THE FIRST REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF PRISONS.
Appointment of inspectors of prisons--Their names and
antecedents--Mr. Crawford and Mr. Whitworth Russell at once visit
Newgate, and make a searching inquiry--Find old evils still
present--Overcrowding no longer excusable--Want of
classification--The governor, Mr. Cope, blamed for this--Prisoners'
treatment--No beds, uncleanly, and in rags--Baleful despotism of
prisoner wardsmen, who have more power than the officers--Again
proofs of Mr. Cope's neglect--Scenes of horror in
Newgate--Gambling, drinking, debauchery--Flash books allowed--Libel
of Stockdale v. Hansard grows out of this--Serious affrays in the
wards--Prisoners badly wounded by one another--Extra and luxurious
food admitted--Also visitors of both sexes indiscriminately--Same
evils to a lesser degree on female side--Ladies' Association--No
real separation of the sexes--Mr. Cope an offender in this
respect--The press-yard or condemned convicts' yard the worst of
all--Culpable and indiscriminate association--Brutal behaviour of
many of those sentenced to death--The ordinary checked in his
zeal--Criminal lunatics allowed to remain in Newgate--House of
Commons' prisoners monopolize hospital and best accommodation in
the gaol--Abuses of State Side revived in their case--Evils rampant
briefly recapitulated by inspectors--Their report raises a storm in
the city--Protest of the Corporation--Some attempt at reform--Many
of the charges reiterated in later reports--No radical reform
possible without complete reconstruction.
In the preceding chapter I have been tempted by the importance of the
general question to give it prominence and precedence over the
particular branch of which I am treating. Newgate has remained rather in
the background while the whole of the gaols as a body were under
discussion. But this digression was necessary in order to present a more
complete picture of the state of gaols in the early part of the present
century, just before the public mind was first awakened to the need for
thorough reform. I shall now return to the great gaol of the city of
London, and give a more detailed account of its condition and inner life
as the inspectors of prisons found them in 1835-6. These gentlemen were
appointed in October 1835, owing to the strong representations of the
Lords' Committee,[80] backed up by the evidence of several influential
witnesses. Mr. Samuel Hoare, when examined, considered it indispensably
necessary, to carry out whatever system might be established, that
inspectors should watch over the observance of the law. He saw no
objection on the score of their probable interference with the local
jurisdiction, but he would not arm them with any authority lest their
co-operation might be offensive. Sir Frederick Roe was of the same
opinion as regards the appointment, but he would give the inspectors the
power of acting as well as reporting. They should be persons, he
thought, selected from the highest class; the duty was most important,
one which required discretion, judgment, and knowledge of law, with
sufficient insight and experience to discover defects in prison
discipline. These considerations no doubt had weight with those who made
the selection of the first inspectors, and the two gentlemen appointed
were probably the most fitted in England to be so employed. One was Mr.
William Crawford, the other the Rev. Whitworth Russell.
The first named had long been an active philanthropist, devoting himself
more particularly to the reformation of juvenile criminals.[81] William
Crawford had been one of the promoters and managers of the Philanthropic
Society's farm school. Later on he had devoted himself to the personal
investigation of the prisons of the United States. At that time the mild
and intelligent prison discipline in force in Pennsylvania, the legacy
of the old Quaker immigrants, had made such prisons as Auburn a model
for imitation. Several European states had despatched emissaries to
examine and report upon them. France had sent MM. Beaumont and De
Tocqueville, who subsequently published several interesting works on the
subject. England was represented by Mr. Crawford, and the result of his
inquiry was given to the public as an appendix to the House of Commons'
'Report on Secondary Punishments.' It is an able and exhaustive state
paper, testifying to the keenness of the writer's perception, and his
unremitting labour in pursuing his researches. Mr. Crawford was
thoroughly versed in the still imperfectly understood science of prison
management, and fully qualified for his new duties.
The second inspector, the Rev. Whitworth Russell, was the chaplain of
Millbank penitentiary, the great architectural experiment which grew out
of the strong representations of Jeremy Bentham and others, and was the
first national recognition of the principle that punishment must be
reformatory as well as deterrent.
Messrs. Crawford and Russell proceeded to carry out their new functions
with commendable energy, and without a moment's loss of time. The ink
was barely dry upon their letters of appointment before they appeared at
Newgate, and commenced a searching investigation. They attended early
and late; they mustered the prisoners, examined into their condition,
took voluminous evidence from all classes of individuals, from the
governor down to the convict in the condemned cells. They visited the
wards after locking-up time, and saw with their own eyes what went on.
Having started with the proposition that the metropolitan prisons must
monopolize their attention, as constituting, to use their own words, "a
subject of magnitude and importance sufficient to exclude other gaols,"
they soon narrowed their inquiry still further, and limited it to
Newgate alone. Newgate indeed became the sole theme of their first
report. The fact was that the years as they passed, nearly twenty in
all, had worked but little permanent improvement in this detestable
prison. Changes introduced under pressure had been only skin deep.
Relapse was rapid and inevitable, so that the latter state of the prison
was worse than the first. The disgraceful overcrowding had been
partially ended, but the same evils of indiscriminate association were
still present; there was the old neglect of decency, the same callous
indifference to the moral well-being of the prisoners, the same want of
employment and of all disciplinary control.
