John Howard (prison reformer)

John Howard FRS (2 September 1726 – 20 January 1790) was a philanthropist and the first English prison reformer.

Howard was born in North London, either in Hackney or Enfield. His father, also John, was a wealthy upholsterer at Smithfield Market in the city. His mother Ann Pettitt died when he was five years old, and, described as a "sickly child", he was sent to live at Cardington, Bedfordshire, some fifty miles from London, where his father owned property. His father, a strict disciplinarian with strong religious beliefs, sent the young John to a school in Hertford and then to John Eames's dissenting academy in London.

After school, John was apprenticed to a wholesale grocer to learn business methods, but he was unhappy. When his father died in 1742, he was left with a sizeable inheritance but no true vocation. His Calvinist faith and quiet, serious disposition meant he had little desire for the fashionable endeavours of an English aristocratic lifestyle. In 1748, he left England for a grand tour of the continent.

Upon his return, he lived in lodgings in Stoke Newington, where he again became seriously ill. He was nursed back to health by his landlady, Sarah Loidore, whom he then married despite her being thirty years older than he was. She died within three years and he distributed her meagre belongings amongst her remaining family and poor neighbours.

John Howard was considered eccentric by many of his contemporaries. It has been advanced by psychiatrist Philip Lucas and by mathematician Ioan Mackenzie James that Howard might have been autistic.

He then set out for Portugal following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, traveling on the Hanover, which was captured by French privateers. He was imprisoned in Brest for six days before being transferred to another prison on the French coast. He was later exchanged for a French officer held by the British, and he quickly travelled to the Commissioners of Sick and Wounded Seamen in London to seek help on behalf of his fellow captives. It is widely believed that this personal experience generated Howard's interest in prisons.

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