§ MR. DAVITTI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he can state in how many prisons, local and convict, the treadmill and crank are now used in the discipline of such respective prisons; and whether it is the intention of Prison Commissioners to supersede these methods of punishment in all prisons in England, in view of the fact that no such instruments are employed in Ireland, Scotland, or any other civilised country; and, if so, can he state when their use will finally be dispensed with in English prisons.
§ * SIR M. WHITE RIDLEYTread-wheels are used in thirty-three, and cranks in eleven, local prisons, but solely for productive purposes. Cranks have never been used as a form of labour in the four convict prisons. Occasionally in the past they have been made use of as a means of punishment for prison offences, but are now very rarely resorted to. I cannot at present make any promise as to the discontinuance of these forms of hard labour in the prisons where they exist.