Thomas Eddy

• Thomas Eddy
• Born: September 5, 1758
• Died: September 16, 1827

Prison reformer, antislavery advocate, philanthropist, was born in Philadelphia, one of sixteen children in the family of James Eddy and Mary (Darragh) Eddy. His parents, who had been Presbyterians in their native Ireland, became members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) before emigrating to Philadelphia. The religious atmosphere of Thomas Eddy’s home and his early association with William Savery, a leader in the Quaker community, had a positive influence in shaping his sympathies.

Before and during the Revolutionary War, the Eddy family favored the loyalist Tory cause and young Thomas suffered persecution at the hands of his neighbors. He was accused of being a spy for the British and put in prison. No doubt this experience was an important factor in turning his thoughts to prison reform. While he was incarcerated, he learned that it was customary to flog inmates with a cat-o’-nine tails, to burn their hands and foreheads with a hot iron, to crop their ears, or to expose them in a pillory where slops might be dumped upon their heads. In addition, Eddy found, prisoners—himself included—were often held in cells so crowded it was impossible to sit or lie down.

Soon after he was freed, Eddy spurred a campaign by the Philadelphia Quakers to set up a prison in the city (the Walnut Street penitentiary) in which prisoners were furnished clean, single cells.

At the age of twenty-four, Eddy married Hannah Hartshorne, the sister of his friends Lawrence and Richard Hartshorne. After several unsuccessful business ventures in the Philadelphia area, he and his wife moved to New York City, where he became an insurance broker. In his autobiographical writings, Eddy noted that in 1792 the public debt of the United States was funded and that this provided an opportunity for him to speculate in public funds. “I made a great deal of money,” he wrote. He became an insurance underwriter and was eminently successful in this business also. Soon he was able to devote his energies largely to philanthropic endeavors. Prison reform became his main interest, inspired by the progressive ideas of William Penn, the Quaker leader and founder of Pennsylvania; John Howard (1726-90), the English prison reformer and philanthropist; Baron Charles Louis de Montesquieu (1688– 1755), the French philosopher, writer, and jurist.

In 1796 Eddy’s zeal inspired a similar interest on the part of Philip John Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general and New York State legislator. The two men traveled to Philadelphia to investigate the Walnut Street jail. On their return to New York, Eddy and his associates urged the legislature to authorize the building of two jails similar to the one in Philadelphia. Only one was built, the “Newgate Prison” in Greenwich Village. Eddy was appointed to play a role in overseeing the construction of the prison and later became an official of it. He was disappointed, however, to find that the new building did not have single cells, for he believed that such a system was advisable, particularly for hardened offenders.

During the next quarter-century, Eddy devoted himself unstintingly to prison reform—specifically the banning of branding and the cropping of ears—and to the liberalization of the penal system in New York. He wrote, in 1801, what came to be considered an important document in the history of prison reform, An Account of the State Prison or Penitentiary House in the City of New-York. He founded a Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents; helped to found the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane; and, in 1815, published Hints for Introducing an Improved Method of Treating the Insane in an Asylum. He was against the practice of imprisoning debtors, and proposed laws against gambling and drunkenness.

Eddy died at the age of sixty-nine. During his life he found time to associate himself with many forward-looking movements of his time. He was a founder of the Free School Society, an organization designed to establish a free school for poor children in New York City and a step leading to the creation of a public school system. He took an active part in working with De Witt Clinton in support of the Erie Canal project and in 1810 wrote an article on canal navigation for the American Medical and Philosophical Register. He opposed slavery. He was a founder and governor of New York Hospital, a founder of the American Bible Society, a founder of the House of Refuge, one of the first trustees of the Bank for Savings in the City of New York, and a member of Quaker committees organized to provide assistance for American Indians. His good works were many and varied, but he is remembered chiefly as his country’s first prison reformer.

Eddy’s published works include his Account of the State Prison or Penitentiary House in the City of New-York (1801) and Hints for Introducing an Improved Method of Treating the Insane in the Asylum (1815). Biographical sources are S. L. Knapp, The Life of Thomas Eddy (1834); H. E. Barnes, The Repression of Crime (1926); W. W. Campbell, Life and Writing of De Witt Clinton (1849); letter of John W. Francis, in the New York Public Library; brief sketches in The New-York Mirror, March 8, 1834; F. Hunt, Lives of American Merchants (1858). See also the Dictionary of American Biography (1931).