The penitentiary bill specified exactly 888 convicts

Evidence

I mentioned in round numbers nine hundred as the number of convicts which was going to be provided for; but 888 was the exact number mentioned in the bill. Three eights, ‘thus arranged, a terrible show!’ But granting this to be the number likely to require provision of some kind or other, it surely does not follow that all that require it must necessarily be provided for in this manner, or in none. — Jeremy Bentham, The Panopticon Writings, 225