In 1887, socialist politician John Burns spent six weeks in prison, for most of which time he received the Class 2 daily allowance of 12oz of bread and a pint of gruel. He recalled:
The bakery at Wormwood Scrubs in 1898 where prisoners, under the direction of the prison baker, roll out and cut up the dough into weighed individual portions.
I had the bread at 5.30 p.m. and nothing till 7.45 next morning. I am not ashamed to say that at I or 2 o’clock in the morning I have wetted my hands with my spittle and gone down on my hands and knees in the hope of picking up a stray crumb.181
Bread, the staple of all prison diets, could be very variable in its quality. Lord William Nevill, an inmate of Wormwood Scrubs and Parkhurst between 1898 and 1901, found that the bread ‘at times was very good, but often it was quite the reverse. It seemed either to be made of bad flour, or to be half baked, and there is nothing more unwholesome than sour, sodden bread.’182 At Strangeways in 1906, suffragette Hannah Mitchell found that ‘the gruel was not too bad, but the bread was quite uneatable. If it had been of sawdust flavoured with road sweepings it could not have tasted worse.’183 Equally unappetising was the bread at Portland, which was said to be half baked ‘in order to keep it wet and damp to keep it up to weight; [it] was what you call soaked, you could squeeze it up like a lump of putty’. 184
By the 1890s, the adulteration of foods such as flour and bread had become a criminal offence, although Oscar Wilde in his 1897 Ballad of Reading Gaol suggested it was still taking place:
The brackish water that we drink
Creeps with a loathsome slime,
And the bitter bread they weigh in scales
Is full of chalk and lime,
And Sleep will not lie down, but walks
Wild-eyed, and cries to Time.
Wilde was also highly critical of the food given to children placed in prison while awaiting trial or sentence – a matter he had gained first-hand experience of while at Reading. In a letter to the Daily Chronicle in May 1897, he wrote that:
The food that is given to [a child] consists of a piece of usually badly baked prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast at half-past seven. At twelve o’clock it gets dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal stirabout, and at half-past five it gets a piece of dry bread and a tin of water for its supper. This diet in the case of a strong grown man is always productive of illness of some kind, chiefly, of course, diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness … A child who has been crying all day long, and perhaps half the night, in a lonely, dimly lit cell, and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat food of this coarse, horrible kind.
Wilde’s comments were provoked by the revelation that a kindly warder at Reading who had taken pity on a child and given it some sweet biscuits had been dismissed from his post.
Suet pudding had become a regular item on the prison dinner menu in 1864, when it had been praised as ‘palatable without being luxurious’. This was not a view that was always shared by the diners. Manchester councillor Frederick Brocklehurst, after a month-long stay at Strangeways prison in 1896, recorded that it was ‘of the solidity of putty, and about the colour of burnt umber’ and ‘clung tenaciously to the stomach’. 185 Another consumer’s appraisal came from George Foote, imprisoned for blasphemy at Holloway in 1883:
On Sundays and Wednesdays … I was served with six ounces of suet pudding baked in a separate tin. I never saw such pudding, and I never smelt such suet. Brown meal was used for the dough, and the suet lay on the top in yellow greasy streaks. I can liken the compound to nothing but a linseed poultice.186
Some prisons grew their own vegetables, both as a form of employment for the inmates and also as a means of keeping costs down. At Holloway, a team of up to twenty raised a large quantity of potatoes, leeks, cabbage and other vegetables for use by the prison. However, many establishments bought in their potatoes – at least when supplies were cheap and plentiful. Nevill complained that when prices were higher, the quantity and quality of those purchased was reduced and ‘the unfortunate prisoners had to eat rotten potatoes, or else go without half their dinner, for weeks at a stretch’.187 At one prison in 1880, the potatoes ‘usually consisted of two, or occasionally three, shabby-looking tubers, the dirt still adhering to them, and soft and spongy to the taste’.188 A prisoner at another establishment recalled that on cutting into the potatoes, ‘half the interior was often found to be a mass of foul, black, spongy disease’.189
Following its inclusion in the local prison dietary in 1878, stirabout soon became the most detested item on the prison menu. Brocklehurst described it as having ‘the consistency of “stickphast” paste’.190 Class 1 female prisoners were spared its pleasures after 1895 when an amendment to the dietary instead allowed them bread and a pint of gruel at each meal.
