.
They are the haunts of the most depraved and abandoned characters,
as well as the most miserable and suffering objects of the town,
(_Manchester_,) and constitute one of the most influential causes of
the physical and moral degradation of our laboring population.”
Unless we are misinformed, the investigations now making by the Board
of Health of Philadelphia, will reveal a state of things, not much
behind, although on a smaller scale, those described in the foregoing
extracts; and as regards New York, Dr. Griscom’s report, made a few
years ago, exhibits a still darker picture. With the warnings on the
other side of the Atlantic to deter us, we ought to have kept clear of
these nuisances entirely. Let us, as we have imitated the people of
Great Britain for evil, imitate them also for good, by instituting the
same searching inquiries into the nature and extent of these physical
and moral corruptions, that are recorded in the proceedings of the
various Parliamentary committees and Royal Commissioners.
In Glasgow, the lodging houses have been subjected to regular municipal
supervision and ordinance, and, as we are told, with excellent effects.
ART. III.--STATE PENITENTIARIES.
I. _The Twentieth Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Eastern
State Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, transmitted to the Senate and
House of Representatives._ March 1849, pp. 36.
II. _Report of the Board of Inspectors of the Western Penitentiary
of Pennsylvania, for the year 1848, with the accompanying
documents._ Pittsburg, 1849, pp. 21.
III. _Report on the condition of the New Jersey State Prison,
embracing the Reports of the Joint Committee, Inspectors, Keeper,
Moral Instructor and Physician._ Trenton, January 1849, pp. 44.
IV. _Documents relating to the State Prison._ Senate of
Massachusetts, Document No. 5, pp. 24.
I. The first document in the above list is worthy of a much more
extended notice than our limits allow us to give. We shall notice its
constituent parts in their order.
(1.) In their report the inspectors refer with natural interest to the
opening of the State Lunatic Asylum, which is expected to be completed
as early as January 1851. For want of it, “instances have occurred in
which the sheriff has been the medium of a message from the judge who
pronounced the sentence, to the chief officer of the prison, informing
him that the prisoner was insane, but that no other mode of providing
for the case existed.”
The subject of pardons occupies a prominent place in their report. It
appears that but a fraction over six per cent. of the pardoned have
been recommitted; and the percentage of pardons in relation to number,
sex and color, cannot be so well set forth in any other way as by
transferring the table to our pages.
_Table showing the whole number of pardons granted from the
establishment of the prison in 1829 to 9th July, 1848._
+-------+-----------------------------------------+-----------------------------+--------+
| | _Whole number in confinement._ | _No. of pardons._ | |
| | | | |
| +-----------------+---------------+-------+--------------+--------------+ Annual |
| | Whites. | Colored. | | Whites. | Col’d. |average |
| | | |Total, | | | per |
| +-----------------+---------------+ both +----+----+----+----+----+----+centage.|
| YEAR. | M. |Fem.|Total.| M. |Fem.|Tot.|colors.| M. |Fem.|Tot.| M. |Fem.|Tot.| |
+-------+-----+----+------+-----+----+----+-------+----+----+----+----+----+----+--------+
| 1831 | 75 | | 75 | 25 | 4 | 29 | 104 | 1 | | 1 | | | | |
| 1832 | 90 | | 90 | 27 | 4 | 31 | 121 | 4 | | 4 | | | | |
| 1833 | 129 | | 129 | 41 | 4 | 45 | 174 | 2 | | 2 | | | | |
| 1834 | 189 | | 189 | 81 | 2 | 83 | 272 | 8 | | 8 | 1 | | 1 | |
| 1835 | 261 | 8 | 269 | 155 | 11 |166 | 435 | 10 | | 10 | 4 | | 4 | 2.38 |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 1836 | 278 | 11 | 289 | 179 | 19 |198 | 487 | 2 | 1 | 3 | | | | |
| 1837 | 320 | 8 | 328 | 199 | 19 |218 | 546 | 4 | 1 | 5 | | | | |
| 1838 | 333 | 11 | 344 | 199 | 22 |221 | 565 | 10 | | 10 | | | | |
| 1839 | 241 | 6 | 247 | 150 | 16 |166 | 413 | 2 | | 2 | | | | 1.26 |
|to Jan.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 15th.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 1839 | 335 | 9 | 344 | 214 | 30 |244 | 588 | 9 | | 9 | 1 | | 1 | |
| 1840 | 331 | 8 | 339 | 203 | 31 |234 | 573 | 19 | | 19 | | | | |
| 1841 | 293 | 6 | 299 | 171 | 32 |203 | 502 | 11 | 1 | 12 | 1 | | 1 | |
| 1842 | 298 | 5 | 303 | 153 | 21 |174 | 477 | 20 | | 20 | 2 | 1 | 3 | |
| 1843 | 319 | 6 | 325 | 146 | 16 |162 | 487 | 15 | | 15 | | | | |
| 1844 | 332 | 12 | 344 | 136 | 17 |153 | 497 | 39 | | 39 | 4 | 3 | 7 | |
| 1845 | 230 | 10 | 240 | 97 | 11 |108 | 348 | 23 | 1 | 24 | 2 | | 2 | 5.37 |
|to Jan.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 21.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 1845 | 305 | 15 | 320 | 113 | 16 |129 | 449 | 5 | | 5 | | | | |
| 1846 | 321 | 14 | 335 | 110 | 16 |126 | 461 | 24 | 1 | 25 | | | | |
| 1847 | 297 | 9 | 306 | 113 | 13 |126 | 432 | 20 | | 20 | 5 | | 5 | |
| 1848 | 245 | 8 | 253 | 97 | 12 |103 | 356 | 6 | 1 | 7 | | | | 4.08 |
|to July| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| 9th.| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
+-------+-----+----+------+-----+----+----+-------+----+----+----+----+----+----+--------+
During the year 1848, there were received 121 convicts, viz., 88 whites
(two females), and 33 colored (three females), and 128 were discharged.
Of these, 83 served out their time; 13 were pardoned; 11 discharged by
order of law; 15 died from disease, and one was a suicide. The whole
number of convicts in confinement during the year was 415, viz., 299
white and 116 colored. Of the 16 deaths, 10 were whites and 6 colored.
(2.) The warden’s report shows that of the 121 convicts received, 32
were foreigners, and 56 were natives of Pennsylvania. Ninety-one were
under middle age; 96 were of intemperate habits; 76 could read and
write; 60 were unmarried. Only 14 were bound and served their time out;
13 were bound and broke their indentures; and 96 were never bound.
Some curious facts appear in the various summaries which these details
embrace. For example, of the 2,421 prisoners received into the
institution from its opening in October 1829, 619 could neither read
nor write; 2,020 were addicted to the use of intoxicating drinks; 460,
or more than one-sixth, were foreigners; and of these last, Ireland
supplied 199 and Germany 112. Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine were
first convictions; 1,451 were never married; and 18 had been married
and separated; 1,631 were whites (48 females) and 790 colored (86
females); 467 broke their indentures, and 1,569 were never bound. Of
the 2,421 crimes, 2,000 were against property.
(3.) Next in order is the physician’s report, in which special
reference is made to the inordinate length of sentences, when the
nature of the discipline is duly considered. Dr. Given thinks the
coloured prisoners as a class, suffer a double burden, inasmuch as
their sentences are longer and the enervating influence of imprisonment
is more severely felt by them,--and he furnishes the following items on
this subject.
Whole number of white prisoners, 1631
Whole number of colored prisoners, 790
Average length of sentences of white prisoners, 2 y., 8 ms., 2 days.
Average length of sentences of colored prisoners, 3 y., 3 ms., 14 days.
Whole number of pardons of white prisoners, 253
Whole number of pardons of colored prisoners, 25
Whole number of deaths of white prisoners, 73
Whole number of deaths of colored prisoners, 141
The Doctor is disposed to vindicate the exercise of the pardoning
power, even to a still greater extent than heretofore, unless the need
of its exercise is taken away by a proper adjustment of the penal code
to the penal discipline of the State. We are not prepared to say how
far it would be safe to entrust the executive with power to remedy
the errors or supply the defects of the Legislature, but if it is
given, its extent should be clearly defined, and its exercise closely
watched. We do not make this remark with any reference to the past.
It is suggested by the idea, advanced in the report before us, that
the pardoning power must needs be freely exercised, to compensate for
the undue severity of the sentences. It is easy to see where such a
doctrine would lead if followed out. We do not doubt the correctness of
the statement, that the sentences at present prescribed by our laws,
are quite too long and too indiscriminately inflicted, if we take into
consideration the nature and efficacy of the discipline under which
they are to be worked out; but in our haste to remedy the evil, we need
to be cautious, lest we incur another and even a greater, because a
more general and radical one. We hope this distinct call of attention
to the subject, will awaken our legislators to early and efficient
action. Where crying injustice is now done under color of law, a double
wrong is inflicted on society. The agent and the instrument, become
alike odious.
Dr. Given seconds the movement of the inspectors towards some relief
from the commitment of insane convicts. He speaks of it not as a
thing happening now and then, but as “A PRACTICE to send thither as
criminals, persons notoriously insane or idiotic.” He also suggests the
importance of some more suitable provision than now exists, for those
who may become insane during their imprisonment.
Of the 15 deaths by disease, eleven were more or less diseased on
admission. The mortality for 1847 and 1848, gives a mean of 4 per
cent., which is the usual average. In respect to insanity, Dr. Given’s
researches show, that of the 121 commitments during the year, 30 have
had insane relatives;--10 cousins, 10 uncles or aunts, 5 parents, 4
mothers or sisters, and 1 grandparents.
