Pentonville (HM Prison)
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HMP Pentonville
| Opened | 1842 |
|---|---|
| Management | HM Prison Service |
| Prison type | Adult Male/Local |
| Prisoner figures | 1,177 (2006) |
| Location | Barnsbury, London |
| Governor | Gary Deighton |
| Information | www.hmprisons.gov.uk |
HM Prison Pentonville is a prison built in 1842 in North London. Its design was influenced by the "separate system" developed at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.
The first modern prison opened in London in 1816 – the new Millbank prison. It had separate cells for 860 prisoners, and proved satisfactory (to the authorities, at least), thus commencing a programme of prison building to deal with the rapid increase in prisoner numbers occasioned by the ending of capital punishment for many crimes and a steady reduction in the use of transportation.
Two Acts of Parliament were passed allowing for the building of Pentonville prison for the detention of convicts sentenced to imprisonment or awaiting transportation. Construction started on 10 April 1840 and was completed in 1842. The total cost to build the new prison was £84,186 12s 2d. Its design consisted of a central hall, with five radiating wings, all of which are visible to staff positioned at the centre. (This design, intended to keep prisoners isolated from each other – the "separate system" first used at Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary – was not, as is often thought, a panopticon. Guards had no view into individual cells from their central position.) Pentonville was originally designed to hold 520 prisoners under the separate system, each having his own cell, 13 feet long, 7 feet wide and 9 feet high. Conditions were vastly better and healthier than at Newgate and similar older prisons, and each prisoner was made to undertake work, such as picking coir (tarred rope) and weaving. Pentonville became the model for British prisons; a further 54 were built to the same basic design over the next six years, and hundreds throughout the British Empire. The cost of keeping a prisoner at Pentonville was about 15 shillings a week in the 1840s.
Prisoners under sentence of death were not housed at Pentonville until the closure of Newgate in 1902, when Pentonville took over responsibility for executions in north London. Condemned cells were added and an execution room built to house Newgate's gallows, which were transferred to it.
Today, Pentonville is a local prison, holding prisoners remanded by local magistrates' and crown court, and those serving short sentences or beginning longer sentences. As of 31st January 2006, it held 1,177 adult males.
The closest tube station to the prison is Caledonian Road.
[edit] Famous residents
Poet Oscar Wilde spent time here before being transferred to Wandsworth and finally Reading. The singer Pete Doherty spent four nights in Pentonville Prison in February 2005 while unable to make bail (on charges which were later dropped). The actor John Alford spent six weeks in Pentonville in 1999 after being convicted of selling illegal drugs to a reporter. Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers also served a sentence at Pentonville for drug possession. Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was hanged there on 3 August 1916, and his remains interred at the site until 1965.
