An Account of all the Gaols, Houses of Correction or Penitentiaries, in the United Kingdom...as far as relates to Ireland.

£950 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. OCLC records copies at University of London, Cambridge and University of Amsterdam. The signatures begin at A and the pagination is separate. A detailed and shocking account of all the prisons in Ireland at the beginning of the 19th century with information on the size, number and type of prisoners, labour undertaken by the prisoners and the allowances for food and clothing. The report highlights overcrowding, disease and the dilapidation of prisons in the period. “The jail at Galway Town Court is described as, “**the most insecure prison in Ireland”,** the report continues: “…it has no mode of preventing escape of prisoners, in the day-time but one door; no outward guard room; no proper mode of preventing the occasional mixing of male and female prisoners; no place of solitary confinement; no difference in the places of confinement between the most abandoned criminals and those confined for minor offences; no bath; and no place which can with convenience be converted into an hospital…” (p.9). The prison at Dungarvan (Waterford) is described starkly as, “ a wretched dungeon , consisting of one apartment, where prisoners [around 14 in number] of both sexes are confined together, and neither bed or bedding allowed, unless provided by themselves” The tables also give details of the provisions and clothing allocated to each prisoners, for example at the main Wexford prison: “Each criminal, and the poorer description of debtors, are allowed half a quartern loaf and a pint of

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