All these evils were set forth at length in the inspectors' first
report. There was no longer the faintest possible excuse for
overcrowding. The numbers now committed to Newgate had sensibly
diminished. The prison had become more or less a place of detention
only, harbouring mainly those awaiting trial. To these were still added
an average of about fifty expecting the last penalty of the law; a
certain number of transports awaiting removal to the colonies; an
occasional prisoner or two committed by the Houses of Parliament, the
Courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, the Commissioners
of bankruptcy and of taxes; smugglers, and a larger number sentenced for
very short terms, and for offences of the most varying description, by
the Central Criminal Court. The sum total thus produced was
inconsiderable compared with the hundreds that had formerly filled the
gaol, and the whole by proper management might have been so accommodated
as to prevent overcrowding. But incredible as it may appear, the
authorities of Newgate declined to avail themselves of the advantages
offered them, and when the population fell they shut up one half the
gaol and crowded up the other. Some rooms remained quite empty and
unoccupied, while others were full to overflowing. Not only were the
wards thus needlessly crammed, and for no reason but the niggardliness
of the corporation which refused a proper supply of bedding, but the
occupants of each were huddled together indiscriminately. The inspectors
found in the same wards in the chapel yard the convicted and the
untried, the felon and the misdemeanant, the sane and the insane, the
old and young offender. The classification prescribed by the Gaol Act,
which laid down that certain prisoners should not intermix, was openly
neglected, and "the greatest contempt shown for the law." In another
part there were men charged with and convicted of unnatural offences
shut up with lads of tender years; minor offenders charged with small
thefts or non-payment of small sums were cheek by jowl with convicts
sentenced to long terms of transportation. In the master's side yard,
which had only one washing place, as many as seventy-eight prisoners,
frequently more, were associated together, "of every variety of age,
habit, and delinquency, without employment, oversight, or control." In
the middle yard it was still worse. "Here," say the inspectors, "are
herded together the very worst class of prisoners; certainly a more
wretched combination of human beings can hardly be imagined. We have
reason to fear that poverty, ragged clothes, and an inability to pay
the ward dues, elsewhere exacted for better accommodation, consign many
of the more petty and unpractised offenders to this place, where they
inevitably meet with further contamination from the society of the most
abandoned and incorrigible inmates of the gaol."
No doubt the governor for the time being, Mr. Cope, was in a great
measure to blame for all this, and for the want of proper
classification. I shall have occasion to speak again, and more at
length, of Mr. Cope's careless and perfunctory discharge of his many
manifest duties, but I shall here confine myself to animadverting on his
neglect as regards the appropriation of his prison. He was unable to
give any reason whatever for not utilizing the whole of the wards. He
saw certain rooms fill up, and yet took no steps to open others that
were locked up and empty. He blamed the construction of Newgate for the
neglect of classification, and was yet compelled to confess that he had
made no attempt whatever to carry it out. The fact was, he did not keep
the classification of prisoners on first arrival in his own hands, nor
even in that of his officers. A new prisoner's fate, as to location,
rested really with a powerful fellow-prisoner. The inspectors found that
prisoners had their places assigned to them by the inner gatesman,
himself a convicted prisoner, and a "wardsman" or responsible head of a
room. The wardsman still exacted dues, of which more directly, and this
particular official took excellent care to select as residents for his
own ward those most suitable from his own point of view. "So great is
the authority exercised by him, and so numerous were his opportunities
of showing favouritism, that all the prisoners may be said to be in his
power. If a man is poor and ragged, however inexperienced in crime, or
however trifling may be the offence for which he has been committed, his
place is assigned among the most depraved, the most experienced, and the
most incorrigible offenders in the middle yard." It must be admitted
that so far but little effort had been made to counteract the evils of
indiscriminate association.
It was not likely that a system which left innocent men--for the great
bulk of new arrivals were still untried--to be pitchforked by chance
anywhere, into any sort of company, within this the greatest nursery of
crime in London, should exercise even the commonest care for the
personal decency or comfort of the prisoners. Their treatment was also a
matter of chance. They still slept on rope mats on the floor, herded
together in companies of four or more to keep one another warm, and
under the scanty covering of a couple of dirty stable-rugs apiece. So
closely did they lie together, that the inspectors at their night visits
found it difficult in stepping across the room to avoid treading on
them. Sometimes two mats were allotted to three sleepers. Sometimes four
slept under the same bedding, and left their mats unoccupied. The rugs
used were never washed; an order existed that the bedding should be
taken into the yards to be aired, but it was not very punctually obeyed.
The only convenience for personal ablutions were the pumps in the yards,
and the far-off baths in the condemned or press-yard. Water might not be
taken into the ward for washing purposes. There was some provision of
clothing, but it was quite insufficient, and nothing at all was given if
prisoners had enough of their own to cover their nakedness. The
inspectors paraded the prisoners, and found them generally ragged and
ill-clad, squalid and filthy in the extreme; many without stockings, and
with hardly shoes to their feet; some, who had the semblance of covering
on the upper part of their feet, had no soles to the shoes, and their
bare feet were on the ground. This, too, was in the depth of the winter,
and during a most inclement season. The allowance of food was not
illiberal, but its issue was precarious, and dependent on the good will
of the wardsmen, who measured out the portions to each according to his
eye, and not with weights and measures, no turnkey being present. Too
much was left to the wardsman. It was he who could issue small luxuries;
he sold tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, although prohibited, and extra
beer. He charged a weekly sum as ward dues for the use of knives, forks,
and plates--a perpetuation under another form of the old detestable
custom of garnish. He had power where his exactions were resisted of
making the ward most uncomfortable for the defaulter. He could trump up
a false complaint against his fellow-prisoner, and so get him punished;
he might keep him from the fire, or give him his soup or gruel in a pail
instead of a basin.
The authority of these wardsmen so improperly exalted, and so entirely
unchecked, degenerated into a baneful despotism. They bought their
offices from one another, and were thus considered to have a vested
interest in them. Their original capital had been a few shillings, and
for this they purchased the right to tax their fellows to the extent of
pounds per week. The wardsman had a monopoly in supplying provisions,
gave dinner and breakfast at his own price, and was such complete master
of the ward that none of its inmates were suffered to make tea or coffee
for themselves lest it should interfere with his sales. He made
collections when it suited him for ward purposes, to be spent as he
chose, in candles and so forth. When the wardsman was a man of some
education, with some knowledge of legal chicanery gained by personal
experience, he might add considerably to his emoluments by drawing
briefs and petitions for his fellows. There was a recognized charge of
5_s._ per brief, for a petition of from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 8_s._, according
to its length, and by these payments a wardsman had been known to amass
as much as £40. The man intrusted with this privilege was often the
inner gatesman, the prisoner official already mentioned, who held the
fate of new arrivals as regards location in his hands. It was not
strange that he should sometimes misuse his power, and when prisoners
were not to be cajoled into securing his legal services, had been known
to employ threats, declaring that he was often consulted by the governor
as to a prisoner's character, in view of speaking to it at the trial,
and he could easily do them a good turn--or a very bad one. The
brief-drawing gatesman and wardsman at the time of the inspectors' first
visit must have been a particularly powerful personage. He was on the
most intimate and improperly familiar terms with the turnkeys, had a key
of both the master's side and middle side yards, was the only person
present at the distribution of beer, and was trusted to examine, and, if
he chose, pass in, all provisions, money, clothes, and letters brought
for prisoners by their friends.
