By Bonnie Withers

If you are one of the MCUUF members who are engaged in the issues of prison reform and prisoner rights, you follow in a long line of forebears.  Among the many early Unitarians and Universalists who fought for justice for the incarcerated, we remember Charles Spear, who was born on May 1, 1803 in Boston. 

Spear, a student of  Universalist Hosea Ballou, served churches in Massachusetts and Hartford. In a time when opposition to capital punishment was a radical position, Spear fought tirelessly against it in his role as general agent of the Massachusetts Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment.  Consider the familiar strains of this argument:

“He declared capital punishment an unjust and arbitrary exercise of power, an instrument not fit for the Republic. Moreover, injustice was multiplied by unequal application of the penalty according to race. “ (UUdb.org)

In 1845, Spear began producing a newsletter, first called “The Hangman”, then “The Prisoner’s Friend”. His work to move prisons from punishment to rehabilitation, to improve conditions, to run a half-way house for parolees, to end the death penalty, caused him to become known, himself, as The Prisoner’s Friend. Through his efforts, the death penalty was abolished in three states and applied less often in others.

Spear set up a chaplaincy among the camps surrounding Washington, D.C. in 1862. His intense work led to his death from what his wife called “nervous exhaustion” the following year.

When you visit the historic cemetery at King’s Chapel in Boston, stop for a moment to pay homage at the grave of Rev. Charles Spear, the Prisoner’s Friend.