Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Crime, Disease, Health, Hospitals, Mental Illness, Quackery, Class

    A description, and implicit criticism of, the inhumane methods adopted in Britain for treating criminals. Describes how the criminal is confined in overcrowded sick wards where he is exposed to the diseases of 'the asthmatic and consumptive' and to the 'beds of paupers dying of infectious cholera or fever'. He is propped up with hard pillows taken from a death bed and given 'physic by hap-hazard, measured by the rule of tipsy', and in general allowed to 'slowly rot to death'.