Cell, with prisoner at crank-labour in the Surrey House of Correction

Book illustration of a cell in the Surrey House of Correction with a prisoner working at 'crank-labour', from page 398 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. On a tour of the prison the authors inspected "the hard labour machines in corridor E1, patented by Botten. They move by a crank hand, and perform on an average 12,000 revolutions a day. The prisoner in the first cell we visited had to perform 12,000 revolutions; some have only 10,000. There is an indicator on the machine to tell the amount of work performed." Weights inside the box meant it was possible to adjust the pressure, "and the hard labour [can be] consequently lightened or increased, by removing the weights, or adding to them. The machine without the weights is 7 lbs. pressure. Two weights added to it, increase the pressure to 10 lbs., and the whole of the weights introduced brings it to 12 lbs. The pressure of the machine is prescribed by the medical officer. There are 100 machines, all in E1, some have wood and others have iron covers."