Chapter 30

A KNIGHTLY CRUSADER

ON this, the birthday of John Howard, the prison reformer, it is interesting to reflect that, although the aisles of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, are now adorned by some of the most perfect masterpieces of the world’s most eminent sculptors, the first statue to be admitted to that sacred edifice was his. The circumstance is symbolic, for Howard was ever a pioneer. He did a work peculiarly his own in a way peculiarly his own. Yet he embarked on his great historic enterprise without premeditation and without plan. On November 1, 1755, the world heard with horror that the capital of Portugal had been destroyed by earthquake.

In the hour of her desolating calamity, Lisbon looked to London. At that bleak moment, Howard, a youth in his twenties, was sitting beside the body of his dead wife. He resolved to seek consolation in action. He would visit the stricken city and administer relief with his own hands. But England and France were at war. His ship was captured by a French privateer and all its passengers were flung into prison. The dungeon in which Howard found himself was ‘a horrible hole, dark, damp and filthy beyond description’. After a spell of ravenous starvation, a leg of mutton was tossed to the prisoners in the cell, much as flesh is dropped into a den of wild beasts; and, like wild beasts, they tore at it until every morsel had been greedily devoured. They slept: on the bare stones. This bitter and degrading experience set Howard thinking. Was it possible, he wondered, that all prisoners were subjected to such horrors? He would make it his business to find out.

The discoveries that he made in the course of these voyages of exploration must, in our time, appear utterly incredible. In all the gaols of Europe he found the wretched inmates, regardless of sex, herded together in one vile and cavernous chamber, with nothing in the shape of light, ventilation or sanitation. The odour of such foul gehennas was so sickening that, after leaving them, Howard could never enter a room, or even a public vehicle, until he had bathed and changed his clothes. The fevers and pestilences that broke out in these horrid holes were so frightful that they not only swept away the prisoners in hundreds, but spread to the officials, the crowds in the courts, and even to the judges themselves. Howard often found among the prisoners the bodies of those who had been dead for days. It was no uncommon thing for a man to be torn to pieces by rats. The prison officials received no salaries; indeed, they paid as much as .£40 a year for their positions. They reaped their recompense in the fees that they wrung from their victims. No inmate could escape torture, or obtain the slightest shadow of comfort except by paying the gaoler.

To make matters worse, the innocent suffered with the guilty. ‘For,’ says Howard, ‘the thing that moved me most was the sight of those who had been found not guilty, and even those against whom no charge could justly be laid, suffering the same penalties as the most hardened and desperate criminals. After being confined for months awaiting trial, these unfortunates, though acquitted, were again dragged back to gaol and locked up with other prisoners until they should pay the fees that they owed the governor, the gaoler, the clerk of assize, the turnkey, and so on.’ Debt, too, was as much a crime as burglary. At Cardiff, Howard found that a man had just died, after rotting for ten years in a loathsome cell, for owing £7 to a tradesman. The whole thing, as Green says in his Short History of the English People, was a perfect chaos of cruelty.

Realizing that a problem so stupendous needed a strong spiritual dynamic, Howard entered into a secrei: but solemn Covenant of Consecration with God, a covenant which he periodically reviewed and renewed. Thus fortified, and with a case so unanswerable, he quickly caught the ear of the public. He had scarcely made his voice heard when a bill was introduced into Parliament. He was called to the Bar of the House and thanked for directing attention to so ghastly an evil. Thus encouraged, he went abroad to inspect the prisons of the Continent and to initiate the same salutary movement in every land. No personal danger deterred him. He made his way to the Bastille, the French galleys, the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition and the lazarettos of Turkey. He often entered dungeons that were infected by the Plague. He simply knew no fear. He did his work quietly, but he did it efficiently; and it soon began to tell.

He made no fuss and courted no publicity. As his biographer says, he never talked with Johnson, dined with Fox, had his portrait painted by Reynolds, or attracted the notice of Gibbon. But he built the first model cottages, founded the first village schools, exposed the nightmare of the gaols, transformed the hospitals, reconstructed the workhouses, ameliorated the lot of all prisoners-of-war, and travelled the highways and byways of Europe to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and set the captive free. At his own cost and at his own risk, he appeared before Parliament, pleaded with emperors and kings, and prosecuted his brave crusade. The inevitable happened. Contracting a malignant fever in Russia, he died in 1790 at the age of sixty-four. ‘Suffer no pomp to attend my funeral,’ he begged. ‘Lay me quietly in my grave; place a plain slab of marble over my head bearing the inscription: “John Howard: my hope is in Christ”. ‘The whole world mourned. Never before had so many nations wept for the passing of an Englishman. John Wesley, who died shortly afterwards, declared that Howard was the greatest man of his time. Statues and memorials sprang up everywhere. ‘Whoever thou art,’ reads the inscription on his grave, ‘thou art standing at the tomb of thy friend!’ That eloquent but just tribute sums up everything!

 By Dr. F. W. Boreham