The organizers of the society had a tremendous task before them, and they went at their work with energetic diligence. Very little effort had ever been made to carry out William Penn’s injunction that “all prisons should be considered workhouses for the employment of criminals and of the idle and vicious.” There was an ill-constructed prison at the corner of High and Third Streets with subterranean dungeons for those under sentence of death. At least half a dozen crimes were punishable by death. “In one common herd were kept by day and night prisoners of all ages, colors and sexes. There was no separation of the most flagrant felon from the prisoner held on suspicion for some trifling misdemeanor. There was no separation of the fraudulent swindler from the unfortunate, and often estimable, debtor.” The society early resolved that two leading elements of the desired reformation were to find employment for the inmates and to interdict the use of intoxicants. They also insisted that there must be a segregation, not only of the sexes, but also that there must be an individual separation in order that the penal institutions should not become “schools for crime.” From the first the society has advocated separate confinement and individual treatment, but has not stood for absolutely solitary imprisonment. There is no objection to work being done in groups, provided the prisoners are under direct supervision of the proper officials. Visits from the officers, from ministers, from all properly concerned persons, have been encouraged. Visitations by members of the Prison Society began under peculiar difficulties, as it is on record that the keeper, with loaded cannon, for the purpose of maintaining order, allowed the prisoners to assemble to hear the preaching of the gospel, but the beneficial effect of the visits were soon officially recognized, and have been maintained with great regularity to the present day, the Acting Committee in 1909 having reported 10,951 visits to prisoners. In the year 1829, when the Eastern Penitentiary, whose plan and management at that time represented the most advanced ideas in prison construction and discipline was built, the members of the Acting Committee of the Society were, by enactment of the State Legislature, constituted “Official Visitors” of prisons. In 1794 the society succeeded in securing the abolition of the exaction of fees by the jailers as a condition of release, and a competent salary was authorized to be paid to the prison officials. About the same time it was decreed that capital punishment should be inflicted only for the crime of murder. Barbarous methods of punishment, such as the pillory, branding with hot irons, the whipping post, were soon dispensed with as reformatory measures.