Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/333

Rh that relating to &quot; proposed improvements in the structure and management of prisons &quot; constituting less than a tenth part of the whole. One portion of his subject, indeed, that relating to the ships used for transportation of convicts, had been to some extent taken out of his hand by the passing in 1776 of the Act authorizing the hulk system ; but even in this connexion the appearance of his work was highly opportune. Following within a few years the pub lication of Beccaria s work On Crimes and Punishments, it called public attention to the practical question of the treatment of criminals in a manner which compelled the adoption of remedial or at least of palliative measures, although the full difficulty and delicacy of the problem had not as yet been thoroughly appreciated. One of the most immediate results was that Sir W. Blackstone and Mr Eden were requested to draft a bill for the establishment of penitentiary houses, where by means of solitary imprison ment, accompanied by well-regulated labour and religious instruction, the object of reforming the criminal and inuring him to habits of industry might be successfully pursued. New buildings were manifestly necessary in order that the provisions of such an Act might be carried into effect ; and as no one seemed to know how to set about their construc tion, Howard volunteered to go abroad again and collect plans and other information. On this errand (April 1778) he first went to Amsterdam, and carefully examined the &quot; spin- Louses&quot; and &quot; rasp-liouses&quot; for which that city was famous ; next he traversed Prussia, Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, and Italy, everywhere inspecting prisons, hospitals, and work houses, and carefully recording the merits and defects of each. In the course of this tour he was received with marked consideration and respect at more than one court ; but the personal incident of greatest consequence was one which befel him on a voyage along the Tuscan coast. A sudden and violent storm had compelled the master of the small vessel in which he had taken a passage for Leghorn to seek the shelter of land; cold, wet, and exhausted, passengers and crew reached a little island harbour, but only to find that through fear of the plague (they having sailed from a port supposed to be infected) a landing was refused them. Driven backagain upon the storm, they were carried by its violence to the coast of Algeria, where a similar experience was encountered, permission to enter the harbours there also being peremptorily denied. It was this occurrence which first directed Howard s attention to the subject which engrossed his attention in after years, and in the investigation of which he ultimately lost his life. Leghorn at last reached, he hastened northwards through Lombardy, France, and Flanders, arriving in England in 1779. The information he had obtained having been placed at the service of the House of Commons, a bill was intro duced and passed for building two penitentiary houses in Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, or Essex (as might be afterwards determined), and Howard was appointed first supervisor (19 Geo. III. cap. 74). The scheme, however, did not proceed without friction too trying for his patience : and after much time had been lost in interminable discussions with his colleagues as to the sites of the proposed buildings, he in January 1781 wrote to Lord Bathurst resigning his post before anything practical had been achieved. In 1780 he had published a quarto volume of 220 pages as an appendix (the first) to his State of Prisons ; about the same time also he caused to be printed his translation of the suppressed French pamphlet on the Bastille ; but on obtaining release from his employments at home his passion for accumulating statistics urged him to new and more extended Continental tours, as far as to Denmark, Sweden, and Ilussia in 1781, and to Spain and Portugal in 1783. The results of these journeys (which were full of curious and romantic incidents) were embodied in 1784 in a second appendix, with the publication of which his direct labours in connexion with the subject of prison reform may be said to have ceased. The five remaining years of his life were chiefly devoted to researches on a different though cognate subject, that of the means which ought to be used for pre vention of the plague, and for guarding against the propa gation of contagious distempers in general. Having at the suggestion of his medical friends provided himself with a list of queries to be put to the physicians in attendance at the lazarettos he proposed to visit, he in November 1785 sailed for Holland, and thence travelling through France inspected the great lazaretto at Marseilles, though with considerable difficulty, owing to the unfriendliness of the authorities. He next passed through Florence, Rome, and Naples to Malta, whence he sailed by Zante to Smyrna, where his reputed medical skill opened all the prisons and hospitals to his inspection, and where he had ample oppor tunities of studying the plague in its most fatal form. He then went to Constantinople, where the fame of his skill had preceded him, and where some further fortunate practice greatly added to his prestige. Declining the hospitalities of the British ambassador, however, he devoted himself entirely to the care of the neglected poor, and per sistently forced his way into infected caravanserais and pest-houses whither physician and dragoman alike declined to follow him. At length his researches seemed to be complete ; and with a great accumulation of papers and memoranda, he was preparing to return homewards by Vienna, when it occurred to his scrupulous mind that he still lacked one essential qualification for practically dealing with the matter which he had taken in hand ; he had not as yet had any personal experience of quarantine discipline. Altering his plans accordingly, he returned to Smyrna, and, deliberately choosing a foul ship, took a passage to Venice that he might there undergo the usual confinement. A protracted voyage of sixty days, during which an attack by pirates gave Howard an opportunity of manifesting in a new form that personal bravery which was one of his characteristics, was followed by a weary term of confine ment which enabled him to gain, though at the cost of considerable hardship and suffering, the experience he had desired. While imprisoned in the Venetian lazaretto he received two pieces of intelligence which from very opposite causes gave him acute pain. One was the announcement of a proposal that a statue should be erected commemorative of his services in the cause of humanity; to Howard as &quot;a private man with some pecu liarities,&quot; desirous to retire into obscurity and silence, it presented itself as a &quot;hasty and disagreeable measure,&quot; &quot;a distressing affair.&quot; The other was the information that his only son, a youth of twenty-two years of age, after a course of flagrant misconduct, had lost his reason and had been put under restraint. Returning hastily by Trieste and Vienna (where he had a long and singular interview with the emperor Joseph II.), he reached England in February 1787. His first care related to his domestic concerns; after these had been put into such order as they admitted, he set out upon another journey of inspection of the prisons of the United Kingdom, at the same time busy ing himself in preparing for the press the results of his recent tour. The somewhat rambling work containing them was published in February 1789 at Warrington, under the title An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe : with various Papers relative to the Plague, together witk further Observations on some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals, and additional Remarks on the present state of t/ioye in, Great Britain and Ireland. In the conclusion (p. 235) he committed with some solemnity the result of his past labours to his country, and announced his intention of again visiting Russia, Turkey, and some other countries, 