In the 18th century prison conditions were deplorable. The number of crimes punishable by death had soared to 200. These crimes ranged from serious crimes such as murder to minor offences such as stealing bread, picking pockets or even cutting down trees absent permission from authorities. The prisons of the 18th century were overcrowded and prisoners lived in deplorable conditions. The 1784 novel Adventures of Caleb Williams has over the years won accolades for its mastery in capturing how life was on several aspects in the 18th century. In the very opening of the novel Caleb Williams described his life as “a theatre of calamity”. His imprisonment brought to the fore the appalling prison conditions in the 18th century.
In the 18th century the authorities made no efforts to rehabilitate prisoners. Convicted persons were imprisoned until they paid their debts or were hanged. This led to overcrowding in cells. In most cases, prisoners were not segregated according to age, crime or even sex (Cairns). Young prisoners were exposed to physical and sexual harassment by adult prisoners. A quote from a description of a prison at Southwell, Nottinghamshire in 1806 captures the prison conditions almost perfectly, “they all use the same room for every purpose, nearly 18 foot 6 inches square; of this space the beds take up more than a quarter, yet in this small space seven to eleven men are often confined’ (Ruck 6).
Godwin depicts Caleb Williams as one who spoke out against oppression and tyranny. Caleb went through inevitable and undeserved disasters as he sought to have societal reforms that upheld value for humanity. He was against societal institutions that turned men against each other and the disempowerment of men such that they could not defend themselves against injustice.
Conditions in the prisons were inhumane. Most prisoners used to lie on straw absent bedclothes save for those provided by relatives and friends. In the very cells the prisoners were placed, utensils, night-tubs, potatoes, raw and cooked meat, other food items, coal and dressing lay jumbled together. Speaking of the horrendous conditions in the prisons, Godwin wrote,”those who thank God because there is no Bastille in England speak only from ignorance”. Bastille was a French state prison famous for handling prisoners opposed the government. Seasoned prisoners in the 18th century, complained that the conditions in which they lived with filth and vermin were the most torturous aspects of their imprisonment (Godwin 56).
Under poor sanitary conditions, death of sickly and the outbreak of killer diseases were common occurrences (Cairns). Prisons took in even sickly people. Tyrell dragged Emily to prison from a sick bed and exposed her to the horrendous prison conditions which led to her death. Prisoners were expected to provide for their own food while fresh drinking water was hard to come by. Caleb tells the tale of his friend Brightwel who died in prison, “ of a disease that was the consequence of his confinement” (Godwin 179). Brightwel had been put in prison awaiting trial. He laments of a system so unjust that it murders even those who had never set their eyes on a magistrate in the confines of a courtroom.
The imprisonment of persons depended on their financial might. “there is some law for the poor folk, as well as for the rich” (Godwin 71). The poor were at the mercy of the rich and those in power and had their rights violated. Before arrested persons were tried they were subjected to the same conditions as convicted prisoners. Caleb for instance was remanded in prison prior to his trial for crimes leveled against him by Falkland.
Godwin described the prison conditions as “unspeakably awful” (Godwin 90). He highlights dirt, lack of food, diseases, lack of privacy, brutality and torture from prison officers as the order of the day. Caleb draws a picture of prisons so horrible that one might assume he is grossly exaggerating or even imagining those conditions. The descriptions offered by Godwin are corroborated by John Howard’s The state of the Prisons. When Caleb first walked into the prison he was struck by, “squalidness and filththe mansions (prisons) were in a state of infection and putridity” (Godwin 177). According to Howard prisons were distinguished by their “dirt and filth”.
On his first day in prison, Caleb was kept penned together with both convicted and other men awaiting trial. “I spent the day in the midst of excretions and profligacy” (Godwin 183). The worry that Caleb had was that he was to be subjected to the horrors to the prison life for several months or even years before he was executed or sentenced in any other way. Howard attests to the herding together of prisoners and decries the invasion of privacy for meditation coupled with the forcible keeping of bad company. Young and old inmates were kept in the same cells which was a torturous experience particularly for the young inmates. The crowding and the size of the rooms denied the prisoners fresh air and the spiritual nourishment needed by the prisoners.
