By Tim Lambert
Before the 19th century prisons were not commonly used as a punishment. Instead, people were often held in prisons until their trial. The sentence was usually execution or some form of corporal punishment.
Early prisons were very dirty and extremely overcrowded. Diseases were rife and being sent to prison was often a death sentence because they were so unhygienic. Many prisoners died of typhus, which was called goal fever.
Elizabeth Fry, the great prison reformer, was born on 21 May 1780. In the early 19th century she campaigned for reform of women’s prison. Her work led to considerable improvements in conditions.
In 1823, the British parliament passed the Gaol Act. It reformed prisons. In future, the two sexes were to be segregated, and there would be female jailors for female prisoners. Irons and manacles were banned. Doctors, chaplains, and magistrates would visit prisons to check conditions. Jailers were to be paid salaries instead of charging prisoners fees.
In the 19th century sanitary conditions in prisons became much better but the regime was very harsh. Convicts were made to do tedious and pointless tasks like turning a handle over and over again.
Before 1776 prisoners from Britain were sometimes transported to the North American colonies. However, in that year the colonies rebelled so the British government began to use old ships as prisons. They were called hulks. From 1787 prisoners were transported to Australia but prisoners were often held on hulks before they were transported. During the Napoleonic Wars, French prisoners of war were also held on hulks. Hulks were abolished in 1857.
The treadmill was invented in 1817 and was soon introduced to many British prisons. It was hard and very boring work. It was abolished in British prisons in 1898.
The crank was a handle that convicts had to turn again and again. Normally the prisoner had to turn the handle thousands of times before he could eat. It was hard and very monotonous work. The crank was abolished in British prisons in 1898.
In Britain from 1862 the courts could order whipping with the cat o’nine tails or birching (which meant hitting a man on the bare backside with a bundle of birch rods). Birching gradually replaced whipping, although cases of the latter were recorded in Britain until 1947. In 1948 whipping or birching civilian men was abolished but it was legal in prisons until 1967. The last birching in a UK prison was in 1962.
In 1945, Charity Taylor became the first woman governor of a prison in Britain. She was the governor of Holloway. She was the governor in 1955 when Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.
Among infamous prisons Dartmoor opened in 1809 to hold French prisoners of war.
In Britain Holloway prison was built in 1852. In 1902 it became a woman’s prison. However, it closed in 2016.
Alcatraz opened as a federal penitentiary on 11 August 1934. It closed on 21 March 1963.
