18730 



NEW FEMALE JAIL. 



319 



" On Saturday afternoon, we saw a great smoke, then a fire, 

 and then three fine steamers, one after another, sail down with 

 the tide, all in full blaze. We found afterwards, that it caught 

 under an office on the wharf* full of shavings, etc. : I suppose, 

 as usual, some one's pipe-end ; but it blazed up ; a strong 

 wind blew off shore, caught the N.Y. steamer 6 Dirago,' which 

 blazed all over, so that several were drowned or burnt ; the 

 steamers were all off steam, and there were not tugs enough 

 about ; so next caught the 6 Montreal,' in which we had come 

 up from Boston a week before ; then the ' Carlotta,' Halifax 

 iron steamer. . . . Our 6 Blue-light ' (dredging steamer), which 

 was anchoring here, started instantly, without captain, pilot, 

 or engineer, all elsewhere, and went to the assistance of the 

 ■ Carlotta/ with steam-hose. [It was unavailing, and the 6 Blue- 

 light' was in great danger.] The Admiral praised our men, 

 saying that if they had lost their ship in even trying to save 

 the British one, he should have been quite content." 



In the following winter Philip wrote to a prominent Pro- 

 testant alderman and member of the local Legislature, who was 

 supposed to have much influence in the matter, to ask him 

 whether it was correct that, in the name of the City Council, 

 which had not been consulted, he was making arrangements 

 for a new female jail, in which the Catholic prisoners would be 

 handed over to the care of the nuns and would sleep together in 

 large dormitories : and finding that this was the case, he wrote 

 to the Earl of Dufiferin and to the Minister of Justice, remind- 

 ing them of his sister's letters to them on the Canadian jails : f 

 and that " persons conversant with prison discipline regard it 

 as quite essential, especially in short sentences, that persons 

 should sleep alone." The proposed plan " could not take 

 place in Britain, being against the provisions of Lord Carnar- 

 von's Act." Philip had no prejudice against the Catholics, and 



* " Montreal," he says, "is the only city I have seen in America where 

 they build solid wharfs. Everywhere else they are simply piles boarded 

 over, and being well supplied with air below, they burn rapidly. ' 



t See "The Life and Work of Mary Carpenter," pp. 414, 415. Lord 

 Dufiferin, in his reply to her letter, expressed his hope that the reprehensible 

 state of affairs it disclosed would be soon amended. 



