[49] In the eighteenth century, penal servitude reached the highest point in its development. The utilitarian spirit of the age and the reform program of the Bourbon rulers provided both a justification and a stimulus for its continued expansion. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, penal servitude, whether on the galleys or in the mines of Almadén, was applied principally to hard-core criminals, although the laws of the period prescribed this penalty for vagrants, gypsies, and other "undesirables." Despite royal pressure to condemn as many men as possible to the galleys, magistrates continued to sentence vagrants and petty criminals to the traditional forms of punishment, that is, flogging and banishment. Vagrants and petty criminals who did serve on the galleys in this period usually were convicted of more than just vagrancy or were notorious recidivists. This also was true of the gypsies, except when they were conscripted en masse for the galleys, as, for example, in the seventeenth century. ⁽¹⁾ In the Hapsburg period most vagabonds and petty offenders lived out their marginal lives freely, wandering about the country and subsisting off charity and crime. It was not a question of whether the laws were too lenient or too severe; rather, they were inconsistently enforced.

[50] In the eighteenth century the campaign against idlers and delinquents had more effect. Under the Bourbons, the pressure of public opinion and the economic objectives of the government combined to produce a systematic plan of attack. Bourbon reformism was determined to eliminate or reduce antisocial and delinquent groups, or at least improve them by making them useful to society and the state. One of the most interesting characteristics of this movement was the support that it received from educated persons of differing intellectual views. ⁽²⁾ Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (1676-1764), a figure of the early Spanish Enlightenment, set the tone for the discussion by denouncing the willfully idle as a "pestilence" not to be tolerated by any rationally governed society. ⁽³⁾ As the century advanced, a stream of publications appeared lamenting the large numbers of vagabonds, beggars, and idlers and advocating decisive action to deal with the problem. Although their motives varied, the authors -- churchmen, government officials, and "enlightened" writers-- all denounced idleness and praised honest labor. While the clerics condemned idleness because it violated religious and moral norms, secular writers established a connection between labor and the volume of production. Gaspar de Jovellanos, for example, argued that idlers injured the economy and placed a heavy burden on the working part of the population. In the view of Lorenzo de Normante and others, the gravity of the offense demanded state action to compel the idle to work. ⁽⁴⁾

The viewpoint of the state can be seen in the works of Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, Antonio Pérez y López, Nicolás de Arriquíbar, and others. They believed that every subject had an obligation to contribute to the well-being of the country; and the state, as the guardian of public good, had both the responsibility and the right to direct the population into useful employment. For the Count of Campomanes, work was "not a privilege but the obligation of every citizen"; and Arriquíbar believed that if a man was without an occupation, he was dead as far as the state was concerned. ⁽⁵⁾ Moreover, the attack against idleness was not made on exclusively economic or moral grounds, but was connected to a corporate interpretation of social organization. Society was based on the mutual interdependence of individuals. Most of the population [51] was destined to provide food and clothing for the rest. Persons who did not work threatened the stability of the hierarchical social order. ⁽⁶⁾

Idleness also was viewed as a source of social maladjustment and delinquency. It led individuals away from the obligations of a good Christian life to the disorders that accompanied a useless existence. Since idleness was conceived as the root of vice and delinquency, the state, by taking action against it, would extinguish the "seeds of most crime as well." ⁽⁷⁾ Given the connection between vagrancy, vice, and crime in the minds of the eighteenth-century thinkers, it is not difficult to understand the wide interpretation given to the term "vagrant" in the repressive legislation of the period. ⁽⁸⁾ In the category of "vagrants" was a large group of misbehavers who were not vagrants in the strict sense of the term. Since these elements threatened the social order, violated religious and moral concepts, and injured the economy, the state could suppress them by any means at its disposal.

The campaign against idlers and social outcasts began early. The proportion of vagrants had increased greatly during the last years of the seventeenth century and the War of Succession (1700-1713). In the reign of Philip V (1700-1746), several decrees were issued impressing vagabonds and idlers into the army, and similar legislation was repeated throughout the century. In the legislation of 1745, vagrants were defined as all those living without an honest and licit means of support, but as the years passed, the number of people included within this classification increased continuously. Decrees were issued against gypsies, wandering pilgrims, and others with similar nomadic lives, but these laws also allowed the authorities to impress drunks, men caught sleeping in the streets, artisans who refused to work, and sons disobedient to their parents. By the last quarter of the century, libertines, fornicators, and men who mistreated their wives or abandoned their families all were being prosecuted under similar legislation. On the basis of her data, María Rosa Pérez Estévez has concluded that only a small percentage of men impressed into the army during the eighteenth century were authentic vagrants. In the levy of 1759, for example, they represented 19 percent. Petty thieves made up 14 percent, and the rest had committed offenses against morality or had disturbed the public peace. ⁽⁹⁾

[52] The plan to derive utility from idlers and misbehavers resulted in their steady exploitation by the state throughout the eighteenth century. The able-bodied male vagrants were conscripted in the armed forces. According to a nation-wide sample for the years 1730-82 compiled by Pérez Estévez, of the 44,777 vagrants whose destinations are known, 24,899 (56 percent) went to the army and 11,664 (26 percent) to the navy. ⁽¹⁰⁾ In the 1740s, those who were not fit for military service because of age (over forty-four years old), youth (under sixteen), or physical defects were used as laborers on military fortifications. During those years the military plans of the government called for a program to strengthen the defenses of the Peninsula through the reinforcement and improvement of fortifications in addition to a reorganization of the army. Since the heavy work of construction and repair of fortifications in the North African presidios was being done by this time by penal labor, it was decided to apply the same system to the Peninsular presidios.

