Abstract
The Dublin intermediate prison system proposes a comparative study of Dublin’s, Edinburgh’s and London’s prison systems in the nineteenth century. It aims at offering a new point of view about British and Irish jails by contradicting the widespread belief of English strictness and Irish leniency. Based on case studies, the article thus details the inner working of intermediate prisons, the unique Irish form of containment, and shows its severity and modernity when compared to the English penal system. Finally, the Jebb and Crofton controversy over the paternity of the new Irish Convict System is tackled, emphasizing on the jealousy aroused from the efficiency of the Irish system, the first one to propose such individualized sentences in the nineteenth century.
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Notes
- 1.
Ireland and Scotland being British colonies subsumed into the Union, Dublin and Edinburgh prisons were supposed to operate the same way as London prisons. Yet, the two countries differentiated themselves from colonial rule, and thus the comparison is worth examining.
- 2.
The Wakefield Justices were prison committees visiting prisons in Ireland but also in the British Isles. An 1823 Act laid down the prison duties of justices, including their systematic inspection of every part of prisons. In an 1835 Act, the justices were subjected to Home Office regulations.
- 3.
In the third, or ‘intermediate stage’, male convicts were transferred to the newly acquired [1856] agricultural prison at Lusk, north of Dublin, or, when later appropriated for the purpose, to Smithfield prison in Dublin. These institutions were ‘open prisons’. At Lusk, for instance, there were no walls or fences to contain the convicts. Treatment at these prisons was adjusted as much as possible to each individual (Carroll-Burke 2000, 104). Lusk Prison contained only exemplary character convicts.
- 4.
The serious disturbance at Portland Convict Prison in 1858, in which over 300 men had refused to work, was largely a result of these defects in the legislation. According to the governor, the prisoners had themselves stated that ‘they considered themselves ill used in having no remission of sentence for good conduct such as the men under the Act of July 1857 had’ (Brown 2003, 48).
- 5.
Pentonville Prison Registers, PCOM 3/3/209 (05 Dec. 1853), PCOM 3/5/486 (20 Feb. 1854), PCOM 3/7/613 (14 March 1854); the National Archives, Kew.
- 6.
Pentonville Prison and Mountjoy Prison are perfect institutions for a comparison since they were both built according to the new Pentonville design and were meant to imprison serious offenders called convicts (Higgs 2007, 7).
- 7.
When the Irish Convict System was legally established in 1854, it included the Dublin prisons of Mountjoy, Grangegorman, Newgate and Smithfield, Cork female depot, Spike Island, Philipstown outside Dublin and the Camden and Carlisle forts. […] The first or ‘penal stage’ was served by both men and women in strict separate confinement in Mountjoy. In the second, or ‘reformatory stage’, male prisoners were transferred to Spike Island where they worked at associated outdoor labour, to Philipstown if invalid, and to Smithfield if tradesmen (Carroll-Burke 2000, 103–104).
- 8.
See, for instance, “Major misconduct offenses and their punishment” Dublin: Mountjoy Gaol Registers, no.17; p. 1/11/17.
- 9.
The 1707 Act of Union signed by Scotland with England gave Edinburgh control of both Scottish religion and education. Yet the 1801 Act of Union signed by Ireland forced Dublin to recognize the Anglican Church as the official Church of Ireland. The Church of England was also responsible for education in Ireland, although some Catholic dissenters set up secret Catholic schools nicknamed ‘hedge schools’.
- 10.
No convicts were released on licence in Ireland until police surveillance was introduced. A system of special forms for recording information on behalf of the police was adopted in Ireland. These forms not only provided an extensive description of the individual but also information on former convictions, previous residence, residence of friends and associates, birthmarks, occupation, place of birth and particulars of both past and present offences. This system, however, applied only to men living outside the city and county of Dublin (Carroll-Burke 2000, 126).
- 11.
Sir Walter Frederick Crofton (1815–1897) was an Irish penologist and was chair of the Board of Directors of Convict Prisons for Ireland between 1854 and 1862. He is the founder of the Irish Convict System, created in 1854 and which imposed on convicts a third stage of imprisonment: the intermediate prison.
- 12.
Reverend W. L. Clay was the author of Our Convict Systems (London, 1862) and the chaplain of Preston House of Correction.
- 13.
Edmund Du Cane, the Chairman of the Directors of the Convict Prisons from 1869 to 1895, has been criticized for his role in constructing a severe system of penal servitude, and there is little doubt that Du Cane’s name will always be written large in the history of English prison administration (Brown 2003, 85).
- 14.
The Great Famine (1845–1851) stands out as a key period in the history and evolution of Ireland, but in prison life and prison diet as well. It pushed starving people to seek for shelter and food in prisons to escape from the famine ravaging the streets of Dublin (in 1850, as many as 9034 people were committed to Kilmainham Gaol). Prison diet was therefore not seen as a punishment, as a deterrent, but rather as the only way to stay alive for a few more days. Dublin was filled with orphans and children with no other choice but to steal food to survive. The page of Kilmainham Gaol from 1847 gives details about the type of crimes Irish criminals commited during the Famine: ‘a man imprisoned for having three geese he could not account for, two young men jailed for attacking a bread cart, another for having “bread and butter” in his possession which had been stolen’. The direct consequences were that prison diet is reduced to the minimum: seven ounces of meal and a pint of milk for breakfast, and a pound of bread and a pint of milk for dinner. However, in Kilmainham, prisoners also died from hunger: one person in 1845, three in 1846 and twenty-nine in 1847. At the end of the Great Famine, one million people had died and another million had emigrated. The decline in the national population was immediately followed by a decline in the prison population. That’s why the prison authorities wanted to seize the opportunity and swept away the old prison regime for reforms (Cooke 1995, 11–13).
- 15.
Fingerprint technology was introduced to the police service by Henry Faulds (1843–1930). See Dell, S. (2008). The Victorian Policeman. Oxford: Shire Publications Ltd. pp. 37–38.
- 16.
See Constabulary Inspector: Report on Annual Inspection, Edinburgh City Police, 1887, Police Report Files 1887–1930, HH4/1, Edinburgh National Archives; Gray Wilson, J. (1960). Not Proven. Secker & Warbuck: London.
- 17.
This may be explained by the influence of the misogynous reformer, John Knox, who fiercely opposed the reigns of Marie de Guise, Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart, whom he considered as synonymous with ‘subversion to moral order, equality and justice’ (See Turner 2017). Presbyterianism also depicted women as threats to the patriarchal order and often associated them with subversion and dissidence (See Raffe 2014, 61–78).
- 18.
Name given to Pentonville Prison (London), a prison constructed in 1842 on Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon : a prison with a central circular tower from which the wardens can watch all the individual cells built around it.
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Web Resources
Online Archives
Wakefield Prison 1801–1991. West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield, Reference GB 201 C000118. https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/69689709-cfcf-3daa-ba58-c08f4f4e10b9
Online Articles
Turner, J. 2017. John Knox and His Women. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2017/01/john-knox-women/
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Berthillot, E. (2020). The Dublin Intermediate Prison System. In: McCann, F. (eds) The Carceral Network in Ireland. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42184-7_2
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