ABSTRACT
John Galsworthy was a novelist and playwright, and a reformer. He felt that a sympathetic perception and revelation of social evils was the most effective way to right injustices. He visited Dartmoor Prison in September 1907. By early 1909 he was in correspondence with Henry Salt of the Humanitarian League. He was particularly exercised by the solitary confinement endured by every male convict during the first three, six, or nine months, according to class of convict: ‘star,’ ‘intermediate,’ or ‘recidivist;’ and by all prisoners sentenced to hard labour, during the first month. To bring an end to this closed-cell confinement, Galsworthy decided on an Open Letter to the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, which appeared in two instalments in The Nation, 1 and 8 May 1909. Galsworthy cleverly quoted the Departmental Committee on Prisons, 1895, which had recommended a reduction in the period of separation, and which of course Gladstone himself had chaired.
