Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    QGR5/9
  • Title
    Minute book of the Visiting Justices [third volume] [see also QGR 4]. Records their weekly visits to the Gaol, with numbers of prisoners, notes on some individual prisoners, their responses to complaints and reports from the Gaoler, Turnkey, Matron and Surgeon. Mentions execution, transportation, debtors, cases of typhus, ague and smallpox, use of the treadmill, provision of food and drink for prisoners, adaptations to the prison buildings, classification of prisoners, and attempted and successful escapes from the prison. Page 9 includes the following:
  • Date free text
    6 May 1833
  • Production date
    From: 1833 To: 1833
  • Scope and Content
    Philip Hunt, George Cardale, Thomas Charles Higgins. There have been discharged during the week: Thomas Money of Ampthill; Thomas Millard alias Maddox; Thomas Bone and Abel Maddox. There have been committed during the last week: Charles Hill from Luton and James Cardwell from Luton, both charged with stealing sacks. The effect of the new system of silence and separation in the House of Correction appears to be good; and since it has been adopted no prisoner has been readmitted during a period of twelve months. In visiting the female convicts the Visiting Justices were grieved at hearing that Sophia Sinfield, committed for vagrancy, had been boasting to her fellow convicts of her extreme profligacy and drunkenness and disgusting depravity. The visiting justices wexamined the Under Matron and some of the fellow prisoners of Sophia Sinfield; but not having found that the most part of the charges against her could be proved by evidence the Visiting Justices reprimanded and cautioned her as to her language and conduct in future.
  • Level of description
    item
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