in 1776, begins his book by remarks upon the
jail fever. This disease was bred in the filth of
neglected prisons. It would not, perhaps, have
been heeded for another half a century, had it
not irreverently, in 1750, carried off the lord
mayor, one alderman, two judges, and most of
the jury at the Old Bailey sessions of 1750.
In 1772 it was again fatal, and that at last awoke
the city. Howard found the new jail building at
Newgate, and did not much like it. "Without
more than ordinary care," says this true
philanthropist, "the prisoners in it will be in great
danger of the jail fever." The condemned cells
were nine feet high, the smaller cells only about
nine feet by six. The one double-grated window
was three by one and a half. The doors
were four inches chick. The strong stone walls
were lined with planks, studded with broad–
headed nails. In each cell was a barrack bedstead.
Criminals, bold enough, at their trial, were
struck with horror, and shed tears, the turnkeys
told Howard, when they first entered those
darksome solitary abodes. The noise in the
yard was distracting during the prayer-time in
the chapel. Visitors to the press-yard at
executions paid three guineas to the keeper.

The Fleet had been rebuilt before 1776.
Howard describes it as consisting of four long
galleries, with rooms on each side, and a cellar
floor, called by the debtors Bartholemew Fair.
On the first floor were the chapel, the tap-room,
a coffee-room, rooms for the turnkeys and watchmen,
and eighteen apartments for prisoners.
Over the chapel was a dirty billiard-room, kept
by a prisoner, who slept in the same room. The
Common Side was a large room, with cabins
opening from it. These were for men who
were insolvent, and who lived on donations
and the proceeds of the begging-box and grate.
The amusements in the yard were skittles,
Mississippi, fives, and tennis. The jailer's tap-house
was frequented by butchers and others from the
neighbouring market (a most demoralising
practice). Every Monday night there was a wine
club, and every Thursday a beer club, rioting till
two in the morning, and vexing the more sober
prisoners. April 6, 1776, there were two hundred
and forty-three prisoners; wives and
children, four hundred and seventy-five.

In the Marshalsea, Howard found two hundred
and thirty-four prisoners. There were
four rooms for women, and sixty beds for men;
but many of the prisoners slept anywhere about
—in the chapel or the tap-room. There were in
the prison about forty-six women and children.
There was a skittle-ground and a chandler's
shop inside the prison. The excellent but
intensely matter-of-fact philanthropist is good
enough to observe that one Sunday in 1775,
when the tapster's beer ran bad, there were no
less than six hundred pots of beer brought into
this prison from a neighbouring public-house.

The King's Bench prison, in May 1776, contained
three hundred and ninety-five prisoners;
besides two hundred and seventy-nine of their
wives and seven hundred and twenty-five of
their children. Two-thirds of these were within
the walls. There was a stocks in the prison, used
for the punishment of blasphemers, swearers,
and rioters.

We have improved in these matters since 1777.
We have now perhaps gone to another extreme.
In the twenty-three years preceding 1772, the
total number of executions in London was six
hundred and seventy-eight; yet far more than
that number died in the same period of jail fever.
Howard says that he saw nothing abroad that
made him blush for his native country but the
prisons. He tried successfully to show that
vileness, debauchery, disease, and famine were
not the necessary attendants of a prison; but
though turtle-soup and sweetbreads are not yet
the general diet of the Uriah Heaps of our day,
we have still, we fear, much to learn before our
prison discipline is worthy of our civilisation.

LICENSED TO KILL

I QUITE agree with Socrates in many things.
That eminent philosopher and I completely
coincide in our estimate of mere physical science,
but on a special point we are heartily and
altogether agreed. If I remember right,
Socrates designates as the "obstetric art"
that department of human knowledge which,
to persons circumstanced as I am, is most
valuable. He lays down that every child, on
his entrance to this world, knows everything,
and will answer correctly the most difficult
questions, provided his examiner only knows
liow to put his questions correctly. Shelley, I
find, was a believer in this creed, and frightened
a nurse into fits by seizing her small charge one
day, and demanding to ascertain from it something
about the essences of angels. To me the
doctrine is most comfortable and cheering. I
have the sweet consciousness that I know
everything in my inner self, and that it was
altogether owing to the obtuseness or ignorance
of my examiners that the world was not alive to
the extent of my erudition. The incapacity of
my questioners in that obstetric art has been
the bane of my life. How much the happiness
of man depends on the intelligence of others!
At school I was deemed a dunce and dolt, and was
"kept in" or flogged accordingly, solely because
my masters did not interrogate me properly.
An infant—I am told that is a correct rendering
of the word pusio—actually explained to
Socrates the doctrine of the squaring of the
circle, but then Plato knew how to question
scientifically. Unfortunately, my questioners
were not of the Socrates order, and I have been
a martyr.

My friends—it is right to call them so—designed
me for the medical profession, and, to say
the truth, I was not averse to become an M.D.
I knew a few fast young students, and I liked
their life. It was an easy thing, I thought, to
walk the hospitals, and assist the great surgeon
by holding his instruments and bandages. The
art of administering boluses and applying
cataplasms seemed easy. Then there was so wide a