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SECTION VIII.: BEDDING. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION VIII.

BEDDING.

A word or two, merely to set the manager at liberty on the article of bedding. More unlegislative minuteness—more unthrifty fixation. Each prisoner is to have a bedstead; that bedstead is to be iron; the sheets are to be one or more; they are to be hempen; there is to be a coverlet; there are to be blankets; there are to be two or more of them, and they are to be coarse. Why a bedstead at all events, and that of iron, by act of parliament? Not that there is any harm in giving prisoners iron bedsteads: it is what I might, for aught I know, give them myself, if it depended upon me. Here, again, what is the object?—comfort, or economy? The former gains nothing, and the latter suffers by it. Spite of the act, your bedstead, though of iron, may be so dear as to be an unfrugal one, or so scanty as to be an uncomfortable one. Procrustes, were he manager, would find nothing in it against his bed. Is it that iron is the cheapest material for bedsteads? A contractor, then, had it been left to him, would have employed it. But it is not cheaper: a wooden one of the same size may be had for less money; and a bedstead, even a wooden one, will last for ages.

But why force bedsteads upon the manager at all? Is it so certain that they will be preferable to hammocks? Is it so certain that they will be cheaper? Will they be warmer? Will they require less bedding? Will they take up so much less room? Is there anything in hammocks inconsistent with good health? Had the immortal crews of the Resolution and Adventure anything else to lie on? Can hammocks, any more than iron bedsteads, harbour bugs?

Why matting? Is it that you are afraid of their having feather-beds? My contractor would ease you of your fears. Why matting, and not straw? Matting is not so favourable to cleanliness as straw. Matting, being a manufacture, costs something to make, and cannot be shifted every week or fortnight, on account of the expense: straw might; the more easily, because, having performed this service, it might be applied to other uses with little loss of value.

Sheets, why hempen at all events? If flaxen be cheaper, why have hempen ones? If dearer, what fear is there that the governor, if he undertook the business by contract, would allow them?

Blankets, too—to what end speak of blankets and coverlets, and enact that the blankets shall be “coarse,” leaving the coverlet to be of eider-down? Peculation or extravagance might give each man blankets by dozens, and those of beaver or vigogna wool, for anything there is here to prevent it: avarice might starve him with a worn-out linen coverlet, two thread-bare blankets, and those not worth picking off a dunghill.

[]Bugs, it is true, may lodge in wooden bedsteads. This is a very good reason for preferring iron ones for hospitals. But there the case is different in a thousand respects. Comfort is the great object there: by discomfort and want of rest, even a bug bite may be productive of serious consequences. In hospitals, the introduction of such vermin is facilitated by the promiscuous access incident to a frequent change of inhabitants, and to a state of freedom: discipline, in this as in other points, cannot be enforced with equal rigour or facility.

[]To inclose the straw, as Howard says, there should be a sack, for several reasons.

[]If you must regulate, do what for the hulks the act has not done, and save men from the incommodious and indelicate necessity of lying two in a bed. On board the hulks, this was (and I suppose is) the case, as the evidence the authors of this act had before them declares.

The single sheet the act allows of is an awkward and uncomfortable contrivance. A sack, with a flap under the chin, would take less stuff, and be more comfortable.

This, let it be observed, is in a note, and not in an act of parliament.