This is where his institutional career would begin: Rochester Borstal, the original children’s detention centre in Britain, where borstals themselves would later acquire their name. Opened in 1902 beside the Kentish village of Borstal, now swallowed up by the town of Rochester, it’s the sort of place you’d expect Miss Trunchbull to be nutting about in, terrorising the kids with maniacal joy. Heading the experimental scheme was the prison commissioner, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, who was seeking an alternative to the usual treatment of putting children directly into adult prisons.
