Were prisons in London evacuated?

Someone asked me today if I knew if prisons in London were evacuated, and I had to say I had no idea! Presumably prisoners were just left where they were?
Joy

 

I've just stumbled on this 7+ year old thread and noticed it had no answer.

Being that I thought it was an excellent question to something I've never considered I thought I'd bump it up for the current members to perusal.

 

Pentonville and Wandsworth prisons certainly remained open during the war as these were used as the places of execution of a number of people convicted under the Treachery Act.

John

 

Were any of them hit by bombs?

Anyone escape during the war?

Any PoW's put in them?

 

Prisoners and Warders were killed at Pentonville during the bombing. After the Battle magazine did an article on this - Issue 151.

 

I believe that Wandsworth was also home to several German agents, who were turned and sent messages back to Germany from the Prison as part of Operation XX (Double Cross).

Regards
Tom

 

Were any of them hit by bombs?

Any PoW's put in them?

Prisons certainly remained open for business as usual during WW2. No special arrangements were made during air raids; prisoners simply remained in their cells. At least one London prison was hit and some prisoners killed. Two are commemorated by CWGC.

PoWs were not ordinarily placed in British prisons, but it is possible that a PoW who committed a serious offence could have been sentenced to imprisonment by a civilian court.

 

Do you think that they would have spent time and money to keep a convicts safe, while the general population is being bombed to blazes. In those days they got there priorities right.

 

Glad I stumbled across this. Not something I had considered before but very thought provoking and pg like the attitude of why should we concern ourselves with them when ordinary civilians need priority. Plus it would have been a logistical and risky process to even consider moving prisoners on mass.

 

In addition to its usual population of tarts, madams and other female prisoners, Holloway was used for those women arrested under Defence Regulation 18B who were considered most dangerous. Generally leading BUF or Right Club members: they didn't all end up in the Isle of Man!

 

I'm shocked by the lack of info
I can find online on this subject!

Does this mean that potentially
'stuff' was "hushed up"? The likelihood
of London prisons being hit during the
first Blitz or later rocket attacks must
have been as high as anywhere.

I wonder what incidents we've never heard about!

Would a mass escape be heavily reported?
That might make it develop into a Luftwaffe/
Goebals tactic!

 

In addition to its usual population of tarts, madams and other female prisoners, Holloway was used for those women arrested under Defence Regulation 18B who were considered most dangerous. Generally leading BUF or Right Club members: they didn't all end up in the Isle of Man!

The most notable woman prisoner under 18B was Diana Mosley, wife of Oswald, who was held in a male prison, as were some other male prisoners under 18B.

 

Hull prison took some hits as it was near the docks and I believe one of the most bombed towns during WW2. Some killed there too.

They say that up until the bombings prison cell doors were only secured by the main heavy duty (Chubb) lock. During the bombings when some prison wings were hit the buildings shook and the lock bolts sprang out of the frame. So, to avoid prisoners getting loose during the bombings they added big sliding door bolts on the outside. One for ordinary prisoners and two for higher risk prisoners.
The practice of adding these additional external bolts continued in prisons well into the 1980's.
Also, during the cold war there was a contingency to deal with prisons during a atomic/nuclear attack, they stayed where they were, in prison. I don't suppose its any different now

 

The most notable woman prisoner under 18B was Diana Mosley, wife of Oswald, who was held in a male prison, as were some other male prisoners under 18B.
Diana - and later Oswald, after he was transferred from Brixton - were both held in Holloway until their release in 1943. Fay Taylour and Enid Riddell - to name but two - were actually considered more dangerous than Diana Mosley.
Mosley offered the services of the BUF to the British government, but he was loathed as a potential collaborator should the Nazis invade; part of the Labour party's price for joining a coalition government may have been his internment in Brixton prison in 1940. Diana, recently delivered of her son Max, was watched closely. Her ex-father-in-law and sister Nancy denounced her as a "sinister woman".

A month after Mosley's detention, she was told to pack a few clothes, hand Max - whom she was breastfeeding - and his brother over to relatives. She entered the filthy dark of Holloway Prison's F-wing, its plumbing fractured by bombing, its food contaminated. Churchill, as prime minister, directed that Diana could bathe daily, but water supplies were so low that ablutions were never more than weekly. She ordered bottles of "grocer's port" through her Harrods account, and Mosley sent her a whole Stilton; for months she subsisted on a daily glass and slice of cheese. A newspaper fantasised about Mosley's life inside, imagining a butler and unrationed viands; he sued for libel and the couple saw each other for moments at court. The damages paid for a rough fur coat, under which she slept.

Churchill granted her request that the Mosleys be imprisoned together in a small house inside Holloway walls. The couple had quiet, clean sex offenders as domestics; they raised and cooked vegetables, aubergines and fraises des bois besides cabbages, listened to records, read Racine, sunbathed in their tiny yard. The prison priest told the warden: "It's the Garden of Eden out there, Lady Mosley in her little knickers." When they were released in 1943, 20,000 people petitioned and protested against the decision. Exiled from London and with their other properties requisitioned, they grew food at Cimmie's farm, and tutored their sons at home.

Obituary: Diana Mosley | Politics | The Guardian