John Howard FRS (2 September 1726 – 20 January 1790) was a philanthropist and early English prison reformer.

His mother Ann Pettitt,[2] or Cholmley,[3] died when he was five years old, and, described as a "sickly child", he was sent to live at Cardington, Bedfordshire, some fifty miles from London, where his father owned property.

When his father died in 1742, he was left with a sizeable inheritance but no true vocation, a Calvinist faith and a quiet, serious disposition.

He was later exchanged for a French officer held by the British, and went to the Commissioners of Sick and Wounded Seamen in London to seek help on behalf of his fellow captives.

Having returned from France, he settled again at Cardington, Bedfordshire to live on a 200-acre (0.81 km2) estate which was formerly two farms, the larger of which he had inherited from his grandparents.

He took this issue to parliament, and in 1774 was called to give evidence on prison conditions to a House of Commons select committee.

[6] Howard's views on keeping prisoners in isolation were later unavailingly opposed by Elizabeth Fry, who believed in the value of association.

[7] The following account, of the Bridewell at Abingdon, Oxfordshire, is typical: Two dirty day-rooms; and three offensive night-rooms: That for men eight feet square: one of the women's, nine by eight; the other four and a half feet square: the straw, worn to dust, swarmed with vermin: no court: no water accessible to prisoners.

[3][8] Despite his request for a quiet funeral, the event was elaborate and attended by Emanuel Giani Ruset, the Prince of Moldavia, Nikolay Mordvinov, and Admiral John Priestman in the Russian service.

[9] When news of his death reached England in February 1790, a commemorative series of John Howard halfpenny Conder Tokens were struck, including one that circulated in Bath, on the reverse showing "Go forth" and "Remember the Debtors in Gaol".

It has been advanced by psychiatrist Philip Lucas[11] and by mathematician Ioan Mackenzie James[12] that Howard might have had Asperger's Syndrome.

[13] She died in 1765, a week after giving birth to a son, also named John, who was sent to boarding school at a very young age.

The younger John was sent down from Cambridge for homosexual offences, was judged insane at the age of 21, and died in 1799 having spent thirteen years in an asylum.

In its first annual report in 1867, the Association stated that its efforts had been focused on "the promotion of reformatory and remunerative prison labour, and the abolition of capital punishment."

[citation needed] The Howard Association, a benevolent organisation founded in 1855 in Norfolk, Virginia, United States, was also named after him.

[citation needed] Samford University, located in the US state of Alabama, was founded by Baptists as Howard College in 1841.