Victorian prison

A view of new cells under construction during the remodelling of Brixton Prison in 1902. The old cells were supposed to accommodate one person in a 8ft x 7½ft x 6ft high space, but became overcrowded. These were rebuilt ‘to meet the strain put upon the prison accommodation by the closing of Newgate [prison] and […]

A Victorian female prisoner in her cell, holding her child. From an edition of “The Windsor Magazine - An Illustrated Monthly for Men and Women”, published by Ward Lock & Co in 1896.

Plan of HM Prison Coldbath Fields 1884. The grey shading shows old buildings, the pink shows building which was new in 1884, increasing the capacity of the prison to 1,000 prisoners. Victorians were worried about the rising crime rate: offences went up from about 5,000 per year in 1800 to about 20,000 per year in 1840. They were firm believers in punishment for criminals, but faced a problem: what should the punishment be? There were prisons, but they were mostly small, old and badly-run…

Victorian prison wing by coldwarcamera, via Flickr

In this post I've taken a deeper look at Victorian Prisons and what it meant for your ancestor to be sentenced to Hard Labour on the Treadwheel or 'Everlasting Staircase'. I've even looked a some of the distances travelled in some of the harsher prisons in Victorian Britain. #VictorianCrime #CriminalAncestors #FamilyHistory

newgate

A Prisoner in his Cell (The Prisoner), 1878 by Nikolai Yaroshenko (Russian, 1846-1898), oil on canvas, 143.1 x 107.6 cm - Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow, Russia)2

Prisoners on a treadwheel at Pentonville Prison 1895 (COPY 1/420)

A Comprehensive History of the Workhouse by Peter Higginbotham

Armley prison-The hangman's tunnel - SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds