CLASS 9 — Destitute Debtors — As Class 4.
CLASS 10
Prisoners under punishment for Prison Offences, for terms up to three days: 1lb of bread per diem. Prisoners in close confinement for Prison Offences under the 42nd section of the Gaol Act:
Males
Females
Breakfast/Supper
1 pint of oatmeal gruel, 8oz of bread.
1 pint of oatmeal gruel, 6oz of bread.
Dinner
8oz of bread.
6oz of bread.
A suggested recipe was also provided for the prisoners’ soup:
The soup to contain, per pint, 3oz of cooked meat without bone, 3oz of potatoes, 1 ounce of barley, rice, or oatmeal and 1 ounce of onions or leeks, with pepper and salt. The gruel, when made in quantities exceeding fifty pints, to contain 1½ ounce of oatmeal per pint, and 2oz per pint when made in less quantities. The gruel, on alternate days, to be sweetened with ¾ ounce of molasses or sugar, and seasoned with salt.
One somewhat unexpected item that appeared in the new scheme was the cocoa provided to Class 5 prisoners – those serving long sentences with hard labour. Its introduction, without apparent comment, in three of the weekly breakfasts was perhaps intended to add both variety to the menu and also extra nutrient through its fat content.
Although the new dietaries were not imposed on prisons, magistrates were strongly encouraged by Sir James Graham to adopt them in their local establishments.
THE NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF VICTORIAN PRISON DIETS
In the 1850s, the science of nutrition was still in its infancy. Diets were largely judged in terms of the weights of the solid food they provided, even though the widely differing water content of, say, potatoes (around 75 per cent) and bread (35 per cent) made such comparisons misleading. The body’s use of different types of food was also little comprehended. However, the study of prison diets was to lead to some of the most significant advances in nutritional understanding.
The problem of scurvy, which frequently afflicted long-term prisoners as well as seafarers, was still not understood. Although the remedial effects of lime and lemon juice had been known since the sixteenth century, exactly why these were effective was still a mystery. It was also not widely appreciated that protection against scurvy was provided by the inclusion of other fruit or vegetables in the diet, as the disastrous effect of removing potatoes from the Millbank dietary had shown in 1822. That eating raw potatoes could protect against scurvy just as well as citrus fruits had been recognised by the 1780s 157 but was apparently little known outside nautical circles. In 1842, physician William Dalton recalled a sea voyage he had taken in the 1820s where the sailors had been provided with ‘scurvy grass’ – raw potatoes, peeled and sliced like cucumber, and served with vinegar. Not a single case of scurvy was reported on the expedition which lasted almost three years. 158 The fact that cooked potatoes could be equally effective was reported in 1843 by William Baly, medical officer at Millbank, who noted that scurvy only occurred amongst military prisoners and never amongst the convict population. The only significant difference between the two groups was that the military prisoners did not receive cooked potatoes in their diet – once this was changed, no further cases of scurvy developed. Baly also analysed data from local prisons and found that an absence of potatoes or other vegetables from the diet was linked with the appearance of scurvy. 159
Even when the value of other vegetables in preventing scurvy came to be realised, their addition to the diet was not always appreciated by the prisoners. An attempt to introduce onions and lettuces onto the menu at Portland had to be abandoned after some of the men threw them from their cells into the corridor in disgust.160
One area where prison studies significantly contributed to nutritional knowledge was in the roles played by carbohydrates and proteins in the diet. In 1842, Baron Justus von Liebig – a German-born chemist of some repute – published his influential work Animal Chemistry. The book claimed that protein was the only true nutrient and the primary source of the body’s energy, while fats and carbohydrates had a fairly minor role, for example in maintaining the body’s temperature. Disciples of Liebig’s theory interpreted any dietary-related disorder as being caused by a lack of protein. An outbreak of scurvy at a prison in Perth in 1846 was thus diagnosed – despite William Baly’s results – as resulting from a protein deficiency.161
