William Sall and Fulham’s lost prison

A reformist vision

The Refuge was based on reformist ideas promulgated by the then Director of Prisons, Joshua Jebb.  It accommodated women in the latter stages of their sentence (usually transferred from Millbank), who were taught skills, such as needlework, ironing and washing, to help them find employment once released. Nicknamed “Jebb’s pets”, the women were encouraged to foster a desire to lead an honest, decent life, and to “break off strongly rooted evil habits”, and had access to a Chapel and a schoolroom for their moral education.¹ The system seemed to work. In 1859, with a population of approximately 180, two-thirds of the women who were released secured situations where “they were likely to do well and were at the end of the year going on satisfactorily”.² 

From rehabilitation to punishment

However, by the time William Sall was appointed as the Medical Officer, a policy of rehabilitation had given way to one of punitive treatment. The Refuge had expanded to accommodate up to 400 women and in 1871 had been renamed as ‘Fulham Female Convict Prison’.³  As the medical officer, William would have not only played a key role in restoring prisoners' health and avoiding the outbreak of disease, but would also have decided which women were strong enough to endure physical labour and harsh punishment. We know from the evidence the Lady Superintendent gave to Parliament that this punishment included solitary confinement, up to a month living solely on a diet of bread and water, and the wearing of a coarse canvas dress as a mark of disgrace. 

Despite this, contemporaries still complained that, in their usual blue dresses and white straw bonnets, the women looked more like the residents of a charity school and that “..the living awarded to many of these unmitigated criminals is little short of exasperating to anyone who sees the daily struggles for a bare existence carried on by thousands of people all around”.⁴

Sall's death and the prison's closure

William Sall died in November 1884 at his home in Munster Terrace and was described in his obituary as greatly respected by those he came into contact with. Four years later, Fulham Female Convict Prison closed its doors and the women prisoners were relocated to a new prison in Woking.