The procedures to be observed for the admission of prisoners were laid down in prison regulations from the early nineteenth century, standardised after the Prison Act of 1865 and incorporated in the Rules and Standing Orders of the Prison Commissioners from the 1870s.
When the ‘Black Maria’ arrived at the prison it would have been met by a senior officer and a reception officer (an experienced warder who had been selected for the supervision of the admittance of the prisoners). Their first duty was to ensure those being received were the people named on the commitment and that the convicted and unconvicted prisoners (those awaiting trial or on remand) were separated and kept apart from the moment they were received; these inmates could be identified from the other convicts because they were allowed to retain and wear their own clothes before trial.
‘One Who has Endured It’ recalled:
The first thing on entering [Millbank Prison] each man was released from his handcuffs and told to seat himself on a long bench in the passage. Presently two chief warders, one a fine looking military man and the other a little man, arrived accompanied by a medical officer and a clerk. On their appearance we were told to rise and stand to ‘attention’, and the warders saluted their superiors in orthodox military style. The official party went into a cell, fitted up as an office [a Reception Room], and the examination and classification of the prisoners began. One of the warders walked along one line and good-humouredly at once claimed more than one of our party as old acquaintances. Asked their names, ‘What name were you in last time?’ was a question that called forth a laugh all round.
Five Years Penal Servitude (1878)
A gaol delivery from the ‘Black Maria’, c. 1890.
The practice of lining up the prisoners by senior warders to see if they could recall the faces of old offenders was common. Sometimes a face might be familiar but the warder would not be able to place where they had seen the offender before. If this was the case an enquiry to that effect explaining the offence(s) upon which the prisoner was being held, often with a photograph and a description of their vital statistics and distinguishing marks, would be published in the national Police Gazette to see if the offender was known and possibly wanted elsewhere. Sometimes the police would think along the same lines but if the prisoner had been admitted to prison, finance would become a consideration and regulations stipulated clearly that ‘Photographs supplied to the police at their request will be charged by the governor at cost price.’
The details from the official paperwork that had been sent with the prisoners stating their name, case, crime and sentence were entered long-hand into the Prison Record Book. As the prisoners waited, a warder would direct their attention to a large copy of the Prison Rules displayed on the wall and would read out the key rules covering the way prisoners were expected to behave, keep their cell and act towards the warders. The warder would explain that they would be expected to observe the timetable of the day, to work and attend schooling and chapel. He would also point out how good behaviour would earn a prisoner marks for privileges. The prisoners’ attention would be particularly directed to the rules regarding breaches of discipline. The disciplinary offences listed on the Lincoln Castle Prison Regulations of 1866 are typical:
Weighing convicts, Millbank Prison, 1873.
The Gaoler shall have power to punish, with not more than three days close confinement, to be kept there upon bread and water for the following offences:
1. Disobedience of the regulations of the prison by any prisoner
2. Common assaults by one prisoner on another
3. Profane cursing and swearing by any prisoner
4. Indecent behaviour by any prisoner
5. Irreverent behaviour at chapel by any prisoner
6. Insulting or threatening language by any prisoner to any officer or prisoner
7. Absence from chapel without leave by any criminal prisoner
8. Idleness or negligence at work by any convicted prisoner
9. Wilful mismanagement of work by any convicted criminal prisoner
If a criminal prisoner is guilty of any other offence, or of repeated offences against prison discipline, the Visiting Justices may order the offender to be confined in a punishment cell, for, not exceeding one month; or, in the case of prisoners convicted of felony or sentenced to hard labour, by personal correction.
The prisoners would then be individually called and escorted into the Reception Room. They would be ordered to surrender all articles of personal property be they watch, wallet and money or collar and studs, even toiletries; they would all have to be handed over and a warder would enter them into the Property Book. Next, the Prison Record Book – often simply referred to as a ‘Prison Book’ – would be opened with the clerk ready to transcribe the answers of the prisoner next to a series of standard questions. A prisoner would first be asked to confirm his name, age, place of birth, occupation, marital status, number of children and the religion he observed. They would then be measured and weighed in their ordinary clothes, without cap or shoes, and their weight entered in pounds in the prison record and reported to the medical officer. Prisoners would be weighed again twenty-four hours after admission and then on one of the last three days of every month by a hospital warder, who would record and report to the medical officer.
