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The Clink Prison

The Clink Prison was the prison of Winchester Palace. Its original purpose was to hold heretics. However, with time, it came to be a penitentiary that was used to hold those individuals whose behaviour had transgressed the smooth operation of Bankside as a pleasure ground. The prison was burned down during the Gordon Riots of 1780.

In clink is a phrase for someone being in gaol or in disgrace.

Location: Clink Street, SE1 9DG

The Fleet Prison

The Fleet Prison was burned down during the Great Fire of 1666. The rebuilt gaol grew into being something of a social centre. Its facilities included coffeehouses and a real tennis court. Its inmates included: the writer John Cleland (d.1788) and the entertainment impresario Teresa Cornelys (d.1797). The prison acquired a particular notoriety through the practice of unlicensed Fleet marriages. During the Gordon Riots of 1780 the building was burned down a second time. The prison was again rebuilt. It was demolished in 1846.

Location: Old Seacoal Lane, c.EC4M 7LD. The railway lines running into Holborn Viaduct Station cover part of what was the site.

Fanny Hill

During the late 1720s and through the 1730s, John Cleland worked for the East India Company in India. He returned to Britain, where his various ambitious schemes did not meet with a receptive audience. In 1748 he was arrested for debt and was imprisoned in the Fleet Prison. While incarcerated there, he followed in the tradition of Marco Polo (d.1324) and Miguel de Cervantes (d.1616), by writing a literary work - the erotic novel Memoirs of A Woman of Pleasure. This described the life of a prostitute without using vulgar language. The following year he, the book's publishers, and its printers were convicted of having produced an obscene work. In 1750 the Memoirs of Fanny Hill, an expurgated version of the novel, was published. This too triggered a prosecution. Cleland continued to produce works in a range of genres but none of them proved to be a commercial success. The Privy Council granted the writer an annuity on the stipulation that he did not write any further obscene works.

The Marshalsea

In the 1720s William Acton ran the Marshalsea Prison. He divided it in two sections. The Common side was made awful. Those on the Master's side could see it from their tap room. They would pay to remain where they were rather than be transferred.

In 1729 the architect Robert Castell died of small pox after being forced to share a room with a man who had contracted the disease in a sponging house that was associated with the prison. Despite his financial indebtedness, Castell had had influential friends. As a result, the House of Commons set up a Gaols Committee to study the Marshalsea and the Fleet. Its members were shocked by the suffering that they uncovered. Acton was put on trial for murder. He was acquitted because the ministry wished to protect Sir Philip Meadows, who, as Knight Marshal, had appointed John Darby, the prison's governor, who, in turn, had appointed Acton.

Location: Quilp Street, SE1 1HQ. A remaining wall of Marshalsea.

Millbank Penitentiary

Jeremy Bentham's brother Samuel was a naval engineer and architect. In 1780 he went to Russia to work. He entered the employment of Prince Potemkin. He ran a workshop on one of the prince s estates in The Crimea. In order to be able to supervise the workers efficiently he created a circular workshop. His own desk was at the centre. Bentham visited for a couple of years. He saw the workshop.

Relatively few of the death sentences were carried out. The social theorist Jeremy Bentham concluded because not enough people were dying the death sentence was not a real deterrence and that therefore the system should be replaced by one that did what it stated it would do. He set out his ideas about prison management in The Panopticon or Inspection House (1791). In 1794 he was awarded a government contract to implement his scheme but failed to do so. In 1813 the government took over the project. Millbank Penitentiary was built upon the site of the Grosvenors country house.¹ The gaol opened in 1816 and was completed five years later. By then the facility covered eighteen acres. It was the first prison that was established to deal with a national penitential task. It was turned into an ordinary prison in 1843 and closed in 1890. The complex was demolished during the early 1890s.

In a Panopticon people feel as they are being surveyed, therefore, they behave. For Bentham this was a positive. He wanted the public to visit the prison so that they in turn would watch the watchers. For him, it was a mill for grinding rogues honest.

The government did not extend the Panopticon model. This piqued Bentham. His politics became more democratic in their character. He drew up a plan for how the state should be. This was effectively the Panopticon in reverse. It involved the people watching the government.

Location: Tate Britain, 52 Millbank, SW1P 4RG² (blue, red)

The Ministry of Justice, 102 Petty France, SW1H 9AJ. The site had been 19 York Street, where Bentham had lived. (blue, brown)

¹. Until the 1820s Park Lane had not had any particular social lan. A side-effect of Millbank's construction may have been to help make the road a fashionable address. The Grosvenors moved to Grosvenor House in Park Lane.

