Jonas Hanway’s book, Solitude in Imprisonment, was an emphatic, particularized appeal within Hanway’s general program for more thorough, more benevolent social regulation. Solitude in Imprisonment, which was published in 1776, had 144 pages. About a year earlier Hanway had published a work entitled:

The defects of police : the cause of immorality and the continual robberies committed, particularly in and about the metropolis, with various proposals for preventing hanging and transportation, likewise for the establishment of several plans of police on a permanent basis with respect to common beggars; the peaceful regulation of paupers; the peaceful security of subjects; and the moral and political conduct of the people; observations on the Rev. Mr. Hetherington’s charity and the most probable means of relieving the blind. In twenty-nine letters to a member of Parliament. ^

This work was longer (288 pages), less focused, and apparently less successful than Solitude in Imprisonment. ^ The earlier work set out a maudlin anecdote about communication featuring a female prostitute. Solitude in Imprisonment repeated that anecdote nearly verbatim.^ ^