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RETHINKING THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH PRISONS ACT OF 1835: IRELAND AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CENTRAL-GOVERNMENT PRISON INSPECTION, 1820–1835*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2016

RICHARD J. BUTLER
RICHARD J. BUTLER*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
St John's College, Cambridge, cb2 1tp [email protected]
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Abstract

While the introduction of central-government inspectors for prisons in a British act of 1835 has been seen as a key Whig achievement of the 1830s, the Irish precedent enacted by Charles Grant, a liberal Tory chief secretary, in the early 1820s, has gone unnoticed by scholars. The article sets out to trace the Irish prefiguring of this measure and, in the process, to consider prison reform in the United Kingdom in the early nineteenth century in a more transnational manner. A new analysis of the critical years between 1823 and 1835 in both Britain and Ireland based on a detailed examination of parliamentary inquiries and legislation shows how developments in the two countries overlapped and how reforms in one jurisdiction affected the other. This article explores the channels through which this exchange of knowledge and ideas occurred – both in parliament and through interlinked penal-reform philanthropic societies in both countries. This article also highlights inadequacies with the theory supported by some scholars that Ireland functioned as a laboratory for British social reform at this time, and instead suggests a more fluid exchange of ideas in both directions at different times.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 2016 , pp. 721 - 746
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the following scholars for their assistance in writing and editing this article: Joanna Innes, Jim Donnelly, Eugenio Biagini, Robert Tombs, Ian d'Alton, John P. DuLong, and Otto Saumarez-Smith, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their detailed criticisms and helpful advice. An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies at University College Dublin in June 2014.

References

1 Second report from the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the present state of the several gaols and houses of correction in England and Wales, HL 1835 (439), xi, p. 341.

2 Ursula R. Q. Henriques, Before the welfare state: social administration in early industrial Britain (London, 1979), pp. 155–78.

3 Norman Gash, Mr. Secretary Peel: the life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830 (London and New York, NY, 1985), pp. 315–17.

4 Cooper, Robert Alan, ‘Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English prison reform’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42 (1981), pp. 675–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 686–7.

5 Henriques, Before the welfare state, pp. 250–2; Oliver MacDonagh, The inspector general, Sir Jeremiah Fitzpatrick and the politics of social reform, 1783–1802 (London, 1981), pp. 320–6; Shute, Stephen, ‘On the outside looking in: reflections on the role of inspection in driving up quality in the criminal justice system’, Modern Law Review, 76 (2013), pp. 494–528 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English prisons under local government (London, 1922), pp. 75, 109–12; Sean McConville, A history of English prison administration, i: 1750–1877 (London, 1981), p. 170; Randall McGowen, ‘The well-ordered prison: England, 1780–1865’, in Norval Morris and David J. Rothman, eds., The Oxford history of the prison: the practice of punishment in Western society (Oxford, 1995), pp. 79–110, at p. 89. Simon Devereaux has explored late eighteenth-century hostility to central-government reform among local authorities, see ‘The making of the Penitentiary Act, 1775–1779’, Historical Journal, 42 (1999), pp. 405–33CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at pp. 409, 421–3, 430–3.

7 Gash, Peel, pp. 315–17; McGowen, ‘Well-ordered prison’, p. 89.

8 Webb, English prisons, pp. 110–12; Margaret Heather Tomlinson, ‘Victorian prisons: administration and architecture, 1835–1877’ (Ph.D. thesis, Bedford College, University of London, 1975), p. 53; McConville, English prison administration, p. 170; Patrick Carroll-Burke, Colonial discipline: the making of the Irish convict system (Dublin, 2000), p. 50; Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: a biography (London, 2007), p. 79; see also Philip Harling, The waning of ‘old corruption’: the politics of economical reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford, 1996), ch. 1, passim.

9 Joanna Innes, ‘Central government “interference”: changing conceptions, practices, and concerns, c. 1700–1850’, in Jose Harris, ed., Civil society in British history (Oxford, 2003), pp. 39–60, at pp. 40–4, 46–7.

10 Joanna Innes, ‘Prisons for the poor: English bridewells, 1666–1800’, in Francis Snyder and Douglas Hay, eds., Labour, law, and crime: an historical perspective (London, 1987), pp. 42–122. An Irish act, 26 Geo. III, c. 45 (1786) – one of the first that specifically mentions bridewells – sought to promote their building throughout the country and stated that sheriffs were to transmit prisoners held there to county gaols at least twice in every year before the assizes.

