The Treadmills of Northallerton

The new "retail and leisure destination" to be built on the site of the former prison in Northallerton is to be called "the Treadmills"

Along with many others, I have always thought this name showed distinctly poor taste and by chance I've just come across this, from R P Hastings' Chartism in the North Riding of Yorkshire and South Durham, 1838-1848, (Borthwick Publications, 2004)

Chartism was a nation-wide, radical, grass-roots, movement of the working classes calling for reform and, above all, for the vote.

Noting the local Chartists' tendency to exploit "every propaganda opportunity", Dr Hastings writes:

Northallerton House of Correction had an unenviable reputation.  Samuel Holberry, the young Sheffield Chartist leader, had become a martyr overnight when he died in 1842 at York Castle after imprisonment in Northallerton.  His associate, John Clayton, had died in Northallerton.  North Riding Chartists then took up the case of William Brook, a Bradford Chartist who had been 'reduced from a stout athletic man to a mere skeleton' in the 'Northallerton Hell'.  

Clayton, Brook and others, the Chartists claimed, had been subjected illegally to work on the treadmill.  Northallerton and Brompton Chartists raised a fund to enable Brook to buy his own provisions and petitioned the Home Secretary for his release.  Isaac Wilson, a Brompton weaver and Chartist leader, became treasurer and made weekly prison visits.  Donations came from as far afield as Dundee, Trowbridge, Spitalfields, Brighton and Abergavenny as well as Darlington.  

This is an excerpt from the "Proposed National Petition, to be signed throughout the country, and entrusted to the care of the "Political Prisoners' Release and Charter Petition Convention" from the Chartists' newspaper The Northern Star of 20 March 1841.  This section deals with the "Northallerton Hell" and the treadmill.  (The "silent system" had been introduced to Europe from the USA; under it, strict silence was enforced at all times.)

That in the Gaol of Northallerton, six Chartist prisoners, whose sentence was merely imprisonment, were put to hard labour, on the treadmill, contrary to law. 

That William Brook, one of the said prisoners, who had been convicted of sedition and conspiracy, at the same time as Peddie [convicted in 1840 at York], and whose sentence was three years, fell off the mill; and, though he informed the Visiting Surgeon, that he was frequently troubled with a cramp, yet he was forced, contrary to his sentence, to work upon the wheel, for nearly one calendar month, until removed by an order from the Most Honourable the Secretary of State for the Home Department. 

That your petitioners have been informed that John Clayton, a Chartist, who lately died in Northallerton House of Correction, had been sentenced to solitary confinement, upon a charge of violating the silent system. 

That your petitioners have every reason to believe, from what they have heard of the conduct of the authorities of the prison, that he came to his death in consequence of the cruel manner in which he was treated. 

That Wm Martin, who had been confined in the said House of Correction, Northallerton, was removed to Lancaster Castle, in consequence of the severity of the silent system, and of the tyranny of Wm Shepherd, the superintendent. 

That your petitioners have likewise been informed that the physical condition of the prisoners in the House of Correction, Northallerton, is deteriorated not only by the hard labour of the mill and the horrid silent system, but by the filthy manner in which they are obliged to sleep; that they have been for a fortnight at a time without a clean shirt, and their beds infested with vermin; that the only place where they are permitted to wash, is at a stone trough in the yard, and the superintendent is in the habit of coming to the yard gate and shouting to the petty officers to report the men for being too long washing themselves; that some of the prisoners have been punished for using too much soap, which is a proof that the object of the Governor is to enrich himself instead of attending to the comforts of the unfortunate convicts.

An overview of the history of imprisonment and an illustration of prisoners working on the treadmill, from Henry Mayhew's The Criminal Prisons of London (1862) can be found here.