Chapter III: Part 3

_Case Third._—Two young soldiers that were from the State of Maine.
One of them was of a family of the highest respectability; they were
accused of stealing a silver watch valued at $18, for which offence
they were committed to prison. When the parents of one heard of the
imprisonment of their son, they addressed a note to the Warden of
our Prison expressing their surprise at his imprisonment. They
stated that they had never known him to do anything wrong, but to
the contrary he had always conducted himself in such a way as to
command the respect of all who knew him. They wished to know whether
it was necessary to send on money to employ counsel to defend him.
This letter was handed to the Agent, who made himself thoroughly
acquainted with their case, and who believed they were innocent. The
letter was answered, and the parents were informed by the Agent that
he believed their son was innocent of the charge that he was accused
of, and the case would be attended to free of charge, and that it
was not necessary to send any money. It was not long after this that
the Agent succeeded in ascertaining that these young men were
entirely innocent of the charge they were accused of, and so far
from having stolen anything, they had been robbed by their
prosecutor. After having been induced to drink _liquor_ that was
drugged, they became intoxicated, and were taken out under the cover
of night and laid at the door of the adjoining house. The very party
that robbed them, went to a magistrate and made oath that they had
stolen a silver watch of the value of $18 from him; for which
offence they were committed. They had been engaged in one of the
late battles, and both of them were wounded and sent to the Chestnut
Hill Hospital, where they had _partially recovered_ from their
wounds, and as they were _convalescent_, permission was granted them
to visit the city, where they got into the difficulty. The Agent
succeeded in ascertaining from one of the _inmates_ of the tavern
where the occurrence took place, that the young men were entirely
_innocent_ of stealing the watch, and that the prosecutor had
actually _offered to sell_ the watch the next day after they were
imprisoned. Soon as this fact was discovered, the Agent got a
_return_ of the case from the magistrate, took it into Court, and
informed the _District Attorney_ of all the facts in the case; the
prosecutor was sent for, but was nowhere to be found, as he had
_suddenly disappeared_ and left for New York, he having become
_alarmed_ at the Agent’s interference in the case. Their case was
laid before the Grand Jury and ignored, and they were released from
prison and permitted to return to their hospital where they could
have their wounds properly attended to. The Agent then addressed a
letter to the anxious parents of the one that their son’s innocence
was fully established, and that he was _honorably discharged_ by the
Court. This intelligence was no doubt gratifying to them.

If this third case is well considered, it will present an instance of the value of the services of the Agent, and consequently of the value of the Society, which must be gratifying to every friend of humanity. It seems almost impossible to free our large cities from the haunts of the vicious into which these young men had been enticed, and while they exist it seems certain that crime will not only abound, but progress, not merely in amount but in impunity. The feelings of those interested in the welfare and character of these young men, may be imagined when they learn of their release from prison and their full acquittal of the charge of felony. The course of vice had indeed been entered, and idle curiosity (at least) had been partially gratified in the dangerous exploration by these young men, and now perhaps they may understand the significance of monitions, against entering the path that leads down to destruction and associating with those “whose feet take hold on hell.”

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MAGISTRACY.

Persons visiting the County Prison, are struck with the evidence that abounds of some great defect in the system of primary justice in this city; and the evils so justly and so greatly to be deplored, are often unhesitatingly referred to the incompetency or malfeasance of a portion of the magistrates by whom the vagrants, the drunkards, and the violators of the public peace are committed. Without offering an opinion at present on the question, whether we owe the results of which we speak, to the ministers of justice, or to the system upon which they receive their office, and discharge its duties, we are certainly right in saying that any attempt to alleviate the miseries of public jails, must first grapple with the administration of primary justice; must begin with creating a respect for the officers of the law, and must satisfy the accused that the object of arrest is not so much the profit of the magistrate as the benefit of society; and that while the balance is held with a clean and steady hand, the costs are imposed less for the benefit of the magistrate than for the punishment for a violation of the law and the improvement of the offender.

But before we can hope for any amendment of the system, we must enable the public to comprehend the reality and the extent of the evil which is deplored, and which it is the object of the friends of sound justice to correct.

The “Station-House” and the County Prison are crowded with persons who do not feel that they have done an injury to others, or at most, they think their offence is of a most venial kind. The offence of “vagrancy” is so undefined, that it is easy to commit almost any idle person upon such a charge, and equally easy to let him go. “Disorderly conduct,” which appends to the offence of drunkenness, the punishment of a month confinement instead of a day is so uncertain in its character, that the jubilant politician is in danger of imprisonment if his huzzas are strengthened and multiplied by even moderate potations. And “disorderly house” is made to cover all kinds of disturbances between singing loud to a crying child, and the repeated orgies of drunkenness and prostitution, just as “misdemeanor” includes all indictable offences below actual felony. And “abuse and threats,” that formerly expressed something definite, now fill the commitment with most undefinable charges, and the cells with most astonished and astonishing inmates.