From the 1740s through the 1770s, forced labor contingents were organized in almost all the Peninsular presidios, but their quotas were small, ranging on the average from fifteen to sixty men. Two of the earliest establishments, created in the 1740s with forty and sixty men, respectively, were at Pamplona and Badajoz. La Coruña had the largest group, over 100 men, while San Sebastián, with fifteen, was the smallest. Other contingents could be found at Barcelona and Jaca; and the last-formed contingent (1776) was at Zaragoza. ⁽¹¹⁾

In the beginning, the forced-labor brigades in the presidios were made up of vagrants who were rejects from the armed forces. In addition to those who could not meet the age and physical requirements, there were chronic alcoholics, libertines, and petty thieves whose offenses automatically disqualified them from military service. In the 1750s the population of the presidios began to change. At mid-century the government inaugurated its program of naval expansion. Work was begun on the arsenals of El Ferrol (Galicia) and Cartagena, while the facilities at La Carraca (Cádiz) were expanded. During the important years of construction (the 1750s and 1760s) the main body of those disqualified from military service were sent into the naval arsenals to perform varied labor tasks. ⁽¹²⁾ Their places in the presidios were taken by smugglers and defrauders [53] of the royal tobacco monopoly (minor offenders only), who by the late 1760s made up the majority of prisoners. It was not until the l770s, when the naval arsenals were transformed into penal establishments for serious offenders, that vagrants and social outcasts were sent once again to the Peninsular presidios. ⁽¹³⁾

In the 1770s there was little work to be done on the presidio fortifications, but their penal contingents continued to increase in disregard of official quotas. Prisoners from the presidios began to be used in municipal works projects. For example, in La Coruña in the mid-1770s there were 150 convicts, most of whom were utilized in street-cleaning and on bridge construction and maintenance. Conditions there, although not untypical, provoked royal intervention. In 1777 the king reaffirmed the established practice that men condemned to hard labor in the presidios could be used only in fortification work or in other tasks within the confines of the presidio. ⁽¹⁴⁾

By the 1780s, a more flexible attitude began to be taken toward utilizing prisoners from the presidios outside the fortresses. As long as they performed work beneficial to the king or in the public interest, prisoners did not have to work specifically within the jurisdiction of the presidios. The new approach provided the basis for a proposal to establish a penal contingent of two brigades of fifty men each in the presidio of Alicante. There were to be used in the construction of a new customs house, to repair facilities in the port area, and to build a military hospital and barracks. Several budget estimates for this project were submitted to the king in the beginning of 1786. One of them, compiled in March of that year, is particularly revealing, since it purportedly represented the actual cost of the undertaking while the others underestimated it. Food and clothing were the principal expenses. The food ration alone cost 51,529 reales (at twelve cuartos or forty-eight maravedís per man), and this did not include bread. Had a bread ration been added, the cost would have risen substantially. As for the clothing allotment, the individual outfits amounted to an additional 140 reales per man every two years, or a total of 17,000 reales. Another large item in the budget was the expense of hospitalization, estimated at four and one-half reales per man for three hospital stays, or some 4,927 reales a year. The total cost of maintenance was 73,356 reales; still, this sum was less than the expense of hiring contract laborers. One [54] hundred free workers at four reales a day per man for 244 working days a year amounted to 97,600 reales, or some 24,244 reales more than the total annual cost of the convict laborers. ⁽¹⁵⁾

Despite the apparent financial benefits, the project to establish a penal contingent at Alicante was not adopted. The government was unwilling to organize a new establishment when it was dissatisfied with those that existed. Throughout the l780s there were constant complaints against the administration of the labor contingents in the presidios, and in 1788 the king ordered an investigation. ⁽¹⁶⁾ It was found that the whole system was riddled with mismanagement, fraud, and abuse. In all of the presidios (the situation was particularly bad at La Coruña and Badajoz), passes were given to prisoners allowing them to return home temporarily or to live independently in the towns, practicing their trades. Some men from the Badajoz presidio were working in the surrounding countryside cultivating the land and caring for livestock belonging to presidio officers. Others were laboring in the town in the homes of those same officials as servants, or in like capacity in other private homes. At La Coruña, several convicts were employed as cooks and caterers for residents of the town and lived outside the presidio in rented quarters. In both La Coruña and Badajoz there were prisoners who were working as street vendors, and in 1788 a number of men from the Badajoz presidios were caught while engaging in their former profession of smuggling. ⁽¹⁷⁾ The conditions revealed in this inquiry led to the abandonment of the penal contingents in the Peninsular presidios. Their facilities were converted into depísitos or receiving centers for the temporary safekeeping of prisoners sentenced to the overseas presidios.

