The first feeble shoots of a new plant – the ideology of imprisonment – emerged above ground in the sixteenth century. By 1520 there were at least 180 imprisonable offences at common law. Now that imprisonment as a punishment for crime was becoming commonplace, some thought was given to its purpose. Was it purely penal, with the unwanted result that those ultimately discharged were more embittered and more ingrained in criminality, or could it have another function and be of advantage both to the individuals enduring it and to society at large? A development that began in 1556 was to put England at the very forefront of penal reform. Retribution, deterrence, containment, correction and training were put into the carceral cauldron and mixed. Punishment by imprisonment with multiple – and often conflicting – purposes was the result.

In that year, with the blessing of Edward VI and in response to the influx of a host of country people, dispossessed by the dissolution of the monasteries or the breakup of feudal retinues, and the resultant increase in vagrancy, the City authorities transformed the dilapidated Bridewell, Henry VIII's castellated palace situated on the left bank of the Fleet Ditch opposite the western City walls, into a unique institution serving a multiplicity of complementary ends.

Of lavish dimensions, as well as accommodating a granary and a coal store, it could combine a school for poor boys, a prison for refractory apprentices, a reformatory for ‘harlots’ and ‘vagabonds’, a workhouse for the unemployed, and a place of refuge for the relief of the poor. It boasted medical facilities far superior to those in any gaol, with a surgeon, a physician and an infirmary and with inmates being regularly checked for disease. Later Bridewell was incorporated with Bethlehem, the hospital for ‘lunatics’, and the two institutions shared the same governors, president, treasurer, clerk, physician and apothecary.