Prisoners awaiting trial and destitute debtors were to be given the Class 3 diet for their first month, the Class 4 for their second month, then the Class 5 for any further time of imprisonment. Debtors and bankrupts committed for fraud or other serious offence, and also deserters, were placed on the Class 3 diet for the duration of their stay.
A new dish on the menu was Indian meal pudding. Indian meal (milled maize corn, or cornmeal) was not a traditional foodstuff in England though supplies from North America were sometimes used as pig-feed. It was, however, eaten by the poor in many countries, for example in Italy as the dish polenta. Supplies had also been shipped to Ireland to feed the starving poor during the famine between 1845 and 1850. For those in Classes 3–5, Indian meal pudding was replaced after a month by suet pudding, an item which had occasionally featured on prison menus since at least 1818 when it was part of the dietary at the Maidstone House of Correction. It was now commended as ‘easily made and measured’ and ‘palatable without being luxurious’.172
At first glance, the basic dietary appears to lack any meat. However, the ingredients list that accompanied it includes some in the soup served for dinner three times a week:
Ingredients of Soup
In every pint: the meat and liquor from 6oz of the necks, legs, and shins of beef, weighed with the bone, previous to cooking; 1oz of onions or leeks; 1oz of Scotch barley; 2oz of carrots, parsnips, turnips or other cheap vegetable, with pepper and salt.
On Tuesdays and Saturdays, the meat liquor of the previous day is to be added.
Ingredients of Suet Pudding
1½oz of suet; 6½oz of flour, and about 8oz of water to make 1lb.
Ingredients of Indian Meal Pudding
To consist of ½ pint of skimmed milk, to every 6oz of meal.
Ingredients of Gruel
To every pint, 2oz of coarse Scotch oatmeal, with salt. The gruel for breakfast on Sunday in Class 4, and for breakfast and supper in Class 5, to contain 1oz of molasses.
As with the 1843 dietary proposals, the new scheme was presented only as a recommendation for local prisons to follow, should they decide to do so in consultation with local magistrates.
At the same time as local prison dietaries were being reviewed, another committee was reassessing those in use at the convict prisons. For male convicts in separate confinement, the following dietary was proposed for those engaged in ‘industrial employment’:
BREAKFAST (All days)
Bread. ¾ pint cocoa (containing ½oz cocoa, 2oz milk, ½oz molasses).
DINNER Sunday
Bread. 4oz cheese.
Monday
Bread. 1lb potatoes. 4oz hot mutton (with its own liquor, flavoured with ½oz onions, and thickened with bread left on previous day).
Tuesday
Bread. 1lb potatoes. 4oz hot beef.
Wednesday
Same as Monday.
Thursday
Bread. 1lb potatoes. 1lb suet pudding (containing 1½oz suet, 8oz flour, 6½oz water).
Friday
Same as Tuesday.
Saturday
Bread.1lb potatoes.1 pint soup (containing 8oz shins of beef, 1oz pearl barley, 3oz fresh vegetables including onions).
SUPPER (All days)
Bread. 1 pint gruel (containing 2oz oatmeal, 2oz milk, ½oz molasses).
Bread, per week: 148oz (20oz per weekday, 28oz Sunday)
Males not at industrial employment received the same dietary but with the bread allowance reduced by 4oz a day. Women convicts had a single ‘ordinary’ dietary – a slightly reduced version of the men’s rations – with those engaged in washing or other heavy work receiving the men’s meat allowance plus a lunch of bread and cheese between breakfast and dinner. Finally, for anyone breaking prison rules, a punishment dietary consisted of bread (1lb per day) and water. For punishments above three days, a ‘penal class’ diet of bread, porridge and potatoes was served every fourth day. Cocoa, which the committee reviewing local prison dietaries had decided was an unnecessary luxury, was retained at convict prisons.
NATIONALISATION
Although the 1865 Prison Act brought local prisons under some degree of central control, they were still funded by local rates, with local JPs playing a part in their administration. The final step in creating an integrated national prison system came with the 1877 Prison Act which placed control of all prisons in the hands of a new body known as the Prison Commissioners. At the same time, the Exchequer took over all the costs of running the prison system.
The nationalisation of the prisons aimed to make the operation of the penal system both uniform and economical. To this end, the Commissioners, chaired by Sir Edmund Du Cane, set about rationalising the country’s stock of 113 prisons. In the summer of 1878, forty-five were shut down – mostly small town gaols, although eleven county prisons were closed. The remainder provided space for 24,812 inmates – about 4,000 more than the expected requirements. 173
Unlike its predecessor in 1865, the new Act did not include detailed prison regulations. Instead, a new set of rules devised by the Prison Commissioners was introduced in April 1878. One innovation was a system of four stages through which convicted prisoners could progress during their sentence. In Stage 1, prisoners slept on a plank bed with no mattress. They were employed for ten hours a day in First Class hard labour, of which six to eight hours were to be on a crank- or tread-wheel. No money could be earned. In Stage 2, a mattress was provided for the plank bed on five nights a week. After completing a month of First Class hard labour, Stage 2 prisoners were moved to Second Class hard labour – light industrial work, for which a small payment could be earned. Stage 2 also offered inmates school instruction and a period of exercise on Sunday. Stage 3 reduced the bare plank bed to one night a week, allowed library books to be kept in cells and gave a higher rate of earning. Finally, at Stage 4, prisoners had a mattress every night and a further increase in earnings. More significantly, they could be given jobs of trust within the prison, have a visitor every three months and write and receive a letter.
Progress through the stages was achieved by the accumulation of marks, of which six to eight could be earned each day. Attaining a total of 224 marks (i.e. twenty-eight times eight) in a stage earned advancement to the following one, although idleness or misconduct could be punished by loss of earnings, stage privileges or even temporary demotion to an earlier stage.
Second Class labour covered a variety of tasks and could result in the learning of a trade that would make an inmate employable after release. At Manchester in 1886, the work for men included brush making and calico weaving, while women were occupied at knitting, sewing, cotton picking and making mail bags. 174 At Wakefield, the men’s employment included mat-making, stocking weaving and hammock making. Many of the goods produced by prisoners were supplied to government departments such as the War Office, Admiralty and Post Office.
THE NATIONAL PRISON DIETARY
Following the creation of a national prison system in 1877, a review of prison diets was undertaken with the aim of finally establishing a scheme that could be used by all the country’s prisons. A committee was set up to consider the matter and made its report in February 1878.
In its report, the committee noted that the dietaries in use at local prisons were now more varied than ever, with eighty-one differing widely from current official recommendations, compared to eighteen in 1864. 175 Many prisons were still using dietaries similar to those issued following the 1843 review. The committee endorsed the existing view that those serving short terms should receive a more severe diet than those on longer sentences. It also broadly agreed with the principle that longer-term inmates should progress through the various diets given to those with shorter sentences. However, it recognised that the number of potential dietary combinations of male and female prisoners, with and without labour, and at different stages of their sentence, could be excessive – with some prison kitchens having to deal with up to eighteen different diets on the same day
. To address this, the committee proposed that the number of basic dietary classes be reduced to four. It was also recommended that female prisoners should generally receive the same amounts as males not performing hard labour. For longer-term prisoners, a revised system of progression was devised, with each prisoner receiving just the last two dietaries applicable to their length of sentence. The revised scheme is shown below:
Dietary
Sentence Length
Class 1
Class 2
Class 3
Class 4
Up to 7 days
Whole term
From 7 days to 1 month
First 7 days
Remainder
From 1 month to 4 months
First month
Remainder
More than 4 months
First 4 months
Remainder
From 1878, Stage 4 prisoners could periodically send and receive a letter. A group of inmates engrossed in their writing are seen here at Wandsworth prison in 1896.
By the end of the nineteenth century, unproductive labour such as the tread-wheel had been replaced by more useful occupations which could result in a prisoner learning a trade. This 1898 scene shows the mechanical shop at Wormwood Scrubs where small metal containers are being made under the careful watch of prison officers.
Prisoners at Portland were not solely occupied in the quarries, as shown by this view of the fitter’s shop.
The governor and staff at Shepton Mallet prison in Somerset, early 1900s. In 1878, a national scale was created for prison staff ’s pay. Governors of prisons with 1,000 inmates or more started at £710 a year, with free accommodation and medical care. At a smaller prison like Shepton Mallet, the governor received a rather more modest £200. A warder’s salary was £70, plus uniform and accommodation.
In terms of the food provided in each class, the committee was decidedly of the view that ‘the shorter the term of imprisonment, the more strongly should the penal element be manifested’; that ‘a spare diet is all that is necessary for a prisoner undergoing a sentence of a few days or weeks’; and that ‘to give such a prisoner a diet necessary for the maintenance of health during the longer terms would be to forgo an opportunity for the infliction of salutary punishment’.176 For longer terms, however, it was accepted that a more substantial and varied diet was appropriate. The details of the new dietary recommendations are shown below:
CLASS 1
CLASS 2
Meals
Men, Women, and Boys under 16, with or without Hard Labour.
Men with
Hard
Labour.
Men not on Hard Labour, Women, Boys under 16.