The eighteenth-century campaign against idlers and misbehavers reached its culmination in the last quarter of that century. The repressive legislation of the previous years had reduced the number of these elements, but since it affected only those who could be impressed into the armed forces as fighters or workers, many more remained. A large part of the pauper and idle population -- women, children, the aged and physically handicapped -- were untouched by the laws. It was at this time that the house of correction idea was adopted in Spain. These institutions were created elsewhere in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but had long been [55] rejected in Spain. Proposals to establish houses of confinement were made in the sixteenth century, but had little effect. In 1545, for example, a Benedictine monk, Juan de Medina, suggested the confinement of beggars, vagrants and idlers. Medina's plan met with immediate opposition from the Dominican friar Domingo de Soto and others, who argued that confinement of the poor and indigent would deprive them of their God given personal freedom and that removal of mendicants from the streets would prevent the faithful from practicing charity necessary for their salvation. ⁽¹⁸⁾ In the eighteenth century, with the new emphasis on the economic benefits to be derived from welfare measures, the idea of confinement gained wide support. Advocates of the workhouses, like Bernardo Ward, whose writings on poverty and idleness enjoyed great vogue, emphasized the economic rewards to be gained by the state by putting the idle and poor to work. ⁽¹⁹⁾ In the period 1750-1800, workhouses were established all over the country. The essence of the houses of correction was that they combined the principles of the poorhouse, workhouse, and penal institution. Their objective was to force the poor, idle, and delinquent to work at useful tasks. It was hoped that the inmates, by being forced to work, would learn trades and form industrious habits at the same time. ⁽²⁰⁾

The House of Correction of San Fernando, located some eight miles outside Madrid, was a perfect example of this kind of institution. Established in the aftermath of the Squillace riots of 1766, it contained a mixed population of vagrants, beggars, and petty offenders of both sexes. ⁽²¹⁾ There also were paupers, orphans, and, at times, even the insane, but they were always in a minority (in the first six months of 1771, for example, of the 292 persons of both sexes who were sentenced to San Fernando, only 4 percent belonged to that category). ⁽²²⁾ In the eighteenth century, these institutions typically combined several different functions within the same establishment. San Fernando was a refuge for orphans, the destitute, and the insane, as well as a penal institution. From the beginning, all age groups were represented. Extant figures for the year 1771 give some idea of the age distribution. ⁽²³⁾

At that date, 43 percent of the men sentenced to San Fernando were over fifty years of age: 29 percent between the ages of fifty and sixty-five, 10 percent in the sixty-five to seventy-five-year-old cate- [56] gory, two men over seventy-five years old, and one eighty-four years old. At the other, end of the scale, 29 percent of the male inmates consisted of children under fifteen and youths between fifteen and nineteen years of age. The remaining 28 percent were made up of men in the twenty to fifty-year-old group: twenty to thirty-year-olds accounted for 10 percent, thirty to fifty-year-olds for 18 percent. If these statistics are typical, and it seems likely that they are, the overwhelming majority of male inmates in San Fernando were men who were unable to serve in the army or perform hard labor on the fortifications or public works projects because of age or youth.

The female inmates were younger. Most of the women (over 81 percent) were between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five. The largest percentage of the total female population (55 percent) was made up of prisoners fifteen to forty, and the fifteen to twenty-five-year-old group alone accounted for 29 percent. There also was a substantial proportion (26 percent) of middle-aged women, forty to fifty years old. Beyond age fifty-five, the numbers decline sharply. Women in the fifty-five to seventy-five-year-old group represented an insignificant 8 percent of the total.

The age distribution of the inmates corresponded closely to their offenses. Among the males, those over fifty years old were all beggars, while those in the twenty to fifty-year-old groups were either beggars or vagrants. Most of the children were orphans and paupers, but there were a few beggars as well. The fifteen to twenty year-old category contained an equal number of beggars, vagrants, and orphans. Significantly, there were only three men who had committed real crimes. They included two youths (fifteen and seventeen years old) who were thieves and one mature man who was sentenced for assault and injury.

The female inmates were divided into two groups: the older women beggars, the younger ones prostitutes. Prostitution was not illegal in the eighteenth century, but periodically the authorities conducted a campaign to remove diseased women from the streets. Quite a few of the women in San Fernando were in the advanced stages of syphilis. Others were arrested on public scandal charges, that is, for having been caught in flagrante (conducting their business in public places, most typically the vestibules of private homes [57] or public buildings). ⁽²⁴⁾ Most of the prostitutes were between the ages of twenty and forty years, with the largest percentage in the twenty to twenty-five-year category. Among those fifteen to nineteen years of age there were prostitutes as well as vagrants and beggars. Similarly, the women thirty to fifty years old were either beggars, vagrants, or prostitutes. There also were some married women who had committed adultery and others who had been convicted of licentious behavior and concubinage.

