System proposed and Discipline to be enforced—Conduct of Prisoners; riotous in Chapel—Outbreak of Females—Revolt against Dietary—Millbank overgoverned—Constant interference of Committee—Life inside irregular and irksome.

The system to be pursued at the Penitentiary has now been described at some length. Beyond doubt—and of this there is abundant proof in the prison records—the committee sought strenuously to give effect to the principles on which the establishment was founded. Nevertheless their proceedings were more or less tentative, for as yet little was known of so-called “systems” of prison discipline, and those who had taken Millbank under their charge were compelled to feel their way slowly and with caution, as men still in the dark. The Penitentiary was essentially an experiment—a sort of crucible into which the criminal elements were thrown, in the hope that they might be changed or resolved by treatment into other superior forms. The members of the committee were always in earnest, and they spared themselves no pains. If they had a fault, it was in over-tenderness towards the felons committed to their charge. Millbank was a huge plaything; a toy for a parcel of philanthropic gentlemen, to keep them busy during their spare hours. It was easy to see that they loved to run in and out of the place, and to show it off to their friends; thus we find the visitor, Sir Archibald Macdonald, bringing a party of ladies to visit the pentagon, when “the prisoners read and went through their religious exercises,” which edifying spectacle gave great satisfaction to the persons present. Again, at Christmas time the prisoners were regaled with roast beef and plum pudding, after which they returned thanks to the Rev. Archdeacon Potts, the visitor (who was present, with a select circle of ladies and gentlemen), “appearing very grateful, and singing ‘God save the King.’” With such sentiments uppermost in the minds of the superintending committee, it is not strange that the gaoler and other officials should be equally kind and considerate. No punishment of a serious nature was ever inflicted without a report to the visitor, or his presence on the spot. All of the female prisoners, when they were first received, were found to be liable to fits, and the tendency gave Mr. Shearman great concern, till it was found that by threatening to shave and blister the heads of all persons so afflicted immediate cure followed. Two Jewesses, having religious scruples, refused to eat the meat supplied, whereupon the husband of one of them was permitted to bring in for their use “coarse meat and fish, according to the custom of the Jews;” and later we find the same man came regularly to read the Jewish prayers, as he stated, “out of the Hebrew book.” Many of the women refused positively to have their hair cut short; and for a time were humoured. In February, 1817, all the female prisoners were assembled, and went through a public examination, before the Bishops of London and Salisbury, to show their progress in religious instruction, and acquitted themselves greatly to the satisfaction of all present.

Judith Lacy, having been accused of stealing tea from a matron’s canister, which had been put down, imprudently, too near the prisoner, was so hurt at the charge, that it threw her into fits. She soon recovered, and it was quite evident she had stolen the tea. Any complaint of the food was listened to with immediate attention. Thus the gruel did not give satisfaction and was repeatedly examined.

“A large number of the female prisoners still refuse to eat their barley soup,” says the governor in his journal on the 23rd April, 1817, “several female prisoners demanding an increase of half a pound of bread,” being refractory. Next day some of them refused to begin work, saying they were half-starved.

Mary Turner was the first prisoner released. She was supposed to be cured of the criminal taint. Having equipped her in her liberty clothing, “she was taken into the several airing grounds in which were her late fellow-prisoners. The visitor (Sir Archibald Macdonald) represented to them in a most impressive manner the benefits that would result to themselves by good behaviour. The whole were most sensibly affected, and the event,” he says, “will have a very powerful effect on the conduct of many and prove an incentive to observe good and orderly demeanour.”

Next day all of the female prisoners appeared at their cell windows, and shouted vociferously as Mary Turner went off. This is but one specimen of the free and easy system of management. Of the same character was a petition presented by a number of the female prisoners, to restore to favour two other convicts who had been punished by the committee. Indeed, the whole place appears to have been like a big school, and a degree of license was allowed to the prisoners consorting little with their character of convicted criminals.

This mistaken leniency could end but in one way. Early in the spring the whole of the inmates broke out in open mutiny. Their alleged grievance was the issue of an inferior kind of bread. Change of dietary scales in prisons is always attended with some risk of disturbance, even when discipline is most rigorously maintained. In those early days of mild government riot was, of course, inevitable. The committee having thought fit to alter the character of the flour supplied, soon afterwards, at breakfast-time, all the prisoners, male and female, refused to receive their bread. The women complained of its coarseness; and all alike, in spite of the exhortations of the visitor, Mr. Holford, left it outside their cell doors. Next day, Sunday, the bread was at first taken, then thrown out into the passages. The governor determined to have Divine Service as usual, but to provide against what might happen, deposited within his pew “three brace of pistols loaded with ball.” To make matters worse, the Chancellor of the Exchequer arrived with a party of friends to attend the service. The governor (Mr. Shearman’s successor) immediately pointed out that he was apprehensive that in consequence of the newly adopted bread the prisoners’ conduct would not be as orderly as it had ordinarily been. At first the male prisoners were satisfied by raising and letting fall the flaps of the kneeling benches with a loud report, and throwing loaves about in the body of the chapel, while the women in an audible tone cried out, “Give us our daily bread.” Soon after the commencement of the communion service, the women seated in the gallery became more loudly clamorous, calling out most vociferously, “Better bread, better bread!” The men below, in the body of the church, now rose and stood upon the benches; but again seated themselves on a gesture from the governor, who then addressed them, begging them to keep quiet. Among the women, the confusion and tumult was continued, and was increased by the screams of alarm from the more peaceable. Many fainted, and others in great terror entreated to be taken away. These were suffered to go out in small bodies, in charge of the officers, and so continuously removed, until all of the women had been withdrawn. About six of them, as they came to the place where they could see the men, made a halt and most boisterously assailed them, calling them cowards, and such other opprobrious names. After the women had gone the service proceeded without further interruption, after which the Chancellor of the Exchequer (who was present throughout) addressed the men, giving them a most appropriate admonition, but praising their orderly demeanour, which he promised to report to the Secretary of State. Afternoon service was performed without the female congregation, and was uninterrupted except by a few hisses from the boys.

