List of Illustrations
| Temple Bar, London | [Frontispiece] | |
| Bow Street Office, London | Page | [40] |
| Millbank Penitentiary, Westminster | ” | [108] |
| Prisoners at Dartmoor Marching to Their Work | ” | [194] |
MILLBANK
PENITENTIARY
[CHAPTER I]
THE BUILDING OF THE PENITENTIARY
Choice of Site—Ancient Millbank—Plan of new Building—Penitentiary described—Committee appointed to Superintend—Opening of Prison in 1816—First Governor and other officers—Supreme Authority—First Arrangements.
The lands which Jeremy Bentham bought from Lord Salisbury were a portion of the wide area known then as Tothill Fields; speaking more exactly, they lay on either side of the present Vauxhall-bridge Road. This road, constructed after the purchase, intersected the property, dividing it into two lots of thirty-eight and fifteen acres respectively. It was on a slice of the larger piece that the prison was ultimately built, on ground lying close by the river. This neighbourhood, now known as a part of Pimlico, was then a low marshy locality, with a soil that was treacherous and insecure, especially at the end towards Millbank Row. People were alive twenty years ago who had shot snipe in the bogs and quagmires round about this spot. A large distillery, owned by a Mr. Hodge, stood near the proposed site of the prison; but otherwise these parts were but sparsely covered with houses. Bentham, speaking of the site he purchased, declared that it might be considered “in no neighbourhood at all.” No house of any account, superior to a tradesman’s or a public-house, stood within a quarter of a mile of the intended prison, and there were in this locality one other prison and any number of almshouses, established at various dates. Of these the most important were Hill’s, Butler’s, Wicher’s, and Palmer’s—all left by charitable souls of these names; and Stow says, that Lady Dacre also, wife of Gregory Lord Dacre of the South, left £100 a year to support almshouses which were built in these fields “more towards Cabbage Lane.” Here, also, stands the Green Coats Hospital, erected by Charles I, but endowed by Charles II for twenty-five boys and six girls, with a schoolmaster to teach them. Adjoining this hospital is a bridewell described by Stow as “a place for the correction of such loose and idle livers as are taken up within the liberty of Westminster, and thither sent by the Justices of the Peace, for correction—which is whipping, and beating of Hemp (a punishment very well suited for idlers), and are thence discharged by order of the Justices as they in their wisdom find occasion.” Again, Stow remarks: “In Tothill Fields, which is a large spacious place, there are certain pest-houses; now made use of by twelve poor men and their wives, so long as it shall please God to keep us from the Plague. These Pest-houses are built near the Meads, and remote from people.” Hospitals, bridewells, alms and pest-houses—the chief occupants of these lonely fields, formed no unfitting society for the new neighbour that was soon to be established amongst them.