At the same time they passed votes of thanks also to the assistant-chaplain, the medical superintendent, the matron, manufacturers, steward, and officers generally. And from that time forth Millbank, as a penitentiary, ceased to exist.
[CHAPTER XI]
LAST DAYS OF MILLBANK
Captain Groves at Millbank—New Staff—Governor a strict disciplinarian—His methods unpopular—Discontent among old officers—Petition to House of Commons charging Captain Groves with tyranny and misconduct—Another Parliamentary enquiry—Prolonged investigation—Report fully absolves Groves—His task difficult—The boys’ reformatory gives the most trouble—Mistaken methods employed, but Captain Groves’ firmness in due course establishes peace—Later history of Millbank—“Wormwood Scrubs” to replace it—Erected on the same lines as Sing Sing built by Elam Lynds—Some of the later Millbank celebrities—Latest uses of Millbank—Closed in 1891.
With the changes which were instituted in Millbank in 1843, its character and constitution were alike materially altered. It was a penitentiary no longer, for it did not now deserve the high-sounding title. The lofty purposes with which it started were unfulfilled, and its future usefulness depended upon the wide area it embraced within its gloomy walls, rather than on the results its reformatory system might be expected to achieve. But as a plain prison, it might yet render more tangible service to the state. And just as Millbank became more practically useful than heretofore, so those who ruled it were no longer amateurs. The superintending committee, composed of well-disposed gentlemen of rank, were replaced by a board of three permanent inspectors, two of whom were already well known to prison history. Mr. Crawford, the senior member, had given much time to the examination of the American prisons; and Mr. Whitworth Russell, the second member, had been for years chaplain of Millbank. Both also had been long employed as inspectors of all prisons in England. Under them was a new governor—a person of a different stamp from mild Captain Chapman, or pious, painstaking Mr. Nihil. Captain John B. Groves, a gentleman of some position and not unknown in society, was also a military officer of distinction. He did not seek the appointment, but as those in high places who knew his character thought him eminently well suited for the post, he was told that if he applied he could have it. A soldier, firm and resolute of will, but clear-headed, practical, able, Captain Groves had but one fault,—he was of an irascible temper. However, like many other passionate men, though quickly aroused, he was as speedily cooled. After an outburst of wrath he was as bright and pleasant as a summer landscape when the thunderstorm has passed. Added to this was a certain roughness of demeanour, which, though native often to men of his cloth, might easily be mistaken for overbearing, peremptory harshness. But that Captain Groves was well-suited for the task that had devolved upon him there could be little doubt. The Millbank he was called upon to rule differed more or less from the old Penitentiary which had just been wiped out by Act of Parliament. The population was no longer permanent, but fluctuating: instead of two or three hundred men and youths specially chosen to remain within the walls for years, Captain Groves had to take in all that came, en route for the colonies; so that in the twelve months several thousands passed through his hands. Moreover, among these thousands were the choicest specimens of criminality, male and female, ripe always for desperate deeds, and at times almost unmanageable; yet these scoundrels he had to discipline and keep under with only such means as Mr. Nihil had left behind; for the most part the same staff of warders and with no increase in their numbers. And with all the difficulties of maintaining his repressive measures, were the gigantic worries inseparable from a depot prison, such as Millbank had become. The constant change of numbers; the daily influx of new prisoners, in batches varying from twos and threes to forties and fifties, in all degrees of discipline—sometimes drunk, always dirty, men and women occasionally chained together; the continuous outflow of prisoners to the convict transport ships—a draft of one hundred one day, three hundred the next, all of whom must carefully be inspected, tended, and escorted as far as the Nore,—these were among the many duties of his charge.