². The Tate Gallery (1897) was opened on part of the site.

Transportation

Those prisoners who had been sentenced to a term of transportation to Australia were kept in Millbank Prison.

Location: The Morpeth Arms, 58 Millbank, SW1P 4RW. The pub s cellars are reputed to be a legacy of Millbank Penitentiary. (orange, purple)

The Town of Ramsgate

The cellars of The Town of Ramsgate pub in Wapping High Street were once dungeons in which convicts were held before being transported to Australia to serve out their sentences.

Location: The Town of Ramsgate, 62 Wapping High Street, E1W 2PN (blue, orange)

Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was founded in 1188 by King Henry II. It was probably an outgrowth of Newgate Gate's gatehouse. In the early 15^thC Richard Whittington oversaw a renovation of the gaol. The building became the City of London's principal penitentiary.

The business of justice was carried out within the prison. However, conditions within it became so unhealthy that in 1539 the first Old Bailey Sessions House was built for the judges.

The rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666 placed the Corporation s finances under extreme pressure. In 1694 an Act of Parliament bankrupted the City. One of the means that the Corporation then utilised to raise money was to auction off a number of the principal civic offices, e.g. the City Marshal and the Keeper of Newgate.

Those who were imprisoned in Newgate included: Captain Kidd, Claude Duval, Jack Sheppard.

The prison was burned down during the course of the Gordon Riots of 1780, but as it was in the process of being rebuilt at the time, so the event did not have the same impact as it would have had otherwise.¹ In 1792 the livestock and dogs that had long lived in gaol's yards were banished from the complex.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield came up with his idea for colonisations (New Zealand, South Australia, and parts of Canada) while serving a prison sentence in Newgate. He had been convicted of eloping with a young, heiress and had been caught.

In 1902 the cuckoo of judicial administration finally expelled its parent from the nest. With the demise of the gaol, prisoners had to be transported to and from the courts on days when they were sitting.

Location: 32 Old Bailey, EC4M 7HS (blue, red)

¹. Just as French politics prior to the French Revolution resonated with the political classes frustration at their relative restriction, compared to their British counterparts liberty since the Revolution of 1688, so the attack on the Bastille Prison in 1789 echoed the destruction of Newgate Prison during the Gordon Riots.

Pentonville

Pentonville was designed by Captain Joshua Jebb (1793-1863) of the Toyal Engineers. After the prison opened in 1842, its death rates proved to be the same as the old prisons despite its being a healthier environment than they were. This was because of the high suicide rates.

The violent criminal Frankie Fraser (1923-2014) nursed a particular hatred for William Lawton, the Governor of Pentonville. In 1951 while the man was walking his dog on Wandsworth Common, Fraser assaulted him and hanged the animal.

Terence Morris (1931-2013) and Pauline Morris's Pentonville: A Sociological Study of An English Prison (1963) was the first sociological study of an English prison.

Prison Fever

The Black Assizes of Taunton. / April 1750 the Old Bailey. Over 40 people died. (Evans, Robin (1982) 95)

Black Assize of May 1750 - four Old Bailey judges and fourteen jurymen died of prison fever. The practice of judges having nosegays was introduced.

The Lord Mayor Sir Samuel Pennant died.

In 1749 Rev Stephen Hales installed ventilators in the Savoy Prison. Three years later he did the same at Newgate. (Evans, Robin (1982) 100)

Location: 32 Old Bailey, EC4M 7HS (blue, red)

Prison Reformers

See Also: PHILANTHROPY

Elizabeth Fry

The prison reformer Elizabeth Fry lived in a house in St Mildred's Court from 1800 to 1809. In 1828 the bank that was run by Fry's husband Joseph Fry collapsed. She was able to continue with her work with the support of her five brothers, who included Samuel Gurney.

Location: St Mildred's Court, EC2R 8BP (blue, red)

John Howard

The statue of the prison reformer John Howard (d.1790) in St Paul's Cathedral's South Transept was the first monument to be admitted to the cathedral.

Location: 23 Great Ormond Street, WC1N 3JB (orange, red)

157-159 Lower Clapton Road, E5 8EX

Transportation

George Barrington

George Barrington was a prince of pickpockets . After he was transported publishers started producing his memoirs . They then moved on to produce accounts of his life in New South Wales.

He became the subject of interest in Australia.

David Backhouse 2024