HOWARD, JOHN (1726-179o) , English philanthropist and prison reformer, was born at Hackney, probably on Sept. 2, His father was a retired merchant who lived at Cardington, near Bedford. Af ter serving as an apprentice to a firm of grocers, John Howard inherited considerable property on his father's death and decided to travel. He was on his way to Portugal in 1754 when the ship was taken by a French privateer, the crew and passengers being carried to Brest, where they were treated with great severity. Howard was permitted to return to England on parole to negotiate an exchange. He settled at Cardington, interesting himself in meteorological observations, and was admitted a member of the Royal Society in 1756. In 1766, after the death of his second wife, Howard went for a prolonged foreign tour, from which he returned in 1770.
In '773 he became high sheriff of Bedford and paid visits to the gaol. Howard found it, like all the prisons of the time, wretchedly defective in its arrangements; neither the gaoler nor his subordi nates were salaried officers, but were dependent on fees from prisoners. He found that some whom the juries had declared not guilty, others in whom the grand jury had not found even such appearance of guilt as would warrant a trial, others whose prose cutors had failed to appear, were detained in prison for months, until they paid the fees of gaol delivery. His prompt applica tion to the justices for a salary to the gaoler in lieu of his fees was met by a demand for a precedent in charging the county with an expense. He went accordingly from county to county, and though he could find no precedent he discovered many abuses in prison management and determined to devote himself to prison reform.
In 1774 he gave evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, and received the thanks of the house. Almost imme diately an act was passed which provided for the liberation, free of all charges, of every prisoner against whom the grand jury failed to find a true bill, giving the gaoler a sum from the county rate in lieu of the abolished fees. This was followed by another re quiring justices of the peace to see that the walls and ceilings of prisons were scraped and whitewashed once a year at least; that the rooms were regularly cleaned and ventilated; that infirmaries were provided for the sick, and proper care taken to get them medical advice ; that the naked should be clothed ; that under ground dungeons should be used as little as could be; and generally that such courses should be taken as would tend to restore and preserve the health of the prisoners. Howard had the provisions of the new legislation printed at his own cost, and sent to every gaoler and warder in the kingdom. In 1774 he stood as an anti ministerial candidate for Bedford, was returned, but was unseated after a scrutiny.
After a tour in Scotland and Ireland, he travelled in through France, the Low Countries and Germany. At Paris he was at first denied access to the prisons; but, on the pretext of giving alms he succeeded in inspecting the Bicetre, the Force l'tveque and other prisons, the only important exception being the Bastille. At Ghent he examined the great Maison de Force. At Amsterdam, as in Holland generally, he was much struck with the comparative absence of crime, a phenomenon which he attributed to the indus trial and reformatory treatment there adopted. In Germany he found little that was useful and much that was repulsive ; in Han over and Osnabruck, under the rule of a British sovereign, he even found traces of torture. After a short tour in England he again went abroad, extending his tour to several of the Swiss cantons.
In 1777 appeared The State of tile Prisons in England and Wales, with Preliminary Observations, and an Account of some Foreign Prisons. One result was the drafting a bill for the estab lishment of penitentiary houses, where by means of solitary im prisonment, accompanied by well-regulated labour and religious instruction, the object of reforming the criminal and inuring him to habits of industry might be pursued. New buildings were mani festly necessary ; and Howard volunteered to go abroad again and collect plans. He first went to Amsterdam (1778), and carefully examined the "spin-houses" and "rasp-houses" where prisoners were set to useful work; next he traversed Prussia, Saxony, Bo hemia, Austria and Italy, everywhere inspecting prisons, hospitals and workhouses, and carefully recording the merits and defects of each. The information he thus obtained was presented to parliament, and a bill was passed for building two penitentiary houses; Howard was appointed first supervisor, but he resigned the post before anything practical had been achieved. In 1780 he had published his State of Prisons. Howard made other and more extended continental tours to Denmark, Sweden and Russia in 1781, and to Spain and Portugal in 1783. The results of these journeys were embodied in 1784, in a second appendix to his great work.
The five remaining years of his life were chiefly devoted to researches on the means for prevention of the plague, and for guarding against the propagation of contagious distempers in gen eral. After an extended tour of the continent, he was preparing to return when it occurred to him that he still lacked personal experience of quarantine discipline. He returned to Smyrna, and, deliberately choosing a foul ship, took a passage to Venice. A protracted voyage of 6o days, during which the ship was attacked by pirates, was followed by a weary term of quarantine in the Venetian lazzaretto. He reached England in 1787. He then in spected prisons of the United Kingdom, and prepared his Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe (1789).
In 1789 he made his last journey. Travelling overland to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and visiting the principal military hos pitals that lay on his route, he reached Kherson where he in spected the hospitals. In attending a case of camp fever he con tracted the disease, which terminated fatally on Jan. 2o, 1790. He was buried near the village of Dauphigny on the road to St. Nicholas. There is a statue to his memory in St. Paul's, London, and one at Bedford.