Millbank Chaplain Reverend Whitmore Russell argued vigorously in favor of allowing prisoners to communicate with their family and friends.^ Russell had served as Chaplain at Millbank since about 1830. Russell and William Crawford became the first Inspector-Generals of Prisons of Great Britain in 1836.

The Governor of Millbank Penitentiary, Captain Benjamin Chapman, also advocating for allowing prisoners to communicate with family and friends. Chapman had argued for allowing communication in his testimony for the Report of the Select Committee on Secondary Punishments. That committee had recommended:

The Indulgence hitherto allowed to Prisoners, of receiving Letters from their Friends, should in the future be withheld altogether; and, during the whole Period of their Confinement, all Communication from without, except in special Cases, should be strictly prohibited.^

The Select Committee of 1835, in contrast, recommended that prisoners’ communication with family and friends should be withheld for the first six months of incarceration.

Millbank officials held important positions in the British penal system. The Millbank Penitentiary was the product of sustained national penal deliberation. It began full operation in 1821 in London at the spot where the Tate Gallery now houses art. Its architecture drew upon the ideas set forth in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon texts. Bentham himself received and then lost the commission for its construction.