Breakfast
Daily
Bread
8oz
Daily
Bread
6oz
5oz
Gruel
1 pint
1 pint
Dinner
Daily
Stirabout
1½ pints
Sun,
Wed.
Bread
6oz
5oz
Suet Pud.
8oz
6oz
Mon,
Fri.
Bread
6oz
5oz
Potatoes
8oz
8oz
Tue,
Thu,
Sat.
Bread
6oz
5oz
Soup
½ pint
½ pint
Supper
Daily
Bread
8oz
Daily
Bread
6oz
5oz
Gruel
1 pint
1 pint
CLASS 3
CLASS 4
Meals
Men
with
Hard
Labour.
Men not on Hard Labour, Women, Boys
under 16.
Destitute Debtors, Prisoners awaiting trial, etc.
Men
with
Hard
Labour.
Men not on Hard Labour, Women, Boys
under 16.
Breakfast
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
Gruel
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint; or
Porridge
1 pint
Cocoa
½ pint
Gruel
1 pint
Dinner
Sun,
Wed.
Bread
4oz
4oz
4oz
Sun,
Wed.
Bread
6oz
4oz
Potatoes
8oz
6oz
6oz
Potatoes
8oz
8oz
Suet
Pud.
8oz
6oz
6oz
Suet
Pud.
12oz
10oz
Mon,
Fri.
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Mon,
Fri.
Bread
8oz
6oz
Potatoes
8oz
8oz
8oz
Potatoes
12oz
10oz
Ckd.
Beef
3oz
3oz
3oz
Ckd.
Beef
4oz
3oz
Tue,
Thu,
Sat.
Bread
8oz
6oz
6oz
Tue,
Thu,
Sat.
Bread
8oz
6oz
Potatoes
8oz
6oz
6oz
Potatoes
8oz
8oz
Soup
¾ pint
¾ pint
¾ pint
Soup
1 pint
1 pint
Supper
Daily
Bread
6oz
6oz
6oz
Daily
Bread
8oz
6oz
Gruel
1 pint
1 pint
1 pint; or
Porridge
1 pint
Cocoa
½ pint
Gruel
1 pint
On Mondays, beans and fat bacon may be substituted for beef. After nine months, 1 pint of cocoa, with 2oz extra of bread, may be given at breakfast three days a week in lieu of 1 pint of porridge or gruel.
Economy, as always, was kept in mind and the authors of the 1878 report were keen to extol the virtues of pulses – peas and beans. For Class 3 and 4 inmates, replacing Monday’s cooked beef by ‘beans and bacon’ (9oz haricot beans, 1oz fat bacon, 12oz potatoes, 8oz bread) would, it was claimed, be more nutritious and also reduce the cost from 4¾d to 2¼d a portion.
A notable absence from the new dietary was Indian meal pudding, introduced for Class 1 and 2 prisoners in the 1864 review. Indian meal continued in use, for Class 1 prisoners, in the guise of ‘stirabout’, a thick porridge containing equal parts of Indian meal and oatmeal. Despite appearances, ‘stir’ – one of the English slang terms for prison – is not a shortened form of stirabout, but is said to derive from the Romany word ‘sturiben’, meaning ‘to confine’.177
The new diets were endorsed by an 1878 Royal Commission who
found that the quantities were ‘fairly proportioned to the amount of labour required of the prisoners, whether in separate confinement or at public works’. The meals themselves also received a seal of approval: ‘though they are coarse in quality, they are good and of their kind nutritious, and sufficient in quantity to maintain ordinary convicts in good health and vigour.’178 This was not a view that everyone felt inclined to agree with.
Located in the town’s market place, Buckingham’s borough prison was erected in 1748 in the style of a castle, the traditional setting for a prison. By the 1870s, its inmates rarely numbered more than three and it became one of many small local prisons to close following the nationalisation of the prison system in 1877. The building, now a museum, has also served as a police station, fire station, ammunition store, public conveniences and an antiques shop.
twelve
From Worms to Beans
STIRRINGS OF DISCONTENT
Despite the periodic reforms of prison food, culminating in the creation of a standard national dietary in 1878, complaints about what ended up on prisoners’ plates were never far away.
The quantity of food provided was regularly a source of grievance. One former inmate of Dartmoor in the 1870s claimed that prisoners were so hungry that they resorted to eating dead rats and mice, grass, candles, dogs and earth worms. If caught, they would be starved even further by a spell on bread and water.179 Elsewhere, items such as beetles, slugs, snails, toilet paper and even a poultice were devoured by prisoners to stave off the pangs of hunger.180
The Prison Cookbook Page 14