For those convicted of the most serious crimes, such as murder, hanging remained the ultimate sanction until its abolition in 1965. However, the use of the death penalty was already in dramatic decline. Those sentenced to death in 1818 numbered 1,254 of which ninety-seven were actually executed.215 In 1900, only twenty received the death penalty, with around three quarters of those actually facing the hangman. The spectacle of public executions ended in 1868 and now took place behind closed doors. From 1908, the minimum age for execution was raised to 16.
A women’s prison cell at Holloway prison in 1901. The occupant is engaged in sack-making. Her plank bed can be seen standing on end at the left. From 1902, all London’s female prisoners were held at Holloway.
The 1901 scene outside Holloway where relatives or friends wait to meet those being discharged from the prison.
An aerial view of London’s Wormwood Scrubs, opened as a convict prison in 1883 then used as a local prison from 1890. It used a ‘telegraph-pole’ layout, a design which had been popularised in the pavilion plan hospitals of the period promoted by Florence Nightingale. The cell blocks, linked by covered passageways, ran north–south to receive sunlight at each side during the day.
Internally, the Wormwood Scrubs cell blocks resembled the galleried wings of older prisons. This view, from around 1900, shows prisoners returning to their cells for dinner.
A women’s cell at Wormwood Scrubs in 1896 with bedding stowed away at the right. The corner shelves contain a few books from the prison library. The prisoner is picking oakum – teasing apart old rope into its raw strands.
The ‘babies’ parade’ – female prisoners with their infants taking outdoor exercise at Wormwood Scrubs in 1896. Nurseries for such children were established in a number of prisons in the nineteenth century.
An early version of the ‘Black Maria’ used to carry prisoners to and from gaol. The prisoners were placed in cells at each side of the vehicle and were accompanied during their journey by a constable.
Male prisoners taking a turn around the exercise yard at Holloway in 1901 – their perambulations apparently proving something of a spectator sport. When the prison became women-only in the following year the men were moved to Brixton, originally opened in 1853 as a convict prison, but which had served as a military prison since 1882.
The interior of Newgate’s execution shed. Local prisons could requisition a ten-piece hanging ‘kit’ from Holloway or Pentonville. It comprised a rope, a pinioning apparatus, a cap, a bag holding sand to the weight of the prisoner in his clothes, a piece of chalk, a few feet of copper wire, a six-foot graduated pole, pack-thread just strong enough to support the rope without breaking, a tackle to raise the bag of sand or the body out of the pit, and a chain with a shackle and pin. And, presumably, some instructions.
A comparison of the ten different styles of convict uniforms in use in around 1900. The arrow motif was also included in studs on the underside of the men’s boots.
DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1920
In the first four decades of the twentieth century, the prison population dropped from a daily average of just under 15,000 in 1901 to just over 10,000 immediately prior to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.216 As a result, there was virtually no new prison building.
Things were not standing still inside the prison system, however. Reforms during the 1920s and 1930s began to make prisons much more humane places. From 1921, the ‘convict crop’ haircut was abolished, together with the broad arrows on prison uniforms; transfers between prisons were now in civilian clothes; prisoners could have a shave before attending court; the bars or wires separating inmates from their visitors were removed and replaced by an ordinary table; there were relaxations in the rules preventing talking between prisoners.217 Compulsory chapel attendance was abolished in 1924, and the month-long initial solitary confinement of new prisoners ended in 1931. Other changes in this period included the introduction of educational courses run by voluntary teachers, film shows, lectures, amateur dramatics and radio sets. An earnings scheme introduced in 1933 allowed inmates to buy goods from prison canteens.218
A significant trend in prison accommodation began in 1930 with the opening of a new ‘open’ Borstal at Lowdham Grange, near Nottingham. A group of forty boys marched the 132 miles there from Feltham, initially living in tents and huts while they built their own institution, which lacked the usual walls or barbed wire perimeter. In 1934, the first open prison for adults was established at New Hall Camp, near Wakefield. During the day, inmates at open prisons were able to work in the open air on a farm or outside at local factories. For juvenile offenders, 1932 brought an end to reformatories and industrial schools and their replacement by a single system of approved schools.
Young offenders doing farm work at Lowdham Grange borstal in the 1940s. The borstal was largely self-sufficient in items such as milk, eggs and vegetables.
A major shake-up of the prison system came soon after the Second World War in the shape of the 1948 Criminal Justice Act which, amongst other things, abolished penal servitude, hard labour and whipping. The Act also introduced a new sentence of corrective training for younger offenders and established two new types of institution – the detention centre (providing a ‘short sharp shock’ for first offenders between 14 and 21) and the remand centre (for those awaiting trial or sentence).
