182 
NOTE ON PENITENTIARIES. 
way to her sister republics in the direction of reform in criminal law and penal discipline. A 
new criminal code was created, the most interesting feature of which was the abolition of 
the former barbarism of capital punishment, for all offences short of the highest felonies, 
treason, murder, rape and arson. In a few years, under the auspices of such intellects and 
such hearts as those of a Benjamin Franklin, a Benjamin Rush, a William Bradford and a 
Caleb Lowndes, a still further amelioration took place. The year 1790 was marked by im¬ 
portant mitigations of the former corporeal severities inflicted; and in 1794, the penalty of 
death was restricted to the single crime of murder in the first degree. The first penitentiary 
erected in the state was the Walnut-street prison in Philadelphia, in the year 1790 ; in which 
imprisonment at hard labor was substituted for the ancient modes of punishment for crime by 
the gallows, the lash, and the brand. A certain degree of classification was adopted for 
prisoners, according to their offences and characters ; while solitary cells were provided for 
those who, for the more heinous grades of crime, were condemned to that penalty, as also 
for those whose violent resistance to the ordinary discipline of the prison required unusual 
means of restraint or punishment. The solitary cells were without the provision of labor, 
which in the other portions of the establishment was designed to afford one of its chief refor¬ 
matory influences. 
New-York was not slow to follow in the track of a more enlightened penal policy, in which 
Pennsylvania thus bore off the honor of leading the way. The year 1796 marks the first 
prominent era in the history of penitentiary reform in this state. In his first message to the 
legislature, on the 6th January, Governor Jay recommended the mitigation of the criminal 
code, and the erection of establishments for the employment and reformation of criminals. 
Two years previously, two citizens of New-York, distinguished for their humanity and libe¬ 
rality, Thomas Eddy, of the Society of Friends, and General Schuyler, alike in peace and in 
war, one of the most illustrious of the founders of this commonwealth, had visited the Philadel¬ 
phia prison for the purpose of acquiring a more accurate knowledge of its tendency, structure, 
and its internal arrangements ; and so favorable was the impression produced on their minds, 
that the latter gentleman, who was then in the senate of the state, immediately drafted a law 
for the erection of a penitentiary in the city of New-York. This bill, “for making altera¬ 
tions in the criminal law of this state, and the erecting of state prisons,” in harmony with 
the recommendation of the governor, was brought forward in the senate, and ably and suc¬ 
cessfully sustained by Ambrose Spencer, the subsequent eminent chief justice of the state, 
and finally became a law on the 26th of March, 1796. This law directed the establishment 
of two state prisons, the one at Albany and the other at New-York; though the idea of the 
former was afterwards abandoned, and the whole appropriation expended in New-York, under 
a commission consisting of Matthew Clarkson, John Murray junior, John Watt, Thomas Eddy 
and Isaac Stoutenburgh. This establishment (known as Newgate) was opened for the recep¬ 
tion of its inmates on the 25th of November, 1797. The building was 204 feet in length, a 
wing projecting from each end, and from those wings two other smaller wings. The whole 
structure was of the Doric order, containing 54 rooms, 12 feet by 18; besides the cells for 
