London’s Bastille

The story of England’s cruellest prison against the backdrop of the forces of radical change in Georgian and Victorian Britain

The story of England’s cruellest prison against the backdrop of radical protests and harsh punishments introduced by William Pitt's government, and the forces of radical change in Georgian and Victorian Britain

In 1860, Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that ‘The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons’. He meant not only that a society can be judged by how it treats its prisoners, but by who it chooses to incarcerate. 66 years earlier, Britain’s newest prison had opened its gates in Clerkenwell, north London. Built on the principles of John Howard, the most vocal and committed prison reformer of the eighteenth century, the new Coldbath Fields House of Correction was intended to be a flagship for the humane improvements that Howard championed. Instead, within just a few years, it would become notorious for its cruelty and injustice. The history of the prison and the stories of its inmates, including not only thieves, vagabonds and prostitutes, but political reformers, mutineers, writers and clergymen, provides an extraordinary new insight into the forces of radical change shaking Georgian England to its core.