At Norwich prison, an experiment began in 1956 where prison warders were encouraged to get to know their prisoners on a more personal level. This was accompanied by a move towards dining in association for all convicted prisoners and an increase in the time spent out of cells at work. The so-called ‘Norwich system’ achieved beneficial results for both staff and inmates and its use was taken up by other local prisons.
THE GROWING PRISON POPULATION
An increase in crime rates in the years following the Second World War eventually resulted in a major programme of new prison construction with Everthorpe, in 1958, being the first new closed prison to be built since Victorian times. Following the publication in 1959 of an influential parliamentary White Paper Penal Practice in a Changing Society, around forty new penal establishments were opened. ‘New Wave’ prisons, such as Blundeston, Coldingley and Long Lartin, employed a novel style of design based on the principle that cells were used only as bedrooms and so omitted built-in WCs or space for eating. Instead of the galleried radial wings of Victorian prisons, the new buildings generally consisted of several T-shaped blocks clustered around a central service building which contained classrooms, library, canteen, kitchens, gymnasium and chapel. 219
After the 1960s, construction of new prisons steadily continued and experiments were made with a wide range of designs. The mid-1980s saw the influence of ‘new generation’ ideas from the USA, where small groups of inmates were housed in small triangular house blocks organised around a central communal area. At the opposite end of the spectrum, new prison buildings at Woolwich, Bicester and Bullingdon saw a return to the use of galleried wings reminiscent of Victorian prisons.220
Many new buildings during this period were for young offenders, supporting the aim of keeping them out of prison. Those receiving sentences of up to six months were to be placed in detention centres, with borstal training for those serving up to three years. Borstals were rebranded as Youth Custody Centres in 1983 then from 1988 became known as Young Offenders Institutions, after merging with the former youth detention centres which were abolished as a separate form of establishment.
As well as the erection of new buildings, there was a programme of refurbishment and reconstruction of old prisons. The most extensive project was at Holloway women’s prison where, between 1970 and 1983, the Victorian buildings were completely replaced at a final cost of £40 million – more than six times the original estimate. The new layout was made up of a number of small separate cell blocks, linked by a corridor, and arranged around a ‘village green’, with communal facilities such as workshops, a swimming pool and chapel. However, its sprawling l
ayout was subsequently criticised as being hard to supervise and control.221
Despite efforts to expand prison accommodation, it struggled to keep up with the growth in the prison population, which rose from just over 20,000 in 1950 to over 83,000 by 2009. Overcrowding was a regular feature of many prisons – in 1981, almost 5,000 prisoners were living three to a cell, in a space originally designed for one. Triple-sharing was abolished in 1994, although this was only achieved by an increase in the numbers of prisoners sharing with one other. Overcrowding has become markedly worse in recent times with prison numbers increasing by 85 per cent since 1993. In 2006, the UK government announced ‘Operation Safeguard’ – a contingency plan for situations where the shortage of prison places becomes acute. Under the scheme, temporary holding cells at police stations are pressed into use as additional prison accommodation. At the end of 2007, the government announced plans for three new 2,500-capacity ‘super-prisons’ as part of measures to create 10,500 new prison places. On 22 February 2008, the accommodation crisis finally reached breaking point when, for the first time ever, the total population exceeded the prison system’s useable operational capacity.222 In April 2009, following widespread criticism of the super-prison proposal, the Home Secretary announced a revised plan to erect five smaller prisons, each with a capacity of 1,500 – about the size of the country’s large existing jail at Wandsworth.
fifteen
Prison Food After 1900
A FRESH LOOK AT PRISON DIETS
In 1924, the Prison Commissioners instigated a Departmental Committee to look at prison diets which, it was said, were too starchy and lacked both variety and green vegetables. The committee, reporting in 1925, agreed that the existing diets were ‘somewhat low in fat and in fresh green food’ 223 and proposed a number of improvements. As regards variety, a much expanded range of dinner dishes was put forward, based on trials that had proved successful at borstal institutions. They also recommended that prisons use any available ground for the cultivation of vegetables (potatoes, spinach, kale, cabbage, carrots, onions, parsnips, swedes and – where practicable – watercress), especially winter-cropping varieties and early potatoes.
Interestingly, some of the committee’s suggestions were based on practical research conducted amongst cooks and diners. The use of raw vegetables, for example, was viewed as being particularly beneficial to health, but experiments with raw cabbage (shredded and pickled in vinegar) suggested it would probably be rejected by prisoners. Trials with bread, by now largely made with white flour, had concluded that a mix of 50 per cent white household flour and 50 per cent brown flour produced a loaf that was both nutritious and sufficiently palatable. Experiments with suet pudding, often complained of as being too stodgy, had shown that adding a small amount of yeast to the dough produced a light and tasty pudding. The same recipe (8oz flour, 2¼0oz suet, oz yeast and water) was also used for dumplings.