All the wardsmen alike were more or less irresponsible. The turnkeys
complained bitterly that these old prisoners had more power than they
themselves. The governor himself admitted that a prisoner of weak
intellect who had been severely beaten and much injured by a wardsman
did not dare complain, the victim of this cruel ill-usage having "more
fear of the power of the wardsman to injure him, than confidence in the
governor's power to protect him." These wardsmen, besides thus ruling
the roast, had numerous special privileges, if such they can be called.
They were not obliged to attend chapel, and seldom if ever went;
"prisoners," said one of them under examination, "did not like the
trouble of going to chapel." They had a standing bedstead to sleep on,
and a good flock mattress; double allowance of provisions, filched from
the common stock. Nobody interfered with them or regulated their
conduct. They might get drunk when so disposed, and did so frequently,
alone or in company. Evidence was given before the inspectors of eight
or ten prisoners seen "giddy drunk, not able to sit upon forms." The
female wards-women were also given to intemperance. The matron deposed
to having seen the gates-woman "exceedingly drunk," and having been
insulted by her. There was no penalty attached to drunkenness. A
wardsman did not necessarily lose his situation for it. Nor was drink
the only creature comfort he might enjoy. He could indulge in snuff if a
snuff-taker, and might always smoke his pipe undisturbed; for although
the use of tobacco had been prohibited since the report of the Lords
Committee, it was still freely introduced into the prison.
Probably authority would not have been so recklessly usurped by the
wardsmen had not the proper officials too readily surrendered it. The
turnkeys left the prisoners very much to themselves, never entering the
wards after locking-up time, at dusk, till unlocking next morning, and
then only went round to count the number. Many of them were otherwise
and improperly occupied for hours every day in menial services for the
governor, cleaning his windows or grooming his horse. One turnkey had
been so employed several hours daily for nearly eleven years. It was not
strange that subordinates should neglect their duty when superiors set
the example. Nothing was more prominently brought out by the inspectors
than the inefficiency of the governor at that time, Mr. Cope. He may
have erred in some points through ignorance, but in others he was
clearly guilty of culpable neglect. We have seen that he took no pains
to classify and separate prisoners on reception. This was only one of
many grave omissions on his part. He did not feel it incumbent on
himself to visit his prison often or see his prisoners. The act
prescribed that he should do both every twenty-four hours, but days
passed without his entering the wards. The prisoners declared that they
did not see him oftener than twice a week; one man who had been in the
condemned ward for two months, said the governor only came there four
times. Again, a turnkey deposed that his chief did not enter the wards
more than once a fortnight.
But it is only fair to Mr. Cope to state that he himself said he went
whenever he could find time, and that he was constantly engaged
attending sessions and going with drafts to the hulks. But when he did
visit, his inspections were of the most superficial character; sometimes
he looked at his bolts and bars, but he never examined the cupboards,
coal-boxes, or other possible hiding-places for cards, dice, dangerous
implements, or other prohibited articles. He only attended chapel once
on Sunday, never on the week-day, and generally devoted the time service
was in progress to taking the descriptions of newly-arrived prisoners.
He really did not know what passed in his gaol, and was surprised when
the inspectors proved to him that practices of which he was ignorant,
and which he admitted that he reprehended, went on without hindrance. He
was satisfied to let matters run on as in the old times, he said in his
own justification; with him what was, was right, and evils that should
have been speedily rooted out remained because they had the prescription
of long usage. He kept no daily journal of occurrences, and nothing,
however important, was recorded at the time. The aldermen never called
upon him to report, and left him nearly unsupervised and uncontrolled.
In his administration of discipline he was quite uncertain; the
punishments he inflicted were unequal, and it was not the least part of
the blame imputed to him that he made special favourites of particular
prisoners, retaining of his own accord in Newgate, and for years, felons
who should have been sent beyond the seas. But, indeed, his whole rule
was far too mild, and under this mistaken leniency the interior of the
gaol was more like a bear-garden or the noisy purlieus of a public-house
than a prison.
It was the same old story--evil constantly in the ascendant, the least
criminal at the mercy of the most depraved. Under the reckless contempt
for regulations, the apathy of the authorities, and the undue ascendancy
of those who, as convicted felons, should have been most sternly
repressed, the most hardened and the oldest in vice had the best of it,
while the inexperienced beginner went to the wall. Edward Gibbon
Wakefield,[82] who spent three years in Newgate a little before the time
of the inspectors' first report, said with justice that "incredible
scenes of horror occur in Newgate." It was, moreover, in his opinion
undoubtedly the greatest nursery of crime in London. The days were
passed in idleness, debauchery, riotous quarrelling, immoral
conversation, gambling, indirect contravention of parliamentary rules,
instruction in all nefarious processes, lively discourse upon past
criminal exploits, elaborate discussion of others to be perpetrated
after release. No provision whatever was made for the employment of
prisoners, no materials were purchased, no trade instructors appointed.
There was no school for adults; only the boys were taught anything, and
their instructor, with his assistant, were convicted prisoners. Idle
hands and unoccupied brains found in mischief the only means of whiling
away the long hours of incarceration. Gaming of all kinds, although
forbidden by the Gaol Acts, was habitually practised. This was admitted
in evidence by the turnkeys, and was proved by the appearance of the
prison tables, which bore the marks of gaming-boards deeply cut into
them. Prisoners confessed that it was a favourite occupation, the chief
games being "shoving halfpence" on the table, pitch in the hole,
cribbage, dominoes, and common tossing, at which as much as four or five
shillings would change hands in an hour.
But this was not the only amusement. Most of the wards took in the daily
papers, the most popular being the 'Times,' 'Morning Herald,' and
'Morning Chronicle'; on Sunday the 'Weekly Dispatch,' 'Bell's Life,' and
the 'Weekly Messenger.' The newsman had free access to the prison; he
passed in unsearched and unexamined, and, unaccompanied by an officer,
went at once to his customers, who bought their paper and paid for it
themselves. The news-vendor was also a tobacconist, and he had thus
ample means of introducing to the prisoners the prohibited but always
much-coveted and generally procurable weed. In the same way the wardsman
laid in his stock to be retailed. Other light literature besides the
daily journals were in circulation: novels, flash songs, play-books,
such as 'Jane Shore,' 'Grimm's German Tales,' with Cruikshank's
illustrations, and publications which in these days would have been made
the subject of a criminal prosecution. One of these, published by
Stockdale, the inspectors styled "a book of the most disgusting
nature."[83] There was also a good supply of Bibles and prayers, the
donation of a philanthropic gentleman, Captain Brown, but these,
particularly the Bibles, bore little appearance of having been used.
