In 1767 he made a short excursion through Holland with his brother-in-law, and in the autumn of 1769 again went on the continent, visiting France, Switzerland, Holland, Italy, and Germany. After his return in the autumn of the following year he occupied some time in travelling through Wales and the south of Ireland, and was afterwards laid up at Cardington with an attack of ague, which lasted nine months, and rekindled his zeal in promoting sanitary improvements in the village.
On 8 Feb. 1773 Howard was appointed high sheriff of Bedfordshire (London Gazettes, 1773, No. 11325). Though a dissenter he accepted the office in spite of the Test Act, and though he does not appear to have conformed for the occasion, no legal proceedings were taken against him. Howard now commenced his career as a prison reformer. In his official capacity the defective arrangements of the prisons and the intolerable distress of the prisoners were brought immediately under his notice. Shocked at discovering that persons who had been declared not guilty, or against whom the grand jury had failed to find a true bill, or even those whose prosecutors had failed to appear, were confined in gaol until certain fees were paid to the gaoler, Howard suggested to the Bedfordshire justices that the gaoler should be paid by a salary in lieu of fees. The justices replied by asking for a precedent for charging the county with the expense. Howard accordingly rode into the neighbouring counties in order to find one, but failed to discover a single case in which a gaoler was paid by a fixed salary. The many abuses which he unearthed determined him to continue his investigations, and he left few of the county gaols unvisited. He then resolved to inspect the bridewells, and for that purpose travelled again over the country, examining the houses of correction, the city and town gaols, and paying particular attention to the ravages made among the prisoners by gaol fever and small-pox (Introduction to The State of the Prisons in England and Wales). On 4 March 1774 he gave evidence before the House of Commons in committee, and was afterwards called to the bar to receive the thanks of the house for ‘the humanity and zeal which have led him to visit the several gaols of this kingdom, and to communicate to the house the interesting observations he has made on that subject’ (Journals of the House of Commons, xxxiv. 535). Subsequently, in the same session, two bills were passed, one for the abolition of gaolers' fees (14 Geo. III, c. 20), and the other for improving the sanitary state of prisons and the better preservation of the health of the prisoners (14 Geo. III, c. 59). Though copies of these acts were printed at Howard's expense, and sent by him to the keeper of every county gaol in England, their provisions were for the most part evaded. At the general election in the following October Howard unsuccessfully contested the Dorough of Bedford in the opposition interest, and though his colleague, Samuel Whitbread, obtained one of the seats on petition, Howard failed to establish his claim to the other, and his opponent, Sir William Wake, was declared duly elected (Journals of the House of Commons, xxxv. 22, 194, 220, 221, 222).
Meanwhile Howard continued his self imposed task of inspecting prisons, and, after his return from a visit to Scotland and Ireland in the spring of 1775, started for France, and visited the principal prisons of Paris. He failed, however, to get into the Bastille, ‘though he knocked hard at the outer gate, and immediately went forward through the guard to the drawbridge before the entrance of the castle’ (State of the Prisons, &c., 4th edit., p.176). From France he went on a tour of inspection through Holland, Flanders, and Germany, and returned to England in July. In November of this year he set out on his second general inspection of the English gaols, and in May 1776 revisited the continent, spending some time in Switzerland. Upon his return he completed his second inspection of the English gaols. Having got all his materials together for the book which he had originally intended to publish in the spring of 1775, Howard retired to Warrington in 1777, where his ‘State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons’ was at length published, Warrington, 4to. In August of this year his only sister died, leaving him her fortune and her house in Great Ormond Street. In 1778 he was examined before a select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the working of the hulk system established by 16 Geo. III, c. 43 (Journals of the House of Commons, xxxvi. 926, 928-30) . Convinced that vessels were less suitable for the confinement of prisoners than buildings, it was urged by Sir William Blackstone and others that places of confinement similar to the Rasp and Spin-Houses of Holland should be erected. Howard therefore set off again (18 April) for the continent to collect further information on the subject. At Amsterdam he met with a serious accident, but upon his recovery visited Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and France, returning to England at the close of the year. In 1779 an
