from [William Crawford and Whitworth Russell], Reports of the Inspectors Appointed under the Provisions of the Act 5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 38, to Visit the Different Prisons of Great Britain (I. Home District). Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 22 March 1836. pp. 47–8, 50–3, 56–7, 67–9.

As government became more organized and systematic in the formation of the early nineteenth-century state, the British Parliament aimed to keep itself informed of the condition of the prisons by appointing inspectors and receiving their annual reports, naming particular areas for investigation from time to time. In 1835 Parliament passed the Prison Act, establishing a prison inspectorate for the entire country. Part 1 of the 1836 report for the Home (i. e., England) department was an account of the inspectors’ visit to Newgate; part 2 summarized the testimony of prison officers; part 3, from which the extracts here are taken, the testimony of prisoners; part 4, extracts from reports of the House of Commons and House of Lords and others over a period of years since 1814; and part 5, ‘Inference’, or conclusions to be drawn from the investigations. A special section dealt at some length with the issue of ‘Juvenile Depredators’, concluding that the extent of the ‘problem’ was over-stated, but serious enough, and making recommendations on the subject. A further section dealt with ‘Criminal Lunatics’. Appendixes provided a plan for restructuring the space in Newgate, statistics and lists of various kinds, extracts from the chaplain’s journals, extracts from the surgeon’s (physician’s) journal, and extracts from the earlier reports mentioned in part four.