MIllbank Prison

The first prisoners, all women, were admitted on 26 June 1816. The first men arrived in January 1817. The prison held 103 men and 109 women by the end of 1817, and 452 men and 326 women by late 1822. Sentences of five to ten years in the National Penitentiary were offered as an alternative to transportation to those thought most likely to reform. In addition to the problems of construction, the marshy site fostered disease, to which the prisoners had little immunity owing to their extremely poor diet. In 1818 the authorities engaged Dr. Alexander Copland Hutchison of Westminster Dispensary as Medical Supervisor, to oversee the health of the inmates. In 1822 23 an epidemic swept through the…

The site at Millbank was originally purchased in 1799 from the Marquess of Salisbury for £12,000 by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, acting on behalf of the Crown, for the erection of his proposed panopticon prison as Britain's new National Penitentiary. After various changes in circumstance, the Panopticon plan was abandoned in 1812. Proposals for the National Penitentiary continued, however, and were given a legislative basis in the Penitentiary House, etc. Act 1812 (52 Geo. 3. c. 44). An architectural competition for a new prison building on the Millbank site attracted 43 entrants: the winning design was that of William Williams, drawing master at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.…

in the background. The image was published in 1862.]] The plan of the prison comprised a circular chapel at the centre of the site, surrounded by a three-storey hexagon made up of the governor's quarters, administrative offices and laundries, surrounded in turn by six pentagons of cell blocks. The buildings of each pentagon were set around a cluster of five small courtyards (with a watchtower at the centre) used as airing-yards, and in which prisoners undertook labour. The three outer angles of each pentagon were distinguished by tall circular towers, described in 1862 as "Martello-like": these served in part as watchtowers, but their primary purpose was to contain staircases and…