Nine prints of group photographs of inmates at the first Borstal Prison [at Borstal, near Rochester, Kent] and six of inmates at the second Borstal Prison, at Feltham in Hounslow. With two of a portrait of a prison officer. With the six negatives.

Author: 
Maurice Lyndham Waller (1875-1932), Chairman of the Prison Commission 1921-1928; Prison Commissioner, 1910-1921; Feltham Young Offenders Institution; Captain W. V. Eccles, Governor of Borstal Prison]
Nine prints of group photographs of inmates at the first Borstal Prison
Publication details: 
[Pre-First World War.]
£250.00
SKU: 10416

All photographic prints and negatives roughly 8.5 x 14.5 cm. Prints all black and white. The collection aged, but in good condition overall. The pictures of inmates all landscape, and the two of the officer portrait. The boys are arranged in three or four rows, with as many as forty present in one image. The images are all taken outdoors and in front of prison buildings, the windows in the Feltham images being barred, and the windows in the Borstal images plain glass. The prints consist of a number of exposures, each slightly different, of the six photographs whose negatives are also present. Each Borstal or Feltham print is docketed on the reverse in pencil, with the name of the institution and camera details such as '1/2 sec. - wide open' and 'Instantaneous'. In the remains of the original green paper wallet ('The Westminster Photographic Exchange Ltd'), naming the owner as 'Mr Waller'. From the archives of Maurice Lyndham Waller, Chairman of the Prison Commission from 1921 to 1928, having been a Commissioner from 1910 to 1921. According to his biographer A. S. Baxendale (in 'Prison Service People', ed. Kenneth Neale, vol. 1, 1993) Waller was 'particularly accountable' for the borstal system. The image of the prison officer may well show Captain W. V. Eccles, the first Governor of Borstal, whom Waller regarded as the only one of 'the geniuses' (see Baxendale, p. 32), and who died in 1916.