Early in the year 1776 a society was organized by some benevolent citizens of Philadelphia under the name “The Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners.” After a career of nineteen months the society was dissolved on account of difficulties arising during the War for Independence. In 1787 philanthropic citizens constituted themselves “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.” From that time until the present this society has been actively engaged in securing measures to improve the conditions of prisons, and also in earnest endeavors to reform criminals, and so far as known it is the oldest prison society in continued existence in the world. The name of the society was legally changed in 1886 to “The Pennsylvania Prison Society.” The present president, Joshua L. Baily, whose membership dates from 1851, has been connected with the society longer than any other living member. In the first year of the existence of the society about 150 gentlemen of Philadelphia were connected with the organization. Their object was to discover “such degree and modes of punishment” as might restore our “fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness.” An annuity of the value of about $70, the donation of John Dickinson, was the only permanent revenue of the new society. In 1788, the society addressed the following letter to John Howard, the great apostle in the work of ameliorating the condition of prisons: “The Society heartily concurs with the friends of humanity in Europe in expressing their obligation to you for having rendered the miserable tenants of prisons the objects of more general attention and compassion, and for having pointed out some of the means not only of alleviating their miseries, but of preventing those crimes and misfortunes which are the cause of them.” A year or two later John Howard left on record an expression of appreciation of the work of the Philadelphia Society. The following sentiment was found among his papers: “Should the plan take place during my life of establishing a permanent charity under some such title as that at Philadelphia, viz: ‘a society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons,’ I would most readily stand at the bottom of a page for five hundred pounds.”