Ten cases of insanity are reported, 5 whites and 5 blacks, average
age, 25. Four were in imperfect health when admitted; one has an
insane uncle, and two have an insane brother; 5 are stated as cases of
dementia, and 5 as cases of monomania.
(4.) The moral instructor’s report informs us, that 288 sermons
have been preached in the prison, which is an average of 48 to each
corridor, and nearly one service for every Sabbath of the year. The
whole number of visits recorded as having been paid by this officer to
the convicts, in the course of the year, is 3,385.
II. The condition of the Western Penitentiary, is exceedingly
gratifying. The inspectors allude briefly to the animadversions
which have been made upon the Pennsylvania system; but they express
their confidence, that the happy results which have attended its
administration in that institution, will excite in the public mind the
same confidence in the advantages of that system over all others, which
long experience and personal observation has excited in theirs.
The number of convicts received during the year 1848, (all males,) was
discharged in the same time, 52. Of 1,286 prisoners received from
the opening of the prison, July 1826, only 22 have been white females;
and only 215 colored convicts, of whom 37 were females. Of the 115 in
confinement January 1, 1849, 88 were addicted to intemperance; 44 were
natives of Pennsylvania, and of the 55 received during the year, 32
were unmarried. In respect to occupation, 42 of the 115 were laborers,
15 boatmen, 6 blacksmiths, 5 tailors. Of the 55 received during the
year, 38 were under middle age.
The physician’s report shows, that among 167 prisoners in confinement
during the year, only 4 deaths have occurred. Two of the four were
thoroughly diseased when admitted, a third was of a consumptive family
and died of consumption, and the fourth was sixty-one years old, of
intemperate habits and died of apoplexy. A complete table is presented
by the physician, showing the color, sex, duration of imprisonment,
and state of health on reception and discharge of each prisoner,
released by expiration of sentence or by pardon, from which it appears,
that, _with one exception_, they were all received and discharged
in good health. Among these there were eleven, one or both of whose
parents died of consumption, two who were intemperate, and one very
intemperate, and their average term of imprisonment was eighteen
months. Six were in better health when discharged than when admitted,
and one, who was partially insane when admitted, was discharged in good
health.
As a striking illustration of the healthfulness of the institution,
the physician states that between sixty and seventy different convicts
have been employed during the year in the shoe department, and
forty-eight or fifty on a daily average; “of this number _only four
have failed in consequence of indisposition, to perform their full task
of work. Throughout the year every other than the four referred to
have performed their regularly allotted task._” We are not surprised
that the medical officer thinks it proper to italicise a record of so
remarkable a measure of health.
From the moral instructor’s report, we extract a single, but very
sensible paragraph.
“It is not unfrequently the case that subjects which have been
presented in the ministrations of the Sabbath, are called up by the
prisoners themselves during the _daily visitation_ in their cells,
and thus the opportunity is furnished of impressing upon their
minds, when alone, that _heavenly truth_ which may ultimately bring
them to repentance and to God. In this feature of the _separate
system_, one of its principal excellencies consists. The prisoner,
by himself, separated from all vicious influences, is far better
prepared to receive and retain wholesome instruction than when
surrounded by men of a moral cast like his own. If the reformation
of convicts be accomplished at all, it must be done, as a general
rule, by those moral influences which are made to reach him, _when_
and _where_ intercourse with the vicious is cut off. In this
situation he will listen, reflect and reform.”
III. The New Jersey Penitentiary, at Trenton, received 108 convicts
during the year just past; and had 176 in confinement December 31,
1848, which is 23 more than at the close of 1847. Of the 85 discharged
during the year, 71 had completed their sentences, twelve were
pardoned, (two on the day before their sentence expired,) and two died.
Of 176 in confinement at the date of the report, 99 were received in
1848, and 38 in 1847. Eighty-six were for crimes against property, 142
for a first offence, 127 were under middle age and 42 were foreigners.
In respect to color, 123 were whites, (114 males and 9 females,) and
53 were colored, (one a female.) Sixty-six had no trade or occupation.
The available means of the prison, at the close of the year, were
upwards of six thousand dollars.
The physician’s report states, that “but _one_ death occurred during
the year and that a suicide. From diseases contracted within the
prison, (where there are under discipline 260 persons,) do not average
one a year.” The physician says, that “all experience has proved
steam to be the best carrier of heat, and by far the most certain and
economical.”--p. 43.
The report of the Rev. Mr. Starr, (the moral instructor,) is quite
a valuable and intelligent document. We cannot refrain from copying
a single paragraph, touching the advantages of separation as an
element of prison discipline, especially in its relations to moral and
religious instruction.
“The chances of amendment under the separate system, duly
sustained, must be incalculably greater than where companies of
men are congregated in their workshops. The plan is severe; but,
to use a paradoxical phrase, it is a _mild severity_. The less
abandoned are shut out from association with the hardened, who
may have spent years in familiarity with crime. Each man has his
books and his thoughts and his conscience for companions. His
keepers, his physician when in sickness, his moral instructor, the
superintendent of his daily labor, he soon learns all are _his
friends_. A great deal is in their power, through the pleasant
look, the friendly salutation, and the kind interest manifested
in those little alleviations which in no degree interfere with
the strictest and most wholesome discipline. The prisoner’s
self-respect will thus be encouraged and cultivated, as he sees
that he is not by all the world regarded in the light of a hopeless
outcast. He may be inspired with the noble ambition of regaining
his character, and leading in future a reputable life. Such like
benefits can be extended with four-fold advantage in the separate
plan of imprisonment, while its solitude is relieved by the kind
offices of a sympathizing friendship.”
IV. The inspectors of the Massachusetts State prison at Charlestown,
make a very favorable report of the health of body and mind of the
convicts under their care. “The favorite system of congregate labor and
lenient discipline, established in our prison,” they say, “has fully
answered the high expectations of its most zealous advocates. Every
year brings with it new proofs of its practicability, and of its great
superiority over any and every other that differs from it.”
None will dissent, we presume, from the remark of the inspectors, that
“it should be remembered by all those who are intrusted with the high
prerogative of administering punishment, that the convict in the prison
is sentenced by the law to expiate his crime by confinement and hard
labor, and that every degree of punishment beyond what is needful for
the due execution of this sentence, and the attainment of the best
ends to be answered by it, is excessive, is beyond the sentence and
intention of the law, and is without law or justice.”
The number of convicts received during the year ending September 30,
1848, was 122; number discharged during the year 129; remaining, 281.
Of those discharged, 94 were by expiration and 27 by remission of
sentence, 2 were removed to the lunatic asylum, 2 escaped, and 3 died.
Of the 281 in prison, 22 are negroes, and 8 mulattoes, 203 are below
middle age, and 228 are for crimes against property! Seventy-one are
foreigners, of whom 30 are from Ireland. Of the employments, 72 are
stone-cutters, 20 blacksmiths, 69 cabinet-makers and upholsterers, 21
brush makers, 9 “solitary prison-sweepers.”
The report of the warden concerning the twenty-seven who were (during
the year) pardoned, is very encouraging. “All but one are doing
well--are obtaining a livelihood by honest labor, and are becoming
respected citizens in the communities where they reside.” Forty volumes
have been purchased during the year for the use of the prisoners, among
which we notice the Autobiography of Goethe, Bushnell’s Christian
Nurture, and Vestiges of Natural History.
The warden is of opinion that the lives of the three prisoners who died
was prolonged by their imprisonment, as they had been long diseased!
The prison suffered a serious loss by fire during the year, and from
this and other causes the revenue of the institution is less than the
expenses by $4,242 79.
The physician’s report is a modest and sensible document, evidently
prepared with care. The sickness of the prison would be represented
by an average of four patients a day in the hospital. Four hundred
and twenty-five days of light labor were prescribed during the year,
and about the same number of changes of labor. The general average of
convicts during the year was 287; and Dr. Bemis thinks his report shows
“a fair average degree of health fully equal to that of the community
at large, and vastly superior to what would have been enjoyed by the
same class of men in pursuit of their usual modes of living when at
large.”--p. 21.
The three deaths were of consumption.
The following remarkable statement from the physician’s report, we
cannot refrain from transferring to our pages.
“The average period of imprisonment of all those sentenced for
life to the State Prison, since 1818, (amounting to 125,) has not
exceeded seven years. Nineteen of this number have died in the
Prison after an average confinement of seven years.”
The supply of a substantial suit of clothes and a sum of money, not
exceeding five dollars, to each discharged convict, occasioned an
expenditure last year of more than five hundred dollars. In consequence
of the frequent instances in which the money thus furnished is spent
indiscreetly, it has lately been proposed in the Legislature to entrust
the dispensation of this bounty to the “Boston Society for the relief
of discharged convicts,” and a bill was introduced for that purpose.
We have not learned its fate. From a cotemporary print we learn that,
in consequence of the great increase in the number of convicts at the
Charlestown prison, it has become necessary to use other accommodations
than those which belong to the prison proper.[4] The chief cause
assigned for this increase is intemperance.
_State Prison of Michigan._--It is said that 128 convicts are confined
in the Michigan State Prison, and that the annual deficiency in the
receipts ranges from $5,000 to $10,000. The Governor thinks that
this sum is not more than a reasonable profit upon convict-labor,
considering what is made in other State Penitentiaries within his
knowledge!
NOTICES.
