ABSTRACT
The Commissioners were sufficiently confident in their achievements by 1888 to publish a description by Dr Richardson of prisons as model institutions, shutting out ill-health. Apart from the campaign to keep out the chronically unfit, the Commissioners sought to improve health within the prisons by transfers to asylums and to workhouse infirmaries and by medical discharges. It was in every way to be expected that the Commissioners would devote considerable effort to improving prison sanitary conditions. There was a keen public and political awareness of public health issues, which no administrator could ignore; the times dictated that the Commission’s success would be measured, at least in part, against sickness and mortality rates. Improvements were made to ventilation, heating and lighting; floors were relaid and buildings extensively repainted. The sanitary works chiefly consisted of removing water-closets from the cells, an action which is at first sight inexplicable to the modern observer.
