ABSTRACT
The author of Old Bailey Experience seems to be that Thomas Wontner who was born at Kingston-on-Thames, south-west of London, son of John Wontner and Mary Hoff. John Wontner was a successful London clockmaker who became keeper, or governor, of Newgate Prison in 1822 and eventually marshal of His Majesty's Gaols. Old Bailey Experience is one of those books that is based on firsthand observation and it addresses the nineteenth-century debate on crime and punishment from that perspective. Like late eighteenth-century commentators such as Martin Madan and William Paley, selections of whose work are included in this volume, Wontner argues that leniency, inefficiency and inconsistency in application of the criminal laws defeat their purpose – to reduce crime and reform criminals. The object of the penal law is the prevention of crime. The guilty are to be punished, that society may be deterred from delinquency.