The whole system of magisterial justice has, in this city, fallen into disrepute; and those who are the objects of its penalties, seem to lose respect for its ministers and their ministration, and to regard arrest and imprisonment as a misfortune which is as likely to fall upon one as another, if poor, and which therefore justifies any effort to evade the penalty.

This was not always so; we speak of the estimate of aldermanic justice. There never was a time when vice and crime did not abound in a great city, and, consequently, if respect for public rights exists, and a necessity for order is admitted there is likely always to be business for the police, and cases for the magistrates. But there is a mode of conducting both arrests and “hearings,” that makes the difference in the proceedings and their effects. And when we shall have looked a little more into the details of the matter as they are presented, we shall not only see the cause of the evils which we deplore, but shall rapidly and easily arrive at a conclusion with regard to some of the means which are to be employed to alleviate the miseries of public prisons, and thus see that the subject of which we now treat, is one that directly connects itself with the aims of the Society, and that it demands from us an opinion of the evil which it involves, and a consideration of the plans which may be suggested as a remedy.

The small income from the office of Alderman in this city is augmented by a salary allowed to six of them, who may happen to be of the right kind of politics to ensure their claims upon Councils to be elected Police Magistrates. The changes which the Charter of the City has undergone by amendments and substitution, have left Philadelphia in an anomalous situation with regard to offices. Every ward in the city has one or more Aldermen, who possess now little else than the functions of a justice of the peace. And the roll of officials bears also the name of a “Recorder,” yet that functionary has few if any other relations with the city government than has the humblest of the Aldermen; or if he has, it is some remnant of ancient obligation to do service never required, or to demand fees seldom paid to him. No one can deny that the present Recorder discharges well the duties of a justice of the peace, so far as his power extends; but no one will say that the office is essential to any branch of justice in the city if all others are well executed.

We speak now rather in abstract, but it may not be out of the way to say, that the citizen who occupies at present the place of Recorder, seems to illustrate the idea of an efficient magistrate, as, without any particular call upon him, he has been a terror and a scourge to evil doers, and thus he magnifies his office, and makes it honorable.

The report of our Prison Agent, extracts from which have been given, shows to what an extent the evil to which we allude has already extended. His labors procured the release of more than a hundred persons every month. Now, though in many instances the prisoner thus released may have violated some law, and thus have rendered himself obnoxious to the penalties of the statute, yet in a greater part of the committals, investigation shows that the idea of just convictions did not enter into the complaint, and that the magistrate might have caused a settlement of the matter, without recourse to incarceration, in the infliction of fine; or at least it would be easy so to amend the laws of the State as to empower the magistrate to deal thus with the accused. Much the largest part of the commitments, however, are of a kind that do not often come to the knowledge of the Agent, but are referred to the “Visiting Inspectors” of the Prison. These are for drunkenness, disorder, breach of the peace, and vagrancy; and as an Act of Assembly gives to the Inspectors of the Prison the power to discharge persons committed for such offences, it follows that many committed for thirty days are released before the expiration of their term. Intoxication is charged, and the miserable offender is sent to the prison; perhaps a family is dependent upon his or her labor, or an infant needs the nourishment, which only a mother can afford; and the miserable mother is suffering from an excess of that from which only an infant can ordinarily relieve her.

An innocent woman has often been taken up in a grand swoop which a spasmodic effort of the police has made, and she is included in the long list of commitments as drunk, or a vagrant. Many of those who were guilty of the lower offences charged against them receive no good from their incarceration, and society is not benefited by their removal from the labor which maintains them and a family, and the imprisonment devolves upon the city the expenses of the support, often both of the offenders and their families.

A considerable portion of the community that have acquaintance with the prison by commitment, are of a class that think all personal redress, and all protection from wrong, and all safety from the consequences of their own misconduct lie in an appeal to the magistrate, and a trifling quarrel in a neighborhood frequently leads to the arrest and incarceration of the principal members of several families, and the offending and the offended parties are often seen withdrawing from the contests of hands and clubs, and contending in a foot race to see which shall first enter complaint before a magistrate. Often in these matters both succeed; each contrives to get his antagonist into prison, and mulct him in costs. Occasionally it happens, that “the race is not to the swift;” success is found to depend on the possession of the means to pay the first cost of the action. Perhaps the most painful, because the most unrighteous, of this kind of suits, are those in which a quarrelsome drunkard, having beaten his wife, proceeds at once to the magistrate and charges her, on oath, with assault and battery, or with assault and threats, and the poor woman comes down to the prison with her head bruised, her eyes blackened, and her whole frame bearing marks of the outrageous injury inflicted by her cowardly, drunken husband, who, after a few days, finding his household matters in some derangement for want of a female head, obligingly releases his wife from prison, till his time for another debauch has arrived. Nor is it to be denied that the drunken wife often, very often, brings the husband into similar difficulties. In some of these cases a magistrate might, by interference, mitigate a portion of the misery which is inflicted, and by his friendly advice prevent much that usually follows.

