An extract from the script of a paper I gave at the University of Bristol's History Department Research Seminar last year.
At 10 o'clock on the night of the 27th April 1853 in Birmingham Gaol Warder Jones entered the cell of Edward Andrews, a 15 year old prisoner and saw him hanging, dead, from the iron bars of his cell. Referring to Andrews’ death Michael Ignatief has claimed ‘there was no one to support him, no one to hear his defiance.’ In fact far from Andrews death provoking the indifference which, both then and now, normally characterises official responses to such tragedies it had exactly the opposite impact. It led via a controversial inquest, a Home Office Inspector of Prisons report ,an inquiry by the local justices, a Royal Commission, considerable local and national press coverage to the trial and imprisonment of the prison's Governor.
Birmingham Jail had been open less than five years; when it received its first prisoners in September 1849 its Governor had been Alexander Maconochie, the former Superintendant of Norfolk Island Penal Settlement and inventor of the 'Mark System' of penal reformation. Maconochie's tenure however was an unhappy one and in October 1851 he was dismissed and replaced by his deputy William Austin under whose regime Edward Andrews was to die.
Edward Andrews, aged fifteen, was serving his third prison sentence. His first two convictions had been for stealing garden fruit and for throwing stones in the street for which he had served a month and 14 days hard labour respectively. His current offence, stealing 4lbs of beef, had earned him two months hard labour. None of Andrews’ offences had been of sufficient interest for the Birmingham Journal to include them in their detailed court reports. We know little more about the boy and what information we have is contradictory; Ambrose Sherwin, the Gaol’s Chaplain described him as ‘a willing lad, but (who) seemed very weak’, whilst the prison’s surgeon, John Blount, whilst conceding that he was not fat portrayed him as ‘a fully developed, muscular boy’ who was in good health. The Visiting Justices’ investigation concluded that he ‘was most mischievous, obstinate, idle, and dirty, and pertinaciously refused to work, and comply with the rules of the prison’ and the Royal Commission determined that he was ‘of a thin spare habit of body, about five feet high’.
Three days before Andrews’ death John Wood, the prison school master described seeing him undergoing punishment by being hung up in a straight jacket which
made shrivelled marks on his arm and body. A bucket of water stood by hum in case of exhaustion. He stood with cold, red, bare feet, on a sock soaked in water. The ground was covered with water. He looked very deathly and reeled with weakness when liberated and previous to liberation. Water had been used the previous day to restore from exhaustion consequent on the punishment from the jacket; … had had the jacket on for many previous and consecutive days; had been sent regularly to the crank, except when confined in the jacket. Food, usually bread and water. Punishment with bread and water for seven prospective Sundays. Too weak and jaded to be taught; could only be talked to; always appeared wild.
It is clear that Edward Andrews was frustrating the attempt by the Governor, Lt. Austin and others to extract from him the submission to their authority they demanded. Despite a period of sustained punishment, including being regularly placed in a straight jacket which had been adapted by the addition of a stiff leather collar and straps allowing the prisoner to be attached to a hook on the wall, Andrews was unwilling or unable to comply. The day before his death, not for the first time, Andrews sabotaged his crank machine as well as damaging the bar on the cell window. The Governor determined on this occasion not to punish him but instead to refer him to the visiting magistrates. Andrews’ bed was removed from his cell and he was left alone in it, his bed being returned at ten at night, rather than the normal locking up time of 5.30pm. The next day, Wednesday, Andrews again broke his crank machine and was caught declaring, to another boy, ‘his determination, in coarse language, not to do the work’. Again the Governor returned Andrews to his cell and removed his bed. At ten o’clock that night warder Jones discovered him dead.
Two days later John Davis, the Birmingham Coroner held an Inquest into Andrews’ death which heard evidence from the Gaol's Governor, Lieutenant Austin; two warder’s Thomas Brock and Edwin Cotterill; the surgeon, John Blount and the chaplain, Ambrose Sherwin. Austin portrayed Andrews as healthy and fit but a troublesome prisoner reluctant to work who regularly sabotaged his crank machine. Although he had punished Andrew regularly he reported that Andrews had never complained at his treatment. He offered no explanation for Andrews hanging himself. Brock and Cotterill confirmed the details of the discovery of Andrews’ body. Blount, the surgeon, reported that Andrews was in 'very good health'. He had seen the boy less than seven hours before his death and inquired as to his health, Andrews had told him that he had nothing to complain off. Subsequent to the boy’s death, Blount had performed an autopsy on his body which had shown him to be in good health and that his body 'did not bear the slightest mark of any violence, except the mark on the neck.'
