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to whipping, branding, or other corporal punishment. Public humiliation was considered a deterrent, so
the convicted criminal was not locked up—only debtors languished in jail. One of the sheriff's earliest
duties was to take custody of prisoners. Because few counties had a secure place of confinement for
prisoners, most persons awaiting trial were out on bail, bond, or personal recognizance, and a sheriff who
could not produce them for trial was penalized. Beginning in 1674, every county was required to build a
jail (Chapter 16, Acts of 1674), and the Paper Currency Act of 1733 allotted funds for each county to
erect a prison (Chapter 6, Acts of 1733).

In response to an increase in such crimes as burglary, robbery and horse-stealing, a Court of Oyer and
Terminer and Gaol Delivery was created in 1793 for Baltimore County (Chapter 57, Acts of 1793). The Court
could sentence convicted men for up to seven years hard labor working on the public roads of Baltimore County
or building, repairing, or cleaning the streets or basin of Baltimore-town. Caretakers, a place of confinement,
coarse apparel, and food, consisting of bread, coarse meat, and water would be provided by the Court. Convicts
could be compelled to work in irons and wear a distinctive badge. Any misconduct was punishable by close
confinement, a diet of bread and water, and up to thirty-nine lashes of the whip. Convicted women also could
be sentenced for up to seven years hard labor; however, their labor was out of public view at such tasks as
picking oakum, beating or hackling hemp or flax, manufacturing wool, knitting, or sewing. Women were not
subject to whipping. The most interesting feature of the 1793 law was its statewide provision. County courts
and the General Court of the State had the option of conveying their convicted criminals to the person or
persons appointed to take care of criminals in Baltimore County for the fee of five pounds current money. The
law also authorized counties to keep their criminals at home, the men at hard labor on the county roads, the
women in the county workhouse. Such laws were known as "wheelbarrow" laws.

Development of State Prisons. The nineteenth century was the forum for the great debate over systems
of penology. Penitentiaries were built in response to public outrage at the spectacle of convicts laboring
on roads and other public projects. Their institutional function was to punish prisoners through solitary
confinement and, later, hard labor. Prison labor began as a punitive measure, but by the end of the century
was perceived as rehabilitative, which justified any profit to the State.

The Maryland Penitentiary, authorized in 1804 and opened in 1811, vacillated between the two
competing penal philosophies of the times, but was renowned for nearly always being profitable
(Resolution no. 15, Acts of 1804). A legislative committee inspected the building under construction in
1807 and reported that the new penitentiary had depositories for raw materials and manufactured goods,
nine cells measuring roughly 8 by 16 feet, separate rooms for women, and a chapel. The 1809 law, which
specified for what crimes and what terms persons were to be sentenced to confinement in the new
penitentiary, merely stipulated that convicts "shall be kept therein at hard labour, or in solitude," and male
and female prisoners kept separate (Chapter 138, Acts of 1809). Thus, at its inception, the Maryland
Penitentiary operated under neither the Philadelphia system of total isolation nor the Auburn system of
moral isolation. Both systems, however, exerted some influence. In 1829, the Directors of the Maryland
Penitentiary reported the completion of a new east wing designed for solitary confinement at night. In
1837, the Directors were required to remodel or rebuild the old west wing so that prison discipline based
on the Philadelphia plan could be extended to the women's department. Further, "the directors shall pay
particular regard to the enforcement of the Philadelphia system, to the fullest extent of its admissibility, in
the new cells, so as to be able to report to the Governor annually, the effects thereof upon the convicts,
as a reformatory and punitive confinement, and also upon the financial and manufacturing operations of
the Penitentiary, for the purpose of affording a comparative estimate of the merits of the two great systems
of punishment now in use in the United States" (Chapter 320, Acts of 1837). The President and Directors
of the Maryland Penitentiary noted in 1838, however, that "the experience of the past year has served to
test the efficacy of the Auburn system of prison discipline in our Penitentiary, to the introduction of which
the new workshops were expressly adapted." By 1841, the Auburn System was definitely in use with its
discipline of silence by day, solitary confinement by night, enforced by the whip.

Prisoners in the Maryland Penitentiary were kept at hard labor most of the time, either confined in their
solitary cells (Philadelphia) or in a common but silent work area (Auburn). The 1809 law called for either
hard labor or solitude, whereas the 1837 law required the prisoner to work in his cell during solitary
confinement a period not less than one-twentieth nor more than one-half of the total sentence (Chapter
138, Acts of 1809; Chapter 320, Acts of 1837). The weaving of cotton and woolen goods was one of the
more successful manufactures undertaken, as it employed even the older and more feeble inmates. In the
late 1830's, however, the market for such products was undercut by cheap machine-made calicoes.

By 1842, the Penitentiary, hit hard by a general commercial depression and the depreciation of its textile
production, had accumulated a deficit. Its directors appointed a committee to visit five penitentiaries in