The Virginia Gazette

An Account of the Rasp House at Amsterdam.

The Dutch being sensible that most disorders in a state are owing to crimes of a less than of a more heinous nature, as the latter are but seldom perpetrated, and the former every day, where suffered, and considering that it is by means of the former or lesser crimes that people harden themselves by degrees to the commission of greater, prudently determined that no crime in their country should be without an adequate punishment.

With this intent they set up that famous building the Rasp House at Amsterdam, in which are several orders of punishment, for the different degrees of vice: The idle are made only to work, the wicked and idle are to work, and are punished too; and there are other apartments where softer means are used, for the reclaiming less hardened offenders, and where confinement is the only punishment, good advice supplying, and that often very happily, the place of the rod or whip; and the effect of this is not only that we have there no such shocking scenes as are frequently to be met with in London, but we bring back many to industry and virtue, whom you leave to the gallows.

The entry to the Rasp House is through two strong gateways of stone, which lead into a spacious square; over the outer gate there is a decoration adapted to the place; it is a carter loaded with rasps, saws, and other implements of industry, used in the house; his waggon not drawn by horses, but by wolves, bears, lions, and tigers, which the carter drives along with a whip; over it are these words,

Virtus et domare, que cuneti pavent.

That is, It is the work of virtue to tame those creatures which all men fear.

Over the gateway are carved two strong naked fellows, with their legs fettered, rasping off logwood; for log wood being a commodity of great trade with the Dutch, they make their criminals rasp that, as we make ours beat hemp. Round the square on the ground floor are the prison rooms, which have iron bars for windows; and in the middle of the square stands a pillar, on the top of which is the figure of justice, with a pair of scales in one hand and a sword in the other; to this pillar the unruly criminals are tied to be whipped. The lower wards receive all the criminals, thieves, and vagabonds, not guilty of capital crimes; these, according to their demerits, are whipped oftener or seldomer at the post, and are confined in these apartments, and made to labour hard in rasping of logwood. Over these is another set of apartments, into which they put idle and vicious boys, vagrants, strollers, and beggars, who are troublesome to people in the streets; these are all made to work, according to their several abilities; and the boys have a school, where they are taught to read and write, at the publick expense; and often this proves a nursery of valuable and industrious persons.

The place where the building stands was formerly a convent, famed for miraculous cures of lameness and other disorders, and it seems yet to possess the same virtue; more persons having been cured of pretended lameness, and other disorders, at the post in the middle of this square, than by all the doctors and surgeons in many centuries.

Behind these publick wards there is a private one, in which are kept undutiful and wicked youths, who are sent thither by their parents or guardians; here they have no punishment besides the confinement, and are visited by sober persons, who talk to them of the nature of their crimes, and try to instil into their minds a love of virtue and a hatred of vice. Every one has here his private cell, unknown to one another, and to all the world: and here they are kept until they give hopes and promises of amendment; they are then returned to their parents with all secrecy, and the absence is called a journey into the country. Nor is this part of the house kept for children alone; for a wife, making the grounds of her complaint against her husband appear, may send him thither in the same manner. I need not ask, with all these advantages, both publick and private, whether it would not be a very valuable thing to have a Rasp House at London, as well as at Amsterdam.