Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

крын

1369

78

HARVARD

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

1858, Sept. 15.

Sept. 15

MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. 244.]

AUGUST 1, 1813.

[Price 2s.

Our Supplement, completing the 35th Volume, is published with the present Number.

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

I

SIR,

F the degree of suffering, of useless suffering, which exists in our prisons were generally known, it is impossible that the evil should not be remedied. By calling the attention of your numerous readers to some of the facts lately published by Mr. Nield, entitled State of the Prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales, you may do much to make it known; and for that purpose, I hope you will allow a place in the next number of your widely circulating Magazine, to a few of its interesting details.

In the BOROUGH COMPTER, SOUTHWARK, there is no medical attendance in ease of sickness, which so frequently attends the altered situation of the prisoner. The men and women debtors associate together during the day. No coals are allowed, no mops, brooms, or pails, to keep the gaol clean, no bedsteads, bedding, or even straw to lie upon! Ilence the debtors are obliged to sleep in their clothes upon the boards, than which the very streets can hardly be more filthily dirty. Soap and towels are not afforded; a man may, for a debt of one guinea, remain in this wretched place forty days, without once taking off his clothes or washing his face and hands. The allow ance is a two-penny loaf a day; which is not sufficient to support the cravings of

nature.

CLERKENWELL.-In this crowded prison, two-thirds of the prisoners constantly sleep in their wretched habiliments on the bare boards, without even straw. The allowance of bread (one pound a day) is too scanty, in a place where there is no opportunity afforded of earning any thing by labour. Persons committed for lesser

This prison is within the jurisdiction of the Borough Bailiff, and neither the Sheriffs of London, nor the Corporation of London, have any coutroul over it. In 1807-8, ..it was frequently visited by one of the Sheriffs, and that Sheriff had an interview and a correspondence with the Borough Bailiff about its wretched state, but he fears to Kittle purpose.-EDITOR.

MONTHLY Mag. No, 243.

offences are associated with the daring and desperate criminal. No money is given to prisoners at the time of discharge, to prevent an immediate recurrence to the predatory acts which brought them thither.*

FLEET PRISON.-No medical attendance in case of sickness. No allowance of food, but the very poor prisoners partake of the donations which are sent to the prison, and the begging-grate. A yard where strangers are admitted to play tennis, &c. with the prisoners. A wine and beer club twice a week, to which strangers are admitted.

KING'S BENCH PRISON.-No medical aid. No allowance of food whatever. Every person who is obliged to partake of the charities, must take his turn to hold the begging-box at the door, which prevents many who have lived in respectable situations from applying for this relief. There are instances of men, who, rather than submit to this degradation, have shut themselves up for months in their rooms, and become so emaciated from the want of food, as to lay the foundation of disorders which ended in their death. Staircases and lobbies in the most filthy state imaginable. No bedding provided. There are, on an average, from 500 to 700 prisoners within the walls: the pri son will not accommodate more than 220.

CAERMARTHEN CASTLE COUNTY GAOL AND BRIDEWELL.-The felons cells are dark, damp, and ill ventilated. No employment furnished. Transports have not here the king's allowance, and from sickness, want of water, and filth, were in a state bordering on desperation, and begging to be sent any where to get out of so miserable a place. Several prisoners were ill, and one could not turn

This is a non-descript prison, over which no controul was ever clained by the Sheriffs of the county, except by one of them in 1807-8. The new Debtors' Prison and the intended separate prison for commitments in Gilispur-street, ought to render this prison useless; but if used, the Sheriffs ought to insist on their jurisdiction over it,

B

EDITOR.

berseif

herself in bed, yet the surgeon had not for two months seen any of them.

CASTLE-TOWN, ISLE OF MAN. CASTLE RUSHTEN GAOL.-It contains only three inhabitable rooms, in which felons and debtors are promiscuously confined. Here no insolvent act hath ever reached, neither have the laws of this island ever provided any mode of relief for the honest though unfortunate debtor. After a debtor has given up all his effects, there is not any public provision of food, beds, fuel, or medicine, for persons confined in this place, nor any parochial support afforded to their wives and families. The court-yard of the prison is a part of the old fossé, and exceedingly damp, surrounded by high walls; seldom does the sun shine upon any part of it; it is like wise intolerably offensive.

DUMFRIES COUNTY GAOL. The debtors pay fees of two-pence or four pence a night, though the felons pay one; the surgeon attends the felons only; no chaplain. A large day-room for the debtors, converted into a dwelling for the turnkey's family. The felons are wever suffered to come out of their cells, though there is a day-room for them. No coals are allowed.

EDINBURGH CITY TOLBOOTH.-In three of the felons rooms, are stocks fixed on the floors, the upper part of which lifts up to receive the leg of the prisoner, who must lie on his back till released, and in these stocks they have been confined night and day. After sentence of death, a blacksmith fixes an iron strap to the criminal's leg, fastened again to a ring which encircles a strong iron bar running across the room, so that he cannot lift up that foot from the floor; in this situation the wretched sufferer has been sometimes detained during six weeks, until the execution of his awful

sentence.