Even traditional porridge and gruel, particularly in those dietaries where it was served unsweetened, were not liked much better. The poet and writer Thomas Cooper, describing a stay in Stafford Gaol, recalled that ‘at eight, they brought us a brown porringer, full of “skilly” – for it was such bad unpalatable oatmeal gruel, that it deserved the name’. 191
Some of the worst food served to inmates involved meat that was either substandard or in advanced stages of decay. Nevill related how the mutton served for one dinner was ‘perfectly rotten’ – one man had thrown his dinner through the ventilator because the smell of it made him horribly ill. On another occasion, the pork used in the dinner soup was ‘absolutely putrid’:
It came out that when the meat was issued to the master-cook on the Saturday, he pointed out that it was tainted, and that, as the weather was very hot, it would be quite bad by the following day. The steward, however, told him that the meat must be used. On Sunday, of course, it was quite unfit for human consumption. If a butcher had exposed it for sale he would have been heavily fined. Yet, as the master-cook had nothing else to make the soup of, he had to use the decayed pork. He tried to smother it by putting in an extra quantity of vinegar, but the mess was so disgusting that no one could swallow it. 192
At Warwick Gaol in 1839, the chartist William Lovett was served with ‘a pint of what was called beef soup’. In a subsequent official complaint, it was said that it contained ‘no other appearance of meat than some slimy, stringy particles, which, hanging about the wooden spoon, so offended your petitioners’ stomachs that they were compelled to forgo eating it’.193
Prison regulations did, of course, include a provision for a prisoner to complain about the diet given to him, although at least one version of the regulations at Millbank included the interesting restriction that this must be done before the food was tasted. A prisoner could also request that the portions be weighed in his presence. 194 Repeated complaints of a frivolous or groundless nature could, however, result in punishment.
One item of the prison diet that received relatively little complaint was cocoa. It was introduced for some longer-term inmates in Sir James Graham’s 1843 dietaries but was cut and then restored in successive reviews. In his evidence to the Carnarvon Committee in 1863, William Guy, the Medical Superintendent at Millbank, was asked whether cocoa was a rather unnecessary luxury. He replied that although not an essential item, it was ‘a very good article of diet, and contains a good deal of that oily element which … should always exist in food’.195 This richness of oil sometimes appeared as an oily slick on the surface although this did not deter Jabez Balfour when served with his ‘very fat – but most excellent – Navy cocoa’.196
Manchester’s Strangeways prison was completed in 1868. This view of the prison kitchens, probably dating from the early 1900s, shows how central the use of steam was to cooking operations.
By far and away the best food provided in prison was that served to inmates who were sick, and prisoners could go to remarkable lengths to gain medical exemption from their normal ‘hard labour and hard fare’. According to one estimate, 150 of Dartmoor’s 1,000 inmates applied to see the doctor each day, 100 of whom had noth
ing wrong with them. Methods of faking illness included eating soap, soda, poisonous insects and ground glass. Self-mutilation could be performed with a needle or piece of glass or, in extreme cases, placing a hand or arm under the wheels of a moving quarry wagon. Medical officers were, of course, wise to prisoners’ ploys and discouraged them by various means, for example, by prescribing suspected malingerers with a dose of some suitably unpleasant mixture. For a man feigning fits or paralysis, a douche of cold water could rapidly expose the deception.197
Regardless of the quality of prison food, physically consuming it could sometimes present problems. One Holloway inmate received a tin of porridge but was unable to eat it because no spoon was provided. At Pentonville, shallow wooden spoons were supplied but had to serve for dealing with every type of food – even tough meat, which had to be cut up using hands and teeth.198
DARK PLACES
In January 1894, the prison administration was thrown into crisis by a series of three articles which appeared in the Daily Chronicle under the title ‘Our Dark Places’. The unnamed author, referred to as ‘Our Special Commissioner’, appears to have been the Reverend William Morrison, an assistant prison chaplain at Wandsworth.199 The articles condemned the chairman of the Prison Commission, Sir Edmund Du Cane, for his dictatorial style and for ignoring all foreign innovations in penal administration. The separate system was described as torture, especially for less hardened prisoners; staff were underpaid, overworked and badly selected; the local prison system had suffered a ‘complete and utter breakdown’, yet ‘the great machine rolls obscurely on, cumbrous, pitiless, obsolete, unchanged’.200 It was also claimed that there was a high rate of insanity amongst prisoners – a rate of 40 per 10,000 as compared with 3 per 10,000 amongst the general population.
In response to the heated debate sparked by the articles, a Departmental Committee was set up to examine prison administration and the treatment and classification of inmates, particularly juveniles and first offenders. It was chaired by Herbert Gladstone MP, son of former Prime Minister William Gladstone. The committee’s report, published in 1895, acknowledged that ‘a sweeping indictment had been laid against the whole of the prison administration’ and that ‘many grave evils were alleged to exist.’201 Starting from the principle that ‘prison treatment should have as its primary and concurrent objects, deterrence and reformation’, it agreed with much of the criticism, concluding that ‘the main fault of our prison system is that it treats prisoners too much as irreclaimable criminals, instead of as reclaimable men and women’.202 The Prison Commissioners were described as ‘too unbending’ and ran ‘in grooves too narrow for the application of higher forms of discipline and treatment’. 203
Amongst the report’s recommendations were: the amalgamation of convict and local prisons; improvements in prison staffing; a reduction in the period of separation for convicts; the replacement of unproductive labour, such as the crank- and tread-wheel, by productive activity, for example gardening and farming; the provision of more books for prisoners; special treatment for drunkards, the ‘weak-minded’, first offenders, habitual criminals and juveniles; and the setting up of an experimental reformatory for offenders aged 16 to 21. The committee broadly supported the continued use of the separate system, but proposed that in local prisons association should be permitted during industrial labour as it was healthier, simplified the provision of labour and training, and could be used as a privilege that could be withdrawn.