11 S. J. Connolly, ‘Unnatural death in four nations: contrasts and comparisons’, in S. J. Connolly, ed., Kingdoms united? Great Britain and Ireland since 1500: integration and diversity (Dublin, 1999), pp. 200–14; Neal Garnham, ‘The criminal law, 1692–1760: England and Ireland compared’, in Connolly, ed., Kingdoms united?, pp. 214–24; Joanna Innes, ‘Legislating for three kingdoms: how the Westminster parliament legislated for England, Scotland and Ireland, 1707–1830’, in Julian Hoppit, ed., Parliaments, nations and identities in Britain and Ireland, 1660–1850 (Manchester, 2003), pp. 15–47; Niall Whelehan, ‘Playing with scales: transnational history and modern Ireland’, in Niall Whelehan, ed., Transnational perspectives on modern Irish history (London, 2014), pp. 7–29.

12 Stanley H. Palmer, Police and protest in England and Ireland, 1780–1850 (Cambridge, 1988). For a critical review, see Connolly, ‘Unnatural death in four nations’. See also Galen Broeker, Rural disorder and police reform in Ireland, 1812–1836 (London, 1970), pp. 1–19, 228–39; Styles, John, ‘The emergence of the police: explaining police reform in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England’, British Journal of Criminology, 27 (1987), pp. 15–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David Philips and Robert D. Storch, Policing provincial England, 1829–1856: the politics of reform (London, 1999).

13 Burn, W. L., ‘Free trade in land: an aspect of the Irish question’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 31 (1949), pp. 61–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also D. H. Akenson, The Irish education experiment: the national system of education in the nineteenth century (London, 1970), pp. 1–16, 376–91; Palmer, Police and protest, pp. 25–7, 193–236, 278, 286–303, 520–2, 542–5.

14 Palmer, Police and protest, pp. 529, 535.

15 Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh, Ireland before the famine, 1798–1848 (Dublin, 1990), p. 95.

16 Joanna Innes, ‘What would a “four nations” approach to the study of eighteenth-century British social policy entail?’, in Connolly, ed., Kingdoms united?, pp. 181–99, at pp. 198–9.

17 Innes, ‘Legislating for three kingdoms’, pp. 35–40.

18 MacDonagh, Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, pp. 42–65, 133–4.

19 Factory inspectors were appointed following the 1833 Factories Act (3 & 4 Will. IV, c. 103). Assistant poor-law commissioners (later known simply as inspectors) were established after the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act (4 & 5 Will. IV, c. 76).

20 Webb, English prisons, p. 112. For a critical view of the Webbs' scholarship, see Cooper, Robert Alan, ‘Ideas and their execution: English prison reform’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 10 (1976), pp. 73–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 73.

21 Webb, English prisons, pp. 182, 200; R. S. E. Hinde, The British penal system, 1773–1950 (London, 1951), pp. 117–18; Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, The age of reform, 1815–1870 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1962), pp. 467–9; Henriques, Ursula R. Q., ‘The rise and decline of the separate system of prison discipline’, Past and Present, 54 (1972), pp. 61–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tomlinson, ‘Victorian prisons’, p. 50; Stockdale, Eric, ‘A short history of prison inspection in England’, British Journal of Criminology, 23 (1983), pp. 213–16Google Scholar; Gash, Peel, pp. 315–17; David Eastwood, Governing rural England: tradition and transformation in local government, 1780–1840 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 244–60; Morris and Rothman, eds., Oxford history of the prison: the practice of punishment in Western society, pp. 89ff; Richard R. Follett, Evangelicalism, penal theory, and the politics of criminal law reform in England, 1808–1830 (Basingstoke, 2001); Willis, James J., ‘Transportation versus imprisonment in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain: penal power, liberty, and the state’, Law & Society Review, 39 (2005), pp. 171–210 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shute, ‘Reflections on the role of inspection’. Irish historians have also been reluctant to engage with Irish penal reform at this time in a transnational basis with the notable exception of MacDonagh's biography of Jeremiah Fitzpatrick; see for example R. B. McDowell, The Irish administration, 1801–1914 (London, 1964), pp. 145–63; Oliver MacDonagh, ‘Ideas and institutions, 1830–1845’, in W. E. Vaughan, ed., A new history of Ireland, v: Ireland under the Union, part 1: 1801–1870 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 193–217, at pp. 211–12; R. B. McDowell, ‘Administration and the public services, 1800–1870’, in ibid., pp. 538–61, at pp. 545–6. For Charles Grant, see Ged Martin, ‘Charles Grant’, Oxford dictionary of national biography; Daniel Beaumont, ‘Charles Grant’, in James McGuire and James Quinn, eds., Dictionary of Irish biography (9 vols., Cambridge, 2009), iv, pp. 195–7, at p. 196.

