to lie on. Bread was the prisoner’s staple diet, along with thin gruel containing
potatoes, which were often rotten. There was also a punishment diet,
consisting of just bread and water for four days out of five, and there were
accounts of extreme hunger, and riots caused by the condition of the food. The
fortunate prisoners at Dartmoor had the unique privilege of cocoa at supper
thrice weekly!
Prisoners had their heads shaved when they entered the prison, were bathed
in carbolic, given a rough uniform to wear, and a number was issued to be
used instead of a name. One fifteenminute visit and one letter every six
months were permitted. Exercise periods of up to an hour were spent in the
prison yard, and daily attendance at chapel was obligatory.
The warders often lived in the prisons and were uniformed. They carried
truncheons for protection and were as supervised as the convicts themselves.
Not until 1864 were they allowed a half day off a week. Every prison had a
chaplain who held services and visited prisoners. Medical officers were also
appointed to inspect prisoners on arrival, and to make rounds twice a week.^14
About thirteen per cent of the total numbers of prisoners in 1908 were
female, mostly convicted for prostitution or for activism in the suffragette
movement. In 1903 Holloway was designated as a female prison.
By 1911 the Metropolitan Police had 200 police stations in twentytwo
divisions across London; these included divisions dedicated to the royal
household, to guarding military stations and dockyards, on special duty with
the armed forces and government departments, and officers seconded to major
department stores, museums and galleries. There was a Central Criminal
Investigation Department, a Public Carriage Department, a Training School,
Executive and Statistical Departments, and Special Branch, which had
responsibility for cases concerned with royalty and political affairs. Unlike
other police forces in England at the time, the Metropolitan Police was an
‘imperial’force, not subject to control by local councils. In one year of the
first decade of the twentieth century, the‘Met’dealt with 178,495 minor
offences and 17,910 indictable offences, with proceedings being taken against
14,525 individuals, some of whom had committed several offences.
Nationally, in 1901, there were 55,453 trials and 45,039 convictions for
indictable offences. The number of lesser offences was much higher –
drunkenness alone accounted for 210,342 arrests. In that year 199,875 people
were committed to prison, threequarters of them male, representing fiftytwo
per cent of the convictions for indictable offences. Fines were levied on
twentytwo per cent of those found guilty, and nine per cent were sentenced to
a whipping. Reformatories or industrial schools existed for juvenile offenders,
VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN CRIME