According to Howard, “many prisoners died of gaol fever that those who were put to death by all the public executions in the Kingdom” (178). The gaol fever also affected those who visited their relatives in the prisons. Sailors and families of prisoners from as far as America were said to have contracted and died of the disease. Others affected were people working in the judiciary as they mingled with rearrested ex-convicts in the courts. So debilitating were prison conditions that even if a man was released he never fully regained the physical strength to ever work again.
Howard explains how bad the night was as compared to the daytime hours. Caleb spent fourteen or fifteen hours each day in a dungeon, "71/2 feet by 61/2 feet, below the surface of the ground, damp, without. . . light or air, except from a few holes worked for that purpose in the door" (Godwin 181). The only “furniture” in the cells was straw on which the prisoners laid for rest. The straw was always damp, smelly and unwholesome. Water also seeped into the dungeons when it rained up to an inch or two. The straw was then laid on the water. Prisoners were expected to sleep on the same straw. Most of the prisoners chose to lay on the floor.
Howard himself had been imprisoned and his explanation of the prison conditions is more explicit as compared to the one offered by Godwin. According to Godwin, Caleb used to attach iron fetters for both hands and feet. Doctors recommended that fetters attached to sick prisoners be removed. The loading of prisoners with heavy iron bars made their walking and laying down difficult and painful. The fetters fixed on Caleb’s legs made them swollen. He bribed a fellow prisoner to get a doctor to attend to him. Other prisoners were chained to staples unable to move more than 18 inches. Caleb also spent some time in the strong rooms. Its walls were damp and had mildew. He once loosened his fetters to have some sleep and for that “crime” and that earned him a night in the strong room which he describes as having a putrid smell.
The prisoners were also fed poorly. They were offered small bread which was at times moldy and smelling. They lacked clean, fresh drinking water and had to make do with smelly water. These conditions are still prevalent in some prisons today. Prisoners are still kept in conditions that deny them access to clean fresh water. Prisoners are given no more than a keeper to guard them, instead of providing them with basic necessities such as water and access to fresh air. Committing any crime amounted to imprisonment in the 18th century. Godwin contrasts the order of confinement in the prisons. Arrested persons were first placed in prisons for long periods of time before they were tried through a legal process. This convention challenges the modern justice systems where unfairness is still rife in the courts system.
The depiction of prisons in the 18th century prisons as distinguishable by dirt glosses over a scandalous aspect of the contemporary prison system. Modern prisons are rife with wanton neglect of basic sanitary measures and they still act as breeding grounds for diseases and death. The capturing of prison conditions in the 18th century goes on to provoke contemporary authorities to institute measures to improve among other things sanitation in the prisons.
Godwin’s description of the dungeons is a subtle description of prison conditions. It challenges the authorities to make the prison life better and habitable in order to achieve the principal functions of the justice system which is correction and rehabilitation. Once people are aware of how prison life was like in the 18th century they are able to draw comparisons with the modern prison conditions. The modern prison conditions are supposed to be better and more oriented to correcting behavior rather than punishment. Moreover, human rights have diversified and thus prisoners ought to be maintained in humane conditions. The society allows the government to maintain oppressive and dehumanizing conditions towards prisoners by failing to demand for improved prison conditions. Although contemporary prisons in most countries are far improved from those depicted in18th century English prisons. When he managed to escape from prison, Caleb was starving and totally exhausted. He was accosted by a group of robbers who demanded for his clothes when they discovered that he had no money on him. This scene shows how the society was and what led so many people to be imprisoned. The injustices in the society created huge divides between the rich and the poor which compelled them to turn to crime to fend for themselves. Caleb however, saw the robbers as fellow fighters against oppression since they were also poor. The political rhetorics in the book that lead to people agitating for responsible government are rife in the book Caleb Williams. These rhetorics aim at agitating contemporary societies to demand better services from the government they put in power.
Works cited
Godwin, William. The Adventures of Caleb Williams, ed. David McCracken. London: Oxford
University Press, 1970. Print
Howard, John. The state of the prisons in England and Wales with preliminary observations and
an account of some foreign prisons and hospitals. The 2nd ed. London: Sold by T. Cadell
and N. Conant, 1780. Print.
Ruck, Kenneth. The State of the Prisons,(London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929.
Godwin s Moral Philosophy. London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 68.
Cairns, Campbell. Seventeenth and 18th Century British Debtors Prison: The Compter. 2009.
Web. 22 April 2012. http://voices.yahoo.com/seventeenth-18th-century-british-
4518493.html?cat=37