This constant resort to litigation in those who have no “cause” but what they create of themselves, is one of the crying evils of the times. The facility of a warrant, and the knowledge that the facility results from its price, cause a large portion of the cases which reach our courts of justice, or are settled, “with costs,” between the Alderman’s office and the jury-room.

Another class of cases is found in the prison—that of disorderly houses. Now it is well understood that the term “disorderly house,” has a specific signification when connected with a charge before an Alderman; yet, on enquiry as to the character of the “disorder,” it frequently happens that the offenders were in the exercise of customary rights in their own apartment. Singing, perhaps, or talking loudly; or, it may happen, that not even such disturbances are mentioned. But the proprietor of the house, usually an under-letter, can do better with his contracted premises by a larger rent, or more ready collection, he therefore incurs the cost of magisterial interference, the tenants, he knows, cannot find freehold bail, they will sell a part of their goods to pay back rent and cost, and for the sake of exemption, or release from confinement, will agree to leave the rooms, and thus the prosecutor secures the first object of his unjust movement, and is saved also the cost of a defeat in court.

The number of persons committed on the charge of “disorderly houses,” is astonishing; especially when it is considered how many “disorderly houses” remain unvisited, and the occupants not arrested. But we must not forget the fact, that the movement of the magistrate in these cases is sanctioned, perhaps required, by the solemn oath of the complainant.

With these remarks we are led to the consideration of the subject with which we commenced this part of our Report, namely, THE MAGISTRACY, and their alleged complicity in the evil which we deplore, and which we would diminish for the sake of the miserable victims of temporary power, and for the sake of the credit of our community.

On all sides we hear the complaint of the character and conduct of the Aldermen of the city; many of them, it is stated, use their office to extort from the unfortunate poor, a portion of their hard earnings, and thus deprive the homes of the laborer of the little comforts of which they are susceptible. They entertain complaints, it is said, of acts which need not be construed into offence against the law, and thus encourage litigation, and perpetuate feuds among those whom it would seem to be their duty, as magistrates, to “keep at peace with all men.”

We have already enumerated and repeated the classes of cases which most encumber the dockets of the Aldermen, and which are made of more importance than they deserve by the effects on the income of the magistrates which these causes produce. But the enumeration and repetition alone of these would not be a part of the duties of this Society, or form a portion of this Report, if they did not suggest a call for remedy. It is not the evils of prisons that constitute the object of this Society, but the melioration of those evils.

Taking, then, the existence of the evils, as we have only hinted at them, and admitting (as we are free to do, and as we do with pleasure, because it is just) that while the cry against the magistracy is universal, the fault is really found in only a part of them, the inquiry is, “how shall all this be remedied?”

“_Elect better Aldermen_,” say those who wish for a better state of things. “Elect suitable men, and the evil is at once remedied.”

Undoubtedly the plan is good; but is it practicable? For many years the Aldermen of Philadelphia have been elected by the people, and in many instances the choice has been judicious, but in others either the official conduct of the magistrate has deteriorated into the grossest kind of improprieties, or he has been compelled to give place to some greater favorite of the voters of his ward, who would begin his descending march some grades below that at which his predecessor closed his career. So large a portion of the duties of the Alderman who has most to do as a police magistrate, are beyond the knowledge and sympathy of the respectable portion of the community, that little interest is taken in his election by those who feel a sense of shame at the improprieties of a functionary connected with the administration of justice; and in many parts of the city the knowledge and sympathy of that class would avail nothing towards the election of another person.

The Grand Jury recently inquiring for the city and county of Philadelphia, made the following severe strictures upon Aldermen:

“It has been a matter of exceeding regret that the law has not
clothed this body with discretionary power to tax the magistrates,
before whom the cases were heard, with the costs, as a proper rebuke
to that avarice which seeks to convert litigation and contention
into a source of gain,—which offers a premium for crimes, by making
the ministers of the law the transgressors, and prostituting the
province of peace-makers to that of a common barrator.”

As the Grand jury did not, of course, desire to be directly personal when they were not about to find a bill, they let their censure take a general course. They set forth an evil, and that, perhaps, was enough, till some special case of wrong should be laid before them.

