1983 - London England - Pentonville Prison

Criminal Justice - Drug and Alcohol Abuse London England - Summer of 1983

My Memories of HM Pentonville Prison
We took the tube to get there.  The Colonel had requested access for the Criminal Justice students.  I was at the end of the line getting into the crowded subway car and was so afraid the doors would close before I could get it.  I managed to push my way in and not get left behind.  I didn't know where we were going (how to get there) and would have been hated to miss this.

We got to the property and waited for entry.  This is a prison.  The building was old (not unusual for London).  This prison was built with a wagon wheel spoke design /architecture.  The hub of the 'wagon wheel hub' was where all of the guards would be located.  The spokes out were the actual prisoner cells.  of course there are administrative areas also.

As we walked in, I saw a gorgeous guy - an inmate.  The inmates wore white and blue striped shirts.  I didn't talk to him as I wouldn't even if we had not been forbidden, which we were..  No idea why he was there (his crime).  We were told to not speak to the inmates and to not walk in the middle of the walkways as things could be dropped on us or the inmates could jump or be tossed from the upper flights..  There was netting over us so if someone jumped.... WOW.

We walked through the prison and it was non-descriptive except for the hub / spokes architecture of the building.  I enjoyed it though. I was very glad to be able to walk out of there though.


Her Majesty's (HM) Pentonville Prison
Address:  Caledonian Rd, London N7 8TT, UK
Opened: 1842
Phone +44 20 7023 7000
Capacity 1, 310

wikipedia
HM Prison Pentonville (informally "The Ville") is an English Category B/C men's prison, operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not in Pentonville, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury area of the London Borough of Islington, north London.
The first modern prison in London, Millbank, opened in 1816. It had separate cells for 860 prisoners and proved satisfactory to the authorities who started building prisons to deal with the rapid increase in numbers occasioned by the ending of capital punishment for many crimes and a steady reduction in transportation. Two Acts of Parliament allowed for the building of Pentonville prison, designed by Captain Joshua Jebb, Royal Engineers, for the detention of convicts sentenced to imprisonment or awaiting transportation. Construction started on 10 April 1840 and was completed in 1842. The cost was £84,186 12s 2d.

An isometric drawing of Pentonville prison, from an 1844 report by Joshua Jebb, Royal Engineers.^[1]

It had a central hall with five radiating wings, all visible to staff at the centre. This design, intended to keep prisoners isolated – the "separate system" first used at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia – was not, as is often thought, a panopticon. Guards had no view into individual cells from their central position. Pentonville was designed to hold 520 prisoners under the separate system, each having his own cell, 13 feet (4 m) long, 7 feet (2 m) wide and 9 feet (3 m) high with little windows on the outside walls and opening on to narrow landings in the galleries.^[2] They were "admirably ventilated", a visitor wrote, and had a water closet, though these were replaced by communal, evil-smelling recesses because they were constantly blocked and the pipes were used for communication.^[2] The cost of keeping a prisoner at Pentonville was about 15 shillings a week in the 1840s. Prisoners were forbidden to speak to each other and when out on exercise would tramp in silent rows, wearing brown cloth masks. In chapel, which they had to attend every day, they sat in cubicles, or "coffins" as the prisoners referred to them, their heads visible to the warder but hidden from each other.^[3] The chaplains were very influential, making individual cell visitations, urging the convicts to reform, and supervising the work of the schoolmasters.^[4]

Prison labour at Pentonville in the 1870s.

Mental disturbances were common. An official report admitted that "for every sixty thousand persons imprisoned in Pentonville there were 220 cases of insanity, 210 cases of delusion, and forty suicides".^[3] However, conditions were better and healthier than at Newgate and similar older prisons, and each prisoner was made to do work such as picking oakum (tarred rope) and weaving. The work lasted from six in the morning until seven at night.^[3] The food ration was a breakfast of 10 ounces of bread and three-quarters of a pint of cocoa; dinner was half a pint of soup (or four ounces of meat), five ounces of bread, and one pound of potatoes; supper a pint of gruel and five ounces of bread.^[3] Pentonville became the model for British prisons; a further 54 were built to similar designs over six years and hundreds throughout the British Empire. For instance, Pentonville was used as a model for the eventual construction of Corradino Prison in Rahal Gdid, Malta by W. Lamb Arrowsmith in 1842.^[5]

