Hard Labour in the Victorian Prison,

The nineteenth century saw a number of ‘useless’ hard labour techniques introduced. Before the Victorian period, hard labour fulfilled two purposes: punishment and the creation of a product. In other words, the hard labour had a goal; something that the establishment and the prisoner worked towards. For example, some prisoners worked a treadmill to grind down flour for their bread in the prison. This labour was to change drastically with the Victorians who believed that punishment would be made more effective with an ethos of labour for labour’s sake. There would be no end product; the labour would be simple, repetitive and mind numbing. One of the most infamous techniques was the crank: a box-like machine with a handle placed in an inmate’s cell. The procedure was quite simple: the inmate had to rotate the handle of the crank 10,000 times a day to receive his meal. It was estimated that 10,000 cranks would last up to eight hours and twenty minutes. It was the solitude, however, that was the real punishment. Being shut away from fellow inmates while carrying out this labour, made the crank a hated punishment among the prisoners; therefore, many preferred the treadmill. If this task was completed quickly, however, the prison officer would adjust the numerous screws to make the handle more difficult to turn. This is perhaps the origins of the term ‘screws’, which is nowadays used to describe the prison officers.

Another widely used technique was the treadmill. Introduced in 1818 as a form of punishment, the treadmill had the ability to be used for grinding flour. The Victorians, however, preferred to use it to grind the ‘wind’. In 1862 Henry Mayhew and John Binny explain:

“This invention was introduced at most of the prisons more than 40 years ago, but the machine, with but few exceptions, has never been applied, even to this day, to any useful purpose. The prisoners style the occupation ‘grinding the wind’, and that is really the only denomination applicable to it – the sole object of the labour of some 150 men, employed for eight hours a day, being simply to put in motion a big fan or regulator, as it was called which, impinging on the air as it revolves, serves to add to the severity of the work by increasing the resistance.’ (Pettifer.151)

The wheel would rotate twice a minute and a bell would ring on the thirtieth revolution, which would signal an end to each work stage. The prisoners would be placed in a big wooden wheel with their backs to the prison officers; they would balance themselves by a bar, running from the side wooden panels behind them. Each inmate was separated with wooden partitions, leaving some prisoners with only a space of two foot square. Mayhew and Binny inquired whether this labour was tiring:

“You see the men can get no firm tread from the steps always sinking away from under their feet, and it makes it very tiring. Again, the compartments are so small, and the air becomes so hot, so that the heat at the end of the quarter of an hour renders it difficult to breath!” (Pettirfer.152)

The shot drill was a difficult and very tiring punishment; therefore, those prisoners too old or sick were exempt from taking part. Like the previous punishments, it was a simple technique where the men were lined up approximately 3 yards apart around an area of rough ground making a three sided square. A pyramid of ‘shot’ -cannon-like balls of great weight- were passed one by one along the line of inmates, till, when reaching the end, it was piled into another pyramid. Once this pyramid was formed, the procedure would start again, but only reversed. When Mayhew and Binny inquired about the labour, a prison officer stated:

“It tries them worse taking up, because there’s nothing to lay hold of, and the hands get hot and slippery with the perspiration, so that the ball is greasy like. The work makes the shoulders very stiff too.” (Pettifer. 157)

The Victorians were dedicated to their form of punishment; transportation had become a past fashion, prompting the revision of the prison system. As previously discussed, the Victorian moral code and work ethic consolidated the concept of hard labour in attempt to establish a good, sound work ethic for criminals. Prisons throughout England adopted the method of ‘useless’ hard labour and continued to use this technique of repetitive mind numbing punishment right up to the nineteen hundreds.

References:

Pettifer, E.W. (1947.) Punishment of former days. London:Waterside Press.Priestly,P. (1985.) Victorian Prison Lives. Londo

Reference:

• www.associatedcontent.com/article/2212385/seventeenth_and_18th_century_british.html?c
• www.history-on-the-web.com
• www.associatedcontent.com/article/2234911/the_coggeshall_gang_a_brutal_victorian.html