But the alleviation of the evil—the remedy. It is evident the remedy is not in the ballot-box—the root of the evil lies far back of that; nor is it in the statutes of the Commonwealth. The Constitution of the State is in fault; and until that is modified, or till some act of the Assembly can be passed superseding the Aldermen in their special police duties, we cannot hope for any diminution of the evil. The Aldermen of the city are elected by the voters of their own wards, and he who can command the most votes, can, if he desire it, be chosen Alderman. No man of wealth seeks the place,—no man of business habits asks for a nomination. The rewards of the office are, at best, below that of ordinary business; and the distinction which the place confers is not that which gratifies the wishes of the ambitious. But the place is coveted and obtained, its emoluments spring from the fees paid by those who come or are brought before the magistrate. If his business is multiplied, his profits, of course, are increased; and as he sought the place for the means of a living, he must avail himself of the capabilities of the place to augment those means. If people will “sue and be sued,” if people will fight and go to law, if neighbors will quarrel, and then drag each other before the magistrate, it may seem, to the functionary, rather a thankless exercise of his ability, to recommend such an adjustment of the case as will deprive him of the fees of office, by which he lives. And while most philanthropists would applaud the magistrate who sat to reconcile rather than to punish,—who dispensed with his fees while he dispensed kindness and affection rather than justice,—it is probable that the family for which he was bound to provide would have to look to some other means of support than those supplied by the man who looked to the peace of the neighborhood rather than the augmentation of fees. And it may as well be added, that the magistrate who should thus employ his functions, would soon fail of objects, provided another alderman could be found who would grant to passion its first demand. For it is evident that most of the complaints that come before our aldermen are brought by those who seek to gratify personal animosity and a sudden desire of vengeance rather than any wish to punish the wrong-doer for the sake of right. We must take men as they are, not as we could wish them to be. We must recognize in the office of an alderman the means of support for the incumbent and his family; and while all around us, men are exercising their talents and taxing their ingenuity, to gain wealth by the advantages which the law allows, we must not suppose that the alderman is to sit in magisterial quiet, and suffer the vails of office to escape his grasp, when they are the fruits of a labor sanctioned by law or warranted by official custom.

If we would remedy the evils about which so much has been justly said, and concerning which the Grand Jury has spoken so plainly, we must do something more than talk and complain.

We have already said the evil finds its source and sanction in the Constitution of our State. The change of the whole mode of supplying the magistrates and judicial officers, that was wrought by the present Constitution, may have corrected some evils: the general question is one which we are now not called upon to discuss; but we may say, that experience shows that nothing has been gained with regard to the administration of justice in the magistrates offices of our city. Twenty-five years experience shows that none of the evils complained of in this department have been diminished, while most of them have been augmented, and new ones added to the list. This seems almost a necessary result of the system, and thus calls for prompt, effective remedy.

What is required in Philadelphia, is a class of Police Magistrates, with a salary that shall secure and compensate the services of competent men, who shall have no pecuniary temptation to commit any person brought before them, and whose character and condition shall give weight, no less to their decisions than their recommendations. Placed by the tenor and fixed reward of their office above dependence upon those who shall demand justice in others, or receive it in themselves, they shall not shrink from their duty to condemn, more than from their sense of propriety to discharge.

Of legal qualifications we have little to say. The layman, fitted by character and ordinary education for the place of police magistrate, might soon become sufficiently learned in the law and requirements of his place, to discharge with fidelity and success the duties thereof. A considerable number of those now holding the office of Alderman, and as such elected occasionally as Police Magistrates, show themselves competent to all the duties of their office, and worthy of the position which would be opened to them, should the reformation that we suggest ever be made. It is not always the man,—it is the circumstances in which he is placed; it is the necessities of nomination, the demands of the election, and the condition into which the office has been brought, that hinder some in their attempts at good, and deprive the city of benefits from the services of those who, under other circumstances, would promote public order, and acquire honor by their administration of justice and their exercise of humane powers.

And while so much freedom has been exercised in censuring the official conduct of some of the Aldermen of our city,—a freedom that is suggested and can be sustained by facts,—it is due to the cause of truth and justice to repeat emphatically what is readily admitted above, that many of the magistrates are eminently deserving of commendation, as well for the abilities they possess, as for the use to which those abilities are applied in the discharge of their vexatious duties. And it may be added, that some of those who have been most censured, have shown themselves possessed of good feelings, and amenable to the requirements of courtesy and humanity. The system is in fault; and till that is changed for the better,—reformed altogether,—we cannot look for any considerable improvement in the administration of justice in police offices. For it is a lamentable fact, that such is the want of confidence in some of the magistrates, that the decisions of the able and the good are treated with a distrust most dangerous to public order.

Our judiciary, from the lowest offices to the highest, was derived from England. The names of the officials, the cause of their proceedings, the rules of their action, are all from the parent country. If we have not derived from these all the benefits which might be expected, and all we see England enjoy, it is worth while for those interested to inquire what has disturbed public opinion, what has weakened public respect, what has augmented the law’s delay, or what has strengthened the general opinion of its uncertainty. So far as such feelings, if any such exist, may connect themselves with the “courts of record” of our State, it is not the object of the present Report to discuss the cause, to point to their extent, or suggest a remedy. But we have legitimately before us the evils of a bad system of minor justice, and we are therefore right in suggesting a remedy.

