Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/569

 16. BOWEN: THE VICTORIAN PERIOD 555 places where it had not been introduced, and that the organi- sation of what has been called our standing army against crime was placed upon its present footing. What requires to be done to perfect still further its efficiency, it would be be- yond the limits of this paper to discuss. To what has already been accomplished is due the disappearance in the course of the present reign of a lawlessness and insecurity in our coun- try districts which had become a disgrace to England. The treatment of our criminal classes while undergoing sentence of imprisonment or penal servitude constitutes the last head of the present subject; and limits of space require that the notice of it should be brief. The darkest ages of English prisons had closed before 1837, but a prison system was as yet unorganised. Throughout our local gaols there was no uniformity of management — the hours of labour, the discipline, the diet varied in each ; a separate system of con- finement, a careful graduation of punishments, the classifica- tion of offenders, the construction and sanitation of the prison, all remained to be dealt with upon a natural and com- plete basis. The years 1840-45 began an epoch of improve- ment with the opening of Pentonville a model establishment, with airy single cells and sanitary arrangements of the best kind, which has been the means of developing and perfecting in England the separate system, and been largely imitated abroad. Fifty-four new prisons were constructed on a similar method during the next six years. But prison reform still moved slowly, owing to the number of local gaols, each under a management of its own. Even in the year 1863, the food at one gaol was furnished from a neighbouring inn, while at another the inmates passed fifteen hours out of the twenty- four in bed. In some smaller prisons the prisoners slept two in a bed, in compartments which the warders were afraid to enter in the dark. Parliament in 1865 introduced the separate cell system, with rules for the discipline, health, diet, labour, and classification of the inmates ; but the essential step towards complete uniformity was not adopted till 1877, when Government took over the local prisons of the country, and the Secretary of State and the Commissioners of Prisons became responsible for their management. A uniform code