Life in a Victorian Prison

The Grim Reality of Nineteenth Century Incarceration

Getting convicted in Victorian England was often a fate worse than death. It wasn’t until the late 1870’s that the British penal system transitioned from harsh punishment to reform, education, and training for life after prison.

My first experience in learning about a prisoner’s life all began with a visit to an obscure little museum in Dartmoor, which is about 4 ½ hours southwest of London. The Dartmoor Prison Museum may be small but it’s also a wealth of information about the hulking institution just on the other side of the road, all of which is in the middle of a moor.

Situating a prison at the center of an unforgiving landscape really is a brilliant idea, so thought the creators of Dartmoor Prison—and they were right. Even after two-hundred years, this fortress still houses convicts. The institution was originally built in 1806 to detain French prisoners of war, but with the breakout of the War of 1812 against the United States, the walls confined American prisoners as well. When things simmered down, the prison closed in 1816 but then reopened in 1850, coinciding with the passage of legislation against transportation. Since then it has and still does imprison a range of offenders such as gangsters, killers, and political prisoners.

In my latest release, The House at the End of the Moor, hero Oliver Ward escapes from Dartmoor Prison. And I don’t blame him. The punishments used on prisoners were barbaric. Some of them are:

The Crank
A pointless device that exhausted a prisoner who was ordered to “turn the crank” up to 15,000 a day. Cranks could be tightened by the warders, making it harder to turn, and that’s where the warders’ nickname of a “Screw” came from.

The Treadmill
This was a set of interior steps set into two cast-iron wheels. By walking the steps, the prisoners drove a shaft that could mill corn, pump water or connect with a fan for resistance.

Picking Oakum
Oakum is loose fiber obtained by untwisting old rope, used especially in caulking wooden ships. Prisoners would cut that rope into two-foot lengths, strike it with a heavy mallet to remove the old, hardened tar, then pick it apart for re-use. This job would often tear the flesh and ruin your hands.

And those are just a few of the punishments, so you can see why Oliver Ward made a break for it and ran off—especially since he was wrongfully convicted. Want to find out about his escape and if he gets caught? Then snatch yourself up a copy of The House at the End of the Moor. Here’s a blurb:

What Can a London Opera Star and an Escaped Dartmoor Prisoner Have in Common?

Opera star Maggie Lee escapes her opulent lifestyle when threatened by a powerful politician who aims to ruin her life. She runs off to the wilds of the moors to live in anonymity. All that changes the day she discovers a half-dead man near her house. Escaped convict Oliver Ward is on the run to prove his innocence, until he gets hurt and is taken in by Maggie. He discovers some jewels in her possession—the very same jewels that got him convicted. Together they hatch a plan to return the jewels, clearing Oliver’s name and hopefully maintaining Maggie’s anonymity.