Howard_3

Howard, John (1726-90), an English philanthropist, was born at Enfield, and apprenticed while young to a firm of grocers in the City of London. His father's death in 1742 enabled him to abandon this line of life and to spend a year in foreign travel. On his return to England he settled at Stoke Newington, and in 1752 he married. His wife's death in 1755 unsettled him, and he started for Portugal, but was captured by a French privateer and was for some time a prisoner of war. After his exchange he again settled down in England, and married a, second wife, who died in 1765. He then went abroad to France, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany; and on his return to England he again settled down on his estate, and in 1773 became High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, an appointment which -turned his attention to prison reform. His first efforts were directed against the practice of paying gaolers by fees, and investigations on this point led him to attack other" abuses and shortcomings. His evidence before a Parliamentary Commission in 1774 resulted in the passing of two bills abolishing gaolers' fees and providing for a better sanitary condition in prisons. Howard then carried on his prison investigations in Scotland, Ireland, France, Flanders, Holland, and Germany, and in 1777 published the result of his labours in a book - State of the Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observation, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons. The rest of his life was spent in further inspection of prisons at home and abroad. He underwent in some places much difficulty and danger in carrying out his objects, and embodied from time to time'the additional facts that came to his knowledge in new editions of his former work. His last journey abroad began in 1789, and early in the next year he died of camp-fever in Kherson. His statue was erected in St. Paul's Cathedral, and was paid for by public subscription, and was, moreover, the first statue set up in the cathedral. There is a portrait of him in the National Portrait Gallery. His researches were carried out at his own expense, and were the undoubted cause of the many reforms in the treatment of prisoners that have been introduced in the present century.