The promulgation of these two Gaol Acts strengthened the hands of the Prison Discipline Society enormously. It had now a legal and authoritative standard of efficiency to apply, and could expose all the local authorities that still lagged behind, or neglected to comply with the provisions of the new laws. The Society did not shrink from its self-imposed duty, but continued year after year, with unflagging energy and unflinching spirit, to watch closely and report at length upon the condition of the prisons of the country. For this purpose it kept up an extensive correspondence with all parts of the kingdom, and circulated queries to be answered in detail, whence it deduced the practice and condition of every prison that replied. Upon these and the private visitations made by various members the Society obtained the facts, often highly damnatory, which were embodied in its annual reports. The progress of improvement was certainly extremely slow. It was long before the many jurisdictions imitated the few. Gaols, of which the old prison at Reading was a specimen, were still left intact. In that prison, with its cells and yards arranged within the shell of an ancient abbey chapel, the prisoners, without firing, bedding, or sufficient food, spent their days "in surveying their grotesque prison, or contriving some means of escape by climbing the fluted columns which supported the Gothic arches of the aisles, and so passing by the roof down into the garden and on to freedom." In a county prison adjoining the metropolis, the separation between the male and female quarters was supposed to be accomplished by the erection of an iron railing; in this same prison capital convicts were chained to the floor until execution. In another gaol not far off male and female felons still occupied the same room--underground, and reached by a ladder of ten steps. In others the separation between the sexes consisted in a hanging curtain, or an imaginary boundary line, and nothing prevented parties from passing to either side but an empty regulation which all so disposed could defy. Numbers of the gaols were still unprovided with chaplains, and the prisoners never heard Divine service. In many others there were no infirmaries, no places set apart for the confinement of prisoners afflicted with dangerous and infectious disorders. No attempt was made to maintain discipline. Half the gaols had no code of rules properly prepared and sanctioned by the judges, according to law.