CHAPTER I

THE BUILDING OF THE PENITENTIARY

Choice of Site—Ancient Millbank—Plan of new Building—Penitentiary described—Committee appointed to Superintend—Opening of Prison in 1816—First Governor and other officers—Supreme Authority—First Arrangements.

The lands which Jeremy Bentham bought from Lord Salisbury were a portion of the wide area known then as Tothill Fields; speaking more exactly, they lay on either side of the present Vauxhall-bridge Road. This road, constructed after the purchase, intersected the property, dividing it into two lots of thirty-eight and fifteen acres respectively. It was on a slice of the larger piece that the prison was ultimately built, on ground lying close by the river. This neighbourhood, now known as a part of Pimlico, was then a low marshy locality, with a soil that was treacherous and insecure, especially at the end towards Millbank Row. People were alive twenty years ago who had shot snipe in the bogs and quagmires round about this spot. A large distillery, owned by a Mr. Hodge, stood near the proposed site of the prison; but otherwise these parts were but sparsely covered with houses. Bentham, speaking of the site he purchased, declared that it might be considered “in no neighbourhood at all.” No house of any account, superior to a tradesman’s or a public-house, stood within a quarter of a mile of the intended prison, and there were in this locality one other prison and any number of almshouses, established at various dates. Of these the most important were Hill’s, Butler’s, Wicher’s, and Palmer’s—all left by charitable souls of these names; and Stow says, that Lady Dacre also, wife of Gregory Lord Dacre of the South, left £100 a year to support almshouses which were built in these fields “more towards Cabbage Lane.” Here, also, stands the Green Coats Hospital, erected by Charles I, but endowed by Charles II for twenty-five boys and six girls, with a schoolmaster to teach them. Adjoining this hospital is a bridewell described by Stow as “a place for the correction of such loose and idle livers as are taken up within the liberty of Westminster, and thither sent by the Justices of the Peace, for correction—which is whipping, and beating of Hemp (a punishment very well suited for idlers), and are thence discharged by order of the Justices as they in their wisdom find occasion.” Again, Stow remarks: “In Tothill Fields, which is a large spacious place, there are certain pest-houses; now made use of by twelve poor men and their wives, so long as it shall please God to keep us from the Plague. These Pest-houses are built near the Meads, and remote from people.” Hospitals, bridewells, alms and pest-houses—the chief occupants of these lonely fields, formed no unfitting society for the new neighbour that was soon to be established amongst them.

As the prison, when completed, took its name from the mill bank, that margined the Thames close at hand, I must pause to refer to this embankment. I can find no record giving the date of the construction of this bank, which was no doubt intended to check the overflow of the river, and possibly, also, to act as one side of the mill-race, which served the Abbot of Westminster’s mill. This mill, which is in fact the real sponsor of the locality, is marked on the plan of Westminster from Norden’s survey, taken in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, in 1573. It stands on the bank of the Thames, almost opposite the present corner of Abingdon and Great College Streets; but it is not quite clear whether it was turned by water from the river, brought along Millbank, or by the stream that came from Tothill Street, which, taking the corner of the present Rochester Row, flowed along the line of the present Great College Street, and under Millbridge to the Queen’s slaughter-house. “The Millbank,” says Stow, “is a very long place, which beginneth by Lindsey House, or rather by the Palace Yard, and runneth up to Peterborough House, which is the farthest house. The part from against College Street unto the Horse Ferry hath a good row of buildings on the east side, next to the Thames, which is mostly taken up with large wood-mongers’ yards, and Brew-houses; and here is a water house which serveth this side of the town; the North Side is but ordinary, except one or two houses by the end of College Street; and that part beyond the Horse Ferry hath a very good row of houses, much inhabited by the gentry, by reason of the pleasant situation and prospect of the Thames. The Earl of Peterborough’s house hath a large courtyard before it and a fine garden behind it, but its situation is but bleak in the winter, and not over healthful, as being so near the low meadows on the South and West Parts.” But it was on one edge of these low, well-wooded meadows that Millbank Penitentiary was to be built.

