John Howard and Prison Reform (1773 to 1790)

Born in 1726 in Enfield, England, Howard was the only son of a successful London businessman. In 1773 while holding the office of Sheriff of Bedfordshire he noticed that even when no good case could be made against a prisoner, he was still taken back to jail because even when innocent, the prisoner must still pay a gaoler fee which was the gaoler's sole source of income. His travels to other gaols told him it was similar practice for gaolers to depend on fees and that conditions in the gaols were deplorable. An unsucessful attempt had been made to introduce a bill changing how gaolers were paid. However, it wasn't until Howard presented his precisely detailed description of what existed in England's gaols, that Members of Parliament were finally galvanized into action. Two bills were passed within the year. One immediately set free all prisoners being detained for nonpayment of fees and authorized the payment of gaoler salaries by the county. The other dealt with health in prisons. Though heartened by his success at Bedford, Howard couldn't forget the misery he had seen. Throughout 1775-76 he toured the prisons of Europe, including France, Flanders, Holland, Germany and Switzerland. He was painstaking and meticulous with his observations.

The culmination of these efforts was the publication in 1777 of his classic work, The State of Prisons. If his work at Bedford made him known in his own country, it was this publication that made him an authority in Europe on prison matters

The State of Prisons was not only groundbreaking in terms of prison reform, but was a monument to John Howard's ability to be thorough, detailed and constructive. It includes a general study of the distress in prisons, proposed improvements, a detailed analysis of prison conditions and statistical tables. Parliament passed two more prison Acts, in 1778 and 1781. Aware that making it law doesn't automatically ensure the changes will be made quickly, Howard continued touring the prisons of England and Europe. He not only collected information about conditions, but revisted many to monitor the progress of reforms.  For the next several years, John Howard worked ceaselessly, making five more tours of European prisons, as well as visiting those in England. Health matters concerned him increasingly, inspiring him to publish a second book in 1789 on Lazarettos--the plague ships.

His stamina became legendary. It was hard to imagine that he was once a sickly, delicate youth. He could ride 40 miles a day, needed little sleep and could withstand considerable heat and cold. On one of his trips to Ireland he gave up his berth to a maid servant and slept on deck. He maintained his simple vegetarian diet of fruit, vegetables, bread and milk or tea. One of the reasons he chose travelling by horseback was to disperse the bad odours from the jail he had been visiting, although he took pains to change his clothes as soon afterwards as possible. In 1786 he even travelled to Venice on a plague-infested ship in order to observe firsthand the conditions on a Lazaretto. However, his spartan regimen cannot account for all of his extraordinary ability to withstand the physical demands, pestilence and filth of his prison tours. His friends observed that by this time John Howard possessed an air of purpose, serenity and vigor that seemed to surround him like a magic cloak.

John Howard was in demand by royalty and aristocrats. In Austria he dined with Empress Maria Teresa and on a later trip, had a long visit with Emperor Joseph. To many he was a hero, but he had lived most of his life an unknown and was, by nature, modest and self-effacing. He had made such an impact on the public that when some decided to pay him tribute in the form of a monument, large sums of money were collected almost overnight, though these funds were later returned or diverted.

In late 1789, Howard once more set off for Eastern Europe. Almost as though he knew it would be his final journey, he had bid fond farewells to his dearest friends. It was after tending to a prisoner with typhus at Kherson in the Ukraine that Howard became ill. He died January 20, 1790 at the age of 64. He was buried in Russia and the inscription on his tomb conveys so much of the simple, unconditional, caring essence that was John Howard: "Whosoever thou art, thou standest at the grave of thy friend"

While John Howard the person died just over 200 hundred years ago, the work of John Howard is still very much alive. Today there are 53 John Howard Society branches throughout Canada alone, whose basic aim is still to make improvements in the criminal justice process. As popular and powerful a force as he was though, quite some time was to pass after his death before the John Howard Societies we know today emerged. This is partly because John Howard and the work he did was a tough act to follow. It was comparatively easy to commend him for his work, it was quite another to emulate him. Nonethless, his work meant that no longer could the incarcerated or the criminal justice system be ignored by society. In 1866 England's Howard Association was formed to continue the work of John Howard, followed by the League for Penal Reform. These two organizations merged to form the Howard League for Penal Reform in 1921. A variety of prisoner aid groups emerged in Canada towards the end of the Nineteenth Century and beginning of the present century, but the first to use his name was the Vancouver John Howard Society in 1929. In 1935, it became the John Howard Society of B.C. (Leigh, 1991, p.12).