The 1898 Prison Act implemented many of the Gladstone Committee’s recommendations. Classification of prisoners was improved, with first offenders being placed in a special ‘Star Class’ and housed separately from ‘habitual criminals’. The administration of convict and local prisons was to be merged, although convict prisons remained as a special category of prison until 1948. Formulating detailed regulations for the running of prisons was placed in the hands of the Secretary of State, with the first set being issued in 1899.
THE END OF THE PENAL DIET
In the wake of the Gladstone Report, the nineteenth century’s final review of prison food began, in the usual manner, with the setting up, in 1898, of a Departmental Committee. In a carefully worded brief, the Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, reminded the committee of several important guidelines: that ‘the food given to prisoners should be sufficient and not more than sufficient to maintain health and strength’; that ‘the ordinary prison diet is not to be regarded as an instrument of punishment’; and that ‘prison diets may not bear too favourable a comparison with the diets of free labourers in the outside world or the inmates of workhouses’. 204
Information was gathered from a wide range of sources including Members of Parliament, prison officials, prisoners’ aid societies and local Justices. The committee also made a number of unannounced visits to Dartmoor, Portland, Parkhurst, all the London prisons and several provincial ones, where kitchens and food were inspected, prisoners talked to and notes made of what was left unconsumed.
The most widely voiced topic of complaint was the existing Class 1 male dietary, which comprised 8oz of bread for breakfast and supper, and 1½ pints of stirabout for dinner. The committee’s report, published in 1899, concluded that Indian meal ‘as an article of diet is neither recognised nor used by the general population, and it is universally objected to by the inmates of prisons’. 205 This was a view confirmed on visits to several prisons where stirabout was virtually the only foodstuff left uneaten by prisoners, a finding which echoed the views of the Gladstone inquiry.206
The committee recommended a considerable simplification of the dietary system. It endorsed the existing practice of varying diets with length of sentence, but felt that the number of classes should be reduced to three. The report also disagreed with the 1878 review’s belief that there should be a penal element in the food served those serving short terms. Their proposed new Class A diet, provided in the first week of sentences lasting up to fourteen days, would provide ‘the plainest food, unattractive, but good and wholesome’. The Class B dietary, for those serving up to three months, and Class C, for longer sentences, would each offer an increased amount and variety of food. The system of dietary progression was almost entirely removed.
On the question of a separate dietary for those serving sentences with hard labour, the report noted that 60 per cent of such prisoners were exempted from onerous tasks such as the tread-wheel on grounds of age, infirmity or physical defect. Accordingly, it recommended that no distinction be made between hard-labour and non-hard-labour diets. With regard to age and sex, it proposed a new three-way categorisation, namely: males over 16, females over 16, and juveniles under 16 of either sex.
The new Class A diet offered a breakfast and supper of bread and gruel, with extra milk for juveniles. The despised stirabout was abolished and replaced on different days of the week by potatoes, suet pudding or porridge. Nutritionally, the Class A diet was superior to both the old Class 1 and 2 dietaries.
The new Class B diet, effectively a replacement for the former Class 2 and Class 3 dietaries, was an enhanced version of the latter. It offered three meat dinners a week instead of the previous two, and larger portions. Bacon and beans became a standard dish, and other portion sizes were increased. For men, supper time now included larger helpings of bread, and porridge instead of gruel. In nutritive terms, it was calculated that the Class B diet provided 128oz of carbohydrates and 33oz of ‘nitrogenous matters’ per week, compared with the 116oz and 23oz in the old Class 3 dietary, an increase which took it above the minimum daily needs of a working adult male. 207 A slightly modified version of the Class B diet was recommended as one appropriate for debtors and prisoners awaiting trial, with tea being given instead of gruel at breakfast, and cocoa instead of porridge or gruel at supper.
The Class C diet, a replacement for the existing Class 4, was a more generous version of Class B. For women with sentences over three months, tea was substituted for the usual breakfast gruel, which it was believed wou
ld make their lives ‘more contented’. For all inmates, supper was to be oatmeal-free with a pint of cocoa provided instead. The new dietaries for men (M), women (W), and juveniles (J), are presented in the accompanying tables. Broadly speaking, women and juveniles received the same food apart from some slight differences in the breakfast and supper menus:
CLASS A
CLASS B
CLASS C
M
W
J
M
W
J
M
W
J
Breakfast
Daily
Daily
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Gruel
1pt
1pt
1pt
Gruel
1pt
1pt
1pt
Porridge
1pt
1pt
Milk
½pt
Milk
½pt
Tea
1pt
Milk
½pt
Supper
Daily
Daily
The Prison Cookbook Page 15