Next morning the governor informed the whole of the prisoners, one by one, that the new brown bread would have to be continued until the meeting of the committee; whereupon many resisted when their cell doors were being shut, and others hammered loudly on the woodwork with their three-legged stools; and this was accompanied by the most hideous shouts and yells. In one of the divisions, four prisoners, who were in the same cell, were especially refractory, “entirely demolishing the inner door, every article of furniture, the two windows and their iron frames; and, having knocked off large fragments from the stone of the doorway, threw the pieces at, and smashed to atoms the passage windows opposite.” One of them, by name Greenslade, assaulted the governor, on entering the cell, with part of the door frame; but he parried the blow, drove the prisoner’s head against the wall, and was also compelled, in self-defence, to knock down one Michael Sheen. Such havoc and destruction was accomplished by the prisoners, that the governor repaired to the Home Secretary’s office for assistance. Directed by him to Bow Street, he brought back a number of runners, and posted them in various parts of the building, during which a huge stone was hurled at his head by a prisoner named Jarman, but without evil consequences. A fresh din broke out on the ringing of the bell on the following morning, and neither governor nor chaplain could permanently allay the tumult; the governor determined thereupon to handcuff all the turbulent males immediately. The effect was instantaneous. Although there were still mumblings and grumblings, it was evident that the storm would soon be over. In the course of the day all the refractory were placed in irons, and all was quiet in the male pentagon. Yet many still muttered, and all was still far from quiet. There was little doubt at the time that a general rising of the men was contemplated, and the governor felt it necessary to use redoubled efforts to make all secure, calling in further assistance from Bow Street. The night passed, however, without any outbreak, and next morning all the prisoners were pretty quiet and orderly. Later in the day the committee met and sentenced the ringleaders to various punishments, chiefly reduction in class, and by this time the whole were humble and submissive. Finally five, who had been conspicuous for good conduct, were pardoned.

It is satisfactory to find that the committee firmly resisted all efforts to make them withdraw the objectionable bread, and acted on the whole with spirit and determination. How far the governor was to blame cannot clearly be made out, but the confidence of the committee was evidently shaken, and a month or two later he was called upon to resign. He refused; whereupon the committee informed him that they gave him “full credit for his capacity and talents in his former line of life, but did not deem he had the talent, temper, or turn of mind, necessary for the beneficial execution of the office of governor of the institution.” There was not the slightest imputation against his moral character, the committee assured him; but they could not retain him. He would not resign, and they were consequently compelled to remove him from office.

There can be no doubt but that Millbank in these early days was over much governed. The committee took everything into their own hands, and allowed but little latitude to their responsible officers. Governor Shearman complained the visitors (members of the committee) who, he says, “went to the Penitentiary, and gave orders and directions for things to be done by inferior officers, which I thought ought to come through me.... Prisoners were occasionally removed from one ward to another, and I knew nothing of it—no communication was made to me; and if the inferior officers had a request to make, they got too much into the habit of reserving it to speak to the visitors; so that I conceived I was almost a nonentity in the situation.” The prisoners, even, were in the habit of saying they would wait till the visitor came, and would ask him for what they wanted, ignoring the governor altogether. Indeed it appears from the official journals that the visitors were constantly at the prison. A Mr. Holford admits that “for a considerable time he did everything but sleep there.” But their excuse was that they were not fortunate in their choice of some of their first officers; and knew therefore they must watch vigilantly over their conduct, to keep those who fulfilled expectations, and to part with those who appeared unfit for their situations. Besides which it was necessary to see from time to time how the rules first framed worked in practice, and what customs that grew up should be prohibited, and what sanctioned, by the committee, and adopted into the rules.

