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Mr. Holford moved," That the Report which upon the 31st day of May in the last session of Parliament, was made from the Committee * appointed to consider of the expediency of erecting a Penitentiary House or Penitentiary Houses under the acts of the 34th and 19th of his present Majesty; and, in case the adoption of the measure referred to their consideration should appear to them to be for the advantage of the public, to report whether any additional legislative provisions will, be wanted for that purpose, and what number of persons such Penitentiary House or Penitentiary Houses should, in their judgment, be calculated to receive, together With any observations which they might deem material upon the subject of their enquiry;—and who Were instructed to enquire into the effects which have been produced by the punishment of transportation to New South Wales, and of imprisonment on board the hulks;" might
* For the First and Second Reports of the said Committee 4 see Vol. 20, Appendix, pp. Ixxxix, Cxxiii.
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be read; and the same being read, the hon. gentleman again rose, and said, that it was his intention, in conformity with the opinion contained in that Report, to conclude with moving," That leave be given to bring in a Bill for the erection of a Penitentiary House for the confinement of offenders, male and female, who have received sentence of transportation within the city of London and county of Middlesex." The hon. gentleman said he was happy to find a general disposition throughout the House, to accede to this proposition. The object of the bill which he wished to bring in, was to send back to society at the end of their respective terms of imprisonment, with useful and beneficial habits, those persons who now issued from their prisons merely to prey on the community till the hands of justice again consigned them to confinement. Regulations respecting Penitentiary Houses of a nature similar to those which he had in view, had been sanctioned by legislative authority by the 19th George 3; and a Committee of Supervisors had been appointed, among whom was the great philanthropist, Mr. Howard. Their proceedings were to be referred to the consideration of the lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, the twelve Judges, and the Lord Mayor. The immediate execution of the plan had been prevented, by a difference of opinion among the supervisors, Mr. Howard, Dr. Fothergill, and some others, With respect to the spot of ground which should be fixed on for the erection. In consequence of these dissentions, three new commissioners were appointed, two of whom were the present lord Minto and the late Mr. Burke; and there then appeared some prospect of some fixed plan being adopted; but government at that time began to turn their attention towards Botany Bay, and conceived that this colony would supersede the necessity of the other scheme of punishment and he believed no steps had been taken in furtherance of the 19th George 3, till the year 1794. In that year a new proposal had been made by an ingenious and learned gentleman, Mr. Jeremy Bentham, in pursuance of which, the 34th of the King had been enacted, which superseded most of the regulations of the former act. An idea prevailed, that both these enactments were Still in existence; yet the 19th of George 3 had expired in 1802, for which he Was the more sorry, as, among other reasons for
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holding the latter statute in less estimation than the former, he thought it impossible to ingraft on a system of contract a provision for apportioning the duration of punishments to the conduct and demeanor of the prisoners. By the first act, 79 acres had been chosen for building; and the 34th, for reasons with which he was unacquainted, changed the site to Tothill-fields, where there was a great difficulty of finding the quantity of ground required. Thus the magnitude of the scale had been a great obstacle to the completion of the scheme. The hon. gentleman then stated, that for the last twenty years Pententiary Houses had been erected and governed in conformity to the rules expressed in the first statute, that he had the authority of Sir George Paul, a wise and active magistrate, with respect to the utility of such an establishment in Gloucester; and he was informed, that in Southwell the usefulness of the institution had been such, that several persons who had been confined there were now living in credit, and atoning to society for their former crimes. A Committee of last session had properly rejected the idea of a national Penitentiary, which would bring into one focus so vast a number of offenders. The object, therefore, of the present Bill, was merely a Penitentiary House for the offenders in London and Middlesex. It would not entirely abandon the plan of Mr. Bentham, to which gentleman a liberal compensation should be made for his expenses in this meritorious service; nor would it raise any question with respect to the propriety of the punishment on board the hulks, or transportation. The scale which he should propose would be a substantial building to contain 200 male, and 200 female convicts, with capacity for 100 additional of each. He then adverted to the stale of Newgate, the evils of which prison were not imputable to Mr. Newman the keeper, who was an useful and upright officer, but to the system adopted. The present plan would remove from that prison a large portion of the transportable convicts who ought to be supported by the public and not by the city, and then the city would be able to adopt such measures in their prison as would prevent the present corrupting effects of entering its walls. He highly reprobated the present distribution of offenders, by which persons who were taken up, on suspicion only of felony, were made to associate and mingle in one common mass
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with the most abandoned convicts. He supposed the case of a poor servant girl, out of place, whom necessity might have induced to commit a small theft; she associated with felons of her own sex, transportable felons of the most depraved: description, who despised and made a mockery of all the decencies and moralities of life; with what feelings, with what manners, he asked, would such a person return back to society? The present plan would prevent such pernicious consequences, by removing the possibility of such contaminating associations. Under all the circumstances, he trusted the motion would meet with a general concurrence
§ Sir W. Curtisrose to second the motion, of which he cordially approved.
§ Mr. Alderman Combestated that the corporation of London had it in contemplation to build a Penitentiary House in the city.
Sir Samuel Romillyrose, not to throw any impediment in the way of a subject which had been already too much delayed, but to call the attention of the House to the Report of its Committee in the year 1798. The subject, indeed, had not engrossed an attention proportionable to its importance; but by reference to that Report, it would be seen, that after mentioning the great number of persons on; board the hulks, together with their different periods of imprisonment, they strongly recommended to the legislature the adoption of the excellent plan proposed by Mr. Bentham. Two sessions ago the subject had been resumed, and was referred to the subsequent session: yet two years had elapsed, and government still persisted in their system. The House would do great injustice to Mr. Bentham's plan, unless they read the printed Report of 1798; and he could not but express his surprise that the present Committee should object to what was so strongly recommended by a former Committee, which had mentioned in terms of high praise the great advantages of the employments and industrious habits which formed the peculiar character of Mr. Bentham's plan" This advantage, and another equally great,—he meant the economy of that project,—had been strangely disregarded by the subsequent Committee. The small expence of Mr. Bentham's scheme had, indeed, been accounted for from the circumstance of his allowing only one room for the convicts to sleep in; this, he was 239 aware had been strongly objected to by Sir George Paul—an authority, he allowed, of the greatest weight,—who conceived that it would be of pernicious consequence, that all the convicts should sleep together. Still, notwithstanding these objections, he hoped, that the House would look attentively into the reports of the Committee of 1798, and consider the extraordinary utility of Mr. Bentham's plan, that if they rejected it, they might substitute something as beneficial in its place. He then expressed his regret that the scale recommended by the hon. member was so small, as if it was intended only as a plan of experiment. The right right hon. Secretary of Ireland, to whom the merit of adopting such an institution in that country was solely due, had borne testimony to its utility, and indeed in no one single instance had it ever failed; the plan, therefore, should have been much more extensive. He concluded by hoping that inquiries would be instituted into the comparative effects produced by the system adopted in Penitentiary Houses, and the effects produced by imprisonment on board the hulks.
Mr. Abercrombypaid a high compliment to the talents and benevolence of Mr. Bentham, and to the excellence of his plan, and cautioned the House against forming an opinion of it solely from the terms of the proposed contract, since such was the confidence reposed in the proposer, that many necessary points left at his discretion were there omitted. As one of the Committee appointed two years ago, he had visited Newgate, and found that none of the defects of that prison were owing to the conduct of the keeper, but entirely to the insufficiency of its accommodations.
Leave was then given to bring in the Bill.