248 MINUTES OF EVIDENCE BEFORE SELECT COMMITTEE applicable to any mode of employment; we employ our prisoners in breaking stones; that diminishes the demand tor labour of that description out of doors; but the para- mount necessity of employing prisoners in gaols is so great, that I do not think the little difference of the competition which is thus produced ought to be regarded. What may the expense of building that gaol be ?— I think the expense of building the gaol and the purchase of the site, amounted to about 24,000/. What is the number of criminals for which it is calculated?— It contains 125 cells and 10 day rooms, besides five solitary cells. How many could it hold without incroaching upon the rules of discipline of the prison ?— The rules of discipline of the prison would require to have a separate cell for every prisoner, which would hold about 130; but with regard to the building of any gaol, I should very much recommend any public bodies who are about to embark in it, to look at the experience of practical men conversant with the internal manage- ment of prisons, much more than to the recommendations of professional archi- tects: our plan was submitted to the late Sir George Paul, to Mr. Morton Pitt, of Dorchester, to Mr. Harenc, who has taken a great share in the management of the Maidstone gaol; and I am quite convinced, that without the practical information derived from them, we never could have adopted a plan that would have been bene- ficial to the public: I need only point out to the Committee the inconveniences arising from following mere architectural authorities, as exemplified in the original building of the Richmond bridewell, in the city of Dublin, which was utterly unfit for the purposes of a prison, although it had cost the public a very considerable sum. You have examined the Dublin prisons?— I have, but not for some years. Can you entertain any reasonable doubt of . the impossibility of an arrangement of prison discipline in the city of Dublin, without a new Newgate being provided?— I think it completely impossible, unless Newgate were merely made use of for one particular class of prisoners, who might then be accommodated. Do you conceive the building of a new Newgate for Dublin to be an object of sufficient importance to justify the necessary expense ?— I conceive the building of a new criminal prison in Dublin is absolutely necessary for the purposes of cri- minal justice in that city, not only as it concerns the administration of that gaol, but as it concerns the reaction on society; the state of Newgate, when I visited it, being infinitely more caculated as a seminary for crime, than as a place for the punishment of offenders: a new prison for debtors is also particularly wanting; the whole arrangements for debtors both in the sheriff's prison, the city marshalsea, and the four courts marshalsea, being utterly defective. Do not you conceive, 4 that an uniform plan for gaols throughout Ireland would be most desirable ?— Unquestionably ; and I can state to the Committee, that from want of some general principle upon the subject, great waste of public money has frequently taken place in the prison of the county of Clare at Ennis, and in the pri- son of the county of Kerry at Tralee, there has been an expenditure of public money, which ought to have procured for those counties, gaols of the best de- scription ; but from want of due care in the choice of a plan, the prisons are so bad, that I conceive them to be incapable of improvement, and necessarily involving, at a period, more or less remote, the building of a new prison altogether. Might not the adoption of a fixed plan, from which no deviation could take place, have the effect of preventing the possible improvements of ingenuity in future?— It certainly might; but when I consider that the main principles of gaol architecture which are at the present day adopted in all improved prisons, are the very plans which, between the years 1780 and 1790, were recommended by Howard and his architect Mr. Blackburn, I am not very sanguine as to any extensive improve- ments, as far as the principle goes. Would not that very objection to a fixed plan be remedied, if a power were vested in the Lord Lieutenant, upon being satisfied of the projected improvement, to cause it to be adopted ?— By the law as it now stands, 110 gaol can be undertaken without the approbation of the Lord Lieutenant; but I have reason to know, that although those plans are subjected to the inspection of the most able and conscientious officers, the inspection is rather one of an architectural nature, than bearing at all upon the internal discipline or economy of theprison. Then as the law stands at present, if the government of the country choose it, they may insist on an uniformity of plan, without any legislative enactment for that specific purpose ?— Having the power of refusing their approbation, they may in tact carry any plan which they think fit into effect. * Do