John Howard was born in 1726 at Stoke Newington, London, and came of a well to do family.  He later moved to Bedford and joined the Bunyan meeting in Mill Street.  When the minister adopted a more rigid Baptist position, John Howard with other paedo-baptist Congregationalists withdrew.  They built a Congregational Church in Mill Street not far from the Bunyan Meeting.  This church was a memorial to the great prison reformer.  Sadly today it is derelict and ruined, a reminder of the past glory and a witness to the decline of evangelical belief.  His truly Puritan spirit is evident in his letters and frequent expressions of joy in God in them.  His family seat was at Cardington but he owned a house in Bedford in order to be there on the Lord's Day and to avoid travel.  His concern for his servants and domestics was evident by the way in which he treated them and the accommodation he provided for them in building them cottages.  John Howard's first wife was much older than he and they had no children.  She had befriended him in a very serious illness, as his landlady, and in spite of her advanced age he married her.  Their life together was brief, she soon died and he married again.  There was a son by this second marriage who did not follow in his father's godly footsteps.

AN AWFUL EXPERIENCE
When he was about forty years of age his second wife died and he sought comfort in travel.  The ship on which he travelled was captured by a French privateer.  John Howard was imprisoned, treated harshly and saw the awful state of prisons.  He was released and returned to England.  The effect of this was deeply impressed upon him for the rest of his life.  In 1773 he became Sheriff of Bedfordshire.  In his official capacity he was responsible for Bedford Gaol.  There was in force a system by which the gaolers exacted large bribes from the prisoners and their families, even from those who were held on remand and were not yet sentenced.  Although not an M.P. he secured legislation to correct this and now busied himself in the task of making public the awful state of the prisons, bridewells and houses of correction.  He must have travelled hundreds of miles in his patient and thorough investigations into these matters.  His action was motivated by his deep piety and firm evangelical faith.  His work was recognised by his being called to the bar of the House of Commons and presented with the thanks of the nation for his valuable work in prison reform.

AN INTERNATIONAL REFORMER
He now being a widower, and free to travel more widely, visited France, Hungary, Austria, Italy, Russia, Spain and Portugal to view the prisons, to enquire into the treatment of the prisoners and seek to bring public attention to bear on the many forms of privation and cruelty practised in these institutions.  He later turned his attention to the problems of the lazarettos of the East.  The object of this research was to discover more about the jail fever (typhus) which was such a scourge in many prisons.  These travels took him to southern Russia where he nursed a lady with fever and contracted it himself.  He died there at Daughigny near Kherson and is buried under a small brick pyramid.

A MAN OF DEEP EVANGELICAL FAITH
The force behind this useful life and great endeavour was his personal faith in Christ and his deep loving concern for his fellow men.  His writings on the state of the prisons and lazarettos were full of facts and wise observations and roused governments and their legal officers to action.  His health was frail and his personal habits simple and frugal.  As a country gentleman and business man he could have lived a life of ease and pleasure but he chose rather to serve Christ in this unique way.

A LESSON FOR OUR TIME
The great lesson of the life of such evangelical people is that when the evangelical faith declines a moral decline sets in, awaiting a further revival of evangelical faith and belief to bring in a moral revolution.  This is now overdue and we wonder has God now come to the end of His mercy toward us as a nation?  "He will not always chide neither will He keep His anger forever".  Psalm 103:9