46 REPORT — 1861. 



In some the treadwheel and crank are exceptional emploj'ments; in others they 

 are universally used for a small part of the sentence ; whilst in a third class 

 they are the constant employments during the whole term of imprisonment. 

 In most gaols they are chiefly employed for short sentences, and therefore 

 for small crimes, and with insufficient food, whilst the light occupations are 

 reserved for long sentences, with greater crimes, or frequent repetition of 

 crime, and sufficient food. In some they are worked for an hour without 

 intermission ; in others thirty, twenty, fifteen, ten, and down to four minutes 

 only at a time. In some they are enforced for three hours daily, and simply 

 as exercise ; whilst in others the labour endures ten hours. In many, boys 

 of fourteen years of age work the wheel and the crank ; whilst in otiiers, 

 able grown men make shoes or pick oakum only. In some the ordinary rate 

 of the ascent on the treadwheel is fifty-six steps of 8 inches each per minute, 

 whilst in others it is so low as thirty. In some the ordinary pressure on the 

 crank is seven pounds ; in others, twelve pounds, — the pressure being certain, 

 and demonstrated by weights in one, and uncertain, depending upon the 

 turns of a screw in another. In some the ordinary number of revolutions 

 per day is 14,400; whilst in others, in which the crank is still the chief in- 

 strument of punishment, it varies from 13,500 to 7000 or 6000, at the discre- 

 tion of the surgeon, the prisoner being in all these instances without disease. 

 In some the day's work may be performed in any part of the twenty-four 

 hours, with the index of the instrument in sight of the prisoner; whilst in 

 others, as the New Bailey, Salford, it must be performed before the night 

 and with the index outside the cell, so that the prisoner is unable to ascer- 

 tain, from time to time, how much labour he has yet to perform. In some, 

 pumping is employed for an hour only, and even during that short period, 

 as at Reading, there is no method of determining if any individual prisoner 

 is labouring or not; whilst in others, the labour is for the whole day, pump- 

 ing water into the sewers. 



"Oakum-picking is no labour in one prison, and hard labour in another; 

 and in the latter it is two pounds for a day's work at Wandsworth, and three 

 pounds at the Coldbath Fields, whilst it is five pounds at a workhouse ; and 

 the rope itself difiFers greatly in the amount of labour which is required to 

 tear it to pieces. In some the prisoner, by good conduct, obtains lighter 

 labour, a commendatory badge, and a pecuniary reward ; in others it is tread- 

 wheel labour from the beginning to the end of the imprisonment, whilst in 

 many, as at Wandsworth, the change of labour is due neither to crime, sen- 

 tence, nor conduct, but simply to the variation in the number of the pri- 

 soners. 



" In addition to all this, in some prisons the separate system is strictly 

 enforced and a mask worn, whilst in others hundreds of prisoners sit together 

 in the room picking oakum ; and, finally, in some the cat is so heavy, and 

 the officer's arm so strong and willing, that the prisoner is for a time made 

 insensible to pain after a few strokes, whilst in other prisons it is so light as 

 to leave very little evidence of its use." 



Hence it appears that the utmost diversity exists in the different county 

 prisons as to the instruments of punishment employed, the condition in which 

 they are kept, the amount of labour which they exact, the amount of a day's 

 work, the system ol' progressive change in the use of the various means of 

 enforcing labour, and, in fact, in all that concerns the carrying out of the 

 sentences of hard labour. 



Dietary. 



In reference to dietary, the diversity is even more striking ; for so various 

 are the schemes contained in the " Return of Dietaries for Convicts, &c.," 