The first act was to decide upon the plan for the new prison buildings. It was thrown open to competition by public advertisement and a reward was offered for the three best tenders. Mr. Hardwicke was eventually appointed architect and he estimated that £259,725 would be required for the work with a further sum of £42,690 for the foundations. Accommodation was to be provided at this price for six hundred prisoners, male and female, in equal proportions; and the whole building was intended solely for the confinement of offenders in the counties of London and Middlesex. By subsequent decisions, arrived at after the work was first undertaken, the size of Millbank grew to greater proportions, till it was ultimately made capable of containing, as one great national penitentiary, all the transportable convicts who were not sent abroad or confined in the hulks. Of course its cost increased pari passu with its size. By the time the prison was finally completed, the total expenditure had risen as high as £458,000. And over and above this enormous sum, the outlay of many additional thousands was needed within a few years, for the repairs or restoration of unsatisfactory work.

The Penitentiary, as it was commonly called, looked on London maps like a six-pointed star-fort, as if built against catapults and old-fashioned engines of war. The central point was the chapel, a circular building which, with the space around it, covered rather more than half an acre of ground. A narrow building, three stories high, and forming a hexagon, surrounded the chapel, with which it was connected at three points by covered passages. This chapel and its annular belt, the hexagon, form the keystone of the whole system. It was the centre of the circle, from which the several bastions of the star-fort radiated. Each of these salients was in shape a pentagon, and there were six of them, one opposite each side of the hexagon. They were built three stories high, on four sides of the pentagon, having a small tower at each external angle; while on the fifth side a wall about nine feet high ran parallel to the adjacent hexagon. In these pentagons were the prisoners’ cells, while the inner space in each, in area about two-thirds of an acre, contained the airing yards, grouped round a tall, central watch-tower. The ends of the pentagons joined the hexagon at certain points called junctions. The whole space covered by these buildings has been estimated at about seven acres; and something more than that amount was included between them and the boundary wall, which took the shape of an octagon, and beyond it was a moat.

Such is a general outline of the plan of the prison. Any more elaborate description might prove as confusing as was the labyrinth within to those who entered without such clues to guide them as were afforded by familiarity and long practice. There was one old warder who served for years at Millbank, and rose through all the grades to a position of trust, who was yet unable, to the last, to find his way about the premises. He carried with him always a piece of chalk, with which he blazed his path, as does the backwoodsman the forest trees. Angles at every twenty yards, winding staircases, dark passages, innumerable doors and gates,—all these bewildered the stranger, and contrasted strongly with the extreme simplicity of modern prison architecture. Indeed Millbank, with its intricacy and massiveness of structure, was suggestive of an order that has passed. It was one of the last specimens of an age to which Newgate belonged; a period when the safe custody of criminals could be compassed, people thought, only by granite blocks and ponderous bolts and bars. Such notions were really a legacy of mediævalism, bequeathed by the ruthless chieftains, who imprisoned offenders within their own castle walls. Many such keeps and castles long existed as prisons; having in the lapse of time ceased to be great residences, and they served until recently cleared as gaols or houses of correction for their immediate neighbourhood.

On the 9th February, 1816, the supervisors reported that the Penitentiary was now partly ready for the reception of offenders, and begged that a committee might be appointed to take charge of the prison, under the provisions of an act by which the king in Council was thus empowered to appoint “any fit and discreet persons, not being less than ten or more than twenty, as and for a Committee to Superintend the Penitentiary House for the term of one year, then next ensuing, and until a fresh nomination or appointment shall take place.” Accordingly, at the court at Brighton, on the 21st of February of the same year, his Royal Highness the prince regent in Council nominated the Right Hon. Charles Abbot, Speaker of the House of Commons, and nineteen others to serve on this committee, and it met for the first time at the prison on the 12th of March following. The Right Hon. Charles Long, George Holford, Esq., and the Rev. J. J. Becher, were among the members of the new committee, but they continued their functions as supervisors distinct from the other body, until the final completion of the whole building in 1821.