No. 1.--_Institutions for the Insane._
We have upon our table, the reports for the year 1848-9 of the
Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, (the eighth,) of the
Massachusetts State Lunatic Asylum, (the sixteenth,) of the New York
State Lunatic Asylum, (the sixth,) of the Physician and Superintendent
of the M’Lean Asylum for the Insane at Somerville, Massachusetts,
(the thirty-first,) and of the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum, (the
second.) The first and fourth are on private, and the other three on a
public foundation.
1. We suppose the first in our list combines as many of the substantial
advantages for the treatment of patients of this class, as any
institution in the world, and we are happy to know, that the prominent
principles which have been recognized in its structure and economy,
have been adopted in asylums of the latest date. The hospital has been
quite full during the whole year, and yet the health of the patients
has been remarkably good. The present arrangements are fitted to
accommodate 200 patients, and provision will soon be made for receiving
20 more. It is certainly desirable to extend the benefits of such an
institution to as large a number as can divide without diminishing
the aggregate of good, but we quite concur with Dr. Kirkbride in the
opinion, that a larger number than 220 could not be well received in
one building, nor receive due attention from one medical officer--“a
daily visit to all the wards, and a daily supervision of all the
departments by its official head, being exceedingly desirable in every
institution for the insane.” Seven of the seventeen deaths during the
year, “occurred within a fortnight after the patients’ admission,” and
only one had been more than a year in the asylum.
Of 1391 patients admitted to this hospital, 725 were under middle age,
(35 years,) and 666 over. Of 773 male patients, the leading occupations
were as follows:--farmers, 115; merchants, 66; laborers, 62; clerks,
50; carpenters, 30; shoemakers, 22; physicians, 19; seamen and
watermen, 19; teachers, 17; tailors, 15; students, 15; NO OCCUPATION,
108.
Of 618 females, 66 were seamstresses or mantua-makers, and 64
domestics; store-keepers and attendants in stores, 12, and teachers, 9.
Of single females, not pursuing a regular employment, 29 were daughters
of farmers, and 29 daughters of merchants. Of the married, 57 were
wives of farmers; 39 of laborers; 35 of merchants; 23 of clerks. Of the
618, 244 were single, 286 married and 88 widows. And of the 1391, 773
were natives of Pennsylvania; 91 of New Jersey; 197 from other of the
United States; 340 from foreign parts, of whom 189 were from Ireland!
The most productive cause of insanity, as shown by the returns, is
intemperance, 84; the next is mental anxiety, 69; grief for loss
of friends, &c., 69; then comes the loss of property, 67; religious
excitement, 56; domestic difficulties, 45, and _unascertained_, 563! In
907 of the cases, insanity appeared before middle age, leaving 384 only
developed after that period.
The plan of detached cottages for a particular class of patients,
continues to be an approved feature of the arrangements; and among the
valuable improvements of the last year is the erection of a museum
and reading-room on an eligible site. The building is 46 feet by 24,
with a piazza, and the interior is furnished with interesting and
valuable cabinets in natural science, as well as with newspapers, maps,
periodicals, pamphlets, &c. On the interesting topics of society,
instruction, and moral treatment, and the arrangements for heating
and ventilation, much valuable information is furnished. The annual
receipts and expenses are balanced with the sum of _twenty-six cents_,
and the cost of each patient per week, including every thing, is $3 88.
The amount expended on _free patients_ during the year is $7,666 88.
This is unalloyed charity.
2. The State Hospital at Worcester, (Massachusetts,) under the care of
Dr. Chandler, was overflowing with patients, though fifteen new rooms
were added during the year. The average number for the year was 404,
and the number of dormitories 360 only. The number of foreigners in the
hospital at the close of 1842 was 34, at the close of 1847 it was 121,
and at the close of 1848 it was 150!
Dr. Chandler is of opinion, that it would not be judicious to enlarge
the present hospital, but he would rather erect a new one, and separate
the sexes. He thinks three small hospitals, in different sections of
the State, would have some advantage over a large one.
The whole number of patients admitted from January 1833, to November
30, 1848, is 3084, of whom 1433 were discharged cured, 416 improved,
and 272 died. Of the patients admitted last year, 154 were under
middle age, and 255 above, showing a very different result from that
which we have stated above at the Pennsylvania hospital. Of the whole
number received at Worcester, the cause of insanity in 322 cases is
supposed to have been intemperance; in 266 domestic affliction; in
233 religious views, and in 161 self-abuse. Hereditary tendencies to
insanity were traced in 691 cases. Fifteen hundred and sixty-one were
single, one thousand two hundred and thirty-two married, one hundred
and ninety-nine widows, and eighty-six widowers. Dr. C. thinks it very
clear that the sympathies and motives to action, which the domestic
relations supply, are all but indispensable to keep the whole system of
mind and body in a healthful state. If we understand the report of the
trustees, the cost to the State of each patient is $2 33⅓.
3. The report of the New York State Lunatic Asylum established at
Utica, was made to the Legislature, February 1, 1849. During the
six years since it was opened, it has had an annual average of 335
patients. The whole number under care during 1848, was 877, of whom
495 were removed at the end of the year. Judges of county courts have
authority to send to the asylum any person who becomes insane and whose
estate is insufficient for the support of himself and family; and the
county is chargeable with the expenses of his restoration, if it is
effected within the space of two years. Six hundred and twenty-nine of
this class have been received into the institution since it was opened,
and have thus been partakers of the most seasonable and appropriate
charity which the public can bestow. These have been among the most
hopeful subjects of hospital treatment, and would have suffered most
for want of it.
The hospital is lighted by 280 burners from gas manufactured on the
premises. The expense of work, fixtures, &c., was $5,346 48,--and this
mode of lighting, is regarded not only as safer and more secure and
pleasant, but as cheaper than the former mode. The price of board and
hospital care, to patients who are chargeable to towns or counties,
is $2 per week. Pay patients are charged from $2 50 to $4 per week,
according to the accommodations they receive. The receipts of the year
fully meet the current expenses.
Of 382 discharges during the year, 189 were men and 193 were women;
174 were cured, (viz., 87 men and 87 women,) and 84 were improved.
There were 86 deaths. Some salutary cautions are given respecting the
removal of distant patients to the hospital, especially in sudden and
acute cases of insanity, and where they are in a weak or diseased
state, and exposed to much suffering and fatigue on the journey. The
opinion of a judicious physician should be taken before the attempt to
remove them is made. Other and equally important cautions are given
against delaying to send such as are clearly deranged, merely because
they are monomaniacs, or not violent, nor very excitable. “Those cases
of insanity that are most improperly and most frequently neglected
and kept at home until they are incurable, are unattended by much
excitement; those that come on very gradually, unperceived for a long
time, excepting by the most intimate acquaintances,” (p. 20.)
Of the whole number, (2,014,) 1017 were men, and 997 women; 1213 became
insane before middle life, and 801 after that period. Of the 1017 men,
437 were farmers and 133 laborers, 57 merchants and 51 scholars; and
of the 997 women, 853 were employed at house-work, or were without any
special trade or employment; 45 were school girls; 30 tailoresses; 24
instructresses; 21 milliners; 16 mantua-makers; 7 factory-girls; and
1 music-teacher. As to their civil condition, 957 were single; 937
married; 83 widows; and 39 widowers. 1417 were natives of New York, and
300 were from foreign lands.
Among the causes of insanity, are religious anxiety 178, loss of
property 86, sickness and death of kindred 74, excessive study 51,
intemperance 67, Millerism 36, disappointed in love 53, abuse by
husband 28, blows on the head 24, fright 24, excessive labor 33,
anxiety about absent friends, 18. Among the amusements of the patients,
debates, tableaux, singing and dancing, and theatrical performances.
Of the whole number, (2014,) 251, (108 men and 143 women,) were
disposed to suicide. This variety of insanity is by no means the most
incurable. On the contrary, some of the most permanent and complete
recoveries, are from this form of disease. From a register kept by Dr.
Bingham for four years at this hospital, of all the suicides occurring
in the State of New York, and noticed in the public prints, it appears
that 74 cases occurred in 1845, 64 in 1846, 106 in 1847, and 88 in 1848.
In relation to hereditary insanity, the report shows that of the 2014
patients received at the institution, 637 are known to have insane
relatives, and 273 are known to have had insane parents, or nearly 1 in
7. Dr. Brigham expresses the opinion that _all other causes combined
have not so much influence in producing insanity, as the transmission
of the disease from parents to their offspring_, p. 36. In other words,
that the exciting causes would be inadequate to produce insanity, but
for the inherent constitutional tendency to it. Dr. B also declares
his belief, that there is more insanity in this country than in any
other, especially in the northern and eastern States, and _that it is
fearfully on the increase_, p. 38.
Some valuable suggestions respecting the prevalent causes of insanity
and the means of obviating them, are thrown out, and are entitled to
the earnest and studious regard of parents and teachers, as well as of
professional circles.
4. In the _M’Lean Asylum_ there were received during the year 1848,
153 patients, (71 males and 72 females.) Dismissed, 155, (87 males, 68
females,) of whom 82 were restored, (55 males, and 37 females.) There
were 23 deaths during the year. The total number of patients received
from 1837, is 1696. The average of the first six years of this term was
115, and the average of the second six years, was 166. Of the whole
number, 884 were discharged as cured, and 184 died. The report enters
at much length into a history of the construction of the buildings, and
of the recent alterations, amounting almost to a reconstruction of the
largest and most modern building on the male side.