The progress of society abroad suggests remedies for evils which it is the duty of the people of this country to consider. And the mode of administering justice in police courts in London, eminently deserves the attention of those who deplore the deficiency and seek for a substitute in Philadelphia. It is simple, easy, practical. Magistrates of established character are appointed, to hold office during good behavior. They have a salary ample to maintain themselves and a family. Their office has with it something of the character of the Court of Sessions, and thus there attaches to their persons an idea of judicial dignity, which is to be respected on the police bench, and which respects itself when in the world. These officers are not tempted, by inadequacy of income, to augment the business of their office, that they may profit by costs or compromise. Those who are compelled by business or misfortune to appear before them, feel that respect is due to the administration of justice in its incipient stages, and a large portion of those who are charged with the violation of law, appeal with confidence to those magistrates for summary proceedings, (which the law there allows,) in preference to the delay which would attend a reference of their case to a jury. Such a power on the part of the police magistrate is found most advantageous to justice in London, resulting in great saving to the city and county, without lessening the terrors of the law,—rather augmenting them by the promptness of punishment.

Should the Legislature of the State be disposed to remedy the existing evils in this city, by providing for an alteration in the Constitution, by which the mode of acquiring, and the terms of holding, office by the Aldermen shall be changed, it is possible that an enlargement of power, such as we have noticed in the London magistracy, would be granted, so that justice would be promptly as well as carefully administered.

We have, in this chapter, touched upon one disturbing element, and we have done it with no view to cast indiscriminate odium upon any citizen. The evil to which we have adverted, exists. The great cause, however, of the evil, we have shown to arise out of the Constitution of the State, or from a deficiency of legislation. We lack no talent in this city for judicial or magisterial place; but we have failed in attempts to call those talents into the best exercise, and to insure to them the highest public respect.

There is, however, another disturbing cause, which we must look at steadily, if we would understand its bearing on society, its influence on morals, and especially its connection with the subject of prison occupation and prison discipline. And especially ought we to present the subject in immediate connection with a consideration of the Magistracy. It is _Intoxication_ that crowds the police office and the alderman’s tribunal. Hourly is the magistrate called to commit or fine the violator of the law of temperance. The miserable wretches come into his presence without power to discriminate between right and wrong, with no command of their own movements, and no sense of propriety with regard to conduct or conversation; and complaints are sometimes made that these creatures are not treated with suitable consideration. Let us, when we consider the duties and conduct of magistrates, not overlook the disgusting materials to which they are to administer justice, nor blame them if they sometimes suffer the prisoner to hold the rank which he assigns to himself.

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INTEMPERANCE.

Of any two hundred persons committed to the County Prison, probably one hundred and fifty owe their incarceration to drunkenness. Assault and battery, breach of the peace, misdemeanor, vagrancy, abuse and threats, disorderly conduct, and other charges which figure upon the commitments sent by the magistrate with the prisoner, are often only other terms for drunkenness and only varieties in the _charge_ or slight additions to the offence; and even the higher offences against the law are frequently referable to, or connected with, intemperance in the use of intoxicating liquors; and it generally happens that when the prisoner is questioned with regard to the temptation to steal, to fight, or commit some other misdemeanor with which he stands charged, he replies that he knows nothing about such acts, he only took a drop too much, or was a “little tight;” he remembers a mass of things, yet nothing distinctly, and professes to feel greatly injured in being committed for a misdemeanor, when he had done nothing but get drunk; or that he should have been charged with assault and battery when he had only beaten his wife or struck the officer that arrested him; nor does he find it reconcilable with justice that he should be charged with abuse and threats for merely cursing the magistrate and offering to break his head at a moment of greater soberness. This vice of excessive drinking is then so intimately connected with the administration of justice, either as a motive or a stimulant for offences against the law, that it is deemed proper to consider it more closely in connection with prison discipline, in order that we may understand what are the duties of society in regard to its means and subjects, and thus we may also comprehend how entirely its suppression becomes a means of ameliorating the condition of public prisons. If we would lesson the evils of prisons, perhaps the most important step would be to diminish the number of prisoners. To strike from the list of offences that offence which is the parent, the assistant, and the offspring of so many more—would seem to be a great advance in the work of those who seek to denounce vice as well as to correct the vicious and criminal.

How drunkenness is to be diminished in our community, is a problem difficult of solution. Attempts have been made of various kinds, with various degrees of temporary success; but the appetites of one class and the cupidity of another, seem to baffle the efforts of the benevolent and counteract the enactments of legislatures. It may however tend towards an amendment, that something of the extent of the evil should be made public.

The means of intemperance are indeed public and its fruits abound, but very few stop to notice the extent of any habit that grows up gradually in a community and is consistent with general customs and taste, and only to be condemned for its excess, or only to be entirely condemned when its excess shows that the evils of abuse outweigh all advantages of moderate indulgence. Not many who read this report have thought to note the multiplied number of shops, saloons, taverns, hotels, casinos and cellars, whose maintenance is the profit on the sale of intoxicating liquors; yet these places present themselves all around us, and in certain parts of the city they are in such abundance as would lead one, a stranger to our domestic life, to suppose that the chief employment of the people was vending liquors, and the principle food was whiskey. Fifty grog shops and liquor stores are found for one bakery, so that Falstaff’s “penny for bread and a shilling for sack,” seems no longer an extravagant partiality for liquids over solids; and, if it should be said that many families bake their loaves instead of depending on the bakers for their daily bread, it may with equal truth be replied that thousands of those who reach Moyamensing Prison for drunkenness, maintain a household altar to intemperance, at which their neighbors also sacrifice (themselves and their character) in devotion to the social jug, from which drunkenness can be imbibed without the expense of a license or the payments of profits to the retailer.

