224 FOTHERGILL AS PHILANTHROPIST CHAP. 



provide something for the families of the convicts. They 

 should receive Christian instruction as well as needed 

 discipline : at present there was no provision for religious 

 worship for the prisoners upon the river. 



When Howard's labours had at length borne fruit, 

 and the miserable state of the gaols and the squalid 

 wretchedness of the hulks had been laid bare to public 

 view, the British Parliament, in 1779, passed an Act 

 to empower the erection of two Penitentiary houses on 

 a better system. Howard, Fothergill and Whatley, 

 treasurer of the Foundling Hospital, were appointed 

 as supervisors to carry out the experiment. All three 

 were able men and earnest in the cause, but each of them 

 had strong opinions. Fothergill took a broad and en- 

 lightened view of the duty committed to them. " We 

 consider," he wrote on their behalf, " that the great 

 object of the Act in question is to punish the convicts 

 for past offences, and at the same time, if possible, to 

 make them better men ; and that the mere profit or loss 

 of their labour though this is essentially necessary is 

 less an object with the legislature than their correction 

 and reformation." The death of Sir William Blackstone, 

 a firm and wise advocate of reformation, early in 1780, 

 was a loss to the cause. The three commissioners had 

 much ado to agree upon a site for the new buildings. 

 Howard and Fothergill wished to build at Islington, but 

 their colleague preferred Limehouse. Fothergill dying 

 before the matter was settled, Howard and Whatley were 

 too firmly set in friendly divergence to be able to work 

 together : the former retired, and new supervisors were 

 appointed. Little, however, was done : transportation 

 of convicts to the colonies was still carried on, and it 

 was not until 1821 that the great Penitentiary, with its 

 noo separate cells, was opened at Millbank. Although 

 Howard was thus the pioneer of the " separate system " 

 in prisons, its more modern developments of complete soli- 

 tude and silence were not in accordance with his teachings. 1 



1 Fothergill, Works, iii. pp. cxx, 59 ; John Howard, State of Prisons, 

 2nd ed. 1780, p. 118 n. ; Correspondence, etc., of J. Howard, by Rev. J. Field, 



