George Peter Holford

[2] Holford was a friend of Lord Castlereagh, who in 1802 became President of the Board of Control, overseeing the East India Company.

He was also on good terms with the rising Tory politicians Lord Hawkesbury, Richard Ryder and Nicholas Vansittart.

At the end of 1802, the Prime Minister Henry Addington told Holford that he would shortly be brought into the House of Commons.

[1] When Addington made way for William Pitt the younger in May 1804, Benjamin Hobhouse who was Secretary of the Board of Control resigned, and Holford replaced him, working under Castlereagh to whom he became close.

He was invited in 1810 by Richard Ryder, the Home Secretary, to chair a select committee to implement the Penitentiary for Convicts Act 1794.

[1][5] In 1812 Holford obtained a grant to proceed with a penitentiary for London and Middlesex convicted prisoners who had been sentenced to transportation.

[1] For a few years from 1810, also, the Holford Committee allied itself with the generally Whig agitation set off by Samuel Romilly's campaign for criminal law reform, with Henry Grey Bennet and others, that made some piecemeal legislative progress.

[7] In the end, Holford and the committee rejected Bentham's principles, and the National Penitentiary was constructed over the next few years without regard for them.

The input from magistrates, such as John Thomas Becher, George Onesiphorus Paul, and William Morton Pitt, had more traction.