The details recorded in the Prison Book would also include descriptions of features such as complexion, hair, eyes and any distinguishing marks such as scars, birth marks, tattoos or deformities. Additional information such as further distinguishing marks about his body, and whether the man was circumcised or not, was often entered later by the clerk from the notes supplied after examination of the prisoner by the prison medical officer.
The phrenological head of Charles Peace, 1879.
Not every prisoner was compliant when it came to having his photograph taken.
From the 1870s, after the much vaunted theory of physiogmony expounded by Cesare Lombroso (appointed Professor of Forensic Medicine and Hygiene at Turin in 1878), British prisoners, particularly repeat or ‘habitual’ offenders, were scrutinised for physiognomic attributes or deformities, which could indicate a ‘criminal type’. Lombroso also believed in the eugenics of inherited criminality. He argued that the born criminal could be distinguished by physical atavistic stigmata such as large jaws, forward-projecting jaws, low-sloping foreheads, high cheekbones, flattened or upturned noses, handle-shaped ears, hawk-like noses, fleshy lips, hard, shifty eyes, long arms and insensitivity to pain.
In 1882 French police officer and biometrics researcher Alphonse Bertillion demonstrated his criminal identification system of anthropometry. The system took measurements of the head and body, individual markings such as tattoos or scars, and considered some personality characteristics. These measurements were then made into a formula that would apply to only that person and would not change, meaning that if the convict was apprehended again in the future they could be easily identified. He used it in 1884 to identify 241 multiple offenders, and the system was rapidly adopted by both British and American police forces and special Bertillion system callipers and measures were issued to all convict prisons. The Penal Servitude Act and subsequent Prison Regulations stated the measurements to be taken included the length and breadth of the head, face and ears, the length of either foot, the fingers of either hand, the length of the cubit of the hand, span of the arms, the prisoner’s height when standing and sitting and ‘the size and relative position of every scar and distinctive mark upon any part of the body’.
The prisoner would then be photographed. The photographing of prisoners had been advocated by the recommendation of a House of Lords Select Committee as early as 1863 and became generally adopted by prisons across the country after the Prevention of Crime Act of 1871. Using the natural light in a prison yard, the prisoners would be taken outside and individually photographed. Sometimes these images show that a simple pale canvas background was used, others simply have a brick wall and on days when the light was proving difficult the subject would be moved to a position which may show the prison yard as a backdrop. These images show the prisoners in the clothes they were wearing at the time of their arrest and not only record the faces of prisoners but also form an invaluable archive for social historians recording the everyday working clothing worn by ordinary Victorian folk, many of them from the lowest orders – people who almost certainly would never have been able to have enough money for a studio photograph to be taken of them at the time. That said, many did not like having their photograph taken and pulled faces and even resorted to violence. Pictures of reluctant subjects sometimes show them held down by the strong hands of prison warders.
Despite being suggested from the 1880s, fingerprints were only taken and filed at Scotland Yard from 1901, thus the criminal detection service of Britain in the nineteenth century were without one of the greatest and most conclusive clues to the identity of a suspect.
Some convicts struggled and had to be held in place for their photograph to be taken, while others attempted to hide their identity by pulling a face.
From the 1880s and up to the early years of the twentieth century convicts were mostly photographed showing both of their hands, fingers spread, raised to chest height. A chalk board stating the convict’s name, prisoner number and the date the photograph was taken (usually the admission date) hung on the wall behind them. As fingerprints were not collected until 1901, the raised hands of the prisoners in the photographs would only provide clues for identification and elimination of suspects with distinctive hands, such as those that had tattoos or were deformed or had missing fingers. By the late nineteenth century most prisoner photographs were taken inside and consisted of a double portrait, one image showing the full face and the other their profile, taken on separate quarters of the same half plate-glass negative. It would then be developed as a contact print.
