William Marshall Fitts Round
William Marshall Fitts Round was a prominent prison reformer born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the 19th century. The son of a Baptist minister, he initially pursued an education at Harvard Medical School but transitioned into journalism, writing for various newspapers. Round's significant involvement in prison reform began when he joined the Prison Association of New York in 1881, where he served in multiple leadership roles until 1900. His advocacy focused on the social rehabilitation of delinquents and included proposals for parole, industrial training, and the elimination of county jails, which he criticized for their harsh conditions.
Throughout his career, Round was instrumental in founding the National Prison Association, later known as the American Prison Association, and he played a vital role in establishing alternative penal systems, including farm schools for delinquent boys. His innovative approaches to prison reform incorporated scientific and psychological principles, reflecting the progressive ideals of his time. Additionally, Round authored several novels under the pseudonym Peter Pennot, expressing his social concerns through fiction. He passed away at sixty, leaving a legacy marked by significant contributions to the treatment and rehabilitation of individuals within the penal system.
Subject Terms
William Marshall Fitts Round
- William Marshall Fitts Round
- Born: March 26, 1845
- Died: January 2, 1906
Prison reformer, was born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the son of Daniel Round and Elizabeth Ann (Fitts) Round. His father was a Baptist minister. After a public school education followed by study at Harvard Medical School, which was cut short by illness, he worked as a journalist for a variety of newspapers, including The Boston Daily News, the Golden Rule (also based in Boston), and The New York Independent. He was commissioner from the United States to the Vienna World’s Fair in 1873 and was responsible for the New England department.
Round went through a brief, intensive period of writing novels, under the pseudonym of Peter Pennot, including Achsah: a New England Life Study (1876), Child Marian Abroad (1878), and Rosecraft, a Story of Common Places and Common People (1881). He was married in 1877 to Ellen Miner Thomas.
Although concerned with social reform generally, Round became especially absorbed in the social rehabilitation and treatment of delinquents, the interest that would sustain him through much of his life. He was placed on the executive committee of the Prison Association of New York in 1881; one year later he became the association’s corresponding secretary. He served until 1900. Legally empowered to inspect county penal institutions, the association sought to remedy the conditions in which prisoners were kept, as well as to aid released prisoners and influence government policy on these and related issues. This work elicited Round’s creative energies, and he began to advocate methods of parole, industrial training for prisoners, indeterminate sentences, and elimination of county jails. He criticized the extent to which prisoners were subject to corporal punishment and in his reports depicted vividly the political corruption involved in the running of county jails and their uncleanliness and overcrowding.
Some improvement seemed to result from Round’s efforts and from those of the association. Encouraged, Round stepped up his organizational efforts, in the midst of wider public interest in prison reform and the failure of charity organizations to focus on this need. With Franklin Sanborn, president of the American Social Science Association, Round called for the reorganization of the National Prison Association (NPA) in 1883. Disagreements between reformers and wardens threatened to block the way, but in 1884 Round was able to take a leading position in the first regular congress of the NPA. The organization (which became the American Prison Association in 1908) underwent new structural revisions in 1886, the year in which Round became its secretary.
Round assisted in plans for farm schools for delinquent boys and ran the Burnham Industrial Farm at Canaan, New York, for a few years; here he established the “mill” system, which rewarded good behavior, and the cottage housing system, creating for the boys a degree of autonomy from the farm’s central authority. His organization of the farm was modeled in part on French and German systems, including that of the Rauhe Haus near Hamburg. Round also established the nonsectarian Order of St. Christopher to train employees at public institutions.
Leaving Canaan near the end of his life, Round became head of an orphan asylum at College Point, Long Island. He died at Acushnet, Massachusetts, at the age of sixty.
Round’s proposal to abolish county jails became a reality in some states, which set up alternative penal farms. He was significant as a reformer who applied innovative scientific and psychological ideas, consistent with the spirit of the progressive movement, to the problems of prison organizations and the human needs of delinquents.
For data on his work see the annual reports of the Prison Association of New York (1882-1900). Round’s fiction works include Torn and Mended, a Christmas Story (1877) and Hal, the Story of a Clodhopper (1880). Biographical sources include the memorial notice in Prison Association of New York. Sixty-First Annual Report (1905-06); Who’s Who in America (1906-07); and B. McKelvey, The History of American Prisons (1977). See also The New York—Daily Tribune, January 17, 1892. Other bibliographical items are contained in an article in the Dictionary of American Biography (1935). Obituaries appeared in The Boston Evening Transcript and The New-York Tribune, January 6, 1906.