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SECTION XII.: STAIRCASE FOR CHAPEL VISITORS, AND FOR THE OFFICERS’ APARTMENTS. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 4.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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SECTION XII.

STAIRCASE FOR CHAPEL VISITORS, AND FOR THE OFFICERS’ APARTMENTS.

To the staircase for company resorting to the chapel, I allot the middle one of the five piles of cells in the dead-part. Of the lower-most of these half, the height is occupied by the upper part of the diametrical passage through the sunk story. The passage to this staircase, twenty feet in length, taking that for the depth of the projecting front, will be right over the above-mentioned diametrical one. To reach this elevation, there will be an ascent of 4½ from the ground, to be performed by seven or eight steps.* To light it, which can only be done from above, will require the sacrifice of the centre one of the five uppermost cells, the four others of which are destined for the infirmary. The reasons for using iron not applying here, I make this staircase of stone. Being in use only on Sundays for promiscuous company, and then for no more than four or five hours of that day, it may serve for the officers’ apartment on each side: on which account, the expense of stone need the less be grudged.

By two passages, one over another, and crossing the intermediate area, it will distribute the different companies to their respective seats through the channel of the inspection-galleries. Of these passages, the lower one is upon a level with the area of the chapel; the upper one, upon a level with the uppermost inspection-gallery. The area of the chapel being 4½ feet below the level of the middlemost inspection-gallery behind it, the passage divides itself into three. The central part reaches the chapel-area without change of level, by a trench cut through the inspection-gallery to that depth: on each side of it is a flight of steps, seven or eight in number, by which such of the company as propose to sit in the lowermost of the two chapel-galleries will be conveyed through the inspection-gallery of that story to that elevation. The uppermost passage, having no area to lead to, will be uniformly on an elevation with the inspection-gallery and chapel-gallery, to which alone it leads. The inspection-galleries, encircling all round the chapel-galleries to which they are respectively attached, will discharge the company through doors made in any number of places that convenience may point out. The company who go to the area of the chapel will have an ascent of 13½ feet to make, to reach their destination; those who go to the lower gallery, 18 feet; those who go to the upper, 36 feet.

With the company’s staircase and the passages attached to it, it may be objected that the prisoners’ galleries and staircases possess an indirect communication. But so must every part of every prison, with every other, and with the exit. In the present instance, this communication is not such as can be productive of the smallest inconvenience, either in the way of danger of escape, or in the way of offensive vicinity with regard to the company. To make use of the company’s galleries in the way of escape, prisoners must first have forced their way into one of the inspection-galleries. How is this to be effected? And at night, should they, after having forced the grating of their cells, attempt to force the door that opens from their straircase into the inspection-gallery, there they find the inspector, whose bed is stationed close to that door, that he may be in constant readiness to receive them. As to vicinity, the nearest part of the prisoners’ staircases will be at twelve feet distance; nor will they be any of them on any part of those staircases at the time: the doors that open into them from the cell-galleries will then be locked. As to view, the prisoner’s staircases are indeed open; but this only in front, and the company’s staircases and passages are closed: nor will they see anything of the prisoners, till, from their seats in the chapel, they behold them at a distance on the other side of the intermediate area, ranged in order in their cells.

[*]This inequality is owing to the want of coincidence between the stories of the inspection-tower, and those of the surrounding cellular part—an irregularity produced by the contrivance of allowing two stories of the part to be inspected, to each story of the part from whence the inspection is to be performed.