While the majority of San Fernando's inmates in the 1770s were vagrants and beggars, the situation changed in the 1780s, when the Madrid courts began to sentence more delinquents there, especially women. In this period, male petty offenders normally were sent to the public works presidios, but there was no comparable place for women. The galera, a penal institution for women modeled after the galleys for men and in operation since the seventeenth century, held mainly major offenders and recidivists, and lacked the resources to receive others. ⁽²⁵⁾ In 1783, when the English penal reformer, John Howard, visited San Fernando, women outnumbered men almost two to one. In the 1790s, the ratio was more than six to one. ⁽²⁶⁾

When the houses of correction like San Fernando began to take on an increasingly penal character, their original aim, the custody of vagabonds and beggars, was shifted to the hospicios. The former became institutions for the confinement and punishment of criminals. As penal institutions, they were not thought of as places where persons served sentences of imprisonment. Instead, they housed offenders sentenced to forced labor, and this concept was held until the end of the eighteenth century. ⁽²⁷⁾ In this period, imprisonment as a punishment was still almost unknown in civil law, despite the efforts of the penal reformers (Cesare Beccaria and his Spanish interpreters, Manuel de Lardizábal, Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, and Juan Meléndez Valdés) to substitute it for capital and corporal punishment. Jails, as in previous centuries, continued to be detention centers for those awaiting trial or the execution of their capital or corporal penalties.

Conditions in Spanish jails, like those in other European countries, were notorious for centuries. Squalor, immorality, and idleness, as well as the deep-rooted corruption of wardens and subordinates, made them places of hardship and suffering. Yet, in [58] the opinion of John Howard, one of the most notable penal reformers of the period, prisoners in Spanish jails seemed to have been somewhat better off than inmates in other countries. Howard, who visited a number of Spanish jails in 1783, was impressed with the fact that there existed separation of the sexes (introduced as early as 1519) in contrast to the indiscriminate mixing of male and female prisoners found in other European jails. In addition, he considered the architecture of Spanish jails to be well suited to the needs of the prisoners. Most Spanish jails were constructed with patios equipped with fountains and running water in the center and corridors for shade. Near the fountains were convenient stone troughs where the inmates washed their clothes. ⁽²⁸⁾

On the negative side, debtors in Spanish jails were not segregated from criminal prisoners, as they were in many other countries. All inmates, regardless of age, record, or type of offense, were kept together. The only separation was between those who had made their declarations and confessed, and those who had yet to do so. The latter were confined together in dirty, unventilated vaults (encierros). Frequently, those who persisted in protesting their innocence were laden with chains and placed in solitary confinement in grilleros (cages) until they had a change of heart. ⁽²⁹⁾

The principal officers in every jail were the jailers or keepers, and until 1840 these positions were sold by the Spanish crown to the highest bidder. Sometimes purchasers bought these posts as an investment which they subsequently leased out to others. On other occasions, they appointed deputies to perform their duties. Despite the small salary, the position of jailer was always popular, because it offered excellent opportunities for extortion and graft. ⁽³⁰⁾

The main source of remuneration for the jailers was the fees that they exacted from the prisoners. In order to secure their incomes, they ran their establishments like business enterprises. The jails functioned through a system of payments for services rendered. Everything the prisoners needed was available for a price. More spacious and cleaner quarters, beds, blankets, and mattresses were rented for a fee. The jailers also sold the prisoners their food and drink, as well as the fuel that they needed to prepare their meals. Prisoners could obtain more or less comfort and service depending on their resources. In addition, there were entrance and release fees. [59] Until 1788, discharge fees were paid by all prisoners regardless of the outcome of their cases, but in that year the king ordered that payments did not have to be made by persons who were acquitted of their crimes. Discharge fees reflected the socioeconomic status of the prisoners and their ability to pay. In the second half of the eighteenth century, common prisoners in the Madrid jails customarily paid eighteen reales, while the wealthier ones, who were lodged in the more comfortable parts of the jail, paid twenty-four reales. Those who rented rooms in the jailer's own apartment (the best accommodations in the jail) were charged two doubloons. ⁽³¹⁾

The fee system in Spanish jails was justified as being the prisoner's contribution toward the cost of running those establishments. It was used to pay the salaries of the jailers, turnkeys, and guards, but also to cover the expenses of upkeep and repair. Authorities justified perpetuation of the fee system by claiming that they lacked sufficient funds to pay the prison staffs and maintain the jails. The most they could do was to keep the fees at reasonable levels. From the fifteenth century on, jailers were required to publically display tables of fees charged in their jails, and the sums that could be demanded were established by law. New fee tables were compiled in 1736, 1741, and 1781, and there were several revisions in the years before the end of the eighteenth century. ⁽³²⁾

