With the end of the Bloody Code and the winding down of transportation to Australia, new prisons were needed to deal with the rising number of criminals in the nineteenth century. Captain John Jebb built a new prison at Pentonville in London between 1840 and 1842 based on the design of new prisons in the USA.
It had five wings radiating out from a central core and could initially hold 520 prisoners. Each cell was about 4 metres long, 2 metres wide and 3 metres tall. Toilets in each cell were quickly replaced with communal facilities as prisoners banged on the pipes to communicate with each other. Pentonville Prison became the blueprint for 54 other prisons around Britain.
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