View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses The ‘star class’ in English convict prisons, 1863-1914 Ben Bethell PhD History Birkbeck, University of London 1 2 Introduced in 1879, following over a decade of mounting anxiety about ‘contamination’ in English convict prisons, the ‘star class’ was an administrative division for first offenders intended to ensure their segregation from other prisoners. Conceived primarily in terms of criminal pedagogy - the notion, that is, that prisons functioned inadvertently as ‘schools of crime’ - ‘contamination’ was an elastic term whose meaning extended to a spirit of insubordination among convicts, and with it the potential for ‘mutiny’; to convicts’ everyday employment of ‘filthy’ language; and to the vexed issue of sex between male prisoners, complicated by the presence in convict prisons of men sentenced under the sodomy laws. It also encompassed the forced association of hitherto ‘respectable’ offenders - not least, so- called ‘gentleman convicts’ - with members of the reviled ‘criminal class’. Secondary background checks on prospective ‘star men’ were often extensive and narrowed still further the division’s constituency, leading eventually to a population in which men convicted of offences against a female person predominated, but in which ‘white collar’ property offenders were also concentrated. At the same time, the principle that ‘star men’ and ordinary convicts should receive uniform treatment was gradually eroded with regard to prison work, with more congenial forms of labour routinely assigned to the former. Among these was printing, the principal trade at Maidstone convict prison, which opened in 1909 and was designated a star-class establishment, fulfilling a long-standing operational objective (it would remain so until 1939, and the star class itself would survive until 1967). Thus, a form of social privilege, albeit highly circumscribed, endured within the convict system, its formal egalitarianism notwithstanding: ‘gentlemen’ were spared both the full rigours of penal labour and the company of common thieves, but at the cost of their being classified with violent and sexual offenders. 3 CONTENTS page List of figures 5 Abbreviations 6 INTRODUCTION 7 CHAPTER 1: ‘Contamination’ in English convict prisons before 1879 39 CHAPTER 2: Forming the star class, 1879-1885 99 CHAPTER 3: Prison labour and the star class, 1880-1909 137 CHAPTER 4: Maidstone convict prison 190 POSTSCRIPT: The star class after 1918 232 CONCLUSION 237 Bibliography 245 4 LIST OF FIGURES figure page 4.1 Star men by age, 1880-1911 201 4.2 Star men by offence, 1880-1911 201 4.3 Star-class non-violent property offenders by former occupation, 1880- 209 1911 4.4 Proportion of star men convicted of an offence against a female person, 209 1880- 1911 5 ABBREVIATIONS ADM Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard, and related bodies BL British Library CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CRIM Records of the Central Criminal Court GPO General Post Office HO Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies MEPO Records of the Metropolitan Police Office MO Medical Officer MP Member of Parliament PCOM Records created or inherited by the Prison Commission and Home Office Prison Department PP Parliamentary Papers RCPDCP Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and Directors of Convict Prisons RDCP Report(s) of the Directors of Convict Prisons RPD Report on the work of the Prison Department TNA The National Archives YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association 6 INTRODUCTION This study takes as its topic a system of classification introduced in English convict prisons in 1879. Unlike England’s local and county gaols, where those sentenced by the courts to imprisonment served terms of up to two years (though often far less – a week or two was common), convict establishments were reserved for prisoners condemned to penal servitude, the sentence introduced in 1853 to replace transportation. Until 1864, penal servitude’s minimum term was three years; this was then raised to five years, and in 1891 reduced again to three. The sentence comprised three ‘stages’: a nine-month period of so-called ‘separate confinement’, followed by transfer to a public-works convict prison, where its bulk would be served, with release ‘on licence’ then available for up to a quarter of a given term, dependent on good conduct. In 1878, a royal commission was appointed to investigate the operation of penal servitude under successive legislation passed between 1853 and 1871, chaired by the Liberal politician John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley.1 In its final report, published the following year, the Commission found little amiss with the convict system, judging it ‘on the whole satisfactory’. The ‘first and most important’ criticism to be levelled against penal servitude, however, was that ‘although sufficiently deterrent, it not only fails to reform offenders, but in the case of less hardened criminals, and especially of first offenders, produces a deteriorating effect from the indiscriminate association of all classes of convicts on the public works.’ Prisoners serving the second stage of the sentence in this way fell prey to what the Commission described as ‘the risk of contamination’. To address this shortcoming, two remedies had been proposed: ‘the division of prisoners according to the crimes for which they are undergoing punishment’ and ‘the formation into a distinct class of those against whom no previous conviction of any kind is recorded’. Of these, the Commission recommended the latter, while adding two important caveats: first, that it would ‘strongly deprecate’ any disparity between the treatment of first offenders and that received by ordinary convicts; second, that certain types of first offender – for instance, receivers of stolen goods – would be ‘obviously unfit’ for assignment to the new division. The Commission also felt it necessary to stress that 1 Under the 1853 Penal Servitude Act (16 & 17 Vict., c.99), sentences of transportation of less than fourteen years were replaced with penal servitude; under the 1857 Penal Servitude Act (20 & 21 Vict., c.3), penal servitude replaced transportation altogether, and release on licence was introduced for those receiving the sentence; and under the 1864 Penal Servitude Act (27 & 28 Vict., c.112), penal servitude’s minimum term was raised from three to five years (seven for a second sentence) and conditions of license were tightened. Under the 1871 Prevention of Crimes Act (34 & 35 Vict., c.112), the latter were then restricted still further. Report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the penal servitude acts, PP 1878-79 [C.2368] XXXVII, 1 (hereinafter Kimberley), pars.1-23, pp. vii-xiii. 7 convicts ‘guilty of unnatural crimes and indecency would … of course, not be admitted into this class.’2 Towards the end of 1879, the segregation began of first offenders serving penal servitude’s first stage. Convicts assigned to the new division were identified by red star- shaped patches sewn to the front of their caps and both sleeves of their jackets, intended to ensure that they were ‘always kept quite separate, and that any departure from this order should be at once discovered’.3 As a result, the division was soon designated the ‘star class’; convicts assigned to it were known informally as ‘stars’ or ‘star men’. The star class was, as we shall see, understood at the time as a radical break with existing penal practice, and would remain on experimental footing for the next eighteen years. As such, it was not governed by statute; indeed, until 1897, no Standing Order was even issued in relation to the division, a ‘curious fact’ noted that year by the Prison Commission’s secretary.4 Writing a quarter of a century later, England’s senior prison administrator, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, observed that it had at the time ‘represent[ed] the first and most practical attempt to introduce the principles of segregation of the better from the worse, which has since become so familiar as an essential condition of any well organized Prison System’.5 It would remain a feature of English penal practice until replaced in 1967 by the system of security categorisation still in force in English prisons today, whereby adult male prisoners are classified on the basis of their likelihood of escape and danger to the public if successful.6 The present study looks at the circumstances that led to the Kimberley Commission’s recommendation, and at ways in which this recommendation was implemented and modified between 1879 and the outbreak of the First World War. To this end, it addresses a handful of straightforward research questions. In the first place, it makes a simple ontological enquiry: of what did the star class actually consist - in terms, that is, of its population and of measures to both segregate this population and prevent its adulteration? It also asks whether star men, the Commission’s caveat notwithstanding, were treated differently than ordinary convicts, and whether the division served to an extent as a way of shielding so-called ‘gentleman 2 Ibid., par.67, pars.72-3, pars.78-9, pp. xxvi-xxx. 3 TNA HO 45/9557/70327C: Du Cane to Liddell, 1 January 1881; TNA PCOM 7/279: Standing Order (New Series), No.10., 30 July 1897, p.3. 4 TNA PCOM 7/279: Clayton to Ruggles-Brise, 8 July 1897. 5 Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, The English Prison System (London: Macmillan & Co., 1921), p.37. 6 David Price, 'The Origins and Durability of Security Categorisation: A Study in Penological Pragmatism or Spies, Dickie and Prison Security', in The British Criminology Conference: Selected Proceedings. Volume 3., ed. George Mair & Roger Tarling (2000), http://www.britsoccrim.org/volume1/013.pdf (accessed 6 April 2019).