Drink, in more or less unlimited quantities, was still to be had.
Spirits certainly were now excluded; but a potman, with full permission
of the sheriffs, brought in beer for sale from a neighbouring
public-house, and visited all the wards with no other escort than the
prisoner gatesman. The quantity to be issued per head was limited by the
prison regulations to one pint, but no steps were taken to prevent any
prisoner from obtaining more if he could pay for it. The beer-man
brought in as much as he pleased; he sold it without the controlling
presence of an officer. Not only did prisoners come again and again for
a "pint," but large quantities were carried off to the wards to be drunk
later in the day.
There were more varied, and at times, especially when beer had
circulated freely, more uproarious diversions. Wrestling, in which legs
were occasionally broken, was freely indulged in; also such low games as
"cobham," leap-frog, puss in the corner, and "fly the garter," for which
purpose the rugs were spread out to prevent feet slipping on the floor.
Feasting alternated with fighting. The weekly introduction of food, to
which I shall presently refer, formed the basis of luxurious banquets,
washed down by liquor and enlivened by flash songs and thrilling
long-winded descriptions of robberies and other "plants." There was much
swearing and bad language, the very worst that could be used, from the
first thing in the morning to the last thing at night.[84] New arrivals,
especially the innocent and still guileless debutant, were tormented
with rude horse-play, and assailed by the most insulting "chaff." If any
man presumed to turn in too early he was "toed," that is to say, a
string was fastened to his big toe while he was asleep, and he was
dragged from off his mat, or his bedclothes were drawn away across the
room. The ragged part of the prisoners were very anxious to destroy the
clothes of the better dressed, and often lighted small pieces of cloth,
which they dropped smouldering into their fellow-prisoners' pockets.
Often the victim, goaded to madness, attacked his tormentors; a fight
was then certain to follow. These fights sometimes took place in the
daytime, when a ring was regularly formed, and two or three stood by the
door to watch for the officer's approach. More often they occurred at
night, and were continued to the bitter end. The prisoners in this way
administered serious punishment on one another. Black eyes and broken
noses were always to be seen.
More cruel injuries were common enough, which did not result from
honest hand-to-hand fights. The surgeon's journal produced to the
inspectors contained numerous entries of terrible wounds inflicted in a
cowardly way. "A serious accident: one of the prisoners had a hot poker
run into his eye." "A lad named Matthew White has had a wound in his eye
by a bone thrown at him, which very nearly destroyed vision." "There was
a disturbance in the transport yard yesterday evening, and the police
were called in. During the tumult a prisoner, ... who was one of the
worst of the rioters, was bruised about the head and body." "Watkins'
knee-joint is very severely injured." "A prisoner Baxter is in the
infirmary in consequence of a severe injury to his wrist-joint."
Watkins' case, referred to above, is made the subject of another and a
special report from the surgeon. He was in the transport side, when one
of his fellows, in endeavouring to strike another prisoner with a large
poker, missed his aim, and struck Watkins' knee.... Violent inflammation
and extensive suppuration ensued, and for a considerable time amputation
seemed inevitable. After severe suffering prolonged for many months, the
inflammation was subdued, but the cartilage of the knee-joint was
destroyed, and he was crippled for life. On another occasion a young
man, who was being violently teased, seized a knife and stabbed his
tormentor in the back. The prisoner who used the knife was secured, but
it was the wardsman, and not the officers, to whom the report was made,
and no official inquiry or punishment followed.
Matters were at times still worse, and the rioting went on to such
dangerous lengths as to endanger the safety of the building. On one
occasion a disturbance was raised which was not quelled until windows
had been broken and forms and tables burnt. The officers were obliged to
go in among the prisoners to restore order with drawn cutlasses, but the
presence and authority of the governor himself became indispensable. The
worst fights occurred on Sunday afternoons; but nearly every night the
act of locking up became, from the consequent removal of all
supervision, the signal for the commencement of obscene talk, revelry,
and violence.
Other regulations laid down by the Gaol Acts were still defied. One of
these was that prisoners should be restricted to the gaol allowance of
food; but all could still obtain as much extra, and of a luxurious kind,
as their friends chose to bring them in. Visitors were still permitted
to come with supplies on given days of the week, about the only
limitation being that the food should be cooked, and cold; hot meat,
poultry, and fish were also forbidden. But the inspectors found in the
ward cupboards mince-pies and other pasties, cold joints, hams, and so
forth. Many other articles were introduced by visitors, including money,
tobacco, pipes, and snuff. From the same source came the two or three
strong files which the inspectors found in one ward, together with four
bradawls, several large iron spikes, screws, nails, and knives; "all of
them instruments calculated to facilitate attempts at breaking out of
prison, and capable of becoming most dangerous weapons in the hands of
desperate and determined men." The nearly indiscriminate admission of
visitors, although restricted to certain days, continued to be an
unmixed evil. The untried might see their friends three times a week,
the convicted only once. On these occasions precautions were supposed to
be taken to exclude bad characters, yet many persons of notoriously
loose life continually obtained egress. Women saw men if they merely
pretended to be wives; even boys were visited by their sweethearts.
Decency was, however, insured by a line of demarcation, and visitors
were kept upon each side of a separated double iron railing. But no
search was made to intercept prohibited articles at the gate, and there
was no permanent gate-keeper, which would have greatly helped to keep
out bad characters. Some idea of the difficulty and inconvenience of
these lax regulations as regards visiting, may be gathered from the
statement that as many as three hundred were often admitted on the same
day--enough to altogether upset what small show of decorum and
discipline was still preserved in the prison. Perhaps the worst feature
of the visiting system was the permission accorded to male prisoners
"under the name of husbands, brothers, and sons" to have access to the
female side on Sundays and Wednesdays, in order to visit their supposed
relations there.