22 Fourth and fifth reports from the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the present state of the several gaols and houses of correction in England and Wales, HL 1835 (441), xii, pp. 684–5.

23 26 Geo. III, c. 27 (Ireland) (1786), ss. 30–1, and 27 Geo. III, c. 39 (Ireland) (1787), ss. 6, 12. See also McDowell, Irish administration, pp. 150–1; McGowen, James, ‘Nineteenth-century developments in Irish prison administration’, Administration: Journal of the Institute of Public Administration, 26 (1978), pp. 496–508 Google Scholar; Smith, Beverly A., ‘The Irish General Prisons Board, 1877–1885’, Irish Jurist, 15 (1980), pp. 122–36Google Scholar; Starr, Joseph, ‘Prison reform in Ireland in the age of enlightenment’, History Ireland, 3 (1995), pp. 21–5Google Scholar; Caroline Windrum, ‘The provision and practice of prison reform in County Down, 1745–1894’, in Lindsay Proudfoot, ed., Down: history & society (Dublin, 1997), pp. 327–52; Shane Kilcommins, Crime, punishment and the search for order in Ireland (Dublin, 2004), pp. 12–21.

24 MacDonagh, Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, pp. 62–85, 294–329; Devereaux, Simon, ‘The historiography of the English state during “the long eighteenth century”’, History Compass, 8 (2010), pp. 843–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 852.

25 3 Geo. III, c. 28 (Ireland) (1764); John Howard, The state of the prisons in England and Wales, with preliminary observations, and an account of some foreign prisons (Warrington, 1777), pp. 14, 44, 52, 70. See also Innes, ‘A “four nations” approach’, pp. 190–2.

26 3 Geo. III, c. 5 (Ireland) (1763); 14 Geo. III, c. 20 (1774).

27 16 Geo. III, c. 43 (1776); 16 Geo. III, c. 56 (1776); 17 & 18 Geo. III, c. 9 (Ireland) (1778); 17 & 18 Geo. III, c. 28 (Ireland) (1778).

28 Devereaux, ‘Making of the Penitentiary Act’, pp. 10–18.

29 MacDonagh, Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, pp. 42–62; Innes, ‘A “four nations” approach’, pp. 190–2.

30 MacDonagh, Jeremiah Fitzpatrick, p. 144.

31 Ibid., p. 143. See also Forster Archer to Charles Grant, 19 Dec. 1821, Dublin, National Archives of Ireland (NAI), chief secretary's office registered papers, 1822/3212; Correspondence on the subject of granting a superannuation allowance to the Revd. Foster Archer, late inspector general of prisons in Ireland, HC 1823 (264), xvi. Archer agreed to be an alias for the government in prosecuting a libel case against the editor of the radical Cork Gazette newspaper in 1794; see Brian Inglis, The freedom of the press in Ireland, 1784–1841 (London, 1954), pp. 88–9.

32 Galway (1810), Tralee (1812), and Cork city (1824). See McDowell, Irish administration, pp. 151–3.

33 Report from the select committee on the state of gaols, etc., HC 1819 (579), vii, pp. 191–3, 195, 243.

34 Ibid., pp. 9–148, 195–235.

35 Ibid., pp. 195, 201, 204. The legislation in force was the Prisons (Ireland) Act of 1810 (50 Geo. III, c. 103), amended in 1815 (55 Geo. III, c. 92), which had introduced classification by gender and offered central-government financial assistance to replace old prisons.

