It was in this winter that the superintending committee became convinced that the methods of coercion they possessed were hardly so stringent as the case required. They reported to the House of Commons that “there were among the prisoners some profligate and turbulent characters for whose outrageous conduct the punishments in use under the rules and regulations of the Penitentiary were by no means sufficient.” They found by experience that “confinement in a dark cell, though in most cases a severe and efficacious punishment, operates very differently on different persons. It appears to lose much of its effect from repetition; it cannot always be carried far without the danger of injuring health; and on some men as well as boys it has no effect.” Many of the ringleaders in the disturbances just described were subjected to twenty-five, twenty-eight, and even to thirty days of uninterrupted imprisonment in the dark, and certainly with little effect. In view of this want of some more salutary punishment the committee expressed a wish for power to flog. They were convinced that “the framers of the statute under which the Penitentiary is now governed acted erroneously in omitting the power to inflict corporal punishment when they re-enacted most of the other provisions of the 19th Geo. III. And they are satisfied that a revival of this power (a power possessed in every other criminal prison in this country) would be highly advantageous to the management of this prison, provided such power were accompanied by regulations adequate to control the exercise of it, and to guard against its being abused.”