In conjunction with these alterations, a new heating and ventilating
apparatus has been introduced, and as we know the very great solicitude
that is felt in respect to this point by those who are commissioned
to devise the plan and oversee the construction of such edifices, we
extract so much of the report as relates to it.
“Every room has a hot air and a foul air flue opening in it, the
entrance being protected by an ornamental grate, and the galleries
have five or six flues of each kind opening in them, in order that
the diffusion may be general. The flues are twelve by twelve, and
twelve by nine inches in size.
“The pure supplies of air are received into a large reservoir
or space in the basement between the walls forming the sides of
the galleries above, and in which both kinds of flues are built.
This main air channel has an area of at least fifteen feet, and
terminates externally in a low tower, fully exposed to the passing
air.
“The heater is a vertical boiler on the tubular plan, about
eight feet in height and thirty inches in diameter. The fuel
(anthracite) is placed within the boiler, and that is so placed
within the reservoir before named, that only a small part of it,
required to receive the fuel, is left outside.
“On each side of the reservoir of air, is a construction consisting
of six longitudinal chambers one above the other, the whole length
of it. The lower three, separated from the upper three by a brick
arch and from each other by partitions of wood, are the ventilating
channels receiving at intervals the flues from above and finally
terminating beneath the exhausting shaft, to be described.
“The upper range consists of the three channels for hot air.
Both of these ranges are so arranged that a channel answers to a
story above, and thus each story of the house has its heating and
ventilation entirely independent of any other.
“Each hot air channel has a pair of four inch cast iron water pipes
connected with spigot joints and iron cement; one end of each comes
off the boiler near the top, and the other or return end, enters
the boiler on the other side, near its bottom. The hot and cold
ends of each pair of pipes are on opposite sides, in order that the
average heat at any place where the air is delivered above may be
the same. The three pair of pipes receive and return their water,
through tubes reduced to two inches diameter, as recommended by
Mr. Hood, the highest authority on this class of subjects, and at
the same level. The degree of curvature essential in this form
of connection, was expected to make a difference in the velocity
of the circulating fluid, and consequent temperature at which
the water would be found in the different ranges. Practically no
material difference is remarked. The radiating pipes cross at the
bottom of the cold air reservoir. The air flows in to impinge upon
them through arched spaces left in the front of the channels,
looking towards the reservoir. Every flue for hot or foul air is
commanded by a slide readily approached below.
“The heated air is always admitted near the ceiling to obviate any
contamination at its point of delivery. The foul air is drawn off
near the wash-board, any impurities there deposited being drawn
down, but not into the room. The diffusion of the air, where an
adequate exhaustive power is provided, is also much favored by
being thus turned in its course, and the lower stratum is not
uncomfortably cool to the feet,--a common objection to the usual
method of receiving and withdrawing the supplies.
“The foul air channels into which the flues from each story open,
do not come together, until just as they pass under the foot of
the ventilating shaft or chimney, which through the agency of a
cast iron pipe, a foot in diameter in the middle of the shaft,
running up fifty feet and receiving the smoke from the furnaces,
constitutes the moving power. This shaft is built of brick in a
useless angle where the two buildings approached each other, and
has an internal diameter, it being a circle, of about six feet at
its basis a few feet below the cellar floor, and terminates in one
of the original chimney stacks at the corner of the foundation
of the dome, height of about seventy-five feet, and with about
one half its size at bottom. A deviation of a few feet from the
perpendicular was inevitable at about two-thirds its length.
It is carefully plastered or _pargetted_ within. As its upper
opening was commanded by the spherical dome, endangering the
regurgitation of wind at certain times, it was surmounted with a
form of chimney-cap, figured in Mr. Tredgold’s works some forty
years since, and being essentially that recently introduced into
considerable use in this vicinity.
“As a cure for smoky chimneys, this cap has considerable
efficiency, but is regarded as of very trifling moment as for as
suction or exhaustion from below is required. For its power is too
feeble at all times, for such an amount of ventilation as an insane
hospital requires, and depends wholly on the fluctuation currents
of external air. If the upper range of bricks had been laid with a
bevel upwards, and a plain plate of metal placed on four short
legs a few inches above, it would have answered equally well and at
a tenth of the cost. The rarefaction produced by the heat radiated
from the central iron smoke pipe occasions a partial vacuum,
instantly filled from the rooms behind.
“The whole length of cast iron hot water pipe is about 600 feet,
and with the portion of the heater within the main air cell or
reservoir, and the smaller wrought iron tubes connecting the
extremes of each of the six pipes with the upper and lower ends
of the boiler, constitutes a radiating surface of over 700 square
feet. The effective fire surface of the boiler is probably about 30
superficial feet, and about 60,000 cubic feet of space above in the
three corridors, and the rooms opening upon them, are to be heated.
“The amount of anthracite consumed in the twenty-four hours of
our coldest weather, is not far from 400 lbs.; the water in the
extremities of the pipes receiving it from the heater, rarely
exceeds 180° F. and falls off about 20° at its point of re-entering.
“All these expressions, however, are quite indefinite without
taking into consideration the extent of change required in the
air. It is obvious that by closing the damper which commands the
ventilating shaft, the relations of temperature of the air, and
of the pipes would at once sympathize. With the active power of
the shaft, it is certain that any possible amount of ventilation
may be attained. Indeed, it is probable that the present shaft is
equal to the demands of the remainder of the male wing in addition.
The escape of the steam pump is injected into the centre of the
ventilating space, giving us, for some hours daily, the aid of this
recently adopted and exceedingly efficient means of ventilation.
“While a sufficient time has not yet elapsed to stamp our apparatus
with the seal of experience, the only test of such appliances in
the mechanical arts, yet we are authorized to declare that, as
far it has been tried, it promises all that could be desired in
supplying a full, certain, and manageable amount of air, in its
highest hygienic conditions.
“The cost of getting up a complete system of hot-water warming
and exhaustive ventilation in a country where few examples or
approximate specimens are to be found--in a climate which nullifies
all European experience--where all parties, suggesters and
mechanics, are obliged to acquire a certain experience as they go
along, must be much greater than when this subject shall be well
understood and generally adopted, as it eventually cannot fail to
be. Independent of making the flues and ventilating chimney, items
which in new undertakings would naturally come under the head of
construction account, the expense of our undertaking will fall
considerably below a thousand dollars, and we are satisfied that
with the experience acquired in this single trial, it could be gone
over again at a very considerable reduction of cost.”
We have left ourselves but a finger’s breadth of room for a notice
of the report of the _N. Jersey State Lunatic Asylum_ at Trenton,
rendered December 1848. It is accompanied by a view and ground plan of
the buildings, which were opened for patients on the 15th of May last,
under the superintendence of Dr. H. A. Buttolph. They are designed for
the accommodation of 200 patients, and in their general structure and
arrangement accord with those of the Pennsylvania Hospital already
noticed. The asylum occupies a most eligible site, about two miles
north-west of the public buildings, surrounded by a choice farm of 111
acres, with an unfailing supply of fine soft water, and a beautiful
grove in the rear, thus affording abundant room for hospital purposes,
and embracing every variety of scenery and spacious pleasure grounds
for the use of the patients. The various fixtures for warming,
ventilating and lighting, as well as the arrangements for cooking,
washing, bathing, &c., are after the most improved models, and are
described with interesting and intelligible minuteness in the report,
an examination of which we would recommend to all who are seeking
information on the subject. The number received during the year was
86, of whom 83 remained in the asylum at the date of the report. A
large proportion of the number received were chronic cases, which are
generally very numerous at the opening of such institutions. Of the
86, 27 were under middle age; 52 were single and 30 married. Of their
occupations, 22 of the men were farmers, and 16 of the women were
house-keepers. An hereditary tendency to insanity was traced in 18 of
the 86 cases, or about as 1 to 5.
SUMMARY OF PRINCIPAL FACTS.
======================================================================
| Admitted | Discharged | Remaining | |
| during | or died | at date | |
| the | during | of | Cured. | Deaths.
| year. | the year. | report. | |
---------------+----------+------------+-----------+--------+---------
Pennsylvania, | 215 | 203 | 200 | 120 | 17
New Jersey,[5] | 86 | 3 | 83 | 3 | 0
New York, | 405 | 382 | 495 | 174 | 86[6]
Massachusetts, | 261 | 246 | 409 | 136 | 30
======================================================================
VIRGINIA.--The Eastern Insane Asylum of Virginia is established at
Williamsburg, and the Western at Staunton. At the former were received
in 1848, 34 patients, 15 males and 19 females. The number under care,
October 1, 1848, was 165. Aggregate of inmates during the year 198;
discharged 6 males and 10 females; deaths 17, (8 males and 9 females.)
Spacious additions to the buildings are now in progress, a portion of
which will be appropriated to colored patients. The receipts of the
year were $41,350 64, and the expenditures $29,716 89.
At the latter institution were received during the year ending October
1, 1848, 70, (39 males and 31 females,) making an aggregate of 277
under care during the year. There were discharged in the same time 50
patients, of whom 40 were recovered, (21 males and 19 females,) and 7
more or less improved; 2 were unimproved, 1 eloped, and 22 died.
Among the causes assigned for insanity, we notice hard study is given
in the case of 11 males and 1 female, intemperance 16 males, and
domestic affliction 6 males and 18 females. Seven thousand dollars have
been expended lately in new buildings.