The first instalment of prisoners did not arrive till the 27th of July following. In the interval, however, there was plenty of work to be done. The preparation of rules and regulations, the appointment of a governor, chaplain, matron, and other officials, were among the first of them; and the committee took up each subject with characteristic vigour. It was necessary also to decide upon some scale of salaries and emoluments; to arrange with the Treasury as to the receipts, custody, and payments of the public moneys; and to ascertain the sorts of manufactures best suited to the establishment, and the best method of obtaining work for the convicts, without having to purchase the materials.

On the 10th of March Mr. John Shearman was appointed governor. This gentleman was strongly recommended by Lord Sidmouth, who stated in a letter to the Speaker that, having been induced to make particular inquiries respecting his qualifications and his character, he had found them well adapted to the office in question. Mr. Shearman’s own account of himself was, that he was a native of Yorkshire, but chiefly resident in London; that he was aged forty-four, was married, had eight children, and that he had been brought up to the profession of a solicitor, but for the last four years had been second clerk in the Hatton Garden police office. Before actually entering upon his duties, the committee sent Mr. Shearman on a tour of inspection through the provinces, to visit various gaols, and report on their condition and management.

He eventually resigned his appointment, however, because he thought the pay insufficient, and because the committee found fault with his frequent absences from the prison. He seems to have endeavoured to carry on a portion of his old business as solicitor concurrently with his governorship. His journals show him to have been an anxious and a painstaking man, but neither by constitution nor training was he exactly fitted for the position he was called upon to fill as head of the Penitentiary.

At the same time, on the recommendation of the Bishop of London, the Rev. Samuel Bennett was appointed chaplain. Touching this appointment the bishop wrote, “I have found a clergyman of very high character for great activity and beneficence, and said to be untainted with fanaticism.... His answer is not yet arrived; but I think he will not refuse, as he finds the income of his curacy inadequate to the maintenance of a family, and is precluded from residence on a small property by want of a house and the unhealthiness of the situation.”

Mr. Pratt was made house-surgeon, and a Mr. Webbe, son of a medical man, and bred himself to that profession, was appointed master manufacturer; being of a mechanical turn of mind, he had made several articles of workmanship, and he produced to the committee specimens of his shoe-making, and paper screens.

There was more difficulty in finding a matron. “The committee,” writes Mr. Morton Pitt, “was fully impressed with the importance of the charge, and with the difficulty of finding a fit person to fill this most essential office.” Many persons were of opinion that it would be impracticable to procure any person of credit or character to undertake the duties of a situation so arduous and so unpleasant, and the fact that no one had applied for it was strong proof of the prevalence of such opinions. Mr. Pitt goes on: “The situation is a new one. I never knew but two instances of a matron in a prison, and those were the wives of turnkeys or porters. In the present case it is necessary that a person should be selected of respectability as to situation in life. How difficult must it be to find a female educated as and having the feelings of a gentlewoman, who would undertake a duty so revolting to every feeling she has hitherto possessed, and even so alarming to a person of that sex.”

Mr. Pitt, however, had his eye on a person who appeared to him in every way suitable. He writes: “Mrs. Chambers appears to me to possess the requisites we want; and I can speak of her from a continued knowledge of her for almost thirty years, since she was about fifteen. Her father was in the law, and clerk of the peace for the county of Dorset from 1750 to 1790. He died insolvent, and she was compelled to support herself by her own industry, for her husband behaved very ill to her, abandoned her, and then died. She has learned how to obey, and since that, having kept a numerous school, how to command. She is a woman forty-three years of age, of a strong sense of religion and the most strict integrity. She has much firmness of character with a compassionate heart, and I am firmly persuaded will most conscientiously perform every duty she undertakes to the utmost of her power and ability.” Accordingly Mrs. Chambers was duly appointed.

