Prisons and Prisoners 1899 by Rev John William Horsley, Chaplain at Clerkenwell (London) House of Detention ~ Penology Conditions in England

Title: Prisons and Prisoners

Author: Rev. J. W. [John William] Horsley

Description: Maroon cloth boards with gilt lettering and a pictorial of the Newgate Prison gate stamped in black on front cover; gilt manacles stamped on spine. Light wear to spine ends. Faint marking on front pastedown, else interior is clean and unmarked. Frontispiece (showing the author's invitation to the 1893 opening of the Hugh Myddelton School, built on the site of the old Clerkenwell Prison). viii + 233 pages.

A fascinating and gritty survey of prisoners, prison life, crime, and the sociological conditions associated with criminality in England, by a noted London prison chaplain.

Contents:
I. The Last Age of Prisons - A Prison Calendar [an English chronology, 1577-1878]] - The Last Prison Statistics [1896].

II. Is Crime Reducible? - Juvenile Crime - Family Crime - Alcoholic Infanticide.

III. Education and Crime - Not All Prisoners are Criminals - Mouthpieces.

IV. Money Spent on Drink - Phraseology about Drink - Teetotalers in Prison - Proportion of Drink-Caused Crime.

V. Prison Slang - A Thief's Autobiography [written by an East-End Cockney, born in 1853].

VI. Children in Prison - Not ''Whether'' but ''Why'' - Sunday School Influence.

VII. Inscriptions in Cells.

VIII. Suicide: Its Causes

IX. Prison Sermons.

X. Ten Desirable Reforms.

XI. American Prisons.

John William Horsley (1845-1921), Canon of Southwark, was a social reformer who spent the greater part of his career in close connection with the poorest side of London life. He was the chaplain at Clerkenwell Prison, London (also known as the Clerkenwell House of Detention), from 1876 until its closure in 1886. In 1887, he published Jottings from Jail with the intent to help ''remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are''. He devoted much time and energy to a perennial crusade against the overcrowding and insanitary conditions of life amongst the poor. He was also a noted malacologist, served as the president of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1911-12, and was the author of Our British Snails (1915).

Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good

Publisher: M. F. Mansfield and Company
Place: New York
Year: [1899]

Keywords: penology, conditions, England, United Kingdom, Jottings from Jail, sociology, Victorian, history,