Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/24

12 young enough to be in the nursery, all huddled together; prisoners employed in gambling, and complaining that they had nothing else to do. Idleness, contamination, riot, sickness and blasphemy; no rest by night, and no peace by day; only corruption, mental and physical, hourly leavening among neglected swarms of fellow-creatures, with bodies to care for and souls to be saved.

To the efforts, first of one earnest individual, and then of another, must be attributed the attention slowly granted by successive Governments to these great abuses; until at length the greater part of our prisons have become a triumph and a show; from the regulations of which it needs only that some future Neild should expunge the barbarous mistake of prolonged solitary confinement, to make them as perfect as places of the kind can be.

To the efforts of earnest individuals, must also be attributed that control now exercised over the education of the poor. Where was England in this respect fifty or sixty years since? In 1798, a Mr Lancaster opened a school in the Borough road, which in seven years became a free school for one thousand children. The expenses of Mr Lancaster's plan outran his means; and a Mr Joseph Fox gave bills for 3,600l. to take the school out of debt, risking this sum without any very clear prospect of repayment, for the sake of the cause. Other generous and public-spirited men then came forward, and Mr Lancaster travelled through the country giving lectures and explaining his scheme. In consequence of those lectures, forty five schools, educating 11,300 children were established; in the year 1809, fifty schools, educating 14,200 children, were organised; and at length, at a meeting held at the Freemason's Tavern on the 11th of May, 1811—two Royal Princes (the Duke of York and the Duke of Sussex), moved and seconded a resolution, that Mr Lancaster deserved the thanks and support of all England, for that in four years he had been the means of causing 25,000 children to be educated; and