London's Prisons in 1900

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Arthur H. Beavan, in Imperial London, first published 1901, made a brief survey of London's Prisons at the time:

One would naturally suppose that a mighty city like London would be proportionately studded with prisons.

But it is not so; there are fewer than formerly.

In all its vast area, besides Newgate, there are only Holloway, Pentonville, Wandsworth, and Wormwood Scrubs gaols.

Millbank prison has vanished; the Clerkenwell House of Detention and the Tothill Fields prison have likewise disappeared; the Cold Bath Fields prison has been abolished, and upon its site stands "Mount Pleasant," the useful annex of the General Post Office at St. Martin's-le-Grand.

The Queen's Bench and Horsemonger Lane Goal have long ago been pulled down; so have the Marshalsea and the Borough Compter in Mill Lane (both for debtors); the Bridewell in Blackfriars, the Fleet, the Giltspur Street Compter, and the Whitecross Street prisons, have gone, and even the inoffensive Female House of Detention at Fulham, close to Putney Bridge, has been razed to the ground.

Next: London's Prisons in 1900: Newgate Prison