Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    QGR2/6/1/2
  • Title
    Report of the Governor of the Prison Robert Evan Roberts to the Bedfordshire Epiphany Quarter Sessions. Includes the following:
  • Date free text
    5 January 1869
  • Production date
    From: 1869 To: 1869
  • Scope and Content
    Number of prisoners in the Gaol 2 Jan 1869 = 162. Number of recommittals have been once 41, twice 23, thrice 6, four times and upwards 17. Total 90. On 4th November George Hillyard was removed to Beds Reformatory. On 20th November Lewis Barratt was removed to Pentonville. 27th November William Hudson to Millbank Convict Depot. During the last quarter 30 Middlesex prisoners have been discharged and 31 received. During the last Quarter with the sanction of the Visiting Justices I have adopted a new description of labour especially for the vagrant class committed to this prison, the desirability of doing so was in consequence of the great influx lately of tramps and vagrants committed for offences in Union Workhouses. I have every reason to believe from what has already transpired that the labour now enforced upon this particular class of offenders will ultimately prove not only beneficial in a pecuniary sense but will tend ,aterially to reduce the number of committals under this head. I have the satisfaction of also of reporting that the Government Inspector on the occasion of his late visit, saw the prisoners so employed and expressed his entire approval of its application; so also has the Right Honorable Lord Devon who recently paid a visit to the Gaol for the express purpose of seeing the discipline and labour carried out in your County Prison. The subject of vagrancy having been already most ably brought under public notice in this country I trust I may not be deemed out of place in venturing an opinion of what appears to me to be a source of evil, or at least mistaken leniency in dealing with these offenders. I allude first to the shortness of sentences too frequently awarded viz 7 or 10 days - such sentences enable offenders of this class whose persons are invariably in a filthy state to enter the prison simply for the purpose of being throoughly washed and cleansed, and being affected as the majority of them are with a certain disease requiring medical tratement they are thereby enabled to quit the prison without being subjected to labour, hence it is that the Gaol is too frequently preferred by them as a more agreeable place than the workhouse. Secondly these persons generally travel together in gangs, and it invariably happens that when brought before the Magistrates they are sentenced alike to the same term of imprisonment thus enabling them on discharge from prison to meet together again, keeping up the old association which thier imprisonment was intended or ought to have destroyed. What I respectfully suggest is that the imprisonment should not be for less than one month and where there are more than one implicated in the same case that the terms of imprisonment should vary, this would operate in checking vagrancy and be the means to a great extent of breaking up many organised gangs travelling through the country, living chiefly on mistaken charity and plunder.
  • Level of description
    item
Hierarchy browser