Can such things be, and drunkenness not abound? Can so many places for the sale of liquor be maintained with gain to the proprietors merely upon the profit of getting people drunk without a terrible deterioration of public morals? It is proved by the revelations of our courts of justice, by the confession of prisoners and the statements of sufferers, that many of the keepers of these drinking places augment their profits by other crimes than that of intoxicating their fellow-men, by making indeed intoxication only a step towards almost every other species of criminality; and while the prison cells are crowded with the offenders and sufferers from these haunts of vice and crime, thousands leave unrevealed their sufferings and their losses rather than expose their weakness and vice in frequenting such resorts and yielding to the temptations of the place.

In presenting these remarks on the means and extent of intemperance, it is not to be inferred that the Philadelphia Society for alleviating the miseries of prisoners, is about to resolve itself into a temperance society, or create a committee to lessen the evil of intoxication. This society has its specific duties, which it endeavors to discharge fully and profitably; but if vices and woes cluster, virtue and peace also associate,—and if we would lessen any considerable evil we must seek to diminish its cause. This society has incidental association with almost all the benevolent and humane institutions of the city. The repentant, impure female is recommended to the Magdalen, the Rosine, or the Good Shepherd. The female vagrant or the thief, is conducted to the Howard Home or some other refuge with which the Committee or the Agent is in correspondence. The young are transferred from the cell of the prison to the care of the House of Refuge. Is it then less consistent with the objects of this society that it should put itself in harmonious action with those who would lessen the overwhelming vice of drunkenness by which the cells of our prison are crowded, not only by drunkenness, but by those who having by drunkenness forfeited the esteem of society and lost their own respect, sink into lower debasement and lose all distinction between vice and crime, and practice theft as the means and intoxication as the end of living.

No one unacquainted with the life of a drunkard, but especially of an habitual female drunkard, can form a correct idea of the irrepressible thirst which the constant use of intoxicating liquors imposes. In a man it is usually a love of the _taste_ of drink and the habit of social drinking; and the habit is often broken and the male drunkard restored. In woman the desire is for the _effect_ of liquor, the feelings to which it gives rise; and the indulgence is more frequently solitary than social: and however strong the sense of wrong, however deep may be the regret for the folly when the evil moment of intoxication is over and the secondary results succeed, still it rarely happens that the repentance is deep or the amendment permanent. We do not know how many women have triumphed over a strong appetite for intoxicating liquors; thousands, of course, have solemnly but terribly wrestled with the deadly enemy and conquered; many thousands maintain “the irrepressible conflict” with various degrees of success; but the prison and the almshouse records show that with another class, mighty in number and important in interest, resistance is relinquished, shame forgotten, and the daughter, the wife and the mother confess themselves the captives of that one vice which sacrifices every female virtue to the gratification of rapacious appetite. This subject commends itself to the regard of the philanthropist, it calls for the attention of the magistrate, and it asks for some new legislation; what that legislation should be in detail, we do not pretend to say; our duty in the capacity in which we now act is done when we thus expose the evils whose existence and a part of whose terrible effects we discern in our prison visitations. We do not exaggerate the means nor the devotion to drunkenness in what we here state. The inducements to intoxication are double those which we have mentioned, and all vices and passions are made subservient to the work of selling liquor, while the effect of the poison sold is promotive of other vices. The accursed bottle is not confined to the house, the cellar, the dram shop, nor the saloon, it follows the miserable devotee to the police station, and the very van in which the drunkard is conveyed to the prison has its illicit bottle, so that if a single one of the inebriates should have failed of the necessary quantity for entire intoxication, or one should have recovered a gleam of reason, there should not be wanting the means of completing or restoring the work; and, it may be added, that it is with the utmost vigilance that the officers of the prison are enabled to keep intoxicating liquors from the cells. It is a melancholy fact that the husband endeavors to smuggle a contraband bottle into the cell where his wife is confined for drunkenness; and mothers while lamenting the hereditary misconduct of their daughters, seek to convey comfort to the young offender in the form of coffee strongly “laced” with whiskey. The right hand of fellowship extended through the aperture of the cell door, is the means of conveying a phial of brandy carefully deposited in the ample sleeve, and the affectionate friend that comes to sympathize with her incarcerated companion, exposes as she reaches forward to reciprocate a kiss, the forbidden bottle hidden in the bosom of her dress. It is then not only the appetite for whiskey against which opposition is to be made at our prison, but the deep sympathy which is manifested for those who suffer for a want of means and place to gratify that appetite.

