A Different London Underground

I'm in my Sherlock Holmes phase, having recently viewing the new SHERLOCK season finale, (a bit confusing; looking forward to another viewing). I have now begun reading the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. They're just great!

In The Sign of Four, one of the longer stories, as they hunt the perpetrator of shocking events (shocking by Victorian standards) Sherlock mentions to Watson that they must take a boat along The Thames to Millbank Penitentiary.

Well, I know the area  well, having visited a very close relative who lives not far from the site! In fact, the local Morpath Public House that he frequents is directly over the prison! On my last visit to London, he told me that the pub owner has given him a tour of the basement level of the establishment, where the cells still can be seen.

The prison is long gone, but I'm sure the ghosts still haunt. The site for the original Millbank prison was purchased in 1799, on behalf of the Crown by a man named Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher and social theorist. The prison was designed by Bentham as a "PANOPTICON", which allowed an observer to see all the inmates without them being able to see if they were being watched. Planned as a circular structure, with an inspection house in the center, from which the staff could watch inmates who were stationed around the perimeter. Bentham described the Panopticon as a "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

Unfortunately, the site chosen was quite marshy, and the building costly to erect, and the plan was abandoned. Eventually, though, in the early 1800's, the prison was built along the Thames near Vauxhall Bridge, and it did encounter problems from poor design, with a maze of corridors that even found the warden and guards losing their way. The prison was later downgraded, and eventually closed in the late-1800's.

Today, in this area of Pimlico, at 12 Millbank, another incredible, and secretive, building exists:         Thames House, the home of MI-5, the equivalent of the FBI ( national security). I have walked by 12 Millbank many a time, and been tempted to knock on the door if only to see if they ask for a password. I'd like to think the code would be S-H-E-R-L-O-C-K!