s developed
by sanitary ignorance raged fearfully both there and elsewhere, and of
these perhaps the most fearful was the jail fever. The prisons of that
period were vile beyond belief. Men were confined in dungeons rarely if
ever disinfected after the death of previous occupants, and on corridors
connecting directly with the foulest sewers: there was no proper
disinfection, ventilation, or drainage; hence in most of the large
prisons for criminals or debtors the jail fever was supreme, and from
these centres it frequently spread through the adjacent towns. This was
especially the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In
the Black Assize at Oxford, in 1577, the chief baron, the sheriff, and
about three hundred men died within forty hours. Lord Bacon declared the
jail fever "the most pernicious infection next to the plague." In 1730,
at the Dorsetshire Assize, the chief baron and many lawyers were killed
by it. The High Sheriff of Somerset also took the disease and died. A
single Scotch regiment, being infected from some prisoners, lost no less
than two hundred. In 1750 the disease was so virulent at Newgate, in the
heart of London, that two judges, the lord mayor, sundry aldermen, and
many others, died of it.

It is worth noting that, while efforts at sanitary dealing with this
state of things were few, the theological spirit developed a new and
special form of prayer for the sufferers and placed it in the Irish
Prayer Book.

These forms of prayer seem to have been the main reliance through the
first half of the eighteenth century. But about 1750 began the work
of John Howard, who visited the prisons of England, made known their
condition to the world, and never rested until they were greatly
improved. Then he applied the same benevolent activity to prisons in
other countries, in the far East, and in southern Europe, and finally
laid down his life, a victim to disease contracted on one of his
missions of mercy; but the hygienic reforms he began were developed
more and more until this fearful blot upon modern civilization was
removed.(335)

(335) For Erasmus, see the letter cited in Bascome, History of Epidemic
Pestilences, London, 1851. For the account of the condition of Queen
Elizabeth's presence chamber, see the same, p. 206; see also the same
for attempts at sanitation by Caius, Mead, Pringle, and others; also
see Baas and various medical authorities. For the plague in London, see
Green's H