Edmund Frederick Du Cane

A further responsibility of the 1865 Act was to make arrangements for additional prison
accommodation required by the imminent abolition of penal transportation.
Still only 39 years of age Du Cane succeeded Edmund Henderson, in 1869, as Chairman
of the Board of Directors of Convict Prisons, Surveyor-General of Prisons, and Inspector-
General of Military Prisons. The same year saw the changes in the colonial convict prison
system which responsibility was transferred to Du Cane.
An advocate of using prison labour for public works, Du Cane authorised Convicts to
carry out works on various defence installations, including the breakwater, at Portland
and the docks at both Portsmouth and Chatham as well as using this Labour Force to
build additional prison accommodation including London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison
which was built to Edmund Du Cane’s design and specification.
Work began at ‘The Scrubs’ late 1874 with the construction of a small prison made from
corrugated iron alongside a temporary shed to which served as a barracks for the
Warders, by a small group of prisoners each of them within a year of their release. This
initial construction was then used to accommodate 50 more prisoners who erected an
additional temporary prison wing before, then, being employed to manufacture bricks at
the site. By the summer of 1875, enough bricks had been made to begin building the
prison's first block, it’s ground floor having been completed by the year’s end.
HMP Wormwood Scrubs
By now promoted through the ranks to that of Brevet-Colonel, signifying rank in the
British Army overall, but not within a Regiment, Du Cane oversaw the implementation of
the 1877 Prison Act under which all prisons came under direct government control, the
rules governing their administration standardised and staff co-ordinated into a single
Prison Service with a regular system of promotion.
The cost of maintaining the prison system was largely reduced as a consequence, as was,
in short time, the overall number of prisons. A more progressive system of discipline was
introduced and assistance offered to the discharged prisoner in finding gainful
employment on release.
Additionally Du Cane inaugurated the formal registration of criminals, overseeing the
production of the first "Black Book" list; printed using convict labour, the register listed