A challenge to Liebig’s views eventually came from Edward Smith, a London hospital physician who was not afraid of getting his hands dirty in his quest for scientific data. His early researches, carried out on himself and convicts at Coldbath Fields prison, measured the carbon dioxide produced during exercise and rest. Later, for a period of more than two years – even during his seaside holidays – Smith collected and measured his own daily faeces and urine production, the latter being analysed with particular respect to its content of nitrogen-containing urea. Another study involved a three-week long investigation of the waste products of four Coldbath Fields convicts who worked the tread-wheel three days a week. From his experiments, Smith concluded that exercise led to increased production of carbon dioxide, but not to any change in the excretion of urea. Contrary to Liebig’s theory, Smith found that urea production was related to the amount of protein in the diet. Thus, it was carbohydrates rather than proteins that that were the body’s primary source of muscular energy.162
Smith also questioned the whole rationale for standard dietaries, as the labour given to convicts in different establishments was so varied. His analysis of the 1843 recommended dietaries led him to conclude that the food was seriously inadequate, with a carbon content for Class 1 prisoners amounting to as little as one third of what was nutritionally required to perform tread-wheel labour. Even the diet given to Class 5 prisoners provided only three fifths of the daily requirements for the tread-wheel. 163 In Class 2, the concession to those performing hard labour of a single pint of soup per week he described as ‘manifestly ridiculous’.164
A contrary view – that prisoners were generally overfed – was voiced by William Guy, Medical Superintendent at Millbank from 1859. In a comparison of the food served in workhouses and prisons, Guy noted that even Millbank’s Penal Class dietary (280oz of solid food and 10½ pints of liquid per week) compared favourably with the most generous workhouse dietary (187½oz solids and 12 pints liquid) provided to able-bodied male paupers. 165 A Royal Commission on Penal Servitude in 1863 noted that paupers in some workhouses received only 4oz of meat per week, while a convict on public works received 39oz as well as a daily ration of 27oz of bread and 16oz of vegetables.
Vegetarians and vegans may appreciate one further contribution from the prison system to nutritional knowledge. Based on reports from the Devizes House of Correction and Stafford Gaol, where prisoners had been given only bread, potatoes and gruel for up to eighteen months with no ill effects, William Guy concluded that neither meat, nor any other animal-derived nutrient, was essential to a healthy diet.166
The exercise yard and tread-wheel at the Coldbath Fields House of Correction. The tread-wheel was invented in 1819 by engineer William Cubitt. Odd and even-numbered slots alternated fifteen minutes of wheel exercise with fifteen minutes of rest or reading. In the course of a day, the distance climbed by a prisoner could be equivalent to the height of Mount Kilimanjaro. From 1843, use of the tread-wheel was restricted to males over the age of 14, with a maximum ascent of 12,000 feet.
ten
The Victorian Prison Kitchen
In 1862, the Victorian journalist and social researcher Henry Mayhew, in collaboration with John Binny, published The Criminal Prisons of London, an extensive survey of the capital’s prisons based on first-hand visits to each establishment compiled over the previous six years or so. Unlike official reports, Mayhew’s descriptions convey the colours, smells and sounds of prison life. His visit to the kitchens at Coldbath Fields prison was typical:
The kitchen, where the daily food of the 1,300 inhabitants of Cold
bath Fields prison is cooked, is as large and lofty as a barn, so that despite the heat required for the culinary purposes, the air is cool, and even the panes in the sky-lights let into the slanting wood roof, are free from condensed vapour. Everything is cooked by steam, and the whole place seems to be conducted on the gigantic scale of an American boarding-house; for there is but one pot to be seen, and that holds at least ten gallons. The different articles of food are being prepared for the prisoners’ dinners in the immense square iron tanks — for they are more like cisterns than boilers — ranged against the wall. In one, with the bright copper-lid, which is so heavy that it has to be raised by means of an equipoise, are 100 gallons of cocoa, the red-brown scum on the top heaving and sinking with the heat; in another are suspended hampers of potatoes; whilst other compartments contain 150 gallons of what, from the ‘eyes’ of grease glittering on the surface, you guess to be soup, or which, from its viscid, pasty appearance, you know to be the prison gruel.