The chaplain, who ‘voluntarily offered to put the coroner and jury in possession of the circumstances within his knowledge, as to the state of deceased's mind’ had a very different story to tell. He advised that on the 19th April he had heard, whilst passing Andrews’ cell, groans. On entering he had found Andrews ‘strapped to the wall of his cell in a straight jacket’. The jacket, Sherwin reported, was not only ‘drawn very tight (impeding) the circulation of his arms’ but has a ‘stiff and deep leathern collar’ attached to it which caused Andrews pain. Andrews, who he described as ‘spare and thin’, had ‘been driven to despair at being punished’, not only through the application of the straight jacket but also through repeated periods on a bread and water diet and hard labour on the crank. In short the disciplinary regime of the prison had driven him to suicide. The jury returned a verdict of ‘Suicide in a state of insanity’ and Andrews’ body was released to his family for burial.
The Justices set up an inquiry and the following week’s Birmingham Journal reported the inquest under the headline – ‘Another Suicide at the Borough Gaol – Extraordinary Revelations’. A copy of the newspaper report was sent to John Perry, the Home Office Inspector responsible for Birmingham who immediately informed the Home Secretary, Palmerston, of his intention to ‘proceed forthwith to Birmingham for the purpose of making a searching investigation’. Meanwhile back in Birmingham, the radical Councillor Joseph Allday placed an advert in a number of Birmingham newspapers calling a public meeting primarily to discuss the Borough’s expenditure but with the issue of ‘Discipline at our Gaol’ listed as the fourth and final agenda item. This was not the first such meeting called by Allday, and it is likely that it had been planned before Andrews’ death.
The meeting on the 17th May was packed despite hundreds having to be turned away. Allday reported on 'recent extraordinary revelations' 'so horrifying that he could scarcely believe he was in England.' He rejected any suggestion that the Visiting Justices, responsible for the jail's management, might investigate the allegation and instead he 'demanded a public inquiry, in the presence of the press'. After other speeches the meeting resolved that a memorial drafted by Allday be presented to Lord Palmerston. Ten days later Allday led the deputation that presented the lengthy memorial to the Home Secretary. He was accompanied by both Birmingham MPs, two other Borough Councillors and Cutler. The Home Secretary provided a sympathetic ear but advised the delegation that although he felt a full investigation was necessary he must first wait for the report from the Inspector of Prisons. This report had in fact been drafted two days earlier; John Perry’s conclusions were damming; the Governor, he advised, was
in the habit of inflicting on the prisoners, especially those of the juvenile class, punishments not sanctioned by law, which, while they are not even effectual in repressing disorder, are in their nature repugnant to the feelings of humanity, and likely to drive the prisoners to desperation.
Perry linked ‘the large number of suicides, and attempts at suicide, that have occurred in this prison’ directly with ‘the extreme severity and irritating nature of the discipline pursued in it.’ On the 3rd June the Home Office wrote to the Justices, enclosing Allday’s memorial and Perry’s report, requesting their comments on the allegation made within them. The Visiting Justices provided a detailed response, which made a number of telling points. The punishments in the prison highlighted by Perry were not, they claimed, recent innovations; they had been established by the prison’s first Governor, Alexander Maconochie, and had not in the interim period been seen worthy of comment by the Inspector in any of his annual reports. They provided a detailed analysis of the three suicides and eleven attempted suicides arguing that with the exception of Andrews none of the prisoners who had killed themselves had been subject to the Hard Labour regime. They also made a clumsy attempt to discredit the Chaplain, highlighting his failure to comply with his duty to report concerns to the Governor and suggesting he had significantly backed off his allegations made in the inquest.
Concerning Austin, the Visiting Justices were clear, ‘whereby occurrences of an objectionable character have occasionally happened’ these were ‘without the knowledge of the Governor’; who they had found throughout his employment to be ‘faithful, energetic, and painstaking in the discharge of his difficult and laborious duties’. The report was submitted to a full meeting of the Justices who approved it for submission to the Home Secretary without discussion.
Local reaction to the report was unfavourable; a Birmingham Journal editorial concluded that
the report wholly fails to vindicate the discipline practised at the Gaol, or the character of the officers by whom it is administered, from the serious charge of severity unsanctioned by law and repugnant to the ordinary feelings of humanity.
More significantly three days later, Ambrose Sherwin, the chaplain wrote to John Perry at the Home Office claiming that from the over twenty pages of evidence he had submitted to the Justices they had ‘culled a few isolated statements … perverting’ their meaning. He also alerted Perry to a number of new cases of abuse that had recently taken place in the prison, in particular he highlighted one that was remarkably similar to Andrews’ treatment:
A puny looking boy, fifteen years of age, who was at the Hard Labor Crank from 6 o’clock in the morning till ten at night, on the bread and Water diet. Then at 10 o’clock the Head Warder and another put the Straight Jacket on him and left him so, till six next morning when on removal of the jacket he was immediately subjected to the crank again, he had not closed his eyes all night.