No. 2.--_The precise present character of transportation explained,
with suggestions by Ignotus._
We observe in our English papers a brief notice of a pamphlet of
fifty pages, published in London a short time since, advocating some
important modifications of the transportation system. As we regard
the system itself too near extinction to render any modifications of
it particularly valuable or interesting, we notice the publication
only for the sake of what the author says about _convict-separation_.
We take, by piece-meal, the whole extract of the English reviewer,
venturing a brief comment on some passages.
“This sort of confinement (separation) has, of late years, been
extravagantly commended by some, and as loudly reprobated by
others. The truth seems to lie between the two extreme opinions.
(A position which truth has long been supposed to occupy.) We are
led, by our own observations, to value it but little as an _active
agency_ for reforming criminals, but to allow it a high place as
auxiliary, in general, to that which is reformatory in the highest
degree, _Christian instruction in the hands of Christian men_.”
We are not aware of any system of prison discipline that possesses
or pretends to possess an “active agency for reforming criminals,”
independent of Christian instruction. We imprison men to punish them,
and we think the “_active agency_” of punishment is quickened by
separation. And hence we hold, that apart from reformatory influences,
separation during imprisonment is preferable to association, considered
merely as a punishment. When, however, we introduce the agency which is
“reformatory in the highest degree,” (to wit, “_Christian instruction
in the hands of Christian men_,”) the comparative fitness of the two
modes of imprisonment to receive and employ it, is at once revealed,
and, as “Ignotus” says, the separation of the convicts is then seen to
occupy a high place as an auxiliary to its influence.
“The separate system is free, certainly, from many things which
impede the reformation of criminals; from the perpetual distrust
and perpetual punishment which are necessary to enforce _silence_
in _association_, and from the grosser vices of the older style of
prisons, mutual contamination and hardening in villany. It allows
a return to feelings of self-respect. It removes all possibility
of combination for evil purposes, and prevents the exertion of
that fascinating influence which the practised villain exerts so
destructively over the novice in crime. It protects the penitent,
in his first desires and efforts to return to God. It is something,
also, as regards others less hopeful, even for a time, effectually
to break the chain of their evil habits, and to compel the mind,
however reluctant, to turn inwards and reflect, until the dormant
powers of conscience be aroused. Beyond this it does not seem to go
in producing amendment; and we are persuaded, that if the benign
and saving influence of our divine religion were withdrawn from a
prison on the separate plan, not a single inmate would ever leave
its walls a whit more reformed than from any other.”
We think the friends of separation could scarcely ask for a more
favorable exhibit of its advantages than _Ignotus_ gives. It certainly
places that system far in advance of any and all others as the basis
of reformation. And while we readily admit that it is but a basis,
and that higher and better influences must be relied on to make
it efficient as a means of reformation, we cannot agree with the
author, that convicts from a separate prison are not likely to leave
its walls a whit more reformed than convicts from Newgate or from
Blackwell’s Island. To keep bad men apart must always, under all
circumstances, be more conducive to their reform, than to suffer their
intercommunication. If “the benign and saving influence of our divine
religion,” were withdrawn from the city of London or New York, it would
become a pandemonium; but no one would say, that if each man, woman
and child, were separated from every other man, woman and child by an
impassable gulf, the degree of corruption would not be essentially
reduced. Close association breeds the plague of cities--comparative
separation keeps the country clean and wholesome. The analogies of the
moral and natural world are very obvious in this respect.
“If it be thought, from what has been written of late years on the
subject, that a greater efficacy should be attributed to separate
confinement, let it be borne in mind, that cotemporaneously with
its adoption in any prison, there has been very much greater
care taken than ever used to be in the selection of officers to
superintend the discipline, and to convey moral and religious
instruction to the prisoners. Wherever Christianity has been
brought to bear upon criminals, in its real power and blessedness,
good has been accomplished under the most untoward circumstances;
sinners have been brought to Christ and salvation; and the mass,
if not converted unto God, have been marvellously civilized. This
was manifested by the success which followed the self-denying
labors of Mrs. Fry, and other pious persons in Newgate; of that
eminent man Dr. Browning, in so many convict ships; of Sir Edward
Parry, who labored like a missionary amongst his _assigned_ convict
servants, at Port Stephen’s; of Colonel Demaresq, also acting in
the same spirit, under the same circumstances, at St. Helier’s and
St. Aubyn’s; and of Sarah Martin, in the gaol of Yarmouth, of whose
unwearied and blessed labors the Government Inspector, Captain
Williams, makes such honorable mention in several reports. The
superior mind of a person invested with authority, may exercise
a most salutary influence upon any class of human beings, but
Christian doctrine, and Christian character _consistent enough to
stand the scrutiny of the bad_, accomplish greater things; and the
lower any are sunken, the more commanding is this influence upon
their minds.”
We presume the prevailing sentiments of this passage, will meet
a hearty response from all our readers. We are in no danger of
attributing too much efficacy to the power of the truth over the mind
when it has access to it. It may be questioned, however, whether its
influence is not greatly hindered, and sometimes completely obstructed,
by the debasing vices of convicts. We are not quite prepared to admit,
that the lower the human mind sinks, the more commanding is the
influence upon it of Christian doctrine and Christian character, though
we would regard no case as beyond the reach of such an influence.
“The _combination_ of pious Christian zeal with good judgment and a
knowledge of human nature, in the head of any prison establishment,
we are convinced is more likely to lead to the reformation of its
inmates, than any _system_ of discipline _without it_. It has the
blessing of God, “without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy,
nothing is perfect.” But, whatever may be thought of the influence
of separate confinement, as _a means of reformation_, there should
be no doubt about its utility as a punishment, if not carried to
an extreme. It is a most severe one, certainly; but this is not
without great advantages, even in an economical point of view; for
in proportion as it is severe, the sentence may be abridged, and
its heaviest pressure is upon those who deserve it most. Criminals,
of all men, can least bear to be alone. A thoroughly bad man,
by himself, is the greatest coward, and without his accustomed
stimulants, the most wretched of beings; we have no hesitation,
therefore, in stating, that such a man would prefer even the scanty
food, the vermin and the sloth of such a place as Newgate, where
he might gamble for his supper, learn new tricks or instruct the
novice, sing, play, and quarrel by turns in the night-room, than
the very best treatment and the most abundant diet of a prison
on the new plan. The _reformatory character_ of such a gaol is,
to such persons, an object of real terror. A visiting justice of
the gaol of Reading, stated before Lord Brougham’s Committee (p.
478-9,) that full 50 per cent of the vagrant class had actually
fled out of Berkshire, lest they might be immured in so horrible
a place. It is however, an expensive plan for the treatment of
criminals; its _individuality_ and severe pressure creating a
necessity for better occupation of the mind and body, a more
liberal diet and a greater number of teachers than where prisoners
are associated.”
We regard the features of separation which Ignotus delineates in the
foregoing passage, as most highly commendatory of it as a means of
discipline and reform. This better occupation of the mind and body, a
more liberal diet, and the greater number of teachers, which become so
needful, indicate just what the desire for wholesome food does in a
convalescent patient. His vices had made wholesome occupation of either
mind or body irksome; and the attempt to teach him good knowledge was
to annoy, if not to offend him. If separation from the haunts and
fellowship of the wicked makes him long for what he once loathed, the
public are “penny-wise and pound-foolish,” if they grudge the supply.
It is the token of returning health and should be hailed with joy and
gratitude.
No. 3.--_Statistics of Truantry and of Juvenile Vagrancy in the City of
Boston._
By the kindness of Mr. Tukey, City Marshal at Boston, we are furnished
with an interesting report, which he prepared at the instance of the
late efficient Mayor, (Mr. Quincy,) respecting the number, character,
social circumstances, &c. of the street-children, in habits of
vagrancy, wandering about and contracting idle and vicious habits. We
draw largely from this interesting document, and earnestly wish the
like investigation might be made into the condition of other cities in
this respect.
The whole number of the class of children designated between six and
sixteen years of age, is 1066; arranged as follows:
Male children, 882
Females, 184
Children of American parents, 103
Children of Foreign parents, 963
Children who belong to some school, but are truants, 106
Boys regularly employed in Bowling saloons, 139
Children who do not attend any school nor have any lawful calling, 821
Children who do not attend school for want of clothing, books, &c. 129
Children of widows, 238
Children with fathers but no mothers, 29
Children, orphans, 54
Their ages are as follows:
Six years of age, 39
Seven “ “ 53
Eight “ “ 79
Nine “ “ 77
Ten “ “ 121
Eleven “ “ 111
Twelve “ “ 176
Thirteen “ 141
Fourteen “ 143
Fifteen “ “ 80
Sixteen “ “ 56
“My opinion is, that of the whole number, from eight to nine
hundred (from neglect and their bad habits) are not fit to enter
any of our present schools.
“From the best information which I can obtain, I am satisfied that
the whole number in the City at the present time, (including the
above number,) is not less than fifteen hundred of the same class
as those described.
“And I earnestly call your attention to them, and the necessity of
providing some means to have these children properly brought up,
either at public or private expense; for I am satisfied that it
will cost the State and City more for Police, Courts and Prisons,
if they are suffered to go at large, than it would, to take them
now, maintain them and make them useful citizens.
“The State Reform School at Westborough, will be a great benefit.
Out of fifty-eight boys that have been sent there, thirty-four
have gone from this City. But I am of opinion that the law is
defective that waits until the child ‘_shall be convicted of any
offence known to the Laws of this Commonwealth and punishable by
imprisonment_’ before he can be sent there.
“Very few parents are willing to complain of and testify to the bad
conduct of their children, knowing that such testimony will deprive
them of their services.
