3-065-998 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in the Clerkenwell House of Correction: weighing prisoners, 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...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...When a prisoner is admitted to this House of Correction, he exchanges the name he has disgraced for a number, by which his place in the establishment is known; there is, in the visiting ward, a large frame of movable brass and zinc tablets, with figures and letters, showing at a glance the cell to which any particular man or boy is consigned. The inmates are weighed at their entrance to the prison, under the supervision of a warder'. Note sign on wall reading: "Be sure your sins will find you out". From "Illustrated London News", 1874.