The London Prisons, with an Account of the More Distinguished, Persons Who Have Been Confined in Them: To Which Is Added a Description of Chief Provincial Prisons (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The London Prisons, With an Account of the More Distinguished, Persons Who Have Been Confined in Them: To Which Is Added a Description of Chief Provincial Prisons

The latter circumstance led me also to enlarge the plan, so as to take in the Past as well as the Present -thc Political Dungeon as well as the Felon's Cell. The papers had, consequently, to be rewritten and greatly increased in length in fact, they can only be considered as the germs of the present work, two thirds of which' is entirely new.

A few words will suffice as to the sources whence my information is derived. So far as regards the actual condition of the various prisons, all the state ments are made from personal knowledge and on my own responsibility. The details given in respect to their past history are nearly all gleaned from my own reading. The Tower only excepted, the London prisons have never yet found a historian a case of neglect by no means merited, considering how closely they are connected with the social and literary history of our country. Nearly all the information which is still extant lies widely scattered in plays, poems, letters, biographies, and sermons. It was not my purpose - as will be found explained elsewhere to collect these fragments; but I have not omitted to weave into my work such of them as seemed to me to possess a peculiar interest, anecdotical, social, or literary. I indulge in the hope that this volume will supply a long-felt desideratum in the literature of our domestic history.

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