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.
- Sir John Hippisley, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1823
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.
230/238
![urged, which, in the intervals of the General Sessions, might, by a legislative provision, be authorised to exercise the powers heretofore given by the 24th Geo. III. c. 56, sect. 12, by which one Justice of Assize, or two or more Jus- tices of the County, “ might remove any prisoners, under “ sentences and orders made by one or more Justice or ,e Justices of Peace at their Sessions, or otherwise, upon “ conviction in a summary way, without the intervention “ of a Jury.” It was also suggested, that such a power might be advantageously extended to cases of all convictions in which capital punishments were not awarded, but subject to such restrictions, with reference to the responsibility of the Sheriff, State Prisoners, &c. &c. as might seem expe- dient. It seems difficult to assign any valid reason why the provisions of the Act of the 24 th of the late King, in this respect, should have been repealed, [which appears indeed to have expired;] or why such a Committee might not be beneficially entrusted with such an extension of the powers originally provided. Removals thus circumstanced could not be construed to be opposed to the provisions of the Habeus Corpus Act, as all process for removal out of the County, when addressed to the Sheriff, might equally operate in whatever place of confinement the prisoner was found within it-,—nor could such a power militate against the pro- vision of that Act, “ that to the intent no person may avoid “ his trial, by procuring his removal before the Assizes, at “ such time as he cannot be brought back to receive his “ trial there 3 it is enacted, that after Assizes proclaimed “ for that county, where the Prisoner is detained, no person “ shall be removed from the common Gaol upon any Habeus “ Corpus. Nor in any other clause of the Act is there any thing constructively opposed to such a power of removal as that here suggested. In cases of excess of commitments, the advantage to be de- rived from the application of such a discretionary authority is obvious : — there is scarcely a prison in the kingdom where the benefits, at some time or another, would not have been deeply felt 3 and, with reference to contagious diseases, instead of being merely checked in their progress, by the pro- vision of the law as it now stands, they might have been obviated altogether. Nor would such a discretion vested in Committees of the Magistracy be less advantageously exer- cised in instances where important reparations of Gaols and other prisons are conducted by prison labour, as experience has evinced the great inconvenience of the want of such a](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22390649_0232.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
