18 C O N T E X T 1 0 8 : M A R C H 2 0 0 9 continued to be occupied for over 300 years, until the outlying ex-convent of S Maria Maggiore took over the role in the inter-war period. A tour still shows how common wards were linked by a zigzag of narrow connecting passages. Fist- or plate-sized holes exist between the wards, cut through the stone of the walls. Such was the usual layout for numerous early prisons throughout Europe. During the same decades when the new prisons were inaugurated in the early 17th century, the Republic of Saint Mark organised a second vast project. Land was reclaimed from the lagoon on the north side of the city centre: the Mendicanti, a vast poor-house, was constructed. It still exists (in other roles). At one time it must have caused numerous visitors to Venice to reflect on how such purpose-built structures could be imitated. Systems of imprisonment began to change from the mid-to-late 1700s onwards. This is comprehensively shown in English Prisons: an architectural history2. Although British imprisonment began in simple dungeons in castles or the turrets of city walls, it developed into purpose-built houses of correction (as at Ripon, NorthYorkshire) as a result of social changes in the Tudor period and subsequent increases in vagrancy, destitution and criminal violence. The imprisoned elements in the British and Irish populations began a steady growth in numbers during the pre-modern period, and into the 19th and early 20th century. The increased efficiency of policing and the courts, and the multiplication of offences carrying custodial sentences, fuelled the rise. After a brief decline in the 1920s to the 1950s, steady growth resumed again. Not all of those imprisoned passed through the courts. Jacobite Scots soldiers in the mid18th century were later followed by French, American, Russian and other prisoners of war, and then by internees and captured Germans and Italians during the world wars. Prison history is largely international in character. From the 18th century onwards, governments sought comparison overseas of their problems. Ireland, preindependence America, Canada, Australia and many other places saw courts and prisons constructed under British direction, frequently reflecting similar types of plan and architectural fashions. The famous reformer John Howard (1726–90) visited prisons widely throughout mainland Europe as well as in Britain and Russia. Howard’s State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777) marked the beginnings of changes that produced an enormous quantity of architectural results. Howard’s publications included examples of purposebuilt houses of correction in Rome and in Ghent. It was not long before these examples began to be translated into numerous British and Irish examples. The Porridge images of open landings, the long, straight rows of cells and the radial layout of wings around central service buildings became the norm. As early as 1775 the first fully cellular English prison appeared at Horsham, where the Sussex County Gaol was rebuilt. Thirty-two detached radial prison designs from the period 1800–35 (mainly located in county towns) are shown in Brodie, Croom and Davies. Many examples are still in use today. The provision of cells for individual occupation was the original aim of the late-Georgian and Victorian reformers, but the reality remains that, as Porridge showed, the sharing of cells continued widely. In Ireland, court houses, work-houses, bridewells and larger gaols were plentifully constructed after 1815. A typical example is the former gaol at Trim, 40 kilometres west of Dublin. Built in 1827 to the designs of John Hargrave, it had five radiating cell blocks and a central governor’s house. Impressive walls surround the site, but few perimeter walls can rival those of HMP Maidstone.These patterns became Venice’s new prison: as begun by Rusconi in 1563, it effectively began the removal of inmates from outside contacts.The Bridge of Sighs, high above the water, leads directly from the places of trial into the gaol. Fidelio scene: prisonsetting stage design for Beethoven’s Fidelio by Quaglio, 1820. A large common ward of the time seen as a grand neoclassical composition. References 1 The Medieval Prison, Guy Geltner, Princeton University Press, 2008 2 English Prisons: an architectural history, English Heritage, Brodie, Croom and Davies, 2002 Further reading Norman Johnston, Forms of Constraint: a History of Prison Architecture, University of Illinois Press, 2000 John Champness, Lancaster Castle, a brief history. Lancashire County Books, 1993
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