40. David and Eliza Meaden of London, Birmingham and the Isle of Wight

David Meaden was born in 1817 in Shillingstone nr Blandford, Dorset. His parents were George and Jenny Meadon.

Eliza Margaret Waddilove was born in 1810 in Bethnal Green, Middlesex (East End of London). Her parents were James and Margaret Waddilove.

Eliza married Frederick Samuel Smith (1807) in 1832 in St Pancras, Middlesex (London). Frederick died in 1838. They had a daughter:

• Eliza Margaret Smith (1834). Eliza died in 1834; Frederick also died.

David and Eliza were married in 1839 in Marylebone, Middlesex (London) in 1832.

They had two daughters:

• 52.2.1 - Eliza Meaden Meaden (1840)
• 52.2.2 - Fanny Jane Meaden (1841)

Years ago, I pored over handwritten records to check that her middle name really was the same as her surname. Then it became obvious that David was ensuring that his name would be handed down via his daughter. Eliza was also remembering her first daughter, who died as an infant.

More in Chapter 52.

When he married, David was a soldier, based at the relatively new Regent's Park Barracks (part of John Nash's original design for the Park). It was built for the Life Guards, who guarded the monarch and were, allegedly, "recruited with men of good repute, - generally the sons of persons in a respectable sphere in life". I had been speculating that David had been aware of the re-formation of the Blandford Troop of Dorset Yeomanry Cavalry in 1830 after a wave of unrest and agricultural riots. Either way, I've now found a record of David enlisting with the Life Guards in December 1834.

Interior of Guard Room, with soldiers of the Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards, 1840 (credit) 

The barracks had the reputation of being cramped and uncomfortable, and, as often, army accommodation was often scandalously poor. On the wedding certificate, David and Eliza's parents were described as a 'farmer' and a 'gentleman' respectively. 

Regent's Park Barracks (credit)

When Eliza jr was born in 1840, David was a different sort of guard - on the London and Birmingham Railway! Eliza sr died in 1843. 

At Christmas 1845, David married Betsy Maria Morgan (1823) on Portsea Island, Portsmouth. By 1851, he was a warden at Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight. The family lived at 57 Horsebridge Hill, Northwood, half a mile from the prison. If the building hasn't been replaced, then it was a modest terrace. It appears that David was an 'Extra Warder' at Pentonville before this.

Parkhurst Prison (credit)

The prison had begun as a military installation but was a Juvenile Reformatory by 1838. Almost 1500 boys were transported from Parkhurst to Australia and New Zealand. By 1863, it was accepting young adults. Eventually it became a conventional prison, incarcerating, in due course, the Yorkshire Ripper, a Moors Murderer and the Kray Twins.

If David was at the prison when he married, then he may well have been present at Queen Victoria's visit a few months earlier. She remarked on the loneliness of the solitary confinement in which the boys spent their first month or two (actually four), and on the "most admirable education, even scientific, & we saw them at work, tailoring. They make all their own clothes. The younger boys were much more pleasing to look upon, the older one, giving one the painful impression, of real criminals". The emphasis was on training in agriculture and practical skills, and plenty of religious instruction. The boys also made bricks to extend the prison.

A book by prison reformer Mary Carpenter, written in 1851 is available online, and discusses conditions at the prison, and transportation. According to a book on Canadian 'apprentices' from Parkhurst (and other sources), leg irons were used, and the institution was run along military lines with strict discipline. The boys were guarded in the fields by soldiers with muskets and bayonets - presumably including our David.

David and Betsy had eleven children - David had ten daughters in a row:

• Betsy Maria Meaden (1847)
• Kate Harriet Meaden (1849)
• Mary Ann Meaden (1851)
• Julia Jane Meaden (1853)
• Alice Emily Meaden (1856)
• Beatrice Emma Meaden (1858)
• Ellen Rose Meaden (1859). Ellen died in 1862.
• Minnie Amelia Meaden (1861)
• David George Morgan Meaden (1862)
• Henry Ernest Meaden (1864)

More in Chapter 52.

Meanwhile in Birmingham, the first attempt to provide a local alternative to the Warwick County Gaol was part of the substantial stone building built in Moor Street in 1806, shared with the post office and the court. There was no room for expansion and it soon became clear that it was wholly inadequate. Work on its replacement at Winson Green, with its distinctive gothic gateway started in 1845 and it opened as the new Birmingham Borough Gaol in 1849 (it is now HMP Birmingham). 

The first governor was the God-fearing Scottish naval officer Alexander Maconochie, who had developed ideas on penal reform when commandant of the Australian penal colony on Norfolk Island. He was encouraged to resign on health grounds after a couple of years when the regime was felt to be too liberal (but only by the standards of the time). His deputy, Lieutenant William Austin took over. Austin presided over a sadistic regime brought to an end after a whistle blower reported the barbaric treatment leading to the suicide of several young inmates (see Ragged Victorians). There are accounts here As a result, Austin was himself jailed in 1856 (the Sydney Morning Herald gave full account).

By 1857 (from a convict report of a deported glass blower called Henry Brittain! - also 1858 Kelly's Directory), our David was governor, 'living in' with his family. In 1859, the Recorder of Birmingham made the observation (North Wales Chronicle) that:

"Mr. Meaden, the governor of the gaol of this borough, an active and zealous officer, has been in correspondence with gentlemen holding similar situations to his own, and he thinks that the diminution of the number of convictions may be estimated at 15% per cent during the last year."

Winson Green prison (credit)

Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham indicated that he earned £450, and was replaced in 1878 when the government took over the gaol, possibly as a result of the escape of three prisoners in the preceding year. Betsy died in 1881, by the census, David and six of the children were living at 14 York Road, Edgbaston, a suburban, semi-detached villa (his occupation is apparently related to 'tools'). There is more about the prison and its surroundings on this local history website. 

 

In 1885 Winson Green took over as the hanging prison for those convicted at Birmingham Assizes.  A new, rather cramped brick built execution shed was erected against the front wall of the prison adjacent to C Wing.  Inside the shed the walls were whitewashed with the beam set into sockets in the sidewalls, 11’ above the trap doors which were level with the floor, thus not requiring the condemned to climb any steps.

By 1891, David had retired to Northam nr Bideford on the Devon coast: he died in 1898, back in Dorset. The controversies at the prison have never gone away. In echoes of the nineteenth century, having been accused by its own Board of Governors for being too lenient, in 2011, it was the first prison to be privatised. The government took over the prison again in 2018, after a regime of 'violence, drugs and squalor'.

Next (David's siblings)