3-077-827 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Centenary of [the death of] John Howard, Prison Reformer: John Howard, (1890). 'Between 1773 and 1784 Howard traversed every country in Europe, except Turkey, visiting the jails in every capital and great city, spending £30,000 mainly in relieving the sick and giving freedom to the captive. In 1785 he made his fifth journey to the Continent, this time to examine the great lazaretti. Being refused admission into France, he disguised himself, [eluded] the police, made notes, and obtained drawings of the great lazaretto at Marseilles. He then visited those of Italy and Malta, and reached Smyrna, but returned in a foul ship, in order that he might experience what it was to be shut up in a lazaretto. In 1789 he started on his last journey, crossing Northern Germany, and on through St. Petersburg and Moscow to Cherson, where, in January 1790, he caught a fever in a self-sacrificing effort to save a young lady, already in the last stage of the disease. He died, and was buried in the village of Dauphine, in the neighbourhood of Cherson, thousands of Russians following him to the grave...Our Portrait is a facsimile of an etching by Holloway, who had many opportunities of observing the great philanthropist at the Baptist Chapel in Little Wild-street'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.