Burial-ground at Millbank Prison

Book illustration showing the burial-ground at Millbank Prison, from page 388 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. The burial ground was "an oblong piece of land, enclosed within a low black iron rail, and with a solitary elder-tree, growing in a round green tuft, close beside the fence." It was no longer in use in 1862, the warder explaining to the authors that, in "the cholera of 1848, so many corpses were interred there that the authorities thought it unhealthy. The bodies of convicts dying in the prison are buried at the Victoria Cemetery, Mile End, now. After a post-mortem examination has taken place, an officer of the prison goes with the coffin, and is generally the only person present at the ceremony."