ABSTRACT
In English law, the prison has been the King’s; through all the centuries prior to 1877 it has to be dealt with as a part of Local Government. From 1557 and 1576 onwards there existed an increasing number of prisons bearing another name, and maintained under different statutes, known as houses of correction or bridewells. Of common gaols, as distinguished from houses of correction, there seem to have existed, in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, up and down the country, something like a couple of hundred, provided, owned and maintained by many diverse authorities. The House of Correction was originally a place in which persons want only idle or disorderly might be compulsorily set to work, partly in order to produce their keep, partly with a view to their reformation of character, and partly with the intention of thereby deterring others from idleness and disorder.
