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Canterbury Gaol remained a local prison in the twentieth century, continuing its varied role holding remand prisoners prior to trial, convicted prisoners awaiting transfer elsewhere and those serving short sentences. It closed between 1922 and 1946, although served as a Naval Detention Quarters to punish sailors during the Second World War.¹ On reopening, it continued as Kent’s local prison, enabling Maidstone to concentrate fully on its new role as a training prison. In 2003, Canterbury itself became a training prison, holding inmates serving longer sentences.² From 2006 until its closure in 2013, it was a ‘hub’ prison detaining only foreign national prisoners, part of a controversial shift in Government policy designed to increase deportations.³

The Victorian separate system of prison discipline was replaced with a focus on ‘training’ in the twentieth century. This aimed to achieve deterrence and reform through ‘social rehabilitation’, which was to take place in specific prisons set up for that purpose and to continue after release.⁴ Drawing on ideas initially developed within the Borstal system for young offenders, training was put into effect from 1948, when the Criminal Justice Act abolished both penal servitude and hard labour.⁵ All inmates would now serve sentences of imprisonment for varying lengths up to life, although habitual offenders could be sentenced to borstal, corrective training or preventive detention depending on their age.

As a local prison, Canterbury’s role was to hold prisoners awaiting trial and convicted inmates while they were classified for training purposes.⁶ They were then sent to an appropriate prison for the remainder of their sentence, although most prisoners serving less than twelve months would remain at Canterbury. Appropriate training was considered difficult to deliver in local prisons, but the new emphasis on social rehabilitation created a need for additional buildings for work, education and exercise. Originally covering two acres of land, Canterbury expanded considerably; by 2013 it had quadrupled in size.⁷ The ‘classical Victorian prison’ blocks remained, but elsewhere there was a jumbled, crowded maze of buildings.⁸ By 1980, the prison was considered outdated, ‘designed for another age and another approach to a social problem’.⁹ It would operate, though, for another thirty years.

The pressures and contradictions of the criminal justice system peak in local prisons. Rising prison populations meant they were almost permanently overcrowded from the 1940s through to the twenty-first century; Canterbury was no exception. Its Victorian cells, designed to hold a single inmate in isolation, instead often held two, three, or even four inmates together. Hearing a case involving the assault of one prisoner by another in 1958, a judge criticised the damaging practice of confining three men to a cell built for one.¹⁰ Doubling and even tripling, however, were to persist. In 2003 Canterbury was highlighted by the Prison Reform Trust as one of the ten most overcrowded prisons in the country with occupation 57% more than it should be.¹¹

Little educational provision was available for prisoners before 1948, with reading, writing and arithmetic the only schooling available.¹² By 1952, provision had expanded to include Art, French, Drama and a current affairs discussion group, but the prison had just two classrooms and struggled to find teachers. In the 1970s, twenty-five evening classes were available in addition to daytime education, including handicrafts, reading for pleasure and music appreciation.¹³ A new education centre opened in 1992 with spacious classrooms and a variety of facilities, ranging from pottery to computer training rooms.¹⁴ Prison labour continued to be important despite the abolition of hard labour, though, and drudgery remained. As late as 1991, sewing mail bags was the main occupation and the need for better training opportunities was highlighted by prison inspectors.¹⁵

Canterbury held female prisoners until its closure in 1922, but it reopened in 1946 as a male only establishment. Canterbury’s most notable female prisoner was probably Rachel Barrett, Assistant Editor of the Women’s Social and Political Union magazine The Suffragette.¹⁶ Convicted with five other prominent suffragettes of conspiracy to damage property in 1913, she spent her short time here on hunger strike before being released under the provisions of the ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ (1913). Contrary to usual practice, which sent suffragettes to Holloway prison, on this occasion each woman went to a different local prison.¹⁷ Barrett was released from Canterbury after five days and returned to London by train.¹⁸ Female prison officers were again employed from the 1970s, although in the 1990s numbers remained small, with just 4 non-male uniformed officers.¹⁹ In 1998 Canterbury appointed its first female governor and her successor was also a woman.²⁰

During the 1980s, suicide was a particular problem within the prison, leading the charity INQUEST to publish a report entitled Murder by the Cathedral (1983) which called for an inquiry into the matter.²¹ Many of the young men who took their own lives were remand prisoners awaiting trial, some of whom may have been found not guilty. No systematic records of deaths were kept prior to 1978, although we know of some. Many inmates died of common diseases, such as tuberculosis, which were likely exacerbated by conditions in the prison. Charles Best was held here in 1913 on a charge of attempted suicide after throwing himself in a well following the death of his wife.²² Before he could face trial for this offence, he passed away in Canterbury prison hospital from pneumonia at the age of sixty-three. Thirty-one men died between 1978 and 2013.²³ Eighteen of these deaths were self-inflicted, twelve from natural causes and one was a homicide. The youngest inmate to die was seventeen, the oldest seventy-two, and the average age was thirty-eight.

Bibliography

Brodie, A., Croom, J. O’Davies, J. English Prisons: An Architectural History, London, 2002.
Garland, D. Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies, London, 1985.

References