prison commissioner 1910 1921 (2 Ergebnisse)

Photographs: All black and white prints. The first (21 x 15 cm) a portrait of Waller (reproduced in Baxendale, p. 26, below). The second (23 x 17 cm) a family photograph of six Edwardian individuals, three younger ones (including a woman and with Waller at centre) standing, and three older men seated. The other six (all 14 x 8.5 cm and taken at the same time) showing Waller and family outdoors: one of him rowing, and one with a smiling woman (presumably his wife). Overall condition of the photographs is fair. They are lightly-aged, with a little creasing here and there. Letter One (signed 'Richard Waller'): 1 October 1991. 12mo, 2 pp. He is sending Herbert Gladstone's letters to his father, and 'cannot remember anything specific about Conan Doyle in relation to Portland or other prisons'. Discusses his father's attachment to Portland, and family history. Letter Two: 31 December 1997. 8vo, 2 pp. Discusses at length his views on death ('I shall meet in spirit my dear father & mother again'), with reference to Conan Doyle. Tells anecdote about his advice to the dying Marjorie Fry ('Howard League of Penal Reform'). Regarding Churchill he writes, 'I think my father (told me by my mother) admired Churchill but found him a great ego boaster to deal with'. The biography of Waller features on pp. 26 to 55 of 'Prison Service People', ed. Kenneth Neale, vol. 1, pp.26-55 (Newbold Revel: Prison Service College, 1993). The copy present here is in fair condition, in lightly-worn boards, and with a little marking-up to the margins. The book is scarce, the only copies on COPAC being at the six deposit libraries.

All photographic prints and negatives roughly 8.5 x 14.5 cm. Prints all black and white. The collection aged, but in good condition overall. The pictures of inmates all landscape, and the two of the officer portrait. The boys are arranged in three or four rows, with as many as forty present in one image. The images are all taken outdoors and in front of prison buildings, the windows in the Feltham images being barred, and the windows in the Borstal images plain glass. The prints consist of a number of exposures, each slightly different, of the six photographs whose negatives are also present. Each Borstal or Feltham print is docketed on the reverse in pencil, with the name of the institution and camera details such as '1/2 sec. - wide open' and 'Instantaneous'. In the remains of the original green paper wallet ('The Westminster Photographic Exchange Ltd'), naming the owner as 'Mr Waller'. From the archives of Maurice Lyndham Waller, Chairman of the Prison Commission from 1921 to 1928, having been a Commissioner from 1910 to 1921. According to his biographer A. S. Baxendale (in 'Prison Service People', ed. Kenneth Neale, vol. 1, 1993) Waller was 'particularly accountable' for the borstal system. The image of the prison officer may well show Captain W. V. Eccles, the first Governor of Borstal, whom Waller regarded as the only one of 'the geniuses' (see Baxendale, p. 32), and who died in 1916.