66 EEPORT^1861. 



old offenders have to short imprisonment with its low dietary, and from the 

 value which magistrates attach to this their most formidable agent. 



Without expressing a strong opinion upon this point, the Committee ven- 

 ture to assert that a dietary of bread and water, or Jaread and gruel, cannot be 

 enforced without doing serious injury to the prisoner's health ; and that this is 

 fundamentally recognized may be inferred from the fact that all agree that 

 a high scale of dietary is absolutely demanded in long imprisonments. The 

 Committee assert that the injury is one of degree, and that the shortness of 

 the imprisonment prevents the ill effects being observed, which with a long 

 imprisonment have been proved to increase the mortality in gaols. 



The Committee hope that, on philanthropic grounds, the principle may be 

 established in prison discipline, that the prisoner shall not be so treated that 

 when he leaves the gaol he shall be less able to earn his living than he was 

 M'hen he entered it, and that, punishment and reformation being sought toge- 

 ther, some plan may be adopted which shall accord with that principle. 



The fundamental fact of the duty of apportioning food to the labour per- 

 formed needs to be re-established. At present the attempt is nugatory ; but 

 the Committee venture to hope that the principle will meet with universal 

 concurrence, and that their labours afford at least some of the means whereby 

 the estimation may be made. 



The great value of the system of extra dietary cannot be too highly esti- 

 mated ; but the very admission implies that there is a defective adaptation of 

 the general scheme of dietary to the wants of the system, and that almost the 

 life of the prisoner is, throughout a large part of the imprisonment, at the 

 discretion or negligence of one officer, viz. the Surgeon. 



The Committee also venture to affirm that bread is far inferior to milk as 

 an article of extra diet, as the experiments detailed in this report prove. The 

 detention in prisons certainly lessens the power of assimilating food ; and 

 hence it is quite possible that whilst a given quantity of food would sustain 

 a man out of gaol, it would not sustain him with the same labour in gaol. 

 The object of extra diet is not so much to give additional material, as to 

 give the iiind of food which will aid the system in making a better use of 

 that ordinarily supplied. Extra diet of bread (when the dietary is the 

 highest scale) is in great part wasted, and increases disproportionately the 

 amount of waste passing off by the bowel. 



In conclusion, the Committee urge the great importance of making better 

 use than heretofore of the unparalleled opportunities which prisons afford 

 of working out the most important and difficult questions in nutrition, with 

 a view to supply information for the more just and economical manage- 

 ment of gaols, and for the advance of a science which is so essentially con- 

 nected with the daily life of the community. Such questions are, the true 

 value of white bread over brown bread in prison and other dietary ; the exact 

 influence of various kind of food, and especially of such as tea, coffee, milk 

 and alcohol, which act chiefly by modifying the action of other food ; the 

 exact relation of a given quantity of food to a given amount of labour; the 

 causes of the defective power of assimilation of food in prisons, and the relation 

 of the elements of the food taken to those which are fixed in and thrown out 

 of the body. The Committee feel that the importance of such inquiries is 

 not by any means so well understood as it should be, and that some officials 

 have a natural repugnance to anything which may interfere with their ordi- 

 nary routine ; but they trust that the expression of the opinion of this great 

 Association, and the additional knowledge which they and others have en- 

 deavoured to discover, may open prisons to such inquiries. 