On this female side, where the Ladies' Association still reigned
supreme, more system and a greater semblance of decorum was maintained.
But there were evils akin to those on the male side, prominent amongst
which was the undue influence accorded to prisoners. A female prisoner
kept the registers. Wards-women were allowed much the same authority,
with the same temptations to excess, and intoxication was not unknown
among them and others. The clothing was still meagre and ragged: the
washing places insufficient, and wanting in decency; in some yards the
pump was the only provision, and this in a place within sight of
visitors, of the windows of the male turnkeys, and unprotected from the
weather. There was the same crowding in the sleeping arrangements as on
the male side; the same scarcity of bedding. It was a special evil of
this part of the prison, that the devotional exercises, originally so
profitable, had grown into a kind of edifying spectacle, which numbers
of well-meaning but inquisitive people were anxious to witness. Thus,
when the inspectors visited there were twenty-three strangers, and only
twenty-eight prisoners. The presence of so many strangers, many of them
gentlemen, distracted the prisoners' attention, and could not be
productive of much good.
The separation of the sexes was not indeed rigidly carried out in
Newgate as yet. We have seen that male prisoners visited their female
relations and friends on the female side. Besides this, the gatesman who
prepared the briefs had interviews with female prisoners alone while
taking their instructions; a female came alone and unaccompanied by a
matron to clean the governor's office in the male prison; male prisoners
carried coal into the female prison, when they saw and could speak or
pass letters to the female prisoners; and the men could also at any time
go for tea, coffee, and sugar to Mrs. Brown's shop, which was inside the
female gate. In the bail-dock, where most improper general association
was permitted, the female prisoners were often altogether in the charge
of male turnkeys. The governor was also personally responsible for gross
contravention of this rule of separation, and was in the habit of
drawing frequently upon the female prison for prisoners to act as
domestic servants in his own private dwelling. Some member of the
Ladies' Association observed and commented upon the fact that a "young
rosy-cheeked girl" had been kept by the governor from transportation,
while older women in infirm health were sent across the seas. His excuse
was that he had given the girl his promise that she should not go, an
assumption of prerogative which by no means rested with him; but he
afterwards admitted that the girl had been recommended to him by the
principal turnkey, who knew something of her friends. This woman was
really his servant, employed to help in cleaning, and taken on whenever
there was extra work to be done. The governor had a great dislike, he
said, to seeing strangers in his house. This girl had been first engaged
on account of the extra work entailed by certain prisoners committed by
the House of Commons, who had been lodged in the governor's own house.
The house at this time was full of men and visitors; waiters came in
from the taverns with meals. Some of the prisoners had their valets, and
all these were constantly in and out of the kitchen where this female
prisoner was employed. There was revelling and roystering, as usual,
with "high life below-stairs." The governor sent down wine on festive
occasions, of which no doubt the prisoner housemaid had her share. It
can hardly be denied that the governor, in his treatment of this woman,
was acting in flagrant contravention of all rules.
Eighteen years had elapsed since the formation of the "Ladies'
Association," and Mrs. Fry with her colleagues still laboured
assiduously in Newgate, devoting themselves mainly to the female prison,
although their ministrations were occasionally extended to the male
side. The inspectors paid tribute to the excellence of the motives of
these philanthropic ladies, and recognized the good they did. They had
introduced "much order and cleanliness," had provided work for those who
had hitherto passed their time in total idleness, and had made the
treatment of female transports on the way to New South Wales their
especial care. They had tried, moreover, by their presence and their
pious, disinterested efforts, to restrain the dissolute manners and
vicious language of the unhappy and depraved inmates. But it was already
plain that they constituted an independent authority within the gaols;
they were frequently in conflict with the chaplain, who not strangely
resented the orders issued by the aldermen, that women should be
frequently kept from chapel in order that they might attend the ladies'
lectures and exhortations. The admission of a crowd of visitors to
assist in these lay services has already been remarked upon; as the
inspectors pointed out, it had the bad effect of distracting attention,
it tended to "dissipate reflection, diminish the gloom of the prison,
and mitigate the punishment which the law has sentenced the prisoner to
undergo."
It is to be feared too that although the surface was thus whitewashed
and decorous, much that was vicious still festered and rankled beneath,
and that when the restraining influences of the ladies were absent, the
female prisoners relapsed into immoral and uncleanly discourse. Even in
the daytime, when supervision was withdrawn, "the language used to be
dreadful," says one of the women when under examination; "swearing and
talking of what crimes they had committed, and how they had done it."
Another witness declared she had heard the most shocking language in the
yard; she said "she had never witnessed such scenes before, and hopes
she never shall again--it was dreadful!" After locking-up time, which
varied, as on the male side, according to the daylight, the scenes were
often riotous and disgraceful. The poor, who could afford no luxuries,
went to bed early, but were kept awake by the revelries of the rich,
who supped royally on the supplies provided from outside, and kept it
up till ten or eleven o'clock. There were frequent quarrels and fights;
shoes and other missiles were freely bandied about; and with all this
"the most dreadful oaths, the worst language, too bad to be repeated,"
were made use of every night.
Bad as were the various parts of the gaol already dealt with, there
still remained one where the general callous indifference and
mismanagement culminated in cruel culpable neglect. The condition of the
capitally-convicted prisoners after sentence was still very disgraceful.
The side they occupied, still known as the press-yard, consisted of two
dozen rooms and fifteen cells. In these various chambers, until just
before the inspectors made their report, all classes of the condemned,
those certain to suffer, and the larger number who were nearly certain
of a reprieve, were jumbled up together, higgledy-piggledy, the old and
the young, the murderer and the child who had broken into a
dwelling.[85] All privacy was impossible under the circumstances. At
times the numbers congregated together were very great; as many as fifty
and sixty, even more, were crowded indiscriminately into the press-yard.
The better-disposed complained bitterly of what they had to endure; one
man declared that the language of the condemned rooms was disgusting,
that he was dying a death every day in being compelled to associate with
such characters. In the midst of the noisy and blasphemous talk no one
could pursue his meditations; any who tried to pray became the sport and
ridicule of his brutal fellows.