The same care was exhibited in all the selections for the minor posts of steward, turnkeys male and female, messengers, nurses, porters, and patrols; and most precise rules and regulations were drawn up for the government of everybody and everything connected with the establishment. All these had, in the first instance, to be submitted for the approval of the Judges of the Court of King’s Bench, and subsequently reported to the king in Council and both Houses of Parliament.

The supreme authority in the Penitentiary was vested in the superintending committee, who were required to make all contracts, examine accounts, pay bills, and make regular inspection of prison and prisoners. A special meeting of the committee was to be convened in the second week of each session of Parliament, in order to prepare the annual report. Under them the governor attended to the details of administration. He was to have the same powers as are incident to a sheriff or gaoler,—to see every prisoner on his or her admittance; to handcuff or otherwise punish the turbulent; to attend chapel; and finally, to have no employment other than such as belonged to the duties of his office. The chaplain was to be in priest’s orders, and approved by the bishop of the diocese, and to have no other profession, avocation, or duty whatsoever. Besides his regular Sunday and week-day services, he was to endeavour by all means in his power to obtain an intimate knowledge of the particular disposition and character of every prisoner, male and female; direct them to be assembled for the purposes of religious instruction in such manner as might be most conducive to their reformation. He was expected also to allot a considerable portion of his time, after the hours of labour, to visiting, admonishing and instructing the prisoners, and to keep a “Character-Book,” containing a “full and distinct account from time to time of all particulars relating to the character, disposition, and progressive improvement of every prisoner.” Intolerance was not encouraged, for even then the visitation of ministers other than those of the Established Church was permitted on special application by the prisoners. Such ministers were only required to give in their names and descriptions, and were admitted at such hours and in such manner as the governor deemed reasonable, confining their ministrations to the persons requiring their attendance. No remuneration was, however, to be granted to these additional clergymen. The duties prescribed for the house-surgeon were of the ordinary character, but in cases of difficulty he was to confer with the consulting physician and other non-resident medical men. The master manufacturer was to act as the governor’s deputy if called upon, and was charged more especially with the control and manufacture of all materials and stores. It was his duty to make the necessary appraisement of the value of work done, and to enter the weekly percentage. The total profit was thus divided: three-fourths to the establishment, or 15s. in the pound; one twenty-fourth to the master manufacturer, the taskmaster of the pentagon, and the turnkey of the ward; leaving the balance of one-eighth, or 2s. 6d. in the pound to be credited to the prisoner.

For the rest of the officers the rules were what might be expected. The steward took charge of the victualling, clothing, etc., and superintended the cooking, baking, and all branches of the domestic economy of the establishment; the taskmasters overlooked the turnkeys, and were responsible for all matters connected with the labour and earnings of the prisoners; and the turnkeys, male and female, each having charge of a certain number of prisoners, were to observe their conduct, extraordinary diligence, or good behaviour. The turnkey was expected to enforce his orders with firmness, but was expected to act with the utmost humanity to all prisoners under his care. On the other hand, he was not to be familiar with any of the prisoners, or converse with them unnecessarily, but was to treat them as persons under his authority and control, and not as his companions or associates. The prisoners themselves were to be treated in accordance with the aims and principles of the establishment. On first arrival they were carefully examined by the doctor, cleansed, deprived of all money, and their old clothes burned or sold. Next, entering the first or probation class, they remained therein during half of the period of their imprisonment. Their time in prison was thus parcelled out: at the hour of daybreak, according to the time of the year, they rose; cell doors opened, they were taken to wash, for which purpose soap and round towels were provided; after that to the working cells until 9 a.m., then their breakfast—one pint of hot gruel; at half-past nine to work again till half-past twelve; then dinner—for four days of the week six ounces of coarse beef, the other three a quantity of thick soup, and always daily a pound of bread made of the whole meal. For dinner and exercise an hour was allowed, after which they again set to work, stopping in summer at six, and in winter at sunset. They were then again locked up in their cells, having first, when the evenings were light, an hour’s exercise, and last of all supper—another pint of gruel, hot.