HERTFORD COUNTY GAOL AND BRIDE WELL.-The prisoners committed to the felons gaol, (and some of them even for Comparatively trivial offences, and before a trial,) are here immediately put in irons; and at night are fastened two together down to the flooring of their cells, by a chain passed through the main link of each man's fetter, and padlocked to a strong iron staple in the floor, and, with this additional aggravation of their daily misery, are left to pass the hours destined by nature to ease and refreshment, upon loose straw only scattered on

the floor, A man may thus suffer six months imprisonment under the bare suspicion of a crime, from which, at the end of that dreary term, his country may perhaps honourably acquit him.

[ocr errors]

HULL. THE BRIDEWELL. Mr. Nield felt himself almost suffocated from the offensive state of it.

BRIDGEWATER. The prison is only one room, with straw upon the floor, where, as Mr. Nield was informed, fifty prisoners had been confined for six days.

ROTHWELL, YORKSHIRE. Prison for debtors.-Fees on commitment 9s. 4d. on discharge 18s. 4d., garnish 6d. 2d. No chaplain, no surgeon, no allowance for food whatever; no firing allowed, nor any employment provided, which can sel dom be procured by the prisoners; pri soners pay for their bed. Only one court yard for men and women, The annual number in confinement about thirty-four.

SALISBURY COUNTY GAOL AND BRIDEWELL-Young novices in vice and inveterate offenders, vagrants and faulty servants, are alike promiscuously confined here: when let out for airing, it is but for one hour only out of the twenty four. Mr. Nield happened to be there during that hour, in the wintry month of January 1802. There was a heavy fall of sleet, snow, and rain; it was extremely cold, and yet upon opening their door, the prisoners (17 felons and 7 for misdemeanors) rushed out into the midst of it, eagerly gasping as it were for a mouthful of fresh vital air.

TAUNTON COUNTY BRIDEWELL, — Many of the prisoners were in irons; and amongst them a very little boy, committed for two months, had heavy irons.

KINGSTON UPON THAMES, TOWN GAOL. -Mr. Nield found here a man confined for six guineas for rent, and the costs incurred against him had amounted to 31. 3s. 9d. The poor man told him he had maintained a wife and brought up ten children without parish assistance; but having been in confinement eleven weeks, his wife and three youngest children were then in the workhouse. Here was no allowance whatever to provide needful food for this victim to misfortune, nor even water accessible to him. In a narrow passage he was standing to beg; and but for the casual interference of sympathy in others, could no longer have existed than human nature can exist without food,

E. F.

For

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

A

SIR,

S it is the express duty of every thinking individual, whether be longing to the profession of medicine or not, through some channel, to communicate to the public, for the benefit of society, whatever fact his accidental experience may have discovered to him as likely to conduce to the preservation, or restoration, of the health of others; I shall make no apology for requesting you to insert in the Monthly Magazine, the statement of the case, with which the narrative I am about to enter upon commences. With regard to the subsequent detail and remarks, as not being necessarily connected with it, and having less of utility than amusement for their object, you would, notwithstanding, oblige me by bringing them forward through the same respectable medium, as they, possibly, may not prove uninteresting to such of your general readers as, from occasional mental exhaustion or other causes, for a time, may happen to be in disposed to engage in the perusal of the more profound communications and more important disquisitions, with which your valuable publication abounds.

After a long residence in the island of Jamaica, where for between thirteen and fourteen years I exercised the different departments of medical practice, upwards of a twelvemonth ago I returned to England, in a state of very indifferent health, designing to pass the remainder of my life among my relations and friends, with a view to the possible recovery, or, at any rate, improvement of my impaired health. During my abode in Kingston, where I was harassed with the multiplieity of my professional avocations, I had, in common with the majority of European settlers there, repeated attacks of the endemic of the climate, hepatitis; to alleviate which I was more than once ebliged to have recourse to the employment of the usual remedy of the complaint, the submuriate of mercury, taken in the form of pills, and persisted in so as to affect the gums and taint the breath. In process of time, also, my lungs be. came injured; as was indicated by a habitual frequent, dry cough, which now came on, and the hurrying of my respiration on making any unusual exertion, as in speaking, or reading aloud, for any length of time, ascending an acclivity, or the like.

For more than four years of my life had my enjoyment been thus embittered

by a constant uneasy state of feeling, which appeared to be rather gaining ground, when I at length determined on making trial of the effect of revisiting my native country: and, accordingly, I fol lowed my wife and family to England, where I arrived in the course of April 1812. As, until latterly, my cough had not been attended with any expectora tion at all, which, also, when it did su pervene, betrayed nothing of a purulent nature, and, as the symptoms of hepa titis, upon the whole, indicated a com paratively slight affection, doubtless one less severe than cases I had known by the same expedient recovered from, I was not without hopes of ultimately regaining, in some degree, my pristine vigour of body and mind.

