Some facts to consider…
Numbers Reformatory School
THINGS TO DISCUSS
Look at the age and height of the
lawbreakers. Is there a difference in the
height of modern children of the same age?
How would you describe the conditions of
the clothes of the lawbreakers? Why do
you think they wore clothes like this?
What do you think of the punishments given
to the children? Did the punishment fit
the crime?
Why do you think children were more likely
to be sent to prison in Victorian time
than they are now? What has changed?
How do the photographs of the children
make you feel?
The number of sentences to These were set up in 1854 for
children under the age of 16. They
imprisonment in England and
were very tough places, with high
Wales, under 17 years of age in
1849 was 10,460 (out of population levels of discipline and regular
of 23 million). 859 young people beatings. Before ending up there,
were in youth custody in the year child criminals would often spend
ending March 2019 (out of a some time in an adult prison to do
population of 66 million). their “hard labour.”
Hard Labour
Many children were made to 'pick oakum' for up to five hours a day. This meant 'the
pulling to pieces of old tarry ropes which were then used to make new ropes or to cover
the planks of wooden ships to make them water tight. This made their hands very sore.
Punishments inside Reformatory School
Misbehaviour was punished in various ways. Whippings were common but straitjackets
were used to fix young offenders in a standing position in their cells for up to six hours.
Other punishments included solitary confinement in a “dark cell” and being put on a
diet of bread and water. The focus was punishment, not reform.
Transportation
Fortunately, our young law-breakers were spared this. Transportation meant being sent
to Australia for many years or even life. It was stopped in 1857 but not before 100,000
people had been sent there. About 200 under-16s were transported each year for 50
years.
GCSE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
 Why didn’t people complain? They did and this eventually led to reforms of the prison system. Here are four eye-
witness accounts of children in prison and the background many came from.

Visiting a Jail Oscar Wilde, 1899 1872 – Hippolyte Tayne

I had never before seen a dark cell, and The cruelty that is practised by ‘…the lanes which open off
therefore had no idea of the horrible place it day and night on children in Oxford Street, stifling alleys thick
was. A cell within a cell. The interior of the English prisons is incredible, with human effluvia, troops of
first is so black that when the governor entered except to those who have pale children crouching on filthy
it I speedily lost sight of him, and I was only witnessed it and are aware of staircases; the street benches at
made aware of his opening an inner door by the brutality of the system. To London Bridge where all night
hearing the key clicking in the lock. shut up a child in a dimly-lit cell whole families huddle close,
for twenty-three hours out of the heads hanging, shaking with
"Come out here, lad," he exclaimed firmly, but twenty-four is an example of the cold…abject, miserable poverty.’
kindly. The lad came out, looming like a small cruelty of stupidity.
and ragged patch of twilight in utter blackness
until he gradually appeared before us. He was
not a big lad, not more than thirteen years old,
I should say, with a short-cropped bullet-head, 1853 – John Garwood
and with an old hard face with twice thirteen ‘The collecting of the prisoners for church service almost resembles the
years of vice in it. collecting of children to their school. This is undoubtedly the most
affecting sight which a prison reveals. The writer has visited the prisoner
The prison dress consisted of a sort of blouse awaiting execution, under sentence of death for murder, and he has visited
and trousers… he shambled out of the pitchy the female wards of a prison. Both these are very pitiable sights to behold,
blackness at a snail’s pace, his white cotton but the swarms of juvenile prisoners are a still more pitiable sight.’
braces trailing behind like a tail, and
completing his goblin-like appearance.
Lord Romilly, 1860
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