“I am satisfied that the system heretofore pursued by the City
Government of licensing minors to sell papers, and other small
articles, is an injury to them.
“During the year 1846, out of 112 minors arrested for larceny, and
carried before the Courts, 46 were news-boys. During the year 1847,
out of 112 minors, 58 were news-boys.
“During the year 1847, out of 30 licensed, six were brought in for
larceny during one week.
“There is evidently a great increase of crime among minors. The
Police books show that the number arrested and brought in, is more
than one hundred each quarter.
“The following extract is from the City School Report for the year
1847.
“‘Does the instruction provided by the City reach all those persons
for whom it is intended? This question suggests itself to every one
who observes the apparently great number of children, at large, in
school hours, in almost every part of the City.
“‘It is not difficult to find out what are the occupations of
many of these children. They are hawkers of papers, or sellers of
matches,--most of the time occupied in quarreling and gambling.
They are beggars, male and female, strolling from street to street,
through lanes, by-ways and alleys, practicing the elementary
lessons of pilfering, lying, deception and theft. They may be
seen wherever wooden structures are in the process of building,
repairing, or tearing down;--seeking for fragments of wood to which
they evidently feel they have a very questionable right. They are
the loafers on wharves and in all the modes of juvenile vice. Are
these children in the way to become useful citizens or happy and
respectable men? Are they not growing up to be the occupants of
jails and almshouses? Are they not in a course of education for
worthlessness and crime?
“‘Let us see what answer the records of the courts of justice make
to these questions.
“‘There are, on an average, 74 inmates of the House of Reformation;
nearly the same number in the school on Thompson’s Island; and, for
the year ending in November last, 456, under age, had been inmates
of the jails.
“‘In reference to providing instruction for this great mass of
uneducated children, our _system_ is not defective. Sufficient
provision is now made for the instruction of those children who
have passed the age at which they are admissible into the primary
schools, and who are not qualified for the grammar schools. The
number of this class is rapidly increasing, and is likely to
increase still more. Our system was contrived and adapted to a
small city, peopled by persons born in New England, and always
enjoying and disposed to avail themselves of the advantages of the
free-school system of these States. But some (no?) provision has
been made for the vast accessions to our population by immigration
from foreign countries of persons of every age, and of every
condition of ignorance. Our system of government supposes educated
citizens; and will not be safe unless our citizens are more or
less educated. Now there are great masses coming in upon us who
are not educated, except to vice and crime; the creatures or the
victims of the justice or the oppression, or the over-population
of the old world. For the education of these, adult and juvenile,
not only must provision be made, but means must be used to render
the provision effective. It is not enough to say that provision
is made for their education, if they will avail themselves of it
at a proper time. Unless they are made inmates of our schools,
many of them will become inmates of our prisons; and it is vastly
more economical to educate them in the former than to support
them in the latter. The annual cost of educating an individual at
the public schools is from six to twenty dollars. The annual cost
of the support of an individual in the House of Reformation, the
cheapest of all such institutions, is forty-four dollars, and in
the House of Correction probably not less than one hundred dollars;
and in this estimate is not included the great expense of the
administration of criminal law, much of which might be prevented by
the proper education of these children.
“‘It is a defect in the organization of this (School) Board, that
there is now no person connected with and acting under direction
of the Board, to ascertain what children of the legal age are not
in the schools, and to use measures to bring them there. This
Board is the only one which has, officially, a knowledge of the
numbers of children in the schools and of those who ought to be
there. It is the one whose duty it is to provide means for the
education of all the children. It would be well if it could have
authority not only to use means to bring wandering children into
the schools, but to provide for the instruction of those portions
of the adult population who are without, and who desire elementary
instruction,--that is, instruction in reading, writing and
accounts.’
“I know of no one thing,” says the City Marshal, “that is so much
needed as a proper home for idle and vagrant _female_ children, the
ascertained number of which class is 184. There are, undoubtedly,
300 of the same character now in the City, they may be seen at the
entrance of every public building and every great thoroughfare,
peddling small articles or begging, and insulting every person who
refuses to buy, or give when asked. Many of them have been so long
neglected, that they are familiar with crime in its worst forms,
but against whom it is difficult to procure evidence, and when
procured, the only place they can be sent to, is to the House of
Correction or House of Industry for short terms, and then they are
suffered to go at large without a proper home or friends to care
for them.
“In regard to habitual truants from the schools, I am satisfied
that the powers of the Courts, and the City authorities, are
entirely _inadequate_ to meet the evil. The late Mayor directed
me to detail some officer whose whole duty it should be to look
after the truants that were reported to him, by the masters of the
several schools.
“From the report of the officer detailed for this purpose, I make
the following extract:
“‘During the year that I have had the charge of Truants, I have
been called upon by the teachers of the Grammar and other Schools,
to nearly 300 truant and idle children; and for want of some system
by which to be governed, my practice has been as far as possible
adapted to the circumstances of the case. I first call upon the
parents, find out their condition and the character of the boy
complained of, in order to know how to proceed with him; admonish
him, and always in the first instance take him back to the school
to which he belongs. In many cases this course has been sufficient.
If called again to the same boy, by the consent of the parents, I
have locked him up for a few hours, and given him to understand
that a complaint against him would remain on file to be proceeded
with if he again offends. This, sometimes, has been enough, but
not often. After taking a boy to School two or three times, and
he finds that nothing further is done, the Police-man’s badge and
staff have no terrors for him. The reason, I think, is this. The
law does not reach his case--the Courts say he is not a vagrant,
because he has a home--and he is not a stubborn and disobedient
child within the meaning of the statute. He is disobedient only so
far as he is a truant; and there is no law against truancy. I have
been into Court with a number of such cases and did not succeed in
sustaining the complaint. The decision was almost fatal to the boy,
and a great injury to the School to which he belonged. The only
course left for us after this, was to watch the boy until we could
arrest him for some trifling offence _known to the law_, and have
him punished, which seemed to be necessary for the good of the boy,
as well as the School.’
“The above statistics have been obtained in the following manner.
During _school hours_ the officer has visited the wharves,
public thoroughfares, and all other places where these children
congregate, and by kind treatment and persuasion, learned their
names and residence, then gone with them to their homes and
ascertained their condition, and that of their parents, a record of
which is now in this office, and to which additions are daily made.”
This brief history of juvenile vagrancy in the city of Boston, whose
school system has been so long and justly regarded as her chief glory,
will not surprise those who are familiar with scenes at the wharves,
railway-stations and steamboat landings of New York, Philadelphia and
Baltimore. Innumerable specimens of the same class of young renegades
may be seen also at the doors or in the vestibules of public houses
in the large inland towns; and unless some mild compulsory process is
devised to form them to better habits, it is certain that a severe one
will be demanded to protect the community against their violence and
depredations.
No. 4.--_The London Christian Observer’s notice of Rev. Mr. Field’s
work on the advantages of the separate system of imprisonment._
In our last number we inserted, entire, an article on Mr. Field’s work,
from the “London Medical and Chirurgical Review.” The February (1849)
number of the _London Christian Observer_ devotes ten or fifteen pages
to it, and inclines “to agree to a considerable extent in the author’s
opinion, that the separate system is superior, not only to every other
system that has hitherto been tried, but also to any that shall be,
or can be hereafter devised.” This is rather more than we should be
willing to say of any human device, but we are glad to see an English
periodical of so much influence and reputation committing itself so
heartily to the right side.
The “Observer” has strangely fallen into the notion, that absolute
solitude without labor or instruction, was ever adopted _as a system
of discipline in the United States_. He speaks of “our good friends
in the United States,” as having run into the extreme of “entire
solitude for six or ten months together in prisons of the most wretched
description,” but when the effects were seen, “the system was abandoned
at once.” He expresses thankfulness, that this dreadful system was
never tried in England, but that they have been permitted to learn
better by the experience of their neighbors. There is no doubt, that
studious efforts have been made by the opponents of separation in our
country to confound it with solitude, and to give the impression, that
whatever evils are imagined or proved to result from the latter, are
necessarily incident to the former. But we should have looked for a
little more discrimination in the Observer, and for evidence of more
thorough knowledge on a subject of so much interest. Indeed, we might
almost suppose, that the needful supply of knowledge and discrimination
is at hand, when the inquiry affects the good repute of the “sea girt
isle,” and only fails when the institutions of “young America” are
presented for review.
“We come now,” says the Observer, “to the separate system as we
have it _amongst ourselves_, and we must request our readers to
bear in mind, that this system is essentially different from the
_Solitary_, properly so called--different in its objects, in its
working, in its effects. The separate cell is but the sick room, in
which the morally diseased is put under treatment for such time as
his case requires. The solitary cell is (or rather was, for it no
longer exists among civilized nations) the grave; where the patient
is left as being past treatment and without hope of recovery. Yet
the two methods have been, and are confounded, and the failure of
the one, with all its attendant circumstances of horror, is used
blindly or unscrupulously as an argument against the other.”--p.
129-30.
It is this “blind or unscrupulous” confounding of solitude and its
effects, with separation and its fruits, that constitutes one of the
crying sins against humanity, for which we think the anti-separatists
will be called to account.
