'Vicious examples.—The general prevalence and spread of wickedness in prisons and abroad by discharged prisoners, will now be as easily accounted for as the propagation of disease. It is often said, 'a prison pays no debts;' I am sure it may be added, that a prison mends no morals. Sir John Fielding observes, that 'a criminal discharged, generally by the next session after the execution of his comrades, becomes the head of a gang of his own raising.' And petty offenders who are committed to bridewell for a year or two, and spend that time, not in hard labor, but in idleness and wicked company, or are sent for that time to county jails, generally grow desperate, and come out fitted for the perpetration of any villainy. Half the robberies in and about London are planned in the prisons, and by that dreadful assemblage of criminals, and the number of idle people who visit them. Multitudes of young creatures, committed for some trifling offense, are totally ruined there. I make no scruple to affirm, that if it were the wish and aim of magistrates to effect the destruction, present and future, of young delinquents, they could not devise a more effectual method than to confine them so long in our prisons, those seats and seminaries of idleness and every vice.
'These gentlemen who, when they are told of the misery which our prisoners suffer, content themselves with saying, "let them take care to keep out," prefaced perhaps with an angry prayer, seem not duly sensible of the favor of Providence which distinguishes them from the sufferers. They do not remember that we are required to imitate our gracious Heavenly Parent, who is kind to the unthankful and to the evil; they also forget the
[Footnote A: Of the famous 'Black Assize' at Oxford, mentioned in the text as an instance of the malignity of the jail fever, the following is the account given by the chronicler Stowe:—The 4th, 5th, and 6th days of July, 1577, were holden the assizes at Oxford, where was arraigned and condemned one Rowland Jenkes for his seditious tongue; at which time there arose such a damp, that almost all were smothered. Very few escaped that were not taken at that instant. The jurors died presently. Shortly after died Sir Robert Bell, lord chief baron; Sir Robert D'Olie, Sir William Babington, Mr. Weneman, Mr. D'Olie, high sheriff; Mr. Davers, Mr. Harcourt, Mr. Kirle, Mr. Phetplace, etc. There died in Oxford three hundred persons; and sickened there, but died in other places, two hundred and odd, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August, after which day died not one of that sickness, for one of them infected not another, nor any woman or child died thereof.' An occurrence so horrible gave rise of course to much speculation at the time, and various strange explanations were had recourse to, of which the following will serve as a specimen:—'Rowland Jenkes,' says one anonymous writer, 'being imprisoned for treasonable words spoken against the queen, and being a popish recusant, had notwithstanding, during the time of his restraint, liberty sometimes to walk abroad with a keeper; and one day he came to an apothecary and showed him a recipe which he desired him to make up; but the apothecary, upon the view of it, told him that it was a strong and dangerous recipe, and required some time to prepare it, but also asked him to what use he would apply it. He answered, to kill the rats that, since his imprisonment, spoiled his books; so, being satisfied, he promised to make it ready; after a time he cometh to know if it was ready; but the apothecary said the ingredients were so hard to procure, that he had not done it, and so gave him the recipe again, of which he had taken a copy, which mine author had there precisely written down, but did seem so horribly, poisonous, that I cut it forth, lest it might fall into the hands of wicked persons. But after, it seems, he had got it prepared, and against the day of his trial had made a week or wick of it [for so is the word—that is, so fitted, that, like a candle, it might be fired], which, as soon as ever he was condemned, he lighted, having provided himself with a tinder-box and steel to strike fire. And whosoever should know the ingredients of that wick or candle, and the manner of the composition, will easily be persuaded of the virulency and venomous effects of it.' This explanation seems to have been adapted to the public appetite for the wonderful; at all events, being anonymous, it is to be regarded as nothing more than a curiosity. The generally received explanation was, that the disease arose from infection brought into court by the prisoners; and the opinion, sanctioned by lord Bacon, that this infection was a fever bred by the filth of the jail, was but too surely confirmed by subsequent instances of a precisely similar nature.]
