Mothers, with their children, exercising at Tothill Fields Prison

Book illustration showing mothers, with their children, exercising at Tothill Fields Prison, from page 399 of 'The criminal prisons of London and scenes of prison life' by Henry Mayhew and John Binny. The authors discovered that at Tothill Fields Prison there were 33 children currently in the prison "and 3 of these were under 6 months old, 12 from 6 to 12 months, and the remainder between 1 and 2 years". The mothers all had "a pound and a-half of oakum to pick in the course of the day, and they go into the work-room if their children are upwards of eight months old, while their little ones are taken care of by the women remaining in the nursery."