“We are sorry that we cannot follow Mr. Field through his
description of the system of instruction, and its effects on the
prisoners in general. His work abounds in examples of the ignorant
instructed, the profligate reclaimed, the hardened convict
subdued, the weak-minded set firm in good principles; and almost
all thankful for the discipline they have undergone, and setting
out afresh in this world of trials, with, at all events, new
strength and better principles. Mrs. Fry, indeed, regarding man
as adapted for a state of trial, argued against the system[7] as
one that takes the convict away from trial altogether; but surely,
there are stages and states in the moral life, when the discipline
of solitude and reflexion is absolutely required; just as the body,
though its intended sphere of action may be the air and the light,
may absolutely require total seclusion from both, must be placed
in bed, and take sharp medicines, instead of taking exercise and
facing the weather. To say nothing of the fact, that a crowded
prison-yard can scarcely be regarded as a _fair_ field of probation
for any man.
“Altogether, we regard the present state of things with respect to
this whole subject as affording a ground of great encouragement
and thankfulness to God; and as opening prospects of large social
improvement both at home and in the Colonies; for the wretched
system of transportation, the plan of peopling new lands with the
outcasts of the old, seems to have received its deathblow from the
introduction of wholesome discipline at home. There are a few minor
differences to be adjusted regarding the treatment of convicts, the
length of their separate confinement, and the mode of disposing
of them for the rest of their sentence; but the principle is now
fairly admitted, that the prison is to be a place of severe moral
and religious discipline. The office of a gaol chaplain, instead of
being the most loathsome and repulsive that a clergyman could hold,
is now a work full of interest and promise and hope, bringing often
a speedy return for labor. Sarah Martin, the pious needlewoman of
Yarmouth, who passed her life among the wretched inhabitants of the
gaol, would indeed have rejoiced, if she could have accompanied as
we have done, the zealous Chaplain of one of these new gaols along
the clean, light, well-aired corridor, and entered with him into
one cell after another, where the prisoner welcomed him cheerfully
and respectfully, repeating his few verses of psalm or hymn--a
voluntary task--and listened thankfully for the kind admonition
or encouragement of perhaps the first friend he ever knew. It
seems as if God had raised up men on purpose for the work. We are
personally acquainted with some Gaol Chaplains, and have read the
Reports of many, and believe, in most cases they are men of energy,
discernment and piety. If we have a fault to find with them, it
is, that from their experience of visible effects speedily and
uniformly produced on those who are under their charge, they come
to speak and write as if the reformation of a sinner were a matter
of certainty, provided only a sufficient time is allowed. We are
aware, that this is only an apparent error, for no man would be
more ready than Mr. Field to acknowledge the absolute necessity of
the power of the Holy Spirit in any work of genuine reformation.”
No. 5.--_Kentucky State Penitentiary._
A friend has kindly forwarded to us a copy of the annual report of the
keeper, clerk, &c., of the Kentucky Penitentiary, for the year 1848. It
is located at Frankfort, and as the reports indicate, is administered
with much success. We have noted a few items of general interest.
It was formerly the custom to _shave the head_ of every convict _once
a week_. This humiliating process was required by law, but, at the
suggestion of the present keeper, it was so modified, as to leave it
to the discretion of the keeper to shave or not to shave. The good
effects of the measure were at once manifest. We are not told to what
extent the practice now prevails, but are left to infer that it is
only adopted as a mode of punishment. There can be no doubt, we think,
that all methods of humbling or subduing a convict which savour of
vindictiveness, or occasion a needless violation of a natural and
proper self-respect, are to be deprecated. External badges of infamy
and degradation may be needful sometimes as a precaution against
escapes, or for the recapture of convicts, but it is a great advantage
to be able to dispense with them.
The average number of convicts in confinement at the date of the
report, was 161, and the clear profits upon their earnings during the
year, were eight or nine thousand dollars. The bagging business has
been found dull, and very extensive preparations are now made for
coopering.
The number of convicts received during the year ending December 1,
1848, was _sixty-nine_, and the number discharged by pardon during
the same time was THIRTY-THREE, or nearly half as many pardons as
commitments. This number is exclusive of five who were pardoned the
day before the expiration of their sentence, to restore them to
citizenship. All the convicts are males, and only 16 of the 161, are
colored; and 128 were convictions of crime against property, and only
twenty-five of the sentences exceed seven years. Nine of the convicts
are from Ireland, and nine from other foreign countries, leaving
143 native Americans; 97 are under 30 years of age; 114 habitually
or occasionally intemperate; 47 utterly destitute of any degree of
education; and 80 were never married. From a review of the prison
history for a period of 13 years, it appears that the largest number
received in any one year, was 81, (1842,) and the smallest, 49,
(1837;) the number of convicts received during the 13 years from the
88 counties of the State, was 877, of whom 383 were from the county
of Jefferson alone, of which Louisville is the shire-town. Of the 877
convictions, 551 were for crimes against property, or against the
person for property. Of the 877, only eleven were females. The number
of cases of disease occurring during the year, was 244, of which 128
were cured. Days lost by sickness during the year, 1664.
No. 6.--_An Inquiry into the Alleged Tendency of the Separation of
Convicts, one from the other, to Produce Disease and Derangement._
BY A CITIZEN OF PENNSYLVANIA. Philadelphia, E. C. & J. Biddle, 1849.
The questions involved in this inquiry and the elaborate manner in
which they are handled in it, forbid a short or superficial notice of
its contents; and hence we must ask for farther time to enable us to
study, compare and collate, before we attempt to analyze the work for
the use of our readers. If, however, in the mean time, they should
choose to read and think for themselves in the premises, by a careful
perusal of this “Inquiry,” we are safe in saying that the time will be
well spent and the labor fully rewarded.
No. 7.--_New York Eye and Ear Infirmary._
The report of this humane institution for 1848, (the 28th of its
existence,) states that there were received during the year, 1,945 new
patients being 565 more than were received in 1846. There remained
under treatment, January 1, 1849, 129; and of 2,074 prescribed for
during the year, 1,370 were cured, 147 were relieved, 33 declined
treatment, 11 were discharged as incurable, the result of 34 were not
ascertained, and 220 remained under treatment. Diseases of the ear, 130.
Of the patients, there were born in the United States 827; in foreign
countries 1,118!
A free institution for the blind, is about to be opened in
Jacksonville, Illinois. The State supports it by a special tax.
No. 8.--_Shelter for Colored Orphans._
For thirteen years, a quiet and useful charity, known as the “Shelter,”
has been provided for a portion of the colored orphan children of
Philadelphia. At the date of the twelfth report there were 56 children
under care, and twelve were received during the year; while 9 were
apprenticed and 3 died. There were in the house, January 1849,
53 children. Dr. Casper Wistar attended and administered to the
institution gratuitously, during a season of severe sickness from the
measles, in the progress of which thirty-six were under medical care!
No. 9.--_Paupers and Prisoners in Cincinnati._
It is stated in the public prints, that the admissions to the
Cincinnati city hospital in the year 1848, were over 3000; and
two-thirds of them foreigners. In the number were 152 lunatics.
“Admissions to the Jail, during the year, 776, of whom 742 were
intemperate, 17 under 18 years of age, and 66 females. Of these
776, 35 were sent to the Penitentiary, and 741, ‘turned loose,
without friends or employment, to prey upon society again--a
portion of them serving awhile in the Chain-gang first.’”
_No. 10._--_Insane Asylum in North Carolina._
We understand that the act establishing a hospital for the insane at
Raleigh, provides for a tax of one and three-fourths of a cent on every
hundred dollars valuation of land, and five and a quarter cents on the
poll, to be levied for the space of four years, to raise the money to
construct and furnish the building--the County Courts during the said
time to have power to make a proportionate reduction of the poor tax in
their respective counties.
No. 11.--_Corrupt Police._
In a charge lately given by one of the Judges of the Court of Quarter
Sessions for the city and county of Philadelphia, some passages occur,
the implication of which is very far from being creditable to the
police-gentry, and is, moreover, rather startling to the lovers of
peace and security.
“So long as there is collision between police officers and
criminals, crime will continue, and it will be difficult to
suppress it. If police officers will suppress evidence against the
perpetrators of offences; if they will associate and correspond
with criminals, and participate in the fruits of robbery, crime
will continue to increase, because the chances for escape are
great. In some of the _Incorporated_ Districts it is believed, the
police force is efficient and useful.”
This makes the whole matter so vague as to aggravate, rather than
alleviate apprehensions.
In the same charge, the magistrate is represented as saying, that
“if there were no pardons there would be but few convictions.” Is it
possible that the indulgence of executive clemency is so frequent as
to make juries careless or forward to convict from the impression that
their verdict will be reviewed under an application for pardon?
We confess we had no idea that the exercise of the pardoning power had
been such, either in character or extent, as to warrant a statement
like the following from the same source:
“If any one will look at the records of conviction throughout the
State for the last fifteen years, and then at the list of pardons,
and the history and convictions of the convicts, it will be found,
that rarely has a criminal served out the period of his sentence,
if he were a person of _wealth_ or previous influence, or who had
wealthy connections, or friends and relations of great political
influence. While no one can doubt that every Executive has been
honest and sincere in the exercise of this power, yet the unseen
effect of money and political relations enables the convict to
surround the governor with influences which he does not resist.”
Can the yielding to such influences be regarded as consistent with
“honesty and sincerity” in the exercise of the Executive prerogative?
“The principles on which pardons are often obtained, are, in my
opinion, incorrect. The Executive generally hears but one side of
the case--the one presented by the criminal--while the Court and
Jury hear both sides. The case of the prisoner is always strongly
stated in his favor, and that backed by the influence of friends
or _hired agents_, and the incautious signing by citizens of a
petition for pardon, usually produces the result of a liberation
from that sentence.
