The fetter-room at Millbank

Book illustration of the fetter-room at Millbank, from page 247 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. On a tour of Millbank prison, the authors are shown the chain-room, or armoury. "It was one of the ordinary cells, but literally hung in chains, which were arranged against the walls in festoons and other linear devices." The authors observed leg-irons, hand-cuffs, manacles, ankle-cuffs, neck-pieces "heavy enough to break an ordinary collar-bone", and even "little baby handcuffs, as small in compass as a girl's bracelet, and about twenty times as heavy". The authors reflected "with a sigh that this museum of fetters - this depot of criminal harness - this immense collection of stupidities and atrocities in short - was not only a vestige of the sanguinary criminal legislation of the last century, but also a reminder of the discipline of our lunatic asylums as they existed at no very distant period."