36 Ibid., pp. 173–95.

37 The British society was founded as the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death and the Improvement of Prison Discipline in 1801 and merged with the Society for Investigating the Cause of the Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in 1816, to form the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and for the Reformation of Young Offenders (SIPD). The Irish society was formed in December 1818. See An account of the origin and object of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge upon the Punishment of Death, and the Improvement of Prison Discipline (London, 1812); First report of the Association for the Improvement of Prisons and of Prison Discipline in Ireland for 1819 (Dublin, 1820), p. 11. See also Robin Evans, The fabrication of virtue: English prison architecture, 1750–1840 (Cambridge, 1982), p. 239; Maria Luddy, Women and philanthropy in nineteenth-century Ireland (Cambridge, 1995), p. 155.

38 A statement of the objectives of the Association for the Improvement of Prisons, and of Prison Discipline in Ireland (Dublin, 1819), p. 9. Grant remained patron until at least 1824; see Fifth report of the Association for the Improvement of Prisons, and of Prison Discipline in Ireland (Dublin, 1824), p. 3.

39 Lady Augusta Gregory, ed., Mr Gregory's letter-box, 1813–1830 (London, 1898), pp. 116–17, 128–9, 210–11; Brian Jenkins, Era of emancipation: British government of Ireland, 1812–1830 (Kingston and Montreal, 1988), pp. 138–54, 161–2; Martin, ‘Charles Grant’; Beaumont, ‘Charles Grant’, p. 196.

40 Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1819 (59 Geo. III, c. 100).

41 Journal of the House of Commons, 75 (25 May 1820), p. 238; A bill to amend an act…relating to prisons in Ireland, HC 1821 (493), iii; Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1821 (1 & 2 Geo. IV, c. 57).

42 Abolition of Gaol Fees (Ireland) Act, 1821 (1 & 2 Geo. IV, c. 77); Gaol Fees Abolition Act, 1815 (55 Geo. III, c. 50).

43 Third report of the committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline (London, 1821); Eclectic Review, 17 (1822), pp. 274–83, at p. 279.

44 A bill to amend an act…relating to prisons, p. 4.

45 Charles Grant to Charles Fox, 6 June 1820, Dublin, NAI, chief secretary's office registered papers, 1820/552.

46 Heaney, Henry, ‘Ireland's penitentiary, 1820–1831: an experiment that failed’, Studia Hibernica, 14 (1974), pp. 28–39 Google Scholar, at p. 30.

47 Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1821 (1 & 2 Geo. IV, c. 57), ss. 8–15.

48 James Palmer, A treatise on the modern system of government gaols, penitentiaries, and houses of correction, with a view to moral improvement and reformation of character; also a detail of the duties of each department of a prison, together with some observations on the state of prison discipline, at home and abroad, and on the management of lunatic asylums (Dublin, 1832), p. 91.

49 William Gregory to Robert Archer, 25 Nov. 1821, Dublin, NAI, chief secretary's office registered papers, 1821/53.

50 Report from the committee on the state of the gaols of the city of London, etc., HC 1813–14 (157), iv; A bill for the better regulation of the prisons or gaols within the jurisdiction of the city of London, HC 1813–14 (263), ii; Report from the committee on the King's Bench, Fleet, and Marshalsea prisons, etc., HC 1814–15 (152), iv; Journal of the House of Commons, 73 (5 Feb. 1818), p. 26; Report from the committee on the prisons within the city of London and borough of Southwark, etc., HC 1818 (275), viii. An exception was the 1819 Act for the Building of Gaols in Scotland (59 Geo. III, c. 61), that encouraged the rebuilding of gaols in the Scottish royal burghs.

51 24 Geo. III, c. 54 (1784); 23 & 24 Geo. III, c. 41 (Ireland) (1784).

52 Bill for consolidating into one act, and amending, the laws relating to the building, repairing, and regulating of gaols…in…England, HC 1820 (313), i, pp. 5, 19. For an overview of British justices of the peace, see Tompson, Richard S., ‘The justices of the peace and the United Kingdom in the age of reform’, Journal of Legal History, 7 (1986), pp. 273–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 A bill for consolidating into one act, and amending, the laws relating to the building, repairing and regulating of gaols…in…England, HC 1821 (173), i, p. 25 and Schedule B.