The fat deficiency in existing diets was to be remedied by increasing the amount of milk, for example serving it with the porridge ration, and by an increased use of margarine which had been introduced during the 1914–8 war as a replacement for part of the bread allowance. It was suggested that margarine should be made more appealing by serving in individual pats stamped with a decorative design. Tea was now recommended as a standard part of breakfast, but with only 1½oz of milk to offset the cost of that now to be served with the porridge.
It was originally proposed that fish be largely removed from the dietary, as ‘the type of fish obtained by contract is not very palatable; transport delays affect the freshness of the supplies; it is of small food value, and unsatisfying; and it taints the food utensils’.224 However, a concession was made following a request from Liverpool prison, where the majority of women convicts were now detained, and where frying facilities could be readily obtained locally.
The committee noted that the now long-established Monday dinner dish of bacon and beans would appear ‘somewhat repellent’ to the average non-prisoner. The bacon often consisted of a solid lump of fat which prisoners were known to use for such purposes as greasing their hair and softening the leather of shoes. It was suggested that the dish be restyled as ‘savoury bacon pie’ using belly bacon, in which meat might actually be discerned. Replacing the beans by marrowfat peas, while likely to be popular with the inmates, was considered too expensive an option.
Finally, it was proposed that, for the first time, several baked dishes be included on the menu, although it was conceded that some prisons might have to adapt their bread ovens to enable this to happen.
The 1925 committee’s proposals contained diets for local prisons (Diet I diet for men, Diet II for women) and convict prisons (Diet III for men, Diet IV for women), with various small additions for male convicts performing hard labour. The basic weekly diet plan is shown below:
Meal
Day
Item
DIET I
DIET II
DIET III
DIET IV
Breakfast
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
8oz
6oz
Porridge
1 pint
½ pint
1 pint
½ pint
Tea
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint
Dinner
Daily
Bread
3oz
2oz
4oz
2oz
Potatoes
12oz
8oz
12oz
8oz
Sunday
Preserved Meat
5oz
4oz
5oz
4oz
Fresh Vegetables
4oz
4oz
Monday
Beans
12oz
10oz
12oz
10oz
Bacon
2oz
2oz
2oz
2oz
Fresh Vegetables
4oz
4oz
4oz
Tuesday
Soup
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint
Mutton
5oz
Fresh Vegetables
4oz
Wednes-day
Suet Pudding
12oz
10oz
10oz
Golden Syrup
2oz
Pea Soup (pork)
1 pint
Thursday
Beef
5oz
4oz
5oz
4oz
Fresh Vegetables
4oz
4oz
4oz
4oz
Friday
Soup (beef)
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint
Saturday
Suet Pudding
12oz
10oz
12oz
Mutton
4oz
Fresh Vegetables
4oz
Tea and Supper
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
12oz
6oz
Cocoa
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint
Tea
1 pint
Margarine
½oz
½oz
½oz
½oz
Cheese
1oz
The outlined weekly menu does not include all the different dinner dishes proposed by the new scheme. In Diet III, for example, it was suggested that a total of eighteen different dishes be used within each twenty-eight day cycle, as follows:
Diet III – Summary of Dinners for 28 Days
Dish
Times issued
Dish
&
nbsp; Times Issued
Beans and Bacon
2
Meat Pie
1
Preserved Beef
2
Meat Pudding
1
Preserved Beef and Pickles
2
Mutton (roast)
1
Beef (roast)
1
Pork (boiled) and dumplings
1
Beef and Treacle Pudding
1
Sea Pie
4
Haricot Mutton
1
Shepherd’s Pie
3
Hot Pot
1
Soup (beef)
1
Irish Stew
1
Soup (pork)
1
Savoury Bacon Pie
2
Stewed Steak
2
SPECIAL DIETS
In addition to its provisions for the main categories of inmate, the 1925 review included a number of special diets. For the first time, special menus were provided for ‘Oriental Prisoners’, of which two groups were differentiated – ‘Mahommedans’ and ‘Moslems’. The Mahommedan diet included the standard breakfast and supper offerings, but for dinner provided 8oz of potatoes and 4oz of bread each day, plus fish (on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday), boiled rice (Tuesday and Thursday), or rice pudding (Saturday). Moslem prisoners again had the standard breakfast and supper issue, with boiled rice and rice pudding for dinner on alternate days, together with the standard bread and potatoes of the ordinary diet. For Jewish prisoners, dinners containing pork were replaced by meat pudding, sea pie, shepherd’s pie or stewed steak, and treacle pudding. Kosher meat could also be issued to Jewish prisoners during Passover, where the numbers were deemed sufficient to justify it.
The Prison Cookbook Page 17
