Sir Evelyn John Ruggles-BriseKCB (6 December 1857 – 18 August 1935)[1] was a British prison administrator and reformer, and founder of the Borstal system.
Ruggles-Brise was born in Finchingfield in Essex, the second son of Sir Samuel Brise Ruggles-Brise (1825–1899) and his wife, Marianne (née Bowyer-Smijth), daughter of Sir William Bowyer-Smijth. He had three brothers and seven sisters. His family have deep roots in Essex, having been based at Spains Hall in Finchingfield since the house was bought by Samuel Ruggles, a clothier, in 1760. His father was Conservative MP for East Essex from 1868 to 1884. Another relation, Sir Edward Ruggles-Brise, 1st Baronet, was MP for Maldon from 1922 to his death in 1942 (with a short intermission in 1923-4), and became a baronet in George V's Silver Jubileehonours list in 1935.
Ruggles-Brise was educated at home and at a private school near Hitchin, before attending Eton from 1869 to 1876 on a scholarship. His older brother, Archie, was already an Oppidan, and President of Pop. He read Mods and Greats at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a first in 1880. He also played in the college cricket team.
At Oxford, Ruggles Brise knew Montague John Druitt, the man named as the prime suspect in the Jack the Ripper case by Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten in a report written for the Home Office in 1894. Ruggles Brise was also a lifelong friend of Basil Thomson who attended New College, Oxford at the same time as Montague Druitt and who succeeded Melville Macnaghten as Head of CID at Scotland Yard in 1913.
The long-serving incumbent chairman of the Prison Commission, Sir Edmund du Cane, was criticised by Gladstone Committee in 1895, and resigned. H. H. Asquith appointed Ruggles-Brise in his place, and he served as chairman until 1921. His main task was implementing the report of the Gladstone Committee, to combine reform with deterrence, and to separate youths from older men in adult prisons. Reform was undertaken under the Prison Act 1898, and physical punishments such as the treadwheel and the crank were abolished.
He wrote The English Prison System, published in 1921, and Prison Reform at Home and Abroad, published in 1924.
A confirmed bachelor for many years, he married Jessica Philippa Stonor (née Carew), widow of Francis Stonor, 4th Baron Camoys, on 3 September 1914. She died on 29 November 1928. He remarried on 6 June 1933, to Sheelah Maud Emily Reade, daughter of Captain the Hon. Francis Algernon James Chichester, and widow of Essex Edgeworth Reade. He died of throat cancer in Peaslake in Surrey, survived by his second wife. He was buried at Finchingfield.
Philip Priestley, "Brise, Sir Evelyn John Ruggles- (1857–1935)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 4 Sept 2007
