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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    greater part of the poor are subdued and paralyzed by the contemplation of their own miserable condition, and the forlorn and helpless state of their offsprings, for whom the general tear of pity should be shed. The hapless parents brooding over the insurmountable adverse circumstances of their fate, are deprived of all powers of action ; for, while the mind contemplates its own troubles, it is acted on, instead of acting; when they become, in the language of their op- pressors, lazy idle vagabonds who will not work even when it is offered at a remunerating price for their labour] The well-fed man reflects but little on the state of the poor man's body and mind in a jejeun condition. Hunger, it is true, does most commonly stir all animals into action, but partial feeding for any length of time, combined with an agonised state of mind, arising from surrounding miserable circumstances, will inevitably superinduce inappetency, re- ducing the human frame into a kind of semi-torpid and vivid state, under which the mind becomes stultified and callous to the affections and amenities of life. All per- sons declared insane in the common acceptation of the term, become immediate objects of commiseration, and of national concern ; liberal subscriptions are made to build asylums in every country throughout the land for their reception. The wealthy are loudly eulogized for their benevolence, but here self-interest is predominant. If madmen were allowed to go at large, and run a-muck, every man's life would be in danger; and who more tenacious of life than those who have where- withal to secure all its luxuries and enjoyments ? True charity is disinterested, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. I say unto ye, rulers and landholders, let every man capable of labour occupy his rood of ground, and more in proportion for his family ; restore the peasantry to the land of their forefathers, whom ye most atrociously hunted off the soil of their birth, compelling them to take refuge in large