The condition of gaols, hospitals, and other institutions as described by John Howard / by James Blake Bailey.

  • Bailey, James Blake, -1897.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The condition of gaols, hospitals, and other institutions as described by John Howard / by James Blake Bailey. 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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    infirmary he places in the court for young criminals, quite apart from tlio main building. At Norwich County Gaol these conditions were partly fulfilled. Howard tells us that there he found three airy rooms for the sick, so distinct from the rest of the prison, that there is no danger of spreading any infection from thence. This infirmary was an ex- ception to the rule. Instead of building this important part of the gaol so as to minimise the risk of infection, the top of the house seems to have been generally chosen as the place for the sick. At the London Bridewell the women's day ward occupied the ground floor; up-stairs were their two night rooms, and a chamber above these was fitted up as an infirmary. This is a fair specimen of several other gaols, where there was any apartment exclusively kept for the sick. At Salisbury County Gaol, the infirmary was built over the stable, cart house, and brew house ; whilst at Tralee County Gaol, the ascent to the room put by as an infirmary, was by a ladder. At York County Gaol, there was a most extraordinary regulation in force, viz., that when prisoners of one sex were in the infirmary, those of the other sex were excluded. The building was one mid- dle-sized room near the gate, and Howard mentions that at one of his visits a sick man was kept out of the infirmary, because at that time there were female inmates. In many cases, similar to that last quoted, no doubt it was im- possible to rectify the existing state of things without a thorough re-arranging or re-building the gaol, and that was almost too much to expect in the then state of public opinion on this question. In the prison of Saint-Eloi at Paris, the general infirmary was over the two rooms La Force and over this '* an infirmary for the scorbut. This distemper seems to have been very prevalent and fatal at this prison, for Howard found at his visit in 1778, 63 patients most of them ill of this disorder. They contracted it in a year or two from their confinement, as they were never sufi'ered to go out of their rooms. Many lost the use of their limbs by it. Howard's remarks on Clerkenwell Bridewell, show the disgrace- ful neglect to which the sick were subjected. He teUs us in January, 1777, he found that the sick complained of sore feet, which were quite black. The sick were for the most part women of the poorest sort, not able to pay for beds. No straw or bedding allowed. In the infirmary for men, which is described as a small close room, we read that *• in January, 1783, five were 2—2
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