nd Portsmouth, which had been used as
a temporary expedient. Thence they were constantly discharged, to return
to their old practices. A man, says Colquhoun,[110] would deserve a
statue who should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. To
meet these evils, Colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a
metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or
revision of the Criminal Code, which he sees is likely to be delayed. He
also suggested, in a pamphlet of 1799, a kind of charity organisation
society to prevent the waste of funds. Many other pamphlets of similar
tendencies show his active zeal in promoting various reforms. Colquhoun
was in close correspondence with Bentham from the year 1798,[111] and
Bentham helped him by drawing the Thames Police Act, passed in 1800, to
give effect to some of the suggestions in the _Treatise_.[112]

Another set of abuses has a special connection with Bentham's activity.
Bentham had been led in 1778 to attend to the prison question by reading
Howard's book on _Prisons_; and he refers to the 'venerable friend who
had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'[113] The career of John Howard
(1726-1790) is familiar. The son of a London tradesman, he had inherited
an estate in Bedfordshire. There he erected model cottages and village
schools; and, on becoming sheriff of the county in 1773, was led to
attend to abuses in the prisons. Two acts of parliament were passed in
1774 to remedy some of the evils exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at
home and abroad. His results are given in his _State of the Prisons in
England and Wales_ (1779, fourth edition, 1792), and his _Account of the
Principal Lazarettos in Europe_ (1789). The prisoners, he says, had
little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no
water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. The stench was
appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors
and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with
lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was
extorted; the gaolers kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and
prisoners were often cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before
trial. At Hull the assizes had only been held once in seven years, and
afterwards once in three. It is a comfort to find that the whole number
of prisoners in England and Wales amounted, in 1780, to about 4400, 2078
of whom were debtors, 798 felons, and 91