54 Ibid., HC 1821 (701), i, pp. 26, 33, and Schedule B. For the role played by backbenchers in bringing forward legislation, see Eastwood, David, ‘Men, morals and the machinery of social legislation, 1790–1840’, Parliamentary History, 13 (1993), pp. 190–205 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 George Holford, Thoughts on the criminal prisons of this country: occasioned by the bill now in the House of Commons for the consolidating and amending the laws relating to prisons (London, 1821); Journal of the House of Commons, 76 (1821), pp. 117ffGoogle Scholar; R. G. Thorne, ‘George Holford’, in R. G. Thorne, ed., The history of parliament: the House of Commons, 1790–1820 (5 vols., London, 1986), iv, pp. 214–16.

56 Holford, Thoughts on the criminal prisons, pp. 16–17; Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1810 (50 Geo. III, c. 103).

57 Holford, Thoughts on the criminal prisons, pp. 22–4.

58 Webb, English prisons, p. 75; Henriques, Before the welfare state, pp. 250–2; Stockdale, ‘Prison inspection’, pp. 213–16.

59 Smith, Sydney, ‘Prisons’, originally published in the Edinburgh Review in 1821 Google ScholarPubMed, reprinted in Sydney Smith, The works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (2 vols., London, 1859), i, pp. 330–40, at p. 338. See also Webb, English prisons, p. 75; Stockdale, ‘Prison inspection’, p. 214.

60 Smith, Sydney, ‘Prisons’, originally published in the Edinburgh Review in 1822 Google ScholarPubMed, reprinted in Smith, Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith, i, pp. 353–67, at p. 360.

61 Giles Playfair, The punitive obsession: an unvarnished history of the English prison system (London, 1971), pp. 79–80.

62 For opposition to the bill, see Journal of the House of Commons, 77 (31 May 1822), p. 304, and ibid. (11 June 1822), p. 334; A bill…for consolidating and amending the laws relating to the building, repairing and regulating of certain gaols, bridewells, and houses of correction, in England and Wales, HC 1822 (324), ii; Prisons Act, 1823 (4 Geo. IV, c. 64). For Peel's involvement, see Robert Peel to Lord Eldon, 16 Jan. 1822, London, British Library (BL), Peel papers, Add MS 40315, fos. 85–6. See also Gash, Peel, p. 315; Simon Devereaux, ‘In place of death: transportation, penal practices, and the English state, 1770–1830’, in Carolyn Strange, ed., Qualities of mercy: justice, punishment, and discretion (Vancouver, BC, 1996), pp. 52–76, at p. 64; Follett, Evangelicalism, penal theory, and the politics of criminal law reform, pp. 174–5. For an unfriendly perspective of Peel's involvement, see V. A. C. Gatrell, The hanging tree: execution and the English people, 1770–1868 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 528–9.

63 Amendments made by the lords to the bill, intituled [sic], an act for consolidating and amending the laws relating to the building, repairing, and regulating of certain gaols, bridewells, and houses of correction, in England and Wales, HC 1823 (463), i. The seventeen towns were Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Coventry, Exeter, Gloucester, Kingstown-upon-Hull, Leicester, Lincoln, Litchfield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Worcester, and York. The House of Lords requested the removal of Bath and Louth (Lincolnshire) from the final list. For other less important prison legislation in this period, see Advances for Gaols Act, 1823 (4 Geo. IV, c. 63); Gaol Sessions Act, 1824 (5 Geo. IV, c. 12); and Gaols (England) Act, 1824 (5 Geo. IV, c. 85).

64 Hansard 10 (2nd ser.), cols. 241–7, at col. 242; Hansard 10 (2nd ser.), col. 1283.

65 Journal of the House of Commons, 76 (1 May 1821), pp. 299ff; Anon., Observations on the expediency of erecting provincial penitentiaries in Ireland which may receive all criminals who are sentenced to confinement and hard labour or are under the rule of transportation (London, 1821). For the SIPD's take on this, see Inquirer (Apr. 1822), article 15 (‘Prison discipline’), pp. 203–20, at pp. 213–14.

66 Report from the select committee on the state of prisons in Scotland, HC 1826 (381), v, pp. 3–4; Hansard 90 (2nd ser.), cols. 45–7. Local opposition derailed attempts at prison reform in Scotland throughout the 1820s, with unsuccessful bills in 1828 and 1829, and with a minor success in the 1829 Gaol Reports (Scotland) Act (10 Geo. IV, c. 54) that simply extended the reporting measures of the 1823 Prisons Act to Scotland. See A bill to amend the laws relating to the building, enlarging and repairing gaols in Scotland, and for regulating such gaols, etc., HC 1828 (306), iii.

