3-065-997 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in the Clerkenwell House of Correction: the Boys' Pony, 1874. 'The metropolitan county of Middlesex, not including the City of London, has its House of Detention for untried prisoners, in St. James's-walk, north of Clerkenwell-green [in London]. It has two Gaols, or Houses of Correction, for convicted criminals. The one for male prisoners is in Coldbath-fields, which is also in Clerkenwell, but a little east of Gray's-inn-lane, nearly opposite the end of Guilford-street...It has accommodation for nearly 2000 men and boys, sentenced to different terms of imprisonment, from one week, with or without hard labour, to two years' penal servitude. The average daily number in custody is about 1700, and the number admitted during the year is from 12,000 to 13,000, of whom 1000 are juveniles...[Our illustration shows] the block, facetiously called "the pony," upon which naughty boys are horsed for a birching. There is also a triangle for tying up older persons who are to be flogged for wilful misconduct while in prison. But there are not more than about thirty whippings in the year; and what is that among 13,000 culprits, in and out of the prison?' From "Illustrated London News", 1874.