By the 1830s a sense of crisis over the direction of penal policy prevailed. In his imperial digest the Scottish economist John Ramsay McCulloch produced the statistics and proffered an analytical description along the usual lines. Prisons were chaotic. There was little distinction in their purpose, little coherence, and no uniformity. In 1837 there were 136 prisons in England and Wales under the operation of the Gaol Act, besides a considerable number of prisons belonging to corporate bodies exempted from its jurisdiction. There were in addition 107 county prisons, of which sixteen were exclusively gaols or places for the safe custody of persons committed for trial or confined after conviction; thirty-nine were gaols and houses of correction combined; and fifty-two were denominated houses of correction, being distinct and generally at some distance from gaols. Of the latter, however, only twelve served their original purpose as in the others it was commonplace to confine both those remanded and those convicted. The amount of work provided varied enormously from place to place, and where tread-wheels were installed the severity of labour fluctuated ‘from 5,000 to 14,000 feet of ascent per day in summer and in winter from 3,600 to 12,500 feet’.