67 See for example Copies of all reports…of certain gaols and houses of correction, in England and Wales, HC 1826–7 (46), xix, pp. 320–3 (Portsmouth).

68 Virginia Crossman, Local government in nineteenth-century Ireland (Belfast, 1994), pp. 33–41.

69 James Palmer to Charles Grant, 18 Oct. 1820, Dublin, NAI, chief secretary's office registered papers, 1820/739; Benjamin Woodward to Charles Grant, 17 July 1820, ibid., 1820/1391. See also McDowell, Irish administration, pp. 151–2.

70 Innes, ‘Legislating for three kingdoms’, pp. 30–4.

71 Broeker, Rural disorder and police reform, pp. 1–19, 228–39; Eastwood, Governing rural England, pp. 76–98, 244–60. For an eighteenth-century perspective, see Paul Langford, Public life and the propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 139–206.

72 Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1822 (3 Geo. IV, c. 64), ss. 31, 49.

73 See, for example, the reports on the bridewells of Rathcormack and Buttevant in County Cork in Second report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1824 (294), xxii, p. 44; Third report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1825 (493), xxii, p. 43.

74 First report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1823 (342), x, pp. 69–71; Tenth report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1831–2 (152), xxiii, pp. 51–3; Palmer, Government gaols, pp. 88–90. In 1823, there were 177 prisons in Ireland; 41 were county gaols and 136 were bridewells. By 1832, the total number of prisons had fallen to 147; 40 were county gaols and 107 were bridewells.

75 Third report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1825 (493), xxii, pp. 10–11; Eleventh report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1833 (67), xvii, p. 8; Palmer, Government gaols, p. 91. See also Richard Butler, ‘Cork's courthouses, the landed elite, and the Rockite rebellion: architectural responses to agrarian violence, 1820–1827’, in Kyle Hughes and Don MacRaild, eds., Crime, violence and the Irish in the nineteenth century (forthcoming Liverpool University Press, 2016).

76 By 1834, the cost to cesspayers of the bridewells in Cork and Tipperary was £236 and £555 respectively for comparable numbers of bridewells and committals in the two counties. See Thirteenth report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1835 (114), xxxvi, pp. 8, 35, 54.

77 Eleventh report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1833 (67), xvii, pp. 8, 30, 56–7.

78 For County Kerry, see Fifth report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1827 (471), xi, p. 51; Southern Reporter, 30 June 1827 and 14 July 1827. For County Limerick, see Seventh report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1829 (10), xiii, p. 59; For County Tipperary, see Eleventh report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1833 (67), xvii, p. 30.

79 Hansard 6 (3rd ser.), col. 944.

80 Palmer, Government gaols, pp. 90, 92; Eleventh report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1833 (67), xvii, p. 8. For the comments of a travelling assize judge, see ‘Carlow assizes’, Finn's Leinster Journal, 11 Apr. 1827.

81 For the inspectors' role in the privy council cases relating to counties Tipperary and Waterford, see Donal A. Murphy, The two Tipperarys: the national and local politics, devolution and self-determination, of the unique 1838 division into two ridings, and the aftermath (Nenagh, 1994), pp. 87–91, 294–7.

82 Grand Jury (Ireland) Act, 1836 (6 & 7 Will. IV, c. 116), ss. 176–7.

83 Mitchel P. Roth, Prisons and prison systems: a global encyclopedia (Westport, CT, 2006), p. 138.

84 Thirteenth report of the inspectors general on…the prisons of Ireland, HC 1835 (114), xxxvi, p. 18.

85 Palmer, Government gaols, p. 83.

86 Report from the select committee on the state of prisons in Scotland, HC 1826 (381), v, p. 81.

87 Report from the select committee on criminal commitments and convictions, HC 1828 (545), vi, p. 90.

88 Stockdale, ‘Prison inspection’, p. 214.

89 Report from the select committee on criminal commitments and convictions, p. 16.

90 Report from select committee on secondary punishments, HC 1831–2 (547), vii, pp. 115–16.

91 Ibid., p. 127; Elizabeth Fry and Joseph John Gurney, Report addressed to the Marquess Wellesley, lord lieutenant of Ireland, respecting their late visit to that country (London, 1827). See also Luddy, Women and philanthropy, pp. 152–9.