Execution site

Prisoners under sentence of death were not housed at Pentonville Prison until the closure of Newgate in 1902, when Pentonville took over executions in north London. Condemned cells were added and an execution room built to house Newgate's gallows. At the same time Pentonville took over from Newgate the function of being the training location for future executioners. Irish revolutionaryRoger Casement was hanged there on 3 August 1916 and his remains interred at the site until 1965. Udham Singh, the Indian revolutionary, who shot Sir Michael O'Dwyer (Governor of the Punjab during the Amritsar Massacre), was also held in custody and hanged at Pentonville (1940). Various other people were executed at Pentonville and all were subsequently buried at the rear of the prison in unmarked graves. The prison cemetery is at 51°32′44.05″N 0°06′54.62″W. The final execution at Pentonville took place on 6 July 1961 when Edwin Bush, aged 21, was hanged.^[6]

Escaped prisoners

• 2006: Prisoner escaped during transit between Pentonville Prison and a hospital facility^[7]
• 2009: Convicted arsonist Julien Chautard escaped by clinging on to the underside of the prison van which had delivered him to the jail from Snaresbrook Crown Court. He returned to the prison four days later after giving himself up to police.^[8][9]
• 2012: Convicted murderer John Massey escaped from within the prison confines at Pentonville on Wednesday 27 June 2012, 18:30 BST, and was recaptured in Kent two days later following what police described as "an intelligence-led operation".^[10][11]
• 2016: Two prisoners, Matthew Baker, 28, and James Whitlock, 31, escaped after they allegedly used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to break through cell bars before they scaled the perimeter wall; the escape was discovered when prison staff found pillows imitating bodies in the prisoners' beds. The public was warned not to approach the escaped prisoners.^[12][13] Baker was recaptured a few days later hiding in his sister's house in Illford, with Whitlock found by police six days after the breakout.^[14][15]

Prisoner escapes

The Prison Officers Association said that the escape of Baker and Whitlock followed years of under investment and staff cuts. Steve Gillan of the POA said, "The reality of the situation is the focus should be on Government and their budget cuts that have created this situation. The basics of security aren't getting done simply because there is not enough staff to deal with the daily tasks."^[16][17] The prison's independent inspection watchdog described Pentonville as a "soft target" through the "dilapidated" state of the Victorian building. Emily ThornberryMP called the escape the "final straw" and urged that the prison should be closed. "People don't seem to be safe inside Pentonville and now it transpires inmates can escape. (...) If they don't have control of the place, what is the point of it being there? This was built in 1842 and is totally inappropriate for modern needs."^[

The prison today

Notable former inmates

• 1879: Charles Peace, notorious burglar and murderer.^[29]
• 1895: Oscar Wilde spent time in Pentonville^[30] before being transferred to Wandsworth.
• 1910: Hawley Harvey Crippen (Dr Crippen) was hanged in the prison in 1910 after being found guilty of murdering his wife.
• 1912: Frederick Seddon the poisoner, was hanged in the prison in 1912.
• 1916: Sir Roger Casement, Irish republican, was executed in the prison in 1916 on charges of treason.
• 1917: Éamon de Valera, Irish republican leader.^[31]
• 1940: Udham Singh, was an Indian independence activist and hanged at Pentonville Prison On 31 July 1940.
• 1940: Arthur Koestler was detained for six weeks after arriving in England without papers in 1940. His novel Darkness at Noon was published in England while he was still in Pentonville.
• 1946: Neville Heath was hanged in the prison in 1946 after having been convicted of murdering two women.
• 1950: Timothy Evans, wrongfully accused co-tenant of John Christie.^[32]
• 1953: John Christie was hanged in the prison in 1953 after having been convicted of murdering his wife.
• 1974: Simon Dee, a radio/television personality, served 28 days for non-payment of rates on his former Chelsea home that he had not shared with his first wife since 1971/2.
• c. 1980: Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers served a sentence for drug possession.^[33]
• 1984: Taki Theodoracopulos, gossip columnist for The Spectator, was imprisoned in Pentonville for three months in 1984 on a cocaine possession charge. He wrote a book about the experience titled Nothing to Declare.
• 1984: George Best, Football player. Spent seven days imprisoned in Pentonville for driving under alcohol and assault.
• 1994: David Irving, Holocaust denier and writer. Spent ten days of a three-month sentence for contempt of court.
• 1999: John Alford spent six weeks in Pentonville in 1999 after selling illegal drugs to a reporter.
• 2005: Pete Doherty of The Libertines and Babyshambles spent four nights in Pentonville in February 2005 while unable to make bail on charges which were later dropped. He subsequently wrote a song about the prison, named "Pentonville", which is on the Babyshambles album Down in Albion. He spent a further six weeks in Pentonville between May and June 2011 for cocaine possession.
• 2009: Boy George, for the assault and false imprisonment of a male escort.^[34]
• 2010: George Michael, for drug driving offences^[35]
• 2017: Nile Ranger, for money laundering and fraud.^[