ABSTRACT
THE 'new model' convict prison at Pentonville was opened in 1842 to replace the Millbank Penitentiary which, though only some twenty years older, had proved to be a costly white elephant from the beginning. 1 In his radial wing design for Pentonville, Jebb followed Haviland's model of the Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia which had opened in 1829. He had, however, made improvements, and there is little doubt that Pentonville represented an achievement in prison architecture of no mean stature. Strictly functional and devoid of pseudo-Gothic ornament, it has aesthetic qualities which are visible even today and it was, in 1842, a startling contrast to the rotting hulks at Chatham and Sheerness which were then still in use. (Indeed, it once possessed cell w.c.s which were later removed under the du Cane régime.)
