Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
was a very hard one, and he promised most faithfully that he would do
whatever was in his power to comply with my request, which was, that his
wife might have free access to him, and that he might have the liberty
of walking in a larger yard. But I found this could not be done under a
fortnight, and he politely assured me that he would write me the result
of the meeting of Magistrates.
Though in the manner of this gentleman, who I believe was chairman of
the quarter sessions, there was something much more honest and open
than in that of his brother justices, yet when I left him, to return to
Gloucester, I was not satisfied that I had done all that I could do, and
therefore I drove on to Bromsgrove, in Herefordshire, to call on Mr.
Honeywood Yate, of whom I had heard as an independent Magistrate, as
well as a friend of Reform. I soon enlisted him in the service; but he
was very much engaged with other business, which, after awhile, as Mr.
Yate was a very humane man, was made subservient to the cause of the
oppressed and persecuted captive. Mr. Yate went to Gloucester the next
day. Before I returned to Clifton I had the satisfaction of hearing that
there was an order made for Mrs. Hart to visit her husband in his room,
and for him to walk in the garden, I think, of the Governor. To the
kindness and humanity of Mr. Yate was Mr. Hart greatly indebted for this
indulgence. Without his assistance it might never have been granted; at
any rate it would have been protracted to a cruel distance.
Since that period I have never seen Mr. Hart except once, and that was
in London, after the term of his imprisonment had expired; and for the
trouble which I had taken in his behalf, I was amply rewarded by the
manner in which he expressed his sense of the accommodation that I had
been so instrumental in procuring for him. If he read this, it will
recall the whole to his recollection. Mr. White laboured under an
asthmatic complaint, and suffered greatly from his confinement; but I
understood that he was treated with proper respect and attention by the
Magistrates. Pittman, who was then the head turnkey of Dorchester Gaol,
called upon me the other day, and almost the first words he uttered
were, that the apartments allotted to Mr. White and his family, in
Dorchester Gaol, were quite a palace compared to the room in which he
found me. He said that Mr. White had two airy rooms over the Chapel,
which commanded a view of the circumjacent country, and that he had the
liberty of walking round the large open area of the Gaol, which was
composed of a beautiful gravel walk; that his was, in short, altogether
a very comfortable situation compared to that which I occupy in
Ilchester Bastile. He was here before the walls were lowered, and
consequently, he saw the place in all its native wretchedness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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