Gissing in prison

By PAUL DELANY

Simon Fraser University

Gissing's arrest and imprisonment in 1876 was probably the most important event of his life. I will not attempt to give a full account of it here, but only to bring forward some newly discovered documentary evidence and to supplement Pierre Coustillas's 1963 article on the affair.¹ The evidence is the register entry for Gissing's commitment to Bellevue Prison, Hyde Road, Manchester on 6 June 1876.²

Bellevue Prison was opened in 1849 to expand prison capacity for the rapidly growing city of Manchester, and was demolished in 1892. It provided cells for 851 prisoners, 557 male and 294 female. In 1879 a total of 11,859 prisoners were sent there, 6,979 males and 4,880 females. This gives an average length of sentence of just under a month, with the women prisoners serving a bit less than this and the men a bit more. Bellevue Prison took only the small fry of Victorian criminality: the maximum sentence normally was no more than two months, and the prisoners were there by summary conviction, ie, not for any indictable offence. Some prisoners were held in Bellevue while awaiting trial, but Gissing was bailed out by the Principal of Owens College (J. G. Greenwood) after his arrest on 31 May.³

Who were Gissing's companions in the prison, and what were their crimes? The prison register is a classic document of Victorian social control, exercised over the mainly Irish slums west of Deansgate (earlier described in Engels' Condition of the Working Class of Manchester in 1844.). Almost as many women as men were caught up in police sweeps through the neighbourhood, and all ages from mid-teens to the elderly. The most common convictions were for "Drunk," "Drunk and Riotous," "Prostitution," "Theft," and "Assault." Some were jailed for such heinous deeds as "Pitch and Toss" (a street game), "Lodging in an Outhouse" (three vagrants), and "Stealing One Pot" (for which a "Charwoman" got three days). Many came to Bellevue because they could not or would not pay the fines assessed for their offence. Many were illiterate, judging by the few who sent or received letters, and many had a long string of similar previous offences.

Gissing was the second prisoner of forty-three (twenty-five male, eighteen female) who entered Bellevue on the 6th of June. Ahead of him in the register queue was Daniel Bowen, aged sixteen, given two months hard labour for assault. Behind him was Bridget Monahan, born in Ireland, given one month's imprisonment as a common prostitute. Monahan was fifty-five years old and four feet ten inches tall. The warder carefully noted her appearance: "Face wrinkled and freckled. Lost several upper side teeth and one front tooth broken." Her profession was given as "Hawker" and she had sixty-seven previous convictions. Another "Common Prostitute" followed: twenty-four years old, five feet tall, twenty-two previous convictions. Given where she lived (on the edge of Deansgate) and how she behaved, it seems likely that Nell Harrison knew Bellevue from the inside, though no register entries have yet been found.

Here is my transcription of the register entry with added comments:

Register No.: 14797

Prisoner's Name: George Robert Gissing

When and by Whom Committed: 6 June. T. Dale J.F. Furniss Esq. [These would be the magistrates, sitting jointly]

By Summary Conviction: S. of A. [Session of Assizes]

For what offence or on what charge: Stealing 5/2 in money [About £10 to £15 at current value]

Sentence: One c[alendar] /month Hard Labor [This might mean the treadmill, the turning of a crank, or picking oakum]

Age last birthday: 18

Personal Description:

Height: 5-8 1/2 [Gissing would have been one of the tallest men in the prison]

Complexion: Light

Hair: L[ight]/brown

Eyes: Grey

Marks upon person and remarks: Freckled face, mole left side neck, mole right side

Professed trade or occupation: None

Place of birth: Yorkshire

Last or usual residence: Mother Margaret Victoria Place, Wakefield [Gissing had been in lodgings on Grafton Street near Owens College when arrested, but perhaps wanted to conceal his connection with the college]

Religious profession: C E [Church of England]

Extent of instruction: Well

Married or single: S[ingle]

Parents living: M[other]

Number of Previous Committals: --

Letters received: 22/6 & 27/6 [It was quite unusual for a prisoner at Bellevue to receive or send letters. Probably only letters from next of kin were allowed, and not until two weeks had passed]

Letters sent: 24/6 & 28/6

Date of Discharge: July 5

It must have been a dreadful thing for a gentleman to be imprisoned in such a place. The irony was that Gissing, in trying to save Nell from the slums of Deansgate, was himself plunged into the lowest circle reserved for the Victorian underclass. When he made that class the subject of his earlier novels, he treated them with a mixture of sympathy and dissociation -- probably the same emotions with which he endured his month in Bellevue Prison.

NOTES

1 "George Gissing a Manchester," Etudes Anglaises, July-September 1963, pp. 255-61.

2 The prison register is held at Strangeways Prison, Southall St., Manchester. I am indebted to Kathy Willeard of H.M. Prison Service for finding the entry, and to Ray Jack for his instructive tour of Strangeways, a Victorian prison similar in its layout to Bellevue. Also useful was the anonymous pamphlet HM Prisons Manchester. The History of Prisons in Manchester.

3 John Halperin, Gissing: A Life in Books (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982), p. 19.

This article first appeared in the Gissing Journal for October 1996 and is posted here by kind permission of the author.