Owing to the repeated entreaties of the criminals who could hardly hope
to escape the gallows, some show of classification was carried out, and
when the inspectors visited Newgate they found the three certain to die
in a day-room by themselves; in a second room were fourteen more who had
every hope of a reprieve. The whole of these seventeen had, however, a
common airing-yard, and took their exercise there at the same time, so
that men in the most awful situation, daily expecting to be hanged, were
associated continually with a number of those who could look with
certainty on a mitigation of punishment. The latter, light-hearted and
reckless, conducted themselves in the most unseemly fashion, and "with
as much indifference as the inmates of the other parts of the prison."
They amused themselves after their own fashion; played all day long at
blind-man's-buff and leap-frog, or beat each other with a knotted
handkerchief, laughing and uproarious, utterly unmindful of the
companionship of men upon whom lay the shadow of an impending shameful
death. "Men whose cases were dangerous, and those most seriously
inclined, complained of these annoyances," so subversive of meditation,
so disturbing to the thoughts; they suffered sickening anxiety, and
wished to be locked up alone. This indiscriminate association lasted for
months, during the whole of which time the unhappy convicts who had but
little hope of commutation were exposed to the mockery of their reckless
associates.
The brutal callousness of the bulk of the inmates of the press-yard may
be gathered from the prison punishment-book, which frequently recorded
such entries as the following: "Benjamin Vines and Daniel Ward put in
irons for two days for breaking the windows of the day room in the
condemned cells." "Joseph Coleman put in irons for three days for
striking one of the prisoners," in the same place. There were disputes
and quarrels constantly among these doomed men; it was a word and blow,
an argument clenched always with a fight. The more peaceably disposed
found some occupation in making Newgate tokens, leaden hearts,[86] and
"grinding the impressions off penny-pieces, then pricking figures or
words on them to give to their friends as memorials." Turnkeys
occasionally visited the press-yard, but its occupants were under
little or no control. The chaplain, who might have been expected to make
these men his peculiar care, and who at one time had visited them
frequently, often several times a week, had relaxed his efforts,
because, according to his own account, he was so frequently stopped in
the performance of his duties. In his evidence before the inspectors he
declared that "for years he gave his whole time to his duties, from an
early hour in the morning till late in the afternoon. He left off
because he was so much interfered with and laughed at, and from seeing
that no success attended his efforts, owing to the evils arising from
association." Latterly his ministrations to the condemned had been
restricted to a visit on Sunday afternoons, and occasionally about once
a fortnight on a week-day.
It is only fair to Mr. Cotton to add that, according to his own journal,
he was unremitting in his attentions to convicts who were actually cast
for death, and the day of whose execution was fixed. He had no doubt a
difficult mission to discharge; on the one hand, the Ladies'
Association, supported and encouraged by public approval, trenched upon
his peculiar province; on the other, the governor of the gaol sneered at
his zeal, stigmatized his often most just strictures on abuses as "a
bundle of nonsense," and the aldermen, when he appealed to them for
protection and countenance, generally sided with his opponents.
Nevertheless the inspectors summed up against him. While admitting that
he had had many difficulties to contend with, and that he had again and
again protested against the obstacles thrown in his way, the inspectors
"cannot forbear expressing their opinion that he might have shown
greater perseverance, in the face of impediments confessedly
discouraging," as regards the private teaching of prisoners; and they
went on to say that "a resolved adherence, in spite of discouragements
the most disheartening, to that line of conduct which his duty imposed
on him, would, it is probable, have eventually overcome the reluctance
of some of the prisoners at least, and would have possessed so much
moral dignity as effectually to rebuke and abash the profane spirit of
the more insolent and daring of the criminals."
The lax discipline maintained in Newgate was still further deteriorated
by the presence of two other classes of prisoners who ought never to
have been inmates of such a gaol. One of these were the criminal
lunatics, who were at this time and for long previous continuously
imprisoned there. As the law stood since the passing of the 9th Geo. IV.
c. 40, any two justices might remove a prisoner found to be insane,
either on commitment or arraignment, to an asylum, and the Secretary of
State had the same power as regards any who became insane while
undergoing sentence. These powers were not invariably put in force, and
there were in consequence many unhappy lunatics in Newgate and other
gaols, whose proper place was the asylum. At the time the Lords'
Committee sat there were eight thus retained in Newgate, and a return
in the appendix of the Lords' report gives a total of thirty-nine
lunatics confined in various gaols, many of them guilty of murder and
other serious crimes. The inspectors in the following year, on examining
the facts, found that some of these poor creatures had been in
confinement for long periods: at Newgate and York Castle as long as five
years; "at Ilchester and Morpeth for seven years; at Warwick for eight
years, at Buckingham and Hereford for eleven years, at Appleby for
thirteen years, at Anglesea for fifteen years, at Exeter for sixteen
years, and at Pembroke for not less a period than twenty-four years."
It was manifestly wrong that such persons, "visited by the most awful of
calamities," should be detained in a common prison. Not only did their
presence tend greatly to interfere with the discipline of the prison,
but their condition was deplorable in the extreme. The lunatic became
the sport of the idle and the depraved. His cure was out of the
question; he was placed in a situation "beyond all others calculated to
confirm his malady and prolong his sufferings." The matter was still
further complicated at Newgate by the presence within the walls of sham
lunatics. Some of those included in the category had actually been
returned as sane from the asylum to which they had been sent, and there
was always some uncertainty as to who was mad and who not. Prisoners
indeed were known to boast that they had saved their necks by feigning
insanity. It was high time that the unsatisfactory state of the law as
regards the treatment of criminal lunatics should be remedied, and not
the least of the good services rendered by the new inspectors was their
inquiry into the status of these unfortunate people, and their
recommendation to improve it.
The other inmates of the prison of an exceptional character, and
exempted from the regular discipline, such as it was, were the ten
persons committed to Newgate by the House of Commons in 1835. These were
the gentlemen concerned in the bribery case at Ipswich in 1835, when a
petition was presented against the return of Messrs. Adam Dundas and
Fitzroy Kelly. Various witnesses, including Messrs. J. B. Dasent,
Pilgrim, Bond, and Clamp, had refused to give evidence before the House
of Commons' Committee; a Speaker's warrant was issued for their arrest
when they absconded. Mr. J. E. Sparrow and Mr. Clipperton, the
parliamentary agents of the members whose election was impugned, were
implicated in aiding and abetting the others to abscond, and a Mr.
