RECOLLECTIONS
OF
WINDSOR PRISON;
CONTAINING
Sketches of its History and Discipline;
WITH
APPROPRIATE STRICTURES,
AND
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS REFLECTIONS.
BY JOHN REYNOLDS.
Third Edition.
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY A. WRIGHT.
1839.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1834,
BY ANDREW WRIGHT,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
" Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
Keep probability in view."
In following this suggestion of the poet, I have been compelled to "extenuate," and I have had no temptation to "set down aught in malice." The world of gloomy horrors through which my memory has been roving for the materials of this volume, cannot receive a deepening shade from either reality or fiction; and my conscientious and prudential object has been, to take the brightest truths which my subjects have required, and let the darker ones remain untold. For the correctness of the facts which I have recorded, as to all essential points, I hold myself responsible; and as to my strictures and reasonings, I am willing they should pass for just what they are worth.
In sending these Recollections abroad, I am governed by principles which are equally remote from the considerations of either hope or fear. All my hopes, from my fellow men, are gone out in the cold and gloomy damps of despair; and having long endured their deepest scorn, I have nothing more to fear from them. My sole object is to plead the cause of suffering humanity, and drag iniquity from her dark retreats out into the view of mankind. I have also aimed to rend the mask from spiritual wickedness; and rouse the energies of benevolence in favor of the wretched. My cause is a good onewould to God it could find an abler advocate!
In noticing the opinions of others, I have been unrestrained, but candid; and in touching the conduct of some, I have endeavored to render to each his duepraise, to whom praise, and censure, to whom censureand I am willing to step into the same scale myself.
I am well aware that this book will create me enemies, and put the tongue of slander in motion; but none of these things move me. The bird that is wounded will flutter. On the other hand, I expect to obtain some friends by this work; but this has been no inducement with me to publish it. Finally, I can assure both friends and foes, that, if any good should result from this volume to the cause of benevolence in any way, I may take my pen again. At any rate, I shall have the satisfaction of having done my duty, and performed my vow; and this satisfaction is of more value to me than any other reward which may result from my labors.
THE AUTHOR.
Boston, April, 1834.
GEHENNA IN MINIATURE.
ORIGIN OF PRISONS.
Egypt is said to have been the cradle of letters; and happy had it been for her history, if she had never cradled any thing worse. There are the first and oldest pyramids, the sphynxes, and the labyrinths; and there was erected the first prison of which history has taken notice. A cruel and heartless people, they deserve the infamy of corrupting the principles of penal justice, and of transforming their prisons into theatres of the most fiend-like barbarity, and unhallowed revenge.
With the same spirit which led the scholar to pry into the hieroglyphic mysteries of this land of wonders, has the genius of her prison discipline been copied by the nations of the earth, till the whole world is filled with these terrestrial hells. But as this sketch leads me rather to the contemplation of Penitentiaries than prisons in general, I shall turn my thoughts to them in particular.
ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF PENITENTIARIES, WITH A VIEW OF THEIR IMPERFECTIONS.
These lurid and doleful mansions, owe their existence to the sinfulness and depravity of man; and they are designed, by a mild and salutary process, to reform the sons of guilt and crime. Long experience had demonstrated, that sanguinary measures produced no good effect on the sufferers, but rather made them worse. Humanity, too, recoiled from the cruelty of such inflictions as the lash, and the brand; and as the effect of such severity was no argument for its continuance, humane legislators devised the Penitentiary system, by which criminals are confined to labor, and should be allowed full opportunities of reflecting on their conduct, and of reforming their lives. And as the design is to have them treated with kindness, and allowed all the means of moral and religious instruction and improvement, that man can furnish, the benevolent hope of the community is, that their sufferings, thus tempered with mercy and humanity, will be salutary and reforming in its effects. Mercy and benevolence were the inspiring angels of this system, and could it ever be brought practically to bear on offending man, it would produce a salutary reform in his heart and life.
But the great difficulty with which this system has to contend, is, the absolute impossibility of finding proper persons to carry it into effect. The life and soul of it is unmingled mercy, and men, qualified by gentleness of temper and benevolence of heart, to administer its laws, are not to be found on earth. Man, in his ruined and fallen nature, is a savage, and the milk of human tenderness was never drawn from the breast of a tiger. To give a full practical demonstration of the tendency and effects of the Penitentiary discipline, as it exists in the speculations of the philanthropist, God must become the director, and angels the ministering spirits of its administration. Such a system, in the faultlessness of perfection, is now in practical operation on the entire community of fallen and impenitent spirits; and the success of the past demonstrates the rationality of the expectation of universal success. On this the mind rests with perfect pleasure, and is relieved by it from the painfulness of witnessing the inefficiency of human means, to reform the votaries of guilt.
There can be no moral truth more fully demonstrated than this, that nothing but goodness can beget goodness. Material substances communicate their own properties to each other, and moral qualities impregnate, with their own nature, the objects on which they exert an influence.Hence the baleful influence of tyranny on the human mind. Hence the contagion of vice. And hence the reason of the truth, that "we love God because he first loved us."
Where, in all history, can an instance be found of a single reformation from guilt, by any other than gentle and clement means? The blaze of retributive vengeance may awe the propensities to crime into inaction; but it cannot uproot them. The terrors of the Lord may make men afraid, but it is the goodness of God that leads to reformation. This is the secret of the Lord, which is with them that fear him. This is the golden key which opens the cause of that success, which has, visibly, in so many cases, marked the progress of the gospel of the grace of God; and which is, in all others, attaining the same happy result, by a process so silent and slow, as to evade the careless observation of the unreflecting multitude. This is the philosophy of the divine administration, and it is one of those simple sciences which the pride of man is reluctant to learn; but which the humility of Christ will dispose him to receive, and by which his nature is to be renewed and adorned.
