Chatham Convict Prison

Chatham Convict Prison was a large public-works penal establishment in St Mary's Island, Chatham, Kent, operating between 1856 and 1892. Designed by Major-General Sir Joshua Jebb, it was built to house male convicts employed on large civil and naval engineering works at Chatham Dockyard and the River Medway, and remained in operation until its closure in 1892. The prison formed a major phase in the transformation of St Mary’s Island from a marshy creek‑cut landscape into an engineered dockyard extension enclosed by a sea wall and three large basins.^[2]

Over its 36-year history, the prison became notorious for its "hell upon earth" conditions, culminating in a massive riot in 1861 involving over 850 inmates.^[3] Following its closure in 1892, the site taken over by the Admiralty, demolished and then repurposed as the Royal Naval Barracks (HMS Pembroke), and today forms part of the Universities at Medway campus.

St Mary’s Island lies in the River Medway at the northern end of Chatham, historically separated from the mainland by St Mary’s Creek.^[4] Before dockyard expansion in the 19th century, the island consisted largely of marshy ground intersected by tidal channels, used intermittently for brickfields and as a burial place for prisoners of war from the prison hulks moored in the Medway. During the Napoleonic Wars, French prisoners who died on the hulks were buried on or near the island; their remains were later exhumed and re‑interred in the grounds of St George’s Church (now the St George’s Centre) when the area was redeveloped.^[5] From the mid‑19th century, the Admiralty progressively enclosed and raised the island as part of a major dockyard extension, using convict labour to dig out St Mary’s Creek and create three basins and associated dock structures.^[6]

Between 1842 and 1849, the British government constructed fifty-four Pentonville-style prisons in England, providing a total of 11,000 cells.^[7] Building on this model, it established major convict stations to serve specific purposes: Portland (1848) as a public works prison,^[8] Dartmoor (1850) for disabled convicts, Brixton (1853) exclusively for women, and Chatham (1856) as a public works prison. Chatham replaced the use of decommissioned prison hulks such as Defence and Warrior at Woolwich, whose inmates had previously carried out dockyard and arsenal work on the Thames. The St Mary’s Island prison at Chatham was designed by Major‑General Sir Joshua Jebb, Surveyor‑General of Prisons, who specialised in large, systematised complexes for public works. While these adaptations challenged the uniformity championed by Jebb, they were considered necessary and pragmatic.^[9]​

The main buildings were largely prefabricated from wood and corrugated iron, a form of “flat-pack” construction intended to allow them to be dismantled and reused elsewhere once the Medway works were completed.^[10] At the centre of the complex stood three four-storey wings radiating from a central hall on a T-plan, with internal galleries and windows shared between pairs of cells, providing a total of 1,135 individual cells for prisoners. An architectural plan dating from 1866 illustrates the wider arrangement of buildings and yards within the prison grounds, including an entrance range containing workshops, schoolrooms, a hospital and chapel, with detached kitchen and workshop blocks behind. The plan also depicts several service buildings used in the daily running of the prison, such as a Warders’ Mess Room and a block containing the Bake House, Cook House and Wash House where food was prepared and clothing laundered, together with enclosed yards and paths used for exercise and the controlled movement of prisoners within the complex.^[11]

Contemporary accounts indicate that on or soon after opening the prison held around 1,700 prisoners, overseen by a staff of about 232, including 117 armed warders.^[12] Chatham Convict Prison held adult male convicts serving penal servitude sentences, many of them men who in earlier decades would have been transported overseas.^[13] Inmates followed a highly regimented daily routine structured around hard labour on dockyard and engineering projects, with work parties marched under escort from the prison to the nearby works. Wake-up time was at 05:30 hours.^[14]

During the early 19th century, the number of prisoners held in Chatham saw a dramatic increase, rising from 194 in 1803 to a peak of 6,289 in 1810, before declining and ultimately reaching zero by the end of 1814.^[15]​

From 1880 Chatham was designated to receive “star class” convicts – first‑time offenders with no previous convictions – reflecting an attempt to separate them from more hardened criminals.^[16]​

Memoirs and official commentary alike emphasise that the regime at Chatham was notably severe,^[17] with one senior official describing the prisoners as being “made to live a life of hell upon earth”^[18] and even the chaplain stating that he “writhe[d] under the discipline of this prison.”^[19]

The primary function of Chatham Convict Prison was to supply a large, controlled labour force for the expansion of Chatham Dockyard and associated fortifications.^[20] Convicts were employed in excavating and constructing three huge dockyard basins cut out of St Mary’s Creek, a project that took more than twenty‑five years and ultimately quadrupled the size of the dockyard.^[21] They quarried and moved earth, drove timber piles into the marsh, built river walls and embankments, and manufactured very large quantities of bricks on site.​​

