In October, 1910, I conveyed to the International Prison Congress at Washington the invitation of the British Government to hold the next Quinquennial Congress of 1915 in London. The invitation was accepted with enthusiasm. The London Congress of 1872 had prepared the way for the creation of the International Commission, which was founded a few years later; but, though supported and encouraged by the Government of the day, it owed its origin to American influence, notably that of the celebrated Dr. Wines. Great Britain did not formally adhere to the International Commission till 1895, when Mr. Asquith, then Home Secretary, nominated the present writer as British Representative to the Paris Congress of that year. Since that date, the Quinquennial Congresses had been held at Brussels, Buda-Pesth, and Washington in 1900, 1905, and 1910, at all of which the British Government was represented, the reports of the proceedings being duly submitted to Parliament. The preliminary arrangements for the Congress in London in 1915 had been carefully prepared by meetings of the Commission representing the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Baden, Bavaria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Norway, Russia, Servia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. It was intended also to invite our Dominions-over-Sea--India, and Egypt, to send special representatives. These meetings were held in Paris in 1912, and in London in 1914, the British Committee consisting of the Chairmen of the Prison Boards for Scotland and Ireland (Lord Polwarth, and Mr. Max Green), Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., and Mr. A.J. Wall, O.B.E., the late and present Secretaries of the English Board, and myself, as President of the International Commission. But man only proposes, and the Great War intervened to prevent the realization of those plans. It has, also, of course, for the time being, arrested the development, and thwarted the purpose, of what promised to be a great international movement for the discussion and improvement of all methods affecting the punishment and treatment of crime. It was for the purpose of the Congress of 1915 that I prepared this short manual, in order that the history and leading features of the English Prison System might be understood by our foreign visitors, and especially its more notable developments of recent years, since England joined the Congress in 1895.[1] I had been greatly impressed with the singular ignorance that existed, both on the Continent and in the United States, of the character of British penal methods. In my Report on the Brussels Congress, 1900, I wrote as follows:--