BY

EDGAR C. S. GIBSON

T

PREFACE

HERE are several Lives of Howard in existence, but, with the exception of Dr. Stoughton's Howard the Philanthropist, the longer and better ones have all been for some years out of print; and Dr. Stoughton's book, full and careful as it is, is somewhat discursive, and gives more space to ecclesiastical matters, which have but little to do with Howard, than seems to be necessary. Hence there appears to be room for another biography which shall tell the main facts of the philanthropist's life, and recall his memory to the present generation. In preparing it, the writer has made full use of Howard's own writings, as well as of the early Lives by Aikin and Brown. Of these Aikin's View of the Character and Public Services of the late John Howard (1792) is our earliest authority, and has the advantage of being written by one of Howard's closest personal friends. It is, however, very slight and sketchy, and leaves much untold. A far fuller,

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and more thorough work is Brown's Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of John Howard the Philanthropist, the first edition of which was published in 1818. Brown had access to Howard's private diary, as well as to a number of his letters, and made careful inquiries of his relatives, friends, and servants; but unfortunately he was unable to obtain any letters from members of the Whitbread family. This necessitated a certain incompleteness in his work, and left a gap which much needed to be filled up. In spite of this, his volume will always remain the great storehouse of material for all subsequent workers, and will ever be the main authority for Howard's life. It needs, however, to be supplemented by the Rev. J. Field's Correspondence of John Howard (1855), in which the philanthropist's letters to Mr. and Lady Mary Whitbread were for the first time made public. Field had a few years earlier published a painstaking Life of Howard, shortly after the appearance of which he was informed of the existence of this correspondence, and happily obtained permission to publish it, thereby materially adding to our knowledge of Howard. This volume, then, and Brown's Memoir, together with Howard's own writings, are the main sources from which the present sketch has been compiled, although full use has also been made of the notices of Howard which appeared shortly