Does any one know any thing about the prison system and conditions in the victorian age?
I agree with Pumpkin: Virginia’s answer is not correct at all. A big change took place in British prisons during the Victorian age. All that brutality that Virginia talks about had been outlawed centuries before. But early Victorian prisons were still bad places. Just like the Debtors’ Prison that Charles Dickens describes in Great Expectations, jails were mostly dark, overcrowded and filthy. All types of prisoners were herded together with no separation of men and women, the young and the old, the convicted and the unconvicted, or the sane and the insane. But during the 1860’s prisons were reformed, with many “modern” purpose-built prisons put into commission. The idea that prison should be for rehabilitation, more than for punishment, took over. In these new prisons, convicts had much better facilities. Warm and well ventilated cells for just two occupants; good clean bedding; baths once a week (that was more often than for most civilians); regular exercise outdoors; prison libraries