The turnkeys were to be assisted by wardsmen and wardswomen, selected from the more decent and orderly prisoners. These attended chiefly to the cleanliness of the prison, and were granted a special pecuniary allowance. “Second class” prisoners were appointed also, to act as trade instructors. Any prisoner might work extra hours on obtaining special permission. The general demeanour of the whole body of inmates was regulated by the following rule: “No prisoner shall disobey the orders of the governor or any other officer, or shall treat any of the officers or servants of the prison with disrespect; or shall be idle or negligent in his work, or shall wilfully mismanage the same; or absent himself without leave from divine service, or behave irreverently thereat; or shall be guilty of cursing or swearing, or of any indecent expression or conduct, or of any assault, quarrel, or abusive words; or shall game with, defraud, or claim garnish, or any other gratuity from a fellow-prisoner; or shall cause any disturbance or annoyance by making a loud noise, or otherwise; or shall endeavour to converse or hold intercourse with prisoners of another division; or shall disfigure the walls by writing on them, or otherwise; or shall deface, secrete, or destroy, or pull down the printed abstracts of rules; or shall wilfully injure any bedding or other article provided for the use of prisoners.” Offences such as the foregoing were to be met by punishment, at the discretion of the governor, either by being confined in a dark cell, or by being fed on bread and water only, or by both such punishments; more serious crimes being referred to the committee, who had power to inflict one month’s bread and water diet and in a dark cell. Any extraordinary diligence or merit, on the other hand, was to be brought to the notice of the Secretary of State, in order that the prisoner might be recommended as an object for the royal mercy. When finally discharged, the prisoners were to receive decent clothing, and a sum of money at the discretion of the committee, in addition to their accumulated percentage, or tools, provided such money or such tools did not exceed a value of three pounds. Moreover, if any discharged prisoner, at the end of twelve months, could prove on the testimony of a substantial housekeeper, or other respectable person, that he was earning an honest livelihood he was to be entitled to a further gratuity not exceeding three pounds.

The early discipline of the prisoners in Millbank, as designed by the committee, was based on the principle of constant inspection and regular employment. Solitary imprisonment was not insisted upon, close confinement in a punishment cell being reserved for misconduct. All prisoners on arrival were located at the lodge, and kept apart, without work, for the first five days; the object in view being, to awaken them to reflection, and a true sense of their situation. During this time the governor visited each prisoner in the cell for the purpose of becoming acquainted with his character, and explaining to him the spirit in which the establishment had been erected. No pains were spared in this respect. The governor’s character-books, which I have examined, are full of the most minute, I might add trivial, details. After the usual preliminaries of bathing, hair-cutting, and so forth, the prisoners passed on to one of the pentagons and entered the first class.

The only difference between first and second class was, that the former worked alone, each in his own cell; the latter in company, in the work rooms. The question of finding suitable employment soon engaged the attention of the committee. At first the males tried tailoring, the females needlework. Great efforts were made to introduce various trades. Many species of industry were attempted, skilled prisoners teaching the unskilled. Thus, at first, one man who could make glass beads worked at his own trade, and had a class under him; another, a tinman, turned out tin-ware, in which he was assisted by his brother, a “free man” and a more experienced workman; and several cells were filled with prisoners who manufactured rugs under the guidance of a skilful prison artisan. But Mr. Holford, one of the committee, in a paper laid before his colleagues, in 1822, was forced to confess that all these undertakings had failed. The glass-bead blower misconducted himself; the free tinman abused the confidence of the committee, probably by trafficking, and the rug-maker was soon pardoned and set at large. By 1822 almost all manufactures, including flax breaking, had been abandoned, and the prisoners’ operations were confined to shoe-making, tailoring, and weaving. Mr. Holford, in the same pamphlet, objects to the first of these trades, complaining that shoemakers’ knives were weapons too dangerous to be trusted in the hands of prisoners. Tailoring was hard to accomplish, from the scarcity of good cutters, and weaving alone remained as a suitable prison employment. In fact, thus early in the century, the committee were brought face to face with a difficulty that even now, after years of experience, is pressing still for solution.