Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

information-in preparing models of prison buildings-and in recommending those plans for the regulation of gaols, which experience has proved best calculated to inspire the criminal with a dread of imprisonment, and induce lim, on his liberation, to abandon his guilty habits.

Crime has, of late years, extensively increased among the youth of the most indigent classes in the metropolis. A large proportion of these juvenile offenders, on their discharge from prison, are perfectly destitute. Without money, character, or friends, how can they subsist? Where can they procure employment? Many hundreds are thus abandoned to want, and have no other means of procuring food than by the renewal of their depredations. But, although their minds are in a state of the darkest ignorance and the grossest vice, they have not unfrequently a latent yet strong desire to forsake their criminal habits; and in the course of their visits to the several prisons, the Committee meet with many whose entire destitution, and earnest assurances of penitence, render them, in an especial manner, objects of compassion. The Committee have continued, for some years past, to extend relief to distressed boys. A considerable number have been received into the Temporary Refuge,—an Institution formed by the Committee to facilitate the reform of Juvenile Offenders. As the experience of the Committee becomes enlarged, the stronger is their conviction of the beneficial effects of this useful asylum, where the friendless outcast is admitted, without interest or recommendation, with no other qualification than that which his own sorrows present, and his feelings of penitence supply. He is placed at a useful employment, and taught a trade. He is trained up in habits of cleanliness, regularity, and order; subjected to vigilant inspection, instructed in moral and religious duties, and permitted to remain, until industry, education, and the force of good impressions, shall in some degree have subdued the strength of criminal desire. When his conduct affords good ground to hope that he may with safety return into the world, endeavours are made to procure for him a situation, removed as far as possible from temptation, and such as may afford a reasonable prospect of his becoming an honest and useful member of society.

Limited as have been the funds of the Society, it has happily been instrumental in saving a considerable number of youths, who, on their discharge from prison, have been in urgent want, and desirous to quit their vicious habits. The Committee can now look round on many, reputably settled, conducting themselves exemplarily; and who, but for the care thus extended, must inevitably have recurred to criminal practices for support.

Deeply impressed with these considerations, it is with pain the Committee feel compelled to state, that the expenses necessarily incurred in the prosecution of these various objects have entirely exhausted the funds of the Institution. These pecuniary difficulties are of a nature so serious, that unless the friends of the Society now generously come forward with their benevolent aid, the labours of the Committee can no longer be continued. It has not been without considerable reluctance that they have thus called the public attention to the objects of the Society, and the peculiar circumstances in which it is now placed; and they appeal for aid, with peculiar confidence, to those whose enlightened sentiments on the subject of Prison Discipline are in accordance with the views of the Society, and whose steady cooperation will alone contribute to its effectual support.

[graphic]

THE
FUERC

187074

A Donation of Ten Guineas, or an Annual Subscription of One Guinea,
constitutes a Member of the Society.

Donations and Annual Subscriptions are received by the Treasurer,
T. F. BUXTON, Esq. M. P., Spitalfields, London; by the Members of the
Committee, or by the following Bankers.-Messrs. Barclay, Tritton, and Co.,
54, Lombard Street; Barnetts, Hoares, and Co., 62, Lombard Street; Drum-
mond and Co., Charing Cross; Gosling and Co., Fleet Street; Hammersley
and Co., 69, Pall-Mall; Smith, Payne, and Smiths, George Street, Mansion
House; and by the Collector, Mr. W. Eddrup, 51, Houndsditch, London.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

FOR

THE IMPROVEMENT OF PRISON DISCIPLINE,

AND FOR

THE REFORMATION OF JUVENILE OFFENDERS.

PATRON-H. R. H. the DUKE OF GLOUCESTER, K.G.
TREASURER-THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, Esq. M.P.
CHAIRMAN SAMUEL HOARE, Esq.

Nor many years have elapsed since the Gaols of Great Britain were, for the most part, habitations of accumulated suffering, depositories of pestilence, and schools for the encouragement of idleness and crime. While humanity was devising schemes, in various forms, for the instruction of the ignorant and the relief of the distressed, the reformation of the guilty was passed by unheeded, and the miseries of imprisonment long continued to be severely aggravated by prejudice and neglect. The criminal was loaded with fetters, immured in loathsome dungeons, deprived of wholesome and sufficient food, air, and exercise; and to this treatment was exposed, in common with all others, the prisoner before trial, whom the laws presume innocent of crime. To their personal sufferings were added the most serious of moral evils. In the absence of control, inspection, religious instruction, and employment, imprisonment could not fail to debase and harden, while it inspired no dread, and was at variance with the primary objects which punishment is instituted to attain. In the present Age, evils of such magnitude could not long remain without the application of a remedy. Investigation proved that the miseries which had heretofore been the characteristic of Gaols, were not the necessary consequence of imprisonment, but the result of negligence in its regulation and discipline; that all physical suffering, not necessary to the purposes of just punishment, may be removed by attention to the construction, ventilation, and cleanliness of prisons; that a system of hard labour and seclusion, accompanied by a spare though sufficient diet, seldom fails to render penal confinement an object of salutary dread; that personal contamination may be prevented by classification and inspection; and that these measures, combined with moral and religious instruction, are well calculated to correct the habits, enlighten the mind, and reclaim the heart, of the offender.

Such were the means by which HOWARD sought to remove the miseries, and reform the character, of the prisons of this country; and to promulgate the views and principles which it was the aim of that philanthropist to establish, is the design of the Institution which now solicits the aid of Public Benevolence.

The objects of the Society involve considerable labour and expense; and in the earnest prosecution of them the Committee of the Society have been for some years past in the habit of meeting weekly. They have been sedulously engaged in exposing the evils of a bad, and the advantages of a good, system of discipline, by the careful collection and wide diffusion of useful intelligence-in aiding the Magistracy with

CUMBERLAND-Carlisle County Gaol and House of Cor

rection

DERBYSHIRE-Derby County Gaol and House of Cor

rection

Derby Borough Gaol

DEVONSHIRE-Exeter County Gaol and House of Cor

rection

Exeter City Gaol-Barnstaple Borough Gaol

- Plymouth Ditto-Tiverton Ditto-
South-Molton Ditto-Great Torrington
Ditto-Totness Ditto

Oakhampton Borough Gaol-Plympton-Earle
Ditto Bideford Ditto-Bradninch Ditto
-Clifton-Dartmouth Ditto

DORSETSHIRE--Dorchester County Gaol and House of

Correction

[blocks in formation]

DURHAM-Durham County Gaol and House of Correction
ESSEX-Chelmsford County Gaol and House of Correc-

tion-Springfield County House of Cor-
rection-Halsted Ditto-Newport Ditto
-Colchester Ditto

[ocr errors]

Page

7

7

8

8

9

10

10

11

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Barking Ditto-Saffron-Walden Ditto-Har-
wich Ditto-Havering (Romford) Ditto
GLOUCESTERSHIRE-Gloucester County Gaol
Gloucester City Gaol-Horsley County House
of Correction-Northleach Ditto-Law-
ford's Gate Ditto-Little-dean Ditto
Tewkesbury Borough Gaol

HAMPSHIRE-Winchester County Gaol and House of
Correction-Gosport County House of

Correction

Newport Ditto-Portsmouth Borough Gaol-
Southampton Ditto-Andover Ditto

33

[blocks in formation]

15

16

HEREFORDSHIRE-Hereford County Gaol and House of
Correction-Ditto City Gaol

17

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »