Howard, JOHN

Howard, JOHN, the philanthropist and prison reformer, was born at Hackney, in Middlesex, on 2d September 1726, though both place and date are given differently by different authorities. His education was mostly got through private tuition. The inheritance of an ample fortune, which fell to him on the death of his father in 1742, enabled him to gratify his taste for continental travel. In 1756, after his wife's death, he set sail for Lisbon, which had just been devastated by the great earthquake, but was captured on the way by a French privateer, and carried to Brest, where he was thrown into prison. There even a short captivity sufficed to leave upon his mind a lasting impression of the inhuman treatment to which prisoners of war were subjected in French prisons. After his return home Howard married a second time, and settled at Cardington, 3 miles from Bedford. That village reaped the first-fruits of those philanthropic exertions which afterwards culminated in such noble labour, the work of prison reform. In 1773 Howard was nominated high-sheriff for the county of Bedford, and his interest in prisons and their inmates was now first fairly roused to the pitch of practical effort. He was struck with the injustice under which many poor prisoners suffered, in that they were detained in prison untried, or even after being pronounced innocent, until they or their friends had paid certain fees to the gaolers and other officials. Howard at once began a long series of tours throughout Great Britain and Ireland, for the purpose of investigating the condition of prisons, and inquiring into the management and treatment of prisoners. Chiefly as the result of his efforts, two acts were passed in 1774, one making provision for fixed salaries to be paid to the gaolers, and the other enforcing greater cleanliness in prisons, with a view to the prevention of the dreaded gaol-fever. From this time onward Howard prosecuted with unwearied zeal and patience this the great work of his lifetime, upheld by an indomitable sense of duty, and supported by a devout faith and his own firm, steadfast will. The remaining years of his life were principally spent in visiting the prisons of Great Britain and the countries of the Continent. Amongst the graver abuses he set himself to get abolished in his native land were such things as these: many prisons were in a deplorably dilapidated state, the cells narrow, filthy, and unhealthy; debtors and felons were confined promiscuously in the same prisons; separate apartments were not provided for the two sexes, and the gaolers were allowed to sell liquors to those placed under their charge, causes directly ministering to immorality and drunkenness. Howard's endeavours to relieve human suffering in prisons easily turned his thoughts to hospitals; and he also directed his efforts to the alleviation of suffering and the removal of abuses in these establishments, as well as in schools and all kinds of benevolent institutions. From 1785 he devoted his attention more especially to the plague, and to the consideration of means for its prevention. With this end in view, he studied it in the hospitals and lazarettos of the chief Mediterranean towns in which it was wont to show itself. But whilst still pursuing his investigations, he was himself struck down by typhus fever at Kherson, in Russia, and died on 20th January 1790. He was buried at Dophinovka (now Stepanovka), 4 miles N. of Kherson. The chief results of his extensive observations were recorded with faithful accuracy and great minuteness of detail, though with little sense of generalisation, in two works—The State of Prisons in England and Wales, with an Account of some Foreign Prisons (1777), to which a supplement was added in 1780, whilst the editions of 1784 and 1792 were each an enlargement on its predecessor; and An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (1780). In consequence of his noble self-denying labours Howard has become the proverbial ideal of a philanthropist, the type of the best kind of humanitarian activity and love. Burke, in speaking of his labours at Bath in 1781, said, 'He has visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art; nor to collect medals or collect manuscripts; but to dive in the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt, to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. . . . It was a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity.' See Lives by Baldwin Brown (1818), Taylor (1836), Hepworth Dixon (1849), Field (1850), and Stoughton (1853; new ed. 1884); Correspondence of Howard (1855) by J. Field; and the article PRISONS.