Parliamentary reports in Hansard describe how prisoners broke windows and overturned stoves during the disturbance before soldiers were brought in to restore order. The riot was eventually suppressed without serious injury, but forty‑six ringleaders were sentenced to corporal punishment of 36 lashes each and to periods on bread‑and‑water rations.^[22]​​

In 1891 another series of Parliamentary questions focused on the treatment of an inmate, Joseph Betts, who was alleged to have been repeatedly flogged and exposed outdoors in winter for refusing to work. The Home Secretary acknowledged that Betts had “persistently refused to do any labour” and had received various punishments, including corporal punishment, but denied that his treatment was unlawful or excessive under the regulations then in force. Many workers suffered from injuries such as sores, ulcers, broken limbs,^[23] and amputations.^[24]

By the late 1880s the major dockyard excavations and associated embankment works for which Chatham’s convicts had been recruited were nearing completion. As the need for a large convict labour force diminished, the authorities began to run down the establishment, and Chatham Convict Prison closed in 1892. The Admiralty quickly took possession of the site, and by 1897 the Royal Naval Barracks, Chatham^[25] – later commissioned as HMS Pembroke – had been constructed on the former prison grounds to serve the enlarged dockyard.^[26]​

The prison’s prefabricated cell‑blocks and associated structures were dismantled around the time of closure, in keeping with the original “temporary” conception of the buildings, and no original prison blocks survive on the site today.^[27] The later naval barracks buildings, now incorporated into the Universities at Medway campus and neighbouring developments, occupy much of the footprint of the former prison.^[28] The dock basins and much of the maritime infrastructure created by convict labour remain integral features of the modern Chatham Maritime area, which has been redeveloped for mixed residential, educational and leisure use.^[29]​​

Chatham Prison soon earned a reputation for violent outbreaks. The worst incident occurred in early February 1861. In January 1861 a small escape attempt by six prisoners was foiled.^[30] On 11 February 1861, after dinner in the work gang on St Mary’s Island, convicts defiantly refused orders to resume their labour. At a pre-arranged signal, about fifty inmates rushed the warders and overpowered them. Hundreds of other prisoners were freed from their cells as the riot spread through the prison.^[31] Inside the complex, up to 850 convicts were briefly loose without control.^[3] By the time order was finally restored no lives were lost, but the damage was extensive.​​

In 1865, Charles Pennell Measor, a former Deputy Governor of Chatham Prison and one of the officials who gave evidence to the 1863 Royal Commission on penal servitude, criticized the Penal Servitude Act 1864. He argued that the legislation had mainly increased the cost of penal servitude without effectively improving prisoner discipline.^[32]​​

On 10 January 1867, 20-year-old James Fletcher was executed for the murder of prison warder James Boyle, whom he had beaten to death with a hammer at Chatham Prison.^[33] Later that year, John Warren, an Irish-born journalist and naturalised American citizen who had lived in Boston, Massachusetts, was arrested in Ireland for his involvement in the Fenian movement and subsequently sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude at the prison. His continued imprisonment drew significant attention in the United States, particularly because William J. Nagle, an American-born participant in the same expedition, had been released by May 1868 while Warren remained in custody. The case sparked a dispute between Britain and the United States over the rights of naturalised American citizens.^[34]​​

In 1876, the prison received a telegram threatening an attack to free three Fenian prisoners. The plan reportedly involved setting fire to a large wooden vessel in the dockyard factory basin, which adjoined the prison, to create a diversion for an attempted landing. No attack ultimately took place. That same year, the Journal reported that a lecture for the “Young Men’s Society” in Chatham was cancelled at the last minute, and Lieutenant Sankey RE stepped in on short notice to deliver a lecture on explosives.^[35]​​

After a fire in 1881 destroyed much of the chapel built outside the Dockyard wall in 1828, leaving only the walls and tower standing, the building was restored by 1885. During the reconstruction, the new pews and pulpit were made by convicts at Chatham Prison. Cost-saving measures for the project also included reducing the pensions of Dockyard pensioners who were employed in the rebuilding work.^[36]

On 4 August 1891, MP John Atkinson raised concerns in the House of Commons about the treatment of a prisoner at Chatham who had reportedly been flogged and punished repeatedly for refusing to work. Home Secretary Henry Matthews stated that the prisoner, Joseph Betts, had persistently refused labour for over two years and had therefore received disciplinary punishments, including corporal punishment, though he denied allegations of mistreatment.^[37]

• Google Street View: the HMS Pembroke area which would have been the location of the prison grounds