But Captain Groves soon seated himself firmly in the saddle, and made himself felt as master. The promptitude with which he grasped the position is proved by his early orders. On the first day he found out that there were no standing regulations in case of fire. No fixed system or plan of action was established, but it was left to the governor, at the moment of emergency, to issue such instructions as might suggest themselves. There were no stations at which the several officials should take post on the first alarm, no regular practice with the fire engine; the machine itself was quite insufficient, and the hose out of repair. There had been one or two fires already inside the prison, and the consequences had been sufficiently disastrous; yet no attempt had been made to reduce the chances by previous forethought and arrangement. Captain Groves begged therefore to be permitted to frame regulations in advance and in cold blood, instead of leaving the calamity to be coped with amid the excitement of an actual conflagration. The fire question disposed of, the governor turned his eyes upon the appearance of the men under his charge; and, true soldier again, I find him complaining seriously of the slouching gait and slovenly garb of the warders trained under the late regime. “I think,” he says, “that the officers when together on parade, or at other times, should present something of the appearance of a military body.” He wished, therefore, to give them drill, and a waist-belt, and a smarter uniform. Again, he found fault with the armoury, and remarked that all the fire-arms in the prison consisted of one or two old blunderbusses, with brass barrels exceedingly short, and he suggested a stand of fifty carbines from the Tower. Next he made a raid upon the dishevelled locks of the convicts, remarking: “The practice of cutting the prisoners’ hair appears to be much neglected. I observe the majority of the prisoners’ heads are dirty; the hair long, and the whiskers growing under the chin.” To remedy this, he introduced forthwith the principles of the military barbers of that time,—the hair to be short on the top and sides of the head and whiskers trimmed on a level with the lower part of the ear—an innovation which the prisoners resented, resisting the execution of the order, one to the extent of saying that the next time he was given a razor he would cut his throat with it. But the rules were enforced, as all other rules that issued from Captain Groves. Not that the adjustment of such trifles satisfied his searching spirit of reorganization. He was much annoyed at the idleness and determined laziness of all the prisoners. They did not do half the work they might; the tailoring was a mere farce, and the little boys in Tothill Fields Prison picked twice as much coir-junk as full grown men in Millbank, and in a shorter time. As for great-coats, the average turned out was one per week, while they should have been able to complete three or four at least. The governor attributed this chiefly to the undercurrent of opposition to his orders from officers of the manufacturing department.
Indeed, not only from this branch, but from all his subordinates, Captain Groves appears to have got but half-hearted service. The double-faced backbitings, which had brought many to preferment in the last regime, were thrown away on the new governor. He preferred to see things with his own eyes, and he did not encourage officers to tell tales of one another. When a senior officer reported a junior for using bad language, Captain Groves remarked, “I must state my apprehensions that the practice which has prevailed of watching for bad or gross language uttered by warders off duty, and reported without their knowledge, accompanied by additions to the actual offence, will be most certain to introduce discussion and discord into the prison, and produce universal distrust and fear. No warder can feel himself safe when he knows that an unguarded word may be brought against him at some future day.” The practical common sense of these remarks no one can deny; but those who knew Captain Groves will smile as they remember that his own language at times savoured “of the camps,” and he possibly felt that under such a system of espionage he might himself be caught tripping. But in setting his face against the old practices he was clearly right, although it might bring him into disfavour with those hypocritical subordinates who felt that their day of favour was over. Of most of the Penitentiary officers, indeed, Captain Groves had formed but a low estimate. In more ways than one he had found them lax, just as he found that the routine of duties was but carelessly arranged. There was no system: the night patrols, two in number to every two pentagons, slept as they pleased half the night or more, and were seldom subject to the visits of “rounds” or other impertinences from over-zealous officials; no one was responsible for the prison during the night; by day, strangers came and went through the inner gates and passed on to the innermost part of the prison, ostensibly to buy shoes and other articles made by the prisoners, but really to see their friends among the latter; coal porters, irresponsible persons, often from the lowest classes (one was afterwards a convict), were admitted with their sacks into the heart of the wards, male and female, and could converse and traffic with the prisoners all day long. There was no notice board at the gates or elsewhere to warn visitors of the penalties of wrong-doing.