Humanity and humanitarianism : with special reference to the prison systems of Great Britain and the United States, the question of criminal lunacy, and capital punishment / by William Tallack.
- William Tallack
- Date:
- 1871
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Humanity and humanitarianism : with special reference to the prison systems of Great Britain and the United States, the question of criminal lunacy, and capital punishment / by William Tallack. 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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![neglected childhood, early disease, orphanhood, training amid filth and vice, and so forth. As to dwellings alone, how sugges- tive are the statistics of large cities. For example, in the better parts of Glasgow the inhabitants only average 34 per acre, and in those parts the annual death-rate is 5 per 1,000. In the squalid parts (not the worst) the average is 328 per acre, and the death-rate 34 per 1,000. That is, 29 persons per 1,000 die annually from the mere difference of haljitation. In Edinburgh the death-rate in the worst parts is 60 per 1,000 ; that is, 55 per 1,000 die in consequence of their poverty. How much dis- ease, temptation, insanity and crime are here involved in addi- tion to the deaths ! How loud the call for treating the faults of such a population with a firmly reformatory, humanely elevating system, whilst at the same time the preventive agencies of tem- perance, economy, self-help, education, and improved dwellings are also requisite.'' The writer has repeatedly had occasion to observe with pleasure that prison officers, from their habitual observation of the mental weakness and congenital deficiencies of many of the criminal class, are often amongst the most truly humane and con- siderate of persons. Amongst these ofiicers are to be found some of the strongest advocates for the system of reformatory punish- ment on the basis of restitution and of sentences sufficiently long (in cases of repeated crime) to form really established habits of useful and virtuous citizenship, t THE SEPARATE SYSTEM. ' The separation of prisoners totally by night in individual cells, and by day, so far as is practicable, by means of silence, is a sine qud non of efiicient prison discipline. This, at any rate, is * Crime Capitalists.—Another urgently needed means of preventing crime is increased severity towards crime capitalists, the villanons, and often comparatively wealthy, receivers of stolen goods, many of whom, with impunity, use simpler-minded criminals as cats'-paws, secure nearly all the booty, and escape scot free. f Industrial Treatment of the Insane.—Not only is useful industry a reformatory discipline for the ordinary idle criminal, but it has been found to be most salutary in its effects on ]icrsons wholly or partially insane. At Gheel, near Antwerp, where industry and individualisation have been, for more than a century, made the chief features of the treatment of the insane, greater success in the way of results has followed than at any other lunatic cstabhsh-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22280352_0026.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