The Penal Servitude Act of 1891 stated that prisoners being photographed should:
Be photographed either in the dress of the prison, or in the dress worn at the time of his arrest or trial, or in any other dress suitable to his or her ostensible position and occupation in life.
Convict and ‘Broad Arrow Man’ Richard Darrell, photographed in May 1899. By the late nineteenth century separate exposures of each half of the same photographic plate was the standard method of photographing criminals.
The name (i.e. the initials of the Christian name or names and surname) were suggested to be written on a strip of wood by the prisoner, but many convicts could not, or claimed they could not, write. Individual convicts writing their name on these boards often proved too much of an inconvenience and the photographer would simply write the name of the prisoner in printed characters, then the prisoner’s number and the date on which the photograph was taken.
For many years the chairs used by the prisons for the photographing of prisoners were of the standard ‘stick back’ type used for seats in most prisons. From the late nineteenth century a special chair was introduced, often custom made in the prison:
A special chair is required, the seat of which should be about 19 inches from the ground, and should measure 10 inches square, with an extra three quarter of an inch for the hollow of the back. It should have a raised edge at each side, and a triangular shaped rib fixed along the centre from before backwards. The back should rise quite vertically from the seat but may be hollowed out to the extent of three quarters of an inch and it should have a strong thick top rail, on the upper surface of which an arrow or mark should be cut from before backwards to indicate the centre, and to enable the photographer to see at a glance whether or not the seam down the centre of the back of the prisoner’s coat corresponds with it and that he is sitting squarely to the camera.
Rules and Standing Orders for the Government of Local Prisons (1902)
Once developed, the prisoner’s photograph would then be affixed in the appropriate place upon his record in the Prison Record Book.
Once photographed, the prisoner is then sent to have a bath. Prison regulations were absolutely clear that all prisoners must have a bath upon admission (unless directed otherwise by the medical officer). There was a great diversity of bathing facilities from prison to prison, none gave much privacy. Some had brick-built affairs with lead linings, others a great bath with compartments above the water for perhaps four or five bathers at the same time, but then they would be followed by another four or five and then another batch depending on the number admitted in the prison delivery. Either way, you would probably end up bathing in the same water as at least four or five others, and at least one of the others probably had some verminous infestation or disease about his body; a number of old lags described such bath water as looking rather like mutton broth. Only in the late 1890s did the prison regulations state:
The depth of the water in the bath will be at least nine inches and the temperature not less than from 95° to 97°. Carbolic soap, a small strong brush and clean towel will be issued to each prisoner … The Reception Officer will, in any case in which it appears necessary, make an examination of the prisoner after bathing, especially as to the state of his head and hair … if any prisoner is found to have any contagious disease, or to be infested with vermin, means shall be taken effectually to eradicate and destroy the same.
‘One Who has Endured It’ recalled his experiences of the Millbank Prison bath house:
I was ordered to go to the end of the passage, where the principal of the receiving ward was standing. I did not like his looks … He ordered me to strip and go into a bath down some steps. I obeyed of course; in a very few minutes he called to me and threw me a towel, telling me to dry myself and come out. This, too, I did; and on reaching the top of the steps, leading from the bath, found my clothes has disappeared. There stood the principal however, who whisked the towel out of my hand and threw it away and told me to stand up, naked as I was. ‘Turn round.’ ‘Lift both arms.’ ‘Lift the right leg.’ ‘Now the left.’ ‘Hold up the sole of the foot.’ ‘Now the other.’ ‘Now stoop.’ ‘Stand up.’ ‘Open your mouth.’ ‘Here take this bundle of clothes.’
Five Years Penal Servitude (1878)
The object of the prison officer’s examination was to make quite sure the prisoner had nothing hidden about himself, be it a comfort, trinket or anything liable to aid him to escape. The bundle of clothes was his prison uniform but he was told to simply wear his long shirt and carry the bundle along the corridor to another room. Here the bundle of clothes our prisoner had been wearing was shown to the prisoner and he would be asked, ‘Do you identify these as your clothes?’
