Picture Number:1987-5180 Credit:National Museum of Photography, Film & Television/Science & Society Picture Library
A photograph of inmates of Pentonville Prison, London, employed in construction work, taken by Captain Lewis, probably of the Royal Engineers, in 1870.
Wearing prison uniform these men are harnessed to a wheel for grinding or crushing rocks. A guard looks on in the background.
Pentonville Prison was designed by Sir Joshua Jebb (1793-1863) and completed in 1842. It was a model prison built according to Jeremy Bentham's (1748-1832) concept of the 'Panopticon', consisting of five blocks radiating from a central point.