Sherwin’s letter was added to a bundle of papers already containing Allday’s petition, Perry’s report, the observations of the Magistrates and the printed regulations of the Prison. These were attached to a request for the Law Officers to consider issuing indictments against the Governor and the Chief Warden ‘for the punishments inflicted upon Prisoners … contrary to Law.’ On the same day this was submitted, Palmerston announced in the House of Commons that
he had caused inquiry to be made into the charges of cruelty recently brought against the Governor of the Borough's Gaol of Birmingham … The proceedings appeared to have been most arbitrary, illegal, and exceedingly cruel and unjust. He had submitted the case to the Law Officers of the Crown, for the purpose of taking opinion as to what steps should be taken.
The Attorney and Solicitor Generals advised that ‘it would not be expedient to prefer an Indictment against the Governor of the jail or the warder, on the materials at present collected. Instead they recommended a Royal Commission be established to further investigate the case.
On the 15th August Austin wrote to the chairman of the visiting justices to advise that as the inquiries into the prison were over ‘that the time has arrived when I can without unpropriety tender my resignation’. Later that week the Royal Commission was announced. It had three members; its chair was Mr Welsby, the Recorder of Chester and an eminent legal scholar, Captain Williams, the Inspector of Prisons for the Home District and Dr Baly, Medical Inspector of the Millbank Penitentiary. They opened the inquiry at the Queens hotel on the 30th August 1853. They took evidence in public every day (except Sundays) until the 13th September 1853. The proceedings were widely reported in local and national reports and Birmingham’s newspapers carried detail accounts of the evidence given. The prisons three principal officers and a number of current and former guards and prisoners were examined in great detail as was the former Governor, Alexander Maconochie, and the Justices. Allday attended every day, introduced witnesses and repeatedly suggested lines of enquiry for the Commissions members to pursue.
As no replacement had been appointed Austin continued as Governor throughout the hearings, one of the Commissioners advising the Home Office that the ‘police had considerable difficulty in protecting the Governor from the mob yesterday evening on his return home.’ The evidence revealed that Birmingham Prison had since its opening in 1849 practiced a range of illegal punishments, exposed the Visiting Justices for failing to carry out their statutory duties and raised serious concerns about the individual conduct of the prison’s two Governors, the surgeon, and a number of other employees.
At the conclusion of the public hearings the Justices accepted they had to act rather await the Commissions report. At the next meeting of the quarter sessions it was reported they had dismissed Thomas Freer, the chief warden and four other warders as well as accepting the resignations of the Governor, the Surgeon and one of the guards. They also agreed to appoint George Hillyard as the new Governor. The offer of the visiting justices to stand down was rejected and they were all re-appointed.
The Royal Commission report published on the 25th January 1854 was damning concluding, with respect of Edward Andrews, that,
by the order and with the knowledge of the governor, he was punished illegally and cruelly, and was driven thereby to the commission of suicide.
Detailed findings on other cases were equally damning, with Austin, Blount, the Surgeon, and several other prison employees been held responsible for individual cases of abuse. Their general conclusions found both Maconochie and Austin guilty of inflicting illegal punishments. Under Austin, they believed ‘the penal discipline of the gaol became almost a uniform system of the application of pain and terror’; and they concluded ‘his conduct in his office … was deserving of the most severe censure.’ The surgeon Blount received the most severe criticism, not only was he involved ‘in the commission of illegal assaults upon prisoners’ he was also grossly negligent in carrying out his professional duties as a Doctor. Both Austin and Blount, the commission felt had given evidence ‘in an evasive, disingenuous, and discreditable manner.’ The report noted that both had resigned.
The one superior officer exempt for criticism was Ambrose Sherwin, who had
laboured assiduously in the discharge of his sacred functions and his endeavours … to comfort the sick and afflicted, were zealous and unremitting.
The commissioners highlighted that a number of the subordinate officers were ‘guilty of wanton and very reprehensible severity’, but acknowledged that the culprits had been dismissed and it was therefore unnecessary to report further on their conduct. The visiting justices as a body were censured for allowing their confidence in Austin to let their duty ‘degenerate into a mere routine form.’ Two justices were singled out for particularly criticism, the commission having established that they were aware of the punishments taking place in the prison.
The Royal Commission had provided the evidence that the Law Officers required to issue an incitement against Austin, it also provided sufficient evidence to prosecute Blount. The Attorney-General prosecuted the case personally at the Warwick assizes where Austin was found guilty of assaulting Edward Andrews and Blount and Austin were found guilty of failing to make required entries in the prison books. Although Blount was not brought up for punishment Austin received a sentence of three months imprisonment. Ambrose Sherwin who appeared as a prosecution witness had by the trial left Birmingham to take up the highly prestigious post of chaplain at Pentonville ‘model’ prison.
