This text is part of:
[339]
attending as a delegate one of the great Prison Reform meetings of our day.
As well as I can remember, each day of the congress had its own president, and not the least interesting of these days was that on which Cardinal Manning presided.
I remember well his domed forehead and pale, transparent complexion, telling unmistakably of his ascetic life.
He was obviously much interested in Prison Reform, and well cognizant of its progress.
An esteemed friend and fellow country-woman of mine, Mrs. Elizabeth B. Chace of Rhode Island, was also accredited as a delegate to this congress.
At one of its meetings she read a short paper, giving some account of her own work in the prisons of her State.
At this meeting, the question of flogging prisoners came up, and a rather brutal jailer of the old school told an anecdote of a refractory prisoner who had been easily reduced to obedience by this summary method.
His rough words stirred my heart within me. I felt that I must speak; and Mrs. Chace kindly arose, and said to the presiding officer, ‘I beg that Mrs. Julia Ward Howe of Boston may be heard before this debate is closed.’
Leave being given, I stood up and said my say, arguing earnestly that no man could be made better by being degraded.
I can only well recall a part of my little speech, which was, I need scarcely say, quite unpremeditated:—
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.