Little Ilford Gaol – introduction and background

This is the first of a five-part series examining the history and role of Little Ilford gaol, which was the second most important prison facility in Essex for almost forty years. It was located in the area now occupied by Worcester and Gloucester Roads, opposite Seventh Avenue and bordering Romford Road in Manor Park, and over its lifetime will have held around 30,000 prisoners.

Site of Little Ilford gaol today - Romford Road, Manor Park

Gaol was the common spelling for what we would now call jail until the mid-twentieth century, and so will be the spelling we will adopt for the Little Ilford establishment through its mid-nineteenth century existence.

Subsequent chapters, assembled from extensive research at the Essex County Records Office and examining newspaper archives, will delve into the institution's history, its management and supervision, and the lives and conditions of the prisoners it housed.

Little Ilford in the early nineteenth century

Little Ilford owes its mid-nineteenth-century growth to establishing a gaol in 1830. According to the Victoria County History of Essex, it comprised 768 acres, with Wanstead and the River Roding forming its northern and eastern boundaries. It was called Little Ilford to distinguish the area from Great Ilford, which lay east of the Roding and was located on the main London—Colchester road.

It underwent significant changes in the nineteenth century (see here). It transitioned from being the smallest parish in the Becontree Hundred, one of the 23 civil administrative units that had provided civil government for Essex-including law-and-order functions since the Middle Ages, to becoming part of the West Ham Poor Law Union in 1836. It was embraced by the Metropolitan Police District in 1840 and was incorporated into the East Ham Urban District, upon its creation in 1886. This transformation placed it on the cusp of rural Essex and the rapidly growing London conurbation, adding a layer of interest to its historical narrative.

We are getting ahead of ourselves. Little Ilford was entirely rural at the start of that century. There were just 15 houses in the district in 1801, and the only substantial building was the Three Rabbits pub (a coaching and trading inn, dating back to the 1630s). The population during the first three decades of the century hovered around 100. It was almost totally agricultural, with its main crop appearing to be the cultivation of osier (part of the willow family, used for basket making) on the banks of the Roding.

The population rose from 100 in 1831 to 189 a decade later, almost entirely because of the establishment of the gaol.

The local prison situation before Little Ilford was constructed

Before the construction of the Little Ilford gaol, there were only two significant prisons in Essex: Springfield in the county town of Chelmsford – which survives today in a much modified form, and the  Becontree House of Correction, which was located in Barking. They both came under the control of Essex’s Justices of the Peace, who were technically royal appointments but were, in practice, appointed by the Lord Lieutenant of the County, who, himself had been appointed by the Lord Chancellor – head of the judiciary.

To be recognised for the position, they had to be of considerable financial and social standing and socially minded enough to accept the unpaid post. The function required travelling around the county, sitting in judgment at police (magistrates) courts, visiting prisons, and reporting to the Essex Quarter Sessions every three months, which supervised both justice and administration in the county.

Each gaol had courts attached, and in Chelmsford’s case, its Assize and Quarter Session courts dealt with more serious cases, that could have resulted in Transportation or execution. Becontree court and gaol were primarily concerned with minor offences, or holding prisoners awaiting trial in Chelmsford.

The Becontree House of Correction had been located in East Street, Barking and served the whole of the Becontree Hundred between 1609 and 1791, incarcerating both “criminals and lunatics”.  It was replaced by a new “House of Correction/Bridewell” in nearby North Street in 1792, but this facility didn’t last long, as it failed to meet standards set for prisons from the 1820s.

Map of Becontree Hundred, soon after Little Ilford Gaol constructed

Early nineteenth-century prison reform

Prompted by prison reformers, including East Ham/Forest Gate’s Elizabeth Fry (see here), Robert Peel’s 1820s tenure as Home Secretary began to rationalise the justice system. The 1823 Gaol Act sought to establish a measure of uniformity throughout prisons in England and Wales. It established health regulations, required room for religious observance, the separation of different categories of prisoners and facilities for imposing hard labour on certain categories of prisoners. 

Early prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry, who lived about 2 miles from Little Ilford gaol and was the mother of the gaol's most prominent "Visiting Magistrate"

The Act directed county magistrates to inspect gaols at least quarterly and demanded that annual reports for each gaol be sent to the Home Secretary.

The Barking House of Correction could not meet the requirements of the 1823 legislation, so the Essex magistrates sought a replacement. It was closed in 1831, and its functions transferred to the newly created Little Ilford gaol. Thus, a community barely larger than a hamlet came to host the only significant prison in Essex outside the main Springfield establishment in the county town of Chelmsford.

Springfield gaol, Chelmsford c1900

Law and order in Britain before 1829 (and the establishment of the Metropolitan Police) were very much hit and miss. The functions were generally in the hands of “constables,” who were often part-time county appointments. Their main function was the collection of county rates.

 They had no detection or preventative responsibilities but did have the powers of arrest and an obligation to pursue felonies reported to them. The initial pursuit of offenders was often assumed to be the injured party's responsibility, who would call upon constables to make the arrests, serve warrants, and move prisoners from place to place (court, prison, transportation, etc.).

Constables also had a responsibility to clamp down on perceived anti-social behaviour and activity and move vagrants from the parish (because they were a drain on local finances). In the absence of locally convenient gaols, they would often be required to accommodate suspects in their own homes, which was something of a disincentive always to arrest perceived offenders.

Unsurprisingly, the convenience of having a local court and goal encouraged prosecution in the neighbourhood, and small towns with their own courts had greater levels of crime recorded than those whose individuals had a long trek to quarter sessions in county towns. (PJR King: Crime, Law and Society in Essex 1740-1820—unpublished Cambridge PhD, 1984).

Impact of Little Ilford gaol on local law and order

Therefore, establishing a gaol and court in Little Ilford meant that the area surrounding the court was more likely to see convictions for various offences than before the goal was constructed.

The 1829 Act establishing the Metropolitan Police brought a more structured approach to law, order, and detection in London—and a subsequent increase in the number of gaols in London. The Act impacted the court and gaol of Little Ilford when, a decade later, the jurisdiction of the Met was extended to incorporate the area covered by the Little Ilford facilities.

Two distinct actions – the establishment of the goal and court and the incorporation into the territory of a detection police force - within a decade, meant that the West Ham area started to record a greater incidence of crime and conviction than it had previously, although the actual level of criminal or anti-social activity may not have changed at all.

Subsequent chapters in this series on the gaol will examine its fifty-year history and how it was managed and overseen on a day-to-day basis, particularly by the “visiting justices” appointed by the Essex Quarter Sessions. The most prominent of them was John Gurney Fry, son of the aforementioned Elizabeth.

The series will conclude with a detailed look at the gaol’s estimated thirty thousand prisoners, their offences, and the conditions in which they were held during their confinements.