What happened next would vary from prison to prison. In some, if the clothes were presentable or redeemable they would be tagged and entered into the property book and, after a good wash and fumigation (clothes worn next to the skin would be treated with sulphur and oil for itch), they would be cleaned and mended accordingly and stored until the prisoner was released. If the clothes were so worn and verminous to be unsalvageable they would be destroyed and a ‘liberty suit’ of men’s clothing ‘suitable for a member of the labouring classes’ would be provided at the expense of the government upon release. Because of the numbers involved, convict prisons tended not to store any prisoner’s clothes but instead sold them to a dealer and the money went towards a ‘liberty suit’.
The prisoner would then be ordered to proceed to the corridor of the reception ward where, dressed only in his shirt, he would wait to be summoned to the medical officer. While they waited, the prisoners remained under the supervision of the reception warders, batons in hand lest anyone ‘played up’ or became recalcitrant. Together with others from the prison delivery, they would stand with backs to the wall of the cold and draughty corridor awaiting their call to present themselves in the office of the medical officer (MO).
Female prisoners’ own clothes store, Tothill Fields Prison, 1862.
The medical officer’s main concern was that the prisoner brought in no contagious disease or infestation such as nits. He would make a note if the prisoner was on prescribed medication and if a prisoner was admitted with an abdominal belt or chest protector. It would be at the discretion of the medical officer if the prisoner was permitted to carry on wearing it. If a prisoner had been sentenced to hard labour it was up to the medical officer to ascertain if the prisoner possessed the physical fitness to undertake the task. Often the MO would ask questions of the prisoner but would not address any medical comment or diagnosis to him but instead would write it down (and, if required, make necessary arrangements) and then send the prisoner on to dress in his full prison uniform.
Above left: The garb of a male convict serving sentence in the ‘Separate System’ at Pentonville (left) and a female convict from Millbank, 1862.
Above right: The veiled female convict serving sentence under the ‘Separate System’, Wandsworth, 1862.
Prisons had a variety of colours for their convict uniforms. Some of them had jackets divided with two colours, such as chocolate brown and yellow or red and blue. One prisoner, writing under the nom de plume of ‘Captain D-S-’ in the 1880s, recalled:
Each man was dressed in a short, loose jacket and vest, and baggy knickerbockers of drab tweed with black stripes, one and a half inches broad. The lower part of their legs were encased in blue worsted stockings with bright red rings round them; low shoes and a bright grey and red worsted cap, which each man wore in accordance to his own taste, completed the costume. One thing spoiled it. All over the whole clothing were hideous black impressions of the Broad Arrow, the ‘crow’s foot’ denoting the articles belonged to Her Majesty.
Even the soles of the boots were studded in the shape of the broad arrow and were remarkably heavy; some boots in public works prisons could weigh as much as 14lbs (6kg). Many prisoners recalled when they first put them on they almost seemed to fasten them to the ground.
Prison uniform removed the last vestige of the prisoner’s life outside the prison walls; the convict no longer had a name, just a number displayed in small metal numerals backed with calico upon the left breast of the uniform. He would, for the duration of his time within the prison walls, be addressed by that number, never by name. On his breast would be a larger round patch emblazoned with the wing, floor and cell number of the prisoner.
Prisoners were commonly referred to as ‘Broad Arrow Men’ from the latter half of the nineteenth century, an epithet gained from the distinctive broad arrow or ‘crow’s foot’ stamped onto all prison uniforms. The origin of the symbol dates back to the seventeenth century, when a Master of the Ordnances in the Tower of London began marking the weaponry as Tower property with an arrow-like device from his coat of arms. Over the years this symbol has been adopted by all government departments to denote equipment as diverse as military uniforms and rifles to rulers and paperweights as Government Issue. The broad arrow was stamped onto prison garb to not only create a ‘dress of shame’ to be worn by convicts, but to make the clothes they wore so distinctive they would stand out as a convict if they affected an escape. Broad Arrows were discontinued on prison uniforms in 1922.