Undoubtedly an immense saving in city expenditures would be made, to the relief of the tax-payer, if such an abuse of humanity could be corrected. And while we know that society would recognize at once any successful effort to suppress drunkenness, we feel that a moral desolation would be removed, could we cut down root and branch, the terrible Bahan Upas of our country, whose pestiferous branches destroy all vegetation beneath their ample shade, and spread misery and ruin throughout the circle of influences.

We dare not say however that, because almost all who are brought to the County Prison are habitual drunkards, that the entire _abolition_ of intoxicating drinks would depopulate our prisons. The experience of the world is different. In Great Britain, Ireland and Germany, the frequenter of the prison is usually a drunkard. In Italy, especially in the South of Italy, drunkenness is almost unknown among the natives. Three years’ residence in the city of Naples failed to present to the narrator a single instance of a drunken Neapolitan, high or low, rich or poor; while frequent visitations to the prisons showed them amply populous. Perhaps there is in Italy some prevailing vice as productive of evil as drunkenness—perhaps drunkenness is in other countries the resort of the bad—of men and women who seek the gratification of a diseased appetite, not as a consequence or means of crime, but only to enjoy such gratifications as are consistent with and are punished by crime. The destruction of the Bahan Upas then may not restore herbage to the field; nay, to find a comparison nearer home, the stately pine is often cut down that culture and care may ensure a profitable crop for the soil which it has overshadowed, but a single season’s neglect shows that in the same earth there lies concealed the germ of other trees and shrubbery, and instead of the single overshadowing object, fifty smaller ones spring up to occupy the ground and prevent the growth of herbage. So the avoidance of a great leading vice does not without watchful care insure with certainty a growth of gentle virtues, some lesser passions, some yet uncultivated appetites that lie latent in the heart, spring into active growth, and become as dominant by their multitude as the ruling one did by its single power.

Yet however appalling may be the vice that is adopted by those who do not fall into the habit of drunkenness, there is always more hope of reclaiming the unfortunate male offender, whatever may be his vice, than there is of inducing the female inebriate to forsake the bottle. Larceny is committed to supply some want, not to gratify an imperious appetite; it leads to solitary confinement for a length of time, and the thief is easily persuaded to reflect, and often induced to amend. He understands, indeed, that his offence is directly against others, and that it provokes the injured to visit upon him the penalty of the violated law, and the anger of an offended society, that arms itself against him. The poor drunkard awakens from his debauchery, and finds a craving thirst for that which prostrated him, and feels that as he has done little or no direct wrong to others beyond his family, his offence is against himself, and the offended one in such a case easily pardons. If it is a female, it is not merely the love of liquor, in the use of which “increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on,” but it is that desire for the forgetfulness of sorrow, that love for the excitement of the nerves, that oblivion of the unhappy past, and that elevation above the miserable future which distinguishes her delirium of drunkenness from the effects of intoxication in man.

The impure female, in her rapid descent, is rarely unmindful of her degradation; and thousands are redeemed from vice by the kind interference of the humane; but when once she has found in the use of intoxicating liquor that paradise of the drunkard, she is rarely ever led by persuasion to return to reason and sobriety; nothing but forceful restraint will keep the wretched victim from the use of the means, and that restraint will not quench the thirst, nor diminish the desire, for the deceptive dreams of happiness.

_Prevention! Prevention!_ domestic discipline, social care, and social censure, can alone diminish this evil, and free our community from that awful scourge—a drunken woman—and alleviate the miseries which are found in the cell of the inebriate prisoner.

It is not to be denied that there has been a great increase in the habit of using intoxicating liquors within a few years. It is a growing evil of terrible dimensions and appalling effects; and the worst part of the curse is its continued augmentation. How is this evil to be lessened? How is society to be saved from the terrible maelstrom, which seems to draw all to its eddying circle, and involves in ruin all that it embraces. It is not the business of this Society, perhaps, to resolve itself into a “temperance association;” but there are precedents in its proceedings for direct action in the matter, at least so far as concerns the prisons. We have asked, by solemn resolve, that the use of tobacco may be restrained in the cells; not, perhaps, merely because tobacco is in itself so injurious, but principally because the use of that narcotic creates a thirst, which seems to have no appeasement but in strong drink. To use a salutary and direct influence, then, in diminishing drunkenness, must _a fortiori_ be within the plan of our Society.

But it may be said that while the use of tobacco has generally been among the admissible indulgence of prisoners, strong liquors have not been allowed. It is by no means certain that in other times the laboring prisoners were not allowed a regular, limited, supply of strong drink, but certainly not lately; yet as it is admitted that most of the criminal and vicious that are sent to our prisons owe their confinement to drunkenness, or at least make their condition worse by intoxication; and especially, as it is evident, that efforts to redeem from crime the released, are defeated by the facility with which intoxication may be had, it can scarcely be doubted that the Society is in the exercise of its legitimate powers, and in the discharge of its assumed duties, when it encourages all good efforts to lessen the prevailing sin and disgrace of the age, and lends its sanction to efforts directed to the diminution of the habit and the means of drunkenness.

