The southern portion used to be the site for Millbank Penitentiary, a notorious six sided structure that housed prisoners of transportation. They were shipped off to Australia in the 19th century direct from a jetty on Millbank itself. It was a desolate, dark, dank prison, where by all accounts, prisoners not only suffered psychological isolation but also physical deprivation and died from dysentery, cholera and scurvy and many other associated diseases. Those who died were interred in an onsite cemetery.
There was also enforced silence and a policy to break the morale and spirit of each prisoner, with the aim of rehabilitation. The prison was so vast and claustrophobic, the wardens themselves could only retrace their journey throughout, by marking the walls with chalk. The prison was subject to subsidence, since the land had not been drained adequately prior to construction. It was surrounded by a moat, the remains of which can still be seen today at the western end of John Islip Street.
Eventually it was deemed unsanitary, and in any case Australia did not want any more prisoners to colonise it, and so the role and purpose diminished, and it was eventually closed in the late 19th century. The Australian term POM is rumoured to be based on the acronym from Prisoner of Millbank.
I wrote the following poem on arrival in Millbank, thankfully not to be subject to the tyrannies noted above! in 2006.
Prisoners of Millbank
Along the wooden boards … his weary frame moved slow
He stopped and turned his pitted face with beard of early snow
And looked back on the fortress, that forced him from its gate
The country that despised him and scalded him in shame
The shackles at his feet, fell chorus like in tune
With all the shackles by his side of souls departing soon
The night was still, moon held high and yet his life was crushed,
Soon to lie in chains inside the hold where he was thrust.
Leaning to, at heavy tide, a vessel held the vilified,
Women, children, men astern, crammed inside, tossed and turned
Shackled, held, corralled aboard the prisoner ship, a sunken world
Here, beneath my pampered feet stood the jetty built to feed
That wayward mob unto the shore where jilted destiny lay moored,
The point of embarkation leads from Millbank Penitentiary
Which rotted in a moat that fed the inmates with its dysentery
An isle of crime, in six sides, shed their hopes awash the tide
Where chartists perished, paupers waned, laid to waste in silted graves
Except the few, bones mildewed, huddled masses chained unshod
Who stood their last on England’s shore to board the boat that here lay moored
Malodorous! This marshland rank, left sodden on its bedraggled bank
As troubled waters shy of home rippled out their murky foam.
Behind, the penitentiary, across the moat of misery
Relinquished its unruly crew to hostile worlds survived by few
Deported on the sediment of penal code and evidence
submerged in London’s excrement that floated on the tide…
Flesh travels back whence it came, to track its path and search in vain
A journey of a lifetime sprung from generations past - once shunned
As if our lifelong souls were borne without our will to gaolers’ scorn
Who still patrol our every move and watch that we don’t push and shove
In lines behind a gate again, to board a transport less mundane
Than muddied hulk that creaked and groaned where those who bled lay in the hold
That voyage now plied by airborne craft sailing high without a mast,
Imprisoned in our alloy bows, we lose ourselves within the crowd
Shackled not to dirty lair, but empty hopes lost in thin air
Above the river in the skies sail vessels spun of different hue
East meets west above our heads to draw descendants to their roots
Speckled waters far below belie the forebears’ mortal woes
Churned and turned their troubled souls lie dashed within the tidal spools
whose surface teases out a trace where the long departed met their fate
Prisons come and prisons go, but prisoners of transportation know
That exile knows no home, and homeless roam their souls
To ebb upon a sea so wide - lost within the great divide
Our man in shackles breathed his last, trapped under an English mast
© Sally P M Gethin
The following poem recounts a very real rumour/report that one of the prisoners perished in the holding cells underneath the Morpeth Arms. I have personally visited these cells and there are scratchmarks in the ceiling. This poem is written from the vantage point of a prisoner incarcerated in these holding cells.
The following poem recounts a very real rumour/report that one of the prisoners perished in the holding cells underneath the Morpeth Arms. I have personally visited these cells and there are scratchmarks in the ceiling. This poem is written from the vantage point of a prisoner incarcerated in these holding cells.
Underneath the Morpeth
Drips and trickles mark the tide
Of Father Thames against our side
He weeps for us inside our lair
His teardrops taste our dank despair
Lamenting our unending woe
He tosses, turns, ebbs and flows
But even he abets our fate
feeds the moat that laps our gate
Marks the mildewed tidal line
Against the walls where we’re confined
Hades knows no deeper cave
No blacker cell, no meaner maze
Than we that perish out of sight
Imprisoned in the Millbank night
Above the clanking vessels slide
To and fro awash the tide
Human cargoes strained and moored
Gaolers, sailors stalk the shore
Here beneath are fettered feet
Shackled, starved, deprived of sleep
We septic souls of dried up bones
Cry and sigh in scurvied shoals
But no-one heeds our withered call
Save to empty down a hole
rotting vittals on our heads
Putrid filth to keep us fed
These sunken eyes will never see
the sun again, or glimpse the sea
My feet will never run in haste
nor joyous laughter course my veins
My body never will behold
The wonder of the world unfold
Never shall I stand again
Upon the earth and feel the rain
I scratch and scrape to climb above
in jagged lines of convict blood
Cast me up! or let me sink
Deserted in the labyrinth
Blood is thinning, death awaits
Just a dungeon marks my fate
Sally Gethin 2008
Millbank trees
The plane trees sway
And a breeze blows up their skirts
And all their branches flutter
As they shiver in its mirth
The dark green leaves
Are dancing to my tune
Laughing and colliding
Jostling for the moon
They call me as their playmate
When the wind goes up their spine
It rustles up their chatter
As I walk beneath their line
They blot out all the grey clouds
With their fulsome laden height
And in the heart their canopy
Is luscious, long and bright
They are my friends, they are my soul
But never within reach
A gracious orchestra of sound
They lull me soft to sleep
Sally Gethin, April 2011
