This malady, which ultimately with most prisoners becomes a permanent disease, is a recognised institution in every prison.

At Wandsworth Prison, for instance--where I was confined for two months, till I had to be carried into hospital, where I remained for another two months--the warders go round twice or three times a day with astringent medicine, which they serve out to the prisoners as a matter of course.

After about a week of such treatment it is unnecessary to say that the medicine produces no effect at all.
"The wretched prisoner is thus left a prey to the most weakening, depressing and humiliating malady that can be conceived, and if, as often happens, he fails from physical weakness to complete his required evolutions at the crank, or the mill, he is reported for idleness and punished with the greatest severity and brutality.

Nor is this all.
"Nothing can be worse than the sanitary arrangements of English prisons....

The foul air of the prison cells, increased by a system of ventilation that is utterly ineffective, is so sickening and unwholesome that it is not uncommon for warders, when they come into the room out of the fresh air, and open and inspect each cell, to be violently sick....
"With regard to the punishment of insomnia, it only exists in Chinese and English prisons.