These included Emmeline Pankhurst, Emily Davison, Constance Markievicz (also imprisoned for her part in the Irish Rebellion), Charlotte Despard, Mary Richardson, Dora Montefiore, Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, and Ethel Smyth.

The Griffins Society provided more services than its previous iteration, including accommodations for discharged prisoners, a meeting ground for imprisoned mothers and their children, a psychotherapy group, and a coffee bar.

After the death from suicide in January 2016 of inmate Sarah Reed, a paranoid schizophrenic being held on remand, the subsequent inquest in July 2017 identified failings in the care system.

[10]Holloway Prison held female adults and young offenders remanded or sentenced by the local courts.

Holloway Prison offered both full-time and part-time education to inmates, with courses including skills training workshops, British Industrial Cleaning Science (BICS), gardening, and painting.

There was a family-friendly visitors' centre, run by the Prison Advice and Care Trust (pact), an independent charity.

The then-Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced in his Autumn Statement on 25 November 2015 that the prison would be closed and demolished and the land sold for housing.

It was only when a number of suffragists, despairing of change through peaceful means, decided to turn to militant protest that the "suffragette" was born.

In protest, some went on hunger strike and were force fed[3] so Holloway has a large symbolic role in the history of women's rights in the UK for those in sympathy with the movement.

Suffragettes imprisoned there include Emmeline Pankhurst, Emily Davison, Violet Mary Doudney, Katie Edith Gliddon, Isabella Potbury, Evaline Hilda Burkitt, Georgina Fanny Cheffins, Constance Bryer, Florence Tunks, Janie Terrero, Doreen Allen, Bertha Ryland, Katharine Gatty, Charlotte Despard, Janet Boyd, Genie Sheppard, Mary Ann Aldham, Mary Richardson, Muriel and Arabella Scott, Alice Maud Shipley, Katherine Douglas Smith, Dora Montefiore, Christabel Pankhurst,[14] Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Emily Townsend,[15] Leonora Tyson, Miriam Pratt,[16] Ethel Smyth and the American Alice Paul.

[18] Holloway held Diana Mitford under Defence Regulation 18B during World War II, and after a personal intervention from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, her husband Sir Oswald Mosley was moved there.

Norah Elam had the distinction of being detained during both World Wars, three times during 1914 as a suffragette prisoner under the name Dacre Fox, then as a detainee under Regulation 18B in 1940, when she was part of the social circle that gathered around the Mosleys during their early internment period.

Later, after her release, Elam had the further distinction of being the only former member of the British Union of Fascists to be granted a visit with Oswald Mosley during his period of detention there.

Noteworthy inmates that were held at the original 1852-era prison include Oscar Wilde,[22] William Thomas Stead, Isabella Glyn, F. Digby Hardy, Kitty Byron, Lady Ida Sitwell, wife of Sir George Sitwell, and Kate Meyrick the 'Night Club Queen'.

[23] More recently it housed, in 1966, Moors murderess Myra Hindley; in 1967, Kim Newell, a Welsh woman who was involved in the Red Mini Murder; also in the late 1960s, National Socialist supporter Françoise Dior, charged with arson against synagogues; in 1977, American Joyce McKinney of the "Manacled Mormon case"; between 1991 and 1993, Michelle and Lisa Taylor, the sisters convicted of the murder of Alison Shaughnessy before being controversially released on appeal a year later;[24][25][26] Sheila Bowler, the music teacher wrongly imprisoned for the murder of her elderly aunt, was detained there before being transferred to Bullwood Hall;[27] and in 2002, Maxine Carr, who gave a false alibi for Soham murderer Ian Huntley.

[35] A further inspection report in September 2008 again criticised safety levels for inmates of Holloway, claiming that bullying and theft were rife at the prison.

[42] Deborah Coles of Inquest said: "Sarah Reed was a woman in torment, imprisoned for the sake of two medical assessments to confirm what was resoundingly clear, that she needed specialist care not prison.

Instead of providing her with adequate support, the prison treated her ill mental health as a discipline, control and containment issue.

"[42] Caitlin Davies has written Bad Girls (published by John Murray), a history of Holloway Prison.