ABSTRACT
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Edmund Du Cane, Chairman of the Prison Commission, had perfected a system of penal discipline based on silence, hard labour, and progressive stages. Du Cane was not feeling well and so gave evidence in private over two days, in which he defended cellular imprisonment as the best form of imprisonment and the best form of punishment. In his 1898 article in The Nineteenth Century, Du Cane took the opportunity to offer a defence of his prison administration. He first of all attempted to show that the uniformity in prison administration, which was laid at his feet, was in fact a result of a long course of legislation, starting with the Prison Act of 1865, which enforced a greater penal and deterrent regime. He also warns that if a truly reformatory system was wanted, and by many it was, no mere tinkering with prison rules would suffice.
