LITMIR.BIZ

      Bow Street Office, London

      The principal police court of the City of London, established on Bow Street in 1749.

      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.

Скачать книгу