Old Bailey experience. Criminal jurisprudence and the actual working of our penal code of laws. Also, an essay on prison discipline, to which is added a history of the crimes committed by offenders in the present day / By the author of 'The schoolmaster's experience in Newgate' [i.e. T. Wontner].

  • Wontner, Thomas
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Old Bailey experience. Criminal jurisprudence and the actual working of our penal code of laws. Also, an essay on prison discipline, to which is added a history of the crimes committed by offenders in the present day / By the author of 'The schoolmaster's experience in Newgate' [i.e. T. Wontner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1l> the term. In the latter case total ruin ensued ; his business was destroyed ; he became a bankrupt, and was left to endure a]l the horrors of a prison without even means to supply his daily wants ; and to this distress was added the knowledge of his wife and family being without bread to eat. And all this he underwent for an inadvertency, which happened in the hurry of his daily labours to conduct a work for the support of his family, being entirely free from any malicious inten- tion ; whilst, on the other hand, strong personal motives actuated the party in committing the offence. This is letting the current of justice go on uninterruptedly: if punishment for like offences are to be equal, circumstances and the situa- tions of the offenders ought to be taken into consideration. I shall have occasion in another place to revert to the cases of embezzlement; my object here is to show that by recklessly depauperizing large families, not only are the parish rates augmented, but the numbers increased from whence the great body of delinquents are drawn. It is sending recruits to fill up the places of those depredators who annually fall by crime. I have noticed elsewhere, that an annual return should be made, of not only the different offences committed, but of the different classes of society from whence the offenders come; if this were done, I will venture to predicate that it would throw much light on the subject of crime. Under the idea of an improved prison discipline meeting the objects of refor- mation, and prevention of crime, have many great writers fallen into error. Beccaria, Paley, Montesquieu, Pastoret, Bentham, &c. &c, all of whom appear, from their arguments, to entertain the notion that punishment, or the dread of it, will change the Ethiopian's skin ; we know it has turned the colour of the hair, but to suppose that it will teach the igno- rant, or induce in a dark and untaught mind a disposition to learn, is a mistake too palpable to dwell on. Where the mind is dark, and the habits of vice are established, no system can avail. Even the great Bentham laid much stress on the