O'Mally, counsel for the two M.P.'s, was also concerned. Pilgrim and
Dasent were caught and given into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms,
and the rest were either arrested or they surrendered. A resolution at
once passed the House without division to commit the whole to Newgate,
where they remained for various terms. Dasent and Pilgrim were released
in ten days, on making due submission. O'Mally sent in a medical
certificate, declaring that the imprisonment was endangering his life,
and after some question he was also released. The rest were detained for
more than a month, it being considered that they were the most guilty,
as being either professional agents, who advised the others to abscond,
or witnesses who did not voluntarily come forward when the chance was
given them.
Many of the old customs once prevalent in the State Side, so properly
condemned and abolished, were revived for the convenience of these
gentlemen, whose incarceration was thus rendered as little like
imprisonment as possible. A certain number, who could afford the high
rate of a guinea per diem, fixed by the under sheriff, were lodged in
the governor's house, slept there, and had their meals provided for them
from the Sessions House or London Coffee-House. A few others, who could
not afford a payment of more than half a guinea, were permitted to
monopolize a part of the prison infirmary, where the upper ward was
exclusively appropriated to their use. They also had their meals sent
in, and, with the food, wine almost _ad libitum_. A prisoner, one of the
wardsmen, waited on those in the infirmary; the occupants of the
governor's house had their own servants, or the governor's. As a rule,
visitors, many of them persons of good position, came and went all day
long, and as late as nine at night; some to the infirmary, many more to
the governor's house. There were no restraints, cards and backgammon
were played, and the time passed in feasting and revelry. Even Mr. Cope
admitted that the committal of this class of prisoners to Newgate was
most inconvenient, and the inspectors expressed themselves still more
strongly in reprehension of the practice. The infirmary at this
particular period epitomized the condition of the gaol at large. It was
diverted from its proper uses, and, as the "place of the greatest
comfort," was allotted to persons who should not have been sent to
Newgate at all. All the evils of indiscriminate association were
strongly accentuated by the crowd collected within its narrow limits.
"It may easily be imagined," say the inspectors, in speaking of the
prison generally, "what must be the state of discipline in a place
filled with characters so various as were assembled there, where the
tried and the untried, the sick and the healthy, the sane and the
insane, the young and the old, the trivial offender and the man about to
suffer the extreme penalty of the law, are all huddled together without
discrimination, oversight, or control."
Enough has probably been extracted from this most damnatory report to
give a complete picture of the disgraceful state in which Newgate still
remained in 1835. The inspectors, however, honestly admitted that
although the site of the prison was convenient, its construction was as
bad as bad could be. Valuable space was cumbered with many long and
winding passages, numerous staircases, and unnecessarily thick and
cumbrous inner walls. The wards were in some cases spacious, but they
were entirely unsuited for separation or the inspection of prisoners.
The yards were narrow and confined, mainly because the ground plan was
radically vicious. These were evils inseparable from the place. But
there were others remediable under a better system of management. More
attention to ventilation, which was altogether neglected and inadequate,
would have secured a better atmosphere for the unhappy inmates, who
constantly breathed an air heavy, and, when the wards were first opened
in the morning, particularly offensive.
Again, the discipline commonly deemed inseparable from every place of
durance was entirely wanting. The primary object of committing a
prisoner to gaol, as the inspectors pointed out, was to deter not only
the criminal himself, but others from crime, and "to dispose him, by
meditation and seclusion, to return to an honest life." But at Newgate
the convicted prisoner, instead of privation and hard fare, "is
permitted to purchase whatever his own means or the means of his friends
in or out of prison can afford, and he can almost invariably procure the
luxuries of his class of life, beer and tobacco, in abundance. Instead
of seclusion and meditation, his time is passed in the midst of a body
of criminals of every class and degree, in riot, debauchery, and gaming,
vaunting his own adventures, or listening to those of others;
communicating his own skill and aptitude in crime, or acquiring the
lessons of greater adepts. He has access to newspapers, and of course
prefers that description which are expressly prepared for his own
class, and which abound in vulgar adventure in criminal enterprise, and
in the histories of the police, the gaol, and the scaffold. He is
allowed intercourse with prostitutes who, in nine cases out of ten, have
originally conduced to his ruin; and his connection with them is
confirmed by that devotion and generosity towards their paramours in
adversity for which these otherwise degraded women are remarkable.
Having thus passed his time, he returns a greater adept in crime, with a
wider acquaintance among criminals, and, what perhaps is even more
injurious to him, is generally known to all the worst men in the
country; not only without the inclination, but almost without the
ability of returning to an honest life."
These pungent and well-grounded strictures applied with still greater
force to the unconvicted prisoner, the man who came to the prison
innocent, and still uncontaminated, to be subjected to the same baneful
influences, and to suffer the same moral deterioration, whether
ultimately convicted or set free. The whole system, or more correctly
the want of system, was baneful and pernicious to the last degree. The
evils of such association were aggravated by the unbroken idleness; one
"evil inflamed the other;" reformation or any kind of moral improvement
was impossible; the prisoner's career was inevitably downward, till he
struck the lowest depths. "Forced and constant intercourse with the most
depraved individuals of his own class; the employment of those means
and agents by which the lowest passions and the most vulgar
propensities of man are perpetually kept in the highest state of
excitement--drink, gaming, obscene and blasphemous language; utter
idleness, the almost unrestricted admission of money and luxuries;
uncontrolled conversation with visitors of the very worst
description--prostitutes, thieves, receivers of stolen goods; all the
tumultuous and diversified passions and emotions which circumstances
like these must necessarily generate, forbid the faintest shadow of a
hope that in a soil so unfavourable for moral culture, any awakening
truth, salutary exhortation, or imperfect resolutions of amendment can
take root or grow."
Strong as were the foregoing remarks, the inspectors wound up their
report in still more trenchant language, framing a terrible indictment
against those responsible for the condition of Newgate. Their words
deserve to be quoted in full.