The women fared no better. Mrs Susan Willis Fletcher stated the garb of the female prisoners in Tothill Fields consisted of:
… brown serge prison dress … with a not unbecoming white hat. The stockings are blue and red stripe, and very course. There is one flannel shirt, and a flannel under vest if the prisoner is wearing one at the time of admission; but there are no drawers (and this slight addition would prevent much suffering), a brown serge petticoat, skirt and jacket, and blue check handkerchief to wear under the jacket, and another for the pocket (very course and rough) and a white cotton cap.
Twelve Months in an English Prison (1884)
After Mrs Florence Maybrick was sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for poisoning her husband in September 1889, the Illustrated Police News gave an account of her surroundings and some of the things she would have seen when she entered the Female Convict Prison Woking, Surrey, including the various classes of female prisoner and the clothes they wore:
Convicts doing the first nine months of their term are known as probationers and wear dark brown dresses. The next class wear dark green and those of the first class dark blue. The special class wear light-striped dresses. Convicts who have never been in prison before are also distinguished by a crimson star on the right arm. These are carefully kept apart from the habitual – one might also say hereditary – criminals, who are easily identified by their degraded, evil-looking countenances. The dejected and forlorn appearance of the better class of women is very saddening. Many of them had lived in comfortable circumstances but in an evil moment they have committed some hideous deed, at which their souls now revolt.
All prisons would divide their inmates into classes. As the Woking Prison account pointed out, there were dress codes that reflected the stage the prisoner was at in their sentence, identified repeat offenders and even helped prevent their fraternisation with the newly admitted, known as ‘Star Class’. There were four stages established and regulated by which prisoners could demonstrate good behaviour and industry and thus earn marks to gain privileges and, of course, lose them for misconduct.
Female convict attire and routine of the later nineteenth and early twentieth century are well illustrated in these depictions of the prison life of Mrs Osborne after the ‘Pearl Case’, where she was found guilty of both jewellery theft and perjury, 1892.
Prisoners in the First Stage would:
a) Be employed daily in strict separation on hard bodily or hard manual labour, for not more than ten hours or less than six hours, exclusive of meals
b) Sleep without a mattress for the first fourteen days
c) Earn no gratuity
d) Be allowed religious and educational books
A prisoner whose term of imprisonment was twenty-eight days or less would serve the whole time in the First Stage.
Once a prisoner had passed the First Stage they were, at the discretion of the governor, permitted to retain photographs and memorial cards from their immediate family in their cells.
Prisoners in the Second Stage would:
a) Be employed on labour of a less hard description, in association if practicable
b) Be able to earn a gratuity not exceeding 1s
c) Be allowed religious and educational books
d) Receive school instruction, if eligible under the rules made from time to time for the education of prisoners
e) Be allowed one library book each week
Prisoners in the Third Stage would:
a) Be employed on labour as in the second stage
b) Be able to earn a gratuity not exceeding 1s 6d
c) Be allowed two library books each week, besides religious and educational books
d) Receive school instruction, if eligible under the rules made from time to time for the education of prisoners
e) Be allowed to write a letter and receive a visit of twenty minutes on attaining this stage
Prisoners in the Fourth Stage would:
a) Be employed on labour as in the second stage
b) Be able to earn a gratuity not exceeding 2s in twenty-eight days and continue to earn gratuity at the same rate as long as he is in this stage, provided that the gratuity earned from the commencement of his sentence shall not exceed 10s
c) Be allowed two library books each week, besides religious and educational books
d) Receive school instruction, if eligible under the rules made from time to time for the education of prisoners
e) Be eligible for any special employment for which his services may be required
f) Be allowed to write a letter and receive a visit of thirty minutes duration
The regulation hair cut and facial hair trim at Wormwood Scrubs, 1889. Note that the convict being trimmed is a member of the ‘Star Class’.
All male prisoners, regardless of infestation or not, would have their hair cropped to the scalp and whiskers and beard shaved off. In convict prisons women’s hair was cut off to the nape of the neck, whereas in a number of county prisons discretion was applied and the women allowed to keep their hair unless the MO suggested otherwise. Hair would not be allowed to grow again until three months before the completion of sentence.