How shall that be done? Shall this Society initiate a plan for promoting temperance, or shall it lend its hearty co-operation to some association that shall have for its principal object that which could only be a branch, a true, living branch, indeed, but only a branch of the duties of the Society for alleviating the miseries of prisons?

This Society can at least, and by the adoption of this Report, does, bear solemn testimony against the prevalence, the multiplication, and the existence of the magazines of mischief, where drunkenness is secured by the cost of the honor of the inebriate, and the disgrace of Society. Citizens who watch with most painful vigilance the action of the City Councils that enhance or diminish by a _single per cent._ the tax upon property, would consult their own interest more if they would look into this one cause of the increase of rates. But our business with the subject is in the interest of humanity. That is cheapest, at whatever cost, which produces the greatest good of the greatest number; and the good of the greatest number must depend on the promotion of sound morals.

With such a view of the prevalence of intemperance, and with such an avowal of the motives of humanity with which this Society regards all vices or crimes that go to make up the sum of the miseries of our public prisons, it may not be improper to state that among the institutions which humanity has yet to establish in Philadelphia, (it has already suggested it,) is a hospital or place of reception and treatment of inebriates. The prison punishes them, it does not cure; and few, excepting those who have seen the drunkard in the agonies of _delirium tremens_, or the terrors of _mania a potu_, can comprehend all the evils which the drunkard accumulates upon his own head, (the domestic misery which he insures, and the general scandal which he causes, may be otherwise considered,) but the personal suffering of the drunkard, after his committal for protracted debauch, is beyond description. It is not without some reason that the cells of the prison which are especially devoted to cases of _delirium_ and _mania_ are denominated “Purgatory,” though it would seem from the unutterable agonies and indescribable apprehension of the inmates that even if they should “go farther,” they would scarcely “fare worse.”

It is hoped, that when the national troubles that now occupy public attention, and draw upon the fiscal means of our citizens shall have ceased, there will be some effort in the direction of a “Hospital for Inebriates,” where proper moral and physical treatment may restore to families and society, those whose intemperate habits have alienated them from the affections of friends, or failing to restore them to reason and propriety, a home may be provided where they cannot by habitual indulgence, degrade themselves further, and by which families and friends may be spared the disgrace of a drunken inmate.

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HOUSE OF CORRECTION.

In the preceding divisions of this Report, it has been shown that the County Prison is peopled and re-peopled by persons who pass regularly from vice to vice, or from one degree of vice to another, marking their progress with a short residence in the cells of the prison, remaining at the longest only thirty days, and associating with those who may be their teachers or pupils in misdemeanors. It is not pretended by those who send these offenders to the prison, that the incarceration will amend their habits,—it is only the means of punishment; nor is it more than desired,—scarcely to be hoped,—by those who seek to alleviate the miseries of the prison, that the confinement of thirty days will tend to repentance and amendment of the vicious offender.

It is evident that more is required,—more in the way of wholesome discipline, more in time, more in direct appeals and instruction, more in the enforcement of industry. The prison cannot do much more than it is doing for the vicious. The solemn pledges of the intemperate to avoid intoxicating drink are slightly regarded when the means of violation are enticingly offered, and all the vices which have procured imprisonment lose their terrors, or double their attractions, when the temporary punishment is accomplished.

It is evident then that we need a resort for the vicious that will offer to society some hope that even if the vice is not avoided, the vicious shall be kept where they will cease to degrade society by their misconduct and lead others to destruction by their example.

We need a “House of Correction,” a place to receive those men and women who will not be reclaimed by monitions, or short confinement. We need a place where time for thinking can be found, and where the food for reflection may be supplied.

But in this case we cannot throw the censure for deficiency on the Legislature of the State. The wants of the community are admitted, and the right to supply those wants granted: the means are withheld by the city authority. Resolutions for building a Municipal Hospital for the reception, care and cure of those attacked with the small-pox, are adopted, and the means for carrying into effect those resolutions are supplied by the Councils of the city. That is well, and denotes a paternal care, on their part, of the interest and health of their constituents. But why—when authority is given, why not provide a Hospital for those struck with the pestilence of drunkenness and the accumulated miseries that come in its train? Is there a disease in the whole catalogue of human suffering that is more epidemic, if not contagious, than intoxication? or is there one that multiplies itself more by social contact? And why then should the vagrant, the breaker of the peace, the drunkard, multiply his or her disease more than the sufferer by the small-pox or cholera? If the hospital for the small-pox is a retreat for the sufferer, and his family and neighborhood need to be relieved from the danger of his condition, the House of Correction would be no less an asylum for the vicious, in which they could grow better by care, and escape the evil of communicating their mental disease to their neighbors.