London’s Dungeons- Millbank Prison 2

In crowded Victorian London, where can a conspiracy get some privacy? What building has the square footage necessary for a fiendish plot? The answer is surrounded by an octagonal wall seventeen feet high.

For the roughly thousand prisoners in Millbank Penitentiary, life was simple, quiet, and regimented. At 6:30 the prisoners woke up, cleaned their cells, and ate breakfast (sweetened cocoa and bread). The prisoners worked until 10 when the warders let them out of their cells and escorted their charges to the prison’s chapel for a sermon and a hymn sing. Then back to the cells for more work until lunch (Beef, potatoes and bread) was served through the cell doors. An hour of walking and pumping water in the yard, a bit of schooling and supper (gruel sweetened with molasses and bread) broke up the afternoon’s work.

Convicts ate their meals and worked in their cells unless work required them to be elsewhere. Cell’s gaslights were even specially positioned for certain trades. Inmates skilled in detailed work (like tailoring) had gaslights low on the wall close to their projects.
 A prisoner’s labor helped recoup the considerable costs of housing and aided rehabilitation. If a prisoner worked a trade as a free man (such as cobblers, carpenters or tailors) they were assigned work familiar to them. Prisoners without training made hammocks and sacks or tore apart oakum.

Part of the reforming process envisioned by the penitentiaries’ designers was to guard the inmates from bad influences. In other words keep them from talking to each other. Many inmates were only allowed to talk after half of their sentence had been served. Small wooden booths separated the inmates during chapel, and prisoners spent almost all their time in their cells.
The prison even had a system for the prisoners to communicate silently with their guards. A small hole in the wall of the cell let prisoners poke a small wooden stick out to the hall. The stick was painted black on one end and red on the other. If the black end showed it meant the prisoner was ready for more work. Red meant he had a more personal need such as going to the bathroom or infirmary.

Reports of gross inefficiency and disease soured the reputation of Millbank. In 1843, Millbank’s role as the National Penitentiary shifted to a new prison in Pentonville. Millbank became a depot for convicts waiting to be transported to the Empire’s colonies.

With the practice of transporting prisoners fading in the 50s, Millbank became an ordinary jail then a military prison in 1870. Millbank closed down in 1890. Demolition of the prison continued occasionally until it was completely gone in 1903.

Millbank prison’s short life has been documented by many reporters and memoirs. There is no shortage of details to add to an adventure or use to snag a player hook. Here are a few interesting bits of Millbank’s history to color a campaign:  

Cholera Outbreak
The filtered (but filthy) Thames water drunk by Millbanks inmates brought an epidemic of cholera in 1849. Prisoners had to be transferred to other prisons around London. Dr. John Snow studied Millbank’s epidemic in his research on the causes of cholera.
Perhaps the disease sweeping through the inmates is part of a larger experiment. Could different wards could be separate control groups, or even separate experiments? Or is the disease a cover for the largest jailbreak the world has ever seen!?  

The Darks 
If an inmate persisted in troublemaking, the warders sent them to the “Darks”. The Darks were underground cells with no windows or sources of light except the warder’s candle. The inmates lived on bread and water. Guards checked the inmate every hour and a doctor visited once a day to make sure the prisoner didn’t harm themselves. Isolation in the Darks could last from two days to twenty-eight depending on the punishment’s effect.
Many inmates were unaffected by their time in the dark. Some took pleasure in annoying the warders sleeping in the nearby barracks by screaming and singing at the top of their lungs through the night.
Although inmates said they could spend a month in the darks without a sweat, a few of them must have been affected by their time in complete pitch black. What else is down there in the dark?