Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/23

11 was done in Neild's time to make progress almost certain, and a retrograde movement impossible. The jail of Aylesbury (with, which he was more immediately connected), and other prisons, controlled in their management by men like himself, became what it is the cant term of the day to call "Model Prisons." The abuses of those he could not control, were exposed by him. It became known that in the Borough Compter prison the debtors lay upon boards; in filth, damp, and discomfort; felons and debtors all huddled together; no classification, no comfort, no decency. That in Ayr jail, the prisoners lay on straw, till Mr Neild supplied blankets from his own private charity. That in Edinburgh jail, the same miseries and even greater were endured; no employment was permitted; and felons (with an enlightened regard for the state of their souls) were absolutely excluded by rule, from attendance on divine service. In the privileged prison of Dover Castle, when its warder was the great Minister Lord Liverpool (who had been preceded by Mr Pitt), the prison-fees were so enormous that prisoners might remain twenty months in the Castle at the suit of the Crown, for sums totally irrespective of the real debt for which they were incarcerated. The prison was in a state of shameful dilapidation; and a Quaker gentleman gave 800l. in the three per cents, to pave the courtyard of this royal jail, and make permanent provision to aid the poorer debtors in obtaining their release. These were merely samples of the condition of most of the prisons in Great Britain. In Fowell Buxton's time the Borough Compter was little altered; dirt, confusion, and misery; cold, sickness, and gambling; and twenty prisoners sleeping on eight straw beds. This, again, a mere sample of the condition of other jails. In Mrs Fry's time, Newgate, which was built to hold 480, held from 800 to 1200; no classification, no employment, no instruction; filth that sickened and turned the heart faint; instances of debtors actually starving in jail; the accused and convicted, sick and well, abandoned women, and children