HC Deb 20 April 1875 vol 223 cc1361-2
SIR WILLIAM FRASER

rose to move an Address for— Copy of Rule 75 of the Clerkonwell House of Detention previous to amendment, and subsequent to amendment after May Quarter Sessions of 1873 of the Magistrates of Middlesex, whereby the compulsory labour of persons remanded or waiting for bail was abolished. The hon. Baronet said, that the Rule 75, abolishing labour of unconvicted persons, those waiting for bail, or on remand, in the House of Detention, Clerkenwell, having never been carried out, it was supposed that the new rule had been cancelled by the Home Office. He had ascertained that it had never been forwarded to the Secretary of State. It was the duty of the Clerk of the Peace to carry out the decisions of the Quarter Sessions in the necessary and legal manner. The scrubbing of the floor of their cells by persons whose bail was not at once forthcoming, and those re- manded for a week by a magistrate, still went on at Clerkenwell House of Detention, although the fact was little known; the public believing that the new Rule had been carried out according to the decision of the magistrates on May 29, 1873. He would ask the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether the said amended Rule was forwarded to the Home Office by the Clerk of the Peace for Middlesex for approval in due course or not?

SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON

, in reply, said, that the Rule had not been sent to the Home Office, but that that Department would have no objection to the proposed change.

Motion agreed to. Address for "Copy of Rule 75 of the Clerkenwell House of Detention previous to amendment, and subsequent to amendment after May Quarter Sessions of 1873 of the Magistrates of Middlesex, whereby the compulsory labour of persons remanded or waiting for bail was abolished."—(Sir William Fraser.)