In addition to the fees that prisoners had to pay for the services they received, they also had to make a peculiar form of payment, a kind of "garnish," when first admitted to the jails. Unlike the other jail exactions, garnish was arranged and collected by the prisoners themselves. Those who could not pay were liable to having their clothes stripped off them and being subjected to physical violence and ostracism by other prisoners. The most vivid accounts of the garnish system date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and can be found in the picaresque literature of that period, especially Francisco de Quevedo's El buscón, but the same system was described by Ventura de Arquellada in 1801. Sporadic attempts were made to eliminate this practice, but most prison officials accepted it as an integral part of the prison life, and it continued well into the nineteenth century. ⁽³³⁾

Security in the jails was achieved through the use of a wide variety of irons, including manacles for the wrists, fetters and shackles [60] for the feet, and iron collars for the neck. Any one of these contraptions could, if necessary, be attached to a ring or staple on the wall or in the floor. When ordered by the court, jailers could remove chains for a fee. The amounts charged were set in the fee tables, but as in the case of other jail payments, the sums varied depending on the circumstances and the ability of the prisoners to pay. In the Madrid jails of the l780s, they ranged from thirty to forty reales. ⁽³⁴⁾

One of the best accounts of Spanish jails in the eighteenth century is that of John Howard. Among the jails and other penal institutions that he visited were those of Pamplona, Badajoz, Burgos, Valladolid, and Madrid. In Toledo he viewed two jails: one served as a detention center and the other as a central depísito for Castile. He found the depísito particularly dirty and crowded. Some 220 prisoners were confined to narrow corridors under a central courtyard, and all were heavily chained and looked unhealthy. The jailers informed him that the depísito usually held more prisoners, but that a hundred or more had been sent to the arsenal at Cartagena two weeks earlier. In contrast, the jail belonging to the Chancillería in Valladolid did not have any dungeons, and all the prisoners were kept together in one large room. As for the jail at Burgos, it was housed in a new edifice that was constructed especially for that purpose in 1778. It was built around a spacious courtyard with a fountain in the center. While he found it satisfactory from an architectural point of view, he described the cells and dungeons as unclean ⁽³⁵⁾

Significantly, the jail in Burgos did not have any official torture chamber. Torture as a means of extracting evidence and confessions was very much a part of criminal procedure in Spain, as in other European countries in the early modern period. In Spain, some of the most common forms of torture -- the rack, water torture, and hoist -- fell into disuse in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Indirect methods, such as confinement for long periods of time (often in various kinds of contraptions that hindered movement), took their place. They were used particularly against those accused of heinous crimes who persisted in denying their guilt in the face of incriminating evidence. These methods continued to be employed until 1814, when Ferdinand VII issued a decree abolishing the use [61] of torture, both direct and indirect, to obtain confessions from defendants and evidence from witnesses. ⁽³⁶⁾

In Madrid, Howard visited the main jails as well as the Prado Public Works Presidio and the San Femando House of Correction. The two principal jails were the Cárcel de Villa (City Jail) and the Cárcel de Corte (Court Jail). ⁽³⁷⁾ The Cárcel de Villa was the original jail of Madrid. In the sixteenth century it was located in the Plazuela de San Miguel, but this site was abandoned by the end of the century. In 1619, part of a newly constructed city hall was set aside to serve as a jail. The main facade of the city hall opened on to the Plaza de la Villa. The jail was located in the rear of the building facing a narrow street called the Calle de Madrid. The City Jail remained at this site until 1833, when its deteriorated condition forced its closing and the transfer of its inmates to another location. ⁽³⁸⁾

The Cárcel de Villa was built around a courtyard and had a capacity of 150 to 200 prisoners. When Howard visited it in 1783, there were about 120 men and thirty women there. He described the rooms and dungeons as very dirty and offensive. The main dungeon, popularly called El infierno, was completely dark. In order to obtain some light, the inmates made candles out of filaments of thread unravelled from their clothing and lard taken from their food. Conditions in this jail were so bad that when it finally was abandoned in the nineteenth century, the authorities could not find any way to clean it up, and were forced to demolish the whole structure. ⁽³⁹⁾

The Cárcel de Corte was the largest jail in Madrid. It was located in the Plaza de Provincia in a building that was constructed in 1634 to serve as a courthouse for the Sala deAlcades de Casa y Corte as well as a jail. The Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, a committee of the council of Castile, exercised judicial control over the city of Madrid. It was divided into criminal and civil sections, and the Sala for crime had final jurisdiction over all crime in Madrid and its environs within a radius of five leagues ⁽⁴⁰⁾

