Prison records

The London Archives is home to collections of records from some of the best known prisons in the capital, as well as some of the least known. With records from Newgate Prison, Holloway, Wandsworth, and Whitecross Street Debtors’ Prison, the Middlesex House of Correction at Cold Bath Fields, and the Feltham Young Offenders Institute, the holdings at TLA offer a unique opportunity to discover the history of custodial punishment and those who endured it.

Prisons in London

The range of prisons for which we hold records shows that London, over time, has had a prison for nearly every tier of a society and every type of crime. The earliest prisons, for example, were run by local authorities to deal with local minor lawbreaking whilst others reflect the responsibilities of County Councils to deal with more serious crimes. Others were built as national prisons, including Pentonville which only later came to serve as a local jail. The prisons, the crimes and the nature of custodial and capital punishments are therefore not only intrinsic to the history of London, but to the country as a whole. It is for this reason that there is no dedicated archive classification for prison records. Instead, prison records can be found in our catalogue under many different classifications, including National Records, the City of London collections, and Courts.

Range of records

The range of records in each of the collections we hold varies considerably, depending on not only what records have survived, but what was created in the first place. Registers of prisoners were usually kept and in some cases were ‘calendared’. This was a form of secondary listing to enable name searching and they are invaluable to the modern researcher. The Newgate Prison calendars reference: CLA/035/01/001 are a useful example.

Many other kinds of prison records can be found in some collections, including Governors’ Journals and Letter book, prison committee and visitors committee records, medical officers’ records and even printed material concerning prison diet and aftercare. The records of Wandsworth Prison reference: ACC/3444 are a good example of the breadth of holdings.

A sample of the nineteenth-century minutes of the 'Committee of Visiting Justices Of The Middlesex House Of Detention, Clerkenwell', are available to view via: digital collections on the TLA archive catalogue.

Research Guides

For further guidance, you can access detailed Research Guides that concern Prison Records and Imprisoned Debtors currently on the TLA archive catalogue:

• Prison Records
• Imprisoned Debtors

London Picture Archive

Discover more images relating to prisons and prisoners on the London Picture Archive.