Conclusion

Summary

After the writer had completed his first draft of the present work, two relevant histories appeared in 1975, one concerned with Reading, the other with Gloucestershire. In The Story of a Prison Peter Southerton deals with Oscar Wilde’s principal place of detention, but he only really starts in the nineteenth century. J. R. S. Whiting in Prison Reforms in Gloucestershire 1776-1820 has produced a long-overdue biography of Sir George Onesiphorus Paul which is excellent, but obviously only a limited period is discussed. It is hoped that the present work will have been found not only to cover a longer period, but also to have shown the relationship of local and national moves for reform, together with the interplay of the experience of the county magistracy with the plans of the Home Secretary.

Man has probably always had mixed feelings about the prisoner, including the following: ‘It serves him right’, ‘Others will be deterred by his example’, and of course, ‘He is better off inside’. Rather different have been the responses: ‘What a terrible place to keep a man’, ‘How can we reform him in that way?’ and ‘What are we doing to his family?’ Justices concerned with the running of prisons have not been immune from ambivalence, and they have had their personal feelings influenced also by considerations of what was customary, what the High Sheriff or their colleagues might think if they took one step rather than another, and by considerations of cost. The jailers were obviously influenced by the need to keep a family as well as by the need to ensure that no prisoner escaped—for purely personal reasons apart from others. Overlying all these attitudes have been religious questions.

The Bible has been used as a justification for the most horrible cruelties as well as an inspiration for real kindness. It has also led to some cruelties which were a result of a misguided intention to be kind. George Bernard Shaw referred to ‘The Ruthlessness of the Pure Heart’.