The Report of the Directors for 1863 shows that steps were at once taken to enforce rigidly this stage of punishment. Fixed wooden beds were substituted for hammocks; the assembling of convicts for education in classes was discontinued, and the cell doors, which had been formerly opened after two months, were kept bolted during the whole period of separate confinement. The Governor and Chaplain of Millbank both reported that these changes had been attended with a visible improvement in the bearing and demeanour of the prisoners. The Directors stated that their object was to render this stage of punishment as _deterrent_ as possible; to habituate convicts to habits of order and obedience preparatory to their going on Public Works, and, at the same time, to avail themselves of this opportunity to educate by means of cellular instruction. The great fall in the convict population which was taking place at this time, and continued during succeeding years (the fall between 1854 and 1874 was from 15,000 to less than 9,000) led the Directors in 1873 to attribute this remarkable decrease to the severe system which had been established. They say:--"Whatever may be the causes which combine to produce an increase or decrease of crime, this system of punishment is certainly one of them, and the records of past Commissions of Inquiry show that an increase of crime has generally been attributed principally to defects in the Prison System. If punishment alone is not to be relied on to diminish crime, it is certainly one of the means of doing so, and it should be carried out so as to make imprisonment a terror to evil-doers, as well as the means of bringing those subject to it into better habits of mind by placing them under the influences to which they would not ordinarily be subject."