Originally, the Cárcel de Corte housed noble and distinguished prisoners, but in the eighteenth century there were all kinds of offenders. Even today the building's two storeys have an elegant appearance. The facade is flanked by two towers, and the main entrance is reinforced by a third section, the front of which runs the [62] full height of the structure. An enormous royal coat of arms breaks up the cornice. In the eighteenth century there were spacious hearing rooms and court chambers on the top for the Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte. The whole ground floor was given over to the Court Jail. There were two patios, one of which was paved and had arches on two sides and a fountain in the middle. Most of the male prisoners (all those who had completed their declarations) spent their days in this courtyard, and Howard was impressed when he saw many of them washing their clothes at the stone troughs near the fountain. At night, they were confined to dungeons some twenty-two steps down from the patio. In one of the dungeons there were beds that the jailer rented to prisoners who could pay him one and one-half reales a night. There also were rooms for which six doubloons were paid in advance, together with one and one-half reales per night. In addition, the jailer had accommodations in his own quarters that he could let out to selected wealthy prisoners at twenty-five doubloons per man for the period of their confinement. As for the women [63] prisoners, until the reforms at the end of the century, they were all confined together in one large room. None wore chains, since it was established practice in early modern Spain not to place irons on women. They had their own infirmary, as did the men. At the time of Howard's visit, the number of prisoners in the Court Jail totaled 180, with 140 men and forty women. ⁽⁴¹⁾

Whereas the fee system allowed wealthy prisoners to obtain a scale of comfort and service graduated according to how much money they were paying, the poor lived out their days of incarceration in misery and squalor. Since there were no regular prison rations, penniless prisoners had to depend on charity and occasional free issues on religious holidays. More than one provision of this kind did exist. Although inmates ordinarily were not allowed to beg from the sides of the jails, a few inmates (on behalf of all) were permitted to do so on Thursday and Friday of Easter week. In addition, collection boxes were placed for this purpose outside the jails. This fund was administered by the jail chaplain and a specially appointed official known as the procurador de pobres who served as an attorney for the poor and destitute prisoners. The sums that were collected were distributed to the inmates either in cash or in food so as to provide them with additional nourishment for the Easter holidays.⁽⁴²⁾

Poor prisoners also were assisted by individuals and societies that made charitable donations for this purpose. Many private persons, in particular the noble and wealthy, left them bequests in their wills. Furthermore, from the sixteenth century onward there existed in many cities charitable organizations that were devoted specifically to the assistance of poor and needy prisoners. In the eighteenth century other societies came into being, and two of the most important were in Madrid. ⁽⁴³⁾ They were the Asociación de Señoras and the Asociación de la Caridad. The Asociación de Señoras, established in 1787, was an organization of noblewomen dedicated to the task of visiting the jails and aiding women prisoners, spiritually and materially. The Asociación de la Caridad, founded in 1799 by the Count of Miranda, performed the same services for male prisoners. Both organizations distributed alms, food, clothing, and blankets to prisoners, in addition to providing religious instruction. ⁽⁴⁴⁾

[64] While the principal aims of these associations were religious and charitable, they also worked to effect reform of the jails. By this time, the ideas of Cesare Beccaria had entered Spain. Their most famous proponent was Manuel de Lardizábal, who in 1782 published his Discurso sobre las penas on the subject. This work constituted the doctrinal basis for Spanish penal reform. Like Beccaria, Lardizábal and other Spanish reformers rejected the death penalty in favor of punitive imprisonment and advocated the principle that the penalty must fit the crime. Lardizábal went further than any other reformer. While accepting the utilitarian and intimidatory purpose of the penalty, he emphasized the correction of offenders as the ultimate objective. ⁽⁴⁵⁾

The work of the Madrid associations must be viewed against the background of the writings of Lardizábal and the other criminal law reformers, but their main inspiration came from John Howard. Howard had a definite conception of how jails should be reformed. Prison buildings should provide sufficient security, but also have spacious rooms and sanitary conditions. Officials should be appointed and salaried under the supervision of some public authority. Inmates must be fed a healthy diet and given suitable education and religious instruction. Howard considered useful labor to be the essence of sound prison discipline, and believed that facilities for it should be provided in every jail. ⁽⁴⁶⁾

In the 1780s, the activities of the Asociación de Señoras were a faithful reflection of the ideas of Howard and the other reformers. Its earliest efforts were directed toward the classification and separation of prisoners to eliminate the pernicious effects of the indiscriminate mixing of inmates of all ages and crimes. This was done in the belief that segregation was the essential first step in bringing about the rehabilitation of offenders. The Asociación sponsored the establishment of a department for youthful female offenders (ten to sixteen years) in the Cárcel de Corte. This department, known as the Sala de Corrección, functioned on the principals of "seclusion, regulated labor and religious instruction." At the same time, another special department was set up in the same jail where pregnant women received special care. ⁽⁴⁷⁾

The Asociación de Señoras and, after 1799, the Asociación de la Caridad, believed like Howard that work was the main correctional [65] tool. Both organizations introduced remunerative labor, which offered the inmates the opportunity to earn some money and to learn a useful trade. They purchased the necessary raw materials and set up workshops. Instructors and supervisors paid by the Associations were brought in to oversee the work. Finally, the Associations sold the goods that were produced and distributed the proceeds among the inmates. ⁽⁴⁸⁾