It takes two cooks three hours and a half merely to weigh out the rations required for this enormous establishment. One of these stands beside a mass — high as a truss of hay — of slices of boiled meat, and, with extraordinary rapidity, places pieces of the pale lean and the yellow fat in the scales, until the six-ounce weight moves. The other is occupied with the potatoes, dividing the hamper filled with the steaming, brown-skinned vegetables into portions of eight ounces each. The sight of such immense quantities of provisions, and the peculiar smell given off from the cooling of boiled meats, has rather a sickening effect upon anyone, like ourselves, not hungry at the time. All the soup is made out of bullocks’ heads; and in the larder, hanging to hooks against the slate-covered wall, we beheld several of these suspended by the lips, and looking fearfully horrible, with the white bones showing through the crimson flesh, so that the sight called up in our mind our youthful fancies of what we had imagined to be the character of Bluebeard’s closet. A curious use is made of the jaw-bones of these bullocks’ heads. After the flesh and all its ‘goodness’ has been boiled from it, the ‘maxilla inferior,’ as doctors call it, is used to form ornamental borders to the gravel walks in the grounds, in the same way as oyster-shells are sometimes turned to account in the nine-feet-by-six gardens in the suburbs.
At Holloway prison, the kitchen was located in the basement of ‘D’ wing:
There are six large boilers in the kitchen with copper lids—each of them having a steam pipe communicating with a large boiler in an adjoining recess. One boiler contained a large quantity of broth, with huge pieces of beef. The cook uplifted several of them on a large fork: they appeared to be of excellent quality. They were carried away by one of the prisoners in attendance, to be cut up into small portions to be put into the dining tins, and distributed to the various prisoners in the different cells. Another boiler contained a large quantity of potatoes which had just been cooked. They were York Regents of an excellent quality. A different boiler contained an enormous quantity of gruel, made of the best Scotch oatmeal, to be served out for supper in the evening. It was filled to the brim, with a white creamy paste mantling on the surface.
THE BAKERY
The staple of all prison diets was bread. Although some prisons, such as Holloway, bought in their bread, many larger prisons had their own bakery. The portions of bread specified by the dietary could be produced either by cutting up large loaves or by baking individual loaves of the required weight. At Pentonville, Mayhew descended a spiral staircase into the basement:
The kitchens at Holloway, showing some of its six steam-heated boilers. Off the kitchen were a cutting-up room, where cooked food was placed in metal pannikins before distribution, and a scullery, where the used tins were washed in two large sinks.
and knew, by the peculiar smell of bread pervading the place, that we had entered the bakery. There was but little distinctive about this part of the prison; for we found the same heap of dusty white-looking sacks, and the same lot of men, with the flour, like hair-powder, clinging to their eyebrows and whiskers (four of these were prisoners, and the other a free man – ‘the master baker’ placed over them), as usually characterises such a place. Here we learnt that the bread of the prison was unfermented, owing to the impossibility of working ‘the sponge’ there during the night; and of course we were invited to taste a bit. It was really what would have been considered ‘cake’ in some continental states; indeed, a German servant, to whom we gave a piece of the prison loaf, assured us that the ‘König von Preussen’ himself hardly ate better stuff … ‘Yonder are some of the ten-ounce loaves, that are just going to be served out for breakfast,’ added the cook; and, as he said the words, he pointed to a slab of miniature half-quarterns, that looked not unlike a block of small paving-stones cemented together.
At Brixton Female Prison, the working of the fermenting dough or ‘sponge’ presented an almost lyrical scene:
The bakery was a pleasant and large light building, adjoining the kitchen, and here we found more females, in light blue gowns, at work on the large dresser, with an immense heap of dough that lay before them like a huge drab-coloured feather-bed, and with the master baker in his flannel jacket standing beside the oven watching the work. Some of the female prisoners were working the dough, that yielded to their pressure like an air-cushion; and some were cutting off pieces and weighing them in the scales before them, and then tossing them over to others, who moulded them into the form of dumplings, or small loaves.
At Wandsworth prison, mechanisation had been introduced to the bakery which was equipped with two nine-bushel ovens made by the firm of Thomas Powell of Lisle Street, Leicester Square, London. The baker, Mr Claridge, described the bread-making process:
I have four men assisting me in the bakehouse. We commence to work at six o’clock in the morning, when we put in the sponge with one of Stevens’ patent dough-making machines. At seven o’clock the assistant bakers (prisoners) leave the bakehouse to attend chapel. On their return they clean and prepare the bread. After breakfast, the bread prepared on the previous day is put into a basket ready for delivery to the storekeeper at ten o’clock, and carefully weighed.
