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contrivance. Such are those which know suggested the idea of Penitentiary
houses: in which the objects of Safe-custody, Confinement, Solitude, Forced
Labour, and Instruction, were all of them to be kept in view. If all these
objects can be accomplished together, of course, with at least equal certainty
and facility, may any lesser number of them.
Letter II.
Before you look at the Plan take in words the general idea
of it. Ι The Building is circular. Ι The apartments for the Prisoners occupy the
circumference: you may call them, if you please, the Cells. Ι These Cells are
divided from one another, and the Prisoners, by that means, secluded from all
communication with each other, by partitions in the form of radii, issuing
from the circumference to toward the center, and extending as many feet as shall
be thought necessary to form the largest dimension of the Cell. Ι The
apartment of the Inspector occupies the center: you may call it, if you please,
the Inspector's Lodge. Ι It will be convenient, in most if not in all cases,
to have a vacant space or area all round, between such center and outer
circumference. You may call it, if you please, the Intermediate or Annular
Area. I About the width of a Cell may be sufficient for a passage from the
outside of this Building to the Lodge. I Each Cell has, in the outward circumference,
a Window, large enough not only to light the cell, but through the cell
to afford light enough to the correspondent part of the Lodge. I The inner
circumference of the Cell is formed by an iron grating, so tight as not to screen
any part of the cell from the Inspectors view.
Of this grating a part sufficiently large opens in form of a Door,
to admit the Prisoner at his final entrance, and to give admission at any
time to the Inspector or any of his attendants.
To cut off from each prisoner the view of every other, the partitions
are carried on a few feet beyond the grating into the intermediate area.
Such projecting parts I call the protracted partitions.
It is conceived that the light, coming in this manner through the
cells, and so across the intermediate area, will be sufficient for the
Inspectors Lodge. But for this purpose, both the windows in the cells and those
corresponding to them in the Lodge, should be as large as the strength of the
building, and what shall be deemed a necessary attention to Economy, will
permit.
To the Windows of the Lodge there are blinds, as high
up as the eyes of the Prisoners in their cells can, by any means they can
employ, be made to reach. I if curtains there must be in them here and
To prevent thorough light, whereby notwithstanding the blinds the Prisoners would see from
there small holes which though impervious to the Prisoner at his distance
the Cells, whether or no any person was in the Lodge, that apartment is divided into quarters by
will not be so to the Inspector when he applies his eye close to them.
four partitions, formed by two diameters to the circle crossing each other at right angles. For +
+ For these partitions, the
thinnest materials might
serve: and they might be
made moveable at
pleasure. The height
sufficient to prevent
the prisoners seeing over
them from the Cells. Doors
to these partitions, if
left open at any time,
might produce the
thorough light. To
prevent this, divide each
partition into two, at
every part required,
setting down the one half
at such a distance
from the other as shall
be equal to the aperture
of a door.
These Windows of the Inspectors Lodge open into the intermediate area, in
form of doors, in as many in as many places places as shall be deemed
necessary, to admit of his communicating readily with any of the Cells. Some
Lamps in the outside of each window of the Lodge, backed by a reflection
to throw the light into the corresponding cell, could extend to the night
the security of the day.
To save the troublesome exertion of voice that might otherwise
be necessary, and to prevent one prisoner from knowing, that the
Inspector was occupied by another prisoner at a distance, a small
tin tube might reach reach from each cell, to the Inspectors Lodge
passing across the area, and so in at the side of the
correspondent window of the Lodge. By means of this implement, the
slightest whisper of the one might be heard by the other, especially if
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Identifier: | JB/550/208/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 550.
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