Female Convicts During the Silent Hour at Brixton Prison, London

All Prisoners Were Required to Sit Quietly Outside Their Cell

Illustration

By: Henry Mayhew and John Binny

Date: 1862

Source: "Female Convicts During the Silent Hour at Brixton Prison, London." Illustration from The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. Griffin, Bohn, and Co.: London, 1862.

About the Illustrator: Henry Mayhew and John Binny were journalists in nineteenth century England with an interest in social issues. This engraving comes from their work on London prisons and the criminal justice system. Mayhew is also known for being one of the cofounders of Punch.

INTRODUCTION

In England, the Industrial Revolution and the massive growth in the population of cities like London led to great social change, including an increase in the crime rate. Traditionally, criminals were either executed or transported to Australia. But society gradually realized that capital punishment and transportation were too harsh for all but the most serious of crimes, and demand for reforms mounted.

Incarceration was increasingly seen as an alternative punishment to execution or transportation. As a result, old prisons were expanded and new ones were built. They were cold, damp, unhealthy places that housed men, women and children. There was no segregation by seriousness of offence—the insane, hardened criminals, petty thieves, those awaiting trial, and debtors were all locked up together. Many died or were released out only to reoffend.

Prison reform led to some changes in the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845),who worked mainly with women prisoners, argued that being in prison was punishment enough in itself. As a Quaker, she believed that people should be treated decently, no matter what they had done. Other reformers hoped that better conditions might reform the criminal

Victorian prisons were an improvement, but they were still unpleasant. One common practice was to keep the prisoners in silence and even solitary confinement so they could reflect on their crimes. Brixton Prison in South London was built in 1819 and still stands today. It became a women-only prison in 1862, the year the illustration below was produced. It shows the women being supervised outside their cells as they observe the rule of silence.

PRIMARY SOURCE

FEMALE CONVICTS DURING THE SILENT HOUR AT BRIXTON PRISON, LONDON

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

The silent system was imposed in response to a strong contemporary belief that criminals were born, not made, and that rehabilitation was impossible. If their will were broken in prison, it was thought, they would be too frightened to reoffend. Conditions had to be hard under this rubric, and in some prisons, convicts were kept in total silence. This was not as bad, however, as solitary confinement, which was common in the 1840s. Many prisoners went mad after being kept in isolation. Another practise was to make prisoners do hard, meaningless labor—walking on a treadmill or picking oakum—separating strands of rope—for hours on end. The treadmill was not banned until 1902.

Even though conditions were harsh, life in Victorian jails may have been easier than on the teeming streets of London. Prisoners were, on the whole, fed, warm, and safe. In 1865, however, a new Prisons Act was passed to appease the public, who clearly thought that not enough punishment was being meted out. The assistant director of prisons, Sir Edmund du Cane, promised "Hard labour, hard fare, and hard board." The hard labor was the treadmill, hard fare was deliberately monotonous—although adequate—food. The hard board was a wooden plank bed, which replaced the hammocks that prisoners had slept on before.

Today arguments about prison reform continue. Many prisoners are mentally ill and have been jailed for relatively minor offenses. This is particularly true where women are concerned. There is often a case for having a convict serve their sentence in the community rather than locking them in prison. If they can, at the same time, render some service to the community, so much the better. Of course, the public is entitled to protection from dangerous criminals and these people do need to be locked away until it is deemed they are harmless. There is also a natural desire for justice, of which seeing someone punished for their crime is a natural part. But so many convicts come out of prison only to reoffend that it is hard to see whether imprisonment as a form of punishment really serves society in the long term.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Web sites

The National Archives. "Victorian Prisons: Why Were Victorian Prisons So Tough?" 〈http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/snapshots/snapshot24/snapshot24.htm〉 (accessed February 14, 2006).

Victorian Web. "The Cornhill, Great Expectations, and the Convict System in Nineteenth-Century England" 〈http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/ge/convicts.html〉 (accessed February 14, 2006).