ir cells; and at Newcastle to a ring in the floor.
The two most objectionable features in Scotch prisons, as appears from
Mr. Gurney's "Notes" of this tour, were the treatment of debtors, and
the cruelties used to lunatics. Both these classes of individuals were
confined as criminals, and treated with the utmost cruelty.

According to Scotch law, the jailer and magistrates who committed the
debtor became responsible for the debt, supposing the prisoner to have
effected his escape. Self-interest, therefore, prompted the adoption of
cruel measures to ensure the detention of the unfortunate debtor; while
helpless lunatics were wholly at the mercy of brutalized keepers who
were responsible to hardly any tribunal. Of the horrors of that dark,
terrible time within those prison-walls, few records appear; few cared
to probe the evil, or to propose a remedy. The archives of Eternity
alone contain the captive's cries, and the lamentations of tortured
lunatics. Only one Eye penetrated the dungeons; one Ear heard. Was not
Elizabeth Fry and her coadjutors doing a god-like work? And when she
raised the clarion cry that _Reformation_, not _Revenge_, was the object
of punishment, she shook these old castles of Giant Despair to their
foundations.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GALLOWS AND ENGLISH LAWS.

About this period the subject of Capital Punishment largely attracted
Mrs. Fry's attention. The attitude of Quakers generally towards the
punishment of death, except for murder in the highest degree, was
hostile; but Mrs. Fry's constant intercourse with inmates in the
condemned cell fixed her attention in a very painful manner upon the
subject. For venial crimes, men and women, clinging fondly to life, were
swung off into eternity; and neither the white lips of the
philanthropist, nor the official ones of the appointed chaplain, could
comfort the dying. Among these dying ones were many women, who were
executed for simply passing forged Bank of England notes; but as the
bank had plenary powers to arrange to screen certain persons who were
not to die, these were allowed to get off with a lighter punishment by
pleading "Guilty to the minor count." The condemned cell was never,
however, without its occupant, nor the gallows destitute of its prey. So
Draconian were the laws of humane and Christian England, at this date,
that had they been strictly carried out, at least four executions daily,
exclusive of Sundays, would have taken place in th