Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/772

748 PRISON of James I., dated 1619, in which the king directs "a hundred dissolute persons " to be sent to Virginia. An other Act of similar tenor was passed in the reign of Charles II., in which the term " transportation " appears to have been first used. A further and more systematic development of the system of transportation took place in 1718, when an Act was passed by which offenders who had escaped the death penalty were handed over to con tractors, who engaged to transport them to the American colonies. These contractors were vested with a property in the labour of the convicts for a certain term, generally from seven to fourteen years, and this right they fre quently sold. Labour in those early days was scarce in the new settlements ; and before the general adoption of negro slavery there was a keen competition for felon hands. The demand was indeed so great that it produced illegal methods of supply. An organized system of kid napping prevailed along the British coasts ; young lads were seized and sold into what was practically white slavery in the American plantations. These malpractices were checked, but the legitimate traffic in convict labour continued until it was ended peremptorily by the revolt of the American colonies and the achievement of their inde pendence. In 1776 the British legislature, making a virtue of necessity, discovered that transportation to His Majesty s colonies (which three years previously had de clared their independence) was bound to be attended by various inconveniences, particularly by depriving the king dom of many subjects whose labour might be useful to the community ; and an Act was accordingly passed which provided that convicts sentenced to transportation might be employed at hard labour at home. At the same time the consideration of some scheme for their disposal was entrusted to three eminent public men Sir William Blackstone, Mr Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland), and John Howard. The result of their labours was an Act ; for the establishment of penitentiary houses, dated 1778. This Act is of peculiar importance. It contains the first ! public enunciation of a general principle of penal treat- ! ment, and shows that even at that early date the system ( since nearly universally adopted was fully understood. The object in view was thus stated. It was hoped, by sobriety, cleanliness, and medical assistance, by a regular series of labour, by solitary confinement during the inter- | vals of work, and by due religious instruction, to preserve and amend the health of the unhappy offenders, to inure them to habits of industry, to guard them from pernicious company, to accustom them to serious reflexion, and to teach them both the principles and practice of every Christian and moral duty. The experience of a century has added nothing to these the true principles of penal discipline ; they form the basis of every species of prison ; system carried out since the passing of the Act 19 Geo. III. ! c. 74 in 1779. The first step towards giving effect to this Act was the appointment of a commission of three "supervisors" to select and acquire a site for the first penitentiary house, j Howard was one, and no doubt the most influential, of these ; but he could not agree with his colleagues as to the most suitable situation. One was for Islington, another for Limehouse, while Howard insisted upon some site which was healthy, well supplied with water, and in such a convenient spot that it could be readily visited and in- j spected. It is interesting to observe that the great phil- anthropist anticipated modern English practice in his pro- - paration of the plans for the construction of the prison, j He was strongly of opinion that the penitentiary should be built by convict labour, just as in recent years the new ; prison has been erected at Wormwood Scrubs, and large ; blocks added to the prisons of Chatham, Portsmouth, and ISCIPLINE I Dartmoor. Howard, however, withdrew from the com mission, and new supervisors were appointed, who were on the eve of commencing the first penitentiary when the discoveries of Captain Cook in the South Seas turned the attention of the Government towards these new lands. The vast territories of Australasia promised an unlimited field for convict colonization, and for the moment the scheme for penitentiary houses fell to the ground. Public opinion generally preferred the idea of establishing penal settlements at a distance from home. " There was general 1 confidence," says Merivale in his work on colonization, " in the favourite theory that the best mode of punishing offenders was that which removed them from the scene of offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of space from all their former connexions, and gave them the opportunity of redeeming past crimes by becoming useful members of society." These views so far prevailed that an expedition consisting of nine transports and two men- of-war, the " first fleet " of Australian annals, sailed in March 1787 for ]S T ew South Wales. This first fleet reached Botany Bay in January 1788, but passed on and landed at Port Jackson, where it entered and occupied the harbour of Sydney, one of the finest and most secure havens in the world. We shall return further on to the proceedings of these first criminal colonists when the pro gress of transportation as a secondary punishment will be described. The penitentiary scheme was not, however, abandoned on the adoption of transportation to New South Wales. It was revived and kept alive by Jeremy Bentham, who in 1791 published a work on prison discipline entitled The Panopticon or Inspection House, and followed it next year by a formal proposal to erect a prison house on his own plan. Bentham s main idea was "a circular building, an iron cage glazed, a glass lantern as large as Ranelagh, with the cells on the outer circumference." Within, in the centre, an inspection station was so fixed that every cell or part of a cell could be at all times closely observed, the prisoners being themselves at liberty to communicate with visitors and make known their complaints by means of tubes. He hoped to effect much in the way of reforma tion from a system of solitude or limited seclusion, with constant employment on work in the profits of which the prisoners were to share. His project was warmly approved by Pitt, but secret influences the personal hostility, it was said, of George III. to Bentham as an advanced Radical hindered its adoption until 1794. A contract was then made between the treasury and Bentham, by which the latter was to erect a prison for a thousand convicts, with chapel and other necessary buildings, for .19,000. A portion of this sum was advanced, and Bentham also acquired on behalf of the Government certain lands in the neighbourhood of Tothill Fields. But the undertaking languished, and never took practical shape. Nearly fifteen years later, when the penitentiary question was again revived, Bentham s claims were referred to arbitration, and the Government proceeded to erect the prison on its own account, "fully recognizing the import ance of attempting reformation by the seclusion, employ ment, and religious instruction of prisoners." This had been tried already on a small scale but with satisfactory results, first at the Gloucester prison erected in 1791 and afterwards in the house of correction at Southwell. A larger and more ambitious experiment was resolved upon, worthy of the state ; and the great penitentiary still stand ing after many vicissitudes, but practically unaltered, at Millbank was the result of this determination. It was built on the lands originally acquired by Bentham, and the work commenced in 1813 was continued at great out

lay until 1816, when a portion was ready for the reception