The work program initiated by the Madrid Associations was a voluntary one; prisoners could not be compelled to participate, because the jails were still detention centers. Only a small percentage of the inmates chose to work. For example, in the last six months of 1799, according to a report of the Asociación de Señoras, there were on the average ten prisoners enrolled in the program in the Cárcel de Corte out of a total of some fifty female inmates, and the ratio in the Cárcel de Villa was even smaller (three out of thirty prisoners). ⁽⁴⁹⁾ After the turn of the century, when it became clear that the voluntary program was not successful, the Associations began to press for a reformed prison system based on compulsory labor as the principal means for rehabilitation. With the adoption of punitive imprisonment in the nineteenth century, the program of the Associations was enacted. ⁽⁵⁰⁾  The prisons became workshops, and the forced labor characteristic of the houses of correction and the presidios became the rehabilitative labor of the modern prison systems.
 
 

1. Sánchez Ortega, Los gitanos españoles, pp. 107-8.

2. For an excellent analysis of the view of the eighteenth-century religious and secular thinkers on this problem, see William Callahan, Honor, Commerce and Industry in Eighteenth-Century Spain (Boston: Baker Library, Harvard University School of Business Administration, 1972); and, by the same author, "The Problem of Confinement: An Aspect of Poor Relief in Eighteenth-Century Spain," Hispanic American Historical Review 51(1971): 2-24.

3. Benito Jerónimo Feijóo, Theatro crítico universal, as quoted in Callahan, "The Problem of Confinement," p. 8.

4. Lorenzo de Normante y Carcavilla, Espíritu del Señor Melón as quoted in Callahan, Honor, p. 58.

5. Nicolás de Arriquíbar, Recreación política (Vitoria: Tomás de Robles y Navarro, 1779), 1:49; Pedro Rodríguez de Campomanes, Apéndice a la educación popular, 4 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta de d. A. de Sancha,

1775-76), 3:233.

6. Arriquíbar, Recreación política, p. 48; Antonio Javier Pérez y López, Discurso sobre la honra y deshonra legal, 2nd ed. (Madrid: La Imprenta Real, 1786), p. 18.

7. Peréz y López, Discurso, p. 20; Rodríguez de Campomanes, Apéndice, 2:183.

8. The best work on vagrancy in eighteenth-century Spain is María Rosa Peréz Estévez, El problema de los vagos en la España del siglo XVIII (Madrid: Confederación Española de Cajas de Ahorros, 1976). See pp. 55-64 for a discussion of the term vagrant in the eighteenth century.

9. Ibid., pp. 65-81. For the legislation against vagrancy, see pp. 165-94.

10. Ibid., pp. 232-37. For vagrants in active service in the army and navy, see pp. 236-68.

11. Documents relating to the Peninsular military presidios can be found scattered through AGS, Guerra Modema, legs. 4793-4988. See other references in AHN, Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, year 1742, if. 300-302; year 1743, f. 149; year 1749, ff. 334-36, 374-78; year 1750, f. 466; year 1751, f. 17; year 1753, f. 9; year 1762, f. 281.

12. Pérez Estévez, El problema de los vagos, pp. 248-86; AHN, year 1775, ff. 669-76, Apr. 30, 1750.

13. Perez Estévez, El problema de los vagos, p. 249, AGS, Guerra Moderna, leg. 4988, Sept. 12, 1788.

14. AGS, Guerra Moderna, leg. 4940, Oct. 31, 1777.

15. Ibid., leg. 4950, Feb. 26-Mat, 1786.

16. The results of this investigation can be found in AGS, Guerra Moderna, leg. 4988, Sept. 12, 1788.

17. Ibid.; and leg. 4962, Jan. 13, 1783, for La Coruña.

18. Callahan, "The Problem of Confinement," pp. 4-5. For the writings of other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors on this topic, see Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Historia de la prevision social en España (Madrid: Editorial Revista de Derecho Privado, 1944), ch. 10; and

Pérez Estévez, El problema de los vagos, pp. 296-98.

19. Callahan, Honor, p. 60. Ward's views can be found in his Obra pía: medio de remediar la miseria de la gente pobre de España, published as an appendix to his Proyecto económico (Madrid: J. Ibarra, 1782).

20. Rusche and Kirchheimer, Punishment and Social Structure, p. 42; Callahan, "The Problem of Confinement," pp. 1-12. For the early history of the houses of correction in Europe, see J. Thorsten Sellin, Pioneering in Penology: The Amsterdam Houses of Correction in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944).

21. Jacques Soubeyroux, Pauperisme et rapports sociaux á Madrid au XVIII éme siécle (Lille: Université de Lille III, 1978), 2:635-44. There was another workhouse in Madrid known as the Hospicio which was a refuge for paupers and the destitute (mainly the aged and youths) and did not normally receive delinquents. For a description of both workhouses, see John Howard, The State of Prisons in England and Wales (Warrington, England: W. Eyres, 1784), sec. 4 (Foreign Prisons), pp. 156-58.

