Remarks on prisons / By Stevenson MacGill.

  • Stevenson Macgill
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on prisons / By Stevenson MacGill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be allotted to each class of prisoners, for enjoying, in their different courts, the benefit of air and exercise. Inquiry should be made into the health of every prisoner on his admission, and a survey taken of the state of his clothing and his person. If required, let his clothes un- dergo a thorough cleansing, and his person be purified and sweetened by the bath. When unable to furnish what is necessary himself, the humanity of the public should provide coarse but decent cloathing, and bed-clothes suited to his condition. Let me not be thought too minute, when I add the following observations: Every prisoner should be obliged to keep his person clean, and his apparel as neat as his circumstances will permit: he should be obliged, if able, to sweep his own room each morning; when unable, other prisoners, for a small reward, should perform the office for him: once, at least, in the week, each room should be washed; and twice in the year, the walls should be white-washed with lime: when the beds are of straw, the straw should be fre- quently changed; the sheets of the prisoners should be shifted once in the month, their linens on every Sabbath: each court being provided with abundance of water, should be washed at least once, in the course of every day. Speaking of some of the prisons of Paris, Howard makes the following remark: “ Most of the courts are paved, and they are washed three or four times a-day. One would hardly believe, how this freshens the air in the upper rooms. I felt this once and again, when I was in the chambers; and an Englishman, who had the mis-
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