Throughout the case the rulings of Judge Henry were briefly and clearly made, and his charge to the jury contained a correct and succinct statement of such principles of law as the facts required.

During Judge Henry's term of office, West Chester was erected into a borough. One of the judge's last judicial acts was to sign the following decree:

"Feb. Sessions, 1800. The within petition being read, on consideration it is ordered by the Court, That the interior bounds of the township of Goshen shall hereafter be known and limited by the boundary assigned to the borough of West Chester by the first Section of an Act of Assembly passed the 28th day of March, 1799." By the Court

JNO. JOS. HENRY,
W. FINNEY,

BENJAMIN JACOBS.

Filed 20, Feb., 1800.

Where Henry left the Kennebec

"SAD

THE JAIL OF '92

"Triste comme les portes d'une prison."

AD as the gates of prison" is a French proverb with which Hopkins begins his Dungeons of Old Paris.

In seeking to find the reason of that "dreary saying," Hopkins undoes the bolts of her historic prisons, slits the curtains of cobwebs which everywhere abound, pushes back on their hinges the triple doors of the cells, peers into the holes that ventilate the conical oubliettes, and even lights up for a moment the carceres duri and vade in pace into which the hooded victims were lowered by torchlight and out of which their bones were never raked.

There is a sense of suffocation in this prison air, a horror as of death in these moist and sunless caverns.

Standing by the brink of these abysses where sex counted for nothing, no one will dispute Hopkins' conclusion that the most pitiful objects in the annals of France are the victims

of its criminal justice; but many persons will find the reason not so much in the multiplied cruelties of the prisons as in the impossibility of escape therefrom.

How refreshing it is to turn from the mouldy records of these French prisons, whose very dust seems to infect us, to the official records of Chester County's jail in the first years of its establishment. "Sad as the gates of prison" finds little illustration in its early annals, compassion no occasion for copious outpouring.

In the spring of 1792, at the May Term of Quarter Sessions, Charles Dilworth, one time tavern keeper of Birmingham Township and now sheriff, makes the following return:

List of Prisoners Confined in the Gaol of West Chester in the County of Chester May 21, 1792

Henry Baughman Larceny Committed May 15, 1792
William Lewis

Debt

20, 1792

Under Dilworth's administration, apparently each prisoner acted as his own commuter.

When he had suffered the amount of punishment that he felt his offense deserved, or when his imprisonment grew irksome or prison fare happened to be unpalatable, he vacated his cell for a new offender, who in turn remained until he had been sufficiently humbled in his own estimation and then departed.

Chain Dilworth this

Such a system has many commendatory features: it dispenses with Commutation Acts, does away with inspectors, relieves jailers of responsibility, gives turnkeys their needed rest and promotes introspection on the part of prisoners.

When I look at this "return" I cannot forbear thinking that Dilworth felt a pardonable pride in the fact that only two of the six prisoners committed to his care had insisted upon remaining and thereby put the county to the expense of their maintenance.

His signature manifests this feeling clearly. How large he makes it and how decorativenot a single possible flourish omitted! “I, Charles Dilworth, have rendered valuable service in my conduct of the jail." So I interpret his signature. Is he wrong? Has he not saved his county the cost of supporting its prisoners? Taxpayers, this is your friend.

During the winter months he could not be expected to accomplish so much, for with the approach of winter the desire to relinquish warm quarters materially lessens. At the November term, Dilworth and Colonel Joseph McClelland (who was elected sheriff in October) were able combinedly to report but one evasion:

"Elias Rambo, removed from Phila., committed on September 4, made his escape October 18."

Accustomed as Rambo was to the amusements of the city, he probably found prison entertainments at the Cross-roads dull.

Of course, to vindicate the majesty of the law, indictments now and then were found against prisoners who had escaped, but generally there were some circumstances about their escapes that indicated contempt for their surroundings, and contempt has ever been an unpardonable sin. Romulus killed Remus for