22. AGS, Gracia y Justicia, leg. 807.

23. Conclusions in the following paragraphs are based on an analysis of data in AGS, Gracia y Justicia, leg. 807.

24. Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:74-86.

25. Domínguez Ortiz, "La galera," pp. 277-85; Howard, The State of Prisons, p. 156; Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:66, 74.

26. Soubeyroux, Pauperisme, 2:641. After 1782, women prisoners from other parts of the country (for example, tobacco defrauders) began to be sent to San Fernando as well.

27. Sellin, Slavery and the Penal System, p. 81; Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:66, 86. For the transformation of the houses of correction in the rest of Europe in the eighteenth century, see Max Grünhut, Penal Reform: A Comparative Study (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1948), pp. 25-27.

28. Howard, The State of Prisons, p. 153; Cadalso, Instituciones penitenciarias, p. 157.

29. Francois A. F. La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Noticia de las cárceles de Filadelfia, trans. Ventura de Arquellada (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1801), pp. 85-86. Information on the Madrid jails is found in Arquellada's notes to this edition.

30. Francisco Lastres, La cárcel de Madrid, 1572-1877 (Madrid: La Revista Contemporónea, 1877), p. 9; Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Noticia, p.91.

31. Cadalso, Instituciones penitenciarias, pp. 194, 159.

32. Ibid., p. 194. For the table of fees, years 1736, 1741, and 1781, see AVM, Secretaría, sec. 1, leg. 101, no. 20, year 1736; see. 2, leg. 236, no. 4, year 1781.

33. Cadalso, Instituciones penitenciarias, p. 201; Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Noticia, p. 81; Francisco de Quevedo Villegas, El buscón, ed. Américo Castro (Madrid: Clásicos Castellanos, 1960), pp. 187-89.

34. Howard, The State of Prisons, pp. 155-56; AVM, Secretaría, sec. 2, leg. 236, no. 4, year 1781.

35. Howard, The State of Prisons, pp. 155-61.

36. AHN, Sala de Alealdes, year 1786, if. 238ù73. For an account of the use of torture in Spain, see F. Tomás y Valiente, La tortura en España (Madrid: Editorial Ariel, 1973).

37. The principal collection of documents relating to the Madrid jails can be found in the Archivo de Villa, but most of it concerns the nineteenth century. The material for the eighteenth century is fragmentary and limited.

38. Lastres, Le cárcel de Madrid, pp. 11-14; AVM, Secretaría, sec. 3, leg. 103, no. 6, sec. 1, leg. 233, year 1831, no. 45; sec. 3, leg. 102, no. 13, year 1787.

39. Lastres, La cárcel de Madrid, p. 12; for Howard's description, see The State of Prisons, p. 156.

40. Gonzalo Anes, El Antiguo Régimen: Los Borbones (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1976), p. 323.

41. Howard, The State of Prisons, pp. 155-56; Lastres, La cárcel de Madrid, p. 14.

42. For example, in 1793, a total of 1,526 reales was collected and distributed among the prisoners of both Madrid jails during Easter week. AHN, Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, year 1793, ff. 183-87; year 1792, ff. 1041-45; Howard, The State of Prisons, p. 160. The accounts of the procuradores de pobres of the Cárcel de Villa for a few years in the eighteenth century still exist in the Archivo de Villa.

43. Charitable organizations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are described in Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:163-73. For private donations for poor prisoners, see AVM, Secretaría, see. 2, leg. 239, no. 2, year 1765, and other examples scattered throughout the collection.

44. The best discussion of the Madrid associations and others can be found in Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:163-229, 239-404. For the work of the Countess of Montijo, one of the founders of the Asociación de Señoras, see Paula de Demerson, María Francisca de Salas Portocarrero, Condesa de Montijo: Una figura de la Ilustración (Madrid: Editora National, 1975), ch. 5.

45. Manuel de Lardizábal, "Discurso sobre las penas," in José Antón Oneca, "Estudio preliminar: El derecho penal de la Ilustración," Revista de la Escuela de Estudios Penitenciarios (1966): 591-746; Israel Drapkin, "Manuel Montesinos y Molina -- An Almost Forgotten Precursor of Penal Reform in Spain," ed. Marvin Wolfgang in Crime and Culture, (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968), pp. 321-22. For the ideas of Beccaria, see Mareello Maestro, Cesare Beccaria and the Origins of Penal Reform (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973).

46. Grünhut, Penal Reform, ch. 3.

47. Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:192-96; AHN, Sala de Alcaldes, year 1794, ff. 183-94; year 1788, vol. 2, ff. 555-94.

48. Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:255-67, 191-216. The Asociación de Señoras also introduced a work program into the galera. In fact this was its original project and its most successful one.

49. Ibid., pp. 215-16; AHN, Alcaldes de Casa y Corte, year 1792, ff. 1011-40; year 1796, ff. 283-89.

50. Salillas, Evolución penitenciaria, 1:242-44.