HC Deb 31 January 1952 vol 495 c349
27. Mr. A. Fenner Brockway

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the number of suicides in prisons during each of the last three years, and the proportion of these to the prison population as compared with 1936, 1937 and 1938.

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

The numbers of suicides in prison in England and Wales during the years 1949, 1950 and 1951 were 10, three and eight respectively: the corresponding figures for 1936, 1937 and 1938 were three, one and none. The daily average prison population in the period from 1936 to 1938 was about 9,000, and in the years from 1949 to 1951, it increased from about 16,000 to about 18,000. These figures do not take account of Borstal institutions.