“Nothing tends more to the suppression of crime than the certainty
of punishment, no matter how short. Let people once be convinced
that criminals will be punished as the law provides, and we should
find the number of crimes rapidly diminishing.
We think much of the principle here asserted, but it is perhaps made to
carry too much weight for its bottom.
ARTICLE II.--The President, and in his absence one of the
Vice-Presidents, shall preside in all meetings, and shall subscribe all
public acts of the Society. The President, or in his absence either of
the Vice-Presidents, shall moreover have the power of calling a special
meeting of the Society whenever he shall judge proper. A special
meeting shall likewise be called at any time when six members of the
Society shall concur in requesting it.
ARTICLE III.--The Secretaries shall keep fair records of the
proceedings of the Society, and shall correspond with such persons and
societies as may be judged necessary to promote the views and objects
of the institution.
ARTICLE IV.--The Treasurer shall keep all moneys and securities
belonging to the Society, and shall pay all orders of the
Society or Acting Committee, signed by the President or one of
the Vice-Presidents, which orders shall be his vouchers for his
expenditures. He shall, before he enters upon his office, give a bond
of not less than two hundred pounds for the faithful discharge of the
duties of it.
ARTICLE V.--The Acting Committee shall consist of the President, two
Vice-Presidents, two Secretaries, two Counsellors, Treasurer, and six
[now ten] other members, three of whom to go off at the meetings in
the months called January and July. They shall visit the prisons at
least once a month, inquire into the circumstances of the prisoners,
and report such abuses as they shall discover to the proper officers
appointed to remedy them. They shall examine the influence of
confinement or punishment upon the morals of the prisoners. They may
draw upon the Treasurer for such sums of money as may be necessary.
They shall keep regular minutes of their proceedings, to be read at
every quarterly meeting of the Society. This committee shall have the
sole power of electing new members, but no member shall be admitted who
has not been proposed at a previous meeting of the Society, nor shall
an election for a member take place in less than one month after the
time of his being proposed.
ARTICLE VI.--Every member who on his admission shall subscribe the
constitution, and pay ten dollars, shall be a member for life, and
every member who on his admission shall subscribe the constitution, and
annually pay the sum of seven shillings and sixpence, shall be a member
while he continues to contribute.[8]
ARTICLE VII.--Corresponding members may be elected, not resident in the
city of Philadelphia, nor within ten miles thereof, who shall not be
required to make pecuniary contributions to the funds of the Society,
nor sign the constitution.
ARTICLE VIII.--The Society shall meet on the second Second-day, called
Monday, in the months called January, April, July, and October, at such
place as shall be agreed to by a majority of the Society.
ARTICLE IX.--No law or regulation shall contradict any part of the
Constitution of the Society, nor shall any law or alteration of the
Constitution be made without it be proposed at a previous meeting. All
questions shall be decided, where there is a division, by a majority
of votes; in those where the Society is equally divided, the presiding
officer shall have a casting vote.
OFFICERS FOR 1849.
PRESIDENT--James J. Barclay.
VICE-PRESIDENTS--Townsend Sharpless, Charles B. Trego.
TREASURER--Edward Yarnall.
SECRETARIES AND COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE--
William Parker Foulke, Charles D. Cleveland.
COUNSELLORS--Job R. Tyson, William A. Porter.
ACTING COMMITTEE.
James J. Barclay, Townsend Sharpless, Charles B. Trego, Edward Yarnall,
William Parker Foulke, Charles Dexter Cleveland, Job R. Tyson, William
A. Porter, Frederick A. Packard, Jeremiah Hacker, William Shippen, John
M. Whitall, Marmaduke Cooper Cope, Rene Guillou, Charles Ellis, Edward
Townsend.
👉 QUARTERLY MEETING of the Society on the ninth day of April, inst.
NOTICE.
👉 Communications and orders for this work may be addressed
“_Editors of the Journal of Prison Discipline_,” care of the
publishers, No. 6, South Fifth Street, Philadelphia.
👉 “Officers of State, Inspectors, or Wardens of Penitentiaries,
Keepers of Common Gaols, Houses of Correction, &c., Superintendents
or Physicians of Insane Asylums, (whether public or private, and
whether for paupers or pay-patients,) officers of Houses of Refuge,
Police Magistrates, and others who may be in possession of, or have
access to reports or other documents bearing on prison discipline,
insanity, juvenile delinquency, police regulations, pauperism,
&c., &c., will confer a particular favour by forwarding to the
above office copies of such publications for use or notice in this
Journal. All such attentions will be gratefully acknowledged, and
cheerfully reciprocated.
“JOURNAL OF PRISON DISCIPLINE AND PHILANTHROPY,”
_Published by the “Philadelphia Society for alleviating the Miseries of
Public Prisons_.”
DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK.
The members of this venerable Institution, which has been mainly
instrumental, in introducing the great reform in Prison Discipline
that has distinguished the last half century, have long felt the
need of such a medium of communication with the public as is now
proposed. Their attention has of late been more especially aroused
to the importance of the measure, from the deep interest which has
been awakened in such reform; and from the misapprehension which
prevails, as to the true principles and results of what is termed
the “Pennsylvanian,” or “Separate System.”
Of the intrinsic usefulness of a Journal of this nature, it is
believed but one opinion can prevail among the intelligent and
humane. One of the most active and well-informed of those engaged
in the reform of Prisons, has justly remarked, that “judgment
is but the result of comparison.” All reasonable men, before
deciding on a measure, will acknowledge the importance of becoming
acquainted with the history and results of similar efforts. Hence
the necessity felt by all civilized nations, of publishing and
preserving public documents, reports, discussions, criticisms, &c.
In America there is no adequate provision for the preservation
of these, so far as they relate to prison reform; they are
scattered among an accumulation of pamphlets on other subjects, are
frequently destroyed, and are always difficult of access; and the
labour which ought to furnish instruction for our future progress,
and for posterity, becomes too often merely temporary in its
utility.
At the present time a greatly enhanced importance is attached to a
publication of this kind, as a medium of communication with foreign
countries. Several of the governments of Europe are endeavouring
to ascertain the best system of Prison Discipline, with a view to
its adoption; and although the Society have no doubt which of the
methods now in existence is the best, some Philanthropists of the
Old World are yet undecided.
It is from a knowledge of these facts and from a belief that it is
due to themselves and the cause of humanity, that the Society have
been induced to undertake this publication.
The Journal will be devoted to the exposition and promulgation of
correct views on Prison Discipline, Police systems, Asylums for
the insane poor, Societies for the aid of discharged prisoners,
and other reforms immediately connected with these subjects.
It will also be rendered more interesting and instructive
by the introduction of biographical sketches of celebrated
Philanthropists, accompanied with portraits; and by plans and
descriptions of the best methods of Prison construction. Such being
the object, the Society cannot doubt that it will meet with cordial
support from the friends of humanity, throughout the Old and New
World.
TERMS.
This periodical is published quarterly; each number to contain
at least 48 pages octavo. It will be delivered without charge to
members of the Society; but to those who are not members, the price
is $1 per aum, always in advance, or 25 cents a number.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Rev. Dr. Alexander’s letter to the Howard Society of New Jersey,
July 1833.
[2] This subject has lately engrossed the earnest consideration of
the Managers of the Philadelphia Refuge, and there is an evident
determination to effect important improvements in this respect.
[3] “CASE I.--The family whose total earnings consist of £2 2_s_ per
week, consist of the father and mother, who sleep in one bed; a married
son and his wife who sleep in the second bed; a grown up daughter who,
with two boys of twelve and fourteen years of age, sleep together on a
bed on the floor; the whole family being in the same room.
“CASE II.--H. H. earns two shillings a day as a laborer--was brought
up as a farmer, and had property to the amount of 2000 pounds, which
he has dissipated--has a wife and five children--the eldest of whom is
13 years, the youngest 5 years; they have only one bed, upon which the
parents sleep; the children sleeping on the floor as they best may.
“CASE III.--D. M., with his family, makes 30 shillings per week; his
daughter, with a bastard child about two years old, a son about 16,
another of 13, and a daughter of 10 years of age, making, with his
wife, seven in all, sleep in the same room, with two beds.
“CASE IV.--J. G. has a father and mother who live with him; he and
his wife sleep in one bed; his father and mother in another; his two
grown up sisters in a third; his brother, a lad of 19, and a young man
lodger, ‘who is courting one of his sisters,’ in a fourth: all in the
same room. J. G. does not know, or will not tell, how much they all
make, but thinks it ‘a good bit,’ as his wife and sisters and brother
are at farming, himself on a fruit ground, and his father a laborer.”
Dr. Holland furnished Dr. Playfair with the following, in the case of
one of his dispensary patients: “D. E. is a widower, with one sleeping
apartment, in which sleeps his adult son and daughter. The latter has a
bastard child which she affiliates on the father, he upon his son, and
the neighbors upon both.”
[4] Boston Correspondence of the New York Recorder, January 1849.
[5] Opened May 15, 1848.
[6] 39 of dysentery in August and September.
[7] Mrs. Fry’s views, when fairly presented and properly understood,
were altogether in favor of separation, and can never be justly cited
against it.
[8] [Article VI. has been altered so as to make it require twenty
dollars for a life contribution, and two dollars for an annual
contribution.]
[Transcriber’s Note:
Table on page 71, headers: Males., Females., and Totals., were shortened
to read M., Fem., and Tot.
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. IV, No. II, April 1949)" ***
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