Author: Arthur George Frederick Griffiths
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2020-09-28
Total Pages: 281
ISBN-13: 1465604170
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →THE three principal prisons in London in the fourteenth century were the Fleet, the KingÕs Bench and the Marshalsea, but Newgate took precedence in interest because identified with its earliest history. All have their peculiar histories full of interesting associations, replete with memories of famous inmates and striking incidents, and all are worthy of detailed description. All alike received prisoners for debt and on occasion, more heinous offenders, especially in the earlier years of their existence. The old KingÕs Bench was the peculiar prison for the Court of that name, but it also took debtors committed by the Court of Exchequer and the Court of Common Pleas. The Marshalsea Court, so called from having been originally under the control of the Knight Marshal of the Royal Household, was at first intended to settle differences between the lesser servants of the palace, and had its own judge, counsel and attorneys, but none except members of CliffordÕs Inn were permitted to practise in this court. The jurisdiction of this court extended twelve miles round Whitehall, excluding the city of London. It also served the Admiralty Court and received prisoners charged with piracy. The Fleet prison took its name from the little stream long stigmatised as the ÒFleet Ditch,Ó the open sewer or water-way which rose in the eastern ridge of Hampstead Hill, flowed by ÒOldbourneÓ or Holborn under four bridges to discharge into the Thames on the west side of Blackfriars bridge. As time passed this ditch, after being deepened once or twice to allow for water traffic, became more and more pestilential and was at length filled up and arched over, becoming then the site of Fleet Market in what is now known as Farringdon Street, on which the main gates of the prison opened. The building was of great antiquity and is first mentioned in authentic records about A. D. 1197. A deed of that date granted it to the safe keeping of one Nathaniel de Leveland and his son Robert, in conjunction with the KingÕs Houses at Westminster. It is stated that the Fleet prison had been the inheritance of the Levelands since the time of the Norman Conquest. Four years later this same Robert de Leveland petitioned King John for leave to hand over the wardenship of the Fleet to Simon Fitz-Robert, archdeacon of Wells, while he, Leveland, proceeded with the crusaders to the Holy Land. He returned very shortly afterward, as appears from a grant of moneys made him by the City of London in 1205, his salary for guardianship of the prison. His wife Margaret was also granted an allowance as keeper of the Westminster Royal Houses.
Author: Arthur George Frederick Griffiths
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2020-09-28
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 1465604189
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →ÊIt will hardly be denied after an impartial consideration of all the facts I shall herein set forth, that the British prison system can challenge comparison with any in the world. It may be no more perfect than other human institutions, but its administrators have laboured long and steadfastly to approximate perfection. Many countries have already paid it the compliment of imitation. In most of the British colonies, the prison system so nearly resembles the system of the mother country, that I have not given their institutions any separate and distinct description. No doubt different methods are employed in the great Empire of India; but they also are the outcome of experience, and follow lines most suited to the climate and character of the people for whom they are intended. Cellular imprisonment would be impossible in India. Association is inevitable in the Indian prison system. Again, it is the failure to find suitable European subordinate officers that has brought about the employment of the best-behaved prisoners in the discipline of their comrades: a system, as I have been at some pains to point out, quite abhorrent to modern ideas of prison management. As for the retention of transportation by the Indian government, when so clearly condemned at home, it is defensible on the grounds that the penalty of crossing the sea, the "Black Water," possesses peculiar terrors to the Oriental mind; and the Andaman Islands are, moreover, within such easy distance as to ensure their effective supervision and control. Nearer home, we may see Austria adopting an English method,Ñthe "movable" or temporary prison, by the use of which such works as changing the courses of rivers have been rendered possible and the prison edifices of Lepoglava, Aszod and Kolosvar erected, in imitation of Chattenden, Borstal and Wormwood Scrubs. France has also constructed in the outskirts of Paris a new prison for the department of the Seine, and she may yet find that the British progressive system is more effective for controlling habitual crime than transportation to New Caledonia. In a country where every individual is ticketed and labelled from birth, where police methods are quite despotic, and the law claims the right, in the interests of the larger number, to override the liberty of the subject, the professional criminal might be held at a tremendous disadvantage. It is true that the same result might be expected from the Belgian plan of prolonged cellular confinement; but, as I shall point out, this system is more costly, and can only be enforced with greater or less, but always possible, risks to health and reason.
Author: Arthur Griffiths
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-07-05
Total Pages: 242
ISBN-13: 3736420242
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Oriental Prisons: Prisons and crime in India, the Andaman Islands, Burmah, China, Japan, Egypt and Turkey. It is as true of crime in the Orient as of other habits, customs and beliefs of the East, that what has descended from generation to generation and become not only a tradition but an established fact, is accepted as such by the people, who display only a passive indifference to deeds of cruelty and violence. Each country has its own peculiar classes of hereditary criminals, and the influence of tradition and long established custom has made the eradication of such crimes a difficult matter. Religion in the East has had a most notable influence on crime. In India the Thugs or professional stranglers were most devout and their criminal acts were preceded by religious rites and ceremonies. In China the peculiar forms of animism pervading the religion of the people has greatly influenced criminal practices. Murder veiled in obscurity is frequently attributed to some one of the legion of evil spirits who are supposed to be omnipresent; and to satisfy and appease these demons innocent persons are made to suffer. So great, too, is the power of the spirit after death to cause good or ill, that many stories are related of victims of vi injustice who have hanged themselves on their persecutors' door-posts, thus converting their spirits into wrathful ghosts to avenge them. The firm belief in ghosts and their power of vengeance and reward is a great restraint in the practice of infanticide, as the souls of murdered infants may seek vengeance and bring about serious calamity. Oriental prison history is one long record of savage punishments culminating in the death penalty, aggravated by abominable tortures. The people are of two classes, the oppressed and the oppressors, and the last named have invented many devices for legal persecution. In early China and Japan, relentless and ferocious methods were in force.
