the supervision of licensees, it may be mentioned that, in his evidence before the Select Committee of 1856, the Chief Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis made the following confession. "It may appear strange for me to say so, but until a few months ago I never saw a ticket-of-leave, and did not know what was endorsed upon it:--it was no business of mine."[228] Fortunately this state of affairs was not allowed to continue indefinitely. Various reforms, extending over a series of years, were successively taken in hand with the object of making penal servitude reformatory as well as retributive, of ensuring that convicts released on ticket-of-leave should remain under police supervision until the expiration of their sentences, of arresting the criminal career of juvenile law-breakers by means of reformatories and industrial schools; and of protecting society, as far as possible, from the repeated ravages of incorrigible offenders, by instituting a system for the thorough identification and registration of criminals. The history of these reforms must be briefly sketched. Of all the abuses which used to disgrace our penal establishments, the most disastrous in its results, was the promiscuous herding together of male with female, adult with juvenile, habitual with casual offenders, under conditions calculated to lower the tone of the whole prison community to the level of the most degraded inmate. The evils inseparable from unchecked association of felons in confinement were recognised even in the eighteenth century; and Bentham, Howard, and other reformers persistently urged the adoption of the "separate" system for all English prisons. Ultimately the Government was induced to make the experiment, and in 1821 Millbank Penitentiary was opened for the reception of prisoners. A long delay followed, and not until 1840 was the first stone of the next model prison laid at Pentonville. Both Millbank and Pentonville were constructed on the "radiating" principle which admits of the constant exercise of perfect supervision over all the prisoners, who are, however, confined in separate compartments. The expense of the new establishments, as well as a popular prejudice against solitary confinement due to its too rigorous enforcement in Pennsylvania, retarded progress, and although a few gaols of a modern type were here and there constructed, the large majority of those convicts who were not transported, were allowed to corrupt each other in the old-fashioned local prisons. This policy of inaction continued until 1865, when the "Prison Act" was passed, which requires that every male prisoner shall be accommodated with a separate cell, and which insists on uniformity of treatment for all persons (except first-class misdemeanants and debtors) undergoing a sentence of two years' imprisonment or less.