English Local Prisons, 1860-1900

The local prisons of the latter half of the nineteenth century refined systems of punishment so harsh that one judge considered the maximum penalty of two years local imprisonment to be the most severe punishment known to English law: "next only to death". This work examines how private perceptions and concerns became public policy. It also traces the move in English government from the rural and aristocratic to the urban and more democratic. It follows the rise of the powerful elite of the higher civil service, describes some of the forces that attempted to oppose it, and provides a window through which to view the process of state formation.

Sean McConville

Acknowledgements  Abbreviations  Introduction  1. The Social and Political Ideas of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon  2. A Prophet in his Own County  3. Carnarvon and National Penal Policy  4. The Social and Political Ideas of Sir Edmund Du Cane  5. Nationalisation: the Flawed Prospectus  6. Enforcing Uniformity: Discipline, Labour and Instruction 7. Enforcing Uniformity: Health, Dietary and Discharge Arrangements  8. Enforcing Uniformity: Special Categories 9. New Tasks: Identification and Executions  10. The Justices React to Nationalisation: Individual Committees 11. The Committees Attempt to Organise  12. Triumph of the Clerks  13. The Call for a Prison Inquiry  14. Personalities and Preoccupations  15. Compounding Errors  16. Aftermath 17. The Final Act Bibliography  Corrigenda, volume 1