Author: Arthur George Frederick Griffiths
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 1830-01-01
Total Pages: 233
ISBN-13: 1465524266
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The period in French prison practice treated in this volume is one of transition between the end of the Old Régime and the beginning of the New. It presents first a view of the prisons of the period immediately following the Revolution, and concludes with the consideration of a great model penitentiary, which may be said to be the “last word” in the purely physical aspects of the whole question, while its very perfection of structure and equipment gives rise to important moral questions, which must dominate the future of prison conduct. Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the combat with the great army of depredators was unceasingly waged by the champions of law and order in France, to whom in the long run victory chiefly inclined. As yet none of the new views held by prison reformers in other countries had made any progress in France. No ideas of combining coercion with persuasion, of going beyond deterrence by attempting reformation by exhortation; of curing the wrong-doer and weaning him from his evil practices, when once more sent out into the world, obtained in French penology. At that earlier date all the old methods, worked by the same machinery, still prevailed and were, as ever, ineffective in checking crime. An active, and for the most part intelligent police was indefatigable in the pursuit of offenders, who, when caught and sentenced travelled the old beaten track, passing from prison to prison, making long halts at the bagnes and concluding their persistent trespasses upon the guillotine, but that was all. French prisons long lagged behind advanced practices abroad, not only in respect of their structural fitness and physical condition, but also in the measure in which the method of conducting them effected the morals of those who passed through them. When the question was at last presented, it was considered with the logical thoroughness and carried out with the administrative efficiency characteristic of the French government, when impressed with the necessity for action in any given line. The question for the French prison authorities—as indeed it is the question of questions for the prison government of all nations—is now: “What can be and shall be done for the reform of the convict rather than for his mere repression and punishment?” The material aspects of the French prison system have attained almost to perfection. These, as well as the moral aspects of the subject, which that very physical perfection inevitably presents, it is the purpose of this volume to consider.
Author: Arthur George Frederick Griffiths
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
Published: 2020-09-28
Total Pages: 256
ISBN-13: 1465608036
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A prison of great antiquity still exists in Rome and claims precedence in date over St. Angelo. This is the Mamertine Prison, situated just below the Capitol and on the way to the Forum, in which by common tradition St. Peter was confined A.D. 62. The pillar to which he is said to have been chained is still on view, and the well of water is shown which sprang up miraculously for use in the baptism of the converted gaoler and St. Peter’s forty-seven fellow prisoners. It is an appalling place even to-day when the light of heaven creeps down the stairs leading to its subterranean recesses. These were two cellars, one below the other, and access to them was only gained through a small aperture in the roof of the upper cellar, while a similar hole in the floor led down into the cell underneath; neither had any staircase. The upper prison was twenty-seven feet long by twenty wide, the lower, elliptical in shape, was twenty feet long by ten feet wide; the height of the former was fourteen feet and of the latter seven feet. They were used originally as state prisons and lodged only persons of distinction, Jugurtha being among the number. We read in Sallust: “In the prison called Tullian when you have gone a little way down, a place on the left is found sunk twenty feet; it is surrounded by walls on all sides, and above is a room vaulted with stone, but from uncleanliness, darkness and a foul smell the appearance of it is disgusting and terrific.” Livy tells us that this prison was built by Ancus Martius, and like the Cloacae, of large uncemented stones; it was also called “Robur” and seems to be identical with the carcer lautumiarum or the “prison of the stone quarries,” suggesting that after the excavation the empty space was utilised for the construction of a prison. The quarries at Syracuse were used for the same purpose. The Mamertine prison was constantly used for the confinement of the early Christian martyrs. A chapel was eventually built above it, consecrated to St. Peter. The site occupied by the castle of St. Angelo is identical with that of the tomb, mausoleum or mole erected by the Emperor Hadrian, A.D. 135, for himself and his family. Powerful rulers from the earliestages have been greatly concerned to raise fitting receptacles for their ashes. The famous pyramids of Egypt are perhaps the most striking illustration of this vanity, and the influence was felt in other countries, especially in Rome. Many fine monuments survive, some in still recognisable ruins, some in ever green memory, perpetuating this desire. We may instance the tomb of Caius Cestius—the only specimen of a pyramid existing in Rome—which still stands near the Porta San Paolo, partly within the walls, partly without, for the Emperor Aurelian ran his wall exactly across it. It is 125 feet high, built of brick cased in white marble, now become black with age; and its chief modern interest is that the English cemetery is close at hand, the last resting place of the poets Shelley and Keats. The Cestian family was distinguished, but nothing very positive is known of this Caius except that he held office as praetor of the people in the seventh century B.C.
Author: Arthur Griffiths
Publisher:
Published: 2016-07-26
Total Pages: 128
ISBN-13: 9781406877199
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Griffiths was a prison administrator and author who published more than 60 books, many on the theme of crime and punishment.
Author: Arthur Griffiths
Publisher: Echo Library
Published: 2016-01-13
Total Pages: 148
ISBN-13: 9781406870602
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Griffiths was a former Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain and in addition to his works on military history and a number of mystery crime novels, he wrote extensively on the history of penal institutions at home and abroad.