ABSTRACT
The physical condition and haphazard administration of prisons in the eighteenth century are probably the aspects of English penal history most familiar to the general student. The work of Oglethorpe, Fielding, Smith and John Howard has been extensively drawn upon by modern writers to substantiate an account of unrelieved misery, sexual promiscuity, disease, squalor and extortion. Light begins to be shed in the last quarter of the century (if their account is accepted) and from then on penal history is represented as progress — however slow and hard fought. Superficially this is an accurate enough picture, but if history is concerned with explaining the reasons as well as stating the facts, then this outline is not very helpful. Ultimately it leads the student to a series of solecisms, to a characterisation of the legal, religious and intellectual principles of the eighteenth century as callous, barbaric and retrogressive, and to an explanation of improving changes that consists in claiming that society became more caring, civilised and progressive; analysis is then confined to the ingredients of the moral improvement. Such a deterministic approach places policy and policy-makers on a narrow stage of modern design and attributes to them only the aspirations, feelings and choices of the modern commentator.