A baby ‘at the breast’ of a female prisoner could be admitted with its mother if such authority had been granted by the committing magistrate. No child could be taken from the mother until the prison MO certified it was in a fit condition for that to happen. A crib, cot or cradle was issued and the following articles of clothing provided for baby:
Binders, flannel
Boots (when necessary)
Flannels, head
Frocks, flannelette
Gowns, day, calico
Gowns, day, flannelette
Gowns, night
Hoods (when necessary)
Napkins
Petticoats, flannel
Pinafores
Shawls
Shirts, No.1
Shirts, No.2
Skirts flannelette
Socks
Babies under 6 months were fed one half to a full pint of sweetened milk daily. For those over 6 months one to four teaspoonfuls of Mellin’s, Allen and Hanburys’ or similar food daily and half a pint of beef tea three times a week. At 9 months the child would be assessed by the MO, who would report whether it was ‘desirable or necessary’ that the child be retained in prison. Only under exceptional circumstances would a child be kept in prison over the age of 12 months.
Before discharge, it was the duty of the prison governor to ascertain if there were any relative willing and able to take on the child. In the absence of a family home the child would be put into the care of the workhouse of the union in which the mother had been apprehended.
Convict mothers exercise with their babies in the fresh air along the prescribed trackways of the exercise yard at Wormwood Scrubs, c. 1895.
After the immediate admission procedure, the prisoner would be led along the corridors and walkways of the prison, and the sense of foreboding for the prisoner could become quite unbearable. First to hit the senses would be the smell of the place, a strange blend of metallic aromas, natural fibre matting, carbolic soap or disinfectant and a hint of boiled meat and the sickly smell of the unwashed (the latter two are sometimes indistinguishable from each other). The sound of keys would echo in the lofty central hall and along the wing as the prisoner was walked smartly along, escorted by two warders. Each cell would be numbered above or to the side of the door. The exterior of the cell door was painted black, grey or green and was made of a frame and very solid uprights of thick wood punctuated by rivets whose edges had been made smooth and rounded by the many coats of paint received over the years.
Once the prisoner was inside and the door closed he would see that the cell side of the door was usually painted the same colour as the rest of the cell. The majority of the door was smooth, in contrast to its obverse, due to the lack of any doorknob or latch. In many instances a large metal plate covered the entire back of the door – there was to be no kicking through that metal plate. Indeed, the only features on this gaunt plain were the outline of a small trap, pulled open by the twist of a small handle that released a locking device from the outside that caused the trap to fall outwards, forming a platform towards the corridor; through this the prisoner’s meals could be passed. About 2ft above the trap, in the centre of the door, was a bowl-like indentation akin to the shape of a human eye, but ten times larger. In the centre of this ‘eye’ was a ‘pupil’, plain and unseeing; it was the reverse side of a spy or peephole, which would come to life with a short and subtle metallic slide and the all-seeing human eye of a warder takes its place as he looks in while he patrols the corridor or takes a quick look to ensure all is well before he opens the door.
A female inmate picking oakum in her cell at Wormwood Scrubs, 1897.
For many who had endured their first admission to prison with some stoicism and bravery, the moment of incarceration in the cell was literally the hardest step to take. Some would refuse to enter, struggling against the escorting warders crying and imploring, ‘Don’t put me in there.’ The pleading would fall on deaf ears, as Mrs Maybrick found; ‘the warder took me roughly by the shoulder, gave me a push and shut the door.’ At the Female Convict Prison Woking, where she was held, the cells were described thus:
Each cell measures about eight feet by five feet. The floor is of blue slate but in some cases, where the prisoners do not work in other rooms, the floors are of wood and the cells somewhat larger. An iron rod is attached to one end of the cell, to which are fastened the straps which at night are slung into a kind of hammock. Some of the cells have raised plank beds. There are three shelves in the corner of each cell. On one the blankets are neatly folded; on another is generally seen the Bible, prayer book and hymn book, with which each convict is provided … In the corner next to the door of each cell is a small wooden flap, which serves as a table, from which the convict in dreamy solitude eats her meals. At night the gas penetrates through a small pane of thick glass suffusing the little chamber with a kind of ‘dim religious light.’