92 Report from select committee on secondary punishments, pp. 7–8.

93 Palmer, Government gaols, pp. vi, 81–99.

94 Hansard 24 (3rd ser.), cols. 604–32.

95 Peter Mandler, Aristocratic government in the age of reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830–1852 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 135–7, 148–50, 171ff.

96 Richard Tompson, The Charity Commission and the age of reform (London, 1979), pp. 94ff.

97 First report from the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the present state of the several gaols and houses of correction in England and Wales, HL 1835 (438), xi, p. 252. When the assistant poor-law commissioners (later known as inspectors) were discussed in this report, it was not in relation to the inspection in prisons; see ibid., p. 71; Fourth and fifth reports…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (441), xii, p. 502.

98 An exception was William Crawford, who discussed inspection with reference to his knowledge of American prisons; see First report…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (438), xi, pp. 11–12.

99 Second report…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (439), xi, p. 341. Cooper, ‘Jeremy Bentham, Elizabeth Fry, and English prison reform’, pp. 681–90, downplays the significance of Fry's testimony at this inquiry.

100 First report…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (438), xi, pp. 292–3.

101 Ibid., p. 177.

102 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

103 Webb, English prisons, p. 111. The London-based SIPD was also convinced of the benefits of inspection and called for the introduction of such a measure in its March 1835 submission to the House of Lords inquiry. See Fourth and fifth reports…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (441), xii, p. 396. Further support can be found in Anon. (‘A County Magistrate’), A letter to his grace the duke of Richmond, K. G. chairman of the committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the state of the prisons of the United Kingdom (London, 1835), p. 30; Eastwood, Governing rural England, pp. 256–9.

104 Fourth and fifth reports…on…gaols etc., HL 1835 (441), xii, pp. 461–4.

105 A bill…for effecting greater uniformity of practice in the government of the several prisons in England and Wales; and for appointing inspectors of prisons in Great Britain, HC 1835 (403), iv, p. 3.

106 Prisons Act, 1835 (5 & 6 Will. IV, c. 38), ss. 7, 8. For the preceding Irish act, see Prisons (Ireland) Act, 1826 (7 Geo. IV, c. 74), s. 61.

107 Frederic Hill, An autobiography of fifty years in times of reform, ed. Constance Hill (London, 1894), p. 115.

108 David F. Smith, ‘Scottish prisons under the General Board of Directors, 1840–1861’, Albion: A Quarterly Journal concerned with British Studies, 15 (1983), pp. 287–312, at pp. 309–10.

109 Willis, ‘Transportation versus imprisonment’, pp. 190–1. See also Hinde, British penal system, p. 110.

110 Tomlinson, ‘Victorian prisons’, pp. 55–6.

111 Ibid., p. 257. Palmer was himself briefly imprisoned as a debtor in the early 1830s, but this seemingly did not much interrupt his work as an inspector. See Returns of reports…on complaints forwarded to the Irish government…relating to the convict service in Ireland, HC 1843 (547), xlii, pp. 41, 53, 74.

112 Mandler, Peter, ‘The making of the New Poor Law redivivus’, Past and Present, 117 (1987), pp. 131–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 151–6; Harling, Philip, ‘The power of persuasion: central authority, local bureaucracy and the New Poor Law’, English Historical Review, 107 (1992), pp. 30–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 31–7.

113 Henriques, Ursula R. Q., ‘An early factory inspector: James Stuart of Dunearn’, Scottish Historical Review, 50 (1971), pp. 18–46 Google Scholar; Mandler, Aristocratic government, pp. 148–50, 179–80.

114 F. A. Barker, The modern prison system of India (London, 1944), p. xii; Amarendra Mohanty and Narayan Hazary, Indian prison system (New Delhi, 1990), pp. 24–5; Patricia O'Brien, The promise of punishment: prisons in nineteenth-century France (Princeton, NJ, 1982), p. 218. A prison inspector was also in office in Belgium by 1830 if not before, see Roth, Prisons and prison systems, p. 87.

115 McDowell, Irish administration, pp. 155–60.