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 […]

Victorian prison wing by coldwarcamera, via Flickr

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…

How Oscar Wilde’s prison sentence changed him. Max Nelson is writing a series on prison literature. Read the previous entry, on writers who found God from behind bars, here. The first time Oscar Wilde saw the inside of a prison, it was 1882—thirteen years before he’d serve the famous criminal sentence that produced De Profundis, his […]

Remember the movie “3:10 to Yuma?” Well, it’s all true and the prison at the end of the ride is an amazing yet desolate place. We took a guided tour of the prison on Thursday and it was well worth the time spent. The paragraphs in Italics are from their brochure: On July 6, 1876, the first seven inmates entered the Territorial Prison at Yuma and were locked into the new cells that they had built themselves. A total of 3,069 prisoners, including 29 women, lived within the walls during the…

A Comprehensive History of the Workhouse by Peter Higginbotham

Discover the history of London at the Museum of London, near St Paul's and Barbican. The greatest stories from the greatest city in nine galleries.

c.1890's

Victorian Prison Block