2-888-364 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War Prison, near Toy-Royal, Dartmoor, [Devon], 1850. 'The Government, in making Prince Town a convict station, might take the initiative with great advantage to the country...The situation presents employment for convicts in... extracting and dressing ores...cutting granite for public buildings...extracting felspathic minerals and limestone; grinding coprolites, and converting them into fertilizers; cutting peat for carrying on these processes...A bondage spent in labours like these could not fail to have the effect of converting the greater part of prisoners into characters capable of maintaining themselves at the expiry of their sentences...we entirely concur with the conclusion arrived at by the Committee who recently reported on Prison Discipline, "that the great majority of convicted prisoners are open to the same good motives and good impulses which influence other human beings...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.