Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    QGR2/3/1/7
  • Title
    Report of the prison governor Robert Evan Roberts to Bedfordshire Michaelmas Sessions for the year ending 29th September last 1863. With appended table showing number of prisoners for trial, convicted prisoners and summarily convicted with offences. Includes the following comments:
  • Date free text
    20 October 1863
  • Production date
    From: 1863 To: 1863
  • Scope and Content
    During the year 104 prisoners admitted from Cold Bath Prison, in all 204 since arrangement in May 1861. There are now 56 in Custody, 52 of thesewill be discharged by the 1st November next; the original contract terminating on that day. From the very first the majority of these men have been one continued source of worry, anxiety, and trouble, in setting at defiance all authority, frequently refusing to work, committing assaults on the Governor and Officers, and other acts of insubordination, conseqently their withdrawal from the prison will not be a matter of regret. It is now upwards of ten years since I entered upon the duties as Governor of the Gaol and therefore consider this a fitting opportunity to present to the Court a return of the workings of the industrial department during that period. The profits to the County after paying all expenses for materials, tools etc amount to £3802.6.11 together with a further sum of £2463.16.10 for work done in and about the prison buildings for which mo charge is made yeilding in aggregate the large sum as profit of £6266.3.9. I shall this Sessions pay over to the County Treasurer £100, making £350 for the past year as profits under this head. Shot drill....has been in operation daily and I have not known a single abuse arising from it, but on the contrary there is much to recommend it as an auxilliary in prison discipline, not only as being conducive to health but is also a mist distasteful occupation and much disliked by those employed at it. Ten hand cranks...principally worked by short sentenced prisoners, vagrants etc...it will be worth ascertaining if a description of crank might not be procured rendering the labour equally severe, and at the same time more lucrative. It is the opinion also that industrial occupations are wholly unfit for short sentenced prisoners, or for those who are working out the earlier stages of their imprisonment. On all grounds it ought to follow upon the hard labour of the treadwheel and crank and ought not to be accepted as an equivalent to hard labour as administered by means of the Wheel, crank or shot drill. It is also recommended that during short sentences or the earlier stages of long confinement the prisoner should be deprived of the use of his bed or mattress, and should sleep upon planks or guard beds, this is the practice in Military prisons, no evil has resulted from it. Dietary - for fourth and fith classes of prisoners...those diets are certainly abundant if not too high, and this opinion is fortified from the fact that 100 prisoners were weighed in September who had been six months more or less receiving one or other of these diets when 78 of them were founf to have increased in weight 679lbs and average of 8 3/4 lbs per man, 12 had lost weight and 10 had remained stationary. ....there is no doubt as presently administered in point of diet, bedding, and general comforts, prisoners enjoy advantages in Prisons generally which many of them do not receive when outside the walls, or when in the workhouse. Within the past fortnight we have discharged one man who had been in prison for the 23rd time, many have passes over our threshold this year that have been 12, 10, 8, 6 and 5 times imprisoned, several other less frequent and it ist such characters as these imprisonment ought to bear more severely but as it is at present this class of prisoners have the same description of diets, bedding and comforts as a prisoner sentenced to a similar term of imprisonment who may never have been in prison before, If the imprisonment in our gaols were shorter and the discipline more severe for a boy, or a man, not known to have been in prison before, I am of opinion it might be better and more likely to deter from crime, especially tramps and strangers who travel the Country committing depradations, they, I feel convinced, would not prefer the Prison in passing from town to town as a resting place more convenient and agreeable that the workhouse. Photography is highly approved of as inexpensive, effective and wholly free from objection as a possible means of identification, numerous discoveries of old offenders through its agency have been made in this prison, without which nothing whatever would have been known against them. The following convicts have been removed to the convict depot at Millbank: Jesse Snoxall, Joseph Grey, William Coleman, Joseph Martin, William Spacey, George Watson, William Craddock, Thomas Johnson, John Smith, James Bailey Creamer, Robert Jordan, and Ezra Foskett.
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