COUNTY ADMINISTRATION: PRISONS

The series' contain administrative papers relating to the Middlesex prisons, including minute books, reports, working papers and prison rules. MA/G/CBF covers the Clerkenwell House of Correction in Cold Bath Fields; MA/G/CLE, New Prison, Clerkenwell; and MA/G/GEN, Clerkenwell Bridewell, Newgate Gaol and the prisons' administration generally

The material is arranged in three series - MA/G/CBF/001 - 455 (1784 - 1877); MA/CLE/001 - 005 (1837 - 1852); and MA/GEN/0001 - 1306 (1722 - 1886)

These records are available for public inspection, although records containing personal information are subject to access restrictions under the UK Data Protection Act, 2018

Until the Sixteenth Century prison was seen primarily as a place to remand before sentence, rather than as a place of punishment. From this date, houses of correction (or bridewells) were established in each county to house able-bodied vagrants, and also to reform them through the punishment of hard labour. Increasingly the justices sent petty offenders to these houses following their trials, and the overcrowding and poor conditions in them became notorious and widespread.;Originally Middlesex prisoners were kept in either of the City of London's gaols - Newgate or the Bridewell (near Blackfriars). In 1615 - 1616 a Middlesex Bridewell (also known as the Clerkenwell House of Correction) was built on a site between the present Corporation Row and Sans Walk (demolished in 1804). On the same site, adjacent and to the south of it, a House of Detention (for prisoners awaiting trial) was built in the late seventeenth century to ease the overcrowding in Newgate. This 'New Prison' was rebuilt in 1818, incorporating the site of the old Bridewell; and again in 1845; before being closed in 1877 and demolished in 1890, the Hugh Myddleton School being built on the site. A new Middlesex House of Correction had been built in 1794 in Cold Bath Fields (on the present site of Mount Pleasant Post Office), and which was also closed in 1877, and demolished in 1889. Although debtors were one of the largest categories of prisoner, a separate gaol for them was not built in London until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century (in Whitecross Street); prior to this they were kept in Newgate. Until the passing of the 1877 Prisons Act, gaols and houses of correction were administered by the county justices