Prison labour, &c. : correspondence and communications addressed to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning the introduction of tread-mills into prisons : with other matters connected with the subject of prison discipline / by Sir John Cox Hippisley.

  • Hippisley, John Cox, 1748-1825.
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prison labour, &c. : correspondence and communications addressed to His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, concerning the introduction of tread-mills into prisons : with other matters connected with the subject of prison discipline / by Sir John Cox Hippisley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    your original Motion, to look for “ Copies of all Communications made to, or received by, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, respecting the use of Tread-Wheels in Gaols or Houses of Correction.” These terms are confessedly wide enough to have included the essential parts of my own Correspondence ; but it is not for me to question the official propriety of the subsequent distinction. Though, as an acting provincial Magistrate, I cannot but necessarily regard the introduction of the Tread-Wheel, in our Prisons, as a mea- sure of no indifferent consideration ; yet, stand- ing individually pledged and under specific en- gagements, for the completion of extensive build- ings in the most considerable of the Houses of Correction in the County of Somerset,—an en- gagement subsisting under the orders and con- firmation of successive Courts of the General Sessions—I am compelled to contemplate, with increased anxiety, the use and rapid progress of this novel system,—which, under the assumed denomination of Prison Labour, is, in fact, sub- versive of all Manual Labour, and cannot fail to paralyse every such effort as that now advert- ed to, contracted in the spirit and letter of the