In Five Years of Penal Servitude, ‘One Who has Endured It’ recalled his cell at Millbank:
On being locked in my cell, the first thing I did was to examine it well and its contents. Opposite to the door and on the floor was a raised wooden platform extending right across the cell. It was about 6 inches from the floor of stone flags. At one end of this platform was a step, about 4 inches higher and 12 inches deep. This platform I afterwards found was my bed-place, on which the straw mattress, now neatly rolled up, was laid and the step acted as bolster, on which I made a pillow of my clothes, no pillow being provided. On the top of the bed were very neatly rolled up … three blankets, a rug and two course linen sheets. A wooden platter and spoon, a wooden salt box, two tine pint-mugs, a bright pewter chamber utensil, an ordinary school slate, a large wooden bucket or pail, with wooden flat hoops and fitted with a close-fitting lid, a short-handled hair broom or brush, a stiff mill-board with a copy of the prison rules and regulations and a small gas-jet, without tap, protruding from the wall about 4ft from the ground … Table or stool there were none. The bucket, with its lid, performed several offices. It contained the water I washed in and which I could change twice a day. It formed my seat when at work and my table when I sat on the bed-place or platform and had my meals.
There was, however, one object that mystified our prisoner:
It was a thin lath of wood, three feet long, two and a half inches wide and a quarter of an inch thick. One half painted on both sides black and the other bright red. There were no spy or inspection holes in the door, but through the wall, alongside the door, was a loop-hole, similar to those usually seen in old castles for arrow slits and in fortified outworks for musketry firing. This slit was about two foot, six inches long and at the passage side three inches wide, extending through the thick brick wall in a radiating manner, till it formed an aperture two foot six inches wide. Anyone walking along the corridor could see at once the inmate of the cell and what he was doing and had a full view of him.
A tall, soldierly looking warder soon enters the cell:
In a racy Irish brogue he asked me if I was No. 20,001. This was the first time I had been addressed by my new numerical name and it sounded somewhat harshly to my ears. ‘Now me man, see you have all the kit ye are entitled to,’ said he, looking round at all my household goods. ‘Bring that bucket and get some clane water.’ I did so, taking the bucket to the sink and tap at the landing on top of the stairs in the round tower. ‘Now bring them dirty sheets, and ye shall have clane ones.’ I followed him, with the sheets of the last resident, to a cell at the centre of the ward, which he had fitted up as a store-room for the necessaries required by the men under his charge and their work. Here he gave me clean sheets, a clean towel with a piece of soap, a small horn comb and a little brush, like a nail brush, which he said was for my hair. The soap, he told me, was my allowance for a fortnight and that alternate Saturday I should have a similar piece. He also gave me rags and bath brick with which to keep my tin and pewter things bright and clean. This he told me to hang behind the door. He then came to my cell and showed me where everything was to be placed when not in use and how to roll up my bedding and fold up the blankets and sheets. He also explained the use of the mysterious red and black wand. When I wished to speak to a warder for any purpose, I was to put the red end from the inspection aperture to cause him to come to me. If a man wishes to see the governor, the doctor or the chaplain, he is to ‘sport his broom’, lay his little hair broom on the floor at the door directly the cell is opened in the morning. This is a signal for the warder to come to him and take down his requirements on a slate on which he makes up his morning’s report.
In daylight hours the prisoner’s cell would be lit by natural light from a small oblong or arched window made from many small panes of plate glass set in a sturdy frame with bars outside and situated high enough on the wall that the prisoner could not easily look out of it; he would have to stand on a stool, wooden bed or bucket to attempt to see out – but that was a punishable offence. Cell windows were seldom cleaned; when Oscar Wilde was imprisoned at Reading he found, ‘Outside the day may be blue and gold but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey … It is always twilight in one’s cell, as it is always midnight in one’s heart.’