"We cannot close these remarks," say the inspectors, "without an
expression of the painful feelings with which we submit to your
Lordship[87] this picture of the existing state of Newgate. That in this
vast metropolis, the centre of wealth, civilization, and information;
distinguished as the seat of religion, worth, and philanthropy, where is
to be found in operation every expedient by which Ignorance may be
superseded by Knowledge, Idleness by Industry, and Suffering by
Benevolence; that in the metropolis of this highly-favoured country, to
which the eyes of other lands turn for example, a system of prison
discipline such as that enforced in Newgate should be for a number of
years in undisturbed operation, not only in contempt of religion and
humanity, but in opposition to the recorded denunciations of authority,
and in defiance of the express enactments of the law, is indeed a
subject which cannot but impress every considerate mind with humiliation
and sorrow. We trust, however, that the day is at hand when this stain
will be removed from the character of the city of London, and when the
first municipal authority of our land will be no longer subjected to the
reproach of fostering an institution which outrages the rights and
feelings of humanity, defeats the ends of justice, and disgraces the
profession of a Christian country."
The publication of this report raised a storm in the city, and the
corporation was roused to make an immediate protest. A committee of
aldermen was forthwith appointed to report upon the inspectors' report,
and the result was another lengthy blue book, printed in the
parliamentary papers, 1836, traversing where it was possible the
statements of the inspectors, and offering explanation and palliation of
such evils as could not be denied. The inspectors retorted without loss
of time, reiterating their charges, and pointing out that the committee
of aldermen by its own admission justified the original allegations. It
was impossible to deny the indiscriminate association; the gambling,
drinking, smoking, quarrelling in the gaol; the undue authority given to
prisoners, the levying of garnish under another name, the neglect of the
condemned convicts, the filthy condition of the wards, the insufficiency
of bedding and clothing, the misemployment of officers and prisoners by
the governor. The corporation evidently had the worst of it, and began
to feel the necessity for undertaking the great work of reform. Next
year we find the inspectors expressing their satisfaction that "the full
and faithful exposure which we felt it our duty to make of Newgate has
been productive of at least some advantage, inasmuch as it has aroused
the attention of those upon whom parliamentary reports and grand jury
presentments had hitherto failed to make the slightest impression."
The measures of improvement introduced were mainly as follows: the
fixing of "inspection holes" in the doors and walls, so as to insure
more supervision; of windows opening into the well-holes, to give better
light and ventilation; the construction of bed-places, three tiers high
alongside the walls for males, two tiers for females; the provision of
dining-rooms and dining-tables. The infirmary was enlarged, the
admission of visitors limited, and the passing of articles prevented by
a wire screen. The windows were to be glazed and painted to prevent
prisoners from looking out; baths, fumigating places for clothing,
wash-house, and the removal of dust-bins, completed the new arrangements
in the main prison. In the press-yard, the press-room and ward above it
were parcelled out into nine separate sleeping cells; each was provided
with an iron bedstead, and a small desk at which the condemned man might
read or write. But the one great and most crying evil remained
unremedied. "The mischief of gaol associations," say the inspectors,
"which has been demonstrably proved to be the fruitful source of all the
abuses and irregularities which have so long disgraced Newgate, is not
only permitted still to exist in the prison, but is rendered more
powerful than before."... In endeavouring to arrest contamination,
prisoners were more closely confined, and associated in smaller numbers;
but this had the effect of throwing them into closer contact, and of
making them more intimately acquainted with, more directly influential
upon, one another.
In the inspectors' fourth report, dated 1839, they return to the charge,
and again call the corporation to task for their mismanagement of
Newgate. Abuses and irregularities, which had been partially remedied by
the reform introduced in 1837, were once more in the ascendant. "In our
late visits," they say, "we have seen manifest indications of a
retrograde movement in this respect, and a tendency to return to much of
that laxity and remissness which formerly marked the management of this
prison." Again the following year the inspectors repeat their charge.
"The prominent evils of this prison (Newgate)--evils which the
alterations made within the last four years have failed to remove--are
the association of prisoners, and the unusual contamination to which
such association gives rise. For nearly twenty-two hours out of the
twenty-four the prisoners are locked up, during which time no officer is
stationed in the ward with them." They go on to say--"Newgate is only
less extensively injurious than formerly because it is less crowded. The
effects of the imprisonment are to vitiate its inmates, to extend their
acquaintanceship with each other, to corrupt the prisoner charged with
an offence of which he may be innocent, and to confirm in guilt the
young and inexperienced offender."
The reports as the years flow on reiterate the same complaints. Much
bitterness of feeling is evidently engendered, and the corporation grows
more and more angry with the inspectors. The prison officials appear to
be on the side of the inspectors, to the great dissatisfaction of the
corporation, who claimed the full allegiance and support of its
servants. In a resolution passed by the Court of Aldermen on 18th March,
1842, I find it ordered "that the ordinary of Newgate be restricted from
making any communications to the Home Office or the Inspectors of
Prisons, and that he be required wholly to confine himself to the
performance of his duty as prescribed by Act of Parliament." The
inspectors were not to be deterred, however, by any opposition from the
earnest discharge of their functions, and continued to report against
Newgate. In their tenth report they state that they are compelled by an
imperative sense of duty to advert in terms of decided condemnation to
the lamentable condition of the prisons of the city of London,--Newgate,
Giltspur St. Compter, and the City Bridewell,--in which the master evil
of gaol association and consequent contamination still continues to
operate directly to the encouragement of crime. "The plan adopted for
ventilating the dining-room on the 'master's side' and that of the
middle yard is very inefficient; it consists of several circular
perforations, about two inches in diameter, slanting downwards from the
top of the walls to the outside adjoining the slaughter-houses of
Newgate market; and occasionally, in hot weather, instead of ventilating
the apartments, they only serve to convey the offensive effluvia arising
from the decaying animal matter into the dining-rooms. Sometimes the
stench in hot weather is said to be very bad. Many rats also come
through these so-called ventilators, as they open close to the ground at
the back of the prison." At the same time the inspectors animadvert
strongly upon the misconduct of prisoners and the frequency of prison
punishments, both offences and punishments affording a sufficient index
to the practices going forward; and they wind up by declaring that a
strict compliance with their duties gave them no choice "but to report
matters as we found them, and again and again to protest against Newgate
as it at present exists."
No complete and permanent improvement was indeed possible while Newgate
remained unchanged. It was not till the erection of the new prison at
Holloway in 1850, and the entire internal reconstruction of Newgate
according to new ideas, that the evils so justly complained of and
detailed in this chapter were entirely removed. But these are matters
which will occupy a later page in my narrative.