It must be confessed that the committee do not appear to have been well served by all their subordinates. The governors were changed frequently; the first “expected to find his place better in point of emolument, and did not calculate upon the degree of activity to be expected in the person at the head of such an establishment; the second was not thought by the committee to have those habits of mind—particularly those habits of conciliation—which are required in a person at the head of such an establishment;” the third was seized with an affection of the brain, and was never afterwards capable of exercising sufficient activity. The first master manufacturer, who as will be remembered was appointed because he was of a mechanical turn of mind, was removed because he was a very young man, and his conduct was not thought steady enough for the post he occupied. The first steward was charged with embezzlement, but was actually dismissed for borrowing money from some of the tradesmen of the establishment. The first matron was also sent away within the first twelve months, but she appears to have been rather hardly used, although her removal also proves the existence of grave irregularities in the establishment. The case against Mrs. Chambers was that she employed certain of the female prisoners for her own private advantage. Her daughter was about to be married; and to assist in making up bed furniture a portion of thread belonging to the establishment was used by the prisoners, who gave also their time. The thread was worth a couple of shillings, and was replaced by Mrs. Chambers. A second charge against the matron was for stealing a Penitentiary Bible. Her excuse was that a number had been distributed among the officers,—presents, as she thought, from the committee,—and she had passed hers on to her daughter. But for these offences, when substantiated, she was dismissed from her employment.

Entries made in the Visitors’ Journal, however, are fair evidence that matters were allowed by the officials to manage themselves in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion. One day new prisoners were expected from Newgate; but nothing was ready for them. “Not a table or a stool in any working cell; and one of those cells where the prisoners were to be placed, in which the workmen had some time since kept coals, was in the dirty state in which it had been left by them. Not a single bed had been aired.” The steward did not know these prisoners were expected, and had ordered no rations for them. But he stated he had enough, all but about two pounds. Upon which the visitor remarks, “If sixteen male prisoners can be supplied without notice, within two pounds, the quantity of meat sent in cannot be very accurate.” Again, the visitor finds the doors from the prison into the hexagon where the superior officers lived “not double-locked as they ought to be, and two prisoners together in the kitchen without a turnkey.” The daily allowance of food issued to the prisoners was not the right weight. He says: “There are in the bathing-room at the lodge several bundles of clothes belonging to male prisoners who have come in between the 1st and 21st of this month; they are exactly in the state in which they were when the subject was mentioned to the committee last week; some of them are thrown into a dirty part of the room—whether intended to be burned I do not know; the porter thinks they are not. I do not believe any of the female prisoners’ things have been yet sold. I understand from the governor he has not yet made any entry in the character-book concerning the behaviour of any male prisoner since he came into the prison, or relative to any occurrence connected with such prisoner.”

All this will fairly account for any extra fussiness on the part of the committee. Doubtful of the zeal and energy of those to whom they confided the details of management, they were continually stepping in to make up for any shortcomings by their own activity. But the direct consequence of this interference was to shake the authority of the ostensible heads. Moreover, to make the more sure that nothing should be neglected, and no irregularity overlooked, the committee encouraged, or at least their most prominent member did, all sorts of talebearing, and a system of espionage that must have been destructive of all good feeling among the inmates of the prison. Mr. Pitt, when examined by the Select Committee, said, “Mr. Holford has mentioned to me: ‘I hear so and so; such and such an abuse appears to be going forward; but I shall get some further information.’ I always turned a deaf ear to these observations, thinking it an erroneous system, and that it was not likely to contribute to the good of the establishment.” He thought that if the committee members were so ready to lend a willing ear to such communications, it operated as an encouragement to talebearing; the consequences of which certainly appeared to have been disputes, cabals, or intrigues. Mr. Shearman remarks at some length on the same subject: “I certainly did think there was a very painful system going on in the prison against officers, ... by what I might term ‘spyism.’ I have no doubt it all arose from the purest motives, thinking it was the best way to conduct the establishment, setting up one person to look after another.” The master manufacturer and the steward in this way took the opportunity of vilifying the governor; and there is no doubt the matron, Mrs. Chambers, fell a victim to this practice. She was the victim of insinuation, and the evil reports of busybodies who personally disliked her.

It is easy to imagine the condition of Millbank then. A small colony apart from the great world; living more than as neighbours, as one family almost—but not happily—under the same roof. The officials, nearly all of them of mature age, having grown-up children, young ladies and young gentlemen, always about the place, and that place from its peculiar conditions, like a ship at sea, shut off from the public, and concentrated on what was going on within its walls. Gossip, of course, prevalent—even malicious; constant observation of one another, jealousies, quarrels, inevitable when authority was divided between three people, the governor, chaplain, and matron, and it was not clearly made out which was the most worthy; subordinates ever on the look-out to make capital of the differences of their betters, and alive to the fact that they were certain of a hearing when they chose to carry any slanderous tale, or make any underhand complaint. For there, outside the prison, was the active and all-powerful committee, ever ready to listen, and anxious to get information. One of the witnesses before the committee of 1823 stated, “From the earliest period certainly the active members of the Superintending Committee gave great encouragement to receive any information from the subordinate officers, I believe with the view of putting the prison in its best possible state; that encouragement was caught with avidity by a great many, simply for the purpose of cultivating the good opinion of those gentlemen conducting it; and I am induced to think that in many instances their zeal overstepped perhaps the strict line of truth; for I must say that during the whole period I was there, there was a continual complaint, one officer against another, and a system that was quite unpleasant in an establishment of that nature.”

Of a truth the life inside the Penitentiary must have been rather irksome to more people than those confined there against their will.