The dough after lying an hour is thrown out by the machine and weighed off to be made into the several loaves. The loaves are baked three-quarters of an hour. We generally have about four batches. The ovens hold about 1200 of the six ounce, and about 1000 of the eight ounce loaves. We finish work about half-past five, when the prisoners who officiate as assistant bakers are taken back to their different cells.
The bread remains in the bakehouse for the night, and is delivered to the storekeeper in the morning, as before stated. The bread is brown, of a coarse but wholesome quality. In addition to this we prepare some of finer flour for the infirmary.
PRISON COOKS
At Holloway, where bread was bought in, the cook outlined the kitchen’s working day:
The fire is generally lit about three o’clock in the morning by one of the night watchmen, when the steam is got up to prepare the gruel or cocoa, served up for breakfast on alternate days.
‘I begin my duties,’ said the cook, ‘at seven o’clock in the morning, when the gruel and cocoa is served up with bread to the different corridors; sometimes cocoa and bread, at other times gruel and bread. The butcher in general arrives about ten o’clock, when we prepare for dinner, consisting of meat and potatoes, or soup and potatoes, which are served up at one o’clock to all the branches of the prison.
‘The gruel for supper is prepared at an early period of the day, generally at dinner-time, and stands in the copper for several hours. By this means it becomes thicker, and its qualities are improved, and besides it economizes our fuel. The bread is cut and weighed out, to be served up with the gruel for the prisoners’ supper, which ends the ordinary operations of the day.’
Keeping track of all the different dietaries and the daily numbers required of each one, not to mention all the ‘extras’ required by sick prisoners, was not a trivial task. The co
ok at Pentonville had devised his own method, as Mayhew observed:
‘Yes, sir, that’s my slate,’ added the man, as he saw us looking up at a long black board that was nailed against the wall in the serving-room, and inscribed with the letters and figures of the several wards of the prison, together with various hieroglyphics that needed the cook himself to interpret. ‘On that board I chalk up,’ he proceded, ‘the number of prisoners in each ward, so as to know what rations I have to serve. The letter K there, underneath the figures, signifies that one man out of that particular ward is at work in the kitchen, and B, that one prisoner is employed in the bakehouse. That mark up there stands for an extra loaf to be sent up to the ward it’s placed under, and these dots here for two extra meats; whilst yonder sign is to tell me that there is one man out of that part of the building gone into the infirmary. Yes, sir, we let the infirmary prisoners have just whatever the medical officer pleases to order – jelly, or fish, or indeed chicken if required.’
PRISON DINING
At Coldbath Fields, dinner was eaten communally at 2 p.m. each day in large sheds where a little light reading was provided to occupy the inmates after they had eaten:
Big tubs, filled with thick gruel, had been carried into the dining-sheds, and a pint measure of the limpid paste had been poured into the tin mugs, and this, together with a spoon and the 6 ounces of bread, were ranged down the narrow strips of tables that extend in three rows the whole length of the place. As the clock struck two, the file of prisoners in the yard received an order to ‘Halt,’ and, after a moment’s rest, the word of command was given to take their places at the table. Then the chain moved to the door; and, as each human link entered, he took off his old stocking-like cap, and passing down between the forms reached his seat. The men sat still for a second or two, with the smoking gruel before them, until the order was given to ‘Draw up tables!’ and instantly the long light ‘dressers’ were, with a sudden rattle, pulled close to the men. Then the warder, taking off his cap, cried out, ‘Pay attention to grace!’ and every head was bent down as one of the prisoners repeated these words:— ‘Sanctify, we beseech thee, O Lord, these thy good things to our use, and us to thy service, through the grace of Jesus Christ.’ A shout of ‘Amen!’ followed, and directly afterwards the tinkling of the spoons against the tin cans was heard, accompanied by the peculiar sound resembling ‘sniffing,’ that is made by persons eating half-liquid messes with a spoon. Two prisoners, carrying boxes of salt, passed along in front of the tables, from man to man, while each in his turn dipped his spoon in and helped himself. The ‘good things,’ as the water-gruel and bit of bread are ironically termed in the grace, were soon despatched, and then the men, reaching each little sack of books which had been suspended above their heads from the ceiling, like so many fly-catchers, passed the remainder of their dinner-hour reading.
The Prison Cookbook Page 12