HC Deb 05 May 1843 vol 68 c1276
Mr. Ewart

wished to ask the right hon. Baronet, the Secretary of the Home Department, as to whether any regulations had been made with respect to the management of the Gaol of Newgate. It appeared, that the gaol committee of Newgate had interdicted their chaplain from giving information to the prison inspectors. He had already called the attention of the right hon. Baronet to the conduct of the governor of Newgate, who, when a pardon had been received for a female under sentence of death, had not, until nineteen hours afterwards, communicated with her on the subject. The right hon. Baronet had stated that it was his intention to direct an inquiry into the subject. He now asked him whether any measures had been adopted which would enforce for the future a due obedience to the authority of the law, and prevent for the future such an interference with law, mercy, and justice?

Sir J. Graham

said he had stated on a former evening the grounds upon which he entertained a confident expectation that the order referring to the chaplain or governor of the gaol of Newgate not volunteering information to the inspectors of prisons would be revised. He had been in communication with the Lord Mayor on the subject, and he had much pleasure in saying, not only that what he had anticipated had occurred, and that before he entered into that communication the Lord Mayor had, on behalf of the Court of Aldermen, made a notification which was entirely satisfactory. On the point with respect to the delay of nineteen hours by the governor of Newgate in communicating to a female prisoner under sentence of death the commutation of her sentence of capital punishment. The Lord Mayor had instituted an inquiry, evidence was taken, and that evidence had been transmitted to him only within the last twenty-four hours, and he had not yet had an opportunity of fully examining it.