Group in convict school, Central Prison, Lucknow, Oudh


Photograph of a large group of convicts posed with books in the yard of the Central Prison at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: India Office Series (Volume 46), taken by an unknown photographer in c. 1871. During the nineteenth century experiments to educate adults in prison were carried out, but by the turn of the next century education was limited to children and adolescents. Central jails were designed to house convicts sentenced to more than one year's imprisonment. The Imperial Gazeteer of India states, regarding boys in prisons: "Boy convicts are confined in special wards, and are divided into children and adolescents. The latter class are kept separate, sleep in cubicles, and are provided with schooling and industrial education." Reformatory schools, the alternative to jail for boys, were initially under the jurisdiction of the prisons, but in 1899 their administration was transferred to the Education Department and by 1903 there were seven such schools in British India.

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