Identifier: newpopularpictor00sear (find matches)
Title: A new and popular Pictorial History of the United States
Year: 1848 (1840s)
Authors: Sears Robert, 1810-1892
Subjects:
Publisher: United States
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ed day and night. They werecredited for the products of their labor ;and half the excess of the amount, afterfines and expenses, was paid on the ex-piration of the sentence. But severalgrand defects of the old system wereretained in that prison, which furtherexperience condemned. One of theprincipal of these was the commonrooms, in which numbers of convictsspent their time together, by day andby night. No vigilance was sufficientto prevent demoralizing intercourse ;and reformation—the great object inview—was not satisfactorily secured.The prison has since been demolished,and others have been erected, on differ-ent plans, on the northeasteni bordersof the city. The Penitentiary, near Fairmount, isan immense edifice of granite, with alaige yard, 650 feet square, surroundedby a wall forty feet high. The plan ofthis building is wholly different fromany before erected. It is designed forsolitary confinement, in the strictest p 09 3 00 p hjrt> » B a BA •=3 S. 5o 0 B BliiliiHiliplP
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228 DESCRIPTION OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA. sense of the term. Rows of cells, onone level, are arranged in seven longlines, radiating from an octagonal build-ing in the centre, where a single senti-nel is placed to watch and listen, guard-ing several hundred convicts. Objec-tions have been made to this system, onthe ground of expense, and the difficultyof finding occupation for the prisoners,useful to them, or profitable to the insti-tution, as well as to the evil effects,physical, mental, and moral, sometimesresulting from uninterrupted solitude.General Lafayette remarked, facetious-ly, while on a visit to this prison duringits construction, that solitary confine-ment had been tried on him at Olmutz,without changing his character or hab-its. The House o/i^e/^o-e, for juvenile de-linquents, in the same vicinity, is con-ducted on the same general plan as othersimilar institutions at New York andelsewhere, and with similar beneficialresults. Vagrant and conNacted boysand girls are pla

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