For the first five or six months after my return, during which I resided prin cipally in Bath and its neighbourhood, if I did not derive decided benefit from my change of climate, I cannot say that I experienced any sensible alteration for the worse. But, when the winter set in, which, to me at least, appeared to be unusually inclement, notwithstanding the employment, on my part, of every requi site precaution against such a vicissitude, especially the habitual wearing of fleecy hosiery next my skin from head to foot, every uneasy symptom, with which I had been comparatively slightly affected in the West Indies, now became aggravated tenfold. In addition to a pain in my right hypochondrium, originally obtuse, now acute, I was almost incessantly tormented with a severe, lancinating pain, shooting up to the shoulder-blade of the same side. My organs of digestion became altogether deranged; and my cough, which was now much increased in frequency, was at length attended with a prodigious discharge from the lungs, of a matter disagreeable to the taste, either actual pus, or highly morbid mucus, having altogether a purulent appearance. The tunica conjunctiva of my eye, as well as my whole counte nance, became such as distinguish the subjects of icterus; and my strength failed me daily. The submuriate of mercury, from which alone I used to receive benefit in the West Indies, I was debar. red from employing, on account of the violent derangement and griping of the bowels, with which I invariably found its exhibition to be attended in England. In short, after being afflicted with these sufferings from the middle of November 1812, to the end of February following, B2

in the anxious hope that change of place might effect something in my favour, I lastly removed to London, where, during the prevalence of the bad weather, I meant to confine myself to the house, and determined to avail myself of the advice of the most eminent physicians in the metropolis. The result of an early consultation of several of the faculty, ac knowledged to possess the most ample experience and the soundest judgment, was, that my only safety consisted in my immediate return to the West Indies, the climate of which, in their opinion, from its having become to me a second nature, as it were, was now indispensable to the prolongation of my life. Distressing as it was to me once more to tear myself from the bosom of my family, and to bid a long, perhaps a last adieu to my friends and native land, it was the only alternative left for me to adopt in such critical circumstances.

Accordingly, early in the month of March last, embarking at Portsmouth on board of a ship bound for the West In dies, I proceeded to the Cove of Cork, to join a fleet of merchantmen which had rendezvoused there to place themselves ander the appointed convoy. During the detention of the fleet for more than six weeks, in consequence of being windbound, I experienced such relief, while living in lodgings in the town of Cove, that, against the wind at length shifting in our favour, I felt myself, so to speak, in a great measure a new man. For the last three or four weeks, the weather, considering the earliness of the season, had been remarkably mild, and seemed to be set in fair; so that, my hepatic symptoms being all by this time consi. derably alleviated, my cough become much less constant and severe, the expectoration diminished, and no longer retaining the purulent appearance, and my appetite and strength inuch improved; I ventured to allow the ship to sail without me, and to try the effect of a longer residence in a situation, which, Judging from my late experience of it, bade fair, as the season advanced, to further the amelioration of my constitution, already for me, so happily begun. Nor had I reason, as will appear in the sequel, to repent of embracing so unexpected a determination.

By the time that I had continued three months at the town of Cove, the jaundiced appearance of my eyes and face altogether disappeared; the pain in the

hypochondrium, shooting up to the sca pula of the same side, was entirely removed; my appetite and digestion were completely restored; I scarcely coughed at all in the course of the day, except on getting up in the morning, at which time, and then only, I brought up an incon siderable expectoration of a yellow.co loured matter, and of a thick and tenacious consistence. I so far regained my former strength, as to be able to ramble over the hilly ground of the surrounding neighbourhood, without any cough being excited, or my respiration materially accelerated. In conclusion, without resorting to the aid of medicine,-of the inefficacy of which, in my own case, I was well convinced, confining myself to no particu ar regimen, but merely observing moderation in all things, in the short space of between three and four months, I returned to the enjoyment of such vigour of health, and hilarity of mind, as I had not known for the last seven years of my life. On stating these particulars to a judicious medical practitioner in Cove, as well as to other men of sense in the place, not of the profes sion, with whom I had contracted an intimacy, I received the gratifying and satisfactory information from them, that there was nothing new nor singular in my case; as they had known instances of not a few, affected in their lungs similarly to myself, who had accidentally put into Cove, with the view of proceeding to Lisbon, Madeira, or elsewhere, after some stay there, having so far recovered as to relinquish their original design of roaming abroad in quest of the health they had lost. Were I a native of the country, still more of the place, as the Irish, in all probability, or rather cer. tainly, are the most national people an the face of the earth; or were I an in habitant, or what would be still more questionable, a medical practitioner established in the town of Cove; the above statement of the important fact, which I have, in my own person, so happily experienced, might naturally enough be ascribed to prejudice, or placed to the account of self-interest. But no such objection affecting the cre dibility of my testimony, the impartial and discerning, to whom I address myself, and whom it may interest, are at liberty to follow the dictates of their own judgment, and to avail themselves of the present communication.

W. C. B.

« AnteriorContinuar »