PAST CRIMESday–in one instance, 10,000 turns had to be made before breakfast. The box
was fitted with a mechanical counter to enable the prisoner’s effort to be
monitored. Both types of punishment were exhausting, pointless, and in the
case of the treadmill, sometimes dangerous. Women and children were often
set to picking oakum–pulling apart old ships’ropes to recover the hemp,
which could then be reused. The ropes were stiff, covered with tar, and the
work quickly blistered the hands of the inmates. Working hours could be very
long–up to fifteen hours a day in summer, and thirteen hours a day in winter.
Across the world, new archaeological interest has arisen about these prisons
and the lives of those incarcerated within them. As many are pulled down and
replaced by more modern institutions, evidence is being gathered through
excavations to record and preserve the details of the prison regimes and
conditions endured by convicts in the past couple of centuries. Among British
prisons which are or have been studied are Reading Gaol, where Oscar Wilde
was imprisoned, the Millbank Penitentiary, and Lincoln and York gaols. Irish
sites include Spike Island and Roscommon. Several sites have been studied in
Australia, and in New Zealand, for example at Mount Eden Prison in
Auckland. In the USA, most efforts have been concentrated on excavation of
Civil War prison camps. French sites include the Bastille and overseas penal
settlements such as the Iles de Salut, in use from 1852, where Alfred Dreyfus
(‘Papillon’) was incarcerated in 1894.
By 1898, a less arduous regime was introduced. Solitary confinement was
now limited to no more than one month at a time, and the use of the treadmill
was abolished. Already, by 1895, the treatment of young offenders was being
questioned, and the desirability of separating young people from adult inmates
was gaining acceptance. In 1908, separate institutions for young offenders
were introduced, where they were put to work, but were also given
educational instruction. These became known as borstals.
Hangings now took place within the prisons, rather than in public. At
Pentonville Prison, a deep, bricklined pit was used for hangings, covered with
a twoleaf trapdoor. Pentonville ran courses to train hangmen, instructing them
in the calculations necessary to conduct an efficient hanging and the length of
time it took a person to die if their neck was not broken when the trapdoor
dropped. Training courses continued until 1960.
Whipping was still in use as a punishment. Birch rods of different
thicknesses were required depending on the age of the offender, who was
struck a decreed number of times on his bare buttocks.
Living conditions, while improved from those of the preceding century,
were still severe–insufficient food, and that of a boring nature, and hard beds